An unofficial place to discuss the Telegraph letters, established when the DT website turned off its comments facility (now reinstated, but not as good as ours),
Intelligent, polite, good-humoured debate is welcome, whether on or off topic. Differing opinions are encouraged, but rudeness or personal attacks on other posters will not be tolerated. Posts which – in the opinion of the moderators – make this a less than cordial environment, are likely to be removed, without prior warning. Persistent offenders will be blacklisted.
Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/02/16/letterstreasury-shake-up-part-war-against-unelected-mandarins/
Good Morning, all
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/methode%2Fsundaytimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2Fe61060b6-4ffc-11ea-961f-902ae2a59867.jpg?crop=1500%2C1000%2C0%2C0&resize=758
Morning Michael. Thank you for posting all the articles above. (Apart from the caricature of Gove the cartoon is rather naff!)
Suella Braverman has a good track record having always voted against May’s ‘deal’ and resigned the day after the draft WA was released.
COFFEE HOUSE – Why the new Attorney General matters so much
James Forsyth – 15 February 2020 – 4:41 PM
Suella Braverman, Geoffrey Cox’s replacement as Attorney-General, is not a household name. But she is one of the most significant appointments of the reshuffle, as I write in The Sun this morning. Why, because she is serious about taking on judges who she thinks are inserting themselves into issues that should be left to parliament.
‘The key issue for the new AG and many others is that ‘metropolitan liberal elite’ policies that have been rejected by the electorate are being imposed by courts, both domestic and foreign’ one Boris ally tells me.
The government’s spine has been stiffened by the fact that in just the last week, it has been blocked by the Appeal Court in London from deporting prisoners who are foreign nationals on the grounds that the mobile reception where they were being held was not good enough and lost a case at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg on the police keeping the DNA of convicted criminals.
The aim, I understand, is to reverse the tide of decisions that has ‘privileged criminals over victims’. Preparatory work is already underway for the government’s Democracy and Rights Commission which is meant to come up with a solution to this problem. But the question is whether a solution that satisfies Braverman and Downing Street is possible while the UK is under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights.
***************************************************************************************
Even better, she has induced the Observer to start digging for dirt and hurling mud, a sure sign that Labour/Lefty/Luvvies are scared
Attorney general Suella Braverman belongs to controversial Buddhist sect
Founder of the Triratna order was accused of sex abuse; victim has spoken out about cabinet minister’s new role
*
*
*
Braverman has also sparked controversy in legal circles. She has called for the UK to “take back control, not just from the EU but from the judiciary”, challenged the Human Rights Act, and complained that “judicial review has exploded since the 1960s”.
Simon Davis, president of the Law Society of England and Wales, said: “The role of the judges is to give effect to the will of parliament, and the role of judicial review is to support parliament, not to undermine it.
“The article 50 and prorogation supreme court judgments were good examples of judicial support for parliamentary democracy. An independent judiciary is fundamental to the rule of law and underpins the UK’s reputation for fairness and impartiality.”
Amanda Pinto QC, chair of the Bar Council, said: “The independence of our judges is fundamental to ensuring the rule of law remains the foundation of our justice system. No one is above the law.
“The Bar Council expects the government to uphold the rule of law in this country. Both the attorney general and the lord chancellor have important roles in guaranteeing those principles are upheld.”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/feb/15/new-attorney-general-suella-braverman-in-controversial-buddhist-sect
We should remove ourselves from the European Court of Human Rights, and ditch our Human Rights Act. They have hamstrung our courts and laws, and have given enormous power to foreign criminals, respectively.
What a load of rubbish from Simon Davis. The role of the judges is NOT to give effect to the will of “parliament” except insofar as an enacted statute or law sets out (or needs clarification as to) what parliament intended when enacting that law. The prorogation supreme court judgment invented law – it did not clarify or uphold it.
PETER HITCHENS: Who let the IRA gangsters take over Ireland? We did
PUBLISHED: 23:58, 15 February 2020 | UPDATED: 00:00, 16 February 2020
I’m awaiting apologies from all the smug buffoons who told me that surrendering to the IRA in 1998 was a good thing to do. It brought peace, they said, ignorant of the true long-term price.
As the gruesome Sinn Fein approaches actual state power in Dublin, will these cowards and trimmers finally admit that they took the low road of superficial success, and left the real problem unsolved?
I am reminded (I often am) of an April 1940 cartoon by the great David Low, in which a defenceless Norwegian worker is menaced by a black Nazi tank and a squadron of dive-bombers.
Beneath are written the cruel words ‘The Iron Comes Back’, a sneer at Norway’s policy of selling its iron ore to Hitler’s Germany.
Well, on this occasion, the lies have come back. We sold Ireland to gangsters for a few years’ respite. Now we see exactly who we sold it to.
We worry whenever some tiny band of neo-Nazis win a few votes in a backward corner of Germany. But this is as nothing to what is now happening in Dublin. Actual gangsters are now close to the offices of real national power.
I note the BBC, tireless in getting everything wrong, has taken to describing Sinn Fein as ‘Left-wing’.
Well, its supposed leader (we will come to this) Mary Lou McDonald cannot be accurately described as Left-wing. It’s another wing that she stands on.
In August 2003, Ms McDonald stood willingly beside the grisly apostle of violence and convicted IRA bomber Brian Keenan. But that wasn’t all.
Both were there to ‘pay respect’ at the statue of one of the nastiest people who ever lived.
The memorial to Sean Russell in Dublin’s Fairview Park is, as far as I know, the only monument to a Nazi collaborator still standing in democratic Europe.
Russell, the IRA’s Chief of Staff in 1939, travelled on the eve of the Second World War to Nazi Germany to offer his services to Hitler. They gave him the use of a villa in Berlin, and provided him with a car and chauffeur.
He was taken to the Brandenburg military camp to study the latest techniques in sabotage and guerrilla warfare, and met Foreign Minister Joachim Von Ribbentrop.
After the fall of France, Russell urged the Germans to use the IRA to strike at British forces in Northern Ireland.
Luckily for the world and for Ireland, Russell died from a burst gastric ulcer in the U-boat (U-65) that Hitler provided to take him back to Ireland. He is a kind of litmus test.
Any decent Irish person shudders at this embarrassing memory of fanaticism beyond all bearing.
Only the real hardliners of pro-violence Republicanism, who hate Britain to the point of lunacy, still defend him.
Well, Ms McDonald, now coated in Euro-gloss, feminism and modern PR, did not have to go there.
She did not have to listen without protest as the grisly Keenan praised the grislier Russell as a man ‘who preferred freedom to slavery’.
But she did, and we can learn a great deal about her and what she stands for from this incident.
Quite how she rose to her position is a mystery.
Her ‘election’ to the leadership of her party was uncontested, and, having met some of Sinn Fein’s leading lights in the USA back in the 1990s, I wouldn’t have wanted to be a heckler on that occasion.
But who actually runs Sinn Fein, which, thanks to the 1998 surrender, is free to raise huge funds in the USA, unlike any other party in the UK?
Well, for that, I refer you to a November 2019 statement by the Police Service of Northern Ireland, reported in the Belfast ‘News Letter’.
The newspaper said that the PSNI saw ‘no change’ from a 2015 government report that concluded Sinn Fein ‘continues to be overseen by the deadliest terror group of the Troubles, which although much reduced in scale and ‘committed to the peace process’, still has ‘specific’ departments and ‘regional command structures’, gathers intelligence, retains weapons and may engage in ‘isolated violence’ including murder’.
They haven’t gone away, you know. In fact, they’ll soon be running the government of a major European country that has until now been a highly creditable law-governed democracy.
And it will be the fault of those who rewarded murder in 1998, and called it peace.
Boris really is turning into Blair
Well now, are any of you beginning to wonder if I wasn’t right about Alexander ‘Boar-iss’ Johnson being the new Blair?
Why, he even has similar problems with his holidays. Where is the rule that says powerful people must have luxury long-haul vacations?
Harold Wilson used to spend his summers on the Isles of Scilly. Harold Macmillan liked a grouse-moor.
Clement Attlee paddled on Welsh beaches. Margaret Thatcher regarded holidays as a form of torture.
I’d prefer any of these to a man who takes his girlfriend to Mustique at the expense of, well, who?
He may say that Winston Churchill was given to grand getaways. But Churchill was the saviour of the nation.
He could do what he liked.
The shameful liars are STILL in business
When I learned many years ago that the truth about a man-made famine in Stalin’s USSR had been suppressed with the help of Western media, I could not understand how such a thing could have happened. Now I do.
An interesting new film, Mr Jones, dramatises this extraordinary event.
The brave and independent Gareth Jones, and the equally courageous Malcolm Muggeridge (later to be a major figure in British broadcasting), both ventured into Ukraine and the Russian North Caucasus, and found starving men, women and children.
When a Soviet official denied that there was starvation, Jones flung a crust of his own bread into a brimming spittoon, and immediately a haggard figure grabbed it and ate it.
But the British-born Moscow correspondent of the New York Times, a one-legged libertine called Walter Duranty, first wrote a disgusting article under the headline ‘Russians hungry but not starving’, in which he described the brave and enterprising reports of Muggeridge and Jones as a ‘scare story’. He knew that they were, in fact, true.
A few weeks later he lied again, writing ‘any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda’.
At the time he did so, people in the famine regions were going mad and eating their own children.
It now seems that the truth about the famine was seen as an obstacle to the USA’s desire to open diplomatic relations with Stalin.
So the mass-murder had to be ignored and denied. How low we sometimes sink.
I don’t in any way compare myself to great men such as Jones (who was later killed in strange circumstances) or Muggeridge, but I have been having a similar experience in the past few weeks.
I have reported on the bravery of two scientists at the poison gas watchdog OPCW who have raised serious concerns about the accuracy of important reports put out by that body, reports which led to major military action.
The two are hugely experienced non-political experts who sought for months to raise their concerns in private, and were ignored and worse.
They have nothing to gain by their actions. They serve no cause except scientific truth.
But the response of their employers has been to belittle them, to suggest wrongly that they were minor low-level figures barely involved in the issue.
And many in the media have either ignored their bravery, or – still more shamefully – joined in the chorus of smears.
One of these smears is that Ian Henderson, a chemical engineer who was sent by the OPCW into the Syrian war zone, was never in fact a member of the Fact Finding Mission (FFM) that went there.
Well, I can tell the OPCW, and others, that there exists in the OPCW’s own archives a document (of its own) in which Mr Henderson is listed as a member of the FFM.
So it should just stop saying this. There is much more about this on the Peter Hitchens blog.
I think we’ve got to give the Irish, and the massively over-reaching Catholic Church, and its ridiculous PR election system and Ireland’s corruption via massive EU handouts, a substantial role in the Irish degeneration.
Some more Hereward the Wake Medals due for Mr Henderson and Mr Hitchins.
I think we’ve got to give the Irish, and the massively over-reaching Catholic Church, and its ridiculous PR election system and Ireland’s corruption via massive EU handouts, a substantial role in the Irish degeneration.
Boris Johnson’s flaws and foibles don’t matter — for now — because he’s doing a great job
Rod Liddle – Sunday February 16 2020, 12.01am, The Sunday Times
Politicians should never go on holiday, or at least should never let us know where they are going on holiday. It leads only to derision and hilarity from the rest of us. “Dave” and Sam Cam in Ibiza, getting down to some banging choons. Tony Blair smarming around Tuscany, in his villa with its tennis court and Eurolackeys. Margaret Beckett with husband Leo in their caravan, sitting by a canal in the drizzle, eating a ham sandwich, somewhere near Daventry.
Theresa May walking up a firm and stable mountain with that stoic and deathly expression on her face. Peter Mandelson smirking and stroking a cat on some oligarch’s yacht in the Aegean. Best of all, Jeremy Corbyn on a motorbike in France with Diane Abbott clinging onto the sissy bar, kind of Easy Rider with no drugs, glamour or appeal.
Nothing makes us despise other people more than their choice of holiday — partly, of course, because that choice is genuinely revealing. We get a glimpse of what these people, these people who rule us, really fancy themselves to be.
So for Boris Johnson, it had to be Mustique, top-end resort of terminally naff hyper-rich jet trash, crap royalty, dodgy moguls and awful pop stars such as Bryan Adams and Jon Bon Jovi. Very 1980s — that sneering loadsamoney decade that is, hideously, back in fashion. Princess Margaret lolling drunk in the pool. Roddy Llewellyn comatose on the sun terrace by an overturned margarita. Mick Jagger popping round for cocktails with his lately acquired drawled vowels.
It’s a Caribbean island denuded of everything Caribbean: you’d see more black faces in the Bullingdon Club in Oxford. Instead it’s all yachts, inexpertly cracked crab suppers and piped music in the marbled yet winningly “rustic” en suites — almost certainly Dire Straits or Sting. Money for nothing and your chicks for free.
Ask me where Boris would go on holiday and I’d answer — Mustique. Ask me who would pay for it and I’d answer — um, somebody else.
And there’s the rub. We don’t know who paid for Boris’s Christmas sojourn, aside from the fact it certainly wasn’t Boris. He said it was the Carphone Warehouse co-founder David Ross. David Ross begs to differ. So, someone else stumped up that £15,000 for the villa — which is very, very, cheap for Mustique at Christmas. Who? Labour’s Jon Trickett, a decent and clever man, is trying to find out, believing this to be the thorn upon which Boris the snail is skewered. He’s wrong, I think, though I don’t doubt for a second that the question should be asked.
I had thought that the thing that would finally do for our prime minister was his relentlessly mischievous and inquisitive penis, especially its possible involvement (vehemently denied) in the Jennifer Arcuri business revealed last autumn. But it hasn’t, so far. And nor will this, even if it is discovered that Boris’s villa was paid for by Vladimir Putin.
Right now, the electorate has priced in Boris’s possible flaws. His flamboyance; his cavalier attitude towards sundry stuff (not least the truth). The public are not sufficiently delusional to think that Boris is a man of the people: they accept that he is a toff and not one of them. But they are also mindful that his performance, since he became prime minister, has been nothing short of astonishing and as a result has transformed the country: he has been decisive, imaginative, valorous and, it has to be said, clever. Including his latest reshuffle.
From a position of utter paralysis he has secured both a huge majority and Brexit, and put the country on the front foot in our negotiations with Brussels. The general consensus is that we will take that, thank you. We’ll worry about Mustique and the chicks later, when things aren’t perhaps going quite so swimmingly.
£5bn boost for public transport
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Fsundaytimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2F78176036-500c-11ea-bc83-f8fbd1f7e3a9.jpg?crop=1500%2C1000%2C0%2C0&resize=1180
Silver-tongued salesman
Got your Silver Solution yet? Hurry, hurry. American televangelist Jim Bakker is flogging bottles of the stuff at $40 (£31) a pop.
It will cure the coronavirus within 12 hours, it is claimed. Also – rather usefully – it will sort out your gonorrhoea.
A quick look at the ingredients on the side of the bottle reveals that it is more than 99.99% made up of a mystical, life-affirming liquid known to many of us as “water”.
For the birds
The Labour Party is planning to expel any members who think that someone born with a male organ is necessarily a man, as science might suggest. This excellent proposal from the transgender rights lobby has been widely supported in the party.
I expect soon another Labour initiative to ensure that people who identify as wading birds — herons, snowy egrets and so on — are accepted as such, regardless of their inability to stand motionless in a bog for hours or spear small fish with their long and dangerous beaks.
These are the kind of measures that will ensure Labour voters come joyously flooding back, convinced that the party is once again sane and rational and has its priorities in order.
On your Marx, silly lefties
The new attorney-general, Suella Braverman, was in trouble with the left even before she took up her new role. She said we were in a “battle with cultural Marxism”. The organisation Hope Not Hate instructed her never to use the term again, on the mystifying grounds that it was “anti-semitic”.
Cultural Marxism devolves from the Frankfurt School of Marxist writers and refers to the obsession with race, gender and so forth. Hope Not Hate objected because the term is sometimes used by right-wingers, some of whom may be anti-semitic. I dare say they also use terms such as “shampoo”, “railway station” and “saucepan”.
A hallmark of cultural Marxism is to close down debate by stopping people using words or phrases they disapprove of. Such as, er, cultural Marxism.
Poor Denniss in eye of the storm
I mentioned two weeks ago the plight of innocent people blamed by idiots for acts of God — such as the Californian chap Al Nino, a real person and not a devastating weather phenomenon.
Well, Storm Dennis is due to hit the UK this weekend, and that’s bad news for a young chap from Whitby called Mr Storm Denniss. He has been mercilessly trolled online. One correspondent advised him to enrol on an anger management course, instead of ripping the roofs off buildings and felling trees.
Mr Denniss has revealed that he was christened Storm because he was born on a blustery evening. An impulsive decision by his parents, who had previously favoured the name Covid-19.
I think we should add Mr Rod Liddle to the recipients of the Hereward the Wake Medal. The list of Medal winners is growing. I wonder if we can form a Battalion?
From Battalion to Regiment,by such small steps do we an Army grow !!
‘Morning King Stephen
I think we should add Mr Rod Liddle to the recipients of the Hereward the Wake Medal. The list of Medal winners is growing. I wonder if we can form a Battalion?
If Carling did Public Service Broadcasting, Rod Liddle would do Thought For The Day most mornings.
It would be wise for any conservative with a liking for hill walking and a taste for good beer and hearty food to not take a break in Bavaria…
They were suggesting on the news just now that they are contemplating making the BBC a subscription service only, removing all the subsidy for public broadcasting and forcing the sell-off (probably to Murdoch, Disney or Sony) of the BBC’s local radio network, some of its national radio channels and some of its TV channels.
What I am afraid of is that the decent surviving parts of the BBC – the bits that do actually provide a public service rather than just competing against the commercial players – will be the parts that are closed, leaving us with dross across the board. BBC4 on TV for example is surviving remnant of Reith’s ideal. The woke managers, on instruction from the Government, might well close this in favour of BBC3, tailored to the youth vote (or what they perceive it to be), and is unwatchable by anyone civilised of any age. Likewise, the old dinosaur bits of Radios 3 and 4 and the World Service, would be merged into the Radio One ethos of doing things – more hip, more “inclusive”, “diverse” (meaning rigidly conforming to woke norms) and utterly dismissive of anyone acting older than 30.
What I want is a public service broadcaster, broadcasting in the national interest, and paid for by the nation out of general taxation. Is this too much to ask?
What I want is a public service broadcaster, broadcasting in the national interest, and paid for by the nation out of general taxation. Is this too much to ask?
Morning Jeremy. Yes!
Thats why the BBC has to go.It hates England.
Who then will step in as England’s public service broadcaster? Or must everything be handed over to America?
There is no Virtue in the world! You are in a Global Babylon!
Don’t know about Babylon – more like Sod’em and Begorrah!
Glasgow has AWAZFM. Broadcasts in several Asian languages, also some English. I have been unable to discover their source of funding, but the accounts show a total annual income of around £17,000. that does seem to be very little for a ration station.
Morning all
SIR – The self-serving agendas of the Treasury’s Europhile advisers reminded me of the unaccountable bureaucrats in the EU Commission.
There was no point in freeing ourselves from the latter without getting rid of the former. Well done, Prime Minister.
Christopher Timbrell
Kington Langley, Wiltshire
SIR – I voted to get rid of unelected EU bureaucrats – but all that seems to have happened is that Jean-Claude Juncker and the others have been replaced by Dominic Cummings.
Dr Murat Akyol
Edinburgh
SIR – I am bemused by those accusing Boris Johnson of megalomania following the departure of Sajid Javid and the appointment of Rishi Sunak as Chancellor.
The December election was Mr Johnson’s election. He won it on the promise to root out Remainer fifth columnists and get Brexit done. That is precisely what he is doing, and I am sure he has the support of most of the country.
George Kelly
Maids Moreton, Buckinghamshire
SIR – Mr Johnson has chosen to surround himself with people who are loyal to him and his aims. Any who resist can expect to be ousted.
This approach has been successful for President Donald Trump, and many in Britain have been impressed by his firm approach to the US establishment.
I suspect Mr Johnson will exercise similar ruthlessness in resisting the British establishment – starting with the Civil Service.
John Pritchard
Ingatestone, Essex
Actually, Trump still has a White House full of Democrats and NeverTrumpers.
Unlike Dr Murat Akyol, I can see major benefits in replacing Juncker by Cummings. Firstly, Cummings is immensely more sensitive to serving UK citizens and deeply more insightful as to how to achieve this (he is also sober by day). Second, Boris Johnson can sack Cummings at a moment’s notice.
Morning again
HS2 tunnel vision
SIR – Surely the money allocated for HS2 would be better spent on making the Midlands and the North truly wonderful places for people to live and work.
Beef up the local transport infrastructure, invest heavily in education and, once we are free from EU regulations, provide subsidies to encourage companies to move there.
If these measures were taken, it would no longer be necessary for so many people to race up and down the country by car, air and rail – and, of course, less travel means lower carbon dioxide emissions.
Chris Lambert
Tadworth, Surrey
SIR – I live in Birmingham. At the moment I can take the local train into New Street station, change platforms and get to London in 90 minutes.
With HS2 I shall have to change stations when I get to New Street and then travel on to London. I doubt a few minutes saved will be worth the inconvenience. I can foresee higher charges for a supposedly faster journey – and then higher prices and fewer journeys from New Street to Euston in order to “encourage” prospective passengers to take the “faster” train.
Are civil servants so devoid of imagination that they cannot think of any other projects on which they might spend £106 billion?
Dr Marius C Felderhof
Birmingham
The Tanganyika groundnut scheme, or East Africa groundnut scheme, was a failed attempt by the British government to cultivate tracts of Tanganyika (modern-day Tanzania) with peanuts. Launched in the aftermath of World War II by the administration of prime minister Clement Attlee, the project was finally abandoned as unworkable in 1951 at considerable cost.
The fact that the region’s terrain and rainfall were totally inappropriate for growing groundnuts, as well as the project’s ultimate cost and failure, led to the scheme being popularly seen as a symbol of government failure in late colonial Africa
I remember in Geography lessons, the ground nut scheme was held up as an example of governmental bumbling.
And that was only two or three years after the experiment was scrapped.
We covered it in Geography also. Our teacher was Pole who had left Poland during WW2, as being both a soldier and an aristocrat meant that being captured by either the Germans or the Russians would have been decidedly unhealthy for his family and himself. He told us that he got out by crossing the border into Romania via an anomaly whereby a kink of a river meant that they did not need a boat until after they had crossed the border. (Or something like that, my mind was elsewhere at the time, most likely).
But, back at the groundnuts scheme, he said that the natives did grow crops, maize, mealies, whatever. He said that the groundnut scheme failed because they planted groundnuts in places where the “stupid natives” knew that nothing would grow.
SIR – Madeline Grant is right that we need to examine thoroughly the implications of Britain’s target of net zero emissions by 2050.
Given that Britain’s emissions will soon be well below 1 per cent of the world total, and neither the US nor any of the other big players appear inclined to follow our example, our current policy looks likely to be a futile gesture. The costs of this gesture are poorly known – but, with estimates of between £20 billion and £40 billion per year for 30 years, they are certainly far from trivial.
Rather than impoverish ourselves to achieve so little, wouldn’t we do better to concentrate on building a strong economy?
David Watt
Brentwood, Essex
There is no point in building a strong economy if it then goes on to trash the world same as everywhere else.
However, there is every point in doing so, if we can act responsibly to the world, can outcompete the bad players and do them out of business. This starts with our own buyers and procurers, who right now seem to prefer (under the spirit of Free Single Market globalism) to buy from our unscrupulous competitors because they are cheap (in money terms) and we are stupid and love our vanity statements.
However, we are told that the answer to problems caused by globalism is: more globalism. Sound familiar?
SIR – Recent letters (February 9) have discussed the status of RAF navigators. In one account I came across, the navigator of a Mosquito plane during the Second World War admitted that he had lost his bearings and told his pilot to “head north with a dash of west”.
Simon McIlroy
Croydon, Surrey
SIR – Whatever may be the view on navigators in Crab Air – as the junior service is “affectionately” known by those parts of the Armed Forces with slightly longer histories – observers, aircrewmen and gunners are rated more highly in the Army, Fleet Air Arm and Royal Marines.
In 1982, during the dark hours before the Argentine surrender in the Falklands, a company of one of the Commandos advancing on Port Stanley incurred casualties in a minefield, and a Royal Marines Gazelle had to carry out casualty evacuation. The night was rather black, with heavy cloud cover; vision aids were not available and, with the absence of a reliable horizon, the pilot mostly had to fly by reference to the attitude indicator and other instruments.
This left the corporal aircrewman working the radios, map-reading, passing instructions to the pilot and keeping such visual lookout as he could for “cumulo-granite”. He became, for much of the eight-hour sortie, aircraft captain (though weather conditions eventually improved). That the task was achieved was entirely due to his competence and judgment. The pilot had, as he afterwards stated, been reduced to a glove puppet.
The aircrewman was recommended for a Distinguished Flying Medal. A civil servant, no doubt gazing out at the hazardous environs of Whitehall, decided that this was not deserved.
Andrew Newcombe QC
Combe Down, Somerset
SIR – We should listen to Aimen Dean, a former al-Qaeda member turned MI6 spy, when he says “deradicalisation is naive”. Well-meaning psychologists and social workers may be over-optimistic when deciding whether it is safe to release a religious extremist from prison.
In any case, the judgment call with terrorists is surely very different from other criminals. The only safe assumption is that they are unlikely to deradicalise – and the evidence that they have done so must be very sound. As their numbers will keep growing, and prison terms will lengthen, building a new prison exclusively for terrorists is now urgent.
Dr Peter Grey
Hurley, Berkshire
Alcatraz is unoccupied. I wonder if the Yanks would rent it to us?
The upside being no refurbishment required.
I’m not sure there’s enough room for all of them, but this would be a start.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3e32c80f62194be5f378d2515d99d9fe9c35c3b61f91aa87c2c3ee286f87157b.jpg
‘Morning, Anne, St Kilda is now unoccupied but the puffins might get humpy.
Morning, Tom,
Given the prospective inmates, the puffins will be the ones getting humped…
‘Morning, Lass, I’m sure that a very hard peck on the pecker will soon disabuse them of the ‘pleasure’. The rapists anyway will have been castrated (without anaesthetic) before incarceration.
Caroline Flack, former presenter of Love Island, dies aged 40. 16 February 2020.
Caroline Flack, the TV presenter, has died at the age of 40, days before she was due to face trial for assaulting her boyfriend. The former host of ITV2’s Love Island is reported to have been discovered at her home in London on Saturday.
Morning everyone. I cannot say anything against this woman since until yesterday I was unaware that she even existed and so I bear her no ill will, how could I? My understanding is that she attained fame on some show based on an exotic island which would clearly not be Britain. This is all by way of saying that in seeking to avoid her on the nine o’clock news I stumbled onto a show about dancing whose presenters/judges, whatever, were of an awfulness that renders insult or defamation redundant. Their sexuality and intelligence were both doubtful and their physical appearance ambivalent. It put me in mind of a television play from many years ago called, The Year of the Sex Olympics where a UK totalitarian state anxious to curb population growth ran sex aversion programmes based on satiety twenty four hours a day. We are there!
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/feb/15/former-love-island-presenter-caroline-flack-dies-aged-40
Reaction seems to be totally OTT on the MSM News/Breakfast programmes …. it reminds me of the loss of “The People’s Princess” in 1997 …. although I get the impression she was “The People’s Slapper” …
It’s wall-to-wall on Andrew Castle’s LBC programme. A nonentity as far as I am concerned, the description ‘vulnerable’ is being applied to her: I think that many people understand what that word is a euphemism for. Another insight into her personality was her reputation for liking young men, lots of young men, mentioned early this morning on the steam radio.
Chimes with your impression, Lewis.
Good morning Minty
Lots of media hysteria.. and wall to wall news coverage .
The news reported that she had attacked her boyfriend whilst he was asleep.
The pics in the Mail yesterday of coarse common womanhood celebrating Valentine’s day say so much about their vulgarity .
No wonder we have problems with migrants attempting to try the pick and mix of British womanhood!
I’m disturbed at there are folk queueing up to criticise and demonstrate their superiority over a young wonan who clearly thought her life was so awful that she had to end it. What happened to Christian charity? Where are the feelings for those left behind, who will be all broken up?
Looks like I was right last night, today’s mainstream media news is a non stop sob fest about someone most people over fifty have never heard of.
As usual the virtuous great and the good are out in force and their first target is free speech and the press.
Though I do not know any facts about what happened to her it appears to me that before attacking free speech they should be taking a serious look at the slime ball people that keep coming out with all this tripe reality tv whereby people live a fake existence and with very little talent are made to feel like superstars for five minutes for the benefit of people who use them just to enrich themselves then throw them away.
I am astonished the Radio 4 gives such prominence to this sad event.
It’s like they want us all to live in their reality world, already we have reality Brexit and reality climate change.
They’re giving it maximum coverage on LBC.
Until this morning, I had never heard of her.
It’s a while since I read ‘Nineteen Eighty Four’ but wasn’t there a department with the sole job of churning out pop songs to keep the Proles happy?
No, that was Radio 1.
No, that was Radio 1.
Looks like I was right last night, today’s mainstream media news is a non stop sob fest about someone most people over fifty have never heard of.
As usual the virtuous great and the good are out in force and their first target is free speech and the press.
Though I do not know any facts about what happened to her it appears to me that before attacking free speech they should be taking a serious look at the slime ball people that keep coming out with all this tripe reality tv whereby people live a fake existence and with very little talent are made to feel like superstars for five minutes for the benefit of people who use them just to enrich themselves then throw them away.
Good morning, everyone. Very, very windy during the night.
Good morning DB,
There was a lull at 0700 hrs and now the wind is building up again. We had a sleepless night.
Wotcher, Maggie,
“Heinz, the (bean) bolt”. [Or the bolting bean?]
Beans from Wuhan?
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/af43144d8bdda42f3cf299c4e104e365eddb7bdfa93c1bdc3f5f0a334a172a2e.jpg
I must not mention beans….
I must not mention beans ….
I must not ……
I feel very sad for anyone who is driven by such despair that the
only solution appears to be suicide. We cannot begin to understand
what goes through the person’s mind prior to this act of self
destruction, The person concerned deserves our sympathy as do the
family and friends of the deceased, they will never understand why
and will always wonder why.
We?
Those who have been through this understand all too well what goes through someone’s mind. There is this endless battle with the survival instinct – an emotional response to the logical conclusion that someone is no great loss to the world, and that it would be so nice to be rid of all the anxiety and worries for the world and have a bit of peace.
In my case, emotion won over logic, which is why I am still here. An annoying little thought came into my head that I wouldn’t be able to stroke the long soft hair of someone who might one day come to love me, and I couldn’t bear missing that. So (thanks to the half bottle of whisky I had brought in as an anaesthetic), I felt my head going down, decided that I was done enough now to get to peaceful oblivion and turned the engine off. I woke at 4am with a headache and the next three hours on the line to the Samaritans.
When my wife got back from her night of passion at the Travelodge, the first thing she said, in a disappointed voice was “so, you’re still here then?” She divorced me for “unreasonable behaviour” a few months later, after I insisted on maintaining a relationship with our two children, then aged 4 and 2. She said “if you push for contact with the children, I will slam in the divorce and screw you for everything”. “I know my rights” was something Relate had taught her at their empowerment for women classes. “I know what I want and I know how to get it” is the mantra for her women’s group in the village, who backed her up and isolated me.
I suspect in the case of Caroline Flack, it may have remorse over her attack on her boyfriend, which might suggest anger issues that can afflict anyone under stress. Clearly these need to be dealt with before they do anyone any harm. It seems the victim of this attack was not prepared to press charges, but it also seems that authorities were keeping them apart for his own safety. Without his support, it seems that she fell apart.
Until the NHS can learn to spend its budget on rather better things than PFI and profiteering corporates in the pharmaceutical racket, there will not be the funds for a decent and timely psychologist (since there was little wrong with her other than being messed up by circumstances) and therapist to sort this out. Failing that, a priest, minister, rabbi, guru, imam or social adviser, who could actually provide some practical ways to get one’s head around love, and how it should be done. I fear that the ITV show she presented was a pretty rotten instructor.
Bloody hell, man. That’s some experience. My sympathies, for what it’s worth.
Thank you for that. I know how hard it is to reveal my innermost thoughts and emotions. I can’t begin to express my admiration of you.
Good morning Garlands
Life’s ups and downs can be very difficult to navigate sometimes.
Good morning, Belle.
Indeed they can but fortunately most of us do not hit
such depths of despair that to kill ourselves seems the
preferable option!
As Rik mentioned above, there are many unnecessary deaths a day .
We only know that they are suicides are by virtue of the inquests we read about in the local newspapers.
And still no reply to my email!
I think that is my fault. I sent you an out of date contact. I will send a new one.
Suicide is a long term solution to a short term problem
Exactly, G.
Good morning.
Downing Street ‘vows to abolish BBC licence fee’
Downing Street is planing to scrap the BBC licence fee and replace it with a Netflix-style subscription model, according to reports.
Senior aides to the prime minister allegedly told the Sunday Times that the corporation would be forced to sell off most of its radio stations and scale back its website.
The plans also include reducing the number of BBC TV channels and banning the broadcaster’s stars from having “second jobs”, it is claimed.
We are not bluffing on the licence fee,” the source was reported as saying. “It has to be a subscription model.
“They’ve got hundreds of radio stations, they’ve got all these TV stations and a massive website. The whole thing needs a massive pruning back.”
Before the general election, Boris Johnson admitted he was ”looking at” abolishing the licence fee.
He was also said to be considering the decriminalisation of non-payment of the annual charge.
I hope this all happens before May 20th when we are expected to pay for a licence (which I won’t)
Met Office warnings: RED ALERT
Storm Dennis is expected to bring further heavy rain for a time on Sunday morning, increasing the likelihood of high impacts. The warning is in place from 6.10am today until 11am later this morning. e Met Office said: “Prolonged, heavy rain will continue until mid-morning, easing slowly into the middle of the day.
“This rain will bring event totals to between 100 and 140mm over higher ground in south Wales.”
Where is the red warning in place?
Blaenau Gwent
Bridgend
Caerphilly
Cardiff
Merthyr Tydfil
Monmouthshire
Neath Port Talbot
Rhondda Cynon Taf
Torfaen
“Good” say Spartacus as he snuggle down to digest his breakfast. “None of that healthy walking in the fresh air malarkey.”
Drip drip news
“High impacts”? What is that? Rain on the roof?
Cripes, RCT. I had better start running around the house screaming.
Good Moaning;
Three TCW links for reading at your leisure.
https://conservativewoman.co.uk/the-archbishop-of-woke-slanders-his-own-flock/?utm_source=TCW+Daily+Email&utm_campaign=18ff56cecd-Mailchimp+Daily+Email&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_a63cca1cc5-18ff56cecd-559682581
https://conservativewoman.co.uk/the-thought-police-are-on-everyones-case/?utm_source=TCW+Daily+Email&utm_campaign=18ff56cecd-Mailchimp+Daily+Email&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_a63cca1cc5-18ff56cecd-559682581
https://conservativewoman.co.uk/lady-nuggy-still-keeping-up-appearances/?utm_source=TCW+Daily+Email&utm_campaign=18ff56cecd-Mailchimp+Daily+Email&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_a63cca1cc5-18ff56cecd-559682581
An excellent comment below the line on the Archbishop of Woke article.
Peter Evans • 35 minutes ago • edited
It’s
rather revealing that the good Archbishop fails to mention that the
Windrush generation and their descendants, along with other ‘enrichers’
of our non-existent/bland/too-White culture, are, for the most part,
incomparably better off in institutionally racist Britain than they
would be in their own homelands, even if some of them spend large
swathes of their lives on welfare benefits.
Might that be just one
of the main reasons why they have chosen, despite all the foul bigotry
of the ‘unconsciously’ but indelibly raaaaycist natives here, to remain
permanently? Unconscious racism had to be invented of course, because,
finding actual racists who hate people because of their skin colour was
proving as fruitless as looking for unicorn droppings or hen’s teeth;
but the underachievement of the ‘vibrant’ new Britons, and their
over-representation in the criminal justice system, had to be due to
malicious bigotry, because everyone’s exactly equal in all talents and
abilities beneath the skin, whatever their ancestral origins.
Despite
evolving in radically different environments and climates over
millennia, despite being subject to radically different survival
pressures and evolving radically different survival strategies adapted
to those environments, all human populations have arrived at the finish
line in Current Year with exactly the same intellectual and
temperamental aptitudes and characteristics.
Apparently, in
Wokeworld, although evolution resulted in different distributions of
genetic alleles in different populations, yielding visibly different
phenotypes and body morphologies, along with multiple different
biomarkers indicating ancestral origin and affiliation, the only organ
in the human body that was unaffected by these different pressures and
conditions was the brain – the most intricate and energy-demanding in
the human body.
So, unconscious racism and the ‘macroaggressions’
it disseminates is the newly-concocted magic bullet that accounts for
the rise of White Supremacism in the West apparently (Wokespeak for the
cause of New Briton underachievement and criminality), even though you
can’t see it, measure it or feel it and you’re not even aware that you
‘have’ it.
As I’m sure the Archbishop will agree, the late
Professor of White Eradication Studies, Noel Ignatiev, has apparently
demonstrated beyond dispute that ‘Whiteness’, the font of all genocide
and hate and oppression in the history of the world (and nothing else),
is incurable, apparently, even though it’s a social construction because
race doesn’t exist.
Well, race doesn’t exist if you’re a
grievance entrepreneur, until it does. It does when grievance hustlers
of colour and their pathologically guilty white, wealthy, Woke-liberal
enablers want unearned advantages over Whitey, like diversity quotas and
‘positive’ action (i.e., pernicious racial discrimination against more
qualified and competent indigenous people).
On those occasions,
race is suddenly accorded malignantly real status: white people are the
people who carry an invisible rucksack stuffed with White Privilege
around with them everywhere they go, even when they’re desperately poor
and live in those enclaves of poverty, hopelessness and despair that
Darren Grimes referred to. White Advantage is a form of sinister white
voodoo that causes people like Afua Hirsch and David Lammy to turbo-spew
endless jets of righteous bile and venom over white bigots (Wokespeak
for white people, even guilt-sick white liberals).
Race only
disappears when white indigenous people try to asset their right to
self-determination, their right to preserve their ancestral homeland as
their forebears intended and pass it on to the next generation.
This
guff is insane. No other people on the planet would be attacked by
pontificating hypocrites like the Archbishop for asserting their
national, ethnic identity and protecting both from demographic
submersion through mass immigration.
But it’s also evil. The
charge of ‘racism’ in Woke Clownworld, a world that Archbishop appears
to feel entirely at home in, should be called what it really is:
anti-White hatred directed maliciously against the most racially
tolerant and generous people on the face of the planet.
Skimming through the Daily Mail this morning, to find out who “Caroline” was, as I’d had no idea, I came across Peter Hitchens’ blog, duly posted here:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8008611/PETER-HITCHENS-let-IRA-gangsters-Ireland-did.html
Who let the IRA gangsters take over Ireland? We did.
We worry whenever some tiny band of neo-Nazis win a few votes in a backward corner of Germany. But this is as nothing to what is now happening in Dublin. Actual gangsters are now close to the offices of real national power.
I note the BBC, tireless in getting everything wrong, has taken to describing Sinn Fein as ‘Left-wing’.
Well, its supposed leader (we will come to this) Mary Lou McDonald cannot be accurately described as Left-wing. It’s another wing that she stands on.
In August 2003, Ms McDonald stood willingly beside the grisly apostle of violence and convicted IRA bomber Brian Keenan. But that wasn’t all.
Both were there to ‘pay respect’ at the statue of one of the nastiest people who ever lived.
The memorial to Sean Russell in Dublin’s Fairview Park is, as far as I know, the only monument to a Nazi collaborator still standing in democratic Europe.
Russell, the IRA’s Chief of Staff in 1939, travelled on the eve of the Second World War to Nazi Germany to offer his services to Hitler. They gave him the use of a villa in Berlin, and provided him with a car and chauffeur.
He was taken to the Brandenburg military camp to study the latest techniques in sabotage and guerrilla warfare, and met Foreign Minister Joachim Von Ribbentrop.
After the fall of France, Russell urged the Germans to use the IRA to strike at British forces in Northern Ireland.
Luckily for the world and for Ireland, Russell died from a burst gastric ulcer in the U-boat (U-65) that Hitler provided to take him back to Ireland. He is a kind of litmus test.
Any decent Irish person shudders at this embarrassing memory of fanaticism beyond all bearing.
Only the real hardliners of pro-violence Republicanism, who hate Britain to the point of lunacy, still defend him.
Peter Hitchens criticises the BBC for calling them left-wing, because they sided with Nazi Germany, but the Nazi party described itself as Socialist.
Personally, I see little difference between the supposed two sides of the political spectrum. They are far closer to each other than the centre, to true conservatives.
That article led onto a second piece, i.e. about the chemical attack in Douma. Someone clearly tried to start another major conflict in Syria, by claiming that a gas attack had occurred, and the MSM went along with it, but as many suspected, not all was as it seemed.
https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2020/02/someone-has-been-telling-lies-about-a-and-b-kafka-comes-to-the-hague.html
Kafka comes to The Hague
The Show Trial of A and B.
Kafka comes to The Hague
Why you should be worried
You might think that when two honest men, with nothing to gain and much to lose, speak the truth about a major scandal in a body which might one day decide between world war and peace, that the world would immediately do the right thing.
You would be utterly wrong.
Read on…
Pitter-patter collocations = tiny feet; raindrops:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgacmkep3Ew
The candidate who went all-in on WOKENESS:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rieWpk1Gcg
Warren promised to let trans-children choose her Secretary of Education.
If you think Warren is bad (and she is by all accounts) there is speculation that Mr M Bloomberg is thinking about one H Clinton as his running mate. Some unkind Americans have suggested he’d better have the top of the range running shoes ’cause the odds of him being POTUS for any lengthy period of time are very small indeed!
Arkansacide?
I understand it is very contagious….
100% fatal, too.
Does he understand how many dead bodies there are of people who walked too close to the Clintons?
Grab a Granny Nite?
They really are gifting Trump a second term aren’t they.
Good morning all.
Wind & rain in fits & starts.
Incumbent voting in the New Hampshire Primary:
1996 – Clinton – 76,797
2004 – Bush – 53,962
2012 – Obama – 49,080
2020 – Trump – 129,696
Must be all those illegal immigrants flooding into NH.
And I’m Tw@ter banned!
The man who likes to be called Stephanie Hayden (@flyinglawyer73) has got upset because I will not kowtow to his delusion that he really is a woman.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c3eb5b74a7598798d41e188d00fc77cb1a390847bda601fc5dbff41ecedf721a.png
Yaay! Banned for the truth!
Unpersonned?
How long for?
Just until “Stephanie” becomes a real woman?
That will be the “Twelfth of Never” then.
Probably a week.
Could any of the Nottler Tw@terati post about my ban and ask why?
Done.
Can you post a link so I can pick up on it via my alternative means?
Ta!
From Tony Angel:
https://twitter.com/TonyAngelUK/status/1229003511544926208
I’ve retweeted a few of your recent tweets.
Sorry, but scientific facts do not matter any more, the truth is whatever “progressives” say it is.
37 trillion sex linked cells will not be gainsaid.
I got a reply and a like from Tony Angel!
He’s still about & active on Tw@ter.
Posted late last night- worth repeating https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4670f6c5e33b3518a0fe5c0eea9b7dca125ba3115540b3ca328ae244751f2690.jpg
https://twitter.com/MayorofLondon/status/1228967829736652800
The comments are a good read!
John Ward on fine form:
https://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2020/02/15/at-th-end-of-the-day-boris-learns-a-lesson-about-the-commercial-futility-of-blocist-alliances/
A passing thought.
Should civil servants be twattering their policy views?
Preferably not.
316394 + up ✔s,
Health / safety warning, join the peoples placed in power dots countrywide, who is responsible for
their placement ?
https://twitter.com/GerardBattenUK/status/1228990095639875584
Just realised I put this on Saturdays page.
I bet on sports about half a dozen times a year when the whim takes me. Said whim took me yesterday to betting on the Liv v Nor game.
The odds were 7-1 on a home win and I thought that was bl**day good so I bet £10. It was only later that I realised that Nor was the home team. :(((
‘Morning, Stormy, and what will you spend your £70 0n?
You’ll have gathered that I don’t follow wendyball even though Norwich City have always been my ‘home’ team.
Isn’t that the team that expelled Delia Smith fan for continual embarrassment?
Just been down waitrose and back, icy cold wet rain and roads with big puddles in the usual places, not very nice out there.
An advert I like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWBp4m_WS-Q
Any advert, and increasingly film, that uses the now almost mandatory “rap” music tends to make my skin crawl. As for that walking along waving your arms about like a monkey, and exaggerated facial expressions, that is also highly off-putting to my senses. But that is just personal opinion from me about the “rap-ification” of our youth and our culture being replaced with LA “ghetto music” and gestures. 🙂
Not that our own historical culture does not have its dark side:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/fedcab59e1dfe334c31c7149d882e892fee4677c778826c745dd74c65c26c47a.jpg
:o)
Miaow, Martin Cat-thy…
Is that Cat Steven’s?
You mean Yussuf Islam, or has he decided that’s not fashionable any more?
Nicked
Am I being unduly harsh when I state that personally this picture
acutely typifies the utter uselessness of modern men? Here we have the
textbook family being ‘rescued’ by the ‘EMERGENCY’ services from certain
death by drowning in the torrential flood waters which have ‘decimated’
Nantgarw in Wales. Thanks to the bravery of these rescue workers the
adults in that poor benighted family will not get their socks wet. Am I
too uncaring?
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ae96f8ac35ddbfad2f8479ecfa7c0c0d0aee76d4743cb006d0377cded4614f4f.jpg
I’ve often thought myself that many of those being “rescued” could easily wade out with their trousers rolled up.
There could be unexpected obstacles.
Sewage. (That was not a criticism, just the probable reason Mr Bob…)
I’m assuming that the owners of the vehicle in the picture are those in the Dinghy. But I wonder how insurance companies deal with this sort of ‘right off’ ?
Driving without due care and attention must be something that crosses the minds of the loss accessors.
I remember a couple of years ago in North Yorkshire met by a flooded dip in the road I turned around and went back.
It can’t be all that deep – the water only came half-way up the ducks!
They don’t want people going through floodwaters because they can’t see hidden obstacles, potholes, whatever, I assume.
But otherwise, yeah.
Link just buzzed over by sonny boy.
https://freespeechunion.org/
Bloody Good Stuff!!
Just discovered this in the Sunday Tellygraff:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/02/16/launching-free-speech-union/
Why I’m launching a free speech union
This week the High Court ruled that a police probe into the tweets of Harry Miller, an ex-policeman, was unlawful. Mr Miller had been contacted by Humberside police after a series of statements he made about transgenderism – for example, “I was assigned a mammal at birth, but my orientation is fish. Don’t mis-species me”. Accused of a “non-crime hate incident”, Mr Miller got the impression that he might be prosecuted if he continued to tweet.
It’s part of a pattern: in June a disabled grandfather, Brian Leach, was fired by Asda for circulating a clip of Billy Connolly targeting his famous rudeness at suicide-bombers, because it was deemed Islamophobic. He has since been reinstated.
Left-wing sceptics dismiss anxiety over free speech as a figment of an overheated imagination. Yet that anxiety commands hard evidence, not just anecdotes. A 2017 report for the University and College Union found that, compared to other EU nations, the constitutional protection for academic freedom in the UK is “negligible” and the level of actual protection “equally poor (if not worse)”.
In 2019, a Policy Exchange report observed evidence of “a chilling effect” upon the free expression of students who hold non-mainstream political views. And in the same year the Legatum Institute’s prosperity index ranked the UK only 17th in the world for freedom of speech, recording a decline over the previous decade.
The threats to free speech are not imaginary. One is the confusion of reasoned criticism with hatred. Another is a radically subjective definition of “harassment” or “offence”, which lets guilt be determined entirely by the eyes of the beholder. Thus, the College of Policing tells us, a hate incident is one “which is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by a hostility or prejudice”. A further threat is posed by institutions such as universities, whose future so depends on attracting students that they daren’t risk appearing other than fully “woke”.
But there’s hope on the horizon. Later this month will see the launch of the Free Speech Union, which sports the refreshingly liberal motto, Audi Alteram Partem – “Dare to listen to the other side”.
Founded by the journalist Toby Young, the non-partisan, mass-membership FSU is no club for pale males: as well as Matt Ridley and David Starkey, its Advisory Council musters the novelist Lionel Shriver, the feminist philosopher Kathleen Stock, and the political commentator Remi Adekoya. The FSU promises to aid any member whose legal free speech is being shouted down by zealous mobs or betrayed by spineless institutions, through mobilising support and offering legal advice.
We have a problem with free speech in this country; the Free Speech Union is the beginning of a solution. For more information, please visit https://freespeechunion.org/
Nigel Biggar is a professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at the University of Oxford.
It was Nigel Biggar who got a kicking for saying the British Empire wasn’t worse than the German Experiment.
Splendid – I’m going to have to outsource my Hereward the Wake Medal production to China given the numbers involved in the FSU!
THE GREAT STORM DENNIS
“In February 2020, on the fifteenth day
Storm “Dennis” came to blow us all away
Warning was given and folk were feared and numb
As the great storm did whistle round the lum
Along the length and breadth of the Great Glen
The good folk huddled in each but ‘n’ ben
The bairns sat anxious round the blazing peat
And supped their brochan as they warmed their feet
And those who ventured out, with spirits bold
Returned home sad and drookit and somewhat cold
Yet I’m glad to say, no serious damage did ensue
Although a fallen tree did block the auld A82
So folk gathered round in chapel and kirk
To thank the Lord above for his good work
In saving them from the fearful wrath of “Dennis”
Which they had thought their very lives did menace”
— after William McGonagall
“Labour’s trans row shows the party can’t handle debate”
Basically, Zoe Strimpel needs to change her social circle.
Of course, the DT shows its attachment to debate by not allowing comments.
I do think Keir ( rabbit caught in headlights ) Starmer
should identify as a transsexual and shoot Becky ( hamster )
Wrong Daily’ s fox by becoming Labour’s first ” female ‘ leader .
Maybe Mr. Harriet Harman – winner of the Labour all-female candidate line-up in Birmingham Erdington – could be his bag handler.
Anne,
316394+up ✔s,
PIE on the menu was it?
Afternoon Anne,
316394+up ✔s,
There is a lot of it about among the peoples as in, the three monkeys rule,OK
Good afternoon, a fleeting visit from a Saxon Queen .
Maybe Terpischore will know this once she is up and running,
someone sent me a post and said –
” why do you write your comments in free verse ” not the first
person to ask me this, even in actual life it’s asked,
I truly don’t know what’s meant by it but assume I’m being insulted.
Not an insult – just an observation that your posts are generally in short lines, so that they look like verse, even if they’re not.
I like it, you carry on queenie.
The First Time We Kissed” by Kelly Roper.
Nervously I stood there under the porch light
As you smiled at me and moved in closer.
You took me in your arms, and my heart began to thud so loudly
I was sure you could hear it but were pretending you didn’t.
You moistened your lips, looked deeply into my eyes,
And then gently pressed your lips to mine.
A moment’s pause, and you touched my lips with yours again,
A whisper of a kiss that promised more to come.
We kissed again, and during that kiss I felt like I had finally come home.
Looking back, I know I was right as we kiss goodnight and I turn out the light.
“After the Sea-Ship” by Walt Whitman.
After the Sea-Ship-after the whistling winds;
After the white-gray sails, taut to their spars and ropes,
Below, a myriad, myriad waves, hastening, lifting up their necks,
Tending in ceaseless flow toward the track of the ship:
Waves of the ocean, bubbling and gurgling, blithely prying,
Waves, undulating waves-liquid, uneven, emulous waves,
Toward that whirling current, laughing and buoyant, with curves,
Where the great Vessel, sailing and tacking, displaced the surface;
“City of Potholes” by Kelly Roper
Zig-zagging down the road
Trying not to stray over the centre line
Or hit a curb
Or break an axle
Or flatten a tire
Or wind up in the next surprise sinkhole.
Driving in Toledo is not a sport
For the timid or the sane or the under-insured.
Talking of which, I was rather amused, in the New Woke Telegraph to see this one by Walt Whitman included amongst their Valentine’s day poems:
“A glimpse through an interstice caught,
Of a crowd of workmen and drivers in a bar-room around the stove late of a winter night, and I unremark’d seated in a corner,
Of a youth who loves me and whom I love, silently approaching and seating himself near, that he may hold me by the hand,
A long while amid the noises of coming and going, of drinking and oath and smutty jest,
There we two, content, happy in being together, speaking little, perhaps not a word.”
316394+up✔s,
Well whatterya know,
https://twitter.com/GerardBattenUK/status/1229013873061236739
There were always black slaves in the Middle East. The only reason there were Sub-Saharan Africans in the Roman Empire is that they entered via the Arab slave markets. The Romans had no interest in conquering Sub-Saharan Africa and the North Africans they did conquer were Caucasian not Negroid.
Afternoon Sue E,
316394+ up ✔s,
Not a lot of people know that.
The Chinese had many black slaves when Mugabe invited them to build a railway and take all the copper.
And the extremely nasty piece of work as he was, died an extremely wealthy man as a result.
Also on the news today, report that the Church of England is going to redivert hundreds of millions away from mending the roofs of Grade 1 listed buildings, and towards providing handouts to abuse “survivors” and their attendant lawyers.
Also, instead of the spiritual welfare of parishioners and the community, they will concentrate on “Safeguarding” whereby everyone is regarded with suspicion, and an atmosphere of hate fostered against those who may be prospective abusers, such as men, who are of not of an officially-supported sexual orientation.
I walked out of the Church of England back in 2000, when they were trying to show their modern approach by advising me that it was better to be single and independent, rather than to aspire one day to be married with a woman I love, and who loves me (which is considered outdated and time for an upgrade). How could I sing in the choir at weddings in a church that was founded on a king’s divorce? I became a Roman Catholic.
I then walked out of the Catholic Church in 2018 over the issue of ‘Safeguarding’ (as explained above), which I do not consider to be Christian, and the role of the Church is not to act as police officer, upholding standards of political correctness set by the Home Office and the BBC.
I am now spiritually stateless, and will probably burn in hell for it.
Morning, Jeremy.
There will be at least the two of us in that furnace. I haven’t quit any churches, preferring not to join the organised religions, as they are really another vehicle for power, control & wealth. Instead, I plough my own furrow, no priests to tell me what to do, trying to live by the basic principles of Christianity as best I can (and it’s not so easy, actually…).
I think staying true to bible teaching and keeping out of the CofE and RC churches is more likely to save you from hell than commit you. The orthodox churches haven’t fallen but they worship in Greek, Russian and Church Slavonic, which presents me with something of a problem.
Good morning!
I was raised agnostic by atheist parents. I therefore take a radical approach to religion. For me, there is one point and one point only in religion – that is to enhance my capacity to love and to be loved. The only point of a church is to make this communal.
All religious institutions are therefore judged by this yardstick.
You won’t burn in hell, but those who have perverted the Church might.
Peter was symbolic of the rock upon which the church is built.
In their lack of wisdom they have decided to change rock for a foundation of shifting sands.
Morning, Jeremy.
There will be at least the two of us in that furnace. I haven’t quit any churches, preferring not to join the organised religions, as they are really another vehicle for power, control & wealth. Instead, I plough my own furrow, no priests to tell me what to do, trying to live by the basic principles of Christianity as best I can (and it’s not so easy, actually…).
‘Morning, Paul, I agree with you in that all religions and ideologies are man-made control systems, hell-bent in their own ways, of forcing mankind to submit to their view. I’m also one who refuses to adhere to any of their principles except one.
I have always questioned our raison d’etre. Why are we here? What is the point of all the striving to survive if there is no purpose? For this reason I have two beliefs;
One is that there must be something bigger than us – call it God if you must but the big bang was no mere accident.
The second is that three score years and ten is an awfully short time in infinity. Are we here to learn a lesson and, having learned it, pass on to another life and another lesson until we reach some sort of perfection?
In this belief I’m hoping that Bercow is reborn as a rat, having failed spectacularly to learn humility in this one!
The Big Bang was an accident. It was a mathematical perturbation in nothingness. A singularity, nothing more.
Years ago, a nurse I worked with introduced me to the concept of new and old souls.
Those who were maladroit in their dealings with the world were new souls, while the thoughtful were old souls, who had been here before.
Can we assume this is Bercow’s first incarnation as a human being?
I like that, Anne, new souls and old souls and I would guess that Bercow is in the category R souls.
Only half listening to ‘Private Passions” on Radio 3. The guest Jonathon Aitkin has just relayed a story of a private dinner at a hotel in London with just three other guests: Richard Nixon, Harold Wilson and Lady Falkender. Apparently Both Wilson & Nixon were word perfect in singing all eight verses G&S’s HMS Pinafore ‘Ruler of the King’s Navy’….
I missed hearing who the singers were, but did hear the rest of the story.
Apparently Edward Heath could have had a career as an orchestral conductor.
What a pity he went into Politics.
Afternoon Bob,
316394+up ✔s,
Bloody bus conductor would have been more apt.
Or a lightening conductor nailed to a wall.
He loved sailing around the buoys, so I heard.
‘Afternoon, Eddy, wasn’t that Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, found drowning in the Solent while clutching the bottom of a buoy.
You may be confusing it with the newspaper headline David Hockney cut out and included in one of his pictures. ‘”Man clings to buoy all night”!
Well, he certainly wasn’t one for the gulls.
Getting a bit of a sore throat, shall I self quarantine for 14 days?
Definitely.
I hope you haven’t been drinking tea or coffee from China cups.
Yup. You never know…. you can’t be too careful. Have you been in Waitrose very recently? Ours was full of Chinese on Friday, no doubt stocking up their empty cupboards having been away back home to China for the Chinese New Year.
Stay away from Bicester Village, it’s full of ’em.
Research departments in Cambridge are also choc-a-bloc with research students, also with visiting scholars from China…. then they are let loose upon the town at the end of the day. My feeling is that China did not press the International Panic Button straight away, I think more than a few weeks elapsed before they were prepared to admit there was a problem.
Phizzee is this you posting under a different name over on ZH?
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c9817f73745e7a5ec22f371db9c15f6905e27f919b8d80b13c1fca704c40d2a1.png
Not me but i agree with the sentiment.
I only post on here.
Good afternoon O’Bargee
Afternoon Phizz. Thanx for the clarification. Perhaps you have an unknown twin brother?
I’m curious why you thought it might be me.
Well the name and the sentiment! 😉
Well, i am extremely good looking so easy mistake to make, but i have two arms.
‘Morning All
“Storm Dennis Overturns Entire House In Scenes of Devastation Near The Chilterns”
“No one injured as house was unoccupied at the time”
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c1383b65f80409af4e73948adc0627be62c9d69883732a9be30280749d79ea09.jpg
It’s February,a month where traditionally the UK gets some wet and windy weather,will the Met Office and MSM kindly wind their neck in and stop squealing hysterically at the first gust
We’re after all.British
Were any dolls injured?
Oh that made me smile …
First world problems
Star Trek!
or should it be the dark side?
The Iranian Ambassador to the UN had just finished giving a speech and walked out into the lobby of the convention centre where he was introduced to a U.S. Marine General.
As they talked, the Iranian said, “I have just one question about what I have seen in America.”
The General said, “Well, anything I can do to help?”
The Iranian whispered, “My son watches this show called Star Trek and in it there is… Kirk who is Canadian, Chekhov who is Russian, Scotty who is Scottish, Uhura who is black, and Sulu who is Japanese, but there are NO Muslims. My son is very upset and doesn’t understand why there aren’t any Iranians, Iraqis, Afghans, Egyptians, Palestinians, Saudis, Syrians, or Pakistanis on Star Trek.”
The General leaned toward the Iranian Ambassador, and whispered in his ear, “That’s because it takes place in the future.”
Some hope!
Hope springs eternal, Aeneas!
Good morning to you.
Fingers crossed.
Morning Each,
Let us not be in the condemnation game where
Ms C Flack is concerned when pity is called for, where most I would assume do not know the full details of what
had occurred leading up to it.
This is not saying suicide is the answer, far from it.
A very sad affair all round.
I’m not very nice but I can”t help asking myself “Where is the wall to wall grief-fest for the other 15 people who statistically committed suicide yesterday??”
Yup on average 16 people a day commit suicide largely unremarked,what makes this life more important??
I find the MSM wailing yet feasting on this poor woman’s death utterly repugnant
I’ll have none of it
Good morning, Rik.
Yes, I agree with you, apparently she was vilified in life and now the sobfest begins
……..by those very people who vilified her!
Its another story to fill the front pages. She was part of the disgusting love island selfie fest, where preening youngsters concoct relationships based on air-head fantasies, the whole thing played out in front of a gawping audience. When reality strikes these kind of people, they can not cope. The CPS must have had a pretty good case and some one whacked the boyfriend whilst he was staying in her place. Sad, but if you live by the social mejja, you might die by it. There is always the OFF switch, but that never seems to be an option in this responsibility free world.
Programmes like that remind me of the more overwrought films depicting Classical Rome’s decline and fall.
Morning, Anne,
Happily I’ve never seen an episode. It sounds like cr*p.
I’ve seen odd seconds when MB is flicking around trying to find something like Repair Shop or interminable railway journeys.
(Hereditary traits are soooo powerful; I remember MB and his mother wanting to kill pa-in-law for his irritating trick of getting up and constantly changing the telly from BBC to ITV – or the other way round.)
In the Good old Days before remote controls!
At least he got some exercise!
That reminds me, Anne, of the story I put up a while back:
An elderly married couple were at home watching TV.
The husband had the remote and was switching back and forth between a fishing channel and the porn channel.
The wife becoming more and more annoyed, finally said:
“For god’s sake! Leave it on the porn channel. You already know how to fish!”
Perhaps we should bring back throwing
christiansslammers to lions.Considering the Orwellian title of that show and one of the ministries featured in ‘1984’ (which I recall was mostly concerned with cultural re-education), what has that show got to do with love?
It seems to be mostly about getting people to want to top themselves.
Many feel suicide to be shameful, not to be talked about. In Kongsberg recently, some young lads created a huge publicity about one of their mates who topped himself without warning, and this created a huge discussion in the press. More power to their elbow!
I’ve just successfully signed up to intense debate without
any hiccups. Want to set up a new Disqus account.
I pressed the set up part and it asked for the following-
name
password
email .
Forgot what to do, did it want my full name or what I want to
call myself with Disqus.
I think your avatar name. You don’t want your real one on your posts.
Avatar name, thanks. I thought it meant my full
name. Intense debate – I spoke too soon, got
to reset my password, grrrr.
Just set up a new email account to use with your new disqus one. Then call it what you want.
Got a new Email. I went to the sign up to Disqus page
and it asked for my name. I assumed it meant
my full name .. Mrs ….. but it was explained below
that they want to know what I want to be called
( not the actual full name of which you give when
creating a Email ).
That’s right. Have you got it all done now?
I find that Disqus is determined to make any attempts to gain a new account (or change avatar) perilously difficult.
Although my first name is Peregrine, my chums tend to call me just by the last vocalized syllable of that name, i.e. “Grin”. But try as I may, Disqus forbids me to choose an avatar depicting someone grinning maniacally!
I’m still having problems with Intense Debate.
Neither ID nor ConHome have bothered to respond to my requests for help.
I hope you get help from them soon,
Intense debate take their time with being helpful
and ConHome just ignore things .
There’s is something warming about the thought of Observer/Guardian readers swallowing this with their breakfast
‘Fighting like ferrets in a bag’ as EU tries to plug Brexit cash hole
UK’s withdrawal has left £62bn hole in bloc’s purse for the next seven years
*
*
*
There are two main rivals in the budget battle. On one side are those who proudly describe themselves as “the Frugals” – the Netherlands, Austria, Sweden and Denmark (although there are some concerns within the camp that the new Austrian coalition government, being a bit Green now, has been lost to them, and that the Swedes are going soft). As the biggest net payers, the Frugals have been insisting on a budget of no more than 1% of the EU’s gross national income. The European commission’s initial proposal was for 1.1% – around €1.25tn over the seven years.
Then there are the “Friends of Cohesion”. “The Friends of Corruption, you mean?” spat one EU diplomat from a Frugal state.
The 15 under the FoC flag are the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Estonia, Croatia, Malta, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, Portugal and Greece.
*
*
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/16/stressed-heads-to-start-brussels-budget-talks-post-brexit
It will make for good spectator sport.
I’m slightly surprised that those two net gobblers of EU money, Luxembourg and Belgium, are not in FoCers too.
“Swedes are going soft.”
Going? We’re talking about the Norsemen who couldn’t be @rsed to go out for a spot of ravaging and pillaging, let alone conquer whole nations.
But they do sell cheap furniture…
It’s times like this when I wish I liked popcorn.
Are root vegetable crisps an acceptable substitute?
Yes, the EU were united. United in wanting the UK to stump up for as much as possible for as little benefit as possible. Germany paid more but boy did it benefit from the euro and being allowed (well, it allowed itself, natch) to keep a good manufacturing base. Unlike this country, where our own contributions were used as EU incentives for our industries to relocate abroad.
‘Morning Nottlers!
One very old fence demolished, six original (1905) slates off the roof. However, I keep having a breath of fresh air with Taki (even found the music to accompany it):
“ARCHITECTURE
Hiding Behind Psychobabble
Theodore Dalrymple
February 15, 2020
There was a very curious letter to the editor in the latest edition of the English monthly magazine The Critic. It was from a correspondent who defended the type of architecture known as brutalist, that is to say of buildings constructed of and faced with large blocks of raw concrete. The letter concluded as follows:
I love Brutalism, and believe every example of it should be preserved, but I would never call it beautiful, any more than I would call it ugly. I just happen to find it unique and interesting, and I find it condescending to be told otherwise.
The writer seems to imply that aesthetic considerations played no part in his estimate of the worth of a building, only its uniqueness and interest. His ideal of a city, then, would be one composed of freaks, since freakishness is the royal—which is to say easiest—road to uniqueness, and freaks are, whatever else they may be, invariably interesting. As every writer knows, it is easier to depict a bad man interestingly than a good one. But this is not an argument in favor of bad men.
The correspondent is not, oddly enough, unique in his uninterest in the aesthetics of architecture. Writing in a journal by architects for architects, an architect began his article with the following words: “Many of us [architects] are worried about the focus on beauty….”
Indeed they are; but from this one might have supposed that the principal problem facing modern cities was an effete aestheticism that somehow prevented things from being built, and that beauty were to buildings what satin ribbons were to Pekinese dogs, that is to say neither essential nor important.
But indifference to beauty is not the attitude of most of humanity, at least once its very basic needs are met, either in the present or in the past. The true, the beautiful, and the good have long been considered the prime desiderata of life, but, as Sganarelle said when posing as a physician and being told by his patient Géronte that he thought that the heart was on the left and the liver was on the right side, “Nous avons changé tout cela”—we have changed all that. Beauty is no longer an important concern of architects, and they want to persuade us that it should not be to us, either. We should henceforth satisfy ourselves with uniqueness and interest.
“Safety lies in the appearance, not in the reality, of communication.”
I hesitate to coin a neologism, but it seems to me that architects, though not architects alone (they are but the canaries in the coal mine), suffer from pulchriphobia, that is to say a fear of beauty. To be more exact, it is not beauty that they fear so much as the revelation to others of what it is that they consider beautiful, or the revelation of their incapacity to produce anything of beauty. Taste is very revelatory of character, and though we live in an age in which we delight to talk of ourselves, in fact we do so while carefully protecting ourselves from true self-revelation or true self-examination. That is the secret of the success of psychobabble, that strange form of language that permits people to talk endlessly about themselves while revealing nothing specific, let alone discreditable, and that the originator of the term, R.D. Rosen, defined as follows:
A set of repetitive verbal formalities that kills off the very spontaneity, candour and understanding that it pretends to promote.
Self-revelation and self-examination terrify us, but we dare not admit it, so we pretend to be candid.
Let us suppose that we are walking down a street together and we see in a shop window a pair of sky-blue furry slippers in the form of rabbits. You find them beautiful, but are instinctively aware that I will find them kitsch, ridiculous, or in the worst possible taste. Therefore, you do not say, “How beautiful those slippers are!” but “I find those slippers interesting.” Interesting is a nice neutral term that reveals nothing of your taste (never forget that taste divides people by at least as much as opinion, and probably by more). Things that you abominate may interest or even fascinate you; therefore, by saying that something is interesting, you have not put your cards on the table, so to speak.
There are certain people who disguise what they think and feel by always talking jokingly or ironically. You are never quite sure what they really mean. If you take them to mean what they say in the most literal sense, you risk ridicule as a person lacking in sophistication, in a sense of humor or irony. If, on the other hand, you take them to mean the opposite of what they say, you may be accused of failure to understand plain English. The safest thing to do, then, is to answer in kind, to adopt a joking or ironical tone, so that your interlocutor faces the same dilemma as that which you have just faced. Conversation becomes as two ships passing in the night, rather than the meeting of minds.
In similar fashion, psychobabblers talk but do not converse. Theirs is a social compact: You agree to listen to my empty verbiage about myself if I agree to listen to yours. We can talk for hours but still know nothing of each other. Safety lies in the appearance, not in the reality, of communication.
The desire not to reveal themselves no doubt lies behind the pulchriphobia of the architects (and also, perhaps, that of poets, painters, and others). That is why they opt for characteristics such as transgressiveness, originality, unprecedentedness, and so forth. To say of a building that there is nothing like it tells you nothing about its value. It may be the Taj Mahal or it may be the Centre Pompidou.
The article by the architect I cited above mentioned a survey among students, of architecture and of all other subjects amalgamated. They were asked to rank a series of buildings in order of preference. Their rankings were completely inverse: What the architectural student liked, the other students disliked, and vice versa.
Social pressure no doubt accounts to a large extent for this professional perversity. A contemporary architect who preferred the Taj Mahal to the Centre Pompidou would be like a Hindu of old who traveled across the sea: He would lose caste. Best, then, not to talk of beauty or ugliness.”
[Oh yes!]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDXa4FkAw-4&list=RDbDXa4FkAw-4&start_radio=1&t=34
“…their incapacity to produce anything of beauty…” Ah, there’s the clue to almost everything.
Ppphh
TLDR
316394+up✔s,
Still to much common sense & no takers A ?
https://twitter.com/GerardBattenUK/status/1229040968827129857
Thank you Gerard – I’ve been banging on about this ad nauseum. As well as the Law Lords, kick out the dross of the ‘Life’ Peers and leave room for ALL the hereditaries and the Bishops to get on with their task of monitoring the Common’s legislation (give the lords back their power to delay bills for up to one year in order to get the Commons to reflect on their sometimes foolishness). The ‘Supreme’ Court should be abolished forthwith with absolutely no recompense – there is nothing to thank them for.
The dross that are kicked out, may repair to York, therein to reflect on their foolishness, pay their own fares to attend the talking shop and relinquish their £300 per diem for attendance (drop it to £100) and we shall see who bothers to attend.
Ntn,
316395+up✔s,
There is a great deal more he should be thanked for also.
That daily “attendance allowance” (a.k.a. corruption fee) has recently been hoisted to £323 per walk-in, NoToNanny.
I would stop this total and profligate drain on the exchequer completely. Disrobe all Life Peers, and move the House to somewhere quiet (Cape Wrath has its virtues).
Much energy can then be expended on repealing Human Rights legislation and abolishing the “Supreme” (hah!) Court. The old court system worked perfectly well for centuries, why tinker with a tried and proven method?
Funny Old World
I must have missed the Guardian Headline
“Khan and Javid belong to Death Cult that throws gays off buildings”
However………………..
https://twitter.com/JuliaHB1/status/1229012639210188801?s=20
Now THAT’S a Hornets nest you’ve kicked there…………
https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/1228943686953664512?s=20
Go, Richard, go!
There’s a strong case to be made that the old Southern US slave owners practiced eugenics. They certainly selected who partnered with whom to produce offspring that were more valuable.
There is a strong case that the UK Advertising industry is pushing an Eugenics Policy of its own…………………
No, they are just pandering to noisy pressure groups.
Someone has commented that only 0.001% of people don’t believe in genetic reality.
I think that underestimates the stupidity of the woke who deny that race, gender and IQ are genetic and love Planned Parenthood and The Kalergi Plan, both originally conceived as exercises in eugenics.
I know dozens of politicians whom I ‘self’-identify as cabbages.
Back in the 60’s and ’70’s, the British left wing belief was that IQ was all nurture and no nature. When it was pointed out to them that for example, race horses were selectively bred to achieve certain traits, the standard reply, was that it was different in humans. Now of course we know nature plays a huge part in IQ and other personality traits.
In fact poor old Hans Eysenck was physically attacked by left wing students when he presented his IQ research – based on data collected for years – because it contradicted their favoured view that race and genetics played no part in intelligence.
Yes I remember people were outraged that his research produced the wrong answers.
Whilst that comment is obviously true, Dawkins was born a moron and has not improved with age. His advancing years have only deepened his other massive character flaw, his lack of morality, with the banal idea that “good” and “bad” are relative concepts. No they are not you pseudo-intellectual dolt.
“Richard Dawkins Paedophilia Remarks Provoke Outrage” Nov 9th 2013. (Although he had a new book to sell, so he was hawking his backside like a common whore to be controversial and make the headlines.)
“CANTERBURY, England (RNS) Richard Dawkins, one of the world’s best-known and outspoken atheists, has provoked outrage among child protection agencies and experts after suggesting that recent child abuse scandals have been overblown.”
Dawkins has one useful purpose. He does light up those who think the same way that he does.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/richard-dawkins-pedophilia_n_3895514?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuYmluZy5jb20vc2VhcmNoP3E9cmljaGFyZCtkYXdraW5zK3BhZW9kcGhpbGlhK3F1b3RlJmZvcm09SUVOVE5CJm1rdD1lbi1nYiZodHRwc21zbj0xJm1zbmV3cz0xJnJlZmlnPTBiNWM2YThlNDQ5NjQ5YWQ5MTVkN2EzMzM0YTNmN2E0JnNwPS0xJmdoYz0xJnBxPXJpY2hhcmQrZGF3a2lucytwYWVvZCZzYz0wLTIxJnFzPW4mc2s9JmN2aWQ9MGI1YzZhOGU0NDk2NDlhZDkxNWQ3YTMzMzRhM2Y3YTQ&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAALW52fhH7SdTgcCI1ProuGRuV_ZubyXrlw6bU-DXSpWDZEaeX_nHe3rtaNAwRSwHQsVV7wqBHuUwkcAqP6EEbIgd0k0rZ9qQaYei2IDPERm4ATskx-SxGqX4GxkrWMJrildhepHYw36DAtS4bI3l-t9BrqA_3oMeCe69ZI7MNu5v
Hands off Daft Dickie! He’s a national treasure!
Me for example! People like the NSPCC now include a smack or strong words as abuse!
You can always spot them. They do stand out. Or at least, they stand alone. 🙂
(No serious offence was meant. Those who do not see the problem with Dawkins approach to reality tend to be very touchy about it. It is one of those subjects that goes nowhere online and can only be addressed over Ales in a public house as the Sun goes down. 🙂
Man who claims Dominic Cummings assaulted him is set to be interviewed by Emily Maitlis in BBC documentary. MOS. 16 February 2020.
As an indication of how provocative the film could be, the producers are understood to be planning to interview Colin Perry, who says that two decades ago Mr Cummings grabbed him by the lapels and pinned him to a wall.
He says of Mr Cummings, who, like him, was 27 at the time: ‘He then seized me by the collar and tie, slammed me against the wall and raised his fist as if to hit my face.’
Good God! The horror! And only two decades away? Why that’s almost yesterday!
Are there no limits to the BBC’s archaeological department digging up the past? What next? Churchill kills Moslem at Omdurman? Wellington a Francophobe? Was Henry the Fifth a War Criminal?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8008843/Man-claims-Dominic-Cummings-assaulted-set-interviewed-BBC-documentary.html
I dipped Rosemary’s plaits in the ink well.
Well, she did sit at the desk in front of me and was better at hockey.
Ooops ….. there goes my chance of advising Bozza.
You best add “You must hate the Frenchman like the very Devil” Nelson to that list…..
I must order some more Medals. If Mr Cummings is under attack from the Beeb, he deserves a Hereward the Wake Medal and Bar!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5hP15g4EI0
If Cummings is behind the move towards, and achieves, the emasculation of the BBC, he will deserve some statues in his memory.
Lewis, I hate to say this but the Beeb was emasculated decades ago….
Emasculated at the philosophical level, but still wielding vast amounts of undeserved power.
I’ve been trying to set up an account under a different ID. Username, password etc are fine, but I’m required to respond to a verification email.
There lies the problem. I’ve requested a verification email over and over again, yesterday and this morning but nothing arrives. I’ve checked junk and it’s not there.
I had that problem. It worked when I kept the same name etc but changed to a new email address.
I set up a new gmail account just for this version of Ndovu. My earlier one – which is still live and the one my phone uses, is on a different email address. As I haven’t opened it since I don’t see the emails, though I did get the verification one.
I had to do exactly the same thing, Ndovu.
I also had that problem, Sue Edison.
Two things spring to mind, and the first is so obvious that it is just a suggestion and is not meant to be insulting. When I use software that requires an email address, and I don’t trust the company requesting it not to flood me with spam, then I create a dummy one just for them. You are checking the correct email address that you set up? Clearly this is not relevant if you have not done this, but I have so many emails for different companies that I can sometimes check the wrong one.
The second possibility is far more likely. It is a Sunday and the system will be “ticking over” with the weekend staff watching for any critical meltdowns. Their normal functions might take longer to operate if the standard staff are not running the everyday procedures and clearing small errors that pop up.
Or, having read Richard Sk’s comment, it might just take a few weeks at times for this rickety old software to do what you expect it to.
Flying tonight?
https://www.instagram.com/p/B8l8daXhZFG/
That was precision flying in high winds. Well done the pilot.
316394+up✔s,
May one ask, Has this johnson chap (Pm) got the drawing upside down as in, severing ties with America,
whilst strengthening ties with China ?
If needed, is there any opposition to any issues the peoples disagree with ?
Has not the brexit group melted away & the fire threatening the political feet gone out ?
Where’s “nige” what’s the form on the forming of the reform party ?
Will more £25 pounders be called for to assist in forming the reform party or is there enough
in trust left over from the brexit group ?
There is a trust I take it or has all monies paid to the brexit group been accounted for ?
Is there a particular reason, ugga1, why you precede all your posts with a recondite and abstract code?
ugga1 ?
316394+ up✔s.
It’s a reference to the Disqus bot gobbling up-votes from accounts opened before the free channels closed.
Anyone who cares that much about the upvotes that they have lost to need to put that number on every comment that they make is clearly not playing with a full deck. But then, I suspect that we had guessed that already.
MM,
316394+up ✔s,
I did wonder who would bite first, you have answered that.
We ?
Odious submission in any form is not acceptable, that has what has brought these Isles to be eyebrow level in sh!te.
Your input I have no doubt helped a great deal.
MM,
316395+up✔s,
I note the wagons are once again circling, usual punters.
MM, you do come across as the type with your “we” that feels more secure when you operate mob handed,
odd that.
That would describe many of us who spend their leisure hours posting their opinions (and prejudices) to a bunch of complete strangers.
Sue,
They ask from a
non existent user name a question that is posed in such a way as to be self explanatory,as in
315394 + up ✔s, surely.
So far as we can tell, we’ve had no further structural damage, i.e. fences all in place, no more roof tiles on the ground, but we lost another glass garden table top. It’s our own fault for not weighing it down with something. There’s glass everywhere, and it’s going to take some cleaning up, but not today. It will have to wait until the weather stops raining and blowing.
I trust everyone else here is ok?
We’re fine here, lms2. S Cambs seems to be a fairly benign part of the country, we seem to miss much of the worst weather systems. Of course it was very windy, and the rain was splattering against the windows but everything seems to be ok. We are about to take the dog for a walk so we will check on the local hedgerows and woods that we pass by to see what has been happening there. Note ‘pass by’ – we won’t be walking through them just yet. This seems to have been the wettest winter ever, every day has been an oozey squelch underfoot.
A glass garden table top does not appear the best thing to have to me.
Strongest wind gust we have had during the “storm” was 35 MPH not 50MPH as forecast by the met office.
Do you have a wind measuring device?
A Burpometer?
(Despite the obvious temptation, I’m being tasteful.)
Measured on the Beaufart scale?
Respect!!!! You is cooking on gas (in a manner of speaking).
I have lit one before!
I have this.
http://www.seafordweather.co.uk/wl/seaford.htm
I only have a window
Following on from Peter Hitchens is this from the DT.
Radio 4’s ‘The Briefing Room’ covered the subject last week in what was a good listen, a useful primer on Irish politics. Where it failed was in giving the impression that Sinn Féin is a new, fluffy friendly party for the progressive young of Ireland, fed up with the economic situation, especially in respect of housing.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000f6c1
Major and Blair of course…
The UK Government, indeed most governments have had no qualms about endorsing murderers and terrorists as political leaders. Every senior politician in Israel for about fifty years, until they all died. Our Prime Minister then attended their funerals. The terrorist murderer Nelson Mandela was widely feted. We recognised and did business with Generalissimo Franco for decades. We have treated the rulers of Arabia as honoured guests at the highest level despite their being completely undemocratic and totally uncivilised, as well as being the funders of world wide terrorism. (Iran, on the other hand, is ostracised as they would not play ball with us.)
Oh, and what does Hannan think the power-sharing thing at Stormont involved? Two groups of unreformed terrorists and murderers, Republicans and Unionists both. Spare us the cant. We have long touted the ballot box in preference to the bullet. Now, when it appears to be working at last, he decries it!
Oh, and what does Hannan think the power-sharing thing at Stormont involved? Two groups of unreformed terrorists and murderers, Republicans and Unionists both.
He makes that very point…
Morning WS,
316394 + up ✔s,
Nearer to home and sod the sinn fein
party how about when the innards of the lab party, who takes some beating in the unsavory stakes, decide it is time
to devour the host party and turn up in the HP sauce factory en masse
Prayer mats & korans at the ready ?
Realpolitik. ‘Twas ever thus; Romans and Visigoths, Britain and the Kenyattas/Mau Mau.
Sinn Fein are foul. It’s the Irish behaving like … well … the Irish.
And Mau Mau was not the independence movement it is often portrayed as, because Britain had already signalled it’s intention to leave it’s colonies, but was a power grab by a particular tribe.
Africa is incurably tribal. The only civilising influence was the British, which (among the admitted atrocities that were committed) at least gave sanitation, education and opportunity to countries.No doubt the Chinese will tell them to just get on with making China money – without any of the social and administrative benefits.
Morning all.
Flooded by the Taff ….
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-51520986
How is it where you are, Issy?
Good morning, N, thanks for asking. I’m on a small hill and runoff keeps me dry here. Garden is gloopy though!
Stay safe all nottlers.
We live on a small hill too, so apart from the shed roofing felt all ripped off, and a couple of leaks in the house, we’re ok here.
That’s good to know. Shed roofs are replacable, you are not!
After rain early this morning it is dry and windy up here in North Yorkshire. Blue sky visible at times and mild. Fingers crossed.
Unless they are in hospital or out of the country I really don’t understand why drivers leave their cars parked on low lying ground next to a river when several inches of rain are forecast…
Just a thought here .. if the Chinese bats carry the Corona virus which is then consumed as a delicacy then spread from human to human .. How come the bats are not dying of it..
Could the solution and immunity to this virus be found in the bat?
Just asking … so many questions too few answers.
Probably the survivors have immunity, same as for other illnesses that don’t kill everybody. After all, if all the hosts were to die, the virus would have no carriers.
As an example, I’m convinced my Gt Grandmother was a TB carrier, though she lived to be over 90, but most of her siblings, and all her children but one, died of TB.
Also, it’s believed that AIDS came from contact with monkeys, who had evolved to live with the virus.
Morning J
Goodness me , that was really bad luck .
When we were all at school, all older school children had a Mantoux test to see whether we were immune to TB or not . Apparently I was immune .
My late dear elderly Aunt who was a district midwife in North Yorkshire , picked up TB which affected her nasal cavity … Poverty stricken households in those days revealed the really dire state that ENGLISH families lived in , post war , even into the 1960’s .. and by delivering many
home births , especially in poor homes , increased the risk of picking something nasty up.
I’ve done a lot of family history research and she was quite an interesting character. She had 12 siblings and only she and one sister lived beyond the age of 40.
She had five children – all but one died of TB, including my grandfather. The youngest son survived to 90, and his daughter is still alive and will be 94 next week.
I had a TB skin test (a Heaf test?) and was immune. Most of the girls at my school had the jab, which left a nasty scar.
I thought it was the Mantoux test.. I was immune as well , cross fingers.
I was immune too.
The Mantoux test is a widely used test for latent TB. It involves injecting a small amount of a substance called PPD tuberculin into the skin of your forearm. It’s also called the tuberculin skin test (TST).
Tuberculosis (TB) – Diagnosis – NHS
http://www.nhs.uk › Health A to Z › Tuberculosis (TB)
The Heaf test, a diagnostic skin test, was long performed to determine whether or not children had been exposed to tuberculosis infection. The test was named after F. R. G. Heaf.
Heaf test – Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Heaf_test
Thanks Peddy – which one did you have?
I think it was the Heaf test.
A little circle of dots that became raised if you had a positive reaction.
That was it.
I think part of the problem was reported as truth, Belle, but perhaps the whole truth was a step too far for the Chinese to reveal. The truth that the Wuhan viral lab being involved was most likely correct, but the source of the virus being, ah ‘adjusted’.
I don’t suppose we’ll ever know the real truth, but if it leads to a ban on wildlife meat markets then that’s a good outcome.
It was initially reported as coming from a laboratory technician who had become infected whilst working on the project.
Could the solution and immunity to this virus be found in the laboratory….I hope so.
Meanwhile, Belle, back in Wuhan,
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b3d2991118c10e4ae709cfb12d74bc9bf9a8efe0e6956404ec8316fc2450d571.gif
A better version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93bAdEf0pzc
Some animal species act as hosts to viruses that don’t cause disease in them, it do in other species.
Random Traffic Stop
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/eaaff42ffc0c9691fafe7b84d11af09e37575517e22f251dffc7da63074e5c28.jpg
Excellent review of one of my favourite book series, Flashman
https://newcriterion.com/issues/2020/2/no-flash-in-the-pan
Wonderful books. No one would publish them nowadays of course!
Great review.
“Indeed they had such a feeling of verisimilitude that no fewer than ten of the twenty-eight American reviewers treated the first one as a genuine autobiography.”
Hee hee.
https://freespeechunion.org
Good on you, Toby. I’m joining.
ANY MEMBER OF THE THOUGHT POLICE KNOCKING ON MY DOOR WILL BE DISEMBOWELLED!
That is a poster-of-intent posted on my workshop wall.
You can make sausages with bowels.. just saying.
And crispy bar snacks.
Andouilles?
The most interesting thing about the Thought Police, Hate Speech and No Platforming etc. is what you do not see, which is any Member of Parliament or the Government standing up to speak against it let alone repeal the laws that have generated it!
Lily-livered is the alliterative cliche which springs to mind.
(Colourless-kidneyed; blanched-bladdered, anaemic-anused are alliterative alternatives)
My friend replies:
Couldn’t help noticing that one of their members though (Kisin) was chastised this week for saying he wouldn’t ever have Katie Hopkins on his show as they wouldn’t give her a platform!!
When there was a storm of people commenting “what about free speech?” they were kindly asked to unsubscribe just like some lefty SJW and completely missing the Irony of the author of Trigonometry been completely triggered 😊
Off to rescue Best Beloved’s Grandson’s keys for him. What would they do without Grandma?
‘Morning, Peeps.
Late on parade today, so apologies if this has already been posted:
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/02/16/we-will-whack-it-boris-govt-tackles-bbc-plan-scrap-tv-licence/
The same story is in today’s Times. If the government really means it then hooray! I would like to think that News and Current Affairs will be at the top of the list for subscription/selling off/closure. They, above everything else, deserve severe pruning at the very least. The bad news is that Whittingdale will be in charge of carrying it out – in view of his capitulation at the last Charter renewal this does not bode well.
R4 Extra needs to survive for all of us oldster-comedy fans.
Pretty unlikely, bearing in mind the transfer of funding from progs for oldies to progs for yer yoof…
Sadly, you will probably be correct, H.
I think this worker who is sweeping the lock ladder rungs clear of mud and slime must be thinking: “You never know Bill Thomas might pass this way”…….
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0db3486a5d2379f81d8be99c3397457d5dc4c9a5ec0a5528b11b20e7d921e0de.jpg
I heard BT was now into trains, especially blue ones.
Sorry Eddy that reference is lost on me….
Thomas the tank engine 🚂 sorry this one isn’t blue.☺
Agatha Christie, Paris to Nice.?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbDuhafRMNA
THE GREAT STORM DENNIS
In February 2020, on the fifteenth day
Storm “Dennis” came to blow us all away
Warning was given and folk were feared and numb
As the wild wind did whistle round the lum
Along the length and breadth of the Great Glen
The good folk huddled in each but ‘n’ ben
The bairns sat anxious round the blazing peat
And supped their brochan as they warmed their feet
And those who ventured out, with spirits bold
Returned home sad and drookit and somewhat cold
Yet I’m glad to say, no serious damage did ensue
Although a fallen tree did block the auld A82
So folk gathered round in chapel and kirk
To thank the Lord above for his good work
In saving them from the fearful wrath of “Dennis”
Which they had thought their very lives did menace
— after William McGonagall
Excellent!
Once more not to and from the beach dear friends……
And once more ‘the weather’ (just weather) brings our country to a stand still !!!
Ahem
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f69006632f1ff7d0b0c54e706c829193cef36eed47468deb97f36dd510b17b7b.jpg
I see what he did there
1 100 2
I C II.
1 / 51 1 100 ‘500 / 1,000 4 6.
I liked Mivvi.
The old ice lolly?
I was wondering about that…
Lyons Maid’s Mivvi came in pineapple and strawberry flavoured ice with a vanilla ice-cream centre.
I preferred Walls’ copycat Split, which had lime and raspberry flavours (my favourites).
As a kid you had to be pretty flush to afford them, a real treat.
What have the Romans ever done for us?
Zero
Daily Mail Story
Pregnant woman’s body is found in her car after she was ‘run off the road and shot dead by her boyfriend’ who is charged with murdering her and their unborn child
‘…murdering the unborn child’ some say that that is what abortion is.
Can the DM verify that it was THEIR unborn child …. just asking.
There is no moral equivalence.
https://twitter.com/Richard63277416/status/1229052194512605186?s=20
Its totaly left wing popaganda. I refuse to watch and pay anything for it. All I wanted is balance and you never have it.
Supporters of the BBC seem to be obsessed with Rupert Murdoch, and Boris “doing his bidding,” and how it can’t possibly please the “right wing.”
Night All
https://media.giphy.com/media/Ib6HtcZMKdPHaBj1R2/giphy.gif
https://media.giphy.com/media/1hM7LdfmMGMnDYnkg9/giphy.gif
https://media.giphy.com/media/5t7AJfJQnmsP5Tm1QS/giphy.gif
https://media.giphy.com/media/5w3RKoi4WSZQ8ddHV3/giphy.gif
Just pop back in with this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4B90Knx57w
Just William:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0d46fdf1387e4e496bef52d1fc1bf4443d24ace66934953247c53bdf2f4451d2.png
“The Grave’s a fine and private place
but none I think do there embrace…”
High Offley: ‘Pevsner dates most of the church to the 13th century with some earlier Norman features and some from later periods.[3] The core of the church dates from the 12th century, and features from the 13th century are still present, including the lower stages of the tower and the south arcade.’
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/458cc4b14424cf7531295692ac59ce09cd419a79277848d2759634a59aff6dbb.jpg
That is a fine solid traditional church .. I looked up the details , because I wasn’t certain where it was .
How amazing that so many parish churches of the same vintage were all so similar .. and how the travelling masons got everything more or less spot on ..Question ….. where did they learn their skills from .. considering the great distances they travelled .. or was everyone in Britain schooled in masonery first and foremost?
From my log”
From the Inn the walk up the hill from the canal to High Offley, a farming village with a pretty Church and an old Manor House that has seen better days [PHOTO] rewards one with magnificent views across Shropshire’s well-tended fields and farms until the detail is lost in the distant hills miles and miles away under a massively wide sky. Fortunate are they who make the effort to see for themselves the views and drink in such beauty.
On the walk up the hill I had noticed some fine looking and somewhat contented fillies grazing in a field. It was only on the walk back down that I saw the sign: “Stud Farm”.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5240cd2652668cf22fd50e9b08823a385c478e1e92ffeeb22715a9581a537de0.jpg
Award winning ECO homes falling apart
Well the article dresses it up as improvements
https://www.eadt.co.uk/news/eco-flats-tenants-in-bury-st-edmunds-are-being-rehomed-1-6517266
Good job they weren’t living in caves…
“A spokeswoman for Havebury said the housing association is carrying out maintenance work to improve its sustainability for the future.
“However, due to its unique design, we will have to remove the windows, doors and staircase to carry out these improvements which would cause disruption to our tenants.’
H’mmm …. gazes thoughtfully at 137 year old Victorian windows chez Allan.
That makes my 84 year old Crittall windows seem positively modern. Yours prolly (©BT, whoever he was) do a better job than mine of keeping out the elements. I’ll say this, though – there are eco homes, and there are eco homes that work. A friend (my ex, actually), moved into one in Devon in December. I helped her connect her many wifi thermostats to t’interweb thingy, and i’m keeping an eye on the place while she’s in New Zealand. She left on 23 Jan, I put the heating into “Away” mode, and the room temperatures are still between 13.6 and 14.7 degrees.
I can achieve that overnight…
… by mobile phone? When we are babysitting for our grandson, if we are feeling cold at any stage throughout the day, we send a text to our son who works in London, and he ups the thermostat by a couple of degrees, using his phone. My parents would have been utterly and completely amazed by the magic of this technology. We had an open fire and used coal bricks.
Yep. I have a Nest thermostat at home, which I can control via the phone. Or tell Alexa to do the business. Her system is slightly different (Myson Touch2 if anyone cares). She has left her new phone in the UK, and is using an old one without the app. I’m also monitoring her video doorbell. Thus far, she’s had a visit from a couple of JW’s, and the road has had its final wearing course laid. Pretty quiet, really.
Our son has his cat-flap and the cats’ collars micro-chipped and in contact with his mobile phone, he knows exactly when ‘x’ cat or ‘y’ cat (not their real names, of course!) has entered or left the building by an alert to his phone. This was set up because they were having other marauding cats entering their home whilst they were out and terrifying the incumbent cats. On a couple of occasions we have had to dash over and clear up the mess when our son and his wife were away. Now – no problem.
Matchstick homes which surely MUST be a huge fire risk !
“The works will begin once the building is vacant, which will enable us to have a better understanding of what improvements we can make to ensure it remains a comfortable place for our tenants to live in the future,” she said.
Frankly, demolition looks like the best option…
Two things tell you they are a mess and that s Award Winning” and ECO
Not necessarily.
Evening, all. I just popped in to say hello; I am suffering my third bout of illness this year – not helped by getting thoroughly soaked and chilled grappling with the failing railway system yesterday. If a friend hadn’t been able to pick me up I’d still be waiting at the station, trying and failing to complete the last leg of the trip! It’s no joke to be constantly told that your train has been delayed, then to finally get on a train only to be told twenty minutes later that it had been cancelled and everybody had to get off and go to another platform. Once there, we were told to go back to the platform we’d originally come from 🙁 Fred Karno’s army was better organised than that! I finally got home just before midnight, when I should have been back just after half past seven. Whoever thinks we should get out of our cars and onto public transport obviously hasn’t tried it recently 🙁
It sounds a thoroughly exhausting and dispiriting day, Mr C. Wrap up well and keep warm indoors as much as you can for the next few days. Simply look after yourself, no extraneous duties if these can be avoided. The weather is awful here, but not as bad as in some parts. Public transport is a nightmare wherever. I will not travel by public transport, the last time was by rail to Leeds probably five years ago. We are only eight miles from Cambridge and bus is simply not an option.
I have cancelled engagements for the next couple of days.
Yo, Conners. More accurately, anyone who thinks we should get out of our cars and onto public transport lives inside the M25, and assumes the rest of the world is no different. When I moved here, fifteen years ago, there was a bus stop 70 yards from my front door. Admittedly, there were only two buses a week, and shoppers had to run around Guildford if they were to get home on the same day. That service has long gone. The nearest bus to the village no longer stops, in the interests of efficiency. So my nearest stop is now a mile and a half away. This is known as progress. Get well soon, by the way…
https://www.camelproductions-store.com/blu-ray-camel-at-the-royal-albert-hall-292-p.asp
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0SqfOSdDsQ&list=RDR7Sd6GPlFrM&index=6
More ‘Asian’ Grooming Gang Abusers Sentenced in Oxford, England. 15 Feb 2020.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a21719cfcefb1adebbb25bf2770453e7e0e814bc7752ec780931d7531a6999d7.png
Another three “Asian” grooming gang abusers have been sentenced for multiple rapes, indecent assaults, and drug dealing offences in Oxford, England.
Prosecutors claim the convicted trio have been “jailed for a total of 49 years”, with Khan, Nazir, and Ahmed receiving terms of 24 years, 20 years, and five years — but this may be misleading.
In the British criminal justice system, criminals handed multiple sentences are generally told they will serve them concurrently — i.e. all at the same time, rendering all but the longest effectively meaningless.
They are also typically eligible for automatic early release on licence halfway through non-“life” terms, or else at the two-thirds point with Parole Board approval if handed special “extended” sentences.
Yes we know these things BB. I suppose if one had access to the statistics it would be possible to construct a graph that would predict the year in which normal life will become impossible!
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/02/15/more-asian-grooming-gang-abusers-sentenced-oxford-england/
If only these crimes were racist they might have got a lot longer inside.
Bob! Bob! Only white men can be racist!
Afternoon AS,
316394+ up ✔s,
I posted on the same issue a day ago asking why the new ruling on the 27th Feb be brought forward to yesterday, as in a Tommy Robinson type action,
only this time to incarcerate the odious guilty for their FULL sentence.
Good night all.
Good night, Peddy.
The benefits of reducing England’s population by 10% or say 5,5mn people would be great – lower house prices, less congestion, lower infrastructure spending …. if the 5.5 mn. included 90% of the muslim population returning to their heritage homelands, the benefits would be so immense *and our young women would be so much safer), it’s almost beyond words …
LD,
314395+up✔s,
The regular voting pattern will not hear of it, the continuing voting pattern dictates that mass uncontrolled immigration is the way to go.
Make it 100%.
Sadiq Khan: ‘All Gender Identities’ Including ‘Non-Binary’ Are Valid
Can anyone think of anything else where something is just accepted and no validation is made ?
Tax payers.
BJ,
314395+up✔s,
How about lab/lib/con manifesto’s ?
https://twitter.com/JuliaHB1/status/1229165592491544584
Maybe his imam needs a word in his shell.
First off, we need to get the words right. I am sick of “binary” as if we are computers. The only non-binary person is an hermaphrodite, and I wonder how many of these there really are in society.
If we must discuss this, then let’s make it a spectrum, with pure male and pure female at each end. These have all the relevant bits, are attracted to one another, and are capable of breeding. Most people are these.
Close behind, we have the non-breeding pures, such as children, the elderly and the barren. Behind them are the homosexuals and the impersonators, who could be actors or they could be transvestites.
Then we come to the confused. These are what we refer to as the trans-sexuals. These are at various stages in their transitioning, from identification and cross-dressing to full medical and surgical conversion, which can sometimes produce very convincing results. These are still male and female though, and as I said only hermaphrodites possessing both sets of organs should be given a non-gender personal pronoun (therefore the neutral ‘it’ reserved for inanimate objects in English is not right).
For my part, although the more scientifically rigorous will disagree, I am happy to assign the gender personal pronoun according to principles I learnt in infancy and have served me well over the years: if it has a willy = ‘he’; if it doesn’t = ‘she’, and that’s the end of the matter. Those that have one bit but are pretending they have the other and deceiving me. A lot of people don’t like to be deceived, and this may explain some of the hostility towards the gender-confused. However, a ladyboy or ‘Bob’ from Blackadder identifying as such readily, can be accepted as just one of life’s eccentrics and brought into the village as is. There is then no deception.
The exception is with actors and actresses, who will acquire the characteristics, and the gender, of the character they are playing. Here, a separation must be made between actor and character, as they are effectively quite different people. In all fiction and fantasy, we can be whatever we like to be, but those who confuse fantasy and reality are sometimes deluded, sometimes demented, but often simply being normally human and using their imaginations. Most people following a religion come into that category, and have their reasons to do so.
A friend of mine has four daughters, one of whom I am pretty certain is gender-confused and looks like a boy, She initialised her name, so that it is no longer gender-specific. Regardless, until she acquires the right bits, her correct gender pronoun is ‘she’, but simply out of common courtesy, it is more polite just to use her initialled name in the third person.
What does the prophet Mo have to say about that?
Coming ashore in a small boat in the English Channel. No papers needed.
Unlike when I come home from Spain after a holiday and I have to stand with my passport on a scanner and have my eyes and facial features scanned by another scanner.
‘Security’, you know.
That is something else i find extremely annoying. You have already been scanned out. They know how long you are away for and where. Then they do it all again on your return.
I could get paranoid about it but i do enjoy the pat downs.
Trump had it right when he said “if you don’t have (real) borders, you don’t have a (real) country”.
https://twitter.com/paulwalteruk/status/1229173395830517760
It does annoy me that Boris, Cummings and Suella Braverman have come under sustained attack when they are doing their best to carry out the will of the majority.
Haven’t you been looking?
‘The will of the majority’ is now known as ‘populism’ and it’s a very bad thing.
I have noticed.
B,
314395+up✔s,
Tad late in the day is it not when it has been the majority over the years that has created via the ballot booth the Isles
of sh!te fit for felons.
“May” be preparing “a threat” to scrap the fee? Sounds pretty unlikely then.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6e43c3b2ea87d2edbd2c7a2e31e821613f2502fa6810ba1e881f3ca4da694294.jpg
I very much hope Cummings has been under estimated.
Every dog will have it’s day….
Whereas a cat has its day every day!
I’m trying to set up my Disqus account, done everything
required but it won’t let me verify my email address .
Pressed on the verify email in my emails and nothing
happens. Another problem with Intense debate that wants me
to reset my password. But verifying an email shouldn’t
be difficult, even after the captcha things .
Oh I give up, I’ll ask the husband to sort it out in a few days .
Why didn’t it respond when I pressed the verify email section
In my emails.
No good asking us we are all too old for technical advice.
Check your junk email folder, might be something there.
I’ve turned off the laptop ( set it up on there, not this Samsung )
just gave up for now. The notification doesn’t work with
Disqus email. The notification email was fine with Intense
debate but the new password needs changing.
I shall look when I turn on the laptop next, they sent the
verification email, I assumed I just needed to press on it to
verify it unless I am being a bit thick this afternoon .
We’re mostly all in the same boat.
Verifying an email address shouldn’t be difficult,
well it’s all set up apart from the final part,
I’ll take another look next week or whenever,
just a lot of hassle .
Extinction REbeliion Week Long Road block and the police just ignore it
https://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/cambridge-news/petition-extinction-rebellion-cambridge-protest-17756178
Disgraceful.
“However, police have already taken some action towards the week-long protests in Cambridge, by closing the roads the protesters are on and diverting traffic around them.” (!!!) I am understanding the police are closing the very same roads that ER were/are intent on closing… the mediaeval road system, narrow and one-way streets in Cambridge is bad enough – all it takes is one road in the city to be blocked to create mayhem. Criminally irresponsible by both police and protestors.
Our police have totaly lost it.
They sent me a verification email which is in my email
box on the laptop. I pressed on that email with the curser to
verify the email address. Nothing has happened it just tells
me to verify the account. At that point I gave up.
I assumed you just pressed on the verified email
They send and you are verified, if there is more to it then that
I don’t know. Well anyway, given up for now and laptop has
been put away. So much hassle it’s ludicrous.
Now you see why its called a curser…
You need to drag a teenager off the street…..
You could try to copy the link they sent you and paste it in your browser. Place the cursor over Verify Email and right click selecting copy link. Go to your address line in your browser and right click selecting paste. Then hit enter.
The weather is more than just atrocious .. I get anxious about little things like the animals who have no where to escape to during these floods .. mice and voles , hedgehogs , badgers and foxes , cats , neglected horses and ponies and the fields full of sheep and their lambs . The weather is so cruel..
The run off from the fields around here and the flooded meadows and crumbling river banks , and eroding cliff sides fill me full of despair .
Surely many parts of Britain are too much of a flood risk to even anyone who might contemplate smothering the landscape with new housing estates . We are so overcrowded , doing or getting anywhere by car or train or even a coach is fraught with difficulty.
Sorry to sound miserable , although we certainly do not have the flood problems many other places are enduring , the roads around here are suffering due to water streaming off the fields .. there is no respite , our garden is an absolute quagmire .
We had to go shopping earlier this afternoon to Weymouth .. can you believe the bay is so sheltered that the sea was millpond still… the only disturbance on the beach were the rake lines throm the beach side tractors clearing and cleaning back the sand ,
On the way back home the wind blew and it blew and we had to navigate huge amounts of water gushing off the fields .
For once , car and lorry drivers were exercising caution and good manners re the deep puddles and streams on the road.
Lovely post T_B……not miserable at all…just caring. I too worry about the little animals – even my garden birds. Hubby weathered the winds yesterday to fill all the feeders and I hpe they use all the little houses and dovecote around the garden for shelter.
Thank you Jenny , I refilled my feeders earlier as well, the birds are ravenous … yet silly things still insist on splashing themselves in the bird baths even though it is raining .
I love my birds so much and worry if I ever see the feeders empty. We have a small tree in the back garden with many feeders hanging on it and also on my arch. Birds do seem to like the rain but not the howling wind! Poor things.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/cb790e73bc55c1d6ecd7f29769ed8cc1be2b6aff1523bd277e4966a69b25f13e.gif
Me too. However, the bird on your GIF will certainly never appear on your feeders. It isn’t resident in the British Isles. :•)
Ludlow is flooded; the Teme has burst its banks.
I thought Ludlow was well above the river. Apparently not….
Must be Lower Ludlow.
Yo Harry. My recollection is that most of the town is well above the river, But not all of it. My abiding memory of Ludlow is the gents lavatory in the Church Inn…
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1ea38970099a51e7d6211ea92af157de6bd9d5b8bc8272d3e5775e2db886f742.jpg
Only the castle; those Normans were not stupid.
Oh, bugger. That’s sad to see.
Good morning all – today’s new page is here.