739 thoughts on “Sunday 24 November: Labour’s plans would turn Britain into a place that punishes aspiration”

  1. Good Morning Folks

    Just getting light here, looks like another cloudy dull day ahead , nice crescent moon in the cloud breaks.

  2. I suppose the problem for Corbyn is that the Conservative have moved so far to the Left that he has to go a step further to get attention.

  3. Why am I addicted to the impeachment hearings? I’m not even American. Sat 23 Nov 2019 1

    Even here in South Africa, thousands of miles away, we are finding it hard to look away from this compelling drama.

    I live in the UK and I’m addicted to avoiding them! I refuse to believe that any ordinary person can watch them and make coherent sense out of this mass of conflicting and politically prejudiced verbiage. They are about as dramatic as East Enders on Mogadon.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/23/addicted-to-impeachment-hearings-not-american

    1. It’s just another Western: “Bunfight at the Ukraine Corral”

      Seriously though, it appears to me that the Democrats are trying desperately hard to draw attention away from their endemic corruption.

      Morning Minty et al.

      2. “…the Democrats are trying desperately hard to draw attention away from their endemic corruption.”

        …and, in so doing, are just highlighting it. How we laighed.

        ‘Morning, Stephen.

    2. From what I’ve heard, hardly anyone in the US is watching it, apart from other journalists who have to as part of their job.

    1. I lost out because I could only afford the ‘married woman’s stamp’ at the time.
      But somehow, I suspect I’d lose more than my half pension if Jezza and Co. get in.

  5. My admiration knows no bounds

    Eamonn Holmes is reprimanded for calling Meghan Markle ‘uppity’ – because it used to be used to insult black people – as ITV BANS the word altogether
    *Eamonn Holmes described Meghan Markle as ‘uppity’ on This Morning
    *A viewer complained to ITV’s network head of diversity Ade Rawcliffe
    *The complainant said ‘uppity’ was used as a 19th century insult to black people
    *ITV defended the presenter claiming he was unaware of the 19th century useage

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7718737/Eamonn-Holmes-race-storm-ITV-reprimands-presenter.html

    3. I wasn’t around in the 19th century. All through my life, “uppity” has been a slang synonym for arrogant, and has no racial connotations whatsoever.

      I was once reprimanded by a civil service manager for using the word ‘niggle’ meaning minor annoyance. Wasn’t there someone who used the word ‘slope’ to describe a steep incline? Apparently, some people consider that a form of racial abuse too, although I’ve never heard of it.

      No criticism of a word that was used throughout the 20th century, which used to mean the permanent domestic union of a man and a woman, but is considered homophobic, sexist and misogynist to use it this way today.

      No doubt, there will come a time when it is forbidden to speak or write to one another at all, lest it cause offence. Best we all follow the example of the young, lock ourselves in our bedrooms with our phones and play Gay Strictly, duly vetted by the Diversity Safeguarding morality police. Suicide is optional – either book into a Swiss clinic, or at your local A&E at a fraction of the price. Losing the will to live is thrown in as part of the deal.

      1. “Slope” may pertain to the expression “sloping forehead”, meaning a person of low IQ, but is certainly not racial.

        1. Slope, short for slopehead. It was used by US troops in Vietnam to descibe the Vietnamese or Chinese.

          2. Same here – even after 22 years in the Army and another 20 in Gas and Oil, I thought I’d heard every insult and pejorative but this one was new to me.

    4. “A viewer” complains about what a word used to mean 150+ years ago. Well of course, as Ade Rawcliffe is black of colour, that complaint by one viewer has to be upheld.

      1. UKIP is campaigning to ditch the CPS guidelines on “hate speech” because they are so loose and all-encompassing as to be catch-all.

      1. We freeze out Filipina nurses and Polish plumbers so we can give priority to these people. Won’t somebody please think of the children?

        Erdogan is shipping them out for us to take in.

          1. Is it because the native men have failed to procreate in sufficient numbers and a more ‘robust’ approach is required….?

          2. I don’t think native men have failed I think Western civilisation has been under attack since the war, all the so called progressive initiatives have led us to birthrate self destruction, religion, traditional family, working mums, women working until they are middle aged before having children have just speeded it all up. Then bring in lower IQ replacements, job done

          3. I saw someone complaining about the Operation Christmas Child shoe boxes having Christian literature. One of the people said she was unhappy about promoting (the Christian) religion to children of another faith. Some ideologies don’t have such qualms.

    2. Just caught LBC’s report on this latest outrage. Appears it quickly escalated into about 100 of these creeps, many armed with machetes, running amok. Several police were injured and many families left terrified. All going to plan.

  7. PETER HITCHENS: Let’s save the monarchy… by getting rid of the Royals
    By PETER HITCHENS FOR THE MAIL ON SUNDAY

    PUBLISHED: 00:46, 24 November 2019 | UPDATED: 00:48, 24 November 2019

    What if we carried on having a monarchy, but just got rid of the monarch, and the Royal Family, too? The more I think about it, the more I like the idea.

    I strongly support constitutional monarchy. I think it keeps politicians out of a key part of power – the bit where they bathe in public adulation, and are treated as living gods, the bit where they ride in coaches and stand, in gorgeous uniforms, taking the salute of the Armed Forces.

    Just imagine Margaret Thatcher or Anthony Blair doing that and you know, instantly, that it would be a disaster. Blair in particular came to love posing with soldiers, and it frightened me to see it. His head was quite swollen enough already.

    People who mock and despise our rather modest monarchy seem never to spot just how grandiose presidents can be.

    The President of the USA has a personal anthem, played when he comes into the room, is Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces and can pardon convicted criminals on a whim.

    He flies about in a gigantic, flashy aeroplane which takes off and lands exactly when and where he says it should. No wonder they aren’t allowed to stay in office for more than eight years any more.

    The President of France lives in a palace with plumed ceremonial guards standing at its gates, and lives, if he wishes, more or less above the law, with his private life a secret from the people. So we might be grateful for an austere Queen who eats frugal breakfasts and turns out the lights as she roams her crumbling, dowdy palaces.

    Except, of course, that not all monarchs are like her. In fact, I think we can be fairly sure that we will not get another Elizabeth II in a century or more. Hence the worry about the other members of the family, which I share. I wondered for a while last week if it was possible for a prince or duke to resign or be sacked from the Royal Family.

    The President of the USA has a personal anthem, played when he comes into the room, is Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces and can pardon convicted criminals on a whim +5
    The President of the USA has a personal anthem, played when he comes into the room, is Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces and can pardon convicted criminals on a whim

    Now, thanks to silly, childish Prince Andrew – whose Royal status went to his head – we all know that he can be fired and has been.

    Edward VIII famously abdicated, but that was a gigantic personal and constitutional struggle which – if it happened again – would probably destroy the monarchy and perhaps the country. The removal of the Duke of York was by comparison a minor scuffle. And it made me think seriously again of an idea I have been pondering for a long time. Why not keep the monarchy, but stop having any actual monarchs or annoying heirs? They are so accident-prone, aren’t they?

    In return for some nice houses and a decent pension, the whole lot of them can be persuaded to modestly renounce their claims to the throne when the time comes. My suspicion is that most of them would be glad to be rid of the burden.

    And the actual daily tasks of the monarchy can be given to some harmless white-haired senior civil servant towards the end of his or her career, who can sign Acts of Parliament in the King’s name, preside with dignity and good humour at the award of Honours or at Privy Council meetings, and can open Parliament, perhaps arriving by bicycle.

    The monarch is a bit like the king on a chessboard, who can hardly move and cannot easily take any other piece, but who prevents others occupying his square and those immediately round it.

    As long as that space is adequately filled, prime ministers will not be able to invade it and the main job will be done. The arrangement will be slightly incomprehensible, in a quirky British way, but then so is the current position.

    I personally would not miss the lost tourism, which has engulfed London in a mile-deep wave of tat for decades. And if I never had to watch another Royal Broadcast or endure another Commonwealth Conference, I would be a happy man.

    What is more, there would not need to be another Coronation, which, when it comes in all its Welbyised modern horror, will just ram home to us all how far we have declined since the last one in 1953.

    *************************************************************************************
    I note that the Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson, defending her party’s moronic policy of marijuana legalisation (which has failed to do what its supporters claim, everywhere it has been tried), says she smoked the drug with enthusiasm at university. Yet more evidence, as if it were needed, for the link between marijuana use and reduced intelligence.

    Laughing as our democracy dies
    Most of the time I forget that there is an Election taking place. I am happier that way. But I managed to watch some of the non-gladiatorial clash between Al ‘Boris’ Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn on ITV.

    Two things struck me. Mr Johnson really, really does not like to be asked about his long record of dishonesty – and the presenter, Julie Etchingham, shockingly failed to compel him to answer a question on that subject, which he clumsily evaded. Instead, she soppily forced the two men to shake hands and promise to be nice. Oh, honestly.

    The second thing was that, for the first time I have ever seen, the audience openly laughed at the various evasions of the two men. Applause can be faked and is. But scornful belly-laughter, which this was, cannot be. This is not a good omen for our future. If democracy has become a joke, can dictatorship be far behind?

    One of the best stories ever written – then the BBC got to work on it
    I think The War Of The Worlds is one of the best books ever written. I first read it 60 years ago and even now, when I pick it up again, I find it hard to stop reading. Was there ever a man with a head so full of ideas and pictures as Herbert George Wells? He fills your mind with vivid images and pulls you into the book with superlative, simple story-telling, so simple most authors cannot manage it.

    The scene in which the ironclad ‘Thunder Child’ rams the Martian fighting machine off the Essex coast is one of the most intensely exciting things ever written. The slow opening of the first space capsule is among the most sinister and suspenseful.

    Now we have the technology to make this wonderful story come to life on the screen, and what do we get from the BBC? A saga about a miserable single mother – played by Eleanor Tomlinson – moping about the place and repeatedly squealing with fear (the best way to attract hungry Martians, as it happens), and about her almost unbelievably stupid boyfriend, who keeps looking for her and then, when he finds her, losing her again. Someone very like Dr Who seems to have crept into the story, too, an irritatingly wise astronomer with fiddly Left-wing glasses.

    This is mixed up with a dim teenage caricature of the imperial age with some digs at Christianity thrown in. If the British ruling class of the Edwardian era had been as thick as they are made to look, I do not think they could have governed Woking, let alone the largest empire in the world.

    For heaven’s sake, Wells’s original book is already a clever story about the rise and fall of civilisation, full of bright cynical thought about religion and morals in the midst of chaos and defeat.

    But Wells, a ferocious Left-wing radical (and an appalling womaniser), had more sense than to clutter up his story with clunky, obvious propaganda. That is why it will survive the BBC’s theft of its great title and idea, replaced with something not remotely as good. You can only enjoy this if you don’t know the actual story.

      1. I awoke this morning thinking it was Monday…ah tennis. Then I realised it was Sunday….a deep depression set in.

        2. As the chaps around here know, you’ll never get anything done if all you do is wander around all day with a couple of balls in your hand…..

    2. “And the actual daily tasks of the monarchy can be given to some harmless white-haired senior civil servant towards the end of his or her career, who can sign Acts of Parliament in the King’s name, preside with dignity and good humour at the award of Honours or at Privy Council meetings, and can open Parliament, perhaps arriving by bicycle” – Someone like Ollie Robbins perhaps . – No I thought not……

  10. Man arrested after Jewish children verbally abused on London underground. 23 NOVEMBER 2019.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/064e5845b5e2a28cbc5bf6ac3b9d23d5dc5f903a71f5e773d2e8072692269b17.png

    A man has been arrested after anti-Semitic abuse was directed towards Jewish children on the London Underground.
    His arrest came after a man was filmed reading anti-Jewish passages to two young boys in skullcaps while they were travelling with their family on the Northern Line.

    It doesn’t say so here but the “abuse” consisted of passages from the Bible and as can be seen from the photograph the father of the two boys thought he was more comedy act than threat!

    That said he was obviously seriously disturbed since the kernel of his anti-Semitism was that the family were pseudo jews when it was he who was a true Hebrew (probably one of the Lost Tribes) and they had stolen his heritage by the medium of the Slave Trade! Fascinating eh? We’ve all had these! Not an anti-Semite. Just another nutter!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/11/23/man-arrested-jewish-children-verbally-abused-london-underground/

    1. Morning Minty
      I’ve seen the video,he threatened to knock out someone who remonstrated with him,quite a dangerous nutter!!

          2. “obviously not Norwegian”
            You have no idea how he identifies,how terribly “Scandinavianist” of you
            Report for re-education at once

          3. Not at all, Rik, after all I was married to a Swede for 13 years, until she turned out to be a turnip.

  15. I’m Shocked,Shocked I tell you…………………

    The BBC

    Question Time audience member who spoke out in Jeremy Corbyn’s defence

    over Brexit is a Labour communications officer, it has emerged.

    During an uncomfortable grilling of the leader over his “neutral” position on a second referendum, Liam Shrivastava, intervened, saying: “There is actually precedent for this.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/11/23/question-time-audience-member-defended-corbyn-brexit-labour/?WT.mc_id=tmg_share_tw#

      1. Oh dear. I must go on a course. Something like “Gender Recognition for the Unwoke”, or something. I thought that the photo was of a man. I was not disabused of this notion until I had read down to here….

      3. Only if you have a horseshoe magnet stuck through your nose. As an aside, how did you conclude it’s a female?

    3. Torc Talk. If it’s made of gold it will probably be worth a few thou. It could be very painful if ever mugged!!!

      1. It could be used as a take on the old, ‘dog with no nose joke’. With that thing in its nose, how does it smell? Boom, boom Mr Derek.

    5. He looks as if he is a qualified teacher who has just been promoted to the position of Director of Studies in a large comprehensive school.

      1. Agreed – I’m surprised that one end of the torc wasn’t inserted in one ear and out the other. That would have terribly Woke (As in dead between the ears).

    6. Stop all of his benefits as he is clearly making himself unavailable for work, apart from in very niche places. Then see how hungry he needs to get before he decides that “attention seeking” does not help to stop the tummy rumbling.

      1. It is its human right to look a complete prat but I agree that benefits for this type of misfit should be withheld. Outside of a freak show where could anyone looking like that gain meaningful employment?

  18. I have just written to my district councillor about a planning matter. The old community hospital is an important Edwardian building in the conservation area of Great Malvern, famous for its architecture. A planning application for its demolition and replacement with a modern care home by Montpelier Land Ltd. was condemned by the local civic society and turned down by Malvern Hills District planners. They resubmitted an application for five fewer places, which was approved in 2018. They immediately put in a successful application to restore the original application that was then pushed through by the planners. The historic and sturdy building has started to be demolished this week.

    Six months ago, I attempted to get a kitchen/diner extension to my home, which is not in a conservation area, but in a secluded spot in a neighbourhood dotted about with numerous buildings of pretty well every conceivable style and quality and is not visible from any public highway. It was turned down because it was felt to be incongruous to the “street scene” according to the South Worcestershire Development Plan.

    “Dear Cllr Rouse

    You may remember in the Spring how my own modest planning application for an extension was turned down on appeal on the grounds that it was out of keeping with an undefined local vernacular, and was incongruous with the existing building.

    I notice in the news today that the old community hospital in Great Malvern Conservation Area is being demolished to make way for redevelopment.

    Is this not an example of one rule for developers and another rule for householders? No wonder the public holds the planning process and its officers in contempt!

    Best regards
    Jeremy Morfey

    P.S. I see that none of our general election candidates are daring to submit to public scrutiny at any hustings in Malvern this election.”

    1. The trouble is that too many people in both local and national political life are often incompetent, power-hungry and arrogant. As is always the case Shakespeare saw though such people:

      “But man, proud man,
      Dress’d in a little brief authority,
      Most ignorant of what he’s most assur’d—
      His glassy essence—like an angry ape
      Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
      As makes the angels weep…..”

    3. Jeremy, with all due respect you need to employ the services of an architect or planning consultant or similar. Did you show the drawings to the local planning office before you submitted them? If so, did they dislike some detail which could be amended?

      1. They charge £48 for written clarification as to the rules. The days when you could turn up to discuss it at the drop-in centre with a duty planner are over. They had to cut back on these sort of things when the Central Grant for statutory public services was cut to zero, and ever more expenditure on social care and Safeguarding, both ringfenced piled up on the Council Tax.

        Architects and planning consultants are brilliant at sending out the bill and making work for themselves, but not so good at designing extensions I can afford.

  19. Tories to axe hospital car parking fees for millions. 23 NOVEMBER 2019

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b5d37a0116681c092fee3cee1bbb501f45cf5f7699aead21b62b179c10e32a03.jpg

    Boris Johnson is pledging to end NHS hospital car parking charges for millions of patients, relatives and staff as he prepares to unveil an election manifesto designed to take on Jeremy Corbyn on the health service and the cost of living.

    This is just bribing people with their own money. It will simply be raised elsewhere!

    Apropos the photograph. Do you seriously want these people running your life!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/11/23/tories-axe-hospital-car-parking-fees-millions/

    1. Yo Minty

      A small adjustment

      Apropos the photograph. Do you seriously want these people runining your life!

    2. According to Radio 3 News bulletin ( 30 seconds is about my limit for beeb news) Labour are planning to spend £50+ billions of your money on sorting out WASPI pensioners. Such a proposition could conceivably deliver an extra 50 seats over and above what was previously forecast. So that would make it £1 billion per extra seat. Eat your heart out Elbridge….

      1. White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Irritants? Ah no, it’s Wimmin Against State Pension Inequality. Oh the irony of protesting against a move to remove sexual inequality in pensions.

    3. Hmm. Will that also make more car park spaces available? Most spaces are taken up by NHS workers. If GPs issued tickets for spaces, or the NHS sent out tickets with the appointment letters, parking might be better managed. At our general hospital, car sharers arrive singly, park, then share one car into town.

      1. I daresay hospitals will introduce the system that’s now in favour in all the pubs in my locality Number Plate Recognition. You may park in the car park but have to enter your car’s registration in the terminal at the bar if you don’t you will receive a hefty fine. Relatively simple to do although given the number of visitors and multiple entrances lots of terminals will be needed .

        (It will give a whole new meaning to Terminal Care)

        1. Good Morning everyone.
          Does the local Constabulary (etc) have access to the database of car registrations that use the pub carpark? Could be useful. Anyway, the pub management could not tell you the truth, because tipping off is an offence.

          1. I’m sure with appropriate warrants they could access said databases. (The Car park operations across multiple pubs are run by one organisation). However, if they’ve been following the French drama Spiral they won’t bother with warrants…

        2. The Sainsbury’s on the edge of Darlington town centre, has an overhead gantry which records car number plates on entering and allows 3 hours free parking , I think, for the stay. I do not know how they enforce this and what the penalties are but except in the run up to Christmas, parking is no problem

          1. People are parking on private property and if you overstay the operator can ask for details of the car’s owner and send them an invoice, parking charge notice, to cough up. It is not a fine as only courts can impose them but you could be taken to the County Court and forced to pay damages. It is not a criminal matter but a civil one. The Information Commissioner is quite happy to allow all and sundry to obtain your details on the flimsiest excuse..

          2. Our local supermarket does that (a bone of contention because the land that is rented was donated for the use of the inhabitants). They issue a fixed penalty notice of £70. One or two people have been caught because there is a short-cut through the car park and cameras have caught them coming in (but not exiting the other end) and then snapped them going out again much later and have presumed they have been parked. Bingo! Seventy smackers thank you very much.

          3. That Sainsbury’s used to be a Safeway when I was living near Richmond. For most of the time, access was unlimited despite the proximity of the town centre. I assume there was no number plate monitoring then *(mid 90s). During busy periods, the barriers were manned and if you had a receipt from using the store, you didn’t pay. Seemed like a sensible policy to me.

    4. A town of 28,000 a few miles from here has a large general hospital. Until a year or two ago it handled accident and emergency for the county as well as other services, then they built a new hospital in a less convenient place for many in the rural parts of the county, but that is just an aside.

      The hospital in question was built on the edge of town in the 1980s with a large car park. It is surrounded by residential estates and no places of work other than the occasional corner shop. It’s not near any transport ‘hubs’ – the bus station is three quarters of a mile away, as is the main shopping area and the railway station was demolished in 1968 after having closed in 1964. The reason for hospitals charging for parking is usually given as to discourage people from abusing the car park while they take a train to work for the day, or to go shopping or something like that. As I have said, that cannot apply here – there is no motivation of any kind to use that hospital car park other than to visit the hospital.

      Yet in that entire town of 28,000 souls it is the only car park (other than one outside the town at the other side of the mineral railway at a mining museum) that charges people to park.

      The only paid parking within the entire town envelope is at the hospital.

      Iniquitous.

      2. My great Granddad started at that mining museum when they were sinking the shafts and was there until he retired.

    5. The NHS car parking charges can be very well managed, if they get creative and apply intelligence. There was one place that was in Headington in Oxford, which had a lot of business’s within a 10 minute walk. The car park had many spaces taken up by office workers parking for the day, and it was very common for visitors coming to see patients to be forced to park in the streets around the centre, if they could find a space.

      So they started enforcing the “pay and display” machines that they had, with charges of 50p for 3 hours, £8 for 6+ hours (roughly – this was 20 years ago.) This was based on short visits to patients often taking less than 3 hours, and if there were longer visits then all the visitor needed to do was go and buy another 50p ticket when the first one ran out. They could get a 6 hour stay for £1.

      On the other hand, office workers would need to pay the full £8 amount, or leave their work 2 or 3 times a day to get new tickets. This turned out to be very effective and there were far more spaces available for visitors at a very low cost. It can be fair with some thought.

    6. Nicked straight from the UKIP manifesto! Along with the points-based immigration policy. They’ll be promoting grammar schools next – oh, wait! I believe that May did just that.

  20. Good morning, everyone. Had a welcome lie-in as the Springer is having a sleepover at a friend’s house.

  21. A senior police officer has said “sexist and homophobic” abuse sparked by her hairstyle led her to leave social media.

    Deputy chief constable Rachel Swann made several media appearances as she led efforts to evacuate residents of Whaley Bridge earlier this year.

    Some viewers then took to Twitter to mock the officer.

    Ms Swann, of Derbyshire Police, said she was shocked her “mere existence could cause such a depth of feeling”.

    About 1,500 people were evacuated from Whaley Bridge when a dam wall at the nearby Toddbrook Reservoir dam was damaged in August.

    Ms Swann, the senior officer in the operation, noticed comments about her on social media after she appeared before cameras at a press conference.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-50501203

    Titter ye not, as Frankie Howard used to say

      5. I reckon most of us would look a bit miffed if we’d been dragged away from emulsioning the ceiling to give a press conference.

    3. ‘Morning T_B
      I support her right to wear her hair exactly as she likes,just as I support my right to mock her mercilessly for her hilarious barnet

    5. Mocking a female for outlandish hair styles is sexist, but males such as Boris or Michael Fabricant are expected to put up with it?

  22. General Election 2019: Muslim voters on issues that matter to them
    Muslims could swing the vote in 11 seats in Greater London on 12 December, according to research by the Muslim Council of Britain.

    But what issues matter to them and could this influence who they vote for in the General Election?

    We joined a guided tour of London, which looks at how Islam has influenced culture in the capital, and spoke with Muslim voters on the tour about the issues that mattered most to them

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-50518346/general-election-2019-muslim-voters-on-issues-that-matter-to-them

    Deep breaths , dear Nottlers!

    1. As I’ve said before it’s only a question of time before the Tower is flogged off to the highest bidder to be converted into a mosque. The Yeoman warders can then be redeployed to Group 4 to guard Westminster so the hundreds of police officers currently guarding the place can be redeployed to police the streets of the capital. And whilst we are about it we may as well flog off the Crown Jewels except one or two, in order to pay down the National debt….

      1. “…the hundreds of police officers currently guarding the place can be redeployed to police the streets of the capital. hate crimes on the internet

        A much better use of our Police Farce.

    2. All That seemed to matter to them was that we were scared of their choppy choppy co-religionists. Says it all, really.

        2. I’m sure that I have only heard the term used in old films where black people have used it against other black people.

          4. Most probably and many, including Al-Beeb, will praise that as progress. It’s an upside down World that’s being created in front of our eyes and it appears that there’s little or nothing we can do about it.

          4. If black is a colour then white is a colour. We really need a new word for people of Afro-Caribbean appearance. I suggest ” negro ” or ” nigger ” ( as in “nigger brown ” ). Avoids confusion.

        4. Political correctness will ultimately make independent thought and communication literally impossible because correctness authorities will withdraw the actions and words required to express such aberrations..

          Every concept and human interaction will be rigidly controlled with meanings precisely defined by government rules and all non approved alternatives extinguished and soon forgotten. The process will still be continuing long after the British have tried but failed to escape the EU behemoth.

          Every year fewer and fewer words and the range of consciousness always a little smaller.

          Even now, of course, according to senior correctness officials, there is no reason or excuse for having independent thoughts, it is merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control.

          But in the end there won’t be any need even for that, because through doublespeak and newthink, central authorities will enter our brains to prevent it and control us all..

        5. Morning!

          “Like” is still allowed. Multiple times in every sentence, regardless of whether it makes any sense.

          2. Yeah, but that’s like fair enuff innit, ‘cos overwise we wouldn’t like be able to like communicate?

    2. It’s a word I use on occasion, when it suits.

      I don’t recall ever having used it in relation to a ‘person of colour’, more in relation to twerps in local ‘government’ and such.

        1. That was from 17 years ago…

          You would almost think that there were some long-term plans afoot to control the way that we think and speak. 🙂

          2. This kind of manipulation of the language is now of course, seen as entirely normal to anyone uner the age of forty or so, as they have grown up with it. Those of us who can remember when English was English are now out of step with the world.

    3. Thinking about it didn’t one of our EU Presidents use the word when referring to the leave voting population of the UK not so long ago

  25. Good afternoon all it’s 27C here and we’ve had a swim this morning in the outdoor pool. We’re in Dubai visiting family. It’s a lovely heat and the risk of rain is, a bit like Br**it, remote.
    Don’t watch news, just like home.
    Cost of living through the roof.
    Have a wonderful rest of the week.

      1. No but the architecture is, IMHO, amazing others, I am sure, will disagree. It’s like beauty, it’s in the eye of the beholder.

      1. Thank you for your concern but we had 20 minutes in the sun after the swim and are now in the shade. It’s all very pleasant.

      2. Thank you but we do about 10 lengths of the 25 m pool dry off in the sun for about 20 mins then in the shade. Humidity under 60% and no sweating. It really is the ideal temperature for November.
        Hope you are keeping well.

        1. I’m terrific in this cold.wet,damp miserable island with an election and Christmas to look forward to…. Thanks.

          1. We’ll be coming back to that next Wednesday. We will have topped up our Vitamin D by then. :-))

  26. 20.000 “football fields” more of Solar,untold acres of wind

    How will you store the power for when it’s needed??

    Why will nobody ever ask the Eco-Loons the tough questions like “how will we TRIPLE our generating capacity to begin meet your fantasies??”

    Gridwatch

    https://gridwatch.co.uk/
    If you think biomass is green and renewable I’ve got a bridge for sale

  27. Meanwhile, the BBC have nearly reported that some unknown people have been making trouble, by collecting in a crowd of dozens if not hundreds of unidentified male (possibly) personages, in Birmingham. A very few unnamed people have been arrested.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-50533609

    It seems that Police decided not to make wholesale arrests of the rioters as that might have upset community relations. A BBC spokesperson said that they were playing down the incident as it is not nearly as newsworthy as “How Instagram trends wrestled wreaths from Christmas” which is also on the front page of the BBC website.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-suffolk-50504591/how-instagram-trends-wrestled-wreaths-from-christmas

    Now, I have used my own words here, and have made stuff up about the BBC spokesperson. So, it’s fake news, right?
    Well, no. A crowd of muslim men, numbering nearly a hundred and armed with machetes did indeed riot in a leisure complex in Birmingham. But that is not the kind of news we want to disseminate, is it? Nor should we ask awkward questions, such as “why those armed were not shot dead on the spot?”. (Please recall the lone loonie armed with a sword that the police shot dead at his house a couple of years ago.)

    1. Any chance one of them could use the wrong pronoun in front of a trannie?
      Or does that conceit only apply to whitey?

    2. LBC have reported it as just a fight between people, started with an argument between two women. No mention of machetes at all…funny that.

      1. Just another ordinary weekend fight. Part and parcel of living in a modern city according to some.

        I mean, who would even dream of turning out at the weekend without their best machete? Hardly worth a mention.

      2. I caught the early LBC news and they definitely mentioned machetes and a 100 or so involved. That info was in my first post of the day. Clampdown orders gone out, community cohesion and all the other crap to try and con the people. Haven’t the PTB noticed that the genie is out of the bottle and the people know what is going on.

    3. Morning HP,
      There was also the paper vendor (2009) Ian Tomlinson ( unlawful killing )
      on his way home from work, then the electrician in the tube station, it is my belief that PC / Appeasement kills innocence & the innocent.

  28. DT (or, rather, Sunday T) doesn’t do irony. No comments allowed on this article. Maybe they’re saving us from ourselves.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/must-live-fear-visit-actual-thought-police/

    “Must we all live in fear of a visit from the actual thought police?
    Zoe Strimpel

    A year or so ago, a friend insisted we move from Facebook Messenger to WhatsApp for our communications. The former was too easily hackable, she said, and she was worried that any off-colour comments – or indeed jokes – we might make about politics, life or individuals could end up being released to the world. I hate WhatsApp, but – suddenly feeling uneasy – I acquiesced.

    At the time, I thought she was being paranoid. Now it has become abundantly clear that one cannot be too careful.

    This is a chilling feeling, and even more chilling to consider that it exists at all in a country like Britain, formerly a beacon of political and civil liberty. Law-abiding, decent people like me and my friend should not have to feel that we cannot be too careful.

    Yet last week yielded yet another grim example of how important it is now to watch oneself at all times. Freedom of speech, something I just about took for granted growing up, is now seriously under threat. For if previously the “PC police” was just a figure of speech, it is now a real armed force – the actual police.

    Parodic though it sounds, one of the things our police force is meant to do is pay visits to and, if need be arrest, people thought have possibly committed a “hate crime” – “any non-crime incident which is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by a hostility or prejudice against a person”.

    What this menacingly vague clause means is that anyone can be taken down at any time if just one person points the finger at a comment they deem to be “motivated by hostility”. A recent exchange with my neighbour saw him spout aggression at me in an entirely uncalled-for manner – I have to say I wondered why, if we’re talking hate crimes, that didn’t count.

    This was illustrated well with a landmark case argued last week, in which Harry Miller, 54, a former constable with Humberside police, told how he had put himself in danger of a criminal record for tweeting about transgender people. The posts may have been in poor taste, but all were clearly well within a common-sense scope of opinion that one would, until recently, never have questioned being allowed to vent in public.

    But times have changed. Mr Miller – who presciently noted that the police “operating manual” is as if drawn from George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four – was visited in January by an officer from the force having “engaged in regular tweeting relating to transgender people”. In one message, he wrote: “I was assigned mammal at birth, but my orientation is fish. Don’t mis-species me. F—–s.”

    Giving evidence to the High Court, Mr Miller said that the officer, PC Mansoor Gul, had said: “I’m here to check your thinking.”

    That’s right. His “thinking”. In other words, Mr Miller had a visit from the thought police who are actually… the real police.

    Mr Miller said he was told that while he had not committed a crime, he was being investigated for a “hate incident” under the guidance of the College of Policing. He was told that his social media account would be monitored.

    Mr Miller, co-founder of the pressure group Fair Cop, which campaigns for free speech rights around trans issues, has made the case to the high court that the Humberside police acted in a way that was “contrary to his fundamental right to freedom of expression”. His lawyers made the case – it is astonishing that they had to – that allegations like those against Mr Miller should be tested for their veracity and not recorded as an “incident” even when based on just one complaint.

    Clearly, the term “PC police” is no longer a figure of speech. Caroline Farrow, a Roman Catholic pro-life campaigner with the conservative views about gender and sexuality and gender befitting her faith, was investigated in 2018 by Surrey Police for allegedly “misgendering” someone – assigning them the wrong gender pronoun – in a tweet. “We received an allegation […] in relation to a number of tweets which were posted in October 2018,” the police primly stated earlier this year. “A thorough investigation is being carried out to establish whether any criminal offences have taken place.”

    Last week, Ms Farrow was denied travel to the US after arriving at the airport in London to find that her visa waiver, initially approved by the US authorities, had been revoked. She wrote that she could only conclude that, following on from a number of threatening tweets to this effect, two people had decided to file a police complaint. “The vindictive obsessive mentality is quite something to behold,” she observed.

    Indeed. What’s truly frightening is that this very controlling vindictiveness – apparent throughout cultural and institutional life now – no longer just takes the form of online bullying and intimidation from those who disagree, a practice in which the woke Left have true form.

    But now their obsession with curbing everyone else’s speech has infiltrated all parts of the establishment – down to those who carry weapons and handcuffs. It’s mind boggling and terrifying in equal measure. With a serious shortage of manpower leaving them struggling to prosecute actual crimes, our police are instead going after our thoughts.

    Man may be born free, in Britain these days, thanks to ever-more powerful armies of the woke, he is everywhere in chains.”

    1. I was threatened on The Spectator comments forum by a group claiming the support of a Chief Constable, with access to a ring-fenced budget and a special unit, and a former long-serving Home Secretary, who was actually Prime Minister of the UK at the time I was threatened. This group had already destroyed the political reputation of a former London mayor, and is currently on a campaign to wreck that of the Leader of the Opposition, who is currently fighting a General Election.

      One of them let slip the name of the village where I live. I was warned about this group by another commenter who had already gone through the mill. I blocked all suspect members of this group, and have exposed their antics and how they have perverted maliciously and violated democracy and free speech in this country.

      The point I was making was that it is important to make a distinction between persecuting a group of people, largely innocent and often highly beneficial to our society, on the grounds of religion or ethnicity, and the political actions of a Government claiming to represent exclusively their interests, which I personally find destabilising in a region that is threatening to flood my continent with refugees and vengeful “freedom fighters”.

      Criticising a foreign government that is threatening mine should not be a crime in my country at least.

    2. Morning Anne,
      The thought police etc,etc are brought about by the lab/lib/con political governing hierarchy & given
      succour, support, votes via the polling booth.
      Prior to the whinge of too much
      unnecessary surveillance regarding the people, by the peoples who are voting it in.
      There should, in every polling station be a lie detection questionnaire as in,
      Are you of sound mind ?
      Are you agreeable to facing charges as a result of your vote resulting in disaster ?

    3. Our country has been changed over the past few decades. There was a warm, safe, almost “defining” background certainty that these things “couldn’t happen here” because this was the United Kingdom and we don’t do that.

      But here we are and we can see that they ARE doing this to us. In this proud country, with all of our history of fighting against oppression, we are being told to sit down and shut up. When the public explosion of our Britishness comes, from our revulsion at being told what to do by worthless people, those who are trying to crush us will discover that they have chosen the wrong side.

  29. Labour to abolish the transferable personal allowance
    Labour to abolish the single persons council tax relief
    So much for its tax changes will only affect the richest 95%. The above changes are going to affect the poorest mainly

    1. We’ve always assumed that it’ll be the Tories and repeat the 2017 May Experiment and alienate the core vote during an election.

      Why revive the Poll Tax now?

      1. Why not remove the council tax and replace it by a Sales tax, levied within each Council Boundary?

        That way you get to see those Councils are raising higher taxes for pet projects and CEO’s salary, and you then just do your shopping in a neighbouring borough, where the sales tax is less than your own borough.

        The other advantage is that EVERYONE pays the tax, the amount only varying by the amount you have and the amount you spend – no Council Tax dodgers. What a good idea!

      1. In the end a country is no different to a very large company and it has to balance its books and with Corbyn the UK will sing under the weight of its debt. Remember we still have a deficit that will rocket under Labour. Their proposed borrowing levels in fact would almost certainly break EU legislation as would their plans to nationalized various companies

        1. Why do you think that people like me voted for Comrade Steptoe as leader?

          It’s great when a plan comes together…

      1. Nationalizing the Royal Mail will cost a fortune as it is a declining industry so losses would rocket and the bill be picked up by the tax payers
        Logically the Royal Mail should move to alternate day deliveries to control costs. Most post is not urgent and the Royal Mail offers alternatives for faster delivery

        1. It cost the taxpayer a fortune when that useless goon Bumbling Vince sold off our remaing stake for nearly half its value, when the coalition was in office (2014?) under Dodgy Dave.

          2. The Royal Mail though is a fast declining industry and if Labour nationalizes it will resist reform and the staff cuts needed

          3. It’s why they hived off the profitable parcels business just when internet shopping was taking off. Now every cowboy going makes money delivering parcels, when it used to be the local postie.

  30. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0-6aIBsyaKg

    British Voters Slam BBC For being Biased And Pro Remain by Mahyar Tousi

    “British Voters Slam BBC For being Biased And Pro Remain. BBC Question Time Special hosted a leaders debate for the 2019 general election with Jeremy Corbyn, Boris Johnson, Nicola Sturgeon and Jo Swinson. The audience were supposed to be picked in a balanced way but the crowd were very much leaning towards Remain with one audience member being Kate Rutter, who was an actress on I Daniel Blake. The biased BBC shows their true face by not selecting the audience in the right way.”

  32. Explosive leaked email claims that UN watchdog’s report into alleged poison gas attack by Assad was doctored – so was it to justify British and American missile strikes on Syria? Peter Hitchens. 23 November 2019.

    Britain’s then Premier, Theresa May, was equally confident of her facts, saying after the missile launch: ‘Last Saturday up to 75 people, including young children, were killed in a despicable and barbaric attack in Douma, with as many as 500 further casualties. We have worked with our allies to establish what happened.

    ‘And all the indications are that this was a chemical weapons attack … We are also clear about who was responsible for this atrocity. A significant body of information including intelligence indicates the Syrian regime is responsible for this latest attack.’

    Morning everyone. Well with all due respect to Mr Hitchens, this is old news. All the Syrian chemical attacks over the last five years were faked by the White Helmets with the UK providing technical advice and assistance while Mrs May’s words were just a rehearsal for her declarations over the equally false Skripal business. Judging by the levels of incompetence, the same people at MI6 planned both. Have they penetrated the OPCW to falsify the Douma report? Yes of course they have. We even know the name of the UK mole who engineered it.

    The only real oddity in this article is that it lacks Mr Hitchens usual personal input (On holiday? Ghost written?) and he has allowed comments. Perhaps an error to be rectified later? Whatever, the ones posted (Aside from a Mr Herb who is clearly the night-watchman at MI6 Troll HQ and who has written It woz Putin wot dun it! three times) are well acquainted with the subject matter and as disbelieving of the official accounts as anyone who has bothered to sift through these fabrications.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7718627/Sexed-dossier-furore-alleged-poison-gas-attack-Assad.html

    1. There is no way that article was written by Peter Hitchens. The Mail on Sunday have borrowed his name to try to up their ‘hits’.

      Morning Minty.

  33. ‘Morning, Peeps,

    SIR – The main thrust of the Labour Party’s manifesto is to tax success.

    The message is that one should not study, gain qualifications, work hard and get a well-paid position. Equally, one should avoid taking risks to establish a profitable business that provides jobs.

    Labour clearly regards such achievements as something to be punished.

    Keith Vaughan

    I fear it is much, much worse than that, Keith Vaughan – their current extremism goes well beyond the mere politics of envy, and they won’t be happy until they have destroyed capitalism in this country. Never has so much responsibility been placed upon so many to deny so few their evil intention.

    1. Morning, HJ.

      The Corbyn/McDonnell axis believes in the State controlling everything, including peoples’ lives from the cradle – if you survive their late abortion idea – to the early grave that will be your end. Success in education, employment, building a business etc endows the people with freedoms that are anathema to Corbyn & Co and they must, and will be, curtailed.
      A future under Corbyn/McDonnell will not be something to look forward to; mind you, last night at the cinema in Birmingham is one vision of the future that is coming our way under any and all major political parties in the UK. Our grandchildren are going to have a real fight on their hands.

    3. The message is that one should not study, gain qualifications, work hard and get a well-paid position.

      Corbyn certainly qualifies on the first three criteria. Apparently his son’s company is now bust with debts to the tune of £100,000. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree…

      1. All of my apples except the Bramleys died of brown rot this year, now I know the source of the infection.😎

          2. Plums are very prone to it, I believe. I thought my problem was my neighbour’s diseased Victoria Plum but a friend and now you have indicated it may have been something else. The weather?

        1. When Corbyn was seven, the family moved to Pave Lane in Shropshire, where his father bought Yew Tree Manor, a 17th-century country house which was once part of the Duke of Sutherland’s Lilleshall estate. Corbyn attended Castle House School, an independent preparatory school near Newport, Shropshire, before, at age 11, becoming a day student at the Adams’ Grammar School in the town. WIKIPEDIA.

          The family are landed gentry. Poverty is for the peasants!

  34. Boris Johnson will commit a Tory government to not raise income tax, VAT or national insurance for five years as he promises to “put more money back in people’s pockets” after Brexit.

    Launching the Conservatives’ general election manifesto on Sunday,
    the prime minister will also pledge to protect the value of state
    pensions, boost spending by £1bn on childcare during school terms and
    holidays, and cut energy bills by up to £750 a year for those in social
    housing.

    He has also pledged to provide additional funds for education and farming,
    to introduce new schools to teach pigs to fly.

    1. Why just reduce energy bills for those in social housing. I would love to know how the will reduce the bills by £750
      The average electricity and gas costs for families in the UK is together about £1264 per year by the time you take off the standing charges and VAT that means the basic energy bill will be free

      1. That is what smart meters are for, they will automatically cut back allowed power consumption to the prescribed amount.

      2. The winter fuel payment, introduced by Gordon Brown in 1997, gives between £100 and £300 tax-free to help pay your heating bills if you were born on or before 5 May 1953. The payment is made automatically each year in November or December.
        A good man, Gordon.

        1. It would be more sensible to remove it and add it to the state pension. That gives some simple means testing as non tax payers get the full amount 45$ tax payers would only get 55% of it

          1. It is, though, nice to get something from the Government, and at the right time of year too.Taxing Higher Rate taxpayers on it would be dangerous. It would be the last straw and they would all leave the country,

          2. An Extra £45 in tax. If someone is retired and paying 45% tax they are doing very well indeed

          4. No, no !

            If you did that you would have to close a Government department down.
            We don’t want our political cronies to be without well paid jobs with a nice index linked pension at the end.

          5. No, no !

            If you did that you would have to close a Government department down.
            We don’t want our political cronies to be without well paid jobs with a nice index linked pension at the end.

          2. If adjusted so that 20% taxpayers are no worse of
            0% £250
            20% £250-20% £200
            40% £250-40% £150
            46% £250-45% £145

          3. If it were taken into the state pension it would go up each year and become taxable meaning there is a simple means of means testing
            0% taxpayer £200
            20% tax payer £160
            40% tax payer £120
            45% tax payer £115

          5. Why is this waiting to be approved? I’ve never seen any of our comments waiting to be approved before!

          6. Why are there tax bands at all? Yes, I understand that people are greedy and want to hurt the higher earner more but that’s just spite.

            20% of 100,000 is more than 20% of 10,000. Even knowing Lefties can’t do maths the obvious solution must be to just get rid of those offensive taxes and flatten the lot, combine with national insurance and stop pretending the state only takes 20% of our money when it really takes closer to 67%.

          7. The Hong Kong tax book is about two inches thick at most. Ours runs to several volumes! Gordon Brown making tax even more complicated.

        3. But it’s typical Brown. Rather than remove the reason energy is more expensive he singles out a group and through an expensive, unnecessart state controls how much they receive.

          Always the expensive control freak, never the enricher.

        4. If there are two of you in the household you get £100 each. Single pensioner gets £200. I think the £300 is for those over 80.

      4. Why not just scrap green taxes generally for everyone? Why not freeze council tax? Cut fuel duty?

        Truly, there are dozes of taxes the state lumbers us with. It’s all very well saying some wouldn’t be increased but the rest would, and those are the ones that bring us pain and make life expensive.

        It’s time to cut taxes, shred the state.

    2. In 2017 they all committed to respecting the referendum. Worthless bullshut. Still waiting, not holding breath.

      2. S,
        This is just a warm up for WW 3 manufactured & activated in the UK via PC / Appeasement
        lab/lib/con political purveyors, followers, voters.

      1. W,
        The majority of my comments get down voted
        especially anti paedophilia ones so I believe it to be a fully paid up member of PIE, hidden disagreement IMO shows a great deal of LMF.

        1. I’ve just noticed that almost all of the posted comments have been downvoted, usually with no comment left at all to explain their displeasure.

          I find such rather pathetic. If you cannot form a rebuttal you’ve no business just clicking the button.

    3. Its coming here.
      And the one man prepared to stand against it got kicked in teeth, knifed in the back on behest of the elite, which the public obliged and so lost the most honest and brave politician since Powell.
      Batten.

  38. Morning, Campers.
    I knew something had been missing from my life.
    As I read the DT letters, I realised what it was – William Barter of Towcester; the man who is completely disinterested when it come to HS2.

  39. “Rape cases should be investigated through a grand jury-style system to encourage more victims to take their attackers to court, a senior judge has proposed.

    Peter Murphy, a circuit judge, said the process – similar to

    investigating magistrates in Europe – would provide victims with greater

    privacy by enabling a judge to decide what information about their

    sexual past could be disclosed to police and prosecutors.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/11/23/rape-cases-should-investigated-grand-jury-style-system-senior/
    Investigating activist magistrates with Napoleonic Law powers and the power to exclude evidence

    What could possibly go wrong……………………………

    1. Does Mr Murphy not know what a Grand Jury is? It is composed of ordinary members of the Public, who can ask any questions they like, which in this context includes asking about the previous sexual history of the complainant. So, instead of the defence brief asking questions, a dozen people can ask them. Oh, and if the complainant doesn’t answer they can be jailed for Contempt of Court.

    2. The prosecution rate on rape cases is always likely to be low as I most cases there are no witnesses so no evidence
      The vast majority of rape cases 90% plus is where the claimed rapist is known to the woman and as we have seen in quite a number of cases woman have lied and how you differentiate with the absence of evidence I dont know

    3. What does alarm me is that habeas corpus and being ‘innocent until proven guilty’ seem to have gone out of the window in Britain to be replaced by trial by Media.

      It seems that a person who has been falsely accused can easily be sacked and humiliated and have very little chance of regaining either profession or reputation.

      A friend of mine’s brother was the librarian in a large comprehensive school. A fourteen year old girl made sexual advances towards him which he rejected firmly but kindlily. Out of spite she reported him for having abused her sexually. He was dismissed immediately and put on the sex offenders’ register. His career and reputaion were completely destroyed.

      Six years later the girl had a crisis of conscience and declared that she had made up her accusations entirely and there was not a thread of evidence against him but by that time his life was beyond repair.

      2. Habeas Corpus was a victim of the EAW, rastus, and innocent until proven guilty is not a concept in corpus juris as far as I am aware; on the continent, it is usual to arrest the accused and then build a case against him or her. One of the reasons I voted to leave.

  41. Can’t bloody move for bloody pledges all over the shop.
    I know that a great many of the electorate have the brain power of rocking horses but even they must realise now the value of a lab/lib/con pledge, vow or promise.

      1. Afternoon AS,
        Opium for the lab/lib/con current masses AKA
        rhetorical lunatic soup, fodder for fools.

  42. More women say Birmingham University refused to investigate rape complaints. Sun 24 Nov 2019 13.48 GM.

    Birmingham University faces a growing outcry over its response to student victims of sexual violence after more women said it had refused to investigate their rape complaints.

    One recent graduate, who was allegedly raped in university-owned accommodation, said the institution refused to investigate, even though it has previously stated that disciplinary action would be taken over misconduct on its premises.

    Nicole (not her real name) twice asked the university to launch a formal investigation but she said on both occasions staff told her that her there were no specific procedures to deal with rape complaints, so no action could be taken.

    This article is a complete fabrication on behalf of a feminist pressure group very probably Rape Crisis England and Wales mentioned further down the page. All the supposed victims are unnamed so it’s not possible to trace their history. This aside it is not the job of Universities to investigate Criminal Acts; they have neither the resources, staff nor the expertise and if they did do so they would leave themselves open to private legal action and be breaking the law themselves.

    https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/nov/24/birmingham-university-criticised-over-response-to-rape-complaints

    1. You Fascist Beast!!
      Don’t you understand YET,a woman has made a complaint,the male accused must be named,shamed,his career ruined and be promptly sent down
      What do you mean,evidence,tested in court,are you living in the 19th century!!

      1. “I’ve been raped Chancellor!”

        “Good heavens. Sit down my dear I will send a couple of porters to apprehend this monster. We will soon have him by the goolies. So to speak you understand?”

        “She was Trans.”

        “What? Oh I see. But what could it do?

        “You’re doubting my account Chancellor?”

        Never in life my dear.”

        “And stop calling me “my dear” it’s sexist harassment designed to denigrate women and perpetuate the patriarchy!”

    3. Send them to the police. I never became involved with staff problms that did not concern our business. I would refer them to the correct organisation that could help them. One member of staff did not attend work because her cat had died. i said no problem but you will not be paid. She came to work.

    4. “institution refused to investigate, even though it has previously
      stated that disciplinary action would be taken over misconduct on its
      premises.”
      So rape is just misconduct, which is why it was not reported to the police ?

    5. The unniversity not having a policy is utter nonsense.

      My university had a policy way back in the 90’s when I went along with a chum. To suggest any major institution wouldn’t take such seriously is absurd.

      Yet… I say that and only recently we have seen councils covering up the rape of white girls. Of police ignoring them. Of a blasted Mp agreeing that they should ‘get raped in the name of diversity’.

      So hell. Maybe the victim was white.

    1. For years I thought the term Aunty was an affectionate reference to the BBC. However, I clearly misheard. It turns out the word is Anti as in Anti-British Broadcasting Corporation

  45. From the Spekkie; Lionel Shriver cooking on gas.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/2019/11/labours-real-2019-manifesto/

    Labour’s real 2019 manifesto | The Spectator

    “In 2019, Labour’s strategy is about delivering a fairer, more prosperous society, in adherence to our motto: for the zany, not the shrewd.

    Because Labour voters have short attention spans (and therefore do not remember how deeply we got the nation in debt the last time our party was in power), we would like to frontload this manifesto with the vast piles of Free Stuff that will inundate British households if you award our party a majority. You will notice lower down on your ballot a space to tick ‘milk’ or ‘dark’ for your 750g M&S chocolate assortment. Do not forget to further customise your order by ticking ‘creams’, ‘caramels’ or ‘truffles’, and ‘yes’ or ‘no’ by ‘I have a nut allergy’.

    We apologise that delivery of your first free weekly Proletariat Pizza (thin crust or classic deep pan) will have to wait until after 12 December, because we were unable to fit the full list of optional toppings on to the ballot paper, and there were unresolved objections from some quarters to the inclusion of pineapple.

    When leaving the polling station, however, make sure to pick up your shiny red Labour goodie bag to the left (naturally) of the door. We don’t want to ruin all the surprises in store, but we can tip off voters that gifts include: a 100ml bottle of Aveda Botanical Kinetics moisturiser, a five-inch lavender-scented candle (bound to come in useful when we nationalise energy companies), a £50 John Lewis coupon redeemable for the lampshade of your choice (teal blue being, alas, out of stock), a deckle-edged collector’s edition of Mao’s Little Red Book, Bose Bluetooth headphones (as we’re not to be outdone by the New Yorker Festival), and a small electric car.

    Commonly, of course, goodie bags are filled by donations from supportive companies, but because we couldn’t find any companies that want Jeremy Corbyn to become prime minister, the cost to Labour of those headphones will be reimbursed by the taxpayer. That’s surely all right with you, because if you vote for Labour in 2019 we assume that you’re not a taxpayer.

    Advance announcement of our nationwide free broadband policy allowed the membership to point out that super-rich access to commercial streaming services is not only a form of cultural appropriation but a major contributor to inequality. So we will also be providing the British people with free subscriptions to Netflix, Sky Sports and Disney Plus.

    In the event that householders have needs and desires in excess of chocolate and moisturiser, never fear. In its first year, a Labour government will nationalise Amazon. Thus British citizens — and non-citizens, whose exclusion would be racist — will be able to have DIY materials, groceries from Amazon Fresh, gardening tools, Nike trainers and ineffective nutritional supplements shipped directly from 10 Downing Street, all without the bother of registering a credit card. We regret that owing to the organisational challenges of fitting this many goods into a rather small house off Whitehall, to begin with our returns policy may not be quite as efficient as the current online retailer’s.

    As for health care, free dental checkups are just the start. To ameliorate our oppressed countrymen’s damaging reputation for dingy smiles, we will offer the entire electorate free tooth whitening and/or veneers. Nitrous oxide will also be made available on a recreational basis.

    Given that the money we will pile each year into surgeries and hospitals will be equivalent to the Treasury’s entire annual budget, we are herewith proposing to rename the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland ‘the National Health Service’. As any mention of this institution must already be delivered with quavering, misty-eyed reverence, it makes sense that ‘our NHS’ should refer to the country itself, thereby ensuring a degree of social cohesion with which mere ‘One Nation Conservatism’ cannot compete.

    The Labour party realises that inequality is not solely a material concern. Of course our confiscation of private schools will guarantee that no one in our fine country is permitted unjustly to excel, but we will go still further — bulldozing, grading and compacting the outlying properties of Eton and Harrow into perfectly level playing fields. The unjustly good-looking will be issued mandatory fat suits, the unjustly smart will wear compulsory VR headsets streaming synchronised patriotic dance numbers from North Korea, and the unjustly likeable will be targeted by vicious, defamatory Twitter pile-ons via #seeminglycharmingpersonsecretlyawanker.

    Detractors have claimed that, if we stick to our commitment to keep the taxes of 95 per cent of the population unchanged, our manifesto is unaffordable. On the contrary, the irresistible draw of so much fabulous fairness in one place is bound to attract investment from all over the world. Being graciously allowed to contribute to communal wellbeing on such a scale will act as an irresistible pull factor for the super-rich, especially when they learn that the civic-minded top 5 per cent will be issued complimentary hair shirts. Emblazoned with bright yellow pound signs, these sturdy waterproofs will provide welcome protection from the elements when CEOs, hedge-fund managers and any other members of the bourgeoisie who thieve more than £80,000 per annum are drafted into chain gangs to pick up roadside litter. (Apologies to the membership, but Jeremy has equivocated on expanding freedom of movement, as it was observed that such liberty might be misused to leave the country.)

    Besides, who is the tax evader par excellence? Who, the British people will be shocked to learn, has hitherto paid the Exchequer exactly 0 per cent, year upon year? Santa Claus. A notoriously wealthy, privileged capitalist who usurps the role of the state in determining who’s been naughty and who’s been nice. Closing up this loophole will alone finance our whole first term.

    Lastly, Jeremy has sorted climate change. We will nationalise the weather.

    2. Absolute classic, especially the bit about getting an electric car in a goody bag.

      However.. who is downvoting every comment? I htought such individuals had been abolished?

  46. Fine morning here .. garden is really sodden from the deluge of the past few days .. Birds are happy now that the feeders are full.

    Moh is playing in a Sunday competition this morning .. hope he steers clear of the soggy bunkers!

  47. Farage reveals NEW PARTY plan

    It was always daft calling it the BREXIT party in my view. Now they will have to Rebrand . Would have been far more Sensible to have called it the Reform Party’s and adding a strapline to it such as Fighting for Brexit

    Cannot say I find the name Reform Party that inspiring and lot of parties have used that in their name as well

    NIGEL Farage has revealed plans to rebrand the Brexit Party as the Reform Party with an agenda of “draining the swamp” of Westminster politics.

    The Brexit Party leader has warned the political establishment that getting Brexit done is just the beginning and that his party’s long term future will be about reforming Britain’s broken political system.

    But in the short term, the veteran anti-Brussels campaigner has not ruled out taking on a role as an EU commissioner if asked by Boris Johnson.

      1. Now don’t be silly. Fairness is an arbitrary concept that is set by someone according to what will gather the most votes.

      2. Car parking has nothing at all to do with health. It costs a lot of money to provide Free car parking and that’s money coming out of the health budget

    2. All hospital charges are unfair. It’s our property. We paid for it. We own it. The hospital si charging us to use our own property.

  50. Radio 3’s Drama on 3 offering this evening:

    “The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives”
    Drama about the struggles, rivalries and interplay of personalities among the four wives of Baba Segi, the pompous patriarch of a well-to-do polygamous Nigerian household.”

    I suppose it’s progress. Following on from the days when the Archers was intended to instruct about farming methods. Today we are going to be instructed on how to or how not to live with four wives……

      3. I wonder how long you would need to be out of sight before they realised that you were not in the shed but had run for the hills

    3. Dear life. What utter dross they churn out. Not once I imagine do they speak negatively of how disgusting such an occurence is, how it goes against everything this country stands for.

    4. Any useful tips about treating mastitis in goats?
      The Archers used to be obsessed with Warble Fly.

  51. Julie Birchill is growing up and becoming funny

    When a celebrity like Lily Allen says she believes in a politician, 100 voters cry
    JULIE BURCHILL – 24 NOVEMBER 2019 • 10:00AM

    Of all the celebrities I’ve ever had beef with, Lily Allen is the only one who has ever got her mum on to me.

    I wasn’t surprised to see Lily Allen crying with happiness at Magic Grandpa’s Money Tree Manifesto last week. To say the singer is immature is like saying the Labour leader is a bit of a Lefty; of all the celebrities I’ve had beef with, she’s the only one who’s ever got her mum on to me.

    Where I went to school, you made damn sure your mother never had the chance to stand up for you once you were out of Mixed Infants – but they obviously do things differently at Bedales.

    Politics being showbusiness for ugly people, it’s only understandable that politicians feel sprinkled with fairy dust whenever a celeb deigns to wink their way.

    But I find that every time a celebrity says that they believe in a politician, a hundred votes die – like Tinker Bell in reverse. Just think of the Donald Trump/Hillary Clinton presidential contest; she had the whole of Hollywood behind her – he had Hulk Hogan.

    In the past, people had more time for what stars thought about politics. There’s a dry, logical, even Marxist reason for this; once, stars were of the people.

    Showbusiness was considered such a rackety profession – one step up from prostitution – that even D W Griffith (“The Man Who Invented Hollywood”) wrote to his wife in 1908: “We can’t go on forever and not tell our friends and family how we earn our living”.

    When Marilyn Monroe said of Communism “They’re for the people, aren’t they?” we knew that she said it from the perspective of an illegitimate, impoverished, abused foster child. But when some celeb backs Jeremy Corbyn, we know they were invariably privately educated.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/films/2018/08/13/TELEMMGLPICT000066288941_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bqh9q5AkaxZikBhDdQ0hDFIORC8LilEL5cbKy75iS3lA4.jpeg?imwidth=1240
    Hypocrisy – like racism and misogyny – is now found mostly on the Left, whereas historically they were Right-wing things.

    The practitioners believe they can brazen it out by hiding in plain sight; hence celebrities who live in gated communities often preach about tearing down walls and the Sussexes scold us over our carbon footprints while taking private planes like others take taxis.

    Even when celebrities are sincere and I agree with them 100 per cent – see Rachel Riley’s and Maureen Lipman’s highlighting of Labour’s anti-Semitism – I’d be happier if they kept it to themselves, because I still think this kind of thing rubs people up the wrong way; “Listen to me, I’m the living embodiment of the line ‘If you do a job you love you’ll never work a day in your life’ so I must know better than you!”

    When Daniel Craig announced last week that he was “incredibly proud” to become a naturalised American at a time when the president of the United States is routinely referred to as Satan by showbiz kids, I felt surprised and pleased that I knew nothing about his politics.

    If you’re a celebrity and 
you want to make the world 
a better place, in fact 
there’s one really useful thing you can do. 
Don’t practise nepotism.

    Be you a shallow Beckham (trademarking your five-year-old daughter’s name) or a deep Chris Martin (recording a song by your teenage son on your new album), you are actively making the world a worse place for bright young proles.

    It was shocking to see the un-self-conscious entitlement of young Roman Kemp (son of Spandau Ballet’s Martin) in I’m A Celebrity… last week when – scorning a campmate’s liking for the singer Jane McDonald – he crowed: “Nobody knows what she does! It’s just random…”

    More random than becoming a radio personality at the age of 20, which had nothing to do with your parents being famous?

    If you promote or profit from nepotism, you are doing your bit to make society less fair by robbing some bright unconnected kid of a chance to escape the still savage strata of this country’s class system. I believe that the main cause of youth crime is lack of social mobility – and that is now being stitched up at the liberal fundraisers of the metropolitan elite as much as it is on the playing fields of Eton.

    Now there’s something for Lily Allen to cry about.

    1. I do wonder if Lily Allen would be praising Corbyn if his momentum thugs popped along to hers and tore those rings off her fingers, emptied her jewellery box, sold her furniture, emptied her bank account, repossessed her homes and turfed her out on to the street.

      Of course she wouldn’t. She;d bleat and squeal and wail about the unfairness of it all because, of course, communism – Corbyn’s dmeented policies are for *other people*, not her. Not the good people like her.

    2. I’m amazed that ‘celebs’ do not yet realise that, in political matters, their opinions are held in even greater contempt than those of politicians.

  52. Most of the Conservatives’ manifesto pledges had been pre-announced – but a key new policy is to add 50,000 more nurses to the workforce in England by 2023.
    This is from a level of just under 300,000 full time equivalent posts now.
    WE probably don’t need 50,000 more nurses. A figure often bandied about is the NHS is a 100,000 nurses short but this is very misleading 90% of those posts have someone doing those jobs. It will be a mixture of agency and bank staff so the underlying shortage is no more than 20%
    The main vehicle for doing this is through reintroducing maintenance grants of between £5,000 and £8,000 a year for nursing students.

  53. John Redwood writes today about ”mental health”, so here’s my reply………………..

    I believe the question should not only be ”what do we need ?”…. but also ”why do we need it ?’

    To answer correctly, please think outside the box and not exclude any answers which might be inconvenient.

    Such as what is the effect of the rush towards socialist progressivism and ”new think”, alongside the rolling back of hundreds of years of civilizational evolution?

    Change can be desirable but it can also be extremely destructive. Such as the downgrading of the family, the downgrading of marriage, the downgrading of personal responsibility, the ease of divorce, the ease of abortion, including the shocking desire of some individuals to legalize late term. Progessive methods of education, prizes for all, no discipline in class, the encouragement generally of an ”anything goes” mentality, the destruction of evolved institutions, the downgrading of Christianity.

    As in the US (until 2016), it seems that in Britain and Europe anything which undermines or destroys self reliance, self determination, and national pride in traditional civilization is seen by governments as desirable and a ”must have”.

    Western governments often seem to want to overturn the apple cart, so what happens then to all the apples ?

    Could so much downgrading of long term evolved human behavioral patterns have an adverse effect on mental health ?

    My opinion is a definite Yes.

    Polly

    1. Natch – look at the mental health of the importees. A survey in Denmark showed that inbreeding caused a far greater % of mental health problems than the indigenous population of Danes.

  54. Disqus hates me today. When I click on see more at the bottom of the page, 50% of the time precisely nothing happens. Now, it has decided to force me to login when I come back to it. I give up.

        1. No, it’s not.
          Men can now menstruate and have cervical smears.
          And don’t cite ‘O’ level biology – that is just soooooooo C20.

    2. Today & yes’day Disqus is showing no new posts, so I have to refresh the page frequently if I want to keep up.

  55. ” Tories’ election promise of £2.9bn extra public spending dwarfed by £83bn pledged by Labour”
    Are they all plain bloody mad ? I am still thinking that nobody will bother to turn up and vote on the day.

    1. The politicians on both sides know that a lot of voters are on to them now, and see that they are all trying to stop us leaving the EU. So its bribes and gifts from the left and the right to seduce those whose votes can be bought. Even more so than normal in this election. Labour are increasingly desperate as they see their voters switching to the Brexit Party in the North and the Limp Dems in the South / West.

      Not that the medias hand-written polls will say anything other than Labour is still on 30%.

  56. C Kirk Tweeted.

    Did you know:

    One of Democrats’ “star witnesses” Fiona Hill sat on the board of George Soros’ Open Society Foundation from 2000-2006

    Donald Trump’s foreign policy is everything the “Open Society” Foundation hates

    Is that why she is fighting so hard to impeach him?

    1. It was interesting to note, that of all of the things that President Trump has done, it was when he attempted to stop the travel of followers of islam from certain countries that the globalists went instantly ballistic from all sides in America.

      It was almost as if they were saying: “Yes we are bitter, we cannot accept that we lost the election and all of these trials are an utter waste of time. But you WILL NOT stop the spread of that cult. We are not letting them stop it in Europe and you will not stop it here either.”

        1. Really? America’s immigration systme is pretty tough. Surely most of such individuals as we’re lumbered wil would fail their criteria?

        2. jackthelad – thank you for reminding me that there is still innocence left in this world. I am almost certain that it was a desire to uphold some letter of the law, and not to block any attempts to hinder the ongoing invasion of the West, that motivated those who were attacking President Trump so loudly.

          The Democrats in America have shown that they are fair, honest and well-balanced in their approach to politics in recent years, after all. Not in any way in the pay of those people who want to keep global borders open at all costs.

          Jackthelad – No offence to you was intended. 🙂 But your comment was so sweet, that it should be put in a box, wrapped in a pink bow, and placed on top of the pile under the Christmas tree. 🙂

          1. The ACLU started legal proceedings, not the Democratic party. They are an organization committed to upholding the US Constitution – unlike Trump, who wants to drive a coach and horses through it, though he swore an oath to uphold it.

            If you are going to make comments on things American, please do some basic research before reciting the alt right’s playbook.

          2. The ACLU started legal proceedings, not the Democratic party. They are an organization committed to upholding the US Constitution – unlike Trump, who wants to drive a coach and horses through it, though he swore an oath to uphold it.

            If you are going to make comments on things American, please do some basic research before reciting the alt right’s playbook.

          3. Heh heh – it is rarely wise to use the “do some research” line. 🙂

            Relax chap. Life is too short to take offence easily.

        1. It does seem to be a bit of a coincidence that those who are saying “No” to the spread of that cult are now being treated as the enemy, or at least, as very bad people. China, Russia, even Myanmar (Burma) with the delightful Aung San Suu Kyi who was a heroine for those in the West is now shunned because they are removing the cultish invaders from their lands.

          In Europe we have Hungry and Viktor Orban who are also being punished by the EU for saying “no” and anyone who questions the policy of mass importations into their countries are labelled by the media as “far right” and extremist parties.

          This vilification of people and countries is global, and must raise an eyebrow on the people who don’t think that there is a co-ordinated policy in this area to spread the followers of one particular cult around the world.

    1. If Nicola is aligned with ”you know who”, would that explain her fondness for progressivism and her apparent desire to end the UK ?

      I think it might !

  58. I have no love, admiration or trust in the man but in one
    comment he just made a spark of integrity shone through, saying that much of the tory manifesto was inclusive in past UKIP manifesto’s.
    The brexit group in a one off campaign, good, “nige”
    highly suspect.

      1. Used by others to their advantage as with the MEP
        UKIP seats never returned
        to UKIP on the holder leaving the party.

  60. Where is the center of British government… and where are the sub offices…………

    Buckingham Palace ?

    Westminster ?

    10 Downing Street ?

    21-24 Millbank ?

    1. People have been fleeing London for over a decade. It is mainly those that are not in a position to leave that are left in London

    2. White flight. Made me laugh when I was watching the French coverage of the Meagain/Harry match. The reporter interviewed 2 “Londiniennes” who were straight out of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Maybe it’s because I’m English ….

  62. Gove wants ‘consensus’ over social care
    You can break down social care into 3 main groups a) Care in the Home, b) Care in care home and c) Care in a nursing home
    In my view it is not unreasonable that in all three cases people pay a small part of the cost of the service. If someone is in a care home they are not incurring Gas, Electric, water TV bills and food and laundry costs
    The amount paid could be done by a simple means testing by just using the tax band so say Non tax papers pay nothing 45% taxpayers pay say about 50% of the cost. 45% taxpayers would pay a 100% of the cost for care in the home. THis is normally only about an hour day so costs are modest
    The remaining cot could be covered by a social care fund that every one pays into
    He is asked if there is a “big thought through offer”
    in the manifesto to tackle social care problems.
    Short term, he says there will be an extra £1bn investment to
    tackle issues.
    Long term, he says he wants to “forge a consensus”
    with opposition parties to create a “solution that spans the
    generations”.
    He refuses to go into more detail ahead of the manifesto launch
    later.

  64. When journalists tell Johnson that his pledge was a lie I wonder why he hasn’t prepared a decent answer along the lines of:

    The House of Commons, the Speaker and the Supreme Court did everything in their power to prevent our leaving the EU.

    I obey the law, even if I don’t like it. I would happily execute the democratic mandate, they would not.

    1. Boris has a bunch of Remainers in the Tory Party who will stand again and be re-elected. He has to keep these MPs on side in any parliamentary vote on his ‘oven ready’ WA.

      The problem is of course blindingly obvious: his oven ready deal is well past its sell by date and has turned rotten to its core.

      1. Oddly enough, when I made that post I was thinking that he should say also that the remainer Tories were at fault but did not comment as such an approach would harm his position if they were not expelled as they should have been..

        Myassessment is that it in’t going to turn out in quite the way that those voting him into power think it will.

        December 2024 might well see the end of the Conservative party if he makes a fricassee of Brexit

    2. “And having bent her over the back of the sofa, I showed her my Prince Andrew technique…”

    3. “I told you NOT to look at it until it has been voted through! Also, there is no reason why I am trying to get it rushed through so fast before Christmas. No treason at all. Oops, I didn’t mean to let that slip out. Uhh… I didn’t say that at all, you have misquoted me. The fix is in, let’s get Brexit done!”

    4. The levels of hatred and contempt he engenders in me are beginning to rival the levels previously achieved by May and Blair

          6. The Organ Concerto is a favourite of mine. From memory Poulenc married the daughter of a Singer magnate: think Singer Sewing Machines. Some of his music actually sings.

            As with Elgar I admire the fact that Poulenc had no rigid musical training but more or less taught himself. We desperately need these talented folk outwith the establishment and mainstream.

          8. BBC Four showed a splendid Biography of this incredibly talented musician. I was astonished to learn that on one of her albums she played all the different instruments herself. The programme shown at the end of September is no longer available on iPlayer.

  66. Ongoing Guard Strikes
    Who know hoe long this will be allowed to go on. Some mainline trains have run without guards for decades and the entire London underground does
    Even dafter is the on the lines that these strikes are about will not have no guard. It is their role that will change. They will no longer be responsible for closing the doors. The driver will have that responsibility. The guard will on these train become a train manager. being responsible for checking tickets and for customer services as well as making on train announcements. In Exceptional circumstance a train will be allowed to travel without a train manger, This will normally be when there is no train manager available for example when another train is running late the intended train manager may be in the wrong place
    Platforms at stations will also have a customer service burton should assistance be needed. It would go through to the station staff if it is staffed or to the train manager or to the driver.. New train as well have step free entrance to train so a ramp is no longer need for the disabled or those with prams

    1. “In Exceptional circumstance a train will be allowed to travel without a train manger”

      “Platforms at stations will also have a customer service burton”

      ” The manger has gone for a burton “

          1. Burton was a menswear retailer. They secured the government contract for demob clothing given to returning troops. They were famed for off the peg three piece suits. Most Burton shops also had billiard rooms on the first floor.

            I know this because I had to research an outlet in Beverley on behalf of Carluccio’s restaurants when I surveyed the premises a few years ago. The premises had the inscribed names of several Burton directors on the granite plinth work.

          3. What they were really famous for was that they would sell you a bespoke suit at a very reasonable price. Had a few of them in my younger days.

        2. What? Burton has 4 breweries to my knowledge, possibly more by now. Some of them only produce p!ss but Marston’s and the Burton Bridge Brewery produce fine products.

          1. Burtons itself is no more . Some of the original breweries may still be producing beers but usually not the original beer they now being just a production unit for one of the international brewing companies

          2. There has never been a brewery called ‘Burtons’. Allied Breweries introduced a beer called ‘Burton Ale’ in 1976, it was a remarkably good beer (for them) and was brewed by them for a number of years before farming it out to Lees of Manchester more recently. It is now history. There is a beer style called ‘Burton Ale’ which is typified by the gypsum content of the Burton liquor. A good example is Marston’s Pedigree, a beer which is still produced using the Burton ‘union sets’, a unique fermentation system. A pint of Pedigree in good condition is hard to beat.

            But please don’t write about ‘Burtons brewery’, there’s no such thing and never has been.

          3. The best hangover cure known to man:

            Two pints of Marston’s Pedigree and a half a pint of cockles!

          5. You’re correct, Johnny. But that was over a century ago and BJ was referring to more recent times, I think.

          8. I’ll be having my regular Sunday night swig of Pedigree later this evening when I meet my mates.

  67. I don’t know if this has already been posted

    Delingpole’s Election Diary
    By James Delingpole – November 22, 2019

    THERE was a moment in Tuesday’s ludicrous ITV Leaders’ Debate where Corbyn and Johnson were asked which world leader they most admired. I forget what Magic Grandpa’s answer was – Nicolas Maduro or Kim Jong-un, I’m guessing. But I vividly recall Boris’s because you could actually see his brain whirring as he went through the various options.

    ‘Donald Trump? Probably the most deserving candidate, but I’d be pilloried if I went there.’

    ‘Justin Trudeau? Perfect opportunity for a hilarious joke about Canada’s first black Prime Minister . . .’

    ‘Erdogan? Well, I did write the most splendidly amusing limerick about him, though I say it myself . . .’

    Eventually, of course, he settled for the safe, boring, insincere option: one that banged home the approved campaign message while simultaneously offering no opinion that could possibly be construed as a genuinely held personal one.

    ‘I nominate the 27 heads of the EU member states for all supporting my withdrawal agreement.’

    His campaign advisers no doubt cheered: the key to winning elections, as we all know, is to keep ramming home the same phrases, over and over, far beyond the point where everyone is sick of them. And very obviously the Tories’ strategy is to emphasise the importance of Boris’s deal in delivering Brexit.

    But the rest of us will have groaned. Boris is so much more entertaining when he’s off-piste and near the knuckle. This was more like watching a chained bear being forced to do its dance. Sad, demeaning, unnatural.

    Does anyone outside the Westminster bubble actually watch this tosh? God, I hope not. I watch on sufferance because it’s my job. But the thought that real people might watch it for entertainment or, worse, to help them decide which way to vote I find absolutely terrifying.

    What, after all, do these charades tell us about politicians except how good they are at lying, virtue-signalling and tactical evasion? One questioner from the audience – clearly delighted with his own perspicacity and trenchancy, as people who ask questions in the audience are, like this is the moment they’ve been preparing for all their lives – thought he’d come up with a zinger: ‘How can we trust you?’ Pillock. You can’t! That’s the whole point. These are politicians on the election trail. They’ll say anything.

    Yet still they get applauded for it. Actual serious people – Westminster commentators who are supposed to guide us through the maze of politics – sit rapt through this utter tosh, nodding sagely, taking notes, forming opinions as if any of this matters. Who answered the silly Christmas present question better: Corbyn, by giving Boris A Christmas Carol to make the point that all Conservatives are heartless Scrooges, or Boris, by giving him first his Withdrawal Agreement, then some damson jam? Who, frankly, cares?

    It’s worse than a bad joke: this is our country’s future at stake. They say we get the politicians we deserve but I’m not sure I agree with that masochistic line. What we actually get is the politicians our broken, facile, relentlessly left-drifting media culture inflicts on us.

    Why, always, must these debates dwell at such length on the NHS? And why do the questions always treat leftist cultural assumptions about the NHS as the reasonable middle ground? So, for example, you’ll never, ever hear a politician of any hue being put on the spot about (relatively dismal) cancer survival outcomes, or about the massive inefficiencies of the world’s third biggest employer (allegedly after the Chinese army and the Indian state railways) or the pressure caused by health tourism. Always, but always, it’s the default, BBC-issue question – ‘Why isn’t the government spending more money?’ – or some nonsense cooked up in Labour HQ along the lines of ‘And can you promise our viewers that there are no plans to sell our NHS to Donald Trump?’

    The political effect of this is toxic. Not only does it mean that any sensible, balanced debate about improving the NHS, as opposed to just chucking more taxpayer dosh into the money pit, is verboten on TV, in much the same way as immigration ever since Rivers of Blood. But also it means that no one on the Conservative side of the argument has the incentive, let alone the balls, to do anything other than try to compete with Labour as to who can make the most extravagant spending promises – which of course is what Boris and co are doing now and which future generations will come to rue.

    Since every TV moderator out there apart from Andrew Neil shares the same lefty, right-on, mostly Oxbridge-educated, big state PC cultural assumptions, this is never going to change.

    And it’s no good leaving it to the audience to ask the questions because they’re even worse, especially if it’s on the BBC. Did you see the Question Time special with Nigel Farage? The one and only time I appeared on Question Time I got a long explanation from one of the bookers about all the trouble they go to about ensuring that the audience is exactly balanced along party political, sex, race, age, etc lines. Yeah, right. I reckon for this particular edition, the audience division went roughly: one third Guardian readers; one third Momentum members; one third loons with FBPE (ie Remainer nutcase) on their Twitter profile. (Subsequently it emerged that at least two of the cackling harpies who gave Farage a hard time were Corbynista activists). He did amazingly well under the circumstances – he was far more authentic and honest and combative than Corbyn and Boris were. Then again, he can afford to be: he’s not standing for election, is he?

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

    mancunius • an hour ago • edited
    In July 2016- May 2017 the Conservative Party (having noted with glee that Nigel Farage had resigned as UKIP’s leader) deliberately pretended its intentions were to leave the EU, in order to sink support for UKIP. They even went as far as to deliberately lie in the 2017 election manifesto about the firmness of their intention to leave if the EU refused to enable a sensible Art. 50 agreement.
    Ukip voters gave way, and supported the Conservatives at the 2017 polls. May then (in a secret and evidently pre-planned move) promptly tried to forge an illicit agreement that would leave us in the EU’s institutions and governed by its laws.
    Boris has already accepted the shaky structure of her WA, and also virtually handed NI over to the tender mercies of Brussels, Dublin and the CBI.
    What proof do we have that he is not copying May’s electoral strategy?

    https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/delingpoles-election-diary-3/

    1. Yes it has, but it bears repeating, if only for the benefit of those like me who have a small attention span for long articles.

    4. I think the case has been conclusively proved that Boris Johnson is a piece of stinking excrement who should not be trusted one inch.. The fact that Swinson and Corbyn stink even more rankly shows what a deep cesspit we are in.

      2. Remember, he was the only one who would take the job on. The rest of them wee even worse.
        At least we can reasonably believe that Boris is not impotent.

      3. Evening R,
        But that is the voting mode of many along with the nose holders, the best of the worst brigade make for a fair % of voters hence we go deeper into the sh!te every GE.

        1. No, he is a lot of one!

          By the end of next year, all those leavers who blindly accept what they have been promised by Johnson will find out the depth of his betrayal.
          I am tempted to say tough shite, you brought it upon yourselves, pity about the rest of the country they will have dragged down with them!

          1. We don’t trust him, but where I am, for example, there’s no Brexit Party or UKIP candidate to vote for.
            A choice between Tory, Labour, or Lib Dem is not much of a choice.
            I don’t trust Boris, but I couldn’t vote for either of the other parties if I was paid to.

          2. I am in a similar position, Green, Lib Dem,Labour or a Tory who voted for Mays deal 3 times. I will vote “None Of The Above”.
            At least I will sleep with a clear conscience.

          3. #metoo. And there’s no polling station in the village, for the second time this year. A further complication is that the current MP, Anne Milton, left the Tories, and is standing as an independent. Splitting the Tory vote, and the Remain vote. I voted for Boris in the leadership election (Arron Banks suggested that Leavers should join the Tories for this reason). I like Boris, but I don’t trust him any further than I could throw him. I hate his deal, but the spectre of Magic Granddad is not insignificant. So – do I embark on a 4 mile walk in cold and wet December weather on my prostheses (this is a public transport desert) to vote for someone i don’t trust, or do I stay at home? I genuinely don’t know the answer.

  68. Iraq’s defence minister accused of benefit fraud in Sweden. 23 NOVEMBER 2019.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/92873954adbf05a194cf8e50704ab2c2feb57276268e513b8f4dac7c6bd0ba52.jpg

    According to Sweden’s Expressen newspaper, the 52-year-old was reported to Swedish police for fraud two weeks ago, after news reports revealed that he was still registered as living in Sweden under the name Najah Al-Adeli. Records indicate that he received 51,900 kronor (£4,200) in welfare payments in 2013 and 33,200 kronor (£2,700) in 2014, the newspaper reported. It is unclear when he returned to Iraq.

    According to Aftonbladet newspaper, al-Shammari claimed while living in Sweden that memory problems left him unable to work. A 2014 judgement from a Swedish court stated that al-Shammari and his family had, “for a long time been partly dependent on welfare support”.

    He obviously knew where the food banks were as well. Lol! If this story weren’t true it would make a wonderful spoof. Another bright spot to it is that it shows that the Swedes are even more stupid than we are!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/11/23/iraqs-defence-minister-accused-benefit-fraud-sweden/

      1. All that’s needed to take out all these third world crooks is a moustache seeking missile……

    3. I thought it was against the law in Sweden to suggest the diverse ones were anything but enriching.

    4. This is just a press article. Not even an opinion piece. Why has it been downvoted? One assumes there’s a nasty, petty, – very small minded half wit flitting about over here.

    5. Your last sentence has been well known to anybody who has lived in Sweden. It’s not for nothing that my German clique of dentists referred to them as die blonden Paviane.

  69. The UK’s homes are so poorly insulated that to meet our 2050 climate commitments we need a nationwide programme to upgrade them.
    This one is just plan daft. In 2014 over 90% of UK homes were insulated to a good standard and among social homes it was even higher
    Homes that are poorly insulated are typically listed building. Most modern homes have Loft Insulation. The Hot water tank insulated if they have one, They have Central Heating and cavity wall insulation. There is nothing much more that can be cost effectively done that offers any real improvement
    The Average energy bill is about £1100 a year but a good part of that is standing charges and VAT so the £750 a year saving they suggest is total nonsense
    You would need to be living in a poorly insulated mansion to save over £60 a month.
    According to the Business Select Committee, it is a national infrastructure priority.
    The Tories’ pledge to spend
    £2,860 per household on improving the energy efficiency of social housing would affect 2.2 million homes but there’s no mention of what would be done for those who own their home.
    The claim that households could save up to £750 a year on their energy bills, following the retrofitting, sounds optimistic and could only
    apply to homes with terrible energy efficiency.The typical saving after such work, experts say, tends to be more like £50. And the policy is dwarfed by Labour’s promises of spending £9,300 per home on almost all of the UK’s 27 million homes – costing £250bn.

    1. This may sound odd, but thank you for posting.
      It has the same effect on me as the Humming Chorus in Mme Butterfly as she spends her last night with Dolore.

  71. Interesting….. the mystery of Britain’s ERM disaster seems to be slowly unfolding……………

    ”JOHN MAJOR’s Government disguised the true cost of Black Wednesday – the day that arguably changed the political and economic landscape forever – by building up a “secret” £12.5billion book of foreign exchange swaps, unearthed reports reveal.”

    https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1127926/brexit-news-eu-theresa-may-european-elections-john-major-erm-pound-euro-spt

    1. It was the day that finaly convinced me that we must leave the EU. France and Germany should have ensured the pound did not suffer and they both refused to help. I just knew it was all take and no give from them. They have never liked us.

        2. Our European Partners along with the likes of their devotees John Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron and May have been trying to cover their pro EU, anti British, tracks for decades.

          Their time is surely up.

      2. Who made a billion ?

        Was it the same guy who was the star client in an organization where someone else, some years later, by random coincidence, got a million dollar 1-2 day a week job in DC ?

        1. Who also ensured that we’d be join the Euro, thereby allowing us to vote to leave the EU.
          If we’d had the Euro as our currency, either we’d never have had the referendum, or Remain would certainly have won..

      3. A beggar despises those who throw a few coins into their cap much more than those who pass by on the other side. It was ever thus. The EU despise the UK in direct correlation with the amount we give them. The more we gift them the more they despise us.

        This is bloody obvious. Just read Donald Tusk’s derogatory remarks about us when the reality is that we have funded the major improvements in Poland that now make it appealing to its exiles. Better out and let them build their own economies. Hopefully they will learn a little humility and respect for our endeavours on their behalf over 75 years. We live in hope.

        1. Tusk does not hold the same opinions as the “ordinary” Poles. The Poles think he is a turd, too, which is why he was sent to the EU.

    2. Major screwed up badly and the UK economy paid the price. No-one else’s fault but his and his cabinet.

  72. Defence chiefs plan to slash Army to its smallest size in a century and lend one of Royal Navy’s flagship new aircraft carriers to the US amid fears of further budget cuts

    One source told The Times: ‘The army hates the aircraft carriers, which they have always seen as white elephants, but the Americans love them. They’re cutting-edge because they can operate with far fewer crew than the US carriers.
    ‘The army can’t recruit or retain the people it needs. Both the army and the navy think that the job of the RAF will soon be done by drones.’

    2. Those carriers can operate with fewer crew – they carry a lot less firepower. In fact there’s one here in the Chesapeake Bay hosting “conferences”. Maybe the Marines are sussing it out, they like smaller carriers.

  73. National Grid and SSE move offshore over Labour plans
    Corbexit
    Two top energy firms say they have moved ownership of their UK operations overseas to protect themselves from Labour’s nationalisation plans.
    National Grid has opened offshore holding companies in Hong Kong and Luxembourg, while SSE has incorporated in Switzerland.

    According to the Sunday Times, water company Anglian and Yorkshire has already set up an offshore holding company. Severn Trent is said to be considering a similar move.

    1. According to the Sunday Times, water company Anglian and Yorkshire has already set up an offshore holding company. Severn Trent is said to be considering a similar move.

    3. Would foreign ownership stop nationalization ? Surely Steptoes mob would not restrict themselves to UK owned business. They cannot hate the UK that much – can they?

      1. I assume their money has also gone offshore.

        Anyway, all the while Britain is in the EU, Labour’s “plan” is a non-starter, that’s why Comrade Corbyn was always a leaver.

  74. Evening, all. Hopefully, if I don’t freeze to death (the only way I can connect to the Internet is to have the computer physically attached to the router by a short LAN cable and the room is unheated), I shall be with you a little longer this evening. Mind you, some of you may not think that a blessing 🙂

      1. Not easily; it’s a workshop, really. Not much space. I don’t fancy frying – that would be from one extreme to the other! 🙂

          1. I used to be able to use the computer downstairs, connected by LAN, but the old router died (the reason I’ve been off-line) and the new one doesn’t seem to accept the old LAN connection (at least, I can’t connect using it), only the new cable supplied with it. Also the new router doesn’t have an antenna so its wi-fi coverage isn’t as strong. All in all, it isn’t very satisfactory, but at least I am online!

          13. I read somewhere that if you make a v shaped or 3-sided screen out of aluminium foil and put it round the router, it was supposed to strengthen the signal. I haven’t tried it but it may be worth a go.

      1. Thanks. I’ll have a read and see if anything is suitable. The problem is the distance from the router to where I normally work downstairs. It’s going to have to be pretty powerful as the house is very solidly built (none of yer modern, flimsy, unsound-proofed stuff).

        1. Conners – I have a couple of Powerline adapters, connecting the parish copier/printer to the router. They occasionally become unpaired, and throw out a lot of RFI, so keep them away from the TV, but they do work. I’m working on hard wired connections, hence there are more than a few floorboards up at the moment. I have a couple of hundred spare metres of CAT5 cable here, surplus to requirements and up for grabs, if you’re ever in Surrey…

        2. My house is fairly big, and I’ve had to use two WiFi boosters (luckily free from Sky) to get the signal around the house. Most of the downstairs rooms are breeze-block rather than just plasterboard.

          1. We used to use Buffaloes to boost the wifi signal, but they don’t seem to be compatible with the new router, either. Add in the lack of an antenna on the router now and you can see the problem. As I am not exactly tech savvy, it’s been a steep learning curve and a minor miracle that I’ve done as well as I have! 🙂

          3. 🎶Oh give me a home
            Where the buffalo roam
            And I’ll show you a house
            With a very messy carpet!🎶

        3. Mine works from the floor below and diagonally across the house, but like many it is no mansion. There is another alternative which also works for me but is more expensive.
          http://www.google.co.uk/shopping/product/6172833370904106845?lsf=seller:1309967,store:3055547059500178265&prds=oid:979965167633482031&q=internet+over+mains&hl=en&ei=oeLaXdaOMceZ1fAPy-uIwAc&lsft=gclid:CjwKCAiA8ejuBRAaEiwAn-iJ3iKBHkPwFVBRJ321vLIsSmWdpTsA2A8gZnvQs48e10EmJlZXtLlqGBoCoQEQAvD_BwE,gclsrc:aw.ds

      1. Before the router died, I used to be able to connect via a long cable which went from downstairs to upstairs via the outside of the house. This router only seems to work with the new cable that was supplied. I am wearing my thermal underwear and a thick sweater 🙂

          1. Serious clothes for serious times. In the days when it was still safe to get half-naked when going to the lavatory.

  75. 50.000 new nurses,which third world country are we going to rape of talent this time??
    Because gawd knows we won’t invest to train our own
    How many more training places for doctors and nurses have we implemented in the last 20 years…………….
    Bugger All
    If fact instead of paying nurses to train now we stuff them up with debt
    Wuckfits,wuckfits everywhere

    1. At the risk of channelling ogga, I feel compelled to point out that UKIP’s policy is to waive fees for STEMM subject graduates provided they work in the UK for five years after getting their degree.

      1. The trouble is that we then train nurses, who, when they are becoming really rather more competent at 5 years post-qualification, booger off to Australia , the US or some other place.

        We talk about poaching nurses from countries that need them, but other countries poach our nurses too.

        1. That’s because the working conditions are better overseas. We need to do more to retain staff. My neighbour’s brother is a doctor, but he went to NZ because his lifestyle and working conditions are better there. I have just come out of hospital, having been admitted through A&E (had a fall and broke a couple of ribs). A&E was manageable when I arrived late afternoon, but by evening they were lined up on trolleys both sides of the corridors. Nurses were complaining they were enlarging the unit, but not engaging more staff.

          1. Same reason doctors and nurses from overseas come here.

            Sorry to hear about your accident – hope you are not feeling too rough after it all. Did they do a decent job patching you up?

          2. I have broken a couple of ribs, for which the only remedy is don’t do much (particularly, don’t cough or sneeze!) and take painkillers. I’ve also got a gash on my forehead which they were supposed to glue, but never got around to before I was released. It has stopped bleeding and will heal eventually.

          3. Oh dear, I’m so sorry to hear that. Don’t laugh too hard is probably also on your pain list…I had very bruised ribs once and there were things like that, that I couldn’t do either. Perhaps when your forehead has healed you could try Bio Oil on the scar. I used it on a rather big scar and it worked wonders – it’s hardly visible now.

    2. I doubt that we actually need 50,000 new nurses. The figure bandied about is we need a 100.000 but that i just an educated guess the reality is there is no accurate data. Lets take the 100,000 figure. It does not mean there are a 100,000 jobs not being done. Over 90% of those roles are filled with agency staff or bank staff. The underlying shortage is probably about 10,000. We have about 300,000 NHS employed permanant staff add in agency staff so about 380,000 so a 10% shortage is about 4% which is not that great,

      1. I suggest you spend a week in a hospital at the sharp end on the wards or A&E before writing such tosh!
        Then you can tell us the need for extra nurses is not that great.

        1. Well this is based on NHS data so the underlying shortage is 10,000 to 15,000 out of a total current head count of about 380,000

          2. Well this is the data from the experts. I would give more weight to that than you uninformed observation

          3. There is far more to it than that.You cannot just look at one area and come to any conclusion.

          4. I agree which is why I suggest Jill Backson gets at the sharp end and it may temper his reliance on figures and percentages.

    3. Yo Rik

      We could make it hard for the new nurses

      Shoot Mr Rashid (and his crew), then make them fill in the application forms IN ENGLISH AND INCLUDE AN ORALTEST

    4. I have one of my daughters training to be a nurse on a 3 year Uni course.
      For this pleasure she will end up in about £30K of debt. She is at present doing a 7 week placement working 3 days per week 7.30am – 8pm 25 miles away, and 3 such placements will be undertaken this educational year.
      I am very proud of her and admire her desire to qualify for pediatric nursing which is her passion, but I question the financial wisdom of such a passion.
      Wuckfits yes, and you can find them in Westminster.

        2. The Brexit party idea of doing away with interest on the loans is sensible but they also ought to go back to the other idea of variable tuition fees so for nurses it could say be £3000 a year whilst Golf Course management of other courses such as history where wee have a surplus of graduates it could be £9.500 a year.The fees could be reviewed annually but any changes would not affect those already on a course

      2. Yo vvof

        Nursing and lots of other jobs/proffesions used to be like an apprenticeship.

        Until you know HOW the job should be done, ie sh1tty bits, you cannot tell others how to do it.

        I knew that at 1000, every morning, as an apprentice, I would be sweeping an effing big hangar. After 28 years in the job, it still needed to be done and a good manager helped.

        The NHS should be the same…..oops their managers never worked clinically

      3. You must be very proud of her .. it will be a mental hard slog .. and financially debilitating for her..

        If her mindset is I just want to make people better .. she will be such a huge asset , and will be very fulfilled . Good girl.

        2. If you look at the international data our spending on health comes out slightly above average but we get way below average outcomes from the NHS so money is not the NHS’s biggest issues. One area of shortage is nursing but that seem to be mainly down to the NHS failing to have proper workforce planning and training in place. Relying on migrants is not sensible therir can be language and cultural issues as will as high staff turnover

          Some basic comparision data can be found here
          https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm#indicator-chart

    5. Nursing used to be a vocation ..

      Women these days are so self centred and quite unconcerned .. I cannot see 50,000 so called liberated sober , untattooed , drug clear gentle souls volunteering for nurse training unless of course they are Polish, or from the Philippines or from Latvia!

      1. In my view, it’s crazy to have stopped training on the wards (Matron and Sister Tutor) and instead made nurses be graduates.

        1. THE RCN persuaded government to abolish the State Enrolled Nurse Grade in favour of Graduate State Registered Nurses and Heath Care Assistants. In times past a lot of mature folk returning to work having brought up children were delighted to become SENs with the lower (think O levels) entry requirement. Somehow I don’t think HCAs were regarded in the same “professional” light as SENs.

          Things may have changed but I suspect this is one factor behind the need to recruit staff from abroad.

        2. THE RCN persuaded government to abolish the State Enrolled Nurse Grade in favour of Graduate State Registered Nurses and Heath Care Assistants. In times past a lot of mature folk returning to work having brought up children were delighted to become SENs with the lower (think O levels) entry requirement. Somehow I don’t think HCAs were regarded in the same “professional” light as SENs.

          Things may have changed but I suspect this is one factor behind the need to recruit staff from abroad.

      2. Most want to work 9am to 5pm which does not really work in the NHS but they have allowed it to hapen so hospitals are understaffed in the evenings and at night and weekends

      3. We’ve all heard the old stories of soldiers wounded in battle who married their nurses. Now the nurses are so bloody regulated that they are just box-tickers and not allowed to waste time talking to the patients.

      4. Nurses now can describe in detail how to find the ratio of 2/3 the square root of the volume of a bedpan but cannot will not empty it

        1. We had nurses who could write a thesis on faeces, but not clear it up.
          Nurses are now in debt because they have to pay tuition fees, rather than earn a small wage as apprentices.

    1. “…Orlando is a remarkable human being who questions every kind of duality
      and experiences a sense of ‘in-betweenness’ in both life and art. It’s
      about freedom of speech, about being who you are, to choose the identity
      you like and not be put into a drawer if you’re a man or a woman.”…

      So… it’s a pile of tosh then?

      I expect the ‘freedom of speech’ she discusses will be precisely not actual freedom, but only to agree.

      As for ” shake up this old-fashioned, beautiful, wonderful place” I hear ‘ruin it and invade tradition and dignity with nonsense. Why is no one shouting ‘the emperor has no clothes on’ over this nonsense man in a dress pap?

  77. Nicola Sturgeon says scrapping Trident is a ‘red line’ in any deal with Jeremy Corbyn

    A BTL

    COLIN MAYES 24 Nov 2019 3:17PM

    So let’s get this right Nicola, you want an independent Scotland and scrap Trident, what about the jobs in Scotland that rely on Trident or don’t they matter? Sturgeon and Corbyn an absolute class act, in an asylum.

    Simples, she will get Westminster to pay Scotland A Zillion Groats (Ne Scottish Currency) to pay for the lost jobs when Faslane shut down

    Korbynski, however, will want the IRA to have Trident

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/11/24/nicola-sturgeon-says-scrapping-trident-red-line-deal-jeremy/

    4. In other words, she wants to dictate the defence policy of a country from which she wants to gain independence.

    1. ” The sheep capsized ”
      ” You mean, the ship capsized ”
      “Yes, that’s right, the sheep capsized.”

    2. Yo T_B

      Call me cynical, but what was going to happen to the sheep

      Were they going to live in an ovium paradise, or be eaten

      The sheep are a symptom, the ship is the problem

      I was on the first ‘NATO’ ship to go into the Black Sea, after we became matey with the Russians, back in the early 80’s (we docked in Constanta)

      The Black Sea there is not rough. What caused the ship to capsize, regardless of cargo, that is the question to be asked.

    1. There are a good number of these “individuals” who already think that our country is theirs, because we have been so tolerant of their “little boy temper tantrums.” The world has many countries who can remember what it was like when the British squared off and decided to take them seriously.

      But it’s a Sunday night. 🙂 I have had no desire to touch alcohol for over a week while I’ve been recovering from the Cumin overload, so I shall have a glass now and catch up on all of those programs that I enjoy better under the influence. Have a good night. 🙂

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6ZvylOSy5A

        1. We are not all dreaming, some of us have our eyes open.

          The future has two paths. This is the same in an increasing number of countries now. There is the easy way and the hard way. The vast majority of moral people would choose the easy way. Our politicians on all sides will not let that happen and are forcing us into a position where doing it hard way will be inevitable. The politicians know this.

          This is not a fight that we want. This is not a situation that we want to be in. It is being done to us on purpose. But we are still strong and have the numbers on this island to prevail. We will win.

          On that happy note I am away into the night to watch 2 episodes of the Walking Dead. Which is not that far from one of the futures that we would like to avoid. 🙂

        2. Evening TB,
          Many currently supporting / voting
          lab/lib/con must find the status quo acceptable
          they have been following the same voting pattern for decades.
          We could never have got into such an odious
          state as a nation without their input.

    1. Good evening Lovely One

      But you must never forget that immigration not only enriches us but is essential for our economy.

    2. TB,
      I did say some weeks ago that the islamic ideology in positions of power
      was knitting together nationwide, nicely.

  82. We are NEVER going to have enough nurses or enough
    of anything unless the borders are strictly controlled and none of the political toxic trio are going to do that any time soon.
    The electorate are gearing up on the strength of fairy tales once again to keep in place a mass uncontrolled immigration party, followed by a mass whinge & mass
    importation of foreign potential work units, plus mass
    problems, ongoing.
    Been proved for at least four decades that you cannot have mass uncontrolled immigration & a decent healthy
    infrastructure

      1. T,
        You have backed the wrong
        political horse in a field of wrong horses ALL the entrants are ringers with vested interest
        as in,
        status quo regarding the eu is
        GOOD,

      2. The biggest problem is very poor management and process and system within the NHS. . We actually spend slightly above the EU average on health but get way below average performance

        Specific additional issues are a shortage of nurses and a shortage of beds

  83. “Snowflakes” is a word that doesn’t really accurately describe the Puritwats. The Puritans would be really proud of this story from the US

    The Daily Northwestern student paper, staffed by these aspiring journalists, recently apologized for covering a “traumatic” event on campus.
    The traumatic event in question was a speech by former Trump official Jeff Sessions.
    Unsurprisingly, some students protested the ex-Attorney General’s speech, and the newspaper covered the protest. But the paper said they inadvertently “retraumatized” these protesters in reporting the story.

    Past generations were traumatized by fighting in the Vietnam War, or having police dogs sicced on them while marching for equal rights.
    All it takes for these snowflakes is to be traumatized is a newspaper article about a man who has differing political opinions.
    So the paper apologized and published an editorial promising that if a news event could be ‘triggering’ to the snowflakes, it just won’t be reported.
    Once again– this is supposed to be one of the finest journalism schools in the world.
    https://reason.com/2019/11/11/daily-northwestern-jeff-sessions-editorial-triggered-students/?fbclid=IwAR2iQQsYs-5MNO2PbFMy4pPmcM7HG5Md4vk_d574I-8irHfChoYrzwiyiTc

    1. I don’t think it’s our own mods. Heck, we’ve all posted some pretty racy things but there’s never been this sort of draconian assault before. I suspect it is related to the downvoter popping up.

  85. LOL every comment now is getting the: “Hold on, this is waiting to be approved by Not the Telegraph Letters” message.

    So either I’m being punished for saying it is Disqus staff that are running the vote-stripping bot, or, if it is happening to lots of people, then Disqus is falling down again this weekend. Time for some food to see if it clears up.

    (Or they just don’t like those people who share our opinions. 🙂

  87. Serious accident during circus performance at Hyde Park. An acrobat fell 30 foot to the ground . Some reports suggest that she was conscious but from that height could have some quite serious injuries.

      1. Sort of they cancelled that performance and give them tickets for a later performance

        Lets hope she recovers 30 foot is one hell of a fall and you are likely to have serious injuries. At least Hyde Park is near a major hospital as the faster you can get to hospital the better your chances

  88. Premium. Anyone care to oblige?

    Families are our basic social structure. So why are the Conservatives penalising them?

    PHILLIP BLOND

    If the Tories really want to help families, they should offer genuine choice instead of engineering family fragmentation

    One of the most telling aspects about the limits of modern conservatism has been the almost complete absence of thinking about the family. Over the last 20 years I can think of only two ‘positive’ ideas. There was the 2015 derisory marriage tax allowance, which allowed one non-working partner (in effect) to transfer £1250 of their tax allowance to their spouse if they were basic rate taxpayers – producing a massive net gain of £250 a year for married couples who fulfilled the requirements. And then more importantly in September 2017, the increase to 30 hours free nursery care…

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/11/23/families-basic-social-structure-conservatives-penalising/

    1. Here you go…

      Families are our basic social structure. So why are the Conservatives penalising them?
      PHILLIP BLOND – 23 NOVEMBER 2019 • 10:00AM

      If the Tories really want to help families, they should offer genuine choice instead of engineering family fragmentation

      One of the most telling aspects about the limits of modern conservatism has been the almost complete absence of thinking about the family. Over the last 20 years I can think of only two ‘positive’ ideas.

      There was the 2015 derisory marriage tax allowance, which allowed one non-working partner (in effect) to transfer £1250 of their tax allowance to their spouse if they were basic rate taxpayers – producing a massive net gain of £250 a year for married couples who fulfilled the requirements.

      And then more importantly in September 2017, the increase to 30 hours free nursery care for preschool 3 and 4-year olds, to provide term-time cover for working parents. And… that’s about it: roughly speaking one positive idea per decade.

      Along with such ambitious acts of construction have been conspicuous acts of negation. Recall 2012 when the finance bill removed child benefit for those households where somebody has an income over £50K.

      In addition, there was the complete erasure of New Labour’s three-pronged approach to achieve full employment and eliminate child poverty, including the wind down of ‘Welfare to Work’, the dismantling of the working families tax credit system and the ending of the focus on early years, particularly Sure Start.

      These policies were largely based on getting ‘workless families’ and ‘lone parents’ (mostly women) into work. The claim that work was the best route out of poverty was largely thwarted by the developing gig economy, which has resulted in most children in poverty now living in working households.

      It is odd that a Conservative Party hasn’t done any serious thinking on the family, the basic social structure for most of us. Perhaps because Tory policy has been, not conservative but liberal, ignoring the relational and the familial and encouraging instead autonomy at virtually every stage of human life.

      The effective policy of forcing women into lifestyle choices they might not actually want to make – such as subcontracting their childcare to third parties so they can go out to work – reveals the governing assumptions and the implicit bias of the current system.

      Quite how badly British families with young children are treated was revealed this summer in an OECD/UNICEF report.

      The UK was the among the worst in Europe for supporting parents with young children in terms of paid parental leave (the UK offers just 12 weeks fully paid maternity leave compared with 85 weeks in Estonia and 72 weeks in Hungary) and was the worst in the EU for affordable childcare.

      But that’s not the half of it. We penalise families at the very point when they most need support (young families with babies). As has been conclusively demonstrated in a series of reports by CARE, the existing tax system heavily penalises family formation.

      In 2017 the tax burden on a married couple with two children, where one parent was earning an average wage, was 30 per cent greater than the OECD average.

      By contrast we tax single people 22 per cent less than the EU average. And most families at some point are all single earner households and most countries support people during family formation when they are in most need.

      For example, a single earner household family in the UK pays 85 per cent more tax than a comparable French family, twice as much as a comparable US family, and a shocking eleven times more than a comparable German family.

      Given that post-Brexit, we won’t be able to move to the Bavarian mountains to have children, we surely have to reverse this liberal prejudice that always rewards free single individuals and penalises families.
      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/11/23/families-basic-social-structure-conservatives-penalising/

      So, what to do? Well I have long argued that we need to restore what was lost at the turn of the millennium, the transferable tax allowance between a partner who is looking after the children and one that is working. It’s still the easiest thing to do, it’s already in the tax system through the marriage allowance and has the virtue of being easily grasped.

      In effect the current system penalises families, encourages one parental status and all the penalties that implies for mother and child. It incentivises parents (particularly low paid ones) to abandon their children as soon as possible for the workplace, as how else can they make ends meet?

      And in so doing it offers nothing to encourage or support the informal systems of care that are vital for a well-balanced life (grandparents looking after little ones etc). After all, if the mother is encouraged to go out to work how is she meant to subsidize or support her childcare needs?

      The situation marginally improves once the child-care subsidy kicks in at age 3. This provides some £5,500 additional incentive to encourage mothers (and it most often is) to depart the home and enter work. But should the state really be trying to break up the world of care quite so aggressively via the tax system?

      Do we really know the cost in terms of health and wealth and human need? Some children really do need their parents with them during the early years. Psychologists can relate, ad nauseum, the costs to some children of their parents leaving them, too early, in the hands of others.

      As Ian Mansfield has argued so persuasively on Conservative Home, we should at the very least, uphold the principle of fairness and link the nursery subsidy to exchange of tax allowances so that families could take one and not the other. But still this leaves untouched those with children between the ages of 0 to 3.

      When we penalise the family as perniciously as we do, at least let the tax system recognise that the capacity of a person to pay tax, if they are looking after others, is greatly reduced. We need this principle to be secured in our tax policy. We need to offer people genuine choice instead of engineering family fragmentation, via the tax system. If conservatives now believe in marriage equality shouldn’t they make the state’s treatment of it more equal?

      Being serious about the family is crucial not just for the well-being of the child but for the mother as well. Overwhelmingly academic research shows that in the West the gender pay gap is not related to sex discrimination but to the hidden pregnancy penalty that mothers face. So, it follows that if we wish to genuinely progress women and achieve equality and fairness for them it’s the focus on families and children that is decisive.

      In this regard we have much to learn from Europe in general and central Europe in particular. Take for instance Hungary, a country whose policies regarding women and families can lay claim to being among the most progressive in Europe. The support Hungary offers is truly staggering.

      Public spending on families in the OECD is an average of 2.4 per cent of GDP. In 2019 Hungary is planning to transfer 4.6 per cent of GDP. And it is spending it across the board to combat not just the gender/pregnancy pay gap but everything that is associated with the pregnancy penalty.

      This includes housing, where normally young couples would not be able to afford accommodation of sufficient size and who would otherwise create an asset-less class that was forever cut off from property. Plus, they try to enable mothers to find work after their children are born and maintain their connection with the labour market.

      For example, every married couple where the woman’s age is between 18 and 40 is eligible for an interest free loan of £31, 250 euros on a low repayment scheme, with 30 per cent written off on the birth of a second child. On the birth of the third the loan is entirely forgone.

      Now Hungary, like much of central Europe, is in an understandable demographic panic about enormous losses in population, but such a transfer at least reverses the penalty for having large families.

      In addition, rather than condemning young families to an asset-free future in rental accommodation, which is what happens in the UK, the Hungarians try to offer real security to family formation, including subsidised mortgage loans at 3 per cent of up to 46,875 euros for a three-child family, including further mortgage tax relief of 3,125 euros for the second child and 12,500 euros for the third. Other family inducements include grants towards a large car and, (this will appeal to Telegraph readers) complete exemption from income tax for a woman with four children or more.

      The very fact that all this sounds so unusual should cause us to reflect on the actual price women pay for having children and what, if anything, we are prepared to do to compensate for such choices that, let’s face it, are structurally necessary for society and fundamental to our social balance and economic cohesion.

      An important study, published last year by Princeton Professor Henrik Keleven, found that women who have children lose out in comparison with their male counterparts by earning 20 per cent less over their careers after their first birth. Given such a loss, even Hungary’s efforts can’t quite compensate – but at least we should thank the Hungarians for trying.

      Against persistent criticism, by outraged liberals, that this is all intended to reinforce the patriarchy (they mostly hate the idea that post-liberal Hungary might have something to offer us) Hungary is trying to equalise choices and endeavours both supporting families and getting women into the labour market if they so wish.

      Hungary also offers payment for grandparents to help cover childcare to help women back into work and have led a planned 40 per cent increase in nursery places so that women who want to return to work have a place where they can leave their children.

      Also, they throw in free catering and textbooks, and a legal requirement that part-time working has to be granted, if requested, by any mother with children under 3. Happily, female employment has risen in Hungary from 54 per cent in 2010 to 66.6 per cent in 2018. What can we learn from this? That tackling the gender pay gap and helping families are largely synonymous endeavours, and supporting families is highly progressive as a result.

      Given the Conservatives’ new electoral base – often struggling working class families with children – they could and should abandon their middle-class liberal bias for autonomy and instead support solidarity with children with families and with women.

      So Conservatives, lets mirror the scale and vision of support for families that we see elsewhere in Europe. For the benefit of wider British society, one-earner families should not be the preserve of those who can afford it.

      1. I suppose that if you are not shovelling cash into the EU budget you can afford to be a bit more generous at home. Who would have believed it!

      3. Labour want to abolish the transferable allowance they seem to hater couples. In most European countries the personal allowance is fully transferable and with pre school children it is far better and most cost effective for one of the parents to care for as child. In a nursery ther costs are very high

      4. Does the writer realise that UK taxpayers are paying for the largesse in Hungary? The only large families encouraged here are those of single parents.

  89. Dear mods
    2 comments I have put on in the last few minutes of smiley emojis are awaiting approval. .??

    1. As were several others. For some reason the site had gone into pre-moderation. Couldn’t see any obvious reason for that, so I’ve turned it off and approved the pending comments…

  90. Plymouth Council

    Plymouth council have registered a load of students who had not applied to register. The council claim it was a mistake but it is hard to see how it could be done accident but that would be pretty near impossible to do at the very least it must be gross incompetence

    Even dafter it is not actually an offence to register someone without their consent. I can only assume this is some political incompetence and the law was never updated when it changed to individual registration

  91. A ruddy risky move

    Petulant former Justice Secretary David Gauke cut a lonely figure as he launched his independent bid to remain MP for South West Hertfordshire after being deselected by the Tories.

    But there was a familiar face among the sparse group of supporters at the devout Europhile’s campaign launch – fellow former Cabinet Minister Amber Rudd.

    https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2019/11/24/00/21388658-0-image-m-60_1574554776336.jpg

    Given that she boasts she is ‘not finished with politics’, was her appearance the wisest move?

    Tory Party rules state anyone who campaigns directly against a Conservative candidate has their membership card torn up. I hope no one sees this photo…
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-7719001/To-think-Prince-Andrew-reckoned-Boris-Johnson-pickle.html

  93. What does the Tory manifesto mean for those on benefits?

    Universal Benefit does in general k well. One problem r people transferring to the old system to the new where there is a 4week delay. For new claimants that should not be an issue as they would review money when they left their job

    The other issue t of the frequency of medical reassessment. Now nearly all would be seeing their GP on a regular basis so the GP should be required to notify the DDS of any significant changes to the patients health. This would reduce the need for reassessments

    The Conservatives confirm that they will continue the roll out of Universal Credit, despite the controversy that has dogged the new benefits system.
    As has already been announced, they are ending the freeze on benefits, which will mean a 1.7% increase in the money people get next April.
    They also pledge to reduce the number of reassessments that people with disabilities face for their benefits, with a National Strategy for Disabled People promised by the end of 2020.

  95. Completely off-topic, as age kicks into my life, possibly. This week I wore my first pair of “serious man slippers” and they were sooo comfortable that I don’t wear anything else on my feet in the house now. I have had slippers in the past, but they tended to be balls of fibre / furry things whose sole purpose was to keep the feet warm and the neighbours cats entertained. These new ones could be used to meet Royalty. The older Royals, not the young ones.

    I have also needed to go to the Doctors for the first time in 30 years this week, after eating something with an unwise level of curry seasoning in it. Never before in my life have I had an allergic reaction to anything, but my body just said “What the hell was that you ate, you fool?” From reading comments made here by others, medical tests are just a part of life as you reach the later decades. I may just have been lucky so far to have 30 years with no reason to go.

    I have also started “tutting” where I did not do so before. Three attempts to spell the same word, all ending in failure, will cause one.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7bc2519af0094a7f4d269748448a494bf4b5b44a7445469b6f18ad0a9b2d2c6d.jpg

    1. When/if you find out what caused it, please let us all know.

      I’ve been an avid curry swaffler for years, but just recently I’ve been getting some fairly scary reactions; I’m guessing I’ve become sensitised to something but unsure what it is.

      Scary to the extent that I now seldom eat curries in restaurants. The most recent needed antihistamine and HG was just about to dial 999 because my throat was closing.

      1. For me it was Cumin, but it was the quantity that I used rather than the spice itself I suspect. I had realised that I had been using lots of spices for years, but I wasn’t really sure of the real flavours of each of them. So I tried using one at a time. But I put in a whole spoonful in one meal so that I could REALLY get a sense of the taste. That did not go well. I liked it, but it has taken 8 days on 1 Piriteze anti-histamine a day to get over it. My arms were wrapped up like The Mummy in the old Hammer Horror films for a couple of nights.

        I will wait a few weeks to see if even a small amount will now trigger a reaction. I have eaten tear-streamingly hot curries before with no bad reactions, so it might just have been too much in one go.

        1. UK normally, although there is a Kashmiri one in Bergerac that has tasty food, particularly the lamb, but they don’t have a clue about “hotness”.

          I don’t know of any really good ones near here. We tend to make our own, HG does a good butternut and prawn one.

          Are there any around you?

          1. We ventured into one of the 6 curry houses in Bordeaux recently, I ordered a chicken vindaloo. Out came a chicken casserole devoid of spicing. I complained and the waiter said, “oh you want an English vindaloo, we cooked you a French vindaloo!” Out came another one suitably spiced and garnished with fresh chillies.

            French vindaloo? Really?

          4. I was in a Great Spanish Indian Cafe last night

            One dish was described as Muy Muy Piquante

            Wine.Poppadoms. Starter, Main Course, Rice/Naan, Coffee/Dessert for 9.50€, and a Schapps (Brandy) when you pay the bill

          5. There’s a fairly new curry house in Sarlat but we haven’t been there. I tend to cook curry (Indian and Thai) at home using home-grown garlic, onions, tomatoes, chillies, coriander and lemongrass. There’s an excellent spice emporium nearby.

            https://www.aromatiques.com/en/

      3. For me it was Cumin, but it was the quantity that I used rather than the spice itself I suspect. I had realised that I had been using lots of spices for years, but I wasn’t really sure of the real flavours of each of them. So I tried using one at a time. But I put in a whole spoonful in one meal so that I could REALLY get a sense of the taste. That did not go well. I liked it, but it has taken 8 days on 1 Piriteze anti-histamine a day to get over it. My arms were wrapped up like The Mummy in the old Hammer Horror films for a couple of nights.

        I will wait a few weeks to see if even a small amount will now trigger a reaction. I have eaten tear-streamingly hot curries before with no bad reactions, so it might just have been too much in one go.

        1. Thanks, that’s interesting because I was beginning to suspect that cumin might be the culprit. I’ll monitor it.

          1. I use cumin moderately in various things, including chilli con carne. Turmeric is a good curry ingredient and fabulously good for one!

        2. Be careful..

          MSG and colourings .. you don’t know what they add to the flavour or spices.. The new Heinz tomato sauce sets me off horribly.. and Haywards piccalilli.

    2. Re the slippers
      I once treated myself to a pair of Church’s leather soles and uppers slippers.

      Very, very comfortable and strong enough to wander around the garden picking fruit and veg. (much to HG’s annoyance, she seems to think I need separate footware for all parts of the house and garden)

      1. Funnily enough, I have the same ‘management’ problem! Apparently underwear is inappropriate attire for going outdoors.

        1. And yet I presume you would be permitted to go to the pool from the house in swimming trunks.

          Wimmin!

        2. Hiatus Hernia, tchhh .. or Gall bladder … hmmmm..

          Do you shave your nostrils or ear hair … Moh was horrified when he turned 60 , and little things like the chiropodist( hard toe nails] and stuff like that threw him .

          1. Cut toenails immediately after getting out of the bath. Nails are softer & less likely to split.

          8. You can get battery powered angle grinders nowadays with small diamond 3″ discs, ideal for those stubborn toenails

          9. That is what I tell Moh .. but as people get older , nails almost turn into rhino horn! He has a good chiropodist. Foot care for diabetics is very important.

          16. True_Belle – if my body does go “Planet of the Apes,” which is quite normal and the way that we are designed to be, then I might take further steps. By that age it would just be to make the future nurses lives easier, as nobody else will be seeing me. 🙂

    5. Be very careful, “tutting” starts as just a small outbreak brought on by an overload of “Mayinitus” or “Johnsonitis” depending on what season we are in. It however becomes much worse with a national outbreak of “electonitus”.
      The good news is that it normally runs its course over 6 or so weeks, any relapse can be helped by a good dose “Humorus Nottlerus”.

  96. Night All

    https://scontent-lax3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/76779548_2736257319793461_4868999416096227328_n.jpg?_nc_cat=1&_nc_ohc=9xJ1QTw_T5EAQn9iJkBzdLM3Uw-PRov75Xn3dDX6RLSfaVA4lgUiRTR4A&_nc_ht=scontent-lax3-1.xx&oh=41db01652de05c01c833addaebd73c31&oe=5E7BDCDD

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/91299186b723aaf7297d407b92b25a9a243dbc601b7792e03618ae3a2c292134.gif

    https://scontent-lax3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/76638444_3184606061566476_3515505571581132800_n.jpg?_nc_cat=1&_nc_ohc=AhoWIkaBrT4AQnrtLlYg8hbcCg8cc8kVR964NtFQFLXF1T6MajgaGG_aA&_nc_ht=scontent-lax3-1.xx&oh=78a8127e105b8fbcca5d16f98ead65c8&oe=5E7E11AE

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/60e8c54be1e1fabddb3bd25946e50b31fcbb1932d7c4df9ef8166dc1bb272081.jpg

    https://scontent-lax3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/78166191_2735558273196699_529580424058372096_n.jpg?_nc_cat=1&_nc_ohc=omDIa3Tzn7cAQkt0eLl6OjUSlMIlJx018_ObhfW21LEgzOyojju5EBY5Q&_nc_ht=scontent-lax3-1.xx&oh=523acba5780c31dd491ad3482d72455a&oe=5E4171C5

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3ab72ffbf9ffedcf864f4257fe709940dfa6558819382fa579b080d8ab84abf9.jpg

    1. Before long, the same treatment will be applied, by our incomers, to those in UK who are Christians.

        1. I say it often.

          I am quite sure that I was the first to post about Ali’s Snack Bar

          That said, I have mates of every colour, creed, religion, sexuality etc.

          But that is my right to make, not the laws.

          If they think it is, any

          ‘Gay’ comedian
          Muslim
          LGBTQer?
          Feminist,

          etc
          who makes a joke about a heterosexual, MUST be prosecuted

  98. The Telly-subbies strike again

    Should I divorce my husband after he cheated on me with a colleague?

    I met my husband Marc* in Berlin eight years ago. I was there on holiday – I’d recently divorced, my two grown-up children had left home, and I’d braved a solo summer trip.

    Where was he until then

    How about I met my husband to be Marc* in Berlin eight years ago

    Buck up DT, you cannot even do Red Top well

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/should-divorce-husband-cheated-colleague/

  99. Good night fellow Nottlers

    I hope that bright and bold posters will be displayed everywhere in all constituencies where TBP are fielding candidates. If TBP won all the seats in which they are standing it could save Britain from dying.

    WANT TO LEAVE THE EU COMPLETELY BUT DON’T WANT THE CONSERVATIVES AND THEIR SELL OUT DEAL?

    VOTE FOR THE BREXIT PARTY ON 12th DECEMBER – THE ONLY PARTY WHICH WILL KEEP ITS WORD ON BREXIT

    1. The real choice, Richard, is between Boris Johnson’ s Conservatives – or Communist Corbyn with Marxist McDonnel in the wings …

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