Monday 29 March: May’s Scottish elections have become a fight for the future of the Union

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),
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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2021/03/28/lettersmays-scottish-elections-have-become-fight-future-union/

672 thoughts on “Monday 29 March: May’s Scottish elections have become a fight for the future of the Union”

  2. The Scottish election in May gets prominent attention in the first few letters today. Perhaps the comments will clear up the consequences of Alec Salmond’s new party. It doesn’t look good for Unionists.

    1. The break-up of strong nation states into small, weak, balkanised units has been part of the globalists’ plan for a long time, and is favourable for China too.
      I do not include the EU in the definition of “strong nation state.”

    2. Back to the future. Scotland reverting to its original social pattern.
      What a shame The Enlightenment only last 250 years. All those lovely New Town houses will soon resemble abandoned car parks in Venezuela.

  3. SIR – What’s all the fuss about having to carry some form of identification to show you’ve had a Covid-19 vaccine?

    When I first came to this country I had to show Immigration Control proof that I’d had a yellow fever vaccination. I did not think this was impinging on my civil rights – so why should people feel that way now?

    Nancy Bowring
    Bodiam, East Sussex

    Did Nancy have to show her certificate every time she went into a pub, restaurant, shopping centre, hairdresser, sports centre, railway station, and in fact pretty well everywhere she was outside her home? And what about those who have yet to be vaccinated, or are advised not to be done, due to medical reasons? And, since the general population seem pleased to be further controlled, they will obviously love it when other things get added to the ausweis to control their access to society – maybe to do with opinions posted on blogsides not being right enough on?
    Ausweis, bitte!

    1. The yellow fever vaccination was probably not an experimental procedure when she had it, either.
      I have seen this incredibly short-sighted point of view expressed in the Mail comments too, several times.

      1. We had to have YF vaccinations to holiday in Africa. Presumably it was a waste of time because not all Africans had been inoculated.

        1. This reminds me that when I spent some years before retirement working in a local secondary school I had to have a police CRB check to ensure that no schoolchildren were put at risk. I complied, but complained that none of the children had had a CRB check themselves to ensure that I myself was not put at risk by them!

          :-)) (Good morning, Annie, btw.)

        2. If you had been following the same rules as for Covid, you would have been vaccinated but then not travelled because it was too dangerous.

    2. Oberstleutnant morning. I’m sure Nancy Bowring actually lives in Ewhurst Green not far from the White Dog pub, not Bodiam. And Bill, the White Dog pub owner, never required proof other than £££. From memory, she’s tried many times, and failed, to get a seat on the local council, having done some temporary admin stinit at the nearby Guinness hop farm. I played one of my last games of cricket at Ewhurst Green for neighbouring village Northiam and Nancy made the teas. I certainly don’t recall having to show her a yellow fever vaccination cert to take tea, but admit the tea was crap.

    3. Our younger son, Henry, looks far younger than his actual years while his elder brother, Christo, could buy a pint of beer in a pub with no questions asked at the age of 16. Henry is still asked to provide evidence of the fact that he is over 18 at his current age of 25 when he wants to buy a drink. The poor chap was still seventeen when he went to UEA and the university bar refused to sell him beer which he found a bit embarrassing.

  4. Freedom and faith
    SIR – I am grateful to Fareed Rehman (Letters, March 27) for putting into perspective the reverence Muslims feel for their Prophet Mohammed. Likewise, the degree of “immeasurably heart-wrenching” hurt resulting from a perceived insult to their prophet.

    I should, however, like to put into perspective the deep and sincere love and respect for the freedoms the people of Britain have fought for and nurtured over many centuries, not least the freedom of speech.

    Although Britain is ostensibly a Christian country with the monarch at its head, tolerance, respect and acceptance of all faiths – and those who have none – are enshrined in law and etched into the character and conscience of the people of this country.

    The majority of Britons will defend the right of Muslims (and any other faiths) to practise their religion and publicly voice their beliefs, within the law. But what is not acceptable is any minority group attempting to force a diminution of our treasured freedoms through intimidation or actual violence.

    Leslie Mills
    Peterborough, Hampshire

    1. Good morning, Obs.

      Has Peterborough moved to USA. … ie. [New] Hampshire?
      A good letter from L. Mills., wherever he/she might live.

          5. I thought you were perhaps addressing me
            as Old Woman but couldn’t work out the
            other letters, … all is clear now! :-))
            I’se foin ,fanks, How ya doin’.

          8. I thought the Soke of Peterborough was a social problem hogging the park benches.

    2. Islam is incompatible with the UK’s Christian values and always will be, reflecting its origins as a warlord’s cult versus Christianity’s peace love and understanding (albeit tribalism and human nature abused it before today’s more civilised times, the victims are mainly other Christians). The hope that Muslim immigrants would take on the culture of their host nation has proven to be a vain one. Anyone expecting appeasement to improve the situation is a fool; history shows that appeasement only encourages the perpetrators and results in a worse backlash later.

      1. Good morning Dale

        One Briton killed and others missing in Mozambique bloodbath: ‘Scores’ of foreigners are unaccounted for as jihadis seize town near French-run oil field leaving dozens dead and beheading several victims

        Dozens of people have been killed in a four-day assault on Palma, Mozambique
        A spokesman for the country’s defence and security forces confirmed the attack
        Hundreds of people, both local and foreigners, were rescued from the town
        Concerns have been sparked for British and Irish nationals caught in the attack

        https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9412117/Fears-British-Irish-workers-caught-Mozambique-bloodbath.html

        1. TB morning, re Mozambique skirmish, fighters [loose term here, agitators would be better] funded by Clinton Foundation [and Total] re US$60bn LNG project and US / French firms losing out. Finding any “ISIS” in Mozambique is akin to Pol Pot drinking in our local bar

    3. Jawohl, Feldwebel.

      That letter, as printed in the newspaper, simply says “Peterborough”. Did you add the “Hampshire” bit through mischievousness? 😉

      1. No… it must have been on the electronic version.
        I’m a bit frayed to be mischievous. More dull & grumpy!

    4. “…what is not acceptable is any minority group attempting to force a diminution of our treasured freedoms through intimidation or actual violence.”
      Actually, it is entirely acceptable. It has been accepted. More than that, our freedoms have been seriously curtailed as a result. When I was little, there was no requirement to have your schoolbag searched for a bomb when you visited a museum or art gallery.

      1. I do recall though, that 50 years ago, when shopping at the Naafi, shopping bags had to be left on a rack by the door.

        2. MMmmm. But are not NAAFIs in military establishments and were we not at war with the IRA?
          If you work back from that the government is tacitly admitting that we are at war with muslims?

  5. Many letters on Scottish independence today. I wish the press would stop giving Sturgeon and Salmond the oxygen of publicity. I’m fed up with wingeing Scots and Westminster bunging more of my taxes at them. Give them their vote, but make clear to them that they if they vote Yes then they take their share of the UK’s debts and liabilities and, in the likely event that it all goes wrong for them, they won’t dump their debts on the English taxpayer.

    1. As a tester, we should dump the Barnett formula and let them see the results of independence.

  6. Morning all,from a damp Finland..rain today i think.
    Today marks the 245th anniversary of the founding of the Bolshoi Theater!
    Older than most countries !

  7. Morning all

    SIR – Now that Alex Salmond’s new Alba party has joined the Scottish elections in May, can I make a desperate plea? Will the Unionist parties, Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrats, please do a deal and field just one Unionist candidate in each constituency?

    This election is not a normal political election. It is not about Left or Right, capitalism or socialism, but the future of our country. Please put aside ideological differences and unite to save the United Kingdom.

    James B Sinclair

    St Helier, Jersey

    SIR – Could I add that Unionists must promote arguments for the Union, not scare stories about Scottish independence.

    Michael Heaton

    Warminster, Wiltshire

    SIR – Your report (March 28) on the civil war within the ranks of Scottish secessionists quotes the Alba-defecting MP for East Lothian, Kenny MacAskill, as saying: “Boris Johnson must not be able to reject Scotland’s democratic rights. Scottish democracy must prevail over a Westminster veto.”

    ADVERTISING

    Given that the Scottish National Party has spent the last seven years scorning and now attempting to delegitimise the pro-Union result of the 2014 independence referendum, it is surely not the UK Prime Minister who is rejecting the democratic wishes of Scots, but the SNP and its imitators.

    Stuart Millson

    East Malling, Kent

    SIR – It takes more than one side to make a Union.

    In Scotland you have one of four sides to the United Kingdom. Therefore it is logical that when one side is thinking of breaking away, the thoughts of the others should be taken into account. If there is to be a vote then all sides should have a say.

    Jack Marriott

    Churt, Surrey

    SIR – Sherelle Jacobs (Comment, March 25) believes that success for the Scottish National Party in a Scottish independence referendum would spell the end of Boris Johnson.

    This conclusion is presumably based on an assumption that the majority in the rest of the country would regard such an outcome as disastrous. This notion may well be badly misplaced.

    Advertisement

    Christopher Timbrell

    Kington Langley, Wiltshire

    SIR – I agree with Peter Ferguson (Letters, March 24) that Scots not living in Scotland are ignored by the SNP.

    Were the UK Government to sanction another referendum on independence, the franchise must be reformed to include people born in Scotland as well as current residents, and provide time for native-born Scots to register. The age limit for voting should also be restored to 18, removing the gerrymandered inclusion of schoolchildren from the register of voters.

    Michael Staples

    Seaford, East Sussex

    1. Mr Sinclair please be aware that Labour and the LibDems have rejected the suggestion of working together to save the Union. Twice this year and most recently last week.
      Mr Marriott please be aware that there are two parties to the Treaty of Union.
      Mr Staples there is no requirement for us to receive permission from Westminster if there is a valid vote to secede. Also your suggestion to arrange the franchise is drivel.
      Oh, and Mr Millson, the result of 2014 was more than massaged.
      Finally. Mr Sinclair, you are quite right. The penny is starting to drop, apart from at Westminster. Your solution is unlikely to work. In fact there is not the slightest chance that Unionist parties will gain a majority of seats. The base position is that over half the population are in favour of independence and have been for most of the present century. That is a hill that the Unionists cannot climb in six weeks, especially as they have refused to co-operate with each other.

  8. SIR– As a mother I always considered myself lucky that “sensible” shoes were fashionable in the early Nineties when my daughter started high school.

    However Helen Shortland’s letter (March 27) about the “repaired” torn jeans reminded me of the time my husband polished my daughter’s Doc Martens. She was not amused.

    Mary Ross

    Penketh, Cheshire

    SIR – On a parental visit, my elderly father kindly volunteered to do the washing-up. Some considerable time later, he apologised profusely for not having been able to clean a saucepan completely. However, he had successfully removed 95 per cent of the Teflon coating of our one and only non-stick pan.

    Charlie Balding

    Callander, Stirlingshire

    2. They should have contacted Bliar, he is coated in enough Teflon to make the Universe Non=Stick

    3. Never mind Mr Balding, it can’t have been that good quality if it came off so easily! Would probably have shed itself into your food otherwise!

  9. If people do not wish to be vaccinated then they will have to accept th consequences,
    just as people who do not have a driver’s licence, a passport or a television licence must.

    In some parts of UK,, Driving Licences, MOT, Vehicle Insurnace etc are just seen as an
    imposition placed on Native Brits and does not apply to immigrants

    1. You can live quite comfortably in Britain ignoring all the laws about such things as long as you are prepared not to own anything. This fact is largely unknown by the middle classes who write media output and shape policy, but there are loads of people, mainly immigrants in my experience, who are doing it.

      I even heard a few years ago about a bakery that was operating in a shop on a London high street, with no contact to the authorities. No business rates, no inspections, nothing. The founders were illiterates, so couldn’t have handled paperwork. Not sure how long that one went on.
      Another man was running a large business with rented flats that were sub-let on AirBnb – no tax paid, of course. He was raking in several times what he was paying in rent every month. That one had to disappear hastily when the tax authorities finally caught up with him.

  10. I have read previously about Scotland’s new
    political parties but have not read of these being
    authorised by the Electoral Commission; I assume
    that body oversees the whole of the UK.
    New Parties hoping to campaign in England seem to
    have to jump through hoops before they are able to
    join the political platform…. just wondering!

      1. Nope. We know that those old radios were not really Hi-Fi. (No one would call Mr Salmond “High Fidelity”!)

  11. Welcome to the woke age of cinema – where ‘historical dramas’ peddle revisionist lies. 29 March 2021.

    But in the golden age of streaming, it’s film and TV that packs the biggest punch. Nearly 30 million people watched the latest season of The Crown in the week after it launched, while 82 million saw Bridgerton. That’s a lot of people imbibing “history” written by politics. Ammonite is unlikely to reach such figures, but in turning a precious bit of women’s history and science into a leerathon, it’s arguably done just as much damage.

    Morning everyone. This is part of an ongoing and deliberate effort to destroy our history. The destruction of the Universities, which are the repositories of the accepted National form, and of course its accuracy,legitimacy and moral authority as depicted in the MSM. Colonialism, Slavery, Black Players in Shakespeare, massive ethnic diversity in advertisements etc, All this erodes the sense of belonging; of being a part of a cohesive whole; this is because, a nation, a people cannot exist without an agreed history. They become simply individuals unable to register their presence let alone have representatives or lever any Influence or Power. Just an agglomeration, responsive to the simplest stimuli of existence. Food, accommodation , education, employment, they must depend upon others to supply these things and are thus not free beings but Slaves!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/welcome-woke-age-cinema-historical-dramas-peddle-revisionist/

    1. The irony that the middle class luvvies who made Ammonite don’t appreciate, is that they are being as slighting to the memory of Mary Anning as the middle class intellectuals of her day were to her when she was alive.

      1. I was so really shocked to see that the film luvvy types have labelled Mary Anning a woman with lesbian tendencies .

        Why on earth couldn’t they have told the story of that remarkable lady properly, instead of introducing something sexual for the voyeur to boost audience figures .

        1. I agree, I find it disgraceful. She was my childhood heroine, and to see her misrepresented to fit their stereotypes is very sad.

    2. 330955+ up ticks,
      Morning AS
      “They become simply individuals unable to register their presents”

      There is an opportunity arriving shortly, 6th May by making their presents felt by NOT touching, a lab/lib/con coalition candidates selection box that is.

      The electorate WANT change but with “their” party, be it lab/lib/con/greens leading the way, an impossible situation.

    3. A good BTL Comment on that:-

      Arthur Pewty
      29 Mar 2021 7:28AM
      @Richard Curious

      No. History is factual. It can be ‘interpreted’, if the information is scant, but those interpretations must be made with a firm eye and acknowledgement of the moral compasses used at the time. There is no use blaming all slave owners for slavery; they were simply alive at a time when slavery, as horrendous a concept as can be imagined today, was simply a normal part of life.

      What we call racism now, was more nationalistic then. At a time when enemies attacked you, you did not sit down and wonder how to make them feel better about themselves. You created a narrative that built hatred for them, and increased importance of your own culture or nationality. In that way, you fought back against them.

      That was then, this is now. Never forget that history will judge the woke. Who knows what that judgement will be. It may consider them to be a disillusioned bunch of idiots who had their cranium hidden firmly inside their posterior. Perhaps. So be careful about being too woke. Do you want to be compared to the flat-Earthers in the future?

      1. “”…as horrendous a concept as can be imagined today…” Really? How long ago was it that tens of thousands of men worked down mines?
        Historical industrial museums will give you an insight into the fourteen hour day worked by children in cotton mills, and the tour guides will say little about how horrendous it was.

    1. Bob3 has gorn orf to play golf….. without
      giving us his usual cheerful good morning
      and weather conditions.
      This Country is going to pot!

      1. Morning Garlands

        Moh dashed off to golf earlier this morning .
        Breezy chilly day, the brr factor will diminish as the morning progresses.

        The preparations for golf started last week, trolley battery charged, oh and the saga of the new shoes that were ordered .. the drama the shock when the replacement box arrived .. they were duds.. bought on a golf site shoe sale

        I said , er hate to say it but they look rather small, he replied of course they are not … look, size 44 on the sole …size 10 .. identical to my old pair.

        Darling , those shoes are far too small.

        They can’t be, look 44 stamped on the sole ..

        Compare them to your old pair , try them on .

        Whoops , 44 stamped on the sole, but the shoes were probably a size 8, and what ever that translates in numbers, far too small.

        The shock and horror and panic , the atmosphere was electric ..

        I suggested a new online site .. and wow, with in 3 days another new pair arrived , right size , proper fit , and pukka name as were his old ones !

        All’s well that ends well. I hope he has a great game.

        1. Good morning, Belle.
          I chuckled at your tale;
          I am pleased the shoes were sorted
          out. I hope he has an enjoyable day.

          2. Do Clark’s still use their famous foot gauge so that you may have an ‘unpair’ of two shoes that both fit?

    2. 330955+ up ticks,
      Morning OLT,
      Something had to trigger the great reset “they” needed a detonator, the flu variant fitted the bill on ALL control issues.
      When it comes to treachery these tories (ino) are top drawer, the polling booth proves that.

  13. 330955+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,
    It is surely a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma maybe as it is
    concerning the welfare of the nation as a whole, combine the two issues.

    A people’s reset nationwide vote with the welfare of the family / Country first & foremost in mind NOT THE PARTY.

    The electorate are kowtowing and have been for decades to the same political overseers and now we are witnessing a deserved very bitter harvest, there lies the riddle WHY.

  15. Good Moaning.
    Waiting for Godot Heatwave.

    This made Oi laff: maybe, as I’m between tapestries, this could be a nice little earner.

    “The priceless 11th-century artefact needs a £1.7 million repair job and the mayor of Bayeux is demanding that Britain should pay for it. One MP waspishly remarks: ‘If the Government picks up the bill, can we change the ending?'”

    1. Why should we pay for a tapestry depicting our own defeat? He can eff right off!
      And how many years have they been charging tourists to come and see the thing? Couldn’t they have saved up a bit for restoration?

  16. Good morning from a much brighter Derbyshire than yesterday. An absolutely miserably dull and dank day it was too!
    But this morning is bright if a bit cloudy after last night’s rain & wind with 8°C on the yard thermometer.

  17. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4d0e7b689c7c78614dbf93403ad10b458528ea08d1a6893156a1695800b0ac53.png It seems that you had a compulsive urge to write a letter to a national newspaper in order to show the world what a pretentious cow you are, Sheila.

    ‘Mint jelly’ is nothing more than apple sauce (de rigueur with pork) with added mint. Why won’t delicious proper mint sauce—made with malt vinegar—that has been more than acceptable to 99·9% of the British population for centuries, ‘do’?

    Colman’s of Norwich do a more than acceptable version in a jar for use in the months when fresh mint is not available. I order mine online.

    1. Hey Beatnik, supporting those trendy Lefties at Unilever, Dude? Now, just one big wokefest, Bro.

      1. Hey, Dean, old Jeremiah Colman will be rolling in his sarcophagus, Hombre.

        Few groats are to made these days in Norwich from the mustard left on the side of Dude’s dinner plates, Bro.

    2. Good morning, Grizzly. What struck me about Sheila’s letter was that that it was totally illogical. She complains that – because not everyone grows mint in their gardens – she must therefore be forced to use mint jelly which the shops are failing to provide. Yet, even if she had some mint in her garden, she would not have used it because “mint sauce mad with vinegar just won’t do”. ?!?!?

      1. Good morning, Auntie Elsie.

        Why doesn’t she just make some apple jelly in the late summer, when apples and mint are fresh, and then seal it in jars as you do with marmalade? Or pack it in small polythene containers (or ice-cube trays) and freeze it for winter and spring use?

        1. Or, if the worst came to pass, buy the damn ingredients in a shop and make the stuff??
          How hard can it be?

      2. Good morning Elsie.

        Our food habits have altered as have our tastes .

        We eat healthy foods, but I usually have a bowl of sugar free jelly in the fridge , lime flavour is delicious, with chopped banana, or raspberry jelly with fresh raspberries .. er dare I say with cold custard .

    3. Good morning, Grizzly.

      Sheila didn’t mention redcurrant jelly, which some people enjoy with
      roast lamb.
      I have one of those old fashioned mint roller-cutters to chop my mint
      or use scissors. I have read that chopped fresh mint can be frozen
      but I haven’t tried that method.
      As you so succinctly say … pretentious cow! :-))

        1. My mother used to eat apple jelly with lamb, which I loathed.
          Isn’t it funny how our tastes change through our lives?

        2. Good morning, Maggie.

          Have you tried making mint sauce with apple vinegar? It is not as sharp as malt.

          1. Good idea, will give that a go!

            Morning Grizzly, that blinking woman beat me to it by penning the first useless letter of the week to the DT!

        3. I would suggest mint jelly, Belle,
          but some recipes do have vinegar
          added to the apple jelly mixture.
          I boil the apples with a bunch of mint,
          the flavour infuses and I remove it
          before the apples go into the jelly bag.
          I read that the chopped mint shouldn’t be
          added to the jelly until fifteen minutes
          after temperature is reached, it then doesn’t sink
          to the bottom of the jars when bottled … it works!

          2. I bung decored apples in the oven , butter and sultanas in the core space and just bake . Moh sprinkles his sugar free powder on his own , good old custard and baked apple is just the nicest treat ever.

      2. Good morning, Garlands.

        Redcurrant jelly (especially home-made) is delicious with roast lamb. I chop my mint with a large sharp kitchen knife using a rocking motion. Fresh mint does indeed freeze successfully.

        1. Just sayin’ my mint is growing wildly at the moment! I have a very old wooden bowl and Demi-Luna blade (from my great aunt) which I use to chop mint, parsley and any other fresh herbs! Good morning all! Half a lifetime ago today, I gave birth to my younger daughter! Very scary thought!

          1. Good morning, Mrs Macfarlane. Hope you daughter has a lovely day.

            I shall go out presently and check my mint patch for any signs of life.

          2. Thank you pet! We had a pre birthday party here yesterday! Just 13 of us! Plus 2 dogs and 2 cats! It was riotous! 3 glorious children under 7, and 3 babies! My old man kept closing the curtains on the lane side of the house, in case anybody outside counted! I think the cars in the drive might have given it away! Our mint is very hardy and shoots up between the paving!

        2. Do you freeze it in ice cubes? We have loads of mint, but, by late summer it becomes tough and tasteless.

      3. ‘Afternoon, little g, my understanding as a child, was that redcurrant jelly was only used for saddle of lamb and mint sauce for the rest. I don’t think there was mint jelly in those days and Mama always made the mint sauce.

    4. We use granskuddgele (pine shoot jelly) as a basis for mint jelly. The granskudd has a faint wunderbaum flavour, and is a gret base to give body to ther herbs – such as mint. It’s nice now & again, but for me the point of mint sauce is the vinegar that balances the fat in the meat.
      Morning, Grizz!

      1. Afternoon, Paul.
        You’ve hit the nail on the head with your final point. I have to say, though, that I’ve never sucked a wunderbaum to see how it tastes.

        1. have a chew on the bright green pine shoots when they come out – they are really rich in vitamin C, and each tree taste different, too, so you can select the strength of flavour you want.

    5. I hate mint sauce – ruins the tast of anything, especially lamb. I use rosemary from the garden when I cook lamb.

  18. There have been a number of posts regarding the views of Dutch virologist Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche and his concerns over mass vaccination which he believes may lead to faster mutation by the virus- exacerbating the problem. These two scientists discuss his concerns and explain them in a cogent and intelligible way. Their conclusion is that this aspect of concern should be open to scientific debate but as I think we all realise, an open debate has not been a part of this health issue.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81mEJ2Rph1Q

  19. China and Russia’s military arsenal are terrifying in scale – but how would they perform in combat? 29 march 2021.

    China has more than doubled its official defence budget over the last decade to 1.355 trillion yuan (£152 billion) for 2021. And analysts estimate it spends far more on defence than it reports publicly.

    In 2017, President Xi Jinping announced a goal for the People’s Liberation Army to become “world class” with the ability to “fight and win” global wars by 2049.
    Russia lacks China’s enormous economic clout. But it too has been diligently investing in its military capabilities since the early 2000s.

    This year, two-thirds of the Russian military budget, which at £44.1 billion is slightly lower than that of the UK, will be spent on purchasing and modernising military gear.

    There is much here about the capabilities of Russia and China but none about America.

    The United States spends more on defence than both of them combined and everyone else too. It is not only the most powerful state on the planet but the most powerful that has ever existed, not only militarily but economically as well; easily eclipsing its predecessor the British Empire at its peak. Astonishingly Xi’s claim that Beijing would not be a viable opponent until 2049 may well be overly optimistic since this power is almost certain to increase over the coming decades. Demographically, technically, economically, in fact by every measure, the United States will wax in ability for the next forty years. China and Russia will not. This of course does not include the possibility of a Nuclear Exchange in which all normal calculations will be cancelled!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/03/29/china-russias-military-arsenal-terrifying-scale-would-perform/

    1. The “joke” in my day was that if the Chinese army marched towards us then we’d run out of bullets before the rear half arrived.

  20. I lifted this comment from the Brighton Argus report on the protests at Brighton on Saturday. https://www.theargus.co.uk/…

    Most of the other comments mirror those on here and in the other MSM papers whereas this one follows my logic that’s not getting a very good reception from some of you. The comment below is only one which leaves me in the minority but may offer some food for thought?

    MarthaM
    8 hrs ago
    User ID: 2375500
    4Passing controversial legislation banning protest during a lockdown when there are no protests going on.
    The government are the thick ones here, and they are relying on your support for their strategic game playing.

    The police chants are connected to the high rates of racist stop and search happening across the UK including in Brighton. I don’t see the Brighton police saying they don’t need these new laws, in fact they have signed up to pilot new laws allowing indiscriminate search powers without any suspicion other than knowing someone who had a knife in their possession.

    Have a look at the daily mail videos from Bristol of the police brutality and you can see that the police using tactics like goading protestors, cornering a small number of them, attacking first, getting agent provocateurs to respond and then lying to the media about the violence. All part of painting a narrative that you will happily accept.
    If you won’t accept violence from protestors, just think about whether you apply that same standards to those given state power. If not, maybe time to think about why. Are the injustices of some not worthy of your empathy? What pushes people to this level of anger at police?
    Last Updated: 1 hr ago

    1. I don’t watch any news on TV or listen to it on the radio so am not au fait with what’s been going on in Brighton. But from small clips I’ve seen on here of peaceful protests, as in the vigil for Sarah Everard, it was perfectly peaceful until the police moved in. That seemed unnecessary and provocative. Particularly when we have examples of rioting and looting from XR and BLM “protests”. The behaviour of the Muslims at Batley GS is a case in point. They have been allowed to intimidate the school and the teacher concerned has apparently gone into hiding although I understand that particular lesson had been taken at the school before without such an outcry. It’s treating people differently that is so disturbing. To say the least.

      Unfortunately the usual mob infiltration into protests mean that TPTB can brand all protesters with the name thug and they will be used as proof that more powers are needed. Don’t know what the answer is. I understood that it was the police who had asked for these extra powers although I can’t give a link.

      1. Because I’m a researcher I watch the BBC news and read the MSM as a matter of course. The message they send goes over my head because I know the game they are playing. I study videos and have a natural talent for breaking them down and into reality. I don’t just glance at them or the stills like most people do.

        Bottom line is that the police work hand in hand with antifa to provide the imagery the controlled media want to paint genuine protesters as thugs and until people start doing the same as me then they will always win their arguments.

        1. Possibly they work hand in hand with anyone that the PTB and media want, in order to convey the message that they want to give. We all have written ad infinitum as to what those messages are – and they don’t bode well for the indigenous, law-abiding population.

    4. Morning Delboy. Have your club planned the opening up for the season? Ours is in the middle of all sorts of ifs and buts and maybes for Open Day on 17th April. We don’t have a lot of ground around the green so it’s a bit tight for us but hopefully we will have some interest in trying out bowls for half an hour at a time. Trust your green has survived through the difficulties. Expect you have been working hard to keep it up to scratch.

      1. We are hoping to open the green for 17th April also. During the season we have Monday, Wednesday and Friday mowing teams. But the Friday team works every Friday during the year. We will be getting the ditch mats out on Friday, mow the green, trim hedges and so on. That plus walking the dog keeps me very fit.

    1. If we allow the loony left to take down the Anglosphere…

      Well, it doesn’t bode well for our survival.

    2. I wonder if the great demand for handcarts to take us to Hell will be met by manufacturers in China or the USA?

  23. I am getting the feeling that the wave of sex crimes in schools, which has been going on at least since the 80s, and is known to have increased massively after smartphones became available, is being pushed into the news at the moment.
    The timing, just after one London murder out of many was hyped to the skies, seems to imply a series of incidents designed to push public opinion in a certain direction.
    But where is it heading?
    Is it really just another attack on white males? (because I strongly doubt that many ethnic minority or muslim boys will be among the accused).
    Another attempt to portray women as everlasting victims?

    Latest headline in the Mail: top police officer tells parents to turn in their sons.
    Now while many if not most parents would turn in a child for a truly horrible crime, the article appears to me to scream the message “BOYS BAD!!”

    More divide and conquer, or an attempt to divert us from other developments like the loss of basic freedoms?

    2. Those were my same thoughts on reading the Mail this morning. I don’t like where all this is going. And my second thoughts were that young women also do bear some responsibility for what is happening. This will be followed with more loss of basic freedoms ‘to protect young women’.

    3. Once upon a time the newspapers were full of stories about male teachers having improper sexual relationships with teenage girls.

      For the past decade that has been turned on its head. Nowadays it seems it is only about female teachers getting shagged by teenage lads.

      1. There was a case a couple of years ago in a leading London Girls’ School where the head girl had left the school to go to university. She was 19 years old and she met one of her former school teachers who was just three years older than she was. They fell in love and started a sexual relationship and when this came to light the young man was sacked.

        I think it is an insult to women to say that they lack the judgement to make their own decisions on sexual matters once they are adults.

        1. If 16yo children need protecting from themselves regarding sexual partners, are the REALLY mature enough to get the vote?

          1. Now raise the voting age to 25. They might just have started to become mature enough to understand reasoned debate.

          2. It was 21 in our day………… I was a married woman by then.

            I tried to join the mobile library – but I needed my husband’s permission.
            How humiliating is that?

          3. Perhaps, J, Common Purpose had already reached the Library system and they wanted to be sure that you would only read Mills and Boon.

          4. That sort of humiliation didn’t just apply to women. I started at age 21, to work for a bank in Johannesburg. At that time, had I wished to marry, I would have had to get my manager’s permission after having had my financial status checked or face the sack,

        2. A nineteen years old female is legally (in ALL senses) a woman! If I had been that teacher I would have appealed on that valid point of law.

        3. Yes, I agree, the balance has tipped far too far in the direction of “protecting” students now.

      1. Ah, but that’s empowerment. Also, there’s apparently no discrimination in that female porn stars earn far more than their male equivalents, despite the latter’s relatively demanding technical issues? Women always seem to agree with me that sexual exploitation is wrong, until I say that it’s time women stopped exploiting men’s weaknesses.

        1. There is no excuse for what is supposedly happening in schools around the country.

          1. But where is the blame?
            It is clearly going to be dumped on evil white males as usual.
            My children were educated abroad because even twenty years ago, we could see how over-sexualised British kids were, and how schools were not doing anything about sexual harrassment.
            My son was kissed in the playground aged 4, by pakistani kids. We complained to the school, and were told “that’s what kids do.”
            This was the catalyst for removing our children from the UK state system.
            With this sort of attitude, it’s hardly surprising that things just get worse and worse as the kids get older.

          2. Blame?

            It has got to the point that if anyone tries to speak out against this they are accused of bigotry or worse and soon become “unpersonned”.

            The greater the freedom for children to be themselves the more they are exploited by people with vested and often perverted interest in the access to those children being themselves.

            In the past, peer group pressure tended to prevent such things, now it positively encourages them.

            My ethical and moral standards are decried as old-fashioned, stifling and unacceptable in modern society. By denigrating such standards we are where we are today and the parents of the current crop of children and adolescents have only themselves and the so called opinion formers to blame.

          3. I have thought carefully about my moral standards, and they are as applicable today as they were a hundred years ago, or two thousand years ago. I don’t accept fools telling me that I’m “out of date.”

            Education has a particularly bad invasion of the woke disease. I don’t know what the answer is to anyone whose children are young now, as educating them abroad is no solution for everyone.

          4. Education from pre-school all the way up to and including post-graduate.

            I am considering whether to stop my contribution to my old college, I am sure I can find more appreciative recipients.

    5. An equivalence of evil. If all the white men have been doing it, then muslims are not an especially evil exception.

      1. Yes, that’s a good point. Note the silence surrounding the accused Batley rapists as well.

    6. Back in my 1970s senior school days the girls were just as bad as the boys. The only physical intimidation I saw was when the art teacher, known by all as Torpedo Tits, slapped my mate with some force when he muttered “bouncy, bouncy” as she walked past. My friend’s sister said she got far more pressure and bullying from girls than she ever did from boys. My sons tell me most of the problems they saw came from protected groups and think what has been claimed for public schools is not a patch on what they saw in their State schools.

      1. In my brother’s school (all boys), the (male) art teacher once nailed a boy’s cuff to the desk during a particularly disturbed lesson.*

        In my school, bullying was almost unknown – all girls from nice middle class families, no boys to impress.

        *I think this is true, not apocryphal, as the teacher was named….

    7. I believe that the school doctor in one of the leading public schools – one of the first to admit girls into the Sixth Form – insisted that all girls arriving at the school were put on the contraceptive pill.

      There is a site called Everyone’s Invited ( https://www.everyonesinvited.uk/ ) which invites people to tell their own experiences of sexual harassment. It is amazing how many of the girls who contribute their stories to this site say that they were drunk at the time or high on drugs. This begs the question that is is surely the responsibility of girls not to place themselves in danger by getting drunk or high on drugs? Indeed, you could argue that alcohol and drugs are self-administered date-rape drugs!

      1. When I was a teenager in the 80s, it was accepted wisdom that a girl didn’t cross a dark common at night, or render herself incapable through drink or drugs, as a criminal might then take advantage of her.

        Then the feminists said that this was victim blaming, and women shouldn’t be given this advice. I see where they are coming from, because you have to draw the line somewhere, and the next item is “women shouldn’t wear short skirts.”
        However, I believe that “don’t go in dark lonely places like Clapham common” and “don’t get drunk or high on drugs” is still valid advice for girls.
        If they get attacked and did these things, clearly the fact that they did them is NOT a mitigating factor for the attacker, however.

        If women don’t take basic precautions to protect themselves, then why do we bother to lock our cars or houses? Why would we have no hesitation in telling someone not to get blind drunk while sitting on the edge of a cliff, but believe that it’s absolutely fine to get drunk in the company of thirty strangers about whom they know nothing?

        To answer your question, yes they do have the responsibility towards themselves, but it does not lessen the responsibility of the rapist not to rape them.
        The ones who I would blame are the feminists and destroyers of society who told the girls that it was their right to get drunk and high on drugs.

        1. “…I would blame are the feminists […] whotold the girls that it was their right to get drunk”

          If it’s OK for males, why shouldn’t women have the same fun?

          1. Because women are less physically strong than men, and typically get drunk on less alcohol, so they are more likely to put themselves in danger.
            Who says it’s OK for men to get blind drunk anyway?

          2. Getting blind drunk appears to be a relatively modern thing; back in the day, one was proud to be able to hold one’s liquor.

  24. I answered a question just now on the black hole that is Quora about the whereabouts of the lost Queen of Narnia, Susan, who survived the train crash in the final book of the series ‘The Last Battle’ first published and set in the year I was born. For nottler amusement, here it is:

    “I did imagine a sequel, which I gave the working title ‘The Lost Queen’. It was inspired by walking to a derelict railway station in my village, closed in the 1950s and which is today an overgrown ruin and the remnants of a station platform and a railway line that, where it has not been ploughed up, passes over abandoned viaducts and dismantled bridges surrounded by mature trees.

    I set it in 2013, fifty years after the death of CS Lewis. Assuming ‘The Last Battle’ was set in the year I was born, 1956, and Susan was about 20, then she would have been born in 1936. I know several people born in that year – the old community choirmistress in my village (who is dead now), the current Pope and my ex-mother-in-law.

    The whole point of the Narnia chronicles was to explain the New Testament as a children’s fantasy. CS Lewis was a devout Christian, and the books are full of Christian allegories.
    My main criticism of the New Testament is that it stopped with the Revelation to St John and the apocalypse, echoed in ‘The Last Battle’. After that, our own time is thrown away:
    “… now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

    Except, now that we have the wisdom of hindsight and the reading of 2000 years of history, we know not to be true. Furthermore, things are happening in this century that are turning out to be every bit as apocalyptic as anything written in the New Testament, such as the mass extinction of life, the disruption of the world’s climate and collapse of civilisations and the institutions that only a few decades ago we could reliably take for granted. It is time for a new book to catch up on the story of Christianity since St John’s apocalypse.

    Susan, High Queen of Narnia, rejected the old games she used to play as children when she grew up, and must have led an ordinary and humdrum life since the loss of her relatives in that train crash. By 2013, she would have grandchildren and great-grandchildren. It is these that stumble across a ruined railway station on a line closed after a rail disaster in the 1950s.

    Whereas the old portal to Narnia was long closed (and Lewis never uses the same portal again, hence the wardrobe losing its magical powers after the close of ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’), it does create a resonance in the children that they cannot explain – that they have a destiny within themselves that is quite irrational and intangible, and yet as real as the ground they are treading on. They take their feelings to their great-grandmother, which then sets off an adventure of faith, and a rediscovery in the old lady of a destiny as Queen of Narnia as yet unrealised, and deliberately suppressed for a reason during her adult life.

    I don’t expect I will live long enough, or have the talent or energy living alone with my thoughts ever to write the novel, but the germ of the idea is there until some corporate controller deletes all that I have ever been or written about in a spate of tidiness.

    Lewis goes out of copyright in November 2033, when I will be 77 years old, and Susan Pevensie approaching 100. She would not be too old to put her in that time, and while it may lose a few more bricks, the ruined station will probably still be there. I might well set it then, in a time when much of what made us human and civilised was lost by the Covid lockdown and the tyranny of Woke.”

    1. Interesting!
      I found Lewis’s end very misogynistic, even as a child. Clearly, one was meant to stay as an child, and not morph into one of those evil temptresses known as ADULT WOMEN. That is profoundly un-Christian, as Jesus has no fear of women or even of women’s sexuality in the Gospels.
      He deals quite calmly and rationally with the woman caught in adultery (uncontrolled female sexuality!), saves her from being stoned to death and then tells her to go away and not sin any more. In other words, He knows that she can understand and change her behaviour just as a man could.

      1. Somerset Maugham always wondered Christians made such a fuss about sexual peccadilloes. In his view there were other ‘sins’ which were far worse and far more damaging to human beings.

        2. Hmm, that is a masculine point of view I think. Women are far more psychologically damaged by uncontrolled sexual activity than men, for obvious reasons. The Christian view on this subject is eminently rational (sex only within the confines of marriage) compared for example to the islamic one (women covering themselves up for fear of tempting men).

      2. My sister’s boyfriend in her teens was a public schoolboy who went to Oxford, specialising in gargoyles. He had a curious attitude towards adult sexuality. He was keen enough, but he liked my sister because she was a jolly good chap – about the highest compliment he could pay. She took it in good heart, and they had an enthusiastic bed life.

        While Lewis did get married to a feisty American lady late in his life, I really don’t think he was interested either way in sexuality. I don’t think he was hostile to adult women; he just didn’t move in the same circles.

        His disappointment with Susan is much more about the loss of imagination, rather than burgeoning sexuality. She became very shallow as she grew up, and this is rather what irked him. I sympathise.

        I agree with you about Jesus liking and enjoying the company of adult women, even and especially those who were not virgins. I don’t know where this fixation about chastity came from. Even St Paul, who argued that it was better to be celibate, was quite pragmatic about expecting it of others. It might have its roots in Genesis, since it was Eve who persuaded Adam to defy God and eat of the Tree of Knowledge. In much of the Old Testament though, women are generally regarded equally, with goodies such as Ruth and baddies such as Judith and Delilah.

        Interestingly, in the New Testament, the demise of John the Baptist came about because a gullible ruler got persuaded by the whim of an evil woman, who demanded John’s head served up on a platter. Plenty of modern examples of women wearing the trousers, including the sixth-in-line’s missus (also a feisty American).

        1. But the symptoms of Susan’s “shallowness” were lipstick and silk stockings if I remember rightly, which are symbols of the sexually desirable women.

          When I was a teenager and first started reading the broadsheet newspapers, it was fairly common to read similar snubs aimed at women. Or you would be reading an article about people, and suddenly the writer would drop in a line that betrayed that the people he is talking about are men, not shallow, fluffy women, who are quite another species. I remember one article from the Telegraph or Times in which the writer railed about fat women blocking London’s sewers with boa constrictors of poo!

          I’m not a fan of feminism, but I must confess to being quite happy not to have to read similar put-downs today!

          As a random aside, I went pond-dipping in the pond in the garden of C S Lewis’s house in Headington Hill in Oxford when I was a child (He was dead by then!). It was an extraordinarily beautiful garden, and there were pike in the pond.

          1. We must belong to a different generation. I grew up in the 1970s, but if you were still a child when he died in 1963, we cannot be much different in age.

            I never found lipstick and silk stockings remotely sexually desirable at any time in my life. It’s what old ladies wore with their handbags, their perms, their hornrimmed glasses and their pursed, disapproving lips. Just because it was fashionable in the 1950s, it didn’t make it sexually desirable. All that paraphenalia to fight through to get to the real woman somewhere underneath the war paint. I often suspected it was rather a way to show off to other women, a sort of peacock display that in birds is in the male of the species. There was a revival of the clown look in women in the 1980s, but by then I was set in my ways and preferred the natural look.

            What I do miss from the 1950s though was a sense of devotion that vanished by the time my generation grew up. Now that was sexy – it is so nice to be with someone who wants me to be there!

            Anywhere near the Headington Shark?

          2. It was the 80s by the time I visited the house! Yes, it was near the shark, and the PPP too, if I remember rightly. How laid back and informal Oxford was in those days!

            You are so right about being with someone who likes you.

    1. 330955+ up ticks,
      Morning BA,

      will this also be applied to
      charlie lynton & outside toilets within a park ?

  26. 330955+ up ticks,

    breitbart,
    However, despite the government’s Orwellian response to the Chinese coronavirus, Mr Farage predicted that with Britain’s comparably successful vaccination programme combined with the ineffectiveness of the Labour Party, “the British public are of a mind to forgive Boris everything else… there is no opposition.”

    “To be honest, whatever his flaws, I suspect he can be Prime Minister for as long as he wants,” he predicted.

    ” There is no opposition”
    Old nige in collusion with the current uKiP nec made bloody sure of that
    on once again taking a hike.

    1. Green policies. His idiot suggestion to scrap all fuels except electric cars did it for me.

      The lack of energy production, of continuing the EU’s polluting efforts… no. There is no one to vote for. If that Lawrence Fox fellows puts a man here, then him, otherwise there is no point voting Conservative. They are all the same.

      1. 330955+ up ticks,
        Afternoon W,
        Or Anne Marie Waters, Robin Tilbrook.
        Anyone BUT a LLCG candidate.

  28. I am going to repeat this

    British ex-cop ‘grabs AK-47 and kills two Islamists’ to escape five-day assault on Mozambique gas city: Another Briton is killed and others missing as jihadis seize town and behead victims
    Dozens of people have been killed in a five-day assault on Palma, Mozambique
    Nick Alexander gunned down two militants after his convoy was ambushed
    Philip Mawer from Somerset is among dozens of expats missing after the attack
    Thousands of people have been evacuated from the town near a major gas works

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9412117/Fears-British-Irish-workers-caught-Mozambique-bloodbath.html

    Dad worked in Mozambique for a year , he was living in SA for years , he was part of a group working for the UN.

    He developed cysts in his liver , not helped by bouts of malaria , and of course a few glasses of whiskey , died 6 months after the disease was confirmed , that was in 1995, he said they all had to carry guns in the glove compartment of the car .

    Back to here now , we are reading about the nonsense in Batley , which will get worse , and a chap who is a Chechnan Muslim troublemaker is stoking the fire of unease . The equivalent to that nasty character , remember the Muslim bloke with the hook , whose large family is still being supported by taxpayers whilst he is in prison .

    When is that pussyfooting twerp Boris going to take the disturbances to our security seriously?

    This summer looks as if it is going to be a powder keg of trouble .
    No one listens.

    1. When is that pussyfooting twerp Boris going to take the disturbances to our security seriously?

      He is not T_B, and I expect this to continue. The question should be when is his party going to replace him with someone who has our best interests at heart, or is there no desire for that in the Conservative Party.

      1. Good morning VVOF

        We have a Libertarian government posing as Tories , and we have a weak spineless useless opposition .

        Britain has become fat and careless as it drinks and feasts , and scatters money hither and thither!

        1. Morning T_B

          The weak and useless opposition is directly responsible for the excuse that is called our government. Without effective opposition, governments can run riot with democracy.
          They are not held to account for any of their actions or inaction, which is why it is so disappointing that the Conservative parliamentary party also fails to show Johnson any semblance of censorship.
          HS2, BBC, the ill thought out green agenda, inappropriate building in the countryside, pandering to BLM…. I could go on but you know the rest..

          1. Yep, I know the rest .

            We are all of the same mind thankfully, but NOT one of those lazy minded MP’s have raised any questions.. fat salary all the perks , they are like pigs at the trough .

          2. And like pigs they are, they will only do something when their place at the trough is under threat. The last Euro elections showed that, my, how they viewed Treasonous May then.

      2. Is there anybody in any of the main political parties who has our best interests at heart?

    2. My son’s USA company lost the $billions contract at the last minute for the massive LNG project in Mozambique He recently told me that the company which won the contract was recruiting for a private “army” to defend the workers and the project. It seems it was not enough. I am glad my son is in Texas.

      1. My mother was shocked a few yers ago when I said I had absolutely no intention of going to work as a contractor for BP in In Amenas, Algeria. She was incredulous when I explained that the COMPANY have security up to the eyeballs, but would not pay the contrator company’s security fees. So, I didn’t go. Bloody good thing, too.

    3. Good morning, Maggiebelle

      I am afraid that Boris Johnson, the Compliant Haystack, hasn’t got a grain of grit in his whole flabby body.

    4. Vast numbers of Muslims are welfare dependent.

      Not only do they out breed us, but we’re forced to pay for them.

  29. 330955+ up ticks,
    You cannot say you were NOT warned as you make your lab/lib/con coalition vote consenting to MORE of the same,

    breitbart,
    Muslim Leaders Demand UK Shows ‘Respect’ to Islam or Face Becoming ‘Like France’

  30. Why the West should stop investing in China. 29 March 2021.

    The Prime Minister has called for an international coalition of free countries to oppose the growing influence of China’s authoritarian dictatorship. But it needs to be a lot bolder. The wheels of international diplomacy turn slowly and the government should make full and immediate use of the powers it already has.

    Free Countries? Where are they?

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-the-west-should-stop-investing-in-china

    1. Yo Minty

      international coalition of free countries

      WTF is Boros going on about

      We are NOT a Free Country, we are as enslaved now by the PTB/etc, as the meekist Chinese slave is by Xi

      The Pox on Borus and his kin

    2. The irony of a nation imposing sanctions and calling itself free.

      Of course, the real question is why do we buy things form China. It’s because it’s cheaper, of course. Perhaps – just perhaps – if Boris spent less time complaining and more time promoting the UK through tax cuts and legislative changes we wouldn’t be so dependent on China.

  31. Sheep Farming

    A farmer buys several sheep, hoping to breed them for wool, chops, etc. After several weeks, he notices that none of the sheep are getting pregnant and telephones a vet for help. The vet tells the farmer that he should try artificial insemination.

    The farmer doesn’t have the slightest idea what this means but, not wanting to display his ignorance, only asks the vet how he will know when the sheep are pregnant.

    The vet tells him that they will stop standing around and will, instead, lie down in the grass and roll around when they are pregnant. The farmer hangs up and gives it some thought.

    He concludes that artificial insemination means that he has to impregnate the sheep. So, he loads the sheep into his truck, drives them out into the woods, has sex with them all, brings them back and goes to bed.

    Next morning, he wakes and looks out at the sheep. When he sees that they are all still standing around, he concludes that the first try did not take and loads them into the truck again.

    He drives them out to the woods, bangs each sheep twice for good measure, brings them back and goes to bed.

    Next morning, he wakes to find the sheep still just standing around. One more try, he tells himself, and proceeds to load them up and drive them out to the woods. He spends all day shagging the sheep and, upon returning home, falls listlessly into bed.

    The next morning, he cannot even raise himself from the bed to look at the sheep. He asks his wife to look out and tell him if the sheep are lying in the grass.

    “No,” she says, “they’re all in the truck and one of them is honking the horn!”

  32. Reposted from late last night

    Batley’s hardliners are winning by exploiting Britain’s liberal principles
    Fear and naivety have stopped us pushing back against ideas that are fundamentally extreme

    Nick Timothy – https://www.telegraph.co.uk…

    A BTL comment which sums up my thoughts on the matter:

    Whether or not you believe that Christ is the son of God you must accept that England is a country with an established Church of which the Head of State, the queen, is also the Head of the Church.

    Surely this means that while we can tolerate other religions we must not allow these other religions to attack our freedoms and destroy the fundamental tenets of Christian ethics and practice.

    Why should Muslims expect consideration, power and control in Christian countries that Christians are denied in Muslim countries?

    1. Local Islamic leaders in West Yorkshire will send a letter to Prime Minister Boris Johnson demanding that Britain show “respect” to Islam or face becoming “like France” following controversy over a teacher showing students a picture of Mohammed.

      https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2021/03/29/muslim-leaders-demand-uk-shows-respect-for-islam/

      The imam of the Al-Hikam Institute in Bradford, Adil Shahzad warned that there may be consequences from the Muslim community if action is not taken against the teacher, who has already been suspended and forced into hiding after a local Islamic group shard his identity online.

      Local campaigners have been protesting outside the Batley Grammar School, vowing to continue demonstrating until the teacher is fired.

      “All we ask for is a bit of respect,” Shahzad told The Times, adding: “If one teacher can do it, another teacher can do it five years down the line, and we do not want this to be the case. Otherwise we are not responsible for the actions of some individuals.”

      A Muslim refugee publicly beheaded a French teacher, Samuel Paty, who had shown images if the Islamic prophet during a lesson of freedom of expression.

      Shahzad said that if Batley Grammar School doesn’t do the “right thing” then Britain will “likely that we will follow the route that France has taken, for example, or other European countries where firstly it’s ‘let’s insult the prophet’, then we’ll start banning the burqa.”

      The imam claimed that local Islamic leaders tried to ease tensions during their Friday sermons in order to make “sure nobody does anything irresponsible, that we don’t spread hatred, that we don’t spread violence, that we do it in a peaceful way, within our democratic right”.

      2. Shahzad said that if Batley Grammar School doesn’t do the “right thing” then Britain will “likely that we will follow the route that France has taken, for example, or other European countries where firstly it’s ‘let’s insult the prophet’, then we’ll start banning the burqa.”
        The imam claimed that local Islamic leaders tried to ease tensions during their Friday sermons in order to make “sure nobody does anything irresponsible, that we don’t spread hatred, that we don’t spread violence, that we do it in a peaceful way, within our democratic right”.

        What that fork-tongued bastard is actually saying is that it will be like France with teachers getting beheaded, while suggesting that it’s only the Imams keeping their wild men on the leash. The Burqa is a smokescreen.

      3. Otherwise we are not responsible for the actions of some individuals.

        The implied threat of violence. Surely this is a Hate Crime?

      4. Gerry Adams used the same very sinister sort of threat when he said of the IRA:

        “They haven’t gone away you know!”

      5. The hypocrisy here is staggering. ‘do as we tell you, sack who we want sacked because laws don’t apply to us’.

        And yes, another teacher should do it, and on and on until *you* get the message. You’re guests. You live here under tolerance. You refuse our laws, our prinicples, our decency our tolerance in favour of your own bigotry, intolerance and attitudes.

        Yes, we should follow France in banning the burqa. It’s not British. We don’t like masks becaue we don’t like covering our faces. If you don’t like it, then you are the ones who are in the wrong and who should change.

        1. And as more and more are waved in every month, they will get more and more violent. Laughing their heads off as they live off the taxes of those they want gone.

    3. Why should Muslims expect consideration, power and control in Christian countries that Christians are denied in Muslim countries?

      Because tolerance is a one-way street as far as Muslims are concerned. If they were ever to achieve a majority in the UK, they would deny people of other religions or none the rights they demand for themselves today.

        1. They were at it yesterday…Palm Sunday.

          A suicide bomber blew himself up… twelve
          of the congregation were injured.

          1. If the report I read was accurate, I got the impression that two motorcyclists blew themselves up in the street after the service.
            I suspect they mistimed the attack and the congregation got away lightly compared with what might have happened.

          2. I was surprised there were no Christian fatalities;
            I think you are correct.

            Edited.

      2. 330955+ up ticks,
        Morning A,
        May I beg to differ “when” they achieve a majority
        is work in progress ably assisted by the lab/lib/con/greens coalition group & member / voters.
        All under the mass uncontrolled immigration ongoing policy that even the three monkeys in the polling booth are finding hard to handle.

    4. 330955+ up ticks,
      Morning R,
      By the same token surely they are led in many respects to believe ( wrongly in regards to the people) that the indigenous peoples via the lab/lib/con coalition group are behind them.

      The islamic ideology following is given support in parliament shown by oath taking on the koran and fed
      further supporting fodder as shown on the parliamentary
      HALAL inclusive canteen menu, a meal obtained by torture.

    5. Why should Muslims expect consideration, power and control in Christian countries that Christians are denied in Muslim countries?

      Because their religion tells them to. To question is to be killed.

    6. I see the article has been closed to new comments and a load deleted.
      Is yours still there?

      1. It was originally posted under my pseudonym of Richard Tracey! I doubt if it is still there.

        1. Good afternoon, Rastus.

          I never realised that ‘Richard Tracey’ was your pseudonym. I naturally presumed that it was your real name. 🤣

        2. Still there with a respectable 37 votes.
          So is my comment with 23 votes:-

          Robert Spowart
          29 Mar 2021 2:51AM
          Where are the reasonable Muslims who object to their religion being used by these loud voiced extremists as a means to enhance their powers?

          Surely by their silence they are acquiescing to the shouts and demands of the Islamists?

  34. I learned a new word yesterday, “dindu”.
    I can now use it in a sentence. This morning on Victoria Derbyshire a dindu was allowed to speak for ten minutes with only one very brief interruption for VD to request clarification. The dindu was burbling incomprehensibly about BLM and their hero the criminal G Lloyd.

    1. Apparently there are large numbers of them in the States going by the name of Dindu Nuffin…

      1. Yes, that’s how I found it. Interesting etymology. Possibly even,”famous last words” along with “I can’t breathe”.

  35. Good afternoon, dear NoTTLers!
    The CP Woke Net is tightening around us – from Spiked

    A teacher has been struck off for insulting his pupils in an anonymous blog.

    ANDREW TETTENBORN
    29th March 2021

    You have to watch what you say very carefully if you are a teacher these days. Last year, Eton teacher Will Knowland lost his job after suggesting that there are innate differences between men and women, and refusing to remove a YouTube video making a similar point. But the censorious trend is not limited to upmarket schools – as shown by a case last week from a thoroughly undistinguished comprehensive in North Wales.

    Alexander Price, a technology teacher at Denbigh High School, wrote an anonymous blog post 18 months ago (available here, unfortunately not for free), in which he slated the school. Girls at the school were, he said, interested in little other than the annual school prom. At that event, well-off boys merrily snorted cocaine and the girls looked like a cross between ‘Eastern European prostitutes and trans-human Kardashian clones’. They were plastered in fake tan and ‘make-up so thick that when it cracks it rivals tectonic plates’. They wore ill-fitting prom dresses which their parents could ill-afford. Educational standards were, meanwhile, abysmal: some pupils, Price said, had ‘literacy so poor they cannot read the instructions on sachets of brown goop that leak into every pore’.

    In another blog post, Price referred to the school’s headmaster as Grima Wormtongue, the two-faced, sycophantic Lord of the Rings character.

    After a little sleuthing, the blog was traced to Price, who admitted he wrote it. He was sacked in 2019. But this was not the end of the story. Though understandably disillusioned with teaching and determined not to return to it, Price was subsequently hauled before the Education Workforce Council (EWC), the Welsh government’s disciplinary body for teachers. He was accused of professional misconduct. On Tuesday last week, the EWC ruled against Price. What he had said in his blog was ‘critical’, ‘disrespectful’ and ‘likely to cause offence to any pupil or parent’, it said. Even worse, his prom post had focused on ‘families from poor backgrounds’ in an ‘unnecessary and unwarranted way’. In line with the ruling, Price has been banned from teaching anywhere – a ruling he cannot apply against for at least two years.

    This episode has raised a lot less comment than the Eton debacle, but should worry us more. This was not simply a case of a teacher being sacked from one school and told to look elsewhere. Price has been forbidden by law from teaching anywhere – even at a school that wants to employ him. This is a serious sanction, as it essentially equates to the state taking away his livelihood.

    This can be a justified response to some serious cases of misconduct. Actual threats or danger to pupils are one example, and sexual offences are another. So too is old-fashioned incompetence. But none of these categories applied to Price. For one thing, his blogpost was anonymous. It could therefore offend only those who actively decoded the references in it.

    Regardless, what was the actual harm the post caused? Offence and damage to the self-esteem of a few families and pupils, granted. Possibly also embarrassment to some other teachers at the school. But however unpleasant matters like this may be for the school, none of these things provides any good reason for the state to prevent Price from teaching.

    However disconcerting Price’s claims about the parlous state of Denbigh High might have been for families, students and staff, no one appears to have said they were not true. Indeed, there is reason to think they were uncomfortably accurate: at about the same time as they appeared, the school was ignominiously placed in special measures as a failing institution. The fact that Price was punished for making these failings clear says a lot about the dire state of Wales’ education system.

    There is also a wider point to be made. This is a case about a professional disciplinary body. These bodies are becoming as much of a threat to freedom of speech as dictatorial employers are – possibly even more so. Most, like the EWC, now demand that their members do nothing to diminish public confidence in the teaching profession as a whole. This is a requirement that effectively bars teachers from saying anything in public that may offend someone. And, of course, the consequences of breaching the rules are immeasurably greater when they are determined by one of these bodies: not simply a P45 from one particular employer, but legal loss of livelihood.

    Technically, the Welsh teaching profession is separate from the English, so what happens in Wales will not necessarily spread across the Severn. There is also cause for hope: last month, the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS) disgusted the liberal establishment by courageously refusing to disqualify teacher Richard Lucas from the profession. As leader of the Scottish Family Party, Lucas had defied received progressive opinion by saying in a YouTube video what he thought about sexual morality – as well as criticising Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson for producing a ‘fatherless child’. The GTCS said he was not guilty of professional misconduct, since his argument had been measured and sedate, and there was no clear evidence that people would think him intolerant or prejudiced as a result of it.

    But we are not out of the woods. The case of Will Knowland remains live. In addition to being dismissed from Eton, he too has now been referred to the English teachers’ disciplinary body, the Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA), with a possible view to being struck off. It remains to be seen what view the regulator will take on the problem of educational wrongthink and identity politics – but don’t hold out too much hope.

    Andrew Tettenborn is a professor of commercial law and a former Cambridge admissions officer.

    1. A recent fly-on-the-wall documentary series on schools and pupils covered several proms. The teacher was entirely right. Why was it ok for the BBC to show it then?

      1. I’m afraid I can’t comment on yours, as I hardly watch TV any more.

        In relation to your question, I guess it depends on what point the BBC was trying to make: no doubt it was woke and PC so the answer is probably No.

      2. Proms are another pointless American import. I’m glad we didn’t have them in my day – and I think not in my sons’ day either. They just seem to be a competition to see who can spend the most money on the silliest transport or the most vulgar costume.

        1. When I was teaching, we had an end of Christmas term Sixth Form Ball. The pupils had dancing lessons (Old Time and traditional!) and turned up in tuxedos and evening gowns. The oddest sight I ever clocked was a girl in a beautiful gown who was wearing Doc Marten boots with it!

    2. Hard to disagree with his assertion that this is even more worrying than the Knowland case. Since when was “lack of respect” a crime in Britain? Clearly it is in Batley, too.

    3. If people are insulted by an anonymous blog – then perhaps they should consider the old saying – “If the cap fits, wear it”. His words must have been true.

  36. Hand your son into police if he is responsible for sex assault, senior officer tells private school parents. 29 March 2021

    Parents have been told to hand their sons into police if they believe they have been responsible for a sexual assault, a senior officer has urged in the wake of the private schools rape culture scandal.

    Writing in The Telegraph, Cabinet minister Robert Halfon said that what has allegedly been happening at some of the country’s most distinguished schools was “appalling” and it had spread to state schools too.

    The chair of the Education Select Committee said that countless stories had emerged of female pupils being “objectified, harassed and sexually assaulted”, with websites set up by students highlighting “a rape culture”.

    I wouldn’t hand Jack the Ripper over to the UK police, particularly at the behest of a politician! All these accusations were made anonymously and there is not one shred of proof that any of them are in any way true! That there are no comments allowed is a pointer to the reality here!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/03/29/hand-son-police-responsible-sex-assault-senior-officer-tells/

    1. Have they asked the wives and parents of the grooming gangsters to hand their husbands and sons in?

        1. Afternoon AS

          Just got back from golf, just relieved that my golf trousers never ripped at the arse

    2. Much of this hoo-hah is inspired by the desire to damage independent schools.

      The first prong of this recent attack was to require that white applicants from independent schools applying to the better universities had to have better grades than applicants from state schools and especially so if they are BAME.

      1. Hi Rastus. As I understand it lower grades have been accepted by universities for some years to “encourage” diverse applicants. Dumbing down all the time. Blair has a lot to answer for.

      2. One of my school friends applied to medical school but was not accepted as his qualifications were not good enough. (They were very good.) He qualified as a vet instead. However, he is now a Professor of (human) Medicine in the USA.

        1. A few years ago (well actually over 40 years ago) the head boy of the school in which I taught got 3 B grades at “A” level. In those days B grades were considered very good grades.

          Not only was this boy head boy and captain of rugby but he had been brought up on a farm and was very strong and had spent much of his boyhood tending animals. His ambition was to become a vet and intellectually he was well up to it but the James Heriot’s TV series had made veterinary science such a popular option that you needed 3 grade As to get a place at university. So he studied land economy instead and became an estate agent.

          He became very rich – but he still would have preferred to have been a vet and a very competent chap was lost to the profession which probably took spotty swots from the town with 3 A grades and no natural talent for the job.

    3. One of my sons just told me that he was sexually assaulted by several girls at school; he was strong enough to laugh it off. Another, a shy introvert, was harassed every school day for months by girls that thought it fun to humiliate him until my ex-wife, a formidable woman, found out and put a stop to it; my son is still scarred by the experience. Where is the balance?

      1. lucky that your ex wife didn’t do that in todays society, she would have been visited by plod and probably faced charges for upsetting the poor dears.

    4. In these cases and cases involving possible criminal actions by police the accusers are allowed anonymity. Very often judges and magistrates insist upon it. Yet when the bench or the jury acquit the accused, it is pretty much a statement that the accusers and/or witnesses lied under oath.
      Yet the protection continues. In the now notorious Salmond trial all the charges were rejected by the predominantly female jury.
      Clive Thompson has been jailed for six months for revealing the names of the complainants in the prosecution. The sentence was handed down by Lady Dorrian who had presided over the trial and blocked the names of the complainants from being revealed. (That hardly seems entirely fair.)
      Moreover the MSM seem unanimous in mentioning the trial every time Salmond’s name is mentioned regardless of whether the trial has any relevance.
      (Alec Salmond, who was acquitted of charges of sexual assault, had porridge for breakfast this morning.)
      The police have not looked at the matter of collusion, conspiracy or perjury. Nor has the vicious “documentary” produced by Kirsty Wark ever been reviewed for its possibly defamatory content.

      https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000lwld

  37. Notice the timing of the George Floyd cop’s trial….

    Just at the very time things are already on a knife edge.

    BBC now full on with it so they can bring an American problem into our own back yard and provoke even more racial tensions.

      1. Imagine what will happen in the US and over here if there’s a not guilty verdict.

        And the BBC sparking riots.

          2. I wouldn’t count on it…

            Under other circumstances he’d go straight to jail but by making an exception the left will relish the ensuing riots.

        1. Possibly to ensure there could could be no claims of Minneapolis “looking after” its own.

      3. Facts don’t matter. The Police are clearly racist and juries unlikely to be swayed by facts that contradict ‘their truth’, as OJ Simpson case law shows.

    2. The timing from event to trial is about normal for the US but don’t let that get in the way of a good conspiracy theory.

      1. I said notice the timing, nothing about conspiracies that people use to confuse things.

  38. Now the stupid French on on the streets begging for more carbon reduction.

    Macron offers a 40% reduction in a decade and they want more.

    Wonder what will happen when their cars are taken away.

    1. 330955+ up ticks,
      Afternoon H,
      The Le Pen`will on take over execute a replacement with tumbrils for transporting politico’s with a short period of incarceration, till dawn in mind.

      1. We can dream, Ogga and also dream of those tumbrils pulling up in Parliament Square.

        1. 330955+ up ticks,
          Afternoon NtN,
          No one would dream this nightmare was being assembled decades ago but then it started slithering into the light and now it is plain to see in All it’s treachery.

          In my book the electorate have an odious, vicious, treacherous political tiger by the tail ( the toxic coalition) and are frit to let go.

          I want in reality, the United Kingdom to lap other contenders in the race for justice via the peoples reset.

  39. Batley School affair . . .Mosque leaders ask protesters to step back after school takes action in Prophet Mohammed row
    Must have been quite a party . there are 20 Mosques in the Batley Area . . .

    2. Twenty Mosques in the Batley area and not a single church in Saudi Arabia.

      What does that salient fact say about the ingrained and institutional stupidity of those in power in the UK?

  40. Apparently a new term is required to replace BAME. How about Non-White? It includes everyone and all groups equally. It has questions such as what % non-white you need to be (eg is Not-Prince Archie non-white at a nominal 25% with a ‘black’ mother who is whiter than my 100% white Italian friend?), but they apply to all definitions.

    Any other suggestions?

    2. Any reference model needs to be adjustable depending on the situation.

      If qualifying for free handouts to non white then it one of your great grandparents was not pale, you qualify.
      On the other hand when it comes to being accused of white supremacy, you get an automatic pass unless everyone in your family is whiter than white.

  41. FREE SPEECH UNION

    Monthly Newsletter

    March has been a bad month for free speech. The Scottish Parliament passed a new censorious hate crime law, whose shortcomings we drew attention to in this submission to the Justice Committee of the Scottish Parliament last year and which the Law Commission of England and Wales would like to see replicated in Westminster. Numerous public figures got cancelled, including three people who had the temerity to challenge Meghan Markle’s claims about the Royal Family and the British media in her Oprah Winfrey interview. Piers Morgan lost his job on Good Morning Britain after he refused to apologise for saying he didn’t believe a word she said – something we complained about in a letter to the CEO of ITV. Ian Murray was forced to resign as executive director of the Society of Editors after issuing a statement headlined: “UK media not bigoted.” And Sharon Osbourne was axed from an American chat show after telling her co-presenter she doesn’t think Piers Morgan is a racist just because he doesn’t like Meghan.

    And that doesn’t begin to scratch the surface. March also saw the cancellation of children’s author Dr Seuss, the banjo player for Mumford and Sons (for praising a book by a centre-right journalist), Gordon Beattie, the founder of PR company Beattie Communications, James Moore, an employee of NHS Wales, Keith Hann, director of corporate affairs at Iceland (for making disparaging remarks about the Welsh language), Alexi McCammond, the 27 year-old editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue, who was forced to step down when faintly inappropriate tweets she’d written as a 17-year-old came to light, and Elizabeth Heverin, a 19 year-old student at Aberdeen University who was banned from her students union after saying the words “Rule Britannia”. No wonder Nobel laureate Sir Kazuo Ishiguro told journalists he was concerned for the next generation of writers who will have to self-censor in case an “anonymous lynch mob will turn up online and make their lives a misery”.

    But what made March a truly terrible month were the protests that erupted outside Batley Grammar School last week after word got out that a Religious Education teacher had shown his pupils one of the infamous Charlie Hebdo cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. This was the same sin that led to the brutal murder of another teacher – Samuel Paty – by an Islamist terrorist in a suburb of Paris last year. Instead of standing up for the RE teacher’s right to free speech, the head of Batley Grammar issued a grovelling apology, described the cartoons as “completely inappropriate” and suspended him. Blasphemy hasn’t been a crime in England and Wales since 2008 and section 5 of the Public Order Act which outlawed “insulting words and behaviour” was repealed in 2013, yet the headteacher appears to think that Muslims in his local community have the right to veto anything taught in the school that they find offensive.

    We wrote three letters in response to this outrage: one to the headteacher, demanding the reinstatement of the teacher; one to the Chief Constable of West Yorkshire, asking him to provide the teacher with round-the-clock police protection; and one to the Charity Commission to complain about the Purpose of Life, a Muslim charity which named the teacher in a letter to the school and then published that letter on Twitter, thereby endangering his life. (The Telegraph reported that the Charity Commission has already followed up on our complaint.) You can read all three letters here.

    In addition, we wrote to Gavin Williamson, the Education Secretary, suggesting he amend the Department for Education’s official guidance on the promotion of British values in schools so it includes a duty to promote free speech. You can read that letter here.

    One of the few glimmers of light in this whole sorry affair is the fact that the pupils of the teacher at the centre of the row have started a petition on Change.org asking for him to be reinstated – a petition that now has more than 50,000 signatures. You can sign that petition here.

    The FSU’s 10-Point Manifesto

    In the run-up to the local elections in May, the FSU has published a manifesto, arguing for 10 changes to the law to strengthen protections for free speech. Here’s point number three, dealing with the protection of free speech in the workplace:

    In order to protect the speech rights of employees, there needs to be a specific legislative protection against their penalisation for lawful political or social opinion expressed in a private capacity. This means workers should be protected for what they say: (a) in a purely private capacity, whether in person or on social media; (b) when what they’ve said does not refer to their employer, the business their employer is engaged in, or to other employees; and (c) the employer cannot prove that the expression of the opinion directly and substantially affects the employer’s business or the employee’s ability to carry out his or her job. Contracts of employment that try to restrict this protection should be legally unenforceable and if an employer wants to punish an employee for saying something lawful the burden should fall on them to prove the employee isn’t deserving of the above protections.

    You can read the manifesto here.

    Non-Crime Hate Incidents

    Point one of the manifesto asks the Government to scrap Non-Crime Hate Incidents (NCHIs), which can be recorded against a person’s name whenever that person is accused of having done something motivated by hatred, particularly if the “victim” is a member of a “protected” group, but is judged not to have committed a crime. As a result, people’s names are being included on the police’s national database, often without their knowledge, when the police know they haven’t committed a crime. In the five years between 2014 and 2019, 120,000 NCHIs were investigated and recorded in England and Wales.

    Dr Radomir Tylecote, the FSU’s Research Director, has written a paper about NCHIs, setting out the case against in detail. The really pernicious thing about them is that after they’ve been recorded against someone’s name – often without their knowledge – they then show up on that person’s police record if a prospective employer does an enhanced DBS check.

    And if you thought 120,000 in five years is a lot – that’s an average of 66 people a day being investigated by the police for what amounts to thought crime – you ain’t seen nothing yet. On March 17th, the Government accepted a House of Lords amendment to the Domestic Abuse Bill that will require the police in England and Wales to record crimes of violence motivated by a person’s sex or gender. You can bet your bottom dollar that means the police will enlarge the definition of NCHIs to include incidents in which someone is accused of committing a “misogynistic” hate crime, recording that accusation against their names even if no crime has been committed. (You can watch Claire Fox, Emma Webb and me discussing the implications of this amendment with the New Culture Forum’s Peter Whittle here.)

    Our best hope of scrapping NCHIs currently rests with Harry Miller, who appeared in the Court of Appeal earlier this month to argue that the recording of NCHIs is unlawful. If he’s successful, that will mean NCHIs are no longer included on people’s police records, but if he’s unsuccessful he will have to pay not only his own costs but those of the other side, too – in this case the College of Policing, a quango that instructed police officers to record NCHIs in guidance issued in 2014. The FSU is supporting Harry’s appeal and has agreed to use the money in its GoFundMe litigation fund to help pay his costs should he lose. So please do make a donation to that fund if you can afford it. If Harry is successful, we’ll use the money to fight other important free speech cases.

    Professor Gregory Clark

    The FSU has pulled together a letter, signed by over 100 senior academics, objecting to the cancellation of a seminar by Professor Gregory Clark at Glasgow University’s Adam Smith Business School. The seminar, entitled “For Whom the Bell Curve Tolls: a lineage of 400,000 individuals 1750-2020 shows genetics determines most social outcomes”, was due to be given in February, but was “postponed” after more than 100 Glasgow academics wrote to the Vice-Chancellor urging him to cancel it.

    Our letter in support of Professor Clark points out that section 26 of the Further and Higher Education (Scotland) Act 2005 imposes a legal duty on higher education providers to uphold academic free speech. In addition, Glasgow University issued a statement on academic freedom in 2018 saying it supports the right of “individuals, groups and societies to arrange events, conferences, lectures and seminars on challenging topics with speakers who may be controversial”.

    The signatories of the letter include the current executive director and president of the Economic History Association, as well as 15 ex-presidents, and some of the leading economic historians in the field, including Niall Ferguson.

    You can read a story in the Scottish Times about the letter here.

    FSU Spring Convention

    Inaya Folarin Iman at the FSU’s Spring Convention

    We held an online “Spring Convention” for Gold and Founder members on Friday, 19th March in which the directors and staff of the FSU gave short presentations and then took questions. That membership tier is for people who want to play an active part in shaping the FSU and we had hoped to arrange a meeting so they could talk to the directors and staff in person. The lockdowns prevented us from doing that, so we organised this online convention instead. It lasted two hours, but we’ve put together a 45-minute highlight reel that you can watch on YouTube here.

    The Workers of England Union

    A quick reminder that if you’re worried you might be put through a disciplinary procedure at work because your beliefs are at odds with your employer’s, you should consider joining the Workers of England Union. The WEU has won tens of thousands of pounds for members whose philosophical beliefs have been discriminated against.

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

    Affinity

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

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

    Currently in their centenary year, Affinity is different to most trade unions: it has no party political affiliations, is not a member of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) and is totally independent, financially and organisationally, of the employers with which they deal, leaving it free to protect the rights and interests of its members without fear or favour.

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

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

    • Access to its dedicated 24 Hour Advice Line

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

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

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

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

    Thanks again for becoming a part of the Free Speech Union. We haven’t been able to organise any in-person events in the past 12 months, save for a couple of nights at a comedy club in Bethnal Green during a brief window between lockdowns, but we’ve done our best to adapt to the strange world we’ve found ourselves in and when the lockdown is consigned to the dustbin of history later this year – please God! – we can start hosting some proper events.

    We’ve received several requests to make it possible to share these newsletters on social media, and so we’ve added the option to post them on Twitter, Facebook and other platforms. Just click on the buttons below.

    Kind regards,

    1. They also cancelled the very talented cellist for one of my favourite bands, The Dead South. Apparently, 3 times, twice when he was 17 and once as an adult, women who’d been drinking went to his bedroom to see his drawings/etchings and he made passes at them, to which they responded only to get buyer’s remorse when sober. Shock, horror. I suppose that it didn’t help that their songs often have dark themes such as murder, relations with a cousin, anti-social behaviour and old-fashioned values.

      https://youtu.be/B9FzVhw8_bY

  42. 330955+ up ticks,
    What’s this new policing from home business then ” turn your sons in regardingsex acts at school” is that right ?

    This when a great number of victims reported to the “police” in regards to rape / abuse in the rotherham area their reports were met with a 16 plus year cover up, ALL on record, check the JAY report.

    Mass uncontrolled immigration ongoing is kept alive by the lab/lib/con voter via the ballot booth.

    1. Somehow I doubt they will be launching a “Muslim women, turn in your husbands!” campaign any time soon.

      1. Have any of the tip of the iceberg multitude convicted of rape of little white girls ever been reported to the police by a muslim? Has any muslim ever given evidence against any of them?

        1. There is one video clip on youtube that I saw once, of a group of muslim women blaming the rape victims for being whores.
          From my experience living among the muslim community in Britain, I have no doubt that the vast majority of muslim women probably believe that the girls deserved everything they got.

          1. That was the view of the Home Office also. Carefully ignoring the fact that underage girls cannot give informed consent in law.

          2. That was our dear Jacqui Smith who wrote to the police forces that “it was a lifestyle choice” IIRC.

          3. The Jacqui Smith who charged her husband’s porn videos to the tax payer? That Jacqui Smith?

          5. Yeah, yeah! She might have blamed her old man, but there’s no smoke without fire. Wee Jacqui wasn’t averse to flashing her knockers on the telly … or in the HoC.

          6. The Jacqui Smith who charged her husband’s porn videos to the tax payer? That Jacqui Smith?

          8. An additional advantage for the Muslim women was that they were left alone; no annual pregnancy, they might get a 15 months break between childbirths.

      1. Most other religions are tolerable and don’t try to force their ways onto others. It’s only Muslims who think they have the right to force their views onto other people.

      2. Not in that particular photo. Those pictured in it are clearly of the Mennonite/Amish persuasion.

          1. I was neither correcting her spelling nor her grammar. Just pointing out my humble opinion of the subject matter in the photograph.

            What’s up? Are you bored? No ambulances to chase? 🤣

        2. Sorry, I meant the caption. Concepts do not always get clearly translated into words!

          1. No apology required.

            I’m familiar with the Mennonites and Amish since I spent a few wonderful days in their excellent company in Pennsylvania back in 1983.

          2. Afternoon, Grizz!

            I used to know a chap called ‘amish ‘enderson. He didn’t look much like the folk in the picture though…

  48. BBC news channel right now…

    Milking the George Floyd court case for all its worth as if there’s no news in the UK.

    They are determined to cause racial unrest.

  49. Nicked,now THAT’S awkward

    “Isn’t it amazing, how we can get beautifully clear, high resolution,
    satellite images of a cargo ship aground in Egypt, but are unable
    adequately to observe a small stretch of French coastline?”

    1. I haven’t killed anyone by spreading flu or anything else. I may have passed on the odd cold – but that’s good for priming one’s natural immune system.

      It’s up to individuals whether they want to be vaccinated or not. It only protects the individual so vaccine passports are pointless.

    1. An unambiguous portrait of the most successful and intelligent species to have ever evolved.

    5. He’s thinking – I knew I shouldn’t have worn this sweaty old t shirt to bed. I reaslly should make more of an effort.

    1. I must have missed the riots by angry mosque members in front of the houses of these men accused of criminal activity.

    2. Perhaps they were grassed up by their fathers, as per the latest Government instructions?

    5. Bailed, bailed, bailed… Free to carry on raping. Also free to flee to some foreign country – I’m guessing Pakistan. The tariff for rape includes life imprisonment so scarpering to friends and family in Pakistan is a good option.
      The Glasgow rapists appear not to have been prosecuted. Reference is only made to “disrupting” the activities of the rapists aka “asylum seekers”. This was kept secret by the police.

      https://www.glasgowchildprotection.org.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=33484&p=0
      https://www.gov.scot/publications/foi-202000016603/
      https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/5215881/police-scotland-glasgow-grooming-gang-secret/
      https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/02/only-4-glasgows-71-muslim-refugee-child-rapists-daniel-greenfield/

  55. The BRITISH Broadcasting Corporation has now been covering the George Floyd court case in America for several hours non stop on their news channel.

    Any any news from Britain today or is everybody asleep.

      1. Wouldn’t like to be a member of the jury if the cop gets a light or no sentence or found not guilty.

        1. He has already been declared guilty by the mob and the City Authorities. There will be rioting whatever the vedict.

        2. It’s a show trial. Like Alice Through the Looking Glass; verdict first, trial afterwards.

    2. It’s now approaching 18 hours since the restrictions were relaxed – any minute now I’m expecting see the doom merchants of SAGE appear to tell us that the R number is over 100, the hospitals are full to bursting with new cases and there are over 5,000 new variants in the country; thus we need to self isolate in separate rooms until we starve to death!

  57. DM Story:

    EXCLUSIVE – ‘I fear I will be murdered’: Blasphemy row RE teacher is in hiding and told his father he can never return to his old life after death threats over Prophet Muhammad lesson – and says school has thrown him under a bus
    Batley Grammar School RE teacher sparked outrage among Muslim parents when he allegedly showed pupils a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad
    Crowds of angry Muslims gathered at the school gates last week as the teacher was suspended and the school was shut down before Easter
    Headteacher Gary Kibble apologised to parents for the ‘inappropriate’ use of the cartoons, taken from the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo
    But now the teacher’s father has slammed the school and insisted the lesson was authorised by the school as part of the curriculum
    The teacher himself has told his father he will never feel comfortable setting foot in Batley or the classroom again after gangs of men went to his home.

    This teacher will not only have to move and give up his profession, he will probably have to have a new identity as the Jamie Bulger murderers did.

    And the more things like this happen the bolder Muslims will become and the more they will assert themselves and threaten non-Muslims.

    And the more Muslims assert themselves and threaten non-Muslims the less politicians will do.

    And the less the politicians do the more likely there will be a civil war and public disorder from the once peaceful indigenous population who will finally decide that they have had enough.

    .

    1. The headmaster should be sacked for not standing up for his staff. The lesson must have been part of the curriculum, so he should not have pandered to the mob at the gates.

    2. Just like the murderers in Mozambique who have slaughtered hundreds of Christians , or the b……..ds who are murdering Christians in Uganda and Nigeria .

      The PM has to firmly put his foot down and tell these prehistoric monsters that the religion of peace is a bloody lie , and they are racially targeting an innocent white boy who was doing his job .

      2. Compliant Haystack putting his foot down? You must be joking. He only does what his pafamour tells him to do and if he does not comply she will withdraw all sexual favours from this sex-obsessed buffoon.

    3. 330955+ up ticks,
      Afternoon R,
      Not a lot can be done really what with the lab/lib/con
      coalition recognising and giving support to the islamic ideology followers and the LLC politico’s continuing to find support from the voters again & again.

      There was a bloke who was warning of this happening
      the warnings were as far back as 2005, one Gerard Batten.

      Treachery took him and the best part of UKIP party out on account of truthsaying.

      1. I think a Conservative MP – Enoch Powell – was warning us long before that.

        1. 330955+ up ticks,
          Evening R,
          I would not take Mr Batten to be a credit stealer more a purveyor of Mr Powell / Churchill’s warnings.
          Besides Mr Powell WAS a genuine Conservative and there was no UKIP or need of it.

          We are now suffering the complete reverse as in there are no
          genuine conservative politico’s and a great need of UKIP under
          a Batten leadership.

          The present uKiP is an extension of the lab/lib/con/greens coalition, their nec could teach the torie’s (ino) a thing or two about treachery.

    5. The Headmaster’s reaction was a disgrace.
      You stand up for your staff, not throw them under a bus.
      You can still have a quiet word – or more – afterwards.

  58. There are loads of you on here who are real foodies and who seem to me to be accomplished cooks .

    I have really become rather fed up with cooking , and have run out of ideas , and feeling too lazy to source the stuff to put a different menu together .

    Have any of you tried this new fad … Food boxes, recipes and ingredients put together in a box which is delivered to your home, with instructions how to put the meal together .. I am just asking , because a friend had a box delivered from a famous restaurant in London for a special anniversary . Lots of chefs are on to this including Rick Stein , although his boxes cost a fortune ..

    So has anyone got any recommendations , after trying some .. Many do meals for 2 or family meals .. to be prepared at home . British Airways have got onto the act so has a company called Gusto ..

    I just need to hear from those of you who have tried them, I think Peddy used to buy recipe boxes from his favourite eatery .

    1. Belle cooking is no big deal…Throw a few ingredients together…place in hot oven…Pour large sherry
      Sorted!

      1. Oh Plum , cooking for 3 adults , one of whom can be fussy , is sometimes a real pain, anyway I have just been in the kitchen chopping veg stuff up and adding lots of basil and garlic and tomatoes to my weekly bol , now simmering nicely , eventually to be spag bol , minus anchovy which I love .

        Moh has had a very good day playing golf , and old son has decided to take his motor bike out.

        When I went out with the dogs , there were loads of people down by the river and on huge green spaces having picnics , family get togethers . How nice for them . Roads are very busy.

        1. …..why don’t the ‘men’ cook and give you a break!
          I have never slaved over a hot stove and have no intention of doing so now!
          Far more important things to do………………tennis when fit!

          1. We share – whichever one cooks today doesn’t do the washing up, and doesn’t cook tomorrow.
            Telephone pizza and a meal out (Sigh…) about once a week or so.

          2. Excellent idea…turn and turn about…Belle might end up eating takeaway though!

        2. Have you got a slow cooker? They are ideal for when you don’t want to cook – just keep some diced lamb or stewing steak in the freezer and some potatoes, swede, parsnip, onions etc in the veg drawer. Whenever you don’t feel like cooking, just bung ’em in and leave on all day.

          I don’t mind cooking, it’s the going shopping that I get fed up with.

          1. Slow cooking is a great idea. I just did a load of oxtail. Perfect for any type of beef stew. Just with the addition of simple ingredients it can be turned into Goulash or Italian Ragu or steak puddings.

          2. Snap, the past year has just been terrible re cooking meals and my double oven needs cleaning .. I mean really cleaning , son and husband have cooked and fiddled around , splattering stuff everywhere .

            I used to have a slow cooker years ago , but I wasn’t sufficiently organised , and the smell permeated the house at the wrong time . I may invest in another one .

    2. No – I haven’t tried them – haven’t tried veg boxes either because they seem to be full of stuff I wouldn’t buy.

    3. We are having Crushed New pot00000000, Linconshire sauages (cut into bite sized pieces pan cooked withe onions, served with mixed veg.

      Come eating time, the Sausages and onions will be cooked again in Onion Gravy, helped with a dollop of white pepper and gravy

      Pud, peeled, cored and chopped apples, cooked in (Diet) Lemonade ’til soft, then mixed with All Spice, left to go cold, mush lemon drizzle cake into apples , then cover in custard

      1. We’re planning a seventies dinner in the next few days: Fray Bentos tinned meat pie, frozen peas and dried mash! All from Iceland – I never knew you could still get tinned “meat” pies…
        Our boys will be utterly disgusted, The experience of history will be good for them!

        1. I think there’s one of those languishing in my tins cupboard – liberated from father-in law’s cupboard when he died……… must be a bit out of date now. Except they didn’t have dates on them then.

        2. Those Fray Bentos pies were a very grave disappointment. I only tried one once and I followed the instructions very carefully but the pastry was soggy and not at all pleasant.

          1. Yo Mr T

            Open the tin, ‘slice’ the pie topping off and put on a baking tray: cook it in the oven

            Scrape the filling out into a saucepan, top up with a tin of staek in gravy: cook til they bubble

            When Lid is cooked, serve with pie filling and whatever else you like

          2. I have done it that way. Still not as flakey as i would like though it is an improvement.

        3. I had a FB steak and kidney pie about six months ago. I used to love them.
          You’ll be lucky if you find any actual steak or actual kidney in them now.

        4. Everything but the smash.

          I have never been able to get the pastry to rise properly regardless of the promising picture on the tin. I do like the flavour though.

          Try your boys on Brains Faggots and see what they think.

          Faggots and gravy in a soup bowl topped with mush peas and a slice of white bread perched on top à la Black Country.

          1. My Mother’s butcher in Penarth does absolutely magical Brains faggots. If we can ever get over, will have to get a gutload.

    4. I’m with you at the moment, Belle. If only I could stop getting hungry… but otherwise, I can’t be arsed in the tinyest bit.
      I reverted to simple food, like meatballs with potatoes & gravy, and takeaways.

      1. I don’t think we have ever had a takeaway , apart from fish and chips from a van that has appeared in the village , nor even a pizza .

        We have had a Burger King though , and regretted it !

        1. Buy boned and skinned chicken thighs.

          Dip in flour stuffed full of herbs and seasonings that you like or ones your fussy eaters won’t crybaby about.

          Run them through some beaten egg and then breadcrumbs. You can do all that earlier and then deep fry or sauté and serve with salad at your leisure.

          There are lots of places on google where you can recreate a take-away at home.

          1. Phizzee , I can cook , I just get fed up with cooking .

            The boneless chicken thighs are brilliant .. I brown them off and bung a pkt of frozen Mediterranean vegetables in my large wok, 2 of those jelly type chicken stock cubes dissolved in hot water , drop of anchovy paste , handful of fresh spinach leaves , seasoning and simmer away for 30mts , mashed potato and purple sprouting broccoli , a pretty picture and quite tasty .

            I usually stay shtum about the anchovy paste .. it just adds a little secret something .

            All I would like to try is something similar to the best dishes we see on Master Chef .. that is why I was enquiring about boxed meals !

    5. Our next door neighbours, two adults, one teenage girl, use Gousto all the time. They don’t seem to do much supermarket shopping. 30% of for a month at the moment.

      1. We’ve tried Cote a few times – good quality and reliable; a useful standby for when I can’t be bothered to cook from scratch! For Valentine’s Day we got a five course tasting menu delivered from a nearby hotel which was excellent if something of a worry to finish preparing. I’m definitely a cook, not a chef!!

    7. My daughter uses Gousto occasionally and has always been happy with the results, although the portions are not large.

        1. You can set up a delivery for once a week once a fornight, three weekly or once a month. They have a menu which changes slightly each week that you order from. The fresh pasta and sauce are delivered – takes about fibe min to cook – I have ordered four times over the past six or seven months and each one has been delicious. The portions don’t look very big when you unpack them, but it is very filling.

          I do find the website a bit of a chore to navigate through though – too many twidly bits.

          https://pastaevangelists.com/

    9. They are a good idea for a candle lit dinner but Rick Stein and others like Vivek Singh are expensive. Try looking more local for a restaurant that you know doing boxes.

      One restaurant local to me is doing it and the food is fantastic. https://trufflesrestaurantfareham.co.uk/take-away/

      A nice country pub nearby is doing take-out Sunday Lunches !

    10. ‘Morning, Mags, (it’s 01:25) and you might like to follow this link and download my own cook-book.

      https://www.mediafire.com/file/6xe6fawz8lfjpiz/Tom%25E2%2580%2599s_Simple_Cook_Book_%2528Rev_12%2529_A5_9Pt.docx/file

      The link is for the WORD (.doc) version which will allow you to modify, add, delete as you wish. If you wish to print (I recommend double-sided) it’s in A5 size, approximately the size of a stout paper back.

      Please let me know your thoughts – and that applies to others.

  60. Here is a question for those who are paid up members of a political party, e.g. the Conservatives.
    Does anyone check that an MP is actually doing any work? Do they have to fill in a weekly work diary showing how they have used their time? Do local selection committees monitor this work?
    (We have a Tory MP whose work seems to consist of retweeting others’ tweets and training for a marathon. Our local Tory MSP is entirely invisible and completely missing.
    The leader of the Scottish Tories is married, to a woman, and has a small child. He is a professional football referee as well as an MP. He is intending to stand as an MSP while keeping his seat as an MP. As the job of managing the Tory group at Holyrood is surely something that demands some attention, either he is Superman, or he hasn’t a clue.)

    1. I’ve never belonged to any political party and i don’t intend to change now. They are all a load of charlatans and shysters.

          1. Be as tart as you like. I don’t think there would be any disagreement. Except for the fact that it diminishes the self.

          4. Ditto. The only upside of today was son and grandchildren helping MB with ladder and heavy work in the garden. The dry weather will let me ‘de-green’ the terrace and pathways tomorrow.
            Next, a lovely killing session of driveway weeds.

          1. The lady on the show “fostered” a young female many years ago in a sanctuary. The youngster is now the matriarch of a wild herd.

            She has done so for a few different ones, so I’m guessing you may both be of a similar mind regarding elephants.

    2. Our MP is the same. Couldn’t care less, unless there is something that might affect his position.

    3. All public sector workers, particularly MPs, should have been furloughed at a maximum of £2500 per month, excepting NHS employees and refuse collectors. Although, as the hospitals were closed other than for “Covid “ patients for nearly a year and are still not up and running properly, they could have been included too. Certainly GPs. This scamdemic would have been over months ago. People seem quite content to be furloughed, to wear a mask, social distance, dance to the government’s tune. and now happy to have an experimental jab with a needle.

      Our MP is fairly good I think. Alf and I have emailed him numerous times, individually and together. He has always replied (though we are not always satisfied with the reply). We were delighted that he voted against extending COVID legislation for another 6 months and we emailed congratulating him.

    5. As they are our servants and not our masters i would like for them to have to clock in and out like factory workers.

  61. 330955+ up ticks,

    Oliver Dowden said that so-called hate speech will be covered in the upcoming legislation which is set to impose further limits on online free speech in Britain.

    I can honestly see ollytwat & co falling foul of the people’s reset when it is triggered with peoples on the doorstep stomping hoes & pitchforks and chanting in unison Countrywide K ill, K ill, ongoing, making Zulu like a garden fete.

  62. The Express are early with WW3 this week.
    Putin seen flying Russian bomber “near” British airspace!

    1. It’s monotonous. Another doctor died at the hospital that treated Navalny! Doctors as we know are immortal!

        1. I’m expecting to read of the expiry of everybody in the place over the next twenty five years including the cleaners!

    2. We and the Russians are signatories to an international agreement. They are even allowed to fly over the UK sometimes.

      All the nonsense in the media is just to keep ratcheting the fear.

      When we launch our fighters it is not to intercept but to show them we have the capability.

      1. It’s a military pas-de-deux Phizzee. Last week we watched their missile launch. This week they count how many planes we have! Lol!

      3. Shouldn’t that be, “when we launch our fighter”? It gives them a good laugh, probably.

        1. Our ducks don’t like the mower, which could be because I chase them up and down the garden with it.

          1. Which breed?
            I used to have Indian Runners. They were a constant delight but infuriating late evening, they refused to leave the pond for bedtime!

          2. 3 Indian Runners, 2 brown and white sisters and a pure white old girl (the gang leader) that’s got a large tuft on her head. I don’t chase them but they will stay directly ahead of the mower even when I change direction, silly girls. They’ve just started laying again. I let them out in the morning and the OH has the pleasure of putting them to bed.

          3. I love the way they all turn in unison when a predator appears or a seagull’s cry diverts them from their ablutions…
            I had a trio, they just turned up one day, plonked themselves on the pond and refused to leave. I put an ad. in the local paper to no avail….
            I was happy to keep them….

          4. Yup, their heads all swivel to look with one beady eye up at any large bird flying over, which is great as I’m into the raptors and they give me an early warning. All 3 of them appear to be lesbians as well, but live and let live I say.

    3. What ho M.Thomas. I’ve been meaning to ask was your scan ok? Is being below par a post 2nd jab effect? I’m sure the MR will cosset you….

      Chin chin.

  65. Latest news on Plum’s Achilles tendon….waddya mean you don’t give a toss!

    After lengthy telephone chat last week with Doc. I received a letter am. regarding
    excersise options. Plus another telephone app. booked for Thursday!

    Signed – Social Prescribing Link Worker……..WTF?

    PS

    Tennis resumed today…..I prayed for rain!

    2. Poor Andy Murray is in the same boat as you, only really fit for commentating now yet he has to fulfil his sponsorship obligations and soldier on.
      Will anyone understand a word he says though?

        1. Love you too dear heart. :@)

          I’m in a wheelchair at the moment and i’m thinking of keeping it after i get better. People act more kindly through guilt/giving a shit or ignore me which suits me fine.

    3. Some of us noted that Glaxo Smith Kline has offices and plant in Barnard Castle when Dominic Cummings strayed there when “testing his eyesight”.

      Cummings is obviously tied up with the plan to vaccinate everyone and profit from the outcome which is far removed from public health concerns. Cummings is a weirdo and a domestic terrorist in my opinion. GSK sponsor students from Imperial College London so the links are there for all to see.

          2. Old ladies out of their depth, I’d say. (Not that old men aren’t either, but not in this either of these cases!)

    2. The Met’s Dyke Central is it not? I bet they go to Mytilene for their holidays!

        1. “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better place that I go to than I have ever known.”

          2. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”

            That’s what I like about Dickens. He’s really positive

          3. I own a first edition Dickens.

            Not quite as valuable as one might expect and an “unDickens” book. A good read nonetheless.

          4. I always feel when I read Dickens that there are large sections missing, though he is of course the greatest constructor of Characters in literature. Myself I prefer Austen who is the greatest writer in the English (And probably every other) language!

          7. Thomas Hardy for me….did Austen and Brontes at school. Spent my time looking out of the window….at the boys playing cricket!

          8. Fourth year mock English Exam. It got me hooked when he sold his wife. Much cheaper than a divorce !

          9. For purple prose it’s hard to beat this by Robert Byron:

            “If I have a son, he shall salute the lords and ladies who unfurl green hoods to the March rains, and shall know them afterwards by their scarlet fruit. He shall know the celandine, and the frigid, sightless flowers of the woods, spurge and spurge laurel, dogs’ mercury, wood-sorrel and queer four-leaved herb-paris fit to trim a bonnet with its purple dot. He shall see the marshes gold with flags and kingcups and find shepherd’s purse on a slag-heap. He shall know the tree-flowers, scented lime-tassels, blood-pink larch-tufts, white strands of the Spanish chestnut and tattered oak-plumes. He shall know orchids, mauve-winged bees and claret-coloured flies climbing up from mottled leaves. He shall see June red and white with ragged robin and cow parsley and the two campions. He shall tell a dandelion from sow thistle or goat’s beard. He shall know the field flowers, lady’s bedstraw and lady’s slipper, purple mallow, blue chicory and the cranesbills – dusky, bloody, and blue as heaven. In the cool summer wind he shall listen to the rattle of harebells against the whistle of a distant train, shall watch clover blush and scabious nod, pinch the ample veitches, and savour the virgin turf. He shall know grasses, timothy and wag-wanton, and dust his finger-tips in Yorkshire fog. By the river he shall know pink willow-herb and purple spikes of loosestrife, and the sweetshop smell of water-mint where the rat dives silently from its hole. He shall know the velvet leaves and yellow spike of the old dowager, mullein, recognise the whole company of thistles, and greet the relatives of the nettle, wound-wort and hore-hound, yellow rattle, betony, bugle and archangel. In autumn, he shall know the hedge lanterns, hips and haws and bryony. At Christmas he shall climb an old apple-tree for mistletoe, and know whom to kiss and how.

            He shall know the butterflies that suck the brambles, common whites and marbled white, orange-tip, brimstone, and the carnivorous clouded yellows. He shall watch fritillaries, pearl-bordered and silver-washed, flit like fireballs across the sunlit rides. He shall see that family of capitalists, peacock, painted lady, red admiral and the tortoiseshells, uncurl their trunks to suck blood from bruised plums, while the purple emperor and white admiral glut themselves on the bowels of a rabbit. He shall know the jagged comma, printed with a white c, the manx-tailed iridescent hair-streaks, and the skippers demure as charwomen on Monday morning. He shall run to the glint of silver on a chalk-hill blue – glint of a breeze on water beneath an open sky – and shall follow the brown explorers, meadow brown, brown argus, speckled wood and ringlet. He shall see death and revolution in the burnet moth, black and red, crawling from a house of yellow talc tied half-way up a tall grass. He shall know more rational moths, who like the night, the gaudy tigers, cream-spot and scarlet, and the red and yellow underwings. He shall hear the humming-bird hawk moth arrive like an air-raid on the garden at dusk, and know the other hawks, pink sleek-bodied elephant, poplar, lime, and death’s head. He shall count the pinions of the plume moths, and find the large emerald waiting in the rain-dewed grass.

            All these I learnt when I was a child and each recalls a place or occasion that might otherwise be lost. They were my own discoveries. They taught me to look at the world with my own eyes and with attention. They gave me a first content with the universe. Town-dwellers lack this intimate content, but my son shall have it!”

          10. “He shall know the butterflies that suck the brambles”
            That’s how Wilfred got into trouble.

          12. He wrote the Road to Oxiana ‘a travelogue by the explorer Robert Byron, first published in 1937. It documents Byron’s travels around Persia and Afghanistan, and is considered one of the most influential travel books of the 1930s. The word “Oxiana” in the title refers to the ancient name for the region along Afghanistan’s northern border’.

            Sadly he never had a son – he drowned after the ship he was on was torpedoed during WWII.

          13. It might be excellent, but as set out there it’s unreadable, James Joyce meets Chris Packham.
            Sorry.

          14. Curiously. I rather like the long paragraphs and James Joyce. I get irritated by the one sentence paragraphs prevalent in many of today’s novels.

          15. Up to a point…

            One reason I suspect that Child’s Reacher books are so successful is that the sentences are short and the chapters are short Baldacchi is similar.
            I like it that way because I can dip in and out more easily.

          16. I’m a pleb, I like Seymour, Price, Cornwell, Forsyth, Le Carre, etc etc.
            I also enjoy History books.
            As long as I can dip in and out I’m happy. At any time I usually have at least three books on the go and often many more.

          17. I am into Prime reading now

            If the book is not totally aweinspiring, I read Chapter 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13 17, 19 and to the end

          18. I love Jane Austen, but have to put in a mention for Anthony Trollope and George Elliott, and the greatest of them all, though not an Englishman – Feodor Dostoevsky.

          19. “A Tale of Two Cities” was first serialised in two English local newspapers. It was the Bicester Times, it was the Worcester Times.

    3. One just hopes there’s a Sgt.Scrotum on the staff….as the bag carrier for the pair….

      1. Do they have an Arboretum at the Yard? They could call it the Perfumed Garden!

      2. We need a tough Chief Inspector Strap …. preferably a hard edged Scot called Jock.

    1. In which case, why does he ever refer to himself as anything other than English?

      They refer to themselves as anywhere-English
      It’s the same in America, they refer to themselves as anywhere-American.

      Either you are English/American or you’re not.

      1. Exactly – it’s a bit of cake having and eating. If you’re English (and part this or part that) then you’re English. If your parents or grandparents have been given a British passport and British citizenship – sorry you’re not English, you’re British.

      2. One of the first books I was given to read by my Art Master in the sixties was Pevsner’s ‘The Englishness of English Art’.

        In my subject it has taken two Germans to define the unique qualities of English Art. The other German is Hermann Muthesius who wrote ‘The English House’.

    2. What do they hate so much about the 10am to 1pm slot on LBC , if it’s not Oh No’Brain it Lammy the Minimind

  70. Set the recorder: BBC2 12.10am
    ‘The Damned United’ Brian Cluogh’s unhappy time at the club with Michael Sheen.
    Brilliant!

    3. Good fillum.
      Michael Sheen is always good value.

      Did you watch ‘Staged’, with MS and David Tennant?

      1. No, not yet…
        I enjoyed His Tonyness in The Deal and TheQueen. He was nominated
        for a BAFTA and an Emmy.
        Great actor.

  72. Local TV news.
    Interview re. opening pools, tennis, golf etc.
    ‘Wonderful’, says elderly pensioner ‘ I can’t wait to socialise and meet people again’

    Really!

    5. Difficult to take people seriously when they dress with their arse hanging out.

        1. Mola when you posted just now there was a distinct increase in humidity coming off the thread which I can only guess is due to excess drooling….

    1. I am sick of the sight of Whitty. He even looks like someone from a mental institution and obviously has more than a few screws loose, a number of loose bolts.

      This Whitty airhead is as casual in his megalomaniac and inhuman diktats as that other charlatan, Fauci, in the States.

    2. Meanwhile the Amish community is the first in America to achieve herd immunity. There’s a moral there, somewhere.

  76. What has become of us?

    ‘The teacher who prompted protests after showing a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed fears that he and his family will be murdered, his father has said.

    The religious studies teacher remains in hiding after receiving death threats and has told his family “it’s all over” and he will never be able to return to his job or his home.

    Batley Grammar School in West Yorkshire sent pupils home last week and issued an apology after the parents of Muslim children gathered at the gates to protest. The RS teacher was described as a “terrorist” in a letter from one community leader.

    His family has now accused the school’s head teacher, Gary Kibble, of “throwing him under a bus” by failing to fight his corner while he lives as a fugitive.

    The teacher’s father said: “My son keeps breaking down crying and says that it’s all over for him. He is worried that he and his family are all going to be killed.

    “He knows that he’s not going to be able to return to work or live in Batley. It’s just going to be too dangerous for him and his family.”

    The teacher, who lives with his partner and children, fears he will suffer the same fate as Samuel Paty, a teacher who was beheaded in Paris last year after showing his pupils a cartoon of Mohammed during a lesson on freedom of expression.

    His father told MailOnline: “Look what happened to the teacher in France who was killed for doing the same thing. Eventually they will get my son and he knows this. His whole world has been turned upside down. He’s devastated and crushed.

    “When he starts speaking, he just breaks down and cries. He’s become an emotional wreck.

    “He feels that everything is broken and to be honest, it’s hard to console him at the moment because that is the truth.”

    The teacher was suspended by Batley Grammar School, and the school apologised to parents for the “inappropriate” use of the cartoons, taken from the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, whose staff were attacked by terrorists in 2015.

    His father said a CCTV camera had been set up to monitor his son’s home after neighbours reported gangs of young men arriving at the property.

    The father said: “Even if he gets his job back, how can he possibly return to Batley Grammar School? It will be far too risky. And how will he be able to walk around the town with his kids, doing normal things knowing that he could be killed?

    “Sadly, his life here in Batley is over.”

    The teacher’s mother has also gone into hiding, the father said, explaining: “My wife is petrified that we’ll also be targeted and has become a bag of nerves since all this happened. She’s unable to stay in our home. This whole incident has had a devastating impact on us, and we are all scared about the situation we find ourselves in.

    “The school and my son have issued a full apology, and both have said that they won’t allow the same thing to happen again. That should be the end of the matter and my son should be allowed to get on with his life.”

    A petition in support of the teacher keeping his job has been signed by 64,000 people’

    Do we just look the other way?

    1. Unless and until the Muslim menace is challenged, and beaten back, this kind of episode will continue.

      We won’t, it won’t, and it will continue.

      1. But there has to be a tipping point somewhere, but probably not in our lifetimes.

        1. I think so, but I differ as to timing, this is going to happen within the next 10 years.
          Whether a Judeo-Christian Britain comes out of it is open to debate.

          4. I’ve said it before, but the built-in Siemens microwave at my last home used to display a message when it was finished. “End time”. I fear it was more prescient than Siemens could imagine…

      2. 330955+ up ticks,
        S,
        The instruction manual is active in taking oaths
        and halal on the parliamentary canteen menu.

        Following the voting pattern that put them in place it will still find support for the good of the tory ( ino) party.

        1. Is there any chance you could actually eat your bullshit and choke, either that or start to post a few original contributions?

          1. 330955+ up ticks.
            S,
            Heavens forbid NO, your likes have persecuted myself and other decent peoples for the last three decades at least , plus your nasty slip is showing and we can’t have that.

          4. Do what the rest of us do, Sos and just roll over his tedious repetitions.

            It’s a bit like, “Do Not Feed The Troll.”

    1. “Cancel culture is the Inquisition of the digital age”

      Thing is, nobody expected that.

  78. A Census 2021 official came to my house this afternoon. She was wanting to know why I hadn’t sent in my census form.
    I told her that I had sent it in before the Census day.
    She said that had happened to others who had completed and submitted the form early.
    Eventually we solved the problem when I dug out the letter which had the unique census code for my house. She typed the code in to her phone and the completed census was shown on her screen. It had not been sent. She pressed the send button on her phone and my form was submitted.
    She was helpful and polite and a pleasure to talk to..

    1. I wonder how many others there are like that.

      Many Nottlers appear to have completed theirs a while ago and submitted them, perhaps they are all in a similar pending file.

      1. I completed mine a few days early, having seen comments online that this was possible. Knowing the gummint’s propensity for screwing up anything IT, it made sense.

        1. I sent mine by snail mail – the runner with the cleft stick is probably still puffing his way to the Head Office.

    2. I filled in mine and my wife’s part then got my son to fill in his bits. After he had finished I put the code in to check it was complete but it was no longer there.

      1. Same happened to us exactly. I wasn’t certain it was sent but I could not log back into it with the code.

    3. Perhaps we’ll get a knock at the door then – we did ours online, early. But I think I got an acknowledgement so presumably they got it.

    1. To the last one, could be added – “when you see that the public sector swallows 50% of GDP in your country”

  80. Steady on, Calvin – you’ll be cancelled.

    Of course we should scrap the term BAME – it’s meaningless, especially for mixed-race Britons like myself

    The catch-all term hides a wealth of differences – not least when it forces mixed-race people to disregard their white heritage

    CALVIN ROBINSON

    The Government’s Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, set up in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests last year, will release its report later this week, but already the indications are that it intends to challenge the Left-wing consensus on race in the UK. One of its recommendations is said to be that the term BAME – Black and Minority Ethnic – should no longer be used. If that can be enforced, not only would we be rid of a term that is confusing and alienating, but one that is entirely unhelpful and counterproductive.

    On the most basic level, the idea that all non-white people can be lumped together as if they are one homogenous group is absurd and offensive. Just consider the statistics, released yesterday, on take-up for the Covid vaccines. For all the talk of “BAME” vaccine hesitancy, people from Indian backgrounds are almost as likely as white British people to have been inoculated. The lowest take-up is among those from black African backgrounds, but you wouldn’t know that if you examined the issue solely through the prism of “BAME”.

    Even looking at the first letter of the acronym, there are enormous discrepancies. I used to be an assistant principal of a school, and one of big questions in education is why children from black African families tend to do better than those from black Carribean families. How does it help to answer that question by lumping them together as “black pupils”, let alone BAME pupils?

    The term is inherently divisive, pitting white people against those from ethnic minority backgrounds. It implicitly supports the ideology of critical race theory – and the dangerous idea that some people are naturally at a disadvantage because of their skin colour, while others have “privilege” because of theirs. Not only is that a lazy way of analysing the different outcomes of different groups, it’s wrong, presenting a false narrative of race relations in the UK.

    Many ethnic minority people dislike having their specific backgrounds erased by the catch-all term BAME. And what of those of us who are mixed race? Proponents of BAME presumably think they are being helpful, but there is a growing population of people in the UK – those who are neither exclusively ethnic minority nor exclusively white, but somewhere in between – who do not fit neatly into their patronising top-down terminology. If ethnicity is linked with identity, labelling a mixed-race person BAME is essentially to force us to disregard half of our heritage, half of our culture, and half of our ethnicity.

    Ultimately, we need to move away from the idea of ethnicity being core to our identities. Grouping people by their immutable characteristics is a tool the hard-Left use to control us. We do not choose our immutable characteristics, so why must they define us? Our personality traits are not set in stone by accident of birth – we choose how we want to live our lives and the types of people we want to be, and we mustn’t let anyone tell us otherwise.

    It would be naive to suggest that we don’t have issues with racism or discrimination to resolve here in the UK. But on the whole, race relations in this country are fantastic. We should avoid dodgy terminologies that divide us unnecessarily and stop us from fixing the problems we do have.

    Calvin Robinson is a school governor and former assistant principal

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/03/29/course-should-scrap-term-bame-meaningless-especially-mixed/

    1. And coming up on the outside…

      Binning BAME is just the start – we need fundamental changes in the way we talk about race

      There needs to be a broader move away from racially homogenising terms such as black and Asian

      RAKIB EHSAN

      News that the UK Government will be advised by the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities to scrap the BAME label is a welcome development. The BAME acronym – Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic – has its roots in the idea of “political blackness” and was frequently used by many in anti-racist social movements of decades past. These included Left-wing organisations which sought to rally against racial discrimination in Britain by cultivating feelings of “pan-minority solidarity” and mobilising a “shared black resistance”. But even back then, there were dissenting voices in the anti-racism movement who argued that such efforts were harmful for non-black minorities and gave undue prominence to people of African-Caribbean origin.

      When one considers the complexities of modern-day Britain, it is abundantly clear that this umbrella term is not fit for purpose. It lumps together a collection of ethnic groups which differ in a number of ways – including socio-economic status, social integration, institutional trust, and democratic satisfaction.

      But for me, consigning BAME to the dustbin of history is not enough – there needs to be a broader move away from racially homogenising terms such as black and Asian.

      To give an example of how the term black masks notable ethnic differences, while black Africans traditionally show high levels of satisfaction with the British democratic system, black Caribbeans are one of the most dissatisfied ethnic groups in the UK. The most recent crime survey for England and Wales found that 76 per cent of black Africans had confidence in their local police force, but that this figure drops to 56 per cent for black Caribbeans. It is also worth noting that there are important differences surrounding family and faith – with black Africans more likely to hail from stable family structures and attach importance to their religious identity than their co-racial Caribbean counterparts.

      As someone of Bangladeshi and Indian origin, I can safely say the term Asian is redundant and unhelpful. Thanks to differing migratory backgrounds and educational resources, the better-integrated British Indians are generally financially better off than the Pakistani and Bangladeshi ethnic groups. In fact, while Indian-origin children are the least likely to live in a materially-deprived, low-income household, children of Pakistani and Bangladeshi heritage are the most likely. But we should also be wary of the merged “Pakistani-Bangladeshi” category I have seen on occasion – a range of educational metrics show that Bangladeshi-origin pupils are now outperforming their Pakistani-heritage peers in England. Granularity is key here.

      Grouping data into simplified black and Asian categories is not a satisfactory method for designing British social policy. And neither is it ideal from a social cohesion perspective. Anyone who was raised and lives in a “hyper-diverse” setting – such as my hometown of Luton – will tell you that some of the strongest social tensions are within, as well as between, black and Asian communities. This can be based on regional rivalries imported into the UK from other parts of the world or sectarian tensions rooted in religious affiliation.

      And Britain’s ethnic-minority people know this – a recent survey found that twice as many BAME people agree (40 per cent) than disagree (21 per cent) that there is more tension between Britain’s different minority communities, when compared with tensions between white and non-white groups.

      For post-Brexit Britain to build an effective social-policy infrastructure, binning BAME is the right move. Next, the differences within black and Asian categories must be recognised. This will help to identify existing problems in terms of economic stagnation, cultural barriers and broader social discord, in the name of fostering a more cohesive and satisfied society.

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/03/29/time-fundamental-change-way-talk-race-scrapping-bame-just-start/

      1. Owzabouta The Bames. under any set of Initials, Acronyms. Nicknames or Abbreviations work at fitting in with our ways

        If Whitey goes to live in Saudi Arabia, he will get short shrift if he wants tto Open a Church, Pub, Driving School for females etc

      2. Owzabouta The Bames. under any set of Initials, Acronyms. Nicknames or Abbreviations work at fitting in with our ways

        If Whitey goes to live in Saudi Arabia, he will get short shrift if he wants tto Open a Church, Pub, Driving School for females etc

      3. “This will help to identify existing problems in terms of economic stagnation, cultural barriers and broader social discord, in the name of
        fostering a more cohesive and satisfied society        ” And those who form the major part of grooming gangs?? If you find Britain so awful, even if you were born here, feel free to leave; Lord knows I think I might as this once pleasant land migrates into a 3rd world sh1t tip.

      4. “This will help to identify existing problems in terms of economic stagnation, cultural barriers and broader social discord, in the name of
        fostering a more cohesive and satisfied society        ” And those who form the major part of grooming gangs?? If you find Britain so awful, even if you were born here, feel free to leave; Lord knows I think I might as this once pleasant land migrates into a 3rd world sh1t tip.

      5. The truly dreadful aspect is that there was little racial discrimination in this country. It was brought about by th bad behaviour of black people. The Jamaicna yardiss, the Brixton riots, were groups that wanted something for nothing. Something more than what the British people had already given them for nothing.

          1. I have just read the under noted. I looked up Kelso Cochrane as I had never heard of him. I was starting secondary school and had my own problems in a society that was very sectarian.
            The article is written from a black perspective and the dismissal of “teddy boys” as “thugs” indicates a slightly skewed perspective. Cochrane was picked on because he was different. I and others were picked on for the same reason, although I was not black.
            The conflation of the Cochrane and Lawrence stories misrepresents the underlying reality that those of West Indian origin seem not to wish to be educated. For poor people, white or black, there are two possible routes out of poverty, education and sorting excellence. Education does not need to be academic, it can be as a tradesman, for example.
            In the late 60s/early 70s a chum of mine worked as a teacher in London at a school with predominantly black pupils. None in the classes he taught were much interested, they were compelled to be there. Many of the boys were big and “tough” being grown men in all but age.
            He said the girls were the worst as he could not communicate with them. They simply sat and ignored everything, and chewed gum. The boys he could handle as he was over six feet tall and well made. He went to Africa where he taught for many years. They wanted to learn.
            Simplistic analysis does not really give an understanding that will lead to a fix.
            The statistics given do not prove bias, but may suggest that blacks are more likely to be criminals. (Jamaica is not known to be a law-abiding and safe place.)
            Has there ever been a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural society that’s been harmonious while under a liberal government, anywhere? Have such societies only ever been functioned by being controlled by a strict regime that was totalitarian in nature whether monarchy, caliphate, republic or dictatorship?

            https://www.ourmigrationstory.org.uk/oms/murder-in-notting-hill

          2. It would be hard to argue that black people didn’t get a hard time of it when they first arrived in big numbers after WW2. The treatment of some of them was shameful.

          3. Yes. Was it ‘cos theys black? Or was it just because they were here at a time when there were housing shortages and tough times all round? Had they been poor whites from the cheap end of the USA would they have been treated differently?

      6. Why don’t we just do away with any distinguishing groups altogether? Why can’t we just be the public? All these different groups are one-issue people all jostling for a better or different advantage. There are too many single issue lobbyists. And after all there are groups within whites. Why do official forms insist on having these differences recorded?

        I have to say that I was not racist years ago but I get sick and tired of people bleating on about white supremacy and white privilege. If these others think we are so hateful why come and live here or continue to live here.

    2. My theory for scrapping the term BAME is that in the not-too-distant future is that BAMEs will become the majority, so it will become contradictory.

    1. Ironically, the whole Covid fiasco is Cancerous to our Way of Life now and in the years to come

  83. We are sitting here watching a programme about the late Jackie Charlton..

    Moh and I met him in 1969 . We rented a small cottage near Sherburn in Elmet when Moh was doing his initial flying training at RAF Church Fenton for nearly 6 months

    Jack used to come over to the farmer’s house where we rented the cottage next door , he knew the farmer , and they used to shoot pigeons , rabbits and pheasant .

    My eldest lad was a baby then , and he used to sit outside the cottage door in his cosy pram, with the chickens clucking around . Jack used to wander over and pat son no 1 on the head or tickle his cheeks and talk some wonderful chattery stuff to him, bonny lad and that sort of thing . Jack spoke to me so casually and nicely and I remember him saying , ” How are you doing missis , ( the chipmunk training aircraft used to do circuits over the area , ‘cos close to the airfield ) “Have you got the dinner on the table , looks like he’s going to land “, he had a wonderful chuckle and was very good looking , he wore his clothes well , and his hat!

    Jack was playing for Leeds in those days , I wish I had had the nerve to ask for his autograph , or rather I wish Moh had asked for it , but I don’t think it was the done thing really to ask for that sort of thing .

    He was a really nice bloke .

    1. When he was manager of my club, Sheffield Wednesday, in the late 1970s he won a promotion from the old third division. After the final home match he remained at the club with the players and staff to celebrate with a few drinks. A number of fans congregated outside chanting his name. He opened the doors, invited them inside, then sent someone to the local Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet to buy a dozen large buckets of fried chicken for the fans to enjoy, paid for out of his own pocket. He is still revered at the club as one of the best managers we ever had.

      1. That is a lovely story Grizzly .

        I am not a football fan, but it is so strange how I have met some delightful men .

        I was heading north on leave in my walking out QARNNS nurses uniform( looked similar to the WRENS) and I missed my train (had a travel pass) , was going to stay with relatives , and so I luckily caught the Pullman . The year was probably 1966 I think .

        I decided to have lunch on board , I found a table and excused myself politely , sat down opposite a pleasant looking chap with a very nice voice, train was crowded .. I minded my own business as one does 😏 and the chap started talking , my uniform was a talking point , with my badge etc , and something clicked in my head when he said he was a footballer.. Danny Blanchflower .. he was delightful company , and he even paid for my lunch . Excellent man , respectful and a wonderful sense of humour .

        If I have recounted this story before , forgive me.

        1. Irish captain of double winners (in 1961) Tottenham Hotspur (his brother, Jackie, was injured in the Munich air disaster on Feb 6, 1958).

          He famously declined to appear on This Is Your Life.

          2. He did not want any intrusion into his life. He was a very private individual and wished to keep it that way.

          3. From Wiki: On 6 February 1961, he also became the first person to turn down the invitation to appear on This Is Your Life, simply walking away from host Eamonn Andrews. Contrary to belief, this incident was not broadcast live on air, but was being recorded to be shown at the beginning of the live transmission. “I consider this programme to be an invasion of privacy”, he explained. “Nobody is going to press gang me into anything.”

        2. Do you remember his appearing in Shredded Wheat adverts During the ’60s with the punch line, “Pass the hot milk, please?”

      2. That reminds me of the late Ken Murta, lecturer and subsequently Professor of Architecture at Sheffield University.

        He entertained overseas visitors and took them to a precious restaurant.

        After the frugal ‘modern’ meal he realised his guests remained hungry and persuaded the chef to fry a large portion of chips for his guests which they greatly enjoyed.

    1. The rule is a good idea in principle; however, there are too many gormless knobheads on the road who would not pull over.

        1. You could not do that on Italian dual carriageways. Do they have motorways in Italy?

          Edit: A few years ago I found myself in a long line of traffic on a dual carriageway heading towards Siena from Poggiabonso.

          We found the delay was because a couple of attractive girls in an open top sports car in the outside lane were being chatted up by a couple of lothsarios in a Ferrari on the inside lane. They were travelling at about 20mph in order to maintain a conversation, totally oblivious to the jam forming behind them.

        1. I make a determined attempt each day, Paul, to increase my gorm (and my hap) levels.

          A gormful and hapful life is to be admired.

          1. “Lá breá breach a bhí ann; bhí an ghrian ag taitneamh sa spéir gheal ghorm …”

  87. 330955+ up ticks,

    They have gotta be joking,

    The only link this plot could have in regards to world wars is in starting a third.

    Exclusive: World leaders call for pandemic treaty
    Boris Johnson, Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel propose global accord akin to that forged after Second World War

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