An unofficial place to discuss the Telegraph letters, established when the DT website turned off its comments facility (now reinstated, but not as good as ours),
Intelligent, polite, good-humoured debate is welcome, whether on or off topic. Differing opinions are encouraged, but rudeness or personal attacks on other posters will not be tolerated. Posts which – in the opinion of the moderators – make this a less than cordial environment, are likely to be removed, without prior warning. Persistent offenders will be banned.
Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/08/28/letterspatients-report-gps-turn-away-dealt-dialling-111/
It’s in the UK’s national interest for Trump to triumph. Douglas Murray 29 August 2020.
Is there anyone in the world who cannot list Donald Trump’s flaws? They seem so manifest and so multiple that even thinking of doing so evokes thoughts of barrels, shooting and fish. His unwillingness to ever miss an opportunity to boast. His career-long devotion to exaggeration. His desire to talk up everything about himself and talk down everything about anyone else. This and much more can all be held against him and regularly is.
He is also one of the most successful figures in US history. In his career before the presidency he made a fortune, lost a fortune, made a fortune again, then ran for president and – having never held political office – gained the presidency on his first try. You don’t need to admire him, let alone love him, to notice that there is something uncommon about him. And uncommon people – especially uncommonly successful people – generally have something worth teaching.
Opinion polls suggest that the British people have never warmed to Trump and find his vulgarity as well as what news about him filters through to be reason enough to dismiss him. But taking this view deprives us of something. Not least an ability to learn what it is about Trump that makes him appealing to a significant proportion of the American public and what has made aspects of his time in office a success. Listing Trump’s virtues may be harder than listing his flaws, but still they are there and worth highlighting.
Take Trump abroad. The revelations about him – not least in John Bolton’s recent memoir – can be hair-raising without a doubt. The President’s lack of awareness about major aspects of foreign policy. His ignorance of basic things (such as – apparently – this country being a nuclear power) are enough to instil in the foreign policy establishment a desire to have a lie down. And yet those same foreign policy establishments have been shown to be wrong time and again. Whether it is intelligence failures over WMDs, or a total lack of foresight over nearly any major event (such as the so-called Arab Spring) we have of late had a foreign policy establishment that can hardly point to a single success. What is more, among most candidates for the US presidency, it seemed to have become a prerequisite for office to appeal to the American public on the basis that you’d be keener than any of your opponents to send American troops into battle. Any battle.
Trump reversed all of that, promising to prevent America being dragged into quagmires around the world. Of course there are consequences to America’s withdrawal. But Trump was not wrong when he berated the foreign policy failures of his predecessors and rivals. Had Hillary Clinton achieved the Oval Office, it is almost certain that she would have got her country into one or more conflicts in the Middle East among other places.
The person who actually won the 2016 race has done no such thing. He has not only stuck to his promise not to get America into any more wars, he has done things that his predecessors would never have done without getting America into endless such conflicts.
Cast your mind back to January when American forces killed General Qasem Soleimani. The moment the killing of Iran’s foremost general was announced, the entire foreign policy commentariat went into overdrive. “Is this our era’s Franz Ferdinand moment?” they asked. And that was just the less excitable ones. There seemed a general belief – once again – that Trump was going to get us all killed. And yet – once again – he didn’t. American forces took out Iran’s leading general, a man who had overseen the deaths of countless numbers of British and American troops, not to mention Iraqi and other civilians in the area, and Iran took it. Not least because they seemed to fear that they were dealing with a madman.
It is the same with the other notable foreign policy strides of his presidency. Whether it is the still under-heralded but utterly historic Israel-UAE peace deal. Or his unexpected efforts to address the problem of North Korea. Time and again Trump has done bold, brash and often nail-biting things in the foreign arena. But he has come through them. Like all presidents he could have done more in other places. But in the areas that Trump has applied himself to, he has made quite extraordinary achievements. And the fact that he is unpredictable and perhaps even a little crazy (an impression we must hope that he works at cultivating) can be a great virtue in the international arena.
Likewise when it comes to the only major challenger to America’s global economic and military dominance, Trump has been able to do things that none of his opponents would ever have dreamed of doing. His re-building of the American military has not been done in order to use it against third-rate despots and tinpot terrorist groups (who have demonstrated an uncanny ability to play America to a draw in recent conflicts). Rather he has built it up in order to demonstrate to China that American military dominance will not be allowed to dwindle away. He knows that if you have military dominance, an awful lot of other games can also come into play.
Is there another candidate (in 2016 or now in 2020) who knows better than Trump the game that is now in motion with Beijing? If there is then is there any other who would have been willing to slap tariffs on the country, bring back jobs from China and much more in the way that Trump has done? Long before the coronavirus hit, Trump had warmed up the American people to understand the threat that China posed to them. Not as a military power but as an economic rival. An economic rival whose actions were directly affecting the wage-packets of American workers. No European leader has managed to do anything like that. And America’s desire to play the Chinese at their own game is a major global play that is highly unlikely to survive the Trump presidency.
And then there are the issues that are of more immediate relevance to the UK. Most important of which is the US-UK trade deal currently under negotiation. It seems unlikely that this deal will be completed before the presidential election. Not for any lack of will on either side, but simply because of the time it takes for the details of such agreements to be ironed out. The excellent trade teams on both sides of these discussions want to arrive at a deal and given the opportunity they will do. The good will in Washington and from the team around Trump is not to be ignored. Compare that with the “back of the queue” that Trump’s predecessor said a post-Brexit Britain would be sent to.
On these issues and more, there are successes that this administration has achieved which are worth reflecting on. Of course some will judge that these do not outweigh the negatives. Others will accuse me of seeking to use a low tool for high purposes. But there are only two people on the ballot this November. And the one most frequently presented as the most unstable and unpredictable may yet prove to be the one who will give this country and the wider world the period of greater success and calm.
Morning everyone. This is of course a skit on William Hague’s piece: It’s in the UK’s national interest that Joe Biden wins the presidential race. 24 August 2020. The only difference is the subject and it is better written and true.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/28/uks-national-interest-trump-triumph/
Morning Minty, a fact of life that is forever true, Wee Willie Vague is always wrong and can be relied upon to let us know it with his DT articles.
That is the natural consequence of peaking at age 16 or thereabouts.
It’s in the UK’s national interest for Trump to triumph. Douglas Murray 29 August 2020.
Is there anyone in the world who cannot list Donald Trump’s flaws? They seem so manifest and so multiple that even thinking of doing so evokes thoughts of barrels, shooting and fish. His unwillingness to ever miss an opportunity to boast. His career-long devotion to exaggeration. His desire to talk up everything about himself and talk down everything about anyone else. This and much more can all be held against him and regularly is.
He is also one of the most successful figures in US history. In his career before the presidency he made a fortune, lost a fortune, made a fortune again, then ran for president and – having never held political office – gained the presidency on his first try. You don’t need to admire him, let alone love him, to notice that there is something uncommon about him. And uncommon people – especially uncommonly successful people – generally have something worth teaching.
Opinion polls suggest that the British people have never warmed to Trump and find his vulgarity as well as what news about him filters through to be reason enough to dismiss him. But taking this view deprives us of something. Not least an ability to learn what it is about Trump that makes him appealing to a significant proportion of the American public and what has made aspects of his time in office a success. Listing Trump’s virtues may be harder than listing his flaws, but still they are there and worth highlighting.
Take Trump abroad. The revelations about him – not least in John Bolton’s recent memoir – can be hair-raising without a doubt. The President’s lack of awareness about major aspects of foreign policy. His ignorance of basic things (such as – apparently – this country being a nuclear power) are enough to instil in the foreign policy establishment a desire to have a lie down. And yet those same foreign policy establishments have been shown to be wrong time and again. Whether it is intelligence failures over WMDs, or a total lack of foresight over nearly any major event (such as the so-called Arab Spring) we have of late had a foreign policy establishment that can hardly point to a single success. What is more, among most candidates for the US presidency, it seemed to have become a prerequisite for office to appeal to the American public on the basis that you’d be keener than any of your opponents to send American troops into battle. Any battle.
Trump reversed all of that, promising to prevent America being dragged into quagmires around the world. Of course there are consequences to America’s withdrawal. But Trump was not wrong when he berated the foreign policy failures of his predecessors and rivals. Had Hillary Clinton achieved the Oval Office, it is almost certain that she would have got her country into one or more conflicts in the Middle East among other places.
The person who actually won the 2016 race has done no such thing. He has not only stuck to his promise not to get America into any more wars, he has done things that his predecessors would never have done without getting America into endless such conflicts.
Cast your mind back to January when American forces killed General Qasem Soleimani. The moment the killing of Iran’s foremost general was announced, the entire foreign policy commentariat went into overdrive. “Is this our era’s Franz Ferdinand moment?” they asked. And that was just the less excitable ones. There seemed a general belief – once again – that Trump was going to get us all killed. And yet – once again – he didn’t. American forces took out Iran’s leading general, a man who had overseen the deaths of countless numbers of British and American troops, not to mention Iraqi and other civilians in the area, and Iran took it. Not least because they seemed to fear that they were dealing with a madman.
It is the same with the other notable foreign policy strides of his presidency. Whether it is the still under-heralded but utterly historic Israel-UAE peace deal. Or his unexpected efforts to address the problem of North Korea. Time and again Trump has done bold, brash and often nail-biting things in the foreign arena. But he has come through them. Like all presidents he could have done more in other places. But in the areas that Trump has applied himself to, he has made quite extraordinary achievements. And the fact that he is unpredictable and perhaps even a little crazy (an impression we must hope that he works at cultivating) can be a great virtue in the international arena.
Likewise when it comes to the only major challenger to America’s global economic and military dominance, Trump has been able to do things that none of his opponents would ever have dreamed of doing. His re-building of the American military has not been done in order to use it against third-rate despots and tinpot terrorist groups (who have demonstrated an uncanny ability to play America to a draw in recent conflicts). Rather he has built it up in order to demonstrate to China that American military dominance will not be allowed to dwindle away. He knows that if you have military dominance, an awful lot of other games can also come into play.
Is there another candidate (in 2016 or now in 2020) who knows better than Trump the game that is now in motion with Beijing? If there is then is there any other who would have been willing to slap tariffs on the country, bring back jobs from China and much more in the way that Trump has done? Long before the coronavirus hit, Trump had warmed up the American people to understand the threat that China posed to them. Not as a military power but as an economic rival. An economic rival whose actions were directly affecting the wage-packets of American workers. No European leader has managed to do anything like that. And America’s desire to play the Chinese at their own game is a major global play that is highly unlikely to survive the Trump presidency.
And then there are the issues that are of more immediate relevance to the UK. Most important of which is the US-UK trade deal currently under negotiation. It seems unlikely that this deal will be completed before the presidential election. Not for any lack of will on either side, but simply because of the time it takes for the details of such agreements to be ironed out. The excellent trade teams on both sides of these discussions want to arrive at a deal and given the opportunity they will do. The good will in Washington and from the team around Trump is not to be ignored. Compare that with the “back of the queue” that Trump’s predecessor said a post-Brexit Britain would be sent to.
On these issues and more, there are successes that this administration has achieved which are worth reflecting on. Of course some will judge that these do not outweigh the negatives. Others will accuse me of seeking to use a low tool for high purposes. But there are only two people on the ballot this November. And the one most frequently presented as the most unstable and unpredictable may yet prove to be the one who will give this country and the wider world the period of greater success and calm.
Morning everyone. This is of course a skit on William Hague’s piece: It’s in the UK’s national interest that Joe Biden wins the presidential race. 24 August 2020. The only difference is the subject and it is better written and true.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/28/uks-national-interest-trump-triumph/
It’s in the UK’s national interest for Trump to triumph. Douglas Murray 29 August 2020.
Is there anyone in the world who cannot list Donald Trump’s flaws? They seem so manifest and so multiple that even thinking of doing so evokes thoughts of barrels, shooting and fish. His unwillingness to ever miss an opportunity to boast. His career-long devotion to exaggeration. His desire to talk up everything about himself and talk down everything about anyone else. This and much more can all be held against him and regularly is.
He is also one of the most successful figures in US history. In his career before the presidency he made a fortune, lost a fortune, made a fortune again, then ran for president and – having never held political office – gained the presidency on his first try. You don’t need to admire him, let alone love him, to notice that there is something uncommon about him. And uncommon people – especially uncommonly successful people – generally have something worth teaching.
Opinion polls suggest that the British people have never warmed to Trump and find his vulgarity as well as what news about him filters through to be reason enough to dismiss him. But taking this view deprives us of something. Not least an ability to learn what it is about Trump that makes him appealing to a significant proportion of the American public and what has made aspects of his time in office a success. Listing Trump’s virtues may be harder than listing his flaws, but still they are there and worth highlighting.
Take Trump abroad. The revelations about him – not least in John Bolton’s recent memoir – can be hair-raising without a doubt. The President’s lack of awareness about major aspects of foreign policy. His ignorance of basic things (such as – apparently – this country being a nuclear power) are enough to instil in the foreign policy establishment a desire to have a lie down. And yet those same foreign policy establishments have been shown to be wrong time and again. Whether it is intelligence failures over WMDs, or a total lack of foresight over nearly any major event (such as the so-called Arab Spring) we have of late had a foreign policy establishment that can hardly point to a single success. What is more, among most candidates for the US presidency, it seemed to have become a prerequisite for office to appeal to the American public on the basis that you’d be keener than any of your opponents to send American troops into battle. Any battle.
Trump reversed all of that, promising to prevent America being dragged into quagmires around the world. Of course there are consequences to America’s withdrawal. But Trump was not wrong when he berated the foreign policy failures of his predecessors and rivals. Had Hillary Clinton achieved the Oval Office, it is almost certain that she would have got her country into one or more conflicts in the Middle East among other places.
The person who actually won the 2016 race has done no such thing. He has not only stuck to his promise not to get America into any more wars, he has done things that his predecessors would never have done without getting America into endless such conflicts.
Cast your mind back to January when American forces killed General Qasem Soleimani. The moment the killing of Iran’s foremost general was announced, the entire foreign policy commentariat went into overdrive. “Is this our era’s Franz Ferdinand moment?” they asked. And that was just the less excitable ones. There seemed a general belief – once again – that Trump was going to get us all killed. And yet – once again – he didn’t. American forces took out Iran’s leading general, a man who had overseen the deaths of countless numbers of British and American troops, not to mention Iraqi and other civilians in the area, and Iran took it. Not least because they seemed to fear that they were dealing with a madman.
It is the same with the other notable foreign policy strides of his presidency. Whether it is the still under-heralded but utterly historic Israel-UAE peace deal. Or his unexpected efforts to address the problem of North Korea. Time and again Trump has done bold, brash and often nail-biting things in the foreign arena. But he has come through them. Like all presidents he could have done more in other places. But in the areas that Trump has applied himself to, he has made quite extraordinary achievements. And the fact that he is unpredictable and perhaps even a little crazy (an impression we must hope that he works at cultivating) can be a great virtue in the international arena.
Likewise when it comes to the only major challenger to America’s global economic and military dominance, Trump has been able to do things that none of his opponents would ever have dreamed of doing. His re-building of the American military has not been done in order to use it against third-rate despots and tinpot terrorist groups (who have demonstrated an uncanny ability to play America to a draw in recent conflicts). Rather he has built it up in order to demonstrate to China that American military dominance will not be allowed to dwindle away. He knows that if you have military dominance, an awful lot of other games can also come into play.
Is there another candidate (in 2016 or now in 2020) who knows better than Trump the game that is now in motion with Beijing? If there is then is there any other who would have been willing to slap tariffs on the country, bring back jobs from China and much more in the way that Trump has done? Long before the coronavirus hit, Trump had warmed up the American people to understand the threat that China posed to them. Not as a military power but as an economic rival. An economic rival whose actions were directly affecting the wage-packets of American workers. No European leader has managed to do anything like that. And America’s desire to play the Chinese at their own game is a major global play that is highly unlikely to survive the Trump presidency.
And then there are the issues that are of more immediate relevance to the UK. Most important of which is the US-UK trade deal currently under negotiation. It seems unlikely that this deal will be completed before the presidential election. Not for any lack of will on either side, but simply because of the time it takes for the details of such agreements to be ironed out. The excellent trade teams on both sides of these discussions want to arrive at a deal and given the opportunity they will do. The good will in Washington and from the team around Trump is not to be ignored. Compare that with the “back of the queue” that Trump’s predecessor said a post-Brexit Britain would be sent to.
On these issues and more, there are successes that this administration has achieved which are worth reflecting on. Of course some will judge that these do not outweigh the negatives. Others will accuse me of seeking to use a low tool for high purposes. But there are only two people on the ballot this November. And the one most frequently presented as the most unstable and unpredictable may yet prove to be the one who will give this country and the wider world the period of greater success and calm.
Morning everyone. This is of course a skit on William Hague’s piece: It’s in the UK’s national interest that Joe Biden wins the presidential race. 24 August 2020. The only difference is the subject and it is better written and true.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/28/uks-national-interest-trump-triumph/
‘Morning, Peeps.
Brief, but powerful:
SIR – Can Matt Hancock explain why he has decided to change our National Health Service into a National Covid Service that only treats one condition. The rest of us suffer and die in silence.
Dr Mary Castle
Claygate, Surrey
The objective is to maximise the number of people who will be especially vulnerable to being killed by Covid.
This will ensure that when the Autumn/Winter wave strikes, deaths will far exceed the last time round and show that Fergusson’s team was correct and that Government’s actions were necessary.
It will also save a small fortune in care, pensions etc. while bringing forward death duies and releasing housing stock.
The green revolution and NWO reset can go ahead unhindered.
‘Morning, Hugh.
He’s toeing the World Party line.
Lock down over Christmas. Not sure which year.
It’s all part of the UN’s Agenda 21 plan to reduce the world’s population.
Good morning, all. Another day.
Gale blowing.
‘Morning again.
I would like to think that the government wouldn’t fall for something as daft as this, but judging by their current performance Hall’s ludicrous suggestion may well come to pass:
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/08/27/outgoing-bbc-boss-in-future-tv-tax-could-be-compulsory-for-all/
My understanding, Hugh, is that most European (or perhaps it’s World?) countries already include a universal charge to cover not just police/rubbish collection/fire services/etc. but also TV stations. I reckon that a universal TV tax for the UK is inevitable.
‘Morning, Elsie. A cop-out is certainly possible, Elsie, but would leave the poisonous B’stard Broadcasting Corpn generally intact, and that for me is totally unacceptable. There will still be no accountability, but judging how the government rolled over last time, we are about to be shafted yet again.
Norway recently moved tv tax to income tax. So, even if you have no telly, you pay. And avoiding it is difficult.
In a sense, I have no objection provided that the revenue raised is shared equally by all TV stations and not (as currently is the case) given to just the BBC. And heaven help us if the government takes it all and uses it to plug other non-TV gaps, just as it does with the Road Tax, Pension contributions, etc.
I watched (part) of a prog that the MR had recorded. It was the beeboid Botney “interviewing” (= listening sycophantically) to a British born bame – who had abandoned his birth-given “slave name” and replaced it with a Nigerian one. He is a director of a theatre – delighted to have 45% bames – putting on plays written by bames about guns, crime, gangs, broken families (as well as the terrible live the whites force upon them). Adored by white libtard BLM supporters who say that he makes them feel “liberated”.
He clearly has not the remotest interest in 350 years of English drama. He wandered round Nigeria – esp a “slave” prison – whinging about the English and slavery – completely unaware that the place had been built and run by Nigerian slave dealers.
I went for an early bath.
I thought (and hoped) we had heard the last of Yentob following the ‘collapse’ of Kids Company, the charity that he and that fat batmanjelly woman were involved with. Even the BBC went cold on him over that episode.
Good Lord. I’d forgotten about the explosion in Dunelm Mill curtain dept..
Nah – he’s back in spades (as it were). Smarming his way round bames.
He’s precisely the sort of overpaid leftie that has got the BBC into the current mess.
Quite so; he oozes smugness like so many Beeboids.
Quite so; he oozes smugness like so many Beeboids.
This Botney?
Alan Yentob ‘tried to halt’ BBC probe into Kids Company: Corporation’s £330,000-a-year creative director phoned Newsnight staff hours before it aired damning report.
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/08/04/00/2B04796E00000578-0-image-m-40_1438644206150.jpg
Mr Yentob, the BBC’s £330,000-a-year creative director, telephoned Newsnight staff hours before it aired a damning report into Kids Company last month.(Aug 2015)
The very same.
Are asylum seekers really living in luxury hotels? – Q&A. 29 August 2020.
Are asylum seekers living in luxury hotels, as the far right claims?
The quality of hotel accommodation varies. Most rooms are in budget hotels, which are being used during the pandemic because social distancing is not possible in accommodation the Home Office usually uses, especially those that have several beds or bunkbeds in one room.
So that would be a yes then!
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/aug/28/are-asylum-seekers-really-living-in-luxury-hotels-qa
Not much social distancing in this one: man, wife (presumably) and several children; in fairness, they do occupy 3 rooms.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8674669/Britain-activists-film-storming-hotel-migrants-inside.html#v-676267097516362556
“Far right”? People observing the situation and saying what they see are just right, surely.
Dull and 14C.
Is that your bra size JN? 🙂
It depends where he wears it.
Are you bragging and threatening to trump his Cs with your Ds? :•)
Charles Moore:
It is a basic doctrine of our system of government that ministers decide, and therefore account to Parliament for their decisions. It follows that they – not civil servants or other advisers – take the credit for success and the blame for failure. In cases of iniquity or irredeemable, systemic cock-up, they should resign. Any other system would evade the direct relationship that must exist between the voters and those who win the general election and then form a government.
In the case of the confusion over Covid-affected A-level and GCSE results, the responsible minister is the Education Secretary, Gavin Williamson. No iniquity is alleged, but if the general view is that the cock-up is irredeemable, Mr Williamson should resign or invite the Prime Minister to move him when convenient.
Given the immense difficulties of Covid, I would say Mr Williamson’s case is borderline, rather than open-and-shut. On the one hand, he has lost a lot of public confidence. On the other, his departure might solve nothing for the Government, or for schools, still wrestling with the plague. It is a fine judgment.
But I want to look at a different aspect of the doctrine of ministerial responsibility. How much does it mean when the structure and practice of the public service undermine its reality?
In the case of this summer’s exams, the body charged with making the decisions was not Mr Williamson’s department, but Ofqual. Ofqual is an “independent” regulator, a “non-ministerial government department”. It is supposed to be free from political control, and thus maintain educational standards. The famous algorithm was its, not Mr Williamson’s. He did not even have the right to inspect it in detail.
In quiet times, such arm’s-length arrangements can work. Ministerial meddling is reduced; experts protect the standards. The trouble is that whenever things get difficult, the Government comes under pressure to intervene and the non-ministerial departments somehow vanish. How often, during the exams row, did you find Sally Collier, Ofqual’s now-departing chief executive, publicly defending what her organisation had done? She neither made the case for her policy, nor explained her errors.
The most glaring example of responsibility swerved is NHS England. It employs 1.2 million people, making it the largest public-sector employer in Europe. Its chief executive, Sir Simon Stevens, is accountable for more than £120 billion of annual spending. Yet he has been almost invisible to the public since Covid-19 hit the fan. We have little idea whether he did right or wrong. We have to listen to the Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, instead.
These arm’s-length bodies become closed little worlds, invested with great power, hard to hold to account, fiercely unwilling to take blame.
Then there are the government departments themselves. Here – in theory – the chain of command is clear. Ministers answer to Parliament for their departments and protect them from attack. In return, civil servants make sure that what ministers want gets done. The practice, however, now departs very markedly from the theory. I am not talking here about clearly bad behaviour, such as bureaucrats leaking or ministers turning on their officials in public. That, unfortunately, always happens. I am talking about what is now considered normal practice.
Defenders of officials often say, “Remember, they can’t answer back”. Yet nowadays they often can. Senior officials appear before parliamentary committees, as if they had an independent existence. They make lots of public speeches, often without consulting their ministers. Last month, Jonathan Slater, the permanent secretary of state at the Department for Education, spoke at the Institute for Government. He declared that “I feel at my best when I genuinely feel accountable for delivering something”. If so, would he like to take some responsibility for the exams fiasco?
It is increasingly common for a department to declare its own view on an issue which goes beyond government policy (and sometimes even contradicts it). Recently, the Tory peer, Emma Nicholson, alerted by complaints from many parents, began to protest to the Department for Education about its new materials for the Relationship and Sex Education (RSE) guidelines which become compulsory next month. Some of these “factsheets”, promoted by lobby groups with the help of departmental money, advise schools that they must, in the interest of transgender rights, institute mixed-sex lavatories. Breast binders, padded trousers, puberty blockers, cross hormones and surgery are all advocated. The Trans Inclusion Toolkit being pushed to schools sounds as if it does the job all too literally.
Another document for schools – an “inclusive package for ALL young people” – circulated by an LGBT organisation, the Proud Trust, and backed with money from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, introduces the “Dice Game”. On each face of each die is a word (or words), such as “penis”, “anus” and “hands and fingers”. Players are then invited, having rolled the dice, to think of exciting things to do with the combination chance has thrown up. This almost paedophilic fantasy is aimed at children as young as 13. None of the above is in the legislation, though the pressure-group documents often suggest it is. Mr Slater, however, is an enthusiast for trans rights, and tweets as the Civil Service’s “LGB&TI Champion”. During Covid, he has tweeted only once (so far as I can see) about the urgent matter of exams, preferring subjects such as Ramadan, Pride Month and Windrush Day.
The most striking recent example of departments going way beyond their impartial remit is their reaction to Black Lives Matter, following the killing of George Floyd. Several permanent secretaries, including Mr Slater at Education, and Sir Stephen Lovegrove at Defence, put out messages against “whiteness” or giving the hashtag for Black Lives Matter.
Since then, part of Mr Slater’s concern for what he calls “tackling the whiteness of senior Whitehall” has been fulfilled, in that he has been retired early on ministerial insistence. The permanent secretary of the Ministry of Justice, Sir Richard Heaton, has also been moved towards the door. In June, he wrote, on behalf of his department: “We must be clear in the workplace that racism and inequality are enemies we must keep fighting … It’s why the Black Lives Matter movement is so important. And that it’s not enough to be passively anti-racist; we must take a stand, and we must take action.”
The point is not that racism does not matter, but that definitions and remedies differ dramatically. Many mandarins have failed to recognise – as they failed with Brexit – that other views legitimately exist. They appear not to understand that their views, publicly expressed, undermine the neutrality of public service. What due diligence have they done on the organisation Black Lives Matter? It is a lazy assumption that, just because of its title, BLM must be right, and that taxpayers’ money should be spent in its cause. The mandarins are allowing HR departments to be used as a battering ram for political activism, undermining the Government’s right to make policy.
These trends suggest that the present Government is right to try to recall the public service to its chief duty, which is to stop striking attitudes and to make policy work. Hence the coming reorganisation of the Cabinet Office, the search for a new Cabinet Secretary and a new head of the Foreign Office – and the quiet but firm moves against all these woke Sir Humphreys.
A couple of BTL comments:
“The Civil Service is there to support and enact policies and legislation as decided by the elected Government. They are not there to thwart or manage their own agendas, or as I believe is happening at the moment, discredit the Government. This sickness is at the top and it needs addressing. We could for example, start with the MOD, who’s role it is to remove the Army, Navy and Airforce whilst keeping themselves in a job.”
“Covid is not the disease we should fear, this marxist infection is far more dangerous.”
323098+ up ticks,
Morning HJ,
In the main charlie got it right, the main fault is the political close shop, three party’s pro nearly ex eu assets, and an
electorate locked into keeping / putting “their” party in/into power.
The welfare of the Country and the countries infrastructure are a secondary issue.
These three party’s have not changed in many ways since
24/6/2016 same party’s, same politico’s, same in many respects rubber stampers,same in the main electorate giving the politician carte blance once again.
The electorate are voting for the political ghosts of yesterday in supporting lab/con today, there is not one iota of integrity in the current treacherous coalition.
Democracy was terminated when Lynne (now Baroness) Featherstone introduced a public consultation over a law that had no overwhelming public support, was not in any party election manifesto, nor in any Queen’s Speech, nor was tested in a Green Paper or a White Paper, and was a fundamental redefinition of an institution that goes back to biblical times. The whole thing was guillotined through Parliament where opponents, in a very time-limited debate, had to battle for the Speaker’s eye for their three minutes, along with supporters and the two front-bench spokeswomen on both sides of the House, Maria Miller and Yvette Cooper were given 45 minutes each to speak in favour.
Featherstone announced that we would get it whether we liked it or not, and all the public consultation was about was to decide how to implement it at the greatest speed.
It set a legal precedent that damns the nation today.
What, after the Equal Marriage Act got Royal Assent by the Head of the Church of England in 2014, is the point of parliamentary democracy or a constitutional monarchy?
But COVID and BLM have flushed a lot of these covert marxists into the open, for which we should be thankful. The enemy is identified, by name, and measures can be put in place to thwart them.
Along the same lines, I have come to the conclusion that there is a wide spectrum of opinion about the Covid-19 pandemic ranging from “over-cautious” to “over-reckless” following/ignoring of Government rules. And both extremes (and every degree in between) are viewed by their supporters as being the only correct one – from “Rather safe than sorry” all the way to “No-one is going to curtail my liberty”. It has opened my eyes to which of my friends and acquaintances are at one extreme or the other. Which helps me to see them more clearly in all future interactions.
Along the same lines, I have come to the conclusion that there is a wide spectrum of opinion about the Covid-19 pandemic ranging from “over-cautious” to “over-reckless” following/ignoring of Government rules. And both extremes (and every degree in between) are viewed by their supporters as being the only correct one – from “Rather safe than sorry” all the way to “No-one is going to curtail my liberty”. It has opened my eyes to which of my friends and acquaintances are at one extreme or the other. Which helps me to see them more clearly in all future interactions.
Can be, but will they be?
One thousand upvotes.
Morning all
Dull and boring here
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2020/08/28/BOB290820_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqcXLA0TNltAe_ihgyEu4tGyDopaLyoiuXkoEo0JROwNA.jpg?imwidth=1260
Is it to do with some recently expire coolie who no-one has ever heard of but is all over the Daily Dumbells? Reportedly he died of colon canker – they can’t even spell Covid properly.
I don’t get it. Actually, I often don’t get what Bob’s cartoons are getting at.
Batman has become fat and lazy and prefers WFH. The Bat-signal fails to entice him back to his ‘office’
Thanks Boss. I knew we country bumpkins could count on you. {:^))
I even had to look up WFH.
The things one learns from NTTL… morning, Mola.
Me too.
So you’re saying (© Cathy Newman) that Boris thinks that dressing himself as Batman will make him lose a few pounds, and that Robin has self-declared himself as a scaredy cat. Or perhaps that Peddy and Missy are looking up a recipe for Roast Bat before heading to Waitrose to do their shopping for Sunday lunch?
:-))
Frankly, Elsie, I believe you’re overthinking this one… 🙂
Thanks for the explanation, Boss. I do struggle a bit with Bob, and this one was no exception.
#metoo.. I only posted it in the hopes that one or more of our more trendy woke brethren would explain it to me (and you).
Hola todos.
Como estas?
Perry, thank you.
Bare bra, takk. Og du?
Leave her underwear out of this forum….
‘Morning, Bugsy.
‘todos’ is plural, ‘estas’ is singular, hence ¿Cómo estáis?
“Como están?”, BSK. “Todos” is plural.
PS – Why are you writing to us in Spanish as if you were Peddy? And why am I correcting you as if I were Peddy?
:-))
Morning all. How some doctors have failed us …….
SIR – A worrying trend that I have recently encountered is patients reporting that their GP practice is closed or that phones are not answered when they try to ring.
Sometimes patients report speaking to a GP and being asked to call 111 for a face-to-face appointment with the out-of-hours service.
As a result, doctors such as myself who work in out-of-hours practices see far more patients, who are not best managed in these settings. They need either ongoing care from a GP or specific referrals.
This all has the potential to compromise patient well-being and delay suspected cancer referrals. NHS England was clear in its recent update on GP contracts that all practices must deliver face-to-face care where clinically indicated. At present this is not happening.
I would ask all my colleagues in general practice to reflect on this. If I can see patients, why can’t they?
Dr Milan Dagli
Harrow, Middlesex
ADVERTISING
Ads by Teads
SIR – Neil Mortensen, the President of the Royal College of Surgeons (report, August 28) estimates that NHS surgeons are working at 50 per cent capacity because of procedures to protect against the Covid-19 virus.
Why are these still in place when (by the only measures that matter, deaths and hospital admissions) the epidemic is over and has been for some time?
This egregious damage to health services, the economy, education and social cohesion has gone on too long.
John Black FRCS
President, Royal College of Surgeons 2008-11
Malvern, Worcestershire
SIR – The sterling efforts of health workers in the NHS cannot hide the fact that a radical overhaul is long overdue for the NHS itself.
With face-to-face appointments with a GP almost non-existent, with ever-lengthening queues for life-changing replacement surgeries, with cancer treatments curtailed or postponed, with many hospital wards still without patients and with private hospitals effectively closed for business (while they work out their lucrative contracts with the NHS), is it not time for a change?
The response to the Covid crisis may have avoided a Dunkirk, but we are poorly prepared for overall victory and urgently need to refocus, rearm and retrain, while developing a vision of what success will look like.
We need a rallying cry to persuade the Government that our country urgently needs an NHS fully serving the nation’s needs. To persuade Boris Johnson to be bold enough to bring about such change, what suggestions are there for such a rallying cry?
Dr Jeremy Mantell
West Lavington, West Sussex
SIR – Can Matt Hancock explain why he has decided to change our National Health Service into a National Covid Service that only treats one condition. The rest of us suffer and die in silence.
Dr Mary Castle
Claygate, Surrey
The logical response is to move the nhs from a government-controlled provider to a private-sector provider. The banning of patients that stops the money flow would sharpen their focus somewhat.
Herr Oberst, I thought that the “woke” version of a full stop was X and not (=”)
Will you please edit that post, Paul? I can’t read machine code.
Refresh… Edited it immediately on posting.
SIR – Extinction Rebellion is threatening to disrupt the bank holiday weekend (“Extinction Rebellion to target airports over bank holiday weekend as part of new protest action”, telegraph.co.uk).
I hope the police will act more quickly and firmly than they did last time, when they stood by and let disruption happen.
Duncan Rayner
Sunningdale, Berkshire
Don’t count on it Mr Rayner.
Nah – they’ll be handing out vegan meals – and dancing and clapping along with the urban terrorists.
“… dancing and clapping along with the urban terrorists … and their ‘uman rights lawyers.”
Nah — they come along later. They don’t dirty their hands in the streets.
SIR — I ate at a local upmarket pub recently and ordered “seasonal vegetables” (Letters, August 27).
I was thoroughly disappointed to receive a dish of broccoli and carrots. I suspect these are served throughout the year, regardless of the huge variety of vegetables growing in gardens in August. The manager did accept that this was somewhat unimaginative.
Lorimer Burn
Guildford, Surrey
Tell you what, bloke with two surnames, instead of frittering away your money in an “upmarket pub” (it can’t be that upmarket if it only has broccoli and carrots) why not pop down to your local greengrocer, buy a selection of tasty vegetables for a fraction of the cost your pub charges you, take them home and cook them for yourself. Or are you as clueless about cooking as you are about your choice of pub?
Is there anywhere in England where it is not possible to grow a glut of runner beans and courgettes in August?
Dunno, but I certainly enjoyed some of my glut of runner beans yesterday.
Before the days of home freezers, mum and dad would cut their excess runner beans and layer the slices with salt in an old large glass sweet jar with a screw-top lid. On Christmas morning mum would remove some, soak them in water to remove the excess salt, then boil them and we had fresh-tasting delicious runner beans with our Christmas dinner.
Dunno, but I certainly enjoyed some of my glut of runner beans yesterday.
Before the days of home freezers, mum and dad would cut their excess runner beans and layer the slices with salt in an old large glass sweet jar with a screw-top lid. On Christmas morning mum would remove some, soak them in water to remove the excess salt, then boil them and we had fresh-tasting delicious runner beans with our Christmas dinner.
One of my favourite tasks was grinding the large block of salt into loose grains. Great fun.
Gosh, Bill. There’s something I haven’t thought of in half a century: block salt! I recall the large (2 pint?) pot full of it on the side of the cooker.
You just like grinding – admit it.
My garden 🙂
The words ‘upmarket pub’ and ‘manager’ in the same context speaks volumes about this bloke’s judgment. Pubs perceived as ‘upmarket’ will have an owner, a publican, a landlord or a proprietor. Managed pubs are rarely, if ever, ‘upmarket’.
I can’t remember the last time I went into a pub. Two/three years ago..
I can. 12 noon, Wednesday, November 6, 2019, the Glassblower PH, Glasshouse Street (off Regent Street), Piccadilly/Soho, London.
I met Toots and Zaharadelasierra; we enjoyed a pint or two and a jolly good chinwag.
Blimey – that made me remember the last time. The Admiralty, Trafalgar Square; 2 Dec 2019 with the MR, my daughter-in-law and grand-daughter.
It wasn’t bad.
We had been to the Royal Institute of Oil Painters Annual Exhibition at the Mall Galleries. My grand-daughter (aged 13) is a very capable painter – and was fascinated. Lunch was followed by visits to Christie’s and Sotheby’s., the viewing for their winter auctions are an education.
I can’t remember the last time I went into a pub. Two/three years ago..
One to ponder: from Charles Moore’s DT article.
“Another document for schools – an “inclusive package for ALL young people” – circulated by an LGBT organisation, the Proud Trust, and backed with money from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, introduces the “Dice Game”. On each face of each die is a word (or words), such as “penis”, “anus” and “hands and fingers”. Players are then invited, having rolled the dice, to think of exciting things to do with the combination chance has thrown up. This almost paedophilic fantasy is aimed at children as young as 13…”
Quite extraordinary.
Morning Anne 🙂
Is this what true love has come to among our well-trained educators?
Good morning Anne , yet on the commercial channels we are viewing serious celebrities begging us all to save tiny children in Africa from sexual predators .
This country is awash with organisations who are filling young impressionable minds with filth , or auto suggestion.
Is this what true love has come to among our well-trained educators?
They are ‘experts’, remember.
I have on my bookshelf a description from a famous Dutch diarist, written in 1944:
“I don’t think boys are as complicated as girls. You can easily see what boys look like in photographs or pictures of male nudes, but with women it’s different. In women, the genitals, or whatever they’re called, are hidden between the legs. …
Everything’s pretty well arranged in us women. Until I was eleven or twelve, I didn’t realise there was a second set of labia on the inside, since you couldn’t see them. What’s even funnier is that I thought urine came out of the clitoris. …
When you’re standing up, all you see from the front is hair. Between the legs there are two soft, cushiony things, also covered with hair, which press together when you sit down, and they’re very red and quite fleshy on the inside. In the upper part, between the outer labia, there’s a fold of skin that, on second thought, looks like a kind of blister. That’s the clitoris. Then comes the inner labia, which are also pressed together in a kind of crease. When they open up, you can see a fleshy little mound, no bigger than the top of my thumb. The upper part has a couple of small holes in it, which is where the urine comes out. The lower part looks as if it were just skin, and yet that’s where the vagina is. You can barely find it, because the folds of skin hide the opening. The hole’s so small I can hardly imagine how a man could get in there, much less how a baby could come out. It’s hard enough trying to get your index finger inside.
That’s all there is, and yet it plays such an important role!”
Could any such thing be written today, as a guide written by and for a 14-year-old?
Pedant alert! She was German, not Dutch.
You’re right! She was born in Frankfurt in 1929, and moved to Amsterdam when the Nazis came to power in 1933.
Good morning all.
A much brighter day here in Derbyshire.
I posted this last night and Garlands has asked be to repost it.
I was in tears listening to this brave woman:-
https://youtu.be/OON3Ea4WFvc
Posted on FB with the title, “Soon to be coming to a street near you.”
Just glimpsed the front page of today’s DT. Lord Haw Hall all over it telling us the beeboids have to be even more diverse than hitherto. “Divisive” more like.
Presumably he wants more and more of the sort of garbage I spent a few minutes watching last night (described below).
A large part of the Farming Programme this morning was introduced by a bit of horrible rap followed by a piece where there were encouraging black farming methods to the UK.
Transition from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe along BLM/Mugabe lines methinks. Time to stock the larder and load the shotgun?
Having spent the last 37 years living in the country (here and in France) I have never seen a black person employed in agriculture. Not one.
https://youtu.be/-ILbUduwBkg
Nice to see some slaves hard at work.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/58a44d46c055c2ab2376559883671dab3878f804be3c4472db2332a657ac3575.jpg
I know an excellent hard working builder, decent family man, who happens to be cafe au lait.
He once went into a property to quote for some work, and when he returned to his van, he hadn’t been given the job. When asked why, he said “They didn’t like the colour of my elbows”.
‘cos it’s hard bleedin’ work, and machines are better.
A question in today’s DT “Pub Quiz”: How many counties are there in Northern Ireland? reminded me of an acronym told me by a teacher when I was about nine. FATLAD gives you: Fermanagh, Armagh, Tyrone, Londonderry, Antrim & Down.
I suspect, though, that for Catholics this will be FATDAD.
Ah, but how many counties are there in Ulster?
“Well, I wouldn’t have started from here…”
Cavan, Donegal and Monaghan, all in the Republic of Ireland, are part of the traditional region of Ulster. That makes the total nine.
FATDAD DCM
Sounds like a terrible pseudo-rock band.
Morning, Grizz.
A heavy-metal/hip-hop conglomeration? A bit like Aerosmith/Run DMC?
Morning, Paul.
Northern Ireland or the north of Ireland?
Gavin Fuller, the DT’s quizmaster, prefers the former.
For reasons I outlined below, we have not been legitimately governed for six years now, despite three meaningless general elections.
What are we going to do about it, once we shed the supervision of the EU at the end of this year?
Sod all.
323098+ up ticks,
Morning JM,
The one thing that must be done is that anyone running an “opposition” campaign is thoroughly checked out, otherwise a repeat performance of the recent past is on the cards, guaranteed.
….we have not been legitimately governed since 1973…
So true Plum.
Good morning , how is the weather in Cornwall this morning , here in Dorset the chill factor is noticeable .
Morning all. Having endured ‘healthy’ breakfasts of grain-based muesli type stuff (or Trill, as I prefer to call it), I have, at last, identified a source of proper bacon in France. This morning I enjoyed fried bacon and mushrooms on toast. Luxury in these parts!
Military dog receives animal equivalent of VC for tackling Al Qaeda insurgents in Afghanistan on Special Forces raid. 29 August 2020.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/000645416f2974c160de1ca9bb9835c80876a3b7fd060c819fcc8eddc609c104.jpg
A military dog is to receive the animal equivalent of the Victoria Cross for tackling Al Qaeda insurgents in Afghanistan as part of a special forces raid.
Kuno, a three-year-old Belgian Malinois, was wounded in action during the battle in 2019 whilst serving with the Special Boat Service. He is to be awarded the Dickin Medal later this year.
Yep. He’ll be in court on charges of racially motivated biting in a couple of years!
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/29/military-dog-receives-animal-equivalent-vc-tackling-al-qaeda/
Lovely looking dog.
Precisely my thought.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6617c9a9d814802759667c42c81ea92eb757fc109c83fc43957f123cd3f93ad1.gif
Belle’s previous post mentioned the following on BBC lunchtime news.
I missed it did anyone hear it….?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALntxtC8dQ8
Fortunately not
Richard (Moh) and I nearly crashed the car when we heard that on the 1pm BBC4 news yesterday .. whilst on the way to my dental appointment .
We felt so physically sick .. the BBC devoted so much news time to this terrible anti white crusader.
It’s not serious – the whole thing is quit funny.
They didn’t find it funny, that’s why they quit.
Morning Peddy, for the BBC to air it , we have to take it seriously!
If you listened to it properly, you would realise that it’s a send-up.
A send up with hidden depths…..
….. in that they actually really do mean it, under cover of a send-up.
All good comedy has hidden depths.
You’re being naive peddy….
We know what the BBC are up to…they’ve been rumbled.
323098+ up ticks,
Has the nation enough moral fibre within left to try for change or will it be left to the imams to decide ? the way they are gaining strength & positions of power we will as a nation not have long to wait.
https://twitter.com/GerardBattenUK/status/1299626675244851201
Our voting system is fair, it just favours the incumbents.
Bah, who am I kidding. The eagerness for postal voting – note that the Left wing media have already started promoting it – is evidence.
Postal voting should be scrapped – it is open to total abuse.
But has Boris Johnson got the testicular strength to even think about doing it?
By the way, does anybody seriously believe that Boris Johnson will do away with the TV licence or stamp out the Channel Illegal Immigrant trade?
(I fear that he is completely impotent but I would love to be proved wrong)
Who do you think fathered Carrie’s baby then?
No, on both counts.
The problem is the belief that because he is PM he somehow has power. He doesn’t. Like all ministers, they’re figureheads. The mistaken belief (not here, I imagine) is that they’re captains, familiar with their ships. They’re not. Ministers are idiots with ideas. The people responsible for getting the ideas implemented are the civil service.
When the civil service is uninterested in minister’s idea it simply doesn’t get done, or more usually, is done with such deliberate incompetence that it’s implemented so badly that the minister is made to look a fool.
Worse, because there are no consequences for either incompetence or malice the civil service trundles on, apathetic and uninterested in ministerial – public – interest, pursuing it’s own agenda.
323098+up ticks.
Afternoon W,
Our voting system is as fair as the black abbots @rse a great many are comfortable with the current one because it can bring about no threat
to the existing voting pattern.
They are locked into “their party” no matter it has been proved to be treacherously atrocious year on year.
Many see no further than their nose they are at times gripping, do they see the decimation these party’s have bestowed upon the Country ? if so it is obviously not reflected in their voting pattern.
Maybe decimation is apt with regards to the legions of peoples & covid 19 also, we will see.
SIR – Sir Ed Davey, the new leader of the Liberal Democrats, said it’s time for the Liberal Democrats “to wake up and smell the coffee” (report, August 28). If that is supposed to portray inspirational leadership, then the party’s fourth leader in five years is guaranteed to go the way of his predecessors.
D M Retallack
Dorchester
SIR – Sir Ed Davey came second in the previous Liberal Democrat leadership election to the stupefyingly naive Jo Swinson. In this election, he beat his sole opponent, Layla Moran – another nonentity with all of three years’ experience as a Member of Parliament. What a thrilling, nail-biting contest.
Michael Fabb
Chobham, Surrey
Fear not, Gentlemen; the Limp Dumbs’ leader is a well established and readily recognisable eco-loon, so the party is destined to remain in the political wilderness for the forseeable.
Oi, Wo’ abaht us gals?
Fear not, Ladies; the Limp Dims’ leader is a well-established and readily-recognisable eco-loon, so the party is destined to remain in the political wilderness for the forseeable future.
Oi – what about the Trans folk?
I’ll leave that to you.
Especially for you, Grizz:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/70443f76f4fb6a84210d521611879fa0afdf4c630a9ec688b831a3b3c756e6d1.jpg
Aarrgghhh! Stop it! We in Sussex have to suffer this annual abomination!
If any force had even tried to bring out a cop car in that livery during my service:
1. No one would drive it.
2. Those responsible for making the decision to waste paint and commit criminal damage to police property in that way would be up on a disciplinary charge.
Morning, Grizz. Whilst I wholeheartedly agree with your condemnation, no paint would have been wasted on this abomination. The car has been ‘wrapped’ with a printed vinyl(?) film, which is removable. Would still have cost a 4 figure sum, though…
Evening, Geoff. Sorry to be late in replying. I wasn’t aware of that. I thought all new liveries required a paint job.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/58b1e9b463b6e5a1fbd07ad42b734b90927975839916d5223d801f9fb75652a3.jpg
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/90a977538304e1055c92e0e92f5227cb868cad24b1f3f1ad896ef4789525812e.jpg
Fear not, BSK; I was addressing the male letter-writers…although I must confess that, having reviewed my puny effort, D M Rettallack could be any one of at least 37 genders.
323098+up ticks,
HJ,
Truth be told the lib party have always been honest in the fact that they have ALWAYS been PRO EU can those
castigating them currently ie, lab / con say they are any
different in the honesty department ?
London
https://twitter.com/Charlotte3003G/status/1299655229231824897?s=20
Berlin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLI86rLaji8
Slowly the resistance begins……………
Freedom from what?
Face nappies, for a start
Good to see them all standing six feet apart.
Where are the police? Just asking.
Down on one knee?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8676411/Fresh-crisis-Boohoo-audits-18-factories-suggest-workers-paid-little-3-hour.html
What did anyone expect? You create a massive unskilled population. They either sit on welfare or, given the demographics are pushed into jobs. Those jobs are crappy and they’re not worth minimum wage so the workers are exploited.
The Left don’t care. For them immigration is a weapon to hurt their enemies. For the unskilled, unneeded immigrant it was always going to end in exploitation.
Now these boohoo people will say how awful it is and do a big investigation – which will destroy all these jobs and move them overseas. That’ll create a massive amount of unemployment, less money in the shops and high welfare demands leading to higher taxes.
Alternatively, the workers are paid minimum wage and the price of goods will rise, leading to redundancies as fewer people are kept on which means more welfare and high taxes.
It’s all very well for the grauniad to whinge and whine, but the reality is this situation is *their* fault. It’s as if they thought that forcing 1 and 1 to equal 3 would simply because they said it would.
It all leads to destabilisation, and the opportunity for a fascist/marxist takeover resulting from all the chaos.
£3 every hour and no beatings? Luxury.
When we learned about Victorian reforms in the workplace in history lessons at school, I never thought I would see Britain regressing to the standards of the third world country.
You create a massive unskilled population
And/or import one – which is definitely happening right now.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/banksy-s-migrant-rescue-boat-says-overloaded-stranded-at-sea/ar-BB18uwjW?ocid=msedgdhp.
I can hardly contain my indifference…
That creature is not an artist. He is a pinko criminal damageist. I would have relished the opportunity to catch him at it and feel his collar.
Oh come on, he’s pretty talented as an artist (producer of visual images). Sadly that does not equate to being a decent human being.
He uses stencils. Does that make him a good artist?
He makes the stencils though. I think one should use any techniques at one’s disposal within reason, to produce a visual image. I sometimes use printing mixed with painting.
Tipping down in yer Narfurk. And very cold. Thank goodness for the woodburner. And another pullover.
You’re in for quite a lot with a NW wind. I am too.
https://www.netweather.tv/live-weather/radar
Morning all, my local rag has been reporting that some of the organisers of the rave held last month at Charmydown Bath has been arrested and questioned by Avon & Somerset police farce.
I eagerly await reports of similar action against Extinction Rebellion organisers whose ongoing protests has caused chaos for residents and visitors in Bristol.
https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/m5-motorists-targeted-extinction-rebellion-4465988
Don’t hold your breath, VVOF.
Morning.
We know where the faulty fridge owning taxi driver goes for his holidays now.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1299613815609360392
Did he take Peddy’s shirt?
I’ve given up all hope of seeing that again. Besides, cheques are sooo out this Summer.
Don’t bank on it…
Don’t talk to me about banks. I’m a bit pissed off with my online banking atm.
Biggles Flies Undone!
Any low-flying aircraft involved?
Biggles in a burka?
Good morning, everyone.
Morning, DB.
For those of you who have read the “interview” with Lord Haw Hall in the DT – and think, “Thank God he’s going” – fear not. His replacement is just as bad.
I did read it earlier. He’s had 7 years to sort the BBC out and, as far as I can see, has done SFA.
I am afraid he did achieve quite a lot – simply by standing by and allowing the beeboids to take over and dictate the political direction of what was broadcast.
Saw the Bbc bandwagon was teetering on the brink of the steep downhill slope and failed to apply the handbrake.
It is a condition of employment that the new Director-General of the BBC (spit!) must be woke-r than the previous one. At one time an almost impossible task, but nowadays they come in gay battalions.
The BBC Board has today appointed Tim Davie as the 17th Director-General of the BBC. The new DG was paid £600,000 (last year base salary and performance bonus). Tim Davie’s annual salary has been set by the Board’s Remuneration Committee at £525,000.
The process for appointing the Director-General was led by the Board’s Nominations Committee under the leadership of Chairman Sir David Clementi, with members Dame Elan Closs Stephens, Sir Nicholas Serota and Dr Ashley Steel.
I wonder how many of those are patriotic Brexitiers.
Sir David Cecil Clementi (of Italian descent) former Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, holds a number of board positions including chairman of international payments business World First. His grandfather Cecil Clementi was Governor of Hong Kong. Given review of the regulation of legal services in England and Wales by Labour peer and barrister. Baron Falconer of Thoroton.
Nicholas Serota, art historian (loves black music). Mother, Baroness Serota (née Katz), a civil servant, later a life peer and Labour Minister for Health in Harold Wilson’s government. Harold Wilson appointed her as a Government Whip almost immediately (after election?). She had never been an MP herself. Husband of Russian descent.
Dame Elan Closs Stephens. Born in Talysarn in the Nantlle Valley, Gwynedd, educated at Ysgol Dyffryn Nantlle and Somerville College, Oxford. One time chair of Chwarae Teg, a body that promotes the economic development of women in Wales
Ashley Caroline Steel (born 1959) was the vice-chair and global head of transport for KPMG. Currently she holds non-executive roles on the boards of National Express, GoCo and the BBC. She has been named “one of the UK’s most influential gay people”
Dr Ashley steel declined to help compile the Independent on Sunday’s ‘Pink List’. She felt uneasy about putting one lesbian above another or an old thespian behind a young gay-boy. It wouldn’t be fair.
I can understand the dilemma.
Diversity means they must all think alike.
I wonder how many of those are patriotic?
How the West was lost. 29 August 2020.
The slowness has also hit the economy hard. In the first half of the year, Britain’s GDP shrunk by 22 per cent — twice as much as America and worse than any major European economy other than Spain.
What went wrong? The brutal answer is poor government. There were individual mistakes — and Boris Johnson should take responsibility for many of them.
This prime minister’s strength has never been organisation; and with Covid, the man he relies on to do the organising, Dominic Cummings, destroyed much of the Government’s credibility by taking a trip to the north and making that infamous visit to Barnard Castle to ‘test his eyesight’.
But in general, the Government machine simply did not work. The Covid-19 crisis was like a gigantic stress test for government everywhere and Britain’s state failed the test hopelessly. Many of the problems were simple ones.
This is an example of the Mails schizophrenia. On the one hand an obsession with what they quaintly call side boob and on the other serious reportage as here. This article is admittedly largely extracted from the author’s book but still well worth reading for its conclusions about the UK. To paraphrase Britain bears a strong resemblance to the China of 150 years ago. It is ruled by a Mandarin Elite with the aid of an incompetent, venal and corrupt bureaucracy, both having long outlived their usefulness. China has recovered from this. We shall not!
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8675517/How-West-lost-JOHN-MICKLETHWAIT-reveals-coronavirus-making-China-powerful-again.html
In the first half of the year, Britain’s GDP
shrunkshrank by 22 per cent…Shrinked?
Shrat!
Was shrunken.
Head-line stuff…
But that’s the passive voice.
To be candide I always enjoyed these Panglossian lines in a Kris Kristofferson song:
‘Cause there’s still a lot of drinks that I ain’t drunk
And lots of pretty thoughts that I ain’t thunk
And lord there’s still so many lonely girls
In this best of all possible worlds.
Don’t ignore this because its written by Bryony Gordon.
Hurray. At last. Bryony speaks about something she knows of personally.
Don’t diminish her achievements , she also writes at length about being a permanently pissed and overweight flibbertigibbet with all the intellectual depth of a 2mm feeler gauge.
No comments allowed – very sensibly!
2mm? How generous of you.
The kids’ll be better off back at school, a couple of days back with their friends and they’ll be back to normal, nasty and rude.
The government needs to remove most of the restrictions asap.
If we hadn’t rescued the Elgin marbles they would probably have been broken up and crushed for limestone.
Good morning all.
Sun has disappeared behind thick cloud already.
That’s cos it has just appeared here!
Ah – but how do you know that it is the same Sun?
I have an artist friend who painted this portrait of Anne Frank. (d’aprés un dessin de Marcel Lemeur).
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/457978abd3f3cd808b5bf80410be3a6b57c57f3d9118889b9c365a6916b2671c.jpg
The caption reads: Le journal d’Anne Frank. The diary reads: Amsterdam 6 Jun 1944 Anne Frank.
I am not a great lover of modernistic art but I like this particular painting.
Morning, Campers.
(DON’T Touch The Roof!!!)
I see that a busy weekend confronts our perlice. I hope they are fit enough to run away from the challenge.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c775c2531162eb4b595cb22c8e531d6aa2e3f204e9633d229b4211b6d7a6c0ce.jpg
Not much use these days, once upon a time big old coppers like that were used to sort out the problems at ‘chucking out’ time in a Cricklewood pub well known for it’s well known Irish boozers.
Friday nights a queue of http://word-detective.com/2008/11/black-mariapaddy-wagon/ were employed for the take away.
https://www.claytoncrownhotel.com/restaurants-bars/crown-pub/
Not as it use to be.
In the pubs in Kilburn High Road in the 60s it was not unusual to see a piano crash out through the front window of a Pub – quickly followed by the pianist and, no he was not just 12″ high!
Oh, happy days with the fun-loving Irish.
Wish list………. 12 inch pianist.
A bloody swish hotel that i stayed in a couple of times when the test train was stabled at Cricklewood.
Waddling their way to another visit to Greggs…
For many of the demonstrations, protests, riots – they won’t even bother to turn up.
Not even for double bubble (or is that chins)?
Hardly qualify as part of the Thin Blue Line.
Top headline on BBC news website:-
Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman dies of cancer aged 43
Who? Who cares?
Further down:-
Elon Musk unveils pig with chip in its brain
“Gertrude the pig is a prototype of a brain-to-machine interface. Mr Musk argues such chips could eventually be used to help cure conditions such as dementia, Parkinson’s disease and spinal cord injuries.”
How wonderful. And the other uses?
And finally:-
Warnings after ‘huge’ Jurassic Coast cliff fall
Some bits of rock fell onto the beach. Nature at work. Surprisingly, there is no mention of you-know-what.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-dorset-53958154
Never heard of him thank God.
I’m amazed at the stupidity of people who go the beach and then sit at the base of a cliff. Perhaps they flunked Geography.
Or don’t read newspapers and watch TV news.
They may have failed geography. Only vacuous Yanks “flunk” things. I thought you knew that, Philip.
Just seeing if you were paying attention. ***whistles nonchalantly….
“Elon Musk unveils pig with chip in its brain” I thought Lammy, but his chip is on his shoulder
…& they couldn’t find a brain.
Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman dies of Covid aged 13. Killed by a Tory virus.
No blekman gets past 19 don’t you know?
When does the looting, stabbing and arson start?
Michael Moore warns Dems: Trump voters’ enthusiasm is ‘OFF THE CHARTS!’ 29 August 2020.
Moore continued, “I’m warning you almost 10 weeks in advance. The enthusiasm level for the 60 million in Trump’s base is OFF THE CHARTS! For Joe, not so much. Don’t leave it to the Democrats to get rid of Trump. YOU have to get rid of Trump. WE have to wake up every day for the next 67 days and make sure each of us are going to get a hundred people out to vote. ACT NOW!”
Earlier this month, the Oscar-winning filmmaker expressed similar concern over the lack of enthusiasm for Biden, telling MSNBC, “I worry because people do need to get excited.”
“Real Time” host Bill Maher also sounded pessimistic about Biden’s chances in the upcoming election.
“I am feeling less confident about this — maybe it’s just their convention bump got to me, but I’m feeling less confident than I was a month ago,” Maher said Friday. “I feel very nervous, the same way I did four years ago at this time.”
Yes its beginning to look like the Donald is going to do it again!
https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/michael-moore-warns-dems-trump-voters-enthusiasm-is-off-the-charts?cmpid=prn_newsstand
Any chance voters are put off by Biden’s support for BLM? I would be.
Of coures he is ,the Democrats have handed it to him on a plate. If you HAVE to vote for Trump or Biden who would you vote for.?
From this week’s Speccie
Douglas Murray
Protestors are clearing a path for Trump
From magazine issue: 29 August 2020
‘This city is not going to stop burning itself down until they [the protestors] know that this officer has been fired.’ Thus spoke Whitney Cabal, a leader of the Kenosha chapter of Black Lives Matter, in response to the latest police shooting in Wisconsin. The use of the passive in that sentence is revealing.
As Theodore Dalrymple has pointed out (see ‘The knife went in’) it is common for people to assign motive to inanimate objects when they are loth to admit to being in the wrong. I suspect that the suitably named Ms Cabal knows that the state of Wisconsin did not auto-combust this week, as Krook does at the end of Bleak House. True, there was first a police shooting and arrest. But someone must then have put a match to the place. The American public, press and politicians know that. But any willingness to say it appears now to fall along strictly party-political lines.
It is one of the most striking things about the violence and unrest that have followed the killing of George Floyd. Not the violence, but the increasingly ostentatious desire of a portion of the population to pretend they do not see it. Some friends in New York tell me of gang robberies at restaurants in broad daylight, of lootings, shootings and boarded-up shops. ‘Peaceful demonstrations’, I am assured by other friends, who identify as ‘liberals’ though have mysteriously stayed away from the city of late.
The same story is rolling out across America. The left says that there are nightly protests for ‘social justice’. When these protests involve mass lootings, such as those in Chicago’s Magnificent Mile, they are claimed (if acknowledged at all) to be the actions of a tiny fringe. Such dogged blindness has a clear political and cultural purpose. The political purpose is a desire to prevent the re-election of Donald Trump. The wider justification would appear to be a belief that ‘anti-racism’ is such an important omelette of a cause that a few broken eggs — or cities — is a price worth paying.
The extremes to which this thinking can go are perhaps best seen in Portland, Oregon, where local ‘Antifa’ activists stalk the city nightly in quasi-military get-up. The participants appear convinced that their city seethes with Nazis. Even were it not the most left-wing city in America, Portland would seem an unlikely place for a Fourth Reich to be established. Still, every evening ‘Antifa’ roam the streets, often advancing behind a wall of umbrellas and homemade shields, like some post-apocalyptic Roman legion. Some nights these ‘anti-fascists’ find an elderly woman to assault. On others they pull passing motorists from their cars and kick them in the head until they are unconscious. These ‘Antifa’ are merely the forward phalanx of a portion of America now dedicated to weeding out an essentially phantom menace, who won’t be content until they have ripped up their country, or burned it down, to find their enemy.
Their point of view could do with being refined, or corrected. Instead most of the American media — not to mention the leadership of the Democratic party — pretends that these events in Portland are not taking place. Or are the invention of the ‘alt-right’.
If there is a couple who have come to epitomise this fork in reality it is Mark and Patricia McCloskey. They are the couple from St Louis who made headlines in June when a BLM protest broke on to private property. Fearing for their lives, and their notably elegant home, the McCloskeys came out on to their terrace with their guns and stayed there until the protestors left. This week they made a five-minute appearance at the Republican convention.
Of course, this year’s convention is virtual. But so is one of the versions of the couple. Because from the moment images emerged of the McCloskeys guarding their house, two versions of them came to exist.
The first is the one they presented at the conference. They are two law-abiding home-owners. A protest broke on to private property and they asserted their right as American citizens to defend their home. No shots were fired, yet thanks to the activist local circuit attorney Kim Gardner, the McCloskeys are now charged with ‘unlawful use of a weapon’, which is a felony. None of the people who broke on to the property have suffered any harm.
That is because Attorney Gardner is acting against a second version of the McCloskeys. This version might be summed up by the headline in which the Washington Post announced their convention appearance: ‘St Louis couple who waved guns at BLM protestors will participate in GOP convention.’ Put like that, you might feel that the McCloskeys had it coming. ‘Waving a gun’ is a somewhat nonchalant, as well as dangerous, thing to do. Nonchalantly waving guns at BLM protestors is another thing altogether.
In defence of this version, there was the iconography: Mr McCloskey in crisp chinos and nice pink polo shirt; Mrs McCloskey holding her tiny little pistol and looking a little deranged. Very hard to sympathise with them. Not like the nice Mr Floyd.
But you know, a couple of months ago Mrs McCloskey was sitting in the home she and her husband had worked their lives to create. The mob started by shouting: ‘Racist!’ Audio of the event shows that at least one member of the crowd shouted: ‘We gonna kill you, bitch.’ Soon a man in the mob was screaming: ‘I’mma rape you, bitch.’
‘You can’t stop the revolution,’ the group’s Marxist ring-leader bellowed at the couple through a bullhorn as the mob milled. That ring-leader has since been given the Democratic nomination to enter the US House of Representatives as Congresswoman for the area. So she’s done nicely out of it. And if Mrs McCloskey is the loser — well then, ‘social justice’ or something.
Most of America must know this is wrong, just as they know that the cities aren’t burning themselves down. But only one half of the country remains willing to identify the fact. Perhaps the half that stays silent believes that after getting what they want at the ballot box, some greater good will emerge. But I wouldn’t be so sure. What they are doing is giving Donald Trump his best shot at four more years in office.
***********************************************************************
BTL:
Demosthenes • 2 days ago • edited
People see what they want to see. I’m reminded of the Nick Sandman controversy last year, where a video emerged showing a group of white school-kids dancing and singing around a Native American ‘elder’ who was standing amongst them, with one boy in particular wearing a MAGA hat and what appeared to be a mocking smirk. The BBC story, along with the rest of the left-wing media, exploded, immediately assuming the boy and his classmates had chosen to confront and humiliate a poor, innocent, oppressed Native American, motivated by nothing more than naked racism. It subsequently turned out that the wise ‘noble elder’ and his friend had actually been the ones to approach the schoolchildren while banging their drums and chanting, not the other way around, and video footage proved that the school kids had never chanted ‘build the wall’ or anything like it as the man had claimed (lied). In addition, it soon became apparent that the kids had even been verbally assaulted with vile racist abuse by a group of passing Black supremacists (Hebrew Israelites) shortly before the incident in the initial video. I guess I must have missed the follow-up articles correcting the initial mistake and explaining that it was in fact the white school-kids wearing the MAGA hats who were the victims, and the Native Americans and Black men who were the victimisers.
As we saw with the 28 year old ‘child refugee’ who drowned in the channel, it’s always very telling when the BBC suddenly stops promoting a story they’ve sunk their teeth into. In both cases, they saw what they saw because that’s what they wanted to see, what they expected to see. It’s basic human psychology to want to accommodate new observations into one’s pre-existing model of reality, rather than have to adjust that model accordingly. Especially when that readjustment would require changing one’s most basic assumptions about reality. This is as true for those on the right as much as those on the left. It just so happens that the right’s model of reality is much closer to the truth than the left’s. And that, ultimately, will be their undoing. Let’s just hope they don’t bring down our civilisation along with them.
Blindsideflanker Demosthenes • 2 days ago
I think Nick Sandeman has had the last laugh, CNN has had to settle with him on a $275 million lawsuit .
JamesR • 2 days ago
It’s not all bad news Douglas. The Notting Hill Carnival has been cancelled this year. So business owners won’t need to board up their premises, many people won’t be stabbed thereby relieving the pressure on our overstretched NHS family.
Tons of rubbish won’t need to be cleaned away. Vomit and urine won’t need to be hosed off the streets and drug dealers will face a substantial loss over the comparable period last year.
Steel bands will not be heard and obese women in skimpy costumes will not be seen. Nor will woke police officers. Too many of whom seem to think that taking part somehow improves community relations and the image of the police in general. It doesn’t.
Admittedly, independent jerk chicken sellers will take a hit and in these Covid19 times that’s unfortunate but on the plus side they will still receive their benefits. So that’s of some comfort.
Every cloud..
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/protestors-are-clearing-a-path-for-trump
I do not believe that the “carnival” will not take place. There are far too many bames for whom raves and drugs are just too much to ignore. They will be out on the streets after dark. People will be murdered. You read it here first.
I have no idea who Old Holborn is but …
https://twitter.com/Holbornlolz/status/1299636687459553280
Used to be a type of “roll your own cig” tobacco.
Still is, I’m reliably informed.
Wasn’t Old Holborn a dark shag?
I think Janet ‘smells a rat’.
Then she woke … (geddit?)
I’ll have another lie down.
Would you like an ‘n’ with that?
Try refreshing … your drink, young man.
That’s what comes when you don’t teach two generations about Christianity.
People stand for nothing and fall for everything.
She’s wrong to say it’s medieval, in fact it’s pure pagan. We’ve lost the knowledge that Jesus died for our sins, which frees us from human guilt, and we’ve reverted right back to the days of sacrificing (our petrol cars and much else) so that the sun will rise again tomorrow.
Do you agree as I do.?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rG1WnTsY6RQ
Nicked from The Grimes. Made me smile this shyte afternoon:
“Barcelona are believed to be keen to sign Jesus “
That would be a miracle.
Are they looking for a goalie? Jesus saves!
But Martin Chivers scores on the rebound!
(When he played for Southampton)
I thought it was Mick Channon.
Courtesy of elder son:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/112513e26fd2f9d15d97cd1a17d7588d3f7a7d6f0d47ed5c174ed543bc19b793.jpg
Pinched and posted on Parler!
That’s quite tickled me. Morning Anne.
‘Morning, all.
Today is the 70th Anniversary of the deployment of the the first British troops to Korea. The Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders and the 1st Middlesex Regiment landed at Pusan on the 29th of August 1950.
After three years of heavy fighting, the North Koreans and their Chinese allies were pushed back to the 38th Parallel and the status quo ante was resumed. I know it’s easy to be wise in hindsight, but how different the world might have been today if only the US had used its nuclear weapons against the commies. The Russians, despite much huffing and puffing had no capability to respond at that time and they knew it, while Red China would have been put back in its box.
Surely the MSM wouldn’t misrepresent the happenings in London today?
Spotted this tweet, but when I tried to copy the link, it no longer existed. This is a screenshot…
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1b7fde7bf9b573b1ae7570ec2d1a87352a3793867fb6b1bb8890adcc356e3999.png
I would be very wary of this.
Both pictures might be true and taken at different times, or equally the new Tweet might not be true.
You’re prolly ©BT right. Sorry, folks…
https://twitter.com/sa_purvis/status/1299705530345234432
I am much obliged. I know that part of Lunnon like the back of my hand – and I knew it wasn’t either place mentioned in the “tweets”.
‘Bob’ is subtly sending up the protests:
https://twitter.com/bob_london?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
Not taking the pish? Well I never!
And many fall for it, even some on here in the recent past.
Fairy nuff.
That is St George’s Hall in Liverpool.
323098+ up ticks,
I do believe the UKs governance party’s are prepared for any anti submissive move from the indigenous peoples as in, Kevin Crehan died in prison after receiving a 12 months sentence for introducing a mosque door to a back rasher.
https://twitter.com/GerardBattenUK/status/1299621914030338049
Did they ever get around to the inquest?
Oh yes, apparently he kicked himself to death.
323098+ up ticks.
Morning KP,
Drs in inquest believe he died of drug overdose if current it would surely have been covid.
My belief is he fell foul of the submissive pcism &
appeasement unwritten law.
He did not have the same approach to
bacon / pigs & pig husbandry as cameron the recent tory PM had shown.
Oh yes, apparently he kicked himself to death.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c7c87f99c041ad0031149abc422599176c93b64a6b8d09648407f360994971b0.jpg
Are you a Brexit supporter? This is what Labour politicians, BBC executives and most remainers think of you.
.
.
.
“Labour MP Neil Coyle caused outrage when he called Brexit-supporters “absolute sh*tbag racist w*nkers” in relation to the row, and a BBC producer added to public concern when she compared the ordinary patriotism of Britons to the Nazi gas chambers”.
Remember the next time you vote or pay your TV licence you Nazi, sh*tbag racist w*nker, you!
Fairly mild to what some people could call me.
But you’re a nice NoTTLer, Jeremy. No way would I call you a Silly Sausage.
:-))
On the subject of low language – something really British: poetry, class and bums, an unbeatable combination.
“I once sat next to a duchess,
Sat next to a duchess at tea,
Her rumblings internal
Were really infernal
And everyone thought it was me.”
The Duchess when pouring the tea,
Asked “Do you fart when you pee?”
I replied with some wit,
“Do you belch when you shit?”
And I think that was one up to me.”
“There was a young man from Dundee
Who was stung on the neck by a Wasp
When asked ‘Did it hurt’?
He said ‘No, not a bit’
It can do it again if it wants.”
Bum bum.
When I sang this in a concert with a choir in the 1970s, we rhymed ‘abdominal’ with ‘phenomenal’, but the second verse is new to me.
Mozart was rather partial to this sort of humour, I believe. It was a staple in the masonic lodge in Vienna.
I once took part in the Kaffee und Kuchen (coffee & cake) ritual* when staying with friends in north Germany. They had invited their neighbour, who was also their landlady. As this enormous beast sat, taking up the whole of a 2-sater sofa, her guts rumbled continuously, as she consumed large portions of all 3 cakes on offer, but far more disconcerting was a faint intermittent mechanical sound. My thoughts, which, try as I might, I could not banish, went to a colostomy pump. That idea robbed me entirely of my appetite.
Later it was explained to me by my hosts that what I could hear was an insulin pump. Too late; that didn’t restore my appetite.
*The ritual takes place all over Germany, usually on a Sunday afternoon, about 4 pm. Prior to that, grown-up sons can be seen hurrying from bakers’ shops at midday, armed with a box of cakes for their Pflichtbesuch bei Mutti (duty-visit to their (widowed) mothers).
What’s Brexit….remind me……!
It’s a promise made with ones fingers crossed by lying Tory politicians.
Wot another one….!
Sticks and stones…
Education / Schools -? ?
From an article in the Telegraph –
“Another document for schools – an “inclusive package for ALL young
people” – circulated by an LGBT organisation, the Proud Trust, and
backed with money from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and
Sport, introduces the “Dice Game”. On each face of each die is a word
(or words), such as “penis”, “anus” and “hands and fingers”. Players are
then invited, having rolled the dice, to think of exciting things to do
with the combination chance has thrown up”
OMG – Words fail me – – – –
I guess you rolled penis/mouth.
Maybe you can manage this contortionist’s party trick ?
Not with my back these days! But as you say, words are hard to find to describe the acceptance of these ideas.
Whatever one thinks of homosexuality Pride is one of the deadly sins.
I am heterosexual but I take no credit for the fact – I am neither proud nor ashamed of the fact.
So whether or not homosexuality is a sin, homosexuals who subscribe to the Gay Pride movement are guilty of a deadly sin.
[Is there something wrong with my logic?)
Well the word Pride is probably used to counter the word ‘shame’.
Possibly it is due to a poor translation years ago, but to be ‘houseproud’ is scarcely a sin. Nevertheless, homosexual people are wont to re-purpose standard words, eg ‘gay’ and ‘marriage’ and ‘cottage’.
Easiest way to screw up BLM graffiti – get a spray can and add an ‘O’. This is what you get
Black Olives Matter.
That’s better.
Green olives are better.
Just saying for a friend…
When stuffed with anchovy.
I prefer black olives. Einmal Schwarz, immer Schwarz!
If you see a BLM graffiti, just add this below:-
BLM
UOU
ROR
NTD
…..E
…..R
Edit: – Spaces didn’t work, so I added full stops – just omit them when writing.
One for German speakers…two stray letters completely subvert the meaning of a Green election poster:
https://i1.wp.com/philosophia-perennis.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/20190507_140257-1.jpg?resize=521%2C391&ssl=1
Morning all……walls and ceilings archs ‘n’ skirts all finished, oh well back to work,….. only 32 cupboard doors and drawer front to rub down and paint now.
Three coats on each……..see you next month some time. 😏
Er – we are still waiting for your quotation.
It’s in the post………..
Wadda ya fink of this Bill ?
If someone comes to my house to test me, these are my house rules:
1. You can’t come to my house if you have been to someone else’s house or anyone who could potentially have COVID. You must self-quarantine for a period of 14 days and then you’re allowed to come to my house to test me. This applies to you and any other person with you.
2. Before testing me, you must have your temperature checked and you must take the same test you intend on giving me.
3. You must answer a three page questionnaire, initial every page, and sign the document and have it notarised. Everyone with whom you come in contact must be fully tested and you must self-quarantine for a period of 14 days. This is serious stuff. We’re all in this together!
4. You must provide documentation showing the test you intend on performing has an accuracy rate higher than 95% as documented by at least two reputable independent national labs.
5. You must be ready to explain in your own words, and to my satisfaction, the term, “informed consent.”
6. You must allow me ample time to review any documents you may want me to sign with my solicitor, and you must agree to pay any legal fees stemming from any such legal review.
7. If/when we get to #7, we’re ready to try # 1 again.
It’s a start….keep working on it.
Or I could keep a large pan of simmering oil on the gas eh.
That is far too long winded. Here are my house rules:
1. You knock on my door and tell me that you are here to test me.
2. I give you ten seconds to f*ck off and promise never to come back again … ever … or I’ll introduce you to Mr Machete.
How easy is that?
How easty is to replace the window bit of velux windows. The wooden bit of the windowframe of the glass bit is badly worn , and the glass is mildewed inside , the velux windows are the only things we didn’t replace when we had new windows a few years ago .
Anything that is part of the glass surround is going to be a problem it will effect the double glazing aspect. A complete replacement might be a better option. About a days work. plus the window. Prices for the various sizes can be seen on line Belle.
My kitchen ceiling needs painting……please send quote!
I’ll get the roller out and drive down 😍
Get a new one.
Exatomundo.
I think you mean exactamundo.
Is that a version of Expelliamus!
No, it means I agree with you.
what evz 🙄
Next month is only 3 days away.
My word so it is………….😉
PBonds draw……something to look forward to.
Now who’s being naïve?
You’ve never won anything then….!
No. As I have no PBs, that’s hardly surprising.
So unfair!
On the wet and windy bank holiday Saturday – just to brighten your day:
August, cold and dank and wet,
Brings more rain than any yet.
Bleak September’s mist and mud
Is enough to chill the blood.
Then October adds a gale,
Wind and slush and rain and hail.
Dark November brings the fog
Should not do it to a dog.
Freezing wet December, then
Bloody January again!
Alternatively:
August brings the sheaves of corn,
Then the harvest home is borne.
Warm September brings the fruit,
Sportsmen then begin to shoot.
Fresh October brings the pheasant,
Then to gather nuts is pleasant.
Dull November brings the blast,
Hark, the leaves are falling fast.
Chill December brings the sleet,
Blazing fire and Christmas treat.
[from: The Months, Sara Coleridge]
Good morning, Grizzly.
Your post reminds me of the parody of Philip Larkin’s famous poem (but I know you will disagree heartily with the last line!):
They tuck you up, your Mum and Dad
They read you Peter Rabbit, too.
They give you all the treats they had
And add some extra, just for you.
They were tucked up they were small,
(Pink perfume, blue tobacco-smoke),
By those whose kiss healed any fall,
Whose laughter doubled any joke.
Man hands on happiness to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
So love your parents all you can
And have some cheerful kids yourself.
Good afternoon, Rastus.
Au contraire, I’m all for cheerful children … as long as there aren’t too many of them.
How terribly Patience Strong…..
Nah. She was the daughter of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
As a schoolchild I was taken to see Coleridge’s room in Highgate.
I was (wrongly) impressed that some visitor had ridden all the way from the West Country simply to interrupt the poet’s sleep.
Yehudi Menuhin’s house was nearby.
Good morning Bill
Here it is sung by F & S:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eT40eV7OiI
This is even better:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vh-wEXvdW8
How can SAGE be trusted to get anything right when there is an obvious conflict of interest thanks to the vaccine promoting Gates Foundation multi million dollar funding of Oxford University, Imperial College and the London School of Tropical Medicine which are SAGE board members, and the apparent personal friendship between Bill Gates and Hancock/Whitty/Johnson ?
”Matt Hancock warns a ‘worst case scenario’ could see UK go back into nationwide lockdown or ‘very extensive’ local restrictions this winter – as SAGE warns of 85,000 deaths in second wave”
Looks like multi million dollar, multi billionaire related, conflicts of interest don’t matter in the UK and that everyone is happy to just look the other way because it’s so much easier and doesn’t rock the boat.
https://twitter.com/nikolovscience/status/1260335204033376256
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8675593/Health-Secretary-warns-extensive-lockdowns-event-second-wave.html
After all, where did Neil Ferguson’s funding come from?
None other than Bill Gates!
This might waise a smile!
https://twitter.com/Bob_of_Bonsall/status/1299644118348509184
RACISM SUCKS!
So does a vacuum cleaner.
That’s a very shrewd observation.
To all modern liberal parents: This is all your doing. You have bred and brought up a generation of utter, unreconstructed, cretins.
I’m terrified to even think what the next generation — i.e. the one that this coterie of gormless imbeciles shall no doubt breed — will be like.
Here is something I came across in the Asda car park scoffing a McDonalds. I think she has been listening to Honey Ross a bit much
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/bb3b3e0941e93a21fedf6ff1d80ce1a44f4be7edb01db2863842942eb17db3a1.jpg
It’s even got de ni55er rap!
Moustaches sans beard should be banned.
Bet he’s a remainer.
He’s a DJ, a sub-species of the barely human race that I have a particular dislike of, in my admittedly personal opinion there are 1. talented popular musicians, 2. talentless popular musicians who use volume as a substitute for talent and then there are DJs who attempt to ride on the back of 2 with even more volume.
There was a golden time , oh years ago now, that he would be quietly taken to a nice old Victorian pile in the countryside with lots of rooms with no sharp corners and very soft walls where he could continue his discourse with other likeminded souls.
His parents must be SOOOOOO proud of him.
Chadwick Boseman being deified on the BBC at the moment!
Lewis Hamilton has today dedicated his pole position to Chadwick Boseman but then he would wouldn’t he. Any black bandwagon.
I’m sorry for anyone who died young, but I had never even heard of him until today.
Anyone know which city this is? apparently it’s the capital of a former British colony.
https://metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/GettyImages-824079764.jpg
I see no slaves.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a817b498550109fc4a10ada5999a358ce681b794042b547ff38fbd90f834a0e5.jpg
Colombo. Sri Lanka.
Colombo City, Sri Lanka?
I thought that too.
I was there in March ’77 – had a good time.
I passed through there on the way back from Malaya in 1979. There was an old woman seated in the gents toilets at the airport selling sheets of bog roll paper. Ceylon is beautiful from the air – red earth and shiny leaved tea plantations.
It’s beautiful at ground level too, especially around Candy & the view from the top of Sigiriya Rock is spectacular.
‘Morning All
Nicked comment
“I am now afraid. All of the below is from U.K. Government Documentation. Not
tin foil hattery, but official Government policy documents and data.
19th March 2020: U.K. officially but quietly downgrades COVID 19 as not
being a high consequence infectious disease due to low mortality rate.
Between then and now: UK government enacts policies that destroy the economy, health service provision and education.
24th August, with minimal people in hospital and almost no deaths,
government announces plans to test up to 4m a day on a rolling basis- so
retesting and retesting.
As at today, NHS statistics show the
astonishingly low figure of just 305 people in total under the age of 60
that do not have pre existing condition have died from covid 19. Out
of a population in England of 56 million
28th August. Government
document describes the pandemic as the worst thing this country has
faced since the Second World War and outlines plans to:
– authorise emergency use of unlicensed vaccines
– authorise mass publicity campaigns for unlicensed vaccines
– authorise huge recruitment of non healthcare professionals to give the unlicensed vaccine
– give unlicensed vaccine provider companies immunity from liability.
29th August Government outlines plans for rolling lockdowns in the event of CASES increasing.
Conclusion: I am afraid of my Government.”
#MeToo
I mentioned the graffiti man, Banksy (real name Robin Gunningham) recently. The ‘Arschloch’ has been revealed to be funding a ship bringing migrants from North Africa to Europe. Ex public schoolboy probably has a crush on one of them – might even be female… but I doubt it.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/db9dc733b93d2a35667fc6b8fd250211ca11de4b229408881b3c2d6fbdd0552a.jpg The “Robin Gunningham” identity is still disputed; however, I can reveal that “Banksy” is not me!
Is that the tail of a coonskin hat trailing the left shoulder?
I’ve heard of people being green-fingered, but I think something has gone wrong here.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/90920bb42cc654eb0e7f2e665ec91aa50a58431cd3aab2525b5df7c70f527bb2.jpg My trademark isn’t invariably green.
You are Big Brother and i claim room 101. 🙁
I am big brother. All my siblings are younger.
Shrek?
That ship has been sending out distress signals during the night. Engines have failed & it is overloaded.
You’re just trying to cheer me up. 🙂
Live from Whitehall, outside the gates of Downing Street:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spRFkh8B1YQ
Good social distancing & not a face mask in sight.
Now described a March of conspiracy theorists and assorted loons.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/index.html
A similar demo of 18,000 (police estimate) has been broken up this afternoon in Berlin by the police because of lack of social distancing & face masks.
It amuses me that police everywhere seem to be quite happy to wade in on these demonstrations but won’t touch BLM or ER or lbqwerty demos.
Authorities ignoring our pleas, says crew of Banksy-funded rescue ship. 29 August 2020.
A rescue boat financed by the British street artist Banksy is stranded at sea after the crew helped 130 migrants, with requests for help from the European authorities being ignored, the ship leaders said.
The vessel, named Louise Michel after a French feminist anarchist, set off in secrecy on 18 August from the Spanish seaport of Burriana, near Valencia, and is now in the central Mediterranean, where, on Thursday, it rescued 89 people including 14 women and four children. It is nowsafeguarding more than 200 people off Libya’s coast.
How can it be “stranded”? This would imply that it no longer had power for its engines which would place the crews lives in jeopardy and make it a hazard to navigation and in need of a MAY DAY call! It hasn’t done this. It just keeps making calls for the “Authorities” to come and take the Migrants on board. This has just succeeded and 59 of them have been taken off. What we have here is an attempt to import more of these people into Europe. That their numbers are for all practical purposes limitless completely evades these do gooders.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/29/banksy-european-authorities-ignoring-pleas-crew-migrant-rescue-vessel
Stranded implies hat it has run aground or been beached. Neither is the case. (German: der Strand – the beach).
Same in English peddy.
Is it really?
https://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/strand
Hit post too soon.
Yes.
They are only about fifteen miles off shore. They could return these people easily!
I’ll be much more relieved when I hear it is fifteen fathoms from the surface.
323098+ up ticks,
Ahh that’s alright then as some were worried because it looks like they will be getting the political shout shortly in the UK,nice to know what to expect.
This is just a trailer main feature in near future.
https://twitter.com/ExmuslimsOrg/status/1298651553927245825
I see that TV licences are cheaper in the Irish Republic than they are in the UK. This is surely good news for any Brits that own a Murphy TV.
…… I’ll get me clàrsach …..
You mean I could buy an Oirish one and watch telly in Narfurk?
Bloody Hell,the wind’s getting up a bit
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1705e8be88a54d2f27c46482a0347e5f5cf99f743f066e715c62da39c2d7d864.gif
Is that cat 5?
Tonight’s cocktail is Gin & Cranberry Juice… Gin & Cranberry Juice.
Tonight’s supper is:
Pork & Mushroom Chinese Curry with Egg Fried Rice … Pork & Mushroom Chinese Curry with Egg Fried Rice.
Pork & Mushroom Chinese Curry with Egg Fried Rice … Pork & Mushroom Chinese Curry with Egg Fried Rice.
Does it repeat on you instantly – or later ?
Dunno. I was just following this forum’s trendsetter, who invariably repeats his drinks.
Try Bacardi and Cranberry juice..really nice.
I’m having single malt Glen Grant 12 years with single malt Glen Grant 12 years. :•)
Later, Ledaig 18 years, can’t be arsed to repeat it… 🙂
😉
I’ll try that tomorrow. Can’t have another tonight, as I’m opening a bottle of white Rioja with the Dover sole.
Try opening it with a corkscrew, not as slippery.
“… I’m opening a bottle of white Rioja with the Dover sole.”
I usually use a corkscrew – it spares the Dover sole from trauma …
The bottle has a screw top.
Homemade vodka and lime ‘n mint schweppes.
Homemade? Blimey…..the mind boggles….. Still…….
Liebig condenser – or big Lie … ?
Copper Alembic still, sat on the top of a tea urn (with a tap…). Bought from Bideford last year.
Filtered and chilled… Hic!
Sounds Absolut good.
Don’t like Absolut. Too sharp. Russian Standard or Stolly for me, when I’m buying the stuff.
Homemade much improved after activated carbon filtering. Almost like Stolly.
In my 3 years in Sweden I don’t think I tried Absolut.
Sex or vodka, ptv ?
I had more sex than vodka.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/m9DwbEmqPgkb/
How odd, there was nothing about this in the national news!
This video has only about 5550 views at the moment, but everyone should see it.
HAPPY HOUR
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f8e2c0c366944a788182f07d5e34a64b0b7f6263b83501ed2995f9e411a2983d.gif
Hey, do you think Bill’s John Thomas would fill these two, or three, times over?
Hey Bill, these look like your wife’s knickers!
Hey, Bill! This guy has the same pants as you!
A very wry “Modern Life”
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6a23627ccb78b25eb00753dd54fe136f1d9427a4ebb6e74f16ac4b10eafd04ba.jpg
What a shyte day. The rain has just stopped – and it is supposed not to start again. It has rained all day without ceasing.
I shall go and open a bottle of something medicinal.
Have a jolly evening – I shall diligently search out an all-bame programme on the telly – and suggest you do, too, if only to prepare for the ever-worsening future.
A demain.
A few more inches expected later….
You can start with the First Night of Proms. “BBC Proms begins with music by black British composer ‘exploring themes of identity'”. That should put you in a nice frame of mind for the evening.
…
I suggest, for your delectation, Bob Marley BBC2 21.45.
In Turkey the call to prayer is broadcast several times a day over a PA system which we hear all too clearly on the boat. The noise is most unpleasant and sounds like the wailing of an animal being slaughtered. You learn to identify which imam is doing the wailing by his tone and his phrasing so we ask ourselves which Bob is doing the business today.
Why Bob? Because Bob Marley’s backing group was called the Wailers.
Miraculously we were able to run five weeks of our French courses in Brittany before new quarantine restrictions came into force.
We announced the dates of our two October courses a few days ago and already most of the places have been reserved – but shall we be able to run them or will the current restrictions still be in place?
At the beginning of September we usually announce our February Half-Term and Easter holiday course dates for the following year.
How many of these courses shall we actually be able to run? It is a great shame that so few people in politics have the remotest idea of what running even a small independent business entails. Fou comme le merde d’un cochon as they don’t say in these parts!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_arP69Gzm0https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_arP69Gzm0
Rivals plan Fox News-style opinionated TV station in UK. 29 August 2020.
Rival efforts are under way to launch a Fox News-style opinionated current affairs TV station in Britain to counter the BBC.
One group is promising a news channel “distinctly different from the out-of-touch incumbents” and has already been awarded a licence to broadcast by the media regulator, Ofcom, under the name “GB News”. Its founder has said the BBC is a “disgrace” that “is bad for Britain on so many levels” and “needs to be broken up”.
A rival project is being devised in the headquarters of Rupert Murdoch’s British media empire by the former Fox News executive David Rhodes, although it is unclear whether it will result in a traditional TV channel or be online-only.
Both are pitching to a perceived gap in the market for opinionated video output fuelled by growing distrust of the BBC among some parts of its audience, especially on the political right over culture war issues such as Brexit and whether Rule, Britannia! should be sung at the Last Night of the Proms.
I’m not a fan of politically slanted TV channels; I would prefer neutral coverage from just one or two. But if we are to have a BBCWoke Service then we might as well have its opposite!
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/aug/29/rivals-plan-fox-news-style-opinionated-tv-station-in-uk
The BBC has never ever been neutral. Lord Reith knew it was been taken over by the left all those years ago when he was the D.G.
Glad someone else pointed that out!
I’m fed up with comments saying “oh the BBC used to be so great and now they’re biased.”
No, they were always biased to the left and wanting to destroy traditional society!
Whether the British public would take to an overtly political Fox-style approach is debatable. A canny operator will copy the Fox style of taking a CNN report and shredding it but, perhaps, without quite so much stridency. However, a few short monologues won’t go amiss. Like this:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-34877683
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/bd080cbdfcbd6885d76aedc03079dfd37a1120f1b79d9aa4daab3b608e86e280.jpg
One assumes they would tailor it to British audience!
SwotIsaid.
Please not a Foxnews like channel. A right leaning news source would be nice but Fox is not news, just woke level upset at anything left of Genghis Khan.
I have tried looking at the fox news web site to get a balance to CNN but frequently all of their main stories are about perceived indiscretions by anyone not backing Trump.
Night All
Ahem
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b6dcdd17e59c004b5ae3ef2011af54e6df8db2e4268144dfa7a0de43edcb4c93.jpg
♫The MSM bought and sold by Gates’s gold,was there ever such a parcel of rogues in a nation♫
He had best not make that too public over here. Everyone knows he is a lefty Democrat but backing the Guardian would have him called a socialist and that is frowned on in the US.
Throwing his money into a charitable foundation is an American thing, quite a few do it. However, supporting the Guardian is a step too far.
One of MILs pensions comes from the Guardian, I suppose that the good news will be that the pension is safe.
Pays the piper, calls the tune.
No independence there, then.
Being at a loose end I searched the internet to see whether any of the building contractors, joinery companies, fibrous plasterers, stainless steel fabricators, masonry companies, specialist bronze fabricators, and so on, those I worked with in the seventies and eighties in London, are still in business.
All have vanished. The last to go into liquidation was Jordan Engineering of Yate in Bristol who manufactured the fully welded stainless steel framework supporting the ornate brick and stone frontage of Richmond House in Whitehall. Their specialisation was the manufacture of flasks and pipework for the nuclear industry. I fully expect they will be replaced by a Chinese imitator on Hinckley Point.
I reckon many established and fine companies will be no more after the Covid hoax is finally terminated. I believe many sensible people can now see the deception and nonsense perpetuated by self interested politicians and the utterly corrupt global elites.
Our supposedly expert medical theorists are shown to be fools and compromised by conflicts of interest so blatant as to be otherwise unheard of in modern times. Yes, I refer to Gates’ funded charlatans such as Ferguson, Whitty and their friends in various University and private Pharma laboratories. The evidence is there for all to see.
Hi, John. Were I to return to the fray, I frankly wouldn’t know where to start. Laing’s pension scheme continues to pay out every month, but for how long? I see that Holloway White Allom has now been dissolved. Laing’s old Regional Office in Carlisle (where the whole company started, before being shunted in the direction of Mill Hill), is now an Aldi supermarket.
I don’t want to barge in on a conversation Geoff , but is this the same Laing you are refering to?
Pictures of post-war workers heading off on their summer holidays have been added to an online archive.
Historic England has spent almost two years digitising 10,000 pictures from the John Laing Photographic Collection for public viewing online.
The latest and last to be added are 700 pictures taken by John Laing photographers for the construction firm’s in-house newsletter Team Spirit.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-53938491
The past is a foreign country, with no mixed marriages and no Afro-Caribbean BBC continuity announcers.
….they do things differently there.
Yes, Maggie. Team Spirit April 1957 issue had a tiny mention of the arrival of a son to Jimmy and Edith Graham. For what it’s worth…
Aaahhh , that is lovely . Worth alot, and a wonderful announcement for a precious arrival .
Hi again, Mags. Found one of my old projects on that site.
https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/archive/collections/photographs/shopping-centres-built-by-laing/#80895ead
Fascinating articles , my late father would have been familiar with Laings… In the 1950’s were they known as Wimpey, Laing and Holloway brothers?
All separate in the 50’s. Laing had joint ventures with Wimpey in the Middle East in the Seventies. Holloway Bros (see Corim’s post) were taken over by Laing, as part of Holloway White Allom. One of HWA’s most prestigious jobs was the Royal Albert Hall: those white circular thingies hanging from the roof were theirs, and improved the acoustics.
Laing was founded in 1848; one of the earliest projects was a house in Sebergham, Cumbria. (Sir) John W Laing was the next generation. He was staunch Plymouth Brethren, and, by all accounts, treated his workers with rather more compassion than was normal.When he died, his estate was worth.. hundreds. Much had been given away. My Mum was the recipient of a number of grants from Laing’s Charitable Trust. I guess I would also qualify if I asked.
Morning Geoff , it was either Laing or Holloway who employed my father in Egypt and when we were caught up in the 1956 Suez crisis, huge civil engineering project out there, I think in association with the Suez Canal contractors, all British expats . It was meant to be a 10 year contract, lasted a year ! Prior to that he worked in the Sudan .
Here’s a wee piece of nostalgia for you, Geoff, taken during the construction of the M1.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/38b6b0a9b7e3820848bc2d336958e5c19160182c39af550a545f4fbea3efdcf6.jpg
To the left, you can see the auld Laing sign.
Cheers, DM. That was a wee bit before my time. My old man was a Safety Officer for Laing. Actually, he would have been Group Chief Safety Officer, had he not had the misfortune of being in the back seat of a car travelling through Shap early in 1963. It collided with a reversing truck, and he was no more. On the bright side, it saved me from having to grow up in Mill Hill…
By the time I joined them, this was the company logo:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2289fd87e02039cd18dc1c090fae3cef64ca5b95e04529cd26f1b531d445fbca.png
PS – Just noticed the company car on the left. My father never passed a driving test; he had a company BSA bike, but was also allocated a company Ford Popular. We had the handbook at home. That could conceivably be his car in the photo…
Yup I know. My favourite joiners in London were Victoria Joinery an Holloway White Allom subsidiary. They did some of the best joinery at Richmond House and later they made the oak Queen Mary’s Bower and the radiused oak steps to the parterres at Hampton Court Privy Garden, for which I was the Architect.
Their joinery and fibrous plaster shop were in the old HWA works in West London. The last contact I had with HWA was the contract for Tusmore House near Bicester back in 2002. (Wafic Said’s country pile).
Edit: VJ were on Magdalen Street in Earlsfield, originally Holloway Brothers then taken over by John Laing mid sixties. Workshops long gone and now a housing estate. They made the joinery for a swathe of HWA housing from Earlsfield to Wimbledon.
Much of Laing’s Page Street head office is now gone, in favour of housing. The building in Bunns Lane survives – unlike its doppelganger in Carlisle. which has been demolished to make way for an Aldi supermarket…,
Earlsfield Baptist Church had a J W Walker organ, surplus to requirements. Twenty-odd years ago, I, along with two organist colleagues, spent a few days there, dismantling the instrument, and took it back to darkest Suffolk, where it spent a few years in storage, before being used as the basis of the organ at St Laurence, Eriswell.
Fascinating. It is a really small world.
Indeed.
The replacement Allen digital instrument was inaugurated by Nigel Ogden. Cost around £25k, but never sounded like anything other than an electronic organ.
You be careful.
Someone will accuse you of saying all the government and people in charge are sosraboc
We are just chuckling away at the silliest Dad’s Army yet BBC2
We’re about to watch episode 9 of The Bridge.
We watched the dvds of that series a while ago. Very haunting music if I recall correctly.
Yes – and the action is gripping. We hadn’t seen the first series before. One more episode to go.
I know I have gone – but as I was preparing o switch off the PC, this e-mail popped up:
French lady expecting the “second wave”…..
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7fc02e24a743c886096db1fed7545f01de8113aeeae24767c98309f72e297455.jpg
A demain – really.
Wonderful , absolute … class?
Good night Bill , stay warm. We have just put our heating on.
So have we – last night too.
According to Nest, it’s now 18.5 deg C indoors. I expect the CH will be on by the morning…
Ours came on by itself this morning, the thermostat is set to 20.5 c.
Don’t you have Winter duvets?
No – we use the same one all year round – just shake the feathers down a bit when we want a bit more warmth or less. Our bedroom seldom gets too warm as it’s north facing.
Assuming the picture you posted a while ago really was you, I saw your doppelganger this evening at the marché gourmand.
Even HG agreed it was the spittting image of the picture you posted!
Something to take to bed…
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/bad24db057e63c4b801782affae682746a41ca41b54a16d9739d12461188d538.gif
…should’ve been wearing a mask!
Pride goeth before a fall.
I’ll take the fall …
Do French ladies wear that stuff in bed ?
Nice one!
https://twitter.com/LionelMedia/status/1299672868889001984
Latest BBC weather report – Rain forecast.
A few more inches expected during the night….
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7e103071082484472161e7146ab17959bd336828d005e6b6c56abcdfc9be3519.jpg
Are you trying to kid us that’s Cornwall?
More like the Isle of Man…
Don’t turn your back to the wind, whatever you do.
East Anglian homo-erectus ?
Pull the other one, Sunshine.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-8676757/Prince-Harry-hosts-Zoom-quiz-mark-Rugby-Leagues-125th-birthday.html
The other Royals are managing OK in the UK.
I like the ‘definitely would’, it sounds like a guilty cover for ‘not really’. He protesteth too much.
Exacto. False as a viper’s promise.
Good night all.
Hmmm. Sounds like Agenda 21 / Agenda 2030 is going according to plan. Won’t be long before rural dwellers like me are forcibly removed to rabbit hutches in ‘smart cities’. For our own good, obviously…
‘My beating was so brutal I can’t sit’: British ex-public schoolboy, 31, left with horrific injuries after being caned 24 times while tied naked to a frame in a Singapore jail gives the first account of his barbaric punishment (D Fail)
Tough luck buster. Don’t be a mug. Don’t deal in drugs.
When are we going to start dealing with UK scum like this with Singaporean style justice?
Agreed.
Drug dealers are murderers.. they are poisoning and killing idiot drug taking people for money.
“…they are poisoning and killing idiot drug taking people for money.”
And? Surely they are doing society a service?
Problem is, they rob the rest of us while they are on their downward spiral.
EDIT: darn, there was a page break and I didn’t see that the conversation had continued with corimmobile making the same point.
But as you know Grizz the idiot drug taking people obtain the drug money by theft of other people’s possessions.
Therefore the more of them that perish, the fewer of them that will be left to nick your possessions.
Indisputably correct. Then we are left with complaining that the drugs aren’t killing them fast enough.
Oh that is so last year, all that they do nowadays is claim covid layoff support payments.
You have a point.
Probably why crime levels have been lower during lockdown.
Problem is, they rob the rest of us while they are on their downward spiral.
EDIT: darn, there was a page break and I didn’t see that the conversation had continued with corimmobile making the same point.
323098+ up ticks,
Evening TB,
Which party’s was / is responsible for bringing this odious foreign, in many cases, selection of criminal sh!te to these Isles,and are
these / this party / party’s still finding support because as we witness the odious issue is still very much ongoing.
When islam takes over. Not too long now.
Caning on his bum, how gentle. What happened to the good old cane on the hand.
Stop sniveling boy, go back to your class.
I well remember the whining when some youngster who was keying/paintspraying cars for fun got the same
Of course they never expected to get caught as in the UK or USA the crime would be ignored but in Singapore crime levels are so low a detective squad was assigned to the case
Swiftly caught,swiftly tried,swiftly caned
Result
Zero tolerance – it works.
Over my time at Blundell’s I certainly had more that 24 strokes of the cane (but never more than 6 at a time) but I never dealt in drugs or anything nasty and most of my failures to adhere to the school rules were relatively trivial. Of course in my day it wasn’t considered quite the thing to whinge and whimper – one had to show that one could ‘take it like a man’ without the smallest sign of watering up.
I thought they executed drug dealers in that part of the World.
323098+up ticks,
Afternoon P,
Never, because there is a great deal of nasal play operating, what with a good % of the electorate gripping their nasal passages voting in more of the same, and
I strongly assume a good % of the governance politico’s using the hooter as a hoover, k vaz springs to mind.
Evening, all.
Afternoon nottlers one and all.
I’ve just read the letters in The Garden magazine and just have to vent my spleen. The letters are all about “diversity and inclusivity” and people bleating on about their own “racial prejudice, where are all the BAME horticulturalist, too many white faces in the business”. I am sick and tired of all this woe, woe is me, “I have been subconsciously racist but now I shall be redeemed”.
Surely, if anyone Is interested in horticulture to the extent of making it their career they will do so. Is the RHS actively preventing them in their chosen career? I really have had enough. I think I’ll go and eat worms.
Any idea who decides which letters are printed?
No, doesn’t say, but 3 long letters of the 6 published are on the theme. I quote: “in the wake of the BLM protests worldwide and discussion on diversity, race and inclusion within the horticultural industry, this is a crucial time”. It goes on … and on. “The Society has been actively listening to our members who have expressed concern about these important issues. There will be RHS updates over the coming months but in the meantime here are some letters from members”.
IOW, more Bames on Gardeners’ World.
Or more Bames on the Isle of Wight? 🙂
I am sure that, like many others in this forum, I don’t care What race, colour, creed, gender or otherwise a presenter is as long as they are not ramming some other subject Down my throat and as long as they know what they’re talking about!
My mistake. Perhaps I should have said “Countryfile”.
Yes , say I , screeching highly, I can cope , just about.
I also don’t care really, but I do not want to be force fed race, colour, creed, gender, I just don’t want to hear anymore from them whining on, it is like the incessant prattle we hear from the royal bods in America, I feel overwhelmed , and I don’t recognise the real me as I rattle on about those topical issues .
The ridiculous pair in USA are so up their own rear ends. Harry has forfeited any right to respect from us or the ROyal Family, particularly them. He is such A disappointment and HM must be utterly hurt by his comments on the Commonwealth.
I’m getting to care. This BLM shonet is making me a racist, and I’m not happy about it!
OI!!!
If you don’t mind!!
Yo, Bob. Have you patented ‘shonet’? I’m not totally convinced that it was your invention. But I may b
meringue…:-((
That’s the whole point isn’t it? Set everyone against each other, divide and conquer.
But there are MORE of us than them….
Just saying.
At the moment……..
Have you seen the population of Nigeria recently?!
On a worldwide scale, we’re the ethnic minority. No-one seems to be fighting our corner, though…
I feel exactly the same.
Sounds like the usual ‘frit’ mob dealing with things.
My Moh and I started to watch the Proms last night and even before it got under way , there was a Bame composer talking about diversity and racial prejudice.
We turned over. My Moh has even started to scream on Twitter about his fed upness!
https://twitter.com/wappawappa/status/1299625726476419073
I listened to the Radio 4/Benjamin Zephaniah link that you provided. Well, I listened to some of it. When he urged angry white men and women to also rise up against their oppressors I just started laughing and switched off.
He is, of course, a BBC favourite. He made a few appearances in Peaky Blinders, thus making the series the equal of Father Brown by depicting black people in the most unlikely historical settings (though not equal in any other way, of course). While there was a tiny black population in Brum in the early years of the 20th century, I doubt very much that it included dreadlocked bible-bashers associating with organised crime gangs of Romany ancestry.
I listened to the Radio 4/Benjamin Zephaniah link that you provided. Well, I listened to some of it. When he urged angry white men and women to also rise up against their oppressors I just started laughing and switched off.
He is, of course, a BBC favourite. He made a few appearances in Peaky Blinders, thus making the series the equal of Father Brown by depicting black people in the most unlikely historical settings (though not equal in any other way, of course). While there was a tiny black population in Brum in the early years of the 20th century, I doubt very much that it included dreadlocked bible-bashers associating with organised crime gangs of Romany ancestry.
We watched the Prom and the first piece was mercifully short. I enjoyed the rest.
It’s incessant isn’t it. Just as “Stay alert, control the virus, save lives”. I’m so fed up with it all.
Totally pushed in our faces , and things that we didn’t really focus on are there now in the forefront.
We are now seeing our good selves dismissed and discarded .
I was furious because a well known councillor decided the National Anthem wasn’t for her and we should have Land of hope and glory instead that Imperialism and Colonialism was to be frowned on . These are the attitudes of thirty somethings who haven’t a clue !
People should not be able to become a councillor so young – they have so little experience of how things really work. I have to say our politicians are on the young side too with most of them now career politicians and they are useless. They seem totally divorced from the practicalities of life in their gold plated pensions, unchecked expenses, subsidised meals and drinks.
And don’t get me started on all the quangos, the bonfire of which has never materialised. Now instead of SAGE or, rather, as well as, we have the Joint biosecurity committee I think it’s called and instead of PHE we have the National Institute for Health. (No doubt run by the same bods). And they want a brand new building in which to work! Only £367m or thereabouts! They are so insulated from the real world and the public. I have such contempt for them all.
So do I, but we are persuaded not to speak out , nor given the opportunity to raise issues that the Woke bods find uncomfortable.
You cannot even call a spade a spade !
I very much like Lawrence Fox, he’s my kind of man.
I like him as well, he has an old head on young shoulders,
His career is stuffed , but my word he has principles , and he is the epitome of an Englishman in the old fashioned sense . He has stature.
Even though he has a quirky lifestyle , he shows so much strength of mind , and speaks common sense and he speaks for me or us / everyone I think.
He’s 42 which seems about the right age to become an MP having had some experience of real life.
He may have found his calling.
Hathaway gave up the priesthood to become a detective 🙂
I just wish there were more like him.
According to CQS (Chartered Quantity Surveyor) magazine, some decades ago, the wonderful thing about the English language is that we’re free to describe the above as a ‘spade’, or a ‘Subterranean Void-Enhancing Implement’…
I just love that description Geoff, have you anymore delights to amuse us with?
Not at the moment, Mags, but I’ll try harder… :-))
No they don’t like being called spades. I believe that persons of colour is the accepted term nowadays.
We have a mayor and a MP in Norway who have just left school! Whilsst they may (?) be fine people, they have absolutely zero experience of life, and should be dismissed as silly schoolkids who know nothing.
The dangerous thing is, they will think they know everything.
I never thought I would say this but I think war, from time to time, is good for the psyche and soul of a nation. It reinforces priorities.
That’s assuming we aren’t fighting on the same side as the bad guys.
More likely our government would be fighting on the side of the bad guys against us.
The bad guys…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU
“My Moh”? Isn’t that a tautology?
I listened to the Radio 4/Benjamin Zephaniah link that you provided. Well, I listened to some of it. When he urged angry white men and women to also rise up against their oppressors I just started laughing and switched off.
He is, of course, a BBC favourite. He made a few appearances in Peaky Blinders, thus making the series the equal of Father Brown by depicting black people in the most unlikely historical settings (though not equal in any other way, of course). While there was a tiny black population in Brum in the early years of the 20th century, I doubt very much that it included dreadlocked bible-bashers associating with organised crime gangs of Romany ancestry.
depicting black people in the most unlikely historical settings
It’s kind of ironic that the future was the first era depicting black people in unlikely settings. How or why would there be black people on a starship? Why would we colonise other planets and then bring black people along?
The future first, then the present day and now history being pozzed as well. Somehow that seems to be the wrong order but clearly makes sense to TPTB.
Benjamin Zephaniah should clear off to the Yardie enclave in Jamaica his ancestors originate from .
He could take Linton Kwesi Johnson with him.
It’s bloody freezing the reset button has worked.
323098+ up ticks,
Afternoon B3,
You mean we are entering the
“new world” ?
Chadwick Boseman
I don’t know/ never heard of him …
Me neither but Lewis Hamilton is supposedly deeply upset by his passing. I assumed he was black and sure enough he was, more black than coffee coloured Hamilton.
I wonder what Lewis Hamilton’s Mum thinks of her son’s increasingly strident views on racial issues.
Hamilton was born on 7 January 1985 in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, England, 30 miles north of London. Hamilton’s mother, Carmen (Larbalestier), is white British, while his father, Anthony Hamilton, is black British, making him mixed-race; he self-identifies as black.
I know that Maggie !
Nor me – it occupied the prime spot on the beeb news last night – sad that he was only 43 but the neame meant nothing to me.
Matt is on holliday.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ce168147f5047306a2c97ada3ef3e4a48975b90c5a24f67d578513a438fed545.png
Good morning(?) all – Sunday’s new page is here.
This sole is perfect, just slightly underdone & the Rioja goes well with it.
We had sea bass with lemon, salad and half a focaccia bread. With Black Stump.
The sole was so good, it was enough to make one thankful that God invented fish.
Black Stump. Fabulous wine. We have both the normal Durif grape and some Reserve made with Sirah.
It’s been my favourite for years! White might have been more suitable with the fish but it was already open.
OK, it’s a mickey mouse contest, but yer gooners are off to a flyer!
Goodnight, everyone.
I am getting a sense that those who were highly supportive of the government’s stance on the covid-19 hoax may just be starting to slightly distance themselves and edge away, particularly after today’s marches. It will become interesting. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8676535/Jenny-Harries-says-face-coverings-evidence-not-strong.html
I went to Morrisons todat (instead of yesterday in the pouring rain) and it was almost back to normal, apart from the sanitising stations and facemasks. No queueing for the checkouts and I could unload my shopping while there was someone in front.
Our Morrison’s has been back to normal for several weeks now and neither Alf nor I wear masks when we go shopping. We have seen only 3 other people without a mask and that’s only in the last week. I still can’t believe how many people are wearing them when shopping. Some even wear them in the street and along driving their cars. Unbelievable sheeple!
Edit: We are both “vulnerable”, age wise and medically. We refuse to be muzzled.
Quite so, Maggie, and I know your local Morrisons well. Since it was a Safeway. My nearest is now in Aldershot. The face nappies are supposed to encourage the terrified sheep to venture out, but they’ve had the opposite effect on me, and everyone else I know. I rarely shop in person since they were introduced. I’ve had deliveries from Morrisons, and I see I can now get their stuff via Amazon. Actually, I had a delivery from Amazon Fresh today, but I chose Booths stuff. They’re based in God’s Country (i.e.The North), and are on a par with Waitrose. Saves me from shopping at their most Southerly branch, which is Knutsford.
Blimey Geoff, Knutsford! Interestingly we have only been asked once when entering Waitrose “No mask today?” John said I’m exempt p, then the “ guard” said “and you madam?” Just said afraid so. In Sainsbury’s there are announcements asking shoppers to understand if some are not muzzled. The government has dug itself a hole and can’t now think of how to wriggle out of it.
Edited No instead of Lon.
I wear mine just for shopping – not because I feel vulnerable, but it’s less hassle than standing out from the crowd. I certainly don’t wear it in the street or in the car.
I refuse to wear one. If challenged I would happily say my doctor has seen my without a mask as has one of the nurses and a hospital consultant has seen me without a mask. I would then ask what they know about my medical condition that they don’t. Nobody has had the courage to challenge so far except the a ‘security’ chap at Waitrose.
Each to his own of course but It’s a great pity that more people don’t shop minus mask because, apart from one or two glances when I’ve been in a shop, nobody says anything. I really think this is all about controlling the public. Infections may be increasing, possibly due to testing, but deaths from the virus are very few and far between. And if Boris really wants people back in their offices he’s got to drop the social distancing and mask wearing rules. The thing is, when are they going to dispense with all these regulations, there seems to be no hint of it in the near future. Are people willing to wear masks into 2021?
I’ve also been into the chemist minus mask to pick up a prescription. Nobody said a word. The chemist wore one but his assistant did not.
This is good news! Hancock will be waving his fist and muttering about lockdown and getting bowled over in the Christmas rush when even the scaredy cats will have given up on their masks.
He is a total idiot. How he is the minister is just frightening. He looks and sounds more like a german propaganda minister of 1936
Proof of his inadequacy has been his friendship with Bill Gates and his failure to connect the dots. Perhaps he already has Gates’ implant. He seems to have no mind of his own.
I think he’s a clone of a Zombie and does have a mind at all. Sounds like the talking clock.
We hope!