Saturday 8 February: Britain is well placed to lead the way by banning new petrol vehicles

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/02/08/lettersbritain-placed-lead-way-banning-new-petrol-vehicles/

635 thoughts on “Saturday 8 February: Britain is well placed to lead the way by banning new petrol vehicles”

    1. I’ve just popped in before I go to bed. Just finished a night shift (10pm – 6pm) and I noticed on Thurs by a remiss piece of planning thatI had volunteered for a other shift today so a quick forty winks then I’m back to work at 8.30am.
      I hope I can stay awake for the rugby later.

      Dewch ymlaen, Cymru!

    1. A very convenient death.
      Professional, well nourished and well educated young man, who was unfortunately addicted to honesty.

  3. SIR – Last April a legal challenge by Wild Justice, an anti-shooting campaign group, forced Natural England to suspend the general licences under which crows, wood pigeons and other avian pests could be controlled.

    At a time when the countryside was full of nests with eggs and fledgling birds, young lambs were vulnerable to attack by corvids, and fields contained emerging crops, this had far-reaching consequences for wildlife and farmers. Wild Justice blamed Natural England for the timing of the suspension.

    It now transpires that Wild Justice has initiated legal proceedings in a bid to achieve the same results in Wales. By seeking to inhibit the control of avian predators and pests at this time of year, their true colours could not be clearer.

    They are anything but the conservationists they claim to be.

    Charles Smith-Jones
    Landrake, Cornwall

    Wild Justice was set up by Chris Packham and is the most pernicious organisation in its field in the UK

    1. ‘Pernicious’ goes some way towards describing Packham, too. I can think of a few more, but they would spur the mods into instant action.

      ‘Morning, Citroen.

  4. SIR – While I agree with the thrust of Dr Mark Campbell-Roddis’s thesis (Letters, February 6), he misses the point about the two new aircraft carriers.

    The potency of an aircraft carrier is defined by the strength of the “air wing”, and this is where our two ships are to be found wanting. The USS Nimitz can host 130 F18 strike/attack air-defence capable aircraft. Additionally, onboard air-to-air refuelling aircraft are available.

    The Queen Elizabeth carriers have no such overarching capability. The F35B lacks range and payload. Support can only be offered by helicopters. These ships will not have Russia’s Vladimir Putin or any other potential foe worried, and are thus rendered strategically worthless.

    Wg Cdr Jeremy Parr RAF (retd)
    Suckley, Worcestershire

    Ordering the UK’s new aircraft carriers had little to do with defence of the realm. They were Gordon Brown’s gift of jobs to the Scottish shipyards which couldn’t produce anything remotely as large as a Nimitz class carrier. The challenge for the Royal Navy has been to devise an effective use for them and I’m not sure that they have succeeded. It would have been more honest of the RN top brass of the time to have said that the carriers would be nigh useless but they couldn’t resist the thought of being given some expensive new toys. The taxpayer has been stuffed yet again.

    1. Don’t forget Mr Cameron’s suggestion that they be shared with the French . Embryonic EU Navy anyone?

    2. Well, we could have kept the shipyards in business (a strategic asset) by building assault ships, frigates and fast patrol boats. All much more useful and relevant to our new relationship with the EU. We have not used aircraft carriers since the Falklands, but we have used assault ships. We need frigates to protect our merchant marine and patrol boats to police our fishing waters.

    3. Not forgetting the lack of any suitable Airborne Early Warning (other than a helo based excuse).

  6. Looks like the all news channels are going to spend the weekend stamping on our faces over Schofield.

      2. Years ago I asked someone about a British aristocrat with a large estate “But what does he DO ?” (ie an occupation, vocation, career, job) .
        Reply was: “He hunts.”.

        1. 4% mortality rate could ruin the global economy but will not affect population growth.
          Yes, I know that the official rate is 2%.

      2. Ya think?? As cruise ships refuse boarding for any Chinese national our airports still have direct flights……………

    2. Now you should all slap me on the back and say how great it is that I deceived my wife for over 2 decades

  9. Royal Mail has warned that its letters and parcels delivery service is at risk of falling into the red.

    It is a declining business and it is more a case of trying to manage decline and the unions do not like that. They are not keen on the Royal Mail automating its old parcels sorting methods

    Royal Mail has warned that its letters and parcels delivery service is at risk of falling into the red.

    Shares in the privatised postal network fell to new lows yesterday after the company said that it may fail to hit the targets of a turnaround plan and that its UK operation will crash to its first losses since it was floated more than six years ago.
    The gloom was made worse by fears that the Communication Workers Union is embarking on plans for the first national strikes in a decade.

    The company has also been hit by its failure to introduce new automated parcel-sorting technology to the timelines it has set itself.
    Royal Mail is the country’s former state-owned postal monopoly, founded five centuries ago by Henry VIII. It is struggling to make its way amid falling letter volumes, as people communicate via email and social media, and parcel delivery competition from the likes of Amazon.
    Last year in the UK it employed 143,000 people, more than 0.5 per cent of the nation’s workforce. A further 19,000 work for General Logistics Systems, its parcel delivery business in Europe and the US.
    It delivered 13 billion letters and 1.3 billion parcels in the UK. It made pre-tax profits of £398 million, down nearly 30 per cent, on revenues up marginally at £10.5 billion.
    Yesterday, the group reported on its Christmas trading quarter, a crucial period because of the rush of items bought online around the Black Friday shopping event in November as well as the wave of cards and presents sent before December 25.
    With letter volumes down by 8 per cent on a like-for-like basis and parcel volumes only ahead by 4 per cent, the company has forecast that it will produce group operating profits of between £300 million and £340 million in the year to the end of March 2020. That compares with operating profits in 2018-2019 of £544 million.
    Royal Mail also warned that with letter volumes now expected to fall even faster than the long-term average, by up to 9 per cent over the next year, UK parcels and letters will fall into the red in its next financial year.

    1. You have to wonder how they can fail when online shopping is increasing demand for deliveries.
      Maybe private industry can do it better.

      1. When the RM was sold off, I demonstrated that the figures used were statistics, that is, lies. There had been some falling off in volumes but in the overall picture since WW2 the volumes had increased enormously.
        They are not selling themselves to companies that sell by mail order. I always ask the seller to use Royal Mail. The performance of the Hermes courier is appalling. He safely delivers about half of the deliveries to us. He bends things in half to get “fragile” items through the letterbox. He leaves things on the front step, in full view of the road. He delivers things to house in a village three miles away (and we get theirs).

        1. We have a lovely chap – typical Essex Cockney – who delivers for Hermes and UPS (I think).
          He is pleasant ad efficient; we called him Mr. Happy.

      2. The high union rates mean it’s non-viable. The Unions, as usual, pricing themselves out of a job.

        1. So what you are saying is that the work should be given to delivery companies that make money by paying their employees (inc zero hours, sub-contractors etc ) the lowest possible wages?

  10. Well Ireland goes to the polls today. They use a form of PR so as far as I know the results will not be out until Sunday

    1. Leo Varadkar can take his ‘hard border’ and shove it where the sun don’t shine! He’s the last of the Brexit Blockers from the May era who is still around. Hopefully he won’t be much longer.

    3. Polls open at 7am and close at 10pm with heavy rain forecast across country

      The most recent opinion poll, the Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI poll, put Sinn Féin out in front, followed by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, although the gap between the three larger parties has been relatively small.

      The Irish Times will publish an exit poll as soon as voting ends at 10pm, giving the first indication of the outcome of General Election 2020. The results of the poll will be announced simultaneously at 10pm on irishtimes.com and on RTÉ One television

      2. Some acquaintance of mine recently sent this email to Mary Lou McDonald;

        “This is to wish you well in the upcoming election.
        Over the last three years or so I have listened with dismay and disappointment to the outpourings of threats and dislike coming from the mouth of the Taoiseach, Mr Varadkar and his Foreign Minister, Mr Coveney.
        Your Taoiseach has given every appearance of hating the British and of being a catspaw of the EU.
        While the relationship between the UK and the Republic has been a little unsteady at times, the Taoiseach has rocked the boat in no uncertain manner.
        You will be aware that for all practical purposes the Border between NI and the Republic does not exist, and that the “hard border” backstop nonsense, is just nonsense.
        You will also be aware that Irish people in the UK are treated at least as well as UK citizens with privileges not extended to nationals of other countries.
        You will also recall that following the financial crash around 2008/2010, the UK Government came to the assistance of the Republic with a loan of around £3bn, some which is still outstanding.
        I hitchhiked around Ireland at Easter 1966 and became aware of a certain tension. In NI police stations were heavily sandbagged. A statue of Nelson had but recently vanished from O’Connell Street.
        In Dublin I visited Kilmainham Gaol and the graves of the Irish heroes. I sent a telegram home from the Post Office, “alive and well!”
        I learned quite a lot of history, and am naturally inclined to support rebels.
        On the entire trip from Dublin to Donegal, Galway to Belfast, for all that I am British through and through, I was met with nothing but kindness and hospitality, both North and South of the invisible border. The same is true of my subsequent visits with the rugby club, which visits might have tested the patience of the most equable of the Irish.
        I am therefore both baffled and disappointed by the postures taken by Veradkar and Coveney.
        So much so, that I, a humble British citizen of no real consequence, have decided to take some small actions in response.
        I have stopped buying domestic heating oil from Baxter Johnston, a wholly owned subsidiary of Certas, the Irish company.
        My first pint in a pub, over half a century ago, was Guinness.
        I will never drink Guinness again.
        I will not now buy Irish bacon or sausages, butter or cheese.
        In short, I will buy no product produced in Ireland.
        I have conveyed this message to many hundreds of people and urged them to do likewise.
        I am naturally inclined to support rebels, but not ingrates. You may mention this to Mr Varadkar.
        Good Luck with the election,”

  11. France demands ‘NO restrictions’ on fishermen in UK waters as price for Brexit trade deal

    France will be disappointed then. There will be a deal struck on fishing but it will not be a No restrictions . France will have some limited access to UK waters on a licence type deal but that’s all

    Will France be giving the UK unrestricted access to their farming land as our Farmers might fancy doing a bit of framing there ?

    1. “Will France be giving the UK unrestricted access to their farming land as our Farmers might fancy doing a bit of framing there ?

      It’s the French who do the framing!

    3. Standard negotiating procedure. Ask for (demand) something you know you won’t get, but that leaves scope to compromise. Cameron went to the EU asking for virtually nothing, and came back with even less.

      1. As I have frequently said (sorry, Peddy) Jean-Claude Juncker is as big a Brexit hero as Nigel Farage.

        If he had had a modicum of common sense he would have seen that the British would never have voted to leave the EU if the EU had given any proper concessions.

        There is an obvious parallel: why do people blame the Treaty of Versailles for the rise of Hitler and the Second World War? Because the terms were too punitive.

  12. German minister admits EU in wrong – ‘Brexit will be success’

    Lucia Puttrich, the Minister of Europe for German state Hesse, urged Britain to push on with negotiations in a statement. The politician, who is from chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU party said Brexit could be a “success” for the UK. She said: “I think it is quite likely that Brexit will be a success for Great Britain.

  13. Morning again

    SIR – Dominic Raab, the Foreign Secretary, claims that “the safety and security of British people will always be our top priority” (“Foreign Office urges British nationals to leave China as coronavirus spreads”, report, February 4).

    The Government is right to be concerned about the possibility of a pandemic overwhelming an already stressed NHS. Although the death rate outside China remains lower than for Sars and Mers, a high percentage of those infected require intensive medical care. The virus also appears to be highly infectious. In light of this, it is inexplicable that flights from China to Britain have not been halted and that all those arriving in Britain who have travelled to China within the past 14 days are not subject to enforced quarantine or denied entry. Given that the China land border with Hong Kong remains open, halting flights from Hong Kong might also be appropriate.

    The British Government has been complacent and negligent in not following the recent practice of many other countries. Its actions do not match Mr Raab’s words.

    Damian Chunilal

    Hong Kong

    2. Our Government is claiming that it can’t act alone it has to be an EU Bloc decision to implement a travel ban. The 3 years prevaricating since the 2016 Referendum may turn out to be a very costly indeed.

        1. Good for Italy. However, our Government takes the position with EU guaranteed freedom of movement a unilateral ban is pointless. 🙁

    3. The initial reaction from our government was to publish an advisory leaflet to be handed out to arrivals at Heathrow. The leaflet was followed by ‘self isolation’ advice, which of course could be adhered to or ignored at the whim of the potential carriers.
      The government are displaying the utmost complacency imaginable in the face of what appears to be a very virulent infection. Raab’s hollow words fly in the face of what we continue to experience within the UK – escalating volumes of knife crime, casual violence and terrorist atrocities – delivered as a by-product of deliberate government policy, so should we be surprised at the government’s lame reaction to something else coming from abroad?

      2. If he had been honest with his wife, she could have moved on and had a meaningful relationship with a loving man .

        Why are people calling him a hero, this is so wrong .

        1. There is an anonymous Telegraph article expressing exactly that point of view, from a lady who still feels betrayed several years later.

        2. He may well have loved her. Being gay doesn’t prevent that.
          His private life should be just that – private. We don’t need to know. I wonder what kind of malicious teasing his daughters are getting?

          1. …and using a programme to announce his affliction to the world has redefined “self-indulgent”. Of course, a programme made by a bunch of luvvies sees nothing wrong in doing this. Indeed, he is now a life member of luvviedom.

          2. Very infra-dig to wash dirty linen in public.

            Mind you Oscar Wilde had another take on this in ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’:

            “….. Mary Farquhar, always flirts with her own husband across the dinner-table. That is not very pleasant. Indeed, it is not even decent . . . and that sort of thing is enormously on the increase. The amount of women in London who flirt with their own husbands is perfectly scandalous. It looks so bad. It is simply washing one’s clean linen in public…”

          3. He’s the one who has blasted his sexuality all over the media,one wonders why………………

          5. She could have moved on and still had an intimate relationship with some one else .. He has consigned her to a dustbin by virtue of his narcissistic personality.

          6. Money makes the world go round?
            Was it a pact until age and fading career caught up with him?
            Or a possible kiss and tell about to become public?

        3. You mean he was married?!…. To a woman!? She must have been the only person who didn’t realise…

      3. I wonder if he is the bugger or the buggee? I have no knowledge of these matters but does the same member of such unions always take ‘the dominant role’ or do they take it in turns?

          1. My two instructors, when I was an engineering apprentice, were Frank Tagg and Ernie Laverick.

            On day I was dragged up before them to explain myself after being caught indulging in horseplay.

            My response of, “Well to be absolutely Frank and Earnest with you …” didn’t go down too well!

    3. Good morning Lovely Verity

      The husband of a very attractive school friend of Caroline’s has come out as homosexual. After 27 years of marriage he has deserted her and their children for his companion in sodomy.

      This has caused her terrible emotional and practical problems – it is not an exaggeration to say that it has ruined her life.

      But nowadays it seems they try to direct our sympathies in the wrong direction. We are not meant to sympathise with the wife deserted by her deviant husband – just as we are not meant to sympathise with the victims of Moslem rape gangs.

      1. The trees being still fully leafed in October 1987 acted like sails on a schooner.
        Also, since Michael Fish’s blooper and the dramatic naming of high winds, the Met Office has acted like hysterical children; it’s a@se covering, like BB dates on most foodstuffs.
        Morning, Belle.

        1. Morning Anne , so true .

          We have a real lull here at present , still not cold , birds are feeding and I have the patio door slightly ajar to air the room out . Parrot has his head under his wing though .

          1. Gawd. You haven’t been lining his cage with newspaper and he’s fed up with reading about Philip Schofield?

          2. Not being one who follows the vacuous TV/film ‘stars’, I picked up on the latest sleb, or should that be slob, news on Nottle. Now, if this latest closet hopper had moved the other way, would the air waves be quite so full of support for him?

        2. In ’87 we had some trees down along my leafy road and I ventured out to see how much damage there was. The one item that has stuck in my mind was seeing the milkman weaving his way past fallen branches and only about half an hour later than usual.

        3. This is why such dire predictions are rarely borne out by events. It drives the tourism industry apoplectic.

          1. Yes absolutely. I remember a huge beech tree being blown over in 87 at the local golf course in use to play.

          2. A beautiful copper beech finally gave up the ghost at 7.0 am; it had withstood the battering all night.

    2. Not a chart you see very often nowadays.
      I remember being taught how to interpret that in Junior School, Mr. Butterworth’s class if I recall correctly.

      1. I haven’t watched the TV weather forecast since they introduced that ridiculous projection that squashes the British Isles. No great loss, though, as I rarely watch TV channels which carry weather forecasts.

      1. Compared to a couple of days ago, the Metcheck forecast for here has been dropping the max wind speed from 60+, it’s now supposed to be max 53 at midday on Sunday.

    4. The ‘weather presenters’ have certainly been waving their arms around a lot, of late !
      Early this morning during the much missed dawn chorus. I heard my favourite black bird, he sings the first few notes of the Fats Waller tune “Ain’t miss behaving”. That’s the 5 year so far.

  18. Good morning all from a bright but chilly Derbyshire.
    Not quite 2°C in the yard just now.

    The Dearly Tolerant’s earache I mentioned t’other day has only partially abated so she’s still not sleeping properly. She had been planning a trip to her mother’s for a few days but that’s been knocked back.

    I wonder when the government will wake up and admit that the climate change hysteria is a total con?

    1. Morning Bob,
      Not all the time the eu scam has been so badly mauled, replacement scams are a priority.
      They are rather busy at the moment
      what with dishing out NI numbers &
      sorting out accommodation for the boat peoples ( campaign Sealion) is in daily progress.
      Not a great deal can be done about earache, lets hope it is on the mend.

      1. Morning all.
        I don’t think the ‘greens’ “and the vegetables (Mrs Thatcher) > madam” ? “oh they’ll have the same” ! aka our increasingly dopey political classes, fully understand that every time somebody arrives on our shores uninvited and is given the keys to free accommodation with access to gas and electricity not only costs the british tax payers around 50k a year each but are at the same time increasing not only their own carbon footprint by around 99%, but also the carbon footprint of this once sceptered isle. But of course so called climate change is everyone else’s fault. Except the increasingly dopey political classes.

        1. Morning RE,
          All the time the voting pattern holds firm any of the toxic trio in power is on a win/win course, be a very silly billy that thought the lab/lib/con coalition had been conquered.
          First they create a problem then spend many a year, decade
          rhetorically solving that problem.
          The wretch cameron proved this by issuing a pro eu leaflet to each & all & charging each & all for it.

          Mass uncontrolled immigration is a prime example.
          Fuel for these parties comes via the polling booth on a regular
          basis.

          1. I agree.
            Blair set the trend by opening the door.
            In an interview with the media one of his many home secretaries Blunkett was asked circa the year 2000, how many people do you think have arrived in Britain since labour came into government ?
            He replied emphatically “we have absolutely no idea” !
            And still nobody knows. It’s been estimated at around 10 million.
            There is no way this country can stay ahead of the much discussed situation of ‘climate change’ if we don’t stop building homes and do not take a responsible approach on mainly illegal immigrants. It’s not exactly rocket science.

          2. Supermarket figures are a better guide.
            I gather water and sewerage companies are also a good source of more accurate statistics.

          3. I don’t believe the UK or any other European government has the honesty and the guts to admit the true figures on immigration.
            We have over 4 million cars on our roads now.
            Transport and most infrastructure is overwhelmed. It’s out of control.

    2. Has the DT got antibiotics for her ear?
      I’m not sure inserting a boiled onion is powerful enough.

      1. She was using an antibiotic spray up to Thursday when she saw the doctor again and was given tablets.
        It’s not as bad as it was, but flares up periodically through the day.

      1. I tick two boxes in that list above. A Morris-Dancing Bear.

        [Shoulda bin born in Warwickshire!]

  20. Why all the furore and interest about some squeaky-voiced children’s telly presenter telling the world that he is a mincer?

    I could have told you that 30 years ago when he first showed up!

        1. No need for all that destruction when half the planets population could well be wiped out by a virilent bug.
          I Am (not) Pilgrim, but I’ve read the book.
          But the Chinese haven’t been very kind to a certain culture they see as extraneous in recent years.
          Just sayin’.

          4. I saw the clips TB posted the other day BBQing live dogs, it’ was horrendous. I stopped Buying takeaways from a local Chinese years ago. A friend had an office next door to the Chinese TAW. I had to deliver something to his office, but he wasn’t there and it didn’t fit the letter box. I went to the back door and the horrendous mess I saw on the ground and open bins behind the Takeaway put me off for life. Plus the 4 recently dead ducks in a small cage.

    2. Mention of the FO reminds me of a supposedly true story about someone wandering down a corridor, looking for the FO offices. He asked someone which side the FO was on.
      “Not ours,” was the reply.

  23. It must be an age thing. Just t’other day A catchy television theme from the 1950s just popped up in my head … sixty-four years after I’d last heard it!

    It was the theme song from The Buccaneers starring a young Robert Shaw. This got me thinking about few more favourite telly themes from my childhood in the 1950s. I wonder what proportion of NoTTLers remember any of them?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMqg_vZY75w The Buccaneers
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVPLuFoyzUg William Tell
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzzjI-k538g Robin Hood
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umvbqPUMoKg Cannonball
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NO3UBIjU8ZA Whirlybirds
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CGAzD8B-NI Whiplash
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5i_pEYGe1o Champion the Wonder Horse

    1. Without opening any of the attachments I could hear the music in my head for all. Including one not mentioned.
      Casey Jones. The train driver.

      1. We didn’t get that program on Granada, which covered all the north prior to 1967 when Yorkshire Television started up.

      2. “When you hear, the tootin’ of the whistle
        It’s Casey at the throttle of the Cannonball express…”

    4. The Buccaneers has one Hornigold starring – well what do you expect it is a Weinstein production

      1. I’m glad my younger childhood was radio only. That and books I’m sure developed our imaginations better.

      2. We had a big bakelite wireless when I were a sprog. I would run from the room in fear whenever The Grove Family came on. Grandma Grove reminded me of my despicable maternal grandmother who scared the life out of me!

      3. Daphne Oxenford in the Andy Pandy voiceover and one of the images. Still acting into the 1990s.

    1. 40 years ago homosexuality was thought to be a crime. Now it is not just decriminalised and tolerated – it is applauded.

      Today paedophilia is illegal. Will it too be decriminalised, tolerated and applauded in 40 years time?

      2. R,
        In the 70s lab politico’s were
        in talks with PIE, both female, one later apologised the other is still active in parliament.
        About that time the age of consent was also talked about
        as being lowered to 12, if not lower.

        1. Which is why they told the police th a t those girls who were raped and abused by you-know-who had made a conscious decision about their “sex lives,” while completely ignoring the legal position, i.e. that it was statutory rape. Perhaps, if they’d been given another term, they’d have removed that piece of legal statute and added something new to replace it….

      5. It will always be a crime but the age of consent will be dropped to 8 to keep in line with community values.

    4. Blimey and there was the broadcast media full of interviews with others lauding his “bravery”. Here from ‘This Morning’:

      Asked why he was making the announcement now, he said: “It’s a good question. The thing is, you know this has been bothering me for a very long time.

      “Everybody does these things at their own speed, when they think the time is right. It has consumed my head and has become an issue in my head.”

      He said he was inspired by people on This Morning being brave enough to share their own very personal stories with the world.

      “We sit here every day and some amazingly brave, incredible person is sitting here, and I’m listening to their story thinking ‘oh my god, you’re so brave’ and I’m thinking ‘I have to be that person’.

      “All you can be in your life is honest with yourself and I was getting to the point where I wasn’t being honest with myself, and I didn’t like myself very much.”

      Oh yeah!

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/02/07/phillip-schofield-coming-terms-fact-gay/

      1. ‘Afternoon, Lewis, (and others with complete disinterest in Schofield’s sexual morés)

        Do we really need to know anything about this exhibitionist’s state of mind and/or his sexual proclivities?

  26. Morning, all!
    Magic day #2 for me – and something for y’all to consider.
    I have been taking methformin for six years now, and it seems that one side-effect is to block vitamin B-12 uptake. The result is nerve damage, and never-ending tiredness & lack of energy.
    Bought B-12 supplements on Thursday this week, and after two pills, I’m transformed from a blob back to how I used to be, energy-wise. Action this moment! No need to sleep 24/7! Fantastic!
    If you are on Methformin, give it a try. The tablets cost here £4 for 100, so no huge outlay.
    Yayy!! I’m back again, being me!!
    Edit: SWMBO says it’s like a new duracell shoved up me arse! :-o)

    1. That is wonderful news, Oberst. The question is whether we NoTTLers will be able to cope with you operating at full throttle or will we be overwhelmed.

    2. Good morning, Obs.

      A friend recommended Berocca, the difference is very noticeable,
      ……..except I have had the lurgy all week!!!

    4. ‘Morning, Paul, glad to hear that you’re in finer fettle. Keep up the good work and keep duracell charged.

    5. Morning, Paul. Might give them a try. I’ve been on Metformin for 19 years, and can identify with the fatigue and tiredness symptoms. Out of interest, are you certain that the ‘nerve damage’ you describe is attributable to B12 deficiency, and not simply diabetic neuropathy? Diabetes (or more accurately, poor blood glucose control) commonly causes damage to nerves, blood vessels and the like. Sounds like good news, anyway.

      1. Sadly, one of the down sides of ageing is that your system doesn’t utilise nourishment as efficiently. The Vitamin B spectrum is a particular problem.

    7. Morning OB

      Moh is also taking Metformin, Type 2 diabetes..
      When I go shopping later , I will buy a pot of B-12 for him .

      Thanks for the tip.

    8. When we admitted confused elderly patients, we took three immediate actions:
      Rehydration.
      Cleared their constipation.
      Put them on total spectrum Vitamin B tablets.

      Three days later, they were restored to the person their families remembered.

    9. Morning, Paul.

      I am on a strict Ketogenic diet and am losing weight rapidly. I’ve also not felt so good for years, have high energy levels and sleep like a log (at night).

      I undertook extensive research before commencing this diet, which cuts out carbs and sugars. One thing I noticed was that there were scores of reports from people who suffered from type-2 diabetes, telling that they were either cured of the affliction after commencing a strict ketogenic low-carb diet or, at least, noticed that their symptoms had abated.

      Four weeks in on my diet, I have lost a stone in weight and no longer crave sugar or sweet carb-laden food like bread, cakes or ice-cream. My only dessert, each night, is one measly square of 85% cocoa, low-sugar, Lindt chocolate which takes me 20 minutes to nibble.

      This diet might be worth a try, since sugar and carbs have been proved to be the evil influence that feeds a number of diseases.

      [In the chart that I’ve compiled (reproduced, below), good, low-carb foods are in green, moderate are in blue, and foods to avoid are in red]

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3b640187c1dd4a1b4990c238044c4fe30970401f1138c83f89de2350ab434327.png

  27. Well, that’s me home alone for the next week!
    Ear infection not withstanding, the DT decided she felt fit enough to drive down to MinL’s and left an hour ago, so I’ve just moved my computer from the sitting room to the dining room to take advantage of the log burner.

          1. There was an old saying that is still relevant today: “Never get into bed with a woman who can throw you out of it.”

  28. Prince Harry opens up about mental health therapy at exclusive JP Morgan event in Miami in first public appearance since leaving the royal family. 7 February 2020.

    The Duke of Sussex has revealed that he has been in therapy for several years to try to overcome the trauma of losing his mother, at his first public appearance since stepping back from royal duties.

    Speaking at an exclusive JP Morgan event in Miami, which he attended with his wife Meghan, he said he did not regret his decision to step down as a senior member of the Royal family.

    Morning everyone. Here’s our Harry who wants to avoid the Public Limelight giving a sobfest in front of a gang of Banksters for a truckload of cash. Meghan was there to look after the cheque! He’s on a Premium at the moment but she will probably have to buy a Barrel Organ in a couple of years and hawk him on the streets!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-family/2020/02/07/prince-harry-opens-mental-health-therapy-exclusive-jp-morgan/

    2. He flew down in a Private jet. He never seems to have worries about his father Charles. He can’t continue to spend his time making speeches about his mental state.

      1. Morning to you

        His mother had many many boyfriends , and aired her problems in public … Children learn very quickly, hence his bad mental state .

        He and Megane are absolute basket cases.

        1. It is time for him and his ghastly wife to practice what they preach and forget any thoughts of flying back to Blighty – ever. What a dreadful embarrassment they are.

          ‘Morning, Belle.

          1. Good morning Hugh

            Where are all these uncomfortable confessions leading to ?

            I am just wondering whether Harry will adopt a new lifestyle choice in his fifties , in common with certain TV celebs?

  30. For Premiumless NoTTLers

    Fixing the Supreme Court should be Boris Johnson’s constitutional priority
    CHARLES MOORE – 7 FEBRUARY 2020 • 9:30PM

    Boris Johnson’s government should abolish the title of Supreme Court and rename it the Upper Court of Appeal.

    If we are to get the future after Brexit right, we must restore and develop a strong British constitution. To do this, we must first win a battle for history. The wrong history of Brexit will see it as a contest between ruthless “populists” and righteous persons determined to resist anything which could have “an extreme effect upon the fundamentals of our democracy”.

    Those persons – righteous in their own estimation – were, first, the then Speaker, John Bercow (plus a clutch of Remainer MPs), and second, the 11 judges of the Supreme Court who, on 24 September 2019, declared that Boris Johnson’s attempt to prorogue Parliament for a few weeks was “null, void and of no effect”.

    This week, there is reason to write about both. As Mr Bercow struggles – comically clinging to the conventions which, in other spheres, he joyfully ditched – to get a peerage, his record is being assessed. It has at last stated unambiguously in public that he may not have been the perfect boss – self-aggrandising, shouting, allegedly bullying, and generally stamping his little foot. These are powerfully expressed accusations, but one should, in fairness, point out that they have not yet been tested.

    Mr Bercow has also revealed sensitive private conversations with colleagues and officials, without their permission, in his hurried, well-paid memoirs. Such complaints are true and damaging. He has been rebuked by the parliamentary authorities.

    But the key reason why Mr Bercow deserves no advancement is different. It is that, as Speaker, he broke the parliamentary equivalent of the Hippocratic oath. He abandoned the impartiality which is the most basic principle of his job. And he undermined the vital convention of the British system, which is that we govern, as the stock phrase puts it, “through the House of Commons”.

    The British convention is that Parliament has ultimate authority because the Government cannot continue without its confidence, but that it otherwise has a duty to let the Government govern. This means, procedurally, that it must allow the Government to set the business of the House. From the 19th century, this was never questioned – until Mr Bercow. To frustrate Brexit, he decided that he would let Remainer MPs take control of the order paper.

    The same Remainers could agree only on what they didn’t want, not on what they did. They were too scared to permit the logical result of deadlock, a general election. The result was angry stasis, with government unable to govern. So, to break this unconstitutional logjam, Boris Johnson asked the Queen to prorogue.

    It was this Bercow-created situation which led to “Miller 2”, the Supreme Court case.

    Obviously, the judges of the Supreme Court are very different characters from Mr Bercow. By training and inclination, impartiality is their watchword and understatement is their manner. When they pronounced in Miller 2, many naturally supposed they had deliberated most carefully, blind – as justice is supposed to be – to the bright lights of political drama and media celebrity.

    I feared at the time that this was not wholly the case. They were becoming a band, working-title: The Supremes. I was suspicious of the judges’ rare unanimity (in the English law tradition, there are often important dissenting judgments), of their haste, and of their President, Lady Hale, with her spider brooch, her air of ill-suppressed excitement and her propensity for sounding off out of court. I noted their unusually rhetorical way of talking. That phrase about the “extreme effect upon the fundamentals of our democracy” comes from Miller 2. It is the sort of thing that politicians, not judges, usually say.

    I also noticed that their tone of angry dismissal led them to contradict themselves. At one point, they declared they could not know what reasons the Prime Minister had given to the Queen, who was sitting in council at Balmoral, for seeking prorogation; yet they also said that the advice he gave her was “unlawful” because it was “a nullity”. If they did not know what he had said, how could they judge it? Did Mr Johnson’s prorogation frustrate the constitutional role of Parliament? “Of course it did,” chorused The Supremes, as if this was self-evident. It was actually hotly disputed.

    Many millions of the public felt worried, but we are people unversed in the law. So it is helpful to have our worries learnedly justified by Professor John Finnis of Oxford, arguably the most distinguished academic lawyer of our time. In a forthcoming pamphlet for the think-tank Policy Exchange (The Law of the Constitution before the Court), Professor Finnis identifies the problem with the Miller 2 judgment. He says it runs deeper than carelessness or haste.

    In his view, the Supreme Court judgment goes against our history and our law, and produces “a constitutional unsettlement”. Ignoring the arguments which the Divisional Court had already made the other way, it tramples over a central feature of our Bill of Rights of 1689, which protects political liberty by insisting that no “proceeding of Parliament” should be “impeached’ in a court.

    The Supremes danced round this problem by asserting that prorogation is not a proceeding of Parliament. As Professor Finnis sets out, this had never been successfully argued in any court in any Westminster-style constitution (ie the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia etc). It is rejected by Erskine May and all the great experts on the constitution. There is “no authority, no case law, no textbook” for last September’s judgment, says Finnis.

    Like other acts of the Crown prerogative which involve what the law calls “high politics” (as opposed to individual rights), it is, says Finnis, “a well-established legal rule that prorogation by the sovereign…is non-justiciable”. So The Supremes strutted in where all previous judges had feared to tread. If they feel free to forbid the prorogation of Parliament, they could equally destroy another Crown prerogative – the right to decide whether to dissolve it: they could prevent a general election. That really would have an “extreme effect upon the fundamentals of our democracy”.

    So the Miller 2 judgment was the most political act by our judges in modern history. It may have been, in part, motivated by group-think against Boris and Brexit, but it was even more an attempt to assert who’s boss. It was certainly driven forward by Tony Blair’s creation of the Supreme Court to replace what used to be known as the Law Lords. The very title implies ultimate judicial power of a sort that refashions our constitution along continental or American lines incompatible with our own belief in the supremacy of the voters’ elected representatives. The first, best rebuttal of the court’s pretensions was the thumping result of the December general election.

    Now legislative action should result. When the Government abolishes, as promised, the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, it should find a way of restoring the non-justiciable prerogative right of prorogation in its repeal. It should look again at the “independent” panel for appointing judges which gives the current establishment almost untrammelled power to replicate its own.

    It should also abolish the title of Supreme Court and rename it the Upper Court of Appeal. It might even move its premises. On their website, The Supremes boast that their new location (the Law Lords never had a separate building) “is highly symbolic of the United Kingdom’s separation of powers, balancing judiciary and legislature across the open space of Parliament Square”. Such a formal separation of powers never existed before in this country. It was better thus.

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

    Kyt Thompson 7 Feb 2020 9:43PM
    The “Supreme Court”. One of very many slices of constitutional vandalism masterminded by the ghastly Bliar creature.

    John Mason 8 Feb 2020 6:19AM
    Besides the sovereign, there’s only one other constitutional body, Parliament. Lady Hale may fancy herself a latter-day John Marshall, but she forgets that her Supreme Court, unlike Marshall’s, has no constitutional status. Hence, when it comes to the interaction of the two constitutional bodies, Hale and her cronies should best butt out, else the Parliament who made them can bloody well unmake them.

    john wo 7 Feb 2020 10:09PM
    The Supreme Court is a construct of the leftist Blair. I have little doubt it was to undermine the sovereignty of both Houses of Parliament, a fundamental of left wing political dogma.

    Parliament makes law, the judiciary administers it. Sadly there is enough evidence within the Commonwealth that activist Supreme Court judges of any political stripe ( but mostly of the left persuasion) attempt and have succeeded in making law by virtue of striking down legislation. Canada is a fine example of that, but then it is a socialist leaning country.

    It is irony that the very people who would abolish the House of Lords because it is an un-elected body are supportive of the Supreme Court, an un-elected body.

    But then the Left is never short of hypocrisy.

    The Supreme Court must be abolished.

    1. I agree and go further. Unelected authorities such as the Established Church, the military, the judiciary, the public broadcasters, the Civil Service, and the House of Lords should have the same aversion to political allegiance as the monarchy.

      All party labels and all partisan whipping in the House of Lords should cease immediately. All appointments made by politicians taking a Party Whip (including the Prime Minister) should be reviewed, and those displaying party bias should have their voting rights suspended, and their renumeration from public funds stopped.

      In time, a Royal Commission should consider whether they should be there at all. All peers should be reviewed on merit and their capacity to serve in a non-partisan manner.

  31. Trump can be funny!

    Everyone concentrates on the problems we’re having in our country lately:

    Illegal immigration, hurricane recovery, alligators attacking people in Florida.
    Not me — I concentrate on solutions for the problems — it’s a win-win situation.
    * Dig a moat the length of the Mexican border.
    * Send the dirt to New Orleans to raise the level of the levees.
    * Put the Florida alligators in the moat along the Mexican border.

    Any other problems you would like for me to solve today?
    Think about this:
    1. Cows
    2. The Constitution
    3. The Ten Commandments

    COWS
    Is it just me, or does anyone else find it amazing that during the mad cow epidemic our government could track a single cow, born in Canada almost three years ago, right to the stall where she slept in the state of Washington? And, they tracked her calves to their stalls. But they are unable to locate 11 million illegal aliens wandering around our country. Maybe we should give each of them a cow.

    THE CONSTITUTION
    They keep talking about drafting a Constitution for Iraq …
    why don’t we just give them ours?
    It was written by a lot of really smart guys,
    it has worked for over 200 years,
    and we’re not using it anymore.

    THE 10 COMMANDMENTS
    The real reason that we can’t have the Ten Commandments posted in a courthouse is this –
    you cannot post
    ‘Thou Shalt Not Steal’
    ‘Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery’, and
    ‘Thou Shall Not Lie’
    in a building full of lawyers, judges and politicians, it creates a hostile work environment.

  33. The Scotland supporters intend to protest at the Rugby match this weekend by flying the EU flag. [Daily Telegraph]. Might revitalise the England players.

    1. I read a while back that the once mighty and enviable Scottish education machine was no longer what it once was.

    2. ‘Morning, Clyde, it seems that, just like Wendyball, Rugby is to descend into politics and becoming a money-grubbing business.

      1. Rugby Union is a professional sport. The English Premier League (or whatever) is owned by a finance company in Singapore. Same company is trying to buy the 6N Championship. These are facts.
        I speculate that that is why red cards are few and far between. People pay to see the stars. They will not see the stars if they have been banned for 6 months. Normal red card ban, when it actually happens, is 3 weeks.

  34. Irish election today. Let’s hope that that the electorate hands Varadkar his @rse, or gives him the bum’s rush, or….somehow I can’t find le mot juste

        1. Two nuns cycling down a cobbled street.
          The first says, “I’ve never come this way before.”

          The second replies, rather breathlessly, “No, neither have I, but isn’t it nice!”

    1. You shouldn’t have posted that Anne – the pics really put me off the bat soup I was about to have for lunch. {:^))

  39. Morning all

    Uninvestigated crime

    SIR – On December 19 last year, my car was broken into and my work and personal iPads stolen. I reported the thefts online and included CCTV footage that clearly showed the two perpetrators trying various cars.

    This was the second such theft; the first time, despite being called while the break-in was in progress, the police hadn’t bothered to attend.

    This time, a signal was generated by my company iPad, which showed its whereabouts, so I called the police and gave them the address. I was told someone would get back to me. I asked if that meant no officer would go to the address and the operator said: “To be honest, it’s very unlikely.”

    I went there myself. Some would say I was fortunate that the people in the flat wouldn’t open the door. The signal was live for 16 hours and the first call I received from the Met was two weeks later. The officer who rang blamed lack of resources. I replied that police choose to use resources for high-profile things, such as sending 8,000 officers to the Notting Hill carnival.

    Police spend so much time building bridges with minority communities in the hope of a positive press that they neglect the majority, who are being robbed blind in their absence.

    Gareth Jones

    London SE9

    1. Whilst I sympathize with Mr Jones over the unacceptable response by the police, he is simply a fool to leave such items of value in his car. Furthermore, the fact that the crooks decided to break in to his car would suggest that the items, or whatever they were in, were left on view.

      It takes two to tango, Mr Jones. It is people like you who provide a lucrative reward for crooks by acting irresponsibly. Wasn’t the first theft enough to point out the error of your ways?

      ‘Morning, Epi.

      1. It also suggests the crooks were stupid, because all such devices now have a tracker.
        Or they were bright enough to know that the tracking device packs up after xx hours and that the polis would do bŭgger all about it anyway.
        Maybe if Mr. Jones called his laptop N!88er, there might have been some action.

      2. Yes, prudence suggests that one leaves nothing visible. Yet the workings of the criminal mind are unfathomable. On a visit to friends in Florence we parked our Mercedes sports car in a main street (Via Lorenzo il Magnifico).
        When we came to the car in the morning, it was clear that there had been break-in. The somewhat scruffy old Volkswagen camper van parked right next to us had been broken into. Our car was untouched.

  40. Predatory worm with hundreds of eyes wreaks havoc on gardens after invading UK. 7 February 2020.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/67058d8e8389e702838e26869276046db97dc5a8f723afebd21196612cb9944f.jpg

    A predatory worm from Argentina is invading the UK and could wreak havoc with farms and gardens.

    The flatworm Obama nungara, up to three inches long and covered in hundreds of tiny eyes, has already started eating snails and earthworms in mainland Europe.

    Hmmm. Ugly looking brute! No immigrant ever brought anything good to the UK!

    https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/predatory-worm-hundreds-eyes-wreaks-21446432

    1. “has already started eating snails and earthworms in mainland Europe” yet another reason why we should have left the EU 3 years ago to end freedom of movement!

      1. One of his relations discovered the worm and introduced it into the family.
        That’s when it turned into an Obama.

  42. Welsh MPs feel ‘second-class’ over English-only Commons vote

    Do English MP’s get to vote on Welsh issues at the Assembly?

    The real issue is that of Westminster trying to be both the UK parliament and the English parliament. It needs proper separation ie an English parliament

    English votes for English laws makes Welsh MPs feel like “second-class” politicians, a former Welsh Secretary has said.
    Stephen Crabb said excluding MPs from Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland from certain votes had not “done anything” to strengthen the UK.
    Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National Party protested after they were blocked from voting on an “English-only” NHS bill.
    Mr Crabb said the rule was “bizarre”.

    1. Easy answer – scrap the assemblies and the Wee Pretendy Parliament and bring the devolved powers back to Westminster.

      It will save fortunes on incompetent talking shops that spend a lot of time undermining the UK Government.

    2. Don’t see why the SNP is protesting, it has total control over NHS Scotland – God help us – and no English MP has any say whatever in Scottish Health affairs.

    1. “Fatcher” – hhaaaaaa ….
      “Fook” ….. whahaaaaaa ….
      “Vagina” ……stoppit, can’t get me breff ……

    2. I particularly like the comment:

      “Needs to be more diverse. Where is the non bellend representation?”

      I haven’t bothered listening to this load of scripted leftie bilge for years now. I understand that a so-called leftie comedian by the name of Kumar chairs it – another fine reason to avoid it.

      ‘Morning, Rik.

    1. “We’re feeling horny but we still don’t want kids – what are we waiting for?
      We’ve both got protection so let’s get at it – no ifs, no butts!”

    4. I wonder why the black one seems to the trouble-maker, intent on driving the white one out?

      Just asking…

    1. Sturgeon wants more immigrants in Scotland.

      If/When Scotland gets its independence why doesn’t England give them all their illegals? Those arriving on the South Coast in rubber dinghies can be transferred straight into secure lorries and driven to the Scottish border. An electrocuted rebuilt of Hadrian’s Wall might help.

        1. In a Voxpop by Reporting Scotland the BBC asked people in a few places across Central Scotland a question. I cannot remember the question , probably some indieref/Brexit/EU thing.
          What I noticed was that over half of the people who appeared on screen, answering the question, were not native Scots. The BBC may have only presented it this way, or that may be an accurate reflection of the population.
          Now, had abortion put paid to 1m in Scotland the population would be 1m higher then it is.
          However it is much the same, in numbers, as it was in 1960, so we can suggest that at least a quarter of the population are non-Scots.

        2. Morning FA,
          In the long run it is going to be the security
          of the contents of the sporran that will decide.

      3. Morning R,
        Because there is not a governmental party currently as in lab/lib/con would condone it, after years of building up such an anti indigenous collection, to give them away, no way.

  46. I can’t see this being an alternative mode of transport.
    q=opener+blackfly+youtube&docid=608011512827873153&mid=E5E4CA757CF86912B00CE5E4CA757CF86912B00C&view=detail&FORM=VIRE

      2. I thought I deleted it, it wouldn’t work but it looks as if Datz has done the trick.
        I can’t imagine trying to park one in a multi storey.
        Thanks Datz . 😊

  47. COFFEE HOUSE – Let’s not forget the unintentional heroes of Brexit
    Patrick O’Flynn – 8 February 2020 – 7:30 AM

    A week on from Brexit day, it is worth stopping and reflecting on just how Britain’s departure from the EU actually came about. We’re familiar of course with those from the Leave side who contributed to Brexit. But what about the unintentional heroes of Brexit, those who ensured accidentally that Britain really did leave the EU?

    On the day we were supposed to leave the EU last March, I bumped into an important member of Tony Blair’s social and political circle in the lobby of a St James’s club.

    “Are the Tory Spartans holding firm? Are they going to stop May’s deal going through?” he asked.

    “Yes, quite comfortably I think,” I replied.

    “Good,” he said, “that’s what we need.”

    He left me in no doubt that blocking May’s deal was seen by some as an essential precursor to stopping Brexit altogether by means of a second referendum.

    Fortunately such thinking was shared by almost every Remainer MP that day. They subsequently voted it down. So the deal that Theresa May and Olly Robbins had designed as a bridge to the “closest possible relationship” between the UK and the EU (i.e. the deliberate handing to Brussels of the power to entrap us permanently in its rules) was scuppered for good.

    Those MPs who turned down May’s shocker of a deal because they wanted nothing less than to cancel implementation of the referendum verdict altogether will surely be counted in an important category by future historians of this period: the unintentional heroes of Brexit.

    There are many other actions by explicitly anti-Brexit campaigners that would admit them to this not very exclusive club.

    Take, for example, Jo Swinson’s decision to get behind Boris Johnson’s wish for an early general election because she had been persuaded that the Lib Dems were well placed to make sweeping gains.

    Anti-Brexit Lib Dem defector Chuka Umunna was a particularly enthusiastic advocate of this collective decision of the Lib Dem leadership. He said of an early December election:

    ‘We want to see Remain MPs in Parliament and that’s the only way we think to stop Brexit because you cannot rely on a Labour party that has a significant minority of MPs who don’t want to stop Brexit who want to help it happen’

    For making a decision that paved the way for Boris Johnson’s escape from the parliamentary predicament he was in, Umunna, too, must be counted as an accidental hero of Brexit. Thank you Jo and thank you Chuka.

    And let’s not forget Gina Miller, who fought – and won – a court case that forced May to secure a Commons majority for her putative Brexit treaty rather than being permitted to push it through on prerogative powers.

    Were it not for Ms Miller, May’s lock-in would have been enacted and pro-Brexit voters would now be contemplating the ugly truth that restored EU membership would give the UK more agency over its own fate than the ghastly form of non-membership devised by May.

    Next we must turn to those who devised the ill-starred Tory “dementia tax” of the 2017 general election that deprived May of the majority she seemed certain to win. At the time, May’s creation of a hung parliament struck me as a disaster for Brexit. In fact, it turned out to be a huge blessing, scuppering her own dismal Brexit deal.

    One of the proposal’s authors, May’s adviser Nick Timothy, was Downing Street’s most important pro-Brexit voice. He had been involved in the Vote Leave campaign, so we must leave him out of the club of accidental heroes. But his co-author on the Tory manifesto was Ben Gummer, a passionately pro-EU Tory MP. So, thanks Ben. A Brexit campaign medal is yours for the asking.

    Angela Merkel and all the other EU leaders who humiliated David Cameron by giving him nothing of substance during his attempt to renegotiate the terms of British membership also provided us with an essential contribution. Given her seniority, nothing less than granting her a full state visit would seem a sufficient reward.

    Finally, hero status must go to Jeremy Corbyn. Labour’s leader ensured, one presumes unintentionally, that the dominant pro-Remain offer at the 2019 general election was so polluted by socialism that people who might have been open to backing a Remainer party swung behind Boris Johnson instead. That’s got to be worth a Queen’s Gallantry Medal at least.

    Historian Robert Conquest’s Third Law of politics states that the behaviour of any bureaucratic organisation is best understood by assuming it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies. The Brexit blockers did not form a single organisation and never seemed particularly bogged down in bureaucracy. But nonetheless, they succeeded in shooting their own desired objective in the foot on numerous occasions. Now that Brexit is done, it’s important to stop and remember these heroes of Brexit, even if they would themselves presumably be quite modest about their role.

    The odds are that I will bump into my Blairite chum again before very long. And when I do, I am sure he will wish to join me in a chuckle at how it all worked out in the end.

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

    electricnostril • 18 minutes ago
    Excellent article and I agree wholeheartedly. How lucky we were that the cards fell in the way that they did.
    I think John Bercow deserves a mention too (and Hilary Benn, Yvette Cooper, Oliver Letwin).

    Supreme Court, BBC, Channel 4, Civil Service, almost all newspapers, Parliament……

    tony chestnut • an hour ago • edited
    The lavander scented Chucky Umoony ….AKA the British Obama ….how we laughed when menopausal Anna Soubry – breathing Gin all over him – used to make sheeps eyes at him …..Umoony meanwhile had his eyes on different objectives. Those were the days my friends – we will not see their like again in our lifetimes

    tony chestnut tony chestnut • an hour ago
    what a cast of unlovely characters Umoony , Soubry , Miller , Adonis , The Maybot , the Tinge lady , etc etc etc……and endless stream of freaks , flaneurs , con artists and idiots

    1. Morning Z,
      All the while the real peoples as in the
      UKIP membership, the all weather pavement pounder activist, receive only castigation and the tag “far right racist”
      Bear in mind that those that left UKIP
      becoming MEPs from the top to the bottom never had the bollocks to return the UKIP seats to the party.
      Bet that ain’t on their CVs.

      1. A note from history: older readers my recall that Michael Holmes, the then leader of UKIP, won a seat in the European Parliament in 1999. The next year he fell out with the party and resigned from its group in the EP. At the time, Home Office lawyers (not nature’s Kippers) opined that, as he had been elected on the party list system, he should give up his seat and let the next candidate on the UKIP list for that constituency take it. Brussels saw otherwise.

    2. Where did the WA come from ?

      Was it a result of the British government being ”leveraged” ?

      ”We work to foster open societies inside and outside Europe by leveraging the EU’s policies, legislation, funding, and political influence………….linking the Open Society Foundations network with…….. member states.”

      https://hrdn.eu/open-society-foundations/

      As you’re a very senior financial expert, perhaps you can explain what ”leveraging” means in this context ?

        1. You really couldn’t make this up.

          What previously was a lobbying organization 10 minutes walk to the British government has now morphed into a ”leveraging” operation, and self admittedly they have been ”leveraging” the Brits for 30 years so that George gets what he wants, but hardly anyone seems to know about it.

          I wonder if they ”leveraged” the ERM and ”leveraged” the Maastricht Treaty ?

          3. Are you saying that it was set up to fail? In retrospect, that seems not entirely implausible.

          4. There are some strange innocent random coincidences. The beneficiary of the billions admits to lobbying European governments back to the 1980s. The main actor on the British side later got a million dollar very part time job when he retired from politics where the beneficiary of the billions just happened to be the star client, Of all the companies in the world, it just would have to be that one..

    2. I have watched them doing that in the United States to try to contain something, but it was so long ago that I cannot remember what they were doing it for. It was either some mass insect invasion to save crops, or in a disaster area to kill bugs and stop them spreading disease.

        1. It was more recent than that… I think it was when that Hurricane Katrina hit America and they had all of those bodies and dead animals floating around in Louisiana. I have looked for a clip on youtube but didn’t find one. I remember that there were big spraying machines just like the ones the Chinese are using in that clip, and they were spraying houses and the landside. So that might be a standard response to control pests or disease vectors.

          Or it might have been something / somewhere else, which would explain why their are no pictures associated with Katrina. 🙂

          It would be interesting to know what chemicals they are actually spraying and how long they stay “active.”

    2. I thought they were known as Cherry bums on account of their bright right cavalry trousers – so I can understand the confusion!

    1. Morning Rik,
      It does fly in the face of submission, PCism, Appeasement as used by the English politico’s, how are they going to
      build on the active paedophile numbers if Jock keeps locking them up ?

    3. There are far too many of them (in all towns and cities) to even think about sending them to prison.

      Since these scum favour stoning as a punishment, then let us give them their birthright! [Much less of a drain on the exchequer too!]

  51. Coronavirus

    I note that one of the affected cruise ships is due to come out of quarantine on 19 February, yet cases are still being diagnosed on board. If the incubation period is 14 days, surely the quarantine should only stop 15 days after the last case was identifed? The worldwide handling of this whole episode is bizarre.

    1. People described as British in France have now been diagnosed, one of them had recently been in Singapore. Before the group went on a French skiing trip.
      My neighbour came back from skiing in France yesterday. I was chatting to him over the fence !

      1. Assuming that it isn’t already, we will know that it is totally out of control when numerous cases start popping up all over Africa and the Indian sub continent.

        1. The thing is Sos it’s probably less likely to affect the areas you mentioned. The people who live there are less likely to be travelling.

    2. It is bizarre. Perhaps sinister. There now seem to be cases involving people who are not ethnically Chinese. (If they have been diagnosed correctly and don’t have novovirus or some other thing that might give similar preliminary indications.)
      This suggests that the virus can adapt to new hosts. This makes it a pandemic in early stage. When will WHO recognise this? When will the UK Government take it seriously? (I expect the Olympics to be cancelled.)
      Cancel all conferences, e.g Glasgow?

      1. Woops sorry I hadn’t seen yours. Though that does not mean non-ethnically Chinese won’t be less affected, as a whole.

    3. The death rate of those who have been diagnosed is quite consistent at 2%. I believe the majority of the deaths are the elderly and those with pre-existing medical conditions, which describes a lot of us on the forum. A year ago the Remainers would probably have welcomed the Coronavirus and actively tried to contaminate us Brexiteers.

  52. COFFEE HOUSE – Boris has fallen into a trap by sucking up to David Attenborough
    Charles Moore – 8 February 2020 – 7:36 AM

    Regardless of one’s views on climate change, one should welcome the fact that Boris Johnson removed Claire Perry O’Neill from her post as president of this year’s Conference of the Parties (COP 26), which will be held in Glasgow. He is at last trying to exercise the power of patronage. Ms Perry O’Neill is a George Osborne protegée, anti-Boris and anti-Brexit. She stood down at the end of the last parliament. She is also a keen self-publicist. Given that international climate conferences are chiefly forums in which governments strike attitudes, it was highly unwise to let her strike the Glasgow ones. She was almost bound to be disobliging to the government.

    With the election out of the way, the government recognised its mistake and acted just in time. Ms Perry O’Neill accidentally showed its decision justified by going on air this week to claim that Boris had told her he did not ‘get’ climate change. Little good can come of the Glasgow COP, as David Cameron presumably recognises by refusing to replace Ms Perry O’Neill. The Prime Minister is in a trap of his own making by sucking up to David Attenborough: all the more reason why the COP president should be in tune with the government. Since the spending of something between £20-40 billion of Treasury money per year is at stake, a current minister needs to be in charge. It has taken the Tories nearly ten years in office to learn to use patronage to advance their broad policy aims, not to offer publicly funded platforms to their critics. Tony Blair understood this from his first day in office.

    This article is an extract from Charles Moore’s Spectator Notes, available in this week’s magazine.

    1. That reminds of a cracking comment on the DT letters page:

      SIR – The Government should recognise that there is far less carbon in a carrot than a stick.

      Chris Crawshay
      Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands

      Whether or not it is actually true is another matter.

  55. French ice skating boss quits amid sex abuse scandal

    The long-time head of France’s ice sports federation has resigned amid a sexual abuse scandal in figure skating.
    Didier Gailhaguet said he was leaving with his head held high and without bitterness at the “injustice” of being forced out by the sports minister.
    Several former skating champions have come forward to accuse three trainers of sexually abusing them as teenagers.
    Mr Gailhaguet is not personally implicated. The alleged abuse happened from the end of the 1970s to the 1990s.

    In an autobiography released last week, champion figure skater Sarah Abitbol alleged her former coach Gilles Beyer abused her when she was a teenager. Ms Abitbol, who is now 44, said she was aged 15 when it first happened.
    Mr Beyer has admitted to “intimate” and “inappropriate” relations with her, and said he was “sincerely sorry”.

    1. Fax Machines are still around in a small way as are Polariod cameras and Wimpy bars

      Any More

      Police Boxes. Trolley buses, Fire Engines with big wooden wheeled Ladders. Fire Engines with Bells. Coalmen, Cars with starter handles, Steam Engines , Gas lights on many railway stations

      1. Compact
        Suspender belt
        Petticoat
        Liberty bodice
        Thank you letters
        Jukebox
        Yuppie
        Half Crown
        sixpence
        Threepence
        Floppy Disk
        Shorthand
        Laundry collection
        Twin sets
        Mental arithmetic
        Crank handle for starting car
        School assembly prayers
        Christian names

        1. Liberty Bodice – Seems a strange name for something that seem to be more akin to torture. Still I suspect they may have go in the way of boys wanting to take liberty

          7. Nobody wore them when I attended school in the freezing climate of North Yorkshire. But I do have fond memories of the occasional foray to Harrogate Ladies College. {:^))

          8. Only the girls with elderly mothers wore them when I was at school.
            I’d never seen such objects before; presumably my mother was too young to inflict such clothing on me. (Well, apart from The Grand Battle of the Vest.)

          9. Elderly mothers? A friend of mine wore one and her mother was quite a lot younger than mine – she died only a few years ago. But I didn’t notice anyone else wearing one.

          10. Mum wasn’t elderly, but liberty bodices were on our school clothing list for boarding school … Our school was in North Yorkshire .. We froze if we didn’t wear warm clothes .

      2. THe even more obscure ones of Rod, Pole, Link. Perch. Chain. Hand, Furlong. these two are still in use, Rood, virgate, Hide, Peck bushel

        plus Florin and farthing and Crown

    3. They also do not “get”:

      Standard English.
      Good manners.
      Proper etiquette.
      Good grace.
      Table manners.
      General knowledge.
      Mental arithmetic.
      Not butting in.
      Speaking only when spoken to.
      Being seen but not heard.
      Mr Pastry.

      [Having said all that, I neither “got”, nor raised a smile to, Mr bloody Pastry! (nor Pinky and bloody Perky!) ]

    4. For those who served:

      Blanco
      Jankers
      Four-by-two
      Gaiters
      Gash
      Bull
      Mug-n-irons
      Snoops
      36s
      48s
      Plus all the ones from overseas:
      Ghari (sp?)
      Shufti
      Bearer
      Short-time
      Pick-up (taxi)
      Etc etc

        2. I thought of that one, too, but I think that the NAAFI is still going so perhaps NAAFI Breaks are as well.

    7. I suggested to my four year old granddaughter that we should tape Paw Patrol.

      ‘What’s ‘taped?’ ‘

  57. Michael Barrymore

    I see they have had yet another program about Barrymore and the swimming pool death, It was a party there at lest someone must have seen or heard something. I suspect the truth of what happened may never come out

    1. Two pieces of evidence were removed from the scene of the murder. They were high on cocaine, ecstasy and booze. A death in waiting.

        1. So far. The Police are so on the case and that this senior detective is the fifth one to do the job that should have been done at the time. The Police are so totally fecked up now with the concerns of minorities they are no longer able to function. I don’t expect them to solve anything at all.

  58. “Eighty-six people die of coronavirus in a DAY in China as Beijing begins mass
    arrest of sufferers and videos shows hazmat suit-clad goons dragging
    people from their homes as the death toll hits 724″!”
    (Daily Mail)

  59. To reassure the world, China must be honest. Editor 8 February 2020.

    The Chinese government has reassured Donald Trump that it is doing all it can to contain the coronavirus outbreak and castigated Britain for overreacting. Perhaps the UK has overreacted, maybe it has not – it is very hard to tell when dealing with a regime like China’s. What the world wants is reassurance, but that is hard to get when there is a distinct lack of openness and independent reporting.

    Building a hospital in 10 days to treat sufferers is impressive, but it obviously does not make outsiders feel any more secure. What is really needed, and what democracies are used to dealing with, is maximum transparency. If the coronavirus had started in Wisconsin rather than Wuhan, the media would have covered every infection, while lawyers and politicians would be breathing down the government’s neck.

    Such is the mixture of unworldliness and innocent hypocrisy in this piece that you have to wonder if it was written by the editor’s eight year old daughter. China is a Totalitarian Communist Dictatorship and Honesty has never been nor ever will be in any Manifesto that it publishes. That said the idea that Western Democracies are models of “Maximum Transparency” is if anything even more ludicrous. I have striven to find a reasonable explanation for the Coronavirus and China’s actions but it has so far eluded me. I am not personally concerned about this but that is primarily because I am 73. Perhaps the Editor can get her fat ass off the sofa and use the Telegraphs resources to satisfy my curiosity before I peg out from the infection!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/02/08/reassure-world-china-must-honest/

    1. I do not understand the implication that the Western media are honest. I am waiting for them to show a picture of a pretty Palestinian Muslim child who caught the virus from an Israeli settler.

      1. “Oh, what a good idea.” said a Graudian journo, whose name rhymes with bones.

        ‘Afternoon, Tony.

    2. Afternoon AS,
      By the same token very hard to tell when dealing with a regime such as the lab/lib/con coalition party.
      Very little openness, if any.

    3. Afternoon Minty
      We have a total of about 6000 critical care beds in the whole UK,you could make a case your best chance for survival would be early infection before resources are overwhelmed and all the medical staff succumb as well!!

      1. I’ll have you know our community health services have been more than adequately prepared for this sort of epidemic indeed lessons were learned during the last plague outbreak. Each health visitor and district nurse has been issued with a bag of 6″ nails and a hammer and a 5 ltr tin of red paint and paint brush in order to decorate the nailed up front doors with a large red cross.

  60. The Saxon Queen has just seasoned and massaged olive oil
    into two very nice Aberdeen Angus steaks and we’ll have them
    with small herb roasted potatoes, cream brandy sauce and mange tout.
    Also a decent red wine and chocolate mousse for pudding.
    Didn’t have much to eat yesterday, nor today so am looking
    forward to it. I’m not really a steak person but like one occasionally.

      1. Thank You Mr Viking, I hope you enjoy your dinner too
        unless you had a large lunch. I like to save some of the
        Burgundy especially for the chocolate mousse as they
        go well together. I didnt even need to hunt the beef with the
        long bow 🙂

    2. The story of Alfred the Great and Aethelfled on Paramount Network now. Free view 31 or Freesat 132 if you’re interested.

      1. Thank you but I’ve missed it, I’ll see if in can find it .
        Really isn’t much known about that time in our English
        history. We know more about the Ancient Greeks and Egyptians
        then we do about our own which is why I find it so
        fascinating.

      2. Hmmm. I have the end of “High Noon” with Gary Cooper on Paramount at the moment, followed by “Mad Max: Fury Road” at 09:00PM, but that is on Sky. I didn’t realise that the same channel names had different programs on different networks.

        (Edit: Found it on PBS America, as you said.)

        1. I used to have a steam loco drivers licence here in Norway… No more, after a stroke 4 years ago.
          sigh

          1. Was it Norway where a historic narrow gauge locomotive being transported on a standard gauge wagon, inadvertently ended up at a steelworks and being tipped into the furnace?

          2. I am so sorry to hear that Obers…..but pleased you are still here to tell the tale. We must always focus on what we can do in this life. I used to climb the mountains and hills in the Lake District…now I need help across the sitting room…lol. But…we have our wonderful memories – which many will never know. Take care dear friend….you have your beautiful kitties for companionship as do I. They keep me strong.

    1. Main line stock, so presumably the day the old GE route was handed over to LTR.
      Route would be Main line to Ilford, turn Left through Ilford Depot, drop down to Newbury Park and round to Woodford via Hainault

      2. They had a small shed at Epping so it may have come from there. In the last few years the steam was just a shuttle from Epping to Onger

  67. Starbucks’ new charity associations leave a bitter taste in the mouth
    DOUGLAS MURRAY – 8 FEBRUARY 2020 • 4:00PM

    Starbucks have come up with their new Mermaids cookies in the name of something they present sweetly

    If you enjoy puddle-like coffee and pastries with the texture of rock-cakes then you are doubtless a fan of Starbucks, the horrible American coffee chain which sits on every high street in the world. Meaning you might be happy to learn that this week a fresh morsel was added to the counter of inedible products in the company’s stores across the UK. These are “mermaid” cookies. And as the faux-friendly writing on all the identikit chalkboards at all the depressing Starbucks stores inform customers, these are cookies with a purpose.

    Starbucks have come up with this particular tooth-rotter in the name of something they present sweetly. Purchase a “mermaids cookie” and a full 50p will be given by Starbucks to the charity Mermaids. So sweet. So innocent. Or sickening. Depending what you know.

    Personally I view Mermaids as one of the most sinister charitable organisations in the UK. Starbucks simply says that the group supports “young transgender and gender diverse people and their families”. The undrinkable coffee chain claims that all those 50 pences will pay to support a helpline for such people. In fact everything that Mermaids pushes is deeply controversial and with implications which need to be properly interrogated.

    Let’s just start with that presumption – put on all those Starbucks boards: what are “gender diverse people”? Does anybody know? Can anybody justify or explain the phrase? I would offer a year’s supply of edible croissants from any of Starbucks’ competitors for anyone who can.

    Then there is the lobbying that Mermaids puts out to persuade society at large that children who believe – or are encouraged to believe – that they are in the “wrong body” should be helped to change sex. Something which is presented by Mermaids as though it is not just a right but a doozy. Think you’d like to become a girl? Why not give it a go? Vice versa? No problem!

    Whatever societal madness future historians work out encouraged this fiasco, the most striking aspect of it is that on this matter, as on so many others, the adults all appear to have left the room. People do not question the new orthodoxy. If someone says that certain children should be given puberty blockers so that they can transition into approximations of the opposite sex who are we to question it?

    So it is fitting that this week the news emerged of a 13-year-old girl applying for a judicial review against Oxfordshire County Council. The cause is the council’s ‘Trans Inclusion Toolkit for Schools 2019’ which Oxfordshire County Council has given to more than 300 schools in the area.

    Its advice says – among other things – that girls like the girl known only as ‘Miss A’ should share changing rooms, lavatories and even residential dormitories on school trips with any boy who identifies as a girl. Campaigners against accommodation of such ‘self-identification’ say that this advice poses a serious risk to children.

    It will be interesting to see in the months and indeed years ahead who wins stand-offs such as this one. The fact that multinationals like Starbucks can so easily jump on board with the agenda that Mermaids is pushing is just the latest demonstration of how fast this new orthodoxy is being accepted.

    Meanwhile parents and others who object to this agenda are wrongly portrayed as backwards and bigoted: people who are trying either to make people murder trans people or make trans people kill themselves. Thus with the language of catastrophism is an actual catastrophe mainstreamed into society.

    What studies there are show that around four fifths of children diagnosed with the highly dubious condition ‘gender dysphoria’ will grow up to be perfectly happy straight or gay men or women – happy in their own bodies.

    For any sane society this would be just one sign that the claims of the trans extremists need far more investigation than they are currently getting. So how encouraging it is that a 13 year old schoolgirl should try to inject some sense into a debate which nearly all the adults in our society have fearfully, disgracefully ducked.

      1. I am well, thank you Bob. Ian & M-G’s health has been deteriorating and they need live-in help. As a consequence I have been scurrying around like a blue @rsed hornet for the past couple of months finding/changing abode. Will email you sometime in March with the new details once things have settled down.

  68. Thank Heavens for the off-switch.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/smug-ceremony-virtue-signalling-oscars-still-lasted-15-minutes/

    A smug ceremony of virtue-signalling – if only the Oscars still lasted 15 minutes

    The Oscars is unbearable, Julie Burchill says, less an celebration of film than a mélange of woke posturing, self-indulgence and surreality

    8 February 2020 • 1:48pm

    My first reaction on finding out that the imminent Academy Awards is the 92nd was to make a mental note to be sure to be out of reach of all media outlets eight years hence. Imagine the carry-on that will mark the centennial of this backslapping, virtue-signalling pass-the-parcel! As if I needed to add fuming to the fire, I recently came across the information that a whopping 60 per cent of British Oscar-winners over the past 25 years have been privately educated, whereas only 6 per cent of the population have had the privilege – so even rooting for the “plucky” little British contingent comes with a tainted love.

    The first Oscars were presented in front of 270 people, the cost of tickets was $5 and the ceremony ran for 15 minutes; these days it is – as Johnny Carson, the host in 1979, quipped – “two hours of sparkling entertainment spread over a four-hour show”. You can’t explain this away by saying that cinema was a minority interest back then either. In 1930, 65 per cent of Americans went to the movies each week; these days, only 4 per cent.

    Yes, of course we still watch films at home, on DVD and online, but we no longer watch film stars in the hushed, sacred darkness, with their fabulous faces the size of a cathedral. Instead, they are part of the technological furniture; we mock them, pause them, talk and sexually gratify ourselves over them. They know this, and it hurts their fragile egos; no one yearns to become a film star in order to be just an add-on in an evening’s entertainment on Netflix alongside the Deliveroo. THEY WANT TO BE ADORED!

    And so, as the importance of cinema dwindles, the self‑importance of the film industry grows. The sight of privileged individuals who had the same chance as everyone else to become doctors, nurses or firefighters, but chose instead to go into a business that is about playing pretend and reaping vast financial rewards for lecturing the rest of us about how to be better people, would be offensive if it wasn’t so funny. But we have their number: when entertainers espouse a political cause – as they did with Hillary Clinton and Remain – far more “civilians” (to use Elizabeth Hurley’s risibly inaccurate phrase; surely “punter” is nearer the mark) turn against it than support it.

    Surely some of this disdain on the part of the paying public is down to the increasing desire of actors to be seen as suffering grafters, when their lives are lush and cushy. In the past, stars simply accepted their status as unreal beings and would never have claimed that walking a cheetah on a leash down Sunset Boulevard was in any way comparable to doing a shift in a factory.

    But things have changed. Gwyneth Paltrow has not only famously claimed that being a film star is tougher than doing a “regular” job, but also that reading nasty things about herself and her friends was “almost like how, in war, you go through this bloody, dehumanising thing”. Kristen Stewart, meanwhile, compared being papped with being raped. It’s odd how a bunch of woke liberals who would be conscious of “white privilege” can be so unconscious of having the greatest privilege possible – doing something one loves for a living.

    The film stars of yesteryear were generally of working-class origin and became successful due to their outstanding talent and/or beauty. Perhaps because of their humble backgrounds, they tended to be genuinely political, rather than posturing narcissists. Marilyn Monroe was famously under surveillance by the FBI for talking openly about her support for black civil rights and her interest in the Chinese revolution, going so far as answering, when asked her opinion of Communism: “They’re for the people, aren’t they?”

    The Committee for the Fifth Amendment – starring Bacall, Bogart, Garland, Kelly and Kaye – flew on a plane, tauntingly called Red Star, to take a petition bearing 500 prominent industry names to Washington in defiance of the witch-hunts. But these stars – maverick freethinkers in a cowed, Right-wing Hollywood – were risking their careers by going against the grain. They weren’t conforming to the lickspittle lip-serving that has seen the modern Oscars become a fuzzy‑feelz pile-on.

    In liberal Hollywood, a creature like Harvey Weinstein could hide in plain sight because he donated to feminist causes, supported Clinton and gave an intern job to Obama’s teenage daughter; hence he was a Good Guy. And you can see why he might have been confused as to what constituted a Bad Guy, seeing at first hand the legions of Hollywood liberals who protected and lionised the child rapist Roman Polanski.

    Vis‑à-vis MeToo, one would have to be quite odd not to approve of the surge of solidarity among Hollywood stars of the female persuasion, especially when a fine actress such as Frances McDormand receives an award before declaiming: “All the female nominees in every category stand with me tonight – Meryl, if you do it, everyone else will!” But I did wonder whether she meant “Suck up to Weinstein”, or “Give Polanski a standing ovation”, because Streep certainly led the liberal sheep-in-wolves-clothing in those fields for years.

    This is not the first time in its history that cinema has been threatened by TV. When it happened in the 1950s, the cinema fought back with Smell-O-Vision, the invention of releasing atmospheric odours during a screening. They can’t fight back now, though to give them credit, they’re rolling over and taking it. Even Jane Campion, the director’s director, said it: “The really clever people used to do film. Now, the really clever people do television.” You can’t Smell-O-Vision your way out of that. There is a sense this time that there will be no recovery, due to the rise of streaming. Young people have the lowest cinema attendance, due to the technology that makes the cinema look like the museum, and they are unlikely to change their ways as they mature.

    The film stars of the fledgling Hollywood truly were worshipped as higher beings; a tribe of Pathan Indians opened fire on a cinema when they were denied entry to a Greta Garbo film, while women committed suicide when Valentino died. Their marriages were regarded as heavenly unions, their romantic sunderings as tragedies. Nowadays, we smirk when they crash and burn, but rather than accept their fate as disposable baubles on the tree of life, they double down defensively in their $25,000 dresses, telling us how awful rich people are.

    I’d like an actress to say, just once, instead of thanking everyone from God to her great-uncle: “I’d like to thank my plastic surgeon, and my breasts – both of them – for getting me here!” I miss the old days when film stars were braver and bitchier, vice‑signalling and career-risking, political not posturing. When (to paraphrase Marilyn) cinema was from the people, for the people. But that’s long gone and with it our fascination with film, now that the business of quotidian magic is just a little nepotistic racket like all the rest

    2. Don’t get me started…too late….bunch of self admiring, shallow, overpaid and overated attention seeking nothings.

      1. So inward looking and self indulgent they have trouble staying married to each other for more than five minutes before wanting to beat each other to death.

        1. They treat marriage like stars on a tick sheet…often they are in competition with each other in their public lives . Obviously there are exceptions I am sure.

          4. He might have “stuck with her” but that didn’t stop him from wandering.

            It was only Paul Newman who remained faithful to his wife, Joanne Woodward. When asked why he didn’t stray he replied, “Why go out for hamburger when you can stay at home and have steak?”

          6. Many wives have understood the urges of the men they married and after the career, the house the education of the children have been relaxed about the extra-maritals.

            At least…that is what i will be pleading in Court. :o(

    3. Apropos acceptance speeches, could we take it as read that the winners would like to thank their families and the people listed in the credits?

      It would be more interesting to hear who they don’t think helped them.

    4. Why are the greatest accolades: Oscars, Peerages, etc, only reserved for the pampered, spoilt and least deserving?

      Why are there no Oscars and Peerages for sewerage workers? Those pampered nonentities would be in deep shit without their sterling efforts.

          1. Me too…best I can. Knighthoods were for those who do something above and beyond…not overpaid, over indulged, life of rileys.

      2. Yo Mt Grizz

        Conversely,Oscars and Peerages etc are seemingly awarded to the most important parts of the body

        The Arrissoles

  69. Anyone listening to the Met Opera Matinee on R3?
    Just had an unexpected break in the music for an advertisement. Presumably someone pressed the wrong button in the control box!

        1. We saw a great performance of Faust at Covent Garden a few years ago – with Dmitri Horostovsky

        2. For Faust, give me Marlowe or Goethe.
          All attempts to make an opera have failed. Gounod, Boito, etc. all come into the same category – “Once seen (or heard ) never forgotten how bloody awful they are.

    3. Lovely song btw…was referring to the wind when I said I hate this. What a racket outside. Scares me to death.

      1. Thank you Bob!! It will pass….just like the storm and hopefully we will be all the stronger.

    3. Jenny:

      Half a lemon, juiced; a large Scotch, 3 cloves and a tsp of honey – topped up with boiling water … 🙂 !

      2. You trying to kill me?….ha ha ha. Thank you Lacoste. I can’t have alcohol but thank you …..xxx

    4. Try a mug hot instant chicken soup .. steam will soothe and the drink might loosen gunk in your throat , and hopefully give you some relief as you sip it.

      Hope you feel more comfortable tomorrow,

      Night night Jenny.

  74. I have seen some comments just below from people who do not like the high winds and rains very much, and this is quite understandable, especially if your garden / home has been damaged by them in the past. I revel in them however, and love standing out on a hill with the wind and rain swirling around me. 🙂

    This is probably because I know that there is a warm home to get back to. It might not be as enjoyable if you are stuck out in them with nowhere to go. The wind is really picking up here, so I am off out now to get blown about a bit. I might even get the camp bed down into the conservatory to sleep there and hear the wind and rain sleeting down until dawn. Have a good night. 🙂

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4da5c0788058814cabbfc392d8c5d74399b3c95acea9cad9a400869f7e1cfd1f.jpg

    1. Same here. I think anyone who has spent a large part of their life working in the outdoors in all weathers would feel the same.
      Reminds me of the old saying, ‘There’s no such thing as bad weather, just inappropriate clothing.’

  75. Watching the rain radar on the Met Office site and it’s fascinating how the rain appears to be breaking up and avoiding the Matlock area!
    Just been out to clear the rainwater gullies to stop the expected flow across the main road, but it’s just a very light rain with a light blustery wind outside at the moment.
    However, the roar of the wind across the top of the valley is noticeable.

    1. The fish one reminds me of a story about an aquarium shop where the owner had a rainbow trout in one tank and a couple of dozen piranha in another nearby.

      He came in next morning to find the trout missing.
      he then realised it was in the piranha tank, looking as satisfied as a fish could and a couple of the piranha cowering behind the pump!!

  79. I guess Philip Schofield gritted his teeth when he was intimate with his wife and thought of Elton John

  80. Polls Close at 10pm

    Exit poll should be out soon after 10pm. In the UK exit polls are pretty accurate but Ireland use a form of STV and I have not a clue as to how accurate exit polls are with that

  81. I’ve just been watching another of those Midsomer Murder things
    with the husband. Not as bad as last time but an over the top ending.
    I still prefer John Nettles as Barnaby and his wife Joyce.
    It’d make anyone think twice about rural living 😉

  82. With regard to everyone running around like headless chickens in panic about events in China, I ask them, “What are you afraid of all of a sudden?”

    I’ve been warning you all for a decade-or-more that torpor and inaction over the unstoppable human overpopulation of the planet will only lead to tragedy.

    Deal with it!

    As long as only humans are devastated, as a direct result of their own mass stupidity and continually burying their heads in the sand, then all the better!

    1. How strange that this is happening now.. China had a one child policy for years..

      Have they been tampering with something devilish that has got completely out of control ..

      I fear they have .. and they are bringing havoc and disorder to the planet.. Strange that no cases have been heard of in Africa?

        1. How wonderful, do have a lovely time .
          I’ve always wanted to do one of those Safari trips
          but haven’t done so yet .

          1. It’s my passion, obsession and addiction. This will be my 10th trip to Africa and the wildlife never disappoints.

          2. I did wonder due to the avatar 😉
            I loved all those African wildlife programmes with
            Simon King, do it know what happened to him but
            thought him brilliant. I was very fond of Meerkat
            Manor too and have a cheetah cub on the computer
            screensaver. The wildlife is so differn t and so much
            exotic then ours and the photography that appears
            In books is amazing.

          6. They are so beautiful. I remember a docu about them once. A baby elephant died at birth. That mother cried real tears and stayed by it’s side. That vision will go with me to my grave.

          8. I am so jealous!! Are they not just the most beautiful of creatures. Let me loose on those who harm them.

          13. Brilliant, what a superb talent, the depth of colour, shape
            and the ripples in the water — superb and atmospheric.

            My late father in law used to be an artist ( graphic designer by trade, used to
            be employed by the BBC and worked with Tony Hart )
            eons ago in the 50s / 60s before the BBC became lefty.

          14. Thank you for that. My friend loves it and it is hanging in her lounge. I used to love watching Tony Hart when I was a nipper.

          16. It’s very beautiful, it’s a gift to be able to draw and paint,
            I cannot do it for toffees.

          18. Thanks, Grumps. More hard work than talent, I’m afraid. It was my first piece in oils and it took me a while.

          20. I too have a passion and obsession with wildlife; however, my favourite continent is North America.

            Grizzly bears (natch), black bears, cougars, wolverines, fishers, skunks, raccoons, moose, wapiti, bighorn, porcupines, opossum, sea otters, pika, peccary, grey wolf, coyote, caribou, marmots, gophers, chipmunks, prairie dogs, beavers, arctic fox, bison, cottonmouths, copperheads, rattlesnakes, alligators and hundreds more.

            And that is just the mammals and reptiles; if I also counted the birds I would be here for evermore.

          23. Most that I came across were roadkill and I couldn’t be sure how fresh they were!

            Ragôut of fortnight-dead skunk is not particularly appetising.

    2. My husband whilst ordering some items from Amazon UK
      just out of interest went to see their face masks ( the type they
      are wearing in China ). He saw that they were out of stock
      with Amazon, so people are buying up face masks in the UK.

      You make a valid point. There are cities in China that we’ve never
      heard of that contain millions of people. And although places
      such as Shanghai are very westernized the rural areas
      still have no proper sanitation and lavatories.

    3. Grizzy – The events in China do not concern me in the least. It has led me to fast-forwarding through large chunks of the news to find stories that do matter though. There are very real threats to life that walk on two legs who will have a 100% certainty of killing people such as myself who won’t bow down and who won’t surrender. That is a real threat that is unfolding before us in real life, in real time.

      If I can fully accept that reality, and go through life with a smile on my face and a song in my heart, then I’m not wasting my time worrying about some virus, especially when flu kills so many 100,000’s of people a year anyway. There are much bigger fish to fry, or grill, or wrap in tinfoil, however you like them. 🙂

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/70cc749843358625e72cf0d0309e6f4c7b0d3a5205333e0c3a59748eb327b3cc.jpg

  83. I was reminded a moment ago of a documentary I’ve missed on
    Alfred the Great and Æthelfled which reminds me of why I find
    the mysterious dark ages so interesting. We know so
    little about that period apart from a few snippets in the
    Anglo Saxon chronicles and yet we know so much about
    the Ancient Greeks / Persians and Egyptians.

    1. From GP:-

      neveruptothejob Black Cat • 7 minutes ago
      I have every confidence that the voters of Ireland will continue to support the transformation of their culture and country into an Afro-Asian one, and the abandonment of the old-fashioned norms, traditions and stabilities that are inimical to the establishment of a modern diverse and divided society.

      http://disq.us/p/2776y5t

      1. No expert on Irish politics or STV but FF & FG have said they will not work with SF

        Assuming in Ireland they have the same convention as in the UK the Party with the largest number of seats gets first go at forming a government. If by some chance it was SF they would therefore fail so I assume it then goes to the party with the next highest number of seats so they will try to form a coalition. If that fails I assume its another election

        I suspect it will be after a lot or negotiations a coalition between which one leads iyt depending on which of those two get the moist seats

    3. That result makes it quite obvious that the voting has been rigged. Time for a hanged Parliament.

  89. The England Rugby coach needs to have a word in the players’ Conch-like that in the words of Einstein doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity.

    Cue Ogga……

  90. With over 20 years of marriage and two children.

    I’ve been struggling with unusual feelings all my life like I’m different.

    Going through life ashamed, hiding my awful secret.

    But no further.

    Please don’t judge me. It’s just who I am even though I’m in the minority.

    I’d like to come out to everyone today…

    I…

    like…instant coffee. Okay !

  91. ” Harry and Meghan ‘earn $1m’ for speech in Florida ”
    (After agent’s fee and tax, there won’t be much left).

    1. Say it was a 40 min speech, that’s £25,000 a minute.
      How much of that will they keep for themselves and how much will they donate to charidee?

  92. Breaking news.

    Midget holds seance for charity and runs off with the takings.

    Small medium at large.

    And it’s goodnight from him. :o(

  93. Waiting in vain for Sunday’s letters. Off to bed – new page is here, but there’s nothing to discuss. Will add a link in the morning if the DT gets its act together…

          2. I am a Daniel Silva books reader and I started re-reading the whole series from start to finish. I find it fascinating to see how the recurring characters grow with each book and how prescient some of his ‘fictional’ ideas are.

          3. Not an author I know – will have to look. I bought Cemetery Road (£9.99!), but have yet to read.

          4. Spy books, if you are interested in international stuff, with a twist! G’night. have to go, enjoy Cemetery Road, I surely did!

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