812 thoughts on “Friday 3 January: Take politics out of law degrees to protect judicial independence”

  1. Qassim Soleimani, head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, assassinated in US airstrike at Baghdad airport. 3 JANUARY 2020 • 5:27AM.

    General Qassim Soleimani, head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, was killed in a US airstrike at Baghdad’s international airport early on Friday, an assassination that marks a major escalation in US-Iran tensions in the region.

    The strike also killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of Iran-backed militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces, or PMF.

    Morning everyone. This was a dumb move since no country can allow its leaders to be killed without responding. Iran does not wish to fight the United States for obvious reasons but this does not mean that it won’t! There is no reason to believe that a war with Iran will be any more successful than any of the others the US has waged in the region over the last thirty years and quite a few to suggest that it might be much worse.

    The comments below the line which are supportive in a Marvel Comics sort of way appear to have been written three hours before the article itself was posted. Lol!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/01/03/air-strike-kills-qassim-soleimani-head-irans-elite-quds-force/

    2. What was Suleimani doing at Baghdad airport? Co-ordinating the attack at the US Embassy?

      1. Morning Oberst. What was an American drone doing killing a member of the Iranian government in someone else’s country?

    3. They had a British Government spokesman on this morning trying to be as diplomatic about this idiocy as possible.

      Before picking a fight with Iran he’s been itching to do since he got in, he should reflect that by betraying the Kurds, he lost the West’s most reliable ally in the region, handing over authority to an alliance of Assad, Russians and Iran. He has lost all his diplomatic credibility there, and should not be surprised therefore that unwashed locals have as much regard for Americans as Asterix and Obelix have for Romans.

    2. Pure bluster on the part of Labour – there is no chance of the amendment being accepted all it does is delays acceptance of the Brexit Bill. If it doesn’t get as far as the Monarch’s signature by 31st January we will be out of the EU with NO deal – by far the best solution.

      Go on Labour, keep putting up amendments. The conservatives just need to filibuster in the Lords on January 31st – job done.

      1. Because it is in the Queens speech convention is the Lords will not vote against it

        2. There was a convention that the speaker was neutral, but that disappeared recently. Conventions are worthless in politics.

      1. The LIb-Dems had more of a disaster at the polls than Labour. They had gone from over 50 seats down to 13 so logically should have done better instead they managed to go down 1 seat

      2. Sadly, anyone who voted for Labour in 2019 is basically anti-semitic, or ignorant, or both.

        1. They are also prepared to place Islamic Rape Gangs above the wellbeing of their underage victims.
          How the Hell Labour is, post-Rotherham, still a viable political force is beyond me.

  5. ‘Morning All

    “Is Australia ground zero in the climate change crisis?”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/01/02/has-australia-become-ground-zero-climate-change-debate/

    Bizarre piece linking the bush fires to coal production??

    The comments are having none of it

    “One of the big problems underlying these fires is land management. The
    do-gooders have done away with man-made fire-breaks and allowed the
    fallen leaves and branches to build up but, with Australia’s climate and
    vegetation, these are extraordinarily flammable. And now we see the
    result.”

    1. Bush fires in Australia are normal. Most of the Australian population is on the coast and as the population has grown the towns and cities have extended out into the bush increasing the risk of fires

      1. My brother lives in the Adelaide Hills, and I have been out there five times in the past, so know the area well. My father is also buried there.

        When the temperature rises over 40C, and especially if there is a north wind, they declare a Catastrophic Fire Risk day, when they put volunteer firefighters on standby alert, lock up known firebugs, order householders to clear their gutters, top up water tanks, check sprinker systems, and avoid barbecues outside or any naked flame. Any lighting of fires is met by the neighbourhood alarm going off, and a visit from the fire brigade which the perpetrator has to pay for. As you say, this is normal in Australia.

        What is different lies on a decision every householder must make – whether to stay put, fight the fire and save the home, or whether to evacuate to the coast. It is a fine line, depending on the likely severity of any fire as well as one’s mental and physical fitness to fight the fire.

        My brother told me yesterday that he has prepared the car, loading up pets and family albums for evacuating to the coast today, and abandoning any hope of saving his home in the hills should a fire erupt there.

        Sceptics here suggest that global warming is a myth, but I suggest that Aussies are coming to a verdict by voting with their feet, and that this time it shows that it a reality, and that at least there, it has flipped over a fulchrum.

        1. I don’t think you will find anyone here Jeremy who denies GW otherwise we’d still be in the LIA. What we cannot understand is how anyone could think that the essence of life present in almost dangerously low concentration can somehow control the climate of the planet. There is absolutely no evidence for this anywhere.

        2. With these fire once they have taken hold the fire can spread rapidly and even a small change of wind direction can take you from being safe to being in danger. It is a tough call

          1. Indeed. It all hinges on surviving a blowover. If you do, you need a masonry shelter that is ventilated (people can suffocate in cellars) and fireproof. You need fireproof clothing of cotton or wool. You need to be fit enough to endure extreme heat and stress. If you have gutters clear, cleared away local fuel sources, a tin roof and a working sprinkler system, it was normally possible to see out the blowover.

            The main danger to home is after the fire has passed, with embers blowing about and getting into nooks and crannies, which can then burn down the home. It requires constant vigilance with the hose attached to the water pump. The reward is of course saving the home, and the leaves on the gum trees are designed to regenerate after fire.

            However, there comes a point when this cannot work, and the only way to survive a big fire is to get the hell out in good time. Leave it too late, and you are caught out on the road. Many people die in their cars.

          2. A lot of them appear to be timber framed and once a fire gets into a timber frame it is very difficult to put out

        3. When I was there one November (for the Race That Stops A Nation) there was a Fire Risk alert. We went out into the Little Desert and were about to have a picnic (with a thermos of pre-prepared hot water) when a policeman appeared to check we weren’t about to light a fire.

    2. Dreadful to see this sort of article in the DT. Not as bad as the maniacal ravings of the Monbiot but an unexpected disappointment when so much pseudoscience is published.

    3. Particularly in view of the recorded incidence of large fires on the mainland in the eighteenth century logs of Captain Cook’s fleet.

  9. “A private

    police service is mounting the UK’s first private prosecutions for

    theft and other “minor” crimes because it claims the police have “given

    up” taking them to court.

    The private firm, which provides neighbourhood policing to residents,

    firms and shops, says it has set up a new prosecution unit after its

    teams have apprehended shoplifters, pickpockets and drug dealers only to

    be told by officers called to the scene to release them.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/01/02/private-security-firm-mounts-uks-first-private-prosecutions/

    Private police forces,what could possibly go wrong…………………..

    I am instinctively against such forces but with the pathetic service provided by the state I can understand why this is happening,elsewhere in the paper we are told less than 1% of thefts are solved

    “Tens of

    thousands of thieves are escaping justice with as few as one in 500

    thefts being solved by police in parts of Britain, a Telegraph analysis

    has found.

    Home Office data shows that just one in 500 thefts (0.2 per cent)

    resulted in a charge in Suffolk, the lowest rate, followed by 0.3 per

    cent in Gloucestershire and City of London and 0.6 per cent in

    Warwickshire for the year 2018/19.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/01/02/tens-thousands-thieves-escaping-justice-telegraph-analysis-reveals/

    1. The few they detect are rarely prosecuted so called low level crime is almost legally now with little fear of being caught or prosecuted, If by some fluke you are caught and prosecuted a jail sentence is a very remote possibility so low you can pretty much forget it

      1. As Peter Hitchens has observed it is more difficult to get into Jail than University!

        1. “Here, Ni ……”
          Hey, I’ve just achieved something more difficult than 4A* results.

        2. Commit a crime which is perceived as not being PC and a small army of police will turn up within minutes, Report a burglary and you will be lucking it they turn up at all. All they will want to do is give you a crime number for insurance purposes

    2. This was meant for publication a few days hence but this is the way to get it done:

      HOW TO CALL THE POLICE WHEN YOU’RE OLD AND DON’T MOVE FAST ANYMORE.

      Phillip Hewitson, an elderly man, from Norwich, was going up to bed, when his wife told him that he’d left the light on in the garden shed, which she could see from the bedroom window. George opened the back door to go turn off the light, but saw that there were people in the shed stealing things.

      He phoned the police, who asked “Is someone in your house?”

      He said “No,” but some people are breaking into my garden shed and stealing from me.
      Then the police dispatcher said “All patrols are busy. You should lock your doors and an officer will be along when one is available.”

      George said, “Okay.” He hung up the phone and counted to 30. Then he phoned the police again.

      “Hello, I just called you a few seconds ago because there were people stealing things from my shed. Well you don’t have to worry about them now because I just shot them.” and he hung up.

      Within five minutes, Six Police Cars, a SWAT Team, a Helicopter, two Fire Trucks, a Paramedic, and an Ambulance showed up at the Hewitson’s residence, and caught the burglars red-handed.

      One of the Policemen said to Phillip, “I thought you said that you’d shot them!”

      Phillip said, “I thought you said there was nobody available!”

      (True Story)

      That’s Norfolk for you.

    3. Didn’t the police openly say they wouldn’t bother with shop-llfting thefts under £100? Licence to nick.

  10. Morning all

    Follow

    SIR – I am confident that the judiciary is not politically motivated in the party-political sense (Letters, December 30). However, after Cherry/Miller (No 2), it is probably no longer possible to avoid greater scrutiny of the make-up of the Supreme Court, especially since it reached a unanimous decision on a matter that another court, which included the Lord Chief Justice and Master of the Rolls, held to be non-justiciable.

    The problem is achieving this scrutiny without affecting the independence of the judiciary. I have three suggestions. First, the Judicial Appointments Commission should be overhauled and both its membership and the criteria for judicial appointments should be reviewed. Secondly, every judicial appointee should have been in full-time practice as a barrister or solicitor for a significant and set number of years before being appointed to any office. Thirdly, a law degree should cover only core subjects such as criminal and contract law. Other politicised topics – for example, criminology and diversity law – should only be studied as part of a graduate degree or for the professional qualification.

    I suspect that the present problems have deep roots and in some cases go back to politically motivated teaching at universities. My suggestions might not eradicate all such problems but they would deal with some.

    His Honour Judge Nicholas Webb

    Birmingham

    1. The changes made to judicial appointments allowing lawyers to apply for judgeships in “Areas they have a special interest in” has been a disaster it has enabled judges to make up law bypassing Parliament

    2. Just kibosh the Supreme Court.
      I don’t remember life being any more or less just before its creation.

        1. Are you daring to suggest that Mrs Blair (who possibly disapproved of fox hunting) was able to influence the Prime Minister?

          1. Mrs. Blair has a pile of chips on both shoulders; each and every one of them is too large to shove into her gob.

    3. So, Your Honour, Judge Nicholas Webb, you recognise that the Supreme Court’s ruling that Proroguing was ‘Unlawful’, despite there being no law to be broken?

      Funny old sense of non-political judgement.

  11. SIR – There was a lot of media coverage for our brand new aircraft carriers coming into Portsmouth over the holidays. However, I think they should be returned as unfit for purpose because their sirens don’t work.

    On the stroke of midnight, every ship in the harbour used to let rip with their horns and hooters, and the noise could be heard all along the coast, to be joined in competition by the merchant fleet in Southampton. There was never any doubt about when the new year started.

    On January 1 this year, our navy terrified the world with its silence – even the ship’s cat was asleep on the command console. Britain is going to be a sad place to live if even its sailors do not know how to party.

    David Allen

    Portsmouth, Hampshire

        1. ‘Morning, Bill, hitherto they’ve just been buggering about but with the ladies on board it’s a (w)hole new Navy Lark.

    1. WE have this strange character trying to get a court to declare it as a sort of religion. What business it is of a court to decide this who knows

      They try to claim being vegan is healthy. It is not. It is harmful to ones health well at least without taking loads of supplements which also may not be healthy

      The other claim is being vegan is better for the planet which is another total load of bunk

      The number of vegans in the UK is close to zero. The vegan society claims 600,000 but gives no real source as to how it arrived at that and that number appear to be very exaggerated. Even 600,000 out of a population of nearly 70M is next to nothing

      1. If the Vegans win out then watch the life stock populations die out with no purpose left to sustain them.

    2. IT is highly profitable.. They can charge a lot more for food that is cheaper to produce

  13. It’s just not cricket.

    SIR – Even the cricket authorities miss the point of Test matches (Leading Article, January 2). The goal is to bowl out the opposing side twice for a lower cumulative score than your own. It isn’t to play cricket for five days.

    Allowing five days normally means that playing for a draw is taken off the table and that time lost for bad weather can be recovered.

    Four-day tests in England will make the chances of a result less likely and will be the death of this form of the game. Perhaps that is the real objective.

    Dr David Cottam

    Montauriol, Lot-et-Garonne, France

  15. Iran: Attacks USA Embassy
    USA: “You’re gonna pay for that.”
    Iran: “You can’t touch us.”
    USA “Hold my beer”

  16. Morning, Campers. Continuing last night’s discussion:
    Well, I’m up to date with the ironing, and my new pressure cooker should mean I’ve a little spare time ….

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/01/02/calling-weirdos-boris-johnsons-chief-aide-dominic-cummings-begins/

    Calling all ‘weirdos and misfits’: Dominic Cummings begins extraordinary No10 recruitment shake up
    Gordon Rayner, Political Editor Danielle Sheridan, Political Correspondent

    “Boris Johnson’s chief adviser has issued a call for “weirdos and misfits” to apply for jobs in Downing Street as plans to shake up Whitehall went into overdrive.

    Dominic Cummings said he wanted to hire “true wild cards” and “people who fought their way out of an appalling hell hole” to transform the civil service, instead of “public school bluffers” with no real-world experience.

    In a 3,000-word job advert on his personal blog, Mr Cummings suggested the ideal candidate might be a “Chinese-Cuban free runner from a crime family hired by the KGB” as he cited characters from science fiction novels as his inspiration.

    In a broadside at political correctness, he railed against people in Whitehall “babbling about ‘gender identify diversity blah blah’,” adding: “What SW1 needs is not more drivel about ‘identity’ and ‘diversity’ from Oxbridge humanities graduates but more genuine cognitive diversity.”

    He suggested “unusual” new blood could solve what he regards as “profound problems” with the civil service, which he regards as staid and inefficient, and says the civil service must work out how to employ “super-talented weirdos” without expecting them to comply with “the horrors of human resources – which obviously need a bonfire”.

    It came as unions representing civil servants went into battle with No10 over “insulting” proposals for reform outlined in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph by Mr Cummings’s former colleague Rachel Wolf, who co-wrote the Conservative Party manifesto.

    Ms Wolf suggested civil servants might have to take regular exams to prove their competence, but her ideas were moderate compared with the vision outlined by Mr Cummings, who is regarded as the most powerful non-elected official in the country.

    One of his new hires will be “a sort of personal assistant to me for a year” but he warns applicants: “You will not have weekday date nights, you will sacrifice many weekends – frankly it will be hard having a boy/girlfriend at all.

    “I don’t want confident public school bluffers. I want people who are much brighter than me who can work in an extreme environment. If you play office politics, you will be discovered and immediately binned.”

    Mr Cummings cites the Manhattan Project to develop the first nuclear weapon as an example of how to successfully project-manage Credit: Rex

    Setting out the categories of people he wants to hire, he says Downing Street needs “unusual mathematicians”, physicists, computer scientists, data scientists, but also “assorted weirdos and misfits with odd skills”.

    Defining who such people might be, he cites characters in the novels of the science fiction writer William Gibson, known for coining the term “cyberspace” long before the invention of the world wide web.

    Mr Cummings writes: “We need some true wild cards, artists, people who never went to university and fought their way out of an appalling hell hole, weirdos from William Gibson novels like that girl hired by Bigend as a brand ‘diviner’ who feels sick at the sight of Tommy Hilfiger or that Chinese-Cuban free runner from a crime family hired by the KGB.

    “If you want to figure out what characters around Putin might do, or how international criminal gangs might exploit holes in our border security, you don’t want more Oxbridge English graduates who chat about [French psychoanalyst Jacques] Lacan at dinner parties with TV producers and spread fake news about fake news.

    “By definition I don’t really know what I’m looking for but I want people around No10 to be on the lookout for such people.”

    He tells them to send job applications with the word “misfit” in the subject line of the email if they identify with his description.

    He makes it clear to all applicants that: “I’ll bin you within weeks if you don’t fit – don’t complain later because I made it clear now.”

    Mr Cummings, who is clearly aware of the backlash the Whitehall shake-up is likely to cause, says that Mr Johnson’s “significant majority” means there is “little need to worry about short-term unpopularity while trying to make rapid progress with long-term problems”.

    His aim is to “improve performance and make me much less important – and within a year largely redundant”.

    Among the other categories of experts he wants to hire are project managers, saying the first project will be “improving the people and skills already here”, and cites the Manhattan project to develop nuclear weapons in the 1940s and the Apollo moon missions of the 1960s as “cutting edge” examples of how to manage people and resources.

    Mr Cummings also suggests that “a small, odd No10 team” will be able to encourage “ideas that seem bad” without “worrying about media noise”.

    His radical ideas have not gone down well with civil service unions, which have already voiced their opposition to suggestions made by Ms Wolf, who said the civil service was “woefully unprepared” for the wholesale reforms to come.

    Dave Penman, general secretary of the FDA, formerly the Association of First Division Civil Servants, said: “Tired old rhetoric of ‘civil servants being promoted to a level of incompetence’ is not only insulting, but demonstrates a lack of understanding of the modern realities of the civil service.”

    He said many issues the civil service faces were “of the Government’s own creation”.

    “Churn in senior civil service roles is a result of a decade of pay stagnation, with movement between jobs the only route to a pay rise,” he said.

    Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union, said: “Comments by Dominic Cummings that imply he wants to hire-and-fire at will reveal an anti-trade union mentality and will be strenuously resisted by PCS.”

    Meanwhile Sajid Javid, the Chancellor, hit out at suggestions that the economy will stagnate this year because of Brexit.

    A survey of more than 85 leading economists by the Financial Times found that the vast majority of them predicted little or no improvement in economic growth this year.

    But Mr Javid told The Telegraph that Brexit uncertainty would end this year, meaning “we can move on, chart a new optimistic course for our economy, and unleash Britain’s potential”.

    Mr Johnson tweeted that: “This is going to be a fantastic year for Britain,” and US ambassador Woody Johnson replied: “Agreed. This will be the year of opportunity for both our countries.”

    1. Good Moaning, Anne

      I have read Cummings’s 3,000 word blog. What comes through is that there are various areas of modern advanced maffs, stistics, puter programmering an’ other stuff that he knows little about (coz he read history at Oxford) but likes to talk about with other brainy people and then bamboozle the media. The Beeb News dolly-bird was seething with disdain early this morning.

      My maffs is totally out of date and I don’t think it’s a job opportunity for you.

      https://2.bp.blogspot.com/_9ihK9_CfYX0/S6MBAXiLZrI/AAAAAAAACPI/Nfo2IJpUt3A/s320/calvin+hobbes.bmp

      1. ‘Morning, Citroen, you may rest assured that two and another two still gives your four.

        1. Made sauerkraut yesterday.
          Funny how a grated large cabbage fits in a moderately-sized jar.
          :-o)

    4. If Dominic Cummings just studied this website and other similar sites on a daily basis he could get his inspirational information for free.

    7. “…..
      there is “little need to worry about short-term unpopularity…..
      Now what does he mean by that?
      Of course Boris will be unpopular with the remainers, the left liberal elite and so forth and that should go without saying. My worry here would be that what he expects is that Boris will prove unpopular even with the people who voted for him expecting better things only to be disappointed.

      In which case, if even Cummings, Bojo’s personal Rasputin…. (why couldn’t he settle for a “Nostradamus” type?), sees himn as being unpopular in the short term it can only mean bad news.

      It becomes inbcreasingly evident that we really need labour to get over itself, and become a credible electable opposition party if there is any hope of controlling Bojo’s domestic policy ambitions.

  17. Mum-of-five overpaid £10,000 in monthly pay spent it before employer noticed

    She seemed to be very well paid anyway. It claims she normally took home £1,744 a month . For rural Wales that a high level of pay. She claimed her husband was unemployed but he would be getting some benefits. I dont buy her claim she was in dire financial straights. The total income must be over £2000 a month.

    https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/news/mum-of-five-overpaid-£10000-in-monthly-pay-spent-it-before-employer-noticed/ar-BBYyq6p?ocid=spartandhp

  18. A woman goes to the Doctor, worried about her husband’s temper.
    The Doctor asks: “What’s the problem?”
    The woman says: “Doctor, I don’t know what to do. Every day my husband seems to lose his temper for no reason. It scares me.”
    The Doctor says: “I have a cure for that. When it seems that your husband is getting angry, just take a glass of water and start swishing it in your mouth. Just swish and swish but don’t swallow it until he either leaves the room or calms down.”
    Two weeks later the woman comes back to the doctor looking fresh and reborn.
    The woman says: “Doctor that was a brilliant idea! Every time my husband started losing it, I swished with water. I swished and swished, and he calmed right down! How does a glass of water do that?”
    The Doctor says: “The water itself does nothing. It’s keeping your mouth shut that does the trick.”

    I’m not a misogynist, I just think it’s funny,

      1. In the light of recent developments may I suggest we add a few more words to the lexicon:

        Transogynist
        Panogynist etc etc

        Morning Minity et al…..

    4. I found it funny too but the Jake ditty below I didn’t. It seems a masculine trait to invent derogatory phrases or songs (and sometimes jokes) about women whilst claiming they’re not misogynistic. It’s a pity because there are quite a lot of us women about!

      1. I do empathise, vw, and I also post stories that go the other way and lampoon men and their attitudes.

        I’m so balanced that I have a chip on each shoulder! {:¬))

        1. That’s great. I do think that, sometimes, it can depend on where you are at the time and also the company you’re in but it can just get a little wearing.

    1. “A fire with 15 years worth of fuel (i.e leaves and dead branches) on the ground is 17 times more intense than a fire with just 4 years worth of fuel on the ground”. This is why they cannot tackle these big fires and put them out irrespective of the number of aeroplanes and firefighters on the ground.

      1. These fire occurs in the UK particular on forestry land. On dense hillside planed with conifers once alight you cannot put them out. The aim is to stop it spreading with the main fire pretty much left to burn out

        It is pretty similar with the recycling depots that go up in flames almost weekly,. They just have to be left to burn out

        2. It used to be the case that after the harvest, and straw cutting, stubble burning was the order of the day… and there are environmental benefits from that, but I suspect the townies who moved to the country put paid to that along with noisy village church bells, cricket, dung spreading (the smell) etc etc etc and all these people can find to do in the country is join the parish council and other such organisations because they want to “give something back” ….

      2. Quite right. Fuel hygiene should be second nature in all communities in wooded areas in Australia. If you do not want a winter bonfire to clear away the fuel, then you can pay the local fire service to take it away and dispose of it.

        The obvious Green-minded thing to do is to set up wood-powered power generation using the fuel that is there on the ground to be picked up. Charcoal production for barbies can also generate money from fuel disposal.

        1. In Spain (and I suppose in other Mediterranean member states) the woods were grazed by flocks of sheep and goats under the care of herdsmen. However, generations of young urbanites have gradually rejected an eco-friendly life of solitude and now prefer to pollute the planet. Result: no goatherds, but plenty of forest fires that could potentially burn the weekend houses of city dwellers.

          1. No goatherds? or did you mean no herds of goats because, immigration being what it is these days there should be no shortage of goatherds or even goatherders who can probably provide the goats too.
            I note that the Staines Reservoir had (might still have) flocks of sheep used to keep the grass on the steep banks cropped short……even before imnmigration became a way of changing life.

        2. Good luck with picking up the 1.8 million tonnes of wood that it takes to fuel even a modest power station, like the 420MW Lynemouth station for only a year.

          How much fuel are you going to use collecting the forest litter as fuel? They get the timber for our biofuel power stations by clear-felling American natural forests on an industrial scale, not by foraging for scraps and leaf litter.

          https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/11/28/europes-biomass-boom-is-destroying-americas-forests/

          1. You can only think in terms of centralisation, which is so very 20th century.

            Every village should have its litter powered generator, and it’s part of civic pride (as well as self-preservation) to keep the neighbourhood free of litter. The generated power is a byproduct.

          5. What can be recycled is left out on the road once a fortnight to be collected. What can be burnt goes on the woodburner. What can be composted goes on the heap. Food waste goes on some waste ground far away from houses to feed the rats and the badgers. Leftovers then get put out for landfill.

            Living in damp old England though, brushwood rots down before it catches fire. This is not the case in Australia.

    4. “Priti Patel is to examine ways of deporting illegal migrants more quickly and in greater numbers”

      How about 747s, super-ferries, additional carriages on Eurotunnel services for starters? Of course, examining doesn’t mean doing or even planning to do; action not words is the only way to convince the people that you are doing what the people have demanded for years. I will continue to respire on a regular basis.

      1. ‘Morning, Korky, my solution is a Hercules (C130) with its clam doors, fit each illegal with a parachute and push ’em out over their desert hell-holes.

      2. Morning KtK,
        Surely the peoples would tire of demanding for years from these mass uncontrolled immigration policy parties.
        Why would one vote for such parties if one continued to,
        for years, disagree with the party policies ?

      3. She might also consider that this is expensive and will probably see the lawyers getting even richer on the “pile it high sell it cheap” principle of having to deal with so many cases in a short space of time. And, there is an old adage she should also bear in mind “prevention is better than cure” and she should stop so many arriving or being “assisted here by the very people supposed to protect our borders. Spend some money of ships for Border force but also direct that any and all rescued immigrants are returned to the nearest French harbour.

    6. Morning Rik,
      Actions speak far louder than words
      should be the order of the day.
      The tories track record on the incoming
      tide is far from good especially from the
      HO / may, lest we forget.
      The wretch cameron was going to reduce the numbers incoming, then promptly raised them.

    1. BJ,
      Mass uncontrolled immigration,
      PC / Appeasement as adhered to by the lab/lib/con coalition are a killer, and are a constant danger to society.
      The establishment will no doubt stipulate the paedophile move town so as to not cause them any embarrassment by bumping into their past victim / victims.
      By the by, where do the victims get to sign off from, in some cases, lifelong suffering.

  23. Oh Dear , Vegans will have to starve

    Product
    Type of insect contamination
    Action Level
    Canned sweet corn
    Insect larvae (corn ear worms or corn borers)
    2 or more 3 mm or longer larvae, cast skins, larval or cast skin fragments, the aggregate length of insects or insect parts exceeds 12 mm in 24 pounds
    Canned citrus fruit juices
    Insects and insect eggs
    5 or more Drosophila and other fly eggs per 250 ml or 1 or more maggots per 250 ml
    Canned apricots
    Insect filth
    Average of 2% or more by count has been damaged or infected by insects
    Chocolate and chocolate liquor
    Insect filth
    Average is 60 or more insect fragments per 100 grams (when 6 100 g subsamples are examined)
    Peanut butter
    Insect filth
    Average of 30 or more insect fragments per 100 grams
    Wheat flour
    Insect filth
    Average of 150 or more insect fragments per 100 grams
    Frozen broccoli
    Insects and mites
    Average of 60 or more aphids and/or thrips and/or mites per 100 grams
    Hops
    Insects
    Average of more than 2,500 aphids per 10 grams
    Ground thyme
    Insect filth
    Average of 925 or more insect fragments per 10 grams
    Ground nutmeg
    Insect filth
    Average of 100 or more insect fragments per 10 grams
    Ground cinnamon
    Insect filth
    Average of 400 or more insect fragments per 50 grams
    Shredded carrots
    Insect filth
    Average of 800 or more insect fragments per 10 grams

    1. I’m sure you understand perfectly what you have just posted. I certainly don’t.

          1. Still would not get rid of them. Flout for example will contain trace amounts of all sorts of bugs

      3. The more filth you eat, the better your immune system copes.

        But make sure you wipe them damsons before you make my crumble.

        1. Ooh Grizzly. That’s unfair. I look at my apple crumble and think…. needs more damsons…

          One for tomorrow!

          1. Plum crumble and damson crumble are my favourites, wibbling. Trouble is, I’ll now have to wait until next September’s harvest for my next helpings. :•(

          2. Gooseberry crumble/pie is my favourite. No sugar added. Rhubarb pretty good, too!

    2. vegitarians used to point towards primitive tribes who existed purely on the fruit, nuts & vegetables they scavenge from their environment as examples of how people can live without meat.
      Their theory was shot down by anthropologists pointing out the high percentage of grubs, insects & other invertebrates consumed with their “meat free” food.

      1. With great care an adult in a pretty sedentary job could just about live on a vegetarian diet but not a vegan diet

        Whether vegans like it or not all food will contain some trace amounts of insects and animals. Zero contamination is simply impossible. . Corbyn found a reference to US food standards that define the maximum amounts and got all excited about it. The UK has similar standards. Crops grow in fields , field have insects and animals and birds so will get contaminated the processing removes most but not all. If a grub has burrowed into a pea that,s pretty difficult to detected

    3. I don’t mind what people eat – it’s none of my business – but I don’t want to be preached to about it. It’s certainly not cause for a protected event or whatever other tosh that vegetablist called it.

  24. Pan Am, Lavatory pan, pan for gold, hollow in the ground,a person’s face… and go down the pan, fail utterly.

    BUT what is pansexual…half goat?

    New Liberalism is rather confusing ..

    1. It seems to define that they have some kind of mental confusion. Should such a confused person be an MP? In my view no

        1. Marzipan is like Marmite. No one ever says it is “OK”.

          You either love it or you hate it. I love both.

          7. Tell me about it. The worst headache I’ve ever had. Poking my finger into what I thought was weeping gelignite and sniffing it just to make sure. Nothing shifts a jelly headache except time.

          8. Never handled gelignite, only PE4 and blocks of guncotton during the explosive demolition phase of my B2 Combat Engineer course in 1971.
            Later, when with the Stores Troop of 61 HQ Squadron, I was involved in supplying the prilled ammonium nitrate to, I think, 60 Squadron when they did the cratering trials on Salisbury Plain using ANFO as an explosive, but sadly did not get to take part in the trials, though I did, for some years, have a copy of the report by, again I think, a Captain P.O.M. Chitty!
            The trials were to gauge the suitability of ANFO for cratering various cross-border roads in Ireland to hinder their use by the IRA.

          9. Our standard explosive was ANFO. Safe to handle, low velocity, nice heave. Not much use if it was in wet ground in its normal form. Used jelly as a primer to initiate the ANFO, or for the complete charge in wet ground if there was no waterproofed nitrate or slurry available.

      1. I did wonder whether two ‘Pans’ taking advantage of each other would result in Pandemoanium?

    5. Well as long as the NHS does not interfere this people will eventually die out as they cannot breed

    6. ‘Pan’ is a prefix meaning “all”, “everything” or “all members of a group”, Maggie.

      In this context, pansexual means they will f•ck anyone (or anything).

      1. Morning G

        Happy New Year..

        One of your endearing qualities is that you tell it like it is .

        Years ago when searching for a suitable nursing home for Moh’s mother ..
        we visited somewhere similar to Fawlty Towers.. We entered the home through a grand front door into a superb old fashioned hallway .. in front of us was a staircase with an ornate newel post and an elderly man gyrating wildly .. The Matron of the home guided us quickly to the end of the hallway .. Poor old chap hadn’t lost his base instinct.

    7. Well she could use two pan in place of a bra. I am sure she will be able to handle that

    8. Plough pan. A layer of smeared soil that can build up at plough depth in wet clay soils, that can interfere with downward drainage through the soil.

    9. I assume it means she’ll attempt sex with anything, human, goat, 1974 Xr3i, you name it, she’s up for it. Clearly an odd creature, but she’s a Libdem so that really goes without saying.

      1. Pub Bore Alert – The Ford Escort XR3i was a Mk III variant and only launched in October 1982 and therefore did not exist in 1974.
        Carry on !

        1. I bought the Cabrio version in ’85 & took it with me to Germany in ’86. Great car.

  27. Next week the Brexit Bill is to be finalized through the commons and then to get royal assent

    Labour and the Lib-Dems have already proposed amendments to the bill and more amendments will probably be proposed

    These amendments are really just time wasting attempts as they will be rejected

    1. As I’ve said earlier, the more time wasted, the better, as it may not receive Royal Assent before time expires on January 31st.

    1. The BBC Seems to have forgotten the meaning of Dialektic ….

      (Dialectic or dialectics, also known as the dialectical method, is at base a discourse between two or more people holding different points of view about a subject but wishing to establish the truth through reasoned arguments)

    2. If the BBC were puti n charge of the Aintree Grand National, the following would be the result

      All fences would be removed form the course, in case a horse (or Jockey) got hurt

      The course would be shortened, ti save tiring the horses

      Whips would not be allowed.

      A device similar to the Hare in Greyhound Racing (which they would ban) would be used to pace the race.

      The device would be an effigy of BoJo. The riders must not go faster than BoJo

      Every LGBTqwertyop life style must have a jockey/jocketette/jockeypan etc to represent it

      Every ethnicity in UK (apart from us WASPs) must have representation

      The course must be levelled ie no uphill or downhill

      Hijabs to be compulsory, to save embarrassment to Muslim wimmen riders.

      The above of ‘course’ is just the ‘start’ and They’r Are Off

      1. No white horses allowed and geldings have to wear frocks and be addressed as ze gee gee.

      2. Yo, Tryers.

        The BBC were the broadcasters of the Grand National for years in the 1960 to the 1990s, when the peerless Peter O’Sullevan (with his back-up team of Peter Montague-Evans, Julian Wilson and John Hanmer) was in charge of the commentary.

        No “PC” bollocks in those days.

        1. Peter O’Sullivan also owned a cracking little horse called Attivo. Made me a good few bob in the days when a few bob was worth having.

      4. No white horses allowed and geldings have to wear frocks and be addressed as ze gee gee.

      5. They have already done a considerable PR number on the muslim woman who won a charity race in a hijab and that was the (hideously woke) ITV.

  29. ” In a written statement, Raab said: “We have always recognised the
    aggressive threat posed by the Iranian Quds force led by Qassem
    Suleimani. Following his death, we urge all parties to de-escalate.”
    That’s a plus. If the Israelis had been responsible, the whole world would be castigating them for targeted killings.
    The wimps who are terrified at what the Americans have done would have been very reluctant to do anything about the Nazis in the 1930’s.
    The EU, of course, will continue support Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

      1. Just checked my music and you posted that in August 2017, Plum. I downloaded it at the time.

        1. They used to advertise it as “FLASH – the big job cleaner” Then someone must have had a word…!!!

    1. Morning TB,
      As far as I can ascertain the only halal free bread is Hovis, tesco’s have said they are Not selling Hovis.
      We quit buying bread long ago.
      Our cook makes her own, and very nice to.
      The governing parties are getting away
      with condoning murder not only of the body, but the mind, and many of the electorate are in collusion.
      PC / Appeasement kills, why would anyone support political parties that use such tools ?

    2. Good morning Truthful Beauty

      Why? Because our politicians and MSM prefer appeasement to sticking up for our own values.

      1. R,
        Correct, lab/lib/con are PC / Appeasement parties.
        PC / Appeasement kills & maims, why would any right minded person condone that ?

    3. IT is a load of nonsense really as Hallal only really apples to meat and Bread does nor contain meat

      It is as daft as saying a loaf of bread is suitable for vegetarians

      Before long food will come with a little booklet as they will not be able to fit all the wording on the packaging

      1. Bill, the point is that a payment is made for the certification and that money finds it’s way to terrorist organisations.

          4. THAT, my good friend, Pud, is an unbeatable Reuben on rye! Delicious beyond peer!

            I had my first Reuben in a Jewish deli in Noo Yoik, 26 years ago!

            Two slices of rye bread, filled with wafer thin slices of salt beef (“corned” or pastrami), Swiss cheese (usually Emmenthal), sauerkraut, and Russian dressing. It is to DIE for.

            I occasionally make my own here in Sweden. :•)

          7. Let me know if you make the trip. There are better sandwich shops than Katz’s and I would consider it an honor to serve as your scout/guide if you visit.

      3. …and Bread does nor contain meat.

        How does that square with your constant bleating that vegetables, fruit & cereals are contaminated with animal (insect) matter?
        Get out of that one, if you can.

    4. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/93b31ea7ef34ab07f5f75d511f80f3712029a7d9f259380e3fc10e204c9e4a03.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3c65c2245b299fac06780041da985dee20eb537998fd4728aabb5d0981e1e970.jpg Will my small bread cobs fail the ‘halal’ test? They are made with 500g strong flour, 150g water, 150g milk, 10g salt, 12g dried yeast, 12g sugar, and 28g home-rendered lard from Swedish pigs.

      My standard overnight ‘sleepless’ loaf will no doubt pass the test since it only contains four ingredients: 500g strong flour, 1·5g dried yeast, 10g salt and 280g water (i.e, no milk, no sugar, no piggy fat).

        1. The loaf (large cob) is simplicity itself. Just mix the four ingredients the day before you want it and keep it in a cool place (or the fridge) overnight to “autolyse” i.e. develop its flavour. Next day bring to room temperature and let it rise. Knock it back, shape it up, allow its second rise (the proving) for between 1 and 1½ hours, then bake in a preheated oven at 220ºC for 25 minutes.

          It is the long, overnight, first rise that causes a chemical reaction between the flour and water, which gives it its deep flavour. That is why French batons are so tasty, they too are risen overnight.

    5. Hi TB,
      haven’t got time to check but it is surely the yeast that makes Christian bread ‘haram’, because fermentation produces alcohol (which mainly evaporates during baking)?

    6. This is OLD news. Warburtons bragged about their product becoming halal sometime last year and now it’s reality. I haven’t purchased their products since they declared their intention.
      M&S are promoting their halal ready meals and that’s the end of my money going into their, and the terrorists’, coffers. A small my gesture by me but I’m certainly never going to willingly support the islamists’ cause.

    7. Any advance on 4%? It’s already above 5%n – probably closer to 7% with all the undocumented.

      1. For the likes of Warburtons and M&S to promote their halal qualifications the % of moslems must be sufficiently high to ensure good profits. The globalist politicos have set this Country on the road to civil strife, just look at France, Germany and Sweden – bombings, desecration of churches and Christian graveyards etc.

      1. You can always tell halal food – it has a little explosive coating….

        Good afternoon, Hatman.

  34. Thinking about celebrating the holidays (any holiday) in Mexico? Think again:

    https://blog.diegovalle.net/images/blogger_images/2.bp.blogspot.com_-lFjHQ0_uqBY_UNcs3bQgFNI_AAAAAAAAF9Q_4-3ciPgNcRA_s1600_text5544-4.png

    Mexico danger map updated as US warns of ‘widespread’ crime amid rise in murders, kidnappings, carjackings and robberies
    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10599755/mexico-danger-map-updated-widespread-crime-us-government-murders/

    Mexico’s Scot holiday hotspots plagued with 700 murders in just one year as gun violence rocks Cancun and Playa Del Carmen
    https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/4334377/mexico-holiday-murder-cancun-playa-del-carmen/

  36. Ethical veganism is philosophical belief – judge

    This is just total nonsense even a barrister specializing in this sort of thing agreed the judgment from the courts on these issues were random and illogical

    There is a judgment that a belief in being able to change sex is protects but a belief in not being able to change sex is not protected

    Ethical veganism is a “philosophical belief” and so is protected in law, an employment tribunal has ruled for the first time.
    The case was brought by vegan Jordi Casamitjana, who claims he was sacked by the League Against Cruel Sports because of his ethical veganism.
    But his employer says he was dismissed for gross misconduct.
    The judge ruled ethical veganism should fall under the Equality Act 2010 but is yet to rule on his dismissal.
    The ruling means ethical vegans are entitled to protection from discrimination.

      1. Sues his employer for a £100K because the cleaner used a polish contain meat based product

    2. I am the Prime Suspect for everything. Throw me in Jail

      I am White

      (Nominally) Christian

      Married to SHE WMBO

      Omivore

      Heterosexual

      Not a Paedophile

      Not a Sex Offender

      Have Car Tax

      Pay Car Insurances

      Pay Taxes

      Have paid NI all my working life

      Never claimed any Benefits

      Pay Council Tax

      Have had private medical insurance (back with NHS)

      Never stole a Library Book

      etc

      I need a Lawyer

      Billllllllll

      1. But no TV license. Wait for the BBC enforcers to try and prove guilt by any means.
        You are obviously an over entitled white male who worked all of his life.

      3. I applied for a council house and had to go for a Triage meeting. I had absolutely no idea what it meant other than something to do with hospitals. But before I got there I knew from the introduction telecon I would have no Triage pluses.
        Wrong gender
        Wrong nationality
        Wrong colour
        Wrong religion
        Wrong age
        No disabilities but after meeting me she did suggest I go to the doctors and get psychiatric help.)))) I did make an appointment for four weeks later. The Indian doctor was not interested in me, her only concern was not overstepping the appointment time.
        I am awaiting the response from the councils Information Governance Officer to my subsequent complaint. Due to the complex nature of my complaint she has now taken up the second time frame in which she has to respond.
        But there are 100s of Syrians walking around the town and more to come.

    2. For those nottlers who don’t want to know the score, as they may want to watch the highlights later, it’s xxx for y.

        1. Oh I don’t know…

          I suspect that most people have got your number

          Oh, you meant telephone number, sorree

    2. Reminds me of the Flanders and Swann, “my number is even more exclusive; I don’t have a ‘phone at all”.

  39. Lib Dem leadership candidate Layla Moran comes out as pansexual and criticisms Parliament as ‘weird, backwards’ place

    I tend to find her somewhat weird. So now instead of fancying men she is into women mind you she might change her mind again next month

    Still what she gets up to is her affair as long as it does not interfere with others but why the need to advertise this fact to the world no one else cares as to what strange relationships you get up to

      2. She does seem to fancy some sort of horny old goat to whistle up her pan-pipe.

        ‘Morning, Minty.

      3. Wow! I’ve heard of & seen split tongues, but a split glans is in another league.

    2. Is this the Great Vision her party has for the nation?

      My response is mainly of disappointment. Surely the party I used to support so actively can do better than this? Or is this really the limit of their imagination after their bluff was called in 2010 by suddenly being thrust into Government? What makes it so hard for them is that Layla Moran was not tainted by the betrayals and compromises of principle from the Coalition and should have been a new broom and the future. Instead, with her trendy declaration of gender orthodoxy, it’s more of, more of…

    3. Then why the need to regurgitate what was discussed at length on here last night?

      2. Useful, Peddy, and Good morning, since not all of us are night-owls, who has time to regurgitate yesterday’s or any day’s before news?

        It rather comes down to wrapping the electronic Fish and Chips in yesterday’s news.

          1. Hope you spend it wisely. I suggest associate membership of the Labour Party in order to elect their new leader.

          2. Has the rate gone up then, King Steve? So far I have only been charging five bob.

      5. Pan’s People were an attractive group of young lady dancers at a time when I was young enough to appreciate such things.

    5. I don’t think Eric Clapton would have had a woman like this in mind when he wrote his well-known song!

      (Sorry Citroën – looking down I see you beat me to it.)

    1. “It’s just a boring job because there aren’t any wars going on,” says Ryan Jenkins
      Thick bugger. Would do for cannon fodder.

    2. Parkour is a training discipline using movement that developed from military obstacle course training.
      Army recruits should realise that being a waste management and disposal technician whilst being a fulfilling job in its own right is neverthess a necessary prerequisite for the challenging role of keeping the peace by engaging in camouflage techniques in operational countermeasures against an enemy:

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc4cc5b5b6c7ed37c5353c27d5881fe7fe7272214179db0715918782589b11.gif

  41. Russian Defence Ministry praises Soleimani for fight against IS

    Further to comments from Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova,
    the country’s Defence Ministry has released a strongly-worded statement
    condemning the strike – and praising some of Soleimani’s actions.

    “Short-sighted
    actions by the US resulting in the killing of General Qasem Soleimani
    are leading to a steep escalation of the military and political
    situation in the Middle East region and serious negative consequences
    for the whole system of international security,” the statement says,
    quoted by Russian news agency Interfax.

    “Under
    Qasem Soleimani’s direct leadership, armed resistance against
    international terrorist groups Isis and al-Qaeda was organised in Syria
    and Iraq long before the US-led so-called ‘international coalition’ was
    set up.

    “His personal contribution to the fight against Isis in Syria is undeniable.”

    The
    statement later added: “Gen Qasem Soleimani was a stilled military
    commander, who wielded deserved authority and significant influence in
    the Middle East region.”

    You can’t help liking the Russians.

  42. Fears over impact on vulnerable patients of cameras worn by health workers

    Total bs. The cameras are there to protect the NHS staff. Yes it may change the dynamics between the health staff and the patient as they will be less inclined to kick off and attack them if it is captured on a camera

    The use of body-worn cameras by health workers is to be investigated to ensure they do not spark adverse reactions in vulnerable patients.
    The video cameras are being rolled out across the NHS, with London Ambulance Service medics due to begin a 12-month trial shortly. They are also being trialled in a number of mental health trusts across the UK.

    Health Secretary Matt Hancock backed them as a way of reducing violence against NHS staff.
    However, researchers are to examine whether the cameras change the “power dynamic” between patients and healthcare workers

      1. But just think of the revenue stream generated for the NHS for every £250 clip sent to You’ve been framed

    2. … to examine whether the cameras change the “power dynamic” between patients and healthcare workers…

      Isn’t that the whole point? Doh!

  43. I can see on FB that the Speccie has “Lady Hale’s Christmas diary (as told to Quentin Letts)” but I don’t subscribe so can only see the first para. Can anyone see the rest and if it’s worth a read, perhaps copy and paste/post?

    1. It’s rather long Sue

      Top tip,briskly tapping the esc key as the page loads defeats the Speccie paywall

      Here is the last para,proof my tip works

      Sir Keir Starmer — little Keir, such a dear — has asked us to his New Year fancy-dress party. Le tout
      Holborn will be there. Hilary Benn is going to be a flowerpot man,
      Diane Abbott is coming as Pierre Trudeau, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette
      are coming as the Blacks and Carole Cadwalladr has an Eliot Ness
      costume. Alan thinks I should go as Spider-Woman, after that famous
      brooch I wore, but at present I intend to go as ‘Brenda from Bristol’. I
      have been listening to The Archers to perfect the accent.

    2. NOTEBOOK

      Lady Hale’s Christmas diary (as told to Quentin Letts)

      Quentin Letts
      21 December 2019 9:00 AM

      “They say I must retire next month when I turn 75. Irritating. I have been a member of the Supreme Court since 2009 but its president — a term I do like — only since 2017. There is still much to be done. Julian, my current spouse, indicates he has little desire to have me under his heels at home. I would merely get in the way of his dusting and the Tupperware parties he holds every month with other SW1 house-husbands. Jolyon Maugham QC — a slightly familiar young man, but I am told he has the right views — comes to see me. He proposes challenging the legality of my compulsory retirement, perhaps using the Scottish courts. We could ‘crowd-fund’ the costs, he says. I doubt there are that many fools in the world. ‘You’d be surprised,’ says Mr Maugham. He feels we could pursue the case all the way to the top, i.e. to the Supreme Court. Given tiresome levels of press scrutiny I suppose I might have to recuse myself from any such judgment. Could I rely on my fellow justices to reach the right decision without my helping hand?

      As I once told Barack Obama (I think he was grateful for my advice), a president must be a leader, a strategist and a disciplinarian. At October’s state opening of parliament, one of my colleagues sauntered into the House of Lords with hand in pocket. ‘Wilson!’ I exclaimed. ‘This is not a queue for the bookmaker’s!’ I told him I would sew up his trouser pockets if we had a repeat of that sort of thing.

      Julian points out that I never complain when Lord Pannick QC plunges a hand into his pocket while developing a case before us. Ridiculous. I can hardly say ‘Don’t, Pannick!’ during a Supreme Court hearing. One does not wish to be caricatured as Corporal ‘Jonesy’ Jones.

      Alan rings. My heart goes pit-a-pat. I ask him to hold the line because Julian is outside my study in his pinny, making a din with the Dyson. I close the door and now I can hear Alan’s ravishing voice. A masterly timbre is only appropriate for the principal of Lady Margaret Hall. Alan recently invited me to be one of the college’s visiting fellows. The others include Katie Price, Russell Brand and a Mr Gary Lineker, who used to play association football. I am not sure I have ever met anyone called Gary but there is a first time for everything. Alan says he has the most beautiful thighs. Gary, that is. I suspect Alan’s thighs are no less remarkable.

      One annual chore is organising the Supreme Court’s Christmas jolly. ‘Jolly’ is not an entirely accurate word — I don’t know if you have ever met my fellow justice Lord Carnwath — but ‘outing’ has its difficulties and ‘knees-up’ is unsuitable given the decrepitude of some of them. Anyway: where to go for our party? Most of them like French cuisine but, with the Brexit horrors, this is ruled impolitic. The men hope for the Garrick Club but I cannot abide that chauvinist establishment. Being chased round the bar by Derry Irvine shouting ‘Come to me, lassie’ with a fistful of mistletoe is not my idea of fun. One of our interns says that we should visit a food bank and dine there, but this meets with long faces in the robing room. I finally alight on a suggestion from the Attorney General. He recommends an establishment called McDonald’s — a Scots restaurant, it seems. The Attorney says something about ‘good game, good game’ and exhorts me to ask for its venison, ‘even if the staff say it is not available — they do that to keep the good stuff for their regulars’. McDonald’s it is, then. I am told there is no need to book because the service is so efficient. I am grateful to Geoffrey. It is good of him not to hold a grudge after that prorogation judgment.

      Julian has taken up knitting and is making me a Christmas bobble hat with a pattern saying ‘11-nil’, to mark our comprehensive spanking of Boris Johnson’s ‘government’. I like hats. Julian’s homemade Christmas crackers always contain paper hats and he sometimes makes them resemble those black caps worn by judges in the good old days when we could send the lower orders to the gallows. One of the many good things about the Supreme Court — constitutional heft, European harmonisation, etc. — is that I get to wear a flat squashy hat at ceremonial occasions. My daughter says it looks like a lardy cake, which is something the poor eat on Saturday mornings. Very bad for their waistlines, no doubt.

      Kenneth Clarke pops in for one of his moans. I have not known many Conservatives but as I say to Kenneth, he is not really a proper (i.e. improper) right-winger. He also happens to be a lawyer, though not, I fear, a very hygienic one. He arrives at the door with muddy shoes and I am obliged to remind him of our house rules. We soon have his Hush Puppies covered in our habitual prophylactic: a pair of shower caps. (One of the consolations of staying in three-star hotels, as judges nowadays must, is the regular supply of free shower caps.)

      Sir Keir Starmer — little Keir, such a dear — has asked us to his New Year fancy-dress party. Le tout Holborn will be there. Hilary Benn is going to be a flowerpot man, Diane Abbott is coming as Pierre Trudeau, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette are coming as the Blacks and Carole Cadwalladr has an Eliot Ness costume. Alan thinks I should go as Spider-Woman, after that famous brooch I wore, but at present I intend to go as ‘Brenda from Bristol’. I have been listening to The Archers to perfect the accent.”

  45. Royal Navy adjusts rules to allow Rastafarians to keep their long hair and beards as head of new association calls for end of drug-taking stereotype. 3 JANUARY 2020.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/551cf05402b5ea404fa9694dfcaec8d7c87b1cdcecfdc7b15f01d6521bd4c18d.jpg

    The Royal Navy has changed its rules to allow Rastafarians to keep their long hair and beards as the head of a new association has called for the end of the drug-taking stereotype.

    The Royal Navy was for nearly two centuries one of the greatest fighting forces of history. Its battle honours are unequalled. It was also a representation of all that was best about English Civilisation, (two of Jane Austen’s brothers were admirals) the suppression of the Slave Trade and the Freedom of the Seas for all can largely be attributed to its existence. We should all mourn its demise.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/01/03/royal-navy-adjusts-rules-allow-rastafarians-keep-long-hair-beards/

    1. Heaven forfend … they look just like Pirates of the Caribbean.

      – …. .-. — .– ……. – …. . — ……. — …- . .-. -… — .- .-. -.. ……. ……. …….

      2. ‘Morning, Mags, translates as “throw?them?overboard???” but with all those question marks you don’t seem certain.

      1. Only their ships’ companies have the right to gauge theirs and their own fighting abilities

    3. he Royal
      Navy has changed its rules to allow Rastafarians to keep their long hair
      and beards as the head of a new association has called for the end of
      the drug-taking stereotype.

      If allowing beards has just started, I feel miffed

      In my 23 of of 28 years in the RN, me and my mates who had ‘sets’ (beards) were just invisible

      As for coloured people, only just being allowed, I always wondered why my team always seemed undermanned.

      The RN allows Sikhs to wear turbans, with, if they are ratings, ship’s Cap Tally (the ribbon embroided with HMS Lastone) woven into the turban

      On church parade, the the Order ‘fall out the RC’s and Jews’ was given, to respect those religions

      The Navy has always been Woke

      TO Wake the RN up more, just give them OPERATIONAL SHIPS

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/01/03/royal-navy-adjusts-rules-allow-rastafarians-keep-long-hair-beards/

      1. Surely long hair and turbans are a health and safety risk? For the same reason, tattoos were not allowed on any special forces members – too easy to identify.

      2. In Napoleonic times coloured people or people of all ethnic minorities were evident in Royal; navy ships…..

        …..indeed, one of the greatest sea captains of all was a scot, Lord Cochrane.

  48. Sigh,it’s friday……………

    The attacker died shortly after he was shot in the town of Villejuif,

    which is 7km (4 miles) south of the French capital, news channel BFMTV

    reports.

    Four people are reported to have been stabbed and one person is believed to have been seriously injured.

    Police have advised people to avoid the area near to the Hautes-Bruyères State Park as an operation is ongoing.

    https://twitter.com/BBCBreaking/status/1213097702269034496

    1. Deranged Methodist. Known to the authorities. Lovely neighbour. Always had a cheeky smile. Loved his Nan to bits…(yawns and drops off…)

      1. Ah, the recurring theme that our ‘betters’ believe that we take at first hand and will continue to do so until it’s too late.

    3. Nom d’un chien! Glad I checked your new post before posting mine. Mental instability strikes again?

      1. Frustration. Don’t forget that France was an Arab state for thousands of years until the French stole it.

      2. “Nom d’un chien!” Rover!

        Sorry Korky, couldn’t resist bringing up an old piece of Goonery.

        1. It’s perfectly possible that the name has nothing to do with them, but I would guess that at some point in its history there will have been a Jewish community.

  49. An interesting Question

    If vegans are so offended by meat why so they spend most of their time trying imitate meat dishes?. Anyone foe a vegan leg of Lamb ?

    1. And we all know that vegan food is far worse for the environment. Do these people never think?

    2. It’s similar to vaping and nicotine gum and patches.

      Those who give up stll want the pleasure/sensations but also the “holier than thou, you addicts” by pretending to give up the product.

      1. When I see a vaper in clouds of white emissions, I see someone who is advertising their failure to have the mental strength to give up smoking, even when they want to, sucking on the adult equivalent of a baby’s dummy.

        I find them literally pathetic.

        1. Console yourself with the results so far. It seems that vaping may be even more dangerous than smoking.

          2. Indeed it could. But there are sufficiently high numbers of problems appearing to suggest that vaping is very unhealthy.

          1. I used to smoke 30 Embassy a day, 40 at weekends. Then at 4.50pm on 22nd March 1985 I smoked my last one. I went through the mill. I had the assisance of one week’s supply of Nicorette chewing gum, then only available on doctor’s prescription. I made that one week’s supply last three weeks, eating only a half piece when things got really bad. It was a very stressful time at work, but I stuck with it. I put up with the over-acute vision, the short temper, the aches and pains in my muscles, but I did it.

            It was so bad, I swore I would never do it twice.

            Best decision I ever made.

            So I think I do understand the nature of tobacco addiction at least.

          2. I have never been a smoker, so, as I’ve never been through the process, will not criticise those who do and can not give up.

            However, that does not stop me from calling them worse than muck for starting in the first place.

        3. There is increasing evidence that vaping is harmful to your health. They certainly taking in a much higher level of nicotine

        4. I have some sympathy with them, I gave up smoking some 45 years ago and it was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do and was only ameliorated by sucking alarming quantities Fox’s Glacier Fruits, a habit that was easily dropped once the cravings subsided. ( appx 12 months)

          1. I went with a bag of salted peanuts and a quarter of midget gems from our corner shop. I put on a stone.

          2. In 1969 I went from 40 a day to zero overnight, no withdrawal symptoms and a much healthier life and bank balance

          3. I started aged 10 when my father gave me my first cigarette, saying that it was time I started. From 16 onwards, 20 a day plus.

            I stopped on 23 October 1968.

            Never missed it.

          4. The main impact that those that give up smoking is weight gain as their appetite comes back and they can also taste the food

          1. It’s not just that either. The sheer quantity of the fog is amazing. I don’t recall ever seeing a smoker creating as much smoke as a vaper expels vapour.

        6. When the Vaperites are sucking, it is OK with me

          It is when they breathe out, and ‘I Wander through a cloud of white’, it worries me.

          Non smokers emit the same, but it unnoticeable

          1. I was sitting in my car a few days ago waiting for my wife who was in the post office. A woman walked along the path towards the car and exhaled a cloud of white chemicals, which spread, passing on both sides of her body and coalescing into a single cloud behind her before finally dispersing. It was reminiscent of a steam loco blowing off through its steam cocks to dry the cylinders when pulling away from a stand. It illustrated to me just how far and how quickly a person’s breath spreads.

        7. I smoked real cigarettes between the ages of 12 and 32.

          On New Years’ Eve, 1983, I visited a hypnotist and paid him £20 (the price of two weeks’ fags at the time). An hour later I had no desire to smoke again and I banished the disgusting habit overnight.

          I spent the following two weeks coughing up unwanted black phlegm from my lungs (my body’s natural protection against the vile heat and pollution), and almost immediately food started to have full delicious flavour for the first time since my childhood.

          I’ve now been a smoke-free zone for 36 years (and, it’s true what they say, ex-smokers’ are more vociferous in their condemning of smoking than are those who have never smoked).

          I refuse to use the egregious expression “non-smokers” because that has negative connotations. I prefer to use “fresh air breathers” and “non-fresh air breathers” (i.e. smokers), which is more positive sounding [Why should someone doing something positive be labelled with a negative tag?].

          1. When the DT used to work at the old Tyrell & Green’s in Southampton I used to meet her at the back of the building when she finished work.
            I always remember one lass coming out of the door saying, “God, fresh air at last!” whilst in the process of getting a fag out of the packet and lighting up.

      2. Not absolutely true, Sos, I am a nicotine addict and have been since age 12 but I now satisfy my brain’s urge for nicotine by using an e-cigarette. I don’t get ‘holier than thou’ about it but just quietly satisfy a craving without all the dangerous other components of tobacco..

        1. I think you may be kidding yourself that vaping isn’t at least as dangerous as tobacco.

          I may have the wrong individual here and if so I apologise, but those things and COPD are bad bed-fellows.

          1. OK, in respect for my health and on your good advice, I shall go back to smoking tobacco.

          2. My mother was diagnosed with COPD and gave up smoking overnight, from 20+ a day, which she had done for sixty years. Her father actually encouraged her to take it up, to look sophisticated; how times have changed.

            I know the craving varies greatly between individuals. What I’m not convinced about is whether giving up actually improved her quality of life all that much.

            Whether vaping after having been a life-long smoker is better or worse than smoking is moot. I don’t suppose there is sufficent research out there.

            Horses for courses I suppose, but I would go with whatever you feel happiest with.

          3. Thank you, Sos, and I shall (continue ‘vaping’) despite all the other “Holier than thous” that this thread appears to have triggered.

            I’ve said my piece and call ‘enough’.

          4. I suspect I may be biased because having had parents and friends who smoked a lot I got used to it; second hand vaping is worse for my nose than second hand smoke.

            As a commuter on a very busy line, I used to like the old smoking carriages because it meant I could get a seat.

            Good luck with whatever you decide.

          7. There is no doubt at all that it will improve your long term health. Most smokers will die from the habit and that is a proven fact

          8. I think I would rather live a slightly shorter but more enjoyable life than hang on until the bitter end falling apart slowly and painfully and with loss of dignity from other problems of extreme old age.

          9. and in the spirit of Nottlership, send you the bill for my ciggies/tabs/woodbines?

  51. I have a walk in airing cupboard which was full of old towels, years old bedlinen, like duvet covers, sheets , pillow cases .. I mean , years old , but clean and still useful .. but it needed a good clear out and tidy up .. and older stuff discarded and newer stuff organised and paired up. .. even things like mattress covers..

    This is a five double bedroom house but currently 3 bedrooms in use.. the junk has accumulated badly.. clearing Moh’s mother’s home .. and boxes of my books and stuff not used anymore .. old computers (Apple Sirius and the rest .. prob nearly 40 years of old stuff)

    The other day when the weather was so miserable .. Jan 1st .. New Years resolution … clear the airing cupboard .. took me ages .. 2 useful sackfuls and 3 sacks for the tip . (old pillows and spare kingsize duvets that went peculiar when I washed them at the laundrette, but annoyingly had to replace them years ago

    The useful sacks of linen were donated to the Ape rescue near here ..The Apes love to wrap themselves up at night , and tuck sheets and duvet covers around them , and the pillowcases are used for the tiny monkeys who love to nestle inside them .

    Feel good factor excellent , and the mental image of little monkeys like marmosets tucked inside pillowcases is so cute.

    If any of you have a tidy up, vets appreciate old towels as do some of the rescue centres .. and of course charity shops , because people love to seek out old towels for drying their dogs.

    Sorry to have wandered off topic .. but what does one do with old computers.. floppy disc variety ..and the succession of children’s old computers after that ?

        2. If they still have their boxes etc check that they are not valuable, some of the very early models are collector’s items.

          1. I still have some early computers in their boxes. I’d love to get rid of them, but I don’t want to just throw them away.

          5. That doesn’t mention anything I’ve got (perhaps because it’s American?). I have IBM, Amstrad PCW, ZX81, Spectrum, Einstein, Atari, BBC B etc. I am trying to find a site where I can advertise the stuff to enthusiasts in the UK. I’ve had a look on Ebay and see that they shouldn’t go for pennies 🙂

          2. There;s a similar company near here, Maggie. I have two dead full-size copiers, plus several PC’s. It’s on my to-do list to contact them this New Year…

    3. I think “Ape” is a very derogatory and divisive word to use about the newly arrived…

    4. We managed to palm off an artificial Christmas tree at the local charity shop today. Why on earth would they want one of those at this time of year?

    5. Depends on the computer… .

      Old tech in your house right now that’s worth big bucks
      https://www.komando.com/money-tips/old-tech-in-your-house-right-now-thats-worth-big-bucks/694558/

      Sold! Antique Apple-1 brings a record $671K
      https://www.computerworld.com/article/2496982/sold–antique-apple-1-brings-a-record–671k.html

      Vintage Apple-1 computer sells for $388K
      https://www.computerworld.com/article/2483743/vintage-apple-1-computer-sells-for–388k.html

    1. I don’t actually know anyone who is the least bit confused or concerned about the death of this mass murderer. As is becoming clear to more and more people, islam is the single biggest threat to the future existence of “moral” civilisation. Far, far more dangerous than the here-today gone-tomorrow European Union. The EU are just the delivery system, they are not the ones who will walk into your house and kill you.

      So there is an inevitable time approaching where either we put islam back in its box, or they put us into a coffin. There can be no middle ground with this death cult. On the bright side, we have the numbers to defend ourselves at the moment, and a slightly more advanced military infrastructure. But Boris really needs to do something now about our borders and the ferrying in of ever more enemy combatants.

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/cd9531aa186942f557dd3f33b440f44e98a1faa0e26f89f2ef7eeffebddd99fb.jpg

      1. This is the comedy I don’t really understand about Amuhricahns and their guhnz.

        The US has the ability to kill a man across the planet. What’s the use of a pistol – or even an automatic rifle – when your opponent doesn’t even need to be in the same side of the *world*.

    2. A new and opposite definition of the word ‘accurate’ also.

      Just what the world needs.

    3. There is a Medieval madness making it’s presence felt again …

      First the fish fry and ova have problems , then tadpoles don’t evolve into froglets, , we read about an 8 armed baby and 2 headed snakes, and babies joined at the head .. twenty toed adults, and freaky creatures that would make the Victorians cover their eyes and say their prayers..

      Is the Devil at work again.. are we witnessing twisted tormented devilish souls … I really do believe we are.. something very bad is happening .. what on earth is going on.

      1. It is all connected to this utter abomination, Maggie:

        https://www.worldometers.info/watch/world-population/

        Just click on the blue button marked “watch as we increase” and you will see, in real time, just how many people the world human population is being increased by: more than three births per second!

        You cannot fill the only planet known to support life (and a diversity of life forms at that) without something giving. The first thing to give is the sanity of those overpopulating the place. As I’ve repeatedly said, human stupidity is increasing at an exponential rate.

        The second thing to give is the will be the planet’s tolerance of that human plague. We will shortly end up us the dinosaurs did. Any intelligent being evolving in the distant future will regard Homo sapiens as we regarded Tyrannosaurus rex.

        Get used to it. it is destined to happen.

        1. Got it.. thanks

          Have you noticed that the taller people grow , the smaller their heads become ?

          I don’t think that is anything to do with me being 5’3 and looking up, no, I mean , people’s heads do seem to be shrinking the taller they become .

          4. Not really correct. You will find midgets have pretty normal sized heads but small bodies

          5. That’s dwarves, surely. Dwarfism usually means a large head on a small body, with small limbs. Midgets are in the correct proportions, but physically much smaller than the norm.

            That’s what my books told me when I was at school.

          6. IT is a bit arbitary . Technically a midget is a short person so not really a midget. AS far as I know there is no real definition of the two terms

          8. We had a postie like that. Really tall and his head was no wider than his neck. He did look odd. Nice chap though.

        2. The fundamental problem is technology.

          Here in the West we developed technology very quickly: farming, mechanisation, tooling, infrastructure, medicine.

          Then, because our kids were not dying we had fewer children – mostly because the punitive taxes levied on us by a greedy state prevented us from doing so. Amongst the intelligent, ABC1 group they are having perhaps one child. The problem is that the massive tax burden also pays the DE2s and 3s to breed. The wrong people are having children. The solution? Scrap welfare.

          Equally in the third world we in the west, our rich, wealthy countries are helping them out by giving them medicine, fuel, food and money and, at the simplest level clean water.

          Now, these are all nice things to do but the reality is we blasted well shouldn’t be doing it! It’s like giving a cave man a car. They’re simply not educated – and not in the formal reading and writing sense, but in the evolutionary stage of development to reduce their breeding to match their change of status, so more are born and the infrastructure cannot support them, so we intervene again and again and do them no favours at all with our charity.

      2. It’s called kissing cousins to keep an acre of scrub in the family.
        For several hundred years.

        1. I can’t help wondering if inter-racial cross breeding my also be having an effect.

          Rather like dogs, humans can reproduce with almost any other human of the opposite sex and reproductive age and rather like dogs some very peculiar mongrels are appearing with genetic weaknesses that only get noticed a few generations later.

          1. A good amount of research in the US is laming the sheer quantity of chemicals ending up in water – things like oestrogen which cause sexual development disorders in fish, etc. Plus of course, agricultural runoff which is laden with both natural (manure, etc.) fertilisers and chemical fertilisers, plus weed killers, etc.

            Long term inbreeding certainly causes genetically “challenged” babies to be born. That’s what used to cause the “village idiots” of days gone by – the extreme result of IQ lowering that is known to result in families that tend to marry their relatives. One first cousin marriage in a family may be OK, but doing it generation after generation leads to all kinds of both mental and physical defects.

            Given that many third world immigrants are probably the result of significant inbreeding, they would bring all those problems to any cross racial relationship that resulted in offspring.

          3. Many immigrants come from countries with absolutely kazillions of people so it’s not lack of choice that results in their in-breeding.

          4. That’s an interesting comment. Based on very limited experience with pedigree and non-pedigree cats and dogs, I would have said that the mongrels tended to be more resilient, less prone to illness and longer-lived than their more aristocratic fellows. I wonder if there has been any scientific analysis to say what the case is.

          5. Only the ones where “nature/natural selection” decides which will succeed. I suspect in most of your cases they were not breeding Great Danes with Chihuahuas.

            I can only comment on cases I know, but far too many have allergies, deformaties and psychological problems for it not to be worth looking into.

            And yes I do see that that makes me akin to a National Socialist.

      4. It’s just waiting for someone to scream ‘the emperor has no clothes on!’ to point out the absurdity. Once we reach the saying they’ll just fade away and stop thinking they’re special. They’ll be upset and probably wail but the simple fact is their nuts. They need long term therapy for a mental illness. Not pandering to.

    4. THe couple are both female and the claimed female sperm donor is genetically male and as far as I know not even claiming to be female

    5. A female does not produce sperm. Similarly, a man cannot have a child.

      While they’re welcome to pretend they’re something they’re not, they are only pretending.

    4. Morning PT,
      The hard core membership of the lab/lib/con coalition pro eu parties will continue to send food parcels containing wedges of wonga, it is in their DNA.

  55. US announces countrywide ban on flavoured e-cigs

    The US has announced a countrywide ban on some e-cigarette flavours amid concerns about vaping among teens.
    The ban applies to mint and fruit flavours that are offered in cartridge-based e-cigarettes, like the popular pods sold by Juul.
    The US will continue to allow menthol and tobacco flavours, as well as fruit flavours delivered in other ways.
    The action has been under consideration for more than a year, with several states passing similar rules.
    South Korea, India, Brazil are among the dozens of countries that have announced sweeping vaping bans. Others, like China, have announced restrictions.

    Fifty-five people have died and more than 2,500 people have been hospitalised with injuries linked to vaping, US health regulators say.
    Investigators have said they believe vitamin E acetate, which is sometimes added to marijuana vaping products, is playing a role.

    1. “Fifty-five people have died and more than 2,500 people have been hospitalised with injuries linked to vaping, US health regulators say.
      Investigators have said they believe vitamin E acetate, which is sometimes added to marijuana vaping products, is playing a role.”

      And the statistics behind tobacco-related deaths and injuries are…?

  56. That’s me for the day. Must go and have a shower (just one a month – to save water…) and then get ready to go out for a drink with a French chum.

    She dresses beautifully; very interested in things intellectual; is very musical; keen gardener – looks the sort of person who would have worked in a museum or art gallery.

    Her career? Air Traffic Controller…!!

    A demain

    2. And very well off, I suspect. Hope she doesn’t vector you away from the straight and narrow.

    4. It is nice to enjoy the company of an intelligent and beautiful woman. Don’t deploy the landing gear.

    8. Below, in my estimation, the most remarkable 3 minute real-time audio recording in the last half-century:

      https://youtu.be/z70mT0h8ooA

      Thank you, Captain/Crew of U.S. Airways Fight 1549 (and Air Traffic Controllers, and Hudson River rescue crews), for saving 155 lives!!

  57. Cummings would block it.

    COFFEE HOUSE – Give Nigel Farage a peerage
    Patrick O’Flynn – 3 January 2020 – 2:35 PM

    Almost half of Tory supporters think that Nigel Farage deserves a peerage, according to a new poll. And while some 53 per cent of the overall public are said to oppose the elevation of Farage to the Lords, if anyone does deserve to become a peer the Brexit party leader should certainly make the shortlist.

    Elevation to the Lords is meant to be an exceptional honour for exceptional people. This, of course, isn’t always the case. Over recent decades it has all too often been a reward for reliable placemen who have done a party leader’s bidding with such obsequiousness that not sending them down the corridor to wallow in pomposity becomes unthinkable.

    On this former criterion – making an exceptional contribution – there can be no question of Farage’s claim to a lordship. Without the vehicle of a major political party to assist him, he has changed the course of events, forcing the issue of the UK’s membership of a transnational political union to the top of the agenda, despite the constant efforts of the entire establishment to keep it at the margins.

    As one of those who featured for a while in his rolling cast of supporting actors, I naturally would not say he has done this “single-handedly”. But there can be no dispute that it would not have happened without him or that he has been the leading man.

    For all those who accept that the UK leaving the EU is the biggest political change of the past forty years – which surely most would agree it is – there can be no logical claim that Farage does not merit a peerage. Only the most resolute and narrow-minded tribalists – those who insist nobody of any other viewpoint deserves any elevation ever – could say that Farage doesn’t deserve a seat in the Lords.

    Farage’s early adoption of the cause of Donald Trump, something I confess to having found baffling and objectionable at the time, has also raised him to the status of someone who can be very useful to his country. Farage could be a helpful, informal channel of communication who is likely to receive a far warmer and more intimate hearing than many of the Foreign Office’s brigade of conventional thinkers.

    And think, too, what an electrifying presence Lord Farage would be in the Upper Chamber, where debates on the great issues of the day have tended over recent years to be ever more subject to “groupthink” and ever more remote from public opinion.

    I do not suppose for a second that Farage would import unamended the oratorical style he perfected in the European Parliament. Nobody would be getting called a “damp rag”. But he would be prepared to challenge orthodoxies and would also draw the best out of political adversaries.

    Of course, Farage has indicated several times that he is not really in the market for a peerage but would be delighted with a knighthood. As the pre-eminent political swashbuckler of the age, knightly status would suit him rather well. But “Arise, Sir Nige” would short-change the nation. The outlook, ideas and experience he possesses would undoubtedly benefit the Palace of Westminster. Our first past the post electoral system means the Commons is out of reach. And yet here is a man who often speaks for millions of people who have been left to feel marginalised.

    Nigel Farage led the campaign to force a referendum on EU membership. Early last year he rescued Brexit – not quite single-handedly but nearly – by forming the Brexit party ahead of the European elections.

    In the years ahead, the British establishment as a whole will need to swing behind the proposition that Brexit was inevitable and right given the state of public opinion towards the prospect of further European political integration. Within it a core of advocates of the old order will carry on regarding Farage with stone cold fury, seeking to blackball him from any official recognition.

    But those are the very same people who take that view of the Prime Minister too – and went on the airwaves to badmouth him throughout the recent general election campaign. Boris Johnson should not kowtow to them. He should not merely offer Nigel Farage a peerage at an early opportunity, he should actively seek to persuade him to accept one.

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

    Hugh Bryant • an hour ago
    I think Farage should be honoured in some way – but not with a peerage. The House of Lords has to go. I’d make him Chair of the BBC Governors.

    2. Make him a Knight Commander of the British Empire and a member of the order of companions.

      Kick Major and that oaf Elton John out. Neither are subservient to Her Majesty. One is clearly a traitor to the nation – Major – and the other’s a queen.

  58. Just read this:

    “The Times splashes with an appeal by the PM’s chief adviser Dominic Cummings for “weirdos and misfits” to come and work with him in 10 Downing Street.”

    Providing he carries it through, it’s the best news I’ve heard for ages.

    We desperately need to get rid of dead wood at the top and introduce new shoots with new ideas, especially if those ideas are ‘off the wall’. Also, since “I’ve done public service for 30 years” seems to be a penance when justifying a gong, let’s relieve such people of that ordeal.

    1. Yo Eddy

      One big problem with Civil Servants doing exams, they do not tell the whole story

      1. An intelligent person knows tha tomatoes are fruit: a wise or sensible person will not put it into a Fruit Salad

      2. Knowledge per se does not equate to ability

      A ‘clever’ person could easily find ‘Tw thirds the squareroot of the volume of a jar of pickles, but not be able to open it’

      Just be aware

      3 Who examines the examiners, and then examines the examiners examiners?

      4. Who will decide which occurrences ar Symptoms, which are Faults and which are Defects

      Symptom, the ‘visible’ bit of a Problem

      Fault somrthing that has failed in a normally functioning sytem

      Defect. An error in design/specification etc. ie making fireguards and teapots from chocolate

  60. Apols if this DT headline has already been posted:
    “Brian cells may grow with exercise, study suggests”
    Shouldn’t Brian’s surname have a capital letter?

    1. Anne, I wish I had seen it in time to take a screenshot!
      However, Google reveals that it is a surprisingly common typographical error in scientific literature.

    1. Poor Lib Dems. You don’t really need to to attack them as they are quite capable of destroying themselves. As each week passes the more they reveal just what a circus side show they really are. It is a bit of a stretch for this paper to call that woman a forger though. She faked an email, she was not printing off thousands of pounds in her kitchen at night.

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1bbfd5524dbf731a2a9c49f8b05685326067efbad5da52e343c8261fc7ca462b.jpg

      1. Still forgery though not quite in the Great Bank Robbery League though. I presume she was fired though and expelled from the party ?

        Should Layla be an MP? There i a potential security risk as she could have confidential data and will be living with a woman known to misuse confidential data

      1. Think kitchen scissors.
        After Layla finishes with the saucypans she puts them into the dishywasher.

  62. As I watch a nice glowing sunset here, it has struck me that when all the smoke from Australia enters the upper atmosphere, we should get good sunsets in the summer. I think that happened after Mt St Helens, though that eruption was in our own hemisphere. Not that that compensates for the sad deaths of Aussie wildlife.

      2. No, and that isn’t what jschecker is getting at.

        They seem a new face around these parts. Be nice.

        Regarding Australia: what the flip can we do? Why were forest not burned back? I heard the BBC waffle endlessly about climate change. Some oaf came on and nearly gave himself a heart attack so vehement was he yet… when I did a bit of reading it appears that when advocates of burning back forests and creating fire brakes asked to do so, the Left went beserk and complain about – you guessed it – destroying habitat and of course, climate change, as if it’s the answer to shut down any argument.

  63. Conwoman

    The laws of nature? So-o-o-o last century
    By Laura Perrins – January 3, 2020

    SO I have been thinking a lot about Maya Forstater over the Christmas holiday. You remember her? The feminist who was fired for having the audacity, the absolute audacity, not only to tweet but to believe, actually believe, that biological sex is real.

    One of her tweets was the following: ‘Yes I think that male people are not women. I don’t think being a woman/female is a matter of identity or womanly feelings. It is biology. People of either sex should not be constrained (or discriminated against) if they don’t conform to traditional gender expectations.’

    For this and other tweets she has been labelled a bigot, part of the far Right and of course as transphobic, and she was fired from her job.

    But Maya Forstater did not meet Judge James Tayler at the Employment Tribunal. He, dear reader, has the power to declare what view is or is not ‘worthy of respect in a democratic society’. That’s quite a lot of power if you ask me.

    Critical issues surrounding the transgender debate should not be decided by some random judge in the employment tribunal. Most people might think that you would need perhaps more than one person to decide, or even better an Act of Parliament to do that. But not so.

    I have written before about how the transgender juggernaut is getting very close to George Orwell’s 1984, and this judgment is more evidence of the dystopia made real. What Maya Forstater may or may not understand is that she is behind the times. The narrative has changed, and with it all the old forms of language have changed.

    Maya Forstater is clinging to her old view that sex is an objective reality, but this is ‘oldthink’. Maya Forstater is out there, comrades, tweeting away about sex and biology when she doesn’t understand that if the Party says there is no such thing as sex, then there is no such thing as sex. And that’s it.

    And should Maya Forstater start talking about concepts such as liberty and equality, for instance, this is ‘crimethink’ and she must be stopped or fired from her job and shamed for it. I’m still not sure that many people out there get this, but you should.

    Transgenderism is not about protecting a minority of vulnerable people who suffer from gender dysphoria. The transgender agenda is about what it is always about: power. Power plain and simple. The power to compel speech. Most of all, the power to compel thought.

    Tribunal Judge Tayler said that Maya Forstater’s view in its ‘absolutist nature’ was incompatible with human dignity and the fundamental rights of others. He seems positively shocked at the idea that she denies the right of the person with a gender recognition certificate to be the sex to which they have transitioned. The certificate means that the person is legally a person of the new gender but of course it doesn’t mean that this is true biologically. The issuing of an adoption certificate means that the new parents are legally the parents of the adopted child. It doesn’t mean what we all must accept that this child was conceived in the adoptive mother’s womb, that she was pregnant with the child, laboured and gave birth to it. Just don’t tell Judge Tayler that.

    But as I said, this isn’t about protecting rights, this is about power. And there is no end to this. There is no bottom. Do you think that if we all accept that men can biologically change into women, that will be the end of the matter? No, of course not. This is the Left we are dealing with, the hard Left, the Left for which there is no reality, there is no morality; there is only power. And if they have the power to remake reality is this area, I warn you that they will move on to the next area where they find reality just a little too troublesome.

    Remember, in the Leftist handbook 1984, O’Brien makes it clear that the only way to assert power over another is to make him suffer. The Left will make Maya Forstater suffer, and they will make anyone else who gets in the way suffer economically, socially or all of the above.

    And when they talk about power, they want power over not just the body or speech, but over the mind. They don’t just want Maya Forstater to be nice and use the right pronouns. They want her to believe, to really believe, that men can change into women. And if she doesn’t believe, they will make her an unperson, slowly but surely.

    O’Brien again: ‘We control matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside the skull. You will learn by degrees, Winston. There is nothing that we could not do. Invisibility, levitation – anything. I could float off this floor like a soap bubble if I wish to. I do not wish to, because the Party does not wish it. You must get rid of those nineteenth-century ideas about the laws of nature. We make the laws of Nature.’

    Do you understand yet? Biological sex, genes, chromosomes: it is all so last century, according to the Employment Tribunal. If the gender recognition certificate says the man is a woman, the man is a woman not just legally and socially, but biologically.

    There are no laws of nature any more, folks, there is only whatever the Leftists say there is, and if they declare that men can get periods then you better get on board.

    Finally, this is not just about what you say or what you do, this is about what you think and believe. This is why there is so much use of the suffix ‘phobic’. If you disagree with a certain proposition you are not just on the Left or on the Right. No, that won’t do any more – you are phobic, and suffer from a phobia or are ‘transphobic’ in this case.

    In other words you are mentally ill, mentally unstable and in need of help. That, my dear friend, is where places such as the Employment Tribunal come in.

    In 1984 there are constant references to Winston’s state of mind. ‘The Party is not interested in the overt act: the thought is all we care about.’ Winston is told he is ‘mentally deranged,’ and O’Brien tells him: ‘Your mind appeals to me. It resembles my own mind except that you happen to be insane.’ Earlier he told him, when convincing him he was holding up five fingers and not four, that he ‘must try harder. It is not easy to become sane’.

    And don’t we hear this all the time on the airwaves, and TV and twitter, people denounced as TERFS, and transphobic for believing in the laws of nature? This is just another way of telling them that they are insane, mentally deranged and that ‘they must try harder’.

    So it’s not going to be easy for Maya Forstater, not when pure power is at stake. The power to remould society, to deny reality and the laws of nature is not something the hard Leftists will give up easily. They simply will not tolerate oldthink and crimethink, and the likes of Maya Forstater.

    No, she must be educated, she must try harder, for it is not easy to become sane.

      1. Does this mean that this Man(Woman can demand the NHS gives him a smear test on his non existent parts ?

    3. What the bally hell is a gender representation certificate?

      Yesterday, in tesco, there was a man in a dress. I don’t care if he’s got a note from the Queen saying he’s a woman. He’s blatantly, obviously a man.

      However, he can dress as he likes, cut whatever bits off he likes, take whatever pills he likes. What he can’t do is force me to say he is a woman. The hard Left are trying to change that. As usual, they are trying to control language to control thought.

      1. Bu if I went around pretending to be a monkey they would probably quite rightly section me

        1. Oh but isn’t Trans-speciesism the nbext logical step? We already have ecosexuals (they want to make love to trees or be treated as trees or something) and a woman (self identified?) who wants to marry a vase….

      2. I was in the High St the other day when a man stopped and politely asked if he could pat my dog. (she being so cute) I of course said yes but i thought it strange for him to be wearing a leather mini-skirt in this weather. Still, he at least had the sense to wear stockings, even if they were fishnets.

        As you say, people can dress how they like but i will form my own opinions based on logic. Not wants.

    5. Does not this judge have some kind of problem. He is trying to claim that scientific medical data is wrong. Can he prove his claim or is it just his opinion if so what makes his opinion more worthy than science ?

    6. Transgendersim is simply another facet of the progressive lib/left cultural marxist globalist movement and since what we are seeing is a collapse of the left across the world and a rejection of all the “PC” crap, this may be the last gasp of such leftist doctrinaire views. Just as the Government in the Uk is truning its attention to some long standing issues such a the “impartiality” of the BBC and the politicisation of the justice system, to judge by the various comments earound these issues, the education system will not long escape scrutiny and the indoctrinational nature of education will be on that list.

    2. Torn to shreds. Identified by his ring. Al Muhandis was obliterated. Nothing left to identify. Now it’s Blairs turn.

      1. Nobody on Earth deserves to be the one who identifies Blair from by his ring, not even Cherry (sic)

        1. I’m sure there are lots of people who could identify it if they were peering through a hole in a toilet wall.

  66. Please do not offend me as I may be protected by the law

    Ethical omnivorism is may be “philosophical belief” and so is protected in law,

    Ethical omnivorism should fall under the Equality Act 2010

    The ruling means ethical omnivors are entitled to protection from discrimination.

    All omnivors eat a meat-based diet,

    “Religion or belief” is one of nine “protected characteristics” covered by the Equality Act 2010.

    ethical omnivorism qualifies as a philosophical belief, after satisfying several tests – including that it is worthy of respect in a democratic society, not incompatible with human dignity and not conflicting with the fundamental rights of others. are entitled to protection from discrimination.

    “Religion or belief” is one of nine “protected characteristics” covered by the Equality Act 2010.

    1. The ‘equality act’ has done more to create inequality than anything else. Scrap it.

  67. Black people in California are stopped far more often by police, major study proves. Fri 3 Jan 2020

    Twenty eight per cent of all persons stopped by Los Angeles police officers during the last six months of 2018 were black, while black people account for just 9% of the city’s population, the data shows. In San Francisco, the black population has shrunk over several decades to just 5% of the city’s total population, but 26% of all stops carried out by the SFPD from July through December of 2018 were of black people – marking the widest racial disparity in police stops of the eight reporting agencies.

    This is because they commit most of the crimes and the reason the black population of San Francisco has shrunk is because most of them are now in jail!

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/02/california-police-black-stops-force

        2. Apart from it being an “inter” racial bar chart, BoB (not you BoB) I suspect would be so high as to make the rest of the bars invisible

          1. Ah, righto, sorry, I missed the text beneath it. I’d still like to know the comparators.

            There is something rotten in our country. We’re not talking about it.

    2. Aye. It’s sad that the grauniad doesn’t produce the facts alongside the statement.

      Their the same ones who sqweamed about profiling in the UK. I suppose the chattering classes around dinner tables in Islington care more that blacks are stabbed to death than stopped and searched.

      Frankly let’s start there Boris. Search evvery single black youth in a given area. Go in, enact martial law. Sack Khan for gross misconduct – Khan lies endlessly about how marvellous his regime is.

      1. That would upset the liberals who would class it as racial victimisation. A better measure would be to stop and search ALL youths under the apparent age of 25 who are on the streets, and look for not only guns and knives but cans of spray paint. I would guess that as much graffiti spoiling our town is done by white youths as black youths so it would be an evenhanded measure.

        1. I understand the sentiment – and in the case of the cans, strip the yob to the waist and empty the can on him (but hang on, what itf it’s me and I’ve got them to undercoat something?

          I do think the discrimination is needed. For once let’s drop the pretence and just search black kids. If we can stop the deaths there then we can drop a moon on the lesser crimes.

          1. Agreed. Yes, there has to be flexibility – my post was a bit tongue in cheek to make the point.

    3. Without information on how many were charged or received warning it is meaningless. From what I have seen on TV in the UK black people that have been stopped by the police are far more likely to become very aggressive and violent and possibly is it the same in the US. One has to remember in the US firearms can be leagally carried so the police are likely to be very carefull which may mean to quickly retrain people

        1. SNAP!
          Please note that he has sneakily edited his post without acknowledging the hit. That’s why it’s always good to C&P the offending phrase or sentence.

          1. When shown the blue, yellow and red bar chart above, Jo Swinson remarked “From the chart, you can see that the Lib/Dems are winning here”.

            :-))

      2. One has to remember in the UK firearms can be leagally carried…

        WHAT? Is this the final proof of your dementia?

    4. That particular group is about 10% of the US population and commits about 50% of the country’s violent crime. Since the vast majority of the victims are also black, the most likely person to kill a black man is another black man, yet the BLM types somehow give “their” killers a pass, and only focus on the very small percentage shot by police. And the main reason they get shot is resisting arrest – pulling a gun on a police officer is never a good idea.

  68. Who can turn around the Labour Party ?

    In my view none of the names that have been touted as front runners will, They are all very much far left and would just carry on Corbyns polices

    One possible outsider is Stephen Kinnock he is at least more tradition Labour and has some profile but he will get no support from the Corbynites as he is not a part of the Islington sect

      1. Just one of the least worse in my view. I cannot really identify even one Labour politician that could turn the party around. My gut feeling is it may tear itself in two

  69. Just looking through my posts. This one got 2 upticks on BB and no downticks. Away you go CCHQ guys and gals.

    “And you’re a globalist Johnson bot, then? Johnson, wasn’t he the MP who wrote two letters and then on a whim decided to join Vote Leave to ensure it failed? Then withdrew from the Tory leadership campaign because his best mate Govey stabbed him in the back. How come it didn’t stop him being PM this time? Is Gove in his government?”

    1. Suggest you dig deeper and you’ll find enough evidence to see that he’s just another globalist pawn.
      5 upticks 1 downtick

      1. Anybody who lives in Londonistan please look away, now.

        “Ha ha ha ha No Sharria Courts in the USA. Ha ha ha. You’re a comedian. You should be on the stage. The next one leaves for Minnesota at 7am tomorrow. I’m sure you’ll find plenty there. I see some states banned them. That means you think they are not there! Ha ha ha.

        Why do all you geographically challenged Yanks think London is the only place in the UK? I don’t give a flying faack about the shiiiite hole. It was a shiiiiite hole when it was full of cockkneed caants like Richard Van Dyke in Mary Poppins. They can stabb each other to deeath as far as I’m concerned and probably the rest of the UK thinks the same. I wish global warming was true and one day it would disappear under 20′ of seawater.

        You Yanks have far bigger problems than we do but you’re so dumb you’ll never realise it.

        NB. Had to try many times until I realised you can’t use the familiar term of Richard.”

        Re-build the Antonine Wall and a wall around the M25. Job done. Wonder if there are any Puritan Policers in the building.

        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/89073aa5f60bb9fc326b003b2b0256be708dfcf7848b8b8298fb8a736b509763.png
        .

    2. Good morning, RS

      You are as cynical as I am. Gove is a nasty snake in the grass who should not be trusted one inch.

      The Conservatives needed a true and committed Brexiteer, like Owen Paterson, to lead the party and to lead Britain out of the EU. I am. perhaps, deceiving myself that Johnson will free Britain from the EU but I admit that I am not sure whether it is better to cling on to hope or to cling on to despair!

      2. Good Afternoon rastusctastey,
        Ah, but you do it in a nice way.
        The only decent one for me was that German woman, Hoey too, if she had resigned after the referendum vote.
        I forgot to mention in our chat the other day that it pays to associate with people of higher intelligence as you learn more. I note that your comments are open to perusal so if you don’t mind I’ll look in from time to time and comment on then.

    3. RS,
      Put to the backing music of
      🎵Many a tear has to fall, (& most certainly will yet,)
      but It’s all in the game🎵

      1. Happy New Year o1,
        Just been to Aldi and the chippy. Last song I listened to while walking was “It’s the same old song…))))

        1. RS,
          Greeting reciprocated, we are in currently a state of uncertainty regarding 100 % brexitexit
          and could, in the near future be singing
          🎵
          Who’s sorry now 🎵 as a National Anthem.

          2. RS,
            Been on the cards from the start of the leaving process 24/6/2016 to many power players with vested interest ie pensions / wages etc,etc.
            In so far as the lab/lib/con parties are concerned their hierarchy in the main, especially since the Margaret Thatcher era, have been happily rubber stamping the years away.
            What has it cost the politico’s in injuries due to the mass uncontrolled immigration, using the three monkey system ?
            Cost joe public plenty in deaths, rape / abuse,
            physical / mental scarring, (acid / rape).
            The governing cretins have no intentions of triggering a total severance & will have a tie with brussels, until the eu implodes.
            On that day the contents of the HOc/HOl will mourn / sob in private, my personal opinion.

          3. Seems very similar to my opinion. That Gisela Stuart was the only decent MP in my opinion. She saw how they reacted on Vote Leave and realised they were all Remainers. All 650 are traitors. Only civil war will purge us of this rancid scum.

    1. The Beeb must be implementing its new approach to the EU – criticizing another member state is verboten. Unless of course they don’t toe the EU line, in which case they are labelled extreme right wing fascist governments.

  72. If I go around believing the world is flat will I have my belief protected by law ?

  74. Anyone have an uneasy feeling about sport, or football being hijacked for nannying good causes?

    1. Just for you, PTxxx

      The death of Soleimani shows Iran that it cannot strike with impunity

      Con Coughlin, defence editor
      3 JANUARY 2020 • 2:26PM

      The assassination of Iranian commander Qassim Soleimani by an American air strike in the early hours of Friday morning sends an unequivocal message to Tehran that it can no longer threaten the US and its allies with impunity.

      As the head of the elite Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, which is responsible for conducting Iran’s overseas military operations, Soleimani has been a key figure in masterminding Tehran’s proxy war against the West and its Arab allies in the region.

      Soleimani first came to prominence following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, when he was in charge of the Iran-sponsored Shia militias in southern Iraq that carried out a series of attacks against British troops based in Basra.

      His actions led to the deaths of several British soldiers, with many more suffering serious injury, as the militias waged a brutal terrorist campaign against British forces.

      At one point during the Iraq campaign an elite SAS team was dispatched to assassinate Soleimani, but the operation was called off by the then Labour Foreign Secretary David Miliband who told British commanders his preference was to open negotiations with the Iranian commander, not to kill him.

      Since then the 62-year-old poster boy of Iran’s Islamic Revolution has overseen the rapid expansion of Iranian meddling throughout the Middle East.

      At the height of his powers, Soleimani easily eclipsed Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden as posing the greatest threat to Western interests in the region.

      Indeed, Washington has noted a sharp increase in Quds Force activity since Iran signed the controversial nuclear deal with former President Barack Obama in 2015.

      Instead of spending the tens of billions of dollars it received as a result of the sanctions being lifted on rebuilding the Iranian economy, the ayatollahs instead spent the money building a new network of military bases throughout the Middle East.

      It was to halt the spread of what US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has described as Iran’s “malign influence” in the Middle East that the Trump administration withdrew from the nuclear deal, imposing fresh sanctions against Tehran.

      This, in turn, has resulted in a dramatic increase in Iranian attacks against the West and its allies in recent months as the ayatollahs have sought to distract attention away from their woeful handling of the Iranian economy, which has resulted in nationwide anti-government protests.

      Moreover, after Donald Trump failed to respond when the Revolutionary Guard shot down a US Navy drone over the Gulf in the summer, and only made a lukewarm response after Iran attacked Saudi Arabia’s Aramco oil facilities in September, Tehran wrongly concluded that it could maintain its aggressive stance with impunity.

      For Soleimani, this proved to be a fatal miscalculation. For decades the Iranian regime has operated on the basis that it can undertake provocative actions against the West without being held accountable for them.

      From the hostage crisis in Lebanon in the 1980s, to more recent attacks, such as the downing of a US Navy drone over the Gulf in the summer, Tehran has been able to carry out hostile acts without having to face the consequences.

      But with the assassination of Soleimani, the US has demonstrated forcefully that it is no longer prepared to tolerate Iran’s campaign of aggression against the West and its allies and that, from now on, will pay a heave price for any further aggressive acts.

      The Soleimani assassination is also likely to have profound implications for neighbouring Saudi Arabia, Iran’s main rival for supremacy in the Gulf.

      Western intelligence officials believe that Soleimani was personally involved in planning last September’s devastating attack on Saudi’s Aramco complex, which briefly reduced the country’s oil production by a third, while Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have regularly launched missile attacks across the border into Saudi Arabia.

      Saudi minister of state Adel Al-Jubair warned in the aftermath of the Aramco attack that Riyadh would do “whatever it takes” to counter further acts of Iranian aggression, and the US has deployed an extra 3,000 troops, fighter aircraft and missile defence systems to defend Saudi territory. Consequently any further Iranian attempts to attack the Saudis is likely to be met with a robust response.

      1. Labour and the Democrats are responsible for the death, mutilation and persecution of Service men and women defending our interests. I call that by its name. Traitors.

      2. Thanks zxcv3 xx

        Right or wrong I’m reminded of the assasination of Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand and the law of unintended consequences….where will it end?

        Dreadful start to 2020….

        2. It will end in MAD.

          The only reason we are meddling in the middle east is oil. If they didn’t have that we would leave them to kill each other as they have always done.

          Perhaps Greta has a point.

          1. In the short term it would certainly be horrific, but if the West destroyed all the oil installations of the Middle East, Islam would suddenly lose most of its lifeblood.

          4. MAD is over

            We do not have the ships to operate it

            Signed MAD operator for 20 years

      3. If it’s Con C. I generally assume it’s wrong, and war mongering, but in this particular case I’m in agreement.

      4. “The Soleimani assassination is also likely to have profound implications for neighbouring Saudi Arabia, Iran’s main rival for supremacy in the Gulf”. If a choice has to be made between Iran and Saudi Arabia, I would rather the former than the latter.

  78. M&S seeks to dress up image with range of affordable sportswear

    It seems to smack ol desperation. M&S flounder from one idea to another. Is anyone even going to go to M&S for affordable sportswear? For a start their cost base is very high and there idea of affordable may not math the customers expectation and if someone wants sportswear is M&S where they are likely to go ?

    M&S seem to have no idea at all as to what they are supposed to be about

    Marks & Spencer is looking to shed its reputation for selling frumpy clothes aimed at the over-50s in 2020 by going after the booming athleisure market with a range of affordable sportswear.

    From Friday the 150-piece Goodmove collection, which includes leggings, will be available. In-store leggings “experts” will be on hand to help customers choose from five styles, which start at £15 for a basic pair and go up to £45 for sculpting tights. The accompanying marketing push includes ads on social media as well as a dedicated Spotify playlist.

    M&S, which is due to issue a Christmas trading update next week, has been unsuccessfully trying to reinvent itself for nearly two decades but chief executive, Steve Rowe, is promising to make the changes. The retailer is redesigning its fashion and food ranges to attract more young families. At the end of last year it poached Richard Price, the head of Tesco’s F&F clothing and homewares label, to lead the struggling clothing division.

    2. Why the incessant chasing of the youth segment, who have little spare cash and lots of commitments? No wonder they are tanking!

      1. They seem to be desperately trying to chase every and any market and succeeding with none of them

        1. They had a solid, if dull, market in selling ordinary clothes to middle-aged people. Why junk that before you have properly established a new one?

    1. I don’t think that the cat would hide. They have more sense and know who their real friends are.

  80. Mr Hat was right about Disqus staff and notifications returning to normal after the holiday. However i just opened mine and it crashed. :o(

  81. SNP’s Westminster chief claims party was ‘systematically omitted’ from BBC election coverage

    If anything they were over represented on the BBC. The SNP are a Scottish only party so I woyuld expect the main coverage to be on BBC Scotland. I dont live there so cannot comment on that but in England where they were standing no candidates they got quite a lot of coverage

    The SNP’s House of Commons leader has written to the BBC complaining that his party was “systematically omitted” from stories during the election campaign.

    Ian Blackford said his party “often had to challenge” the BBC over the level of coverage it was receiving during the build-up to polling day on 12 December.

    1. Ian Blackford is an unpleasant bully; he gets far too much exposure on BBC and SKY news …

  82. Environment Agency set to approve huge incinerator near Braintree

    These incinerators are not large and are a sensible way of disposing of non recyclable waste.. The wast is only transported locally and the incinerator produces enough electricity for 60,000 home plus the waste heat can be used to heat homes and any wast metal is recovered and recycled and it eliminates land fill

    Gent Fairhead say the new plant would divert waste from landfill, recover valuable materials from waste and produce enough electricity to power more than 60,000 homes. Further details into the EA’s decision are set to come ahead of a public consultation on the proposed changes that will run between January 9 and February 6.

    1. Have you got a link?
      Tom Brake found out what people think of having an incinerator in their backyard.

    2. Personally i prefer waste gasification to incineration but both are preferable to landfill.

  83. The new year season of Karaoke singing contest kick of this week. They have not yet come up with a naked singing contest but I guess they will be working on it

  84. Spiked. O’Neill.

    “There
    is something really off in the media fury over Trump’s killing of
    Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani. Let’s leave to one side whether the
    killing was wise (spiked thinks not). The virtual weeping over
    Soleimani’s death is still seriously messed up. Serious foreign-policy
    talking heads and others in the chattering classes are talking Soleimani
    up as an anti-ISIS hero, almost as an innocent man ‘murdered’ by evil
    Donald Trump. This is dangerous nonsense. Soleimani was an Islamist
    theocrat and imperialist who unleashed terror across the Middle East and
    who was in Iraq (where he was killed) as part of Iran’s violent
    repression of dissent in that country. He helped to crush dissent in
    Iran, too. The sorrow over his death has nothing to do with
    anti-imperialism – rather, it is driven by geopolitical cowardice, by a
    fear of taking decisive action, and by a loathing of Trump so irrational
    that it convinces its adherents that Islamist hardmen are good guys in
    comparison. This is perverse. Stop crying for Soleimani.”

  85. Democrats. Bah!!

    Elizabeth Warren

    ✔

    @ewarren

    We’re on the brink of yet another war in the Middle East—one that would be devastating in terms of lives lost and resources wasted. We’re not here by accident. We’re here because a reckless president, his allies, and his administration have spent years pushing us here.

    Elizabeth Warren

    ✔

    @ewarren

    Donald Trump ripped up an Iran nuclear deal that was working. He’s repeatedly escalated tensions. Now he’s assassinated a senior foreign military official. He’s been marching toward war with Iran since his first days in office—but the American people won’t stand for it.

      1. Just wondering. How many of her relations serve or have served. Can’t be arsed to research it.

      2. I just read her up on Wikipedia. She probably wrote it herself. This is one of those Wikipedia pages that are nothing more than a political propaganda sheet. She must be expecting a Nobel Prize for being Good.

    2. He knows who is really responsible for 9/11.

      Appeasement and self enrichment under the Clintons and Obama will not work with desert tribes.

      1. Hmm. As that’s the wife’s job, she had chums over there who were killed during those events.

        The problem isn’t killing one Iranian general by the US. It’s the demented lot of loonies here in various enclaves who’ve now been given an excuse to kill Westerners.

    3. Soleimani was Iran’s terror chief who along with his henchmen were in Iraq directing/organizing terror attacks. Same guy fomenting trouble in Yemen and behind the attack on the Saudi oil installations – and on and on. I suspect the US public is behind Trump in a big way on this one.

  86. Latest News Just In – It has been confirmed that Qasem Soleimani was an ethical vegan, Trump to appear before court of human rights.

  87. Corbyn speaks !!-

    “Jeremy Corbyn called the killing an assassination and said it
    represented “an extremely serious and dangerous escalation of conflict
    in the Middle East with global significance”.
    The Labour leader said: “The UK government should urge restraint on
    the part of both Iran and the US and stand up to the belligerent actions
    and rhetoric coming from the United States”

    2. Corbyn also believes that Israel should lay down and play dead while the population is massacred.

    3. Whereas Airey Neave died in a motoring accident?

      Corbyn should keep his gaping vicious mouth shut.

      Real Labour voters live outsise of the M25 Ring and support our troops

    2. 2007 Christmas Concert at the Central House of Art Workers Country : Russia Genre : christian songs Duration : 00:47:55 Release year : 2007 Description : Participants: Olga Arefieva, Julia Teunikova, Adrian Huseynov, Petr Akimov. The concert performs folk songs dedicated to the feast of the Nativity of Christ. Tracklist : 1) The virgin of the baby washed 2) I have outlived my life 3) On Sunday, the sun came up early 4) Three angels 5) To whom shall my grief 6) The sun was under the mountain 7) The sinful man 8) Our faith 9) Poor birds 10) Holy evening

    3. What a strange version of Back In The USSR that was. (But I really enjoyed the minor key song they all sang.)

      PS – Nice to see the cellist smartly dressed in a collar and tie, unlike the open-necked male singer.

      PPS – Is the female singer on the right adding spice to the song by shaking the pepper pot on the floor?

    2. 1960s – I preferred the Rolling Stones and Soul to the Beatles. Never could stand John Lennon, especially.

      1. I preferred the Stones as well..

        I couldn’t bear the Beatles nasally needy whine .. George Harrison on his own wasn’t too bad in the later years.

        1. That wasn’t a whine – it was just the Scouse accent in all its glory – though they did all lose it when they got rich and moved South.

      3. The Stones were better than the Beatles in my opinion too, yet some of the Beatle’s songs are really good. Wasn’t so keen on a lot of their solo stuff or after-Beatles projects.

    5. Saw them at the ABC cinema in Carlisle in 1963. Along with Gerry and the Pacemakers and Freddie and the Dreamers. Much screaming, sadly. I had achieved the tender age of six…

      1. I saw the Rolling Stones in Wolverhampton – I couldn’t hear a thing for all the screaming. Waste of a journey!

        1. The Stones are great live. Biggest let down for me was Bob Dylan. I was given two tickets to see him at Wembley Arena and he was pretty dire sadly. Voice totally gone. Songs raised in tempo stupidly. Most classics unrecognisable. So sad as I love his music and he was an artist I thought I’d never have a chance to see live.

    6. But you forget that you were a screaming bobby-soxer in the younger days of Frank Sinatra, weren’t you?

      (Sorry, Maggie, I just couldn’t resist that one.)

    8. What I didn’t understand i swhy they’d keep screaming once the music started.

      You couldn’t hear a note.

  90. Chinese man fined £13,000 for throwing ‘lucky’ coins at plane engine

    AChinese airline passenger who threw coins into a plane engine while boarding in a bid to ensure a safe journey has been ordered to pay 120,000 yuan (£13,115) in compensation to the airline.

    Twenty-eight-year old Lu Chao, who was flying with Lucky Air, was ordered to pay the fine after the airline had to cancel the flight to search for the coins.

    The police detained Mr Lu for 10 days after the incident at Anqing Tianzhushan Airport in eastern China in February 2019, and the airline took legal action against him. Industry experts said the superstitious practice of tossing coins into the plane’s engines increases the risk of engine failure.

    “Regardless of size, any pieces of metal [that] fell into the engines would damage its turbine blades at high-speed rotation,” Zhang Qihuai, a legal expert in China’s aviation industry, told Beijing Youth Daily.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/01/03/chinese-man-fined-13000-throwing-lucky-coins-plane-engine/

    3. That’s why I don’t understand it when Grizzly tries to explain the game of cricket to me. Why would any team want to have a Chinaman on their team?

      :-))

      2. The Chinese football, rugby, table tennis, cricket tiddle=winks, bridge etc Teams

        More to the point why do not English football teams have any Englishmen in them

    12. There is nothin’ like a dame
      Nothin’ in the world
      There is nothin’ you can name
      That is anythin’ like a dame!

  93. I long for the day to return, when the majority of the population have their say and will be listened to about such things as

    Ooman roits
    Vegans
    LGBTQqwerty

    Gender/sex
    Marriage
    Free speech
    Veganism
    Vegetarianism
    Greta the Bleata
    Free Speech
    Immigtation
    The perlice
    etc

    1. Evening OLT,
      They have their say every General Election & to be quite honest the only difference I see is that the odious situation facing the country on entering the polling booth is guaranteed to get worse on exit.

    1. Earlier this week you were ramming down our throats your view that Sweden has a much better health service which we sold learn from.

        1. Yes, especially on matters of pedantry. Those in grass houses will never get sold down the river because throwing stones would have less affect.

  95. Several towns in Oz have been cut off and it’s too late to evacuate. Two large bushfires are joining together to create a mega fire. They have declared a state of disaster. Which means the authorities can order you to leave, at gunpoint if necessary.

    Scott Morrison is highly unlikely to remain Prime Minister for long after he swanned off to Hawaii for a holiday while peoples homes were burning to the ground.

    If you pray, pray for them.

    1. Could be difficult or impossible to get to them. It depend show close to the fire they are. The fire can create a lot of smoke and turbulence which would mean helicopters may not be able to get in

      1. Some main routes in and out have become impassable. The roads still open have been gridlocked since yesterday. I fear some people are going to abandon their cars and try to walk to safety. You can’t outrun a bushfire on foot. The death toll is going to rise sharply.

        1. Even out driving it if the wind is taking the fire can become impossible. Such fire can spread fast and be unpredictable

          1. People upvote for different reasons. I sometimes upvote to show i have read the item. It doesn’t necessarily mean i agree with it. (all upvotes to Bill Thomas)

    1. News Exclusive: The one thing that is going to be really, really bad for Planet Earth is when the Sun goes Red Giant……..

      1. The one thing that was really, really bad for Planet Earth is when the Suns topped having Sam Fox on Page 3.

        She looked luvverly to us men although she ‘Batted for the other side’

        Years ahead of her time

    3. In future,I shall hold off on the Quinoa and sprout salads, juust like I have done before.

      Honestly, who came up with that mix?

  97. Of course he is…..

    Tony Blair is set to earn millions of pounds advising an American businessman on how to make money from tackling climate change.

    The former prime minister will be paid at least £700,000 a year

    to act as a “strategic adviser” to Khosla Ventures, a venture capitalist

    firm founded by Indian billionaire Vinod Khosla.

    The Californian company bankrolls businesses hoping to profit

    from technology that helps reduce global warming and carbon emissions.

    https://www.standard.co.uk/news/tony-blair-to-earn-millions-as-climate-change-adviser-6473759.html

    1. T Blair who isn’t even welcome to sign a book in a bookstore in the UK …uneffing believable…..

    3. This is why we must scrap all subsidy for climate change. It puts such people out of business.

      No problem with their investing their own cash, but when the return is guaranteed by us that’s disgusting.

    4. Green taxes paid by the poor as the super rich take those taxes paid as ‘subsidies’. The word obscene doesn’t even begin to describe it.

        1. Pointing out to those who are blind to the fact. I have been saying this for some time but not 40 years. Have you been saying forv40 years?

          1. It was obvious right from the eighties what the switch to neoliberalism would do for us. You can’t tax production out of the country and remove taxes from the holding of land without that having a detrimental effect on the amount of production and an incentive effect on the amount of rent-seeking which in turn stretches inequality and cuts aggregate demand by removing disposable income from the lower deciles. All so that the wealthy can enjoy 2%ish inflation. The lack of inflation has killed pension growth, killed the endowment industry, forced the old to buy houses as pensions, exacerbating the house price issue for the young who are mostly earning a poverty wage as wage levels haven’t kept up with productivity growth. This has been aided by an era of cheap credit because without credit the money supply growth stops and the wheels fall off this caravan of cards.

    5. Blair does seem to be motivated by a desire for quite exceptional greed on a grand scale. He will prostitute everything to make yet more money.

      I rather hope that Boris will cut back on Blair’s protection, funded by the rest of us as at vast expense. With a bit of luck some Iranian Methodist will then shoot the bugger and wipe out his hideous wife as a bonus.

  101. Don’t let the door hit you on the Ar……….

    ://twitter.com/GerardBattenUK/status/1213220646538371073

    1. Bert “sex before lights out helps me to sleep”
      Ada “and sex after lights out guarantees you’ll be asleep before you’ve finished”

    2. “How do you fancy going vegan Bert – we could live long and prosper?”
      “How do fancy getting the vegan death grip Ada?”

    3. Ada ” Did you enjoy the lecture on how to improve your sleeping habits, Bert”?

      Bert “I don’t remember …”

    1. I can’t believe this was a genuine air pilot. If it was, remind me never to catch a plane where he is in the cockpit.

    3. Wow, that told her.

      The only thing missing was a smacked bum and being sent to her room without any tofu.

    4. Where I take issue with Professor Hill is that humans really will wreck the planet because of their numbers.

      Unless population growth can be curbed there will come a point where humans will kill all diversity apart from what they eat and what feeds what they eat..

      And yes, I know that people have been saying similarly for centuries, but those of even a hundred years ago had no conception of how the number of people would expand.

    5. Jason D. Hill is soon to be was professor of philosophy at DePaul
      University in Chicago, and a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David
      Horowitz Freedom Center.

    1. They can’t all have books coming out, surely? If they haven’t then their careers are flagging.

    2. All paid for by Soros, the Clinton’s and Obama’s. These bastards have been taking backhanders from the Ayatollahs from the day dot. Unfortunately for them Trump and his administration have connected the dots.

      Expect real fireworks in the New Year.

  110. BREAKING: USAF’s MQ-9 Reaper drone targeted a convoy carrying several
    high ranking officials of PMU (Hashd al-Shaabi) in Taji, North of
    Baghdad. Casualties are mostly among members of IRGC backed Asaib Ahl
    al-Haq. It is not known whether Qais al-Khazali is dead or alive
    ———————————————————————————————–

    BREAKING: Israel Air Force’s F-16D Block 40s from No.109 The Valley
    Squadron which are flown from Ramat David are now headed toward Syria to
    probably carry-out airstrikes against IRGC-Quds Force targets near T4
    Air Base as well as Damascus using Rampage ALBMs

  111. Paris stabbing: One dead and two in critical condition after knife attack in Villejuif

    Police shot dead the assailant, who has not been identified.

    Anti-terrorist prosecutors have gone to the scene to assess whether the motive was terrorism.

    Witnesses told Le Parisien newspaper that the attacker shouted “Allahu Akhbar” as he lunged at passers-by.

    Police used a robot to examine his body for explosives but none werefound. The assailant, who has not been named, was psychologically troubled, according to local sources.

    No problems then

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/01/03/man-neutralised-police-four-people-stabbed-paris-park/

    2. Given the number of apparently “psychologically troubled” muslims one begins to wonder if it isn’t endemic….

      1. The authorities refuse to believe the truth of islam. But when we have judges who accept that a man can become a woman, I believe that society and reason is lost. People like Trump and Orban are described as outrageous, but those who went against the established views of the day were always regarded thus and ostracised.

    3. No no no, he was calling for a ‘Loo and a snack bar.’ He was carrying a knife as the cutlery wasn’t sharp enough to cut the sandwich he wanted to buy.

      The people who got in his way were Far Right Christian fundamentalists chanting racist slogans.

      (c) the BBC, Guardian A N Other Lefty rag.

  114. @mahatmaganzi Would the aforementioned gentleperson care to comment on this article from the Daily Mail?

    “Israel is sickened by their arrogance: How country has turned on the 12 teenage boys accused of sexually assaulting a British girl at a down-at-heel Ayia Napa hotel after their vile admissions of debauchery”

    Reminds me of a conversation I was having with a rather attractive blonde 18 year old and her school mates during the referendum discussion. They were all voting to remain and she said “I’ll never be able to go to Ayia Napa ever again, if we leave. The yoof of today eh, first generation in the history of mankind that is not only cleverer than their elders but wiser too.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7850097/How-Israel-turned-12-teenage-boys-accused-sexually-assaulting-British-girl-Cyprus.html

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