Sunday 14 August: Does the country need another three weeks of the Tory leadership contest?

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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608 thoughts on “Sunday 14 August: Does the country need another three weeks of the Tory leadership contest?”

    1. Mongo regularly does that. The right thing to do is to sit on the steps and wait him out.

    2. Oscar is clearly an urban dog; he’s happy to go for walks on pavements and tarmac, but distinctly reluctant in fields and woods. He hasn’t got to the stage of lying down yet, thankfully.

    1. Ah, but then we wouldn’t have the underpinnings of the digital ID system in place . . .

  5. Britain should prepare for a nuclear war. 14 August 2022.

    During the Cold War, there was education for the public on what to do in the event of a nuclear attack. Some will remember the black and white BBC cartoons: far from terrifying our parents and grandparents, they gave them some reassurance. But to be more resilient to a nuclear attack, we need to rethink our entire strategy. The Local Resilience Forums proved their worth during the pandemic, and should be strengthened to cover nuclear as well. We must restore the knowledge and equipment we enjoyed during the Cold War that have fallen into abeyance. We could follow the model of the Nordic countries, South Korea and Singapore, which have prepared networks of shelters and kits. Even school children are trained in how to react to a strike.

    I think it was called Protect and Survive and like most looney government programs it eventually died of public indifference. As to building shelters that ought to have been undertaken fifty years ago. It’s a little late now.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/08/13/britain-should-prepare-nuclear-war/

    3. The Swiss did legally prepare for a nuclear war by requring authorities to build underground shelters to house the whole population.
      However a test trial of one of the facilities showed that in practice it wouldn’t work as recently reported on Yesteday’s Abandoned Engineeering.

      https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/society/in-case-of-emergency_the-forgotten-underground-world-of-swiss-bunkers/42395820

      It is now a tourist attraction just like the ‘secret’ UK one at Kelvedon Hatch:

      https://secretnuclearbunker.com/

      1. WE have bomb shelters all over Norway. Only a decade or so ago did the authorities remove the requirement for new buildings to be built with shelters. A house we looked at buying, and the block of flats where we rented at the time both had bomb shelters, with big doors, storage, and an emergecy exit out at the back.

        1. Morning, Herr Oberst.
          And have they planned for what happens as the survivors stumble out into the post-nuclear world?

          2. Apart from the occasional dog or cat sheltering with their owners, are there any plans for farm animals to be protected?

        2. If there was a Nuclear war, I suspect a back passage evacuation point would be put to frequent use!

      3. Ohh, here’s an idea. They’ve lots of space for housing people in an emergency. We’ve lots of people who need to be housed – securely.

        Why don’t we shift all the criminal illegal immigrants into Swiss bunkers, shut them in and… forget about them?

        1. Actually the Swiss have already thought of that onr – except that there is an open door exit policy for undesirable immigrants in the country.

  6. Talking of politicians..

    http://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7c08fb3ae89bc639e4d6538370675470cb41e030b83e450ef1b5cceb43bc148c.jpg

    More modern Life….

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0f6805c60e5dbb5dc5ce147f12463e60467d21e0af6a559e6cb60d0f492a83b7.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9cd287a60e4960a277081ac35d9d4bf44d90434cea0ee18ee199b33da9402069.jpg

    70’s Girly on form

    https://twitter.com/70s_70sgirl/status/1558184038510256129?s=20&t=Jtj4ZsB4A0ts5O6X2z22Jw

      2. There is among politicians a lack of mathematical and scientific depth that leaves them vulnerable to both the myopic interpretations of low grade science funded by vested interests and the somnambulant acceptance of pharmaceutical drug guidelines among tired medical policy makers. How is the trick worked?

        This problem has been a Nottler standpoint for as long as I have been posting. PPEs from wherever do not equip MPs for the real World. The ability to question and understand the data, or sift out the deliberate misinformation from facts, seems to be in very short supply at Westminster. Covid, Net Zero, HS2, closing down gas storage etc. etc.
        The continuing problem is that many MPs are so thick and do not have the reasoning wherewithal to put the problems of a situation into their true perspective.

        Very late edit re misinformation.

    2. Morning, sos and all. N Essex weather is what weather does.

      A slow realisation and questions that something isn’t quite right with the “vaccinated” from the MSM. Can we call this situation, progress? USA’s CDC changing its advice late last week, as I mentioned yesterday, and other questions popping up in the USA are indicators that there could be a change in the wind.
      Why? Data, difficult to hide what is really going on as the numbers keep on climbing; the article put up yesterday from John O’Looney – I watched his long interview on this subject a few weeks ago in which he exposed much more disturbing information, and he is appearing on USA social media – would have been revealing to anyone reading what he has to say for the first time.
      As to your last question: the jabs are a medical failure of monumental proportions.
      Volte face appears to be the order of the day with some of those responsible.

      1. Read Rik-Redux’s link and the fuller interview linked to from there.

        I suggest that war crime style trials, with similar outcomes, would appear to be the order of the day.

        1. Who puts on war-crime style trials? Governments. Who were cherleaders and the enforcers for all this crap? Governments. I doubt there will be much reaction from them.

          1. You’re correct, but wouldn’t’ it be great if a political party put it in their manifesto and got elected.

    3. Good morning all.
      No, it is much more complex than a vaccine failure.
      As human beings we are all equal before the law, but not before nature.

      1. Indeed, but are you trying to suggest that the vaccinations have been the success we were told they would be?

  8. 355099+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Sunday 14 August: Does the country need another three weeks of the Tory leadership contest?

    More to a factual point ” Does the country need another three weeks of the Tory (ino) party & political contents in power” ?

    The lab / lib dems are the other two segments of the proven anti freedom repress / reset / replace .coalition.

    Fairs fair ,the political overseers have told you what the future holds, your vote X is a kiss of supporting agreement.

      1. 355069+ up ticks,

        Evening W,

        Then it is just a party game, when the music stops three arses sit on three chairs, still a close shop coalition party,
        no change, as coalitions work it’s kneels turn next.

        .

      1. 355099+ up ticks,

        Morning AS,

        The puzzle that is still with me is, if in knowing,
        such, and there is ample proof over the last three plus decades, WHY do those that portray such rhetoric find support again,again,& again.

        1. Because there is NO viable alternative.

          If you know of one, apart from NOTA, let us all know and we’ll spread the word.

          1. 355069+ up ticks,

            NtN,
            We in the party that designed & gave the peoples the referendum spread the word for years prior to the victory.

            I called for years for a build up on the genuine UKIP, go back in my history tis all open.

            We were dropped like a hot tattie on the 25/6/2016 ” leave it to the tory (ino) party” was the cry, the Country is suffering the odious consequences.

            The idiots openly roundly castigated the only patriotic party in the political field.

            A good party true to the country’s indigenous peoples are NOT off the peg,
            they have to be built.

            Sticking with NOTA & the party first before Country brigade will now, in a short space of time win the participants
            a prayer mat that is my true belief.

  10. A war in which Ukraine can do no wrong. Peter Hitchens. 14 August 2022.

    Have you noticed how Ukraine and Ukrainians cannot do anything bad? I think President Volodymyr Zelensky is actually quite a decent person. But his attempt to get all Russians banned from travelling to Europe is bigoted and foolish. Russians do not all agree with their government’s stupid, bloody invasion. But Zelensky gets away with this proposal because Ukraine is a sainted nation.

    Now we have the weird episode of the shelling of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station which has been in Russian hands since they illegally seized it in March.

    This, whatever the provocation may be, is an extraordinarily stupid thing for anyone to do. But who is doing it? Well, since the Russian Army is dug in there, it is extremely unlikely that the Russians are doing it.

    So who is doing it? Martians? North Koreans? Eskimos? When I put the words ‘Ukrainians shell Zaporizhzhia’ into Google, that search engine responded by saying: ‘No results found for “Ukrainians shell Zaporizhzhia.” ’ Instead I got several accounts of the Russians apparently shelling themselves. The BBC reported online on Friday that the power station had ‘come under heavy fire’. But who from? It is not even stated. Normally reporters are urged to avoid using the passive voice. But for Ukraine, this rule has been suspended.

    The level of MSM propaganda on this war is so outrageous that it’s almost impossible to comment on it sensibly.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-11109173/PETER-HITCHENS-didnt-Doctor-warn-Comprehensives-far-scarier-Daleks.html

    1. At least someone in the msm has made this connection overtly, rather than hinting about it in a roundabout way. Yes, I’m looking at you, BBC.

  13. 355099+ up ticks,

    Gerard Batten
    @gjb2021
    ·
    11h
    The Globalist forces that control the US Government controls the UK Govnt & those of the Western world.

    Trump represents the only hope of combatting them. Those of us who love our own countries want him to succeed. We have no champions

    https://gettr.com/post/p1mguqsaa54

      1. 355069+ up ticks,

        Evening NtN,
        Ask him, he could very well ask you about your voting history up until your NOTA era.

    7. Grattis på födelsedagen, Jill. Hope it’s a lovely day for you.👍🏻😊🥂🎂🍾

  15. Good moaning.
    Dan Hannan joining in the cannonade.
    Like all the media, the DT itself played an ignoble role in the covid hysteria, but individual voices did speak up.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/08/13/britain-crisis-arrogance-delusions-lockdown-fanatics/

    “Britain is in crisis because of the arrogance and delusions of the lockdown fanatics

    Don’t say I didn’t warn you. This economic storm is the direct result of the belief we could shut down society without cost

    Daniel Hannan13 August 2022 • 5:00pm

    What the hell did you think would happen? For the better part of two years, we paid people to stay home, and covered the cost by printing money. In other words, for two years, the amount of goods and services being produced fell, while the amount of money in circulation rose. You don’t need a degree in economics to know that more money chasing fewer products means inflation.

    Most of us grasp the concept of a postponed reckoning. If you took two years off work, and maintained your income by borrowing, you’d be a lot worse off. We all understand that with reference to our own lives. So why do we struggle to extend the same reasoning to our nation’s finances?

    Perhaps because it is human to prefer sweet falsehoods to bitter truths. It would be lovely if there really were a way to get back to growth and stable money without significant cuts. And, politics being politics, various fools and opportunists are now stepping forward to claim that this can somehow be done.

    First, there are the half-educated spendthrifts gathered under the banner of Modern Monetary Theory. They argue that, since a state cannot go bankrupt (because there is no higher authority to administer the bankruptcy) its finances cannot be compared to those of a company or a family.

    Governments can borrow whatever they need, they say, so don’t worry too much about debt. To which I can only respond, with John Dryden, “What fools our fathers were if this be true!” There we were for all those centuries wrestling with the problem of limited resources, when all we had to do was magic up more money!

    The cranks who make this claim are few in number but, as often happens when an idea catches the mood of the times, mangled versions of it spill over into popular discourse.

    During a radio debate when we were still in lockdown, the financial commentator, Martin Lewis, got cross with me for saying that the Government was skint, and could not go on funding its various emergency programmes. How ignorant, he snorted, to suggest that a government could be skint when it could keep printing money. Now, unabashed by the consequences of its having done precisely that, he is popping up on the BBC every five minutes to warn of a “cataclysm” unless ministers spend even more in order to subsidise our energy bills.

    There are good arguments for subsidising those on low incomes during the squeeze (though not for fixing energy prices across the board – one of Theresa May’s many blunders). And, indeed, the Government has already committed £37 billion in grants. But let’s not pretend that this was money that ministers found lying around.

    Our national debt stands at £2 trillion – 100 per cent of our GDP (up from under 30 per cent at the turn of the century). We are not just increasing that figure; we are increasing it at an accelerating rate, borrowing more in this fiscal year than we did in 2021/22. Our finances are constrained, not by ministerial callousness, but by the hard fact that we unexpectedly dropped half a trillion pounds during the pandemic.

    The second group who wilfully refuse to see the connection between the lockdown and our present penury are those who are determined to blame everything on Brexit. Never mind that our inflation is in line with the EU’s. Never mind that the UK economy has outperformed the Eurozone’s, whether we measure from the referendum or from Brexit taking effect. The fanatical bores have their Unifying Theory, and continue to press everything into it.

    Much the same can be said of the third group of deniers: those who are mainly interested in bashing the Conservatives. Anything that goes wrong must, they think, be the Tories’ fault. It can’t be the Bank of England. It can’t be the war in Ukraine. It can’t be global inflation (the OECD, which uses a different measure from government and applies it consistently across its 38 member states, puts Britain’s rate at 8.2 per cent, against an OECD average of 10.3 per cent). To Labour and its media auxiliaries, it is all the result of mismanagement by Conservative dolts.

    God knows this Government has its share of dolts. But Labour’s approach is to exaggerate and prolong all their mistakes. The lockdown was too long; but Keir Starmer wanted it to be longer. He opposed lifting restrictions last July and called for them to be reimposed in December. The furlough scheme was too expensive, but Starmer wanted to keep it going. Public spending overall was too high; but Starmer wanted (and wants) it to be even higher, opposing the winding up of most emergency spending.

    Excessive public spending is the root cause of the other ills. The Attlee-level taxes, the £1,900 per household spent on servicing the national debt, the price rises, the strikes – all these are secondary ailments. The underlying malady is big government.

    Which brings us to the fourth and most dangerous group hiding the vastness of our fiscal crisis: the Tories themselves. Yes, the pandemic was a one-off; and, yes, it occasioned exceptional spending. But there was no need to present that spending as intrinsically meritorious. The PM didn’t have to preen in Scotland about the “massive fiscal firepower” of the UK Treasury. He didn’t have to swank at the Despatch Box about how Britain’s furlough was “far more generous than anything provided in France, Germany or Ireland”.

    There was no need for Eat Out To Help Out. There was no need to prolong the furlough. There was no need, last October, fully three months after restrictions had been lifted, to slather yet more cash around: £3 billion more for adult skills training, £5.9 billion for the NHS, £6.9 billion for urban transport outside London and so on.

    When voters see a Right-of-centre government spending like that, they assume that there must be plenty of money to spare. Which explains why so many people were nonchalant about the cost of lockdown and why they still struggle to connect cause and effect.

    I hate to say “I told you so” but… oh, sod it, no I don’t. I bloody told you so. As early as May 2020, I was warning of what lay ahead:

    “If you’re a pensioner, your pension will lose its value. If you’re a public sector worker, you’ll find that, as its tax take evaporates, the Government can’t afford to pay you. If you have savings, they will be inflated away.”

    At that time, 96 per cent of people supported the restrictions, every broadcaster was droning on about “putting lives before the economy”, and only 26 per cent of people thought the lockdown was making them worse off. “Only when we are unable to afford the things we used to buy will we understand that ‘the economy’ is what we call the transactions people make to improve their lives,” I wrote. “And, even then, we may struggle to link our misfortune to the closures we have spent the past two months demanding.”

    Just as people who clamoured for net zero now complain about the price of energy, so people who clamoured for the longest lockdown now complain about the cost of living. Naturally, politicians find it easier to humour them than to point out the connection. And, of course, no minister wants to take away even a notionally one-off benefit.

    But unless we act now to restore our finances, we face a sterling crisis and a collapse which would be most painful for the people on whose behalf the opposition are demanding more subventions.

    A Right-of-centre party can win, even during a downturn, provided that people think it is fixing the problem. Margaret Thatcher won her largest majority in 1983, when unemployment was above 3 million and rising, because people believed that she had a plan to tame inflation, cut taxes and stimulate growth.

    Having known Liz Truss, our probable next PM, for 25 years, I have no doubt that she knows what needs to be done. She used to work in a think-tank, and has a genius for recruiting the ablest minds from that world. The question is whether, in the short time before the next election, she can convince people that a crisis on this scale requires commensurately radical solutions.

    Doing so won’t be easy. It will mean offering hard truths while the other parties offer windfall taxes, price controls, nationalisations and other juju solutions that initially poll well. But not doing so will be even worse. If people stop trusting the Tories on the economy, they face an ERM-style meltdown and a generation in opposition.”

    1. As regards Hannan’s first point on Modern Monetary Theory. Walter Wriston, Chairman of Citicorp (1970-1984) was famous for espousing the belief that “Countries can’t go bankrupt.” Flaming idiot. Just because there isn’t a clause in the USA Bankruptcy Code that covers the eventuality of countries being unable to pay their debts doesn’t mean they can’t go tits up. He had Citibank continue to lend and lend and lend into the Latin American debt crisis and Citicorp lost more money in the subsequent debt rescheduling/write offs than any other institution in the world. Other US institutions had to rally round to prevent Citibank from going under.

      There aren’t enough old farts like me still around who can remember this stuff

      1. The state is hoping that ignorant and silly children will believe the same. Government continues making the same errors it always has to appease a population made lazy and fat off someone else’s money.

    2. Not the lockdown fanatics or even just lockdown. That was just another straw. A health economy would have recovereed swiftly. Ours is not a healthy economy. It is aheavily taxed, over regulated and when lockdown ended the treasury, stuffed full fo seeming morons decided to hike taxes on employment and sales, then hammered us with energy taxes thanks to 3 decades of deliberate statist obstruction.

    3. BTL:

      Carpe Jugulum
      17 HRS AGO
      The last time I looked, out of 650 MPs 26 were STEM qualified.

      Out of 650 MPs NOT ONE demanded and received a cost/benefit analysis of lockdown.

      Out of 650 MPs NOT ONE questioned why Whitty and Vallance were still using discredited models or why Ferguson had not been sacked for making the utterly witless assumption that there would be no existing herd immunity to SARS-CoV-2, a coronavirus of the family we get hit with EVERY SINGLE YEAR.

      SAGE was THE most spectacularly moronic failure of bureaucratic incompetence in the entire history of the UK. A bureaucracy that stifled scientific debate and that attacked those questioning it. That isn’t science, it is the dogma of morons.
      Instead of female only shortlists and ethnic minority targets isn’t it time that a country that depends on science and technology had MPs that understood it?

    4. Great article.

      Now could someone explain to us why no one is safeguarding their savings by buying gold?

  17. Morning, all Y’all.
    Sunny again. 13,5C outside. Was 28 yesterday, mid-afternoon.

  18. The early death of Zulu star Stanley Baker is one of cinema’s great ‘what ifs’. 14 August 2022.

    Probably the film for which he is best remembered – and it remains a masterpiece, though doubtless will soon be cancelled because of what bigots will consider its unacceptable depiction of colonialism – was Zulu (1964), in which he played with utter credibility John Chard VC, hero of Rorke’s Drift. It was an exception to the gritty black-and-white films he was making in the late 1950s and early 1960s, anticipating the “kitchen sink” genre.

    Still one of my favourite movies. Though it will probably be a Capital Offence in the near future I have it on DVD.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/early-death-zulu-star-stanley-baker-one-cinemas-great-what-ifs/

    1. Mine too, Minty. I suppose that makes us very bad people in the eyes of the wokeists. Tough titty!

    2. Well, it was in the immediate aftermath of the defeat of whitey at Isandlwana that morning. One of the most throughly complete defeats we have ever suffered, and we have suffered a fair few. It should be noted that the Zulus have never complained. If the instigation was one-sided by us setting impossible terms, the Zulus had built an empire by seizing it by force and absorption, and lots of killing.
      The were treated well, and Cetswayo came to the UK to meet Queen Victoria. Cetswayo became a popular celebrity. The most efficient type of sailing drifter ever built was called the “Zulu” in their honour.

      https://engelsbergideas.com/notebook/when-king-cetshwayo-came-to-london/
      http://glennmci.brinkster.net/zulus/zulus.html

  19. The early death of Zulu star Stanley Baker is one of cinema’s great ‘what ifs’. 14 August 2022.

    Probably the film for which he is best remembered – and it remains a masterpiece, though doubtless will soon be cancelled because of what bigots will consider its unacceptable depiction of colonialism – was Zulu (1964), in which he played with utter credibility John Chard VC, hero of Rorke’s Drift. It was an exception to the gritty black-and-white films he was making in the late 1950s and early 1960s, anticipating the “kitchen sink” genre.

    Still one of my favourite movies. Though it will probably be a Capital Offence in the near future I have it on DVD.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/early-death-zulu-star-stanley-baker-one-cinemas-great-what-ifs/

  20. Good morning all. Another sunny start after another warm night. 13°C outside, 1° increase on earlier, 04:30, when I was up to cool down.
    Woken up at half seven by a wunch of bankers having a drive past the house in sports cars with overloud exhausts, a frequent Sunday Morning experience.

    1. Prolly a bunch of Dominican monks who didn’t want to be late for Matins.

      Good Morning, Bob

      1. 🤣🤣 On that note, I teased a man I found washing an extremely snazzy car in the cathedral precinct in Winchester yesterday. He grinned and told me Jesus approved 🤣

    2. Mine the road in response to sub sonic noise. An electromagnet triggered by acoustics sorts the attachment – could do that with a pi zero and a cheap sensor. When the noise arrives the sound meter triggers a charge which empties a bucket of ball bearings.

  21. ‘Morning, Peeps. Another awful night, thank goodness it will shortly come to an end.

    Today’s leading letter:

    SIR – As the country struggles with multiple serious problems, the Government is in a state of torpor.

    The Conservative leadership contest seems to me to be a self-indulgent nonsense. It should either be suspended, or the vote urgently brought forward.

    It is outrageous that Britain should be rudderless while awaiting the decision of a tiny proportion of the population.

    Leslie W King

    Couldn’t agree more. Why did the 1922 Committee think that several weeks of bickering between the final two candidates was a good idea??

    2. A BTL comment with which I completely agree:

      Mike Pitman
      1 HR AGO
      Basically why when Boris was defenestrated, did the deputy PM simply not just step in? He must have been considered not only suitable but equally competent to hold the deputy’s position. Then the small number of Tories eligible to vote for a new permanent leader could have taken as long as they liked discussing, arguing, debating, call it what you will, without boring the pants off the rest of the nation. It should have been, and could have been business as usual, especially at this time of the parliamentary year.

      1. One wonders if the position has any meaning other than “holding off” those interested in the real job? Raab got a kicking for being on holiday when Afghanistan was taken over by Afghans. What difference did it make? Should he have phoned the Taliban to ask then to postpone things till he got back from holiday?
        Those responsible for the shambles did not include him. It is not up to a politician in London to control our troops on the ground or to arrange evacuations etc and so forth. Nor did he, or anyone else, appear to have been given notice by the Americans that they were leaving.
        He could have moved into No 10 while the elections for the new PM were going on. That would have been fun.

  22. Not bad with a muzzy head

    Wordle 421 4/6

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    2. Wordle 421 4/6

      ⬜🟨🟨⬜⬜
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    3. Hmmm.
      Wordle 421 5/6

      ⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜
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      1. Ditto 🙁

        Wordle 421 5/6

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  23. SIR – Lord Frost, as always, hits the nail on the head.

    When Margaret Thatcher became prime minister in 1979, we were reeling from 26 per cent inflation, government bonds yielding 16 per cent and a marginal tax rate of 83 per cent.

    When she immediately cut that rate to 60 per cent a great cheer went up, and we began the restoration of personal and business confidence, which revitalised the economy.

    The entrepreneurial spirit unleashed by the policies of small government, individual freedom and low tax rates is still there. We need exactly what Lord Frost suggests: Liz Truss making the case “that countries are stronger where people keep their own money and decide things for themselves” – and then doing something about it.

    Donald R Clarke
    Tunbridge Wells, Kent

    For goodness sake, Give Frost a job and make it a big one. The next general election is rushing towards us and time is now exceedingly short if any part of the God-awful government-induced mess is going to be cleared up beforehand.

    1. I’d settle for giving Frostie a minor role: how about Dictator or Leader?
      The past 2+ years have shown that the British have a natural aptitude for subservience and snitching, so they would settle down quite happily under the new regime. Arguably, Blighty was better run in the days before the universal franchise – which is a system for buying people’s votes with their own money.
      Trouble is, he could be good at the job and might improve our lives. And that would never do.

    2. Why was Lord Frost not offered then chance of running in the Tiverton by election?

      Maybe because all the contestants – as well as Boris Johnson – knew that if he were in the race none of them would have had a chance.

    3. The upper and higher rates and pure greed by an arrogant state machine. Idiots think that ‘well, you earn more, you should pay more’. I reply with ‘yes, I earn more because I percentages.’

      What the bloke on £17K a year look at someone earning £17m thinks isn’t ‘How do I get from here to there’ anymore. It’s ‘How do I force the state to make that rich person give me their money?’

      No one seems to consider the abusive, spiteful stealth taxes – energy, fuel, food. No one understands the compounded taxes of *all* the taxes companies pay adding to the cost of goods. Someone complained in Tesco yesterday that “bread was bread, why is it suddenly £3 a loaf!” as if Tesco pay the additional costs the stat elumbers them with. People are ignorant and worse, they’re allowed to vote.

  24. You may have read about the new we’re all gonna die: non-stick pans.
    An amusing take from Takimag:
    My bold

    YOUR PANCAKES HAVE DOOMED US ALL
    So, what’cha have for breakfast this morning?
    Scrambled eggs, you say? Mmm-mmm, who doesn’t like scrambled eggs? Did you enjoy ’em? You did? Wonderful. Very good.
    Because your eggs just murdered the world.
    Nice going, jerkwad.
    According to a Swedish study published in Environmental Science & Technology, the earth’s rainwater is now permanently undrinkable—everywhere, even Antarctica—because of PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), which are used to create nonstick cookware. Because you bastards want your stupid eggs and pancakes to glide smoothly off your stupid skillets, PFAS residue has risen up and saturated the clouds and now water from above is more toxic than water from a Tijuana tap.
    Worse still, the study describes PFAS as a “forever chemical,” meaning that once it’s in the environment, it never leaves.
    All because you spoiled, selfish monsters don’t want to lick your breakfast off a solar-heated stone.
    Oddly, though, if you read the Swedish study all the way to the end, you find that far from being “forever,” “PFAS levels in people have actually dropped quite significantly in the last 20 years” and “ambient levels (in the environment) have been the same for the past 20 years.”
    What gives?
    Well, as the study’s corresponding author Ian Cousins admits, “What’s changed is the guidelines.” PFAS isn’t more prevalent; governments have simply decreed it more dangerous.
    But why now? The EPA recently changed its PFAS guidelines significantly “after discovering that the chemicals may affect the immune response in children to vaccines.”
    So when kids become ill or die after being pumped full of Covid vaxxes and boosters, it ain’t the vaxxes and boosters. It’s your damn greasy-ass hash browns, which all of a sudden kill kids who’ve totally coincidentally just been super-vaxxed.
    Science starches on.

    1. ‘Morning, sos. In the early 80s I visited a factory where the non-stick coating was made. Sickness bsenteeism amongst the staff was rife, with many suffering from ‘Teflon flu’. It was fully investigated by the local authority and found to be real, as a result of which a whole host of precautions were introduced so as to reduce the risk to the staff.

      1. Horrid consequences of things that were thought to be a good idea at the time, qv CFC’s

          2. Ah – they were designed to kill. The earlier ones were intended to be nothing but good.

      1. Which reminds me…anyone seen PrettyPolly recently….or did you do the dirty with your non-stick pan?

          1. I’ve seen it elsewhere, but, mercifully, not here. Still making the same repetitive noises.

    3. PFAS non-stick pans are not necessary. A cast iron skillet, once “seasoned”, becomes almost non-stick. I have had a set of cast iron skillets for the last 20years or so. No problem.

    4. PFAS non-stick pans are not necessary. A cast iron skillet, once “seasoned”, becomes almost non-stick. I have had a set of cast iron skillets for the last 20years or so. No problem.

    5. “Scrambled eggs, you say? Mmm-mmm, who doesn’t like scrambled eggs?”

      Me. Scrambled is probably my least favourite way of eating eggs.

        1. I agree, but they just don’t float my boat. I love eggs: fried (sunny-side up), poached, 3-minute soft-boiled, hard-boiled (I don’t like ‘coddled’), omelettes and baked. Just not a fan of scrambled.

  25. SIR – I have just ordered a hardback copy of The Satanic Verses.

    Trelawney ffrench
    Ascot, Berkshire

    Try not to announce this fact to the world if you would like to go on living…oh you just have.

    1. Why get a copy? It’s appallingly written drivel. Even Ghadaffis Little Green Book has moments of (unintended) hilarity, SV has none whatever.

      1. I think I’ll continue to save myself the bother of reading it. I hope he survives the attack.

      2. Matter of principle, I suppose. I loved ‘Midnight’s Children’, but SV had lost its wit.

        1. Although I’ve never bothered to watch it, I have a DVD of ‘Gone With The Wind’ lurking somewhere in Allan Towers.
          I should probably invest in a non-Woke version of “Zulu” before it is banned.

          1. In the modern remake, the garrison all got no their knees to apologise to the Zulus about white slavery and the patriarchy. As the leaders were all women, there were no problems of any sort and it ended with celebrity bake off – of the men soldiers.

            Of course, if women had been running the empire and protecting its borders we would not now have tea, coffee, bananas, chocolate, curry, bungalows, herbs, spices, rice, fuel or fibre optics, to name a tiny few.

          2. Not necessarily. We might still have these commodities but by peaceful means, not by fighting to acquire them.

    2. Respectfully Hugh, with that name no bugger could pronounce it, let alone some loony rag head muslim.

  26. SIR – It is quite extraordinary that it has taken so long for hosepipe bans to be enforced.

    The Government should have the power to put such a ban in place very quickly, after consulting with the water authorities. In Gloucestershire, for instance, there has been much dilly-dallying. Action should be immediate.

    Most of the public will be able manage perfectly well for a couple of weeks with a watering can, and the practice of watering lawns is ludicrous anyway, and should stop – drought or no drought. Grass recovers, and turning brown is its own way of surviving a week or two of dry weather.

    Bob Kingsland
    Stroud, Gloucestershire

    As I understand things, the government already has the power to introduce a drought order and that is vested in DEFRA. A pity, therefore, that they were asleep on the job until now. And as for OFWAT…this (alleged) regulator has proved to be a complete waste of space. As usual I suppose, too many vested interests and also too many overpaid jobs in the water industry seems to have clouded their judgement – if they ever had any, of course. The whole set-up stinks and needs urgent reform.

    1. The best way to bring about heavy rain is the imposition of restrictions when they are no longer needed.

        1. Especially if you have a Denis Howell MP (who had no other use) hanging around in Westminster.

    2. As has become clear in the USA much of the the administrative state has been ‘captured’ by the concerns they are supposed to be controlling and have created a ‘revolving door’ situation between the higher echelons. For some reason(s) the regulators in the UK are as paper tigers when it comes to fulfilling their role of working for the interests of the public.

    3. The regulators work for the government, not the public. Once folk realise that it all becomes much clearer.

  27. SIR – Britain failed to follow the example of other European countries that adopted a co-insurance model to finance their health services (Letters, August 7) decades ago, with individuals making direct contributions to the cost of care.

    All have entirely satisfactory safety nets for people who are either unable or no longer required to make contributions. The services they receive are of the same quality as those provided to individuals still making contributions. Britain, by comparison, is the sick man of Europe.

    Why? Because of the inability of politicians to grasp the (not-too-toxic) nettle, explain why the current model is broken and explain how co-insurance would cost less while providing more efficient and effective service to the population, irrespective of ability to pay.

    The establishment of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence is a positive model for how change can be made. I was a member of the industry consultation group as it was being mooted, and well remember the political shenanigans over supposed “rationing”.

    However, Nice is still with us, the sky hasn’t fallen in and cost-effective, innovative drugs are being made available.

    I hope (possibly in vain) that someone soon will be prepared to take the five-year pain of reform on the chin, for all our sakes.

    Tim Wright
    Dorchester

    It would need a government with guts, Mr Wright, but unfortunately those are a bit thin on the ground these days. Ergo, we are stuck with an NHS in a state of collapse, where the only ‘remedy’ is to pour yet more money into it.

    1. While those of us lucky (!?!) enough to have savings, use them to buy a bit of comfort and mobility.
      But, hey ho, we have only paid taxes of varying and ever increasing amounts, for an average of 60 years.

    2. If I were Saint George I would be very cross indeed about the state of the NHS.

    3. The NICE regularly fails at it’s most basic duties.

      However, the NHS is a whipping post for failure. The Left use it to squeal you’ll have to pay to see a doctor! Ignoring that you already do – and for someone else to see the doctor as well. You’re also paying for diversity wonks – for government policy. ASking the government to sort out the NHS is the same as demanding energy be nationalised. You don’t put the morons causing the problem in charge of fixing it.

      There’s a middle ground, of course: Pay staff after they do the work. If there’s an operation, pay them after the op is done. Have the NHS operate as if it were paid from insurance but keep the funding the same, from general taxation and find out how quickly those diversity, race, equalities, 5 layers of managers are removed.

      No worky, no payee.

  28. As Putin’s war spreads panic across Europe, Ukrainians must fear a stab in the back. 14 August 2022.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4cb3a63ba876ad80a92c8f2eaedee5ebe7e7df85671d074f0244f2b2302b092d.png

    What has always been less clear is whether they honestly expect to achieve these aims, given Nato’s less than heroic refusal to get directly involved. An uncomfortable, even distressing question now arises: should Ukrainians prepare for a stab in the back this winter?

    One of the most informative (which isn’t saying much) aspects of this war is the photographs! Unlike all previous European conflicts it seems to be mostly waged by the Middle Aged and Old. Like Dylan can we ask, Where have all the young men gone? Were they all killed in that first three months of fighting? Have they all bugged out to sunnier climes? I would like to know!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/14/putin-war-europe-ukraine-west

    2. Probably quietly joined their wives and children here in the land of milk and honey. There is little point in fighting if there is nothing more than a flattened apartment block to return to.

    4. “…given Nato’s less than heroic refusal to get directly involved“. Are these cretins really so keen on starting WWIII? We have already committed what could be considered “acts of war” by supplying weaponry to Ukraine, a country that as late as October last year the Grauniad was referring to thus “Welcome to Ukraine, the most corrupt nation in Europe”.

    5. “…given Nato’s less than heroic refusal to get directly involved“. Are these cretins really so keen on starting WWIII? We have already committed what could be considered “acts of war” by supplying weaponry to Ukraine, a country that as late as October last year the Grauniad was referring to thus “Welcome to Ukraine, the most corrupt nation in Europe”.

  29. SIR – I spent some 30 years in the sound department of Thames TV, where I was engaged in the dubbing of many dramas.

    At the dubbing session, directors quite often wanted to add music when they considered that the action had slowed down, in order to compensate for the loss of drama.

    I frequently argued against this, as it usually led to the dialogue being drowned out.

    We were able to monitor the sound on very expensive, high-quality loudspeakers costing many thousands of pounds – unlike the viewing public, who listened on much inferior sound systems.

    We got a simulated television sound system built in, which I used to illustrate how the directors’ “enhanced sound” would be experienced by viewers.

    I am glad to say we were able to convince most directors to give priority to the dialogue. The results can be heard in such productions as Rumpole of the Bailey, Van der Valk and Minder.

    Michael Westlake
    Farnborough, Hampshire

    …and yet we are still stuck with intrusive music. All three of the quoted examples bucked the trend, and a loud, crashing orchestra is the norm these days.

  30. New reservoirs must be forced through despite local opposition, Government told

    Sir John Armitt, chairman of the National Infrastructure Commission, warns need for reservoirs becoming more urgent amid drought threats

    Ministers must overrule opposition from local residents, councillors and MPs to give new reservoirs a green light by 2025, the Government’s infrastructure tsar says. In an interview with The Telegraph, Sir John Armitt, the chairman of the National Infrastructure Commission, warned that the need for additional reservoirs was becoming increasingly urgent amid the threat of prolonged droughts.

    Continuing to allow locals to veto such projects would mean that the new reservoirs Britain needs never get built, he suggested, stating: “It’s a bit like people living in the Chilterns – if it was left to them HS2 wouldn’t go through the Chilterns.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/08/13/new-reservoirs-must-forced-despite-local-opposition-government/

    Someone should tell this man the difference between HS2 and H20…

    1. it isn’t local residents. The resistance comes from Whitehall in it’s slavish adherence to EU policy.

      In contrast, HS2 is part of TENs, an EU project so is being forced through regardless of what people want or need.

      1. In C21 Blighty we, the great unwashed, are always to blame; particularly if we are English.

    2. And will one of these reservoirs be on SJA’s land and drown his house?
      Thought not.

      1. Sir John acknowledged that local residents fear such projects would cause more than a decade of “upheaval” and result in “what they’ve seen as being green and pleasant fields suddenly becoming a vast hole”.

        It’ll be more than a hole in the ground. It is proposed that it be a bunded reservoir i.e. with raised banks of 70-80′ in height formed from the excavated spoil. It won’t have the visual appeal of catchment reservoirs such as Rutland Water.

    4. Odd that he doesn’t seem to mention the EU banning us from building new reservoirs! And, yes, I have read the article.

    5. Odd that he doesn’t seem to mention the EU banning us from building new reservoirs! And, yes, I have read the article.

    6. Just yesterday someone pointed out the Thames Water from the 1980s sold 25 reservoirs.

      1. I think some of these were small head-of-pressure reservoirs built before the London Ring Main made them redundant.

    8. I don’t think that Sir John is concentrating.

      The proposed reservoir near Clayhill was approved by the locals, but the Government turned it down as “the EU were

      forbidding the building of any more reservoirs”.

      Strangely the EU is allowing reservoirs to be built in various EU countries.

      Why are we following EU requirements, yet various EU countries are not?

        1. …….and since 2016 nobody in Government has thought of reinstating this much needed project?

    1. I have often thought that some (of not all) of the scripts behind the James Bond films are based heavily on her theory’s.
      I read her books in my ‘mud’ twenties.
      Last night in the film Tomorrow Never Dies, media baron Elliot Carver wants to take over as NWO boss by trying to start a war between Britain and China.
      Something very similar and sinister to what is going on between Ukraine and Russia at this very moment in time.
      It’s pretty obvious who these mega rich AHs are but were’s JB when we need him. Life would be so much better for everyone if these overself important maniacs were wiped out.

  34. A friend in Singapore had a new line put in today. 10GB fibre. He has 2 others already at that same speed. As each block is locally switched (doesn’t go out if the recipient is local) he hasset up a support group for the older residents to have cameras so they can be looked in on for tea or a visit at the press of a button.

    No grainy images, it’s all 4k. And here we are, shuffling along under the BT oppression with endless marketing lies over ‘fibre’ when there’s bugger all really involved.

    1. Singapore is a very well organised place.
      I hope our transport for London have the gutts to introduce driverless underground trains as they have in SP. Kick out these trouble making bastard Union bosses.
      We have been away in the UK twice this year. Both Devon and more recently Cornwall. Both apartments and the 5 bed house were WiFi has been available and the signal strength was 100%. Unlike the efforts and continuous excuses we get from our supplier. We have a buried cable running along each side of our road within 6 metres of the front entrance.
      Every time we get a problem the company VM seem to suggest it’s our fault, because of lose connections.

    2. Singapore is about the size of my back garden – rather a different scale of challenge.

  35. Morning all 😃.
    Nice and cool last night thankfully. Strange how it’s better to close south facing curtains and blinds in the daylight hours and open them at night. Although the moon has been unusually bright, I wonder if that’s due to a less polluted atmosphere, because Parliament is in recess until the 5 of next month.

      2. It’s 2050, so it will be Boris Johnson’s 25th child from his 15th different partner.

    2. 607? Dear freakin’ life. Get rid of them. Don’t let them land, drag them back to France.

      What do we do? Wait until the entirety of eritrea and Sudan are here?

      1. silly! There are lots of other people in lots of other countries still to come; Sudan (both of them), Central African Republic, Burkino Fasso, Mali (thousands of interpreters , and their families, working for British Army, and many others.
        You know the story of “how long will it take the population of China to walk past me, four abreast? Answer: forever.

  38. Good morning, all. Just dropped grandson off at King’ Lynn station where – amazingly – there were trains. None yesterday.

    What a treat to have a lovely young man to stay. He is very good company, cracking sense of humour and strong as an ox. It was unbelievably beneficial for this very old man to have a fit young chap drag hoses all over the garden and carry watering cans as though they were made of fluff!!

    Good, too, to show him snaps of the first time he came to stay alone (in Laure) 19 years ago…!!

    I gather that nothing has happened during my absence.

    (I did notice the libelous comment by Citroen – a writ is winging its way….!!)

    2. Na then, Billy.

      On your direct recommendation, a few weeks’ back, I ordered some French bean seeds, variety ‘Cobra’, from Amazon.co.uk. Those bean seeds were dispatched to me by a UK company called Gifts Direct 2 U Ltd.

      OK so far?

      Last week I received, in the post, a notice from PostNord (our postal service) requiring a photograph of the order that I’d placed. This is not unusual so I took a screenshot of the Amazon order form. A week later I received another, similar, request from PostNord, this time informing me that they needed a certificate from Defra confirming that the bean seeds are disease-free!

      I telephoned Mr Fothergill’s Seeds in the UK and put this to them. The lady I spoke to was puzzled that Gifts Direct 2 U had even thought about sending the seeds to me since they (Mr Fothergill’s) had suspended sending seeds to the EU “in the wake of Brexit”. She also advised me against contacting Defra for a certificate since it would cost me an arm and a leg, with no real chance of success, and certainly not worth it for a £10 order of seeds!

      As a result of this I sent a complaint off to Gifts Direct 2 U via the Amazon website:

      The item I ordered (French Bean seeds) has arrived in my country (Sweden) but Swedish Customs are refusing to release them since I cannot provide any certification to prove they are disease-free. I have contacted Mr Fothergill’s Seeds in the UK and they tell me that since Brexit they no longer provide seeds to EU countries. With this in mind, I would like you to either: (A) find a way of getting those seeds to me, or (B) give me a refund. I await your response. Thank you.

      They replied in very quick time to me:

      Hello,

      Thank you for getting in contact with us. I am sorry that this has happened with your order. I have now passed this onto our accounts team who will deal with your refund shortly. If you require any further assistance please don’t hesitate to get back in contact with us.

      Kind Regards
      Abi
      Gifts Direct 2 U Ltd

      I am now minded to write a letter to Swedish Customs and ask them why the EU are using “Brexit” as a bollocks excuse to reverse a decades-long postal agreement between two countries. I shall ask them why the thousands of illegal immigrants to all western European nations are not required to possess an expensive “declaration certificate” to prove they are disease-free; whilst a poxy little packet of bean seeds needs one.

      Twats!

      3. Or – if you HAVE any chums in the UK – get them to buy a packet and post it to you….

  39. Phew!
    Decided to go up the “garden” after my 1st mug of tea and do a bit of pickaxe swinging and shovelling out of the next bit of wall base I have to concrete. Got several buckets of soil shifted and a couple of big rocks dug round which look as if they’d be best left in situ and concreted round. Came in for a 2nd mug of tea then went out again to do a bit more digging and also got a couple of tree roots cut off.
    I’ve partially exposed a thicker root, which needs more digging, but I’m sweating buckets as the sun has moved round to make where I’m working a bit too warm for working, so I’m off for another dip in the cold bath and then another mug of tea!

    1. The Nation needs you, Bob…. half a dozen new reservoirs have to be dug out by next Tuesday

    4. Bob,that you’re outside woring is incredible. I made the beds and was running with sweat.

      1. Poppiesdad, yesterday morning, spent two hours chopping down an old ivy-covered tamarisk tree/bush (more of a tree) that was in danger of toppling over further down the line on to the green path. He kindly chopped it up into manageable logs for our 63 next door neighbour (who has just gone a-kayaking in Sweden. He was 81 in June. Me: the heat affects me so badly I can scarcely put one foot in front of the other after taking Poppie for a walk (45 minutes-ish).

        1. Fill a bath with cold water and, when the heat gets too much, lie in it for 5 to 10 minutes!

          Works for me.

  40. Small changes in attitude re the “vaccine” are surfacing within some of those responsible for not only advocating its use but for mandating people accept the jab as a condition of travel, work, attending events etc. The efficacy issue is pretty much settled i.e. the “vaccine” is useless and billions have been splurged by governments on buying it to inject into their citizens. And for what? That is the real question.
    Here is Dr Tenpenny giving a voice to an issue that a number of other doctors and scientists have concerns about.

    Dr Tenpenny’s Concerns

    1. Absolutely the ‘vaccines’ is totally useless. I know people who have accepted every jab and booster available, who live quite and unassuming lives. And still caught covid.
      And now big jabber wokey and even bigger pharma are bringing into focus babies and other children saying they need polio vaccines.
      Sorry but I don’t trust anyone with information any.
      The assumed problem has probably occurred because of mass illegal immigration and previously arrived who don’t feel they need to comply with our culture.

      1. The Polio vaccination is included in the normal childhood vaccination programme. The vaccination being offered now to children between 1 and 9 in London is a booster, as the virus has been detected in sewage in the Capital.

        1. How is it getting into sewage? Is our waste processing not sufficient? Is it because of the huge number of unvaccinated immigrants?

          A combination of the two?

        2. Polio is caused by a virus that spreads easily from person to person. It usually spreads through contact with the poo of an infected person. For example, from not washing your hands properly and putting them in your mouth, or from contaminated food or water.

          1. It doesn’t take too much thought to associate spreading of such a virus and the toilet habits prescribed by Islam…

  41. Bicycling past a farm the other day, I saw a notice “Duck, eggs.” I thought that it was a silly place to put a comma then it hit me.

    1. And if anyone assumes that Fishi Rishi, Liz Surgical-Appliance or the Hairy Buffoon ( should he return) will do anything about it, they’ve been slurping the Kool Aid.

    2. And still no mention of this bloody obvious and or reason for this invasion.
      Because its never mentioned nobody seems to believes it’s happening.

  43. Free speech is under sustained attack. 14 August 2022.

    It is astonishing that some still claim that free speech is not under attack. A fatwa was first placed on Sir Salman Rushdie’s head in 1989, in response to the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses, which was judged by Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini to be blasphemous. Sir Salman went into hiding; the book was banned in several countries; bookshops were bombed and people were killed.

    Tehran never truly rescinded the fatwa, and pro-government Iranian newspapers have congratulated the man who attacked the author in the United States last week. This is the reality of a regime that deluded Western elites still believe we should do business with, despite its continued and unashamed commitment to assaulting the West both directly and through its proxies.

    Iran’s suppression of free expression, which extends to religious and sexual minorities, is a special category of authoritarianism: brazen and violent. But when fanatics attack free speech, we have to ask how far the West is truly willing to go to defend it, especially in the context of the growth of a chilling culture of intolerance and retribution within our own societies.

    Well the Telegraph should know. They censor and remove opinions, sometimes whole sections Below the Line without much worry about Freedom of Speech!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2022/08/13/free-speech-sustained-attack/

    2. You will remember that the DT banned me from commenting , saying what I felt and know , but I see that other subscribers are let off the hook.

      Oh yes and every letter to the letters editor I have written , no matter how sensible or silly, has been declined .

      2. Try sending your proposed comments on to another nottlers subscriber. TB United we stand.

    3. Minty

      I have rattled off a brief letter to the DT editor and used your final paragraph above .

      I am just testing the system .

      Will they print it or won’t they x

    4. Culture of intolerance and retribution… and, notably, it’s amongst those benefitting from those freedoms who most want to erode it.

      What the Left want is for their voice to be the only one ever heard. Muslim want the same. Both are totalitarian fascists.

      So many people died for those simple rights and within a few short months the Left are determined to erase them. They haven’t changed, they never will.

    5. Heard on CBC radio a few days ago –

      Those views are extreme and should not be heard in a free and democratic society.

  44. I doubt if its hardly worth a mention but just been watching 20, 200mph petrol fueled Porche sports cars belting around Snetterton circuit in Norfolk. Brown scorched grass surroundings, track temperatures 37 plus. Clouds of explosive dust in the air metal work contact, even hotter tyres temps.
    And we are told and BBQs are dangerous.

        1. The Empire is all the fault of the English. Scots had no part in it. Even when they did.

          1. I see where you are coming from. Pretty near everyone realises that Sturgeon is an ill-educated fascist, even if they all do vote for the SNP.

        2. Och, aye, where would be have been without Scotty and all the other marine engineers, backbone of our merchant marine fleet.. ‘I tell you captain in this heat they cannot take the strain’.,,etc.

        3. Och, aye, where would be have been without Scotty and all the other marine engineers, backbone of our merchant marine fleet.. ‘I tell you captain in this heat they cannot take the strain’.,,etc.

        2. They didn’t completely go back to pre-colonial behaviour though, like comitting suttee and little rajahs fighting continual wars. They had irrigation, education, a legal system – and at least they didn’t do what some African nations did – at least they retained some of what they had learned through the British being there, even if they were glad to see the back of us.

          OK so their leaders are now greedy – well so are ours.

          1. I saw on the bbc news earlier mayor sadick being honoured 🎖 for seemingly just being a Pakistani……but he’s often insisted he’s British.
            Some underlying influences popping up to the surface. Who knew ?

          3. Thankfully she’s not quite as dangerous as that little sh one t.
            Someone needs to remind her what happened to Harry’s mother.

    3. Well remembered. But, hey, let’s not upset social cohesion. The police won’t.

    1. Our Governments have been told not to. Through the Greens etc. as ostensible messengers.

    1. That’s about the size of the Viking invasion. Of course the Vikings adopted Christianity on arrival and were clever and industrious as well as being warriors. (Rape and pillage wasn’t their only talent, whereas with these people…)

      1. So what you seem to be implying Sue is hat he latest arrivals are not Vikings more Milkings?

    2. Immigration is fundamentally an economic argument.

      Considering that the majority of such immeditely sit on benefits, I suggest that all Whitehall civil servants, especially those in the Home Office, Border farce and so on have their salaries sequestrated to pay any and all costs these immigrants develop. Hell, the people we pay to keep them out are intentionally bringing them in.

      Round them up, put them on a ferry, send them back to france. Any trying it again are shot.

    3. Immigration is fundamentally an economic argument.

      Considering that the majority of such immeditely sit on benefits, I suggest that all Whitehall civil servants, especially those in the Home Office, Border farce and so on have their salaries sequestrated to pay any and all costs these immigrants develop. Hell, the people we pay to keep them out are intentionally bringing them in.

      Round them up, put them on a ferry, send them back to france. Any trying it again are shot.

  48. A Newfoundlander was walking home late at night and spots a woman in the shadows.

    “Twenty dollars” she whispers.

    Perry had never been with a hooker before, but decides what the hell, it’s only twenty bucks. So they hide in the bushes.

    They’re going at it for a minute when all of a sudden a light flashes on them. It is a police officer.

    “What’s going on here, people?” asks the officer.

    “I’s makin’ love to me wife!”, Perry answered, annoyed.

    “Oh! I’m sorry,” says the cop. “I didn’t know.”

    “Well, neidder did I, ’til ya shined that light in ‘er face!”

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

    Close Call

    A Newfoundland farmer named Angus had a car accident. He was hit by a truck owned by the Eversweet Company.

    In court, the Eversweet Company’s hot-shot solicitor was questioning Angus.

    “Didn’t you say to the RCMP at the scene of the accident, ‘I’m fine?'” asked the solicitor.

    Angus responded: “Well, I’ll tell you what happened. I had just loaded my favourite cow, Bessie, into the-”

    “I didn’t ask for any details,” the solicitor interrupted. “Just answer the question. Did you not say, at the scene of the accident, ‘I’m fine!’?”

    Angus continued, “Well, I had just got Bessie into the trailer and I was driving down the road…”

    The solicitor interrupted again and appealed to the judge. “Your Honour, I am trying to establish the fact that, at the scene of the accident, this man told the police on the scene that he was fine. Now several weeks after the accident, he is trying to sue my client. I believe he is a fraud. Please tell him to simply answer the question.”

    By this time, the Judge was fairly interested in Angus’ answer and said to the solicitor: “I’d like to hear what he has to say about his favourite cow, Bessie.”

    Angus thanked the Judge and proceeded.

    “Well as I was saying, I had just loaded Bessie, my favourite cow, into the trailer and was driving her down the road when this huge Eversweet truck and trailer came through a stop sign and hit my trailer right in the side. I was thrown into one ditch and Bessie was thrown into the other.

    “I was hurt, very bad like, and didn’t want to move, however, I could hear old Bessie moaning and groaning. I knew she was in terrible pain just by her groans. Shortly after the accident, a policeman on a motorbike turned up. He could hear Bessie moaning and groaning so he went over to her. After he looked at her and saw her condition, he took out his gun and shot her right between the eyes. Then the policeman came across the road, smoking gun still in hand, looked at me, and said, ‘How are you feeling?’

    “Now what the F*#k would you say?”

    1. Did you hear about the war between Nova Scotia and Newfoundland?. ? The newfies were throwing grenades; the Nova Scotians were pulling the pins and throwing them back

      1. Did you hear about the new Silence of the Lambs sequel that’s set to take place in Newfoundland?

        It’s going to be called Ewes Be Quiet.

    2. To His Mistress Going to Bed
      BY JOHN DONNE
      Come, Madam, come, all rest my powers defy,
      Until I labour, I in labour lie.
      The foe oft-times having the foe in sight,
      Is tir’d with standing though he never fight.
      Off with that girdle, like heaven’s Zone glistering,
      But a far fairer world encompassing.
      Unpin that spangled breastplate which you wear,
      That th’eyes of busy fools may be stopped there.
      Unlace yourself, for that harmonious chime,
      Tells me from you, that now it is bed time.
      Off with that happy busk, which I envy,
      That still can be, and still can stand so nigh.
      Your gown going off, such beauteous state reveals,
      As when from flowery meads th’hill’s shadow steals.
      Off with that wiry Coronet and shew
      The hairy Diadem which on you doth grow:
      Now off with those shoes, and then safely tread
      In this love’s hallow’d temple, this soft bed.
      In such white robes, heaven’s Angels used to be
      Received by men; Thou Angel bringst with thee
      A heaven like Mahomet’s Paradise; and though
      Ill spirits walk in white, we easily know,
      By this these Angels from an evil sprite,
      Those set our hairs, but these our flesh upright.
      Licence my roving hands, and let them go,
      Before, behind, between, above, below.
      O my America! my new-found-land,
      My kingdom, safeliest when with one man mann’d,
      My Mine of precious stones, My Empirie,
      How blest am I in this discovering thee!
      To enter in these bonds, is to be free;
      Then where my hand is set, my seal shall be.
      Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee,
      As souls unbodied, bodies uncloth’d must be,
      To taste whole joys. Gems which you women use
      Are like Atlanta’s balls, cast in men’s views,
      That when a fool’s eye lighteth on a Gem,
      His earthly soul may covet theirs, not them.
      Like pictures, or like books’ gay coverings made
      For lay-men, are all women thus array’d;
      Themselves are mystic books, which only we
      (Whom their imputed grace will dignify)
      Must see reveal’d. Then since that I may know;
      As liberally, as to a Midwife, shew
      Thy self: cast all, yea, this white linen hence,
      There is no penance due to innocence.
      To teach thee, I am naked first; why then
      What needst thou have more covering than a man.

      1. Cripes. After he’d finished spouting all that, I’d’ve completed the crossword, read another chapter of my book and fallen sleep.

    1. Well… we all knew this. We weren’t given a choice.

      It was also deliberately done to punish natives.

      1. Even then they tried to shame people who thought that Powell was completely right in his prophecies.

  52. I noticed in yesterday’s DT a full page (FFS) interview with Grant Shitts. Not one word about his major triumph – the collapse of the DVLA…..

  53. I don’t know what I was trying to prove, since no-one has ever actually said that one *can’t* provide a decent spread in a caravan, but inviting the inimitable Phizzee to afternoon tea meant I wanted to make an effort. (Variously cucumber, tomato and potted salmon; and yes, Dolly had a teaspoon of the salmon.)

    What a lovely afternoon. Nottlers are good people! https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4910d7199ccc9bc61bc4ada5346e9ae27e63a63a994f571eb50408cfa0196939.jpg

      1. Terrible waste of bread, what with the famine starting next week (after the torrential rain and flooding, of course).

          1. Thunder’s certainly due. The sky’s overcast, of all things. It’s still achingly hot, but the air is so thick it’s waiting for a storm.

          2. We have what looks like thunderheads building up in the Borders but it’s still very warm. 29°C.

      1. We had Tea, sandwiches and an iced carrot cake with a dollop of extra thick cream, with pink Cava to follow. We didn’t talk about Nottlers at all. No sirree. Nope.

      2. I have just opened a bottle of alcohol free Prosecco. Drinking and driving a 17.5 ft vehicle is not recommended.

    6. Reminds me of Tiffin, taken at the gateway to India hotel, Mumbai, 2005. No crusts, cucumber sandwiches, tea. Excellent!

      2. I understand, Paul, that even the natives still refer to it as Bombay – and Calcutta and Madras.

      1. Buy ready made sandwiches and cut the crusts off. No one will be the wiser. I assume you are able to make a pot of Tea in the van? Oh, and don’t forget the doilies for the sandwiches !

        1. Of course!
          I can cook a meal too, though with only a single burner camping stove, I restrict myself to two pans at the most.

          1. Steak and green salad !

            I used to have a trailer tent. Put out the awning then attach a free standing A frame. Then a fold out kitchen. Table, chairs and rug….. Also a mini obelisk tent for the chem loo…..lol. *not keen on camping :@)

      2. Plenty of room! Don’t know what you’re talking about. Isn’t the point of afternoon tea that you eat it with your fingers? 😉

  54. Why eco-alarmists are wrong about almost everything. Spiked 14 August 2022.

    The death of the Great Barrier Reef is only the latest eco-apocalypse that has failed to materialise. For decades our hairshirt elites have been forecasting death and doom on a global scale, and none of it has happened. Remember ‘global cooling’, the 1970s idea that Earth was headed for a new Ice Age? Even the CIA predicted ‘detrimental global climate change’, with ‘more snow [and] cold spells’. It was bunkum, of course, as this week’s heatwave attests. ‘The Ice Age that never happened’, as one headline put it a few years ago. Then there was the ‘population bomb’, the feverish belief that so many pesky humans were being born that we wouldn’t be able to feed them all, another 1970s panic. This neo-Malthusian nonsense also fell apart upon contact with reality. There are almost eight billion souls on Earth right now – compared with less than four billion in 1970 – and our revolutionised, fertiliser-rich system of agriculture means we can sustain them all.

    Worth a read possums!

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/08/14/why-eco-alarmists-are-wrong-about-almost-everything/

    1. “There are almost eight billion souls on Earth right now – compared with less than four billion in 1970”.

      Trouble is – they’re all headed this way!

      1. It’s hard to impress upon the eco-loonies that at any time (but especially during an energy crisis) it’s a bit thick to invite millions to move from the warm parts of the world to the cold.

        1. I’m now so glad I moved to Scotland, “Cold and they don’t speak English.”

          I’ve yet to find the Moffat Mosque!

    2. I suspect that way more than a billion people would disagree re the feeding and watering aspects

    3. It took from the beginning of time to create a human population of 4 billion, and then another 4 billion since 1970, and they aren’t concerned about overpopulation? They should be! It chews up resources, cuts down trees, builds over farmland – and eventually, the ability to feed these billions and billions of people will not be able to cope. And then, there’s water to drink…

      1. I honestly believe that the next war will be about water – check out the Mekong where China’s damming, up in the headwaters is affecting thousands, downstream.

    2. Aha – so we can blame Foyle for our chosen system of government

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/obituaries/2022/08/14/TELEMMGLPICT000305558962_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqLYdoWXVyVUQMSe0gNN2ScK5XWGrcsUePvhJjj3A7TdE.jpeg?imwidth=680

      “In his later life he was also an author; his most widely acclaimed book was entitled Foyle’s Philavery, a term which he invented to describe a “collection of words chosen simply on the grounds of their aesthetic appeal, quirkiness or obscurity”. Typical of the selection was “kakistocracy”, defined as “a system of government in which the rulers are the least competent, least qualified and most unprincipled citizens.”

      1. “During his schooldays, Christopher also began to attend Foyle’s literary luncheons. These events were major fixtures in the London social calendar, but Christopher’s first experience was particularly dramatic, as it was the occasion when Randolph Churchill drunkenly denounced fellow guest speaker Sir Hugh Cudlipp, editor of the Daily Mirror, as “the Pornographer Royal.”

        When Christopher later asked his mother what a “pornographer” was, she replied “One who plays on the pornograph,” and refused to answer any more questions.”

          3. The Jeremy Thorpe “murder trial” judge, Melford Stevenson J – was so utterly one-sided – that this “spoof” is almost (but not quite!!) what his summing up was!!

          4. Peter Cook’s biased judge sketch – apparently not very diffrent from the actual summing up in the Thrope case?

          6. OK – “video unavailable” message on first click. Have now seen it on Youtube. Have seen it before.

        1. Indeed. (Wiki) Philip Avery (born 15 November 1959) is a British meteorologist and BBC Weather forecaster. Not to be confused with Phil and Erer, the well known Music Hall duo.

        2. Indeed. (Wiki) Philip Avery (born 15 November 1959) is a British meteorologist and BBC Weather forecaster. Not to be confused with Phil and Erer, the well known Music Hall duo.

  56. It’s come over all sort of cloudy here, i’m going into the garden to get onto my knees 🦿🦿

    1. One cloud doth not a rainstorm make. Humidity is still 30% and oddly, not rising . Peaked at 32.0C here. My terrace was over warm, but the Oleanders are enjoying it. There is a humid haze, close in over the Dee estuary, which I do not recall having seen before.

  57. The attack on Salman Rushdie highlights a growing cancer
    The politics of free expression have changed in the past 30 years. The practice of seeking retribution for causing ‘offence’ is widespread.
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/08/14/attack-salman-rushdie-highlights-growing-cancer/

    BTL

    Can Islam and the Christian Ethic co-exist peacefully or will we need some sort of apartheid to prevent the more aggressive ideology from smothering any opposition to it? Is the situation we have today the consequence of ignoring Enoch Powell’s warnings?

    2. In the 70’s and 80’s we regularly saw on television large groups of angry muslims marching the streets creating mayhem. Someone obviously decided we needed some of that here too.

      Muslims and Christians are unable to co-exist because muslims can’t stop murdering and raping ‘infidel’ women and burning our churches.

      The police, social services and successive governments are all complicit and deserve zero respect.

      1. Islam is a theocracy. This is totally at odds with democracy. It should be obvious to anyone that Islam is incompatible with Western civilisation.

        1. Islam is an ideology – nothing more, nothing less – religiously followed by millions of blind, daft Arabs and other brain-washed cults.

          (Yes I spelled the last word correctly.)

        2. Well the Islamists realise that – which is why they attack us again and again. Islam is incompatible with anything that could pertain to Western civilisation.

  58. And in other news, while eldest grandson was here, Pickles shamelessly made up to him. Normally G & P are cautious about strangers – and Gus remained so with Ben. Pickles as a real show-off. Roly-poly on the ground, winding round Ben’s legs, following him round the garden, climbing a tree (as if to say – “Look at me”..) It was really funny to watch!

      1. Funny you should say that…!

        Of course, I suppose Ben could be – …..and Pickles recognised the signs!!

    1. …and this is the medical so-called professionals, who ought to be immediately struck off from practicing ANY sort of medicine.

    2. Silly woman only understands American, as ‘gender’ is purely a grammatical construct.

      There are only two biological sexes, male and female, defined by the number of x and y chromosomes in their indivudual DNA.

        1. Very rarely used, unlike French, German, Spanish and a host of other languages.

          I cannot see the point.

          2. I mean very rarely used for nouns – Ships, boats, cars maybe, all feminine.

            …and in French they manage to get it wrong – Le Vagin- look it up and check its gender.

      2. Bloke in front of me in the supermarket checkout yesterday had XXY tattooed in big letters on his upper arm. He looked tough and had his wee girl with him. Just saying.

  62. And so it builds

    America is ‘on edge of war with Russia and China’, says former US secretary of State Henry Kissinger – and blames US leaders having ‘trouble defining a direction’

    Henry Kissinger served as Secretary of State under President Richard Nixon
    He suggested to the Wall Street Journal over the weekend that leaders in today’s US political climate have trouble separating personal values from negotiations
    ‘All you can do is not to accelerate the tensions and to create options, and for that you have to have some purpose,’ he said of issues with China and Russia
    It comes as another Congressional delegation is en route to Taiwan
    House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit was seen by some as exacerbating tensions

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11110441/Henry-Kissinger-america-war-Russia-China.html

      1. Senility is never pretty, Bill!

        Arguably, Henry Kissinger is less senile than most recent UK PMs and Cabinet Ministers …

    2. I seem to recall a number of senior US political figures visiting Ukraine, from just before 2014 onwards? That’s turned out well!?

      1. Indeed, SB; they visited Kiev to ‘arrange’ the transition from elected Ukraine President to Proxy Compliant Comedian …

        1. Indeed they did,and in return said comedian has become a billionaire in around 6 years – however did that happen in the poorest & most corrupt country in Europe?

          That said, the US CIA/IMF tag team have been involved in 69 forced ‘regime changes’ since WW2 – quite a peace-keeping force for good eh !

          Russian & China have upset the apple-cart, disobeyed the banking uber-paymasters and decided to create their own financial system, one based on commodities (”hard money”) rather than the current Western system based on nothing but trust in government(“fiat”). The Ruskies & Chinese have brought along with them a susbstantial cohort of BRICS & other African, South Amercian and South East Asian countries to create an alternative trading structure and financial system.

          The globalists wet dream of a one-world gov’t is officially over if they can’t get Russia & China particularly to play ball. They’ll have to settle with a single “Western government” – not what their Great Reset was about at all. They’d only be half there if Russia & China continue on this path.

          That’s the root of the Ukraine conflict which might just be turned into WW3 by the mad fuckers running the West.

          1. We have gone along with most of it. We have turned our partners and friends into enemies. Persia…

    3. Do the Amercians not understand that starting a war with both Russia and China is suicidal? Are they really that stupid?

      1. Fight on two fronts? War classes #101: don’t do it. Look what happened to that Mr Hitler with the stiff arm.

  63. That’s me gone for the day. THEY say it will rain tomorrow and Tuesday and Wednesday. But “they” have been saying this for weeks – so we’ll have to wait and see. The “Rain tomorrow” cliché has become worse than boring. I shall now go and do the watering.

    We have had a splendid 48 hours with my grandson. Such a lovely young man – thoughtful, funny and good company. I am very lucky with my grand-children.

    Have a spiffing evening building flood barriers…

    A demain.

  64. ‘Night All

    Computer starting to freeze so I’ll drop this lot off in no paticular order….

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/81961b4c8568370065171e0993051f22a0f955582a8569238135758d50934f2b.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/56ad72f43a01b0c9e2a9da782366f1cacf42c3f7af00ff7ed7e3e867c57fab13.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1f78d61b2028e1813ab18920da181fc7152a202272fcb22bf09065c52c68ef60.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b9b500161e80d856c6acb7a90b0ad4449774aa6e890d67217e4f22ff3d2cbc0c.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/37f8a764c811e7b8445ddb3ceab2bd9a4e2eedfcab0e19758ad9c73514624a1f.jpg

  65. Seems that the Fisheries Directorate here have executed our walrus, the one that’s been swimming round the Oslofjord and puncturing boats. They reckoned that it was a threat to people – not taht people are too stupid to heed the warnings about the danfers of a wild walrus and not to mess with it, so the poor walrus had to pay with it’s life.
    https://www.aftenposten.no/oslo/i/dno5eA/kjendishvalrossen-freya-er-doed-menneskers-liv-og-helse-kunne-komme-i-fare

      1. People and nature don’t get along, especially if the people are stupid, as most are. Witness those who reckon polar bears are fuzzy and cuddly…

        1. And those morons who keep wild animals as pets. Chimps and Boa Constrictors are not sweet and cuddly- they’re dangerous. Chimps may be amusing but they are wild animals who can do great harm.

  66. Signing off also. Goodnight and God bless. Books to read and a croswword to battle with.

  67. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/08/14/must-tackle-energy-crisis-make-sure-never-happens/

    I got nine paragraphs in before he set out how he would do it. Get 50GW out of wind – you won’t – and nuclear. A waste of money. Oh, and he’d make us all insulate more.

    No suggestion fo the real problem, no consideration to scrapping taxes on energy companies, not suggestion of abandoning the standing charge, no mention of fracking. The man is a big state, spendaholic moron.

    1. Nuclear – new plant sometime within the next 30-40 years.
      My first proper job was safety case for Hinkley C – that was nearly 35 years ago, and it ain’t generating yet.

          2. Nobody wants them, since they blow up continuously and cause massive pollution daily. Those of us who worked with nuclear kept sctumm over it, as people treated you as if you tested the sharpness of safety pins by jabbing them into kitten’s eyes.
            Now, my Father, who worked with nuclear weapons…

          3. Yet it is the only really sensible choice we hav for energy generation. Gas is obviously ideal, coal a good bet but nuclear is reliable. The only issue – bashed into me at school – is the waste, which rather implies we should be looking at thorium?

            Is that a possibiliity, the molten salt reactors?

          4. Power generation is the only civilised thing to do with uranium. And (apart from the plant construction) it’s low co2 (if that matters). Regular, reasonable power density, bit of a problem with the waste but that can be solved.
            I’m not up to speed on the newer reactors. They promise lots, but th technology doesn’t receive the level of attention required, ‘cos it’s nuclear, and we’re back to pins and kittens eyes…

          5. Yet w need nuclear. Urgently. The State has got to stop faffing about and get building. Energy in this country should be virtually free and abundant, instead some oaf is trying to destroy our economy on the altar of green tyranny.

  69. Kate Moss is the new face of Diet Coke.

    Appropriate, really.

    For the last 30 years or so she’s been the face of a coke diet.

    2. Waiting until 01:00 hours when the temperature supposedly will drop to 16°C.

      17°C at 08:00 Keeping cool on Belgian Beer – Affligem – from the beer machine.

  71. Evening all. Back communicado at last, although still in the wilds of deepest Norfolk. Went through some of the places Bill talks of and am now at Sandringham. As I am on the laptop and typing in the dark (it’s very hot and I’ve got the blinds down) please forgive the multiple typos which must surely follow as night follows day!

  72. A couple of people seem to have missed why I now have two dogs, so I’ll explain; I promised my neighbour, who is terminally ill, that I would have her dog (a Norfolk terrier) and not to worry if she were taken into hospital suddenly, because he could come to me. As it happened she had to go into hospital a few days before I was due to set off on the holiday I’d booked months before. Oscar is fine with his little brother, but the Norfolk is a bag of nerves. He’s a nervous, barky, clinging dog even without any trauma, but now he’s like velcro and barks if he’s not stuck to me. Unsurprising, given that he had barely had time to get his head round the new regime, new routine, new rules of a new pack leader before he was whisked off to become a motorhomer. I don’t think he’d even been camping before! Oscar is beside me and Kadi is lying on my feet.

    1. Poor wee dog. It can’t be easy.
      But he’s got you to look up to now, Conners, you who have the knack with unhappy dogs… 🙂
      Hope it goes well with your neighbour. Those times are hard for everybody, let alone a pet who doesn’t understand.

      1. It isn’t easy for him and I make allowances. I don’t need to put him on a lead – he is velcroed to my leg!

        2. It will be a relief to your neighbour to know that her dog is in good hands when she’s gone.

          1. She is very grateful and relieved. She had three dogs and they’ve all got new homes. Kadi was the last one to find a billet.

          2. Good man yourself, Conners. It’s good to see that there are still some people left who do the right thing.

    2. Dogs are so smart, he may know that his owner is terminally ill.
      You wait ages for a dog, then two come along…

      2. I’ve never done so. It has always been slightly more difficult to get to, being (slightly off centre) in Cambridge. Waitrose is our nearest supermarket, at the moment convenience (and truly helpful delivery assistance) wins hands down.

    2. As far as I know, there isn’t an ASDA anywhere in Hammersmith or Shepherds Bush, so I’m spared the temptation.

    3. Not to worry. The purchase of ASDA by the brothers who made money running petrol stations with shops was heavily leveraged, that is they bought ASDA with borrowed money. They will now be squeezed by higher interest rates and downward pressure on selling prices. We have already abandoned them as a shopping destination. My guess is that ASDA will be in administration by the end of the year.

      1. Well done, Sue!
        Wordle 421 4/6

        ⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜
        ⬜⬜⬜🟨🟨
        ⬜⬜⬜🟩🟨
        🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

  80. https://www.arabnews.com/node/2142636/world

    LONDON: Indonesian workers picking berries on a farm supplying four popular UK supermarkets say they have been burdened with debts of up to £5,000 ($6,071) to work in Britain per season.

    Pickers at the farm in Kent, south-east England, were initially given zero-hours contracts, and at least one was paid less than £300 a week after the cost of using a caravan was deducted, The Guardian reported.

    The farm supplies berries to Marks & Spencer, Waitrose, Sainsbury’s, and Tesco.

    The fees the laborers paid to secure work included flights and visas. But many said they also faced thousands of pounds in extra charges from Indonesian brokers who promised them substantial earnings. This despite it being illegal to charge workers fees for finding them jobs under UK law.

    One worker described how he had staked his family home in Bali as surety on the debt and was worried he would lose it.

    “Now I’m working hard only to pay back that money. I cannot sleep sometimes. I have a family who need my support to eat and meanwhile, I think about the debt,” he said.

    Brexit and the war in Ukraine have created chronic labor shortages in the UK’s agricultural sector, with many desperate farms and recruitment agencies forced to source labor from outside Europe, where it can be harder to track the methods local brokers use to find workers.

    The revelations highlight the prospect of fruit pickers being trapped in debt bondage which would prevent them from leaving work for fear of financial ruin. Migrant rights experts said the situation put workers at risk of what was essentially forced labor.

    The Home Office and the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority are examining the allegations, while the supermarkets have launched an urgent investigation.

    Hundreds of Indonesian farm workers have been recruited to work in Britain this summer on seasonal worker visas, the immigration route created to tackle a shortage of farm workers after the UK left the European Union.

    Pickers were sent to Clock House Farm, which supplies berries to major supermarkets.

    Clock House said it was “deeply concerned” by the allegations and would “not have entered into an agreement with, or taken workers from, any entity that was involved in such activity (the charging of fees).”

    It said it was working with authorities to investigate the claims.

    1. Ridiculous. It’s surely still easier and cheaper to bring Europeans rather than exploit these poor Indonesians. What on earth is going on?

      1. Bb2

        There is no one in charge of our country .

        We have been abandoned , discarded , bankrupted , we are just having to muddle through ..

        Government is a mess, and local government is struggling badly with the hit and miss instructions and pile of nonsense Westminster is piling onto everyone .

        Something is badly wrong .

        Who is capable of fixing the mess, I don’t know , do you?

        1. The people “in charge” are only capable of following orders from the WEF. They meddle endlessly, but rarely do any good and never acknowledge their errors.
          Things looked just as hopeless with regard to the unions in 1979, a small group of determined people was enough to turn things round. Tebbit said that when he was campaigning in the 79 election, an old lady said that she would like to vote Con, but didn’t dare to, because the unions had said they wouldn’t work with a Conservative government, and she feared therefore that the country would collapse. That turned out to be a paper tiger.
          This time round, the opposition’s strongest weapon is the sheer number of people they have working for them. It’s pathetic that we’ve got yet another election coming up where the only candidates are WEF1 and WEF2, bigged up by the WEF Broadcasting Corporation.
          One day their stranglehold will be broken, meanwhile all we can do is join the resistance and spread the word.

    2. An industry that existed only because of cheap labour. Britons didn’t do it not because they were lazy but because the pay was so poor. Slaves in shacks don’t have housing costs.

      No one in government or commerce will answer the questions about how it got to this. Europeans were only going to come here for as long as it was worth it. Wage differentials between the UK and the new EU countries were always going to reduce over time, irrespective of Brexit.

      People will have to pay more for their fruit or go without.

      2. The visiting workers system works well across Europe. The people come, work hard for a season and go home to Eastern Europe with enough money to last for the rest of the year.

        1. Few would object to small-scale, properly managed seasonal workers schemes. In this country the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme was introduced in 1945. Even back then, workers were coming from Eastern Europe and Russia.

          Filling a temporary need is one thing. Building a whole industry around cheap foreign labour is another. Importing workers from the other side of the world is a nasty racket.

        2. Few would object to small-scale, properly managed seasonal workers schemes. In this country the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme was introduced in 1945. Even back then, workers were coming from Eastern Europe and Russia.

          Filling a temporary need is one thing. Building a whole industry around cheap foreign labour is another. Importing workers from the other side of the world is a nasty racket.

    3. An industry that existed only because of cheap labour. Britons didn’t do it not because they were lazy but because the pay was so poor. Slaves in shacks don’t have housing costs.

      No one in government or commerce will answer the questions about how it got to this. Europeans were only going to come here for as long as it was worth it. Wage differentials between the UK and the new EU countries were always going to reduce over time, irrespective of Brexit.

      People will have to pay more for their fruit or go without.

    5. My heart bleeds, two such workers have more income coming in than HG and I do, and if the story is to be believed, that’s after housing costs.

      Yes I know we’re not comparing like with like, but goodness sake get it into perspective.

    6. ‘at least one was paid less than £300 a week after the cost of using a caravan was deducted’……What’s the problem?

  81. G’ night all- not too good today. OH has just made me a lemsip. Headache and aching legs.

    2. Oh, I hope you’re feeling better tomorrow, Ndovu. An early night can make all the difference. Perhaps it is your body responding to the change in the weather. Check in and let us know how you are tomorrow, we are all concerned about each one of us.

    3. So sorry to hear that you are feeling rotten.

      You have been very busy recently, lots of bugs still going around despite the wretched heat .

      Rest up and sleep well .

  82. Our younger son bought his father a mushroom growing kit for Father’s Day in June. The mushrooms (oyster) took a while to get going, we thought they were not going to do anything. Anyway, we harvested the eventual small crop, sufficient for a generous mushroom omelette for two. The instructions promised a second crop. Last Wednesday we noticed the beginnings of growth. This morning we came down to discover half the kitchen covered in a thick, white-ish grey powder – the mushrooms had exploded their spores overnight. And this from only seven of them.

      1. Yes. And no. We ate them at lunch time! (A mushroom omelette again…) Somewhat tougher than the last crop. We spent the afternoon trying to digest them. The instructions promised a third crop. The box (approximately 12″ x 6″) is now in the bin. Re-cycling of course.

      2. I hate to imagine how much he paid for the kit, Anne. The growing medium was used coffee grounds, and the actual growing area was probably 5″ x 7″. So – a sturdy cardboard box, some fancy printing on the outside, used coffee grounds and mushroom spores and hey! bob’s your uncle. Entertainment value and son’s love … priceless.

  83. Well, What a lovely surprise. Last minute invitation to join friends for lunch at Butley Oysterage. We haven’t been there for years.
    Last minute jobs swept away, zipped over to Capel St. Mary to chauffeured to Orford. There are worse ways to spend a Sunday.
    Just got home, caught up with the DT; talk about foreign affairs.

    “A dog has been infected with monkeypox for the first time after sharing a bed with its infected owners, scientists have said.

    It is the first reported case of a domesticated dog or cat catching the virus and comes as the virus continues to spread worldwide in people.

    Two gay men living in Paris developed monkeypox symptoms at the start of June and went to a hospital, where their lesions were identified as being caused by the disease.

    The non-exclusive couple, aged 44 and 27-years-old, developed sore lesions in their anal region as well as over the rest of their body a week after having sex with other men.

    Twelve days after the men went to the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris with their symptoms, their otherwise healthy four-year-old male Italian greyhound developed lesions too, with pustules on the stomach and a “thin anal ulceration”.

    A PCR test revealed the dog had monkeypox, and genetic sequencing found it was a 100 per cent match to the strain that infected his owners, indicating the dog caught the virus from his owners.”

    I wonder if the dog got his own back by infecting the owners with hard pad and distemper?

    5. We’re getting plenty of ‘suspected’ MPV showing up at the clinic. Planning to do 800 odd jabs in Sep/Oct if we can get the vaccine – not sure yet what our allocation will be or when we’ll get it. I’m sending SMS to all our high risk MSMs – so far they’ve been pretty good at turning up, so not too many wasted doses.

    6. Green with envy, I adore the Butley Oysterage. Unpretentious fish dishes at their best. Orford also has a couple of good pubs and an excellent butcher.

  84. Cracking thunder and lightning here! And because I watered the garden earlier on, it’s heaving it down as well!

      1. Looking on the Met Office rain radar map, it looks like the Coquet and Redesdale are getting the hammer.

  87. Going to bed very soon. The Sibelius Prom is superb, I am very sleepy but it is cooler tonight.
    I wish you all well. Goodnight.

  88. We had a message from a couple of our friends today. They have just returned after a voyage up to and along the Norwegian coast and up to the artic circle. It was chucking it down with rain and only around 4 c.
    Both came back with mild covid.
    Sun burn would have worse.
    I read earlier about a Christian Church in Egypt that went up in flames and around 25 people died. On the opposite side of the Nile to Cairo.
    Must have been caused by climate change.
    I’m off to bed now, night everyone 😴
    And sad news our old funny guy neighbour passed away last evening after many years of illness. Another decent English man lost. RIP HP.

      1. I guess it depends how colds and other coughs and sneezes might have looked through the process of these test kits a few years ago. People just had common colds then.

        1. Why on earth are people still using these unreliable test kits. At best they only detect coronavirus which in most instances will probably be a common cold. It just shows how project fear is ingrained in peoples minds.

  89. Back again – it’s too hot to sleep, the crossword’s finished and reading the book means lying in a very warm bed. I hope you all played nicely while I was away.

  90. Good night, everyone. I’ve just watched REGAN, the pilot for THE SWEENY TV series. Now I reckon I need to buy myself the complete TV series (53 episodes or around 44 hours’ worth for £32. A big investment, but an even greater time investment for watching them in! And then there’s the two movies filmed starring John Thaw and Dennis Waterman.

    1. Good morning, Elsie.

      Last episode of the The Sweeny, 28/12/1978 to first episode of Morse, 06/01/1987 as John Thaw morphed from the belligerent Regan to the much more refined and cerebral Morse. IMO John Thaw was an excellent actor with the ability to play very different characters convincingly.

    2. You should be able to find a Sweeney box-set on eBay for a song. Worth every penny! The movies are good too.

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