Saturday 10 July: Guilt and upset at being falsely pinged led to deletion of the Covid app

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 banned.

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2021/07/09/letters-guilt-upset-falsely-pinged-led-deletion-covid-app/

551 thoughts on “Saturday 10 July: Guilt and upset at being falsely pinged led to deletion of the Covid app”

  1. The Kremlin’s plan to destabilise the West. 10 July 2021.

    Apart from some more sober references to ecology and partnership with China, most of the strategy reads as a paranoid diatribe against Russia’s oft-cited ‘internal and external enemies’. They loom large on nearly every page, lurking within discussions of national interest, societal cohesion, economics and strategic stability. But these threats are most explicitly referenced in the frequent pages that address culture, historical truth, and spiritual and moral values.

    According to the authors of the strategy, Russia must grapple against the destabilising influence of the US and its allies as they desperately seek to preserve and reimpose their disintegrating global hegemony. Western-US hegemony is defined here in cultural as much as military or geopolitical terms.

    Morning everyone. Those Nottlers hoping to read an exposé of the Kremlin’s intentions toward the West as indicated in the title will be disappointed. This monologue is concerned exclusively with Russia and the Government’s plan to prevent the country suffering the same fate as the UK! Unsurprisingly they have noticed the West’s decline into decadence and depravity; its people misled; its traditions despised, the grooming of its schoolchildren to serve the pederasts both Foreign and Domestic, the untruths and corruption that lie at the heart of its rotten governments. This latter probably goes some considerable way to explain Putin’s confidence and contempt for its leaders when dealing with them. He sees them for what they are! Perverts and Liars posturing as Good Men!

    Responses include strengthening family and traditional values; using state-controlled media to promote ‘Russian values’; funding ‘patriotic formation’ youth clubs; controlling publicly available historical narratives; promoting the church and religion; and the terrifyingly expansive promise to defend the Russian people from external ideas and values.

    One could only wish that the UK had a similar program but its very antithesis prevails as the rules of Babylon are imposed!

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/kremlin-putin-plan-destabilise-west-america-biden

    2. BTL Comment:-

      Bob of Bonsall • an hour ago
      When the USSR collapsed, the West, i.e. NATO, the EU and the USA were very keen to fill the power vacuum that collapse created.

      We did this by not only pushing our influence into the satellite states of Central and Eastern Europe and into the former Soviet Republics, but by allowing our own Carpet Baggers to link up with the corrupt Soviet Oligarchy to strip Russia and those former Soviet Republics of the fund they needed to repair the damage of decades of Communism.

      In addition, we also began throwing our weight around in the Middle east and made some appalling policy decisions, essentially backing the wrong horse too many times, that have destabilised the entire region.

      In doing all this we have not only been poking the Bear with a sharp stick, but also pushing his face into the dirt.

      So is it really so surprising that the Russian Premier distrusts us?

  2. The Kremlin’s plan to destabilise the West. 10 July 2021.

    Apart from some more sober references to ecology and partnership with China, most of the strategy reads as a paranoid diatribe against Russia’s oft-cited ‘internal and external enemies’. They loom large on nearly every page, lurking within discussions of national interest, societal cohesion, economics and strategic stability. But these threats are most explicitly referenced in the frequent pages that address culture, historical truth, and spiritual and moral values.

    According to the authors of the strategy, Russia must grapple against the destabilising influence of the US and its allies as they desperately seek to preserve and reimpose their disintegrating global hegemony. Western-US hegemony is defined here in cultural as much as military or geopolitical terms.

    Morning everyone. Those Nottlers hoping to read an exposé of the Kremlin’s intentions toward the West as indicated in the title will be disappointed. This monologue is concerned exclusively with Russia and their Government’s plan to prevent the country suffering the same fate as the UK! Unsurprisingly they have noticed the West’s decline into decadence and depravity; its people misled; its traditions despised, the grooming of its schoolchildren to serve the pederasts both Foreign and Domestic, the untruths and corruption that lie at the heart of its rotten governments. This latter probably goes some considerable way to explain Putin’s confidence and contempt for its leaders when dealing with them. He sees them for what they are! Perverts and Liars posturing as Good Men!

    Responses include strengthening family and traditional values; using state-controlled media to promote ‘Russian values’; funding ‘patriotic formation’ youth clubs; controlling publicly available historical narratives; promoting the church and religion; and the terrifyingly expansive promise to defend the Russian people from external ideas and values.

    One could only wish that the UK had a similar program but its very antithesis prevails as the rules of Babylon are imposed!

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/kremlin-putin-plan-destabilise-west-america-biden

  3. mng all, the weekend waffle: “Toby Gunter” leads the charge although it seems “Sally Hadely” woke up and saw a glint of light, or not:

    SIR – I was “pinged” by the NHS Covid-19 app a few days before Christmas. The only place I had visited was a Christmas shop, when I was with my daughter – who also had the app, yet she was not pinged. No one phoned me from Test and Trace at any point.

    Lockdown soon followed, so Christmas plans were stopped, but I badly missed church on Christmas Day … and I furtively walked my young dog early each morning, masked and avoiding all human contact. I felt guilty (for being outside), angry and upset, as I certainly hadn’t been in contact with anyone infected.

    I can understand why people are deleting the app. I have now decided to follow suit.

    Sally Hadley
    Hitchin, Hertfordshire

    SIR – I am a participant in the Novavax vaccine clinical trial. On Thursday, Grant Shapps, the Transport Secretary, said that trial participants will be able to prove they have had both jabs either through the Covid pass on the main NHS app or the accessible letter available by calling 119. The same message is on the NHS website.

    Professor Jonathan van Tam, the Deputy Chief Medical Officer, has said that no one on a trial should be disadvantaged, but should be treated equally with those who have had the approved vaccines.

    However, not one – of the NHS website, the NHS app or the 119 service – is able to provide such proof because (obviously) the vaccine record cannot appear in GP records, as trial vaccines are, by definition, not approved. Indeed several 119 managers have even denied that this service exists to provide the proof.

    There are about 40,000 people on Covid vaccine trials. Their enthusiasm for future participation may be curtailed if the Government does not quickly put into deed what it says in public.

    D M Old
    Stamford, Lincolnshire

    SIR – We are expats who have been double vaccinated in order to visit family in Britain – and our own house – after an unbearably long absence. We are horrified to read that exemption from quarantine will at first only be given to those who have received their jabs via the NHS.

    This is an outrage, legally contestable, and a sign that the Government has lost all sense of proportion and decency. All tests and quarantine should be abolished completely for the double vaccinated, no ifs, whens and buts.

    Andrea Fiddy
    Kössen, Tyrol, Austria

    SIR – When coronavirus restrictions end on July 19, will all the companies and government offices that have refused to answer their telephones during the past 16 months ensure that their switchboards are fully manned so that incoming calls can be answered promptly and the caller be put through to the requested extension immediately?

    Peter Thomas
    Saffron Walden, Essex

    The CofE’s own-goals

    SIR – I do despair over the future of the Church of England: the parish system is being deconstructed, wokery is on the increase, stipendiary clergy are being made redundant and head office posts are proliferating.

    Now we read of the plan to create 10,000 lay-led churches (report, July 6) to “attract” new members. If nothing else, the history of the Church since the late 1960s has been one of decline amid a plethora of liturgical reform, revised translations of sacred texts and the planting of new congregations. As the number of foot soldiers decreases, the well-remunerated generals multiply (report, July 9).

    If you need medical attention, you are reassured by a person with a badge saying “paramedic”. At church, a dog collar tells you who the ordained person is. While wearing mine out and about, I have been engaged in conversation by hundreds of people.

    So Christianity needs to proclaim the Gospel, build up the Kingdom, resource the parishes with ordained, trained and effective leaders (working with enthusiastic lay people) and spend money where results will be seen.

    It will not be achieved by micromanaging what is left of the stipendiary cohort and replacing it with laity. Will these new churches replace parishes or be in competition with them? These proposals need to be properly thought out.

    Rev Simon Douglas Lane
    Hampton, Middlesex

    SIR – As the 20 per cent decline in church attendance is precisely because of the lack of proper, old-fashioned vicars, substituting more of them is unlikely to reverse it.

    Toby Gunter
    Weyhill, Hampshire

    Paying for pensions

    SIR – Your report on the pensions triple lock (July 7) says that £3   billion will be needed if pensions are to increase by 8.5 per cent.

    Last year, it was reported that all the pensioner deaths would save the Government £3 billion in unpaid pensions.

    Does one not equal the other?

    Gerry Price
    Granby, Nottinghamshire

    GB or not GB?

    SIR – The currency of the United Kingdom is the pound sterling, known around the world as the GB pound and guaranteed by the Bank of England.

    Typically British, what?

    David Mitchell
    Aberdeen

    Criminal migration

    SIR – I despair at the Crown Prosecution Service’s announcement that it will not prosecute illegal migrants (report, July 9).

    The CPS seems hell-bent on finding excuses not to prosecute several categories of criminal activity. What gives it the right to grant immunity to a whole criminal class? Does it not realise that a criminal justice system relies in part on deterrence to be effective? The blanket exclusion of illegal migrants from prosecution is a big encouragement: what risk do illegal migrants face from the British legal system? None.

    The CPS is a centralised monster and out of touch with reality. It should be abolished, and we should return to a system of local prosecuting solicitors, who were far more in touch with the public mood. Those of us who are old enough remember how such solicitors contributed to the prevention of crime by enthusiastically prosecuting criminals. The CPS seems actively to avoid prosecutions.

    Mike Speakman
    Retired deputy chief constable of Humberside Police
    Worlaby, Lincolnshire

    Threat to the Amazon

    SIR – As Brazilian Bishops of the Amazon, we are outraged at proposals in a Bill being considered by the Brazilian Congress, and the marco temporal (time-limit thesis) legal loophole on which they are based, which threaten all life in the Brazilian Amazon.

    If proposed legal changes are approved, indigenous lands would be opened up to mining, agribusiness, ranching and dam construction – effectively ending the rights of indigenous people granted by the Brazilian Constitution. The Bill is an enormous threat to their territories, forests, rivers and ways of life. If passed, neither the indigenous communities nor the Amazon rainforest will still exist in a decade.

    Nearly 40 British food businesses have already threatened to stop sourcing products from Brazil over the proposed reforms. In Britain’s Environment Bill, there are plans for a due-diligence requirement for commodities associated with a risk of deforestation. However, this only requires companies to comply with local laws when sourcing such commodities – such as the detrimental ones proposed in Brazil’s Bill.

    Britain’s hosting of the UN Climate Change Conference, Cop26, later this year is an opportunity to show its leadership in defending indigenous rights, and to support those fighting against deforestation and climate change. Now is the time to act to protect indigenous peoples and our common home, before it is too late.

    Rt Rev Erwin Kräutler
    President, Pan-Amazonian Ecclesial Network in Brazil
    Brasília, Brazil

    Wimbledon plastic

    SIR – While I realise that Wimbledon has to raise money from its sponsors, perhaps thought could be given to the number of plastic water bottles used by players, on and off court. Isn’t Wimbledon aware that we have a plastic crisis?

    Margaret Kalil
    Caldy, Wirral

    The dog delusion

    SIR – I truly dislike all dogs, though would not go so far as to self-diagnose cynophobia (Letters, July 9). But what I hate even more is the reaction of dog owners to my clear statement of hatred. They frequently reply to my, “I hate dogs,” with, “Oh, you’ll love mine”.

    Noeleen Murphy
    London SE22

    The barbarism of a hole in the door for letters

    SIR – The system of having doors with holes in them to receive mail is barbaric (“Royal Mail considers US-style postboxes to avoid dogs”, report, July 5).

    Here in France every home has its own locked postbox bolted to a wall or post on the outside of the property, making dog attacks much more difficult.

    Julia Evans
    St Vincent Rive D’Olt, Lot, France

    Gareth Southgate has shown up the politicians

    SIR – Gareth Southgate’s example of calm, clear leadership, infused with compassion and an unfaltering vision, contrasts starkly with the lack of moral integrity and the ineptitude of almost everyone in our political class.

    I sincerely hope that Cabinet ministers are deeply humbled by the integrity, loyalty and passion of the England team. Somehow I doubt it.

    Sean Chapman
    Richmond, Surrey

    SIR – There is talk of an additional bank holiday if England win on Sunday (report, July 9). Will an existing one be cancelled if they lose?

    Derek Wellman
    Lincoln

    SIR – Scots should support the English in the Euro final on Sunday. After they win we can say that Scotland was the only team the European champions could not beat.

    Bill Spence
    Kirkwall, Orkney

    SIR – While I normally save the flying of my Cross of St George for national events, not sporting ones, I have been proudly flying it lately and will continue to do so for the next few days.

    I hope my neighbours forgive me if I neglect to take it down on Sunday evening by 8.30pm or sunset (whichever is earlier), as flag etiquette dictates – I may be distracted.

    Tony Parrack
    London SW20

    SIR – Why are advertisements for Gazprom – owned by the Russian government – being displayed during Euro 2020 matches at Wembley?

    So much for the Salisbury poisonings, Ryanair Vilnius hijacking, and the invasion of Crimea.

    Roger Balchin
    Woking, Surrey

    SIR – In M&S on the day of the Euro semi-final against Denmark, I noticed an invitation to buy beer to drink while supporting England.

    Three types were piled up – Italian, Spanish and Danish. Anything wrong with English beer?

    Peter Bell
    Tunbridge Wells, Kent

    1. …and a sign that the Government has lost all sense of proportion and decency.

      Dear Andrea Fiddy, to lose something one has to have had possession of it in the first place. The current government is at the head of a list of governments going back to the last century’s final two decades, none of which had much of the two features you allude to, if any at all.

      1. Good morning, Korky, I totally agree. Now off for a couple of hours of gardening, after which I shall again harvest the rhubarb and prepare another rhubarb crumble. Our meeting up earlier this week was very much enjoyed, and the empty jam jars you kindly gave me are now fully washed and ready to take some more raspberry jam as the raspberry harvest is proceeding apace. Oh, the joys of the garden and the kitchen during these difficult times!

        1. Good morning, Elsie. Glad to hear you survived my cooking.😎

          I’m sure I told you that when I was poised to prune my redcurrant bush back in February I informed it that, “…fruit this year or you are gone.”

          The result:

          https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9e8a13503b8494f0ab1900a65450fdf463a750cdfec4be5b058c6a108df9da21.jpg

          https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/63315723483b62435841472a8aa36935f6b9bf68de2abe937c2d2f86e6014b2b.jpg

          Talking to, or in truth issuing threats to, plants has appeared to have had an effect as the bush provided its best crop for years. This experiment in ‘mafia tactics’ has not been peer reviewed and hence the science is not proven. Repeat experiments will be performed to either confirm that threats or getting the pruning correct is the cause of improved fruit production.

          3. ‘Morning, Korky, and people say Charlie Windsor is nuts in advocating people talk to their plants.

            Good luck with further harvests.

          4. Well done, Korky. This morning I spent from 7.15 am to 9.15 am in the garden, then later on in the day made a large rhubarb crumble. For the rest of the time I did very little, and it hardly rained at all. Not a sensible thing to do (I am trying to lose weight), but I think that I shall end the day with a glass of wine. Good night all.

    2. I do despair over the future of the Church of England: the parish system is being deconstructed, wokery is on the increase, stipendiary clergy are being made redundant and head office posts are proliferating.

      I gave up on it Simon when Welby became A of C! He was quite clearly a Wooden Horse tasked with destroying the C of E!

      1. mng Araminta. Legacy of Cameron appointing woke Welby. Don’t be surprised intention is for C of E to become C of W[okedom] as in irrelevant. Services to be held in Cameron’s shed for the “sheeple”

    3. D M Old boldly states, “ I am a participant in the Novavax vaccine clinical trial.”

      More Bloody Fool, you.

      1. Morning NTN and Nottlers.

        The whole of the “covid19 injection programme” is a clinical trial!

      2. Exactly my reaction.
        And we’ve taken two for the team to release our grandchildren into a ‘norrmal’ youth.

    4. “SIR – Why are advertisements for Gazprom – owned by the Russian government – being displayed during Euro 2020 matches at Wembley?”

      Could it be because they sponsor the bloody tournament?
      Also,check any Champions League game over the last 5 or 6 years…the Referee will be wearing a Gazprom patch.
      Why?..because the also sponsor that tournament!

    5. “Britain’s hosting of the UN Climate Change Conference, Cop26, later this year is an opportunity to show its leadership in defending indigenous rights, and to support those fighting against deforestation and climate change. Now is the time to act to protect indigenous peoples and our common home, before it is too late.”

      Rt Rev Erwin Kräutler
      President, Pan-Amazonian Ecclesial Network in Brazil
      Brasília, Brazil

      Dream on your Right Reverence.

    6. Hating something is idiotic. If you’re frightened of dogs, that’s fine. Some are thoroughly unpleasant.

    7. If you tell me you hate dogs, Noeleen Murphy, my reply would be, “that’s okay; I hate you”.

    1. Yes, Bob3, but non-stop rain all day not forecast until 9 am so I hope to get a couple of hours in the garden before the heavens open. Good morning to you and all NoTTLers, btw.

  6. The end game is nigh,
    Covid vaxx passports will be required to enter pubs restaurants and nightclubs.
    Now see where all the compliance has led us to.

    1. 335258+ up ticks,
      Morning B3,
      So bloody true, many of the electorate have been only to willing to be mafia governance soldiers, and
      batley – spen points out they still are still fighting the
      country destroying war of party before ALL else damn
      the evil consequences.

    2. The hospitality industry has been very vocal in opposing the introduction of this control mechanism. It will be interesting to see if those currently opposing the government’s “support” for this move remain in opposition or if they collapse and end up complying.

      Johnson is using proxies to enable his “passport” simply because he dare not try and legislate away the rights that people take for granted, including not to be discriminated against. If he tried the legislation route it would leave him open to too many questions being asked along with waking up more of the population to what is his real agenda. The latter has nothing to do with anyone’s physical health: mental health, of course, is another matter.

      2. Johnson is the Louis XVI of C21 Blighty – but without the fertility problems.

    3. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/covid-passports-planned-in-time-for-englands-autumn-wave-hgg8wpggv
      Covid-19 certificates will be required for customers to enter bars, restaurants and nightclubs under plans to tackle a fourth wave of the virus in a move that experts hope will boost jab rates among the young.

      Entertainment venues in England would be forced to make customers use so-called vaccination passports from autumn, to prove that they had either had both doses or a negative test the day before. Recent figures have shown a reduction in the take-up of vaccines with first doses halving in two weeks. Fewer than 100,000 a day are being given out on average for the first time since April.

      2. ‘Morning, Paul, “Entertainment venues in England would be forced to make customers use so-called vaccination passports…”

        …and then watch those insistent venues go bust.

    4. If LGBTs etc. can sue cake shops and the like for discrimination, I hope that those who are unable to have the vaccinations on medical grounds sue the pants off establishments that refuse them entry.

      1. What about those vaccinated abroad, as the man wrote? Tourists, expats and so on?
        What if you can’t get a mobile signal, as is the case over much of the UK?
        Has anyone thought this through?

        3. Yes. The digital ID is worldwide.
          What you have just described is a “problem” they have created so that they can “solve” it.
          EU countries already have matching ones.

      2. that’s the plan sos, data mining all evidence, docs, links. There’s 38 of us here in Kenya on weekly collation exercise and lawyers here, on board. No jab simply beacuse nothing exists here but hitting the refusal of entry. Kenya Govt couldn’t care less

  8. ‘We expect them to act’: Biden presses Putin on ransomware groups, hints at retaliation. 10 July 2021.

    The two leaders held an hour-long phone call on Friday, their first since they discussed ransomware attacks at a summit in Geneva on 16 June. Biden’s message to Putin in the call was direct, suggesting a growing impatience over attacks that have disrupted key US sectors.

    “I made it very clear to him that the United States expects, when a ransomware operation is coming from his soil even though it’s not sponsored by the state, we expect them to act if we give them enough information to act on who that is,” Biden told reporters.

    Well even if this is true it makes no sense to the Russians to comply with Biden’s threats. We know that the UK acts as a US proxy in attacking Russian cyber installations (the real reason for Biden’s reluctance to involve the US) so they are not fooled by the hypocrisy of his position. What Putin is waiting for is an assurance that the US is going to rein in its lackey and he might then do something.

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/10/we-expect-them-to-act-biden-presses-putin-on-ransomware-groups-hints-at-retaliation

    1. ‘Morning, Minty, most sensible people and businesses would ensure that their system is backed up at least once daily, to circumvent the threat of letting ransomware into their system.

      But there is no backup for Sleepy, dopey Joe.

      1. Also many computer systems do not need to have any connection to the internet. Use of the internet is where the viruses enter as workers play on the internet at lunch time. Although many companies use the internet for business it is possible to divide activities up so that those activities that don’t need the internet cannot be reached from outside.

    2. Much of the software in use is from the US. Maybe the FBI/CIA could track down those who abuse US software (have you read the terms and conditions)* and sort them out?

      * No, of course not. Nobody has.

  10. Number of deaths in the UK in selected years

    680,799 in 1976 or 1.21% of UK population
    670,656 in 1985 or 1.19%
    657,733 in 1989 or 1.16%
    658,194 in 1993 or 1.14%
    612,085 in 2003 or 1.03%
    695,812 in 2020 or 1.02% of UK population

    Sources: Statista, CountryMeters

    1. Johnson and his cabal have broken the Country socially, medically and financially on a tissue of lies. Churchillian? The man is a fraud.

      1. Only yesterday a comment was published which explained how some MPs seeing her for what she was, pressured the 1922 committee to bring about the ousting of Treasonous May. There are over 360 Conservative MPs, the great majority are obviously content to have such a fraud lead their party and the Government.
        Never forget the fact the buffoon is in office with his fellow party MPs agreement.

          1. Why do we need more than 6-10 max.

            A good manager has no more than 6 sub-managers/supervisors reporting to him – but that’s industry, which has to make money, governments just spend it (ours).

          2. Or want such a role, and vote the way they are told to keep their hopes of a better job alive – to hell with what is best for the constituents!

      2. Boris Johnson has a net worth of $4 million.

        When he ceases to be PM i expect to see that figure go up by at least a factor of 10.

        Services rendered.

    1. Time to give this another airing:

      Greta’s Green Day
      One crisp winter morning in Sweden, a cute little girl named Greta woke up to a perfect world, one where there were no petroleum products ruining the earth. She tossed aside her cotton sheet and wool blanket and stepped out onto a dirt floor covered with willow bark that had been pulverised with rocks.
      “What’s this?” she asked.
      “Pulverised willow bark,” replied her fairy godmother.
      “What happened to the carpet?” she asked.
      “The carpet was nylon, which is made from Butadiene and hydrogen cyanide, both made from petroleum,” came the response.

      Greta smiled, acknowledging that adjustments are necessary to save the planet, and moved to the sink to brush her teeth where instead of a toothbrush, she found a willow, mangled on one end to expose wood fibre bristles.
      “Your old toothbrush?” noted her godmother, “Also nylon.”
      “Where’s the water?” asked Greta.
      “Down the road in the canal,” replied her godmother, ‘Just make sure you avoid water with cholera in it”
      “Why’s there no running water?” Greta asked, becoming a little peevish.
      “Well,” said her godmother, who happened to teach engineering at MIT, “Where do we begin?”

      There followed a long monologue about how sink valves need elastomer seats and how copper pipes contain copper, which has to be mined and how it’s impossible to make all-electric earth-moving equipment with no gear lubrication or tyres and how ore has to be smelted to make metal, and that’s tough to do, with only electricity as a source of heat, and, even if you use only electricity, the wires need insulation, which is petroleum-based, and though most of Sweden’s energy is produced in an environmentally friendly way because of hydro and nuclear, if you do a mass and energy balance around the whole system, you still need lots of petroleum products like lubricants and nylon and rubber for tyres and asphalt for filling potholes and wax and iPhone plastic and elastic to hold your underwear up while operating a copper smelting furnace and . . .
      “What’s for breakfast?” interjected Greta, whose head was hurting.
      “Fresh, range-fed chicken eggs,” replied her godmother. “raw.”
      “How so, raw?” inquired Greta.
      “Well, …

      . . .” And once again, Greta was told about the need for petroleum products like transformer oil and scores of petroleum products essential for producing metals for frying pans and in the end was educated about how you can’t have a petroleum-free world and then cook eggs. Unless you rip your front fence up and start a fire and carefully cook your egg in an orange peel like you do in Boy Scouts. Not that you can find oranges in Sweden anymore.
      “But I want poached eggs like my Aunt Tilda makes,” lamented Greta.
      “Tilda died this morning,” the godmother explained. “Bacterial pneumonia.”
      “What?!” interjected Greta. “No one dies of bacterial pneumonia! We have penicillin.”
      “Not anymore,” explained godmother “The production of penicillin requires chemical extraction using isobutyl acetate, which, if you know your organic chemistry, is petroleum-based. Lots of people are dying, which is problematic because there’s not any easy way of disposing of the bodies since backhoes need hydraulic oil and crematoriums can’t really burn many bodies using as fuel Swedish fences and furniture, which are rapidly disappearing – being used on the black market for roasting eggs and staying warm.”

      This represents only a fraction of Greta’s day, a day without microphones to exclaim into and a day without much food, and a day without carbon-fibre boats to sail in, but a day that will save the planet.

      Tune in tomorrow when Greta needs a root canal and learns how Novocain is synthesised.

  13. Justin Trudeau isn’t the progressive leader he thinks he is. 10 July 2021.

    As part of their effort to build this better country for all, Trudeau’s Liberal party is working to push through a number of bills suppressing free speech for those who don’t identify as members of certain politicised minority groups, or who are not fully on board with positions our government has deemed progressive.

    Bill C-36, introduced last month, aims to tackle ‘online hate’ by amending Canada’s Criminal Code and Canadian Human Rights Act. The bill would make it a ‘discriminatory practice’ to communicate hate speech online, where it is ‘likely to foment detestation or vilification of an individual or group of individuals on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination’.

    This is of course a replica of the UK’s Online Harms Bill similarly tasked with shutting down dissent like Nottl! The Countries of the West are all turning into Police States to form one Globalist Entity.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/justin-trudeau-isn-t-the-progressive-leader-he-thinks-he-is

  14. Good morning all.
    12°C on a damp and dull Derbyshire morning. at least the overnight rain has stopped.

  15. Winston Marshall in the Spekkie diary:

    “I’ve been amazed by the response to my decision to leave my band, Mumford & Sons. The article in which I explained why has now been read 700,000 times and has been republished by newspapers in the UK, the US and Germany. My main hope in publishing it was to restore my own sense of integrity — eroded, I felt, by an apology I made to an extreme but vociferous internet minority who took great exception to what I considered an innocuous tweet to Andy Ngo, the author of a bestselling book about the radicalised far-left. Just as I never anticipated the angry reaction to my unremarkable tweet, I could never have foreseen that my article about the ensuing fuss would have generated so many messages of gratitude. Gratitude for what? Not for leaving the band — although a few people may be glad. It seems as if, in explaining why I felt I could not carry on, I had articulated something that many people feel in their daily lives: self-censorship. In the current febrile political climate, many of us are just too scared to say what we think.

    The messages came from an astonishing array of professions —fellow musicians, doctors, civil servants, actors, painters, politicians, think-tankers, comedians, vicars, teachers, students, beauty queens, lawyers, mothers, charity workers, cannabis activists, journalists, entrepreneurs. I found many of them very moving. I’m especially struck by how these represent the moderate free-thinking middle-ground. Not extremists. A theme that crops up again and again in these emails is a fear that speaking ‘the truth’ could prove too costly. So people stay quiet. They have rent or mortgages to pay. Their careers have taken decades to build up. They are accountable to colleagues who depend on them in turn to maintain their lives and their responsibilities. There are kids to care for. Some recount being alienated by their friends for holding incorrect opinions. Others explain how they keep quiet at work, or nod along when things don’t seem quite right. Others describe being bullied for wrong-think.

    The comedian Ricky Gervais said recently: ‘Whoever you are, if you can’t be bought you’re the richest person in the world… There’s something to be said for being proud of one’s integrity.’ I am fortunate to be able to walk away when my integrity is compromised. For most people life is far, far more complex. It is noble to prioritise those other hugely important aspects of our lives: family, friendships, careers. But the sacrifice of keeping schtum also comes at a price. What starts as a niggling feeling can build up inside. An elastic band slowly stretched will eventually either warp out of shape or snap back to position. Perhaps our consciences do something similar.

    I think of Vaclav Havel, the playwright turned dissident turned Czechoslovakian president who wrote The Power of the Powerless in 1978, describing life in the Soviet era. He used the example of the greengrocer who places the slogan ‘Workers of the world, unite!’ in his shopfront: ‘If he were to refuse, there could be trouble… He does it because these things must be done if one is to get along in life. It is one of the thousands of details that guarantee him a relatively tranquil life “in harmony with society”.’ The grocer has much to lose should he dissent from the ideological norms of the day. However, the moment he stops putting up the slogan and ‘rejects the ritual and breaks the rules of the game, he discovers once more his suppressed identity and dignity’.

    Havel’s words speak to an alarming degree to the situation in the liberal democratic West of today. I don’t imagine we will experience a social convulsion as dramatic as Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution of 1989, at least not any time soon. But how will these pent-up feelings which so many share manifest themselves? Havel’s writings suggest two possible ways forward. Either the system continues to tighten into a ‘dreadful Orwellian vision of a world of absolute manipulation’, or the ‘independent life of society including the “dissident movements” will slowly but surely become a social phenomenon of growing importance… influencing the general situation’. Let’s hope it is the second of these. A restoration of honest, good-faith dialogue and the widespread recognition that we are all fallen and fallible would go a long way towards restoring the freedom to think and speak. It may be premature to say this, but on the evidence of the reaction to my piece, a quiet Colour Revolution for our times may have already begun. And I hope more and more people will find the courage to speak the truth as they see it, and that it will be less and less costly to do so.”

    1. He seems to be an uncommonly thoughtful young man. His views have a distinctly Nottlerish tinge!

    2. Winston Marshall in March after saying journalist Andy Ngo was “brave” for his book
      which says far-left activists have “radical plans to destroy democracy”.

      and he is correct!

  16. I am not a follower of, or interested in, wendyball. However, the present competition is rather being thrust upon one. I read a comment yesterday suggesting that the comp had been rigged by EUFA to ensure that Engerland won it. Apparently they only played one match abroad. Their semi-final “goals” looked dodgy. The Danish goalie told the ref about the laser and was told to get on with it.

    Shirley such an event could not be rigged…(sarc). At least, that is what my friend Mr Rashid thinks.

    1. For some reason, continental Europeans seem ill-disposed to us. EUFA had the means and the opportunity to help England, but the motive to do the opposite.

      1. I see that the Hitlerene Sofa-sitter is vociferously supporting Italy.

        I have wracked my brains but I simply cannot think of any recent event that so put Europeans off the UK…{:¬)))

        1. It is not the European people. It is their comptrollers.

          Obviously the Italians and particularly the French (because they hate us anyway but we don’t care) want England to lose. But when you get the likes of Ursula and Mutti making statements that they want Italy to win, their motives become obvious.

          England doing well at anything is unacceptable.

          A taster for you Bill. More to follow on Monday.

          https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7c130e208add1fcfcaee1923596910436fc9275fa0a15d263438d55089af75c1.jpg

          Good morning. :@)

          8. We once had a particularly obnoxious fellow who was PA to the regional manager and always unpleasantly tactile to the females. He always wore patent leather shoes.

            I told my staff that he wore them so he could look up their skirts. They never again took him seriously.

        1. Which reminds me: when Millwall fans booed the knee-takers, I became a soccer fan for the first time in my life, and sent off for a Millwall cap. I’ve worn it ever since; some people remark upon it with favour, nobody has objected to it.

          1. I remember that football commentators – Dion Dublin in particular – went mad at this show of disagreement with their woke agenda. Dublin called for those fans who were booing to be banned for life from football stadiums, calling them ‘racist’.

          2. I sent them a tenner and got a little badge. I discovered it the other day when filing a load of correspondence.

          3. Not forgetting the Millwall fan who blocked the doorway of a full restaurant stopping the machete wielders from getting in.

            He took a few stab wounds but still carried on.

            The Government decided not to honour him because he had a criminal record.

            The real reason being they didn’t want to upset their muslim chums.

            I hope someone set up a crowd fund for him. Or that the diners at least showed their appreciation.

    2. Anybody remember whining like this in 1966 when England played all their matches at Wembley, no thought not!
      I’ll be glad when wendyball is no longer the leading story along with another dozen “journalistic” articles in the MSM rags and we can get back to blaming Brexit for everything.
      Manners, morning all.

      1. Good morning VVOF.

        It is my firm belief that the gang of phonies posing as a government are using every ounce of wendyball stuff to bury the bad news about covid passports, new restrictions, forthcoming lockdown…..

        1. Morning BT, I believe you are not wrong.
          A report in the Daily Fail mentions the likelihood of Covid passports being a requirement in the Autumn to enter places such as pubs.
          Why are councils employing Covid marshals on contracts stretching into next year, it stinks of deception by the buffoon and his clowns.

      2. If my memory serves me right,the 1966 World cup was played in England!
        They were never in danger of playing in Rome or St Petersburg.

  17. 335258+ up ticks,

    Saturday 10 July: Guilt and upset at being falsely pinged led to deletion of the Covid app

    Surely time for many to admit to backing the wrong political horse in what can NOW be clearly seen as being over the last three decades
    a phony race, run by phony contenders, with the same three political horses alternately winning.

    The punters ( the electorate) have a good chance of their phony party winning and them personally sharing in the
    prize appertaining to their continuing input, that being a very genuine
    guaranteed large dollop via the trough of treacherous political tripe.

    The “DEAL” should have been the flashing ALARM, seen but ignored,
    we are now suffering a multitude of mini deal issues that added together amount to be jabbed or freedom of actions seriously curtailed,
    forever and a day.

    1. 335258+ up ticks,
      O2O,
      What’s the odds the electoral punters will recognise the truth OG ? dunno,I would imagine about
      48% / 52% voting for sh!te or right, per usual.

  18. Protect Your Environment – Recycle Your Old Jokes

    The grim reaper came for me last night, and I beat him off with a vacuum cleaner.
    Talk about Dyson with death.

    I went to the cemetery yesterday to lay some flowers on a grave.
    As I was standing there I noticed 4 grave diggers walking about with a coffin;
    3 hours later and they’re still walking about with it.
    I thought to myself, they’ve lost the plot!!

    My daughter asked me for a pet spider for her birthday, so I went to our local pet shop
    and they were £70!!! Blow this, I thought, I can get one cheaper off the web.

    I was at an ATM yesterday when a little old lady asked if I could check her balance,
    so I pushed her over.

    I start a new job in Seoul next week. I thought it was a good Korea move.

    I was driving this morning when I saw a parked AA van.
    The driver was sobbing uncontrollably and looked very miserable.
    I thought to myself, that guy’s heading for a breakdown.

    Statistically, 6 out of 7 dwarfs are not Happy.

    I was explaining to my wife last night that when you die you get reincarnated but must
    come back as a different creature.
    She said she would like to come back as a cow.
    I said “You’re obviously not listening.”

    The wife has been missing a week now. Police said to prepare for the worst.
    So I have been to the charity shop to get all her clothes back.

    Two Muslims have crashed a speedboat into the Thames barrier in London.
    Police think it might be the start of Ram-a-dam.

    When I was in the pub I heard a couple of IDIOTS saying that they wouldn’t feel
    safe on an aircraft if they knew the pilot was a woman.
    What a pair of sexists. I mean, it’s not as if she’d have to reverse the thing!

    Local Police hunting the ‘knitting needle nutter’, who has stabbed six people in the rear
    in the last 48 hours, believe the attacker could be following some kind of pattern.

    Bought some ‘rocket salad’ yesterday, but it went off before I could eat it!

    A teddy bear is working on a building site. He goes for a tea break and when he returns
    he notices his pick has been stolen. The bear is angry and reports the theft to the foreman.
    The foreman grins at the bear and says “Oh, I forgot to tell you, today’s the day
    the teddy bears have their pick nicked.”

    1. Yo NTN

      Recycle Your Old Jokes

      You are (our) World Champion material in this field

      Just do not stop

          1. Sorry, too late. Anyway, NoTTLers other than me, will have already read them.

  19. Al Beeb pushing the Covid rising, NHS overwhelmed, routine ops cancelled, very heavily.

    Freedom day will be nothing of the sort.

    1. Talkradio reports head of Pfizer saying that the vaccination programme is going very well – too optimistic for the Beeb.

  20. 335258+ up ticks,
    Herd milking time is getting more regular, which politico has the franchise on this issue,

    Dt,
    Travel policy in chaos as cheap Covid tests exposed as bogus
    Price of holidays to rise sharply as tests listed on government site at £1.99 are instead revealed to cost £118 when customers click through

  22. BBC complaints double in two years as political bias incenses viewers. 10 July 2021.

    The number of complaints about BBC programmes has more than doubled over the past two years to a record high of nearly half a million, figures have revealed.

    However, analysis of the BBC programmes which attracted more than 100 complaints in 2020/21 show that the biggest issue was perceptions of political bias.
    The annual report noted: “Our research shows too many people perceive the BBC to be shaped by a particular perspective. This is not simply about the politics of Left and Right. We recognise that many feel the BBC does not get the world from their point of view.”

    Wow! Who would ever have guessed? The Beeb is a Woke propaganda machine. It tells you something of Westminster’s true orientation that like Mass Immigration it’s untouchable!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/09/bbc-complaints-double-two-years-political-bias-incenses-viewers/

    1. That figure of course does not take into account the people who no longer watch the BBC.

    2. Good morning, Belle..

      I know how much you enjoy your crab sandwiches. A pot of handpicked Devon crab 250grams @ £19 sounds quite expensive but it will make four generous sandwiches. Take a look for a comparison on price … They appear to be out of stock at the moment but not for long, i’m sure.

      https://www.hamiltonsfish.co.uk/crab-86-c.asp

      You can freeze it too.

  25. Lithuania builds barrier along border with Belarus and accuses the country of FLYING IN migrants and sending them illegally into the EU. 10 July 2021.

    Lithuania has accused Belarusian authorities of flying in unwanted migrants and transporting them across the border.

    The fence installation comes just a week after Vilnius declared a state of emergency due to an influx of migrants.

    The double barbed wire fence will run for 342 miles and cost 46 million euros.

    Migrants crossing Channel? OK!

    Migrants entering Lithuania. Panic Stations!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9773139/Lithuania-builds-barrier-border-Belarus-prevent-migrants-sent-illegally-EU.html

    1. We have a 1400 Km border with Russia but don’t experience problems with “refugees”…strange.

    2. ‘Morning, Minty!

      That’s because yer frogs are complicit in the exportation of their unwanteds to us.

    3. ‘Morning, Minty!

      That’s because yer frogs are complicit in the exportation of their unwanteds to us.

    4. ‘Morning, Minty!

      That’s because yer frogs are complicit in the exportation of their unwanteds to us.

  26. Don’t say ‘it’s coming home’! Whitehall tells ministers to stop uttering the song lyric that’s been part of English football culture for 25 years… because it ‘does not go down well overseas’
    Ministers told to stop saying ‘it’s coming home’ as it ‘annoys other countries’
    Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport officials issued the warning
    It said it could scupper the UK and Ireland bid to host the 2030 World Cup

    The email reads: ‘As stressed before, please do encourage your ministers not to use ‘it’s coming home’ with the news media and social media.
    ‘I know we’re swimming against the tide, but we know this does not go down well overseas – and strategically we need to do all we can to make ourselves welcoming to the football authorities when the UK and Ireland is scoping out a bid for 2030.’

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9774615/Whitehall-tells-ministers-stop-uttering-coming-home-song-lyrics.html

    1. It annoys me too, but I don’t give a damn how the rest of Europe feels about it.

      2. Given that v der L is openly and unprofessionally rooting for Italy – simply because they are playing England – the EUers can put up and shut up.

        1. Tell the members of the EU that only one EU team can represent all the EU countries in future cups, the Olympics, world championships etc and see what happens.

    2. Since England has not won the cup before then surely the cup would be going foreign rather than coming home if England won it?

    5. If England were to win the Euros, football would indeed be coming home, as England is where the game was invented.

        2. The Revd William Webb Ellis is buried in Menton cemetery (France). The grave is always festooned with rugby stuff – flags, etc.

          Not many people know that…

    1. Was that the Scottish team with the drug taker whose comment was, “They were only wee pulls”.

        1. Get the different brain capacities. Is that relevant? I think so but you may disagree.

  29. SIR – The system of having doors with holes in them to receive mail is barbaric (“Royal Mail considers US-style postboxes to avoid dogs”, report, July 5).

    Here in France every home has its own locked postbox bolted to a wall or post on the outside of the property, making dog attacks much more difficult.

    Julia Evans
    St Vincent Rive D’Olt, Lot, France

    All I can say to Mrs Evans is that she has never been to Laure Minervois. All the houses in the very narrow streets (lanes, really) have letter boxes – because the sort of box she describes would be hit by traffic and bashed by pedestrians.

    1. ‘Morning, Bill, as is the case in many towns and small villages throughout France.

    2. Ours is a box on the wall near the door. Some of our neighbours have letter boxes in the door but some have boxes on posts nearby.

      1. Morning J.

        We also have a box , painted red , on the wall.

        My hands were virtually ripped to bits during the years I used to deliver leaflets etc for our local politics .
        People have such appalling letter boxes in their doors.

        1. Many years ago I did some charity leaflet drops and collections. The worst ones were those very low down in the door with a dog waiting. Some were very snappy and nearly had your fingers off.

          1. Yo Ndovu!

            #me too. Especially if the flap is very stiff (presumably for insulation purposes).

          9. I remember a GPO poster from more than sixty years ago, the gist of which was “Too low, too high, just right, but too tight.”

        2. Tell us about it! One of our deliverers ended up in casualty to have his hand stitched up; he had put it through a badly fitted letterbox and the screws ripped his hand open.
          And don’t get me onto the subject of those slots at the bottom of the door. Apparently the Irish PO have banned them.

      2. Morning J, mine is a box at the end of my drive by the cattle grid with a larger box for parcels the other side of the fence

      3. A bone of contention between the DT and myself was when, after leaving the choice of a new front door to her, I was horrified to see the letterbox inches from the bottom of it because the door she had chosen made a centrally fitted one impracticable!

        1. Those letterboxes (and the vertical Victorian ones measuring about 3″ x 1″) were the bane of my life when I was delivering leaflets.

    1. Yes. Interesting.
      I wonder what accounted for it the occasional excursions over Afghanistan and why it just avoided Iran.

  31. 335258+ up ticks,
    This could very well be a politico’s Odessa line getting warmed up for when shortly things go tits up.

    Dt,
    Branson and Bezos brace for blast-off in biggest gamble of their lives
    Virgin founder puts his life on the line with heavenly trip on Sunday – beating Jeff Bezos to the punch – as race for space heats up

    1. I expect that Branson’s body double will enjoy the trip and if all goes well with it, the Virgin Barsteward will enjoy the Glory

      1. 3352258+ up ticks,
        Morning M,
        No, must be left isolated, made to suffer, ALL earthly signals severed no more Archers, Corrie, Eastenders, how bad would that be ?

  32. A lovely great spotted woodpecker having a go at one of the feeders not 15 feet away.

      2. I was trying to sit still not to scare it and my phone is on the other side of the house where it can get a weak signal.

        1. Always the way. As with G & P when they are looking photogenic – by the time the camera arrives, they have buggered off.

          Birds infuriate me by flying off just as I am about the click the shutter.

    2. very commendable you inform us all of your MP visting the ATMs. Don’t forget to maintain social distance but memorise his PIN. Don’t wear a mask, you may be misconstrued as a robber

    3. very commendable you inform us all of your MP visting the ATMs. Don’t forget to maintain social distance but memorise his PIN. Don’t wear a mask, you may be misconstrued as a robber

    1. I hope that tomorrow, the England football team stands for a few seconds of silence in honour of Paul Mariner instead of going down on one knee. But that is too much to hope for.

        1. I noticed Harry Kane’s captain’s armband was a rainbow one in at least one earlier match.

          1. as was the German Captain “celebrating”? Pride month to keep the shirtlifters happy – presumably the ones who bought tickets

    1. What they get to British to accept for the ‘foreigners’ among us will establish the precedent to control freedom of worship and then general freedom of association among the rest of us.

      2. ‘Morning LIM!

        The “foreigners” never establish a precedent for the rest of us. They are in a class of their own – what’s OK for them is not OK for us.

        Edit: or have I misunderstood what you were saying?

    2. If Muslims had claimed that vaccination was Halal, do you believe that the pressure would be so great to have one and that the unvaccinated would be banned from certain arenas/travel?
      No?, neither do I.

    3. Good God, I thought that was satire, but it’s real, isn’t it?
      It really is impossible to tell the difference between satire and reality these days!

  37. A study finds that 39% of Covid Delta hospital inpatients tested negative on entry for other illnesses/injuries, suggesting that they caught it in hospital. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9772259/40-patients-Indian-Delta-variant-admitted-hospital-reasons-Covid.html

    Yet more studies showing that the damage done by lockdowns vastly exceed any good that they might do: https://lockdownsceptics.org/2021/07/10/reductions-in-quality-of-life-have-vastly-outweighed-covid-19-deaths-say-researchers/

    Thanks, NHS and politicians. Glad to know we’re dying and suffering all around to save you doing your jobs and making tough decisions. Trebles and a George Crosses all round!

  39. I don’t have a smart phone, so “APPs” are of no concern to me.

    However, I am surprised that the inventors of the Track and Trace thingy didn’t embed a device which made it impossible to delete.

    Shirley the fragrant Dido didn’t slip up?

    1. The Americans like to castigate the British Empire but it subjugated Iraq with a few biplanes and ground troops at a fraction of the blood and treasure spent by the US.

  41. I decided to retire early last night to recharge the batteries as it were (very wearing being nice to people for more than a couple of hours). :@)

    I was lying abed reading my book, eating a big slice of treacle tart with my fingers …as you do. When Dolly decided to rearrange the furniture.

    She dragged her bed out to the middle of the floor. Went back for her toys and then got comfy. She had arranged herself with a clear line of sight of the tart (the food, not me !) and proceeded to stare me down.

    She won.

    1. Ah yes. The death stare that makes food jump off the plate and into their mouths.
      Does Dolly do the ‘tortoise walk’ with the bed over her back?

      1. Yes, the invisible dog routine.

        She only got a little bit of pastry crust though.

        She also has another bed in the living room which has one of those little hooded beds.

        For most of the time she will sleep on top of it with her blanket.

        When she is feeling like Garbo she drags her blanket inside and the only thing you can see poking out is her nose.

  42. Can anyone explain why the wendyball match tomorrow is being carried live on BOTH the beeboids and ITV?

    1. So that if you’re losing on one channel then you can see if you’re doing any better on the others.

      1. I keep looking for different weather forecasts but whichever one I choose we get incessant drizzle. The good news is that it might brighten up from next Thursday. But, on the other hand, it may not.

  43. Apropos the two clips from Sky Oz below – is that channel as rude about Australian politicians as it is (rightly) about foreign regimes?

    1. Is that real, can’t find anything about it. Match delayed for rain but Stokes was presented with his 100th ODI cap out on the pitch.

  48. Good morning again, my friends

    There is only one benefit of not being able to run our courses this summer – I can get on better with the work in the garden – but even that advantage has been wiped out by the fact that it has been drizzling for the last four weeks : not just proper showers which pass by quickly but permanent drizzle when you get wet and stay wet and your clothes smell musty because they never dry properly out of doors.

    So here is some cheerful news in the Daily Mail which will warm the cockles of the Nottlers’ hearts:

    Covid passports ‘WILL be compulsory in pubs’: Ministers ‘plan to force bars, clubs and restaurants to demand proof of two jabs or negative test from autumn’ to help tackle fourth wave of the virus

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9774653/Covid-passports-compulsory-pubs-clubs-restaurants-prevent-fourth-wave.html

    1. These idiots are determined to wipe out the Hospitality Industry, aren’t they?

        1. Government as a whole needs to feel the firm grip of their master around their neck and to be reminded they are but temporary managers of our estate.

          The state machine must be kicked underfoot and it’s neck stamped on, firmly and then collared and chained to learn to come to heel.

    2. ‘Morning, Richard, and, as I’ve said elsewherem the pubs, clubs and restaurants will be no more, as they will all go bust.

      1. Part of the plan.

        And when we cannot afford electric cars and we have no way of heating our houses we shall have to wear more clothes and be imprisoned in our homes in bed.

    3. I suspect kite flying. Particularly over this past 18 months, the government have put up an idea in the DM/DT/DE or any paper read by people who vote for them.
      If the result is all-round incandescence, the plan is withdrawn or re-designed to discommode those who wouldn’t vote for them anyway.

    4. Will this use of covid passports be ordered by diktat or via debated legislation in the HoC? IIRC, some months ago when Johnson finally let slip that passports were on the domestic agenda, that is after all the denials by Gove and that creep who is employed as “vaccine” minister, the Labour Party and sufficient dissenters in the Tory ranks forced him to back off. Johnson did offer a ‘sunset clause’ in the legislation but as everyone is aware, his words are worthless.

      What has changed for this threat to be repeated? Is a fourth wave planned? The attack on the hospitality industry has been relentless by this cabal and it’s obvious that Johnson & Co want to destroy places where the people can meet, chat and enjoy a drink and a meal. Clearly the elite will still have places to visit for their refreshment etc as per flying/travelling unhindered, congregating and hugging unhindered, tax breaks for private aircraft fuel etc. Johnson’s grey and lifeless dystopia is a serious threat to the people of the UK.

      I tend to agree with Anne, this isn’t the first time that this shower have put up a kite to test reactions. However, that doesn’t mean that public pressure will dissuade Johnson from trying, just that it will take a little longer after more scare tactics have been employed.

      1. Will there be public pressure? My reading of the general opinion in the UK at the moment that it’s a dangerous step to allow no lockdown, everyone should be wearing hazmat suits at least, and 10 years chokey isn’t enough for someone who breaks quarantine.
        So, the general population will be deighted with having to have ausweis. There’ll be no pushback.

  49. I thought some of you would like this article by Melissa Kite in this week’s Spectator. She does go on a bit each week about how tiresome nouve country dwellers are – but this was classic:

    Oh, I do so love to see all the lovely pheasants running around the place,’ said the lady walking the Alsatian up the farm track.

    The huge dog was straining at the leash, pulling her along, but she was trying to stop for a chat with the builder boyfriend as he mended a fence.

    I came alongside them in my car as I arrived at the farm to ride Darcy. I got out and joined the tail end of the conversation, in which the builder b took it upon himself to explain to this sweet lady that the pheasants got shot.

    Look, he had to. She was under the impression the footpath ran through a wildlife park, and that the millionaire at the top of the track was putting the pheasants there for the walkers to look at.

    I reckon this explains why the whole village support the local shoot. They have no idea it is a shoot. That would make sense, because they’re all lefties round here, and we’ve always been amazed and relieved they don’t turn up in balaclavas to scream at the City boys when they arrive to enjoy a day’s pheasant shooting as guests of the wealthy chap down the end of the track who runs the whole shooting malarkey.

    ‘Did you not wonder what all the gunfire was during the winter?’ asked the BB.

    She simpered: ‘Yes, I did wonder. But they’re all so nice down here.’ Then she gasped and said: ‘But what about the deer?’ We thought hard before telling her about the stalking. We looked at each other, and a lot passed silently between us.

    We’re out of favour with the shoot boys since we refused to let them on the land we rent.

    While I have been an advocate of country sports in the past, I’m actually a bit at the end of my tether with it. We always knew there was shooting in woods and fields near us. We just didn’t think we would have to fight so hard to say no to the idea of the boys coming on to our smallholding and letting off guns near our horses. They were downright furious when we said they couldn’t use our land, and a lot has happened I won’t go into.

    But suffice to say that, as this lady looked to us for answers about what happens to Bambi, we simultaneously thought: ‘To hell with it.’

    It’s not just the way the shoot has treated us that made us tell her, it’s the way the locals live in cuckoo land.

    The builder boyfriend reckons we are getting to the point in Surrey where daft lefties enjoying a steak at the local gastropub will voice utter outrage if you tell them that steak is a dead cow.

    The cognitive dissonance is off the scale round here. They prefer any old fairy story to the complex, messy realties of life.

    The rich lefties, in particular, are getting guiltier of ever more ludicrous attempts to enjoy what they loathe.

    They like the idea of the shoot because the shoot members are wealthy, smart, well-connected people and this affords new entrants to the country set a chance to social climb by associating with them.

    So perhaps the locals push to the backs of their minds what a ‘shoot’ actually entails, aside from everyone dressing up in jolly smart clothes and looking posh.

    I have noticed the tendency of the village lefties to dress in expensive Dubarry shooting jackets and so on, just to walk their dogs. And, of course, practically every dog in Surrey is a working cocker nowadays.

    The lefties have no idea what to do with these dogs, so they let them pull them along, wildly straining at stupid harnesses around their middles, when they should be wearing a slip lead. Ditto the German shepherds that pull the kind, old, silver-haired ladies up the farm track as they sing: ‘La la la, not listening not listening, nothing dies, nothing gets shot. Oh look, there’s a lovely, happy pheasant who will live a long life and die of old age.’

    So the BB said to this particular lady: ‘Did you not wonder what those high chairs were in the trees?’ And she said: ‘They’re to watch the wildlife from.’ And he said: ‘Yes, they watch the wildlife, before they shoot it.’

    ‘No no no!’ she wailed. ‘I won’t listen!’

    ‘Did you never have venison from the keeper?’ he pressed on. ‘Ye-es,’ she said, really looking quite frightened now. ‘Well, where do you suppose the venison came from?’

    1. ‘Did you never have venison from the keeper?’ he pressed on. ‘Ye-es,’ she said, really looking quite frightened now. ‘Well, where do you suppose the venison came from?’
      She probably replied “Waitrose?”

    2. I loved that article , really loved it .

      The newcomers from near Windsor , Kingston , Watford , Earlsfield etc splash out on the latest very expensive 4x4s, thus clogging the roads /lanes around here and moaning like hell when they have to pull off road to let humble small cars pass.. they don’t like the mud nor the muck that the muck spreaders wheels leave on the road .

      The new comers havn’t been subjected to church bell practise yet, I wonder what they will think of that .

      I forgot to mention moles , do they have moles in suburbia .. folk do moan abut their ruined lawns .

      Re Working cockers spaniels , I have had them forever . Eversince the twit Beckham and the Middleton family acquired them , the breed has been so popular … yes with flat owners and people with no access to a decent amount of countryside , there are so many lockdown pups who are now young crocodile dogs with guarding tendencies coming into rescue with huge problems … these are young dogs that were bought for thousands because they are such pretty looking dogs .

      Homes have been selling here in a matter of days , sealed bids .. crikey .. we are almost as bad as Scotland used to be .. silent gazumping is really taking off.

      Shoots, there are a few small shoots around here , not huge bird days like there are in Hampshire and Wiltshire .

      I used to go beating for years, my spaniels were trained to a good standard .. getting really wet during those years when we had very wet winters got to me .

      I have an old Barbour Jacket really tatty and scratched etc, the wrists on the sleeves were badly frayed , Barbour said they would sort things out, so I sent it up to them , and about a month later it was returned repaired , new zip, mended lining , repaired sleeves and reproofed/waxed , I was thrilled to bits … that was about 20 + years ago now ..

      One of our local wood and general farm merchants sells stuff that are good replicas, as well as rat traps and other things that would make many cringe at .. the smell of wood and leather is quite a heady sensation !

    3. At first i read it it as ‘…all those lovely peasants…’

      I’ll get me smock and pitchfork.

    4. Mongo has a harness, the idea of if he should pull that he gets throttled is obscene.

      If he doesn’t want to go, he doesn’t go. If he wants to stop, he stops. It’s his walk as much as mine.

      As for pulling – only if I’m asleep at the wheel as he usually walks beside me, occasionally bearing off to sniff something. While not perfect, he’s a good dog.

      1. Oscar wears a collar. He walks to heel. If he doesn’t want to go, I call him to heel and he comes. I can’t claim any credit for his walking to heel – he already did it, I just had to remind him that that was how it should be and praise him when he did it. If he wants to stop and sniff, that’s fine. If I stop to chat, he sits patiently until we’re ready to go on (and gets rewarded for that, too).

    5. I forgot the last paragraph:

      ‘The shop?’ her eyes said. ‘Please tell me it came from Waitrose…’

      He put her out of her misery: ‘Venison is deer. Those deer…’ And she shrieked and turned on her heels, letting the huge dog pull her up the track while wailing: ‘No no no! It can’t be!’

    6. I always assume “locals” to mean those born & brought up there, not just living there (off cummed’ns, if I recall me dialect). So, I was a tad confuserated for a while.

  50. 335258+ up ticks,
    This is NOT news it is well known, well suffered facts, she & her like have been getting tough & tougher over the last three decades, that is a known fact but NOT on the mass uncontrolled immigration / foreign paedophile plague, no,no,no , but on the decent indigenous peoples.

    What puzzles me greatly is why does she and her odious clique continue to find support time & again via the polling booth.

    breitbart,
    Prosecutors Say They Will No Longer Prosecute Illegal Migrants as Patel Poses as Getting ‘Tough’

        1. “Apparently genuine front pages, as shown on the BBC’s news website.”

          Ah, I see – genuine fakes, then.

    1. Nigel Farage had a clip on You Tube on 5 July about the Channel immigration, Border Force’s failure to deal with it properly and Priti Patel’s plan. It was quite grim with one boat with 70 immigrants and another at Dungeness with 50 on board. This country is being taken over drip by drip and Johnson ignores the warnings which are loud and clear.
      Johnson and his government are hopeless and an utter disgrace. I personally am very angry about this.

      1. 335258+ up ticks,
        Afternoon Cs,
        The farage chap has a track record of going into an
        Emil Zatopek mode something to do with getting his life back, 100% mercenary.

        This country is being HANDED OVER piecemeal by the political rubber stampers, still very active in parliament, along with their hard core supporting minions via the polling booth, one as bad as tother.

        The johnson chap & co are highly successful regarding his input seen in a pro brussels light as the whole tory party ( ino) has been since Thatcher was disposed of.

        I truly don’t know what the electorate is going to do shortly when hit with prayers five times a day, and no one to blame but ……

  53. Come on in Boot, the water’s lovely.

    Geoff has banned all those boorish people and it’s a much better atmosphere here.

        1. It’s just depressing. Something must be done, forced labour, compulsary service in a penal battalion. Something to stop the savagery and barbarism and force them to behave as civilised human beings.

    1. One of today’s DT letters is from a woman in Austria who is complaining that the UK app only recognises vaccinations performed by the nhs so although double vaccinated in Austria, she would still need the hotel stay.

      If that is the case, there goes tourism – you can come and visit but cannot use pubs, restaurants or hotels!

      MILs ashes can continue gathering dust at the crematorium, we will wait for some sense and joined up thinking.

      1. Speaking with our neighbour on Thursday evening who is at this moment in time driving back to their country side abode in the Lot region. She is taking her ‘pot’ of her fathers ashes with her in the car today, at least he will be scattered or interned as she said in a safe and respectable place.

        1. SWMBOs family are holding off with scattering her brother’s ashes until (at least) she can reasonably get to the UK.
          Not looking good so far.

    2. I hear we are all going to be issued badges to help. The badge will be a Covid star with a letter S to represent the level of safety, one for each increased level of protection given by a jab. The background colour will start yellow, mirroring traffic light warning amber, darkening to black with each S. Those refusing vaccination will have a red triangle to emphasise that people should stop and think before approaching. A pink badge will be available for those wishing to support LGBTQXYZ causes.

      2. Badges are so last century.

        You will receive a scan code tattooed on your forehead. Machines in doorways will scan you and either grant admittance or push you to one side. Imagine the Airport luggage handling system modified with a big boxing glove to push the unclean aside.

        1. Cattle trucks to the showers for those bearing official tattoos are also so last century.

    3. I have been think for a long time this ridged idea of making our great British pubs inoperable as appeasing the slammers.

      1. Sorry to be pedantic, Eddy (someone must in Peddy’s absence) but that’s ‘thinking’, ‘that this’ ‘Rigid’ and also ‘is’ but, by and large, I agree with the sentiment.

      2. Slammers don’t like Theatres either. It’s only because Lloyd Webber is a millionaire that they may survive.

        1. They don’t like music either.
          They appear not like anything except beheadings and other types of blood shed and murder.

  57. Two things I noticed.

    (a) The spamhead slammer has been very quite lately. Has he been nobbled or is choosing to be the opposite of the ubiquitous Halfcock?

    (b) Grant Shitts lied again – “Tests for £2.50 – just look at HMG website” He meant £119.50, of course. Just a slip of a digit… Total shite, that man.

    1. I have just written a reply (copies to general government and my local MP) to Rishi Wishy Sunak, regarding his recent email to all re- tories…. “Our Plan for Jobs is Working”. Really ??
      Not sure if he’s actually got the gist of what has been happening over the past 18 months or so. Perhaps this is a live remake of the TV series ‘Yes Minister’ !
      But I have asked him to detail the plans and the reasons behind all the continuous illegal immigration that they promised to stop. One cant imagine how these thousands of people will be a benefit to generally England. As soon and if I get a reply, i’ll post both emails. He might of course have been referring to all the effing house building that seems to be taking place all over England. As housing minister Mr Snapps and quite a lot to do with all that. We have triple locks on our front door………….. a very loud dog. And cauldron of boiling oil at the ready.

    1. Funny isn’t it that Grant slimeball Schapps is urging people not to delete the App as his fellow MP’s are doing just that.

      If you’ve got it…delete it.

      1. You do not need a smart phone its a brainwasing tool and nothing more. Only sheep need them.

        1. Sheep may need smartphones, but they much prefer springtime clippings from my plum trees.

    2. Dear life. How illiterate can a report get? Why can these people not use apostrophes?

      1. Here are some spare ones for use in an emergency:

        ”””””””
        ” ”
        ‘ ‘
        ””””””

      2. Here are some spare ones for use in an emergency:

        ”””””””
        ” ”
        ‘ ‘
        ””””””

  59. What is this ‘Scumming Home’ they are all singing about. A retirement home for wendyball fans, perhaps?

    2. ‘Afternoon, Ped, shit diction on the part of the caterwaullers.

      It’ snot good.

    3. ‘Afternoon, Ped, shit diction on the part of the caterwaullers.

      It’ snot good.

  60. England fined £25630 over fans use of lazer and disturbances at the last game

    1. If you look at the photographs of the light on the keepers face it must have been shone at ground level. I would have thought it almost impossible for a person at least 40 mtrs from the middle of the goal mouth to keep focused on a single and moving persons face. From previous construction experience it’s not at all easy to pick out a specific object of the size of a human face to keep and keep it in focus. And the higher the alleged lazer attacker was in the stands (seating) the less likely it was.

      1. You have to remember professional photographers take pictures at a high rate (several per second) to ensure they capture a good shot, so it’s not beyond the bounds of possibility that the camera caught the fraction of second the laser beam actually hit Schmeichel’s face.

        1. It’s possible but doubtful. It might even have been a photo shop.
          Apparently 24 thousand people have signed a petition to have the match replayed because of the given penalty, but there were two incidents prior to that one that were ignored. I suppose the VAR was wrong, or 24,000 anti English and woke dopes signed up.

    1. Only 7 years old.

      The replies are depressing. They include ‘97% of scientists’. People still believe this.

      1. As with anything, if you want to believe it, you will. If you want the truth, you’ll question it.

        The state wants to believe it, so it ensures a lot of people are paid a lot of money to believe it.

  62. Most of our politicians are evil. They are alllowing it to happen and do nothing for the people.

    1. The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,
      But, swoll’n with wind and the rank mist they draw,
      Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread;
      Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw
      Daily devours apace, and nothing said.

      These lines from John Milton’s Lycidas, could be aptly applied to our current situation.

      We are the hungry sheep and it is Boris Johnson who is filling us with rank mist and we are rotting away internally from some foul contagious plague. Meanwhile the grim wolf of Islam is speedily devouring everything and our politicians say and do nothing about it.

      ,

    2. Yes! It is the Greatest Betrayal in History. A whole civilisation and its people are to be erased from existence by those charged with protecting it!

      1. Yet, despite even *my* cynicsm, they’re not. There are some decent, honest people trying very hard to make a difference.

        Unfortunately, the number of greedy, self obsessed, arrogant, evil and stupid people out numbers the decent ones – and they get to the top, and having got there, they bring the other nasty ones with them.

  64. Jo Stevens, Labour’s shadow digital, culture, media and sport secretary… Ms Stevens said: ‘These allegations raise very serious questions about Conservative cronyism at the heart of the BBC. D Fail

    Conservative cronyism at the heart of the BBC. – Who could have guessed? Have they been infiltrated by a liberal Marxist Leninist?

  65. We’ve left Afghanistan but we may well be back. 10 July 2012.

    This is the fifth military withdrawal — Boris Johnson and Nick Carter hate the word retreat — from Afghanistan in just over 150 years.

    Unless we learn the lessons of muddled strategy and muddled planning — especially for unachievable targets like eradicating the entire opium crop of Helmand in three years, we are likely to be back again soon.

    There is a bright spot here. This is unlikely, at least for another twenty years. The memories are too fresh. What is happening instead is that the Taliban or its equivalent is coming to Europe and the UK. The Elites will be no more successful in that struggle than the one just ended! Prepare for the European Caliphate.

    https://www.standard.co.uk/comment/comment/british-army-left-afghanistan-may-return-b945016.html

    1. Britain’s problem is following “big brother” no matter the consequences.
      The US is the other side of the Atlantic so they basically don’t give a toss.
      Poor old Britain will bear the brunt …..and a bloody good job too.
      You go to Afghanistan and kill people..don’t be surprised when Afghanistan do the same.

      1. Yes but Boris would do it to make it look like someone he isn’t to attract votes and Dianne would do it because she is an imbecile.

  75. New Euro-funded council officer will help rural businesses in Craven – Local paper

    Why is the EU funding positions in district councils in the UK. What other ‘political’ positions are they funding?

    1. The ad states: “This post is part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) as part of the European Structural and Investment Funds Growth Programme 2014 – 2020”

      I can only assume they had some money left over from when we were still in the EU…

  76. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/99a9735218b456302393a0cdc0e2aa08d8f40034e852fcf87cd4aec76c78746c.png https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2711c3c348a0e96253bb1cb99aec9bcf4b3b848718334c4a511a9ced93542d57.jpg If Julia Evans considers that having doors with holes in them to receive mail is barbaric, she should count herself lucky that she doesn’t live in rural Sweden.

    Here we have to walk up to 200 metres, in all weathers, to collect our post from flimsy, unlocked, lidded plastic boxes bolted to a rail adjacent the road.

    Householders who don’t fasten heavy weights under their postbox lids will often find them blown open in windy weather with the contents utterly drenched.

    2. 15km to our mailbox but it is indoors.

      No we don’t walk or use a phizee scooter.

    3. No Weegie would tolerate that, Grizz.
      They would have had a little rustic shelter, made with timber and with sloped roof, built to house them. Maybe even with a few flower pots for the summer.

      2. Swedes accept anything that is thrown at them. They have been cosseted by the nanny state for so long they have no fire in their bellies.

        The British seem to have gone that way too.

  77. The Daily Human Stupidity.

    “On Stupidity – There is no such thing as a foolproof plan. If there are fools about, no plan is proof against them.”

    Marsha Hinds.

    2. My father was called up on the day as a late replacement to entertain the winners of the company’s sales performance and they had £5 tickets.
      He knew absolutely nothing about football, being a rugby fanatic, and was dutifully cheering “England” who played in white at rugby.

      The guests wondered why he was supporting the Germans.

      1. Maybe that was because seeing the union flag wasn’t quite so surprising as patriotism hadn’t been derided and insulted by the Left.

        After all, the fascists had just been defeated by the Allies, so they were understandably quieter.

      2. It began to change in the 1990s, especially at the Euros in 1996. The Scots and the Welsh bridled at the use of the Union flag in 1966.

        Once upon a time, the England national team was identified with Britain as a whole. The 1966 World Cup was hosted by England but its iconography was British. World Cup Willie, the tournament’s leonine mascot, sported a union jack waistcoat, the publicity material and programmes had the flag all over them, and among the crowd at Wembley the union jack outnumbered the St George’s Cross by 20 to one. The defeat of West Germany in the final was widely viewed through the prism of the second world war. When Geoff Hurst’s goal made it 3-2, the crowd spontaneously broke into “Rule, Britannia!” The victory party in London was likened to VE day. (In Edinburgh or Cardiff, it was a different story – the English victory was not experienced as a British triumph. The great Scottish striker Denis Law remembered it as “the blackest day of my life”.)

        https://www.theguardian.com/news/2014/oct/23/-sp-how-england-football-team-came-embody-englishness

  79. Charles Moore’s article today on the futility of our PM’s climate policy.
    Comments are allowed and some have science to explain the reasons for Zero Carbon policy not being really achievable nor acceptable to the populace, more carbon produced. more waste including plastic waste, more fossil fuel required to mine and produce the metals required for batteries, despoiling large areas of land to mine the metals etc.etc..
    Some of our PM’s advisors should sit him down and tell him the reasons his climate policy is a no,no and doomed to fail.

  80. ‘If your god exists, you will rot in hell,’ MSP tells Jacob Rees-Mogg

    SNP’s James Dornan hits out at devout Catholic over video praising controversial Nationality and Borders Bill

    By Simon Johnson, SCOTTISH POLITICAL EDITOR • 9 July 2021 • 4:30pm

    An MSP has been criticised as “beyond the pale” after telling Jacob Rees-Mogg: “If your god exists, you will undoubtedly rot in hell.”

    James Dornan, of the SNP, hit out at devout Catholic Mr Rees-Mogg over a video he posted praising Westminster’s controversial Nationality and Borders Bill.

    The Glasgow Cathcart MSP commented on the video on Twitter, accusing the UK Government of being responsible for thousands of deaths and being “happy to see the most desperate people in the world suffer and drown”.

    Stephen Kerr, the Scottish Tories’ chief whip, said Mr Dornan’s intervention was “beyond the pale” and questioned why the SNP allowed him to remain in the party.

    The Nationality and Borders Bill gives Border Force the power to turn away asylum seekers crossing the Channel, with officers being able to use “reasonable force if necessary”.

    Offshore processing centres could be set up, meaning asylum seekers could be sent away while their cases are determined and that it will be a criminal offence to arrive in the UK without permission.

    Mr Rees-Mogg, the Leader of the Commons, was shown in the video visiting the Border Force National Command Centre and arguing that the Bill would ensure better treatment for people trying to legally enter the UK and swifter processing of illegal cases.

    https://twitter.com/Jacob_Rees_Mogg/status/1413047266097647616

    “It’s going to be a really important method of securing our borders for the future. The people who work here do a fantastic job to keep us safe, and the country has a great debt of gratitude,” he said.

    Sharing the clip on Twitter, he said: “The bands of blighters bringing illegal entrants to Blighty will be broken up by this brilliant borders bill.”

    Mr Dornan, whose Twitter account is private, wrote in response: “Hope you remember this the next time you go to confession. You and your cronies are already responsible for the deaths of thousands and you’re now happy to see the most desperate people in the world suffer and drown. If your god exists you will undoubtedly rot in hell.”

    Mr Kerr said: “I try to avoid commenting on this particular MSP, but this latest comment is beyond the pale – the SNP need to tell us why they think it is appropriate they keep this person in their party.”

    An SNP spokesman said: “The Scottish Tories’ desperation to pass judgment on a tweet while utterly failing to condemn the immigration regime of their bosses in the Westminster government speaks volumes.

    “While some people appear determined to be offended regardless of what SNP politicians say, there are fewer things more offensive than a policy which threatens to jail desperate refugees for the crime of trying to save their own lives – and the lives of their infant children – and it is essential such callous policies are called out.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/07/09/god-exists-will-rot-msp-tells-jacob-rees-mogg/

    Message to any MP: beware of the ‘witty’ one-liner.

    Message to the noxious Dornan: if mentally and morally retarded specimens like you didn’t encourage open-door immigration, people wouldn’t drown at sea trying to break into the country.

    1. Hmmm, JR-M, I fear that you too have gone ‘beyond the pale’.

      Why are you lauding the idea of bringing even more jihadis into the country to bolster the New Caliphate Army?

    2. Very rude joke okay?

      I was on a plane recently and the flight attendant was doing the safety announcement ‘In the event of an emergency please put your head between your knees” and a voice at the back of the plane shouted out..
      ” If I could do that I wouldn’t be flying to Thailand”….

      2. That’s not rude. This is rude !

        A middle aged frumpy married couple return to a Mercedes dealership
        where the salesman has just sold the car they were interested in to a
        beautiful leggy busty blonde.

        “I thought you said you would hold that car till we raised the £75,000
        asking price, ” said the man, “I just heard you close the deal for £65,
        000 to the lovely young lady there. You insisted there could be no
        discount on the model.

        “Well, she had the ready cash, and just look at her, how could I resist.
        ” replied the grinning salesman. Just then the young woman approached
        the middle aged couple and gave them the keys.

        “There you go, ” she said, “I told you I would get the prick to reduce
        it. See you later dad. “

      3. Normally, Mags the answer to that order is, “And kiss your ar5e goodbye.”

  82. An Afghan man suspected of being a leading member of an international people-smuggling network has been arrested in north London.

    Gul Wali Jabarkhel, 32, was detained by National Crime Agency (NCA) officers in Colindale on Thursday evening.

    He is accused of being part of an organised crime group involved in transporting migrants from northern France and Belgium into the UK.

    He faces two charges of conspiracy to facilitate illegal migration to the UK.

    Mr Jabarkhel appeared at Willesden Magistrates’ Court on Saturday. He was remanded in custody and will appear at Harrow Crown Court at a later date.

    The Afghan group he is suspected of being involved with allegedly had contacts with organised gangs in Belgium, and planned to use lorry drivers to smuggle migrants across the Channel on a regular basis, the NCA said.

    NCA Branch Commander Andy Noyes said: “This is a significant arrest. Jabarkhel is suspected of running a criminal enterprise which involved migrants being moved across the Channel in lorries in dangerous circumstances.

    “Organised immigration crime sees people treated as a commodity to be exploited and profited from, and tackling it is a priority for the NCA.”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57789450

    1. Businessman contributes to the economy and provides employment, what’s not to like.

    2. “Organised immigration crime sees people treated as a commodity to be exploited and profited from, and tackling it is a priority for the NCA”
      Branch Commander Andy Noyes said, “However, we need to try harder as this is the first person we have arrested this year”.

      Well, that’s not true as I made it up, but it might true as their website does not say anything about what they have actually done, e.g arrests, convictions and so on.
      I attach a link to their website, specifically to a page of the bad people that they would like to apprehend, including some who appear to have been mislaid after their conviction.
      https://nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/most-wanted-search

  83. That’s me gone for the day. Very productive. Lashed up a leaf cage for the autumn (time marches on…). Despite promises from three met sites – it didn’t rain.

    Hope that holds true tomorrow as our oldest friend is coming for lunch. It was through her that I met the MR over 30 years ago – so she is very close to both our hearts. A smashing person who has been through a lot – including very nasty cancer from which she has recovered. She took our then ginger cat Mousie in 2009 when we went to Monaco. Mousie still with us aged 16.

    So I will not be around much tomorrow – charging my laser gun.,…

    Have a jolly evening.

    A demain.

  84. Organizers of the Devon and Cornwall music festival have been arguing over the first act on the main stage.

    They can’t decide whether It should be Cream or The Jam.

  86. How can England lose. !

    If England seem to be winning after 30 minutes…..Italy will change sides.

  87. Alright, but apart from the fairgrounds, underage marriages,
    housebreaking, benefit scrounging, flytipping, trespassing and putting
    tarmac on the odd driveway, what have the Romanies ever done for us?

    2. They used a crystal ball and predicted that they would be indulging in fairgrounds, underage marriages,
      housebreaking, benefit scrounging, flytipping, trespassing and putting tarmac on the odd driveway.

      Should’ve seen it coming!

    4. I remember watching it in black and white on the TV and later going to the cinema to watch it in colour.

      2. We didn’t have a telly but I remember seeing some of it on the boyfriend’s parents’ telly.

          1. The couch was a ‘put me up’ and he slept upstairs……. I remember his mother creeping down to make sure I was still there.

      1. 22 years old and just about to go to Germany for my first foreign RAF posting.

    7. We watched it on a Ferranti TV in black & white. The damn thing had glass valves so it required adjustment from time to time viz. a thump on top of the set.

      We watched the other matches, some held at Hillsborough, then a top ground, which has a large stand designed by a firm of Sheffield engineers more renowned for the construction of the Jodrell Bank telescope, all steel and bolts.

      We were more afraid of Portugal than Germany in the stages because they had a player, Eusebio, who had struck fear into everyone with his explosive shooting power.

  89. 335258+ up ticks,
    They burnt their bridges long ago when the odious latch lifter charlie lynton political dogger unleashed the makings of a foreign paedophile plague that other parties within the close shop also ran with, ongoing.

    The electorate knew precisely what they were supporting and voting for
    post JAY report, a coalition that had, along with their employees covered up for 16 plus years the rape & abuse of the nations children
    mentally scarring many for life, sacrificed in keeping a trio of party’s
    phony good name unsullied.

    The toxic trio, the lab/lib/con coalition covert manifesto = umbrella protection for paedophiles, allsorted felons / current top ups via DOVER.

    https://twitter.com/BernieSpofforth/status/1413873909863174150

      2. I recognised all the characters so it certainly won’t sell.

        Glad to see they were equally nasty to everyone.

  91. Film showing now BBC1 – ‘Darkest Hour’…. Gary Oldman portrays Churchill during 2nd World War.

    Is this an omen for the footie tomorrow?

  93. Canada is the world’s first woke nation

    Those fired by the religion of “anti-racism” are rewriting my nation’s history in the worst possible way

    ERIC KAUFMANN

    Canada, with the exception of French-speaking Quebec, is becoming the world’s first woke nation. That is, wokeness is increasingly becoming its identity. To glimpse what happens when a nation is captured by John McWhorter’s “religion of antiracism”, look no further than my country.

    Earlier this month, activist mobs pulled down statues of Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth II on the grounds of the Manitoba provincial legislature. From Victoria in the West to Charlottetown in the East, statues of Sir John A Macdonald, the closest thing Canada has to a founding father, have also been toppled or removed. The wave surged in mid-2020 as a copycat response to the Black Lives Matter protests.

    As the result of the supposed discovery of mass graves of indigenous schoolchildren on church property, claims never properly verified by the media, nearly 30 Catholic churches have been torched or defaced in the past week. The response from the country’s woke prime minister, Justin Trudeau, has been tepid and late, even describing the actions as “understandable”. Meanwhile, protest from conservative politicians and media has had little cut through due to the relative weakness of conservatism compared to Britain or the US. Despite the rebukes of conservative premiers in Alberta and Manitoba, there has been nothing to match the decisive action to protect heritage taken by leaders like Emmanuel Macron in France or even Boris Johnson in Britain.

    The reason given for the vandalism is the country’s residential schools programme for aboriginal children. Schooling became mandatory for the aboriginal population, and while most attended day schools, some were sent far away to buildings maintained by the Anglican and Catholic churches. This ill-conceived project was motivated in part by a desire to assimilate natives into Anglo-Canadian culture and to improve their dire economic prospects. In so doing, it disregarded the wish of many to retain their culture and blithely assumed that an English boarding-school ethos could be transplanted wholesale. Conditions were often poor, with a failure to isolate ill students. Many struggled, and when pandemics like the 1918 Spanish Flu hit, many paid the ultimate price. 150,000 children went through the system, with as many as 6,000 dying.

    Despite this shameful tragedy, those fired by the religion of “anti-racism” have failed to keep it in perspective. Many native children on reserves and non-native children at boarding schools also died. Moreover, callous disrespect for native culture cannot be equated with the deliberate genocidal events that mar the pasts of many countries. In world-historical terms, Canada’s record is among the best. But activists airbrush the sins of others and bury the country’s achievements in order to centre what is sacred in the woke religion: the white mistreatment of minorities. This allows activists, most of whom are white, to construct a simplistic morality play, vent their hatred for the country’s British-European settlers and signal their virtue.

    What explains Anglo-Canadian exceptionalism? First, a weak attachment to national history. The country’s British population embraced a fervent empire loyalism after 1776, but when the empire declined in the 1950s, a vacuum was created. Instead of an emerging popular nationalism based on its northern landscape and folkways, socialist intellectuals like Frank Underhill invented the idea of Canada as a Left-wing nation, which became the elite narrative. In 1971, the country’s Left-liberal Prime Minister, Pierre Trudeau, enshrined the Multiculturalism Act into law, with its duty to promote this new state ideology. Along with some of the highest levels of immigration in the West, this established the foundation for Canada’s guiding project of equity and diversity.

    Since then, several generations have been taught an official culture of politically correct ultra-sensitivity to minorities in which the pre-1971 past is cast as a racist Gomorrah. Trudeau’s son Justin, despite his groping and blackface scandals, has distinguished himself as the world’s most politically correct head of state, describing Canada as having “no core identity” or mainstream. This year he even symbolically cancelled Canada Day by flying the flag at half-mast. As activists destroy the past to arrive at Year Zero, the world’s first post-national state is rising from the ashes.

    Eric Peter Kaufmann is a Canadian professor of politics at Birkbeck College, University of London.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/10/canada-worlds-first-woke-nation/

    Any territory that becomes a political and cultural vacuum becomes a dangerous place. USA next, then us…

    1. Can’t argue with that analysis although I would question Trudeau being the most politically correct – the most shallow, venal, corrupt, idiotic, untruthful scumbag is a better description.

      This weeks Governor General is an Inuit woman who was sent to a Government school obviously her schooling has had a very negative impact on her career as a CEO and as a diplomat.

      To think that despite all of the corruption and embarrassing behaviour by Trudeau, the pundits expect him to win a majority in the election that he is trying to force.

      God, he is an embarrassment.

    2. I wonder how many Mosques were torched? In fact how many Mosques are there in Canada – and why?

      1. They still don’t know (or will not say) who did the torching.

        First nations leaders are furious about the burning so it may well not be their mob.

        Let me see, who is in love with Islam, hates Canada and has said that he understands the desire to burn churches? Trouble is he is PM and the woke love his style.

  94. BBC considers left-wing, anti-Brexit journalist for top news job

    Jess Brammar, who ran HuffPost UK until April, has emerged as favourite for the newly created post of executive news editor

    By Henry Bodkin, HEALTH AND SCIENCE CORRESPONDENT and Edward Malnick, SUNDAY POLITICAL EDITOR

    The BBC is considering hiring a left-wing former editor who has spoken out against Brexit to oversee its news channels. Jess Brammar, who ran HuffPost UK until April, has emerged as favourite for the newly created post of executive news editor, despite a promised drive for better impartiality at the corporation. As head of the left-leaning site, she set an editorial agenda that was aggressive in its criticism of Brexit, Boris Johnson and swathes of government policy.

    A vociferous Twitter user, it emerged on Saturday that Ms Brammar had deleted hundreds of previous tweets. However, The Telegraph has recovered tweets in which she suggests Brexit was bad for the NHS, and poking fun at Mr Johnson. She also used the platform to prosecute high-profile spats with cabinet ministers, such as Jacob Rees-Mogg, Dominic Raab and Kemi Badenoch, part of a campaign against what she described as “smears” against her journalists.

    Earlier this year Ms Brammar, who was previously deputy editor of BBC Newsnight, also tweeted that a camp within number Number 10 “don’t want to reach out to minorities”. During Theresa May’s premiership she tweeted about Parliamentary wrangling over Brexit forcing the then-prime minister to delay the launch of the NHS 10-year plan, opining: “Just in case you need an indication of what Brexit is doing to UK politics”.

    Critics of the BBC last night said the proposed appointment showed the corporation had “learnt nothing” and had a “death wish”.

    Ms Brammar’s appointment is understood to be stalled while management attempting to vet her previous comments.

    It comes after Tim Davie, the new Director General, said BBC journalists should be “activists for impartiality”, threatening to fire employees, including on-screen stars, who break the rules.

    The row erupted after it was reported that Ms Brammar’s candidacy was being opposed internally by non-executive director of the BBC who formerly worked as a Conservative aide and Theresa May’s head of communications.

    Sir Robbie Gibb reportedly texted Fran Unsworth, the director for news and current affairs, saying she “cannot make this appointment” because the government’s “fragile trust in the BBC will be shattered” if it went ahead.

    Before working for the former prime minister, Sir Robbie spent more than 20 years as a BBC journalist, ending up in overall charge of the corporation’s political programme output. As a current member of the BBC board, he has no direct involvement in the recruitment of a new executive news editor, as the appointment is made by BBC management.

    It is understood that the BBC disputes the precise wording of the texts, but not the claim that Sir Robbie attempted to intervene.

    ‘The BBC has a death wish’

    Philip Davies, a longstanding member of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, said: “This proposed appointment shows the BBC has learnt absolutely nothing about why it has lost touch with huge swathes of the country. If they really think that what they are short of is a left-wing, politically correct Remainer then they have truly lost the plot. It seems the BBC has a death wish and this will just hasten the end of the licence fee. The fact that we do checks means some appointments take a while.”

    A BBC spokesperson said: “As the BBC has set out, we do not comment on ongoing recruitment processes – which are the responsibility of the executive. For absolute clarity, no recruitment process has been blocked. The responsibility for staff appointments rests with the executive, not the BBC board. Board members are able to discuss issues with other board members; they are also able to raise issues with senior executives. It is essential that board members can debate and discuss issues.

    “They have an absolute right to do so and it is fully consistent with having a unitary board. What individual board members can’t do is make decisions which are for the executive. That hasn’t happened. Good governance principles were adhered to.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/10/bbc-considers-left-wing-anti-brexit-journalist-top-news-job/

    This is no surprise to anyone but when I first heard about it on Radio 4’s 6pm news I had no idea why Brammar’s appointment might be controversial. This is the gist of the report (part quote, part summary):

    “Labour has called for the former director of Downing Street communications, Sir Robbie Gibb, to be sacked from the BBC board after he reportedly warned against making a senior editorial appointment at the corporation. Gibb said the BBC’s relations with the government would be harmed if Ms Brammar was appointed.

    Shadow Culture secretary Jo Stevens said it raised serious questions about ‘Conservative cronyism’ at the heart of the BBC and called for Gibb to be sacked.”

    The reporter went on to say that Gibb was appointed to a role described in part as responsible for upholding and protecting the independence of the corporation and testing and constructively challenging management. He said nothing, but nothing, about Brammar’s views on the world at a time when the BBC’s lack of impartiality is under the spotlight. Instead, with the aid of the Labour Party, the whole feature slyly and expertly pointed the finger at the Tory party.

    1. BBC considers left-wing, anti-Brexit journalist for top news job

      and this is News?

      1. The point being that her stance was not reported on the radio. The story was presented as Tory interference in the BBC.

  95. All the omens are good for an England win tomorrow as we always win trophies under socialist governments.

    2. We would need to improve on our diving tactics to come anywhere near the ham acting and melodramatics of the average Italian footballer.

      1. Just see the link. Someone at the BBC with a sense of humour – they won’t last long.

    1. Look at all the photos of Joe and his doubles over the last three years. He is definitely not a Vampire.

  99. As far as Sunday’s final goes and who we should support, I think it’s time for the Welsh to try to forget the past and take a more grown up attitude to cheering on our old enemy.

    Let’s face it there’s no point in holding on to old historical grudges nowadays…

    The Roman invasion happened a very long time ago so isn’t it time to forget the evil they perpetrated on us and cheer on Italy?”

      1. Norman Hunter, he used to bite your leg. They could do with him tomorrow.

  101. Today I went to the pharmacy to inquire about an antibiotic skin cream with a name that could almost be a slogan for the wendyball team tomorrow.

    Go on lads, Fucidin!

  106. Mike Yeadon demolishes Reuters [for him not difficult] “fact checkers https://www.globalresearch.ca/former-pfizer-vp-answers-reuters-fact-checker-pack-lies/5749677 and “How to Dull People’s Minds and Then Kill Them”: Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt https://www.globalresearch.ca/how-dull-people-minds-then-kill-them/5749649 and The Responsibility of Medical Doctors: Warn the Public Worldwide of Serious State Criminality and Coverup Thereof https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-responsibility-of-medical-doctors-warn-the-public-worldwide-of-serious-state-criminality-and-coverup-thereof/5749626

  109. I laughed at the letter asking how we would cope in an extreme winter in Johnson’s Green utopia. Doesn’t the fool realise that with global warming we will never see extreme winters or that all those people from hot countries must know something not to worry about colonising the U.K.

    Mind you, I never quite understood why Saint Greta was so worried about global warming when she lived in one of the coldest countries in the world.

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