Sunday 2 February: Brexit was never simply about trade; for many it is a matter of principle

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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/2020/02/02/lettersbrexit-never-simply-trade-many-matter-principle/

986 thoughts on “Sunday 2 February: Brexit was never simply about trade; for many it is a matter of principle”

  1. You lovers of the English language (and some Americanisms) might enjoy this.

    There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that is ‘UP.’
    It’s easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP?
    At a meeting, why does a topic come UP?
    Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report?
    We call UP our friends.
    And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver; we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen.
    We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car.
    At other times the little word has real special meaning.
    People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses.
    To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed UP is special.
    A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP.
    We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night.
    We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP!
    To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary.
    In a desk-sized dictionary, it can take UP almost ¼ of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions.
    If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used.
    It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don’t give UP, you may wind UP with a hundred or more.
    When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP over.
    When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP.
    When it rains, it wets the earth and often messes things UP.
    When it doesn’t rain for a while, things dry UP.
    One could go on and on, but I’ll wrap it UP,
    for now my time is UP,
    so…
    …it is time to shut UP!
    Now it’s UP to you what you do with this comment.

    But, since it’s Sunday, a text for the day might not come amiss:
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a44f7b02c519d1f89049fe4a03a0a715df05ecb1d47da3e35480f80fb23a6027.jpg

    1. But you can’t sit up until you have sat down.
      Shut down is not the opposite of shut up.
      Once a tree has been cut up, you can’t cut it down, but you can cut it up without cutting it down.
      :-))
      Morning, Tom!

      1. ‘Morning, Paul, that too is interesting. Drive safely, I don’t know when one is ready to meet Him.

    2. And here’s me thinking that UP! is a Disney/Pixar film!

      :-))

      (Good morning to all NoTTLers, btw.)

      1. You should come to Sweden. They do not “Park” their cars here, they “Parker” them!

        When I first saw a sign in a car park that said “Parkering”, I thought it was a warning against busybodies and peeping toms.

    5. It’s those Americans again. For the Yanks perhaps “people stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets,” we make trouble and queue for tickets…

      Too much up in yankee-speak. P’raphs they could be brought DOWN a peg or two…

  2. Police called in after poster tells residents of flats to speak English. Sat 1 Feb 2020.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/44bb78ef8b5ac535f7bb71313c48d9452696b3f75696bcf48feda0ef0a958ac7.png

    According to the BBC, which spoke to a resident, the signs were left on fire doors across all 15 floors of the block of flats before being removed by the caretaker.

    Mike Stonard, a cabinet member on Norwich city council, told the Eastern Daily Press: “I absolutely condemn this abhorrent poster. Whoever put it there has committed a hate crime, it is as simple as that.

    “Many people voted for Brexit for a range of different reasons, however I am sure not many of them will condone this kind of thing.”.

    Morning everyone. This is so obviously black remainer propaganda (it is syntactically suspicious, hopelessly impractical and deliberately offensive) that it can only confirm that Stonard is a twerp for falling for it!

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/feb/01/police-called-in-after-poster-tells-residents-of-flats-to-speak-english

    1. ‘Morning, Minty, surely it cannot be a hate-crime to let foreigners know what country they are in and what language will allow them to be understood by the majority (for now) of the population.

      2. I agree, but it is no hate-crime to speak gibberish either. It is more practical than anything to speak English in England. Language is fluid though and what is said by one generation is deeply embarrassing to another, and the feeling is often mutual.

        There is a long history in England however of villains speaking to one another in code in order for the authorities not to get wind of what they are up to. Cockney rhyming slang is one such example. Sometimes this can indeed be a threat to national security, and at this point it is right to take action.

        Plotting a programme of aggressive insurgency, either in Arabic or in rapper patois, does come under this category.

        1. Good morning JM

          Eavesdropping on any conversations when one is shopping or even watching TV… use of the F word is taking root .. We definitely know which country we are in , and it isn’t very pleasant.

          1. Good morning, TB. I’m afraid that you are sadly mistaken. Use of the F word is not taking root; it already has taken root. It is the C word which is nowadays taking root.

            On a much happier note, yesterday afternoon I went for a short drive. My heart was gladdened to see how many houses had flagpoles in their front gardens with a large Union Jack (Union flag) raised for all to see.

    2. Oh, that’s in Gnaw-retch (“Norwich”). Gnaw-retch people don’t trust no-one who don’t come from Gnaw-retch, boy.

      Oi bin thur, an’ Oi knows how they are.

        1. Be careful, Elsie (and George) I was born there and understand why you are not accepted in Norfolk until you’ve lived there for forty years. Gratuitous insults may debar you for life.

          1. Oo-er! And I was so looking forward to meeting Bill Thomas one day when he returns to Norfolk for good. I guess I shall have to go to the naughty step now and do penance.

            :-))

            (No offence intended, NtN.)

    3. Unfortunately, the author of this poster is still caught in a “Directive” mindset. The European Commission passes a decree recommending a course of action, and if you comply we will leave you alone. It is prescriptive.

      English Common Law is prohibitive – you are free to do what you like, but anyone can try to stop you, and if this is an offence imposing on the liberties of others, then the authorities will enforce this prohibition.

      What happened while we were members of the EU was that English Common Law decreed that everything that was not covered by the Directive was deemed offensive and had to be rigorously prohibited using the full force of the law, regardless whether it was actually doing anyone any harm. On the continent, they do not have to enforce the directive officially, only that compliance guarantees you peace from the authorities, no more. This combination of two incompatible legal systems rendered the British hopelessly uncompetitive, and indeed most of our industries have been duly closed down over the last fifty years.

      As regards the use of foreign languages, English Common Law without Directive suggests there is nothing stopping speaking in whatever tongue they choose in the privacy of their homes, and this indeed should be the rule if it is to comply with the spirit of Brexit. Those that take offence at any use of language are free to attempt to suppress it, but the authorities should only take action if it can be proved that harm was done, intended or threatened, and how far; in most cases, there is no harm, and therefore the authorities should take no interest, and may consider whether malicious or vexatious attempts to suppress free speech (in whatever language) is indeed itself a harmful violation of privacy or causing harm.

      1. Unfortunately, the author of this poster is still caught in a “Directive” mindset.

        Morning Jeremy. The author of this poster was caught in the shit-stirring mindset. It is not genuine. I am surprised that an actor and performer such as yourself should be fooled by it! The use of the word “infected” is racist. The Government is not going to implement any laws about English being compulsory. How could you enforce such a measure in private? No Brexiteer would identify themselves (though they might think it) as a “true patriot”. It is unBritish! The construction of the syntax and the cadence of its rhythms would suggest someone of foreign extraction!

        1. I agree with you that it is likely the work of an agent provocateur, but I like to take it first at face value in case it is merely playing devil’s advocate.

        2. Morning AS,
          To many it would be more acceptable if when raping / abusing etc, please & thank you
          was used.

    4. Araminta – As you say, this note is obviously written by a “Remainer” or a left-wing troll. They have done it before on different subjects and their “blunt lack of intelligence” shines through in the language that they use. It is a massive giveaway whenever they try this, such as the “bash an islamic” hoax that they tried to use to drum up sympathy.

      Those on the left have one major critical defect, which is their intelligence. That is a serious observation, not abuse. They are not informed enough to understand the real world and are not smart enough to think for themselves. They have been told that this note is the way that Brexit voters think, and so they write the message in a way that reflects what they have been told.

      But 99.9% of Brexit voters do NOT think that way and would never put up such a note. So it stands out to us as the blatant fake that it is.

    5. The Guardian must have been delighted to print that article .

      i am always puzzled by their coy stance and inability to report other cultural outrages .

        1. But as the Guardian does that in spades I don’t understand why we don’t take a leaf out of them and term it Hypercrisy!

  3. Good morning all.

    Wet and stormy here, at least it was 30 minutes ago.. Very noisy night !

    SIR – Although Brexit is finally upon us, we cannot afford to relax.

    Remainers are in positions of power in the civil service, the judiciary, the BBC and elsewhere. Many still will not accept the result. They will fight a rearguard action to try to ensure the poorest outcome possible in forthcoming negotiations, so that in a few years’ time they can call for yet another referendum – to rejoin.

    Robert Griffiths
    St Lawrence, Jersey

    1. SIR – To mark Brexit I took a trailer-load of rubbish from the garden to the tip.

      Jonathan Longstaff

      Buxted, East Sussex

    2. Morning T-B – I suspect the remainers have started already to disrupt our new found freedom. Araminta’s comment below could be part of that process. The BBC Radio programmes are mainly on the EU side. Donald Tusk has “empathy” towards Sturgeon’s plan to get Scotland back into the “EU” [BBC Radio 4 this morning] The powerful and influential Remainers are working in the shadows. The Treachery Law should be re-inforced with appropriate punishment for offenders..

      2. No surprise there.
        The difference is that the stone has been upturned and the nasty wriggly things have been exposed to daylight.

      3. Let him try it on! Tusk was eager that the UK revoke Article 50, but eventually had to concede defeat when Jo Swinson’s Liberal Democrats were roundly defeated electorally in favour of Boris’s Leave-minded “Red Wall” Northern Tories.

        No doubt there will be another attempt by the SNP to force another Independence Referendum; they have made no secret of it, and this has been the intent of their party ever since it was set up. Last time, the “Three Amigos” of Brown, Cameron and Clegg managed to brow-beat the Scots into submission, against a powerful SNP revival laying into the UK loyalist parties with devastating effectiveness. I am sure they are well-prepared for a return match.

        More likely is the prospect of Irish unification, where the whole of Ireland takes its place as an EU Member State. This will be rigorously opposed by Unionists of course, but do the UK parties have the will to resist as much as they have Scottish nationalism?

    3. Morning, Belle.
      As has been said many times … many, many, many times …..
      The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
      (I would also add ‘and the will to protect it’.)

    4. Well, if that’s the case, Bobby, it’s time to do some weeding!

      There is no reason on earth why these cancerous beings cannot be excised and replaced, along with all the Common Purpose placements.

  4. Morning

    SIR – It is a great shame that Brexit has been reduced to a question of trade. While that is obviously of great importance, for millions of us, leaving the European Union is fundamentally a matter of principle.

    For the past 40 or so years I have found it impossible to reconcile myself to the fact that we have been, in effect, governed by a foreign power rather than governing ourselves, as we have done for hundreds of years previously.

    For me and, I am sure, millions of others, January 31 was the day that this country regained what we should never have given up: our national self-respect.

    Clive Green

    Bristol

    1. I could not agree more Clive, as I posted yesterday I enter & leave a polling booth with self respect intact.

  5. SIR – The speeches and flag-waving cast a sentimental pall over Britain’s last days in the European Parliament. Some expressed hope that Britain would one day return to the EU.

    But what makes anybody think there will be an EU to return to?

    M A Owen
    Hockwold cum Wilton, Norfolk

  6. SIR – Huawei is the cheapest supplier of 5G technology because it it subsidised by the Chinese state, rather like having a bank loan. At some point that “bank” will want something in return.

    Michael Fabb

    Chobham, Surrey

  7. As it did in California and Australia and will do again should the wretched Greens retain control.

    SIR – As the owner of heather moorland and the chairman of the Quantock Hills AONB (Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty) Joint Advisory Committee, I agree with Dr M S Pusey (Letters, January 26) that burning heather and other plants is necessary.

    I have always followed the principle that if you do not burn when you want to burn, it will burn when you do not want it to burn.

    Anthony Trollope-Bellew

    Taunton, Somerset

    1. Morning E,
      To much common sense in one hit there shown by tony, common sense ( a lost commodity) has to be
      re-introduced as we take to the freedom trail.

    2. Good morning everyone. I read that the word ‘debrousaillage’ is the appropriate expression in French.
      It is (or used to be) obligatory to clear undergrowth on one’s land in certain areas of Provence, and wherever there is a risk of heath or forest fire.

    3. The Australian aborigine knows the benefits of controlled burning.
      The Highland Laird knows the benefit of controlled burning.
      The Greens and their followers think they know better.

      The Australian wildlife, the farmers, the householders have paid a high price for the ill-thought practice failing to have controlled burning.

  8. We won’t take your rules, PM to tell Brussels

    Boris Johnson is to say he won’t accept alignment with EU rules when Britain negotiates a trade deal with Brussels.
    The prime minister will use a speech on Monday to toughen his stance ahead of trade talks following the UK’s formal withdrawal from the bloc.
    EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier will also set out his approach to the talks, which are due to start next month.
    It comes as European leaders expressed sadness at the UK’s official departure from the EU on Friday.
    In what is being described as a comprehensive speech, Mr Johnson will tell the European Union he is prepared to accept customs checks at Britain’s borders if he cannot secure the sort of trade deal he wants.

    1. For me, the most revealing moment came about a year or so ago.

      I was watching the Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz giving a speech to the European Parliament, summarising Austria’s six month presidency. Kurz is a middle-of-the-road Conservative, disliked naturally by Social Democrats, but popular with conservative-minded folk in his country. He gave a workmanlike speech.

      The reaction from the parliamentarians in Strasbourg was largely positive, reflecting on the individual concerns and interests of member states in accordance with their each unique cultural identities. At the end of this part of the debate, I felt rather proud to be part of the club – of different European nations getting along harmoniously in a spirit of co-operation and friendship, and wondered why on earth I voted Leave in 2016.

      Sitting in one corner was Juncker, Barnier and a clerk. Juncker got up to speak, and then addressed the hall with the position of the EU Commission. He laid into Kurz, condemning him for going against the Commission’s ruling that EU borders had to be made open to Islamist migrants coming out of Turkey, regardless whether this was a threat to local security, or whether closing the borders was demanded by the local electorate. He warned Kurz of consequences if he persisted to defy the Commission (and indeed within a few months Kurz was thrown out of office by a fabricated sting operation involving a fake Russian journalist). After I heard Juncker speak, it left me in no doubt why I voted Leave.

    2. BJ,
      Still far to much unnecessary talking &
      NOT enough walking.
      What steps we have to take now in regards to the eu are LARGE ones in the opposite direction.

  9. ‘Finally, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel for Stuart’s killer’. 1 February 2020

    On Thursday, Channel 4 will screen a new documentary called Barrymore: The Body in the Pool, and from the title alone most people in Britain over the age of 30 will know exactly what it’s about. That title, however, is also telling: while people remember Michael Barrymore, the fallen TV entertainer, the man who was found dead in his swimming pool 19 years ago has remained largely anonymous.

    I never liked Barrymore before this business so it only acted to confirm my opinion of him. I had no doubts at the time that he and his “friends” drugged, gang-raped and in the process murdered Stuart Lubbock and then threw his body into the pool to destroy the forensic evidence. I don’t blame the police for not prosecuting, it would have been almost impossible to gain a conviction and I doubt that they will get one now!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/barrymore-documentary-finally-can-see-light-end-tunnel-stuarts/#comment

    1. I have no idea whatsoever whether MB had anything to do with SL’s death and so can’t comment on that, however, like you, I wasn’t keen on the bloke and rarely watched his TV programmes. I always thought he came across as a bit of a bully.

  10. Firefighter recruitment ‘more and more difficult’

    Recruiting on-call firefighters is becoming “more and more difficult”, a community safety manager has said.
    Retainer staff – who man more than 70% of Wales’ fire stations – need to be able to leave their main jobs the moment they are needed and are usually on call 120 hours a week.

    on-call firefighters need to live or work within a few minutes of a retained station – meaning the increase in people commuting to larger towns and cities for work is reducing the pool of people able to sign up.

    They also need to be able to leave that job or their home as soon as they are called.
    “It’s got more and more difficult, there’s no doubt, over the last 10 to 15 years less people work in small communities – this is a challenge across the whole of the UK.

    1. Yet another example of Laffer Curve corner-cutting over public expenditure.

      Rightfully the employers of retained firefighters should be reimbursed the cost of releasing their staff on full pay to attend a call, and this money should come out of general taxation, not from Council Tax.

    2. My village butcher is a first responder and his senior assistant is a retained fireman. I’ve had need of both of them in the past. Fine people.

      1. So you’re saying, molamola, (© Cathy Newman) that you are neither a vegetarian nor a vegan?

        1. He has a counter with a basic local veg selection, Elsie, as for my need for them, it was flooding and then a heart attack. I do eat vegetables amongst other things. Vegans, by choice and not by necessity, are too weird for words.

          1. I’m sorry, molamola, I had no idea that your need for the village butcher was a matter as major as flooding and the much more serious heart attack. More strength to his elbow for being such a decent volunteering man. I hope you realised that my thoughtless post was intended to be a humorous one.

          2. I was just pretending to be serious. Those things happened, but are not things that occupy my mind. I don’t have a serious bone in my body, I’m one big humerus bone.

    3. They are not “firefighters”. They are firemen. Always have been.

      [They do not “fight” fires, they squirt water on them. They should be known as “Firesquirters”.]

      1. My neighbour, Charlotte, is a fire fighter, Grizz. Does she have to be referred to as a ‘fireman’?

        1. In legal terms, a “person” is a tube that can direct liquid, especially when standing up. Women have them, so I am told.

  11. ‘Morning All

    It’s time to end the Left-wing stranglehold on public bodies

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/02/01/time-end-left-wing-stranglehold-public-bodies/

    The top comment has saved me a lot of typing,ta Robert

    Our biggest challenge now that Brexit has been won?

    “The
    destruction of Cultural marxism in all the British state institutions,
    the BBC, Church of Eng land and taken on board by business, media,
    charities, luvvies, academia, NGOs.

    We now have
    thought crime, gender wars, virtue signalling, identity politics, the
    attempt to destroy Christianity, sneering at patriotism.

    This
    is the illiberal intolerance of the left, the new cultural Puritanism
    which tells us all through their cultural ideology what we must think,
    say and do.
    Brexit was about an existential threat by Remainer
    globalists and the EU to an independent and democratic political,
    economic and financial nation.
    Cultural marxism is about an
    existential threat to the core values of this country and to free speech
    and just as dangerous as globalism and EU membership.”

  12. Why I’m standing by my old enemy Selina Todd. Douglas Murray. 1 February 2020

    It turns out that in her spare moments away from studying grievance, Todd has found time to get embroiled in the ongoing ‘trans’ controversy. Readers who play close attention to these things will have noticed by now — as all us writers have — that there are two subjects which get you into most trouble in 21st-century Britain. The first is insinuating that Islam is anything but a religion of brotherly love. The second is questioning whether someone with a penis can be a woman. As luck would have it, these two are among my favourite topics. Indeed, I have often dreamed of bringing them together, which may be why The Spectator’s editor always starts wiping his brow and running backwards whenever I say I have an idea for a column.

    No comment!

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/2020/02/why-im-standing-by-my-old-enemy-selina-todd/

    1. Here’s an idea Douglas Murray might like to expand upon. If one of the Rotherham child rapists is caught and sentenced, by way of atonement he could have his penis and testicles removed (without anaesthetic) and live his life ever after as a woman – burka and all.

      It would only have to be enacted once and the crime would disappear, as would the subjugation of women – they would never know what hit them if they tried to subjugate the wrong burka wearer.

      1. You do realise that compulsory sex change exists as a judicial punishment in Iran? The chop, or the drop, for gay men.

        1. No, Tim, I didn’t. All the more reason to mete out the sort of punishment they would endure in their home shïtholes. Show them how welcome they and their rules are here in the UK.

      2. Sorry, NtN, when you say “It would only have to be enacted once and the crime would disappear”. If it happened once, all hell would break loose and the police would have great difficulty in controlling it.

        1. About time then, Elsie, that it was done and let all hell break loose (and be put down very forcefully with deportation for the instigators).

  13. Words Fail Me

    “Shakespeare, Blake and Woolf are on the curriculum due to ‘racial bias’, university says

    The literary figures feature in a Sheffield University video that

    attempts to educate its students about different forms of racism”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/01/31/shakespeare-blake-woolf-curriculum-due-racial-bias-university/

    Time to burn our institutions to the ground and start again

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/04d9e98f312dac47ccfbffd42b902a1996994f7bdca8ee2c56e3a548ec62f84f.jpg

    1. I look at Universities as a business, they supply the courses for what the students pay a fortune for, what gives them the self entitlement to start dishing out all this mind corrupting weird propaganda? it has to stop.

      2. Morning B3,
        They are a great help when the kitchen is flooded.
        Turning out paper work / rhetorical engineers etc.

    2. I look at Universities as a business, they supply the courses for what the students pay a fortune for, what gives them the self entitlement to start dishing out all this mind corrupting weird propaganda? it has to stop.

    1. I took pity on Lucky, the neighbourhood cat, this morning. After I fed him his breakfast I let him in and placed a plastic container with an old towel in the bottom next to the living room radiator. For the past half hour he has been gently and contentedly snoring away.

  15. “One of the country’s leading grammar schools has hired a security guard to protect pupils from a spate of muggings.

    The Latymer School in Edmonton, north London, which was founded in

    1624 and counts Sir Bruce Forsyth among its alumni, said they have taken

    the drastic measure as a way to improve security.

    The local MP has blamed cuts to front line policing for forcing the

    school to seek private security, as she said she has complained to the

    borough commander.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/02/01/leading-grammar-school-hires-security-guard-pupils-repeatedly/
    Of course if a group of parents indulged in a little “counter mugging” to protect their children they would no doubt be buried in police persons

    1. Or a child would be found in a pool of blood surrounded by a wall of silence. Pour encourager les autres.

      1. Better yet, Tim, catch one of the little shïts, keep hold of him until midnight and then tie him to the school railings with a large notice hanging from around his neck proclaiming, “I am a mugger and a thief!” and leave him there to be discovered in the morning. Take photographs and send them to the local paper, explaining why.

        It might put a few of the others off.

          1. I agree. It would be wise to safeguard these by employing a rota guard to make sure that no undue bodily harm happens to this little thug. The guard could be supplied with a stall selling fruit and veg long past their use-by date, and other harmless but disgusting projectiles to use as target practice for passers-by, and could be a nice little earner as well as a bit of free harmless entertainment.

            There used to be stocks in every village in more enlightened times.

          2. Would the Use by date labels need to be replaced by Use after date labels?

            Health and Safety would probably raise the issue of normally ripe fruit causing damage.

    2. “The local MP has blamed cuts to front line policing for forcing the school to seek private security, “

      The local MP has, if I may say, missed the point entirely. Schools never used to need any more security measures than a (usually grumpy) caretaker who kept the schoolchildren in check. It is the breakdown of discipline at home that has led to the deterioration in children’s behaviour at school.

      2. Plus teachers being hand-tied as to disciplining the kids in their class. Bring back the cane and the flying board duster

        1. There was one Maths teacher with a deadly accurate aim that forced the school to get rid of all their wooden-handled board dusters. It was just getting too tiresome cleaning up the blood stains.

          1. The real sharp shooters could ping an earlobe with a chalk stub.
            Lurking at the back of the class was no guarantee of safety.

        2. It is because there are no real problems with discipline that many good teachers who are interested in the subject they teach want to teach in independent schools.

  16. ‘It’ll be OK. Spain is kinder to us migrants than the British are’

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/feb/01/brexit-expats-spain-is-kinder-to-us-migrants-than-the-british-are

    I don’t want to appear argumentative , but apart from the benefit of sunshine and a cheaper cost of living , but with regard to the length of time some of those expats have lived in Spain, don’t they understand the frustration that we here in the UK have endured since our membership of the EU.. and don’t they realise that if many of them had lived under Franco rule , they would feel as angry as we have been with petty EU bureaucracy?

    1. ‘Morning, Mags, having recently lived in Spain (and France) for over 5 years as an ex-pat, I can vouch for the tedious bureaucracy in both countries. They don’t like computers and always want pieces of paper, preferably originals or notified copies.

    1. It seems quite logical to avoid ethnic Chinese at the moment, Belle, especially in confined spaces. A very family orientated people (very commendable, if you like families) that often have a large household that is just about perfect for passing on a virus.

  18. Morning, Campers.
    And Happy Candlemas to you all.
    A snippet from the Sunday Tellygraff:

    “Theresa May’s former chief of staff has secured work with a major consultancy company and will advise its clients on how to make the most of the “post-Brexit world”.

    Lord Barwell – who was awarded a peerage in Mrs May’s resignation honours list – will be a “strategic adviser” to PWC.”

    Oink, oink.

    1. Do the likes of Barwell ride the gravy train or is it known as the jus train in the elite circles they inhabit?😎

      1. Ah …. Bisto.
        Yes, it would be a Jus Train, on account of their dining expenses being paid by you’n’me, so they can afford posh caffs.

        1. No one, who knows anything about making good gravy (or ‘jus’), would dream of having Bisto in the house. It is disgusting.

          1. Caroline will certainly give you an up-tick when she sees this. Her home-made gravy is delicious.

    3. I find this sort of troughing disgusting. From falure to cushy sinecure, all with the intent of buying policy,. It’s corruption, it’s fraud, it’s wrong.

    4. Morning, Nursey.

      Do you think Punxsutawney Phil will emerge today, or will he spend the next six weeks in hibernation? :•)

      3. What on earth, and Good morning, George, does that have to do with us? Surely it’s just another example of American stupidity and is best ignored. But you do what you will and don’t be surprised if there are a few yawns.

        1. Like the Presidential Pardon for a turkey on Thanksgiving Day, Groundhog Day is not “another example of American stupidity” but simply a harmless tradition which brings a bit of levity and fun into people’s lives. Rather like our own Olney Pancake Race and the annual Cheese Rolling contest.

      1. Norway knows who their friends are – those who support them when the chips are down.

  20. As the world loses faith in democracy, leaders of vision are desperately needed. David Olusoga 2 February 2020.

    When liberal democratic governments refuse or are incapable of bringing about change, voters seek out populist parties and charismatic leaders who promise to tear up the rules and bring about real transformation.

    Donald Trump did not cause America’s democratic crisis of faith, he rode to power on it. Once in control, he and other populists discovered their room for manoeuvre was expanded by the same disillusionment that helped them into office. The trashing of democratic norms and the abuse of institutions such as the judiciary and the press was made possible by the delegitimisation of democratic systems.

    I don’t doubt that democracy is in serious decline, we have just had a particularly egregious example of it here in the UK, but Olusoga’s thinking on the subject is as erroneous as his views on Slavery and Race. Populism has not caused this. It has occurred in an age of rampant neoliberalism and Globalism. Populism is the response! It is true that history’s previous examples are not reassuring (the Fascist Dictators of the Thirties) but this was because their precursors were so obdurate in giving the people what they wanted (sound familiar) that eventually the system was destroyed. What we must hope that this time around (listening Boris?) that it does not come to extremes!

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/02/as-world-loses-faith-in-democracy-leaders-of-vision-are-desperately-needed

    2. I see the problem as a failure of leadership.
      It’s been coming for years. There is, among, the uneducated a confusion between freedom and anarchy. The cry is often ‘it’s a free country you can do what you like’. I don’t see it that way.
      In a free country there is an onus on the individual that that doesn’t exist in an anarchic society. The freedom is that you can say what you want but to be aware of the effect on others. I don’t mean that nobody should be offended in fact quite the opposite. Everyone has the right to be offended.
      Free countries have rules by which we live and those rules will evolve. With anarchy anything goes and law and order break down. That is what we have seen from our so called governments over the years. Give in to every minority ie same sex marriage, transgederism, choose you own sex on a daily basis etc. etc. and the non prosecution of Pakistani rapists in the name of ‘social cohesion’. Well, that went well didn’t it.

      2. What we have is not the freedom to behave as you wish but being responsible to others, it’s the state holding the whip hand while encouraging largesse.

        Freedom to act only exists in a society with shared and consistent values but crucially one where society does the punishing, not the state machine. For example, there’s a kiddie car parked on double yellows outside. If fellows in our road have it towed away, the state will punish us so we’re forced to go to the state for restitution. The state, however, doesn’t care. It’s imply not important to it and so the offender goes unpunished.

    3. Olusoga, the idiot who, while trashing pink people, Britain and the idea of Empire, happily accepts an OBE. Andy Pandy Nandy should have a few stern words with him.

    4. The writer confuses his own prejudices for reality.

      Trump was a response toa lack of democratic accountability, a lack of people feeling they were in control of their lives.

      But the Guardian cannot admit this, so it spins and spins and ties itself in knots denying reality.

    5. Before, there were few channels to express ones opinion, save via elected representatives. Recently, in the UK, we saw how contemptuous they were of ordinary folks opinions. Now, there are many ways of expressing opinion via Twatter, for example, that there is no excuse for rulers to misunderstand it.

      1. …there is no excuse for rulers to misunderstand it.

        Morning Oberst. The main reason they are trying to stamp out the Free Internet!

        2. Yet it’s notable that the Independent – a Left wing rag – calls Hopkins ‘far Right’ to demonise her.

          There’s not even an attempt at balance or to examine what it is she said and to whom. After all, it’s far more likely the post was true, but disliked by a Lefty.

    1. Morning Anne
      A good piece – I enjoyed it but I must comment on one paragraph, namely,

      “We — one of the oldest democracies in the world, a country that has not been invaded for 1,000 years — truly do not need anyone else to make our laws or to tell us what justice looks like.”

      Maybe no military invasions but there has been a gradual one going on for about the last twenty years thanks to Blair.

  22. SIR – I too have been on search for a soap that retains its smell and have found that Wool Fat Soap is the answer. Fragrant until the end.

    Ron Callow
    Ashford, Kent

    “Wool Fat” soap? I think you meant to say Lanolin, Ronnie.

        2. It works, they’ve been around a long time.

          Rather similar marketing to Wright’s Coal Tar Soap I suspect.

        1. It smells soooo cleeeean though, it’s lovely. I find all the flowery, perfumy scented soaps a bit choking.

          1. I have to admit to liking some perfumed soaps, not all. Cadum is still sold in France, that’s not too bad. Do you remember the advertising slogan? Cadum for Madam!

          2. And Camay for Mamay. I used to like the smell of ‘Lovely Lively Lyril’, but the brand appeared to be shortlived.

      2. To my dismay I find the latest iteration is “Wright’s Soap with Coal Tar Fragrance”, no active coal tar component at all. What next, orange flavoured Swarfega?

        Edit re: swarfega – yes

  24. Morning from the Anglo Saxon long bow carrying daughter of
    Alfred of Wessex. I was going to set up Terpischore and her lyre
    today but the husband asked if I had anything more important
    to do, hmm .

    It’s 2/2 / 2020 interesting date.

  25. Good Morning, all

    Self-important broadcasters haven’t yet realised how irrelevant they now are
    DANIEL HANNAN – 1 FEBRUARY 2020 • 3:02PM

    I no longer give TV interviews – and I’m amazed any other politicians do either

    If you are one of the thirty-odd European journalists who asked for an interview with me this week, and whom I turned down, please don’t take it personally. It’s just that the previous week, I had had as many requests. I had no particular reason to accept any of them – I was quitting politics – but I thought I might as well help the reporters. So I ended up agreeing to nine interviews – seven of which turned into harangues by the journalists about what a terrible idea Brexit was. A waste, surely, of everyone’s time.

    It got me thinking. Why do politicians give interviews? Seriously, why? Ten years ago, it would have been a ridiculous question. The media were precisely that – media, channels for whatever you wanted to tell your electorate. If you had something to say, it made sense to say it where it would reach the widest audience – which, unless you were targeting a very niche constituency, generally meant television. Even five years ago, an MP who decided to stay off, say, Newsnight, was excluding himself from the national conversation. Not any more.

    Consider the recent general election, where Boris Johnson filmed and disseminated his own broadcasts. A video of him chatting as he made a cup of tea in a microwave was watched by millions. His Twitter and Facebook campaigns were brilliant. He knew how to use apparent gaffes or incongruities – comic sans font, for example – to get his messages repeated and discussed.

    At the same time, he turned down several set-piece interviews. He chose not to go head-to-head with Andrew Neil on the BBC. He stayed away from Channel 4 News’s ridiculous “climate emergency debate” – a decision that was then wholly vindicated by Channel 4’s juvenile decision to replace him with an ice sculpture.

    The legacy media fell about like affronted Victorian matrons. The electorate, they averred, would surely punish the PM for “avoiding scrutiny”. But the general population, as usual, proved wiser than the broadcasters. Voters were quite happy to make up their own minds about the various candidates without demanding presenters to frame things for them.

    TV editors sincerely see themselves as tribunes of the people, fighting for truth and transparency. But most voters see them as self-important and entitled. The general election didn’t just bury Corbynism; it also buried any lingering sense that the old media could set the political agenda.

    On Friday night, broadcasters pompously refused to carry the PM’s address to mark Brexit. So he put it out himself, and it has been as widely viewed as if the BBC had run it live. Which can’t have been pleasant for the BBC.

    Over the past couple of years, I reckon I have turned down around 95 per cent of broadcast bids. This is partly, to be honest, a question of laziness. I don’t live in London, so appearing on TV means a 90-minute journey in, half an hour of waiting around, four minutes on air, and then 90 minutes home. Until perhaps three years ago, I often felt I had to accept anyway, because there was no other way to reach a mass audience. With every day that passes, though, more people switch from twentieth-century stations to YouTube and social media.

    I still go on TV from time to time, of course – but only if I have a specific message and a reasonable expectation of being able to deliver it. Other elected representatives are evidently making the same calculation.

    There is simply nothing to be gained from appearing with interviewers who will grandstand, interrupt and show off. Nor is there much point in letting yourself be intermediated by someone who loathes your party (the reason that almost all Tories have given up on Channel 4 News). Even generally professional interviewers can unexpectedly go rogue – as, for example, Andrew Marr did during the election campaign, when he decided to cut the PM off four seconds into every answer.

    In an age when it is just as easy to broadcast yourself, why not simply say what you want in your own words?

    Some media have adapted to the changes in technology. There is, for example, a growing market for long-form interviews, in which ideas are properly explored and discussed. The demand for podcasts is rocketing. But old-style gladiatorial contests – especially the laziest and most common form of them, the “gotcha” interview, in which the journalist triumphantly quotes some past words at the politician – have had their day. Politicians know this. Broadcasters, by and large, have yet to grasp it.

    2. In the 1960s my cousin, C.G. Tracey – a leading Rhodesian businessman, was involved with the discussions between Ian Smith and the British government about the future of Rhodesia. CG made the mistake of agreeing to record a televised interview with the BBC but the BBC distorted what he said completely by editing and inserting different questions to the answers he gave. He resolved that in future he would only agree to be interviewed for broadcasts that went out ‘live’.

      So we should not be surprised by the BBC’s duplicity – it has, as they say, ‘history.’

  26. I suspected it wouldn’t take long.
    The Wuhan coronavirus could be down to climate change.

    She added how a combination of factors including global travel, population growth, people living closer to
    wildlife and climate change allow viruses to spread easier.

    Speaking about climate change she said: ‘Viruses are spread from animals and as a
    result of climate change, animals move habitat.’

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7955695/British-scientist-42-races-against-time-invent-vaccine-stop-coronavirus-deaths.html

    The article makes some other, more interesting/worrying, observations.

      1. Was there global warming at the times of the Black Death and then the Great Plague of London in 1665?

        1. The Black Death occurred during the mediaeval warming period.
          The Plague hit during the Little Ice Age – from which we are just recovering.

          1. I remember being taught at school that the people thought The Black Death was spread by cats, and so the felines were killed in large numbers. The reality was that it was spread by the fleas on rats that jumped to humans. Getting rid of the cats allowed the rat population to explode, increasing the spread of the disease across the world.

            That could be one of the earliest examples of a knee-jerk popular reaction, based on false information, making a situation much worse than it would otherwise have been. Is Greta a time-traveller after all? Moving through the ages to devastate mankind.

          3. I did read an online comment around 15 – 20 years ago that claimed that there was something about the structure of AIDS that indicated it had been created in a lab, and that it was released in Africa on purpose. But then, of course, it was spread all over the place by people who went there for cheap/easy sex.

            I cannot recall if it was a serious article or on one of “those” webpages. Live Aid has done its best to keep the numbers high though.

          5. The Doom Goblin does look pretty mediaeval.
            I can imagine her leading a mob of demented religious nuts.

        3. Was there global warming when the one mile thick ice sheet where Birmingham is now all melted in 50 years ?

    3. Nothing to do with overpopulation then. Figures–that was just too obvious.

      (Greetings, Sos).

        1. Don’t get me on that one. Few things move me to tears, but that is sure fire trigger for runny mascara.

    4. Any antivivisectionists here ? I am worried about the mice and the guinea pigs.
      Has she no heart ?

    5. “global travel, population growth, people living closer to wildlife”

      Those are the reasons, i.e. the downside of globalism. Nothing to do with climate change, which, if we weren’t constantly being told about it, no one would even notice.

  27. DT Lead story

    Boris Johnson team ‘infuriated’ as EU reneges on free trade deal
    The Prime Minister’s Brexit advisers believe Brussels has unilaterally been ‘changing the terms’ of the deal he agreed last year

    If this is true then surely we have no alternative but to walk away and accept ‘No Deal’ and no further commitment to the treacherous EU..

    Who would be surprised to see that the EU is dishonourable and treacherous?

    2. I doubt the team, let alone Bozza are ‘infuriated’.
      More like hugging themselves with glee at this latest example of EU pig headedness.
      But this looks better for public consumption – 48% of the public.

    2. “Guernsey said it had created new legislation to ensure French vessels could continue to fish in its waters “on a time-limited basis”.”

      You do not immediately think of Guernsey as moving as swift as a ninja striking in the night, but well done to them for signalling that they are preparing for a possible new future. That attitude is one that our own MP’s could chose to adopt.

          1. Visited the area in ’74. Meru & Meru NP, Nanyuki, Nyeri*, Mt Kenya NP.

            *I seem to remember that Baden Powell is buried in Nyeri – you can visit his grave,

            When I was a mtoto we lived across the Aberdares on the shore of L. Navaisha.

            Safari minge nzuri yako!

  30. ‘Morning, all.

    I see there are several letters in the Sunday Telegraph on the subject of soap fragrances. Not wishing to smell like a poofter, I have always shunned scented soap, preferring to use Wright’s Coal Tar Soap, which has a fine wholesome smell and which brought the novel concept of personal hygiene to wogs throughout the British Empire.

    But for some years there has been a problem. A European Union Directive, which came into law in 2004, banned the use of coal tar in non-prescription products, resulting in the removal of coal tar derivatives from the formula and their replacement with tea tree oil as the main anti-bacterial ingredient. To cloak this major variance from the original recipe and give it authenticity, coal tar “essence” – whatever that is – has been added, and the soap is now produced in bloody Turkey!!

    I shall know we’re truly free from the grip of the Evil Empire when Wright’s Coal Tar Soap is ‘repatriated’ and returns to its original formula.

    I’m not holding my breath!

    1. The finest thing in the world: a freshly-washed woman straight from the bath: warm, damp, and smelling of clean. Can’t get better than that!

    2. When I was a child we had tar blocks piled up in the yard. Whether we used them for washing or putting on the fire I can’t remember.

      1. My grandparents used to use some soap that was violently red in colour. Smelled atrocious. I think it was called Lifebuoy for some unfathomable reason.

      1. “She shuns schented shoap and shells shea shells on the shea shore”
        — Shir Sean Canary

  31. From today’s letters D/Telegraph

    SIR – It is a great shame that Brexit has been reduced to a question of trade. While that is obviously of great importance, for millions of us, leaving the European Union is fundamentally a matter of principle.

    For the past 40 or so years I have found it impossible to reconcile myself to the fact that we have been, in effect, governed by a foreign power rather than governing ourselves, as we have done for hundreds of years previously.

    For me and, I am sure, millions of others, January 31 was the day that this country regained what we should never have given up: our national self-respect.

    Clive Green

    1. Is anyone else able to read all the letters??
      And the quality of comments on the DT has gone downhill. It’s like Breitbart over there, with Remainers trolling and moaning like crazy.

      1. Pongy soap and trouser zips, hardly worth discussion.

        And someone else wants HS2 to be built. His logic is that even though his daughter cannot afford to buy a house in London, she will be able to afford the mortgage on a house up north and pay for a season ticket on HS2.

          1. I had a look at season ticket prices. I went for Yorkshire to London. An absolute bargain at £14,000 for an annual ticket especially when you see that Peterborough to London is close to £9,000

        2. So the clot’s never heard of supply and demand? Does he think the house prices ‘Up North (as if)’ will stay the same once it comes within commuting distance of London?

          House prices soared in the towns on the East Coast Main Line when they introduced the high speed trains there and the property-rich sold up to go carpet-bagging outside of London, driving the prices out of reach of the locals.

      2. I buy the “virtual paper” version of the DT and ST. The pages of the actual newspaper appear on my computer screen and I turn the pages over, to read it, with click of my trackpad. Another click magnifies a section of each page.

        I take a screenshot of the letters’ page, every day, and email it to four friends (two of whom are regular posters on this forum).

        It costs me £26 a month to receive that facility, which is less than a third of the cost if I were to buy the newspaper each day.

        1. Du er vel nok flink, Bamse, at hjelpe dine venner ved at sende dem screenshots!

          Go’eftermiddag, min ven.

    3. I find it hilarious that the Bbc is shifting its programming (in both senses of the word) towards a younger audience, the very same audience that is moving away from mainstream TV in droves. At the same time the Bbc wants over-75s to pay to watch their output…

    2. Godzilla looks just like his recent movie appearance. The first Obese Japanese Monster.

        1. “No, rather I abjure all roofs, and choose
          To wage against the enmity o’ the air;
          To be a comrade with the wolf and owl – “

          EDIT – BTW, is that you, Stormy?

    5. What happened to following American traditions? It is groundhog day today.

      Across the land, hibernating oversized rats are being dragged from their lairs to show the world that it really is an overcast day.

      Edited to repair spelling breaker

  37. Recognise British excellence not empire in honours system, says Nandy. 1 February 2020.

    Nandy, who is still seen as an outsider in the race despite strong performances in early hustings, said: “It was [poet] Benjamin Zephaniah who balked at the prospect of accepting an OBE – the Order of the British Empire. Why not a choice to provide the Order of British Excellence? Why does the honours system, which should recognise the contribution of our people, shut people out, rather than bring people in?

    One could make the observation that there is no Empire and only someone interested in SJW posturing and historical irrelevancies would be interested in objecting to its appearance in the Honours system. Of much more importance is that the system itself is now utterly corrupted and by being so is essentially worthless. Better to get rid of it entirely!

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/feb/01/lisa-nandy-honours-system-british-excellence

    1. Not get rid, but rewrite the criteria so that nominations can only be accepted for those persons where there are no public awards in their field.
      There are already mechanisms for public recognition for people such as actors, directors etc (Oscars BAFTAs etc) sportswomen and sportsmen (cups, medals, trophies etc), military pers (promotions and medals), singers (Brits, Emmies etc).

      1. Quite right, BSK. I, for example, deserve an honour to recognise my crumble- and marmalade-making skills. I hope that all NoTTLers on here will send in a recommendation to Boris or Her Majesty. Which reminds me, when HM visited the Tiptree Jam Factory accompanied by our then Lady Mayor (an all-round Good Egg as Annie will attest), the Queen asked her if she herself had Tiptree marmalade for breakfast. “No, Ma’am,” came the reply, “I make my own!”

    2. An empire is a sovereign state functioning as an aggregate of nations or people that are ruled over by an emperor or another kind of monarch. The territory and population of an empire is commonly of greater extent than the one of a kingdom.[1]

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

      Silly bint needs to take a look at her ancestral heritage .. I suggest she goes back 600 years.. then she can give us all a lecture on Empire

    3. Despite their age, I suppose the Nandy woman will also want to rid us of the Royal Victoria Order.

      However, I do agree with you, Minty, on the corruption of the honours system – it requires an overhaul, as does the definition of ‘merit’.

    4. The OBE and the MBE are as quaint and anachronistic as judges wearing wigs, or royal footpersons (does a foot have a person in today’s gender-confused scheme of things?) still delivering the bedpan for King George III because they were never told not to. Does it matter though? I quite like these follies.

      I would prefer a new award “Freedom of the Commonwealth” and “Honoured Freedom of the Commonwealth” bestowing something of value to those that merit it – like the Freedom of the City, a lifelong automatic visa to reside, work and travel in any Commonwealth nation, and if honoured, to do so as a Guest of Honour. It could be awarded to anyone of any nationality.

      It also carries a duty to represent the Commonwealth positively anywhere in the world, and could be rescinded by a judge in a criminal court, or by a royal commissioner where a conviction happens outside the Commonwealth. In time this could be recognised as a badge of honour in any friendly nation outside the Commonwealth, granting a fast track for visa applications there too.

    5. For proof see above for photo of child elevated to Lord for working against the country and against democracy.

  38. Programme on R4 now playing about the lack of diversity in knitting. Beyond parody! But where do they get the money to make such rubbish? What’s that you say?

      1. I’ve not debased anything, Minty. I’ve just removed two offending (and no longer relevant) wordings on the periphery of the document.

        The only part of a passport that is examined at border crossings are the two ID pages which contain all the relevant official details. I have not touched those pages (nor shall I).

        1. Well done Griz .. The sign of a true Englishman.

          The EU has made people afraid to breath

        1. In my experience Bureaucracy very rarely has an IQ that reaches double figures and you are White and English. Looks like Permanent Swedish Exile for you I’m afraid!

      1. I would if I could, John. They are still issuing Burgundy ones for the time being before moving over to the new blue ones.

        1. I heard yes’day that they want to use up their stocks of burgundy ones before they start issuing blue.

        2. Our passports ran out of time last year. We decided we were going nowhere until the blue ones were available once again. These may be our very last passports and we wish to shuffle off this mortal coil with the identification of a free and sovereign United Kingdom once again (I do realise it may well be ‘England and Wales’ by then).

    4. Having run into an unfriendly passport checker at Heathrow a couple of years ago, good luck.

      I wanted to argue back but bit my tongue rather than giving the idiot an excuse to keep going.

  41. Oh dear, it looks like we are about to see another deluge of the “I want a man” spam.
    This time the message is embedded in an image.

    3. Just had a look – I see there were quite a few. They do it at weekends because they know there is no Disqus moderation.

  42. Hooray, Spring is sprung.

    I’ve just watched several flocks of cranes gathering to form larger flights. Today it has been happening directly overhead. They fly East in groups of 100+.

    Very noisy today as they are flying quite low.

    2. I was watching thousands of them in Southern Spain a couple of weeks ago on the fields at La Janda in Cadiz province, where they are spending the winter.

      You could hear the main flocks before you could see them when driving along the tracks

        1. Common Cranes start flying overhead, here in Skåne, in early March. There is a stop-over point, at nearby Åhus, where it is possible to see more than 9,000 of them at one time in the large wet fields there. I went two year ago and it was a stunning sight.

          1. The main movement seems to be late February/ Early March. I’ve been in Extremadura in the last week of February a couple of times and the sound of them flying over in large flocks is constant.

      2. I can certainly hear them across the valleys but the cloud is too low to see them there. These were directly overhead under the clouds. From the noise I would guess there must have been many more higher up.

    3. The groundhog did not see its shadow, therefore spring will be early this year.

      The accuracy of this prediction is supposedly about thirty percent. In line with the best super computer models.

      1. The cranes are fairly reliable.
        My plum blossom is also appearing as are daffodils and crocuses. We’ll probably get another coldish snap, if we get very clear nights, but probably nothing of any great length.

      2. Just think, a totally random answer to a yes/no question (which is in effect what this is) has a 50% chance of being right, given enough samples.

    4. Yo sos

      Here in Spain, their lesser known National Bird, the Crane, is prevalent on all skylines

      In very remote districts though, it is being outnumbered by the Greater Spotted Fartle Turbine

  43. “Britain has broken the rules, it is not part of the EU philosophy that the PEOPLE can decide their FATE.”

    [Martin Schulz (President of the European Parliament, 2014–2017). June 27, 2016.]

    You were saying, Marty?

  45. Tom Watson’s a political failure who did something bad — yup, roll out the ermine
    Rod Liddle – Sunday February 02 2020, 12.01am, The Sunday Times

    There are growing rumours that, yet again, I have not been nominated for a peerage. I am not sure how long the country will continue to tolerate this grotesque oversight. I have devoted my life to spreading kindness and solace through my writing and ask for very little in return — just a trifling ennoblement and that £300 per day stipend for eternity.

    I have long dreamt about my elevation to the Palace of Westminster. There I would sit alongside fat, crooked businessmen; grey-skinned, public school-educated, time-serving civil servants put out to pasture on vast pensions; failed politicians; mithering wet-lipped bishops and a whole nest of conmen who’ve bunged the Tories or Labour a few million quid. I would sit proudly on the benches among these people, perhaps every so often being touched gently, below the waist, by the ennobled ghosts of Sir Cyril Smith and Sir Jimmy Savile — not technically peers in their lifetimes, true, but they enjoyed having fancy titles and I suspect they’re there now in spirit.

    Sadly, once again, it is not to be my year. It may be the year of another failed politician, though, in the form of Tom Watson, Labour’s former deputy leader. Rumour — scurrilous, no doubt — has it that Watson is being nominated by Magic Grandpa for having kept his gob shut about the Labour Party’s hilarious disarray during the last election.

    Watson suddenly gave up his seat in West Bromwich East only a few weeks before the vote in December, sensing, one suspects, that he was going to take a right old beating. Then suddenly he went very quiet while Jeremy Corbyn et al were stamping around the country promising to nationalise air and give everyone, bar the Jews, a free unicorn.

    One man determined to stop him getting his peerage is the chap whose life he ruined: the former Conservative MP Harvey Proctor. In what looked like an exercise in political spite, Watson heavily involved himself in Operation Midland, the ludicrous police operation to root out paedophiles among the Tory establishment, something dreamt up by an utterly implausible fantasist. Proctor was one of those wrongly accused, and he lost everything in attempting to defend himself.

    Watson formed a support group for the aforementioned fantasist, the convicted paedophile and fraudster Carl Beech. He brought Beech into the House of Commons, put pressure on the police to pursue his patently absurd claims and used parliamentary privilege in the House to prosecute the wholly empty case against former Conservative politicians.

    Beech is now serving 18 years in prison, but Watson has not properly apologised to the family of Lord Brittan, who was also maligned by Beech, nor was there an apology to Proctor. That kind of redress is surely the least the man deserves. Proctor has now written to Lord Bew, chairman of the House of Lords Appointments Commission, suggesting that it would be an “appalling misjudgment” to ennoble Watson and would demean the Honours system in general.

    I wonder how Lord Bew will respond? The problem is that, on the face of it, Watson is precisely the kind of figure who gets bunged a peerage, and Proctor’s comprehensive detailing of Watson’s behaviour may serve only to convince his lordship that old Tom is an ideal candidate. He’s a political failure who did something very bad — yup, roll out the ermine. Indeed, as Proctor also points out, another crucial player in the Operation Midland fiasco, the former Metropolitan police commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe, has a seat in the Lords already.

    There are a few good people in the House of Lords. My old boss, Baron Jones of Deeside, who as the Labour MP Barry Jones fought tirelessly for his constituency and his country, bringing industry and thus jobs to Wales, is but one. Yet the system is rotten. For every Baron Jones there’s a Baron Watson. Or worse.

    We are enjoined to buy into the charade of the honours system because of the glory it dispenses to the “little people”. And it is true that every year we are invited to exalt in the fact that Nora Tiggywinkle, aged 96, has been awarded the OBE for manning the school crossing in Slaphead, Lincs, every day for the past 72 years. Our delight that Nora’s devotion to duty has been recognised is supposed to outweigh the fact that another bunch of yes men, money men or plain rotters have just been elevated to our second chamber and actually have a say in the running of our country. Tom Watson or no Tom Watson, let’s put a stop to it.

    Farage portrait unveiled
    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Fsundaytimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2Fccb8870c-4506-11ea-bb8c-d0d9130b9ea4.jpg?crop=1500%2C1000%2C0%2C0&resize=1022

    ● There was a delightful celebratory dinner in London late last week for pro-Brexit journalists, organised by the columnist Allison Pearson. There were about 70 or 80 of us present, guzzling alcohol while listening to erudite and uplifting speeches from the likes of the former Telegraph editor Charles Moore. The mood was one of great joy, only slightly underlain with a dash of smug self-congratulation.

    I enjoyed it enormously until just before the end of the evening when, unused to being in a room surrounded by people who thought the same as me, I was assailed by a nagging doubt: what if we were all wrong?

    Beer makes me ill with laughter…
    The beer company Corona has had to put out a statement denying that it is responsible for a certain virus. So let’s be clear: you cannot catch coronavirus by drinking Corona beer, unless perhaps you take a swig from a bottle being held by a Chinese man with a hacking cough.

    These phonetic misapprehensions cheer me up enormously. You may remember that the Czech Republic was berated on social media when it was revealed that the men who planted bombs at the Boston marathon were, er, Chechens.

    Best of all was an American chap I once interviewed who had been inundated with threats after a cyclone caused havoc on the west coast of the US. His name was Mr Al Nino. All he said, over and over, was: “I didn’t do it!”

    Mind you, it’s not just Americans who are thicker than a block of Davidstow Cheddar cheese. When the US invaded Grenada in 1983, quite a few Brits contacted a certain television channel — to be assured cast members of Coronation Street were perfectly safe.

    …but gay people are still in the pink
    Meanwhile, an evangelical pastor from Florida has discovered that coronavirus is actually God’s way of punishing homosexuals and deviants. Rick Wiles said: “God is about to purge a lot of sin off this planet.”

    Sources close to God told me yesterday that He had “no current plans for mass sin-purging”. The heavenly spokesman added: “If we wanted to have a go at homosexuals, why would we begin in Wuhan? Keep the faith.”

    3. Reminds me of a former work mate of mine who, on reading in his Daily Redtop that the UK would be processing nuclear waste from Georgia. “Why can’t the Yanks do this themselves?”

    1. Pennsylvania’s most famous groundhog on Sunday declared: “Spring will be early, it’s a certainty.”

      He’s been reading the bloody Doomgoblin again hasn’t he?

    2. As I just wrote below, the beasties weather forecast accuracy is pretty low. My snow tyres are staying on the car for now.

    2. “Et percutiam habitatores civitatis huius homines et bestiae pestilentia magna morientur”
      — Jer. 21:6

      :¬(

  50. Streatham incident: Armed police in south London amid reports of man ‘shot in street’

    Now confirmed man has died., The Ambulance crews turned uo wearing hard hat ans body army such is life in Khan London

      1. “What the hell is going on in Streatham?” If it is not a Right Wing Terrorism then I guess it’s probably multi-cultural enrichment to blame?

      2. A man has been shot by armed officers in south London in an incident that the police said was terrorism-related.

        The Metropolitan police said that a number of people had been stabbed in Streatham.

    3. Now seems it was a stabbing and the police shot the man. The police are treating the incident as Terror related

    5. BJ,
      The johnson chap would be well advised to avoid foreign wars.
      Until a party is constructed to reclaim
      our cities /, towns / villages / hamlets there is little to be done.
      Sad to say but the present society protectors have proved to be unfit for purpose.

  52. From the Beeb-

    Donald Tusk,
    the former president of the European council, has said there would be
    widespread enthusiasm in the EU if Scotland applied to rejoin after
    independence.
    In remarks that will boost Nicola Sturgeon’s campaign for a second
    referendum, Tusk told the BBC he had great sympathy with the desire of
    many Scots to rejoin the EU after Brexit.”

    1. How many referenda before the people return the desired verdict and will Scotland pay for its EU membership or be paid?

    4. T,
      IMO Jock is to canny in the main, not wanting a flash in the sporran from the eu, but a steady input as it has been receiving from the UK to continue.

    5. I’m sure Tusk – and other Eurocrats, in their chagrin over Brexit – would love to see Scotland leave the United Kingdom. However, he’s not quite as enthusiastic about Catalunya seceding from Spain even though the Catalans voted for independence, while we in Scotland did not.

      Odd, that ………..

    6. I read that. The object is clearly to drive wedge between Scotland and rUK. It will encourage Sturgeon to bleat more loudly.
      However, it may mean that the UK Government may be unsettled by this. The UK might ensure that Scotland (farmers and fishermen) are looked after in any “negotiations” with the EU. Or the UK may throw Scotland to the wolves. It could go either way.
      Of course, the UK could decide to do the same. If the Government tells the EU we will not do trade deals en bloc. We will, for example, minimise imports of French wine, but allow Italian and Hungarian wine free and unlimited access. We will restrict our imports of German cars, but allow unrestricted access of Spanish-made cars.
      And so on. That will cause internal ructions in the EU, with France and Italy at each others throats etc, etc.
      They won’t be able to cope. While the EU haggles we can simply open our doors to Commonwealth produce and products, as well as stuff from SE Asia and Japan, the USA and South America.

    7. Anything to stir up trouble. And to think successive prime ministers from Heath onwards (especially Cameron) have tried to instill in us the notion that “these people are our friends.”

      Edit: typo ‘nation’ to ‘notion’.

        1. Thank you – your notion is quite correct, actually. It is strange how one’s fingers have a mind of their own. It must be the familiar sequential pattern, like piano playing. I was thinking ‘notion’ as I wrote it, but the fingers decided I meant nation. I will edit.

          1. Everybody seems to be making typos today, including me, and all the media, Seems to be some kind of typovirus going around.

      3. Afternoon PM,
        Agreed with bells on, but regardless of odious actions taken, deceit, lies & treachery
        they still get support, bloody amazing.

    8. I’m sure Tusk – and other Eurocrats, in their chagrin over Brexit – would love to see Scotland leave the United Kingdom. However, he’s not quite as enthusiastic about Catalunya seceding from Spain even though the Catalans voted for independence, while we in Scotland did not.

      Odd, that ………..

      1. If Scotland were suicidal enough to first leave the United Kingdom and then join the EU, the Commission would be delighted. They would accept the financial basket case that is Scotland so that they could dump as many millions of “new arrivals” there as they could. The heavily bearded cult followers could then enter England just by walking South. No need to worry about boats or sneaking in on lorries.

        1. The heavily bearded cult followers could then enter England just by walking South.

          Any likelihood that if what you suggest happened our government would finally be stirred into action to stop mass incursions? You know, action on introducing ID cards, stop, check and deport or would the current laissez-faire attitude to illegal immigration prevail?

          1. I think that we know the truth in this matter. If there were suddenly a million arriving every year in Scotland, then our government would spend a fortune laying new footpaths between England and there, with nice easy gradients for those tired feet that are accustomed to flat deserts.

            There would be a boom in building waystations and rest stops along the paths. Given enough time, they would lay on bus services so the journeys could continue overnight. They could not get the new arrivals into England fast enough. The cities conversions to islam are well under way, now it is time for the towns and villages.

            If only I were joking.

          2. No confidence in a British government seeing an incursion from Scotland as a step too far? No government concerns that finally the English and Welsh would have had enough of mass immigration, especially if the majority are Ropers?
            There will come a time, and I think that you have expressed a similar thought, when the people will have to take back control, literally. No government will have sufficient peace-keepers if enough people take to the streets in multiple cities in a coordinated demonstration against the government and its policies. A time will come when the PTB will have to listen and then act, if only to save their own sorry political skins.

          3. That is one thing that is in our favour. Many of those in power are weak-minded cowards. They go with the flow because they are well paid and it is easier to just say “yes!” and not bite the hand that feeds them and gives out the honours. They have no backbone. They have panicked en-masse when The Brexit Party did so well in the last Euro elections, causing massive damage to both major parties who had been blocking Brexit.

            So when the branch does start to creak beneath them, when the British public says “That is FOUR votes where we have told you to leave and we still have not” then these cowards might bolt and do what the people actually want. When you start getting knife murders happening in villages such as St Mary Mead, and you see the Mrs Marples being kicked to the ground, then even those who do not want to believe that this is happening will be forced to decide – act, or not.

          4. Unfortunately, however pertinent the point, the PTB will only ever listen when it affects their own sorry political skins. Most of them are less than despicable.

        2. Quite. We would have to build a very big, very fortified wall. If wee crankie thinks that people would stay in her Scootland for a minute, she’s either even more stupid than I thought. Or she is someone who should under the old rules, be hanged.

  55. ‘It is devastating’: UK farmers despair as sheep thefts soar. 2 February 2020.

    Sheep farmer Mark Candy did not realise at first that he had been targeted by rustlers. His Romney ewes graze among trees and rough ground on a Wiltshire country estate, and it was not obvious at first that some were missing.

    “Then I sensed that something wasn’t quite right,” said Candy, whose family have farmed in the area for five generations. “I did a rough count and it became clear many of them had gone.”

    There is of course no attempt in the article to explain this or to identify the perpetrators. It takes no great detective genius to figure out what is really happening but the villains have been given Carte Blanche to Rape and Steal as they will!

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/02/it-is-devastating-uk-farmers-despair-as-sheep-thefts-soar

    3. The same happens around here , rural crime and rustling are frighteningly common.

      Many have theories .. poor sheep end up in the curry houses of the south and midlands , in back yard slaughter yards.

      Sheep that are lovingly reared on grassy fields , tended and inoculated , wormed , and cared for end up vanishing thanks to a certain religious market requirement!

      Stealing is so appalling.. I can hear the sheep in the fields near me.. Before Christmas they were lambing , and the cries of the young lambs was plaintive as they called for their mummies.

      3. I never eat in Curry places anymore. I’ve gradually learnt to make my own. I never did eat kebabs (except when I was a student).

        The trouble is that these ogres probably sell the meat to “ordinary” halal butchers, which sell to “ordinary” muslims.. I wish they would all go away with their horrible habits.

        Edit: I really don;t see why we owe any kind of “diversity” get out for people we never invited here, who don’t want to integrate, and who have no reason actually to justify their presence here.

        1. Hi HL

          That’s how we feel . We haven’t eaten in a curry place for over 30 years .. I make my own .

          I found a giant cockroach in my last meal when we ate out.. I thought it was a funny shaped mango stone .. with hairs and legs .. I freaked out !

          In fact it was so dreadful , I dream about it sometimes.

          Eating out is all to do with trust .. and I don’t trust that sort of thing anyway.

          1. Hello Maggie,

            I don’t trust that kind of thing much more anyway (plus we can’t really afford it).

            Apart from that lovely fish dish we had we had with you at that restaurant – now that really was nice!

          2. Yes it was lovely and such a long time ago now.

            It is just as easy to pop something under the grill like a piece of fish .. and a few tomatoes .. cooked spuds and broccoli .. and just enjoy without any fripperies!

          3. We bought an air fryer – it is brilliant! Like grilling except that you don’t have to watch for burning (although you do need to shake the contents from time to time). No oil involved.

          4. We have one of those as well.. So clever aren’t they .. the guys have cooked all sorts of stuff in it .. It is a blokey machine …. ha haaa

  56. Hoorha the second day of freedom, well not 100% total severance freedom but nearly.
    In winning back these Isles…. nearly, just what have we won back ? judging by the news from Streatham one shot dead & a number of peoples been stabbed in a terror related “incident”
    To combat this we have a political fraternity in governance & helpers, who adhere to, and strictly abide by submission, PCism,& Appeasement so these “incidents” will grow in number until it is finally recognised by all peoples that we do NOT have to travel to a war no more, we have one raging at our own front door.
    Anyone kicking submission / PCism / Appeasement into
    touch WILL be labelled racist, and will be incarcerated
    AKA, will be Tommy Robinsoned.

      1. I gave up watching after 30 minutes as regrettably a number of English players were literally throwing the game away without any assistance from the Ref….

          1. Of course. I meant apart from that. At that incident I would have given a red card to the English player who threw himself on Ollifant and struck him with his elbow on the head. thereafter numerous instances of England not releasing and even an accidental offside ignored.

          2. My earlier reply was not clear. I was convinced on first viewing, when it happened, in real time, that the ball went forward from a French hand. Also clear in TMO replays… I thought.

  58. EU have looked into the UK referendum and have decided it was not run in accordance with EU legislation the result is therefore null and void. It is as if it never happened so we are therefore still in the EU (ok it is a wind up but I would not put it past them)

    2. Well, we were taken in on lies thus not run in accordance with British legislation, so….

    3. As has been noted several times (and is actually perfectly correct), referenda in the UK are not legally binding. Parliament treats them as advisory. All votes in Parliament after the referendum result e.g. triggering of Article 50, the approval of the Withdrawal Agreement, have been the ones which count. Remainers tried to use this fact to delay/cancel our departure from the EU. In the end, they lost. Simple.

      1. The Extension of the Article 50 on 29 March 2019 was done in a curious way which some legal experts meant we had actually left on 29 March 2019.

    1. They have already destroyed the way of life of people in London. I seldom go there but the concrete barriers everywhere, the security bag checks at the Museum, etc have all changed the way of life in the UK.

        2. I was working in London during the IRA’s 1970’s “activities”. No concrete barriers, nothing very abnormal on the surface, except of course everyone was careful around packages – especially if you happen to be lugging a suitcase on the tube on your way to Heathrow – lots of people asking whose suitcase it was. And of course, we were all suspicious of anyone with an Irish accent.

          1. And most litter bins were removed and armed police appeared on the streets especially in the City where several Road Barriers were erected.

          2. There were bag checks at the Naafi supermarket in the early 70s – you had to leave your shopping bags at the entrance.

          3. Don’t forget the disappearance of the litter bins.
            I put the huge increase in litter problems now, down to that.

      1. Some things go without saying – housing exclusively for muslims? – Who does he think he’s fooling?

      2. The utter hypocrisy. Lauding the Met Police whilst supporting Muslim only enclaves. The little flucker should be deprived of his office, prosecuted for race hate and and put in jail or preferably deported.

  60. Man shot dead by police as several stabbed in London terror attack. 2 February 2020.

    A Metropolitan Police spokesman said: ‘A man has been shot by armed officers in Streatham. At this stage it is believed a number of people have been stabbed.

    ‘The circumstances are being assessed; the incident has been declared as terrorist-related.’

    Prepare now for a deluge of articles about the menace of the “Far Right!”

    https://metro.co.uk/2020/02/02/man-shot-street-streatham-south-london-12168904/

    1. “The Moslem Community is scared of a reaction”
      “Extra Police Guards on Mosques”
      The usual in other words

      1. For a community whose people (i.e. followers of their religion, known to some of them) wreak such havoc, they are very “scared”. If they are scared, then they should stop their own carrying out these murders. Simple, really.

    2. AS,
      Fact,
      The real UKIP party is the only party that can lay claim to being the,
      ………….So far right party

    3. There are a million words on the media but nothing to say what actually happened.
      Unfortunately, all the witnesses were colour blind.

    4. One thing I find even more disturbing is that these attacks are now taking place in more “ordinary”, rather than high profile areas.

      There has been another one just now in Ghent.

      1. They make life hard in the high profile areas for them, so they do the obvious thing.

        If you can’t do it on London Bridge, do it on some high street where there’s no ‘enhanced security’.

        Building bollards etc just drives the deaths elsewhere. It was always going to be the way.

        1. If I was their “planner” I would have done so long ago.

          The “little ones” don’t get the same publicity in London now, beacuse one assumes any of these attacks are just a typical night in Kahn-age-istan.

    5. “Local resident Stuart Birch, 50, a bookmaker, said: ‘I was just coming back from the dentists at around 2.30pm when I saw a helicopter ambulance on the Common and a police helicopter hovering above the High Street.”
      Londoners don’t know how good they’ve got it.Sunday dentists.

  61. The Chinese have done a remarkable job of creating a 1000 bed isolation hospital in just over one week. It seems each room is hermetically sealed. However, the bars on windows seem to be an extreme measure. Perhaps there is some truth in the conjecture that it is a bio-engineered virus that has escaped containment from the nearby Cat 4 Lab?

    “Shocking Footage Inside China’s Newly-Constructed Hospitals, ‘Like Jail Cells Where You Go To Die’

    https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/shocking-footage-inside-chinas-newly-constructed-hospitals-jail-cells-where-you-go-die

    1. That will save the muslims from needing to drive the white people out. Now they can carry out their weapons training without worrying about prying eyes. Some of our leaders would give the entire country over to them tomorrow if they could, but it is going to take a few years to get enough of them here to do that.

      Or we could just choose to end this invasion. It won’t stop until we do. A ban on incoming islamic travel would be a beginning, no matter what certain people will say.

      2. MM,
        “Some of our leaders”
        All of the lab/lib/con leaders for starters & a great number of their followers.
        No way years, months even weeks.
        You give them positions of power on councils say then watch, you what ? you have already, no one, but no one could be that daft.

    3. Housing for Christians only.
      Housing for Hindus only.
      Housing for Jews only.
      Why does the word ghetto keep flashing up in my mind?

    5. The fantasy of intersectional power structures dictates that all white Christians are destructively powerful and therefore not to be afforded the victim status deemed necessary to be allowed any support whatsoever.

    7. News story released within the publication. May 2nd-8th 2019 issue.”

      It would be illegal, anyway. A wind-up.

    2. Morning Rik. If it is limited to Chinese only victims this would support the idea that it is engineered!

    3. Whilst it may well be an escaped bio-weapon, and we know that those “mad scientists” do like to play with their test-tubes when there is government funding available, I am slightly suspect of a website that uses that many exclamation marks, capital letters, red texts and hyperbole. Sentences such as:

      “China is guilty as sin.”

      Do not convey a reasoned interpretation of available data. But it could be true. It would not be the most effective weapon of mass destruction if the worlds population can be saved by everyone staying indoors for 2 weeks though. 🙂

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/bcd25cbdf0383d3a08f944139a0e0852e2fbf25b3abee9e98720f8852ff2349c.jpg

      1. It would not be the most effective weapon of mass destruction if the worlds population can be saved by everyone staying indoors for 2 weeks though. 🙂

        Afternoon Meredith. A Genetically Targetable Bioweapon would be enormously effective in certain circumstances and its Lethality could be enhanced.

        1. Araminta – I have read those books as well and am aware of the possibilities. It would be a bit of a “lapse in security” if this was a bio-weapon that escaped by accident. We know how relaxed the smiling Chinese are when it comes to security procedures in military facilities. A genetically targeted weapon would be of little practical use for those who want to rule the world.

          As the UN have said, it would be much better for mankind in general if its population were to be lowered by vast numbers. So they would make the weapon, then the cure, then release it when those they want to survive have all taken it. You would need to have a heart of stone to use such a weapon though. Or follow a cult that believes in mass death. Oh.

          1. So far as I am aware we only have one Doctor on this Blog and who also happens to be a troll and Epidemiologist. Unsurprisingly the first time something turns up that he knows about, he does a runner. Probably on orders from the PTB!

          2. Ahh I didn’t know that we had a “real one” here. But authors have been writing about this scenario for decades now. 🙂

          3. I’m out of my depth here Meredith. I’m not a virologist or geneticist but I usually know sense when I read it! I haven’t read anything truly convincing yet!

          4. I just think that we are all going to die one day anyway, and panicking every time the media shouts “DOOM!” is unwise. If I reacted strongly to everything I had read in the news in the past 30 years, then I would have been dead of a heart attack years ago. Although if the media was to be believed, then we would all have been killed by Global Warming a long time ago.

            https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/216bd1835efd7a56028c7d6055c680566f1862a00f2bb20d4cd1047e2f19e806.jpg

          7. When I was a young teenager , I frightened myself so much by reading my parent’s books , one of which was a Nevil Shute book called

            “On the Beach”.

          8. I read that a few years after I saw clips of the film on the TV film review show. I was way to young to go to the cinema to see it, but it caught my imagination.

          10. We’re certainly all going to die one day. I’m cool with that. I’ve booked the churchyard shed, since it won’t be worth heating the church. Around these parts, your average funeral can run on for an hour and a half, while all the achievements of the deceased. It’s astonishing to hear of all the exploits of the locals…

          11. As Woody Allen said; I’m not afraid of dying. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

      2. If developing a mass bio-weapon a few trial runs would be helpful. The trial run would be targeted at one’s own people and would be a mild version. The purpose of the trial is to prove that the lethality can be determined in advance, that the diffusion rate was as planned and that the virus was undetectable until the target was beyond recovery.
        The corona virus seems to meet many of these requirements. The Chinese tested the virus on their own people. Easy, simple and they have plenty and to spare. They were also testing one very important characteristic, that the virus can be DNA selective. By targeting the DNA code for the epicanthic fold the Chinese were limiting the spread. Now they simply have to tweak the DNA sensor component to address Indo-European and other ethnicities.

        1. Governments do have a track record for this. Wasn’t it the American government who released a weak form of something into the underground in a city to monitor the spread of a foreign biological attack back in the 60’s?

          Politicians… The things that they get up to for the “common good.”

          1. The Chinese have kept Islamists under control – no need to exterminate. They’d be doing the West a favour, and they don’t want to do that…

      3. “Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
        Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
        Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting,
        Lizard’s leg, and howlet’s wing,–
        For a charm of powerful trouble,
        Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.”
        I believe all these were available at the Seafood Centre, Wuhan.

      4. That assumes everyone has a 2-week supply of food at home, and that they hadn’t been spreading it around everywhere before they fell ill.

        1. If someone does not have the foresight to have a few tins of food in the house in this day and age, then we are not going to miss them. The human race’s long term chances of survival will improve with them gone. I do not know anyone who does not have a cupboard with lots of tinned food in it.

      3. Exactly – look what happened after the referendum when some people thought “job done”.

  66. Grr!
    Started a number of jobs this morning, can’t finish any due to not having a part!
    Leak in car screenwash (short length hose needed); lightfitting behind washing machine (short mounting screws); numberplate light on other car (fitting broke due to corrosion).
    Bah!
    I’ll have a beer instead.

    2. Things like that stacked against you makes it feel as if someone is out to get you. Beer is a good antidote.

      1. Maybe it’s platinum …. I have a pen made from that.

        EDIT: As you were …. just checked, it’s platignum.

        3. My wife’s engagement ring and her wedding ring are both made from white rather than yellow gold.

          5. Wasn’t that made out of Shark Fins? No wonder they keep attacking people and eating them!

          8. My first ink pen. Along with a hockey stick, it was one of my 9th. birthday presents in preparation for going to a new school.

  69. Firstborn just back from company celebration of good performance in 2019.
    One game played at the end of dinner was, shown a picture, to guess whether it was cleavage or butt-crack!
    After that much alcohol, it was great fun, apparently!

    1. I have to post a comment, which is then greyed out. Tap on Edit, then save edit, and it is accepted.
      Dunno why.
      Disqus is merde.

    2. I find most times that if a posting problem message appears just pressing post again solves it.

        1. If you move from one disqus site to another do you get logged out?

          I don’t generally have problems moving across sites, so I wonder if you have different privacy settings depending on where you start.

          1. Thanks to you and other helpful types. I tried logging out then in again. Worked for all sites except this one. Seems to be back to normal – for now.

    3. As sosraboc says below, I often see a message saying that my comment cannot be posted. I just click the “Post” button again and it goes through that time. Today is slightly different though – it is taking 20 seconds or so for a comment to clear and appear on the blog. That delay does not happen that often for me. It is the weekend staff in though, and disqus is not exactly the most stable system that I have encountered.

      If I encounter difficulties then I highlight and “copy” the text I have just typed before posting it or during the 20 second delay. That way you will still have it if the comment disappears.

      1. Sometimes it just seems to be our dodgy connection; other times it seems to hover in grey for a while and goes. Other times again I get the red message and have to press post again.

        1. It is becoming more widely known that the Disqus offices are filled with more snowflakes than a blizzard. They are no friends of free speech, unless that speech is of the pro-Democrat version. So they really do not like the things that are said on channels such as this.

          Many of the users on this site had 100,000+ upvotes, even 250,000+, 4 months ago. Then the users here were almost all targeted by the “vote-reducing bot” and those numbers were whittled down below zero, and many have new accounts now. This bot has been around for years, but all of those who were affected here were hit within a fairly short space of time. So someone might have directed their anger at this site to do that, and from time to time decide to hit it with mass spam attacks, or slow-downs of service.

          But they would need to be a Disqus employee to deliberately achieve the last one. I myself just find that Disqus goes slowly at times. It is a ramshackle flawed system, bolted together with candlewax and socialist dreams, not fit to scrape the barnacles from the keel of a fishing boat. But there are some interesting people on it.

    5. For the last ten days or so I have had awful problems with Disqus. If I leave the site for any reason (even for something like following a link, or going into my own details or notifications) I am thrown out and have to re-identify myself all over again, every time. I think Disqus are doing this to reduce traffic for their own nefarious reasons.

      I also have another problem. When I am at my son’s home, I cannot get access to this site’s comments. It is peculiar to this site only and, so far, to his home only. I thought when he changed provider this would sort itself out but no, it is still the same. Any answers, any techies out there?

    6. Disqus has, in the past, decided your posts are spam. Why is anyone’s guess. I’ve added you to the ‘Trusted User’ list, which may help. Or not…

      2. Many thanks Geoff. It is a bit off since, as I wrote elsewhere, I never use profanities and resist making personal attacks.

        1. Profanities, violence and personal attacks
          are rife ‘ elsewhere ‘ maybe you’re inadvertently
          paying the price for the unfortunate company you
          keep elsewhere. Not right as you are an intelligent
          and thoughtful person who keeps his head when
          others don’t.

    1. “Well, he’s heard that Larry bullies Dilyn”. (Bit lame but someone has to get it going…)

    4. “I got fed up with the dog chasing his own tail so I decided to get the cat to help him out”.

    11. “The dog said he was thinking of transitioning into a mouse, and the cat is giving him a taste of reality.”

    2. Harry and Meghan appear to be following the precedent set by Edward and his mistress Mrs Simpson and then wife. They can become celebrity followers and fashion icons. If the vacant and ugly Beckhams can achieve icon status surely these two misfits can match the same ’achievement’.

    3. If they can do without protection for 30+ minutes each time Meagain or Harried feel peckish, the RPOs should be brought back.

  75. Does anyone have an official, or unofficial, estimate of the numbers attending the Brexit party at Westminster on Friday evening? I haven’t seen any reference to this at all. They were only too quick to blast the numbers to all points of the compass when the Remain gang had their congregations.

    1. The BBC report that it was three people who kept moving around very quickly in front of the camera.

      1. Just like BBC reporting of NO demonstrations at Indieref 1. They strangely missed tens of thousands on the streets of Glasgow for YES, but found and interviewed the dozens for NO. Good old unbiased BBC.
        They are now building up their resources and activity in Scotland. I wonder why?

    2. As a rough rule of thumb:
      Take the BBC’s estimate and the Guardian’s estimate.

      Add their estimates together and divide by two.
      THEN.
      If it’s a left-wing gathering divide by 10 and if it’s a right wing gathering multiply by 10.

      You’ll probably be in the general area.

    3. Good luck with that.

      Just tried a new gin – Sipsmith, during the News. At 41% not like the Sipsmith non-alcoholic drinks! Quite acceptable, though.

      1. Sounds par for the course to me from the bbc! It looked like hundreds upon hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and thousands more to me!

    5. No, but I found this bit of poisonous, spiteful drivel during my search:-

      https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/brexit-nigel-farage-parliament-square-a9312436.html

      Here is the more thoughtful, less hysterical bit:-

      ‘Brexit’s ultimate tragedy is that it has broken the very thing it imagines itself to have restored: national identity, national cohesion. There is none at all. There are just two huge tribes set against each other, and the mutual loathing is as fierce as ever.

      There simply isn’t any middle ground. The gulf is as wide as it has ever been: one side revels in regaining its imagined independence, while the other mourns the terrible loss of having been part of something big, something ambitious, with its eyes fixed on the future and not drunk on the imagined glories of the past.

      We simply do not have more in common than that which divides us. It is an irreconcilable, fundamental rift that goes to the core of everything everyone on either side believes. There will be no moving on. For 10 years or more, all the nation’s fortunes will be tied back to this event.’

      3. Evening Itp,
        The quicker both sides admit that their ongoing political battles over the decades putting party before country has
        caused 1400 / 1600 mental stress for a lifetime, paedophilia
        rape & abuse victims.
        That in one area alone.
        There is very little victory in regaining a nation full of three
        monkey sh!te, along with many of the same politico’s who had a hand in creating it.

  76. It’s been a stressful day but I’ll forget it, make food and read up
    about the Stuart’s ( doing a monarchy course, just finished the Tudors ).
    Very bias against Henry VIII was the lecturer but he liked Elizabeth I .
    Anyway the oven calls for attention as they do .

    1. I’m having my Brexit supper 2 days late.

      Poached salmon, asparagus, new potatoes with Hollandaise & English fizz.

      1. The asparagus is probably Peruvian unless it’s out of a jar. Where are the new potatoes from?

        1. The Spargel is indeed from Peru, with all its carbon miles, but so what, it’s fresh; I don’t touch tinned muck.

          The salmon is from Canada – lots more miles!

          The potatoes are from w/rose, origin unknown. Who cares?

      2. Practically the same as me, Mr Viking.
        Baked salmon with lemon and dill, new potatoes and
        asparagus. With iced water, not English fizz .
        Enjoy your meal it sounds lovely and I hope you’re having
        a pudding.

    4. Bertie..

      Really, please stop casting aspersions about your entirely innocent Aunt Agatha, or I will instruct Jeeves to make you eat your greens !

      1. I’ve read all Agatha Christie books and visited Greenways on
        many occasions. I try to avoid tv adaptions because they are
        always modernised pc correct cr@p.

        1. Are you saying that half of the people in the Bronte books are non-white? Who would have guessed? This is surely what Reith would have wanted – the BBC fulfilling a didactic role for the proles.

        2. Are you saying that half of the people in the Bronte books are non-white? Who would have guessed? This is surely what Reith would have wanted – the BBC fulfilling a didactic role for the proles.

          2. All the best pictures come from reading the books yourself

            Not watching ‘adaptations’ of them

        3. I understand, that Herculetta Poirot, in the coming adaptation of Ms Christie’s Ten Little Naugty Boys/girls/Frogs/Mojos etc will be played by a

          Four foot short
          Bald

          Wheelchair bound

          BAME
          LGBTqwertyuiop
          Dyslexic
          Blind in one eye
          Deaf in one ear

          Autistic
          Prescription Drug addicted
          Pacemaker fitted
          Recovering alcoholic
          Vegan
          Athiest

          Crossdressing

          Lefthanded
          Police Officer

          Crestfallen Dick is looking forward to playing the part

          If I have missed out any minorities I apologise

  78. Programme on R4 now playing about the lack of diversity in knitting. Beyond parody! But where do they get the money to make such rubbish? What’s that you say?

    1. I typed in haste. The programme was a brave attempt to shine a light on so-called purity-spirals, the latest manifestation of the disease called PC, and more dangerous than any virus that escaped from a live meat market.

  79. And another thing (dishwashing frees the mind).
    If I were negotiating with the EU I would have a book of quotations compiled with every nasty expression, every warning, and every threat that fell from the lips of Tusk, Barnier, Juncker. Guy Verybadhaircut and the rest.
    All sorted and indexed under various headings. When they raise a point in negotiations, and we can refer back to a quote where they said something would not happen, we’ll remind them of it and agree that it cannot happen, and that it will not happen, so would they like to raise another topic?

    1. Forgotten you name, Polly?

      You were Henrietta just now.

      Careful you don’t get banned again. Geoff’s waiting!

        1. It is a normal tactic from the left-wing troll handbook. If they know what a handbook is, other than that little red one. Create a new account then post images / comments that are certain to get “upvotes.” This will give the account seeming credibility when it is used to slime their way on other channels with their snakey words and false agendas.

          As we know, polly is not winning upvotes based on their personality. I don’t care though. These people keep using these tactics and they keep losing elections. 🙂

          2. agnostic1 – you have got to put some sort of smiley face at the end of a comment such as that so that we know you are joking. 🙂

            Polly is a Soros / globalist shill who advocates fake arguments that they do not believe in up until the point where a decision has to be made, then Polly always comes out on the side of the globalists. She constantly pretends Soros is the kingpin behind everything, when he is just an office boy such as Blair, or the “Office Girl Twins,” Merkel and May. They all pass on the orders of others, they are not in control.

            Most damning of all, Polly used 28 fake accounts to target Bill Thomas over 2 days, to show visible downvotes and to drive him away. Polly is a pathetic nasty piece of slime. I don’t normally say things like that about people, but using dummy accounts like that shows how really ugly some people are on the inside.

          3. I don’t have access to moderation tools (I’m not a Mod here), and AFAIK, neither do you. My understanding is BT left when the “upvote-stealing” bot hit the NTTL board in the past month or two.

            Just so you are aware, the “upvote-stealing” bot was released into the world in July/August/September 2019, right around the time Zeta Global was planning to terminate the “Unpaid Channel” system (forcing Disqus users to go to commercial sites that pay for the Disqus commenting system. Some people claim Zeta Global wanted to remove Conservatives from their user-base, before they flooded other paid Disqus sites (I agree with this scenario).

            So how or why would Polly be responsible for dozens of NoTTLers losing upvotes? It doesn’t make sense. Wouldn’t she have done it back in July/August/September 2019 ?!?

            Disagree with @disqus_9UlkONglMI:disqus / Polly if you must–but she claims to be half-British, so part of the issue with her may be cultural (i.e. with the non-British half). Furthermore, I see no harm in Ben Garrison cartoons!

          4. agnostic – you have completely misunderstood what happened. I assumed you had been here to see it happen and knew the details. This has nothing to do with the downvoting bot. If I use my account to give you a “downvote” then it appears as a -1 beneath your comment, if I give you an “upvote” it appears as +1.

            Polly used 28 different accounts to put a visible downvote under a comment asking Bill to come back. It then became possible to see the names of who left downvotes. 7 of the accounts were in her own name “Pretty Polly” (I don’t know how she managed that) and another 22 were accounts that she used herself to downvote multiple people on those days. You could tell that they were from the same person because of the pattern of downvotes.

            It was the logging in and visibly seeing -15 to -22 under each comment that you make that effects people who do not know that the votes are fake. If you are 1 person and use 28 different accounts, and cycle through them to downvote the same persons comments, then that is not free speech, it is abuse.

            Polly is a globalist troll. Her words gave her away within a month of my first seeing them. The mass-downvoting of users here just confirmed it.

          6. I have just seen this comment after I posted the last one to you, and it might look rude, and as if I was ignoring you if I didn’t reply, but you don’t need to reply to this one as this conversation is not productive if you didn’t see what happened on those 2 days.

            The names of the downvoters were hidden from all at that time, including the mods, so they could do nothing about it. Blocking someone has no effect when someone uses 28 different accounts to put -28 downvotes under your comment, which are seen by all.

            That was an online attack on someone by Pretty Polly who was trying to drive them away. Left-wing trolls do that. Right wing moralists do not. Have a good afternoon.

  81. It’s been a disaster.
    I’ve a BT internet Microsoft account, this afternoon
    I attempted to create a free Microsoft outlook . Com account
    on my laptop ( not this gadget ) although I seems to have
    been created Microsoft seem to not want me to have a
    free account and I cannot add the new outlook .com to
    my list of contact details. I sent myself a email with
    the new outlook. Com account to my private bt internet
    account and it didn’t get through .
    Husband said he’ll look at it next week.
    The husband also said I should’ve just set up a gmail account as it’s
    easier and quicker, less complex , i think he was right
    but i don’t have the energy to even try atm , they all sound
    so easy to do but are not so and I feel very stupid .

    1. Please don’t feel stupid. 12 month ago my McAfee internet security needed renewing and I bought the card with code in from a country wide chain. The card instructions gave 3 steps which would instantly take me to the page where the code to renew could be entered. What they said would come onto the screen was nothing like what actually came onto my screen, and 6 hrs later I had to leave it as the stress was over-riding my blood pressure tablets. Needless to say their Feedback form got a load of zeros on the satisfaction scale and the comment section could have got me banned. This year took 20 minutes but could still be made much easier. Another laptop, using a different security was renewed in 5 mins maximum.

    2. Try gmail – it’s easy – even I can do it. I set one up the other week just for this Ndovu2 account.

      1. My husband said a gmail would’ve been easier but I
        didn’t listen. I shall tell him not to chase up the
        out look email and in a week or so I’ll set up the
        gmail. The laptop wasn’t happy either, as soon as
        It was turned on it needed lots of updates, my fault
        for practically ignoring the laptop. I’ll set up the
        gmail thingy and not try and make things more
        complicated then they need be, I am not technically
        minded for that.

  82. A rather whimsical article from the Spekkie. I’d forgotten about ‘Continental quilts’.

    https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2020/02/will-the-word-continental-make-a-comeback-after-brexit/

    Will the word ‘Continental’ make a comeback after Brexit?

    Ysenda Maxtone Graham

    Feasting on the remnants of my edible Christmas presents during the otherwise frugal month of January, I experienced a frisson when I opened the box of Thorntons ‘Continental’ chocolates.

    For anyone who grew up in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, the word ‘Continental’ carries with it a waft of balmy air from the Mediterranean, a sense of longed-for glamour, pleasure and breakfast on a balcony, unavailable on this rainy, cut-off island. I’m wondering whether, as we leave the EU and return to being a small country across the water from a many-countried, warmer landmass, the word ‘Continental’, and the concept, will come back into use. Do other small countries across bodies of water from large continents have this concept? Do Madagascans speak of glamorous items from mainland Africa as ‘Continental’? Do Sri Lankans call Indian things ‘Continental’, or perhaps ‘sub-Continental’?

    Of all the Thorntons ranges, the ‘Continental’ selection was always the most enticing. It has (and still has) silhouettes of Milan Cathedral, St Peter’s and the Acropolis round the edge. ‘Inspired by travelling across Europe in search of rich and delicate taste experiences’, Thorntons dreamed up the dark Italian Panforte, the cupcake-like Dutch Speculoos, and the Spanish Turron that comes in squishy white slices. The flavours, I admit, seem rather brash and over-sweet in this age of Rococo and Prestat, but the air of glamour clings on.

    Remember the Continental quilt? The Continental breakfast? The Continental tent? How we fantasised! The Continental quilt introduced a whole new way of life in bed: carefree abandon and downy flinging, after centuries of lying rigid under tucked-in sheets and itchy blankets. The Continental breakfast made you imagine you were on honeymoon in Antibes. As for the Continental tent, it had rooms. What a breakthrough from one-bedroom-only tents! Suddenly you could sit in the living-room of your tent and look out of the window while playing Monopoly. To know about these exotic, new-fangled items was a cultural signaller.

    Sometimes ‘Continental’ items weren’t all they were cracked up to be. The Continental breakfast, for example, soon became a mere euphemism for a not-cooked breakfast, touted by British hotels to save money. It was a bit dismal, and everyone missed the eggs and bacon. The restaurant I longed to go to in Canterbury in the 1970s was the Continental Grill. Its signature dish was the Mixed Grill: a daunting array of charred pieces of meat, including liver, garnished with one large mushroom and half a grilled tomato. Not quite as Continental as it aspired to be.

    Continental pillows were bewildering. There were two kinds: the first were square pillows, which don’t really work, as you have to move your head halfway down the bed to rest on one, causing your feet to stick out at the other end. The other kind, immortalised in Lucian Freud’s painting of his bleak honey-moon in a Paris hotel room with Caroline Blackwood, was the ‘bolster’ pillow, locked under the bottom sheet so you couldn’t easily turn it over for a longed-for blast of coldness in the middle of the night.

    As Britain became increasingly integrated into the EU during the 1980s, the adjective ‘Continental’ was superseded by the invented prefix ‘Euro-’. Some of us sighed, wishing that the deadly dull name of the new European currency could have been something more romantic, such as the Continental shilling.

    But no — ‘Euro’ took over. The Continental Grill closed down, as did many hotels with that name. In their place came a new global concept: hotels calling themselves the ‘Inter-Continental’. That name had none of the gentle, Riviera charm of ‘Continental’. ‘Inter-Continental’ suggested jetlagged businessmen flying in on Cathay Pacific and ordering shark-fin soup from the room-service menu.

    A few hotels called the ‘Continental’ managed to cling on, and still do to this day. Well done them. There’s a Continental Hotel in Hounslow. I visited it last week, and was reminded, once again, of the slight sense of anticlimax when you’ve been building up to the idea of something being Continental. Nothing wrong with this 1970s-built hotel, and the Romanian bar waitress was utterly charming, but the overwhelming sense was of brown: brown carpets, brown armchairs, brown slatted wood walls, and brown padded leather behind the banquettes in the empty restaurant. There’s a Hotel Continental (spot the exotic adjective-after-noun) in Whitstable, whose menu lettering is charmingly 1920s-Agatha Christie.

    Realising that the word ‘Continental’ was becoming slightly antiquated, the Continental Hotel in Plymouth changed its name to the New Continental Hotel, and the Bentley Continental (car) changed its name to the Bentley New Continental. Those were canny acts of reinvention, rather like New Labour.

    “It would be delightful if the prefix ‘Euro-’ could now be phased out entirely in Britain and the word ‘Continental’, without ‘new’ or ‘Inter-’, could make a comeback. We’ve perhaps lost our innocence, though, about how glamorous it all is over there. We now know it’s hypermarkets on the outskirts, strikes on public transport, chewy overpriced steak in town squares, and gridlock on the road from Nice to Cannes. If the word does come back into common usage, it will be proof that we’ve fallen in love with the Continent all over again, in our new semi-detached state.”

      1. I know it is old-fashioned and before our time. , But it is really beautiful stuff. Beats Clockwork Orange and (later) post-war drivel any day.

    3. I was at school with Jill Thornton of chocolate fame. Well built, gorgeous lass, with ginger hair. Sigh…

        1. The Amstel used to be one of my favourite places to stay when I was a regular visitor (on business) to Amsterdam. Interconti Hotels were started by PanAm.

          1. My recollection of them was that one got a very good sized room and bed, the room had at least one good view and the restaurant was clean and had a reasonable choice of meals at a price that reflected the standard of the hotel, not too expensive and good service.

            Well out of my price range when not on expences!!!

    5. I find Thorntons to be a bit claggy and mundane though the chocolate itself isn’t bad. I am lucky enough to have a small chain of Confiserie Verdonk where i live and it is exquisite.

    8. I was at school with Jill Thornton of chocolate fame. Well built, gorgeous lass, with ginger hair. Sigh…

    1. The BBC say 40 to 50 swivel-eyed loons turned up to celebrate the country’s departure from our European teat.

    3. Yes BBC, that looks like just a few hundred… Those Remainers still sitting at home must have watched that and been shocked at what a real rally with real people looks like. Not just the same 60 people being ferried around by bus to the same Remain marches.

  84. To Hell with the EU and Gibraltar.

    Tell the EU that Spain can have Gibraltar and we keep our £39 Bn.

    1. But – Gibraltar is an important naval base… oh – I forgot. We haven’t got a navy any more.

      2. It’s an all-round military base, not just naval. Because of its strategic location at the mouth of the Med it will never be relinquished.

        1. Good evening, Harry.
          I had not previously realiised that your ‘specs’ are rose coloured!! 🙂

          1. Sorry G, I’m not with you. Please elaborate…..

            BTW, if you replied to my email email I didn’t receive it!

          3. ‘……..it will never be relinquished’

            Like Hongkong?

            Harry, I have not received your e-mail???

      1. Except that Gibralter voted to stay in the EU more than any other single constituency.
        By a very large margin.

        They made their choice, let them be Spanish

        1. But the Falkland Islanders will never become Argentinian,
          a war was fought so they’d remain British and Argentina
          would love to get it’s hands on Falklands Isiands oil.

          The Gibratar people also voted to be British and not
          Spanish, regardless of their fears in regards to leaving/
          remaining in the EU.They shouldn’t be punished because
          of the referendum vote, they are British.

          1. Big difference: the Falklanders never voted to join Argentina, they don’t try to have the cake and eat it.

            The Gibraltarians need to decide. EU or British, they can’t have it both ways.

          2. So following that logic should alp those whom
            voted Remain who live here be booted out
            of the country ? As the Prime Minister said we need
            to all pull together in that forgiving enterprising
            English spirit, and forgive the doubters here and
            there. We also need to keep all our landmass here
            and abroad too, unless we can afford to give away countries.

          3. If those remoaners continue to moan, then yes.

            Tell them the continent is “that” way and if they hate the UK so much they can sling their hooks.

          4. We won but 52%/ 48% . It’ll be a huge chunk of the UK
            population if 48% left. It’s time for everyone to
            pull together, the referendum is over and we have
            left the EU. And I am sure the remain people would want
            The UK to thrive, it’s in their best interest after all.

          8. Not true.
            Add the number who didn’t vote and by definition said they accepted the result whichever way it went.

            That meant ~ 30mn accepted we should leave.
            ~ 2/3 of the eligible voters

          9. That’s why Boris Johnson’s ” get Brexit done ”
            won the day, by the time of the election practically
            the entire country respected the vote and wanted to
            get on with it. The Brexit who voted which way argument
            is over now . Gibraltar voted to be a part of the UK
            they may have voted for Remain for whatever reason
            but I am sure they’d want to get Brexit done
            and besides I don’t think we can afford to lose
            and part of our country home and abroad .

          10. Gibraltar wants to have its cake and eat it.. It voted against the majority of the UK, to stay in the EU, why? Why did it think it was best for the UK and Gibraltar (not just Gibraltar) to stay in the EU? I doubt if the rest of the UK crossed the Gibraltarians’ minds at all.

          11. It was in order to retain their (rather fragile) relationship with Spain. Curiously, the Spanish border town, La Linea, owes its prosperity to the number of residents who earn their living in Gib. But you’re right, they can’t have it both ways.

        2. They also voted, by a similar margin, to remain a British outpost rather than become part of Spain.

  85. Just had a very close shave moved a saucepan from
    one part of the hob to another without turning the flame
    off. If I was wearing my turquoise cardigan with droopy sleves
    that I had taken off a few moments previously then I’d
    gone up in flames. Too busy thinking of the whìffy day and
    not being careful.

        1. Wool is difficult to ignite. Plastic, however… We’d hate for you to be hurt, Æ.

      1. Evening M,
        Peoples putting up with it via supporting / voting for the parties that are condoning / encouraging it.

      1. I don’t know why but I seem to have more affinity with the folk on that boat than with the more aggressive enrichers that seem to despise us.

    1. I remember when the word ” neutralised ” came into common use, and the United Nations called it over-reaction.
      How times change.
      It wasn’t really one of them with the knife, was it ? Over here ? How dreadful.

  90. Boris talks:
    .
    “An investigation is taking place at pace to establish the full facts
    of what happened, and the government will provide all necessary support
    to the police and security services as this work goes on.

    Following the awful events at Fishmonger’s Hall in December, we have
    moved quickly to introduce a package of measures to strengthen every
    element of our response to terrorism – including longer prison sentences
    and more money for the police.

    Tomorrow, we will announce further plans for fundamental changes to
    the system for dealing with those convicted of terrorism offences.”


    1. “An investigation is taking place at pace to establish the full facts of what happened, and the government will provide all necessary support
      to the police and security services as this work goes on.

      No help or support for those stabbed then

        1. If you dug up a coin with the twin heads of King Harry and Queen Megan on it, dated 2029, then that would send a shard of icy darkness through your soul.

          (They / she would insist on both of their heads being on it.)

      3. That is what I thought, when I wrote it, however, you do not think it even worth an uptick

          2. Fanx

            I am off to join Bill T

            As an aside, I remember you saying something abour David Frost, I sure that his father was buried at Raunds Church

    2. A 30-year search?!?!? If only they had asked me 30 years ago I would have told them to look in the fridge.

      :-))

  92. Revealed: Terrorist shot dead after stabbing two people in south London attack is named as Sudesh Amman, 19, who was freed just days ago after serving jail term for distributing extremist material

    Sudesh Amman, from Harrow, fantasised about carrying out a terror attack with a blade or with acid while riding a moped and also shared Al Qaeda propaganda on a WhatsApp group used by his family.

    Aged 18, he was jailed for three years and four months in December 2018 after he pleaded guilty to possessing and distributing terrorist documents.

    However, it has now emerged that he was released just a few days ago, after serving half of his sentence, despite authorities being concerned that he continued to hold extremist views.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7958927/Suspect-Streatham-terror-attack-named-Sudesh-Amman.html

    1. The question really is why was he released half-way through his sentence, if he was known still to be a danger.
      I thought it was a discount for good behaviour ?

          1. Probation Service was partially reorganised to be run by private sector operatives, or some such nonsense, introduced when the May woman was busy screwing up the country as Home Secretary (iirc). Today two people have suffered life changing injuries because of that policy.

      2. T,
        A more important question is what is he and his ilk doing in this country to start with, I know I did not vote for the party who condoned his likes entry, who did ?

        1. Surely you know who did, ogga1? It was all of us, we who constantly keep voting for the Lib/Lab/Con parties!

          1. Morning EB,
            But why ? why was it continued when it was seen damaging the countries infrastructure and more importantly the countries peoples ?
            Who are “us” ?

      3. Christians believe in reform and forgiveness, muslims do not. Allah’s word is unchangeable to the faithful, something that our legal system can not comprehend.

      4. Because the parole board are either a) frit (on the Churchilian feed the crocodile basis, b) CP, c) in the pay of someone who is probably abroad, or d) all of the foregoing.

    2. “However, it has now emerged that he was released just a few days ago, after serving half of his sentence, despite authorities being concerned that he continued to hold extremist views.”
      We must be the only country in the world that lets this kind of thing happen, Belle.

      1. The ones who allowed him to be released early MUST be prosecuted, for aiding and abetting a criminal

        Were the ones who sanctioned his early release muslims/BAME?libore do-gooders

        Why did the Prison Authorities not shout and long, that it was unsafe to release him

        All inmates, with similar backgrounds should be made to serve their Full Sentence: No parole, solitary confinement, so they cannot ‘convert’ others or let them mingle with ‘good honest patriotic’ criminals

        Reggie and Ronnie would not have allowed this to happen

        2. The main reason i like the Father Red Cap London pub. Order was maintained and everyone could have fun. These people would not have made it through the door.

        1. It is time to mobilise the armed forces and declare war.

          This would not have presented a problem in England during the 11th – 19th centuries.

      1. It’s the same scenario as the recent attack when 2 Cambridge scholars were killed – early release, etc.

        It is clear that lessons are NOT learned.

    5. Er… I’m no Diane Abbott, but three years and four months = 40 months. Half of his sentence would have ended in August 2020. Unless I’ve overslept, we’re not there yet…

      2. He was arrested on 18th May 2018, charged, appeared in Magistrates’ Court on 25th May, pleaded Not Guilty, was remanded in custody, later pleaded guilty at his trial, was sentenced on 17th December 2018, and time on remand would have been taken into account. Released end of January 2020. That adds up to twenty months by my arithmetic.

  93. Two points
    The hateful Moslem swine got exactly what he wanted with his fake suicide vest,martyrdom on jihad,a direct route to paradise he believes,we should thwart his desires and bury him wrapped in pigskin
    It appears he was being followed by an armed undercover cop,well done that man,I trust he wont be spending months on suspension while the shooting is investigated

          1. As far as I’m aware they will return, possibly for the last time; although they will continue to visit France

          2. Yes, I thought they would continue to visit France (as we will when our passports are renewed – we are holding off for a blue passport! – and the dog situation is sorted) but I remember him saying when they left Laure that would be it, they would not return. I assumed he meant Laure. I hope all goes well for him and the MR for the last departure.

  95. From World Cup finalists to this????????????????/
    Jeez
    Edit
    Good grief.

    “It’s the hope I can’t stand.”

    1. Match report.

      Tom Curry: Woefully out of position at No 8. A wonderful 6 but hapless in a specialist position.

      Jamie George: Worst line-out thrower I’ve ever seen.

      Elliot Daly: Still clueless under the high ball.

      Ben Youngs: ‘Useless’ doesn’t even start to describe this chump. Errors every time he touched the ball! He gave the South Africans an advantage in the World Cup final and neither he nor his coach have learned anything from that.

      Eddie Jones: Poor team choice and now bereft of ideas. He left the best players unpicked (or on the bench) and other coaches have worked out his tactics. Time for a change.

      2. Agree completely. I think there are
        parallels with the Scottish team. The Scottish have several Hastings, Gavin, Scott and now Adam.; Keep it in the family or what? Of course it matters which school you went to especially in Edinburgh which has the highest concentration of Masons in the UK.

        Likewise the English still select Ben Youngs, an alumnus of Rastus’s public school from memory and accordingly bloody useless. Every match possession is kicked away and the Youngs idiot then shouts encouragement at his team mates.

        The position of an England Number 8 was defined most recently by Laurence Dallaglio and the skill set includes control of the ball at the base of the scrum. Tom Currie or Curry? as you say, is a great ball carrier but played out of position.

        1. Ah, Edinburgh. There were many companies who would not employ me when I left school, because of the school that I left. (Not Merchants Company…)

  96. Tell me, are eyes beginning to open, are the three monkeys being kicked somewhat into touch, is the realm of submission, PCism,& Appeasement being
    threatened ?

    1. ” the three monkeys being kicked into touch ”

      Aha ! A new name for the infamous ‘ Lib/Lab / Con ‘ er ?

      Have you ever wondered why insults don’t create votes ?
      You’ve also forgotten Labour turning hard Left, the demise
      of the Lib Dems and the fact that the SNP have lots of seats .

      1. Evening A,
        The three monkeys is a mode of voting that is used by the
        lab/lib/con mass uncontrolled immigration coalition party every time they, the membership vote.
        The rodent b liar ( lab) lifted the entry latch, the wretch cameron ( tory )after pledging to reduce the entry numbers raised them.
        The libs have never made any pretence at being other than pro eu.
        Who in their right mind would vote to continue what has been odiously going on for years ( failure after failure ) and proving by the day to get worse ?

    3. Evening Z,
      His part in the leadership farce along with the supporting cast gove, leadsome, almost believable.

    5. This gratutious dig at Boris is in poor taste. The person who deserves the real dig is Prince William who gave a “woke” speech insisting that it was time that all-white nominees should end. For goodness’ sake, the BAFTAs are meant to be awarded for talent not diversity! (And in any case, BAFTAs were awarded to a non-white foreign film, i.e. not French, German, nor Italian.)

      1. Seriously, Elsie, who actually could give a flying fluck about the Bluddy Arsehole’s Flucking Twat Awards?

        I don’t – and I’m off to bed with less than 3/8ths of 7/16ths of fluck-all interest in these luvvie fests.

        See you all tomorrow,.

        1. I do, because I am interested in film and television programmes of quality. And, frankly, I don’t give a d*mn what time you go to bed at. (Two can play the “rudeness” game.)

  98. Clearly this terrorist;s family (how many? – 4, 8, 12) and his circle of muslim acquaintances didn’t manage to dissuade him from terrorism during his 13/14 month incarceration. They must all be terribly upset ….

  99. I bet we have quite a few Daily Telegraph articles with No Comments Allowed over the next 24 hours.

  101. Goodnight all.

    Gave some of the salmon complete with Hollandaise to Missy. She loved it.

    1. I hope you’re not implying that the entirely innocent, and brutally executed, Sudesh Amman had anything to do with the wonderful Religion of Peace…

  105. We have had some very bad terrorist attacks in this country – Manchester, London Bridge, etc., and lots of itsy-bitsy ones like this one, and there seem to be lots and lots of ungood Muslims who for the life of them can’t see anything wrong about them.
    I’ve asked a few times in different places, without an answer – what can they do that is so bad that we all get together and say ” Enough. No more. ”
    and do something absolutely unacceptable to get rid of them. Letting this sort of thing go on is not good for those of their co-religionists who are really nice people.

    3. “I’ve asked a few times in different places, without an answer – what can they do that is so bad that we all get together and say ‘Enough. No more.’ “

      It’s a question I’ve asked on here a few times. It will take an outrage on a hideous scale for there to be a change in the attitude of the political classes. Perhaps it will have to take place in another country, one with a more robust attitude.

      1. It will take the politicians themselves being affected, not little girls being blown apart outside a pop concert.

        1. I agree – it will only be when a major attack hits politicians or other members of the elite that any serious action be taken. It would need to kill sufficient numbers to be effective. One stray politician would not be enough.

          1. What a really depressing thought, isn’t it? Mutilation and death of small children doesn’t stir them, mutilation of a few old politicians might.
            Makes one wonder about humanity.

          2. Humanity? in Parliament???!!!! Greed, avarice, corruption, Common Purpose – of course. But not humanity or Common Sense.

    4. “I’ve asked a few times in different places, without an answer – what can they do that is so bad that we all get together and say ‘Enough. No more.’ “

      It’s a question I’ve asked on here a few times. It will take an outrage on a hideous scale for there to be a change in the attitude of the political classes. Perhaps it will have to take place in another country, one with a more robust attitude.

  109. Night All

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3c63d368d8c33e39160394f93390d62bdcf2c3b55cd8f28b6e9ecc15a0063a69.gif

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8a7240d41ba21d914ddfe623b901ab8b7e81be417dfae63362b60aac340a0e83.gif

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3f5003e3d071fc52a9726bd799ca8a53f8bede2578f2c7c9b12ae173a5508bf4.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e0c5510d1616f963ee980938de9ac859cf89a81a44ce672fd83b3f31b587d662.gif

    And something different

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2a6c8cbe39a843d99687a86f3d10fe22a68e116fa6c2108e0ce79c5cf4bd16e7.gif

    2. I’ve never really known how much rights the EU have
      in terms of the produce from our seas .
      Saying that when visiting fishing areas around Norfolk and
      Cornwall the local fishermen get very cross, so a lot I guess .

    3. C.F.P. ?
      Centre Fired Pistol
      Certified Financila Planner
      Oh… Common Fisheries Policy,
      Bit low down on Google.

    4. I’ve never really known how much rights the EU have
      in terms of the produce from our seas .
      Saying that when visiting fishing areas around Norfolk and
      Cornwall the local fishermen get very cross, so a lot I guess .

  114. Streatham –

    “While the investigation is at an early stage it is believed that the suspect was motivated by an Islamist terrorist ideology.”

    In the Guardian, so must be wrong. Islam is a religion of peace.

    1. Give it a few hours and that female solicitor who defended the actions of that mad machete gardener who slashed a policeman will be tw@tting away about how this terrorist should have been invited for a nice cuppa and a chat instead of being ginned down like a rabid dog.

      1. I hope now that we have Brexited .. solicitors like that will be booted out .. because we will not listen to EU trained ‘uman roights tricks and lies any more .. and I hope all liberal minded wassocks are shown the door!

        1. Every time this sort of thing happens, it’s a nine days wonder, it that, then brushed under the carpet.

  115. Re: the stabbings in Streatham. Yet again the useless MSM are reciting the ‘Lone Wolf’ theory bur the fact is that we are dealing with a German style Wolf Pack. The sooner Priti Patel gets to grips with this evil import the better.

    I suggest demolition of every mosque and repatriation of the Islamists to Muslim countries of their choice aka Asian and African shitholes. If they wish to exert their religion by violence let them do it in their indigenous lands.

    2. This was not supposed to happen we were supposed to be angry with the lone wolf letter writer that said English only to be spoken in this block, but then someone had to spoil it

    3. Demolish one mosque for each incident like this. After three incidents make it two mosques and so on. And stop the supply of Saudi funding for mosque building.

      1. I think that Saudi money is going into more than mere mosque building, if you get my drift. Too much across the board support for the RoP for it to be genuine.

    5. Evening C,
      Now which of the submission / PCism /
      Appeasement parties lab/lib/con ( the importers) are going to call for that ?
      I know a man who has been warning of the dangers of islamic ideology in rhetoric & book form since 2005 but was awarded the title far right racist.

    6. Listening to LBC while preparing the evening meal I heard Clive Bull interview someone (I missed the introduction) who must have been a senior officer in the Met. His statement that, “We shoot to protect,” is in my opinion mealy mouthed. Say it as it should be, “We will be following a shoot to kill programme of all suspected terrorists and others seen to be wielding a bladed weapon or firearm in an attack on the public.” These people need to know that they will be dealt with with extreme prejudice if they step outside the law. Pussy footing around and trying to understand these criminals has failed, time for the big equaliser to be deployed.

      1. I agree they should be shot dead, on sight; but do you really think a “career” policeman would order the troops to do so?

        1. ‘Shoot to kill’ would have to be a political decision and not a decision for someone who might put his/her career before the safety of the public. At a minimum it would have to be the Home Secretary but preferably a Cabinet decision so that they’re all in it together i.e. collective responsibility. Some of them have responsibility for what has come to pass; pontificating about diversity is our strength, supporting the importation of Third World tribal cultures, attacking those who express concerns about the direction of travel of the immigration numbers etc. etc.

          1. Ha ha ha, breathe, ha ha ha, deep breath, ha ha ha.

            Politicians do that?

            ha ha ha

            Apart from that slight caveat, agreed.

            {:-((

          2. You’re right, of course. That takes me back to my earlier post when I described the, “Shoot to protect,” claim as mealy mouthed. The weak politicos are quite prepared to hide behind someone in the law and order community making up that slogan to cover the very necessary response
            required, rather than take responsibility themselves.

          3. Even our Armed forces are not allowed ‘To shoot to Kill’

            Look at the procecutions, going back to actions from 40 years ago, of our troops for deigning to harm Corbyn’s mates in the IRA (in all its’ forms)

          4. Not quite. If British soldiers and police offices are opening fire under the Rules Of Engagement, then they are authorised to use lethal force in other words, Shoot To Kill.

            When I served in Northern Ireland and Bosnia, the rules were quite clear. If we were to fire under those rules, we were to Shoot to Kill, the orders were unambiguous.

            The term “Shoot to kill” has been misinterpreted because the Army’s battlefield manual at the time was called Shoot to Kill. Unfortunately, when applied to Northern Ireland, this was misrepresented as a political policy and extra-judicial murder and not what is essentially a battlefield/ Internal Security firearms tactic.

            The prosecutions you mention are based on the notion that the soldiers accused were operating outside the Rules Of Engagement and were thus not entitled to open fire at all.

    8. “I suggested demolition of every mosque and repatriation of the Islamists to Muslim countries of their choice”
      Unfortunately, they all chose Londonistan.

      1. “I suggested demolition of every mosque and repatriation of the Islamists to Muslim countries of their choice Mutti’s Germany.”

        That’s better. She caused the problem. She can sort it out!

  116. Dr Who in Madagascar trying to save a British crashed astronaut suffering from a lethal pathogen after being abducted by the alien Hazmatians who are dressed in S&M gear.

    Earth is being attacked by microplastic eating organisms called Praxius that is being spread by birds.
    Praxius infected alien girl discovered on the beach in a laboratory trying to find a viral antidote to the pathogen.

    Thank goodness Dr Who has a sonic screwdriver but she hasn’t used it yet.

    1. This woman’s term as Doctor Who has already been consigned as the “Dallas shower scene” moment by many fans. No matter what the BBC says, these series will not have happened, at least among the older, and quite a few of the younger fans. When the next Doctor arrives, if it is a male as Jon Pertwee once said that it was impossible for a male Timelord to change sex (those were the days,) then the series might be given another chance. But only if the BBC has been purged of the painfully-woke scripts.

      The feminazi’s have always hated female science fiction fans. The women are so much more intelligent than the woke feminists, and think that they are silly girls quite often. This outrages the feminists who cannot understand why smarter women than them don’t agree with them. So those at the BBC have wanted to pull down Dr Who to upset the sci-fi woman for a long time. But they just switch the channel and don’t watch either. Yet another failure by the BBC to socially engineer society.

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b1f6940fe35b2c09ec2b5d582dd7384c43cff29536f4ea16211791fbca26bf23.jpg

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6ee9cf07029d3feec845b4d80a1910d2cd6af434f3f074c7a2fe605fd555bdf3.jpg

    2. Could have killed two birds with one stone by herding the Praxis thingeys into the Pacific to eat all that waste plastic floating around.

  118. Daily Telegraph reporting that the knifeman was under active counter terrorism surveillance and was wearing a hoax bomb. One person is critically wounded.

    2. It is understood that that the man police are investigating over the
      attack on Streatham High Street is Sudesh Amman, released recently after
      being convicted of a terrorism offence.

      Amman was jailed at the age of 18 in 2018 for disseminating terrorist
      material and collecting information useful for terror attacks. He
      admitted 13 terror offences.

      A college student at the time of his arrest, he had shared an
      al-Qaeda magazine in a family WhatsApp group and told his siblings: “the
      Islamic State is here to stay”. Jailed for three years and four months,
      he had only recently been released from prison.

      Amman also shared beheadings videos to his girlfriend – whom he said should kill her “kuffar” (unbelieving) parents.

      1. So how effective is “active counter terrorism surveillance”? On a scale from 0 to100. Will anyone involved in “active counter terrorism surveillance” be charged with negligence or similar?

          1. I agree. The chaps doing the surveillance were doing the job allocated to them; and seem to have been doing it pretty well.
            It’s the twerps who let Amman out – despite, it would seem, doubts about his rehabilitation – who should be investigated.

          2. Two possibilities.
            1)They needed space in prison for the next ones?

            2) Tailing him to find other likeminded associates?

          5. Ah, Parole Boards, on the recommendations of social workers, case workers and psychiatrists. All of them are completely unaccountable.

  119. The Times is reporting that scores of firefighters are tackling a major blaze at the Law Society.

    Hmmm…..squabbling solicitors?

    1. Yesterday-

      About 150 firefighters were called to the Law Society’s office in Holborn’s Chancery Lane at 22:40 GMT on Saturday.

    4. A man from the scene was quoted as saying: “There are 17.4 million suspects. Me for a start.”

  120. Rod Liddle, The Sunday Times, 2nd February 2020

    Tom Watson’s a political failure who did something bad — yup, roll out the ermine

    There are growing rumours that, yet again, I have not been nominated for a peerage. I am not sure how long the country will continue to tolerate this grotesque oversight. I have devoted my life to spreading kindness and solace through my writing and ask for very little in return — just a trifling ennoblement and that £300 per day stipend for eternity.

    I have long dreamt about my elevation to the Palace of Westminster. There I would sit alongside fat, crooked businessmen; grey-skinned, public school-educated, time-serving civil servants put out to pasture on vast pensions; failed politicians; mithering wet-lipped bishops and a whole nest of conmen who’ve bunged the Tories or Labour a few million quid. I would sit proudly on the benches among these people, perhaps every so often being touched gently, below the waist, by the ennobled ghosts of Sir Cyril Smith and Sir Jimmy Savile — not technically peers in their lifetimes, true, but they enjoyed having fancy titles and I suspect they’re there now in spirit.

    Sadly, once again, it is not to be my year. It may be the year of another failed politician, though, in the form of Tom Watson, Labour’s former deputy leader. Rumour — scurrilous, no doubt — has it that Watson is being nominated by Magic Grandpa for having kept his gob shut about the Labour Party’s hilarious disarray during the last election.
    Liddle’s Got Issues: Who can win back Labour’s heartlands?

    Watson suddenly gave up his seat in West Bromwich East only a few weeks before the vote in December, sensing, one suspects, that he was going to take a right old beating. Then suddenly he went very quiet while Jeremy Corbyn et al were stamping around the country promising to nationalise air and give everyone, bar the Jews, a free unicorn.

    One man determined to stop him getting his peerage is the chap whose life he ruined: the former Conservative MP Harvey Proctor. In what looked like an exercise in political spite, Watson heavily involved himself in Operation Midland, the ludicrous police operation to root out paedophiles among the Tory establishment, something dreamt up by an utterly implausible fantasist. Proctor was one of those wrongly accused, and he lost everything in attempting to defend himself.

    Watson formed a support group for the aforementioned fantasist, the convicted paedophile and fraudster Carl Beech. He brought Beech into the House of Commons, put pressure on the police to pursue his patently absurd claims and used parliamentary privilege in the House to prosecute the wholly empty case against former Conservative politicians.

    Beech is now serving 18 years in prison, but Watson has not properly apologised to the family of Lord Brittan, who was also maligned by Beech, nor was there an apology to Proctor. That kind of redress is surely the least the man deserves. Proctor has now written to Lord Bew, chairman of the House of Lords Appointments Commission, suggesting that it would be an “appalling misjudgment” to ennoble Watson and would demean the Honours system in general.

    I wonder how Lord Bew will respond? The problem is that, on the face of it, Watson is precisely the kind of figure who gets bunged a peerage, and Proctor’s comprehensive detailing of Watson’s behaviour may serve only to convince his lordship that old Tom is an ideal candidate. He’s a political failure who did something very bad — yup, roll out the ermine. Indeed, as Proctor also points out, another crucial player in the Operation Midland fiasco, the former Metropolitan police commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe, has a seat in the Lords already.

    There are a few good people in the House of Lords. My old boss, Baron Jones of Deeside, who as the Labour MP Barry Jones fought tirelessly for his constituency and his country, bringing industry and thus jobs to Wales, is but one. Yet the system is rotten. For every Baron Jones there’s a Baron Watson. Or worse.

    We are enjoined to buy into the charade of the honours system because of the glory it dispenses to the “little people”. And it is true that every year we are invited to exalt in the fact that Nora Tiggywinkle, aged 96, has been awarded the OBE for manning the school crossing in Slaphead, Lincs, every day for the past 72 years. Our delight that Nora’s devotion to duty has been recognised is supposed to outweigh the fact that another bunch of yes men, money men or plain rotters have just been elevated to our second chamber and actually have a say in the running of our country. Tom Watson or no Tom Watson, let’s put a stop to it.

    1. Could the affected families bring a private prosecution? If they could be bothered, that is.

      1. They could and they should, PT; but they – the survivors – are mostly elderly and frail …

  122. Police make terrorist raids on homes in London and Hertfordshire

    Whilst the police and media like to try to represent these things as mentally disturbed lone wolf attacks they appear not to be. There seems to be a growing web of undergrounds terrorist cells scattered around the UK

    STREATHAM terror attack investigators have raided a number of homes in London and Hertfordshire in the early hours of this morning after a recently released prisoner went on a stabbing rampage.

    The Metropolitan Police confirmed it had carried out two residential raids at properties in south London and Bishop’s Stortford, Hertfordshire. In a statement, the force explained how the operation to trace any information regarding the incident would continue. The statement said: “Detectives from the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command continue to carry out fast-time enquiries into the circumstances of the attack in Streatham High Road at approximately 2pm on Sunday, February 2.

Comments are closed.