Monday 27 January: If EU negotiators try to weaponise fish, Britain has weapons of its own

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/01/27/lettersif-eu-negotiators-try-weaponise-fish-britain-has-weapons/

763 thoughts on “Monday 27 January: If EU negotiators try to weaponise fish, Britain has weapons of its own”

    1. Morning Bobster.
      I don’t think I need to go out today – I have a few days off t’werk and I’m hoping to spend them doing mostly nothing 🙂

      1. Not so bad here today, BSK. After a very busy day on Saturday making my annual batch of marmalade and preparing and enjoying a Burns Supper of Haggis, Neeps and Tatties (with the obligatory Wee Dram) I had a lazy day yesterday with a little shopping, a little laundry, a little reading and a few hours working on a jigsaw, I am off today to see the latest version of David Copperfield with Dev Patel in the title role. Back to the jigsaw for now. (Bt the way, greetings to all my friends on the NoTTL site.)

        1. Good morning Elsie.

          I wonder how many people who clear off to watch the David Copperfield film , will have read the book.
          The impressions we formed during childhood of the books we enjoyed .. will no doubt be ruined by the celluloid version .

          What sort of jigsaw are you tackling .. an amusing one or something more serious?

          1. A picture of several pounds of finely sliced Seville oranges would be an appropriate challenge.😎

          2. When we were homeschooling our sons and spending over half the year living on the boat we read several Dickens novels aloud with our boys as well as reading the works of Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas.

            It is amazing how much children can learn if they are not brain-washed in schools!

            But what about Science and Maths, I hear you cry. One of our sons is studying for a Masters degree in Computer Technology while writing software for a company in Preston and the other is an aerospace engineer but they are still both avid readers.

          3. Je dis que le tombeau qui sur les morts se ferme
            Ouvre le firmament

            Et ce qu’on prend ici bas pour le terme
            Est le commencement.

            A Villequier

          4. Hi Maggie, there were 13 of us watching the film and only one of us hadn’t read the book, which surprised me. The votes were 10 “Thumbs Up”, 1 “Thumbs Down” and 2 “So-so’s”. But we all agreed that the mixed races were very distracting. Despite that caveat the film did not ruin our childhood impressions. In fact I thought that Iannucci did an excellent job in compressing such a long book into a humourous and entertaining two-hour film.

            The jigsaw puzzle was a circular one from the 1950s featuring EAGLE characters: Storm Nelson setting off to sea in the Silver Foam, Dan Dare returning as a hero from an outer space mission, Jeff Arnold rounding up a herd of cattle with the help of Luke, and Harris Tweed running away after being frightened by a scarecrow.

            There were three missing pieces so I shall be offering the jigsaw to members of the Eagle Society.

        2. We made marmalade last Friday too. Just over a kilo of Seville oranges and half a kilo of easy peelers that were not at all sweet, so we put them in. We made less than last year as the Seville oranges were all of the last ones in the shop. Eventually, we bottled 16 jars, just under 6 kilos, compared to 25 jars last year. As we still have a couple of jars from last year we were able to do comparative tasting. This year’s batch is lighter and softer. Last year I had to use a very brown sugar as the store had run out of the Barbadian cane sugar I usually use, and I had to make up the quantity of Barbadian that we had with a very dark sugar, maybe Muscovado – I cannot remember. I also used pectin last year, after around 6 iterations of the crinkle test. This year I carried out 4 tests and then thought, “let’s just do it!” and it is fine. So no pectin used, just pure ingredients. It is so good to be able to do something like this, isn’t it?

        3. Went to visit an old (ie long-standing) friend today after a long break. One of the presents she received for Christmas was a jigsaw composed of pictures of her garden. Absolutely brilliant!

  2. Good morning all.

    Absolutely smashing it down with rain 1/2 hour ago but seems to have slackened a bit now.

    1. Here too, Peddy, and morning.
      Dark.
      Heavy rain.
      Trains all screwed up.
      Monday.
      I’m going back to bed. Today is cancelled due to lack of interest!

      1. ‘Morning, Paul, what we described in the forces as, “NAAFI” syndrome (No Ambition And Fluck-all Interest).

        Enjoy your day, old troop.

        1. Unfortunately, arbeit muss sein.
          Preparing for a 2-day Maintenance Fair attendance, where I’m manning (well, being vaguely male – “man” is a bit ambitious these days) our little stand. Lots to do, printing still not finalised…

      2. ‘Morning, Paul.

        I can’t say that I was enamoured of the rakfisk, but Missy seems to like it. Thank you anyway.

        1. It was worth a try. Glad it was enjoyed, anyway!
          BTW, that was prize-winning Rakfisk, from the God Medal producer, just a km North of Firstborn’s farm… so Missy should be impressed of the qualty fish she received. :-))

      3. Indeed, so to give charity 50p, it will cost you £1.00 plus the 50p to end up in the gutter? With that logic, no wonder they got all riled up over the economics of Brexit.

        1. I guess that’s one place one could happily stick the new 50p piece.
          :-))
          Morning, Tom.

    2. After years of Remainers calling Leavers thick, uneducated, and hoping they would die soon, my only response is “SUCK IT UP, YOU B*STARDS!”

    3. ‘Morning Aeneas, that article has, to date, resulted in 2,792 BTL comments – too many to read but I bet that most will be eagerly ‘rubbing their noses in it’. It is no more than they deserve.

      Imagine their hubris had we remained.

      1. The article about Hezza had 4000 + comments; the vast majority suggesting that his views attracted scant support (to put it politely).
        Around the same number of postings were under the DM’s article on the same subject. Again, ‘suck it up, Hezza’ was the overwhelming sentiment.
        Morning, Nanners. I see your beloved has been posting BTL the Tellygraff letters.

        1. One must keep up appearances, doncha know? In fact it’s me but the subscription is in her name and she doesn’t know how to change the name and I don’t want to mess with it.

  4. SAS plans to create super-strength unit with radical plan to draft in Parachute Regiment

    RADICAL plans by Army chiefs will see two battalions of the Parachute Regiment form a Special Forces unit to aid the SAS in combat missions overseas.
    It means Parliament will not be consulted when the regiment is sent abroad as SAS operations do not need the approval of MPs…

    Daily Express – SAS and Parachute Regiment Reforms

    My immediate thought on this was that it opens the door for our elite forces to be ‘loaned’ out to the emerging EU forces without scrutiny from Parliament. After Johnson’s ‘Brexit’ the idea that our military could be placed under the EU’s control would be a political minefield and this move would go some way to remove the need of political justification for such a deployment.
    Johnson and Co have been quiet on how our military will be related to that of, “Our friends and partners,” in the EU. We must not get involved in any conflict that the EU foments, especially in the MENA and francophone African states.

    1. Let’s just stick with NATO and force our partners to pay their dues.

      ‘Morning, Korky.

      1. Morning to you, NTN.

        Spot on. NATO has served us, and World, well for decades and needs to continue. The last thing we need is to expend our military strength on some mission thought up in the political quagmire that is Brussels.

      2. Let’s leave NATO. Turkey will get us into a mess. The USA will not help us (see Falklands debacle)

  6. SIR – As a former Director (Ports) of the then UK Immigration Service, I was interested to read of plans to use aircraft to spot migrants crossing the Channel in small boats. Presumably, to be effective this would need to be carried out 24 hours a day.

    Once again, the Home Office, French and now Belgian authorities are missing the point. Instead of investing many millions of pounds attempting to stop the boats, the real answer is to return migrants to France or Belgium immediately, no matter where they are found in the Channel. Organised crime, which arranges these attempts, would soon get the message and stop.

    In 2019 almost two thirds of those attempting the crossing were successful – many of them picked up mid-Channel by Border Force cutters or other UK agencies.

    If the French and Belgians are serious about stopping these attempts, then they should not resist taking individuals back. Earlier this month, Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, herself advocated this approach. So what has happened to that initiative?

    Peter Higgins
    West Wickham, Kent

    (I can see all the letters this morning )

    1. Peter Higgins hasn’t caught on to the fact that the PTB want the arrivals here, otherwise they would all be held under lock and key before being deported at the earliest opportunity.

    2. TB,
      If any of these governmental parties were remotely interested in the welfare of the indigenous of these Isles then they would have stopped
      the welfare for the world campaign many years ago.
      That would beat any human endeavour rhetorically in place hands down.

    3. Good morning Maggiebelle

      Just because Boris Johnson won the election it does not mean that the government and its agencies have any desire to do what people want – which is the expulsion of illegal immigrants.

      Added to which they don’t want to stop Muslim rape gangs, they have no desire to pursue cases of theft and stabbings by ethnic minorities have never been higher.

      All they want is to chase people for thought crime and to eliminate free speech.

  7. SIR – We now learn, from a freedom-of-information request, that 13.9 million trees have been felled in Scotland alone to make way for wind farms. Add the millions of trees felled in North America to produce the pellets keeping Yorkshire’s Drax power station operating and it seems that renewables are killing the planet.

    Neil N H Bailey
    Stockport

    1. Morning TB,
      Wonga for air will be the next big scam.
      Air wars will take on a new meaning as in, get your air cylinder here at prices that won’t leave you gasping.
      No snatch backs but air supply under government control, any opposition
      and…..
      And so it goes on.

      1. Good morning

        Thank you for posting the link . It is madness isn’t it

        I naively assumed that the fields of maize grown around here was for animal feed.. but some one informed me that it was for biomass .. good grain growing fields really , and soon in the spring , fields of oil seed rape , which will be sprayed … same old patterns , and the insect population crashes even further ..

        Life here in the countryside can actually be very depressing , as no doubt you are well aware of!

        1. There’s an anaerobic digester not far from me; the fields of maize (crops carried by huge tractors filling the narrow rural roads and tearing up the verges) are solely grown to fuel it. Nobody I know wanted it, but they got it anyway.

    3. Oh, certainly they fuel the tractors and chainsaws in those American forests with fossil fuels–not to mention the pelleting plant.

  8. SIR – The free licence for over-75s needs to be maintained. To help fund it, the Foreign Office should pay for the BBC World Service, as it used to. Or the Department for International Development could pay. In either case, funding would come through general taxation.

    That the World Service is a valued diplomatic tool of soft power for the United Kingdom is not disputed. It is wholly wrong, however, for its cost to be directly borne by licence payers.

    William Pender
    Salisbury, Wiltshire

    1. That is simple and absolutely correct.
      Incidentally, has anyone yet invented an ad-blocker for TV ?

      4. Using ‘catch up’ goes some way to eradicating those irritating breaks. On live TV the mute button helps and the fast forward on anything recorded.

  9. SIR – The Government makes strong announcements about the importance of woodlands and habitat-friendly hedgerows, yet at the same time there is a plan to concrete over Rutland.

    A large area of farmland was requisitioned for a Second World War airbase and subsequently became an Army barracks. It is now due to be vacated and disposed of by the MoD as a money-grabbing deal.

    The Government plan is to build a new town on site, plus a major transport distribution hub and, to cap it all, start an opencast mine that will last 50 years – all this right next to the world-famous aqua facility that is Rutland Water.

    The new town will increase the population of Rutland by about one third and will be nothing but a dormitory town. The majority of Rutlanders have been protesting against this proposal for more than four years, wishing the site to be given back to rural use. The area is begging to become a country park full of trees and recreation areas, as in the ideas publicly advocated by government. Yet Rutlanders are being ignored and the civil service machine is trundling on.

    It is an area that Michael Gove, as Environment Secretary, should be championing against the MoD.

    Lt Col Dale Hemming-Tayler (retd)
    Edith Weston, Rutland

  11. “UK sovereignty in jeopardy if Huawei used for 5G, US warns”
    If the Government sticks to its guns and tells the Americans where to go, who takes the blame when our security system
    gets a nasty Chinese virus?
    If the Government decides not to use the Chinese for obvious security reasons (giving the job to the Chinese is on a par with the EU giving the
    bomb to Iran), they will be accused of being in Trump’s pocket.
    What is the correct thing to do ?

        3. I suggest you have that the wrong way round. Kate spent a lot of time sharing a platform with UKIP (in the shape of Nigel) during the run up to the referendum.

          1. Good evening Conway
            It was very tongue in cheek as an alternative to ogga’s continual monologue. I should have finished my comment with a :-)).

    1. Didn’t take them long to build an island in the sea and then stick an Airport on it.

      Good morning.

  15. Coronavirus: 100,000 may already be infected, experts warn. 26 January 2020.

    About 100,000 people could be infected with the new coronavirus around the world, experts have warned, as the UK government faced calls to reassure people that the NHS is ready to deal with any British cases within days.

    Prof Neil Ferguson, a public health expert at Imperial College, said his “best guess” was that there were 100,000 affected by the virus even though there are only 2,000 confirmed cases so far, mostly in the city of Wuhan in China where the virus first appeared.

    Morning everyone. There are some things about this Chinese affair that puzzle me greatly:

    1 Why does this virus, which appears to have quite modest symptoms, require the ubiquitous hospitalisation of its victims? Can no one be treated at home?

    2 Why does it require such draconian sanctions as quarantine, which of course is what travel restrictions are?

    3 Has anyone actually recovered from it? By this I mean has someone passed through the infected stage, recovered and gained the immunity that say Influenza confers?

    4 Has it infected anyone other than ethnic Chinese?

    This said the last people on the planet to reassure me about any of this would be the British Government and I would point out that this blog and its predecessor are devoted to the concept of both its mendacity and incompetence!

    https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/jan/26/coronavirus-could-infect-100000-globally-experts-warn

    1. Morning Minty. Very good questions. From what I’ve read the Chinese were criticised for not doing more earlier during the last SARs outbreak so I surmise they do not wish to be criticised for not reacting – hence the heavy duty restrictions on travel.
      The fact that the death rate is not 100% indicates that some folk do recover. However I’ve no idea what immunity they develop.

      1. The fact that the death rate is not 100% indicates that some folk do recover.

        You could be jumping to a false conclusion. It could be that some people take longer to succumb than others. C.f. HIV.

    3. I’ve lost track of the number of things that were going to wipe us from the face of the earth.
      Ice age coming, global warming, climate change, HIV/Aids, SARS, swine flu, avian flu, please add to list.
      It would appear that governments use this tactic when they’re losing control of people’s minds. Hong Kong, Brexit , Trump etc.
      Let’s scare the living daylights out of the masses in the hope the establishment can resume control.
      Am I cynical or am I cynical?

      1. The Apocalypse or its equivalent is built into most cultures so it’s probably a part of human nature. My own sleep patterns are much disturbed (more than usual)at the moment and I had this weird dream last night where I was wandering the destroyed urban and industrial landscapes of my youth.

          2. Morning Phizzee. One could make several cruel remarks in response to that but I shall restrain myself!

          3. Good morning, Minty.

            At one time it was prosperous. Freeman St full of all types of shops. There was good employment to be had, mostly from the fishing industry and processing. Now Freeman St is full of boarded up shops, drug addicts and prostitutes.

          4. In all our small market towns and cities and is now spreading to our villages ..

            The young messengers , the hooded wan faced knobbly fingered youths .. wasted weak minded individuals .. are the virus that has infected life everywhere ..

            How can we halt the rot that is so evident .. What can we do.. We must stop making excuses for society .. Our population is skewed .. our hospital A+Es are chockablock full of self inflicted injuries.. domestic violence , alcohol, drugs and self neglect .

          5. Going to church on Sundays, playing ping-pong at youth clubs, Scouts and Guides, family dinners around the table, sit-down breakfasts every day.
            And a bonfire of the smartphones.

    4. I, and quite a few people around me, fell ill with a virus with remarkably similar symptoms before Christmas, and have been laid low for weeks with fatigue, sore throat, catarrh, thirst, and a dread feeling at the base of the lungs that unless I stay still in bed, things could get much worse. One week, it got to my ears, then my eyes, then back to the throat, on one side and then the other side and then the middle. Coughing up sticky plegm that just hung around just behind the tonsils. On the Common Cold spectrum, rather than influenza. The flu jab had no effect.

      The feeling I had was that there was little in my medicine chest of antibodies to take this on, so although the symptoms seemed mild, the damage that could be done was severe unless I had extreme rest in order to allow my body to fight this thing. My GP yawned with boredom – not another one – and handed me five days supply of penicillin for the ears.

      1. Practically everybody we know spent Christmas and/or New Year wishing they could pass on all that having fun lark and just go back to bed.

      2. Absolutely. It is an awful virus, pd and I came down with it on the 28 Dec and it swept us off our feet within hours. I have checked the symptoms against those of the coronavirus and they seem identical… along with the backache, stomach upset for a week or so then food seeming to lie heavily in the stomach. I must have gone through ten boxes of large tissues. Now starting week 5, the virus keeps coming back for another bite, it is the fatigue preceded by much sneezing! – that is worst now particularly in the evening, a wiped-out, fading away sort of feeling, especially if one has been doing even just mundane tick-over activities during the day. Yesterday we went out for a delayed birthday (mine) family celebration lunch, I was exhausted from 6.00 pm onwards.

        1. Interesting comment.
          Two of our friends went down with those symptoms in December, and neither has fully recovered yet.

          1. It is going on forever, and just before writing this reply I had another sneezing attack and my throat feels sore in the area of my ears! – but not like the soreness you get with first onset which feels really raw. With hindsight I don’t think it was ‘flu, as although I was swept off my feet with with fatigue on the early evening of 28 Dec I was able to dash out on the morning of 29 Dec and get some food supplies in which I don’t think I would have been able to do had it been ‘flu – I was in a slightly better state than my husband and we had been away over Christmas, returning home on 27 Dec. Having said that, that was it for two weeks, I was a slave to the tissue box! What made me think it was not like a normal winter virus was the back-ache, the stomach/digestive upsets and the fatigue afterwards – but at the same time, not a ‘flu virus.

          1. Not this time, Peddy. We went to Johnson’s at Old Hurst (the Croc farm) nr Huntingdon, as when when I booked we were catering for an almost 3 year old as well; we thought the farm and woodland walk would give him something to do after the meal. Unfortunately last Tuesday he came down with chickenpox so he and his mum stayed at home, he did have a very spotty face by Sunday! However our two sons and one wife did manage it so there were five of us. I can recommend – the carvery was delicious and the pork was wonderful which I had. Slow cooked overnight at 75 C apparently. There was a choice of pork, beef, turkey – or all three if you wish. There is also a non-carvery menu.

    5. To take our minds off the contagion apparently threatening all people on Earth, ZeroHedge this morning has helpfully drawn our attention to the Russians upgrading their automatic Nuclear Retaliation capability. The Dead Hand is the last line of deterrence in the event of a crippling nuclear strike.’In peacetime conditions, the system slumbers, waiting for a turn-on command or an alarm signal from the missile attack early-warning system. It has a human “firewall,” for example, an on-duty officer who would switch it into the fully automated mode. Therefore, there is no risk of an accidental or unauthorised missile launch. Having received a command or signal about missiles being launched from the territory of other countries, this Dead Hand goes into an automated combat mode. Through a wide-scale sensor network, it monitors signs of an incoming nuclear strike.’

      Fortunately the ingenuity of man knows no bounds as for example this BTL observation:

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/dd0a495ae7b9ebc6a938b7dfea518f23ad63b925530b7d788401d559ca56c10d.png

      1. Morning Stephen. This has long existed in an American form where lacking human direction a Minuteman missile self launches and transmits instruction to expend the entire arsenal!

        1. I think the word you are looking for is satiated which I’m sure must have its root in Satyr……..

      3. Morning Stephen. This has long existed in an American form where lacking human direction a Minuteman missile self launches and transmits instruction to expend the entire arsenal!

    6. We are an Island , and are capable of quarantine measures..

      For goodness sake , if we stopped the Germans from invading , we can blooming well do something about installing isolation measures and start taking quarantine seriously .

        2. The Foreign Office is drafting plans to extract British nationals stranded by the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan.

          The Government confirmed that it is working on making an “option available” for Britons to leave Hubei province which has effectively been shut down by Chinese authorities in a bid to contain the virus.

          A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “We continue to monitor developments closely and are in close touch with the Chinese authorities. The safety and security of British nationals is always our primary concern.”

          https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/01/27/foreign-office-preparing-extract-british-nationals-wuhan-amid/

          The safety and security of the UK should be the primary concern.. what utter wassocks are running this country.. heaven forfend !

      2. If you can’t stop women & children arriving in inflatable dinghies, what hope is there of stopping anything?

          2. We could stop them if there were a will to do so. So far the government hasn’t shown the will, even though I suspect a high proportion of the population would be happy for them to do so.

          3. My apologies, cynarch, I didn’t see your reply until I had written yours – which echoes yours.

          4. No apologies needed – I think we all do it at times. Very easy to respond before reading all the replies in a thread.

          5. If ‘we’ really wanted to stop them then ‘we’ would. And if left to the people of this country, it would be done. The problem is there is no political will to stop them. Therefore, one has to come to the conclusion that ‘they’ want them here.

          6. The usual excuse is we need the immigrants for cheap labour – yet there are millions of capable workers on the dole. The benefits system needs re-organising.

          7. The benefits system is wrecked and totally unfit for purpose now. It’s just had the sort of re-organising you want. We officially have very low unemployment although we all know the figures are fudged endlessly. The claimant count has risen by half a million since 2014 yet unemployment has fallen supposedly from 6% to under 4% over the same period. I’m officially economically inactive but I work 48 to 84 hours per week for £7 an hour and have no employment rights at all. That was the only job i could find so i took it, and things haven’t improved in the last six or seven months in my area.

          8. There should be no immigration until all those on the dole/’benefits’ (of our largesse) are fully employed. And only then to take up vacant employment, not to sit on the dole/benefits. We must be mad.

      4. Yes, but that would be contrary to the ethos of open Britain globalism as practiced since Tony met George way back in April 1996 at the Plaza Hotel, New York to decide Britain’s future.

      5. The world is a global village now. Got any idea how many people pass through UK borders every single day?

    7. The combination of Chinese and British government openness is leading to some imaginative theories.
      A Chinese scientist frog marched out of Canadian research lab; new viruses being developed on the Middle Kingdom; a Novichok type operation in Blighty….
      Please, pretty please, don’t let any goody goody British nurses fly over to China to be helpful. They’re bound to sneak back with some blood boiling version of a flu bug.

    1. From other websites, the helo was flying low in bad weather. They were trying to make it for the start of a game.

      1. Just some athlete who received tributes from Donald Trump, Barack Obama, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, David Beckham, Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Lewis Hamilton, Mike Tyson, Rafael Nadal, Naomi Osaka, Simone Biles, Paul Pogba, Marcus Rashford, and Raheem Sterling.

  17. DT:

    “Letters: If EU negotiators try to weaponise fish, Britain has weapons of its own”

    Give ’em a dose of Nottlers’ punning,
    That would have the EU running.

      2. Morning Anne.

        Notice how I deliberately avoided getting the ball rolling.

        At the risk of setting off an explosion of seal puns, my lips are sealed.

    2. WE have all the aces.And they know we are now serious about leaving

      There will be compromises though that’s what negotiation are about but there will be no big giveaways for the EU

      2. BJ,
        What negotiations ? if they wish to deal AFTER we exit they only have
        to ask……………. nicely.

          1. BJ,
            Still stands, no ties to the eu whatsoever unless from a completely honest tory
            Pm / MP so, total severance MUST be the order of the day.

          2. BJ,
            Then all johnson has to do is not answer the phone.
            The time to spot future treachery is if johnson were to go to brussels when there really is NO NEED.

    3. Our fishing is on the line
      What’s yours is mine
      The frogs are on the make

      So let them eat cake…..

  18. Letter: SIR – On holiday in Spain with euros in my pocket, I notice that on all the coins and banknotes is a map of Europe that includes the British Isles.
    Will the EU be removing the United Kingdom from its currency when we leave?

    David Garnett
    Mojácar, Almería, Spain

    Norway isn’t in the EU, and omitting the country from the coin map leaves Sweden hanging there like, well, a limp dick. It’s most amusing! Another joke played on “Söta Bror”!

  19. TfL spent £8m paying staff for time off to attend official union duties

    That is just ridiculous. It is about £1 per year for every man woman and child living in London. They are clearly taking the Micky under Khan’s London.

    Transport For London spent £8 million last year paying staff for time off to attend official union duties.
    The cost increased from £4.4 million during the final year of Boris Johnson’s mayoralty to £7.9 million in 2018-19.

    TfL allows union representatives paid time off for union duties, so-called “facility time”, and meeting these costs represents 0.4 per cent of its total wage bill

    The number of staff spending more than half their time on union activities rose from 48 in 2015/16 to 148 last year.

  20. FFS. What are the MSM – yes, you, BBC – hiding while they blether on about an American sportsman that few in Blighty had ever heard of?

    3. I caught that news late last night on LBC. I said to myself, “Who?,” surely a tragedy but the presenter went on and on. It was the same this morning, basketball, as well as being one of the most boring games to watch, is of minor interest here. Report the news and move on to items that are of interest or concern here should have been the manner to treat this tragedy.

  21. If I can just say this please and ask …

    In total, 6 million Jews were killed during the Holocaust. One-sixth of these exterminations happened at Auschwitz alone.

    First established in 1940 in German-occupied Poland, Auschwitz had a concentration camp, a labor camp, large gas chambers, and crematoria.

    So the planned exterminations must have been years and years before we knew anything about .. So the purges were pre planned years before .. So Germany cleared the land of all , because they wanted more land .. because they had no land left?

    Am I on the right track or not?

    https://www.businessinsider.com/auschwitz-photos-nazi-camp-history-liberation-anniversary-2020-1?fbclid=IwAR1MPIOED8HM9R-dpVb3uUlAFS3b88w1xAKLrwMTEk_d8_lnIRzC690l7Ak&r=US&IR=T#in-total-6-million-jews-were-killed-during-the-holocaust-one-sixth-of-these-exterminations-happened-at-auschwitz-alone-21

    1. TB,
      We have the same clearance campaign operating within the UK with 48% of the electorate seemingly very eager to assist.
      For gas chambers read, submission,
      PCism, Appeasement, death & injuries
      guaranteed just takes longer.

      1. There nothing submissive about a gas chamber. The word you are looking for is “care”, and the railway to the gas chamber is the “pathway”, since we cannot get the trains to run on time.

    2. The Jews were the largest ethnic group to be slaughtered but they were not alone: Gypsies, the deformed and mentally retarded; Poles and other Slavs who were declared ‘untermenschen’; untold numbers of Russian PoWs; the list is long and grisly.
      I’m currently reading James Holland’s, The War in the West 1941 to 1943, and he mentions the Germans taking hundreds of thousands of Russians prisoner in one battle after another. Herded together, rarely if ever fed, the majority must have succumbed to the harsh treatment, it’s little wonder that a terrible revenge was visited on the Germans by the Russians. The Jews of course had no means of taking revenge; who could have blamed them had they done so?

    3. They certainly started to kill them before the death camps were set up. They decided that shooting them all was too slow and inefficient….

    4. They used a lot of slave labour, Belle. That makes it quicker.
      Auschwitz 1 (with the Arbeit Macht Frei sign), the first camp, used to be a Polish Army barracks, and was extended a bit. So, that was quickly done.
      Auschwitz II / Birkenau was a new camp, designed specifically for extermination. It is the brick building with the squat tower and railway line going under it, and was largely wooden huts, with the gas chambers and ovens at the far end of the railway line.
      It won’t have taken long to build, with slave labour, likely worked literally, to death.

      1. You can see where the huts were at Birkenau, as they were burned when the camp was evacuated – the chimneys still largely remain, as do the huit bases.

        1. The huge propaganda machine that is Hollywood and the film industry existed in the 30s. It is not believable that the USA and the UK were unaware of what was going on. So why did the USA, funded by their very rich Jewish community, not rescue the Jews of Europe?
          “Give me your tired, your poor,
          Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
          The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
          Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
          I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

        2. When I moved to where I now live I found in the loft a copy of the DT for one day in the summer of 1941. It was just four pages in total. Front page given over to news on the war (with small ads for things such as curtains and ladies dresses). Back page sports news – cricket. Carry on as normal despite the war. However, there was a small paragraph of reports of Concentration Camps in eastern Europe. I think the war office probably new of their existence and possibly purpose but didn’t have the wherewithal to do anything about it until 1944.

          3. I once asked my mother what they knew of the camps in the war. She said there were reports but that they didn’t believe them as they couldn’t believe anyone could be that bestial.

        5. Jordan Petersen in his lectures suggests that though most people like to imagine themself the hero helping Jews escape Nazi Germany, they are more likely in reality to have ended up as the concentration camp guard. Or at the very least turning a blind eye to what they felt powerless to change and just getting on with life as best they could.

        6. There has always been a widespread hatred for Jews – I don’t know why.
          The collection, export and murder of all those people came about because, mostly, the civilian populations were afraid that they would be denounced and sent to join the Jews on their journey, but undoubtedly, many approved of it as well. The occupied countries all had their laws enacted that made it legal to do what the Occupying Power said you must do, and many (for example in the police in the roundups) were “just obeying orders”. I suspect that people thought “well, only a few Jews”, then we’ll be all right.
          I read somewhere that the art in doing something like the Holocaust was to persuade ordinary people that what they were doing was for the good of society – so getting rid of Untermensch / gays / cripples / perverts / other undesirables. It’s not a very big step from people “being disgusted” by gay sex to agreeing that they should be locked up “to protect the children”, and then then that it’s too expensive, so gays should be eradicated for the good of society.
          I always felt that Pastor Niemöllers poem was most apt. That’s why I support the Jews, and gays, and any other part of society that might find itself on the receiving end of the same treatment. Edit: Poem added below)
          There were some brave souls who defied the Occupation; quite a few Jews were tipped off in Norway, and fled to Sweden, but we had our deportation of Jews to Germany, where precious few ever came back. What is sad is that many Jews who were warned to run for it just couldn’t believe what they were told, that their neighbours & police could do such a thing. But, they could and did. Repeated in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, when Christian and Muslim neighbours had at each other in horrific ways.

          When the Nazis came for the communists,
          I remained silent;
          I was not a communist.

          When they locked up the social democrats,
          I remained silent;
          I was not a social democrat.

          When they came for the trade unionists,
          I did not speak out;
          I was not a trade unionist.

          When they came for the Jews,
          I remained silent;
          I was not a Jew.

          When they came for me,
          there was no one left to speak out.

          Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller (14 January 1892 – 6 March 1984) was a Protestant pastor and social activist.

          1. Did the Danes not resist by bravely wearing yellow stars, led by their monarch, although they are all pure Aryans?

          2. Believe so, but it wasn’t all Danes. Like, it wasn’t all Norwegians who helped the Jews across to Sweden

          3. Indeed not, Herr Obst. Six thousand Danes and six thousand Norwegians actually fought for Germany, serving in the Waffen-SS.

          4. I actually met one of those Norwegians, and bought the book he wrote together with a Resistance man of the same age.
            His explanation was that he joined the Germans to fight the Soviets as he hated communism passionately, in t he same way that people join the French Foreign Legion. The only way you could do that as a foreigner, was to join the SS, so he did – and fought the Soviets. He, of course, ended on the wrong side, but it’s easy to see how a young lad could make that kind of mistake.
            The two men were best of friends, and didn’t hold their opposing sides against each other.
            I believe there were some Brits in the SS as well.

          5. It never is, unfortunately. There are always those looking out for the main chance. Germany must have seemed unbeatable.

          6. “There has always been a widespread hatred for Jews – I don’t know why.”

            I think it is well documented in litt that there has always been a deep suspicion about the Jews’ natural talent for making money. This loathing deepened, in some communities, as the result of a few, less scrupulous among their number, using usury as a way of making much more money.

            This was one reason given why King Edward I banished them from England. Following that, persecution after persecution often followed them on their peripatetic sojourns.

            In my personal experience I have known a lot of Jews and I never received anything other than goodwill and friendship from them. There are, though, others who do their utmost to annoy and sicken with vigour. Arise: Philip Green and Harvey Weinstein. All Green and Weinstein achieve, through their self-centred vanity and venomous attitude to others, is invite hatred and loathing. Perhaps they learned little from history?

        7. I recommend ‘Auschwitz (The Nazis & The ‘Final Solution’) ‘ by Laurence Rees.

          It chronicles the development and the changing policies that led up to the Final Solution and it also explains how some European counties, while allies of or occupied by Germany were more reluctant than others to ship their Jewish citizens to the camps.

          A sombre subject, but a very good read.
          https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/978098.Auschwitz

          https://reviews.history.ac.uk/review/2176

          1. One of my Dutch friends researched the export of Dutch Jews to Germany during WW2. It was surprising how many people collaborated, particularly among the police (he is a policeman).

        8. A work colleague whose parents were Polish told me that her mother lived in Krakow throughout WWII. Her mother didn’t have any choice but to stay there and she said that the smell of burning flesh hung over the city so that no-one could possibly not know what was going on. There wasn’t anything they could do.

        9. There was a psychological experiment done a few years ago where people were told to press a button even though they were told it would cause pain to the person at the other end. Most obeyed because they were told by “someone in authority”. ‘I was only carrying out orders’ seems to carry a lot of weight.

      3. Don’t forget Mauthausen – they made prisoners carry heavy stones up a steep staircase and often threw the wretches to their death into the abyss.

  22. For Sale Welsh Villager

    Any reasonable offer considered 16 for the price of One London home

    Aberllefenni has been on the market for three years, and has seen its priced knocked down to £1.25m, but nobody will bu

    y it https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6a196d94c3b9cf392f44e6245eee13683d09f3e9a853c877ea7b674b92f64d8c.jpg

    Sixteen homes and cottages, along with dozens of acres of agricultural land, in Aberllefenni, near Machynlleth , were put up for grabs with estate agent Dafydd Hardy for £1.5m back in August 2016.

    But since that time, and despite being reduced in price by a quarter of a million pounds, the quarrying village – currently on for the same amount as a two bed apartment in Knightsbridge – has failed to find a buyer, largely thanks to the uncertainty surrounding Britain’s departure from the European Union.

    He added that because the properties are already tenanted any potential landlords will have to consider potential changes to things like the EPC ratings levels, the guidelines which enforce energy efficiency standards in the home.

    “It could be that, if or when we leave the EU, properties of a certain banding might end up being deemed unlettable until they’re brought up to spec. That means installing new boilers and upgrading heating systems,” he said.

  23. UK burger chain collapses with 19 restaurants closing immediately

    A burger chain has collapses with 19 branches across the UK closing immediately – and 283 people losing their jobs.

    Handmade Burger Co restaurants has collapsed for the second time and Leonard Curtis Business Rescue & Recovery have been appointed joint administrators

    The restaurants which have closed with immediate effect are in Aberdeen, Edinburgh Ocean Terminal, Glasgow Braehead, Glasgow St Vincent Street, Birmingham Brindleyplace, Birmingham Bullring, Leicester Highcross, Lincoln Brayford Wharf, Peterborough, Solihull Touchwood, Gateshead Metrocentre, Hull, Leeds Trinity, Sheffield Meadowhall, Bath, Bournemouth, Reading, Southampton West Quay and Wembley, reports BusinessLive .

    1. Probably one of those idiotic establishments that insisted on calling its sub-standard products idiotic names like, “beefburgers” or “burgers”.

      These muppets do not have the brains to realise that the properly-named hamburger was originally called a Hamburg Steak and was invented in that city.

      No one calls Frankfurt’s famous sausage a “porkfurter”, nor do they call Berlin’s famous doughnut a “breader”.

        1. Right, that’s it, Duncan! I shall book a flight to Schweinfurt to test your theory!

          You’ll next be telling me that Clootie Dumpings were invented in Clootie!

  24. Cumbria Police officer dies in M6 motorway crash

    A police officer has died in a motorway crash as he responded to an emergency call.

    The 47-year-old, who worked for Cumbria Police’s road policing unit, died on the M6 near Carlisle at about 14:00 GMT on Sunday.

    His vehicle left the southbound carriageway between junctions 44 and 43, the force said.

    A spokesman said the officer, who has not been named, was alone in the marked car and no other vehicle was involved

  25. Some people just don’t appreciate us:

    Donald Tusk accused of ‘insulting’ Bath after describing architecture as ‘a circle of boring identical facades’

    Since Roman legionaries lounged in its spas, few places in Britain have been as desirable a destination as Bath.

    Steeped in history and elegant Georgian architecture, it is judged by Unesco to be “one of the most beautiful cities in Europe”.

    That is, unless, you are Donald Tusk.

    The former president of the European Council pulled few punches as he reflected on his time in the Somerset city in his recently published diaries.

    In January 2016, he attended a language school in the region to “Polish” his English, as David Cameron conducted last-ditch negotiations with the EU before the Brexit vote in June.

    Unfortunately, however, the qualities that earned Bath the status of World Heritage Site in the 1980s did not cast the same spell over the hard-nosed Polish politician.

    Mr Tusk recalled a visit to the historic row of townhouses known as the Circus, which he understood to be considered “one of the best works of British architecture”.

    “God knows why,” he wrote in his memoir Szczerze, which means ‘frankly’ in English.

    “A circle of boring, identical facades.”

    He continued: “A few hundred metres away there is a small Jane Austen museum, she lived here for several years. ‘Pride and Prejudice’ would make a good motto for Brexit.”

    The Circus in Bath failed to impress the former president of the European Council

    His stay at the language school – which the Telegraph established to be Linguarama, near the village of Box, Wiltshire – was no happier.

    “It’s cold, it winds mercilessly, and it rains almost all the time…the nights are black, the days are dark grey, and I am suffering from fever and cough,” Mr Tusk wrote.

    “I might just as well go and hang myself.”

    His withering assessment of south-west England provoked a backlash on Friday, as Bathonians leapt to their city’s defence – and even questioned Mr Tusk’s taste.

    “I am staggered that Tusk would say it was boring,” said David Crellin, of the History of Bath Research Group, regarding his criticism of the Circus.

    “Its repetitiveness and common nature is its strength, not its weakness – it is a pity that Tusk does not appreciate that vision as it overwhelms many people when they look at it for the first time.”

    Sue Swainbank, of Bath Tours, was more frank.

    “I am quite insulted by the comments actually. I think it shows a lack of appreciation of splendid Georgian architecture,” she said.

    For others, it was Mr Tusk’s slight of British weather that particularly stuck in the craw.

    Kathryn Davis, CEO of Visit Bath, said: “It was unfortunate that when Donald Tusk was in Bath there was inclement weather.

    “When you come to Bath there are other things you can do which do not involve good weather.”

    Robin Moss, a councillor in the region, added: “Tusk must be used to this type of weather – is he not from Poland?

    “It’s not as though he comes from Italy.”

    At the Linguarama language school, based in a grand Jacobean manor house, memories of Mr Tusk’s visit have endured.

    Jon Waring, 48, taught the politician grammar and vocabulary and recalled how he was keen to “brush up on his language and negotiating skills” to talk to Mr Cameron about the impending Brexit vote.

    “(He was) practising a lot of diplomatic language – so instead of saying ‘that is impossible’, you would say ‘that would be difficult’,” he told The Telegraph.

    “You do not say that is crazy, you can’t upset people by using direct language.”

    He described how the “natural and normal” Mr Tusk was stopped for autographs by Polish people in the streets of Bath, where he spent time hunting for tea to buy his wife.

    “He went to one of those classic tea shops and bought back two massive bags of tea – (enough to fill) half a suitcase.”

    Mr Tusk gave his tutor the impression he “liked being back in Bath after 20 years” and cheerily joined in with social activities at the school.

    In the course of one game, where players had to guess which of several anecdotes was true, Mr Tusk revealed he had once accidentally found himself in the same toilet “as a famous female popstar, who I believe was Shakira”, Mr Waring said.

    “One of them opened the door and saw the other, and whoever was wrong said ‘I’m sorry’ and walked out.

    “That was his comedy moment.”

    Mr Tusk was said to have spent around six hours a day in one-to-one lessons focused on different areas and was accompanied throughout his stay by a bodyguard.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/01/24/donald-tusk-accused-insulting-bath-describing-architecture-circle/

    1. “It’s cold, it winds mercilessly, and it rains almost all the time…the nights are black, the days are dark grey……”

      … unlike the tropical paradise that is Tusk’s native Poland.

      1. Believe it or not, Poland has much more sunshine, and far fewer damp, dank, low-pressure days than the western half of the UK. Also weather like last week – 5 days of high-pressure greyness is less common.

          2. Lower temperatures, but often a dry cold, and when wind is absent, much easier to cope with than dank, damp, English cold – especially on the not uncommon crisp sunny winter days there.

    2. “I might just as well go and hang myself.” Never too late, Mr Tusk. Though, to be more charitable, if he’d just keep his gob shut it would do nicely.

    3. It was Quentin Crisp who once said that being Polish was less a national identity and more a state of mind. One thing you never do to a Pole is to tell them not to do something. The response is invariably “it’s not a problem – I’m Polish” at which point the Pole goes and does precisely the thing they are not [corrected] supposed to do.

      I have very fond memories of once telling a Polish professor not to strip off naked on Weymouth beach on bank holiday Monday. One of the people I summoned to attempt to spare the Prof’s modesty is now a Tory MP, renowned in the Commons today for being boring.

      Donald Tusk shares the same distaste for architectural uniformity as the Victorian Grand Matriarch of Great Malvern, Lady Emily Foley. When they were building the town, she decreed that no two buildings were to be the same, and God help anyone that got on the wrong side of Lady Emily!

        1. Well spotted, and will be corrected now! It’s touching that someone actually reads my guff.

      2. “at which point the Pole goes and does precisely the thing they are NOT supposed to do.”

        ????

      1. In the past 15 years that scene has largely vanished as have several £billion British pounds via the EU land subsidising EU CAP. Now in the Polish countryside it’s all tractors and large crop-sprayers.

  26. Carey Mulligan wants overhaul of Oscars voting system. 27 January 2020.

    She has questioned whether those with suffrage to decide the highest honour in showbusiness have even watched the films they spurn, claiming that the power of recent female-led productions would not allow for their exclusion by any other way but ignorance.

    Mulligan, 34, said the apparent attitude that these films are not worthy of recognition should be addressed by changing the Oscars voting system.

    They didn’t vote for women so we ought to change the voting system!

    You would laugh at this but it is the Feminist default position.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/01/26/carey-mulligan-wants-overhaul-oscars-voting/

      1. I’m not a woman, and I don’t care, either.
        If it is that bad, why not just scrap the whole shebang?

    2. I bet she stamps her feet and insists that she is a “actor”.

      Until, of course, when she is nominated for an Oscar!

      1. If it’s so important to them why don’t they have a best female director category?

        And while they are about it a best “your guess is as good as mine what type of self-identifier the strange creature is” director category.

    3. Why is there a need to issue an award to any member of the film industry? Surely the best judge of whether one’s work is any good is at the box office.

        1. Doesn’t work on me – I ignore all such awards ceremonies and would not be able to name any winners over recent years.

          1. I can only name one, which I happened to watch last night. Wes Anderson’s magnificent ‘Grand Budapest Hotel’. A tour de force which actually won 4 Oscars in 2014.

          2. I don’t often go to the cinema but i did go and watch that. Weird and wonderful. What made it even more weird was that i was the only person there.

          3. The cinema-going public make bizarre choices. We went to the pictures to see “the Piano” and squeezed in to seats in the precarious balcony. I was giddy, as three rows from the front I could see down into the stalls when standing. The place was packed out.
            The following week we went the same cinema, same night, same time, to see “Get Shorty”. There was a total of four people in the audience, including ourselves.

  27. I can see the letters today. Funny how that happens sometimes. These two have been placed together presumably because the editor realises that the second answers the first. Wokeness is a state of self-obsession and not conducive to any understanding of duty.

    Village volunteers

    SIR – Our village hall is precious and used constantly, for aerobics, toddlers’ exercise, drama, charity quizzes, harvest lunches, Christmas fairs and many private functions. It is truly the centre of our small community.

    It is maintained by volunteers, but these stalwarts are ageing. We need to encourage the same sense of duty in the next generation.

    Jacqueline Davies
    Norton, Kent

    An urban mob compelling ‘woke’ opinions

    SIR – The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland comprises four different countries, or three and a part of another, if one conceives of the divided people of Ireland inhabiting but one country.

    The UK itself is not a country but a political union and is often, inaccurately, termed a democracy; it is, in fact a constitutional monarchy. Yet the use of “democracy” in this context is not unhelpful.

    Such a polity can truly be said to represent the totality of the people, where respect for dissenting views and the rights of minorities are the norm. At the other extreme democracy can be little more than a mechanism for imposing the will of a (vocal) majority (or, perhaps more accurately, the majority of the vocal) – a mobocracy.

    Today the UK has an Establishment seized by the liberal-Left and dissent from the norms of the “woke” is at best demonised.

    This mindset is the antithesis of defending to the death a person’s right to articulate a thought, even if one may disagree with that thought with every fibre of one’s being. I accept that Voltaire’s proposition needs, in the interests of good governance, to be tempered by laws of defamation and the punishment of conduct which must be criminalised; but to limit freedom of speech – by “no‑platforming”, for example – merely because some claim to be offended is itself offensive.

    Surprisingly, the existence of a liberal‑Left reveals a continuation of class differences, in that such views are largely the domain of the urban-dwelling middle classes – one must resist use of the word “smug”.

    It may not be unfair to characterise such people as sufficiently educated to have achieved a degree of articulacy without having acquired wisdom.

    Life’s challenges are best approached by nuanced responses; yet the “woke” seem to deal only in absolutes. More than ever, we need a Scrutonian approach, and can only mourn the death of its eponymous proponent.

    Andrew Newcombe QC
    Combe Down, Somerset

  28. A popular motivational speaker was entertaining his audience. He said, ‘The best years of my life were spent in the arms of a woman who wasn’t my wife!’
    The audience was in silence and shock. The speaker added, ‘… And that woman was my mother!’ Laughter and applause.

    A week later, a top manager trained by the motivational speaker tried to crack this very effective joke at home. He was a bit tipsy after a drink, and he said loudly, ‘The greatest years of my life were spent in the arms of a woman who was not my wife!’

    His wife went red with shock and rage.
    Standing there for 20 seconds trying to recall the second half of the joke, the manager finally blurted out ‘… And I can’t remember who she was!’

    Moral of the story: Don’t copy if you can’t paste properly!

      1. Thank you, Mags, I’m struggling to get back to a (normal) good night’s sleep, having had many where I’ve been up and awake until 2 or 3 in the morning.

        I must rid myself of the habit of dropping off in front of the TV.

        1. I did that last night .. Moh cleared off to bed leaving me alone to snooze , I had to let the dogs out in the drizzle at 1am… for their last minute wees!

    1. Very tidy bowling by the England team. Only seven extras given away so far, and only one (a wide) in the whole of South Africas first innings!

  31. The rush to Huawei looks so strange.

    I wonder what lies behind that?

    Could it be the same business techniques as allegedly enjoyed by former Vice President Biden?

    1. Polly, if you’re attempting to make an undercover return to the bosom of Nottlerland you really must change your writing style. As someone once said about Sir Isaac Newton, “We recognise the lion by his claw.”

    1. You are telling me that no one in the HoC had the balls to ‘man-up’, push the poisonous little fat-gobbed dwarf in a quiet corner, and “advise” him in the time-honoured fashion?

      2. I can well believe the accusations against him of bullying. I remember watching a very young reporter interviewing him and the reporter said something he didn’t like. He instantly became intimidating and threatening.

  33. Afternoon all — another victim ….

    RIP: Rob Rensenbrink, fast and elusive Dutch footballer nicknamed ‘the Snake Man’ who shone in two World Cup finals. :

    He spent much of his later life fishing, but had been suffering in recent years from motor neurone disease

  34. The Brexit coin is on sale on the internet for £8 – £13. Surely the banks should provide them at their face value.

    2. While searching for the DVLA site to renew my driving licence, I noticed in the search results an entry for the Post Office. I know there are cowboys around, and they include the Post Office it would seem. They would charge £25 for a service the DVLA provide free…

  36. Nearly 10,000 retail jobs lost this year as sector pins its hopes on 5G

    I dont really see 5G making much difference to retail

    Meanwhile, a separate report has found that owners of retail property are hoping 5G wireless technology can save them from the struggles of the high street.
    British executives hope 5G will allow retailers to use both augmented reality and virtual reality to enhance the customer experience, while improving stock efficiencies and eliminating queues at checkouts.
    Around 66% see cashier-less retail as one of the top two beneficial innovations to come with the introduction of 5G, according to Altus Group’s annual Commercial Real Estate Innovation Report.

    1. Of course the more folk who are made redundant the greater the number reducing their spending…..

  37. Amigo: Sub-prime lender puts itself up for sale

    The dominant operator in the UK’s guarantor loan market has put itself up for sale.

    Amigo lends money to people with a poor credit rating, but who can offer family and friends as a back-up to guarantee any missed repayments.

    The company controls at least 80% of the UK market but has faced scrutiny from regulators.

    Numerous complaints have also been submitted by people who feel they should never have been given a loan.

    The sub-prime lending sector as a whole has faced a blizzard of complaints from customers who believe they were approved for loans which they could never afford to repay.

    This has led to the demise of some of the biggest names in the sector, such as Wonga.

    What does Amigo do?
    Amigo is different to payday lending as it requires more security from borrowers, through the demand for a guarantor.

    The loans involve friends and relatives being asked to pay off the debt, if the original borrower fails to do so.

    Charities, such as Citizens Advice, spoke out against this brand of lending, claiming that many such guarantors are unaware they are signing up for large debts.

  38. …For some reason I can’t upload a picture – it tells me I must be logged in…..but I am

    1. If you are using an i-thing, its been like it for months. I have to take to my windows laptop if I want to upload something.

    2. Snap. I can upload vids but not still pictures. I gather it’s something to do with Safari and I’ve been too lazy (AND busy) to concentrate on adding Chrome.

      1. Chrome. The picture actually uploaded the first time but then I got the message I must be logged i (which I was) subsequent attempts didn’t even upload and I tried logging out and back in twice.

  39. Definition of Woke: “The right to be offended by the opinions of anyone else about anything, while being equally offended if they are offended by your opinions.”

    Bill Blain’s daughter.

    1. And still the labour Party cannot see why many folk have deserted them when the answer is staring them in the face….

      1. Er , Why didn’t Lammy mention the fact that there are also more black athletes , footballers, basket ball players , Kentucky Fry Chicken eaters, absent fathers , and stabby stabbies?

      2. S,
        Lets face it then the same can be said of the toxic trio can it not, there is surely enough
        proof.

        1. O, For the avoidance of doubt, I have heard and inwardly digested what you have been saying about the toxic trio ever since I joined this forum. Unfortunately I cannot fathom what goes on in the minds of everyone who didn’t vote UKIP. However, your repetitious posts on the subject almost make me yearn for the lucid thinking of Polly the ‘Mermaid’ Parrot. I can’t believe I just wrote that…

          1. S,
            I take it you do not believe in learning by rote.
            Answer is optional but what party has your support ? I will understand if no answer is forthcoming.

      3. Not non-indigenous. It’s only a question of time – they will wait for supremacy under our democratic laws. And then the twits who have encouraged them (Owen Jones will be one of the first) will themselves be killed – twerps like Corbyn just haven’t a clue – feed the crocodile…

        2. Well look at them – in both his and Abbott’s constituencies. Places that most decent people wouldn’t dream of living in. Not now – those places used to be quite nice, but were ruined by the influx of….No wonder that they don’t understand when total rubbish is being spoken by their parliamentary candidate. They can hardly understand English, let alone logic.

      3. One does choose to take offence, one can equally choose not to take offence, it is not mandatory to the human condition unlike pain.

    3. Lammy in my view is just an idiot if he thinks ever black person knows who Kobe Bryant is

    4. Oh for pity sake! For quite a few years during the 1990’s, the BBC accepted only Black or Asian applicants for all Production Assistant posts and various roles are still recruited in the same way now.

  41. Not sure if this has made headlines in the UK press. It’s not very new news, as this was published on 21st January, but it goes to show that the situation is dire. Yesterday I heard that the number of Christians in the world being killed for their faith was higher than it has ever been. Isn’t it time politicians were seen and heard standing up for our own side?

    https://www.christianpost.com/news/nigerian-pastor-who-praised-god-in-ransom-video-beheaded-after-refusing-to-deny-christ.html

    1. No headlines here – just wall to wall coverage of the sad accidental death of an American basketball player few had heard of.

    2. Good afternoon Caroline

      No one breathes an inch about the numbers of Christian Nigerians who are being slaughtered by Muslims . The media seem to have given up. Biafra state is majority Christian ..

      Shocking state of affairs.

    3. I tend to believe that politicians stopped being on our side decades ago. The Adversary has gained more in the last forty years than in the previous 400.

    4. The UK press doesn’t do Christianity. It might upset their Muslim readers, and that will never do.
      Seriously, it is very noticeable that Christianity rarely appears in a good light. It’s a funny world.

        1. I thought it would be impossible ever to have a worse Archbishop of Canterbury than Rowan Williams.

          How wrong I was.

  42. From Nigel Farage’s DT column:-

    ‘It is no exaggeration to say that Chinese business opportunities now seem to be the number one priority for our civil servants, retired politicians and pro-EU big businesses. The cast of characters on Huawei’s UK board tells its own story. They include former BP boss Lord Browne, ennobled by Tony Blair and enabled by David Cameron; Sir Andrew Cahn, a senior civil servant who worked closely with Neil Kinnock at the European Commission; and John Suffolk, once the civil service information officer. The late Dame Helen Alexander, a former boss of the pro-EU Confederation of British Industry, was also a director. Or consider David Cameron, now officially recognised as an interlocutor between the British and Chinese governments.

    The upper echelons of British public life have been bought and paid for by China. No wonder they have had so few concerns about our national security – unlike two of our closest allies, Australia and America, which have banned Huawei from their 5G networks over a raft of security and intelligence fears.’

    Well that explains a lot.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/01/27/course-huawei-getting-easy-ride-british-establishment-has-bought/

    1. Well, Trump has just concluded a big trade deal with China, so there is no reason why we should not deal with them, either.
      Perhaps we should subcontract HS2 to them also. If they can knock up a hospital in a fortnight, it wouldn’t take them
      twenty years to do a train line.

      1. Twenty years? You, sir, are an optimist. Think of the complete fiasco over London’s airports. The Roskill Commission came up with a plan in 1970, the government having decided that a 4 runway airport was a necessity for future growth. 50 years later and with much, much more air traffic, there are still arguments over expanding Heathrow.

    2. The Remainers are so keen to have us take up this Chinese offer because they know it will annoy our real friends and alienate them, making us more dependant on any scraps that the EU offer us as our “closest trading partner.” Even though the EU are beyond broke. They want to make it as hard as possible to forge any future close relations with our other friends in the wider world.

      As one commentator pointed out “We don’t NEED this system RIGHT NOW. There is no life-ending emergency that is forcing us to adopt it this week. If is it going to cause such problems with our greatest allies, then wait until there is an alternative.” This is not rocket science. They also said that the decision had already been made by Theresa May months ago, they just haven’t had the stones to announce it yet.

      1. That is just so patronising. For years I had to share my house with a lodger, which circumstances forced me to do.

          7. Not if you’d been here! I (and when I had a boyfriend, we) used to try and welcome our lodger to the tablem share a bottle of wine etc. But I always insisted that it was Monday-Friday lodgers only. Actually most of them stayed 2-3 years each, so it worked out. But I’d much rather have had my place to myself

          4. You didn’t upset me as such – but your remark did. I know there are several what I would call very comfortable NoTTLers on here. Don’t get upset, dear. I didn’t mean it as a personal thing, just as a reaction to that particular post.

          5. You are right, actually. I realised it could be seen as provocative.Although it, on consideration, wasn’t.
            The multiple postings from some of our nicest contributors suggested the posting !!
            (e.g.. ” I will be back home in a week’s time. Looking forward to getting back. It’s raining cats and dogs here in Tahiti”)>

          7. Many a true word is spoken in jest, Tony. Some things trigger painful memories.

            Sorry to miss your joke :o(

      2. I need an overdraft. I’m not paid well enough to invest in anything. I have got it down a touch but I’m still £1500-1600 in the red.

        1. Keep at it, T. I know you will succeed in the end.

          As Dev Patel’s character says in the BEMH:

          “It”ll be alright in the end; if it’s not alright, it’s not the end!”

    2. I had that notification this morning; it seems a licence to increase interest rates (except for on savings, of course – those have gone down).

          1. I always blame the keyboard, it’s not my fault that it chooses the keys next to the ones I want. And why is that not the kind of error that spell checkers could instantly pick up?

          2. My spell checker packed up years ago and try as I might it no longer works on any of the programmes I most commonly use.

            I try to catch them but often see what I think is there rather than what actually is there.

            I’ll usually try to correct them, but if someone comments then I tend to leave it.
            As long as the person pointing it out does so with humour I’m OK with it, it’s the “oh look how clever I am” merchants that get my goat.

      2. We listened to Radio 4 World at One and to a very poignant interview with that wonderful Holocaust lady survivor who had given many interviews this morning .. who ever interviewed her was an absolute ignoramus.. She asked her whether the food was alright .. and what the menu was like , or something similar… The elderly lady was dignified , but the woman interviewing her was ill informed in the most ignorant way.

        We rode along in the car in utter shock and disbelief .. I don’t know whether the interview will be on BBC I player .. but we wondered why such a silly young bint was given the task re the interview?

        1. If the BBC don’t take it seriously, it simply means that they don’t give a damn about it. ” What a pain. Having to do this Holocaust stuff on the same day as we are busy with Huawei and the Virus How the heck are we expected to cope with China and the Jews on the same day ? We just don’t have the staff”.

    2. Yes, but it’s also typical of the BBC to use that picture. Let’s see its stance in any upcoming H&M v The Firm controversy. (Beyond what has already happened, of course.)

    3. No, it is not serious at all. This is cooked up to promote Israel and make us look kindly on them. It is part of the PR campaigns. The facts do not seem to stack up. Nor can I recall any Armenian Massacre days.

        1. No, not really. Other hobby horses are available. This is a relative pony by comparison.

  45. Leo Varadkar’s future in crisis as just 22 percent back party in election poll

    LEO VARADKAR faces an Irish election wipeout after his party was revealed to be trailing in a series of new polls.

    With less than two weeks until polling day, confidence in the Taoseach (Irish prime minister) has plummeted. This was indicated by a number of polls of potential Irish election voters. One poll conducted by the Irish Mail on Sunday revealed Mr Varadkar’s Fine Gael party had dropped in popularity by six points.

        1. Obviously he’s been reading the “private polls” and opportunistically creating the opening.

          I wondered whether the Irish people were reacting to that factor. He’s going out of his way to offend their largest trading partner.

          1. I doubt if the Irish would react to that factor. IMO they are opportunists, with no loyalty. One of the first things we should do is stop Irish in the UK from voting on things that concern the UK only, and then send all the pikies they don’t want back for them to clear up after them.

    3. Well, he is in the media today, threatening the UK with hard times and no part options, and tough trade deal etc etc.
      We no longer buy anything from Ireland, or trade with Irish businesses. This includes Certas who have a monopoly on the supply of heating oil, and seem to have acquired Gulf petrol stations. I’d be pleased if everyone else in the UK did the same.

      1. I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.

        1. Careful Minty. You’ll get a reputation as a RW Extremist and we all know you wouldn’t harm a fly.

        2. The Irish have had their wild “diversity fling” by electing a man who was rejected by the Village People for being the wrong type of gay Indian. They have watched with ever more alarm as Varadkar has been increasingly abusive to their British neighbours. Now they see the United Kingdom actually in the process of leaving the EU and they are thinking:

          https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/cfd2b7bce291a73a120fa953c8ed50f0e47f69059e1158801061209fe0ca55a9.jpg

    4. Why we toady to the Irish I don’t know! They are among the most inveterate of our enemies!

  46. DM Story

    Washington Post journalist is suspended after tweeting a link to a 2016 story about Kobe Bryant’s rape case just hours after he died in helicopter crash

    And yet in England they have televised a lurid story about a man who, after resigning, dedicated his life to helping others.

    I know nothing about Mr Bryant but why should the truth about the history of the rape case be ‘hushed up’ when the MSM revel in the stories of Mr Profumo and Prince Andrew?

  47. Coronavirus: how to protect yourself from infection. 27 January. 2020.

    Frequently wash your hands with an alcohol-based hand rub or warm water and soap.

    Cover your mouth and nose with a flexed elbow or tissue when sneezing or coughing.

    Avoid close contact with anyone who has a fever or cough.

    Seek early medical help if you have a fever, cough and difficulty breathing, and share your travel history with healthcare providers.

    Avoid direct, unprotected contact with live animals and surfaces in contact with animals when visiting live markets in affected areas.

    Avoid eating raw or undercooked animal products and exercise care when handling raw meat, milk or animal organs to avoid cross-contamination with uncooked foods.

    Best of all. Don’t go to effing China!

    https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/jan/27/coronavirus-how-to-protect-yourself-from-infection

      1. You can’t push the crook of your left elbow onto your mouth by pushing it with your right hand?

      2. “Cover your mouth and nose with a flexed elbow.”
        So it doesn’t have to be your own .

    2. A friend of mine works for a top-of-his-field medic who travels to China once a month. He has cancelled his February trip. She is going to fill me in on the details tomorrow when we meet up, but she did say that he said things are a lot worse there than ‘they’ are letting on.

      I will report back in due course.

  48. Migrants found off Dover crossing the Channel as Border Force called out

    Dozens of migrants have been found off the Kent coast trying to cross the Channel.Border Force officials were called to assist a vessel entering UK waters near Dover at 5.30am yesterday.

    There, they discovered the small boat was carrying 26 men and two women who said they were from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Syria.
    They were taken to Dover, where they were medically assessed and transferred to immigration officials for interviews.

    4. Why don’t they end up in Tunisia or Morocco.. where the climate is better and they speak Arabic and they are Muslim .. why can’t they head for there.

      3. They don’t get benefits and there is no point in taking over a country that is already muslim, is there?

    5. Hitler would no doubt have kicked himself if he had known how ridiculously easy it was to enter Britain

      1. S,
        Agreed, the lab/lib/con coalition
        party, supporters / voters as latch lifters make it so
        ridiculously easy.

        1. In case you hadn’t noticed they apparently make up the majority of the British population. Whether one would willing join up and take up arms to defend them if necessary is another question

        2. I don’t think I’ve heard you say it like that before Ogga ,
          It’s usually ” Lib/ Lab / Con ”
          Wow ! it’s a little change, I am impressed, truly I am .

          2. Are you even aware of the presence of the SNP
            or Labour turning hard left or the demise of the
            Lib Dems. But never mind you are doing soo
            Well with attracting voters by insulting them –
            keep it up .

          3. Evening A,
            Especially the last two decades I have been thoroughly abused
            by the actions resulting via the ballot booth of the lab/lib/con closed shop coalition party, again,again,& again.
            Being of a delicate nature I have feelings also.
            Are You fully aware of the out & out treachery of the governance parties, that is, so there is no mistake, the lab/lib/con pro eu
            rubber stampers ?
            Or is that to activate in some mindsets the three monkeys, ie things best forgotten ?

      2. Easy is now and then was nigh on impossible. Hitler’s slow moving invasion fleet would have had the RN to deal with, especially during the night when air cover would have been non-existent. The RN destroyers, light cruisers etc. would definitely NOT have brought the invaders ashore. There is a good book that plays out this scenario. Damned if I can remember its title. I would like to reread it

        1. I was thinking of the propensity today of the UK sending out boats to rescue small groups of men – wouldn’t take much effort to have a battalion or two in place….

          1. I don’t think that the problem is rescuing them, the problem is bringing them ashore and releasing them into the arms of the immigration officials who then…?
            No number of personnel stationed on shore will deter the illegals, they have to be captured before they land and returned from whence they came, no exceptions. Only the repeated failure of the trafficking gangs in their criminal activities will deter the illegals from attempting the crossing and losing money. Sadly, our government doesn’t take a hard line and there’s little prospect of that situation changing.

    1. I daresay he’s pouring over his Trompetti seed catalogue at this very moment whilst quaffing copious quantities of vino…

        1. Three reasons.
          1. He’s not poor.
          2. I very much doubt he’s into (as it were) that kind of thing
          3. He’s no fan of the religion of peace

        2. Peddy I know you are a great one for accuracy. A chap with two domiciles (well one now assuming the sale of the French Property has gone through) cannot be regarded as poor, and who has by his own admission been married thrice can hardly be regarded as a bugger. Therefore your reasoning fails on two counts. I’m sure a great number on this site miss his contributions and bonhomie…

          1. It was Bill who directed me to the Nottlers in the first place after having worked out who Rastus C Tastey was from my avatar in the DT comments section.

            Bill’s wife, Carolyn, was our Christo’s English teacher at Gresham’s about ten years ago and Caroline organised a meeting with some local Breton notaires when Bill was writing a book about buying property in France some 30 years ago.

            I have tried to encourage him to return to the Nottlers but so far without success.

        3. I agree, they are constantly going on about
          Bill. I don’t think it’s in the slightest bit fair
          or reasonable. Leave him alone everyone
          He can do as he choses .

    1. Our health department have acknowledged that they made a mistake when they waved through a Traveller from China admitted to feeling ill but was not sneezing.

      So that is how our first case got in.

    2. A lot of cases are not at all serious. There’s one in the US where they had him in hospital “out of an abundance of caution”. Like many of this kind of disease, if you are young and healthy, it is not too much of an issue. But if you are not, especially with respiratory issues or weakened immune system, it can be very nasty.

  52. Jeeeeze, would you beleeeeeve it!

    Change.org has generated a new petition to make Kobe Bryant the new logo of the NBA.

      1. Still no mention of the accusation against him for rape which he settled out of court?

        1. One of the rags mentioned that a US reporter was fired yesterday for bringing up the case.

        2. The accuser withdrew the accusation. He always said it was consensual. May have been a big check involved.

  53. Natwest pays 0.1% on my meagre savings.
    I’ve just received this concerning my arranged overdraft facility:

    An arranged overdraft allows you to borrow more money than you have in your account, up to an agreed limit
    From 2nd April 2020, we’re removing usage fees and increasing our interest rates.
    The £6 a month Arranged Overdraft Usage Fee will be removed
    The arranged overdraft interest will go up from 19.89% to 39.49% EAR.
    We’re removing the £10 buffer, meaning the whole arranged overdraft is chargeable.

    And banks wonder why they are so disliked.
    Fortunately, I very seldom need to use the facility.

    1. I saw this with HBOS recently. You might think that they were bolstering their reserves in case of anything nasty happening in the financial world. And, yes, its a disgusting rip-off of customers.

    2. NatWest have always been a crap bank, ever since the National Provincial amalgamated with the Westminster.

      I was warned off them for their incompetency nearly 40 years ago by my ex-wife. 20 years ago, I thought they might have improved so I took out an account with them to invest my spare cash as a “pocket money” account. I soon found that the NatWest leopards had not changed their spots. I could never get any sense out of any of their staff, so I close my account and moved to a better bank.

      1. Many years ago I had to open an account with them as part of my employment contract. I’ve been with them since.
        On balance I’ve found them to be no worse than any other of the numerous banks I’ve had dealings with over the years and the hassle of changing again puts me off doing so.

      2. I can’t say I have had a complaint with NatWest, Grizz, other than that they shut down the branch in the local town and I’d have had to travel nearly 20 miles to bank with them if I had kept the account.

      1. It is unsecured lending to a private individual as far as they are concerned and therefore higher risk. The rate reflects their risk assessment of the product as a whole.
        I suspect that for people who go overdrawn for small amounts for short periods the net costs are actually lower.
        It’s the people who sometimes need a larger facility who will be clobbered.

        It’s the fact that it is now cheaper to use a credit card that sticks in my craw.

        1. I had a Barclaycard account for over 35 years. I was told I was a “valued customer”.

          After I moved to Sweden, I informed the bank and they continued sending me credit cards at my new address and I used the facility as I always had done. The last time they sent me an updated credit card was in 2017. They then contacted me a few months later telling me that they were closing down my account since, living abroad, present me as a “risk” of not paying my monthly bills!

          I rang them and was given erroneous information, citing Financial Services Authority “rules” as the main reason. I then rang the FSA and was told that Barclaycard had given me false information and that FSA rules did not forbid accounts with people living abroad!

          I again contacted Barclaycard with my findings and they were more contrite. They said is was a ‘management decision’ and that there was no going back. However, in view of my impeccable history, they offered to pay off my existing debt and even gave me a £50 “leaving bonus”.

          Since that happened I have not missed having a credit card.

          1. I have a Barclaycard but seldom use it. It is useful though and I’ve always paid in full each time.

          4. Hence my great wariness at changing accounts.

            We’ve had no end of problems because we hold a joint account.
            We have been informed by various suppliers that they are only able to pay money into an account in one name, they have cited EU anti moneylaundering rules, which I believe to be complete tosh, but they won’t back down, even though they had happily been paying into the joint account for years.

          5. Generally banks to not allow you to have a UK credit card if you are no longer resident in the UK. You should be able to get a Barclays issued by them from their Swedish company

          6. I had my British-based Visa card throughout my 16 years in Germany & 3 years in Sweden

          7. Not having a credit card can sometimes pose a problem when it comes to renting a hotel room or more especially, hiring a rental car.

          8. I’ve never had a problem. I routinely use my debit card all the time (it’s very nearly a cash-free society here in Sweden) and I hire a car (and obtain hotel rental) using it on my trips to the UK without issue.

            Not possessing a very different credit card has not affected my life one iota.

    5. Santander are paying 1.5% on their current account up to £20k, but going down to 1% soon. I don’t know what they charge for arranged overdrafts.

      1. Santander provide the worst customer service in the country. People round here have been leaving them in droves.

      2. It’s all the hassle of swapping that stops me.

        The extra few pips for the balances I maintain isn’t worth the effort.

        Being in France has its own peculiarities and most day to day banking is done here. NatWest fulfills my UK needs straightforwardly and many UK banks are not at all keen on opening accounts for expats; particularly ones needing a comparatively big O/D limit that might not be used more than once every few years.

      3. FCA are doing away with the concept of arranged overdrafts as I understand it. Most banks now have a rate of about 40% for overdrafts. How they get away with that with bank rate at less than 1% who knows

    6. Same here from the RBS, mentioned it before. I asked why interest on credit cards was 38 percent if the banks could
      borrow money virtually free, but nobody answered.
      The world is bent and full of idiots like us that never challenge anything.

      2. And taking advantage of an opportunity.

        tThe UK is slighty unusual in having a long history of “free” current account banking for accounts in credit and not paying interest on those accounts when they are in credit..

    8. UK Banks offer absolutely dreadful service. I’ve wanted to change mine for forty years and have never been able to find a decent one to do it!

      1. Not long after I moved to Sweden I contacted a branch of the Swedish international bank Handelsbanken in the UK. This bank is one of the most successful in the world at present and is expanding into many countries.

        I had received nothing but poor service from Halifax and wanted a change for the better. It was the best move I’ve ever made. The staff in my branch all introduced themselves to me, and gave me all their personal mobile numbers and email addresses. Whenever I have contacted them they reply immediately and are invariably friendly and helpful. I have never been involved with a better bank. My pensions are paid directly into my current account with my UK branch and I then transfer what I need each month into my separate Swedish Handelsbanken account. The charge for each transfer, no matter the amount, is £1·50.

        Each branch of that bank is a separate franchise—under the general umbrella of Handelsbanken—and, consequently, responsible for its own business plan.

        You could do worse than researching the bank online and, if necessary, ring up the nearest branch to you for a chat.

      2. Royal Bank of Scotland used to be very good until that twerp tried to overexpand and drove it into bankruptcy.
        It can take a century or more to build up a reputable and trusted brand, and next to no time for someone who shouldn’t even be in charge of running a whelk stall to destroy it, e.g. Marconi, RBS, etc.

        1. When I moved to RBS from Barclays (ugh!) in I think 1998, it was light out of darkness. When I complimented the manager, he said to me – ” Yes it’s fine down here. But when you get to the top they are just as bloody awful as the rest of them “.

      3. My brothers lecture me on not keeping my savings in one bank but if I open a new account, the question is with which bank? Everyone I ask recommends a different one and there isn’t any consistency in people’s experiences.

        1. I’ve always banked with Barclays and have never felt any need to change. For savings, their rate is abysmal, but the hassle of moving from one miniscule rate to another keeps me in inertia.

        2. The only consistency Sue is their uselessness. I had better service from ANZ in rural Tasmania!

      4. I have been with the Co-op bank since I opened an account with the SCWS, when they had mahogany counters and hand-written ledgers.
        Yesterday, while attempting to pay a tax bill online I had to fill in lots of information, and set up an HMRC account. NI number, passport details, passwords, address details, age, etc etc. It took fifteen or twenty minutes before I got to the point of entering the debit card details. Then after doing so, the system told me I needed a “Verified by Visa” code, something I did not have. To get one I had to go to the Co-op call centre. To access the Co-op call centre I needed a telephone access code, which I do not have as I bank online, having transferred from telephone banking some years ago. Catch 22. So I sent a message.
        I received a reply this morning re-iterating the instruction I already knew. So I telephoned them anyway. Eventually, after entering codes, which of course failed, I was put on hold for about ten minutes until an “advisor” answered the call.
        The lady sorted things out and set up new codes.
        So this afternoon, after allowing the advised time for the changes to be implemented I once more entered the HMRC website. I entered using my newly set up account details. Easy-peasy. Until, when I reached the payment stage the system told me that the system was not available because of technical issues.
        Approximately two hours spent overall on this computerised shambles.
        I’m sending a cheque. Time taken was approximately 4 minutes including photocopying and filing and preparing an envelope for posting by Recorded Delivery tomorrow.

        The Computer Age…

        1. I received a notification a few months ago of a £28 tax refund due. I already had a HMRC account, but it still took ages to navigate through all the stages. I did get there, though and the £28 was duly repaid.

        1. I once cleaned out my building society account in cash due to its miserable service and went down to another. Unfortunately I was dressed in work clothes and the Manager (female) thought I looked subpar for one of her clients and suggested I try elsewhere. I walked across the road and put K£10 in a TSB current account. That was the last move I attempted!

          1. That often happened !! I had a client in the building trade ( million pound turnover and all that ) who fell out with the Allied Irish and went to look for another. He went to a local branch of I think Lloyds, certainly not wearing a tie!! He came out cursing. ” They thought I was just a bloody Paddy” he said. That was common at one time.

          3. My first job in IT was for a bank as a computer operator. We were obliged to wear ties on all shifts, even the graveyard shift despite the fact we were on the second basement behind two security doors and never saw the public. Mind you, these were the days when one had to ask permission from one’s manager should one wish to get married.

        1. Oh lovely thank you Peddy. I had my birthday last week and my daughter took me away for two days. I slept most of Saturday and yesterday we had a family birthday party. So I am tired out now…..thank you for asking, hope you have had a good day too…..xx

          2. They never are…..!! Darned things. Never mind Peddy….Spring is closer than it was…;-)

        1. Just visiting. Is this Alderan? Just checking coz the Boss doesn’t like me blowing up planets by mistake. He gets a right cob on…. :o)

          1. Ha ha ha……Alderaan ?? okay…….I am backing slowly away….keep taking the tablets and you’ll be fine…..;-)

    1. This is just one of these useless HR “consultant” types after a bit of advertising for their firm. The DM readers had fun with it in the comments section.

      1. I’ve stopped trying to wade through the Mail’s website, it’s just too much hard work.

        1. If you don’t want to comment or read comments, turn javascript off. All that pop up stuff and ads go away, but the stories are still OK.

          3. Not sure which version of the Mail you are looking at. If it is the U.K version then one needs to wallow in benefit fraud as an amuse bouche,. A bit of imprudent behaviour from a civil servant from the taster menu. Some rather large bossoms as the main course and for dessert…. Paedo hunting.

            Of course we do have a pictorial and video gallery showing the blanked out faces of the miscreants doing their stuff.

    3. Sometimes you look at these people’s comments and you sigh, before wanting to walk up to them and saying:

      “You are in the United Kingdom. You have won the jackpot in life to be here. You have more freedoms than many people on Earth could ever dream of. This is how you abuse it… What I am going to do now is for your own good. You will thank me in the long run.”

      And then slap that smirk right off of their skull. It is the only way with these people, who have clearly never encountered real violence at any time in their safe little world. When they have actually felt real pain for once, they might care more about those who have suffered under that symbol.

      1. Or, to follow up on the post about branding a red-hot Brexit 50p on Farage’s face, do the same to him and call it an Outs witch tattoo.

        See if he thinks that that is equally amusing.

          1. I understand the device was popularised in that lewd novel 50 Shades of Grey . Which I haven’t read and have no wish to. The title alone reminds me of the loathsome former Prime Minister.

  59. ‘The FBI and US prosecutors have sought to interview the Duke of York over the Jeffrey Epstein case but he did not respond to requests, it was reported today.

    According to remarks reportedly made by US Attorney Geoffrey Berman, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, the duke had shown “zero” cooperation.’

    Perhaps when Anne Sacoolas comes to the UK to stand trial for the death of Harry Dunn then the US may have something to complain about.

    1. “…you will probably have noticed that three one of the defendants have very wisely chosen to exercise their inalienable right not to go into the witness box to answer a lot of impertinent questions. I will merely say that you are not to infer from this anything other than that they he considers the evidence against them so flimsy that it was scarcely worth their while to rise from their seats and waste their breath denying these ludicrous charges.”

      Peter Cook

    2. She had diplomatic immunity based on her husband’s job – it was agreed between the US and UK that anyone working at that base would be covered. The US got her out of there on a USAF flight. I doubt she and hubby had any choice in the matter. The only real impact is that I bet hubby’s career is “done”. Next posting, Nome or Thule air force base or the like.

    1. Goldcrest? They are absolute sods to photograph, as are their close relations. Tiny, liking cover and they never stay still for a moment.

    1. Very early for the birds, not so the camellia, which are beautiful, btw.

      My red rose which opened yesterday was smashed by the torrential rain this morning.

      1. I was watching wood pigeons mating along the river last week and the rooks are already nest-building on schedule. There was a cormorant in full breeding plumage resting on a log in the estuary as I passed a couple of hours ago and the mallards have been at it for a while. Some species can be on eggs as early as February in the UK.

        1. When I was a bird-ringer with the Birklands Ringing Group in Sherwood Forest, we also took part in the breeding birds survey, also run by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO).

          The two species which came up regularly on the early breeding list in January or February, were Mistle Thrush and Stock Dove. Stock Doves are a strange bird that gets away with building a nest with as few twigs as possible. As long as the eggs don’t roll out that will do!

          1. I almost added blackbird to my list, another early breeder.

            At the other end of the scale I saw a wood pigeon sitting on eggs in November on Holy Island a few years ago.

      3. A site which I love to watch, even though it demonstrates the difference a few hundred miles south and west can make, is Charles Williams’ Garden Diary, about his garden at Caerhays Castle. There, the camellias x williamsii are around a month earlier than here: as well as his own daily entries, he has included entries from the previous 3 generations of his family:

        http://thediary.caerhays.co.uk/january/6th-january/

  62. MP’s

    To avoid MP’s getting to complacent should e have a rule to say they could only be elected 3 times in any particular seat

    1. Personally, i think they should be put in the Stocks in the town square when explaining their ideas in front of taxpayers.

        1. We could just throw excrement at them and enjoy tomato sandwiches while we do it.

          Crusts and corners off of course.

      1. You’ve been missing from here for a while ! Some of us treat this Blog seriously and comment all day ! :o)

        Things good?

        1. I’m working and earning. things are looking up, but i’m a vampire, up all night, sleep all day, seven days a week.

  64. The Saxon Queen will start up her secondary Dissqus account
    at the weekend or the one after.
    It’ll be the voice of her father Alfred of Wessex, after all
    In the words of another Royalist Queen ” I may have the body
    of a weak and feeble woman but I have the heart and stomach of a king “.

    If my father the King, pops up anywhere, don’t tell him I’ve been playing
    with the long bow and axe again . I have just not the use of swords yet.

      1. Keeping it in the family at least, Æthelfled is her father’s
        daughter after all. I can go into greater military details of
        dark ages warfare defeating Vikings but don’t mention the cakes 🙂
        (It’s just the spare one, this is the main one but I have huge trouble
        with logging on now and other issues with it. Storm in a Dcup
        said I can keep the same email and password with the second one,
        and Æthelfled will still be the user name in the account details,
        wouldn’t let the father out alone on the battlefields ,
        men need managing;)

      1. Ælfræd of Westeaxna. It’ll probably be only
        occasionally used and done so in relation to
        battles of that period which occur historically
        when the such arise in debates .
        Bouddica seems to be the most popular blogging name
        online followed by Elizabeth I.
        PS.. I don’t believe I have encountered ‘ Alf the Great ‘
        and I also understand Lady of the Lake is now Avalon which I think
        Is very fitting .

  65. Don’t wish to bore but when i open my history file i have upvotes from many people i have never heard of. Loads of them. Mostly from a week ago.

      2. Might be Montezumamahatmas revenge. :o)

        First rule of business…………….never piss off the Boss.

    2. I have too and most of the are from young female trolls (or ‘bots’) who are trying to sell a very suspicious looking dating site (on their accounts page). I just erase them.

    3. Odd that; I don’t get any of those.

      Obviously they only target sad, rich, ugly barstewards.

    1. Evening TB,
      Who to believe a, personally my belief is the integrity of submission , PCism,
      & Appeasement overrules all else
      nationwide currently.
      Submission, PCism, Appeasement,
      can,has & will again,kill.

      1. Ogga.1 Dear thing..

        You are beginning to sound like a robotic bot ..

        All these long words and soundbites do not sit pleasantly on the page .

        Please try to sound more personable.. , please?

        1. TB,
          Believe me I would like very much to fulfill your request that is said in all honesty but to say nothing again,again,& again, only
          condones what the supporter / voters of the lab/lib/con coalition have been / are doing again,again,& again that has brought us to our present pretty pass, and many “hope” johnson will do the right thing.
          How tenuous is hope ? how tenuous is the future of these Isles ?

  67. Evening, all. It’s all very well having weapons, it’s being willing to use them that counts.

  69. To make my position clear on the Holocaust issue that seems to have upset some.
    IMO was, instigated,started & fueled via the ballot booth, minor street brawls, leading to major street brawls, dis satisfaction among the population
    ( unemployment) used as a stirring tool, plausible political rhetoric, ie vows,promises, pledges all aimed at annihilating the Jewish race within / without & domination.
    We as a country have suffered four decades and are now well into the street killing, knifing / acid scarring era, we have uncovered some of the other odious issue’s
    that have stayed covered for years 1400/1600 victims
    of paedophilia will bare witness to that in one area alone.
    I can SEE a comparison quite clear, but to many the facts are comfortably, self inflicted blurred.

    1. Self immolate? That’s not very nice. I shall put you on my watch list…….”””when meeting Jenny……take a fire extinguisher”” or at least a bucket for the charcoal. :o(

  71. The Grenfell buck passing has started almost from day on of Phase 2 of the inquiry

    I dont understand that their should be a process that they either followed or did not

    Firms involved in botched Grenfell Tower revamp refuse to accept responsibility for tragedy, inquiry hears . There should be a proper audit trail but it appear not

    https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/firms-involved-in-botched-grenfell-tower-revamp-refuse-to-accept-responsibility-for-tragedy-inquiry-hears/ar-BBZmW5H?ocid=spartandhp

    Every private company involved in the botched refurbishment of Grenfell Tower has refused to admit any responsibility for the tragedy, an inquiry has heard.

    2. In my day the firm holding the most professional indemnity cover would be targeted. This was invariably the Architect whether the fault lay with the parties to the contract, contractor or client.

      Architects were perceived to be the leader of the design team and others such as professional quantity surveyors, structural engineers and mechanical and electrical engineers escaped unscathed despite being contributors to delays and cock-ups.

  74. It seems the powers that be are failing to recognise that London has turned into a war zone:

    “A man has been stabbed to death at a busy railway station in south London.
    Emergency crews were called to East Croydon railway station just after 16:30 GMT to reports of a stabbing.” Unthinkable two or three decades ago.

    2. Gone the way of many 3rd world countries..

      Johannesburg, Capetown , Lagos , Nairobi , Entebbe, Kabul .. Jamaica, everywhere..

      London… a once decent vibrant city is in the hands of black savages now, there will be no end to it … an inescapable fact .

    2. Goodnight Geoff

      Thank you for everything .. It has been a strange old day, when all is said and done .

      Sleep well.. raining here.. dogs need to go in the garden … moh snoozing on the sofa!

    3. How come the BBC buried this news on the ‘London’ section of the website instead of the main news webpage? Instead we we treated to wall to wall coverage of a man and his daughter who died in a helicopter crash in the US

  78. DT Story

    Author calls for Brexit coin ‘boycott’ over lack of Oxford comma

    Sir Philip Pullman has joined the ranks of Heseltine and Alstair Campbell to boycott the use of the Brexit 50p piece.

    I must admit that I gave up His Dark Materials after the first book, Northern Lights. The Armoured Bears and the concept of each person having a daemon did not work for me at all and I came to the conclusion that it was pretentious crap and not a patch on C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books.

    Not surprising that Pullman is a fanatic remainer.

    Does our friend Peddy have any views to add to the debate over the Oxford comma?

    (My beloved wife has suffered from toothache in the last week and she went to a new dentist who was a very friendly and attractive person. Caroline said to her: “You’re far too nice to be a dentist”)

    1. Sir?…When his books were first published the response was that they had Satanic undertones. The series has also been well received on the BBC.

      Oh.

      Wait until Caroline has to suffer a steel bur. The lady may change her opinion.

      1. That’s correct, but the common convention is ‘this, that and this again’ i.e. no second comma. I usually add the second comma.

        1. I always thought there was no comma before ‘and’ – that it was sufficient unto itself. However, I suppose for dramatic emphasis a comma after ‘and’ would be perfectly acceptable.

          1. I was always told not to start a sentence with ‘And ‘.

            And i was also told not to begin a sentence with ‘So’.

            So, what do you think?

            And, i would like an answer sooner, like. :o(

          5. I was typing something the other day, I looked at my line and I actually saw a word I’d written correctly being altered by the bloody thing!

          6. So it’s auto correct that changes the wording,
            I am glad it happens to others too.
            Happens most of the time with this Samsung tablet,
            most words when the auto correct prefers another,
            It drives me nuts.
            Well anyway I shall be using my new laptop later,
            had it for two months but haven’t done much with it,
            It doesn’t have auto correct thank God .

          7. I have auto correct on my phone and it’s very annoying. I don’t have it on here (my laptop) so I have to do my own proofreading. Only trouble is- my fingers tend to post first. Once posted I can see the typos – i do try and read it first.

          8. Those auto correct things are annoying,
            It’s not just spelling errors and foreign letters
            within words. It seems to recognise American spelling
            and words it prefers that are completely different,
            I do the same, quite often post first too quickly and
            then have to change the words to what I want ,
            probably should read my posts first;)
            I don’t think the laptop has such a thing as auto correct
            and I really must get started with using that more
            as this will then be used for holidays or something
            more quick, it’ll still have auto correct here but if
            not using this tablet so much,It’ll not be as annoying.

          9. I’ve only once used a tablet (borrowed) and it saved the email contacts I sent to on gmail, resulting a Chinese hacker sending them spam. So I never save contacts on webmail, only on my laptop.

          10. Email contacts are a whìffy are.
            Mine are kept on our computer under my private
            BT internet account, there is a joint account for
            both my husband and I for shopping etc and he has his
            private accounts.
            I don’t have any set up on my laptop yet but shall.
            I have a gmail account for Disqus.
            But I also want to get more involved with the literary
            world with my laptop and they’ll want my full name
            but I shan’t give anyone my private bt internet email
            so I shall set up a outlook.com account with just my
            Initials and surname.

            Spam filters are a blessing, I didn’t know this until
            the spam filter on the Tablet wasn’t working,
            the most disturbing, vile and disgusting things turned
            up which upset me greatly, I let my husband sort it
            out. I didn’t go near the Tablet for ages after that
            but it seems okay now .

          11. Gmail is quite good at filtering out the spam. I get quite a lot, especially on the account which I use for signing petitions. I check it now and then as sometimes genuine ones go in there, but mostly they can all be deleted.

        1. I sent in a contribution to Lynne Truss when she was preparing that book (she asked for them in the DT).

          I now have a similar book, very funny and witty, on the same topic by Gyles Brandreth. It is entitled, Have You Eaten Grandma.

    4. To demonise the Oxford comma is irrational since it can have some very necessary uses. For example:

      Unless you’re writing for a particular publication or drafting an essay for school, whether or not you use the Oxford comma is generally up to you. However, omitting it can sometimes cause some strange misunderstandings.

      “I love my parents, Lady Gaga and Humpty Dumpty.”

      Without the Oxford comma, the sentence above could be interpreted as stating that you love your parents, and your parents are Lady Gaga and Humpty Dumpty. Here’s the same sentence with the Oxford comma:

      “I love my parents, Lady Gaga, and Humpty Dumpty.”

      1. Actually I am more interested in his objection to the Brexit 50p piece than I am in the Oxford comma.

        Do you remember the Christmas reading describing how the shepherds found Mary and Joseph and the Babe lying in the manger. When reading this aloud you have to make sure that it does not sound as if all three of them were in the manger!

    5. The dentist is a fungus based toxin present in Avocados ?
      Persin ;).
      I am sure Mr Viking will deal with it at the break of day before the cock crows,
      on that note I shall deal brush my teeth and go to sleep.

        1. You’re supposed to keep these things for Mr Viking,
          keeps him on his toes. He’ll become complacent otherwise 😉

  79. Grow your own sponges to cut down on plastic waste, the National Trust has said as its first property begins the practice.

    Gardeners at the Knightshayes estate in Devon decided to grow loofah plants in order to supply the kitchen with zero-waste cleaning utensils.

    While some sponges come from the sea, loofahs are grown from the Luffa cylindrica, a vine in the cucumber family.

    These are, the National Trust has said, very easy to grow and suitable for any garden, and are “the same as growing courgettes”.

    They also do not litter the planet with waste like a throwaway plastic foam sponge.

    Staff and volunteers are now using their home-grown sponges to wash their mugs and other dishes and say it is working very well.

    The team grew 30 fruit which, once cut into segments, produced around 50 washing up sponges. Sponges not needed by the team will be sold in the onsite shop.

    The team plan to grow more loofahs this year and are hoping for a sunny, warm growing season which will help produce the very fibrous sponges suitable for bathroom use.

    Kitchen Garden Supervisor at Knightshayes, Bev Todd, said: “We know people are looking for ways they can live more sustainably. We hope what we are doing at Knightshayes will inspire others to think about creative, simple ways they can reduce their everyday impact on the environment.”

    “You need to grow them up some kind of supporting structure, but there’s nothing more complicated than that involved. You simply grow them as you would grow courgettes.”

    The National Trust has plans to almost completely eliminate single-use plastics from its sites by 2022.

    In the last few years, the organisation has have replaced all disposable hot food and drink packaging with compostable products. There are also plans to remove single-use plastic drinks bottles, eliminate plastic packaging from shops and take as much plastic as possible out of the day-to-day operations. The latter includes finding alternatives for a diverse range of products from name badges and stationary to tree guards and plant pots.

    Ms Todd added: “We have 80 volunteers and nine staff in our outdoor team, so that’s a lot of washing up and a lot of sponges. With the growing awareness of single use plastics, and their impact on the environment, we wanted to find a more sustainable alternative to the disposable plastic-based sponges we had been using.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/01/27/grow-sponges-cut-plastic-waste-national-trust-says-first-property/?utm_content=telegraph&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR2fh9V94PqOvU6ZetcScOXZNz9SDyggNL5OZlatbDZ1RpNhJvuXKdndEQk#Echobox=1580145686

    Where is Bill Thomas when we need him ?

    1. I have used Trombetti seed kindly donated by Bill Thomas. No IVF required thankfully.

      Amazing plants rich in large fruits. Last for ages and cost a fortune in water. Just like growing sponges.

      I’ll stick with me brillo pads if it’s all the same to you.

    2. I thought Bill made his position perfectly clear. He was insulted by the downvotes shenanigans and irritated by the trolling of this site. I feel some sympathy with Bill but have decided otherwise to visit only occasionally and make comments on matters in which I have expertise or else strong views.

  80. Earlier I watched a bit of the Holocaust ceremony from Auschwitz. I did not recognise the front row folk. Were the Germans represented or the effing French surrender monkeys?

    It seems to me that the British paid the ultimate price for saving Europe from the Germans. We paid for the war effort over and over whereas the Germans seem to have been rewarded for their warmongering.

    Now we see an attempt to further expand the EU with the addition of utterly dysfunctional Eastern European countries and other alien Muslim countries.

    For chrissakes can we just get out cleanly before it is too late?

    Edit: And can we please rebuild our Navy, Air Force and Army. There are real threats out there and we remain vulnerable. We are a world power for good whereas so many others represent the opposite of our long held values. We must protect ourselves.

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