Monday 2 August: Vaccination surveillance threatens to upend the concept of privacy

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2021/08/01/letters-vaccination-surveillance-threatens-upend-concept-privacy/

840 thoughts on “Monday 2 August: Vaccination surveillance threatens to upend the concept of privacy”

  1. Vaccine booster shots for 32m to begin next month. 2 August 2021.

    Booster vaccines are to be offered to 32million Britons starting early next month with up to 2,000 pharmacies set to deliver the programme, The Telegraph can disclose.

    Amid fears that the efficacy of the vaccines may begin to decline, ministers are planning to deliver an average of almost 2.5million third doses a week starting in the first week of September.

    All adults aged 50 and over, as well as the immuno-suppressed, will be offered the booster jabs.

    Morning everyone. Booster vaccines? It’s barely a year since they had the original shots and they are already useless? I would point out that this measure as stated here is purely speculative! fears that the efficacy of vaccines may begin to decline It is a predicted not present event! By what means did they discover this? If it is true what is the point in pressuring the so called “anti-vaxxers” to have the two opening shots, since they are clearly ineffective?

    The only reasonable explanation I can see for this is that they have always known that the vaccines were/are nearly useless; placebo’s in effect, and concealed/instigated it! The reasons for this are moot.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/08/01/vaccine-booster-shots-32m-begin-next-month/

    1. Yo Minty

      Must keep the peasants population under control.

      They must not get even a hint of freedom from CONVID

    2. Saw a bit of GB news earlier, there was one comment that struck a cord, how come all the people that are pro abortionists, that spout my body my choice and but now are completely silent on mandatory vaccination at best and most are at the forefront of supporting it.

      1. Their idea is that you run the risk of hurting them, rather than the non-person that is a foetus. I know. Not logically very profound but there it is.

    3. How can people be so gullible as to think there is ever going to be an end to this charade?

      1. Spend a bit of time on facebook, there are plenty that are that gullible, most appear to be the condescending types from the Left.

        1. Yes most. But the Tory party is captured by this and they at least think of themselves as being on the Right. It’s as though the country has been lobotomised.

          1. Yes there are some that are perceived to be from the right, they are also the ones with an air of superiority about them rather like the remainer side of the party and the old grandees

          2. Reminds me of the original PLANET OF THE APES films, when the black astronaut was lobotomised by the Apes because his being able to speak disproved their theory of human inferiority.

      2. These people believe that the government has the answer to every problem. In addition, their complacency re the government’s intentions has made them lazy and they seem incapable of independent thought and doing their own research. I decided not to accept a jab after reading articles by Drs M Yeadon and D Cahill, along with several others. Yeadon and Cahill are seriously independent individuals and are not beholden to either the government or big pharma.

        2. Having read through all today’s post was seriously dismayed at the number of nottlers admitting to be vaccinated (not having looked in much for quite some time now to know how life was going here) but was pleased to see that you are at least standing out as a shining beacon decrying the ‘vaccine’ hoax.

          1. Thank you but hardly a beacon, more like a candle in the wind. I believe there exists a number of nottlers who have decided not to partake of Johnson’s offer of the unknowable potion.

    4. Morning, Araminta.

      From what I’ve read and watched, all of it from independent doctors, virologists, microbiologists etc. the “vaccine” is a very dangerous project. Geert Vanden Bossche, a World renowned vaccine and immunisation expert, described the “vaccine” as a prophylactic along with giving a dire warning re the stupidity of widespread inoculation during a pandemic: the latter action giving rise to mutations within of the virus aka variants. His prediction is being proved as all can now see.

      Del Bigtree who fronts the Highwire site explains in layman’s terms why the “vaccine” doesn’t stop transmission and the very real problem of placing specific antibodies into humans.

  4. Tourist Info’
    Here are some of the classic questions that were asked of the 2000 Sydney Olympic Committee via their Web site, and answers supplied where appropriate.

     I hear that all Australian women are beautiful. Is that true and if so, can you send me pictures of the available ones? (Italy)
     I want to go swimming at Bondi Beach on October 20th. Will I turn blue? (Germany)
    (More likely brown, considering the effluent…)
     Does it ever get windy in Australia? I have never seen it rain on TV, so how do the plants grow? (UK) .(Upwards, out of the ground, like the person who asked this question, who themselves will need watering if their IQ drops any lower…)
     Will I be able to see kangaroos in the street? (USA)
    (Depends on how much beer you’ve consumed…)
     Which direction should I drive – Perth to Darwin or Darwin to Perth – to avoid driving with the sun in my eyes? (Germany)
    (Excellent question, considering that the Olympics are being held in Sydney.)
     I want to walk from Perth to Sydney – can I follow the railroad tracks? (Sweden)
    (Sure, it’s only seven thousand miles, so you’ll need to have started about a year and a half ago to get there in time for this October…)
     Is it safe to run around in the bushes in Australia? (Sweden)
    (And accomplish what?)
     It is imperative that I find the names and addresses of places to contact for a stuffed porpoise. (Italy)
    (I’m not touching this one…)
     My client wants to take a steel pooper-scooper into Australia. Will you let her in? (South Africa)
    (Why? We do have toilet paper here…)
     Are there any ATMs in Australia? Can you send me a list of them in Brisbane, Cairns, Townsville and Hervey Bay? (UK)
     Where can I learn underwater welding in Australia? (Portugal)
     Do the camels in Australia have one hump or two? (UK)
     Can I bring cutlery into Australia? (UK)
    Why bother? Use your fingers like the rest of us…)
     Do you have perfume in Australia? (France)
    No. Everybody stinks.)
     Do tents exist in Australia? (Germany)
    (Yes, but only in sporting supply stores, peoples’ garages, and most national parks…)
     Can I wear high heels in Australia? (UK)
    (This HAS to have been asked by a blonde…)
     Can you tell me the regions in Tasmania where the female population is smaller than the male population? (Italy)
    (Yes. Gay nightclubs.)
     Do you celebrate Christmas in Australia? (France)
    (Yes. At Christmas.)
     Can I drive to the Great Barrier Reef? (Germany)
    (Sure, if your vehicle is amphibious.)
     Are there killer bees in Australia? (Germany)
    (Not yet, but we’ll see what we can do when you get here.)
     Can you give me some information about hippo racing in Australia? (USA)
    (What’s this guy smoking, and where do I get some?)
     Will I be able to speak English most places I go? (USA)
     I have a question about a famous animal in Australia, but I forget its name. It’s a kind of bear and lives in trees. (USA)
     Are there supermarkets in Sydney and is milk available all year round? (Germany)
    (Another blonde?)
     Please send a list of all doctors in Australia who can dispense rattlesnake serum. (USA)
    (I love this one…there are no rattlesnakes in Australia)
     Which direction is North in Australia? (USA)
    (Face North and you should be about right)
     Can you send me the Vienna Boys’ Choir schedule? (USA)
    (Americans have long had considerable trouble distinguishing between Austria and Australia.)
     I have developed a new product that is the fountain of youth. Can you tell me where I can sell it in Australia? (USA)
    (From Liz Taylor, perhaps?)
     Are there places in Australia where you can make love outdoors? (Italy)
    (Yes. Outdoors.)
     I was in Australia in 1969 on R+R, and I want to contact the girl I dated while I was staying in Kings Cross. Can you help? (USA)

    1. Sunak would be to the UK what Macron is to France – the bankers’ bitch. He is up to his neck in the world of finance and he would ruin us even further to their advantage.

    2. Sunak’s fully signed up to the great reset agenda. Anyone who supports vaxx passports is tainted.

  6. The culture warriors have captured GB News. 2 August 2021.

    Thing is, Farage has done for GBN exactly what its founders wanted: he has embarrassed the rivals by setting the news agenda and beating their ratings. Tuesday’s show got 107,000 viewers, vs 35,000 for Sky and 93,000 for the BBC News channel – the latter very significant because he was up against the excellent Outside Source, which was meant to be the new model of BBC programme-making. GBN is never going to get BBC One style ratings or provide the corporation’s breadth of coverage – silly metrics for a gonzo start-up – but translate that 100,000 into a regular audience, keep the advertisers happy, and you’ve got a long-running business model.

    More power to Farage’s arm though whether Outside Source is “excellent” is a misconception at best and a joke at worst.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/08/01/culture-warriors-have-captured-gb-news/

    1. A bit more humility and a bit less hubris from Nigel Farage would not come amiss.

      I think that Farage is an excellent TV/Radio presenter and a very effective orator. BUT he has smothered himself in hubris and is so narcissistic about his role in Brexit that he has failed to admit that he enabled Johnson to field remainer Conservative candidates in the general election and said that Boris Johnson’s bodged “deal” was acceptable when it clearly is nothing of the kind as we can see in Northern Ireland and in our fishing waters still being exploited and damaged by the EU. We must also not forget that there are far too many Conservative remainers still in Parliament.

  7. SIR – I enjoyed the first Prom.

    As the organist in a small (Episcopal) church in Dornoch, with only one keyboard, one octave of pedals and six stops, it was an unbelievable joy for me to watch the magnificent Royal Albert Hall organ taking such a prominent part in the final piece.

    What a pity that the organist did not do the instrument (and occasion) justice by wearing a tie.

    Caroline Cousins
    Blairmore, Sutherland

    I too noticed the absence of a tie. Bloody rude to all including Sir Henry Wood but no doubt blessed by the Beeb.

    1. The first Prom

      SIR – Ivan Hewett, writing about the First Night of the Proms, observes that there was little repartee between the organist Daniel Hyde and the orchestra in Poulenc’s organ concerto, and added that he couldn’t hear the strings.

      Could one reason for this be that, while the auditorium was packed to the rafters with cheek-by-jowl promenaders, the members of the orchestra were for unexplained reasons all socially distanced from each other?

      Advertisement

      It was a bit ridiculous, really.

      Martin Henry

      Good Easter, Essex

      1. Ridiculous as in Tokyo where it wouldn’t surprise me were the swimmers to be seen masked as they swam. A potent reflection of our inability to resist hysteria.

        1. I am fairly relaxed about mask-wearing and if people I know say that they still prefer me to wear one, then I will be happy to do so (I carry one in my pocket). But in general I do not wear one (the Government’s “rules” say that we are “allowed” to choose). Wherever I go I see a considerable number of people still wearing the masks, and I think this is because they have all been frightened by the constant messages of fear; I believe that this will continue until more and more of us show these people how we are not frightened. So what I am saying is that my not wearing a mask is doing my bit towards hastening the day that the “frits” regain their courage.

          1. ‘Morning, Elsie.

            I went to Côte last week for lunch and although I had a mask in my pocket, I completely forgot to put it on to enter the place. Nobody said anything about it; I think they were surprised to see me after such a long absence.

  8. Boris’s boiler ban will bankrupt Britain. Spiked 2 August 2021.

    Boris Johnson is reportedly considering granting the humble gas boiler an extra five-year stay of execution.

    We will now have to get rid of our trusty combi gas boilers and oil-fired central-heating systems by 2040. From then on, we will supposedly rely on air-source heat pumps, possibly backed up by solar panels. This is because, according to climate experts, the CO2 emitted by domestic heating systems is a significant contribution to climate change.

    The Green Revolution is a nice idea. Who wouldn’t want a toasty heating system providing gallons of hot water, fuelled by lovely, clean, renewable energy? But unfortunately, there’s a green-coloured fly in the ointment: the UK’s housing stock. Modern, carbon-zero homes are almost hermetically sealed to ensure that energy usage is kept as low as possible. Many British homes aren’t insulated to these standards.

    In my dreams, I live in a beautiful detached house with a large garden. It has been fully insulated, inside and out. I have had a long trench excavated in the garden and put metres of piping into it to extract the warmth from the earth using a ground-source heat pump. I have piping-hot water for my daily shower and if the water should ever be a little tepid, I can use the electricity from the solar panels on my roof to give it a little boost. I can afford all this wonderful and environmentally friendly technology, thanks to a generous subsidy from the government that I get for being a smug early adopter. I am like a green pig in clover and I never see a gas or electricity bill.

    Then, I wake up. I look around and find I’m back in my tiny, 200-year-old terraced cottage. It’s a listed building and I’m not allowed double glazing, because it’s in a conservation area. I’m not allowed to put solar panels on my roof, either.

    It’s not all bad. Like a lot of the UK’s older houses, my home’s hot water and central heating rely on a small combi gas boiler. It’s a very efficient device that heats water almost instantly. My fuel bills are reasonable even though they include a levy that goes towards funding the kind of system that the smug version of me dreams of.

    Out of curiosity, I thought I’d try to find out how my house could be more energy-efficient. An energy consultant told me that because I had limited outdoor space, an air-source heat pump was probably the best option. The device looks like a large air-conditioning unit and its fan makes a humming noise. The pump works a bit like a fridge in reverse and is powered by electricity.

    The consultant said that if I wanted to heat my house properly, I would need to heave up my flagstone floors and install metres of plastic tubing to carry hot water. This is because most heat pumps can’t raise water to the same temperature that a gas boiler can.
    The consultant also told me that the water might not be as hot as I’m used to and that I would need to install a hot-water tank with an immersion element to boost the temperature. Unfortunately, like a lot of people, I don’t have space for a large water tank. However, that little obstacle is nothing compared to the problem posed by the cost of the new system. I was told it could be anything up to £30,000 – providing there weren’t any unforeseen issues. Anyone who thinks the price of this new technology will crash doesn’t understand how labour-intensive retrofitting can be. The overall bill would be many times that of fitting a new gas heating system.

    It seems as if the government has decided to put the proverbial cart before the horse by signing the death warrant of the humble gas boiler. It wants us to retrofit heat pumps to the nation’s housing stock, at enormous expense. It’s going to be a bonanza for companies that jump on the bandwagon early. Expect plenty of green cowboys.
    We aren’t ready for the change. When we no longer use gas to heat our homes, the energy will have to come from the electricity grid, a system that teeters on the brink at the best of times. Without a massive drive towards nuclear power, it’s hard to see how the grid will be able to keep up with the increased demand.

    The government lacks any coherent plan for securing the nation’s long-term energy supply. There doesn’t seem to be any detailed costing of how much this massive change of infrastructure will cost, either. Even if the changeover is heavily subsidised, the money must ultimately come from the taxpayer. We have already loaded up the nation’s credit card paying for the pandemic. Never mind a money tree – we are going to need a money forest. Boris’s Green Revolution is a pipedream.

    Without meaning to be rude about the PM, there’s a chance he won’t even be around to see his revolution in action. But that won’t remove the glint in his eye when he waxes lyrical about the endless commercial opportunities that he thinks these new technologies will provide. He knows that the UK accounts for only around one per cent of global CO2 emissions, but he’s desperate to signal his green virtue ahead of the upcoming COP26 environmental conference, to be held in Glasgow later this year. He’s pledging our money to burnish his environmental credentials.

    If this massive energy switch is to work, it will need a lot more carrot and much less stick. The government’s plans for gas boilers are already frightening the elderly and the poor, many of whom struggle to keep warm as it is. In contrast, I doubt Boris ever sees a gas or electricity bill at No10 – a building with a very poor energy rating. It’s typical of the governing class that it can’t help lecturing and bossing the rest of us around while exempting itself from its own strictures.

    Boris must level with us by telling us what his plans will cost. He needs to give reassurance to those who are already in energy poverty. Until then, we should stick to our trusty gas boilers.

    Lots of words here! Even more Common Sense!

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/08/02/boriss-boiler-ban-will-bankrupt-britain/

    1. 5 years.? it will be much longer than that. Johnson lives n a dream world. A very dangerous man.

        1. Morning Rik. I had Boris turn up in one of my dreams last night which is not a good sign!

        3. Considering his appalling life style , his sperm seem to be fast and furiously in urgent fertile free flow.. I mean he looks like a fumbling , wham bang thankyou ma’am type .

          So why do so many families have fertility problems ?

      2. Morning Johnny. I tend to regard this plan as another HS2 though vastly greater in scope. It will allow for huge sums to be leeched out of the Public Treasury and placed into Private Hands!

      3. Since nobody has started yet, they won’t even acknowledge the problem exists, you are looking at 50+ years time.
        Morning, Johnny.

      4. In that period of time many of today’s wind turbines and solar panels will require replacing at enormous cost and energy.

    2. The people pushing this nonsense know perfectly well it won’t work. They do not have our best interests at heart.

      1. And when the consequences of this nonsense start to demolish ordinary people’s live Boris Johnson and his wife latest mistress will be far away sunning their backsides in the Bahamas.

    3. The extra 5 years will give our deluded PM time to get about 1000 climate zealots to volunteer to sacrifice their gas boilers, cooker hobs and gas fires and take part in a trial of heat pumps in various types of housing to determine the cost and efficacy. I am sure such volunteers will be falling over themselves to participate

    4. Nuclear power, eh? Good luck with that.
      One of my first paid jobs was working on the safety case for Hinckley C. THat was late 1980s. They still haven’t built it, let alone commissioned it, and there’s argument over who is paying. So, over 30 years to NOT YET GENERATE A MILLIWATT! Never mind building out the grid to cope with all that extra power required for heat pumps and electric cars.
      Cloud cuckoo land.

  9. Good morning all. Sunny day, though it rained in the night.

    Millions dead by the end of the week – “official”.

    1. Apparently, they have found a type of paint which means that the no longer have to keep on painting the Forth Bridge

          2. The Lord said unto Moses “Come forth”.
            But he came fifth and lost his beer money.

          3. Moses only drank Kosher wine . The Lord also said to us ” Go forth and Multiply ” and that’s why accountancy has been very popular with us Jews as a profession ever since!

          7. Aaarrrgghhhhh …… the dreaded football results.
            All life came to a standstill – and then the pencil broke.

    2. Morning to you.

      Just a very silly question , but would we be able to produce that quantity of steel for a bridge again?

      “The superstructure, which weighs approximately 51,324t, was built from 1886 to 1890. Altogether, the construction of the bridge made use of 53,000t of steel, 20,950 cubic metres (m3) of granite, 6,780m3 of stone, 49,200m3 of concrete, 50t of cement and 6.5 million rivets.”

  12. Anyone prepared to “decode” this for me??

    “Samaritans volunteers abused their position of trust by having sex with

    vulnerable callers, The Telegraph understands, prompting the charity to

    ‘listen in’ to conversations for the first time.

    The “shocking” incidents are believed to include volunteers meeting up with callers for inappropriate relationships.

    It is understood that there was a “specific demographic” of some

    “middle-aged men” who were abusing female callers by meeting up and

    having sex with them.

    The charity, which provides a helpline

    service for people in emotional distress or at risk of suicide, has

    strict rules concerning volunteer contact with callers.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/08/01/exclusive-samaritans-listen-conversations-volunteers-had-sex/?utm_content=telegraph&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1627852025
    Hmm “Specific Demographic”

  14. 336203+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,

    Monday 2 August: Vaccination surveillance threatens to upend the concept of privacy

    As with many other odious issues this should NEVER have got the breath of discussion but for the insistence of the electorate via the polling booth and the “vote in to keep out party before Country” mode of voting which for the last three decades has been steering these Isles into very dangerous waters under a succession of treacherous political toerags, major, the wretch cameron, treacherous may, & now the turkish delight aka the fat controller.

    I do believe a General Election leaving out the lab/lib/con criminal cartel or a civil war are nearing to be the only options left and this is NOT said lightly.

      1. 336203+ up ticks,
        Morning E&S,
        No right minded, person of decency wants civil war but having no choice in the matter and righting wrongs NOW
        with the children’s future in mind is very different.

        The criminal element of the overseers want a countrywide jaboree outset being from the cradle, whilst
        running a people trafficking campaign via DOVER allowing the entrance of MORE foreign paedophiles to
        continue the paedophile rape & abuse plague seen at rotherham,rochdale, and ALL compass points nationwide.
        It surprises me that the only actions taken is to change the political criminal element for one of the same ilk again & again.
        Change the names to protect the guilty, with the peoples consent.

        1. Right now the UK is being invaded in dribs & drabs & being steadily occupied by millions of young male Muslims & Black Africans ( many of whom are Muslims ) of military age whose probably only skill is to be able to fire & maintain am AK47. This is being done with the consent & planning of the authorities. So its either civil war or submission to Allah & the eventual establishment of Caliphate rule in the UK as soon as they reach 15 – 20% of the voters

          1. 336203+ up ticks,
            E&S,
            ONE could very well be right in thinking that these political overseers were recruiting.

      2. Blair made sure 20+ years ago that only criminals and government employees were seriously armed.

        1. Correct & he also annulled any serious treason legislation so that he & his former ministers would not be charged with treason once out of office

      1. Good morning, ogga

        This was posted yesterday – but it deserves to be seen by as many of us as possible.

    2. He is, with respect to the “vaccine”, uneducated. If he had taken the time to do some independent research he would find a wealth of information that exposes the “vaccine” as, at best unreliable as it doesn’t stop transmission, and at worst is totally useless.

    5. That is ridiculous. He is ridiculous. Whatever is the point of vaccination in the first place if it doesn’t work. They know it is ineffective, and that is their admission, right there.

    6. Again, to reiterate. A vaccine ONLY affects you. No one else. You can still spread it, still get it, but no one apart from you benefits from your having a vaccine.

      You neither help nor hinder anyone else.

  19. Morning all

    SIR – A young person I know has just received a second invitation from the NHS to be vaccinated against Covid.

    Both envelopes have been clearly marked: “Private and confidential – addressee only”. If the invitation to be vaccinated is private matter between an individual and the NHS, how can we justify demanding that people later demonstrate their vaccination status publicly in order to access events, airports and universities, and to secure employment? Surely whether or not you have accepted the invitation is even more of a private matter.

    We have just received our “Covid passports”, proving our vaccination status. These, too, arrived in envelopes marked, “Private and confidential – addressee only”, yet surely their whole purpose is to be displayed. There is something rather disingenuous about all this. Either medical matters are confidential or they are not.

    Lucy Beney

    Charlton Horethorne, Somerset

    SIR – You report that young people are to be given vouchers to encourage them to have Covid vaccinations. Is there to be a reward for those who did the right thing in the first place and had their jabs as soon as they could?

    Linda Fisher

    Gloucester

    SIR – I see young people will be offered free Deliveroo food in exchange for a vaccine – but what kind of food? Will this help with the anti-obesity drive?

    Simon Warde

    Bognor Regis, West Sussex

    SIR – Incentives for vaccinations are not new. I can remember the doctor giving me a lollipop for having the smallpox vaccination.

    My only concern is that, when it comes to the booster jab, will some people hold out for more than a pizza?

    Gill Taylor

    Halstead, Essex

    SIR – What a prospect those of us over 70 now face. We endured food rationing in early life and now we face the rationing of NHS healthcare in later life.

    Dr Nigel Knott

    Seend, Wiltshire

    SIR – There cannot be a single medically trained person in Britain who was surprised by the “secret plans” to deny care to elderly care-home residents in the event of “resources becoming exhausted”.

    This is the basic principle of the triage system – namely that, if there is severe crisis where it is impossible to help all who need treatment, priority is given to those with the highest chance of survival. Would anyone argue that it was better to put the needs of a 90-year-old above those of a 20-year-old if both required a ventilator?

    We may find these types of decisions distasteful but, until unlimited funds are made available to the NHS, medical professionals will be in the unenviable position of having to make them.

    Dr Julia Sharpe

    Salisbury, Wiltshire

    1. And out come the excuses for the mass murder in care homes from Dr Julia Sharpe.
      That is a straw man argument, because the NHS was NEVER faced with a 20 year old and a 90 year old both requiring the same and only ventilator.
      They jumped in and started murdering the old people while NHS staff were producing TikTok dancing videos because they did not have enough work to do!

    2. “[U]nlimited funds”, Julia? The NHS is a black hole where money is concerned; it is inefficient and throwing money at it will not cure the problem.

  20. Choosing a cat

    SIR – Like Dr Hilary Aitken (Letters, July 31) we lost a much-loved 16-year-old cat at the start of the pandemic, and wanted a rescue cat due to our age.

    But I do not think it is irresponsible to obtain a cat from a reputable charity after only seeing it online. We were given detailed background information – and were thoroughly vetted ourselves, supplying photos of our house and garden.

    The personality of a cat does not emerge when it is seen in a pen, as in “normal times”. Our new companion is now thoroughly settled and happy.

    Gillian F Sargent

    Worthing, West Sussex

    1. We’ve fostered many cats over the time. The latest one is very much a solitary beast who doesn’t like anyone, doesn’t like being fussed, picked up or sitting on laps.

      I let him be – he’s been with us for about 3 months and maybe is used to getting sent back. As long as he comes home at the end of the day, he’s a free spirit.

    2. I chose Oscar from an on-line photo and reading the blurb about him. He turned out to be nothing like the blurb! Still, I’m happy to have him and eventually he will be a wonderful dog with everybody (whether he likes it or not!). He’s an awful lot calmer and more settled now (after eight weeks yesterday). He didn’t bother about the chimney sweeps.

  21. Salmond blogger Craig Murray hands himself in to police to begin jail term. 2 August 2021.

    Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, has handed himself into police in Edinburgh as he faces an eight-month prison sentence.

    A court ruled in March that his blogposts contained details which, if pieced together, could lead readers to identify women who made allegations against Salmond, who was acquitted of all 13 charges including sexual assault and attempted rape in March last year.

    Murray is going to gaol for the same reasons as Tommy Robinson. He has spoken out against the lies and disinformation of the Elite!

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/aug/01/alex-salmond-blogger-craig-murray-hands-himself-into-police-to-begin-jail-term

    1. Hmmmm – “if”, “could” – obviously guilty? On a separate issue – if Salmond was acquitted [or was it not proven?] surely the women who made the accusations should be identified and prosecuted for making false allegations???

    2. If only Murray had used someone as discreet as Alki Campbell to blog for him.

    3. That is absolutely disgusting, why should he be put in jail ? The effing so called hierarchy are always on top, it’s not right.

  22. Morning, all Y’all.
    Beginning to need a jumper today. Chilly. New bees very sensibly staying indoors rather than foraging.
    Weirdly, collecting two hives worth yesterday, Firstborn was stung through his white bee-suit, whereas I, in T-shirt & trousers, wasn’t. As Firstborn said, quoting Captain Haddock: “Billions of blue blistering barnacles in ten thousand thundering typhoons, why does it always happen to me?”

          1. Blimey typical oldie he does go on a bit eh. 😉
            But you’re half way there his name I think is Richard.
            I went to see Tommy Emmanuel the guy in the middle, at St Albans arena a few years ago, when you see such talent it makes a humble guitar player feel like giving up.

  24. Momentous day today for the ‘limpics. For the first time ever, a man is going to compete in a women’s event.

      1. You cannot talk to them – they are convinced that a couple of years on oestrogen makes trans women have a similar muscle mass to women. Anything else is transphobia.

        1. I sincerely wish that there is a Chinese weightlifter who wipes the floor with her, but I’m not holding out much hope.

          1. I hope the New Zealander “wins” because that will highlight the whole farce. If a Chinese woman wins, it will be seized on as proof that it’s a level playing field.
            I’m just waiting for the male world number 180 tennis player to transition and hoover up the million pounds on offer at Wimbledon.

    2. Morning, Stormy. Still on night shift?
      Wasn’t there a post yesterday about a guy brought up as a girl competing in the 1936 Berlin Olympics?

      1. Night off last night but I’ve agreed to work tonight to cover someone who’s away. (It always seems a good idea when I say yes 🙁 )

        1. Urgh… You’re a harder person than I am.
          I hated night shifts with a passion. Always had a blood sugar crash about 02:00, so needed lots of heavy food to keep going – that, or marmite & cucumber sandwiches.

          1. It’s voluntary. It’s not my main job. I have a ‘9-5’ and the weekends/nights are a second job where I pick up shifts whenever they are available and I feel like it.
            At the moment, the team is short staffed so there are a lot of shifts available and I say yes to too many 🙁

          2. You are working too hard! I have worked 6 days a week in the past (they weren’t even nights!), and it gets to you after about 6 months.

          3. Got to discipline yourself.
            Both when complting my Ph.D and MBA, I used to work 09:00 – 17:00, home, dinner, then restart 21:00 til about 02:00 Mon – Thurs. Friday night & Saturday off, work 09:00 – 16:00 Sunday to make up the hours. Not sure I’d care to try that again, but once you’re in the swing, it goes OK.
            Watch diet, exercise and coffee intake, though.

          4. One can do amazing things while young. I once pulled an all nighter to complete an Open University assignment (for my ex-louse husband) and then went to work for a full day’s work, while he lounged around at home.

          5. I once did 52 hours, coring and shutting down the lab at T.D. Just got to bed , heard a helicpoter arriving. Toolpusher rushes in … that’s for you, boy ….

          6. Swing shift in the RAF (00:01 – 08:00) was always fortified by the NAAFI wagon rolling up with strong tea and corned beef rolls – and I still like corned beef!

          9. 7 Health Benefits of Eating Cucumber
            It’s High in Nutrients. Cucumbers are low in calories but high in many important vitamins and minerals. …
            It Contains Antioxidants. …
            It Promotes Hydration. …
            It May Aid in Weight Loss. …
            It May Lower Blood Sugar. …
            It Could Promote Regularity. …
            Easy to Add to Your Diet.

    3. Yesterday I posed the question here : “Has any person born a female transed into being a male and been successful in men’s sport?” Nobody came up with any examples.

      1. The ‘limpic limit for testosterone is 10 nanomoles per litre of blood. In normal women, and by that I mean women, it is 2 nanomoles.
        They can reduce it to zero and there still wouldn’t be parity. How many days’ training a year do the joking women lose due to period cramps?

    4. One day a man will run the women’s 100m and smash any world records forever.

      We live in an insane world. That this is categorically unfair on the women competitors is disgusting.

    1. Was it when The Sun stopped Page 3 models that girls stopped going ‘topless’ on the beach? Between about 1980 and 1995 young girls – and even not so young girls – were very happy to manifest their mammaries. What caused the puritanism that put an end to that?

      1. Better awareness of the harm done by the sun’s rays. Breast skin is very, very sensitive.

        1. Recall reading some years ago that sunburned nipples can be soothed by cutting a tomato in half and applying the wet side to the affected parts. No idea if it works. Cooling, I suppose.

          2. One of SWMBOs ladies mags, I think, back in the 80’s. But it’s so long ago, I dont recall properly.

    1. A society that treats children as the enemy of adults deserve to collapse.

      It is going to collapse! It’s approaching a USSR moment where the divergence between Truth and Reality is so great that it can no longer be bridged with even the most outrageous lies!

      1. 336203+ up ticks,
        Morning AS,
        IMO what the JAY report revealed as in a multitude of children being the playthings of imported paedophiles
        with the peoples being complicit via going into three monkey mode this inclusive of council members ,police etc, showed the country was rapidly sinking in a sh!te bog.

        26 August 2014
        Published on 26 August 2014, the Jay report revealed that an estimated 1,400 children, by a “conservative estimate”, had been sexually exploited in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013.

    2. A society that treats children as the enemy of adults deserve to collapse.

      It is going to collapse! It’s approaching a USSR moment where the divergence between Truth and Reality is so great that it can no longer be bridged with even the most outrageous lies!

  27. Michael Mosbacher
    Who really owns the Benin bronzes?
    1 August 2021, 8:22am

    https://images.contentstack.io/v3/assets/bltf04078f3cf7a9c30/blt31d87b8467d52a69/61064d5ebe3cec3a86c1086a/benin.jpeg?format=jpg&width=1920&height=1080&fit=crop
    The Benin Expedition 1897

    Statues must fall. Bronzes must be ‘returned’. The artefacts in question are the famous ‘Benin bronzes’ taken by the British from the royal court of the Kingdom of Benin in 1897. The present demand is that they be returned to Nigeria; confusingly the kingdom’s former territory is now part of Nigeria, not the modern day Republic of Benin. In 2016 Jesus College, Cambridge announced it would be discussing the return of a bronze cockerel. In May, Germany agreed in principle to the return of the Benin objects in its public collections — Germany holds nearly 300 of the most prized items. In June, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art stated it would be returning two plaques.

    With the Benin bronzes (which are actually made of many different materials) we have a useful exemplar of the fashionable narrative of dastardly colonialist deeds by dead white European males. The fact that the objects were taken from a West African kingdom that could hardly be confused with a pacifist, vegan commune — Benin grew rich on the Atlantic slave trade and the slaying of elephants; it practiced human sacrifice and possibly ritual cannibalism — does not quench the appetite of those demanding their return. Moral taint only seems to apply to westerners.

    In January 1897 James Phillips, the acting consul general of the British territory of the Niger Coast Protectorate, led a party of nine white colonial officials and 250 or so African porters to the Kingdom of Benin. They were ambushed. Four of the colonialists, including Phillips, were killed and a further three either died in the ambush or after being taken prisoner. Many of the African porters were killed.

    In retaliation the British launched a punitive expedition against the kingdom. British forces captured Benin City and the palace of the oba, or king, on February 18, 1897 and the territory of the kingdom was incorporated into the British colony that would become Nigeria. The oba’s palace and other ceremonial buildings were richly ordained with ornate ivory carvings and bronzes predominantly dating from the 16th century onwards. These were taken, along with a huge quantity of uncarved ivory, by the British forces, with the justification that the sale of these items would defray the costs of the expedition. In truth, many of the looted items ended up in the private possession of the British officers leading the expedition.

    By September 1897 a selection of the bronzes were already on display in the British Museum. That items of such quality and refinement should have come out of what was perceived as a primitive society generated astonishment. Today, items taken from the Kingdom of Benin are on display in over 160 Western museums, 38 of them in the United States — at the Met and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, in the collections of Harvard and Yale universities, and elsewhere.

    The Kingdom of Benin controlled trade in certain goods through its fetish priests placing a magical juju on them. This placed the goods outside the sphere of everyday items and, importantly, the bounds of normal commerce. A similar ritual taint has been placed on the Benin bronzes, this time not by fetish priests but by Dan Hicks, professor of contemporary archaeology at Oxford and curator of the Pitt Rivers Museum — the university’s ethnographic collection. Hicks has called for the return of the Benin bronzes. In his tract The Brutish Museums (selected by the New York Times as one of its Art Books of the Year), he also demands ‘the physical dismantling of the white infrastructure of every anthropology and ‘world culture’ museum’.

    The Kingdom of Benin, right up to its downfall in 1897, held slaves and practiced human sacrifice. Even Hicks — a strong partisan for Benin and its oba — acknowledges these shortcomings. The Brutish Museums asks ‘what then became…of the Oba’s harem, slaves and servants’ after the British conquest — i.e., it acknowledges that there were slaves in Benin in 1897.

    Hicks goes on: ‘It is continually left vague how many deaths represented human sacrifice and how many were casualties of the British attack’ — i.e., he acknowledges that human sacrifice was practiced there. What is left for debate is how many of the 1897 dead were killed in human sacrifice and how many were casualties of the British raid.

    The Kingdom of Benin was a slaving state and grew rich on the back of the Atlantic slave trade. It captured other Africans and sold them to European slave traders. Hicks acknowledges this:

    ‘The Kingdom grew in power and scope during its involvement in European and transatlantic trade from the 16th century, at first with Portuguese traders, and later British and French — central among which was the slave trade.’

    There is some debate as to the relative importance of the slave trade versus the trade in ivory — not exactly seen today as a noble undertaking either. What is clear is that slaving was at least as important to the rise of Benin as it was to the rise of Britain, and very probably considerably more so.

    The very metal used to make the Benin bronzes, coming from horseshoe-shaped manillas manufactured in Europe, was obtained by the kingdom in exchange for slaves. The Benin bronzes are every bit as much an expression of the wealth created by slavery as a plantation house in the American South or an English stately home built on the proceeds of West Indies sugar estates. Yet Hicks and his fellow returnists attach no moral opprobrium to these West African artefacts, while no tour of a tainted house can be completed without acknowledging its founding sin.

    Few today would want to argue that the Benin bronzes were initially legitimately acquired — those taken in 1897 were clearly secured without consent. Many Benin objects, including all those in American museum collections, were purchased on the secondary market, either by the institutions themselves or by their subsequent donors. The bronzes that the Met is returning are a case in point. They had been in the collection of the British Museum and were then transferred to the Nigerian National Museum in the 1950s. Some time thereafter, in unclear circumstances — they weren’t formally deaccessioned — they left the Nigerian museum and reentered the market. In 1991 they were bequeathed to the Met. In other words, these particular bronzes had been previously ‘returned’ — and their second return has more to do with their dubious recent history than the events of 1897. Their fate is not the greatest advertisement for restitution.

    It is unlikely the major auction houses will again be willing to sell objects taken in 1897. In 2007, Sothebys sold a Benin bronze in New York for $4.7 million (£3.4m). In 2011, Sothebys in London announced that it would sell a Benin ivory mask with an estimate of £3.5 million to £4.5 million but then swiftly reversed the decision and withdrew the lot under pressure from the Nigerian government. The London item had a more problematic provenance than the New York offering: the ivory mask was offered for sale by the descendants of one of the British officers involved in the 1897 expedition, while the New York item was being deaccessioned by the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo, New York. When the Albright-Knox bronze was offered at auction it was challenged in the courts, but solely on the grounds of the legitimacy of the museum’s deaccessioning its antiquities and pre-modern works, not on the basis of provenance.

    The direction of travel for the Benin bronzes, or at least some of them, is becoming clear. In Benin City there are plans for a new $100 million (£70m) Edo Museum of West African Art designed by noted British-Ghanaian architect Sir David Adjaye. This is planned as a repository of returned Benin objects. It seems unlikely that their exhibits will be displayed with the same kind of contextualising plaques you now find in Western museums next to objects with a tainted pedigree.

    Meanwhile, the Church of England is ‘in discussions’ with Nigeria to return two Benin busts. The trouble is that these were not looted in 1897, indeed, they were not created until the early 1980s. The objects in question were a gift from the University of Nigeria to the then-Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie, and were freshly minted. Some institutions want to be guilty, even when they have nothing to be guilty about.

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

    SaveTheWest • a day ago • edited
    Dan Hicks, professor of contemporary archaeology at Oxford … demands ‘the physical dismantling of the white infrastructure of every anthropology and ‘world culture’ museum’.

    Dan Hicks is a neo-racialist wokust. If we translate his words into their real meaning we get: “every effort must be made to destroy Western Civilisation”.

    Afua Jones O’Brien SaveTheWest • a day ago
    Would that include dismantling every road, railway, bridge, port etc across Asia and Africa built by those mean Victorians?

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/who-really-owns-the-benin-bronzes-

    1. The Kingdom of Benin was a slaving state and grew rich on the back of the Atlantic slave trade. It captured other Africans and sold them to European slave traders.

      This of course is the perennial truth of the slaving issue! It could not have existed without the full cooperation and assistance of Native Africans!

      1. Unacceptable facts such as this should be given no credit and regarded as fake truth.

        1. Puts me in mind of people who who talk about ‘true facts’. There are true and false statements, – all facts are true.

          1. Thank you, Stormy, ‘true facts’ is a classic English grammar example of superfluity.

      2. Any native of Africa might well have been unwillingly facing an option, Slavery or Death, with the choice being made by his uncle or the chief of the tribe by whom ha had been captured. Slavery was the kind and humane way of disposing of relatives who might challenge for leadership. Getting a few shiny beads* on the deal didn’t hurt either.
        * gold, guns…

    2. I think Africa is doing a good job of dismantling Victorian bridges, railways and so on without lifting a finger. It’s the method known as neglect.

    3. I’m sure the current lot of Chinese financial colonisers will be more beneficial to the dark continent.

    4. We should keep them in Britain, and add a notice next to them explaining the context of slavery and human sacrifice. Purely in the interests of ensuring that history is more widely known, you understand.

  28. Good Moaning.
    We have ….. wait for it ….. sunshine!!!!
    I see Lewis Hamilton claims he is suffering from ‘Long Covid’. Of course you are, pet. Would you still have it if you’d won?
    The BTL comments in the Mail are unsympathetic.
    p.s. since the black snowflake claims he had blurred vision, why the heck did he think it was all right to drive a sooper dooper killing machine?

    1. Lewis Hamilton fears he has Long Covid after struggling with dizziness, fatigue and blurred vision after finishing 3rd in Budapest GP
      DT Story

      He is grossly irresponsible. Does he not present a mortal danger to other drivers if he is ill? Is he so self-obsessed that only thinks about himself?

      1. Morning Rastus – LH finished 3rd but was moved up to second when Vettel was disqualified for a fuel infringement
        Alonso was third.

    2. He said he felt giddy driving the later stages of the race. He should be cited for dangerous driving.

    3. He didn’t react very well to being comprehensively booed after the qualifying on Saturday either.

  29. 336203+ up ticks,
    This has been awaiting a trigger for decades, could any politico insider investments already be in place ?
    The political point of the needle on a regular basis is complete herd control and that is coming more into the light via their
    ( the politico’s) desperation.

    Flu will shortly be making an unwelcome return that could result in peoples saying, this is little different than that there covid, if any.

    Dt,
    Vaccine booster shots for 32m to begin next month
    Ministers aim to deliver average of almost 2.5m third doses a week, with a key role for pharmacies

      1. 336203+ up ticks,
        Morning NtN,
        In the nicest possible way I can assure you this is NO time to relax.

          1. 336203+ up ticks,
            NtN,
            But if “sark” was not in evidence then could very well be misconstrued.

          2. Most people don’t need one to identify by (sarc) or even a Scottish shirt (look it up) that one is being either ironic or sarcastic.

        2. At least a few people appear to be waking up. But by combining it with the flu shot, they will get all the people who usually get that. Kerching!
          I wonder if it will be possible to get the flu shot separately on the NHS?

          1. 336203+ up ticks,
            Morning BB2,
            If we are dealing with a NEW political construct dept,
            ( covid) would you trust their agents saying this is a superior flu shot ?

    1. The leftards response to the Latin lessons is telling. They used to say that it was elitist as it was predominantly taught in yer public schools, giving their pupils advantage but now that it is proposed to give state school children the same opportunity, it is criticised as unnecesary.
      A fine example of wanting weights rather than ladders.

      1. Non enim tam praeclarum est scire Latine quam turpe nescire …

        …. and of course, it can give one a decided advantage when dealing with Latin Americans.

      2. My godmother used to teach Latin and Greek in a state school. I think it was a girls’ secondary modern in London, though that sounds unbelievable now. It stopped a very long time ago.

      3. I went to a state school and learned Latin (I actually did A Level Latin). Mind you, the Lefties couldn’t wait to get rid of grammar schools.

          1. Si hic legere potes, operis boni in rebus Latinus alacribus et fructuosis potiri potes !
            :¬))

          3. If you can read this, you can get a good job in the fast-paced, well-paid world of Latin
            ;¬)

  32. Jacinda has gone full bonkers

    Auckland, New Zealand

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/78c545255a27df0b1b0d1a14875a6fd1540ce27e/0_0_6000_4000/master/6000.jpg?width=720&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=aed1bd5341d3a40cf29caccbe1f01f72
    New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, centre, is covered during a ceremony to formally apologise for a racially charged part of the nation’s history known as the Dawn Raids. The Dawn Raids are known as the time when the Pasifika people were targeted for deportation in the mid-1970s during aggressive home raids by authorities.
    Photograph: Brett Phibbs/AP

    1. Only ritual Seppuku will do to atone.
      Hiding under a sheet is not enough.
      Daft bat. Jesus, the Kiwis have really elected someone with roos in their top paddock…

    2. Trained at the court of Anthony Charles Lynton Blair, that’s all you need to know.

    3. Any chance they could cover her complete and tie the thing tightly round her neck? Just to show real contrition, of course.

    4. They’re throwing a sheet over her, tying it off them chucking the waste in the bin?

      Sounds good. Do the folks doing the covering then say ‘Cheers mate, took a lot of planning to get rid of that bint’?

    5. I always had the impression that Kiwi’s were quite down to earth sensible people…………..installing her was a bad move I think they all may well regret.

    1. Those little kids watching Greta through the window will be little European kids if the policies she wants are put through.

    2. ‘Morning, Maggie, obviously people like Mike Graham are easily fooled. Would he like to buy this bridge I have for sale?

      1. Morning, Tom.
        Those with spare bridges need to look out for gruff Billy goats!

        1. Best place to find Gruff Billy Goats is Microsoft, where he’s doling out his euthanasia injections.

    3. Britain was warmer and wetter during the Roman period. All those farting chariot horses, no doubt.
      The Mediaeval Warm Period was followed by the Little Ice Age (roughly Tudor and Stuart era).

    4. ‘Climate change’ is real. I can see it out the window. This morning it was raining. it isn’t now, ergo, the climate has changed.

      Is man responsible for that? No. What he is responsible for is pollution in the form of litter, waste and urbanisation. Look at the UK, for example. Big cities, a mass of people, unsustainable farming for the population and even then ever more people flooding in.

      The solution is to throw the green rubbish into a fire. All the legislation. All of it. Stop polluting the oceans under the WEEE act. Start recycling. Fund those from taxation by all means.

  37. Firstborn is 30 today 🙂 🙂 🙂
    We planned a family get-together somewhere nice (like Italy) some years ago, as Second Son was 20 in April, SWMBO 60 in May, and I made 60 in June, so we’d planned a 170 years birthday.
    Lockdown, etc means absolutely zilch in that respect has happened. However, FB and I are taking a day free from roofing, pig farming and bee herding, and going back to my place today so at least the 4 of us can go and get a nice Italisan dinner. Not the same, but what can you do? Maybe reinstate the plans for next year’s 40th wedding – like the 2020 Olympics held in 2021?

    1. Morning OB

      No 2 son 48 years old today … it feels like yesterday when he was born .

      We had been to watch a tank display at Bovington with friends , very hot year, 1973 ..
      There were 4 adults and no 1 son in our Hillman Hunter estate .. we decided to take a short cut home to Dorchester ( where we used to live decades ago) via the River Frome … which was shallow at Moreton , Moh was driving … please don’t risk it , I said , he said , don’t worry we will be fine … and of course we weren’t !

      The car had to be towed out , and we waded to the other side .. after a good deal of annoyance and inconvenience and debate and a soaking wet car , well the inevitable happened a couple of days later .. .

      Seems just like 2 minutes ago and as we are only 10mts away now … we still go down to the river with the dogs and laugh at the memory and many people still make the same mistake! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moreton,_Dorset

      2. Hillman Hunter Estate? There’s posh; our car was a Hillman imp.
        Our journey up to the Lake District with 2 sons, camping equipment and a small dog was cosy.
        And good fun.
        Happy birthday to the Spare Heir.

        1. Morning Anne ,
          Our old car was a battered 2nd hand car .. our old mini traveller gave up the ghost , and when the Hillman died , we then bought another old battered mini traveller .. those days were poverty stricken .. with house mortgage interest rates sky high , and these days we are just about getting by !

          We also went camping in our Mini traveller , with dog etc that was to Tenby .. and I don’t know how we managed to rough it , toddler and 5year old son, spaniel etc… we really did rough it .. Do you know what , I HATE camping .

          It was good fun at the time , but flies /wasps etc.

          Camping was a remote activity in those days, wasn’t it.

          1. Went camping with the Hillman Imp when I was seven months pregnant. The first night spent in a two-man bivvy in a field was not much fun, especially with all the daddy long legs infesting the tent (it was late September) and I had terrible heartburn.

          2. Snap,
            That and mossies, and cow poo , more insects in those days , and we also think a family of badgers snuffled around the outside of our tent , Jerry (son) thought we were being attacked by bears , and Mike cuddled into R and I , it was all very dramatic , because we were all desperate to wee, and hanging on for ever to our bladders .. They were badgers , their beetle laden pooh was the clue !

          3. Camping trips was all we did when the boys were young……… in 1980 we borrowed a small towing caravan – that was a bit better. After that we started venturing further afield – to France.

            The first time we took E camping was at Easter when he was only three months old. It was so cold I spent a sleepless night worrying that he’d died of frostbite.

          4. We stayed on a campsite beside Lake Windermere. To our horror, the boys picked up a Brum accent from their playmates.
            We just gritted our teeth and said nothing so as not to make the new accent forbidden and exciting. A fortnight back in darkest Essex and things returned to normal.

          5. That is so funny and pretty awful at the same time .

            Children say the most terrible things sometimes(often)

            My eldest who was 9 at the time , visited a pals house , where they watched The Fonz (Happy Days TV series ) together.. J thought Henry Winkler was just too cool for words .. The other lad’s parents bought their son a leather jacket , and a few Americanisations crept in .

            We resisted, of course but rode his chipper or was it a chopper bike around like a maniac .

            I must say the Olympics has shown some amazing new items like BMX free style , skate board and all the water sports on the waves , and canooing, where do they practise these things ?

          6. The BMX bikers practised at the skate park near here. It’s in a redundant factory site and kids from all over the place have learnt skills here and had fun. The council wants to redevelop the site and the skate park has to close at the end of August, with nowhere else to go. Meanwhile, the plans are 10 years old and the council doesn’t have a developer so it will all just be allowed to be derelict for goodness knows how long.

            https://www.stroudnewsandjournal.co.uk/news/19483289.bmx-rider-trained-rush-skatepark-wins-olympic-gold/

          7. The BMX bikers practised at the skate park near here. It’s in a redundant factory site and kids from all over the place have learnt skills here and had fun. The council wants to redevelop the site and the skate park has to close at the end of August, with nowhere else to go. Meanwhile, the plans are 10 years old and the council doesn’t have a developer so it will all just be allowed to be derelict for goodness knows how long.

            https://www.stroudnewsandjournal.co.uk/news/19483289.bmx-rider-trained-rush-skatepark-wins-olympic-gold/

          8. We stayed on a campsite beside Lake Windermere. To our horror, the boys picked up a Brum accent from their playmates.
            We just gritted our teeth and said nothing so as not to make the new accent forbidden and exciting. A fortnight back in darkest Essex and things returned to normal.

          1. My parents had one as a second car circa ’74/’75 ish.
            I remember it felt like a bit of a toy.

        3. My first car also, did the car have its speciality of a warped head! Not rude, honest.

        4. We had two Hillman Imps, and a Hunter later on.

          Honeymoon to the Lake District in the Imp (the first one) blew the head gasket on one of the steep passes, and came home by train. The ex had to go back up later to collect it.

  38. From https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/bankers-stop-moaning-think-poor-london-stock-exchange-hh7nvvzrq
    Young investment bankers on big salaries who complain about being overworked have come under fire from one of the City of London’s veteran financiers.

    Xavier Rolet, the former boss of the London Stock Exchange who was previously a leading banker, has told graduates who do not enjoy their jobs “by any means do something else”.

    He suggested that financial firms troubled by mutinous staff “should try hiring poor, hungry kids who managed to put themselves through college instead of entitled [graduates] — and you won’t have that problem”. Rolet’s comments to the Mail on Sunday and Financial News are likely to prove divisive in the Square Mile.

    Whoops. But it’s true – don’t like the job, believe you are worth more – go and find a better one, put your CV out there and see how much you are really worth.

    1. The war queen works at least 60+ hours a week. Usually more at weekends. When she was commuting she’d check and answer emails and messages late on Sunday.

      That said, it’s killing her. Too many times have we sat at 4am – an hour before her alarm – with her sobbing to pieces.

      Even when wfh it’s usually 8 before she finishes.

        1. Sounds like she doesn’t get time to think of anything else. That sort of pressure can only end one way, Sadly.

        2. Yes, and in 5 years stops. Well, 4 year, 4 months. Flip knows what she’ll do then. Probably run her own company. She’ll be 45 – I think. I’m not allowed to know (even though I do).

        1. Investment banking. I think. It’s certainly involves a lot of tax knowledge – the real sort, not my ‘i hate tax ranting’.

  39. A supporter protests outside the trial of comedian Mark Meechan who was prosecuted under the Communications Act for making a “grossly offensive” YouTube video.

    Last year, we submitted evidence to a consultation by the Law Society of England and Wales about the law governing harmful, threatening, and false communications, telling the Commission we thought the existing law was far too censorious, particularly the Malicious Communications Act 1988 and section 127 of the Communications Act 2003. (It was this section which resulted in the prosecution of the comedian Mark Meechan for being “grossly offensive” after he made a YouTube video about his efforts to teach his girlfriend’s pug to give a Nazi salute.) We urged the Commission to scrap those offences and we’re pleased to see that it is following our advice. In a report published last month, which refers to the evidence submitted by the FSU repeatedly, the Commission recommended replacing those offences with a new “harm-based” communications offence, whereby it would no longer be enough to show a communicant caused annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety to secure a prosecution; in future, the Crown would need to show that they deliberately intended to cause non-trivial psychological or physical harm. In addition, we urged the Commission to exempt journalists and media companies from communications offences and it has followed this advice, too.

    While we’re glad to see so many of our recommendations adopted, we do have some reservations about the Commission’s proposals. We’re concerned about overly broad definitions of the word “harm”. As a bare minimum, no one should be prosecuted for a given communication unless it can be shown beyond doubt it caused real harm to a person of reasonable firmness. On a platform like Twitter, for instance, which has 330 million monthly active users, a message may cause one of those individuals non-trivial psychological harm because they are particularly psychologically fragile. But it wouldn’t be fair to prosecute a communicant on that basis.

    You can see our press release on the Law Commission’s proposals here. Andrew Tettenborn of our Legal Advisory Council has written for the Critic about the Commission’s report, and FSU Research Director Dr Radomir Tylecote spoke to GB News about what the proposals would mean for free speech, highlighting some of the absurd cases that have come before the courts in recent years.

    Hatun Tash’s rights must be protected

    Following the knife attack on the Christian preacher and FSU member Hatun Tash at Speakers’ Corner last month, we have written again to the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick CBE, urging the Met to do more to protect Ms Tash’s right to free speech:

    We accept that policing the capital with necessarily limited resources is a difficult job. As such, we recognise that there is a practical limit to the protection the police can offer to Ms Tash. However we believe that the duty in Fáber v. Hungary is clearly engaged in this case. The Met must therefore make clear to Ms Tash, if it hasn’t already, the steps it proposes to take in order to facilitate her right to speak in Hyde Park. In addition, the Met should make clear to the public, in general terms, how it proposes to carry out its positive duty to protect freedom of speech against intimidatory violence from those seeking to silence others.

    You can find a record of our correspondence with the Met about Hatun Tash here and watch her being interviewed on GB News by former FSU Director Inaya Folarin Iman here.

    Free speech and the war over sex and gender

    Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of interviewing Kathleen Stock, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sussex and author of Material Girls. We spoke about the transgender debate and the silencing of gender critical feminists who speak out in defence of women’s sex-based rights. One of the most revealing things she talked about was what she referred to as “reverse Voltaire”, whereby her colleagues would support her in private but side with those condemning her in public. It was the opposite of the principle that’s usually attributed to Voltaire, namely, “I disagree profoundly with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” In Kathleen’s case, it was, “I agree profoundly with what you have to say, but I will defend the right to no-platform you for saying it.”

    The entire interview can be seen on our YouTube channel. FSU members are invited to all of our regular Speakeasies. The next one, scheduled for September, will be with comedian Graham Linehan.

    Gender critical women forced out of politics

    We are continuing to support our member Natalie Bird, who was barred from seeking office by the Liberal Democrats for 10 years after she wore a t-shirt bearing the slogan: “woman: adult human female.” The Lib Dems decided this statement of fact was “transphobic” and Natalie is now raising money to fight a legal battle against the party. Women who oppose trans ideology are being silenced, threatened and hounded out of politics. Help Natalie fight back by contributing to her fundraiser here.

    Incidentally, it isn’t just women who are punished for raising doubts about militant trans ideology. Another of our members, James Esses, has been sacked as a volunteer at Childline and kicked off his five-year psychotherapy course for expressing reservations about encouraging children who identify as trans to undergo irreversible, life-changing medical procedures. He is now raising money to bring a case against his course provider. You can read about James’s case in the Mail on Sunday and contribute to his fundraiser here.

    FSU member Rebekah Wershbale labelled “transphobe” in Labour Party training material for wearing “woman: adult human female” t-shirt

    We have written to Sir Keir Starmer urging him to intervene after a member of ours, Rebekah Wershbale, discovered she is being used in a Labour Party training course as an example of a “transphobe” because she was banned from a pub for wearing a t-shirt saying “woman: adult human female”. We assisted Rebekah in securing the training material in question, which was produced by the Labour Campaign for Trans Rights, Momentum, The World Transformed, and the Labour Party LGBT+ Network as “trans political education” for party activists. The course appears to have been used all over the country by constituency parties.

    Once we secured the training material, the course’s creator tried to stop Rebekah from sharing it on spurious copyright grounds – even though her name and photograph were used without her permission.

    Rebekah said: “When the seriousness of the situation dawned on me I was horrified. To be singled-out as an example of a transphobic bully by someone I’d never even met or even interacted with was very disturbing, especially given that they used my name and photo. We know very well what happens to women in those crosshairs. We receive actual, real threats of violence and threats to our livelihood. Not just the vague threats of potential ‘misgendering’ or dogwhistling we’re accused of. How many people have gone through this course and seen my name and photo as an example of ‘transphobia’?

    “My question is, who is being bullied here? I had no idea my name and image were being used in this way. Accusations of ‘transphobia’ have turned women’s lives upside down. I’m alarmed that this has been greenlit by the Labour Party, knowing what the potential backlash is for women in my position who refuse to play the game of pretend, and who stand up for women’s rights and biological reality.”

    You can see Rebekah being interviewed about this on GB News here.

    FSU member Nick Buckley talks to GB News about cancel culture

    Last year, Nick Buckley MBE was fired from the award-winning charity he founded after he wrote a blog questioning the ideology behind the Black Lives Matter organisation. With our assistance he was reinstated, and the trustees who had forced him out resigned one by one. He spoke to Colin Brazier and the comedian Andrew Doyle, a member of our Advisory Council, on GB News about his experience of cancel culture.

    FSU New Zealand wins plaudits

    Our New Zealand sister organisation has won plaudits for commissioning research on public opinion about the country’s proposed new hate speech law (similar to Scotland’s Hate Crime and Public Order Act.) Forty three per cent of New Zealanders support the proposals, with 31% opposed and 15% undecided.

    Meanwhile, the New Zealand FSU has taken up the case of Dr Raymond Richards, an historian at the University of Waikato who faces disciplinary action after he referred to flat earthers as “cranks”. A student complained and the HR department wrote to him saying it did “not expect to have a repeat of these matters”. An open letter from the New Zealand Free Speech Union has defended Dr Richards’ right to academic freedom.

    Free Speech Champions attend Institute of Ideas event in Westminster

    The Free Speech Champions – a group of young free speech advocates jointly sponsored by the FSU and the Battle of Ideas charity – were out in force at Open For Debate, a one-day festival organised by the Academy of Ideas on 31 July. We offered our members special discounted tickets to the event and FSU representatives were there on the day to meet attendees. The FSU and the Free Speech Champions sponsored the closing discussion of the day entitled: “How can we combat campus cancel culture?” The FSU will be collaborating with the Academy of Ideas on a two-day festival in October.

    Keystone Law Legal Insurance Scheme

    We have now put a legal insurance scheme in place for FSU members. All members will now be entitled to ‘free to access’ legal assistance when it comes to breach of contract claims. That means a free consultation with a legal expenses firm called Keystone Legal Benefits Ltd to consider your options. If they fancy your chances, Keystone Legal will offer you legal insurance on a straightforward ‘one stop shop’ basis. You’ll pay nothing unless you win, in which case you’ll pay 25% of any damages awarded. If you think you might need their help, email Keystone at FSU@keystonelegal.co.uk. If you provide your contact telephone number and brief details of your case, one of their experienced underwriters will quickly get back to you.

    The Workers of England Union

    A quick reminder that if you’re worried you might be put through a disciplinary procedure at work because your beliefs are at odds with your employer’s, you should consider joining the Workers of England Union. The WEU has won tens of thousands of pounds for members whose philosophical beliefs have been discriminated against. More recently, it has helped a number of people who have been threatened with the sack if they don’t get vaccinated against Covid-19.

    We’ve negotiated a deal with the WEU whereby you can become a member for a fee of £25. Unlike other unions, the WEU will go to bat for its members as soon as they sign up. If you’d like to take advantage of this offer, you can join online here, but don’t forget to email them here first, letting them know you’re a member of the FSU.

    Affinity

    We also have a relationship with another independent trade union – Affinity.

    Affinity represents thousands of people working in a wide range of industries including banking and finance, accountancy, retail, manufacturing, education, the law, hospitality and travel and tourism. Its members include teachers, bank staff, IT consultants, financial advisers, academics, local government staff, lawyers and civil servants.

    Currently in its centenary year, Affinity is different to most trade unions in that it has no party political affiliations, is not a member of the Trades Union Congress and has no ties to the employers it deals with, leaving it free to protect the rights and interests of its members without fear or favour.

    Many of the problems Affinity’s members face at work involve free speech issues and the union will be lending its support to the FSU’s campaigns.

    It is offering members of the FSU three months’ free membership (normally £7.65 per month for full time staff), which includes:

    • Access to its dedicated 24-hour Advice Line

    • Representation in all formal meetings with your employer, such as disciplinary hearings and grievances. Last year, Affinity supported over 2,500 members in cases of all different types and everyone was represented by a full-time Affinity official not a lay representative.

    • Access to a market-leading ancillary services package, including free CV writing, free will writing, free travel insurance, free income protection insurance, free personal accident insurance, free contract checking, free consumer rights advice… and more!

    To find our more, visit workaffinity.co.uk or call Affinity on 01234 716005. Its membership lines are open 9am-5pm, Monday to Friday.

    Note: the FSU does not receive a commission if any of our members join the WEU or Affinity or become a client of Keystone.

    Thank you for your support of the FSU. We’re aiming to reach 10,000 members by the end of the year, so spread the word.

    Kind regards,

    Toby Young

    1. Well, flat earthers may be “cranks” but so was Galileo!
      As for the “Workers of England” Union, is that even legal per the Act of Union?

        2. I watch a youtube channel called ‘SciManDan’. I’m a bit ignorant where the sciences are concerned so wanted to learn more. The channel helped me there. However I stopped watching because I felt the presenter saw destroying flat earthers (and other non scientists) as a strange sort of competition.

          Now, the world isn’t flat. It’s an oblate spheroid. I know this. We all do. Yet I find it wrong to denigrate someone’s belief that it isn’t. As a younger, much angrier me I was a vengeful crusader against the religious. I can’t believe in a god as humans are far too destructive. Religion is too easy an excuse for the nasty. yet as I’ve aged I’ll still debate god with someone, but I won’t dismiss their view.

          Maybe I’ve just grown up a bit and really want a quiet life.

          I often wonder if that’s what bothers me most. So few people want to permit me a quiet life. I do wonder what will happen when those denied that quiet life finally flip the table.

    2. When you allow someone to indulge themselves and behave as they wish to, you encourage freedom. This is a good thing. My personal attitude on trans people is that they are ill and need help to integrate their whole selves, but, as this opposes my first fundamental freedom ‘from’ my opinions, good for them. Let them live as they want to.

      However.

      Along those same lines they have absolutely no right whatsoever to demand I accept them, applaud them or support their decisions, least of all to finance their choices.

      No one pays for Mongo’s vets bills but me. No one else pays for my shopping but me. Those are my responsibilities, my choices, my life to live as I choose to. When someone interferes with those choices, they remove my freedom from them.

      The covid issue, especially with relation to the NHS is very much a ‘freedom from’. The NHS wanted freedom from the public need yet the state didn’t give us the choice. The thing we expected to prepare and provide for us was simply shown incapable. That raises a discussion as to whether we should be ‘free from’ funding it.

    3. On the ‘flat earthers are cranks’ example, how is it any different to anti-vaxxers or even COVID-deniers, who are regularly mocked – and worse?

  40. We have not seen Henry and Jessica since Christmas 2019 but they are coming to stay with us in Brittany for a week next Friday. Of course, even though they are both double vaccinated, they will have to self-isolate on return to Britain from France but as they can work from home that is not really a problem. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/cb862a84976d6008e0d2f12a6cc03b188d31fe83828d39391e5ff381f3996452.jpg

    Here they are in Turkey with us on Mianda in September 2019 when life was rather more agreeable.

    1. Parts of Turkey are in flames right now and so many people are having to abandon their homes.
      Greece and the Italian main land are also having the same problem with ‘wild’ fires.

      1. Some friends of ours have been posting videos of the fires around Marmaris where Mianda is on the hard at the marina. There is speculation that the fires have been caused by the PKK.

    2. Enjoy you visits, Richard, Caroline, Henry and Jessica.

      With these like-minded people, together we can beat the freedom grab.

    1. Thanks particularly for the 2ns TCW link. I have emailed it to my MP with a few additional comments of my own. The article is exactly what I think and feel.

  42. Firstborn is looking at buying in grain in some volume, and has been offered some measured by the bushel.
    Not knowing WTF, we looked it up and found https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushel
    Naturally, the subdivisions are weird too – peck, for example (4 to the bushel). And, the weight depends on the product and moisture content… gee, as if it wasn’t difficult enough in the first place!

        2. According to her butler wasn’t that what the Princess of Wails called him?

  44. During the lock up we had some of Junior’s chums over as a ‘sports day’ thing. This helped the parents who needed the space and got some of them simply outside, playing in a field. What we didn’t know was that one of those little boys lives in abject squalor.

    I don’t know what’s worse. The useless, abusive, intrusive state machine or the treatment of children as a cash cow.

      1. We took him home one afternoon. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t necessarily the parent, they’re trying, but working two jobs, just getting home to pick up frrom after school club, no husband, living in a tiny, tiny antiquated flat, they cook dinner but can’t do much more before going out again to job 2.

        1. Meanwhile – those who arrive are put in hotels and cared for. Nice place we have become. Foreigners first.

          1. The BBC claims that 33,000 “asylum seekers” have been waiting over a year for a decision from the Home Office.

          2. I recall a tv program years ago, undercover reporter, hidden camera, working in one of the immigration offices – where the staff were threatened with their jobs if they told the truth of what was happening.Deportation figures were trebled, to make it look as if the govt were doing someting – and immigration figures were cut by two thirds to make it look nowhere near as bad as it is. Boxes and boxes of applications lined the office walls and the corridors. MoH’s daughter worked there at the time – and said it was all true. Coincidentally, a few week later I mentioed it to the lady who was in the same cafe, getting a bite ( nothing to do with the downpour ) and I was amazed when she said it was true – as her daughter worked at a different Immigration office in another city – but just the same there.

          1. 6. His neighbour sits in with him, but that was from a mother who was both deeply ashamed and frightened of losing her little boy.

            We’re trying to put something in place with a ‘cleaner’ visiting while his Mum’s away in the evening.

          4. 6. His neighbour sits in with him, but that was from a mother who was both deeply ashamed and frightened of losing her little boy.

            We’re trying to put something in place with a ‘cleaner’ visiting while his Mum’s away in the evening.

  46. So more experts than the proverbial stick might be poked at, have deemed it necessary to administer a covid booster this autumn.
    Twice I have had a rather serious reaction to the two same brand ‘vaccines’ what is this ‘booster’ supposed to be or do ? Testing testing ! And Third time lucky……….

    1. I’ve done my bit by having two – I don’t need any more. They seem to be admitting that the vaccines are useless.

      1. I’ve done my bit by having none. I don’t need any more. I shall eagerly take up the booster of none.

        1. As I mentioned elsewhere, Grizzly, there is no need for a booster given alongside a ‘flu jab since the ‘flu has now been eradicated (no cases last winter).

          1. On Saturday last my pharmacist offered me an appointment for the flu jab later this year. While I trust him and his staff I do not trust this government or their agents, in this case the NHS, and I declined the offer.

          2. I last had a dose of flu 26 years ago and had never bothered with the flu jab till last October – the propaganda must have got to me then. I won’t be bothering this year.

      2. Stick to your decision if you want to retain your freedom. The government’s desperation is palpable.

        1. I only had the jabs so I could go on my trip to Kenya – which had to be postponed to October……….or sometime.

          1. I recall you mentioning that. I imagine quite a few thought that having the jabs would give them their freedom: how Johnson and Hancock must have laughed. The jab was always a trap.

          3. The government scared and cajoled the population into baring their arms without much thought. The people have to wake up and question why are boosters required. If the majority don’t then we will all suffer at the hands of these mendacious people.

          4. I expect the compliant and the cowed will go along with it like they did with masks and anti-social distancing.

          5. With over a million reported adverse effects and goodness knows how many deaths one would like to think that those affected people will not partake of more risks.

          7. I know – I don’t use the app but i could probably get a GP letter to say I’ve had my two jabs. I won’t be getting the booster if I can avoid it.

          9. Still waiting to see if Kenya comes off the red list before October. I really don’t want to do time in an airport prison facility at my own expense.

      3. Yup. We did it for the grand children’s sake to help push towards their having a normal youth.
        Given that we suspect MB had Covid in Jan 2020 and the inoculation a year later, we do wonder if his myocardial infarction a fortnight after the jab might be more than co-incidence.

    2. I have a history of anaphylactic reactions to influenza jabs. That is why no one will ever come near me again with a needle full of whatever.

    3. I have an acquaintance who had a stroke within a couple of weeks after each Pfizer jab. He and his wife have told me that they will not take a booster. Another friend, still suffering from fatigue, will not take a booster. More evidence is breaking out informing people that the “vaccine” is not only useless but dangerous. This is NOT about health, it is about control. Taking the booster will be the greatest mistake people can make – surpassing the mistakes of taking the first two jabs – as it will reinforce this treacherous government’s hand. The government are laughing at the people. Mass refusal of boosters will put the government on the back foot and their threats in response will be telling, as it will expose their intent to entrap people into endless jabs and control by a digital ID.

      1. Neither of us had any reaction at all to the first two jabs – he had Pfizer, I had AZ. Or maybe we had a placebo.

        1. The creep in charge of the jabberthon admitted to a placebo group last week. Not sure if he slipped up AGAIN or meant to release that information.

        2. Friend told me of her SiLaws relative, 60, fit, married happy grand kids – had jab – now in care home – her and families life ruined.
          The wildly different reactions to the jab has made me wonder if some stuff is harmless – and the rest isn’t.

          2. A few days after – just collapsed – nothing wrong before. From what iv’e been told she would have been better off dying. Sounds cruel but went from vibrant life loving granny to – unable to do anything – had scans etc – nothing – except the jab. Coincidence???
            Another friend – his nephew did same – luckily he was released after4 days and took a while to get back to normal.

          4. When you suddenly become TOTALLY dependant on others – what else – it has devastated the family.

          5. Sister of an acquaintance, aged mid 70s, had a stroke shortly after AZ jab.
            Shop assistant, early 40s, died. OK, it’s hearsay.

        3. The placebo rumours won’t go away. I wouldn’t pay much heed to them, except that the boyfriend of a friend of my daughter’s was called back for another jab “because you only had a saline”. What’s that supposed to mean??

          1. Which begs the question – how did they know – and how many “wrong” jabs did they dish out???

          3. One would assume so, certainly. Who knows what the truth is? I have never heard of anyone being called back for another jab “because you got a saline” before.

      2. The whole farce gets more sinister as it goes on. One jab – then a second – now a booster – and flu?? – stupid ideas – “Grab a jab” slogan – free junk food and taxi rides??? deaths being blamed on covid which clearly aren’t. misleading “facts” – xxx people died within 28 days of a positive result – – but died of what – try texting the beeb phone ins with that – blanked – propaganda machine in full flow.

      3. So have I Korky, I spoke to his nice but very leftie wife and she blamed it on Apixaban ……but that’s a blood thinner taken to stop clots !!
        I also bumped into and spoke to an old golfing friend who told me of a friend of his who suffered Atrial fibrillation after the jab. As I have after both.

  47. I’m in a phone queue to book my meds review, only been listening to tripe music for 15 mins so far.

      2. This morning I was No 11 in the queue for 15 minutes, I then became No 10 for a further 20 min. I gave up after that. But then I phoned the practice manager and yelled at her. She pointed out it was Monday. To which I told her: “Then have the intelligence to add another receptionist on a Monday.” After much shouting I finally got my medication, prescribed by the hospital, sent to my local pharmacy, a matter of urgency that the Royal Surrey requested for me exactly one week ago today and without which I would be in the hospital. Fortunately for me, although I ran out last week, my pharmacist gave me some medication off his own bat to tide me over. The failure in this case and in many cases, it seems to me, is not the hospitals or the pharmacists, but the GP’s hiding behind Covid as an excuse for their own incompetence.

        1. After a hospital visit nearly 3 wk ago, I left with medication. 2 days later clinician rang, said another prescription was coming and to double the dose. – which differed to the dosage label on the bottle.I just take some when the pain starts – my way seems more sensible.
          The race to the bottom of the 3rd world continues at full throttle.

    2. Took about 25 mins for first human contact, but put on hold 3 more times because it’s so difficult to find times for the nurse to be in for bloods etc.
      45 mins all told, and a call (by phone) appointment with a doctor. It’s been 2 years since my last annual review.

      1. Had a call from hospital last Wed – said someone would call me that day or Thursday – still waiting for it.

          1. Not really. I know that as soon as I move away from the phone that will be when they ring. Try and take it everywhere I move. Yes even there.

    3. You should have gone to live in France, no problems with seeing your GP, they never stopped being available.

    4. Does your “doctor” not have an website where you can make appointments online?

    1. Mr. Plod in Oz is as dumb an ox as his UK equals are nowadays, recruited specifically not to have any common sense ever since Blair was PM & turned the UK’s police into an arm of the Labour party !

    2. Not only the WHO has altered meanings to suit this scamdemic so has our government regarding death certificates. Odd isn’t it! Let alone not carrying out proper post mortems.

    4. The amount of fiddling that officer does with his mask is daft. A far more common sense approach, which I’d think the police would encourage is a simple ‘guys, come on, cover your nose and mouth, eh?’

      And walk off. As it is, masks prevent cross infection. Something needed to get well.

      1. Very droll. The police that permitted Mohammedans to illegally pray in Hyde Park? Keep in mind, as do the police, that sharia law permits the out of hand butchery of infidels.

  50. Wondered if anyone saw start of women’s football semi final in the Olympics? Canada (usually not kneelers) beat USA who do normally kneel. Can anyone confirm ‘kneel status’ please?

    1. Oi

      I would have you know that canada is the site for a blm office. The woke lefties can outdo the US with their descent into the gutter.

      I used to live in a town called Picton but now they are trying to rename it because the original Picton was a slave beating miso-oganist white man.

      1. And! If enough people agree with you it won’t be changed and if the agree with those who want change then it will be changed. Democracy

  51. INTERNAL GOVERMENT MEMO

    Don’t worry – we’ll get them one way or another:

    IF THEY’RE VULNERABLE ENOUGH TO DIE OF COVID

    THEY’LL BE VULNERABLE ENOUGH TO DIE FROM THE VACCINE

    1. But if they came here in a dinghy, or are otherwise non- ndigenous, they won’t take the vaccine – no sterility for them or their children, no siree!

    2. But if they came here in a dinghy, or are otherwise non- ndigenous, they won’t take the vaccine – no sterility for them or their children, no siree!

  52. 336203+ up ticks,
    May one ask again,
    Could this one month tally if concentrated in one village when getting the vote, change a local council standing ?

    Could this six month tally if concentrated in one town when getting the vote, change a towns standing.

    Can this yearly tally if concentrated in one city when getting the vote
    change that cities standing ?

    Take london for example……..

    Is there any known date for the final hand over of the United Kingdom ?

    Record 3,500 Illegal Boat Migrants Land in Britain Last Month, as Total Tops 9,300 For the Year

      2. 336203+ up ticks,
        Afternoon W,
        Bare fact fears are enough, add on the possible potentials & even the core lab/lib/con mass uncontrolled immigration members would I’m sure be asking “what have we created”

    2. Well, 10% of immigrants in the UK are in Glasgow, where the Scottish Health Minister come from…and others including the leader of Scottish Labour.

  54. Live Tokyo Olympics 2020 live: Laurel Hubbard out of weightlifting final as first transgender Olympian fails to register a score

    DT Report

    Was the whole thing a publicity stunt from start to finish to soften people up to a level where they regard it both normal and acceptable for trans women to compete in sport alongside born-women?

    We shall soon be reading about a pregnant woman who transed during her pregnancy and then, after the child was born, claimed to be the first man to have given birth to a child!

    3. Sadly, its already been done. I will spare you the details from a link but the partner was non binary. You may find an answer to the increase in mental illness somewhere in this story.

      1. We need to record sexual histories with same sex and/ or opposite sex partners. I wrote to PHE to ask how to record two non binary people in a relationship. Are they SSPs or OSPs?
        Answer was there none.

        1. I cant help either with what goes on. Probably like the sailor’s refrain, any port in a storm.

    4. Hopefully soon normalcy will take over and instead of praising and publicising such people we’ll offer them help and support. Should such folks continue to, and eventually wish to compete in sport then there should be defined categories – but, simply put, same as there are not half the population as gay there are no where nearly as many trans people as the media make out.

      Frankly, we all need to get over this obsession with irrelevant minorities. One side promoting to provoke the other being provoked and just let people get along with their own lives. Treat people as individuals, not the labels the Left so love.

    5. Sadly this just gives the “trans” lobby further amunition to claim that being a man didn’t give him an advantage.

      3. The real women, i.e., the women, should have all refused to attempt a lift in protest against her his inclusion.

    6. Too late – there has already been a trans “man” who didn’t have the internal female bits removed and got herself pregnant.

  55. Anyone still believe this is about health? The health of the young lad certainly wasn’t considered by the brute who struck him on the head.

    The unrest around the World is part and parcel of the plans to rob us of our freedoms and eventually our possessions via a digital currency. The latter will be controlled by the PTB, not the owner. Does our government have the nerve to let the police off the leash and let them literally run riot against the population? Johnson is looking to sow the wind of division, does he have the balls to reap the whirlwind?

    https://twitter.com/CeeOfGee/status/1421933536131620871

    1. Boris won’t need the police – he is importing his army – people who come from places where slaughtering others isn’t a problem.

    2. Be fair, knocking the innocent about, bashing the weak and unsuspecting, using brutal violence on the peaceful, is what the police are best at.

      1. Taking direct lessons out of the Stasi “Kick ’em when they’re down.” handbook.

    3. There’s about a dozen of the police and a mass of bystanders. Next time that happens the public need to break up the police precisely so they can’t do the same thing. Use their own tactics against them.

      I just find it odd that they’re desperate to act over covid restrictions but have no interest in investigating burglaries, rapes, child abuse, theft…

    4. There’s about a dozen of the police and a mass of bystanders. Next time that happens the public need to break up the police precisely so they can’t do the same thing. Use their own tactics against them.

      I just find it odd that they’re desperate to act over covid restrictions but have no interest in investigating burglaries, rapes, child abuse, theft…

  56. Depleted and unwanted, HS2 hurtles on as Johnson’s £100bn vanity project. 2 August 2021.

    Britain’s new high-speed railway will not – repeat: not – get to the north of England. It will go back and forth from London to the Midlands and its chief beneficiaries will be London commuters. All else is political spin.

    This became certain last week as the government’s internal major projects authority declared phase two of the HS2 project, to Manchester and Leeds, effectively dead. While the already-started London-to-Birmingham stretch is still marked at “amber/red” for “successful delivery in doubt”, anything north of Crewe has been designated “unachievable”. Its multitudinous issues “do not appear to be manageable or resolvable”. This comes not from the arms-length National Infrastructure Commission or last winter’s Oakervee report, both agreeing that going beyond Birmingham should be “reviewed”. This was the verdict of an arm of the Treasury and Cabinet Office.

    This Colossal Fraud could only be carried out by a State that is itself Criminally Corrupt! This is what you get when the Political Elites go Rogue!

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/30/hs2-johnson-vanity-cost-taxpayer

    1. Anyone who thinks this will cost £100 b – I’ve a bridge to sell you. It will cost nothing short of half a trillion once the final bill comes in, and they’ve not laid a shred of track yet!

    2. 336203+ up ticks,
      Afternoon AS,
      Been openly rogue for at least three decades remember the house flipping era, duck ponds etc,etc,
      currently they should be done for deceitful & dangerous advantage taken of the mentally afflicted
      ( the electorate) causing depression, serious injury, & death.

      Sad thing is that action will NOT be taken until every one of their supporter / voters suffers personally at the overseers hands, for example their daughter / son getting raped / abused by a foreign illegal during dinner might just do the trick, maybe.

    3. What about all the compulsory purchase orders where people were forced from their homes? What about the destruction of forests?

      1. Afternoon Phizz. A part of this scam is the despoliation of the countryside and the destruction of historical sites. It’s an exercise in domination like the Normans building huge castles or the Soviets putting up Marxist statues in the Eastern Bloc. It essentially says we don’t care if you don’t like it! We are the bosses here! We can do as we like!

    4. Just in case any of you missed this before.

      Calls for inquiry into whether ministers misled Parliament over HS2 costs

      Commons told project was ‘on track’ to cost £55bn despite earlier warnings it could not be delivered to schedule or budget

      By Edward Malnick, SUNDAY POLITICAL EDITOR • 10 July 2021 • 6:29pm

      The former deputy chairman of Boris Johnson’s review of High Speed 2 is calling for an inquiry into whether ministers misled Parliament over the costs of the scheme.

      In a letter to Simon Case, the Cabinet Secretary, Lord Berkeley highlighted new evidence showing that Theresa May’s ministers were told in April 2019 that the line “could not be delivered to the current scope within the current schedule and budget”. Despite this, Nusrat Ghani, the then transport minister, later told the Commons that the project was “on track”, adding: “I stand here to state confidently that the budget is £55.7 billion.”

      The review commissioned by Mr Johnson later that year warned that the costs of the line could rise to £106 billion, and more recent independent estimates cited by Lord Berkeley suggest a figure as high as £142 billion.

      Lord Berkeley’s intervention came as it emerged that an internal economic analysis by HS2 Ltd, the government-owned firm behind the project, concluded that the section of the Y-shaped line between Crewe and Manchester represents “poor value for money”.

      In a letter sent to Mr Case on Friday, Lord Berkeley asked the Cabinet Secretary to consider whether ministers had broken the ministerial code during Mrs May’s premiership. His letter cites several occasions on which he says it was made clear to government figures that the scheme would exceed its budget, including at a conference in 2015 at which officials were told that the costs of the scheme could top £100 billion.

      He also cites documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act which suggest that Chris Grayling, the then transport secretary, and Ms Ghani, were told in April 2019 that the scheme was facing £7 billion in cost overruns and a three-year delay. Allan Cook, the chairman of HS2 Ltd, told the pair that “phase one could not be delivered to the current scope within the current schedule and budget”.

      Mr Cook was in the process of carrying out a review of HS2 Ltd’s finances, which he finalised in August 2019.

      Minutes of the meeting added: “The HS2 Ltd board had been told by the exec that the latest point estimate for phase one was approximately £28 billion, with a £6-7 billion gap in the forecast, and a two to three year change to the schedule.” Despite this warning, Ms Ghani told MPs on July 10 2019: “The business case is clearly solid: there is one budget and one timetable – HS2 will continue on track… I stand here to state confidently that the budget is £55.7 billion and that the timetable is 2026 and 2033.”

      Legislation paving the way for the first phase of the line was given royal assent in 2017, despite opposition from 50 MPs. A bill for phase 2a – from Birmingham to Crewe – was voted on by MPs in the summer of 2019 before becoming law earlier this year.

      Lord Berkeley said: “Parliament would expect that ministers would have complied with the ministerial code by ensuring that the true costs and time for project delivery were placed before it for its scrutiny and debate in a timely manner during the [legislative] process, so that it could have an opportunity to affirm its support for the project or otherwise.

      “I therefore conclude that… ministers misled Parliament multiple times, either by omission or misinformation, and that this misleading has continued.”

      Meanwhile, unredacted minutes of HS2 Ltd’s June board meeting, seen by this newspaper, state of the Crewe to Manchester leg of the line: “Emerging findings of the Economic Analysis indicated that the central case Benefits Cost Ratio (BCR) is likely to be below one (i.e. ‘poor’ value for money).”

      Mr Cook said: “The phase 2b economic analysis represents early advice to the Department for Transport from HS2 Ltd and is work in progress.”

      Mr Grayling declined to comment. Ms Ghani did not respond to a request to comment.

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/10/calls-inquiry-whether-ministers-misled-parliament-hs2-costs/

          3. The two chicks left at the weekend – but our visitors were able to see the second one which left yesterday morning. The parents usually stay for a few more days to recover their strength – they were cuddled up together last night. The young non-breeding pair that moved into the hole in the wall were still here last night after roosting 25 consecutive nights – they’ll be back next year to breed, hopefully.

            There are still some around – we’ve had more flying around our house this year so it’s been a good year here.

  57. Snigger………..

    Top headline.

    TRANSGENDER athlete Laurel Hubbard is OUT of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics after failing to record a successful snatch.

  58. Just had text come in from doc’s – telling me my interim diabetes check is due – ring and make an appointment with a HCA – rung – never even rang – “Line busy” – not even into a queue.

    1. You really ARE living in the past. See a doctor? See a nurse? You must be mad. Just lie down in a corner and die – quietly. Wearing a mask.

    2. This is all part of the this government and the next and so on turning the NHS into pay to be seen and take out health insurance.

      I have recently been to Spire for some NHS appointments, on previous visits in the past 3-4 years the car parks were sparsely occupied. But earlier this year it was difficult to find a parking space. The private sector appear to be filling in the spaces left by the NHS, but only if you do not have existing conditions, leading to possible complications. Then the patient/s will only be seen for treatment where there is a serviceable A&E.

      1. OH had his shoulder repair job at Spire in Bristol via the NHS in 2019. All went well and he was home the same day.

        1. Moh had a hip replacement at Sire about 5 years ago it’s been superb and the food was good, but sometimes the surgeons are the same as NHS.

          1. The surgeon he had also worked at Southmead – the main NHS hospital in Bristol – and he recommended OH go back to the GP for the referral after he had had the private consultation.
            Not sure how easy it is now – post-covid – to get a referral to a private facility – a friend of mine has decided to use savings to get her knee sorted as the waiting list for NHS treatment was too long. I have to say – I wouldn’t hesitate if I needed orthopaedic surgery as the quality of life if you can’t walk or hobble is so dire if you have to wait for years.

  59. Back from the bodging. All very satisfactory – except for the “rechargeable drill” which – although charged for 12 hours, ran out after about 20 minutes.

    Now having a sit down prior to going to an atheist vegan memorial event. Should be fun… Will eat before and after! “Bring your own glass and cutlery to avoid covid”….

    Toodles.

      1. I don’t often eat Big Macs but after a morning of being afflicted by vampires at the hospital i find a Big Mac, fries and strawberry shake hits the spot.

        The food in the hospital is disgusting unless you pay their super inflated prices in the cafes. £3.75 for a bloody coffee !

        I can just see Bill eating a Big Mac with a knife and fork off his Meissen porcelain.

          1. Captive audience innit. The coffee on the wards is undrinkable. Then there are the hospital parking fees.

          3. Pick the ‘Right Shop at the Right Time’, and you can get 300 grams of Nescafe

      1. Remember a chap at work bought a Chinese made quad bike – electrics died after a few weeks – and the place he bought it off “disappeared”.

          1. It took me nearly two years to get a garden wall rebuilt because the contractors were unable to turn in the turning circle.

            They left the scene as well. I followed them down the road with my camera.

            The original wall was in Fareham brick with proper supports. What they replaced it with is the same standard used by Persimmon Homes…Crap.

            My neighbour to this day has not been able to put his cast iron gate back because they didn’t bother to embed the anchors.

            Now those same crappo contracters are resurfacing the main road again for the fourth time in four years.

            Yet again no access or escape from the cul de sac. Which i’m sure isn’t legal.

          3. Much ado about nothing.

            A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

            Etc.

        3. Hawthorn? It’s privet and yew.
          But – that is about as exciting as Halstead ever gets.

    4. My rechargeable drill driver does that with one of the batteries. Fortunately, the other one holds enough charge to get work done – at least, at the moment.

  60. Here’s one for youse: From https://punchng.com/42-year-old-nigerian-yekemi-otaru-appointed-scotland-varsity-chancellor/
    “Sodiq Oyeleke
    30 July 2021
    An inspirational entrepreneur renowned for her passionate commitment to equality, diversity, and inclusion has been named University of the West of Scotland’s Chancellor-elect.

    The university made this known via a statement on its website.

    Yekemi Otaru, a tireless passionate supporter of women in business and an active mentor of business owners in the world’s poorest countries, will formally take up the role of Chancellor at the University of the West of Scotland on 1 September 2021, succeeding Dame Elish Angiolini.

    Yekemi, 42, holds four degrees and has considerable industrial experience in engineering and marketing. She is Co-Founder and Executive Director at Doqaru Limited, a prominent Aberdeen-based sales and marketing consultancy.

    She is also a board member of Interface, which connects a wide range of organisations from national and international industries to Scotland’s universities, research institutes and colleges, matching them with world-leading academic expertise to help them grow. A bestselling author and social media expert, Yekemi is also known for her innovative use of platforms such as LinkedIn.

    As Chancellor, Yekemi will hold formal powers to confer degrees, diplomas and other academic distinctions, and will represent UWS at key events as an advocate and dignitary.

    Yekemi said, “I am honoured to have been appointed Chancellor-elect of University of the West of Scotland, following in the footsteps of a remarkable individual in Dame Elish Angiolini.

    2. It sounds as if she started a sales company, bragged about it on soshul meeja and then troughed her way to the top.

      Four degrees? Did she just turn in a circle or really spend 12 years as an under graduate? She’s no entrepreneur. She’s a failure who exists inside the state bubble, exploiting tax payers money using the wedge of ‘diversity’ to get her own way.

    3. It sounds as if she started a sales company, bragged about it on soshul meeja and then troughed her way to the top.

      Four degrees? Did she just turn in a circle or really spend 12 years as an under graduate? She’s no entrepreneur. She’s a failure who exists inside the state bubble, exploiting tax payers money using the wedge of ‘diversity’ to get her own way.

    4. A ‘bestselling’ author
      Social media ‘expert’
      ‘prominent Aberdeen-based sales and marketing consultancy

      Well she’s got one book for sale on Amazon – and her consultancy’s company accounts for Nov18 to Nov 19 showed nett Capital and Reserves of, wait for it, £114!

  61. (Sigh) A feeling of deja vu all over again…..

    “The Streatham terrorist shot dead by police after a stabbing spree first became known to the authorities after attacking fellow pupils at his school, an inquest has heard.

    The inquest into the death of terrorist Sudesh Amman, 20, began at the Royal Courts of Justice on Monday morning.

    The coroner, High Court judge Mr Justice Hilliard, said Amman was shot by armed police in Streatham High Road in south London on Sunday Feb 2 2020 after he stabbed and injured two people in an “apparent terror attack”.

    Amman, originally of Harrow, north-west London, had been under surveillance following his release from HMP Belmarsh 10 days earlier having been jailed for terror offences.”

    1. They never learn do they – – the replacements are going to do this over and over and over . . . . .

      1. WE never learn! Security of the realm was the No 1 priority for millennia. Since 1997 it has been replaced by crass idiocy.

          3. I probably would, Walter. I’m still in constant touch with friends and relatives in the UK who appraise me of the changes, but I’m quite happy where I am now.

          10. Never heard of the term – – and nervously asking for an explanation, knowing what your comments can be like.

          11. Me ! :@)

            Okay.

            Take your steak and kidney pie that you have previously cooked.

            Put in the bottom of a deep bowl.

            Pile on some mushy peas.

            Pour gravy down the inside of the bowl not washing the peas away. Continue pouring the gravy until the pie tries to escape to the surface.
            Slap a slice of bread on top to foil the escape.

            Eat with a spoon in front of the telly.

            Ta dah !

          14. Decent pubs with cask-conditioned ale. Fish and chip shops. Chinese takeaways. Apart from that I don’t miss much, especially the traffic. Yes, Swedish drivers have about the same dismal level of driving skills as your average Frog or Wop, but there are far fewer of them on the road.

          17. A combination: I worked for a Norwegian company in London & had the opportunity for an expat posting; Gordon Brown had just wrecked my pension; SWMBO was looking for a new job; Firstborn was in 2nd year at school, making transfer relatively easy. I’m a child of the Empire (Nigeria), and so moving wasn’t an issue for me, and it was a “Now or never” moment for SWMBO. Besides, it was only a two year expat position… it was so good, we stayed. Don’t see us moving back, even without the Covid shambles, the UK doesn’t feel like home, Norway does.
            Other benefits: We could afford a nice house, SWMBO gets paid a decent salary, and now Firstborn owns 350 or so acres of Norwegian forest and lakes. Oh, yes, and we all have al least two languages now (Firstborn has at least 5 he can work in).

          18. Congratulations. I love reading how Nottlers have been all over and how their lives turned out. 5 languages for First born – impressive – could have good conversations with Rastus’s wife.!!!!

          21. I echo your sentiments, Oberst!! We moved to the US for a 2 year contract, 1979 and consequently, his nibs retired and we are still here!!

          22. Just remeber jill, ‘Britain and America’ Two Nations divided by one Language

        2. Never was a priority for this bunch of twerps that are called Government.

          Defence of the Realm always was, and is, the first priority, hence the depletion in our armed services.

          Passive resistance and civil disobedience MUST be the only way to combat this – inevitably leading to insurrection and civil war that will make 1642 seem like a stroll in the park.

        3. It is the only task of government, not all the other rubbish they stick their noses into!

    2. Under surveillance. Bollocks.

      The Manchester arena bomber had been reported to the police the week before by two separate people for acting suspiciously while in possession of a rucksack.

        1. Presumably like all the grooming gang members – warm dry, fed, looked after, NHS, etc etc – and onto lifetime benefits when released.

        2. At least one of the attacked was gay which would be a hate crime but as we know…muslims trump everyone else.

        3. At least one of the attacked was gay which would be a hate crime but as we know…muslims trump everyone else.

  62. 336203+ up ticks,

    Could very well be true, bringing back to mind the referendum result
    48% / 52%, 48% being the eu syndrome sufferers.

    breitbart,
    NHS Pingdemic Scares Almost Half of Britons Away from Socialising: Poll

  63. The smear campaign against the Great Barrington Declaration. Spiked 2 August 2021.

    In October 2020, along with Professor Sunetra Gupta, we authored the Great Barrington Declaration, in which we argued for a ‘focused protection’ pandemic strategy. We called for better protection of older and other high-risk people, while arguing that children should be allowed to go to school and young adults should be free to live more normal lives. We understood that it might lead to vigorous and heated discussions, but we did not expect a multi-pronged propaganda campaign that gravely distorted our arguments and smeared us. We are just three public-health scientists, after all. So how and why did this slanderous counterattack emerge?

    Well pal if you had been a Nottler you would have understood how the world actually works and could have prepared for it!

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/08/02/the-smear-campaign-against-the-great-barrington-declaration/

    5. Oh, the shock of someone who has always coasted along being protected by the system (woman, ethnic minority) when it suddenly turns on you!

  64. Good afternoon, Nottlers!

    Just a brief look-in and to share a piece from the NY Times about Wee Crankie Sturgeon’s previous career as a lawyer. Not one to be proud of. The SNP leader was eventually cleared by the Scottish Law Society more than 14 months after a complaint was made by a victim of domestic abuse. Ms Sturgeon spent several years working as a solicitor before becoming an MSP in 1999, although this episode has never been revealed before. When she was asked in 2014 about rumours that something had gone wrong, Ms Sturgeon replied: “I’ve got nothing I want to confess.”

    Even her biographer, David Torrance, was unable to discover much beyond the fact that Ms Sturgeon “did mostly matrimonial and civil court work”.

    Nicola Sturgeon: The murky end to the SNP chief’s legal career
    By nytimespost – April 4, 2021 0

    The First Minister’s legal background has come under renewed focus recently as a result of the probe into the handling of
    harassment complaints against her predecessor, Alex Salmond.

    Mr Salmond successfully challenged the Scottish Government’s “unlawful” and “biased” investigation at a judicial review, with the debacle costing the taxpayer up to £1million.

    The top QC and Labour peer, Lord Falconer, recently said Ms Sturgeon made a “profound mis-statement” about the legal advice she received, which urged her to concede the case at an earlier stage.

    Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson asked at Holyrood: “Why did the First Minister think that she was a
    better lawyer than Roddy Dunlop QC and the advocate Christine O’Neill?”

    Ms Sturgeon replied: “I did not and I most definitely do not.”

    Nicola Sturgeon was investigated by the Scottish Law Society.The complaint against Ms Sturgeon was brought by a battered wife who turned to the newly-qualified solicitor for help after years of abuse at the hands of her husband.

    Ms Sturgeon was working at Stirling law firm Bell & Craig when the client – now a grandmother in her 60s – first sought her help in July 1996.

    Over the next 14 months, despite the woman being followed, threatened and physically attacked, it was claimed Ms Sturgeon did not seek a court order against her violent partner.

    The client also alleged that Ms Sturgeon failed to send off her legal aid application – despite claiming that she had done so.

    After Ms Sturgeon left the firm for a new job in Glasgow, the unsent application was discovered in the client’s file by her new
    solicitor, Cath Dowdalls, now a QC.

    In stark contrast to Ms Sturgeon’s inaction, Ms Dowdalls immediately secured both legal aid and an interdict with power of arrest against the husband – ending his stalking and threats.

    The client wrote to the Law Society in November 1997, saying: “I sincerely hope that you look into this case as I certainly would not wish Ms Sturgeon to ill advise further matrimonial cases which she is clearly not capable of dealing with.

    “I feel as if I have been trailed through over a year of ill advice and wasted time.”

    The following month, the client’s outstanding fees totalling £542 were waived by Bell & Craig as a “goodwill gesture”.

    A year later, in December 1998, the Law Society sent the client a five-page report which stated that her complaint would be investigated in the professional misconduct category. The three individual allegations were failing to raise the interim interdict against the ex-husband, misleading the client about the legal aid application and failing to properly take her financial circumstances into account.

    Ms Sturgeon was eventually cleared by the Law Society in April 1999, although the client no longer has the decision letter.

    A Law Society spokeswoman said: “There was a complaint which was investigated but it was not upheld.”

    The decision came just weeks before Ms Sturgeon gave up law and was elected as a list MSP in Glasgow for the SNP in the first Holyrood election.

    Last night, the client said her decision to finally speak out after more than 20 years had been triggered by her outrage over the Salmond affair.

    A Holyrood committee found that two female civil servants who complained about Mr Salmond had been badly let down by the Scottish Government.

    It described the outcome of the judicial review as being “devastating” for the government, as well as being “wholly unsatisfactory for the two women who had made complaints”.

    The client said: “It is an old story, but it is one that should be told.

    “The way those women were let down was her responsibility and it was completely wrong.

    “It goes back to my story; there was no responsibility taken. How can you sail through life like that and not admit any responsibility for when things go wrong?

    “When she told me she was moving on to politics, an alarm bell rang and I immediately thought, ‘That’s why I’m getting nowhere’. She was focused on herself and her own career.

    “To me, that’s what she is doing now as well. Where was her focus on the two women who complained about Alex Salmond?

    “It is a case of history repeating itself.”

    A spokesman for the First Minister said: “This complaint was not upheld by the Law Society.

    “Now, more than 20 years later, the First Minister remains absolutely committed to tackling domestic abuse and ensuring that women can access the support they need.

    “That commitment is demonstrated by Scottish Government’s support for organisations dealing with domestic abuse and violence against women.

    “And by the passing of new legislation creating a specific offence of domestic violence, which includes measures to make psychological abuse and controlling, coercive behaviour a crime.”

  65. Good afternoon, Nottlers!

    Just a brief look-in and to share a piece from the NY Times about Wee Crankie Sturgeon’s previous career as a lawyer. Not one to be proud of. The SNP leader was eventually cleared by the Scottish Law Society more than 14 months after a complaint was made by a victim of domestic abuse. Ms Sturgeon spent several years working as a solicitor before becoming an MSP in 1999, although this episode has never been revealed before. When she was asked in 2014 about rumours that something had gone wrong, Ms Sturgeon replied: “I’ve got nothing I want to confess.”

    Even her biographer, David Torrance, was unable to discover much beyond the fact that Ms Sturgeon “did mostly matrimonial and civil court work”.

    Nicola Sturgeon: The murky end to the SNP chief’s legal career
    By nytimespost – April 4, 2021 0

    The First Minister’s legal background has come under renewed focus recently as a result of the probe into the handling of
    harassment complaints against her predecessor, Alex Salmond.

    Mr Salmond successfully challenged the Scottish Government’s “unlawful” and “biased” investigation at a judicial review, with the debacle costing the taxpayer up to £1million.

    The top QC and Labour peer, Lord Falconer, recently said Ms Sturgeon made a “profound mis-statement” about the legal advice she received, which urged her to concede the case at an earlier stage.

    Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson asked at Holyrood: “Why did the First Minister think that she was a
    better lawyer than Roddy Dunlop QC and the advocate Christine O’Neill?”

    Ms Sturgeon replied: “I did not and I most definitely do not.”

    Nicola Sturgeon was investigated by the Scottish Law Society.The complaint against Ms Sturgeon was brought by a battered wife who turned to the newly-qualified solicitor for help after years of abuse at the hands of her husband.

    Ms Sturgeon was working at Stirling law firm Bell & Craig when the client – now a grandmother in her 60s – first sought her help in July 1996.

    Over the next 14 months, despite the woman being followed, threatened and physically attacked, it was claimed Ms Sturgeon did not seek a court order against her violent partner.

    The client also alleged that Ms Sturgeon failed to send off her legal aid application – despite claiming that she had done so.

    After Ms Sturgeon left the firm for a new job in Glasgow, the unsent application was discovered in the client’s file by her new
    solicitor, Cath Dowdalls, now a QC.

    In stark contrast to Ms Sturgeon’s inaction, Ms Dowdalls immediately secured both legal aid and an interdict with power of arrest against the husband – ending his stalking and threats.

    The client wrote to the Law Society in November 1997, saying: “I sincerely hope that you look into this case as I certainly would not wish Ms Sturgeon to ill advise further matrimonial cases which she is clearly not capable of dealing with.

    “I feel as if I have been trailed through over a year of ill advice and wasted time.”

    The following month, the client’s outstanding fees totalling £542 were waived by Bell & Craig as a “goodwill gesture”.

    A year later, in December 1998, the Law Society sent the client a five-page report which stated that her complaint would be investigated in the professional misconduct category. The three individual allegations were failing to raise the interim interdict against the ex-husband, misleading the client about the legal aid application and failing to properly take her financial circumstances into account.

    Ms Sturgeon was eventually cleared by the Law Society in April 1999, although the client no longer has the decision letter.

    A Law Society spokeswoman said: “There was a complaint which was investigated but it was not upheld.”

    The decision came just weeks before Ms Sturgeon gave up law and was elected as a list MSP in Glasgow for the SNP in the first Holyrood election.

    Last night, the client said her decision to finally speak out after more than 20 years had been triggered by her outrage over the Salmond affair.

    A Holyrood committee found that two female civil servants who complained about Mr Salmond had been badly let down by the Scottish Government.

    It described the outcome of the judicial review as being “devastating” for the government, as well as being “wholly unsatisfactory for the two women who had made complaints”.

    The client said: “It is an old story, but it is one that should be told.

    “The way those women were let down was her responsibility and it was completely wrong.

    “It goes back to my story; there was no responsibility taken. How can you sail through life like that and not admit any responsibility for when things go wrong?

    “When she told me she was moving on to politics, an alarm bell rang and I immediately thought, ‘That’s why I’m getting nowhere’. She was focused on herself and her own career.

    “To me, that’s what she is doing now as well. Where was her focus on the two women who complained about Alex Salmond?

    “It is a case of history repeating itself.”

    A spokesman for the First Minister said: “This complaint was not upheld by the Law Society.

    “Now, more than 20 years later, the First Minister remains absolutely committed to tackling domestic abuse and ensuring that women can access the support they need.

    “That commitment is demonstrated by Scottish Government’s support for organisations dealing with domestic abuse and violence against women.

    “And by the passing of new legislation creating a specific offence of domestic violence, which includes measures to make psychological abuse and controlling, coercive behaviour a crime.”

      3. Oops, sorry, missed that. Yes it is worth a look – it’s amazing the sheer gall that politicians have, isn’t it?

        1. Not at all, Hertslass! Ijust loved the Pasportnikov name – sounded like some generic Russian spy!

      1. That poor sod doesn’t need more messing with hormones.
        A wig might be a better bet.

        1. A prescription that I saw included oestrogen, testosterone blockers, Vit D, anti-depressants, painkillers (for phantom pain). Those are probably life-long.
          Being trans is not a walk in the park. I would have more sympathy with a person who did not inflict so much of their pain on those around them though.

    2. The scheme is designed to better “understand the science around immunity” as the country heads out of lockdown.

      We are being vaccinated willy nilly with an experimental vaccine and they don’t understand the science.

      And they wonder why people are very wary of this?

  73. “The Olympic spirit was alive and strong on Sunday night when two high jumpers opted to share the gold medal rather than take on a sudden-death contest that would have seen one of them miss out.”

    Olympic spirit, my Aunt Fanny.

    Neither of them wanted to risk not getting a gold medal.

    1. Would they have shared the medal if it was decided to award silver rather than gold?

    5. Unwrapped racism.
      The problem with disparaging black Africans for not being rocket scientists/engineers is that someone might say something similar about you (or me).

      1. Call it what you wish, the truth is that apart from physical resources, very little of intellectual value actually comes out of Africa for the benefit of mankind as a whole, in proportion to what is poured into it.

        1. But that’s the problem there.

          We give them huge amounts which mitigates the need to produce for themselves. Worse, we hinder trade.

      2. The difference is that we invented in the industry and technology.

        Some folks sensibly argue that there simply isn’t the need, but it raises the question of why when there’s a famine, there isn’t a huge wave of farming improvement.

        It isn’t a lack of intelligence or tooling – we’d give them the tooling. We in the West don’t help either, as we don’t trade fairly. The EU massively subsidises over production then dumps it on Africa and Africa can’t do the paperwork or meet the absurd regulatory demands (designed by the EU specifically to create a protectionist market) to trade with EU nations.

      3. The difference is that we invented in the industry and technology.

        Some folks sensibly argue that there simply isn’t the need, but it raises the question of why when there’s a famine, there isn’t a huge wave of farming improvement.

        It isn’t a lack of intelligence or tooling – we’d give them the tooling. We in the West don’t help either, as we don’t trade fairly. The EU massively subsidises over production then dumps it on Africa and Africa can’t do the paperwork or meet the absurd regulatory demands (designed by the EU specifically to create a protectionist market) to trade with EU nations.

  75. From The Times…a cover up such as this could ever happen here,… could it…?

    WORLD AT FIVE
    Jailed Beirut whistleblower ponders fate as politicians walk free

    The man who repeatedly alerted his superiors to the impending disaster has spent most of the year in prison, write Richard Spencer and Leena Saidi

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Ftimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2F4ac9d256-f2f6-11eb-8f01-2c678acbb979.jpg?crop=1600%2C900%2C0%2C0&resize=1200
    The explosion at the port killed 200 people and hurled Lebanon into a crisis from which it is yet to emerge
    AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
    Richard Spencer
    , Beirut | Leena Saidi
    Monday August 02 2021, 5.00pm, The Times

    Joseph Naddaf is puzzled, and it is not hard to see why. He was the one man who tried to stop the disaster at Beirut port, the explosion which a year ago this week ripped through the city, enveloping it in flames and smoke, and killed 200 people.

    The state security major had repeatedly warned his superiors of the impending disaster, his files on the dangers of the ammonium nitrate stashed in Hangar 12 reaching the desk of the president. Yet afterwards he was interrogated, arrested and held in jail for eight months.

    He has now been released on bail, but still faces charges, even though he is back at his job and continuing to investigate the corruption at the port that many say was the underlying cause of last year’s trauma.

    At first, he says, he thought he was victim of a fishing trip, a trawl of anyone who had information. But then he was transferred to Beirut’s general security prison, and ended up in a cell for eight months. “I was surprised,” he said in an interview with The Times, with some understatement. “‘Why was this?’ I asked myself.”

    The politicians and generals whom he warned about the nitrate still walk free, claiming immunity through office.

    The comparison between their fate and that of Naddaf, detained with 24 other mid-ranking or junior officials and technicians for “complicity”, has become a symbol for many Lebanese of not just the blast’s injustice but the brazenness of the country’s ruling system.

    Sitting in a small office in central Beirut, Naddaf is not allowed to talk about the politics of the disaster. The issue remains sensitive, and permission to speak to him had to be obtained personally from the head of state security, General Antoine “Tony” Saliba.

    The blast is Lebanon’s touchstone issue, amid a broader economic and political crisis, and the anniversary on Wednesday is expected to trigger protests to rival those that toppled its last relatively stable government in 2019.

    But Naddaf’s reticence does not mean he does not take his extraordinary fate personally. “I wrote four reports in five months,” he said. “In each one, I warned about the danger of the nitrate.

    “All I can do is write reports. That’s my job. I can’t go beyond that. So I was shocked when they arrested me. The person who first interrogated me said I should be rewarded.”

    Beirut is not the only city to have suffered destruction by ammonium nitrate. The compound is a regularly traded commodity in everyday use as a fertiliser, but is also highly volatile. A similar explosion in Tianjin, China, in 2015 killed 173 people.

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Ftimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2F3d0c2e84-f2f1-11eb-8f01-2c678acbb979.jpg?crop=1000%2C1500%2C0%2C0&resize=1533
    Lady Cochrane, 98, was fatally injured in the explosion
    ALAMY

    Beirut’s was similar in nature but wildly different in political effect. It happened in the heart of the capital, slicing through business and residential districts, and damaging or destroying some of the city’s most celebrated historic buildings.

    Thousands were injured. The dead were a roster of Beirut life. They included ten firefighters; pensioners, office workers; the Dutch ambassador’s wife; Syrian refugees; waitresses; a celebrated architect; and the grande dame of Lebanese Christian high society — 98-year-old Yvonne Sursock, Lady Cochrane, blown across her family’s palace. The youngest was the two-year-old son of an Australian UN worker.

    The tale of incompetence which led to the explosion reflected Lebanon’s other catastrophe: a continuing economic collapse whose approach analysts repeatedly predicted but the government ignored. The EU has threatened to impose sanctions on Lebanon’s ruling elite as the country has been left with no government and is struggling with a financial crisis that the World Bank has described as one of the worst since the 1850s.

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Ftimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2F40c7d7f8-f2f1-11eb-8f01-2c678acbb979.jpg?crop=1500%2C1000%2C0%2C0&resize=1533
    President Aoun, left, and Hassan Diab, who was the prime minister until last month, had received reports from Joseph Naddaf warning of the danger of ammonium nitrate
    ANADOLU VIA GETTY IMAGES

    Naddaf arrived at the port 25 minutes after the blast and realised quickly what had happened. Officials subsequently released details of how his previous reports had been transferred upwards, until the last landed on the desks of President Aoun and the prime minister, Hassan Diab.

    Naddaf had been specially chosen to lead a mission to address popular concerns about corruption at the port, starting work in April 2019. Later that year, he was tipped off about the nitrate, and found it in Hangar 12, with a door missing and a hole in the wall.

    He was worried it might explode. He was also worried it might be stolen, he said.

    In a terrible irony, it may have been his persistence that led to the disaster.

    The most common if, as yet, unproven theory is that the fire that triggered the blast was caused by welders sent to secure the door. The hangar was also used to store confiscated fireworks.

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Ftimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2F4269d746-f2f1-11eb-8f01-2c678acbb979.jpg?crop=1500%2C1000%2C0%2C0&resize=1533
    The explosion damaged or destroyed some of the city’s most celebrated historic buildings
    WAEL HAMZEH/EPA
    The explosion also cast a harsh light on how the port was run, a secret that everyone knew. Its managers are said to answer to a variety of political factions, including Hezbollah but also Sunni, Christian and Druze parties. Each can arrange its own illicit imports and extract bribes and cuts.

    The nitrate arrived in 2013 and was off-loaded after the cargo ship carrying it was declared unseaworthy. Its destination was listed as Mozambique: the mystery was who arranged the shipment, and why it was not transferred on, returned or sold.

    An investigative television programme claimed earlier this year that the shippers shared an office address with a businessman linked to President Assad, the Syrian leader. The suggestion was that the ammonium nitrate was deliberately brought to Beirut to be taken to Syria to stuff the regime’s barrel bombs.

    A leaked FBI report now says that far from the 2,750 tonnes of nitrate on the ship’s papers, the explosion was compatible with a stock of about just 550 tonnes. Four fifths, in other words, was missing — though the theft saved Beirut from an even worse fate.

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Ftimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2F38640cce-f2f3-11eb-8f01-2c678acbb979.jpg?crop=1500%2C1000%2C0%2C0&resize=1533
    The tale of incompetence has left the public confused and angry. Protests have become common
    HANNAH MCKAY/REUTERS

    What is clear is that Naddaf’s clean-up job was a “mission impossible”, yet he says no one ever interfered with his work.

    However, he is well aware of the dangers. Two people with links to the explosion have been murdered in unexplained circumstances since — a former customs official and an official photographer at the scene.

    Even before the blast, shots were fired at his house, an apparent warning, however he does not know whether it related to his reports on Hangar 12 or other corruption investigations.

    Uppermost in his mind now, though, are the dead of August 4, 2020, who included one of his own men. “I was arrested but I came back to my family,” he said. “They did not.”

    And then, of course, there is the pain of knowing it could have been stopped, and that he had tried to stop it.

    “It’s very difficult,” he said. “Every second, every minute, every day I cannot forget it. And when I say that, I don’t just mean once a day, I mean every minute.”

    1. Land clearance. Soon to be a multi million £ development funded by the E.U and British taxpayers. Duplexes starting at 2 million.

    2. Land clearance. Soon to be a multi million £ development funded by the E.U and British taxpayers. Duplexes starting at 2 million.

  76. An interesting article from Taki mag.

    The Covid crisis is not about official lying. Whole institutions are
    being discredited as they are employed to support a narrative that is
    increasingly implausible. Further, it is becoming clear that the system
    itself is infested with sociopaths. The narrative collapse regarding
    Covid is now calling into question the narrative of the Biden presidency
    and the regime that put him in office. The biggest victim of Covid may
    turn out to be the regime itself.

    https://www.takimag.com/article/narrative-collapse/

    1. So true.

      I usually watch the Dan Bongino podcast on Rumble which is great value.

      Dan says the most dangerous people in the world are the ‘stupid smart people’.

      When we look at the likes of Johnson, Vallance, Whitty, Van Tam and the motley assortment of supporting geeks the government have thrust forward to explain their stupid psychopathic and totally unscientific policies, I have to agree.

      1. Bitter experience has taught me that the less willing an “expert” is to be questioned about their field of expertise, the more likely it is that they are not really expert.

    1. Two friends, one male one female, decided that the ongoing costs of tooth-witchery were so high that it would be cheaper and less painful long-term to have total extractions and dentures.

      Both say it was a good decision.

      1. Years ago I used to repair fine porcelain for an antique dealer….I’m sure I can knock up a replica tooth…..

        1. I wish I’d known that a few years ago, we could have sent you lots of work.

          Araldite just doesn’t hack it where 18th century ceramics are concerned!

        2. I wish I’d known that a few years ago, we could have sent you lots of work.

          Araldite just doesn’t hack it where 18th century ceramics are concerned!

        3. I wish I had known that years ago Plum, when some one in the family bashed a tall beautiful Satsuma Ewer, 3foot high, with the vacuum cleaner , and it cracked , yes it was a mess .

      2. My Dentist is exceptionally good but he wasn’t prepared to do that when i asked him.

        There is also a risk though quite small of a heart attack.

        1. Having experienced multiple delayed appointments and moreorless lost faith in NHS dental services (although my NHS dentist is great) I was eventually referred to a private practice in Colchester. Three consultations, a CT scan and X-rays later I am having an unrecoverable tooth removed next month.

          The surgeon who will perform the extraction advised that my sinus shadow indicated chronic sinus disease. I am about to talk with my GP about available treatments (If I can contact him with this Covid nonsense barrier to normal communications or face to face consultations).

          I mention this because the NHS dentist was obliged to refer me because they did not have the equipment necessary to examine teeth and gums in such detail.

          We are constantly told that our NHS is a marvel to behold. I beg to differ.

          1. Talk to your GP by all means but you should also research as much as you can. Not necessarily to score points but to be aware of alternatives.

      3. Talking to our dental hygienist the other day (well more mumbling between prods with pointed sticks),she became very emotional about a patient that she had just seen. The patient was about twenty five years old and claimed to have never used a toothbrush in her life. Possibly true, her teeth were so bad that the dentist had recommended extracting all of her teeth.

        If that wasn’t bad enough, mother and grandmother had been the same.

    2. If you have expensive restorations, always put the plug in the basin before cleaning your teeth.

  81. Evening, all. I am surprised how much more energy and enthusiasm I have during my respite; I’ve cut both the lawns, weeded the orchard, cut back some overhanging shrubs, dealt with the chimney sweep (who also put up wires on the chimneys to stop the birds getting in), fielded a couple of calls (both from women with Jamaican accents) about MOH and started making preparations for having my neighbours round for an apéro tomorrow night. I couldn’t have managed half of that two weeks ago.

    1. The Power of Oscar.

      Good evening, Conwy – coupled, with the pleasure of escaping from Eastern England!

      1. Evening, Bill. Ah, but I have the pleasure of Western England (and the Welsh only a few miles away) 🙂

          1. Only for two days and only in Lincolnshire, Bill 🙂 I may well plan another Lincolnshire holiday sometime before the weather turns wintry; I went past quite a few places I would have liked to revisit, but they were closed (they only open on certain days and I wasn’t there on their open days).

          3. Yo, OLT! Yes, I went a couple of years ago. I did as much as I could in that visit; Scampton, the WAVE, the Dambusters Inn, the Petwood Hotel, Cinema in the Woods, the Bluebell Inn, Thorpe Camp, East Kirkby, IBCC, Metheringham. I went past Thorpe Camp and Metheringham this time, but they were shut. I also drove past the campsite where I’d stayed then (but I chose a different one this time).

    4. The “enforced” break seems to be doing you good, Con. More power to your elbow. Is there any sign of a permanent solution?

      1. It certainly is, John. I hadn’t realised how bad it was until I stopped! I took Oscar into town with me this morning for his walk and we stopped to chat with other dog owners, gossiped in the shops and went for a coffee in a dog-friendly place. They even gave Oscar his own small piece of flapjack! He chilled out while I browsed some Lifestyle magazines (thinking, “does anybody really think this looks good?”) that were left for customers to peruse. On the way back I couldn’t help feeling that I had got my life back. No pressure, no dread of what I might find when I got back, just a leisurely pace and enjoying the moment. Then I dug up some new potatoes, collected some garden peas (remembering the way Charlie used to be helping himself at one end of the row as I harvested at the other!) and cooked myself lunch. Tonight, I’ve got some neighbours coming over for an apéro on the terrace. I don’t honestly think MOH will be able to come back. I told the woman who rang yesterday that I couldn’t cope any more. It’s taken the break for me to face up to that. When you’re in the moment, it’s a case of one foot in front of the other, head down and carry on, but it’s only now I’ve been released from the grind that I realise what a toll it was taking on me.

  82. The vegan “do” wasn’t nearly as bad as it sounded. It was a gathering in memory of a very old chum of the MR – who died a year ago but no one could go to her funeral.

    The MR taught both the chum’s children – now in their 50s!! Most of the food WAS veganish – but not the chocolate cake…!! Nor some very non-vegan bottles of hooch – which I eschewed (driver…)

    Anyway, time for a bit of a rest. It was lovely when we arrived – then after an hour and a half, it clouded over and turned very chilly. Fortunately, the MR has just handed me a glass of special medicine…

    Have a jolly evening.

    A demain.

    And NO ONE was masked.

    1. Special medicine eh? Would that be Fenning’s Fever Cure by any chance? Be nice in a stiff gin.

  83. https://twitter.com/ex_excalibur/status/1422137571916738567

    What are we going to do?

    A group of very tall slender elegant looking very black Africans walked along the pavement near the village shop late morning , I wonderered whether they were Sudanese or Ethiopeans or even Kenyans . Perhaps they were holiday visitors ..

    I guess we must all be welcoming and generous with good wishes for their new lives.

    I feel very uncomfortable though.

    1. It might well “end” the Conservatives but what alternative is there? Labour and the Limp Dims are a busted flush. All the other peripheral parties are perpetual wannabes with not a hope in hell of gaining power (no matter what the super-optimists — step forward Ogga —will tell you otherwise).

      1. 336203+ up ticks,
        G,
        Do you deny the voting mode vote con keep out lab, vote lab keep out con ( two proven INO sh!te parties) is the main cause of our
        near complete downfall ?

        Bearing in mind that whilst that voting mode
        was / is continuing to be played out other forces were / are building and being added to daily.

        ” Super optimist”
        Very cheap shot when All I ever wanted as a real UKIP party long term member, now ex,
        was total independence as a nation and to render unto the peoples that, that is theirs.

          1. 336203+ up ticks,
            Evening MA,
            In the context of the Brexitexit total severance should have been made to work.

          2. Completely agree there. The whole point of Brexit after all was to trade globally as an independent nation. We *want* nations to work together, we want international trade.

            What we need more than anything above that is to govern ourselves.

        2. Not a ‘cheap shot’ at all, Ogs. The Labour Party came about in 1900 when the Whigs were in decline. No other party in history has successfully gatecrashed the Con/Lab hegemony since then. In order for any party to do so it must have the support of the electorate. That electorate has never been seduced into doing so despite various attempts by short-lived upstarts; most of which have very off-putting ‘personalities’ leading them. THAT is the problem and there seems to be no solution to it. Perpetually whingeing and moaning about the accursed two-party system won’t resolve the issue. You need the electorate on your side.

          1. 336203+ up ticks,
            G,
            For the last three decades a good % of the electorate are tactical,nasal canal gripping, best of the worst voters their input has kept us in a sh!te bog to forehead level, one would be a fool to have many of this current electorate behind one in the trenches.

            I would say a major section of the electorate are worse than the odious political creatures they continue to elect
            at least the political creatures retain a high level lifestyle
            whereas their backers are running on sh!te addiction.

            What cannot be denied is that a majority of the electorate have been knowingly / unknowingly supporting / voting for a coalition with no opposition.

      1. The main parties are toast.

        Unfortunately no new party has the organisation and infrastructure to challenge any of them.

        If someone could buy the Liberal Party apparatus including the National Liberal Club on Embankment, lock stock and barrel, dispose of their woke MPs and use their resources as a base for a proper Liberal Party with proper policies they might sweep the board.

        1. I do believe that’s pretty much the plan of Liberal Spring, if they get enough momentum.

        2. 336203+ up ticks,
          Evening C,
          The party before Country is the country killer tis now a proven fact.

          Currently the electorate are deep in vote & whinge mode.

          Common sense would tell one to build on an existing footing, UKIP under Batten proved that, a political success story.
          Anyone denying that are very clever peoples being able to talk outta their @rse,
          You build party’s you DO NOT continue to give political succour as in vote & whinge for proven treacherous trash.

        3. Why not do a Trump and take over the conservative(ish) party? Put forward a reform minded leadership candidate who is also acceptable to the mainstream, purge the softie MPs and away you go.

      2. The main parties are toast.

        Unfortunately no new party has the organisation and infrastructure to challenge any of them.

        If someone could buy the Liberal Party apparatus including the National Liberal Club on Embankment, lock stock and barrel, dispose of their woke MPs and use their resources as a base for a proper Liberal Party with proper policies they might sweep the board.

    3. Buy 7000 arrows and use them as target practice.

      They shouldn’t be here, we don’t want them here, they are illegal economic gimmigrants who’ll go on to commit crime and sit on welfare.

      Get. Rid. Of. Them

  84. OMG

    Duchess of Pork will be present on the One Show BBC 1, just shortly .

    We don’t watch it normally , and will probably switch channels when she appears, but she is really outrageous and in your face.

    Why would any man have wanted to have sucked her toes !

    2. Only Connect and the Not Bamber Gascoigne (We called him Bob) on in 20 mins, for those who pay the BBC Tax, of course

          1. Doesn’t matter if he has or not. Belle’s husband is ‘wannafight’ our one time Notl wind up artist.

          1. It was when I wrote, the arrival of new posts throws everything out of synch.
            The second related to the Discovery man.

          2. “Discovery”?? Land Rover?? I am lost.

            As I am about to go to bed, it doesn’t matter.

          3. Businessman who stalked his ex-girlfriend after spending thousands
            buying her a Land Rover Discovery and paying her £2,000 a month is
            spared prison as judge says he ‘no doubt felt used’ 4
            •
            Edit
            •
            Reply
            •
            Share ›

    2. Businessman who stalked his ex-girlfriend after spending thousands
      buying her a Land Rover Discovery and paying her £2,000 a month is
      spared prison as judge says he ‘no doubt felt used’

      1. That’ll teach him to pay for sex instead of getting a GF by using his charm.

          3. I always go for twenties now. Tired of being asked if i have anything smaller. Me? Smaller !

    3. I’m glad that was thrown out. Although it is not harassment though it does annoy me that staff with children get prioritised when booking leave etc

      1. I’m slightly sympathetic re the children question.

        School holidays are limiting factors.
        I objected (not that I could do anything about it) to bosses who always took the prime times, Christmas, Easter, July, August and the like.

        Once our children were older we avoided peak times.

        1. School holidays are a real problem vis a vis vacation.
          Glad we’re no longer subject to it.

          1. Agreed.
            We charge the same fee all year for the cottage precisely because we sympathise with families.

          3. I believe so, and we (pre-Covid) had lots of return custom and the beauty was that when the children moved to independent holidays the parents came out of season.

            We are now seeing their children booking.

          4. Gosh – that brings back memories. When I retired from soliciting in 1996, my last clients were grand-children of my first !!

          5. It was the same when I was coaching children’s football in the UK.

            When “my” boys brought their sons and daughters it made me very happy and I have to admit slightly proud.

          7. Perfect.
            It did look the perfect setting for young families. The surrounding countryside was reminiscent of our green and pleasant land. Swallows and Amazons.

          10. Most Nottlers live in the UK where you get half the house for twice the price.
            They are the ones who are well off.

          12. My place could be bought for the equivalent price of a small three bedroom terrace in parts of London, and the London house would leave money over for improvements.

          14. A friend’s son works for one of those courier companies. Holidays are strictly by seniority so the younger, more recent hires who are probably the ones with children frequently end up missing the chance for hols during school holidays.

            Mike has worked there for fifteen years, this is the first time that he has been able to get time off in August.

          15. I worked in the hospitality industry all my working life and there is no such thing as a holiday in August for the staff.

          16. I know I am departed this life – but I’ll tell you a funny story.

            When the butcher in Laure retired and let the shop and business, a chap from Paris took it on. Nice bloke; though mediocre butcher. Open all week – every week, EXCEPT August – when he closed and went away.

            August is the month where all local businesses earn half a year’s income – because of holidaymakers….

            He didn’t last….

          17. Similar here.
            It’s why the pissing contest politicians are doing irreparable damage to the tourist industry, the bastards.

          18. When we first came to Norway, the country basically closed in July “Fellesferie”, to the extent that I couldn’t get a haircut, even some supermarkets were closed.
            Nowadays, it’s unusual to find any business reduced during the holidays.

          19. Interesting. August being hot is not good for meat. Also, Paris empties of Parisiens in August so he may have had family commitments.

            I know in Malta a great many people sod off to Gozo and rent their apartments to tourists.

            Different strokes.

          20. IT consulting was the opposite, clients would be on holiday so contracts were few. Get to March with the end of the government year and holidays were forbidden if there was any government money up for grabs.

        2. Perhaps those who complain about it should also remember that the school holidays are the expensive time and higher fares help to subsidise lower fares off season.

          1. If you believe that, you’ll believe anything.

            The higher fees are charged to make higher profits. As far as I’m aware nobody sells the product at a loss in the off season, they cover their costs at a minimum.

          3. Indeed, but people don’t tend to sell at a loss.

            The only instance I know is where people quote a very low fee for one week, when nobody ever wants to come, so that when people search by price their property appears at the top of the lowest to highest.

      2. I can understand that but can’t quite match that with the amount of extra shifts you volunteer to do.

        1. Remember – WE have our bills to pay – and every new arrivals too. They are a massive financial burden – and that burden grows every day – even if none arrive.that day.

          2. No – doubt she’d want someone who looked like this. Never actually had good looking women throwing themselves at me. I was at the back of the queue when good looks were being handed out.

          3. I must have been a few places behind you, Walter, based on life experience…

          7. Unless you look like quasimodo or the elephant man a lot of women are attracted to other aspects of a person.

            The media showcases vacuous men and women all the time who fall into sex, get married and get divorced all in one or two years.

            Real life isn’t like that. Certainly not life worth living.

            Apologies if you do look like Quasimodo but even he had Esmerelda.

          8. A chap I knew years ago told me to “get a woman who isn’t very good looking – they are more greatful” – his wife was a blob with a large hooked nose – sorry – couldn’t face coming back home to that every day.

          11. Try working in Nigeria – I’ve never been so attractive to young women as I was working there. All you need is a pulse and a wallet…

          1. You work very hard. Come spend a day with me and i will show you the error of your ways. :@)

          2. That’s because I have very little pension to speak of so I’m making hay while the sun shines 🙂

  88. Beeb radio just played part of a “documentary” aimed at scaring the young into getting jabbed – – so obvious. Sinister gets worse and worse. The govt must have been promised a life of untold wealth and luxury for this farce – – wonder where this fantasy land is?

    1. Oh, it’ll be the UK for the super-rich. Suitably protected by bodyguards of course.

  89. What do you think of this now ?

    For too long, our broken asylum system has lined the pockets of the vile criminal gangs who cheat the system. This is not fair to the vulnerable people who need protection or the British public who pay for it.

    That is why we have introduced our Nationality and Borders Bill, which will increase the punishment for people smugglers, make it a criminal offence to knowingly enter the UK without permission, and make it easier to swiftly remove those who enter the UK illegally.

    This will create a fair but firm system that prevents dangerous channel crossings and cracks down on the criminal gangs that exploit vulnerable migrants, whilst supporting those in genuine need.

    https://action.conservatives.com/borders-bill/?utm_source=fb&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=Borders%20Bill&utm_content=England%20%26%20Wales_Facebook_Desktop_Feed&utm_term=Borders%20Bill&fbclid=IwAR1vcM95v6JNc9flm33bJfT6KyfFCPUC8RMOln71zPmS3gSNeUa5xVExJac

    1. “make it a criminal offence to knowingly enter the UK without
      permission, and make it easier to swiftly remove those who enter the UK
      illegally”.

      And before deporting all the illegals give them all amnesty.

          3. Is that why you find it so easy to put your foot in your mouth?

            Open goal, irresistible.
            };-O

      2. Blah blah blah, who do they think they are kidding , just another consultaion which will be shoved to the back of a drawer , tick boxing exercise .

        I see that Afghanis are being housed down in Plymouth ..

        Every County Council is being persuaded to take a huge quota of these people .

        Politicians are ignorant twerps .. they hide behind their country estates .. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7180225f6443bd0d7eaf3bd56f913d5808415b3113de22bedcdba8c6896eb064.jpg

        1. Yes it is. But film it happening and you will feel the wrath of the Courts. Complain and they will destroy you as they have done with Tommy Robinson.

    3. “I say, Boris, the constituencies are getting awfully annoying. All those ghastly far right wing elderly members! They seem to think we should be doing something about defending the borders. Of course, I can’t tell them that that would annoy George, and put all our ha ha bonuses in jeopardy”

      “God, no! Don’t go telling them the truth! That would be a disaster for my bank account, I mean, for the Party”

      “So what shall we do?”

      “Oh, just stick a consultation on the website, and include some words like “Action” that make it look as though we’re doing something. They can direct all their resentment into their answers, and get the feeling they’re influencing policy”

      “Jolly good wheeze, Boris! We’re right onto it!”

    4. If you or I tried to enter the UK illegally you would soon be arrested. No new laws are needed. I speak as someone who has experienced the considerable administrative and financial burden of the legal importation of Mrs Pea into the UK. You will be glad to hear that she has no intention of staying after my demise!

    5. We only get to see just how many illegals are infesting our country when a building housing them burns down.

      A few years ago a fire in a nail bar in Sudbury destroyed several historic buildings in Market Square. I had no idea that so many foreigners were housed by the council in the upper floor accommodation of the premises. They were rescued by the fire crews.

      I recall a similar observation when a fire destroyed a number of historic buildings in the centre of Harrogate where I was designing a shop front for a restaurateur. All manner of local authority housed folk were rescued from flats above the shops by the fire crews.

      2. In my town i heard of proposals to open up the spaces above shops for housing. It is becoming clear that that wasn’t for indigenous people waiting on the housing list but to accommodate all the newcomers. Another reason why rent and rates are so high and all we see are charity shops and Nail Bars. Drive out and destroy the small family business and replace it with social housing.

        It is also quite likely that those fires were the result of people cooking in a part of the premises not designed for the purpose.

      1. Get some bees, Grizz.
        Nowhere near as irritating, they don’t do that pendulum thing in front of your face, and contribute with pollination and honey. Rather fuzzy and cuddly, actually… and your own honey, mead…

        1. My garden is full of honey bees and bumble bees, Paul. They outnumber the wasps by thousands.

    2. White anglo saxon protestants? Possibly.

      Stingy things, I hope not, wasps are your friend, they eat all sorts of garden nasties and as long as you leave them alone they tend to leave you alone.

      And I speak as one who was given a thoroughly harsh stinging session earlier this year and the sting sites still hurt and itch.

      1. 🙁
        Firstborn was stung yesterday through his bee-suit. Me, in my tee shirt & work trousers, no net or hat – not stung, although I was working with the open hives.

        1. My grandfather kept bees, normally they never stung him.

          His wife went into anaphylactic shock when stung, and the males down the line all suffer similarly, I’m extremely wary of bees, but love honey and mead.

          1. Was savagely stung by African bees as a small child, so much so it’s clear in my mind still (wherever that mind is…). Not keen for a repeat experience even with cuddly Norwegian bees, but yesterday I had to do useful stuff, although not prepared for it. Still, went well.

        2. France is a big country and it would take quite a long time for intensive monoculture farming to take place, if ever.
          We are seeing it here in the U.K though. Proposals for herds of cows in the thousands. Chickens and pigs. It is unsustainable.

          Just like the Florida orange crop. When the bees get imported to fertilise and then they get a disease there will be no oranges.

          Nothing lives in the orange groves. Even beneath the surface.

        1. Neonicotinoids are now off the banned list if your monoculture cash crop is in danger.

          Bee Killers.

    6. I haven’t seen any yet. I’m keeping an eye on my greengages as they often get there first.

      1. I had a bumper crop of cherries last year. I netted them to stop the fat pigeons eating them all. This year i had a bumper crop of blackfly. Not a single cherry. The apple tree got so bad that i ended up cutting it off at the base. My Bays were so infested with a leaf mite that i got rid of them too.

        I can understand banning harmful to the enviroment chemicals but the balance has gone the other way. Just like the Somerset levels they haven’t a clue about secondary and tertiary conditions.

        Next year the cherries are for the birds. Once the fat batsards can’t get off the ground they are in a pie. Pigeon not cherry !

        1. My cherry tree is much too tall to cover with a net. The wood pigeons don’t get a chance to nick my cherries; the bloody rooks and jackdaws beat them to it.

          5. Thank you Johnny but that doesn’t tell me what they taste like. Gamey bird or more chickeny?

    7. In London, Birmingham, Rochdale, Rotherham, Manchester, Leicester, Leeds, Barnsley, Liverpool & other beleaguered cities the lack of WASPS & over abundance of WOGS is quite alarming !

      1. That sounds like a song. Or rather a death knell. I think we hear the muezzin at all times of day at midnight.

    2. Not really to my taste. Are the male singer’s trousers too tight?

      :-))

      PS – At least he’s wearing a tie.

          1. Erm… no. The ladies shoes. Not that i have a particular fetish for them but sometimes the ladies in question could be better advised. Sometimes long leather boots up to the thighs…ahem…can be a positive in camouflaging the kankles.

            ‘Scuse me…going for more ice. >>>>>> :@(

          1. I remember watching that series and Little House on the Prairie. The driving force for me to leave home at 16.

  96. SIR – Dr Richard Budgett, the medical and science director of the International Olympic Committee, said: “Everyone agrees that trans women are women” (report, July 30).
    Who are these “everyone”?
    Alan G Barstow
    Onslunda, Skåne County, Sweden

    3. What Dr Dick means by ‘everyone’ is everyone bought and paid for by the sponsors.

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