Monday 12 August: Covering agricultural land with houses and wind farms courts disaster

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

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

696 thoughts on “Monday 12 August: Covering agricultural land with houses and wind farms courts disaster”

  2. Morning all. Woke up to the news my daughter has followed in my footsteps and done the bungee jump in NZ. Really proud of her. She is fearless.

    1. I have parachuted and thought I could do a bungee jump until I watched the brave/foolhardy jumping off a bridge in France. Not for me, so fair play to your daughter.

      1. Our youngest son has been active in these sorts of activities including skydiving. Booger that.

        1. My wife and younger son are the same – scuba, bungee jumps, sky-diving, wing-walking, the lot. They seem to have run out of challenges. Me? I just observe from the sidelines.

        2. My wife and younger son are the same – scuba, bungee jumps, sky-diving, wing-walking, the lot. They seem to have run out of challenges. Me? I just observe from the sidelines.

  4. SIR – It would be comforting to know whether the following concerns about the Government’s housebuilding target have been addressed.

    Will the electricity grid be able to supply power to these additions to the grid?

    Is the supply chain ready to meet building demands?

    Will water companies be able to supply enough water, and will the sewage created be controllable?

    Will all the necessary infrastructure – such as roads, shops, recreation facilities, GPs’ surgeries and dentists’ surgeries – be built at the same time?

    Finally, will there be more landfills created?

    I have my doubts but would like to be pleasantly surprised.

    John Williams
    Heywood, Wiltshire

    There is no obligation on the local authority to build or insist the builder builds those facilities. So to answer your question…No.

    1. There is a procedure in the plannin process, known as Section 106, which obliges developers to provide at their expense essential public infrastructure supporting the development. This is often removed under appeal, since the developers argue that it is business-unfriendly.

      Is Section 106 one of the planning provisions to be removed by the current Government, pushing the cost of this infrastructure onto the councils? No pledge was made by the Labour Party during the election not to raise Council Tax substantially.

      Council Tax is a popular stealth tax by central Government, since it can then be blamed on feckless councillors. Those having to pay inflated Council Tax are mostly hard-pressed poor people without the clout to argue. They are encouraged by the banks to keep borrowing. The important thing is that the "headline rate of tax" is kept down.

      1. That public infrastructure will be drains, roads and pavements. Not schools and Doctor's surgeries.

        1. Indeed. A truly Left Wing Government would pass on these costs of public provision to those who can afford it and whose actions create these costs, but the Labour Party is chicken, and the Conservative Party too wrapped up in ideology that considers no such obligation on the business community, whose primary role is to make money for their shareholders, their directors and ultimately Party donors.

          Laffer applies here, in that if developers were asked to pay for schools and doctors’ surgeries as well as drains, roads and pavements, many projects would become unviable and homes would not get built, least of all social housing and post-colonial compensation for needy, hardworking migrants and their growing families.

          On the subject of drains, must it be those that pay water rates that have to pay for keeping the water courses clean with the extra burden, on top of the U.S. global market-led executive remuneration that they must already pay?

      2. Section 106 is a levy – the builders pay cash to the council. It then goes into neighbourhood fund doled out to the councils who have been affected. The restrictions on spending NF make it difficult to finance anything! It's supposed to fund things like infrastructure needed as a result of the building, but that doesn't include things like schools, doctors or dentists. It can be used for street lighting, for instance.

    2. As of 1st April Scottish new builds cannot have gas central heating. Not far from Edinburgh Airport there is a huge building site at Winchburgh. It has been going for almost 10 years. The completions will need to slow down as there is a lack of capacity in grid.
      It will be 5+ years before the grid is upgraded.
      In 4 years time Scotland's last Nuclear Station closes. The only 24×7 supply will be Peterhead Gas. We will be dependent on Windmills and imports from England. Not the best as England itself is depending on imports from France, Norway + others.
      Winter demand is over 5+GW, Peterhead is 1.2GW. Hydro/pumped storage is local supply & peak demand only.

      Apart from planning a replacement at Peterhead with a new plant, there are no further plans for 24×7 supply. Nuclear is in effect blocked as the SNP are in charge of planning permission.

      2. "The lights will be going out all over…"
        I hope the idiots in charge understand the lead time between decision and actual power supply to the grid is very long for power generation in any reasonable way.
        Note: I worked on the Hinckley Point C safety case before leaving that industry in 1990 for oil & gas, and HPC isn't yet fully operational. That's not far from a third of a century ago…

      3. Wow.
        We just emptied my pension of the tax-free cash before Labour stop it in October (my prediction). With the cash we bought a small starter home for the kids to share, rental income to repay their students loans and daughter will live there too. Neighbours told me it’s the only house in the estate with gas as the previous owners to the pig we bought it from paid the gas people to instal it. Neighbour says he electric boiler and it is expensive. I would not buy a house without two sources of heat, if I could possibly avoid it. My in-laws in Cornwall have oil and electricity so they have two sources of heat. But these neighbours in Soton are totally dependent on electricity. Scary.

        1. My father always said that every residential property should have at least two forms of energy supply available. A chimney for solid fuel would be a good start for any new house in Scotland.

        2. I am thankful that I have open fires, solid fuel central heating and oil central heating. I'm trying to free myself from dependency on electricity, but obviously I'll need light (have candles and oil lamps, but it isn't the same).

      4. If you point that out to a committed greenie (and I've tried) they'll tell you that a solution will be found, because a solution must be found. End of.

    3. Land fills will happen as millions of tonnes of clay and gravel are dug out to supply the materials for the construction.
      But i think I can safely say that none of this will have any inconvenient effect on our AHs who are members of Parliament.

    4. In a neighbouring small town Wealden Planning department are very keen on having a large housing

      estate built on Green Belt farmland.

      The locals pointed out that the town ran out of water last Summer, and had to be supplied with

      bottled water as the piping is inadequate.

      The Planning Department's riposte to that is that "planning law gives priority of water supplies

      to new developments".

      Any legal minds know if this is true, or is it just local government BS?

    5. We've had hundreds of houses foisted on a small community (built on green fields, natch). No thought was given to the fact you can't get a doctor's or dentist's appointment, the roads are crowded, the electricity supply is inadequate and there is no work locally so everyone will have to commute. Think of the council tax to waste.

  5. Good morning, chums, and thanks to you, Geoff, for todays NoTTLe site.

    Wordle 1,150 6/6

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

  6. Good Moaning.
    I have vague memories of a panoramic photo being taken on Saturday – a bit like one of our school photos but with more select subject matter and in colour.
    I realise that Disqus is probably iffy when posting a picture of that size and complexity, but could it be emailed to me so MB can see it?
    Geoff, Tina and Phil have my email address.

  9. Why Finland’s quiet archipelago is now on alert for Russian spies. 12 August 2024.

    As Lt Jalava continues his patrol, he says a key concern for the Åland area is “loitering” boats and ships which may be trying to cut undersea cables or damage other key infrastructure. Such attacks are part of Russia’s hybrid war on Europe, a revenge of sorts for the West’s strong support of Ukrainian forces.

    He has good reason to be suspicious: the Baltic connector, a 77km-long gas pipeline connecting Nato members in the Baltic Sea, was mysteriously damaged in October 2023, with Russia the prime suspect.

    This is what passes for news in the West. Spies are swimming in across the Baltic? Why don’t they just fly in like everyone else? As for the Baltic Pipeline the truth of it is everywhere except in the MSM.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/08/11/aland-islands-finland-archipelago-achilles-heel-russia/

    1. Seems a bit of a non sequitur, since it may be Russian subs, not spies, that are loitering with intent (and I do recall they are everywhere, including up the Clyde, and are as much as part of the natural landscape as seagulls). I'm sure their spies fly in with the tourists.

      More hostile elements – young men of fighting age with a sense of entitlement, innate hostility against their prospective hosts' culture and heritage are mixed in with those escaping terrible persecution (who are in the hold and can be scuttled at sea) and swim in from Calais once they fall off their dinghies. I don't think they are Russians.

  10. Good morning folks,
    Nice fresh sunny start here bit of a breeze
    Having Latte on balcony overlooking golf course

  11. Amazing and noisy thunderstorm here! Predicted yesterday with an amber warning! So much for going to Stirling castle and the Wallace monument!

        1. In front of a crowd? What sort of hedonistic exhibitionist showoff do you think i am ?

          Sunshine with a few scattered clouds on Saturday which made it comfortable. If i had had it on the Sunday they would have been dropping like flies.

  12. Police must have zero tolerance for intimidation of journalists. Chris Philp. 12 August 2024.

    We must equally guard against the risk of hostile foreign actors and others seeking to use manipulative disinformation to sow division and create conflict, especially on social media.

    Some social media firms seem to have little interest in combating divisive disinformation. The real-world impact of fake news and clickbait shock content on social media is now clearer than ever.

    It’s those Russkies again. Lol. There will be no call here for Free Speech. Reading between the lines, he is one of Starmer's boys.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/08/11/chris-philp-freedom-press-intimidation-journalists-rioters/

  13. Rants are great.. Especially from David Starkey.

    Summary:
    The working class relationship with Labour is over forever.
    No full scale civil war.
    We have effectively Enforced silence.
    Starmer presents himself as an authoritarian policeman. Everything he & Yvette Cooper does.. Makes things worse.
    .
    Democracy doesn't work under The rule of the exotic Minority against the majority.. and the only way you can protect this is by aggressive policing.
    We are talking about a world scale tragedy. The Britain I grew up in was the most peaceful, gentle, homongenous society that has ever existed. It's why we didn't need identity cards. It's why there were extraordinary low levels of crime. High levels of public trust. This has been deliberately destroyed by New Labour because they were determined to make us multi-ethnic for our own good.
    Remember, the sort of human rights that Starmer represents are only of exotic minorities.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJf_hZO2NEw

    1. I've watched half of it and he's absolutely spot on.
      The very thought of our current political idiots waking each morning and breathing makes most people shudder.
      Keep it going mr Starky you're brilliant.

  14. Morning all 🙂😊
    Light scattered cloud, sunny but forecast rain later.
    Yes of course building houses all over the countryside will be a disaster. We don't have enough water already.
    But it's because our political idiots are an absolute disaster. Let's be honest, who in their right minds encourages an invasion and builds the unknown invaders new homes and supports them morally and financially.
    The vast majority of these people who call themselves politicians are a complete and utter disaster.
    Nothing new, but, You name it, they'll eff it up.
    The only thing that they never eff up is their expenses claims.

      1. I checked it out a couple of years ago they took home around 300 million pounds between them. I think it might have included the Lords. But it's still a massive amount of money.

    2. Most of us were expecting the total shambles of an unpleasant, vindictive, left wing government, so we can't say we are surprised by their start.

      1. I'm not sure anyone expected the current Kim Il Sung-style Labour, even in their worst dreams. When it's a criminal offence leading to jail time longer than kiddy fiddlers to stand and watch, or even think hurty thoughts.

      2. They are obviously horrible nasty hatefilled and vindictive people.
        It's hardly human what that nasty woman has done to genuine British pensioners.

  15. Good morning all, two pleasant days and now back to rain. The worse summer here in Northern Ireland for a long time. Global warming, not here.

    1. When we moved to Norway, and up to about 8 years ago, we used to get really hot summers (over 25C overnight, for example) and we used to set up a drippy hose on a timer to water the garden when we were away, to the extent that 6-8 years ago, the small river that runs past Firstborn's farmhouse even dried up! Now, it's cold, and rains all the time in the "summer". Haven't used the drippy hose & timer for ages.

      1. ALL because of global warmingclimate changetoo much CO2 knock-on effect of the fact that Britain. left the EU

  16. 391400+ up ticks,

    It must be stipulated that the refugees on offer can be delivered next morning via Amazon,but with no tribal pedigree, so you take the risk NO normal, decent peoples, are willing to take, a proven fact is those calling for more invasion elements have obviously NO feeling for their their own, or other childrens welfare.

    https://x.com/SandraWeeden/status/1822886836047347737

    https://x.com/RebashawnWright/status/1822628331147194783 https://x.com/RebashawnWright/status/1822628331147194783 https://x.com/RebashawnWright/status/1822628331147194783 https://x.com/RebashawnWright/status/1822628331147194783 https://x.com/RebashawnWright/status/1822628331147194783 https://x.com/RebashawnWright/status/1822628331147194783 v https://x.com/RebashawnWright/status/1822628331147194783 https://x.com/RebashawnWright/status/1822628331147194783 https://x.com/RebashawnWright/status/1822628331147194783 https://x.com/RebashawnWright/status/1822628331147194783 https://x.com/RebashawnWright/status/1822628331147194783 https://x.com/RebashawnWright/status/1822628331147194783 https://x.com/RebashawnWright/status/1822628331147194783 https://x.com/RebashawnWright/status/1822628331147194783 v

    1. 391400+ up ticks,

      O2O,

      Take a 100 sample of these retards and, I know it is taking advantage of the mind maladjusted,
      but mandatory deliver their new additions to the family NEXT MORNING, very long sentencing for refusals.

      1. Better yet.

        "Would you accept a refugee living with you?"

        "Yeah, if I had the space."

        "Excellent. You're now homeless. A refugee will be given your space, have a nice night on the streets. I'm sure you can find a services veteran to snuggle up to, if they'll have you in their space."

  18. Good morning, all. Just passing through. Condition the same. All pretty shitty. Am just hoping that Nature will intervene annd bring the misery to an end.

    Thank you for your good wishes. It must be as uninteresting to you as it is boring for me. I'll return when fully recovered – a week or so, I reckon.

    No further bulletins will be issued.

    Play nicely.

    2. All the best, Bill. According to Our NHS, the shits have to be continuous for a fortnight to be a problem. I dread to think how that feels. Get well soon.

          2. If you don't know already you can by flushable wet wipes now which break down quicker and don't cause blockages.

          5. Rik commented on my large supply of toilet rolls stacked in the bathroom. Thank goodness he didn't look in my wardrobe.

    5. The Paris Olympics has finished and your contract to spoil the in Seine swimming is cancelled.
      Your Imodium fee is in la poste.

      Good luck.

    7. Get well soon. (Faster than soon, actually. Soonest.) Take it easy, the trots are very debilitating. 🌺 xx

    9. Eat nothing, drink only water, for at least 24 preferably 48 hrs…but most of all, get well soon.

    10. What sort of bug is it? Norovirus, giradiasis? The obvious solution is to take some electrolytes, the brand is Dioralyte but supermarkets sell similar own-brand sachets. Weirdly, ice-cold Coca-Cola is said to purge the nasty little critters, but many people dislike cola beverages. Edited, but it was a family Doctor who told me about CocaCola as a remedy, to be taken with some banana.

    1. They used to have the Brains Trust on the radio. It is clearly not something for today but maybe they could have a Dimbos Trust instead and get the Archpillock and the current king as its first guests.

      1. The political Left must rejoice in their successfully bringing both of those to heel.

    2. Yes, particularly good that one. This howler from Welby in it. Misinformation or disinformation? Discuss:

      "Having visited our Palestinian Christian brothers and sisters many times over recent decades, it is clear to me that the regime imposed by successive Israeli governments in the Occupied Palestinian Territories is one of systemic discrimination. Through annexing Palestinian land for illegal settlements, depriving Palestinians access to their own natural resources, and imposing a system of military rule that denies them safety and justice, the State of Israel has been denying the Palestinian people dignity, freedom and hope.

      I am particularly aware of how this is impacting Palestinian Christians, threatening their future and viability. It is clear that ending the occupation is a legal and moral necessity.accused Israel of “illegal” and “systemic discrimination” against Palestinians."

      1. Just because he says something that is unpopular with favoured identity groups does not mean that it isn't true.

        Calling it a "howler" is a cheap bit of discreditation without substance.

        I criticise Welby over many things, not least the expropriation of collection money from the parishes that should be keeping the roofs on listed churches and attracting the young, but is instead being squandered on the Mercedes fund for those whose ancestors sold their neighbours into slavery at about the time the Royal Navy was enforcing the abolition of it.

        However, he is right about Gaza and the West Bank, however much Mirvis may get his chums to huff and puff about causing offence to important people.

        1. Sorry but it is a "howler". I realise it is standard lefty disinformation to claim otherwise; however, Israel is guilty of no discrimination. Its settlements are entirely legal under international law. The Palestinian Arabs live under their own governance in areas designated as such under the Oslo Accords.

          This has to be called out, since these people do not address the smear they repeat over and over again. I agree with you about listed buildings, but unfortunately the list of other things I could criticise him for is much too long to go recite in ordinary conversation, Jeremy!

          1. Your chutzpah does your argument no credit, and does nothing to suggest that what Welby said on this subject was not true. Even chimps operating randomly get the grape from time to time, and a stopped clock tells the correct time twice a day.

        2. Sorry but it is a "howler". I realise it is standard lefty disinformation to claim otherwise; however, Israel is guilty of no discrimination. Its settlements are entirely legal under international law. The Palestinian Arabs live under their own governance in areas designated as such under the Oslo Accords.

          This has to be called out, since these people do not address the smear they repeat over and over again. I agree with you about listed buildings, but unfortunately the list of other things I could criticise him for is much too long to go recite in ordinary conversation, Jeremy!

      2. I think what strikes me is Welby's utter obliviousness to the fact that Christians in Gaza and the West Bank are far more in danger from Hamas and members of the local predominant religion than they are from Israel.

        1. The other aspect that also irritates me is that law abiding Muslims in Israel have the same rights and privileges as anyone else.

          Islam was Satan's gift to the world.

        2. He's oblivious to anything not officially sanctioned in "The Message", if you ask me.

          Israel is a nation where Arabs, Israelis and all religions live harmoniously alongside each other with equal protection to express themselves from the State. It is far more enlightened than what goes on in the UK and if that man without gumption had anything about him he'd have made that clear to our temporal authorities by now.

      3. I think what strikes me is Welby's utter obliviousness to the fact that Christians in Gaza and the West Bank are far more in danger from Hamas and members of the local predominant religion than they are from Israel.

    1. From the Spanish interior

      Excessive Heat Warning State Meteorological Agency 29°C
      Monday 11:48 Sunny
      High 40°C

    1. Funny how they can't catch everyday burglars, shoplifters, muggers, car thieves, "behead the infidel" merchants, monument defacers, etc etc et bloody cetera.

        1. From Coffee House, the Spectator

          The tyranny of the self-service check out
          Why should I have to pack my own bags?

          Comments Share 12 August 2024, 7:34am
          The other week I popped into my big Morrisons after the school drop-off. It was a biggish shop, including things like socks, olive oil and washing powder, hence going to a proper supermarket rather than just whizzing into my local Tesco Express.

          Not being able to find the correct type of fruit or vegetable on the touch screen scores highly in the irritation stakes
          But lo and behold, when I came to check out my shopping, not a single manned till was open. ‘There’s nobody on them until 10 a.m. love,’ explained the apologetic cashier who inevitably had to help me with an unexpected item in the bagging area (a packet of toothbrush heads that were too light to register on the pathetic shelf they give you at a self-service till). A week later, the same thing happened to me at Sainsbury’s, this time in the afternoon – not a single cashier to be had – apparently the lone checkout assistant normally working at that time (5 p.m.; hardly an odd time to be buying groceries) was off sick. Once again I was left piling my not insubstantial shop onto an area the size of a coffee table book, cursing as things rolled off it left, right and centre.

          Honestly, supermarkets are taking the Michael. Not only are we now having to pay through the nose for our groceries – Morrisons has recently leaped from being the cheapest supermarket to the second most expensive – we’re now expected to act as supermarket workers to boot. But I’m not a supermarket worker, I am a journalist, and I’m frankly rubbish at rattling 50-odd items through a till in five minutes, all while having a nice chat about the weather. Self-checkout may be fine if all you’re doing is picking up a pint of milk and a loaf of bread, but not to have any cashiers available at all? Will we next be required to clean the floors before we’re allowed to leave with our shopping?

          I’m not the only one finding this move towards making customers do all the work irritating. A quick Google finds multi-page threads detailing the excruciating nature of beeping your own groceries through the till (‘they are obsessed with bags’; ‘the technology isn’t fit for purpose’; ‘I hate being barked at by a machine’), while a request for rants among my friends had them pouring in. One eco-conscious pal is driven potty by the fact that the self-checkout bagging areas refuse to recognise the cloth bag she puts on it in anticipation of her groceries, thereby forcing her to then decant the precarious pile post-payment rather than being able to put it straight into the bag. Another points to the fact that issues always arise when you’re in a rush, at which point it’s completely impossible to catch the eye of an assistant.

          Not being able to find the correct type of fruit or vegetable on the touch screen scores highly in the irritation stakes (is it any wonder that frustrated shoppers are driven to pretending an avocado is a carrot?), as is the barcode on an item not reading properly or, heaven forbid, having no barcode at all if you erroneously happened to have picked up a loose item that came out of a multipack (happened to me last week). ‘No, that’s not an “unexpected item”, that’s a small child touching things because that’s what small children do,’ says one frustrated self-bagging parent. If you’re old or disabled, forget it.

          Even the classier supermarkets are not immune – one editor at this publication finds it immensely irritating when he’s trying to buy, for example, a bottle of rum in his local Waitrose – the assistant will come over to authorise the purchase but refuses to take the security tag off the bottle until he’s paid for it. ‘I go in there three times a week and they recognise me, so I’m unlikely to do a runner,’ he complains. ‘It means I have to call them back once I’ve paid and wait again for someone to turn up. Infuriating.’

          How to escape this scourge of modern life? There seem only to be two available options. One is to return to the old-fashioned method of buying your bread from a bakery, your greens from a greengrocer and your meat from a butcher – if you happen to be lucky enough to live near those sorts of shops and have a full day to commit to shopping. The other is to switch entirely to online delivery. Except oops, then you’ll be subject to the dreaded substitution, and end up with mushrooms instead of tampons, or beer instead of washing powder. I’m seriously considering boycotting supermarkets entirely from henceforth. Either that, or retraining as a checkout girl.

          1. As a matter of idle curiosity, how do you decide which posts to respond to with your Coffee House quips?

            9/10 seem to have absolutely no connection whatsoever to the comment you are replying to.

          5. I bought a bottle of sherry at a supermarket a while ago; because it was after 9pm, only self service was available. It took me ages to find someone who would take the tag off so I could go home – and she wanted to see the receipt (although she knew who I was). I try to avoid buying stuff if I have to use a self service till. Not that I use supermarkets all that often.

    3. Every police officer seconded to a PSU (Police Support Unit) has to come from somewhere. Villages and towns across the country have to lose their own officers whenever a PSU is made up to go and perform duty elsewhere.

      It doesn't take the local toe-rags long to work this out.

    4. “reassure the communities”

      Note there is no such thing as the “white community”. When they talk about “liaising with community leaders”, who are my “community leaders” with whom they are speaking? No kne, that’s who. So yes, she is saying that they do not care and are not working for the indigenous population. This will not end well.

    5. Bu88er off, Four Eyes.
      I bet you were the sneaky cow who was never picked for any team.

    6. Passive resistance. If thousands started writing but used metaphors and other tricks of language then they would have to give up. Or full frontal where everyone breaks the laws so they are flooded by resistors to the point that it chokes the system.

  23. I am enjoying this podcast (prob. also available on You Tube). Ex-BBC journalist (I think) Andrew Gold speaking on his “Heretics” channel to a girl called Alex Philipps and she is talking a lot of sense. He bills it this: “Talk TV's political commentator Alex Phillips rants about everything from mass immigration and social cohesion to women's safety and her divisive opinion on cat calling (wolf whistling).” I haven’t finished it yet but lime it so far. I don’t know her as I don’t listen to Talk TV and I only just found Andrew Gold recently when I was searching for podcasts on someone else (can’t even remember who now) and Gold had interviewed whoever it was, and now the podcasts come in anyway now for some reason. I must have subscribed somehow.

    https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/heretics-andrew-gold/id1515932214?i=1000664964929

    1. Alex Phillips is great! Speaks a lot of sense on Talk Radio but can be a bit shrieky! I like her!

    2. Alex Philips is on TALK Radio every day. Love listening to her. She hold nothing back, a bare knuckle fighter. You can find her on You Tube too.

  24. SIR – Twenty four years ago, while on honeymoon, my husband was snorkelling and saw something glinting in the sand below. He dived to retrieve it and found it was a simple wedding band – his own. He didn’t know he’d lost it. Five years later we were crewing a racing boat in the North Sea and he was on foredeck duty. The helm at the stern picked up what he thought was a piece of metal rigging. I recognised said wedding band. It had somehow worked its way down the length of the boat without ending up in the choppy water.

    My husband finally managed to rid himself of the ring within the relatively secure confines of a hockey pitch. We are still married.

    Ruth Sleigh
    Cold Ashby,
    Northamptonshire

    Ruthie, I suppose a Sleigh wouldn't be much use in a Hot Ashby, would it?

    However, I digress. WTF is a "wedding band"? Does it contain double basses, tubas, bassoons and timpani? I can't imagine one getting lost in the sand! No one in the UK, who gets married, wears a wedding 'band'. They wear a ring!

    Solomon King did not sing, ♬"She Wears My Band!"♬

    1. There was a time when talking about a wedding band or a wedding ring referred to two different types of jewelry. Traditionally, a wedding band was a simple piece of jewelry that had very few, if any, adornments. It could have been thick or thin, but it usually didn't include any gems. A wedding ring usually referred to a ring that incorporated diamonds or other gems. It was much more ornate than a band.

      However, as styles of jewelry have changed, the terms "band" and "ring" are used interchangeably. It doesn't matter if the jewelry is adorned, either term is fine to use. Where you live in the world and your personal preference will determine which term you use when referring to the rings that you and your future spouse exchange at your wedding ceremony.

      1. I think they’ve always been called wedding rinks in England. My maternal grandparents married in the early 1900’s and called them rings. I think wedding bands originated in America and presume that’s where you were either born or live due to you spelling of jewellery.

        1. It is a quote from a jeweller’s website (American), but some UK sites also advertise wedding bands.

    3. I've never worn mine,I knew a couple of chaps who both nearly lost their fingers from getting their wedding rings caught in wood working machinery and tools.
      It's safe in the box it's been in for nearly 50 years.

      1. I never had one. When we were married, I could only afford a simple platinum ring for SWMBO, but not for me as well. As I hate wearing rings, this was no problem then, nor is it now.

        1. When I got married I declined to wear a ring as I find them very irritating, and I didn't want to be reminded of my wife by something that irritated me. She completely understood the logic of this and supported my decision.

      2. Never wear a tie when you are operating a lathe! (or answer the telephone when you are ironing)

    4. Wedding band is an Americanism, and I expect that Mrs Sleigh's words were edited.
      Much of the Telegraph is adapted for a readership within the USA, or for those who have been brought up on US English.
      There is a long illustrated article in the Telegraph about the funeral of a child who was violently killed passed unexpectedly, in which there is a reference to the hearse being a "carriage drawn by two white horses". Yes, I'll allow her parents' to follow their beautiful Little Princess' last journey in a white fairytale carriage, but those horses are greys.

      1. I beg to differ. In 40 years of living in the USA I never heard it called anything other than a wedding ring. A priest, Catholic, Episcopal or otherwise, in an American church will always ask for the ring, not the band.
        Looking up etymology is says nothing at all about it being an Americanism but having its origin in Medieval French. In other words it has been long in the English language, before there was ever an America.

      2. ♬"Has it really got a team of snow-white horses?"

        "One's like snow … the other's more like milk."♬

        The Surrey With The Fringe On Top Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II

      3. Most horse drawn hearses are drawn by black horses in my experience. I've never seen one drawn by greys.

    2. Madam, I have just rescinded your citizenship and you will be on the next plane back to what you clearly regard as your proper home.

    7. Order her out of the country. It is not for a foreigner of a hostile ideology to impose her beliefs on a native of the country, prince or not.

  26. Good morning all

    This is the best analogy yet with a solution for the mess that America/Canada/UK/Germany/ Australia/NZ is now in economically.

    I bought a bird feeder. I hung it on my back porch and filled it with seed.

    What a beauty of A bird feeder it was, as I filled it lovingly with seed.

    Within a week we had hundreds of birds taking advantage of the Continuous flow of free and easily accessible food.

    But then the birds started… Building nests in the boards of the patio, above the table, and next to the barbecue.

    Then came the shit. It was Everywhere: on the patio tile, the chairs, the table…Everywhere!

    Then some of the birds turned mean. They would dive bomb me and try to Peck me even though I had Fed them out of my own Pocket.

    And others birds were boisterous and loud. They sat on the feeder and squawked and screamed at all hours of the day and night And demanded that I fill it when it got low on food.

    After a while, I couldn't even sit on my own back porch anymore. So I took down the Bird feeder and in three days the birds were gone. I cleaned up their mess and took down the many nests they had built all over the patio.

    Soon, the back yard was like It used to be ….. Quiet, serene…. And no one demanding their rights to a free meal.

    Now let's see……

    Our government gives out Free food, subsidized housing, free medical care and free education, and allows anyone born here to be an automatic Citizen.

    Then the illegal’s came by the hundreds of thousands. Suddenly our taxes went up to pay for free services; small apartments are housing 5 families; you have to wait 6 hours to be seen by an emergency room doctor; Your child's second grade class is behind other schools because over half the class doesn't speak English.

    Corn Flakes now come in a bilingual box; I have to
    press one to hear my bank talk to me in English, and people waving flags other than ”ours” are Squawking and screaming in the streets, demanding more rights and free liberties.

    Just my opinion, but maybe it's time for the government to take down the bird feeder.

    If you agree, pass it on; if not, just continue cleaning up the shit!

    1. Good morning Alfredo el Grande, and everyone.
      Amusing analogy. I remember a cat that used to squeeze itself into the covered birdtable, and then it would swipe at any bird foolish enough to approach its territory (or borders, dare I say?).
      However, the anecdote misses the point that in UK rural areas we mainly feed, or need to feed, small birds from January to March; the seeds and pieces of nuts that land on the ground will attract corvids, as well as mice and RATS. Any bird poop will usually be washed away by rain.

    3. This horror show of a government will increase benefits. They will bankrupt us. They know we hate them and they hate us. Of course, they will do anything to destroy the country. They are the enemy.

  27. Universities set to open doors to students failing to make A-level grades
    Vice-chancellors under pressure to fill places amid fall in demand from international students
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08/11/universities-set-open-doors-students-failing-a-level-grades/

    It is all Blair's fault – things worked far better when only 5% of the population went to university and those who did not had plenty of other ways of getting properly equipped and qualified for work.

    Bill Thomas provides a good example. On leaving school he joined a firm of solicitors and served a term of articles while studying for his law exams in the evenings. Several of my friends who left school after "O" levels or "A" levels became chartered accountants as did people joiining other professions such as surveying. And most nurses with the requisite number of "O" levels started their nursing training at 16.

    There were several other options available including sandwich courses and day release from work schemes for people to get the necessary practical qualifications.

    Now we have almost 50% of young people going to university rebranded tech colleges emerging unqualified to do anything!

  28. Good morning, all. Bright start here in N Essex.

    After Trump was asked if he was worried about the number of people attending Harris's appearances he said, "Give me a break," and then gave examples of the overflowing attendances at his appearances compared to the low turnouts at hers.

    Now we have controversy over what is happening with the reporting of Harris's appearances. Shenanigans, without doubt, but who is responsible? It's being suggested that AI is being employed to create crowd scenes at Harris's appearances to help improve her popularity: there are many anomalies in the scenes, one being a man with four arms, reflections from Air Force 2's engine and fuselage showing unoccupied runway when the picture shows hundreds of people beside the aircraft and the ID number missing from AF's tail.

    The other option is that Trump supporters are up to mischief and it's their manipulation that we're being exposed to. All good fun but with possible terrible consequences should Harris improve her lacklustre performance.
    .

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a6c1aed3b4e01f9cd52f19de3ce788d74c9d36bfa364770cb75920eac25fa36f.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8ad2e7732edd2182bf38debab9e1e393ea1d9cc62fb505830c4b5da4532ef439.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4c6a1f08dd72e1286be350d5267405d845028ded483ea9c9e3cfa54a6bec181a.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6114a91429bc7b3c35a756e396b5922ea1d795470b338f7697eb6fdd8723bff5.png

    1. Your source must be mishtaken, shorly?

      All UK news organs of note reporting huge surge for Harris and love all round. They are highly accurate pictures of what's really happening on the ground. How could you demur so?

      1. That’s right, because we all know spreading “misinformation” (let alone “stirring” anything up with “disinformation”) is dreadful and requires a knock at the door from Plod and summary justice (sic) in the Starmfuehrer’s new Kangaroo courts and a prolonged period in the nick.

        1. Indeed so. I'm quite offended personally. The government is allowed to circulate mis and dis at will, and without fear of comeback. Why can't the rest of us get a piece of the action? It's just so unfair! 🤬

    2. And off Trump will go talking about crowd sizes and other irrelevant distractions.

      Stick to the script and attack Harris on her abysmal record in national and state government.

  29. Falling demand for places from abroad? Well who didn't see that coming? Britain is in need of a severe readjustment in its attitude over the way it assumes it is being viewed, education included. Fortunately I'm increasingly meeting young people who have no intention of going anywhere near university. Increasing numbers I reckon are seeing through the blatant scam.

    1. Apart from the domestic effect this government with its threats is going to damage tourism. I know as a matter of fact that Americans are genuinely horrified by what they are hearing about the UK.

      1. I do too. Many of us know Americans and tone deaf Starmer trying to do his best imitation of Trotsky is definitely not helping. Frankly, we are becoming an embarrassment.

      2. I do too. Many of us know Americans and tone deaf Starmer trying to do his best imitation of Trotsky is definitely not helping. Frankly, we are becoming an embarrassment.

  30. Morning all,

    Black Belt Barrister discusses how far you can go in law before posting criminally liable posts on the internet.
    He reveals, after discussions with a US lawyer, that the US has far greater freedoms of speech in their first amendment than
    the UK does under ECHR.

    https://youtu.be/iAGlE39FKLg?si=EBBUD7Xy0pnMr-Oh

    1. In the video the discussion by the American lawyer stars at approx. 7 minutes in.

      I'm so glad that you found this because I listened to this last night and meant to post it here this morning but couldn't find it. I posted on Friday that because I am used to the first amendment the threats of this government actually made me feel as though I had been personally assaulted, deeply offended, it feels like an attack on my basic right as a human being made in the image and likeness of God. In other words I regard the actions of this corrupt government in terms of freedom of expression as being tantamount to being anti-Christian and anti-English. A direct attack on our freedom in the most fundamental sense. After listening to this video perhaps people will understand how outraged I feel, as an Anglo/American about this, someone who had taken for granted for 40 odd years, that you can more or less say anything you like apart from shouting fire in a crowded theatre. I regard the actions of this government in that respect, to be evil and proof that this is a regime on the side of darkness not good. You can take that either religiously or as a metaphor for their actions. Either way, this bunch of thugs need to be resisted in every way that is possible. They are out to destroy our culture and civilization by attacking the keystone to all that makes our islands civilization possible.

  31. Morning all,

    Black Belt Barrister discusses how far you can go in law before posting criminally liable posts on the internet.
    He reveals, after discussions with a US lawyer, that the US has far greater freedoms of speech in their first amendment than
    the UK does under ECHR.

    https://youtu.be/iAGlE39FKLg?si=EBBUD7Xy0pnMr-Oh

  32. Graham Thorpe committed suicide. A very sad end.
    His family will be utterly devastated and very unhappy memories will flood back to those who have experienced similar tragedy.
    Be at peace.

      2. I also get depressed but won't contemplate suicide, as I believe in a Buddhist reincarnation tenet that each life is a lesson to learn. End your life and you have to come back and do it all again.

    2. The condition that he was treated for in 2022, oft mentioned, was also an attempt on his own life. Very sad, some thoughtful comments under the article in the DT.

    3. Oh no. I think he did try before as well didn’t he? That’s terrible. I had a huuuuge soft spot for him.

      1. Note to self #4,626. (Refer previous identical “notes to self #s 1 – 4,625).

        Read.
        The.
        Thread.
        Before.
        Posting.

  33. Morning all, over at Free Speech we have another humorous but worrying piece about the state of teaching in modern Britain and the affect mass immigration and multiculturalism has had on it, by Paul Sutton.

    freespeechbacklash.com

    Please do nip over and read it, and leave a comment.

    1. From Coffee House, the Spectator

      Elon Musk has a point about free speech in Britain
      Comments Share 12 August 2024, 6:59am
      If there is one thing that can be said about Elon Musk, whether you like him or not, he is certainly an argument for the great man theory of history. Rather than the human story just being just a series of social forces pushing us like waves, a single individual can steer events in a totally different direction.

      Before Musk’s takeover of Twitter, the social media site was driving the English-speaking world towards more progressive social norms, and it’s unlikely that the Great Awokening would have happened without it, especially both the Black Lives Matter and the transgender movement. The former culminated with the summer protests of 2020 when 19 people were killed in the United States and several billion dollars’ worth of damage was caused. (Smaller protests in Britain resulted in some police officers being injured, and its effects on our institutions were considerable.)

      It did so because Twitter users came from a very specific, socially radical section of society and were pushing culture as a whole (as Kristian Niemietz likes to point out, Twitter is now real life.) Because there was social pressure to conform to certain progressive views, so there was a general drift to the left, which historian Tom Holland likened to the hoplite phalanx in classical Greece, where the body of men would invariably drift in one direction as each sought the protection of their comrade’s shield beside them.

      The organisation itself and its employees had a progressive tilt and its system of moderation was clearly run in a partial way, in particular with users being banned for pointing out biological facts.

      Most popular
      Lucy Denyer
      The tyranny of the self-service check out

      That issue is what provoked Elon Musk to buy the site. Musk is opposed to what he calls the ‘woke mind virus’ and was animated by the case of his own transgender child. His purchase changed the nature of Twitter dramatically, and with it the direction of politics; he introduced a free-speech policy that encouraged far more right-wing users to join and even amnestied many who had previously been banned, as well as reversing the shadow-banning rumoured to suppress some users. He has also tweeted several conservative or at least anti-woke talking points, his most recent being on the global history of slavery. On top of this, he signal-boosts several right-wing accounts and this week even went as far as sharing a fake headline posted by the co-leader of Britain First, a tiny, ultra-right wing group so far outside of the Overton Window it can’t be seen on the horizon.

      Now Musk is at war with the British government over free speech, repeatedly tweeting about ‘two-tier Kier’ and some of the harsh sentences handed out after the riots. He seems to be having a good time and, if I’m honest, if I was one of the world’s richest men I’d probably use the money to launch my own one-man war against the British establishment.

      That establishment seems rather keen on the conflict and, seemingly unable to do anything about the underlying problems, many in Britain have blamed Musk for recent unrest. Jessica Simor, a prominent human rights lawyer, has suggested that Twitter be closed down, insisting that: ‘Freedom of speech is not an absolute right in Europe; it is a qualified right. This means Musk that it is criminal to incite racial hatred and/or violence; exactly what X has been allowing and you have been doing. We had fascism and mass murder in Europe – we don’t want it again.’ (It’s worth noting that in 2016 Simor was Britain’s nominee for Judge at the European Court of Human Rights.)

      Even people with nominally liberal opinions think that free speech shouldn’t mean ‘the untrammelled capacity to spread disinformation’. A Leeds MP said that ‘Free Speech is not the same as hate speech. Responsible bodies have a duty to protect people from hate speech in democratic societies.’ Yet one might say that free speech is the same as hate speech, and it’s entirely a matter of definition and perception.

      Journalists have suggested that Elon be banned from Britain, and a senior police officer has said that Americans could be ‘extradited’ over their posts (good luck with that). Others compare Twitter under Musk to Paris under Nazi occupation.

      I happen to agree with Musk that Britain’s free speech laws are troubling, even if comparisons with the Soviet Union are silly (the USSR imprisoned 200,000 people just for telling jokes). Britain suffers worse from the extremes of American-driven progressivism because we have no First Amendment, which means that people regularly get arrested and prosecuted simply for saying or posting things.

      To think that this isn’t a problem strikes me as complacent, and there is something especially depressing about having the ‘Larry the Cat’ account explain to Musk that Britain does actually have freedom of speech because of the Human Rights Act, something which perfectly encapsulates the combination of British twee, smugness and midwittery. Believing that we do have freedom of speech because the law says so is a bit naïve, when Russia, China and North Korea also make the same claim.

      Membership of the Human Rights Act and European Court of Human Rights are among those things British centrists define as what makes a grown-up country, and withdrawing would put us in the same camp as Russia and Belarus; perhaps they might like to ponder the countries where Twitter is banned.

      Yet that is at least the direction in which we are heading, and as the Telegraph reports, a review of the Online Safety Bill could force tech companies ‘to take down or restrict the visibility of content deemed to be dangerous but not against the law’.

      Blaming communication technology for unrest is nothing new, of course. Printing certainly unleashed the Reformation, as well as fuelling the witch-crazes with pamphlets written by excitable partisans fuelling fear of the out-group. The French Revolution followed a sudden and rapid explosion in newspaper consumption among Parisians in the late 18th century. The turmoil in America in the 1960s, for both good and ill, was directly linked to the spread of the television, Martin Luther King in particular being skilled at using the soundbite for the evening news slot. Facebook spread the Arab Spring, and it will be interesting to see how many who supported that now call for a clampdown on social media. And now we have Twitter, which fuelled first the Great Awokening and whatever this is.

      Neither is it unusual for people to reach for bizarre outside forces to explain disorder. After the Broadwater Farm riot, the Daily Express sensed the hand of the Kremlin. The Birmingham riots in 2005 were blamed on pirate radio stations, and the London riots six years later were attributed to BlackBerry Messenger.

      What is different now is the power of one particular social media platform, and the clear political agenda of its owner. This is different in scale to almost any media in the past, including newspapers at their over-mighty zenith, and presents challenges to traditional ideas of free speech, since Musk has far more power to voice his opinion than almost anyone now or previously.

      He has arguably used that power to amplify some quite unpleasant people, one reason that Jonathan Freedland blamed Musk for the recent unrest (although he doesn’t actually call on him to be charged, as the headline suggests).

      ‘He decided to make X a safe space for racism and hate almost as soon as he bought it,’ Freedland wrote: ‘The effect was instant. One analysis of tweets found a “nearly 500 per cent increase in use of the N-word in the 12-hour window immediately following the shift of ownership to Musk”. The same study also found that posts including “the word ‘Jew’ had increased fivefold since before the ownership transfer”, and something tells me those tweets weren’t tributes to the comic style of Mel Brooks.’

      It’s certainly true that Twitter is now swarming with some incredibly racist users and it’s often quite grim. These days I’ll see some mad looking account tweeting about Muslims enforcing Sharia Law on Britain and click to see ‘500,000 followers’. It seems to be everywhere: oh look, there’s a guy with cartoons of Africans looking like cannibals, there’s the guy in Cambodia tweeting about how ‘Europe has fallen’, here’s yet another joke about the N-word.

      Yet the problem is more to do with incivility than misinformation in my view, the biggest downside of ‘free speech’. Freedland suggested that ‘It’s clear that schools should be teaching information hygiene, so children learn to avoid fake news the way they would avoid poisonous food. Clear, too, that we need online safety legislation with teeth and if, as Sadiq Khan has suggested, that means toughening up laws so new they are yet to be fully implemented, so be it.’

      Yet evidence of a misinformation epidemic is actually very thin, and ‘fake news’ is a very nebulous concept.

      After all, most newspapers regularly run articles about women committing sex crimes which are clearly carried out by men. Is that fake news? Misinformation? What about the 120,000 killed by austerity, much repeated but untrue? What about Brexit being orchestrated by the Russians? What about misinformation spread by groups exaggerating threats and violence to minorities, such as Hope Not Hate, whose spokesman claimed that a Muslim woman had been attacked with acid – the same Hope Not Hate which Freedland quoted as experts?

      The entire BLM movement was spurred by misinformation about specific incidents involving police brutality and misinformation about statistics. The catchphrase ‘Hands up don’t shoot’, spread across the media and by protesters, was never uttered. There has been no reckoning for this, there were no calls to shut down Twitter, and yet the Floyd protests were lethal. Maybe underlying racism is still an issue that should be addressed, but actual misinformation behind the BLM movement led to many deaths.

      Even citing a statistic is misinformation and fake news if other relevant statistics are left out. The Guardian, for instance, regularly reports on disparities in arrest or imprisonment rates between different groups, without mentioning that these actually reflect disparities in crime rates. Is that misinformation? Incitement?

      Similarly, dozens of churches in Canada were attacked, some burned down, over misinformation in the press about indigenous children being killed and buried in Christian schools, among the newspapers promoting this story being the Guardian in a number of articles. That entire story turned out to be a fabrication. The only difference between that sort of fake news, and the bad kind, is that journalists don’t feel uncomfortable repeating it.

      There is much to criticise over Elon-era Twitter, and opinion seems divided over whether it as got worse, but one solid improvement is Community Notes, which would have made a huge difference to the 2013-2020 discourse. Since Musk took over, many potentially influential tweets have been stopped in their tracks because they are community-noted, including several claims of racist police brutality which have turned out to be misleading.

      There are also many cases where social media has been more correct than the mainstream, such as when the BBC and several others reported that Israelis had bombed a hospital in Gaza. That ‘fake news’ had catastrophic effects.

      If the authorities are keen to clamp down on social media, then the past week has only further cemented the idea that mainstream institutions cannot really be trusted to report the truth.

      Indeed, many incidents from the past week would probably not have been reported otherwise, including the many instances of white people being attacked in UK cities. These would have gone unreported because journalists in mainstream news outlets find it too distasteful to report and a threat to community relations.

      Alex Thomson, chief correspondent and presenter for Channel 4 News, posted a number of videos over the weekend showing ‘Mobs of Asian men’ attacking ‘lone white individuals’ in Middlesbrough. He then deleted them.

      Even the BBC reporting of the incident in Birmingham was designed not to tell anyone anything about who was doing what.

      It is true that the political atmosphere on Twitter is almost irredeemably grim and depressing now, but this trend has gone in tandem with the media becoming more and more opaque.

      The finale to the week’s protests will only have further eroded people’s sense of confidence, with the obviously implausible threats of nationalist marches in London, including such totally absurd locations like Walthamstow. Presumably it suited both the virtually non-existent far-right to claim to be able to mobilise an army, and for the groups of Londoners to gather together and LARP the Spanish Civil War for the thousandth time. The fact that most newspapers ran with this same narrative of Britain United, siding with the ‘anti-fascist’ protesters brandishing Socialist Worker placards, will only have fuelled suspicion about the media’s curating of the news.

      The more that media comes to be seen as biased and engaged in curating a narrative, the more that social media will become extreme, a positive feedback loop which Scott Alexander once explained in a post called Neutral vs Conservative – as the mainstream in the US drew left, conservatives went off to form their own ghettos, which further pushed those institutions even more left:

      So there we have Twitter. Many regular users are now fleeing the site for other climes, and it does feel like there is something of a brain drain, although perhaps ‘status-drain’ is a better term. I can understand this to some extent, since the site does seem to be more unpleasant; it’s upsetting when your community gets disrupted by the arrival of unvetted outsiders who don’t share your values and change the atmosphere.

      I’ve often likened our age to the Reformation, but in this analogy the roles are reversed, with an overarching central authority trying to control and muffle thousands of uncontrollable independent clerics preaching their own morality, many of them clearly mad and dangerous. Perhaps, if I were to stretch this analogy to breaking point, Elon Musk represents to the Cathedral the figure of the Devil. But he is certainly, in the historical sense, a great man.

      This article first appeared in Ed West’s Wrong Side of History Substack.

  34. Good morrow, Gentlefolk, today’s (recycled) story

    Do You Really Want This

    Two sailors standing on a street corner are approached by a lady of the night who tells them, "Boys, I'm gonna give you something you ain't never had before."

    So one sailor looks at the other and says, "Oh my God! Leprosy!"

    1. A true story.
      When i worked in JHB i met a decent bloke whose name was Cliff Stilling. Ex radio operator on HMS Ark Royal.
      H e told me about a couple of new recruits who had never been to Gibraltar back in the day of national service.
      The chief petty officer spoke to them as they went ashore and told them to behave themselves . . Oh yes sir will will, were only going ashore to sight see and buy some magazines. Two days later they were in the queue out side 'Rose Cottage' as it was known on board for treating socially spread diseases. He walked passed the line of patients and said to them " you two been reading those dirty magazines again ?

  35. They need to stop trying to blame all their stupid and ongoing mistakes on the public..

    https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/visible-to-anyone-outside-the-m25-matt-goodwin-lets-rip-at-claim-multiculturalism-is-working-after-uk-riots/ar-AA1oDYNJ

    “There’s lots of people saying, ‘hang on, how come these groups are allowed to prioritise who they are and celebrate it and defend it, but we’re now being told we have to reshape our entire identity around these universal, liberal themes?’

    “To say that a country is welcoming is fine, but it’s not the basis of an identity because it’s like saying you have no identity.

    1. The blame game is deliberate. It is an old Marxist trick to maximise conflict. Pit black against white. The native English against immigrants. women against men. Lie about our history, paint ordinary people as Right Wing Thugs and extremists. Christopher Hitchens says that Starmer is even more to the left than Corbin, that he is out do damage us beyond repair for yet another stab at the Marxist utopia. Davidf Starkey has words about him too
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6MrtxOuCxs&t=27s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srz2JRNxVg0

          1. I used to read Christopher's articles in Vanity Fair. I used to read Vanity Fair. Wouldn't touch it with the proverbial barge pole these days.

      2. Who is the idiot interviewing Hitchens? Increasing the rate of NI is completely different to taking a wrecking ball to the Constitutionn. No wonder the country is fooked if this is the intellectual standard of the fourth estate.

        Edit. The more i listen to the interviewer the crosser i am getting. The guy is a moron!

    2. “Furious rant”? Wow, if what i watched last night was a “furious rant” i dread to think how my actual furious rants would be reported!!!

    3. To quote the idiot Trudeau, you are now a post nation state.
      Heritage and history are to be forgotten, bring in the dross and pay their living expenses as they carry on with their heathen ways.

      Strange nothing was said about this post nation BS before the election.

  36. Was our Olympic team more of a success than last time in winning one more medal, or a failure in winning eight fewer gold medals than last time?

    1. Those who won medals were successful and let's celebrate their success rather than looking for negatives.

      1. I agree.
        But given how many more events there are, where medals may be won, the team as a unit was not as successful as last time.

        1. I understand that but it is a different set of people, mostly, and looking backwards is, IMHO, irrelevant.

    4. Third by total but seventh by rank, almost a letdown after 4th, 3rd, 2nd and 4th.

      I think the GB OC will be a bit disappointed. A few golds were missed in athletic, cycling and swimming. And a shooter was cheated of one.

    1. Me neither. The ridiculous, overblown, opening and closing ceremonies are a serious turn-off. And I haven't even mentioned the wokery and satanism.

    1. It will be interesting to see how much hype the Paralympics gets and what sort of opening and closing ceremonies are put on.

      If the disabled can have their own games I think trannies etc also should, if only to stop the men beating up women element..

      1. The Lunatic Games? It could include people who like to dress up as dogs, competing to do things that dogs do?

          1. His little doggies were running around and seemed to be wondering what on earth was happening on Saturday but I noticed that when they barked it seemed to be the proximity of a couple of small kiddies that triggered them.

          2. Yes. I noticed that.
            Spartie is not keen on small children and will either bark at them or run away. Very difficult because as he is small, children are attracted to him.
            I suspect, given chihuahuas' fox like ears designed to pick up the slightest sound, that the high pitch of children's voices is too penetrating.

    1. "…advice on how to work the system…"

      From a Nottlander's archives:

      BBC East Midlands news on Wed 31st Oct 2012 included a report about a charity in Derby. JET helps immigrants find work and says it is struggling to cope with the demand because of a lack of resources. Virtually all of the immigrants are from central and eastern Europe and the Middle East. Hardly any could speak anything but the most rudimentary English. One representative of the charity, a young woman who acted as an interpreter (well, almost), was helping a Slovakian woman who must have been in her late 50s and who said she was here because there was 'no work at home and the benefits weren't good'. Both performed for the camera without blushing.

      The reporter, an earnest young man in his 20s, informed us that the centre helped the immigrants with job applications, CVs and 'understanding the benefits system'. Meanwhile, Councillor Fareed Hussain cheerfully advised us that these people were here to stay so we should help 'smooth their paths and make it easier for them to settle here' and that this would benefit us in the long run.

      To my great surprise, I found the video:
      http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-20162189

      Footnote: JET went bust owing more than £120K. It was founded by one Mohammed Sharief and had consumed more than £400K of public money. The building in which it was based was owned by…Mohammed Sharief, who charged his own charity £60K pa in rent.

      https://derbynews.org.uk/2017/03/12/jet-jobs-education-and-training-goes-bust-owing-120000/

      Take the money and run!

    2. "…advice on how to work the system…"

      From a Nottlander's archives:

      BBC East Midlands news on Wed 31st Oct 2012 included a report about a charity in Derby. JET helps immigrants find work and says it is struggling to cope with the demand because of a lack of resources. Virtually all of the immigrants are from central and eastern Europe and the Middle East. Hardly any could speak anything but the most rudimentary English. One representative of the charity, a young woman who acted as an interpreter (well, almost), was helping a Slovakian woman who must have been in her late 50s and who said she was here because there was 'no work at home and the benefits weren't good'. Both performed for the camera without blushing.

      The reporter, an earnest young man in his 20s, informed us that the centre helped the immigrants with job applications, CVs and 'understanding the benefits system'. Meanwhile, Councillor Fareed Hussain cheerfully advised us that these people were here to stay so we should help 'smooth their paths and make it easier for them to settle here' and that this would benefit us in the long run.

      To my great suprise, I found the video:
      http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-20162189

      Footnote: JET went bust owing more than £120K. It was founded by one Mohammed Sharief and had consumed more than £400K of public money. The building in which it was based was owned by…Mohammed Sharief, who charged his own charity £60K pa in rent.

      https://derbynews.org.uk/2017/03/12/jet-jobs-education-and-training-goes-bust-owing-120000/

      Take the money and run!

  41. 391400+ up ticks,

    I do believe old kneeler is out in front regarding the lets replace the indigenous with multi foreign units of dangerous unknown character.

    The political wretch fat faced cameron took some beating, but kneeler the treacherous tool has, I believe, done it..

    This is I think now out of desperation to rapidly finish building a protecting force for politico's and their part,along with many majority voters, in rendering these Isles defenceless.

    Dt,

    Highest number of migrants cross Channel in single day since Starmer became Prime Minister
    Eleven boats carrying 703 people arrive in England from Franc

    The decent peoples promise to the poliico's must surely be,
    ""we WILL get you even from old haunts of the former nazis namely South America, when the SHIT FINALLY hits the fan".

  43. Afternoon All
    "It's all so tiresome…….
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/539ea820602683d7ac75dec0884217f93466e162d767a379e8b3862b4d729c49.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8204da71bc5cf815002bf5e09f547570aa0bd1722a0cd38e4791fa156543a168.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/90686d1ae2ae47e091cc5a58e929368407942617289a51ab32983bcdc2e1fb9e.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3197dcd0a9eb1f0d567c4a817b06e8d27e554dc2353952269f570cbec93de365.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/04fbe8e9fa48ba4bd716e5992bdaac77fee6e556de86d3f8012cbc6ec54db227.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/cee8e33c114bd078ec4023648c4e68d66f19a9b6f6aa89242344d9cdb1bc59c5.png

  44. Hello everyone ,

    Very warm night , yes it was .

    Moh was up early to play 9 holes of golf at his club , he has a competition in Lyme Regis tomorrow .

    I slowly woke up and sorted myself out , quick brekkie banana and sugar free muesli , spaniel ate his breakfast first thing , then I was out of the house by ten am , already abit warm and heavy .

    Spannel had sniffy walk amongst the heather on one of our local heaths , bees were buzzing , heather is delicious and the different tones of colour .

    Just a quick half hour bimble , some lovely horses , not sure what breed , were sheltering under the trees .

    Got home , Moh had vanished , bags of hedge cuttings etc were missing , so I knew he was visiting our very orderly clean waste facility in Wareham .

    Will we have a thunderstorm ?

    Look at this https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/migrants-detected-crossing-the-english-channel-in-small-boats/5cede69b-a408-47eb-8933-31fb2813ab77

  45. Secularism never survives that long under Muslim rule..

    Bangladeshi PM Sheikh Hasina was secular (and part of the reason she's gone), and she had to rule the country with an iron fist to keep it from descending into Islamic fanaticism. Well, she's gone now, and the Hindu minority are facing attacks and are looking for a new home.

    Sir Keir.. you know we said you couldn't make it any worse.. here's a chance to prove everybody wrong. Yes you can.

    1. When the crunch comes and a criminal definition of Islamophobia appears on the statute book will it be Islamophobic for Keir Starmer to worry about the safety of his wife and children?

  46. Secularism never survives that long under Muslim rule..

    Bangladeshi PM Sheikh Hasina was secular (and part of the reason she's gone), and she had to rule the country with an iron fist to keep it from descending into Islamic fanaticism. Well, she's gone now, and the Hindu minority are facing attacks and are looking for a new home.

    Sir Keir.. you know we said you couldn't make it any worse.. here's a chance to prove everybody wrong. Yes you can.

  48. Bagpipers to play in first global contest despite Chinese ban.

    BAGPIPERS from Hong Kong will compete in World Pipe Band Championships for the first time ever despite a Chinese government crackdown on the “colonial” instruments.

    A band of 18 Asian pipers and drummers will be among 7,000 musicians who will perform in Glasgow, in what it is hoped will boost the tradition in the region, even as it faces new threats from China’s National Security Law.

    Chris Lee, who has become a master piper after becoming fascinated by the instrument when he first heard them in a Hong Kong parade as a small child, said his band had struggled to practice owing to Covid restrictions and a mask mandate, lifted in March last year. However, his band, the Pì http://ob.hk collective, named after the Gaelic word for pipes, had been working hard since, including training four of its six drummers within nine months, to get ready for the event.

    Bagpiping has a history in Hong Kong dating back to Britain’s arrival in the 1800s with a local “piping scene” developing in the 1960s, Mr Lee said.
    A Hong-kong academic based in Edinburgh said the tradition had come under threat owing to restrictions from China and its associations with the British military and colonial rule.

    However, the 12 pipers and six drummers will be the first band from Hong Kong ever at the Glasgow world championships, which were first held in 1948.

    “It’s a dream not just for me, but for every member,” Me Lee, a Hong Kong native who previously studied in Scotland, earning a piping degree from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, said. “It’s a true milestone for Hong Kong piping. Of course, all pipers anywhere in the world would like to visit Scotland at least once in their lifetime.

    “So we thought why not visit in the best week of the year, which is the Piping Live festival and the championship. And if we’re here anyway, why not enter at the lowest grade, where the requirement of the music is accessible for us?”
    Mr Lee did not wish to comment on the political situation, but said he hopes to develop a new style of piping distinct to Hong Kong, focused on music rather than uniforms or regalia.

    “We want to transform the image and presentation of the bagpipes in Hong Kong,” he said. “We want it to be music centred. The outfit can cost a lot more than the instrument, which is not good when promoting it to students.

    “I studied in Scotland for four years, and love and respect the Scottish technique and history. But we want to create something relevant to the local Hong Kong people, with new compositions.”

    There are bands from 13 countries taking in part in the World Championships, which coincides with the Piping Live! festival. The competition will take place on Friday and Saturday.

    Hong Kong’s participation in the event comes after traditional Scottish tunes and regalia were banned for official pipe bands following the introduction of China’s national security law in 2020.

    A 'Colonial instrument'? I see what they mean. Those infernal, dreadful, noise-machines do indeed resemble a colon; moreover, one with six-or-seven rectums.

      1. The sweetest music imaginable is made when someone chucks a set of bagpipes into a skip and they hit a rap singer already chucked in there.

        1. Oddly enough I like bagpipes when played well, the problem is that so very few players play them well.

          One of the senior lecturers at college played, and was a judge at highland games. He used to rehearse on the college playing fields and on a misty morning the sound of a lament was hauntingly beautiful and because of the mist one could only guess where the sound was coming from if you didn't know. It was almost as if one was surrounded..

          2. The story goes that when a piper asked for requests from the audience the reply came from the back "Can you play Over the Hills and Far Away?"

          4. When I were a lad, we had a family holiday in Scotland, near Fort William. Returning home, we took the Ballachulish ferry. A piper was there by the road down to the jetty. It was a cool, crisp early September morning and, as you say, it was hard to tell where the sound was coming from, as though it was trapped in the layer of cool air at ground level.

            Even a cloth-eared, insensitive schoolboy was moved by it.

          5. Had similar experience of the pipes played in the morning mist on the side of the loch at Ullapool. Most romantic, so it was.

        2. The definition of a gentleman is someone who has a set of bagpipes and never plays them.

          2. David, a friend of ours and Henry's godfasther, has a set of Northumbrian Pipes – he brought them with him when he came to stay with us many years ago when Rumpole, our lovely boxer, was still with us.

            When David played his pipes Rumpole set up a woeful wail such as we had never heard before and Rumpole, who previously adored David, never forgave him and always growled fercociously when David came near him.

      2. The definition of a gentleman: a chap who knows how to play the bagpipes – and doesn't.

        [Edit: Apologies to Rastus – I've just read down.]

    2. Bagpiping was invented by Scotch cavemen. They had competitions involving strangling and squashing feral cats in primitive sacks, the winner was the one that squealed the longest and loudest – which also led to the invention of the first tartans kilts . . . blood and sh*t stained rags which they tied to their waist as tribal trophies.

      Who said the Jocks never invented anything.

      (Don't tell my nephews and nieces, two of them are Scottish karate champions.)

      1. Jocks do have their uses.

        Single-malt Jock whisky is the world's premier quaffable spirit.

      2. Jocks do have their uses.

        Single-malt Jock whisky is the world's premier quaffable spirit.

    3. The definition of a gentleman is someone who knows how to play the bagpipes – and doesnt…. (Oscar Wilde)

      1. I was told the a gentleman’s duty is to protect every woman from every man except himself.

      1. Can understand that, Sir Jasper…inexplicably, they reduce me to tears..the better they are the more I cry.

      2. The gaita flourishes in the region of Galicia, in the north west of Spain. Galicia is one of the Celtic nations, along with Scotland, Ireland, Cornwall, Brittany, Wales and the Isle of Man.

    5. When I were a lad I was the chef (yes –'the chef') of a fairly large two star hotel in Perth, Scotland. On the opposite side of the road and lower down was an even bigger hotel, The Station Hotel, a gathering and transit place for Royalty and the Hoi Polloi, From my bedroom window I would occasionally see a fully rigged piper strolling beneath a corner of the building serenading the current residents. I was told that the Queen and Phillip stayed there from time to time. Quite pleasing from a distance.

      The former North British Trust House Hotel – Perth. (Where I was the chef).
      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9f47a0bf229323b71e1d8816454f29d8b52842aed3cc27941d1a02e7fe8c85c2.png

    6. When I were a lad I was the chef (yes –'the chef') of a fairly large two star hotel in Perth, Scotland. On the opposite side of the road and lower down was an even bigger hotel, The Station Hotel, a gathering and transit place for Royalty and the Hoi Polloi, From my bedroom window I would occasionally see a fully rigged piper strolling beneath a corner of the building serenading the current residents. I was told that the Queen and Phillip stayed there from time to time. Quite pleasing from a distance.

      The former North British Trust House Hotel – Perth. (Where I was the chef).
      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9f47a0bf229323b71e1d8816454f29d8b52842aed3cc27941d1a02e7fe8c85c2.png

    7. The pipes were good enough for centuries of British and Scottish warriors, and Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth permitted a lament to be played at Prince Philip's funeral. You must be turning republican!
      Edit: and Flowers of the Forest was also played at QEII's funeral.

      1. I don’t care. I still cannot stand the bloody dreadful noise they make.

        I bet the Kings Edward I and II (or the Duke of Cumberland) didn’t like the sound of the bloody things.

  49. Figures for the last 7 days for irregular migrants attempting to cross the English Channel in small boats – 1072

    The data on arrivals does not include individuals who:

    Arrive in the UK on larger vessels, such as go-fast craft, yachts (except those arriving in the area of operations of small boats), motor cruisers, tugs and fishing vessels – although these are rarely used by irregular migrants at present
    Arrive in the UK clandestinely on larger vessels not referenced above, including where hidden in a vehicle on a ferry
    Arrive in the UK undetected, or where there have been reports of people making the crossing, but no actual encounters

    So the figure is probably a gross underestimate. Fancy that!

    2. Grizzly has it from people who work with and report to her that she is an excellent cop and much better than the man she succeeded.

        1. I agree.
          “Look at me, look at me. Why are you staring at me you sexist pig? Now I can complain and ruin your career.”

    1. "prison wardens" Well they are indirectly causing foolish WISE people to end up imprisoned.
      (if BAMEs can have their own acronym, so can the Welsh Scots Irish and English)

  53. I've been told the late Queen loved them, at Balmoral. Good enough for her, good enough for me.

    1. I might not want to be stuck in a big band of them for more a couple of minutes!

      1. I once lived in a house near the border with Scotland, built on sufficiently high ground to previously see the marauders coming and hear their bagpipes. Interestingly also the site of local gallows many years previously.

  55. The scientists accused of using ‘flawed’ research to tell you to stop drinking. 12 August 2024.

    Dr Tim Stockwell’s work – which has been published in The Lancet, among other esteemed organs – has inspired a new crackdown on alcohol that has seen daily drinking guidelines slashed in Canada and Australia. The US may next year follow suit, and the UK anti-alcohol lobby is using Dr Stockwell’s work as it warms up for a similar fight.

    But many of Dr Stockwell’s respected peers say it is far from settled science and have cast doubt on his research. They question his motives and accuse him of being a front for a worldwide temperance lobby that is secretly attempting to ban alcohol.

    This should come as no surprise. Every pleasurable activity known to man (and woman) has always come under some form of censure. The right thing to follow is Aristotle’s dictum. Moderation in all things: even moderation.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/diet/alcohol/abstemious-scientists-accused-flawed-research/

    2. I am always extremely wary of people who claim the science is settled.

      Most proper Nobel Prizes get awarded to people who proved the science wasn't settled after all.

  56. Breaking news:
    An 11-year-old girl and 34-year-old woman have been stabbed in London's Leicester Square, the Metropolitan Police has said.
    Source, BBC news.

    But is it really news, or simply another day in the United Kierdom? I ask because a friend was randomly attacked one evening in central London, and it did not make the papers. ( knocked unconscious, blood, A&E hospital treatment, arrest of suspect who had mental issues etc,)

    1. That's dreadful I haven't seen the news today.
      And your friends attack. I suspect if you fight back and win you would end up in jail.
      The problem we have in general seems to be the mental health issues that most of our political idiots are suffering from.

    2. Just another day, yes. Poor Sadiq, even the Mayor of London now feels unsafe on his own streets. I sometimes wonder precisely who is responsible for the good regulation and safety of the streets of London.

      Oh yes, I remember now. It's Sadiq Khan himself.

    4. Afternoon Tim. I remember going down London many (50) years ago on a contract job. While I was there a full scale street battle between hundreds of Greek and Turkish Cypriot immigrants was waged near the hotel. Axes, Knives, what ever. The BBC never even mentioned it

    5. Afternoon Tim. I remember going down London many (50) years ago on a contract job. While I was there a full scale street battle between hundreds of Greek and Turkish Cypriot immigrants was waged near the hotel. Axes, Knives, what ever. The BBC never even mentioned it

    1. Doctor in off message shock!

      Obviously failed to express his concerns using the appropriate word salad back then. Did he not mention equity, racist English countryside, freeing Palestine and curbing comment on the Internet? No wonder his message didn't get through.

      I see now where he misspoke.

    2. People with low IQ are incapable of empathy so will act on impulse. Of course the lunatic left deny the existence of inherited intelligence so being in denial about the actual cause, will look around for something else to blame. Did someone say hurty words that triggered him?

      1. The far left socialists (Labour) obviously have very low IQ. We normal people have always known that.

      2. A couple of young people with a life ahead them; a life they were daring to enjoy.
        The poor caretaker happened to own a useful set of wheels.

      1. Maybe he wouldn't – maybe that's why so many governments won't take their citizens back…

    1. David Starkey has noted Sue Gray's role in the increasing authoritarianism of the UK in recent times:

      This is the most terrifying thing about the Labour Party. This is where Starmer and his supporters are a real, genuine, urgent and dangerous threat to free speech. Starmer sees himself essentially as a prosecutor, and it’s worth noting the sort of civil servants his party has recruited. Sue Gray, his chief of staff, invented this extraordinary thing in the Cabinet Office called the Propriety and Ethics team, which allowed her to oversee ministerial and public appointments. This is effectively used as a modern-day Stasi. I know this because I’ve been at the receiving end of it.

      https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/08/05/starmer-called-for-my-prosecution/

      Ollie Robbins, he of the non-deal Brexit (yes, I mean 'non'), also got a mention in a Starkey video as Director of Intelligence, Security and Resilience in the Cabinet Office i.e. both of them embedded in no. 10, Robbins before Cameron became PM. He also been at the Home Office overseeing immigration.

    2. David Starkey has noted Sue Gray's role in the increasing authoritarianism of the UK in recent times:

      This is the most terrifying thing about the Labour Party. This is where Starmer and his supporters are a real, genuine, urgent and dangerous threat to free speech. Starmer sees himself essentially as a prosecutor, and it’s worth noting the sort of civil servants his party has recruited. Sue Gray, his chief of staff, invented this extraordinary thing in the Cabinet Office called the Propriety and Ethics team, which allowed her to oversee ministerial and public appointments. This is effectively used as a modern-day Stasi. I know this because I’ve been at the receiving end of it.

      https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/08/05/starmer-called-for-my-prosecution/

      Ollie Robbins, he of the non-deal Brexit (yes, I mean 'non'), also got a mention in a Starkey video as Director of Intelligence, Security and Resilience in the Cabinet Office i.e. both of them embedded in no. 10, Robbins before Cameron became PM. He also been at the Home Office overseeing immigration.

    3. Who controls the narrative has always been the most important matter in any politburo. This is a matter of life or death for them, in my opinion.

      1. I know. It’s like they’ve never left school. I don’t think they’ve ever had to function in the real world outside the confines of their political bubble.

  59. Is it just me, or is the personality-free, charisma-devoid, panache-zero-zone, Lefty automaton, Two-Tier Starmer, the blandest and most gormless prime minister since John Major (or Anthony Eden)?

    7. Bloody dangerous.
      Grey apparatchiks are easy overlooked because they make little impact.
      But their beliefs and actions can destroy an entire country or even a continent.

    2. You get medals for original moves – it's hell for commentators because they can't think of what to call them.

      When I came actross one break dance on TV I called it Fly Spray because the move looked just like a fly that had just been knocked out by such a product.

      1. I thought it was easy
        The tasered tosser
        The spasmodic sputum
        The awakened wanker
        The gonzoed gonad
        The epileptic fit
        nope, that one's already taken.

    3. I'd like it dropped from The Proms too. I'm certain that isn't the kind of dancing Purcell intended for The Fairy Queen.

      1. His idea of fairy queens doesn't fit modern interpretation.

        Unless he dedicated it to Phizzee

  61. 391400+up ticks,
    A 11 year old girl and an adult lady stabbed in the Leicester square area, man arrested , no description as usual, it could very well be one of those sword carriers who go into stealth mode with the law within spitting distance.

    1. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08/12/girl-stabbed-leicester-square/

      From the Telegraph.
      Maybe they looked openly Jewish or were showing a bit of ankle.

      Girl, 11, stabbed in Leicester Square

      Woman, 34, also taken to hospital as man arrested

      12 August 2024 • 1:18pm

      A girl has been stabbed in Leicester Square, central London Credit: chameleonseye/iStock Editorial
      An 11-year-old girl has been taken to hospital after a stabbing in London’s West End on Monday.

      The Metropolitan Police said officers were at the scene of the stabbing, which happened in Leicester Square. It said a man has been arrested and is in custody.

      A girl and a 34-year-old woman have been taken to hospital, and their condition is not yet known.

      This is a breaking news story and is being updated

      1. Another swarm of Methodists who feel victimised?

        The worst thing that the government can now do is to be secretive.

        2. Oh it's nothing to worry about but just more mental health issues. Sarc.
          I think we are done with all thus now. I thought that the police were in charge of security since the most recent killings.
          They don't seem to know their arse's from their elbows.

  62. Marcus has decided to revive the public disputation that took place annually in Barts from 1133 until St Bartholomew's Fair was abolished in 1855. Sir Thomas More once took part. I'll report on it when the speakers for this year are confirmed but the (outrageous) motion is "This House believes that Christianity is intrinsically socialist". I've heard that Ann Widdecombe might be one of the speakers against. I'm hoping she confirms!
    https://x.com/WalkerMarcus/status/1822957851507048747

    1. King Lear was a communist:

      Poor naked wretches, wherso'er you are,
      That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
      How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
      Your loo'd and window'd raggedness, defend you
      From seasons such as these?
      O! I have ta'en too care of this. Take physic, Pomp;
      Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
      That thou mayst shake the superflux to them,
      And show the heavens more just.

      All very well in theory to shake the superflux about a bit and distribute it to the needy. The trouble is that in all cases of socialism/communism we have seen to date the PTB have kept a firm grasp on the superflux for themselves!

    2. King Lear was a communist:

      Poor naked wretches, wherso'er you are,
      That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
      How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
      Your loo'd and window'd raggedness, defend you
      From seasons such as these?
      O! I have ta'en too care of this. Take physic, Pomp;
      Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
      That thou mayst shake the superflux to them,
      And show the heavens more just.

      All very well in theory to shake the superflux about a bit and distribute it to the needy. The trouble is that in all cases of socialism/communism we have seen to date the PTB have kept a firm grasp on the superflux for themselves!

  63. This headline appears in the DT in its Life section.

    I earn £40k and have no savings – how can I move to a £1m country house?

    I was going to suggest go to France, buy a dingy, get escorted by Border Farce, dump your passport in the sea just before you arrive and bingo, your wish has come true. Unfortunately no comments allowed.

    1. £50k worth of bitcoin.. or, about the same in Put options on NVDA June 2025.. or wild card £3,99 worth of MaidSafeCoin
      (MAID) which according to my mate will revolutionise the way the internet works and he should know because he's got a brain the size of Ayr, Scotland.

    2. £50k worth of bitcoin.. or, about the same in Put options on NVDA June 2025.. or wild card £3,99 worth of MaidSafeCoin
      (MAID) which according to my mate will revolutionise the way the internet works and he should know because he's got a brain the size of Ayr, Scotland.

  64. Greetings from The Beach Hut bar at Prestatyn.
    Had a couple of hours at Holywell this morning and visited the well that gives it its name.
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c34f65f974b5e70e3d441107432acd4acccee4b4a12db29659d2782497298b15.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7b41dc6ac75b5c494619e2971532b0b87ea537880cf0f317f949276cdee60043.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/34efd1c74d58060964b7af0bd4c280e41b3c1b911b4686b8ac394f86a1657dac.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/41d807c9678ead38dc50fdac486449e48fd0c1cc6c66ffe9e06d529c9ffc422a.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3fb58285de86da874f48936119452cbc0d45e8fe2b6942271b139b2e4bfafcd2.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/84da3dc5d56ca4775fc795276a3c076a4599c2b1cfae6cf83c2644139707aeaa.jpg

  65. Afternoon folks. Just back from a long weekend in Warwickshire. At one point i popped into Leamington Spa's Art Gallery & Museum. There was a feature:

    "Join Lily Crowther (History Curator) as she introduces our new temporary exhibition, ‘“Built with malice aforethought”: Leamington Spa and the Black Atlantic’. The exhibition traces the town’s links with the Caribbean, the Americas and West Africa in the nineteenth century, and explores the local legacies of slavery and empire."

    As we now live in two tier Britain I asked the member of staff on duty (in a rather loud voice) if there was a section detailing the Heroics of the Royal Navy's Wast Africa Squadron which freed around 150,000 slaves en route to the Americas at the cost of the deaths of several hundred British sailors? " No there wasn't came the reply…"

    So I added: "I don't suppose there is any mention either of the million Europeans taken into Slavery by the Barbary pirates?" The latter question was scoffed at by a young white bloke…. There is no hope!

    1. Get with it Stephenroi. Just wear Just Stop Oil Tabards and smash up the bits you don't agree with.

    2. It’s a shame these things are free to enter, because we can’t hit them where it hurts (in the pocket) when we don’t like what they provide

    4. Good for you. Not many people know how to barbary sailed around the coast of the English channel the Irish and north sea. Kidnapping young children. Kept them in caves in Spain for the use of and fed them to their pet lions after they had finished with them. And as we know centuries on they are still at it.

      1. Apparently the Vikings took the majority of good looking women from England. Left the Scots pretty much alone.

          1. Ha…Did a DNA test, James, several years ago…only 48% Brit, don’t tell anyone will you, I’ll likely be put on a plane…oh wait…no probably wouldn’t. Phew.

          3. OK, will do James, thanks. 52 pretty much 100, yes? :-(btw of the remaining 52, quite a bit was Russian…again don’t tell anyone…)

          8. Привет, друг. Все в порядке, я говорю по-русски только наполовину.

          9. You only speak half Russian? What’s the other half…second thoughts …don’t tell me….:-DD

        2. It is said that the English women weren't generally unhappy about that as the Viking men tended to bath more often than the native blokes and women in Viking society had reasonably good status. A Viking woman was distinguised as married by the keys at her belt and she looked after the family finances and did the hiring and firing if there was a family business. Any property she took into the marriage also remained hers.

          1. So I understand, Sue, sounds like a pretty good deal – Libbers – what comes round, goes round…hmm.. Norsemen on Netflix was funny, first series anyway.

        4. But the Muslims stole children and took them to Alhambra.
          But i heard they took a lot of Scottish females to Iceland to generate a population.
          All those choppers were put to good use.

          1. That might explain why Icelanders a hardy lot, and language difficult to master. I’ve read some of their folk tales, mostly around fights, money, women, horses – nothing new there, but names a bit difficult to pronounce.

          1. I don’t take any of it seriously, Lola…we’re all mongrels and they’re the healthiest, witness Toulouse-Lautrec. How do you like being part Scot? 🙂

          2. As a small child I was imbued with a romantic attachment to Scotland and I loved going there every year. In later years I grew weary of the perpetual victim narrative and bigotry of Scotland’s politicians and the complete subversion of Scottish history by people who thought Braveheart was a documentary.

          3. Agree that can be a drag…during Covid they had a sign ‘English Go Home’…they placed a lot of confidence (and money) in the SNP/Independence and feel badly let down now so I try not to make fun of them. Nevertheless we usually end up having a laugh. Braveheart -Mel Gibson- no, ta 🙁

  66. I often watch long videos about politics or history, especially things that are of contemporary relevance. Usually here, I only post short videos but I wanted to know if people are interested in watching long videos. These sort of things would be an example. Obviously I don't mean stop and watch now, but informative videos people can save and watch later.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qs0s9kTFE5Y
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fd5qf4pG-xg&t=1809s

  69. “Our message is simple to anyone who plans to breed violent disorder; We will identify you, and you will face the full force of the law."

    Unless you also happen to support any or all of the following: statutory r*pe, fgm, kidnapping Israeli citizens and keeping them hostage, torture-slaughtering animals, killing homos exyules, stabbing WISE people etc.

    By the way, it has taken me a while to understand the joke about Sir 2TK's father, but at last I geddit!

    2. When I was a student I worked on an oil rig in the North Sea during one of the summer vacs. I was manual labourer – a roustabout.

      The big boss on the rig was the tool pusher. I don't know where he came from or who made him but he was considerably better than our current prime minister.

          2. Small border brought down a jack rabbit bigger than herself, had to lift her off it by her ears to let it lollop away. Another time had a baby badger also bigger than herself, heard the screaming from the house, raced out just to find the mother badger barrelling towards them, picked furious dog up by ears again. She’s had both cruciate ligaments replaced, expensive. Other is an old Patterdale, sleeps mostly, but crazy in his day. I’ve had a number of rescue animals, centres know a sucker when they see one…:-D First cat I had was a farm cat, came home to find what looked like a row of bees on front step…mouse heads, she’d eaten the rest of ’em. Never more than a few feet away from a rat, or so they say. Once saw four tails hanging down from bird feeder, quite impressive how they all fitted in. Dogs sorted ’em.

          4. I think cats might do with mice/rats they’ve killed, dogs never had chance as I hauled them away and discarded carcasses. Had a rescue greyhound one time, very skinny could see her bones, took her on a short walk to relieve herself – she snatched a young rabbit out of the grass and swallowed it whole, she slept a few hours after that. I’d try my darndest to not let a cat eat a mouse or rat they’d caught – it might have been caught because it was slow due to poison – but cats seem to have a 6th sense, play/kill/leave.

  72. A buoyant Birdie Three?

    Wordle 1,150 3/6
    ⬜⬜🟩⬜⬜
    ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. Oh well done! Took me five today. I considered the answer but thought my guess number four was more likely. Doh!

      Wordle 1,150 5/6

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

          1. Not sure how, lacoste, will ask him indoors. Believe me, if I get it in four or five, you'll hear about it…:-D

    2. Well done, me too.

      Wordle 1,150 3/6

      ⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜
      🟩⬜🟩⬜⬜
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    3. That was awkward. \Wordle 1,150 5/6

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

    1. I saw a thread on X yesterday where a group of South Africans were writing that even under ANC rule they at least have freedom of speech and the right to bear arms. A licence is apparently not easy to obtain and you have to complete training in how to use the gun but it can still be done. They were not at all impressed with what's being inflicted on us.

      1. btw, in UK you don't have licences.. you have firearms certificates. You must also have a certificate to buy ammunition.
        These can be revoked within the blink of an eye.. and never be reinstated.. ever.
        Also, all gun clubs highly recommend that gun holders deposit their firearms with a Registered Firearms Dealer during a nasty divorce!
        Some women love to use any leverage they can.. and claiming you threatened them with a gun is just too good an opportunity to miss.

      2. btw, in UK you don't have licences.. you have firearms certificates. You must also have a certificate to buy ammunition.
        These can be revoked within the blink of an eye.. and never be reinstated.. ever.
        Also, all gun clubs highly recommend that gun holders deposit their firearms with a Registered Firearms Dealer during a nasty divorce!
        Some women love to use any leverage they can.. and claiming you threatened them with a gun is just too good an opportunity to miss.

      1. It is indeed. We are in for a very rough ride. In the grip of an insane ideology they will take everything we possess (“you will own nothing”); we have to organise and be prepared.

        Reading Johnson’s biography of Churchill a few years ago, I was surprised to realise there are distinct parallels with ‘Tommy Robinson’ – he possessed many of the same youthful characteristics as our national hero – an absolute hot head, an impulsive bonkers madcap. Both possess a grim determination never to be ground down by opposing forces, come what may. Patriotic to the very core. One was half British, half American. The other – half British, half Irish. The major difference is one of class – Churchill’s youthful mad capers were legitimised and channelled into his army experiences whereas Robinson’s playground was the streets of Luton and beyond. His ability to turn round the attendees to understanding his point of view at an Oxford Union debate was truly remarkable.

        Just saying. If he possessed Farage’s oratory skills he would be unstoppable. I rather think he is regardless.

        *Robinson’s autobiography ‘Enemy of the State’.

  76. 'Night All
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f8f4d694d779f492a3f279bdb16ac4ebe3b2c8cf87c1ce881b57908f07f5ead1.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6233a6760e4bac5677ab68f7770c6b219908c08b5a61e71a29fe9f0de3a0a923.png
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5bbe27d4cbad4922889f083458a36c47f1ac57d2171eb64f766b80105083ef26.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d2ef046fe0380d80a945cc67892186aab613268c06bc3fec36c5f39c13c09348.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/247bfb0c8c30aa112dcd93aa08063cf3dee4b2993d9bf5381d36c4b784767c7c.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f6f75561456efd543b6b9ce18608e556d8321f36e1673728fb88fcfb330dba6f.jpg
    Pat Condell
    https://x.com/patcondell/status/1822607332087378026?s=19

    2. Too late, they are already in Canada.
      Two of the latest refugees granted citizenship have been arrested after they were found to be building bombs for a special ceremony.

      Long term terrorist sympathizers at that – so much for the checking that is supposedly done on refugee applicants. ,

  77. Meanwhile over in the West Midlands…

    The new Cathedral at Coventry:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/40531a797e953f84273523f7cc342493386aa5c9ac182358c742b882dff534fc.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1e9e182a752005a7808bc599f8b77f40cd600d9c13b1d7a469f1085dd2393fee.jpg

    And Charlcote House & Gardens. (NT)

    (The ceiling and walls are all painted plasterwork!)

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2c5f91b27cfb968d1b481a978883a401a08bcc616efc9064c4b52e98acc8db75.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5b40d28ff138eb97a0db6f101b5b7fca6c023651f59fb10df6b16e46b2965a4d.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/902f2680a72e2c31bc815d6ce0530a76a8569573b5ca84f00e10a4c6202486e2.jpg

      1. Thank you lacoste . All taken on an iphone and each reduced in quality to meet the 5Mb requirement of Disqus!

        1. Thank you Stephen! I thought of you today while we were visiting the Falkirk Wheel and the Kelpies!

          3. It was only a flying visit; I was racing most of the time and I only saw the Kelpies when I drove past to Musselburgh.

    2. when opened in the 60s was half-jokingly described as.. designed by Sir Basil Expensive in the Architects' Journal.

      1. It's one of the few Cathedrals that doesn't charge an admission fee.
        Whilst there a young organist was practicing on the Cathedral's extraordinary organ – well worth the donation into the gift box!

    3. "New" Cathedral? As a Senior Safety Officer for John Laing Construction, my father (1912 – 1963) was a regular visitor. Including when the spire was installed by helicopter. Okay – in Cathedral terms, It's new, I guess. I think Guildford is newer…

    4. Basil Spence is probably one of the most underrated architects in our country. His British Embassy in Rome is masterful. The competition winning design for Coventry Cathedral was a clever piece of planning and as with all great buildings made use of master craftsmen in a number of disciplines.

      John Piper designed the stained glass with Patrick Reyntiens. The tapestry was designed by Graham Sutherland.

      1. And I understand the chap who etched the plain glass windows above the entrance ingested so much glass particles into his lungs that he eventually died as a result of bleeding to death…

      2. And I understand the chap who etched the plain glass windows above the entrance ingested so much glass particles into his lungs that he eventually died as a result of bleeding to death…

    1. Couldn't be better for MSM especially The Guardian..as Brave, have a-go hero hard working employed Abdullah, 29 seemed relaxed baring his incredible abs tells how he “jumped on” the knife-wielder suspect a 'young, dispicable pathetic snivelling white, skinny male'.

      Without urgent action, we risked losing the victims forever. No matter how big or small – migrants can make a real difference in protecting these incredible lives.

        1. The news will be rushed out if so, along with a little aside: "White people can be criminals as well, you know."

        2. There will be a reason why his name has not been released. Or maybe they are just trying to manipulate far right thugs into rioting.

        4. Doesn't matter what colour he is. His ideology matters, as does his claim (or loyalty) to being a citizen of the UK, willing to abide by its norms. Looking at the arrest video, he seems to be as high as a kite. Maybe tackling the flood of mind altering drugs into the UK might be a sensible thing to do.

      1. If, as is reported, the attacker is a white man, I can't help wondering if it's a trap to get more momentum into calls for censorship and for the State to close down outlets, because people will be tricked into jumping to false conclusions which will stir up more far right hatred.

        1. Is this the London stabbing? There was one in Dublin about thesame time and that very definitely was a white man. Odd that they should be in two capital cities, about the same time, both suspected to be w h i t e.

  80. Talk about useless. My bold etc..

    Dr Anthony Fauci is again recommending that people don face masks as Covid cases rise.

    The number of infections is increasing as part of another summer surge – even though hospitalizations and deaths from the virus remain at historic lows.

    On Monday, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease said: 'The message is that if you are in a risk category you have got to take this seriously.'

    The 83-year-old told people with comorbidities and seniors 'you should be wearing a mask' in crowded places.

    He also revealed he had contracted Covid about two weeks ago. It was his third Covid infection and he has been vaccinated and boosted a total of six times.

    1. I had several vacinations and boosters against cholera over quite a few years, and bugger me, I never caught cholera.
      Something wrong with your vaccinces, Fauci, old mate.

      1. Something's wrong with Fauci, full stop. He was apparently complicit in the vaccines. Recall the side eye Trump gave him.

        1. Never had a Covid vaccine. Never wiil. SWMBO took one vaccination more to convince.

          1. Think I posted earlier, caused arguments in my fam. My view, novel virus, novel vaccine, wtf could be going on here. In the end, I caved and went for it. We've all regretted it since, still sitting on the 'higher moral ground' not that it makes me feel better. For a while, I improved, but memory still affected, especially short-term. Good on you for sticking to your principles:-)

        2. As someone prepared to entertain the idea of reincarnation (Mozart and all that) I did check the dates of Fauci's birth against Mengele's death and they were the wrong way round

          1. Well there's the proof right there, opopanax, a very important clue. Bandy legged little swine. I've already decided I'm coming back as a rescue dog, one which gets rescued by me. What a life/;-)

          2. You could come back as a rescue dog rescued by me – I've got a pretty good record (as people who followed my trials and tribulations with Oscar my fox terrier will attest).

          4. Kadi looks very much like a soft toy, judging by the photos. I had something very similar on a platform on wheels, on which I used to ride with pride, as a little dut.

          8. I love 'em all. My adult dogs (all rescued) have ranged from a red setter, through mongrels to a fox terrier.

          10. He was very handsome and a real gentleman. Unfortunately, I only had him for just under three years. I've only had two pedigrees and both of them didn't have long with me to enjoy being given TLC. But then, they were both elderly; the setter was 6 – old for the breed – and the foxy was nearly 12.

          11. It’s a shame how some pedigrees have been bred for certain characteristics. I hate Crufts, won’t watch it. Used to have a really good vet, around 30 years ago, once asked him healthiest dog breed he replied ‘what you have, cross-breeds’. Largest dogs I had were discarded greyhounds, very sweet natures, one had no fur had to wait a quite a few weeks before colour came through. Perseids tonight/tomorrow, very red clouds here just now but will watch for the showers as usual. Bats just out now in number.

        3. It runs in their dna.

          The Canadian doctor that was advocating most strongly covid jabs has now gone completely of her rocker and is suggesting that the drugs program in British Columbia is expanded and ALL of the addictive drugs are decriminalized and made as freely available as aspirin.

          1. Along with euthanasia on demand (or by compulsion) and up to term abortion, no doubt. What is the matter with these people?

          2. Euthanasia or Medically Assisted Death as they prefer to call it was apparently the number five cause of death in Canada last year.

          4. Truly mad. I hope for Canadians’ sake Poilievre elected, Trudeau seems a complete nut job.

      1. The less bolshie you become, the more likely the Boss will expel you, for betraying the ultra far right fascist Nazi pigs that he kindly gives sanctuary to.

          1. He’s not the kindly old gent that other Nottlers would have you believe.

            He’s firm but fair, not kindly.

            The lady Nottlers say he’s a rod of iron.

          3. Deliberate, so that you and Phizzee would jump to a similar conclusion and the laydees could just ponder being disciplined.

    4. I have seen a few mask wearing believers in these parts recently. Thee was even some old biddy n a coffee shop wearing a mask that she would just pull down when she sipped the brew.

    5. I have seen a few mask wearing believers in these parts recently. Thee was even some old biddy n a coffee shop wearing a mask that she would just pull down when she sipped the brew.

    6. It was his third Covid infection and he has been vaccinated and boosted a total of six times.

      Reminds me of Trigger's broom.

  81. Apparently two twelve years old white boys have been arrested in the riots for throwing bricks. They will now have criminal records and little encouragement to lead a productive life and will develop a real hatred for the police. Years ago, they would have been given a thick ear and reported to their parents, who should have been keeping a closer eye on them.
    Two tier is so brave, there is nothing he won’t do to clamp down on white people and their children. Next thing you know he’ll be getting the Nobel prize and whatever the prize is for advancing the caliphate.

      1. I think the Kalergi Prize has been rebranded as the Charlemagne Prize. Less negative connotations.

    3. There were photos of young kids lobbing Molotov cocktails at the Irish police the other day. Will they get the same treatment?

  82. Found it. The Paul Mason prorogation video. This was shown at the time on BB2's Newsnight with Kirsty Wark. They discussed it as though it were the latest work by Stephen Poliakoff.
    https://x.com/chunkymark/status/1166967833546412032
    If you really want to get a flavour of Mason, the next video (from the same time) shows his true nature. It makes his written offerings appear reasonable. This is the modern Left. It is the likes of Mason driving the anti-fascist [sic] movement.

    https://www.facebook.com/www.JOE.co.uk/videos/paul-mason-we-need-mass-peaceful-protest/694848531027440/

    1. Hmm. Reminds me of one of those nut-job telly preachers. Politics and religion should be kept completely apart. All this chanting, drumming and ramping up of mass negative emotion is reminiscent of a Satanic rite. Looking at the anti-Jew, anti-UK weekly festivals that dominate the streets of our capital and other UK cities there is a genuine miasma of menace, of palpable evil.

      1. I had a chat with my leftie neighbour today when he was out walking his dog. Predictably he referred to "right wing rioters", but amazingly he also added "they need to do something about immigration"!

        1. Well, if it's becoming permissible to express that view for such people then there is some progress

  83. Found it. The Paul Mason prorogation video. This was shown at the time on BB2's Newsnight with Kirsty Wark. They discussed it as though it were the latest work by Stephen Poliakoff.
    https://x.com/chunkymark/status/1166967833546412032
    If you really want to get a flavour of Mason, the next video (from the same time) shows his true nature. It makes his written offerings appear reasonable. This is the modern Left. It is the likes of Mason driving the anti-fascist [sic] movement.

    https://www.facebook.com/www.JOE.co.uk/videos/paul-mason-we-need-mass-peaceful-protest/694848531027440/

  84. Haven't heard about the latest attacks, been reclaiming a house after the tenants left. Owing a month's rent as always, it's one finger in the air a " you've got the f' ing deposit". Which never comes close to covering the additional costs. So last time it was a 14 yard skip full to the brim, this time , not quite so bad two trailers, one very large, and a lot of cleaning for tomorrow. Why do we bother, with the present government more vindictive than the last one, but only just. It's always tenants right, landlords greedy etc.
    in my later working life I used to inspect HMOs in West london. And some I had to wipe my feet when I came out. There are landlords, and there are landlords. But the good are trashed by every one and the protected ones make the money.

    1. There is a little cottage on the market just a few hundred yards away from us, we could basically buy it with some spare cash and make decent money out of long term or even as a holiday rental. However, why bother when we would also be treated as pariahs who are making money off of the poor.

    2. I've just read the safety inspections on the two play areas we (the parish council) are responsible for. It's made me wonder if it's worth it. Perhaps we should just close them down, take away all the equipment and give up providing a recreational space.

      1. That would fit in with the anti-human, anti-fun, anti all risk zeitgeist of this ghastly era, wouldn't it?

      2. The disease has even spread here, where elf-n-safety wasn't quite as strict.

        I noticed that a couple of the very popular with the children, but very slightly risky, climbing frames had been removed at the local night market.

        I will be interested to see if we still have hand axe throwing at the village fete.

  85. The Argies are waking up to the huge Russian find of oil and gas reserves in British Antarctic territory, estimated at around 511 billion barrels.

    General Pueyrredón argues the new UN maritime treaty would make it potentially much harder for Argentina to prevent the UK from "appropriating vast resources belonging to Argentina, as clearly happens with fishing and planned oil extraction."

    The problemo now is the internet.. and everyone is struggling to work out exactly when The Falklands ever belonged to Argentina.
    For instance, in Bristol they have a maritime museum featuring Brunel's SS Britain launched in 1843 with a very long history of serving The Falkland Islands.. even ended up there until 1970. The old maps show Argentine was no where near The Falklands and didn't really exist until 1861.

    Not that Ed Millipede would do anything with the evil oil anyway.

    1. I suggest General Pueyrredón does something like China.. and get the graphics dept to knock up some celestial map showing everything in front of the dark side of the moon and beyond clearly belonging to the Argentine Incas.

        3. At its largest, the Inca empire joined modern-day Peru, what are now western Ecuador, western and south central Bolivia, northwest Argentina.
          everyone knows the southern bit split off to form the Inca People's Popular Front of northwest Argentina. basic CSE History.

        4. At its largest, the Inca empire joined modern-day Peru, what are now western Ecuador, western and south central Bolivia, northwest Argentina.
          everyone knows the southern bit split off to form the Inca People's Popular Front of northwest Argentina. basic CSE History.

      1. Nope! Doesn't need it. Doesn't need food either. Certainly doesn't need borders or history or anything disgraceful like that.

    3. Given that the Falklands was a British territory long before Argentina gained independence from Spain, I suspect the Spanish may have a greater claim to the reserves.

      But then again none is none.

        1. You are kidding, aren't you? Starmer is holding a closing down sale of the UK. No offer refused.

    4. Argentina is a nation comprised exclusively of colonists – mostly Spanish, Italian and German but with a few Welsh in Patagonia.

  86. 391400+ up ticks,

    Leicester Square , rotherham, countrywide the evil work of knife & sword wielders is picking up apace and now seemingly a daily occurrence.

    A great deal of this triggered by psychopath "miranda" who still has a shout in daily politics.

    May we come to one at least, honest conclusion, the sheep cannot be blamed for ALL our ( self inflicted) woes, they have their own problems with the odious halal issue.

    1. Exactly so, 'mum. Can envisage a nurse doesn't like the cut of your jib (or a different part of your bod), can refuse to treat on grounds of 'racism'. We must surely be nearing peak 'racism'….musn't we?

      1. With a view to covid and the vaxes-to-come. They plan decades in advance. Certainly the Hippocratic Oath appeared to be suspended as a matter of course during the ‘covid’ years.

      2. The Hippocratic Oath was not part of my medical qualification from the University of London in the 1970s – not in any formal sense anyway.

        1. That's interesting, Lola. Is it a myth that it ever was? (Miranda would have it so, as would his heirs)

          1. It is possible some newer clinical schools may have introduced it. But, otherwise the actual taking of an oath is mostly an urban myth. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t a raft of professional standards in GMC ‘guidance’ ie iron rules.

            Edit – I bet they all take it in the US but turning up in a mortar board and gown and spouting Latin or Greek lines (without understanding them) is very popular over there. In the UK when I qualified, most of us collected our results, phoned our parents, got drunk, ordered a cheque book with the title ‘Dr’ on it, went on 2 weeks holiday and then started working 100 hours a week For at least the next year. Hardly any of my friends even attended the degree ceremony held some months later as getting time off for it wasn’t an option.

          3. Yes that is quite interesting. To me it supports the idea that the further we get from the situation where student doctors were imbued with a sense of moral responsibility and vocation through being an integral part of a hospital , the more artificial crapspeak is introduced by people who are just glorified administrators.

          4. I can't recall how it worked, but the adage "first do no harm" vanished years ago.

            Nowadays too many treatments appear to be experiments on the unknowing on the off chance that the medics/drug company strike the motherlode of gold.

          6. I have a real problem with the simplicity of how ‘first do no harm’ is interpreted.
            All doctors should consider whether the proffered ‘cure’ is worse than the disease eg whether ‘heroic’ surgery should be attempted on the frail elderly or whether chemotherapy might prolong a life by a few months but at the cost of making that life intolerable. But, there is a danger that it is used as a cop-out by those who are excessively risk-averse . All medical interventions have the potential to do harm, be it an unwanted effect of medication or a serious complication of an interventional procedure. There is no such thing as a free lunch and all decisions must be made in that context. Interpreting ‘First do no harm’ literally rules out doing anything at all.

          7. "Thou shalt not kill
            but should not strive
            officiously to keep alive"

            I do appreciate how not simple the life of a doctor is, Lola. and am grateful that there are those, like you, who take it on. Like so many other aspects of life these days, I do wish that politics had no place in it.

    4. The irony of course is that if they deny racial differences they could end up doing a lot of harm to the people they think they’re protecting.

    5. I don't suppose that someone attacking whitey would be considered racist would they? It could open up a whole new avenue for after atrocity care if the offended are taken care of.

      1. Attacking white people is NEVER racist.

        It is an appropriate response to centuries of white supremacy which should have civilised the savages, but didn't.

    6. I believe the UK entered that space a long long time ago.
      So many anecdotal stories about activists correlating social media with NHS records.. just ask solicitor Teresa Steele what happens next.

      Or Kellie-Jay Keen's pleasant (last) day at her local GP.

    9. And yet the RCN would never dream of advocating Nurses should refrain from treating patients who are not entitled to care under the NHS….

    10. It’s quite straightforward.

      1. Refer whoever issued this guidance to the the Nursing and Midwifery Council;
      2. Refer any nurse citing this and refusing to treat a patient to the Nursing and Midwifery Council
      3. If said Council refuses to process the complaint or finds the perp has not brought the profession into disrepute and/or put a patient at unnecessary risk, refer them to the Professional Standards Authority.

      Convicted murderers – even as heinous as Ian Brady and Myra Hindley – received medical care.

      1. I suffered Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT) years ago and wound up in an overcrowded West Suffolk Hospital for emergency treatment. Eventually I was placed in an old fashioned ward which had been opened specially because all other beds were filled. A ward sister had to be drafted in from Newmarket.

        The following morning I was wakened to the tea boy who offers me and my room mate a choice of porridge or corn flakes. His first question in a sort of Cockney accent was “what are you in for?”.

        I explained that I had DVT whilst the other chap had a mini-stroke. He persisted “Nah, what are you in for?”

        It transpired that the ward we were in was reserved for prisoners from Highpoint Prison.

      2. Thank you, Lola – I have taken a screen shot for future reference. Just in case we need it.

      3. Councils do this. “We do not tolerate abuse of our staff. Blah blah”. So when you ask them a question they cannot answer, they claim you are abusing them and put the phone down. From their perspective it works like a charm. No pesky “customers”.

  89. Close, but no cigar.

    Starmer will ask the Spanish to take over Gibraltar and give them the Falklands as the thank you present.

    1. and why not? Jack Straw tried the first one.. and Jeremy openly said FI were Argentine.. or anyone's on a first come first serve basis.

      1. Not sure I’d like that. My pension is living there, sunning itself, and hopefully getting fat.

  91. Initially, they said it was like flu.
    I've had one flu vaccine, and was sicker than a dog afterwards, so said never again – and didn't
    Had a mild Covid infection after a conference at the airport hotel, started with Vit D3 afterwards, and no illnes AT ALL since.

    1. EXACTLY. Think I’ve been asked ten times now to go for Covid jab, went for first three due to family pressure, arm swelled, blood returned down tube, third time stuck needle in my arm whilst commenting ‘I’m just a trainee vet’. Whole thing seems farcical in retrospect, bit like Johnson being PM. RFKjr has interesting take on vaccines, he may well be right. Taken Feroglobin liquid a while, and B12/D tabs, feel pretty good apart from STML improving slowly. Millions of covid tests in landfill, some people were testing weekly.

  92. Initially, they said it was like flu.
    I've had one flu vaccine, and was sicker than a dog afterwards, so said never again – and didn't
    Had a mild Covid infection after a conference at the airport hotel, started with Vit D3 afterwards, and no illnes AT ALL since.

  95. Must have caught what Bill has.
    🙁
    Woke myself by farting hugely last night, now glued to the dunny making vast gurglings and firehose impressions 🙁
    Worst thing is, the wine is downstairs!

    2. Well…confess I laughed, Ober…but now with a straight face I genuinely wish you better. As my dad would say 'look after thissen, nay other ****** will….

  97. Evening, all. Been hot, sunny and muggy today, but despite the weather I have made progress with the seating area – just as well as the bench arrived this afternoon. It has, of course, come as a flat pack. Nothing is delivered so that it can be used immediately these days. With any luck, it should all be finished tomorrow.

    Re the headline; I have received, in my capacity as a parish councillor, a questionnaire from the County Council re environmental concerns. Needless to say, climate change was there, front and centre (although it's the least of my concerns). Amazingly, building and urbanisation was one of the things listed and among the things we'd like to see preserved was hedgerows. I haven't filled it in because I can't see them acting on our concerns, and anyway, I don't think "white (English) people" would have gone down well in the "what would you like to see added to the protected species list" section 🙂

    2. Ditto, the same questionnaire I have received Conway. Net zero and accommodate a child (Foster).

      I have almost had enough and am considering resigning .. no one takes any notice , planning issues will become really ugly .

      We arrived here 24 years ago , the population of this village was 3,500 now nearly 6,000, infill and expansion .

      2. There wasn’t anything about fostering on mine, but SCC are very big on “net zero” and “climate change” – they have a whole department devoted to CC. That would be the first thing to go if I had my way.

      3. There wasn’t anything about fostering on mine, but SCC are very big on “net zero” and “climate change” – they have a whole department devoted to CC. That would be the first thing to go if I had my way.

  98. US time
    Make or break??

    Former President Donald Trump returned to X for the first time in 2024 ahead of his Monday night interview with the site's owner, Elon Musk.

    Trump posted a campaign ad to the site, formerly known as Twitter.

    The highly produced video shows clips from Trump's 2017 inauguration, the 2020 State of the Union address – where House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tears up his speech at the dais – the 2022 Mar-a-Lago raid and the ex-president triumphanly entering an Ultimate Fighting Championship match with CEO Dana White.

    'Donald Trump seems to always get stronger when challenged,' a voiceover says.

    Musk is set to interview Trump at 8 p.m. tonight – after endorsing the Republican nominee in July, hours after he was grazed by a bullet in Butler, Pennsylvania.

    3. SWMBO now passing wine refills through the ajar door.
      I might survive… Hope Bill is reovering.

  101. I’ve always found him to be very kind, and thoughtful. I couldn’t possibly speak for other ‘lady’ nottlers:-D

    1. Likewise the majority of stabbings in London – certainly since 1990 but, I suspect, since the dawn of modern times.

      1. My Dad had a few Frank Crumit records including this. Also The Old Armchair, Grandfathers Clock and others. All broken now, alas.

    3. Without checking the figures, I would suggest that pro rata to the total population by race and religion that rapes and sexual assaults of underage girls are heavily biased towards Pakistani/Bangladeshi Muslims.
      Knifings and muggings are heavily biased towards blacks
      Benefit fraud is evenly distributed but again pro rata is heavily biased towards immigrants.
      Looting and shoplifting black and white, fewer Muslims.
      Fly tipping and construction fraud, pikeys
      Complete and utter destruction of what was once a relatively peaceful and harmonious land: Politicians
      Damn them all to the lowest reaches of Hell.

    4. Put simply, we produce enough rubbish of our own so we shouldn't be importing any more.

    5. What a stupid initial tweet. If the Uk is still 90% hWite (spit) (and for all I know it isn’t), then you would expect 90% of crime to be committed by hWites (spit). So what is the “majority” of crime? 90%? 80%? 75%? 51%? In this example, anything less than 90% indicates that non-Indigenous are committing proportionally fewer crimes. Not that I’d expect a stupid unthinking Leftard to necessarily understand that concept.

      1. Ave Maria, gratia plena, beata tu in mulieribus. Magnificat anima mea Dominum. Ecce Ancilla Domini … nope, can't see it myself.

  105. London's 'most notorious phone thief' is jailed for two years after snatching 24 mobiles in a SINGLE morning while racing through city streets at 50mph

    Fine, lock him up. It isn't going to stop.

    BUT if the buyers of the phones could be traced and they were locked up and the key thrown away, it might.
    Eradicate the chain, catch the little fish and get them to betray the bigger fish and on up the food chain.

    1. If locked up he'd do healthy trade in mbles in prison, sos. We have everything the wrong way round, somehow.

    1. There is no getting away from all this terrible crime every day and night.
      Our Political idiots have done so much damage to our country they should be taken to court.
      if they make out they don't understand what is going on. They should be forced into resignation with no pension.

    2. Well "migrants" (sic) are "top trumps" in the "victim" hierarchy of "oppression"

  108. Struggling to stay awake. Just have to pop into the loft and grab one of the fans to keep cool tonight.
    Apparently another meteor shower tonight but too late for me. Even the chance of Northern lights.
    Night all.

    1. Someone will catch it, Eddy…red clouds here earlier, now dark skies but still no appearance, suspect a late show this year.

    2. At least after the weekend's live appearance, we will be able to recognise you when plod posts your mug shot.

    4. Reads like the same judge gave a different man a similar sentence some weeks previously. Wonder what Elon Musk would think and say?

  115. Lewis again.

    Labour MP accused of blaming Israel for far-Right riots

    Anti-Semitism campaigners want Clive Lewis suspended after he claims 'inhumanity' to Palestinians has led to rising UK Islamophobia

    Amy Gibbons, POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT • 12 August 2024 • 5:44pm

    A Labour MP has been accused of blaming Israel for the far-Right riots after claiming the war in Gaza has stoked hatred towards British Muslims.

    Clive Lewis, the MP for Norwich South, appeared to link Israel's actions in the Middle East with the recent disorder on Britain's streets, arguing that the "inhumanity" shown towards Palestinians had led to rising Islamophobia in the UK.

    Campaigners accused the MP of blaming Israel for the riots and called for his suspension. In remarks posted on X, formerly Twitter, over the weekend, Mr Lewis said: "The link between the daily inhumanity being meted out to Palestinians and rising Islamophobia in the UK, are not unconnected. The inhumanity being shown to one is giving 'permission' for the other. These actions diminish us all."

    Alex Hearn, the co-director of the Labour Against Antisemitism campaign group, branded the MP's comments "highly irresponsible" and urged Sir Keir Starmer to strip him of the whip.

    Mr Hearn told Sky News: "It is very concerning that people across the political spectrum, from 'anti-racists' to the far-Right, have fantasised that 'Zionists' and Israel are to blame for unrest across Britain. A recent report by the Community Security Trust showed anti-Semitism in the last six months has gone up 105 per cent, and that the pretext for these 1,978 incidents are often Palestine. This includes synagogues targeted 76 times and 121 assaults.

    "For a Labour MP to blame a conflict thousands of miles away for the recent racism in far-Right riots in Britain is highly irresponsible. When attacks against British Jews exploded following the Hamas 7 Oct massacre, no such link was made by Mr Lewis."

    He added: "Labour Against Antisemitism calls for his immediate suspension and for the whip to be removed while he is investigated. We believe that his comments in the context of sectarian violence and record attacks against British Jews warrant expulsion."

    In the wake of Mr Lewis's remarks, the Prime Minister rejected any suggestion that Jewish people were to blame for the UK riots. Asked if Sir Keir thought Jewish people were to blame, a No 10 spokeswoman said: "No, he would completely disagree."

    It is understood Labour has rejected demands to suspend Mr Lewis.

    A Labour spokesman said: "All complaints are treated seriously and thoroughly assessed in line with our rules and procedures."

    John McDonnell, the veteran Labour MP who has been temporarily stripped of the whip after defying the Government over the two-child benefit cap, came to Mr Lewis's defence.

    He tweeted: "It's a bizarre warped logic that accuses Clive Lewis of anti-Semitism when he comments on how the visible inhumanity towards Muslims in Gaza displayed daily on our screens feeds into the inhumanity of some in our own country towards Muslims here."

    Mr Lewis has been approached for comment.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/08/12/labour-mp-accused-blame-israel-riots-islamophobia/

    1. From Coffee House, the Spectator

      In defence of Douglas Murray
      Comments Share 12 August 2024, 10:30pm
      Even by its own standards, Twitter has been an asylum of late, with a lynch mob going after our associate editor Douglas Murray. An interview he gave months ago has been heated up, and selectively edited to maliciously misrepresent him. I won’t say how: to repeat such smears is to spread them. This is how Twitter works. I don’t follow Alastair Campbell on Twitter, but it seems he was telling me that unless I condemn Douglas then I myself would apparently ‘stand condemned’. By no less a moral authority, it seems, then Campbell himself.

      Andrew Neil has rightly pointed out that hell really will freeze over before a Twitter mob makes The Spectator turn on a star columnist who has brought so much to the magazine over so many years. The idea that we would do so now, at Campbell’s behest, is laughable. Andrew has also banned advertisers who complain about our columnists: hopefully the message goes out that The Spectator isn’t edited by Twitter.

      The Spectator will not be bowing to the mob
      I normally avoid making any reference to Twitter’s madness – following advice from Douglas himself. ‘Never waste time bouncing off the effluent of morons’, he wrote in one of his superb Spectator columns. ‘So, for instance, it is a rule among British columnists never to use the term “Owen Jones” in an article. It is too easy. Every couple of hours there will be another gaseous eruption.’ We have a house rule in The Spectator: to avoid the utterances of the trolls like Katie Hopkins, Campbell, Jones, etc.

      But this one is different. When I went through my inbox this morning, I found emails from many readers who could see a character assassination attempt in the offing and who wanted to defend Murray. We only print letters in the magazine in response to articles, but we had so many here that I thought we should make an exception. The below from Justin Stebbing, a renowned oncologist, resonated with me because it sums up my own feelings – and, I suspect, a great many of our readers.

      I am writing to express my unwavering support for Douglas Murray, whose insightful and articulate commentary has been a beacon of clarity and reason in today’s complex political landscape. His contributions to The Spectator have consistently demonstrated a profound understanding of global issues, particularly the intricacies of Middle Eastern politics and the defence of Israel.

      His steadfast support for Israel is not only commendable but also essential in an era where misinformation and bias often cloud public discourse. His writings provide a balanced perspective that champions truth and moral clarity, qualities that are increasingly rare yet desperately needed. His ability to dissect and articulate the nuances of geopolitical conflicts with precision and empathy is a testament to his intellectual rigor and commitment to justice.

      In his recent works, including his speeches and articles, he has eloquently defended Israel’s right to exist and protect its citizens against terrorism. His stance is rooted in a deep understanding of historical and contemporary contexts, which he conveys with both passion and reason. As he aptly stated, ‘It’s moral hygiene to try and clean some of this up. When 99 lies are being told and one truth, the truth will eventually win.’ This commitment to truth is what sets him apart as a commentator and public intellectual.

      His broader contributions to political commentary, such as his critiques of western self-laceration and his defence of western values, highlight his role as a crucial voice in contemporary debates. His ability to engage with a wide range of topics, from the rise of extremism to the cultural and political challenges facing the West, underscores his versatility and depth as a thinker.

      The attempts by political figures like Campbell to silence him not only undermine the principles of free speech and open debate but also seek to deprive the public of a valuable perspective that challenges prevailing narratives.

      It is imperative that we stand by commentators like Murray, who courageously speak the truth, even when it is unpopular. His brilliance, clarity of thought, and unwavering commitment to truth make him an indispensable asset to your publications and to the broader conversation on critical global issues.

      Amen to all that. Douglas wrote the definitive piece about Twitter lynch mobs when he exonerated Roger Scruton by securing the raw footage of the interview that had been so egregiously misrepresented by George Easton. His scoop and cover piece changed the debate: it was the high water mark of Twitter character assassination because Murray had calmly taken this madness apart and it stood exposed. So did those who get sucked into them, and how partial quotes can be maliciously assembled to smear – and how easily a mob is assembled to condemn.

      His column last week, incidentally – looking at the deprivation levels and local economic dysfunction in rioting areas – was thoughtful, original and generated more new subscriptions than any other article we published this year. That’s proof of just how utterly detached these pointless Twitterstorms are from the real world.

      It’s almost exactly 15 years since I first became editor and was told about Douglas by the writer Ruth Dudley-Edwards who said he was one of the best young essayists thrown up by our country for quite some time. I’d remove ‘one of’. So, sorry, Alastair Campbell et al: The Spectator will not be bowing to the mob. Not now, not ever.

      1. What does this have to do with Clive Lewis?

        Don't you know how to start a thread?

        1. Two articles above, William. The second one is the peculiar defense of Douglas Murray against unknown calumnies perpetrated by, apparently, the stainless Alastair Campbell.

          1. And what does this mean?

            I posted a DT piece on Clive Lewis, MP. Douglas Murray's status at the Spectator is irrelevant to that.

        2. Don’t be so mean.
          I’m on my iPad and they won’t let me start threads since they modernized this application.
          I depend on the good nature of the other posters.

          3. "Don't be so mean."

            Are you accusing WS of being average … or tight-fisted? Or are you simply one of our American cousins?

          6. "Don't be so mean."

            Are you accusing WS of being average … or tight-fisted? Or are you simply one of our American cousins?

      2. I have no idea what calumny has prompted this, but if it means that Fraser is growing a backbone then it is welcome. Douglas is extraordinarily valuable and he will survive, as will his exceptionally well formulated ideas.

    2. Clive Lewis is one of the more disgracefully racist MPs in the new government, a crowded field. In my opinion.

      1. He has a history of poor behaviour in his attitude to women and Jews. He also comes across as immature with some of his behaviour in the HoC: his refusal to read the oath, the gun-in-the-mouth jest, his feet resting on the back of the seats (if he wanted to slouch with style, he should have asked JRM).

        It's also notable that McDonnell supports him. They're both members of the genuinely hard-left Socialist Campaign Group, along with Burgon and Sultana. McDonnell isn't an empty gobshite. He's a genuinely nasty piece of work.

  118. White police officers lost out on job after order to pick Asian candidate

    Employment judge rules three officers were directly discriminated against when the force appointed an Asian sergeant

    Telegraph Reporters • 12 August 2024 • 6:53pm

    Three white police officers have won a discrimination case after an employment judge ruled that they were passed over for promotion because of their race.

    Det Insp Phillip Turner-Robson, Insp Graham Horton and custody inspector Kirsteen Bishop claimed that Thames Valley Police “directly discriminated” against them in a bid to improve the diversity of its senior staff. The tribunal heard that a superintendent from the force was told to “make it happen” by appointing an “Asian” sergeant to the rank of detective inspector. This was despite warnings about the legal risks of not holding a competitive process.

    The three experienced officers brought employment tribunal proceedings against the force, claiming to have been disadvantaged because of their race – described by the tribunal as “white British”. They had been working with Thames Valley Police – which covers the counties of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire – for between 19 and 26 years when they were blocked from applying for the role, a tribunal heard.

    In August 2022, plans were discussed for a job advert for a detective inspector in the force’s “priority crime team” at Aylesbury, the hearing was told. Having been made aware of the vacancy, Mr Turner-Robson expressed his interest on the same day, the Norwich tribunal heard.

    But the following month, Supt Emma Baillie made the decision to move Sgt Sidhu, whose forename was not provided, into the role without undertaking any competitive process or advertising the vacancy to staff, the tribunal was told.

    The sergeant had not even been promoted to inspector at the time she was made detective inspector, the tribunal heard, after Dept Chief Constable Jason Hogg and the superintendent had “jumped the gun” and given her the senior role.

    Mr Hogg, an experienced officer who joined Cleveland Police in 1995, became Thames Valley Police chief constable in April 2023. The superintendent had been told to “make it happen” by the deputy chief constable and “took the decision without thinking it through”, the tribunal said.

    “Clearly, Supt Baillie was only focused on ‘making it work’ rather than carrying out a balancing exercise of competing factors and considering whether her actions or the respondent’s actions were proportionate,” the tribunal said.

    She then tried to “retrospectively justify” the decision by saying the appointment came under a “Bame progression program which clearly did not exist at the time”.

    It continued: “Supt Baillie and no doubt the deputy chief constable had been warned of the risk of operating such a policy.”

    Employment Judge Robin Postle concluded that the three white officers were directly discriminated against by reason of the protected characteristic of race.

    “The superintendent made a decision to move police sergeant Sidhu into the detective inspector role without any competitive assessment process taking place,” the judge said.

    “It went beyond mere encouragement, disadvantaging those officers who did not share sergeant Sidhu’s protected characteristic of race and who were denied the opportunity to apply for the role. It was not a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim. Clearly, Supt Baillie was only focused on ‘making it work’ rather than carrying out a balancing exercise. Her decision… clearly constituted positive discrimination.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08/12/white-thames-valley-police-officers-discriminated-against

    5. They don't do anything about rural crime, the usual suspects get a free pass and do what they want, it seems to me

  119. Tuesday Spruddel. That took some finding.
    Wordle 1,151 3/6

    ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨
    🟨⬜🟨⬜🟨
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Comments are closed.