Saturday 23 July: Tory members face a stark choice of policies on tax and inflation, so which one is justified?

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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564 thoughts on “Saturday 23 July: Tory members face a stark choice of policies on tax and inflation, so which one is justified?”

  1. Good morning all. 10°C outside and it’s dry at the moment, if a bit overcast.

  3. Morning everyone.

    Just a word about Geoff’s post from last night. Quite frankly I don’t know how he does it! The physical demands alone must be quite daunting. He has to have the patience of Job and the stamina of a horse. I could never get up every morning to post this blog; though I do to comment, which just shows the level of pure selfishness that runs through my veins.

    Nottl is an oasis of rationality in a desert of lunacy that allows us to water our particular intellectual camels and fend off both oncoming senility and the Djinns residing in the dunes. It’s much better than chess or crosswords. I can feel my brain muscles flexing as they try to deal with the latest lies and fabrications in the MSM.

    The PTB will get us eventually of course. It may just be the Online Safety Bill that does for us or Geoff accidentally falling under the wheels of the 520 bus one foggy morning. The more powerful a tyranny the less it can bear the slightest criticism. Whatever; a Great Evil has taken over this country and we like our ancestors must do our bit and suffer the consequences whatever they maybe.

    http://disq.us/p/2pzzuzk

    1. Good morning, Araminta and all Nottlers.

      The last two and a half years have confirmed that both the PTB and the equally corrupt MSM are led by, and in the main consist of, intellectual and moral pygmies. Exceptions exist but they are few and far between and many of these appear naïve in the face of the others’ incompetence or veiled wickedness.

  5. The first bit of a very disturbing article from the Gatestone Institute and still we give aid to Pakistan:-

    Death for “Blasphemers” in Pakistan
    by Raymond Ibrahim
    July 17, 2022 at 5:00 am

    Send
    “Muhammad Irfan came to my shop for wheel balancing for his motorbike. I balanced the wheel and demanded my amount of labour as settled between us. Muhammad Irfan refused to give me money and said, ‘I am a follower of Peer Fakhir [a Muslim ascetic] and don’t ask for money from me.'” — Ashfaq Masih, Christian falsely accused of “blasphemy” and sentenced to death by hanging, chuchinchains.ie, July 7, 2022.

    https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18716/death-blasphemers-pakistan

  6. Tory members face a stark choice of policies on tax and inflation, so which one is justified?

    Taxes and inflation although once the most important issue at an election are now secondary to the nation state self harming that we are suffering with Net Zero, covid regulations, immigration and wokism.

    We cannot possibly rebuild a strong economy with that agenda hobbling and hamstringing every economic decision that we make.

    I don’t believe that a PM even has the power to make those changes anymore.
    We build up the importance of a PM far too much.
    Even in the USA President Trump was virtually powerless to prevent the globalist agenda.

  8. Mykolaiv governor will shut down city to root out saboteurs and spies. 23 July 2022.

    The governor of Mykolaiv has pledged to shut down the southern Ukrainian frontier city to “flush out” saboteurs and Russian spies.
    In an interview with The Telegraph, Vitaliy Kim revealed that he intended to close the city for several days to investigate those suspected of collaborating with Russia.

    His vow comes less than a week after Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, sacked his own spy chief amid fears Russian intelligence officers had infiltrated the SBU, Ukraine’s version of MI5 and MI6.

    This is just confirmation that the image of Ukraine as a Unified Democratic State is an MSM fantasy. The country is as divided as South Vietnam at the start of their war; where, as I’m sure Nottlers will remember, they told us the same story until it fell apart.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/07/23/suspect-everybody-mykolaiv-governor-will-shut-city-root-saboteurs/

  10. 354586+up ticks,

    Morning Each,
    Saturday 23 July: Tory members face a stark choice of policies on tax and inflation, so which one is justified?

    To have two such options surely shows what a successful Country destructive campaign they have been running these last three plus decades.

    Thanks to this well supported lab/lib/con coalition and a party before Country voting attitude of the electorate, the daily sound of the whiplash and the touching of the forelock is assuredly on the cards in the near future.

    Many of us saw it coming, many more either intentionally or via political ignorance voted for it.

  12. 354586+ up ticks,

    They would not listen then, PERHAPS they’ll listen now,
    Gerard Batten
    @gjb2021
    ·
    8h
    Britain was never married to the EU. There was no divorce. There is no divorce bill. We don’t owe them a penny! We resoled a Treaty – our right as a sovereign nation.

    Even if the UK had agreed to pay it’s membership contributions for the 7 year budget period in force before we left, that ended in 2020.

    We are not part of the 2020-2027 budget period – we owe the EU NOTHING!

    I laid all this out in detail in my UKIP EU Exit Plan 2017. I don’t suppose any Tory read it.

    Like I keep saying, we haven’t really left. We are on the back burner so a future government can take us back in.

    Gerard Batten
    @gjb2021
    ·
    8h
    Britain was never married to the EU. There was no divorce. There is no divorce bill. We don’t owe them a penny! We resiled a Treaty – our right as a sovereign nation.

    Even if the UK had agreed to pay it’s membership contributions for the 7 year budget period in force before we left, that ended in 2020.

    We are not part of the 2020-2027 budget period – we owe the EU NOTHING!

    I laid all this out in detail in my UKIP EU Exit Plan 2017. I don’t suppose any Tory read it.

    Like I keep saying, we haven’t really left. We are on the back burner so a future government can take us back in.

    previewing
    Brexit: UK’s divorce bill from EU could rise to £42.5bn — BBC News

    A minister says inflation could increase the bill for outstanding UK spending commitments to the EU.

    Come back Gerard. we love you. ( think Shane)

    https://gettr.com/post/p1jcppk81a3

  13. ‘Morning, Peeps.  A delightful 15°C for now, rising to a near-perfect 21° later on.

    SIR – Rishi Sunak’s main line of attack on Liz Truss’s plan for the economy is that it will be inflationary.

    May I remind Mr Sunak that inflation is caused by too much money chasing too few goods and services.

    He did, of course, allow £450 billion of new money to be printed and at the same time shut down virtually all production, thereby predictably flooding the economy with £450 billion worth of inflation.

    I wonder if he ever listened to any of Margaret Thatcher’s regular lectures to leaders of the opposition on how a capitalist economy works.

    Sadly, what Mr Sunak has already done smacks more of socialism to me.

    Tony Rolt
    Pevensey Bay, East Sussex

    Quite right, Mr Rolt.  And over the 13 years of QE the total is around £895bn, so no one should be surprised that inflation is rampant once again.

    2. Bell’s Palsy?
      I take the point and there does appear to be a problem, but posts have more impact if the basics are spelt properly.

  16. SIR – I am horrified by how often the candidates have said that they (using the pronoun I) will do certain things and carry out particular policies. When I taught A-level politics, I taught that Britain had Cabinet government.

    Having just dispensed with the services of a man who believed that he had a personal mandate from the people – a concept completely alien to a parliamentary democracy – we are on the verge of having as prime minister someone with an equally inflated sense of power and importance.

    I taught that the prime minister was primus inter pares. Can we please return to that state of affairs?

    Andrew Moth
    St Ives, Cornwall

    The ‘presidential’ style of government started with Bliar. Johnson’s belief that the 80-seat majority was his because people voted for him was always mainfestly bogus. His part in the grand scheme of things was simply to waste it.

  17. SIR – Oxford University is paying Professor Charles Spence (report, July 22) a good salary to tell us that we would enjoy our food more if we ate with our mouths wide open (disgusting to watch) and with our hands (disgusting to watch and to do).

    Philip Ryder-Davies
    Wickham Market, Suffolk

    Hear, hear!

    1. Hmm, in what savage places beyond the Pale do the inhabitants do that? Rotherham Allahabad, Bradford?

      1. A very pertinent BTL “Why does it take Italian and French authorities minutes to move them but British police 9 hrs national disgrace”.

        1. Loved the way they just tore the hands off the glass… saw a video of someone doing that to a plonker who’d gluedhimself to the road – left his palms on the road and the tw@t in the hat screaming and rolling in pain… Hah!

          1. Well, they can at least claim they had ‘skin in the game’ !

            Morning Paul and all…

  20. There was a thread recently about people being absent from Nottle, (Plum I hope all is getting better), has anyone heard from Garlands recently?

          2. Apparently a series of injections are improving matters.

            Not her fault but what annoys me is we make plans to do wonderful things and then have to cancel. Besides all the other difficulties everyone traveling are experiencing for all sorts of reasons. Most of them bogus.

  21. Good Moaning.
    From the Land of Knickerla MacFishwife.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/07/22/keep-clothes-stop-sexy-strippers-scotland-told/

    “Keep your clothes on and stop being sexy, Scottish strippers told

    Edinburgh Council is using new powers to effectively ban strip clubs … but it has suggested ways around the venues being forced to close

    22 July 2022 • 4:04pm

    Strippers who face losing their jobs because of a ban on adult venues will be able to continue working if they keep their clothes on and stop being sexy, a council has suggested.

    Edinburgh Council is using new powers to effectively ban strip clubs in the Scottish capital, following claims they objectify and harm women, with the city’s four existing venues told they must shut down by April next year.

    The move has prompted a backlash from the venues, who are planning a legal challenge, and some of the women who work as strippers, who say they face being forced out of lucrative and flexible work.

    However, Mandy Watt, the deputy leader of the Labour-run council, claimed that the venues could remain open as long as women did not dance naked.

    Sexual entertainment venues (SEV), which the ban applies to, are defined as places with live performances for profit and “for the sole purpose of sexual stimulation of the audience”.

    ‘Dancers are not workers’

    This is likely to mean that having scantily-clad but not naked dancers performing the same routines would not be enough to escape the ban, and suggests they would have to incorporate elements of dances which were not designed to sexually appealing.

    “Dancers are not workers,” Ms Watt said. “It’s not work, they are performers and it is not in the council’s gift to confer workers’ rights on them. Most are self-employed.

    “I understand concerns about people losing jobs but the venues could apply to stay open. All they need to do is not insist on women dancing naked. They don’t need to do that to operate.”

    She added: “I believe the ban was the right decision because these clubs disempower women. They are not helpful for the view society has of women and their place in the world. I want to see women being treated with respect.”

    Edinburgh Council voted in March to set the maximum number of SEVs at zero. Councillors rejected proposals to set the limit at four, meaning no more would be able to open but those that already existed could continue operating.

    If a legal challenge is not successful, it would be the death knell for the city’s infamous “pubic triangle”, where there are three strip clubs within close proximity to each other.

    Campaigners who called for the venues to be shut down claimed there was a link between strip clubs and the abuse, rape and murder of women because they promoted the objectification of women.

    However, Ms Watt’s comments caused a backlash from sex workers, with a union representing strippers also planning a legal challenge to the council ban.

    ‘She is doing nothing but pushing women into poverty’

    Georgie, a dancer in the city, told the Edinburgh Evening News that stripping was “no different” to other jobs.

    She challenged Ms Watt to suggest another job she could perform with the same “autonomy and freedom” and which she could “live off comfortably with a 12-hour week”.

    She added: “Until she ensures that every single dancer that will be affected by the loss of Edinburgh’s strip clubs has this same equal and matched opportunity for work, in an industry of their choosing, she is doing nothing but pushing women into poverty and taking away their freedom of choice.

    “She may believe she is doing the right thing, but she is at best misguided and at worst using personal bias and morality to speak over the lived experience of women.”

    The SNP Government handed Scottish councils new powers to set a minimum number of SEVs, after officially classifying stripping as a “form of violence against women and girls”.

    Nicola Sturgeon has backed councils who want to use the powers to ban venues, claiming the “dignity and treatment of women” must be respected.”

    1. I suspect thus wull leed to Olga upskirting and checking what’s warrn under kults. 👀

    3. The SNP Government handed Scottish councils new powers to set a minimum number of SEVs, after officially classifying stripping as a “form of
      violence against women and girls”.

      So, councils will be ‘break the law’, if they do not have a minimum number of ‘Strip Joints’, where the stripprs are not allowed to strip.

      I just love it

    1. We’re going to be doing:
      – Another storey extension on the beehives – the little beauties are amazingly productive this summer
      – Fitting skirting board in Firstborn’s sitting room
      – Disposing of old fridge – it’s outside the front door just now, we only need an old sofa there too and it’ll look like we’re Scousers… 😉
      – Trying to fix ride-on garden mower
      Phew! I’m knackered just thinking about it.
      Got the fuel selector valve (side tank / rear tank) in Landy changed yesterday. Have many bruises, and the Landy ate my 12mm short ratchet spanner. Bugger, it’s fallen between a fuel tank and a bulkhead, no access 🙁

      1. Just turn the car upside down – the spanner will fall out. Come on – initiative!!!

      4. What you need is a puberty tool – (A neodymium magnet on a telescopic arm they are wonderful for dropped nuts….!)

        1. I love the names for tools:
          Angry Pliers – those gripper plier-like things with adjustable hinge that allows them to be opened really wide. In Kongsbergm known as “Norlending” (person from North Norway) because they are “stor i kjeftet men ellers nesten ubrukelige” (big-mouthed, but otherwise almost useless).
          The Fcuk-It Tool – anythin unbreakable at hand that can be flung across the workshop in frustration to add emphasis to the shout of “Fcuk It!” – often used when breaking a stud at the back of the engine-block, tight up against the firewall…

          3. It’s their raison d’etre! They were created for one purpose and one purpose only dammit!

          5. Spade::hand and foot operated agricultural tool, fot turning sods over

            Hammer:: hand operated percussion tool for applying a directed force to (hopefully) an inanimate object

            A Rule: An strip of solid material, inscibed with graduated markings ,used to measure or mark dimensions A Ruler is a King or a Queen

        2. I love the names for tools:
          Angry Pliers – those gripper plier-like things with adjustable hinge that allows them to be opened really wide. In Kongsbergm known as “Norlending” (person from North Norway) because they are “stor i kjeftet men ellers nesten ubrukelige” (big-mouthed, but otherwise almost useless).
          The Fcuk-It Tool – anythin unbreakable at hand that can be flung across the workshop in frustration to add emphasis to the shout of “Fcuk It!” – often used when breaking a stud at the back of the engine-block, tight up against the firewall…

      5. I don’t know you had a Landy.
        I had a LWB 2.25 ltr series 3 in Oz it had many extras including an extra 65 litre fuel tank rh rear and same size water tank opposite. I towed our home a 16 x 8 ft caravan along the coastal roads from Adelaide to Gladstone QLD and back in land to Melbourne. Anything between 12 and 18 to the gallon. 🤭🤗
        And elderly Italian I worked with in QLD had a series 2 it had travelled more than 250 thousand miles. With a few repairs along the way of course.

        1. This one is Firstborn’s. Series 3 ex-Norwegian army (cammo repainted by me), a hybrid of a 1-tonner and “ordinary” Series, but with thicker body panels and the 1-tonne chassis, low ratio differentials, 24 volts FFR. This one lost its hard top before FB bought it, but we had to get it a new tailgate (previous owner had cut short the rear door, which was crap, so we fitted the drop-down version), new door tops, great vehicle to drive. You actually have to drive it, not just sit there and steer, as in my VW.

          1. I was on my way home from Adelaide’s Flinders medical center just after our eldest was produced. And the ‘king gear box went up the creek. The cluster layshaft had lost a few cogs.
            Over the next few weeks I had to strip it down, hoist it out, its the size of a mini engine. Get hold of the parts. Fixed it up then went off on our 6 thousand mile journey.

      1. “The human race has only one really effective weapon and that is laughter”

        We should laugh at the woke, it’s why they appear to hate comedians above almost all others.

        1. I’ve never really understood why they’re so utterly humourless. After all, everything Lefties do, think and say is a joke.

    2. My father-in-law used the toast “may you have astonishing good luck” sometimes shortened to “astonishing good luck”, I wonder if he adopted it because of Churchill’s quote

    2. Morning, Delboy.
      Hope Mrs. D is feeling better, and you haven’t succumbed…

  25. From today’s DT…cock-up or conspiracy?

    How France wrecked Britain’s great summer getaway

    Port of Dover bosses claim French border police were warned repeatedly – but ‘just haven’t turned up’

    ByOliver Gill, CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT ; Ewan Somerville and Patrick Sawer, SENIOR NEWS REPORTER
    22 July 2022 • 7:50pm

    Port of Dover officials could hardly believe their eyes when they saw the French border police staffing plans for the first weekend of British summer holidays.

    “About 48 hours ago they dropped their resourcing plans for the weekend. And it’s just completely and utterly inadequate,” a source says. “This is the first opportunity for everyone to get away since Covid. We’ve all been working collectively and collaboratively together.

    “A significant amount of investment has been put in from our side. We put in all their IT and connectivity that they’ve requested in order to be able to facilitate all of this.

    “And they just haven’t turned up.”

    The scenes in and around Dover on Friday were beyond the worst nightmare of port officials, and they did not pull any punches when blaming the Police Aux Frontieres (PAF) for a brutal start to the summer.

    “Woefully inadequate French border resource ruins start to the summer getaway,” was how the port summed up the debacle. 

    Children were spotted running up and down the M20 as a six-hour queue quickly built up. Pets sweltered and the elderly complained of feeling carsick. Some people trapped in cars even stopped drinking water because they were desperate to go to the lavatory.

    Calls to end checks on British soil by French border officials have grown ever louder as an ever-increasing number of migrants successfully cross the English Channel.

    French passport clearance has been conducted by PAF since 2004 under the Le Touquet Treaty, which allows reciprocal border controls of French and UK officials in each other’s countries. In essence, it means that arrivals can drive straight off the ferry and Channel Tunnel without clearing further checks.

    Not only have the French since been accused of turning a blind eye to migrants illegally entering the UK, ports also know that they must keep PAF sweet or face the consequences of a Gallic go-slow, or no-show. Friday was an example of what happens when this strategy goes awry.

    “We work very, very hard in France at every level of the PAF,” one logistics insider says.

    “From the local officers themselves, right through to the director general in Paris, we try to maintain a very, very close working relationship with them to ensure that they understand our needs.”

    In Dover’s case, the French seemed set on thwarting their best-laid plans.

    Millions had been spent on getting ready for the great British getaway. Three new booths had been built, taking the total to 10. Passenger forecasts going into “granular detail” had been shared with the French authorities.

    But only four French officers turned up on Thursday morning, meaning only four of the booths were in operation. As many as nine arrived for one shift on Thursday night, but by then the damage was done – just as Dover braced for its busiest day for more than two years.

    “You then cannot get the throughput through into the port to check in and then on to the vessels. If you actually look at some of the pictures, the check-ins after French border control are empty,” a port source says.

    “Even if you haven’t got the resources at the PAF, they have an ability to reduce the number of checks that they are doing to reduce the transaction time for each vehicle. But they are not only under-resourcing, they are crossing every ‘i’ and dotting every ‘t’.”

    “It’s the Covid checks, it’s the visas, it’s the checking of the financial ability [to travel],” the source adds.

    “They are doing everything they can, it would appear, to make it difficult, which is why everyone is so frustrated.”

     grew from four, to five, to six hours, on Friday morning matters went from bad to worse near Folkestone.

    A major incident was called shortly after 10am following a crash between a lorry and a van between junction 11 and junction 12 of the M20.

    Police closed the motorway, effectively cutting off the Channel Tunnel.

    Shortly before 12pm, a source at the Channel Tunnel terminal said: “I’m looking at the check-in at the moment. I can’t see any cars there. The car parks are emptying their allocation directly.”

    By this point, French police had pledged to send more staff.

    Unfortunately, however, the border officials have a preference for travelling by the Channel Tunnel rather than by ferry, one source said. And this meant those sent on the mercy mission to Dover were also caught up in the M20 closure.
    In the queues on the roads outside Dover, things were going from bad to worse.

    Port authorities and ferry operators urged cars heading to the port to “carry snacks and additional water”.

    Turkish lorry driver Muhammet Turker had been queuing in his HGV in Dover since 6pm on Thursday, and was still waiting to cross the Channel on Friday morning.

    He told reporters that other lorries kept cutting in front of him in the queue: “I’ve been in something like this before, but this is the worst.”

    He added that this chaos was “worse than P&O”, when workers for the ferry company protested against mass lay-offs earlier this year, causing gridlock in Dover.

    One traveller tweeted that they were moving “50 metres per hour”, adding: “At this rate it’ll be 34 hours before I get to the port.”

    Cycling enthusiasts heading to Paris for the climax of the Tour de France were also caught out.

    Sally Turner, 40 from Clitheroe, Lancashire, said: “We have travelled six hours to get here and have been stuck half an hour so far – it’s just one of those things and not an ideal start to the holiday.

    “We were told to arrive early so hopefully we’re nearly there now. We’re going to Paris to watch the end of the Tour de France – luckily we don’t need to be there until Sunday.”

    Brenda Touuse, 65, from Chesterfield, was travelling with her husband Steve, 64, to a family wedding in Italy via a holiday in the Alps first. They were stuck in traffic for five hours.

    “We decided to get down from Derbyshire last night as they recommended getting here two hours early, so we stopped at Faversham overnight, and left the Premier Inn at 8.15am,” she said.

    “We’re still, at 1pm, en route at a standstill trying to get into the port. We thought we’d have loads of time.

    “I’m dying for a wee, so I can’t drink water. It’s just a nightmare, we tried to take a detour but everywhere is blocked. The ferry company has said they’ll get us on the next available crossing, but we were meant to be crossing five minutes ago.”

    Another man, who asked not to be named, said he wasn’t even catching a ferry but had been stuck in gridlocked traffic for four hours.

    The motorist had just been trying to return a hire vehicle to Enterprise Rent-A-Car on the A20 which happens to be on the approach to the terminal.

    Ameziane Ait Yahia, 24, and Andrea Orellana, 22, tried to get to France by Eurostar to visit family but found it was fully booked. 

    The couple, from Montreal, Canada, who have been on holiday in London, travelled down to Dover, Kent hoping they might be able to catch a ferry instead.

    They were shocked to find mayhem at the port – with cars queueing for miles – and said they would not be returning to the coastal town after seeing the disorder.

    Ameziane, an estate agent, said: “We tried to get a train to France but they’re fully booked for the next week so we’ve had to get a ferry.

    “We’d come back to London but not Dover.”

    Graham Stuart, minister for Europe, was clear on where the blame lay.

    “We have been planning for this on the basis this is the biggest peak moment of the entire year. Inevitably every year at this time there are queues and we’ve been working closely with the French authorities because it’s their staff and it’s their ability to cope and process people that is causing the backlog,” he told Sky News.

    “They’ve added three additional booths and we’ve worked closely with them to get those staffed up and our team in Paris led by our ambassador there has worked closely with them.”

    With some 10,500 tourists scheduled to turn up on Saturday, including 148 coaches, the Port of Dover’s chief executive Doug Bannister warned that avoiding day after day of further chaos is not within his gift.

    “We don’t have any control over the border authorities that operate at the port of Dover. We can plead, we can implore, we can suggest and we can discuss but unfortunately that’s the best that we can do,” he told the Telegraph.

    “As far as the port of Dover is concerned we’ve put in place the plans, the resources from our side, our ferry operators are all geared up and we’ve made certain that our resourcing requirements are well known to all those who need to know it.”

    Meanwhile, it is not just holidaymakers who will be hoping that the French border officials relent.

    Jamie, who lives in a house on the A20 approaching the port, said gridlocked traffic has become a regular occurrence in the coastal town. He said the chaos at the ferry terminal is like having “Glastonbury outside your house six times a year.”

    As the row over French officials continue, staff at the UK’s Border Force may feel somewhat aggrieved

    A letter sent by Damian Hinds, security minister hours before he left office following the ousting of Boris Johnson, reveals the altogether different expectations on British officials.

    Border Force staff were ordered into “six-day working and overtime where possible”, Hinds told port and airports: in stark contrast with their French counterparts.

    * * *

    I trust that our Foreign Secretary will take some time off from the hustngs and call in the French ambassodor for a one-way discussion on the French failings.  It is hard not to think that this fiasco is yet another punishment beating for having the audacity to leave the EUSSR.  Their excuse – a technical issue in the tunnel – is about as lame as it gets, bearing in mind that this was resolved hours before some of them failed to arrive.  Next time I suggest we lift the barriers until they appear.

    1. Another aspect. If you have left your dog in your car and popped into a shop for 15 minutes you could be fined arrested or have your window smashed.
      But it’s okay when a family of 6 are stuck in their car for 6 hours in searing heat whilst the French government deliberately dillydally.

    2. The French can hinder people from travelling from Dover to Calais, but can’t do anything to disrupt the flow of illegals travelling in dinghies from France to England.

    3. Well, that’s Liz Truss, so no, that is unlikely.
      Why on Earth did we sign up to an agreement to have French officials check on our side of the Channel? The “Le Touquet” thing was in 2004, during our membership of the EU. Why is it still around?
      When I went to France, as a foot passenger, it all went as quickly as I could walk. No queues. Just on the ferry, off the ferry, on the train. I hardly broke step for Customs or ticket check.
      The same ten years later when the rugby club went to Paris, no delays.
      Games theory and other approaches have pretty well confirmed that a tit for tat approach is the most beneficial, not just lying on your back thinking of Downing Street.

      1. 354586+ up ticks,

        Morning HP,
        Would not be so bad if they laid on theirs backs, they seem to take great pleasure in taking a bend Dover position,

      2. Well… yes. White hall hates Brexit and is using every possible hinderance to crush this country and make life seem so intolerable because of it with the sole intent of forcing us back in to the hated EU

    4. French farming was dependent on the UK giving them monney to do nothing, to plant nothing and to put their feet up while British farmers did all the work and paid all the bills. As farming’s a very big industry in France, understandably they’re upset at having to get of their backsides. They’re also likely annoyed at having to do something for their money.

  26. Good morning NoTTLers, the Red Arrows are due to display a few miles up the Clyde coast over Irvine Beach Park around 13.30.. Sadly. it’s a tad murky out there with the cloudbase struggling to each 4000′, and light rain forecast throughout the day.

        4. They are still going out of Coningsby
          I have yet to live in a house, which is not the ‘turning point’ for warplanes

          1. But, but, but … I was reliably informed by a Nottler the other day that Google said Coningsby was CLOSED 🙂

          2. Is RAF Coningsby still operational?
            41
            Squadron is the Typhoon Operational Evaluation Unit. Coningsby is also
            the home of the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight (BBMF) which operates a
            variety of historic RAF aircraft.

      2. They were temporarily grounded yesterday but, having been inspected for the possible safety issue, are good to go today.

        I watched them landing at Prestwick about 20 minutes ago.

      3. Having passed a safety inspection they are good to go today. Just seen a couple of them fly by my kitchen window prior to landing at Prestwick Airport for some tiffen before the show.

    1. He’s tried to bring almost a whole tree home, and didn’t want to let go of it, but there comes a point where Mongo has simply been told no and to drop it. He doens’t like to, but I’m in charge.

  28. Modern Life…

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/51d36dc9ba5cdadaa588e70f7265395c2918508d8ea6db719131d93af46e0406.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/00f160bc0af4ed9a14a0b30ac116df925c845c7fa3058710cf40d5da171dc235.jpg

    https://twitter.com/BernieSpofforth/status/1550565528091213828?s=20&t=FtNIKzCymATNBcfPfjbIbA

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6a09da5ba9c081bc0860869a5fc9685be8a51a1bef483599ebe687b352e1a574.jpg
    Edit
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/974f27e44e4765d7671cca0a142700d9a2af3f02407002d8bb0db9d2dc19bc3f.jpg

    1. I’ve just been talking to Bruce near Melbourne and although we put the world to rights, again. And it seems their politicians are worse than ours. There was no mention of the rise of Covid in QLD. I have rellies north of Brisbane and they have not mentioned it. Only the floods and lower than usual winter temperatures.

    2. The Ozzie thing is truly Orwellian. It’s extortion and abuse. The “vaccine” does not work. That’s demonstrably proven. Continuing to force it at financial gunpoint is wrong, at every level.

  29. Dutch plans to house refugees on cruise ships described as ‘absurd’ and illegal

    Solution to overcrowded asylum centres angers NGOs, though three ships have already been commissioned

    Three large ships have already been commissioned and one is due to be anchored in Velsen, near IJmuiden in North Holland, although ministers are struggling to find further willing ports. The government has further enraged NGOs by suggesting people from Ukraine will not be put on the ships unlike refugees from elsewhere.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/22/dutch-plans-house-refugees-cruise-ships-netherlands

  30. National Grid in emergency bid to pump more gas to Europe

    National Grid has asked for emergency permission to pump more gas to Europe as it races to fill up storage facilities ahead of a winter crunch.

    Operators are ramping up the capacity of pipelines between Britain and the Netherlands to help boost stocks. National Grid has applied to the Joint Office of Gas Transporters for permission to increase the pressure on the 235km pipeline between Bacton, Norfolk, and Balgzand, Netherlands, so the pipeline can export 34pc more than normal.

    It follows a request from BBL, the Netherlands-based operator of the pipeline, to maximise gas exports to “address existing gas supply shortages which are being experienced in continental Europe”, National Grid said.

    At the moment the French are harassing our holiday makers and the EU is suing us for contravening the Brexit agreement. Why are we helping these people?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/07/22/national-grid-emergency-bid-pump-gas-europe/

    1. The Dutch are ok. They had a few moments with customs a while back but hey ho.

      However, the intent of the EU was to force weld the nations of Europe together and one of those things was a single energy supply – we would all share energy. However, that doesn’t really work. Every nation needs to be self sufficient. The common let’s all be nice’ doesn’t work. Despite the Lefty dream of there being wind in Moldova and them letting us use that electricity in truth it’ll be insufficient and given to their nearest neighbours, with us getting the dregs.

      I don’t quite know why lefties hold to these backward ideas – independence and sufficiency makes for better neighbours. Forcing interdependence is both economically and scientifically ignorant.

      2. No the Dutch are not OK. I had a set-to with the Dutch Embassy at the same time as I wrote to Truss about a 3 week delay in very small small packets going to/coming from Holland. Truss did not reply. The Dutch Embassy replied, “it’s the fault of Brexit”.

        2. It’s all over, nothing to do with Brexit.
          Customs in Norway is ultra-slow too, not just for parcels coming from the UK, but also Europe (we’re not in a customs union with them). Dunno why. Long Covid, perhaps.

          1. It appears to be universal problem; the use of technology and @rse-covering to be seen to be doing something. Probably to justify the creation of hosts of new non-jobs.
            Anecdotally, I ordered some vitamin pills on-line, rather than by phone as I usually do with this particular company. A chunk of my life was wasted; it will be back to phone calls from now on.

          2. The Universal Postal Union predates the EU by about 80 years. At the same time as the Dutch were buggering up my postage to Holland and my receipts from there, I received an ordinary, non-express packet from a shop in Paris 3 days after I placed the order, i.e. Day Three. To my mind it is just shambolic and no one is sorting it. Valuable fresh food exports are rotting between the South of England and the North of France.
            When I was responsible for delivering fresh food products by temperature controlled container lorry from Scotland to Rungis, outside Paris, it took around 15 hours in total. When I sent samples from Berwickshire to customers in Paris, I posted them Special Delivery at 4:30 pm at the Post Office in Duns, and they were on the buyer’s desk by 10am the next morning.
            A good few ears need to be boxed.

      1. No – they wouldn’t. Unless it was to their advantage, like EDF building our nuclear facilities.

  31. UK’s ‘runaway’ health spending costs £10k per household – but produces some of the worst results

    UK health spending is costing around £10,000 per household, with the third highest share of GDP in Europe, a major report has found. It shows that Britain has one of the most costly health systems – and some of the worst outcomes. The study by think tank Civitas suggested almost 50,000 people a year are dying in the UK for want of effective medical intervention.

    The research tracking 19 wealthy countries found that only the United States fared worse. Britain also came second worst for life expectancy, having seen a fall in the last decade while the average lifespan rose across the rest of the developed world.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/07/23/uks-runaway-health-spending-costs-10k-per-household-produces/

    It’s not long since one of our departed controversialists told us that the NHS was one of the most efficient in world…

    2. It’s odd, as Lefties keep saying how we don’t spend a lot on healthcare. These numbers prove them wrong, howeverI think they’re right. The NHS is the most expensive system around, but only about a third of the cost goes on actual healthcare. The rest is wasted on managers and box ticking.

      The fundamental problem is healthcare is run by the state. It collects endless data for government, not for patients. It spends a lot of time on box ticking and adhereing to policy: not on providing a service. Until the customer of the NHS is the patient, not the state, nothing will change and it will continue to consume hundreds of billions a year. It will remain inefficient and ineffective and waiting lists – unheard of in other systems – will continue to grow.

      1. If it were privatised it would still collect endless reams of data. We live in a data driven society these days.

        We don’t spend a lot on healthcare. I can’t read that article so can’t comment on it. No way are we the third biggest spender on healthcare in Europe. No way at all. Germany, France, Netherlands, Belgium, and Switzerland for sure spend more than we do. Then you can add Denmark, Sweden, Luxembourg, Austria, Norway and even Iceland who all spend more than we do.

        The NHS had extra money thrown at it during the pandemic, but so did all those other healthcare systems.

        Here’s what the ONS says, but bear in mind this predates the pandemic…
        https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthcaresystem/articles/howdoesukhealthcarespendingcomparewithothercountries/2019-08-29

      2. When I had the misfortune to be hospitalised, I noticed that the ward staff spent most of their time walking up and down the corridors with reams of paperwork.

    3. There’s a lot of words, all saying the same thing, but I must have missed the link with the numbers actually giving hard facts.

    1. Don’t..just DON’T….. I have boxes of these things none of which match any other…

        2. In addition be hoarding such things for 70+ years, I inherited two such collection from an uncle and my first father-in-law!!!

          When he sorts out my estate, my son will have a great deal of stuff to throw away….

          1. What you could do is make a start and be ruthless and chuck out all those items you think might come in handy one day . I guarantee you won’t miss 99% of the stuff and you’ll soon find out which 1% would have been really useful if you hadn’t chucked it away!

          2. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve thrown stuff away only to need it a short time later 🙁

  33. Nice BTL comment in The Grimes about Untrussworthy:

    “Apart from her being being intellectually challenged, transparently careerist, profligate, unprincipled, unscrupulous and unhinged what have you got against Truss?”

  34. Truss vows to scrap remaining EU laws by end of 2023 risking ‘bonfire of rights’

    Scale and complexity of task would be difficult in context of civil service cuts, say experts

    Dave Penman, head of the FDA union, which represent senior civil servants, said the task had to be seen in the context of plans to get rid of one in five civil service jobs over the next three years.

    Experts and union leaders said Truss’s proposals would be hugely difficult to achieve in the context of civil service cuts, with warnings it could end up becoming a “bonfire of rights”.

    “The more divergence there is in practice, the more checks the EU will want to impose,” said Catherine Barnard, deputy director of the UK in a Changing Europe thinktank. “The more divergence there is, the more trade friction there will be.”

    Barnard, who is professor of EU law at Cambridge University, said there would be concerns about a plan apparently based on the idea that “any retained EU law is bad”.

    “Of course, some of it has worked well,” she said, citing the Equalities Act as an example. The Truss campaign said the Equalities Act would not be included in their plans.

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jul/22/bonfire-of-rights-truss-vows-to-scrap-remaining-eu-laws-by-end-2023

    As if they’d perform the task even if there were no staff cuts. They’d just spin it out for years.

    1. As we’ve increased our civil service staffing by 91,000 since Brexit, I’m quite sure that with all those extra staff all administration

      will be carried out speedily and efficiently.

    1. …and they’re still spreading BS as the truth – but telling the truth is a hate-crime, innit?

    2. All propaganda is believed by some if it’s pushed at them often enough. It’s a basic tenet of marketing a product.

      1. What is truth
        or
        What is propaganda

        Is only dertermined when the war is over.
        In some cases propa gander, has even equaled Truth,
        WEF, BLM, and a Woke World has stopped that happening now freedom of Speech is only allowed to Wokeristas

    3. All propaganda is believed by some if it’s pushed at them often enough. It’s a basic tenet of marketing a product.

    4. Good of the Beeb to completely ignore all the renowned scientists and Climatologists who take the diametrically opposite view on ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming’….

      1. But, but – shirley the science is settled so there can’t be an opposing view? [/sarc]

    5. The report’s reasoning is the same as that of all ‘warmists’: because the Global Climate Coalition (GCC) is made up of oil and coal companies and some of their major customers, anyone who is sceptical about the claims for AGW is in their pay.

    6. Good is bad. Bad is good. The prophet Isaiah warned and Orwell expanded on the theme?

      Remonstrating is a waste of energy. First they answer with irrational statements then when you point out the flaw in their reasoning, they lie with ideas formulated in a vacuum divorced from objective reality. It shurely applies to all aspects of the misbegotten ideology? Climate, sex, disease, tax etc.

  36. Pointed observations from two BTL comments from ZH:

    CapeWrath
    16 hours ago
    Forgive the over used metaphor of the Titanic, but the West is truly going down as quickly as that massive iron ship.

    Our economies have been strip mined by our own banksters (their unfettered corruption ending in disaster in 2008 with every citizen of the West forced to bail these cockroaches out so their looting practices could continue unabated), along with our corporations (out sourcing manufacturing to China to make bigger profits, in turn creating ghost towns across America, the UK and EU full of benefit junkies with no future).

    Our governments are run by a coalition of The Great Towers of Western Usury, The Military Industrial – now combined with a Medical Industrial – Complex, and the WEF. All our once solid institutions from Education to Health Care have been infiltrated by the WEFs Woke Communism. Meantime trillions have been wasted on Western invasions of the Middle East, causing the loss of young servicemen and in total over a million civilian deaths. All for nothing apart from adding to the oil wealth of the demonic Bush family and their cronies, ditto the Clinton mafia.

    The great difference between the West and the East is that the majority of people in Eastern nations still live inside the reality our ancestors endured, as in lives of endless toil just to have a subsistence life style ending well before old age. The majority in the West have become more and more spoilt with every post WWII generation. So now we have millions of Woke Warriors; a vast army of narcissistic spoilt brats that live life inside their social media accounts, where posting daily selfies accompanied by infantile emojis is a vital part of their existence along with the daily need for upvotes. We have millions who don’t work and millions in work who do the bare minimum, hate their own country and in growing numbers aren’t even sure what gender they are.

    The East doesn’t need to fire a single shot at the West because our own governments have been slowly killing all that was best in the West for decades and are now literally killing us with their WEF euthanasia injection project. The West will be eaten for dinner by the East as we drown in government and bankster created debt, younger generations over medicated, too fond of their recreational drugs and youth obesity spiralling out of control. BLM and Rainbow flags are the government chosen national flags now. They are both perfect expressions of a West being sucked down into the stinking bog of its own degeneracy on all fronts. The endless flood of rocket scientist immigrants who follow a Stone Age religion is the rotten cherry on a Western cake that is now putrid.

    MadMax1
    16 hours ago
    So, you’re saying it’s not good?

      1. That is the £64million question. As ogga1 continuously points out we live in a Slobocracy. I guess Neanderthal society is probably the closest parallel especially as they didn’t come up with a plan to deal with the wave of wide awoke Homo Sapiens…. In short I don’t know what the answer is except KBO for the present!

        1. Afternoon Stephen there is no answer in that sense. We are caught up in one of those times that come along in human history where individuals are essentially helpless. All you can do is keep your wits about you and try not to get caught up in any of the Elites projects. Watch out for yourself, family and friends. Bugger everything else!

    2. I’ve heard so many versions of the rocket scientist theory but why would educated professional middle class Africans travel in a rubber dinghy and throw their papers overboard when they could just pick up their passports and take a limo to the airport?

    1. “…the light is in the hands of every single one of us as sovereign individuals, and we must not outsource the responsibility to spread it...”

      I think we NoTTLers do more than our bit to spread it, despite the hands over the ears and the la la las of the great unwashed.

  38. If Steve Bannon is guilty of Contempt of Congress, I would say that he and 200 million Americans are being a little restrained. Congress bears direct responsibility for the state of the public heath of the West, and has facilitated the grift, the corruption and massive damage to the health of millions over the last 5 decades,

    And having got Susam Rosenberg released from her 58 year sentence for blowing up the Capitol building, Congress now runs a kangaroo court to manufacture charges agains those who rightly hold it in total contempt!

    The Red Queen at so many levels…

  39. Self-hating Remainers are blind to the EU’s flaws

    Their obsession with bashing Britain has not wavered, even as their project across the Channel crashes and burns

    ROBERT TOMBS

    It has been obvious for over 20 years what the European Union’s systemic institutional flaw is: the euro itself, designed to lay the groundwork for a federal state. As economists and politicians warned at the time – and were ignored – a single currency in a continent marked by deep economic, cultural and political differences would be a cause of constant tension, because it would enrich some regions and impoverish others.

    As under the old Gold Standard, weaker performing regions would just have to tighten their belts and work harder. Even outside times of crises, this meant increasing inequality and migration, especially of the unemployed young from southern Europe. A German think tank calculated in 2019 that since the introduction of the euro, the average German had gained €23,000, the average Frenchman had lost €56,000, and the average Italian had lost €74,000. Italy’s economy has been stagnant for a generation. All these countries have accumulated huge national debts, while Germany has garnered the world’s biggest trade surpluses.

    It is no surprise that the latest challenge to the EU comes from Italy, where the leader of the nationalist Brothers of Italy seems likely to head a new government replacing that of Mario Draghi, the EU’s man. Across eastern and southern Europe, parties critical of EU policies have been rising. Emmanuel Macron, the EU’s remaining champion, has lost control of parliament. Yet the eurozone straitjacket has so far made protest sterile, as the Greeks discovered when the European Central Bank (ECB) threatened them with financial meltdown.

    Since then, southern European states, above all Italy, have become dependent on the ECB buying their governments’ bonds and thus supplying them with cash. The sums involved are astronomical, and no one knows how long this can continue or who might ultimately foot the bill. Following the resignation of Draghi – former president of the ECB and guarantor of orthodoxy – the yield on Italian debt has risen. In the face of sharply rising eurozone inflation, the ECB delayed raising interest rates because it would increase the debt burden on member states. But now it has had to do so, and also announce more compensatory bond buying.

    How long can it keep the plates spinning? Another eurozone crisis is in the offing. On top of this chronic problem has come the sudden energy crisis following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Germany’s choice to rely on Russian gas has made Putin’s aggression possible and gives him a devastating economic weapon. The EU is contemplating an enforced cut in gas consumption for all its members of more than 10 per cent, including those not dependent on Russia and those pretty indifferent to Ukraine. Will it work? Will it cause further political upheaval? Will the EU cave in to Putin?

    Europe’s fragile economy rests on the shifting foundations of its “green” energy policy, in which Britain is supposedly a leader. Germany has ended nuclear power generation. France and Britain have allowed theirs to wither. So we have made ourselves partly dependent on wind and solar power, but mostly dependent on imported gas.

    Despite promises that wind power will usher in a new era of cheap sustainable energy, basic facts will not go away: a gas-turbine generator small enough to go on the back of a lorry will produce the same electricity, faster and more reliably, than 10 offshore wind turbines the size of the Eiffel Tower. Europe has for some time been deindustrialising and has become dependent on Asia, and especially China, for most of its wind turbines and panels. The promised jobs in green energy have not materialised – except in China, of course, where “green” power equipment is manufactured using cheap energy from coal, so even the planet gets no benefit. (I am optimistically waiting for Extinction Rebellion to glue themselves to the Chinese embassy.) On its present trajectory, Europe will at best jump out of the Russian frying pan into the Chinese fire. Our present problems might then seem minor in comparison.

    In the immediate future, faced with rising inflation, especially in energy and food, increasingly dependent on two aggressive dictatorships, and threatened by the side effects of likely eurozone turbulence, what should Britain do? To ask the question is practically to answer it. Rapidly increase our domestic energy resources and storage capacity. Set up a task force to accelerate modular nuclear power, as was done with Covid vaccines. Diversify our food supplies, which at the moment are overwhelmingly dependent on the EU and road and ferry links. (Why are we still imposing tariffs and quotas on imported food from outside the EU?) Ensure that our financial institutions are as resilient as possible and as distanced as possible from the euro.

    There are signs that some of this is slowly beginning. But there are still many voices in politics and the media that want us to paddle back towards the EU. Project Fear is being revived. The Guardian recently showed remarkable ingenuity by managing to make the good news that manufacturing exports to the EU were increasing into a scare story about our “dependence”. Current affairs magazines such as the New Statesman and Prospect run long articles on the supposed disasters of Brexit.

    Do they not notice what is happening in the EU?

    I have never believed that the EU would suddenly collapse. But I thought it likely that it would gradually run out of political capacity due to lack of popular legitimacy. Many, like myself, have drawn a comparison with the Austro-Hungarian empire: divided, weak but unreformable, aiming at best to maintain (as one of its rulers put it) “a stable level of discontent” among a resigned population. This now seems optimistic. Not only is it unclear whether the EU can carry out its policies, it is unclear that it has any policies, or that there are any that could solve its problems. Its member states follow increasingly diverging paths. The ECB hesitates between unpalatable alternatives. Support for Ukraine is at best ambivalent. As a diplomatic player in the world’s affairs, the EU has practically vanished.

    So why are there still Remainers or Rejoiners? This week I read two new books attacking Brexit, which give a clue. One thing they have in common is that they say nothing at all about Europe or the EU. All their considerable verve is spent in attacking what they see as pathological characteristics of Britishness.

    This has been typical of Remainer discourse since 2016. Those 1930s enthusiasts for communism who visited the Soviet Union came back with descriptions of a workers’ paradise. True, they were blind to the starvation, the repression and the fear, but they did have a vision of what they wanted, however illusory. But I’ve never read a Remainer book (and I have quite a collection) describing how wonderful the EU is: the talents of its Commission, the friendly atmosphere of the Parliament, the spacious motorways built with regional funds.

    I have read many on how contemptible Britain (or rather England) is, how weak, how isolated, how mocked by the foreign press. But not much sign of knowledge of or interest in Europe.

    Their real aim is to discredit the Brexiteers by any means available. At the moment, that even includes supporting tax rises at a time of pressure on modest incomes and probable recession. Would even a collapse of the EU change their minds? No, they would blame it on their great bête noire, Boris Johnson.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/07/22/self-hating-remainers-blind-eus-flaws/

    1. “All these countries have accumulated huge national debts, while Germany has garnered the world’s biggest trade surpluses.”

      Achtkerching!

      1. It was inevitable in any organisation where Germany had infuence. When will people learn that leopards don’t change their spots?

    2. I think it was about 16 months ago I forecast the demise of the Euro and the subsequent implosion of the EU within 2 years – only 8 months more to go. March 2023.

  40. Wordle 399 4/6

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

    1. Ha! 3 🙂

      Wordle 399 3/6

      ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟩
      ⬜⬜⬜🟨🟩
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

      1. Me too.
        Wordle 399 3/6

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

    2. Struggled today.
      Wordle 399 5/6

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

  41. …It follows a request from BBL, the Netherlands-based operator of the pipeline, to maximise gas exports to “address existing gas supply shortages which are being experienced in continental Europe”, National Grid said.

    Here’s an idea. Tell Europe it can have our gas if the French sort out the dinghies and stop trying to FU brexit by being arses about freight and pax channel crossings

  42. China braces for ‘big heat’ day with temperatures set to soar. 23 July 2022.

    Readings above 40C expected on Saturday with some cities at highest alert level and warnings of dam failures due to melting glaciers

    The load on the national power grid could reach a new high this summer as demand for air-conditioning by homes, offices and factories surges, with safe operation facing “severe tests”, the ministry of emergency management warned on Friday.

    “For all of the factories in China and in Shanghai we have regulations that need to be followed,” said Leo Zhang, president of chemical product maker Sika China.

    “Every year we do things to make the work more comfortable, for example giving workers ice-creams when it gets too hot.”

    Panic Chinese style! Ice Creams all round! Lol!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/23/china-braces-for-big-heat-day-with-temperatures-set-to-soar

      1. Surely there’s a fat chance of that helping the CCC to meet the targets of the Climate Change Act 2008. 🤔

    2. Chair of the Climate Change Committee- despite being financially involved with a number of green companies – but naturally no conflict of interest!

    3. Of course, being heavily invested in the green industry and sitting on the climate change committee as chair has no vested interest in the green lie, has he?

      Frankly, the CCC should be disbanded and all green targets abolished and Gummer’s shares and investments seized. They’re tax payers money, after all.

    4. I visited Savoy Place the last time i was in town. Everyone was incredibly polite.

    5. The public should be very wary of the programme for delivering unattainable policies and the very devilsh pursuance of them.

    6. ITV even managed to work climate change into the interview with the Clerk of the Course about the ground today! He said that the average rainfall hadn’t altered much over the last 20 years, but they were experiencing “extreme events” – like a few hot days in summer, presumably.

  44. Can Rishi Sunak heal the NHS. 23 July 2022.

    Rishi Sunak’s big pitch this weekend is to grip the NHS waiting list crisis. It makes political sense, given the terrifying size of these lists now, with some trusts declaring their waits ‘unmanageable’. By the time of the next election, the crisis in the NHS is going to seem monstrous.

    The former chancellor is worried that the surge in people seeking private treatment is ‘privatisation by the back door’. James and I discuss the wider context of this on our latest Coffee House Shots podcast, agreeing that if people feel forced to go private, the underlying public consent for the NHS itself will start to erode.

    That’s not something any government, particularly a Conservative one, really wants to contemplate as it tends to rebound politically on whoever is in power rather than on the health system itself.

    Lol. Like pretty well every other government controlled institution this thing is dying! It would need Jesus Christ himself to raise it Lazarus like from its fate.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/can-rishi-sunak-heal-the-nhs

    1. Currently many doctors doing private work also work for the NHS. NHS facilities, such as operating theatres, are hired out for private treatments.
      I would be quite surprised if there are thousands of qualified doctors sitting around waiting for jobs. where does Mr Sunak propose to find the staff?

      1. Or perhaps it is that many NHS doctors also do private work…gold-plated pensions in the NHS, and then the extra bunce from private work.

  45. I have just been really startled by something that sounded like an express train charging through the house. The noise was intense, it was actually overhead and sounded as though it was 100 ft above the house. I caught a 10th of a second’s glimpse as it disappeared over the nearby tree level, probably at 8,000 ft. It looked remarkably like Concorde, a triangle hurtling across the skies. We live about 8 miles from Duxford. The noise was such that I honestly thought it was coming through the house; I put my hands over Poppies ears. Does anyone have any thoughts as to what it could be?

    1. There’s no Concordes flying nor Vulcans (both delta wings), If it was smaller it’ll be a Typhoon

      2. Today 23 July: “United through flight, we’ll be celebrating 25 years since The American Air Museum in Britain opened to tell the shared story of war love, loss and duty. We’ll also be commemorating the history of Station 357, IWM Duxford’s United States Army Air Force fighter unit name during the Second World War.”

      4. Concordski? [The ridiculed and failed Concorde rip-off, Tupolev Tu144. It was so gross they numbered it 144]

    6. Yo, PM. Twice in the last week, I’ve had a Eurofigter Typhoon fly over here at low altitude. I assume It was involved in Farnborough Air Show, which isn’t far away. The noise is impressive, for want of a better word. Not as loud as a Vulcan, but none of those are flying any more. Flightradar24 doesn’t show anything of that ilk near Duxford around 2.00 pm, but military aircraft rarely appear on the site. I’m guessing (and it is just a guess) Typhoon…

      1. Thanks Geoff, I have reached that conclusion too. I was surprised at its height as I looked out of the window, it honestly sounded at chimney pot level; we heard it well in advance, so we were prepared, louder and louder with that whoooosh as it pushes the air out of the way – and then it seemed to howl as it passed directly over. We used to get patrolling aircraft passing overhead during the cold war era, mid-eighties, which used to, on occasion, frighten the daylights out of me but nothing quite like this.

  47. Just been trying to arrange a mail diversion online for my late mother-in-law’s mail. Apparently I need to register with Royal Mail to do so – sadly every attempt results in them asking me to select a password, at which stage they tell me “we are having technical issues” and ditch the data, asking me to resend the link – after 4 attempts I have given up – appalling service!

    And as for the jobsworth organisation that wants to see birth/marriage/death certificates for anyone remotely related to MiL, words almost fail me, and those that don’t might get me banned!!

    1. Good luck- nothing in the UK works nowadays. It is especially distressing for those suffering a bereavement. This country cares nothing about its real people.

      1. That’s because really poor work that would have got people the sack previously, is just ignored by the companies concerned. We got our own back on one transaction recently, where we withdrew the day before we were due to sign. I made it clear why – I doubt if it will make any difference for their dealings with anyone else.

        It’s a bit like having an MP who can’t be bothered to reply to any mail – all I am able to do with ours now is let him know that he won’t be getting my vote in the next GE.

      2. That’s because really poor work that would have got people the sack previously, is just ignored by the companies concerned. We got our own back on one transaction recently, where we withdrew the day before we were due to sign. I made it clear why – I doubt if it will make any difference for their dealings with anyone else.

        It’s a bit like having an MP who can’t be bothered to reply to any mail – all I am able to do with ours now is let him know that he won’t be getting my vote in the next GE.

    2. We tried redirecting mother in laws mail as well.

      Service with a grump and the process ground to a halt when they demanded a paper copy of one of our utility bills that showed the address.
      I managed to use the hotel computer to print a copy of one of our online bills but that didn’t satisfy them because our mail is delivered to a post office box, not our home and the address on the bill did not match the address we were asking them to deliver to.

      Empathy and a helpful attitude were certainly missing from that extended transaction.

    3. It’s private companies as well.

      We have recently withdrawn from a re-mortgage application, because of the very poor service we have received. Happily we were in the position where we could still withdraw, but what a waste of time and effort!

    4. It’s private companies as well.

      We have recently withdrawn from a re-mortgage application, because of the very poor service we have received. Happily we were in the position where we could still withdraw, but what a waste of time and effort!

    5. Not as bad as the TV tax department. After MOH died I wanted to change the name on the licence; I can’t do so without written permission from the person whose name appears on the licence! I think I’ll leave it and see what happens. Knock once for yes, twice for no!

  48. I suppose I should be grateful. There was an article in a paper, which I didn’t read, about a guy who ate a ham roll five years ago and has been farting ever since.
    Reckon a three day session after a midnight bean feast is not so bad;-) !!

    1. So THAT’S what causes it! I had one when I was little so that explains it

      1. Proud To Fart

        A little old guy goes to the doctor and says, “Doctor I have this problem with gas, but it really doesn’t bother me too much. They never smell and are always silent. As a matter of fact, I’ve farted at least 20 times since I’ve been here in your office. You didn’t know I was farting because they didn’t smell and are silent.”

        The doctor says, “I see. Take these pills and come back to see me next week.”

        The next week the guy goes back, “Doctor,” he says, “I don’t know what the hell you gave me, but now my farts, although still silent, they stink terribly.”

        “Good”, the doctor said. “Now that we’ve cleared up your sinuses, let’s work on your hearing.”

        1. A man goes to his doctor and tells him that every time he moves a limb he passes wind.
          Doc lays him down lifts his arm and the man farts. Doc lifts his head off the pillow….same again, lifts his other arm and then both legs, then opens a cupboard door and brings out a long pole. With a brass attachment. Oh blimey doc he’s says, what are going to to with that ?
          I’m going to open the window it stinks in here.

    4. When I was a kid on holiday in Broadstairs I remember seeing some graffiti on the inside door of the cubicle.
      Oh my lord I’m broken hearted.
      I paid my penny and only farted.

      1. Just like the musical earworm, silly rhymes can run around one’s head when they pop out of the memory bank. Here are two from Perranporth Beach public loos, c1970:

        Here I sit midst toil and vapour
        Cos some bastard’s nicked the paper

        If a man’s brains were as big as his balls
        He wouldn’t be writing on toilet walls

        They amused a small schoolboy at the time…

      3. Mary Rose sat on a pan

        Mary Rose

        Whereon this place you enter
        To give up what you eat
        Please place it in the centre
        And not upon the seat

        Loo graffiti!

          1. It;s no good going to the one next door,
            The crabs in there jump six feet more.

        2. The best I saw was in a public loo in Cardiff, it declared, “Australians are the living proof that Aborigines fcuked kangaroos.”

  50. Hi Plum

    Hope you’re well on the way to recovery, sorry to read you’ve been poorly. We miss you so come back soon.

    Wordle 399 3/6

    🟨⬛🟨⬛🟨
    🟩🟨🟩🟨⬛
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. A sad Bogey FIVE for me …

      Wordle 399 5/6
      ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜
      🟨⬜⬜🟨⬜
      ⬜⬜🟨⬜🟩
      ⬜🟩⬜⬜🟩
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

  52. The Notting Hill Carnival has been cancelled this year but don’t worry,
    you can recreate the entire experience at home by simply banging
    saucepans together for 16 hours, taking a shit in your front garden,
    handing over your wallet to a complete stranger and stabbing yourself!

  53. Anthony Martial (Frog footballer) turns up at Old Trafford with a rucksack.
    The security guard asks him, “What’s in the bag Anthony?” and Martial
    openly replies, “Some drugs, counterfeit tickets and a gun!”
    The security guard says, “Thank fuck for that, I thought you’d brought
    your boots!”

  54. Jose Mourinho gets a letter delivered to his house in Rome.
    Opens it, it’s an electricity bill for £17,000 forwarded on from Manchester United Football Club..
    He rings the club, “I think there’s been a mistake, you sent me a bill but I haven’t worked for you for years.”
    No Jose sorry, but there’s no mistake……
    You were the last person in the trophy room in 2017 and you left the light on!”

  55. Rishi replacing Boris is like being in a care home in the 70s.
    You’re laying on your bed after hearing that Saville won’t be visiting
    this weekend, then you start to hear the sound of a digeridoo outside
    your door…

  56. Just after nations sign treaty giving the WHO superpowers in the event of a global health crisis…………

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/10f1ebfac239944794278baa5bf8fa7d51aa1263de974a917bcd129c6fb87705.jpg

    “The declaration by the WHO is designed to trigger an international response to the outbreak, which could unlock funding and vaccine sharing.”
    Kerching!!
    Edit
    The telegraph monkey pox story had comments open for all of 30 minutes before panic must have ensued and not only were comments closed, but all the comments were deleted.
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/07/23/monkeypox-outbreak-now-global-emergency-says-world-health-organization/
    I suspect BTL weren’t buying it..

      1. Be my echo… I don’t believe a word of any of this BS anymore- not that I believed much to begin with. Neither does MH. Sod them all. Live your life as you wish to and ignore these stupid effwits.

  57. Just heard that the new James Bond will be aimed at the woke brigade. Will star as a man transitioning to a woman.
    The film will be called …
    “Cocktopussy”

    :@(

    1. Me no monkey but i have to eat bananas because of very low potassium levels. I peel them and split them down the middle. Drown them in maple syrup. Two scoops of ice cream covered in caramel sauce and sprinkles. For some reason i can’t taste banana.

          3. That’s sick…
            But you may well be correct, even though there isn’t any evidence of such.

          1. Indonesian Dutch?

            The Indonesian, crap airline, amused me by the translation of their name, GARUDA, as Generally All Right Under Dutch Administration.

          2. Indonesian Dutch?

            The Indonesian, crap airline, amused me by the translation of their name, GARUDA, as Generally All Right Under Dutch Administration.

      2. How long before they claim that the smallpox vaccine many of us received in the 60s and 70s isn’t any good against this “virulent new strain” and we need boosting with their monkey juice instead?

        1. Now that it is proven at least in my eyes, i have no intention of having any of the shit big pharma is pushing/injecting.

    5. Ah, but do you swing through the tree branches? Or indeed, scratch yer armpits;-))

        1. Thanks for that. Shade higher than counter Tenor I suspect.

          Adds new meaning to the old adage:

          “Tarzan swings
          Tarzans falls.
          Tarzan hurts his hairy balls….”

  59. Football again…

    Thomas Tuchel is spotted popping into the famous Lidgate Butchers &
    Charcutier on Holland Park Avenue by an exiting Chelsea fan who says,
    “Thomas, you don’t want to shop in there; I’ve just spent £30 on two
    pork chops!”
    “That’s nothing,” replied Mr Tuchel, “I spent £97.5 million on a Black
    Pudding!”

    1. I sent that to a footie fan (spurs if you are curious) he replied:

      “Love it! A non-vegan joke 😉

      Also a very generous term for the donkey lukaku “

  60. I’ve been trying to get an appointment to see my Doctor for absolutely
    ages. I finally saw him Monday at 2.30 and showed him the rash on my
    scrotum that had been worsening over these last 4 months.
    Miserable git completely ignored me and kept on pushing his trolley
    around Tesco…

  61. Afternoon everyone .

    My laptop has been playing up , and I had to try to sign in everywhere again .

    I am so daft I cannot even remember my passwords or where they are saved . My keyboard is fading , and Moh has had to paint letters on my qwerty.

    Have been trying to catch up with housework , it is a daily struggle .. my new Vax machine has shampooed the carpets quite well .. saved me a fortune on a commercial carpet clean .. My younger sister is arriving on Tuesday.. she has been in England for nearly a week, staying up in North Yorkshire , and has been up on the moors doing stuff with cousins . She also had a seat to watch SA v England nr Durham .. in the big heat !!!

    We still haven’t had any rain , despite heavy rain in other parts of Dorset .

    We can hear the rumble of the contract harvesters .. I always fear for the wildlife as the huge machines work their way through the fields , clouds of dust in the air.

    The season is moving on so quickly, grounds is very dry and the harvested fields (Silage ) are now full of campers .. tents of different shapes and sizes ..

    What idiot would WANT to queue up for hours at Dover in these strange times or even at an airport?.

    1. Hi Belle…a recent joke was…if you can’t remember your password use… Incorrectpassword as your password. :@)

      I expect most of the wildlife will do a runner with all the noise.

      1. Back in the 90’s our IT support group gave the following piece of helpful advice:-

        ‘Your new password should not be trivial or obvious’

        So everyone chose either ‘obvious’ or ‘trivial’.

    2. “and has been up on the moors doing stuff with cousins ”
      Sounds like Cornwall, Belle.

    3. You can buy a plug in keyboard for your laptop:

      Argos £7.99.

      https://www.argos.co.uk/product/9487844?istCompanyId=a74d8886-5df9-4baa-b776-166b3bf9111c&istFeedId=30f62ea9-9626-4cac-97c8-9ff3921f8558&istItemId=pixwamqaa&istBid=t&&cmpid=GS001&_$ja=tsid:59157%7cacid:534-693-8244%7ccid:16577722243%7cagid:132965638685%7ctid:pla-1048338375333%7ccrid:587868959751%7cnw:u%7crnd:17058082847633727871%7cdvc:c%7cadp:%7cmt:%7cloc:1006826&utm_source=Google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=16577722243&utm_term=9487844&utm_content=shopping&utm_custom1=132965638685&utm_custom2=534-693-8244&GPDP=true&gclid=Cj0KCQjwuO6WBhDLARIsAIdeyDJjRmyAJshPd6aWlAqTxwnBINa4FsZVNqURdb9F9FcTWX67-5npxyMaAiYQEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

      1. I have a wireless one for my IPad, I didn’t know you could get them, it was a present from younger son. The on-screen keyboard is a pain, but convenient.

    4. Write them down in a little notebook. Don’t think anyone is going to scramble around for your Nottl password if they break in. Stick words in a different language if you know one.

      1. Did you see the map, Phizzee?

        Yet we are expected to accommodate Africa , little us .. us who are less than the size of the Congo !

        2. This idiotic agreement should not have been with one of the smaller African countries.

          In 2021, population density of Rwanda was 538 people per sq. km.

          The population density of England in 2021 was 434 people per square km,
          The UK is roughly 276
          Puts it into perspective.

          I suspect this was one reason why Rwanda was chosen, just so the pro immigration people could attack the deportations on such grounds

      2. No need Phil the deal cost us 120 million pounds an absolute bargain at £600,000 per deportee………
        What an abject farce these clowns have made of it

        1. Hi Rik. Any recommends on something fantasy/sci-fi ish to read?

          I read today they are making prequels to lord of the rings with Lenny Henry in the cast and a prequel to Game of Thrones. House Targaryen. I’m running out of things that that genre interests me.

  63. “Monkeypox outbreak declared global emergency by World Health Organisation”

    94 comments and 35 minutes later, DT comments were closed.
    Shame, really; they were rather creative.

    Anyone hazard a guess as to why the DT has called time?

        1. Maybe they need a Director General who isn’t accused of genocide by his own country?

        2. Maybe they need a Director General who isn’t accused of genocide by his own country?

      2. 354586+ up ticks,
        Evening SE,

        Yours is the first in 21 hours , could my charm be at fault ?

  65. We have spent the afternoon looking at summer houses, kitchen cabinets and paving stones.
    It was hot and things were getting a bit frayed.
    As I reversed into a dodgy parking space, I asked MB to keep an eye on his side of the car.
    “Where are you going?” he asked.
    I replied “Backwards.”
    There was along silence and I looked at paving slabs on my own.

        1. I know. My neighbour Kaz drives her car like a professional limo driver. Though her reason is low fuel consumption when you drive properly. 68mph on the motorway and smooth gear change at all other points whilst thinking ahead.

          1. At the end of my last 150 mile trip – A roads, B Roads over a delightfully manicured Salisbury Plain, then M3 followed by Duel (sic) Carriage way I was astonished to read the fuel consumption figure of 68.3 mpg. Not bad for a 2 litre 190 bhp motor!

        2. Knew a gorgeous Finnish lass some decades ago. She was a rally driver – missed her audition as a professional because, in a UK-side drive Escort, she grabbed for a gear change with the wrong hand and caught the window-winder not the gearstick – meant she came 3rd IIRC, and they had two places… Drove a Lancia Delta Integrale homologation car, filled with computers, as a daily drive… what a woman!

          2. She was indeed – and a show-jumper as well. She became Pat Moss-Carlson, I seem to recall.

      3. Wimmen normally talk about “reversing Back” which means that you are going forward

        1. In the interests of my health and safety………………………………….

    1. Talking of which…. I never, ever impulse buy but today- oh wowsers. I saw this dress in the shop and simply couldn’t resist it. Bright cerise and a ruched bodice. I have it on now- it is lovely- well I think so.
      It is so woohoo! I feel like a million $$$.

      2. Sometimes you just know something’s perfect! I impulse buy maybe once a decade, amd always love what I’ve bought. Good for you!

    1. Love the blue men! Used to know one of them and get comped – great shows. Thanks.

    3. Didn’t think I would like it, but I did. A bit flashy on the eyes though, enough to spark an epileptic fitttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt.

    4. By a strange coincidence, Moh is watching House of Gucci and Donna Summer came on singing this song, at the moment I read your post….

      Wow, spooky…

  69. ‘Night All

    What an utter farce….

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b413a38a15c4f8472b1ac4be8312fa9c6f5e583d1ff75301bee3d41ae191adbe.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ac8ea265018be27a1d2ffb13f1ba1fdae5e4d271ab5fa068dc4952adab609b9e.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3df586012758fecd570c43839bf1e0d29352aea9cc3be29c54fcddd7b96be6e9.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e56030dd08704bfa857ab3a8f780c1f1db5863a58d8f317cf80e6c2dc2caa356.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/54633c20632572a20c0c3e84e97096eb980d2fd11263743946bd70406e2e7eb0.gif

  70. Re the pollution of our airwaves by people with an agenda to fuck us all up…Fauci was in pharma when HIV/Aids hit. His gain of function covid virus had fractions of that virus. It’s all gaga…https://youtu.be/PLIAp5nr0q0

  71. Just got put on the naughty step on Twitter for failing to mis-spell ‘ivermectin’. I didn’t even mention covid!

    1. Is it one of those 12 hour jobs? The twerps who impose it seem not to understand time zones. So most of the ban happens overnight. I got one from 10 pm to 10 am. All I did was agree with another poster, whose comment stayed up.

      2. No idea. The time you’re banned changes from second to second. Took a week last time.

        “After careful review” my ar… foot!

      3. I replied to you in the notification bit but can’t see it anywhere. That sort of day. Last time I was out for a week. Probably a blessing! 🤣

    3. I’ve been put on the naughty step for quoting directly from Pfizer… !

      I am ploughing through the book, btw.

  72. Just so you don’t fall for this conspiracy theory I thought I should post it here:

    Curious Coincidences: Monkeypox Edition

    1) November 2014: Bill Gates funds Chimerix’s antiviral brincidofovir. The drug is initially tested as a treatment for Ebola. (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-11-19/gates-to-fund-ebola-survivor-blood-chimerix-drug-trials)
    2) March 2021: A war game is conducted in which a terrorist group unleashes weaponized monkeypox at airports on May 15, 2022 (although it takes the world awhile to discover this origin). Vaccines prove ineffective against it. Over 18 months, 3 billion are infected and 270 million die (9% mortality, consistent with the deadlier version of monkeypox and about 200 times deadlier than COVID). (https://www.nti.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/NTI_Paper_BIO-TTX_Final.pdf)
    3) June 2021: Chimerix’s antiviral brincidofovir is approved by the FDA to treat the smallpox family of viruses under the brand name Tembexa. (https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2021/06/04/2242292/0/en/Chimerix-Receives-U-S-Food-and-Drug-Administration-Approval-for-TEMBEXA-brincidofovir-for-the-Treatment-of-Smallpox.html)
    4) September 2021: The US government begins stockpiling another smallpox family antiviral drug, TPOXX, produced by SIGA Technologies. (https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/stock/SIGA-TECHNOLOGIES-INC-10830/news/SIGA-Announces-BARDA-Exercise-of-Procurement-Option-Valued-at-112-5-Million-for-Oral-TPOXX-36410838/). Like COVID vaccines, TPOXX is gene-editing. (https://www.siga.com/wp-content/themes/sigahba/TPOXX-Fact-Sheet.pdf)
    5) November 2021: Bill Gates—who (along with Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum) was also involved in the Event 201 war games of October 2019 that played out exactly as COVID did—warns, ‘what if a bioterrorist brought smallpox to 10 airports?’. (https://news.yahoo.com/bill-gates-warns-smallpox-terror-000100099.html) Most people talking about a hypothetical would say “an airport” or “some airports” rather than a specific number of airports.
    6) May 16, 2022: Tiny research company Chimerix announces it sold the rights to its smallpox antiviral Tembexa to Emergent BioSolutions, a larger firm with more experience in drug mass production. The deal gives Chimerix the right to royalties between 15 and 20% of gross sales if Emergent BioSolutions is able to sell more than 1.7 million treatments. (https://ir.chimerix.com/news-releases/news-release-details/chimerix-announces-sale-tembexa-emergent-biosolutions-3375) The stock price is cut in half as soon as the markets open. Presumably, the market doesn’t believe that more than 1.7 million treatments can ever be sold for an eradicated illness.
    7) May 18, 2022: Various Boston local news outlets report the first case of monkeypox in the US in 2022. (https://www.abc6.com/massachusetts-man-first-confirmed-case-of-monkeypox-in-the-us-this-year/) Cases are also suspected in New York City. (https://nypost.com/2022/05/19/possible-case-of-monkeypox-investigated-in-nyc/ ) Simultaneous outbreaks occur in Canada, several European countries and Australia. (https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/monkeypox-outbreak-europe-largest-ever-region-cases-cross-100-2022-05-20/ ) It rapidly becomes the world’s largest monkeypox outbreak ever and the only one to spread over such a wide area with no direct link to African travel.
    8) May 19, 2022 7:30 AM New York time: SIGA announces the FDA approved an intravenous version of TPOXX for those in emergency care. (https://investor.siga.com/news-releases/news-release-details/siga-receives-approval-fda-intravenous-iv-formulation-tpoxxr)
    9) May 19, 2022 9:30 AM New York time: Markets open and shares of SIGA Technologies (SIGA), Emergent BioSolutions (EBS) and Chimerix (CMRX) explode higher.
    10) May 19, 2022 11:09 AM New York time: Before lunch, the fact checkers publish articles saying any suggestion Bill Gates might be involved in the monkeypox outbreak is a crazy conspiracy theory. (https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-did-bill-gates-predict-monkeypox-outbreak-1708171)

    1. And now Tedros has overruled the WHO committe of experts and decided it’s a global concern. 🙄

  73. SWMBO just cooked a great stir-fry with chicken – washed down by Prosecco Valdizze.
    Magic dinner!
    🙂

          1. Wear rubber pants. They may balloon but you can float out the room and not make others suffer. Unless they have to hunt around for billhooks to drag you back.

          2. That image totally boggled my mind, good job it’s too early for the Saturday G&T!!

          3. Jill. it is always 5 o’clock somewhere 😉 Get stuck in- you can always have an early night;-))

          4. It could happen here again… we had steak, a baked spud for MH plus steamed cabbage. I had half my steak and mixed veg. Was very nice indeed.
            Cabbage following on from beans….

          6. I’ve grown a wonderful crop of summer cabbage here, since it is impossible to obtain it in Sweden (they only understand savoy and white winter cabbage). I’ve already enjoyed some as spring greens and now that the rest have filled out am looking forward to steaming some wedges with fennel, or garlic, or on their own and served with a topping of butter. Mmmmmm!

  75. It’s high time for the police to finally stop recording ‘non-crime hate incidents’

    When the authorities occupy themselves with policing speech that is deemed inappropriate, they are not fighting crime

    MARK JOHNSON

    A knock at the door from police officers, asking you to “check your thinking”, sounds like fiction straight from the pages of a George Orwell novel. Yet over the last 5 years, the police have recorded 120,000 “non-crime hate incidents” in the UK.

    Now, new guidelines [from the College of Policing] say that police should focus on catching criminals rather than policing Twitter debates. It’s extraordinary that this glimpse of sanity should feel like such a breakthrough, but after such an embarrassing stretch of pointless speech-policing – culminating in an ex-police officer being visited at work over entirely lawful views expressed on his Twitter account [the Harry Miller case] – it really is.

    The recording of non-crime hate incidents is a well-intentioned practise emerging in the aftermath of the Macpherson report, which made serious recommendations about tackling racism in policing following the Metropolitan Police’s incompetent investigation of Stephen Lawrence’s murder. It is important for the police to record information that could be used as part of a criminal investigation – but recording thought crimes and mean tweets is a serious mission drift that does nothing to allay concerns about police incompetence.

    The recording of non-crime hate incidents has done nothing to address serious allegations of racism in policing but rather has turned police forces into the agents of Big Brother, keeping lists of people accused of all sorts of trivial transgressions or even expressing unpopular views.

    This has culminated in officers recording an incident of a boy, calling one of his peers, aged 11, “shorty” and putting a mark against the name of a man who whistled the tune of Bob the Builder, where the motivation was interpreted as discriminatory and hateful. Worryingly, these records can be revealed in enhanced DBS checks despite no actual criminal act taking place. With a lack of transparency around the information that is recorded, many people may even not be aware of their alleged wrongdoing.

    Last year, Merseyside Police was forced to apologise after parading an electronic billboard displaying the message “being offensive is an offence”. Thankfully, the police are finally realising that this is not the case. A landmark 1976 European Court of Human Rights ruling regarding free speech in the UK (Handyside v. United Kingdom) found that “freedom of expression…is applicable not only to ‘information’ or ‘ideas’ that are favourably received or regarded as inoffensive or as a matter of indifference, but also to those that offend, shock or disturb the State or any sector of the population.”

    Being offensive alone is not an offence and yet, through the recording of trivial twitter spats and compiling lists of individuals for their micro-aggressions, officers have treated it as such. All of this has a serious chilling effect on free expression. When the state scorns or blacklists those for simply saying the wrong thing, we all feel obliged to self-censor. This has profound consequences for our society because when people are not able to speak freely our horizons shrink.

    In the context of violent crime continuing to rise, police should focus resources away from the Orwellian world of non-criminal transgressions and back to the world of crime. The alternative is a downwards spiral towards a more authoritarian Britain where unfriendly tweets can see you cancelled not just by your peers but also by the state.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/07/22/high-time-police-finally-stop-recording-non-crime-hate-incidents/

    What will the police do with all their spare time?

      2. Don’t hold your breath while waiting for change:

        Deputy Chief Constable Mark Hamilton, the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for hate crime, said: “Policing recognises the importance of recording and responding to non-crime hate incidents to protect the public, given the impact they can have on individuals, communities and families. It is essential that the harm caused by such incidents, and the motivation they can have on others, are recognised. At the same time, we must make sure that our responses are proportionate, so that human rights freedoms are protected, while also safeguarding members of the public.”

        https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/07/21/police-told-focus-catching-criminals-not-twitter-debates/

        1. Aah, poor little snowflake wokes, I hate ’em all and wish ’em dead.

          So, come and knock on my door and see what a tongue-lashing you get and deserve. I’ll be VERY offended.

    1. Nice leatherback, a small one but big enough to take a few fingers off. We helped a similar sized turtle (might have been a green turtle) off of West Africa that was caught in thick rope netting. I saw it go by as I was fishing off the bow, ran up to the bridge and convinced the skipper it would be a good MOB drill (as well as good company PR) to launch the FRC to try to help it. I went with 2 on-shift crew in the boat, found it 2 or 3 miles behind, hauled it onboard upside down and cut it free. Then came the part of getting it back in the water without losing any fingers.

    1. First time I’ve seen it! Great, thought a few, Robert De Niro among ’em, took it very well.

      1. Trouble is Mola, I don’t know what/who he’s talking about – but that’s just me, when I watch a film I’m more interested in the plot and the action – who’s delivering the lines rarely gets on my radar.

        2. I knew a few of the older audience, Pacino, De Niro, Streep etc. He mentioned Weinstein and Epstein and suicide and underage sex stuff so I thought I got his drift.

        3. I knew a few of the older audience, Pacino, De Niro, Streep etc. He mentioned Weinstein and Epstein and suicide and underage sex stuff so I thought I got his drift.

      1. I was trying to remember the name of the series, all I could come up with was International Rescue. Both done by Gerry & Sylvia Anderson?

  79. Ah, I do love a proper Italian deli! Not only did a bit of the lingo and a smile work their usual shrinking magic on the bill, but I’ve just found an unexpected sweet pastry in my bag 😎

    1. I stopped reading after… I do love a proper Italian….;-)
      Gawd, this new dress has gone right to me head- am feeling very wicked. Watch out Y’all!

        1. It is and I am about to be wicked….

          There once was a man from Iraq
          Who had holes down the side of his c**k,
          When he got an erection
          It’d play a selection
          From Johann Sebastion Bach.

          I’ve always loved Bach….

          3. One for the collection, Ann:

            There was a young Bishop of Birmingham,
            Who fcuked all the girls while confirming ’em.
            Amid roars of applause
            He’d haul down their drawers,
            And pump his episcopal sperm in ’em!

          4. In the Garden of Eden sat Adam
            Complacently stroking his madam,
            And he thought with mirth
            That on the whole damned earth
            There were only two balls and he had ’em.

          5. There once was a girl from Cape Cod
            Who prayed for a baby to God
            ‘Twas not the Almighty
            Who crept up her nightie
            ‘Twas the vicar, the dirty old sod!

          7. There was a young lady from Hitchin
            Who scratched at herself in the kitchen
            Her mother said: “Rose,
            ” VD, I suppose?
            or is it your tampax is itchin’?”

          10. There was a young fellow named Perkin
            Who was always jerkin’ his gherkin
            His wife said, “Now Perkin”
            “Stop jerkin’ your gherkin”
            “You’re shirkin’ yer firkin’ ya b*stard’ “

        2. I did indeed dance- after dinner, I put on a little Roxy Music and had a gentle leap around. Might do again in a short while.

        1. I actually haven’t used it yet. I’ve been in for a look around. I’ve been told so many good things about it though. It’s a bit away from the town centre, a shop on its own in a residential street and yet people travel for miles to use it.

          3. I always thought it was a bit of a craphole but now i’m here it actually seems ok. The town centre is pedestrianised, has most shops you would want. The local council seem to do a terrific job at keeping the area clean. Lots of lovely walks. The people are nice. I know there’s a few areas where it’s not so great but the area we’re in is fine.

          4. Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam
            Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.

    3. You are scandaloso and i can’t wait to see you again… ! did you still have your purse? :@)

      1. Purse and keys always in a bad fastened around my waist. I do try to mitigate my forgetfulness!

        Drawing nearer; on to East Sussex tomorrow, with any luck.

  80. Hmm – perhaps some Tour de France experts can offer comment on Wout van Aert winning the time trail some 40 seconds faster than the world champion; OK van Aert is a very good time trialist but he’s had 3 weeks of hard work as a domestique, during which time he’s also out-sprinted world class sprinters and out-climbed world class climbers – it all seems a bit too good to be true??

    1. Now, if he were a Russian from a few decades ago. or cousin of Trumpet playing Louis, he may may have called for divine help from some Pill agers

  81. Evening, all. It won’t matter what choice the Tory members make, the usual business (of ruining the country) will continue as usual.

    1. Evening Conners- I am sorry that I have lowered the tone here before you got here. And it might get worse;-))

          1. You know I’m vertically challenged; I would never have reached it otherwise 🙂

  82. Took stepson out to Alfreton today for a few hours and am now heading to bed.
    Good night all.

    3. I think he’s more a stunted 6 or 7, but so sad. Hopefully he had a wee bit of fun in his probably very short life.

    2. Apologies, Sue.
      There was a sick chimp from Havana,
      Who loved to stick his banana,
      In the depths of the bum,
      Of his elderly chum,
      Who hailed from the town of Savannah.

      Composed because of earlier Limerick contributions,

  87. Good evening Nottlers! I offer this, the first of a number of poems I recorded of Nick Snowden Willey to accompany a book in 2019 of his early work, as a momentary compensation for the unrelieved sordidness of the spectacle we are witnessing of our country. All is not not lost, but it is being a bit drowned out by the fatuousness of Mother Truss and her fellow goblins. Life remains wondrous and we shall never surrender it.

    https://tarableu.substack.com/p/liminal-green?sd=pf

  88. And I know it is Saturday, but I am am tired and so off to bedfordshire.
    Sleep well y’all and I will try to be better behaved tomorrow. Please do not hold your breath….
    Me and my new dress are going upstairs.

  91. Just got back from having dinner with the neighbours. Nice evening with plenty of food wine & chat.

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