Monday 23 August: America’s unconvincing account of the Kabul operation to save civilians from the Taliban

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2021/08/22/letters-americas-unconvincing-account-kabul-operation-save-civilians/

573 thoughts on “Monday 23 August: America’s unconvincing account of the Kabul operation to save civilians from the Taliban”

  1. Vladimir Putin says he’s not allowing Afghan refugees into Russia. 22 August 2021.

    Russian President Vladimir Putin said Sunday that his country won’t accept Afghan refugees because he doesn’t want to deal with “militants” masquerading as asylum-seekers.

    The Russian strongman slammed Western nations for placing Afghan refugees in countries even near his border while their US and European visas are being processed.

    Morning everyone. I’ve looked at these queues at Kabul Airport and there is no way that these people are all former interpreters to the British Army! What we have is a general rush to get on a free flight to the UK and a life on benefits for evermore.

    https://nypost.com/2021/08/22/vladimir-putin-refuses-to-allow-afghan-refugees-into-russia/

  3. mng all, Monday’s offering covering Much Ado About Nothing:

    SIR – While serving with Isaf at Kabul airport on the 10th anniversary of September 11, during a period of high-intensity combat operations there, I was ordered to attend a meeting at the US embassy in Kabul, thinking it at the time, for obvious reasons, a dangerous journey.

    I was a fairly senior officer, effectively under American command, and I live to tell the tale despite having made the return trip by road.

    For the US secretary of state to suggest that helicopter flights were the normal means of making that trip is contemptuously dishonest. We all know why it’s now a helicopter journey, as it was in Saigon.

    Colonel James N Stythe (retd)
    Pewsey, Wiltshire

    SIR – Tony Blair might like to recall who committed British troops to this 20-year war before using the word imbecilic.

    T T Weller
    Newbury, Berkshire

    SIR – It’s getting embarrassing. As an (ex) paid-up member of the Conservative Party, I find myself agreeing with Tony Blair yet again.

    Garry Wiseman
    Fordham, Cambridgeshire

    SIR – Following Margaret Thatcher’s resolve to send a taskforce across the globe to recover the Falklands from Argentine occupation in 1982, Britain’s standing in the world shot up, our postwar decline was arrested and would-be invaders of our allies were deterred.

    The catastrophic withdrawal of the United States from Afghanistan has already had the reverse effect on the world standing of America, but also on that of Britain. With China having flouted the Joint Declaration in Hong Kong and already sabre-rattling over Taiwan, and with Russia’s Vladimir Putin having seized part of Georgia in 2008 and Crimea in 2014, calculations will be made that the West under US leadership has lost the will to defend its interests and its values. Overnight, the world has become a much more dangerous place.

    The West must now declare that Nato’s Article 5 remains firmly in force and that any attempt to seize Taiwan will be forcefully resisted.

    Meanwhile, Britain must ramp up its Armed Forces more than envisaged in the recent defence review.

    Sir Gerald Howarth
    Minister for International Security Strategy, 2010-12
    Chelsworth, Suffolk

    SIR – The unwelcome image of Taliban leaders returning triumphantly to Afghanistan from Qatar was made more shocking by the fact that they were filmed disembarking from an aircraft of the Qatar Air Force.

    The Taliban are a terrorist grouping with no mandate to take control of Afghanistan, but they have been given a spurious status by this visible official support from the Qataris. Questions need to be raised, not just about the venue of the 2022 World Cup.

    Alexandra Wakid
    London SW15

    SIR – The article
    “Pakistan goes to the root of Taliban support. Time to stop treating it as an ally” by Kyle Orton (telegraph.co.uk) includes the claim that Mullah Omar died in Pakistan. By all accounts, he died in Afghanistan.

    In the past 20 years, more Pakistani soldiers have died in confronting terrorism than those of the United States and Nato combined. Pakistan has suffered over 80,000 casualties.

    Pakistan’s intelligence cooperation has been pivotal in decimating al-Qaeda and other groups. Pakistan continues to be a generous host to over three million Afghan refugees.

    It has been the consistent position of Imran Khan, the prime minister, that there was no military solution to the conflict in Afghanistan, and that dialogue was the only way forward. So Pakistan played its part in bringing the Taliban to the negotiating table. The US, the Taliban and the Ashraf Ghani government held direct talks. Failure of intra-Afghan negotiations to make headway speaks of the inflexibility of various Afghan parties, rather than any “duplicity” on the part of Pakistan.

    Pakistan maintained that any withdrawal of international forces must be accompanied with a negotiated settlement. Unfortunately, the decision to withdraw forces was made without informing Pakistan.

    In the last week, Pakistan has helped hundreds of diplomatic staff of several European countries and Afghans working at organisations like the World Bank and UN to evacuate safely.

    Pakistan expects all stakeholders in Afghanistan to respect fundamental human rights, including the rights of women, while fulfilling their commitment to ensure that Afghan territory is not used by international terrorists against any other country.

    Moazzam Ahmad Khan
    High Commissioner for Pakistan to the UK, London SW1

    SIR – Which lessons of history will we repeat at Kabul airport, where flights are only possible by the acquiescence of the Taliban?

    Will the media-savvy Islamists put us through a surrender and a repeat of the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979-81? Or will it be a promise of evacuation by land and then a massacre, as happened to Major-General Elphinstone’s army on the road to Gandamak in 1842?

    We are past a military solution to this problem. Bring our soldiers home within hours, not days.

    Otto Inglis
    Crossgates, Fife

    SIR – A strong sense of déjà vu makes me wonder if, in 2035, a new musical will take the West End by storm, called Miss Kabul.

    Paul Ryan
    Smarden, Kent

    Patients are told there are no appointments to see a GP

    SIR – You report Professor Martin Marshall, the chairman of the Royal College of General Practitioners, saying: “It’s a misconception that GPs aren’t seeing
    patients face to face.”

    Last week my wife attended hospital for leg surgery and was told to arrange an appointment with her GP for examination after a week.

    On contacting her surgery she was told that no face-to-face appointments were being made. Misconception?

    Chris Davis
    Stevenage, Hertfordshire

    SIR – I am the mother of an extremely hard-working GP. I am sick and tired of GPs being constantly denigrated. They are demoralised and short-staffed, and constant carping in the Telegraph only reinforces this feeling.

    The vast majority of GPs have worked their socks off in the Covid pandemic. They have been seeing patients face to face throughout. If they work from home, it is in addition to long hours in the surgery.

    Ruth Mays
    Windsor, Berkshire

    SIR – I recently had reason to enter a building that houses two large GP surgeries. I saw no one except a single receptionist telling one caller after another there were no appointments.

    Karen Gwynn
    Bromsgrove, Worcestershire

    SIR – I am 90 years old and live alone, and have no health visitors. Last Monday I found a large lump on my shoulder blade close to my spine.

    I rang the doctors and was given a telephone appointment for some time Wednesday morning the following week. How will the doctor be able to diagnose me? I cannot take a photo as I have arthritis in both hands.

    Roy Bottomley
    Huddersfield, West Yorkshire

    SIR – Having had problems with face-to-face consultations with GPs, hospital consultants and physiotherapists, and waiting six weeks for an urgent MRI, I have come to the conclusion that the NHS was not saved, and is in fact dying.

    Pamela Cox
    Lichfield, Staffordshire

    What the DVLA does

    SIR – My sister and her husband run what was the family farm on an island off Scotland. They had a letter from the DVLA informing them that a vehicle registered in their name does not comply with London emissions rules and would not be allowed on the M25.

    They found the registration belongs to a 32-year-old tractor, kept as a loader. My brother-in-law is quite disappointed that he can’t go to London on his tractor.

    Incidentally, I am still waiting for my driving licence to be renewed (Letters August 20), and am worried as we plan a trip to Spain in October. How can I explain
    to a car-hire company that I am allowed to drive, but don’t have proof in the form of a driving licence?

    John D Frew
    Ipswich, Suffolk

    The cat chooses

    SIR – On the question of the pecking order with cats in the house (Letters, August 21), I heard my wife call out from the kitchen: “Do you want beef or chicken?” I replied: “Ooh, beef, please.”

    To this the retort was: “I was talking to the cat; you’re having soup.”

    Dave Taylor
    Manchester

    McGreenery

    SIR – After years of complaining that Scotland does not get the government it voted for, Nicola Sturgeon has just added a Green dimension to her own government that almost no one in Scotland voted for. Her “landslide” victory seems to have gone down the drain.

    Dr Gerald Edwards
    Glasgow

    SIR – I see that the Green Party in Scotland does not believe growth is a “sensible measure” of economic success.

    What might they believe is, I wonder?

    Simon Morpuss
    Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire

    Selfish virus

    SIR – It would appear that the cunning coronavirus has a plan to frighten the adult population into not educating its children, thus ensuring that there are no future scientists capable of devising schemes for its elimination.

    Anthony Singlehurst
    London SE11

    Star-crossed staging

    SIR – I am 101 years old. When I sat for the School Certificate in 1936, the set Shakespeare play was Romeo and Juliet. We were taken to see the London production with Laurence Olivier, Peggy Ashcroft, John Gielgud, and Edith Evans (as the Nurse).

    I do not remember being traumatised by the events in the play. Was I hard-hearted, or just more grown-up than today’s teenagers?

    Mary Wilson
    Sudbury, Suffolk

    SIR – Oh dear! How could I have got it so wrong all these years? I thought the actors in Romeo and Juliet really did die at the end of the play and a new pair of actors were chosen for the next performance.

    Guy Williams
    Nailsworth, Gloucestershire

    It’s cash that counts at the village flower show

    SIR – This month our local community hall has as usual held its annual flower show. It was highly successful and we took nearly £900. But it was all in cash.

    How do the banks and the Government suggest we achieve this in future when they seem hell-bent on phasing out this valuable commodity?

    Dick Arnold
    Holditch, Dorset

    1. It has been the consistent position of Imran Khan, the prime minister, that there was no military solution to the conflict in Afghanistan, and that dialogue was the only way forward.
      As it was in Norn Iron – to reasonable effect.

    2. How do the banks and the Government suggest we achieve this in future when they seem hell-bent on phasing out this valuable commodity?
      We have a system in Norway, run by Den norske Bank. It’s called VIPPS, and uses your mobile phone to instruct your bank to send money to someone else’s bank, by indexing with their mobile phone number. Thus, easy to use for small “cash” amounts, such as buying a second-hand book and similar. Naturally, can be used for bigger amounts, if you wish, like the electricity bill.
      So, that’s how it could be done. Of course, you need a mobile signal – something else absent from most of the UK.
      However, the UK being a society stuck in 1950s and going backwards, will only say “It would never work here”, despite that it works, well, here. I don’t remember the last time I took out cash – I think, late 2019.

    5. Gerald Howarth’s idea that ‘NATO’s Article 5 should remain firmly in force’ overlooks the fact that Taiwan is not a member of NATO.

  4. Good Moaning.
    A book review on something we take for granted. I must admit I’ve never given it a thought; they just exist.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/13th-century-parchment-google-invention-index/

    “13th-century parchment Google: the invention of the index

    Meet the medieval monks who had a bright idea: the index. Their technology revolutionised books – and now underpins the internet

    By Dennis Duncan 22 August 2021 • 12:00pm

    What was she in again? Isn’t he dead? How does the chorus go? We live in an age of compulsive detail-checking, our fingers forever twitching for our devices. The Oxford English Dictionary dates the first use of the phrase “to look something up” – to search for a piece of information in a table – back to 1692. It is hard now to imagine a time when this was not a universal, daily activity.

    Rewind to the Middle Ages, however, and things looked rather different. In the monasteries, where literacy was concentrated, reading was a slow, patient, linear business. The Scriptures were central to the daily monastic routine, but monks, cloistered from the outside world, had a lifetime to read, mark and inwardly digest them. Then, at the turn of the 13th century, two new institutions – the universities and the mendicant orders – brought with them a need for speed. Lectures and sermons: a new way of using books – of finding what you needed as efficiently as possible – was urgently required. It was in this world of preaching and teaching that our Age of Search was born.

    The humble back-of-book index is one of those inventions so successful, so integrated into our daily practices, that they become invisible. Yet, like any piece of technology, the index has its history, one that, for nearly 800 years, was intimately entwined with a particular form of the book – the codex: the sheaf of pages, folded and bound together at the spine. Now, it has entered the digital era as the key technology underpinning our online reading. The very first webpage, after all, was a subject index. As for the search engine, Google engineer Matt Cutts explains: “The first thing to understand is that when you do a Google search, you aren’t actually searching the web. You’re searching Google’s index of the web.” The index, today, organises our lives. But when it first emerged, somewhere around the year 1230, it was one of those innovations – like the light bulb or mathematical calculus – that was so necessary, whose time was so ripe, that it was invented twice.

    If you’ve ever been to Paris and visited the Pantheon, the vast domed mausoleum on the Left Bank where the heroes of the French Republic are laid to rest, the chances are that you’ve stood at the foot of its steps and admired the view west up the Rue Soufflot to the Eiffel Tower. The area is heavily built up now, noisy with traffic. It is hard to imagine that, had you been standing in the same spot 800 years ago, you would have been just outside the south wall of the Dominican friary of St Jacques, where, with painstaking care in the convent library, the friars were at work on an extraordinary project.

    The year is 1230, and the friary, like the Dominican Order itself, is barely a decade old. Hugh of Saint Cher, a dynamic young cleric from the south-west of France has been made prior, and under his direction the friars will begin to produce a new type of document – a book index – and the book in question is the Bible. This index is a word index – what we call a concordance – it lists all the major words in both Old and New testaments, nearly 12,000 of them, and all the places where those words appear, about 129,000 references in total.

    The St Jacques concordance lists its terms in alphabetical order, from a a a (usually translated as ah or alas) to Zorobabel. It represents a milestone in religious scholarship, and we can tell it was an important book – something of a bestseller – because 28 different copies of it still survive in libraries today. (These, of course, were the days before printing, when if you wanted a copy of a book, you would literally have to copy it out by hand, or pay someone to do it for you.)

    But let us leave Hugh in Paris and travel to Oxford to meet a man named Robert Grosseteste. Grosseteste’s origins are both humble and obscure. He was born in Suffolk, sometime around 1175, likely into a family of tenant farmers. It was a lowly start that would always be held against him – when he became Bishop of Lincoln, his underlings openly grumbled that someone of such mean beginnings had been appointed above them. It is not clear whether Grosseteste was the family name or an epithet applied once Robert’s abilities had become manifest. Grosse tête: big head. When he first enters the historical record it is in a letter of reference praising his “wide reading” in business, law, medicine, the liberal arts… Grosseteste, it is said, had both a large noggin “and store of brains to fill it”.

    We finally pin him down in the late 1220s, and Robert, now in his 50s, is in Oxford, preaching to both gown and town, and lecturing at the new Franciscan convent. It is here too that he is compiling his Tabula distinctionum, his Table of Distinctions, the detailed, even picturesque, subject index to a lifetime of unbounded reading.

    Unlike Hugh’s Concordance, Grosseteste’s Tabula survives now in a single, incomplete copy, a manuscript kept in the municipal library at Lyon. And again, unlike the Concordance, it is arranged not alphabetically but conceptually. Its headwords, all 440 of them, are grouped into nine top-level categories, broad themes like the mind, created things, the holy scriptures. So, taking Grosseteste’s first category, God, as an example, it is broken down into 36 topics: that God exists, what God is, the unity of God, the trinity of God, and so on.

    For each of these, Grosseteste supplies a series of references – first to Bible passages, then to the writings of the Church Fathers, and finally, in a separate column to the right, to pagan or Arabic writers. So, if we wanted to know more about that first entry – that God exists – the Tabula informs us that we should start by looking at the opening chapter of Genesis (“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth”). We might then look to various works by Augustine – Books 8, 10 and 11 of City of God, for example. And if we were prepared to go off-piste into non-Christian thought, we could try the first book of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. This is far more than a mere book index; it is a books index, a parchment Google that aspires to be as encyclopedic as the mind of its creator.

    For the preacher with sermons to write, or for the time-poor teacher in the newly founded universities at Paris and Oxford, the value of these two indexes would have been clear immediately. Within decades, readers were producing their own, annotating their books with tables – sometimes alphabetical, sometimes conceptual – of their contents. When the printing press arrived two centuries later, which meant you could be sure which page any given word would appear on, the index became all but ubiquitous for non-fiction writing.

    Once readers knew what to expect, indexers began to have fun with the form. Whether it’s the mock-serious paraphrase of bad poetry (“Jewsbury, Miss, cheats time with stuffed owl, 151”), the razor-sharp skewering of a disgraced politician (“Aitken, Jonathan: admires risk-takers, 59; goes to jail, 60”), or the caustic takedown of one’s colleagues (“Peterhouse [College]: high-table conversation not very agreeable, 46; main source of perverts, 113”), the index offers a perfectly sized nook for the deployment of discreet snark. Meanwhile, rogue indexers formed the idea of subverting the intention of the main text. In 1705 the MP William Bromley lost the election for Speaker of the House when a new edition of his youthful travel writing suddenly appeared with a handy index pointing out all its moments of banality, popishness, or just bad grammar. The great Victorian historian Thomas Macaulay, a Whig to his core, is said to have thundered at his publisher: “Let no damned Tory index my History!” He knew that whoever controls the index controls how readers enter a work.

    Now the digital revolution has given us an index of everything and placed it in our pocket. For some, those old anxieties about who compiles the index are still urgent ones. “Google & others are suppressing voices of Conservatives,” tweeted Donald Trump. “They are controlling what we can & cannot see.” For most of us, however, our relationship with search is a far happier one. So next time you feel the Google twitch – Who did he play for? What else did she write? – spare a thought, a quick mental toast: to Robert and Hugh, distant founders of the information age.”

    1. Ooh, I did like “a perfectly sized nook for the deployment of discreet snark”. Thanks!

  5. UK plans offshore asylum centres in other countries for Afghans. 23 August 2021.

    Britain plans to establish offshore asylum centres for Afghan refugees in countries such as Pakistan and Turkey, as ministers admit that the UK will not be able to rescue those eligible for resettlement before troops leave Kabul.

    The defence secretary, Ben Wallace, said in a newspaper article on Sunday that the UK planned to establish a series of processing hubs across the region outside Afghanistan, for Afghans it had “an obligation to”.

    This is a blatant lie to mislead the people of the UK! There is no way these countries or any others for that matter will carry out such an action!

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/aug/22/uk-plans-offshore-asylum-centres-in-pakistan-and-turkey-for-afghans

  6. Beware The Witching Hour
    There’s this guy who’s driving home from a party, when all of a sudden, he gets really horny.

    He’s driving by a pumpkin patch and remembers how they’re supposed to be all wet and squishy inside.

    He pulls over thinking no one’s around, cuts a hole in a pumpkin and proceeds to give it all he’s got.

    He’s going at it like crazy, when along comes a policewoman!

    She walks up behind him quietly and startles him when she says, “Excuse me sir but do you realise you’re having sex with a pumpkin?”

    He looks her straight in the eyes and shrugs and says, “Holy shit! Is it midnight already?!”

    1. Which presumes that before midnight he would have been shagging a coach-and-four?

  10. Good morning all. Sort of blue sky with clouds. Up early. I asked for a delivery of oil “first thing”. Chap arrived at 6.45!

    Draab still there?

    1. Good Morning, Wm. ‘Delivery Chap’ deserves a medal, far more so than Lt Gen woke Nick Carter.

      No sign of the failed Dutchman Draab in these parts….might he be busy stuffing a dyke?

    2. O/T May I suggest that you check with your Scottish sources of malicious gossip should you be in need of a giggle. I hear this very morn’ that yet more revelations regarding The First Minister are on the bubble. {:^))

    4. This was the week when the met office predicted that the second wave of heat was to return and thousands would perish. Another failure in their forecast.

  11. TONY BLAIR: America’s retreat is imbecilic – and tells our enemies we don’t have any interests or values worth defending. 22 August 2021.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/68e1ee40aa3065e8f590b38d351bdb7ba9b54ff222d741c8ff346f5f61af80d7.png

    It requires us to learn lessons from those 20 years from 9/11, in a spirit of humility, and the respectful exchange of different points of view. It also requires a sense of rediscovery that we in the West represent values and interests worth being proud of and defending. And that commitment to those values and interests needs to define our politics – and not our politics define our commitment.

    We did once have interests and values worth defending Tony but you and your friends destroyed them! You only have to look at the faces of the squaddies in the photograph! They knew you were a liar even then!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-9915299/TONY-BLAIR-retreat-makes-enemies-think-dont-interests-values-worth-defending.html

      1. Morning Citroen. I agree that it is suspicious but there’s no sign of anti-aliasing or any of the other faults of Photoshopping!

    3. Oh for just one of those decent men to have shot the sewage in the back of the head. Just one.

  13. 337047+up ticks,
    Morning Each,

    Monday 23 August: America’s unconvincing account of the Kabul operation to save civilians from the Taliban

    The way it comes across is that the American/United Kingdom political overseers are NOT making to great a fist of safeguarding peoples outside of Afghanistan.

    In the United Kingdom we suffer shades of Kabul airport daily, with potential terrorist landing on the DOVER beachhead daily reinforcing those in-house, waiting.

    The lab/lib/con/ greens coalition inclusive of current members ARE the root problem .

    https://twitter.com/NKrankie/status/1429672098222559237

    1. mng Ogga, I see your e-stalker’s reappeared, he’s looking worse for wear despite the fact the meds aren’t woking / working as he thought / told they would https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/615f10307a875c5fd804ae34b0a8315c08d71328973aeef246134056e51fbcb5.jpg . Perhaps he needs a strongly worded woke statement identical to that issued in the Global Talking Shop of the UN https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ee834d559edb62203423c8b08d79a0d18a8bb475dcc1a835ae408fdc3f134d59.jpg although he’ll find out soon enough that’s going to be the least of his worries

      2. We should form a special forces battalon of these bizarre characters. Of course, giving them weapons is out of the question, so instead they get posters and placards oh, and a megaphone so folk can hear them.

        We then drop them into the centre of Afghanistan and leave them to it.

        1. I was thinking just now of perhaps Easter Island, cut off all means of comms and then leave them to it. With a rainbow flag of course to virtual signal

      4. ‘It’ (or ‘he’, or ‘she’ or binomial ‘they’ or whomsover they wish to be called) is all so massively sad and unoriginal. Not for the first time, namedrop. namedrop, I drank my way though Cantab circa 1966-1969 (I may have those dates wrong) and every available lefty always used King’s as a backdrop. Tragic obscenity.

        Just ask Sos – he was at Pembroke at much the same time and it didn’t do him any good

        1. am sure Sos has better things to do than e-stalk ogga whether he agrees with what ogga posts or responds with his points. Something this clown’s simply not educated enough to do. the legacy of taught what to think not how to think

    2. People who just downvote are proving they cannot make a counter argument and are pointless. Arguments mean engaging. They’re risky, you’re vulnerable (if you’re a pathetic Lefty) to having your ideology smashed from on high with a planet sized hammer with facts and reason.

      Such people just creep about in the dark like vermin, frightened and cowardly trying to nibble at great works they do not understand

  14. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a75826ff86baef6df7a1741e398ebbd19e05a46f1a64c0e103f6b77114980427.png It would appear to me, Tony, that you have taken your eye off the ball for the past four decades. You, and indubitably millions more like you, have not been paying attention, have you?

    There has been an overt programme of miseducation taking place in British and American schools for a protracted period of time. Pupils are no longer taught how to reckon up in their heads. They are taught neither English grammar nor literature and their grasp of history, geography and mathematics is non-existent. Instead they have been made to be slaves of technology. They are drip fed with dubious ‘facts’ from their mobile phones and laptops instead. None of this is accidental; it is a deliberately-constructed and well-organised programme to ensure that this and future generations are kept in the dark on most matters in life. The legions of zombies walking the streets with their eyes glues to their cellphones didn’t come about by chance. It is all part of the master plan.

    This means that when the bubble goes up and a series of massive bursts of microwave radiation are exploded over the country, ensuring all technology is wiped, a clueless and utterly dependent young population will be there for the taking.

    Those of us who are much older, and who were properly educated, will neither mind nor matter: we have had our lives. The dark dystopian future that is still being planned for the younger generations is something neither I nor any of my contemporaries will have to endure.

    1. Modern, state provided education is bereft in that it teaches children to pass exams. It does not teach them how to think.

      This is because exams make the department look good. They are useless to the pupil. Thus state education is really ‘for the state’, not the student.

      State education also deliberately seeks to make itself the educator and parent. Increasing levels of power are vested in the state machine and removed form the parent. The increasingly broad class of welfare parent simply obviates their duty of teaching the child and hands it all over to the school. The days when the parent taught and the school provided information about which to think are long gone – and the state likes that. Why else promote all the before school and after school clubs, sure start and other such nonsense?

      In addition, a critical and thinking populace is a threat to the state. If it had an awareness of what was wrong, it would seek to fix it, so it is kept docile and placid.

      As regards technology – it is a tool to achieve an end goal. Ready access to information is necessary as we’re saturated by the stuff. The problem comes not with the access, but with it’s application.

      An individual unable to think and reason for themselves cannot make use of information, so it has to be told what to do. Government loves this, as it gets to tell a bunch fo thick (because they don’t know they’re wrong, nor how to understand that they are), obedient people how to live.

      I remember my sister looking through the Guides activities book and frustrated, throwing all the Left wing, PC, big state, climate change guff away as there was nothing ‘fun’ in it. As I looked through it I saw the problem: it’s all designed by a statist machine to indoctrinate. Not one bit was interested in educating or encouraging children TO think – just HOW to think.

      I adapted half of them into strong capitalist, market based activities alongside a lot of network prinicples – scrapping the waffle and PC nonsense. The Guide group loved them, because rather than the heavy handed Obey! message they were thinking about what got the right answer – and it’s ALWAYS markets.

  16. Boris Johnson will push Joe Biden to delay US withdrawal from Afghanistan

    Boris Johnson will on Tuesday personally ask Joe Biden for a delay to the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan. 23 August 2021.

    The Prime Minister will put the US president on the spot in front of world leaders at an emergency G7 meeting, after attempts by both Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab and Defence Secretary Ben Wallace to ask the same of their US counterparts fell on deaf ears.

    And Joe Biden is not aware of this? His staff don’t read the Telegraph or watch the BBC? Of course he did manage to refuse to answer the phone to Boris for over a day at the beginning of this debacle which gives you some idea of his opinion of the standing of the Prime Minister of the UK! The truth is that this meeting is just a publicity gimmick to try and convince the Plebs that they know what they are doing!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/08/22/boris-johnson-will-push-joe-biden-delay-us-withdrawal-afghanistan/

  18. 337047+ up ticks,

    Hard to tell if this piece of information is in regards to
    Afghanistan or DOVER / United Kingdom.

    Dt,
    Taliban sends ‘hundreds’ of fighters to crush resistance

    2. Sky news reporting this morning that a Taliban spokesman has said if Biden delays the removal date for the departure of US troops there will be consequences. Boris’s belated appeal to Biden tomorrow to keep his troops in Afghanistan will be ignored.

      1. The West still does not get it. It is like cognitive dissonance on steroids. The Taliban have tolerated our playing around in their country and now they have taken it back. They have no reason to budge an inch. No reason to extend anything by 5 minutes. Even bribery will not work. They have the money sorted with China.

      2. Western MSM trying their hardest to spin narrative and non existent agenda. For all their speculation, they know they’re lying, and they know we all know they’re lying

  19. Yo All

    Cambridge museum to explain ‘whiteness’ of its sculptures under anti-racism campaign

    ‘You might understand this coming from a student, but the idea that this has been approved by the Faculty is as terrifying as it is comical’

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/08/22/cambridges-archaeology-museum-will-explain-whiteness-sculpture/

    Let me get this right, that at a British University, with 100s of years of history, relating to a population that has been predominantly
    white for most of that time, have apologise for having white statues.but BAME Wokists can impose its’ will on us.

    Out of the two above, who are the racists?

    The only way ahead, is ALM: ALL LIVES MATTER.

    Within 30 years, Boros’ Green UK will be inplace, not because of his policies, but the Wokists and incomers will have dragged us down to a fifth-rate
    country.. I carefully avoided the word Nation, as we will not be one.

  20. Police pin hopes on ‘rainbow cars’ to drive out hate crime
    Forces across the UK add a splash of colour to their fleet to encourage people to report racist, homophobic and transphobic incidents

    Police are replacing patrol cars with “hate crime cars” to encourage people to report incidents such as social media comments.
    Deputy Chief Constable Julie Cooke said that the cars painted with the police insignia and rainbow designs are now “part of our vehicle fleet” and will be driven daily by officers on patrol.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/245625ac78095522213c02585242d03a2e0f21038f0bc37aab4349ce870fbcb8.jpg

    This has to the latest in earning the police their full title of a Police Farce.

    Is it coincidental with so many women now rising to prominence in many walks of life – I’m no misogynist but I do think that these positions should be filled by those qualified and not ‘tokens’ as so often happens. Has Julie Cooke got an honours degree in Common Purpose?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/08/22/police-pin-hopes-rainbow-cars-drive-hate-crime/

      1. A fine Wolseley police car.

        A shame the company never made a model called the Cardinal.

    2. Police are replacing patrol cars with “hate crime cars” to encourage people to report incidents such as social media comments.

      I wouldn’t report a rabid dog to the Stasi!

    5. Sadly, I have to agree.
      I don’t think this is what the really tough early feminists had in mind.

    6. My ex-copper friend says that the only Chief Constable he knows of who actually came through the ranks and did all the jobs, including pounding a beat, is the bloke i/c Wiltshire. The rest are know-it-all graduates signed up to Common Purpose.

  22. With regard to that daft slammer bint from Slammer Sharia who said that the Taliban were lovely boys and would give ladies all their rights.

    I do hope the meeja invites her back when the stoning, flogging and beheading starts up.

  23. A 2nd Good morning on a bright but damp from overnight rain Derbyshire. 11°C in the yard.

  24. Dominic Lawson in the DM is in full ‘the unvaccinated are killers’ mode.
    Here is a pikkie from his column, plus the information.

    Am I allowed a very large “H’mmmmm”?

    This month, H. Scott Apley (pictured) died of Covid at the age of 45. He was a member of the governing board of the Republican Party in Texas, and a notable opponent of the vaccine programme

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/023770f583b390b754d367fb8e5ce0677c2a85bb3bb05cfb015fee9acab23fa5.jpg

      1. He has a handicapped daughter. That makes him a world authority on anything vaguely medical.

        1. He was also a close friend of David Cameron which does not say much about his judgement.

    5. Interesting how they pick out one person who died with/of covid. Just because he mocked the hysteria. What about those who were Oh so positive and excited to get the vaccine, and died as a result of being vaccinated? Don’t hear about them, do we?

      1. If the same crazy 28 day rule over a Covid death, you died of Covid if you had tested positive, no matter the real cause of death, was applied to anyone vaccinated, I suspect that more people have now died within 28 days of a vaccination than have died of Covid. Sheer numbers and natural morbidity will make it likely.

        I am not saying that people are dropping like flies because of vaccination, merely that the Covid criteria were stupid and very misleading.

    1. Blimey, Hatters.
      Has it also been a dull weekend in Tel Aviv?
      I will be sending out a Bumper Edition of ‘Toon Time to lighten family and friend’s Monday.

        1. ‘Laying’ for lying has a long traditional regional usage. Similar to ‘chimbley’ for chimney (among countless others) in many parts of the UK. Try telling some of the locals in many locations that they are ‘wrong’ and see how far you get.

          1. Is it not probable, that accents and dialects apart, it is incorrect use of an English verb?

          2. The Chambers Dictionary offers a long lexicological etymology, including:

            lay lā, vt to cause to lie … to lie (archaic, naut and illiterate).

            The Oxford English Reference Dictionary adds this:

            intr.dial. or erron. lie.¶ This use, incorrect in standard English, is probably partly encouraged by confusion with lay as the past of lie, as in the dog lay on the floor which is correct; the dog is laying on the floor is not correct.

      1. During the War, there was a type of milk called, “Grade A”. For several years, I thought is was “Grey Day”…

        Not many people know that….{:¬))

    2. Sun bouncing off the flags up here Bill, in fact too hot to work outside in anything more than your skin

  47. How long before cancel culture claims Saracens’ fezzes and the haka?
    Exeter Chiefs’ Native American branding has come under further scrutiny and it is only a matter of time before it is consigned to history

    Charles Richardson: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/rugby-union/2021/08/23/long-rugbys-woke-warriors-claim-saracens-fezzes-haka/

    BTL

    I have never liked the haka. It is an act of aggression and contempt just as kneeling before a rugby game is an act of pathetic submission!

    The best thing was when the England hooker at the time, Richard Cockerill, wandered amongst the NZ players at Twickenham during their war dance trying to put them off their steps and gestures. Of course the NZ complained at this mark of disrespect – i.e. they did not like it up ’em. In my opinion Richard Cockerill was right to do what he did.

    But because I do not like the haka I am not sure that it should be banned. If the NZ stop doing it it should be their decision to do so because they have become embarrassed at portraying themselves as primitive savages

    1. People should be allowed to do as they wish, specially when they give themselves names*. The insanity of the loonies is underlined by the fact that they think it is perfectly fine for a man to call himself a woman in dead earnest, yet hysterically decry those who would give their clubs and associations names chosen from history or wherever, just for fun.

      *Except in France apparently, where there is a list of approved names for boys and girls from which new parents must choose.

    2. I expect Saint Jacinda does a haka every morning, to how solidarity with native New Zealanders.

    3. The All Blacks are not the only international rugby team that perfom the haka. All the Polynesian islands’ teams perform their version of that ceremonial war dance.

      Personally I have no issue with it. I actually enjoy watching the performance prior to a match as, for me and many others, it enances the enjoyment of the match.

      1. I have no issue with it. But if they are allowed to do it then why shouldn’t their opponents be allowed to mock it at the same time? Surely ridicule is a highly appropriate response to attempted intimidation?

        1. I do not, nor have I ever, seen it as intimidation. Everyone is aware of it and knows what is coming: how that that be intimidating? Any rugby player being intimidated by that is a wuss and is not fit to play for his country.

          I see it for what it really is: a traditional pre-match entertainment. I always look forward, eagerly, to watching the spectacle.

          1. One wonders then, George, what is the purpose of a war cry if not to intimidate?

            Nearer to home, why else did the police bang their shields?

          2. “Nearer to home, why else did the police bang there shields?”

            I didn’t know there did, Tom. I never banged mine.

    4. Rugby is a physical contest so any preparation to psych up your own side and intimidate the opposition is fair game. I think Cockerill was out of order when he did that.

      1. Both he and Tuffers including Sue Barker have been kicked off Question of sport by wokey dopey BBC, it was bad enough as it was and now it’ll simply be unwatchable.

        1. We have some recorded, with Matt & Co, we watch them when we want a treat.

          The new QoS will be filed with the NT, assorted banks and supermarkets; we will not use/watch them

          1. Nor me really, I have always been under the impression the team captains had access to the questions and answers before the program.

    6. But because I do not like the haka I am not sure that it should be banned.
      But now you have mentioned this Richard i’m sure the Muz Wokey the NZ prem might be on your case. Just don’t try and go there it might be an expensive wasted journey. I was chucked out of a pub in Auckland for wearing a tee shirt, circa 1977.

  48. We could have done great damage to Isis, Al Quaeda, and the Taliban many years ago by bombing Tokyo and Doha. Without all those shiny new Japanese trucks no terrorist would be going anywhere. It seems obvious that the West* wanted someone to fight even if it meant losing.

    *Military-industrial complex, and Napoleon complex in politicians.

    1. terminal damage to all those would have been done instantly if the “Cocaine Importation Agency” turned off the money tap at inception

  49. 337047+ up ticks,
    In light of Afghanistan fall out and in lieu of any bandwagon jumpers I am for following Anne Maria Waters,FOR BRITAIN, she recognises the imminent danger of islamic ideology.

    We could very well go down due to lab/lib/con continued input but we would go down with self respect and not grovelling appeasement.

    https://twitter.com/Rob_Kimbell/status/1429463388590166022

    1. …and, Ogga, at the next election will EVERY constituency have a candidate FOR BRITAIN or will most of us have to NOTA again?

      1. 337047+ up ticks,
        Afternoon NtN,
        Starting NOW you build a party as the people were shown via the real UKIP under the year long Gerard Batten leadership.

        Treachery as portrayed by the nec / nige input put paid to a successfully reborn party, falling foul of the knife wielders political assassins.

        ” Most of us” is that an honest posting ? in my book the
        nasal grippers / best of the worst brigade / believers in a
        tory party still genuine as was & NOT a tory party in name only,as is, have done, are doing the real damage.

        Example,
        Batten on becoming leader ask the membership for £100,000 to get the party out of stook, in reply he received £300,000 the party was financially sound and gaining members daily when the knife went in.

        If the peoples put 1/2 the amount of input into a new party venture starting NOW as they have put into keeping us in sh!tland especially these last three decades, we would once again be world leaders.

        Peoples now in reality should vote for a candidate / party that has true Conservative policies under another party title, NOT for a conservative party INO that has
        openly abused every true Conservative policy again,again,& again.

        You do not continue to feed croc’s after being bitten once, twice, after that you deserve to be bitten.

        Lest we forget there are halal dumplings on the parliamentary canteen menu.

        1. So the answer to my question is a resounding NO.

          It’ll be back to Lib/Lab/Con with For Britain, Reclaim and Reform just splitting the votes amongst themselves, without making any inroads into that Lib/Lab/Con.

          1. 337047+ up ticks,
            NtN
            Resounding NO ? I do not think so, only if you want it to be so.

            Put it this way, instead of supporting / voting lab/lib/con the peoples supported / voted for For Britain, reform, reclaim, their candidates would cover most bases as nige could confirm.

            Many though, prefer the best of the worst or worst still a nose gripping vote misguidedly putting party before Country once again.

            In short replacing lab/lib/con & guaranteed treachery with Reform, Reclaim,For Britain, triggering a peoples reset can only benefit these Isles.

            Do that first then talk of a new peoples reset party when the dust settles, keep SUPPORTING / voting lab/lib’con and shortly be prepared for a massive mosque building program that will put HS2 costs in the shade.

          2. Hmm, “…peoples supported / voted for For Britain, reform, reclaim,..” would merely split the vote

            I, and many others, would actively support Country before Party but, to date, there is NO party that actively does that, other than the guys and gals who can only split the vote amongst themselves.

            Like the bloody stupid Trades Union, NOW is the time for them to unite – it’s our ONLY hope.

          3. 337047+ up ticks,
            NtN,
            Ask yourself how many times has the vote been split by lab/lib/con and to what advantage to this nation over the past three decades.

            Instead of ONE new party try three new parties first, out of the result build on it.

          4. Once again, Ogga, you display your naïvete by advocating 3 parties (shades of Lib/Lab/Con).

            There will only be ONE result – same again.

            Can you not, or will you not, see the sense of those three (similar) parties amalgamating against the current impasse?

          5. 337047+ up ticks,
            NtN,
            If I am naive having been a long term now ex UNIP activist member how would you describe current lab/lib/con supporting voting members ?

            What is the difference in voting once again for lab/lib/con & guaranteed treachery please check their past record.
            or
            Voting for For Britain, reclaim,reform candidates with NO past treachery record.

            Currently the electorate are voting for a NAME.

          6. “…how would you describe current lab/lib/con supporting voting members ?”

            Yes, also Naïve but with NO viable alternative.

          7. 337047+ upticks,
            NtN,
            “Yes, also Naïve but with NO viable alternative.”

            All I can say is little wonder we are in such dire straights as a nation.

            If there is a multitude with the same mindset as that
            maybe try Amazon they may do a flat pack party , next day delivery.

  50. As well as Draab, the darkie chap who is his number 2, the three top civil servants at the FCO – and BPAPM – have all been absent during the Afghan “crisis”, (and the ambassador about to flit before being ordered to stay and do his bloody job) – I notice that Witless, Unbalanced and Pan Van Drum are also silent.

    Hope none of them are down with the plague….

    Actually, I expect that they are all away at their foreign summer residences – untrammelled by tedious things such as covid “passports”, tests and more tests and locator forms – because they can show that they are “important”….

  51. I never thought the Nato mission to Afghanistan was worth the money blown by all of our respective governments on stupid shit. You can not teach them how to be westernized they are a bunch of tribal Neanderthals. This was a HUGE money laundering scheme by our military industrial complex. We do not want any more ME muzzies we have enough

    1. Fuck the money,it’s only money 427 dead and christ knows how many mutilated and crippled in mind and body are the real price
      The price the politicians should pay for on the gibbet

          1. The media questions the idea of a two tiered legal system? You have cases like this and so many others to prove otherwise. If this was a military foul up where are the General Courts Martials???? (crickets) this was a cluster Fu^k in the greatest magnitude and not one of the political or military decision makers will have to face justice.

  52. A Scotsman’s home is no longer his castle. 23 August 2021, 10:15am

    A couple of years ago, following a public consultation answered by a whacking 122 respondents, the SNP quietly changed Scottish building regulations. The new rules allow the government at a future date to order every homeowner in Scotland to install smoke detectors and other safety devices of a type dictated by it, whether they liked it or not. That date is now set for February 2022. Last week Scots householders were given their orders in the unequivocal, if bossy, style typical of the new model Scots bureaucrat.

    Every living room, hall and landing must have a smoke detector. Not any smoke detector, mind you. It must either have irremovable tamper-proof batteries or be wired in by a professional electrician so you cannot switch it off. And if one detector goes off, all of them must, to prevent you sleeping through them. Your kitchen is to have a heat detector and any room with a fireplace (even unused) a carbon monoxide alarm. Already have perfectly good smoke detectors? Sorry: if they aren’t exactly right you must upgrade. For an average house this costs about £220, assuming you do the job yourself: for many, it will cost more, and tradesmen come extra. What if you don’t? The local authority can in the last resort intervene and make you do as you are told.

    The Omnipresent Omniscient State! The USSR is beginning to look almost benign!

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/a-scotsman-s-home-is-no-longer-his-castle

      1. They wont. They like being told what to do. Not all of course, but most.Same in England as well as we can see from the very high numbers of mask wearing. We were the only people not in a mask in Sinsbury’s today.

        2. The nanny state has ensured that people cannot think for themselves. They need to be spoon-fed everything.

      2. Amongst this current generation? Never. One of my ex-wives is married to a fairy boy, despite his fine Scottish name. My favourite uncle (C/O the Argylls) would have at least hurled an (empty) bottle of whisky at them.

    2. Totalitarian it is. The unification of the police forces was a big move in this direction. Previously a police force could act as it pleased, under the control of its Chief Constable. The single force, Police Scotland, has had some very dubious Chief Constables, all appointed by the First Minister.

        1. Not to Wee Krankie. Like Bruce Forsythe, “I’m in charge.” though she should be on one, Malfeasance in Public Office.

    3. What’s the reckoning that bagpipe drones will require CO2 detectors to be fitted after COP26?
      That’ll be a bit of a blow for the pipers

    4. And the wee fishwife thinks this is a wonderful tactic to ensure all Jocks will vote for a breakaway from the UK?

      She may be a wee bit disappointed.

      1. One does hope so. I would vote for independence if the likely government was sensible. Ho-Hum. The present Scottish government is corrupt, incompetent, and misguided. There is some slight possibility that the missing £600k will actually turnout to be a serious problem for them. (Not having this money which was donated specifically to fund an independence campaign not the SNP running costs, does not seem to be a problem and the police are surely either bamboozled, or have been told to lay off.)

          1. No. There are a few reasons. We were lured into a free trade co-operative that changed into a restrictive political overlord. The bureaucracy managed things in such a way as to control our farming and denude our industry. The level playing field and rules against a government supporting industry and enterprise only applied to the UK. A nasty bunch, best avoided.
            Moreover their wider ambitions are very dangerous to the peace they claim to have maintained for half a century.
            (I always dreamt of retiring to the south of France…Ho-Hum)

  53. A Scotsman’s home is no longer his castle. 23 August 2021, 10:15am

    A couple of years ago, following a public consultation answered by a whacking 122 respondents, the SNP quietly changed Scottish building regulations. The new rules allow the government at a future date to order every homeowner in Scotland to install smoke detectors and other safety devices of a type dictated by it, whether they liked it or not. That date is now set for February 2022. Last week Scots householders were given their orders in the unequivocal, if bossy, style typical of the new model Scots bureaucrat.

    Every living room, hall and landing must have a smoke detector. Not any smoke detector, mind you. It must either have irremovable tamper-proof batteries or be wired in by a professional electrician so you cannot switch it off. And if one detector goes off, all of them must, to prevent you sleeping through them. Your kitchen is to have a heat detector and any room with a fireplace (even unused) a carbon monoxide alarm. Already have perfectly good smoke detectors? Sorry: if they aren’t exactly right you must upgrade. For an average house this costs about £220, assuming you do the job yourself: for many, it will cost more, and tradesmen come extra. What if you don’t? The local authority can in the last resort intervene and make you do as you are told.

    The Omnipresent Omniscient State! The USSR is beginning to look almost benign!

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/a-scotsman-s-home-is-no-longer-his-castle

  54. I made a not very polite joke about the poor chap, Apley, mentioned below. He looks very robust in the photos. His family must heartbroken by his death.
    It set me thinking. People who die as a result of Covid-19 die from, or because of, “underlying causes” we are told.
    I have not seen any list of what these “underlying causes” might be. Nor have we been told why such”underlying causes” can result in death from a virus that attacks the lungs.
    Something seems very wrong.

  55. Morning all, just about to pop out to Wickes and buy a new vanity basin unit and taps for our utility room loo. The nagging reminders has reach a critical point. 🤣🤔 a refurb and Plumbing ahead………..slayders.

      1. My vanity has been undermined.
        The last time I went there I was met by a chap known as ‘a greeter’, he was From NZ, he asked me if I wanted any decking. I expect he’s out of hospital by now.

    1. We don’t need worry about pistols arriving in dinghies. The automatic rifles, grenade launchers and anti-aircraft missiles will be arriving in containers to the Cash & Carry warehouses.

      1. Happy Monday HP, I read that there are stockpiles of buried military AR15 type rifles, Soviet era AK47’s & LMG’s, RPG’s, Mines, Grenades, ammo etc dispersed around the UK, all brought into the UK by the IRA back during the time of ” the Troubles ” in Northern Ireland & were paid for both by IRA supporters in the USA & by the KGB via the IRA’s alliance ( which still exists ) with the PLO & Ghadaffi’s Libyan regime . Originally the IRA intended to carry out an expanded terror campaign in the UK in addition to their bombing campaigns but probably did not have the manpower in place in the UK, apart from a few dozen members of the bomb making cells which MI5 were onto , so they let the weapons remain burried & unused. I expect that one day these weapons might well find their way into the hands of Muslim Brotherhood / AQ / ISIS supporters in the UK

        1. Yes, very likely. I had not thought of that, only of containers of curry powder and the like, arriving from Asia.

          1. On one of the police progs they stopped a car with a drugs marker on the system. 4 massive Asians -and a bootful of several kebab lumps in. No drugs found – on their way. No chance of something in the kebab lumps then officers?

          2. Ever town has an effnic shop purporting to sell giant water melons , spices and huge sacks of rice .

            I expect the Mosques hide a mulitude of secrets .

          3. ‘Afternoon, Maggie, “I expect suspect the Mosques hide a multitude of secrets armaments.”

            Fixed it for you.

          5. Weevils.

            A food inspector once told me that almost every kebab thingy he inspected was alive with maggots etc all round the metal centre pole.

      2. Years ago a taxi driver of a certain religion said that the basement in the house that is used as their place of worship was full of weapons.

      3. Every male arriving in those dinghies has an anti – whitey weapon – in his trousers.

  58. Mate just rang me. Local beeb radio was on about house rental market, not enough houses etc. He texted in that after seeing the tv horror stories of nightmare tenants costing the owner a fortune by wrecking the place, not paying rent etc, he wouldn’t rent out to anyone.. They rang, clearly wanting him to go on air – he didn’t answer. They then texted him saying they wanted to talk to him about XR ???
    He didn’t reply.

      3. So, since I’m the youngest of nine, George, I’m the worst?

        Despite the other eight all being deceased.

      1. Yes. Part of it has survived last winter – snow slides off fairly quickly. Plus, Firstborn climbed all over it to screw the panels down to the rafters.

  60. From https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/08/16/this-is-worse-that-saigon/
    This is the truth: America and its Western allies are too consumed by wokeness to be able to pursue a moral or military struggle for their values. The past 20 years of this slow-burning Afghan humiliation have been a modern case of fiddling while Rome burns. An intolerant Islamist army gains in strength and plots its return to power while the American and British armies obsess over how to become more trans-inclusive, which gender pronouns to use (the Royal Air Force’s list includes ‘ze’, ‘per’ and ‘hir’), how to make training exercises more inclusive of ‘snowflakes’, and how to fight wars without offending the enemy. Who can forget when US navymen wrote ‘Hijack this, fags’ on a bomb destined for Afghanistan and all hell broke loose? Such ‘spontaneous acts of penmanship’ are completely unacceptable, said the then US rear admiral. The Taliban was fighting to the death for its theocratic vision – the West was squabbling over offensive words.

    1. There was a little article on the paralympic games ontheradiothis morning.

      None of the expected flag waving celebration, this was all about the “fact” that the paralympics are discriminatory because people do not see women athletes in the same way that they see men.

      What woke rubbish, no wonder real issues cannot be addressed.

      1. We know that women and girls do not fare too well under Taliban rule – does anyone know how trans people are likely to fare?

        Maybe if transes are not treated well Biden will order a return of US troops to Afghanistan?

        2. Nobody will care – just as their barbaric treatment of women seems to be no problem to the woke, either.

        3. From a programme I watched several years ago, the Iranians are the number one go-to surgeons for MTF surgery. Queers are having the snip and pretending to be women so they can be with their boyfriends without the religious police harassing them. Of course, it means having to wear a burka and give up any rights, but they seemed willing to do it, according to the interviewee in the programme.

    1. Fibrates such as fenofibrate activate peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors alpha (PPAR-alpha), which upregulate lipoprotein lipase, induce high-density lipoprotein (HDL) synthesis, and decrease liver production of apolipoprotein C.28 Jun 2021

      Bound to work then. 🤔

  62. Biden confuses Afghan people with the country’s currency. 23 August 2021.

    Joe Biden’s propensity for verbal gaffes haunted the US president again after he referred to Afghans as “Afghanis” – the country’s currency.

    It was just the latest unfortunate slip of the tongue by the 78-year-old president, which has led Republican critics to question whether he still has the capacity to serve in the Oval Office.

    I’m only surprised that he didn’t confuse them with the dogs!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2021/08/23/biden-confuses-afghan-people-countrys-currency/

  63. According to the BBC some 6,000 people have been flown from Kabul to the UK. It would be nice if the BBC had lists of these people by category, eg. diplomatic staff, UK citizens, Afghan translators,.. free-loading chancers, etc.
    The UK authorities will not sort very carefully on arrival. Dubious cases will be put into some kind of temporary accommodation. It is unlikely in the extreme that those arriving without papers will be put back on the plane and returned to Kabul. Everyone who arrives from Kabul will be allowed to stay forever at our expense.

    1. Agreed. Strange? that the beeb station has been on about house rentals this morning. 600 a day can arrive – families to follow. Flying in 000s from Afghanistan. Even my friend has just said on the phone that the UK is going to be a 3rd world hell in months – a total change for her. Think she has finally realised that the trouble we see in other countries, will be coming here – and WE will be paying for it – financially and culturally.

  64. The Taliban admitted it was facing resistance in the Panjshir Valley, 93
    miles north of Kabul, where the son of an Afghan war hero has thousands
    of armed followers ready to fight it.

    Just for sake of argument:

    If the Taliban in turn were defeated after a civil war in Afghanistan and the victors started hunting down those who had worked with the Taliban and their families, would the Western bleeding hearts be calling for rescue missions to bring the persecuted Taliban to the West?

    If the answer is no, why on earth is the West falling over itself trying to rescue Afghans who are as unlikely to assimilate as the Taliban would be.

    1. Has anyone noticed that there isn’t any pandemic in Afghanistan and nobody calls the Taliban racist?

    1. Stocking up on drugs – and receiving his orders for the action to betaken on 11th September.

    3. It seems that the Miirror can get a bit of a handle on the numbers, and how they are composed, even if the BBC cannot or will not.

      1. The beeb is the govts lapdog – does exactly what it is told. – being laid up I have the radio on full time – not one mention of all those coming in at Dover – never any mention of the cost, even where they are supposed to live. No mention of ANY effective invasion – just keep welcoming those who want endless “govt” money to fund endless invasion. One day, when they eventually open their eyes to what they wanted here – will they say “What have I done” – NO – too stupid fpr that.

        1. Sorry to hear that you’re laid up, Walter, as it seems to be only KOS (Knackered Old Shits) like us, who would be prepared to stand up and fight for what we believe in (Our country and all that it stood for).

          Unfortunately we don’t have the physical stamina to do it, unless we were all armed – and effin’ dangerous.

      2. This situation is beyond the remit of the Border Force, Coastguard and RNLI .
        This calls for an armed response unit like the SBS at Poole

  69. G’day, Nottlers!

    From Takimag – so true:

    ISSUE OF THE CENTURY
    Protector of Strangers
    The Z Man
    August 23, 2021

    Theoxeny is a theme in Greek mythology in which mortals demonstrate their virtue by extending hospitality to a complete stranger, usually one who is humble like a beggar or a poor traveler. The stranger turns out to be a deity in disguise. The man who is a generous host, thus displaying his piety, is rewarded, while the man who refuses to extend hospitality is punished for his lack of piety.

    For the ancient Greeks, hospitality toward foreigners and guests was a very important moral obligation. Zeus is sometimes called Zeus Xenios because of his role as a protector of strangers. The name Xenios is derived from xenos, the Greek word for “stranger.” To have Zeus, the ruler of the gods, embody the moral obligations around the treatment of strangers speaks to the importance of the practice to the Greeks.

    In the new religion of the American ruling elite, there is a similar sort of ritualized hospitality toward strangers. It is primarily expressed in the form of open borders, the admittance of anyone who has a reason to settle in America. The reason does not need to make any sense. It just has to provide the ruling class with the opportunity to tell one another how much they care about these strangers.

    “This is not about you, as they don’t care about you. It is about piety within the managerial class itself.”
    In the past week, all corners of the ruling class have demanded that America import as many Afghans as possible. Granted, none of the people demanding the importation of these Neolithic barbarians plans to house them in his home. It is not about actually helping the people they claim to love. You see, the demand to import Afghans into your neighborhood is part of a ritual demonstrating their virtue.

    In prior ages, the ruling class might sacrifice a bull and underwrite a great festival as a way to display their piety. In the Middle Ages, the great men would build cathedrals to show their devotion to the Cross. Today, the great and the good import people from around the globe into your neighborhood. This is not about you, as they don’t care about you. It is about piety within the managerial class itself.

    National Review provides a handy example. The editors tell us how much they care about these people they do not know and will make sure to never know. “We have a direct moral responsibility to these people—they risked their lives and those of their families to aid our effort, often with the understanding that we’d get them out if the Taliban returned to power.”

    Conservatives love throwing around the word “we” when it comes time for you to pay for their failures. National Review was not having any of that “we” stuff back in 2016 when they were coming to terms with Trump. Here is David French telling white people to suck it up and take responsibility for themselves. Here is the corpulent Kevin Williamson calling you a Nazi for thinking that “we” should have a say in things.

    In fairness to the mouth breathers of conservatism, theoxeny afflicts the left side of the ruling class as well. The difference is they view themselves as the full expression of the general will, so they take a more subtle approach. Here is The Washington Post telling us that “we” are joyously welcoming these Afghans, but those wreckers out there questioning the wisdom of this must be dealt with lest they sow doubt in the minds of the righteous.

    It would take a heart of stone not to laugh at the arrogance. The people in Texas and Wisconsin suddenly having to deal with grooming gangs were never asked, never consulted about this policy of dumping Afghans into their towns. Why would the people fond of using the majestic plural ask the dirt people for their opinion? Why would they question a policy that clearly shows the compassion and virtue of our rulers?

    This is not a psychosis exclusive to America. Boris Johnson has announced that Britain will take in Afghans. Apparently, Rotherham needs a topping-up. French president Emmanuel Macron also wants Afghan refugees. If you are wondering what everyone will be getting for Christmas this year, there is the answer. Europeans will wake up to find an Afghan family under their tree.

    Notice there is no debate about whether these people should be rescued from the new rulers of Afghanistan. It is just assumed that because they were willing to work with the invaders that they are good people. The people with a fondness for throwing open the gates for the enemy feel a kinship with the Afghans who were happy to collaborate with the empire against their own people. It says a lot about our rulers.

    Of course, the fact that they feel no duty to make their case to the people they supposedly represent tells us all we need to know about our rulers. They feel no duty to explain how they created this mess. Every day they roll out a new wave of lies to explain yesterday’s lies. One can be forgiven for wondering if they actually hate the people they claim to represent. After all, if they hated us, what would they do different?

    What the events of the last week are bringing home is that the managerial elites running the American empire see themselves as a distinct class with its own morality. The rest of us, the people they are supposed to represent, are just the rabble they have to shelter inside the castle walls from time to time. If the rabble speaks Pashtun, English, or a Mayan dialect, it does not matter. We all look the same to them.

    This is why they have no shame over this debacle. In order for one to feel shame, one must have a sense of moral duty. The moral posturing over these Afghan traitors is not for our benefit. It is just a positional good inside the ruling class. These theoxenian customs and rituals are about the elites signaling their piety to one another. It is a way for our betters to remind themselves that they are our betters.

    Of course we know why Macron wants more refugees – so that he can get the Brownie points while sending them off to us…

    2. ‘Afternoon, Lass, “The name Xenios is derived from xenos, the Greek word for “stranger.”

      Hence, xenophobia, just one more to add to the litany of ‘phobias.

      At the moment I’m a practicing, xenophobic Islamophobe.

      I’d round ’em all up and deport them. Playing ‘catch’ at Friday prayers – empty the building and then search for the arm’s cache that WILL be there.

      Plod, take note – oh, sorry, I forgot, you’re too busy looking for hate crimes online.

      1. When Daddy and hundreds of British expats were taken prisoner when the Suez debacle got nasty , they had sacks put over their heads and were taken away , questioned and incarcerated for 3 months in Cairo after they were rounded up in Moascar, near Ismailia .

        Lots of the British expats, WHITE MEN , some Scots, Welsh and Irish and English, , Get it? Civil Engineers, Shipping experts , Canal Pilots , Mechanics , etc etc etc oh yes and Army Padres

        Dad said they were thumped and abused .. and one of the Padres was knocked out and badyl abused by the Egyptians who captured them .

        As I have mentioned before , my mother sister and I and lots of other women and children were evacuated .. 24 hours notice, whisked away by coach to the Bitter lakes and were put on a flying boat to where I have no idea , maybe Cyprus or Malta .. I was a small child , 9 years old .

        Our pet dogs, that we inherited from a British Army officer , when the Army was dumbed down and virtually pulled out of Egypt in 1955, an alsatin and daschund , Flash and Whiskey .. and most of our clothes and books and toys were abandoned .. as I said 24 hr notice to pack a couple of small suitcases .. Little did we know our lives were in danger and that we wouldn’t see Dad for another 3 months .

        Apparantly our houseboy who had been part of the Army’s bilingual domestic team , whacked dad veryy hard and spat on him and laughed when he was lined up and arressted with all the other expats, and the padre was knocked backwards and badly hurt , many expats suffered .

        I don’t give to pigeon stuffs about Afghans who were bilingual helping the Army .. Their own country is in THEIR blood , they will have no loyalty to the British troops .. as was proved in blinkining Egypt in 1956.

        Daddy always used to say .. Trust no one darling .

        1. Thank you, Maggie, maybe that should be widely published – look at what to expect from Islam in YOUR future – I won’t be around to see it, unless Walter and I are each given a Bren gun and 40 magazines.

          1. Yes he was , he had served in the Fleet air Arm during the war in the far east , and had had friends who were captured by the Japs and .. well the rest is history , and he said that given the chance , other foreigners were just as beastly to the Brits .. Arabs in particular, he knew a thing or two about them and had worked in Saudi and elsewhere when he was based in SA.

            He would be so shocked to see what this most Liberal soft gloved government is doing to its own people.

            Politicians seem to ignore history , and just because these Arabs wear posh watches wear a nice tie and drive a great Merc , people are drawn in and lulled into a sense of false security .
            Their temperment and values are different to ours .
            Boris and co are clueless as are all his immature crew.

            Kindness turns quickly into cruelty , people should not be fooled .

            Arabs are merciless wretches.

          2. Not all Muslims are Arabs – the Turks are very touchy on this point and vehemently insist that they are not Arabs.

        3. Bitter experience. Some of those so welcoming to “refugees” should get a taste of it.

    3. I think this one was written by David Cole, I recognise the style.

      Not my favourite of the Takimag contributors.

      2. They are what I call Geoffrey Boycott Muslims – once you get ’em in you’ll never get ’em out!

    2. Greece has certainly followed the trend set by Berlin/Israel/Trump in favour of walls.

      Can we get one built along the Channel, preferably on the French side?

      A moat doesn’t deter them, but then, we should sow mines all along the south coast waters with paths identified to fishermen only.

      Reinstate all the war-time defences on the beaches – after all, this should be viewed as war.

      1. It clearly IS war – our own govt against us – they are making us pay for our own inevitable eradication. Our taxes used to feed and house their troops. If BJ and PP were stuck in a burning car – who would save them?

  71. Belarus is forcing Afghan migrants over the Polish border at gunpoint as tyrant Alexander Lukashenko plays ‘dirty game’ to destabilise the EU. 23 August 2021.

    Belarus has trucked Afghan migrants to the Polish border and forced them to cross at gunpoint as strongman dictator Alexander Lukashenko plays a ‘dirty game’ to destabilise the EU.

    Record numbers of refugees have been pouring across the 420-mile EU frontier with Belarus, which includes Latvia and Lithuania, since Brussels imposed sanctions on Minsk in June.

    Forced them? Lol! You would have to shoot them to stop them!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9918335/Belarus-forcing-Afghan-migrants-Polish-border-gunpoint.html

    1. No argument from me on that point BoB. But their culture is known for lies lies and more lies.

    2. Would this comment be described as ‘far right hate speech’ by Boris and his colleagues?

  74. TheTaliiban have said no extension. Everybody out by 31st August. The Black Watch may be arriving in Afghanistan in the next couple of days. Could be interesting.

  76. Gosh I hate DIY. The MR wanted me to fix a new notice board in the church porch. Easy peasy. Just needed three screws. Took me 2½ hours. I know exactly what needs to be done and have about 5% clue how to do it. I embarrass myself – and couldn’t swear because it was in the church.. No blood, though,.

    Next time, I’ll get an Afghan to do it for me.

    1. Shouldn’t have too much trouble finding one – – may be a bit of hassle with the church bit.

    2. On that subject – please could Nottlers check this list and tell me of any errors or omissions Thank you:

      02 January – 1947 : Poppiesmum
      07 January – **** : Lady of the Lake
      08 January – 1941 : Rough Common
      09 January – **** : thayaric
      10 January – 1960 : hopon
      16 January – 1941 : Legal Beagle
      18 January – **** : Stormy
      21 January – **** : Nagsman
      23 January – 1951 : Damask Rose
      27 January – 1948 : Citroen 1
      10 February -1949 : Korky the Kat (Dandy Front Pager)
      11 February- 1964 : Phizzee
      22 February- 1965 : AW Kamau
      22 February- 1951 : Grizzly
      24 February- 1941 : Sguest
      28 February- 1956 :Jeremy Morfey
      29 February- **** : Ped
      05 March—– 1957 : Sue MacFarlane
      08 March—– 1957 : Geoff Graham
      26 March—– 1962 : Caroline Tracey
      27 March—– 1947 : Maggiebelle
      27 March—– 1941 : Fallick Alec
      19 April——- **** : Devonian in Kent
      22 April——–1950 :Jay Sands
      26 April——- **** : Harry Kobeans
      18 May———****: Hertslass
      24 May——– 1944 : NoToNanny (Tom)
      02 June——–1939: Clydesider
      08 June——– **** : Still Bleau
      09 June——- 1947 : Johnny Norfolk
      09 June——– 1947 : Horace Pendleton
      23 June——– 1961 : Oberstleutnant
      25 June——– 1952 : corimmobile
      01 July——— 1946 : Rastus C Tastey
      12 July——— 1956 : David Wainwright/Stigenace
      18 July——— 1941: lacoste
      19 July——— 1948: Ndovu
      21 July———-1960: Tier5Inmate
      26 July——— 1936 : Delboy
      29 July———- 1944 : Lewis Duckworth
      30 July———- 1946 : Alf the Great
      01 August—— 1950 : Datz
      03 August—— 1954 : molamola
      10 August—— 1967 : ourmaninmunich
      14 August ——-1944 jillthelass
      18 August—— **** : ashesthandust
      19 August——- 1951 : Hugh Janus
      04 September- 1948 : Joseph B Fox
      07 September- 1946 : Araminta Smade
      11 September- 1947 : peddytheviking
      12 September- 1946 : Ready Eddy
      13 September- **** : Anne Allan
      15 September- **** : veryveryveryoldfella
      26 September- **** : Feargal the Cat
      30 September 1944 : One Last Try
      07 October—– 1960 : Bob 3
      11 October—– 1944 : Hardcastle Craggs
      25 October—– 1955 : Sue Edison
      12 November- ***** : Cochrane
      01 December– 1956 : Sean Stanley-Adams
      06 December– 1943 : Duncan Mac
      10 December– **** : Aethelfled
      16 December– **** : Plum
      21 December– 1945 : Elsie Bloodaxe
      (E&OE)

        1. Still horizontal after my ambulance trip to hospital weeks ago.
          An hour after my painkillers I manage a mile drive to a mini mart shop, one of the staff come to me, take my short list and credit card, get the stuff, bring it out to the car for me and I drive home.
          My laptop is on the bed. I am propped up on my side typing one fingered – that’s why it comes out so messed up at times.

          2. Sorry to hear that Walter. Hope you feel your old self soon.

            That is very kind of the people in the shop. You’ll have to remember them at Christmas for their kindness.

          3. Will Christmas be allowed again – probably offend the freeloaders. – Can’t do that – they are “The Preferred”

  78. Local radio been on about building houses on Green Belt land. Council said no to plans for 320 houses – – ordered by govt to allow it. So much for Protecting the Green Belt.

  80. I see the XR terrorists are choking central London.

    Are the police helping – dancing, providing vegan meals etc?

  81. Afghan refugees likely to have problems finding suitable UK housing. 23 August 2021.

    A Home Office spokesperson said: “The UK government will always stand by those fleeing persecution or oppression in their hour of need, which is why thousands of Afghans most in need will be welcomed to the UK through one of our most ambitious ever resettlement schemes. Each and every day we work closely with local authorities across the United Kingdom to ensure suitable accommodation and support is in place for those seeking asylum or resettlement in the UK.

    “We are grateful to all local authorities who currently support and would encourage all local authorities to come forward and offer further assistance to these vulnerable people. Dedicated civil servants continue to work round the clock with local authorities to ensure those arriving in the UK have the accommodation and assistance they deserve.”

    There speaks an arrogance that is beyond argument or reason!

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/aug/23/afghan-refugees-likely-to-have-problems-finding-suitable-uk-housing

    1. Are local councils being warned that accepting Afghan refugees may mean in increase in the incidence of murder, rape (especially of young girls), theft, violence, church burning and general filth? Asking for a friend.

      1. … and an increase in Council tax to pay for it.

        Time to replace Council Tax with a local Sales Tax – all pay, no avoidance, except to go to the cheaper district next door.

        What’s not to like in putting a crimp on Councillors’ salaries and largesse for the under-employed?

    2. “those arriving in the UK have the accommodation and assistance they deserve.”

      and what about the UK born English, worked and paid taxes for 40+ years????

      Are all these arrivals to have houses large enough for their multi-offspring breeding – of course – PAID FOR BY US.

      1. What about the veterans sleeping on the streets? They served the country, unlike this lot of invaders.

    4. Civil Servants don’t work around the clock. I doubt local authority staff work around the clock. Perhaps some unpaid overtime.

  82. Just had a phone call about a friend who nearly died weeks ago. Rushed into hospital about 10 week ago, still there. His daughter is a druggie and he has just banned her from the hospital – Staff are NOT allowed to let her see him. She has been pestering him for money for the obvious – his bank account shows 3 figures – that includes the two for the pence !!! – – and she wanted it. Speechless. Absolutely speechless.

    1. Plod heavily engaged dozens of perlice and vans etc.

      XR screw central London – perlice look on benevolently.

      1. If the police don’t take action to remove these criminal demonstrators the public will understandably take the law into their own hands.

  85. Not especially newsworthy but anytime that Jawn Snow gets called an ‘effin liar (listen carefully) must be worthwhile.

    Steerpike
    Watch: anti-vaxxers storm Channel 4 studios
    23 August 2021, 1:40pm

    It’s happened again. Less than a fortnight after anti-vaccine protestors managed to storm the wrong BBC building in White City, a similar demonstration has occupied the lobby of the ITN studios on Gray’s Inn Road, Farringdon. Judging from social media, at least some of those involved appear to believe they have occupied the Daily Mail newspaper offices – actually located in Kensington some four miles away.

    https://twitter.com/SubjectAccesss/status/1429783118693781505?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1429783118693781505%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.spectator.co.uk%2Farticle%2Fwatch-anti-vaxxers-storm-channel-4-studios

    Footage uploaded today show dozens of protestors thronging the lobby of the building which is owned by ITN and provides news bulletins for the ITV and Channel 4 stations. A livestream shows masked police officers blockading the protestors outside from those inside, with some of those involved shouting abuse at the Met’s finest.

    https://images.contentstack.io/v3/assets/bltf04078f3cf7a9c30/blt838fa15209e45bae/61239dd185514a6ee3fa85c2/Screenshot_2021-08-23_at_14.07.32.png?format=jpg&width=1440

    A bemused Jon Snow was spotted by the mob and pursued into his office, with one telling the veteran newsreader: ‘it’s a real shame yeah that you didn’t speak up for the children when you coulda.’ First the BBC, next ITN – which media behemoth is next?

    https://twitter.com/NewsForAllUK/status/1429795600699166723?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1429795600699166723%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.spectator.co.uk%2Farticle%2Fwatch-anti-vaxxers-storm-channel-4-studios

    Footage uploaded today show dozens of protestors thronging the lobby of the building which is owned by ITN and provides news bulletins for the ITV and Channel 4 stations. A livestream shows masked police officers blockading the protestors outside from those inside, with some of those involved shouting abuse at the Met’s finest.

  86. Methinks this is spooky…

    Tom Slater
    The policing of ‘non-crimes’ shows the dark side of rainbow cars
    23 August 2021, 3:18pm

    The policing of ‘non-crimes’ shows the dark side of rainbow cars

    https://images.contentstack.io/v3/assets/bltf04078f3cf7a9c30/blta9f85bf6f188e493/61239ff1f30d085bb45b794a/GettyImages-1160391748.jpg?format=jpg&width=1920&height=1080&fit=crop

    The great awokening of the British constabulary has got to be the most curious and infuriating part of our culture war. While knife crime continues to rise, an inordinate amount of police time now seems to be taken up by various virtue-signalling initiatives.

    Take the rise of ‘rainbow cars’. For some time now members of the public have been bemused to see cop cars patrolling their neighbourhoods emblazoned in the LGBT flag. Now the LGBT+ lead of the National Police Chiefs Council has felt the need to make an Instagram post explaining it all to us.

    In the video, deputy chief constable Julie Cooke — complete with rainbow lanyard and miniature rainbow flag in the background — informs us that such schemes aren’t expensive and that the cars help ‘give confidence to our LGBT+ community, but also to other under-represented groups’ in coming forward to report hate crimes. She even dubs them ‘hate-crime cars’.

    Cooke seems to think that long-running suspicions towards police among certain sections of society — not just LGBT people but also all ‘under-represented groups’ — can be addressed by an inexpensive, gay-friendly paint job. Of course the police should try to maintain good relationships with minority groups, but this is a dumb and patronising way to do it.

    But more importantly, such shallow attempts at community outreach represent a broader threat to the freedoms of all citizens, whether you’re gay or straight, white or black. For as has become clear in recent years, the ‘hate crimes’ the police are so doggedly pursuing often just amount to ‘offensive’ speech.

    The number of hate crimes reported to police has more than doubled in recent years. But as the Telegraph notes, police are increasingly focusing not on hate crime as such, but on statements made online and off, which are then recorded as ‘non-crime hate incidents’: 120,000 of them were logged between 2014 and 2019.

    The police’s foray into policing ‘non-crime’ is as dystopian as it sounds. According to the College of Policing, non-crime hate incidents are logged when a ‘criminal offence has not taken place, but the victim or any other person perceives that the incident was motivated wholly or partially by hostility’ on the basis of religion, race, gender and so on.

    The idea is to clock troublemakers who may go on to commit actual crimes — non-non-crimes, if you like. But the actual result is to produce a chilling effect on free speech, allowing anyone to report anyone else for saying something they found offensive. These black marks remain on the supposed perpetrator’s record, and can show up on advanced background checks.

    The most infamous case is that of Harry Miller, the Humberside businessman who was visited by police for posting a trans-sceptical limerick on Twitter. But there are plenty more. In 2017, then home secretary Amber Rudd had a non-crime hate incident recorded against her for a speech she gave on immigration, which her accuser later admitted he hadn’t actually watched.

    The ‘non-crime hate incident’ is a concept that was cooked up entirely by the College of Policing and has no basis in law. When put alongside the already extensive speech crimes we have on statute, it has led to cops going after alleged wrongthink with alarming zeal.

    Merseyside Police hit the headlines in February when some officers showed up outside an Asda with a billboard proclaiming that ‘BEING OFFENSIVE IS AN OFFENCE’ – set against a rainbow-flag background, of course. Merseyside’s finest were later forced to ‘clarify’ that being offensive was not in fact an offence.

    This is the dark underside of the rainbow cars. Such virtue-signalling isn’t just irritating and condescending, it’s part and parcel of a police crackdown on speech that is becoming as unhinged as it is occasionally comical: in 2019, Gwent Police posted on Facebook a mugshot of a drug dealer to call for information on his whereabouts — then, when social media users mocked the dealer’s haircut, threatened to investigate them.

    Such is the power of identity politics that even the police — an institution woke activists would rather defund than celebrate — feel the need to genuflect to it. And so warped are the priorities of those running some police forces that non-criminals have become as important to them as criminals, and maintaining an offence-free ‘safe space’ is now just as pressing an issue as actually keeping people safe.

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

    Should any of these fairy boys pull me over, they risk enduring my (as a former long time resident of the Lower West Side, NYC) rendition of…

    https://youtu.be/CS9OO0S5w2k

    2. Just wondering whether the soft side of the law has more gays than we think?

      So they are advertising their liberated gayness by covering their cars in Rainbows .. They are an absolute joke .. and appear to be mocking quiet respectable gay couples in pantomime fashion ?

      1. I suspect many gays find it all rather embarrassing. Most do not parade their sexuality in such a brazen way.

    3. Julie Cook, “…but also to other under-represented groups…”

      Not least the white, christian, indigenous population.

  87. Prisoners to plug worker shortage in meat industry
    By Michael Race

    Abattoirs, butchers and meat processors are set to employ prisoners and ex-inmates to help plug labour shortages.

    Meat industry leaders held talks with the government on Monday to discuss options of how businesses could link up with prisons to fill vacancies.

    The Association of Independent Meat Suppliers told the BBC the industry had about 14,000 job vacancies currently.

    It said Covid, Brexit and perceptions over career paths had caused a looming “recruitment crisis”.

    The industry body said businesses would seek to link up with prisons that contain prisoners who are part of the Release On Temporary Licence (ROTL) programme.

    ROTL is a risk-assessed temporary release programme that inmates in open prisons use to gain work experience to help them in their transition back into the community.

    Tony Goodger, of the Association of Independent Meat Suppliers, said the industry body would contact members who required staff and work with the Ministry of Justice to put them in contact with prison services, in a bid to recruit people about to leave prison or current inmates.

    Mr Goodger said some members already employed inmates on ROTL, and had found them to be “well behaved, hard-working, and willing to learn”.

    “It’s down to the members [who they employ],” he said. “They [prisons] have got offenders and prison-leavers, we have got members who need labour. It seems sensible to bring the two together.”

    Turkey processing giant Bernard Matthews has previously formed links with HMP Norwich and regularly visits the prison as part of its recruitment cycle, to assess candidates and offer inmates contracts to start upon release.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58303679

    So now all the murderers and stabbie stabbie brigade will be up to their armpits in blood again?

    1. So are muslims going to process meat for general sale? If so, it will all have to be halal. Great Idea.

      1. Once got talking to a lad who worked at an abbatoir and he said a muslim worker also worked there, but would NOT work on pigs. Other animals ok, not halal slaughter – but NO touching pigs.

  88. That’s me gone. It did get sunny – eventually…. But it has been much less sunny in the last three months than in previous years.

    I’ll look in tomorrow – though I have the pleasure of a bonfire – lots of blighted tomato plants to burn, among other things.

    Have a jolly evening preparing your spare rooms for the highly educated Afghan brain surgeons, architects, judges….

    A demain

    1. Mine had mostly finished ripening before the blight struck. I’m throwing the soil away though.

          2. Oh i got the little batsards. I bought the right poison to deal with them and barely diluted it.

          3. All you have achieved is to create new variant weevils, which will pop up next year, bigger and stronger.

    2. They are not trying to get you, Bill. We’ve had crappy largely sunless months on end here in Wilts. All the wrong sorts of things are growing. And we are not nearly as sinful as you are.

      1. I decided my patch was a write-off in the middle of July. Beans were very successful but that’s about all.

    3. My dentist wasn’t available the other day , he is an Afghan , educated here , a very sensitive clever man , talks too quickly .

      I am used to him now , and respect his diligence and enthusiasm.

      We are in the middle of a consultation here in the village .. County Council want to plonk 1,000 homes in a rural village , sacrificing good farmland for homes! The landowner lives next to his burned out castle …in hundreds of acres of glorious parkland , and our MP has a similar lifestyle and is well protected.. Damn them all .

      1. Do get with “the plan”, 1000 homes won’t take a fraction of the immigrants/asylum seekers coming in. Not even close.

          2. That’s what the whites fleeing might think.

            The reality is that every estate will be forced to have social housing with the culturally and ethnically diverse, which in turn will cause the white end of the estate to leave, which will turn the estate into a ghetto.

            You read it here first.

          3. And those leaving, will still end up paing the bills for the arrivals to live there. When they turn up with a VERY large number of kids, get specisl housing, which we have to pay for, the aggravation will only increase.

          4. Look on the bright side.
            Evil tax-paying whiteys like us will soon be dead. Our houses will become available and the taxes/death duties will pay for a few more.

            What the stupid bastards in charge don’t realise is that one can eat this year’s fruit and cut down the tree for firewood, but next year, no tree, no fruit and no firewood.

      2. Picky, picky, picky….you, Maggie, and your fellow neighbours don’t count…it’s all been decided and, no matter what you might say, you will be overruled. Now get into line if you want to sustain your pitiful pension. THAT’S AN ORDER.

      3. It’s happeneing everywhere – a friend of mine who lives in a village on the Severn Floodplain – they are having 1500 homes dumped on good farmland in their village. All the villages and towns round here have masses of new-builds thrown up in the last few years.

        1. Same here; our market towns are told they WILL grow by 40%, whether we like it or not (and we don’t), villages are getting estates built on prime farmland and Shrewsbury is set to see massive housebuilding. No more blue remembered hills in Shropshire if County has its way, just bricks and mortar.

    4. You need sun? I will, send you some.

      I spent yesterday monitoring some golf matches, just sitting in the bar was exhausting soh wo knows what it was like to have actually played and struggled round that hilly course.

      Unfortunately no blight here, just twenty pounds of tomatoes a day and this is the respite before the peaches then the plums and finally apples.

      1. Nice!
        Plums plentiful this year, beautifully sweet, wet and firm. Masses blackberries, lots raspberries.
        Bugger-all apples, though, and the rowan berries are few & far between. Same with redcurrants. Hope to chase down blowberries and cranberries at the weekend… Fair wedge of rhubarb, too.
        Thank God for freezers as a staging-post to sauces, pies & crumbles.

        1. I went to harvest my plums tonight, only to find wasps burying themselves in them 🙁 Too late!

          1. We’re rather behind, being Norther than you. Also, only seen one wasp this summer – and a hornet-like thing, bothering Firstborn’s bees.

    1. I noticed on the News tonight that many of the ‘protestors’ were sitting on plastic chairs. Are they really that thick?

  92. Karan Thapar
    My love for old Kabul
    The city of the Sixties was small but filled with life
    22 August 2021, 10:00am

    They say the city you most fondly remember is the one you grew up in. In my case that’s Kabul. I spent my formative years in the Afghan capital in the mid-1960s. It was a very different time and Afghanistan a very different country. But the Kabul that’s imprinted on my mind belongs to that decade.

    It was a happy city. No other description does it justice. Of course, it was poor, conservative and hierarchical but people were always smiling. They were warm, welcoming, courteous and generous. This was most obvious in their attitude to children. Everyone called me ‘bacho’. When Mummy took me out, shopkeepers would slip Hershey’s chocolates or spearmint gum into my hands and then seal my lips with their fingers. It was our little secret and it made a nine-year-old feel special.

    Every morning Khan Mohammad would hold my hand and walk me from the ambassador’s residence, past the Italian embassy, to the corner of Ariana Hotel to await the school bus. Across the road was Dilkusha Palace. A little further was Pashtunistan Square and the Khyber restaurant, famous for its beef steaks and lemon meringue pies.

    Daddy’s office, as I called it, was in Sharinau, not far from what later became famous as Chicken Street. In the Sixties it was literally a place to buy fowl. Carpets and antiques were nowhere to be seen. The birds were crammed into wire-mesh coops. Mummy would pick her choice and the chicken would be slaughtered in the ‘jui’ or drain that ran alongside. She would look the other way, I was transfixed by the gruesome slaughter.

    Old Kabul lay beyond Pashtunistan Square. It was a warren of shops surrounding the Pul-e-Chisti Mosque, an amalgam of money-lenders, jewellers, second-hand clothes stores, naan bakeries and dingy little supermarkets. In fact, there was nothing ‘super’ about them but the American term had caught the Afghan fancy.

    The grandest hotel was the eponymous Kabul. The Inter-Continental was still a few years into the future, The Serena decades away. But there was a delightful Swiss hostelry called Spinzar. Its pastries were delectable. Overlooking the Kabul river, it stood at the end of a long row of little shops selling Afghanistan’s prized Karakul caps.

    On Fridays we would drive to Kargah Lake, just beyond the city limits, or even further to Paghman, where the royal family and aristocracy had summer homes. The restaurant at Kargah was rather posh. But I preferred the handcarts selling candyfloss and Coca-Cola in old fashioned bottles.

    Society, in the Victorian sense, was small but sophisticated. The upper classes spoke better French than English, but they all warmed to Indian classical music. Vilayat Khan and Amjad Ali were favourites. Hindi films were adored and Dilip Kumar was every Afghan’s hero.

    The rich lived behind high-walled compounds. Outside some women wore burkas. Indoors, however, it was Chanel dresses and high-heeled shoes. They smoked American cigarettes held by carefully manicured fingers with bright red nail polish.

    Those were innocent days. Grass grew in gardens and dates were numbers on a calendar. Even parents were incredulously trusting. When Daddy fell ill he was surprised at how often the princes would drop by, until it dawned on him that the real attraction was his daughters.

    Much of today’s Kabul didn’t exist. Wazir Akbar Khan was a vast barren spread. From our upstairs balcony there was an unbroken view all the way to the Pakistani residence. The American ambassador lived opposite the Indian chancery. The present-day US compound was scrubland. It was here, when he was free and feeling indulgent, that Daddy taught me to drive.

    I studied at the American School at Karte Chaur. A little further was Dar-ul-Aman Palace, built by Amanullah in the early 1900s. If we didn’t go to Kargah we would spend Friday afternoons swimming in the palace pool.

    When Mummy found I’d acquired an American twang and started saying ‘aloominum’ she packed me off to school in Dehradun. She was determined to protect her son’s accent. But that didn’t cure my taste for peanut butter. I have it every day at breakfast and each bite brings Kabul back to mind. Unlike Robert Graves, I cannot say ‘Good-bye to all that’.

    WRITTEN BY
    Karan Thapar
    Karan Thapar is an award-winning Indian journalist

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/my-love-for-old-kabul

    1. Fifty years from now, it isn’t impossible that writers will be reflecting similarly about London/Paris/Washington.

      In fact I would put money on it; except I doubt people will be able to express such opinions any more, fifty years hence.

  93. https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/old-bailey-fulham-london-gcses-chris-wood-b951965.html?itm_source=Internal&itm_channel=homepage_banner&itm_campaign=breaking-news-ticker&itm_content=1

    On Monday, Mr Greenidge’s parents described the devastating loss of their “intelligent, witty and caring
    son” as five men from west London were handed jail terms of up to 20 years for his manslaughter.
    Mrs Greenidge said: “I worry that our social class meant despite our hard work we could not protect our son, we could not live in a place of our choosing but rather relied on the State.
    “Social housing puts a roof on people’s heads but can also mean that our children mix with the wrong – if not dangerous – crowds and that’s exactly what’s happened to our family.

    What a crazy world we live in.

    1. Next will be a claim against the victim, because “their blood got on my new trainers . . and they are £200 in the shops” – Did you buy them asks the judge? – No I stole them, but they’re still expensive !!!

    2. “Connor Gwynn-Bliss, 21, who was on licence and had 25 previous
      convictions for 63 offences, was jailed for 20 years for manslaughter,
      arson and perverting the course of justice.”
      This,right here, is the problem,what the hell was he doing loose on the streets!!!!

      1. Quite.
        At the very least castrate the bastards on a second offence, so they don’t breed more of the same.

      2. The father should go to jail as well…

        Gwynn Bliss then called his father and asked him to buy a can of petrol, it was alleged.

        The stolen vehicle was then torched, destroying the Mini and damaging several cars parked nearby.

        Gwynn Bliss was seen patting himself down and was later treated for serious burns to his face and hands.

          1. I admire frontline NHS staff. Not their managers obviously. They treated the murderous little shit as they would anyone else. Just a shame they haven’t updated to Saudi or Taliban tactics and chopped both his hands off.

          3. They could remove his head and sew his lips together, but that is just me being nice. Vermin.

      3. That poor boy. Not able to read the article as it is a bit upsetting. Why did they target him?

    3. Diversity strength!

      Look, we’re reaching a point where every black boy in London should be wearing an ankle tag. If they get too close toegther, they get a cattleprod shock.

      But hell – why was the black thug ‘gwyn-bliss’ around the public? Why had he not been flogged to breaing point and now hanged?

  94. For goodness sake, why don’t the police leave the gluers and chainers of ER exactly where they are.

    Refuse any access to them by third parties, refuse them water and food and let them piss and crap themselves and dehydrate where they chain themselves. Do not allow them to leave the area for 24 hours, at a minimum.

    Dropping a few hornet and wasp nests amongst them, so they can celebrate nature, would be good too.

      1. …and they cannot get through because of the traffic blockade.

        Hoist with their own petard.

    3. Tit-for-tat. The XR protesters are determined to make life as difficult as possible for the average citizen, so why not pay them back in kind?

        1. That is what i’d do with all those who want the migrants here. and those lawyers who fight to stop any being deported. Make the lawyer personally responsible, financially responsible and have to have them live in the home WITH them. If the crim absconds, the lawyer gets the sentence to serve.

    5. 48 – but they are obstructing traffic so better set to drag them to some waste ground.

      If they try to escape, break a few knees.

  95. A message to the UK Prime Minister from the Taliban (not yet recognised by the UK) spokesman:

    In his parting words, Shaheen issued a message directly to UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

    He said: “Our message is to him that the people of Afghanistan, they fought for their liberation for the last 20 years and the people of Afghanistan are now in Kabul and forming a government.

    “A new chapter of relations, of reconstruction of Afghanistan, that is good for both Afghanistan and Britain. They should now, while they have closed a chapter of occupation, should look for work maintaining relations with the people in the government of Afghanistan.
    “I think it is better for both Afghanistan and the UK.”

    https://inews.co.uk/news/world/afghanistan-the-taliban-interview-pr-campaign-kabul-1161163

    1. We should be there now. Liz Truss should be agreeing an FTA, Raab should be offering aid, the MoD should be offering assistance, anything. The Taliban are not interested in exporting Islamic fundamentalism, they just want their country as they want it.
      Influence it before other countries like China influence it in ways that we find even more distasteful.

      1. On what evidence do you base your statement that the Taliban are not interested in exporting islamic fundamentalism? They may want their country as they want it, but surely they are interested in establishing the caliphate, like all muslims.

        1. Not my understanding. The Mujahideen, which morphed into the Taliban post Russia’s departure, were never and have never been interested in a wider Caliphate. They might welcome it, but were never going to pursue it. They accommodated AQ and later ISIL, but were never interested in pushing it.
          Events may prove me wrong, but for now…

  98. Evening, all. Have spent most of the day on the telephone (when I wasn’t putting up gazebos), mostly without success. I got cut off twice trying to change the name on the account for the Post Office (they do our telephone and broadband) and contacted the NHS referral service about my hip, as instructed in the letter (not heard anything for 14 days) only to be told it was in the system and they would be telling me by letter in about four days’ time where it had got to! Had to phone up the solicitor because when I got the will out to take to the bank to close MOH’s account (they requested the will as well as the death certificate, which finally arrived this morning), I discovered that the signature and witness pages were blank! They are going to send me a certified copy of the original, but when that will get here is anybody’s guess. Why is life so complicated? Don’t tell me – it’s all due to Covid 🙁

    1. Evening Conners.
      It’s a bugger, isn’t it? I don’t mind difficult things being difficult, but when something should be easy and some uselesss REMF has made it almost impossible, then I start wanting to throw stuff around. ARGH!
      KBO, is all I can think of. Ruin the bastards day by succeeding despite all odds!

      1. I’ve not had a good last few days what with the dishwasher delivery fiasco, the registrar delay thanks to the surgery dragging their feet, having to call the plumber and to cap it all, today Oscar blotted his copybook. Things had been going really well and I thought I’d cracked it; he let me get the seeds out of his beard without reacting, although he didn’t like it. Success, thought I. Then I noticed his bum needed cleaning – boy, did he object to that (although I’d done it before without a problem). Good job I’ve got quick reactions – and then, for good measure, he thought he’d have a go at my feet! I was wearing thick leather boots, having just got back from the walk, so no damage done, except to trust. He got a dressing down, time in the sin bin (I left him in the house while I worked in the garden) and a cold shoulder when he wanted a cuddle later (“you must be joking after what you’ve just done!”). I’ve left him downstairs now while I’m up in the shack typing on the computer. Back to the drawing board, it seems.

        1. It can’t be long since you picked up Oscar, give the pooch a chance- and a swift kick on the bum!

          1. Eleven weeks. He’s had a chance – he’s had eleven weeks to learn to conform to the new rules (he is NOT stupid – far from it). He only seems to conform when it suits him. He’s got to learn that the rules are the rules and that’s the way it works from now on. I was quite lenient with him at the beginning, because I understood that he was settling in, but nearly three months later, he should be adjusted. Unfortunately, a kick is what he seemed to have got in his previous life. We need to work on the fact he can rely on other methods of discipline here.

          5. When I was at work a young man on the electrical team seemed to get on with me very well, despite 20+ yrs difference. We learned he had been brought up by his grandma, but we never learned why. He always seemed to listen and respect what I said, then gobsmacked me one day when he said “You’d have made a great dad “.. Suddenly all was clear. Problem was -Never wanted kids at all – my brother never wanted any kids either.

        2. Dear Oscar (keep the bugger away from me !). He is probably picking up on your mood and frustrations. You are doing so much better than i could. I know i would go to pieces after what you have had to deal with.

          Let him into your bed tonight to show all is forgiven. Just my thinking. Probably wrong.

          1. Definitely wrong! My bed is my territory (I am, after all, top dog) and he should know his place. Give him an inch and, on past form, he’ll take an ell. All of my dogs have been told, “I don’t sleep in your bed, you don’t sleep in mine!” He is gradually being forgiven; he’s been allowed the core of my (home grown) pear and he’s now back in the shack with me. He needs to know he’s transgressed.

          2. I bow (wow) to your knowledge. Dolly is the first dog i have ever had and she does tell me when she wants company. I’m a bit soft but then so is she. :@)

          3. Oscar is an alpha terrier. I need to remind him that he is second in the pack to my alpha terrier leadership 🙂 That way, he’ll be a happy, relaxed member of the pack; no worries, no decisions to make, no responsibilities, just doing doggy things like marking his territory when we go and beat the bounds on our daily walks. I go out of doors first because I’m the leader, he walks by my side because I’m in charge and he goes where I decide.

          4. But he’s quite an old dog – has he always had such a structured life? He’s probably developed some bad habits over the years.

          5. He’s nearly 12, but he can still learn some manners. He has learned part of the routine for feeding (he sits quietly and waits until I say okay, but he just shouts his head off and leaps up and down, pirouetting, until I hold the bowl and say, “WHAT do you do?”) My setter was six (old for a setter) when I got him and he soon learned. My Patterdale cross was five (and he was intellectually challenged) but he learned, too. Oscar is a foodie; I reward him with treats when he does the right thing so I expect him to latch on.

          6. I am in awe. I love my dog so very much. You definitely have the right attitude in training animals. I couldn’t train my Dolly to that extent. Though she does know her name and will respond to hand signals and a bit of Barbara Woodhouse harrangues.

          7. I love my dog, too. That’s why I treat him like a dog. He gets to do doggy things and feels secure.

          9. I’d be mortified if Oscar bit a postman (and he’d probably be put down as dangerous, given the legislation these days).

        3. Poor old Oscar – he can have bad days, too, and as Phizzee suggested, he’s likely feeling tense ‘cos you weren’t all serene. Maybe groom only one end at a session, and give him a treat at the end? (what do I know, we have cats)
          Little Cat is happy to be groomed any time, but Big will only take a couple of minutes. He expresses that he’s had enough by gently grasping your wrist in a jaw like a man-trap, and moving your hand away. No biting.

          1. I do give him a treat if he’s allowed me to do something I need to do without trying to take my fingers off – every time.

    2. Having lived in both France and Spain, I thought, Connors, that they were the worst bureaucracies in the world but it seems that we are fast heading to outdo them in spades (pun intended). as Paul has already said, we can only KBO and out-bugger them.

    3. A bit late now to suggest it but our solicitor recommended getting a dozen copies of my mothers death certificate.
      We found that some building societies wanted to keep their copy of the certificate.

      1. I got three, just in case. MOH didn’t have a building society account and I suspect that the bank will photocopy it (they did with the LPA and other documents). When I sent a copy of the LPA to the DWP they returned it. I’ve done the “Tell Us Once” notification and didn’t need a copy of the certificate for that, just the code from the registrar.

    3. TB – regarding your earlier question on the birthday list – I have NEVER put my DoB in any comp, or phone. Once there it can be hacked. Not in and it can’t. I have had plenty of offers to show me – declined. I do NOT buy over the internet, nor pay by phone. If they try to intimidate me by calling me a dinosaur – my reply is – I will go somewhere else where they actually WANT my custom – and my money – and walk away. Usually adding – I won’t be back.

        1. No – didn’t embarrass me at all. When all this internet banking started a lady I knew gave me hassle everytime I saw her – bragging about how she could do her banking in her nice warm home at 11 o clock at night. – I still refused -more dinosaur comments. Then she got done by hackers – £13 k – wiped out. no refund from bank – all the hassle of getting everything sorted, new email address, new security passwords for everything she was registered to etc etc. – not a comment about internet banking after that.

      2. I don’t put sensitive details on the Internet, too. It amazes me the things that people put on Facebook, for instance. Prime candidates for criminals to steal their identity, in my view.

  100. 337047+ up ticks,
    My feeling is we are about to witness a never to be forgotten spike regarding appeasement / Afghanistan commencing with more halal items
    going on the parliamentary canteen menu as a sign, signaling of being in tune with the new Afghanistan overseers.

    2. Brilliant – That is of course a Wax Work (which is in all probability more astute than the actual article…)

  105. “The UK has ordered 35 million more doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which will be delivered in the second half of 2022.
    The government said it was preparing for a programme of Covid boosters to protect the most vulnerable this year.” So we either have 35 million vulnerable people (unlikely) or the Government is Lying – what do you think?

    1. World health organization has issued a strong recommendation to not do booster shots before poorer countries get their jabs in.

      Any chance they get their act together?

    2. The beeb radio has just been pushing 16-17 yr olds to get jabbed – – -there is something VERY sinister about the whole thing.
      Lies, misinformation, peoples deaths by other things blamed on Covid – – the infertility rumour would not surprise me –

  106. We must fight the normalisation of masks

    The zero Covid campaign’s bid to make masks political is no substitute for a proper understanding of their costs

    COLIN AXON

    The divide in the House of Commons was striking last week. Nearly all members of the Opposition were wearing masks while only a handful could be seen on the Government benches. I do not know whether this was an organised political statement †, a natural result of personal choice, or a difference in the implications drawn from the scientific evidence. But whatever the explanation, political posturing over face coverings matters.

    For a year or more, many commentators have been suggesting that the Government’s responses to the pandemic owe more to politics and polls than science. We must resist the creeping normalisation of masks and resist the way in which they have been adopted as a talisman by the campaign for the impossible state of zero Covid.

    Does it matter that half of the MPs were not wearing a mask in a large enclosed space? The Office for National Statistics estimates that more than 90 per cent of adults have antibodies anyway. The WHO advice prior to 2020 was that cloth face coverings and surgical masks were not effective in preventing transmission of viruses. Prof Chris Whitty has stated that the evidence for using masks was weak. It does not appear that any new evidence has emerged in the last 18 months to overturn that consensus.

    According to the scientific method, it is not for those claiming the veracity of an effect to expect others to disprove their claim. The onus is on those asserting that masks work to devise a suitable experiment to prove it.

    The best evidence would be from randomised control trials (RCT), but too few have been done. One Danish RCT showed no statistically significant difference in the infection rate between those who used masks in the community and those who did not. It was not a perfect study: participants had to self-report how well they used masks once they had been shown how to use them properly. But compliance will likely have been better than the average we see around us.

    In the absence of compelling RCTs, we need to examine indirect evidence. Looking at different countries, there is little or no correlation between changes in the infection rate and the dates of implementation of mask mandates. If the number of infections was increasing when the mandate was imposed, it carried on increasing at the same rate. If the number of infections was falling or stable, they continued on that line. This statistic should inform governments which have to make decisions at the population level.

    Also, the UK pilot study for large-scale indoor and outdoor events found no worrisome spikes in infection.

    The real world has many variables and picking apart these effects using statistical methods is hard. That makes it easier for the mask proponents to argue that if mask-wearing saves just one life and a few infections it is worth it. But that is a value statement, which takes no account of possible harms.

    There are many downsides to using masks. They stoke fear and anxiety, reminding us that we are living in a state of emergency, a barrier that must be crossed for us to return to normal. They are a hindrance to communication, and can have a significant impact on child development, particularly in relation to social interaction.

    If the real-world effect of mask-use on reducing transmission was strong, there would likely have been a signal in the infection data. Overall, it seems that the best we can say about masks is that any effect on transmission they might have is obscured by the effects of other interventions, perhaps lost in the noise below any readily observable level.

    Responses to pandemics should account for all factors that make for a well-functioning society. The rules and advice need to balance health, economic, and human and social factors. If face coverings do become a political battleground in the UK, as they have done in the US and elsewhere, politicians will not be solely responsible. The wider scientific advice system and its relatively narrow base of expertise must shoulder some blame for failing to commission systematic trials and transparent, balanced risk-benefit analyses.

    If the results of such research are open to all, we can end those remaining mask mandates and let the public make up their own minds.

    Dr Colin Axon is senior lecturer in engineering at Brunel University. He is writing in a personal capacity

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/08/22/must-fight-normalisation-masks/

    † Of course it was. The Labour Party loves to show how much more caring it is.

  107. Just love it.

    Twitter has just flagged a comment by Trudeau and co as being untruthful. It was a tweet about the conservative leader telling Perkins about healthcare.

    Even the lefty media have no time for that waste of space.

    3. Call it Monday, Tom. When you awake after a good night’s sleep you can call it Tuesday. And a good night to all from me.

    4. Goodnight Tom.

      I am just tapping away on my laptop watching Newsnight .
      Mild evening , soon time to walk around the garden with the dogs.

    1. Next Spring and Summer it will be 2 thousand a day. Just like what happened in the Med a few years ago and still they pretend there is nothing they can do.

    2. Families to follow – all straight onto benefits, NHS, If not housed fast enough ( in appropriate accommodation of course ) – a detached 5 bed house, fully furnished etc – all on us.
      An Afghan was on the radio the other day, mentioning his disabled wife ( they will end up here apparently ) and that will be a brand new car on Motability straight away. Good job Rishi has an endless supply of our cash. I feel sorry for their situation – but it is now clear our govt don’t give a **** about us or our culture.

      1. Shouldn’t intercept be in inverted commas? – The govt may as well fly them in – no green or red channels for them – no passports – no visas, no ID checks, no virus checks. The govt sits there, destroying our nation – and STILL taking their wages. Disgusting – – and BJ and PP are the worst.

  114. From Tuesday’s letters:

    SIR – The sacrifice made by our soldiers in Afghanistan is not wasted. A whole generation of Afghans has caught a glimpse of freedom and a host of young women, in particular, have been given inspiration for their dreams.

    Heather Blackwell
    Garstang, Lancashire

    Yep, they’ve already got their NI numbers.

    1. How f’g naive can you get! The working classes, who are usually on the receiving end of these grand schemes, know better.

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