814 thoughts on “Sunday 11 August: Britain must start giving its Armed Forces the resources they deserve”

  1. A judge told a career crook to slim down and get a job. Guess who was punished. 11 August 2019.

    But it is deeper than that. We now have a state which, when asked to choose between a learned judge and a frequently convicted criminal, sides with the criminal as if they are on an equal footing. There is no moral force and bite in our cardboard criminal justice system.

    It sees its job as to negotiate, neutrally, between ‘society’ and ‘offenders’ whose misdeeds are not really their fault, but are explained by poverty, abuse or some other fashionable misfortune. And it reserves special spite for anyone who tries to behave as if things were still as they used to be. The householder who defends himself against a burglar is more severely investigated than most burglaries. This is because his action threatens the monopoly of soft justice.

    You are alone. If dangerous evil comes your way, do not expect our current establishment to take your side and defend you. If you dare to defend yourself, it will quite possibly be you who ends up in the dock.

    Morning everyone. Yes. Just one symptom of the moral disintegration of Society and Civilisation!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7345101/PETER-HITCHENS-judge-told-career-crook-slim-job-Guess-punished.html

    1. On a much less emotive sexed-up scale, I recently had to deal with a smouldering bonfire that was hanging acrid smoke over my bedroom at night, provoking a bronchial condition that nearly led to pneumonia last Christmas, and making singing difficult.

      Environmental Health does not have the resources to deal with this (social care and child protection are ringfenced, and the Council Tax cap does not extend to public protection when central grants are cut to nothing by the Treasury). They recommend asking the offender politely to stop, and if they don’t, then sucking up and moving on.

      A local farmer’s wife explained to me that we all light bonfires of wet, green garden waste in summer and leave them unattended and smouldering for days. Otherwise we might encourage rats. It’s not a problem for her though, since they take care to make sure the farmhouse is not downwind. If I live in the country, I should expect country smells, such as sleeping with acrid smoke in my bedroom at night. If I want fresh air, she implies, I should go and live in the city.

      In the end, I went to the bonfire with a bucket and, using a handy water trough in the next field for the horses, put the damned thing out. If they want to do me for trespassing, then so be it.

      1. It’s always an intrusion when someone’s smoke gets into your houses and we had an early spat with a neighbour who stormed into our garden because of our first bonfire. My wife saw him off but we learned to be more careful with the wind direction in future. Personally I love the smell of burning autumn leaves but then I breathe in Cuban tobacco every night.

        1. That is why I can only have a bonfire when there is a north wind. Then the nearest dwelling is six miles away.

      2. You are quite right, Jeremy, but if Elsie may be permitted a lighter, more comical, view on this:

        If hanging acrid smoke over your bedroom at night makes singing difficult, have you tried singing in the bath? That’s where I do most of my singing, as I keep my bedroom just for sleeping and snoring!

        :-))

      3. They can’t do you for trespassing as you have left the property. Trespass is when you refuse to leave.

        1. As i understand it, Harry, it is only trespass if, in passing over land belonging to another, you cause actual damage to the property. That is what I was taught in the 1950s as a small boy.

          Probably today, if you walk on someone else’s land, they will be mortally offended and charge you with whatever is the worst form of ‘hate’ crime imaginable.

    3. Yes, Minty, but the criticisms which The Daily Mail and you yourself complain about are slowly about to change. Just consider new PM Boris Johnson’s statement today that early release from jail sentences need to be scrapped.

          2. Without wishing to pour too much cold water on that view, I seem to
            recall you being convinced May would have got us clear of the EU by now
            and that we should wait and see to give her a chance.

          3. I failed to see that Mrs May was an evil witch and believed her when she said Brexit Means Brexit and No Deal is better than a Bad Deal.

            I also used to think that Judas Grease Smugg was a brilliant man of great integrity.

            May proved to be a liar, Grease Smugg turned out to have feet of clay.

            My judgement was wrong.

          4. Console yourself that you were not alone.

            I never trusted May, JR-M was a grave disappointment.

          5. Boris Johnson must put on public record just what he thinks Brexit means.

            If his definition is anything like Evil May’s then the sooner he goes the better.

          6. My greatest fear is that he will return with May’s WA agreement, slightly tweaked, and we will be Brino, it will pass Parliament and we’ll be permanently caged with all the costs and no benefits or say in its future direction.

          7. That’s what many of us fear. It explains why Boris does not want a pact with Nigel Farage. Nigel would clip his wings and make sure a proper No deal Brexit was effected.

          8. That’s my reasoning, too, rastus. I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t trust Boris an inch.

          9. When I met him, J-RM struck me as a Tory first and a Brexiteer second, so party before country.

          14. I’ve already explained that I was taken for a ride by May, and that it took me far too long to realise. But Johnson has only been in situ for a couple of weeks and his deadline is October the 31st (80 days away) and for that short period of time I am prepared to wait.

            Constantly harping on about my trusting in May is like saying that everyone is a fool because once upon a time they believe in Father Christmas. What was the old saying “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me”?

          15. I’m not for a minute suggesting that you are/were a fool.

            But I think you tend to be far more trusting of these toads than I am!

            If one waits too long it is often too late to react.

          16. Perhaps “fool” was an unfortunate word to use, Sos. I have no doubt that you do not consider me a fool. But what is the point of “reacting” at this moment in time? All I could do to “react” would be to say (and post) “I don’t trust Boris Johnson one little bit; he is just Theresa May Mark 2”. How does this help him to achieve Brexit? All it achieves is to make the general public continue in their cynicism around politicians, when he is actively (and, in my view, successfully) working hard to fill us with hope for the future. 80 days is not too long for me to wait.

          17. It can also be looked at as keeping his feet close to the fire.

            I agree we need the much more positive can do attitude he exudes, but as Conway’s observation that “changes to the backstop” cause alarms I feel it is pertinent to remember that the whole WA is duff and worse than actually being in the EU. The backstop is a red herring.

            Probably 75% of May’s WA agreement should be torn up.

          19. }:-O

            There are some bits that are mutually beneficial and will have to be negotiated in due course, why not accept them now to save time and effort later?

          20. Absolutely not! May’s WA needs to be abandoned completely. Negotiations can then be started after we leave the EU with a clean sheet.

          21. I would prefer that, but if time is of the essence then taking those bits that help both sides has merit.

            When BJ was “elected” I made a comment on Nottle to the effect that the first thing he should do would be to shred the WA and send it to Brussels.

          23. Nah wait until the wind is blowing across to France and then burn it to generate maximum CO2 and particulates

          24. While I appreciate that, Elsie, I’d just like to point out what he’s been saying about “making changes to the backstop” and then we can agree a deal. Once he started down that track, alarm bells started to ring. May’s “deal” would be a complete sell out; the backstop is only a small part of its unacceptability.

          25. Indeed it (May’s WA) is totally unacceptable. My take on this (I may well be wrong, but still I will wait and see) is that he is saying what he says to put himself in the position of a reasonable person who is willing to talk if they (the EU) will also show reasonableness and drop the backstop. Since he (and we) know very well that they will not go back on their word (they would lose face totally if they did) we are no further down that route, except that the general public will see ever more clearly that the problem is not our Government but instead the obdurate, corrupt, un-audited, etc. etc. EU.

          26. I hope and pray you are right, Elsie, but I have completely lost all faith in politicians and don’t trust them to tell me the time of day!

    4. A sign of the times, Minty. The yobs and career crims are being given a free ride on far too many occasions. They rule the streets now while the police cower behind their screens, looking for the all-important hate crimes. On other occasions they can readily find the time to cavort and mince with parades of perverts. (A slight exaggeration, but only slight.) Full marks to the Judge for refusing to participate in the politically correct rubbish that now infests this poor country.

      Coincidentally, in an article in the same column Hitchens talks about cannabis creating ‘crazy people’. I wonder if he had the idiotic Gauke in mind when he wrote that??

      1. Cannabis means more crazy people
        As the sickly-sweet stench of marijuana spreads ever further across the once-civilised Western world, there is one universal result. There are more crazy people. Some of them are dangerous.
        Many of them are crazy because they have fried their brains with skunk. Some are crazier still because baffled doctors have added to the cocktail with various poorly understood prescription drugs.
        But the chances that you will meet such a person grow daily, as our leaders refuse to enforce the laws against marijuana possession. They will grow still more if they are stupid enough to bow to the billionaire campaign to legalise this poison.
        Yet last week I wrote to a prominent political figure to seek his help in fighting this mistake, and he said he was too busy. This may be deeply unwise. Amid the usual emotional and incurious coverage of the latest US rampage killings, the news has quietly leaked out that the Dayton killer, Connor Betts, was (as I knew he would be) a marijuana user. His girlfriend Lyndsi Doll has told the Washington Post that the shooter suffered hallucinations and menacing voices in his head, and feared he was developing schizophrenia. Why would that be?
        There’s a clue in the logo of Betts’s repellent rock band Menstrual Munchies. It is a marijuana plant. But would you like more?
        Well, another former friend told the Post that Betts’s group of friends had a reputation at Bellbrook High School as ‘the outcast kids that the cool kids didn’t really like’. And what did they do at weekends? Why, they smoked marijuana. I have no doubt that something similar will eventually emerge about the alleged El Paso shooter, too. Sometimes it takes months, even years, but it always does. And it’s not just in the USA. You might wonder what role marijuana had in several violent episodes in Britain recently, and you would be wise to do so.
        A correspondent recently wrote to me from Washington state, which went soft on users in 1971, fell for the ‘medical pot’ scam in 1998, and ended up legalising it for recreational use in 2012. What happened? He describes matters: ‘Seattle has hundreds of people who live on the streets who have been completely relieved of their mental capacity. They have no cognitive functions left apart from shouting incomprehensible nonsense.
        ‘I write this while one such person is wandering up and down the aisle of the bus I’m riding, screaming at the top of his lungs and banging on the windows.’

        1. ‘Afternoon, Bob,

          Yes, legalise it and legalise all the other mind-bending drugs, control the sale in the same way as they control tobacco and alcohol, charge prohibitive tax on it and let the stupid users kill themselves, as they will be no loss to the community.

          It might seem harsh but their lifestyle leads them down a verminous road and, as vermin, they are best left to exterminate themselves on the stuff they will kill, steal, hate and injure for. It won’t take long for the rest to avoid that killer trap.

          Darwin rules.

    5. More than 50 convictions and still going.

      Please, tell me… what is the point of justice system that doesn’t actually stop crime? Don’t tell him to get a job. Don’t tell him to lose weight.

      Flog him. 40 crimes over 30 years, call it 40 lashes a day for 30 days.

  2. Questions raised over disgraced financier’s death. BBC. 11 August 2019.

    Questions have been raised as to how US financier Jeffrey Epstein was able to apparently commit suicide in his prison cell while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

    There’s lots of questions and no answers, a sure sign that something is amiss. He was on suicide watch from a previous attempt that has not been explained and the bed sheets under this regime are designed to fail under the weight of a human body while the cameras appear to have been disabled.

    He was probably murdered by one of the other inmates snuck in there for just such a purpose!

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-49309317

      1. Well not living in Manhattan or being incarcerated in the Metropolitan Correctional Center myself I can offer no eyewitness account so it is just an opinion!

  3. OK, I’m done for now – off to Stonham Barns Boot Sale.

    I’ll check back later this afternoon.

  5. Morning all

    SIR – Defence of the realm should be the first priority of any Prime Minister – and I hope that Boris Johnson, as he goes round the country doling out money, will find some coppers for our Armed Forces.

    In 2010 David Cameron greatly reduced our ability to defend ourselves. The RAF has fewer than 200 frontline aircraft, the Navy is totally overstretched and the Army could barely raise a brigade. It is rumoured that Russia’s new submarines can operate within our waters with impunity. Our next coastal surveillance aircraft are due over the next 10 years, and until then we must rely on our Nato allies and the US.

    Our weakness is highlighted in the Strait of Hormuz, where there is just one ship to protect all of our trade passing close to Iran. We are often told that our warships are very capable –but they can’t be in two places at once. We build over-complicated ships when we should be building smaller ones. We also need sailors to man them. These changes must begin now. Important though Brexit is, our ability to defend ourselves is paramount.

    Paul James
    York

    1. SIR – When the ratio of serving frigates to living, former First Sea Lords (Letters, August 4) drops below three to one, something is surely amiss with the size of our Navy.

      David Arnold
      Tilston, Cheshire

      SIR – It is all very well for former First Sea Lords to express concern over insufficient frigates and destroyers – but successive, significant reductions in the number of these ships occurred during their time in office.

      Any force level reduction would have required the agreement, however reluctant, of the serving First Sea Lord, including the decision made in the 2010 strategic defence and security review to reduce the number of frigates and destroyers from 23 to 19.

      Rear Admiral Philip Mathias
      Southsea, Hampshire

        1. The DT seems to have an endless supply of letter-writing Armchair Admirals/Generals to call upon.

    2. Yes, Mr James, but our hands (and money) are tied in many ways until we are free from the @*/*&@ EU. And there are only 81 days to go (fingers crossed).

  6. Good Morning, all

    SIR – The Prime Minister’s plan to “boost” the NHS with £1.8 billion of additional funding is, sadly, likely to have only limited success.

    The health unions, led by the British Medical Association, will ensure this outcome. Only root-and-branch reform of the NHS will give us a health service that is comparable to those of other advanced countries. Long waits for GP appointments, and even longer ones for hospital treatments, resulting in late diagnoses, are the main reason for our relatively low survival rates for many serious conditions.

    The NHS needs to embrace private enterprise and shed the shackles of Marxist dogma inherent in the system set up by Aneurin Bevan 70 years ago. Surely a determined Conservative politician like Boris Johnson understands that.

    Ron Forrest
    Wells, Somerset

    That’s the spirit, Ron! (You had better use an alias next time you nip into A&E)

    1. Feeding a wasteful monster is never going to succeed. All it achieves is a very expensive and short-lived headline.

      ‘Morning, Citroen.

    2. Morning Boot, They always ignore the fact that there are too many people accessing the NHS – yes we’re talking of immigrants (whose needs are more) and freeloading foreigners
      Edit – oops sorry mate , I called you Boot.

  7. Morning again

    SIR – Your report on the attempts to bring about a new surge in onshore wind energy developments mentioned that concerns have been raised about visual intrusion and the impact on birdlife.

    However, no mention appears to have been made of the poor efficacy of these turbines. In England, some 30 per cent still fail to achieve a load (or capacity) factor of 20 per cent. This contrasts with the industry’s claim that all such schemes are able to achieve at least 30 per cent, and the increasing number of offshore developments achieving at least 40 per cent.

    There should be an additional condition for all onshore developments: no support (including subsidy) if their capacity factors fail to achieve a rolling annual average in excess of 30 per cent (and preferably over 35 per cent). This is not such a high bar. I know of one development that originally achieved only 18 per cent, but the most recent development alongside it has reached 36 per cent.

    In parts of Scotland – the windiest country in Europe – the case should be much stronger on efficacy grounds. Unfortunately for proponents, visual intrusion and impact on birdlife are likely to come to the fore there.

    In the case of any schemes permitted to go ahead, if they fail to achieve the agreed load factor, all previous subsidies should be repaid.

    Professor Michael Jefferson
    Melchbourne, Bedfordshire

    1. If the latter condition were applied then these monstrous follies would quickly fall into ruin.

    2. The eminent Prof has done work for the IPCC in the past. Not sure they are going to invite him back now!

      1. Eminent Prof Epidermoid, Prof Matt Ridley or the late Prof David MacKay? If the latter, the IPCC would be barmy to try to invite him back.

    3. Ha! If there were not the massive subsidy there would be no windmills built at all.

      They are utterly inefficient, ineffective and pointless things that no one sane would ever build as a 21st century energy source.

  8. SIR – Daniel Hannan criticises the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, who plan to have only two children, and points out that the birth rate in England and Wales is falling – but he forgets that the world is already seriously overpopulated.

    Meanwhile, supporting our population of 60 million involves sucking in resources from all over the planet, at other people’s expense. Why haven’t we listened to David Attenborough’s warnings on this?

    Peter Jeffery
    Eastbourne, East Sussex

    1. Because David is not a scientist and has fallen for a massive fraud which is a shame for his legacy as a wild life broadcaster is one to be proud of.

    2. “…our population of 60 million…”

      What has happened to the other 6 million, Mr Jeffrey? Has there been a secret policy of repatriation of ‘illegals’ perhaps, or is our wonderful NHS quietly undertaking some natural culling to get the numbers down? Apart from this, the growing problem of over-population is rarely highlighted. (I shall have to take his word that Saint Attenborough may have raised the subject, but I haven’t been watching his programmes since the poor old boy lost his marbles over the alleged need for man to atone for his production of CO2.)

      ‘Morning, Epi.

  9. Good morning all, from a sunny, warm Laure Minervois. I am not stopping – as we are expecting a potential buyer shortly….I am not holding my breath.

    Good journey down – apart from gut rot striking in the middle of Thursday night – (still here…{:¬((…) and heavy traffic on Saturday morning adding an hour to the trip.

    Smashing gutbash du quartier last evening – great to be with som many chums. There were about 60. The only negative aspect was the main course – “barbecued” (that means burnt to a cinder on the outside) but only half cooked chicken. Along with many others I tactfully left it. Rest of the food and hooch at normal high level!

    I’m off for a lie down so as to be bright and cheerful later.

  10. One thought on the way down. That ridiculous acronym BAME, which is now ubiquitous, needs to be pronounced BARMY

          2. South of the River Clapham used to be Clap Ham.

            It then became Clay Tham

            And is now Clarm.

          1. Good morning, Anne

            Remember Tom Lehrer’s intricate rhyming schemes:

            I wanna go back to Alabamy,
            Back to the arms of my dear old mammy,
            Her cooking’s lousy and her hands are clammy
            But what the hell – it’s home.

  11. Morning Each,
    First letter,
    I would say channel patrol boats capable of fishing protection are our first
    priority, that is of course after filleting the lab/lib/con coalition party of pro eu rubber stampers.
    “defence of the realm” should be the first priority of any PM, many of us know that, but the ballot booth again & again denies it, in point of fact the
    ballot booth via people power has made sure that the cameron ( the wretch) ilk stay in power.
    I want johnson AKA amnesties R me, the turkish delight, to,this once stick
    to his guns is so far as say what he means & MEANS what he says, although I have no trust in him whatsoever.

    1. You can victim blame the electorate for being lied to until the cows come home, it won’t alter the fact that the perpetrators of the lies are the guilty ones.
      And it is directly analogous to blaming girls for falling victim to ‘grooming gangs’.

      1. The continuing same voting pattern by the electorate over the decades since the mid 70s
        has brought about our present odious plight as a nation.
        A great deal of our present odious issues ie rape /abuse etc, etc, are consequences of the ongoing voting pattern.
        If you cannot admit to that then YOU are part of the problem.

          1. In the case of 1400 / 1600 rape / abuse cases in one area alone I point out, IMO, the cause, and the effect now & in the future can only be imagined by many, and certainly NOT by those
            that support the parties / purveyors of such evil miseries.

          2. QED.
            The very existence of ‘grooming gangs’ in the UK is an effect of the cause – mass migration.

          3. Mass UNCONTROLLED migration lab / lib / con
            policies condoned via the ballot booth again, again,& again.

          4. Like I said, You can victim blame the electorate for being lied to until the cows come home, it won’t alter the fact that the perpetrators of the lies are the guilty ones.
            And it is directly analogous to blaming girls for falling victim to ‘grooming gangs’.

  12. Well Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of Capn. Bob, I would be very careful crossing the road, yachting or even being alone at home; if I were you. You wouldn’t want a nasty dose of Arkansacide, would you?

      2. She must be perrishing:-

        Poor girl: a girl who harasses Wellington with constant tales of poverty, despite wearing an impressive fur coat and claiming to have a household full of equally impoverished staff.

  13. Steady Boris, steady. The Brexit Party are watching. Lenny is sweating bullets. If he wants to come to London for a chat, then send him back with a shredded copy of the entire WA. Otherwise concede nothing.

    Boris Johnson accepted an offer from Irish premier Leo Varadkar to meet to try to break the Brexit deadlock

    Boris Johnson has accepted an offer from Irish premier Leo Varadkar to meet to try to break the Brexit deadlock as the European Union president insisted the UK would be the loser from a no-deal exit.

    UK Government sources have told The Sunday Telegraph that dates for a bilateral meeting are now being discussed, raising hopes of a breakthrough in agreeing a deal for the UK to leave the EU with a deal on Oct 31.

    Mr Johnson has been insisting that he wants the 27 EU countries including Ireland to drop the Northern Irish backstop from the Withdrawal Agreement because it would keep the UK closely tied to the EU after Brexit.

    The UK source said: “The UK has accepted Varadkar’s offer to meet and dates are being discussed.”

    The hope is that any meeting can happen before the meeting of the G7 major advanced nations in France in a fortnight’s time.

    David Frost, Mr Johnson’s new EU adviser, is now understood to have met or spoken with nearly all his counterparts in the EU 27 countries, The Telegraph has learned.

    The source said: “David Frost made clear that the UK will work hard to strike a new deal with the EU and that he has been in contact with the Commission and a range of EU countries to start the process.

    “The PM has also been active on the phone. He and Steve Barclay expect to have further discussions soon to see whether a way forward is possible. There are no preconditions.”

    EU leaders have been told “100 per cent clear that there could be no final deal without abolition of the backstop”.

    It is the EU who at the moment will not contemplate that”, the UK Government source said.

    “Unless they change that position it will be difficult to have a productive negotiation.”

    The focus in the talks is now on the G7 summit on Aug 24-26 in Biarritz which will be “an important moment to assess whether there are any signs of a change of heart on the EU side”.

    The news came as outgoing European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker said Britons will be the “big losers” if there is a no deal Brexit.

    “If it comes to a hard Brexit, this is in no one’s interest, but the British would be the big losers. They pretend it’s not like that, but it will be,” he said in an interview with an Austrian newspaper.

    Mr Juncker insisted that the EU was prepared for no deal, despite accusations from some in Britain that Brussels would be caught on the hop on Halloween.

    Separately Dominic Raab, the Foreign Secretary, said that Britain’s “old friends and new partners” on the global stage are much more excited about Brexit than “the rankling in Brussels”.

    Mr Raab told The Sunday Telegraph: “The attitude and enthusiasm towards the UK is incredibly warm… “It’s a real contrast to the rankling in Brussels, and I’ve been struck by the positive reception for our ambition for new trade deals.

    “Sure, it will take some diplomatic elbow grease, but there’s a real sense that there are win-win opportunities for us to grasp with old friends and new partners.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/08/11/boris-johnson-accepted-offer-irish-premier-leo-varadkar-meet/

    2. A ‘bilateral meeting’

      If Boris had told him to bugger off would it have resulted in a unilateral meeting?

    3. It makes a pleasant change to be taking the fight to the enemy, something that will no doubt cause great alarm after our surrender over the past three years. The panic and alarm amongst the traitors and betrayers in the House of Clowns must be at fever pitch now, and no doubt they will come up with yet more cunning stunts in their attempts to defeat the referendum – but time is fast running out.

      1. Beware of spoonerisms!

        (In fact the spoonerised version of the devious tricks describes those people who practise them.)

  14. Queen’s fury at her politicians: ‘Dismayed’ monarch tells aides of her ‘disappointment in the current political class’ and their ‘inability to govern correctly’ amid Brexit turmoil. Mail. 11 August 2019.

    The Queen has voiced her frustration with today’s politicians and their ‘inability to govern correctly’, it has been claimed.
    The 93-year-old monarch remains scrupulously neutral in public but is said to have told aides of her ‘disappointment in the current political class’.

    It is of course impossible to know if this is true in principle let alone in accuracy though one suspects that it is; if only because it is evident to almost anyone who has eyes to see or brain to think that the UK has a governing class that would be more suitable to some Third World cess pit than an advanced state.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7345259/Queen-tells-aides-disappointment-current-political-class.html

    1. Good morning, Minty.

      Apparently the comment was made in 2016, but the Mail believes it is still relevant!

    2. I once saw it reported, after months of shenanigans trying to negotiate a “deal”, that the Queen was heard to ask “Why can’t we just leave?”

    3. Remember the asinine Shirley Williams saying that if you paid politicians more you would get a better quality of people wishing to enter politics?

      Like the predictions of many people of her political bent the reverse has proved to be true.

      If politicians are too well paid they fear losing their jobs. Why are all those ‘working’for the EU (thousands receive a higher salary than the British PM) so very well paid, have to pay virtually no tax, have almost unlimited expense accounts and over generous pensions as long as they remain’loyal’ to the EU.

      Pay politicians less and they will have less to lose if they lose their jobs and there will be more incentive for them to be honest!

      1. I recall that Lee Kuan Yew, who forged Singapore into a modern, wealthy, well-run and highly successful state, insisted that MPs be paid exceptionally high salaries. This ensured that people of great ability would apply to become an MP, that, once there, would not want to lose their salary because of poor performance, and would not be attracted to corruption. It worked!

  15. SIR – Daniel Hannan (Comment, August 4) criticises the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, who plan to have only two children, and points out that the birth rate in England and Wales is falling – but he forgets that the world is already seriously overpopulated.

    Meanwhile, supporting our population of 60 million involves sucking in resources from all over the planet, at other people’s expense. Why haven’t we listened to David Attenborough’s warnings on this?

    Peter Jeffery
    Eastbourne, East Sussex

    People do not listen to sensible advice and breed indiscriminately because they are stupid. Stupidity in humanity has risen steadily since the end of the 19th century and the concept is now rising exponentially. The evidence is all around and is presented to us daily.

    I have planned to write a book on the topic of intrinsic and escalating human stupidity and how it will be responsible, in the not-too-distant future, for their self-annihilation. I do not hold out much hope though for it to be a best-seller since the majority of humans will be:

    1. Far too stupid to buy it and read it.

    2. Far too stupid to understand its message.

    2. Good morning, Grizzly

      As always I am always glad to hear your cheerful, optimistic voice!

      1. Good morning, Rastus.

        I am wondering: as an educated man, how would you go about raising the poor general level of intelligence in mankind?

        I don’t mean the kind of “intelligence” created by a good education—that is mere learning which is not to be confused with proper intelligence—I mean the intrinsic, instinctive intelligence that is held by most sentient creatures but, sadly, no longer by humanity.

        A squirrel is intelligent because it hoards its food and builds its drey out of the reach of predators; however it cannot read or discuss Dostoevsky and it certainly cannot rationalise Pythagoras’s Theorem because formal learning would be beyond its capabilities.

        My paucity of apparent cheerfulness and optimism is a direct result of refusing to bury my head in the sand.

  16. I wonder what would happen when a poisoned Tony Juniper shows up on someone’s land?

    Grouse moor owners should be prosecuted if hen harriers die on their land, whatever the cause, government adviser says
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2019/02/23/TELEMMGLPICT000189274540_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQfyf2A9a6I9YchsjMeADBa08.jpeg?imwidth=1240
    Grouse moor owners should be prosecuted if hen harriers are found dead on their land whether or not they are responsible for their deaths, the Government’s countryside adviser has suggested as he calls for tougher laws to protect birds of prey.

    Tony Juniper, head of Natural England, will make the comments on the eve the “glorious 12th” on Monday – the official start of the grouse shooting season, one of the busiest days in the countryside calendar.

    Hen harriers, although protected under UK legislation since 1952, are killed illegally on grouse moors because of concerns that they can reduce the number of grouse to such an extent that driven grouse shooting can become economically unviable.

    Currently prosecutions are difficult to land because investigators have to prove who has poisoned the iconic birds.

    However Tony Juniper, the new chairman of Natural England, said the birds were threatened by “poisoning, shooting, damage to nests, disturbance of nests, disturbance of roost – a range of activities.

    He told The Sunday Telegraph: “The most visible thing is a dead bird and with depressing regularity dead birds are picked up, often on grouse moors.”

    He said the law did not currently allow grouse moors owners to be prosecuted.

    “It requires us to has evidence pertaining to a particular event, rather than to link it to a locality,” he added.

    “Some people have argued that there should be a change to the law in order for there to be so-called vicarious responsibility – should somebody kill a bird on a grouse moor the owner of the grouse moor would be responsible.

    “It makes some sense – except the main problem is lack of evidence and it won’t solve that lack of evidence problem. What we do know is that the disappearance of these birds is associate with grouse moors.”

    Asked if the law should be reviewed he said: “I would like there to be some review of the persecution of birds of prey – there is still work to be done because despite the legal protection we do have this continuing breaking of the law in different ways.”

    The “vicarious liability” approach to protecting hen harriers proposed by Mr Juniper already exists in Scotland where landowners are responsible for the actions of their employees on their land.

    New figures published by Natural England show the 2019 breeding season has been highly successful with 15 nests producing 12 successful breeding pairs and 47 chicks – beating the previous highpoint of 46 in 2006.

    The chicks were hatched in a wider variety of areas this year, including in Northumberland, Yorkshire Dales, Nidderdale, Derbyshire and Lancashire.

    Mr Juniper says: “We have got a long way to go – I don’t think that one year’s improved figures equals a recovery – hopefully this is the beginning of a trend.”

    He said: “Numbers are much lower than would be expected considering the scale of available habitat.”

    He said research in March had found “a very high correlation with birds disappearing on English grouse moors – and this would suggest that illegal persecution remains a major problem and is one that we are going to need to solve if we are going to see the recovery of the species”.

    Mr Juniper said “hunting can be compatible with the conservation agenda”, adding: “Increasingly in the shooting community there is an awareness of how conservation needs to be reflected in what people do and how they manage estates.”

    But he warned that the owners or managers of the moors where poisoned hen harriers were found should face prosecution.

    Mr Juniper said he wanted “to convince keepers to change their culture and begin to see these birds as things of beauty that can be managed as part of the grouse management and see them as part of the landscape and part of the eco-system”.

    He added: “There are grouse moor owners who are running good shoots who have got hen harriers, and we need to increase the number of hen harriers as part of the recovery plan.

    “The grouse moors are a key group of stakeholders in doing that and at Natural England we very look forward to working with them in order to be able to change behaviour so this historical problem can be got rid of.

    “If it is done in a sensible and sustainable way I don’t have any problem with shooting as part of the rural economy and ideally as part of conservation of the natural environment.”

    A spokesman for the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: “Our legislation protects all our wild birds, including hen harriers.

    “Local police forces are responsible for enforcing this legislation and the collecting of robust evidence to prosecute wildlife crimes.”

    BTL:

    Dan Barrett 11 Aug 2019 3:32AM
    This guy is a naturalist?

    So what if a Harrier dies of disease or old age on a farmer’s plot? Prosecute him?

    Insane.

    Peter Ryder 11 Aug 2019 12:30AM
    I thought that “innocent until proven guilty” was still the basis of our Common Law legal system or have we now adopted the Roman Law system of the rest of the EU?

    Psychic Lass 11 Aug 2019 1:36AM
    it’s Funny how the buzzards keep dying since a commercial pheasant shoot guy bought up the land. Hang em. I’m sick of these people shooting the place up for cash.

    Christopher Hindle 11 Aug 2019 7:25AM
    @Psychic Lass It is also “funny” that there has been an explosion in the numbers of Buzzards due to shooting estates providing easy pickings for them.
    There would be very few, if any, Buzzards or other birds and wildlife, without the conservation efforts of the shooting community.

    “Shooting the place up”? Do you live in the ‘wild west’? No, I suspect you are an urban dweller with no real knowledge of the countryside.

    1. And if by any chance a dead Hen Harrier appeared on Tony Juniper’s property, would he call for his own prosecution?

      And if it happened after every time he was prosecuted, would he still be so keen?

      1. The attitude seems that someone must be punished, and if that’s the culprit, fine, but that’s only a minor consideration.
        With a law like that, there will be plenty of ‘throwing dead birds on the shooting moors, even though the birds were poisoned/shot elsewhere, to get at the landowner as a political act. It could even lead to the wiping out of the protected bird.

    2. Some people have argued that there should be a change to the law in order for there to be so-called vicarious responsibility – should somebody kill a bird on a grouse moor the owner of the grouse moor would be responsible.

      These presumably are the same people who call for landowners to be charged with murder when a homicide occurs within its precincts?

      1. For every person murdered in London perhaps an MP or a person working in the Mayor’s Office should be taken away and shot?

    3. Once upon a time, I used to see one, or at the most 2, raptors of some description circling over the fields just south of my house. Last week, I noticed at one time there were 8 visible. Protection should be removed.

    5. Golly! A few feathers ruffled this morning. And nary a cool, clear head, or cool clear argument in sight.
      I have done some research and am writing a missive on this subject as it relates to Scotland. These raptors are protected. Grouse moors are big business. Many, if not most, raptors killed are poisoned using poisons that have been illegal for some time. Evidence of personal culpability is difficult if not impossible to obtain. Wildlife crime is not a priority. Penalties on conviction are derisory. Convictions are limited to employees (gamekeepers) and not their employers. There appear to be few, if any, instances of employees being sacked for such convictions.
      These are just some of the factors here.

    6. There is nothing like prosecuting someone for something that isn’t his fault – very communist.

  17. SIR – Marianne Jones’s article (Travel, August 4) about her return to Malta brought back many happy memories for me.

    I first visited the country in 1956, while serving in the Royal Navy. Strait Street, known as “the Gut”, was popular with sailors. Bars and food stalls abounded, with cooked chickens the size of sparrows.

    Then, in the early Sixties, I had a two-year posting to RAF Hal Far. Our first flat was opposite the neolithic temples at Tarxien. Our youngest daughter had shiny white hair – and as a result, like Ms Jones, received much attention from the locals, which she revelled in.

    Many years later we returned. The owner of the bar where we used go was aghast upon discovering that my wife had changed her drink of choice from gin and bitter lemon to gin and tonic.

    Derrick G Smith
    Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex

    The reason that the “chickens” were the size of sparrows, in that shìthole den of scumbags, Deck, is because they were fücking sparrows!

    The Maltese are one degree lower than the amœba (and two degrees lower than the average Muzzie) in the evolutionary schedule.

    1. Don’t hold back, Grizzly. Tell Deck what you really think! (Good morning, btw.)

    2. I reckon they shoot every flying thing ‘cos it’s dead boring on Malta, nowt else to do. Like pulling wings off flies.

      1. What vehemence is that, Annie?

        My writing or the Maltesers’ continued wanton destruction of all their birdlife?

        1. Your opinions of the Maltesers.
          I seem to remember that several criminal gangs in 1950s London were run by them.

  18. Good morning ladies and gentlemen.
    There’s no point giving the armed forces more money and toys if the personnel are rainbow displaying, Pride celebrating, mosque attending, sex-changing types. No wimmin in frontline roles, no poofs, no trannies etc, but patriots who are willing to kill our enemies.

        1. My heroine is Hannah Reitsch the German aviatrix. I first read about her exploits in a book I had as a boy. “Skymen” told the stories of heroes like Major Micky Mannock VC who became an air ace although he’d never have passed a driving test because of poor eyesight, and Wiley Post the first Red Indian to fly solo around the world.
          Nowadays we adore celebs.

    2. It has always seemed to be utter folly to give British Army weapons training to the followers of a cult with such a disturbing trend towards mass violence.

    1. So you’re saying, Peddy, (© Cathy Newman) that your “Bright and sunny again” comment is just False News?

      :-))

      1. Caution is called for with the interpretation, Elsie. The comment refers to the weather.

        1. Effing weather here is driving me dotty. Every time I go outside is a cue for yet another downpour. It’s the same time every time I’m over here.

  20. August 11 2019, 12:01am, The Sunday Times
    A peaceful, easy life hasn’t made us happy. Perhaps it’s time to give war a chance
    Rod Liddle

    I was wondering, idly, recently if maybe it was time for us to have another war with someone. I didn’t really care who, although I would prefer it if it were a war we might win, which removes only four or five countries out of the 197. Not a hi-tech war against impecunious Arabs, such as the Iraq war: an involving war, which impinges on us all.

    The obvious candidate for an act of unprovoked aggression on our part is France — but it might be over too quickly for the beneficial side effects to take root. So China, maybe, using its bullying of Hong Kong as a pretext. My suspicion is that China’s military competence is gravely overstated.

    If we had a war with the Chinese, we’d find out if I’m right, I suppose. If the only animated thing left in the country after hostilities is strontium-90, then I will have been proved errant and you can point this out in the letters page of whichever newspaper they have in the afterlife (almost certainly the bloody Guardian).

    War increases social cohesion and integration (unless it’s a civil war, obvs) and the population becomes less deranged and self-indulgent. Madness diminishes and people are less inclined to top themselves. It also reduces personal dissatisfaction.

    We now live in a country where everyone is dissatisfied, which has little social cohesion, where integration is a dirty word and a significant minority wishes to dismantle everything that has given us a comparatively comfortable existence. There seems to be a millennialist yearning for catastrophe. The best way to assuage that yearning is to give them one.

    The Extinction Rebellion crowd recently demanded that London Fashion Week be scrapped and that instead we should convene “a people’s assembly of industry professionals and designers as a platform to declare a climate and ecological emergency”. That sounds exciting, doesn’t it? Will this people’s assembly have to wear outré stuff while they’re debating our imminent demise? I’d like to see David Attenborough in an orange Perspex thong, or maybe channelling heroin chic.

    To tell you the truth, I don’t have much time for the fashion business, but it generates more than £32bn a year for the UK, a vital contribution in a country that doesn’t make enough stuff any more. For the Extinction Rebellion crowd, this doesn’t matter. They have become monomaniacal — all that counts is this kind of biblical Armageddon, this annihilation, which is just around the corner. They cleave to this catastrophe more as an article of blind faith than a careful consideration of the science.

    They are not alone. A growing number of greenish economists think we should reduce our GDP: they yearn for “degrowth”, as The Times reported on Friday. They wish us, then, to be poorer, in the mistaken belief that the world will benefit from our Lenten abstinence from industry. Much as New Zealand’s uniquely irritating and exponentially woke prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, has asserted, they also believe that capitalism has conspicuously failed, forgetting the billions of people it has lifted out of poverty.

    This self-abnegation is there, too, in the dim 12-watt-bulb sanctimony of our big box office royal couple. It is Harry and Meghan’s stated intention to have only two children because of over-population. And yet our birth rate is falling. (By contrast, it is rising in the poorest parts of the globe, where people have more pressing concerns than pretending, unconvincingly, that they carry the weight of the world on their shoulders.)

    In the social ranks below those two increasingly risible individuals, there is also a madness. More working days lost to stress, depression and fatigue than ever before. More money than ever spent on mental health, and still it is nowhere near enough. Where does this misery come from? Why is it only manifested now?

    My argument is not that climate change is imaginary or that capitalism is perfect or that we should invade China. But one of the earliest social studies, published by Emile Durkheim in 1897, noted the beneficial social effects of war, and it still holds a few uncomfortable truths today. We have become softened and prone to be frit at everything, perpetually discombobulated in our pacific affluence and our ease, to the extent that we would throw it all away.

    Summertime, then. And the living is, perhaps, too easy.

    After losing no-confidence vote, Boris reveals replacement
    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/methode%2Fsundaytimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2Fbb9e9ff4-bb7e-11e9-8b18-4403ae03f399.jpg?crop=1500%2C1000%2C0%2C0&resize=600

    A lunar colony of Israeli settlers
    The Israeli moon landing may have failed recently, but it did deposit a large number of strange creatures on the lunar surface. These were tardigrades, sometimes called water bears. They are almost indestructible. You can freeze them, boil them, deprive them of water and air — and they will still live. It’s quite possible they could survive several nights in Gillingham.

    But here’s my worry. What if there is already a vulnerable community of microbes on the moon? And then these Israeli tardigrades put up settlements all over the place?

    I think Jeremy Corbyn should pay this matter a bit of attention.

    Christians taken for a ride in Norwich
    A large helter-skelter has been erected in Norwich cathedral. This follows Derby cathedral showing Nicolas Roeg’s graphically sexual Don’t Look Now as well as The Wicker Man, in which a Christian is burnt to death by members of the Scottish National Party. The dean of Derby said they were “not showing God anything He had not seen before”. I suppose He caught the X-rated films on their first release in the 1970s.

    A spokesman for Norwich cathedral, the Rev Andy or something, said of his helter-skelter: “We all are always looking to broaden the appeal of our cathedrals because some people can feel that cathedrals are slightly exclusive, they’re for a particular type of person.”

    Hmm. What kind of person might that be? I can’t quite put my finger on it.

    The UN is a victim of its own idiocy
    We broke open the champagne in the Liddle household on Friday. The United Nations had declared it a day for celebrating indigenous peoples. I am indigenous and so is my wife. In the afternoon we went out and behaved in a scornful manner towards immigrants.

    Only later did I discover that this day wasn’t actually for us. It was for people the UN has decided are victims, such as native Americans. Except they weren’t really indigenous, were they? They migrated from Siberia once they saw the way Russia was going, and now live in casinos in Nevada.

    White Afrikaners were the first settlers in large swathes of South Africa, which kind of gives them indigenous status. But I would hazard a guess the UN didn’t mean them either.

    1. War would at least illuminate what is important in our existence. Wrong pro-nouning and bare-foot Harry would soon be relegated to the toilet of history.

    2. “We Have No “Right to Happiness”…C.S. Lewis”

      We do have the right to pursue it…..

    6. The issue isn’t a need for war, it’s a need for responsibility, maturity and discipline.

      When a man in a dress complains about being ‘hurt’ and receives the full weight of the state to promote his ego the problem is utter decadence brought about by an easy life without fear, need or want. War usually produces all three in abundance. We don’t need war, we need personal discipline to do without and treat others better, we need responsibility instead of rights to control our actions and rein in our endless expectations that we can have whatever we want, regardless of the cost.

      Just look at the difference between Owen Jones and Tony Benn. Look at the maturity, dignity and courage of Benn and the arrogant egotism of Jones. The hypocrisy, ego and arrogance of the Left who, regardless of consequence want their own way. The petulance of big state to defy the public will. This only comes about because they have no concept of responsiibility, dignity, integrity and restraint. They simply want without end because the era of planety they live in tells them they can have whatever they want, whenever they want it without consequence.

      Far too many have grown up with those Left wing conceits. If only we had more of the Right wing values of restraint, dignity, tolerance and responsibility instead of rights we wouldn’t be in this mess – but government has set about eroding those values. They didn’t suit it’s agenda of mass benefactor to all.

    7. During Parish Communion this morning, we had a baptism as well. Naturally the back of the church was packed with people who were only there for the ceremony. They talked incessantly and loudly; their children ran amok, including invading the sanctuary at the moment of consecration of the host. None of the party seemed in the least bit bothered, or indeed, to have any inkling that perhaps this is not the way to behave in church.

  22. Dualling work set to double port cargo on the rail network

    We seem to have crazy priorities when it comes to rail. The government can spend a £100B on HS2 which offers no real benefit but cant invest in dulling the line To Felixstowe port . A line which is shared with passengers service

    Britain’s premier container port says it is preparing to double the amount of cargo it sends by rail once dualling of part of the Felixstowe-Ipswich line is fully complete. Bulk container movements are ideal freight traffic for rail yet all they ca invest in is a passing loop. If a train breakdown it shuts the line down for most of the day which does not do much for Just In timer deliveries

    The £60million project will enable the Port of Felixstowe to increase the number of freight trains it handles by 30% and open up fresh connections to the north of England.

    The port currently puts more than one million standard-sized boxes on the rails each year – treble what it was sending by train 20 years ago.
    But now it is aiming to double that to two million boxes.

    The project to dual part of the line on the Felixstowe peninsula will increase the current capacity of 66 daily train movements to 90 train movements a day.
    The Network Rail project – a 1.4km passing loop between Trimley and Nacton – is finished but won’t be fully operational until new timetabling comes in later in the year.

    1. Doubling that line is something I’ve been calling for for years, including wiring up the line too, as part of a plan to allow electric traction on the currently diesel only existing route from Felixstowe to the Midlands via Ely, Peterborough, Leicester & Nuneaton.

      1. It is just crazy as bulk container traffic is ideal freight traffic for rail. How an earth can the UK’s largest container port be left dependent on a single track line shared with passenger trains. Surely as well they could build some hybrid locomotives so they could run on the electric overhead lines where they are available

        Surely Hybrid Diesels should not be that difficult to build as diesels run on electric anyway

          5. Coopie’s Lane, Morpeth. I had the car in for service and went for a walk, aiming to go along the river with my camera. As I passed the crossing the fugly came past so I got a snap.

            The river doesn’t look like this today. The flood barriers are up and there are flood warnings all over the county after three days of heavy rain that started on Friday and is still coming down.

            https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f97645c93fcfa324f950094629b214caa7ce00db79bd0c8f296942addccfe957.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f22cf28f9e38aa691677bec0e5981e3e9365c9c6812c6c765b5ae1df3ef358ed.jpg

          6. Ah! You were on the Up side of the line looking to the new housing estate.
            A pity the old house on the corner of that plot was demolished. It looked as if it had a fair bit of character.

        2. Scotland has a £70m railway track going free – 12 miles built to take the strain off the Forth Bridge.
          The coal trains travelled from Stirling to Longannet Power Station – great idea EXCEPT
          they are now knocking it down.

          Come a very cold Dec- March with severe cold & no wind, it might just have been a good idea
          to keep it’s 99.999% availability going for a stand-by! – 2,600MW.

          The SNP did not think standby was needed & will import English power if there are shortages!
          Not after Friday’s episode.

          1. Longannet and Cockenzie. Two of the most efficient coal-fired power stations ever built with years of life left in them. Demolished because of the smoke.

          2. Cockenzie.
            The infant MB caused much embarrassed tittering among his Scottish rellies when he pronounced it as “Cockineasy”.

  23. That’s the way to do it !

    Richard Gere – ( Remember him ? ) Talking about those poor , poor Gimmigrants Refuges he used to ingratiate himself with his fellow Follywood luvvies

    “We
    have our problems with refugees coming from Honduras, Salvador,
    Nicaragua, Mexico… It’s very similar to what you are going through
    here,” he said, accusing politicians in both Italy and the US of
    demonising migrants. The Italian government needed to stop “demonising
    people”, the actor said.

    Matteo Salvini responds

    “Given
    this generous millionaire is voicing concern for the fate of the Open
    Arms migrants, we thank him: he can take back to Hollywood, on his
    private plane, all the people aboard and support them in his villas.
    Thank you Richard!” he said in a statement.

    1. The current asylum system as I have said before is no longer fit for purpose and it is widely abused. To stop this we should provide safe areas in the asylum seekers own countries. In the few cases this is not possible asylum will be provided in a near by country. In cases where people illegally enter a country and destroy their papers and refuse to identify the country they are from they will be given asylum in an asylum camp abroad.

      The above would stop the asylum abuse. Most asylum seekers are now fake, I would say about 98% are. It is amazing now how many asylum seekers claim to be Gay. Half the population of Africa appear to claim it is Gay so how an earth can they claim to be persecuted ?

      1. The best thing would be to revert to the Victorian meaning of ” Asylum “. We have some very large unwanted buildings here which could be used. Immigrants in London could be housed in the Westminster Asylum.

        2. Don’t worry. Boris Johnson’s Davos inspired “Shared Future” amnesty scheme is the solution.

      2. The primary problem with “the asylum system” is not that it is over-used but that it is now being used to deliberately import an invasion force to end this nasty “democratic society” that we live in. Democracy hinders those who want to have unlimited power over us because they are forced to conceal their plans in case the voting public notice what is happening. You could design the perfect system with all of the required changes you need to make it fair and watertight. Those in power would ignore it and continue moving as many new arrivals into Europe as they can.

        If they could build a bridge that was five lanes wide from North Africa to Southern Europe, they would start work on it tomorrow. The only way to stop this onslaught is to remove those leaders who are forcing it on us. Before they manage to change our society to the point where we cannot get rid of them at all.

        1. Morning MM,
          To me in this instance the bridge builders are without doubt the lab/lib/con pro eu coalition party, & their labour force is their current
          supporting / voting membership.

      3. The real problem is the lab/lib/con
        are a mass uncontrolled immigration pro eu coalition party,
        and their policies are condoned via the ballot booth by many of the electorate again & again.
        One party only has called consistently for controlled immigration that is UKIP, do you deny that ?

      4. Although you sometimes make relevant points your arguments would carry rather more weight if they were backed up by verifiable rather than hypothetical figures and percentages.

      5. The truth is that, in the past, people were persecuted on a big scale only in a limited number of countries. Now most of the Islamic world and Africa wants to move to Europe. I am told by my brother, who works in the NHS dealing with refugees, that professional Turks are the latest to appear on our shores in numbers. Apparently, the educated middle-classes are persecuted. Previously, it was the Chinese, who just managed to have a 3rd child when they were here, and would therefore be discriminated if they went back home. As you say Bill, when half the world wants to move, the system no longer works.

        1. This is a big compliment to our country. I don’t think we need to hang on the EU coat-tails any more.

        2. Good morning

          I wonder what will happen when the asylum seekers outnumber the tax payers.. and considering our own indigenous birthrate is going down , the pressures will be on Asians and their prodigious breeding rate that will support their own , and us in our very old age .

          We will be out bred by 2040!

          3. We don’t yet have any grandchildren but in 2040, if we are still alive, I shall be 94, Caroline will be 78, Christo will be 47 and Henry will be 45.

    1. Any chance I could pop over to Kashmir, claim asylum and cash in on their welfare system?
      My presence would make the statelet more diverse.

    1. Morning Rik

      They do what they please.. they are our replacements , they are here to convert and subsume us.

      Who will bat for us ?

      It is not difficult to imagine what life will be like in Britain , where there is no cheer , smiles . happiness or make do and mend attitude .. no charity or neighbourliness..

      It feels like a Labour government already

      1. TB,
        Who has been “batting ” for you for the last 27 plus years, politically wise that is ?
        Discounting the lab/lib/con pro eu coalition who have proved on numerous occasions their true worth.

      1. The irony of people calling for diversity is that they (Muslims) don’t want diversity, they want uniformity,

    3. He says that cows have more value than human beings who are not muslims. They will happily slaughter these same cows when the time comes without hesitation. Yet they are worth more than humans? At least he is being honest about true islam. They are becoming very bold now as our leaders usher more and more of them into our countries.

      I think it is safe to say that he, and all of those who think as he does, should be removed from our societies before they decide to remove us.

      1. M M,
        You will upset a great many peoples who put “our leaders” in place, and via the ballot booth , keep them & their ilk there.

      2. …before they decide to remove us.

        MM, I think you’ll find that decision has been taken, it’s a matter of when.

        1. Korky – I agree that the plans are in place to change our countries and remove democracy, but as the little David Steele puppet said on Spitting Image: “We’ve surged too early!” People have started to notice that their countries are changing and that no-one asked them about it. The eu is on the verge of bankruptcy and their societies are falling apart in the cities.

          Having said that, given the past history of islamic military units and the performance of their males up against those of us fighting for a “good” cause, I think that we are going to win. We don’t want to keep the borders open for another 10 years though. That will just make it harder. Time to fully Leave the eu in October. Not years from now after a drawn-out “transition” period.

          1. Our political class, including Johnson and Co, are wedded to mass immigration. One reason they use to cover their real intent is the economic one i.e. grow GDP: however, that growth will be due to consumption – more mouths to feed, bodies to clothe etc. They then claim that as an economic success. In fact it’s the economics of the madhouse especially when many of the incomers are either not economically active or earn minimum wage and receive benefits to make up the shortfall: these people also grow old and even more strain is then put on the Country’s purse.
            Johnson is talking of only allowing people in who will benefit the Country etc. he is one of a recent long line of politicians spinning that lie. We have to judge our politicians by their actions because their words and promises are worthless. The current crop leading all of the parties in the HoC are pro mass immigration, they need to be culled before the tipping point is reached.

          3. http://statisticstimes.com/economy/projected-world-gdp-ranking.php

            India is fifth in the table of nations’ GDPs ahead of Britain and France.

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita

            But according to the IMF rankings of per capita wealth India is 119th, according to the World Bank’s figures it is 120th and according to the CIA’s India is 125th.

            It is a complete lie that increased GDP will increase the average person’s wealth – it is far more likely to impoverish many people.

          4. Recent Chancellors have used GDP to indicate success in “growth” figures when, as you point out in India’s case, GDP per capita is a much more accurate indicator of a country’s efficiency and competitiveness in producing wealth. Checking the GDP/per capita top ten I found that Ireland is at number 5. The UK doesn’t figure in that list.

          5. It will only increase overall GDP; per capita GDP will reduce so we will actually be worse off.

          7. Horace – I have not been on this channel for long enough to get to know people yet, so I am not sure if you are well versed on military history or not. But there have been many discussions over the years about islam and how well they fight. During that time Afganistan has been mentioned and individuals with some experience in the field have said:

            “It is easy to defend a country that is 90% vertical with choke points and passes. Far easier than the open fields of a flat Western Europe.”

            So it is not a measure of their excellence as fighters in Afghanistan, it is the terrain. Being prepared to die for your cause when you think it gets you into heaven is not a selling point either. Compared to those soldiers who do not want to die at all, but fight anyway because it is right… I know which requires more bravery in my book. But I may be biased. 🙂

            Time for a Sunday afternoon stroll alone the beach to recover from lunch. Have a relaxing afternoon. 🙂

          8. I don’t disagree entirely, but there is nothing to suggest that the Afghans are not brave and excellent fighters. The reasons do not matter really. Jan Sobieski and Don John of Austria seemed to have no doubts about the martial abilities of muslims. Just saying.

          9. Horace – Yes it is a complex issue with broad statements barely able to scratch the topic. As poppiesmum has outlined above, one factor is that those defending their homeland and families tend to be much more highly motivated than an invader. No doubt those anti-air missiles we gave them also assisted in their struggles with the Russians. The training we provided will also have helped them against us as well. The perils of short term tactical planning against long term strategic ones. 🙂

            I am not saying that muslims are cowards by default, but the motivations behind this current invasion of our own lands will wake the British Lion again when our people realise what the long-term goals are. I would type more, but my screen is jumping all over the place this far down the page.

            Good luck to us all in the next 25 years. 🙂

          10. While I agree with your reasoning, fighting in the open fields of a flat Western Europe is less likely than an urban guerilla war with buildings and streets.

          11. Conway – Absolutely. It will be urban street fighting, which I have been told is very bad as you don’t know which direction or elevation the next threat will come from.

            I was just pointing out that I have heard “Afghanistan” used before as an historic example of how good islamic fighters are, when the terrain there plays a massive role in why they were not just swept away as they were in the other countries that are flat.

            I have no illusions about what will happen in this country, and others in Europe, if islam is not made illegal and those who still choose to follow it are removed. Which is why I am all in favour of peaceful deportations before their numbers grow large enough that they start to openly force the issue. I believe that we will win if it comes to a fight, but would prefer to avoid that if it is possible.

          12. You are correct that urban street fighting is very nasty for the reasons you state. Also, there is the likelihood of collateral damage with innocent people being caught in the cross fire (not something that will worry the islamics). The chances are, you won’t know who can be trusted (apart from your mates and if some of them are islamo-diverse, they could be iffy).

          13. They were on home territory. And Afghanistan started off as a peace keeping effort on our part. Wait until we are defending our homes. The kettles will be boiling (metaphorically and literally).

            Edit: addition of ‘on our part’.

          14. Yes. I was actually thinking of our Afghan Wars, when we were defeated time after time, including being spectacularly massacred.

    4. Another homegrown Midland or Northern (my accent meter is not great) example of cultural (I don’t do religion) dissonance.

    6. We watched a very frightening prog last night on the box… Moh is well into the history of WW2.. Not much was known about how China and Japan interacted with each other , and how the Japanese found a foothold in China in the early 1930’s and caused utter mayhem .. Their mendacity in Manchuria was outrageous ..

      Unless you play catch up on BBC 4 last night you won’t see the connection between all great invasions and plans , which of course Hitler also copied and developed into his master plan ..

      War and invasion has a pattern .. boldness and strength is the key .

      We have reached a very bad low re attitudes of our politicians and by them allowing our defence forces to reach such a lamentable level .

      Japan walked into Manchuria .. People from other parts of the world are walking in to Britain and we are being totally subsumed by their wishes and requirements.

      Soon we will be overwhelmed . Law and order is the first thing to go haywire!

      2. Excellent prog followed by Schindler’s List.
        Earlier Channel 5 showed Bridge on the River Kwai…1957 vintage.

  27. Sore thumb (again)

    I’ve mentioned being accosted in town by a clipboard surfer and told that without a Hi-Viz vest I stood out like a sore thumb. Last night I was similarly visible.

    The chap on the market who sells packets of adhesive tattoos has moved up to Edinburgh for this month’s military tattoo, meaning that last night I had to breeze into the Tattooed Arms for a pint sporting clean arms.

    Talk about standing out like a sore thumb.

  28. Stop press

    We may have sold the house!

    On Thursday morning, just as I was checking the e-mails before leaving Fulmodeston at 6.30, there was a mail from a French woman who lives in Laure. She is a friend who has been here several times for an apero. She said that she understood we were selling and could she come and have a proper look as the house with its large extrerior terraces might suit her.

    Well, she came and had the longer look and said she was extremely interested….

    Fingers and toes crossed!

        1. I hadn’t realised that you had recently moved up the property ladder.

          Congratulations.

          };-O

          2. As an expert, he’ll have no trouble climbing to the top to repaint the roof. He missed a bit last time, you can see.

          3. That’s P-T’s not BT’s.
            P-T is a she.
            Allegedly.
            If not, lacoste may be disappointed.

        3. A fabulous well located 2 bed home in an up market area waiting for a new owner to renovate it

      1. Speak for yourself, dahling! Personally i think we Nottler ladies re Good news! :o) x

        1. It did when it happened to us, too – 24 hours to first viewing and 12 hours later shaking hands on the deal. And three days later our buyer had sold his!

          Ours was a different market, I do of course realise. Fingers crossed for you. Things CAN go well when all parties are honest and true to their intentions.

          1. Thank you. I trust the lady completely. She has a property to sell (about 200 yards away) and will be instructing an agent tomorrow.

            She has already suggested that we keep then house on the market in case someone with a sack of cash turns up.

    6. How does it work in France, Bill? Offer, acceptance, job done – or all the gazumping crap, as in England?

      1. I am about to discover! Odd really, considering I wrote a whole book about buying property in France in 1990!

        There is no deal until there is a contract signed. So either of us could withdraw. Gazumping would be unusual. The price is quoted by the agents and people tend to pay it – though there may be some negotiation. The a contract is signed and the seller and buyer are stuck – though there are get out clauses if the buyer can’t raise the money, for example; or there is a serious defect discovered.

        1. In Norway, the price is agreed when the offer is accepted, and withdrawal is only possible if the house is significantly not as described, and that in the viewing, you could not have been exoected to detect that.
          The buyer can withdraw up to signature, the house is then iffered to the second bidder, but the withdrawer must make up the financial difference.
          So, it pays to be careful.
          However, it makes buying & selling easy. We viewed our current house on Sunday, back on Mondday, agreed price, and signed on Thursday.
          Easy-peasy.
          The UK process is horrific. Our sale was an utter nightmare.

          1. 40 years of conveyancing made me realise that in England, many people – on both sides – are liars. A seller will tell the purchaser that he wants to move as quickly as possible – but instruct his solicitor ro delay, use second class post etc – because they don’t want to remove their children until the end of the following summer term.

            A buyer will say that he loves the house, has nothing to sell and can move quickly – but, in fact has put in offers on several other places.

            People lie more about buying and selling houses than they do when engaged in adultery. Really.

            One can do it quickly. I had a buyer who contacted me in a Wednesday morning and said he wanted to move in the coming Saturday. The seller was a bit put out but agreed. The two solicitors just got on with things. Easy peasy.

          2. When I sold my previous house, I thought it had sold relatively easily. Woman kept coming round and measuring up (bit of a nuisance, really, but hey ho!). Then she stopped coming. Maybe she’d got all the measurements she needed, but nothing seemed to be happening. Eventually, the estate agent let us know she’d pulled out! Great. What a difference with the second buyer. They thought they’d sold their house, but their buyer pulled out. Nonetheless they took out a bridging loan and exchanged contracts so we completed with my only having had to commute for a week.

    7. Good luck, Bill. My good friend (and former GF) has accepted an offer on her place in Woking, and has put a deposit on a new house in Devon. All appears to be proceeding apace, but the process is causing her many sleepless nights, and – since I’m the one she tends to turn to for advice – the sheer quantity of paperwork involved is mind-boggling. She has two solicitors (wonderful people, obviously) on the case, one to sell, one to buy. Neither strike me as particularly on the ball, and no doubt they’ll take their pound of flesh. I’m rather glad that I merely have a ‘licence to occupy’ this place. Bang out a few hymns every Sunday, have roof over head in return. Simples…

      1. The delays are almost certainly because someone (not necessarily either of the solicitors (well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?)…) wants to delay.

        Part of the “paperwork” problem has been constant interference by successive governments and their ignorant Quangi demanding “consumer protection” – no matter what it costs in forests.

      2. Conveyancing “Solicitors” often aren’t solicitors. They are Legal Execs. or sometimes unqualified. Normal, ordinary conveyancing is simply form-filling. It doesn’t take someone with very much nous to do it – it’s more the timescales that bother them. So some high street firms put in duds who can fill in a form…but not much else,.

        If it is more complicated, obviously the conveyancer needs to be more trained. Hmmm. I don’t do conveyancing myself, but I do know the important things that affect properties, and I think I was badly served by the person who did ours when we moved here – in fact, I changed solicitors while the transaction was going on.

        1. Hi, HL. Her solicitor for the purchase seems unable to understand that she’s a cash buyer. There’s no mortgage involved; the development is on land that clearly has only been used for agricultural purposes since Roman times, and 45 out of 50 properties on the site have now been sold, yet the solicitor has insisted on a disclaimer, since D has declined to pay for any searches. Meanwhile, a two inch thick ‘report’ has turned up. OK – it’s thorough, admittedly, but it’s far more involved than when I last bought a property in 1988.

          1. Searches can show up some very strange restrictions and dealings. Personally I would pay for them, and I would want a disclaimer if someone didn’t have them done.

          2. Fair enough, but the site is virgin agricultural land. There’s an oak tree just opposite her front door, which appears on the First Edition Ordnance Survey map of c. 1881. Nothing has happened on that site since the Romans (the archaeologists dealt with that a few years ago). I’ve just spent the last three hours or so helping with queries from her buyer’s solicitor, most of which are nonsense, and indicative of someone who doesn’t understand their brief. Sigh…

  31. That Little Johnny Again!

    A teacher goes around her class asking each of the kids what do they need at
    home. 1st kid says “A computer”. Teacher replies “That’d be very useful.”
    2nd kid says “A new lawn mower” and gets a similar response.
    Little Johnny pops up and says: ” At my house we don’t need anything.”
    The teacher asks him to think again carefully as everybody needs something
    Little Johnny replies, “Nope I’m sure! When my sister started dating a Muslim,
    I remember Dad saying, “Well, that’s the last fucking thing we need.”

  32. Clacton Pier: Haider Shamas, 18, dies two days after sister

    An 18-year-old man from Luton has died in hospital after getting into difficulty in the sea near Clacton Pier.
    Haider Shamas died last night after an incident earlier this week which saw his 14-year-old sister Malika Shamas drown.
    Haider and two relatives got into difficulty in the sea near to Clacton Pier on Thursday at around 1.40pm and they were all pulled from the sea.
    Another 15-year-old girl is expected to make a full recovery.
    They are understood to have travelled to the seaside resort with a group of around 30 people.

    1. But why did they die?
      I was always under the impressions that you either drowned or you didn’t. If you did it only took a few minutes not a day or two?

      1. Could be secondary drowning.

        When you inhale salt water it irritates the lining of the lungs and even though you have been hauled to safety and are breathing again you aren’t out of the woods.

        The irritated tissues produce fluid that can fill the alveoli and you finish up drowning in your own body’s secretions.

        2. I had read, in the dim distant past, that you stood a better chance of survival if you drowned in salt water rather than fresh water. Do you know if that’s true?

          1. Fresh water fills the body & blood, as these are saltier, ansd osmosis draws in the water. That upsets tge chemical balance.

    2. Rather sad to read, that. I’m quite a strong swimmer but the sea is incredibly powerful – I’ve been turned completely around and hauled about with ease. How a young chap coped against that doesn’t bear thinking of.

    3. Sounds like that incident on the South coast a year or two ago when a party of Sri Lankans died.

    1. What’s wrong with August? Is it that they are not at school and September gives the teachers yet another days holiday

      2. August brings the sheaves of corn, oil seed rape
        Then the harvest home is borne.

        Warm September brings the fruit;
        Sportsmen Immigrants then begin to shoot.

    2. I wonder who that could be ?

      Maybe the individual who apparently strongly influences policy at the UN and the EU.. and who allegedly strongly influenced Obama ?

    3. When I was at school we had a WWF “Save The Panda” campaign. That was fluffy and innocent compared to the mass brainwashing of children today. But many of them do snap out of it when the real world opens up before them.

      I love seeing a picture of a 16 year-old holding a Union Jack or a Conservative or Brexit Party flag. It warms the heart. 🙂

        1. Back in my day it was the World Wildlife Fund (I think,) although from what I have seen of that “sport” that our American cousins call wrestling, they do resemble something that you would find in a zoo.

          2. Ahh, language can be distracting. I had a friend, that I needed to clarify to overseas readers, was not a man of easy virtue nor someone who could be found on street corners after the Sun had faded from the sky.

            His innocent comment was “I’m a Hooker” as the discussion was around sporting hobbies. 🙂

      2. We used to support WWF with a monthly donation……… till we realised they support trophy hunting.

        Have a look at their last financial report on the Charity Commission website and you’ll see they are nothing but a money-grabbing scam.

        3. One of the top bods at WWF was invited to my church a few months back to give an address on environmental issues. When I looked him up, I discovered he’s an investment banker who studied Arabic.

  34. I always think one should have something to look forward to in this life,admittedly this is premised on us actually escaping the clutches of the Evil Empire on Oct 31st

    I want wall to wall coverage on the Al-Beeb of the beaten,twisted failed politicians like Clarke,Heseltine etc etc etc and their utter failure to achieve their lifetime goals,with luck apoplexy will carry them off on screen

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/cf1bd88b4e127dea661240056c14dcc308cbc45cb8500f33e019ef114ea56f6e.jpg

    1. ‘To crush your enemies. To see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women.’ (Having raped them in front of their defeated husbands and sons …)

      The founder of which popular cult told his followers (allegedly) to do these admirable, Godly, things?

  35. Boris Johnson set to lose 50 seats at election unless he forms Brexit Party alliance

    Hard to be sure with the polls all over the place but with the Lib-Dems., Greens, Plaid & SNP likely to form a pact it would be madness for the Conservatives not to do a deal with the Brexit Party

    The catastrophic wipeout would see two cabinet ministers – Environment Secretary Theresa Villiers and Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd – lose their seats, while 35 of the casualties would be Brexiteer MPs. It would leave Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour as the biggest party with 288 seats, opening the door for a Remain alliance with the Lib Dems and SNP. The threat to the Tories from the Brexit Party comes as speculation grows there will be another general election following a no confidence vote in Parliament.

    1. Boris should not declare an election until we are out of the EU. After that he is no longer needed. The Conservative Party has disgraced itsself so badly that nobody in their right minds would want them to stay in power. If Labour wins, so be it.That is the way things go.
      The prospect of Labour in power is too awful to contemplate, so we will have to deal with that when it happens.

      1. T,
        You mean the build up from input over the decades of the lab/lib/con parties until now has been the right way to go ?
        The state of these parties that have had alternating input via the polling booth into the odious state of the nation has not just happened,
        the country has been deteriorating on a daily basis for years, supported & voted for GE after GE.

          2. T,
            Who can deny that to adhere to the same voting pattern WILL bring about the demise of the UK,the last 5 decades have been working up to it.
            Since the mid 70s what way has these Isles
            improved, improved NO, impoverished via the infrastructure YES most definitely.

          4. T,
            Build on a proven pro UK party that has in the past proved it’s loyalty to the country.
            People should ask themselves why does this party receive such a high density hate / smear
            campaign every time it shows success?
            Treachery has never in any shape or form towards the state / peoples been
            revealed, yet the parties in alternating government are, as is being witnessed, riddled with treachery activists.
            UKIP have cornered the moral fibre, self respect market and after a blitzkrieg of sh!te
            are still standing.
            Politically undeservedly battered, but with clean hands in regards to the appalling state of the country.

          5. Your constant belly aching at the lied to electorate ( effect ) does absolutely nothing to address the perpetrators of the lies ( cause ) and is probably deflecting focus away from the cause.

          6. You are constantly repeating this post. If ogga offends you why don’t you block him or ignore him?

          7. The agog1 is victim blaming our electorates for being lied to several times daily, I counter his nonsense on probably less than 50% of those occasions. You obviously share it’s inability to separate cause from effect. Logically, if you’re genuinely offended by my countering its nonsense, you should either block me or you ought to be berating the agog1 for its nonsensical victim blaming.

  37. I was wondering if the immigrants who have been arriving here over the last few decades had been distributed one by one to well-off homes to be servants that this might have gone better than what actually has happened.
    In return for being allowed to be here at all, the immigrants would have had to work as indentured domestic servants. For a period of seven years they would have been required to wear the appropriate livery, observe all curfews, carry out their duties competently, accept training as required, learn to read and write and to do so in English. They would not have been allowed to congregate or to be away from their employer or location of employment overnight.
    On completion of the seven year period a report would be compiled, including assessments by the employer, by medical services and by the police as to their suitability as permanent residents of the UK. If not satisfactory they would be deported immediately without any right of appeal. If satisfactory they would be given a right of abode, and a requirement to work, in the UK for an unlimited period. There would be no automatic right to citizenship, and the right to abode would be terminated immediately upon any conviction.
    I think that would have been more sensible than letting the riff-raff of the planet roll in illegally and be added to the burden of State benefits being paid for by our indigenous population.

      1. Some might well be able to take more than one. If immigrants did not like this arrangement then they would not be allowed in.

        As to servants in general, I am surprised that well off people do not have servants; chauffeurs, cooks, housekeepers, laundry workers, handymen, gardeners, and carriers of shopping.
        Given the number of unemployed graduates in Southern Europe who would probably work for room, board and pocket money, and a useful work training course (management, hospitality, etc) it should be burgeoning.

        If I ever become well-off I’d hire at least one. (We had a number of au pairs. One was truly excellent. From Croatia, the young lady spoke seven languages and was keeping out of the way of trouble during the fighting in the Balkans. Her father was in the Croatian Government. That prompted a visit from the intelligence services in London who sent someone up to vet us. Her letters went via an accommodation address.)

        1. Could you name the building, please? I cannot read the name , even on “click on”.

          1. FCI Cumberland
            14601 Burbridge Road SE

            FCI Cumberland is a medium security Federal Correctional Institute facility operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), a component of the U.S. Department of Justice and has an adjacent minimum security satellite camp. FCI Cumberland houses approximately 1100 medium security male inmates.

    1. Pity that Sweden is such a friendly place. If it had a few enemies with good intentions, it would send over a rocket and flatten the place, along with the “young, ill-tempered men”.

      Any chance of Sweden designating it an adventure resort for Russians?

          2. Jag vet att. Var nu en bra kille sluta använda svenska och upprör de nykomlingar på detta forum! ;•)

          3. Nej, jag vill inte sluta att göra detta. Han är alltid dålig åt mig, så kan han skrika. 😉

          4. Grizzly – I needed to use translate software for that, but you are quite correct. To save anyone else the bother:

            “I know that. Now be a good guy stop using Swedish and upset the newcomers to this forum!”

        3. ” Have you lived in Sweden? It’s not as friendly as you think.”
          Please stop irritating us by showing us your linguistic abilities. If you have a problem with English you can always use google translate.

          1. …& you can do the same if you have a problem with Swedish or German.

            I was addressing Jeremy to see if he really had lived in Sweden, but that possibility seems to have gone right over your head.

          2. This is an English board for English people who like true Englishmen and unlike you, do not persistently show off.

        1. I’m not thinking of them. Rather the Putin-inspired bored youth, training up their manhoods in the gym and bored with taking on other Russians. They relish a bit of challenge, and were quite disappointed when the British football hooligans unsportingly ended up in A&E after just a little tap.

    3. Rinkeby in Sweden today – Britain tomorrow if not already.

      The politicians don’t care for the native indigenous population.

      2. Å rynke in yer Weegie means to be an onanist… always reminds me of that when I hear of Rinkeby… I’ll get me mac.

    5. Thanks for posting. just what future trouble is being stored up. The tip of the iceberg I am afraid.

  39. Good morning all from a bright & dry (for now) Derbyshire.
    Janet Daley raises a valid point:-

    As someone who has lived under the US constitution, trust me – it’s the last thing Britain needs
    JANET DALEY
    10 AUGUST 2019 • 1:00PM

    Any minute now somebody is going to suggest that we need a written constitution. This will be presented as an obvious solution to the farrago currently dominating our politics (or, at least, the media coverage of it) which is, in truth, not a constitutional crisis at all but simply a national argument in which the losing side refuses to accept defeat. 


    But nonetheless, the cry will go up, as it does from time to time whenever a particularly self-regarding Westminster clique sees itself as being marginalised: modern government cannot be conducted on the informal, makeshift basis that has ensured Britain’s ability to adapt to changing circumstances with great fluency for centuries. We need a legally binding document to clarify, without ambiguity, the powers and responsibilities of Parliament, the prime minister, the Cabinet Office, blah-blah. 


    Whoever initiates the proposal this time around will immediately receive blanket coverage on the BBC, the support of innumerable Guardian columnists and the endorsement of the Liberal Democrats. Given how much time and energy we are investing at the moment in trying to define basic terms like “democracy” and “Parliamentary sovereignty”, even quite sensible people might be prepared to give it consideration.

    Then again, perhaps enthusiasm for this idea will be instantly mitigated by recent events on the other side of the Atlantic where the effects of just such a document – with its historic guarantee of the right to bear arms – is having demonstrably catastrophic consequences. The Second Amendment to the US Constitution was devised to protect the new-found states against the danger of a coup by federal government which was seen as a form of proxy for the old colonial ruler. It guaranteed the right of the states to form militias and, as a necessary corollary, of the people to bear arms. It is an almost perfect example of the danger embodied in a written constitution – which is to say, it froze the historic concerns of the time in which it was written, into the unforeseeable future.

    Of course, constitutions may be amended – but only with great difficulty. That’s the whole point. A written constitution is not simply a piece of legislation which may be reversed by a further legislative act: it is the basis for the legality of all acts of government. In the US, not only has the Second Amendment proved almost impossible to amend or even re-interpret (because of hugely influential opposition from the gun lobby and constitutional traditionalists) but new amendments which most progressives favour have proved impossible to pass.

    The most striking (although now largely forgotten) example of this was the 1972 Equal Rights Amendment which would have made discrimination against women unconstitutional. It was passed by the Senate but did not succeed in being ratified by the three quarter of states that were required and so the US, home of the modern feminist movement, never succeeded in amending its constitution to guarantee equality for women.

    Meanwhile Britain, accepting the moral force of the case, passed such legislation in the lifetime of one parliament. Lesson: a document which enshrines the sacred political and cultural principles of the era in which it is composed may not seem like such a great idea a few generations (or even decades) later. This difficulty would be magnified exponentially at the present moment when the question in hand is so contentious. Any new constitutional settlement now would simply be regarded as a coup by one side or the other in the Brexit controversy.

    National constitutions are an attempt to transform the Enlightenment idea of a social contract between government and the people into literal form. That is why they were adopted with such alacrity by the revolutionary republics of the 18th century, usually at seminal points in their histories when there was general agreement on the ideals and objectives of the society that was being born. We are, needless to say, not at such a point. We cannot settle our raging debate with a permanent redefinition of governmental functions: in the great British democratic tradition, it will have to be argued to exhaustion and whichever side proves more convincing will win.

    Having lived under both systems, I promise you this is the better way. Britain has found it remarkably easy in the past to settle the great social questions of the day such as abortion reform, gay rights, and, indeed, gun control primarily because its legislature can respond rapidly and fluidly to changing attitudes without an agonisingly slow (and inherently conservative) constitutional procedure.

    So if it cannot be resolved by some constitutional fiat, where does this leave the Great National Argument? It depends really on how seriously you take its increasingly hysterical tone. Of course, a great deal of the noise from the antagonists in the actual Brexit negotiation is trash talk: the fighters haven’t even got into the ring yet. Maybe this really is a purblind march toward apocalypse, dictated by the vanity of national rulers, like the steps that led to the First World War. But probably not: the vulnerability of elected governments will almost certainly rule this out. Refusing to re-open the Withdrawal Agreement even after it has been rejected by the UK Parliament three times is simply too absurd a notion to sell to European electorates who will have to pay the price of No Deal.

    Meanwhile here at home, the abuse being thrown around is descending into self-parody. Sir Nicholas Soames has described Dominic Cummings as a “functionary” who, like a child, “should be seen and not heard”. And a former Treasury official, Nick Macpherson, has likened Mr Cummings to Thomas Cromwell, advising him that when public servants engage in self-promotion and believe their own myths, it “tends to end badly”. I doubt that we will be seeing Mr Cummings publicly beheaded at the Tower but I am quite sure that an awful lot of public figures are going to make fools of themselves before this is over.

    Robert Spowart 11 Aug 2019 9:30AM
    When people say Britain needs a written constitution they forget one thing, we already have one.
    Granted, it is not neatly wrapped up in a single document in the style of the American Constitution, but rather in a number of documents with the Magna Carta and Bill of Rights being but two of them.
    And therein, perhaps lies its strength as its very diversity protects it from meddling, whether from malicious intent or ill thought out “Good Intentions”.

    1. Having lived under both systems, I promise you this is the better way. Britain has found it remarkably easy in the past to settle the great social questions of the day such as abortion reform, gay rights, and, indeed, gun control primarily because its legislature can respond rapidly and fluidly to changing attitudes without an agonisingly slow (and inherently conservative) constitutional procedure.

      Britain hasn’t settled them at all. They have been imposed by Westminster Diktat mostly against the wishes of the General Population. The American system prevents this by imposing constraints on the powers of Government. Janet’s approval is based on partisanship. She approves of these measures and thus thinks the system that allowed them is superior!

    2. Hot air, and very superficial hot air at that. Neither the USA nor the UK has been particularly well run over the last hundred years or so. But that’s from the point of view of a poor person like me. The only period I could suggest where this was not the case was the 50s/60s. Things improved for bit but have certainly gone downhill to where we are now. There is nothing to choose between the USA and the UK in that respect. Forget democracy and constitutions. They have been and remain irrelevant. What seems to have changed is the nature of the controlling forces.

      1. The final nail in the cofin was the Maastricht Treaty, the international agreement responsible for the creation of the European Union

          2. Kenneth Clarke has been a traitorous dog for years. He should have been deselected long ago.

          3. “Kenneth Clarke has been a traitorous dog for years. He should have been deselected defenestrated long ago.”

          4. “Kenneth Clarke has been a traitorous dog for years. He should have been deselected defenestrated disembowelled long ago.”

          7. This man must be one of the most repulsive and treacherous sub-human beings in the House of Commons.

        2. As The Great Lady said

          MAASTRICHT IS A TREATY TOO FAR

          But silly little John Major signed it with unpatriotic glee just as Gordon Brown furtively slunk into a dark corner and signed the Lisbon Treaty having failed to provide the promised referendum on virtually identical legislation (The European Treaty) which had been voted against in referenda by the Irish, Dutch and French people whose votes were ignored by the politicians. (Though in Ireland the people were humiliated and told to vote again in the face of threats from the EU of what would happen if they got the answer wrong again.)

    2. “Reports suggest that talks have taken place between the Queen’s private
      secretary Edward Young, cabinet secretary Sir Mark Seawall and Mr
      Johnson’s principal private secretary Peter Hill.”

      “Seawall”?

    3. Politicians to govern properly i.e. in the interests of the people and the nation state. Now there’s a novel idea.

  41. From John Redwood.

    Power outages

    Posted: 10 Aug 2019 11:45 PM PDT

    I am glad there will be an urgent review of what went wrong with the power system.

    It appears from the records that there was a 740 MW drop in gas
    generated power supply (Little Barford) and a 1000 MW fall in wind
    supply (Hornsea) in quick succession. This was followed five minutes
    later by a 1000 MW increase in pumped storage supply, presumably the
    quickest acting power that could be brought on. This all took place
    against the background of relatively low summer demand for electric
    power which meant there was plenty of potential capacity available. It
    is also interesting that though we are using well below domestic
    capacity levels of electricity we are tending to import power from
    France, Belgium and the Netherlands anyway.

    Questions for the review should include

    Now the system is running on high percentages of renewables when the
    weather permits, does it have enough quick acting stand by plant for
    when the wind drops or sun goes in? If not can we rapidly remedy this
    defect?

    Why do we continue to import when we are well below capacity? What
    account is taken of the different fuel mixes and subsidy patterns for
    continental power which includes fossil fuel power in its mix?

    Given the use of pump storage, how long did the outages last and why did they last as long as they did?

    Why did the wind power fail, given the current size and the planned large expansion of this new plant?

    The government also needs to ask the railway industry why it was
    unable to quickly adjust services and get trains running as soon as the
    power was restored.

    1. “Lessons will be learned” apparently. If so, it means that those running the National Grid must have forgotten an awful lot.

      1. When bureaucrats say that “lessons will be learned”, they generally mean that “lessons will be identified”. Lessons are seldom actually learned.

  42. Like this froggy’s style – give him a seat in Boris’s Brexit Cabinet sub-committee

    No-deal lorry mayhem at Dover and Calais? ‘C’est la bullsh**’ replies French ports chief AEP – 11 August – 2:07pm

    The head of the French channel ports has dismissed warnings of Brexit chaos on the Dover-Calais trade route as irresponsible scare-mongering by political agitators.

    “The British authorities have been doing a great deal to prepare. People say they are asleep but I can assure you that they are highly professional and they are ready,” said Jean-Marc Puissesseau, president of Port Boulogne Calais.

    “There are certain individuals in the UK who are whipping up this catastrophism for their own reasons. This has provoked a lot of concern but basically ‘c’est la bullsh**’. Nothing is going to happen the day after Brexit,” he told The Telegraph.

    “Britain will be a third country, that’s all, and there is no reason why this should lead to any problems. If both sides do their homework traffic will be completely fluid,” he said.

    Mr Puissesseau, an anglophile and horse-race afficionado, said alarmist stories of thirteen-mile lorry jams across Kent are based on twisted assumptions by people who do not know what they are talking about, or in some cases the result of distortion by particular interests with an axe to grind.

    However, he acknowledged that a no-deal Brexit in March would have been a hair-raising experience. “That would have been a huge problem because nobody believed it was going to happen and they were all dragging their feet. But we have seven more months and this time they are getting ready,” he said.

    The comment may raise eyebrows in the Brexit camp. Dominic Cummings, Downing Street’s political enforcer, has accused hard-core Remainers in the May cabinet of sabotaging efforts to prepare for a hard rupture if necessary. The alleged intention was to force acceptance of the Withdrawal Agreement by raising the political cost of a no-deal to prohibitive levels.

    But the European side was not ready either. Brussels knew that the British government had no intention of walking away – a point made clear by Martin Selmayr, head of the European Commission’s Task Force 50, in a Panorama documentary – so preparations ranged from dilatory to non-existent in most countries. This too is now changing.

    “I have just received a delegation of Polish hauliers – and they are the most important in Europe – and I can tell you that they are perfectly up to speed on everything that has to be done,” said Mr Puissesseau.

    He insisted that the extra steps for freight transport in a WTO-Brexit are not as complicated as critics claim. “Look, if you want to travel as a passenger to the UK you already need a passport. That’s completely normal. Travellers do this all the time. This is what will happen with customs declarations,” he said.

    Roughly 30pc of the lorries from Dover to Calais currently travel empty (a sign of serious imbalances in the UK’s bilateral trade relationship with the EU). “They will go straight to the green line and won’t need any clearance. Another 60pc of the does not carry material that needs to be checked,” he said.

    “Every now and then we will have to stop a haulier at Calais but not many. If we find some with the wrong paperwork in the first days: we’ll tell them you are bad boys, don’t do it again,” he said.

    The Calais authorities have good reason to play down any concerns. There are signs that alarmist stories over Channel chaos is diverting slivers of the port’s £120bn annual trade to container shipping from Antwerp and Zeebrugge in Belgium, and the Humber ports in the UK. These routes have a lower carbon footprint and may make more sense for some destinations than the congested land corridor whatever happens over Brexit.

    Data from HMRC shows that only 70,000 out of a total 240,000 British companies that currently export to the EU have applied for a European economic operator registration and identification number (EORI), which will be needed immediately after a no-deal.

    However, the EORI issue is a red herring. The HMRC says it takes five to ten minutes to apply online. You can then obtain it immediately. Most of the firms that have yet to apply are small. Together they make up just a quarter of UK exports to Europe.

    But the EORI number alone is not enough. “It is just a building block to identify you for customs formalities. The much bigger issues are the import and export documents needed for every shipment,” said Duncan Buchanan, policy director of the Road Haulage Association.

    “If everybody turns up in Calais with the right documents there will be no problems but even today you cannot find out from the government what you need and what qualifies you for ‘lorry ready’. It’s an information black hole. Some people may have to engage a customs clearance agent,” he said.

    “If decisive, clear action is taken now, and if we get the right information into everybody’s hands, we can minimize the disruption and we will recover more quickly, but there will still be disruption,” he said.

    1. ” have just received a delegation of Polish hauliers – and they are the most important in Europe”

      Those are the ones that get well tanked up on spirits before they are able to face the horror of British motorways I assume.

    2. Duncan Buchanan of the Road Haulage Association said “…even today you cannot find out from the government what you need and what qualifies you for ‘lorry ready’. It’s an information black hole. Some people may have to engage a customs clearance agent.“

      Brilliant, Mr Buchanan! Ask someone who knows what they’re bl**dy well talking about!

      Edit:
      It was Jean-Marc Puissesseau who upset the BBC in January by suggesting that their predictions of chaos at the ports were foolish.

      1. Just so. I was responsible for exports to Switzerland as well as the EU. We used a shipping agent to book flights and do the bumf. Easy, professional and cheap. The only time that we had a problem was when Swissair “bounced” our load for the equipment of a rock band travelling as passengers. My letter of complaint pointing out that we despatched several pallets by air every week was responded to with singular indifference. Well, Swissair subsequently went out of business.

  44. The DT reports today: “Ballet dancers leading a backlash against plans to force Britain’s arts scene to become more diverse”
    A backlash against diversity? They must be racists!

    It is worth remembering why the country is infected with the diversity virus.

    From the DT 23 October 2009

    “The huge increases in migrants over the last decade were partly due to a politically motivated attempt by ministers to radically change the country and “rub the Right’s nose in diversity”, according to Andrew Neather, a former adviser to Tony Blair, Jack Straw and David Blunkett.

    “He said Labour’s relaxation of controls was a deliberate plan to “open up the UK to mass migration” but that ministers were nervous and reluctant to discuss such a move publicly for fear it would alienate its “core working class vote”.

    “As a result, the public argument for immigration concentrated instead on the economic benefits and need for more migrants.
    “Critics said the revelations showed a “conspiracy” within Government to impose mass immigration for “cynical” political reasons.”

    It was also reported that “The Asian vote was split about 50 per cent for Labour, 10 per cent Conservatives and 15 per cent Liberal Democrats”.

    Blair did so much irreparable damage to this country that I don’t know how he dare show himself in public.

        1. Morning Anne,
          As with the hydras head lop it off and two grow back the lab/lib/con coalition party
          proves that.
          Lop one, get two.

        2. What would be a suitable punishment to make him really suffer? I suggest two days in the stocks and then hung, drawn and quartered in reverse order!

      2. Tony wanted the lovely lolly, he cared not from whence it came. He was paid to effect globalism, he cared not about the results of globalism.

    3. There is noting at all to suggest Migrants benefits the UK either financially or culturally in fact all the evidence suggest that they overwhelm our services and add to the housing shortage and suppress pay

      Many students though seem to have been brainwashed into think otherwise. Many have no sense at all. One was on the radio suggesting house prices need to fall by 70% which would take them way below the cost to build them. The average gross profit builders make on a home is less than 10

      Outside of London and the South East you can easily by a home for £200,000 so 70% off of that is it comes down to £60,000 in some parts of the UK they would be almost giving them away if they came down by 70%. The reality is they cannot fall by that unless pay and material costs also come down by 70% and that’s simply not going to happen

      The reality is that house prices have gone up due to mass migration. You see the same in Germany, Sweden etc

    4. Morning Q,
      Let us keep in mind it was b liar initially then the mass uncontrolled immigration baton was pass over and run with by other parties on gaining power, that power given them by the electorate, again& again.

      1. You can victim blame the electorate for being lied to until the cows come home, it won’t alter the fact that the perpetrators of the lies are the guilty ones.
        And it is directly analogous to blaming girls for falling victim to ‘grooming gangs’.

        1. Firstly, it is absolutely not analogous. Secondly, it is apposite to point out that the electorate had years to see what was happening and still voted for the same to continue.

          1. Ah right, so the electorate is made up of exactly the same personnel now, indoctrinated to exactly the same level as it has been .. forever, I hadn’t realised that!
            /sarc.
            And yes, blaming the effect, instead of the cause, is directly analogous.

    5. Why would Blair care? The massive immigrant vote exists to give his party a massive electoral support. They also need vast amounts of state services, police intervention and social services, translators, lawyers (through the equalities act) and the whole hangers on industries needed to keep fractious, arrogant, unemployable, divisive and often violent people happy and vaulted away from the law abiding employed majority who pay for it all.

  45. When Disqus removes whatever it is going to remove at the end of the month, will that include all the posts that we have made into NOTTL?
    If so is there any way of saving these that does not involve copying and pasting them individually? Is there a quick way to save old comments in bulk?

    1. I think as we are still using Disqus for our comments and our accounts still work, then we will still have our posts on our records.

      1. Yo Jules. I’m hoping you’re right. Everyone’s Profile page has all their posts there, but there’s no guarantee that – come 31 August – the posts on NTTL won’t disappear.

        I’ve taken the precaution of printing out all the ‘Banned Users’ from the old site, since I don’t expect to be able to access the list after this month.

          2. I think I’m right in saying that I have been banned and blocked on this blog more than any other individual.

            I’m just waiting for Sir to confirm it…

        2. Good idea. We’ll have to go through the trusted list as well and add people. There were lots of trolls on the banned list.

  46. How an affluent suburb is being terrorised by brazen robbers who WANT owners to be at home: Violent thieves wield machetes to smash down front doors before demanding victim’s hand over their valuables. Mail 11 August 2019.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6f75fcc416d5fac492c440def5a7f3d53fc44b6febb51e78bd36969f29c7206a.jpg

    Using a battering ram, it took a matter of seconds for the intruders, armed with machetes and iron bars, to gain entry. By the time Mr Dutton-Parish, an historian, put his glass down and ran inside to investigate, they were already moving between rooms like a SWAT team.

    Unlucky for them that Mr Dutton-Parish was entertaining guests? Not at all. In all likelihood the gang knew exactly who was inside as they had watched them arrive.

    This is well worth reading for the large number of first hand reports which unusually for the Mail imply a truthful narrative. Just another step on the road to Criminal Chaos.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7344951/How-affluent-suburb-terrorised-brazen-robbers-WANT-home.html

    1. It is poetic justice that it is starting to hit the prosperous areas, inhabited by the very people who have done so much to enrich and diversify us, emasculating the police and the justice systems and creating this dystopian world we are seeing flourish.

      1. Afternoon N,
        As with much of the truth which I am sad to say many peoples prefer, being in the three monkey mode is their comfort zone.
        It is circulating now and making room for the next one.

  48. Son no 2 lives on Worthing seafront.. What do you think of this palaver then?

    Worthing pier is evacuated and sealed off after mystery ‘hazardous materials incident’: Tourists start vomiting and flee with burning eyes after suspected ‘chemical spill’ in Sussex
    Police cordoned off the seafront in Worthing due to a chemical substance
    The unknown chemical is making people vomit and causing eye problems
    It comes two years after a mystery cloud hospitalised 150 people in Beachy Head
    Were you in Worthing and affected? Email jack.a.newman@mailonline.co.uk

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7346219/Public-told-close-windows-doors-hazardous-cloud-leaves-seafront-visitors-vomiting.html

      1. The pair of them are feeling fine , but wondered what all the fuss was when they viewed everything from their balcony .. lots of police, including bods in haz suits etc .. Also police were using a drone . Perhaps a gas discharge from a ship maybe?

    5. Probably the wind has shifted and is now coming from the east and blowing in the toxic cloud of smug self-righteousness and moral superiority from the right-on alphabet pervs in Brighton.

  50. How come the farmers union is so worried about a no deal brexit, yet they have nothing to say on the latest UN climate change project fear about cutting meat from our diets?

    1. Coz they think that if they squeal loud enough, they can get oodles of dosh from the taxpayer for the former (and there should be transitional relief/subsidy as CAP payments are eliminated) but not for the latter imagined threat.

  51. Off back to the Proms soon. Last night a guy interrupted the opening bars of Bruckner 4 by very loudly singing the chorus of Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi”. “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone, they paved paradise to put up a parking lot”. He then demanded to know why he was being evicted from the hall. Extinction Rebellion, I heard – but no official confirmation of that.

      1. Went to a concert in the Barbican some years back, Schubert & Bruckner 4.
        My thoughts were the Schubert was sublime and the Bruckner brutal.

        Despite evoking the sensation of being hit repeatedly behind the ear with a sockfull of wet sand, Bruckner nevertheless, still draws you in and leaves you emotionally exhausted at the sudden and very abrupt end.

    2. He’s not wrong on that score (no pun intended), but I doubt his solutions would be the same as ours.

    3. Just goes to show what you can learn on here.

      “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone, they paved paradise to put up a parking lot”.

      I’m a Joni M. fan, but for years I’ve been hearing that as “the Pink Paradise…”

  52. That’s me for the day. A day suddenly filled (briefly) with hope! The strong sunshine and warmth has been replaced by a typical English summer evening – cloudy, windy and decidedly chilly!

    A demain. Have a good evening.

  53. Evening all. Looking at the lead photo of HMS Duncan. That’s one very large boat to carry such a little gun.

    2. That’s a standard BAE 4.5 inch naval gun.
      The type 45 destroyer also carries the Sea Viper and Aster 15/30 missile systems, plus 2 x 30mm Oerlikon cannon and a Phalanx point defence system. I believe its also been retrofitted to take the Harpoon anti ship missile system too.

      1. When I first read it onTB’s post I thought it was referring to the destruction of our civilisation and potential wars resulting from immigration -wsn’t sure about the image of the innundation of Tower Bridge though possibly metaphorical. It was onlly when I read on & TB mentioned the Green Party that I realised I had competely misinterpreted the message.

    5. I can’t make my mind up about this:-
      What is worse, a ” think tank ” or an ” activist ” ?

  57. Totally awesome thread from Brian Cates today about Don, the Swamp, wot’s in the pipeline etc……

    Just one tweet of this….

    Brian Cates @drawandstrike

    “The second reason is that in the past 6 months it’s been shown to the political elite class that Trump is 100% serious about exposing **everything the elites were doing**. With RussiaGate, U1, Epstein, all of it. He’s not playing. HE’S SERIOUSLY GOING TO DO IT.”

    3. It’s just regular fossil fuel (whose origin is solar energy) that Princess Greta has peed upon.

          1. I don’t know about having a pee, but to Greeniacs, they probably see sunshine when Grotty Thunderbug has a number 2.

    4. Hydrogen. It burns well producing water and if you’re not careful 💥💥💥
      It’s also useful for 🎈🎈🎈

      1. And the most common way of producing commercial quantities is by starting with natural gas and stripping out it’s carbon atoms. Guess where they go? Yep, into the atmosphere.

        1. Just looked at that process. Appears that it’s very difficult to get away from carbon whichever path is taken, including renewable energy – steel and concrete production etc.

          3. The only way “sorta” green approach would be a nuke power station with a huge electrolysis plant next door. – once built of course. To get the volumes needed it would have to use seawater and then there’s chlorine to deal with. No easy answers anywhere – unless we want isotope powered cars, that is. Can you imagine the insurance premiums? And the Ruskies seem to be having the odd issues as well.

            p.s. Burning wood pellets is far from “renewable”. The only difference between burning pellets or coal is the age of the trees involved. And the fact that coal could be dug out of the ground in Britain, but pellets are shipped in oil burning ships from the US where trees are cut down to produce them. Never mind, Greta will save mankind…

    6. “At Good Energy, we believe there’s a cleaner way to supply gas, which is why we offer carbon neutral gas. This is made up of two parts – to start with, 6% of the gas we source is biogas. This is produced by breaking down organic matter such as farm waste and unicorn droppings, putting to use potent greenhouse gases such as methane that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere.

      At the other end of the journey, we neutralise the emissions from the rest of the gas our customers use by investing in verified carbon reduction schemes in Malawi, Vietnam and Nepal. So by choosing Good Energy, you’re supporting other communities around the world to access clean energy, too.”

      Slightly edited…

    7. What the hell is this unscientific b*ll*cks they are spouting ?
      Has no-one told these charlatans about the fundamental scientific principle of “conservation of mass” i.e. matter cannot be created or destroyed ? All fuels are “carbon neutral” because there is exactly the same mass of carbon in existence after you burn them than there was before !!

      1. C’mon, Doc. You don’t have to support the man-made atmospheric warming theory to understand the distinction they’re making in respect of CO2 released from fossil fuels and that which is continually circulated through the carbon cycle.

  59. Surprisingly, it seems to have dropped out of the news lately. But it’s not long since Project Fear was spouting horror stories about stock-piling food in case of a no deal Brexit. The NDB looks imminent, but not a word about stockpiling.
    It just came to mind as I went a walk down our street. Not a cat in sight. Lady two doors down asked if I had seen her Tiddles, who had disappeared.
    A similar thing two streets away. This one is a dog street. And all the dogs had disappeared, and all the residents in a panic.
    Nothing in the media, but rumours abound that these animals had been transported to an Asian warehouse in London.
    At least the take-aways there will still be open if all else fails.

  60. Prevening, everyone. Been an awful day here; wet, windy and COLD 🙁 Hope you have fared better.

      1. Good evening D

        Moh has just watered the garden , the plants in their pots were gasping , and the prize dahlias were wilting .
        Has been very gusty and quite chilly.

        We took the dogs to Arne , our usual walk , the smell of the heather in flower is sublime .. the rain a few days ago must have done the heath a world of good ..sadly hardly any bees , no martins , no swallows nothing ..

        2. We saw swallows and housemartins flying low (heralding this afternoon’s rain) over the fields whilst walking the dog this morning, Belle, so they are still around, just. And I have seen more bees this year.

          1. Loads of time for swallows and martins to be around yet.

            Ours have just hatched their second clutch this week. Unfortunately we’ve had three days of almost solid rain and all five chicks were at the edge of the nest this afternoon begging for food from parents who were nowhere to be seen because they were off hunting for the few insects that would be on the wing in this weather. Normally the chicks would be sitting out of sight, huddled in the nest. It’s not a good sign that they are out in the open like that.

            The swallows will be here well into September, or maybe October for those that have bred a third clutch.

        3. Being boastful we’ve done well with butterflies.
          It is still very dry; this evening, MB and I have been revelling in the rare sound of rainfall.

          1. This year I’ve seen more Painted Ladies than usual, but fewer Peacocks, Red Admirals and Tortoiseshells.

    3. Third day of rain here and it’s forecast to be heavy until breakfast time tomorrow. River is in flood and there are flood warnings in the county.

      Bloody August.

      It’s hardly stopped raining since May.

        1. If only. It was the 25th June she announced that and June was wet with the occasional bright spell

    4. First day (afternoon) of rain here, it has been very dry for days. Absolute downpour (stair-rods) with hail, thunder and lightening; a river of water running down the gravel path from the church in front of our house down to the duck pond. The temperature has dropped. Yesterday was the day chosen for our family bbq – the windiest day of the year. We ate inside but the poor old bbq-er had to grin and bear it in a sheltered spot outside. The wind was so gusty (and gutsy) that it blew one of our apple trees completely over. It must have been there for fifty years as we have been here for forty years. Sad to see it go.

      1. Too much foliage and a heavy crop, I presume? When I arrived at Church this morning, one of the congregation said it was only 15 degrees on her car thermometer. Friday and Saturday it bucketed down. Friday there was thunder to accompany it.

      2. We have a bbq at the curling club in January. It can be below minus fifteen and the poor souls are sent outside to barbeque their steaks. It can be quite frustrating, a barbeque has just about no chance of heating up enough to cook things properly.

        1. I once attended a bbq in Germany in March. Overcoats, boots, & snow on the ground.

      3. Don’t give up on the tree quite yet. There was one mature apple tree in the orchard next door which blew over in the 1980s, and continue to grow sideways using the roots still in the ground. The apples are a lot easier to pick.

        If there is space, just give it a good prune in the winter.

    5. We were promised a wonderful weekend, mid-80’sF. clear blue skies and NO humidity, which after many 95 degs days with high humidity, they (the forecasters) for once are correct.

    6. No, thanks all the same. Yesterday there was a brief period in the afternoon when I was able to get to the supermarket with the car top down. It started raining again in the evening and has been raining since. It is now getting dark. Rain forecast for tomorrow and for eight of the next ten days. It has rained every day for the last fortnight. Ho hum.

    1. No, motorways won’t become congested, because there will be no point breeding sheep, cattle, pigs, chickens etc. No farmer will breed these animals just for people to look at them in ‘petting farms’.
      Edit – missed out ‘no’!

  63. BBC News has a video on Scunthorpe ( the British Steel town ) interviewing young people who live there.

    Deliberately constructed to make Scunthorpe look a shit hole and the kids look dumb, it has twice normal size

    subtitles throughout. I had no problem understanding what they were saying – it sounded like English to me – but

    I assume this was done by by some producer down South who just spoke London posh like.

    I do get a bit sick of the BBC. Effing snobs they are.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-49287619/give-scunthorpe-a-chance

    3. People who I have met from Lincolnshire regularly tell me that the Lincolnshire accent is the most neutral in England, lacking both northern and southern characteristics.

      1. The Lincolnshire accent was muted by all of the refugees from London and has now been compromised further with a combinational of Polish and other eastern European languages.

      2. Nah Grizz. The West Country accent is pretty neutral. I have kept mine but when I visit relatives in Somerset even my rustic Bathonian timbre is considered posh.

        This despite spending three years at University in Sheffield and thirty five years in central London mixing with and addressing all manner of supposedly superior individuals speaking in posh tones and down at me.

        The one accent we now consider the most untrustworthy happens to be the Scottish, this following a total reversal following the Fred the Shred and associated banking scandals. Hitherto every banking advertisement utilised a Scottish voiceover because it was considered a mark of reliability and truthfulness.

        1. Oh, come on, Corim, “Oi’ll give it foive” and “Oi am a zoider drinker” are not what I’d call neutral. To everyone else in England, the West Country (including your home town, Baaaaaath) is quite distinct.

          Apparently Lincolnshire was picked out sometime after the war as having a “bland” accent with no distinguishing features: a sort of “standard English” without any heavy dialectic overtones. The fact that the home of ‘yellowbellies’ has been overrun by Mockneys will not alter its character.

          As for Sheffield: I’ve never heard anyone in a film or play, purporting to be from Sheffield, speak with anything resembling a Sheffield accent, which is very distinct. “Duss da gnaw Tawn-eh?’ (Do you know Tony?). Sheffield is very different from the “standard” Yorkshire. The “thees”, “thars” and “tha’ what?” of Yorkshire are replaced by “dee”, “dar” and “da what?” in Sheffield. We Chesterfield folk routinely refer to Sheffielders as “Dee-dars”. Point of fact: the only genuine Sheffield accent heard on television is that of Sheffielder, Sean Bean.

          3. What the BBC refers to as ‘The North’, ie the Leeds/Manchester axis, is in the midlands (ie half-way down England) when you’re up here.

    4. It would be worth a look, just to see how a town goes about interviewing young people.

        1. “Their” agenda is to make fewer and fewer people actually able to think – let alone enunciate their thoughts. Take us all down to the lowest common denominator – and then let us slave for them.

          1. “Critical-thinking” skills, and learning to question those who tell you what to believe, do not seem to be high on the agenda these days. One of our English teachers had us reading “1984” when we were 13 years old. It was obviously not on the teaching plan, but he wanted us to be able to think for ourselves and to question authority. He also had us reading “A Wizard of Earthsea” which deals with the nature of good and evil within ourselves and how to face up to “darkness.” Also at 13 years.

            He looked one of those old-time prophets from “The 10 Commandments” and had a beard that you could lose a badger in. He was a good man. 🙂

        2. It’s a free country. Nobody is forcing you to watch the dross commonly known as the BBC, or listen to BBC radio or read BBC news.

          There are legal ways to avoid having to have a TV licence which would cut out most of the dross as you wouldn’t watch it.

          1. Thayaric – I assure you that I have not watched a BBC news program in over a decade. The only program that I did watch was “This Week” as Andrew Neil could be quite good at ripping delusional lefties apart if the mood took him.

          2. Please tell me what the legal ways are to avoid having to have a TV licence and be able to watch live TV in the UK (being in gaol, a pensioner, or otherwise being exempt does not count).

          3. If you value watching live TV you should pay for a licence yet many people don’t because Crapita have no right of access to your property and you can rightly tell their heavies to get lost. Why watch live TV? Is there ever anything on actually worth watching? You can always use catch-up services for all channels except for BBC iplayer if there is something that you really want to watch that’s not a BBC programme.

          4. You have not answered my question, probably because you know that you were bull-shining.

          5. I did answer your question. If you value watching live TV you should pay for the TV licence. Is that not clear enough for you?

            It’s perfectly legal to delay watching TV shows as they are broadcast and watching them via catch-up/on demand services instead and for that you do not need a TV licence except for the sole exception of BBC iPlayer which since 2016 you have needed a licence to watch unless you are using it to catch up S4C programmes in which case you do not.

            If you want to watch TV as it is broadcast in theory you need a licence. In practice you don’t because there’s no real enforcement. Crapita visit over 3.5M addresses each year and are granted around 100 search warrants each year and they do not break down your door as that is against BBC policy and they have to catch you in the act of watching live TV at the time of the visit, i.e. it’s near impossible for them to prove their case sufficiently. They rely on your fear of their threat.

          6. You did not answer the question to which a truthful answer would have been that there is no legal way to avoid having to have a TV licence and watch live TV in the UK.

          9. An hour ago you wrote “there are legal ways to avoid having to have a TV licence” (to watch BBC programmes). Now you write “If you want to watch [BBC] TV as it is broadcast in theory you need a licence. In practice you don’t because there’s no real enforcement“.

            So you have now made it perfectly clear that there are not any legal ways, just that penalties for illegal watching are not enforced. So that makes any illegal actions you make somehow legal? Enri d’Aith is quite right – you are bull-shining.

          10. I never said you don’t need a TV licence to watch BBC programmes, in fact I have said quite the opposite. I did however point out that because enforcement is a joke many people do claim no need for a TV licence yet continue watching live TV.
            I said there are legal ways to use a TV set without having to need a licence. I haven’t had a TV licence in 8 years, i mostly watch Netflix or use on-demand services. There’s simply so little on TV channels that’s worth watching. I’m currently binge watching Lucifer. Much better than anything on BBC, and if there’s an ITV show or Channel 4 show i fancy seeing I’ll delay watching it until I can watch it on catch-up TV.

          14. Why don’t you just give over? Thayaric, to whom I addressed the question, is quite capable of answering himself or not as he wishes, and he doesn’t need you to interfere.

          16. The BBC claims to represent Britain (it does not) and to be impartial (it is not). Given its status, we have every right to complain about its monstrous intellectual and moral conceit, and its campaigns of misinformation and prejudice, whether or not we pay the licence fee.

          18. If enough people took a stand over the licence fee then it’ll have to go commercial to survive, yet most of you keep coughing up the dough year in year out.

          20. Who’s listening to your complaints though? Money talks, it’s the only thing they listen to. The BBC charter says they have to be impartial. Yeah right. Who’s holding them accountable for being as bent as a nine bob note.

          21. It will take more than a fee-payers strike to bring the BBC to account. Serious political action is required, however difficult that may be.

      2. How many BBC “employees” are married to BAME partners?

        Edit: employees put in quotation marks – they aren’t technically and legally for tax purposes employees, are they? But they are, when it comes to wimmin wanting as much as overpaid men.

  64. My eyes are overflowing. Listening to BBC R3’s Words & Music and they’ve just had The Yetties with, I think, Bonnie Sartin reciting Linden Lea to the Rv_W tune being played in the background.
    I was lucky to see them do that live a decade or so ago.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0007k53

    1. Prom BBC4 Tristan and Isolde on now. Sublime.

      I would gladly bin everything else by Wagner …

      1. Someone said that he had been listening to a Wagner opera for three hours and then looked at his watch to find out that only fifteen minutes had passed.

        1. About 3 summers ago I sat through the entire Ring over a week.

          No need to do it again.

          3. Let’s hope so. But worse still was when I was invited by a German friend to a performance of Lohengrin on a hot summer’s evening in Düsseldorf. He insisted we had to wear a suit & tie, but when we got there everybody was in t-shirt & jeans.

          4. I saw Parsifal, in a modern version,sent out to various cinemas as it happened.

            Weird, but the music was wonderful.

    3. A police spokesperson said that they had been able to obtain a quantity of lamb chops, lamb steaks and lamb mince. “That’ll keep our canteen going for some time”, he added.

  67. Night night, lovely Nottlers,

    I get so tired so early. Then I have to try to catch up the next day, on what was posted the previous day.

    I may reply to some posts at around 4-5 a.m.

      1. Sorry, I’ve been out all day so far. No I didn’t get anything in my inbox but for some reason it was in my junk. Will do and have replied.

          1. For the record…I asked to be removed from the email list that Herts has for us. Though i have been in contact and met people for drinks and lunches some of the others are…………….

    2. “Why are we watching a blank TV screen Ada?”
      “There’s a power cut Bert!”

    3. Ada, ” why do we have to watch the porn channel every night “.

      Bert ” You pinched the remote batteries for your vibrator”.

  71. I wish posters would post in English. All of this Swedish and German stuff is irritating. My wife is fluent in French and German and whilst dismissive of the supposed language experts on here, agrees with me. Who in England have a command of Swedish? So what is the point?

    1. A very good point Corimmobile.

      It was raised earlier but it appears to be a long time poster who thinks more about his stolen Laura Ashley and Jam making pot than he does of all the other people on this site. Including the person he stole them from.

      1. Curiously I actually completed Laura Ashley stores in Beccles, Chester and Wrexham. They were a poor outfit to deal with and I was obliged to quit after several abortive ventures which cost me a small fortune. They are run by Malaysians, which probably explains this unfortunate circumstance.

        I doubt that anyone with our experience would bother with them

          1. Take a look at Tripadvisor first. Just so your expectations are met.

            Wouldn’t want you to waste your money on a concept where the originator has been dead since 1985.

          2. It was The Chace Hotel, and in an area between nice people and scum. We will see how it goes. (Lots of nice people here in Cov. And
            Kenilworth, Leamington Spa, and Stratford-upon Avon are not far away. )

          3. Oh. i do apologise. I didn’t realise there was such a differentiation between the classes where you live.

            I had the pleasure of living in Edgbaston with a four bed detached overlooking the …oh never mind. You wouldn’t want to go there now without an armoured car.

        2. You have been around a bit.

          When the Brands get bought out it is all cheapened.

          ‘Our experience’… ?

    3. Why not, as many on here don’t seem to have a full command of English.

      Besides, there are at least 4 who enjoy bantering in various forms of Scandinavian.

          1. It takes all sorts. I am just surprised, having followed comments for several years, that some seem to think that we are interested in their oblique language references which most of us (common folk) cannot immediately comprehend.

            If I lived in Sweden I would be making a hasty retreat. The place is about to be overtaken by ruddy Muslims. These folk need to clue up quickly and get the hell out of there.

          2. Is, was and is a Mod including the Boss. Foolish as that is.

            I have met several people from this site for lunch or for a trip to one of these pop up Ale houses that have begun to appear in our towns.

            People who appreciate a good drink or nice food. Unlike the invaders.

        2. Guess what: I don’t really care. Just a bit surprised that you have lowered yourself to being so acrimonious.

      2. A full command of English is not a requisite. Your attempts of bamboozling people is waining. Jampot pan thief !

  72. There is still some uncertainty about who has the real power in the EU..

    The answer, imho, of course is the individual who knows everything, and who can prove it should he need to do so.

  73. Apologies if mentioned previously, but Guardian article mentions David Lammy’s concern about shackles and restraints used on hundreds of deportees from UK. Evidently ‘chilling’ figures reveal abuse of power by authorities.

    Wonder if anyone else is bothered?

    2. The deportees may be a bit upset about it. But they will be able to take them off when they get to Somalia.

      1. Most of them arrive in refrigerated lorries, so they can go home the same way.

        Always start as you mean to go on.

      1. Don’t be silly, Polly.

        He’s small snuff. He wandered around Afghan in a robe and met his dealers and now he is about to be history.

          1. If you know that then make a stand. We on here would all support you. Seeds and things. Most people have some sand paper around and we could possibly run to a small mirror.

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