640 thoughts on “Saturday 16 November: The public would welcome a revival of the country’s rural rail network”

  2. Prince Andrew admits ‘I let the side down’ over friendship with paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. 15 NOVEMBER 2019.

    The Duke of York has admitted that he “let the side down” over his friendship with the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein in an unprecedented television interview.

    Following years of scrutiny over his links to the billionaire financier, Prince Andrew conceded for the first time that his behaviour had “not been something that was becoming of a member of the royal family”.

    Asked about repeated allegations that he had sex with 17-year old Virginia Giuffre, the Duke replied that he had “no memory” of ever meeting her.

    Morning everyone. This “leak” is obviously designed to double down on the denials and soften the impact of the interview while allowing the Palace to get their retaliation in first. We won’t be able to make a real judgement until we see the interview itself which even aside from the preamble looks suspicious in being an hour long (it takes an hour to say “No I didn’t give her one”?) and will allow for ample quantities of hangdog regrets and patriotic persiflage. Anyway my fellow Nottlers you don’t have to bother, I’ve set the machine on record and if there’s anything of interest I’ll report it (Ye Gods the things I do for this Blog!) on Sunday.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/11/15/prince-andrew-admits-let-side-friendship-paedophile-jeffrey/

    2. And now we’ll hear Epstein’s response to Prince Andrew’s denial. Oh wait… .

      (Happy Saturday, Minty).

      1. Morning A. They had to wait for him to commit “suicide” before they could allow the interview. Lol!

        1. Greetings Anne, I gather that was sarcasm. I can’t say I know enough about the Hess case, but (in the case of Epstein) it would seem unfortunate for the rest of us, if Epstein’s co-conspirators are still alive molesting children.

          1. At the age of 93, Hess managed to strangle himself with a light flex.
            By that stage, he was the only prisoner in Spandau – guarded by a rota of American, British and Russian soldiers.

  3. Prince Andrew admits ‘I let the side down’ over friendship with paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. 15 NOVEMBER 2019.

    The Duke of York has admitted that he “let the side down” over his friendship with the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein in an unprecedented television interview.

    Following years of scrutiny over his links to the billionaire financier, Prince Andrew conceded for the first time that his behaviour had “not been something that was becoming of a member of the royal family”.

    Asked about repeated allegations that he had sex with 17-year old Virginia Giuffre, the Duke replied that he had “no memory” of ever meeting her.

    Morning everyone. This “leak” is obviously designed to double down on the denials and soften the impact of the interview while allowing the Palace to get their retaliation in first. We won’t be able to make a real judgement until we see the interview itself which even aside from the preamble looks suspicious in being an hour long (it takes an hour to say “No I didn’t give her one”?) and will allow for ample quantities of hangdog regrets and patriotic persiflage. Anyway my fellow Nottlers you don’t have to bother, I’ve set the machine on record and if there’s anything of interest I’ll report it (Ye Gods the things I do for this Blog!) on Sunday.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/11/15/prince-andrew-admits-let-side-friendship-paedophile-jeffrey/

  4. Tories to plant 30,000 trees a year to get more votes.
    Liberals to plant 60,000 trees a year to get even more votes.
    Labour to be guided by the science for the Greta good of the planet.
    Greens to plant as many fiscal trees as will yield £100bn a year.

    1. They’re burning 1.8 Million tonnes of mature, wild American forests at the 420MW power station at Lynemouth in Northumberland each year since it was converted from coal a couple of years ago, harvesting a massive ‘green’ subsidy as well as hundreds of square miles of irreplaceable forest.

      They are burning several times more than that at Drax.

  5. A farmer stopped by the local garage to have his truck fixed. They couldn’t do it while he waited, so he said he didn’t live far and would just walk home.

    On the way home he stopped at the Ironmonger and bought a bucket and a gallon of paint. He then stopped by the Farm Shop and picked up a couple of
    chickens and a goose. However, struggling outside the store he now had a problem – how to carry his entire purchases home.

    While he was scratching his head, he was approached by a little old lady who told him she was lost. She asked, ‘Can you tell me how to get to 84 Willisham Lane?’ The farmer said, ‘Well, as a matter of fact, my farm is very close to that house I would walk you there but I can’t carry this lot.’

    The old lady suggested, ‘Why don’t you put the can of paint in the bucket. Carry the bucket in one hand, put a chicken under each arm and carry the goose
    in your other hand?’

    ‘Why thank you very much,’ he said and proceeded to walk the old girl home.

    On the way he says ‘Let’s take my short cut and go down this alley. We’ll be there in no time.’

    The little old lady looked him over cautiously then said, ‘I am a lonely widow without a husband to defend me. How do I know that when we get in the alley you
    won’t hold me up against the wall, pull up my skirt, and have your way with me?’

    The farmer said, ‘Heavens above, lady! I’m carrying a bucket, a gallon of paint, two chickens, and a goose. How in the world could I possibly hold you up
    against the wall and do that?’

    The old lady replied, ‘Set the goose down, cover him with the bucket, put the paint on top of the bucket, and I’ll hold the chickens.

  8. Sir Alex Younger said the secret bar was an essential element in allowing his operatives to unwind, given they cannot talk to anyone outside MI6 about the pressures of their work. Telegraph 15 November 2019.

    The head of MI6 said: “We can’t talk even to our closest friends about what we’re doing and so therefore we need a culture within where we can do that with each other.

    “And it’s why we have our own bar, for instance, one of the most exclusive bars in London, it’s fair to say.”

    They sit around and talk about the individual operations they are engaged in after work? Really? Mind you bearing in mind that this is the idiot that signed off on the Skripal fiasco anything is possible!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/11/13/mi6-spies-unwind-secret-bar-c-reveals/

      1. ‘Morning, Mags, I’m wondering what’s powering his screen. Probably those three unicorns just out of sigfht.

        1. I suspect we are more likely to upset China and get an immediate reaction by virtue of the fact we owe them so much because they
          are holding all the industrial cards!

  11. Airbus will stick by ‘competitive’ UK even after no-deal Brexit

    Airbus has “no reason” to quit Britain in the event of a bad Brexit deal, according to the plane-maker’s boss.

    Guillaume Faury, chief executive of pan-European aerospace business which makes its airliners’ wings at its plant in Broughton, North Wales, said there is a “short-term risk [that] no deal would cause a lot of disruption”.

    However, he added: “We have a very strong base in the UK and we are very happy with this industrial base. We have no reason to move production out of the UK. It would be difficult anyway, these are huge industrial systems – you can’t just move them.”

    He said that “aside” from Brexit concerns, the UK has a “very competitive ecosystem” for the aerospace industry.

    “We really hope and believe the ecosystem will remain competitive, and that the UK will continue to have a commercial and trade relationship with the EU.”

    He added that Airbus was “playing a role to explain what is necessary to have a healthy relationship”.

    His comments in a Bloomberg TV interview represent a shift in position from his predecessor Tom Enders.

    In January Mr Enders released a video message revealing the company – which employs 13,500 people in the UK – had lost its patience and the UK’s failure to strike a Brexit deal.
    *
    *
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2019/11/15/airbus-will-stick-competitive-uk-says-new-chief/

  12. Good morning all.

    SIR – I am a keen walker and am slowly working my way through the national walking trails of Britain.

    I have lost count of the number of times that I have ended a day’s walking (usually on a Sunday) in very close proximity to the site of a former railway station. Since virtually no rural bus services run on a Sunday, I have to rely on taxi firms to transport me back to a working railway line. I keep a journal of my walks and it is surprising how many times, as I criss-cross overgrown disused railway lines, I have recorded the name of Dr Beeching, whose report set out plans to axe thousands of stations in the Sixties.

    I appreciate that railway construction is an expensive business, but I am sure that any moves by a new Conservative government to reinstate parts of the rural rail network (report, November 15) would be warmly welcomed by all.

    Lyndon Gainham
    London W13

    1. SIR – Five hundred million pounds is not going to buy much reopened railway. The Bathgate to Airdrie link in Scotland alone cost £300 million for 13 miles, and the mainly single-track Borders Railway cost about £295 million for 31 miles.

      By and large, the infrastructure of closed lines no longer exists in continuous form. Station sites have been sold off for housing and retail, viaducts and bridges demolished, embankments bulldozed, cuttings used for landfill waste, and track beds sometimes adopted for highway improvements or industrial purposes.

      Five or 10 billion pounds might get us somewhere.

      Robert Humm
      Stamford, Lincolnshire

      2. At a mere half a billion pounds there will not be much track and for what little may be provided what traction system will be employed? Certainly not electric as that would gobble up even more money, meaning even less track being laid, and so what else outside of, wash my mouth out, diesel is readily available? Are rechargeable railway power units available? Are they even being designed?
        An impractical election ‘pledge’ that will be quietly forgotten as reality i.e. costs/mile, become clear.
        Next up, revitalising the canal network to carry goods and get those diesel 40 tonners off the motorway network? stephenroi to comment?

          1. Point to point travel, no locks to navigate and no getting your feet, and much else, very wet. What’s not to like?

        2. Solar powered units. Train schedule and weather forecast web sites would be amalgamated to help travellers plan their journeys.

          4. There are always the older technologies. The driver and guard could leg the train through the tunnel.

          7. Ah, yes. But that’s good! The cycling greenies will collect the horse manure, dry it and use it to cook their quinoa.

  13. I can read all the letters … surprise surprise..

    I liked this one

    SIR – It is nonsense to spend £500 million on reopening railway lines that people have got used to living without.

    What does Boris Johnson expect people to do – sell their cars so they can wait on cold and windy platforms, carrying everything with them, then walk home from the station?

    The car is not a capitalist toy, as the socialists would like to think: it is the only way to go where you want, when you want, carrying what you want. It is thus the most democratic and social machine we have.

    Philip Howells
    Manchester

  14. SIR – If we are determined to build houses on floodplains, why don’t we put them on stilts?

    Tim Bochenski
    Bramhall, Cheshire

  15. Morning, Campers.
    CCHQ/Russians/Pentagon/North Korea/Brussels or even sunspots are busy. I have just a received another wodge of 2 day old replies to my NOTTL postings.
    A quote from a corker of an article by Charles Moore:
    ‘As for the true Remainiacs who felt trapped in their existing parties, it is fascinating to watch them go their separate ways. Like kitchen-table start-ups of exciting new fashion labels which haven’t quite been thought through, they switched names – the Independent Group becoming Change UK. Then they started quarrelling. Some of them – Chuka Umunna, Luciana Berger, Sarah Wollaston, Heidi Allen – moved to an established brand, the Liberal Democrats. Other rebels against their parties, such as Dominic Grieve, will become sole traders. Others still – Philip Hammond, Kenneth Clarke – have retired. Poor, nice, troubled David Gauke this week says he wants the Liberal Democrats to win, but will be a candidate without joining them.’

  16. Good Morning Folks,

    Cloudy and cold this morning.

    Many thanks for all the condolences regarding Stumpy.

  17. “Far-Right Sweden Democrats party top Swedish poll for first time”
    Would that be ‘Far Right’ as in people who actually like and understand their country and aren’t keen on its customs and social order being over-turned by virtue signalling politicians?

    3. ‘Morning, Anne, in my experience, Swedish Politics has always been as close to communism as the then electorate would allow.

  18. Good morning, everyone. We have an Autumn Fair at our bowls club this morning. Mrs D has made two delicious cakes.

    2. There’s an Autumn Fayre in Cromford Institute this afternoon. Will probably trundle down with the DT.

      1. Hmm, ‘Morning, BoB, why would the Autumn Fayre require your copy of the Daily Telegraph?

        Or will you be suffering with Delirium Tremens by this afternoon? {:¬))

          1. Ah, I like to refer to mine as BB – no not Brigitte Bardot (that was then) – Best Beloved.

    6. Just back from the Derwent Donkey Sanctuary Fayre in Cromford.
      No cakes for sale other than slices with cups of tea, but I bought a couple of jars of jam. Damson and Blackberry & Apple.

  19. The whole Charles Moore article:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/11/15/brexit-has-logic-not-even-nigel-farage-has-right-get-way/

    “Brexit has its logic. Not even Nigel Farage has the right to get in its way

    Despite the exhausting egos involved, there is much to be said for political entrepreneurism

    A year ago next week, the Brexit Party Limited was incorporated at Companies House – an unusual structure for a political party. By the beginning of February this year, the party was registered with the Electoral Commission. By the end of March, Nigel Farage had become its leader. Two months later, it won over three times more votes than the Conservatives at the European elections, returning 29 MEPs. Its Euro-election victory doomed Theresa May’s deal and her premiership.

    Seen as a business start-up, the Brexit Party has been a phenomenal success. A phoenix arising from the ashes of Ukip (the earlier Farage vehicle), it immediately established itself as what the jargon calls a “challenger brand” against the traditional market leaders, the Conservatives and Labour.

    There is much to be said for political entrepreneurism, despite the exhausting egos involved. As in all competitive areas of life, it is wrong to let the same old crowd have it their own way. The big players collude to keep out the new entrants and protect their market share. That is against the public interest.

    The whole story of Britain’s membership of the EEC/EU can be seen in this light. EEC entry was always an establishment position. In the 1975 referendum, the three main party leaderships combined to urge us to stay. Towards the end of her time in office in 1990, Margaret Thatcher became increasingly fed up with the European drive for integration. She started to say in public that there should be a referendum on the main issue then current – membership of what later became the euro. She called for a referendum because she saw that existing party arrangements were not offering voters a choice. Roughly half the electorate were clearly Eurosceptic; over 95 per cent of the party leaderships were Europhile.

    Her idea of a referendum never went away. Sir James Goldsmith and his Referendum Party took it up. They did not score terribly well in votes, but they frightened the main parties into promising a referendum. The parties tried to avoid one, of course, but the pressure of opinion, particularly Conservative opinion, grew. In 2016, David Cameron – mistakenly, from his own point of view – succumbed. We voted to leave.

    In this saga, Mr Farage played a notable role. Radicalised away from the Tories by the political assassination of Mrs Thatcher and by John Major’s Maastricht Treaty, he gradually emerged as the main political cartel-buster of our times.

    Yet this week, he stood down around half his workforce. The structure of his party as a company of which he is boss makes him free to do this in a way that no mainstream leader could attempt. All his prospective parliamentary candidates expecting to stand in Tory seats have suddenly found themselves victims of the political gig economy, on zero-hours contracts.

    This is shocking for them, but it follows the logic of the situation. The Brexit Party, as its name suggests, wishes to achieve Brexit. If it does well in this general election, it will make Brexit less likely, which is not clever. If it does badly, as Mr Farage was conscious when making his decision, it will go bust as a political force. Actually, Mr Farage’s approach is really only half-logical. He would have done better not to put up candidates at all. By precipitating the fall of Mrs May, he also helped precipitate the election of Boris Johnson as Tory leader. This brought into being the only pro-Leave government in our history, and therefore the best, probably last chance to achieve Brexit. So, on December 12, a vote for the Brexit Party will usually help a Remainer party win seats.

    I know Mr Farage’s decision not to oppose Tories is very annoying for potential Brexit Party voters in constituencies where the Conservative candidates are Remainers, although it is worth remembering that most of the really Grieve-ous offenders have now departed. It is also true – which is a more serious point – that the deal the Prime Minister miraculously accomplished is no guarantee that we shall eventually negotiate full freedom from the EU. It may be, as Michael Gove says, “oven ready”, but it is only the first course. The battle of the free-trade deal will need to be fought quite early in the next Parliament. If it starts to go the wrong way, the Brexit Party will (rightly) be back.

    The word “election” derives from the Latin word for choice. At the last election, Mrs May made the great mistake of thinking that the choice between herself and Jeremy Corbyn so clearly favoured her that she did not need to prove her worth or expound her party’s policies. On Brexit itself, there was remarkably little choice, since both main parties were pretending that they were going to make it happen. The voters intuited that little real choice was being offered, and so returned an appropriately indecisive result.

    This time, there is a choice. On the most obvious level, it is Brexit (Conservatives), no Brexit or a magical new deal (Labour), or no Brexit (Liberal Democrats). Slightly less obviously, it is a choice between ending the present stasis or prolonging it. This is encapsulated in Boris’s mantra, “Get Brexit done”. The slogan appeals not only to Leavers, but also to millions who may have voted Remain but like the idea of a normal life under a government which can decide things. The successful Dominic Cummings referendum slogan “Take back control” applies in this general election too: we want to take back control of the MPs who forgot they represent us.

    If you compare Mr Farage’s political entrepreneurism with that on the Remain side, you will see a much less keen business sense in the latter. After the shock of the 2016 result, Remainers first of all decided to trash the very idea of the referendum, but then switched to saying it was so important to consult the people that we must have a second one. This is not a credible marketing strategy.

    Now Labour’s solution is to negotiate a lovely, caring Brexit with the EU and then offer it or Remain to voters as the choice in a second referendum, without yet telling us which vote it would recommend. It also promises another independence referendum in Scotland. A less convincing “Let’s get it done” message would be hard to contrive.

    As for the true Remainiacs who felt trapped in their existing parties, it is fascinating to watch them go their separate ways. Like kitchen-table start-ups of exciting new fashion labels which haven’t quite been thought through, they switched names – the Independent Group becoming Change UK. Then they started quarrelling. Some of them – Chuka Umunna, Luciana Berger, Sarah Wollaston, Heidi Allen – moved to an established brand, the Liberal Democrats. Other rebels against their parties, such as Dominic Grieve, will become sole traders. Others still – Philip Hammond, Kenneth Clarke – have retired. Poor, nice, troubled David Gauke this week says he wants the Liberal Democrats to win, but will be a candidate without joining them.

    Since Mr Cameron announced the referendum in February 2016, the led have been far ahead of the leaders. The entire thing is summed up in those short television shots you see of a voter in a street in Barnsley or Southampton or Oldham, saying “We voted to leave, so we must leave”. Despite all its defects, democracy has a logic which comes through over time. I believe that is what is happening in this election.”

    2. Despite Charles Moore suggesting that no Brexit Party candidates should stand, and he appears to accept that Boris’ ‘New’ Deal is OK, the Brexit Party is needed in the new Parliament to curb Boris’ excesses with his shïte deal.

      1. Friday evening and Tony Francois was being interviewed on LBC. First caller asked Francois why he, and the ERG, were supporting Johnson’s deal when it contained so much of May’s deal e.g. tax alignment, that the ERG and Francois in particular had railed against. After a couple of minutes of serious waffle the caller asked why he, Francois, hadn’t addressed the question he had been asked. Francois set off again, I switched off. Disappointing from Francois, someone whom I thought was batting for the good guys.

        1. Morning KtK,
          Not so very deep down they are ALL
          batting for the same side & have been since coming into being.

    3. Good morning, thanks for posting.

      Not often I disagree with Charles Moore but this article is just Conservative campaign material, so typical of the DT content in the run up to the GE.

      Moore writes “This time, there is a choice. On the most obvious level, it is Brexit (Conservatives), no Brexit or a magical new deal (Labour), or no Brexit (Liberal Democrats)”

      Has he forgotten the 3 years where the only type of Brexit offered was May’s surrender deal, and that Johnson is offering a reheated version of it.

      The choice for us is BINO (Conservative), or no Brexit ( All others). The only party offering Brexit is TBP and they sadly will not have MPs to make it happen.

      1. Thanks to the last few years (not just since 2016) we are where we are.
        To put it technically, Boris inherited a shiite sandwich and is doing his best.
        If he gets a proper majority – sans the ‘Grievous’ wing of the Conservative Party – he will be able to free us from the stifling embrace of the EU squid.

        1. Good morning Annie Baby

          To borrow your expression:

          “Boris inherited a shiite sandwich and is doing his best.”

          Having said that:

          i) he promised that he was prepared to leave the EU ‘without a deal’ on October 31st in order to become PM;,
          ii) he failed to do so;
          iii) he produced a BRINO rehash of the Mat WA rather than a proper new Brexit deal,
          iv) he took ‘No deal’ off the table;
          v) he refused to make an election winning pact with The Brexit Party;
          vi) he has retained several remainers as Conservative candidates

          It is very clear that his “best” is very, very far short of good enough.

        2. Good morning Annie Baby

          To borrow your expression:

          “Boris inherited a shiite sandwich and is doing his best.”

          Having said that:

          i) he promised that he was prepared to leave the EU ‘without a deal’ on October 31st in order to become PM;,
          ii) he failed to do so;
          iii) he produced a BRINO rehash of the Mat WA rather than a proper new Brexit deal,
          iv) he took ‘No deal’ off the table;
          v) he refused to make an election winning pact with The Brexit Party;
          vi) he has retained several remainers as Conservative candidates

          It is very clear that his “best” is very, very far short of good enough.

          1. Johnson was stabbed in the back by Gove.
            That is why I no longer trust Gove, however reasonable he may sound.
            He is a classic case of being too clever by half.

          2. A,
            Sorry Anne won’t wash with me, a poorly acted out farce with gove the reluctant pm
            candidate / assassin, johnson the victim, and
            leadsome finding the kitchen to hot after one brief visit, temp equity cards returned then back to the fold, may in place as planned.

          3. I agree, Gove is almost as untrustworthy as both Johnson and Cameron.

            I was surprised that at the time of the referendum the MSM made so little of the fact that the friendship between Cameron and Gove fell apart dramatically because Cameron thought that Gove had betrayed him by not supporting him and being in favour of ‘leave’.

        4. He may be able to free us, but I and many more believe he has no desire to do so.

          The Conservative Party has not changed, still having those existing MPs whose MO has been to overturn Brexit as candidates. CCHQ parachuting in chosen ones overriding local constituency choice, Devizes to name but one.

          Whilst I agree we are where we are and why we are, the Conservative Party are at best very reluctant to embrace Brexit, I am expecting Johnson to have another “ dead in a ditch” moment and achieve SFA.

        1. Morning Rastus, not too much I suspect, after all the sum had to be shared out between the likes of AEP, Tominey, Warner to name but a few.

    4. Morning Anne,
      I do believe that old kim philiby was a likeable chap, look what happened there.
      I still maintain that “our nige” was whilst in UKIP leadership a tory coxswain and steering UKIP along a
      tory course.
      IMO fear of the UKIP success and seeing it’s future potential triggered the hate / smear campaign years ago
      and “our nige” of late used it against the very peoples that supported & gave him a platform, all on record.
      In my book “our nige” done a semi walkies regarding the brexit group but I see it as achieving what it was intended to do, support the tory call
      & back johnson, a lookalike Brexiteer.
      This is not an anti brexit group post.

      1. I view Nigel Farage as the grit in the oyster / pebble in the shoe.
        He needs to be there as an irritant to remind politicians of their duty.
        Sadly, he does seem to be a loner who is not good at delegating, but human society (particularly one under threat) needs that type as well as its more reasonable members.

        1. I watched a programme the other night about Churchill and very unflattering of him it was. A flawed character but a necessary one in the circumstances.

          This, about the army chief during the war, Alan Brooke, struck me:

          In one typical passage in Brooke’s war diaries Churchill is described as a “genius mixed with an astonishing lack of vision – he is quite the most difficult man to work with that I have ever struck but I should not have missed the chance of working with him for anything on earth!”

        2. To paraphrase George Bernard Shaw:

          No reasonable man (or woman) thinks that by himself and on his own he can influence the course of events. Therefore the future of mankind is dependent upon the unreasonable man.

    5. “…it is worth remembering that most of the really Grieve-ous offenders have now departed…”
      I do not believe that for a moment. Our current MP is a Remainer. He voted for the WA in the third round, ipso facto. No one has heard of him. Other than a few photo opportunities in the constituency, he has apparently done nothing whatsoever. As near to anonymous as can be. Yet he, and the many, many others like him, will destroy any lingering hope that we might leave the EU quickly and cleanly without any ongoing irremovable links.

      1. Nigel Farage should have agreed for the Brexit Party to stand down in Conservative constituencies only when the Conservative candidate could be shown to be a Leave supporter. Apparently the Conservative candidate in Ms Soubry’s constituency (Pro Leave Referendum 54.6%) is another remainer. This shows how much contempt the Conservatives have for the electorate.

    6. “If it (the Brexit Party) does well in this general election, it will make Brexit less likely”

      That all depends upon the definition of ‘Brexit’.

      Without the Brexit Party, it would, I’m sure, be business as usual from the Tories with ‘snail’s-pace’ change and a few crumbs for the hoi polloi to make them think they’re getting what they voted for.

      The Brexit Party needs to do well in this election, if only to offer hope to those sick to death of the two-party cartel that’s run the circus for decades.

      Morning Anne.

  20. More on the NHS I see:-

    SIR – As long as each political party seems terrified of openly discussing the future of the NHS, it will remain a political football.

    While the concept of free healthcare for all is a laudable ambition, there needs to be a Royal Commission to assess the needs of British people in the 21st century and to propose how the NHS can meet them.

    Loretta Tinckham
    Bras, Var, France

    Loretta Tinckham is quite correct. As soon as any politician, especially a Tory, even hints at NHS reform, the Combined Entrenched Interests of managers and Unions immediately kick off into the same hysterical screams of “SAVE THE NHS!” and “THEY WANT TO PRIVATISE THE NHS!” at which point any proposals are immediately dropped.

    1. As soon as any politician uses the phrase “our NHS” I switch off. There is too much emotion and political baggage attached to this socialist money-pit. It should be there to provide healthcare as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible. Instead, it seems to exist to provide as many comfortable jobs as possible to the people who work there.

      Privatise the lot I say!

      1. ‘Morning, JK, Aneurin Bevan, the NHS founder was so delighted that a disease had been named for him.

        When he looked up aneurism, it said, “A bloody clot that ought to be removed immediately.”

  21. Regarding Emma Howard Boyd’s MRD Entry today:-

    I wonder.
    Did Emma Howard Boyd get her job because of her proven knowledge and experience in the fields of environment & river management and flood prevention, or is she just another Common Purpose trained “Bumps to the Front” placewoman?

    1. Morning BoB. Draw your own conclusions…….

      Biography
      Emma Howard Boyd is the Chair of the Environment Agency, an Ex officio board member of the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, and has recently been appointed as the UK Commissioner to the Global Commission on Adaptation.

      Emma serves on a number of boards and advisory committees which include:

      ShareAction
      Menhaden Capital PLC
      The Prince’s Accounting for Sustainability Project
      Green Finance Institute
      She has worked in financial services for over 25 years, in corporate finance and fund management. As Director of Stewardship at Jupiter Asset Management until July 2014, Emma was integral to the development of their expertise in the corporate governance and sustainability fields.

      Her previous board and advisory roles include:

      Vice Chair of Future Cities Catapult
      a director of the Aldersgate Group and Triodos Renewables PLC
      Chair of UKSIF (the UK Sustainable Investment and Finance Association)
      a member of the Commission on Environmental Markets and Economic Performance and the Green Finance Taskforce

      2. Did she play at damming streams when she were a sprog?
        She sounds an outright goody two shoes.

  22. Why should the BBC be giving up so much time digging around in to Randy Andy’s life .

    If he is fibbing his pants off, what will the end result be .. and why should it be in the public interest .. why should viewers be judge and jury ..

    It is sordid and dirty and I don’t want to hear any more about celebrity unzippings ..

    1. Many years ago, the Duke of York visited my place of work. Unsurprisingly, he was accompanied by a security detail. Where were they when he flew Lolita Air?

      2. Carefully selected after intense vetting with the emphasis on being able to turn a blind eye and keep their mouths shut?

    2. It is an absurd piece of non-news. That it is pushing other items off the bulletins is quite sinister though, and of far more concern.

      May I remind the BBC that in the jurisdiction of London, of where the Duke of York comes from, and from the country I owe my loyalty to, 17 is over the Age of Consent?

      He may be a prince, but Andrew has no duty of care over this hired hooker, whereas Epstein might have. The worst he has done is to be the playboy, as is the tradition in places such as Las Vegas. Not good taste, and perhaps not fitting to royal etiquette, but he is not the first prince to enjoy the female delights in foreign places. Indeed, the Entente Cordiale established between Britain and France overnight by King Edward VII came about because he had done his groundwork in the seedier establishments of Paris when he was Prince of Wales.

      1. If only it were that simple. Folk in America suspect that the conveniently late Mr E was using very young girls to blackmail a great number of prominent people of influence. There are allegations that he was employed by a Foreign Spy Agency. Ms Maxwell, daughter of Captain Bob (who purloined the Mirror Group’s Pension fund) is apparently well placed to answer questions but she is apparently uncontactable…..

        1. That sort of thing was legendary in the KGB and its successors. There is no shortage of very beautiful young Russians who could charm the pants off anyone of influence abroad, especially those who might struggle finding female companionship by other means. One victim was a former Defence Minister under the Coalition, who was thus compromised. “Teddybear” I think she called him, and really I can understand how he was beguiled.

          The solution was for MI6 to make use of Russian dislike of homosexuality, and use gay agents impervious to Russian charms.

          1. So are the BBC suggesting that the 2nd son rather fancied under age women , and was excited by lascivious sexual shenanigans .. Is he now being branded THE WOLF OF WINDSOR?

          2. Why is that newsworthy? 17 is not under age, unless he has a duty of care over her, in which case it is 18.

            Besides, a lot of us may fancy under age women, but would never indulge this fantasy because of any harm it may cause.

          3. The girl was 17 at the time of the event, over the age of consent, but UNDER the current age for being legally involved in prostitution.
            The question I posed earlier, when was that age increased from 16 to 18?

          4. Doesn’t it depend on which state the act took place.
            Remember Jerry Lee Louis marrying his thirteen year old cousin; Arkansas/ West Virginia – somewhere like that.

      2. As she was almost certainly a prostitute, there is the question of her being under the current age for engaging in that profession.
        The age for legally selling sex used to be 16 and was only increased to 18 in recent years. Can anyone here advise me, which year was the age increased?

        1. Morning Bob,
          Can you define “legally” as in the UK it is a very murky area
          when mixed in with
          PC / Appeasement ingredients.

          1. Prostitution is not illegal in the UK, though many activities, soliciting, running a brothel, living off immoral earnings etc. relating to it are.
            The age at which a girl/young woman could engage in the profession used to be the age of consent, 16, but it was raised to 18 in recent years. This was done as part of the same legislation that made it illegal for girls between 16 and 18 to participate in the production of pornography.

          2. If a prostitute pays her taxes then surely HMRC should be prosecuted for living off immoral earnings?

          3. Tell that to the EU.
            A few years back they snaffled an extra £1.8 billion from Blighty based on putative earnings from prostitution and drugs.
            Dave and Gideon signed the cheque.

          4. I remember that event. Young Dave said that of course we would not be paying the EU’s demand. Then he paid it anyway.

        2. I really do not think that children of 16 or 17 years of age actually can make a considered decision about very much. Certainly not about becoming a “prostitute”. The real reason is grooming, leading them on to hope for things they might not otherwise get. This is no different to the scum operating out of kebab shops and BMWs.
          Keep in mind that for many years our police treated the 12 year old victims of multiple rape as “prostitutes” and not only ignored their plight but brought prosecutions against them.

          1. I believe they are going to bring in two different ages of consent in the UK.

            For ethnically British people it will remain at 16 but for those of other ethnicities and religions the PIE guideline (formerly endorsed by Ms Hewitt and Ms Harman) will be applied at 12.

            In the interests of multiculturalism, in cases of a ‘mixed race/mixed relgion’ sexual liaison the younger of the two ages of consent will apply.

          3. I thought it was determined by the onset of menstruation i.e. ability to procreate with 9 probably being the lower limit at which young girls become fertile. Of course being a male dominated culture the girls have no say.

        1. I have said it before and will say it again, this site is a never ending learning experience.

          I must however admit I was aware of this furniture previously, but not in a “I have used it way“ of course.

          Edit: would this be classed as reproduction furniture?

        2. I have said it before and will say it again, this site is a never ending learning experience.

          I must however admit I was aware of this furniture previously, but not in a “I have used it way“ of course.

          Edit: would this be classed as reproduction furniture?

          6. Any port in a storm, so to speak. We’re advancing into washing machine salesman territory now.

          7. There was a young Lady Miss Tilling
            Who went to the Dentist for a filling
            But in a fit of depravity
            he filled the wrong cavity,
            But its OK, Miss Tilling
            Was perfectly willing….

          15. I thought it was an early IKEA assembly instruction sheet.
            Hope all the screws were in the pack.

          16. Long screws, short screws you takes your choice but make sure that they’re driven home firmly. A loose screw is no good to anybody.
            Brexit is taking a back seat on this thread – bloody screw reference again. 🙃

          18. Rawlplugs, pre-plastic when they were formed from a fibrous material made a good job of securing brackets etc. Good quality modern plastic fixings are far superior, though.

          20. That is bad news. I remember a sort of paste that could be formed into a plug for irregular holes: that was full of fibre. The same?

          25. I read a splendid book entitled A Thousand Years Of Annoying The French which gives a full description of Prince Teddy’s attempts to secure the Entente Cordiale.

  23. What has happened to real investigative journalism in the UK ?

    There isn’t any…why not ?

  24. Another Block goes up in flames

    The speed at which the fire spread and eye witness accounts suggest it had some kind of flammable cladding. Fortunately everyone got out safely. They probably ignored the Fire Brigades stay put policy. If they had listened to it there would have almost certainly been deaths

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-50438177

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a0843b9dbd0a805de751a944273a81ede35d16ad266b9cb40b1a870c22dbd44e.jpg

  25. December General Elections

    Due to the fixed term parliament act in theory all future General Elections will be in December

      1. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

        All I had to do was glance at the title of that damned song and now it’s stuck in my head.

        I’ve hated it since the time it first blighted our world.

        That bloody Slade one is just as bad!

  26. Police say they are assessing two allegations of electoral fraud, after claims the Tories offered peerages to Brexit Party election candidates to persuade them to stand down.

    Labour peer Lord Falconer has urged the Metropolitan Police and prosecution service to launch an investigation.
    He said the claims – first raised by the Brexit Party’s Nigel Farage – “raise serious questions” about the integrity of the 12 December election.

      1. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah ……………..
        (pause for breath) …. hahahahahahahah ………………………………….

  28. The Catalan crisis is key to the rise of the Spanish far right. Sat 16 Nov 2019.

    No one is more aware of this than Santiago Abascal, the leader of Vox, who insistently played the economy card in the run-up to the elections. “The economic crisis will find us without national unity and without legal security,” said Abascal in a televised debate on 4 November. He finished by quoting Ramiro Ledesma Ramos, one of the ideologues of the fascist Falangist movement: “Only the rich can afford not to have a country.”

    One of the few heartening things in the MSM nowadays is their eternal moaning about the rise of the “Far-right” something I applaud but paradoxically because they are not far-right at all. Vox as mentioned here is an archetype of villainy in their eyes.

    Vox has a plan to deport migrants legally entitled to be in Spain if they have committed an offence, and wants to prevent any migrant who comes in illegally from staying.

    The horror! If the Brexit party had added such measures to its Euro manifesto it would have swept the board!

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/16/catalan-crisis-spanish-far-right-vox

  30. I don’t agree with a blanket amnesty; these matters should be judged on a case-by-case basis. And by ‘judged’ I don’t mean involve our thoroughly compromised judiciary.
    A Spekkie article:

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/2019/11/trevor-renes-battle-to-stay-in-britain/

    “Trevor Rene’s battle to stay in Britain | The Spectator

    When Boris Johnson edited this magazine, it proposed an amnesty for illegal immigrants — a controversial notion, but an idea he has stuck to. As London Mayor he suggested an ‘earned amnesty’: if bureaucracy had failed over many years to catch up with the 400,000 undocumented migrants in the capital, he reasoned, why not regularise their status so that they could start paying taxes and contributing to the country in other ways? When this magazine reprised the issue last week, the usual objections were recycled: why reward criminality? But the actual cases are more complicated.

    Trevor Rene is one such case. He was born in Dominica in 1969 when it was still a British colony, so as a child he had a British passport. He has family in Britain because his grandfather moved here in the early 1950s, as one of the Windrush generation. He lost his UK passport when Dominica gained independence in 1978, but went on to respond to an advert for recruits to the British army. The Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers didn’t mind about his status. He has photos of his passing-out parade on the walls of his Hertfordshire home, along with the oath of allegiance he swore to the Queen on joining the army. On Remembrance Sunday in 2012 he took part in the Cenotaph ceremony.

    ‘They were advertising all over the Caribbean,’ he says when we meet in his home in Welwyn Garden City. So he travelled over and signed up. ‘I arrived at Gatwick, told them what I was doing here, and they gave me a six-month stamp in my passport.’ He reported to an army careers office in London. ‘I was 38 and they said I was too old to join the regular army, as they were only taking people up to 35. They told me I had to go to a local army unit.’ He went to Whipps Cross, east London and joined up as a reservist. ‘They asked me for my passport, and saw the six-month visa.’

    His Commanding Officer sponsored his application to stay. And as the wheels of bureaucracy ground on, he continued to serve in uniform, his job being to repair Land Rovers. In the meantime he managed to go on holiday to Turkey and re-enter Britain without trouble. In 2011, however, he was asked to send his passport to the Home Office, and hasn’t seen it since. In 2013, returning in a troop truck at Harwich from a Nato exercise in Denmark, he was asked for his passport. ‘I said I didn’t have one because it was with the Home Office.’ They let him through, but the incident must have awoken someone in immigration control.

    ‘The Home Office contacted my unit and said they had an illegal entrant working for them, but they knew that I came via Gatwick airport. I didn’t come on the back of a lorry, I came the proper way. The army told me that they had to let me go but said I could always come back once I was regulated.’ Not only was he thrown out of the army — which had accepted him six years earlier, knowing his migration status — he was forbidden from seeking any other kind of paid employment.

    So he then joined tens of thousands in a twilight zone: people who arrived legally, but whose visas ran out — who loved the country and sought to stay. People whose behaviour and conduct have been faultless, but who are nonetheless pursued by the authorities because they are an easier target than genuine criminals. And people who, while they continue their fight through the courts, are prevented from contributing to the economy by laws that have not adjusted to the fact that there are now 1.2 million in this legal limbo.

    Trevor received a letter demanding that he visit a police station in Hatfield once a month to sign in. ‘I thought it was bogus at first. The Home Office said I would run away, but run away from what?’ So every month for two years he duly signed in — until December 2016. ‘I tried to sign in as normal and they detained me, no warning or anything.’ He says he was locked in a police cell for 24 hours and then transferred to the Campsfield detention centre in Oxfordshire, where he was initially locked up with Romanians. ‘I asked why they were there when they came from an EU country. It turned out they were criminals, and there was no room in prison.’ Later, he found himself sharing a cell with a Filipino who gave him the number of a solicitor.

    After 17 days he was allowed out, but only after his wife Diane paid his £700 bail. He has been refused a spousal visa, on the grounds that his wife does not earn above a threshold of £18,600, something he says is incorrect. His right to a family life would doubtless stop his deportation, but the system pursues him regardless. ‘I’m not asking for a passport,’ he says. ‘All I want is indefinite leave to remain. Let me continue my life, and start to work and pay my taxes.’ Like so many, he has been shunted into a siding, unable to work — yet unable to leave the country of his own free will as the government has his passport. Given his six years of service in the armed forces and his marriage to a British citizen, you might wonder what more he must do to prove worthy of being allowed to live here.

    It should be a sobering thought for the Conservatives that had Boris’s proposal for an amnesty for longstanding illegal migrants been adopted by the Cameron government, the Windrush scandal would never have happened. The Prime Minister should be brave enough to recognise that he was right — and commit his party to an amnesty.’

    1. ‘Morning Anne
      These cases are carefully chosen and highlighted to poison the well against ALL deportations
      Convicted murderers and rapists play the system endlessly funded by us…………………..and win

      1. That is precisely why I said they should be judged on a case by case basis.
        Amongst the blaggers there will be genuine cases of injustice, often perpetrated by snivel serpents.

        1. Ah,the civil servants at the Home Office,judging by a visit to the passport office it is time diversity quotas were imposed
          Not a “Gammon” to be seen

        2. To get a British passport you have to be a UK national or naturalised UK national so that story is rubbish

        3. The state would argue it doesn’t have the resources to do that.

          The state doesn’t have the ability to run a bath. It chooses to be inefficient because it’s easier.

      2. Well if he had a British passport he would not have lost his right to reside in the UK. This story is not all it seems

    2. You see, when we get a situation like that, which is basically a failure of the authorities to function adequately and we have a law abiding, serving fellow we should invite him to apply for citizenship and do what we can to support him.

      Then we get Abu Al Bullbull, who’s done absolutely nothing apart from run drugs while knifing people and again, we have an establishment failure but in letting him in in the first place.

      1. Exactly. We are plagued by authorities who are at once inefficient and spiteful.
        The result is the current mugger’s buddle, where the good get lumped in with the bad.

  31. Good Morning folks,

    I see Labour are running true to form.

    The first priority of those planning a coup is always to take over the means of communication.

      1. They practically have already. Look at how the Left have infiltrated language – democracy has become ‘populism’, communism/high taxes/economic control ‘progressive’, social control and the suppression of free thought ‘liberal’.

        There is nothing progressive or liberal about the Left.

  34. Mass Migration

    WE have had mass migration for well over a decade. We are told it is wonderful for the UK economy but the facts simply do not substantiate that claim. Most migrants according to the governments own data are unskilled or low skilled and earn close to minimum pay. Many do not speak English and many have non working dependents. Yes a few are highly skilled but only about 1% are , so to get 1% of highly skilled people we bring in 99% low skilled or unskilled. That make no sense

    If this mass migration were so good for the economy the UK deficit would have gone and we would not have the NHS in crisis or the schools or housing
    Mass migration has also lead to pay being suppressed and poor working conditions. It has also played a significant part in the UK’s poor productivity record

    The argument that we need these people simply does not stack up. Our economy last month grew at about 0.3% and some of that is down to productivity growth so that indicates few new jobs are being created. All the forecasts as well suggest we will need fewer people in the future due to increased automation and robotics, Call Centres for example could become redundant and already warehousing is becoming highly automated

    1. Fruit pickers etc. Earn up to the personal tax threshold, access full range of UK benefits, over winter retire to build a country house in Eastern Europe. Repeat until building work complete. Simples..

    2. BJ,
      Do you leave out “uncontrolled”
      intentionally ?
      Why then do a multitude of peoples
      support / vote for mass UNCONTROLLED immigration
      parties ?again,again,& again ?
      These parties have had great success at getting peoples, killed, scarred, maimed, raped & abused via adhering to omitting the “uncontrolled” bit due to,in the main, PC & Appeasement.

      1. I think it’s wilful and deliberate to import as many such people as possible. I don’t really understand why.

        Economically – and this is the only one that matters – we simply don’t need them and, in reality such a massive influx keeps wages low and demand for welfare high which means high taxes on the rest of us.

        1. W,
          Party boosters, you seem to forget that the voting mode is party first & foremost in all things regardless of consequence.

    1. First duty of Government and Parliament is Defence of the Realm and the realm does NOT include the rest of Europe as defined by the EU.

      Be sure your Parliamentary Candidate is aware of this.

      1. Ntn,
        Well meant advice I am sure for some but not for me as I see all parties within parliament as a close shop coalition.
        They have proved beyond doubt they have no intentions of defending the realm of England
        any time soon ,never, if left in power.
        My advice to the politico’s of parliament would be to tool up for the coming civil war of their making & that being a religious civil war, this is my personal view.

    2. We’ve been betrayed for 40 years. The difference is this time people are talking about it.

      And still Remoaners refuse to accept the damage they want to do to the country.

      1. Wm
        In my book the toxic trio are a coalition and have been damaging these Isles since they become eu assets four decades ago.

    1. But but, the system is not divinely imposed. It evolves as a product of the demographic, shirley?

    2. Those upper northwest states are rife with SJW’s especially in the coastal cities – Seattle, Portland, et al. It’s funny, because as you move inland, you are into the “American Redoubt”, the area where good God fearing, gun toting, white supremacists will make their stand come the apocalypse.

    3. What an utterly illiterate slide. outcomes differences? Surely either different outcomes or outcome differences?

      What is the broken system? Do they mean that different groups should be taught differently? Surely that’s broken? Dear life. I despair of these creatures.

  39. Lyft scooters leaving Atlanta, five other cities in U.S.

    Lyft is eliminating its scooter operation in Atlanta, nearly a year after the devices were deployed in the city, a spokesperson confirmed

    The Lyft spokesperson said they’re focusing on markets that have the biggest impact. The spokesperson also confirmed the company is eliminating services in five other cities, including Dallas, San Antonio and Nashville.

    Lyft is the latest micromobility company to leave Atlanta. Uber’s electric bikes, JUMP e-bikes, left the city in September.

  42. Morning again

    SIR – The benefits that nationwide full-fibre access will bring to the UK are transformative. However, as an industry, we believe Labour’s proposals will undermine the significant investment and network development already under way, leave consumers with reduced choice and risk thousands of jobs both now and in the future.

    The telecoms sector has already committed billions to rolling out broadband, but Labour’s plans would cause this private-sector investment to grind to a halt. With the right support from government, the industry is well placed to accelerate rollout.

    Labour’s proposals expose a fundamental misunderstanding of how broadband is delivered and will set back the rollout of gigabit connections across the country for years to come.

    Labour’s plans do not just have an impact on BT, Openreach and other operators investing in new networks. They also fundamentally jeopardise the 600-plus other communications businesses using these infrastructures to connect their customers. These businesses appear to have no role to play in Labour’s nationalised broadband service, with the sector’s 181,000 employees left out in the cold.

    There is no such thing as “free” broadband, and these proposals wildly underestimate the level of investment required.

    Andrew Glover
    Chairman, Internet Services Providers’ Association

    Malcolm Corbett
    CEO, Independent Networks Cooperative Association

    Julian David
    CEO, techUK

    Clare MacNamara
    CEO, Broadband Stakeholder Group

    SIR – Jeremy Corbyn has certainly upped the stakes by pledging to give us all free full-fibre broadband by 2030. Which party will offer us all free electric cars?

    Carey Waite
    Chailey Green, East Sussex

    SIR – State-controlled internet. Doesn’t that make you feel safe?

    Richard Hodder
    Four Elms, Kent

    2. Just pondering here about JC’s free broadband … that will do British hungry children the world of good, at least it will keep their minds off their empty tummies when the Socialist dream becomes a catastrophe .

      1. Few British children are hungry; malnourished since their parents/carers have little concept of a balanced diet, but not actually hungry.

    3. In addition to my free, high-speed broadband, I am waiting for free gas, electricity and water…

      ‘Morning, Epi. I just know that free broadband won’t survive 11 weeks of a Liebour government, never mind 11 years.

  43. SIR – Rebecca Collins (Letters, November 14) is unfair to women when she says they fasten their belts incorrectly.

    Women in the Auxiliary Territorial Service, First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, Women’s Auxiliary Air Force and their modern successors have always worn waist belts – whether Sam Browne, Douglas Haig, Cavalry 1903 Bandolier pattern or Service Dress cloth – which fasten with the tongue pointing left, the same as for men.

    Logic dictates that this practice translates to everyday civilian unisex attire, such as jeans and trench coats.

    H S Blagg
    Car Colston, Nottinghamshire

  45. US accuses Russia of exploiting conflict in Libya. Fri 15 Nov 2019.

    Fears that Russian mercenaries, unofficially backed by Moscow, are tipping the scales in Libya in favour of the military leader Khalifa Haftar appears to have prompted the US to issue a strong warning to the general to pull back.

    Here’s the Kettle calling the Frying Pan black! The situation in Libya is the sole responsibility of the UK and France backed militarily by the United States. They have after destroying the country simply sat back and watched as it has disintegrated and become a highway for African immigrants into Europe. The sooner the Russians become fully involved the better. Perhaps they can save it as they have saved Syria!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/15/us-accuses-russia-of-exploiting-conflict-in-libya

    1. Meanwhile Russia is accusing the US of causing schism in the Orthodox Church. Probably justifiably, given that the breakaway Orthodox Church of Ukraine is the bone of contention. Greece has backed Ukraine but of course Russia doesn’t recognise its autonomy.

    2. Wasn’t the bombing of Libya carried out by NATO in accordance with a UN Resolution? (I thought it was folly to get involved, btw.)

  46. General Election 2019 Summary

    Candidates

    Con 635
    Lab 632
    Lib Dem 611
    Green 498
    Brexit 275
    SNP 59
    UKIP 45
    PC 36
    Alliance 18
    DUP 17
    UUP 16
    SF 15
    SDLP 14
    TiG 3

    1. The last one is TiG. No idea what that meant, so tried Google. I was re-directed to a wiki on Megan Markle.
      What constituency is she standing for ?

      2. I think they have had multiple names in a desperate attempt to stay afloat. Is it The Independent Group now? That is another nice fracture in the Remain vote.

  47. Great article from Charles Moore.
    Witty, informative, lots of info and names….

    Snag is, two most significant names are missing. Tony Blair and George Soros who apparently met with certain EU guys at Davos last January to discuss how to keep Britain in the EU. We know this from EUobserver.

    So what is going on in Britain.. and what has been going on for years ?

    No prizes for guessing !

      1. I expect they planned as far forward as possible and to have all eventualities covered.

        It’s particularly interesting that Blair and Soros are apparently linked thanks to EUobserver not least because Blair policies look identical to Soros policies, and presumably there’s a good reason for that.

        I think his involvement in Britain goes back a very long way, and I am doing my best to prove it, at least beyond reasonable doubt.

  48. Police assessing claims that Tories offered peerages to Brexit party. Sat 16 Nov 2019 .

    Scotland Yard is assessing two allegations of electoral fraud after claims the Tories offered peerages to senior Brexit party figures to persuade them to stand down in the general election.

    The Labour peer Lord Falconer has written to the Metropolitan police commissioner and director of public prosecutions calling for an investigation into what he said were “exceptionally serious allegations”.

    If this “assessment” proceeds at the same pace as the Darroch and Williamson enquiries we will still be here waiting at the next General Election.

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/16/police-assessing-claims-that-tories-offered-peerages-to-brexit-party

        1. Marshall Zhukov.
          I love the film; I have a feeling the foul language was pretty near to how Stalin and his henchmen spoke. They weren’t exactly from the top drawer.

      2. ♫ “Give me back the Berlin wall
        give me Stalin and St Paul
        I’ve seen the future, brother:
        it is murder.” ♫

      3. It does seem a parade of farcial twerps fiddling while Rome burns. What’d be nice to see is if none of them get elected.

        Sadly, as we’ve seen with the coalition they then cheat us our our choice.

        What continues to bother me is there are monstrously stupid people who think ‘Boris’ hair is silly’ or ‘That Mr Corbyn knows how we feel. He’s seen it and promises jobs’.

        It’s the facile idiocy of the small minded, the weak and, frankly, the bloody dumb. There needs to be a citizenship test to ensure a right to vote. One that ensures the public do not have a gobbling moron forced on them by the uneducated, the ignorant and the facile

  49. We have four candidates in the Berwickshire constituency. The constituency has been held by Liberals, Lib/Dem. SNP and currently by the Conservatives.
    Of the four, Lib/Dem, Tory, SNP and Labour, only the Labour candidate Ian Davidson is a Leaver.
    Labour’s best result in the last 36 years was 15% of the vote. Usually it is in single figures.
    Well, time to make myself a red rosette, possibly.

    1. It has come to dark days when as a patriotic Conservative voter of many years, you are forced to consider that the only way to defend your country is to stop the globalist-hijacked Conservative Party getting a majority. When the best thing that you can hope for is a hung Parliament again to keep us free of EU control while they fall apart.

      I am far from the only Conservative who thinks that the worst thing that can happen to the United Kingdom would be a Boris majority. It would put us under complete legal control of the EU with no right of appeal except to their own court with their own appointed judges. We witnessed recently what a “supreme court” can to do a British Prime Minister’s decision.

      Just to be clear – a Corbyn/Lib Dem/SNP alliance will cause LESS damage to this country than the EU’s hand-written Withdrawal Agreement that Boris is trying to get through. But that will fall on some deaf ears I know. Those who know how the EU works can see them waiting to pounce on us, even now. They are already demanding that we give them a name for our new representative, and are saying that we will be paying the EU more than we are now, and Boris has not even sneaked his deal through yet. This is the arrogance of the EU.

      A Corbyn alliance would be economically very bad, but the social / legal / financial destruction of the Withdrawal Agreement will be far, far worse. Please note, this comment from me is from someone who wants the best for our country and for us to be free. I do not say it without having thought carefully about it.

      Boris has the option of being completely free from the EU in 2 months time, with none of this economic train-wreck for our nation. He has decided not to allow that to happen.

  50. Isn’t being offered / bribed regarding a K currently seen
    as sending a person a nicely wrapped parcel of camel
    sh!te ?
    It surely cannot be seen as a reward for service rendered beneficial to the country.

    2. Lady T wasn’t.

      Kate Hoey isn’t.

      Seems to me that she’s slurring based on her own experience. We all do that, but to suggest it’s widespread is simply wrong.

  52. What do you think of this then?

    Please note lots of the comments have been deleted .. Censorious or what?

    A BOURNEMOUTH councillor who came under fire for allegedly posting ‘Islamophobic’ content said her words were taken out of context.

    Beverley Dunlop, of BCP Council, was one of a number of Conservative councillors to appear in an article published by a national newspaper this week.

    It is understood some 25 Tories across the UK have been suspended from the party pending an investigation.

    According to reports in The Guardian, Cllr Dunlop posted messages in two Facebook groups with more than 11,000 members between them.

    In one of the messages, apparently posted in 2016, she allegedly said: “I hate to ban anything really but I’d suggest we start with mosques!”

    In another post from last year, she allegedly responded to a call for an inquiry into Islamophobia in the Conservative party by writing: “How about them calling for an inquiry into Islamist rape gangs grooming underage, underprivileged white girls?”

    https://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/18041006.councillor-accused-posting-islamophobic-comments-says-ive-made-look-like-something-not/?action=success#comments-feedback-anchor

    1. “It is understood some 25 Tories across the UK have been suspended from the party pending an investigation.”

      Suspended for telling the truth about islam? That will be CCHQ weeding out the few real Conservatives left that are still working for the party.

      1. The investigation into the rape of white girls won’t go down very well. It was Labour councils where the problems were swept under the carpet.

        1. That is true, but I cannot see the Conservatives falling over themselves to do anything about it either. Those who are speaking up are being suspended, as the above article shows. Those Labour Party members who have spoken out have been ostracised / disciplined as well.

          It appears that there is cross-party agreement to stop anyone questioning islam and to let that cult do what they like.

    2. Vojtech Gombar, 61, Anil Wagle, 37, Jana Sandorova, 28,and Ratislav Adam, 31 , were sentenced to 36 years in total, at Glasgow High Court. So an average of nine years each and out in six to do it all over again. The crime was enslaving Slovakian girls, by bringing them to Glasgow and forcing them into prostitution. One unfortunate was sold for £10,000 on the street to someone who wanted a wife. Pakistanis were customers. No customers have been prosecuted.
      This kind of vicious and dangerous trash shares our streets with our children, as they make their way to and from school, to Brownies and Cubs.
      Nobody is doing anything to stop it. This has been going on since 2011. Prosecutions like this seem to take years, and are half-hearted, customers and others are simply let off.

      https://www.scotsman.com/news/crime/glasgow-human-trafficking-gang-jailed-for-over-36-years-for-exploitation-of-women-1-5042418

  53. “The public would welcome a revival of the country’s rural rail network”

    Just as long as I, as a non user, don’t have to contribute to it via my taxes.

  55. Nothing quite says ‘Christmas is coming’ like temporary concrete blocks
    being installed to prevent muzzers murdering children on the market square along with policeman strutting around with automatic weapons in places that see a copper once a month if they are lucky

    2. Won’t change our society at all, diversity strength, big city…

      They’ll change their tactics from trucks to suicide bomers or just nutters with knives.

      Why, WHY can we not talk about this very obvious problm with some parts of the Muslim community – from their organised crime, their attitudes toward women, their refusal to integrate, FGM, the rapes of white girls, the massive disproportionate number of Pakistani muslims in British jails compared to their demographic size.. th elist goes on, and doesn’t even cover their terrorist activites.

      So why, why does the establishment refuse this discussion? Why does it desperately try to silence any debate? Yes, there would be squeals of racism but it isn’t bloody racism. It’s actual fact. We’ve got a problem in this country.

  56. Squirrels! Squirrels aplenty! Squirrels abounding! Royal squirrels! Broadband squirrels! Railway squirrels! Even, yes, yes, even tree squirrels!

  58. ‘Morning All
    Roll Up.Roll Up !! Let the bidding war commence
    What am I bid for my vote??
    Do I hear 5 Billion??
    Thank you
    10 Billion you say??
    Come come politicians it’s not as if it’s your money let’s get serious
    100 Billion i’m bid
    Any advance on 100 Billion??
    One Trillion
    I thank you,now we’re getting there,after all it’s not as if we already have any debt
    By all the gods and none just when you thought you couldn’t despise these fluckwits any more they excel themselves
    A plague on them all

    1. Here we are again. Same every election. Our politicians never can accept change. It’s not in their nature.

      Forget the British Lion. Let’s replace it with the ground hog.

      1. Morning LF,
        By the same token the very same could be said of the electorate.
        And ground hog flies in the face of PC / Appeasement which is very popular among
        the lab/lib/con coalition party.

    2. In the movie the Fall of the Roman Empire Stephen Boyd as Livius carries Sophia Loren up the steps of the Roman altar and on being offered the Purple by the corrupt Senators who had installed his predecessor Commodus he replies:

      I don’t think you’d find me suitable, for my first official act would be to have you all crucified.

      What a guy!

      1. Then, if I remember the film correctly, the position of Emperor was put up for auction, with the bids quickly climbing.

      2. Aha,so that’s who I was channeling when I woke up in the early hours in a furious temper
        ‘Morning Minty

          1. I admit I did a search for “science fiction train” so they may have fanciful things such as anti-gravity generators or mono-filament / molecularly-bonded cables that cannot break in the construction. It would certainly be impossible with today’s technology. Unless the train was made out of plastic, which would not inspire confidence if someone dropped a cigarette.

          2. Even if it worked the passengers would suffer the worst sea-sickness known to man as the atrocity bounced along on the sag between the towers.

            That arc-over looks awkward. They’ll be needing to be dropping the rescue ropes as it grinds to a halt.

          3. But that’s the point. It’s a dream, a hope. Heck., the Japanese have Maglev. Why not reverse it for an over head line?

            If all we do is live in the ‘we can’t do that’ then we never try.

      3. Nice Jub. When we first lived on Merseyside we were close to the then main line to the North and would see all the LMS 4-6-0 classes hauling the expresses. Until one fateful morning when we heard a chime whistle for the first time, as the Clans took over on the Scottish expresses.

        1. I was just in time to see the last 5 Clans when I was a lad.

          They were all scrapped by 1966, but against the odds a new one is being built, numbered 72010 and to be named ‘Hengist’ in acknowledgement of the fact that if the original build had gone beyond 10 locos the subsequent units would be put to work in Southern England and Hengist would have been the first of those. The builders are using historic records and modern techniques to avoid the poor record in service and steaming difficulties of the originals.

          https://www.theclanproject.org/Clan_News.php

          1. Not sure that’s where I would put my money if I wanted to build a “new” steam loco. They were only classed 6P, same as the Jubilees – and the TE was not much more. Looked good, though.

    1. You think you’ll be allowed a screensaver, let alone to choose one from the state approved list?

  62. Can’t understand all the fuss about the Duke of York’s alleged sexual liaison with a seventeen year old lass.

    I’ve heard it said that he had ten-thousand men, surely a matter of much greater concern.

    1. And when they were up, they were up

      and when they were down, they were down
      and when they were only halfway up
      they were neither up nor down?

  63. What it’s like being an out-and-proud Brexiteer on campus
    David Paton – Coffee House – 16 November 2019 – 7:00 AM

    Some were surprised when history lecturer and Brexit party candidate Kevin Yuill revealed that there were plenty of secret Brexit supporters in British universities. As another out-and-proud academic Brexiteer, I am happy to report that I too have come across my own fair share of pro-Brexit colleagues. But we should not underestimate the isolation that many of those Leave supporters feel within the world of higher education.

    One consequence of being open about my views is that it has led to people of all political persuasions contacting me, often out of the blue, keen to discuss Brexit. Some are critical. Others are just intrigued to know why I hold the views I do.

    Worryingly, I’ve also had a significant number of academics who support Brexit contact me to share their tales of woe at UK universities.

    In one of the more demoralising cases, an academic working at a Russell Group institution was removed from his university Brexit planning group on the grounds that he ‘had too positive a view of the post-Brexit economy’.

    Another lecturer, again working at a prestigious university, confided that she had experienced a far greater degree of marginalisation in her department for being a Brexiteer than she ever had for being a woman working in a male-dominated field.

    The reaction to my pro-Brexit stance within my own institution has been mixed. On the one hand, I have faced explicit pressure from ‘on high’ to disassociate my opinion pieces on Brexit from the university.

    Amongst my colleagues, however, my views have generated some fascinating conversations and debates. Many disagree with me, often quite strongly, but that is exactly as it should be. Others wish we had voted to stay in the EU but recognise that in a democracy, the vote to leave has to be implemented.

    Many colleagues have quietly told me that they also voted to leave in the referendum. Their reasons are as varied as the rest of the population. Some felt the economic advantages of Brexit had been underestimated. Others were concerned about the democratic deficit in the EU or angry about the treatment meted out by the bloc to countries like Italy and Greece. More than one colleague, born outside the EU, revealed their frustration that EU nationals are given preference in employment and visas over people from, say, the Commonwealth.

    Very few of these Leave-supporting academics have been willing to go public with their views. The attitude of the economics profession to Brexit might help illustrate why. Paul Johnson of the Institute for Fiscal Studies summed up the conventional wisdom this way:

    ‘With one or two very ideologically aligned exceptions, all economists take the view that from an economic point of view Brexit is going to be damaging.’

    Even if true, such unanimity of thought would hardly be something to boast about. We economists are famous for never being able to agree about anything.

    Indeed, it is the only discipline for which the Nobel Prize has been awarded to two people for saying exactly the opposite thing – twice! If economists really were united in believing that leaving a customs union can only have negative economic effects, it would not only be a surprise, but also suggest a disturbing lack of diversity of thought in the profession.

    In reality, the idea of a consensus is far from the truth.

    Economists who conclude that Brexit may bring economic benefits work at institutions as diverse as Cambridge (Graham Gudgin), Princeton (Ashoka Mody), Central Lancashire (Phil Whyman) and Cardiff (Patrick Minford) to name but a few.

    To my knowledge, many more economists hold similar views but are somewhat shyer about going public.

    Such caution is not surprising. In 2016, the Royal Economic Society made a formal complaint to the BBC about airtime being given to pro-Brexit economists. Of course, the BBC dismissed the complaint. However, the idea that the main representative organisation for economists should seek to censor the views of its own members because they do not go along with the consensus demonstrates the extent to which ‘Brexit Derangement Syndrome’ has afflicted some of the brightest people in the country.

    So far, the Brexit process has not shown academia in a good light. What should have been a free and open debate about issues crucial to the future of the UK has instead generated an atmosphere in which people holding perfectly mainstream views feel marginalised and intimidated into keeping quiet.

    The majority of academics undoubtedly back Remain. But there is far greater diversity of opinion at universities than we are being led to believe.

    The reluctance of many on the Leave side of the debate to put their heads above the parapet should give pause for thought to anyone, whether a Remainer or Leaver, who cares about universities as a forum for free speech and open debate.

    David Paton is professor of industrial economics at Nottingham University Business School

    ***********************************************************************************************
    BTL:

    SonOfYork • 6 hours ago

    ‘What should have been a free and open debate about issues crucial to the future of the UK has instead generated an atmosphere in which people holding perfectly mainstream views feel marginalised and intimidated into keeping quiet,

    How true this is and not just about Brexit as it can be applied to just about every issue currently in the news these days.

    Turning_Tide • 8 hours ago

    I’ve always voted in elections/referendum, but I’ve hardly ever voted for the winning side. I’ve never before felt it unwise to mention who I’ve voted for.

    Ironically, having voted with the majority in the EU referendum, I feel as though I’m part of a minority.

    I have a student friend who voted Leave. He keeps quiet about it on campus.

    1. “…‘With one or two very ideologically aligned exceptions, all economists
      take the view that from an economic point of view Brexit is going to be
      damaging.’…

      They think it’s not going to be. We know it will be. All of us do. You can hear the sneering contempt from them. It’s a dripping puddle of bile, spite and hatred. They’re wrong, we’re right. Such stupid ‘ideological’ attitudes.

  64. Candidates standing in my Constituency:

    Central Suffolk and North Ipswich:

    Dr Dan Poulter (C)*,
    Emma Bonner-Morgan(L),
    James Sandbach (LD),
    Dan Pratt (G).

    *Sitting Candidate

    The Green party candidate is well named.

  65. I just went into a small caff not far from here. Not been there before.
    On a ledge next the table was something I hadn’t read in ages. A copy of the Telegraph.
    Yesterday’s. (Today’s you want ?).
    I looked through it from cover to cover. What was in it ? Nothing.Zilch. Nowt.
    No intelligent comment. No anti-Breixt stuff. Nuffin foreign. Like reading a blank page
    with bird seed scattered over it.
    This stuff people pay to read ?

    1. Isn’t it to demand a new treaty, one ensuring abject slavery and then to campaign against that treaty and for a second referendum where ‘we should remain’ and ‘I wish to remain in the EU’ are the only options?

  67. Here’s one for Grizz, if he looks in.
    Do you have a recipe for good black pudding, starting with a bucket of pig blood?

  68. Just listening to a radio show on R4 talking about the original drink drive limit in the late 50s. It worked out to about eight pints.

    Hard core!

    That’s not a limit – that’s a challenge!

        1. Not sure. I know Eldridge Pope’s Hardy’s Ale was the strongest stuff when I was in my twenties. It was so called after the description of the Dorset strong ale in The Trumpet Major.

        2. I went through a craze of drinking that in 1972. Expensive (20 pence for a third of a pint bottle. My regular Brown Ale was 14p.) – but lethal. 9.2% iirc. Once you’d bought three bottles and filled a pint glass with them it was all too easy to get it down your neck too quickly.

  69. 16:05 Saturday 16/11/2019. Here’s shades of the future – the electricity has just gone down to a very pale glow in light bulbs, TV and cooker not working.

    It could be called a brown-out but I fear it’s a green-in, with only the wind farms and solar panels providing a minimum amount of power.

    Wait ’til you try and charge your electric car!

    1. Thank goodness my laptop has it’s own internal battery, always on charge. Still says 99% available (not charging).

    2. 16:40 – lights and power restored to normal – probably fired up a coal-powered or nuclear power station.

  70. DM Story

    Met detectives investigate electoral fraud allegations after claims Tories ‘induced Brexit Party candidates to stand down’ as Ann Widdecombe says she will ‘swear on the Bible’ she was offered top job

    Now whom would you trust to be telling the truth – Anne Widdecombe, or Boris Johnson or one of the Conservative Party’s apparatchiks?

    1. Ann Widdecombe is the sort of woman who has always impressed me. She is the type of Lady who would carry the Empire on her shoulders while the men were away fighting overseas.

      In times of national peril you can see women like her emerging from the mists on the fields, with a sheep under each arm, working to keep the country going. 200 more like her and we would have left the EU 3 years ago.

    2. In our day it would simply be called venison (pronounced, by those that know, ‘venzon – perhaps I’m too posh for hoi-polloi).

    1. I couldn’t make my mind up if the first sentence was either expressing a hope that the letter would be read by her and not a minion or whether he was questioning her ability to read. I know where I sit on this one

      1. Abbott can read, but given the same words she would read something entirely different to you or I.

    2. Abbott as Home Secretary, McDonnell as Chancellor and Corbyn as Prime Minister. A terrifying thought.

    3. Good grief.

      Puts Abbott firmly in her place – well, of course it won’t because she’s a mendacious moron with the brain of a toilet brush.

      I did especially love the ‘answered a question I did not ask’ and that he didn’t want hassle from her and from the current home sec.

      That does worry me as the current one seems to have the right policies, so is Ms Patel not behaving in a manner properly expected?

  73. As a historian of England’s shameful anti-Semitic past, I dread the idea of Prime Minister Corbyn. 16 NOVEMBER 2019.

    On Thursday I joined John Le Carré, Trevor Phillips, Fiyaz Mughal and many others in signing a letter explaining our refusal to vote Labour on 12 December. The concern – indeed, the dread – which we expressed was “the prospect of a prime minister steeped in association with antisemitism.” Whether Jeremy Corbyn is personally anti-semitic, or wilfully blind, or both, I do not presume to judge; but the sheer range of his contacts with indisputable anti-semites, his repeated expressions of enthusiasm for them, means that I have long found it impossible to ignore the anxieties of Jewish friends.

    Ah yes the Evil English! Anti-Semitic Slave Trading Colonialists without a single redeeming feature. It’s a good job the Germans were there to stop us at the Holocaust and the French could rescue the slaves being transported to the United States, not to mention the Belgians preventing us exploiting the Congo. What a paradise the World would have been without us! China would have evolved into a Democracy and the Indians wouldn’t have felt it necessary to burn widows alive while the Russians would have brought in the United Nations 200 years ago. It is not generally appreciated that Alexander Fleming discovered Penicillin while researching new bioweapons and what a relief that Newton died before he could finish his research into Nuclear Fission where we would undoubtedly have exterminated the rest of the Human Race!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/11/16/englands-shameful-history-blood-libel-compelled-denounce-corbyns/

      1. On Thursday I joined John Le Carré, Trevor Phillips, Fiyaz Mughal and many others in signing a letter explaining our refusal to vote Labour on 12 December. The concern – indeed, the dread – which we expressed was “the prospect of a prime minister steeped in association with antisemitism.” Whether Jeremy Corbyn is personally anti-semitic, or wilfully blind, or both, I do not presume to judge; but the sheer range of his contacts with indisputable anti-semites, his repeated expressions of enthusiasm for them, means that I have long found it impossible to ignore the anxieties of Jewish friends.

        One association in particular seems to me beyond the pale. In 2011, writing in the Morning Star, the future Labour leader condemned “the Zionist lobby” for securing the deportation from Britain of a Palestinian activist named Raed Saleh. A year later, Corbyn was still campaigning on Saleh’s behalf, and even issued him an invitation to “tea on the House of Commons terrace.” It is hard to think of anyone less deserving of such an invitation. Saleh has been convicted of deploying the most repellant of all the many calumnies directed against the Jews over the centuries: the charge that they are in the habit of mixing children’s blood with their ritual bread.

        This blood libel is widely repeated across the Middle East today – but it did not originate there. It originated in England. The context was a growing dread in 12th century Christendom of the Jews as willing agents of the Devil. Increasingly they were fingered as sorcerers and blasphemers: enemies of the Church who, given the chance, would pollute the sacred vessels used in the eucharist with their spit, their sperm, their excrement. Darkest of all, they were charged with murder.

        In 1144, the discovery of a young boy’s corpse in a wood outside Norwich prompted a host of sensational accusations: that the boy had been kidnapped by the city’s Jews, tortured as Christ had been tortured and offered up as a sacrifice. The story spread like wildfire. As similar tales were reported across Christendom, a further hellish refinement was added: that the Jews, in a grotesque parody of the eucharist, mixed blood into their bread.

        That this claim was condemned as a libel first by an imperial commission, and then, in 1253, by the papacy itself, did nothing to stop its spread. Two years later, the discovery in Lincoln of a small boy named Hugh at the bottom of a well saw ninety Jews arrested for the murder on the orders of the king himself. Eighteen of them were hanged. The murdered boy was hailed as a martyr. That the papacy pointedly refused to confirm this canonisation did little to check the growth of the cult of Little Saint Hugh.

        England, as the birthplace of this most toxic of lies, has a particular responsibility to take a stand against it. Taking a stand against it, however, is something that Jeremy Corbyn, by backing a promoter of the blood libel, has failed to do. It shames him, and soon perhaps, the country as well.

    1. Politicians have little interest in a free country. What would they do if they could not attempt to bribe you for your vote?

      Freedom is the last thing they want to give you.

          2. Hmmm… I shall refer my honourable friend to the Kentish riots.

            We’ve regularly fought against authority. The problem now is authority has an endless gamut to destroy our lives entirely. Unless you have nothing, they’ll make sure to take everything. Just look at the woman asking the police to do their job and move the Muslims off the park. The next day she gets violently arrested and the police still didn’t do what they were supposed to.

            When the state supports disorder and criminality for an easy life, protest by the honest majority just leads to oppression.

      2. W,
        Why would one give a vote ?
        has giving them votes been beneficial to these Isles in the last four decades ?

      1. Ho ho.
        It’s probably a trick of the light, the Zebra crossing is reflected because of the angles

  78. Three men are sitting in a cell in the (Momentum Party headquarters)

    The first asks the second why he has been imprisoned.

    He replies, “Because I criticised Comrade Korbyn .”

    The

    first man responds, “But I am here because I spoke out in Favour of

    Comrade Korbyn!” They turn to the third man who has been sitting quietly

    in the back, and ask him why he is in jail. He answers, “I’m Comrade

    Korbyn.”

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4ac146fd5dd9f44133dca36db58185af77af2008605cd6d336158a6d10d8333b.jpg

  79. Welsh Separatist Leader: Wales Should Be Turned Into ‘Nation of Sanctuary’ for Refugees

    I bet the Welsh are pleased with her. Just what they wan I don’t think

    1. What a shame: a girlie of Indian heritage wot has done all right in evil, colonial, racist, misogynistic Blighty …..
      All as dust because she is a Conservative.
      Is she a class traitor? A race traitor? Or betraying the sisterhood?

        1. She’s probably as good as Nikki Haley was in the States. She was Indian Heritage too.
          Not Muslims so they don’t blow people up.

  81. If you thought Corbyn was bad think again

    Warren Tax Plan Would Bring Rates Over 100% for Some

    Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren has unveiled sweeping tax proposals that would push federal tax rates on some billionaires and multimillionaires above 100%.

    Potential tax rates over 100% could result from the combination of tax increases the Massachusetts senator proposes for the very top tier of investors. She wants to return the top income-tax rate to 39.6% from 37%, impose a new 14.8% tax for Social Security, add an annual tax of up to 6% on accumulated wealth and require rich investors to pay capital-gains taxes at the same rates as other income even if they don’t sell their assets.

    Consider a billionaire with a $1,000 investment who earns a 6% return, or $60, received as a capital gain, dividend or interest. If all of Ms. Warren’s taxes are implemented, he could owe 58.2% of that, or $35 in federal tax. Plus, his entire investment would incur a 6% wealth tax, i.e., at least $60. The result: taxes as high as $95 on income of $60 for a combined tax rate of 158%.

    1. Yes. These are similar to the measures that brought the Gilded Age to an end in the United States

      2. It does appear to be the final “total inversion” of a sustainable incentive-driven society model. Those at the top who work the hardest will get paid nothing extra at all. Those at the bottom, who do not want to work at all, will get paid to do nothing by the state.

        And those cynics have been saying for years now that the state wanted to remove from the population any incentive to improve yourself, and people should just sit back and accept their position in life. Rather like a caste system.

        1. Plenty of incentive to improve yourself in the US. Especially given the lack of benefits for those who do not want to work.

      3. The top rate of income tax in the US did not drop below 70% until 1981, when it went to 50%, so a bit higher tax rates really don’t hurt the broad economy. And back in the 50’s-60’s the top rate was 90%. The deficit was small, not increasing very much until 1980’s tax cuts began to bite. The last three presidents all ran up (or are running up) much, much bigger deficits. Today’s problem is that taxes have been cut for the top 1% yet again, and spending raised – not viable in the longer term. Plus, of course the US tax code is riddled with “breaks” for the mega rich.

        Warren Buffet reckoned his effective tax rate was lower than his secretary’s – there’s definitely something wrong with that.

        As an aside, it’s easy to stimulate any economy if government lets the deficit soar – but as some point, the bill has to be paid. It’s a bit like the old “pass the parcel” game – each President bets that it will be his successor who has to pick up the pieces.

  82. Daily Telegraph reporting that the iconic Cumbrian Haulage firm, Eddie Stobart,is close to collapse The smart clean Stobart lorries are highly visible on the UK roads. I think the company has rail and Airport interests as well.

    2. Carlisle airport. Stobart have been working on setting it up as a passenger airport for NW England and SW Scotland. They have had a very difficult and expensive time. It has dragged on for several years. I think the the authorities and officialdom have been extremely hard on them in respect of compliance and permissions. I would not be surprised if those who own other airport operations , such as Manchester, have been putting their oar in.

          6. ” Come things you really don’t want on your best suit.”
            Please correct me if I am wrong, but I thought the first letter should be an ” S “.
            If I am wrong, the C may require one of those squiggly things that the French use.

          7. I think you’ve been barking up the wrong tree on this one.

            AA wrote:”Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings.” and I wrote: “Come things you really don’t want on your best suit.”

            So, putting the two together it reads:

            “Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings come things you really don’t want on your best suit.”

          8. R I C !! I get it now. Yes, thanks for your patience. Wrong tree was barked up.
            Going out now for a take-away before watching the Paedo Duke.
            Reminds me of Berlusconi, that magic 17.

          9. I’ve read various “extracts”.

            I won’t hold my breath but when it gets to the point:
            Ms Maitlis added: “You don’t remember meeting her?”, to which Andrew replied: “No.”

            She should then have asked “Do you remember sleeping with any women at that party?”

          10. “Çome things you really don’t want…”

            In the land of Erdogan, Ç (C with cedilla) is pronounced Ch, as in Church or Chips.

            Still makes no sense…

    2. Can’t watch or do stuff like that, Belle, even when I’m sitting down and know it’s just a video. Nightmare stuff. I now need to go to the pub’s live music night to forget it.

    3. I did “skip” a fair amount of the preamble and started watching at 03:44. There are some very impressive views there. 🙂

      I would have been more gentle with the cat at 06:04, although it seemed to enjoy it. I then watched until 07:30 before skipping past the “Tourist complaining about needing to wait in line” bit. That next part from 08:52 onwards was enough to give me vertigo and I’m sitting down. 🙂

      Thank you for that.

        1. I preferred the earlier one, it had a less “grubby” feel to it. 🙂

          How refreshing it must be for them, to walk along a surface such as that with so many holes in it, where so much of it has already fallen away. They must be some seriously jaded people to want to do that “just to feel alive.”

          I feel quite fulfilled in life with a hot cup of tea, a cat on my lap and a book in my hands. 🙂

  85. Nicked,Oi Laffed

    Later tonight

    Maitlis: “Look your Royal Highness, do you really expect me, a representative of the BBC, to swallow these lies”

    Andrew:
    “Epstein, Notre Dame, Trump’s a Russian Agent, Dr David Kelly…I’m
    sure the BBC have got room for one more, wafer-thin story?”

    Maitlis: “….”

  86. Interesting article on the decline of Stevenage in the Guardian –

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/16/the-view-from-stevenage-how-will-the-uks-first-new-town-vote

    Average wage is £30,000 which is £60,000 for two. Bloggins is worried because his other half is pregnant and they
    might not be able to buy a house.
    The place has changed since it was built as the first New Town in 1946.
    So have the inhabitants I think. Coincidence.
    Never been there myself.
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d4013e46db61ed69b41034ddf0dc76e9802703dca5d568203fcc72c0029c7a65.jpg

    1. I’ve never been to Stevenage but I designed the first of the new digital exchanges, Stevenage Unit C, installed there. It was my first design and it was at the start of BT’s network modernisation programme: thinking about it, that was half of my lifetime ago, circa 1984/5 and my son was 1 or 2 yo. Where’s the time gone?

        2. If the real and one and only BT is on the exchange I think he is, I was responsible for that as well. IIRC it was Jan ’89 and there was one hell of a storm blowing, our office block in Colchester shuddered with the gusts. I had to get to Norwich North to load and test the data script for the 06:00 transfer and it was a bit of a wild drive to Norwich that afternoon.

          1. I worked on a Measured Term Contract, carrying out repairs / decorations / whatever on BT exchanges . Had a key which fitted them all. As for Norwich: Sainsbury’s in Pound Lane, Thorpe St Andrew, was one of my contributions to the built environment. We had a helluva job getting BT to connect the phones – to the extent that we almost took a BT engineer hostage until we were connected. R G Carter wouldn’t have had this trouble…

          2. Key Type L? They were eventually removed and each Area had its own Ingersoll key for exchanges. I was amazed but equally relieved that my Type L fitted the lock of an exchange down Bristol way. I was travelling to attend a course and had car problems and needed to phone to say I’d be late.
            Don’t need to tell me about problems with phone provision, I had my set-tos with those people and I worked for the company. Procedures, adherents to procedure and no flexibility in thought or action.

      2. Used to drink in a good pub in Old Stevenage The Marquess of Granby. Its probably been “improved” now and ruined

      3. Well the first digital exchanges were TXE2 & TXE4, There was I think a TXE1 & TXE3 but these were not production versions. They were developed by STC

        1. Forget that I am getting confused TXE exchanges although electronic were analogue. First digital was system X

        2. Bill, the TXE2 was an analogue first generation electronic exchange utilising a reed relay matrix switch. It was a common control system set up by permanent strapping. No SPC i.e. stored programme control. I know this because I completely rebuilt and installed a large unit as well as being CoW on a couple of installation sites.
          The TXE4 and its uprated version 4A were again analogue electronic switches but with some level of SPC.
          Analogue in this sense is related to the mechanism that completes the switching of calls i.e. the switch matrix is realised in Space only, there is no component for switching in Time i.e. an individual circuit is required for each call and the speech signal is not encoded. A digital exchange switches calls both in Space and Time and the speech is encoded.
          In the British System X and the Ericsson AXE10 the basic transmission component is a 30 channel/2 Megabit PCM system. The speech is sampled, encoded, allocated to time slots and transmitted as a stream of binary bits i.e. digital signals. As the speech is sent in small parcels separated in Time but arrive on systems separated in Space the exchanges have a switching matrix configured as a Space-Time-Space switch. The latter forms the heart of a digital exchange. I believe other configurations of Time switches are available.
          I did have some further experience working on a Siemens switch that was used on a CCITT No 7 signalling network and the new Ericsson switch that was being introduced on the trunk network as a replacement for the System X trunk units.
          Although being out of the telecomms loop for 15 years I think what I’ve written is a fairly accurate description of the exchange types you mention with added info for you on the two principal switches used in the network during my time.
          I hope this helps.

  87. Breaking News, Hot off the press

    Latest Poll after every candidate except Conservatives stands down in order to get brexit done

    CON: 100% (+60)
    LAB: 0% (- 28)
    LDEM: 0% (-14)
    BREX: 0% (-6)
    GRN: 0% (-2)

    2. I am not sure Johnson would be happy with this result, probably finding a way to ask for more!

      1. Johnson reminds me of someone, that French chap, arrogant barsteward who always wanted a little bit more, another compromise. Name’s on the tip of my tongue; can’t be all bad he gave May a hard time. Just wish I could recall the git’s name.

    1. Ditto. I was offered a French Horn. With just three keys I thought it would be a cinch. However, I only just about managed to get my hand in the right position in the bell end…..

      1. Lack of hand and finger co-ordination is my problem. I don’t know if that is linked to my mixture of right and left handed skills e.g. I write, eat, bat, play badminton etc right handed but I play snooker and fire a rifle left handed and I’m left footed. A real bloody mix.

          4. Don’t be too concerned about it. Geoff has a very solid outlook on life and at least he no longer has athletes foot.

          11. In a nutshell, diabetes. The left ankle had Charcot Foot, and I was offered a complicated op to correct it. Amputation seemed a better option, not least that it would mean three rather than six months out of action. Six days before the op. date, it became apparent that I had an infection in the other foot. Went for a BOGOF deal. No regrets…

          12. I did wonder. Well done you for approaching things positively. I’m full of admiration for your determination to adjust the church tower clock each spring and autumn.

          13. The tower stairs are easy if I take them slowly. Adjusted the clock again, only yesterday., The only downsides are that ladders are tricky, and the prostheses don’t let me bend my knees enough to ride a bike. Which is annoying, since I bought a folding e-bike,18 months ago…

            I had a transfusion, shortly after the op. Never having known my blood group, I asked the nursing Sister what was my group. “Be positive”, was the reply. “I am being bloody positive – what’s my bloody group?”, I replied…,

          14. And when they say put your best foot forward?

            Do you reply:

            “Don’t be a fool, I’m a Nottler, we have “ped”-ho ho-ants.
            I’ve only got two feet, I put my better foot forward.”

          16. Speaking of which, I lost a fair bit of the red stuff during the op. A few days later, they decided to give me an additional transfusion. “Sister – I’ve no idea what my blood group is?” “B positive.” “I am being bloody positive, but what’s my blood group…”

        2. I am right handed but bat left handed in cricket. It is to do with the relative strength of my right hand by comparison with my left arm. The grip at the top of the bat is more forceful when playing a stroke.

      2. In fairness, I believe there’s much to be said for keyboard instruments. Every note on the page corresponds to a particular key. This is not generally the case for stringed, woodwind or any other instrument. I’m rather saddened that, for me, the organ pedals are now out of reach, but in certain keys, I can still reach a few of them…

        1. Yes but there are an awful lot of them! I’m sorry that you can no longer reach all the pedals.

          My eldest daughter was offered lessons on the Bath Abbey’s organ. However she declined 🙁

          1. My woodwork master at City of Bath Technical School, Ray Jones, was the Deputy Abbey organist in the days of Dudley Holroyd. Your daughter would have been safe with him, not so the boys. The drainpipes and winkle pickers on a sixty year old were a sort of fashion statement in the sixties.

          2. That aspect didn’t concern her. She was more interested in sports and became a Head Coach for an athletic discipline at the University.

          3. I had lessons from Hugh Davies when I was in my late teens and he was sub-organist at Carilsle Cathedral. He’s since been found guilty of kiddyfiddling. Never had a hint of this. Should i feel aggrieved?

          4. No. You are not responsible for the behaviour of anyone except your own.

            Good evening, Maestro.

          5. I suspect that Geoff was saying “What am I, chopped liver? What was wrong with me? I was not that bad looking.”

            I was lucky at school and was a tubby book-reader, so was never in any danger from sexually misguided teachers. When I started weight-training and lost all of the extra pounds, I was strong enough to fend them off anyway. 🙂

          6. Thankfully, neither of us were interested in each other.

            More recently, my old assistant organist has moved on to higher things. He’s as gay as a very gay thing, and moves in extremely elevated musical circles. As it happens, one of our commenters here told me about her nephew, who – unlike me – is a very talented organist. I went to my old assistant’s ‘Come and Sing’ Fauré Requiem last Sunday, and it turns out that said nephew was the accompanist. Former assistant (in the pub, afterwards) described said nephew as ‘straight’, almost as if it was unusual…

          8. Being not very good looking may have helped. :o)

            The Duke should have just admitted his indiscretion with a tart. This will plague him forever.

          11. I’m with you on that. Catholic schools, altar boy, Boy Scouts, Legion of Mary. Nobody even looked like laying a hand on me.

          12. Nope. Ray Jones would put his hands around your waist below the waistband and tickle your tummy in the woodwork class.

            We were entirely innocent and had no knowledge of kiddyfiddling. Some of the more mature boys In my class muttered and I suppose thought they knew what was going on. I was under developed and remained entirely innocent.

            Later on I was his star woodwork pupil but I had to give up woodwork to study Physics, Chemistry, Pure and Applied Mathematics and Art.

          14. I dropped a mallet on his thumb which gave him the most painful ‘black man’s pinch’. The only way to relieve the pain of the clotted blood beneath the nail was to heat an extended paper clip on a Bunsen burner and pierce the nail. The blood hit the ceiling.

            It was purely accidental on my part but the fondling ceased thereafter.

          15. That pressure relief is impressive, I had fingers caught in the hinge of a car door, same result: red hot needle and blood everywhere

      2. “Eyes front and centre Mister.”

        Ahem. They are quite independently active. She has been known to shuffle a deck of cards with them on a good night.

        1. My neighbour likes to sun bathe nude. When i knock on the gate and say are you decent? She says come in but then crosses her arms. I said she looked like she was hugging two baby seals. :o(

    1. I wonder if this directive has any impact on our Fens or the Dutch polders? Drains all over those hard won areas to keep the land productive. Where there’s water and farm land there has to be land drainage, hence there must be dredging allied to pumping to help keep the water under control.

    2. Did no one know this? It’s blasted evident! What infuriates is that Boris doesn’t say these sort of things. That Leave, who had an open sodding goal to discuss all the evils of the EU’s miserable interference in our ecology didn’t mention that flooding is caused by the EU. It controls far too much of our country.

      I despair. People simply don’t understand the EU one bit, do they?

      It’s also not just dredging. It’s building reservoirs as well. It’s truly saddening. I appreciate most people either don’t care or aren’t interested, but the simple reality is the EU dominates this nation. Any suggestion it doesn’t is a blatant lie. People voted to stay chained in ignorance. Truly, it is the Remainers who did not understand what they were voting for.

    1. If I were a child, I’d be really scared at that apparition. Matter of fact, as an adult, I’m really scared!

  91. Bolton Student Block Fire

    It now seems almost certain that the building was clad with similar panels to those used on Grenfell but not the same. It seems checks only concerned themselves with the same type of cladding but in my view any similar type cladding is a serious risk as it has a flammable core.
    Fortunately with this fire it started near to the upper floors of the building and fire spreads upwards. It would spread downwards later on mainly by flammable material falling onto the lower floor panels. The building also had fire alarms and the occupants self evacuated . If they had not there could have been injuries and even deaths. Fortunately this building was not that high so the Fire brigade had ladders and platforms that could tackle the fire from the outside

  92. Funny Old World
    Having watched the Met Policing London program and now the TFL Fare Dodgers prog I can’t help noticing certain demographics seem to be amazingly overrepresented
    How racist am I…………………………..

  94. A light-hearted Spekkie article:

    https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/11/could-philip-hammond-return-to-selling-second-hand-cars/

    “Could Philip Hammond return to selling second-hand cars?
    Richard Madeley

    What will my former school chum, Philip Hammond, do with himself now? He’s thought better of standing as an independent in the coming election, cut his losses and walked away from parliament. I wonder if he’ll be tempted to return to his roots.

    When I knew Phil ‘the Goth’ at Shenfield Comprehensive in Essex, he had a finger in a lot of pies. When he wasn’t fencing in intellectual debate with our history master (Phil was easily the cleverest boy in the school and ran rings around his teachers), he was making money. One of his projects was running a disco.

    Later on, he flogged second-hand cars. Soon ‘Eeyore’ will be a fading memory and we’ll be looking for a new soubriquet. Funky Phil? Or maybe Forecourt Phil: would you buy a used car from this man? You might not have a choice — Phil doesn’t tolerate no deal.”

    2. Poor Richard Madeley has never really recovered from his “Asian Rapper” moment. You do wonder if he knows what a Goth was as Philip Hammond would have been 28 – 33 when that took off, 15 years after they were at school.

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/08ced5448d8b59cddabefb286010bc4f7775f86f3c41d3a3d03549f4f2cfaea8.jpg

      Although looking at this picture that came up when I put Hammond’s name into a search engine, it is hard to imagine this untidy boy trying to do so much damage to our country:

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/12016b4a65df157fb3994f729430cbb96ac610a9e908f458d58224b20a5b65ea.jpg

      1. Oh it is. Look at the lack of respect, the arrogance, the ego, how he sets himself aside from the rest.

        That is a slovenly, disrespectful ponce who thinks he’s above everyone else.

        1. wibbling – Yes – my mistaken wording. 🙂

          Instead of saying “it is hard to imagine this untidy boy trying to do so much damage to our country.” I ought to have said:

          “It is hard to imagine this untidy boy being CAPABLE of doing so much damage to our country.”

          He does have that “I’m trying to be a rebel” look. Yet he turned out to be a complete globalist conformer, when enough bags of money were waved in front of him.

        2. At that time having your tie undone for a group photo was a sign that you were a rebelloius and arrogant little turd.

          As small acorns grow to be great trees so a little turd can become a big shit.

  95. The Stein family’s played many parts
    Ep, in business, Ein, science, Gert, arts
    Gert’s works were obscure
    But Ein’s maths was pure
    While Ep hired out under-age tarts.

    1. BBC either ignores it or marks them as terrorists. More likely there’ll be something like half a dozen Far Right protesters gather in France today to demandthe deportation of the peace loving Muslim minority.

    3. Brilliant BTL Comment on the spike article:

      JAN MOZELEWSKI
      15th November 2019 at 7:08 pm

      This article covers most things I see pretty accurately. (Pity the BBC and other woke media cannot do the same.) The tax over here is eye-watering. It stifles everything. Bureaucracy is probably the major industry….and totally turgid and inefficient to boot. Corruption by local mayors (effectively the local president) compounds problems in provincial towns.
      Transport options in the countryside are virtually nil. You have to have a car, Cars are expensive here….clapped out Renaults with 15 years and nearly 200k on the clock go for thousands of euros …when in the UK they would probably be scrapped. Every year we come over and buy a second hand car in the UK …one with a high mileage but good marque and spec. We get it for a third of what we would pay in France. (because France is tacitly allowed to operate a protectionist economy) So upgrading cars is expensive. We also have the double standards of a gov that pays lip service to environmental concerns….but is operating systems which mean people are having to do lots of meaningless journeys, Want to register a new business? Nothing fancy, just a self-employed affair. In the UK you make a phone call and its done. Here? make a rendez-vous in bloody Caen. A 150km round trip.And they have this wheeze that when you get there they tell you you need some document they didn’t include originally. Can you post it? Nope. A another trip. We tried to register a car once. (Never again.) We had to fill in copious forms and then…get this….we had to drive to Caen so we could PUT IT IN A POST BOX IN THE FOYER!!!!!! And naturally,, even though we asked the woman on the desk to check they had everything they needed….and having to include a signed blank cheque….we were summoned back again to put something else in the box in the f-ing foyer. The bureaucrats …..keeping their jobs by creating a nightmare.
      We pay extra tax for having a septic tank. We also have to pay every year towards the department which inspects them. Large swathes of france have no proper drainage. The nearest to us is 8km away. Yet we are taxed because of our supposed environmental impact. I could write a book.

      Rural france…even reasonable sized towns near mainline statons and motorways….is in a terrible mess. Far away from the nonsense sold to people in lifestyle magazines. Most villages outside tourist trap destinations have no facilities whatsoever. People are living hand to mouth. I foresaw trouble before the gilets jaunes happened. Certain commentators in Paris laughed it off. After the first weekend I remember one young ‘influencer’ on twitter asking if ‘the beggars’ had gone back to their hovels yet’.I doubt she’d ever done a day’s work in her life.
      Sounds all too familiar doesn’t it?
      Trouble is simmering here. The big difference is France is saddled with the German Euro as a currency. (Remember all those clever elite types who ridiculed the sensible proletariat in the UK who didn’t want it? Said we were all backward and what could possibly go wrong?? Well, France is the answer to that.)

  98. Russia allegedly meddled in Bolivia’s controversial election. Max de Haldevang1 hour ago.

    A Russian state company sent around 10 spin doctors to Bolivia beginning in mid-2019 to help the incumbent president Evo Morales win last month’s allegedly rigged election, according to an investigation by independent Russian publication Proekt.

    Is there one election that the Russians haven’t rigged in the last ten years? One of the things that puzzles me is that they are seemingly so good at it why didn’t the losers hire them instead of the numpties that lost them office?

    https://qz.com/1749788/russia-allegedly-helped-evo-morales-in-bolivian-election/

      1. Can’t do it cheaper than the Russians! According to the Democratic Party they put Trump in the White House for $20,000 when Hillary spent $600M!

    2. She looks very uncomfortable, not relaxed at all – there is a lot of tension there. She is wishing this wasn’t happening but she has no control of the situation.

      1. You mean that until she met Andrew she was a lily-white virgin ? Come off it.
        Prostitution is a sad fact of life. At least in that society she would be looked after and wouldn’t starve, and would gow up educated to be a blackmailer.
        It was a way of life for both of them, and I am wondering why dumb Andrew has been set up.There is a lot of big money floating around in this case.

      1. A ” navel ” officer who didn’t know anything about life or girls, like he said he was in the interview ?

  101. Meet the ‘detransitioners’: the women who became men – and now want to go back

    Premium, so I do not know what is said………………. am I surprised … No

    In real life, it is akin to a divorce:

    I thought I liked/loved him her (it) so we wed/had bitz altered………………. however, we realised it was wrong and I want to change back.

    This is the start of the NHS getting swamped with Gender Reversals

    The Blair Witch etc will be sueing the NHS (on No Win, No Cost actions) to have the reversals and to say they should not have happened in the first place.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/meet-detransitioners-women-became-men-now-want-go-back/

    1. No such thing as a reversal.

      Once your balls are in the bin and incinerated there’s no sewing them back on.

  103. DT Headline

    Boris Johnson: ‘Every Tory election candidate has pledged to back my Brexit BRINO deal’

    What better reason is needed to vote for TBP?

  104. The Andrew interview raises a lot of questions. You have already thought of many of them yourselves.
    He came over very, very, badly. His tutors had a hard job on, getting him as manageble as this.
    Why this TV entertainment was permitted, I do not know. He should have just followed his inclination
    and shrugged it off and told everyone to mind their own business, Those with the time, money and inclination
    can always get a girl when they want one. They don’t have to buy an island if they want a ten dollar whore, if
    I may use an Americanism.
    I don’t care what he did or didn’t do. Does anyone care ? Seriously ?
    I would like to know what’s really been going on, where the money is, and what they are hiding.

  106. The Queen switched off the television set, turned round and said to everyone.
    proudly, ” There, I always knew Andy would make a good actor one day “.

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