Saturday 11 September: France regulates small craft in its waters but fails to stop migrant boats

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.

527 thoughts on “Saturday 11 September: France regulates small craft in its waters but fails to stop migrant boats”

  2. Terrorists seek to divide us – they won’t win. Cressida Dick. 11 September 2021.

    But no amount of investment means we can do this alone. Constant vigilance is required. We need the public to be our eyes and ears and report suspicious activity to us. We need people to act early and get in touch if they’re concerned about somebody, so we might be able to help those who are becoming vulnerable to radicalisation. And we need to continually and collectively reject the hate-filled ideologies that terrorists peddle.

    Morning everyone. Wokey, Lesbian, Serial Incompetent calls for neighbourhood spies. ‘Nuff said!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/09/11/terrorists-seek-divide-us-wont-win/

    1. Walking the beat worked quite well for intelligence gathering. Why don’t you bring them back, Miss Dick? Rather than turn the entire population into snitches.

      Good morning, Minty.

    2. That woman is such a foul piece of excrement. She should be put in a prison with Moslem men and given no protection.

  5. 338723+ up ticks,
    We are still importing our own via DOVER, lessons are NOT being learnt via the lab/lib/con coalition overseeing cartel but TAUGHT.

    Lionel Shriver: ‘Whatever the lessons of 9/11, they were wasted on us’
    After the attacks there was a sense of solidarity among New Yorkers – I’ve never been so aware of living in history as it was being made

  6. Good morning from a Saxon Queen with blooded axe and pursed longbow with sharpened arrows ( all in my handbag)

    A grey cool morning and slightly chilly.

    Shall put the oven on from chocolate croissant ( for my husband) I shall have toast and marmalade accompanied by a pot of loose teaf Twinnings English Breakfast Tea .

      2. Yes I agree, I always feel guilty putting the oven on just for that but there is no other way of warming them .

      1. Hello Mr Viking, yes it was a little early.
        I went for a walk afterwards
        And later on I’ll prepare my Greek lamb dish .
        I hope you’re in fine fettle and have something nice for dinner .

        1. Please tell me more about your Greek lamb dish. I’m having St Pierre, with Champagne, tonight for supper. Recipe later.

          1. Your dinner sounds intriguing, with Champagne too .
            My lamb dish is
            Lamb Kleftiko ( baked in parchment)
            slow cooked lamb first marinated garlic, olive oil and Lemon .
            Served with fluffy potatoes, garlic, roasted peppers and tomatoes.
            I’ll do a little Greek salad too.

  7. I don’t follow all this stuff as closely as many on here. Is not much of this old hat?

    Revealed: How scientists who dismissed Wuhan lab theory are linked to Chinese researchers

    Cover-up alleged over Lancet letter that effectively shut down scientific debate into whether coronavirus was manipulated or leaked from lab

    By Sarah Knapton, SCIENCE EDITOR
    10 September 2021 • 9:00pm

    The Wuhan Institute of Virology. The Telegraph can disclose that 26 of the 27 scientists listed in The Lancet letter had connections to the Chinese lab CREDIT: Thomas Peter

    All but one scientist who penned a letter in The Lancet dismissing the possibility that coronavirus could have come from a lab in Wuhan were linked to its Chinese researchers, their colleagues or funders, a Telegraph investigation can reveal.

    The influential journal published a letter on March 7 last year from 27 scientists in which they stated that they “strongly condemned conspiracy theories” surrounding Covid-19.

    It effectively shut down scientific debate into whether coronavirus was manipulated or leaked from a lab in Wuhan.

    On Friday, researchers who tried to investigate a link but were stonewalled and branded conspiracy theorists called it an “extreme cover-up”.

    Despite declaring no conflicts of interest at the time, it has since emerged that the letter was orchestrated by British zoologist Peter Daszak, president of the US-based EcoHealth Alliance, which funded research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where the leak was suspected.

    However, The Telegraph can disclose that 26 of the 27 scientists listed in the letter had connections to the Chinese lab, through researchers and funders closely linked to Wuhan.

    While Mr Daszak eventually declared his involvement in the EcoHealth Alliance, he failed to mention that five other signatories also worked for the organisation.

    A further three of the signatories were from Britain’s Wellcome Trust, which has funded work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in the past.

    Sir Jeremy Farrar, a member of Sage and the director of the Trust, who signed the letter, has also published work with George Gao, the head of the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, whom he describes as an “old friend”.

    Oxford-educated Dr Gao is a former Wellcome research assistant, and Mr Daszak has previously claimed Dr Gao had supported his nomination to the National Academy of Sciences.

    Dr Gao also has close connections with Shi Zhengli, the scientist known as “batwoman” who was leading research into bat coronaviruses in Wuhan, and whose team discovered a virus in 2013 in a cave in Yunnan which is the closest ever found to Sars-Cov-2.

    Another signatory, Prof Linda Saif, of Ohio State University, spoke at a workshop in Wuhan in May 2017 alongside Dr Shi and Dr Gao, organised partly by the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Topics discussed at the meeting included the level of security in Chinese labs. Prof Saif’s talk dealt with animal coronaviruses.

    Similarly, two other signatories are in the leadership team of the Global Virome Project, of which Mr Daszak is treasurer. Dr Gao helped launch the project and EcoHealth Alliance is a partner.

    The Global Virome Project’s goal is to detect and identify at least 99 per cent of potential zoonotic viral threats to human health and food security. It took over from the Predict project, which uncovered more than 1,000 unique viruses in animals and humans.

    However, it has since emerged that Predict part-funded controversial work by Wuhan researchers on bat coronaviruses which were altered to see if they could infect humans. The funds came via EcoHealth Alliance.

    In an email on Feb 8, released under Freedom of Information requests, Mr Daszak revealed he had composed the letter after being asked by “our collaborators” in China for a “show of support”.

    Angus Dalgleish, professor of oncology at St Georges, University of London, and Norwegian scientist Birger Sorensen, who struggled to have work published showing a link between the virus and Wuhan research, said there had been an “extreme cover-up”.

    Commenting on the discovery that so many of the signatories were linked to China, they said: “This article is the first to show beyond reasonable doubt that our entire area of virus research has been contaminated politically. We bear the scars to show it.”

    Other signatories with links to the Wuhan team include Prof Kanta Subbarao, who spoke at a conference in Wuhan – part organised by the Wuhan Institute of Virology – on emerging disease in 2016, while she was still chief of the NIAID’s Emerging Respiratory Viruses Section.

    Dr John Mackenzie, of Curtin University of Technology in Australia, put his name to the letter, but failed to mention he was still listed as a committee member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of Centre for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

    Five other signatories had all published articles with Prof Ralph Baric, who was collaborating with Shi Zhengli and the Wuhan Institute of Virology on research about genetically manipulating coronaviruses to see if they could be made to infect humans.

    Crucially, Prof Baric was omitted from the list of signatures although he was initially asked to join the group by Mr Daszak. Emails have recently come to light between Mr Daszak and Prof Baric ahead of The Lancet letter showing that the pair decided to blur their association in case it looked “self-serving”.

    Mr Daszak told Prof Baric he would distribute the letter in a way that “doesn’t link it back to our collaboration so we maximise an independent voice”.

    Out of 27 signatories, only Prof Ronald Corley, of Boston University, appears to have no links to funders or researchers.

    While an addendum was added to The Lancet letter in June this year, pointing out Mr Daszak’s links to Wuhan, no others revealed any conflict of interest at the time.

    Molecular biologist Prof Richard Ebright, of Rutgers University, who has fought to uncover the truth behind the Covid pandemic, said: “For the June addendum, the Lancet invited the 27 authors of the letter to re-evaluate their competing interests.

    “Incredibly, only Daszak appears to have done so. Conflicts of interest were not reported for any of the other 26 signers of the letter – not even those with obviously material undisclosed conflicts such as EcoHealth employees and Predict contractors.

    “The standard remedy for fraudulent statements in scientific publications is retraction. It is unclear why retraction was not pursued.”

    Several of those who signed the letters have since changed their stance, with Prof Peter Palese, of Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, now calling for a full inquiry.

    Dr Charles Calisher, of Colorado State University, told The Telegraph that the letter never intended to suggest that Covid might not have a natural origin, rather that there was insufficient data.

    Signatory Prof Stanley Perlman, of the University of Iowa, told The Telegraph: “It is difficult to eliminate a possible lab leak as part of the process, so this still needs to be considered.”

    Prof Bernard Roizman has gone the furthest of all, telling the Wall Street Journal in May that he is now convinced the virus was accidentally released by a “sloppy” scientist.

    Mr Daszak was removed from the UN’s Covid commission looking at the origins of the pandemic in June over his scientific impartiality. However he is still part of the World Health Organisation Covid investigation team.

    Earlier this month, he co-authored an article in Nature with the WHO team claiming there was still little evidence for a lab leak theory and warning that it may soon be too late to get to the bottom of how the pandemic started.

    Prof Dalgleish added: “It may now be too late to get to the bottom of what happened with the pandemic because of this stalling but I think enough evidence is out there. It may be that if they hadn’t been doing this work [a] pandemic might never have happened.”

    When approached, the Lancet and Wellcome Trust refused to comment further on the letter. Nobody from EcoHealth Alliance had responded at the time of publication.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/09/10/revealed-scientists-dismissed-wuhan-lab-theory-linked-chinese/

    1. Interesting.
      The problem with being a conspiracy theorist is how often one is proven to be correct.

        1. I do wish the DT would stop the tabloid bs of putting words like “Revealed” at the start of its headlines

    4. The Chinese and the Americans were working together on the virus with 72 patents on its structure, and this is the Big Secret that is actually public knowledge, but for some inexplicable reason the mainstream media hasn’t reported it.
      That’s all you need to know – everything else follows!

    5. This is something that we have known since last year. It has been robustly ignored by our government and by our news channels, such as the BBC, famous for investigative journalism…

  9. ‘Morning, Peeps,

    SIR – I’m sorry that Michael Howard is turning off his radio. He will have missed some illuminating and civilised conversations this week on Today – with the head of MI5 and Tony Blair examining the fallout from 9/11; the Archbishop of Canterbury on climate change and the Health Secretary on the crises in the NHS and social care.

    The joy of live radio is that it can move us – bringing joy when we hear of Emma Raducanu’s success; tears when we hear the memories of those haunted by 9/11 and, yes, sometimes anger when we shout at the radio at a politician who is being evasive or an interviewer who interrupts too much.

    We presenters don’t always get it right but we do our best to balance allowing those we interview to get their message across and holding them to account.

    I hope Lord Howard will be back listening soon and, perhaps, back in the studio too, where he has always robustly answered, rather than ignored, challenging questions.

    Nick Robinson
    London W1

    Gordon Bennett, what a load of patronising carp from Sgt Bilko. He obviously has no idea why so many people have ditched Toady, living as he does in the parallel universe called Beeboid.

    And the Archbishop of Canterbury commenting on climate change is like asking the Eco-Brat to give us the run-down on Christianity.

    2. “I hope Lord Howard will be back listening soon and, perhaps, back in the studio too, where he has always robustly answered, rather than ignored, challenging questions.”

      Robustly answered? As he did on the 14 times, Paxman asked him a question and the 14 times he didn’t answer.

      Small wonder Ann Widdecombe described him as ‘Something of the night.‘

    3. Red Robbo, as he was known at university.
      Perhaps Michael Howard doesn’t want to listen to your claptrap with Tony B Liar, and Justin Welby.

      “We presenters don’t always get it right…”
      Well that at least is correct. I was brought up on Radio 4; I can’t bear hearing the sloppy accents and screechy voices pushing out the same old WEF propaganda about covid and climate change any more. It’s been permanently off in our house for years, and my children have not grown up with it.

      1. Can anybody give me the contact details of the Satanic organisation that is sponsoring Justin Welby and promising him a multi-million pound bonus as soon as he has successfully finished of the CofE completely?

        1. The Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Group or one of their satellites like the WEF? Take your pick.
          David Cameron was their agent on Earth though.

    4. Is that the same Nick Robinson that blatantly lied about Alec Salmond? Or does the BBC have two of them?

  10. Good morning all.
    12°Con a damp start to the day. Overcast & dull but at least not raining.

    Another run to Derby to check Stepson is on the cards this morning.

  11. 338723+ up ticks,
    Dt,
    Why has Boris declared war on Tory voters?
    The PM has carelessly burnt bridges with his core vote – and for no obvious long-term political gain

    The “burnt bridges” was orchestrated & the long term plan that has been in place for decades coming to fruition triggered by the 24/6/2016, he’s piloting the eu semi reentry missile via the “deal”

    The johnson chap could be seen having sex with a donkey then eating a baby nationwide on telly ( bbc of course) and still retain power it is not WHO runs this political sh!te show, it is the, in this case the party name, even though it is an ersatz, counterfeit, rustled name makes NO odds.

    The core voters in ALL three lab/lib/con cartels are the continuing cause of a great many of our problems without their input we would now be, post
    Brexitexit, harvesting fields of decency.

    1. What we should learn from this, is that democracy is over for now, and will not return (even in the limited form that we experienced) until a lot of blood has been shed.

    2. Why is the genus Megaptera, I wonder.
      Ptera means wing or flight or something like that doesn’t it?

        1. Ancient Greek μέγας (mégas, “large”) + πτερόν (pterón, “wing”), in reference to its flippers.

          And used to great effect by Sir Peter Scott in his little Scottish joke.

  13. A Nottlr recently requested sight of the obituary of Jonathan Myles-Lea, but I cannot recall who it was. Anyway, here you are:

    Jonathan Myles-Lea, painter of detailed aerial views of country houses and gardens which gained wide acclaim – obituary

    He was not aiming for photographic representation, he said, but trying to evoke ‘the memory of the experience of going to that property’

    By
    Telegraph Obituaries
    10 September 2021 • 11:27am

    Jonathan Myles-Lea, the artist, who has died aged 52 from cancer, worked for 30 years, he claimed, “in a radical subculture: painting in oils in a traditional figurative style”.

    His images of country houses and gardens, with their distinctive flattened aerial perspective and occasionally microscopic details, won him distinguished followers, including the Prince of Wales, for whom, in 2009, he produced a meticulous map of the gardens at Highgrove; Queen Paola of the Belgians, and the Earl of Snowdon.

    “I’m not trying to create a photographic representation of a property or its garden,” he explained. Instead he aimed at an image which was “the memory of the experience of going to that property”.

    It was a stylised but romantic view of the formal gardens created at The Laskett in Herefordshire by Sir Roy Strong and his wife, Julia Trevelyan Oman, that determined the course of Myles-Lea’s career. He met Strong in 1995, on his 24th birthday, having written to him: “I am destined to paint your garden” after reading, in Country Life, an interview with the former director of the Victoria & Albert Museum.

    On a school trip to Florence, Myles-Lea had encountered the series of lunettes of Medici villas painted by Giusto Utens for Ferdinando I, Grand Duke of Tuscany at the beginning of the 17th century; the flatness and decorative qualities of these bird’s-eye views delighted him. Later he came across paintings from the 1670s of Longleat, in Wiltshire, by the Flemish artist Jan Siberechts.

    From the outset, his own distinctive style was shaped by these and other historical influences: it was the perfect visual idiom in which to capture the highly wrought complexities of The Laskett garden, and subsequently seduced a host of like-minded patrons, including US broadcaster Oprah Winfrey.

    Myles-Lea’s work also came to the attention of Gervase Jackson-Stops, architectural adviser to the National Trust, who commissioned a plan of Stowe Landscape Gardens, the first of a number of pen-and-ink plans he made for the Trust in the 1990s.

    Myles-Lea said recently that he had known from his teenage years that he would have “a short but busy life”. Time proved him correct. Almost a hundred country house commissions took him to more than 20 countries. He lived in London, New York, Los Angeles, Brussels and, latterly, the Royal Crescent, Bath; for several years, he lived in the cottage in The Laskett gardens known as The Folly.

    Fresh from university, he had talked his way into a job at Channel Four. As general Man Friday, he chose new coffee cups for chief executive Michael Grade and presented an episode of Right to Reply, Channel Four’s answer to BBC Television’s Points of View; Richard Attenborough showed him how to use a studio camera.

    His determination to paint outweighed other interests, however, especially after a chance meeting with Francis Bacon in the Colony Room in Soho convinced him of his vocation: Bacon told him to abandon television as too ephemeral.

    Jonathan Myles-Lea was born on January 23 1969 at the Christiana Hartley Maternity Hospital in Southport – an event he would afterwards state he remembered clearly. His parents, John and Elaine, were Methodists; through his maternal grandmother, he was related to the 18th-century caricaturist Thomas Rowlandson as well as to Thomas Baxter, a porcelain painter in Worcester, from whom Lord Nelson commissioned views of his estate in Merton.

    As an adult, Myles-Lea recalled the beauty of his native Lancashire. As a child, addicted to Radio 4 and “hearing voices which sounded like they were from a different world”, he decided “the North … was a place which one aimed to escape when one was old enough to do so”, and from the age of 12 he hid below his bed a going-away case containing a teddy bear from Harrods and a selection of magazines commemorating the marriage of the Prince of Wales to Lady Diana Spencer.

    Myles-Lea’s “introduction to a sense of tradition” happened at Malvern College, to which he won a scholarship in 1985. Of equal importance, his art teacher and housemaster Bill Denny introduced him to Kenneth Clark’s landmark television series Civilisation. This was the start of what became an obsession with Italy (he would visited the country annually for the next 20 years) and shaped his decision to study the History of Art and Architecture at Westfield College, University of London.

    Tall, handsome and charming, in his own words “a rugby player, a vegetarian and a very positive-spirited person”, Myles-Lea achieved considerable renown in his twenties: he was 28 when, in 1997, Country Life hailed him as a Living National Treasure. He maintained an impressive output. But his cultural interests were omnivorous: he read widely, travelled extensively and, through his thoughtful and often provocative Instagram account, opposed what he decried as the revisionism of “woke” politics, which he dismissed as ill-informed, dishonest and philistine.

    A diagnosis of collecting duct carcinoma, an aggressive cancer of the kidney, in 2016 seemed only to increase his joie de vivre, despite interludes of excruciating pain. “I only have the best kind of cancer, the most aggressive, the most naughty,” he told the journalist James Delingpole earlier this year, before adding that he had never been happier and that positive consequences of his illness included a blooming of his spiritual life, notably following a long-contemplated conversion to Catholicism.

    Whenever possible, he continued to paint. He invented an alter ego, Dame Jenny Fulborough, who left humorous messages on friends’ answering machines. Only latterly did he admit that a diagnosis of terminal cancer was like “living inside a glass cloche, while the rest of the world is taking place outside the glass cloche”.

    Jonathan Myles-Lea, born January 23 1969, died August 25 2021

  14. 338723+ + up ticks,

    With their welfare / terrorist threat dropping on a daily basis it is NOT in their interest to stop those wishing to leave, but encourage it in greater numbers.

    But the United Kingdom political overseers know that.

    Saturday 11 September: France regulates small craft in its waters but fails to stop migrant boats

  16. Twenty years after 9/11, the Western world has tragically lost the will to win. 11 September 2021.

    In Britain the consequences are similarly felt. We now have not only a government but an opposition which seems to have almost no interest in the world stage. It has no idea what it would do in the world even if it could. What is the Johnson government’s plan for continuing to avert the terrorist threat from Afghanistan? Nobody knows. While the Labour Party that took us into all this 20 years ago is more confused still.

    Well the US Elites have retired to their lair to lick their wounds and indulge in a bout of Mutual Hatred and Recrimination. Who knows when they will re-emerge? The UK Government; meaning anyone in Westminster, has lost the will to live. The Labour Party has forgotten why they exist and the Tories are engaged in an act of Ritual Suicide. How long this can last before the void is filled by the Forces of Islam is difficult to say but they are the only serious players left on the board!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/09/10/twenty-years-911-western-world-has-tragically-lost-will-win/

    1. I wonder if a similar event happened again today how it would be reported, obviously they would mention who did it or their religion then they would go on about the rise in far right extremism .

    2. 338723+ up ticks,
      Morning AS,
      “How long this can last before the void is filled by the Forces of Islam is difficult to say but they are the only serious players left on the board!

      Gone a long way to being filled already, instruction manual resting between the two dispatch boxes and halal sausages on the parliamentary canteen menu.

      The anti United Kingdom lab/lib/con coalition as can be seen daily are on board & they are finding consent from the peoples via the polling booth.

      Makes one wonder what kids of the future will think when their heads are on the chopping block, of ma / pa.

  19. Morning all

    SIR – In order to operate a boat over 6hp in French waters, a permit is required. This is all the justification needed for the French authorities to stop any but the smallest boats from proceeding to sea.

    The French coastguard is responsible for enforcing maritime law, and for ensuring the safety of vessels. To escort boats halfway across the Channel is both to break the law and encourage lawbreaking.

    Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, is aware of this, I trust.

    Peter Chennell

    Wimborne, Dorset

    SIR – Why, as the French claim, is it more dangerous for Britain to send boats back to France from mid-Channel than for the French to send them on to Britain from the same point?

    Colin Amies

    Docking, Norfolk

    SIR – If the French are so concerned for the safety of the people attempting to cross the Channel illegally, why don’t they prevent them from leaving in the first place?

    If these people genuinely seek asylum, what is wrong with France?

    Robin Cantellow

    Ashbourne, Derbyshire

    SIR – On one day 1,000 migrants arrived from France. At that rate, a year will produce 365,000 and 10 years 3,650,000.

    This has to stop.

    Eddie Peart

    Rotherham, South Yorkshire

    SIR – It is obvious from the hugely increasing number of migrants reaching our shores daily that the people-smuggling gangs are doing brisk business.

    If the prospective immigrants know exactly where to find their booking offices, why do the French police not know of their locations, too? Or is it that they prefer to turn a blind eye?

    Neil O’Brien

    Old St Mellons, Monmouthshire

    SIR – Considering how much we are paying the French to prevent such crossings, we are getting a spectacularly poor return for our money. Other than pointing them in the right direction what are the French doing?

    Charles Penfold

    Ulverston, Cumbria

    SIR – You report the French interior ministry (September 8) as saying that “there was never any question of making [the £54 million] conditional on quantified targets”. Why ever not?

    Charles Farrer

    Faversham, Kent

    SIR – If the French police can’t monitor all their beaches, why not spend our earmarked £54 million on an Anglo-French security company to do it for them? They could patrol in 4x4s, with drones, and by high-speed boats, incentivised according to the number of economic migrants they stop.

    Nick Rose

    Selsey, West SusseX

    1. Peter Chennel is right.

      You need permits for all sorts of boat in France – not only for the open sea but for inland waters too.

      Has Priti Patel the ovarian strength to draw Mr Chennel’s observation to the attention of those in France who try to say that her proposal to turn boats back to France is illegal?

    2. ” SIR – On one day 1,000 migrants arrived from France. At that rate, a year will produce 365,000 and 10 years 3,650,000. ” – – But the arrivals are mainly men – Their wives and kids are waiting for the phone call to come legally – – multiply your figure by ten – AT LEAST. . . . THEN the other relatives will “come to visit them” – – and go straight to a NHS hospital, needing treatment for an ongoing cause – – and NEVER leave.
      Thankfully – – i’ll be long gone by then.

  20. 338723+ up ticks,
    The political governance coalition of the United Kingdom with the peoples consent gave them 5 star treatment on their Dover landing, as with TB
    that was reintroduced for peoples consumption unwanted by the decent peoples of these Isles.

    The lesson of 9/11 is that radical Islamism cannot be ignored
    Bin Laden might be dead, but the forces that announced themselves to the world twenty years ago are still at work.

    Cannot be, but WILL BE that is for sure, we WILL have a full halal parliamentary canteen menu yet not just porridge alone.

  22. Good Moaning.
    Let us start the day with a larf. Michael Deacon in the Tellygraff.

    “Scene: the Prime Minister’s study, 10 Downing Street.

    Boris Johnson: Ah, Gavin. I expect you know why I’ve called you in here.

    Gavin Williamson: Yes, I was just passing the Department of Health and Sadiq told me.

    Boris: Sajid.

    Gavin: That’s the one.

    Boris: And?

    Gavin: He said you’re unhappy because I met Marcus Rashford, but I thought he was Maro Itoje.

    Boris: No, you met Maro Itoje, but you thought he was Marcus Rashford.

    Gavin: That’s what I said.

    Boris: Anyway, it’s extremely embarrassing. Makes us look terrible.

    Gavin: Please don’t sack me. I keep reading these rumours that you’re going to replace me with Priti.

    Boris: Kemi.

    Gavin: Sorry. Honest mistake.

    Boris: Very well, I’ll give you one more chance. But just make sure you don’t do it again.

    Gavin: Thanks, Theresa.”

  23. Some news from the country that produces nothing but oil and gas…

    Russia’s agricultural sector has seen impressive growth in foreign sales this year, according to the latest data published by the Russian Ministry of Agriculture’s AgroExport center.
    In 2021, exports of agricultural products from the country reportedly amounted to more than $20.5 billion as of September 5, marking growth of 17.2% compared to the same period a year ago.

    Grain exports within the specified period grew by 13.4% as Russian farmers sold more than $6.185 billion worth abroad, while sales in the fat-and-oil sector surged 43.9% to $4.531 billion. Exports of meat and dairy products rose 26.5% to $927 million.
    At the same time, exports of fish and seafood saw a modest increase of 7% and totaled $3.492 billion, while foreign sales of food and pharmaceutical industry products amounted to $927 million, marking substantial growth of 26.5%.

    Turkey and the EU were the biggest importers of Russian agricultural goods during this time, accounting for 12.8% and 11.8% of its total exports, respectively. Turkey increased its purchases of Russian food products by 32.8% to $2.619 billon, while exports to Europe surged 30.8% to $2.427 billion.

    1. Allegedly, he’s a writer and journalist (excellent quallies for a PM, doncha think) but he’s forgotten that he used the word irreversible and what it means. He hasn’t lied to us, has he?

    2. “It’s a a stonking good, micro-wave oven-ready vaccine. It doesn’t stop you getting Covid. It doesn’t stop you passing it on. There’s no evidence about it messing up you natural immunity and there’s no reason to worry about possible unforeseen consequences in the future.”

      1. 338723+ up ticks,

        Morning R,
        Promoting it in political circles results in a cough, as in a cough, up of a regular delivery of bulky brown envelopes.

    3. Happy Birthday, Peddy! You’ve caught me up! I hope a lunch at Cote is on the menu for you today! Enjoy your day.

    5. A very Happy Birthday to you Peddy! Hope it’s a good one and you enjoy every minute of it! 🎂🍾🎉

      1. Thanks, Anne. I’m having an early supper before the Last Night of the Proms, so I’ve just put the fizz in the fridge.

  26. Winning The Lottery

    Babbette finds herself in dire straits. Her business has gone bust and she’s in serious financial trouble. She’s so desperate that she decides to ask God for help. She begins to pray…
    “God, please help me. I’ve lost my business and if I don’t get some money, I’m going to lose my house as well. Please let me win the lottery.”
    Lottery night comes and somebody else wins it. Babbette again prays…
    “God, please let me win the lottery! I’ve lost my business, my house and I’m going to lose my car as well.”
    Lottery night comes and still Babbette has no luck. Once again, she prays…
    “My God, why have you forsaken me? I’ve lost my business, my house, and my car. My children are starving. I don’t often ask you for help and I have always been a good servant to you. PLEASE just let me win the lottery this one time so I can get my life back in order.”
    Suddenly there is a blinding flash of light as the heavens open and Babbette is confronted by the voice of God Himself.
    “Babbette, you gotta meet me halfway on this… Buy a friggin’ ticket!”

  27. May I remind Rupert Willoughby (snigger) that HMS Vigil has a black Captain because the head of diversity at the BBC said it must.

    1. The main premise of that programme, which I have not watched*, is entirely wrong. If someone in the military dies in suspicious or uncomfortable circumstances**, the military cover it up. They do not have it investigated by someone from outside the military.

      *I no longer watch drama programmes. The gloom, misery and horrid violence is unrelenting and universally filmed in shades of gray.
      **Deep Cut, gas testing “volunteers”,

      1. I’m not sure about that Horace – civilian police will get involved with a murder on military premises, there was also one in Frost or Morse.
        Deep Cut is being investigated by the police and reported often in Private Eye

        1. Well, I am being a bit sarcastic. However, Deep Cut is a classic cover up. Similarly at some camp in NE England but I’ve forgotten where. I don’t accept Frost and Morse as evidence though. We see covers-up all the time by the police and others. Dr Kelly? After years and years Manchester police were called in to investigate a death in Wick. I don’t think that they yet have any results. (No surprise as it was allegedly the Wick police that threw the poor boy into the harbour). There is a video recording of Scottish police killing Sheku Bayo.

      1. Many of the girls in my generation fell in love with Dudley’s smile! He displays it to great advantage in this clip.

        1. I enjoyed watching him play Arthur the New York Billionaire.

          In particular the scene with John Gielgud playing the Butler, Hobson.

          Arthur is feeling sorry for himself and Gielgud gives him a slap !

      2. Imagine the self-righteous shrieks from the ‘Ooman Rites’ (Differently Abled Branch) lobby nowadays.

        1. I met a one armed man with his dog while out walking along a narrow country path this morning. He called it to heel as I squeezed past. I was tempted to remark that his dog looked pretty ‘armless, but thought better of it.

  29. Good morning my friends:

    For those who have not seen this (Sorry if it has already been posted):

    Twenty years after 9/11, the Western world has tragically lost the will to win
    Like America in those days before 9/11, we think history has gone away again. Until something happens to remind us that history never stops

    DOUGLAS MURRAY

    Twenty years ago, just after the nature of the 9/11 attacks had been understood, America’s deputy secretary of state got hold of his counterparts in Pakistan. By the evening of the attacks, Richard Armitage, like other members of the administration in Washington, wanted to lay the new reality on the line.

    Pakistan’s ambassador and the head of its intelligence services instantly tried to divert the conversation with a run of platitudes about the complexity of the situation and the historical issues that needed taking into account. Armitage snapped through the waffle. “History starts today,” he told them.

    For a time that was indeed what it felt like. It is hard to remember now, but for a time the attacks of September 11 were not just a great unifier, but a great clarifier too.

    The unifying effects were felt early. Until September 11, George W Bush seemed an uncertain and unpopular president. Indeed he was very nearly – after the hanging chads of Florida – an illegitimate one. It took the hijacking of four planes and the deaths of almost 3,000 Americans for the country to rally around him. And though the exact nature of the enemy he identified seemed able to be expanded and redefined at will, the fact that we were facing people willing to mass murder civilians in our cities unarguably focused many minds.

    The president was not the only man to suddenly find a mission. When Tony Blair cut short his speech that day at the Trade Union Conference and returned to London, he too seemed to have a new sense of purpose. Soon whole institutions found a similarly new life.

    Since the end of the Cold War, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) had been the world’s most important military alliance and an alliance without a purpose. September 11 changed that, as the member states triggered their Article 5 commitments to come to the aid of a member that had been attacked. Soon Nato had found a new mission, many miles away from the north Atlantic, in the mountains of Afghanistan.

    What is it that happened between then and now? We will pour over this for years to come, because almost from the first moment of shock and sympathy, things went spiralling out in a thousand bitter divisions.

    First came those (including a famous BBC Question Time audience) who believed that America in some sense had it coming. That although the attacks were not right, they somehow served America right. As the Bush administration started to make its first mistakes, this lobby found more and more fodder for their amoral and conceited position.

    And mistakes certainly did come. The intervention in Afghanistan did not catch Osama bin Laden straight away, though it did plenty of damage to his network. It helped topple the Taliban but did not defeat them. And so in the months that followed, anyone could argue either or both that the military footprint in Afghanistan was too heavy-handed and also that it was not heavy-handed enough.

    Then there was the war against Saddam Hussein, which the Bush administration wanted to carry out for historic and ongoing practical reasons. As the administrations in London and Washington overstated their case for war and oversold it to their respective publics, further self-harm occurred. Distrust in politicians was already growing, as were doubts about the use of military force against a too ill-defined enemy. But now distrust in other arms of the state grew too. The politicisation of the intelligence services in the UK and US saw a great fall-off in trust in the idea that, even if the government of the day got things wrong, there were serious people behind them who would not allow the worst to happen.

    In Britain it took Alastair Campbell’s 45-minutes claim to blow that consensus apart. In the US it took the exposure of rendition, enhanced interrogation, and the legal quagmire of Guantanamo to dent America’s view of itself as a rules-based system.

    In fact all of these things could have been borne if the threat had continued. But the mission of preventing further terrorist attacks against the West was largely successful. There were no more attacks on the scale of 9/11. Significant numbers of major plots were prevented. But the combination of a perception of reduced risk and increased awareness of the cost of these missions eroded support step-by-step.

    For the men caught fighting for us, this was a tragedy. I have spoken to many friends in the forces in the last two decades who have relayed what it is like to risk your life and lose your friends in conflicts which the public have turned on at worst and become bored by at best. Political leaders – like the nightly news anchors – similarly tired of the commitments. Afghanistan fell off the front pages, just as Iraq had before it.

    And so it came about that successive governments of Left and Right in the US and her Nato allies got what they wanted: a pull-out from Afghanistan ahead of the 20th anniversary of entering the country. As recent weeks have shown, what they have actually achieved by this is a tragic return to the status quo ante in Afghanistan. That is, the return of Afghanistan to the hands of the Taliban. With the kicker that this time the Taliban is better armed than it was 20 years ago. Thanks to the largesse of the Americans who have left behind billions of dollars of equipment for their enemies.

    The effect of all of this on our politics is felt everywhere. The American Right, who used to be most in favour of their intelligence services and military, have turned on both. They may still be great supporters of the troops. But they abhor the military chiefs, whose bloated chests are so heavily beribboned, despite having led America to defeat after defeat for two decades. And they hate or distrust the intelligence services who made so many errors, and foresaw so little, while charging and claiming so much.

    In Britain the consequences are similarly felt. We now have not only a government but an opposition which seems to have almost no interest in the world stage. It has no idea what it would do in the world even if it could. What is the Johnson government’s plan for continuing to avert the terrorist threat from Afghanistan? Nobody knows. While the Labour Party that took us into all this 20 years ago is more confused still.

    Tony Blair cropped back up this week to lament the lack of political will to see through long-term commitments. And although there are many criticisms to be made of him, and his conduct of this war, on this he was right. The American Right and Left wanted out of Afghanistan because they said it was a “forever war”. They were tired of such wars, even though by the end that “forever war” meant nothing more than keeping a light military footprint of a few thousand soldiers in a country to support the local forces on the ground.

    Still, the US and its allies had tired of that commitment. And in the process we all forgot one truth in particular. Which is that there are things that are worse than a “forever war”. One of which is losing. And retreating. Yet that is the situation we are in today. And so like America in those days before 9/11, we will go back to thinking that history has gone away again. And we will wish it away again. Until something happens to remind us that while history never starts today, nor does it ever stop.

    1. I remember Blair rushing self-importantly around, like a bored housewife scurrying from house to house to convey the latest piece of gossip.

    2. Murray sums it up well in his last three paragraphs but omits to mention the main reason for the refusal of the British political class to take a public stance on terrorism and Islam, which is that Islam is here. The next conflict will not be in The Crescent but on our streets and the cowards of Westminster and Whitehall cannot contemplate the consequences of that. They turn their heads away in the hope that it won’t happen on their watch.

  30. I think yesterday was the direst day for news I’ve ever seen – including 9/11. From several different countries, we got news of encroaching authoritarianism.
    The burning books in Canada, Germans enthusiastically welcoming vaxx passports, Whitty imposing vaccines for 12 year olds “to improve their mental health”, and that creep Biden with his vaxx bullying in the US.
    Even that tennis player was depressing because the Establishment instantly seized on her and started using her as feel-good propaganda. No doubt she’ll be fast-tracked to all sorts of goodies if she tows the line, and she will meet the royal family about 1000000000 times.

    The only slightly uplifting news of the day was that Sleazebag Andy had those US papers served on him! A truly abysmal day.

    1. You’re not all that far away – come and join Nagsman and me for 1:00pm lunch today at The Swan, Wilton. We won’t necessarily cheer you up but at least you’ll realise that you are not the most cynical person on the planet.

      2. I’d love to if I were close enough! It’s good to know I’m just a beginner in the cynic stakes though.

    3. The muslim woman who was lucky enough to win the charity race at Goodwood a couple of years ago has been paraded on ITV racing yet again. Strange that none of the other (kuffar) women got so fêted.

      1. The great grandson of John Sobieski was Charles Edward Louis John Casimir Sylvester Severino Maria Stuart, generally referred to as Bonnie Prince Charlie. A rather stronger bloodline than that of William of Orange or anyone of Saxe-Coburg, but what do I know? (We get what the politicians want us to have, and they don’t want a Catholic on the throne.)

          1. I don’t doubt it. “Oh look, see how multiculti we are!” Although it might be difficult to know who is speaking as they will all be wearing burqas

      1. Seems very likely. They’re more historically aware than most of their opponents and harbour grudges indefinitely?

    2. The minature of Boris is in the wrong place. Somwhere much closer to the tail would be more appropriate.

    2. Proof of lies is simply ignored. As for truth – the PTB wouldn’t recognised that if it slapped them in the face – which I wish it would.

  36. Boris Johnson says 9/11 failed to undermine freedom and democracy. 11 September 2021.

    The 9/11 terrorists failed to undermine the faith of “free peoples” around the world in open societies, Boris Johnson has said.

    In a defiant message to be played a memorial event at the Olympic Park in east London on Saturday, the prime minister said the threat of terrorism remained but people refused to live their lives in “permanent fear”.

    “The fact that we are coming together today – in sorrow but also in faith and resolve – demonstrates the failure of terrorism and the strength of the bonds between us,” Johnson said.

    No they left that to the likes of Blair and Himself.

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/11/boris-johnson-says-911-failed-to-undermine-freedom-and-democracy

      1. After the muslim terrorist outrages in London, the first thing that the authorities did was to post armed guards on mosques. That should have told us something.

        1. Yep. Frankly a few reprisals to smack them in the face and remind them they’re not welcome would have been a good thing.

      2. When government began importing them by the truck load, every single day.

        We should have said no, immediately.

        Comically the terrorism came from Syria – the one place we ignore.

    3. Interesting isn’t it, how people who are busily doing what the enemy attempted deflect, in their blindness, from the reality that they are doing the same thing in their own way. Where Conservativism, where democracy, where free speech, where freedom, Boris? It seems to me you are busy selling them down the river.

      1. 338723+ up ticks,
        Morning JR,
        In complete agreement only IMO the turkish delight & counterfeit party have sold them the peoples, downriver time & time again these last three decades.

        1. Morning ogga. And yes, not the first time by any means that this lot have sold us down the river. ‘Tory’ seems to have become a synonym for liar.

    4. “…but people refused to live their lives in “permanent fear”. Oh, the irony! Not only do we live in fear of terrorist attacks, any time any place, this government has deliberately used lies and psychological warfare to make us afraid of our own families, our neighbours and those we pass in the street.

    5. What a bloody lying hypocrite Johnson is. He, along with many of his Cabinet, pose the greatest threat to our freedoms, rights and choice to live our lives as we see fit within the constraints of fair and accepted laws. This ragbag Tory government’s popularity has fallen below that of Starmer’s ragbag of chancers due, it has been stated, to the changes in NI payments. Where will it fall to when more people realise what he is really planning for us. Any extension of the Corona Emergency Act will be a travesty for this Country.

  37. Boris Johnson says 9/11 failed to undermine freedom and democracy. 11 September 2021.

    The 9/11 terrorists failed to undermine the faith of “free peoples” around the world in open societies, Boris Johnson has said.

    In a defiant message to be played a memorial event at the Olympic Park in east London on Saturday, the prime minister said the threat of terrorism remained but people refused to live their lives in “permanent fear”.

    “The fact that we are coming together today – in sorrow but also in faith and resolve – demonstrates the failure of terrorism and the strength of the bonds between us,” Johnson said.

    No they left that to the likes of Blair and Himself.

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/11/boris-johnson-says-911-failed-to-undermine-freedom-and-democracy

  38. https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/mandatory-face-masks-could-return-if-virus-cases-surge-in-autumn/ar-AAOjs8U?ocid=msedgntp
    The more desperate the govt gets, the more ridiculous they look. 150’000 deaths, including “where Covid is mentioned on the Death Certificate”

    ONE FIFTH OF ONE PER CENT OF THE POPULATION !!!!!

    And look what the govt have done to the country. The cost, The suffering, The misery. The leaders of the big countries have something TOTALLY sinister going on – and they haven’t got the b*lls to admit it. I do NOT want BJ and the others to die – I want them to live forever – in poverty – till they scream for release – which they never NEVER get..

    2. If enough people go out – then there will be more people than police – and how many people can be arrested, taken to the station – and processed??? population – nearly 26 million. If they remain calm, then any hard violence by the police will be murder – with PLENTY of film of it.

      1. I remember, during the collapse of the USSR, that either Czechoslovakia or Poland, although I’m inclined to think it was the former, would at 6 pm as the evening news started empty out of their houses and flats and go for a walk. A protest against the regime that wanted rid of. It was impossible for the police to arrest almost the entire population of Prague. Quietly, in a dignified way, by going for a promenade that started and ended to time with the news, the citizens made their point that they neither supported of believed the propaganda of the Party, anymore.

        For those who haven’t. A man I found and still find tremendously inspiring. look up Vaclav Havel. Many of his essays are on the internet. A man who is an inspiration for civilized civil disobedience that worked.

        1. Back in the ‘80s I worked with a lovely Slovak lady who escaped to Vienna three days after the tanks rolled in in ‘68. When she was finally allowed home, she had the honour of meeting Vaclav Havel.

      2. The next time the police get heavy handed the public should – calmly – restrain the police.

        They’ve got to be reminded they are outnumbered and serve US, not the useless fools calling themselves government.

        If more plod arrive? Good. More to hold back.

  41. Back from Bike Ride. Very chuffed. Eight churches – nine miles. A photo may be posted later – when the MR has developed the roll of film…

    Perfect day for it. Still, cloudy,dry. Now togging up for the memorial service. Of which more later – possibly.

    Toodles.

    3. How many Gresham’s headmasters have you known? Did you and the MR know L.B-L well?

      When Christo was there Philip John was the head and now Douglas Robb is. We have had several pupils from the school on our courses including the children of 3 or 4 of the masters!

      1. I have two well know ancesters. One was a Prince Bishop of Durham and the other was head of Gresham School.Both Howsons.

    4. Well done both! 🥂

      I managed a stroll across Shepherds Bush Green this am. All symptoms gone but exhausted!

    6. Did you pass and/or call in at many Mosques en route?

      I’m just enquiring so as to gauge how far the filth has spread.

  43. In 2001 we had an extraordinary plan to buy a boat, take our children out of school and educate them ourselves with home-school programmes as we sailed around the Med visiting some of the classical and cultural sites. We would still come back to France twice a year so that we could have students with us in the Easter and Summer school holidays and make enough money on which to live.

    In early September we hired a boat in Athens because our dream would come to nothing if the boys did not share our enthusiasm and we wanted to see how they would react to life afloat.

    On September 11th we were sitting by the water at a beachside taverna on Poros, an island to which Caroline and I had sailed on our honeymoon. As usual Christo aged 7 and Henry aged 5 were chatting to the waiter and the cook and making friends with them in the cooking area. As usual the television was tuned on.

    Suddenly the boys rushed from the taverna buildings up to us saying excitedly: “America has just been blown up!”. We had to go and see for ourselves the TV coverage.

    We saw that the destruction of America had truly begun – but it would take another 20 years before the president of the US decided to finish the job.

      1. Tack så hemskt mycket, Paul. Det va en överraskning att det har kommit från norge och inte från Skåne!

  45. More excuses from GPs.

    GPs in England ‘finding it challenging to maintain a safe service’

    Prof Martin Marshall warns that GPs are finding it difficult to balance a rise in demand for care with a drop in staff levels.

    https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/gps-boris-johnson-nhs-england-royal-college-of-gps-b954809.html
    _________________________________

    More excuses from Wee Krankie.

    Nicola Sturgeon accused of ‘deflection tactics’ after blaming Brexit for NHS staff shortages

    Opposition parties condemn First Minister’s ‘shameless’ remarks, as problems date back to cuts she made while serving as health secretary

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/09/10/nicola-sturgeon-accused-deflection-tactics-blaming-brexit-nhs/
    _________________________________

    I can only assume Morrison’s made its own arrangements in addition to SSP, the rates of which are fixed by law.

    Jabbed Brits celebrate as anti-vaxxers plan to boycott Morrisons after unvaccinated sick pay cuts

    Double-jabbed Britons have celebrated Morrisons decision to cut sick pay for unvaccinated staff in a bid to encourage vaccine uptake.

    https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/morrisons-boycott-anti-vaxxers-unvaccinated-sick-pay-b954820.html
    _________________________________

    And finally, some good news – someone has told Steve Bray to ‘**** ***’.

    Minister refuses to apologise for foul-mouthed exchange with protester

    Nigel Adams admitted to using ‘colourful language’ during a filmed incident outside Parliament.

    https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/steve-bray-parliament-foreign-office-houses-of-parliament-twitter-b954760.html

    Mr Adams is a Foreign Office minister. Promote him now!

    2. As for GPs’ excuses – they are sheer cr88 :

      Prof Martin Marshall …said…: “The fact that general practice is under such enormous pressure means it can’t deliver the patient-centred services that it wants to…The chances of making a mistake in a diagnosis or a mistake in a referral decision or a mistake in prescribing are all greater when you’re under stress. And if you’re working 11-, 12-hour days, seeing 50, 60 patients … the chances of you making a mistake, we all know, are higher.”

      Working 11-12 hour days?! Seeing 50-60 patients?! He’s having a giraffe…

      Three guesses as to why there are so many more patients – no, nothing to do with indigenous fecundity.

      1. What about when seeing the non English speaking – never paid a penny – new arrivals – all needing translators – an hour each????- about 8 a day??

          1. don’t know – either way will still take time and money – which stops US – who HAVE paid – – NOT getting NHS care.

          3. In Sweden it was both, but I refused to have anything to do with telephone translation, although, at 50 miles, my clinic was the furthest from HQ.

      2. Hi T 😊

        As I did this morning after my BP dropped enough to make me wobbly and feel very feint. I googled it.

        Just a thought,………. dyafink some of them might be out training for HGV licences ?

  46. Things are hotting up in New South Wales. A law suit has been filed in the NSW Supreme Court by attorney Matthew Hopkins against the Health Minister and his tyrannical diktats. The police who have been very active against the people have realised that the latest mandate, mandatory jabs to enable people to go work, will apply to them. Mr Hopkins states a lot of police officers are now contacting him looking for protection. Classic, what goes around, comes around.
    Disturbing piece towards the end involving the possibility of foreign military/police intervention in Australia.

    Full interview with Stew Peters here

      1. I agree. Non-compliance to Johnson’s diktats leading to attempts by him at greater oppression followed by revolution.The “anonymous” figures who’ve been running this show from the shadows will drop the likes of Johnson, Trudeau, Macron etc. etc. like hot cakes at the first real signs of their plans breaking down. Where will our oppressors run to? They’ll be finished as politicians and as human beings.

    2. HA! HA! HA!
      After watching a policeman pull his gun on a protester, I have absolutely no sympathy whatever.

      1. I thought that name rang a bell, Witchfinder General. Born in Suffolk and died in Essex. Well spotted, WS.

        1. How strange as I have thought there are strong parallels between the witchcraft times and these strange times in which we live.

      1. One gets the feeling that death is of no consequence to the people organising this scandal. How the politicians driving this horror show sleep at night, I do not know. All of them must be endowed with an unfeeling/uncaring gene.

      2. One gets the feeling that death is of no consequence to the people organising this scandal. How the politicians driving this horror show sleep at night, I do not know. All of them must be endowed with an unfeeling/uncaring gene.

      3. Have you ever wonder why it was called a “Jab” in the first place PPM ? My personal opinion is because they knew it wasn’t a vaccine as it hardly every works the same way as a vaccine would.
        We have all had Mumps, Measles, Polio, BCG etc and they all worked.

        1. Yes, I have thought that – they needed to distance themselves because it does not answer the legal definition of a vaccine. I always refer to it as as the ‘so-called vaccine’ or ‘injection’ depending on context. I detest the word ‘jab’ and now, as well, the word ‘vaccine’. I will never again trust the nhs nor its employees, and as for government, well, it goes without saying. Once trust has gone it seldom returns.

          I have had few vaccines in my life – smallpox, diptheria, tetanus, polio. That is it. I was very ill after smallpox (perhaps the only true vaccination) and tetanus vaccination. We came across a notice to the entrance of a camp site in France: “all animals must have been cow-poxed before entering”. I did wonder how old was the dictionary used for the translation.

          1. When I had the smallpox vaccination during the Bradford scare, my arm blew up, I felt like shiite for several days and then the arm ‘exploded ‘ and wept all over a new blouse.
            I assume if I’d had actual smallpox it would have killed me.

    6. That point about the foreign military in Australia was pretty worrying. China marching in under a UN banner?

      1. Agreed, BB2, especially since the Aussie, female gov’t troll was anxious to remark on the ‘New World Order’.

        Be afraid, be very afraid – and then do something about it.

        Strewth, I wish I were young enough to pick up a bren gun and sort out first the Gov’t, then the Mosques.

    7. The state has vastly more money, all the power, can get to the judge with a backhander and the greatest weapon – time. It doesn’t have to do anything. It can just keep putting off any action indefinitely.

      You don’t attack the government via legal means – the law doesn’t apply to it. You have to use force. Terrifying as that is, the only way to hold these cretinous wasters accountable and to make them serve is going to be tying a collar around their necks and training them all to walk at heel.

  47. ‘Afternoon All

    An appropriate reminder for today…………..

    https://scontent-man2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.6435-9/241049185_10227542064683183_859148717118540338_n.jpg?_nc_cat=102&ccb=1-5&_nc_sid=dbeb18&_nc_ohc=4CGHVArpmpUAX-paAAz&_nc_oc=AQkxgHhPuRf064Zpnq3-BA9ixRZbcHYqEHeDvtXCGYa4vUZnJvV59KVwlu49dDGL86c&_nc_ht=scontent-man2-1.xx&oh=8dbd7a689a4667f09859800a3f43365f&oe=615F11CF

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/23058f942ff372dc6a3648db05d76d89907fa5057e37ed78003bd0e4679bea65.jpg

    1. 338723+ up ticks,
      Afternoon Rik,
      When you have parliamentary peoples oath taking via the islamic instruction manual resting between the dispatch boxes & halal on the parliamentary canteen menu coupled with rife idiocy regarding the electorate it is only a matter of time before the likes of Afghanistan
      are asked to fully take over.

      Lets face it what chance did decent peoples have against those that continued to support / vote for mass uncontrolled immigration / paedophile umbrella cartels, really all the decent peoples got was to retain their self respect.

    2. And they have the goddamn audacity to claim that any one who doesn’t like, or trust any of them, or indeed accept their fake and disguised as, meagre presence, in western cultures, as being islamaphobic ……….HOW ? after the terrible despicable murderous acts they have subjected the western cultures to.

      1. Of course we’re Islamaphobic, who wouldn’t be but the best way to treat a phobia is to face up to it, preferably with a machine gun.

        1. Well….. that’s debateable but not for long eh 😏

          I remember the first time i saw them marching (with a police escort) through London calling for the beheading of any one who was opposed to their idealism.

          1. I rather think, Eddy, that this corrupt government, having sown the wind will soon, very soon, reap the whirlwind.

            All I can say – even as a veteran member of our armed forces – is bring it on, let’s be done with it.

      2. They’ve created islamophobia to force acceptance of their toxic culture. Frankly, anyone using the phrase should be moved out of the country.

    2. That might be funny had he not been responsible for horrendous damage done to kids’ mental health with his scare tactics.

      1. With a bit of luck he might contribute to the Covid death-toll.

        “It is a far, far better thing that I do…”

    4. I wonder who these “experts” are that Whitless is listening to – can’t be the JCVI team as their science apparently isn’t worth following!

    5. Listened to a Stew Peters’ interview earlier, kids in the States are being blinded and made deaf by the jab. As if death and heart problems aren’t enough. Will the so-called journalists in the MSM keep quiet about child deaths etc. happening here?

  49. The Saxon Queen thought she might watch the US open tonight. There is a big fuss about a British girl in the final after all these years.
    I googled the girl described as British / Canadian. Her mother is Chinese, her father is Romanian and she was born in Canada. The British part is due to her living here and having a British passport, says it all really . I still wish the girl well and will watch it, at least she isn’t ‘ a religion of peace ‘ person .

      1. Yes indeed and she is playing for England; she could have chosen to play for China, Romania or Canada .

        1. “…she is playing for England…”

          Ooh, I must quibble. It’s an individual tournament, not a representative one.

          At least she was raised and educated in this country and isn’t flying a flag of convenience.

      1. I normally watch the ATP throughout the year and Grand Slams but haven’t been during lock down for some reason. I’m sure she’ll beat the Canadian.

      2. Your right Plum and she is fairly modest which is good to see, I hope all the attention and all the dosh doesn’t change her personality, too much.

          1. So far as wonderfully articulate as she is, she is a refreshing break in British sport. scuz the pun. 🤗
            I bet she wont be wearing a Romanian, Chinese or even Canadian football shirt in public if England are playing them.

  50. Finsbury Park mosque terrorist Darren Osborne could be left blind in one eye after murderer inmate stabbed him in the head in prison. 11 September 2021.

    Finsbury Park mosque murderer Darren Osborne could permanently lose his sight in one eye after he was subjected to a ‘brutal and unprovoked attack’ by a fellow inmate.

    47-year-old Osborne, who was convicted of ramming a van into a crowd of people outside the London mosque in 2017, was stabbed by convicted murdered Patrick Chandler in an ‘unprovoked attack’ at HMP Full Sutton, in York.

    Tough luck this. I’ve never believed that Osborne was a terrorist; the PTB just couldn’t refuse the opportunity to send some “Far-Right” White Man away. The Comments (two of them) have been moderated in advance as they say!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9980183/London-mosque-van-killer-Darren-Osborne-lose-sight-need-glass-eye-prison-assault.html

    1. He was not charged with a terrorist offence either, although the ethnic judge proclaimed him a terrorist (with no case put forward). So it must be true. Any witches around to burn.

        1. Sikh and ye shall find all manner of right wing plotters under the bed. But seemingly, there have been just 2 incidents in as many years as I can remember.

    2. Unprovoked? The massive – more than a third – Muslim – Pakistani muslim at that – prison population took revenge, no doubt with some ‘effnic’ assistance. Now, here’s an easy one: all muslims get their eyes put out in return.

      I’m sick of this namby pamby nonsense. Punish them. All of them.

  51. Afternoon all, a brief visit we are out for the rest of the day soon, but just look at this WTF are labour on about. Counting votes before the people have even set foot here. And who pet them in anyway i know it was the b liars and they are determined to keep as many (canceled fights out) as they can. It’s quite a legal aide racket they have set up over the years.

    https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/priti-patel-boat-pushback-plan-inhumane-unconscionable-and-reckless-says-labour/ar-AAOkgm3?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531

          2. There are several boats of this particular type in the Med. They are made by Amel yachts in France. They have artificial teak decks which look better than you would expect and are not at all bad.

            Mianda was made by Dufour, another French company:

            https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ee0c09df40e4222194069415f1b0da057c310c63741de016f6d5dd1cb6142957.jpg

            (Note the skipper at the helm has a spotted handkerchief on his head to protect his pate from the ultra violet rays. Environmentalists will be delighted to see a wind generator and solar panels on the instrument rack.)

          3. I remember wondering if the Bee Gees actually ever went to Massachusetts.

            At the time this song came out I tried to write a Country and Western song which admittted in the final verse “I’ve never been further west than Shepton Mallet.”

      2. Friends golden wedding anniversary late lunch and onwards. Getting a bit peckish now.
        And Tmz …….. a Birthday celebration with the family and friends.

          1. Some were unable to make it, we usually have a session on the guitars and singing. But there will be at least two of us, but as usual nobody knows the words, only the choruses.

    1. Oh look! They’re all foreigners! Oh look! Muslims!

      The problem is Labour’s importing of sewage. Find them, flog them. Don’t bother with prion. Just flog them. string them up, castrate them and then beat them every day. No medical treatment, nothing. Rinse, repeat over and over again until they are dead as a message to the next lot.

    1. No need to summon them, the government is picking them up in mid-Channel and transporting them here.

  58. Prince Andrew’s lawyers claim court papers in Virginia Roberts rape case were NOT properly served. 11 September 2021.

    Andrew’s lawyers hope to get the rape case thrown out on a technicality.

    The Duke was finally served legal papers over a civil case for rape and sex assault.

    His team say the papers were not properly served and they will boycott hearing.

    Guilty as Sin!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9979079/Prince-Andrews-lawyers-claim-court-papers-Virginia-Roberts-rape-case-NOT-properly-served.html

  59. Two million civilians in Vietnam.thousands in Kosavo.a million in Iraq…
    Lets hold a day of mourning for 3000 dead in New York.

    2. I expect you were one of those who said after the Manchester bombing: “23 dead? More people die on the roads every week.”

        1. There are a couple of blokes with ‘tans’. When I came back from Jamaica, I could stand against a dark mahogany door & disappear.
          I went to a party hosted by my practice partner & one impertinent bitch, whom I didn’t know, asked him if I were English.

          2. The 2nd 1/2 of the Proms starts at 9pm, but the tennis should be short & sweet, so I can ‘wind back’ the Proms on i-player.

        1. I think you’ve mistaken a loose and baggy-arsed 1960s bikini bottom for a shapely derriere.

  61. There’s a funfair on Shepherds Bush Green. From the screams you’d think there was mass murder being committed.

    3. It is always young girls. Bit stupid really because if they are attacked and they scream no one will take any notice.

    4. Same while I was picking blackberries on Hilly Fields.
      I’d forgotten the funfair was on the water meadows opposite.

      1. As I tracked down the comments he appeared hale and hearty so I need not have worried.I noticed he had finished the 9 miles which is a good mileage at his age. I did 4 miles this morning and on the way home had the pleasure of driving behind 3 tractors in convoy, the last 2 with very dirty big muck spreaders in tow. Evocative smell

  63. Article I missed in July .. and reading it now is bad for my health !

    Rural racism in Dorset: Why is our countryside 98% white?

    The death of George Floyd and the subsequent Black Lives Matter protests may have seemed a distant reality to many people in Dorset.

    In the predominantly rural county, the population is 97.9% white.

    But, as some the 2.1% who do not identify as white can testify, racism can be just as much of a problem in the countryside as it is in our cities.

    Jag Patel moved to Gillingham 18 years ago with his wife where they bought a newspaper shop and started a family.

    But, having moved from north London, the couple said they were unprepared for the prejudice they and their three daughters would endure.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-dorset-57611781

  64. Just returned from a corking memorial service. I was perhaps a tad unfair to the late former head of Gresham’s in my post yesterday. He had retired 15 years before the MR joined the staff. All we knew of him was this old chap who came to staff events and who everyone was supposed to know without being told!

    Chapel full to brim – over 400 people. Four excellent hymns beautifully played and sung. Four family tributes – two of which, sadly, one could not hear because no one adjusted the mikes so that the short ladies could speak into them. Those who could hear (a dozen or so) said they were very good! Two others very eulogistic – naturally. And one from a retired General who is an Old Boy – who was very easy to hear. Last Post and Reveille played by a trumpeter (in full kit, slashed cap and all) from the Life Guards. Not a dry eye.

    Then general mingling with eats and some atrocious WARM fizzy “wine” – nice to see old faces. And not to name drop at all, but as the MR was saying to James Dyson……(yes, really. His mother, who died very young, was the MR head of department at her very first teaching job – a lady who made a tremendous impression on the MR and from whom whom she learned much about being a teacher.) and the MR was able to return to young James a book which he had owned when he was at Gresham’s that his mother gave the MR!

    AND NOT A MASK TO BE SEEN. Nor any social distancing… Hooray.

  65. Bike Ride snaps (and before you ask, he MR has expressly asked me not to show any pictures with her in – it is to do with her public work).

    Thursford

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8034d319a76328793bd6853128c409e016b76c4081f3b2949b19bc1941c12da0.jpg

    St Mary’s Fulmodeston

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e7e4894bd7c4c206f55406a463a7ee4dea5036be88c161e5cb2b9985281f3da9.jpg

    Setting off

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e88df220e4d5497226ea16916bdf165df0812ef86b18354d50a328b5e45f9b04.jpg

        1. True. Who are we trying to impress !

          Of course you did get changed for the Service. You did…didn’t you?

          1. I did wonder!

            No – I looked very smart in blazer and flannels. As quite a number of former staff are ex-military, I sometimes wear a striped tie that looks regimental. (It isn’t at all!!) When they stare at it and then same they are stumped, I tell them it is the Australian SAS tie!

      1. Little Snoring – with late Saxon tower; Thursford (two) – with an East Window that Pevsner said was the finest Arts and Craft window in Europe; Barney; Fulmodeston Methodist Chapel; Christ Church; St Mary’s (now ruined) and Croxton.

        1. And after that you can sit on the loo for a few hours. Let the punishment fit the crime! 😉

    1. Nothing far right about it. It was a public vote. Muslims were showing contempt for Swiss culture. The Swiss said no, we won’t accept it.

      It’s called democracy, not ‘Far Right’ – perhaps it’s the media who are Hard Left and like to label everything they disagree with as hard Right to legitemise their own putrid, disgusting, vicious spite?

      1. Fall far enough and you can start to enjoy it. I don’t want them to think about it, just to know the terror and then death.

        I’m sick of this nonsense. Even as more of these rapist sewage pour across the channel our useless government brings them in on planes. The people who supposedly helped us a fair proportion were likely double agents.

  72. I’ve never taken much notice of 9/11 alternative theories (apart from the plane that was going to hit the White House and crashed first – I think they shot it down, and didn’t want to admit it).
    However, looking at the photos again today, it does seem odd that both towers fell so quickly, and collapsed so completely when they were hit so high up. How was that supposed to work? Could an architect explain?

    1. I am no architect – but I have always assumed that the enormous concussion when the aircraft hit and exploded must have so shaken the foundations that they became unstable. I assume, too, that skyscrapers are designed to concertina should they ever collapse to avoid massive damage to adjoining buildings if they had simply fallen over.

      1. That does make sense. I don’t suppose they had carried out redundancy calculations for jumbo jets crashing into the buildings. 🙁

        1. Oddly enough, I seem to recall that they DO do assessment of light aircraft hitting a ‘scraper. One did hit the Empire State Building (unless I am completely mad).

          2. In 1945 a Mitchell bomber (a B-25) hit the Empire State building in thick fog, killing the 3 crew and 11 office workers.

          5. “light”. So, maybe a ton. Not a big Boeing, filled with jet-A1 and lots of people. Quite a diffenet scenario.

          6. The B-25 that struck the Empire State Building would have weighed about 9 tons, the Boeing 767s of the WTC between 75 and 80.

      2. I recall an engineering/ architectural analysis that deemed the Twin Towers construction – with concrete lift shafts and stairways sharing floor-beams and the entire weight of the building with the outer metal skin – to be uniquely vulnerable to this kind of attack.

        In contrast, the Empire State Building would have been shaken but not stirred …

        The terrorists carried out meticulous research; the raids went according to plan.

      1. The explanation here is that it was the fire, which made each floor collapse onto the one below it until the load became too great.
        If most towers follow this design (as the article says) then why have we never seen another similar collapse due to fire? Grenfell, for example, didn’t collapse although the whole building was gutted.

        1. Grenfell was a conventional tower block with a steel frame and internal concrete columns. Only the outer skin burned. The heat was never intense enough to cause a catastrophic internal structural failure.

          1. Grenfell was a conventional tower block with a steel frames and internal concrete columns; it would not necessarily have collapsed as a result of an impact from an airliner.

            However, its owners chose to coat Grenfell in a flammable outer skin …

    3. Here’s another link: https://www.history.com/news/world-trade-center-twin-towers-construction-facts

      This is the pertinent section:

      4. The twin towers’ design provided stability from the outside in – without a forest of interior support columns.

      Traditional skyscrapers owed their stability to a system of large vertical columns running through each floor at intervals of 15-30 feet, with the exterior walls providing little support on their own. But in order to open up the vast swaths of office space called for in the planned twin towers, engineers put the bulk of the buildings’ strength outside, essentially creating stiff tubes of heavy steel. The innovative design allowed for minimal columns inside, most of them clustered at the building’s center so as to maximize the amount of open space on each floor.

      Essentially, the heat of the fire caused some of the floor support members to melt, releasing the heavy concrete floors to crash downwards through the towers.

      1. The floor plan of the twin towers was compact. The design comprised a central core comprising lifts and vertical services and a clear floor span from core to external wall. The core and external wall were both loadbearing. There was no requirement for internal columns.

    4. Even more strange, the collapse of WTC 7 that evening, a building in the vicinity that was not hit by any aircraft.

    5. IIRC, the internal steel structures of the twin towers were not adequately protected against fire (and who expected fully-fuelled aircraft to be flown into them?), and so the fires caused the steel internal frames to weaken and so collapse.
      For info, roughly:
      Steel loses any form of structural strength at about 1/3 of it’s melting temperature, so at something like 500C.
      A pool fire of hydrocarbons is very much hotter thn that, of the order of 1 500 C. Go figure, as the Merkin expression has it.
      Doesn’t help that there were rumours of poorly applied fire protection to the beams, as well.

      1. The frame would only have weakened and collapsed at the point of the fire though, which was near the top of one of the towers.
        According to the theory in William’s link, this would have led to the concrete floors collapsing and breaking the floor below them. But surely this would have been visible and audible as the floors collapsed one after the other?

        And it still doesn’t answer the question of why no other tower block has collapsed like this during a fire (or has there been another example?).

        1. It required only a very small number to collapse to start a chain reaction, once the accumulating weight of concrete overcame the breaking strain of the steel floor members.

          3. I think the idea is that the concrete floors were held on relatively weak iron girders, and the external walls were the main load bearer. Once one or two concrete floors fell, then the girders supporting the floor below couldn’t hold the weight of multiple floors (weight that had previously been carried by the external wall), and so the chain reaction started.

          4. Not the weight, the energy of the impact. Remember physics – potential energy = m.g.h so the second collapsed floor has twice that of the first, and so on.

      2. I watched the reports of engineers confirming the defects in the fire protection of the internal structure. Admittedly the structure with its use of comparatively lightweight steel beam assemblies supporting floor slabs and supported by a central core and a heavier steel external wall construction was poor design.

        The mere fact that commercial aircraft were allowed to enter the airspace of Manhattan without trace and supervision just adds to the conspiracy.

    7. The twin towers were collapsed by detonations placed within their structure. The timing of these effective demolition detonations caused a progressive collapse in each instance. Both towers fell progressively and vertically which is the aim of controlled demolition.

      The similarity between the collapse of both towers, each struck by Aeroplanes at different heights above ground level proves this point.

      Other buildings were preserved excepting Building 7 which evidently contained significant records. This building was also detonated internally.

      This was an inside job, just as the most recent chaotic withdrawal of the Americans from Afghanistan was also an inside job.

      We are dealing with truly evil globalist masters. They care nothing for human life. They care everything for control of people and for enriching themselves by plundering the combined wealth of others.

  73. That’s me for this momentous day. Bike Ride; Memorial Service – fine weather.

    News on Pickles. He is stable. He eats and drinks – goes out for his “besoins” but spends the rest of the time asleep indoors. There is no evidence of pain or discomfort.

    If he is still like this on Monday, we’ll go to the vet. The MR is convinced that is a reaction to his quarterly tape-worm medicine. I wonder if it is made by Pfizer….

    Anyway – à demain.

  75. Even after refreshing a couple of times the most recent post I see is BT’s after his bike ride. 3 hours ago.
    Lots of replies but no original posts.
    Is everyone watching the tennis?

        1. In Tintent,
          No Telly
          Only got Intynet back yesterday

          PS, I thought it was UK ‘OPEN’ to the world

    3. Tennis? In September?
      Hatman inspired me to watch a cheerful accordionist called Ksenija Sidorova, on the BBC Proms.

  76. Evening, all. France not only fails to stop migrant boats, it’s busy getting rid of its dross and foisting it on us.

    1. I wonder how he would feel if his granddaughter (if he has one) was raped, his children killed in a random drive-by shooting and he was mugged all by black immigrants.

      1. I tried to watch a question of Sport yesterdy. Only lasted 30 seconds before switching channels.

        BRING BACK RONNIE SUE BARKER, LES MATT DAWSON & TUFNELL GREEN TUFFERS

    4. I doubt C4 could manage an all day white programme – just to shew that they’re totally unbiased, doncha know?

        1. There doesn’t seem to bee too much of it now. I’m hoping the generation of grunters has moved on

    1. Desperate requirement for champagne corks (complete with wire) in New York.

      Mums and grandma’s on delivery duty – no truck driving required.

  82. Good tennis, now watching 2nd part of the Prom.

    Birthday supper was quite simple…

    Roasted St Pierre (aka John Dory) with crispy roast potatoes. Veuve Clicquot Brut – one of my faves.
    https://peskyfish.co.uk/recipe-whole-roasted-herb-john-dory/
    Don’t let the appearance put you off, it’s a most delicious fish. I gave the samphire a swerve & roasted the potatoes separately. Missy liked it too.
    Figs preserved in Vodka
    Bitter chocolate – Armagnac VSOP

    1. Good evening, Peter

      Happy Birthday!

      Would you like me to add you to my list?

      I shall be posting another one very shortly with quite a few more this month.

  89. 57,000 runners taking part in the Great North Run … Good luck to them all .

    Weymouth has a population of about 52,000 people living in the seaside town.

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