Sunday 10 October: The gulf between the PM’s oratory and his Conservative credentials

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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646 thoughts on “Sunday 10 October: The gulf between the PM’s oratory and his Conservative credentials”

  1. Sadiq Khan’s 24/7 security challenges our notions of non-racist London. Nick Cohen. 10 October 2021.

    Today, as every day, police protection will be at its highest around the Queen and the prime minister and around a politician who in normal circumstances would barely need guarding. Fifteen armed officers, trained in counter-terrorism and emergency medicine, will be on alert solely because a brown-skinned Muslim, caught up in a global wave of hatred, is the mayor of London.

    The level of threat Sadiq Khan must live with challenges the self-congratulatory claim that “Britain is the least racist country in the world” and many other complacent cliches..

    Morning everyone. This article is a sad confirmation to those who like myself already believe that Nick Cohen is unhinged. The idea that Sad Khan is at the centre of a vast global conspiracy to have him killed for being a Muslim and the Mayor of London must be one of the silliest or paranoid (probably both) delusions of the Left. It is a plot that makes James Bond look positively parochial.

    The reality of political assassination, as opposed to casual terrorism, is that it is invariably successful when attempted by those with moderate intelligence and resources. Did such wish Khan harm he would already be sampling the Houri’s of Paradise. He is much more likely to be run down by one of those e-scooters that he has loosed onto the streets than some fictional “Far-Right” fanatic!

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/09/sadiq-khans-247-security-challenges-our-notions-of-non-racist-london

    1. Morning Minty et al.

      On the basis of the quoted extract above, one has to wonder if the author was ever hinged in the first place. I’m so glad I no longer pay the community charge in London, a proportion of which is used to pay for the officers ‘protecting’ Sad IQ Khan.

      1. Morning Stephen. I read his articles because I suspect, rather ghoulishly, that one day he is going to have a total meltdown in print!

        1. As far as I know I do not suffer from high blood pressure. I aim to keep it that way by not reading the Guardian or watching BBC ‘News’.
          I can only conclude you must have a cast iron constitution!

      1. It is not a good look for a politician to need to be constantly guarded against one’s enraged constituents. It is one they will turn to though when democracy fails, as it seems to have done in London.

        Muslims and blacks bring it on themselves through their religious zealotry and their brazen racism. Like those apprehended unwanted in a Kurdish internment camp, they might pine for the old ways, but it was the old ways they deliberately denounced and endeavoured to force their “upgrade” on all of us.

        They make their bed and now they lie in it, and so do their children and their grandchildren.

    4. So the reason everyone hates Khan is because of his skin colour? I thought it was because he is a tosser.

      1. “Racism ” is the reason that coloured people fail. The few of them* who are sufficiently literate, or intelligent enough to read Shakespeare would surely take note that “the fault, dear Sambo, is in ourselves, and not those racists”.

        (The same goes for white people too, of course. I have given examples of people from my school, whose forebears had nothing, but who went on to achieve success.)

    5. There is an irony in Mr. Cohen standing up for a Muslim mayor.
      First they came for the appeasers…..

  2. Good morning all from a still dark but at least dry (at the moment) Derbyshire.
    7½°C on the yard thermometer.

  5. Good Morning Folks

    Cloudy start here.

    I hear Boris has jetted off on holiday, has he no consideration for his carbon footprint?

      2. With the impending rises in fuel costs the real cost, and it will not be only financial costs, of ‘Net-Zero’ must start dawning on people, surely? Johnson’s “green” plan can only be effective if the people are under total control, the next step on that road is the “vaccine passport”. If he succeeds in getting the majority of the population to accept that imposition of control then the Country will be lost. Peasants they will become in a globalist led ‘Novel Feudalism’. The people who support Johnson and his cabal will rue the day they stopped thinking and believed everything this government told them.

    3. Johnson’s only consideration is for Johnson. He hasn’t abandoned the people nor the UK, they were never part of ‘Project Johnson’.

    5. It’s worse, Bob3. He regularly sleeps for a few hours every night, when the country is facing a multitude of problems. How dare he be so cavalier in his attitude to his job?

      (In case of any doubt, this is sarcasm. Everyone is entitled to take a break from time to time.)

      1. It’s a bit hypocritical though to take over the mantel of climate change and saving the planet, then to jet of abroad.

    6. It’s worse, Bob3. He regularly sleeps for a few hours every night, when the country is facing a multitude of problems. How dare he be so cavalier in his attitude to his job?

      (In case of any doubt, this is sarcasm. Everyone is entitled to take a break from time to time.)

    2. I’m sure it must have occurred to everyone that the principle reason for lifting the Covid 19 Travel restrictions to & from parts foreign was to permit the forthcoming Glasgow ‘Burning Man Fest’ to take place without protests and newspaper headlines about hypocrisy….

  7. Morning all

    SIR – After about five minutes of Boris Johnson’s speech at the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester, it became clear that this was an absolute tour de force.

    Neither Margaret Thatcher nor Tony Blair ever came within a mile of Wednesday’s oratorical brilliance.

    Does that speech mean that Mr Johnson:

    (a) is actually a Conservative rather than a would-be Liberal Democrat?

    (b) will deliver on anything that he referred to?

    (c) truly believes in anything at all?

    (d) should not be dumped as soon as possible in favour of someone who holds basic Conservative values?

    Answers: no, no, no and no.

    Dr Gerald de Lacey

    London W11

    SIR – Were trade description rules applied to political organisations, the Conservatives would definitely be in breach of the law.

    Geoff Ludlow

    Hythe, Kent

    SIR – If the Government’s Build Back Better strategy entails violence on garage forecourts, empty supermarket shelves, and soaring energy and fuel prices coupled with penal taxation rates, I think I would prefer to keep things as they were.

    Martyn Pitt

    Gloucester

    SIR – Ireland does not appear to be happy about being cajoled by Joe Biden into increasing its corporation tax rate from 12.5 per cent to 15 per cent for big companies by 2023.

    However, this pales into insignificance after our Conservative Government announced in March a rise in corporation tax from 19 per cent to a whopping 25 per cent from April 1 2023.

    Whatever happened to the “Singapore-on-Thames” model to stimulate growth and employment? Have Mr Biden, Boris Johnson and the liberal elite put paid to any hopes of low taxation in the future, choosing an economic model of green stagflation with high levels of tax?

    Gerald Heath

    Corsham, Wiltshire

    SIR – Unlike Fraser Nelson, I am not surprised that, at a Spectator panel at the Tory conference, the audience’s preferred replacement for Boris Johnson was Liz Truss.

    In contrast with Dominic Raab and Priti Patel, she was not seen as fully embracing lockdown and other draconian rules, and unlike Rishi Sunak she believes there are better ways to pay down the Government’s huge debt than swingeing tax rises.

    Whatever she once thought of Brexit, she would be more likely than the current PM to take full advantage of the opportunities it offers. Mr Nelson says that “Conservatives like power and will follow anyone who brings it.” He concludes that person is still Mr Johnson, but I’m not so sure. For many of us, it’s Miss Truss we trust.

    Tim Coles

    Carlton, Bedfordshire

    Still ‘due to Covid’

    SIR – Most commercial businesses are now back working normally.

    By contrast, on Wednesday I telephoned the Pension Service using the number given on a letter it had sent me. I was put through to a message saying that, due to Covid, staff could not answer queries.

    Civil servants are failing us.

    David S Baber

    Amersham, Buckinghamshire

    SIR – Where is the outrage about the continuing neglect of our young people?

    Many students who were robbed of the chance to sit their A-levels last year are now being expected to spend much of their second year at university sitting in halls and student flats, learning remotely.

    The university term is often only 150 days a year. During term, a practical degree such as engineering would usually involve four and a half days on site, with face-to face contact. Many of those in the current cohort did not even visit their departments last year.

    These young people – who include the engineers and medics of the future – are being shortchanged. Where is the pressure on the higher education sector to resume normal working practices?

    Jane Lyons

    London SW12

    SIR – Ticket inspectors are back on trains. It appears there is life after Covid.

    Kirsty Blunt

    Sedgeford, Norfo.l

    1. A BTL Comment:-

      Robert Spowart
      10 Oct 2021 7:57AM
      “Civil servants are failing us” states David S Baber!
      Em, given the paucity of Civil Servants who actually did their job in the past, when did they ever not fail us?

    2. Quite right, David Baber, our Snivel Serpents are currently providing very poor service and, in some cases, none at all. Covid is the go-to excuse for this shambles, but until people bombard their MPs with complaints I doubt that much will change. The head of the CS is Simon Case, and it is high time someone read him his horoscope.

      As an aside, the first line of ‘Who we are’ the CS states (try not to laugh) “We’re politically impartial…” Brexit, anyone?

  8. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    SIR – After about five minutes of Boris Johnson’s speech at the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester, it became clear that this was an absolute tour de force.

    Neither Margaret Thatcher nor Tony Blair ever came within a mile of Wednesday’s oratorical brilliance.

    Does that speech mean that Mr Johnson:

    (a) is actually a Conservative rather than a would-be Liberal Democrat?

    (b) will deliver on anything that he referred to?

    (c) truly believes in anything at all?

    (d) should not be dumped as soon as possible in favour of someone who holds basic Conservative values?

    Answers: no, no, no and no.

    Dr Gerald de Lacey
    London W11

    Quite!

  9. ‘Send us home,’ beg Afghan refugees stuck in UK hotels. 10 October 2021.

    Afghans who recently arrived in the UK after fleeing the Taliban takeover have asked to be sent back, casting doubt over the success of Operation Warm Welcome, the government’s Afghan resettlement programme.

    It was launched by Boris Johnson on 29 August to help Afghan refugees arriving in the UK by providing support so they could “rebuild their lives, find work, pursue education and integrate into their local communities”.

    The truth is that most of these people came to the UK on the expectation of a giant freebie. A free flight here courtesy of the RAF, a free house and benefits in perpetuity. Even I would consider moving on such expectations. It is only thanks to the boundless generosity of their benefactors, the UK Elites, that there are very few places and situations left for them. Of the many millions who have been lured to the UK only the tiniest fraction fill the qualifications as refugees. Indeed they not infrequently return home on holiday or to visit their relatives.

    There are of course signs that this largesse is coming to an end. A creaking economy and the soon to be massive rise in the cost of living will create conditions for the lowest levels of UK society that will make it a much less desirable destination except to the most desperate! It will in fact closely resemble that of their homelands and thus hardly worth the effort.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/09/afghan-refugees-uk-hotels-operation-warm-welcome

    1. 339818+ up ticks,

      Morning AS,
      Much more of the Country destroying voting pattern will see ALL innocents on ALL knees, facing East and nutting pavements.

      A sure sign is the pig cull in the extreme, appeasement
      in odious action that will trigger trouble if ever, as in islamic ideology standing between a bloke and a bacon sarnie.

    3. Good. No doubt the guraidna is complaining that this is all horrible and we should have given them all a 5 bed house on the tax payer.

      I appreciate the demented Lefties running that rag are utterly without reason or common sense, but do they not understand how government is funded, or are they utterly myopic in thinking ‘da wich’ should pay for everything?

    4. It’s because paying guests said hurty words when the Afghan children ran riot in seaside hotels.

    5. Good evening Minty.
      That a significant number have asked to be returned suggests that their reasons for ‘fleeing’ were spurious at best, if not outright lies. We shouldn’t be taking any of these ungrateful people. How many will ever work and contribute to this country? We can’t afford them. I just read that the women’s football players and, of course, their large families are to be allowed to come here too. They fled to Pakistan – why can’t that country keep them? Same religion/cult, similar standards of living.

  10. 339818+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,

    Sunday 10 October: The gulf between the PM’s oratory and his Conservative credentials

    Sunday 10 October: The gulf between the PM’s oratory and his Conservative (ino) credentials taking in the curvature of the belly I would put at approx. 5′

    The fat turk as with ALL of his ilk in the toxic trio coalition are top of the political patter merchants class, they can make a vow,promise or pledge
    that has been continuously subjected to oath breaking GBH plausible again for reuse.

    The electoral herd has been / is being battered by a blitzkrieg of alternating fright sh!te / rhetorical calm balm.

    The johnson quoir, performing phantoms of the fright sh!te / false assurance opera on the circle line, fact.

  11. Hells bells! Just been out to drop an empty milk bottle into the crate in the yard and the scent of frying bacon from the cafe up the road immediately assaulted my nostrils!

    2. 339818+ up ticks,
      Morning BoB,
      Under the unwritten appeasement rules that cafe will now be entered on the “list” for closure.

  12. Cancelling cash
    SIR – I too have noticed the attempts to coerce us into paying for things with a card rather than cash (Letters, October 3).

    Each time it happens to me, I tell the seller that if they cannot be bothered with cash then I cannot be bothered with them, and will be withdrawing my custom.

    If enough people do the same, businesses might think again.

    Sylvia Coley
    Billingshurst, West Sussex

    Trevor Anderson
    10 Oct 2021 8:02AM
    Sylvia Coley’s letter is utter nonsense. She accuses businesses of attempting to coerce her into using a card rather than cash when purchasing something. She says: “Each time it happens to me, I tell the seller that if they cannot be bothered with cash then I cannot be bothered with them, and will be withdrawing my custom.”

    That’s rather precious Sylvia. You’re making it up for effect. You have a choice, cash or card, and I do not believe anything else.

    Flag3Like
    Reply

    Robert Spowart
    10 Oct 2021 8:13AM
    @Trevor Anderson No it is not “precious” Trevor.

    I have walked out of several establishments who have refused to accept cash for minor purchases.

    Why? Because I am aware of the Chinese Social Credit System and feel the move towards the abolition of cash is, in part at least, being steered by those who wish to see a similar system in the UK.

  14. SIR – Having received our members’ voting details for the National Trust’s AGM, my wife and I are invited to choose six candidates for election to its council.

    Bearing in mind that the Trust has created much controversy over the past year, I was disappointed to note, on reading through what each candidate had to offer, that only three had made plain where they stood in relation to its past and future direction. The rest merely provided bland statements as to what they are able to offer if elected.

    It would have been good to have had their views on such issues as trail hunting (for or against, for example) and the woke demands that the Trust made of its volunteers, which some found unacceptable.

    The situation now is that members will have no proper idea of whom they might wish to promote. The Trust, meanwhile, has made clear its own choice of those candidates standing for election.

    Anthony de la Poer
    South Perrott, Dorset

    Anthony old chap, it’s no good bleating to the DT. You need to cease being a member of the NT and instead join and support Restore Trust. It seems to me that this is the best chance you have of driving wokery out of this organisation, but I’m not pretending it will be easy. Still, RT has already got rid of one of the senior bods, so there is hope.

    1. I believe Restore Trust is trying to organise existing NT members and persuade lapsed ones to rejoin with an aim towards creating a voting bloc to return the NT to it’s traditional ethos & functions.
      For those who can afford it and view the Woke actions of the NT with dismay, joining both sounds a good idea.

    1. Bright & sunny here.
      And the scent of frying bacon from the cafe up the road has penetrated the living room!

  16. SIR – Simon Heffer correctly observes that panicking never used to be a British trait but has become one.

    Something similar has happened with the tendency to exaggerate. Nowadays individuals are “amazing”, events are “unbelievable” and objects are “incredible”.

    What has happened to British understatement? One thinks of Harold Macmillan and his “little local difficulty” – or a comment made on a recent documentary about Special Operations Executive agents, in which a handler said that, if they were caught, their captors “could be quite unpleasant”.

    Less is often more and understatement is usually more powerful than exaggeration.

    Dr Rob Caird
    Greywell, Hampshire

    For some time now we at Janus Towers have called this unfortunate trait “language inflation”. Just one of many examples – the other day I was giving my post code and other info to someone over the phone, as part of the never-ending ‘security check’. The response was “brilliant” and, later on, “parfect” (note the spelling). I felt like asking “Now, when do I get my lollipop?”

    2. Well, I wonder if Dr Caird is a medical doctor? I have found that the medical profession is very fond of understatement in relation to possible side effects of medication. Example. Side effect: “slight nausea”. Reality: an afternoon with one’s head in the toilet.

  17. I posted this just now under a Spectator article about youth pessimism about the ecological prognosis for the world;

    “After weeks railing against the incompetence of my dentist, a second opinion pointed to a rather less comfortable truth – I am falling to bits, and there are limits to how well anyone can patch them up enough to make a fully-functioning human being. It was very depressing, but as I was told as a child “that’s life”, and life sucks (and here the Americanism is about the best way to express it). I have therefore been suicidal most of my adult life, but with odd bouts of happiness here and there, just to take away any urge to follow it through.

    Right now, I cannot blame the young for thinking the world and civilisation is falling to bits. Like me, it’s been around a fair while. It may well be that there is a lot they are not telling us, and feedback loops gathering pace are making the true situation much worse than even the gloomiest predictions from the Green Prophets or the Goblins of Doom. The young are picking up on this, but of course they do not have the knowledge or experience to evaluate what is really going on… but I doubt their elders have either.

    So what can we do about it? The best advice I think is to take what comfort we can from life and keep pressing on best as we can. A nice cup of tea and a long walk will put all in perspective, and our own ant-like existence is really not all that significant in the scheme of things. The least we can do is to enjoy life, as it presents itself, as much as we can, and leave the suffering to God.”

    1. An excellent book that more or less addresses these themes is “No Abiding City” by Bede Jarrett OP.
      We are all failing and falling apart, and yet, we can (as per the advice we gave to our children) “rise above it”. I have dreams that will never be fulfilled, for example, surfing a tube. But I can still walk up the road and look out over lovely countryside.

      2. Excellent philosophy, Horace. Matches my own quite well:
        “Be happy with what you have and have achieved, not unhappy over what you have not, or did not, achieve.”

      3. I was thinking today, as I sat on a seat overlooking a lake in the sunshine, how fortunate I was to be able to do that and to have the time to contemplate and enjoy the peace.

    3. I think ‘da yoof’ have never had it so good. They live in a world of abject luxury and take it all for granted. Because they’ve not built it or earned it, they complain about it.

      Perhaps if it were taken away from them they might understand just how incredibly valuable it is. The issue lies with their ignorance. They think they can have all this green nonsense and their lives won’t change one bit. They want their cake and to eat it.

      1. Yet they think they are living in “austerity”. I pointed out to one youth, who was going on about the A word, that he should try having to live on rationed food, having to walk miles to get coke to heat the house and cook, being unable to repair a bomb-damaged building because the materials weren’t available – oh, and almost no one had a car.

  18. SIR – The Government has adopted a disastrous strategy on energy, which has seen huge prices rises because of global gas costs and could have even worse consequences now that supposedly friendly countries, such as France, are acting like enemies.

    We must have our own independent supply that is not subject to these fickle global economic forces and outages when the wind doesn’t blow. We need fracking and nuclear – not just big power stations but also small ones in the Rolls-Royce mould, as well as thorium power, and economic storage systems to support wind power. Bankrupting the country for the purpose of pointless box-ticking is not the way forward.

    David Fletcher
    High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire

    Well said, David Fletcher, but a pity you used the awful “outage”. It makes me wince, every time!

      1. If one could only find a practical method, it should be possible to dessicate human corpses and then oxidise them at a high temperature in a purpose built chamber and avail oneself of the surplus energy.
        If a fuelish neighbour complains, you know what to do.

        1. It’s actually better to fatten them up on turkey twizzlers with lots of sugar and lard. Fat burns better than dry bones.

    3. For goodness sake (being polite), when will the likes of David Fletcher wake up? Bankrupting the Country and cowing the people is what Johnson is all about. Think lockdown, tiers, another extended lockdown, U-turns, masks not required, masks required, no “vaccine passports they’re un-British and discriminatory, “vaccine passports” essential to control infection, and more. Control in all its malignant forms will follow.

  19. Do women not have rights on campus? 10 October 2021.

    As a result of all this, some of the female students who were intimidated at the meeting created a group called ‘Women Talk Back!’, of which I am president. We met informally in our living rooms. We wanted to create a space where women could centre their lives and discuss their experiences of being female under the patriarchy.

    That would be the patriarchy that allowed all to speak and say what they wished?

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/10/09/do-women-not-have-rights-on-campus/

    1. Having never been female myself I would find it rather difficult to add any meaningful opinions on the subject of being female! And having always been male I don’t have any personal experience of not being male!

    2. Dear life. Can you imagine the desperation needed to want to feel so utterly powerless that you invent an enemy to blame all your woes on.

  20. 339818+ up ticks,
    In the United Kingdom I take it this will only apply to the indigenous will it not if / when it comes into being ?

    STØJBERG TEAMS UP WITH POPULISTS FOR 50,000 DEPORTATION PLAN:

    •CRIMINAL RECORD
    •LONG-TERM UNEMPLOYMENT
    •12 MONTHS ON BENEFITS
    •FAILURE TO LEARN DANISH

    …ALL GROUNDS FOR DEPORTATION!

      1. 339819+ up ticks,
        Morning N,
        As in a post yesterday I believe the lab/lib/con mass uncontrolled immigration coalition has already put in a transfer bid.

      1. 339819+ up ticks,
        N,
        Not heard of any, deportation would surely offend the offenders, if your question had been import any of these criminals the answer would have been seemingly on a daily basis ,keeping DOVER in mind.

          1. 339819+ up ticks,
            N,
            In a peoples reset when sanity returns and knowing what we now know deportation will be mandatory, importation will be fought for from places of origin along with defence at individuals expense.
            If peoples disagree then they MUST continue to support / vote lab/lib/con.

          2. The sewage shouldn’t be getting here in the first place! Why are the coastguard ferrying them here? Why not take them back to France?

            I’m sick and tired of this. If they pootle out to the middle of the sea, cry panic, turn up and shoot the swine. Let them drown!

      2. I think a special government department is spending an enormous amount of money closely examining this question and ongoing very thorough and exhaustive search is discovering that the grand total currently comes to Zero.

        In fact so encouraged by this heart-warming discovery the government is going to launch an exciting publicity campaign:

        Go for Broke
        Go for Zero – Zero carbon and Zero Deportation.

      1. 339819+ up ticks,
        Morning B3,
        They can be augured along with his defense team in his place of origin, less welfare.

    3. He really should have operated in Lunnon, where the Met are

      He would have been protected and supported by Commisar, oops Commisioner Dick and the Pride of her police service

      She would have put his name forward, for a knighthood in the New Year’s Honours List:, for Services to Non ethnic immigrants

      Remember we are the ETHNICs in UK

      Whats does ethnic mean?

      pertaining to or characteristic of a people, especially a group (ethnic group ) sharing a common and distinctive
      culture, religion, language, or the like. referring to the origin, classification, characteristics, etc., of such groups.

      1. You think this sewage isn’t living in London and got away with it for so long precisely because London’s a third world toilet?

    5. Don’t lock him up, flog him then drop him back in gimmigrant land.

      Do the same to the excrement flooding across.

  23. ‘Morning again.

    Good article by Liam Halligan:

    The West will be begging for more fossil fuel while virtue signalling at Cop26
    PM should not be playing the clown during an energy crisis, Johnson will rue his jokes when the energy crisis bites

    LIAM HALLIGAN
    10 October 2021 • 6:00am

    During this week’s Conservative party conference, the price of oil went above $80 a barrel – up 30pc since mid-August, hitting a seven-year high. On the day of Boris Johnson’s speech, wholesale gas prices also surged, reaching 400p per therm at one stage, no less than 10 times higher than the average over the last three years.

    The Prime Minister used his conference speech to play with words and crack in-jokes with the party faithful. The UK’s ongoing fuel distribution issues did not feature. Even worse, Britain’s now serious energy crisis was also barely covered by Johnson, despite its already huge economic impact.

    As a result of this energy crunch, the price cap on consumer utility bills, introduced in 2019, rose by £139 earlier this month, bringing the average energy bill to £1,277 a year. That cap will be reset again in the spring – and unless wholesale prices fall drastically, household bills will soar further. Industry analysts predict average energy costs could reach £2,000 in April, a 75pc rise in six months.

    The National Grid now warns of a rising risk of winter blackouts. The campaign group National Energy Action estimates another 1.5 million households will be plunged into fuel poverty with the next energy cap adjustment. It really is astonishing that, for all the arguments that conference is about chivvying-on party activists, Johnson had next to nothing to say on this energy crisis.

    As the nights draw in and temperatures drop, a shocking lack of gas storage and creaking nuclear capacity means the UK really faces the prospect at least of outages. Spiralling energy prices are causing much apprehension not just on the domestic household front, but among businesses too – not least as there is no energy price cap for companies.

    Johnson was remiss not to use last week’s speech to calm and assuage, outlining contingency measures, offering the prospect at least of assistance for manufacturers, steelmakers and other firms that are heavy energy-users. If the lights go out this winter, the Prime Minister’s joke-packed conference performance will be thrown back in his face.

    Amid all the obvious downsides of this energy price spike, one upside is that our politicians – ahead of next month’s COP26 summit in Glasgow – will surely have to start being more honest about the cost of meeting their ambitious decarbonisation targets.

    It was Theresa May who made a unilateral and legally binding commitment the UK could reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050 – without any real idea of how that would be achieved or paid for. A Treasury review of the costs of this immense undertaking has been delayed for months.

    Yet this huge commitment clearly involves an almighty social and economic shift – with the burden of change most likely to be shouldered overwhelmingly by ordinary people. By 2030, new petrol and diesel vehicles will be banned – but electric cars typically cost 50pc more than their petrol equivalents.

    Gas boilers are to be ripped out and replaced by electric heat pumps – the bill for each of those will be £10,000 or perhaps £15,000, and then they cost more to run.

    Renewable energy, meanwhile, is hugely subsidised, which has long caused fuel bills to rise. Yes, it’s to the UK’s credit around two-fifths of our energy now comes from a combination of wind, solar, biomass and hydro. Yet energy regulator Ofgem says 23pc of what households pay for electricity now goes on “environmental and social costs” – suggesting the COP26 agenda is adding to higher bills, making this energy crunch even worse.

    What is undeniable is that Britain and several other developed nations are now, as energy prices spiral, pressuring the Opec oil exporting cartel and Vladimir Putin’s Russia to pump more oil and gas. Yet, at the same time, the Western world’s great and the good, led by Britain, are gearing up for their Glasgow COP26 jolly, where they’ll slap themselves on the back for signing us all up to even more ambitious decarbonisation targets.

    Over the coming weeks and months, sky-high energy costs will likely combine with labour and component shortages to drive yet more supply-chain inflation, leading to further price rises in the shops. But again, concerns about the cost of living, acutely felt by millions of households, particularly as the £20 universal credit uplift was scrapped, weren’t mentioned in Johnson’s speech.

    Since the start of this year, CPI inflation – the Consumer Prices Index – has grown steadily from less than half of one percent in February, to 3.2pc in August – a nine-year high. The Bank of England now admits we’re heading for 4pc inflation by the end of this year.

    But this energy crisis, and broader supply chain crunch, means estimates of future inflation are spiralling upward, with some City analysts saying we’re heading for 6pc, 7pc or even 8pc by year end – three or even four times the official 2pc inflation target.

    For months, the Bank of England has argued the UK’s inflationary pressures are “transitory”, so interest rates can stay where they are, ultra-low, at 0.1pc.

    Yet the Bank’s new chief economist is challenging that view, just as his predecessor did.

    “High levels of UK inflation could persist for longer than expected,” stated Huw Pill last week, in his first public statement since starting the job a month ago.

    “In my view,” he said, “the current strength of inflation looks set to prove more long-lasting than originally anticipated”.

    Inflation is soaring not only to energy and labour shortages. The cost of imports is rising, as the pound slips. And there are shortages of crucial inputs too, from steel to semi-conductors, all of which pushes prices up.

    The weight of money in financial markets – the bets placed by traders – now point to UK interest rates rising by February, and perhaps even before the end of this year. Up until a few days ago, the vast majority of economists said we wouldn’t see interest rates go up until the end of 2022 at the earliest.

    Over the last week, though, as the energy crisis has become more acute, something has changed. Financiers have become more risk-averse, pricing in serious inflation across debt markets, no longer willing to take the Bank of England at its words.

    Leadership is about charisma and personality, vim and vigour, as Johnson’s speech last week demonstrated. But it’s about facing tough realities too.

    * * *

    In unhappy BTL poster!

    Andy RoadKing
    10 Oct 2021 7:01AM
    Nothing much about Net Zero or Build Back Better from the smirking Bunter at the conference.

    Bunter and his family are a circus act and Bunter’s ‘Charisma’ is similar to the ‘Charisma’ Jimmy Savile bamboozled the nation with for too many years. He is the worst Prime Minister the UK has ever suffered and we know things are bad right now because he has gone AWOL again: he always hides away when things get tough.

    Can we arrange for him and Nut Nut to stay in Marbella for the next 3 years and put a grown up in charge? Liz Truss might be up to the job: the smirking Bunter certainly isn’t.

    1. It does not help that both the first and second in line to the throne are both completely sold on the net zero nonsense.

      1. Fully paid up members of the globalist billionaires’ club, determined that whatever happens, their family will come out on top again.

    2. I wouldn’t put your faith in Liz Truss. For some reason her husband’s surname is unacceptable, so the lady uses her maiden name.
      Also, she was the one who introduced the Statutory Instrument, just before a Bank Holiday weekend (empty Parliament, almost no MPs present), which obliged Local Authorities to penalise parents who took a child out of school for a holiday during term time.

    3. Electric heat pumps. The clue is in the name. No electricity, no heat. “The National Grid now warns of a rising risk of winter blackouts.” No electricity.

      1. Even if there was enough electricity, there’s not enough grid to get it all to the consumers.

    4. The idiocy of installing a heat pump in, say, a block of flats is lost on that oaf.

      It’s idiotic to praise our energy coming from wind and solar when we’re having to pay a fixed price for it, even when it doesn’t provide anything. Only government would think paying for nothing, and paying through the nose at that is a good thing. If it can’t survive in the market, then it cannot survive.

  24. Well, that’s buggered my gardening plans for the morning, It is RAINING. Not what was forecast.

    3. Good morning Bill,

      Dull , dank , no breeze . I thought the weather bods were clued up on the week end weather, not so .

      Resisting the temptation of putting the heating on.

      Moh is playing golf this morning .

  25. Just seen an advertisement poster from my old Constabulary showing a list of newly-created posts they wish to fill. As you may expect, this has not gone down too well with my former (also retired) colleagues, who have made a number of comments on the site (below).
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9cdc211a9e08c58583d363d094600c3e51af7cbe41397de57b7cb53d56f4d397.png What on earth did we do before, without all these people?… Are we also recruiting Bobbies?

    What ?

    Who needs coppers with all this lot solving crime

    Unbelievable!!

    cloud developer (head in ) must be a top corridor position

    Cloud Developer? Doesn’t nature do that??

    What, no Police? Unbelievable

    Been retired 8 months and they’ve still not filled my post!

    no one could ever replace you

    Loved it all but had had enough at the end

    that’s because you are irreplaceable..!!

    Thanks, but I was just silly running several departments while they took the finances for several posts. Told them no one would do it

    it’s always been the way!!

    Cloud developer? I could do that. They always said I had my head in the clouds

    obviously for some Blue Sky thinking

    What a joke. Sadly the NHS are the same hence no money for nurses

    What about good old boots on the ground? I’d have thought they were in dire need of those. Or is that too “last year”?

    I don’t suppose it would be worth many of us applying for the Cadet Leaders job?

    I think that one has been advertised for about three months now so they may be desperate!

    But not THAT desperate yet!

    Be just what they need

    More non jobs than you could shake a big stick at. All a totall waste of money. Apart fom the volunteer post that may do some good.

    Are they all civil posts – it’s Police we want surely

    They have an advert out at the moment for cops

    There’s a gob smacking shock.

    Just short of the Head up the Arris that suggested we be over-run by non-combatants…… more money spent on shiny arrises than the public service! Just like the NHS…. Fire Service and Ambulances.

    Whoever thinks they can justify write-offs at source and 5hour waits outside A&E needs to be badly traumatised or hurt; then face the waiting for Not A Hope In Hell!

    Which of them is covering the town centre beat.

      1. And that Ladies & Gentleman is why The Guardian is still in business. “Ah Bisto! Woko!

      2. Good morning, All (esp. Rik, Tim, Sue, Maggie).

        I saw that abominable report in the Sunday Telegraph this morning, Rik. It simply defies belief. That a serving officer is being urged to falsify evidence (when, previously, they would be locked up for doing so) clearly shows how much of a complete clear-out is required, from top to bottom.

        It all went tits-up, Tim, when ‘police and crime commissioners’ were installed (to replace the old watch committees); and when Common Purpose brainwashing became the standard for police chiefs.

        ‘Head of Crime? I couldn’t think of a better description — for a hired-help old lag — myself, Sue.

        Do you now what, Maggie? I think I might just write a formal application for all those jobs advertised in The Guardian. I shall probably start off by writing: “Dear Sir, Madam or (insert pronoun of choice), I write in application for your advertised post of HEAD TWAT, and wish to inform you that I have all the qualifications and requirements to perform the duties of the post to the standard required by your organisation …”

        1. “Dear Sir, Madam or (insert pronoun of choice), …”
          Insert it where, Grizz? remembering this is a family site… ;-))
          Good morning (just).

      3. There appeared a job on linkedin that was so utterly full of buzzwords and gibberish, with no duties, responsibilities or actual ‘work’ that I applied for it.

        It was for the head of the government’s actuarial service. You didn’t need to be an actuary, it was just sheer and utter twaddle.

    2. Morning!

      There’s a “Head of Crime”? He/she/it/whatever, organises criminal activity?

    3. Good morning Grizzly, and everyone.
      Those job titles are all fancy names for one role: ‘commissar’.

    4. Good morning Grizzly, and everyone.
      Those job titles are all fancy names for one role: ‘commissar’.

    5. ‘Morning Grizz

      Your comments on this DT headline would be appreciated……..

      “Met Police ‘ordered child abuse detectives to caution innocent people to hit targets’

      Officer claims he was told to tamper with evidence at the scene of a baby’s death and was disciplined after he complained”

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/10/09/met-police-ordered-child-abuse-detectives-caution-innocent-people/?utm_content=telegraph&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1633810316

    7. A ‘cloud developer’ is an appalling descriptor for someone who writes software that works on someone else’s computer.

      With the police database going on to – I think – Amazon s3 it makes sense that they would want someone to support it.

      Although, why is that being done by one police force? Why only one post? Where is the development team? Perhaps that’s why nothing plod like works. They forget that someone has to say if the software is good enough – by then if you’re asking the question, it’s too late.

      1. It’s-a Left-wing, made-up, non-job for-people who-have no-other skill-set than-hyphenating all-words in-a-text.

        At least my job description is more open, honest, and just as bollocks; but doesn’t screw money from the public purse for no possible sensible reason.

  26. Morning all.

    Something to take your mind of the Government’s handling of all these disasters and shortages in the UK.

    Well there’s no shortage of energy here and as one chat entry commented – volcanos are a far bigger influencer of climate than man (and women and all the others for that matter!)

    https://youtu.be/ABIsiuohba0

    3. Passing through Oregon on the way to Vancouver. I saw Mount Hood. The volcano is 50 miles from Portland but it is so vast that it appears to be on the city limits. It is almost 12 thousand feet tall. It was, of course quiescent but the feeling of discomfort I had was anything but and I was quite relived when it slipped out of sight. When you see something like that you really wonder how people can be so insane as to built cities anywhere near such monsters, let alone go about their ordinary lives as if nothing at all would ever happen. Earthquakes, hurricanes and other phenomena, it’s always possible to survive. But when something like Mt Hood goes off it means nothing will survive with in 100s of miles of the thing. Perhaps I have an over active imagination but boy, did the thing give me the creeps!

      1. Familiar threats are not perceived as risks.
        If you’d grown up in the shadow of Hood, you wouldn’t even notice it was there – until the day it started grumbling…

      2. I agree with you. It seems odd that anyone would buy a house on the slopes of a volcano that erupted in 1949, for example.

      3. I think there are quite a few millions who have settled West of the San Andreas Fault and are blithely unconcerned that one day the fault will live up to its name and they will all slide into the Pacific.

        1. Lived West of the San Andreas for 40 years, earthquakes go off all the time to the point you don’t even notice anymore unless it really starts to shake things. They didn’t worry me at all. I was in the 1989 Earthquake which was impressive but no trace of the state sinking at all, it was a 6.9.

          The idea that California would collapse into the sea seems to originate in a disaster scenario where the San Andreas goes off, creates resonance in the Hayward fault and then all hell breaks loose. However, the likelihood that would happen is highly unlikely. You would need an earthquake of such power that it would hardly matter if it set the Hayward fault off.

          1. I was on a small group inland excursion from Iquique, Chile. We visited a church full of statues of the Madonna, when a loud bang & a shake stopped the guide in mid-sentence. After a minute she carried on until a repeat bang & shake stopped her. It happened a 3rd time & she said that we had better move outside. Speech over, she gave us 10 mins to take photos etc. I wanted to photo the church from the other side, so I went round the corner & there was an old-fashioned steam roller being used to dislodge kerbstones somewhat noisily. The Chileans are very terramota-sensitive.

          2. ‘Afternoon, Jonathan, my brother (now deceased) lived in San Francisco in the 70s but moved out to Reno, Nevada for several reasons, notable among them, in his words, “San Francisco is full of Chinks and Faggots and, apart from that, Californians hate each other.”

            His friends asked if he was moving to Nevada with a view to buying property that would eventually become beach-front, when California slid into the Pacific.

          3. Yes Nanny that’s an old one that Nevada would become beach-front. It wasn’t helped when Howard Hughes started buying up chunks of Nevada. The rumour was that he was doing it in order to build beach front property eventually. As for San Francisco being full of Chinese and gays, true. S.F is the largest Chinese enclave outside Asia and it certainly has the largest gay population in the USA.

            Loved Nevada myself and if it hadn’t been for my wife I would have happily moved there. Grew up in the desert and so Nevada was paradise for me.

    4. Perhaps the God of Volcanos (Vulcan O?) is waiting for a sactifice to made, in his name to stop this one bubbling

      If Greta and co really want to save the world, they should put themselves forward for the job

      Whatever then happened would be a good result for the rest of us

    1. Don’t, the Hard Left nutters will catch on one day, but until then, they’ll label and divide everyone into neat little categories to hate them for one reason or another.

      Then, no doubt, they’ll set about exterminating them, either socially, economically or literally.

      They haven’t changed. They’re still thoroughly, completely, entirely evil. They’ve exchanged jack boots and goose stepping but the fascist anti fa have their own uniform type.

      1. Be warned!
        When the Nazis came for the communists,
        I remained silent;
        I was not a communist.

        When they locked up the social democrats,
        I remained silent;
        I was not a social democrat.

        When they came for the trade unionists,
        I did not speak out;
        I was not a trade unionist.

        When they came for the Jews,
        I remained silent;
        I was not a Jew.

        When they came for me,
        there was no one left to speak out.

    3. Thanks, first laugh of the day. And good day to all even though it is a gloomy Sunday.

    1. 339819 + up tick,
      Morning Anne,
      I take it a black day would be you have your burka on backwards.

  31. Five Rules To Remember In Life

    1. Money cannot buy happiness, but it’s more comfortable to cry in a Mercedes than on a bicycle.

    2. Forgive your enemy, but remember the ass-hole’s name.

    3. If you help someone when they’re in trouble, they will remember you when they’re in trouble again.

    4. Many people are alive only because it’s illegal to shoot them.

    5. Alcohol does not solve any problems, but then neither does milk.

      1. 339819+ up ticks,
        Morning JR,
        Society has improved in being odious currently in many cases NO grub,NO roof,
        pavement mattress, Tommy Atkins for instance.

      2. Note, before gaining entrance to an establishment the applicant had to sell all of their possessions i.e. they would own nothing.
        Now where have I heard that phrase recently? Followed by some words about being happy.

        1. In Mark Chapter 10? Reading for this morning about having to give everything away because it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

    2. The idea of working for a living is lost on some people.

      There’s genuine unemployment in the North of England, but for ever illegal criminal gimmigrant coming here another mouth has ot be fed at the tax payers expense. It’s time to get rid of them and simply say no.

      1. Now a days I would agree with you but are you aware that in Victorian England you were luck, if working class, to live to 30? Life really was nasty, brutish, and short and people suffered terribly. .

    2. When I was a small child , I had an autograph book .

      You know the sort of thing that children write , some rude , some funny and all of them innocent , especially during the 1950’s era .

      We only knew knew one or two rude words .

      Mary had a little watch,

      She swallowed it one day,

      And now she takes Beecham’s Pills

      To pass the time away.

      In England all bums are white
      In Scotland all bums are pink
      But in Africa ,where I have been , all bums are black.

      ‘white privilege’, eh?

      1. My ‘white privelige’ comes from starting work on 11 September 1961 and retiring on 01 April 2003.

        During that time, I was “on the Dole”for THREE Days,, cus of a mix up with holiday times

    3. 100% agree. They are Marxists determined to undermine the country and children’s education.

  34. Talking to an acquaintance yesterday who used to be very fit and sporty, now beginning to suffer from MoT syndrome. He told me he had been suffering from an unpleasant condition, trigeminal neuralgia; when he saw a Doctor, the man prescribed him some pills and warned him not to follow any misleading advice on the web. Painkillers useless, so he ignored the Doctor, discovered that the NHS mentioned caffeine as a contributory factor and stopped drinking vast amounts of coffee. Immediate relief (let’s ignore causation & correlation). Now he only drinks coffee occasionally.

    By chance he recently met another neuralgia sufferer who had opted for a radical treatment requiring a hole in the skull and a polyamide mesh insert in order to block a nerve receptor. Cost about £20,000, of which the employer coughed up half. Operation was successful.
    Casually, my pal asked the person if they liked coffee…….

        1. I used to drink Blue Mountain when staying with friends in Jamaica. The last time I enjoyed it was in a coffee bar in Lake Louise, Canada in March ’71.
          Correction: March ’91.

  35. 339819+ up ticks,
    May one ask,
    Have the lab/lib/con coalition current member / voters in considering putting kids future welfare in jeopardy by putting the party wants first ?

    England’s slow vaccine rollout for children ‘risks new Covid spike’
    Just 10 per cent of 12- to 15-year-olds have received first jab almost a month after receiving the go-ahead

    1. We can only hope that 90% of parents retain control over their vulnerable children. The original evidence showed that children were barely affected by the ‘virus’ and now these children are labelled as probable super-spreaders. Wonderful how these charlatans manipulate ‘the science’ to suit their nefarious needs.

      1. 339819+ up ticks,
        KtK,
        Lest we forget it is the peoples majority that are repeatedly giving them carte blanche and some parents will give consent to the politico’s over & above the children’s welfare.

  36. Just the citrus trees to bring in, and that’s the garden squared away for winter.
    I’ll bring them in when we get forecast chilly weather (under +5C), so until then they get to stay out & catch the last rays of sunshine for this year.
    Now relaxing, with a cappuccino :-D)

      1. Lemons and limes, and a decorative mini-satsuma-like thing that makes bright orange balls that squish on the floor. Plus an olive tree.
        We are self-sufficient in lime, and about 30% so in lemons.

        1. Certainly would like to try limes and oranges. Would love a key lime but you can’t find them in the UK. A favourite thing to eat is Key lime pie. Occasionally I find the juice on eBay but not very often. It’s illegal to import the seed into the UK as well, so it’s a bit of an annoyance. But I don’t understand why they make such a fuss about citrus seed in the UK. It isn’t as if they can escape and flourish in our climate. Nor, so far as I’m aware, do the seeds carry any pathogens that are a danger.

          1. A novel I’ve just read goes on for four hundred pages, a mystery/thriller about a young English woman living in Iowa who returns home to the north of England. Set just before Christmas in December 1964 and January 1965, just before the death of Churchill. German spies looking for artifacts from a crashed spaceship in the Black Forest in Germany in 1936 ( not a sci-fi) harass and follow her and she realises her life is in danger. I began following the writer on Instagram and found the ebook on Kindle. The House Near Fallowfield by James Fillmore.

          2. Thanks for the tip, I recently read “V2” by Robert Harris & thoroughly enjoyed that.

  37. Not sure if this has been commented on earlier, but, putting aside any tendency (heaven forbid) of the MSM to sensationalise a story, this looks rather worrisome. No comments allowed, I wonder why.

    “Met Police ‘ordered child abuse detectives to caution innocent people to hit targets’. Officer claims he was told to tamper with evidence at the scene of a baby’s death and was disciplined after he complained.”

    The carpet at Met Police HQ must be quite bumpy with all the stuff that has been swept under it.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/10/09/met-police-ordered-child-abuse-detectives-caution-innocent-people/

  38. Not sure if this has been commented on earlier, but, putting aside any tendency (heaven forbid) of the MSM to sensationalise a story, this looks rather worrisome. No comments allowed, I wonder why.

    “Met Police ‘ordered child abuse detectives to caution innocent people to hit targets’. Officer claims he was told to tamper with evidence at the scene of a baby’s death and was disciplined after he complained.”

    The carpet at Met Police HQ must be quite bumpy with all the stuff that has been swept under it.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/10/09/met-police-ordered-child-abuse-detectives-caution-innocent-people/

    1. Am I correct in assuming that one of the Border Farce boats takes the deflated RIBs, that were used in the prevoius days beach landing,
      back to France, via one of the Landing Force French Armed escorts of course

    2. It will not. Because it did not cost him the last election, so why would the next one be any different?

    1. Boris had a baby,andhe takes Pride in that

      He put NutNuts up the duff and she demanded marriage.

      He will soon need two jobs to pay Child Maintenance

      2. He will already need two jobs. No way could he pay the maintenance on five children from his parliamentary salary. The question is, where is the extra money coming from?

  42. Janet Daley seems to be taking a shotgun approach in this article, hoping that some pellets might hit the target, but I’m not sure what her target is. Irrespective, I think this winter will be the most severe Winter of Discontent this country, and others, will have ever experienced. The basic cost of living will rise due to energy price rises, there will be power outages, logistics will be disrupted leading to food and other shortages. Inflation will shoot up and many small businesses, especially those who have tight cash flow concerns, will cease to exist. The economy will plummet and nothing smooth talking politicians propose will have the slightest effect. The only proposal I would offer is to reduce the tax take by cutting government expenditure, and in parallel, cut all this green tomfoolery of carbon taxes. Stop all subsidies related to carbon neutralism, and, if the recent Mail article about the Drax power station is anything to go by, reinstate coal fired power stations in a crash programme to address the energy crisis. Start fracking as well, to hell with objections. Rome is burning and our leadership has been fiddling for years.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/10/09/boris-johnsons-critics-neglect-crucial-lesson-1970s/

  43. Royals close door on Andrew as Scotland Yard quiz Virginia Giuffre over claims he raped and sexually assaulted her when she was 17: Charles, Edward and Anne ‘block his return to public life’ and William brands him a ‘threat to the Firm’
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10076053/Prince-William-sees-Andrew-threat-royal-family-insiders-claim.html#newcomment

    Did sexual intercourse actually take place? If so, did she consent to it? In Britain the age of consent is 16. Where did the alleged rapes take place and what were the rules there at the time?

    Was it statutory rape? Either way we seem to have forgotten that a person is innocent until proven guilty.

    Apart from his ex-wife nobody in his family seems to believe in his innocence which must be exceptionally painful if he is innocent?

    1. His folly (well, part of it) is that he denies all knowledge of the girl – even when there is clear evidence.

      Had he said – “Yes, I slept with her – and paid her the £100 she asked,” – that would have been that.

      1. How many people did he meet in a year? I think given his role it would be easy for him to claim he didn’t remember the girl. And, I agree with Rastus. There is an element of hypocrisy in all this given the girls age. There is no such thing as an ‘innocent’ of that age in the USA. I have no doubt this has far more to do with efforts to make money and political hay and absolutely nothing to do with justice. I tend to think he is innocent but it is typical of Americans to circle like sharks around a money making and political opportunity. Remember that unlike here, attorneys and the police run for election and anything that can further that aim on the part of these grubby people will be taken despite the consequences. In short if he is guilty or innocent is quite irrelevant. He is a lucrative pawn to be used in a very corrupt system.

        1. There is the photo. AND – forgive me, for it is now long ago – but I did tend to remember the women with whom I slept. Even a prince might remember…if he wished to.

          1. I’m saying he may have met her but that he didn’t sleep with her and therefore has no reason to remember her.

          3. “I have no recollection of her, and if she had been any good I’m sure I would have remembered her.”

          4. That doesn’t worry me. I shudder to think of what will happen if he is foolish enough to go to the USA to face his accusers. Having had dealings with the “justice” system in America I have no faith that he would be treated fairly at all and they would have no qualms about dragging the queen into it and damaging her for score pointing. As I once said to a California judge: “If Lady Justice was to come in to your court room, you would have her arrested and flung down the steps of the courthouse like a whore”. At that point I was so peed off at the system over there that when she threatened me with contempt of court I told her that was impossible because her court was the very embodiment of contempt. She let it drop, like the bully and thug that she was realizing that someone was in front of her that wasn’t going to be bullied. In the USA the legal system is an evil, a corruption of the worst sort and so are the people in it. Those that aren’t leave. If you have the money or know the right people you will get off. If you don’t or you are a useful idiot, which is how Edward would be treated, you are shark meat. Or you can do what I did. Go into Kamikaze mode, then they want nothing to do with you because you are a potential problem for them.

          6. I think he’s conflating Prince Andrew, Duke of York with Edward, Duke of Windsor. Both rascals in their own ways.

          8. With the US “Justice” system, the process is, all to often, the punishment.
            Considering the stress, legal fees and uncertainties, the way the prosecutors will usually ramp up the charge list with every conceivable offence, no matter how inappropriate, is it any surprise that defendants, like Conrad Black for example, will plead guilty to a mere peccadillo rather than go through the whole drawn out farce of a kangaroo court?

          9. Just look at the way Trump is being harassed. Without his money, he would be enjoying free board and lodging by now.

          10. Lawfare is very much a feature of the American Injustice system. Offend the Powers That Be and you will be hounded through the courts on largely trumped up or exaggerated charges.

          11. I suspect the Duke of York felt liberated after the dreadful marriage he and his Duchess wrecked .

            He was probably putting notches on his bedpost , so any bit of stuff wirth a pretty face was like cat mint to him .

            We don’t know what happens in other people’s lives .. but I suspect his arrogant self could have considered his Royalness and unzipped presence to be similar to a first autograph for a young virgin ( if she was one )

            That’s why Arabs and blacks are drawn towards nubile young girls … it is all there in the Tarantella of the sexual trap.

          14. In pre Christian Spain, thousands of young children were kept in captivity by the resident’s of the Alhambra palace.
            After they were less useful they were fed to the pride of pet lions.

      2. That’s the point I think – she was too young and gullible to ask for money – she was just being lent out by her handlers for free. Epstein and Maxwell are a disgusting pair, and Andrew should have steered well clear.

        1. I think she was a young lass who enjoyed the facade of a jet setting lifestyle and meeting celebrities for whom dropping her knickers was merely a quid pro quo.

          1. I very much doubt she was mature enough to figure that out, especially as she was under the control of a skilled manipulator.

    2. If he’d been of another faith or colour he might well have been able to get away with that.

    3. Oh Rastus, you really must do more reading. The alleged fornication also took place on a Caribbean island & New York, where the age of consent is over 17. Ergo, she was a minor.

    4. I think they are justified in banning him from public life for general sleaziness, arrogance and bad judgment. You can get away with a great deal if you are a British Royal, but Andrew’s friendship with a convicted paedophile is testing the patience of the public too far. I certainly don’t want him representing my country.

    3. A twist similar to the so called historian Prof David Adetayo Olusoga OBE (who as do many other men like him appears to malign his white mother by insisting he is black) and who always seems to manage to find an anti white twist in his programs about the past occupants of certain chosen residences, as in private houses.
      If the BBC were pay to view it would be bankrupt inside 12 months.

        1. He had a nerve, pushing naziism in Britain only a few years after the war. What kind of reception did he think he would get? Trust the BBC to dig this story up and twist it for their own propaganda purposes.

  46. The Fornicator

    Ye jovial boys who love the joys.
    The blissful joys of Lovers;
    Yet dare avow with dauntless brow,
    When th’ bony lass discovers;
    Pray draw near and lend an ear,
    And welcome in a Prater,
    For I’ve lately been on quarantine,
    A proven Fornicator.

    Before the Congregation wide
    I pass’d the muster fairly,
    My handsome Betsey by my side,
    We gat our ditty rarely;
    But my downcast eye by chance did spy
    What made my lips to water,
    Those limbs so clean where I, between,
    Commenc’d a Fornicator.

    With rueful face and signs of grace
    I pay’d the buttock-hire,
    The night was dark and thro’ the park
    I could not but convoy her;
    A parting kiss, what could I less,
    My vows began to scatter,
    My Betsey fell-lal de dal lal lal,
    I am a Fornicator.

    But for her sake this vow I make,
    And solemnly I swear it,
    That while I own a single crown,
    She’s welcome for to share it;
    And my roguish boy his Mother’s joy,
    And the darling of his Pater,
    For him I boast my pains and cost,
    Although a Fornicator.

    Ye wenching blades whose hireling jades
    Have tipt you off blue-boram,
    I tell ye plain, I do disdain
    To rank you in the Quorum;
    But a bony lass upon the grass
    To teach her esse Mater,
    And no reward but for regard,
    O that’s a Fornicator.

    Your warlike Kings and Heros bold,
    Great Captains and Commanders;
    Your mighty Cesars fam’d of old,
    And Conquering Alexanders;
    fields they fought and laurels bought
    And bulwarks strong did batter,
    But still they grac’d our noble list
    And ranked Fornicator!!!

    It is widely believed that Robert Burns first came under the censure of the church in 1784-1785 owing to his affair with a servant girl Elizabeth Paton. This resulted in the birth of his first child, Elizabeth or rather ‘dear bought bess’.

    1. Oh, Maggie. Wee Rabbie takes far too long to describe himself (and his machinations) in verse.
      He really needed a lesson in brevity.

      Rumpy-Pumpy.

      I humped the plump rump
      Of a grump, chump lump.
      I jumped her pumped sump,
      And my dump caused a bump.

      © Grizzly, 2021.

      Why beat about the bush? 🤣

  47. I read the article in thr Mail by Hitchens. On the same page this caught my eye:
    “Home Secretary Priti Patel is planning a ‘blueprint for succession’ for Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick and chief constables…”
    If correctly reported Ms Patel has admitted that she does not have a successor plan in place for top positions, including Commissioner of the Met. Unbelievable.
    Every major enterprise has a succession plan for their leaders, managers etc, to ensure that there is a trained and experienced cadre from which promotions to top jobs may be made.

    1. Lovely music Plum .

      I am off out with the dogs to examine some pumpkins , it would be nice if I find some of those little pattipan marrow type things .

      Will be having lamb chops later , Moh is playing golf , and probably an apple pudding , if I can be bothered to prepare it .

      1. Good luck with the pattypans. My friend’s mother in Poland used to slice & fry them as fritters – delicious.
        I can’t recall seeing them in Blighty, although Google tells me they are available.

        1. In Somerset ‘over nighting’ and having dinner with old friends that is what I had for my starter and fresh Crab for the main course. Whilst in Cornwall last week on different occasions, I had seafood chowder, Crab Linguine, White bait and Mackerel Paté with sour dough bread.
          My claim to fame that can never be matched, was with a couple of mates Trevor and Dave digging up with brick trowels, very large cockles on Goolwa beach SA, putting them into a bucket of clean water to purge themselves. Opening a couple of bottles of local white wine. And the three of us sitting in a row on the beach eating them raw with home made crusty bread. Another favourite was catching Blue sand crabs and cooking them and tipping them out on news paper sharing them around a large wooden table in the garden with others. Also catching and eating yabbies’ aka fresh water cray fish and enjoying those. I love sea food.

          2. I love seafood too. Some memories of travel – eating snapper grilled with chili, washed down with chilled Red Stripe in Port Royal, Kingston; octopus & coconut milk curry in a beachside café in the Seychelles; Grilled lobster, again with Red Stripe, on Negril Beach; clams in Viña del Mar, Chile; fruits de mer in Santiago Market, Chile. I once ordered f.d.m. in Iquique, Chile, an enormous platter arrived, including some beast which looked like a dark grey, circumcised penis. They were as tough as old boots & I didn’t manage more than 2 of them. I think they were some kind of barnacle. Entering an informal mussel-eating contest in Cuxhaven, where I worked several times a year. The seafood restaurant had a wonderful panorama view of the Elbe Estuary & on Thursdays they did all-you-can-eat in mussels. After my 2nd generous bowlful I realised that a German lady a few tables away was trying to keep pace. After 4 bowls, she threw her napkin in, so I had a 5th bowlful to clinch the victory.

          3. I forgot to mention the time I was with two mates traveling from Capetown to Port Elizabeth and we got our car stuck in the sand and had to stay over night we picked mussels off the rocks in the Indian ocean and cooked them in the car hubcaps. We had some of the locals help us out of the sand in the morning.

  49. Afternoon all. Something was reported yesterday which I found absolutely gob-smacking, but seems to have floated by with little comment:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58847328

    136 countries will have a minimum threshold that they are legally allowed to tax corporations. This may sound great at first reading, bringing the tax avoiders of Amazon and Facebook to heel. But isn’t it really a gigantic step towards a global government? Raising taxes is the most basic competence of national governments, now that power will be taken away. What next, a standard minimum wage? Personal Income Tax set by the World Bank?

    In the same way that the creation of the Euro was really the first step in creating a United States of Europe, is this the first step on the road to a supra-national, global government?

    3. It’s all coming together nicely. At in western countries. Klaus Schwab et al have done a wonderful job.

      1. I find it amazing that Johnson is openly using the Build Back Better slogan, talk about rubbing it in our faces! Does no journalist have the courage to ask him what that means, and what link he believes it has to the WEF, Schwab and the Great Reset?

        1. It seems to me as if a gigantic net has been somehow carefully arranged over the western world and certain people are gradually pulling the strings tighter. TBH I cannot see a way out of it. Governments have assumed so much power over the last 18 months without a squeak from their MPs or opposing parties with the full connivance of MSM.

          1. Those people who want world power have forgottem one thing – – move the rest of the world here – and they do NOT become Western people with Western attitudes. The people coming want to live in what we have built. . . . . Invading the Western world won’i make things better for those who want world power – but they will find THAT out too late.

    4. Well spotted. Yes, when the politicians start telling us it’s for our good, I get very suspicious.

      1. “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”

        The most chilling nine words in the English (or other) language.

    5. Could be. The general aim is to get businesses like Amazon to pay tax in the jurisdictions in which they sell, rather than having an HQ in a no-tax country. However, that may not be the only effect, as a unified approach to corporate taxation may well trickle down to the level of personal taxation using the same logic.

  50. University pays students £15 an hour to decolonise curriculum

    Edinburgh undergrads to review course materials ‘through the lenses of equality, diversity and inclusion’

    By Ewan Somerville

    Students are being paid almost £15 an hour to be “critical readers” in a decolonisation trawl of a Russell Group university’s courses.

    The University of Edinburgh is hiring students part-time to review course materials and curricula “through the lenses of equality, diversity, inclusion, and decolonisation”.

    They will be paid £14.66 per hour and work six hours a week within one of the 16th century university’s most prestigious faculties, literatures, languages and cultures.

    The recruits will report to academics on the faculty’s board of studies to help diversify courses such as English literature and foreign languages, focusing on issues such as race, gender, sexuality and disability.

    An internal job advert for the posts, seen by The Telegraph, says applicants must “have an interest in decolonising the curriculum” and “a strong commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion”, with these listed under the “essential” specifications. Experience of campaigning is listed as “desirable”.

    Last night scholars criticised the move as an attempt to “institutionalise censorship” by lending credence to “activist students”.

    The students will receive training before embarking on “reading and reviewing” course materials during November and December. The pilot project is funded through the Principal’s Teaching Award Scheme which receives donations from alumni and the public.

    One Edinburgh academic, who wished to remain anonymous, told The Telegraph: “The connotations of this are fairly clear, undergraduate students may be in a position to be paid to vet and ‘decolonise’ curricula proposed by the academics they’re supposedly meant to be learning from.

    “Universities already throw a gauntlet of reviews at academics trying to run courses without activist students getting their say.”

    The academic also expressed concern that tutors on similar pay scales in Russian history may face being “answerable” to English literature students “with little to no knowledge” of their subject.

    Prof Frank Furedi, a sociologist at Kent University, added: “It tries to institutionalise censorship – there’s already that disposition to shut down discussion and now they’re giving people money for it.”

    It forms part of intensifying decolonisation efforts at the institution, which has created a steering group to identify “controversial elements of the university’s past” so that “reparatory recommendations” can be made.

    Computer science lecturers have been urged not to use the “Western” names Alice and Bob in informatics terminology, while the David Hume Tower was renamed after activists surfaced remarks the enlightenment philosopher uttered in the 18th century.

    Earlier this year, Edinburgh academics revolted to call for the university’s principal, Prof Peter Mathieson, to resign. They alleged that an “intolerant and illiberal” culture had taken root after one scholar was investigated over “problematic” views.

    While Edinburgh is thought to be the first to pay student critical readers, last year the University of Sheffield hired students on £9.34 an hour to monitor and challenge so-called “micro-aggressions” on campus.

    An Edinburgh University spokesman said it was “committed to addressing contemporary and historic inequalities” and the students would “explore how the school’s current curriculum can engage students robustly, rigorously, and inclusively”.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/10/09/university-pays-students-15-hour-decolonise-curriculum/

  51. Double vaccinated travellers who return to Britain will be able to forego a PCR test in favour of a cheaper lateral flow swab.

    However, the government is “concerned that those taking the tests could lie about the results.”

    To prevent that from happening, the Health Secretary “is proposing travellers do their lateral flow test on video calls supervised by a health adviser from a private firm,” reports the Mail.

    The change is set to be implemented on October 25th.

    1. The antibody test is unreliable because of its low sensitivity so it is likely that many will be negative anyway.

    2. The whole government are unbelievable cretins. So the TESTS are free but how much are “health advisersfrom a private firm” to be paid? And how many of these health advisers are there in the country? Bar stewards, the lot of them. And presumably BoJo and Carrion will be spared the expense of paying for tests! (Sarc).

    3. Lateral Flow Tests you say………………

      “The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has raised

      concerns about the accuracy of the Innova rapid self-administered

      lateral flow tests.

      The FDA has instructed US citizens to stop using the tests amid

      “significant concerns that the performance of the test has not been

      adequately established, presenting a risk to health”.

      A letter issued to Innova by the FDA explained that the US had concerns around a lack of market authorisation and the reported “Clinical

      Performance” of the tests. It is concerned that the test may be

      providing false-positive and false-negative results and therefore posing

      an increased risk to the public.”

      US citizens have been instructed to “Destroy the tests by placing

      them in the trash ” or return them to the manufacturer. However, the

      agency does admit that it has not received reports of injuries or death

      associated with the use of the test.

      The UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) issued a special market authorisation for the Innova test last year.

      “We are aware of the FDA communication,” the MHRA director of devices Graeme Tunbridge admitted.

      https://nursingnotes.co.uk/news/clinical/us-recalls-lateral-flow-tests-amid-significant-accuracy-concerns/
      What an utter utter farce,we are managed by cretins

  52. Boris Johnson faces fresh Brexit clash with judges

    No 10 prepares for confrontation in courts and House of Lords over Northern Ireland

    By Edward Malnick, SUNDAY POLITICAL EDITOR and Harry Yorke, WHITEHALL EDITOR

    Boris Johnson is gearing up for a second explosive confrontation with Parliament and the courts over Brexit as he demands a new deal with the EU which would free Northern Ireland from the oversight of European judges.

    Downing Street is preparing for a major clash with the House of Lords and Supreme Court as soon as next month, with senior officials drawing up plans to unilaterally suspend swathes of the Northern Ireland Protocol if Brussels refuses to make “significant changes” to the current deal.

    The Telegraph understands that Lord Frost, the Cabinet Office minister, will make it clear to his EU counterpart that removing European Court of Justice (ECJ) oversight of the Protocol is a “red line” for Britain.

    In a speech this week, he will warn that “no one should be in any doubt about the seriousness of the situation”, adding: “The commission have been too quick to dismiss governance as a side issue. The reality is the opposite.”

    Lord Frost will unveil “a new legal text” reflecting the UK’s proposals. In a bid to reinforce Britain’s sovereign status outside the EU, he is expected to insist that the proposed new Protocol should form part of the recent UK-EU trade agreement, unlike the current version which sits within the withdrawal deal signed as the UK quit the bloc.

    The disclosures came as a senior minister claimed the EU’s rigid approach over Northern Ireland was being heavily influenced by an “anti-Brexit” and “anti-British” French regime.

    The minister claimed Emmanuel Macron’s hostility towards Brexit and Britain, rather than genuine concern about the goods trade on the island of Ireland threatening the EU’s single market, was behind France’s hard line on Northern Ireland.

    This week, Maros Sefcovic, the European Commission vice president, will set out the EU’s response to the UK’s demands, with claims on Saturday that the proposals would be “substantive and far-reaching”.

    However, a concession allowing “national identity goods” such as sausages to enter Northern Ireland – despite EU rules restricting chilled meats from non-EU countries – was dismissed by UK sources as only addressing a “tiny” part of the problem.

    In the event that the EU refuses “significant changes” both to remove trade barriers between Britain and Northern Ireland and eliminate the role of the ECJ, Number 10 is planning to trigger Article 16 of the Protocol in order to unilaterally suspend parts of the agreement.

    However, senior figures believe the Government may be required to pass legislation enacting the move – setting up a potentially major clash with the House of Lords.

    For years, the Conservatives have been heavily outnumbered by Labour and Liberal Democrat peers, although Tory figures said the party was now significantly closer to being able to win votes in the Lords partly because of a slew of appointments under Mr Johnson’s premiership.

    One senior MP urged Mr Johnson to continue appointing new peers to increase the party’s presence in the Lords. The MP even claimed that Dominic Raab, the Lord Chancellor, and Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Leader of the Commons and Lord President of the Council, could use archaic rights to vote in the Lords if a division came down to a knife edge.

    Tory whips are more relaxed about the prospects of passing Article 16 legislation in the Commons, where Mr Johnson enjoys a working majority of 81.

    The Conservatives’ 2019 manifesto pledged to “ensure that Northern Ireland’s businesses and producers enjoy unfettered access to the rest of the UK”, which the Prime Minister has said is under threat from the implementation of the Protocol.

    Writing in The Telegraph, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, said the Prime Minister agreed with his view that the UK should trigger Article 16 “if the EU does not step up and restore Northern Ireland’s place within the UK internal market”.

    If Mr Johnson opts to trigger Article 16 without legislation, he is expected to face a legal challenge similar to the cases mounted by the anti-Brexit campaigner Gina Miller in 2017 and 2019, which could force his hand.

    The Northern Ireland Protocol is the part of the UK’s exit deal from the EU which covers the goods trade on the island of Ireland. Mr Johnson and Lord Frost have demanded changes to the document on the basis that the EU’s “rigid” application of its rules is causing significant disruption to businesses and risks “economic damage” in Northern Ireland.

    In a speech in Lisbon on Tuesday, Lord Frost will say: “We are working to reflect the concerns of everyone in Northern Ireland, from all sides of the political spectrum, to make sure that the peace process is not undermined. The EU now needs to show ambition and willingness to tackle the fundamental issues at the heart of the Protocol head on.

    “The UK-EU relationship is under strain, but it doesn’t have to be this way. By putting the Protocol on a durable footing, we have the opportunity to move past the difficulties of the past year.”

    The peer will add that “without new arrangements” to replace the ECJ’s current role in policing the terms of the Northern Ireland deal, “the Protocol will never have the support it needs to survive”.

    Tory sources believe the EU is likely to offer sufficient concessions for the Government to agree to enter several weeks of talks from this week, but that the UK could trigger Article 16 at the end of those discussions if Brussels fails to meet Lord Frost’s red lines, including the replacement of the ECJ’s role in the Protocol with a form of international arbitration.

    Mr Johnson could simply opt to suspend specific and limited parts of the Protocol, or to effectively suspend the whole agreement, as some Tories are urging him to do.

    Martin Howe, a Brexiteer QC, said: “Because the Protocol is causing problems across the board, you can take measures across the board. They could seek an across-the-board removal of barriers against the importation of goods from Great Britain into Northern Ireland.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/10/09/boris-johnson-faces-fresh-brexit-clash-judges/

    1. Anyone here think we Boris will regain complete control of our fishing waters? Does anyone think he actually will invoke Article 16 on the Irish Protocol?

      I’m not holding my breath.

    2. “For years, the Conservatives have been heavily outnumbered by Labour and Liberal Democrat peers, although Tory figures said the party was now significantly closer to being able to win votes in the Lords partly because of a slew of appointments under Mr Johnson’s premiership.

      One senior MP urged Mr Johnson to continue appointing new peers to increase the party’s presence in the Lords.”

      Thus making the case for the reform of the Lords back to its original concept of the Hereditaries, the Law Lords and the Bishops, only I would take advice on the ‘Bishops’. At the same type disbanding Bliar’s pet ‘Supreme Court’ modelled on the corrupt US Justice (ha ha) system.

      The Life Peers are a bunch of self-serving party hacks, carrying out the edicts of their corrupt party leaders and to hell with the best, long-term interests of the country.

      1. Exactly, Tom.
        What’s the point of two houses with party political positions? One is enough. Delete the Lords.

        1. Sorry, Paul, but NO, the second house (in the form I’ve identified) is there to oversee, recommend, moderate and amend proposed legislation put forward by the lower house. In other words, The Senior Common Room.

          Yes the Junior Common Room may mouth off on their pet subjects, hates and loves but oftentimes it IS just the gum-bumping of know-alls and think- nothings that need moderation before it could become bad law.

          Heaven help us, we’ve seen enough bad law go through ‘on the nod’ because nobody has the guts, or independence of mind, to stand up and say, “This is Bad Law.”

  53. It looks as if Rachel Riley is going to be replaced on Count Down, by Dr Anne Marie Imafidon, my suspicion would be that Rachel and Mrs Robinson, aka Plastic Anne didn’t see eye to eye.
    Anne-Marie Osawemwenze Ore-Ofe Imafidon MBE HonFREng is a British computing, mathematics and language child prodigy. She is one of the youngest to pass two GCSEs in two different subjects while in primary school. Imafidon founded and became CEO of Stemettes in 2013, a social enterprise promoting women in STEM careers.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne-Marie_Imafidon

    1. Have you watched it since Anne Robinson took over? It’s hard going, especially for the contestants who are interviewed like job applicants.

      Rachel Riley is about to pop another sprog so she’ll be off for a while anyway. Anne-Marie Of Many Names was on the Black Countdown Day and was dull, dull, dull.

      1. Only watched once that was enough.
        My guess is they have found it difficult to find contestants of colour. So they went for the more certain option.

      2. One feather in my small cap is that Robinson – when she stood in for Jimmy Young back in the last century – refused to work with me!

    2. What on earth is the value of “a social enterprise promoting women in STEM careers?”
      Let me guess, they get their money via virtue-signaling big corporations and public money.

      Come back to me when you’ve worked at the coal-face creating and repairing things for twenty years, Anne-Marie.

  55. My Billet Doux sent to every level of Housing21 Management including the CEO

    Sir

    Firstly I note I have had no acknowledgement of let alone a reply to the concerns raised in my original letter*

    Instead I have had posted through my door a “Rent Statement”

    Ref No.105044

    This document raises more questions than it answers as it shows a sea of red
    ink,in fact it purports to show I have been in rent arrears no less
    than 24 times during my tenancy!!

    If in fact I have been in arrears 24 times how come your letter of the 26th of Sept is the very first I’ve heard of it????

    This document is an outrage caused by your not fit for purpose accounting
    system it is dangerous ,defamatory and very likely to damage my good
    name and my credit score.

    I have already shown this document to 3 private landlords who have all
    told me they would never let to anyone with such an apparent record!!

    Quote “Why would I let to such a deadbeat,24 times in arrears who needs the hassle”

    The reputational damage to me is obvious and no excuses of “It’s just the way our accounts work” will be acceptable.

    I repeat MY duty is to make sure funds to meet my obligations are in my account something I have ALWAYS done

    YOUR duty is to collect those funds owed via a variable D/D in a timely and
    accurate manner something your accounts dept seems incapable of.

    What do I want??

    I want the rent statement expunged from your computers and replaced with
    something that shows I have ALWAYS met my financial obligations

    I want an apology for the nonsense arrears letter also stating I have met my obligations to Housing 21 in full and on time.

    I have not yet taken legal advice over the “Rent Statement” but be in no
    doubt if this matter is not resolved to my complete satisfaction I will
    be.

    Talking of Legal Advice I note my invoice of £66.66 is still outstanding,I am
    informed that my best way to proceed is through the Small Claims Court
    and if this matter is not resolved by 21Oct that is what I shall do.

    Yours

      1. It took several attempts to choke down my anger and write a civil fairly unthreatening letter whilst still making my points strongly
        Not giving the swine any ammunition!!

        1. Try to get as many names and titles of the people who have dealt with you, so that you can inform them personally, rather than as part of the company/organisation, that they they, as individual defendants, will be named in any defamation proceedings, and that appropriate damages and the costs of any legal proceedings will be sought from them.

        2. Don’t take your foot of their throats. My approach is one communication to state my position and to say what I expect to happen next – directed personally at CEO or equivalent, and often sent to their home address so PA cannot intercept it – the next communication is via lawyer, and all bets are off.

          1. I once had such a problem and delivered the letter by hand.
            A not so subtle way of showing that I knew exactly where they lived.
            The problem was sorted out the next day.

    5. Very good, but…

      I have not yet taken legal advice over the “Rent Statement” but be in no
      doubt if this matter is not resolved to my complete satisfaction I will
      be.

      …you have not set a time deadline.

  56. Agrarian sector becomes a pillar of Russian economy — Putin. 10 October 2021.

    MOSCOW, October 10. /TASS/. The agricultural sector has become one of the flagships of the Russian economy and keeps developing actively, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a video address on the occasion of the Agriculture and Processing Industry Workers’ Day, celebrated in Russia on the second Sunday of October.

    “The Russian agrarian sector is developing actively and dynamically. Today, it is one of the flagships of our economy. Who would have imagined this just a few years ago? This success is a result of your effort in the first place,” the president said in his address to agriculture sector workers.

    Russia has probably one of the strongest economies in the world. It is not the largest but has almost no debts with vast gold and currency reserves. This is mostly the doing of Putin. He has within twenty years raised his country from the depths of its degradation when the Soviet Union collapsed and its people were reduced to begging in the streets for something to eat, to what is probably the third most powerful state on the planet. Internally he has faced down the oligarchs and rendered them impotent against the state. The country’s armed forces have been rebuilt and equipped with new weapons while the civilian superstructure has been improved.

    This achievement is all the more astonishing when one realises that it was done against the background of an overwhelmingly hostile West. This hostility has in large part been personalised, thus we read daily of; Putin’s prisons, Putin’s Navy, Putin’s Airforce etc. This is in its way a backhanded compliment. They recognise the worth of the man with whom they are dealing! The manufacture of a whole series of incidents to discredit him is simply further proof.

    He is without doubt the World’s most able leader though this has to be ameliorated by comparison with the rest. The West is burdened with the most vile, corrupt and decadent politicians that have ever sat in its legislatures. The President of the United States is a gibbering Glove Puppet and the UK is ruled by an oversexed clown. These and their supporters are the lackeys of the Globalist Forces that seek to enslave their citizens.

    Putin is a credit to his country and his people. Whether his successors can carry his legacy forward is doubtful, they certainly could not exceed his performance. He has made the dreams of Peter and Catherine the Great realities.

    https://tass.com/economy/1347571

    1. I’m sure, Minty that the detractors will concentrate purely upon tractor production and not upon the uses they, and other farm implements (such as farmers) are put to.

    1. But some of those groups like to move into – and live in – what white people have built and paid for, Then live THEIR lives as THEY want, destroying whitey’s work in the process. They just don’t want whitey there. With the hotel rooms no longer needed due to quarantining coming to an end – and the flood still coming from Calais – – wonder where the next boatloads will go???

    1. Soros investing half a million dollars is probably not going to be good news for Austin, Texas.

    2. Would someone please advise Candace Owen (lovely and mostly correct as she is) that Money is NOT the root of all evil?

      It’s the LOVE of money that is the root…

    3. Afternoon Grizz. She mostly perches on the Spectator threads nowadays, where the other posters say very much the same things about her as we do!

  59. Maybe some marketing whizz thinks it’s a brilliant idea, but, speaking personally, this just gives me the creeps.
    I looked at a couple of items on a marketing email that appeared today. A couple of hours later, I had an email telling me ‘that we know you’ve looked …..”
    It’s not the first time it’s happened, but every time a company does that, I delete any communication from that firm thereafter.
    It’s not clever; it’s not helpful; it’s stalking.

    1. If you use gmail it’s probably triggered by Google. I used to find that things popped up on Facebook if I’d been looking at some product on Google.

      1. Me too, Ndovu! And we have a couple of Google minis in the house which very often ‘overhear’ what we say. Moments later we all recieve emails, or adverts for the stuff we’ve been discussing! It really is sinister!

        1. I don’t like this modern surveillance society. That’s why I leave my phone at home and don’t use QR codes. Why carry a spy in your pocket?

      2. A friend (who had a gmail account) and I used to have great fun discussing weird ideas to see what Google ads would be attached to the replies. It all started because we mentioned Fly Fishing In The Yemen and we invented books from there.

    2. The level at which they track your internet usage is scary nowadays. It might be possible to avoid unwanted attention but it would really restrict what you could do.

      Just have a look at all of the cookies that appear in your browser, they are not just there to make your life easier.

      1. That’s why I frequently clear my history. There are only 3 passwords that I need to remember on a day to day basis, so it’s not a great inconvenience.

          1. Yes. When I clear the history, the cookies go as well.
            Sites like the DT and Disqus need a password; I can remember them because I use them every few days.
            On the sites I use less frequently I have to check my list.

        2. I have a different gobbledegook password for each site I use – but the Keypass password manager keeps them for me just on my laptop.

    3. Internet equivalent of “We understand you have been in a car accident that wasn’t your fault”. Another fact of modern life that isn’t worth getting bothered about. Straight to the bin.

  60. No, the term ‘white privilege’ is not extremist. 10 October 2021.

    A Tory MP last week raised the delightful possibility that the big family of what we might call the terrorism community should be expanded yet further. Speaking to a group of activists at party conference, Jonathan Gullis declared: “The term ‘white privilege’ is an extremist term. It should be reported to Prevent, because it is an extremist ideology. It’s racist to actually suggest everyone who’s white somehow is riddled with privilege.”

    “White privilege” is no more than a jargonish phrase for something that we know to be true. The concept it denotes is that, all other things being equal, someone with white skin is on average going to find life a bit easier than they would find it had they had brown skin. It says: being white is not in itself an active disadvantage in life; and being brown – to a varying but still noticeable degree – can be. Far from being an extremist position, this is a point so uncontentious as to be a banality.

    Hmmm. Someone’s Cultural Marxist nose must have been put seriously out of joint when Mr Gullis suggested that White Privilege was racist! They’ve even turfed out the Spectator’s Literary Editor on his Sunday off to prove it. There is much verbal and semantic gymnastics here to prove that it isn’t. Methinks the man doth protest too much! The truth is of course that any quality or outcome ascribed to someone on the basis of their race must perforce be racist.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/no-the-term-white-privilege-is-not-extremist

    1. Move to a typical African/Asian/Muslim/South American country as a white man and see how great your privilege is.

          3. Also unlabelled freezer tubs! A source of constant surprise! One of my old mans nieces worked at Baxters factory at Fochabers and used to get us boxes of unlabelled tins. That was very exciting if you thought you had strawberries but discovered Lobster bisque when the tin was opened! Then we found the code on the lid!

          6. There is a trick to creating your own minestrone pasta for soups. Take a few sticks of spaghetti. Put them in a tea towel. Run over the edge of your counter at an angle. You get half inch pieces which will pad out a veg soup nicely.

          1. Don’t tell Porkies.

            It was marginally better than: ‘So that’s the meaning of pigs might fly’

          2. It happens sometimes if i eat too soon after taking my Meds. Had to catch Dolly before she ate it.

    3. No lunch Plum, but having roast pork, stuffing and apple sauce for dinner! And I’m making sticky toffee pudding!

          1. Our best apple tree blew down in a storm some years ago, and the other one has pretty red apples, rather early – they’re soft and horrible but the birds love them.

          2. Our two trees are laden this year, and the fruit is bigger than normal. They’re cooking apples and the trees are at least 60 years old. This was a farm cottage and stable/barn and also a market garden. The family kept chickens in the 50s, which we discovered when one of our cats picked up chicken mites!

          3. Our cottage was occupied by cloth workers and weavers for most of its life, and it was a bit smaller than it is now. Most of the garden was probably their vegetable patch. The remains of the privy are at one end.

          4. We have the remains? of a septic tank under the left hand side of the lawn! It’ll probably join up with the pond one day!

          5. When we moved in here 26 years ago, we had two apple trees, two plum trees and two greengage trees. Now just one greengage and one apple tree remain. The others all died or were blown down – probably rotten at the roots. The greengage has put out some new branches which have fruited well the last couple of years. The top died off a couple of years ago. I think all the trees must have been very old.

          6. We also have 4 plum trees which have produced great fruit this year for the first time in ages. We sprayed the apples in the spring and maybe got the plums as well! Lots of jam and crumbles, which the twins loved!

          7. I’ve three apple trees plus the use of my next door neighbours.
            My big tree is well over 100 year old and I think next door’s is of a similar age, but a VERY different variety.
            The cold spring killed off the blossom from my old tree and there are next to no apples on it, but my ALDI Special has again cropped well and my Egmont Russet has a couple of dozen apples of varying sizes.
            Next doors has a moderate crop that I plan gathering this week to do some chutney.
            During mt sojourn in Northumberland I stopped off at the now closed, empty and waiting to be sold Bridge of Aln Hotel and scrumped a few pound of quince that need to be used up.
            If anyone is close enough and wants a pound or so of quince, drop in and you’ll be welcome to them!

          9. Ooh, an Egremont Russet! I thought I’d bought one of those, but when it finally fruited I found it was anything but a russet 🙁 It looks like either a Gala or a James Grieve (I’m sure it isn’t a Red Devil).

          10. Bought it at the same time as the Aldi Special and whilst the latter’s been a decent little tree giving a useful amount of fruit ever year, the russet has taken a while to get established, though much of that may be due to where I planted it.

      2. Brings back wonderful memories of family Sunday lunches.
        My mother-in-law always arrived late just to make an entrance…. had to
        re-arrange the seating! I don’t know how I kept my cool…..!

        1. I imagine you stayed cool, calm and collected as usual…or had a couple of sherries…!

          2. My darling mother-in-law didn’t drink either, but did rather enjoy a Remy Martin or two – for medicinal purposes, of course!

    5. A couple of oat cakes with pate, and some grapes. We’ve got pork for dinner later, and OH has made a crumble.

      2. Crispy bacon. Brown bread or 50/50. Fruity brown sauce. Lashings of Cornish butter. White pepper.

    8. I had ‘brunch’ – scrambled eggs on toast with smoked salmon – at Noon; I shall have roast Chicken with peas, carrots, cauliflower and roast potatoes about 8.30.

      Meanwhile I’m munching spicy prawns accompanied by chilled Prosecco …

    9. Venison casserole with mashed spuds.
      Raspberry trifle and MB nicked a couple of today’s homemade digestive bikkies as well (for quality control purposes, natch).

  64. Has anyone seen any conkers this year? None of the horse chestnuts around us have had any.

    2. Talking of conifers – our Cedar is covered with cones this year. Never seen anything like it. It must know about the coming power cuts…

        1. Yes. We have conkers. Not many this year. All the tomatoes got late season blight. I managed to harvest them before they were ruined. The neighbours apple tree didn’t have a single apple on it this year.

          1. It’s been a bumper crop for apples in my garden (and judging by the way one of the choir was offering apples left, right and centre, he’d got a glut, too).

          2. Good evening, Conway.
            One of the congregation has been supplying us
            with plums and now pears … pounds and pounds
            of both fruits.

          3. It’s harvest festival next week and we usually have a buffet afterwards (mirabile dictu, it’s going ahead).

          4. I hope you enjoy it.
            Our HF was last Sunday;
            with many of the aforementioned pears
            artfully displayed in wicker baskets.
            We had home made soups with bread rolls
            butter and cheeses. it was a start at least.
            I doubt we will ever go back to the halcyon
            days of B&S lunches… the new Rev’s sermons
            are too long, we would end up having them as tea!

  65. As I returned from the bottle bank, I noticed the two different Limp Dump neighbours’ electric cars.

    I wonder how THEY will manage when the power cuts come…

  66. La Palma volcano eruption today: possible tsunami and earthquakes. 10 October 2021.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/65fbdd591b8914796420f0078c49945d43e6e4210b7ecfefefb3605c63630aee.jpg

    A car drives through an empty street in the neighborhood of La Laguna as lava flows from the Cumbre Vieja Volcano on October 9, 2021 in La Palma.

    That would give you something to think about while you were at work!

    https://en.as.com/en/2021/10/10/latest_news/1633858449_380808.html

    2. It is a good job no-one mentions the song Lily of Laguna

      The song now would cause:

      a bigger eruption,
      a bigger earthquake,
      a bigger fall out
      a bigger Tsunami

      than what is happening La Palma

      The first bit

      It’s de same old tale of a pal-pa-ta-ting niggar ev’ry time, ev’ry time;
      It’s de same old trouble of a coon Dat wants to be married very soon;
      It’s de same old heart dat is longing for its lady ev’ry time, yes ev’ry time,
      But not de same girl, not de same girl, She is ma Lily, ma Lily, ma Lily gal!

      https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Lily_of_Laguna

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lily_of_Laguna

  69. More migrants land on English coast after 40 boats brought 1,000 in two days as French claim they had received ‘not one euro’ of £54m promised by Priti Patel to help them stop the crossings
    After 10 days where crossings were made impossible by bad weather, boats began arriving on the English coast on Friday and Saturday with the arrival of a sunny spell and high temperatures in the south of the UK
    Since the start of the year, more than 18,000 people have successfully reached the UK according to the PA On
    On Friday, 624 people reached the UK and at least 491 people, including children, arrived on Saturday
    Comes as French Interior Minister claimed none of £54m UK promised to tackle crossings has been paid
    Home Secretary Priti Patel had promised Paris millions to curb crossings – but has threatened to withhold
    By JACK WRIGHT FOR MAILONLINE and GEMMA PARRY FOR MAILONLINE

    PUBLISHED: 08:20, 10 October 2021 | UPDATED: 16:36, 10 October 2021

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10077097/France-claim-havent-seen-penny-54m-Priti-Patel-promised-tackle-migrants-crossings.html?ito=social-twitter_dailymailUK

      1. Oi! I use every scrap of our Halloween pumpkin! What we don’t make into pie or soup in the first week of November, I stew and freeze. It is very handy in pasta sauce or curry.

    4. It’s one of the introductions to autumn here, when the small multi-coloured ones appear on the market. They started about two weeks ago.

  71. A propôs Phizzee’s comment below, here is a commercial break.
    Hannah is friend of our youngest and made the invitations, Order of Service booklets and place cards for our girl’s wedding. Hannah is very talented and is now self-employed. Wild life, birds, hedgehogs all appear. She has a wonderful range of Xmas Cards and calendars. As well as being designed in the Borders they are also printed here.

    https://hannahlongmuir.co.uk/shop

      1. Got mine he says smugly.

        There was an article in the DM yesterday about rangers finding a lost baby elephant and they got it to follow them back to the herd. When baby saw his mum he trumpeted with obvious joy. Brought a tear to my eye so it did.

        2. Ahh…… one of my favourite charities is the Sheldrick Trust. We’ve visited the orphanage in Nairobi a few times, and they do a lot of work as well to clear snares, find injured animals and fund vet services.

          1. Very worthwhile. A lot of people don’t realise the true value of elephants. When they dig for water many other species benefit from it.

          2. They also spread seeds in their dung, make landscape scale changes to their environment by opening up the savannah, and generally act as gardeners.

          3. I went to Dudley Zoo many years ago. It was heartbreaking to see the elephants in a concrete enclosure. I never went to a Zoo again after that. Though i did enjoy Longleat and the seals.

          4. It’s many years since I went to a zoo – they don’t deserve to be imprisoned, nor do the other animals. Elephants especially need plenty of space to roam.

    2. Good luck to her, but you realise that if the woke discover you’ve advertised on Nottle she’ll be cancelled.

    4. Horace they really are beautiful cards. Has she ever thought of designing some wrapping paper? I would buy in a shot, only I might have difficulty using it because, I suspect, it would be more suitable for framing. Anyway, book marked her site and will buy some of her cards. particularly liked the butterfly and dragonfly cards although I didn’t see a single one I disliked.

    2. Mark Zuckerberg can end the world as we know it just by forgetting where he put the facebook DNS server routing tables.

  73. That’s me for today. See you tomorrow when I am up bright and early to go the GP to give them some blood.

    It is supposed to be fine tomorrow, too. Haircut – in readiness for an overnight trip on Tuesday to elder son near Tetbury. G & P go to their seven-star luxury catotel. First time they have been away from home….(an older parent worries…!!)

    A demain

          1. We get our two together at the 5* cat hotel.
            You can tell it’s 5*, it costs more than the human hotel…

          2. If and when you find a place you trust it is worth it.

            I had great difficulty in finding a place for Dolly. I decided on a place (mostly because everywhere else was full) then slept on it. The following day i cancelled the holiday and the kennel booking. Did a staycation instead where they love doggies. I just couldn’t do it to her. She follows me everywhere. A little different with a cat as they are more independent.

          3. Oscar will be coming with me when I go off in the camper. I discovered yesterday (somebody letting off VERY loud rockets not far away) that he’s fine with fireworks. They made me jump, but he never turned a hair. That’s Bonfire Night (and the week before at least) worry free, thankfully.

          5. I don’t think I had anything to do with it (rather like his walking to heel). He clearly already knew that fireworks were okay before.

    3. At least you know they won’t be advertising teenage cat parties on Facebook while you are away.

      By the way, perhaps you ought to be careful about letting people on t’internet know when you are going to be away (an IT bod writes). For one thing, it might invalidate your insurance?

          1. Good, better, best, never let it rest, until your good is better, and your better, best.

            Resting the roast/steak is the only contradiction I know.

          1. With a shortage of butchers and abbatoirs closing down, maybe the professional could advise how to get dinner out of a live pig?

        1. The meat is too lean for a slow roast. The second time we have differed regarding food. :@)

          Good evening, John.

          1. I think you’re confusing pork loin with tenderloin (fillet). the former has plenty of fat and good crackling. My favourite pork joint!

          2. Yes. You are right. I really should stop posting after 7pm.

            Did you get to see my post of Chateaubriand beef Wellington on Friday? I even managed to bugger up the cutlery lay out. After hours of polishing the silver for the first time in years! Arrgghh.

          3. Yes, I saw it – looked good. Was the beef Red Ruby from PF. I did one of theirs on Valentine’s Day – was as good a beef as I’ve ever eaten.

          4. It was a Chateaubriand from Cote at Home. £42.50 for a kg. I wanted to make it a ‘showstopper’ for the table. It was as tender as any fillet. Cheaper too.

            Thanks for the PF rec. My neighbour also said they were good. I like the ethos.

          5. Agreed. I have met Peter and Henri – great couple. They had a shop in the village at my family home in Exeter, but are now only online and have a large network of small business suppliers working with them.

          8. As I am now operating on at least 10% of my brain…(civil servants)….
            Why does the CB cut taste more like beef than fillet steak does?

          11. Dunno. I think they have more flavour before being filleted. T-bone steak (or Porterhouse) anyone?

          13. PF=Pipers Farm. It’s a co-op of local farms in the South West producing high quality meat and other foodstuffs.

            Improving thank you. I drew the line at all medication that was affecting the brain directly. Feel normal again now.

          22. Hmm. Shoulder of lamb, cooked even more slowly, is also good. The pretty one’s favourite roast.

    2. I will laugh out loud when these girls start displacing women in UK professional teams, ideally undercutting their wages, and the wimmin start complaining.

    3. I suppose the British-funded Ethiopian Spice Girls are already here. They will be caterwauling and otherwise making a racket somewhere or other at our expense.

    1. I never realised the nickname was so apt!

      Browsing the Herald, I noticed another news item about the A83 being closed due to landslides. Now, I know it rains a lot in Scotland, but Alpine roads are very rarely closed due to landslides, and it can rain in the Alps. They have impressive systems to prevent slippage onto the road.
      Scotland gets plenty of funding, so what on earth can the SNP be prioritising over keeping roads open??

      1. It’s the Rest and be Thankful road and it’s been a disaster recently. They’ve been trying to shore it up for years but this year has been very wet. We drove up to Oban last November and the A83 was closed. They use the old Military (General Wades) Road, which is pretty hairy, even in daylight. The contractors were helicoptering in the concrete piles, literally above our heads! It’s a very steep glen!
        https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/homenews/19632316.rest-thankful-a83-shut-safety-reasons-despite-8-5m-fixes-five-years/

        1. Concrete blocks! – and this is the country that produced some of the world’s greatest engineers!

    1. Just like the Med several years ago.

      The trickle becomes a flood.

      It matters not what any MP or Minister says as they have signed up to the U.N Immigration Pact. They even send them tickets to fly in. They also provide debit cards which they can use in their own country to bleed the British tax payer.

      It is also why Poland, Hungary and Austria have become anathema to the E.U because they won’t play ball.

      We in this generation are seeing race replacement across the whole of Europe and the U.S.

      This is all being pushed by the globalists and their paid lackeys.

      Boris is the enemy.

      Rise up.

  79. A useful day today.
    I’ve moved on to another terrace wall, one that I began 20odd years ago, downhill of the one I’ve more or less finished this year.
    It’s on the downhill side of the new wall and I’m planning to build it up so the top is a little above the base and then extend it towards Cromford for another 10 to 15 yards.
    I’m building it of random stone set into rather a lot of mortar, so it’s going to take a lot of cement & sand!

    I was interrupted whilst having a break with a mug of tea by the SaH yelling he’d cut his leg against some wriggly tin on the yard shed roof and after a quick examination opted to run him to the Minor Injuries Unit of the Whitworth up in Darley Dale.
    They were fairly busy but he was seen to and out within and hour & a half. What I suppose would have needed 3 or 4 stitches 20y ago was superglued and secured with a couple of steri-strips.

    Got home and took a couple of flatbreads out of the freezer, defrosted them on the Raeburn and used them as the bases for a couple of pizzas. Very nice too!

    I finished off with dumping and spreading a dozen & a half bags of topsoil against the section of the lower wall I’ve been working on to level the ground between the walls up and then going for a bath.

    I’m going to need a lot of topsoil so I’ll be carrying on with another project of tidying up the verge of the road that I started early last month.

    1. Gosh – you’ve been busy! I finished planting up the pots and clearing up the remnants of the tomato plants and put the pots away. Then I planted a few daffodils. Later cooked the roast pork.

    1. The UK is fucked. This is the result of utter neglect of a vital industry by our hopeless political class.

      Meanwhile Boris and his chumocracy are doing very well, thank you, wasting billions on an imaginary contrived ‘pandemic’, creaming it off the top for their own personal wealth and allowing our vital services to collapse.

      I despise and hate these politico bastards with a vengeance.

      1. Not just the vital industry of supply chain. They haven’t done anything useful about electricity generation and transmission, either.

    1. MOH put me onto this when I got back from fishing. If it wasn’t so disturbingly biased and seeking only certain responses, I would find it amusing. I filled it in as angrily as was possible, with my last response to ‘What could we do better?’ being, ‘Stop trying to undermine our society.’.
      Is it genuine? I’ve never seen such blatant and obviously twisted wording as this.

      1. A million upticks. I completed it a few days ago and gave it to them with both barrels. And then some. It really made my blood boil I was so angry at the totally unbalanced nature of the questions. So in the end I ignored some and put my furious comments where I could

        3. Remember, vaccine mandates are good for big pharma firms who have invested heavily in politicians and scientists, and may even be promising future employment to those responsible for the wording of the consultation.

  83. Evening, all. Lovely sunny, warm day again. Church parade in the morning (there was an offertory collection AND we knelt at the altar rail!!!), followed by taking Oscar to a local garden and relaxing in the warm (and I do mean warm) sunshine in the peace and quiet. I was so energised that after buying him a new lead to match his new collar (the leather one needed Ko-cao-line treatment and time to sink in – well, that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it) on the way back, I dug my large veg plot. Feel very self-satisfied now as I’m nearly ready for winter.

      1. So you’re saying, Peter, (© Cathy Newman) that you are really a pensioner Peter Pan?

        :-))

  86. Heaven forfend Taylors 2015 LBV alternating with a Waitrose VSOP would be a toxic combination
    I may be very late on parade tomorrow………………..

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