382 thoughts on “Saturday 23 November: The Labour political elite actively wishes harm to the prosperous”

  2. Saturday? Skronk! I came looking for Friday’s comments. Proof I am up far too late, but then, I’ve been asleep most of the afternoon.

      1. Morning Minty/Oberst

        Here’s the Guardianistas’ predictably pukeworthy sample response

        ‘Watching it was painful’: readers on the Question Time special

        You reacted in the comments to Johnson, Corbyn, Sturgeon and Swinson on the BBC
        https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/22/watching-it-was-painful-readers-on-the-question-time-special

        Evidently Swinson went down in flames; otherwise nothing much
        https://thumbs-prod.si-cdn.com/7w29khlx7h6pMvea7WDuysAyGao=/800×600/filters:no_upscale()/https://public-media.si-cdn.com/filer/b6/11/b611d42c-35bb-4aec-a220-34c4a6ec7afe/nasm-si-98-15068.jpg

        1. ‘Morning, Citroen, thank you for the links although the Guardian splutter was predictable and equally painful to read.

    3. It was on in the other room so I heard some of it, Bruce seemed to change personality when Boris came on and turned from a nice pleasant person into a screaming harridan, on the whole it seemed another waste of time and just showed what lightweight airheads we have at the top in politics and the bias of the mainstream media.
      Worst of all no Farage for some reason, why Sturgeon was on is a bit of a mystery as she only represents a tiny portion of the UKs’ population

    4. The verdict, I read, is that no one should underestimate the intelligence of Joe Public and his missus.

    5. Snap. These sessions are absolutely useless.
      Let’s hope that this relatively new phenomenon dies a natural death in the face of its total uselessness.

  10. SIR – Victor Zhang, as vice president of Huawei Group, argues that Tom Tugendhat was incorrect in his claim that the use of Huawei 5G equipment could put Britain’s security at risk (Letters, November 21).

    Network operators do not, as he claims, use multiple suppliers “to provide security and resilience”. They do so because each of the suppliers’ “boxes” does a different job, and all of them are needed to provide the total network. Resilience is provided in the design of a network, which has multiple paths in order to be able to bypass any faulty element.

    Any of the boxes in a network could carry hardware or software modules that, when alerted, can do jobs that are quite different from what the box is meant to do. One of these jobs could simply be to close the network down.

    Geoffrey Reynolds
    Camborne, Cornwall

    If only our leaders understood this stuff….

  11. SIR – As a GP, I was visited recently by a pregnant lady, who wanted me to check her blood pressure before she travelled home to America.

    As she was an American citizen, I asked her if she was entitled to free NHS care. She told me the hospital was happy and to mind my own business.

    I contacted the hospital, which said that, as she was now in “the system”, I must let the matter drop. Is this an indicator of how poorly NHS managers look after the money they receive from British taxpayers?

    Dr Nick Summerton
    Brough, East Yorkshire

    Dr Nick could have told the yankee broad that, as a taxpayer, it was his business.

      2. Excellent!!

        “As a kid, I was used to sharing my living space with patients, because Dad ran his practice from our house. I was born at home. I’d come in from school, and there would be ‘an aggrievance’ of patients in our front room/their waiting room. When I got into the kitchen and opened the fridge, it wasn’t unusual to see a patient’s urine sample in storage. The upside of all this was I got fantastic herd immunity. I was rarely ill.”

        Morning Eddy

        1. One of the reasons the Tories won’t be getting my cross in December is that they’ve had me cross for many moons.

          What have they done about NHS reform, our massive debt, immigration, etc., etc?

  12. 08:15. Still dark. Cloudy & wet. Ugg.
    Morning, peeps. Furry thuds outside so the cats must be wrestling.

    1. Morning Ob.

      Freddy the fox woke me up at half four – barking like billyo (outside, I should add).

    1. If more politicians simply refused to answer certain questions, they might gain more respect.

      Morning Bob.

    2. What an odious toad Ian Dale is.

      In this clip he seems completely unaware that he has revealed himself to be a total idiot.

      1. “[Dale] … has revealed himself to be a total idiot.”

        Particularly by suggesting that objections to gay marriage are held solely by the ‘religious’.

    2. Are the mullahs going to receive a right mullering [slang] from the people? One lives in hope.

      1. We’ll see. Or is it another abortive coup, like Turkey a couple of years back?
        Probably fomented by agents provocateurs.

        1. The old, incite a revolution and then come down even harder, scam. If the mullahs’ belief system is so perfect why do they have to be repressive and controlling? Dictators, religious or otherwise, are cast from the same mould.

        3. It is generally thought in Turkey that the coup was organised by Erdogan himself to give him the excuse to grab more control over his political opponents as well as ordinary people.

      2. ‘Twould be good, Korky, to see the Mullahs and Imams all taken out to receive 100 lashes each, as per the clip shewn here recently.

        Those lashes, preferably administered by the women-folk, while fluttering their own, made-up, lashes.

  15. For those without Premium….

    As one BTL comment points out, we have reached ‘Peak Watermelon’

    The Tories should not have signed up to Corbyn’s alarmist climate ‘emergency’
    CHARLES MOORE – 22 NOVEMBER 2019 • 9:30PM

    You have already been told that Jeremy Corbyn’s new Labour general election manifesto closely resembles Michael Foot’s manifesto of 1983, when Labour crashed to its biggest-ever postwar defeat.

    You have been told right. Mr Corbyn, one must remember, is rather old. He came into Parliament in that election and has dreamed ever since of revenge on Margaret Thatcher. Labour is using the phrase “irreversible shift” in this campaign. It deliberately echoes Mr Corbyn’s hero, Tony Benn, who spoke of an “irreversible shift in the balance of power and wealth in favour of working people and their families”. By “working people and their families”, Benn/Corbyn meant/mean “the state”.

    There are two important differences between 1983 and now, however. The first concerns climate change, a subject not mentioned then. Shakespeare’s Macbeth speaks of “making the green one red”. Mr Corbyn is trying to make the red one green. His project for state control of the economy in 2019 appears under the title of “A Green Industrial Revolution”. This makes it more enticing to young voters than all that old-fashioned stuff about the commanding heights of industry.

    The other important difference is that, in 1983, the Conservatives offered a clear, confident approach which overwhelmed the Labour one. This time, on all green subjects, they do not. They have accepted the alarmist premises of the other side.

    On May 1 this year, Parliament voted, without a division, to declare a “climate emergency”, on a motion tabled by Mr Corbyn. The then environment secretary, Michael Gove, agreed that there was a climate emergency, but said he did not like the idea of declaring one. The Tory Government put up no fight.

    An emergency has legal meaning. The Civil Contingencies Act of 2004 defines it as “a situation or series of events that threatens or causes serious damage to human welfare, the environment or security in the United Kingdom”, and the Cabinet Office applies this to “no-notice or short-notice emergencies requiring UK central government engagement”. With an emergency Act go emergency powers by which the Government can remove normal freedoms.

    This, in effect, is what Mr Corbyn proposes to do. Yet the Tories, though they repudiate him, go into this election signed up to the idea that the end of the world is nigh. When they make arrangements to prevent this (“zero carbon”) by 2050, they look weak beside the zealots who want to move even faster. It should be 2030, shouts Labour (with a get-out clause slipped in to please its carbon-emitting trade union backers). The Tories won’t kill new petrol cars till 2040, whereas Labour will do it by 2030. And so on.

    Early in this election campaign, I emerged from Sloane Square Tube station to be presented with a Conservative Party leaflet proudly announcing that “Kensington & Chelsea Council has declared a Climate Emergency”. I gave the same hollow laugh as in the Eighties when Mr Corbyn’s own borough of Islington declared itself a nuclear-free zone. The politics of posturing has triumphed.

    The Labour manifesto contains a long list of stupefyingly expensive and intrusive green actions – a windfall tax on oil firms (where is the “windfall” when their chief source of income is under unprecedented attack?), a £250 billion green transformation fund, a delisting of all naughty CO2‑producing companies from the London Stock Exchange, a carbon-neutralising of “almost all of the UK’s 27 million homes”, the nationalisation of all energy “supply arms”, 3 per cent of GDP to be spent on green research and development by 2030, “one million well-paid, unionised green jobs”, and attacks on taxis and private hire.

    Just as the Leave campaign put £350 million a week for the NHS on the side of a bus, the Labour manifesto writes “100 per cent electric” on the picture of the back of a bus which heads its transport section. It even promises “enough solar panels to cover 22,000 football pitches”. I propose to spin this as a green attempt to suppress our national game.

    All of the above spell doom to prosperity, choice and affordable, reliable energy supply. But the thing to focus on is the ideology underneath. Here are the key sentences that disclose the Labour manifesto’s underlying beliefs: “2019 saw the blossoming of a global movement calling on politicians to wake up and act on the climate and environmental emergency. Labour welcomed that movement and, as a government in waiting, we have turned its demands into detailed, credible plans for real change.”

    The global movement is not named. It is Extinction Rebellion (XR). Its doctrines and origins are detailed in a pamphlet published earlier this year by Policy Exchange, Extremism Rebellion. XR is the classic child (“child” is the right word: think how the movement exploits Greta Thunberg) of protest as a way of life. Not only is it anti-Western and anti-capitalist, XR is also a sort of death cult. It protests at extinction, yet is in love with death for the cause.

    Listen to online talks by one of its two founders, Dr Gail Bradbrook. Punctuated by pauses – “Let’s just breathe, while we can” – Dr Bradbrook teaches that “hope is the creature of privilege”. Good people should “grieve” instead. She calls for a few hundred “upstanders” who will sacrifice themselves, thus moving millions to act, because “so much in humanity is about emotion” rather than arguments. “It feels really different when you break the law, especially when you get away with it.” Thus will the righteous few take power and save the planet through “world government to introduce world mobilisation”.

    XR’s co-founder is Roger Hallam. Like Dr Bradbrook, he thinks that “emotionality is the only way you can get people to do something”. In the same week as Labour’s manifesto launch, he gave an interview to the leading German paper, Die Zeit. In it, he accused the Germans of overplaying the Holocaust. He dismissed it as “just another f—ery in human history”.

    Mr Hallam later half-apologised by admitting the “unimaginable suffering” of the Jews, but went on to justify himself. “It is happening again, on a far greater scale and in plain sight. The global north is pumping lethal levels of CO2 into the atmosphere and simultaneously erecting ever greater barriers to immigration, turning whole regions of the world into death zones… We are allowing our governments to willingly, and in full knowledge of the science, engage in genocide of our young people and those in the global south by refusing to take emergency action to reduce carbon emissions.”

    That is a good summary of XR’s attitudes – their extremism, “emotionality” and hatred of our civilisation. It explains why those fine people trying to get to work at Canning Town Tube station pulled them off the train roof. Yet this extremism, emotionality and hatred are what Mr Corbyn’s Labour calls “a blossoming”, and what no political parties, even the Tories, dare challenge at their roots.

    Climate change is indeed a serious matter, but not an emergency. Its dangers can be mitigated. If you think that, and that steady economic growth is not to be thrown away on undatable speculation about catastrophe, or out of crazy guilt about climate “genocide”, no mainstream party speaks for you at this election.

    Just now, politicians think there are lots of votes in green panic. They will learn too late that they are exaggerating. Mr Corbyn’s XR apocalypse is even more of a phantasm than Mr Foot’s fear of nuclear holocaust which had him so roundly beaten in 1983. Yet no one in power dare say so.

    2. Gail Bradbrook
      From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

      30 April 1972 (age 47)
      Nationality British
      Alma mater University of Manchester
      Known for Co-founder of Extinction Rebellion
      Gail Marie Bradbrook (born 30 April 1972) is a co-founder of the environmental social movement Extinction Rebellion.[1][2][3]

      Early life and career
      Bradbrook was born in 1972 and grew up in South Elmsall in Yorkshire. Her father worked at a mine in South Kirkby. She studied molecular biophysics at the University of Manchester and carried on with a PhD. She carried out post-doctoral work in India and France.[1][4]

      Dr Gail Bradbrook: Wiki

      From 2003 to 2017 she was ‘director of strategy’ at Citizens Online, an organisation promoting wider internet access for disabled users, including launching a ‘Fix the Web’ campaign in November 2010.[5]

      Activism
      An interest in animal rights led to Bradbrook joining the Green Party at the age of 14.[6]

      She has been involved in various campaigning groups in Stroud, including a 2010 to 2013 period as voluntary director of Transition Stroud,[7][8] an anti-fracking protest,[9] various actions in opposition to the building of a local incinerator,[10][11] including a naked protest,[12] and an early Extinction Rebellion roadblock in Merrywalks, Stroud.[13] In 2015, with George Barda, she set up the group Compassionate Revolution[14][15][16] (which morphed into Rising Up!, out of which came Extinction Rebellion).[4] “Bradbrook had been involved in the Occupy movement and campaigns around peak oil, but they failed to take off.“[17]

      In 2016, she went on a psychedelic retreat to Costa Rica, “where she took ayahuasca, iboga and kambo, in search of some clarity in her work.”[17][18] That experience “made her change her approach” to campaigning.[18] Soon after returning she met Roger Hallam and together they came up with Extinction Rebellion.[17][18]

      She is protesting to raise awareness of the dangers from anthropogenic climate change and believes that only civil disobedience on a large scale can bring about the change that is needed.[19]

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

      Thanks a million Costa Rica

    3. Back to this: no wonder Christopher Robin became a reclusive bookseller.

      The Charcoal Burner has tales to tell.
      He lives in the forest, alone in the forest;
      he sits in the forest, alone in the forest.
      And the sun comes slanting between the trees,
      and rabbits come up, and they give him good morning,
      and rabbits come up and say, ‘beautiful morning’…
      And the moon swings clear of the tall black trees
      and owls fly over and wish him goodnight,
      quietly over to wish him goodnight…
      And he sits and thinks of the things they know,
      he and the forest, alone together —
      the springs that come and the summers that go,
      autumn dew on bracken and heather,
      the drip of the forest beneath the snow…
      All the things they have seen,
      all the things they have heard:
      an April sky swept clean and the song of a bird…
      Oh, the Charcoal Burner has tales to tell!
      and he lives in the forest and knows us well.

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/891e39bc17541ebf25d4a15f89572cb6c355bae181c0a69bf0d18f0f88a3ee0f.jpg

    4. Roger Hallam seems to be a world class pillock, and not very hot on actual science (or history) either!

    5. It would get to the point where electricity was so expensive that it would be a status symbol, as it was in the early days of electrification where some houses had it and others did not.

      “Daddy? Why are we using candles when they have electric lights on over there?” “Ahh they are rich buggers, son. They are flaunting their wealth that is all. Now bow down at Gretas shrine and thank her for the daily ration of bread that she provides.”

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a61f47dc8a9cae54586644001d8190921729760bbb62134b5d4fa950c7eec2ab.jpg

  16. Morning, Campers: Michael Deacon’s writing can be of variable quality, but I enjoyed this.
    His comment particularly applies to Look East; but then the Beeb only has to nip out of the front door to mingle with the great unwashed.

    “Earlier this year, I wrote a column about the increasing use of vox pops in TV news bulletins. During the current election campaign, however, the bulletins seem to be stuffed with even more vox pops than ever. But why do we think this is?

    Once again, we took to the streets to find out.

    “I think vox pops are brilliant,” said Tristram Fatuous, 33, a TV news producer from London. “All right, so they’re almost without exception clichéd, banal, predictable and of absolutely no value to the viewer. But on the other hand, they’re an extremely cheap and easy way to fill up lots of time on air. And in the age of 24-hour news, that’s what really counts.”

    “Vox pops are important,” said Tarquin Ludicrous, 33, a TV news producer from London. “If we didn’t have vox pops, we’d have to do things like reporting and expert analysis. That sort of stuff is terribly old-fashioned and out of date. Much better just to spend the afternoon thrusting a microphone under the noses of startled shoppers and asking them whether they think politicians should ‘just get on with it’. In fact, there’s only one thing I like better than vox pops, and that’s ringing up a 22-year-old imbecile from a Left-wing blog and a 22-year-old imbecile from a Right-wing blog, and then offering them £75 each to come into the studio and have a confected row about a subject neither of them knows the first thing about.”

    “I would always defend the use of vox pops,” said Tamara Vacuous, 33, a TV news producer from London. “Ultimately in the future the news won’t contain any news. It’ll just be a solid half-hour of market stall holders in Stoke being pestered for their views on Brexit. By 2025 we estimate that it will be impossible to buy anything from a British market stall, because every single one of them will be permanently surrounded by a BBC news crew.”

    “As far as I can see, there’s only one problem with vox pops,” said Tabitha Bumptious, 33, a TV news producer from London. “Basically: we’ve now done so many vox pops, there’s no one left to vox pop. We’re going to have to start vox popping each other. Here, you wouldn’t mind telling us what you think of Labour’s plans for a second homes tax, would you?”

      1. 🙂 I once tried D&B. Just the once.
        Like Johnson’s comment on the bravery of the first man to eat an oyster, I wondered who on earth thought of mixing the two plants into a brew.
        Good Moaning.

        3. One of the nicest new drinks that I have had in the past few years is Fentiman’s Victorian Lemonade. It is made in a traditional way, so they say, and has a real BITE to it. I gave it to my parents to try and they said it tasted like the lemonade that they had when they were children.

          They also do a very nice cola drink, which is heaven on a hot summers day. You can find them in many places from Sainsburys and Waitrose to some of the bigger Tesco’s and Asda’s. I order them from Amazon when the need calls to me. They are expensive little bottles that work out to be 10+ times the price of “mainstream” soft drinks, weight for weight, but they are worth it.

          https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/68d71ab88fb1c8d39cd60ca1ed9cd9c5a351dfa8401caf00b37018600a0b747d.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0675419f0e2605d4dc314599919c245175f276103050212710c90397170aecde.jpg

          1. I’ve been a Fentiman’s fan for a couple of decades.
            Having jobs where excessive drinking off duty was not a good idea, I used to welcome seeing their ginger beer behind the bar!

    2. I have given up reading Michael Deacon’s articles just as I have given up reading Bryony Gordon’s and William Hague’s.

      To borrow (as I have been known to do) from Shakespeare’s Much Ado

      “I wonder that you will still be talking, Mssrs Deacon, Hague and Gordon (replacing Signor Benedick.) Nobody marks you.”

  18. Open Society’s “hub office” might well be officially listed as being in Millbank, but as virtually all British government policies since at least 1997 have been Open Society compliant, doesn’t it look more like being at 10 Downing Street ?

      1. Well dear, that’s your choice, not ours. You don’t have to wear that thing. In fact, choosing to is deeply racist, a rejection of this country, a deliberate division between us and you, a complete rejection of our culture in favour of your own.

  20. Moh and I are now convinced that the BBC are the real political party in charge of the country , lifestyle changers , influencers, money grabbers .

    We we were furious and unimpressed by the constant interruptions by Fiona Bruce when the Prime Minister took questions and spoke ( he hardly managed to get a sentence out )

  21. The great thing about Open Society is that they’re not shy, they don’t hide their ambitions and how they’re achieving them.

    If you study their website and read their aims, goals and mission statement, it’s clear they want Europe to be run their way and according to their values.

    If you then study what has actually happened in Europe for at least 20 years insofar as EU and national policies are concerned, what do you find ?

    About 90% success for Open Society. Only Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic look resistant.

    Don’t just rely on me though, check it out for yourself !

    2. Mandelslime epitomises all that has gone wrong in politics since the foul and inadequate John Major became leader of the Conservative Party and Tony Blair became leader of Labour.

      1. Morning R,
        Coinciding with the foul creation of the eu &
        those you mention, & many more stemming from the evil, odious spawn of eddy heath.
        Plus I do maintain my feelings that the followers, members, voters of this repeated year on year of political tripe parties must share a large portion of the blame of what evil consequences have resulted from their “party before evil consequences” mode of voting.

    3. It would be an utter delight if Mandelson were convicted, tried and jailed due to this Epstein thing.

      Nothing would bring me more joy than to see that corrupt, stinking verminous effluent dragged to prison.

      1. What a shame she did not join the Brexit Party.

        She, more than anyone else, would have helped win for TBP Labour seats in constituencies which would never vote for the Conservatives and where the majority wanted to leave the EU.

        I am sure that Farage has given in far too easily to Johnson – he should never have agreed not to field candidates in constituencies where the Conservative candidate is a committed and proven remainer

        1. Kate would have been excellent aboard TBP if only for her old mum!

          Not sure what Farage is up to however he’s our only hope..

        2. Kate would have been excellent aboard TBP if only for her old mum!

          Not sure what Farage is up to however he’s our only hope..

    2. For NoTTLers without Premium

      John McDonnell is a ‘nasty, devious figure behind the scenes’, Kate Hoey warns, as she steps down
      Allison Pearson – 23 NOVEMBER 2019 • 7:00AM

      Blimey, Kate Hoey is a tough cookie. I suppose she’s had to be as one of the handful of Labour MPs to campaign for Leave in the referendum and to vote with the Government ever since to save Brexit from castration by a thousand amendments.

      She admits she really likes Boris (she was his sports adviser when he was Mayor of London), and she doesn’t think Nigel Farage is a racist. For these wicked heresies, the former sports minister has been called traitor and received numerous death threats from far-Left trolls: “One wrote that he was coming to burn me.”

      But Hoey is from Ulster where intimidation was once a way of life. “I don’t think you should make a big thing of it,” she shrugs.

      Still, I can see that she is pretty emotional when we meet for afternoon tea in Westminster. Parliament has been Hoey’s place of work (and extended family; she never married) since she was elected MP for Vauxhall, in south London, in 1989. This is her last day. In a couple of hours, she will drive her beloved old Mini through the gates for the final time, waving goodbye to her mates in Security. (A natural chattiness and lack of airs means she has more friends on the staff than among MPs, many of whom she finds arrogant, “with very little to be arrogant about”.) Before she goes, she wants to talk about the conspiracy against Brexit, which she promised her dying mother would come to pass.

      “My mum was driving the day that she died in her 96th year,” she says. “Back home [at the small family farm in County Antrim], she had a massive stroke, and I happened to be there, which was lovely, because I wouldn’t have wanted her to go without me. It was just after the referendum and she’d been listening to the news and she was sad. ‘You know, Catherine, I don’t think they’ll ever let us leave.’ And I said: ‘Oh, Mummy, don’t be silly. We’re in a democracy, we voted to leave.’ Well, I think she’d be turning in her grave now.”

      Hoey wells up at the memory, but she quickly fans away the tears and musters a smile for the waitress. It may be 30 years since she first entered the Commons (she was one of only 41 women MPs), but with her delicate features and exuberant pixie-burst of curls, she looks amazingly youthful. Hard to believe she’s 73. Neither time nor gravity have taken their toll on the lithe frame of the 1966 Northern Ireland women’s high-jump champion. Hoey won the title when she was at PE college in Belfast. “But Mary Peters was injured, probably the only reason I won!” (Often, a surprising diffidence prevents her owning her achievements. Like most Christian-raised women of her generation, Hoey is afraid of appearing “big-headed”.)

      She retains many of the conservative-with-a-small-c values of her background. Last year, she said women MPs should stop dressing so casually; today, she is wearing an elegant tweedy suit with a nipped in waist. It has a jaunty, hunting air, which suits this sometime chairman of the Countryside Alliance. Foxhunting is one of the many issues on which the fiercely libertarian Hoey has clashed with her party. Grammar schools are another. A proud product of the Royal (her emphasis) Belfast Academy, she feels blessed to have had such a brilliant education alongside girls from “big houses and shipyard homes”.

      “I do not believe in banning things, if at all possible,” she says. “Coming from a farming background, I know foxes have to be managed and, to me, hunting was as good a way as any.” Labour didn’t agree: “They thought it was all posh people on horses.”

      Her last, most bitter quarrel with the party has seen Hoey sticking up for millions of Labour Leave voters. Famously, in 2016, she was photographed aboard the Fishing for Leave boat on the Thames alongside Nigel Farage. The Lib Dems, who ran “an absolutely horrible campaign” against her in Vauxhall, put the picture on their 2017 general election leaflets. Hoey was worried about the backlash, but reaction on the doorstep was surprisingly positive. “People on the estates don’t have that instinctive Farage aversion that snobbier people have,” she says. Amazingly, Hoey doubled her majority in a Remain area, a testament to how much she was admired as a local MP.

      She is disgusted that colleagues like Yvette Cooper, who represent strong Brexit constituencies, have done their damndest to scupper it. “They’re kidding themselves that they’re still honouring the vote because they haven’t actually revoked Article 50,” she says. “I think they genuinely believe they’re representing some nice, liberal-minded view on things and if you’re not in favour of staying in the EU, or at least getting a deal that more or less keeps us in, then you actually are beyond the pale.”

      Currently, she is fuming about hypocritical, Brexit-blocking MPs who are distributing election leaflets in which they try to hide their voting record from constituents. “Sorry, I just get so angry, Allison. Parliament has been awful. When I started, there used to be a dignity about the House of Commons which we’ve lost completely. MPs say there’s an impasse in Parliament over Brexit. Yes, I think, and who caused that impasse? You!”

      When Hoey made an impassioned speech about the danger to democracy if MPs failed to respect the referendum result, she was jeered by members on her own benches. Bishop Auckland MP Helen Goodman (whose constituency voted 61 per cent to Leave) cackled like a witch on laughing gas until Hoey coldly rebuked her. “You may think I’m talking absolute nonsense. There are 17 and a half million people out there who don’t think I’m talking nonsense!”

      In light of Jeremy Corbyn being mocked during this week’s ITV Leaders’ Debate, can Hoey possibly explain Labour’s current position on Brexit? “Well, the Labour Party has left me,” she sighs. “Labour simply does not have a credible policy on leaving the EU.”

      Although she admits this might not go down well with Telegraph readers, Hoey says she has a sneaking sympathy for Jeremy Corbyn. “Because I know Jeremy is genuinely anti-EU, always has been. We’ve walked through the same lobby for decades, voting against Maastricht etc, but he’s not been strong enough. He had a Parliamentary party that was stuffed with Remainers. They knew they couldn’t get rid of him as leader so they’ve used the EU issue to get at him. Jeremy’s allowed himself to be completely stitched up, particularly by John McDonnell.”

      The Shadow Chancellor, she says, “has become quite a nasty, devious figure behind the scenes”; McDonnell is the one pulling the strings now. “After a while, Jeremy realised that he was losing and he just seems to have given in.”

      Hang on, so the Labour leader doesn’t actually believe in the Brexit policy he’s currently out selling to voters? “Goodness me, no!” she laughs. “Jeremy can’t stand the EU. Shall we order more tea?”

      Hoey, who began her own political journey as a student in the International Marxist Group, recognises in McDonnell a classic Marxist strategist. “John was also anti-EU, but not so much as Jeremy; he’s changed tack. You see, the Marxist idea is you advance a little bit at a time to gain power. That’s really what they’re interested in: power.

      “McDonnell was the first to quietly, in interviews, move the party line. First by saying that we might need another referendum and then to say that he would vote Remain in that referendum. He is looking ahead. He sees the ‘revolution’ as a process and he likes to be the power behind the throne. So, if Jeremy goes after an election defeat, McDonnell will not want to be leader – but he will want to control whoever is.”

      I doubt Hoey was ever much of an ideologue herself . She said she picked the IMG because Tariq Ali was a leading light. “I thought he was wonderful,” she smiles fondly. Hoey likes men. I’d say she was a keen appreciator of the male form, and the tall, dark, smoulderingly handsome Ali fits that bill. She’s had plenty of boyfriends, most recently a long relationship with the photographer Tom Stoddart. They remain close friends.

      “I never set out to say I wouldn’t be a mother, but it didn’t happen,” she says. Her elder sister (“she was the academic one”) has two sons, and Kate is a devoted aunt. Her brother is so much younger, he was actually born as Kate was starting PE college. “So I had lots of my mothering instincts indulged with him, I suppose.”

      Hoey says she couldn’t bear to live with anybody now because she likes her own company too much. She has a wide circle of friends who don’t care for politicians, but they say: “Oh, Kate, you’re different!” And how: Catherine Letitia Hoey, monarchist and passionate trade union supporter, is impossible to pigeonhole.

      That maverick streak has stood her in good stead over the past three and a half years. The long, drawn-out Brexit battle in Parliament has demanded a lonely courage from the few who chose to fight from behind enemy lines. Hoey reserves her greatest contempt for the man who is the fourth Speaker she has known in her long career, and undoubtedly the worst.

      “Oh, John Bercow has been monstrous,” she cries. “Monstrous! He broke so many conventions and it was all designed to slow up and retard Brexit.” She’s delighted more people have been watching parliamentary TV, “so they’ve seen the childishness and the stupidity and his complete and utter bias”.

      When it came out that Bercow voted for Remain, Hoey went up to him and said, “I do hope that you will be completely unbiased, and I believe you will’, and he said: ‘Oh, thank you, Kate, thank you, thank you.’ (She does a surprisingly good impersonation of the Speaker’s unctuous, Uriah Heep manner.) “But then I saw him having little private chats with the Dominic Grieves and the Anna Soubrys.” The record shows that Bercow rarely called Hoey during major Brexit debates. “Anna Soubry, he called her the whole time!”

      Hoey, who is headmistress of the Suck-It-Up school, clearly sees Soubry as a total drama queen. “Honestly, she gets someone shouting at her and it’s treated as if she’s the only one who ever got abused.” Hoey, meanwhile, was under constant “hateful” bombardment on email and social media from Momentum supporters, who hunt in packs. “I always felt you were giving into them if you made a big fuss. In retrospect, I should have behaved like Anna Soubry and been the heroine of the hour,” she says drily.

      Had the new Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, been in the chair, Hoey believes we would have had Brexit by now. Ditto Boris. “Such a shame. Instead, we got Theresa, who had no belief in the task and was soon taken over by civil servants and Remainers in her Cabinet.”

      Hoey is a big fan of the PM. They worked closely on the Leave campaign and, when he was London mayor, he enabled her to launch successful local sports initiatives while picking her brains for columns on football and the Olympics. “Boris is what a lot of people would call a One Nation Conservative,” she says. “He has a compassion there which never gets recognised because it’s not in the interests of anyone to paint Boris as anything other than this dreadful Right-wing extremist. It’s just outrageous, really. He’s very patient, he exudes a kind of warmth and good cheer that people feel is genuine. The media don’t like to show that he’s really welcomed wherever he goes, they show the one person who shouts at him.”

      A partisan media class is another target of Hoey’s ire. Parliament, she says, would not have been able to get away with their Brexit shennanigans “without the backing of a compliant media that has continually focused on the negative”. Why, she demands, “have there never been any proper programmes about the incredible opportunities that leaving the EU will give us? I suppose it’s because the higher echelons of the BBC are so biased against Brexit.”

      Appearing on TV the morning after the result, she noticed that BBC staff were “incredibly pale. Dimbleby, all of them, they were absolutely shocked. I wasn’t shocked. I was jumping up and down in my seat!”

      Hoey had spoken at a rally in Gateshead a few days before. Labour voters came up to her and said how lovely it was to see a Labour MP there. The “euphoria” of the crowd, “many who had never voted for anything in their lives before”, convinced her that Leave would win. When she said as much on The Daily Politics, her fellow Remainer panellists were incredulous. “You need to get out of London more,” she told them cheerfully.

      Could she personally vote for Labour now? “No,” she says firmly. “If Labour win, it will be the end of Brexit. This election is about whether we keep faith with the British people. I don’t believe that the Labour Party is going to keep faith, and I think they’ve done everything they can to try and renege on the promises they made in the 2017 manifesto. Therefore, I think every Labour voter who wants us to leave the EU has to recognise that this may be a general election where, perhaps reluctantly and with sadness, they will not be able to vote Labour.”

      Hoey will be voting for a pro-Union candidate in Northern Ireland: “The DUP are the best option for Leavers.” Arlene Foster, the DUP leader, is a friend. Hoey thinks the fractured relations between the Conservatives and the DUP will “get back on track” after the election. “Under no circumstances do they want Jeremy Corbyn as prime minister.”

      Boris, she says, is absolutely clear that there is not going to be a border down the Irish Sea. “If he has a big enough majority, if he knows he hasn’t got a stack of Tory MPs waiting to knife him, then I still think the deal can go through and we have a year to get a proper trade deal.”

      Does she really believe that? “This is where you just have to have faith, Allison,” she says, patting my hand. “As a believer, I have to have faith in Boris. It’s emotional enough leaving the House of Commons after 30 years, it’s emotional knowing you won’t be able to help people the way you can as an MP… So I can’t afford to be depressed about Brexit.

      “Deep down, I think there are a lot of politicians who know this has to happen otherwise there is a real threat to our democratic system. Those of us who love our country, who feel very proud to be British, we know that we have to do this, we have to do it in the right way and do it quickly.”

      Hoey has no specific plans for her retirement, apart from attending every Northern Ireland soccer match and doing more horse-riding. Surely, she will go to the House of Lords? “Well, nobody’s asked me. I don’t think Jeremy is going to put me in!” she laughs.

      You can bet she won’t push herself forward. That would be big-headed. She recoils from “the brass neck some politicians have, particularly men, the brass neck of demanding things for themselves”.

      Seriously, if they put the abominable Bercow in the Lords and leave out Kate Hoey, I’m finding some railings to chain myself to. (Boris, can you fix it, please!) When the annals of Brexit come to be written, there will be an honourable mention for this brave, tenacious sportswoman who defied the jeers and kept faith with the millions of ordinary voters her party cynically betrayed.

      “I’m not being big-headed,” she says, “but I think a lot of people in Parliament will miss me – the staff, the catering people, the library. And I think it’s just because I’m myself, really.” Hoey is tearful again now, and so am I.

      As we say goodbye in the now-dark street, before she heads back to the Commons for the last time, she says: “Will you write something my mother would like, Allison?”

      I will, Kate. I will do my very best.

        2. I think Kate’s reading correct.
          The one thing we can guarantee is that, if Labour win, Jezza will be ousted as leader by lunchtime on the Friday.
          Probably a patsy like Starmer or Lady Nugee will be installed with McDonnell as the eminence grise. Labour’s version of Cardinal Richelieu.

          1. Will Jeremy’s ousting be “with extreme prejudice” as happened to other Labour leaders?

      4. I think a lot of people will miss her – as I’ve mentioned before – if Kate Hoey was standing in my constituency I’d break the habit of a lifetime and vote Labour! She really does deserve a seat in the Lords, unlike so many of the recently “honoured”.

          1. I would certainly vote for her if she were either independent or in the Brexit Party. However this is entirely irrelevant as Mr Blair disenfranchised me.

          2. Sorry, P-T, I have to disagree. The Lords is needed as a reviewing, amending and moderating influence on some of the Commons more ridiculous ideas.

            I do agree that there is a need for an immediate review in order to remove the toady, party-nominated iickspittles and return the hereditaries only, as members. – they take the long view and have a vested interest in the stability and defence of the United Kingdom.

  24. Good morrow, Gentlefolk, a little philosophy:

    I asked a friend to give me a perfect example of a dilemma.

    He replied, “Well, there’s nothing better than this example to illustrate that……”

    “Imagine that you are laying in a big bed with a beautiful naked young woman on one side and a gay man on the other.

    Who are you going to turn your back on?”

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

    A new and useful word:
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4fbf41d82b7b3d5b51a8692640053c5899a944a01f2c6cee9bbdab0519716ef8.jpg

    Especially useful in these days of hustings’ bluster.

  25. The Labour Party and Corbyn in a nutshell? Let’s hope that Peter Wood is correct.

    John Redwood’s Diary – Tax, Tax and Tax again

    Peter Wood

    Posted November 23, 2019 at 5:47 am | Permalink

    Good Morning,

    Time to stop the charade, here’s the truth: Mr Corbyn does NOT want to be PM. He knows full well his loony party has gone bonkers communist and is happy to let it propose an unelectable set of ideas, more suited to the 1960’s innocence of first year students.
    Mr Corbyn is a complainer; that’s it, he loves to complain and demonstrate. He certainly doesn’t want the responsibility of actually putting his ideas into practice.
    There is nothing more pathetic than seeing a couple septuagenarian communists pretending they’re still teenagers at a college debate.
    The Labour Party used to have a place in our society to defend the working man, they are now a loony left, Islington old communists club.

    1. I worked for a while at The Independent Socialist Republic of Islington Council in the late 60s. Not as bad the as it is now.

  27. Good morning all. Anyone been shopping yet ?

    The Facelift
    Morris decides to have a facelift for his birthday. He spends £5,000 at Bushey hospital and feels really good about the result. But would others see
    how good he looked? So, he thought he would put this to the test.

    On his way home, he stops off at Brent Cross Shopping Centre. He first of all goes into Smith’s, buys a newspaper and says to the girl behind the
    cash desk, “I hope you don’t mind me asking, but how old do you think I am?”
    “About 35,” came the reply.
    “I’m actually 47,” Morris says, feeling really happy.

    Then he goes into Fenwick’s for lunch and asks the waitress the same question, to which the reply is, “Oh you look about 29.”
    “I am actually 47.” This makes him feel really good.

    In the car park on the way out, Morris meets two elderly ladies and asks them the same question. One of them winks to the other and replies, “I
    can’t really tell. I am 70 years old and my eyesight is not as good as it used to be. But when I was younger, there was a sure way of telling a
    man’s age. If you let me put my hand down your trousers for a few minutes, I will certainly be able to tell your exact age.”
    As there was no one around, Morris thought, “why not,” and let her slip her hand down his trousers.
    Five minutes later, the lady says, “OK, it’s done. I now know that you are 47.”

    Stunned, Morris says to her, “That was brilliant. How did you do that? ”

    She replies, giggling, “We were behind you in the Fenwick’s queue.”

    1. Have they begun the refurbishment of Brent Cross Centre?
      When we used to park the trains at Cricklewood or Ferme Park sidings we’d often be lodged in the Holliday Inn there.

  29. Lad in the village tried donating blood last week – NEVER AGAIN he says.
    Too many stupid questions.
    Who’s blood is it?
    Where did you get it?
    Why is it in a bucket?

  31. Open Society Foundations, formerly the Open Society Institute, is
    an international grantmaking network founded by business magnate George
    Soros. Open Society Foundations financially support civil society groups
    around the world, with a stated aim of advancing justice, education,
    public health and independent media.

          2. Yes, that is one of them. These are just symbols that are used to create a “mystical air” around those who want to rule our lives. Just like meeting together in robes by candlelight, and chanting in the shadows.

            In reality, these people are just average-grade human beings like the people you find everywhere. They put their trousers on one leg at a time just like the rest of us. The sad thing about them is their emptiness. They’ve got nothing real or worthwhile in their lives. Nobody to say “Stop being so bloody stupid and get that robe off, there are weeds that need pulling.”

            So they chase ideas of “Power” and “Wealth” to make themselves feel special. At the heart of their reality though, they are all expendable and have nothing to hold on to once they are not useful anymore.

            The Gregorian Monks in their robes and chanting are far more entertaining. Damn, that was an odd comment for this time of day. Time to put the oven on for lunch. 🙂

          3. As the prayers of monks add to the economy of grace, they are doing a worthwhile job. Only the Grace of God is going to save us, in this life and the next.

    1. She’s probably now terrified that every man she’s ever slept with will appear in the Press describing how un forgettable it was.

      2. When Nick Clegg boasted that he had bedded 30 women I did hope that his wife, Miriam – as a feminist not to be outdone by her husband – would have retaliated by boasting that she had bedded at least 40 men.

        1. I only ever met one bloke who boasted about his sexual conquests. He was a turd, nobody else wanted owt to do with him.

      1. Before a man marries he should look very closely and carefully at his potential wife’s mother – she would provide him with a good look into the future.

        The poor woman’s looks are already on the slide but I wonder what the Duchess of Sussex will look like when she is in her 50’s and 60’s?

        2. R,
          In today’s current social climate a man should look at his partners, mother / father, brother, goat etc,etc, there are dangers everywhere even a mans dress sense could very well bring about clashing dresses.

        3. The same privilege should be allowed to women …. although I note I am very similar to my wife’s father in temperament (bit of an introvert/ loner [except in congenial NOTTL company] very strong sleeper on settees).

          2. Sadly, because I had been previously married, my FiL took against me and tried to stop the DT from seeing me.
            The barrier that put up meant I was always on my guard with him.

        4. With all the money from the divorce! She will be able to keep going very nicely with the nips and tucks to fall in with her ageing celeb friends.

  33. ‘Morning All
    Teacher to Bojo
    “How can you possibly justify 40% of the families at my school earning less than the average wage”
    I just hope to hell he’s not a Maths teacher……………………….
    Tory Austeriteeeeeeeeeeeeee!! My ar^e

    1. I can see no reference in that open society report to the growing world population and mass immigration. Global population growth needs to be reversed and a solution to mass uncontrolled migration needs to be tackled urgently at the highest global level. If these problems are not tackled sensibly and peacefully, war, famine, pestilence and death will be the result..

        2. Not forgetting the fifth, who left the group before they were famous – he is now living as Ronnie Soak, a milkman on Discworld
          who also specialises in other milk products like yoghurt or rancid yak butter from 5,000 years earlier.

  35. Greenscams,greenscams everywhere

    https://twitter.com/fionamflanagan1/status/1197809140829175813?s=21

    Now what was the final death blow to British Steel?? Oh yeah anothe Carbon Credit scam

    LONDON (Reuters) – Taxpayers will lend British Steel around 120
    million pounds to enable Britain’s second largest steelmaker to comply
    with the European Union’s Emissions Trading System (ETS) and avert a
    fine.

    British Steel told the government earlier this year it
    would not be able to meet an April 30 deadline due to the absence of
    2019 free permits, which have not been issued yet due to Brexit
    negotiations.

    “If it had failed to do so by last night’s
    deadline, it would have attracted an immediate and unremovable fine of
    half a billion pounds, on top of the continuing liability of around 120
    million pounds, putting the company under significant financial strain,”
    British energy secretary Greg Clark said on Wednesday.

  41. Mnangagwa Street and Fidel Castro Road: Zimbabwe’s president ditches colonial street names for tributes. 22 NOVEMBER 2019

    Another is to be called “Solomon Mujuru Drive”, after a powerful party kingpin who collected as many as 16 farms confiscated during the purge of white farmers more than a decade ago.

    Foreign heroes will not be forgotten either. Fife Avenue in Harare is to become Brezhnev Avenue after the former Soviet leader who presided over what Russians call the “Period of Stagnation” during the Sixties and Seventies.

    The late Cuban leader Fidel Castro and China’s Chairman Mao are also to be honoured.

    I’ll bet they don’t forget our names when it comes to the Foreign Aid handouts!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/11/22/mnangagwa-street-fidel-castro-road-zimbabwes-president-ditches/

      1. Oddly enough. It crossed my mind when I was reading the article that we are not that far off these people now.

      2. Nearly there, Stephen, just a couple more Contemptible Parliaments and the job’s done. Corbyn McDonnell as life-long President

      3. They have been trying to pull down our statues in the United Kingdom for a while now already. They went after one of Cecil Rhodes in Oxford 3 years ago, before donors to the college told them not to give in to pandering.

        “The statue of Cecil Rhodes at an Oxford college is to remain in place despite student protests after donors threatened to withdraw millions of pounds in funding if it was removed.”

        There was one student protester who ought to have been immediately deported for sheer bloody cheek:

        “The small but vocal group of student activists – led by Rhodes scholar Ntokozo Qwabe – had argued the image of Rhodes should be removed as he was a racist.”

        The shouty little protester was only here in the first place because he was on a Rhodes Scholarship. That must be the definition of biting the hand that feeds you.

        https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/cecil-rhodes-statue-will-stay-at-oxford-despite-student-campaign-oriel-college-says-a6840651.html

  42. Here’s something for us all to look forward to after Christmas – should be a giggle a minute

    Greta Thunberg to guest edit BBC Radio 4’s Today programme
    The Swedish activist will interview leading figures in the fight against global heating

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/51f941b1526b3d850f2edf236bbd87622b814b7f/42_17_3545_2127/master/3545.jpg?width=620&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=97dbb4bdaccddd132f6e346ddf0859eb
    [I lurve that ‘Unite behind the science’ slogan]

    Other ‘guest editors’ will include Lady Spiderwoman, Grayson Perry, George the Poet reporting from Uganda, all of them dazzlingly right-on by BBC/Graun standards.

    “The final guest editor slot will go to Charles Moore, the former editor of the Daily Telegraph, who will focus on freedom of expression in modern society. Moore, who wrote the authorised biography of Margaret Thatcher and founded The Rectory Society for fans of clergy dwellings, has previously criticised the BBC over its perceived anti-Brexit bias.”

    And we suckers pay for this.

    4. I can imagine the national grid blowing a fuse as millions put the kettle on and flip over to another station

  43. ” A UK ticket-holder has come forward to claim a £105m EuroMillions jackpot prize won on Tuesday, operator Camelot has said.

    The
    identity of the ticket-holder, and whether they are an individual or a
    syndicate, will not be revealed unless they decide to go public.

    The winning numbers picked were 8, 10, 15, 30 and 42, with 4 and 6 selected for the Lucky Star numbers.

    It is the sixth EuroMillions jackpot won by a UK ticket-holder this year.

    Last month after a UK ticket-holder claimed a record £170m EuroMillions jackpot.”

    Hopefully Jeremy Corbyn will retrospectively tax it to fund his proposed spending.
    This kind of money is obscene.

    1. I had a couple of punts at winning the Jackpot – alas I didn’t. But what really annoys me is each time I could have chosen the winner numbers but somehow I deliberately didn’t pick them 🙁

    2. Why?

      It’s just money. In and of itself it’s useless. What money buys you is time.

      If I won that amount I’d get a house out in the country with a giant field which I’d fence off and point Mongo at it. He along with Jerry would spend the day playing and being stupid. I’d spend the day indoors making bookcases for my books. The wife would probably get around to setting up that studio she’s always wanted. Junior would write on the walls, so no change there.

      On Monday we’d see junior off to school, do a bit of a shop, then I’d do some painting, she’d take the horses out the dogs would run about, I’d go to physio and no one would walk up to us to tell us we were rubbish/give us an endless demand for more work/an even higher target/ask us to do overtime for their failure to plan properly. At 3 we’d go and get junior together and go for a walk with the dogs along the river I imagine we’d live alongside. Mongo would get soaking wet and then be stood in the shower (which he loves) while Jerry looks on in terror. Wife would help junior with his homework (instead of junior and I going to pick her up at 7:30 from the train station, exhausted and tired only to work even more until 10 and as a family we’d sit down together (as normally junior eats first and goes to bed at 8) for two or three hours and then the five of us would simply be.

      Every day would be our own, without managers, without targets, without colleagues to placate without stresses without hassles without rush hour without ever having to worry.

      I’d collect more books and get some tools to actually learn carpentry – or more likely go on a course to learn how to, she’d learn to potter properly. She’d learn to swim. So might Mongo. She’d come off the stress and hyper tension tablets. She’d never, ever have to open a laptop again. That sounds silly, bt the other day at the dinner table during the spag bol she sits there looking at this slab of plastic, takes a deep breath and flicks the catch to open it, eyes red and wet with tears.

      Money buys freedom. I hope whoever has won it understands that and makes the most of it, enjoying their life rather than just buying ‘stuff’.

      1. If I won the lottery, I’d buy a large area of ancient woodland and tie it up so tightly that, other than maintenance, no-one could touch it in perpetuity.

  44. SIR – The summary of the report from the Church of England into “Christian anti-Semitism dating back centuries” (report, November 21) gives immediate cause for concern.

    First, it is staggering to read that hymns considered in the report to “convey the teaching of contempt for Jews” include Charles Wesley’s renowned Advent hymn Lo, He Comes with Clouds Descending. The reference in that hymn to Christ’s crucifixion cannot be interpreted as anti-Semitic.

    For one thing, it was the Romans, not the Jews, who crucified Jesus; and for another, the hymn is meant to imply that all of us – like the multitudes who heralded his entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday – could, like them, turn against him at a moment’s notice, especially if being seen to follow him might place us in any danger ourselves.

    We are all, especially at this time of year, waiting to see the “true Messiah”, whom we believe will indeed one day return (as the book of Revelation says) in clouds of glory. Or are we to take from this report that Revelation itself is anti-Semitic?

    Secondly, it would appear that there is no mention in the report of those Church members, including senior clergy, who spoke out in this country against the persecution of Jews under the Third Reich during the Thirties and Forties. Among their numbers were the late Bishop George Bell of Chichester, who personally helped many Jews and “non-Aryan” Christians to come to this country, including my own father.

    Bell had a difficult time persuading politicians and Church colleagues that not all Germans were Nazis, and it is likely that his stance cost him the most senior post that the Church had to offer. It would be an act of true Christianity if more of the present-day Church of England leaders were to follow his self-sacrificing example.

    Dr Ruth Hildebrandt Grayson
    Sheffield, South Yorkshire

    1. We all know Welby’s attitude to Bishop Bell; much the same as his attitude to Christianity.

    2. Pirates of Penzance –

      ”
      General. I ask you, have you ever known what it is to be an orphan?

      King. Often!

      General. Yes, orphan. Have you ever known what it is to be one?

      King. I say, often.

      Pirates. (disgusted) Often, often, often. (Turning away)

      General. I don’t
      think we quite understand one another. I ask you, have you ever known
      what it is to be an orphan, and you say “orphan”. As I understand you,
      you are merely repeating the word “orphan” to show that you understand
      me.

      King. I didn’t repeat the word often.

      General. Pardon me, you did indeed.

      King. I only repeated it once.

      General. True, but you repeated it.

    1. It takes things longer to do things quickly and costs more money to do things cheaply.

      The mantra of the civil service.

    1. Reminds me of the time way back when, I suggested to a Chairwoman of a local Health Authority that she invite Cecil Parkinson to open the new Mother and Baby Unit to show there were no hard feelings….

    1. A majority of politicians in this country think that it is more important to stop Brexit than to stop Climate Change.

      1. Frustratingly it looks as if a movement against the establishment has been hijacked by the usual Lefty rentamob.

        Besides, isn’t protesting France’s national sport?

  53. Amusing how the President of the European Commission’s new green initiative and PM Johnson’s new green initiative and Jeremy Corbyn’s new green initiative by random coincidence are identical to the new green initiative demanded by Open Society…

    Amusing how Open Society’s “hub office” in Millbank just by random coincidence is just a short walk from parliament and Downing Street.

    The power behind the throne !

  54. One of four words hijacked by lefties to mean other than their accepted dictionary explanations, as highlighted in the Conservative Woman article, ‘Socialist-speak – your updated guide‘

    Problematic: The word could be used for a device in a Robert Sheckley science-fiction story, set in a future of comfort and luxury, designed to provide otherwise indolent citizens of an automated utopia with personal challenges to overcome lest they get too bored. Why it has come to replace the words ‘causing a problem’ is not clear, except that it does appeal to unashamed sesquipedalians even though it uses one syllable fewer than the words it replaces. The definition of a problematic idea is no longer restricted to the thoughts and expressions of unreformed National Socialists and their ilk, but has been extended to other heretical ideas, such as a woman being an adult female who was born with female genitalia and a womb, and that transwomen do not need tampons or smear tests for cervical cancer. This new meaning is already widely known. A person who expresses problematic ideas is socially deviant beyond the limits of acceptable diversity, pitchforks-and-firebrands-burn-them-at-the-stake kind of stuff. Any problematic expressions made by such a person will be career-limiting. If the expresser of problematic ideas is a public speaker, he or she will be banned from speaking in public at liberal institutions for ever, no matter how liberal their previous public speaking career. It is interesting to note that while National Socialist ideas are always defined as problematic, Soviet Socialist ideas never are, not even those expressed by overt and covert Stalinists. This explains why Jeremy Corbyn has had such an easy ride in interviews on broadcast television. Or it may be that any editorial decision to challenge Corbyn on live television runs the risk of being exceptionally problematic for all involved after the General Election, should Corbyn win somehow.

      1. Oh of course. Any dissent from his lunatic vison will be very swiftly shut down.

        The Left are demented.

    1. People do care about it… but… they don’t think it’s ‘nice’ to say that all terrorists of recent times have been Muslims.

      That wearing a Burqa is racist.

      That having Asian symbols on British street corners is wrong.

      That gays cannot marry.

      That gays shouldn’t adopt.

      That men in dresses are mentally ill, not special.

      That’s not nice, you see. So we shouldn’t say it. Shouldn’t swiftly becomes can’t. And then, silenced; you get confusion at not being listened to. Confusion becomes anger and anger becomes attacked and you get conflict and conflict becomes war.

      There are problems in this country – in every country. As soon as we stop talking about them, we have a problem. By being open about our prejudices, fears and dislikes we meet and engage with difference and we all learn. We become intolerant only when we are silenced. We become more tolerant when we express ourselves freely.

    2. People do care about it… but… they don’t think it’s ‘nice’ to say that all terrorists of recent times have been Muslims.

      That wearing a Burqa is racist.

      That having Asian symbols on British street corners is wrong.

      That gays cannot marry.

      That gays shouldn’t adopt.

      That men in dresses are mentally ill, not special.

      That’s not nice, you see. So we shouldn’t say it. Shouldn’t swiftly becomes can’t. And then, silenced; you get confusion at not being listened to. Confusion becomes anger and anger becomes attacked and you get conflict and conflict becomes war.

      There are problems in this country – in every country. As soon as we stop talking about them, we have a problem. By being open about our prejudices, fears and dislikes we meet and engage with difference and we all learn. We become intolerant only when we are silenced. We become more tolerant when we express ourselves freely.

  56. TV licencing are ‘actively assessing’ property in my postcode.

    Ooooh, I’m soooo scared. I’ve offered them access. The cost was £20,000. Each step was £500. To look in a room was £10,000. of course, no recording devices nor paperwork would be allowed in and no questions asked – of any sort.

    Appointment was by arrangement only and the fee was non-refundable, payable in advance. Having given them the option to enter, the choice is now theirs to refuse it. That stops them applying for a warrant with a nice police man.

    I don’t own a TV. Haven’t for over a decade. I’m just sick of their harrassment.

        1. I just don’t own one. I told them once long ago. I said stop bothering me. They said ‘we’ll write again in two years. I said ‘you’d better not’.

          They continue to threaten. It’s a waste of paper. Complaining is impossible – deliberately. Increasingly I wonder if they cannot be taken to court for just that – harrassment.

          The one time they did get in they scared the wife, which scared the dog, who barked and the licence man was threatening to have him put down just as I arrived home. Now, sometimes – just sometimes you see these films where a bloke is lifted off his feet by the neck. Most of the time it’s impossible. This time it wasn’t. I’m big, I’m bloody strong and I will have no one threaten my family.

    2. Inform them by recorded letter that you consider their behaviour to be harassment and that you will take them to court if it continues. They will back off.

  57. Short article from Zero Hedge – John Stossel on climate change.
    A snippet from the article and a comment from BTL.

    Twelve years? That’s the new slogan.

    The Heartland Institute invited some climate alarmists to explain the “12 years” and other frightening statements they keep making.

    The alarmists didn’t even show up. They never do. They make speeches and preach to gullible reporters, but they won’t debate anyone who is skeptical.

    Over the years, I repeatedly invited Al Gore to come on my TV shows. His staff always said he was “too busy.”

    At a Heartland Institute event I moderated, climatologist Pat Michaels put the 12-year claim in perspective by saying, “It’s warmed up around 1 degree Celsius since 1900, and life expectancy doubled in the industrialized democracies! Yet that temperature ticks up another half a degree and the entire system crashes? That’s the most absurd belief!”

    Astrophysicist Willie Soon added:

    “It’s all about hand-waving, emotion, sending out kids in protest. It has nothing to do with the science.”

    Is that true? I wish the alarmists would show up and debate.

    ========================================================================================================================
    BTL

    Lore 4 hours ago

    I think this may be the quote you’re looking for:

    “It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.” – Paul Watson, Greenpeace co-founder

    Key to the imminent collapse is the extent to which psychopaths with power and influence have deliberately eroded the sanctity of truth at the center of our cultural ethos. The span of their control hinges on their ability to place themselves before God and individual critical thought as the measure of what can be known and trusted and evaluated. Basically, society is hijacked by deranged misfits whose utopia is our dystopia, and the attempt to reshape society in their image always leads to maximum capital misallocation, aka collapse, with terrible human cost. Consider the incredible corruption of globalist agencies like the UN. Disregard for truth allows evil to flourish.

    All major forms of human organization on Earth are totally corrupt and need to be shut down. We need to get back to grassroots respect for honesty and morality, with some kind of tool for weeding out power worshippers.

    2. I followed the link to the Independent and then to the ‘ordinary’ comments. Appears that the Independent attracts some very strange people; one even commented that Corbyn and his acolytes are social democrats.

    3. 2 hundred *thousand*? Thousand? Surely someone, somewhere must be saying a rather large ‘haaaaaannnnnnnnnggggg oonnnnnnn.’

    4. Edited in the light that the news appears to apply to the whole of the UK and not just to TH….

  59. FROM BEHIND THE PAYWALL – Allister Heath on the elite’s virtue signalling
    Posted by Vivian Evans | Nov 23, 2019 | Debate | 1 |

    It is not often that one reads such a fulminant denouncement of our ‘elites’ as that by Allister Heath in the DT. The title, “Our woke elite would rather signal their virtue than fight actual injustice” (paywalled link) seems mild – we all know that virtue signalling is one of the preferred pastimes of our self-appointed elites, but then Mr Heath sets the scene in the introductory paragraphs with these questions:

    “What is wrong with our modern, holier-than thou establishment? Why is it so hypocritical, so superficial and yet so self-satisfied? It considers itself to be the most caring, moral and progressive generation ever, committed to combating injustice, stamping out racism and saving the planet, and yet it is unwilling to fight the truly difficult battles.

    I’m not just referring to film stars who rail against climate change from their private jets. The insincerity and cowardice are endemic: the activists and the luvvies, the woke “thought-leaders” and charity bosses, the church authorities and public sector managers, the Left-wing lawyers and on-trend bankers, the bien-pensant crowd and their millions of followers are in too many cases living a lie. Time and again, either explicitly or implicitly, those with cultural power end up backing the powerful against the dispossessed, the elites against ordinary people, their self-interest dressed up as altruism, all the while congratulating themselves for being so, so good.” (paywalled link)

    His ‘diagnosis’ in the next paragraphs is devastating.:

    “The reality is that, unlike previous cohorts of reformers, they only care about taking on a small set of injustices: those that make them look virtuous, that don’t require any real effort or sacrifice. As for everything else, no need to worry: they have already earned their moral credits for the year by “calling out” a few heretics.

    What is most galling about today’s “social justice warriors” is their delusional narcissism, their belief that they are achieving more than previous generations – including those who took on the horrific evils of apartheid or who fought for civil and equal rights, actually and truly improving the world against all the odds.” (paywalled link)

    After asking where the luvvies’ protests are in support of the Hong Kong demonstrators, Allister Heath states:

    “Once upon a time, young, Left-wing politically-active Westerners would have taken a stand. But today’s social media generation aren’t interested. The Hong Kongers want democracy, free speech and self-determination: these are not values that the Western upper classes care about anymore.

    In fact, many of the most politically engaged in our universities actively campaign against such beliefs, endorsing instead a brutish, post-enlightenment form of authoritarian technocracy. Far from seeking to liberate people, to fight for individual freedom, all of the focus is on trying to restrain other humans, to prevent them from “hurting” others by expressing forbidden ideas.

    The same moral blindness applies to the repression of the independence movement in Catalonia. This sort of outrage was meant to be inconceivable in the West. The problem is that it’s taking place in the EU, which in the elite’s hierarchy of values is beyond reproach; and it’s all too reminiscent of Brexit. The ruling class’s fury at the 2016 referendum, its anger at the public’s decision to revolt, its attempts to reverse the result: Brexit Derangement Syndrome has led many otherwise intelligent people to no longer support other independence movements around the world.” (paywalled link)

    Just so – and the fact that we hardly ever hear in our MSM about the ongoing protest of the Gilets Jaunes which started over a year ago is another indication for this moral blindness. The next paragraphs are on the ‘choice’ these ‘elites’ will probably make in the forthcoming GE:

    “Perhaps most distressingly of all, many self-styled progressives will still vote for Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party in three weeks’ time: their dirty little secret is that they don’t really care about Jew-hate. There are QCs, economists and activists on Twitter who wear their anti-racism on their sleeve but who still back Labour. How can it possibly be right to put a party into power that has helped trigger a rebirth of the world’s oldest hatred? Does nothing mean anything any longer?

    The terrible reality is that in many (though of course not all) cases, the loud, in your face moralising, the endless preaching and lecturing and sermoning is all for show. Far from being genuinely moral, many of “the great and the good” treat political discourse as a fashion accessory, as a means of obtaining a higher social status, as the key membership requirement of the priesthood of the cultural upper-echelon.” (paywalled link)

    Ouch! That verdict is spot on, it is simply irrefutable. One only needs to listen to these ‘elites’ talk on ‘political’ TV shows to realise that their opinions are being pushed by the other ‘elite’, that in the MSM, who think that only they themselves possess true insight.

    Allister Heath’s concluding remarks are sharp, to the point, and explain why fewer and fewer of us oaks are prepared to take our opinion from those se;f-proclaimed ‘elites’:

    “Publicly espousing the approved views legitimises everything else: it allows one to be selfish, mean, angry, greedy, ignorant, irrational, hyper-emotional and even sexist and anti-Semitic. In some cases, the double-standards are as extreme as in Victorian times: a commitment to gender equality or diversity in public, the most disgusting homophobia or racism in private.

    In the 1930s, the upper classes kept out the oiks by dressing and speaking in a certain way and by mastering complex other rituals; today, they do so by broadcasting Left-authoritarian soundbites and attacking anybody who deviates. But at least the patrician rulers of the 1930s-1960s actually felt an obligation towards society: this self-centred bunch says what it does purely to feel better about itself, to legitimise its lifestyle.

    It values virtue-signalling more highly than action, and is prepared to turn a blind eye to genuine injustices. There is a glaring moral vacuum at the heart of our new establishment, and it explains why so many ordinary voters hold Britain’s entire ruling class in such contempt.” (paywalled link)

    This outstanding article is the best indictment of what is wrong in our society where we’re presented with ‘truths’ which we’re meant to accept because ‘celebrities’, the self-proclaimed elite, are uttering them with no fear of any repercussions. We’ve long since recognised their threadbare ‘do as we say, not as we do’ posturings. Now we must make sure that family, colleagues and acquaintances don’t fall into the trap set by the mutual recognition society of ‘elites’ and MSM who are going to tell us whom to vote for.

    Who do they think they are? Emperors without clothes, that’s who!

    1. If the Owners of the DT really supported AH’s views they would publish this on the front page and not behind a paywall…….

      1. They can’t be seen to support his views, though, can they? Apart from the fact that they will scrape every penny they can from the public.

    3. That sort of thinking is sadly as old as the hills – or at least as old as the Bible, where it is documented in the parable of the Pharisee and the publican praying together. The “holier than thou” types have always been with us. What we have now are those same people using the megaphone of social media to demonstrate that they are “not as other men”.

      All those years of RI apparently do not get lost in the mists of time…

      1. It is more insidious now. And social media and “education” = brainwashed young electorate. God help us – we need him/her/it.

  60. Zinger !!

    But the rest of us will have groaned. Boris is so much more

    entertaining when he’s off-piste and near the knuckle. This was more

    like watching a chained bear being forced to do its dance. Sad,

    demeaning, unnatural.

    Does anyone outside the Westminster bubble

    actually watch this tosh? God, I hope not. I watch on sufferance because

    it’s my job. But the thought that real people might watch it for

    entertainment or, worse, to help them decide which way to vote I find

    absolutely terrifying.

    What, after all, do these charades tell us

    about politicians except how good they are at lying, virtue-signalling

    and tactical evasion? One questioner from the audience – clearly

    delighted with his own perspicacity and trenchancy, as people who ask

    questions in the audience are, like this is the moment they’ve been

    preparing for all their lives – thought he’d come up with a zinger: ‘How

    can we trust you?’ Pillock. You can’t! That’s the whole point. These are politicians on the election trail. They’ll say anything.

    Yet

    still they get applauded for it. Actual serious people – Westminster

    commentators who are supposed to guide us through the maze of politics –

    sit rapt through this utter tosh, nodding sagely, taking notes, forming

    opinions as if any of this matters. Who answered the silly Christmas

    present question better: Corbyn, by giving Boris A Christmas Carol to

    make the point that all Conservatives are heartless Scrooges, or Boris,

    by giving him first his Withdrawal Agreement, then some damson jam?

    Who, frankly, cares?

    It’s worse than a bad joke: this is our

    country’s future at stake. They say we get the politicians we deserve

    but I’m not sure I agree with that masochistic line. What we actually

    get is the politicians our broken, facile, relentlessly left-drifting

    media culture inflicts on us.

    https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/delingpoles-election-diary-3/

    1. Evening Rik,
      Many of us don’t get the politicians we
      deserve.
      Many of us are the innocent victims of the odious repeat performance via the polling booth of peoples continuing to put & keep the innocents in the sh!te bog.

    1. His set probably works better than the real thing, so if he comes with the train set it might improve matters.

    1. Corbyn took sides with the IRA. The Birmingham bombers were never identified and those who were Initially prosecuted and imprisoned were later released and paid massive sums in compensation.

      The IRA know which of their members were responsible but have never divulged this information to the authorities. Corbyn is a terrorist sympathiser and unfit to hold public office.

      1. Evening C,
        When it comes to pointing the finger of guilt you must cast a wider net.
        Currently there is not a cigarette paper difference between lab/lib/con in the
        treachery / deceit & anti UK department.
        None of the toxic trio are better / worse than tother, all can be seen as sh!te, & dangerous sh!te at that.

  68. Hola, amigos! I am at last back in the land of the living after 8 days off-line. You have no idea how difficult that has made life. We now have a new router which will only work with my machine if I plug it in direct in the workshop upstairs (which also happens to be extremely cold). Still, at least I can start catching up on all I’ve missed during my period incommunicado.

    3. As Woody Allan is supposed to have said “I’m not frightened of dying, I just don’t want to be there when it happens”.

      1. Hi Lass,

        I told them at the tennis club if I keel over on court DO NOT RESUSCITATE.

        There was a rousing chorus of ” DON’T WORRY WE WON’T…….!

    2. The third one reminds me of my black and white cat, he had long legs and was always getting into trouble, very much missed along with his playmate, who was a grumpy grey and white female, who kept him in order with a swat of her paw.

    3. If the UK ever gets out from under, all those businesses who abandoned the country should have steep tariffs levied on their imports to Britain.

      1. Evening Jtl,
        Done as soon as they moved, HP, etc,etc.
        The HP should have taken their head office with them ( hoc).

  80. Apologies if this has been posted before, but it’s worth repeating, from Speccie blogs thanks to Ross Clark…..

    It is quite a challenge to boil down the Labour manifesto to its 10 silliest ideas, but here are my nominations:

    1. ‘Within a decade we will reduce average full-time weekly working hours to 32 across the economy, with no loss of pay, funded by productivity’ – as well as introducing four new bank holidays on national saints’ days and establishing a Working Time Commission to advise on raising holiday entitlements. How we are going to find the time to build Corbyn’s new Jerusalem I haven’t a clue, but it is greatly going to add to the cost of the NHS and other public services

    2. ‘Introducing a legal right to collective consultation on the implementation of new technology in workplaces.’ Having claimed that it is going to pay for a 32 hour working week through productivity gains, Labour now wants a Luddite clause to enable workers to block labour-saving technology

    3. A promise to end driver-only operation of trains by putting a guard on every train. So how is that supposed to improve productivity on the railways? This is a prime example of how unions will block new technology, damaging productivity. Ending driver-only operation would go back on reforms introduced by British Rail in 1982.

    4. Abolish zero-hour contracts. Only 2.8 per cent of workers in ‘zero hours Britain’ are employed on zero hours contracts, and of these only a third want to work extra hours, according to the ONS. Eliminating this form of work would not just drive up costs for business, it would hurt people who appreciate flexible working arrangements and the freedom to work only when they want to.

    5. ‘We will start to roll out sectoral collective bargaining across the economy’. Back to the 1970s, in other words. We’ll finally trample the likes of Grunwick for good.

    6. Build 150,000 council and other social housing units a year. What it doesn’t say is how it helps to achieve this without diminishing private housebuilding. Unless it can find a way of massively expanding the industry, with workers who don’t currently exist, it will be even harder for frustrated homebuyers to get on the housing ladder

    7. The threat to produce generic versions of drugs unless pharmaceutical companies agree to sell them at ‘fair’ prices. Labour also says it wants to increase the number of pharmaceutical jobs in Britain – but how, given that it is threatening to undermine the industry’s ability to earn back the billions it costs to develop new drugs?

    8. Build 7,000 offshore turbines, 2,000 onshore turbines (approximately doubling current capacity) and 22,000 football pitches’ worth of solar panels. It wouldn’t be such a bad idea if Labour could tell us how it was going to store the electricity from these intermittent energy sources. All it says is that it will ‘expand power storage’ but giving no explanation of how.

    9. Set up public inquiries into blacklisting and Orgreave. For goodness sake, why not one into the Charge of the Light Brigade while we are at it?

    10. Oh, hang on. Labour also wants to ‘conduct an audit of impact of Britain’s colonial heritage to understand our contribution to the dynamics of violence and insecurity across regions previously under British colonial rule’. Any acknowledgement of spreading democracy and the rule of law? What did the Brits ever do for us, eh?

    1. Number one is a show-stopper. We don’t produce anything any more since we went to a ‘service economy’.

      Cutting people’s hair more often, or opening your barber’s shop for only 4 days instead of 5 doesn’t make wealth. Productivity only counts if you are producing something with a sell-on value.

      1. When computers first appeared on the scene, it was predicted that we all would all need only a three day work. (The ” Regulation ” was invented, and the three became six).

      2. My barber now only opens three days a week, but still has the same number of customers and hence has the same turnover. Clearly it’s because they just don’t turn up when he is closed.

      3. The ‘service economy’ has thrived but we also have a significant manufacturing sector, bassetedge.

  81. Goodnight, all. Sorry I only touched base for a hail and farewell. Hope to spend more time here tomorrow.

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