Saturday 1 February: Post-Brexit responsibility will improve the calibre of British politicians

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/01/31/lettersthe-democratic-freedom-decide-britains-policies-fundamental/

571 thoughts on “Saturday 1 February: Post-Brexit responsibility will improve the calibre of British politicians”

        1. Only owes his prominence to his grandfather and has traded off that connection throughout his life.

          2. Who was it who said that sexual congress with him was like having a large, heavy wardrobe with a very small key on top of you?

  2. SIR – If, instead of quoting Shakespeare, Alastair Stewart had called for battery acid to be thrown over someone whose views he didn’t share, as Jo Brand did, would he have kept his job?

    Bob Stebbings
    Chorleywood, Hertfordshire

    Probably not. Jo Brand is (a) a female, (b) a virulent lefty, and (c) a BBC protected species.

    1. You forgot to mention her finer points. A breaker of fine chairs. A person that doesn’t give a shit if she tracks in dog shit into your home. A person who has slagged off men and masculinity for a living calling it comedy. A woman that has no respect for herself or anyone else. … I could go on. Actually i will.. I don’t recall on any of her television appearances mentioning Mass rape by Pakistani bartfards or FGM. Even i am deaf or those over paid c***s like her and Dame Esther (I didn’t know anything about abuse) Rantzen are just in it for the money. And in Brands case…..Dildoes the size of traffic cones because no real man would want to *uck her.

      2. I’m ashamed to admit she shares the same qualification as me: Registered Mental Nurse.
        (In her case, possibly le mot juste.)

        1. I would have done so if I had had the vote in 2015 and I would have voted for The Brexit Party in 2019.

  4. High-Speed Man is at it again, but for once he’s on the right track.

    SIR – Can we please quash once and for all the absurd idea that reopening the Great Central Main Line (Letters, January 31) is realistic in any way, let alone a substitute for HS2?

    At the London end it never closed anyway, but is now the busy commuter route into Marylebone. There is no prospect of adding long distance trains to the traffic on this route, even if it were sensible to drop off more passengers at London’s second-smallest and worst-connected terminus.

    Away from London, the Great Central didn’t serve Birmingham in the first place, while its route to Sheffield and Manchester was roundabout and slower than other main lines. Perhaps this is why it was closed.

    So-called “reopening” would require major construction projects to tunnel into London and Birmingham and to make new connections with existing railways, as is also necessary for HS2. It would be a major undertaking in its own right.

    HS2 proposes to follow parts of the old alignment, but in places has been shifted off it by local protests. Major portions of the Great Central route, such as around Brackley, north of Rugby, and through Leicester and Nottingham, have been wiped out by road schemes and other developments. Even where the alignment exists, many bridges over roads have been removed due to low headroom, so reinstatement would mean raising and thus widening embankments for many miles on each side.

    The Great Central offers no advantages over the West Coast Main Line, as its curves set the maximum speed at no higher than 125mph, even with tilting trains. The service would be less attractive and thus fail to free up the West Coast Main Line for improved local commuter, interurban and freight services in the absence of non-stop trains.

    Finally, the Great Central Main Line was constructed before the Bern Conference of 1912, at which the continental structure gauge was established, and so does not, contrary to urban myth, conform to it. To make it do so, as HS2 will, would be a major exercise, adding to the cost of reopening and resulting in a considerably larger footprint.

    William Barter
    Towcester, Northamptonshire

    BTL:
    Colston Bassett 1 Feb 2020 12:50AM

    For once William Barter is, at least in part, correct. The Great Central cannot be rebuilt.

    Where he is wrong is to think that it was suggested that it be rebuilt in its entirety. If it is the case that the WCML south of Rugby is overcrowded, then reinstatement of the Aylesbury-Leicester section (including the High Wycombe link) with new junctions with the WCML at Rugby and the Midland main line at Wigston, will provide a bypass for all those freight services that are apparently clogging up the route.

    There is no justification for HS2.

  5. Well played, British people, out at last. I’m so proud of us today
    ALLISON PEARSON – 31 JANUARY 2020 • 10:00PM

    Well, thank God it’s over, that’s all I can say. There were celebrations aplenty. Spirits were high from the intoxicating sense that we had finally left. WE DID IT! In Chelsea, Brexit Beer was served at the party of Vote Leave’s Jon Moynihan.

    Specially brewed from the bitter tears of Dominic Grieve and other fundamentalist Remainers, no doubt. The sight of the Union Jacks along the Mall lifted the heart. A wonderful flag for a wonderful country. And yet the overwhelming feeling was one of relief. We really couldn’t take much more of it, could we?

    It is a shocking, exhausting, nerve-shredding, despairing, torturous 1,317 days since David Dimbleby looked into the camera and said, “The British people have spoken and the answer is we’re out!” Some of us were naïve enough to believe him. Others took a more jaded view. In his book, The Great Brexit Betrayal, Rod Liddle reports that, on hearing the news, his wife said, “They’ll never let us leave.” Events since June 23rd 2016 came awfully close to proving her right.

    You thought it was only in banana republics that powerful people felt they could safely ignore a democratic vote? Think again. The wealthy, entitled people behind Project Fear had failed to get their way and they soon showed they could turn very nasty indeed. Ordinary folk who had voted Leave because they wanted their country to control its own borders and make its own laws – a state of affairs that pertains in most nations on Earth – were painted as thick and racist.

    I appeared on what I assumed would be a civilized panel at the Hay Festival only to have Roland Rudd, the multimillionaire PR man, say, “I don’t think Allison wants any foreign people at all coming to this country.” Still grieving for an Asian friend who had died just a few weeks before, I lashed out at him in tearful fury. How dare he?

    It was a preview of the despicable tactics to which Rudd and other hardcore Remainers who said they wanted a second referendum – what they actually wanted was a referendum in which Britons gave the “correct” answer – would stoop. With New Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell, Rudd ran a campaign which they had the barefaced cheek to call the People’s Vote.

    I appeared with Campbell on Radio 4’s The World at One and told him, “Sorry, chum, we’ve already had a people’s vote.” He replied that, because Leavers were old, many of them were now dead so the result of the first referendum was basically invalid. My jaw dropped so far it was a wonder it wasn’t dislocated.

    Looking back, I reckon you could see the past three-and-a-half years as a period of psychological warfare waged by the establishment against the British people. From MPs, half the Cabinet, the civil service, the Treasury, the BBC, Channel 4, the CBI and the universities, came a daily drip-drip of propaganda to undermine and dishearten the majority. Any piece of good news always had a sneaky rider attached: “despite Brexit”.

    This battle to block our exit caused the nation enormous stress. It became known as BDS. Brexit Derangement Syndrome. We really felt like we were going mad, what with all those “extensions” and the unfathomable mysteries of the wretched Backstop. This week, a two-year study, which monitored 2,200 people, revealed that key moments in the struggle to leave the EU sent levels of cortisol, the stress hormone, soaring.

    It’s no surprise to learn that one particularly fraught moment came on Dec 12 2018 when foolish Conservative MPs cheered after they allowed the worst prime minister in our history to survive a vote of no confidence. (While everyone at home yelled at the TV, “Put Theresa and us out of our bloody misery!”) It was to be exactly 12 months before stress levels went right down and equanimity was restored when the Conservatives won a landslide election victory on a promise to Get Brexit Done. Buoyant Boris was balm to our battered souls.

    At a celebration on Thursday night for the very few media people who backed Brexit, as everyone walked into dinner I had the hotel play the theme tune from The Great Escape. It was just for fun, but the consequences of failing to to get out of the EU could not have been more serious. Democracy itself was at stake. Fissures in Britain would have become an unbridgeable chasm as people in the North, the Midlands, South Wales and the South-West realised that a metropolitan elite thought they didn’t count for anything and could be contemptuously over-ruled.

    I heard a Geordie girl on the radio crying with happiness because we were finally leaving. She is one of the 17.4 million voters that fanatical Remainers call ignorant. Yet that young woman has a far better instinctive understanding of why the biggest democratic vote in our history had to be respected than most Parliamentarians.

    It’s a good start that on Friday Boris convened the Cabinet in Sunderland. Let’s hope the PM keeps his word about recalibrating the investment in North and South. Believe me, I am so so weary of Brexit fighting, but I will chain myself to the Downing Street railings if every single penny of the grants the EU “gave” (from our subs, mind) does not carry on being paid, by the Government, to my own South Wales and other deprived regions. Some of that £15 billion net contribution that we’re no longer paying annually to Brussels should cover it with change left over for hospitals and some beautiful parks. Those people should be rewarded for the remarkable faith that they showed.

    What the Remainers never understood, when they insisted “people didn’t vote to be poorer” is that there are some things that are worth taking a hit for. There is no way that the United Kingdom could ever be a small, westerly province of a United States of Europe. That is not our destiny, and enough of us knew it.

    Seeing Twitter users then say that they hope those poor areas are made to feel the consequences of their folly – taking a perverse, told-you-so pleasure in the suffering of others – shows how deep the tribal nastiness runs. I don’t believe that most people think like that. After 11pm, there are no Remainers any more. Gina Miller and a few others may become Rejoiners, but the majority will accept that we are where we are. As the acrid clouds of battle clear, the British sense of fair play may be visible again. It’s time for hope not hate.

    Our Great Escape from the EU could so easily have been Mission Impossible. Instead, picture us hopping onto Steve McQueen’s motorbike in that famous scene in the film. Revving up we leapt over the barbed wire of the Cooper-Letwin Bill and Lady Hale’s spider brooch, jumped over the “cliff edge” before swerving around a case of claret and Jean-Claude Juncker, dodging warnings of 500,000 job losses, national irrelevance and no loo rolls ever again, before we finally summoned all our national reserves of spirit and bloody mindedness and made it out. Well played, British people. I’m so proud of us today.

    On 23rd June 2016, they said it was all over. It is now.

          3. Not surprising, since I’m raising my third glass of Taylor’s LBV in toast to our leaving – hic.

          4. Started off with a bottle of Greyfriars pink British fizz (admittedly, I shared it with the Brexit-supporting neighbours). Followed by two further bottles of something equally fizzy, but possibly less British. Cheers.🍾

          5. Well selected , Sir, I was appalled to hear a commentator on the BBC talking about opening a bottle of ‘English Champagne’. Bluddy fool doesn’t recognise that, like ‘Stilton’, Champagne is a protected name.

            Nevertheless, here’s to all who have raised a glass in celebration of our liberation. Part II comes on January 1st 2021.

      2. Thank you Geoff for this posting but, even more, for all that you (and Stig) facilitated over the years we have wandered in the wilderness.

        God love the pair of you.

          1. We certainly do and yay to them. I have been told off by all of them at one time or another and taken my punishments and learned from them.

            Some people are a bit more whiney and cantankerous and resort to insults, backstabbing and character assassination by email and other nefarious means.

            My being perfect, i am unable to respond in kind.

            I think i might get a job as a politician.

            I need to check my Meds. :o(

          5. We’ve come a long way since that late-night three-way conversation. Can’t thank you, and our Stig, enough!

      3. Sadly, poor old Grizzly is stuck in the EU. But at the stroke of 11pm last night he took his passport and blacked out the words “European Community” from the front of his burgundy-coloured passport. Good old Grizzly!

  9. A little celebration may be in order:
    A great way to hear the first part of Beethoven’s fifth symphony. On the Facebook page, click on ‘Not Now’ and then on the action screen

    https://www.facebook.com/bombeirovix/videos/2188077837892515/
    …and then:

    There’ll Always Be An England:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qhLPWcm-0w

    …and some memorabilia
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f5dad5fbf851f8b08b9248dfa7395f627b3b8a0ca3fc0f72c82bf946ae7c53c9.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b35010f8af24db0ce9a0b26fe825f2f6596fa077807c79d3784f5416ebc7da14.gif

    1. We’ve left the EU but you wouldn’t notice. It’s business as usual atm. In customs union, in single market and free movement carries on. Were stuck with VAT for another decade minimum. We’ve been royally stitched up again. Can’t see any cause for celebration. Oh and we are still funding the EU. And just watch, come July the transition period will be extended.

      1. It’s going to take time. The EU infests so many layers of this country that unwinding it’s poison will take years.

        The difference is now we can change them if we want to without having to ask the EU for permission. No more sending our budget for approval to the EU, for a start.

  16. Good Morning Folks,

    Just checked even though is is still dark I can see that the sky hasn’t fallen in yet.
    By the way,

    A pinch and a punch the first of the month
    and no returns.

  17. We remainers must now aim for Britain to do well – and the EU even better. Timothy Garton Ash. 1 February 2020.

    Hard though it is to accept, as patriots we must wish Brexit a (partial) success.

    At the same time, we emphatically do not want Brexit to damage the larger European project. If Brexit goes very badly, producing an unstable, angry, resentful country, that will be bad for the entire EU. But the EU would also suffer in the unlikely event that “global Britain” were to fulfil the dreams of the Brexiteers, becoming such an attractive advertisement for independence that other member states might eventually follow suit. If that is the larger purpose of Brexit then we must desire it to fail in that regard.

    This is quite disgraceful! For all the blather in the headline Ash is wishing for Brexit to be a failure because it might give the other members the idea of leaving too!

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/31/remainers-britain-eu-brexit

    1. Typical bluddy Grauniad. If it works for us then I do hope that others will follow our lead.

    2. The Euro will eventually tear the EU apart. You can’t share one currency over 20 diverse and varied economies.

    3. It’s not surrising that the Lefty rag that is the guardian would prefer the UK to fail in favour of a foreign power. After all, nothing pleases the Left more than keeping the poor down and the rich richer.

      Pretty pathetic stuff from them really.

      What’s funny is reading theregister.co.uk there’s a strident pro EU attitude toward the ‘rich nations’ of Germany, France and Italy (none of which are rich and one supported entirely by the other) driving the EU onward as it encompasses the Balkan states – which have no money and, as we’ve seen with Ukraine, result in Russian occupation.

      It’s sad that the Left in their fervent support of the oppression of the EU refuse to accept reality. The EU is finished. It was from the outset. Communism always fails.

      1. A 1940’s solution to the very different world of 2020.
        It’s as if, after WWII, we looked back to the 1870s for answers.

    4. I am a curiosity in that I am a leaver who doesn’t actually want either to fail. The whole point of this Brexit exercise is to reset the institution that has not really reviewed its operations since it was the Coal & Steel Community for a handful of identically-run Western European countries recovering from the trauma of a major war.

      Since then, we have seen the amalgamation of the Mediterraneans, the former Warsaw Pact and Soviet provinces, the coming and going of the offshore Anglo-Saxons along with ancient Celtic fringes. All sorts of riff-raff being stuck in what is still the Coal & Steel Community now purporting to be a global federal empire.

      I take great pride and pleasure in the different identities, cultures, traditions, histories and languages of the member states in my continent. Rather than homogenising them into one narrow business model, surely we have the opportunity forced by Brexit to recover the proper definition of the word “diversity” and have the whole continent profiting from it, and the range of talents and resources this offers. The UK and the EU legal systems may have proved incompatible, but that should not mean we cannot offer each other mutual prosperity.

      As long as they keep off our fish though!

      1. That original vision of the coal and steel group was always designed to become the control system that is the EU.

        Further, the EU will continue to extend it’s control over the nations of Europe. It won’t stop.

        1. Quite possibly. Labour’s 1970s leftwingers such as Peter Shore and Tony Benn saw through this fifty years ago.

      2. jM, with reports yesterday that EU elites are again calling for ‘more Europe’ to offset the UK leaving, it appears that, for the time being, any hope for a reset is premature. Over time a certain strain of politician has infested the cabal in Brussels and they are not going to give up their seat on the gravy train any time soon and without a fight. Therefore, the EU has somehow to be completely dismantled before any meaningful improvement is possible. Regressing to a trading block without the political control freaks looting its members would be a good starting point.

      1. Afternoon Plum-Tart – He has given the UK it’s freedom. and a good chance of a better future.

        1. Hi Clydesider,
          I do hope you are right however I shall be watching Boris and keeping my fingers crossed.

  19. The best of good mornings to all of you. I hope Nigel gets some recognition for his dedication.

    SIR – Thanks to the Brexit big four. First to Nigel Farage for helping us to believe that escape was possible. Secondly to David Cameron for giving us the opportunity to vote. Thirdly to Gina Miller for making it possible for MPs to throw out the EU’s (Theresa May’s) “keepy-in” deal. Fourthly to Boris Johnson for his courage and determination to ensure that we escaped without chains.

    Dr Laurence Oldfield

    Malvern, Worcestershire

    2. Don’t forget Jean-Claude Juncker. By treating Mr Cameron’s reasonable request for very minor reforms to the EU with patronising contempt he showed the British voters that the EU was not a reasonable or sensible organisation in which self-respecting Britons should be.

      So thank you, Mr Juncker. Without you the British would not have voted to leave the EU and we would still be completely shackled to it.

      So if we can give knighthoods to Irish foreigners like Bob Geldof why not Sir Jean-Claude – the man who set us free!

  20. Children on phones

    SIR – Parents have said that they now see online harms as the biggest threat to their children (report, January 29).

    I listened to Sir Nick Clegg, now working for Facebook, on the radio talking about the need to do more so that our children are not damaged by the digital revolution.

    The problem is that you only have to take your child to school and look at a flotilla of schoolchildren not looking about them but buried in their phones to realise you have an epidemic.

    On the road to school, virtually every child is caught up in gawking and absorbing and becoming an extension of their gadget.

    We are going the wrong way in becoming completely dependent on technology. Health warnings should be attached to all phones: “They mess with your head.”

    Lord Bird

    London SW1

      1. While cruising the Danube and having dinner with duelling piano’s playing, the wonderful scenery, a family of 6 Chinese people all were staring at their phones throughout.

  21. The special bond between Ireland and the UK will not be undermined by Brexit. Simon Coveney Fri 31 Jan 2020 .

    Together we will protect our deep ties of family and friendship – and the peace enshrined in the Good Friday agreement.

    The Irish government and its people are not our friends.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/31/ireland-uk-brexit-peace-good-friday-agreement

    Simon Coveney is Ireland’s tánaiste (deputy prime minister).

    1. Mr Coveney is the All-Irish back-pedalling champion. What he was saying to us even a few weeks ago, was nasty, rude, ungrateful and threatening.

      1. Morning Horace. Yes and I also met quite a few Irish when I lived abroad. They don’t call it Blarney for nothing!

        1. It is a bit strange. I have visited Ireland a few times in the distant past. All those I met, in NI and the Republic, were hospitable, friendly and generous. So why are their politicians such nasty anti-British bunch?
          (On one visit I kissed the Blarney Stone!)

          1. I have kissed the Blarney stone as well.. I was scared stiff.

            When my sister and I visited deep SW Ireland in the 90’s , we were followed and treated in a friendly curious manner ..

          4. I once had the pleasure of a week long contract working at the head office of a distillery in Dublin.

            It started to go downhill at 9AM on Monday when I was asked if I had visited a distillery before. Well let’s go down to the tasting room then!

    2. Morning, Minty.
      As with all nations, I think we need to differentiate between Ireland and its government.

  22. Dr. Daughter issued an SOS yesterday.
    She’s being transferred from Newcastle to Carlisle as the next step in her training and, as her car has been found to have a serious problem, sent me an e-mail asking for assistance.
    So I’ll be leaving in an hour or so to drive up to Carlisle, meeting her there and taking back to Gateshead to shift her stuff.
    Play nicely please!

    I see William Barter is back in the letters page:-

    SIR – Can we please quash once and for all the absurd idea that reopening the Great Central Main Line (Letters, January 31) is realistic in any way, let alone a substitute for HS2?

    At the London end it never closed anyway, but is now the busy commuter route into Marylebone. There is no prospect of adding long‑distance trains to the traffic on this route, even if it were sensible to drop off more passengers at London’s second-smallest and worst-connected terminus.

    Away from London, the Great Central didn’t serve Birmingham in the first place, while its route to Sheffield and Manchester was roundabout and slower than other main lines. Perhaps this is why it was closed.

    So-called “reopening” would require major construction projects to tunnel into London and Birmingham and to make new connections with existing railways, as is also necessary for HS2. It would be a major undertaking in its own right.

    HS2 proposes to follow parts of the old alignment, but in places has been shifted off it by local protests. Major portions of the Great Central route, such as around Brackley, north of Rugby, and through Leicester and Nottingham, have been wiped out by road schemes and other developments. Even where the alignment exists, many bridges over roads have been removed due to low headroom, so reinstatement would mean raising and thus widening embankments for many miles on each side.

    The Great Central offers no advantages over the West Coast Main Line, as its curves set the maximum speed at no higher than 125mph, even with tilting trains. The service would be less attractive and thus fail to free up the West Coast Main Line for improved local commuter, interurban and freight services in the absence of non-stop trains.

    Finally, the Great Central Main Line was constructed before the Bern Conference of 1912, at which the continental structure gauge was established, and so does not, contrary to urban myth, conform to it. To make it do so, as HS2 will, would be a major exercise, adding to the cost of reopening and resulting in a considerably larger footprint.

    William Barter
    Towcester, Northamptonshire

    Robert Spowart
    1 Feb 2020 7:38AM
    Now there is a surprise. HS2 Consultant and trough gobbler William Barter once again pontificates in favour of his pet project without mentioning his pecuniary interest in it.

    Delete4Like
    Reply
    Robin Sullivan
    1 Feb 2020 7:46AM
    Good morning Robert,

    I was just thinking that as well. As I started reading the letter, I just knew who would be the author. Looks like Great Central must be a better solution than HS2 if Mr Barter is dead against it.

    1. The Great Central Main Line (GCML), also known as the London Extension of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway (MS&LR), is a former railway line in the United Kingdom. The line was opened in 1899 and built by the Great Central Railway running from Sheffield in the North of England, southwards through Nottingham and Leicester to Marylebone in London.

      The GCML was the last main line railway to be built in Britain during the Victorian period. Built by the railway entrepreneur Edward Watkin with the aim to run as a fast trunk route from the North and the East Midlands to London and the south of England.

      The trackbed of the 40-mile (64 km) stretch of main line between Calvert and Rugby, closed in 1966, is still intact except for missing viaducts at Brackley and Willoughby. Various proposals for its reopening have been made

      Plans to reopen the section of the Great Central north of Aylesbury Vale Parkway have been submitted by Network Rail as part of phase two of the proposed Oxford – Cambridge East-West rail. [39] This would link Aylesbury with Bletchley and Milton Keynes. With consent granted, work could begin in 2019.

      Chiltern Railways had a long-term plan to reopen the Great Central Main Line north of Aylesbury as far as Rugby and onward at a later stage to Leicester. However, in 2013 Chiltern Railways stated that the plan was “no longer active”

      In January 2019, advocacy group the Campaign for Better Transport released a report in which they listed the line between Aylesbury and Rugby and (and between Marylebone and Leicester) as Priority 2 for reopening.

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/32e9886771c4feb1ed6c9f8b3dafc7c32cc5d5b747c9aae32a43212079b222ce.png

    1. Good Moaning

      I watched it on Youtube (BBC/ITV/Sky coverage was dire) and saw you nicking the rozzer’s helmet.

        1. Where’ve you hidden it? Should be a snug fit in the double-gusset. ;^)

          🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧

    3. Anne, we sometimes have a mental image of people we’ve never seen.

      You look almost exactly as I imagined, a little (only a little) wider across the chin, but other than that spot on.

        2. Age brings wisdom.

          What’s sad is that so many voted to stay chained to the EU based on propaganda and lies.

          2. She is isn’t she. I am struggling with her weight at the moment. She is on special diet biscuits.
            I am thinking of buying her a treadmill. A harness with a fitting that will dangle a bone a few inches from her nose. That will get the bugger moving.

          3. We have the same struggle with Spartie.
            We think, judging by his shoulder width, that great-granny may have had a fling with a Jack Russell.

          4. I have also had trouble training her to do anything. I didn’t want a dog that was over conditioned so i may have been a bit slack.

            I remember watching a film with Cameron Diaz called ‘The holiday’. It did have some redeeming features for a RomCom.

            In one scene she is staring at the dog and the dog is staring back at her. Cameron winks. The dog winks back.

            I believe i have successfully trained Dolly to wink on command !

            Trouble is. The only reason she is doing it is because she wants the crispy pork belly i am eating.

            Is this grooming?

  25. BBC newswatch still hasn’t got it … Headline story still dwelling on the basket ball player… WHO ?

    I think the BBC are punishing older viewers for voting Brexit .. this is why they are cutting back… Who are they reaching out , what sort of audiences.. Younger people are not news orientated .. snow flakes have their own agenda .. BBC say they want to shift resources to a wider audience .. where do they mean … they are knocking traditional audiences.. and are too target driven.

    Why am I wide awake .

    Wasting money by building a new set for that disgusting soap Eastenders , costing £87million pounds is a disgrace

    3. “I think the BBC are punishing older viewers for voting Brexit .. this is why they are cutting back…”

      ‘Morning, Belle, you are not wrong. Our state broadcaster announced recently that funding for programmes for the more mature viewer is being transferred to bolster the number of yoof viewers, so if you think it’s bad now it’s about to get a whole lot worse. Let us hope that this is the last desperate thrash of our twisted and profligate state broadcaster before it is finally killed off. Meanwhile, I take some pleasure from the BBC’s obvious discomfort!

    4. Good morning Maggiebelle

      Apparently soon after a graffiti tribute to the basket man with a portrait of him was daubed onto a wall one of his less enthusiastic fans had superimposed the word “Rapist” on it.

      Of course this refers to the fact that this man, of whom I had never heard, had been taken to court for rape but the matter was settled out of court.

      It struck me just how selective the MSM is in its indignation. For example the sexual misdemeanors of the basket man and Brendan Cox are swept under the carpet but Prince Andrew is showered with indignant abuse and inuendo.

  27. Morning everyone.

    Free at last, Free at last, Thank God almighty we are free at last.

  31. Last night, I was reminded of a girl I once worked with who, recently divorced, had moved in with her mum. She’d often appear at work with red eyes, having had a blazing row with her mum.

    Eventually, she got a house of her own and those red eyes disappeared. Not only that but she could never stop speaking highly of her mum, who had become her best pal.

    Time for the UK to reach out the hand of friendship to those across the Channel.

      1. I’m under no illusions but feel that the more of a success Brexit pans out, the better our bargaining position will be.

    2. It took nearly four years since the referendum vote to get Brexit done, and the EU (plus Gina Miller, etc.) have done their level best to obstruct us. So it will be at least another four years of my life – not just less than 24 hours – before I start buying EU27 produce when shopping. (Exception – when other nations leave the EU then they will instantly be forgiven.)

      1. Hello Elsie.

        I thought along those lines until fairly recently but have since done a complete u-turn.

        We need to prove to the European countries, not the EU, that life goes on after Brexit and that Project Fear was just that. Also, that trade between us and them is to our mutual benefit.

        Let’s not forget that it’s more than likely their elite calling the EU shots, as were ours, and that many of the hoi polloi are as cheesed off with the EU project as we were.

      2. Precisely, Elsie.

        Those across the Channel need to exert a bit of influence over their politicians before I buy anything from the EU.

  32. SIR—Tamara Abraham (Fashion, telegraph.co.uk, January 29) reports that “petrol blue” is the new neutral colour for the Duchess of Cambridge.
    But that colour is named after the bird called a petrel, and should be spelled in the same way.

    Jeremy MJ Havard
    Westgate, West Sussex

    SIR—Jeremy MJ Havard perpetuates the urban myth (Letters, February 1) that one of the 24 recognised species of storm-petrel and diving-petrel is a ‘greyish-blue colour tinted with green’ (Petrol blue). I challenge him to show me which one.

    A Grizzly B

    1. On the River Wey a couple of years ago we spotted a Tern in the water. When we arrived in Guildford we went straight to the reference library and took three reference books on British Birds off the shelf and spent quite a while trying to identify what sort of Tern it was but without success. So we decided to call it after Roy who first spotted it. So if you ever come across a Tern that doesn’t resemble any other you’ll know it’s Roy’s Tern.

  33. Am I starting to hear the sounds of a parrot shreiking and squawking again on this forum?

    1. It’s the irretrievably tiresome ruddy parrot again, copying ‘n pasting the same old same old.

      4. Except when your foreign neighbour, Keith, weirdly receives eight counterfeit beige sleighs from feisty caffeinated weightlifters; and when you heinously seize your leisurely conceited heifer from the sovereign.

  35. Wee Willie Vague, after spending over three and a half years trying to overturn Brexit, now wants his and other remainers say in what happens in the future.
    Thee comments are not supportive of his wishes.

    Remainers have a crucial part to play in securing Britain’s post-Brexit success

    William Hague

    1 February 2020 • 6:00am

    Credit:

    JUSTIN TALLIS/GETTY

    On our first day outside the European Union, we know something very important.

    Democracy in the United Kingdom is resilient, alive and well. After

    widespread disillusionment with the whole democratic process through an

    uncertain three years, the events that finally confirmed January 31 as Brexit day showed

    the strength of our political culture. The electorate settled this

    argument, and much else besides, with a decisive outcome.

    The finality and legitimacy of that outcome is important, for it

    means Brexit is not the product of a ruse, a procedural trick in

    parliament, or a clever manoeuvre. Rightly or wrongly, the British

    electorate voted to leave the EU, and have reaffirmed that they meant

    it. Many of us who voted Remain in 2016 always argued, once the

    referendum outcome was clear, that Brexit had to happen. Many others

    fought on, in pressure groups and opposition parties. Today is the

    moment they need to move on from such resistance. The thought of

    remaining is officially over.

    Furthermore, Brexit is not an event that can be reversed in the

    foreseeable future, even if the British people suddenly changed their

    minds. At 11pm on Friday, the door closed behind British EU membership

    and it can never be re-opened in the same form. Even if we wanted to

    step back through it, the terms would be quite different and less

    advantageous. Whatever the dangers or difficulties in our new world,

    there is no way back.

    So while the 48 per cent who voted Remain should

    not feel they have to cheer this event, we all have an important choice

    to make about our attitude. Are we going to be reluctant, grudging,

    embittered, and muttering “I told you so” for the next 20 years? Are we

    going to spend a large part of the twenty-first century in a giant sulk?

    Are some political leaders going to pretend that rejoining the EU is a

    possibility, clinging to past ideas as a substitute for thinking of new

    ones?

    It is obvious there will be many huge challenges as a result of Brexit. New trade deals will be very tough to negotiate. Scottish Nationalists will exploit every problem

    to try to destroy the UK. Northern Ireland is beset with difficult

    issues. But the right attitude now – across politics, industry, finance,

    academia and the whole of British public life – is to contribute our

    ingenuity and resourcefulness to overcoming these problems.

    Just as we should always shake ourselves out of the tendency to

    believe we are only a shadow of the great imperial power of the past, so

    we will now have to guard against the tendency to think we can never be

    as successful outside the EU. There will be no point wallowing in

    regrets for what might have been. Now everyone has to work out how to

    make the best of our great assets.

    If we were starting out as a new country and were awarded the sixth

    largest economy of the world, many of the very top universities, the

    biggest financial centre, a seat on the UN Security Council, one of the

    biggest diplomatic networks, highly respected armed forces, a globally

    dominant language and millions of enterprising individuals, we would not

    be walking around feeling depressed. This is the moment to make the

    most of all those advantages, and the key test of Boris Johnson’s

    ministers will be whether they can do that.

    It is true that over the last three years, many people around the

    world have looked at us with pity, bemusement or even incredulity. Yet

    there is an opportunity to change that now and show that it would be a

    mistake to bet against Britain picking itself up and being a success.

    The attitude of those who preferred to remain is going to be a crucial

    part of demonstrating that.

    Many countries in the world don’t get the chance to decide on their

    future. Either their political leaders or their geographic situation do

    not allow for a choice. In Britain we are lucky that we do get to

    choose, and we are fortunate today to be who we are, where we are, and

    with the opportunities that we have in front of us. It’s time for the

    Remainers and the Leavers of recent years to join in making the most of

    that.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/02/01/remainers-have-crucial-part-play-securing-britains-post-brexit/

    1. “Even if we wanted to step back through it, the terms would be quite different and less
      advantageous.      ”
      Hard to imagine.

          1. One talks of possessive adjectives & possessive pronouns but not of genitive pronouns or genitive adjectives.

      2. But nowhere near as much as those who use personal pronouns instead of possessive pronouns when using the gerund.

      3. Autocorrective text. It frequently changes it to the incorrect form when I’ve typed it in correctly. Might possibly be that rather than user illiteracy.
        Then again, it might not.

      4. My fingers occasionally do that, then I have the embarrassment of having to edit to remove the apostrophe seconds after I hit ‘Post’, hoping that nobody has noticed.

        One way around it is to use ‘it is’ and never use the apostrophe at all. It is only one keystroke more.

        My fingers invariably type ‘teh’ instead of ‘the’. I need new fingers.

        1. My typing is so erratic that I have to reread everything I post and even then I miss some of my mistakes which is embarrassing.

          1. Afternoon R,
            If only so much thought went into the ballot booth regarding candidates / parties
            as into correcting rhetoric we would not be in so much sh!te as a nation.

        2. Possibly your keyboard needs to be sent away for reeducation.

          My tablet has now been trained to correct teh

        4. I have actually watched “autocorrect” (a misnomer if ever there was/were* one) adding an unwanted apostrophe into my text and changing words I have typed for something else.

          [*Note to pedants: did you see what I did there?]

  38. Well done all NoTTLers who made it to Parliament Square last night. Nagsman & I were with you in spirit as we gorged ourselves on lots of excellent roast beef + Yorkshire puddings + + + (and Wadworth IPA) at The George, Sandy Lane.

    We had declined the invitation to join a mutual friend (not a NoTTLer but a leading light in the campaign to get Claire Perry/O’Neill out of this constituency) to whom I have just spoken. She got there early and bagged a spot next to the stage, surrounded mostly by people from the North (Wigan, Chester, Newcastle, Sunderland…..and north Devon). She spent some time talking to a German MEP who kept on saying how envious his constituents were of us Brits, that ‘Merkel’ was a swear word and that corruption/control of the media and means of control are just as bad in the fatherland as they have been in Blighty. She confirmed Anneallan’s observation that 90+% of attendees were not wrinklies and would have been too young to have voted in the 1975 referendum. If and when she figures out how to send me her portfolio of photographs and video, I will post it hereon.

  39. You could say that Boris has more power than any other PM of the last 40+ years.

    Lets hope he uses it well.

    2. Morning JN,
      There it is again, the ‘hope’ element why is it left with all the uncertainty about what johnson will do with so much at stake.

        1. JN,
          Regarding the lab/lib/con parties political hierarchy tis best to adhere to trusting none, ALL have proved treacherous especially since 2016.

    3. Brexit brings renewed hope but above all we must have faith. Those without faith will be the biggest losers. This is a unique situation and no one can say with any certainty what will or will not happen. Absolutely Johnny, hope is our strength and inspiration.

  40. A glorious victory for democracy. Spiked. Brendan O’Neill, 31 January 2020.

    But all sides in the Brexit Day discussion are wrong. Baker and other timid Brexiteers are wrong to suggest we should play down the significance of this day lest we offend Remainers, and the Brexitphobic wing of the elite is wrong to say these celebrations are a screech of populist arrogance against the defeated side in the referendum. No, the reason this day must be marked — loudly, firmly and colourfully — is because it represents a glorious victory for democracy. What is being celebrated today is the defence of democracy against one of the greatest threats it has faced in modern times.

    Brendan waxing lyrical here but no matter how this turns out we will have escaped yet again another European fascist state. It is mostly forgotten now but Hitler’s Third Reich exhibited a huge fascination on a large part of the UK elites of the time. Many were openly supportive and admiring of its appearance of efficiency and dynamism. Like the EU it was openly contemptible of Democracy and Free Speech which was incompatible with our traditions and still is, though some of this poison has seeped into the life blood of the UK while we have been a member. Hopefully now we are out we can take the cure and restore ourselves to what we once were!

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/01/31/a-glorious-victory-for-democracy/

    1. Hitler’s Third Reich exhibited a huge fascination on a large part of the UK elites of the time. Many were openly supportive and admiring of its appearance of efficiency and dynamism.

      The majority of them were allowed to remain anonymous to protect them, their position and social cohesion. In similar vein to many across Europe when it became clear that the Third Reich was going down to defeat they all became members of the ‘resistance’.
      Listening to the bleating on the steam radio it would appear that there still is a large minority of people in this Country who want to be ruled by a European cabal, no matter how corrupt, controlling or anti-democratic its political stance. .

    2. ‘Morning, Minty. Thanks for posting. We have finally overcome the wreckers, traitors and betrayers in the H of C and elsewhere, but boy, it was a close-run thing. I shudder to think of what would have happened if we had not done so…but I would have wanted to be part of it.

        1. Good for you, Peddy. I can highly recommend them. Much simpler than washing everything by hand!

          :-))

  42. Good morning all , damp morning here .. just watching the glum BBC faces.. their Guardianista joyless facade is beyond a joke..

    Our vote mattered , politicians assumed they knew better than the people they purport to support ,

    I hope the drama is over now.

    Why is the BBC interviewing the vice president of the EU Mairaid McGuiness.. just now, the bint who told Nigel to sit down and stop waving flags

  43. Traitor BBC interviewing the Irish vice president of the EU… why why why…

    You must hear what she is saying … vexatious comments and a total conflict of interest .. Will some one wake up and listen to her .

    1. I saw the tail end of that just as I switched the TV on. The BBC cannot let go. What a cheery friendly conversation Naganog had with this nasty humourless Irish bint who cut off Nigel Farage in his farewell speech when the little Union Flags were produced.

    1. I find the liberal use of machine guns to be very effective in dissuading such behaviour.

      Such equipment ought to be standard issue for all border patrols.

  45. Top BTL comment under Robert Taylor’s article (posted earlier)

    John Steed 1 Feb 2020 7:33AM

    Good points in this article. I did not feel like celebrating yesterday, although it certainly represented a victory. I felt like someone whose stolen property has finally been returned, scratched and damaged, whilst my insurance premiums have gone through the roof. I am still angry with the thieves who tried to make out I didn’t want my property, then changed tack and said it wasn’t mine anyway, and then said that if I did own it, it meant I was a nasty racist. These people now expect sensitive treatment and consideration of their ‘fears’ and respect for their opinions. And of course the BBC will give it to them. The BBC will provide a platform to the likes of Alistair Campbell, and fawn respectfully, and not interrupt or contradict while he pontificates at length….

    Ian Dale the other day on LBC got Anna Soubry in to air her exhausting and irritating views – I so hoped he had seen the last of her sullen face. Who does she represent now, exactly?

  46. Morning again.

    What dreadful fools these people are that see racism in a favourite Shakespeare quote.

    Alastair Stewart

    SIR – Having worked alongside Alastair Stewart (Letters, January 31) for many years at ITN, I join in with the high praise for his professional skills and his kindness to colleagues.

    Surely ITN should simply have reminded him of the perils of Twitter, told him to reduce if not cease involvement with this form of social media, and continued to use the services of one of the best television news presenters.

    Nicholas Owen
    Reigate, Surrey

    SIR – I worked with Alastair Stewart for many years at London News Network and then at ITN. I’m pleased to confirm what most have already deduced: he is not racist.

    Ben Rudd
    Caddington, Bedfordshire

    SIR – If, instead of quoting Shakespeare, Alastair Stewart had called for battery acid to be thrown over someone whose views he didn’t share, as Jo Brand did, would he have kept his job?

    Bob Stebbings
    Chorleywood, Hertfordshire

  48. Leaving the EU has provided us with many positives (and few negatives); however, for me the most satisfying positive was pissing on Mutti’s kartoffelpfannkuchen.

        2. They look like Reibekuchen, a favourite on the Weihnachtsmärkte, delicious served with Apfelmus.

    2. Serious question, Grizz: are you completely confident about your continuing status in Sweden? (I take it you’ve retained British citizenship.)

      1. Yes, Joe. I am confident that my status will be maintained whilst I remain here in Sweden. I seriously doubt that the Swedish government would make any move against a citizen of a country to which it wishes to retain a good relationship with. Plus I am much less of a drain on the Swedish exchequer than the hundreds of thousands of “refugees” whom the Swedish population were urged to “open their hearts” (and pockets) to back in 2015.

        My British citizenship will always remain intact, and I still possess a British passport since I have no wish, whatsoever, to gain Swedish citizenship.

        As an additional back-up, I enjoy acquired rights under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties:

        https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201617/ldselect/ldeucom/82/8209.htm

      1. I must not say rubber buttons.
        I must not say rubber buttons.
        I must not say rubb ……
        Ooops, I’ve been suspendered.

  52. First Ferries have arrived and departed from Dover post Brexit. Where are the huge delays and where are the several mile long queues of Lorries ?

  53. There was ‘only one gig in town’ yesterday – Parliament Square – as far as I was concerned. Great turnout and atmosphere despite rather variable weather. Couple of pictures attached, although best one is on front page of the (print-only, I think) Telegraph. Their video

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/01/31/brexit-day-2020-latest-news-uk-independence-fireworks-party/

    is also excellent.

    Was surprised at the number of trains running from Westminster Station at that time of night – on the Jubilee Line at least – which suggests some sensible Tfl planning. Well done to them and the police for a very smooth-running event.

    1. I was there too, like the 29th March 2019 rally it was fun and good natured (although a bit hard to hear the speakers from the cheap seats at the back!). At least this time we had something to celebrate.

      But now we are experiencing ‘the morning after the night before’ are we really better off than we were yesterday? We are now a “vassal state” of the EU for the next eleven months. We musn’t let Brexit slip off people’s radar. We must keep a very close eye on what dodgy deals are signed up to in our names.

      1. Me too! As I surfaced for a brief look when passing through on the Jubilee line. There was a wonderful British Bulldog dressed up in a Union Jack coat, superb.

  54. Climate change summit chief Claire Perry O’Neill sacked by Boris Johnson

    Deems to be the start of Boris slimming back his organisation. The role, which was semi-independent from Whitehall, will now come under the remit of Business Secretary Andrea Leadsom and her department.

    The woman who was leading the UK’s hosting of a major global climate change summit has been sacked by Boris Johnson.
    Claire Perry O’Neill, a former energy minister, said that she was “very sad” that her role as president of the COP26 United Nations climate change talks in Glasgow in November, had been “rescinded” by the Prime Minister.

  55. Maldives rejoins the Commonwealth

    The change came into effect at one minute past midnight on Saturday February 1 – just over an hour after the UK left the EU.
    The republic quit the Commonwealth in 2016 after being threatened with suspension over its human rights record and lack of progress on democratic reform.
    President Ibrahim “Ibu” Mohamed Solih, a campaigner for democracy during decades of autocratic rule who was elected in 2018, pledged change and swiftly applied to rejoin.
    The island nation has been readmitted after showing evidence of functioning democratic processes and popular support for being part of the family of nations.

      1. Yes, absolutely right. Realised afterwards that saying ‘towards Whitehall’ about location was rather misleading.

  57. Sort of off topic but …. : English three year battle with experts. (Ponders deeply.)

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/01/31/treasure-hunter-proves-experts-wrong-saxon-coin-rewrites-history/

    Treasure hunter proves experts wrong over Saxon coin and rewrites history

    Andy Hall spent three years trying to prove that his 1,300-year-old coin was genuine

    By Telegraph Reporters 31 January 2020 • 11:29pm

    The coin features the head of Ludica, a virtually unknown Saxon king

    The coin features the head of Ludica, a virtually unknown Saxon king Credit: BNPS

    A treasure hunter who found a 1,300-year-old coin will have history books rewritten after spending three years proving it was genuine.

    Experts and scholars dismissed the silver penny Andy Hall unearthed in a muddy field as it featured the head of a virtually-unknown Saxon king.

    And the date it was hammered – 826AD – would also have meant the history books on Britain would have to be re-written.

    But the 55-year-old metal detectorist was determined to prove them wrong.

    He spent the next three years having his coin examined by other experts and even paid £300 for a metallurgical analysis of it.

    Andy Hall was determined to prove the experts wrong

    Andy Hall was determined to prove the experts wrong Credit: BNPS

    The scientific study confirmed the coin was 95 per cent silver and ‘completely consistent with coinage in the period 810-840AD’.

    The face depicted on the coin is Ludica, the Saxon king of Mercia – which included London – and who reigned for just over a year in 826-827AD.

    The record books state that London fell to the Wessex King Ecgberht at the Battle of Ellandun in 825AD.

    But Andy’s coin proves that Mercia still retained London – or Lundenwic as it was then – in 826AD.

    It did not fall under Ecgberht’s control until after Ludica was killed fighting the East Angles in 827AD.

    Andy has now offered his coin for sale with London auctioneers Dix Noonan Webb who have given it an estimate of £15,000.

    Andy said: “I have a love for history and numismatics and so wanted the historical importance of this coin recorded and, as the finder, I felt I had a responsibility to do so.

    “The process took just over three years and cost £300 in total.

    “I was over the moon when I first read the analysis results, I re-read them about five times.

    “Even though I was expecting a positive result I felt enormous relief. I knew I had dug it up, but there is always the thought that it may have been a contemporary forgery or a 19th century fantasy piece.

    “I felt that at last my patience and determination over the last three years had paid off, even though it seemed impossible at times.

    “It’s very satisfying to have made a very tiny contribution to our knowledge of the period.”

    Andy found the penny during a one-off visit to farmland at Coombe Bisset, Wilts, in January 2016.

    It was buried up to four inches deep in the mud.

    Andy said: “I saw that it was a Saxon silver penny and when I got it home I gently washed off the mud with distilled water.

    “I then had to Google Ludica to find out who the monarch was. I then sent photos and details to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge as that is where new discoveries of early medieval coins are registered.”

    When he tried to auction the coin in June 2016 he was told by a leading historian and expert in Anglo-Saxon coins that there was concerns about its authenticity.

    Andy said: “I agreed to take the coin back and approach specialists myself.

    “I organised a meeting at the Fitzwilliam Museum and received a positive reception although the issue was still concern over its authenticity.”

    It took another 18 months for coin to be sent off for analysis where it was verified.

    Since then an article was written about the new discovery in the British Numismatic Society journal.

    Nigel Mills, antiquities expert at Dix Noonan Webb, said: “Ludica is only mentioned briefly in the Anglo Saxon chronicles, so this coin shows he retained London during his reign.

    “Ludica is first recorded as a military commander in 824AD under the Mercian king Beornwulf.

    “Beornwulf was defeated by the Wessex king Ecgberht in 825AD and it was believed that he then took control of south eastern England.

    “This coin shows that Mercia still retained London in 826AD and that it did not fall under Ecgberhts control until after Ludica was killed in 827AD.”

    Nigel Mills, the coin experts at Dix Noonan Webb, said the King Ludica coin could have been lost forever had Mr Hall not been so determined to prove it was genuine.

    He said: “The view from eminent experts at the time was ‘this coin cannot exist because Mercia did not have London in 826AD and therefore the coin must be a fabrication.’

    “The problem when something as new and radically different as this coin comes to the market is that one naturally questions its authenticity and it comes down to the person who found it to prove it is genuine.

    “Andy was given the coin back and he had to go to several museums to find out where he could have it tested.

    “When the result came back that it was irrefutably right, those same experts had to hold up their hands and acknowledge it.

    “This coin was a piece of propaganda at the time. Usually these coins would have the name on the moneyer on the reverse but this unique example has the city of London on it.

    “What it is telling is that although Wessex was expanding, London was still ruled by King Ludica of Mercia. It is proclaiming that he still retained London.”

    The coin has the bust of Ludica facing right with the legend LUDICA REX MER while the reverse features the inscription LUN/DONIA/CIVIT in three lines.

    Andy will share the proceeds of the sale with the owner of the land the coin was found on.

    It is being sold on March 10.

  58. Another DT article:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/02/01/guilty-men-remain-elite-will-never-forgiven/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter

    The guilty men of the Remain elite will never be forgiven

    The only thing they have achieved is an ignominious place in history

    Tony Blair

    The defeat of those who tried to defy democracy is now confirmed Credit: Chris J Ratcliffe/ Getty Images Europe

    “We’ve lost, we have to face up to that, we’re going to leave Europe.” These are the words of Michael Heseltine, High Commander of the defeated Remain elite.

    His words sound honourable. They sound decent. As indeed they would be, if he’d uttered them on the morning of June 24, 2016, the day after the EU referendum. But he said them only after Boris Johnson’s spectacular general election victory. Honourable, they ain’t.

    For while there is no disgrace in defeat, there certainly is disgrace in refusing to accept it, in spending three and a half years fighting to overturn it and only, finally, giving in when the voters have made their views clear not once (in the EU referendum), not twice (with the general election of 2017) but three times (with Boris’s election victory last month).

    It’s not just Heseltine, of course. The entire Remain elite is culpable in this ignominy, with all its fame and fortune, from Tony Blair, John Major, Dominic Grieve, George Soros and his millions, Chuka Umunna and David Gaulke, to just about every Liberal Democrat MP and countless celebrities, not least Gary Lineker and Hugh Grant. They all join the roll call of dishonour.

    A special place must also go to the ardent Europhile Lord Kerr, one of the architects of Article 50, who fought tooth and nail to overturn the referendum result, assuring the world that Britain would “come to heel”. You heard him right. The world’s oldest democracy should ignore the decision of its people and come to the heel of the European Union, literally like a dog. It is quite some achievement to say something at once so offensive and yet so ignorant. (No wonder the House of Lords, just when the nation was so heartily sick of it all, chose to extend the agony with picky amendments to the EU Withdrawal Agreement in a desperate final attempt to tie Britain’s hands in negotiations.)

    And, of course, much of the Remainer cause was facilitated by John Bercow, who didn’t even bother concealing his bias. Bercow broke convention when it suited Remain, and cited others dating back 400 years when it would hurt Leave. Heads I win, tails you lose. While occupying the one position in the land where neutrality is most essential, he drove a car with a sticker saying that people’s decision to leave the EU was “bollocks”.

    These are the Guilty Men, who refused to accept democracy.

    It is only now, after the general election and its massive mandate for Boris, that the scale of that guilt is clear. They said that Leave voters were duped by a right-wing plot – so stupid that we didn’t realise it – and that if we had the chance to think again, we’d reverse our decision. They rejoiced in older voters dying off, predicting that this would make a Remain victory a certainty in what they termed a “People’s Vote” (what that made the 2016 referendum, in which 33.5 million people voted, is anybody’s guess). They refused to condemn those who called Leavers everything from bigots and racists to imbeciles.

    Because of this Leaver stupidity, they calculated, our vote to leave the European Union could be overturned, however foul the means. So, they colluded with the EU and foreign governments to undermine the British position in Brexit negotiations, aiming either for no Brexit at all or a withdrawal agreement that would leave the UK subject to all EU rules in perpetuity. As we now know, Tony Blair held private talks about Brexit with Jean Claude Junker, and briefed Emmanuel Macron on how to force Britain to stay in the EU. What a patriot. What a democrat.

    Yet, despite it all, the voters still decided to “Get Brexit done”. And finally, today, it will be. Millions of us have told these Guilty Men where to go.

    How horribly irritating it must be. “If it weren’t for you voters, we’d have succeeded”, they must growl, like the vanquished outlaw in Scooby-Doo.

    So, what do the Guilty Men do, now that defeat has been confirmed thrice over? They think they can retire from the battlefield, beaten, bloodied, resigned, but with honour intact. They think, in Heseltine’s words, that they’ll just “face up to it”.

    Think again, Guilty Men. For your attempt to deny democracy will never be forgiven.”

    1. Many of the comments on that article make rather depressing reading. There appear to be many Remainers under the bed. Sadly I don’t think we have seen the end of the remain movement by a long way.

    2. Morning Anne.
      Thanks for posting that, it’s good to see that the DT does still produce some good articles. I haven’t subscribed for a very long time, not since they stopped allowing comments on articles in the run up to 2016 referendum (couldn’t possibly have been because of all the anti EU comments, could it?).
      There may be a few “Guilty Men” at the DT having that Scooby-Doo feeling this morning.

  59. Good morning Fellow Nottlers

    I am extremely lucky to have a happy marriage but I can imagine how unhappy people are when they have married the wrong person.

    I can also imagine that some husbands wake up the day after the divorce with a sense of euphoria and freedom – but that euphoria only lasts until the alimony payments and child maintenance bills have to be met and they have to find somewhere else to live because the ex-wife has the house.

    I seldom agree with that odious man, Alastair Campbell, but last night on television he reminded us that we have been told very little about Boris’s Johnson’s withdrawal agreement and there may well be some very nasty surprises in store which will have to come out.

    Let us hope that Jeremiah, one of the star turns in the Book of Lamentations, has not been given too much material to work on by Mr Johnson.

        1. I just done a 12 hour night, someone else can pick the two agreements apart, not much has changed. Most of the changes are in the political declaration which is as legally binding as toilet paper and so should be treated as such. About 95% of the WA is exactly the same as the May WA.

          1. Good morning Thayaric

            Which is why Boris Johnson was determined not to be interviewed by Andrew Neil who might have asked him questions he did not want to answer.

            I hope all is going well with you.

            .

    2. Good morning, Rastus.

      I still harbour doubts about Johnson despite all his rhetoric on the direction the UK will take under his premiership.
      I see Johnson as being at a fork in the road; one direction is towards becoming a great Prime Minister by putting clear blue water between the UK and the EU. No political, legal or military entanglements; trade certainly but on mutually agreed terms with no alignments and no anti-competitive rules to hold us back and more, much more.
      The other direction will expose him as a fraud and charlatan if he agrees to any of the aforementioned and by doing so creates an opening for the UK to be eased back into the fetid quagmire of Brussels. There is a powerful lobby of people who will campaign for the UK to rejoin the EU and I’m convinced that, behind the scenes, they will continue to undermine the UK and its people.

      1. Good morning, Korky.

        Since 23rd. June, 2016, I have become even more cynical than
        before. We have heard almost every Politician, of every Party,
        tell us what we want to hear, whether it was a Leaver, Remainer
        or Democracy Supporter.
        Last night, the culmination of more than three and a half years of
        talk resulted in a euphoric outpouring of emotion.
        We had several fine speakers with Nigel Farage, at his best,
        , lauding everyone, yet after all the hard work carried out by UKIP
        supporters during the Referendum Campaign, he chose to publicly
        belittle them. I do not wish to sound like a bag of sour grapes but
        I do think we can , on occasion, be easily swayed……..and the B’s
        know it!…………..The result of the last GE was such because people
        want to believe what they are told.
        I really hope Boris Johnson’s actions speak as loudly as his words!

        1. If it hadn’t been for UKIP supporters, there’d have been no referendum. Farage couldn’t have done it on his ownsome, as much as people pretend he could.
          I missed that little sideswipe at UKIP. It was unnecessary.

    3. Morning R,
      Hope once again having to be relied on, the johnson has the whip and the chair and knows how to handle the herd.
      Best thing is to expect treachery then you will not feel let down when it occurs.
      By the by who has trousered the 39 billion as we type

      1. Praying!

        I am just wondering whether this is the reason for Smart motorways.. probably the old hard shoulders were taken up with barefoot prayers.

        Why does Allah insist on shoes being removed?

      1. A bit prescient there, as you’ve added Turkey. I thought that was to be kept a secret until it was too late?

        1. Also England appears to have left without the rest of the Union. Nicked from Facebook of course so I plead not guilty on all counts bar sharing the evidence.

          1. I thought they already had one.

            [Judging by the numbers of ‘Abduls’ on Düsseldorf’s building sites in Auf Wiedersehen, Pet.]

      2. That 21 mile wide moat between this island, and the rapidly rising mosque that is Europe, is looking more beautiful by the day. Now that we have “left” the EU, it would be nice if Boris started to rigorously enforce our border controls.

        Building 100 fast-interceptor patrol boats would stimulate our shipyards and provide useful employment.

  65. An absolute outrage

    !Harry, of course, disagrees. He is

    unrepentant as he waits anxiously for the outcome of the judicial

    review. Speaking from his pleasant family home in a peaceful part of

    East Anglia, he says: ‘I’ve broken no law. I have done nothing illegal.

    Yet I now have a police record on file for retweeting a limerick. It is

    completely mad.

    ‘My view is that transwomen are not biological women. But how do I air my views without drawing the criticism of the police?’

    It is a question many in Britain might ask themselves today.”

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7954389/SUE-REID-Orwellian-nightmare-befell-businessman-Harry-Miller.html

    1. Teaching Biology should be compulsory. There are not “72 sexes” in biology. Just the two needed to tango, whether plants, fish or higher animals.

      1. Not according to the Associated Press in the U.S., where they’ve just sacked a reporter for saying just that.

        1. It’s a sad state of affairs where stating the truth is unacceptable. George Orwell understood perfectly.

  66. ‘Brexit, the most pointless, masochistic ambition in our country’s history, is done’
    Ian McEwan

    John le Carré on Brexit: ‘It’s breaking my heart’

    These are just two headlined articles in today’s Guardian newspaper. The entire coverage of the Guardian today is one of grieving and grievance, turn by turnabout. Even after nearly four years this kind of one sided response shocks. This country’s oldest and most distinguished liberal voice is nothing more than privileged whining.

    I used to comment on Guardian pieces. I never use profanities and do not make personal attacks ever, but was banned promptly after pointing out that a series of articles exposing tax havens failed to mention the Scott Trust, owners of the title. I am not shocked at the financial hypocrisy of the liberal elites, just that the ‘Comment is Free’ slogan is another sham, like ’Stop the War’. Looking back over the past ten years and the steady rotting away of liberal thought, I still cannot believe it is just so utterly stupid. The stupidity that decided an always unelectable Trotskyite with obvious deficiencies besides political ones, could be so mindlessly promoted to a ‘proletariat’ that ceased to exist thirty years ago. Corbyn, and inter alia the Guardian and its writers, seemed to me to believe that somewhere beyond the M25 northwards there lay in waiting a boiler suited mass of workers waiting on his signal to march on Westminster and seize power. When such an opportunity to mount a coup d’etat did present itself in the form of an ego maniacal cross Parliamentary clique, the spectacle was so improbable he failed to see it. His Marxist class analysis didn’t run to toffs, bullies and crooks leading the way.

    Brexit should be merely a beginning; it is just the lining up for the first ball, kick off or to one’s marks. The tough work begins now.

    Brexit exposed more than a divide between this country and its pragmatic ‘Anglo-Saxon’ (and widely adopted) systems and the Napoleonic European Union. In this country – almost solely in this context, England – it exposed the geological division of a nation. The task ahead is to address that fact and what to do about it in practical terms. These cracks present in different forms but are ultimately down to one or two linked causes: The enforced by law fashion known as political correctness and its companion in oppression, multiculturalism, relentlessly imposed by our national media and elites. It is striking how these two defining cults have shaped the past decades of the 21st century in England by today. Few have stood against them and their impacts have been prodigious everywhere one looks. Nothing and no one has been neglected or missed scrutiny. The old trope of having someone ‘come back’ to life to see the country as it is today normally requires a certain lengthy period time for its point to be made; not so now. Someone who passed away in 1989 or 1995 would I suggest be staggered to see what has transpired in every aspect of our national life subsequently. There has been a regressive revolution.

    Last month it was advanced that more should be done to encourage black and South Asian people to go for a walk. Our national bodies concerned with going for a walk were not doing enough; this could be – certainly soon will be – seen as low level, building to medium level, race crime. It is fairly typical for this nonsense to be treated with not just mild interest; I personally didn’t give a fig who does and does not want to ramble. It’s personal choice. But here in this example lies an important thread that links all such cases (across every aspect of our national life). It is the idea, subtle and subliminal as is, that somehow the whole presentation of this country is indelibly racist. You are, if white, racist and there is nothing you can do about it. Interestingly, during the years of Brexit defiance an idea that was not uncommonly advanced was that one explanation for Brexiteers was their failure to drop dead.
    In the aftermath the task those of us whose primary and ultimate motive was national self determination whatever the cost as a goal sufficient to itself, is to asset once again the virtues of what for many of us was the country we were born into and wish to preserve. Common decency and courtesy to all taught to us by our parents and enforced at all schools regardless; recognition that the long haul of our shared history had been progress in ending forms of slavery and exploitation under the same laws for all; it matters not how or why such things were achieved but that they were achieved. Advancing individual rights to be treated no better or no worse than anyone else. Tolerance, accepted standards in public utterance (derived ultimately from the correct application of Christian theology). Above all, a belief in truth as the only route to progress. Today making such claims makes one ‘ a Nazi’. Well, I was brought up among ‘ordinary people’ who fought the Nazis either in the home or on a battlefield who taught me not to hate, so, indeed I must therefore plead guilty. I am a Nazi by todays cock-eyed standards. That thought has occurred to many. It’s why the old coal field constituencies voted Tory when they were given the chance to hit back against the jibes of their ‘born to take your votes by the sackful’ liberal betters in Metroland.

    Like minded people must defy the end of decent progress and oppose regressive, divisive cults everywhere they raise their heads. We can learn for minorities who today twist everything to a newer and worse purpose. Defy. Assert. Never give in.

  69. Greetings, Nottlers! Searching for words of wisdom on this glorious Saturday I ran across this Telegraph article by Julie Burchill–an article that (remarkably) dates back a year ago, to January 2019:

    “Of all the sore-loser descriptions of Brexiteers that have been doing the weary rounds for the past two years among Remainers, it’s hard to know which one least applies to me. On balance, however, I think it would have to be “nostalgic”. ‘

    “I don’t have a nostalgic bone in my body. In fact, the main reason Brexit appeals so strongly to me is that it’s about shaking off a busted flush of a political mindset that may well have made sense in the shadow of the ruins of Germany, but in the shadow of the ruins of Greece has been well and truly revealed as little more than a freeloaders’ gravy-train heading nowhere fast. If anything, Remainers are the Nostalgics. We Leavers are the Futurists. … .”

    20 January 2019–Nostalgic? Me? No, it’s Remainers who cling to the past
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/01/20/nostalgic-no-remainers-cling-past/

  72. Left the EU, Trump ‘set for acquittal’, 6 nations about to commence, ODIs in SA start on Tuesday and the sun, albeit probably very briefly, is shining.
    Good morning.

  73. For needy NoTTLers, a good Premium read from Charles Moore

    The ruled have given the rulers a lesson – and made Britain stronger in doing so
    CHARLES MOORE – 31 JANUARY 2020 • 9:30PM

    Brexit has taught us a lot about ourselves – and that national sovereignty really does matter to the people

    As a boy, I used to pore over an illustrated Edwardian book called Battles of the 19th Century. One essay in it, about Waterloo, stays with me. It reprinted the headlines of a contemporary French newspaper reporting Napoleon’s escape from Elba in 1815 and his subsequent march on Paris.

    The first headline was “The cannibal has left his den”, the second, “The Corsican wolf has landed”, and so on. As the escapee marched successfully north, the tone of the headlines began to change: “Bonaparte is advancing with great rapidity, but he will not set foot inside the walls of Paris”. Then it was “The Emperor has arrived at Fontainebleau”. The last proclaimed: “His Imperial Majesty Napoleon entered Paris yesterday, surrounded by his loyal subjects”.

    On Thursday night, I read out the full list of headlines. The occasion was a merry dinner, skillfully assembled by this paper’s columnist Allison Pearson, of about 60 journalists, writers, historians, boulevardiers who have consistently argued for Brexit over these long years – the few who had spoken up for the many. We celebrated absentees who had done so much to persuade the British people to vote Leave, such as Guy Verhofstadt and Jean-Claude Juncker. We even had grace from a distinguished Catholic priest, whom I shall not name lest Pope Francis excommunicate him.

    My 1815 comparison was with media coverage in Britain from the moment Boris Johnson resigned from Theresa May’s Cabinet in July 2018, through to when he became Prime Minister last July, won the general election in December and accomplished Brexit at 11pm last night. What began as media execration shifted subtly to grudging admiration and, in some quarters, to adulation.

    It would have been unkind (though fun) to point out the agonies of those newspapers which have chopped and changed over the period in question or of broadcasters whose “reality checks” were swiftly overtaken by reality itself. So I refrained. But it is interesting to reflect on what we have learnt – some much more slowly than others – from the process which began when David Cameron called the referendum on our membership of the European Union four years ago this month.

    Obviously, we learnt that some claims made by Remainers were untrue. There was no instant economic collapse, no mass exodus, not even a recession. They said that no deal better than Theresa May’s could be obtained and Mr Johnson was the last person capable of getting anything. When, all the same, he did get a better deal, they said that Parliament would not vote in favour of it. All this was wrong.

    Yet, over this four-year, bitter though almost completely non-violent civil war, I would argue that it is not really about Brexit that we have learnt much more. Even now, we cannot confidently state when we shall get a trade deal or how good it will be. We may predict Britain’s success or its humiliation, but neither side can know the truth. Our inability accurately to foresee the eventual outcomes should restrain Leavers from triumphalism and Remainers from suicide.

    What we can say is that we have learnt a lot more about ourselves. Despite all the genuine pain, we have learnt something to our advantage.

    We have learnt, which we had already suspected, that our elites are in a poor state. Large swathes of them really did think – perhaps think still – that EU membership was a subject too difficult for the mass of voters to understand and therefore to vote on.

    Worse, we have learnt that those elite views were held not only by unelected bureaucrats, judges, university professors etc, but also by a large number of people – MPs – who live by the ballot box. If MPs think voters cannot be trusted with deciding under whose authority they should be ruled, do they think the same about voters’ right to elect them?

    The most shocking gap that opened up after the referendum and – even more so – after Theresa May’s botched general election in 2017, was that between voters and Parliament. Eight-four per cent of the voters in that election backed parties (Labour and Conservative) who had promised to get Brexit done. Yet some Tory MPs and most Labour ones then proceeded to try to make Brexit undoable.

    From this flowed procedural outrages, led by the Speaker, John Bercow, which decided to chuck away our key convention that we must be governed through the House of Commons. Mr Bercow replaced it with the idea that we must be governed by the House of Commons. This quickly meant that the country could barely be governed at all. Hundreds of MP set themselves up as a special caste deliberately unresponsive to the people who elect them, indeed deliberately blocking what those people had decided. This had not happened before in the era of universal suffrage. It seemed briefly as if the parliamentary system which Brexiteers usually extol had broken down.

    These were uncomfortable lessons to learn about many of the people who run this country, but happier lessons came from the public’s response. Three times after the referendum itself – in the 2017 election, in the European elections of 2019, and in the general election in December – electors had the chance to go back on their original decision. They never did so. Politicians who had tried to frustrate Brexit, most notably every single candidate who had left the Conservatives or Labour in the name of Remain, was punished at the ballot box.

    There is little evidence that this was because of increased support for Leave – although Leave held up astonishingly well against the BBC/Labour/Liberal Democrat/SNP and Green propaganda barrage. It was more because voters showed a clear understanding of their own constitutional function.

    If you are asked to decide something by voting, the majority of them seemed to think, your decision must be implemented. When MPs told such voters to vote again – and tried to make it sound nice by calling it a “People’s Vote” – the majority of the electorate was not flattered: “We’ve told you already,” they said. Their way of putting a stop to all this was to vote for the Tories last December. It is fascinating that many of the most excluded places in England and Wales (different in Scotland) did this with the most gusto.

    Two things follow which will help us from this day forward. The first is that, almost alone in the whole of Europe, a mainstream political party has channelled the growing popular revolt. The oldest, wiliest party in the world – the Conservatives – belatedly but successfully gave a lead. So Britain has not suffered a traumatic collapse of political order.

    The second is that 17.4 million voters changed the subject. It had suited European elites for too long to ensure that the main sound in modern politics is the steady tap of the counting house. People like Philip Hammond simply could not believe that people ever vote except for economic reasons. Since the EEC referendum of 1975, the word “sovereignty” had been pushed to the edge of discourse, declared dead or irrelevant, its loss soothed by a stream of money. This was to conceal the fact that sovereignty does matter and was deliberately being passed away from us to a centralised European power.

    The ruled have given the rulers no end of a lesson in our country’s special subject – parliamentary democracy. So now it is much stronger than when that great word Brexit was born.

    *****************************************************************************
    The biggest lesson for me was watching the escalation of the dishonesty and desperation of the civil servants/broadcasters/judiciary as they realised that the populace at large valued democracy more than we valued them.

    2. “We may predict Britain’s success or its humiliation, but neither side can know the truth. Our inability accurately to foresee the eventual outcomes should restrain Leavers from triumphalism and Remainers from suicide.”

      From the very start of the campaign, when Johnson declared himself a Leaver, there was a marked difference in approach. The Out camp was optimistic, rather vaguely but correctly. The In camp was pessimistic, very precisely and wrongly. Aspiration and hope trumped dry analysis and defeatism. We are allowed to enjoy the triumph – even with Rastus’s caveats in mind!

    3. One exhilarating thing about Boris is that most people who get into a scrape like to cover it up and pretend it’s not happening to them, and they are certainly not to blame. Boris, however leaps in with gusto and flags waving, and he relishes the mess he has got himself into with the sort of sheepish grin and ruffled hair and “I think I got away with it that time” when all and sundry can see he’s landed himself right in it.

      He’s the only politician that can openly and proudly admit to a ten-year-old that when in a large hole, he intends to keep digging, and may confound everyone by pulling it off.

      I still don’t think they should trash Buckinghamshire for a £100 billion vanity project.

    4. “We may predict Britain’s success or its humiliation, but neither side can know the truth. Our inability accurately to foresee the eventual outcomes should restrain Leavers from triumphalism and Remainers from suicide.”

      From the very start of the campaign, when Johnson declared himself a Leaver, there was a marked difference in approach. The Out camp was optimistic, rather vaguely but correctly. The In camp was pessimistic, very precisely and wrongly. Aspiration and hope trumped dry analysis and defeatism. We are allowed to enjoy the triumph – even with Rastus’s caveats in mind!

      1. The difference isn’t that the country will suddenly grow jet engines and have us soaring around the galaxy.

        It isn’t that gold will suddenly pour from the bath taps.

        It’s that we can *choose* to cut corporation tax. To scrap VAT, to repeal the climate change act. To undo the environmental damage caused by the WEEE.

        If we *don’t* choose to do these things then yes, we may as well not have left. If the government does not use the majority it has and the freedom to act then the entire thing was a waste of time. If it’s not a rough time in the next decade then yes, it has been pointless. The harder the climb, the better the view.

  74. Just want to say , gave the dogs a lovely sunny walk this morning on heathland .. skylarks were singing , black caps were chattering in the gorse , flocks of finches fluttered here there and everywhere, very soggy underfoot , grass and moss looked really green .. and a solitary fast walker saw me waved and shouted out what a lovely Brexit morning … I was delighted .

  75. Heyup All.
    Sat at Dr. Daughter’s in Gateshead after a long day of driving.
    Though I did have a break at Tebay services to buy some provisions, pies and a couple of other things.
    Ended up spending nearly £40!!

      1. As I explained earlier, I had to go via Carlisle to meet Dr. Daughter at her new place.

    2. Should do it again next Saturday Bob. 46115 Scots Guardsman is heading north through Tebay at 11.57.

      I’m planning on heading to Shap. Not seen it since a very foggy day at York in November 1978

    1. The jury is still out on Boris Johnson.

      I am trying to be optimistic but I harbour very strong doubts about his integrity, his patriotism and his determination.

      1. A fair view to take, Richard. I too am very careful in my appraisal of him, but on balance I have not yet lost total faith.

          1. Duncan, you are a Scottish Centurion and I claim my V denaria.

            :-))

            PS – Must bring out my pocket Bible and read the verse in Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrides!

            :-))

          2. You haven’t been paying attention, Mrs Elsie.

            V denaria denarii.

            Write out ten times the declension of the masculine noun denarius.

          3. The declension of the masculine noun denarius.
            The declension of the masculine noun denarius.
            The…

            Oh, stuff that for a lark! How about:

            “Ten times the declension of the masculine noun denarius.”

        2. EB,
          Not that I had any faith in them, but what did confirm my feelings that treachery was afoot was the nine month delay.

    2. Because he is negotiating a difficult course through the waters, away from the storms created by his predecessors. Wait another 11 months and see where we are then.

      1. Afternoon EB,
        He was part & parcel of the storms etc, plus we have waited near four years now and the peoples are still unsure of johnsons intentions going forward.

    1. The picture doesn’t show the chains around his ankles.

      How is it that you can drive a coachload of bugs umpteen miles and then get off the coach and mingle with the hoi polloi at will?

    2. The Guardian’s begging letter at the end of that article. I cannot believe that I have read 17 Guardian articles in the last 4 months….

      ‘We won’t let Brexit come between us…

      … and we hope you feel the same. Britain may be leaving the EU, but the Guardian remains committed to Europe, doubling down on the ideas and interests that we share. Our independent, fact-based reporting will inform Britain about Europe, Europe about Britain, and the rest of the world about both. These are turbulent, decade-defining times. But we will stay with you, delivering quality journalism so we can all make up our minds based on fact, not fiction.

      You’ve read 17 articles in the last four months. More people, like you, are reading and supporting the Guardian’s independent, investigative journalism than ever before. And unlike many news organisations, we made the choice to keep our reporting open for all, regardless of where they live or what they can afford to pay.

      The Guardian will engage with the most critical issues of our time – from the escalating climate emergency to widespread inequality to the influence of big tech on our lives. At a time when factual information is a necessity, we believe that each of us, around the world, deserves access to accurate reporting with integrity at its heart.

      Our editorial independence means we set our own agenda and voice our own opinions. Guardian journalism is free from commercial and political bias and not influenced by billionaire owners or shareholders. This means we can give a voice to those less heard, explore where others turn away, and rigorously challenge those in power.

      We hope you will consider supporting us today. We need your support to keep delivering quality journalism that’s open and independent. Every reader contribution, however big or small, is so valuable.

      Support the Guardian from as little as £1 – and it only takes a minute. Thank you.’

      1. “We specialise in traitorous lying propaganda. Please support us; anything from a fiver upwards will do ”
        (Where can you get a pack of toilet rolls for a fiver, there days ?)

          3. I usually buy packs of 16, 18, or sometimes 24. Morrisons at the moment have 16 Andrex for £7.

          5. Our nearest Morrisons is small, but adequate. When I go into Waitrose I am stumped by the sheer numbers of different kinds of rice (or anything).

            Is “horridible” a special kind of place?

          8. Many a true word spoken in jest. I am converting one pack into a strong, raised cushion. The extra height makes it easier to stand up from chairs. All I have to do is turn the rolls end-on, as they are as wide as they are thick.
            Then I really shall be on a roll or 2.

          10. No, I won’t. They will be end-on & very strong. Squashing a loo-roll sideways is fairly easy but end-on is a different matter.

            Think… upholstery/mattress springs.

          17. I appear to have offended you in some way. My apologies, that was not my intention.

            My comment was directed more towards Waitrose, which is not exactly renowned for its low prices.

            Still, some fall on stony ground.

      2. They told me I’d read 214 articles in the last four months – mostly from links by Tony and Minty. If they think I will be stumping up they are deluded.

    3. 96% of Gibraltarians voted to remain in the EU. It’s rock and a hard place time for them now, where do their loyalties really lie?

      We should organise a referendum in Gibraltar before negotiations with the EU drag them in.

    4. I can’t help thinking that they voted for the EU over the UK; we don’t really have a navy that needs the base, so

      to Hell with them, let them be Spanish

    5. Interesting point – which is worth the most to HMG, control of the gateway to the Mediterranean or UK territorial waters?

      I’d like to think that Boris would say both, but cynicism leads me to think otherwise.

    6. The UK took possession of the neutral territory between Gib and Spain in WW II, promising Franco that we’d hand it back when peace came. We did not. It is now the location of the airport. I suggest making it an Anglo-Spanish condominium*, with UK customs to the south and Spanish customs to the north.

      *Like Neuter Moresnet. GIYF.

    1. Imagine if a right-wing WASP did a similar routine on Islam and how it stole everything, apart from it’s choppy-whippy-floggy-stoney, aspects from other, earlier, religions and civilisations.
      Do you think CBBC would air it?

      1. Yep, a program showing how Islam was just a rework of Old Testament religion, rewritten to be “relevant to the Arabs”, would go down like lead balloon.

        Including some of the more violent punishments.

    2. The UK urgently requires a spring clean!

      All the dross—whether home-grown or imported—must be dumped into the largest waste disposal unit available. The country will never regain its ‘great’ status until someone with the necessary gonads emerges to start this clean-up.

  81. Evening from a Saxon Queen
    I’ve been hurt rather badly by an online friend, I am
    not going into all that but they chose my avatar picture and
    recognise Æthelfled. Therefore tomorrow I shall create
    a new second one and barely touch this.

    It’ll be Terpischore muse of dance, incorporating my love of
    classical writing, ballet and poetry, I just wish I could find
    a picture of a pair of feet wearing Union Jack socks
    dancing all over the EU flag, I would love to use such a picture
    but cannot find one .

      1. Being a female and taking a size 5 in a shoe, those
        boats would have been way too big for my feet .
        The socks are cool, Boris has a few pairs like that:)

  82. How much it costs to charge & run an electric car

    https://www.edfenergy.com/electric-cars/costs

    Looks like it is so much cheaper to charge up an electric car at a supermarket than at home … because of tariffs.. and insurance is more expensive … and it takes ages to charge your car up.

    No we are not in the market for a new car , but you see lots of cars charging up at supermarkets these days.

    2. the only way that electric cars will be viable will be if the roads are rebuilt with induction loop (thingies) at surface level so that cars can draw current from the road. The technology exists but has only been applied to some trams.

    3. We’ve not seen any in this part of the world charging up, Belle. In France, where we used to stay overnight at Chateauroux there were 6 or 7 charging points in a slightly off the beaten track area adjacent to the hotel in which we were staying. We never saw them being used ever – they looked like lip service to green politics.

    4. What an interesting expedition a trip across the country will become in the future, if we are forced to go down the electric car route. When your charge is running low you can pull into a charging station, if one is free, and sit there for 8 hours while it recharges. Then you can make the next stage of the trip before doing it again. Such a different experience to filling the car with petrol, paying for it, and driving off in 5 minutes. 🙂

      Of course, there will probably be some loopholes for the very rich and the military / law enforcement to still use traditional petrol-based engines. You would not want to inconvenience the very wealthy. If they ever get out of their aeroplanes.

      2. To make any of this anywhere near viable, there needs to be a network of the heavy duty DC chargers which can deliver about 60-70 mile range in about 20 minutes. No comparison with refueling a petrol or diesel of course – that cannot happen with today’s battery technology.

        1. Thus, for example, if I were to go back to the UK from here, I should expect 10+ stops of 20 minutes each, even if there were vacant charging points that close together, rather than a queue for my turn?

          Yeah that looks like a great idea.

      4. “and sit there for 8 hours while it recharges.”

        No. Battery units will be removable and unchanged ones will e exchanged for charged at garages.

      2. Afternoon I,
        Such is the price of submission / PCism / Appeasement.
        The smoke is the pattern for the future, then the next will fall, and so forth until……..

      3. It has not been English for a long time now. Wiki shows the 2011 census breakdown, with only 45% being “White: English/Welsh/Scottish/Northern Irish/British”, i.e. British as we used to define it. Probably even less now.

      4. Who cares? It can declare independence and then the UK can be ruled from York (or Norwich, or Winchester).

        [Sorry, Jocks and Taffs, but Edinburgh and Cardiff are not really up to it! :•) ]

      5. London is not English anymore , once upon a time you could guarantee bumping into some one you knew , mind you , where ever you went there was bound to be some one you recognised you or you them, not anymore . We are all getting older I suppose.

          2. Also dips herself into teak polish for that shiny
            bronzed look against the bleached hair.
            French glamour.. not .

  85. COFFEE HOUSE – ‘We will never return, there is no going back’: the Brexit Day party, as it happened
    Lloyd Evans — 1 February 2020 – 5:27 PM

    Remainers were there too. The first people I met at the Brexit Day festivities were opposed to the whole idea. I found them on Westminster Bridge, a man and his wife, posing with an EU flag. When the man spoke his voice faltered as if his pet spaniel had just died. ‘I married a German woman. I’ve been brought up to tolerate other cultures and lifestyles.’ I asked which of the many crises outlined by Project Fear would strike us first. ‘Economic slump,’ he said. Will Britain ever re-join? ‘Maybe in two generations.’

    A couple with a toddler spotted the EU flag and joined us for a chat. They’d planned to enlist in a Remain Fightback Demo and were dismayed by the poor turnout. The father was a barrister from Gray’s Inn who assured me that ‘crime’ would be the first post-Brexit disaster. ‘As of 11pm tonight there are 17 German sex-offenders who can no longer be extradited to the UK.’ I asked if his legal practice would suffer. ‘No, there’ll be loads of extra work.’ The foursome headed off to Europe House, the EU’s stronghold in London, hoping to find throngs of Remainers holding candles and singing Beethoven. I didn’t like to tell them I’d just been there. The place was deserted.

    A boozy, good-natured crowd had gathered in Parliament Square. The mood was one of cheerful relief rather than euphoria. I was immediately struck by a key difference between a Brexit rally and a Remain demo: the complete absence of women with green, blue or purple hair.

    A Frenchman paraded a banner proclaiming the imminence of Frexit. ‘How soon?’ I asked. ‘Five years,’ he predicted. A retired English banker told me that Denmark would shortly follow us through the escape-hatch. ‘They have the best benefits system in Europe. Why else would 100,000 Muslims come and live in a country with more pigs than people? The Danes are pissed off.’ How did he know? ‘I was attacked by asylum-seekers at a Danish campsite,’ he explained, ‘the locals were horrified.’

    Up on stage the comedian, Dominic Frisby, sang his hit tune, ‘17 million fuck offs.’ He said he’d been advised that if he uttered the words ‘fuck off’ he might face a public order charge. ‘But you can sing it. They aren’t going to arrest 50,000 people.’

    The Brexit Party’s in-house knitwear model, Richard Tice, gave a speech wearing a union jack tie. Ten minutes before the Brexit bongs were due to sound, he introduced the star turn.

    ‘He’s here. He’s a bit shy. Do you want Nigel?’

    The crowd roared. And on he came. He could be forgiven a note of triumphalism. It’s hard to think of a bigger or more extraordinary success story in British politics. Nigel Farage has coerced the will of a parliament to which he has never been elected.

    ‘The establishment tried for three years to frustrate the greatest democratic mandate in this country’s history. But we did it. WE DID IT. I think there’s a lot to celebrate, don’t you? Ten minutes to go. Ten minutes doesn’t sound too bad to me… We will never return. There is no going back. We will be free… proud… independent.’

    The bongs came (pre-recorded) and that was it. 47 years of bickering and bullying were over. Cheers and smoke-flares erupted across the square. As the crowd broke up, a female student, with a union jack in her hair, handed out celebratory flags. ‘No flag, no country,’ she said.

    Outside Downing Street a crowd had gathered chanting, ‘Boris, Boris.’ Some lingered for half an hour hoping that the PM might poke his nose out and give them a wave. Near the Cenotaph I came across a hearty Russian and a Lithuanian blonde dancing and singing a little giddily. ‘We are drunk. We love celebrate. We love Britain,’ he said.

    In Whitehall I met a teacher in his 60s who told me that Maastricht had been the turning point. He described the EU as a free-trade area which had secretly morphed over the years into a sinister, centralised authority. That’s not how I remember it. I was nine years old when we joined and there was no attempt to conceal our destination. ‘The United States of Europe’ was spoken of openly as an exciting and prosperous counterweight to our allies in north America. Nobody was hoodwinked. The game was on from the start.

      1. But the writer, as a nine-year-old was able to see through Heath’s lies, even though the vast majority of the country thought we were joining a trading organisation. Perhaps he has 20/20 hindsight.

      2. No, they’re not. I can remember my father enthusing about a “US of Europe” at the time, with a common currency, postage stamps, etc.

    2. I posted the official referendum information pamphlet on the EEC here the other day. It’s easily found. Google in your friend.

  86. However hazy you feel after a night of quaffing mead, a good English breakfast blows the cobwebs away and sets you up for the day ahead. No wonder the Sun never set on countries that the British wandered into and improved. While our adversaries were nibbling on baguettes and scraping the mould off of cheese, we had the food of the gods driving us onwards.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/90744a494037aa0625d83150d9a99dd42305cb69a43ab0382923651b5a94462b.jpg

    1. Another beauty of the full English (or Irish, or Scottish) breakfast is that it is relatively carb-free and excellent for a Keto diet (which I am currently enjoying).

      Yum!

      2. Don’t stay on it too long. There can be nasty side effects like sky high cholesterol levels.

        2. A full English is an occasional treat. My daily diet is, mainly: salads, leafy vegetables, olives, nuts and seeds; with some meat, eggs, and cheese.

    2. Bury black pudding with fried tomato. ( the b pudding is far too good to eat with anything else.)

  87. Post Brexit political culling of all the contents of parliament will definitely focus the attention of a new crop, first things first, make sure the new lot
    understand their place regarding the peoples in this countries upstairs / downstairs GB form of politics.

    1. Dear Ogga,

      I have every sympathy with you and your views but I don’t
      think I shall be able to cope, for the next eleven months,
      with your continuous ridiculing of the British electorate.

      The choice us yours, Ogga.

      3. G,
        My post merely points out that the politico’s are the servants of the peoples is that not a fact ?

  93. ONAN HOMESITE POWER 2400 (2EGMBB-5267)

    They say machines are taking over more and more of our lives but what kind of W⚓ would use this?

    1. The company was originally founded by a Mr. Onan. They are owned these days by Cummins. Make of that what you may…

  94. Broadcasters have been accused of underplaying the significance of Brexit night after refusing to broadcast the Prime Minister’s address to the nation.

    BBC and ITN’s main bulletins failed to show Boris Johnson’s three-minute broadcast – in which he said that Brexit Day marked the “dawn of a new era”, providing Britain with a “moment of real national renewal and change” – preferring to run only short clips of it as part of their live coverage.

    That prompted anger within the Conservative party and among Leave supporters, who accused the BBC and other broadcasters of ‘Remainer bias’.

    Tory sources are furious at the BBC’s handling of the evening, claiming it showed an in-built left-wing bias among the corporation’s senior managers against Brexit.

    One senior Conservative source said: “Only the BBC could have a special programme on Brexit where the studio is emblazoned with EU colours, they refuse to run the PM’s address, get to Brexit 15 mins in then go to Farage, Widdecombe and a load of Remainers”

    There is also anger at what Brexit supporters claim was the disparaging way the BBC and other broadcasters portrayed the celebrations in Parliament Square, with accusations the size of the crowds was underplayed

    Ian Dale, the Conservative commentator and LBC presenter, wrote on Twitter: “How is it that our public service broadcaster refuses to carry any of the PM’s address to the nation, on a night that is of huge significance to the future of our country?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/02/01/broadcasters-accused-bias-against-brexit-day-celebrations/?utm_content=telegraph&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR39diRZE6PwNBkhtLL3XvNfo1St8cX13NPN69Y7Ug-nTjdiodaZa4CDrwI#Echobox=1580583596

      1. Attempted to uptick you Phizzee, there must be an uptick problem .. anyway , I agree with you ..

        BBC is really anti and spiteful , there appears to be so much resentment amongst the Remainer presenters who seem hell bent on pushing the EU agenda .. of course , many BBC wallahs probably weren’t around 47 years ago anyway, they just associate the EU with the memory of a glass of nice wine and piece of Manchego cheese and a spot of skiing/sunbathing … .

        BBC flings out stuff that confuses the RADAR of it’s viewers /listeners .

        Pure propaganda .

        1. My post may have been flagged and suspended because of troll lefties who have reappeared. They will fail.

    3. Boris needs to deal with the BBC – he should instal a competent chief executive with orders to cut costs – drastically. I read somewhere that the BBC uses the matrix management approach, which is well known in the real world for requiring a lot more senior positions than a normal hierarchical management structure. Plus it screws things up by not having clear lines of authority and decision making responsibility. That needs to go asap.

  95. Every woman and girl should be screened for ‘barbaric’ FGM practice , coalition of police, barristers and charities urge
    Coalition of experts demand that the UK government adopt a series of recommendations in order to honour its pledge to end FGM by 2030

    Every woman and girl should be screened for female genital mutilation, a coalition of police, barristers and charities have urged, as they prepare to present the Prime Minister with their solutions to help end the “barbaric” practice.

    A coalition of experts are demanding that the UK government adopt a series of recommendations including mandatory screening in order to honour its pledge to end worldwide FGM by 2030.

    The practice is defined as a human rights abuse by the UN and constitutes one of the most extreme forms of violence against women and girls which can cause lifelong trauma.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/02/01/every-woman-girl-should-screened-barbaric-fgm-practice-coalition/

    Er , excuse me , but have the authorities forgotten about the rape and defilement of young girls by the Muslim rape gangs?

    2. Are they planning on screening the whole of the female population of the UK or just those who are likely to be in danger. I mean are all of us Christians going to be screened and what about the trans-thingies will they be included. Will it be considered racist just to focus on those at risk?

    3. And do they seriously mean ALL females should be screened? Why are they so scared to name the probable victims? I don’t think many white females have been forced to undergo FGM.

      In any case it would surely be a violation of their rights, having to be screened this way.

      2. Screened when?

        After every holiday? Every birthday?

        If they find that a girl has been butchered, what will they do? There is not exactly a good record of convictions so fat.

  96. Preparations for the new EU-UK trading relationship are now poised to shift into a radically higher gear, The Telegraph has learned, in a move that will shock many businesses, including hauliers, logistics companies and supermarket chains.

    “We are planning full checks on all EU imports – export declarations, security declarations, animal health checks and all supermarket goods to pass through Border Inspections Posts,” said a senior Whitehall source with knowledge of the plans. “This will double the practical challenge at the border in January 2021.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/01/31/boris-johnson-ramps-pressure-eu-plans-impose-full-customs-border/

    1. I doubt that is true. It woukld be physically impossibe to check every lorry. It my be a paper work check which is what happens now for non EU imports. It consistes of scanning the bar code on the paperwork and if that all in order the lorry is cleared to go

    3. The Daily Telegraph printing fake promises. I would never have entertained such an idea……….

  97. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/782add0e0682e71c097079da2a22febe0f0571d963061b952a7985ebcda9151f.jpg

    This is the symbol of a hostile foreign power and it has been for decades. They are not a “neutral player” who wishes to strike a trade deal that gives advantages to both them and us. In their eyes they were our Masters and this reversion to democracy in our referendum should never have been allowed to happen. They have taken billions of pounds from us every year and imposed their will and laws on our nation. They have bought many of our politicians and effectively ruled us as unelected Lords.

    Now that we are trying to be free of them we MUST be severely punished for what we have done. Others in the EU are now asking very serious questions about their own futures. This enrages those who have spent decades building up their corrupted mafia organisation disguised as a trading block. They will hurt us as much as they possibly can. There is no chance at all of a good or fair deal being offered to the United Kingdom. It would only encourage others to leave the EU faster than they otherwise might.

    The European Union needs the United Kingdom to be groaning in agony from the hardships that they will impose on us as a warning to others. So this 11 month delay to leaving is pointless and a very expensive waste of time and money. We will be offered a bad deal. The great concern now is that Boris and those Remainers that are still in the Conservative Party, and there are a lot of them who want us closely tied to the EU, will dress up this deal as an acceptable compromise for access to their markets and continued friendship.

    The department that was planning for a no-deal Brexit has been shut down. We have taken the unspeakably stupid step of getting into bed with a Chinese Tech company and pushed away the Americans and others who we should be embracing in the future world. It also looks increasingly likely that the EU’s White Elephant vanity project known as HS2 is going ahead, in spite of it being a waste of time and vast amounts of money.

    Put together these are not good signs, and it does highlight that Boris and his adviser’s must be watched very closely in what they are doing. They must not be allowed to hide the details of their plans pretending that they need to for political reasons. We CAN fully leave the EU the way that we all want to, but not if the Remainers can suddenly spring a terrible deal and say “Its a good trade deal and the alternative is the disaster of a no-deal Brexit.” They will need to be watched or many will find themselves going through these stages:

    1) Give him a chance, he has just got there.
    2) He is in a difficult position.
    3) This is a negotiation and compromises have to be made on both sides. (This is the one to look out for.)
    4) He has no choice.
    5) What the..? Look at the state of that deal! How the Hell did that happen?!

    A WTO-Brexit should be the goal, with a trade deal with the EU made afterwards. We must make sure that our leaders do not try to rule this out.

      1. sosraboc – passing that Withdrawal Agreement and not just leaving the EU straight away was a bad sign, but the point of no return will be the end of this year. If we are presented with a deal that locks us to the EU, then there won’t be a chance to change anything for another 4 years after that. That will be another 1.2 million new arrivals into the country by then. The 1922 committee’s hordes of 27 (or however many there are) will not be able to defeat these newly elected people, who had to take what was almost a political loyalty oath to support the W/A before they were even allowed to stand.

        We CAN still leave on WTO terms if pressure is kept up on politicians and they are told how terribly unwise it would be to accept a bad deal. Let them know that they will receive many cheery greetings from the public every time that they step out of their houses, every day, for example. This is our country, not theirs, and we can still leave as we wanted to. But not if we close our eyes and trust the people who have stopped us leaving for the past 3 1/2 years already.

          1. sos – thinking like that means you have no chance of winning. You might as well walk down to the nearest mosque and hand them the keys to your house saying “Take the lot.” I am sure they told Nigel Farage that he had no chance of changing things 25 years ago. 🙂

            Our adversary’s in the EU, and those bent politicians in our Parliament, are just low-rent human beings. They are not very good. They do not have Godlike powers. They just have dirty money and the grubby media. That is nowhere near as hard to beat as fighting a real war with bullets flying through the air. Although, if it did come down to that, our side has more professional soldiers with better accuracy. 🙂

            https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/97fa204fac8b4178d62f802edfc03b0cecbd005c8b6c2309bb9338ca6c5f292f.jpg

          2. You’re still dreaming. You trust our politicians and civil service. I don’t.

            Boris might appear to have an excellent majority, the problem is that the WA is now legally binding and the EU can screw us to the floor and there is little we can do about it.

            I will apologise on 01 01 21 if you are correct, and we are out cleanly and on good trading terms.

          3. Sos – I don’t trust either the politicians OR the civil service. I also know that the EU will attempt to damage us as much as they can.

            This does not matter, that is all. Our desire to be free, and what we will do to achieve that, is far stronger than their wimpish desire for power and money. Protecting someone that you love from harm puts a lot more fire in your heart than scrabbling on the floor to stuff a few bank notes down your shirt. 🙂

            If “evil” could win that easily we would not keep beating them down to the ground every few decades. The “good guys” keep winning, although the cost is high. I am a realist and we are going to beat them again. Watch the rats start to run when they see the writing on the wall.

          4. My hope is that the EU will implode. But if you think it will give up without trying to cause the maximum damage to all in its death throes, I fear you are sadly mistaken.

          5. I left too early to see this comment last night or I would have replied. 🙂

            Just in case you have missed every comment that I have ever made about the EU, I am under no illusions at all about what they intend to do to us. I also know that many of our MP’s are happy to work with them to harm the United Kingdom. It is going to be rough if we do not leave on WTO terms. I just believe that as a nation we are stronger than they are and our spirit will not be broken, no matter how our politicians may let us down.

            When the fall comes, we will still be here.

    2. Boris has appointed David Frost as chief negotiator. David Frost is a former diplomat. Before he joined Boris last July, as an aide, Mr Frost was executive head of the Scotch Whisky Association. During his time with the SWA he sold their magnificent HQ building in Atholl Crescent and moved the SWA into a very high rent glass office at Quartermile, a development on the site of the old Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. I do not know why a valuable and beautiful stone building was sold. I don’t think anyone does. I don’t see him being the tough , hard-nosed negotiator, needed to get back all our fish, and give the EU what they deserve and are entitled to, that is, nothing at all.
      Atholl Crescent , Edinburgh;
      https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia2.trover.com%2FT%2F5aca52622c2e91712801a787%2Ffixedw_large_4x.jpg&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.trover.com%2Fd%2F1o6Lu-atholl-crescent-edinburgh-scotland&docid=qb1yN1Z85XtpjM&tbnid=i9-yIeKR9SIvTM%3A&vet=10ahUKEwjs59vPhrHnAhXIQEEAHcFNAr8QMwg-KAEwAQ..i&w=1224&h=918&client=safari&bih=1000&biw=1832&q=Atholl%20Crescent&ved=0ahUKEwjs59vPhrHnAhXIQEEAHcFNAr8QMwg-KAEwAQ&iact=mrc&uact=8

  98. A diificult one this –
    “Trump appears to confirm killing of al-Qaida leader in Yemen”

    The Guardian are trying to approve the killing of an Al Qaida leader while
    criticising Trump for doing so.
    Here we are again.

  99. Goodnight everyone .

    Just finished watching Midsommer Murders, haven’t seen it for years .
    The beginning very politically correct. Small English village –
    the first people you see are black and chinese and then there is gay
    love and murder thereafter.. very woke .
    I remember the original Barnaby played by John Nettles
    and his wife Joyce, so very different then
    and nothing like a small English village. Maybe I’ll just stick to
    Agatha Christie Miss Marple from now on.
    Off to bed..

    1. We get them on PBS. The oldest ones are the best. The “new” Barnaby episodes are, as you say, all virtue signaling.

      I was very sympathetic when poor Brian Trumay got into trouble after being criticized for lack of diversity in the Midsomer series, for pointing out that in English villages in the era in which the series was set, there would not have been any immigrants or POC. Facts like that don’t matter to the SJW’s of this world.

    2. I have often wondered about Granchester…. a small English village from which I live not very far… all that crime… murder….!!! You should see it!! A linear village with a small (very small) nice council housing area off just one section. Three pubs, a tea room ( The Orchard Tearooms), a church, Jeffrey Archer’s home and that is it, all interspersed with nice rural housing along the 300 yds of winding road. A gin distillery. And, cows in the nearby meadows. It floods occasionally. ‘Granchester’, as portrayed by our ‘beloved’ cough, cough, bbc, is absolutely, absolutely nothing like the real thing. How did this happen?

      1. He should at the very least become Sir Nigel. Trouble is our own media has branded him right wing which means ‘don’t go there’.

        Witness the rise of the AFD in Germany.

        What these arselings don’t understand is they are fully responsible for the rise of extremist views.

        1. Trump likes him, which is rare for anyone. Boris ought put him in charge of trade negotiations with the US – or make him the UK Ambassador. Nigel is one of the very, very few Brits who can meet or talk to Trump when he wants to. Especially after the last ambassador “sh!t the bed” with his Trump comments.

          – Jack

          1. I agree with you but i don’t see it happening. Farage would be perfect as an Ambassador to the U.S. The problem would be that he is honest. Never a good trait apparently.

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