Monday 3 February: The BBC revealed its contempt for the nation in its Brexit Day coverage

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/02/03/lettersthe-bbc-revealed-contempt-nation-brexit-day-coverage/

904 thoughts on “Monday 3 February: The BBC revealed its contempt for the nation in its Brexit Day coverage”

  1. Enough is enough – our politicians can no longer ignore Britain’s knife crime crisis. 3 FEBRUARY 2020.

    The findings make for grim reading. Survey after survey indicates that the nation increasingly feels that crime has spiralled out of control and that police need more powers at their disposal. Meanwhile, tragic headlines telling of yet another young life snubbed out on the streets of our towns and cities have become an almost daily occurrence.

    Morning everyone. They don’t need more powers at their disposal, they have more than enough now! They need to throw away their Rainbow Romper Suits, their Hate Speech Guide Books, their Lesbian Leaders. their PC Pc’s and do what Robert Peel invented them for!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/02/03/enough-enough-politicians-can-no-longer-ignore-britains-knife/

    1. I warned, 42 years ago (back in 1978), that the move to flood the top corridors of power in the police with social studies graduates would one day lead to the police being fully staffed by such feeble nonentities.

      Time for a change, back to proper policing by people who know their public. Common Sense must replace Common Purpose.

      This little girl (“Deputy Assistant Commissioner”, FFS), who should still be with mummy and playing with her dollies, cannot even speak English. Hospital is not pronounced ‘Hospitoo!’

    3. …I wonder how much front line policing and thieftaking figure in her career path??

      Morning, Rik. That was going to be my comment before I scrolled down and saw yours.
      Two ranks above Chief Super and three below the top job in the Met or one/two away from Chief Constable in a County force?

  4. The sale of petrol and diesel cars will be banned five years earlier

    than planned, under a climate change drive to be unveiled by Boris

    Johnson.

    The Government announced in 2017 that it would impose a ban on diesel

    and petrol cars from 2040 as part of an effort to tackle air

    pollution.

    However the Prime Minister is said to be speeding up the plans with a view to implementing the ban by 2035.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/02/02/sale-petrol-diesel-banned-five-years-earlier-boris-johnson-reveals/
    These people are barking mad,where is the extra generation capacity to come from??

        1. What the politicians have decided would be nearer to the mark. There doesn’t have to be an element of planning in a decision.

          Are we regressing to a point where the politicians are working towards restricting, not only our ability, but our right to move freely around the country? How long will a journey from the south coast to Carlisle take in an electric car, how many recharge stops? Will the charging stops be ‘smart’ and record your car’s identity so you can be tracked by the PTB?
          When I took holidays in Italy my 2.2 litre Honda Civic returned around 60 mpg on the autoroutes, that meant I could travel from N Essex to my destination with the need for only one fuel stop if I so desired.

          2. Will they demand that we have to have written permission from the Lord of Manor to leave the parish?

          3. Generating electricity from wind is an unreliable process.
            A bigger problem is getting it to homes.

            A new commercial site needed connection to a sub-station – say 350 yards.
            So far 5 weeks x 6 days and they are still at it. Multiply this by every street in the country needing re-wiring.

            Before Xmas a gas pressure valve failed – 8,000 homes were affected for some 3/4 days. Immediately after the gas being cut-off there were power cuts – the local electricity system could not cope with the extra fan heaters that people needed to keep at least 1 room in the house warmish. The weather was mild for the time of year – had it happened in the midst of high pressure over the area there would probably been wholesale powercuts.

            The UK cannot manage installing new electricity meters in 5 years – how will they re-wire the UK 20 years?

          5. Generating electricity from wind is an unreliable process.
            A bigger problem is getting it to homes.

            A new commercial site needed connection to a sub-station – say 350 yards.
            So far 5 weeks x 6 days and they are still at it. Multiply this by every street in the country needing re-wiring.

            Before Xmas a gas pressure valve failed – 8,000 homes were affected for some 3/4 days. Immediately after the gas being cut-off there were power cuts – the local electricity system could not cope with the extra fan heaters that people needed to keep at least 1 room in the house warmish. The weather was mild for the time of year – had it happened in the midst of high pressure over the area there would probably been wholesale powercuts.

            The UK cannot manage installing new electricity meters in 5 years – how will they re-wire the UK 20 years?

    3. Now dont ask difficult questions

      Do the sums as well on car sales and production capacity and those dates are simply impossible to meet. About 99% of vehicles currently sold are not electric

    4. With the inability for most people to replace their vehicle within 10 years, and the current high cost of electric cars this situation is unworkable.

      Then there’s the grid, which has a surplus capacity of aout 2-3%. Bung thousands of electric vehicles on the road and there won’t be the battery the state hopes for, but a massive drain overnight and in th evenings.

      Yes, mobility will be restricted. However, this is what ‘climate change’ was all about: control.

    6. Kindly address your entire pertinent question to Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace whose ground breaking civil disobedience and fake news four decades ago resulted in abandonment of Britain’s pioneering and safe (not excluding the Windscale Fire) nuclear power industry.

  6. Morning all

    SIR – Tony Abbott, the former Australian prime minister, described Brexit as a moment in geopolitics that ranks with the fall of the Soviet Union (Comment, February 1).

    Our Prime Minister addressed the nation to mark this momentous event and yet the national broadcaster refused to carry it (report, February 2). Does this betray the BBC’s contempt for Boris Johnson, for Brexit, or for our nation? Perhaps it’s all three.

    Martin Burgess

    Beckenham, Kent

    SIR – Why am I legally obliged to pay the BBC licence fee when it censors the news? I refer to the biggest news item in my lifetime: leaving the European Union, and the accompanying speech made by our elected leader. This was when we needed to hear from the person in charge. What a total disgrace.

    Paddy G Walker

    Sowerby Bridge, West Yorkshire

    1. SIR – As a retired BBC journalist, I am ashamed that my former employer emphasised its opposition to Brexit by not broadcasting the Prime Minister’s statement.

      This was a disgraceful abdication of news values and a demonstration of how completely out of touch the BBC is with its audience.

      Allan Muirhead

      Kirkby Lonsdale, Cumbria

      SIR – Just after 11pm on January 31, I flipped through the television channels in search of our Prime Minister’s address to the nation. Eventually, I found it on RT (Russia Today). What does this say?

      Patrick O’Donnell

      Wilton, Salisbury

      1. Bring back the Romanovs, but without the religious fervour. (Climate change/diversity, anyone?)
        They’re more akin than a Z List actress.

    2. Good old Martin. Political commentator extraordinaire, lovely man, and one of us too. (ex-NoTTLer).

      Well said, Sir.

      2. When you say “good old Martin” Grizzly, are you implying that he is about to celebrate his 98th birthday?

        :-))

  7. Morning again

    SIR – The former Director (Ports) of the UK Immigration Service, Peter Higgins (Letters, January 27), makes a good point when he says that migrants crossing the Channel in small, often overloaded boats should be returned immediately to their point of departure in France or Belgium.

    However, before being returned, and in order to frustrate criminal people traffickers, migrants must first be detected either at sea or, better still, before they launch their inflatable boats. In this respect the light “spotter” plane can make a valuable contribution, with its attributes of speed, height and reach.

    The coastline between Dunkirk and Boulogne could be visited and revisited every 30 minutes. Moreover, these aircraft and their crews, who are part of the UK’s voluntary community, are available now. All it needs is for HM Coastguard to follow the example of the United States Coast Guard and form an auxiliary air unit with volunteer coastguards being reimbursed to fly coastal patrols in their privately owned aircraft.

    The inflatable boat with an outboard engine is a low-tech target and a low-tech response is worthy of further consideration by the Home Office. Here in the North East we have three aircraft that fly along the coast on a regular basis.

    James A Cowan

    Durham

  8. SIR – Sheffield University has said that Shakespeare, William Blake and Virginia Woolf are on the curriculum due to racial bias (report, February 1). What other country in the world would train its students to treat its cultural icons with shame and suspicion?

    Nicholas Dobson

    Doncaster, South Yorkshire

  9. SIR – Pippa Bly (Letters, January 29) says that a recent television programme gave an unfairly negative impression of John Profumo.

    Several senior politicians have been caught in extra-marital affairs but had the decency to resign. A typical example is David Mellor.

    John Profumo not only brought down the Government by lying to the prime minister and the House of Commons, but also used his position of power to put pressure on the Home Office and the Metropolitan Police in his favour. This ruined the life of Christine Keeler and drove Stephen Ward to commit suicide. If this behaviour “nowadays would hardly raise an eyebrow” then I despair for the morality of this country.

    David Pope

    London SW6

  10. Bollywood and the Nigerian film industry have issued a scathing attack on themselves for their appalling racism and lack of diversity as not a single white actor or director wins an award
    Oh Wait…………………………

  11. Sounds sensible to me:

    SIR – Many lives could be saved on so-called “smart” motorways (Letters, January 30) by limiting the speed of traffic on the inside lane to 50mph.

    The critical factor in a typical smart-lane accident is the stopping distance of following traffic. At 80mph (the speed of many cars, even on the inside lane) it is 133 yards. At 70mph it is 105 yards, while at 50mph it is only 58 yards.

    If the cameras on the overhead gantries were set to award heavy fines to offenders, the number of accidents would plummet. The technology for this is already in place. It would cost nothing to implement and there will be people still alive next year who might otherwise have died.

    Peter Horrobin

    Preston, Lancashire

    1. Genius idea. Ensure that the middle lanes are clogged up with lorries overtaking at a net 5mph or slower.

      1. Even 50 mph would make little difference. A car or lorry slamming into a parked vehicle at 50 mph is a lot of force

        The entire idea of using the hard shoulder as an additional lane was flawed and highly dangerous. An additional problem is it stops the emergency service reaching accidents quickly. They would normally use the hard shoulder to get to the scene but with Smart motorways in many cases they cannot reach the scene so they have to close the opposite carriage way to allow the emergency service to get too the accident . That in turn increases the resulting congestion and it takes even longer to clear the motorway

          1. Yes they have to wait for 2 lanes to be closed ie the so called Smart Lane and the lane next to it and even that is not safe as many motorists ignore lane closures

        2. I read somewhere, probably when Jimmy Savile was doing “clunk click”, that most fatal accidents took place at quite low speeds, under 30 mph kind of thing.

          1. The salient fact is that you would not wish to be struck by a one ton motor vehicle at any speed.

          3. Not sure about fatal accidents but most accidents do take place at 30mph or less but that’s largely because most roads have a 30mph or less speed limit

          5. Most within a mile of their home. People are very careless when first getting in their car and particularity when leaving their home

    2. People don’t limit themselves to 70 MPH on the “normal” motorway, so why would they limit themselves to 50 on the hard shoulder?

  12. Police make terrorist raids on homes in London and Hertfordshire

    Whilst the police and media like to try to represent these things as mentally disturbed lone wolf attacks they appear not to be. There seems to be a growing web of undergrounds terrorist cells scattered around the UK

    STREATHAM terror attack investigators have raided a number of homes in London and Hertfordshire in the early hours of this morning after a recently released prisoner went on a stabbing rampage.

    The Metropolitan Police confirmed it had carried out two residential raids at properties in south London and Bishop’s Stortford, Hertfordshire. In a statement, the force explained how the operation to trace any information regarding the incident would continue. The statement said: “Detectives from the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command continue to carry out fast-time enquiries into the circumstances of the attack in Streatham High Road at approximately 2pm on Sunday, ,February 2.

  13. No wonder they cannot get any black actors at the Baftas

    They can’t find any that are extreme left wing, progressive, self entitled and brain dead enough to fit in

  14. Climate change is real, tangible and plain to see. Open your eyes and minds!

    Yesterday it was cloudy, windy and rainy! Today it is frosty and sunny!

    That is CLIMATE CHANGE, right in front of my eyes!

  15. The largest condom factory in the States burned down. President Trump was awakened at 4 am by the telephone.
    “Sorry to bother you at this hour, Sir, but there is an emergency! I’ve just received word that the Durex factory in Washington has burned to the ground. It is estimated that the entire USA supply of condoms will be used up by the end of the week.”
    Trump, ”Oh damn! The economy will never be able to cope with all those unwanted babies. We’ll be ruined. We’ll have to ship some in from Mexico.”
    Telephone voice says, “Bad idea… The Mexicans will have a field day with this one. We’ll be a laughing stock. What about the UK?”
    Trump, “Okay, I’ll call Boris and tell him we need five million condoms, ten inches long and three inches thick. That way, they’ll continue to respect us as Americans.”

    Three days later, a delighted President Trump ran out to open the first of the 10,000 boxes that had just arrived. He found it full of condoms, 10 inches long and 3 inches thick, exactly as requested… All coloured with Union Jacks with this writing on each one:
    Made in England. SIZE: Small

  16. Romanian cleaner, 47, who ‘helped heist gang steal £50m jewellery from Tamara Ecclestone’s £70m London home was ‘caught wearing 18ct diamond earrings worth £300,000’

    A cleaner charged over a £50million raid on Tamara Ecclestone’s home was wearing £300,000 diamond earrings when she was held at an airport, a court has heard.
    Maria Mester, 47, was allegedly wearing 18-carat diamond jewels identical to those stolen from the heiress when police swooped as she flew into the UK from Italy.
    The Romanian and her son Emil-Bogdan Savastru were charged with conspiracy to commit burglary over the heist at Miss Ecclestone’s £70million mansion on ‘Billionaires’ Row’ in Kensington, west London, before Christmas.

  18. Just a straw poll.

    How many of you, in 1964 and again in 1974, marched around the streets of the capital, waving banners along with hundreds of acolytes chanting:

    HAROLD WILSON: NOT MY PRIME MINISTER! …

    Again in 1976, screaming:

    JIM CALLAGHAN: NOT MY PRIME MINISTER! …

    And in 1997, 2001 and 2005, bellowing:

    TONY BLAIR: NOT MY PRIME MINISTER! …

    And—once more with feeling—in 2007, coughing:

    GORDON BROWN: NOT MY PRIME MINISTER!?

    Well? How many people did that?

    2. Not I , to busy with O levels (64), setting up home(74), becoming a father (76), supporting a family and paying a mortgage (97,01 and 05) and then retiring (07). 😇

    3. I was quite active myself in 1983 and 1987 getting across the message:

      MARGARET THATCHER: NOT MY PRIME MINISTER.

      I voted for her party in 1979. I voted for none of the parties led by the above gentlemen during these elections.

        1. When Michael and Neil were LoO, I was campaigning for a brace of Davids. I boycotted the 1992 election because I didn’t register, afraid I was of the knock on the door from the Poll Tax Bailiff.

          1. There was never any tax known as a “Poll Tax” (either created or implemented). That was just a vapid dream of Pinkoes.

            Mrs Thatcher wanted to introduce a sensible and viable Community Charge to replace the unworkable and outdated Rates system. It was fairer than the rates because everyone would have paid their fair share.

            It was thwarted because brain-dead Lefties wanted summat for nowt and they threw their teddies from their cots until they got what they wanted!

          2. Yes the community charge was the only occasion I felt I was paying a fair share, rather than over the odds, as a single person.

          3. I preferred Local Income Tax, which was much fairer and, if linked in with PAYE, would have been simple and cheap to administer. Any complexities caused by different rates of tax in different places would be easily handled with better IT that was improving all the time.

            I don’t like any tax that means that people cannot subsist on very little, if needs be. It pushes up the cost of living, either in the form of wages, or in welfare payments, or forcing people to give up their pensions and life savings in order to pay the tax, or resort to crime. It is wrong to penalise someone who chooses to live simply, just because they don’t have urban aspirations, or because they want to avoid getting into debt.

            Most of what I pay my £1000 in Council Tax on my little rural cottage I get nothing for. Most of it goes in child protection (i.e. shutting nasty people like me out of their lives), Equality & Diversity enforcement, adult “social care” meaning hand-outs for well-connected jihadis or lawyers’ fees as bailiffs raid the assets of old people, or unnecessary traffic schemes that benefit just the contractors.

          4. “Most of what I pay my £1000 in Council Tax on my little rural cottage I get nothing for.”

            Is that an admission that you regret being an “activist”and marching and campaigning against the much fairer Community Charge?

            All local government taxes—be it the Rates, the Community Charge or the Council Tax—are punitive per se. People who may mortgages or rents are (and always have been) expected to pay for services. The Council Tax, which you clearly hate, only came about because you (and your ilk) shouted too long and too loud about a much fairer system.

            Quid est istic clam mordax.

          5. Not a lot of difference between Council Tax and Community Charge. Both are unfair and regressive, and not levied on disposable liquid funds, but rather on property, where the collateral has to be covered by a forced sale if there are no liquid assets. Both were set far too high and expected to cover things elected councillors have no control over or remit to set policy. Statutory obligations adminstered by councils should come out of general taxation at Whitehall level, not out of either Council Tax or Community Charge.

            A much fairer system is Local Income Tax, but that was never considered. Maybe because, unlike the tax regime the councils were lumbered with, Income Tax is set on one’s capacity to pay, and is progressive and fair.

          9. A son has bought a property in Texas after renting for 5 years (Employer paid that) – the equivalent to Council Tax is 3.xx% of the band your house is in. The valuations are based on prices yonks ago so there is a discount applied to today’s sales price.

            He faces a bill of $30+K at the end of February – it covers a lot more than our Council services – failure to pay on time yields a fine of 33.33%.

            Makes Council Tax look a doddle.
            Mind you top rate of Income Tax is 30%.

  19. What’s with these ‘Deradicalisation Programmes’? The only programme proven to work is early martyrdom.

    2. One of the Prison Deradicalisation programme originators recently said that this expensive programme was not working. Prisoners were only pretending to be deradicalised. Deportation or much cheaper , less comfortable prisons should accommodate such prisoners for much longer sentences.

      1. ‘Morning, Clyde, those cheap prison should also hold all Mohammedans in solitary, for the whole of their sentence, to prevent any further radicalisation.

        Mind you, the more I see of this type of behaviour, Muslim or not, bring back capital punishment for ALL murders, birching for thuggishness between age 16 and 25 and castration (without anaesthetic) for rape.

    3. They don’t work Citroen. Their purpose is to reaasure the Indigenous population that it is just a minor cultural tiff and that something is being done to smooth it out!

  20. Economic boost for Boris as Brussels dealt massive blow

    Britain could get a massive boost from Nissan as part of a bold plan to win market shares from its rivals.

    The Japanese car manufacturer may invest further into Britain in the event of a hard Brexit.
    Nissan has drawn up plans to pull out of mainland Europe should a deal between the UK and EU lead to tariffs on car exports.

    he company believes it can account for a fifth of the entire car market in the UK.

    Sources told the Financial Times Nissan would close its Barcelona van facility and stop manufacturing in France
    .
    Part of the plans would be for Nissan to use its Sunderland plant to help it usurp competitors which would have to import to Britain, such as Ford and Volkswagen.
    Sources claimed Nissan can dramatically increase its current 4pc market share in the scenario.

    1. Not a surprise, but good news. even if merely a plan. It puts the pressure on the EU. I’m sure that the owners of Mercedes/BMW/Volkswagen will have words.

      1. It was always nonsense that car manufacturers would flee the UK. The basis of that claim was that 50% of the cars were exported to Europe but that still means 50% are sold in the UK. When you looked at the claim that 50% went to Europe you found that spin was being used

        They were indeed technically correct that 50% went to Europe. What they did not mention was a substantial number of that 50% just went to Rotterdam for onward shipment outside of Europe

      2. Remember that amongst the negotiations it was announced by the EU that in the event of Brexit Mercedes andBMW would refuse to send spares to UK.

        Gleefully reported by the BBC.

        1. Hmm. Chickens tend to come home to roost. As I have posted repetitively, there is nothing that we get from the EU that cannot get elsewhere.
          (When I worked for a company we were asked by a potential customer if we could cope with their business. We said that we could build a bigger factory. We did, we got the business.)
          The EU should not be surprised if olive growers in Argentina increased their acreage and start to supply the UK, for example.

  21. “Dry, hot summers could become ‘norm’ in Scotland”. This headline refers to the summer of 2018 when Scotland apparently had one or two warm days in one or two places. I did not notice. The weather here was the usual, mostly damp. I do remember warm summers decades ago when I ran about in short trousers.
    The most recent warm summer that I can recall was in the 1980s when we lived in Milton Keynes.
    I do not believe this forecast at all. The summer of 2019 was unrelentingly dreich.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-51347881

        1. NornIron ackshully, I posted this shot ( near the Giant’s Causeway ) as it’s latitude is close to that of Glasgow. We were lucky enough to have chosen the only balmy sub-tropical week N.I. had experienced
          in eons.

        2. NornIron ackshully, I posted this shot ( near the Giant’s Causeway ) as it’s latitude is close to that of Glasgow. We were lucky enough to have chosen the only balmy sub-tropical week N.I. had experienced
          in eons.

      2. A key factor on the East coast is the wind. It can cut like a knife in June and July, all the way from the Urals.

    3. 2018 summer in Norway was hot and dry. Poor harvest as a result.
      2019 summer in Norway was dreich. Poor harvest as a result.

        1. ‘Morning, Tom.

          Sod the grapes! The pineapple, mango, breadfruit, cocoa and coffee crops were devastated those years in Norway!

      2. Global warming in both cases. Easily explained (well, by them as believe in it, not me).

    4. They selectivity quote. So they find the hottest location on a particular day in Scotland

  22. Medical experts find Tunisian illegal immigrant who tried to avoid prison by claiming to be a CHILD after mugging victims near Harrods for luxury watches worth £100,000 is at least 21

    Why has he not just been deported ?

    A bearded illegal immigrant who mugged victims of watches worth nearly £100,000 tried to avoid prison by insisting he was still a child.
    But despite convincing police he was just 17, Bilal Sennousni has now been jailed for 18 months after a sceptical youth court judge brought in specialists to assess his physical appearance.
    They concluded the Tunisian thief was at least 21.

    Scotland Yard accepted he was a teenager as they could not find any birth records for Sennousni, who entered the UK illegally in June 2018.

    1. “Sennousni…entered the UK illegally in June 2018.” How has he survived? Has he been stealing since he arrived? Are illegal immigrants simply let loose, with no checks or records?

      2. Morning HP,
        Now the partial break out has been achieved maybe things will change but, we have the same parties and the same
        political deck of cads after a re-shuffle.
        With the same jubilation in the air as was on the 24/6/2016 &
        look what came of that.

    2. BJ,
      Was he not on the watch list, being illegal, when his time is up will he be allowed to stay with just a caution to watch it in the future.

  23. The Brexit-wreckers got off free,
    The UK’s coffers not.
    The stalling came at quite a price
    And they should pay the lot.

    Send ’em the bill.

    Amazing how those whose Brexit antics cost us billions in delays and uncertainty tend to be those doing the most shouting about a lack of funding for essential services.

    1. We MUST return to water cannon and baton rounds.
      If that fails rubber must be supplanted by lead!

      Civil war must be treated as such otherwise we all die!

      1. I’m not so pessimistic, Grizzly.

        As usual, the smallest minority make the loudest noise. Now that Blair and Co. have been put back in their box and people see Project Fear for what it was, I think things will settle down.

    2. And we’re still presumably paying our membership fees until at least the end of this year, plus £39bn we don’t owe to boot. If the Remoaners had just got behind Brexit we could have left cleanly on 29th March 2019 and be an independent country now. Not to mention that Theresa May agreed to ‘sequencing’ which meant we are only now starting to talk about trade deals, not three years ago. What an enormous waste of time and money these traitors have caused us!

      1. I agree. I can’t see how the last ten months have given us anything extra, other than a bigger bill for leaving.

        1. It’s like resigning from a job you hate then agreeing to work a 12-month notice period. Once you’ve decided to leave a bad relationship, it’s better just to go!

    3. E,
      They use the carborundum method but this time it did not come about, I would have like the result to have been
      a great deal more on the exit side but too many wanna be political rubber stampers.

    4. Good morning, Eddy

      How many of the Brexit Wreckers lose their jobs and pensions by their obstruction?

      Those of us who run our own businesses receive no pay at all unless we can sell the goods or services we offer.

      (Incidentally, I see that your post has been down ticked by a ‘Guest’. Why can we not identify who this guest is?)

      1. Morning Rastus.

        If there ever was a rail project needing more attention than HS2 it’s the lines on which the Gravy Train runs. It’s reckoned that the cost of unfunded future pensions, etc. put the current massive national debt in the shade.

        Our Viv Nicholson elite will be well out of it when the Gravy Train hits the buffers at speed and the younger generations get the bill.

  24. Read this last night – knocked me off my chair……

    The Song of the Dying Gunner AA1

    Oh mother my mouth is full of stars
    As cartridges in the tray
    My blood is a twin-branched scarlet tree
    And it runs all runs away.

    Oh ‘Cooks to the galley’ is sounded off
    And the lads are down in the mess
    But I lie down by the forrard gun
    With a bullet in my breast.

    Don’t send me a parcel at Christmas time
    Of socks and nutty and wine
    And don’t depend on a long weekend
    By the Great Western Railway line.

    Farewell, Aggie Weston, the Barracks at Guz,
    Hang my tiddley suit on the door.
    I’m sewn up neat in a canvas sheet
    And I shan’t be home no more.

    Charles Causley

    1. Morning E,
      Bet the gunner would be right proud of the nation now that he received the bullet for.

      2. One of our berks shoved the ‘EU flag projected on to Dover’s cliffs’ article from the independent.

        Makes you wonder if we could send all these europhiles off as an advance party to wreck other nations,

  25. The UK Crime Epidemic

    The police & our politicians seem paralyzed by fear and are unwilling to accept the true cause of this epidemic preferring instead to state that most crime is not committed by migrants. That in itself is true but that ignore the fact that about 80%% of the population are not migrants. When you look at the crime levels
    amongst migrants and the fact they make up less than 20% of the population a very different picture emerges. Dig into the crime types and another picture emerges. Dig in further and you can narrow it down to certain countries. You see no crime epidemic amongst Australians , Americans , Canadians , French or Germana etc

  28. Wonderful! just perfect! Brexit arguments are now down to a comma, and are reported in Aftenposten in Norway!
    https://www.aftenposten.no/verden/i/4qgGne/brexit-braak-blir-bare-bagateller-britisk-brudulje-om-brysomt-komma
    Translated, means “Brexit brouhaha is just a bagatelle – British fuss about a troublesome comma” – on the Brexit 50p piece
    HA! HA! HA! That’s all the Brexit arguments come down to? Not the biggest political upheaval in the UK since Alfred burned the cakes, but a COMMA??

    1. Well we try to take grammar seriously. How anyone can take the EU seriously is beyond me.

  30. COFFEE HOUSE – Lord Kerr’s ‘stupid’ Brexit jibe shows some Remainers have learned nothing
    Ross Clark – 2 February 2020 – 6:53 PM

    I have always loved the story of Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese solider who refused to believe the Second World War was over and stayed hiding in the Philippines until his former commanding officer was brought out of retirement and ordered him to surrender.

    That was in, 1974, 29 years after the end of hostilities. But I wouldn’t bet on the final Remainer holdouts giving up their struggle so quickly. If Lord Kerr of Kinlochard can be gently persuaded out from behind one of the red benches in the House of Lords before 2049 – when he’ll be 106 – I would consider it a triumph of negotiation. It would be an even greater wonder if Lords Adonis and Heseltine could be tempted out by the same date.

    Lord Kerr, in case you have forgotten, is the former diplomat who wrote article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty. Today, he claims he never expected any country to actually use it, and he doesn’t believe any other country will be so ‘stupid’ to use it again. Indeed, he claims, article 50 was only drawn up in the hope that it might allow the EU to get rid of a country which had fallen into dictatorship – as many feared Austria would with the rise of Jorg Haider. The possibility that a country might ever want to leave the EU, following a majority vote in a referendum, seems not to have occurred to the EU’s leaders. Lord Kerr’s only way of coping with what has happened seems to be to dismiss the British public as stupid.

    If Lord Kerr has any access to television, radio or the internet in his hideaway, surely, he has already seen what happens when you try to dismiss half the population as stupid. They tend to react not by saying ‘Oh, yes, I suppose we were a bit silly, weren’t we’, but by reaffirming their views whenever they have the opportunity to do so. At least Hillary Clinton only defamed a quarter of the US population by calling half of Trump’s supporters a ‘basket of deplorables’. Lord Kerr seems to think a full 52 percent of the UK population is stupid. We have already had three and a half years of this sort of thing, but alas, it doesn’t seem it is quite over yet. Indeed, I suspect the Remainer holdouts will still be fighting the 2016 referendum, still insisting that Brexit is the height of lunacy, if Britain now experiences what Japan did after the end of World War Two: three decades of economic miracle.

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

    Hammerklavier • 14 hours ago
    What makes me sick is just how many of these Remainiac scumbags have the prefix “Lord”.
    It gives them a voice and a supposed status that they simply should not have.

    Robin • 11 hours ago
    Here’s what the Independent have just had to say about the people who attended the Brexit bash in Parliament square.
    “A knuckle dragging carnival of the irredeemably stupid.”

    “Not quite midnight’s children but 11 o’clock’s toddlers.”

    “Roaring its pissy breath into the night air in phoney celebration of regaining an independence it had never lost”.

    These EU fanatics are still as sneering and as insulting as ever. No wonder they lost.

    1. We are at an “academic minimum” because the intelligence levels (and intellect) of the human species is decaying at an exponential rate.

      Brain rot is now at pandemic levels.

    3. It has become a real dithering old farts’ channel, this forum.

      Everything gets posted three times because geriatric posters can’t be arsed to check first!

        1. No, but they have time to write extensively. “Look before you leap” was always a good maxim.

          Nobody has time to peel vegetables and cook a proper meal any more. Time is too precious.

          No but they have plenty of time to queue at hamburger cafés, and gawp unblinking for hours at mobile phones.

          People have a warped set priorities these days.

          1. Few of the geriatrics here ” queue at hamburger cafés, and gawp unblinking for hours at mobile phones.”

            I certainly don’t. But I do have other things to attend to during the day, as I expect most of us do.

          2. Dear George, please do NOT judge us all with the rest of the snowflake generation.

            You have probably already down-loaded, from the link I left on this site for 3 days, my own cook-book which identifies, time and again, the proper preparation of a variety of vegetables (I refuse point-blank anything, absolutely anything, to do with that Northern disaster called ‘Mushy Peas’ and I abjure tripe as the work of the devil) but, otherwise I’m sure that I have a wide-ranging and knowledgeable handle on what makes good, tasty, and sustainable food.

            Please refrain from tarring us all with the same brush.

            My priorities remain as a desire for good, wholesome food, good enough to produce a sigh of contentment at the end of the meal.

            Incidentally – should anyone else want a copy of that cook-book. let me know on this site and I will, happily, put up the link again.

            Love you, people..

          3. Dear Tom. Mint sauce is the key. You need mint sauce on your hot mushy peas (home made ones are 300% better than the chemical-laden abominations offered commercially).

            Oh, and by the way, blame Paul. It was the Norwegian Vikings who introduced ærtsoppa (pea soup) to the British Isles on their pillaging ventures. This was the direct predecessor of mushy peas. Since both proper pea soup and mushy peas are made with soaked dried peas (and never fresh peas smashed to smithereens), it naturally follows that you cannot like one and hate the other. Am I right , or am I not wrong?

            What did the Vikings ever do for us? :•)

          4. What did the Vikings ever do for us?

            They introduced the Thursday luncheon abomination called pea soup and ham, together with traditional beet-root horrors that the Swedish armed forces and the railway canteens continue to poison their work-force with.

            Obviously the English northern heathens have continued this dastardly tradition, only calling it mushy peas instead – mosade ärtor in Swedish, if you must.

            Bleurgh!

          5. There is a hot mushy peas stall on Great Yarmouth market, where southerners queue up for a dish with mint sauce.

            All the southerners that I know from there have told me (using their strangulated vowels) that they were “bang on ,son!”

          6. Those strangulated vowels are in fact somewhat elongated. I had to learn to use that dialect when I first went to school in 1949 as their attitude to my use of the ,then, King’s English was to say, “Blaast bor, yew don’t harf tork posh don’t yew?”

            Going home and asking,”Wen caan Oi have moi dinner?” earned a smack round the ear and to be told, “In this house, you will speak the King’s English”

      3. I guess that too many people read by newest first and don’t see previous posts until they’ve managed to wade through over 300 posts – nothing geriatric about that but, in order to prevent that happening, (mostly) I always start with ‘Oldest first’ in order to read the posts in chronological order.

        1. Elsie Bloodaxe does that too, and she’s always chastising me for being errant in that regard.

  34. Does anyone else find it ironic that the islamic ideology
    is anti alcohol, yet our prisons are islamic breweries in regards to training terrorist ?

      1. M,
        Seeking to be the master brew & without doubt there are fools here that would help in the fermentation process as in minor
        criminal to terrorist.

  35. Graves reclaimed in Merthyr Tydfil as Welsh burial space reaches ‘crisis’

    How can this be true. THey keep telling us we have loads off space for endless numbers of migrants to come to the UK

        1. Too hot for them? Incidentally, my late mother hated hot weather so she demanded to be buried.

    2. In Switzerland, I’m told that lack of space means that 75 years after burial, the corpse is exhumed, all excess flesh is removed from the bones and the bones go into a charnel house together with those previously exhumed and the grave plot is used for another burial.

      It was a Roman Catholic priest who told me about this and he remarked that, “Come Judgement Day, there’s going to an awful rattle and racket going on, as everyone tries to sort themselves out before finally meeting their maker.”

  36. Fnac Darty faces £83m claim from Comet liquidators

    Comet went bust about 10 years ago

    French retailer Fnac Darty has confirmed that it is being sued by the liquidators of collapsed UK electrical chain Comet, which it used to own.
    Fnac Darty said it had received a claim of £83m, which it vigorously challenged. The firm said it would take appropriate measures to protect its interests.
    The French retailer, formerly known as Kesa, sold Comet for £2 in 2011 to Hailey Acquisitions, a year before it collapsed. As part of the deal, Kesa received financing of £115m, most of which the liquidators are now trying to recover.
    Geoff Carton-Kelly, liquidator to Comet, maintains that the £115m payment breached insolvency rules, as it meant Darty was paid before other creditors.

    1. How does one pronounce ‘Fnac’? Sounds like trying to say the ‘F’ word whilst sneezing…

  37. Will green energy become more expensive?

    Energy regulator Ofgem is asking power companies to invest in green energy. But will that affect prices?
    The watchdog’s new boss, Jonathan Brearley, said: “More investment does mean higher cost.”
    “But there are reasons to believe costs may come down in other ways,” he said.
    Firstly, returns paid to investors could fall. Meanwhile, improved technology is also likely to drive down costs, he argued.

      1. Yes it is in my view a nice scam for those involved i it with guaranteed profits and almost zero risk. They even get paid when the wind is not blowing

        Our supply is already very vulnerable as it is increasingly dependent on the wind blowing

        1. Britain’s energy supply is very vulnerable coz a load of billionaire globalist rattle snakes have conned the world !

    2. Once fossil fuels are banned there is no need to subsidise green technology. So bang goes one reason for investing in it.

        1. There is no way 10M electric vehicles can be produced in 10 years and as for Central heating there is no viable alternative to gas

          1. They were warned back in the 90s that the ‘dash for gas’ for electricity generation was a bad idea and that it would deplete the reserves at an unsustainable rate.

            They were warned that the most efficient use of our gas reserves was for domestic heating and cooking and that to use it the way they wanted to was inefficient and wasteful.

            They didn’t listen, now they are pretending that it’s all about saving the planet with windmills.

  38. China issues ‘urgent’ appeal for protective equipment. 3 February 2020.

    “What China urgently needs at present are medical masks, protective suits and safety goggles,” the foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said in a press briefing on Monday morning.

    China’s factories can produce 20 million masks a day, but panic over the virus has prompted people in the country of 1.4 billion to stock up on them, while frontline medical personnel have reported equipment shortages.

    We’re doomed!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/feb/03/coronavirus-live-updates-china-wuhan-outbreak-evacuations-flights-latest-news-death-toll-climbs-passing-sars?page=with:block-5e37d7618f086a28115a474a#block-5e37d7618f086a28115a474a

  39. God help us if people like this are in charge of preventing terrorism. It’s all about de-radicalisation and ‘austerity.’ Wasn’t the last London Bridge attacker a poster boy for a rehabilitation programme, and was actually at an event meant to celebrate the success of the programme, when he murdered the two people who had been trying to help him? The only way to keep us safe is to recognise that fanatics can never be ‘de-radicalised.’ Life imprisonment, deportation or capital punishment are the only ways to be sure.

    “Nazir Afzal, former chief crown prosecutor for the North West of England, has warned that terror attacks are ‘inevitable’ without effective de-radicalisation programmes in prisons. He cited Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Denmark ‘world renowned’ programmes the UK can learn from.

    Speaking on the BBC’s Today Programme, he said: “Let’s make this clear, the responsibility for what happened yesterday is entirely that of the criminal. He is, as we know, a narcissist who wanted to make a name for himself and I refuse to name him.

    “Could it have been prevented? Yes. [With] a longer sentence, people have been speaking about sentencing being the answer, we could have delayed this inevitable crime by a few months if we had given him that.

    “But there is a real problem with de-radicalisation and disengagement programmes. They have been largely underfunded, they are poorly executed. This is all down sadly to the impact of austerity on the probation service.”

      1. Exactly. Our institutions have been infiltrated at the highest levels by people who have no interest in the well-being of the indigenous British people.

    2. Deradicalisation – we really should be uprooting these weeds and sending them back whence they came.

  40. UK wildlife at risk due to regulatory gaps created by Brexit, says report

    What will they come up with next

    Hedgehogs, dragonflies and bees are among wildlife at risk due to big gaps in environmental protections following the UK’s departure from the EU, according to a new report.

    Commissioned by The Wildlife Trusts, The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) and WWF, the study claims the UK faces losing regulations preventing hedgerows being cut during the nesting season and vital buffer strips from being ploughed or sprayed with pesticides.

    Other regulations currently based in EU law, which safeguard ponds and protect carbon-locking bare soils from draining or blowing away, could also be lost, according to the report by the Institute of European Environmental Policy (IEEP).

    The agriculture bill, set to be debated in the House of Commons on Monday, will see payment for the amount of land farmed replaced by a “public money for public goods” system whereby land managers are paid to protect wildlife, the environment and carbon storage.

    While broadly welcomed by campaigners, they fear the new bill does not go far enough. As farmers lose direct payments under the common agricultural policy, critics say some EU regulations could also fall away.

    2. Nice conflation of farming subsidies and environmental protection. I seem to recall ‘set aside subsidies’ were originally because of over-production, and nothing to do with protecting wildlife.

    3. All it says is it could, it could, it could.

      Well, chicken-licken, we’ll wait until the sky falls in before making judgement. In the meantime, RSPB and WWF, STFU!

    4. All EU regulations and directives were enacted into UK law. So, why would they be deleted from UK law, just like that? Could, could, could. What bollux.

      1. Even the arch EU-phile Antoinette Sandbach admitted that we in the UK had to pull the EU up to our welfare standards. Why should we have lower standards now we’ve left? It doesn’t make sense.

  41. Enough is enough – our politicians can no longer ignore Britain’s knife crime crisis. 3 FEBRUARY 2020.

    The findings make for grim reading. Survey after survey indicates that the nation increasingly feels that crime has spiralled out of control and that police need more powers at their disposal. Meanwhile, tragic headlines telling of yet another young life snubbed out on the streets of our towns and cities have become an almost daily occurrence.

    Morning everyone. They don’t need more powers at their disposal, they have more than enough now! They need to throw away their Rainbow Romper Suits, their Hate Speech Guide Books, their Lesbian Leaders. their PC Pc’s and do what Robert Peel invented them for!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/02/03/enough-enough-politicians-can-no-longer-ignore-britains-knife/

    1. Morning Minty

      That includes the heir to the heir to the throne , who is WOKE beyond belief .. Stating the Bafta’s are not diverse enough.. Since when is artistic talent measured by the colour of one’s skin .

      Either you have talent or you haven’t .

      Basket ball players and the West indian cricket team spring to mind .. they are not diverse enough .. ha ha haa!

      1. Funny how coloured people are so good at some things, especially those of a physical nature. An example might be the USA 100m relay team. Not a white face in sight. How can they be so good at running when their ancestors apparently weren’t?

        1. I have always suspected that the politically incorrect answer would turn out to be that slaves were bred in much the same way as cattle, selecting the biggest strongest pairs to have offspring for the plantations.

          1. Quite possibly. On the other hand, the less resilient often died on the slave ships. Almost Darwinian.

          2. While we’re talking dirty, consider this: we know that tribal chiefs co-operated with the slave traders. Is it possible that they sold there most troublesome subjects down the river? Think on’t.

          3. https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2014/01/24/slave-auction-dcc32ffb3f21ad894892b5372d2ea8b48d30cfcf-s700-c85.jpg
            Slave auction in New Orleans, 1842, “Sale of Estates, Pictures and Slaves in the Rotunda, New Orleans.” The nation’s most active slave market was in New Orleans. Slaves who had been “sold down the river” were auctioned off to plantation owners.

            For generations, the phrase “sold down the river” has been used to signify a profound betrayal.

            “River” was a literal reference to the Mississippi or Ohio rivers. For much of the first half of the 19th century, Louisville, Ky., was one of the largest slave-trading marketplaces in the country. Slaves would be taken to Louisville to be “sold down the river” and transported to the cotton plantations in states further south. [Wiki]

          4. Knew that. I was a case of literary licence. (Or license, if you’re Gerard Batten.)

          5. If the plantation owners had realised the trouble they were storing up for future generations by importing black Africans into America, I suspect they would have decided that picking their own cotton was the wisest course to take..

          6. In the early 1970s Muhammad Ali fought for the heavyweight title against George Foreman. The fight was held in the African nation of Zaire; it was insensitively called the “rumble in the jungle.”

            Ali won the fight, and upon returning to the United States, he was asked by a reporter, “Champ, what did you think of Africa?” Ali replied, “Thank God my granddaddy got on that boat!”

            https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Muhammad_Ali

          1. I should have thought of that. I tend to suspect all professional athletes of being on something or other. On the other hand, too much detail can spoil attempts at humour?

      2. I was about to complain that English Premier League teams have too few white players.

          1. Over half the “English” players are black and have gun tattoos on their legs ….

          2. The gun tattoo, depending on which way it points, means they either shoot themselves in the foot or in the testicles.

    2. the police have the powers it is the will that is needed to carry them out. The leaders of the police are wet lefties and that is the problem.

    3. Well said. The first Monday after we have supposedly ‘got Brexit done’ we wake up to news of another Jihadi attack. Thank God these morons are fairly low-tech and it was not more serious than a stabbing.

      We expend enormous resources trying to monitor these lunatics, and yet still some of them get through to harm innocent people. We need a Guantanamo Bay, we need to deport them and their immediate families, we need to take off the PC-spectacles and accept that there is a problem with Islam that is not within other world religions. How many more of us need to die before the authorities take real action?

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/02/02/streatham-attack-shows-weakness-boris-johnsons-crackdown-terror/

      1. It doesn’t matter how many of us die. It will only matter when there is a major attack on some element of the political elites and they themselves feel the impact of the problem at a personal level.

        1. What with ‘deradicalisation’ programmes and ‘smart’ motorways, the PTB are treating the population as sacrifices to the Woke Juggernaut.

    1. Reminds me of Dan Dare (Nigel) and Digby (Boris) escaping the Mekon (the EU) in good old “Annie” (the Anastasia) in the EAGLE in the 1950s – as I am sure our Annie (aka Bill Thomas’ Pushy Nurse) would remember.

  43. Let’s hope the 9mm bullets that ended Sudesh Amman’s worthless life were dipped in pig fat. I’m not usually a heartless person but these people deserve nothing and shouldn’t be tolerated anywhere near our society.

    1. M,
      How did they arrive here ? what process was used to allow them access ?
      Are they given special dispensation via
      the submission, PCism, Appeasement
      unwritten rulings ?
      Surely peoples of a decent nature would not support / vote twice for parties that are known to import these types ?

    2. The problem with fatally neutralising a terrorist is that they are not able to suffer from their punishment.They probably even look forward to it in anticipation of their multi-virgin reward.

      1. I’d love to seen the disappointment on their faces as they face the fires of H ell. A sight to behold, no doubt.

      2. Who cares. WE will not have to pay to keep them in jail and they will not be able commit any more terrorist acts

    3. His mother is now claiming he was radicalized in prison, conveniently forgetting what he was in there for.

  44. Joaquin Phoenix’s attack on Baftas for ‘systemic racism’ applauded. 3 February 2020.

    “I don’t think anybody wants a handout or preferential treatment,” continued Phoenix. “People just want to be acknowledged and appreciated and respected for their work.

    “I’m ashamed to say that I’m part of the problem, because I’ve not ensured that the sets I’ve worked on are inclusive.

    He added: “We have to do the hard work to truly understand systemic racism. It is the obligation of the people who have created and benefit from the system of oppression to be the ones to dismantle it. So that’s on us.”

    Of course it is! And we should start by his handing over his undeserved BAFTA to the first Non-White he meets and then of course donating his remuneration for the movie to share among the millions of oppressed African Americans who are prevented from leaving the United States and returning to their Freedom Loving Homelands

    https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/feb/02/joaquin-phoenixs-attack-on-baftas-for-systemic-racism-meets-industry-wide-praise

    2. Not to mention the : Sioux, Ojibwa, Apache, Comanche, Hopi, Seminole, Cree, Crow, Cheyenne, Kiowa, Blackfoot, Mohawk, Mohican, Cherokee, Iroquois, Pawnee, Navajo, Shoshone, Choctaw and a few hundred other tribes who were murdered, raped and corralled into “reservations” as the invading hordes pillaged their country for their own use.

      What sayest thou on that, Joaquin?

  47. Afternoon all.

    Parrots

    An Elderly lady buys a pair of parrots, but cannot identify their sexes.
    She calls the shop, and the man there advises her to watch them carefully and all would become clear in time.

    She spends weeks staring at the cage and eventually catches them doing what comes naturally. To make sure she doesn’t get them mixed up again, she
    cuts out a ring from a piece of cardboard and puts it around the male parrot’s neck.

    A while later, the local priest visits the old lady.

    The male parrot takes one look at the father’s collar, wolf whistles, and says, “I see she caught YOU at it, too..

  49. See Greta’s been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize again.

    How many wars has she stopped?

      1. Giving Obama the Peace Prize for getting himself elected was insane.

        Obama not refusing it with words to the effect of “Let’s wait and see whether I deserve it”, was just shameful.

    3. Apparently, it is because climate change is definitely definitely going to cause wars, so she is stopping them by preaching the gospel according to St Greta. No argument then, nominations for 2021 next.

  51. DT Headline Stiry

    Duke of Cambridge hits out at Baftas’ lack of diversity

    Does Britain really need a ‘woke’ monarchy?

    Why do we not have several different categories of Bafta – one for each different race or creed? After all the Mayor of London wants blocks of flats reserved exclusively for Moslems so why not have special awards reserved for non-whites and special awards reserved for whites.

    1. One of the minor Royals is trying diversity for himself and it’s not working out too well, is it.

    2. After all the Mayor of London wants blocks of flats reserved for Moslems.

      Maybe not such a bad idea if the blocks are clad a la Grenfell Tower.

      ‘Morning, Richard.

      1. The start of dividing up London into Ghetos on a more formal basis

        1) European Sector
        2) Asian Sector
        3) Black Sector
        4) Muslim Sector

        Future sub sectors
        4a) Sunni
        4b) Shi’ite

    3. Given the disproportionate number of POC actors these days, perhaps he might a point. Alternatively, they might just be rubbish at acting. I give you Dr Whoke as an example.

  53. Emily Maitlis stalker jailed for 12th breach of restraining order. Mon 3 Feb 2020

    A “persistent and systematic” stalker who harassed Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis for more than 25 years has been jailed for three years after breaching a restraining order for the 12th time.

    Edward Vines sent two letters to the BBC journalist’s mother, saying he was in love with Maitlis and that he was distressed because she had ceased contact with him.

    This man needs help! Seeing her on Newsnight would be more than enough for any normal person!

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/feb/03/emily-maitlis-stalker-edward-vines-jailed-breach-restraining-order

      1. Well, the recently deceased Mr Amman got three years and was out in two, if briefly.

    2. This incorrigible stalker should be punished severely for the distress he has caused Ms. Maitlis.

      His white stick should be broken and his guide dog confiscated.

    3. She’s not that bad looking, still. Now if he had had a crush on Theresa May, it would be really worrying.

  55. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/85207aa92fe6be74a7a77229c84c318dddb6e3f91ec53856ba8284096fea1014.png

    Apropos the silly little girl [sorry: “Deputy Assistant Commissioner” (what pretentious titles London cops give themselves!)] spouting off in pidgin English about the scumbag Mussie who was deservedly shot to death. Here is another item that not only has been awarded a knighthood (FFS) to go with his appalling rank (Deputy Commissioner), but also cannot even be bothered to dress himself properly before appearing on the telly in front of No 10.

    When you engage dross, such as this, to ‘police’ the capital then you get all you deserve!

    1. This is terrific. A great change from the usual waffle and bullshit that we hear from all politicians.
      A few black holes if you look for them, but a brilliant speech just the same. It should be on prime time TV.

    3. A great speech delivered from the perfect venue, the Painted Hall at Greenwich. Clever reference to the painter Sir James Thornhill, Hogarth’s father in law (No Tiepolo).

  57. Meghan Markle is a victim of racism, sexism and misogyny, says John Bercow

    I have yet to find anyone that cn come up with any real example of this. Anyone up for the challenge ?. I think this is more Bercow is desperate for publicity

    John Bercow has said the Duchess of Sussex was subjected to “explicit and obnoxious racism”.
    The former speaker of the House of Commons explained he feels deeply sympathetic towards Meghan.
    “I want to say that I believe unequivocally that Meghan has been the victim of explicit and obnoxious racism,” he told the The Sunday Times Magazine
    “I am crystal clear about that. She has been subjected to racism, sexism and misogyny.”

    2. If the left say so, it must be true. Maybe over the next 5 years we can open these people up to scrutiny.

    3. Talking of bad behaviour, how’s the investigation into Bercow’s bullying of staff going?

    5. He’s very good at getting it all wrong and then insisting he’s right.

      A pimple on the arse of humanity or, alternatively, a bloody great haemorrhoid that continues to be an irritant.

      1. She seems to fall out with every one. Half her staff at the Palace left and she appears to have fallen out with her entire family bar her mother

      2. Abolutely. And it explains why Harry has to be taken down with her – no favourites to be seen in the marriage.

      3. ‘Afternoon, Anne, she’s a common little bitch, regardless of colour, race or creed. A thoroughly nasty little piece of work.

    1. Dreadful, try saying the same words about any ‘persecuted minority’ gathering and your door would be down quicker the TR’s.

      1. It would in any sane persons opinion be hate speech and indeed my initial reaction was one of shock and hurt but that quickly morphed into amusement.

      2. Morning KP,
        Methinks there is going to be a dire need for
        Tommy Atkins / Tommy Robinson’s types in the not to distance future.

    3. “… but the IQ of that place was raised genius level, as soon as Tom Pecker pissed off to beat his editor’s deadline.”

  59. Greater Anglia’s last diesel trains head west as new Stadlers complete takeover

    Greater Anglia has lost all but one of its fleet of diesel trains as more of its new Stadler-built bimode electric/diesel trains come into services across the region.

    The entire fleet of 30-year-old Class 156 two-car diesel units have now been transferred to its sister company East Midlands Railway for use on services in Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Lincolnshire.

    That leaves only one 20-year-old Turbostar diesel unit left in the region – and that is expected to be transferred to Wales by the end of the week.

    Over the last two weeks the fleet of bimodes, which have been causing problems since their introduction was delayed because of signalling problems at the start of December, has seen its reliability improve .

    For the next three weeks, fewer are needed because the Wherry Lines from Norwich to Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth are closed because new signals are being commissioned by Network Rail.

  60. UK and EU to unveil trade negotiation stances and discover how far apart they are

    Treasury against a Canada ++ deal claiming the UK will be 4.9% worse off/ Any one that try’s to claim that is just daft. .The treasury cannot forecast the UK economy one quarter ahead with any accuracy . Try to forecast 15 years ahead is just daft and they dont even know what the deal is and whilst 4.9% sounds a lot it is just 0.3% a year and the TReasury ruglarly asjust the UK figures by more than that each year

    The UK and European Union will discover the distance between their respective ambitions for a trade deal as both sides prepare to reveal their hand.
    Boris Johnson, in a speech in London on Monday, is due to announce he would rather collapse the talks and leave without any formal trade agreement if Brussels pushes for the UK to continue following the bloc’s rules after the transition period ends in 2021.

    The Prime Minister will push for a Canada-style free trade agreement but will warn European leaders that he is content to fallback to “Australia” type terms – a move that would see Britain revert to trading on bare bones World Trade Organisation (WTO) terms, but with tacked-on side deals to ensure areas such as aviation can continue to run smoothly.

    Mr Johnson favours a deal akin to Canada’s, despite Treasury analysis suggesting it would make Britain’s economy 4.9 per cent worse off by 2035.
    When Ottawa signed the agreement with the EU, it abolished 98 per cent of all duties and opened up fresh investment opportunities in the transport and financial services sectors for European firms.
    “We want a free trade agreement, similar to Canada’s but, in the very unlikely event that we do not succeed, then our trade will have to be based on our existing Withdrawal Agreement with the EU,” the PM is due to say.

  61. MOBO’s Racist

    The Non Black population are grossly underrepresented at the MOBO’s radical changes are need to ensure proper representation at these awards

    3. I am going to start a movement called MOWO (Music of White Origin) and have it played on a Top Of The Pops-style programme on the BBC at 7:00 p.m. on Saturdays.

      It will have such whitey standards as: Greensleeves, Bobby Shaftoe, The Lincolnshire Poacher, Dashing Away With The Smoothing Iron, Nellie Bly and many other traditional Honky singalong tunes that will get the post-Hip Hop generation pavanning and galliarding all around the ‘hood!

      1. A couple of weeks ago I went see the German countertenor Andreas Scholl in concert accompanied by his Israeli wife Tamar Halperin and performing such great German/Jewish standards as The Ash Grove, Greensleeves, The Sally Gardens and O Waly Waly. He also sings Blow the Wind Southerly (almost) as well as Kathleen Ferrier. It’s as well someone is keeping this music alive though?

        2. There’s the French guy – half slave, half French aristocrat, just avoided getting guiltonined during the French Revolution; name eludes me at the moment.

        3. There are a few, Scott Joplin, Samuel Coleridge Taylor, composer of Hiawatha, Chevalier de Saint-Georges aka The French Mozart, and whilst he was not a composer, many works of Pushkin have been set to music.

  62. ”Britain’s energy regulator unveils plan to rip out gas central heating from EVERY home and put 10 million electric vehicles on the road within 10 years

    Scheme to be built around plans for a 4-fold increase in wind farm electricity

    But the radical proposals will largely be paid for by families and businesses

    Electric vehicle role out could be £2billion a year or £30 on every household bill”

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7959041/Energy-regulator-Ofgem-announces-plans-10m-electric-vehicles-road-10-years.html

  63. COFFEE HOUSE – Nissan’s post-Brexit plan exposes the limits of Project Fear
    Ross Clark – 3 February 2020 – 12:13 PM

    Brexit voters are, of course, mostly fools who don’t know what is good for them – in contrast to all those Remain voters with their degrees and analytical skills. But none are so dim-witted as those in Sunderland who, like turkeys voting for Christmas, chose a course of action which will inevitably lead to them losing their jobs at the city’s Nissan plant.

    Or maybe not. It turns out that Sunderland’s Nissan workers might not be quite so stupid after all. It’s been revealed that the company is looking at a scenario in which it would close its EU plants and transfer production to Sunderland instead, raising its UK output from 350,000 to 400,000 vehicles a year. The Micra, which is currently manufactured in a Renault plant in France, would move to Britain, while its van plant near Barcelona would be closed.

    Nissan, quite reasonably, has been looking at what it would do in the event a trade deal fails. In common with other car manufacturers, the company currently relies on a complex supply chain which involves parts passing – tariff-free – backwards and forwards between Britain and the EU. It also exports a lot of its finished vehicles across borders. Such a business model faces disruption in the event of a failed trade deal – an outcome which, of course, neither the UK nor the EU wants.

    Arch-Remainers were not wrong to pick up on this as a potential cost of Brexit. But their error has been to assume that a hard Brexit would involve production draining away from Britain and towards the EU. What they ignore is that Britain is not just a producer of cars, it is a very large market for them, too. Indeed, German car-makers have called Britain ‘Treasure Island’, as it is a particularly profitable market.

    So what do you do if you currently make cars in Britain, some of which are sold here and some of which are sold in the EU? Do you shift production to the EU in order to avoid the tariffs you might have to pay on exports there? Or do you keep production in Britain, to avoid tariffs which would become payable on cars sold here? The advantage of doing the latter, as Nissan has twigged, is that the prices of many cars currently imported to Britain will rise if a trade deal fails. Cars made in Britain will therefore have a competitive advantage. Under Nissan’s scenario it would increase its share of the UK market from a current four per cent to as much as 20 per cent.

    For the moment, this is only a scenario, and one which Nissan officially denies – although to judge by the confidence with which the Financial Times reports the story this morning it has come from deep inside the company. But it is a reminder that the boot is not on the EU’s foot when it comes to trade negotiations, however much Michel Barnier might like to assert it is. In common with Britain, the EU has much to lose from a failed trade deal, not least because it has a large surplus in trade in goods with Britain. That is why our own government is right to ramp up the rhetoric in trade negotiations and assert that no deal is a serious possibility.

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

    I recall something about one of the first meetings that Treeza had after becoming PM was with senior Nissan Sunderland execs. It was rumoured that they extracted a £52?million ‘comfort letter’ from HMG (i.e. us, the taxpayers) covering the eventuality of her failing to get a no tariff trade agreement with the EU. It appears that Nissan now realise that Boris has ripped up that letter.

  64. Iceland recalls vegan products over fears they contain milk
    The supermarket has recalled six pizza, pasty and macaroni cheese products across the country because they may contain milk which is not mentioned on the labels.

    This means the products are a possible health risk for anyone with an allergy or intolerance to milk or milk constituents, the Food Standards Agency said.

    he products recalled are as follows:

    – No Cheese 2 No Cheese and Onion Pasties, 360g.

    – No Cheese Houmous Style Sauce Pizza, 284g.

    – No Cheese Mediterranean Garden Pizza, 382g.

    – No Cheese Italian Garden Pizza, 382g.

    – No Cheese Houmous Pizza, 284g.

    – No Cheese Macaroni Cheese, 350g.

      1. Quite how they are allowed to sell them who knows. A key part of a Pizza recipe is cheese

        1. The crud between my toes tastes like cheese and is most probably a nutritious and tasty substitute. Did you know you can make non-Vegan “real style” ale from ear wax?

      3. Non-alcoholic beer is a different kettle of fish. If I’m driving & a fancy a beer with lunch I’m quite happy to have an alcohol-free one.

      4. Decaffeinated coffee… Definitive proof of the existence of Satan.

        Just stick to drinking warm milk, the wuss who came up with that idea.

          1. That’s too easy – you just swap the packaging around: a No Lamb leg of lamb is a pizza, and a No Pizza pizza is a leg of lamb. They’ve been describing men and women thus for a while.

    3. The very fact that people choose to waste their money on buying this shit (instead of buying fresh food and cooking themselves) is yet more proof of the unstoppable deterioration of the intelligence of the human species.

      The planet should be renamed: Moronworld.

      1. They consist of a filler to bulk it up often Tofu and lots of artificial flavorings coloring’s and seasonings. Tofu is pretty much flavorless and was originally developed as an animal feed but proved to be to expensive but some bright spark though we can flog this to vegetarians an vegans

    5. It’s a moot point whether milk that’s gone off a little counts as cheese, but most people would be quite happy to eat it anyway. I am not a vegan, but buy and enjoy vegan products (such as bread) sometimes, and wouldn’t be too upset if sometimes it had a bit of milk in it. When I buy Matzos, I’d happily eat them from the blue box, even during Passover, and only strict Jews should feel minded to exchange them for the kosher product in the red box.

      I do wish they would invest in a few rolls of sticky labels “may contain milk products” and a few minutes of staff time to stick them on the offending packets. There would then be no need for a recall.

      1. I have had a couple of slices of vegan chocolate cake (it was the only chocolate cake available and I had to feed my habit!) and really, I much prefer the proper sort.

  65. I was at Parliament Square on Friday so didn’t follow the msm coverage in real time. On Saturday I was amazed that each news bulletin on LBC mentioned “hundreds” of people there. Then I caught up with the coverage of the previous evening: the live article in the DT also mentioned hundreds, the BBC1 special did (and was dire generally) etc. I watched my recording of the ITV special, which I found very good, intelligent, not blatantly biased, pleasant to watch. They showed more of the Parliament Square rally too. My conclusion is that they are as bas as each other, BBC, Sky, LBC… You wonder who tells them what to say. Why downplay the celebration to such a blatant extent?
    To help redress the balance, let’s retweet these:

    https://twitter.com/petenew100/status/1223896039729569797

    https://twitter.com/ellievarley13/status/1223403778923212800

    1. The BBC, LBC, Sky etc still think everyone believes what they say. The public have moved on considerably since those long forgotten days.

      1. Feb is usually the coldest month. 7.4 here at the moment, but blowy so it feels quite cold. The 16 day forecast currently shows no frosts here.

    3. The Daily Express has been predicting massive snow falls and plunging temperatures since at least November and today they’re claiming a ‘Snow WHITEOUT to hit Britain’ with threat to life. It’s only when the first line of the report is read that only ‘parts of the UK’ that may be affected.

      1. The DE does that all the time (well I assume they do, I haven’t looked at it for a long time) till they hit spring and then its drought and heatwaves. I’m surprised anyone bothers with the weather doom from these newspapers except for a laugh.

        1. I look every day to see just how extreme they are and then have a chuckle. They’ve taken crying wolf, weather wise, to a new level of idiocy.

  67. Stop Brexit man vows to never stop protesting outside Parliament

    An anti-Brexit campaigner known as Brexit man has vowed to continue protesting outside Parliament until the UK re-joins the EU.

    In the run-up to Brexit, Steve Bray, 51, has become notorious in Westminster for his “stop Brexit” chants and his interrupting politicians and broadcasters during live TV interviews and speeches since 2017.

    At 11pm on Friday, Britain officially left the EU. But Bray, from Port Talbot in Wales, says he is prepared for the “longest protest ever” and would “not give up” until the UK rejoined the European Union.

    Bray says he will remain outside Parliament for as long as it takes for the UK to rejoin – but only every Wednesday, when Prime Minister’s Questions is held.

    1. Is he getting unemplyed benefits? If so, he is obviously not available for work, and they should be stopped.

    2. Are there mass protests being arranged anywhere, where everyone can go on strike and refuse to pay ?

        1. Thanks, but that’s just a useless pressure group. I was thinking along the lines of Extinction Rebllion, but with a genuine cause.

          “Lots of older people have struggled throughout their working life to
          save a little extra for retirement. But that small pot of savings for a
          rainy day means they don’t qualify for means-tested benefits”
          It’s not just “lots of”. It’s “most”.

  69. More money won’t save the NHS. The health service needs some military-style discipline
    NORMAN TEBBIT – 3 FEBRUARY 2020 • 12:13PM

    Now we’re out of the EU, the Government must get on with dealing with controversial subjects

    Brexit! At last! I did indeed rejoice on Brexit Day last week, although I confess I was in bed before the actual moment we left the EU at eleven o’clock Friday night. Earlier I had opened a bottle of Forty Hall English sparkling wine (just as good, if not better than that Champagne stuff from the EU) to celebrate at supper time.

    What a day to celebrate!

    But now, whether we were Leavers or Remainers, let us all get on with what needs to be done next. There will be plenty of negotiations with the European Union to settle our future trading relationships and strengthen our common programmes of scientific research.

    Here at home, however, there are some very controversial decisions to be made.

    In making them, the Prime Minister has to remember that there are dangers in having a very large majority, since it makes it possible for dissidents to display their anger over controversial decisions such as Huawei or HS2 by voting against the Government without any risk of bringing it down.

    Such displays of disunity can only damage the Government’s public standing and divert attention from the weakness and disunity of the Labour Party.

    All the more reason for the Prime Minister to proclaim that it is now time to put Brexit into the history books and get on with solving the other political issues of today.

    Talking not only to fellow parliamentarians of all parties but members of the public too, I find that it is the NHS which is of greatest concern. It is not just about money. Certainly more is needed but just pouring in more without major reforms will not make things much better.

    We are living longer so there are more of us facing the problems of old age, not only the financial and physical problems but the mental and social ones, which are being exacerbated by a weakening of the family structure right across society.

    All too many of the hospitals facing those challenges are poorly organised and would benefit from the introduction of the disciplines taught to Army officers under training at Sandhurst.

    But first-line care on hospital wards depends on the quality of nursing staff. The practice of sending would-be nurses to university to gain a degree before facing the messy business of caring for seriously ill or dying patients in a hospital bed has led to a fall in standards of patient care. Too many of those entering nursing today complete their university training but then find they are ill-suited to giving intimate personal care and leave the profession. We should return to the former system of training would-be nurses in training hospitals. There, spells acquiring bedside skills alternated with desk-based technical and medical training.

    That, alongside Sandhurst style training for managers, and matrons as more like sergeant-majors, would transform our district hospitals.

    Then in all too many places the existing structure of General Practice is collapsing, putting excessive loads on hospital casualty units. Perhaps putting extra financial resources into general practices, equipping them with x-ray, and other medical diagnostic tools, would raise the prestige of GPs, improve patient service and ease the pressure on casualty units.

    Away from the challenges of the NHS, I will repeat my plea for the closure of our least effective universities to free more resources to finance a system of technical colleges akin to those in Germany. That would both improve the supply of skilled technicians so badly needed in commerce and industry and open well paid jobs to young people not best suited to academic or management careers.

    The collapse of Northern Rail emphasises that the structure of the railway industry, in which the ownership and management of the trains and rolling stock is split from that of the track, stations and signalling systems, is simply wrong. Now would be a good time for the Secretary of State, Grant Shapps, to go back to what had worked so well until the post-war Labour government nationalised the industry

    Boris Johnson’s special adviser, Dominic Cummings, is said to be attracted to unconventional thinking.

    Perhaps he should think about that. .

    2. Afternoon Z,
      As with smoking the lungs begin to clear / heal the day the smoker quits so it will be with the NHS in regards to nursing the world, finance is never going to be the answer.
      Shut the door.
      Same with overseas aid, emergencies
      only, not heartless, just common sense.

    3. I don’t know what the left has against Norman, he was one of the first to promote cycling among the working classes especially the unemployed going green over 30 years ahead of his time

      1. 1. He was a member of Thatcher’s government, therefore is wrong and/or evil

        2. He said people should get on their bikes and find a job. The Left expect jobs to be delivered to their doorsteps. Always have.

    1. That’s a decent head of hair he has there,
      looks more like Boris Johnson’s unruly Byronic mop 🙂

  71. Coronavirus: death toll passes Sars virus as dozens more die in Wuhan. Mon 3 Feb 2020 .

    Dozens more people have died in the city at the centre of China’s coronavirus outbreak, where hospitals are severely undersupplied and understaffed and residents have described increasingly desperate conditions.

    Dozens? What’s going on here? Where’s Cochrane? He’s our medico/troll whizz kid or have the PTB already sent him to Wuhan to guesstimate the threat?

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/03/coronavirus-dozens-more-deaths-chinese-province-centre-outbreak-hubei

    1. “Cochrane returns” is the medical expert you referred to the other day?! Ye gods… If they said that it became dark at the end of the day then, for the first time in my adult life, I would wait to see if the Sun actually set that evening.

      I would not trust their opinion on any subject. They have made definitive statements that are factually incorrect, then not backed down when they were completely wrong. They are so full of nonsense that their comments have made them one of the few names that I skip past without reading them.

      1. Afternoon Meredith. Cochrane is pretty good on Medical Matters but is as Gormless as a Loon on anything else. He is of course led astray by his allegiance to the PTB and the Hippocratic Oath which forces him into a schizoid denial of reality!

    2. The death toll in mainland China is indeed now higher than the Sars virus. The worldwide figure hasn’t caught up – yet. This is all pretty much in line with the mathematical predictions, which forecast an exponential rise in infections and in deaths.

      For the mathematically inclined, here is the paper: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.23.20018549v2

      Anecdotally, the second author of this paper is our son’s girlfriend who is currently doing a PhD on mathematical prediction models on how epidemics spread. She has also told us that China, being China, is probably under-reporting the number of infections, so there is a certain amount of educated guess-work going on as well.

      1. Thank you for that Caroline. I’m pretty sure we are being sold a pup here but my expertise lies outside epidemiology!

          2. You could well be right. I don’t think Jess would contradict you very much. The only slightly reassuring thing is that although the infection rate is high, the mortality rate is relatively low (compared with, for example, a normal flu epidemic) – and there are enough cases outside China to verify this properly, without relying on Chinese figures. The other thing is that a well-organised quarantine system should prevent infections – and that is where China reacted too little and too late.

          3. I read elsewhere that the deaths figure in China may be being grossly under-reported, with bodies being sent for cremation without evidence over whether or not the cause was CV related.

          4. Would not be surprised – they are probably totally overwhelmed. When someone dies, they probably do cremate them quickly as there’s no-one available to do an autopsy, and nowhere to keep all the bodies.

          5. The other point is that the deaths seem to be cases with underlying medical conditions, such as compromised immune systems. It’s the followup pneumonia that does the damage.

  73. BBC World at One:

    “and here is what the Prime Minister said in his Jan 31 speech” – “spoken by an actor”

    Dear Boris Johnson Government this broadcaster is asking to be put down … just do it.

  74. BRUSSELS negotiator Michel Barnier today insisted Britain must sacrifice its fishing waters in order to strike a trade deal with the EU.

    Presenting his draft negotiating mandate, the Frenchman put a direct link between a free-trade agreement and continued reciprocal access for European trawlermen. He said: “Our free-trade agreement must include an agreement on fisheries. “This agreement should provide reciprocal access to markets and waters, which contains quota shares.”

    Daily Express – Barnier’s opening gambit on trade deal

    What a surprise, NOT!

    For all those Remain trolls who repeatedly insisted that UK fisheries weren’t worth saving: how do they square the circle on the EU’s continued demands that we let them retain access? “Quota shares,” has a ring of control/alignment in my book. Now we’ll see what Johnson is made of.

    1. WE will probably agree to allowing limited EU access to our fishing grounds on a licence basis and us agree quotas and areas where they can fish and the annual quotas they can catch

      1. Then we’ve lost.
        I want to see French and Spanish fishing boats being cut up, and French and Spanish fishermen becoming unemployed. Our boats were cut up, – perfectly good boats (“decommissioning”) – and our fisherman lost their jobs, as did our workers in fish processing factories that closed down in consequence.
        Why should we continue our sacrifice for them? Go and look at the prosperity in French fishing harbours, and then look at Fraserburgh and Lossiemouth.

        1. IT is normal to grant some limited access to fishing waters. Most countries around the world do it. WE do not even have the fishing fleet to fully exploit our fishing grounds at present

          1. Countries such as Norway have this 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone in place, they also have agreements with a number of countries, and with the EU to allow fishing in those waters.

          2. Who cares? Did Norway put hundreds of fishermen on the dole? Did Norwegian fishing families lose their livelihoods. Were Norwegian fishing boats cut up and burned? I never heard of it. Please enlighten me.

          3. Norway, while not in the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), has a separate bilateral fishing agreement with the EU. The main condition of that agreement is that Norway has to allow EU trawlers to fish in Norwegian waters, in order to avoid paying tariffs on the majority of its fish exports to the EU.

          4. There are more controls than that, particularly about how to fish, and how much is caught.

          6. Norway is very jealous of the fish, and have tighter controls than the CFP. Much cod can only be caught on line, for example. Not many trawlers do that.

          7. Then the time taken to rebuild the fleet will allow stocks to recover. Exploiting our waters is what the EU nations have been doing since Heath signed away our birthright. Time to have that dish served cold on the table.

          9. The French and Spanish et al will have a few spare vessels we could acquire at knock down prices

          12. “WE do not even have the fishing fleet to fully exploit our fishing grounds at present.”
            That comment, Bill, is on a par with the comment that, ” As we have just had sex, I cannot marry you, dear, because you are not a virgin.”
            We have boatyards that can build fishing boats. We have fishermen to man them.
            We don’t need to grant access. We should catch, process and sell our fish ourselves. We used to.

          13. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) provides for Exclusive Economic fishing zones, which are rigorously enforced world-wide. The reason that non-UK EU trawlers can access UK EEZ waters is because Ted Heath handed them over to sweeten up the EEC when the UK applied for membership.

          1. “Fish Town” currently on BBC iplayer covers Peterhead (& Fraserburgh).

            A small trawler built for the North Sea comes in at £2+million. Fishing gear another £500K.
            Very few new boats around, very few boatyards to build new boats & it takes many years to train crews & skippers ………………. left alone there should be loads of fish in 10-20 years time.

          2. I’m very aware, Bairn, of that North Coast dependency on fish as I lived in Banff for several years around 1985 on.

            We would get great fresh fish landed at Whitehills and the Fish and Chips (the fish supper) in Turriff was phenomenal.

      1. Tony, the Brussels’ cabal contains any number of control freaks, that is their raison d’être – a French phrase that sums them up beautifully. They maintain their demands that we agree to whatever controls they want to apply; level playing field, their field and their idea of level; alignment across many sectors of our economy, their rules and levels of tax etc. They just cannot believe that we want to go our own way and they are trying to tie us down to their rules and regulations to keep us from becoming competitive. Johnson has to cut the umbilical that has fed the EU with our wealth and businesses being hived off/closed down to the benefit of other EU countries.

  75. Kahn, you revolting toad, how dare you lecture the Government or the police over crime and terrorism.
    Under your watch, London has turned into a wild west; where criminals, gangsters, disruptive green momentum anarchists, terrorists,and hate preachers can roam freely while you encourage the police to be more concerned with lauding “diversity” and persuing the non-crimes of hurting peoples’ feelings or criticising Islam.

    https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/mayor-of-london-sadiq-khan-radicalisation-prison-a4352306.html

      1. His treatment of the POTUS is a disgrace to Britain.

        Even if one despises Trump and all he stands for it isn’t the man, it’s his Office. The approval to fly that childish blimp was misfeasance in office and was absolutely typical of the creep.

        I despise Obama, but I would still have shown him the respect he was due as POTUS.

        1. “So Mr Khan, do you have any other distinguishing features, other than the extraordinary fact that your head is only slightly higher than the top of my car door?”

  76. Terrorist Sudesh Amman asked his mother for his favourite mutton biryani meal just hours before he was shot down by police in London, she revealed today.

    Haleema Khan, 41, described her son as a ‘lovely boy’ as she fought back tears today while telling MailOnline how she felt her son was radicalised at HMP Belmarsh.

    Amman lived with Mrs Khan and his five younger brothers in Harrow, North West London, before he was jailed for terror offences at the Old Bailey in December 2018.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7960603/Streatham-terrorist-Sudesh-Ammans-mother-disgusted-rampage.html?ico=pushly-notifcation-small

    6 sons…! Why are they having such huge families , and who is paying ..

    1. He was radicalised at Belmarsh was he?

      Makes you wonder what he was doing in Belmarsh in the first place, maybe just delivering pizzas and the door accidentally slammed behind him?

      Oh, yes, that’s right, he was in there for having bomb-making instructions and other stuff. Nothing radical about that is there?

    2. How could he have been radicalised in the clink when he was sent their because he was already radicalised ?
      (Six kids. Where is the dad?).

    6. Their “lovely boy” laughed and sneered and waved at his family upon receiving his scandalously inadequate sentence (should have been 10 years minimum, then indeterminate release).

      FIVE younger brothers – these terrorist families certainly know how to breed.

  77. The muslim terrorist in Streatham was shot dead by plains clothes police wearing jeans and hoodies, apparently. The armed anti-terror police arrived mob-handed some time later.
    This almost certainly means that the plain clothes officers were on the scene at the time of the attack, possibly before. They may have been following Mr Amman.
    According to the BBC Mr Amman”had been released from prison about a week ago after serving half of a sentence for terror offences, and was under police surveillance”.
    Why did they not act more quickly? Was Mr Amman allowed to carry out the attack?

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51356447

    1. Can’t shoot people just in case they might stab other people, dontcha know. There would be cries of ‘extra-judicial execution/state murder.

      1. So what is the official number that the Met requires to have been stabbed or blown up or shot before they can take action, I wonder?

    2. Why are we continuing to import people like that.

      Did he and his family arrive in Britain for what reason ?

      All these youth children we are allowing into Britain could also eventually result in many more incidents like this.

      I have had enough of these surly faced foreigners .. Their mindsets are frightening .. they want to harm us and bully us …

      This is yet another shocking attack on the stability of our national well being .

    3. Discharging a firearm in a street with pedestrians is fraught with the opportunity to shoot innocent passers-by, either directly or by over-penetration of the bullet. Add that he was moving, likely erratically, and the target becomes much more difficult. We also don’t know how far back these officers were – if they wanted to remain undercover, then they will have been a fair distance away. By the time they see what he’s up to when he came out of the shop, there will not have been much time to take action – and avoid shooting passers-by.
      Not an easy situation.

    4. “Why did they not act more quickly? Was Mr Amman allowed to carry out the attack?”

      Is that a rhetorical question, Horace? Or is it just another noisy bleat from a layman, sitting in his armchair, who has never had any personal experience of being a police officer at the sharp end but just “knows” he would do better?

      1. Rhetorical, thanks. The key question is “were they on the spot, at the time?”
        Or were three armed, officers wearing plain clothes, jeans and hoodies, just happening to pass by?
        That is not “bleating”. It is a question relating to the circumstances. Or is that not allowed by anyone except serving officers? (We know how that works out don’t we? Collusion on the story, and anonymous witnesses as in the Charles de Menenez killing.)

        1. You cannot judge all police operations on one diabolical event, overseen by someone who should never have been permitted to hold any form of office.

          What if they had acted sooner? Should they have shot the man before he committed a crime (and ended up on a murder charge themselves)? Or should they have shot out, willy-nilly, and perhaps caused some collateral damage by taking out Grannie Hopkinson and her 10-year old granddaughter, who just happened to get in the line of fire whilst out buying Smarties?

          3. That is not a reasonable argument. It is whataboutery. My comment is based on current information and I have referred to it. My comment is to ask questions.
            I do not judge all police operations on one event. Nor am I judging this one. I am asking questions.
            (But, you say, “Should they have shot the man before he committed a crime (and ended up on a murder charge themselves)? ” Relate that to Charles de Menenez who had not committed a crime and no murder charges were brought.)
            Also, if the police were close on the heels of Mr Amman they already knew that he was a convicted terrorist and it would certainly be prudent to shoot sooner rather than later. Are police trained to shoot willy-nilly, or to identify the target? My understanding is that it is the latter and that the target is the centre of the torso.

            PS I happen to know Mrs Hopkinson Snr. and she would have kicked a terrorist in a delicate spot.

          4. My argument is very reasonable. From what you have just said, I extrapolate that you would have shot Amman before he has committed any crime and in order to prevent him from committing one.

            “Also, if the police were close on the heels of Mr Amman they already knew that he was a convicted terrorist and it would certainly be prudent to shoot sooner rather than later.”

            The police may well possess a power of arrest to detain someone whom they have a reasonable suspicion that they are about to commit an arrestable offence. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your viewpoint) this power does not extend to killing someone in cold blood.

      2. Hey, Mr ex-copper, you’re in a very judgemental mood today. I’m sure Horace isn’t the only one asking that or similar questions.

        1. I’m on fire today, Tom lad.

          Sometimes I let the utter drivel that I read on here get to me. Today is one of those days.

    5. Already some clown has suggested that he became aware he was being followed by police and that that was what caused the attack.

      2. Just happened to be carrying a blade and wearing a fake suicide vest??
        As you do……………………..

        1. It appears he walked into a shop and picked up the knife.

          But the fact he appears to have been wearing a fake suicide vest suggests something was planned.

    6. As the plain clothes police were armed, it suggests that those who released Amman (or had to deal with the results) had doubts about that decision.
      In which case, why was it made?

      1. Unfortunately Anne there is no decision to be taken. The ‘law’ says prisoners will spend 50% of their time behind bars and the other 50% on licence under supervision.

    1. I switched on the car radio a short while ago, and the first item I hear in the news was the terrorist’s mum saying what a nice quiet boy he was.
      (I hope her other five kids were loud).

        1. TB,
          The sooner the peoples realise that
          islamic ideology is a form of hydraism cut
          one terrorist down two will grow in place, what is the family still doing in this country ?
          planning, plotting
          what ?

        2. Well if they all follow in their brother’s footsteps Heaven may run short of virgins 6×72 = 432 required.

          1. I thought they had been getting their virgins on tick in this country before blowing themselves up.

          2. S,
            How many innocents have to die to keep the supply chain moving ?
            How long will the odious fodder
            submission, PCism,Appeasement have to be swallowed
            before enough is considered to be enough ?

          3. Judging from the debate currently underway in the HoC, this is not going to end anytime soon.

          4. S,
            The hoc is still stuffed with the very same political creatures that made this Country what it is today, and to return to what it was prior to the big scam is going to be one hell of a job.
            After a culling to calm the peoples we are still dealing with the
            very same politico’s, the same pro eu rubber stampers, and many of the peoples are “hoping” for change.
            Currently, hope replaces certainty & that is why we will continue to be in the sh!te as a country, my personal view.

    1. ‘What a good job it was that they married each other and only made two people unhappy’

  80. Let us hope so…

    Trade talks between the UK and the EU are heading to an early bust up

    The Spectator

    James Forsyth, 1 February 2020

    Britain is no longer a member of the EU. Attention now shifts to what kind of trade agreement the EU and the UK are going to come to. I say in The Sun this morning, that the two sides are currently far apart–as we’ll see when the two sides set out their positions on Monday–and the negotiations are heading for a mighty smash.

    The UK thinks that the EU doesn’t realise how much has changed over the last few months. They fear that the EU has not clocked that this will be a very different negotiation because Boris Johnson has a majority in parliament and wants a free trade deal, and nothing more.

    One of those involved in preparing the government for the trade negotiations with the EU says that Michel Barnier’s comments in his various recent appearance indicate that he still thinks he can get the UK to sign up to various things–such as a role for the European Court of Justice–that it simply won’t. If this doesn’t change, then the talks are going to blow up almost as soon as they start in March.

    Downing Street’s view is that they ‘won’t be asking the EU for anything that they haven’t done before’. So, there’s no justification for the EU demanding that the UK align with EU rules on state aid, environmental standards or anything else. If the EU try and insist on that, there just won’t be a trade agreement.

    This government accepts that there’ll be ‘friction’ at the border, that trade with the EU will not carry on as seamlessly as before once we have left. Once you have accepted that, as one well informed government insider points out, there is not actually that much difference between a simple free trade deal and trading with the EU on World Trade Organisation terms. This means that the price for Boris Johnson of walking away from the talks is not that high.

    The danger is that the EU thinks that Boris Johnson will, ultimately, take what they offer as Theresa May so often did. So, they won’t realise he means what he says, until it is too late. As one influential government source warns, ‘Even if there was perfect mutual comprehension there would still be a moment of profound difficulty’.

    In a way, the blow up between the UK and the EU cannot come soon enough. It needs to happen before the two sides can start having a more realistic negotiation.

    https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2020/02/trade-talks-between-the-uk-and-the-eu-are-heading-to-an-early-bust-up/

    1. It’s the arrogance on display when the EU apparatchiks attempt to tell us what we must acquiesce to before they will deign to offer us some scraps from their table that really annoys me. They remain in the mindset they formed when May surrendered at every demand. Johnson needs to stand up the bullying and in doing so rebuild the UK’s international reputation that May tried so hard to destroy.

  81. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7960603/Streatham-terrorist-Sudesh-Ammans-mother-disgusted-rampage.html

    ‘Disgusted’ mother of Streatham terrorist reveals how she found out he was dead when she saw his name on TV – and how he asked for his favourite mutton biryani just hours before launching attack

    A pretty squalid story in the DM about the terrorist’s mother saying that her son was a ‘lovely boy’ and that he had been radicalised when he was in prison.

    Of course he was radicalised before going to prison – indeed he went to prison because he was already radicalised – but she does have a point. Perhaps all those in prison with extreme Moslem views should be put in solitary confinement and allowed no contact at all with other Moslems and always compelled to serve their full terms of imprisonment.

    1. Expect he loved his Gran, too, and was kind to pussy-cats.
      Interesting how the police response to stabby has changed – the use of 9mm means that there’s a quick route to Allah and the virgins by stabbing people.
      I’m glad that the response has turned out to be robust. Is this Boris’ doing?

      1. 9mm should be standard response to all major criminals.

        We are in the parlous state we are in today as a direct result of kowtowing to the bleeding hearts’ brigade.

        To capitulate is to die.

      2. Afternoon O,
        His gran currently should be viewing future proceeding on this issue from outside of the UK borders.
        “Is this boris doings” would that be the same boris AKA the turkish delight & amnesties R me, that one.

      4. A dum-dum to the stomach would be good.

        He would have something to scream about before he met his 92-year-old virgins all panting for a good sh*g.

    2. I daresay they have a meeting room and imam set aside to discuss religious matters along with all their other religious needs. Don’t expect you would find a Gideon bible in a Saudi jail.

          1. Bacon “butties”? Ugh!

            Butter should be kept well away from a bacon sandwich! Bacon fat and HP sauce are permitted, but butter is a no no. :•(

          11. Sorry, George, whatever the reply it just shews as a series of 3 little squares with bolder top and bottom but that’s probably because my ancient Microsoft system cannot read woke ‘Apple Macintosh’ characters.

          13. I could see the first two, but not the plate of curry. Unless it was a square plate with some symbols.

          14. So that is what those three dots mean that sometimes appear on people’s comments on screen. You learn something every day.

            I have Windows 10 running the Opera browser, and I could see all three of the pictures.

          15. So that is what those three dots mean that sometimes appear on people’s comments on screen. You learn something every day.

            I have Windows 10 running the Opera browser, and I could see all three of the pictures.

        2. Good morning, Grizzly

          I am sure you would have liked John Augustis Fortescue:

          And as for finding mutton fat
          Unappetising – far from that
          And often, at his father’s board,
          Would ask him of his own accord
          To give him If he did not mind
          The greasiest morsels he could find.

    5. Afternoon R,
      When we have a fully clued up electorate / society enlightened then they just may insist, forcibly if needs be
      that ALL family members & close associates of the dead one are, same day, deported.
      Keep up the same current voting pattern ie party before country then any innocents turn will come eventually, for the knife in the back, either from the politico’s or the terrorist seeking martyrdom.

          2. T,
            In the nicest possible way in your case I could make an exception, you tend to make light of serious issues, is it a fear of
            giving offence to the many users of the submissive, PC / Appeasement brigade ?

          3. No, I’m a natural cynic. I believe nothing in the media.
            If they say it will be a sunny day, I wear my raincoat.

        2. What a kind, polite and respectful person you are, Tony. I concur with your opinion, too.

          :-))

    1. No surprise. What they will find is people will simply no renew their subscription when it come up for renewal. They could last to the end of the year. They will find it a challenge to defend their seats in the local elections in May

      1. BJ,
        As planned, an orchestrated campaign to take down a party of decency & a full set of bollocks regarding facing today’s issues
        full on .
        Submission ,PCism, Appeasement will, can & does kill, the real UKIP is strongly anti S,PC,A.
        Face facts not fiction.

          2. 21 years come July, in my case. I have often suspected that the Party had been infiltrated – isn’t that what we pay our taxes for? My five-year subscription runs out in 2023.

          3. Afternoon Jbf,
            I was just prior of Kilroy Silk joining, thought the party was needed then and have no doubts that it is definitely needed more so now for what is to come.

      2. BJ,
        As planned, an orchestrated campaign to take down a party of decency & a full set of bollocks regarding facing today’s issues
        full on .
        Submission ,PCism, Appeasement will, can & does kill, the real UKIP is strongly anti S,PC,A.
        Face facts not fiction.

      3. Which is exactly what I have done. Sorry UKIP, you planned your own demise by putting those oafs on the NEC – and allowing them to stay there.

  87. Not only is the Saxon Queen peeved with leftist drones, she has
    also been taken for a fool by a online friend whose taking the pee.
    I am to get myself a second account, I was pondering upon a
    few names which I’ve mentioned but I thinking on the following –
    Goddess of Rhamnous ( Nemesis ) I’ll say –
    ‘ to deliver divine retribution and restore right proportions of equilibrium
    where ever it’s been disturbed ” .

    But I am wondering how the above will be perceived ( it’s not really my nature)
    The other one I was thinking of was Terpischore as I’m fond of poetry etc..

    3. I should stick with Terpsichore. Eddy did a good avatar for you yesterday of the Union Jack socks as well. Set up a new gmail account just for here.

      1. Terpischore is more suited to me, it was a nic name
        given to me by an old Professor friend of 17 years ago
        ( this person knows that too) but it’s best to be true
        to oneself. I’d not make a good Nemesis anyway.
        I’ve bookmarked the picture of the socks walking
        over the EU Flag, I thought it excellent.

        2. I expect you realise it should be Terpsichore – just that you transposed “I” and “s” twice now. Apologies for the correction.

  89. I’ve just learned that it was Blair’s Government that introduce automatic early release without reference to Parole Boards in 2002/03 Criminal Justice Act.

      1. It’s the closest one can get to a perpetual motion machine. However, if everyone obeyed the law our esteemed legal brethren would be on the breadline…..

  91. COFFEE HOUSE – Spare us Nish Kumar and the BBC’s anti-Brexit sneering
    Brendan O’Neill – 3 February 2020 – 5:50 PM

    Friday was Brexit day. The day that the largest act of democracy in the history of this country was finally enacted. The day when the wishes of 17.4m people finally became a reality. And how did the BBC, the national broadcaster, mark this extraordinary democratic day? With a sneer, of course. A smug, aloof, bitter sneer at the entire country.

    Not only did BBC reporters huff and moan at the mass pro-Brexit gathering in Parliament Square, coming off like anthropologists who had happened upon some bizarre, exotic tribe. It also chose that day to push out anti-Brexit nonsense via its kids’ wing, CBBC. Yes, even children must now be subjected to the media elite’s Brexitphobic claptrap.

    On iPlayer and Twitter, Auntie pumped out old Horrible Histories clips to remind people that Britain is actually a bit of a naff nation. It was all anchored by Nish Kumar, a comedian, allegedly. He’s the most Radio 4 comedian ever. Hates Brexit? Check. Bashes Boris? Check. Thinks everyone is racist? Check. Has bread rolls thrown at him whenever he performs to people who didn’t go to Oxbridge? Check, check, check.

    Kumar introduced one of the vids by saying, ‘Britain is striking out on its own and leaving Europe. Goooo Britain.’ The ‘Goooo Britain’ bit was of course said with expert bourgeois sarcasm to indicate that Kumar, like literally every other person in the groupthink milieu he mixes in, doesn’t actually think Britain can do anything on its own, useless fools that we are.

    We were then treated to a 2009 Horrible History skit in which a scowling Queen Victoria mistakenly thinks tea, sugar and cotton are British inventions, only to be disabused of this idiocy by her butler. He informs Her Majesty that these things actually come from India and the Caribbean and are often produced for us by slaves. The message, as the CBBC Twitter account made clear, was as follows:

    ‘British things… turns out there’s hardly any.’

    What was the BBC thinking, pumping out anti-British propaganda to kids — and, via Twitter, to adults — on Brexit day? This cynical stunt was as conscious as it was crass. It was expressly aimed at bursting the Brexit bubble, dampening the Brexit day celebrations, and informing the ignorant throng that Britain has always been a foreign-influenced nation. So much so that there are ‘hardly any’ British things at all.

    This is clearly a lie. You don’t have to be a flag-waving, royalist crockery-collecting super-Brit to recognise that there are many, many British things and that this country has done so many things for its people to be proud of. From the Magna Carta to Newtonian physics, from the Industrial Revolution to all that literature that has stirred souls across the globe for centuries, Britain is a little island that punches extraordinarily above its weight.

    But the fashion today, especially among the morally emaciated liberal elites, is to obsess over the darker episodes in British history. This is a racist, colonialist, rampaging country whose sins still echo across the earth, they endlessly bleat.

    Even as someone whose family hail from the west of Ireland, and whose very recent forefathers died in a famine Britain did little to alleviate, and whose family hometown was plundered and burnt by British forces less than 100 years ago, and whose parents had a bit of a rough time when they migrated to Britain in the early 1970s, I know that this is juvenile, one-sided, anti-British drivel. Britain is a bloody amazing country.

    And yet, Britain-bashing is all the rage among the chattering classes. No dinner party is complete now without a bit of Britain-mockery. Affecting shame about Britain’s history is how the posh and the well-educated distinguish themselves from the masses, whose flag-waving and patriotism they find repulsive.

    Witness posho George Monbiot getting in on the Nish Kumar act by reminding the plebs that even their roast dinner isn’t British:

    >i>‘For those contemplating a patriotic Brexit Sunday roast, please remember: Your roast beef was domesticated in Mesopotamia. Your potatoes originated in South America. And your Brussels sprouts, er, well…’

    There is nothing radical or even interesting about the anti-British posturing of well-off Guardianistas or comics who live off the public purse courtesy of the BBC. It’s just sneering. Sneering at Brexit, sneering at history, and sneering at the little people who dare to take pride in their nation. These bourgeois pessimists are getting really boring.

    1. Queen Victoria and slaves? Slavery was abolished in 1833 and QV acceded to throne in 1837. Her Imperial Majesty probably knew that.

      1. I was about to make that point too, so glad I read a little further to find some with the dates at their fingertips.

    2. The Beeb’s new series, coming soon, “What did the blacks ever do for us”. It will run for about 15 and have some tips on cooking.

    3. If I was as wealthy as Phizzee, I would hire him for a function.

      I would give him a big build up introduction and then finish with:

      “On second thoughts you’re a useless scrote who isn’t remotely funny. Piss off and don’t let the door slap you on the arse on the way out”

      1. “If I was as wealthy as Phizzee, I would hire him for a function etc…”

        You might want to rephrase that!

          2. Not as I see it. The “him” refers to the “comedian”

            OK, being abusive to Phizzee has merit, but I thought my meaning was clear.

            Mind you, grammer (sic) ain’t my strong suit.

          4. It’s ambiguous to say the least, since Phizzee is the last named. Incidentally, it should also be “were” instead of “was”, as the subjunctive is needed 🙂

    4. “Kumar introduced one of the vids by saying, ‘Britain is striking out on its own and leaving Europe. Goooo Britain.’” Thereby showing what an ill-educated prat he is; we are not leaving EUROPE, we are, thankfully, starting to leave the EU.

  93. Off topic.
    Did anyone make a comment today regarding the superbowl?

    If not, well done Nottle; it’s over-hyped, over-indulgent, over-rated and, Praise Ye the Lord, it’s over there.

      1. Ndovu, off topic, I am showing zero votes and have done for a while now, do I need to change avatar, name, e-mail address or start a new account, because my total comments continue to show up but no votes, even when I have up ticks showing up.

        1. I followed advice and changed my email address using ProtonMail. I don’t use it for anything else. As you know I used to be not white and grumpy. :-))

        3. I don’t think it matters too much. I was reduced to zero weeks ago and thought I would try opening a new account. At the moment upvotes are accruing, but apparently (according to experts like Meredith and the Hatman), only older accounts were targetted. I think the zero upvotes count only affects comments made elsewhere and not here.

          1. Ah – it was Hatman who said that it was only older accounts that were targeted, I have never heard that. I cannot see why any accounts, new or old, cannot be targeted again to cause annoyance. I have seen though that the vote count does not show negative numbers caused by the stripper program, and the count does goes down into the -1,000,000’s after long enough.

            But this will not affect you on sites where you have been cleared to comment such as this one. It just means that when your negative vote score gets really low, enough to drag down your hidden “Reputation” score below -0.1, then you will not be able to leave comments on any site where you have not been pre-cleared to do so. This means sites such as Breitbart will be out of your reach unless you make a new account.

            On smaller channels though, your comment will still go to “pending” instead of being published, but a mod there might clear your comment anyway when they see it. It is only a “thing” that you notice, if you publish lots of comments on lots of big news websites. Which is what the bot was designed for – to silence “right-wing” voices on websites that use Disqus.

            (I know that some on the left have been targeted as well, but they were so few, so late, that they were clearly to provide some cover for the vast majority of those on the right who were affected.)

          3. I do not bother that much with Breitbart either, I just use it for information.

            The point is that someones account is blocked from ALL news channels, even the “normal” ones. You cannot leave comments anywhere. That is not so bad for those of us who have others to tell them how to get around it, by first creating a new email address and then creating a new Disqus account using the new email address.

            But you can image all of those who are not that technically literate and don’t know these things. One day they can comment with people they have come to know. The next day they are silenced from the entire Disqus network and do not know how to get back. That is a nasty thing to do to someone. It is similar to walking into someones remote home where their social lifeline is the telephone and stealing it.

        4. Wear your zero with pride.

          Some small minded leftie thinks you are so subversive that you should silenced.
          Carry on as you are.

        5. It doesn’t really matter, does it – an accumulated total. I went down to zero, and just see the upticks I get fro post to post (or not, as the case may be). Stuff the cumulation…

          1. No, I’ve never paid much attention to the accumulation, but seeing so many comments a couple of weeks ago, I decided to look and found a lot of followers listed that I had never seen before. They are now gone!

    2. Guilty m’lud! But only about an hour so, and you are perfectly correct with your second sentence!!

    5. It’s always amazed me that a ‘game’ of 4 x 15 minute quarters can last 4 hours. Must be worse than watching paint dry.

      1. Oddly enough, I enjoy watching the game.

        There is an enormous amount of skill, athleticism and chess-like tactics.
        The Super bowl and the surrounding antics actually do the game a disservice in my view.

        1. I tried watching it a long time ago. There is a lack of continuity. Play for 30 seconds, stop, change players. Start again play for 30 seconds, stop, change players. That maybe and exaggeration but there is no flow to the game with all the stop start. That’s how I remember it.

      1. You’re in Canada, if I recall correctly.

        It’ll be ice hockey season, so everyone will be asleep.
        };-O

        1. We save sleeping for the TV coverage of curling.

          Even though I really enjoy the game and play about five games a week, watching the sport on TV is sleep inducing.

  94. Air Canada Boeing 767 to make emergency landing in Madrid after landing gear ‘fell into engine’

    How an earth does the landing gear fall of let alone fall into the engine. I hope it manages to land safely. The report says it is circling to burn off fuel

    1. “How an earth does the landing gear fall of let alone fall into the engine.”

      Not many journalists are graduates in physics …

    2. Burst tyre on takeoff, apparently. Given the top of each tyre travels at twice the speed of the plane, it’s not surprising that part of it may fly forwards and be sucked back into the engine.

    3. Report says it is expecting to land at about 18:30 local time

      I thing the reporter go a bit carried away with the heading. They suspect a part of a blown tyre may have got into the engine

        2. Been there done that,lost a tyre on takeoff at Douglas IOM to Heathrow,seated in 1A could see flight attendent shaking as announcements were made,Captain comes down and peers through window,lots of circling to use up fuel before we are told we are diverting to Prestwick (don’t want to close Heathrow if we crack up)
          You have all heard that overcalm tone they use…….
          “Cabin Crew two minutes to landing”
          “Cabin crew one minute to landing”
          “30 seconds to impact”
          ARGHHHHH
          Touchdown,no braking,no reverse thrust just a very long roll-out with the loudest cheer I’ve ever heard as we came to a halt

  95. Streatham terror attack latest: Convicted terrorist Sudesh Amman was ‘nice, polite boy’

  96. I suppose we should expect this from Liberty

    Clare Collier, an advocacy director for campaign group Liberty, said: “The Government’s response to recent terror attacks is a cause of increasing concern for our civil liberties.

    1. What about the civil liberties of our law-abiding citizens?

      I reckon that being murdered or maimed, as you go about your daily routine, by an adherent of an imported medieval death-cult is a far greater denial of your civil liberties.

      Anybody seen brandishing a bladed weapon or a firearm in a public place should be shot dead, no warning – no second chance. That’s how we protect the civil liberties of our people.

      1. And if they “wing” them, then follow it up with a double tap to the head, just in case

  97. Cracking clip on the Bbc Six O’clock News about Universal Credit. Women being interviewed by the DWP asks: “How long do I have to do this ‘work search’ thing for?” SMH time?

    2. If you ere on unemployment in the US, you have to report in every week withs list of potential employers you have contacted and/or interviewed with. No report no, no benefits.

        1. Really, if this is the best the Windsors can come up with then it’s time to look for a new dynastic line – it’s been done before.

        2. The modern education system is aimed at removing “backbone” or other values from students – and don’t even mention loyalty or
          patriotism.

    2. You’re not alone.
      Nick Ferrari on LBC was covering this (Prine William) and after a few minutes I just switched over. Along with a lot of other people, I am sick to death of the constant whingeing about “diversity” everywhere. I really don’t give a rat’s behind any more.

        1. Some rapper got up here and complained bitterly that the American Music awards judges did not reward “black music”. Net effect was an awful lot of BTL comments on various news outlet websites, all pointing out that rap was not music.

          2. Or as we say, the “c” is silent…

            It’s mostly chanting and heavy bass drumming with totally obnoxious and violent lyrics.

      2. Yes I turned off Radio 3 this afternoon, when the person being interviewed started on about La Boheme not being diverse enough and they were creating a gay version with Mimi cast as a male.

  99. Mercenary ‘Mad Mike’ Hoare dies aged 100

    Michael “Mad Mike” Hoare, widely considered the world’s best known mercenary, has died aged 100.

    Born in India to Irish parents, he led campaigns in the Congo in the 1960s that earned him fame at the time, and a controversial legacy years later.

    His career reached an embarrassing end in 1981, when he was jailed for leading a failed coup in the Seychelles.

    Mr Hoare’s son, Chris Hoare, said in a statement that his father died in a care facility in Durban, South Africa

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-51352075

    1. Why is everybody queueing up to lionise a mercenary?

      A mercenary is someone who will take anyone’s shilling to kill someone else!

      This forum is full of the most appalling double standards!

      1. Yet, in the Congo actions taken by Mercenaries, when the official UN forces refused to act, saved many, many lives, particularly Belgian nuns & priests held captive by the rebels.

        1. Yes , and I travelled back in 1960 /61, home to school in the UK after spending Christmas with my parents who were living in Nigeria for a couple of years. I was a 13 year old school girl .. The aircraft had been diverted to pick up people from the Congo, wounded Belgian nuns and others who were escaping the terror.. some had their little dogs with them . The UN were totally ineffective as they have always been .

          All the expat children were asked to be quiet to allow the poor adults some rest. It was a BOAC Britannia .. flying from Lagos refuelling in Kano and Rome , then landing London. I have my Junior Jet Club book to prove it

          1. Afternoon TB,
            We were refueling at Kano the stink of aviation fuel was heavy in the air when a Nigerian on-board asked me for a light for his cigar.
            I had to refuse on the grounds of making a mess of the plane.

        2. Maybe it did, but that is still scant justification for murder by hired assassins. If the cash for such an action had been bigger coming from the other side then the mercenaries would, naturally, have followed the money. That is the nature of their business. Morals do not come into it.

          4. Grizzly – Good afternoon chap. You should know better than reading anything that ogga1 types, I certainly don’t, let alone replying to him. 🙂 I have only just logged on and am not condemning or condoning the work of mercenaries. National armies can do far more evil than them as we know.

            I know it is a serious topic, but, just to lighten the mood, I was reminded of a comment from the induction speech given by the Master to new apprentice Assassins at their guild in Ankh-Morpork, in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld:

            ‘We do not execute. We do not massacre. We never, you may be very certain, we never torture. We have no truck with crimes of passion or hatred or pointless gain. We do not do it for a delight in inhumation, or to feed some secret inner need, or for petty advantage, or for some cause or belief; I tell you, gentlemen, that all these reasons are in the highest degree suspect. Look into the face of a man who will kill you for a belief and your nostrils will snuff up the scent of abomination. Hear a speech declaring a holy war and I assure you, your ears should catch the clink of evil’s scales and the dragging of its monstrous tail over the purity of the language.

            ‘No, we do it for the money.

            ‘And, because we above all must know the value of a human life, we do it for a great deal of money.
            ‘There can be few cleaner motives, so shorn of pretence.
            ‘Nil mortifi, sinelucre. Remember.
            No killing without payment.’

            It is strange the comments from books that suddenly come to mind. No offence was intended by this attempt to inject some humour.

          5. I haven’t read any of Pratchett’s books yet, Merry Mac, but I am reliably informed by those who have that they are chock full of prescient wit.

          6. I think he wrote about 22 or so Discworld books, and out of all of them I only found 1 to be a bit slow. There are some passages that are so funny you almost have an accident from laughing so hard. There are also some that are deeply moving. It is not to everyone’s taste but I love that type of “intricate” humour. 🙂

          8. The UN has been a busted flush since Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjöld, was murdered in the Congo in 1961. It embarked on its downward trajectory from that moment on.

            [Hammarskjöld is pronounced “Hammar-fweld”.]

          9. It was a busted flush before the death of Hammarskjöld.
            It’s actions in the Congo were a total Charlie Foxtrot largely due to the policies of Hammarskjöld himself, aided and abetted by Connor Cruise O’Brien.

          10. Can you be a bit more explicit on your assertions about Hammarskjöld’s alleged failings, Bob?

            I’ve done some research on the man and, despite him having political enemies in the Soviet Union (as well as the vested interests of mining groups in the Congo), he was generally thought of as one of the two greatest Secretaries-General who worked tirelessly—without favour—for the world and not factions of it.

          11. Many of his failings were due to incompetence and not recognising when those he relied upon were letting him down, which led to the situation in the Congo.
            His task, and that of his successor, U Thant was not made any easier by the diverse elements within the UN Forces there.

      2. “This forum is full of the most appalling double standards!”

        A very lofty statement, I trust your glass-house is still in good repair.

  100. Good news (unless you are the Doomgoblin)

    “During the last interglacial period, about 127,000 to 116,000 years ago, sea levels may have been 20 to 30 feet (6 to 9 meters) above present sea levels. The current elevation of Manhattan ranges from about 7 feet to 265 feet (2 to 30 meters) above sea level today. A sea level rise of 20 to 30 feet (6 to 9 m) would make commerce in lower Manhattan impossible and create difficulties elsewhere. However, at the current rate of 7 inches of sea level rise per century (questioned by others as being too high or too low) a 7-foot rise would require 12 centuries or 1200 years.”

    From WUWT

    1. Thank you Stephen. We NoTTLErs know that but it’s the politicians who are, as usual, way behind the curve and found the need for something to apply a tax to although it won’t make any difference to what nature does.

    2. It’s likely that Cumbre Vieja, a very active volcano on the island of La Palma, will blow well before then and if it causes the predicted landslide it’s not only Manhattan that will have a serious sea water problem.

      1. Listened to a scientist on TV here being interviewed as apart of a program about volcanoes in general, and that particular one was discussed. While he did not see any imminent threat, he ended with, “Well if you hear it is erupting, get well away from the Eastern Seaboard.”

        1. Horizon reviewed the likely impact on the East coast of the US, of a resultant tsunami in the event of the predicted landslide

        2. From Discovery programmes I’ve watched you’ll have roughly 6 – 7 hours to get a few hundred miles inland. New York and other large cities will not have time to evacuate the millions of people living there. I live on the eastern side of the southern UK at an elevation of around 120′ and its expected that a surge from the landslide will cause great damage here.

          1. I am 15 minutes away from a hill on the south coast which has an elevation of 131 m. Would it be worth bothering?

      2. This is the well known clip from the comet hitting the Earth in the film “Deep Impact.” The waves from this event are higher obviously. Even having watched it many times it can still make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, and bring a tear to your eye.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNtsVP42bOE

    3. I doubt there is sufficient ice to increase sea levels by 7 foot . Do the sums and remember as ice melts it volume decreases as well as more water soaks into the soil

          1. Bill, sea ice, as in icebergs, has no effect on sea levels when it melts. But glaciers, on land, as in Greenland, do.

    4. Il Fungo on Ischia, note the erosion on the rock from long ago. There are minimal tides in the Med.
      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/52b0b19a94d510c025e1e7ef53347a42b1da39436fa83bfe5ee6ef01124a39d1.jpg

      The motor yacht is, of course a British product. Unlike the rock.
      Actually, I’m wrong. I’ve just looked it up and it was built in Italy, the Crowbridge, 110feet…
      A fleet of those would be fine for coastal protection and the crews would appreciate the 5 double staterooms…

      1. There are marine fossils at the top of Mt Everest, but I don’t think the tide got up that high.

        2. They have found fossils in the middle of solid rock at the bottom of mines. That is obviously not a nurturing environment for animal life. 🙂

          It does give an idea of the age of the Earth, when that piece of rock, which was once on the surface, has now been pushed far down underground.

  101. OT, but I just learned that the Norwegian for shingles (the infection) is “helvetesild” – translates as “hellfire”. Most appropriate, I am told.

    1. That’s why the two shot Shingrix vaccine is recommended here for anyone over 50. Shingles apparently is more painful the older you are when you get it.

      1. Shingrix is not available here in the uk on the nhs. It is more expensive than Zostavax, which is available on the nhs. I am on the waiting list for Shingrix, there is a world wide shortage at the present time, it is considered to be more effective than Zostavax with fewer side effects. Shingrix is the dead version of the virus; Zostavax is the (older) weakened version of the virus.

        1. The problem with Zostavax is that protection fades over time and at best it is between 50-70% effective. Shingrix got tested at over 90% effectiveness and it remains effective for much longer. We had the Zostavax some years back and then the Shingrix when it became available here – 2018 I think. We had to pay for it, but put against getting shingles at our age, it was a no-brainer, especially as we both had Chicken Pox as children.

          1. I don’t think you can get shingles without having had earlier chickenpox.
            Anyway, my plan is to have the Zostavax within the next few weeks, and have the Shingrix when it becomes available. I think there has to be a gap of six months between Z and Sh. I was due to have the Zostavax on 29 Jan but I am recovering from a really horrible winter virus, and I felt my immune system should get rid of the present incumbent first. My husband developed shingles in October and was really ill with it, he is still having post herpetic pain; I had an aunt who lost her sight in one eye and found it difficult to speak as it affected a nerve involved in speech. My mother was also very ill with it. In the UK I don’t think the public are sufficiently informed as to the seriousness, debilitation and possible long-term consequences of this illness.

          2. The chickenpox link is interesting. I have never had chickenpox (or any childhood illness except whooping cough). I wonder if I should have the vaccine or not.

      2. As soon as we reached 70 we were offered the Shingles vaccination by our doctor’s surgery and took advantage of it.

        Edit added vaccination.

        1. Especially important for those of us who had Chicken Pox as children, i.e. old enough not to have had the vaccine, as the virus just lies dormant.

          2. Yes, routinely given to infants these days. That’s why kids don’t get Chicken Pox any more.

          6. Yes, they really are. Things like the HPV shots are in the mix due to the apparent modern predilection for shall we say, non conventional sex. Chicken pox is varicella, hence the VAR vaccine.

          11. I hope they recovered with no scars.
            A good friend of mine got it in his 30’s, it was an absolute bastard; worse than getting shingles.
            I say that because I got shingles and we compared notes. He suffered badly as an ex professional rugby league prop, so definitely not a softie.

          12. I had assumed that the UK NHS would keep up on things like vaccinations. Cheaper to vaccinate than have to deal with anyone who gets a nasty dose of chicken pox.

          16. Thankfully most cases are. I think it’s only a problem when there are other medical issues in play.

            All I remember about it was that it itched, and I got a couple of weeks off school. Not that that did any good as it went through my primary school class in no time flat.

          17. I remember my mum telling me not to pop the watery blisters or they would leave scars. She was right of course.

          20. It is available privately. The nhs consider it to be a ‘mild childhood illness’ and thus, presumably, not worth funding.

          22. Been eating US chicken for 40 years now. It’s just a rinse with a very mild chlorine solution, and it’s not even in common use anymore. You probably get more chlorine from your local drinking water treatment plant than anywhere else.

          23. Hear, hear.
            And when I see people buying plastic packed prepared salads I wonder if they too complain about chlorine washes.

          24. We had one guy on the TV from the hospitality industry in the UK and, in a rare moment where the truth slips out against the wishes of the news anchors, he said that the chlorinated chicken debate had been blown up out of all meaning. He pointed out that many of the fresh items on sale in supermarkets had already been washed in chlorine solution and had been for years with no ill effects.

            He did list some of the pre-packaged sandwiches where this was a common practice as well, but it was over a year ago and I cannot remember which ones he listed. I think it was any of the ones with lettuce in them.

          25. Lettuce seems to be a not uncommon breeding ground for Ecoli, which might explain that approach.

    2. I didn’t bother getting the vaccine when I turned 70 – I paid the price last April and it was most unpleasant. A lot of nerve pain but there are anti viral tablets (five a day) that work if you get them soon enough after the rash appears. They are supposed to stop complications developing.
      My outbreak cleared up in about three or four weeks but it left me very debilitated for a while.

          1. I had shingles some years ago.
            Acupuncture cleared it up quickly. No after effects and the rash was only mild
            because I recognised the symptons immediately.

  102. Extinction Rebellion set to bring disruption to London with new mass rebellion on May 23

    Will the Met take action against these extremist of will they yet again let them break the law ?

    Yes you have a right to peaceful protects but that right does not extend to deliberately causing an obstruction nor to trespassing on private property nor to causing criminal action nor to breaking the road traffic act such as obstructing traffic lights , pedestrian crossing etc

    1. Without being a total bastard; oh, OK I am a total bastard, if I was a Jihadist that is exactly the kind of protest I would target.
      The police let them get away with blue murder. one could be in and out with a high level massacre and live to strike another day.

        1. Probably the next game on X-Box.

          But on a more serious note, any attack under cover of another protest damns them nearly as much as you.

        2. Hmmm… ISIS vs. Extinction protesters – but – which one is better? There’s only one way to find out…

          FIGHT!!!

          6. Aeneas – I have seen that cartoon in several places as people seem to be catching on that all is not well with that cult. There are also an increasing number of EU flags looking tattered or on fire as well. There was a time when “normal” people felt uncomfortable about these subjects because they had been told that they were not allowed to think or talk about them.

            Things would appear to moving in the right direction as they are not accepting this anymore. 🙂

      2. I’m all for giving the extinction rebellion muppets a good clubbing with toy stuffed baby seals, just for the visual, but they are one subset that should be among the safest from any islamic attacks. Both are very different groups, but both of their goals will end up severally damaging the United Kingdom, its economy and society. So they have that in common.

        So the clueless schoolboys with their climate change protests are helping the terrorists cause by disrupting our way of life, they are just so out of touch with any form of reality that they cannot see it. The other set of mindless schoolboys in their sandy pyjamas want to die murdering others anyway, so long term climate change is not a concern for them. They tend to focus on the 5 to 10 minutes of life that they will have left, once they stop pretending to be nice and start acting like true muslims.

        1. I think that’s a different issue.

          I’m looking at it from the “mayhem perspective” and getting away in the confusion.

          Nothing to do with Green politics, just killing the infidel.

          1. Yes I see that, I am pointing out that the ISIS people gain nothing from making extinction rebellion look bad. It is in fact counter-productive. They want the climate rebels to cause as much disruption to their “enemy” as they can. If the greenies manage to cause massive damage to our economy then the islamists won’t mind at all. It just means even more hungry and desperate women on the streets for them to toy with.

  103. Christopher Steele: MI5’s very own Walter Mitty. Spiked. 3rd February 2020

    Steele’s sources were mostly fantasists from the hinterland of espionage or disgruntled Russians and Americans who had tried to do business in Russia. Pointedly, many of these sources hedged their claims with qualifications that the stories were third-hand and that they could not verify them. Steele briefed journalists from the New York Times, the Washington Post, Yahoo! News, the New Yorker and CNN. No proper newspaper ought to have published these claims. Indeed, they were not meant to be published verbatim – they were only meant to create rumours which would seep into reporting, and therefore blacken the Republican candidate in the election campaign.

    Here’s an oddity, a realistic and informed assessment of Christopher Steele and his Dossier that will not be appearing in the MSM in the foreseeable future. Nottlers are largely cognisant of its deficiencies but there is still some useful detail in the text. Like the Skripal Affair the Dossier reflects the shortcomings of MI6, their fantasies of being a world player, their amateurishness disguised as derring do and course the mess they leave behind. Well worth a read on a lazy Monday afternoon.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/02/03/christopher-steele-mi5s-very-own-walter-mitty/

    1. Fabulous BTL Comment with reference to Steele: “He could be playing the Diane Abbott trick of appearing to be thick but in reality being, no forget it.”

  104. The teachings and precepts of Islam are incompatible with those of the post Enlightenment open and pluralist societies of Europe. For how much longer is that stone cold fact going to be ignored?

    1. For as long as it takes to destroy, “The post Enlightenment open and pluralist societies of Europe.” Is the short answer.

    2. It is not so much that the reality of islam is being ignored, it is that the reality of islam is being concealed. The media and politicians have been going out of their way to pretend that the violence and rape which is inherent in anyone who takes islam seriously, are just the actions of extremists.

      When 1/4 of the followers of a cult want to kill all non-followers of that cult, then that is a mainstream doctrine. Our politicians at the top know this, and are depending upon it to help reshape the world into one where meaningful democracy and Western morality is gone. They are very keen to make sure that their current populations do not realise that this is the long term goal. Yes, even our own politicians (May, Hammond, Grieve, Blair, etc.)

      Even with the decades of child abuse, which is still increasing now, and the growing acts of violence and murder on our streets, the public find it very hard to even consider that our “nice smiling politicians” are doing this to us deliberately. Our elected leaders say nice words to calm us, such as “No deal is better than a bad deal” while working behind the scenes to bring our country down. Isn’t that correct Theresa?

      At some point the carnage will cause the scales to fall from our eyes and we will be forced to see the world as it really is. Then we will stop this confused hesitation, address the problem, and start to get our British way of life back again. But probably not without 80% of our current politicians being inside of a prison cell.

      1. The late Sir Roger Scruton was vilified when he suggested those that believed transferring large numbers of people from places on this earth where all the ideas that have shaped our society and progressed our heartfelt desires for centuries are scripturally disavowed and forcibly rejected, would, somehow, result in integration within a generation (if at all) were deluded. He was not. They are and the evidence piles up relentlessly on pavements across out capital city.

        If this country’s establishment, that has taken great care to absent itself from those places where the presentation of Islamic belief, ritual and custom are today the norm across streets, schools, surgeries, councils and police stations, cannot see what December’s election result means beyond Brexit, then they will have to be shown.

      2. We keep being told that most Moslems are peaceful but as Brigitte Gabriel reminded an audience in the US, most Nazis were peaceful too.
        The National Socialist Workers Party of Germany had some 400,000 members, most of whom didn’t hurt anyone. It took very few to murder to 6 million Jews. Islam has around 1.5 billion followers, of whom only about 15% are radicalised. That’s 225 million terrorists. The peaceful ones, as Ms Gabriel stated, are irrelevant.
        (Brigitte Gabriel witnessed the slaughter of Lebanese Christians by the PLO. An Israeli soldier helped her escape.)

        1. That was a good clip of the lady pointing out this reality. It must lead to the question: “If we know the inevitable consequences of large numbers of true believers of islam in any society, and our leaders who pretend to be working in our interests know it as well, why don’t they do something to stop it happening? Why are they in fact acting to pick up ever more migrants and are importing more and more of them into our countries?”

          Those types of questions can lead to unpleasant thoughts and sleepless nights. But there is consolation in the fact that our ancestors have overcome many threats to them in the past, and we are still strong and our Kingdom still stands. 🙂

  106. I have just been glancing at the tabloids on line and there are some horrific scenes of pets lying dead on pavements after being thrown from high rise flats in Chinese cities..

    1. Odd that.
      On the one hand we are told they are locked into the apartments and starving, yet on the other we are told that the Chinese will eat cats and dogs etc.

      Words and figures differ methinks.
      {:-((

        2. T_B, it’s bad form to edit the post so much that an earlier reply no longer makes sense.

          just sayin’

          1. So sorry Sos

            “The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit. Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.”

    3. t appears, from previous historical Chinese behaviour, that that nation has little in terms of empathy.

      1. When I was a young pupil at boarding school , 2 of the pupils were daughters of Chinese what ever they were.. The girls had the filthiest most frightening tempers I have ever seen , ever .. especially as we were all children .. the teachers couldn’t cope with the pair of them either.. The girls lashed out at everyone .

        They were clever and articulate , they both played the piano to perfection .. but their tempers were evil.

    1. UK could follow the lead of places like Turkey and make insulting the country a criminal offence.

    2. Kehinde Andrews has form for A-grade idiocy. Our hope must be that one of his own kind deals with him before he causes real trouble for everyone.

      1. It is difficult to explain quite why this prize idiot has such large chips on his shoulders. We whites do not buy all that slave trade bollocks, nor to we accept that the British Empire was a force for evil.

        On the contrary without the British Empire these wogs would still be scurrying around in the swamp, the men sitting on their haunches under the shade of a tree whilst their women fetched and carried for them. Yup I know this is again still the case since we left.

    3. A professor of black studies.

      I wonder how many malleable minds have been twisted by this idiot.

    1. The most successful political leaders in the world today are Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.
      Boris Johnson is taking leaves out of the books of both. I think his judgement is sound.

      1. Theresa May gave a well received speech on her intentions towards the EU. The Lancaster House speech I think it was, and it had everything that Brexiteers wanted to hear with “Red Lines” and “No Deal is Better than…etc.” Some people breathed a sigh of relief. Of course she didn’t mean a word of it and was lying to everyone as she continued working with the EU to bind the United Kingdom to them.

        Boris is a much more polished speaker than Theresa May ever was, and he too knows what people want to hear. But this is the time to watch the things he does and not just listen to the things that he says. We will know in a few months time if he is lying with every breath he takes as May was, or whether he will take us out from under the EU’s control.

      2. So far. He seems prepared to listen and take advice from his advisors. He seems to have the personal characteristics of one who does not want to kow-tow. Early days and fingers crossed.

        Good evening, Tony.

        1. Good evening, P-M,
          I think that you are right, and I also think (I think I implied this in an earlier comment) that he is not expecting to make a clean break from everything that is EU. I think that most of the commenters here are far too optimistic. There has been so much capitulation to the EU over the years that it would be too much to hope to escape from all the agreements and regulation that has been stifling us.
          But I am just looking at Boris’s behaviour since he came into power, and up to press he has done a brilliant job. Why not accept that he is doing his best, and leave the reservations behind us ? Whatever happens will be better than what went before.

          1. He may not have been expecting to make a clean break from the eu but he may now well be buoyed by his success in the north and feel he has to live up to the expectations er, expected of him…. I realise at the moment we are hearing just the rhetoric but I recall watching Boris with Cameron – Boris does not like to be the underdog, topdog is what he wants and we have to hope that this characteristic will work in our favour. We may have to accept that this is just the start of our disentanglement from the eu – or Boris may decide that this is his time for his moment in history and go for it.

            (Why do we all, without exception, refer to him as ‘Boris’? I do not think any other pm – or American president – has been so universally regarded.)

          3. Boris is such an unusual name and you know who you are talking about. If you spoke of Peter or James you would need more information. I liked the films of one of the other well known ones, Boris Karloff. As for ours, we want him to be this:

            https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c42bb0fd4f174a05d14c31a163685d3cf099967498e8e817a29c6e24a149c07e.jpg

            We don’t want him to be this, but we could still deal with him:

            https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/92e00746918b7dba45c864aa883c0c4887c6429fa6e581dfa61aecade797cf3f.jpg

            But if he turns out to be this, then we are in real trouble:

            https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ad2f148ce93f47104991fdd2e623496fa108eb77d86f1b931620b27127cb887b.jpg

    2. The best way of dealing with this is to give that ultimate message to the bbc – the abolition of the licence fee – that would sort the rest of the media out.

  109. Wise guidance from the Qur’an quoted by the Pres of Pakistan.

    “If you hear of an outbreak of plague in a land, do not enter it, but if the plague breaks out in a place while you are in it, do not leave that place.”
    Dr Arif Alvi, Pakistan’s president, tweeted a hadith (or saying) of Muhammad on Saturday to explain his government’s decision not to evacuate its citizens from China

  110. No gas or oil central heating in Britain from 2030.

    No electricity produced from gas.

    No gas cooking.

    No log burners.

    Everyone will have to pay vast sums to convert to super expensive ”wind” electricity

    Meanwhile, as Boris wrecks Britain, the Chinese will be roaring ahead with their coal fired program and taking over the world.

    What an election winner for airhead Boris as the entire country collapses around him.

    Does he work for Xi ?

      1. I hope not, but how far will Boris go in wrecking Britain’s infrastructure before the plan is reversed, and who will reverse it because the present lot are apparently all as barmy as him ?

        All the coal fired power stations have been wrecked or demolished. Is the same going to happen to the gas fired power stations too leaving Britain ruined and in turmoil ?

    4. Boris is jumping on the Green policys without considering the dire consequencies. He has a screw or two loose and needs to be brought to heel by the more practical and ntelligent members of his cabinet. The cost will be extremely high for the electorate who voted for him. He can expect no support from them in 2024 if he lasts that long.

      1. I thought that his bonking was more important to him than his buffoonery.

        I think we have misjudged him – we thought he was more clever than he actually is and his buffoonery is a clumsy attempt to imitate Shakespeare’s Fools and Clowns who are often more perceptive and wise that their betters.

      2. Not really. US power generation is moving from coal to natural gas because it’s cheaper. Less pollution is a side effect. You just don’t see even the MSM pushing “green” energy that much. Local TV news will talk about local “green” buildings occasionally, but that’s it. One of the TV companies came up with the idea of a “green” cable channel a couple of years back – they closed it down for lack of interest.

        People are buying electric cars mostly as commuters – cheaper to run – but the distances here that people drive restrict them given current (sorry!) technology. A holiday journey could easily be 4-500 miles one way. Easy with a petrol car. A PITA with an electric.

      1. Lots of hype about solar panes but they are all but useless in the UK but lots of money to be made out of flogging them. In the winter they tare typically producing about 0.3 % of our energy. In Winter around mid day they might on a good day manage 2%

  111. There was always, always something about it. Something that made me uneasy, but I didn’t know what it was, I couldn’t put my finger on it, certainly couldn’t put it into words. Every time I saw it, every time it fluttered into my vision, I used to think of it as that ‘n*z* flag’, especially when, during the last six months, I would see it flaunting its colours from our next door neighbour’s (a vet from Bristol) upstairs bay window.

    Reading Breitbart comments today, I realised why. Someone commented (along the lines of) “why on earth did the eu choose yellow stars as its symbol on a blue blackground, the symbol of oppression?” And then I realised. Of course. The Jewish people in n*z* Germany were forced to wear a yellow star on their sleeve, to mark them out, presumably as targets. I understand that the eu star is not a six-pointed star, but why did they choose the star symbol? Although we have officially left the eu I feel that if I said what I really think I might well be lying in bed waiting for that 2.00 am knock on the door.

      1. It’s the Saudi national flag that gets me – there is this angry message inviting submission written in Arabic with a very ominous-looking sword underneath emphasising its message.

    3. I don’t think it’s got anything to do with Nazism. Stars are used a lot on flags – United States, China, Australia, New Zealand all have stars on their national flags.

      It’s not the flag that makes me uneasy; it’s the unaccountability and the power of the EU Commission that with every fresh treaty increases its power over the member states.

      1. These countries may have stars on their flags, but none of them is yellow. The flag, for me, is a symbol of the totalitarianism of the EU.

        1. I made a list of national flags with yellow stars on them that include:
          Tuvalu, Congo, China, Ethiopia, Vietnam, Cameroon, Angola, Bolivia, Azores, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Grenada, Mozambique, Philippines, Paraguay, Suriname, South Sudan and Malaysia.

          2. A ragbag of all sorts. I know the current Philippines president likes shooting drug dealers, but his predecessor was a mild-natured liberal whose mother helped overthrow Marcos and whose father was murdered by him.

            The most fun one was this Clark Gable lookalike who got done for pocketing the Treasury. When he was let out of prison, he stood again for the presidency on an anti-sleaze ticket and very nearly got in. In that election in 2010, the leading candidates campaigned under the names Erap (Estrada), Bong-Bong (Marcos) and Noy-Noy (Aquino).

        2. That is it – it symbolises oppression and totalitarianism and a ‘one size fits all’ regardless along with a certain insensitivity.

      2. JM,
        What made me very uneasy is the way the lab/lib/con politico’s
        rubber stamped every wish / command the eu issued.

    4. If something builds up in your mind as a “bogeyman” then belittle it. Several cultures have stories about laughing at the things that worry you. Tyrants cannot bare to be mocked was one of those sayings I think. I don’t think of the EU as a towering force of might, just as naughty boys who have finally been seen stealing cookies from the jar. People such as Macron and many in the Commission are just there because they are easily led and will do what they are told.

      Our country has risen above them. We are the proud wolf who is breaking free from the chains that the others have bound us with. They bleat loudly, but are helpless before us.

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b8227ac801fda073b1633d8228a92d8f587a213b593a9c6352135ee784674f18.jpg

      On that shepherds note, have a good night. 🙂

    5. Hi Poppie’s Mum,
      The history of the flag is clear; a design was submitted to a competition and then adapted (ie graphic design was improved ) by one of the bosses . The man who entered the competition was inspired by a statue of the Virgin Mary in a church in Paris. The Virgin has a halo of golden stars.

  113. Goodnight from the long bow carrying daughter of Alfred of Wessex,
    I must head towards my pillows. Sweet dreams.

  115. Evening, all. I showed my contempt for the Bbc by not watching it Friday, Saturday and Sunday 🙂

  117. Initial informal trade negotiations have commenced . I think the EU have got the message that this is not going to be a push over

  118. Oh good, the Canadian government has decided to bring back the Canadians from pretty Wuhan and park them in quarantine at an airforce base near us.

    The main operational area is well guarded and there are some tough bastard SAS types stationed there, but the accommodation blocks are not exactly well secured.

    Naturally we are being reassured that nothing can go wrong.

        1. ‘A train came within 75 seconds of potentially crashing, an investigation has found as it said staff working from home caused a breakdown in communication.

          A near-miss at Balham station, south-west London, occurred due to poor communication by Network Rail workers, the Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB) said.

          Shortly after 7pm on April 20 last year, a tamping machine was mistakenly driven onto a line which had not been closed to trains during maintenance work.

          It crossed a junction through which a Southern train from London Victoria to East Grinstead had passed just 75 seconds earlier.

          The investigation found that the mistake happened because the two people responsible for train movements over the weekend of the near-miss spent a “significant proportion” of their time working from home.

          The investigation found workers had a lack of “clear guidance” on where they should be based.’

          Wtf??

          https://www.telegraph.co.uk.

    2. Apparently, the quarantine convoy passed through Shropshire (en route to the Wirral, I’ve added, as we don’t form part of Canada), although they didn’t get to the frozen north of the county, so I should be spared for a while, cough, cough.

        1. Hi to you, too. How are you, hope you are staying free from ‘flu, colds, coughs and sneezes, they do spread diseases, don’t you know! Remember Hancock?

  124. Emergency legislation being introduced to stop those being convicted of terrorists being released early and before they are realised the parole board would need to approve or disallow their release

  125. Have Russians lost their appetite for the truth?: five writers shine a light on Putin’s mafia state. 2 February 2020.

    In September 2018, Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov gave a television interview to RT (formerly Russia Today), the English-language television channel that brings the Kremlin’s voice to a global audience. The purpose of the interview was to refute claims made by the British police that they had attempted to murder Sergei Skripal, a former Russian double agent, in Salisbury with Novichok, a deadly nerve agent developed in the Soviet Union.

    BELOW THE LINE.

    Michael Dyche 3 Feb 2020 6:31PM.

    British journalists, look in the mirror and ask yourself, ‘Shall I publicly ask where Yulia Skripal has been disappeared to?’

    Then when you reply, ‘No,’ you’ll realise you are not a proud citizen of a great democracy but a vassal of a banana republic.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/have-russians-lost-appetite-truth-five-writers-shine-light-putins/#comment

  126. ‘A train came within 75 seconds of potentially crashing, an investigation has found as it said staff working from home caused a breakdown in communication.

    A near-miss at Balham station, south-west London, occurred due to poor communication by Network Rail workers, the Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB) said.

    Shortly after 7pm on April 20 last year, a tamping machine was mistakenly driven onto a line which had not been closed to trains during maintenance work.

    It crossed a junction through which a Southern train from London Victoria to East Grinstead had passed just 75 seconds earlier.

    The investigation found that the mistake happened because the two people responsible for train movements over the weekend of the near-miss spent a “significant proportion” of their time working from home.

    The investigation found workers had a lack of “clear guidance” on where they should be based.’

    Wtf??

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/02/03/train-came-within-75-seconds-crashing-investigation-finds-staff/

          5. The Stranglers might have done it – they even had the song “Something’s got to change”.

    1. We had a short break years ago at Simmons Yat. That picture looks similar. Beautiful.

      1. I’m fairly sure that was Symonds Yat, there’s a vague possibility it may have been a little further SW before Tintern at a vantage point called Eagle’s Nest, still the Wye valley whatever. A favourite day out for us.

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