628 thoughts on “Sunday 29 December: Britain’s piecemeal health system needs remodelling, not just extra cash”

  1. Last night I watched the Three Stooges messing about in boats on Amazon Prime. Clarkson’s vessel was flying what appeared to be the blue ensign, usually the flag of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary, defaced with the EU’s ring of stars. “Defaced”, in this context, is a technical term without pejorative connotations, but on this occasion, I mean “defaced” in its everyday meaning.

  2. Good morning all.

    SIR – The Labour Party was established with the laudable intention that working men and women might be properly represented in British politics. In the period up to the Fifties, this aim was implemented. The establishment of the National Health Service and the provision of council housing are testimony to this.

    However, the party has been taken over by the intellectual Left. Its leaders no longer represent the “workers”, who are now better educated and have aspirations that are very different from those of their forebears.

    John Pritchard
    Ingatestone, Essex

    Robert Spowart 29 Dec 2019 7:47AM
    John Pritchard fails to realise that the “Intellectual Left” took over leadership of the Labour Party almost at it’s inception when the nascent group was so chronically short of funds it had to go cap in hand to the Fabian Society.

    Over the years Fabian Socialists have consolidated their grip on the Party leadership, culminating in the election of Jeremy Corbyn as Party Leader.

    1. Morning Bob

      Dull mild day here , still dark , damp and gloomy ! Never mind , it will clear up later I expect .

      Moh and I watched Bridge of spies (Tom Hanks ) interesting film about the capture and release of the U2 pilot Gary Powers who was shot down by the Russians .. thus increasing the the pressures that the Cold War presented from the East to the West…. and the erection of the Berlin wall !

      Does Corbyn embrace that type of socialism, what are his views on some of the major incidents that sent shivers through the democratic West .. I wonder what he thought of Castro , and the Bay of pigs incident ..

      Corbyn is a dangerous little man .. was Stalin his hero as well as Mao?

      1. Good morning m’dear.

        It’s interesting how, even after Hungary and Czechoslovakia many British Communists, including a number in the Labour Party, held onto their belief in the USSR.

      2. ‘Morning, Belle.

        Why are you still spending time worrying about Corbyn? Politically he’s as dead as a dormouse.

        1. Why?

          Good morning Peddy..

          Because everytime I listen to the radio or watch some TV or even read a paper, see a luvvie, etc I am reminded of his weasel whining voice.. Similar to the Big Issue woman in her long skirts .. who extends her hand and begs in Corbyn like tones.. She is everywhere .. transported to all our local towns ..

          The Big Issue has been hijacked by another culture !

          5. When teamed with the stoats they were a formidable opposition for Badger, Mole, Ratty and Toad.

          7. It’s the shadowy entities lurking behind Corbyn that should worry you.
            They have the brains and determination.

          8. I ignore Big Issue sellers, except one in Cambridge whom I walk past on my way from Côte to the bus stop. If he accosts me, I say, “Förlåt, men jag talar endast svenska.”

        2. ‘Morning, Peddy, Corbyn may be politically dead but he is still a dangerous influence on the young who see him as a deposed but still magic, Grandpa.

      4. ‘Morning, Belle. Thanks for the tip. If you enjoy watching Tom Hanks have you seen Sully: Miracle on the Hudson? It was directed by Clint Eastwood and I found it very good indeed.

          1. Hanks had a positive effect for people with HIV after his role in Philadelphia. It laid a lot of ghosts to rest for people who were afraid because of that awful ad campaign run by the Government and the Sun newspaper. Taking delight in terrifying everyone.

    2. I wonder what happened to that erstwhile poster ‘Fabian Solutions’? I doubt if she still works for the Torygraph.

      1. Kate Day. She vaporised once her identity was discovered.
        Maybe she’s AmFishface in the DT comments section.

  3. A good letter from a John Brandon regarding sorting out the Electoral Registers to cut down on the amount of fraud.
    No doubt the usual suspects will be up in arms because it will prevent certain elements of the population from exercising their traditional voting customs:-

    SIR – Before work starts on boundary changes, the electoral rolls need to be sorted out.

    A national register should be introduced based on National Insurance numbers and postcodes. Then we’ll find out exactly who is living where and who should vote where.

    John Brandon
    Tonbridge, Kent

    1. Even allowing for the days when 1/4 of the globe was painted red and many have taken up their right to be here, when out canvassing, there are many names that we decide are too complicated for more than a brisk “good evening”.
      And I’m not talking about Featherstone Cholmondeley Smythe.

    2. I understand that consideration was being given to doing away with the 2021 Census in the UK. I hope that the Census goes ahead as the information, if
      properly gathered, would be of inestimable value.

      1. You mean you want to see if the concluding episode of the Star Wars saga has resulted in a decrease in numbers of Jedi Knight adherents?

        1. It would give us a better idea of the size of the UK population, their ethnicity and where they live. I suspect if the “10 year” census at the start of each decade is stopped by the politicians it will be because they don’t want to know the facts. I want to know and hope the census goes ahead.

  4. Morning, Campers.
    A lot of throat-clearing; maybe Cherry is still keeping her eye on the main chance practising. The article is as convoluted as the Blair’s financial arrangements.
    Oh for the days of Bluff King Hal or his feisty younger daughter. (Provided we can keep central heating and running water.)

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/12/28/tony-blair-sought-eu-funding-trying-stop-brexit/

    “Tony Blair sought EU funding while trying to stop Brexit

    Tony Blair was bidding for contracts with the European Union for his “institute for global change” as he publicly campaigned to overturn Brexit, The Telegraph can disclose.

    Documents obtained by this newspaper show that the former prime ­minister held talks with officials about striking a funding agreement between the European Commission and the not-for-profit Tony Blair Institute (TBI).

    The officials included Ana Gallo-Alvarez, who was previously seconded to Mr Blair’s Middle East envoy office as deputy head of mission.

    She chaired a meeting between Mr Blair’s staff and Commission officials last year after Mr Blair held talks with her then boss, ­Neven Mimica, an EU commissioner.

    On Saturday a TBI spokesman insisted that the institute was “perfectly entitled to seek EU funding for work relevant to EU funding streams”, adding: “As a matter of fact we have not yet ­submitted a formal application so no funding has been received.”

    She said any suggestion of a connection between the talks and Mr Blair’s opposition to Brexit was “absurd”.

    In emails seen by The Telegraph, Mr Blair’s staff explained that the institute wanted to “explore opportunities to ­receive financial support” and said Mr Blair had “unique” connections with leaders of developing countries.

    One exchange reveals that they even considered registering the institute in “an EU partner country”, amid fears that a no-deal Brexit could cut off funding to British organisations from the bloc’s £26 billion development budget.

    For almost a decade, Mr Blair picked up lucrative deals with foreign governments and private companies through Tony Blair Associates, his commercial advisory firm, before winding up the organisation in 2016 and opening TBI.

    Mr Blair receives no payment for his work.

    However funding received by the institute helps to cover the cost of his travel and accommodation around the globe on behalf of TBI.

    Mr Blair and his staff held meetings with EU officials earlier this year, as he was separately campaigning against a no-deal Brexit and insisting the referendum was “reversible”.

    The institute insisted all meetings had been properly declared in the Commission’s transparency register.

    Cache of emails reveal behind-the-scenes talks to give former PM’s institute closer links with Europe

    She was one of Tony Blair’s most senior aides in his role as Middle East envoy, having been seconded from the EU to support the former prime minister’s work some 10 years ago.

    So it may have been with a sense of déjà vu that Ana Gallo-Alvarez found herself dealing with Mr Blair once again last year.

    Mr Blair had set up the not-for-profit Tony Blair Institute and he was seeking EU funding for some of his work.

    Ms Gallo-Alvarez was by now a senior adviser to Neven Mimica, the European Commission’s international cooperation and development commissioner.

    Mr Blair’s efforts to secure EU support for his institute are set out in a cache of emails obtained by The Sunday Telegraph.

    They took place as Mr Blair, 66, publicly lobbied for a second referendum on Brexit, insisting that leaving the EU would be disastrous for Britain.

    In many ways Mr Blair’s willingness to work with the Commission on projects around the world was entirely consistent with his view of the benefits of EU membership.

    One memo, written by an EU official on July 10 last year, appears to suggest that Mr Blair’s efforts on behalf of his institute were bearing fruit.

    “At a request of [the office of] Mimica, yesterday I participate[d] in a meeting with the Tony Blair Institute of Global Change, chaired by Ana Gallo,” wrote the unnamed official.

    “The meeting was an introduction for the TBI on EU’s development cooperation. They expressed interest to work closer with the EU and to explore opportunities to receive financial support.”

    The memo set out how TBI ran projects in 14 countries, with a total annual budget of £11 million.

    In fact, the latest accounts show an impressive turnover of $45 million (£34 million). Of that, $41 million went on “administrative expenses”, including the cost of Mr Blair’s travel as part of his work for TBI, for which he does not draw a salary.

    TBI also employed 213 staff at a total salary cost of more than $19 million – £15 million, an average of about £70,000 each.

    Mr Blair set up TBI in 2016 to carry out his not-for-profit work under the auspices of a single organisation, having wound down his lucrative commercial work advising governments and conglomerates.

    TBI accounts state he spends around 80 per cent of his time on work relating to the institute.

    Discussions between the institute and the Commission appear to have begun in February 2018, when Mr Blair met Mr Mimica in Brussels.

    Posting a picture on Twitter of the pair shaking hands in front of the EU flag, Mr Mimica declared that he and Mr Blair had had an “excellent discussion” on how to improve governance in Africa, where the former prime minister’s efforts have been focused for some years.

    An email sent on Ms Gallo-Alvarez’s behalf, inviting colleagues to attend the July meeting with TBI staff, said it was a “follow up” to those talks.

    The meeting took place at the European Commission’s headquarters in Brussels, which Mr Blair previously visited to discuss Brexit with Jean-Claude Juncker, the then European Commission president – much to the consternation of pro-Leave MPs who accused him of “interfering”.

    The official explained that TBI provided advice to the governments of developing countries on delivering key policies and improving living standards, including by embedding staff in the offices of prime ministers and presidents.

    “Services are requested [by governments] often, following exchanges and advice from former British PM Tony Blair.

    In their view, this political connection and dialogue is quite unique. According to them, this is what makes TBI different to other entities that carry out similar work.”

    The memo of the July 2018 discussion notes that some countries pay TBI directly for its work, but the institute also receives “financial contributions” from charities and the US government.

    As discussions progressed, Mr Blair met Stefano Manservisi, the director general of the directorate for international cooperation and development, on Nov 6. An official described the meeting as “positive”.

    A memo outlining the discussion noted that the institute “builds on Mr Blair’s work post-premiership, first as special peace envoy for the Quartet (UN, USA, EU, Russia) 2008-2015, then through his work advising national governments and countering religious extremism”.

    While Mr Blair was the Quartet’s envoy to the Middle East he was repeatedly accused of potential conflicts of interest between his public and private work – a charge he firmly denied.

    The memo concludes that officials would identify possible areas of “collaboration” with TBI and then make contact with Mr Blair “to see how this could be implemented”.

    Two months later, Mr Blair and Mr Mimica met again. “I know you are keen to see momentum on our discussions, as am I,” Mr Blair said in a letter to Mr Mimica following their meeting.

    “Since we met, my staff have been to Brussels and had useful meetings. I wanted to follow up with you on the proposal for us collaborating with the EU on effective government, policy dialogues and the economic agenda.”

    Mr Blair said that, following meetings between his team and Commission officials, “Ethiopia and Uzbekistan have emerged as priorities for us to focus on right now.”

    He continued: “Based on our teams’ discussions, there seems to be alignment between the EU’s strategic priorities and the institute’s work in Africa and Asia in many areas.”

    Mr Blair promised that his staff would draw up “concept notes proposing a collaborate on effective government in Uzbekistan and Ethiopia”.

    They would also continue to “explore collaboration opportunities” in other countries “with a medium-term time frame”. Mr Blair said that his institute could “bolster” the EU’s existing aid efforts.

    On Jan 25 2019, coincidentally just days after a public pronouncement by Mr Blair that a no-deal Brexit would “profoundly damage” the UK economy, Ms Gallo-Alvarez wrote to one of Mr Blair’s aides with a question about the practicalities of contracts with TBI in the event of such an outcome.

    “I don’t want to disturb TB with this but I mentioned to him I would be contacting you,” she said.

    Ms Gallo-Alvarez, a Spanish official who had worked as Mr Blair’s deputy head of mission in Jerusalem in 2007 and 2008, wrote: “In view of a future cooperation with the TBI, I have a quick legal question: is TBI a UK entity or given your international presence an International Non-Governmental organisation.

    “The later [sic] would be ideal, particularly in the case of no-deal Brexit and also on the agility with which we can enter into contracts with you.

    “If you were to be UK entity only – in case of no-deal Brexit – there might be restrictions for some programmes.”

    A member of the institute’s staff responded on Jan 28 explaining that the institute was registered in the UK, but added: “We are looking into our options should there be a no-deal Brexit. This includes registering in an EU partner country.”

    In the event, Mr Blair did not have to worry. The effort to remove the option of a no-deal Brexit this year, which he supported, was successful, meaning there was no need to activate TBI’s contingency plans.

    A TBI spokesman said: “TBI is perfectly entitled to seek EU funding for work relevant to EU funding streams.

    As a matter of fact we have not yet submitted a formal application, so no funding has been received.”

    The spokesman added: “The idea there is a connection with Mr Blair’s opposition to Brexit is absurd.”

    1. Doncha just lurve the name Neven Mimica? I’m sure he is a fine, upstanding Croatian…..why should he be involved with Blair?

      Wiki: “Early in Mimica’s tenure, the European Union approved 1.15 billion euros in aid for West Africa as part of the five-year European Development Fund program in 2015, nearly doubling its previous commitment to a region that is a major source of migrants seeking to enter Europe.[11] In late 2015, he negotiated a 200 euro million aid agreement with Eritrea as part of the Commission’s efforts to reduce the flow from what was, at the time, the source of the third largest number of migrants.[12] Since 2016, he has been working to implement the European Union’s 44 billion euro Emergency Trust Fund for Africa which is aimed to entice private investors to some of the world’s poorest nations and slow mass migration to Europe.”

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/politics/2019/12/28/TELEMMGLPICT000219962730_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqqVzuuqpFlyLIwiB6NTmJwe9quFJFkCvl4JzUa513NHE.jpeg?imwidth=1240

    2. “The idea there is a connection with Mr Blair’s opposition to Brexit is absurd.” – So absurd that a lot of people, including me, think it’s true!

      1. I think the DT could hear Cherry clearing her throat in preparation to defend her income stream.
        They know and we know, that sentence is a load of bollards.

    3. The memo set out how TBI ran projects in 14 countries, with a total annual budget of £11 million.

      Does anyone have an idea what Blair’s ‘projects’ entail? Providing clean drinking water perhaps or are they rather of a more non-material kind? Being a philanthropist with other people’s money must be quite easy.

      1. “Does anyone have an idea what Blair’s ‘projects’ entail?”
        Topping up the Blair clan finances?

        1. Of course, however I was thinking that there must be something, however insignificant, to give the ‘project’ a sheen of legitimacy.

  5. Robert Spowart 29 Dec 2019 7:54AM
    I see William Barter is pushing HS2 again.

    Surely it is about time he declared his interest in the project and was honest about how much his consultancy earns from the debacle?

  6. Morning all

    SIR – Boris Johnson has made the NHS his top priority. He plans to guarantee a set level of funding, but this does not address the fact that we have a divided and unequal distribution of services that appear inadequate at best.

    A “bottom up” process of service commissioning, led by innumerable clinical commissioning groups (CCGs), has resulted in different levels of care in the four home nations.

    It is time to “re-nationalise” the NHS, reversing this element of devolution, and to put the planning of services back into the hands of clinicians. There needs to be a functional and physical separation of acute (emergency) care and elective (planned) care if acute units are to cope. New community hospitals must act as hubs for primary care, taking pressure off existing acute units.

    The health service does need more funding – but it also needs remodelling if it is to keep up with the increasing demands of an expanding population.

    Dr Frank Booth

    Exmouth, Devon

    1. SIR – My daughter-in-law is just finishing her GP training. She has to pay professional fees and pay for all her GP exams, out of a salary that is most certainly not anywhere near three times that of the average employee (the figure quoted in a recent study by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development).

      Though highly qualified, she is already planning to work part-time as the strain caused by the rules under which she has to operate is intolerable. There is not enough time to care for patients; a ridiculous rule exists whereby only one ailment can be talked about at a time, and she lacks the support to do her job properly.

      It is the system created over many years by NHS management and government targets that is letting down patients, not GPs themselves.

      Claire Scott

      Newbury, Berkshire

        1. Perhaps she has chosen the wrong career. Medicine is a demanding profession. Even if she works part time it is still demanding and it is GP’s choosing to work part timer that is the primary cause of the problem. About two thirds of GP’s work party time if most worked full time we would have an adequate number of GP’s

          1. ” About two thirds of GP’s work party time if most worked full time we would have an adequate number of GP’s”

            Is that a political party or just a week-end bash?

    2. SIR – At my rural surgery in Switzerland I can get an appointment to see the doctor at any time between seven in the morning and six in the evening on the same day, and can also get to see the doctor out of hours in an emergency.

      The surgery is equipped with blood, urine and fecal testing equipment, meaning that results can be made available within minutes or, at the latest, overnight. Usually blood test results are emailed to patients, if requested, within 24 hours. There is an X-ray unit which produces immediate on-screen images. All this makes sure that, in most cases, there is no need to come back to get results.

      I fail to see why British surgeries with multiple doctors cannot collectively afford to install similar equipment and thus prevent patients from having to attend A&E unnecessarily. Incidentally, I have just received the health insurance bill for myself and wife, for the next three months. It amounts to £2,400. There’s no such thing as a free lunch.

      Roger West

      Appenzell, Switzerland

      2. WE have seen the range of services GP’s offer shrink as well as their opening hours shrink and coupled with this hospitals have disappeared leaving only large A&E’s but they are not really their for minor treatment but people are left with no alternative but to go to A&E

    3. Clinicians are not normally good managers. Like it or not we now have 4 totally separate NHS’s and that is not going to change. Westminster is only responsible for the English NHS. It should be organised Top Down. Some things are best run at National level and some at regional level and some at local level and that does not really happen at present

      We have a big gap in the service for minor treatment. The GP services is limited and in many case no more that a prescription issuers or hospital referral services and if you need any services out of of office hours forget it

      Most areas now have large medical centers these good be developed into both GP and minor treatment centers taking the load off of A&E . They are not even really there for that but as the alternatives disappeared the only real option people have left is A&E, It is an even bigger problem in the rural areas

  7. SIR – Jacqueline Davies should apply a very slight smear of butter to the underside extremity of the teapot’s spout. Surface tension will do the rest, curing all but the most recalcitrant teapot.

    W G Hookey

    Leatherhead, Surrey

  8. SIR – Jennifer Marston (Letters, December 22) need not be too worried about catching something during Communion.

    The chalice is silver, and silver has quite good bacteriostatic properties – that is to say that it stops bacteria from breeding. The linen cloth is boiled and bleached before ironing and the chalice is cleaned using recently boiled water, and dried with a boiled, dried and ironed tea-towel. I am confident that infection is unlikely if the above precautions are taken.

    S Linford MRPharmS

    Rustington, West Sussex

    1. Isn’t wine also mildly antiseptic, in that yer average germ is not likely to survive contact with alcohol?

      ‘Morning, Epi.

      1. ‘Morning, Hugh for that type of mouthwash antiseptic, I find that a slug of neat whisky does a very adequate job and, unlike Dettol, may be swallowed and enjoyed after swilling around the gums.

        It is also useful in counteracting angina.

        2. Wood’s Navy Rum at 57% is highly effective,however best a night time rinse rather than after breakfast (hic)

    2. And between sips the traces of saliva of the previous user/s are wiped with a cloth each time, so persumably that cloth takes up germs and puts them down on the chalice at each wipe? I’ve never oserved the cleaning cloth to be changed mid-communion. However, I also suspect that even so the risks are minimal.

      Where the germs are really exchanged is during the “peace” where everyone shakes hands that have been coughed and sneezed upon.

  9. Good morning, all. Very good recorded performance of “The Marriage of Figaro” on France Musique last night. It reminded me of the time I attended the opera at the London Coliseum. The couple in front of me got up at the end of Act 3 and made to leave. Their neighbour said, “Are you going?” The lady replied, “Yes, we know how it ends….”

    Sunny but chilly start.

    1. Last night I watched a recording of the most recent production of Die Zauberflöte from Glyndebourne, it appeared to be set in an hotel kitchen , sometime between 1800 and 1910 with the most extraordinary costumes and puppetry , however given that the original storyline was just as fantastical it not detract from the sublime music.

      Not a stuffy production 8^)

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/87424156b77d2c9b7dab712acd25dae35d32a99d8acbbcde7514754a550e878a.png

  10. Good morning, all. Very good recorded performance of “The Marriage of Figaro” on France Musique last night. It reminded me of the time I attended the opera at the London Coliseum. The couple in front of me got up at the end of Act 3 and made to leave. Their neighbour said, “Are you going?” The lady replied, “Yes, we know how it ends….”

    Sunny but chilly start.

    1. ‘Morning, Bob, but not, as many MSM twerps are saying, the end of the the decade. That doesn’t happen until 20201231.

  14. Good morning people

    I saw this link on Twitter, isn’t it strange how NONE of the press talks about the damage GAZA is inflicting on Israel..

    Israel’s police have successfully tested a new weapon in its arsenal that it says is the world’s first to destroy the fire kites and arson balloons that have threatened Israel from the Gaza Strip, Israel Hayom reports. It can also take down armed drones – a threat coming mainly from Iranian-sponsored militias in the north.

    Called “Light Blade,” it is a laser system that looks much like a miniature Iron Dome, the anti-missile defense system that protects Israel from short-range rocket attack. It tracks the suspicious airborne object, locks onto it, and blasts it with a unique laser beam. If it is a balloon loaded with flammable material, it will explode. If it is a drone, its motor will be burned out and it will crash.

    The Light Blade can work in the night as well as in the day, and has about a two-kilometer range. It is also cheap enough, say the police, that it will enable the security forces to equip themselves quickly with a large quantity of them.

    The system was developed over the past year by three experts in electro-optics and lasers: Prof. Ami Yeshaya, Dr. Rami Aharoni and Dr. Udi Ben Ami. They established a company called OptiDefense to create the technology, signing a cooperative agreement with the police to do so.

    The project was led by Border Police chief Yaakov Shabtai. The Technology Research Department of the Border Police, Ben Gurion University, and the Infrastructure Development and Technology departments of the IDF were all involved in designing the model.

    While the security authorities helped fund the venture, several private investors also chipped in. Altogether, the working model cost about a million dollars to develop.

    Arson balloons flown from the Gaza Strip have caused millions of dollars of ecological damage in the south, burning thousands of acres of cropland and forests.

    Armed drones are seen more as a threat from the North, as the army has had to deal with these airborne attacks launched from Syria by Iranian forces.

    https://worldisraelnews.com/israels-light-blade-laser-may-finally-answer-gazas-burning-kites-and-fire-balloons/

  15. Our betters used to snigger at us, here in the north. They aren’t laughing now
    Rod Liddle

    We’re outside the pub, Sue and me, having a cigarette. A sharp wind is blowing off the North Sea, fresh from Scandinavia. It takes real commitment to smoke in winter in the northeast. Growing up here had many benefits for me, not least learning how to light a cigarette with a single match in a force nine gale.

    Sue is here from South Bank for a quiet night out. South Bank is part of Teesside and is very dissimilar to other, more famous, South Banks with which you may be familiar. Or, as Sue put it: “Rough as f*** — and getting worse.” Sue’s in her fifties, I think. Big bouffant brunette hairdo, nicely turned out, friendly, articulate. “It’s just druggies now,” she says. “There are plenty of jobs, but nobody does any work. And they give them all this money. The government should help people out when they’re trying to do the right thing. But not like this.”

    She tells me South Bank used to be “lovely”. I bite my tongue. Even when I was growing up South Bank had a grim reputation. I’m from a kinder, gentler suburb of Middlesbrough, one with trees in it, a suburb built for the chemical workers rather than the steel workers.

    She’s wary of telling me which way she voted. “People get mad and think you’re evil,” she says, so I know exactly how she voted. You hear the same thing all the time, a reluctance to divulge for fear of opprobrium. Eventually she says: “I voted for Boris. Don’t tell anyone.”

    Don’t worry, Sue, your secret’s safe with me. And here’s the thing: right now on Teesside, you’re in the majority. No need to be a shy Tory any more. Most people were with you and for the same reasons. Not just Jeremy Corbyn. Not just Brexit. Those were the catalysts or the tipping points, but the quiet march away from Labour began at least five, if not 10, years ago: the gradual realisation that the party for which — like Sue — they had always hitherto voted no longer liked them very much and despised their values. They perhaps had no problem with higher tax rates and nationalisation. It was the other stuff that did it: indiscriminate welfare overreach (which the hard-working working class resents), uncontrolled immigration and the culture — ie, the new culture of the party that had been set up to represent them.

    So they elected a Tory as mayor of the Tees Valley and evicted Labour from running Middlesbrough in favour of Independents. And now the seats of Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, Stockton South, Bishop Auckland, Sedgefield, Redcar (Redcar!) — all Conservative. A swathe of blue along the Steel River, the most working-class area in the country.

    I suppose it would be going too far to suggest that the comedian Roy Chubby Brown won the election for Boris Johnson, although it would be nearer the mark than simply parroting “Brexit” and “Corbyn”. Brown is Middlesbrough’s biggest export, since we stopped building the bridges of the world. He is from Grangetown, next to (and slightly downmarket from) South Bank. His humour is not to everybody’s tastes: like a dafter version of Bernard Manning, he stands on stage in flying helmet and goggles and spews forth endless, magnificent smut. But he is extraordinarily popular. The last time I spoke to him, on Friday, was before a performance in front of 700, a sellout again, in Blackpool.

    So what did the Labour council in his home town do? Effectively banned him from appearing there, in front of his ferociously loyal home-town audience. His humour didn’t fit with their principles, these cut-price commissars announced. The ban was overturned last month by Middlesbrough’s Independent mayor, but the message had been heard: you will enjoy only humour approved by us. Brown, a habitual Labour voter, won’t be voting Labour again — and nor will his fans.

    In the living room of his house, Brown has a painting of a chap cycling to the evening shift at the steelworks, which he bought because it reminded him of his dad. It’s by Teesside’s most notable artist, Mackenzie Thorpe — I have one in my house, too. Thorpe may not be to your tastes. Certainly he’s not to the taste of the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (Mima), which finds his work naff and will not show it.

    This large, expensive edifice, ordained by a Labour council, will not show the kind of art that appeals to local people. As Thorpe put it, on an occasion that Mima was featuring the usual egregious tat by the likes of Tracey Emin: “People don’t go to Mima because, by and large, they don’t like the work on show. it doesn’t relate to them — simple. Mima just does not get the local population: they continue to dish up their vision of what they think we should enjoy and persist in ignoring demands for something we would like to see.”

    The leftish elite on Teesside despises both the humour and artistic tastes of the locals and, effectively, outlaws it. Why, then, would the local people continue to give this elite their support? Because that cultural divide is not simply about aesthetics.

    Middlesbrough, a port, has always had immigrant labour and, indeed, the town was built by Irish immigrants. Racial conflict is almost entirely absent. But local people are not happy that the town has recently become a dumping ground for economic migrants, or that the same migrants alter the culture of the place and undercut local wages.

    Suggest such a thing, though, and your betters will tell you you’re a racist. The same people who are contemptuous of Brown and Thorpe also welcome unconstrained immigration. Indeed, pick away at the belief systems of that elite, and thus the Labour Party, and you will find that in almost every case, economic policy aside, they do not accord with those of local people: not on the traditional family, on welfare benefits, on gender and identity politics, on religious faith.

    Sure, this is not entirely true among the youngest voters, who still turned out for Corbyn. But speaking to a few of them, I had the feeling they may change sides one day quite soon. They are tiring of the absolutism of their party, its portrayal of anyone who disagrees with them as “scum” or “evil”, when these people are actually their parents or friends. That’s the first sign of consciousness taking hold, I suspect.

    In George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, Winston Smith, despairs of the proletariat’s quiescence. “Until they become conscious they cannot rebel, and until after they have rebelled, they cannot become conscious.” It always struck me as a little condescending and probably wrong: the proletariat is not quite as insentient as Orwell supposes. On Teesside it is perfectly conscious and cheerfully rebelling — and the process is far from over. It is only the beginning.

    The wind whips up and shoves sleet in my face. I go back in the pub for a last drink. “ A glass of your finest chablis, please,” I say. “Are you tekkin the f****** piss?” the barman replies. “You’ll have chardonnay and like it.”

    OIivia Newton-John becomes a dame
    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/methode%2Fsundaytimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2Fd7065520-297e-11ea-b2b2-6b1a74c53225.jpg?crop=1500%2C1000%2C0%2C0&resize=600

    2. Morning Bill..

      A heart warming story.. you are having me on .. I clicked on the link and then bounced back to you ..

      Nah, not possible..

      What on earth is going on .. are transgenders the end result of Chernobyl’s catastrophe .. plastics in the atmosphere .. too many burgers, bottled water.. we need to know.

      1. The world is clearly underpopulated and we need to change the out-dated biological facts of life in order to solve this problem and produce more babies.

    4. Yo Mr T

      THe only arbiter of ‘sex’ is DNA

      Any deviation (pun intended) from that is a Lifestyle Choice

      If the Alphabetsoupers could get that into their heads, life would be easier for all of us, Them included

    5. Not really.
      That “man” presumably had his/her female parts intact so that s/he could get pregnant and carry a baby to full term. Men can’t do that. They don’t have the requisite parts.

    6. Grotesque. We wonder why there is so much mental illness in society these days when this sort of manipulation of the human condition is regarded as acceptable. Frankenstein’s monster is alive and well.

    7. Mr Sharpe said he had Jay have faced some bigotry since taking the decision to become pregnant, although most people have been supportive.

      Strange how the meaning of words changes over the years, isn’t it? ‘Bigotry’ now appears to mean disagreement with one’s opinion.

    8. It’s simple:- Reuben Sharp: Woman pretending to be a man has a baby by AI from a Sperm Donor who is Man Pretending to be a woman, but still with full male bits. Partner Jay is a Woman who pretends to be sexless and the doctor pretends to be their opposite sex.

    9. Dear Bill, do the newspapers ever explain how or why many of these supposedly gay couples are actually having vaginal sex? Or how a “male” can be impregnated in “his uterus” by a sperm donor? Me-thinks DoubleSpeak is strong in the transgender media:

      https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/britains-first-pregnant-man-gives-birth-to-girl-hayden-cross-a7830346.html
      https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-6776865/Wyley-Simpson-transgender-man-gives-birth-baby-boy.html
      https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/714481/Transgender-man-gives-birth-OWN-BABY-world-first
      https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/transgender-man-gives-birth-baby-first-child-woman-kaci-sullivan-wisconsin-a8107481.html
      https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-4774490/Transgender-man-gives-birth-healthy-baby-boy.html

  17. Big names could fall in ‘St Valentine’s Day Massacre

    Boris is planning a revamp of his cabinet early next year. Who will stay and who will Go I dont know. None of them really seem o stand out as being competent but equally non of the MP’s seem to stand out as being potential ministers

    There is a lot needs to be done and in quite a short time and most politicians only have one speed and thats very slow

  18. Brussels CRUMBLES

    The EU still seem to be in Therea May mode. She was weak and a push over and gave into every EU demand. Boris simply will not do that

    Boris wants a Free trade deal with the EU and will be reasonable with the EU but if they think he will capitulate to their every demand they are wrong. If the EU insistence on being unreasonable he will Walk away.. He will stick to the 2020 deadline although if it needs a few more weeks to dot the I’s and cross the T’s he will accept that. .

    THE EU “will be the loser” if the European Commission fails to make a trade and security deal with Britain by the end of 2020.

    The stark warning from two senior European politicians is the first crack in the united front presented by the 27 members ahead of negotiations. The senior ministers in the Hungarian government have also warned that attacks on Boris Johnson’s Brexit policy by EU leaders are “unacceptable” because the will of the British people needs to be respected.

    The comments are a slap in the face for new European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen who this week said a future relationship agreement with the UK could not be concluded by the end of 2020.

    But Ms von der Leyen insisted last week he will have to “extend” or face no deal.

    However, the intervention by the Hungarian government represents the first public criticism of her Brexit policy.

      1. Not at all, zxcv3. My recipes consist of such fruits as apple, damson, gooseberry, plum, rhubarb, etc. but never brussel sprouts. The very idea is nauseating.

  20. Some of the problem with the NHS is doctors leaving the NHS once they have completed their training or choosing to work time. Perhaps the NHS should put in the contract that they have to work for the NHS full time for at least the same time as their training. They could be allowed to buy themselves out of this should they wish to leave the NHS or reduce their hours

    1. Quite so. We should train far more doctors then we do now, under an apprenticeship scheme. And soon enough, there would be a small surplus of them, which would only be a good thing for the rest of us.

    2. Yo JB

      They can only do that, if they do not have to pay for their training themselves

      Convert Medical Training into an apprenticeship

    1. I suspect it won’t be until women’s professional tennis and particularly the grand slams are dominated by transmen that anything will be done.
      And to be honest, I’m really looking forward to that happening.

      1. The next Olympics in Tokyo will be fun,to think we used to complain about Russian “Lady” shotputters

        2. …who shaved at least once a day and could kick-start a 747 without breaking sweat (or anything else, come to that).

      2. …and their matches will best of five sets. Equal pay for an equal days’ work, etc.

        1. That would be the death-knell for women’s tennis if transmen are able to complete, and any amount of fiddling with hormones is not going to change the inherrent strength differences.

    2. Ha ha ha…the woke brigade do not seem to have an answer for this – or if they do they are too frightened to say what it is. Look what they did to Sharon Davies when she had the courage to challenge this lunacy.

    3. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lye1lzneSnQ

      Joe Rogan on Leftist Social Retards & Piranhas
      3,034,614 views

      Joe Rogan talking about this article:
      National Review: Students: Transgender Woman Can’t Be Diversity Officer Because She’s a White Man Now

      “https://www.nationalreview.com/2014/10/students-transgender-woman-cant-be-diversity-officer-because-shes-white-man-now/

    4. I’m amazed that professional sportswomen aren’t really up in arms about this – they are losing money and presumably sponsorship [more money] if they don’t get the podiums?!

        1. Sadly true – look at the torrent of abuse aimed at Sharron Davies and Martina Navratilova, who dared to state the obvious!

          1. They quite rightly raised an obvious point. A man, competing in a women’s event has an obvious advantage.

            This is unfair on female athletes. This causes Lefties a huge problem: do they attack the man in a dress and support women’s rights or do they support the man in a dress and have a go at those pointing out the obvious?

    5. The idea you’ve got anything is idiotic. If you think you’ve ‘taken’ anytthing you’re already confused.

      Like everything, it is shared fabric in society. If you can’t accept that, you’re an idiot.

    1. As I explained above: the human species is getting increasingly, incrementally (and exponentially) more and more stupid by the second.

        1. I’m not surprised. Human evolution peaked at the end of the nineteenth century, Since then it has gone into retrograde development (‘devolution’ if you like).

          Yes, we might come up with more and more technological ‘marvels’ but we have not added in any way to culture, the arts, etiquette, good manners, or ability to speak clearly, prosaically and succinctly.

          Morons are breeding more and more morons (and if that isn’t alliterative then I don’t know what is).

          1. ‘Nuff Said

            The most prescient — and chilling — of all the science
            fiction stories ever written, though, is “The Marching Morons,” by Cyril
            M. Kornbluth, first published in 1951. It should be required reading in
            every school on Earth.

            The point that Kornbluth makes is simple, and scary: dumbbells have
            more children than geniuses. In “The Marching Morons” he carries that
            idea to its extreme, but logical, conclusion.

            Kornbluth tells of a future world that is overrun with dummies: men
            and women who don’t know anything beyond their own shallow personal
            interests. They don’t know how their society works, or who is running
            it. All they care about is their personal — and immediate —
            gratification.

          2. Thanks, Rik,

            I must order Kornbluth’s book. It looks like he forecast this present generation of entitled dolts, imbeciles and addlepates even before their clueless parents and witless grandparents had been born.

            Unless the geniuses form an effective method of combating this flood of idiotic humanity, and very quickly, then the writing is on the world for the entire species.

          3. P.S. I’ve just ordered the book in hardback from Amazon.

            [That can be Jeff Bezos’s Christmas gift from me!]

        2. That’s because people are wearing hats. Hats should be outlawed.

          However, brain size is not related to brain capacity (intelligence). I, for example, have a huge brain as I’ve a big head and I am very dim.

      2. I don’t think we are. We are able to understand things we didn’t decades ago – the internal combustion engine can be understood, for example. Rocketry and physics and be calculated.

        Yet people still cannot seem to spell – I don’t mean typos. I make those by the shedload. I mean simple words like proprietary. Contractions are not understood because children don’t read. They lookk at a paragraph and groan, whining about ‘a wall of text’ whereas I’ve read it in the time it takes them to whinge.

        Illiteracy is everywhere. Not just the accidental, but the lazy. Never have we been so bright yet so utterly stupid.

    1. No political correctness, either. Free speech really was free and unrestricted.

      ‘Morning, Rik.

        2. All perfectly acceptable.

          If you think such doesn’t continue then I’ve a bridge to sell you. Mankind will always be prejudiced against people who are different. It’s in our nature.

          1. “Mankind will always be prejudiced against people who are different.”

            That must account for why I am prejudiced against: Pinkoes, Socialism, Communism, the Common Purpose crowd, the Frankfurt School conglomerate, the Davos devotees, Social Justice Warriors, Virtue Signallers, Feminism, Liberalism, Globalism, Multiculturalism, Cultural Relativism, Critical Theory, Humanitarianism, Marxism, Fascism (see Communism), Collectivism, Momentum, Antifa, Social Engineering, Social Media, Social Mobility, Social Contracts, Social Workers, Social Chapter, Social Policy, Party “Activists”, Authoritarianism, Totalitarianism, Micro-management, Nanny-statism, Political Correctness, Kiddy-fiddlers, Instant Coffee and Rabbits.

            I’m a f•cking prejudiced bastard, me.

  25. Anyone hear the Gobblin’s efforts on R4 this morning. I seem to have missed it but heard a comment that the Beeb had sent a man to Sweden travelling by air as it would have taken too long by rail.

  26. You useless fuckwit cowards,you diversity whores,by all the gods and none how I despise you

    Sarah Champion, the Labour

    MP for Rotherham, which has been targeted by grooming gangs, told The

    Independent the figures show this type of exploitation ‘remains one of

    the largest forms of child abuse in the country’.

    She

    added: ‘Too many times, Government has said it will ‘learn lessons’,

    yet 19,000 children are still at risk of sexual exploitation.’

    The

    figures, obtained from the Department for Education, showed that

    Lancashire recorded more than 600 children who were victims of grooming

    of any local authority.

    It was followed by Birmingham, Surrey , Bradford and Gloucestershire.

    Earlier

    this month four men from Telford in the West Midlands were jailed for

    abusing a young girl who was sold for sex and raped.

    The offences took place between 2001 and 2002 and started when the girl, who is now an adult, was 13.

    The

    victim told the court she was assaulted by other unidentified males,

    with the abuse continuing until she was in her mid teens.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7833493/Nearly-19-000-children-sexually-groomed-England-past-year.html?ito=social-twitter_dailymailUK
    How bloody dare you publish this article without mentioning the perpetrators!! Just the coded “Rotherham” 1400 victims in one town
    Gutless,useless MSM!!!!

        1. Yep, moderated so that all we get are the dimwits who still swallow the teenagers in nightclubs mantra and want to know why parents aren’t protecting their kids.

          My eye opener was when a colleague at work showed me a text from the head teacher of the school her daughter attends, warning of reported ongoing attempts to abduct girls at the school gates.

          1. I was a bit surprised that Gloucestershire was on that list – but then there is a large muslim population in Gloucester.
            Also – remember during the Tory leadership campaign, one of the phone-in questioners was a head teacher at a girls’ school in the city. Subsequently exposed and sacked. Heard nothing more since, so presumably he’s still brainwashing little girls.

        2. Nor did mine which is strange because I only asked whether the abusers were mainly white, Christian men and I did not mention any other race or religion.

      1. He got a whole life sentence which was confirmed by the Court of Appeal.

        Let’s pray that it sticks, though I suspect that it won’t.

    1. O1 2 O1,
      You can hear the hum of the
      PC / Appeasement lab/lib/con coalition
      & others revving up to protect their
      umbrella stance regarding all things
      pakistani / islamic ideology.

    3. Following Gerard’s resignation, I resigned today.
      Please consider it yourself Ogga
      The party has been hijacked by a man whose reputation pongs and another – a convicted felon.
      Its cannot be supported as a party but we need to still fight on for all Gerard and Richard Braine stood for – but UKIP as the party we supported is history
      Happy New Year
      Em.

  29. Well, my walk to Cromford for the paper, a loaf of bread and couple of packs of butter turned into a walk back home and then up to the Fountain in the village to drop their papers off!
    I arrived at the paper shop as Don was telling the Fountain that he didn’t realise their opening hours were put back over the holiday, probably because they omitted to tell him, so I volunteered to walk up with them!
    Still I need the exercise as I’m now 5lb heavier than last week! 🙁

  30. Defeated Labour MPs call for ‘unflinching’ party election review

    Accusations of cronyism at the top of the Labour party and a “repeated unwillingness to stand up to the stain of antisemitism” must be confronted if it is to learn from its “catastrophic” election loss, a group of defeated MPs and candidates have warned.

    The group says that Labour needs to go “way beyond a simple review” of its election performance if it is to understand why it fell to such a heavy defeat, which left it with its lowest number of seats since 1935. In a letter to the Observer, they say the issue of antisemitism was “constantly relayed back to us on the doorstep”.

  31. Anyone out there know why “nige” is pushing the “johnson must be tough in the coming trade negotiations
    with the eu” ?
    Surely we exit first on the 31st Jan as in, total severance
    then they ring us on a later date, and keep ringing until WE decide to answer.

    1. He said ‘Johnson must be tough’, because if he’d said ‘Johnson must be hard’, it would have gone down badly with some audiences in the USA where ‘Johnson’ has a different meaning.

    1. Other than indecent exposure and possibly offending public decency, can someone tell me what law he broke?

    2. The Suffolk Gazette is a spoof paper, rather like the Rochdale thingy.

      They mostly spend their time and effort having a pop at Norfolk.

    9. ‘Banned from the countryside’.

      That would require a pretty well-defined definition of what constitutes ‘countryside’. Is he allowed to travel through it from one town to another? If he is, is he to be confined to car, bus, train, motorcycle or any other form of motorised transport (other than tractors, obviously)? Can he take a push-bike ride? Can he ride a horse? Can he jog or walk? Must he keep moving, or is he allowed to occasionally stop and stand?

    1. Great. But Paul would get a lot of flak with a name like that, today.
      These old classics seem to stay good for ever.

        1. I see that in his new role as conductor, Boris has had a severe haircut but still isn’t much good at tucking his shirt in.

        1. So you’re saying (© Cathy Newman), Uncle Bill, Sir, that you voted for Jo Swinson!

          :-))

          1. What a change to see a professional turning a problem into fun – rather than stamping her foot and pouting.

    1. No need to have an enquiry. Bribery, mostly, with a fair amount of corruption instead. Compensation for having an awful wife.

    2. Wasn’t he an advisor on ‘Uman rights or sommit to the sweet ruler of Kazakhstan. Difficult job, but pays well and someone has to do it.

      1. Afternoon K,
        He was the taking the piss envoy under the guise of peace,
        & he did it rather well, by the bucket full by all accounts.

  38. And so the clock turns (or something).

    Just back from a walk round the lake (from where we could see the sun glinting on the snow-capped Pyrenees, 50 miles away).

    Walking past the church we noticed an English car and a house, which has been closed for 20 years, open again. Brainwave – perhaps they need furniture….
    Knocked on door – two retired chaps from Blackburn are moving in. AND their previous house was in the village called Villegailhenc which was so terribly damaged in October 2018. Their house was one of the THIRTY SEVEN which have had to be demolished. Thus they need lots of downstairs furtniture – all their have been destroyed….

    Looking forward to them calling in. With chequebook

    2. When one door closes another opens, Bill. Looks like 2020 will be a good year for you and the MR.

    3. After viewing your property via the website i would have been perfectly happy for you to leave everything where it was.

    4. The sting in the tail. Where is your charity, man ? Selling stuff that you would otherwise have to pay to get taken away, to victims of misfortune ?…:-)

          2. Not me, but I sympathize. Not up to any of us to second guess Bill – and make assumptions as to whether his comment was serious or not.

            Judge not lest ye be judged.

          3. You are welcome to judge me. I found his comment to be tasteless, and I will continue to maintain that.

    5. You don’t seem to be very full of goodwill or sensitivity towards people who have suffered terrible losses. You could offer them furniture for a minimal sum (if you want money), seeing as you already have a decent income and the proceeds of sale of the house, plus another house in England. Nul points for charity, ,Mr. Thomas.

      Next time you take a sip of the wines you have laid down, have a think about it.

      1. Why don’t you arrange to send BT a cheque and then donate the furniture?
        What makes you think they will not have been insured or even that the French State might not have compensated them.

        Being generous with other people’s assets is not charity.

        1. You are arguing with the wrong person, sos.

          I have few assets apart from my home (which I worked bl**dy hard for), as it is. I have no pension at the moment, and never managed to save much in personal pension as I was trying to keep a family going (together with paying for therapies for my autistic daughter), when I was earning. My current husband is on the minimum wage.

          If Bill had not written about the cheque book, I guess nobody would have had anything to say either way. But he chose to.

          So I choose to say that insurance never compensates for trauma (and yes – almost all my possession were once wiped out in a Pickfords warehouse fire, so I know what I’m talking about). I have never sold anything I had, except recently my mother’s jewellery, as we needed the money. Everything else that I don’t want anymore from when I was earning, I have given away, when friends wanted them. Otherwise, things have gone to charity.

          I am not being generous with Bill’s assets. But his last sentence was rather ungenerous and tasteless.

          1. Your and their misfortunes are bad luck, but you don’t actually know with certainty what BT’s situation is, nor do you know whether or not the newcomers are wealthy individuals with multiple houses and healthy incomes. The vast majority of English around us who retain an “English” car also have property in England.

          2. Propertied people? when they need downstairs furniture because their own was destroyed in a flood – and they are wealthy individuals?

            I don’t know for certainty what BT’s situation is, but I know that he has two properties, can afford to go travelling around Europe and lives rather a nice lifestyle – because he says so himself.

            The vast majority of English around you probably haven’t just lost their homes and contents to floods in England.

            It’s the fact that Bill mentioned those people’s circumstances and then gloated about the cheque book that stuck in my craw.

            I have always been happy for him that he has his lifestyle – but if he comes out with a comment I totally disagree with on moral grounds, then I have every right to do so.

    1. Would that be UK citizenship and benefits for life at birth, parents, of course, could not be exported. And Grandma will want to visit as well….

      2. (Grandma + grandpa) x 2, (great grandma + great grandpa) x 4 – family links are exponential i.e. each generation raised by the power of two.

  40. I can’t get rid of recent notifications. I look at them, move on, and next time I sign on they are back again -9+.
    It’s a bloody nuisance.

      1. Apart from everything else that is unpleasant about Mrs Murrell – her mean, thin lips are really off-putting.

        4. ‘Nature gives you the face you have at twenty. Life shapes the face you have at thirty. But at fifty you get the face you deserve.’
          — Coco Chanel

          Wee Krankie will be fifty in July ……..

    1. The European Food Bank should learn from the economic policy of the European Central Bank. The amount of nutrition in food packs must be reduced, thus enabling many more smaller packs to be distributed.

      They could call it ‘quantitative easing’.

      2. …and Greta the Beata will complain that as we starve to death, it is a ‘just’ starving as we are using more Plastics and unGreen (not the veggie green) packaging on the smaller portions

      3. Reducing the food in food-packs would be quantitative easing, but reducing the nutrition in same would be qualitative easing.

        1. Take away the all the Arabs’ oil and International Aid, and I suspect Israel might be as properous as all those countries put together

        2. Yep, the Arab League has twenty two member states. The Jews have one state and not a drop of oil to sell.

          1. They have natural gas, now, and want to sell it to Jordan.

            “In July, Jordanian parliamentarian Tariq Khoury called on Jordanians to “sign a code of honor to blow up the gas pipeline from Israel to the land of Jordan,” according to the Palestinian Quds news agency.”Every
            free man in Jordan must sacrifice himself and his children to blow up a
            gas line that passes through Jordanian territory, we are all martyrs of
            the project,” said Khoury in a speech during a press conference to
            reveal details about the gas agreement.”

            ‘Nuff said.

    1. I caught this report on LBC much earlier; no mention yet of mental health issues. Perhaps our yank cousins are not falling for that scam at the moment.

    1. That video is obviously staged as part of the campaign, but it is still powerful never the less.

        1. The way the camera shews the girl actually signing the contract and then follows her as she throws her doll away would suggest that it was made as part of the campaign.

    2. If you catch people early enough in life with an ideology, you will have them for life and can manipulate their minds to carry out all sorts of inhumane deeds. Nat*i Germany being a prime example but there are others. Islam is apparently followed by 24 % of the world’s population, propagated by those who have an interest in maintaining power and control over a poor and uneducated people. The Church was not so dissimilar a few hundred years ago. Maybe education will free minds in the long term, and Islam will modernise, but to do that it will have to reject a basic premise, that of God’s word being unchangeable. All we can do is try and push back but the battle will continue till long after I am pushing up the Daisies.

      2. Islam can not modernise, because in order to be muslim, one must accept that the holy Koran is the word of Allah, transcribed by Moh*d.
        England & Wales underwent the Reformation, which separated Church from State and that was a key factor in the UK’s economic development.
        A 1960s book on Arab & North African history describes Islam as a system of ‘military feudalism’, succinct but accurate.

      4. Good morning KP

        Here we are approaching 2020.. Wouldn’t you think that we would have civilisation pretty well sorted ?

        Sadly it appears to me that the world is resembling a giant overflowing sewer.

  47. Where is Diana Abbott?

    She has been uncharacteristically been total quiet which is not like her at all. What is she up to ? . Will she put herself forward for the Leadership at the last minute ?

      1. Good morning Peddy,
        That was unkind. (said with a chuckle)
        On a more serious note, do you have any preferences as to metal, or fibre, dental posts? I started googling, and was amazed by the number of published studies, and the variety of fibre posts. New dentist recommends fibre.

        UK dentistry seems to be slightly different from its Continental EU cousins.

        1. ‘Afternoon, Tim.

          I was brought up on metal posts, which were replaced by metal screw posts, which I really enjoyed using. My faves were known as Radix Ankers (I first met them in Germany, hence the spelling). When I moved to Sweden in 2002, it was all fibre posts, which I hated – they were very messy. The argument was that a fibre post had the same Young’s Modulus as the dentine in a root, so one couldn’t break the other. I left Sweden in 2005, came back to the UK & R.A.s. Of the 3 countries I worked in, as far as dentistry is concerned, Germany was the Nirvana.

        1. Ditto.
          Also, as much as I dislike her politics, I abhor the casual racism that unfortunately colours much of the justified criticism of her ideas and actions.

    4. To coin a phrase used by Barry Davies in Seoul in 1988, slightly amended – “Where, oh where is Diane Abbott? And frankly, who cares?”

      1. More than a quarter of a million people have signed a petition calling for Sydney’s New Year’s Eve fireworks to be cancelled and the money spent on fighting fires that threaten the city.

          1. Yes it has……I still think it should be cancelled.

            Sydney’s lord mayor Clover Moore said the fireworks would go ahead.

            Ms Moore said she shared the “deep sympathies” of those who had signed the petition, but the fireworks were planned 15 months in advance and most of the budget had already been spent.

          2. Whatever happened to KBO? Have the Aussies abandoned it? And did anyone ask the remaining 24,750,000 of the population?

    2. I think it sould be cancelled out of respect for the people who lost their lives and homes fighting the fires.

      Australians all across the country need the money to rebuild their schools, their homes,” said one person. “It’s a matter of priority and this is where we show we care.”

      1. Cripes, the stuff they spout tests the limits of credibility more every day. Carbon neutral fireworks that do not cause pollution, yeh, plant a tree somewhere. I’m surprised the didn’t suggest a packet of seeds in every rocket.

  49. Once the Christmas/ New Year period is over things should start to get more interesting. WE will have the EU trade talks and the Labour Party Leadership Battle. It will be though more than a Leadership battle it will be a battle for control of the party. Will the Marxists Momentum side win or will the moderates win? At present it seems to point towards Momentum winning. If that happens will the Labour Party Split ?

    Other issues are the Brexit Party. Will it carry on. Will it turn into the Reform party or will it disappear. Then we have the Lb-Dem leadership battle. There previous choice of a woman probably because she was a woman backfired on them in a spectacular way. Under their current rules their Leader has to be an MP which does not leave them a lot of choice. If they carry on with there we want to overturn Brexit that will not get them anywhere/ Interesting times we will see how it all pans out next year

  50. ‘Morning All

    Hitchens on the lack of police on the streets

    “But the old sense that they gave – that
    somebody was in charge and that it would never be long before authority
    showed its face – has quite simply gone. I’ll say it again in case
    someone, somewhere is listening in government.

    This
    has nothing to do with the numbers of officers. It is caused by the
    police decision to react to crime after it has happened, rather than
    prevent it by a convincing public presence. A police officer may prevent
    stabbings, muggings and burglaries. But he or she cannot unstab, unmug
    or unburgle you. So simple, you’d think even an MP could grasp it. But
    they don’t. But this is about the separate question of deterrence and
    justice.”
    He has a valid point,the police appear to have become totally disconnected from the people they are supposed to serve,in reality in all to many areas a single copper on foot patrol would be in danger,a situation not helped by the pathetic response and sentencing given to assaults on police

    Where crimes have not been
    prevented, they must be detected and the culprits found, prosecuted,
    found guilty in fair trials and given deterrent sentences.

    This
    will not happen in a country where people are more afraid of criminals
    than they are of the police. And this is the kind of country we are
    increasingly becoming, because the police, however many of them there
    are, are simply not there.

    1. In Hammersmith the police certainly have a presence. They speed up and down Shepherds Bush Road night and day in cars with sirens blaring. I always figure if they’re heading towards Hammersmith, there must have been a crime committed in Shepherds Bush and vice versa. Shouldn’t joke really but what else can one do.

        1. To warnn the crims the police are coming so they can scarper.
          Saves an awful lot of paperwork and general nastiness.

      2. Morning, Sue.

        “…but what else can one do.”

        Sell up and buy a cottage on the North York Moors? :•)

    1. “Who, in effect, writes “the reports”, Holmes ?”

      “Wake up, Watson, all roads lead to Millbank !”

    2. Ahh, just like down here where they use Durdle door and Lulworth and Kimmeridge as backgrounds for Bollywood movies .. and so now, we have sign posts in different languages .. and mass catering and thousands of Mercs/ BMWs/ Audi’s clog the roads during the summer .. driving habits have a lot to be desired ..

      1. When it was first discovered by native humans, Niagara Falls must have been one of the most truly stupendous, awe-inspiring, natural spectacles on the planet.

        Go there now and it is nothing more than a sideshow to acres of concrete and flashing neon.

    3. What are the twats suggesting? That we concrete the place over, drain the lakes, build some more ghettos and convert the place into a ‘hood?

          1. The last time i was sailing across Windemere four coaches arrived in the car park. Full of the be-robed folk. Not a white face among them. I think they know where it is.

      2. The BBC Radio 4 report said this morning that they wanted to tarmac some paths. For me my enjoyment of the Lakes was walking on the mountain top paths away from the crowds. I don’t go to the Lakes now due to the congestion. I always found Windermere to be too crowded. Keswick will be the same now.

    4. How can they possible change the landscape to get more non whites to visit?
      Install a desert area with an oasis, tents and camels?

    5. Well said, Girly. Not the first time I have seen this bilge. Besides, if the BAMEs etc are steering clear of the area then that’s their loss! In the 50 or so years that I have been visiting the lake district I don’t recall seeing any anti-BAME measures…

      1. “Not the first time I have seen this bilge.”

        BBC’s Countryfile has included similar reports.

  53. The BBC finally contacted me and said they wanted to make a comedy
    prog’ based on my jokes here.

    They said, “Phizzee, we want to make it all about the struggles of the
    typical ‘white working class male’ these days, and his conflicts with
    his fat wife, gay son, feminist daughter, pakistani neighbours, black
    coworkers, etc…. ”

    To make it as realistic as possible, we’ll be
    filming all of your family and everyone you know will be playing the
    actual roles”.

    “That sounds great, when do I start?”

    “Oh, you’re not going to be in it. Because of quotas, we’re going to
    be casting your role with a black guy.” :o(

  54. “The Trial of Christine Keeler” starts tonight at 21.00 BBC1. Looking forward to it. Let’s hope they get the sound right.

    2. Did you see the film Scandal, about her involvement with Profumo? I saw it years ago and thought it rather good at the time. Especially John Hurt’s performance.

      1. I remember all the schoolboy jokes that came out at the time. For example:

        “What’s the difference between Christine Keeler and the M1?”

        “The M1 knackers your tyres!”

          2. I would be surprised if you didn’t ! But i still don’t get it. Probably because i am young and untainted.

        2. “What’s the difference between Christine Keeler and a cockerel?
          The cockerel calls Cockadoodledo;
          Christine Keeler calls Anycock’lldo

      5. I read the whole proceedings from start to finish day by day as it happened in the Daily Telegraph ( which at the time was a good paper) It was fascinating; an an eye opener to to a gormless lad in his early twenties. Shocking it was. An M.P. and a Russian spy sharing a blonde. Must have been a first ..:-) I read it over my desk in the office, while waiting to compete with one of the partners with the the DT crossword.

        2. I thought Keeler was a brunette, not a blonde.

          I remember reading the case day by day; as you say, quite an eye-opener for an adolescent.

          1. “I thought Keeler was a brunette, not a blonde.”

            If you’re lucky, you might find out for certain tonight! :•)

          2. I once persuaded one of my dental nurses that I could tell the colour of a female caller’s hair by her voice on the ‘phone.

        3. An MP would not have mattered; the Minister of War, however, sharing her with a Russian military attache, was an altogether different story. And in those days, Profumo’s worse sin was lying to parliament and especially to his Prime Minister. At least he disappeared from public life and did good work among the poor.

          Christine was quite the looker in her day. Mandy made fun of the courts wonderfully, and I well remember the sense of anticipation when she was back on the stand for the second time. Rumour had it that half of (male) London society was sh***ing itself over what she might say next.

          In the end, an osteopath and two good time girls were hounded – to death in one case, while their “elders and betters” sins were covered up, so “justice” was obviously done.

          1. ” And in those days, Profumo’s worse sin was lying to parliament”
            Funny how things catch on.
            Like ” We will be leaving the European Union on 31st March”

        1. It probably was.
          Sadly, the unfortunate Mr. Ward had got in well over his depth with a lot of very powerful and even more unscrupulous “friends” and realised he was being set up as the fall guy.

          1. The question is, how much did he know about those “friends” & how much could he have revealed if he had entered the witness stand?

    5. I recall going to see At the Drop of (Another) Hat at the time of the scandal. Michael Flanders: nil combustibus pro fumo, no smoke without fire.

  55. I cannot imagine a better and more delightful guide to the recent election and modern British history provided by someone from a northern local council estate – Boris Johnson, David Cameron (hopeless), Theresa May (hapless), and the “traitors” – Grieve, Letwin, Soubry. Notable for its attack on DFID, Quangos, NGOs …. the BBC …. “liberalism is an extremist cult …. Boris should scrap the Supreme Court

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7Yzy6Rqrmc

  56. Like all Beeboids, Marr is so far up himself he can’t see daylight. His scribblings are pathetic but he gets a good bollocking BTL.

    COFFEE HOUSE – Am I to blame for Boris’s war on the BBC?
    Andrew Marr – 29 December 2019 – 11:30 AM

    Judging by briefings to newspapers, Boris Johnson now wants to come after the BBC, first by turning the licence fee into a voluntary contribution. I hope he doesn’t. And if he does, I hope it’s not because I frequently interrupted him the last time he was interviewed on my show. No, I don’t think it was a particularly elegant encounter and I wasn’t happy with it afterwards; but when politicians insist on delivering the same stump speech in response to almost every question, people in my position have a brutal choice. We either lie down quietly on the floor and allow ourselves to be jumped on (painful: Mr Johnson is rather large), or we have to try, somehow, to stop the verbal torrent and get some answers to specific questions, which can get irritatingly tetchy.

    By far the best outcome is for the political guest to arrive with interesting things to say, and confident enough to answer the questions put. Michael Gove, for instance, is rather good at this. I think he’s spotted that for a TV interviewer, there are few things more disconcerting than asking a long, meticulously prepared question, only to get the answer ‘no’. Or, alternatively, after the briefest of pauses, ‘yes’. Another man I’d single out is John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor. Like his mate Jeremy Corbyn, he is now close to becoming an un-person after huge defeat. But I take as I find. And I have always found him attentive, polite and prepared to answer hard questions in clear language. Real interviews are much more fun for those taking part, and for our viewers. More, please.

    Andrew Marr’s Notebook appears in the Christmas issue of The Spectator

    DAN A • 3 hours ago • edited
    Andrew – you’re yesterday’s man. Your interview technique is poor and your health I suspect still a drag on your ability to do the job .

    But most worrying – the fact you fell for the “Uncle John sage bank manager” routine is simply astonishing.

    McDonnell’s schtick is to present a friendly, kind, almost pained face of an older uncle who would rather not have to tax and spend his way to oblivion – but has to because of the mess the evil Tories made which has left him no choice.

    Of course, his published statements and background in extreme left wing politics tell a very different story – not that you would know this from your interviews with him.

    When did you ever challenge him about his desire to overthrow capitalism ? When did you bring up his support for every nutjob extremist cause in the UK ? His love of the USSR and Trotskyit communism ? When did you ever ask him whether advocating the “lynching” of Esther McVey was an appropriate thing for an MP to say ?

    Never.

    He was completely unfit to be part of an elected government – a left wing crank better suited to selling “Workers Paradise” (or somesuch) papers outside Labour Party local constituency meetings.

    Anyone with half a brain could see that his and Jeremy Corbyn’s ideology and worldview made them existential threats to the very continuation of Parliamentary Democracy – but to you he is someone who answers your questions so that’s ok then.

    Your naivety is astounding.

    You and most others on the soft left of the BBC were content to take him at his word and set his own agenda to be interviewd on.

    You failed – you need to move over and move on – we are tired of you and the BBC

    A real liberal DAN A • 3 hours ago • edited
    That is thoughtful. I wonder if you’ve missed something though. I’d suggest that Marr actually believes in McDonnell’s politics. His background and behaviour would certainly suggest he might. Not easy for a disciple to interrogate the prophet. Marr is paid a huge sum to pursue his political activism with almost unlimited access to the television audience. Nice work for a dedicated socialist if you can get it. It’s time to call out Marr, Wark, Robinson (both of them), Maitlis, Bruce, Davies et al and then get rid of them and their broadcasting support.

    Rob • 4 hours ago
    The problem with that particular interview with Boris Johnson is that he wasn’t allowed to finish a sentence. If Andrew marr thinks that this Government’s attitude towards the BBC has anything to do with Andrew Marr’s interview then Andrew Marr has a rather high opinion of Andrew Marr.

    GaryMac • 4 hours ago • edited
    I see that the Labour Party, ably supported by the BBC, are trying to whip up a hate campaign against Ian Duncan-Smith

    They know he is a good man, who has done much social good. They also know that Universal Credit is superior to what went before, but was crippled, vengefully, by George Osborne, which is why IDS resigned.

    What kind of people try and get a decent ex-soldier, who has devoted his life to improving the lot of the poor, lynched?

    TomTom McOot • 4 hours ago • edited
    Perhaps the tiniest glint of self-awareness in this, Mr Marr? The fact is you lazily chose to attempt a tedious Cathy Newman-style ‘gotcha’ and failed completely when Boris chose not to play the game. Your interview with Boris could have been an illuminating encounter but instead you chose to dig up a bunch of facile points from the coalition era – another age in British politics as you well know – and proceeded to shout over your guest for his refusal to bend to your agenda. Maybe it’s a sign it’s time you cashed in that overstuffed BBC pension and went back to writing left-tinted history.

    I’ll tell you who. People who thrive on the continued existence of actual poverty. The Labour Party.

    They really are crossing over from dangerous to outright evil.

  57. Even the Sunday Telegraph has blindly and gormlessly joined the massed ranks of the stupid. It’s vacuous (not to mention erroneous) editorial is headed thus:

    The Twenties could be an age of freedom

    “This week, we say goodbye not only to a year but to a decade…”

    Why has everyone in the western world become innumerate as well as clueless? The end of this current decade is not until December 31, 2020. We still have a whole year to go!

    There was no “Year Zero”. Zero is nothing, it is uncountable, it does not exist! They first year in the “common era” was year 1 AD and, consequentally, we naturally count up (in the decimal system) 1–10, 11–20, 21–30 and so on right up to 91–100.

    OK so far, you number challenged multi-millions?

    We do not (nor have we ever) counted up 0–9, 10–19, 20–29 etc until we reach 90–99. Yet this is what you—and seemingly everyone else—is telling us to do when counting the commencement dates of decades and millennia [universally celebrating the end of the previous millennium a ridiculous whole year early on December 31, 1999, was symptomatic of a mass hysteria].

    If I adopted this idiotic counting system that you are insisting upon foisting on us I could make a fortune. For example, if you wish to buy ten apples (or houses) from me, I could get away with charging you for ten but giving you only nine. When you complained I would simply explain that, under your crazy sytem of counting, 0–9 (which is ten separate digits), then 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 are your ‘ten’ and there is nothing, whatsoever, that you could do—under your appalling counting system—to argue otherwise.

    As the late, prescient, prophet, Frank Zappa once explained, “Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe.” Frank was ahead of the game.

    I propose that the current mass-hysteria regarding the worldwide lack of numeracy is grist-to-the-mill for my theory that the human species is getting increasingly, incrementally (and exponentially) more and more stupid by the second.

    Anyone not believing me should read and assimilate the clear evidence that is graphically presented daily on the pages of every newspaper, in the streets, and in the homes and workplaces of all humans.

      1. Morning, Billy,

        I’m still in first gear. if they want a real argument I’m primed to shift up (and charge more). :•)

        1. ” shift up” – is that not an Americanism? The Yanks talk of shifting gear whereas we change gear.

    2. I blame that annoying little oik, the popstar known as Prince for getting everyone so excited about parties in 1999 that they all forgot how to count.

      Couldn’t stand him.

      1. Both cardinal and ordinal numbers are parallel.

        1 (cardinal) is 1st (ordinal) and so on. Even that doesn’t account for zero (nothing) being counted as 1 (first) in both systems.

        1. Ordinal numbers are gradually being done away with by the MSM , including the BBC. One of my pet hates is to hear some knob who really should know better announcing the ‘5 year anniversary’ of something or other. I knew the battle was lost when they started doing it on Today on Radio 4 a good few years ago.

          3. No, an enemy of sloppy speech and dumbing down. I never heard anyone saying ‘Five (or one, or one hundred)-year-anniversary’ until recent years. Now it’s all over the media, along with ‘train station’, ‘train track’ and ‘train line’.

            Language of mouth-breathers.

          4. Can’t understand or use words of more than one syllable and if the do, they put the em-phasis on the wrong syll-able.

            Controversy is but on example and the inability to use a short ‘i’ in privacy. Too much influence from the (foreign) American Language.

          5. G’day Nanners.

            One example that irritates me beyond measure is when a word starts with kilo. Kilogramme is quite correctly pronounced a KILOgramme, kilotonne is pronounced KILO tonne – and the same is applicable to any unit that one can prefix with kilo (meaning thousand).

            Except when is comes to kilometre, where so many pronounce kilometre as kil – o (short o) – me- tre. The same principle applies, so why the change in emphasis? Is it just laziness? If so, why does it only apply in the one case?

          6. The American language is not standard English and it should be declared to be henceforth known as Americanese to differentiate it from proper English.

            A campaign should be launched in all English-speaking, non-American, countries to have standard English taught again, universally, and to censor any publication that does not follow its guidelines.

            That way we would be spared the now commonplace abomination of people speaking of “thuh apple”, “thuh ink”, or “thuh onion” and, properly, enunciating “thee apple”, “thee ink” and “thee onion”.

            All multiples (or any plurality) can be described as: a mass, a clump, a grouping, an abundance, a cluster, a batch, a party, a set, a pack, a lot, a covey, a bundle, a gang, a troop, a crew, a collection, a quantity, a volume or indeed, one of many numerous synonyms for the trite, overworked, and banal “a bunch“!

          7. Wotcher, Grizzly.

            As you say, American is not standard English. As Henry Higgins said “in America they haven’t spoken it [English] for years”.

          9. Wotcher, Grizzly.

            As you say, American is not standard English. As Henry Higgins said “in America they haven’t spoken it [English] for years”.

          10. …and using “…times by…” instead of multiplied by. It really grates on my ears to hear such baby-talk.

            ‘Afternoon, Basset.

          12. And what about thrice? How often does anyone hear that poor ignored word? We should ensure it has a safe space in Nottleland.

          14. You know what, NtN? (And this is no reflection on you or any other posters – myself included – on this topic.) I think that this discussion is even more boring than Brexit!

        2. But if “i” is the square root of minus 1, then what does that say about my iMac or your iPad, Mr Grizzly, Sir?

          1. ♬The square, on the hypotenuse, of a right, tri-angle,
            Is equal to, the sum of the squares, on the two adjacent sides.”            ♬

            Oh dear, Merry Andrew was quite wrong in his explanation of the Pythagorean Theorem. He ought to have know that an right-angled triangle has one adjacent and one opposite side in addition to the hypotenuse.

          2. So which is the adjacent & which the opposite side? Both are adjacent to the right angle, are they not?

          3. Hejsan, Peddy.

            Shall I give you a trigonometry lesson? OK.

            The right angle is not the ‘pertinent’ angle in a Pythagorean (or, indeed, any trigonometrical) equation. It is one of the other angles, usually designated 𝛳 (theta), which is the subject of the problem. [The right angle is a given, and forms no part of the equation]. That angle, invariably acute, has an opposite and an adjacent as well as the hypotenuse. Sines, cosines and tangents are used to determine the value of angle 𝛳.

          4. I was an ace at geometry, but I hated trig.
            But it strikes me that both angles which are not the right-angle are always acute & therefore interchangeable. Furthermore it could be argued that the 2 sides which are not the hypotenuse are both adjacent to the hypo., which refers back to Merry Andrew’s ditty.

          5. And here’s me thinking that triangles (right-angled or not) had three sides, i.e. one opposite and two adjoining sides. (In any case, what has the Abbotopotanuse got to do with it? This is Maffs not Pollyticks.)

    4. And totally irrelevant to your point but Jesus was born in 3758 in the Hebrew calendar, which also can’t have a year zero, since God created the first year.

      2. Jesus was born on the 7th of March 1958, Sue? Then he must have been 42 during 9/11!

        :-))

      3. Which proves, Sue, that the ancients were numerically sound. Much more numerate (and intelligent) than their modern counterparts are.

    6. Grizzly, old bean, I suspect that your strong feelings about counting by the general population are only equalled by mine when hearing the same general population referring to Prince Henry as Prince Harry.

    7. I made the point about the new century and millennium starting on 1st January 2001 for several years before the event. I found I was fighting a losing battle.

      1. Me too. I was making the same point most recently only a couple of weeks ago to a group of people who looked at me as if I was mad. They couldn’t get their heads around the fact that once the ball was rolling and the party frocks ordered for the end of 1999 that nobody was about to let facts, reality and logic get in the way of the one-year-early celebrations.

      1. But whose president and government will try to “punish” us for leaving their disgusting EU (“we will become a French – cough cough and German” empire again) cabal. After our men lost lives saving their miserable skins in the WWs, when their governments didn’t have the guts to fight for themselves. Disgraceful!

    1. Someone with actual talent being honoured for hard work and ability… What were they thinking? He deserves it far more than some of those on that list.

      At least it can now be said: “We know where you live.”

  61. Pregnant woman among migrants found in the Channel

    A pregnant woman was among more than 40 migrants rescued during operations on both sides of the Channel.
    One boat was intercepted off the coast of Kent, while French authorities picked up two others that had got into trouble.
    A dinghy carrying 11 people, who were all said to be Iranian, was met by a Border Force cutter.
    The expectant mother was among 20 people rescued from a boat that was taking on water near Dunkirk.
    Eleven others, including two young children, were picked up off the coast of Calais after their engine failed.
    All 31 rescued by the French were taken to Calais, where they were met by medics and border police.

  62. There’s a lot of it about……………..

    BOOM: Nancy Pelosi’s son Paul Pelosi Jr. (who

    went to Ukraine in 2017) was a board member of Viscoil and executive at

    its related company NRGLab, which DID ENERGY Business in UKRAINE!

    And Nancy Pelosi appeared in a promotional video for the company!https://t.co/wlndLhPqLe

    — Patrick Howley (@HowleyReporter) October 3, 2019

    Shortly after his mother Nancy Pelosi became the first woman speaker, Paul Pelosi Jr., was hired by InfoUSA for $180,000 a year as its vice president for Strategic Planning in 2007.

    Pelosi kept his other full-time day job as a mortgage loan officer

    for Countrywide Loans in California. And, unlike all of the other

    InfoUSA employees, Paul Pelosi did not report to work at the company’s

    headquarters in Omaha.

    It must be nice being the spawn of a powerful Democrat politician.

    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/12/revealed-nancy-pelosis-son-paul-pelosi-jr-was-given-lucrative-180000-a-year-position-on-infousa-weeks-after-his-mother-became-speaker-despite-having-no-experience/
    I suppose the equivalent here is the Quangocracy

  63. Victoria Beckham ‘gives up chauffeur and florist to help save fashion business’

    It’s a very crowded market and it is hard to make money from it. Her business has never made a profit and it seem to be making ever bigger losses. She could be throwing money away on it

    Victoria Beckham has slipped from being Posh Spice to becoming more like us common folk – if latest reports of her financial woes are to be believed.
    The 45-year-old singer-turned-fashion designer has reportedly been forced to give up her private chauffeur after her fashion business suffered losses of £12.3 million .
    It is believed the star has been forced to lay off a number of key staff members as her fashion empire struggles to bring in money.

    Her company’s Hammersmith head office will also be looking less welcoming as she has also said to have been forced to cancel her account with her florist because her regular stock of pot plants has been deemed an unnecessary expense.

        3. In the Group Accounts Turnover was about £36M and Cost of Sales was about £23M which does not look to bad. What sinks the company is the Administrative costs which are about £25M. That to seems far to high. I would expect those cost to be a fraction of that figure

          1. For a pile of old dishcloths.. I am amazed she has sold anything .

            Still , she has a new spaniel to add to the other 2 , and a husband who still hasn’t received a call from the Palace!

      2. I am unaware of her other business’s (if any) as I do not care that this couple exist, but if they are not paying for these losses, does that mean that she is living off of the money that the man of the house brings home? That is not following the new “woke” feminist script.

        But I cannot see her getting so desperate for money that she ends up down the docks doing “favours for sailors.” If it did get that bad then David might earn more than her for doing that.

        1. I haven’t been following any particular story in the press about them but they do seem to be a good model of what i would call a family.

          David always got a lot of abuse for being perceived as a bit thick and of course to be non-woke means pariah status.

          1. I have a lot of time for David,does his bit for charity without the “look at meeeeeeeee” bollocks of so many
            No harm to the man,fair play

        2. Two Active Companies. Victoria Beckham Ltd and Victoria Beckham Beauty Ltd that was only set up n 2019 so no accounts filed yet
          There is also A group Company that these two companies come under

      3. I am unaware of her other business’s (if any) as I do not care that this couple exist, but if they are not paying for these losses, does that mean that she is living off of the money that the man of the house brings home? That is not following the new “woke” feminist script.

        But I cannot see her getting so desperate for money that she ends up down the docks doing “favours for sailors.” If it did get that bad then David might earn more than her for doing that.

      4. For us common folk, to help her now that she is so common folk that she has to give up her chauffeur. No doubt she has to make do with her husband’s.

  66. Is this the way to run the Railways ?

    Could this be a way forward for the railways in England ? So you could say have Great Eastern Railways which would Cover Liverpool Street & Fenchurch Street lines . LNER Railways say covering Kings Cross & Moorgate services

    Wales has bought all the railway services in Wales (Except mainline services which come under the railways in England) under ” Transport for Wales” The infrastructure sill comes under Network Rail and the services are still franchised but Transport Wales decided the routes and timetables and sets the fared. It appears to be very similar o how TfL operates in that as far as the passengers are concerned it is a single integrated network with the exception of the mail line service to London . Where Transport Wales services operate into England the stations in England remain under the control of the railways in England

      2. Sir Reginald Dwight, is what I always call him. And surely the CH (Companion of Honour) belongs to his partner David Somebody or Other.

    4. When is he moving to another EU Country?

      Personally, I’ll be glad to see the back of him – and not in that way.

    5. I’m ashamed of him.

      He is a stupid, imperialist EUrophile (if you can read Mr. Hercules John, try to read what the EU is trying to do. Imperialism, no?).

    4. “This is terrorism. It is domestic terrorism.”
      – Andrew Cuomo, New York Governor.

      A politician who is prepared to tell the truth. It would be nice if we had 1 or 2 like that over here, who could speak out without being hounded from office by those trying to cover up what is being done to our country.

      1. He said that when he thought it was the white far right,since the revelations of the actual attacker it’s all gone quiet

          1. By the time he gets to court he might be a clean-shaven, bald, skinny white guy with sticky-out ears from Tennessee, who goes by the name of Wilbur.

    2. Strange how the attack on Jews is a hate crime, the sun just puts this one down to a random killing,

      Pretendy PM Trudeau twatted all about the earlier crime, this has not had a single comment.

    1. The one on the right might have short hair and a beard, but I’m not convinced of its masculinity. Wrong build and posture.

      Could be wrong, mind.

      1. I once enjoyed doing logic problems, but this maze of words and definitions is deliberately designed to sow confusion and so that anybody can be anything. Breaking it down, I suspect that they are both women.

        The “transgender man” is obviously a woman because she gave birth. The non-binary one is someone who does not define themselves as either a man or woman, but she is probably a woman because if he was a man they would not need to go elsewhere to get the “donation” from another man to have the baby. So it is a lesbian couple playing silly buggers with the language to make themselves feel special.

        As for the people pushing this agenda:

        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/cc9b59a72b1288a55fed271e02b94fc021608596811321cdf08ad384a6c33e0d.jpg

    3. So they are both men or pretending to be men with a baby, which two men couldn’t possibly have conceived. Yes – we’ve got to the 2 + 2 = 5 Stage.

      I feel sorry for the poor baby.

    1. I’m sure she wouldn’t describe it as a ‘situation’ if it happened to her and her family and friends.

        1. If she has just said ” we’ve just got to stop kidding ourselves that loony Muslims and loony Afro-Caribbeans are a “good thing” and call a spade a spade” that would have been enough.

  76. Comparison between Welsh Assembly Election Results (Uses PR) against General Election Results using FPTP

    The Welsh Assembly Elections were in 2016. They use the same constituencies as the General Election but have an additional 20 Regional seats

    Labour WA 34.7%
    Labour WA Regions 31.5%
    Labour GE 40.9%

    Con WA 36.1%
    Con Regions 18.8%
    Con GE 21.1%

    Lib-Dem WA 7.7%
    Lib-Dems REgions 6.5%
    Lib-Dem Ge 6.0%

    PC WA 20.5%
    PC Regions 20.8%
    PC GE 9.9%

    Brexit WA n/a
    Brexit REgions n/a
    Brexit GE 5.4%

    UKIP WA 12.5%
    UKIP Regions 13.5%
    UKIP GE 0.2%

    Green WA 2.5%
    Green Regions 3.0%
    Green GA

      1. I think the next Welsh Assembly Elections are in 2021. If the General election move to the Conservatives is reflected in the WA elections it could result in a Conservative Welsh Assembly

        It is of course still over 12 months off and what will happen to the UKIP vote? Where will that go. Will the Brexit Party stand ?

        Could there be a Rainbow coaltion with the Conservatives it was tried before but failed to get off of the ground. In the WA elections presumably Brexit will not be an issue and the Railways in Wales are already being run on a sort of TfL basis

  78. Well now , Moh and i watching Christine Keeler etc, the opening five minutes or so left NOTHING to the imagination… diversity at work … graphically ..

    More black on white flesh!

          3. I like him when he is free to speak, but I’ve not watched any of his “series.” I still remember one interview he did from 18 years ago when he almost killed Michael Parkinson by making him laugh so hard. I was surprised to find it on youtube, but there it was. I have started it part way through as the next 8 minutes are what almost finished off Parkinson.

            https://youtu.be/9EqYKb1MI8s?t=4m15s

    3. The first episode carried a lot of flashbacks to set the scene. The real nitty-gritty hasn’t really started yet.

          1. What it means is that Microsoft will no longer provide updates or patches to fix problems with Windows 7. If your Windows 7 is working well, don’t bother changing until you have to. I have an old Dell laptop with Windows XP for which Microsoft support was withdrawn ages ago and it is still working flawlessly albeit a bit slow (rather like me). If you are going to replace your laptop, a new one will almost certainly have Windows 10. Windows 10 is pretty good but not worth buying another computer for unless you are buying for another reason.

          2. Thanks help app.

            My laptop is slowing down…a bit like me. There are some good discounts on offer so will look
            in the sales. It’s a minefield…..aarrgghhh

          3. Windows 10 is fine, but slower in some ways than 7. I had trepidations for a long time about upgrading to 10. Waited until they got the early problems ironed out and made the leap. Very like 7, but for some reason it’s slower at opening data files.

          4. If you get a new machine it will come with windows 10. Windows 10 is pretty stable. I am not so keen on the Edge brower but you can choose what browser to use with it

          7. There were some quirks that I noticed when I switched from Windows 7 to Windows 10, or rather, when I was forced to switch when I bought a new laptop and they would not sell me Windows 7 with it as it was not going to be supported for much longer. I don’t really notice the differences anymore.

            The only problem I still have is getting old software / games to work on Windows 10. Most will work but some just don’t. That is annoying for a well-liked game from 10 years ago, but will not affect the vast majority of people. I did need to switch off a lot of “automatic settings” that I was advised to, but that won’t be necessary for most people either.

          9. The answer to that question could take hours, depending on who you ask, and I am off for the night. 🙂

            The short versions are:

            1: Microsoft are hand in glove with the globalists / governments, and they want new and improved ways of spying on everything that you do.
            2: The hardware “architecture” has advanced and it is better to use new software written specifically to take advantage of those changes.
            3: They just want to force people to buy their products again by cutting off support for Windows 7 and making people buy Windows 10, backed up by agreements with many hardware suppliers not to sell Windows 7 anymore.
            4: As time goes by software is “hacked” and by making the old Windows 7 obsolete, they are cutting off the fake copies out there that won’t be able to run new software written for Windows 10. Until that one is hacked as well. (Which of course it has been.)

            Those are just a few short reasons. It will be a mixture of all of them and others as well. Have a good night. 🙂

          11. Windows 10 is finally stable, the last two updates have installed on my laptop without issues. On the surface it is like regular old windows, I switched my wife’s machine from win7 to 10, as the non techie that she is, she has no problems using it. Things like backup are different (you do back up your files don’t you?), So some admin functions might need a bit of knowledge..

            I wouldn’t recommend upgrading an old system, that is where many of the wind10 issues have occurred so buy a new laptop – you will have no other choice unless you but an expensive apple toy or a Google chrome machine. Yes I know there are other options out there, but none are exactly mainstream.

          12. My laptop is about 5 years old and I want to replace it with similar system. I’m non technie too so I’ll have to get used to Ws 10. I looked at Google Chrome but it’s a different system I think?

            Yes I do back up…..somehow!
            Thanks.

          13. I looked at a chrome tablet recently. It looks like an android system with restrictions so yes it is different.

            There again, there are only so many ways that you can package a user interface – click on an icon to open it! What goes on beneath the surface hardly matters nowadays.

          15. 5 years old is not really that old and, unless you are an exceptionally heavy user or are into gaming, should give good service for a few more years.

    3. January 2020 iirc, which is why I went to Windows 10 about 9 months ago when I was upgrading my hardware.

    4. I am being forced to go onto Win7 because my browser will not support YouTube, iPlayer or Facebook for much longer, and a number of sites are coming up with white screens. I have up until now stuck with Snow Leopard, the last decent OS X with XP on a virtual machine, which has a better file manager, runs a lot of legacy software and is also better at printer driver.

      I loathe the whole concept of Win10 which gives Microsoft a blank cheque to download and install malware without warning, and forces me onto the cloud where I have no control when some US corporation decides to hold my data to ransom unless I pay a subscription. The more I can do offline, the better. As for any machine that doesn’t have a decent offline backup system, forget it. One day, I will be forced to get a cheap machine for irritating but essential internet sites, including this one, but then I will have to backup anything I want to keep and abandon anything else to the wolves. I felt with Win8 was like going back to Win3.1 as regards usability and user-friendliness, as if Win95 had never happened.

      I am therefore trying to work out a way of keeping Win7 as secure as possible. A decent set of antimalware apps, and keeping offline as much as possible is essential. The main vulnerability is Adobe and Facebook, which will not run on a decent system any longer. As website designers get more and more malicious in their use of javascript and malware, then I withdraw my custom. Only yesterday, I refused to buy from someone who was trying to load up too many javascripts, and just left my order hanging. I keep getting pleading emails asking why I didn’t complete my order.

      1. I used to use XP at work ( retired 9 years ago) but never had any MS here. Old (dead) laptop had Snow Leopard and current (tired) one has Debian installed. Neither son will entertain any Windows software. The OS on my laptop has gradually stopped working with various things – can’t use Chrome any more and Firefox is out of date. You Tube still works but not other video eg on Facebook.

        The back up system is the son in Basel.

  80. I gather Bercow is not going to the Lords. ( per Express).
    Tomorro’w headline: Bercow found in Ladies.

  82. Just went into the other room and had a quick look at BBC1
    Boring as hell and seems they want to change the slant of the story.
    Have thrown the tV in the bin.

  84. Pressure to Move UK to a full federal status

    With pressure coming from Scotland and Wales and possibly NI for some form of independence pressure is growing to move the who;e of the UK to a proper Federal status. We already have a partial hybrid form of a federal UK

    We already have devolved assemblies for Scotland Wales & NI so that just leaves England needing its own assembly

    There are various forms of federal countries. One model is to devolve all taxes to each of the Nations and they spend .the taxes they raise

    Some powers would remain Westminster such as defence, Inland security probably state pension. and some other things. To fund these a federal tax would be levied

    1. That is a very treasonous suggestion. Are you, like the BBC, planning to get rid of the Queen ?
      This is the United Kingdom. and you can see what happens to Scotland when you devolve too much power to a silly woman.

    2. There are probably exceptions but all the federal countries that come most immediately to mind seem to have required a civil war at some time to preserve the union – USA, Nigeria, Russia, Afghanistan, India, Yugoslavia etc.

      Edit: OK, Australia hasn’t had a civil war but they have cricket matches with England.

    3. Once we became a federation, what would be the benefit to England, apart from deep water for the submarines that the Scots Nats don’t want anyway, of hanging on to the fiscal drains of Scotland and Northern Ireland? That would be the end of the Union.

  85. The amount of publicity these semi-Iranian women spies are getting is highly suspicious.

    https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/dec/29/zaghari-ratcliffe-to-go-on-hunger-strike-for-fellow-detainee-in-iran

    The way to obtain release of one of your nationals is to work quietly in secret, not to portray them as kidnapped sex symbols imprisoned in a foreign jail for doing something you pretend they didn’t do, but to work quietly behind the scenes and make a deal.

    2. I suspect that her ‘relationship’ with the Jamaican nutter is fiction; perhaps a it is a bit of BBC ‘multi-culshi’ nonsense.

      I was acquainted with CK in the late ‘Sixties; we were regulars at the Star Tavern in Belgrave Mews …

        2. The black man dated by Keeler was related to one of the Caribbean fraternity who played with Georgie Fame. I read about it in a biography so it is probably true. Keeler ‘s boyfriend was into drugs even then.

        1. Thank you, John; I was unaware of JE. I have now learned about his part in the affair. A nasty bit of work!

  87. Not to be missed.

    Lost Home Movies of Nazi Germany. Part 1, BBC4, 30th Dec., 02:35.
    Part 2, BBC4, 30th Dec., 21:00.

    1. I haven’t heard of the Shameful/Greedy/Selfish charity, TB. Are they just setting it up? If so, and the CEO salary is in excess of half a million pounds per annum I just might apply.

      :-))

    2. You have to pay big salaries to get the best people.

      Obviously it works well, a search on St Andrew’s came up with many items about substandard care.

      1. I would be happy with second best at half the price! In every organisation there Is always at least one person who would take the offer “you can have your boss’s job but the salary will be less”. As long as the salary wasn’t a lot less, the prestige of promotion usually wins over money.

      2. From their website:

        “…and our surpluses are reinvested in patient care; we have no shareholders or owners to pay dividends to, and we are proud to put people first.”

        As long as that people includes the CEO and senior managers, obviously.

    3. Never give to a charity where any of the people ‘working’ for it ‘earn’ more than you do.

    3. Remember Georgie Fame and the Blueflames. Saw them at Ronnie Scott’s several times in the seventies and they were brilliant. Other bands would attend because he was so admired in the industry.

      I saw him about fifteen years ago at Spencer’s (Lord Butler of Saffron Walden’s estate near Great Yeldham) and a few years ago at Sturmer Hall in Sturmer also under tent only with a much reduced band. He remarked that he had been ill and had a stent fitted.

    3. One of those comments underneath that story is a gem, about Jolyon Maugham fox-batterer extraordinaire:

      “…he’s holed up at Bernard Matthews place. Wielding a snooker cue, screaming that Boris will never take him alive. SWAT team en route.”

  93. Predictably, this is the Guardian’s slant on tonight’s Profumo episode-

    “Like The Crown, it could also have a scroll atop every scene reading “O
    tempora! O mores!” In the decades since the Profumo affair we have moved
    from a time when a politician having sex with a woman tangentially
    associated with Russia caused the establishment to have a near nervous
    breakdown, to the leader of the free world snuggling up to Putin while
    soliciting favours from Ukraine with near impunity. To say nothing of
    our own government now being led by … well, insert your own term here.”

    The Guardian could turn the Holy Bible into an onslaught against Trump and Boris.

    1. Evening PT,
      Gerard Batten is still doing it and on one front ie islamic ideology in no uncertain manner, but as it is.

  97. Good morning all.
    Just parking here until today’s page opens and just look at all that Cultural Diversity!

    The NHS insiders offering to help desperate families apply for care funding – for a fee

    NHS officials are working as private consultants and charging frail pensioners’ relatives for help securing funding from the state, a Telegraph investigation has found.

    The senior managers, who are paid by the health service to oversee applications for the funding, are charging the vulnerable up to £400 a day for help trying to obtain such grants.

    One health official said that after using her private services a family had been awarded an NHS grant worth “thousands and thousands and thousands, like two years’ worth of nursing home fees”.

    Another was running the risk of an apparent conflict of interest, offering to secure funding for services in the area where he worked.

    Under national rules, any patient with a significant health problem – such as dementia or Parkinson’s – should have their care and nursing fees paid in full, if the condition is deemed to be the main reason they need help.

    f the NHS decides that help is required simply because someone is frail or elderly, this falls under social care, which is means-tested.

    But families and campaigners say the system is unfair – as well as overly complex – with increasing numbers being denied the funds, leaving them facing bills of up to £100,000 a year.

    In the last five years, average eligibility per 50,000 population for the funding has fallen by nearly 15 per cent – from 69.33 per 50,000 in 2014/15 to 59.53 in the second quarter of 19/20.

    Undercover reporters – posing as relatives of a man with dementia and Parkinson’s – secretly recorded meetings with three NHS officials offering to help them get funding for care.

    All the officials claimed to have a high success rate for their clients, securing funds under the system called Continuing Health Care.

    The disclosure will fuel concerns that a two-tier system is in operation, with those who can pay for private advice securing an advantage over those who cannot.

    Last night, Grace Ioppolo, who has been battling to get her husband’s nursing fees covered by CHC funding for two years, said that she thought it was “outrageous” that NHS officials were working as private consultants for families trying to secure the grants. Her husband, Dr Peter Beal, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2013.

    “I don’t think it’s appropriate”, she said. “The system is deliberately confusing and not transparent”.

    “If you can pay these people for extra help it is discriminatory. Just because you’ve got money, it shouldn’t give you a better chance to appeal or to get access to funding”.

    Rear Admiral Philip Mathias, who spent four years fighting for CHC funding for his elderly mother before finally obtaining it two hours after she died, said he thought it was a “massive conflict of interest” for the officials to be working as private consultants.

    “To be offering consultancy work, which they’re paid for, whilst they’re on the inside track of the CHC process, working in one or another capacity with the NHS, I think stinks”, he said.

    He said that if one of the officials was willing to help a family whose relative was based in the same area as where the NHS manager worked, it was “horrendous”.

    Undercover reporters met several NHS officials who said they worked with families as private consultants to secure CHC funding.

    Farouq Ogunseye, who is a project lead for Herefordshire Clinical Commissioning Group, was first approached by an undercover reporter last year, when he was working for Worcestershire CCG.

    A CCG is an NHS body which commissions and pays for health services in a geographical area.

    The reporter was responding to an advert Mr Ogunseye had placed on his Facebook page offering help for families trying to secure CHC.

    After being told that the reporter’s elderly male relative was in Kidderminster in Worcestershire, Mr Ogunseye indicated that he might be able to help and said that he charged £300-a-day.

    He later met with two undercover reporters posing as relatives of the man in the nursing home. By this time, he was working for Herefordshire CCG, which is now merging with three Worcestershire CCGs.

    “CHC is massive, and there is a lot of people, there’s not a lot of information out there”, he said at the meeting in August.

    When asked about his success rate, he said he was able to secure funding for about 40 percent of the cases he worked on and he was handling up to “10 or 11 a month”.

    A second consultant, Dean Aldridge, who works for Waltham Forest CCG overseeing quality control on its CHC funding, said that the system was extremely confusing for families who wanted to apply for financial support.

    “The education’s so bad the leaflet you get given is crap”, he told the undercover reporters.

    Mr Aldridge, who said he charges £400 up to a day to attend meetings with families when their CHC application is being reviewed, said that if the family wanted to appeal the decision to reject the elderly relative for CHC funding, it could be “supported” by him.

    As an independent CHC consultant, he would make a “recommendation” about whether their grandfather should be approved. Once the report was submitted, he said that it would have ‘weight’ coming from him, and the assessors would be ‘more likely to look at it and think “oh hold on a minute”. He said that in about a third of the cases he handled he was able to overturn rejections for funding.

    A third consultant overseeing CHC applications for two CCGs in the north of England, said that in previous cases she had worked on she had been able to “overturn” some of the levels recorded in the documentation, which meant that an individual’s need went from “moderate to high….from high to severe”.

    As a private consultant she charges £300 to assess the needs of the person in the care home and a further £200 to attend meetings. She said that because of her experience, when she attends meetings, “it makes them sit up and listen a bit more”.

    She said that she had recently helped one family in the north of England win funding totalling “thousands and thousands and thousands of pounds, like two years’ worth of nursing home fees”.

    It is understood that the three officials work for the NHS as contractors.

    When confronted Mr Ogunseye insisted that he would not have carried out any work for the undercover reporters’ relative due to the conflict of interest. He said that his claim to have handled up to 11 private clients a month was ‘incorrect’ and that, despite advertising his services, he had never actually done any such work although he hoped to in the future. He said he had only worked for the CCGs as a contractor, not an employee and when he had met the reporters in August, he had expected to be leaving the job with the CCG shortly afterwards.

    A spokesperson on behalf of Herefordshire and Worcestershire CCGs’, where Mr Ogunseye worked, said that prior to being alerted by the Telegraph the CCG had been “unaware that one of their Continuing Health Care contractors is allegedly also offering paid consultancy work to local families. Appropriate action has since been taken”.

    Mr Ogunseye said that the CCG had suspended his contract pending an investigation.

    Mr Aldridge said he had “never billed, invoiced or received payment of any kind from anyone for the advice I have given them”.

    He added that he had no involvement in whether CHC was awarded and said he had no conflict of interest. “My objective, when talking to families or working in my contractor role in the NHS, is to ensure that individuals are on the correct funding pathway based on their care needs and that the process is followed correctly, in accordance with the national framework”.

    A spokesperson for NHS Waltham Forest Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), which employs Mr Aldridge, said: “The CCG is currently looking into the matter. It would not be appropriate to comment further at this time.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/12/29/nhs-officials-selling-care-grant-advice/

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