Saturday 13 August: Truss and Sunak face urgent questions on energy policy and on mass immigration

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here.

504 thoughts on “Saturday 13 August: Truss and Sunak face urgent questions on energy policy and on mass immigration”

  5. Good morning all. Another bright & sunny start with 11°C outside. A hot, sweaty & sleepless night last night.

  6. ‘Morning, Peeps.  It was 21°C at 06:10, which explains the awful, sweaty night when sleep was at times impossible.  Ms Swallox has severely overstayed her welcome!

    Another 31° today, but thankfully there will be a slight reduction tomorrow and then, by Tuesday, a great improvement.  Who knows, the promised rain may appear.  I for one will welcome the return of typical August weather…

    Today’s leading letter:

    SIR – As a member of the Conservative Party, I have received an email headed: “Tell your priorities to the next prime minister.” This had a link to a survey asking me to select the most important of 18 major policy issues. I quickly ran my finger down the list, then read it more carefully, vainly searching for the topic that has dominated the headlines for weeks: energy policy.

    Fortunately, there was an “other” option that enabled me to plead with our next prime minister to scrap the ruinous pursuit of net zero.

    Have the brain cells at Central Office dried up in the hot weather? Do they think that by avoiding honest questions, they can limit the awkward discussions that we must have?

    Fortunately, both Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak have enlisted some of the best policy wonks from the top think tanks but, as we have seen from Boris Johnson’s administration, bright ambitious young advisers are not always good team players.

    Lord Frost shows that he has a deep understanding of the many problems facing us, a willingness to admit our mistakes, and the ideas to take us forward. He also has the experience to manage a team and stick to a strategy.

    So the real priority for the next prime minister is to appoint Lord Frost as chief of staff, to implement the policies which will save us from a future socialist coalition, and from continuing decline.

    Alan Rogers
    Epsom, Surrey

    Well said, Mr Rogers!

    A BTL poster writes:

    Kevin Bell 5 HRS AGO

    In response to Alan Rogers letter. I’m presently reading Tom Bower’s fantastic biography of Tony Blair. All the problems of today owe their origins to New Labour. Mass immigration was started then, the reliance on an energy market rather than energy independence through nuclear, tax credits and the growth of the welfare State, devolution, the failed wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the growth in NHS bureaucracy. You can go on and on. You can trace them all back to 1997.

    None of Cameron, May, Johnson have sought a different direction and these failed policies continue. Liz Truss is probably our last hope to end this disastrous period in our post war history. She must make a clean decisive break with the blight of Blairism. We need a PM with a set of conservative principles and with the strength and determination to see the change through.

    * * *

    I have no doubt that Kevin Bell is right – and I admire his fortitude in being able to read a whole book about the Bliar creature, which is well beyond my endurance!

    1. Do they think that by avoiding honest questions, they can limit the awkward discussions that we must have?

      Yes they do actually Mr Rogers. If you’d been paying attention you would have noticed that this has been de riguer for at least ten years!

    2. Liz Truss, oh yes, Liz Truss. Accomplished very little in her previous roles. But, if we want a PM ready to use nuclear weapons on very little provocation then Liz Truss is the one.

  7. These BTLs caught my eye, even though they do not appear to relate to today’s batch of letters:

    Edwin Pugh1 HR AGO

    On the BBC web pages is an article that claims to debunk five common myths about UK heatwaves. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-62505711

    However, the debunking needs to be debunked.

    1. It’s not the colours used on the weather charts that are the problem but how they are used. There is plenty of evidence from old forecasts that temperatures that used to be shown as yellow/green are now shown as bright red.

    2. Yes, there are criteria that the location of a weather station has to follow. The problem is that few of them actually do. There are concerns too that the automatic sensors now used may not be an accurate reflection of temperature.

    3. Generally speaking summer deaths have been declining. The article claims 915 excess in the hottest days last year with no evidence to actually attribute those deaths to heat. Mortality rates in July and August have been declining since 2001. Deaths rates in that roasting summer of 2018 were actually one of the lowest on record, and the same applies to the summer of 2020..

    4. There is no evidence whatsoever that the heatwave is a “consequence” of climate change. It is a weather event, one which is the direct result of an extremely rare set of meteorological conditions.

    5. There is nothing alarming about the number of hot days each year. The summer of 2018 was exceptional with 47 days but little different from 1911 and 1976 that had 45 and 46 respectfully. Further, from June 1st to July 21st. for this period the average temperatures from CET records were 23.9C in 1976 and 21.6C this year:

    Edwin Pugh6 HRS AGO

    A couple of comments on the BBC’s take on the new drought areas.

    First, they claim July’s record breaking temperatures. Yes, July was very hot for a couple of days otherwise the CET average temperature for the month was very much within the decades range.

    Second, they claim that this is the driest start to the year since 1976. Just not true. In that year the country had 371mm of rain in the first two quarters. This year for the same period there have been 435mm. But in 2017 there were only 304mm, in 2019 only 349mm and 2015 was just as dry with 371mm.

    Now, the third quarter in 1976 produced only 73mm. However, that’s not the most recent driest. That belongs to 1995 with only 65mm. We don’t know what the third quarter will produce this year yet.

    * * *

    Methinks Mr Pugh knows what he is talking about.

    1. No. 5 – When does a very warm day become hot?
      The BBC article focuses on the record temperature rather than, as your quoted comment, the number of hot days. The notable feature about 1976 was the length of the peak of the heatwave – 16 days at 90F, five of them at 95. This year we’ve had short runs of days in the high 80s/low 90s, a higher but shorter peak then a fall to something near normal.

      It’s possible that this weekend will see the 5x95F record equalled.

  8. Good Morning. The sky is a solid light gray. There is a slight damp haze at ground level. Normal again.

      1. Tut, tut, tut. The solar panels on the roof are so feeble (not least because they are in the shade) the cottager has to supplement their output with a fire emitting polluting smoke from his chimbley.

          1. After the Tree Preservation Order had been set aside.
            Actually, that’s an interesting point; would you be allowed to cut down a preserved tree if it impeded the efficiency of a solar panel?
            Which comes first; Tree Preservation or Greenery Wokery?
            That conundrum should keep a selection of town hall desk pilots busy until they collect their pensions.

          2. I live in one of three 1851 farm workers’ cottages on a Wiltshire hilltop. The very conscientious landlord decided to replace the roofs two years ago whilst ensuring that there was minimal disruption to the nesting sites of the 40+/- swifts that visit each year. The ruinously expensive saga of bat inspections, delays, bat audits and general buggeringaboutery by the local authorities is the stuff of nightmares. On Thursday the roofers almost threw the bat inspector lady off the scaffolding.

        3. Good grief! You’re back!!
          I’ve not been online much myself past week or so, so I missed your earlier posts.

          And pass my regards to Nagsman!

      2. Farmers burning stubble was banned years ago. But it seems that someone else have stepped into the frame.
        If these fires where an accident of nature the whole of the countryside
        would be on fire .

  10. The attack on Sir Salman Rushdie is an attack on liberal society itself. 13 August 2022.

    The freedoms he risked his life to defend are under attack not just in Tehran but in his adopted homeland of Britain too.

    In retrospect, perhaps they were right to see Sir Salman as a defining mark of difference. For the right to free speech, even in the face of offence, is a mark of a society’s tolerance, and tolerance is the bedrock of Western liberal democracy. Many Muslims counselled moderation in response to the Ayatollah’s death threat. And eventually, in 1998, after forcing the writer to spend years of his life in hiding, Iran formally withdrew backing to the order to kill Rushdie.

    The usual self-serving hypocritical tosh. Note the “Many Muslims…” fabrication and Western Liberal Democracy is no longer anything of the kind, while in the same edition Douglas Murray’s article has No Comments allowed!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2022/08/12/attack-sir-salman-rushdie-attack-liberal-society/

    1. The BBC claims that the assassin’s name is Hadi Matar.

      I’m told that Matar is Arabic for airport. Hardly a traditional Muslim name ???

      Once again the stupid Westerners are being fooled.

        1. Yes tim, you are correct.

          However the chances of him being a Spanish assassin are small.

    2. Muslims regularly take to the streets to deny others the rights they are exercising.
      Hypocrites all.

    3. Oh dear, Wikipedia has got it wrong again.
      “In February 1997, Ayatollah Hasan Sane’i, leader of the bonyad panzdah-e khordad (Fifteenth of Khordad Foundation), reported that the blood money offered by the foundation for the assassination of Rushdie would be increased from $2 million to $2.5 million.Then a semi-official religious foundation in Iran increased the reward it had offered for the killing of Rushdie from $2.8 million to $3.3 million.
      In 1998, Iran’s former president Mohammad Khatami proclaimed the fatwa “finished”; but it has never been officially lifted, and in fact has been reiterated several times by Ali Khamenei and other religious officials. Yet more money was added to the bounty in February 2016.”

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salman_Rushdie

  11. 355069+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Saturday 13 August: Truss and Sunak face urgent questions on energy policy and on mass immigration

    On par with & just as effective as Canute in regards to the English Channel.

    Also the play on words, AKA is very apt for this pair.

    King of Norway and part of Sweden — Cnut also known as Cnut the Great and Canute, was King of England from 1016,

    1. Cnut was a Prince (later King) of Denmark when he took the English throne. He later also became King of Norway.

    2. Cnut was a Prince (later King) of Denmark when he took the English throne. He later also became King of Norway.

      1. 355069+ up ticks,
        G,
        In a great many cases elected by the peoples, in the case of the United Kingdom the peoples are just shuffling the same political deck and hoping for a
        successful outcome, a regular sign of insanity proven at every voting opportunity.

          2. 355069+ up ticks,

            G,
            At every given opportunity,hopefully to continue for some time.

            But doubtfully as long as the electorate majority have been trying their very best to destroy the United Kingdom openly these past near forty years.

            But then the eyes tight shut ,party before Country brigade, would refuse to SEE it that way.

  13. Good Morning, all

    From The Grimes

    Our weird ‘unis’ are increasingly pointless

    Some of our great inventors and artists never went near establishments that are now becoming tin-pot and intolerant

    AN Wilson

    Friday August 12 2022, 5.00pm, The Times

    It’s the time of year when anxious A-level students are hoping their grades will enable them to go to university while the majority of the country, who aren’t at university, are thinking what weird places they must be nowadays, where books such as The Canterbury Tales come with “trigger warnings”, and where students can gang together to vilify professors whose views offend them.

    Like many people who did not attend such a place, my father idealised universities, especially Oxford and Cambridge, and longed for me and my brother to have what he, probably rightly, saw as a marvellous privilege. I tried to resist him, and even got a place at an art college instead, but his emotional blackmail won me over and I ended up not only going to Oxford to study medieval literature but staying on for seven years to teach the stuff.

    My father was brilliant chemist, artist and designer, in every way a more useful person than myself. In the Royal Artillery during the war, he developed anti-aircraft capabilities that helped to defeat the Luftwaffe. Before the war, as an industrial potter, he and Josiah Wedgwood (great-great-great-grandson of the founder) built the new Wedgwood factory, the first electrically powered pottery in Europe. This not only made beautiful objects, it prolonged and saved thousands of lives, since before then your average potter died in his thirties of the lung disease silicosis.

    He did enormous practical good, while being a designer of utter genius. Yet my dad thought that writing books and teaching literature was a higher calling. Really?

    The autumn never approaches without my being so glad, so very, very glad, that I no longer have anything to do with any academic institution. If only a fraction of these current stories about the state of academe are true, it seems as if universities have entered a crazy world, where a careless word, offending the new orthodoxies, will land you in real trouble.

    The last time such a state of affairs existed in England was in the 18th century, when only those who subscribed to the 39 Articles of the Church of England could go to university. It is no coincidence that nearly all the great pioneers of science and technology in that time were nonconformists who were forbidden to go to university — men such as Joseph Priestley, a Unitarian minister who was the pioneer of modern chemistry. With the discovery of the composition of water came the capacity to link this to the engineering skills of James Watt. A steam engine was born, and with it, the industrial revolution.

    Josiah Wedgwood, Erasmus Darwin and Matthew Boulton would have learnt nothing but a few limited bits of maths and Latin had they been to Oxbridge. As it was, their broad range of scientific curiosity and technological know-how transformed the world.

    Of course, with the 19th century things changed. British universities were reformed, partly through the influence of Prince Albert, who introduced science and modern history to the syllabus at Cambridge. John Henry Newman in his great series of lectures in Dublin on “The Idea of a University” set out what we all believe, in a ideal world, universities should be: places that cherish knowledge, however useless.

    With the kindest of intentions, successive generations sought to expand the privilege to as many as possible. Surely nothing wrong with that? Those who have had the privilege would not wish to pull up the ladder after us. But are we really convinced by politicians telling us that everyone should aspire to go to these places? Now, at the very juncture when so many of them seem increasingly tin-pot, and where the strident voices of the new Savonarolas drown out the voice of reason?

    Liz Truss thinks that everyone with three A*s at A level — thousands of students — should be given interviews at Oxbridge, thereby implying that the other universities in the country are not really worth going to. Are we doing young people a kindness by suggesting that if they don’t get into Oxford they are a semi-failure, and if they do not get into the Russell Group, they are real losers? And even if they are not losers, to use that odious term, what bargain is it, exactly, that they are getting for the £30,000 of debt with which they are saddling themselves for tuition alone?

    Many rich students in Britain are heading for the United States, where Ivy League universities will not persecute them for having been to private schools and where their parents’ bank balance is seen as an advantage, not an embarrassment. That’s their (very understandable) decision, though they’ll find the Savonarolas even fiercer on the American campuses than in Britain.

    My question is not whether Harvard is better than Oxford or Sheffield Hallam, but whether most undergraduates get much out of those three largely depressing years they spend mooning about at “uni”, eating Pot Noodle and longing for the next stage of life to begin.

    I am not speaking of the very few who are destined to be true scholars, who want to devote their lives to studying Husserl’s phenomenology or string theory or the structure of cells. I am talking about the intelligent majority who might get something out of the undergraduate experience, but might profit even more from learning to do something useful, earning money, meeting those of a practical turn and of a different background from their own.

    My own guess is that the sheer cost of these increasingly weird universities will lead to their eventual extinction. Even before that happens, it is surely worth noting that many of the most innovative and interesting career paths in our own day — industrialists, painters, soldiers — are already followed by those who never went near a university and are untainted by the esoteric and intolerant doctrines that now seem to buzz in the heads of the students and the dons.

    1. Bring back polytechnics.
      They were turned into ‘universities’ and so, instead of teaching useful skills to intelligent youngsters, had to devise waffling pseudo-academic courses.
      Thank you, Major and Blair. Thank you, fat complacent western culture.
      That is the reason why young people are kept in a state of childish dependency until well into their 20s.
      Look at the age of officers during WWII and you will realise what damage has been inflicted on the third generation.

      2. Going to university doesn’t mean what it once did.
        It used to mean you were academically oriented, or you came from a well to do family.
        Nowadays, it means you are a conformist sheep, or that you want a specialist training (dentist, doctor etc).
        My children have all made the shall-I-go-to-university decision, or are just making it. Up til now, two have decided against, and one is looking at medicine. Gen Z is much more likely to watch a bunch of youtube videos and then go out and start their own business.

        1. Mine went 30+ years ago before the current madness. I was glad for them as I fluffed my A levels and got a job instead.

          1. I also squeaked through before the madness started, but am not sure I would go now.
            The problem for the country is that the universities are recruiting grounds for all the non profit making jobs.
            They learn intolerance and BS so that they can spend their careers inflicting it on everyone else.

          2. I never went to uni, joined the RAF as an apprentice straight from school. Gained 10 ‘O’ levels, a Final C & G, 2 HNCs with an endorsement. None of my kids went to uni and they all have well paid jobs and no mortgages. I’m sure things would be different had we gone to uni.

          3. With your level of achievement, Spikey, if you’d gone to university you’d probably be (a good) prime minister by now.

          4. Well Grizz I couldn’t do any worse than this lot since Maggie
            I would add that when I came out of the RAF and after a disastrous few months in a plant hire company I was jobless, homeless and penniless so , as the song went, the only way is up. So being able to retire at 52 and live in the slow lane in Gods country will do me.

        2. My two lads aren’t interested. Firstborn took an apprenticeship and is now a diagnostic technician, technical authority and Lead at a motor dealers; Second son is blagging his way into taking up RAM analysis (Reliability, Availability and Maintainability) in the oil & gas industry.

    2. ” ……. if they don’t get into Oxford they are a semi-failure, and if they do not get into the Russell Group, they are real losers.”

      This draws attention to the myth that Russell group universities are ipso facto better than non-Russell group universities or techs and polys..

      Several non-Russel Group universities such as St Andrew’s, Bath and Lancaster are in the Top Ten university lists and many Russell Group universities are well down in the rankings.

      I was at two universities – UEA and Southampton (one RG the other not); Caroline was at Bath (Not RG) and l’Université de Rouen (C’est quoi ce groupe Russell?) having turned down Oxford (RG) because she thought that the Bath Modern Languages courses were better; Christo went to the University of Hertfordshire (A converted Tech and not RG) as it specialised in his passion for aviation and Henry did his B.A. at UEA (Not RG) and his M.Sc. at York. (RG). Christo is making more money than any of us others!

      RG universities are happy to ride on the snob appeal of being Russell Group – just as those educated in comprehensive school claim a certain snob appeal in NOT having gone to a public school! (Christo went to a public school; Henry decided he would prefer to go to a comp!)

      1. My daughter in law is a professor of Medieval Literature at a university in NC. It all depends on what you want to do.

        1. But what does she DO? As a professor I guess she teaches the subject to others who in turn will teach others ad infinitum – I personally can’t see a practical use for this subject (amongst others) – so please enlighten me

          1. If I didn’t know you for so long, I might consider that comment rather insulting. I too was a literature teacher and a children’s librarian. I cannot live without books and there are many like me. The torch was passed to me by a 6th form teacher who was, quite simply, inspirational.
            I have always tried to spread my love of books to children and young people. Not everything in life has to be practical.
            When my son was doing his MBA in NC, he was a manager at Barnes and Noble book store. We lived not far from a military installation. He was astounded at the number of books soldiers bought. Many of the students in my daughter in law’s classes are in the military.
            I guess everyone chooses their own path in life and mine has been books, literature and education. I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
            Maybe if people read more and studied history more, the world might be a slightly better place- haha!

          2. Universities are (or should be) repositories of knowledge and protectors of history and civilisation. Medieval literature is a part of all that.

          4. I didn’t mean to give any offence Lotl, sorry! It was a genuine question as to what does a professor do in a university….as I understand it they either teach others or do research.
            You’re spot on with your last sentence

          6. To some extent, the point of academic study is that that is what it is: academic. Not necessarily useful. But good-quality academic study teaches people to think straight, to use logic, to make connections between different, apparently unconnected, things. And therein, also, lies the progress of humanity, such as it is.

            Of course you mustn’t have a nation of academics, that would bring the whole country to a halt. But a nation full of “useful” people without your academics, who can – or at least should be able to – think straight, might just also bring the country to a halt for different reasons.

            It seems to me that, as in just about everything, a balance is what is needed.

    2. The ‘world’ knows that everywhere Muslims turn up to live outside of their own established countries they cause trouble. Its quite obviously their riason d’etre.
      But unfortunately the ‘They’ the ‘world’ is/are too self obsessed and blatantly ignorant to be able to do anything about it.

      1. 356069+ up ticks,

        Morning RE,
        In my view in the United Kingdom they are doing plenty about it via the polling booth, in supporting / voting for the political mass uncontrolled immigration importers coalition.

        We are currently witnessing the trailer of what is to come in the very near future
        only tenfold worse.

    3. There are 10 types of people in the world – those who understand binary and those who don’t. So there are 10 sexes.

    4. How about we phrase it differently: the biological reality is fixed and immutable. However, folk can think whatever they like, live however they like. As long as no one else is affected by their attitudes and decisions, who cares.

      However, one would have to point out the denial of observed reallity is in itself a form of mental illness – so let’s treat them as such.

  15. A couple of BTL comments from the Telegraph opinion piece about the Salman Rushdie attack:

    “The question which has not and will not be addressed by the MSM or the politicians in the West is: “Can Christian ethics and Islam co-exist or must we have a sort of apartheid?”

    “As the Police are so reluctant to pursue and prosecute members of Pakistani Muslim rape gangs should a non Muslim rapist claim to be a Muslim in the hope that that will let him get way with it?”

    1. After this it emphasise Mr Rushdie, was absolutely correct in his previous writtern and published assessment of Islam.
      I hope very much that he survives.

  16. Bomb disposal – surely the bravest of the brave…

    Major Arthur Hogben, explosives expert decorated after safely tackling a wartime ‘Hermann’ bomb found in 1970s London – obituary

    With his unrivalled knowledge, Hogben acted as a consultant on bomb and mine disposal to television series including Danger UXB

    ByTelegraph Obituaries 11 August 2022 • 4:49pm

    Major Arthur Hogben, who has died aged 92, was awarded the Queen’s Gallantry Medal in 1974 for neutralising a large Second World War bomb in east London.

    In 1974 Hogben was serving with 33 Engineer Regiment (Explosive Ordnance Disposal, or EOD). On August 1, he led a team to a building site at Plaistow, where a bomb had been excavated. It was in a trench about 20 yards from a public road – a densely populated area, close to high-rise flats and a railway line.

    He identified the device as a German 1,000 kg (known as a “Hermann” in reference to the very fat Luftwaffe chief), and with the help of the police and local authority the area was evacuated.

    To minimise the disruption to public transport, work on the bomb did not start until midnight. The fuze was found to be covered with a cap which was so badly corroded that it was difficult to establish what type it was.

    The problem was exacerbated by the fact that only three similar explosives had been encountered in the preceding 20 years, and the team had very little information to guide them.

    What was known was that this type of bomb could contain a particularly dangerous clockwork fuze. There was a risk that the device might detonate while the corroded cap was removed, so Hogben decided to “steam out” the explosive while the fuze was still live.

    This operation was still extremely perilous, because the explosive filling did not conform to the type typically found in similar bombs. There was a risk that the filling might prove to be sensitive to heat and the process of steaming out might set off an explosion.

    Hogben began work at midnight and the dangerous task of removing about 600 lb of explosive took him some five hours. At six o’clock in the morning, the bomb casing was free of explosive. The fuze pocket was then detonated, breaking some of the windows of flats in the immediate vicinity.

    The citation for the award of a QGM to Hogben stated that he had commanded the operation throughout and had personally completed the most dangerous part of the task. It also paid tribute to his skill and courage in reducing the risk to people’s lives and their property.

    Arthur Stephen Hogben was born on March 13 1930 at Adisham, Kent. He was called up for National Service in 1950 and served in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers before being commissioned into the Corps of Royal Engineers in 1953.

    For the following 20 years he served widely in the Far East, Germany and Britain in both operational and technical staff appointments relating to civil engineering. The latter part of his career was spent in bomb and mine disposal.

    In 1974 he assumed command of 49 EOD Squadron RE, part of 33 Engineer Regiment (EOD). At the time the squadron was responsible for routine bomb disposal in Britain, battle area clearances and special operations overseas.

    He subsequently commanded the Defence EOD School, the British Joint Services School responsible for teaching EOD to all three British Services and also to selected Nato and Foreign and Commonwealth students. He acquired a reputation throughout the explosive ordnance world for his knowledge and expertise as much as for his great warmth and humour. To the next generation of the bomb-disposal community, he became simply “Uncle Arthur”.

    In 1981, he retired from the Army in the rank of major. He was appointed Custodian at the Nato EOD Technical Information Centre, Rochester, Kent, which was responsible for providing technical advice and information to all EOD operators within Nato.
    Hogben was active in his local community from 1987 until retiring in 2000 as chairman of the Harrietsham Parish Council. From 1995 he acted as an EOD and mines consultant for films and television, notably for The English Patient and Danger UXB.

    He published Designed to Kill (1987), an account of British bomb disposal from the First World War to the Falklands, and Bombs Gone: Development and Use of British Air-dropped Weapons from 1912 to Present Day, (1990), co-authored with Wing Commander John McBean.

    Arthur Hogben married, in 1958, in Singapore, Eileen Driscoll, an officer in Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps. She died in 2006 and he is survived by their four daughters.

    Arthur Hogben, born March 13 1930, died July 3 2022

    A couple of fitting BTLs:

    David Richards
    1 DAY AGO
    I am staggered by the courage of bomb disposal crews. I suppose one could say someone has to do it but these people are a very special and rare breed. And of course their legacy of courage and unparalleled skill continues to this day. They deserve our eternal gratitude . So thank you Major Hogben. RIP

    Harry Jones
    16 HRS AGO
    Without ever knowing of his bravery, we as a newly wedded couple, lived in 84 West St, Harrietsham in the late 70s, early 80s, next door to the Hogben family in what was then a very rural Kent. A lovely understated gentleman, a gentle father to his 4 daughters and a wonderful neighbour for a young couple. They lived in PECS Cottage, named after the initials of their daughters. A priviledge to have known this exceptional man. RIP

    Picture: Hogben at Rainham in Essex in December 1975 using a hand drill to gain access to the fuze of a 1,000kg Hermann bomb similar to the one involved in the 1974 episode which gained him his medal.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0e76cab0375537aeb5848c6bafa8922fbbab7f46fa07ce0e4c93b8cb739fc639.jpg

    1. That is real courage; no adrenaline rush to carry you through. In fact, such an hormonal rush would sign the death warrant of you and those around you.

    2. The kind of people who deal with defusing bombs is shown in “Braver men walk away”, an excellent read and quite tear-jerking.
      RIP, Arthur Hogben, and thanks.

      2. I thought that when I read it yesterday. It is yet another prime example of the gathering Americanisation of the Daily Telegraph. It ranks alongside other abominations such as “alternate” when alternative is required and “train station” when they mean railway station; both of which have appeared in the DT this week.

    4. Another Sapper away to prop the Squadron Bar up at the Great RE Piss-up on Laffan’s Plain.

      1. “For we’re marching on to Laffan’s Plain,
        To Laffan’s Plain, to Laffan’s Plain,
        Yes we’re marching on to Laffan’s Plain,
        Where they don’t know mud from clay.”

        (From “Hurrah from the CRE”, a marching song of the Corps of Royal Engineers.
        CRE = Commander Royal Engineers (of an Army Division)).

          1. Between Aldershot and Farnborough. In 1866 Robert Laffan was appointed commanding Royal Engineer at Aldershot; he transformed the appearance of the camp by planting trees and laying down grass, and the old Queen’s Birthday Parade was later renamed Laffan’s Plain in his memory. Years later it became part of Farnborough Aerodrome. There is a place in the New Territories, Hong Kong named after him or the Aldershot camp too.

  17. Morning all 😃
    Better get the windows closed before the heat builds up again.
    I couldn’t believe doctor Sarah Jarvis on the TV yesterday said categorically that fans aren’t any good. Not quite sure what she meant but, perhaps she should get back inside her air-conditioned surgery and get on with NHS treatment. That’s what she has been trained for.

    1. Sadly true. Far too many people simply don’t understand basic economics or government operation.

  20. Working up to be warm today. Nice in the shade – about 15C, but the sun’s strong… just been up on the roof to measure, now awfully sweaty 🙁

    1. Does your roof vary in size daily? How often do you measure the roof?
      Good morning Paul.

      1. Thermal expansion… nope, I’m going to fix barge-boards and put metal covers on them to keep the rain & snow out – needed to know the width of the boards for the covers that now have bought.

  21. Re the Salman Rushdie attack: the reaction in the Iranian press is being widely reported here in France. Because many of you don’t speak French, I have found an English-language article that reports this from the Times of India.

    Here are the juicy bits:

    “Bravo to this courageous and duty-concious man who attacked the apostate and depraved Salman Rushdie in New York”, wrote the paper, whose chief is appointed by current supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

    “Let us kiss the hands of the one who tore the neck of the enemy of God with a knife”, the daily added.

    With the exception of reformist publications including Etemad, the majority of Iranian media followed a similar line, describing Rushdie as an ‘apostate’.

    Iranian authorities have yet to make any official comment on the stabbing attack against Rushdie.”

    https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/middle-east/iran-conservative-media-hail-salman-rushdie-attacker/articleshow/93536596.cms

    3. If God is so mighty and so offended, surely He will strike down the blasphemer? He doesn’t need some puny, jumped up Iranian punk to do it for him.

  22. Has anyone else noticed how hysterical the press are getting over the huge numbers of photographs being published showing tracts of brown “parched” grass?

    It is August, FFS! Look at any field of cereal crop (most of which are a type of grass) and see how many remain green at this time of harvest. Wheat, oats, barley and rye, in particular, are necessarily brown at this time of year. As are all species of grass when left to grow and ripen for hay.

    1. The hysteria is such that I cannot be arsed to bother reading / watching it.
      Morning, Grizz.

      2. At least you’re spared the gesticulating moron Justin Rowlatt. I can never hear a word he says for the arm waving.

    2. There was an interview on Meridian TV yesterday with a Sussex vineyard owner who was delighted with the current weather, saying that it should be a bumper harvest of grapes this year.

      1. For grapes, it’s great weather. For boring grass – which provides lots of food for insects – it’s dreadful.

    6. Don’t like what’s on the menu – eat somewhere else.
      How complex can it be?

  25. Germany is about to be plunged into a rolling crisis that will make Britain look like an oasis. 13 August 2022.

    Dry Rhine threatens to trigger a full-scale industrial shock

    Britain is suffering from a crisis of everything at the moment, it seems, but the situation evokes memories of a scene in Fawlty Towers where Basil is told “just remember Mr Fawlty there’s always someone worse off than you,” to which he replies: “Really? I’d love to meet them. I could do with a bloody laugh.”

    The Basil Fawlty of today might find comfort by casting an eye across the North Sea and beyond, to Germany no less, which is about to be plunged into a rolling crisis that could make Britain look like a veritable oasis by comparison.

    The Rhine, one of the mightiest rivers in the world, and the most crucial commercial artery for the continent’s largest economy, is on the verge of drying up as Europe bakes in record temperatures and suffers from a paucity of rainfall.

    Those Rhine Maidens must be having a rough time!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/08/13/germany-plunged-rolling-crisis-will-make-britain-look-like-oasis/

    1. Wotan demands human sacrifice to save the Rhine Maidens! Ursula-Brunhilde to the rescue! Or maybe not.

  26. Good morning, all. The weather forecast for N Essex today is, VERY HOT and VERY DRY. No change there, then!

    This was thought by some to be a parody account but is in fact true. The USA’s Centre for Disease Control (CDC) has attempted a 180 degrees shift in its opinion re the “vaccinated” and non-vaccinated. What has brought this wholesale change in position? Opinions vary but one of the leading reasons may the strong threat of a plethora of law suits coming down the line as people realise what has been done.
    Dr Robert Malone’s quote is apposite and people at the top will be willing to throw both their contemporaries and juniors under the proverbial bus. Perhaps the MAGA and America First successes in the primaries has made one or two hearts sink at the prospect of the Republicans controlling both the Senate and House and doing what they are threatening to do: investigate the administrative state from top to bottom and take action against those responsible for decisions that have harmed the citizens and their Republic.

    Something similar has to be actioned here in the UK. Having those responsible squirming at the threat of exposure is a sweet thought.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8e4167eceb8bb22355b15730b0db0cf2c8a49ddb03147d37a26b52ab6ad8a053.png https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/dab6f127f22faaf6d59be25011db3387b1d7b23828f5ba998b7de43adf2392f5.png https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/cfcabcf3fbe4f098c15996aacc74452e2c90ef997311986632e344274da0b2bf.png https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b09bcb3483b59b88cf823042c9206a1580c1aba3250e37640cef6f5ec5bb7b26.png

        1. Could have been worse – they could have called the dog a ‘Golden Labrador’ – which doesn’t exist.

        1. The dog is referred to in the article both as a ‘yellow Labrador Retriever’ (correct) and a ‘Golden Retriever’ (incorrect).

  31. Almost three quarters of England’s water industry is currently owned from overseas. At least 71% of shares in England’s nine privatised water companies are owned by organisations from overseas including the super-rich, banks, hedge funds, foreign governments and businesses based in tax havens.

    UK plc up for sale as overseas buyers eye bargains
    Value of businesses sold to foreign predators continues to break records https://www.ft.com/content/79e6ec3e-e869-4c77-beef-938c306ed7bc

    Is this the reason we are now in the proverbial dwang?

    1. That’s probably why the Brussels mafia stop the UK from building new reservoirs. Less of a profit margin. But like every other political cockup, it’ll take many years to repair the damage.

      1. It’s all part of the reverting to natural world nonsense. The intent is to let the country – and the planet – do what it likes. That’s a vaunted aim, but it ignores the people living here. Now, I’m all for removing 40% of them. They’re ignorant, dim, annoying folk who use up too many resources and clog up roads and frankly, shouldn’t be here in the first place.

        1. It is atheism with no redeeming features. (ahem) Those who believe God gave the world into our care have, hopefully, a better view.

        2. I agree totally. There is no reason whatsoever for these small successful group of islands to have over populated by invaders from around the world.
          It would have been far better to have sent advisors out to teach these third world people to learn to put their own houses in order………oh yes I remember now. Colonialism, education, billions and billions of honest taxpayers money sent to assist with no recognisable and favourable results.
          Being nice to some people doesn’t work. They just pay back by being extremely unpleasant and quite often very nasty indeed.

    2. Might well be. Being a branch economy is always very dangerous. Scotland went through that phase and now there is very little industry left.
      John Menzies has just* been sold to an Arab company.

      * Edited for typo.

      1. More Islamic influence leading to control.
        There seems to be plenty of water in Germany and Bravaria for the rowing comps.

    1. Question. How does this idiot establish who voted Leave, in order to ‘ban them for life from entering EU territory’?

      1. 355069+ up ticks,

        Morning A,
        Eye scans, madness & insanity
        shows up clearly via eye scans so those so afflicted will get the entry nod to apreciate the eu inner workings.

      3. I’n quite happy to avoid EU states as much as i can, thank you. So much am i am holidaying right now in South America and it is beautiful and even better the weather is amazing (like an English summer ought to be, minus the rain).

      4. I’n quite happy to avoid EU states as much as i can, thank you. So much am i am holidaying right now in South America and it is beautiful and even better the weather is amazing (like an English summer ought to be, minus the rain).

    2. Mr Fegte, the EU is not a nation, thus it has no territory. Eqully, you cannot be an EU citizen.

      All you are is subject to its distat, without any say in them. That, kiddo is called fascism. As for your valued union – do one.

  33. ‘Morning All

    I bet there’s some teachers in Batley feeling extra nervous today……..

    Meanwhile Modern Life

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/233695e64461a43a7e156c182dea93a315869d6584052d28847cc27fa4e44a8a.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c780bfd8b3669af08a98b1ad2d2f083672bf6a7431eff0885f2d7611b921f3a9.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e8523d7d6d4a216053175f26e9759603e423b8be0f704f4838b7a4fb1c51419d.jpg

    One for Bill

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/af3b12fd7a65f341e06cbc099010a5249d2b5b021461a125e862c80b9bd65947.jpg

    1. As long as the Batley teachers don’t expect their employers, the police or any other British authority to support them, they’ll be …. well, not fine …. but ……….

  36. A BTL Poster, Paul Clements, is the top of the most liked with his comment:

    “Sorry to intrude but as good a place to do so as any today. Anyone else think it unfortunate that the DT today publishes four articles and a Leader about Rushdie and freedom of speech yet refuses to allow us to comment on any of them?”

    The DT’s refusal to publish comments from its readers about Muslim slaughter shows how we never have coped – and probably never shall cope – with this problem without having to have a civil war of some sort – and the longer we put if off, the more likely those of us here will be on the losing side.

    1. The state does not like to hear difference. After all, some people might – you know – tell the truth about muslims and how they’re ruined society.

    2. As I have commented on the other place, people are cancelled and lose their livelihoods for expressing off message views. Many organisations are complicit in the banning of free speech.

    3. Comments were initially allowed and indeed I made some. But they feel that if too many comments are not what they want they will take them all down.

    4. I checked Canadian news sites. National Post comments were closed after a few hundred quality entries, other sources did not allow comments.

    1. 355069+ up ticks,

      O2O,
      As an issue a vote winner there, but the coalition lab/lib/con/ukip has not surprisingly the brass neck to use it.

  38. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f68f5ca60479971ef5bccb67bef1f9249b41cdb89a129f8db8de34b8c45d1dc8.jpg Where’s Philip?
    Just preparing tonight’s supper. I’ve vacuum-sealed two 28-day, well-marbled 1″ thick rib-eye steaks into sous vide bags with some olive oil, Maldon salt-flakes, black pepper, chopped garlic and thyme. They’ll remain in the fridge until early evening when I’ll pop them into a sous vide bath at 52ºC for an hour-or-so. I’ll then remove them from the bags, wipe them down, add more salt, then chuck them onto a very hot barbecue over hot charcoal and well-seasoned cherry logs to smoke and gain a crust. I’ll serve them (a perfect medium-rare) with some sautéed mushrooms and a mixed salad.

    1. Yum – see you this evening 🙂 Cooking sous-vide is a revelation, I found.

      1. I picked mine up for a song at a local electronics shop, here in Ystad. I bought the sous vide bath at the same time, again quite cheap.

        1. We have ours from Clas Olson. Almost free, and has given several years of service.

      1. I love eating vegan animals. I eat vegan cows and vegan sheep. I also eat omnivore ducks, pigs and chooks.

        1. In the near future we are all supposed to be relishing a diet of insects and other creepy-crawlies. I’m getting into training by devouring chalk stream trout hereabouts. Strictly speaking they are not vegans but they are very woke and ‘on trend’.

  39. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f68f5ca60479971ef5bccb67bef1f9249b41cdb89a129f8db8de34b8c45d1dc8.jpg Where’s Philip?
    Just preparing tonight’s supper. I’ve vacuum-sealed two 28-day, well-marbled 1″ thick rib-eye steaks into sous vide bags with some olive oil, Maldon salt-flakes, black pepper, chopped garlic and thyme. They’ll remain in the fridge until early evening when I’ll pop them into a sous vide bath at 52ºC for an hour-or-so. I’ll then remove them from the bags, wipe them down, add more salt, then chuck them onto a very hot barbecue over hot charcoal and well-seasoned cherry logs to smoke and gain a crust. I’ll serve them (a perfect medium-rare) with some sautéed mushrooms and a mixed salad.

    1. It says, in the sports section of today’s DT, that Novak Djokovich (who correctly refused to be experimented on with Frankenstein ‘vaccines’) may now be permitted to enter the US of A and participate in its major lawn-tennis-without-a-lawn tournament.

    2. I wonder when TPTB in the U.K. are going to very gently change their story. I can’t see any hint of it yet, can you?

  42. There have been two dog attacks in the last week near me. My neighbour’s terrier was attacked by an out of control Akita. Her dog suffered multiple puncture wounds from bites. This is the same park where i walk Dolly.
    I have now acquired a cattle prod zap gun.

    The other one was where a young man walking dogs for money, died. It is believed he fell to the ground after a seizure and the American Bully he was walking decided it was a good time for lunch. It took off half his face before being restrained. The young man died at the scene.
    Though the American Bully is not on the banned dog list it should be.

    1. I don’t understand the dog attacking the man having the seizure. I doubt Mongo is especially different, but when there’s a problem he barks, or runs toward people, barks then runs back. Hardly the littlest hobo, but it’s fairly instinctual.

  43. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3ad004654fa7972c7bb6405484aa7c33103883e3b1b5e3e1a972e56fc34a93b0.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f65dbf777d4b9b5885d3601dabe6a9745c2b13aaec10de6c5a07eec882365b0e.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/738c9f0b0567f0852adc7801df93572768fdfd79944edc2394f8a815d6c504ba.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/56379dde9b5c8f6d0cb07b586ee57af11c3331bb732ebec56c91810deda19f71.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/01349a591efa58f558a99b0864bf9d097a3414585f2776f7d2244066117825ef.jpg

  44. Just seen a woman in a full burka in this heat! Imagine the tan line from that! She’ll look like a bloody raccoon!

  45. “Bravo to this courageous and duty-conscious man who attacked the
    apostate and depraved Salman Rushdie in New York. Let us kiss the hands
    of the one who tore the neck of the enemy of God with a knife,” –
    Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a spokesman for the religion of peace.

  46. That’s the roof work done for today. Old flashing and bargeboards removed, but it’s too hot to be cavorting up there like a cat on a hot tiled roof. I’ll wait until it’s cooler and continue then. Meanwhile, the ride-on lawnmower needs the cutter drive belts sorted out…

    1. Did you leave those chores until it was too hot to do them? Askin’ for a friend’s wife.

      1. 😉
        Had to go out & buy some gear first – and builders merchants don’t open until 10:00. Then lunch. Then hot. Then empty trailer (we’re moving the lockup). Now – beer & YouTube.

          3. Hah, ‘Snap-on Tools’ as endorsed (in my day) by Martina Navratilova – great tennis player – I first saw her play in Phoenix, Arizona, and she thrashed Rosie Casals.

  47. After my shower, I began the day in jeans and a sleeveless T shirt. I have just been upstairs and changed into a dress that I haven’t worn for years; it’s too big! But cooler and comfortable.
    Don’t like wearing dresses but if it keeps me cool…

    2. Jeans are far too hot and restrictive in this heat. Can also cause problems like thrush. Something lite and flowing is the answer which is why i’m wafting around in a silk kaftan.

          3. Would you ask that question of a man wearing a kilt? We can see how terribly sexist and anti-snowflake Nottlers have become ! :@)

            It was borrowed from the neighbour for the pic lol.

          6. When I was a Drum Major for a Pipe-Band, the rule was on outside engagements, nothing worn under it but different with an inside engagement – you might have to walk upstairs.

    3. I usually wear trousers, and hardly ever a dress – but today I’m wearing a pair of red batik trousers I bought in Malaysia in 1998, with a check cotton shirt I’ve had for many years. It’s nice and cool in here, and we’ll have our dinner outside as has been the pattern this summer.

      1. Bundeswehr desert cammo trousers are excellet when it’s hot. A bit baggy, lightweight cloth but tight weave, very well made… even come in dotty cammo, too, so when you spill yout taco, nobody notices!

      2. If you see a woman in a dress in the Highlands she’s a visitor. it’s the men who wear the skirts

        1. Most women in Norway dress practically in trousers and some kind of shirt. Not very feminine. Then, just to throw you, they dress all girly, like, with a lovely floating summer frock, and suddenly she is transformed into a lovely summery butterfly…

    1. The idea of Lefties all thinking they’re popular when there’s only about 6 of them all talking to bots is quite comical.

      1. Comical but massively destructive as it has gained the narrative. We should kill any we come across. Bots that is…sort of………….

      2. Yes, when we know about it, that’s quite right! When we don’t and the creeps get more than 100 times the Twitter coverage than they should without anyone knowing it’s a bit different.

    1. Oops, sorry Philip, no underreadery. Just back from Tesco in Lockerbie and will do it all again tomorrow!

      2. Lockerbie is/was a nice town. The overnight coach from Victoria in London to Glasgow used to stop there for breakfast. There was a lovely restaurant on the town square that did the best best breakfasts. Wonder if it’s still there.
        Hope all is going well well for you.

        1. We are surviving, my dear and, in no small measure, because of the support received from my fellow NoTTLers. Love you all.

          Off to Lockerbie in the morn’s morn to pick up the grocery order(s). I may then get into cooking for all those friends, I’ve made here who have fed me without a qualm.

    1. Lone wolves usually belong and have allegiance to a pack, if not actively with the pack at the time of the strike.

    1. Thing is, as a sink that’s perfectly functional. Messy, but functional.

      Our economy, thanks to appalling mismanagement by unaccountable, idiotic technocrats is a complete mess.

      1. I would say rather, it looks as though it still works, but cannot actually deliver the functionality expected from a sink…

        1. As a user of French plumbing in baths, basins, sinks and bidets it looks to me that the mechanism to open and shut the plug is buggered beyond all sodomy!

    2. Sunshine!! You deserve the lingering mist because I notice the 3-phase HV transmission lines by which you export your excess solar panel generated wattage to us impoverished sassenachs

      1. Is that 3 phase? All I know is there are 6 poles on my croft and I get paid wayleave every year for having them there.

      1. Looks like autumn… you can feel the peace settling over you, just from that picture.
        Leisure
        William Henry Davies, 1911

        What is this life if, full of care,
        We have no time to stand and stare.
        No time to stand beneath the boughs
        And stare as long as sheep or cows.
        No time to see, when woods we pass,
        Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
        No time to see, in broad daylight,
        Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
        No time to turn at Beauty’s glance,
        And watch her feet, how they can dance.
        No time to wait till her mouth can
        Enrich that smile her eyes began.
        A poor life this if, full of care,
        We have no time to stand and stare.

          1. One of my favourite poems. That’s why I have a copy on my PC. Very evocative, speaks to my right-angled engineer brane.

        2. I am always standing and looking around me, looking at the view, feeling the atmosphere. My cousin, on the other hand, simply doesn’t have time for that. She is always trying to fit in three or four things into the same time frame, even having a telephone conversation with her she is washing up at the same time or walking into B.St.E. So as not to waste time.

          3. I believe Mark Twain wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court while he was living in Hartford CT. His house is a museum now and it wonderful.

      2. Certainly is PM, this is looking from my garden over my croft towards the Torridon Mountains

  53. Jacob Rees Mogg never fails to disappoint. He is probably right in thinking that Johnson will not return as PM but his own personal failure to assist in getting a proper Brexit is shameful.

    John Milton described the Devil’s reasoning as semblance of worth not substance – the description used to apply to JRM but but he is now not even putting up the semblance of worth.

    Boris Johnson will not be able to make Downing Street comeback, says Jacob Rees-Mogg
    ‘Life just isn’t like that’, the minister for Brexit opportunities and government efficiency has claimed.
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/08/13/boris-johnson-will-not-able-make-downing-street-comeback-says/

    BTL

    Brexit should have been magnificent. It should have been liberating to be free of the odiously restrictive and spiteful EU.
    So why hasn’t it been?

    Because there are too many incompetent members of the government who are happy to obstruct Brexit, too many MPs and members of the House of Lords who want to obstruct Brexit; and too many members of the over-pampered civil service who are determined to thwart Brexit.

    Unless Jacob Rees Mogg – or anyone else in a powerful position in the Conservative Party – can get a grip on this then Brexit is dead, democracy is dead, the Conservative Party is dead And the UK is dead.

    1. He’s only one person up against an establishment with everything to lose. It cannot permit their gaping trough to be removed.

      1. If Boris Johnson hadn’t been such a total uxorious wimp under the whim of his wife’s quim he would have not got rid of Cummings and this could have made a difference.

  54. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/08/13/two-days-week-office-can-manage-say-staff-city-watchdog/

    I appreciate a lot of folks can’t work from home. I am also aware a lot of folk working from home are not actually working. Yet for those of us who do and *do*, working from home saves a messy commute, time for clients, lower billing charges (as no petrol), my customer base is now global (we’ve grabbed a client in Italy of all places – yes, we’ve a man but I don’t expect him to pootle about all over the place). I can pick Junior up and drop him off, walk the floofs and get a decent dinner organised (usually).

    WFH isn’t the problem with big government. The problem is it doesn’t work full stop.

    2. Wonderful, I have the cd of the Jive Bunny, great fun to see visuals, sighs, to be that age again!!

      1. 28C in shade. Much hotter in the sun – the air is clear, so the sun strikes down like a mamba…
        Even the wildlife is sheltering. Eagles, ravens are missing, the cattle and sheep are still (cowbells aren’t donling), and the deer are in hiding (no surprise there). Even the butterflies are away… but the bees are at it 100%.

        1. Good for the bees, bless their stripey little jumpers. It has reached 35c in the shade this afternoon S. Cambs. Far too hot for me. I have had two sleepless nights because of the heat, I feel wrecked today.

          2. I find that, after a certain temperature, I have no problem with sleeping.
            Well, TBH, I could sleep for Europe in the Ryder Cup of sleeping…

          3. Ditto on that front, Poppiesmum. Just let it end and normality recover. At least there’s some air movement.

          4. I can’t wait for rain. In the olden days, before the hysteria of ‘climate change’, meteorologists used to talk about very stable high pressure – an anti-cyclone – centred over the Azores causing this sort of weather.

          5. Wrung out cold flannels give relief. One on head and another on neck. Even if you are up all the time.

          7. Cold/cool shower before bed, make sure bedroom is ventilated several hours before bedtime. Start unsweaty, at least.

          8. I hate sleeping uncovered. Primal instinct and all that. But I gave in last night and napped on top of the bedclothes. I say napped because I wake frequently but that’s my norm.

          9. Yes, I do (wake frequently), I think it is a ‘getting older’ thing, but last night and the night before I got about an hour’s sleep each night and that was that. I hate sleeping uncovered as well. In the end I came downstairs for a while, went back up and then came down again. But, nothing lasts forever and this too shall come to pass eventually. We’ve just got to grin and bear it for now.

      1. The Lord of the Dance was written by Sydney Carter and sung up and down the British Isles at school assemblies because even an unmusically gifted school pupil could accompany it on the guitar if he or she could master three chords! But this song about the London Sewers, also written by Sydney Carter, and sung here by Ian Wallace certainly deserves to see the light of day more:

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

        My parents used to love the programme on TV “My Music:” with Steve Race, Ian Wallace, John Amis, and Frank Muir and of course Face the Music with the lovely Joyce Grenfell, Joseph Cooper, Robin Ray and Richard Baker.

          1. Because the BBC in its infinite wisdom considered it/them to be non-inclusive: the great unwashed and our non-reflective incomers would not enjoy such programmes.

        3. The tune for Lord Of The Dance was from a 19th century song Simple Gifts written for the American religious sect called The Shakers. Round The Horne did a sketch about “The Shuddering Bretheren” as a satire.

    2. Thanks for posting that, so evocative and put a smile on my face. And they all know the steps – perhaps it is something they learn at school.

      1. Line dancing. Very easy to pick up. All you need to do is join in. You will get the steps soon enough. I know !

        1. I tried several times. Uk, Azerbaijan, Russia, Turkey …
          I failed. 🙁
          No rhythm… not even with alcohol to help.

          1. Silly billy.! No one cares ! When you go out of step you create a whole new wave of the people looking at your feet and it goes on.

          3. They sound very strict where you dance Zorba…In the restaurant i first worked in we took it into the street. That would be Fareham High St 1980. Almost unheard of. No one noticed a mis-step because they were already pissed enough to dance.

          5. My mother enrolled me up for dance classes when I was four. Wasn’t too bad at tap but when they moved me to the ballet class….
            Dancing Hippos in Fantasia.
            She also tried to teach me to ballroom dance at a Pontins holiday camp (don’t ask) and she gave up. Am useless.

          6. I have no rhythm, nor can I stay evenly out of step with everyone else. So, the complaints… easier not to bother.

    3. Zorba seems so quintessentially Greek but it was composed by Mikis Theodorakis. He and Manos (Never on Sunday) Hadjidakis between them pretty much invented Greek music. Both schooled in the western classical tradition.

      1. You’ve spoiled it for me now ! I just thought it was a piss up and then a dance!

        Joking lol

      2. When I was in Greece was told an event was due to start at 7 GMT (Greek Maybe Time!).

    4. Absolutely joyous! Thanks.

      Great idea for a flashmob – the crowd can actually join in. I often think, when treading on people’s feet trying to dance in Greece or Italy, what a shame it is that we are no longer taught traditional dances in the UK.

      1. I think you mean the old square dances we were taught in the 50s. Can’t remember the names but ‘ Strip the Willow’ springs to mind.

        1. Yes indeed. I watch the little ones learning the steps to traditional dances elsewhere by standing on their grandpas’ feet, and envy them that continuity.

    5. Amazing, how one man with a good idea, can foment a national liking for something so built into the National ideal.

    1. It’s spite. Sheer, unrelenting Left wing statist spite for Brexit.

      Having yet more mouths ot feed is precisely the goal of big fat state to ensure it’s continuance. That they cuold all be deported tomorrow is irrelevant to big government.

    2. A Caliphate Army in the making and the buffoon, Johnson thinks we’ll never work that out.

      I’m almost glad that I’m now in Scotland, where they think its too cold and no-one speaks English.

    1. Sorry, JWE but I refuse to subscribe just to hear a non-NoTTLer wittering about all we already know,.

      2. I woiuld temper my testy response by observing that as you and the rest of us read the entire time about non-Nottlers wittering about all we already know (though “all’ may be stretching it of course..), a little more harmless assault on our rhino-thick hides can do no harm, and who knows, might even do some good!

  63. Have Wordlers died of heatstroke?
    I had a Par Four this afternoon.

    Wordle 420 4/6
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    Little or no help from my first two shots …

    1. I had plenty of help but made the wrong choices.
      Wordle 420 5/6

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    1. That has always been the intent. It has nothing to do with the planet or environmentalism. If it did, many, many things would be done differently, the first being a complete end to people coming in to this country.

  65. Got chatting with the attendant in my local launderette this morning while my washing went around and around. He’s Iranian and has an interesting viewpoint. He recommended a book called Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins, which apparently uncovers Foreign Aid corruption and how it benefits global corporations but impoverishes the supposed recipients.

    2. Read it and at the end, my thoughts: never ever get involved with American aid (lease loan UK/Russia) Saudi oil exploration, Iraq war, Ukraine and the list is long.

        1. Yes, another example of financial exploitation and they criticise the old British Empire 🙄

        2. Yes, another example of financial exploitation and they criticise the old British Empire 🙄

        3. Yes, another example of financial exploitation and they criticise the old British Empire 🙄

    3. Spot on, Sue. The CEOs of ‘donors’ are driven by their own notion of ‘virtue signalling’/self-aggrandisement and want to gain personal dining rights at the top table of WEF, UN, World Bank, etc, etc (please note, not necessarily for the benefit of their corporations). Next to nothing ends up with tyhe people who need it for whom it could make a real difference. I worked alongside that world and was appalled.

      People have arrived here expecting dinner so I must exit before boring you all more.

    4. That needed to be written down? It’s self evident!Heck, these days they don’t even bother to hide it!

  67. Wordle 420 4/6

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      1. Pitsford was empty before the summer! There are other reservoirs nearby (Cransley, Thorpe Malsor, Naseby, Hollowell), some of them quite small and which were in a similar state. They are shallow and dry up very quickly.

  70. The suspect in the stabbing attack on Sir Salman Rushdie has been charged with attempted second degree murder

    Second-degree murder is typically murder with malicious intent but not premeditated. The mens rea of the defendant is intent to kill, intent to inflict serious bodily harm, or act with an abandoned heart (e.g., reckless conduct lacking concern for human life or having a high risk of death).

    The poor man didn’t mean to hurt him, he just wanted to show his irritation at Rushdie for being so inconsiderate to his fellow religious assassins.

    He could end up with several weeks in ‘chokey’ and a large fine.

    1. Reading between the lines – ignoring the fact this was clearly religiously motivated, that there’s a problem with islam and that we urgently need to address it?

      1. Just feeling anxious .

        Many illegals are coming ashore in Kent and parts of Sussex .

        How safe is Dungeness Nuclear power station from these people.. Okay, there are Nuclear police etc , but what happens if Dungeness is attacked ..

        During the WW2, the Channel islands were taken over by, the Germans , they just walked in , set up prison camps , built tunnels and half starved the poor inhabitants of the C islands .

        The volume of undesirables landing here in the UK is enormous .

        We are being being subsumed and subjugated by Muslim infidels , doesn’t anyone care?

        2. We are being being subsumed and subjugated by Muslim infidels

          To Muslims, we are the infidels. The instruction from their ‘prophet’ is to kill infidels.

        4. We NoTTLers care, Maggie,, see my earlier ‘Kryrstalnacht’ comment.

          I, personally, would drive ’em out – every last one. Leave or be killed.

      2. Maybe our own version of ‘kristalnacht’ a few thousand mosques burned, a a few muslim ‘Halal’ stores burned – who knows, someone may get the message – MORE TO FOLLOW!.

        3. The only way that civilisation can deal with these people.
          I think it comes under ‘an eye for an eye’.
          I was not popular for expressing your sentiments once: if there is no doubt, take them outside and shoot them.

          2. None.
            If these people wish to live by archaic rules, then justice would have been delivered.

    1. Since the working classes could see the damage they were doing to everything they touch, aliens is all the have.
      That’s how we were lumbered with this divot of London mayor. As are many other UK towns and cities.

      1. For the past few weeks I’ve been using a pickaxe to break the hardpan followed by an electric cultivator stopping every square foot or so to remove builders’ rubble and to gather up rag stone (some bigger than shoe boxes – most larger than a fist). All in all when it has not been too hot to work that is between the hours 7:00 – 10:30 am and an hour in the evening I’ve removed over 4 tons of material which is now in a hired skip. On Monday I’m expecting 5 tons of top soil, a couple of tons of which will I hope to distribute on the lawn seed bed in the rear garden before the rain forecast for the afternoon arrives. In an hour of so I will begin to dig a section of the sloping side garden – again to remove more rubble whilst I still have the skip and also to collect sandy soil that I anticipate with run off the upper slope which is rock hard if we have any appreciable rainfall!

    2. You’d better keep logged on Bob.

      We had an obstruction a small downed tree on one of our local foot paths a few weeks ago I walked along with a large
      old bowsaw big teeth short job and too quite to attract attention. 🏹🪚

  75. Little Johnny goes to a big “everything under one roof” department store looking for a job.
    The Manager says, “Do you have any sales experience?”
    The kid says “Yeah. I was a vacuum salesman back in Newfoundland.”
    Well, the boss was unsure, but he liked the kid and figured he’d give him a shot, so he gave him the job.
    “You start tomorrow. I’ll come down after we close and see how you did.”
    His first day on the job was rough, but he got through it.
    After the store was locked up, the boss came down to the sales floor.
    “How many customers bought something from you today?”
    The Little Johnny frowns and looks at the floor and mutters, “One”.
    The boss says
    “Just one?!!? Our sales people average sales to 20 to 30 customers a day. That will have to change, and soon if you’d like to continue your employment here. We have very strict standards for our sales force here in Vancouver. One sale a day might have been acceptable in Newfoundland, but you’re not on the farm anymore, son.”
    The Little Johnny took his beating but continued to look at his shoes, so the boss felt kinda bad for chewing him out on his first day. He asked (semi-sarcastically),
    “So, how much was your one sale for?”
    The Little Johnny looks up at his boss and says “$101,237.65′′.
    The boss, astonished, says $101,237.65?!? What the heck did you sell?”
    The Little Johnny says,
    “Well, first, I sold him some new fish hooks. Then I sold him a new fishing rod to go with his new hooks. Then I asked him where he was going fishing and he said down the coast, so I told him he was going to need a boat, so we went down to the boat department and I sold him a twin-engine Chris Craft. Then he said he didn’t think his Honda Civic would pull it, so I took him down to the automotive department and sold him that 4×4 Expedition.”
    The boss said,
    “A guy came in here to buy a fish hook and you sold him a boat and a TRUCK!?”
    The Little Johnny said
    “No, the guy came in here to buy tampons for his wife, and I said, ‘Dude, your weekend’s shot, you should go fishing.’”

    1. Newfoundland is a wonderful part of our planet and Newfies are even funnier than their reputation.

      .- A newfie named Clyde died in a fire and was burnt so badly that the morgue needed someone to identify the body. His two best friends, Clem and Zeke, came to do the job. Clem went in first and the mortician pulled back the sheet. Clem said “Yup, he’s burnt pretty bad. Roll him over.” So the mortician rolled him over and Clem took one look and said, “Nope, ain’t Clyde.”
      Just to be safe the mortician brought in Zeke and Zeke took a look at him and said “Yup, he’s burnt real bad, roll him over.” The mortician rolled him over and Zeke looked down and said “No, it ain’t Clyde.” The mortician asked “How can you tell? Zeke said “Well, Clyde had two assholes.” “What? He had two assholes?” said the mortician. “Yup, everyone in town knew he had two assholes. Every time we went to town, folks would say ‘Here comes Clyde with them two assholes.’ “

  76. Daily Quordle 201
    5️⃣6️⃣
    8️⃣7️⃣
    quordle.com
    🟨⬜🟨⬜⬜ 🟨🟨⬜⬜🟨
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    ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜ 🟨🟨🟩🟨⬜
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    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟨⬜⬜⬜
    ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    ⬜🟩⬜⬜🟩 ⬜🟨⬜⬜🟨
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    🟨⬜⬜🟨🟨 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛

    Wordle 420 6/6

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    2. Wordle 420 5/6

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  77. $ = say hello to the toilet :

    “A trillion is a massive, almost unfathomable number.

    The human brain has trouble understanding something so huge. So let me try to put it into perspective.

    If you earned $1 per second, it would take 11 days to make a million dollars.

    If you earned $1 per second, it would take 31 and a half years to make a billion dollars.

    And if you earned $1 per second, it would take 31,688 years to make a trillion dollars.

    So that’s how enormous a trillion is.

    When politicians carelessly spend and print money measured in the trillions, you are in dangerous territory.
    And that is precisely what the Federal Reserve and the central banking system have enabled the US government to do.
    From the start of the Covid hysteria until today, the Federal Reserve has printed more money than it has for the entire existence of the US.

  78. $ = say hello to the toilet :

    “A trillion is a massive, almost unfathomable number.

    The human brain has trouble understanding something so huge. So let me try to put it into perspective.

    If you earned $1 per second, it would take 11 days to make a million dollars.

    If you earned $1 per second, it would take 31 and a half years to make a billion dollars.

    And if you earned $1 per second, it would take 31,688 years to make a trillion dollars.

    So that’s how enormous a trillion is.

    When politicians carelessly spend and print money measured in the trillions, you are in dangerous territory.
    And that is precisely what the Federal Reserve and the central banking system have enabled the US government to do.
    From the start of the Covid hysteria until today, the Federal Reserve has printed more money than it has for the entire existence of the US.

  79. To all those poor Nottlers enervated by the heat or exhausted by the watering – this too shall pass. It’s my birthday next week, and it ALWAYS rains on my birthday. 🤣

  81. Just had a cold bath so am off to bed whilst I’m still cool.
    Water left in the bath in case it is needed through the night.

    Good night all.

    1. This would be my No1 Desert Island Disc choice. I have this actual recording on CD and have listened to it many times.

    2. I’ve sung that a couple of times. Glorious music! The first time was when I had to ask for the black bass* behind me to be moved, as his voice made me so weak at the knees I couldn’t draw breath to sing properly 🤣

      * Not being racist here – that’s the term for the unbelievably low voices thr Russians are so rich in, and which Rachmaninov used to such good effect.

    2. I’ll break a rule and wish the dear lady a very Happy Birthday from here. Go Jill the lass.

    3. Many thanks, Rastus and Caroline, may not have time to acknowledge tomorrow, as family will be descending here for food and drink, not necessarily in that order!! Cheers.

      9. Very many happy returns and we, vw and me, wish you a fabulous time with your family.

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