Saturday 12 October: Blind hatred of private schools leaves Labour in a policy muddle

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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746 thoughts on “Saturday 12 October: Blind hatred of private schools leaves Labour in a policy muddle”

  1. Good morning All and thanks again to Geoff
    Today's Tale
    The new slave had just joined the oarsmen in the Phoenician war ship, when one of the rowers collapsed and died over his oar. The dead slave was duly released from his chains and thrown overboard. The Slave Master strode up and down the aisle, separating the rowers, lashing each viciously with his whip. When he had finished, all the slaves laid on their backs and pissed into the air.
    “What’s going on?” asked the new slave.
    “It’s an old Phoenician tradition,” came the reply. “Every time someone dies, there is a quick whip around and a piss-up.”

    NOTE: I was going to alter the word piss to p!ss to get past the possible Disqus censorship. But then I looked up Isaiah 36 v 12 in my old Victorian Family Bible and there it was in the original spelling. So it stays.

      1. Sorry Minty, what woman? The original Isaiah quote, reproduced here from my 1880's Victorian Family Bible (1432 pages, 9.5 lb/4.8kg – Oh no, not weighing books again) says that Rabshakeh said it. The term Rabshakeh means “the chief of the princes” and refers to a field commander sent by Sennacherib, king of Assyria, as a messenger to King Hezekiah of Judah (Isaiah 36). I doubt it was a woman in those times.
        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/dd3061857424a99b27430381d5806834b21db428acbd4f52c03efe1dcafeae39.jpg

        2. Indeed it is RC. My apologies. I was in something of a rush to get to the Supermarket.

      2. Sorry Minty, what woman? The original Isaiah quote, reproduced here from my 1880's Victorian Family Bible (1432 pages, 9.5 lb/4.8kg – Oh no, not weighing books again) says that Rabshakeh said it. The term Rabshakeh means “the chief of the princes” and refers to a field commander sent by Sennacherib, king of Assyria, as a messenger to King Hezekiah of Judah (Isaiah 36). I doubt it was a woman in those times.
        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/dd3061857424a99b27430381d5806834b21db428acbd4f52c03efe1dcafeae39.jpg

    4. That's the only reference I know in the bible because it mentions "eat dung with you" which as lads reminded us of school dinners.
      Dung isn't the original word – it was shit

        2. Come off it Ellie !! 🤣😂😃😃
          My comment was specifically aimed at useless Starmer

    2. Johnson and Sunak followed the globalist directed agenda i.e. the covid plandemic resulting in lockdowns, fiscal diarrhoea and more; mass immigration; destroying Brexit etc. etc. The result was their party being almost destroyed at the election and that partial destruction will likely continue.

      Starmer, riding into to power on an unconvincing share of the vote immediately starts throwing his weight about as the continuity globalist PM. What did he expect after his "Change" declaration turned out to be not quite what the unthinking voters believed. The word wasn't sufficiently qualified by any real detail as to what it really meant and people fell for a one word slogan that could mean anything.

      As the reality of Starmer's government starts to appear i.e. incompetence, lack of leadership, continuing mass immigration, the gifts scandal, Miliband released to create havoc with his zealotry re Net Zero, continued financial support to Zelensky – for as long as it takes? – at the expense of needy pensioners' energy security. And there's more.

      What the hell did he think would happen? If he believes that he is working for the people (I very much doubt that) then he is in the wrong job.

    3. I don't. I would like a whole load of toxic chit to bury this vindictive bunch so deep they can never, ever again draw breath.

      1. I volunteer to meet him … with a cat-o'-nine-tails. I think 100 lashes would suffice.

        I would then need a rest (and a nice cup of tea) before they wheeled in the rest of the political class, of all parties, one by one.

  5. Thanks, Geoff. And a Good Morning to all my NoTTLe chums. I hope you all slept well.

    Wordle 1,211 5/6

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    ⬜⬜🟩🟩🟩
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  8. Global institutions can no longer hide their anti-Western malignancy. 12 October 2024.

    These institutions are no longer protecting the liberal order that triumphed in 1945; they are threatening it. In an ever more dangerous world, Western governments need to wake up and recognise that they cannot depend on these compromised bodies to keep us safe.

    Well Andrew Roberts has woken up. Of course if he read Nottl he would have known ages ago.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/10/11/global-institutions-can-no-longer-hide-their-anti-western/

  9. International Ballet
    I went to see Romeo and Juliet by the Northern Ballet and music by Prokofiev last evening. It was amazing. Audience was probably at least 80% women, as it's a romantic though tragic tale.

    I checked in the programme and the ballet company are from 15 countries. Biggest non-UK contingent (including Principal Ballerina) was 8 from Japan. So we CAN attract talent from abroad.

    1. No VPL
      I mentioned that the audience was probably 80% women. Could it have been because of the presence on stage of so many very attractive young men, especially Romeo, who in the bedroom scene was shirtless and wearing just very skin tight tights, with no VPL*? Did remind me a bit of the last scenes in The Full Monty.

      *Visible Panty Line

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d4d65916d826eae61ca8f3792e8ac588e50ae0342feb2a058a91769a7e016a60.jpg

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/23ca36e8107306fd1b60621416e176958268073fb049a170955bc197c0eb4233.jpg

      1. That reninds me of the old saw about the ballet company being assembled to be told by the director that gentlemen must wear sufficient underpinnings when dancing in tights, only for a voice to pipe up from the back "Please, sir, does that apply to those of us with small parts?"…

  10. International Ballet
    I went to see Romeo and Juliet by the Northern Ballet and music by Prokofiev last evening. It was amazing. Audience was probably at least 80% women, as it's a romantic though tragic tale.

    I checked in the programme and the ballet company are from 15 countries. Biggest non-UK contingent (including Principal Ballerina) was 8 from Japan. So we CAN attract talent from abroad.

  12. 'Morning one and all, especially, Geoff, and a big thank you to him for all his sterling efforts on our behalf.

  14. SIR – Lord Frost suggests that we need “the state to be shaped by tradition and Judeo-Christian values”, particularly when it comes to assisted dying (“A nation without faith ends up killing its infirm”, Comment, October 11). However, we can be moral, legal and compassionate without invoking religion.

    Suicide is not a crime – despite being so within the Judeo-Christian framework. Would he wish to make it so again and criminalise survivors?
    Would a gentle, assisted death be any more stressful to a family than someone taking their own life in a potentially more violent way?
    Supporters of assisted dying have no argument against improving palliative care services, counselling for the distressed and strict safeguards – but our bodies are our own and not the property of the state.

    Dr Ruth E Katz
    London N20

    Head and shoulders the most sensible and well thought out letter of the year.

    BTL: Frank Bee: Religious values are good when they stick to their founding core values.

    Love, peace, forgiveness, compassion, kindness, comforting, assistance, sharing, openness.

    When religions start making laws to try to govern people's lives – trying to make them feel ashamed and sinful – trying to tell them what they should and should not do. Then they have gone beyond their remit. That is the purview of the elected government of the state – not of religion. 👍🏻

      1. Wot abaht them, Tom? I do not read the same books as you do.

        Ergo, I have different opinions to you.

        1. You say about religions laying down the law, yet you appear to forget the 10 commandments.

          I’m sure we’ve both read the bible!

          1. "You say about religions laying down the law…"

            I have not said any such thing! Ever! Just show where the hell I've said that. Go on, point it out to me.

            Tom, you and I are different in a multitude of ways. I listen to other people's belief systems and I respect them, but seldom comment on them.

            I do not try to push my own belief system down other peoples throats. You do. I find that offensive.

            To reiterate: I … do … not … read … the … same … books … as … you!

          2. You copied and pasted a BTL comment in which those words appear.

            As I've said, "I'm sure we've both read the Bible."

          3. Pasting and copying another’s comment is NOT the same as me saying it.

            No, I have not,/i> read the bible. My parents sent me to Sunday School (against my will) where odd passages from that book were read, but I never felt inclined to read it myself; much preferring to read about natural history.

            I have lived a life of good behaviour, decent manners and I care for all things natural. I do not need a set of ancient scripts, written in a weird language, to tell me how to behave and be a decent member of society. I have an innate sense of right and wrong.

        1. Yes, but putting the power to kill you without any comeback in the hands of the state which benefits financially from your death is especially open to abuse!

    5. " but our bodies are our own and not the property of the state. " Not entirely accurate.
      At the moment of death (define – Editor) your body parts belong to the state, via the NHS, in that any organ suitable for transplant can be removed without the permission of the Next of Kin or the Executors. The only way around the Organ Donation (Deemed Consent) Act 2019 is for the dying person to have completed an 'Opt out' form in advance of the departure date. The Act came into force on 20th May 2020.

      1. As a boy I always enjoyed Thomas Hood's puns in his accounts of Ben Battle and Faithless Sally Brown. I also enjoyed .Mary's Ghost and your post brought these lines to mind:

        "The body-snatchers they have come,
        And made a snatch at me;        "

        Mary's Ghost. – A Pathetic Ballad : By Thomas Hood

        'Twas in the middle of the night,
        To sleep young William tried,
        When Mary's ghost came stealing in,
        And stood at his bedside.

        O William dear! O William dear!
        My rest eternal ceases;
        Alas! my everlasting peace
        Is broken into pieces.

        I thought the last of all my cares
        Would end with my last minute;
        But though I went to my long home,
        I didn't stay long in it.

        The body-snatchers they have come,
        And made a snatch at me;
        It's very hard them kind of men
        Won't let a body be!

        You thought that I was buried deep,
        Quite decent-like and chary,
        But from her grave in Mary-bone,
        They've come and boned your Mary.

        The arm that used to take your arm
        Is took to Dr. Vyse;
        And both my legs are gone to walk
        The hospital at Guy's.

        I vowed that you should have my hand,
        But fate gives us denial;
        You'll find it there, at Dr. Bell's,
        In spirits and a phial.

        As for my feet, the little feet
        You used to call so pretty,
        There's one, I know, in Bedford Row,
        The t'other's in the City.

        I can't tell where my head is gone,
        But Doctor Carpue can;
        As for my trunk, it's all packed up
        To go by Pickford's van.

        I wish you'd go to Mr. P.
        And save me such a ride;
        I don't half like the outside place,
        They've took for my inside.

        The cock it crows – I must be gone!
        My William, we must part!
        But I'll be yours in death, altho'
        Sir Astley has my heart.

        Don't go to weep upon my grave,
        And think that there I be;
        They haven't left an atom there
        Of my anatomie.

          1. The second song is repetitive, very repetitive, it goes on and on, it is very repetitive. the same line is repeated all the way through, it is very repetitive.

    6. "Our bodies are our own not the property of the state" is a straw man argument even if it were true, which as tim5165 points out, isn't strictly true. Anyone has the right to commit suicide. Proponents of euthanasia are just trying to pretend that only if the state is involved would suicide be certain and painless. This is simply not true.

        1. But, nevertheless, you copied and pasted it on this forum. Including Mr Bee's comment about religious law.

    7. Grizzly, I have trouble with your bold comments: I use Head and Shoulders but still end up with a lot of dandruff. Lol.

  15. Morning all 🙂😊
    It's still a bit dark opp int sky this morning.
    Hopefully it doesn't rain. We will be taking 9 year old grandson to his Saturday football game. Astro turf. Dad's busy decorating his exterior woodwork.
    Talking of turfing and rain, which who can rid us of this turbulent useless political shower further wrecking our country. It can't be allowed to continue. The tories were bad enough.

    2. Why do you think all law abiding Britons were effectively disarmed?
      Now only agents of the state and criminals have ready access to fire arms.

  16. SIR – Home is the best restaurant I know, but I don’t source my ingredients from supermarkets (“Supermarkets hasten the demise of restaurants”, report, October 10). What they stock isn’t good enough.

    I get my meat from a butcher, produced within a 10-mile radius of the shop, and fruit and vegetables from my local greengrocer and my allotment. I’ve yet to eat restaurant food that comes anywhere near that served at home, cooked by my wife and myself – and I’ve dined in some top restaurants in my time.

    What’s more, our candlelit dining room, with its inglenook stone fireplace and flagstone floor, has a far nicer ambience than any restaurant.

    Michael Banyard
    Charlton Adam, Somerset

    Well said, Mick. Second best sensible letter of the day.👍🏻

    1. He does sound a bit smug though. The majority of people don't have an allotment. Or a flagstone floor for that matter.

      Good morning.

      1. Or the time to wander about the country sourcing excellent food ingredients from all over the place. By the time work and commuting is over, a supermarket ping meal begins to look attractive…

      2. I wonder who actually does the cooking and shopping, the clearing up and keeps the fire burning in his inglenook fireplace?
        His "candlelit dining room" produces Hyacinth Bouquet vibes.

        1. He also makes no mention of guests or other family members.

          One of the pleasures of dining out is the atmosphere generated by a crowd of people enjoying themselves.

          I think Mick Banyard doesn't like people…or spending money.

          1. Or a different-from-usual menu for dinner. Better coice of wines. Someone else to do all the work.

          2. I go out for the social aspect mostly. The chef/patron at my local tapas always manages to have me in stitches.
            I have watched him work the tables. Within a minute of turning up the people on the table are laughing.

          4. He answers the phone with ‘it’s a beautiful day today. How can i make yours better?’
            Or.
            ‘This is the Spanish Ambassador. How may i be of service?’

          5. Exactly.
            On our own, MB and I cosily eat together – sorry – often on our laps.
            However, whenever we have family or chums round, then it's dining room and all the gubbins.
            It's part of the pleasure of having 'company' and it tells your guests they're worth the effort.

          6. O/T At the party i saw you arrive but i didn’t put a name to a face. Then Rik asked which other Nottlers were coming and then i remembered your face from a photo you had posted here.
            Did you recognise anyone when you arrived?
            If not i apologise. I was running around a lot at the beginning.

      3. Why is he smug? I’m with him. When you eat at home you know precisely what the ingredients and cooking media are. The vast majority of restaurants still use poisonous seed oils and all manner of iffy additives.

        1. The details he mentions. I'm surprised he didn't mention the crystal, the silver or the chandelier.

          1. Or the extensive wine cellar stocked with Château Latour, Château d'Yquem and Domaine de la Romanée-Conti?

      1. I've not had a letter publised in the DT for nearly two years. Orlando Bird doesn't like me. I had a better relationship with Christopher Howse.

  17. Good morning all.
    But not such a good morning with the weather. Raining, a bit windy and 2°C on the Yard Thermometer.

        1. Short answer, "No". Up until 04:00 then slept until 06:30 when I reset the alarm for 07:30

  18. Good morning all,

    A grey dawn at Castle McPhee, wind South going West, 9℃ risng to 13℃, showers expected.

    Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/53c599bf5a7a50be900180dbd82ee15137359f62b14abfba127617b9af027729.png

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/10/12/starmer-distances-himself-from-haighs-po-comments/

    Here she is, our Secretary of State for Transport, one of eleven women in an eighteen-member cabinet.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ca807e35b4baed9c0500044d865773ce0faab2db101e2326819385b38ed00498.png

    Why is she still in post. She is unfit.

    3. She should quit after being so publicly humiliated by the PM. She obvioussly doesn't have his trust.

      1. The PM's trust is almost irrelevant – what is relevant is the extent to which she can destroy the UK economy.

    4. If "rogue" elements exist in the Cabinet that is a clear indication of Starmer's lack of leadership. Of course, there will be differing opinions in a group but a real leader will be able to create either a consensus or have the will to remove any dissenter who refuses to adhere to the collective responsibility regime that operates in Cabinet.

      1. Louise Haigh is probably very proud of herself – look at that odious self-satisfied, smug grin. Her aim, and the aim of several of her fellow travellers in the government, is to destroy the British economy beyond repair.

        It is not every day that someone can cost the UK £1,000,000,000.

        1. Excluding himself (the tool produced by his father) TTK only has 402 to choose from.
          So he has limited no options.

        2. 394542+ up ticks,

          Afternoon BB2,

          Is she stupid or an agent of treachery answering to the WEF / NWO first & foremost on which case she would be a valued asset.

    5. Yeah! Another woman trailblazing on my behalf, showing the men how to do it. Yeah!

      1. Why is it when a male effs up, his sex isn't mentioned as a factor but when a woman does, its her sex that is called into question?

        (Not defending her actions btw)

        1. Men tend to be promoted or appointed based on their ability to do the job.
          Unfortunately, whilst that is still the case with most women, sufficient have so obviously been given jobs they are incapable of doing simply because it's another TICK on the diversity ticklist.

    2. TBF, Hungary has a very small population compared to the others.

      Russians as an approximate fraction:
      Germany – 1/280
      France – 1/680
      Spain – 1/800
      Hungary – 1/1,400

      1. 394542+ up ticks,

        Morning WS,

        His common sense feelings are coming to the fore majestically, and he plans on keeping the state of his Nation as is.

        1. Indeed, but even if raw stats do make Fond Of Lying squirm in her seat, some qualification of them is required.

    3. TBF, Hungary has a very small populaton compared to the others.

      Russians as an approximate fraction:
      Germany – 1/280
      France – 1/680
      Spain – 1/800
      Hungary – 1/1,400

    1. Expected a more damning summary from Redwood. And he was the best of a bad bunch.

      What about his: two tier justice & policing? What about ignoring the 1,000 a day migrant invasion? And what about the jailing for thought crimes.

    2. Expected a more damning summary from Redwood. And he was the best of a bad bunch.

      What about his: two tier justice & policing? What about ignoring the 1,000 a day migrant invasion? And what about the jailing for thought crimes.

  22. Morning, all Y'all.
    Frost – heavy, and snow on the hills above Firstborn's farm. Time to change to winter tyres.

    2. Probably blaming the English; most patients in easy travelling distance head for Shrewsbury.

    3. Probably done at one of those money-laundereing and drug-peddling establishments known as nail bars, sisters to the Turkish barbers.

    4. Probably done at one of those money-laundereing and drug-peddling establishments known as nail bars, sisters to the Turkish barbers.

    2. I’d invite you round for a beverage to celebrate (?) the first snow of winter, but it’s all a bit complicated with the travelling. Instead, I’ve ordered the beverage to your place from Amazon – it should arrive on Tuesday, they claim, so be sure not to be out! I'll raise a glass you you Tuesday evening! Slainte!

  30. Sir Keir says Transport Secretary’s comments “not the view of the government”..

    Then why did you allow the two gobby little girls Rayner & Haigh anywhere near the negotiations with a major international investor?

  31. Clueless…

    Nuclear Energy Snubbed on Labour’s “Clean Power Board”

    The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero has proudly unveiled its board of commissioners for the “2030 Clean Power Mission.” Cue a long list of people with decades of experience “fighting climate change” in wind energy, technology, reducing emissions and preserving wildlife…

    Given the song and dance Labour made about building nuclear power plants in their manifesto – literally under the section “Clean Power by 2030” – you’d think they’d at least have someone who knows a thing or two about nuclear energy on the board. Not so. In fact one of the board members, Juliet Davenport, even founded an energy service company that set out why it “doesn’t want nuclear power in the UK” because it’s a “bad match for renewables” and “benefits the few, not the many”. Davenport was still CEO when that article was published…

    11 October 2024 @ 16:26

    1. “doesn’t want nuclear power in the UK” because it’s a “bad match for renewables”.

      Yes. It shows up renewables as an expensive way to generate an unreliable source of energy which will barely keep the lights on.

    2. Their desire to wreck the country and destroy the lives of millions of people is like an extreme sexual lust which has to be slaked.

    3. Meanwhile, the nuclear industry is more optimistic than it's been for years, as the big tech companies look to build their own nuclear power stations to provide the power needed for AI centres.
      The digital hell that enslaves us will be nuclear powered, but we will be expected to be grateful for the output from windmills.
      This is not stupidity, it's evil, implemented by psychopaths because we let them.

    4. If anything benefits the few and not the many, it's windmills. Cameron's father-in-law, for example.

  32. Nickerless
    16h
    For a very brief, fleeting moment on the morning of 5th July, I thought 'OK, time to let them have a turn and see what they can come up with'. A mere hundred days in, and I must confess that all those lurking fears and premonitions whispering in my head that 'they surely won't be that bad' have been well and truly confirmed. They are, and by the looks of things they will get worse by the day and the week as they go on: beyond belief! Even in the depths of the late 60s-through to the 70s, when I first started taking an interest in political matters, I never recall feeling this despondent and so full of pessimism as I do now, as I recall there was always then a degree of hope somewhere. God help us all, because this country, if not wholly lost yet, will most certainly be so in four years time.

    1. The Bishop of Lichfield gave the sermon last night and was going on about how, in 175 years, we would still be worshipping in the church. My immediate thought was, it'll be a mosque, like the churches of Algeria., unless we do something drastic.

  35. Good day everyone.

    Today Free Speech has two new articles again, well, one and a half. The whole one is by Dr Frank Palmer, on the sinister unconscious bias ' training endemic in the public sector. It's main emphasis is on 'race' and it is meant to replace usually non-existent unconsious bias against blacks with conscious bias against whites.

    The half an article is by Mark Smith, on Starmer's first 100 days 'in power' and a commentary on Labour's 'achievements' in office in the minds of the Starmer Gang. He puts out a few, and then invites readers to take over and insert their own. Please read it and add your own.

    freespeechbacklash.com

    1. I did the unconscious bias training at work. The first question ran thus. Little Johnnie and his father have been in a road accident. His father is killed and little Johnnie is in hospital. His father visits him in the hospital. How can that be? Of course the obvious answer they’re angling for is little Johnnie has two daddies. The second question is how do you explain that to someone who doesn’t think like you? Well let me see, if you’re thick enough not to realise that’s it’s a biological impossibility…Lord give me strength! The agenda is crude and obvious. Nothing subtle or unconscious about it!

      1. Consider the quality of those who make their careers out of this sort of poison . The term "ambitious third-raters" springs to mind.

      2. Really interesting to hear from someone whoo has done it Sue, thanks.

        Was this in the public sector?

          1. Oh dear Sue. I bet you keep your views to yourself at work then (or is the lunacy confined to the broadcasting section)?

          2. Let’s put it this way, I know of two other people at work who declined the Covid jabs and three who acknowledge the damage done. One of those told me that her husband developed myocarditis after one jab, having previously had no related conditions. The rest are either sleepwalkers or keep schtum.

          1. I guess it didn’t work then! As a best guess Ndovu, what would you say the percentages in the public sector are: those who really are woke; those who don’t object to it but go along with it; those who just want a quiet life, and those who oppose it but keep their head down?

          2. Well, I’m sure things have become more “woke” since i retired in 2011, I would think the woke are in the majority, but the quiet lifers still exist – in what proportions I wouldn’t know.

      4. Little Johnnie's mother lied. The man in the car with him was not his father. He was the paedophile his mother sold him to.
        The man that visited Johnnie in hospital was the milkman.

        1. The one that visited Johnnie in hospital was probably the current partner of his mother who has transitioned and had a strapad*cktomy. Pronoun 'Them'. One of them, to be more precise,

      5. As an ex-snivel serpent I have of course done unconscious bias training many times, under various names. In the early nineties we were shown an (American) film called "Brown eyes, blue eyes" and that stayed with me. Brainwashed people will believe anything they are told to do.
        More recently, before I retired, there was "Diversity" training – three days out of the office with freeby mug mats and mouse mat. Absolute waste of time and money.

    2. I did unconscious bias training in the private sector (if I had any unconscious bias I think I'd know about it!)

      People just tick the box and move on.

      As I have mentioned before, when ethnic monitoring was introduced in the Army, we all put ourselves down as Bangladeshi. Play them at their own game.

  36. Flu vaccine – can I be bothered?
    Roger Watson – October 12, 2024
     https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/flu-vaccine-can-i-be-bovvered/

    BTL

    My case is of no significant importance and is not what the PTB want to hear.

    I am now 78 years old and am overweight but physically active. I have only once had the flu jab and that was about 40 years ago – and following that jab I had a very bad dose of flu. I have not had the flu jab again since then and have very rarely had flu and then it was very mild.

    I have not had the Covid jab – but a couple of years ago I had a bit of dizziness, the nurse came round and gave me a test and said I had Covid. I slept solidly for one day and then I was completely well again. As the nurse was there my wife, aged 62 and unjabbed, also had the test and the result was positive but she did not even go to bed and carried on as normal. At the same time some of our friends and family members who were fully jabbed had Covid and were quite ill.

    We now take zinc and Vitamin D and this seems to keep us clear of colds, flu and Covid.

    1. I hesitate to join this dray, but I can't resist sharing this. My qestion: Gibraltar also had a very high rate of vaccination. What do we know about their death rate?

      The most vaxxed country on earth is now facing a population crisis.

      In 2021, Singapore’s natural population increase (births minus deaths) fell by 13%. By 2022, it plunged even further to 39.4%. 😱

      This decline is unprecedented, especially when you consider that the total COVID-19 deaths during this time were relatively low.

      But here’s where it gets even more disturbing: Singapore ranked number one globally for excess deaths in mid-2022. Yet, as the numbers began to raise eyebrows, Singapore was suddenly removed from a global mortality database.

      To make matters worse, a law requiring investigations into deaths linked to medical treatment was quietly removed in 2023—right when people started asking if the vaccines were to blame.

      The Ministry of Health claims Singapore has one of the lowest excess death rates globally, but the data shows the exact opposite. Singapore is in trouble, and the government’s narrative doesn’t match reality.

      Laura Aboli

      1. Singapore is a country which expects people to obey their laws, live together under their culture and to fend for themselves without massive state handouts. If you were a left-wing, NWO globalist it is just the sort of place you would wish to undermine and destroy, filling it with dross.

      2. In 2021, the neonatal mortality rate was reported as something like 40% higher than normal. I recall that NHS Scotland said they had absolutely no idea what was the cause except that the one thing they knew it wasn't was the Covid vaccines (you know, the ones that the court ordered data release in the US from Pfizer said that pregnant women and those breastfeeding were recommended not to take the jab). They did suggest two possible reasons; understaffing and climate change!

        Anyhoo, the Scottish Government tasked Health Improvement Scotland with an investigation. Unfortunately, the spreadsheet with the base data is 'not available' on their website. I did find this though:

        https://scotland.shinyapps.io/phs-pregnancy-births-neonatal/

      3. In 2021, the neonatal mortality rate was reported as something like 40% higher than normal. I recall that NHS Scotland said they had absolutely no idea what was the cause except that the one thing they knew it wasn't was the Covid vaccines (you know, the ones that the court ordered data release in the US from Pfizer said that pregnant women and those breastfeeding were recommended not to take the jab). They did suggest two possible reasons; understaffing and climate change!

        Anyhoo, the Scottish Government tasked Health Improvement Scotland with an investigation. Unfortunately, the spreadsheet with the base data is 'not available' on their website. I did find this though:

        Link has to be cleared for publication

    2. Good morning, Rastus.

      Proper vaccines, in days of yore (and Salk) were designed — and proven — to prevent illnesses. Millions have been saved from the hideous effects of poliomyelitis, diphtheria, tetanus, typhoid, tuberculosis, whooping cough, scarlet fever, measles, mumps, rubella, hepatitis and smallpox (to name a few).

      Unfortunately the game has changed dramatically since that time and the malign forces of the world are intent on reducing the numbers on this vastly overpopulated planet by whatever means they can think of. Currently the favoured method is poisoning the population by injecting them with experimental potions euphemistically labelled as 'vaccines'.

      My sole experience with an influenza 'vaccine' came in 1970, when I fainted just 10-minutes after being injected with the damn stuff. Since then I have repeatedly refused, categorically, to repeat the experience.

      The recent clamour for me to join millions of ingenues in presenting my naked arm to be stabbed with an unknown substance had me telling those cretinous would-be stabbers exactly what I thought of them.

    3. My comment on TCW on that piece.
      Ndovu • 2 hours ago

      "I've had flu twice in my life – in 1972 and 1984. It was quite unpleasant. However I've only once succumbed to taking a flu jab – in 2020 when the propaganda must have got to me. I won't be having one this year.
      At 76, I guess I 'm more 'vulnerable ' but I'll take my chances and keep up the vitamins D,C and vit K2. It's kept me clear of everything but minor sniffles since 2020."

    3. That makes me laugh (I giggled on Westminster Bridge when I first saw that), but also wonder what the pianists did to piss off the bridge designer. The unspaced black keys must drive them mad! 🤣🤣

  38. Russia punches through Ukrainian lines in Kursk. 12 October 2024.

    Russian soldiers have punched through Ukrainian lines in Russia’s Kursk region only a day after a US official said Kyiv could hold the territory for months.

    Sources from both sides confirmed the Russian breakthrough, which occurred during the heaviest fighting on Russian territory since Ukraine began its cross-border incursion in August.

    The Ukies will be lucky to get out.

    No Comments Allowed. Lol.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/10/12/russia-punches-through-ukrainian-lines-in-kursk/

  39. Good morning all,

    Cloudy , glimpse of sunshine , 12c.

    Some news about the elusive garden mole , quite amusing really.
    Moh sent away for a solar powered vibrating mole repellent .

    The point of the exercise is to insert the vibrator gently into the mole hill, and the gadget emits a low buzz into the mole's tunnel / chamber to repel the mole .

    Ha ha , Mr Mole has thrown up earth in the flower beds , the local cat is mole spotter , and she sits staring at the fresh earth that is piling up , so then Moh moves the gadget to repel more excavations … this is becoming a farce .. because several more repellents are needed , so back to Amazon again .

    All I can bore you more with , this mole must be sturdy , strong and very determined .. he / she even excavates at night

    We do have a mole trap , and years ago Moh caught one .

    After examining the little clever body , black fur as smooth as velvet and paws as big as small shovels , I thought there has to be a better way of repelling such determined clever little creatures.

    No mole hills this morning , so perhaps , he/ she/ has moved on.

    2. Are we sure Mr/Ms Mole isn’t a kinky so and so who’s turned on by the vibrator? It’s a toughie, isn’t it. You don’t want to hurt them. They’re only following a natural instinct but at the same time, you want them out of your garden!

  40. Ragwort’s role
    SIR – No-one questions that ragwort is poisonous (“The poisonous everyday plant at the heart of the rewilding battle”, Features, October 10). The main risk to livestock, though, is not from eating live ragwort, which horses and cattle tend to avoid. The risk comes when dry ragwort is mixed into hay fed to livestock.

    Many vets diagnose ragwort poisoning without conducting proper tests. Even postmortem tests for enlarged red blood cells – the common sign of megalocytosis – are not definitive of ragwort poisoning because common moulds growing on hay produce the same effect.

    The UK is among the world’s most nature-depleted nations. Continuing to blame one of our most ecologically-important native wildflowers, relied on by at least 35 insect species, is both poor science and a distraction from the national effort needed to reverse nature’s decline.

    Neil Jones
    Swansea

    Years ago large groups of volunteers used to pull ragwort from fields , there are two different varieties of ragwort .

    Now that verges and roundabouts are an untidy wild weedy mess, ragwort has really spread and taken off, but I haven't observed insects being attracted to the weeds, only the caterpillars that eat the stuff , birds avoid the grubs don't they?

      2. I think cows affected by ragwort too?I don't know, having no cows/horses – one neighbour says yes, another says no. I really like cinnabar monhs so I leave mine.

        1. They are lovely insects and similar to burnet moths. Cinnabar, the main ore of mercury, has been used for thousands of years for its vivid red colouring for dyes and art.

          1. Completely agree, mola, especially art – is it colourfast in dye do you know? I appreciate all things in nature, good/bad/indifferent – CO2 been a boon for greenery.

        3. Round here people graze their cattle on the commons. There are undoubtedly ragwort plants up there but the cattle are supposed to all be off the common by the end of October, and the horses know to avoid it. The cattle, sadly are at more danger from traffic than weeds. There is no hay made from the commons’ grass – the grazing keeps it short fro the rare butterflies and flowers that are there.

          1. That sounds fab to me..would be interested in list of flutterbies and flowers if you ever make one 🙂 Have’t had a single butterfly here this year, not even a Vanessa..hundreds of cluster flies that’s about it. Is it true ragwort is only poisonous if dried, living plant is ok?

          2. Living plant is still poisonous (if you handle it, wear gloves as the toxin can go through your skin). It's just not tasty.

          3. Thanks Conway, we actually have much less of it this year. My usual method is to tread the steam down where it meets the ground, then collect it when dried. It easily regenerates but after a while seems to give up the ghost. I really like to see the cinnabar moths – numbers down this year similarly to most other insects except horse flies/wasps and not even many of those. Perhaps dry weather during egg laying to hatching.

          5. Thanks, that sounds bit harder but I’ll bear it in mind and give it a try if my current system fails me 🙂

          6. Apparently so, though I didn’t know that. But the animals seem to know to avoid it. Some of the butterflies to be found are: Duke of Burgundy Fritillary; Adonis blue, Large Blue a couple of miles away; Dingy Skipper and large & small skippers; Small Heath, & Meadow Brown; Chalkhill blue; Green Hairstreak, and most of the more common ones…………. notable flowers include Pasque flowers; cowslips, orchids – pyramidal, early purple, and others less common.
            We don’t go up there so much now, but my OH used to walk a transect every week for about 12 years after he retired. He gave it up in 2017, after he’d slipped and rolled down a steep slope one day. There was nobody around and if he had been hurt it would have been a challenge to get up again.

            Not so many garden butterflies this year, or maybe we weren’t looking at the right time – quite a few Gatekeepers though, and the odd comma and holly blue. Also some nice Red Admirals in the autumn. Haven’t seen a Painted Lady for ages though – there was a huge influx of them one year – 2009 i think. Never seen many since then.

          7. Great post Ndovu, after my own heart. Have had neither butterflies nor flowers this year, been quite bleak. Grass is very green and a lot of leaf on trees and elsewhere, all that CO2 I guess. Sorry to read OH fall, I've had a few can really shake you up and knock your confidence. I used to walk a lot, rarely now..my dog sleeps most of the time 😊

          8. I think the grass was wet that day and he slipped and rolled down the slope. It did shake him up rather.

          9. Can be scary if you’re on your own and difficult to get up with a sprain or God forbid a break. Lucky you were with him.

          10. I wasn't with him, but fortunately he was unhurt and managed to get to his feet and back up the slope. It did make him wary though, so he gave up the transect at the end of that season.

          11. Poor chap…the first fall can really shake you up, I managed to knock myself out, two luvverly black eyes for around a month.

      3. The moths with the black and yellow caterpillars. I believe the colour warns birds that they are not a tasty beakful.

    2. What? Ragword is not a native wildflower – I thought it was called Oxford Ragwort because it escaped from the Botanical gardens?

      I haven't noticed it being an insect magnet, I must say.

    3. I thought it was illegal to allow ragwort to grow.
      Any land held by our local councils are awash with the stuff.
      But make any tweaks to your front porch …..

    4. Ragwort is a proscribed weed under the 1944 Dangerous Weeds Act. It should be pulled up and burned. It's true that horses tend not to eat it while it's living, but once it's dead it becomes palatable and causes liver damage if ingested.

  41. This is a very interesting discussion between Godfrey Bloom and Prof. Ed Dutton on the psychopathy of politicians with particular reference to Starmer and Johnson. Stay with it to the end because Dutton finishes with a fascinating proposal on why the British average IQ fell after the two world wars and is continuing to fall, especially among those who lean to the left. 52 minutes.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0QrGaaRNyA

  42. Not bad, Could have done three.
    Wordle 1,211 4/6

    🟨🟨⬜⬜🟨
    🟩🟩🟩🟩⬜
    🟩🟩🟩🟩⬜
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. What like this?

      Wordle 1,211 3/6

      ⬜🟨🟨⬜⬜
      ⬜⬜🟩🟨🟨
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    2. I did three today. Six yesterday.

      Wordle 1,211 3/6

      🟨⬜🟨⬜⬜
      ⬜⬜🟩🟩⬜
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

  43. ,’Morning all! Hissing down here! Am avoiding the news and getting ready for a house full of family and joy! Sister and BiL from Greece, nephew, partner and 2 girls, both daughters and 5 grandchildren! I’ll be back when the chaos, food and laughter are gone! Toddle pip! 😁

      1. Oh boy, Katy! We did! Amazing day and the 7 children, who haven’t all been together for about a year, got on like a house on fire! No falling out or shouting at each other, just kindness and lots of joy! And eating and laughter!💕

    2. Precipitation has paused here, Sue, but forecast to restart in a couple of hours, so I'm getting some much needed indoor tidying up done.

    4. Gan canny, Pet, and buy them all a singing hinny.😘

      Never had one, meself, but I'm willing to try.

    1. Note the sighting hoods and the riveted-on armour plates on the roof of Turret A

      Can't make out what you're describing:(

  46. Ecclesiastes 3:19-20

    19 For what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts, for all is vanity. 20 All go to one place. All are from the dust, and to dust all return.

    We are stardust.

    3. The President in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. But how can you buy or sell the sky? the land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?

      Every part of the earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every meadow, every humming insect. All are holy in the memory and experience of my people.

      We know the sap which courses through the trees as we know the blood that courses through our veins. We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters. The bear, the deer, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the dew in the meadow, the body heat of the pony, and man all belong to the same family.

      The shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water, but the blood of our ancestors. If we sell you our land, you must remember that it is sacred. Each glossy reflection in the clear waters of the lakes tells of events and memories in the life of my people. The water's murmur is the voice of my father's father.

      The rivers are our brothers. They quench our thirst. They carry our canoes and feed our children. So you must give the rivers the kindness that you would give any brother.

      If we sell you our land, remember that the air is precious to us, that the air shares its spirit with all the life that it supports. The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also received his last sigh. The wind also gives our children the spirit of life. So if we sell our land, you must keep it apart and sacred, as a place where man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow flowers.

      Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the earth is our mother? What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the earth.

      This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.

      One thing we know: our God is also your God. The earth is precious to him and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator.

      Your destiny is a mystery to us. What will happen when the buffalo are all slaughtered? The wild horses tamed? What will happen when the secret corners of the forest are heavy with the scent of many men and the view of the ripe hills is blotted with talking wires? Where will the thicket be? Gone! Where will the eagle be? Gone! And what is to say goodbye to the swift pony and then hunt? The end of living and the beginning of survival.

      When the last red man has vanished with this wilderness, and his memory is only the shadow of a cloud moving across the prairie, will these shores and forests still be here? Will there be any of the spirit of my people left?

      We love this earth as a newborn loves its mother's heartbeat. So, if we sell you our land, love it as we have loved it. Care for it, as we have cared for it. Hold in your mind the memory of the land as it is when you receive it. Preserve the land for all children, and love it, as God loves us.

      As we are part of the land, you too are part of the land. This earth is precious to us. It is also precious to you.

      One thing we know – there is only one God. No man, be he Red man or White man, can be apart. We ARE all brothers after all."

      Chief Seattle 1854
      …or a Hollywood scriptwriter 1970, some say

      1. Fine words whoever said them.

        We waste the land's precious resources and shit in our rivers.

  47. I wonder how China really views the prospect of being visited by David Lammy? They have previous when it comes to showing any respect for certain peoples.

    Deep State Demands: Foreign Office Postponed Taiwan Visit to Mollify China
     https://media.breitbart.com/media/2024/10/AP24282429397106-e1728726197709-640×480.jpg
    Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen delivers a speech during the 2024 Hsieh Nien Fan annual

    Oliver JJ Lane12 Oct 20244
    2:57
    The British Foreign Office blocked a planned visit by former Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen because it could imperil a minister’s visit to China next month which they evidently valued more highly, a report claims.

    Tsai Ing-wen stood down as President of the Republic of China, Taiwan, in May of this year and is due to embark on a tour of European nations in the coming weeks but won’t include the United Kingdom on that itinerary, as it claimed to have been hoped. A report by The Guardian claims plans to welcome former President Tsai were blocked by Britain’s Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office (FCDO) because they were worried how the Chinese Communist Party might take it.

    One person said to have been involved in the planning told the paper: “We got a note from the FCDO via the Taiwanese representative to the UK… It said: ‘Please can you defer this for a while because the foreign secretary is about to make a “goodwill visit” to China and this would absolutely put the kibosh on it.”

    David Lammy, the new British Foreign Minister is due to visit China next week reports state, on a visit Bloomberg says is meant to “improve ties” with the industrial power. While UK-China relations enjoyed what was euphemistically called a “golden age” in the last decade under the fervently Sinophile David Cameron — George Osborne Conservative government, subsequent Tory administrations were decidedly more skeptical about the wisdom of opening up too much to Beijing.

    The visit for former President Tsai was being organised by the British-Taiwanese all-party parliamentary group (APPG) and was due to take place this month, The Guardian states. They cite multiple — but unnamed — sources who state the government used its power to deny support to the visit, making it unviable.

    Of course, the United Kingdom has a long history of deferring to China on the Taiwan question, having ceased to recognise it officially as a country in the 1950s and withdrawing its diplomatic office in the 1970s. Even if the UK government doesn’t wish to engage with Taiwan as a country, it still does a great deal of trade with it, valued at billions of pounds a year.

    This kowtowing to Beijing to build bridges with China comes just months after it was blamed for a massive hack of British government defence ministry computers, putting the details of hundreds of thousands of servicemen at risk.

    China has also been seriously accused to running a major operation in British politics to influence Members of Parliament, but also to cultivate a whole new generation of British politicians from their earliest days as candidates. The highest profile scandal related to these operations was over a Labour Member of Parliament who was hauled before the security services in 2022 to be told one of his best friends and benefactors, a Chinese lawyer, was being declared a security threat.

      4. Along with a recording of a traditional cockney song:

        The old bamboo, the old bamboo……….

    2. Jesus! Afraid of their own shadow, thise folk. If it jerks Peking's chain, so what? Grow a pair, FFS!

    3. 'I wonder how China really views the prospect of being visited by David Lammy? '

      Hopefully they will treat him to fish eyeball stew with extra bat.

  50. Gray: I’m First on the List for the Lords

    There is some disbelief in government that Sue Gray is still managing to make herself the story a week after she got the sack. She’s now “on a break” while actually battling in Downing Street for a golden goodbye and new salary…

    There has been some speculation that Gray will be punted off to the Lords imminently – other briefings play down the chances of that. It looks like there’s at least one person who believes the rumours…

    Guido hears that Sue has, incredibly, been heard boasting that she’s the first name on the list to get into the Lords in the New Years honours. Enough time for her to settle in to her fake envoy job before being quietly whisked to the upper chamber…

    A government source tells Guido:

    “Pushing for a job at a house full of unelected great n’goods saying no to politicians and ignoring the voters? Sounds about right.”

    Safe to say there’s not much sympathy left for “Britain’s most powerful woman”…

    1. If there was ever a case for an elected 2nd chamber, she makes it.
      My preferred option is a 2nd chamber with no politicians.

      3. My preferred option is the House of Commons with no politicians – just businessmen with proven records of running successful businesses

        1. Do we have that many successful business men left in the UK willing to serve in the HoC?

    3. From Coffee House, the Spectator

      Keir Starmer’s fortunes are about to change
      Nick Cohen12 October 2024, 7:00am
      Those of us who voted Labour with pleasure on 4 July could never have imagined the new government’s first 100 days. We thought that the grown-ups would take charge after the chaos of the Tory years. Labour would be the adults in the room, as the cliché goes: sensible, professional people like Sir Keir Starmer, a former Director of Public Prosecutions, and Rachel Reeves, a former analyst at the Bank of England.

      Conservative readers are fooling themselves if they believe that Labour’s troubles will continue
      Angela Rayner once described Keir Starmer as ‘the least political person in politics I know,’ and many found his apolitical nature endearing – mature, even. We could not have been more wrong.

      The first 100 days of his government have proved that what is grown-up in the rest of the world is childish in politics. Here’s where that delusion has led us. The first thing most people know about the first centre-left government in 14 years is that it wants to means-test the winter fuel allowance for the elderly.

      The second is that Keir Starmer and many of his ministers took gifts of clothes, fancy spectacles, tickets to Taylor Swift concerts, and in one egregious case, £14,000 towards a remarkably lavish birthday party without a thought of how it would look to the public.

      And finally, and if only subconsciously, the nation has noticed the emptiness of our new government. Its lack of energy and urgency, as everyone hangs around like so many Vladimirs and Estragons waiting for Godot to finally show up, or in the case of Labour MPs, waiting for Reeves to finally produce her budget.

      The vacuum has been filled by ferocious office politics, and ferocious denunciations in the Tory press, which have done nothing to improve the government’s reputation.

      Before I go on, I should say Conservative readers are fooling themselves if they believe that Labour’s troubles will continue. There is every indication that the Starmer government is about to get a grip, and that Starmer himself is becoming more politically savvy by the day.

      Still, it’s worth noting that Labour has tested to destruction the comforting centrist belief that the standards and norms of the professional middle class are a good guide for politicians – and it didn’t even take 100 days to do so.

      Take the decision to means-test the winter fuel payment. Any incoming chancellor will have Treasury civil servants laying out the absurdities of Britain’s tax and benefit system: the council tax still based on 1991 valuations, and the bribes to elderly voters that the Tories used to secure the pensioner vote. In a rational world, there’s no justification for giving wealthy pensioners a winter fuel allowance as if they were Tiny Tim. But politics isn’t rational, and if it’s a profession, it’s one unlike any other.

      In 1919, the German sociologist Max Weber tried to guide the politicians who would govern the newly democratic Germany. His essay Politics as a Vocation is read with sadness today, because we know the politicians Weber addressed failed to prevent the rise of Nazism. Yet his definition of democratic politics as ‘the strong and slow boring of hard boards’ requiring ‘both passion and perspective’ still resonates.

      I have no doubt Labour ministers are genuinely passionate about redistributing wealth away from rich pensioners. But they lack the detachment and perspective needed to step back and figure out the best way to achieve that. However reasonable the Treasury’s recommendations may seem, a politically astute leader wouldn’t simply nod along. They would understand that means-testing the winter fuel allowance is a non-starter. It won’t raise much money once the ministers protect poor pensioners, and it paints the government as a heartless confederacy of Scrooges.

      Technically, Starmer was right. Politically, he was an idiot
      Louis XIV’s finance minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, declared that ‘the art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing.’ Rachel Reeves has got the smallest possible amount of feathers with the largest possible amount of hissing.

      It does not stop there. The same inability to understand that what works in middle-class institutions does not work in politics also explains Labour’s failure to deliver a budget.

      In any other large organisation, a senior figure charged with determining strategy would be given time and space. Of course they would. But governments need momentum. The delays in coming up with a budget have sucked the life out of this one, and allowed the Tory press to set the agenda.

      Speaking of which, Tory journalists have feasted on the freebies Labour’s grandees enjoyed. They did not need to be Woodward or Bernstein to break their stories because Labour politicians had dutifully recorded their gifts in the register of members’ interests. All the hacks needed to do was copy and paste.

      And they provided a political lesson as they did so. The gift scandal shows once again how the standards of modern institutions have no place in politics – in part because ethical standards in the private and public sectors are so low. Most institutions boast of their transparency. But transparency is at best a minor virtue. It is preferable to secrecy. But no one respects an outrageous institution or individual because they are honest about the outrages they commit.

      Thames Water is transparent about the £2.3 million it pays its chief executive, for example. No one thinks that excuses his inability to stop sewage flooding our rivers.

      A part of the problem for Labour politicians is that they thought it was enough to follow the weak standards of professional life. When the Financial Times reported in July that Sir Keir Starmer had taken £76,000 in freebies, he replied, ‘The system is one where if we take any contribution or donation of any sort that is all set out and declared. And that’s what we’ve done properly on my behalf.’

      Love it or loathe it, Labour will rule for a long time
      Technically, he was right. Politically, he was an idiot.

      There are all kinds of signs that this strange interregnum is over, and the Labour party is learning to put politics first. The backstabbing in Downing Street ended with Morgan McSweeney, the political organiser, triumphing over former civil servant Sue Gray. I hold no brief for McSweeney. His analysis that Labour can only win by appealing to socially conservative Red Wall voters may turn out to be a horrible mistake if the progressive middle classes abandon the party. But at least McSweeney is a political thinker who understands that politics is indeed a vocation and that civil servants like Gray can never be, and should not try to be, political figures.

      Meanwhile, Rachel Reeves’s budget will soon be with us. The 40 bills in the King’s Speech are beginning to make their way through Parliament. Brute political facts are asserting themselves.

      So much of the fury in the Tory media over the past few months has been a coping mechanism to duck the most brutal of those facts: that Labour has a huge majority, while the right is split and short of talent.

      Love it or loathe it, Labour will rule for a long time. Indeed, its rule is only just beginning.

    1. Wiki:
      Bazball is an informal term coined by ESPN Cricinfo UK editor Andrew Miller during the 2022 English cricket season, referring to the style of play of the England cricket team in Test matches. It was developed after the appointments of Brendon McCullum (whose nickname is Baz) as Test head coach and Ben Stokes as Test captain by English cricket managing director Rob Key in May 2022.

      The Bazball style and mindset is said to have an emphasis on taking positive decisions in attack and defence, whether batting or in the field. Many of these skills and strategies were developed in playing One Day International and Twenty20 matches.[1] Since the inception of the style until June 2023, England averaged a run rate of 4.65 per over, significantly higher than the next highest in Test match history. A faster scoring rate has allowed the team to declare their innings earlier and seek a result where ordinarily a draw would occur.
      *
      *
      *
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bazball

    2. A style of playing cricket, after the Australian coach of the English team. Seen by some to be needlessly reckless.

      1. It might be reckless of you to call Brendon McCullum an Australian if you were in his company. He's a New Zealander.

        1. Oops. My bad. I used to be a huge cricket fan before they “took the knee”, at which point i stopped following England on principle. Which is a shame as I love the cricket.

          Wish me luck – i am off to Bombay for a week, tomorrow! And the taxi drivers and hotel staff love to talk about cricket!!!

          1. If the cricketers ever took the knee, it wasn't often.

            As for the style, it was reckless batting that cost England the Ashes last year in the entirely avoidable defeats at Edgbaston and Lord's.

          2. They did at the time and it cost them my support. I imagine they’ve rowed back from it now but unfortunately for me it’s too late – i have to have some principles, and that is/was one of them.

          4. Thank you for that. Of course, when you stop following, you have no idea what happens next. Maybe I should reconsider.

          6. No, work…..13/14 hour days, not much fun but a change is as good as a rest. About to do 6 1/2 hours to Bombay.

    1. Beats working for a living. That’s just for the indigenous hWite plebs. They deserve it.

      1. I think the current policy is called 'Slavery Reparations'.. where the white folk are obliged to slave away to enable government to give out free goodies….

  53. 90% of The Cabinet Has Hired Staff Using Work Practices Labour Wants to Ban

    It’s not just a few Labour MPs using employment practices the party wants to ban through its “Make Work Pay” push. If you trawl through job adverts for Cabinet Ministers it turns out that almost all of them have specifically violated their own stated policy on employment rights and “insecure work.” One rule for them as usual…

    16 Cabinet Ministers including Reeves, Cooper, Miliband, and Lammy have hired roles which include working outside of regular hours and on the weekend. SpAds and staffers will be furious they don’t have the “Right to Switch Off”…
    7 Cabinet Ministers including Rayner, Streeting and Kendall have hired on “insecure” fixed-term contracts.
    6 Cabinet Ministers including Lammy, McFadden, and Darren Jones, have hired with long probation periods. The bête noire of Labour’s employment rights plans…
    Dodds, Hermer, and Angela Smith are the only Cabinet Ministers who haven’t hired using these nefarious practices. That’s 86% of the Cabinet. It’s almost like arbitrary restrictions on voluntary working arrangements are a bad idea…

    11 October 2024 @ 16:46

    1. Socialism always takes hypocrisy to a new level. It's the only thing this cabinet of starmers witless wonders excel at!!

    2. The offshore industry (the one I'm most familiar with) exists basically on fixed-term contracts. MOst folk working there are contractors, and they like it – otherwise, they'd join the big companies as staff. Being a contractor can be very tax-efficient. Everyone works outside of regular hours, when the workload and schedules demand it.
      What is all this snowflakery? Fcuking get off your arse and do some work!

    1. PPS Ballet audience always mostly ladies and gay men. Ditto aspiring dancers. Those straight men who choose that path – and ot is hard, physical, work – tend to be rather happy at the choices before them. 😉

      1. I remember taking my little grandaughters to the Nutcracker ballet – some wag said that there wasn't a dry seat in the house.
        And Ashes, you can guarantee that those on stage will be easy on the eye, whether you're straight or gay.

    2. Ah, Ashesthandust, that reminds my of my first visit to the Teatro Colon in the late 1990s, when my companion could not work out why they were calling their theatre after a part of the human anatomy. The only thing the orchestra played was the monotonous Ravel's Bolero.

    3. Ah, Ashesthandust, that reminds my of my first visit to the Teatro Colon in the late 1990s, when my companion could not work out why they were calling their theatre after a part of the human anatomy. The only thing the orchestra played was the monotonous Ravel's Bolero.

    1. Sterilisation programme. I’ll bet all the drugs contain polyethylene derivatives too and tranny supporters are very likely to be Just Stop Oil nutters. Like the mountains of plastic waste convid left in its wake while the supermarket won’t give you a plastic bag. These wokey ideologies are riddled with contradictions.

  56. 'Morning All
    Saturday Laffs
    "When they promised to stop the boats I didn't realise they meant P&O"
    Rest
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    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/745f777573b8deb74474bf06dd937dc31b932825e489676f4605bc0dcb1ef3b7.png
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    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/11ea5360a4e201823af669d244eece813d2118cc00d2b7ab369a31703fe5e769.jpg

  57. Snowing now – and we don't have the car with the snow tyres on it with us. Bugger!

      1. We have a set, but I hate using them. Mostly for getting the car out of really deep snow.

        1. My other strategy is run like hell at the first few flakes and hope to get home. Or park the car and wait until tomorrow when the ploughing/salting angel has hopefully been round

        2. Bought a Subaru a few years ago, very good in ice and snow…not snowed or iced over since tho'.

          1. The tyres are the important bit – my old Polo was the best car so far with UK summer tyres on snow – when we get -30C, snow & ice, the righ tead and compound are essential.
            The Golf will get it's winter tyres next week. I have an arrangement with a local tyre shop that they get changed for the other season's tyres on my rims every 6 months or so. They store the spare set, do the heavy work, pump the tyres, inspect them and so on, we just take the car round when booked. It means that, if I'm incapacitated, SWMBO can easily take care of it. Excellent arrangement.

      1. Yup.
        Not really settling, but sstill… this is Norway, after all, but even so, it’s rather early already.

      1. At Firstborn's farm for a physical work weekend. Away home tomorrow. And, for now, the snow has stopped, so that's OK.

  60. https://x.com/True_Belle/status/1845060658770956513 Dale Robinson
    1 min ago
    Deport them all

    Comment by Peter Mynn.

    PM

    Peter Mynn
    2 min ago
    Another moron who should be deported.

    Comment by kevin henley.

    kh

    kevin henley
    2 min ago
    That kind of humour directed the other way could get you 2 years in Prison.

    Comment by Asingle Voice.

    AV

    Asingle Voice
    2 min ago
    The muslim mind is filled to the brim with ignorance. How can anybody expect them to understand and feel anything other than hate which has been garnered and sanctioned by the Quran????

    They just won't get anything. How can they?? Cut-off from the Source of Intelligence.

    Comment by Steve Dyson.

    SD

    Steve Dyson
    3 min ago
    If this nobody ever was a 'celebrity ', he isn't now.

    Comment by Prester John.

    PJ

    Prester John
    3 min ago
    Scum.

    Comment by Kev Richardson.

    KR

        1. I wanted to cancel TV licence, but Him In the Workshop told me we couldn't because it covers all terrestrial TV and not just BBC. Dunno if this is true, or he was winding me up. I didn't renew the one in my name, he took out one in his…

          1. The licence covers all TV broadcast live on any channel inc iPlayer but you can watch virtually everything on catch-up tv and you don't need a licence for that. I cancelled mine over 5 years ago – just tell them you don't need a licence

  61. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2024/10/10/ratan-tata-unflashy-tycoon-who-bought-jaguar-land-rover-but/

    https://x.com/True_Belle/status/1845062521733956051 KB

    Kanarath BALACHANDRAN
    23 hrs ago
    An extraordinary industrialist and entrepreneur, a gentle soul, a generous philanthropist and a life of modesty. India in particular and world has lost a true gem. As an ethnic Indian, somehow his passing leaves a pain in the heart. I can't explain it.

    India is blessed that the Zoroastrians fleeing Islamic persecution in Persia (today's Iran and Iraq) chose to come to India who welcomed them with open arms as it did to all persecuted religious minorities over centuries.

    May you rest in peace. Rajanji, you will never be forgotten and thank you for touching the lives of billions.

  62. Just finding out for myself other people’s frustrations with TCW website. I was responding to a post about mixed- gender cricket. My reply was words to the effect of “you can’t have mixed-gender cricket, only mixed -sex” and then a bit of context about the Archers storyline. TCW wasn’t having any of that; but when i took out the first sentence which contained the word “sex”, I was OK.

    How hopeless

  63. I am much obliged for the comments about "bazball". Reading through – it seems to me to be a modern definition for "playing to win"….

    2. In the recent test match over 1,600 runs scored in four and a half days. It would have taken Boycott etc 4 test matches to score that many. Would loved to have seen England’s 800+ but it was hidden on Sky I believe.

      1. It would have taken the most tediously boring batsman in cricket history, Chris Tavaré, two decades to amass a quarter of that total.

    1. I think this shows exactly how terminally stupid our political classes really are.
      And the idiots still can't see where the economic 'Black Hole' is welling up from.

      1. …And there are no details of what that 'Black Hole' consists of, other than a figment of imagination

        1. Apparently this unfettered immigration is costing us at the very least nearly 4 billion pounds each year. And our political idiots can’t even seem to be able to admit it. If that doesn’t constitute a final black hole what does ?

  65. Is that why the "Native American" tribes were constantly at war with each other and kept useful captives as slaves?

  66. Michael Deacon in the Tellygraff.

    "Forget all this stuff about Labour giving Taylor Swift police escorts to her Wembley shows. The key question we need to ask about the free tickets row is this.

    Why were all these pathetic, middle-aged politicians so desperate to go and watch a pop star whose core audience consists of 15-year-old schoolgirls?

    For pity’s sake, Sir Keir Starmer is 62. Yet the parliamentary register of interests shows that, this summer, the Prime Minister went to see Taylor Swift perform at Wembley not once, not twice, but three times. Back in June, he admitted in an interview that he doesn’t have a favourite novel or poem. Yet he does, apparently, have numerous favourite teenybopper pop songs about breaking up with your boyfriend.

    “Be fair,” you might say. “His kids probably made him go.” Well, maybe. But three separate trips? How many children has the man got?

    At any rate, he’s not alone. At the last count, it appears that no fewer than 13 Labour politicians went to see Swift, including Yvette Cooper (who’s 55), Sadiq Khan (54), Catherine McKinnell (48) and Lisa Nandy (45). Given their status as senior politicians, the thought of them frugging tragically away to Shake It Off alongside 80,000 squealing adolescents feels just a touch undignified. Politicians used to have more self-respect. I don’t recall Margaret Thatcher joining in the prepubescent screams at a Bros concert, or Norman Tebbit boogeying with Bananarama.

    Some ministers have tried to argue that accepting free tickets to such events is simply “part of their jobs”. I don’t remember reading that in Erskine May. “In accordance with ancient parliamentary custom, Ministers of the Crown are required to be depicted in the public prints wailing hysterically along to the chorus of We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together.”

    Ultimately, though, it isn’t just the Cabinet’s reputation that’s at stake. It’s Taylor Swift’s. Having all these pitiful MPs at her concerts risks making her look desperately uncool. After all, no self-respecting teenage music fan wants to think they have the same taste as some stuffy old politician.

    My own generation knows this only too well. When I was 16, Noel Gallagher was pictured sipping champagne in 10 Downing Street with Tony Blair. At a stroke, Oasis’s image as rock’n’roll rebels was destroyed. No wonder their third album – released just a month later – was such an enormous flop."

    1. They are desperate to look hip and relevant. Starmer just makes himself look like a closet paedophile.

    2. I am 68, but don't fancy this rich painted American with a harsh voice, tuneless songs, and a sour expression. Am I normal?

    3. Sad, isn’t it. I’ve been at the same concert as the Duke of Kent quite a few times but always at the Wigmore Hall. Seen his brother and sister-in-law there once too. KCIII turned up at a Wigmore concert once as well. I wasn’t at that one but the management were thrilled to bits and couldn’t resist boasting. The Windsors, to be fair, tend to buy tickets and just turn up at the Wig.

    5. Taylor Swift is a fake and a fraud.

      I recently watched Turdstock 2024 where Catturd and John Rich invite real country musicians and composers to perform at Rich’s property (Red Neck Riviera) in front of an American country audience.

      Catturd and Jeffrey Steel wrote a song together which was performed and has shot to number one in the category.

      The contrast between country musicians who can actually play their guitars and sing whist dressed in jacket jeans and boots and some semi-naked poser with a white guitar as a prop is shall we say a gulf too wide for me.

  67. Ragwort:
    Ragwort poisoning can have a
    devastating effect on horses in particular, as well as being damaging to cattle and
    other animals. Ingestion of Common Ragwort Senecio jacobaea either in its green
    or dried state, can cause serious liver damage, which can have tragic consequences
    for both animals and owners. Ragwort is the only one of the five weeds covered by
    the Weeds Act 1959, which is harmful to equines and other animals. However, in
    the right place, and where there is no risk to animal welfare, ragwort contributes
    to the biodiversity of the flora and fauna in our countryside.

    1. The 5 injurious weeds stated in the 1959 Weeds Act are:

      Common Ragwort
      Spear Thistle
      Field Thistle
      Curled Dock
      Broad-Leaved Dock

  68. 14 deaths after the storm in Florida. So no where near as bad as forecast. It was not the worst storm ever. and
    "anyone that stayed in their home would be dead". was totaly untrue.

    1. Yes, of course. But we'll hear little about the exaggerated warnings now it's over. We are continually fed this kind of alarmism in the media be it about the dangers of another Trump administration or the horrors of climate change or even possible bird flu. They call 'wolf' much too often.

    2. I a shame they didn't issus similar warnings for the hurricane that destroyed parts of North Carolina.

      There again, if you live in some remote mountain town, warnings to stay out of the ocean and avoid the storm surge would go unneeded.

    3. Look at what actually happened though.

      The first and worse storm was played down by the media.

      Then a second storm was hyped up stupidly by the same media, and then sneered at as a damp squib. Also, a lot of press coverage criticising "conspiracy theories" about the second storm having beein influenced by weather control systems.

      So when people who weren't paying attention look back, what will they remember?
      Not the worst storm since 1916 and all the damage in North Carolina, but "it was nowhere near as bad as everyone said and the conspiracy theorists said it was man-made but they were making it up."

  69. 14 deaths after the storm in Florida. So no where near as bad as forecast. It was not the worst storm ever. and
    "anyone that stayed in their home would be dead". was totaly untrue.

  70. Are Keir Starmer’s first 100 days the worst for any PM in British history?
    Other premiers – including Liz Truss and Jim Callaghan – have been unlucky. But the incumbent’s misfortunes are of his own making
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/10/06/keir-starmers-first-100-days-worst-for-any-pm-in-history/

    A BTLiner poses this question:

    "Is it autism, bi-polarity or Narcissistic Personality Disorder with which Starmer is afflicted – or is it all three?"

    His whole persona calls to my mind this Simon and Garfunkel song: a most peculiar man.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YTgwY1Ld5s

    2. I've still got that LP which I got in 1966 and, although I haven't heard that for yonks, still remember the lyrics. Just wish I remembered where the record is stored !

  71. from Coffee House, the Spectator

    The trouble with protest mask chic
    Patrick West12 October 2024, 6:00am
    We in Britain have become used to the hallmarks of anti-Israeli protests. There are the slogans decrying ‘genocide’. There are chants in sympathy of terrorist organisations. There’s the explicit or insinuated anti-semitism. But one sinister feature making its transition across the Atlantic is the appearance of the face mask.

    Wearing a mask at a demo is the perfect expression of radical chic
    Footage widely circulated online this week showed an Israeli supporter in New York being attacked by a pro-Palestine activist, who proceeded to stamp and spit on the Israeli flag while shouting profanities. Nothing new here, you might say. It’s all part of the vitriol we expect these days, even on the first anniversary of that terrible massacre in Israel. Video footage of pro-Palestinian campaigners shoving phones in the face of another Israeli supporter in New York and shouting abuse at him are also unlikely to surprise many. Sadly, these scenes from the United States are routinely repeated throughout the West.

    What is disquieting in its apparent novelty, however, is that many of these assailants had their faces covered. Troublingly, the spectacle in New York of masked agitators threatening or performing violent acts, has been repeated across North America.

    The trend among far-left radicals for sporting face masks is well-established in the US, the disguise being a must-have accessory for Antifa campaigners with a penchant for creating mayhem. So it’s only logical that face covering is becoming common in anti-Israeli protests that are growing in similar vehemence and fury. Logical, too, that they are starting to crop up over here.

    In anti-Western protests this year, masks have started to be seen in Britain. Jewish News reporter Lee Harpin saw several on display at a demonstration in London’s Russell Square last Saturday. They may not yet be as common as they are stateside, but knowing our proclivity to import the worst aspects of US radical politics, it would only seem a matter of time before they are.

    Wearing a face mask in public became normalised, of course, during the pandemic and lockdown years of 2020-21, years that also saw the swell of radical agitation and Black Lives Matter protests. The two phenomena taken together, it no longer became deemed strange to go on large demonstrations, chant divisive and inflammatory slogans, all the while having one’s face covered. A dangerous bar had been lowered.

    For anti-Israeli activists and anti-Western poseurs, it’s also convenient that today’s radical chic accessory, the keffiyeh, can be employed to conceal one’s face and therefore one’s identity. Among demonstrators, there’s not just the logistical imperative behind hiding one’s face, the fear of facing prosecution from the law, of landing oneself in trouble at work should one’s behaviour be caught on camera, or even having your parents catch you in the act. There is the aura of danger, the frisson of excitement, that comes with donning a face mask.

    It is the perfect expression of radical chic, performative politics as fashion. If in the form of banners proclaiming ‘I Love Hezbollah’ – as seen again in London the other day – we have the articulation of terrorist chic, then in the face mask we have the embodiment of bandit chic.

    The fashion for posturing against the West as an extended form of teenage rebellion is nothing new. Jane Fonda did so famously during the Vietnam War; and it was Tom Wolfe who, in turn, coined the phrase ‘radical chic’ in 1970. Dressing up in foreign garb, embracing the exotic ‘other’, is also a long-established weakness of indulged Westerners who seek to turn their back on their own culture (how ironic that many pro-Palestinian sympathisers are now indulging in their own brand of ‘Orientalism’).

    Most of today’s belligerent anti-Western agitators are young. And while youthful politics have forever been prone to performative, radical chic, now they are reaching their apex in an era of shallow, shouty online self-regard.

    Online discourse, which determines so much of the nature of politics in the real world, is given to exaggeration and hyperbole. This is the nature of a medium in which each participant clamours for ever-more hits and ‘likes’, and does so through upping the ante, by making increasingly outrageous and outlandish claims. This is why youthful politics today is both so vociferous and vacuous. It’s about posing and seeking attention. It’s what happens when the political is reduced to the personal.

    The face mask as a political accessory is a threat to law and order. Those who wear it want to be seen as dangerous, radical and interesting. They are none of those things. Protest mask chic on the streets of London is one US import we could all do without.

  72. I had an engaging conversation with my neighbour yesterday regarding the Sizewell Nuclear Reactor site. My neighbour is a specialist forestry contractor.

    The principal heavy plant supplier is Volvo. The single largest excavator is battery driven. The batteries take 24 hours to charge by means of a diesel generator. Tha damn thing stopped working on day one and was taken away for examination by Volvo technical experts.

    I recall a Bamford video (JCB) in which he states the impracticality of battery driven heavy plant and demonstrates his research into the hydrogen alternative. Of course JCB is a principal competitor to Volvo in heavy excavator and dumper vehicles.

    This would suggest that the problems of endless delays at Sizewell may well be party driven by government insistence on stupid electrical vehicles. I was also told that there are hundreds of contractors fighting each other for work and the place is infested with DEI appointments where the offended can have you sacked simply by lodging a complaint to management.

    The lunatics are running this country into the ground. Sweden I just read is reverting to nuclear and scrapping its low emission targets whilst the largest party in Germany is pressing its government to do the same.

    1. Ah but once the power station is working, they will be able to recharge the digging toys in just a single work shift.

      I suppose that it is a pity that solar panels don't work at night

  73. They were fab, Rastus – thanks. Paul Simon a very clever man. Many online rumours doing the rounds today re Starmer, watch out for those….

  75. Whoever said “import the third world, become the this world” needs to hang his head in shame. Diversity is our strength. Multiculturalism is a great thing.

    “The mother of a 15-year-old girl "sold" her daughter to be sexually abused by a "dangerous" sexual predator – who police say may have attacked others.

    Following a two-week trial at Snaresbrook Crown Court, Ferdous Ahmad, 37, of Queensbridge Road, Hackney, and the woman, from Tower Hamlets, were found guilty of multiple offences involving the sexual assault of a child.…”

    1. Filthy creatures , aren't they .
      They are nothing more than fanny gropers and and genital scratchers .

      Our local car wash has a group of bods of a darker hue and bearded sharp looks , they seem to be constantly scratching the front of their pants as if they are in a permanent erectile state !

  76. I always liked him Rastus, and this recording. He fell out of favour when he married a 14 year old girl, I think? (Lewis, not Macmillan…)

      2. He was a liar, an incestuous paedophile and a bigamist – He could have been a BBC celebrity or a top politician.

  77. Rod Liddle
    Liberals are not just stupid – they’re dangerous

    12 October 2024

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Rod.jpg

    We held a small party to celebrate the news that the UK had seen its largest rise in population in 50 years: a jump of 1 per cent in only 12 months to a respectable total of 68.3 million people. Just crisps and soft drinks, you understand. Nothing wildly extravagant. All patriots feel proud of the speed with which our numbers have been rising of late, because naturally we wish for the UK to be the biggest and best in the world – and we are on our way.

    At the current rate of increase, the populations of Turkey, Iran and Thailand could be surpassed within a dozen or so years, although we have a way to go before we catch up with the real big boys, like Bangladesh. Our canny policy of allowing into the country anybody who wants to come, especially if they are from some maniacal, fly-blown, Stone-Age-desert theocracy and would quite like to kill us, is paying dividends. Ever onwards and upwards.

    There was also the associated good news that Ardit Binaj is a small, but important, part of that 68.3 million – because for a while it looked as if we were going to lose him. Rescued just in the nick of time by the dependable European Convention on Human Rights, Ardit, aged 32, is Albanian and has been a most industrious member of the UK’s flourishing burgling community, with a string of convictions for breaking into homes and making the lives of those who live in them miserable and frightened. He had been due to be deported to Albania since, on balance, we believed that he had given enough of himself to the British people these past few years; but his lawyers lodged an appeal with the courts on the grounds that he had a right to a family life in this country. Ardit, you see, has a wife and we have cause to feel especially blessed, as this couple have recently brought into the world a baby son. It is to be hoped that little Ardit Jr is already familiarising himself with a jemmy. If burglars still use jemmies.

    There is no war in Albania. It is a country more at peace with itself than at any time since good ol’ King Zog was on the throne. Its standard of living may be a little lower than ours, but I don’t suppose that situation will last terribly long, seeing as we are importing their entire criminal class plus a healthy proportion of their charming and agreeable beggars. Ardit came here because our houses have more valuable stuff in them on average, thus making his noble trade much more lucrative.

    His appeal succeeded under Article 8 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, the crucial bit of which I shall quote. It states that every individual has a right to respect for his or her private life and adds: ‘There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.’

    The question which naturally occurs is this: were the lawyers representing the Crown in this particular case as thick as a plate of mince? How the hell did they lose that one? Did they miss the bit about being ‘in accordance with the law’ and the later reference to the ‘prevention of disorder or crime’? The convention seems to me very clear that Ardit’s rights are rendered null and void by the convictions occasioned as he pursued his chosen trade. And this is a problem, because it is clearly not the convention per se which is the obstacle to removing Ardit from our lives for ever, but the fantastically deluded judges who interpret the convention to mean that nobody should ever be sent anywhere they don’t want to go, wholly regardless of what crimes they have committed.

    The rights of Ardit outweigh the rights of the rest of us not to be burgled. Or perhaps, in other cases, stabbed, raped, beaten up etc. It is this idiocy, of course, which has convinced the electorate in Europe (although sadly not here) that liberals are not merely amusingly stupid, but rather dangerous, and that they will not vote for them any more.

    Here, though, even more than abroad, the debate has been stifled and so the population rises ever more. Object to the current utterly ruinous levels of inward migration – which, incidentally, the Office for National Statistics stated was by far the main cause for the recent big increase – and you are considered a xenophobe and a pitiless racist. Advance the argument that, for example, we ought to do a little more to stop the arrival here of those boats from Calais, and the massed ovine bleat will go up: ‘But they’re Yuman Beans!’ The fact that we all know this and that, actually it is the whole nub of the issue – because if they weren’t yuman beans, but were instead potatoes, then it wouldn’t matter very much as they wouldn’t need houses – carries no weight.

    Mysteriously, the hundreds of thousands arriving both illegally and legally each year do not impose stresses upon our infrastructure or greatly exacerbate the housing crisis, and it is defamation to propose that they might perhaps be responsible for increasing the crime rate. Suggest any of that and you’re a far-right, mean-minded bigot – even though it is quite patently true. And seeing as nobody wants to be called a far-right, mean-minded bigot, we all keep our mouths shut and the arrivals keep on a-coming.

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

    Fouquieria
    3 days ago
    The bien pensant clerisy which has infested our institutions is throttling the nation to death; squeezing hard with hands clenched in Instagram-friendly heart shape whilst muttering, “be kind, you scum, be kind…”

    Veritas numquam perit
    2 days ago edited
    Strange isn't it. My wife is a foreign national but she came here legally. Since 2015 she has jumped through countless English tests, at least 6 visas at ever more exorbitant rates, biometric tests every five minutes and at every turn a threat to be parted. We met whilst I was working abroad and proved a real relationship long before we started to fritter money away on visas, accountants and English tests B1, B2, etc. Every 2.5 years we had to reapply to stay, provide audited accounts, give £1000 donations (forced) to the ever fantastic NHS. But if my wife could not pass the life in the UK test (how many jurors on a Scottish trial?) she'd have had to leave. No buts, no thanks, just go. But career criminals and undocumented terrorists are welcome.

    Ron Reagan
    2 days ago
    Look at the hiv case rate. Recent data shows a HUGE increase in new cases. Almost entirety due to the entry of women from African countries.

    3500 cases in 2022. 6000 cases in 2023. 50% increase.
    50% of these new cases were known.

    just like the criminal – it should be clear – no person accepted with hiv. Cost to health system is huge.

      1. Thanks Stephen:-)) I think she wrote this for Neil Young? Hejira is good, think from the time she spent with Graham Nash. I just like all her songs/arrangements, some more than others, especially Coyote, but will listen to any 🙂 I’ve read when she was with Nash, a few of them went to live in a wood cabin…summer was great, when winter came they all left apart from her but even she had to give in eventually..:-D

          1. I wish I still did but had to move albums/player on some years ago, lack of cash and space at the time. Still have a few CDs. Thankful for YouTube 🙂

  79. From Coffee House, the Spectator

    Germany and the fuss over the ‘idiot’s apostrophe’
    Katja Hoyer12 October 2024, 7:00am
    ‘Now it’s official,’ the German press lamented, ‘the idiot’s apostrophe is correct.’ The Council for German Orthography, the body that regulates German spelling and grammar, has relaxed the rules on when and how apostrophes can be used to show possession. What seems like a matter for grammar pedants has fuelled angst for the very future of the German language.

    The issue itself isn’t new. Unlike English, German doesn’t traditionally use apostrophes to show possession. So Uncle Tom’s Cabin, for example, becomes Onkel Toms Hütte in the German translation. But this rule has long been eroded. It’s common to find places like ‘Tina’s Wolllädchen’ – ‘Tina’s Little Wool Shop’ – which should be ‘Tinas Wolllädchen’ according to the old rules.

    Language is the one constant in Germany’s nationhood
    Though the English-style apostrophe is already in widespread use, it’s met with derision by those who consider themselves guardians of the German language. Teachers, journalists and writers refer to it as the ‘Deppen-Apostroph’ – the idiot’s apostrophe. Accordingly, the moral outrage over the rule change has been loud.

    Europe’s largest tabloid Bild is ‘pained’ by the English use of apostrophes. The regional newspaper Volksstimme feels the ‘Council for German Orthography has capitulated’ in assenting to the ‘thousands of little marks between a name and the genitive “s” that have defiled our country for years’. There is an entire website dedicated to the idiot’s apostrophe which pillories particularly egregious examples.

    This may all seem much ado about nothing to an English native speaker. The English language largely follows descriptive patterns whereby dictionaries and rule books change according to the way people use language. In German, it is the other way around. New rules on grammar, spelling and vocabulary have the power to change the way people write and speak.

    Most popular
    Nick Cohen
    Keir Starmer’s fortunes are about to change

    Take the 1996 German orthography reform. Its considerable changes to spelling and punctuation were agreed by the governments of Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein and Switzerland and then implemented in schools and public administration by law. I was in school in Germany at the time and remember how much acrimony this caused the teaching body and the students themselves who would be punished by dissenting against the new rules. It felt odd to add an extra ‘p’ to the word ‘stop’ because it had a short vowel. But it had to be ‘Stopp’ now however wrong that looked.

    The rigidity of German orthography has deep historical roots as a defensive reaction against outside influences on the language. Jacob Grimm, best known for being one half of the Brothers Grimm who collated German fairy tales but also an influential linguist in his own right, was already complaining about English in the early 19th century. Only a language with words as unbending to grammar as English could come up with something as ugly as the gentive ‘s’, he bemoaned.

    Today, English has made much deeper inroads into German. Words like ‘baby’, ‘job’ and ‘okay’ have been part of the German vocabulary for so long that few people would actively recognise them as anglicisms. But in the 1990s, youth slang, marketing and the media began to absorb English words and grammar structures on an unprecedented scale. Teachers and parents tried in vain to stop their children from declaring things and people they approved of as ‘cool’. Cafes offered ‘coffee to go’. Many places to mix German and English, coming up with names like ‘Back Shop’, whereby ‘Back’ isn’t actually English but German for ‘baking’.

    The advance of personal computers and the internet brought words like ‘chat’, ‘dowload’ and ‘e-mail’ into widespread use. Social media and a globalised corporate culture have driven this to whole new levels. It’s now common to hear works like ‘meeting’, ‘call’, ‘coaching’ and ‘deadline’ being used in offices. Identity politics brought words like ‘gender’ and ‘queer’ into the German language. Young people refer to things as ‘safe’, ‘cringe’ or ‘nice’.

    This wave of English vocabulary and the accompanying influence on grammar fuels angst for the survival of the German language itself. Organisations like the Verein Deutsche Sprache – Association for the German Language – encourage people to use German words instead of ‘Denglisch’ ones, i.e. mixing English and German. Its index lists anglicisms and suggests German alternatives. Instead of saying ‘Brexit’, for instance, you could go with ‘Brausgang’, short for ‘Britanniens Ausgang’.

    Efforts to purify the German language have a long tradition. From the 17th to the 19th century, people fretted over French influences as words like ‘Parfüm’ (perfume) and ‘Balkon’ (balkony) entered the language. Previously, it had been the pervasiveness of Latin that had kept German-speakers awake at night. Purists had suggested replacing the word ‘Fenster’ (from the Latin ‘fenestra’ – ‘window’) with ‘Tageleuchter’ – ‘day lighter’. It didn’t catch on.

    It’s easy to ridicule these futile efforts to protect the German language from outside influences. But language is the one constant in Germany’s nationhood. It was only founded as a state in the late 19th century and has since been a constitutional monarchy, a democratic republic, a Nazi dictatorship and a divided nation. Its current boundaries as a unified country are only 34 years old. Defining who or what is German has never been easy, leaving language as the key marker of identity. Any perceived linguistic erosion will always trigger much deeper fears.

    The ‘idiot’s apostrophe’ is no more of a threat to German than the words ‘Fenster’ and ‘Parfüm’ have been. The language will continue to evolve, absorbing foreign influences as it goes. And that’s as much an eternal truth as the existential fears that accompany this process.

    1. Right. That's it.
      I'll boycott the word schadenfreude.
      After all, epicaricacy is good old English word.

    2. The Swede's do not add an 's' for pluralisation, nor do they use the possessive apostrophe.

      A car firm in my next town is called "Alans Bil" [Alan's Car (Company)]. The possessive is given by the addition of the 's'.
      The suffix 'or' or 'ar' denotes a plural. "Bilar" = "Cars".

      Most of the old STOPP signs at Swedish road junctions have now been replaced by ones showing STOP.

      The entrance to a car park is INFART. The exit is UTFART.

      1. Very similar (gosh!) to yer Weegie, Grizz. Small spelling adjustments in Bokmål – Biler = cars, for example.

    3. Judging by my Dutch penfriend, the Dutch add an apostrophe to plurals. The Verein Deutsche Sprache will fare as well as the Academie Francaise when it comes to policing the language people speak. Le meeting dans le grandstanding au weekend aura des problemes de parking.

  80. ""Is it autism, bi-polarity or Narcissistic Personality Disorder with which Starmer is afflicted – or is it all three?""
    Neither. He's just a cnut.

  81. Who here agrees with me that the America's Cup isn't isn't really about yachtsmanship , not like proper yachts are they?

    They are such weird looking vessels, and the helmsman is paddling with this legs , crazy ..

    1. They are still a vessel that floats on water and travels along. The design comes from innovation, in exactly the same way that rafts and coracles morphed into rowing boats and speedboats, and how triremes transmogrified into cruise liners and frigates.

      It's called progress, Maggie.

      1. One would have thought that the person filming and the bloke on the motorbike would have helped her.

        1. Nobody ever interferes, because they always assume it's a domestic fight, so they leave the man to beat up the woman.

      2. 394542+ up ticks,

        Afternoon MM,

        GBH no doubt, I wouldn’t like to take home her housekeeping a lira short, that fraction could put you in traction.

  83. PST in Norway (the security police) have raised the terrorist threat to "High", especially for Jews & Israelis. Border control now includes a police check, so you can't just drive over from Sweden any more.
    Guess what kind of person might be a threat to Jews?

    1. Jeremy Ackbar Bowen – and because of BBC impartiality he has to hate all Jews no matter what religion they are.

      1. No, he is contracted to love them and their 'Dog' and do everything possible to promote their objectives – and he is very good at it.

          2. You know you have made it when you don't have to have money, passports or pass security.

            Like most drug dealers really.

      1. I still have my 67-year-old Raleigh Trent Sports with Sturmey-Archer 3-speed hub and dynohub.

          1. I’m not sure. It is black leather with a thin aluminium strip riveted to the back or side. I must have a closer look at it.

          2. Brooks and Sturmey-Archer were the same company and they used to have factory premises on Triumph Road, Nottingham, just across from the main Raleigh factory.

    2. To restock the 14 Challenger tanks, 700 armoured vehicles, 140 howitzers, at least 3,100 missiles, and more than 10 million rounds of ammunition will cost several billion pounds. I wonder where the replacements will come from. Obscure family companies, benevolent ethical enterprises. non-profit organisations? Difficult choice to make.

      1. "I wonder where the replacements will come from …"

        Chinese coal-fired steelworks, mostly!

          1. My mother was adept with her needles and knitted everything from jumpers, swimming trunks to socks.

            The socks she would knit with three (pointed) needles so the heel was integral. Those socks lasted for years and could be darn repaired. The clickety click of those needles is my abiding memory of her sitting by the fireside knitting effortlessly.

            My younger brother and I wore matching cotton dungarees in a sort of check pattern. My father had brown workman’s dungarees and worked on building sites as a bricklayer and stonemason.

          2. One year at school, they tried to teach the girls how to knit socks.
            I remained stuck on the first heel for about two and half terms.

          3. My mother was a seamstress and seemingly knew everything about clothing once working for a milliner in Quiet Street in Bath prior to marrying before the war. Her “bottom drawer” comprised the most beautiful linen all made in preparation for married life after the war ended.

          4. In addition to quilting MoH is current seeking out suitable material to tailor a coat for eldest granddaughter. She is also an accomplished knitter, happy to create Fair Isle and Shetland Sweaters as well as knitwear for the grandchildren….

          1. :-). There were a couple of tar stains on the skirt.
            My mother bought ready made cloth flowers that she appliquéd over the marks.
            Memory is such a strange thing.

    5. A lovely photograph of you both.
      Today I had planned to spend the afternoon digging out a large compost bin. For later reuse in the garden.
      But it rained. So I spent most of the afternoon looking at stored photographs on our PC. After 8,500.
      I had to stop. But the memories it stirred were wonderful. As your photograph would.

        1. Interesting set up.
          I’ve still got my made in Norway 🇳🇴 flaged woolly hat.
          I just hope I don’t need to wear it too often this winter.
          I bought it in one of the Fjord towns about 10 years ago on a winter cruise.

      2. It's been such a cold, grey and wet day that we've unashamedly hunkered done and done the square root of bu88er-all.
        There were no complaints from Spartie.

      1. Now you tell me.
        Mind you, if I use my Old Fart's card, I could cover the cost of my train fare.

      2. Used to be an advert on the cover of The Times on a Saturday for “Colonic irrigation”. It was next to one advertising “Miss Gem Moufflet” – though I am blowed if I can remember what she offered!

        BTW – are you really Hardcastle??

        3. I remember reading a piece between a couple who collected victorian medical equipment. The thing that stuck in my mind was the fact that one of the chaps had tried his victorian colonic irrigation kit in his back garden noting that it shot a water jet 15 feet into the air and powerful enough to do serious cell damage to the patients' nether parts!

          1. I'm glad you explained – the mids-eye picture of him irrigating himself in the garden was rather alarming, to say the least, might well have put the neighbours off their dinner!

        4. I remember reading a piece between a couple who collected victorian medical equipment. The thing that stuck in my mind was the fact that one of the chaps had tried his victorian colonic irrigation kit in his back garden noting that it shot a water jet 15 feet into the air and powerful enough to do serious cell damage to the patients' nether parts!

  91. A perverted Par Four!

    Wordle 1,211 4/6
    🟨🟨🟨⬜⬜
    ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜
    🟩🟨🟨🟨🟨
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    2. I improved on yesterday’s six.

      Wordle 1,211 3/6

      🟨⬜🟨⬜⬜
      ⬜⬜🟩🟩⬜
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

          1. Thanks lacoste, I was going to guess something a bit more exotic with the same letters but then thought – nah, I always get caught out by something more mundane…

          1. yes, but I nearly chose another word with all the same letters as the final word – so it really sometimes is how you guess!

    5. #MeToo

      Wordle 1,211 4/6

      🟨🟨🟨⬜⬜
      🟩🟩🟩⬜⬜
      🟩🟩🟩⬜⬜
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

  93. Actually, Richard II (a pedant writes) during my interregnum. Alas, there's only so much money you can make from car parking in Leicester.

    2. I think it is better to concentrate on this scepter’d isle, this earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, this other Eden, demi-paradise – a precious stone set in the silver sea than in car parks in the Midlands!

      I learnt this rhyme to get me through Common Entrance History!

      Willy, Willy, Harry, Stee,
      Harry, Dick John, Harry III
      One, Two Three Neds, Richard II
      Henry IV, V, VI then who?
      Edward IV, V, Dick the Bad,
      Harrys Twain the Ned the Lad,
      Mary, Bessie, James the Vain,
      Charlie, Charlie, James again,
      William and Mary, Anna Gloria
      Four Georges, William and Victoria
      Then an Edward, George the Fifth,
      Another Edward, George the Sixth,
      Along then came Queen Bess the Second,
      Then Charles – the dimmest yet we reckoned!

      1. Immigrants and descendants of immigrants all. The small and large boats have been coming uninterrupted for several thousand years. Time to stop them.

    1. Excellent! Good on the lads there.
      With tha paint job, I thought for a moment it is a Shackleton – but the propellers gave it away.

      1. It actually saw service as a bomber in WW2 but was then used for photo reconnaissance in the Arctic until they retired it in 1964.

      1. Almost full length. I don't recall VRA having bomb bay doors that long

        Unfortunately there was no one there that could answer questions, it was just an almost empty hanger with the plane parked inside. .

    4. Three Avro Lancaster B Mark Is of No 44 Squadron, Royal Air Force based at Waddington, Lincolnshire, flying above the clouds. Left to right: W4125,`KM-W', being flown by Sergeant Colin Watt, Royal Australian Air Force; W4162,`KM-Y', flown by Pilot Officer T G Hackney (later killed while serving with No 83 Squadron); and W4187,`KM-S', flown by Pilot Officer J D V S Stephens DFM, who was killed with his crew two nights later during a raid on Wismar.

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9641853f05f3a4c1532c6ea14c801b6fd00871c44bab84e097dd5ba04820fe23.jpg

  97. It has long been said that to have a strong England test team it needs to have a Yorkshireman in it. The record-breaking partnership in the recent test match in Pakistan had not just one Yorkshiremen, but two of the best ever: Joe Root and Harry Brook.

    One of the most refreshing things about their record-breaking partnership is the fact that it was swashbuckling and full of positive strokeplay. The DT's chief cricket writer, Skyld Berry sums up the previous — deplorable — record partnership between two players (both establishment men from the 'Home Counties') who were responsible for an era of debilitatingly boring cricket: Colin Cowdrey and Peter May.

    Record partnership beats one of England’s dark days

    The Daily Telegraph 11 Oct 2024. By Scyld Berry, CHIEF CRICKET WRITER

    It is a red-letter day, now that Joe Root and Harry Brook have posted the highest partnership in the history of English Test cricket – because the previous record stand of 411, by Peter May and Colin Cowdrey, was one of the darker days in the annals.

    May and Cowdrey, at Edgbaston in 1957 against West Indies, added 411 off 190.1 overs of defensive batsmanship and saved the first Test of that series. But, if we can set patriotism aside, it was a partnership that did the sport a disservice, whereas the stand of 454 from 522 balls by Root and Brook was English batsmanship at its glorious best.

    Root and Brook used their bats and played almost a shot a ball. May and, in particular Cowdrey, used their pads as much as their bats to blunt the West Indian mysteryspinner Sonny Ramadhin – and they were allowed to get away with it because there were no neutral umpires and no Decision Review System.

    The consequences of the May/Cowdrey stand were twofold for Test cricket. They killed the threat of Ramadhin: he bowled more balls in that Test innings than anyone ever, 558 in the course of 98 overs, and England went on to win that series 3-0. Ramadhin, who had run through England in the previous home series in 1950, and again in the first innings of that Edgbaston Test – he had taken seven wickets for 49 on what was described as “a perfect pitch” – was never the same again, almost a broken man; and he had cause to lament.

    Whenever Ramadhin hit the front pad in that Test match and appealed, the umpires gave the England batsman not out. He bowled 774 balls in that game, the most in any single innings to that point, and he was renowned for bowling wicket to wicket, yet not a single ball was deemed by the umpires Charlie Elliott and Emrys Davies to be going on to hit the stumps after hitting the pad – not a single ball by Ramadhin or any of the other West Indian bowlers for that matter.

    Ramadhin’s method in that Edgbaston Test was fairly summed up by then Wisden editor Norman Preston: “Ramadhin kept his opponents guessing by his peculiar flick of the right wrist. None could tell his intention, whether he was attempting off-spin or leg-spin. As usual, he kept his shirt sleeves buttoned at the wrists and it was difficult to see how the ball left his right hand. He acquired very little spin and the majority of his wickets were taken with straight balls.” Straight balls, please note. Five of his nine wickets in that Edgbaston Test were clean bowled.
    The second consequence was not far short of fatal for Test cricket.

    Having seen England’s two best batsmen survive by padding away Ramadhin, and never given out leg before, many more batsmen followed their example. The practice came into being of playing at spinners with the pad in front of the bat: as long as you made some vague pretence of playing a stroke, you could not be given out. The effect on county cricket, of a declining tempo of batting, was such that limited-overs cricket had to be invented in 1962.

    The effect on Test cricket was that it entered its most moribund era, crammed with draw after draw, as run-rates crawled at little more than two runs per over. The whole sport declined in popularity, until West Indies played with a flair that fanned the dying embers into revival in the 1960s.
    With this precedent in mind, it was all the more glorious to watch Root and Brook overturn the May-Cowdrey stand – and the joy they took in matching each other, stroke for outrageous stroke, but also perfect orthodoxy in places too.

    May throughout played some strokes amidst his defensiveness, and reached 285 not out off 625 balls before declaring. Cowdrey, prone to go into his shell, reached his century in 7¾ hours – as long as Root and Brook took to score 454. Then Cowdrey showed what he could do by scoring another 50 in 55 minutes, before being dismissed (not lbw) for 154 off 621 balls.

    Both partnerships of 400-plus were magnificent in their way. But the first one by May and Cowdrey came under the category of ce n’est pas la guerre. The Root-Brook stand was the highest in quality as well as numbers.

    Thank goodness the era of the tediously boring cheat, Cowdrey, is long gone.

    1. I have Sonny Ramadhin’s autograph and others from the West Indies team that played against Somerset on the Recreation Ground in Bath in the sixties.

      The site is now Bath Rugby and no longer a County Ground after Fred Truman criticised the playing surface. In those days we were given a day off school to attend such matches.

      Colin Cowdrey was of course the product of Tonbridge School and his initials MCC as his first name was Michael.

    2. For me, the most remarkable aspect of the recent game is that England won it as well.

      I suspect you would have had similar odds to the "Botham Test" vs Australia at Headingly, when Root and Brook came together. Although the bookies will have been more careful than to offer 500-1 as they did to Lillee and Marsh.

      I write "Botham Test" even though I regard the real match winner as Bob Willis.

      1. Indeed. Second-guessing the outcome of a match when the team batting first amass 556 runs is never going to be easy.

      1. As Berry points out, "The practice came into being of playing at spinners with the pad in front of the bat: as long as you made some vague pretence of playing a stroke, you could not be given out."

        In my opinion, whether you attempt to make a stroke or merely pretend to, it still makes for dull cricket for the spectator.

        1. That was my point! The change in the law made sticking the front leg out and holding the bat above the head very much riskier.

          It's also worth noting that over rates were higher then, more than 117 per day in the May-Cowdrey match.

    4. "They killed the threat of Ramadhin: he bowled more balls in that Test innings than anyone ever, 558 in the course of 98 overs"

      Not so, according to https://www.cricketcountry.com/articles/peter-may-colin-cowdrey-add-411-runs-for-4th-wicket-against-west-indies-to-save-test-27386/ it was more.

      "May’s innings had lasted 595 minutes, and he had hit 25 fours and 2 sixes. Ramadhin, on the other hand, finished with the bowling analysis of 98-35-179-2, bowling 588 balls in the innings, and going past Valentine’s 552 balls at Trent Bridge in 1950."

      If you do the arithmetic the 588 balls makes more sense. It might have been boring but still an amazing feat.

      A scorecard of the match here.

      https://www.espncricinfo.com/series/west-indies-tour-of-england-1957-61875/england-vs-west-indies-1st-test-62825/full-scorecard

  100. Where's the one kept that's still operational? (the Canadian one obviously not the BoBMF one)

    1. VRA is kept at a Air force museum in Hamilton which is just west of Toronto.

      VRA is still working, along with several other old aircraft, For a not so small fee you can enjoy a flight that lasts about an hour that takes you over Niagara Falls.

  101. It used to be hangared with the Battle of Britain flight in Cranfield – back in the late 1980s.

  102. Their vision is not clouded by any exposure to nasty business moguls then, the new laws will be unsullied by crass profit motives.

    Oof course their efforts will ruin industry but surely that is a small prude to pay for such excellent values.

    1. I went straight to Wings over Scotland but they haven’t posted anything yet. One wonders where this leaves the investigation of what went on over his failed prosecution.

        1. How is it poor taste to be wondering whether the death of Salmond will now stop any investigation of possible SNP malfeasance over his trial in its tracks?
          I take no pleasure in his demise but neither am I shedding tears.

      2. I doubt that any politician in the know will have submitted to the jabs. They all knew too much about lack of testing and its true purpose viz. a means by which nations could simultaneously be cowed and controlled.

    4. Agree, it's been on hold for some time following non-investigation into Nicky and husband's affairs.

    5. Again. Not “independence”. They are in a union. The have representatives who sit in the UK Parliament. What they want is secession. They cannot have “independence” because theoretically they are not “dependent”.

      1. You are correct. I only used the word ‘independence’ because it is common parlance.

  106. And another thing – about creekit. Yesterday or today there appeared in a broadsheet newspaper a photo of the scorer's page of England's 1st innings . Took me back 70 years – I had imagined, somehow, that there would be some computerised, digital system. But no. All donme by hand.

    I simply cannot find it…I wanted to show the MR. There is an image available on t'Google – but it has a copyright sticker obscuring the total.

    Any fans (Stig?) see it, as well???

  107. Salmond dead? Good effort Grim Reaper, indeed 8/10 but still not Bliar so that cost you a couple of marks.
    Better luck next time eh?

      1. No more than he was.
        It's taken me a lifetime's worth of left wing hate to make me this way.

        1. It just has echoes of those celebrating Maggie's death. You can dislike, indeed detest, someone's politics but they're still people with families

          1. I suspect I won't live to see Tony Blair's death, and whilst I agree with your point in general, if I get my wish I am afraid that I will celebrate many times, should I outlive him.

            I regard him as one of the most evil people ever to have lived, and utterly despise what he and his wrecking crew did to the UK and the damage that continues to be done because of his Premiership.

            His actions on the world stage were, and continue to be, very damaging.

          2. I share your character assessment of Blair. He's doing as much damage now as he did in No 10. Almost everything wrong with this country has got his DNA on it.

          3. Yet when he dies, he will have a family too… (from what I have seen publicly, not really anything to be proud of).

          4. I'm afraid I shall be unable to shed a tear over his demise when it comes. Alex Salmond was at least a racegoer.

          5. I’m happy to say that I won’t shed a tear over either of them. Or many other poisonous people…

          7. Indeed yes, I feel less than comfortable about my hypocrisy however these people have damaged our world and group of countries so much that I'm afraid I can only feel, perhaps not happiness but maybe a relief that they have gone to a reward they so richly deserve.

          8. Not really. Their families are unlikely to read on NoTTL, and happily we can current give vent to our opinions and feelings. Plus, just because you are related to a sh!t doesn't make you necessarily whiter than white. They must have known what their family member was doing.

          10. No but I thought that you indicated that out of consideration for his family we couldn't say what we thought of him. Which I agree with if it is done very publicly and at insensitive moments (like Thatcher's funeral procession?) But not here.

          1. He has many many disciples is the problem we have…longevity…see his Tony Blair Institute website.

  108. That's me for this cold – and occasionally wet – day. Spent an hour digging up six rose plants that have been here for 50 years. Roots more than two feet deep……

    Had hoped to have a bike outing but the weather was against me.

    Have a spiffing evening.

    A demain.

  109. Jim Antle
    The telltale signs that Kamala Harris knows she’s losing
    If the election were held today, Donald Trump would likely emerge victorious

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

    Lisa Parker
    2 days ago
    News outlets are having to edit her answers to basic questions. She's a gibbering mess.

    Jim Bergerac
    2 days ago
    Reply to Lisa Parker – view message
    By edit, I think you mean replace!
    https://x.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1844349221673095258
    utter scandal

    Steven McFarland
    1 day ago
    Reply to Lisa Parker
    So stand by for the next fix. This election will be stolen, just like the last one.

    Philip Searle
    1 day ago
    Would we vote for a David Lammy? Even if we were mildly Left-wIng? Harris (or Lammy) are almost mirror identical victims of over promotion over and above their capabilities. Both are a bit of an embarrassment on the world stage.

    1. I watched Tucker Carlson interviewing Harmeet Dillon (?) an American lawyer who has known Kamala Harris for twenty years. She paints Harris as an incompetent lawyer and a criminal.

      Harris has always been in government employ and slept with influential politicians including Willie Brown of San Francisco corruption fame. Californian politics is exclusively owned by wealthy Democrats funded by Getty and other family concerns.

      2. Busy listening to the latest Winston Marshall podcast, with Miranda Devine (the bestselling-selling author of 'Laptop From Hell' and 'The Big Guy: How A President And His Son Sold Out America'.)

        Notably she was the journalist at the New York Post who Rudy Guiliani trusted with the infamous Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020.

        In the podcast, they discuss the Biden Family dealings – from China to Ukraine, and every way they've taken advantage of Joe Biden's position as leader of the Free World.

        https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-winston-marshall-show/id1727337401?i=1000672821204

    2. I watched Tucker Carlson interviewing Harmeet Dillon (?) an American lawyer who has known Kamala Harris for twenty years. She paints Harris as an incompetent lawyer and a criminal.

      Harris has always been in government employ and slept with influential politicians including Willie Brown of San Francisco corruption fame. Californian politics is exclusively owned by wealthy Democrats funded by Getty and other family concerns.

          2. Must be – he is obviously worried that any male looking at her will lust after her. These third-worlders really show their civilisational pedigree…

          4. I don't need to in that one's case. Most of them are in any case mutton dressed as dishevelled daleks. Men would have to be pretty desperate…

            Anyway, most civilised men in the West don't attack lamb just because it is walking down the street.

          6. How so? As I indicated, most civilised Western males (even sheep shaggers) don't attack lamb because it is walking down the street … ;o)

          7. I don't need to in that one's case. Most of them are in any case mutton dressed as dishevelled daleks. Men would have to be pretty desperate…

            Anyway, most civilised men in the West don't attack lamb just because it is walking down the street.

        1. After all they went through to keep their country safe. I can only imagine what my parents would have to say now if they could see what all these political idiots have done to our country.

  113. Darker than the inside of a cabinet minister now, and hissing down with rain.
    Sometimes, places further South seem attractive… like Thailand, Sudan, even Sicily.

      1. To be honest, the less the press reports on those two grifters the better. From what I have seen they are both thoroughly obnoxious people and spoilt brats.

        1. If they still claim anything at all in any respect from UK tax payers, Hertslass – we should know.

  116. Whatever happened to Peace on Earth & goodwill to all men…?

    France has embarked on a quiet force build-up and expansion of its troops and military presence in NATO's 'eastern flank' country of Romania. It plans to send thousands more French troops to the country which shares a large border with Ukraine for major military drills planned next year.

    "We used to play war," French General Bertrand Toujouse was quoted in Politico as saying. "Now there's a designated enemy, and we train with people with whom we'd actually go to war."

    Politico has further cited French army leadership as saying it has "new marching orders from NATO," and that ultimately the plan is that by 2027 it "should be able to deploy a war-ready division in 30 days."

  117. Just read about the electric buses that drive past Firstborn's place – they are rubbish.
    First supplied with no heater – and this in part of the country where colder than -20C isn't a surprise in winter.
    Now upgraded to have diesel-fired heaters! But, on a route that's about 4 hours long, no toilet. Often, one has to change bus half-way, as there isn't enough charge to run the whole route!
    Nowhere to stow luggage, either, all the space is taken up with heater / diesel tanks and battery…
    Isn't electric drive wonderful?

    2. We have electric buses here where I live in Spain. Noiseless, a luxury in a country addicted to noise. No complaints at all.

  118. Just read about the electric buses that drive past Firstborn's place – they are rubbish.
    First supplied with no heater – and this in part of the country where colder than -20C isn't a surprise in winter.
    Now upgraded to have diesel-fired heaters! But, on a route that's about 4 hours long, no toilet. Often, one has to change bus half-way, as there isn't enough charge to run the whole route!
    Nowhere to stow luggage, either, all the space is taken up with heater / diesel tanks and battery…
    Isn't electric drive wonderful?

  120. Evening, all. The time for lighting the Rayburn is fast approaching. The oil heating is starting to struggle to get the house up to temperature. As I've been out most of the day recently, I didn't think it was worth it to light the stove, but I am due to be at home more from Monday, so it seems it's time to bite the bullet then.

    Hate and envy is all that Labour has.

    1. Apropos heating, I have just invested in an electric blanket. Winter is just around the corner. Brrrr!

      2. I don't like electric blankets (plus I am trying to get away from using electricity – I've just had my latest bill). I prefer hot water bottles if it's really cold.

  121. 394542+ up ticks,

    May one ask,

    Playing devils advocate in an imaginary scenario as in the first 100 days of Tommy Robinson as PM ?

    You want radical change then put Tommy Robinson in as leader of the reform party and in the heart of Parliament, NOT Belmarsh, guaranteed change, BIG TIME.

    1. Sorry ogga. Although TR has some valid points he doesn't have the intellect to deal with the huge canvas that is the UK – indeed it's clear that many, many elected politicians also lack that attribute.

      1. 394542+ up ticks,

        Evening S,
        I believe we are en masse sorry over these last three plus decades,
        for putting trust again,again,& again in political intellectuals who in the main have never been in prison but are well deserving of it.

        The current political mobsters are lacking one main ingredient and that is patriotism, which Tommy Robinson has in abundance.

        IMHO
        This huge canvas which is the UK
        one can only say currently, is being totally abused by a great many
        treacherously dodgy political painters.

      2. You mean that the present wrecking crew are doing better that TR could. I beg to differ! Just look at Milibraine for a start…

    2. Sorry ogga. Although TR has some valid points he doesn't have the intellect to deal with the huge canvas that is the UK – indeed it's clear that many, many elected politicians also lack that attribute.

  122. from Coffee House, the Spectator
    Alex Salmond was an unstoppable force of nature
    Iain Macwhirter12 October 2024, 7:15pm
    It is hard to believe that I will no longer wake up on Monday mornings to the sound of Alex Salmond on the phone, either berating me for my latest offence against journalism or telling me what I should be saying about the latest political scandal. The former SNP leader and First Minister of Scotland was of the old school: combative and relentless, always on the phone, never stopping, never at rest, a 24/7 politician. We always said he would never cease promoting the cause of Scottish independence while he still had breath in his body. He didn’t. Alex Salmond died in Macedonia, shortly after giving a speech.

    He was the most astute, gifted, and energetic politician of his generation
    The Scottish political world is in genuine shock. Alex Salmond was never the healthiest of politicians – he was massively overweight for a start. But his energy seemed to belie his body image. He seemed an unstoppable force of nature.

    Alex Salmond first came to national attention in 1982, when he was expelled from the Scottish National Party as part of the left-wing ’79 group. He had been an oil economist for the Royal Bank of Scotland and was regarded as a bit of a mischief maker by the party establishment. But he was soon returned to the fold as the MP for Banff and Buchan in 1987.

    The UK media took notice when he disrupted Nigel Lawson’s Budget speech that year in protest at the imposition of the poll tax in Scotland. Three years later, he became leader of the Scottish National Party which, in 1990, was still a narrow nationalist organisation, determinedly eurosceptic and deeply suspicious of devolution, which was regarded by the faithful as a devious BritNat diversion from the true path of Scottish independence. The SNP had boycotted the cross-party Scottish Constitutional Convention which had been campaigning for the restoration of the Scottish parliament. Salmond soon changed all that.

    He placed his party and his personality firmly behind devolution, joining with the Labour leader Donald Dewar and the Liberal Democrat David Steel in delivering the landslide results in the 1997 devolution referendum.

    Salmond also formulated the SNP’s new policy of ‘independence in Europe’. This was premised on the idea that, because Scotland and England were committed to membership of the European Union, independence could be reframed – shorn of its old associations with separatism and division. Instead of leaving the UK, Scotland would be joining Europe – equal at last with England in the new Europe of the regions. Indeed, Salmond often talked of Scotland becoming nominally independent in a ‘new UK’, with the Queen remaining head of state, and both countries remaining borderless within the European Single Market.

    Labour thought that devolution would ‘kill nationalism stone dead’. It did the reverse. In the 2007 Scottish parliament election, Salmond finessed his way into Bute House by doing a deal with the Scottish Conservative leader, Annabel Goldie, to form a minority administration. It was a classic example of Salmond pragmatism – or opportunism, as his detractors regarded it. Most commentators thought the fragile SNP administration would fall within months. However, working in collaboration across the parties, it somehow worked and is now regarded, even by many non-nationalists, as one of the most effective administrations since the Scottish parliament was created in 1999. Certainly, the voters approved, and Salmond won a landslide majority in the 2011 Scottish parliamentary election. He even defeated the d’Hondt electoral system and delivered an overall majority of seats in a PR parliament.

    Salmond then persuaded the Conservative Prime Minister, David Cameron, to agree to a referendum. The Edinburgh Agreement in 2012 ceded to Holyrood the power to hold a legally binding referendum on whether Scotland should be an independent country. Cameron clearly thought it would be a unionist walkover since support for independence was running at less than 30 per cent in the opinion polls. But he hadn’t reckoned with Salmond’s populist appeal and boundless energy. The 2014 Independence Referendum turned into a near-death experience for the British state as the ‘Yes’ campaign ignited political engagement in Scotland.

    In the end, Scotland voted to remain in the UK (55 per cent to 45 per cent), but only after the UK party leaders had dashed across the border promising to deliver a new constitutional settlement for Scotland in the now infamous ‘Vow’. Salmond resigned the day after the defeat, handing over the reins to his protégé, Nicola Sturgeon. No one could have predicted the acrimonious split that followed. The independence movement was shattered by a lurid sexual harassment case against Alex Salmond.

    Salmond successfully challenged the Scottish government in the Court of Session in January 2019, winning a judgement that the disciplinary process that had accused him of sexual misconduct had been ‘tainted with apparent bias’. He was awarded costs of £512,000.

    Soon after he was arrested and charged with 14 counts of sexual harassment and attempted rape. Salmond was acquitted on all counts in the High Court in March 2020, but the stain on his character remained. Even as he died, he was pursuing legal action for damages against the Scottish government for what he called a ‘malicious’ conspiracy to destroy his career and have him wrongfully imprisoned.

    The full facts of the Salmond affair have never been made public and probably never will – nor the identities of his accusers. But Salmond was convinced that a claque of senior SNP figures had concocted the charges in order to prevent him returning to active politics in 2018.

    The division at the top of the SNP – and Nicola Sturgeon’s failure to deliver independence despite successive election victories – contributed massively to the decline and fall of the Scottish National Party. The independence movement was divided and at war with itself. Salmond went on to form a breakaway Alba party, which failed to win any seats at the general election in July. His old party lost 38 MPs and all prospect of winning the repeat referendum on independence that Nicola Sturgeon had promised before she resigned in February 2023.

    Alex Salmond took the SNP from electoral irrelevance to the governance of Scotland. He was the most astute, gifted, and energetic politician of his generation. It may be a cliché to say that we’ll never see the like again – but that doesn’t make it any less true.

    1. Guilty or not guilty as charged, it was still Lawfare at its finest.
      The Left thrive on it to try to destroy their opponents.

  123. Bugger.
    After a day of doing not very much I was most of the way through 200+ comments when I made the mistake of trying to respond to Anne's Atomkraft post and got kicked out.

  124. I've, just read that Alex Salmond has passed away. I'm sure if it's true it will be mentioned on the news later.
    RIP.

    1. A heart attack I think after giving a speech in Macedonia. 69 years old, nearly 70. The news made me feel rather sad although he was never my favourite politician. I suppose we tend to feel sorry when people die. He seemed to be enjoying his life.

        1. North Macedonia. I’ve read it several times and they commented on GB news.
          He was a long way from home.

      1. It’s strange this day and advanced medical age, this has happened to someone who’s health probably would have been regularly checked.

        1. He may have missed his appointments, or just decided to chance it. My mum had an aneurysm in her 40’s, was prescribed tablets for high BP, she decided they upset her digestion (no alternative was suggested or prescribed) so she stopped taking them. Another aneurysm followed, resulting in her death. Plus, in Salmond’s case travelling from one time zone to another might not have helped taking meds on a ‘daily’ basis, which happened to my husband missing diabetes meds. Too many people are too over-subscribed too many meds. Sorry for rant, Eddy :-))

  125. DT article

    Poland suspends right to asylum in challenge to EU
    Donald Tusk, the Polish prime minister, says the move is needed in order to counter Belarus and Russia trying to destabilise the bloc

    Poland will temporarily ban migrants from claiming asylum on its territory, Donald Tusk, the prime minister, said on Saturday.

    Announcing the move, Mr Tusk said that Warsaw “must regain 100 per cent control over who comes to Poland”.

    The Civic Platform party leader said the suspension of the right to claim asylum was needed with Russia-allied Belarus funneling migrants to the Polish border as part of a hybrid war to destabilise the EU.

    But Mr Tusk, who was European Council president during the Brexit negotiations, also framed the move as part of wider efforts to toughen Poland’s migration policies.

    “If someone wants to come to Poland, they must respect Polish standards, Polish customs, they must want to integrate,” Mr Tusk said.

    He said neighbouring Germany, a popular destination for migrants, had “negative experiences” with immigration after ignoring integration. “If there are too many people of other cultures, then the native culture feels threatened,” the Polish prime minister added.

    1. Tusk is clearly a bit slow on the uptake. He has only to visit London to see the destruction of civic society brought about by uncontrolled immigration of the Third World into a formerly great country.

  126. 394542+ up ticks,

    We are not silly as a nation we HAVE THEM SURROUNDED,
    devilishly clever these majority voters defending the realm in this manner

    Dt,

    The return of al-Qaeda and Islamic State
    The drums of global jihadism are again sounding around the world

    1. Having kept the Islamists out of Poland for many years, I don't think Tusk wanted to be remembered as the one who opened the door.

  128. Has the worm turned?

    "Poland will temporarily ban migrants from claiming asylum on its territory, Donald Tusk, the prime minister, said on Saturday.
    Announcing the move, Mr Tusk said that Warsaw “must regain 100 per cent control over who comes to Poland”.
    The Civic Platform party leader said the suspension of the right to claim asylum was needed with Russia-allied Belarus funneling migrants to the Polish border as part of a hybrid war to destabilise the EU.
    But Mr Tusk, who was European Council president during the Brexit negotiations, also framed the move as part of wider efforts to toughen Poland’s migration policies."

      1. I saw that Kamala Harris has labelled Orban a terrorist and that some nutty Polish General has demanded Poland attacks St. Petersburg.

        The latter threat puts me in mind of Polish soldiers on horseback going up against German tanks and artillery in a previous war.

        2. Kamala should look to her own labels, hadn’t heard/read about the Polish General, wasn’t Tusk was it 😀

  129. Well, chums, it's well before my bedtime, but I think I'll have an early night tonight. So a Good Night to you all, sleep well, and see you all tomorrow.

  130. From the Spectator

    This UFO testimony had me hooked
    Plus: Radio 4's Surrealism Remixed brings home how conformist, conservative and uncreative we have become

    Daisy Dunn
    In October 1964, a young man was driving to a dance in Hamburg, Pennsylvania, when his radio began to pick up a strange frequency. At first he thought it was just tuning in to a local channel, but then voices came through discussing some kind of nuclear war – and issuing bomb reports.

    Recalling the incident decades later, the driver described the simultaneous appearance of a star overhead followed by the sudden realisation that he could see through the floor of his car.

    ‘I hadn’t done any dope, I wasn’t doing any beer,’ he adds so casually that you feel inclined to believe him. And yet his body felt like jelly. The episode only lasted what seemed like five or ten minutes, but on arriving at the dance, the man realised that the half-hour journey had actually taken nearly two hours. He never found a logical explanation for what had happened.

    Aliens, it would seem,are fascinated by human transport
    Between 1980 and 1992, a Cornell graduate from Ohio named John P. Timmerman travelled across America with a recorder and case of cassette tapes. Diversifying from his day job as the owner of an air-conditioning business, he spent his weekends conducting interviews in shopping malls as a volunteer for the Center for UFO Studies. In each mall he visited, he asked shoppers whether they had ever experienced anything inexplicable. The jellified driver was just one of nearly 1,200 people he spoke to across the course of his peculiar career.

    We Are Not Alone, which airs on BBC Radio 4 this Sunday evening, replays a selection of these interviews in one continuous stream. There is no introduction – and no explanation – and the only interruptions during the programme are the clicks of a tape ending, the ‘this is side two, cassette one’, type markers made by Timmerman himself and, in the final three minutes, some appreciative reflections from Timmerman’s son. I became quickly hooked.

    What struck me, in particular, was how many of the close encounters described took place when people were travelling. Aliens, it would seem, are fascinated by human transport. One woman spoke of a saucer-like object with multi-coloured lights zooming towards her car and disappearing only when another car came into sight. A man with 40 years’ experience in the aviation industry assessed that the sophisticated flying object he saw had no jet engine and was manifestly ‘not from this Earth’.

    Most popular
    Iain Macwhirter
    Alex Salmond was an unstoppable force of nature

    Many reports released in recent years offer more comprehensive descriptions of sightings than those gathered by Timmerman. But the raw beauty of some of the latter nevertheless astounds.

    The captain of a commercial jet summoned the most striking image of the glow he observed while flying north of the Grand Canyon. It was ‘something like the light of the Aurora Borealis’, he recalled, ‘only it was encompassing most of the western sky’. Within it appeared a sphere ‘about the size of a moon when it comes over the horizon’. The moon itself was half-full and directly overhead.

    On his journey, Timmerman inevitably encountered some cranks. Top marks go to the woman who informed him that UFOs live inside mountains and only come out at night. ‘How did you know this?’ Timmerman asked her. ‘A lady told me on the bus,’ she replied.

    But for the most part, the people recorded were characterised by their wonder and yearning for something beyond what the eye usually sees. The fascination you hear in their voices is as captivating as the stories themselves. The programme will leave you gazing skywards.

    The strange and uncanny preoccupied the surrealists as they sought their own kind of alternative universe. To mark the centenary of the publication of the first Surrealist Manifesto, actor and art enthusiast Russell Tovey presents a three-part series, also on Radio 4. He is joined by a long – possibly too long – list of luminous talking heads, including Martin Creed, David Shrigley and Vic Reeves.

    Tovey attempts to hook the series further on the idea that we are hurtling towards surrealism today. ‘It’s all so surreal,’ he says, mimicking those who use the adjective to describe everything from getting a new job to winning three numbers on the lottery. You almost long for an immediate lecture on overuse of the term.

    The notion that our society is truly surreal appears increasingly optimistic as the episodes go on. Surrealism, as we learn, grew out of dadaism, a movement characterised by a nihilistic approach to the past. The seeds of revolution were believed to lie in the rejection of rationalism in favour of uncertainty. Dreams, specifically, were thought to offer a fresh future for mankind. It was all about tapping into the unconscious.

    It is actually a strength of this series, which is nicely produced and accompanied by unsettling dream-world/extra-terrestrial sound effects, that it brings home how conformist, conservative and uncreative we have become.

    1. Sitting in the back seat of my dad's Morris 8 as a child I could see through the floor of the car.
      There was an explanation – there was a metal plate, covering a hole, about 4" in diameter that you could swivel round to reveal the road beneath.

    2. Why only a million? There's probably more than that here now; there'll be millions more by 2029.

      1. One million makes a good, catchy headline. Even one million will be impossible for him to achieve for a number of reasons – where does he send the stateless ones without passports?

    4. You just cannot trust the Tories any more. They have lied through their teeth to us for years. Why will that change. if they have a leader they do not want they will change him/her. just like they did with Truss.

      1. It's the party that is the problem. Can they change that? If not, what is the point of changing their leaders? Which they do like socks.

    5. Well yes, how could we not. However, I've been told (by someone in government) we can't leave the ECHR because it's part of the NI Agreement. So we'll how he does it, if elected.

    6. He isn't my idea of a statesman .

      Not a patch on the old men of politics like dare I say Heseltine, Lawson, Brittan , Lamont, Gow, Maude, and Douglas Hurd .

    7. There are three kinds of lies. There are lies; there are damn lies; and there are politicians' promises.

  135. From John Ward exiled in the Gambia…
    "But the tooth-grinding nature of life as a member of Homo sapiens on Planet Earth is a more invasive irritant in 2024 than it was in [for example] 1492….when one lived a much briefer life, but could evade over 90% of any and all Government attempts to generally boss you around or put you into a spurious sin-bin.

    The first author to really get to grips with the issue of above-the-law Government was Franz Kafka – who, by writing the novel The Trial during 1915 (the story of a man being prosecuted for crimes against the State but being denied the right to know what the crimes were) spawned the adjective kafkaesque to describe the Secret State. It is horribly ironic that Franz died before anyone would publish his novel, which didn’t appear until 1925….by which time, of course, Stalin was already starting work on the construction of his Gulag State and its eighteen million mysterious arrests.

    In 1948 [the year of my birth, as it happens] George Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty Four about a citizen – employed by a totalitarian State at the so-called Ministry of Truth – called Winston Smith. Smith’s job is to examine articles from the past, look for facts that prove the regime is lying in the present – and then process the piece to be ‘disappeared’ along with the author. This book in turn spawned the adjective orwellian. There is – alongside a tragic love story in the mix – the appearance in the novel of Room 101, where Smith is himself tortured and then ordered to see four fingers when only two are being displayed by his interrogator….for only when he submits to this lie “will he be cured”.

    The two novels are seminal studies in torment. But as the first quartile of our century draws to close, two genuine Truths need to be taken on board:

    1. We are all at the mercy of fabulously monied power-junkies who would regard the two novels not as a warning, but rather as a blueprint for the construction of irreversible dystopia.

    2. Awareness of Kafka and Orwell is negligible, primarily as a result of politicised education that in and of itself peddles pc and wokeism as the only right answer.

    Although my younger daughter studied modern literature at University, over a pizza lunch with her and several fellow students in her final year, it became clear that neither of the novels I’m describing here was ‘on the syllabus’.

    A bright and University educated family relative I have by marriage rather than blood is fond of saying things like “You can’t say that sort of thing these days” or “I can’t believe you just said that”. This depresses me more than I can fully describe.

    At a Party some twenty years ago, a voluble collection of Oxbridge students were giving forth on Britain’s “obsession with history”. “Ah but you see,” I ventured wickedly, “that’s the thing with history….it’s a thing of the past”.
    I was feted for the remark – purely because they thought I was being serious. The wit went 40,000 feet over their heads.

    A dark corner of me wanted to strangle them.
    I plead guilty to being a Baby-Boomer. If such is a crime, I relish the guilt: but to complete the circle here – despite the downsides of African culture – I will probably die in The Gambia because here, life is still real: I am free to say what the fuck I like, and yet be pretty certain that no plonker is going to look horrified or slag me off as a Thought Criminal.

    That above all is the saving grace of life here.
    But as a white First World westerner, the way of life can evoke intense annoyance at times.

    1. This evening I’ve been to a performance of the Monteverdi Vespers of 1610. The text includes, “Nigra sum, sed formosa, filiae Jerusalem”. Obviously an extract from the Song of Solomon. How many of the super educated young would squeal because there’s a naughty word and not recognise its origin?

      1. Do they still learn Latin at school?
        Our concert this afternoon was Pergolesi's Stabat Mater, and Vivaldi's Gloria. Very good local choir, good soloists and a period orchestra. Very well attended, the church was pretty full. The conductor was also the counter tenor, and bassoon player. He's very versatile! also director of Music at Pembroke college, Oxford.

      2. Do they still learn Latin at school?
        Our concert this afternoon was Pergolesi's Stabat Mater, and Vivaldi's Gloria. Very good local choir, good soloists and a period orchestra. Very well attended, the church was pretty full. The conductor was also the counter tenor, and bassoon player. He's very versatile! also director of Music at Pembroke college, Oxford.

      3. I am black but comely!

        Ever since at Sunday School, I couldn't tell right from wrong
        And rated higher than the book of Isaiah, the Song of Solomon

        Jeremy Taylor wrote a marvellous song in the 1960s called Confession.

        Everyone, I just don't know why I'm singing you this song
        God knows that I wouldn't hurt a fly and I never would do you wrong
        But society keeps telling me, I simply don't fit in
        I wasn't you see, cut out to be, a respectable citizen
        At balls and dinner parties, I'm always the only one
        Who is quite unable to make polite conversation
        My questions are too simple to be misunderstood
        Like, what's your name, do you smoke a pipe or do you believe in God?
        Not to be sensible is a sin that's reprehensible
        And that is why they say that I am not respectable
        Mr. Jones, I'll make no bones, please listen to my plea
        I love your daughter Sally and I'm sure that she loves me
        And if you agree I think that we could very soon be wed
        I promise to love and honour her until the day I'm dead
        This marriage said he is a certainty, provided you can guarantee
        To give your wife an easy life and lots of security
        Now in truth I was unable to fulfill this demand
        And straightway was the victim of a severe reprimand
        And as he took his shotgun from off the kitchen wall
        I quickly beat a swift retreat and vanished down the hall
        The next night as I lay and cried, Sally came to my bedside
        And now I'm guilty as you see, of immorality
        Well, one fine day I'll make my way to 10 Downing Street
        Good day, I'll say, I've come a long way, excuse my naked feet
        But I lack you see, the energy to buy a pair of shoes
        I lose my zest to look my best, when I read the daily news
        'Cause it appears you've got an atom bomb
        That'll blow us all to hell and gone
        If I've got to die then why should I give a damn if my boots aren't on
        Three cheers for the army and all the boys in blue
        Three cheers for the scientists and politicians too
        Three cheers for the future years, when we shall surely reap
        All the joys of living on a nuclear rubbish heap
        I would fight quite willingly in the forces of Her Majesty
        But not to the price of sacrificing all of humanity
        When Adam loved Eve they said that he was very much to blame
        But if it had been me beneath that tree, I would have done the same
        Psychiatrists always insist there's something wrong with me
        My eyes won't rest on a woman's breast with equanimity
        Forgive me madam, if I stare, but I love the colour of your hair
        My soul is quite out of control, my heart beyond repair
        Now the vicar and congregation of the local parish church
        Show an inclination to leave me in the lurch
        Ever since at Sunday School, I couldn't tell right from wrong
        And rated higher than the book of Isaiah, the Song of Solomon
        I know that I didn't oughta, fall in love with the vicar's daughter
        Now that she has wounded me for all eternity
        My song is done, there's only one more thing to say
        Forgive me if I've bored you stiff, I'll soon be on my way
        For bye and bye I'll have to die and leave the things I love
        And in disgrace come face to face with the good Lord up above
        Who knows if he won't punish me with a million years of purgatory
        For blasphemy, impurity and general insanity
        But when amongst the angels we come to take our place
        I hope you will not think it too much of a disgrace
        If I present to God on high a humble offering
        Of twenty years of sweat and tears and the songs I love to sing
        And if in heaven it should prove true that God likes the musicians too
        We'll sing and play and dance all day and no-one there will say us nay
        And all our troubles will melt away, we'll never again be blue

  141. Seems Thieves has been claiming expenses for accountancy help filing her tax return.

    You and i, acting in a personal capacity, are not entitled to do that.

    Two-tier? Double standards. Surprised?

    2. It's these little things that make her so well qualified to be Chancellor of the Exchequer isn't it.

Comments are closed.