840 thoughts on “Saturday 14 December: The election was at heart about winning back the exercise of democracy for the British people”

  2. Why Labour deserved to lose. Spiked. 13 December 2019.

    But Blyth Valley felt particularly symbolic – not least because of some Labourites’ shameful treatment of the former MP for the seat, Ronnie Campbell. Campbell – an outspoken socialist and veteran of the Miners’ Strike – represented the seat from 1987 to 2019. (He stepped down before the election.) But he was also a committed Leaver. And when he was mulling over backing Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal, to uphold the will of his constituents (60 per cent of whom voted Leave), he was attacked.

    Guardian columnist Zoe Williams accused Campbell, who was leading picket lines while Williams was still at private school, called him a ‘scab’. Corbynite keyboard warrior Paul Mason accused him of ‘lacking moral fibre’. Mason has long argued that working-class northern Leavers are basically a lost cause. He said at an event in May that Labour should ignore those who he caricatured as the ‘ex-miner sitting in the pub calling migrants cockroaches’.

    Morning everyone. I don’t think that Labours hatred of the indigenous population is a recent phenomenon. It stretches way back and probably begins in real terms with Blair. It is no accident that Mass Immigration began on his watch and was partly an attempt to lock in Labour as the permanent Party of Power and partly an exhibition of his loathing and contempt for the native population.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/12/13/why-labour-deserved-to-lose/

    1. Yo Minty

      Labour Lubvvies, Corbynski and the millionaire socialists have the motto

      Do as I say, not as I do.

      How many of them are funding the immigrants, that they want to enter here by the 1,000,000s

      They even evade paying tax, by using offshore accounts

    2. Morning Araminta.

      It’s always struck me as odd that those who imagine themselves occupying the highest moral ground seem to be the nastiest of folk.

  3. Alison Pearson is on-song today……..

    They found out we stupid old Leave voters are very much alive
    The Remainers sought a People’s Vote – and they got one from the quiet millions who have made plain what they want     
    Allison Pearson

    God, I love this country. There we were on Thursday afternoon with a sick dread roiling around our stomachs. The worst butterflies since exam results. Clutching at straws – or straw polls anyway. Unable to sleep peacefully until all was well on Friday morning (it’s going to be all right, isn’t it?).
    Pictures on the news of Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband made you nostalgic for a time when a Labour victory might mean you’d be a bit 
sad, not downright terrified. We believed in Boris, never doubted he was the one leader who could get us through this. But, so successfully had we been gaslighted into thinking a hung parliament was likely by liberal-Left presenters on the BBC, Channel 4 and Sky News, that our faith wobbled. And, in the words of the Christmas story, we were sore afraid.
    The thought of Jews with their bags packed, ready to flee. The thought of our children and grandchildren being indoctrinated in the Marxists’ mirthless creed. It was awful, awful. As the Chief Rabbi warned, “The very soul of the nation is at risk.”
    I didn’t realise how anxious I was until, around mid-afternoon, I got an email. “There is now a significant probability the Conservatives will come first in Wales in both votes and seats,” it said. I actually started to cry at the thought of my valiant little homeland teaching its complacent Labour overlords a lesson.
    A friend called from Swansea and, amid screams of laughter, confirmed that her ex-miner uncle had only gone and voted Tory and – get this – he 
loves Boris!
    If Uncle Carl’s Boriscene conversion was anything to go by, then this wasn’t an election any more, it was a revolution. On Twitter, a Yorkshireman confirmed that locals were “coming down from the hills to see off the dark forces”.
    Our people were rallying to save their country from the Corbynists. Quiet millions pulled on their coats, braved the rain and went down to the polling station for the fourth time in three years, if you please, to vote for Boris, who promised that, this time, we would actually Get Brexit Done.
    Well, the Remainers said they wanted a People’s Vote and they bloody well got one. And the people, they said, No! No to that insufferably arrogant Remainer Parliament blocking the referendum result because they knew better.
    No to Gina “Who the hell does she think she is?” Miller and her insufferable flicky hair.
    No to the Remainer Supreme Court.
    No to Question Time audiences seemingly packed with “unbiased” Momentum activists.
    ‘I actually started to cry at the thought of my valiant little homeland teaching its complacent Labour overlords a lesson’
    No to Jeremy Corbyn, whose rightful place is selling copies of Socialist Worker outside Harringay station in a Leninist cap and a chequered Palestinian keffiyeh, not running this great nation of ours.
    NO! Did you get it this time? Have we made ourselves clear?
    For three-and-a-half contemptuous years, a Remainer establishment assured us that all the stupid old Leave voters have died. Last night, they found out we are still very much alive. It was the anti-Brexit forces that were about to breathe their last. Labour screwed over its traditional supporters and the traditional supporters screwed them right back from Bishop Auckland to Ynys Mon.
    Oh, that exit poll! Will we ever forget the sense of joy ’n’ relief intermingled when it flashed up on the BBC? Immediately, I called my Jewish friend. “THANK GOD, THANK GOD,” she said, over and over, a lifelong Labour voter made politically homeless by the terrible Trots.
    And … breathe. We were safe. Safe! Hang on, what was that loud bang in the BBC studio? Huw Edwards looked concerned. Pop! It was the sound of the London metropolitan bubble bursting. Inside the bubble, so obsessed were they about staying in the EU that they were willing to turn a blind eye to vilest anti-Semitism. They were prepared to magnify every downside of Brexit and play up any risk. They failed to broadcast the dangers of Corbyn, whose patent unfitness for high office could have been sniffed out in seconds by Dilyn the dog – that charming, fluffy, semi-house-trained little fellow, who accompanied his master, the charming fluffy, semi-house-trained big fellow, to the polling station.
    What a great victory this is for Boris Johnson. Who else could have fought the people’s corner so magnificently? Tied down like Gulliver in Lilliput with a hundred parliamentary amendments; every which way he moved, the buggers blocked him. But he did it; by George, he did it! He looked so tired last night, those hooded eyes more recessed than ever, but still the spirit bubbled irrepressibly to the surface. They say that he cares about nothing and no one but himself. But the people believed in Boris and, in that believing, they have already made Boris better than before. As Labour seats tumbled, and Redcar turned to Bluecar, Falstaff became Henry V. “But if it be a sin to covet honour/I am the most offending soul alive.”
    You might say that it was Boris’s finest hour, but I hope not. This is the beginning of the end for the Remainers, but it’s the start of something that could be extraordinary for Britain. Our Prime Minister already enjoys considerable affection, but he will be loved if he can pull off the trick of harnessing a post-Brexit economic boom to the vital cause of world-class public services.
    During the Telegraph’s charity phone-in a fortnight ago, two readers – one a scientist, the other a doctor – told me that they don’t dare reveal at work that they vote Conservative or that they read this newspaper. That’s appalling and it needs to change. Labour is the Nasty Party now.
    I feel so incredibly proud to be a Conservative today. Proud and emotional, too. Our people have defied the vilest calumnies from the righteous, shrieking Left to pull together and reach this historic crossroads in our history. But Boris, whatever you do, please, please don’t betray my Wales or the North-East and the Midlands, which have taken such a remarkable leap of faith to vote Tory. There is great poverty there and they need your help. If you reward them for their trust in you then an amazing new force, delivering social justice and economic prosperity for all, can be forged. Uncle Carl is counting on you, Boris bach.
    This is the luckiest Friday the 13th ever. Those of us who saw that glorious, incredible exit poll will never forget the sheer elation of it. Just look at the map of the UK today. A few islets of red in a vast, beautiful sea of blue. The sheer force of the people’s will, like a great tide, swept away the Corbynists who threatened our way of life, our tolerance, our decency, our everything.
    I hope the Chief Rabbi is pleased. The soul of our nation is intact.

    1. The shallow side of me always appreciates bitchiness:
      “No to Gina “Who the hell does she think she is?” Miller and her insufferable flicky hair.”

  5. Deep Fault Lines in Labour

    The current Labour Part is deeply split in fact in my view it is two different parties trying masquerade as one and that simply does not work. You have what I will call Traditional Labour very much based around the needs of the ordinary working family and you have Momentum Labour who revolve around political ideology and are very close to communism and Marxism. Momentum Labour is very much London centric but also has some limied support across England particularly in university towns

    Can the Labour part sort its difference out ? I suspect not as the two parts of the party’s views are pretty much incompatible , At the moment Momentum are in charge of the Labour party and the views coming out about the new leader show that Momentum are still firly in control of Labour. It makes the Labour Party unelectable

    So bad is Momentum Labour that much of the North gritted their teeth and reluctantly voted Conservative even old mining towns did so.

  6. Morning all.

    SIR – More than anything, the general election was about the most fundamental aspect of our civilised society: respect for the democratic process.

    The anti-democrats have had the rudest awakening possible. Just because a democratic deficit is written into the EU’s DNA, it doesn’t mean that its disciples can ride roughshod over the will of the British people.

    On Thursday, the electorate said enough is enough.

    Eddie Hooper

    Gravesend, Kent

    SIR – For the first time since the Nineties, we have a Conservative Government fully empowered to govern. Brexit will be done and the economic dynamism of our island nation once more released.

    The resulting wealth will pay for improved public services and provide solutions for social problems, notably social care, mental health and homelessness.

    Foreign aid will cease to be a spending target and will work in the national interest. Quangos should be freed from the grip of the liberal establishment. Clarity should be provided to our judiciary as to the limits of its reach and powers.

    Boundary changes, resisted undemocratically by Labour for years, will be implemented and it is to be hoped that the lack of neutrality at the BBC and Channel 4 will be addressed.

    The nation needs an electable opposition, which the Momentum-controlled Labour Party has shown itself not to be. If Labour fails to give up on its rejected Marxist agenda, its moderates should break away and create a centre-Left party. This would be more effective if it combined with the Liberal Democrats, who are in disarray.

    This election has demonstrated in spades that the public is not listening to yesterday’s politicians, such as Tony Blair, Sir John Major, Alastair Campbell and Lord Heseltine. They are out of touch and do not merit the political exposure they have received; nor do celebrities like Hugh Grant or self-publicists such as Gina Miller.

    Gregory Shenkman

    London W8

    1. SIR – The quiet people of Britain have spoken: the people who don’t go on protest marches or get worked up on social media, but who get on with their lives and turn out at the ballot box. We have spoken and we have been heard.

      There is a delicious taste of freedom in the air this morning.

      Garry Critchley

      Liverpool

      SIR – Jo Swinson, who has stepped down as leader of the Liberal Democrats, has said that “for millions of people in our country, these results bring dread and dismay”. Maybe, but for millions more they are a blessed relief. That is what happens in a democratic election or referendum.

      Tony Manning

      Barton-on-Sea, Hampshire

      SIR – I never envisaged that the march demanding a People’s Vote would be quite so successful.

      Richard Morriss

      Biggleswade, Bedfordshire

      SIR – The Remainers said they wanted a second referendum. Now that they have had it, is it too much to ask that they accept the result?

      Robin Lane

      Devizes, Wiltshire

      1. What the Election showed is the Lib-Dem’ are suffering from the same problem that Labour is suffering from.in that the party Leadership is going in a totally different direction to the direction heir voters want to go in. The party is split in two. The bulk of the Lib-Dem’s have traditional Liberal views and dont very much like Swinsons views. Swinson had undemocratic views that did not fit well with the typical Lib-Dem voter
        Does the Lib-Dem Party like Labour need to split into two different parties ?

  7. SIR – Boris Johnson: 1, BBC: 0.

    Julian Faull

    Redruth, Cornwall

    SIR – Note to Sir Vince Cable: the Northern folk that you characterised as thick and racist have spoken.

    Alex Taylor

    Thame, Oxfordshire

    1. Now make it Boris Johnson 10 BBC 0 – scrap the licence-fee and give them 6 months to convert to a subscription model.

  10. SIR – Note to Sir Vince Cable: the Northern folk that you characterised as thick and racist have spoken.

    Alex Taylor

    Thame, Oxfordshire

    SIR – I am thankful that we do not have a fiscally irresponsible government in power.

    To celebrate being able to keep my own cash, I am going to increase my charitable donations in this season of goodwill.

    Patricia Griffiths

    Abergavenny, Monmouthshire

    SIR – Boris the Brave should be his sobriquet.

    P A Downs

    Folkestone, Kent

  11. Morning again

    SIR – As a reluctant Remainer and one who has voted Tory all my life, I would probably not have voted Tory this time if it were not for the threat of a Corbyn-led government.

    His antipathy towards Jews, his lack of fairness towards the state of Israel, his support of any “liberation cause” (however invalid), his obvious lack of respect for the country and institutions that raised him, and the lunatic financial programme proposed all made it clear that – despite my reservations about Brexit – there was only one possible party for me.

    All the protestations by Labour politicians since the election result, stating that it was only Brexit that caused their failure, are wrong. Jeremy Corbyn was to blame.

    Gareth Kreike

    Manchester

    SIR – The 2019 election broke a new record: Labour’s 1983 election manifesto is now only the second longest suicide note in history.

    Robin Jéquier

    Devizes, Wiltshire

    SIR – The Labour Party has ceased to serve the interests of working-class people. It has become the party for well-paid public-sector employees who have generous pensions.

    Mervyn Vallance

    Maldon, Essex

    1. Corbyn is Momentum Labour which is close to communism and Religion and communism are not happy bed fellows

        2. I can’t agree, BoB, like Islam, it is an ideology even if practiced with religious fervour.

  12. SIR – While congratulating Boris Johnson on his victory against all odds, let’s not forget Nigel Farage for holding the line in Britain’s dark days.

    Hugh Ellwood

    Lytham St Annes, Lancashire

    1. Since we’re not out of the woods by a long chalk, let alone in the sunlit uplands, Nigel Farage and the Brexit Party are not ‘of the past’.

      Morning Epi.

  13. SIR – The extraordinary success of the Conservatives in securing such a resounding majority is being quoted as the most important statistic of the election. It is not. By far the most significant figure is that over 11 million people voted for an unrepentant, anti-Semitic, terrorist-supporting economic fantasist.

    Paul Strong

    Claxby, Lincolnshire

  14. SIR – Thank the Lord that we don’t have to listen to that bloody man in the blue cloak and hat with his megaphone any more.

    David Pearson

    Haworth, West Yorkshire

        1. Surely he cannot sign on for the dole if he’s not available for work and deliberately making himself unemployable.

          1. Dunno. I suspect there are ways of blagging the system.
            If not, there is always an Uncle George foundation willing to help.

    2. The man was/is unquestionably a S.I.F.

      From a 2005 article.

      “Being a SIF is the intellectual equivalent of having a facial tic. One can feel sorry for the person concerned. One can sympathise to an extent, particularly if their “single issue” is one of the issues one cares about. But it is nonetheless a disturbing and unattractive trait.”

      whole article:-

      http://lastditch.blogspot.com/2005/04/bernard-levin-and-single-issue-fanatic.html

    4. Good morning thinkers ..

      Let us all also hope and pray we do not ever have to look at the current revolting looking opposition frontbench , who sit and grimace , mee mo and gurn when parliamentary business is being discussed.

      1. It fascinates me that the Left continuously denounce the “vicious hate mongers” of the alt/far/right yet if you descend BTL ( and sometimes above ) on the Guardian or put on a biohazard suit and read the Socialist Worker you will find some of the worst hatred and bigotry imaginable. What makes the Left such a miserable bunch of bile and venom filled misfits ? it certainly cannot be grinding poverty or the effects of working a 60hr week for 2/- as its obvious to me that to a man/woman/whatever they’re all well off and middle class. Perhaps they were weened too early.

        1. Inferiority complexes … they were groomed by their parents .. the LSE , and all the weird books and thoughts of anti heroes.

          Some universities need to be keel hauled … Let us hope we see an end to political correctness , statues demolished , and the Woke generation swiftly put in their place .. we are the adults here .. We do not need the Geldof generation persuading us otherwise.. and the Guardian writers and the Mirror pen pushers can take a running jump.

          Paul Mason and Kevin Maguire are a disgrace!

  15. As I watched the “antifa” thugs making their protests at losing I could not help wondering how they would have reacted had they won.

    I suspect bank buildings smashed up, synagogues trashed, conservative and public offices broken into and despoiled, police and emergency services attacked and general mayhem.

    1. Morning Sos,

      All our statues, village crosses , libraries, cultural history would probably have been wiped out by the thugs

      Local accents would be banned and pidgin patois would become the norm .. It was so refreshing listening to the regional counts and hearing how beautiful our regional accents are .

  16. The NHS Needs Reform

    Without substantial reform the NHS can only get worse. At present their is no constraint on the N HS. It want to treat visitor for free, it wants to treat asylum seekers for free , it wants to treat migrants for free. It want to provide sex change operations for free it want to provide birth control for free. It wants to provide free prescriptions and free parking. . It provides free meals. Without sensible constraint the NHS will always be short of money as it just spends whatever budget it has and more and then come park demanding even more money

    If anyone thinks that throwing £X Billion at the N HS will solve it’s issues they are sadly mistaken

    Another problem is the NHS is perceived to be Free. The real cost of it being hidden whereas the real cost is very high. It typically costs someone earning £25,000 a year about £1,500 a year or a £125 a Month. If people say that real cost they would be a lot less keen on providing free health care to the world etc

    1. Yet, as soon as the dreaded words “NHS Reform” have been thought, let alone uttered, the entrenched vested interests within the NHS begin their hysteric, kneejerk mantra, screaming “SAVE THE NHS!!” and “THEY WANT TO PRIVATISE THE NHS” and thus nothing gets done.

      1. At the moment the NHS pretty much spends what it decides it want to spend which means it always runs out of money. GP’s appear to frequently over prescribe but there is no constraint to stop them , In the end whether people like it or not the NHS is a business. It has a finite budget and we need to ensure we get the best value from it and that should include not treating for free people who have never paid in and stopping people abusing the service

        Should those engaging in sport etc have to take out some insurance to help cover the costs of accidents as a result of the Sport
        Cyclists seem to be a particularly reckless lot. If you watch any of the Air ambulance programs about 30% of the incidents are cyclist that have come a cropper from racing around rural roads

        2. Last week, I filled a bag-for-life with unused medication from elderly (and confused) chum’s house.
          A good half of that quantity was prescription medicine; including three packs of pills for her brother who died 11 years ago.

  18. Good morning all.
    0°C when I took the empty milk bottle out to the crate, but it’s dry at the moment.

    I spent last night watching 4 episodes of the old BBC Great War series. Why can’t they do documentaries like that today?

  19. BBC ‘Toady’ have wheeled out Hezza……..again!

    The BBC should carry a health warning, spoilt my day.

  21. BBC Breakfast – papers review – Hugh Grant went out campaigning for four different anti-Brexit candidates (including Chuka Umunna).

    They all lost! When will these luvvies learn that their champagne socialism is regarded with contempt by most electors?

    1. Morning, Aeneas.
      A Sleb endorsement is the kiss of death.
      Think Emma Thompson, Lily Allen, Eddie Izzard ….
      They are just bloody patronising.

      1. Good morning, Anne.

        ‘Think Emma Thompson, Lilly Allen, Eddie Izzard……’

        If you don’t mind, I would rather not!!

  24. Morning all. Some blue sky here …. at last!

    Gregory Shenkman … letters ..

    ” Foreign aid will cease to be a spending target and will work in the national interest. Quangos should be freed from the grip of the liberal
    establishment. Clarity should be provided to our judiciary as to the limits of its reach and powers.”

    No Gregory, Quangos should be abolished … NOW.,

    2. LOL – It is nice to know that my Virtual Private Network is working as I saw this comment from the Guardian underneath, which would not have been there if they thought that I was sitting in the United Kingdom. The poor lambs are even begging Europeans for Euros to keep themselves going:

      “Britain has chosen Boris Johnson…
      … and it’s making huge headlines across Europe. But while Britain is poised to leave Europe, the Guardian is not. We will continue to be there for you with accurate, authoritative, round-the-clock coverage as events unfold. These are turbulent, decade-defining times. We are committed to keeping readers in Sweden, like you, informed, involved and fully up to speed. We will be front and centre, reporting the facts live from the action. Whatever happens next, the Guardian is staying with Europe – investigating, disentangling and interrogating.

      Support The Guardian from as little as €1 – and it only takes a minute. Thank you.”

  27. Lockdown! This is what St Helen’s Square looks like now.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/489fe7c844de4094edca8774a463d38d69e0f4065c4c9edae3ba90ea0a09e577.jpg

    York has always been hot on security – see that huge stone wall that surrounds the city – but this takes it to the next level.

    Security blocks and barriers have appeared across the city centre, and they make quite an impact on the eye.

    Particularly affected is St Helen’s Square. Barriers run the entire length of the ancient square, surrounding the seats and the Christmas tree.

    Yes but the wall was there to keep the savages out!

    https://www.yorkmix.com/lockdown-this-is-what-st-helens-square-looks-like-now/

      1. Morning Belle. Yes. I found these pictures quite unsettling. It’s quite clear that whatever the central power tells us the reality is that we are semi-occupied!

      2. Morning Belle. Yes. I found these pictures quite unsettling. It’s quite clear that whatever the central power tells us the reality is that we are semi-occupied!

      3. Morning Belle. Yes. I found these pictures quite unsettling. It’s quite clear that whatever the central power tells us the reality is that we are semi-occupied!

    2. So we now have security barriers all around out towns and cities, around various buildings and market squares.
      Wouldn’t it have been better to have more barriers on our border instead?

      1. I can’t understand this Christmas Market carry-on.

        They are weeping tears of blood about the demise of high street and town centre shops as they come under a combined assault from greedy councils’ parking charges and internet shopping.

        Then as Christmas approaches and those suffering shops see a glimmer of hope and increased sales to see them over the hard times, along comes the council with another twist of the knife to allow competitors of those same shops to set up temporarily on their doorsteps to syphon off some more of their life’s blood.

    1. The surnames of the two guilty men do not shout out “traditional Irish family:” Osei (29) and Opoku (33.)

      3. ” Boakye Osei (29) of Tooban, Burnfoot and Kelvin Opoku (33) of Cill
        Graine, Letterkenny had pleaded not guilty to rape of the woman in a
        town in the county in February 2015.”
        Now tell us more about the woman.

    1. I cannot even watch or listen to that nasty little 35 year old man-boy, even in a comedy clip. Although that one where someone has dubbed a nazi-propaganda speech to his words was quite good.

      It is a sad reflection on your life when it can be said that if you had never existed at all then the human race would be better off.

    2. I take delight in little shits like him having a massive hissy fit and laying on the floor screaming and crying while headbutting the floor.

  33. Left Wing Momentum Labour and Hate Not Hope activists these people hate democracy well lets correct that they hate Democracy when a vote does not go their way

    Furious clashes between Remainers and Brexiteers broke out in London after left-wing activists took to the streets. Protesters marched on Downing Street and across central London chanting “not my Prime Minister” in anger at the Parliamentary majority secured by Mr Johnson. The 2019 election results saw the Tories win a majority of 80 seats in the House

  34. Lily Allen DELETES Twitter account after furious anti-Tory rants backfire

    She clearly in my view has some mental health issues

    LILY ALLEN has deleted her Twitter account after she commented on the General Election result, claiming Boris Johnson won because “racism and misogyny run so deep”.

    1. She seems to be the biggest racist around. It is all she ever thinks about, she sees the world in terms of racism.

  35. DENMARK is demanding access to Britain’s fishing waters after Brexit as part of the EU’s exit talks, sparking anger from Leave voters.

    Giving them some access under a licence is ok but if they thing they will get the access they do now then they need to think again

    2. Clucking Bell.
      Fisticuffs with Danish D-in-Law.
      As she’s about six foot, I’ll have to savage her knee caps.

  36. Nicked

    “Now
    that the Labour Party has some spare time why don’t they set up a
    business? Given their lecturing it should be easy for them They could
    pay their staff £20 an hour for a four day week, not use fossil fuels,
    and voluntarily pay the taxes they wanted the rest of business pay.

    When
    they have shown this model is a runaway success they can then campaign
    during the next election for the rest of us doing the same”
    Appoint JC’s son as MD as well??.

  37. I’m not saying British weather is changeable but I have gone from closing a curtain to stop the sun blinding me from my keyboard to having to get up and put the bloody light on !!
    All in 5 minutes !!

  38. Emmerdale star Sheila Mercier dies aged 100

    Actress Sheila Mercier has passed away aged 100.

    The Emmerdale star, who played Annie Sugden in the soap, died peacefully in her sleep according to former Yorkshire Television co-star Frederick Pyne, who played Matt Skilbeck in Emmerdale Farm from its launch in 1972 until 1989.

  39. Sorry if this has been posted: Sherelle Jacobs cooking on gas – again.

    “There is no way back now for the pulverised, pig-headed Labour Party

    Corbyn’s virtue signalling London club is biologically incapable of representing the working-class

    In the harsh light of this brilliant new dawn, the Labour Party has never looked more ugly. Jeremy Corbyn is writhing defiance made flesh. Despite leading his party into the worst defeat since 1935, he growled in his final speech that his manifesto policies had “huge popular support”.

    His frontbench henchmen are out in force on the BBC, whining nasally about the difficulties of “cutting through the noise of Brexit” and conspiracy theorising the power of “the Murdoch Press”. Meanwhile Momentum is squirming stupidly like a snake that has been drained of its venom. Its leader Laura Parker can only grudgingly hiss on the airwaves about the need for a “period of reflection”.

    Labour seems to have already convinced itself that this rout is a blip; that the heartlands has “lent its vote” to the Brexit cause temporarily, and will inevitably gravitate back to the Left. The BBC, meanwhile, appears convinced that the witless masses have succumbed to American-imported populism, and the subliminal witchcraft of the phrase “Let’s get Brexit done”. This is metrollectual nonsense. The working-class has deserted the Labour Party en masse because it does not – and crucially, cannot – speak for them.

    To understand this important point, you need to go back to the beginning. When it formed in 1900, Labour was not a socialist uprising, but a practical trade union movement. It had no dogma, doctrines or draconian teachings. It simply believed that workers should have a mechanism for negotiating a better deal from their employers. That is the working-class way – resourceful, aspirational, and unafraid of a barney with the Establishment if necessary.

    Sadly, a strain of middle-class fanatical socialism that is alien to the British working class infiltrated Labour within a generation. Ever since, the Labour heartlands have chafed against the embrace of the Left’s scratchy-cardiganed altruism. They shivered at Blair’s northern utopias sparkling with out-of-town supercasinos, and, more recently, bristled at Momentum’s patronising assertions that the working-class are all austerity-ravaged food bank dependents.

    But it was Labour’s opposition to Brexit that finally lit the match – catastrophically exposing the extent of the party’s emotional alienation from those it claims to represent. Outraged that “their” people made a decision of such national import against their better advice during the Referendum, Labour decided that the voters were wrong. They wilfully misinterpreted the desire of Brexiteers to move forwards as a sign of its backwardness. Which strikes at the heart of the Labour problem: such an unapologetically patrician movement simply cannot respond to this new era of populism.

    Big Brother’s refusal to accept Brexit is just one strand of the story. Where the Red Wall once stood, people are revolted by Jeremy Corbyn. One Black Country voter described him to me recently as a “snotty Islington weirdo who hates Britain like the vegans hate Sunday roasts”.

    Covering this election in the West Midlands, I found that his past associations with the IRA came up on the doorstep almost as often as the phrase “Get Brexit Done”. Scrutiny of Corbyn’s self-flagellating policies, like teaching the injustices of Empire in schools, were nowhere to be seen on the BBC. But they were discussed with flabbergasted fury in working men’s pubs.

    It is tempting to heap all the blame on Jeremy Corbyn. But he is a merely a product of Labour’s CND, Stop The War tradition. All roads ultimately lead back to the movement’s impulse that Britain is the nation-state equivalent of a bed-ridden war criminal. That a former colonial power should spend the rest of its days in a state of vegetative, socialist self-loathing, to them feels only fitting.

    Swathes of the public are equally fed up with Labour’s mania for identity politics. Minority rights movements – from the “empowerment” of “people of colour” to transgenderism – have become tedious and overbearing. Metropolitans may smear those outside the “woke” London bubble as ignorant or bigoted for not sharing their views. In fact, this populist antipathy stems from a collective gut feeling that, in a world of geopolitical high stakes, Britain needs to explore big, nation-unifying ideas rather than indulge in this insipid naval gazing.

    The final reason why Britain’s rustbelt has turned its back on Labour so decisively is perhaps the most controversial of all. Even Boris Johnson’s party do not quite grasp this yet, but, outside of the M25, Britain is fiscally conservative. To anyone who has grown up in a striving working-class family, the resonance of “living within one’s means” is obvious.

    This is, of course, why so much of the working-class embraced the Victorian principles of Mrs Thatcher.

    Which hits on the graveness of Labour’s situation. Dogma trumps what the people actually think and feel every time. With such a fundamental flaw imprinted on its DNA, it is hard to see a way back for Labour.”

      1. Quite frankly, if someone doesn’t appreciate my charm, wit, beauty and good taste – then bad cess to them.

    3. “Imported populism”? That would be the Demos Kratos wot we got from the Greeks and spent centuries refining?

      1. Except that the Greeks can still teach the world a thing or two about democracy, despite their government. Anarcgic at heart, as would be anyone who has had laws imposed on themby various occupying nations, and now the EU, they have a habit of treating laws the majority disagrees with as “optional” and the authorities tend not to enforce unpopular laws. For example, the EU may have forced the Italians to wear crash helmets, something many wiould never have credited, but in Greece a crash helmet is simply another shopping basket. This anarchy is noweher more evident than in the flouting of the smoking laws or he complete disregard for the road traffic laws. Not unusual to see motorscooter, held tohgether with duct tape, carrying two adults (on their phones and smoking) a child, a dog or two and a weeks shopping hanging of every protuberance. oh, and probably going the wrong way down a one way street. The police, of course, ignore this behaviour because they all do it.

        In a demo9cracy the laws have to be acceptable by and on behalf of the majority. It is only in totalitarian states (as the UK now is) that laws no one agrees with are imposed and enforced.

    1. It’s an odd but very compelling experience to witness someone committing social seppuku so publicly.

      1. As other comments have mentioned, it’s more the quota/quality factor. The girls here are all of high quality, of course.

        1. Are you speaking of your own harem, or more generally?
          PS I may be getting crossed cultures here.

      2. Still to finish re-reading Shogun, so I’m well aware of how to gut myself. Might need a second to finish the job though.

      1. Standard i politics are very low. The standard amongst the female ones seems to be even lower possibly because many have been put there because they are female rather than they are up to the job

        The other problem now is the majority of politicians are career politicians and have no real life experience and just live in the Wet minster political bubble

    3. The best women are just as good as, if not better, than the best men.

      However the average woman who is appointed to a position in order to fill quotas and just because of her sex rather than because of her competence is not.

      1. When Cameron insisted that the final line-up contained 50% women, we had some appalling make-weights fancying their chances (and themselves).
        Positive discrimination just doesn’t work; it alienates.
        In my jaundiced view, every female in a top job has to show she is not a ‘bumps at the front’ promotion.

    4. Margaret Thatcher did quite well while she was there, but you suspect that it was because of her talent and ability that she achieved the things that she did. It is those who are placed into the role of MP just to fill a quota that cause the problems.

      When you ask someone to sign their name and they begin by nudging the pen around the table with their nose before gripping it with their teeth and scrawling an “X” then it does not inspire confidence.

      1. A point of consideration is how much more she could have achieved had she not faced so much opposition, not least from her own Party.

  41. Von der Leyen outlines ‘zero tariff, zero quota’ Brexit vision ‘unprecedented partnership’

    “The European Council today has tasked us the European Commission to remain the Unions negotiator for the next phase of the talks.
    “The time frame is going to be very challenging, we are going to have to work as soon as possible.
    “We will be ready to get the most out of the short period available but for me it is important to say that in this moment yes will become a third country.
    “At the very end we will have an unprecedented partnership.”

    The President of the European Commission said the EU want their relationship with Britain to be “as close as possible” and said they were aiming for a “zero tariff, zero quota, zero dumping” arrangement. She revealed that the European Council has again tasked the European Commission to be the European Union’s negotiator with Britain. Ursula von der Leyen also declared the European Union will be prepared from February 1 to “go to work” regarding the Brexit process.

  42. Boris has advised Corbyn that the government will do all it can to help him find alternative emplyment

  44. How the Tories won the online election: pick a line, ignore the facts and repeat. Sat 14 Dec 2019.

    It was boomers, not bots, who won it for the Tories. For the whole election campaign we were on the lookout for what the academics call “computational propaganda”, what the platforms call “co-ordinated inauthentic behaviour” and what the media increasingly calls, rightly or wrongly, Russian bots.

    But every time we found something odd, closer inspection would reveal that the best explanation was the wonderful diversity of human experience, or, more prosaically, older voters whose desire to engage in political activism outweighed their technical literacy.

    Ah those politically dim computer illiterate older voters. So dim, so illiterate that they won the election for the Tories?

    I think I know someone like that. Lol!

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/14/tory-online-election-campaign-russian-bots-misinformation-retweeting

    2. They seem to forget which generation developed the computers. I was writing land surveying programmes for a Hewlett Packard desk-top programmable calculator in 1974.

      EDIT. For the avoidance of doubt, I was writing and composing the programmes, not just typing in somebody else’s work.

      1. I was playing Pong in 1959*. The current generation are users, not developers, of systems and processes reduced to icons and buttons.

        (*Well, OK that’s a lie. But I did gain insights into programming on a Commodore with 125k memory in the 70s. I also introduced the use of electronic mail to the company I worked for in 1979.)

          1. Elucidate! What was not invented until 1972? If you’re talking about ‘Pong’ you didn’t read the footnote in your eagerness to demonstrate your smartar$edness.

            If you’re talking about e-mail, Hugh’s commissioning didn’t happen until 7 years later.

            Please think before you post.

          2. Nanny, I’ve been vewwy, vewwy naughty and I told a fib.
            But can I still have cake for tea?
            Please. Pleeeeeeeezzze……..

          3. Thank you, Bill. If you read the note further down, you will see that I admit that it is a lie. I could not be bothered to look it up. Nor can I ever actually remember playing Pong, except possibly one time in a pub, while waiting for the go-go dancer to appear. Some comments are for fun and not the historical record.

        3. The difficulty older people have with electronic devices (video recorders, mobile phones, computers, electronic thermometers, etc., etc.) is not down to intelligence, but a failure to follow the thought processes of the nerds who design the damn things.
          No offence meant.

          1. Yes. I was managing the installation of a new national sales system. During a trial the screens went blank. The nerds, excuse me, the highly trained computer development team of systems designers and programmer was immediately informed. The response was”that’s interesting”.
            My reply to that was that it was not “interesting”, it was a commercial disaster, and we were losing orders at the rate of £20,000 per hour, as well as unquantifiable loss of customer approval*, and would he like me to invoice his department hourly or daily?
            They got on it. However that is the kind of chasm between commercial and technical.

            * Had it been a “live” system.

      2. Yes. One of my school chums has been ‘in computers’ ever since they became a serious proposition as opposed to a Bletchley Park speciality.
        He has about fifty years experience of them.

        1. Oh, I bought an IBM PS2 tower system in 1985, I think*. The company I worked for used them so I was able to buy one at the same price on the “cafeteria” system. But that’s not important right now.
          The machine came in a beautiful stove-enamelled metal case, as did my mark one HP Deskjet. Never equalled by anything since.

          * Bill Jackson will supply correction.

    1. Nearly every TV advert and popular culture programme has a number of non-whites sitting in. Guests on the”One Show”, Tesco Xmas dinner, kind of thing.
      These are of course allegories of real life.
      In the UK there is one non-white guest (uninvited and often illegal) for every eight white persons and being supported by them in respect of food, housing, education, health services and pocket money. In my opinion.

  49. BUDGET 2020

    A budget is to take place early next year probably late February/early March so that some of the measures can be implemented in the new tax year

          4. LOL – Paranoia strikes again. It happens to us all. 🙂

            I was having a lively exchange of ideas once and the guy used my Christian name in his response. A slight chill went through me as I thought “How the Hell does he know that..?” Then I realised he was replying to someone else.

          5. Well, Meredith; I had a similar experience recently where someone was “giving it large” and I saw he was replying to a post one above mine.

    2. I have a pair of genuine John Lennon glasses which I am prepared to accept a £126,000 for them. I can give you a certificate of authenticity ( I have though self declared my name as John Lennon)

  51. ” A pair of John Lennon’s sunglasses have sold for £137,500.

    The Beatles star left the round-rimmed glasses in the back of Ringo Starr’s Mercedes in the summer of 1968.”
    So the chauffeur nicked the glasses for a souvenir and some idiot gave him a nice price for them ?

  52. As of this very moment the UK Government should have a list of the areas where we are connected to the EU. For example, Interpol.
    This list can be split into two parts, one part being list of associations and activities where membership of the EU is a necessary prerequisite.
    The other part is a list of the where it is not, for example, Postal Union.
    So, after careful perusal of the lists over the next week, the UK government can tell the EU that we are leaving the some of these arrangements, for example, all those involving EU membership.
    It should not take long to arrange suitable alternative processes. Especially if the UK chooses a team of businessmen to arrange stuff. People like Tim Martin of Wetherspoons.

  53. North Korea conducts another ‘crucial test’ at missile base. 14 DECEMBER 2019.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c1932fb5ab86037876b6ce15767af71776de1e4b7f791c19a05e43e0780d7451.jpg

    North Korea has conducted another “crucial test” at its Sohae satellite launch site, state media reported Saturday, as nuclear negotiations between Pyongyang and Washington remain stalled with a deadline approaching.

    Hmmm. Snowing in Nutterland which I imagine will increase the miseries of the population considerably! It is a source of constant wonder to me that all these Marxist regimes have people at the top who live lives of depraved luxury supported by a starving peasantry.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/12/14/north-korea-conducts-another-crucial-test-missile-base/

  55. Hama, SANA- Three terrorists affiliated to the so-called “White

    Helmets” terrorist organization were killed in explosion of a shipment

    of explosive which they were transporting in an ambulance in Hama

    northwestern countryside.

    Local sources told Sputnik news agency that three members of the

    so-called “White Helmets” terrorist organization were killed due to an

    explosion which took place inside an ambulance affiliated to them in the

    surroundings of Qastoun town in Hama northwestern countryside.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ffffe2e05fc918419fd7b4b3a7e5aad12ee8d8abb56271d938f1e697f459083f.jpg

        1. I found that almost, instantly just by googling the first line of your post.

          Though to be fair, my first reaction was that I doubt that that is an unbiased source.

          1. In disputes between Arabs, is there any reliable way to distinguish between goodies ( if any ) and baddies ?
            Yemen in particular seems to have been the worst kind of Arab shit-hole for a very long time.

          2. Kissinger was on the ball when in the Iran v. Iraq war he said that he wanted both sides to lose. Ceratinly, it was v.nasty with poison gas being used, at least by the Iraqis.

          3. Yemen is stuffed full of ex-Gitmo inmates and assorted jihadi terrorists. They can publish as many pictures of starving children as they like. I don’t care.

          4. Silly boy.

            Shoot first; ask the survivor, isn’t that obvious?

            And don’t forget to shoot the survivor again after you’ve asked.

    7. Cameron is deluded if he thinks he was included in that landslide vote. You would have thought he had twigged by now.

      1. Cameron talks of trust but for over three years the Conservatives did their best to lose the trust if those who voted for Brexit in the referendum.

        And if Johnson now does not produce a brilliant ‘Brexit’ all the good work will be undone and the Conservatives will lose our trust once again.

  58. Restructuring the England

    The UK is pretty much unique in that it runs most things centrally and the problems with this are becoming ever more apparent

    The UK regions have no real control . They have no real budget. They have to plead with Westminster for funds for Infrastructure projects and Westminster and in reality for Westminster read the Cabinet . It is not unusual as well for the Cabinet having granted funding to reduce it or even withdraw it. You cannot sensible plan on that basis. A region can come up with say a 5 year plan but it has no idea at all as to whether Westminster will fund it

    The Regions know best hat their needs and priorities are Westmister does not. If the Regions control their own budget you can get sensible planning

    At the moment thouh England has no real regional structure we have some ad hoc Mayoral regions and a number of Regional Quangos and some services are structured o at least a semi regional basis but that all

    How can the regions plan if they dont control, the budget?

    1. Well, it is not working so well in Scotland. Queues at GP surgeries, A&E departments closed to all but the dying. Roads with potholes and congestion. Railways that don’t run with tens of thousands of cancellations in a year. Education that does not educate, but corrupts. Public works and projects that overrun budgets by 100% and more. Historic and beautiful buildings, our built heritage, destroyed by neglect and stupidity.

      1. I always give Charles Rennie Mackintosh as an example of a decent man brought low by his treatment at the hands of narrow minded Glaswegians. The credit for his early buildings was stolen by Honeyman and Keppie, he could not wait to leave Scotland and pursued his great gift for drawing and painting in England and France.

        Now his finest work, the Glasgow School of Art has been totally destroyed by the same idiotic naval gazing Scots.

        1. Not just Mackintosh, but Alexander “Greek” Thomson whose work I prefer. Some of his buildings have been demolished.
          An ongoing country-wide tragedy brought on by stupidity and corruption.

          1. True. The late Gavin Stamp as Piloti in Private Eye campaigned tirelessly for the conservation of his fine buildings.

            In the early seventies I was architectural assistant on the Hunterian Art Gallery and Mackintosh House at Hillhead. I recall the animosity shown towards the Architects by the site agent, a mean minded English hating yob. The poor standard of workmanship caused us some distress.

            My boss the late (Sir) William Whitfield had designed the University Library and had planned its Phase 2 extension. The Scots however wanted to award the work to one of their own (Walter Underwood) who produced a completely unsympathetic mess detracting from the coherence of the original.

            I prepared the drawings for the reconstruction of the interiors of Mackintosh’s house at Southpark Avenue which was demolished to make a site for the Mathematics Block. I was directed to measure the contents which had been salvaged and these included door frames and an assortment of sash windows along with the furniture. The lot had been deposited in the basement of Pollock House covered in dirt and grime.

            Glasgow has lost so many fine buildings. One of the most shocking I witnessed later was the demolition of St Enoch’s Station.

  59. Hope this isn’t too long but it is a joy to read. That exit poll was like taking Valium.

    God, I love this country. There we were on Thursday afternoon with a sick dread roiling around our stomachs. The worst butterflies since exam results. Clutching at straws – or straw polls anyway. Unable to sleep peacefully until all was well on Friday morning (it’s going to be alright, isn’t it?) Pictures on the news of Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband made you nostalgic for a time when a Labour victory might mean you’d be a bit sad not downright terrified.

    We believed in Boris, never doubted he was the one leader who could get us through this. But, so successfully had we been gaslighted into thinking a hung Parliament was likely by liberal-left presenters on the BBC, Channel 4 and Sky News, that our faith wobbled. And, in the words of the Christmas story, we were sore afraid.

    The thought of Jews with their bags packed, ready to flee. The thought of a man who loves hate preachers getting the keys to Number 10. The thought of our children and grandchildren being indoctrinated in the Marxists’ mirthless creed. It was awful, awful. As the Chief Rabbi warned, “The very soul of the nation is at risk

    I didn’t realise how anxious I was until, around mid-afternoon, I got an email. “There is now a significant probability the Conservatives will come first in Wales in both votes and seats,” it said. I actually started to cry at the thought of my valiant little homeland teaching its complacent Labour overlords a lesson. A friend called from Swansea and, amidst screams of laughter, confirmed that her ex-miner uncle had only gone and voted Tory and – get this – he loves Boris!

    If Uncle Carl’s Boriscene conversion was anything to go by, then this wasn’t an election any more, it was a revolution. On Twitter, a Yorkshireman confirmed that locals were “coming down from the hills to see off the dark forces”.

    Our people were rallying to save their country from the Corbynists. Quiet millions pulled on their coats, braved the rain and went down to the polling station for the fourth time in three years, if you please, to vote for Boris who promised that, this time, we would actually Get Brexit DoneBrexit

    Well, the Remainers said they wanted a People’s Vote and they bloody well got one. And the people, they said, No:

    No to that insufferably arrogant Remainer Parliament blocking the referendum result because they knew better.

    No to Gina “Who the hell does she think she is?” Miller and her insufferable flicky hair.

    No to the Remainer Supreme Court.

    No to Question Time audiences seemingly packed with “unbiased” Momentum activists.

    No to Jeremy Corbyn whose rightful place is selling copies of Socialist Worker outside Harringay station in a Leninist cap and a chequered Palestinian keffiyeh, not running this great nation of ours.

    NO! Did you get it this time? Have we made ourselves clear?

    For three and a half contemptuous years, a Remainer establishment assured us that all the stupid old Leave voters have died. Last night they found out we are still very much alive. It was the anti-Brexit forces that were about to breathe their last. Labour screwed over its traditional supporters and the traditional supporters screwed them right back from Bishop Auckland to Ynys Mon.

    The exit poll called it on the night

    Oh, that exit poll! Will we ever forget the sense of joy’n’relief intermingled when it flashed up on the BBC? Immediately, I called my Jewish friend. “THANK GOD, THANK GOD,” she said, over and over, a lifelong Labour voter made politically homeless by the terrible Trots.

    And….. breathe. We were safe. Safe! Hang on, what was that loud bang in the BBC studio? Huw Edwards looked concerned. Pop! It was the sound of the London metropolitan bubble bursting. Inside the bubble so obsessed were they about staying in the EU that they were willing to turn a blind eye to vilest antisemitism. They were prepared to magnify every downside of Brexit and play up any risk.

    They failed to broadcast the dangers of Corbyn, whose patent unfitness for high office could have been sniffed out in seconds by Dilyn the dog. That charming, fluffy, semi house-trained little fellow, who accompanied his master, the charming fluffy, semi house-trained big fellow, to the polling station

    What a great victory this is for Boris Johnson. Who else could have fought the people’s corner so magnificently? Tied down like Gulliver in Lilliput with a hundred Parliamentary amendments; every which way he moved the buggers blocked him. But he did it; by George, he did it!

    He looked so tired last night, those hooded eyes more recessed than ever, but still the spirit bubbled irrepressibly to the surface. They say that he cares about nothing and no one but himself. But the people believed in Boris and, in that believing, they have already made Boris better than before. As Labour seats tumbled, and Redcar turned to Bluecar, Falstaff became Henry V. “But if it be a sin to covet honour/I am the most offending soul alive.”

    You might say that it was Boris’s finest hour, but I hope not. This is the beginning of the end for the Remainers, but it’s the start of something that could be extraordinary for Britain. Our Prime Minister already enjoys considerable affection, but he will be loved if he can pull off the trick of harnessing a post-Brexit economic boom to the vital cause of world-class public services.

    Thank you to everyone across our great country who voted, who volunteered, who stood as candidates. We live in the greatest democracy in the world.

    During the Telegraph’s charity phone-in, a fortnight ago, two readers – one a scientist, the other a doctor – told me that they don’t dare reveal at work that they vote Conservative or that they read this newspaper. That’s appalling and it needs to change. Labour is the Nasty Party now.

    I feel so incredibly proud to be a Conservative today. Proud and emotional too. Our people have defied the vilest calumnies from the righteous, shrieking left to pull together and reach this historic crossroads in our history. But Boris, whatever you do, please, please don’t betray my Wales or the North-East and the Midlands which have taken such a remarkable leap of faith to vote Tory.

    There is great poverty there and they need your help. If you reward them for their trust in you then an amazing new force, delivering social justice and economic prosperity for all, can be forged. Uncle Carl is counting on you, Boris bach.

    This is the luckiest Friday the 13th ever. Those of us who were up to see that glorious, incredible exit poll will never forget the sheer elation of it. Just look at the map of the UK today. A few islets of red in a vast, beautiful sea of blue. The sheer force of the people’s will, like a great tide, swept away the Corbynistas who threatened our way of life, our tolerance, our decency, our everything.

    I hope the Chief Rabbi is pleased. The soul of our nation is intact.

    1. I never believed the latest poll that showed a very narrow lead. The fatal mistake the polls appeared to have made was a good percentage of people voted by post so they vote would have gone in over a week ago. That does not seem to account for all the error though as the final polls were miles out

      1. For the Postal Votes to count, Mr Rashid must have been on holiday and forgpot to post his 2,897,234 votes

        1. The Four Fatimas were slacking off.
          As were their twenty three offspring, the aunts and the cousins, the grandads and grannies and Old Uncle Abdul and all……….

        2. There is some evidence of people trying to vote twice particularly in University towns. People were turning up at polling stations to vote that had registered for a postal vote. They thought they would be able to get away with it but the register is marked to indicate you have registered for a postal vote. When challenged they either claimed they had never registered for a postal vote or had forgotten

          1. The police in Scotland took away some voting papers in evidence bags from a polling station on election day to investigate possible fraudulent votes.

          2. They did. It looked like only a few. So it is probably no huge fraud. Probably a couple of dolts who do not realise that the ballot paper can be traced back to you, yes, you Jimmy. Ballot papers are removed from a book of counterfoils, all numbered, and marked off against the Electoral Roll.

          3. During my two hour telling stint, there were several polling cards that I had doubts about; Colchester is a university town and the area under question has a high number of multiple dwellings.

      2. Good morning, Bill.

        So, you ‘never believed the latest poll that showed a very narrow lead.’
        You then give your reasons for so thinking; yet, on a daily basis, you
        have subjected us to the poll readings and offered your views.

        Bill……….you are a Master at hindsight

        Edited.

    2. Our elder son popped by for a coffee and a gloat.
      Chatting away, we all realised how tense and miserable the last three years had made us. And boy, did it come to a head on Thursday evening! Every nerve was twanging.

  61. Corbyn’s sons condemn ‘despicable attacks’ on him after defeat. Sat 14 Dec 2019.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/879cbd5c472da904a95442ec362324a8249f04e162cd86e648fdf9b9c21aceb2.jpg

    The Labour leader’s youngest son, Tommy, 25, with his brothers Seb, 27, and Benjamin, 32, posted a statement on Twitter expressing pride in their father, who they said had produced the “most wonderful manifesto this country has ever seen”.

    Oh God there are three of them! They will all be standing in 2024. It will be like the movie. Sons of Frankenstein. McDonnel has two daughters as well so they will probably intermarry and haunt the UK for the next century!

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/14/jeremy-corbyns-sons-condemn-despicable-attack-on-him-after-defeat

  62. Bill Mitchell

    @mitchellvii

    Think about this for a minute. Liberals just got their asses handed to them in the FREAKING UK! Folks, they haven’t been in this bad of shape in nearly 100 years. If they got pounded that hard in the UK, hardly a bastion of Conservatism, what will happen to them in the USA?

    1. They are not Liberals.
      They are Liberal Democrats. Totally different animals from the herbivores of yesteryear.

    1. Good God. And she wants to be a doctor. Perhaps she should learn a few more English words that will be more acceptable to her patients than fu..ing and Cnut. Why are leftards so horrible?

      And where has the graceful acceptance of a disappointing result gone? Jo Swinson still insists that her policy to revoke article 50 was the right one – huh? – look at the votes. And Laura Pidcock or whatever her name is insists that Labour’s “policies” were very popular! Err noooo otherwise labour would have done much better. These people truly are delusional.

      1. The Left have been used to getting their own way ever since Maggie went.
        They are like a particularly vicious and spoilt band of toddlers.

        1. Between 1983 and 2015 there wasn’t ‘a left’ at all. Both major parties in that period were filled with neoliberals. Labour had slightly more of a social conscience but economically they were peas in a pod. Only John Smith could be accused of being ‘of the left’ and he only had about 18 months and spent much of that time in ill health.

    4. When our elder son was at Bristol University, it was at the height of the anti-Murdoch Times furore.
      Son and Heir was reading the Times when some Sloane started shrieking at him; something about wot about the workers.
      S&H pointed out that he knew more about work than she ever would.

      1. They tell us the human brain doesn’t reach maturity until 25 yrs old. That would be a good starting point. Oh, and being a tax payer.

    1. Kids like Greta should be made to go to school. She very obviously has a personality problem – autism/Aspergers can be made easier for the person concerned (and everyone around them) with timely help. Thunberg has not had that help but is being pandered to – she is going to have a very rough ride from now on. Going back to school, then? And if not, then what? She will be yesterday’s news, and I doubt if she will be able to cope with that.

  67. The polls got is so wrong that I suspect that if they had had another EU referendum with an honest question rather than a rigged one then ‘Leave’ would have won by over 15%.

    Social pressure has tried to make people shy of admitting that they voted Conservative or that they voted Leave so they gave the pollsters wrong answers.

    Several articles in today’s papers are saying that the British actually love their country and this is why Corbyn’s gospel telling us to hate Britain and to hate ourselves, our history, our culture and our country failed.

    It is now time that the politicians put the indigenous British people and our society – based on Christian values – ahead of alien cultures that seek to destroy us.

    2. Good morning, Richard. I think the polls were used to persuade people how to vote. YouGov polls are certainly used for this purpose. Genuine polls could not have got it so wrong. Yet they all did.

    3. The attempt by Corbyn et al. to teach the British people to hate everything that we are and what we have achieved is a central tenet of his belief system. Break down the very idea of Britishness and create an amorphous population that can be moulded into whatever the ‘leaders’ desire. Mass immigration is another tool to be used to this end by literally reducing both the indigenous and the long integrated immigrant populations and replacing them with a population that has no interest in our history or culture.

  69. Here we have the arrogant face of the EU, Charles Michel.

    “#EU is ready for the next phase. We will negotiate a future trade deal which ensures a true level playing field.

    “Of course, we hope to keep in the future a very strong strategic relationship with the UK.

    “But the EU is ready to defend and promote its interests.

    “The level-playing field is a very important goal and we will guarantee again the #EU27 unity for the next negotiations.”

    “Its interests,” are controlling every aspect of this Country that they can retain in their wretched grip. A PM of this Country, especially one with a strong mandate from the People, must never cede any control of this Country to a foreign power ever again. We have to be free, free to pursue our own path and not have to refer our future to a corrupt cabal in Brussels that will in no way have our best interests in mind. Quite the opposite in fact, as Michel clearly states, the EU27 are paramount.

    Daily Express – Brexit Deal – Michel

    1. The only way to deal with the EU is to expose who controls it.

      That looks likely to be the individual to whom the European Commission throws open their doors anytime… 72 top level meetings last year… and who appears to dictate policy right down to the last full stop.

      Who really controls Europe ? I don’t think it’s politicians.

    2. Boris must have the courage to walk away from the negotiations. At the moment I don’t see any evidence that he is prepared to do that. He seems to be following Theresa May’s lovey dovey approach to the EU. That will not get him anywhere. They are our opponents, not our friends when it comes to negotiations.

      1. Appeasement with Europeans never works.

        For those who cannot understand history, history will repeat itself.

  72. One thing about the election result, it proves how much our extreme left mainstream media, governing classes and people in positions of influence and power are out of kilter with the majority of the electorate.

  74. Good evening, fellow NoTTLers. And hail the brave new world. Thank God the population saw through the lies of Corbynliner’s Marxism.

    I just hope that Johnson will be sensible – scrap the Five Year Parliament bollux; scrap the BBC licence. Stop primary school children being taught to masturbate and change sex. Scrap Haitch Esse Too and the third Heathrow runway. Limit immigration. Stop paying bennies to all comers. Stop the persecution of elderly servicemen.

    Driving from Rouen yesterday, I indulged the MR and let her listen to the Toady Prog. The best bits were a Communist woman from the Momentum group saying what a rotten press Liebour had had throughout the campaign; and some barking Ilib Undem peeress saying that their manifesto was just spiffing and they’d do it all over again.

    Then Charles Moore attacked Rick Nobinson about the beeboid licence fee.

    I notice that the beeboids tried to make much of the SNP “landslide”. While Mrs Murrell did get some more MPs, the SNP vote went down from 1.8 million to 1.2 million – which indicates that lots of Scots (more than 10% of those who can vote) do not agree with her madcap scheme – and would vote against independence.

    It was 19ºC when we arrived in Laure – two more warm and sunny days forecast.

    For once – briefly – I feel optimistic.

    Have a jolly evening.

    PS During my voluntary silence, I did comment once or twice elsewhere. Main thoughts – how terribly rude and personal people can be (unlike NoTTL) and how you can’t really have a conversation as we do here – sometimes. Certainly no fish puns…!! And an A Allan chap on the DT letters is nothing like as well informed as our own dear pushy nurse!!

    A bientôt

    1. Nice to see you, to see you nice.

      Are you away for Christmas? (note to self….remember crow bar and swag bag)

        1. I was so excited to see you that i didn’t bother reading it. Just wanted to give you a hug. :o)

    2. First the Corbynists get a kicking, then BT returns to our forum. Can things get much better?

        1. Has anyone checked out where all Mr Rashid’s postal votes ended up? They don’t seem to have had mention in the election results.

    3. Good evening, Bill.
      I have bought the most wonderful puzzle for you and the MR;
      I will forward it to you at the end of January.

      It is great to have you back!.

      1. We were discussing this with our son this morning. We all felt that was a real oversight by the Labour strategists.

    5. Lucky you came across Thursday, they wouldn’t have let you back on Friday, what with that nasty man promising to take the UK out of the club.

      1. Funnily enough, the only hitch on the trip was a 15 minute wait at French passport control while they changed shift “according to the rule book”. The queue of cars reached back beyond the Eurotunnel arrival check in – and on to the M20. The advantage of going Flexiplus meant that we were four in the queue….

          1. Worth every penny going from UK = no more heart-stopping anxiety about traffic jams and delays.

      1. Thanks, Missus. It rained all the way until Toulouse. Then the sun came out…

        I see that while I was “off air” my thumb total has continued to go down…. Oh well!

        1. It should start to go back up – Disqus seems to have removed all comments and all votes prior to the new site coming in. The comment total stayed the same.

          2. After climbing again over the last few weeks, I have lost 36 upvotes in the last 24 hours. Looks like the vote weevil is back.

          5. Oh – I haven’t been keeping a count but it’s a bit higher than the figure I wrote down a couple of weeks ago. All my comments prior to the start of this site have disappeared.

    1. These people hate ordinary people, they hate being contradicted or proved wrong and they hate democracy. Why do they think they are better than the others?

      Both Hugh Grant (Latymer Upper) and Lily Allen (Bedales) went to prestigious schools and my wife and I have a lifetime of experience teaching, tending and dealing with privately educated pupils and students. It is only the dregs in such schools who become snobs – or even worse – inverted snobs.

      1. It goes with celebrity. They have an insatiable hunger to be noticed and a conviction that because people are looking at them, they must be looking up to them. They think they are special.

  76. If I were ever in the last 50 years a Labour supporter I would be worried that the party now faces a considerable structural fault-line/cleavage. 50 years ago it was an alliance of the WWC industrial workers (people who worked with their hands) and a minority left-wing intellectual class. very few of its voters had been to university and the vast majority were against foreign immigrants.

    Now, it is a triangle of a much larger metrollectual (predominantly public sector generated) class, a numerous (many millions) immigrant set of communities and a still large WWC – all in the first two groups and a substantiial portion of the 3rd (WWC) group heavilly committed to a large and expensive publlic sector. But there are large strains – the immigrants have a large cultural divide from the other two groups and an increasing proportion of the WWC are revolted by this and by the cultural norms which the metrollectuals are trying to propogate/impose (and like Southern Democrats in the US an increasing number have deserted Labour).

    It could well be that the “rubbing our noses in diversity” policies instigated surreptitiously under Blair will lead to the permament split in the Labour Party and its death (or being out of power for at least a further generation … and unless Johnson/Patel give its new WWC support what it wants on the cultural front – that is severe control re. immigration and law and order norms from the 1950s – this diversity will lead to a larger death … that of Great Britain or England ….

  77. John McDonnell says he will not be part of the next shadow cabinet

    He needs treatment for Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and RSI, from having had Corbyn as glove puppet, since 2016

    2. Ada – “Move over a bit Bert”.
      Bert – ” What for? Ada”.
      Ada – ” Making room for Jeremy”.

    4. There was that famous picture of that “woman” and I use that term loosely, who was wearing the “Never Kissed A Tory” t-shirt. I think these two above could go one step closer to the truth with “No Tory Has Ever Wanted To Kiss Me.”

      Even those on the right with exotic peccadillo’s would run for their lives if they witnessed those two on the radar.

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c884c60f02309d03a47544e2d3247d86ec70dadd2bf866c075d815a17c9c9d4a.jpg

        1. Mr Thomas – I would welcome you back but didn’t realise that you had gone. 😉

          (We have picked up one of those individuals with no real life who tries to cause offence by downvoting people. In their world such things are important. So if you get one – ignore it. That type hate being ignored. 🙂

        1. Thanks, UB. My reason for exile was that I was (a) p*ssed off with the endless and meaningless “debate” about leaving the EUSSR; (b) that I was scared shyteless that the unwashed would, in the event, fall for the Marxist’s lies; (c) that there would be yet another hung parliament.

          My relief on waking on Friday morning in the Mercure in Rouen was total and euphoric. Mainly because I had woken but otherwise sheer relief at a good result.

          1. Two days later and I’m still giggling like a dizzy schoolgirl, I was very concerned that we were destined for a marxist wilderness or vassalage under the EUSSR, who knows what’s to happen now but there’s now hope, and in my case a Bottle of proper fizz to share with my leaving chums tonight, à votre santé

          4. And the chavs have always voted for Labour and if you look at the total votes numbers for Con and Lab the margin is relatively small.
            Labour will always be able to produce votes in quantity from the unwashed, and will always be a danger.

          5. But…. there was always a smidgen of a chance…. later generations have been educated differently. It wasn’t until I heard the words ‘Blyth Valley recount’ very, very early on in the proceedings and I knew, I just knew that this was going to be different and that we would under no circumstances be expected to house a family of immigrants in the spare bedroom.

          6. Welcome back! We are now only one or two sausage roll short of a picnic!

            To the other sausage rolls who departed – if you are reading here, do return, we miss you.

      2. Choices choices.

        That will teach you not to order from uglywhoresdot com.

        You should ask for your money back…

  81. I must say that I am very disappointed that the Remainiacs have not yet started their case to the Supreme “Court” to rue that the election was invalid because the wrong party won.

    And what a delight to see Soubrette and Grievance dashed to the ground. And that daft woman from Totnes (my place of birth – see blue plaque…).

      1. Bound to get results. He’ll be packing now, ready to vacate in the morning.

        What the hell do these self-obsessed numbskulls hope to achieve apart from getting on everyone else’s tits?

      2. They’ve been shouting, “Say it loud and say it clear, refugees are welcome here!”
        Nearly all young, hope their parents are understanding when they turn up with 3 burly ‘Iranian’ blokes to stay.

        1. That Yvette Balls nearly lost her seat – wanqueurs such as she, who promised to have lots of migrants to live with her – forget that the voters do NOT forget…

  82. Ms Soubry, an ardent Remainer, secured just 4,668 seats. I bet that dented her ego but the question is where an earth did she find 4668 people to vote for her?

      1. The Standard English Seat goes back to pre-Norman times. I can never remember if it was measured in ells or oxgangs..

      1. I bet you’ll recognise this quote.
        “She fitted into my biggest arm-chair as if it had been built round her by someone who knew they were wearing arm-chairs tight about the hips that season”

    1. That would be like corbyn getting another spell as labour leader. When will they realise that the voters just don’t want her?

      Come to think of it where is the charismatic Democrat leader that could win.

    2. Surely that’s got to be one of those composite photos, where they’ve superimposed the face of a man onto her head. Oh no, it’s in the Mail, so it must be true…

    3. It looks like two frogs were sacrificed in this procedure (nothing unusual in the lives of eiither Macbeth’s witches or Hillary Clinton).

    1. They are doing well in the States just now, with the Queen of Spades in New York and the Ace of Trumps in Washington.

  85. In the movie, ‘The Annihilation of the Labour Party 2019’, Corbynichev must share the honours with: Ed Milliband (he changed the rules), Len McCluskey (leader of UNITE), Laura Parker (leader of Momentum) and special advisor, Seumas Milne (ex Graduanista) …

    2. They’re all at it in Brussels, Berlin, Paris etc, as well as the UK’s commentariat who are agitating for a ‘soft Brexit’ as we type. It is to be expected and it will become a deluge as time moves on. Al-Beeb will doubtlessly continue with their ‘balanced’ panels on QT i.e. 4 Remain v 1 Leave or maybe they’ll dispense with Leavers for good.

      1. There was one of those drones from the CBI on Sky News this morning. I have seen her several times before, but I cannot recall her name. She was already coming out with the Remainer lines that we are going to hear for years to come to stop any meaningful Brexit actually happening:

        “The Prime Minister needs to get together with the leaders of British industry in the new year to thrash out a way forward in these negotiations for a future trade deal that leaves us as closely aligned to the EU as possible. He should also not box himself in with artificial deadlines because we don’t need to see another “cliff edge” in a years time.”

        So she is saying let us stay as close as possible to the EU, almost as if we had never left at all, and don’t limit transition talks to a year, let them take as long as they need to. It would be nice to have a Prime Minister who would tell these people where to go and just take us out of the EU, not start down this path of tying us to the EU for years.

    1. Compare and contrast (as the exam question used to start) with the Allahu Akbarriers all over York nowadays.

  89. Corbyn’s sons condemn ‘despicable attacks’ on him after defeat. Sat 14 Dec 2019.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/879cbd5c472da904a95442ec362324a8249f04e162cd86e648fdf9b9c21aceb2.jpg

    The Labour leader’s youngest son, Tommy, 25, with his brothers Seb, 27, and Benjamin, 32, posted a statement on Twitter expressing pride in their father, who they said had produced the “most wonderful manifesto this country has ever seen”.

    Oh God there are three of them! They will all be standing in 2024. It will be like the movie. Sons of Frankenstein. McDonnel has two daughters as well so they will probably intermarry and haunt the UK for the next century!

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/14/jeremy-corbyns-sons-condemn-despicable-attack-on-him-after-defeat

    4. Is the person of colour on the far right 😎 the result of Corbyn’s and Abbot’s liaison?

      4. That swarthy rogue has the look of thinking:

        “When our numbers are high enough and we take over the Labour Party, these 3 munchkins will be the first through the shredder. But until that day they will defend me and everything that we do. You have got to love the left because you won’t find that level of stupidity on the right.”

    5. Given the Left’s attitude towards family loyalty, one can only congratulate them on their lack of progressive standards.
      At least Jezza hasn’t raised a trio of Pavlik Morosovs.

          1. Trying to take a course in American humor first. Trouble is, I can’t find anyone here who know what it is.

    2. If, and it’s a BIG IF, he delivers on that he could change voting patterns for a generation.

      We are not the masters, we are the servant’s now.

      His speech writer deserves the OBE, Order of Boris Excellence.

      1. This is an adaptation of a Labour politician who was misquoted as having said “We are the masters now” when in fact he said that ‘for the time being it looks if ‘we are the masters now.’

        Top marks for anyone who can tell me who this was?

        Sir Hartley Shawcross- latterly Lord Shawcross.

    1. The Climate Change agenda is just another globalist scam. We all know this and yet the politicos and interest groups continue to promote this infantile crap.

      The weaponisation of a pre-pubescent retarded Swedish schoolgirl infant, reading from snotty scripts, to promote and facilitate this cause, is a filthy device and tantamount to child abuse.

      Those giving credence to the ignorant utterances of the pre-programmed statements of this village idiot Greta deserve to be reviled.

  96. The battle for leaving the EU is still some way off from winning but at least the forces for reason are gaining ground.
    The next big campaign will be stopping all this globalist climate change nonsense, this is going to hit us far harder than being in the EU ever has.

    1. Morning Bob,
      The question that really needs to be asked is did the country elect a government that is truly Conservative minded or just an extension of what has gone on before since Thatcher was overthrown, ie liberal in all but name.
      There are many issues that need to be tackled head on, climate change nonsense as you say, self gender identification, BBC, C4 and radicalisation of education to name just a few.

    2. Well not really. A vote on the WAS is going to be this month. The real battle will be over the trade deal. The EU will be trying to ensure we keep as close to EU regulation as they can get us to(Note for trade with the EU we will have to follow them). They will also be pushing for access to our fishing grounds as now bu that should be resisted. IT is though quite normal to give foreign fishing fleets access to fishing grounds under licence. You decide how much access theyy can have and they have to pay a licence fee for that access

  97. Must have been the ultimate embarrassment to Blair for his old seat to fall to the Conservatives

    1. And to have Boris thanking the North-East for their Conservative votes, in his old seat of Sedbergh.

          1. I realise now why i have such difficulty in recognising familiar faces. It isn’t the medically accepted view of being on the spectrum. It’s a deep seated aversion to liars.

          1. Yes. A properly made vodka Martini served on a beach in the Med by a scantilly clad……….anyhoo…That’s enough about my holiday.

    2. As part of his election manifesto to win the newly established Sedgefield seat, he campaigned to leave the EEC.

    4. Blair is not particularly bothered. The despicable rat took the Soros millions long ago. He went from being a relatively poor and unsuccessful lawyer to becoming a multi millionaire almost overnight after being exposed as a complete charlatan on the make and having been booted out by the voters.

      1. Every time i see socialist (and in the USA Democrat) politicians going from average or little wealth to the realms of dreams beyond avarice I know that socialism is for the few not the many.

        1. Take a close look at any city on the planet run by democrats/socialists or any of the Left wing and you will see mass unemployment, decay and stagnation.

          Closer to home you only need to look at local authorities run by these ****s to see they haven’t got a effing clue.

  98. I see the conductor Christopher Finzi, son of the composer Gerald Finzi has died and the Telegraph has published a most scurrilous obituary.

    Christopher ‘Kiffer’ Finzi, conductor who had an intense affair with his wife’s sister, the cellist Jacqueline du Pré – obituary

    Christopher “Kiffer” Finzi, who has died aged 85, was the elder son of the composer Gerald Finzi and, after his father’s death in 1956, did much to help establish his reputation, both through a trust founded by his mother, of which he was chairman from 1981 and 1997, and as a conductor.

    An unorthodox figure, once described as “somewhere between a gentleman farmer and a 1970s hippie”, Finzi was married to Hilary du Pré, a flautist and older sister of the cellist Jacqueline du Pré; they had four children.

    In 1997, however, Hilary and her brother Piers wrote A Genius in the Family, a memoir in which they claimed that in the early 1970s Jacqueline, in a fit of depression and desperation, insisted that she have sex with Kiffer Finzi.

    This odd relationship – conducted, according to Hilary, with her eventual agreement – lasted for about 16 months spanning 1971 and 1972, when Jacqueline was already married to the pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim and shortly before she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, the illness from which she would die in 1987, aged 42.

    The memoir and, particularly, the 1998 film Hilary and Jackie, based on interviews with Hilary and Piers and starring Emily Watson and Rachel Griffiths as Jacqueline and Hilary, with David Morrissey as Kiffer, ignited a furore among many who had known Jacqueline.

    They accused the film makers and Hilary of sullying the memory of one of the greatest musicians of the 20th century by presenting her as an unstable, manipulative and voracious woman.

    Some of Jacqueline’s closest colleagues (including Mstislav Rostropovich) sent a furious letter to The Times; Daniel Barenboim wondered why people could not have waited until he was dead; Clare Finzi, Kiffer and Hilary’s daughter, charged that the film was a “gross misinterpretation, which I cannot let go unchallenged”. Students from the Royal College of Music picketed the premiere.

    Hilary, however, continued to defend both the book and the film, while Kiffer saw nothing to apologise for, claiming, in an interview in The Sunday Telegraph in 1999, that the ménage à trois had been a good thing for all concerned.

    Clare Finzi, however, spoke of her distress about the family’s linen being aired in public, and provided a darker interpretation of the relationship. “My father had several affairs, tending to choose women who were lost and unsure of themselves,” she was quoted as saying.

    In an interview with The Independent, the film-maker Christopher Nupen, a friend of Jacqueline’s, described the Finzi household as more or less a commune in the period of free love, when “everybody slept with everybody”. Kiffer, Nupen maintained, “was regarded as something of a guru and his therapy for everyone who came to him for advice was to take them to bed.”

    Christopher Finzi, always known as “Kiffer”, was born on July 12 1934 at Downshire Hill, Hampstead. His parents, Gerald and Joy, also had a house at Aldbourne in Wiltshire and in 1935 they sold their London home and settled at Aldbourne, where Kiffer and his younger brother Nigel, born in 1936, spent their early years.

    In 1939 the Finzis moved to Church Farm, Ashmansworth, a few miles south-west of Newbury, where in 1940 Gerald founded a small orchestra called the Newbury String Players. Though largely amateur, it had a lasting influence for its role in performing works by neglected British composers, as well as its founder’s compositions.

    The Finzi household was cultured and unconventional. Gerald Finzi had gained a reputation not only as a fine composer but also as a man of broad interests, which included cultivating rare species of apple on his farm; his wife Joy was a sculptor, artist and poet. Ralph Vaughan Williams was a close friend, and other visitors to Church Farm included the poets Edmund Blunden and John Betjeman and the guitar virtuoso Julian Bream.

    The Finzi boys were educated at the progressive boarding school Bedales and, like his father, Kiffer became a pacifist, spending a short time in jail for refusing to do National Service.

    He attended the Royal Academy of Music and embarked on a career as a freelance cellist. When his father died in 1956, Kiffer inherited the estate at Ashmansworth and took over as conductor of the Newbury String Players. He also helped his mother to establish the Finzi Trust.

    Later, from 1971 to 1997, he conducted the North Wiltshire Orchestra, another amateur ensemble which he developed into a full symphony orchestra. Finzi first met the 17-year-old Hilary du Pré when she was performing with the Royal Academy orchestra at a concert in Newbury. He was conducting the Newbury String Players in the same concert and he soon became a frequent visitor to the du Pré home in Portland Place, London.

    Both Hilary and her younger sister Jacqueline were captivated by Kiffer’s confident unpredictability. According to Jacqueline du Pré’s biographer Elizabeth Wilson, Finzi was the first to take the du Pré girls out to restaurants and cinemas, causing eyebrows to be raised at home when he delivered them back late in the evening.

    Kiffer and Hilary were married in 1961 and the first of their four children was born in 1963. In 1967 Jacqueline married Daniel Barenboim, but within four years the couple’s relentless touring life was beginning to take a toll on the marriage, and hints of what would eventually be diagnosed as MS manifested themselves in Jacqueline suffering sporadic numbness and dizzy spells.

    In 1971, officially suffering from nervous exhaustion, she moved in to live with her sister and brother-in-law at Church Farm.

    Hilary claimed that she had foreseen her sister’s affair with her husband, recalling an occasion when Finzi called at the du Pré home in Portland Place one morning at 10 o’clock and on being told that Jacqueline was still asleep, ran upstairs, hauled her out of bed, slung her over his shoulder and brought her down.

    “Jackie just laughed,” Hilary recalled. “And I knew … that something had happened. It was a sort of flash … When he threw her over his shoulder that morning in Portland Place, I knew then.”

    The warning signs became more alarming when Hilary woke up one night to find that Jacqueline had crept into the marital bed and was doing her best to rouse Finzi, before Hilary interposed a protective hand. Later Finzi told her that Jacqueline had begged him to go to bed with her – “and so he had”.

    As the affair progressed, Finzi would retire with Hilary to their bedroom. But in the early hours, with Hilary’s apparent acquiescence, he would slip into Jacqueline’s room, returning to his wife at dawn.

    “We were just totally entwined,” Finzi said. “When you get close to someone all judgments disappear. You just become them and they become you.”

    It seems that Hilary, who was looking after their young children as well as her grandmother and Finzi’s mother, who lived with them, felt she had little choice but to accept the arrangement, rationalising it as a means of seeing her sister through a crisis. “I adored Jackie so much, I would have done anything for her,” she told an interviewer.

    Feelings of guilt, Finzi told The Sunday Telegraph, never came into it, since the sisters never experienced jealousy. Yet Hilary wrote: “It seemed to me that Jackie had unconsciously always been a cuckoo in the nest. First in childhood, when everything revolved around her. Later, in music, as I lost my confidence in the wake of her genius … now she was in my home, absorbed by my family, trying to take my husband away.”

    “I just had to cope with it silently … But because I knew it was happening for the very best reasons, because it was the only way Jackie could possibly survive at that time, it wasn’t difficult. It was often painful, but it wasn’t difficult.”

    By Hilary’s account, her husband’s affair with Jacqueline ended after Finzi decided that Jacqueline “needed more than he was capable of giving her … and that she needed professional help”.

    Elizabeth Wilson, on the other hand, claimed that Jacqueline had come to regard her brother-in-law “as a man who wielded his authority in a manipulative way and who had taken advantage of a woman in a distraught state.”

    Together with his violinist brother Nigel, Kiffer Finzi remained a lifelong ambassador for his father’s music and for the art and poetry of his mother. He made recordings in his capacity as a conductor, including a performance of his father’s Dies Natalis, and music by Robin Milford and Edmund Rubbra.

    He eventually turned his attention from music to farming, later operating a health food shop in Newbury with Hilary, to whom he remained married – extremely happily by her account.

    Finzi expressed himself mildly surprised by the hostile reaction to A Genius in the Family and the film. “I sometimes wonder whether life is like a Greek drama where we are just pawns moved by forces beyond our control,” he mused.

    Hilary and his children survive him.

    Christopher “Kiffer” Finzi, born July 12 1934, died November 28 2019

    Robert Spowart 14 Dec 2019 3:05PM
    I find it very sad that the sensationalist side of Christopher Finzi’s life has been pushed as the main theme of this obituary to the almost total exclusion of the huge amount of work he did in keeping his father, the composer Gerald Finzi, in the public view.
    His father was very unfairly neglected during his life and his work, but for Kiffer’s efforts could easily have sank into total obscurity.

    As for his multiple affairs, well, such behaviour was par for the course for that era and to judge it by today’s hypocritical moral standards is a gross error.
    My sympathy to his family, in particular his daughter who I briefly met on a train many, many years ago.
    Edit ()

  100. I would like to thank Corbyn personaly for the excellent work he has done in enabling us to exit the EU

        2. Edwina reveled in it. Are you suggesting that she doesn’t know which shade of grey his Y-fronts are?

          1. Yet her comments were based on a scientific report that had been published days before.
            Somewhere in my attic I may still have a newspaper cutting dated four of five days before her speech.

          2. It is also the reason why current advice is to overcook a roast chicken and to fry eggs until they are hard.

          3. Yes, she was making a point, which was valuable for the health especially of pregnant women. Current health advice also is not to wash/rinse out the inside of a chicken before cooking it.

            The nicest way I have found is to cook a chicken in a crockpot or other slow cooking. It cooks through but is still lovely and moist.

          4. Funny thing, I’ve never come across the word crockpot before, but that is the way my other half cooks chicken. The soup is good as well…:-) {My own cooking experience is limited. I do know how to scramble an egg}

          5. A crockpot is otherwise known as a Dutch oven. Famously known as Le Creuset. More infamously known as….

            What does Dutch oven mean? … In the bedroom, a Dutch oven is when you fart in bed and pull the covers over someone else’s head, trapping it in like a Dutch oven traps heat. :o)

          6. Hhhmm! Dear one.

            A crock pot is exactly that, a crockery pot used in the oven on a very low heat.
            A slow cooker is an electric contraption which allows you to cook ingredients
            for a long time, at a low heat, without spoiling..
            A Dutch oven is an enamelled container in which the ingredients are brought
            to a boil, the heat is turned off and the oven is buried in soil for several hours,
            the heat thus retained slowly cooks the food [ used by dyke builders who were
            often away from their lodgings for many hours,]

          9. Time of night, Garlands. Feeling a bit devilish. When are you going to ‘grace my favour’ again? :o)

          10. I am not in disagreement with you but when one looks at cooking times for all meat and poultry now from supermarkets they err on the side of caution and it all comes out overdone.

            I believe what Edwina said was true. Probably the last truth told by a Politician.

            Idiotic advice that followed was that we should all wash the chicken and then paper towel dry the interior before roasting thereby spreading salmonella everywhere in your kitchen. Including your hands and every surface you touched.

  104. A date has already been set for the Queens Speech. It will be this Thursday. It will include a big spending program for the North and increased funding for the NHS. HS2 may be put on hold

        1. Your comment is so far down the thread now, that I am not entirely sure whether is it me you are replying to or not. If it is, (even if it isn’t) then thank you BoB, I am indeed well and hope to find you and yours the same.

          Rum old world, this. Even in our funny little microcosm NoTTL!

      2. I am afraid you are behind the times both spelling are no acceptable and the form PROGRAM is almost universally used in computing and electronics

        1. Yes but you weren’t writing about computing or electronics. So it is programme. I am afraid you are not up with the nuances of change.

          4. Go’kväll, min vän.

            En jätte stor tack för de pepparkakorna som du har skikat till mig. De var en stor överraskning då vi hadde inte pratat om de.

            En gång till – tack så hemskt mycket.

          1. Both forms of spelling are acceptable in English in electronic etc Program is pretty much the standard spelling used

          4. So if you use ” Theatre ” you have to use ” Theatre Programme ”
            If you use ” Theater ” you have to use ” Theater Program ”
            Is that correct ?

          5. Well then it can creep out again. Just like “center” for centre – and of course bruva for “brother” etc. Where does it end. Do we all end up writing pidgin/american english because we are too lazy to adhere to our own language? What is the point of spelling and grammar any more, in that case?

          6. A living language changes and evolves I am afraid you are going to have to learn to accept it. Have a look at Shakespeare original works an you will see English was very different back them

          8. Well, we’re doing oranges and apples on that, so we’ll have to do a rain check and touch base later.

          9. Yes, but that is gradual, and there were rules for both grammar and syntax then as there are now. These may change, but to have your language taken over by something else or some other spelling within the short space of time that it is happening over here is, I’m afraid, not evolution but laziness.

          10. I expect you have corrected it but your typo of evolation reminds me of how i have begun to speak after binge watching ‘The Crown’…..

            Erm rether injoying it.

          14. Thank you, Lass for standing up for correct English. I tend to treat American as a foreign language because they have bastardised it, often out of (almost) all recognition.

            I keep telling them that I have yet to become acclimated to being burglarized.

          16. You weren’t writing about anything electronic. That’s how the laziness of using Americanisms and spelling gets into our language. Look at the context of what you are writing, as an Englishman.

            Edited to take out words that might have been seen as too critical.

      1. Yeah okay. But spending all that time sunbathing and then just having a paddle with a hankie on your head isn’t my idea of a holiday. :o(

          3. Good afternoon chap. (Well, it is 01:00 pm in the United Kingdom.) 🙂

            Just to let you know, this channel tends to be very much “of the day” so don’t think that people are ignoring you if they don’t reply to any comments that you make on a day-old story. I am new to this channel myself and am only looking at the comments here to see what I missed last night after going offline.

            They are a good group of people with a lot of life experience, even if they are as mad as a box of frogs. I am still coming here after 4 months, so they must have something going for them. 🙂

      3. Ol’ Mo was rather a plagiarist. Borrowed all the first part of his so called message from the big A from the Old Testament and then went egoistic.

  106. Where now for the Reform Party (ex Brexit Party}

    The Party had a poor showing in the election campaign. There is a big gap for a new party as Labour no longer connects with its traditional voters

    The Reform Party needs an effective management structure and a proper manifesto
    It nerd as well to connect with the electorate. Lack of continuity is another issue the candidates are for ever changing. The biggest challenge id]s how to break through whilst we have FPTP

    WE need to understand as well why people vote Conservative or Labour or Lib-Dem. How many of those voters can be won over to the Reform Party

    The London Assembly uses PR but of course London is the most difficult area for the reform party to make an impact

      1. The odds for a small new party to break through are not good with FPTP. The Liberals/Lib-Dems have been trying for decades but have most of the time had between 8 and 15 MP’s

          4. I am sure the two party cartel are keen to keep FPTP but very few countries in the world use FPTP

  108. Sturgeon: “It’s not for him or for I…” So much for the Scottish education system.

  109. I have been chatting to mates, still in the Armed Forces

    If Labour had won the General Election, they are sure it was Corbynski’s intent to make Gerry Adams Minister of Defence, to ensure that the trials of all ex-service personell could be expedited

  110. You know – if only Remain had made better use of celebrity millionaires to vilify the working class of this country for being ignorant, racists we would still be in the EU.

    I think we should all encourage Bob Geldorf and Lili Allen et al to get out there and to keep slagging off their social inferiors, the quicker they start the quicker we shall all once more be under Brussel’s tender care.

  113. Happy Saturday Evening all Nottlers! When the Jobcentre Plus opens on Monday a lot of former MP’s ( those defeated & those who decided not to stand for re-election ) will be signing on for unemployment benefits, so as you drive by your local please Jobcentre Plus spare a thought for poor staff there who will have to deal with the ex-Tory, ex-Lib-Dem & ex-Labour MP treasonous Remainiac scum !

          2. Two weeks ago, we had the pleasure of meeting two Israeli ladies who were staying at the hotel we use in London.

            The MR spent a year on a kibbutz in 1973 – and one of the ladies said she would put her in touch with “alumni”.!!

          6. Pity you didn’t keep going until you got to the edge of Morocco. The world would have been a better place.

          8. A New Year’s resolution for Donald Trump:

            Ship the whole kit and caboodle out of Manhattan and off to Kabul or Islam-is-bad..

          15. I’m in disgrace at the moment. Again.
            I keep the “cooking knives” very sharp.
            HG put one in the washing up basin, forgot she had done so, and then sliced her finger rather badly when gathering up dishes. My fault, naturally.

            I consoled her that the cut, although deep, was very “clean” and having missed a tendon should heal well.

            What is it about women? I thought that that was the right thing to say.

            Once we had stopped the bleeding after only twenty minutes of pressure on the cut, we bandaged it up and so far it’s fine…

            She is still cross.

          16. As bad as my son – he keeps sharpening all the knives. I am extra-careful when washing up the knives – I wash, wipe them up and put them away immediately.

          17. Sorry about the ‘other half’, but I keep the knives sharp too. Of course it was your fault, that’s life.

          20. No. Yes.
            But rumour has it that he eats his own droppings, so you could employ him as a guard dog.

          21. Mostly, though there has been the occasional accident and yes i bite. Just in all the right places. :o)

    3. Pound to a penny the hapless leader of the ‘Tits and Teeth Party’ will be elevated to the Lords. Failing that Soros will find a post for her in one of his many foundations, unfortunately not foundations of the concrete variety.

      The rest of the pro-Remain Scum will have probably secured sinecures with lobby groups, faux charities, EU rip off advisory bodies and green energy companies.

  114. Oi Laffed 4

    “My son is taking part in a social experiment.
    He has to wear a Momentum top for 2 weeks to see how people will react.
    So far he has been spat at, punched and verbally abused.

    It will be interesting to see what happens when he leaves the house”

    1. All the little angels rise up, rise up.

      All the little angels rise up high!

      How do they rise up, rise up, rise up?

      How do they rise up, rise up high?

      They rise heads up, heads up, heads up, they rise heads up, heads up high!

      This is repeated with hands, arms, knees, and finally arse up.

      ©Terry Pratchett.

    1. Well, you morons,leave the UK and don’t return.

      The choice is yours, and unlike where you or your familes came from, nobody is trying to stop you leaving.

  119. Are they going to take another vote until they get it right? Did the Russians, Ukrainians Italians and the Australians interfere in this election, too? Are they going to charge Boris with obstruction of justice, too because he won the election by votes of the people?

        1. Yes. The only interference was home grown and they fucked up big time this time. The people that the Left were supposed to be representing caught on to the fact that their party despised them. Even Grimsby went Blue FFS. Here endeth the lesson.

  120. Question –

    Who will win the Presidency of the United States in 2020 ?-

    1. Donald Trump

    2. Amy Klobuchar

    If you don’t know who she is, you haven’t been reading the Guardian.

  122. From the Garudian

    BBC staff express fear of public distrust after election coverage

    The BBC’s director general has expressed his exasperation with “conspiracy theories” about the broadcaster’s election news coverage, although some of its journalists privately fear that errors during the campaign may have hit public trust in the corporation.

    Hall said the BBC’s critics were often seeing bias in what were genuine human errors: “In a frenetic campaign where we’ve produced hundreds of
    hours of output, of course we’ve made the odd mistake and we’ve held up our hands to them. Editors are making tough calls every minute of the day. But I don’t accept the view of those critics who jump on a handfulof examples to suggest we’re somehow biased one way or the other.”

    If he thinks that, he has not been watching the BBC News/Current Affairs programmes since the Mrs Thatchers time

    https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/dec/14/bbc-staff-express-fear-of-public-distrust-after-election-coverage

    4. One error perhaps but several no. There was bias from the presenters and the BBC was never interested in making on air apologies and preferred to turn a blind eye to it

  123. Boris was brave enough to drain the swamp. It must have been a tough decision when he had no real majority to start with. It though paid off.

    Labour have a real problem. If they drain their swamp there will not be be much left or the party. Labour are now really two different incompatible parties

  124. Thing should be moving fast on Brexit now. The first move is to complete the passage of the WA through Westminster and then it will be full speed on a trade deal with the EU

    1. And then full speed into the brick wall, previously known as Michael Barnier.

      Don’t kid yourself, the WA&PD are a disaster for Britain if we go down that route.

      1. Actually I missed out a step.The first thing that has to happen is the State Opening of Parliament. He will have to get move on as the Queen normally departs to Balmoral for Christmas

        Hopefully Boris has his legislative program already written

        1. There are also various votes that have to take place after the opening of parliament so it is going to be a busy week or so

        3. Bill, if you believe HM goes to Balmoral for Christmas you probably believe her
          and her family arrive at the Church at Sandringham by 777 which parks in the
          churchyard.
          Do get a grip, dear boy.

          1. ♫ Calling occupants of interplanetary craft ♫

            I went to Sandringham once. It was magical. I loved it when you entered the estate and then wondered why the rest of the country looked like shit.

            The beautiful trees, the wide well mown verges not bespeckled by litter from fast food joints. The calm and peace. I also got to sit in the pew that Her Majesty sits in.

            I feel priveleged that i could do such a thing in our blessed country. No one would be granted such access in a republic.

        4. You have obviously attended the Christmas Eve party at Sandringham and the Church service with a hangover.

      2. There is nothing that can be done to stop Boris now, not with that majority. Unless God strikes him down or King Arthur rises to defend the realm. Barnier will have the power and tell us what to do and he will keep the talks going forever if he can. The EU will not give up the power that they have over the UK without being forced to. So 5 years from now we will still not have left and will be in the “transition period” hammering out the final details of a deal that will never come.

        But we might as well face the future with a smile. We will need our stiff upper lips and British sense of humour before this is all over. We will still be standing in 5 years time.

          1. We have faced worse as a Nation and we are still here. Much to the annoyance of many globalists. 🙂

            Have a good night chap.

          1. Johnny Norfolk – I have found it to be a good idea to surround myself with people who are older and wiser than I am, ever since I was a wee lad of 18. I have benefited greatly from this in many ways. We are of one mind about what Boris is and what he is going to do. We have known this since the day that he laughably came out on the side of “Leave” in the referendum. He has done everything that we thought he would do.

            He has the chance of making this country free by the end of January – really free as an independent Sovereign Nation able to operate on the worlds stage. He is deliberately refusing that option and is signing us up to be tied to the EU. No-one who really wanted us to Leave the EU would ever do such a thing.

            But there is nothing to be done about it now. We will be under the EU’s control for years and Boris will not let us leave. So, on we go. 🙂

      3. I would suggest that we are now in a very strong position and hold most of the aces. Negotiations are a two way thing so we will conceded on some things. THats how negotiations work

        1. No Bill it really isn’t.

          (Damn, I know I should just ignore Bill’s comments. Still, I am off for the night anyway now so won’t face 20 replies going nowhere. Have a good Saturday might everyone. Tomorrow is another morn. 🙂

          From the weather reports down here it will be a bright sunshiney day, after the overnight rain.

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKvmlj2k_fM

        2. Why should there be anything other than the basic article 50 requirements:
          goodbye and thanks for all the fish?

          Once out, then negotiate what each side wants/needs. But until then, tell the EU that if they want to negotiate better arrangements they need to recognise that they sell far more to us than we do to them and that there is a great big wide world out there who will be happy to trade.

          Why do you think they are so insistent on their “level playing field”?
          It’s because they know the dice are stacked in our favour away from the EU.

          1. Because we need to cover the rights of UK national living in the EU. THe right of UK pensioners living in the EU to access to health care,
            WE need to resolve EHIC. Euro-pol. Civil Aviation etc etc

          4. Indeed, but the WA as it stands is designed to keep the UK tied to the EU in perpetuity.

          8. Once we leave we should declare war. Nuke Normandy, Calais and Marseille. It is the only way to stop the benefit scroungers.

          9. Where things are of equal interest and equal benefit to both sides, then I have no problem, nor do I have a problem with quid pro quo in some areas; but the WA and PD as currently set out give the EU the whip hand and nothing coming out of any part of the EU has suggested that they won’t wield that whip.

        1. I judge Barnier on his performance to date.
          I very much doubt that he will change his stance in any way that helps Britain.

    2. Good evening Tony.

      More scary is the fact that Judith Woods (a wimmin writer at The Telegraph) has partially censored her print column yesterday; the online version misses out her laudatory piece about Greta Thingummyberg. Apparently middle-aged men are outraged by any positive coverage of Little Miss Sweden.

      As yet, no one has noticed that LMS is almost as old as that teenage masseuse was when she allegedly seduced Duke Andy 18 years ago.

        1. I remember my youth. I was invited aboard a motor boat to travel to the Isle of Wight for Cowes week. The excitement, the fun, the cold roast chicken and Champagne. Not only was i legless but they were welcome to all the bits in between. Even the nuggets.

        2. It’s not nice to criticise Greta for her looks. She has been indoctrinated by her parents and others, and does not understand what she is doing.

          6. Not Sharon Stone, though. When asked if she had had those type of advances in her career, her response was………”With this body, are you kidding?”.

          9. A mashed up Darth Vader Quote.

            The offer of having a beer isn’t.

            Chook being a midland vernacular.

          11. Any time you are in my neck of the woods i can rec a very nice micro Bar. If you need refs for our first date then just ask Geoff or Garlands. :o)

      1. Owen has secret fantasies of being roughed up and forcibly penetrated with his hands and feet tied up. This service is available free of charge to all Guardian journalists on request.

  127. Boris needs to get shot of the LGBT bollocks and to put a stop to the Police from advertising and supporting this crap with their rainbow nonsense.

    Whilst these fools have been promoting the proclivities of perverts ordinary people have seen their homes robbed of precious personal possessions, lead stolen from their porches and chimney flashings and from their cherished historic church roofs.

    Enough is enough. We need to repatriate Irish Travellers who are responsible for the greater part of these abuses and thefts. Admittedly the Irish have expelled these rogues from their own country but I see no reason why we should have to accommodate the bastards and pay to clear up after them.

    2. THe police should enforce the law but in my view they do not and try to claim they need a court order to evict them but in most case that is not true. The police have no problem removing people from shops or stations or football grounds they dont claim they need a court order to remove them

      Trespass in itself is indeed a civil offence but forcing an entry makes it a criminal offence as does any form of theft or criminal damage. This could be stealing electricity or water or refusing to leave within a reasonable time if asked to do so by the land owner or any authorized person

  129. ” Boris Johnson has drawn up plans to run a “revolutionary” government
    that will see ministers sacked, Whitehall departments abolished and
    civil servants replaced by external experts in a bid to “reshape” the
    economy.

    Up to a third of the cabinet face the sack in a February
    reshuffle after Brexit so that fresh faces can be brought in to create a
    “transformative” government focused on the needs of working-class
    voters who propelled him to a landslide victory last week.”

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