Saturday 18 September: Ashamed of a police force that assists protesters in committing offences

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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639 thoughts on “Saturday 18 September: Ashamed of a police force that assists protesters in committing offences”

  3. Russia accused of rigging gas prices to undermine Britain’s economic recovery. 18 September 2021.

    Russia has been accused of increasing gas prices in a bid to undermine Britain and the EU’s economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.

    Chris Bryant, a member of the foreign affairs committee, told The Telegraph: “Russia has been abusing the energy market in Europe for years, holding countries to ransom and forcing up prices. We need a strong united front with other European countries to stop this cynical abuse. Boris Johnson needs to guarantee our energy security without relying on Russia.”

    Tom Tugendhat, the Tory chairman of the foreign affairs committee, said last night: “Many of us have warned against Nord Stream 2 because Russia has indicated it is likely to use energy as a weapon. What we are now seeing is that it may already have started. If we are going to defend ourselves we need to think hard about cooperating in energy security, not allowing ourselves to be salami sliced with pipelines that cut out some of our partners.”

    Morning everyone. I don’t know whether this pair actually believe this stuff or are, as I have long suspected, Borg mouthpieces. The first thing to understand is that “Russia” does not increase prices; that is a function of the market. Second we do not buy any gas from Russia. Third you cannot, as Tugendhat does here, whinge about Nord Stream 2 and then complain that there’s a gas shortage. Fourth it’s difficult to see how it would advantage “Russia” to injure its reputation for probity long term by derailing the “Recovery” when Europe is an important customer who it depends on to buy its raw products for the foreseeable future. Fifthly Bryant’s complaint is similarly askew, if the “Russians” have really been abusing “the energy market and holding countries to ransom” why has it taken till now for anyone to notice or for it to take effect?

    It’s also worth considering that the real money being made is by Europe’s domestic suppliers in increased consumer bills, Russia does not profit at all here since they are paid the same under long negotiated contract prices. British Gas et, al. are simply jacking up the prices and blaming it on Russia! What we have here is a classic case of market manipulation and propaganda for both political and commercial purposes. Bryant and Tugendhat are almost certainly much richer than they were due to this little fracas!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/09/17/russia-accused-rigging-gas-prices-undermine-britains-economic/

    1. We cannot blame Russia for our own self harming green stupidity, we could have been more self sufficient in gas had we started fracking.
      Perhaps the Russians and the Chinese are funding all the green nonsense.

      1. Once again, our lack of proper energy independence – when we have the means – is shown to be dangerous, and sooner or later our reliance on others will be our undoing. Our industrial competitiveness is further damaged by these increases.

        1. Similarly with our dependance on imported food at 39%, when we could reduce that dependency by not building houses ans ‘solar farms’ on good arable land.

      2. “…we could have been more self sufficient in gas had we started fracking.”

        We would still be if we hadn’t used our North Sea reserves prematurely to generate electricity.

    2. Morning Minty,

      Can I add Sixthly, that Russia has “abused” the market no more than all other energy producing countries, those in the Gulf springs to mind.

      I’m starting to think I am not the only cynical person on this forum, Bryant and Tugendhat richer now, surely not.

      1. Morning VVOF. Well Bryant is probably too stupid to be a conscious tool but I’m pretty sure that Tugendhat knows whom he serves.

        1. I do not think there is one amongst them who has not been seduced by the Westminster trough of money or power. Some may have first entered Westminster with good intentions, but not many, and they do not serve us in any way.

  4. Russia accused of rigging gas prices to undermine Britain’s economic recovery. 18 September 2021.

    Russia has been accused of increasing gas prices in a bid to undermine Britain and the EU’s economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.

    Chris Bryant, a member of the foreign affairs committee, told The Telegraph: “Russia has been abusing the energy market in Europe for years, holding countries to ransom and forcing up prices. We need a strong united front with other European countries to stop this cynical abuse. Boris Johnson needs to guarantee our energy security without relying on Russia.”

    Tom Tugendhat, the Tory chairman of the foreign affairs committee, said last night: “Many of us have warned against Nord Stream 2 because Russia has indicated it is likely to use energy as a weapon. What we are now seeing is that it may already have started. If we are going to defend ourselves we need to think hard about cooperating in energy security, not allowing ourselves to be salami sliced with pipelines that cut out some of our partners.”

    Morning everyone. I don’t know whether this pair actually believe this stuff or are, as I have long suspected, Borg mouthpieces. The first thing to understand is that “Russia” does not increase prices; that is a function of the market. Second we do not buy any gas from Russia. Third you cannot, as Tugendhat does here, whinge about Nord Stream 2 and then complain that there’s a gas shortage. Fourth it’s difficult to see how it would advantage “Russia” to injure its reputation for probity long term by derailing the “Recovery” when Europe is an important customer who it depends on to buy its raw products for the foreseeable future. Fifthly Bryant’s complaint is similarly askew, if the “Russians” have really been abusing “the energy market and holding countries to ransom” why has it taken till now for anyone to notice or for it to take effect?

    It’s also worth considering that the real money being made is by Europe’s domestic suppliers in increased consumer bills, Russia does not profit at all here since they are paid the a same under long negotiated contract prices. British Gas et, al. are simply jacking up the prices and blaming it on Russia! What we have here is a classic case of market manipulation and propaganda for both political and commercial purposes. Bryant and Tugendhat are almost certainly much richer than they were due to this little fracas!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/09/17/russia-accused-rigging-gas-prices-undermine-britains-economic/

  6. SIR – It is often said that society has the police force it deserves. Whatever did we do to deserve ours?

    They take the knee, dance with protesters and assist offenders in committing offences (“Patel urges police to get tough on climate protesters”, report, September 17).

    Obstructing the highway was an offence when I served in the Metropolitan Police. I’m ashamed of the force these days.

    David Tucker
    Stokenchurch, Buckinghamshire

    The police are loathsome

      1. Morning Bob. Like most UK state institutions they have been undermined and infltrated by the Globalists.

    2. It’s the higher ranks and politicians who are responsible for the state our police forces are in.

      1. They may be the responsible authorities but I bet that they didn’t order the lower ranks to go skate boarding or dancing with protesters, etc., etc. There are plenty of puffed-up subversives in the ranks.

    3. Wonder if Dick’s next wheeze will be to appoint ‘Crime Assistants’? These people could, say, hold the ladder for Bill Burglar to reduce the risk of him falling or, in the event of something nasty happening, help him fill in compensation forms.

      1. I believe a householder who had been frequently burgled was prosecuted for putting razor wire on the top of an 8 foot wall in an attempt to prevent burglars getting into his property.

      2. Don’t give them ideas! There’s a fortune to be made in properly, erm, policed courses in manual handling, working at heights, animal handling, safe driving courses for getaway drivers and, as you suggest, regiments of taxpayer-funded assistants to help fill out those compensation forms for when things foul up. Heads won’t roll!

    4. Morning

      SIR – Do the Metropolitan Police think the public are so gullible that they will accept a “dynamic risk assessment” as a good enough reason for not stopping the disruption of the M25 (report, September 17)?

      Surely the best way to prevent the demonstrators from being injured would have been to prevent them from accessing the motorway in the first place.

      Brian Norman

      Easton Royal, Wiltshire

      SIR – I was glad that one of the police officers on duty on Wednesday, coping with the Insulate Britain protesters on the M25, was so concerned, telling them: “If any of you have any questions, or are in any discomfort or need anything, just let us know.”

      Did any officer offer the same help 
to the hundreds of motorists stuck 
 in the traffic jams – people needing 
to get to work and urgent hospital appointments, and children needing 
to get to school?

      Rosemary Corbin

      Zeals, Wiltshire

      SIR – The blockage of the M25 by Insulate Britain protesters should never have happened. I was glad to see it did not occur in the Thames Valley, where, until May this year, I was the police and crime commissioner.

      It requires the local superintendent to get a grip of the officers involved. It requires the chief constable to get a grip of his superintendents and his head of traffic police, and it requires the police and crime commissioner to warn his chief constable that his tenure of office will be limited if it ever happens again,

      Anthony Stansfeld

      Kidlington, Oxfordshire

      SIR – Norman Tebbit (“Extinction Rebellion must be stopped”, telegraph.co.uk, September 13) believes that elements of society, including environmental activist groups, “have joined in the fun of vandalism and obstruction”. Nothing could be further from the truth.

      When I retired after a lifetime of law-abiding work, the last thing I wanted was to sit in a road and be arrested. Our aim is to bring our negligent Government to its senses.

      Obstructing a road is not fun. Being arrested is not fun. Going to court is not fun. The future we face if we fail to act now is not fun. The prospect of leaving a ruined world to our grandchildren is not fun.

      This is deadly serious.

      Dr Grahame Buss

      Manchester

      1. Dr Buss: Strange…I thought that the point about demonstrating, and particularly when it is by unlawful means, is to generate maximum publicity, and a conviction is a badge of honour amongst the soap-dodging losers.

        ‘Morning, Epi. For me, David Tucker’s letter in particular sums it up nicely.

      2. Why does Dr Buss blame the Government for his failure to insulate his house properly? Did anyone stop him doing that? What a wanker.

  7. Bloody unions. Marxist teachers, lazy doctors

    GPs demand more cash to see patients as documents reveal full impact of remote appointments

    More than 175,000 diagnoses of key conditions are estimated to have been missed in 2020, according to an official assessment
    *
    *
    *
    ************************************************************************

    Paul Hughes
    17 Sep 2021 2:32PM
    Why not retrain all GP’s receptionists as Border Force Patrol’s off the Kent coast.

    See who gets in then!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/09/17/face-to-face-gp-appointments-cant-return-pre-pandemic-levels/

    1. Doctors Have to Practise everybody would agree
      But I would rather not have doctors practising on me!

      Who remembers Instant Sunshine that splendid cabaret group which comprised three doctors and the journalist Miles Kington.

  8. Seems France have spat out the dummy over the AUKUS submarine deal. Micron has called the ambassadors in Oz and the US home.

  9. France recalls ambassadors from US and Australia amid backlash over submarine deal. 18 September 2021.

    France has recalled its ambassadors to the US and Australia after Australia scrapped a deal to buy French submarines in favour of US nuclear-powered vessels.

    Jean-Yves Le Drian, the French foreign minister, said late on Friday night that the decision had been made following “the exceptional seriousness of the announcements made on September 15 by Australia and the United States”.

    The French have got their knickers seriously twisted over this! Probably no one bothered to explain to them that it’s all bull though one wonder why they didn’t withdraw their UK Ambassador. Possibly because it would hinder the transmission of “refugees” to the UK?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2021/09/17/france-recalls-ambassadors-us-australia-amid-backlash-submarine/

  10. Very depressed again this morning.

    Woke up at 2.30am to write a piece about culling the miserable.

    I had my dental fitting yesterday – to replace a bridge of three front teeth knocked out in 1988 and installed in 1995. One of the teeth had snapped off, making the bridge come loose. The answer my dentist insisted on was to recycle the old bridge, cutting off the tooth that had come off and making it a cantilever, with a new crown over the broken-off tooth.

    Cosmetically, it looks fine, and better than the old bridge. However, I cannot close my mouth fully now, or chew anything. Nor do I have the precision to bite. The bottom teeth bang against a big lump on the back of the crown, because the lab made it too big at the back. The cantilever bridge now twists on the one pin and has already come loose after a few hours. I am booked in for another appointment when the surgery opens on Monday.

    After doing the work, the dentist warned me that I would not be able to use my teeth as before, because they are weaker, but I should get used to it.

    What I did notice was that things that were routine in the past simply do not happen now. The old mould for crowns were like dentures covering both top and bottom at the same time, in order to send the lab proper information about the bite. This time though, he did top and bottom separately, so the lab had to guess how they matched up.

    There was no temporary crown or bridge. To save money, I had to stick the old bridge back in place with Polygrip, which I applied four or five times a day for a week. It may have loosened the one pin holding it in. The Polygrip was my idea – the dentist was happy just to let it rattle around.

    Nor was there any indicator paper, which dentists always used to verify the bite before finishing work and doing any corrections. He just stuck them in, and told me to get used to it. I got a quick flash of a mirror to check the cosmetic alignment before gluing them in, but not really enough time. They weren’t properly seated then either, but cosmetically they were ok,

    The problem I have is that he was the only NHS dentist who was taking new patients, and my old practice had already made a botched job of a back filling, which fell out within a month. He did it quick without anchoring it, in order to save time and money.

    I get all sorts of assurances on the NHS website, but they are all lies, and dentistry has got a lot worse in the last ten years to save money for the executives’ bonus no doubt.

    I always felt that a traditional bridge anchored into two teeth either side was the only way to make it mechanically strong enough to bite properly. I was anxious about re-using the old bridge, and a new bridge built over two stump crowns over the anchor teeth was how it should be done. But I was assured I was mistaken, and my dentist knows best. In the end, I have to rely on the judgement of the professionals, since I am no dentist.

    I keep having memories of the weather girl Emma Jesson, who had terrible trouble with her dentist, but that was in the days when such service from professionals was the exception, rather than the norm.

    Is it really all about money?

    1. This was my piece on voluntary euthanasia:

      “I should have been put out my misery years ago, to make way for more deserving hardworking people than I will ever be again. The Earth can support only so many people, and I am just one too many.

      Pretty well every night now I have two recurring nightmare themes – one concerns being let down, cheated or taken advantage of by those I have to trust, and the other concerns my own failing faculties, particularly my memory, which I cannot rely on for everyday living. Already, my subconscious knows very well what it is to have to rely on “carers” who are not paid particularly well and who seem to lack the capacity to care. Pretty well every profession now is skilled at taking the money, but when it comes to doing the job, self-assurance and public relations can cover legally adequately for incompetence and deceit, giving them a competitive advantage over the honest and the diligent.

      With nobody on my side, why am I persisting doggedly with life? I do not think I am alone in this, and my condition may well be more endemic than the common cold. Mass humane extermination may therefore be the BMA’s best option to clear space in the Health System for the healthy.”

      1. Technology is advancing so fast that most professionals are out of touch with the best practice when they receive their charter. The ongoing need for continuous professional development can ony be effective in narrow specialisms and this blinkers scientific knowledge to the appreciation of the bigger picture.

        We can find a lot of solutions to real life problems on the internet by seeing other people’s expeiences and with luck may find someone who seems to know what they are talking about. However, that is the thin edge of the wedge of putting up paywalls and remunerating con artists.

        The only answer is to suck it and see and learn new ways of doing things as one’s capabilities deteriorate.

        1. If I may venture a comment, – when I feel low, it’s not that I want to die, at all.
          I am just super-weary of living.
          It’s when everything that happens is a burden, an uphill battle, a betrayal, further disappointment.
          I lose all motivation to want to continue with it all.

          Then when I suspect that TPTB actually want to demoralise &/or isolate us oldies….well it doesn’t help.

          1. I can understand that feeling, especially after the last 18 months. I lost any motivation to do things.

          2. Look forward to the day you can start packing the trunk!. I see Kenya is off the red list (not sure how that happened as hardly anyone is vaccinated).

          3. It was a surprise! Too late for the October trip as we rebooked it for February after our flight was cancelled. Let’s hope it’s still open then and they might have scrapped the testing malarkey.

          4. I was on management course long ago. Myself and a number of business high fliers in early 30s age range (I sneaked in the back door). There was a module on depression/ feeling low/frustrated. The presenter was a trained psychologist that was an expert in this kind of thing. He started by asking us, if we had headaches, insomnia, being angry or irritable, anti-social, fed up, drinking too much. A lot of us had these things and more. They are all symptoms of kinds of depressions, he said. Then he asked us individually, what do you do about it? Some drank more, some took pills, some pestered their useless doctor.

            I described what worked for me. I had a nice warm bath wherein I lay back and think of everything that made me depressed, miserable, and unhappy. So dreadful were the thoughts that I presented to myself that I cried my eyes out. Then, as the bath cooled, I’d get out. I’d pull the plug and my tears and depression would go down the plughole. All fixed, happy again..

      3. The plus point about my Mother’s dementia is that I have to manage her house from a distance – so, phone, sms and email, and Google is my friend in finding trademen (plumber and fence repairs being the latest).
        Not only have these folk been helpful, they haven’t overcharged for the work, have sent (without being asked) videos of before & after, are happy to be paid by bank transfer, and to boot, have turned out to be kind and sympathetic as well! IT all started with Valley View grocers in Dinas Powys, last year, when isolation was the thing, who not only would deliver, but do so on requiest, this at a time when I couldn’t get any of the supermarkets to deliver because they were overbooked.
        My faith in small traders has been greatly boosted. Had Mother not been declining, I would never have found these great people.
        So, not everybody is agin you, Jeremy, you can be sure of that. There’s a pile of us here in NTTL, too.

          1. Yes, afraid so.
            Not sure when / whether she will be discharged home. With her tendency now to topple over, it’s not looking good, to be honest.
            Still, the plumber fixed the leak in the kitchen sink on Thursday, so all should be OK on that front.

          2. It was the falls that finished off my F in law sadly. I suppose it’s the result of vascular degeneration.

          3. My mother had a fall a while back – we don’t have a close relationship at all but my sister puts more effort in – and is ignored/abused for doing so. Mother didn’t tell us she was in hosp, so we only found out almost by accident.

            For us, there is no way to produce a successful outcome. Mother won’t speak to us about her needs because that’s leverage with other people. She’s not getting any better due to osteoarthritis, but she’s the same weight as me, but where I’m 110kg lean and 147 (yep, not counting those 3!) now, Mum is just 150kg so is constantly in pain.

            We’re investigating power of atorney but Mum won’t agree – not because of the principle, but because constantly putting us off gives her psychological leverage.

            It’s a mess and despite my ‘detachment’ Mum remains a concern.

            Apologies – I shouldn’t splat in, I hope you see this as ‘I sympathise’ rather than ‘look at me!’

          4. My sympathies, Wibbles, it isn’t at all easy, is it? No need to apologise, there’s company in adversity…
            I have PoA, at least, but never had a great relationship with Mother – something to do with her telling me aged about 10 or so, how much I had ruined her life. It was quite detailed, rather painful, and there’s not much chance of coming back from that.
            It’s still a concern: I don’t want her to have a worse time than is absolutely necessary, and ideally to finish her days in her own home, and she doesn’t know who I am apart from someone trying to steal her money…
            But, who else is there who knows anything about my childhood, apart from me?

        2. Apologies for the hijack of an important topic, but I can’t get blasted tradesmen to do the blasted jobs. They let you down, don’t turn up, when they do, the work is often sub-standard. When you do get a good one, trying to get them in becomes impossible.

          1. I must have been lucky.
            Normally, South Wales trademen have been nothing but wasters – except now, they are all fantastic! Admittedly, I don’t choose any with unfavourable Google reviews, and I do try to choose a one-man operation. When the work is directly connectd to the income, things seem to go better.

      4. The news gets me down but I can do nothing about political matters. People in authority get me down because I can do nothing to change them. I don’t have a lot of faith in people since my longest standing friend told me never to contact him again, by text, during my divorce. So I try and look for the many things in the world that are good and I have some control over. I am lucky to have a nice place to live, 3 chickens that magically provide eggs, the roses in the garden, my runner beans and good food. Its almost like trying to live in a bubble. I have seen the poverty across the world. I worked in Indonesia flying pilgrims to the Hajj for 10 years. There was a guy digging in a ditch in the road who was up to his waste in ‘brown’ water, as I walked by he looked up and gave me a cheery smile. I have always remembered that moment as I thought that if he could smile from the mire, perhaps I should appreciate my pampered life a little more. I can appreciate your situation Jeremy and I really feel for you after what has happened in your family life. The sadness will never go away but I hope that there are some bright spots in life that you can enjoy and try and ignore those things we can do nothing about.

        1. A very petinent post, Kaypea.

          Yet… if you were up to your waist in filth, would you be happy, or would you ask ‘what the bloody hell has gone wrong in my life for me to be up to my arse in other people’s merde?

          What I’m asking, I suppose, is ‘is’ ignorance bliss only so when you don’t know you’re ignorant?

      5. I prescribe a regular course of going to your local pub 3 or 4 times a week. There you can discuss with others likewise afflicted and pour out your vitriol about the ghastly state that the country, nay the world, has arrived at. Unfortunately, the cost of the booze you consume is down to you.

      6. They say that those contemplating suicide have ‘mental health issues’ and need help.

        Looking at the world we now have it may be that those wishing to end it all are the most mentally healthy and rational! Indeed, after Antony’s suicide Cleopatra in Shakespeare’s play decided to kill herself too to leave the dungy earth (as Antony had described it) which is no better than a sty:

        We’ll bury him, and then, what’s brave, what’s noble,
        Let’s do ’t after the high Roman fashion
        And make death proud to take us.

        My father died at the age of nearly 86 in 1984. One of his consoling quotations from Shakespeare came from Julius Caesar:

        Cowards die many times before their deaths.
        The valiant never taste of death but once.
        Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
        It seems to me most strange that men should fear,
        Seeing that death, a necessary end,
        Will come when it will come.

        On the other hand Hamlet said that the fear of the life after death was a conclusive argument against self-slaughter.

        1. Why does someone contemplating suicide – the death of self – but those wanting to pretend they’re something they’re not (ending their own life as Richard and becoming ‘rebecca’) get indulged and public money wasted on the fantasy?

      7. Jeremy, you have a huge group of people on your side. I would suggest seeking some form of intervention, such as therapy. Not because it will make the problem go away – it doesn’t – but it may help you to understand where the pain comes from.

        1. When I was very young, my parents came up with a generic bogeyman they called “Other People”.

      8. It is not the case that there is nobody on your side, jeremy. We here on Nottl are rooting (sorry about that!) for you. I do think you need assistance to look at life differently. Believe me, I have been in a similar low state on more than one occasion and advice from friends got me through it.

    3. I am sorry about your experience.
      I had parallel disasters with my last but one NHS dentist.
      One crown they refused to refit properly & it fell off 3 times.
      One tooth causing problems which they said I had to have out, but because of my individual characteristics a false tooth wouldn’t stay in either.
      Which would make the whole mouth loose.
      In the end I borrowed a large sum of money & went privately.
      An amazing dentist with state of the art fine drills etc saved not just 2 but 4 teeth.
      Over the years the NHS dentists had botched all 4, by not drilling correctly or far enough & things had gone/were going bad inside.

      They really really don’t care. We are a nuisance.
      Sorry for your feelings of depression…they are understandable.
      I have been feeling similarly very low. The last 6 months have been especially stressful & difficult & winter looms ahead.
      Nottlers has become part of my survival kit.

      Is there any way you could afford to get to a decent dentist?

    5. I’ve had the opposite experience – I dislike visiting the dentist due to the prone position and a person jabbing metal spikes into my mouth, sensitive teeth and a very low gag reflex.

      I saw an NHS dentist for a while and was scrubbing away and nothing got better. I visited a private dentist and they not only fixed the rotting tooth beneath a lump of metal (thanks to the NHS man) but after the shock of my 80 year old gums told me to stop trying to scrub the teeth but to use a soft brush and more toothpaste, applying sensodyne using my finger or a spatula.

      It has genuinely helped me and I’m happy to pay for that consideration. It isn’t cheap – the crown was £500 and fitted by (a different dentist to my usual) the very sort who put me off them in the first place – I think I bruised his wrist when he jabbed into my cheek – but it’s all gone well enough.

  11. The transport ministry runs more diesel vehicles than petrol. Gas supply emergency reportedly due to poor solar and wind supply recently. Lack of CO2 causing problems in Slaughterhouses [chicken and pig stunning] and food industry [fizzy drinks etc] Our PM needs to rethink his crazy zero carbon policies and concentrate on reducing the high global population figures.

      1. Gradually? It seems to have taken off with a vengeance since March 2020, and is now catching up with us.

        Don’t expect they’ll stop the inflation-busting market-led bonus packages though. A bit of grovelling about women’s equality, racial awareness or gender diversity to the Select Committee, a bit of spin about Levelling Up Better and I suppose they’ll insist that all has been made good.

        1. 338970+ up ticks,
          Morning JM,
          It has been openly orchestrated since
          28 November 1990, backed ALL the way by a large portion of the electoral herd,
          time after time after time.

      2. 338970+ up ticks,
        Morning B3,
        It has been part of the plan since MRs Thatcher received the order of the knife, consented to via the electorate.

      3. The impoverishing of the masses is undoubtedly part of the plan plus the degrading of their Democratic rights!

      4. Report here inthe paper that students applying for visas from Norway to the UK to study at university are finding that:
        Their applications are lost
        The passport is lost
        The passport is returned, but they forgot to put the stamp in it!
        The repeat applications due to lost applications are costing repeat fees – of £1 700 each time. Oh, yes, and a visit to the embassy for an interview.
        Visa is approved, passport sent to some bloke in Germany
        Wait in the telephone is over 90 minutes, at which point you are disconnected

        My friend found the same on trying to bring his family from Malaysia a few years ago. Lost applications, lost documents…
        This is beyond incompetence, it’s deliberate sabotage

        1. Of course it’s deliberate sabotage by all the slammers who work in the passport office/Home Office. Time for the Vikings to swing into action again.

    2. No one in the state is remotely bothered by reality, facts or common sense.

      There seems to be a reality distortion field around Westminster.

  12. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    Not a single letter about AUKUS today. Nevertheless, my smile about little Napoleon Blownapart’s temper tantrum because he lost out on the contract for new subs is even wider this morning as we hear that he has withdrawn his ambassadors from Australia and the US. His petulant teddy-throwing is a thing to behold. He can dish it out but cannot take it!

          3. The Press happily claimed some months ago that her “good friend” lived in Luxembourg.

            Where does Catherine Colonna live?

      3. A calculated insult to the UK – we are mere running dogs in this affair, hardly worth a mention.

  13. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    Not a single letter about AUKUS today. Nevertheless, my smile about little Napoleon Blownapart’s temper tantrum because he lost out on the contract for new subs is even wider this morning as we hear that he has withdrawn his ambassadors from Australia and the US. His petulant teddy-throwing is a thing to behold. He can dish it out but cannot take it!

    1. ‘Morning, C1. We saw some fine old machines around Chichester yesterday on our way back from Wiltshire. Just for once I wasn’t unhappy about the traffic congestion as it permitted some excellent car and m/c spotting!

      PS My first ‘wheels’ was a Lambretta 175, but not sporting the accessories shown in the photo.

  15. US admits Kabul drone strike was ‘tragic mistake’ that killed 10 civilians including seven children. 18 September.

    The Pentagon has apologised for a drone strike in Kabul which killed 10 civilians including seven children, calling it a “tragic mistake”.

    General Frank McKenzie, head of US Central Command, said reparations payments to the families were under consideration.

    He said: “It was a mistake and I offer my sincere apology. The strike was a tragic mistake. I do feel responsible for it.”

    How many of these have there been? Wedding parties etc. It would seem otiose to complain about one when so many have been killed for no purpose. This of course is one of the reasons the West could not win. Word of mouth is still more powerful than MSM propaganda! The response to these strikes by the Taliban were car bombings. A method that that they were doctrinally opposed to, but emulated what they regarded as depraved western warfare. The decline in the use of drones is noticeable after they shifted their stance and adopted them. One suspects an unspoken agreement!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2021/09/17/us-admits-kabul-drone-strike-killed-civilians-not-islamic/

    1. Biden and his Democrat cohorts were so desperate for headline-grabbing news to counter coverage of the debacle they’d created that they pushed the military into a chancy strike, with the inevitable results.

      Alas, the lives lost are a drop in the ocean of those lost to applying naive liberal/leftie dogma over dealing with reality and the way humans actually work.

    3. The report on BSE states, “Today’s case is the first since 2018, when the disease was found on a farm in Scotland.” shortly after a visit by a wee krankie person.

    4. The report on BSE states, “Today’s case is the first since 2018, when the disease was found on a farm in Scotland.” shortly after a visit by a wee krankie person.

    7. Recent warnings that red meat consumption should be reduced and replaced with alternative sources of protein is purely coincidental. EU have claimed that mealworms are suitable for human consumption and a certain well known globalist is rumoured to be investing heavily in insect protein for human consumption.

      Strangely, last week ITV’s regional news programme in my area ran an article on eating insects and grubs as an alternative to meat etc. They interviewed the chef who runs a restaurant in the region that has these delicacies on the menu.

      1. My wife tried some, having been seduced into it by an attractive young man acting for a BBC documentary. Once she got past the initial shock she found them tasty.

        They’re in many food products already, listed as ‘alternative protein’, particularly those for vegans. I’ve found vegans don’t like to be told that, so I often tell them.

        1. I asked a vegetablist why they wanted to eat sausages – as usual, it was the same doublethink nonsense.

      2. It should be the only thing on the EU menus – and labelled as such. Then the worms can eat worms.

  18. Experimental Drugs

    A man goes to visit his doctor. “Doc, you’ve gotta help me! My wife just isn’t interested in sleeping with me anymore! No passion, nothing! Haven’t you got a pill or something I can give her?”

    “Look, I can’t prescribe…”

    “Doc, we’ve been friends for years. Have you ever seen me this upset? I am desperate! I can’t think; I can’t concentrate; my life is falling apart! You’ve got to help me man!”

    The doctor opens his desk drawer and removes a small bottle of pills. “Okay. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t do this. These are experimental; the tests so far indicate that they’re very powerful. Don’t give her more than one, understand? Just one in her coffee, Okay?”

    The man goes home, where his wife has dinner waiting. When dinner is finished, she goes to the kitchen to bring dessert. The man quickly takes out the pills, then slips one into his wife’s coffee. Then he begins to wonder… The Doc said they were powerful. Out of the blue, he drops a pill into his own coffee, just to see what it’s like.

    His wife returns and they enjoy their dessert and coffee. Sure enough, a few minutes after they finish, she shudders, sighs deeply, and a strange look comes over her face. In a guttural tone, she moans, “I… need… a man…”

    When the husband sees this, his eyes well up with tears and his hands begin to tremble. In a passion-choked voice, he exclaims, “So do I!“

      2. An overpaid, arrogant, rude bureaucrat who has never produced anything in her life except waste and expenses forms.

  22. 338970+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,
    The three monkeys, & short term memory play a large part in this continuing tragedy called society.

    Ask yourself “what part did the police play in the evils of the rotherham
    cover-up” of most certainly a 16 plus year duration ?

    The upset feelings of the motorway drivers although bad is nothing compared to the mental damage to 1400 / 1600 kids, one would say a lifelong burden.

    Yet still the mass uncontrolled immigration party’s received support & votes without a ripple in the voting pattern,in point of fact a party calling
    for “controlled immigration” was time after time kept down due to tactical voting ( seen as a threat to the family tree voting pattern).

    The current hard core supporter member / voters most certainly deserve what they are receiving today, it has been seen coming, gaining speed & intensity for these last 30 plus years, the pity is the innocents have to suffer also.

  24. Good morning all.
    A bit Late on Parade, but it’s a beautiful sunny morning, with an increasingly autumnal feel to the air. 7°C on the yard thermometer as I took the empty milk bottle out.

    1. No air though, so it’ll be warm here. Without any breeze it gets very hot very quickly.

      However, going to see a man about the kitchen.

  25. ‘Morning again.

    More on our pitiful and partisan police farce and their handling of the eco-vandals’ M25 protests.

    Our police should be on the side of the public, not privileged green extremists

    When officers appear to indulge protesters bent on creating havoc, something has gone very wrong

    CAMILLA TOMINEY
    ASSOCIATE EDITOR
    17 September 2021 • 9:30pm

    Could there be any better demonstration of so-called “white privilege” than the protesters who have spent the week blockading the M25?

    It wasn’t just that there didn’t appear to be one ethnic minority among the Insulate Britain eco-mob who brought rush-hour traffic to a standstill three times in just a few days. There was also seemingly no one remotely working class among the cohort from the Home Counties who, unlike anyone with an actual job, were able to take hours off work preventing others from going about theirs.

    Which perhaps goes some way to explain why police officers thought the best way of dealing with this troop of middle-class virtue-signallers was to ask them if they were suffering from any “discomfort” or “whether they needed anything”.

    Instead of actually policing the situation, the activists were indulged, with one officer even filmed stopping traffic to help them on to the busiest motorway in Britain. The footage shows a member of the Metropolitan Police apparently assisting protesters to walk in front of cars at junction 25 near Enfield where they sat down and blocked the road.

    The force defended its tactics, insisting that officers made “a dynamic risk assessment” to prevent demonstrators injuring themselves by walking into fast-moving traffic. But isn’t that a risk assessment for the protesters to make, rather than taxpayer-funded coppers?

    Had Insulate Britain been wearing football shirts – or hoodies – I suspect the situation would have been policed altogether differently. But seemingly because they were the type of people who apply to go on Pointless, the police issued a preposterously tea-and-biscuits response.

    The Met has made the same mistake in the past with the Tarquins of Extinction Rebellion (XR), of which Insulate Britain is a splinter group. But it must urgently change its pandering approach for the benefit of the silent minority who pay the police’s wages because they actually work for a living. While Priti Patel’s intervention yesterday was welcome, the Home Secretary shouldn’t have needed to instruct the police to take “decisive action” against these environmental terrorists.

    Despite all the recent hand-wringing over how to police protests, the law on this specific case actually appears to be very clear: it is illegal for pedestrians to walk on motorways unless in an emergency (and funnily enough, a climate emergency doesn’t count as far as Highways England is concerned).

    But I can see why the Met might have got into a muddle. Section 137 of the 1980 Highways Act makes it an offence “if a person, without lawful authority or excuse, in any way wilfully obstructs the free passage along a highway”. In a High Court ruling from 1965, judges held that “lawful excuse” should encompass “reasonableness” and this test has been applied ever since.

    Yet the law became greyer following a protest at the biennial Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) arms fair held at the Excel Centre in east London in September 2017. The campaigners, opposed to the arms trade, lay down in the middle of the road, attaching themselves to two heavy boxes. The police took 90 minutes to remove them and they were arrested and charged with wilful obstruction of a highway.

    They were acquitted at their first trial, after the district judge ruled that their behaviour was “reasonable”. When this decision was reversed in a higher court, it went to the Supreme Court which ruled the original decision to acquit should stand.

    This so-called Ziegler judgment (named after one of the protesters) is now being increasingly relied on by the likes of Extinction Rebellion as a legitimate excuse for their disruption. So one has to have some sympathy for the police trying to navigate between statute laws and court rulings that, the protesters believe, appear to undermine them. However, in the case of a motorway – how can it ever be deemed reasonable to obstruct?

    The hallmark of a free society is the right to legitimate protest, but how can a protest be deemed to be legitimate if it puts lives at risk? Indeed, in facilitating these protests, the police could surely be subject to a civil action of negligence for failing in their duty of care towards everyone else on the M25 (not least the female driver who was hospitalised after she was involved in a crash thought to be connected to the blockades).

    In that case, the reasonableness test applied should be the standard, what would the man on the Clapham omnibus think? And since any reasonable person would think that it was unreasonable not only for the protestors to glue themselves to the M25, but also for officers to help them to do it, then there is surely little room for further debate on this.

    The police have to balance the right to protest with the safety of others and in this case they failed the wider public. And it shouldn’t have made a jot of difference that this was a “cuddly” cause. As Richard Walton, the former head of counter-terrorism at the Met, put it: “Environmental extremists using planned, illegal tactics of blockading main roads need to be dealt with as robustly as far-Right and Islamist extremists – with the full force of the law, using all available police tactics.”

    Anything less from officers would frankly be discriminatory. We surely cannot have a system where middle-class criminals are given preferential treatment to others (an ironic twist when you consider how woke the police have become in recent years). What happened to everyone being equal under the law?

    What has taken place in recent days on the M25 is representative of a wider failure by the authorities to get a grip on issues that the public desperately wants them to tackle – be it car theft, burglary and anti-social behaviour or the illegal migrant crisis. When you have a situation where members of the public feel compelled to take the law into their own hands because they don’t have faith in officers to police any given situation properly, then something has gone very wrong with our system of law and order.

    Protesters have naturally made a song and dance about the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which is in the process of coming into law. The proposed legislation introduces a new offence of “intentionally or recklessly causing public nuisance” and includes provisions to make noise unlawful if it is “seriously harmful or oppressive”.

    The “Kill the Bill” demonstrators claim that this is some abhorrent attack on our civil liberties, but most “reasonable” people would apply the same description to having their freedom of movement curtailed by a bunch of fibreglass fanatics.

    We need to draw a much clearer distinction between peaceful protest and activities that inhibit the lives of others going about their lawful business.

    But the fact that the police are said to be worried that the law is too “ambiguous” and will leave them having to adjudicate between protesters, commuters and businesses suggests it is going to take more than legislation to solve this issue. For we need a police force that is unequivocal in siding with those who abide by the law against those who break it, regardless of the “worthiness” of their cause.

    1. I’d love to see how quickly the police would spring into action if one of the protesters they helped onto the motorway unfurled a banner reading “CO2 DOESN’T HEAT THE EARTH, IT’S ALL A BIG FAT FRAUD. STOP THE INVASION!”

      2. Heh! I expect immediate activity to destroy the banner and prosecute the protestor. Let’s face it: they’re getting away with it because ‘green’ is fashionable amongst the state machine. It agrees with the protestors.

        It’s just a microcosm of the entire problem: the state standing up for the criminal, making life difficult for the law abiding public.

    3. What sticks out is the ‘far Right’ nonsense. There are none. So far, all criminal damage, all violence, all abuse has been from Lefties. I wasn’t about during the Brownshirts era, but they’re the same. All anti social behaviour comes from the nutcase Left.

      1. The only real right wingers in Britain are the slammers, but because of critical race theory they get a free pass.

        1. I disagree.
          Right wing is all about individualism, left-wing about collectivism.
          That’s why the Right have been so successfully outflanked – they don’t act collectively to overthrow the left, whilst the left have acted collectively to overthrow the right.
          That’s not to say the right won’t act to the common good – since the individual’s good often is parallel with the common good – effective policing, for example, including military protection.
          And religion, by it’s very nature is left-wing.

    4. I would apply a reasonableness test;
      Is it reasonable to remove, by force if necessary, someone who is preventing me from going about my lawful business.

      1. If a dozen or so eco-yobs can openly flout the law and cause huge inconvenience to many hundreds and perhaps thousands of lawful road users then I would say ‘yes’- and if the police are reluctant to act then I see no bar to the ordinary citizen using reasonable force to clear the road. We have now reached the stage where our cowardly and woke chief constables just want a quiet life. We can no longer rely on them to uphold the law so are left with no alternative. It grieves me to say this as years ago their position would never have been in any doubt, but that’s where we are now.

    5. The whole farce shows that Priti Awful has absolutely no control whatever over the Common Purpose, woke wanqueurs than “run” the perlice “services” in the country.

      Had these urban tossers been anti-vaxxers – the SPG would have been there in strength beating them up.

  26. Good morning all

    Cloudy WARM start to the day here.

    Have a problem here .

    My dogs recieved their annual boosters on Thursday , vet gave them their jab.

    Eldest dog became very wobbly late yesterday afternoon .

    Had to carry him downstairs this morning for his walk in the garden to have his wee.

    He is now very unsteady on his feet , he has always been a bright happy dog , enjoys a walk and a rabbit sniff and uncomplaining , untll now.

    Has anyone here had a similar experience with their own pet dogs.

    I will be ringing the vet shortly, if they are there that is .

    3. Sorry to hear this, Belle. This must be a worry for you. From what I can see, any reaction is usually short-lived. Our hound was 12 last week and we no longer seek the annual booster(s) for her.

      1. Our little dog was 12 in July. Is there any particular reason why you don’t have the annual boosters? Is it because there is more risk from the booster than actually catching a disease? We don’t have wandering street dogs any more, well, not around here.

        1. Yes pm, that is the reason. (And the fact that I can deprive an increasingly greedy profession is the icing on the cake!)

          1. Thank you! I definitely agree about the increasingly greedy profession. Our vet offers free health checks, I suppose they all do; my cynical nature (honed through life experience) tells me that is so they can find something else to charge you for.

    6. Poppie had her annual injections of stuff on Tuesday. The long night of Thursday, and it was a long night, between poppiesdad and me, we were up during the night three or four times in the night to let her out onto the garden on her urgent request (pawing at us from the side of the bed.). She had a bad attack of the runs well into the morning (yesterday). After that she seems to have recovered. I don’t know if it was related to her injections. We were all tired yesterday.

      Edit: I hope recovers quickly and you get peace of mind. Our pets are everything to us.

      1. Perhaps the PTB attack on humans by vaccinating them is now extended to animals. After all, if we all die – there won’t be need for pets.

        1. Life is turning into one’s worst nightmare, Bill. I never thought I would live through times like this.

          1. Hi pm,

            I have been thinking about what you have said , and I do agree with you.

            Last year had many hidden shocks , in particular when we were blue lighted on an almost empty narrow country road by the police during first lockdown when we left our village and ventured 4 miles up the road to the next one to exercise the dogs away from other dogs, in an empty field .

            Then we witnessed the news and the frightening BLM riots .. which reminded me of that terrible film ” A Clockwork Orange “.. and the stabbings and anti culture protests and riots , and now the influx of Africans and Asians on our beaches .. No Trump , baying Boris and hopeless Hancock , no one wanting to gather in the harvest of fruit and vegetables , and shortages on shop shelves .

            No doctors , mammagrams , nothing

            Feels like we are in the hands of the 3rd world !

  27. Good Morning all,
    It’s a couple of years now since I cancelled my TV licence, I have been assiduous in adhering to the law and have watched no live TV nor have I ventured onto iPlayer and I ( and SWMBO) haven’t missed it for a second. Occasionally I hear of something I may have liked and if it was on the BBC I guess it will appear on Britbox sometime in the future. I can wait. Fortunately being licence free does not preclude viewing on catchup so when I heard the 2nd series of All Creatures was running on CH5 I happily sat down and enjoyed the first episode. CH5 produces some rum stuff mostly but as far as I am concerned this present interpretation does well even if some purists cavil at the representation . Connie and Mary are transfixed as you can see below.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c15c0a455d7b3462e8867838080516df0c68f4c2ec701584543a1116cfaa5066.jpg

    2. What is the white cubic object beneath and on the right of the television, please? Just above the Wii?

      1. It’s a small WiFi security camera which I dig out occasionally , some times we “forget” to close the kitchen door and it’s fun to watch the Dog Chess positioning for the most comfy chair/settee that unfolds over night.

        Here is Connie having won total ownership of the 3 seater. Mary defeated retreats to the kitchen

        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4cee41c2ffefe1c46524ddc59bbca9a06af443516d9cee27fb58414fc962ed0e.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6c14eaab36c1b9e29bbe7a7c0641bf7c59b2fea70a279db1df869342b4d8c39d.jpg

        1. Funnily enough, G and P are not lap cats. Gus was when younger – now – not interested. I think they may change their attitude when winter comes…!

    4. Netflix is pretty good value. it’s about the only payment we make for something to watch on TV.

      Sex Education series 3 went on yesterday. I’ve binged it overnight.

      That old Xmas favourite The Guns of Navarone is on it now. I watched All At Sea a day or two ago, a film I’d never seen. It was very fun, reminiscent of an old Ealing comedy. I can normally find something of interest to watch.

      1. I have Netflix , I find it far better value than the BBC, as do my daughters and grandchildren who benefit from my sub. The Kominsky Method is a hoot for gentlemen of a certain age, it deals , amongst other things , with the vagaries of the UT system and libido of the older man with tact and humour, SWMBO is entranced by “Call my Agent”. Norsemen, a Norwegian sitcom, while maybe not to everyone’s taste is a firm favourite with me. I’m never at a loss to find something worthwhile to watch

      2. I have Netflix, it’s way ahead of the BBC. Personal favourites at the moment are “The Kominsky Method’ a sitcom/drama with subject matter quite pertinent to men of a certain age, “Call my Agent” and Norsemen ( a Norwegian Sitcom, brutal and odd but I like it.

    5. Love the dogs. Oscar isn’t bothered about the TV – perhaps he doesn’t like horse racing (which is all I watch).

  28. Well, well, well, the USA’s FDA has come down against the booster shot for everyone except the over 65s. Two senior members of the FDA resigned a few weeks ago over this issue. Seems as though the VAERS’ (reporting of adverse reactions system) figures may have played a part in the decision. Interesting to note that the reporting system hasn’t been updated since 03/09/2021.
    Where will this decision leave Johnson & Javid now that boosters are planned to be rolled out here? After all, this is SCIENCE!
    With the double doses known to be losing efficacy surely the “vaccinated” will become de facto non-vaccinated in time. What then for “vaccine passports”?

    https://twitter.com/laworfiction/status/1438984068650123267

    1. If the vaccines work, then fine – if they don’t, then what’s the point of having another……….and another……….. except to make the drug companies happy.

      1. Because people who have had the jab are more likely to suffer much less, and avoid hospitalisation. Hospitals are not healthy places, so it is better if you are able to recover at home.

        1. Indeed, but can you state with absolute certainty that people who have had the jab and yet can still catch and transmit Covid are not busy brewing up a more virulent and deadly version precisely because they have had the jab?
          I can’t prove that they can, but given the hugely different reactions to the disease I am not so certain that they can’t.

          2. And just how do you know that with absolute certainty?

            It strikes me that the so-called experts can’t even agree about what we are dealing with.

          3. Ok let me explain as best I can.

            Usually what happens in this case is you catch two variants at the same time which during reproduction split into smaller sections that later get recombined into a whole virus. In this case the recombination can pull in strands from both variants creating an entirely new variant. Covid doesn’t split up it’s not recombinant.

          4. Given that we actually appear to know very little about Covid how can you be so certain?
            If that is the case why are we getting so many new variants? They must be changing/mutating somehow.

          5. Yes they mutate but they don’t recombine badly because they don’t split up during reproduction. Mutations are very common in RNA viruses and uncommon in DNA viruses. RNA has no error correction mechanism. Every reproduction is a chance of a mutation occurring. What wont happen with covid though is catching two different variants and making a third from the two you caught. We know a fair bit about the virus now.

    3. If you can get Covid just as easily from a vaccinated person as you can from an unvaccinated person then surely the only reason to have the vaccine is to swell the coffers of Big Pharma and vaccine passports are an irrelevance?

    1. Really? It’s very bright and shining outside. The warqueen is talking about having breakfast ‘on the verandh’ (under an umbrella on the cracked and broken paving slabs that sit outside the back door, next to the bins).

  30. Life-saving antibody cocktail given to Donald Trump last year will be given to vulnerable NHS patients from next week
    Sajid Javid heralded Ronapreve as the first treatment specifically for Covid in UK
    Department for Health and Social Care said it has potential to benefit thousands
    Government has bought enough of the drug to treat UK patients from next week

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10002533/Life-saving-antibody-cocktail-given-Donald-Trump-given-vulnerable-NHS-patients.html

      1. I checked this morning whether or not Javid’s new drug was Remdesivir rebranded. It’s not, it is a monoclonal antibody treatment being used in the USA at the moment. Oddly enough, Red Voice Media’s Stew Peters is reporting that Federal Agencies are attempting to take control of its distribution.

    2. Since it is becoming abundantly clear that a vaccine which neither stops you getting nor passing on Covid and which needs constant top-ups cannot be relied on then surely early treatment with safe medicine must be the answer?

      I wonder how many people have died because other politicians hated Trump so much that they turned their backs on everything he proposed.

  31. Comments now closed

    From climate protests to statue topplers – soft-touch policing has to end now

    Like many of our country’s top institutions, the police force is intimidated by cancel culture and wokery

    ROBERT TAYLOR
    17 September 2021 • 12:10pm

    So here’s the deal: as long as you signal progressive virtue, you’re free to break the law. As long as you’re woke, you can block motorways and vandalise statues in full view of the police. Even better, you might get a bobby or two to take the knee while you offend. But, please, don’t be under any illusion that the rest of us could get away with such thumb-your-nose criminality. Deary me, no. If you’re an anti-lockdown protester, expect no mercy.

    Most of us find this week’s motorway chaos staggering. A bunch of activists calling themselves Insulate Britain get away with bringing the M25 to a standstill, leading to misery for tens of thousands, God only knows how much economic and, ironically, environmental damage, and causing an accident that leaves a woman seriously injured. Will any of them go to prison? Don’t be so silly.

    Okay, we hear reports that some have been arrested. But they clearly aren’t remotely impressed by that. In fact, having received their tap on the wrist, a tut-tut and a shake of the head, they’ve told police they’ll be back blocking the M25 at the earliest opportunity. Like today. Many of those arrested on Wednesday had already been arrested on Monday. They’re taking the mickey.

    But it gets worse. Video footage shows police at the M25 Enfield junction waving the criminals through to block the road. Yup, the police are facilitating the crime. It’s not so much soft-touch as no-touch. Or worse. I’m struggling to get my head around it. It’s no wonder that enraged motorists took the law into their own hands, attempting physically to remove the criminals. I would, too. But you can guess what happened next. The police leapt into action to protect the protesters, ensuring they could go on committing their crime.

    Having reviewed it all, and had a few hours to come up with a clever response, the police now explain they made a “dynamic risk assessment”. I have absolutely no idea what that means. And frankly, if they can’t come up with anything better than waffly obfuscation to excuse themselves, we really are in trouble.

    Perhaps we should look to our home secretary to take action. She talks a good arrest, if nothing else. She says she’s ordered the police to get tough. But shouldn’t they be doing that anyway? Isn’t that their job? Why do they need Priti Patel to order them to do what they’re already paid for?

    Apparently, there’s a five-step process the police follow when confronting virtue-signalling criminals. The first involves “engaging” and “appealing”. For reasons only too obvious to any human being who’s ever lived, that never works. So the steps get a little sterner, before finally we reach stage five which involves – wait for it – “reasonable force”. That wouldn’t scare a toddler in a tantrum, let alone a bunch of well-organised, self-righteous climate protesters. In any case, by that time the M25 has long since turned into the world’s biggest car park.

    The tragedy is that this policing by virtue signalling is all too frequent. When a violent mob tore down a statue in Bristol, the police let them get on with it, so as not to “inflame tensions”. In 2019, a policeman skateboarded on Waterloo Bridge while protesters blocked it. A video showed officers dancing with XR protesters who had ground Oxford Street to a halt. Senior Met officers described this as “disappointing”. I can think of other adjectives.

    So these aren’t isolated lapses. There’s a narrative here, of police choosing to engage, appeal, facilitate and stand by – anything rather than prevent, crack down and arrest. And there can only be one explanation. Like many of our country’s top institutions, the police force is intimidated by cancel culture and wokery.

    It therefore comes as zero surprise that the criminals are back blocking the M25 this morning – the third time this week. And they’ll carry on until the punishment fits the crime. It really isn’t difficult.

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

    Robert Robert
    17 Sep 2021 12:37PM
    Policing in 1984 (version.2021):

    ‘OK Mr Scargill, we’re happy for your pickets to stand over there and block the coaking plant for as long as you wish. If you hang on a minute we’ll do a dynamic risk assessment and then escort them to the gates. And don’t worry, if any lorry drivers try to force their way in we’ll arrest them. Is there anything else we can do for you?’

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/09/17/climate-protests-statue-topplers-soft-touch-policing-has-end/

    1. As I’ve said before, everything is back to front. The police support the criminal against the public.

      Government is actively shutting down sources of energy production.

      What the hell has happened to the Conservative party to pursue the precise opposite policies it had only 30 years ago? Collective insanity?

      With the protestors – the police should state that they are breaking the law and offer them the choice to leave now, of their own volition or to tell the protestors that *they* (the police) will leave and let those they’re holding up move them – however they wish to.

      1. It isn’t. It’s the same policies as thirty years ago.
        I keep telling you that you really don’t understand what you’re voting for.

        The first UK politician to bring climate change to the attention of the people was…… Margaret Thatcher. (in a speech to the Royal society in 1988 then the UN in 1989) . She signed the Montreal Treaty banning CFCs. She created the Hadley Centre. She brought in the 1986 energy Act which privatised the energy providers and made a commitment to reduce energy from fossil fuels. She also forced energy producers of the newly private companies to buy power from non-carbon emitting sources. This was called the Non-Fossil Fuel Energy Obligation which later became the Renewables Obligation. She also cut industry leaving it to go offshore so our energy needs lowered. She promised new nuclear power plants and didn’t build any.
        John Major closed down nearly all remaining open coal mining operations. That was just under thirty years ago.

        1. Thatcher later back-tracked on global warming.

          Heseltine returned to government after the fall of Thatcher. It was he who followed EEC directives and embarked on the dash-for-gas, thus seeing off coal mining (and our gas supplies) far earlier than expected. Thatcher had left the coal industry in a decent state but her great failing on this subject was to refuse to authorise the building of new nuclear power stations.

          1. It’s a bit late to backtrack when you are out of office and have set the ship on a course for the next forty years that hasn’t ever been turned. the damage was done. No amount of backtracking could replace those years and build a few nuclear power stations.
            Wibbling said they had different policies from then to now and many times I’ve accused him of not actually knowing what policies he voted for. Well there’s plain proof he didn’t have a clue it was Thatcher that set this course.

          2. “…set the ship on a course for the next forty years…”

            What? WHAT? Are you suggesting that nothing that has ever been done could not be undone? Nothing that came of the Thatcher years has had such a disastrous effect on our energy prices and security as Miliband’s Climate Change Act. Thatcher was the only senior politician to come out against the AGW theory in history. The rest are signed up to the nonsense.

            Your hostility to Thatcher appears to have rotted your thought processes.

          3. I’m not hostile to Thatcher. In fact in many ways she was quite admirable. I’m hostile to her policies in general and some very specifically for the damage they did to the country that wasn’t noticed largely at first.
            She was in fact a decent PM but also completely clueless. She had all the attributes you’d want in a PM except for good policies. Economically speaking she was a bloody disaster. Socially speaking she was much better. The way she dealt with the Falklands issue was nothing short of spectacular. But PMs are judged economically on the whole and that was disaster city. Recession, the largest unemployment in my lifetime, policies for short term gain that gave us long term decline. Your generation got some of the gains. Mine got the decline. I was at school when the gains were being dished out.

          4. “She was in fact a decent PM but also completely clueless. She had all the attributes you’d want in a PM except for good policies.”

            Thank you for agreeing with my opinion of your opinion of Thatcher, which you have expressed in an almost admirably satirical way.

          6. Nowt wrong with that.

            Best team in the league.

            Your son would tell you the same if he was here to.

          7. But I didn’t agree with you. You really seem to have a comprehension problem this morning.

            It was her policies I didn’t like not her.

            Let’s stop inflation by controlling the money supply because Milton Friedman won a nobel prize for economics for his work on this. Well Milton Friedman was an intellectual pygmy who thought he was a world-class economist when any country that followed his advice changed dramatically for the worse. There’s also no Nobel prize for economics. The award is named after Nobel but it’s not a Nobel prize. The upshot of that was the highest unemployment of the 20th century.

            Let’s remove nearly all tariffs, protectionism is bad, then companies can move around the world and chase cheap labour costs and we’ll import the finished goods. Great for importers and the shipping industry perhaps but garbage for the rest of us who wanted those decent jobs that went to other countries. My own job was exported three times in my first two years of work.

            Let other countries fulfil our energy needs. Let’s not build new nuclear power stations even though they were promised. She realised her voters lived in areas these power stations would have been put in and so never built any. No immediate effect as that was covered up by the North Sea oil and gas bonanza but once that gas ran low well you know the rest.

            Cut welfare, break the link between earnings and pensions. Tell people it’s for their own good. Upshot. Massive increase in inequality and poverty.

            I could easily go on a few more pages.

            Many here voted for these policies thinking they were good things. With the power of hindsight, knowing the results of these policies would those voters still think these are good policies?

          8. What an utterly humourless specimen you are. You’ve spent years on here telling us how terrible Thatcher was and then (out of the blue as it were), write in praise of her – except you weren’t really because it was sarcastically expressed. I simply sent you up.

            It’s your comprehension that failed you.

            “I could easily go on a few more pages.”

            Could?!

          9. I have always said the same about Thatcher.
            She had the qualities I’d like to see in a PM but unfortunately she was misguided and her policies on the whole were terrible.
            I don’t hate her, I hate what she did. Subtle difference perhaps.
            Can you defend those policies as good policies knowing the effects they had?
            I could foresee many of those effects, my parents couldn’t. They took their short-term gains and I left school to a country in terminal decline. Every job I took for the next two years was exported. I was an analytical chemist and those jobs were linked to the manufacturing industry which promptly went offshore around 1990.

            And yes sometimes I am humourless and a bit too serious about things I care deeply about, and the decline of this once great country is something I feel deeply about because a lot of it was preventable.

            And…

            https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/cb05e1be44e7f996f91b964814e0bb0c569c12745022248a51f5d160302c269c.jpg

          10. “Can you defend those policies as good policies knowing the effects they had?”

            This is why you rile people on here. This question isn’t so much “What do you think about this subject?” as “Why do you think this…”. It’s effectively an assumption. Why do have to repeat this?

            Which Thatcher policies do you think I have defended? We actually agree on nuclear power/gas and the long-term effects of that (which is where this started).

            My views on the Thatcher years are very mixed but there are too many who still think that in 1979 everything was just fine and she spoiled it all. The UK’s industrial decline was well underway before she became PM. Could she have prevented some of what happened?

            Deindustrialisation occurred across Europe in the 80s and 90s. Ours was worse. Why was that? Outdated production, bad management, government policy – remember prices and incomes policies with rates for goods set by the state? And then there was the TUC and the NUM.

            It’s easy looking back, isn’t it?

          11. Prices and incomes policies were Ted Heath’s overreaction to the inflation caused by the banking and competition changes of 1971, the dash for growth of 1972 and Nixon ending Bretton-Woods unilaterally throwing the global trade regime into disarray. The roots of seventies stagflation that Labour always got blamed for even though inflation was about 18% on the day Harold Wilson entered number 10.

            Deindustrialisation across Europe wasn’t too bad but we were gutted in comparison. All three companies I worked for that exported my job did so to Europe. One went to France, one to the Netherlands and one went to Italy.

            I don’t think you defended any Thatcher policies in our discussion. I asked knowing their results can they be considered good policy. Are they defendable.

            To me it was absolutely obvious that once tariffs were removed companies would move abroad. Why could so few of your generation make that connection? I said to my parents If these policies are enacted where will i work. I was given the usual garbage about working hard and being whatever you wanted to be. My parents have ever been a pair of short-sighted pricks sadly. They also love to exploit people.

            It was also obvious to me that if we didn’t build nuclear power stations and we close most of the coal mines we’re going to have a problem with energy independence. Then we chose gas knowing it was a finite resource.

            It was also obvious to me that if you take all the money out of the economy it can only cause unemployment. my parents told me i was wrong about that. What would a ten year old understand about that. Well actually a lot more than two adults did as my mass unemployment prediction came true and my dad’s most employment in history hope fell through.

            Anyway enough is enough. I need my sleep, I’m going to bed.

  33. 338970+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,
    The three monkeys, & short term memory play a large part in this continuing tragedy called society.

    Ask yourself “what part did the police play in the evils of the rotherham
    cover-up” of most certainly a 16 plus year duration ?

    The upset feelings of the motorway drivers although bad is nothing compared to the mental damage to 1400 / 1600 kids, one would say a lifelong burden.

    Yet still the mass uncontrolled immigration party’s received support & votes without a ripple in the voting pattern,in point of fact a party calling
    for “controlled immigration” was time after time kept down due to tactical voting ( seen as a threat to the family tree voting pattern).

    The current hard core supporter member / voters most certainly deserve what they are receiving today, it has been seen coming, gaining speed & intensity for these last 30 plus years, the pity is the innocents have to suffer also.

    1. What about those people disenfranchised by the entire political system? What about those law abiding, home owning, saving, working folk who pay their bills on time who the state has far from abandoned, but deliberately ignores?

    2. The police can only implement what the Director of Public Prosecutions considers appropriate. If you are not satisfied with the Government’s performance in the matter, then the electorate should address their concerns to the Leader of the Opposition to come up with a better alternative.

      Please remind me what the current Leader of the Opposition was doing during the Rotherham affair.

      1. 338970+up ticks,
        Morning JM,
        Seeing as the odious political trio are ALL complicit via
        mass uncontrolled immigration one initially triggering it
        the other following through, ongoing , what opposition ?

        The way I tend to see it is the electorate find paedophilia acceptable as long as the kid next door is the rape / abuse victim.

        When the JAY report was revealed the political overseers en masse were probable checking their laptop history
        for any overlooked kiddie things.

  35. How many of those cretins, gluing themselves to the M25 whilst complaining about “climate change”, have procreated large families?

    The ONLY massive threat to the planet is the grossly obscene human population, which, at nearly 8 milliard people (I refuse to use the idiotic Yank version of a ‘billion’), has tripled within my own lifetime. This is preposterous and needs addressing urgently if all life on earth is to survive. I don’t see any of those useless, idiotic, brain-dead, halfwitted twats protesting about that!

    2. So do you think Churchill was right and all people with an IQ less than say 90 should be forcibly sterilised?
      Maybe you also think the Chinese one-child policy and forced abortions were a good idea?

      If so, how does any of this gel with your get the state out of our lives bent?

      Don’t tell me you simply expect politicians to say to their electorates, no more kids now please for a while. Can you imagine what percentage of people would take any notice at all? If it’s out of single figures I’d be surprised.

      1. “So do you think…”

        Why are you so interested in my personal thought patterns? You haven’t got the foggiest clue of how I think.

        I do not propose any form of action to be taken by anyone. I am merely a spectator to the incremental imbecilic behaviour of the human species and its sundry apologists. Humanity is on a steep terminal decline and will be responsible for its own implosion and extermination. If this doesn’t come about via nuclear warfare, it will certainly come about from starvation, lack of potable water, increasing pollution, pestilence or disease; maybe a combination of many.

        Mankind has, so far in the geological time scale, proved to be the cleverest organism to have evolved [N.B. I didn’t say the most intelligent!], but its intrinsic stupidity has overcome its cleverness and will be responsible for its downfall. The only upside is that any future species (providing there are any left) evolving to become as clever as humans once were will probably have a documentary record of mankind’s existence as well as a palæontological one. Let’s hope they learn from humanity’s folly.

        1. With no action then the population increase will likely continue. It’s largely driven by global advances in medicine. Infant mortality is very low now. Longevity is much higher. Nutritional advice is better helping us stay active for longer.

          Why wouldn’t I be interested in what you think? That’s the root of all discussion.

          1. “Why wouldn’t I be interested in what you think?”

            You assumed to know what Grizz was thinking. That’s different.

          5. Ah, sarcasm. The veil of reason slips.

            Give it up. Your ‘question’ was an assumption and an accusation. And bloody rude with it.

      2. Why go on about Churchill when you want an example of Eugenics?
        Why not mention the Left wingers who were the early supporters of Eugenics, especially the Fabian society?

    1. The last point is definitely a threat. Book your vaccination or you won’t be able to continue to enjoy recently restored freedoms.

      1. 338970+ up ticks,
        Morning BB2,
        No matter, voting is contained within the odious political three party close shop, they have continued to heap sh!te upon the electorate pushing the envelope ALL the time, slipping in a rhetorical sweet carrot occasionally, and it works a treat ( pun intended) every time satisfying
        the vote tory (ino) to keep out lab (ino), vote lab to keep out tory (ino) use libs tactically brigade.

        The proven recipe that has got us deep in a sh!te bog & is KEEPING us deep in a sh!te bog.

  37. DM Story:

    Strictly is left in crisis as two professional dancers refuse Covid jabs – leaving other contestants reluctant to pair with them
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-10003127/Strictly-left-crisis-two-professional-dancers-refuse-Covid-jabs.html

    Follow the logic:

    Six months ago:

    If you have had the vaccination you will not catch Covid. But let’s not share a plane with unvaccinated people even though we believe they cannot give us Covid because we are safe.

    Now

    It transpires that even the vaccinated can still pass on Covid – but the conclusion is the same: we must shun the unvaccinated who are no more likely to pass on the disease than the vaccinated are.

    This reminds me of some of the lyrics of a Billy Joel song:

    So we’ll argue and we’ll compromise
    And realize that nothing’s ever changed
    For all our mutual experience
    Our separate conclusions are the same

    1. None of them had had the jabs on the last series a year ago – so what’s the fuss about? The jabs don’t stop infection or transmission.

      1. In general no vaccine does.

        People seem to think vaccines are like some body covering shield meaning the bugs just bounce off and we don’t catch them. In truth we catch them all but our bodies deal with the invaders so well we don’t even notice.

        I often highlight this with measles, a disease we’ve been vaccinating against certainly for my entire lifetime. Measles is known to only have human reservoirs. It needs a human host to live and reproduce. Well over 95% of our population is vaccinated against measles but the unvaccinated catch it quickly because it is very contagious. Well people, where do you think they caught it from? It lives and reproduces in vaccinated people but viral loads are kept so low by the immune system we don’t notice it, we don’t get ill and certainly don’t get the spots. But we do transmit this very contagious disease while we have measles reproducing in us.

        We’ve had vaccines now for many a year and in all of that time we’ve only managed to eradicate just a single disease which happens to be a DNA virus which doesn’t mutate hardly at all and that was Smallpox. This was achieved with a decades long global vaccination programme and was only possible because smallpox is caused by a virus that almost never mutates.

  38. John Keiger
    The real reason France was excluded from Aukus
    18 September 2021, 7:30am

    The fallout from Australia’s cancellation of its submarine contract with France and the new trilateral Indo-Pacific security pact between Australia, the US and the UK continues. France has recalled its ambassadors from Canberra and Washington (though significantly not from London) for ‘immediate consultations’; the well-worn diplomatic gesture of discontent. This is the first occasion ever in over two centuries of Franco-American friendship.

    Last night in another outburst of petulance, the French embassy in Washington cancelled the gala to celebrate Franco-American friendship. The festivities were to mark the 240th anniversary of the crucial Battle of the Capes when the French navy defeated its British counterpart in defence of American independence.

    Compared to the present it is a poignant historical example of how, to paraphrase Lord Palmerston, diplomatic and military alliances are never permanent, only interests. France, after all abandoned its western allies in 1966 when it withdrew at short notice from Nato’s integrated military command. Today at the core of all this turmoil is the rising power of China. It is a historical truism that rising powers force diplomatic and military realignments.

    History is replete with examples of states that underestimated the capacity of the international system to coalesce or realign rapidly in the face of rising and threatening powers. Prussian victory over the French in 1871 created a powerful Germany, whose rise and rise inevitably caused the international system to adjust by diplomatic and military realignments.

    Sometimes this occurred slowly (the 1892 Franco-Russian alliance and the 1904 Entente Cordiale) sometimes brutally (the 1939 Nazi Soviet pact and the June 1941 Anglo-Soviet agreement). Then expediency trumped ideology. Now it trumps friendship. This time France is the loser. The historically attuned Macron of all people should now put this snap diplomatic embarrassment behind him and work constructively with Aukus. But the new architecture of the Indo-Pacific will not be easy to negotiate.

    What the three Anglosphere states in the Aukus pact have put together is a loose, flexible and nimble arrangement for managing Indo-Pacific security directly. This is something that is second nature to states of a culture that General de Gaulle always referred to as ‘Anglo-Saxon’. It is just the kind of arrangement that is anathema to the formal, rational and legalistic method of the French and their cultural offshoot the EU, whose modus operandi was best demonstrated by the glacial formalism applied to the Brexit negotiations.

    This clash of cultures – or cultures at cross purposes – was demonstrated prior to the First World War, when following the 1904 informal Entente Cordiale France was desperate for a formal binding written commitment from London to side with her in the event of a German attack. Britain would only agree to wait and see. This was a problem France also experienced in the interwar years. Then to cap it all, Aukus is a club within another very exclusive culturally defined Anglosphere club that has existed since the Second World War and that has never had France as a member, the ‘Five Eyes’ (with New Zealand and Canada).

    Aukus members probably wanted France in the pact. Diplomatically and militarily she has much to offer in terms of naval projection, nuclear submarines and weapons, intelligence and physical presence by dint of her overseas territories in the south Pacific. But wishing to react rapidly, they were probably anxious about her cultural proclivity to define every term, role and eventuality. The crucial problem for France is that by her own admission the Australian deal wasn’t merely about submarines. It was the keystone in a regional security edifice carefully pieced together that will now have to be remodelled completely, were that possible. This is the source of their disappointment and public outrage.

    The second problem for Paris is that Aukus is not just a coalition of three. It will be the nexus of a much broader web drawing in other informal regional groupings with varied objectives from security to trade, such as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, of US, Japan, India and Australia, or the 12 nation Trans Pacific Partnership trade agreement which includes the US (albeit withdrawn under Trump), Australia, Japan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, New Zealand and a pending UK membership.

    France could now find herself outside these concentric circles. Her only full access would be by belated invitation to the sanctum sanctorum of Aukus. But as a late joiner she might be required to be amenable on other matters, for instance smoothing the way for an adjustment of the Northern Ireland Protocol (see my recent Coffee House piece). Heaven forfend that French membership – other than generating the unfortunate acronym of Faukus – be viewed as the EU’s Trojan Horse similar to General de Gaulle viewing Britain as America’s Trojan Horse on London’s application to join the Common Market.

    What Macron does next is therefore key. With the presidential election campaign unofficially underway and France about to take up the presidency of the EU council for six months, he is certain to make grandiloquent statements about France and Europe’s only salvation lying in European ‘strategic autonomy’ from the US and Nato. But Macron knows in his heart of hearts, like his French predecessors, that this has been on the cards since the French inspired – and French scuppered – European Defence Community of 1954 and that it will go nowhere during his mandate.

    What’s more, an EU defence and security role in the Indo-Pacific will go no further than gesture politics, as only France has the capability to deploy in the area. Macron will have to swallow his pride and go with Aukus. The fact that the British Ambassador in Paris was not recalled suggests that he knows how to go about that.

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

    robertsonjames • 2 hours ago • edited
    The tears of outrage from The Guardian, the BBC and best of all Quisling John on here are a reminder that everything, and I mean everything, is currently viewed by Remainers through the prism of their own narrative about the inevitability of post-Brexit British decline and post-Brexit Little Englanderism, disastrous consequences in their view rendered certain and indeed appropriate punishments for suddenly repudiating our intended political merger with Greater Germany.

    And when the narrative is thwarted by inconvenient data or by a new development taking us in a clearly quite different direction from the one they believed was unavoidable, we get utter fury.

    This is why we get the florid denunciations and the intense hostility towards something that confirms the UK is now acting as a normal independent state on the international stage, like Australia and the USA. We join alliances. We strike trade deals. And all, shockingly, without daring to ask Bulgaria and Finland and the rest of Greater Germany, apparently our most natural allies, for permission.

    The bitterness is entirely predictable because it’s simply not the grim post-Brexit narrative of decline and insularism they’ve invested all their emotions in believing would unfold.

    Joyous, isn’t it?

    Recusant • 3 hours ago
    How dare France not recall its ambassador to London. Are we not important enough for a recall? I have never been so insulted. I demand that we recall our ambassador to Paris to let them know that we were 100% behind humiliating France.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-real-reason-france-was-excluded-from-aukus

    1. Does this guy think we’re giving Australia nuclear weapons? They are just nuclear powered submarines. A bit faster than diesel, a lot less maintenance needed but similar attack capabilities to diesel powered subs.

      1. The difference apart from the obvious, that they can stay under water more or less indefinitely, is that they are silent. An advantage over the Chinese subs or the French subs which are clunky and noisy. So the Aussie subs will be all the better to sneak up on the enemy and destroy them.

        1. ” So the Aussie subs will be all the better to sneak up on the enemy and destroy them.”

          Spot on – all those Ockers disobeying their lockdown rules.

  39. I’ve taking the liberty of copying some comments on here and pasting them onto the Russian Gas comments section.
    I hope no one minds:-

    Robert Spowart
    18 Sep 2021 9:22AM
    Some comments from the NTTL board on this very matter:-

    Morning everyone. I don’t know whether this pair actually believe this stuff or are, as I have long suspected, Borg mouthpieces. The first thing to understand is that “Russia” does not increase prices; that is a function of the market. Second we do not buy any gas from Russia. Third you cannot, as Tugendhat does here, whinge about Nord Stream 2 and then complain that there’s a gas shortage. Fourth it’s difficult to see how it would advantage “Russia” to injure its reputation for probity long term by derailing the “Recovery” when Europe is an important customer who it depends on to buy its raw products for the foreseeable future. Fifthly Bryant’s complaint is similarly askew, if the “Russians” have really been abusing “the energy market and holding countries to ransom” why has it taken till now for anyone to notice or for it to take effect?

    It’s also worth considering that the real money being made is by Europe’s domestic suppliers in increased consumer bills, Russia does not profit at all here since they are paid the a same under long negotiated contract prices. British Gas et, al. are simply jacking up the prices and blaming it on Russia! What we have here is a classic case of market manipulation and propaganda for both political and commercial purposes. Bryant and Tugendhat are almost certainly much richer than they were due to this little fracas!
    ==============================================================

    Can I add Sixthly, that Russia has “abused” the market no more than all other energy producing countries, those in the Gulf springs to mind.
    I’m starting to think I am not the only cynical person on this forum, Bryant and Tugendhat richer now, surely not.
    ==============================================================

    Once again, our lack of proper energy independence – when we have the means – is shown to be dangerous, and sooner or later our reliance on others will be our undoing. Our industrial competitiveness is further damaged by these increases.

    1. “Can I add Sixthly, that Russia has “abused” the market no more than all
      other energy producing countries, those in the Gulf springs to mind.”

      Anyone that has had to endure the annual poison pill of renegotiating the domestic home energy contract or face a huge hike as it goes onto default variable tariff will know that the Russians are mild players in this game.

      I don’t know of any easy way of tackling the horrible complexity of tariffs, all of which seem to be different for each household, and all of them dodgy. I have to hunt for what I need to know – standing charge and price per unit. In fact that’s all I want to know; I can work out the rest. But no, their algorithms insist I give name, address, annual usage, existing supplier and name of expiring contract, and then they might give a quote based on the usual half dozen big companies prepared to cough up inclusion fee, which are all in it together and all exorbitant. Which? listed the little companies, and it is possible to go through each of them individually in the hope they list their prices, rather than just email me back with a comparison quote with anticipated monthly cost, which is useless to me.

      Any public competition regulator is not interested; they’ve probably been lobbied.

        1. I fought my way through all the personal disclosure for targeted marketing purposes and agreements to tracker cookies and agreement to them using my data as they will. It seems it is a branch of MoneySupermarket.com. who are paid to plug certain suppliers, even though their “deals” are rubbish.

          They are making it harder and harder simply for me to get the only bits of information I require – standing charge per day and unit rate. Why so many damned tariffs and deals, which are constantly changing and shuffling? I don’t want to have to make a detailed declaration of all my personal details each time I simply want to know the price tag. It seems that one must have the skills of a City finance operative not to get fleeced by the cartel. Maybe it’s the American way? Maybe it’s Free Market at work? It stinks, and how I pine for the old electricity board, when at least I knew where I stood.

          My mother’s supplier Avro, having gone from Green Network Energy, Ebico and nPower with each damned switch, put up their prices from Electricity: 15.75p per day standing charge, 14.02p per kWh; Gas 15.75p per day standing charge, 2.42p per kWh, offering for their next “deal” (how I hate that word, and block to the spam folder any email containing it!) is Electricity 25.079p per day standing charge, 20.59p per kWh, Gas 26.123p per day standing charge, 4.046 per kWh.

          This is in just 12 months, so explain how inflation is 3%, and the interest on her life savings to pay for the price hike is 0.1%

          Is there a list of suppliers anywhere containing standing charge and unit rate only, and no other information?

          3. We bring it on ourselves by allowing some of the least able to determine policy. And it applies in all walks of life now.

          4. I couldn’t agree with you more. Our political system requires a good flushing out, including the senior members of the civil service. They have self propagated in multiple positions where no one can see past or get around them. The British public have to accept their wrong doings on a daily bases. In fact i’d say they are as bad as the people who deliberately sit in the roads.

          6. It’s all become a bit of an effing nightmare. They couldn’t run a bath between the lot of them.

    2. Rigging?

      They have a commodity we want and we are prepared to pay what we need to get it because we lack enough of that commodity for our needs. Maximising your prices without losing customers is what every private business tries to achieve. Then it’s a good thing. Shouldn’t you free marketeers be celebrating this?

        1. Well it’s mostly because when we should have invested in nuclear we threw up gas fired power stations instead, then the North Sea gas production quartered.

          1. And the greens start telling us not to use fossil fuel because of the CO2 emissions. No CO2 emissions from a nuclear plant.

        1. Does that post sound childish and bad-tempered?

          Face it. If Gazprom was a British company and we were maximising the profits we make on our surfeit of natural gas from the countries that choose to buy from us you’d be celebrating not saying oh wait one sec, are we overcharging, can we do this any cheaper.

          Now because of forty years of terrible energy policy we are not sustainable in energy and have to buy fuel from other countries, then when they do what we would celebrate if we did it, suddenly instead we’re calling for inquests.

          In actual fact gas is provided by contracts which set the price. There’s no price rigging. There are simply customers that are pissed the prices have gone up.

          1. Does that post sound childish and bad-tempered?

            The one line of yours that I quoted most certainly did. It was a cheap sign-off and quite unnecessary, a snotty little dig at the writer and similar to your response to Grizz on population. Both times you made assumptions about the writers views on the world and delivered them as accusations with a high level of moral and intellectual conceit thrown in. And they were bordering on the hostile.

          2. No. Not at all.

            As I said had the boot been on the other foot and we had more gas than we needed and the pipelines to export it we’d want the highest price for it that the market would bear too. That is good and proper business practice.

            But because we are buyers rather than sellers we don’t like it.

            Yet this is the very essence of free markets. All free marketeers really should be supporting this move. Yes it’s bad that we are the buyers and not the vendors but that’s what forty years of terrible energy policy gained us.

          3. Stop denying your guilt. You used ‘free marketeer’ as a jibe. You have form in this. With your displays of contempt you almost always turn a perfectly proper discussion into a niggly spat.

          4. A free marketeer is someone who believes businesses are free to set their own prices and not have prices regulated by government. I am a free marketeer by that definition, where I depart from most is in international trade. I’m sorry I saw no advantage in sending our industry to china to import back the finished goods which basically just caused unemployment and underemployment here but I do believe that businesses should set their own prices.
            Well that’s what’s happened here. A business has decided the market will bear higher costs and so it put up its prices within the terms of the contracts already signed. I support this decision. It’s a good economic decision for them. Yes it’s going to cause us a little pain but we willingly gave up energy independence and now it’s costing us.

          6. Why?

            This is a good economic decision. You know this. I know this. But for every winner there’s also a loser and this time we didn’t win. We threw away the game by not building up our energy independence thinking surplus fuel countries could provide for us. Now we are getting a taste of that stupidity coming back to bite us in the butt.

            How is pointing out that a business can and does tend to charge the highest price for goods and services that the market will bear a slippery thing to do? Because we’re the losers and are going to have to pay more for energy? That’s the cost of stupidity and short-termism.

          7. As I said, you used ‘free marketeer’ as a jibe – or at least that’s how it appeared, because that’s your style – and yet you claim to be one.

            That’s slippery.

    1. Working in a London hospital, you get used to dealing with the after-effects of gang fights. But you don’t expect to see them. Of the many horrible things you might witness as a junior doctor in the capital, among the worst must be watching a teenage gang trying to break into the ward you work on, hoping to finish off a victim, punching your colleagues out the way to get to him.

      They must have missed this off the everything is wonderful in the NHS list!

      Morning Anne.

    2. Have the hospital trusts not thought to arm their security and porters with tazers?

      Just one of the little swine kicking and twitching on the floor, will have the rest of the gutless little oiks running for their miserable lives.

  42. I saw a paragraph yesterday before I went to bed that announced “pigs to be culled because they use up too much oxygen!” A couple of years ago I would have thought that was a spoof, but now with all the insanity I am not so sure! And the fact that we know they are desperate for any reason to dispose of our pigs. We know why. And that argument could apply to cattle, sheep, dogs, cats, humans…..

    I don’t have a link to the pig article as I saw it in passing. Does anyone know anything about it? Protect Our Pigs!!

      2. We had a sow and her little offspring put into to an area that has now be replanted as the orchard in our village, they tidied up the area very efficiently.
        Properly Fenced in they would be extremely efficient at clearing so many over grown allotments.

    3. The slaughterhouses cannot take the pigs because of lack of staff, the farmers have to keep them which means they are overweight and nowhere to go. Pig farmers have the prospect of having to slaughter these unwanted pigs on farm and dispose of them.. The Muslim community will be unconcerned but if this is not sorted soon our pig industry will collapse.

      1. Part of their long term plan. You would have though at least half a dozen of that useless mob in parliament might have been able to suss out what is currently happening to Europe. it’s the second coming. Remembering that it took Spain 400 years to get rid of them.

      2. Around 100 slaughterhouses closed this year.

        The majority of non-stunned halal slaughterhouses failed their inspections.

        No surprise there. Muslims have filthy practices when it comes to hygiene.

        In the nearest city to me none of the kebab and chicken shops score higher than a one star rating.

    4. “pigs to be culled because they use up too much oxygen!”
      I’ve never read anything so stupid in all my days. There is obviously more to this a than meets the eye. Could it be part of the planned ‘religious’ take over of the UK ? What is next on the list Dogs. Something else these people don’t like.

  43. Morning all.
    I see some one from the EU anti British cattle mafia has been over to jab a few cattle in Somerset ……again. Probably organised by Mac and his mate Ron.

    And you might have thought that with all the experts we have in the UK today some might have realised this might happen. All of these people should have gone to neighbouring countries in their own area of the Middle east.
    https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/afghan-evacuees-in-uk-face-homelessness-and-destitution-mps-say/ar-AAOzsJL?ocid=msedgntp

  44. Morning all. Lovely sunshine so far.

    I see that “GPs are demanding more cash to see patients”. Can’t read the rest. What a wonderful example to all the other unions in this chaotic country, where black is white (please excuse me!), police aid criminals, Boris is insane and getting worse every day and, really, everything is back to front or upside down. What a crazy world this is.

    I have given up writing to my MP, othing ever comes of it, and the so called “Covid Recovery Group” is like the ScRlet Pimpernel. What an absolute useless bunch of MPs we have. Did we really deserve them? God help us all.

    1. I find this outrageous. In the USA I married into a medical family and know that doctors in the UK are now paid as well as their US counterparts. However, they are, in reality paid more because most of what a doctor needs in his practice, in the USA, comes out of his own pocket so, often as not, he is up to his neck in debts for much of his/her career. It is a disgrace that British doctors are now demanding more pay out of the pockets of taxpayers when, compared with their American counterparts they fork out very little.

      There is one doctor at the practice I am attached to who is hardly ever there, always taking off for this or that. In the USA that would be impossible, his debts would prevent it. So at this point I regard them as little more than spongers. My own doctor, I have seen twice this year and not even able to talk to him on the phone, despite having been seriously ill this year. Fact is the hospital has given my better service than my GP and, I suspect it is the same for most people in the UK from all the stories I keep reading.

      1. In a neighbouring large village there is a notice in the GPs window – “Due to excessive demand this surgery will now only be open from

        9am to 1pm.”

        At 1pm everyone goes home.

        Unfortunately I have not discovered whether the staff have volunteered to go onto half pay.

      2. In a neighbouring large village there is a notice in the GPs window – “Due to excessive demand this surgery will now only be open from

        9am to 1pm.”

        At 1pm everyone goes home.

        Unfortunately I have not discovered whether the staff have volunteered to go onto half pay.

      3. ” In the USA I married into a medical family and know that doctors in the UK are now paid as well as their US counterparts.”

        Really?

        In 2019 the US median doctors salary was $206500 which in 2019 was roughly £160k. The UK median doctor salary for 2019 was 76k a year. That’s quite some discrepancy. Our top consultants with 25 years experience don’t match that US median salary for a physician.

        UK GPs are self-employed. They pay their business costs just like US physicians.

          1. It’s getting that way here now, for doctors, dentists & probably most professionals. I’m still covered, in case a former patient wants to raise an ‘ancient’ grievance, but I’ve been exempt from premiums since I retired.

          2. Five grand a year. A drop in the ocean when comparing a 160k and a 76k salaries. And i suspect that’s only for physicians in the community as hospital doctors are probably protected by the hospitals insurance policy. I am not 100% sure of that though.

    2. Every second of every minute of every hour of every day, there is more and more, and clearer and clearer, evidence presented to us of the accelerating — out of control — stupidity of the species.

    3. Don’t believe headlines. They are often corrupt clickbait, as here. If you read articles you will see that the BMA is not asking for more money for GP salaries but that part of Johnson’s tax rises to be spent on more GP services, including GP training and additional GP surgeries.

      I’m not a fan of trade unions, which is what the BMA is, but I think they are right here and most people will agree with them: more GPs and GP services, please.

      1. Unfortunately many GPs are female and none of them in our surgery work full time. I suspect that’s all over the country. Plus also they all have one day a week off for CPD.

  45. Just when you thought it was all over….

    Case of Mad Cow disease is identified on a Somerset farm as officials seal off the area to stop infection spreading
    Infected animal is dead and has been removed from the unnamed farm
    The agency said precautionary movement restrictions have been put in place
    Today’s case is first since 2018, when disease was found on a farm in Scotland
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10002749/Case-mad-cow-disease-identified-Somerset-farm.html

    1. Our cattle are too well monitored for this to have been a natural occurrence, I would stick my neck out and say it is some sort of ‘industrial sabotage’ by the Brussels mafia I wouldn’t put anything past them.
      And more reason to keep those piggies breathing.

    3. Good morning, Plum. Does this mean that we need yet another Covid-19 jab? Or will the cows have to be injected, carry a Mad Cow Disease passport, and remain at home in the farmer’s front parlour instead of going to the abattoirs and then on to the butchers’?

    1. Good morning, Peter. How are you feeling today? Did you have a restful night? Are you still in pain? Are you black and blue? Do tell!

      1. Hola Elsie. Danke der Nachfrage.
        I’m free of pain until I start moving about, but i can lie in bed comfortably, so I can sleep well. Still very stiff & the sites of my cuts are sore. Black & blue? – I don’t think so, but I can’t see my back.

    2. Not only is Mr Summers an idiot, but so were his guests if they thought this was an “interesting talking point”.

      1. Surely you meant to write “Not only is Jon Summers an idiot…” Grizzly is anything but an idiot.

    3. Pouring cold water into the chip pan to cool the chips was the next thing that they did. Also their last.

      1. It is surprising how often people make chip pan fires much, much worse by trying to put them out with water.

        Many years ago there was a short film explaining how and why it was dangerous and then showing the explosive reaction if water was applied. It spread burning oil everywhere, instantaneously, so the whole room was ablaze. Clearly it was stage managed, but it was certainly impressive and frightening.

        They then showed how putting a lid on the pan caused the fire to burn itself out very quickly. I can’t recall where I saw it, it may have been as part of a tour of a fire-station when I was much younger.

        1. Or a wrung out tea towel. Or if you are like me, i have a small fire blanket as part of an extinguisher combo in the kitchen.

          1. We keep a blanket in the cottage. We have powder extinguisher in the kitchen of the house.

            I suppose the real secret is not to panic

        2. Combustion requires fuel, oxygen and heat. Take any one of the three away and combustion can’t occur.

          With a chip pan fire all you can do is remove oxygen with a lid, or fire blanket.

          Attempts to take away the heat with cold water are futile, dangerous and silly. The water sinks to the bottom of the oil, boils, turns into steam and explodes fiery oil everywhere as the steam rushes up through the burning oil to escape.

          Much of this should be bloody common sense.

          1. Indeed.

            But common sense is in surprisingly short supply, particularly when people panic. People who know no better often do things that others would recognise instantly as being dangerous.

            I would be surprised if the water would even have time to sink to the bottom of a pan of boiling chip oil/fat before the person pouring it in was engulfed.

  48. This household was in all of a kerfuffle this morning re Jack my thirteen year old spaniel.

    He and the younger dog had their booster jabs on Thursday afternoon .

    Yesterday morning , Friday , we did our usual thing and gave them their morning runaround , on one of the local heaths .. all fine , no probs , but by late afternoon Jack was looking very tired and rather wobbly and refused his supper . He slept by my chair untill last minute bedtime wee time in the garden , still wobbled around and he couldn’t climb the stairs to bed .. He sleeps in our bedroom and always has done .

    This morning he looked as if he was steadyng himself on a sinking ship .. I carried him down stairs , took him outside for a long penny spend , he refused his breakfast and just staggered around .

    Rang the Vet .. and thank goodness by 9.30 am I was there with the dog and had more than a 30 minute consultation with a very kind thorough vet .

    She examined him, heart , temperature , ears and EYES.. and his eyes were almost as if they were like a gyroscope …

    The booster jab had nothing to do with the symptons he was presenting .. The conclusion was that Jack had had a sudden onset Vestibular attack .. which happens in older dogs ..balance goes skewwhiff, head tilt etc .

    Sometimes the condition clears up or gets worse, I have had spaniels with head tilt before but they were much older than Jack .

    The consultation cost probably a little more than £30, and the long conversation and examination and reassurance was worth every penny .. As I mentioned earlier probably just under an hour .

    Our dogs are precious , so are we, why cannot Doctors be as giving and tender as Vets?

      3. Our vet kisses Poppie on the top of the head. Just one. He kissed our son’s cat on top of her head (between the ears) and got a long hiss from the recipient. Cynical ole me thinks that kiss is for the benefit of the bill payer.

    3. That is good news – at least that it was NOT the vaccine.

      Hope he gets back to normal pronto.

  49. My wife keeps chocolates hidden away in a recess in the larder. I found this and was about to eat a mini Mars Bar when she returned to the kitchen so I hurriedly stuffed the chocolate into the breast pocket of my shirt. As ill luck would have it she noticed the bulge and I was rumbled.

    Even after 33 years of marriage my dear Caroline has not entirely lost her suspicious nature.

    1. If her suspicions are confirmed then surely it is intuition!
      ETA: Plus, the chocolate is hardly “hidden away” if you know where it is!

    2. A little bit of what you fancy does you good , and of course she knows you so well, that she buys the mini versions .

      She probably treats you as if you were Pooh bear , who loved his runny honey .

    3. A small square of dark chocolate a day is good for lowering blood pressure.

      Mars is hoof and straw.

          8. I think it is to do with work ethics. On the continent a career in pastry skills is not looked down upon. Same as with waiters and waitresses. The Brits see these jobs as beneath them.

          9. I don’t, Phizzee. It is the service industry – as a misanthrope I respect folk who are forced to deal with idiots day in, day out.

          12. I am always delighted by the French pàtisserie window displays, although, like you and Bill, I don’t eat much cake.

      2. I think Hamlet was describing his father rather than his mother, Gertrude, when he talked about an eye like Ma’s to threaten and command. Nevertheless, the trouble with wives is that they can be a bit too eagle-eyed and inquisitive.

        I remember that one day when my mother – whose personality bore certain resemblances to that of my wife – was away for a couple of days my father succeeded in setting fire to the chimney of our thatched cottage in the New Forest. We successfully managed to put the fire out and clean up the mess and, thank God, no damage was done.

        When all this was done my father took me by the arm and said: “I really think, my boy, that no advantage would be served by mentioning this to your mother.”

        Of course we never did – and he got away with it.

      3. I visited the Mars factory in Slough once. Best evening out I have ever spent in my life! Utterly fascinating.

  50. “US admits Kabul drone strike was ‘tragic mistake’ that killed 10 civilians including seven children. ’Tragic mistake’ came just days after IS-K militants attacked Kabul airport, killing 13 US soldiers.”

    I posted this a while ago, but worth repeating. There is a process used in the military referred to as the “OODA Loop” which stands for Observe, Orientate, Decide, Act. It was developed by the US Air Force for pilots and has been adopted by many armed forces as the model for (tactical) decision making. The revised US version is “Observe, Overreact, Destroy, Apologise”. The “Apologise” activity is optional.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2021/09/17/us-admits-kabul-drone-strike-killed-civilians-not-islamic/

  51. Britain is warned it WON’T escape French retaliation over new AUKUS defence pact as furious Emmanuel Macron recalls ambassadors to the US and Australia and one of his diplomats labels the UK as ‘opportunistic’ for joining deal

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10003795/Britain-warned-WONT-escape-targeted-France-ambassador-row.html

    Macron is a nasty spiteful little man. He can no longer boast about his own achievements because he has achieved nothing positive since becoming president. All he can do is venomously imitate the action of the viper (to confuse my Shakespearean metaphors) and try to poison everyone whom he sees as a threat. Look at his duplicity over Brexit and helping illegal immigrants to enter Britain by giving them a French warship escort up to the sea border in the English Channel.

    1. With a bit of luck he’ll explode with his own pomposity when the French are in the seat of the revolving EU presidency.
      Look out for a lot more troubles for Britain.

    3. France, like the bully she is can do nothing if we ignore or give them the same treatment. Bollocks to entente cordiale. Their ruling classes despise us.

          5. No, France likes to pretend it is the boss of the relationship, and if Germany points out that they pay for everything, the French just shout “nazis!”

      2. Now, be sure we retaliate, by pushing their stinking emigrés back to the French coast and sink their dinghys after taking the outboards.

    4. Micron can only act like a spolied brat because that is what he is.

      “Boo hoo, they’ve taken my toys away.”

    1. Apparently a ‘dynamic risk assessment’ was done by the plod in charge. Just waiting for plod to be sued by people who missed flights, medical appointments and those in danger of losing their jobs.

      Bet the plod didn’t take that into account.

    2. Those police should now be charged as accessories, before, during and after the event. The charge being aiding and abetting a crime, viz, Obstruction of the Queen’s Highway.

      Who knows enough to bring these charges.

  55. A ship sailed past my webcam of Southampton water. One i hadn’t noticed before. It turns out it is the passenger and cargo SS Shieldhall.

    In its previous life before being restored by enthusiasts it was a steamy shit dumper off Glasgow sewerage works.

    Southern water bought it and used it for the same purposes.

    Grizz does have a point about the IOW. You wouldn’t want to go swimming off Sandown when that ship was about.

    The ship now does pleasure trips. I enjoyed the Waverley but this one looks better… Though not a paddle steamer.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2c39380f1948c7c87d90e4811eed30d9b5ca180b4062ce87f385777821651ebd.jpg

    1. The Russians also lobbied behind the scenes against shale gas, worried about losing their grip on the world’s gas supplies. Unlike most conspiracy theories about Russian meddling in Western politics, this one is out there in plain sight. The head of Nato, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said the Russians, as part of a sophisticated disinformation operation, “engaged actively with so-called non-governmental organisations — environmental organisations working against shale gas — to maintain Europe’s dependence on imported Russian gas”.

      A back handed compliment if ever there were one!

    2. The Russians also lobbied behind the scenes against shale gas, worried about losing their grip on the world’s gas supplies. Unlike most conspiracy theories about Russian meddling in Western politics, this one is out there in plain sight. The head of Nato, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said the Russians, as part of a sophisticated disinformation operation, “engaged actively with so-called non-governmental organisations — environmental organisations working against shale gas — to maintain Europe’s dependence on imported Russian gas”.

      A back handed compliment if ever there were one!

    3. Well, shale gas can be accessed by working at sea, just as oil is. There is a lot of it under the bed of the North Sea. The shale’s exploiters want it on the cheapest possible terms, in order to make high profits. That is business. However, we can just send them out to sea. They will still make money and will not disturb the landscape and people on land.

      1. The project I am on is expected, like all offshore North Sea projects, to achieve break-even at about 9-10 months after first oil.
        And the capital cost is approximately $1 billion.
        There’s some money that flows out of small holes in the ground!

    4. Nick Steinsberger’s increased pressure method resulted in many more dikes being successfully penetrated. Fracking is not all bad !

  57. Mass migration due to climate change may lead to an increase in racial tensions and community clashes in the UK, police have been warned.

    Millions of people across the world are expected to be displaced from developing countries as climate change worsens, with experts predicting many will try to seek shelter in Europe.

    An influx of climate refugees is a problem that British police forces should prepare for, experts said this week, warning that “we shouldn’t be surprised if there’s a backlash” in local communities.

    Dr Peter Langmead-Jones, the head of external relations for Greater Manchester Police, warned senior officers at a conference that “it would be sensible to predict there may well be a backlash”.

    “It upsets the local community. That can lead to tensions, sometimes on racial grounds, sometimes around resources. It would be as well to plan for that,” Dr Langmead-Jones told the Police Superintendents’ Association conference.

    One study estimated that climate change could push 1.5 billion people to migrate to escape unlivable heat in the next 50 years, even if international targets to keep temperatures low were reached.

    Increase in temperatures as a result of greenhouse gas emissions could leave millions living in areas as hot as the hottest parts of the Sahara by 2070, and force 1.5 billion out of unliveable temperatures according to the study, according to the study by scientists from China, the US and Europe.

    “The number of people who will fall outside of the climate niche that we have lived in for thousands of years is gob-smackingly high,” said Prof Tim Lenton, the director of the global systems institute at the University of Exeter, and one of the study’s co-authors.

    The countries most at risk include India, Nigeria and Pakistan, according to the study, which was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

    Commenting on the study, Bob Ward, the policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics, said: “It won’t mean that people suddenly overnight are going to become displaced. But it will mean that you’ll gradually see populations migrating away from these areas, which will cause pressures on surrounding areas, and we know that’s usually a formula for conflict.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/09/18/mass-migration-climate-change-could-trigger-racial-tensions/

    1. “Mass migration due to climate change may lead to an increase in racial tensions and community clashes in the UK, police have been warned….”

      May! ……it’s a guaranteed f*cking certainty……

    4. The last time this happened was in the 8th and 9th centuries when the Vikings roamed to warmer climes due to cooling and crop failures in Scandinavia.. (Professor Plimer – Climate Change – The Missing Science)

  58. A music professor has resigned in protest at “dogmatic” attitudes to decolonisation which could stop students learning Beethoven and Wagner.

    Paul Harper-Scott, 43, who taught musical history and theory at Royal Holloway, University of London, has quit academia entirely after more than 15 years at the institution, stunning other experts in the field.

    Explaining his reasons for leaving, he said he had become “profoundly disillusioned” at how “increasingly dogmatic” universities are becoming, with cancel culture seemingly “endemic”.

    He cited the “increasingly common view in musicology”, that “19th century musical works were the product of an imperial society… the classical musical canon must be decolonised”, as an example.

    Prof Harper-Scott, who has been editor of the book series Music in Context and a trustee of the Society for Music Analysis, warned: “An outcome of the first, dogmatic statement could be that music departments stop teaching music by Beethoven, Wagner and co.”

    This would be “in the frankly insane belief that doing so will somehow materially improve current living conditions for the economically, socially, sexually, religiously, or racially underprivileged”, he added.

    nstead, he urged music departments to recognise classical music’s “great importance of social history” which can offer “intellectually critical insights” into the time in which it was composed.

    In a parting shot at the cancel culture sweeping British campuses, he warned: “In recent years the dogmatic mode of thinking, in which uncritical commitments are enforced by mechanisms involving public humiliation, no-platforming, and attempts to have scholars fired, has become to seem like it has become endemic.

    “If universities become a place where that basic commitment to scepticism and a critical mode of thinking is increasingly impossible, they will have ceased to serve a useful function. I am not optimistic.”

    Having joined Royal Holloway in 2005, he observed that academia “is a place filled with generally quite well-meaning people, but on the whole not with brave people, not people who are willing to follow the truth wherever it leads”.

    Growing backlash among academia
    His resignation is among the most stark cases of the growing backlash among scholars at vocal attempts by students and faculties to “decolonise” university degrees and pull down statues, which intensified after Black Lives Matter protests.

    Last summer, academics at Royal Holloway’s music department wrote an open letter claiming managers planned to cut staff by 25 per cent as part of efforts to make the music curriculum more “integrated” and “broader”.

    In March, under pressure to “decolonise” music, professors at the University of Oxford branded musical notation “colonialist” as part of proposals to change the current curriculum’s “complicity in white supremacy”.

    Faculty documents showed that scholars felt the classical repertoire taught at Oxford, including Mozart and Beethoven, focused too much on “white European music from the slave period”.

    The Government has taken action on campus cancel culture in recent months. New academic freedom legislation is going through Parliament to allow scholars and students to sue universities if they are unfairly silenced.

    Multiple academics have told of being “harassed, disinvited or sacked because they dare challenge orthodoxy” as part of evidence for the new Bill.

    In addition, History Reclaimed, a new campaign group of eminent professors, has been launched to fight back against “distortions” and “blatantly false” readings of history.

    Michelle Donelan, the Universities Minister, has likened decolonising efforts to the Soviet Union, telling The Telegraph this year that “the so-called decolonisation of the curriculum is, in effect, censoring history” and “has no place in our universities”.

    Royal Holloway declined to comment.

    .

    Show comments

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/09/18/no-turning-bach-music-scholar-resigns-protest-campus-cancel/

    3. Michelle Donelan, the Universities Minister, has likened decolonising efforts to the Soviet Union, telling The Telegraph this year that “the so-called decolonisation of the curriculum is, in effect, censoring history” and “has no place in our universities”.

      Much talk but little action!

    1. 338970+ up ticks,
      Afternoon TB,
      Small adjustment the only ones out of control are the treacherous politico’s, All other participants are making
      a living via payment / welfare.

    1. 338970+ up ticks,
      Afternoon HP,
      A very well orchestrated mares nest from the 25/6/2016
      ongoing, the “leave it to the tory’s” brigade thought all their eids had come at once.

      2. Not quite true, France remained a member of NATO, they only withdrew from the Integrated Military Command Structure.

        1. I’m sorry, but that is nitpicking.

          If they are not part of the command structure they are not part of any of the structure.
          You’re in command, there is a crisis and your troops are going to die unless your orders are obeyed immediately.

          “France send reinforcements NOW…”

          “I am sorry but we must consult Paris before we can obey. We’ll get back to you in due course…”

          1. Not my view, that is not how NATO works, see my post below. The important point is NATO is a political alliance, not a military one. NATO members cannot be committed to NATO operations without the agreement of the providing nations, so reference to the member nations government is a fundamental part of how NATO works. NATO members have the absolute right to consider the impact of an operation on that country, and vote against NATO decisions if they see fit.

          3. Yes, that is the role of the NATO political committee which is formed by the national permanent representatives and a fundamental part of NATO decision making. While article 5 states an attack on one is an atrack on all, it does not bind members to a response. The NATO decision making process is the means by which a NATO position and response is forrmulated. That was the structure during the cold war, but I believe NATO has rather lost its way and seeking, but not found, its role in the post cold war era.

          6. Oh, “secret agreements”, they hadn’t really left..

            Yeah, of course they would obey your commands.

        2. I thought the President at the time said he wanted all NATO troops removed from France and was asked if he included the ones buried there.

  64. Carbon Dioxide Stunning and Killing of Pigs

    The legislation covering the welfare of all farmed animals within the UK, during the handling and slaughter
    process is The Welfare of Animals (Slaughter or Killing) Regulations 1995 (as amended) (WASK ’95)

    SUMMARY
    Increasingly, in larger plants in the UK and elsewhere, carbon dioxide is being
    used for the stunning and killing of pigs. For large operations with high throughput
    rates (eg 800 per hour), this is often the most reliable slaughter method for
    ensuring consistency in terms of good welfare and quality

    Some ‘Greeny’ was complaining on the BBC this morning that pigs are having to be mass slaughtered because of the shortage of food/workers caused by Brexit and climate change but there isn’t enough CO2 available. Either they want CO2 or they don’t. I wish they would make up their minds.

    2. CO2 in farm storage towers killed unprotected farmers who went into the empty towers to clean them. Rescuers who went into the tower unprotected died as well. It was a quick death.
      I wasn’t too happy when I first saw CO2 stunning of the pigs. It was a scream of fear when they were put into single pods before being lowered down into a pit of C02 which silenced the pigs immediately before the pod came up out of the pit for the pigs to be bled. The scream the pigs made when in their pods was maniacal and different from any scream I had heard before.

    3. I rather have a massive herd of farting panting pigs than any of the human crap the government are letting into our country right now.

    1. How do you know they’re veterans. I’ve been waiting for over 4 years now to apply for a veteran’s ID yet The MoD told me a few months ago that I would have to continue waiting for a year or more. FFS how difficult can it be to produce a card like the driving licence, particularly for those receiving pensions?

      When I tried to register as a veteran with my GP’s surgery I was told that I would get no priority treatment as a veteran despite the government’s promises and my medical conditions being a direct result of trauma from my service days. I contacted my local health authority but they fobbed me off and continue to do so. My MP has been useless, full of platitudes and inaction.

      1. There’s none so easily forgotten as yesterday’s hero.
        I’m afraid.
        When I’m over next ( and don’t hold your breath for it, the government are making it difficult), I’ll buy you a gutful of beer, Dale. Or good cider. Whatever floats your boat, in fact, but I can’t afford quite that volume… 🙁

    2. Since the two black-clad fascists are clearly pepperspraying the person (by the shoes, a woman) on the ground with the aim of causing severe harm, would the red-clad woman be justified in shooting them as an act of self-protection?

    3. Since the two black-clad fascists are clearly pepperspraying the person (by the shoes, a woman) on the ground with the aim of causing severe harm, would the red-clad woman be justified in shooting them as an act of self-protection?

    4. No wonder they removed all the guns from the people in Oz. It now seems this has all been planned for many years.

  69. Just watching an American steam ploughing engine pulling a 44-share plough! Amazing! Truly magnificent machine (and with the torque required, and the steam, fireman working like a dog!)

    1. A great response to Biden’s creepy speech and attack on the non-vaccinated a few days ago. His exhortation to have children jabbed was scary in the extreme. The science has spoken, all we have to do is wait and see if the politicians reject the science and plough on regardless. If the politicians do reject the advice of experts then hopefully more people will start to question the politicians’ motives. The Highwire and the Stew Peters’ Show have been highlighting these issues for months and have been attacked for their trouble. Nice to see that doctors, scientists etc are coming to the same consensus as the former two activists.

      1. It is gradually starting to crumble around the edges, Korky. It will all fall apart as it is built on the shifting sands of lies, deceit and fraud. It cannot do otherwise as it has no firm foundations.

        1. The problem as I see it is that the political perpetrators are so far down the rabbit hole of infamy that they are terrified of the consequences of being rumbled. They will do their level best to take everything down with them. A form of scorched earth policy.

          Where will the guilty politicians find refuge? Their elite masters who led them to the brink will desert them immediately and retire to their billions as if nothing has happened. No written orders, no minutes of meetings etc. just discussions and nods and winks. Johnny come lately politicians are as children when compared to the really rich and powerful people: many of the latter have generations of experience exploiting members of the political class.

          1. They are not going to give up without major struggle. The scorched earth policy is one I have thought about and it bothers me. How far will they scorch the earth and to what depth? They will be desperate and have absolutely nothing to lose. Will it involve the nuclear button or starvation for the masses? History tells us this could be a possibility. ‘Going nuclear’ could solve the problem of their billionaire bosses whom they will see as betrayers and the masses baying for blood.

          2. Can’t remember if I watched a retired County Sheriff being interviewed on the Highwire or on the Stew Peters show. It was enlightening to find out some facts about who has authority and jurisdiction in the local areas of the States.

            Apparently in the USA County Sheriffs, especially in Red States, are coming together in associations, their intention is to meet head on any Federal intrusion into their territory. The experienced retired sheriff who was interviewed was quite clear that sheriffs, as elected law officers, had jurisdiction in their counties, not the Feds. He also added that the Feds do not have the manpower to take on the locally elected sheriffs and their men. He seemed ready for a fight.

    1. Big old PC plod turns up, takes yer trousers down and says “Not your lucky day is it matey” ?

  73. That’s me for this day of two halves. Nice sunny afternoon – lunch outdoors. The MR did lots of useful hedgework.

    I’ll join you tomorrow if I am spared.

    A demain

    1. We had a lovely sunny morning, then it clouded over mid afternoon and we had a few spots of rain. Didn’t brighten up again. Getting dark early.

      1. It is warmer now than it was a couple of hours ago . 22c and I have just finished watering the garden .

        Strange thing is I put some washing on the line at mid day, and it isn’t dry yet ..

        Chicken salad for supper .

          1. Jack was given a Stugeron tablet , and he ate his food about half an hour afterwards .

            He is still tilting and swaying his body , staggering around, but he seems happy , and has been the garden to do his usual .

            Pip the younger dog (8 years old ) knows there is something wrong with Jack, he keeps trying to snuggle up to him , but Jack is grumpy and not having any of that sort of fuss.

    3. What a brave man he is and what a hero he is.
      Many people form the start of all this have been intimating what he has now confirmed.

      1. I’ve passed it one to twenty people, from Canada to Australia and France and Scotland in between. One in MK as well.

      2. I’ve passed it one to twenty people, from Canada to Australia and France and Scotland in between. One in MK as well.

  76. 338970+up ticks,

    How Britain’s post-Brexit border plans fell apart
    The delays mean Britain will not enforce its full post-Brexit border regime until some 18 months after reaching a deal with the EU

    The overseers input regarding Brexitexit,

    Jerry build by master political jerry builders, a well thought out & run campaign commencing on the 24 / 6 / 2016 undermining the new found footings of the United Kingdom with great success & the peoples consent.

    The “deal” was the seal of ongoing treachery.

    Seemingly the next step as the politico’s continue to prod the herd is sadly full on confrontation, I can truly see the “beginning” beginning.

    1. Again, any Minister with balls (chutspah) call it what you will can over-ride her snivel-serpents and insist on policy being carried. Otherwise face sacking for “Failure to obey orders.”

      1. 339038+ up ticks,
        Morning NtN,
        Covert is given a coating of overt rhetoric to pacify the herd,and in many cases for the good of the party’s name it is accepted.

  77. Don’t spill your beverages…

    Can Liz Truss take on Boris’s dangerous pro-China cabal?

    The new Foreign Secretary must defeat the dangerous complacency characterising the UK’s policy towards Beijing

    JULIET SAMUEL

    As trade secretary, Liz Truss had a comfortable suite in one corner of the grand Foreign Office building on Whitehall. Yet there must have been more than one occasion when her thoughts wandered to what she might do differently if she were ever to move out of that office into the grander, older one upstairs.

    This week, Boris Johnson’s reshuffle gave her exactly that chance. As Foreign Secretary, Ms Truss is unlikely to change direction radically. She is broadly aligned with the rest of the Government. But in one area, she takes a much tougher view than No 10: her attitude to China. Ms Truss understands that the free world faces a grave and growing threat from the Chinese Communist Party. The question is what she is going to do about it.

    To his credit, her predecessor did try to harden policy towards Beijing. And this week’s unveiling of “Aukus”, a new defence pact between the UK, the US and Australia, suggests he made some headway. The pact’s first move will be to share nuclear submarine technology with Canberra. Naturally, it has been denounced by Beijing and its useful idiots as a provocative act indicative of a “Cold War mentality”. On the other side, some wonks dismiss it as an overhyped arms deal. It is in fact a sensible and strategic response to an increasingly dangerous situation in the Pacific.

    Since 1947, Beijing has claimed ownership of a vast stretch of international waters up to 1,000 miles away from China, an area demarcated by a scribble on a map known as the “nine-dash line”. It has followed up this preposterous claim by building military bases on every shoal and scrap of seaweed in the East and South China Seas, flying bombers around Taiwan and making incursions into the territory of at least four countries. In the background, Beijing has also embarked upon a ten-fold increase in the size of its long-range nuclear missile arsenal.

    There is a clear intention here. Beijing wants to be able to hold the world to ransom by threatening to blockade sea routes handling two thirds of world trade. Why? Well, just ask Australia, which was punished with a AUS$20 billion (£10.6 billion) hit to its trade with China after it dared to suggest setting up an independent investigation into the origins of Covid.

    Nuclear-powered submarines are essential in countering this threat, because a nuclear reactor extends the range of a submarine by thousands of miles. A diesel sub has to come up regularly for fuel and conserve power while underwater. A nuclear sub can create its own water and air and move around undetected at a speed of 30 knots for 110 days before it has to come up for food. It can launch torpedoes to sink ships (in a blockade situation, say) and missiles with a range of 1,000 miles.

    Aukus, however, is an easy sell for the UK. It makes us look important and provides a huge export opportunity. It is Australia that has to spend the cash on infrastructure to service the subs – potentially AUS$1  trillion, according to former Admiral Lord West – and they won’t be operational until 2040. So the pact is a good start, but UK policy on China needs to move faster and further. Unfortunately, Ms Truss is facing a wall of complacency and venality standing in the way of the other changes that need to happen.

    The first is that democratic countries need to root out corruption in international organisations. The World Health Organisation, the World Trade Organisation and, as we learnt just this week, the World Bank, have all succumbed to Chinese meddling, with dire consequences in the case of Covid. The UK should push either to repair or replace these organisations with alternatives that count only democratic, market economies as members, regardless of what “punishment” Beijing doles out in response.

    We face an equally difficult challenge at home. The CCP is running a highly successful interference operation across swathes of British society. It uses its funding of our universities to stifle campus debate on China and buy up British science. It has forced our biggest bank, HSBC, to cheerlead for its crackdown in Hong Kong. Chinese companies command an army of well-paid ex-ministers, officials and City executives as lobbyists. Our businesses and consumers use Chinese CCTV cameras (from Hikvision), phones (Huawei) and social media (TikTok) made by companies that are forced to promote the CCP’s interests and build its surveillance state.

    Ms Truss isn’t directly in charge of all these issues. But she commands one of the few machineries in government that can join the dots together to explain that we face a systemic threat.

    The problem is that she faces a formidable set of opponents. There are those who broadly share her views, like Priti Patel and Michael Gove. But many more are still in thrall to the notion of a “golden era” of Sino-British relations, with an imaginary golden goose available if we kowtow low enough. Unfortunately, the goose-chasers can count Chancellor Rishi Sunak, Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng, current No 10 Chief of Staff Dan Rosenfield and former No 10 chief of staff Lord Udney-Lister among their most powerful advocates.

    Amazingly, despite Mr Sunak being part of a government that publicly accused Beijing of committing “torture and forced sterilisation … on an industrial scale” in Xinjiang earlier this year, I am reliably informed that he is engaged in a private correspondence with his counterpart in Beijing to try to strike a Sino-British investment deal. Is this what the UK wants – investment from a regime engaged in the liquidation of an entire ethnic group within its territory? But for the Beijing kowtowers, our Prime Minister included, only trade matters.

    This is contributing to an extremely dangerous situation. Whereas Beijing marshals its resources with single-minded focus, Britain is lurching from one policy to the opposite like a drunk. As former general Sir Richard Barrons puts it: “We’ll send a sub to the Pacific, but then we’ll sell Knightsbridge to them.” The message is that we are a joke country, unable to recognise and defend our own interests. It is the sort of weakness that makes enemies bold.

    Ms Truss cannot change all of this overnight, but she can build on the start made by her predecessor. She can gear up her department, which has only a handful of senior staff with China experience. She can block or criticise bad policies coming from elsewhere. And she can make the argument, over and over, that if we do not bear the cost of changing tack now, we will bear much greater costs later. Can she persuade Boris Johnson? Perhaps not, but the greater crime would be not even to try.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/09/17/can-liz-truss-take-boriss-dangerous-pro-china-cabal/

    1. Has Boris given her – Ms Truss – a poisoned chalice?

      I no longer trust our Prime Minister; his Foreign Policy is administered in the Bedroom (No.11) …

    2. Is it not about time that the Ministers, entrusted with UK policy, over-rode their recalcitrant snivel serpents and got on with the jobs they’ve been tasked with.

      If the Snivel Serpents don’t like it, they can always resign, forgo their salary and their gold-plated pensions. That’s how I’d deal with it.

      Flogging may be next on the agenda.

  78. Don’t spill your beverages…

    Can Liz Truss take on Boris’s dangerous pro-China cabal?

    The new Foreign Secretary must defeat the dangerous complacency characterising the UK’s policy towards Beijing

    JULIET SAMUEL

    As trade secretary, Liz Truss had a comfortable suite in one corner of the grand Foreign Office building on Whitehall. Yet there must have been more than one occasion when her thoughts wandered to what she might do differently if she were ever to move out of that office into the grander, older one upstairs.

    This week, Boris Johnson’s reshuffle gave her exactly that chance. As Foreign Secretary, Ms Truss is unlikely to change direction radically. She is broadly aligned with the rest of the Government. But in one area, she takes a much tougher view than No 10: her attitude to China. Ms Truss understands that the free world faces a grave and growing threat from the Chinese Communist Party. The question is what she is going to do about it.

    To his credit, her predecessor did try to harden policy towards Beijing. And this week’s unveiling of “Aukus”, a new defence pact between the UK, the US and Australia, suggests he made some headway. The pact’s first move will be to share nuclear submarine technology with Canberra. Naturally, it has been denounced by Beijing and its useful idiots as a provocative act indicative of a “Cold War mentality”. On the other side, some wonks dismiss it as an overhyped arms deal. It is in fact a sensible and strategic response to an increasingly dangerous situation in the Pacific.

    Since 1947, Beijing has claimed ownership of a vast stretch of international waters up to 1,000 miles away from China, an area demarcated by a scribble on a map known as the “nine-dash line”. It has followed up this preposterous claim by building military bases on every shoal and scrap of seaweed in the East and South China Seas, flying bombers around Taiwan and making incursions into the territory of at least four countries. In the background, Beijing has also embarked upon a ten-fold increase in the size of its long-range nuclear missile arsenal.

    There is a clear intention here. Beijing wants to be able to hold the world to ransom by threatening to blockade sea routes handling two thirds of world trade. Why? Well, just ask Australia, which was punished with a AUS$20 billion (£10.6 billion) hit to its trade with China after it dared to suggest setting up an independent investigation into the origins of Covid.

    Nuclear-powered submarines are essential in countering this threat, because a nuclear reactor extends the range of a submarine by thousands of miles. A diesel sub has to come up regularly for fuel and conserve power while underwater. A nuclear sub can create its own water and air and move around undetected at a speed of 30 knots for 110 days before it has to come up for food. It can launch torpedoes to sink ships (in a blockade situation, say) and missiles with a range of 1,000 miles.

    Aukus, however, is an easy sell for the UK. It makes us look important and provides a huge export opportunity. It is Australia that has to spend the cash on infrastructure to service the subs – potentially AUS$1  trillion, according to former Admiral Lord West – and they won’t be operational until 2040. So the pact is a good start, but UK policy on China needs to move faster and further. Unfortunately, Ms Truss is facing a wall of complacency and venality standing in the way of the other changes that need to happen.

    The first is that democratic countries need to root out corruption in international organisations. The World Health Organisation, the World Trade Organisation and, as we learnt just this week, the World Bank, have all succumbed to Chinese meddling, with dire consequences in the case of Covid. The UK should push either to repair or replace these organisations with alternatives that count only democratic, market economies as members, regardless of what “punishment” Beijing doles out in response.

    We face an equally difficult challenge at home. The CCP is running a highly successful interference operation across swathes of British society. It uses its funding of our universities to stifle campus debate on China and buy up British science. It has forced our biggest bank, HSBC, to cheerlead for its crackdown in Hong Kong. Chinese companies command an army of well-paid ex-ministers, officials and City executives as lobbyists. Our businesses and consumers use Chinese CCTV cameras (from Hikvision), phones (Huawei) and social media (TikTok) made by companies that are forced to promote the CCP’s interests and build its surveillance state.

    Ms Truss isn’t directly in charge of all these issues. But she commands one of the few machineries in government that can join the dots together to explain that we face a systemic threat.

    The problem is that she faces a formidable set of opponents. There are those who broadly share her views, like Priti Patel and Michael Gove. But many more are still in thrall to the notion of a “golden era” of Sino-British relations, with an imaginary golden goose available if we kowtow low enough. Unfortunately, the goose-chasers can count Chancellor Rishi Sunak, Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng, current No 10 Chief of Staff Dan Rosenfield and former No 10 chief of staff Lord Udney-Lister among their most powerful advocates.

    Amazingly, despite Mr Sunak being part of a government that publicly accused Beijing of committing “torture and forced sterilisation … on an industrial scale” in Xinjiang earlier this year, I am reliably informed that he is engaged in a private correspondence with his counterpart in Beijing to try to strike a Sino-British investment deal. Is this what the UK wants – investment from a regime engaged in the liquidation of an entire ethnic group within its territory? But for the Beijing kowtowers, our Prime Minister included, only trade matters.

    This is contributing to an extremely dangerous situation. Whereas Beijing marshals its resources with single-minded focus, Britain is lurching from one policy to the opposite like a drunk. As former general Sir Richard Barrons puts it: “We’ll send a sub to the Pacific, but then we’ll sell Knightsbridge to them.” The message is that we are a joke country, unable to recognise and defend our own interests. It is the sort of weakness that makes enemies bold.

    Ms Truss cannot change all of this overnight, but she can build on the start made by her predecessor. She can gear up her department, which has only a handful of senior staff with China experience. She can block or criticise bad policies coming from elsewhere. And she can make the argument, over and over, that if we do not bear the cost of changing tack now, we will bear much greater costs later. Can she persuade Boris Johnson? Perhaps not, but the greater crime would be not even to try.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/09/17/can-liz-truss-take-boriss-dangerous-pro-china-cabal/

  79. Evening, all. Been a lovely day here; I worked in the garden when I got back from town where Oscar and I had a drink (coffee for me, water for him) in one of the pubs. We sat outside in the beer garden in the sunshine and it was very pleasant.

  81. I’m here this evening to avoid effing Strictly,……… I hate it.
    Although I believe one of the band members is a guy I use to play Football and squash with in the early 70s. Percussionist Frank Ricotti.

    3. None of the above……
      On the way home from my junior school on Fridays, I always bought either a Mars bar or a packet of Rolo’s with my 6 pence pocket money.

        2. What we use to do as kids, was put one at a time on the kitchen table and as they were slightly tapered roll them in a circle and try to catch them in our mouths as they neared the edge. 😄

    6. Golden Cup and Flake – the only two I recognise. Perhaps I was overseas when the rest appeared – and disappeared.

        1. Ich auch in Deutschlan for drei jahre und in Suede fur ein jare und halb.

          The only sweet I remember was in Sweden and called Plopp!

          We could get Nigger balls from the vending machines.

    7. I remember Munchies back in 1964. The packet was about 10″ long and cost 6d [2·5p].

      These days they are about 5″ long and cost 60p [12 bob!] or thereabouts.

    8. “Toffo” was originally called “Toff-o-luxe”. The more expensive toffee “pennies” (the one’s still in Quality Street) were called “Toffee de-luxe”.

    9. Are Hopalong Cassidy’s favourites (Spangles) still made? And what was that crunchy butterscotch bar called?

  84. I’m glad to see your little dog is getting over the trauma TB. I have just received some photos on my phone of our opposite neighbours and their little dog saying ‘goodbye’ to their younger daughter they have driven to Liverpool today to drop her off at Uni. I hope she does well she’s a bright very kind and thoughtful young person i’m sure she will make them proud of her.
    And now, Good night, off to read some more of Robert Pestons book, it’s a bit slow getting going. 6 pages is usually my limit siting up in bed.
    We have two more Virgo (on the cups) family birthdays early next week My Lovely Wife and our number one son. A popular month for birthdays all-round. Seemingly a good time had by parents around Christmas and new year.
    Good night all.

  85. Good night all.

    Smoked salmon, cassoulet, mandarins in vodka. Raiding the store cupboard, as I don’t trust myself yet to go shopping.

  87. Ah, no Sunday bits yet, so I shall retire. Goodnight, Gentlefolk and may God bless your slumbers.

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