Sunday 3 September: Bereft of ideas, the entire political class is trapped in a cycle of tax and spend

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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316 thoughts on “Sunday 3 September: Bereft of ideas, the entire political class is trapped in a cycle of tax and spend”

  1. Good morrow, Gentlefolks, today’s story

    Take What You’re Offered
    The pope is on his way to Las Vegas. While boarding the plane, a stewardess says: “Hello Mr. Presley, it is a pleasure to see you!”

    The pope replies: “Sorry my child, but I’m not Elvis!”

    Later, as the Pope arrives and gets into his limousine, the driver says: “Good evening Mr. Presley!”

    The pope replies: “My son, I am not Elvis!”

    So even later, as he’s checking into the hotel, the clerk says: “Good evening Mr. Presley! We have your suite all ready for you, and the usual – 2 beautiful women – are waiting for you!”

    To which the Pope replies: “Thank you… thank you very much.”

    1. I may well join you, Sir Jasper – not literally, of course! I’ve been up since 3.45 am and am beginning to wilt!

  5. Morning all,

    I hadn’t realised why RAAC was so attractive for use in the building industry.

    It’s cheap, strong, light, easy to handle,, quick to install, a good insulator of heat and sound, fireproof and what’s more its production is environmentally friendly.

    https://youtu.be/Dsm7YWny3lM?si=8GtGVCS7T4UZjoFv

    What more ciould you ask from a construction material apart from only having a lifetime of 30 years? 🤔

    1. What puzzles me is why it apparently only affects schools. What about all the other buildings where it must have been used? Was it used on the Continent or only in Britain? Perhaps corrimobile can enlighten us!

      1. I think schools are the first to spot it.
        Think of all the car parks, government buildings, social housing, office blocks etc…. that were thrown up between 1960 and 1990.
        Often after perfectly good Victorian buildings had been torn down.

      2. You will find RAAC in what are termed beam and hollow pot floors. The beams are precast conventional reinforced concrete whereas the hollow pots sitting between the beams are lightweight hollow pots cast in RAAC.

        The problems appear to arise where this beam and pot has been used in flat roof construction. If water penetrates a defective roofing membrane then the blocks are prone to deterioration.

        I am not personally aware of other applications of RAAC and would never have countenanced its use in structural reinforced elements.

        Regrettably and in my lifetime I have witnessed a general decline in standards across the architectural and building professions. The quality of buildings derives from the amount of money spent on them. We spend far less on our buildings than say Sweden or Germany with obvious results.

        When I was designing the external windows of Richmond House in Whitehall I wished to accept the tender of a Swedish manufacturer for the grey anodised thermally broken and double glazed windows.

        In the event Thatcher dictated to the Permanent Secretary that we would have to seek new tenders from British manufacturers and we were given a choice of two. We chose Gibbons and were able to persuade that company to import Ali-Suisse thermally broken sections anodised and fabricated in the UK.

        Others have made the point that C19 buildings survive still and many have proven adaptable to other uses. Warehouses in docklands are an obvious example. We should aim for more permanence as the Victorians were apt to do and stop putting up disposable rubbish.

        Oh, and stop the fashion for flat roofs on some broken backed frame. All roofs should be steeply pitched and gutters should over-sail the walls. It is common sense in our part of the world.

      1. There must be lots of stuff around that looks like concrete but isn’t.
        There’s mortar concrete than you think!

        1. High alumina concrete was used in furnace construction. Made from China clay.
          I worked briefly in a steel works rolling mill reforming a burner block.
          The mill had been switched off for two weeks but my word it was still hot in there.
          And strangely working in construction for 53 years I had never heard of RAAC until last week. Hundreds of buildings have been closed while surveys are taking place. Most will only need minor works.
          I doubt if it’s all quite as bad as our over enthusiastic media are making out.

      3. In the late 60s I worked on the Carlton centre in JHB, after a few weeks prep on the vertically sliding form works we had up to 25 concrete trucks in one day for ‘the pour’.
        Now, as far as I can make out the building, hotel and all is permanently locked and closed down.

      4. I think it was something else, when I was a student I spent a summer working at the Building Research Establishment and I worked on a project investigating long term properties of various concrete formulations. I wasn’t doing anything clever – just helping with the weekly mix and pour and then breaking open the moulds and preparing them for the next week’s batch.

      5. Concrete cancer is the consequence of the rusting of the steel rods in reinforced concrete.

      6. Concrete cancer was caused by the use of unwashed sea aggregates in the mix otherwise known as nitrate contamination. This caused the steel reinforcement to rust prematurely.

    3. When I looked it up, there seems to be quite a difference between standard autoclave aerated concrete, and that using reinforcing bars, which suggests its use in structural elements such as beams.

      In the illustration above, it seems that the standard aerated stuff is being used as infill blocks in a block and beam floor. Presumably the supporting beams are made using conventional reinforced and probably prestressed concrete with the correct proportion of heavy aggregate to give it strength and durability. I see no issue with this, since if the infill blocks fail, the worst thing that can happen is to put your foot through the floor, and the block can be easily replaced. The building itself is not going to fall down. If however, they are doing away with the supporting beams and simply slotting them together, then I can see there would be a problem.

      What I suspect the idiot U.S.-guided British have done, in a drive to cut costs and up the quarterly payouts to executives, is to use the aerated stuff in reinforced concrete, relying on it being strong enough to use structurally during the warranty period. A big no-no, but would managers listen when they would have pocketed their bonuses and retired long before the floor or roof collapses?

      2. The next invented problem will breeze blocks, light weight aerated building blocks. Good for insulation. But…..
        I think the problem with RAAC is putting reinforcement such as high tensile steel bars in as its formed might cause it to rust. And reinforcement such as steel bars has to be at least 50mm from air and possibly dampness because of rust leading to deterioration and arising weakness.

  7. Horror as mosque that has decades-long history of alleged extremism and hate speech, is handed £2 MILLION grant – before civil servants rush to freeze it. 3 September 2023.

    Officials had transferred £77,000 to the mosque before an anti-extremism group called Focus on Western Islamism (FWI) raised the alarm. The rest of the award was halted when FWI appeared to present evidence showing how the mosque’s clerics promoted hate speech.

    The £2.2 million grant was offered by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), from a £300 million pot set up to fund youth centres across Britain.

    The money was awarded after due diligence checks on the mosque had been performed by an independent body called the Social Investment Business (SIB), which is headed by former Labour Security Minister and Communities Secretary Hazel Blears.

    I chose this article; not because of the story about the Imam, but because of the insight it gives into how the system works. The SIB is itself a leech on the system and the idea that it is independent in any meaningful sense or would report negatively is beyond risible. The appointment of Blears as its head is just the sort of confirmation one would expect of ex-MP’s. A pay off for years of faithful service.

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

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12473991/Civil-servants-rush-freeze-2-MILLION-grant-handed-mosque-decades-long-history-alleged-extremism-hate-speech-including-imam-gave-sermon-stone-women-correctly.html

    1. If Christianity has to modernise because it is considered too extreme for progressive Britain, then how can they give Islam a free pass?

    2. Well that’s a start, but why have they taken such a long time to notice the problems caused by islamism.

  8. Bereft of ideas, the entire political class is trapped in a cycle of tax and spend

    The entire political class are acting as one for some reason.

  9. Good morning all! Not a bad night’s sleep for a change, feel much less achey than last night.

    A lovely dry start with a bit of a hazy sky and the setting gibbous moon hovering over the trees opposite. 7°C according to the yard thermometer.

      2. Hazy sky cleared to bright sunshine so I’ve been working up the hill above the “garden”..

    2. Morning BoB.

      You asked me a question recently in response to the comments about cheese possessed. I was out for a few days and so couldn’t reply before the comment was locked.

      Anyway, yes I have still got a compo can opener, several of them. They work better than any of the more complicated gadgets.

      In ’97 I took a sabbatical and travelled around NZ and Oz. I’d been in NZ a couple of weeks and wrote to my old CQMS asking if he’d send me a tin opener as the ones in the hostels’ kitchens kept going missing. It duly arrived a week later, complete with 1033 for me to sign and send back 😁😁

      1. Superb, those little fold-flat tin openers. Fit nicely onto a key ring.
        Morning, Stormy!

        1. Morning Obers.
          They have useful little notch for opening bottle tops too. I take one with me everywhere.

          1. We have an extremely efficient bottle opener it has several size options to clamp around tops.
            I had to open a large milk container the other day, I still quite strong but the tight plastic lid was ripping my hand to bits.

  10. Good morning all,

    Back at McPhee Towers where there is a misty, grey autumnal view out of the study window. However, it is soon to clear up to be a sunny day. The wind is wafting all around the compass from Sou’-East through 270º to Nor’-East, 14℃ and going up to 22℃ this afternoon.

    Now I know that the state IS capable of maintaining the roads in a good condition. I’ve spent five days in West Wales where there is nary a pot-hole to be seen. Not only that but many A-class roads have clearly been re-surfaced and re-painted this year. I know the traffic is somewhat lighter than in central Southern England but, surely, the more a road is used, the more essential it is that it should be maintained properly. You would think.

    The top letter this morning raises a giggle. Ian McKenzie of Preston, Lancashire doesn’t believe Rachel Reeves and it’s not because he thinks she might be lying when she say there will be no new wealth taxes under Labour (of course she is lying). He quite correctly identifies that ALL taxes are wealth taxes but it is in his last two paragraphs that the laugh comes:

    At that moment, politicians of all parties will be forced to confront reality and use their imaginations to work out what the state should do, what should be left to the market, and what a sustainable future for healthcare and welfare looks like.

    Only then might we begin to see some improvement in growth and productivity, which will eventually lead to increased prosperity.

    Ian, my dear chap, you really need to understand that there is to be NO future for our health and welfare and there is to be NO growth and productivity improvement because, well, Agenda 21. But tax rises there will be because they, along with inflation, are what will be the tools employed to achieve the future impoverishment of us all, not just the young.

    1. Headline in the Daily Mail today:
      “Voters now see Labour as the ‘low-tax party for families’ with more than a third of people believing that Sir Keir Starmer will keep tax burden low”

      Either the Mail is flat out lying to deceive people, or voters are even more foolish than I had believed.

        1. The Mail’s campaign to put the fear into the population with a new convid virus has fallen flat.
          Even Mail readers are telling them to poke it.
          So, a new lie is needed to keep the pot a-boilin’.

      3. The tax burden is not low. It is offensively high. Labour only ever hike taxes. They’re Left wing big state spendaholic socialists.

        If Reeves stood up and presented, oh, I don’t know, a practical plan of tax cuts, spending cuts and erosion of the state to say… 20% of it’s current corpulent size that would be a start.

    2. You have to remember that it will be nasty English money that paid for Welsh roads to be resurfaced.

  11. ‘Morning, Peeps. Yet another fine day is forecast, with a very extravagent 23°C apparently.

    Today’s DT Leader:

    Sunak is finally standing up to the green Blob

    The Government is rejecting a proposed moratorium on airport expansion. The Climate Change Act must now be reformed

    TELEGRAPH VIEW
    2 September 2023 • 10:00pm

    The Climate Change Committee and its deliberations may not yet be the subject of wide public debate, but its recommendations are beginning to have a massive impact on all our lives – and, without Government action, its influence is destined to continuously grow. The coming bans on gas boilers and petrol cars are a product of its guidance; overseas holidays are its next target. The quango is now proposing a complete moratorium on airport expansion until the Government draws up a “capacity management framework” to ensure that demand for flights is no more than 25 per cent higher in 2050 than it was in 2018. Even once this is in place, it recommends that future expansion at a given location only be permitted if equivalent capacity is shuttered elsewhere.

    The Committee was set up under Ed Miliband’s 2008 Climate Change Act, and gold plated by Theresa May in 2019 as one of her last acts in office. It advises government on the setting of Britain’s own five-year plans: carbon budgets which set legally binding, and falling, limits on Britain’s total emissions of greenhouse gases. As the limits ratchet down, the steps mandated inevitably have to become ever more draconian. Under its outgoing chairman Lord Deben – formerly John Selwyn Gummer, the Europhile environment secretary in John Major’s government – it has arguably become the most powerful unelected quangocracy after the Bank of England.

    The Climate Change Act has acquired a totemic status akin to that of the Human Rights Act, something that Tories constantly toy with reforming, to the delight of the grassroots, but always step back from. But this might be about to change. The Sunday Telegraph today reveals that Rishi Sunak will reject the airport moratorium that the Committee demands. Already approved expansions at Stansted and Southampton airports will be allowed to go ahead; London City, Gatwick, Luton and Manston can pursue their battles with planning to be given the green light for their plans.

    Restricting capacity would inevitably mean higher prices, so it is good news for hard-pressed families looking forward to their annual foreign trip during this cost of living crisis. It also sends a clear sign that the Government is serious about its global ambitions and intends to keep Britain open for business.

    Transport Secretary Mark Harper and Claire Coutinho, the new Secretary of State for Net Zero, should be applauded for standing up to the green Blob. They should prepare themselves for the legal challenges that this decision will inevitably face. Just as with the Human Rights Act and plans to tackle illegal immigration, the Climate Change Act creates endless opportunities for the Government’s opponents to wage lawfare against it. Ms Countinho should consider reforming the legislation. This would allow the UK to pursue its green ambitions without strangling its economy and imposing ever-rising costs on consumers.

    * * *

    I wish I could believe even some of this. It’s surely too little and too late. Anyone with half a brain should have disowned the “green crap” (one of the few sensible utterances from Dodgy Dave) from the outset, since it was obvious that it was all pie in the sky.

    The BTL posters are similarly unimpressed:

    Michael Geddes
    1 HR AGO
    The following sentence from the editorial in today’s DT is a fair summation of our nation at present.
    “But the shabby state of the country today is also an indictment of the British state: its extraordinary institutional incompetence, its depressing lack of accountability, and its inability to get anything done.” Yes, it’s that bad.
    As a brief example, Suella Braverman arrived as a woman on a mission, as did Patel before her. Her words were music to our ears.
    The Bibby Stockholm is berthed, unused, the Rwanda scheme hasn’t taken flight, more dinghies are arriving, yet we are constantly told; “We will stop the boats.”
    The time for reminders of “what will be done” is over. The time to be told “what HAS BEEN done” is now. Hands up all those who believe this government can (or want to) bring about a decline in unsustainable immigration?

    S A Coello
    1 HR AGO
    It is deliberate. There can be no other explanation and is just one facet of the plan to bring the country to its knees and usher in a new form of government.

    3. Just bear in mind that Gummer has his fingers in many ‘green’ industries. Oh, he admits them all, but should a man who gets rich off windmills really be in charge of the quango to promote them?

    2. Two birds killed with one stone.
      Big Brother can’t fine you and the children avoid the brainwashing factory.

  13. The Conservatives have become a party of handouts – especially to their enemies. 3 September 2023.

    The RSPB is of course free to argue that the balance should be drawn differently. But this is not what it did. Instead, it took to The Platform Formerly Known As Twitter and declared: “LIARS! @RishiSunak @michaelgove @theresecoffey you said you wouldn’t weaken environmental protections. And yet that’s just what you are doing. You lie, and you lie, and you lie again. And we’ve had enough.”

    Naturally, this response riled Conservative MPs, who pointed out that the RSPB received more than £10 million in government grants last year. Why, they asked, was a Tory government funding an outfit that repaid it with juvenile insults? Why should an organisation whose members think their subs are funding conservation be devoting its resources to partisan campaigning?

    Why, one wants to scream, is the government handing out taxpayers money at all?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/09/02/the-conservative-have-become-a-party-of-handouts/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/09/02/the-conservative-have-become-a-party-of-handouts/

    1. Unfortunately it’s the same old and continuous story, our political classes and Whitehall eff up everything they come into contact with. Everything.

    2. Good morning, Araminta.

      £10 million to the RSPB is small, no, very small beer, in the scheme of things political. What is really concerning is the very, very large beer i.e. £Billions that the government is handling out to the people’s potential enemies, the thousands of illegal immigrants being deliberately imported. The importers are the people’s arch-enemy, the government itself.
      Perhaps the DT could do a truthful hit-piece on that ‘handout’ rather than try and distract from the ‘elephant in the room’ of all handouts, the splurging of incredible and unaffordable amounts of cash on ‘rescuing’ and housing people who have no right to be here and who offer nothing positive in return.

    3. I didn’t realise ‘charities’ like the RSPB got govt grants as well, presumably this is to keep them ‘sweet’ and on side and to encourage them to follow the political narrative – perhaps a condition of the grant. Thus govt has a sense that it has bought the charity and can then do what it likes.

  14. Morning all 🙂😊
    Nice bright sunny morning.
    For Our political idiots Brereft of ideas.
    Here’s something to stop their brains from shrinking any further. Stop the boats and start the deportations. By the thousands.
    Do as you are instructed by the people who pay for your sceptred existence. Or should that be septic existence.
    And stop Building new dwellings all across England on our green belt.

  15. SIR – If Labour has no intention of asking billionaires to pay a fairer share towards society through taxation, how does it differ from the present Government?

    It may claim that tackling non-domiciled residents will help the tax take, but it will not solve much at all. The only thing that will happen is that these people will spend a greater amount of their money abroad, rather than in this country. If that is all Labour has to offer as an alternative policy, voting for it seems pointless.

    We would be better served by allowing the Prime Minister to follow the policy of “steady as she goes” and providing long-term stability.

    Bernard Borman
    Richmond, North Yorkshire

    A few points:
    What is a “fairer share” that the billionaires (so many of these around these days) must pay?
    Norway started that, with the current Labour government. Result: The billionaires don’t live in Norway any more, they moved out, typically to Switzerland. This had consequences for local as well as National government: The local income taxes are levied on those registered as living within the county, and so when a billionaire leaves, it makes a huge hole in the local finances – my Company’s owner moved from neighbouring county to Switzerland. As one of Norway’s richest, the county lost a staggering amount of income tax… so everybody else must stump up to fill the hole. One man leaves, and the rest have noticeably higher local tax bills… that seems fair, doesn’t it?
    The government are talking about bringing in laws to stop that happening again, to make it illegal to move your fortune out. Watch the remaining fortunes leave if they get much further with that one.

      1. Indeed, and it doesn’t have to live any particular place – it’s money, too, and it can afford good tax lawyers to minimise it’s taxes.

      2. It’s obviously a ‘Hate Crime’ no diversity at all and very few females.
        Let’s sue……

        1. Oh, come on!

          All the nigras made the money and damn whitey nicked it from them! It stands to reason.

          1. Like they invented scientific progress; printing, clean water supply, modern medicine, electricity ……
            All ideas pinched from Africa by evil colonialist whitey.

          2. Not forgetting that they all wore clean, starched, white lab coats while achieving all that.😘

  16. SIR – If Labour has no intention of asking billionaires to pay a fairer share towards society through taxation, how does it differ from the present Government?

    It may claim that tackling non-domiciled residents will help the tax take, but it will not solve much at all. The only thing that will happen is that these people will spend a greater amount of their money abroad, rather than in this country. If that is all Labour has to offer as an alternative policy, voting for it seems pointless.

    We would be better served by allowing the Prime Minister to follow the policy of “steady as she goes” and providing long-term stability.

    Bernard Borman
    Richmond, North Yorkshire

    A few points:
    What is a “fairer share” that the billionaires (so many of these around these days) must pay?
    Norway started that, with the current Labour government. Result: The billionaires don’t live in Norway any more, they moved out, typically to Switzerland. This had consequences for local as well as National government: The local income taxes are levied on those registered as living within the county, and so when a billionaire leaves, it makes a huge hole in the local finances – my Company’s owner moved from neighbouring county to Switzerland. As one of Norway’s richest, the county lost a staggering amount of income tax… so everybody else must stump up to fill the hole. One man leaves, and the rest have noticeably higher local tax bills… that seems fair, doesn’t it?
    The government are talking about bringing in laws to stop that happening again, to make it illegal to move your fortune out. Watch the remaining fortunes leave if they get much further with that one.

  17. Morning, all Y’all.
    After a lovely calm sunny day yesterday, autumn has now started properly. Quite a few yellow leaves have appeared overnight. And the blue sky is now uniform grey. Sigh…

  18. Good Moaning.
    84 years since we declared that Britain was at war with Germany.
    Imagine that: a British government making a decision and defending our culture.
    “… try and tell young people of today that …”

    1. We have enough of our own people causing more damage to this country than hitler. Especially to London.

  19. SIR – Matthew Lynn’s article, “Bank of Mum and Dad is dragging down the economy” (August 27), reaches some back-to-front conclusions. He looks at parents helping their children as a “problem”, contributing to widening divisions in society, whereas in fact people looking after their own families should be the solution.

    If families were more self-sufficient, rather than expecting cradle-to-grave state care, we might be in a better place than we are now. I agree that the property market is dysfunctional, but encouraging more housebuilding does not mean we should discourage the most powerful, natural and beneficial human motivation: to fight for your children and help them on their way.

    The Labour Party’s daft plan to put VAT on private school fees is one of many examples of the governing class trying to penalise anyone who wants to provide for themselves and their family. Why does no one try anything truly radical, like an educational voucher system, setting parents free to contribute financially towards something better? Are we so out of ideas that we must accept what we are given?

    The Bank of Mum and Dad has more sense than the state – it focuses on those it cares about, and that is no bad thing.

    Lauren Groom
    Salisbury, Wiltshire

    1. I identified this as the prime motive of the true conservative – to leave one’s children in a better state than one inherited. The young grumble about “boomers” (which means something different in the US than the UK, since in Britain, the post-war generation is very different to those born in the 1960s) hogging the money. In fact, as pensioners downsize and wind down, it is a good time to help one’s children get on the ladder and help out with the grandchildren. There is a transference of wealth down the generations, preferably in good time not to get ensnared with Inheritance Tax.

      This benevolent system breaks down with the isolation of the young from the old, each hermetically sealed in their identity groups, as considered “appropriate” by today’s influencers. How many times do we have to hear “always keep away from children” on TV commercials before we get the message and give up on the young?

    2. Next step.
      HMRC will be calculating the number of (free) hours child minding that grandparents carried out and adding that to the death duty total.

    3. It’s notable that when people spend money on what they want – their children, themselves – they get vastly more value from it. When big government forces them to spend cash on what government wants, the return is very poor and usually not remotely what the individual wants.

  20. SIR – Travelling the reasonably short distance to London from my home in Surrey is now proving more and more uncongenial, with high rail ticket prices, strikes, the congestion charge and now Ulez (Letters, September 1).

    So I’ve decided to spend my time and money visiting provincial galleries, museums and restaurants, where it seems my custom is wanted. I suspect I’m not alone.

    Stefan Reynolds
    Godalming, Surrey

    Indeed. Oslo city has the attitude that they don’t want visitors – they tried to ban cruise ships coming alongside and depositing thousands of rich Americans and Germans directly into the city – so much so that we never go there any more, neither to eat, entertain, or shop. So, as well as the rich visitors, they don’t get our, nor quite a few others, custom. I’m sure the shops and restaurants are delighted.

    2. Any modern-day ‘copper’ attempting to try that with me would soon wish they hadn’t bothered. I would dance rings around them, mentally.

  23. Good morning, Fellow Nottlers,

    It’s good to see that I am not the only cock-eyed optimist who submits comments under the letters in the DT! Here is one today from the ever -cheerful person calling herself Anastasia’s Revenge

    Church of England parishes close at record rate
    Post doesn’t get delivered
    Trains don’t run
    The Police arrest the “wrong” people these days
    Banks are closing
    Pubs are closing
    NHS backlogs grow
    Schools must close
    Energy crisis
    Inflation
    ULEZ
    Net Zero farce
    Incompetent political class
    Migrant crisis
    Judiciary a ‘woke’ joke
    The MSM is biased
    Have I left any ‘joyful’ news out?

    2. Post does get delivered. I’ve three amazon parcels ariving today. Trains don’t run because they’re really controlled by the state, which is incompetent. In fact, every other problem on th elist is entirely down to big government.

      The prblem is a meddling, obese, ineffective, expensive, destructive and useless state.

      1. The Amazon deliveries in France are very good – but they have stopped using the postal service and use their own couriers.

  24. Good morning, all. Just looking in after the best night’s sleep I have had for years. Woke to gorgeous sunshine with 29C expected after lunch. The billet is superb, fully and nicely furnished. From the door to the beach is 40 yards and the chilly Atlantic 20 yards further. Very cheerful little town.
    Today we intend to do bugger all apart from nothing. Beach paddle awaits. This week is celebrating the town’s twinning with a Spanish place in Galicia. The MR is booking places on the “Degustation des vins espagnols” tomorrow evening…! I’ll force myself to accompany her

    See you tomorrow.

  25. BTL:
    Matthew Biddlecombe
    46 MIN AGO
    Off piste but I see elsewhere it’s being reported that the Office for National Statistics got the UK economy wrong; apparently it returned to pre-Covid levels two years ago and is currently outperforming France, Germany and Italy.
    When are we going to stop giving these “experts” so much credence? They are getting it wrong on almost every level, yet politicians and the media still trail in the wake like a poodle puppy.
    So you still believe the greens and man-made climate warming?

    1. The ONS was nobbled over covid. Nothing from them can be trusted any more.
      Just the same as BBC weather. They have an agenda to push.

      1. Their stats come from the Met office, who deliberately bake in ‘climate change’ into their models. That’s why they’re wrong most of the time.

        1. It is always so much easier to develop a model when you knew what the answer is expected to be. All of those mistakes can be adjusted out of the system before the results are skewed.

    2. “…….. So you still believe the greens and man-made climate warming?”

      No, it is being used by governments to frighten the stupid and take our money and control us.

      And of course I believe that the main point of man-made Covid and the ineffective gene therapies was to give the PTB yet more weapons with which to control us all.

    3. They want to get it wrong. The entire narrative is to do down the economy and do it in. Then they can say we were right’.

      I forget the article but some wonk was complaining that Truss’ error was not taking the OBR’s advice. This is the OBR that has never, ever been right? That deliberately excludes tax cuts from creating growth?

  26. “Was the summer weather really as bad as you think?”

    ‘Anecdotally, I’ve heard from a lot of people about how “bad” our summer has been.’

    But just to remind you that ‘Global Boiling’ is still on our agenda, and don’t you forget it!

    ‘However, the statistics of meteorological summer show something a little different from our perceptions.’

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/features/66679888

    Sebastian, would you write an article showing the ill-informed plebs that the chilly wet summer they’ve undergone was no such thing.

    1. The Beeb proudly quoted the POTUS earlier on the 7o’clock news Radio 3 re the first hurricane in over 100 years to hit the West coast of Florida: ‘ No one with intelligence could doubt that Climate Change is happening’

      2. I don’t imagine for a minute that they mentioned the person or people who persuaded the SOS (silly old sod) to read that statement.
        I have an article somewhere from The New York Times. From about 15 years ago that blamed climate change on devastation of the rain forests across the world.

      3. In terms of distance, Andrew was in a similar area but just over the state line in New Orleans. It is beyond belief that Joe could link climate change to a hurricane in hurricane season in a hurricane area.

    2. Six weeks ago I posted here that the the Schools’ Summer holidays are about to start and wet weather is forecast for the next week. As indeed it was bar for just one day (Wednesday) in South Devon. I also suggested the weather would remain indifferent until the schools go back in early September. Eh Voila! Schools go back next week and the forecast is looking reasonable – much like the weather described by RC Sheriff in his book ‘A Fortnight in September’….

    4. They’re gaslighting people!
      Someone, I think in the Spectator, suggested that the BBC must have measured the summer temperature from his radiators!

    2. It seems to me that anyone who appears on TV has been informed that unless they mention ‘the pandemic’ they will lose their jobs.

  28. Good morning, all! Spent the day ‘down on the farm’ yesterday, and got the ‘news’ that were going to be grandparents again! Absolutely delighted and thrilled, but wondering when your children stop treating you like stupid people? We’ve known for ages (it is pretty obvious!) but because our daughter had a miscarriage at the beginning of the year, they didn’t want to tempt fate! I understand that, but we’re old and experienced!🤦🏻‍♀️

    3. PS: What exactly did you say to Neil that made him give it both barrels in his last broadcast?

      1. My words were something like ‘Keep on doing what you’re doing, lots of people agree!’ I’ll just away and polish my halo!

  29. How Russian diplomacy died under Putin. 2 September 2023.

    In October 2021, US Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland went to a meeting at the Russian foreign ministry in Moscow. The man across the table was Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, whom Ms Nuland had known for decades and always got along with.

    Mr Rybakov’s American counterparts saw him as a practical, calm negotiator – someone they could talk to even as the two countries’ relationship frayed.

    This time, things were different.

    Mr Ryabkov read Moscow’s official position from a piece of paper and resisted Ms Nuland’s attempts to start a discussion. Ms Nuland was shocked, according to two people who discussed the incident with her.

    She described Mr Ryabkov and one of his colleagues as “robots with papers”, the people said (the State Department declined to comment on the incident).

    Victoria Nuland. Diplomat. The mind boggles!

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-66509180

    1. I don’t know. In one very diplomatic riposte (which every Nottler would agree with) she apparently said: “Fuck the EU!”

    2. Every foreign policy disaster since Obama has Nuland’s paw prints all over it. She specialises in regime change promoted by means of endless wars.

    3. “always got along with” = he did what we told him

      ” resisted Ms Nuland’s attempts to start a discussion” = Waaah! The Russians are not obeying us!

    4. Victoria Nuland, the Khazarian warmonger who’s damn well going to grab back what those bloody Swedish Vikings took away from her forebears when they founded Rus(sia). Except she isn’t. Tough titty Vic.

  30. In France at the time we were building the extension to our house they were very keen on promoting a concrete called betostyrene. The aggregate for this has a high percentage of little balls of polystyrene in it making it both lighter when used in ceilings and more insulating when used in floors and walls. It was also more expensive which is why they wanted to promote it and its durability and resistance to crumbling was probably not considered thoroughly enough.

    The system we did use for our ceiling in the extension we built used standard, time tested concrete poured upon steel re-enforced beams on which were hollow breeze blocks formed and shaped so that the concrete that flowed between them formed re-enforced concrete beams when the concrete set.

    I should imagine that the construction used in the crumbling schools using aeriated cement was nothing like as strong and crumble-resistant as ours is.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f001d20eaaa1e9e4fd443bec6bb9a218f8851909f5507d1db78076a76abc6815.png

  32. There is a letter today about the possibility of a wealth tax under Labour. HMRC will be rubbing their hands with glee – the higher the taxes the more scope they have to catch those evading tax.

    On the death of my sister a few years ago, she, a former magistrate, and I, a chartered accountant, were accused by HMRC of evading inheritance tax, even though my sister’s estate was below the threshold. My dead sister was accused of evasion by sending money to me abroad. Of course, it was completely untrue and I won my case. albeit at a cost of £20,000. In the meantime, money launderers, drug runners and assorted criminals carry on regardless.

    HMRC is sinister but nothing compared with the IRS in the US. The Biden’ administration threatens to raise more taxes, as they continue to squander $ billions, even $ trillions.

    But Biden is empowering the IRS. I hope HMRC doesn’t get any ideas from the IRS. News item: “Since 2020, the oversight group found, the IRS has spent $2.3 million on ammunition, $1.2 million on ballistic shields, $474,000 on Smith & Wesson rifles, $463,000 on Beretta 1301 tactical shotguns and $243,000 on body armor vests”.

    1. First, HMRC will have to make their employees put down the HobNobs and prise their butts off the sofa.

      1. Hobnob- the world’s most overrated biscuit. Too sickly for my taste. I like a dark chocolate digestive. McVitie’s of course.

          2. Now, I like a Hobnob, and I like a McVitie’s dark chocolate digestive. But which one is better? There’s only one way to find out –

            FIGHT!!!

          3. Before fighting it is generally a good idea to know ones enemy.

            Stormy is a force of nature. If they could spot a hurricane fierce enough they’d name it after her.

        3. Not just me then! I have never seen the point of Hobnobs. They do nothing that other biscuits don’t already do better!

        1. At least Canadian tax office workers are good at something, they have been fiddling covid support payments.

          About a thousand are suspected of claiming the unemployment benefit while employed in the taxoffice and over a hundred have already been fired.

  33. Belated ‘Morning All (Just)

    Ahem

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/59d26fc1653d6fb3d9afa5324aae7b5b0ed1aeaa2e4bfdf8d5c5500d5443ed26.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/cbca84fd865bfb128383b40d3cedfcb0ac6aa0001ec7c6ac9ed42470e63cea64.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ac2407c0584ae3ba6adb7ba4d2e4ffc5fb0ea02c57c476fdf9092e93a856f8a7.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/49b5f54111129bb1e2cb44e039cdef6fc68385e2151e6516dde56f3a24ebef49.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images

    /039706bdc768df452dbe8fbab2a37d3c24324105081d56ed5d1647168b3f7fcb.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b54be7478fcd7bf6f570012ee1fff0b2f25862cded173b52e6b70a5bf18182c2.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/141c15270584be0e94ae0ddd94fc21cc9aebc86e62b607c2769677a31a0994ad.jpg

  34. Climate Change or data change?

    Contrast the regular rise and fall from 1650 until around 1970 to the sudden drop from the latter until another change, this time a rise, early this century. What happened to cause and maintain this sudden rise?
    My thesis is that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rose from 368.975ppm to 369ppm at that point.

    Not a Lot of People Know That – Tampering With CET

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/34f6d2dc14785d5beba98c0bee9ce3d5cc049979e943cc11183013096ee6819a.png

    1. Manipulation of weather stats has been going on for more than 20 years. Christopher Booker wrote about it several times.

    2. If the met office didn’t fiddle the figures they wouldn’t agree with the government narrative, so as the EU man said, the have to lie..

  35. Why does our hair keep growing and growing? I can’t think of any animal whose hair or fur does this.

    4. Mongo disagrees. His winter coat is coming through. I’m sure it doubles his size over night. Thing is, it’s getting warmer, so he’ll be too hot.

    5. Mongo disagrees. His winter coat is coming through. I’m sure it doubles his size over night. Thing is, it’s getting warmer, so he’ll be too hot.

    6. A couple of times a year our so called news program will feature a feel goodstory about a sheep / dog / some other furry beast being found with over long, matted hair. A nice bit of barbering and the beast is back to normal.

    7. Even more relevant for me.
      Why does most of our hair become thinner with age but ear hairs and eye brows go into a growth spurt?

      1. Testosterone. I don’t think that happens so much with women. My OH has a three monthly hormone jab to keep the prostate cancer at bay and the hair on his head started growing again – it’s very fine, like baby hair but is growing where none has grown for 50 years.

      2. The hair on top of the head starts growing inwards at a certain age and comes out of your nostrils and ears

    10. Some dogs have hair, which needs a regular trim, others have fur, which don’t need a cut and blow dry. Poppie had an appt at the groomers every 8 week or so for a haircut.

  36. Tesco gives workers bodycams after rise in violent attacks. 3 September 2023.

    Tesco’s chief executive has called for a change in the law to make abuse or violence towards retail workers an offence across the UK.

    Writing in the Mail on Sunday, Ken Murphy said the supermarket chain has offered body-worn cameras to members of staff who need them after seeing physical assaults rise by a third in a year.

    He said Tesco has invested £44m in four years on security measures including door access systems, protection screens and digital radios, as well as the cameras, but called for more to be done against offenders.

    “Money spent on making sure people are safe at work is always well spent,” he said. “But it should not have to be like this. Crime is a scourge on society and an insult to shoppers and retail workers.

    My advice to any shopworker is to do nothing whatsoever that might make you a victim of these people and that includes giving evidence in court. Your bosses won’t have any sympathy for you and there will almost certainly be no prosecutions and even if there were the punishments would be risible.

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/sep/03/tesco-gives-workers-bodycams-after-rise-in-violent-attacks

    1. That’s the fundamental problem. The state takes far too long to prosecute, when it does the criminal is given a risible sentence – despite no doubt being a serial crook – and is let off again, over and over again.

      1. Afternoon Wibbles. These bodycams will encourage their wearers to believe that they confer some kind of protection. Either in the present or in proceedings afterwards. They won’t. A third of people who agree to give evidence in court are subject to intimidation afterwards.

        1. Yep, and worse does absolutely nothing for the crime rate. The only solution is to jail shop lifters immediately.

    2. They need new laws? Is there nothing in the statute book that covers abuse or violence towards others?

      Could it be the laws exist but no one is enforcing them?

      1. Afternoon Richard. Yes of course, That’s just standard guff to deflect criticism. To really understand you have to be involved in some sort of fracas. I remember being caught up in some trouble (I did go to court eventually as a witness) a few years ago and being astonished at the contempt the malefactors had for the Police and Justice system. By the time it was over I shared it, but for different reasons. It cured me permanently of any heroic impulses in the cause of Law and Order.

        1. Some 30+ years ago I watched a policeman tell an outright lie in court.
          His evidence went unchallenged.
          That’s when I began to switch off from our justice legal system.

      2. There are plenty of laws. Public order offences will cover most things. Wasnt there a chap who was convicted of hounding a Labour politician with words and of course the harrasment of Chris Whitty or the other covid guy.

    3. They haven’t said who these violent people are – could it be because they have protected characteristics?

    4. “This would help us to spot patterns and provide reassurance that justice is being done,” he said. “Gangs take advantage of the fact we do not share enough information. We’ll only be able to stop these thugs if we work together.”

      My wife was in Sainsburys a week ago and a very Large afro Caribbean man was shoving alcoholic drinks down the front of his joggers.
      There was nobody available be to bring this incident to their attention to so she moved on to the check out. Can you imagine if she had told someone and then he ran out and she had to take the shopping in a trolley to the underground car park and he was waiting there and took revenge.

  37. The reason the state hates the bank of Mum and Dad is because it keeps wealth where it is generated. It only helps the people the family want it to help. Big fat state hates that. It would far prefer that money be given to it, for it to spend as it chooses – not on what the earner wants.

    1. I’ve always said that the average person would make better use of the money that the State steals from them in taxes.
      Doubly so for successful businessmen.

    2. It was a mistake to be frugal and save for retirement. It is now almost worth blowing all of our money on some useless project and then demanding that the state look after us poor pensioners.

      Except of course government mismanage the care homes.

      1. They simply wont let you in unless you’ve had every jab under the sun.
        And then as private Fraser would say “We’re All Doomed”!

      2. Given the collapse of the NHS, it is a good idea to keep some put by for a rainy (painful) day.
        Thank goodness I didn’t riotously spend the small bequest that finally filtered through to me after my grandparents’ deaths some 60 years earlier.
        It covered the cost of my hip replacement.

  38. Phew!
    As I just commented to Maggie, it’s lovely bright sunshine here now so I’ve done a load of washing & got it hung out, picked about 2 lb of blackberries, dropped a 4″ dead elm, cut it to short lengths and cleared it from where I’m working and dropped a 2nd elm trunk of about 3½” before my chainsaw threw the chain off, so I’m taking a break for a mug of tea.
    Now trying the most difficult task of all, trying(??!!!) to get ex-Student Son roused to give me some assistance!

    2. MB and I have been hanging out of the top bedroom window renewing the paintwork before winter draws on.
      That’s enough excitement for one day.

      1. Erin’s gone to the St Albans shops, I’ve been doing the washing and hanging two loads on the line watered the green house, pumped water from the far fifth end butt to the front one, we are running short of water. Just finished getting rid of the cobwebs from one of our rear upstairs windows. While the sashes are both open, clearing the moss from the lower roof and now resting after sweating buckets. No rest for the wicked eh !

        1. Take it easy Eddy! Do I gather from all this activity that your recent medical procedure has been a success?

    3. I’ve been hacking away at our overgrown shrubbery and run out of energy for now. Lots more to do out there but we’re not used to this warm weather! It’s lovely though.

  39. That’s the 3½” elm cut, a 2nd 4″ dropped & cut then the whole lot shifted clear for ex-SS to shift to the relevant stacks.
    Now having another mug of tea having just decided what to do for the DT getting home from work.
    I will say that after the large portion of chicken risotto I had yesterday, I’m still not feeling that hungry!

    1. Green with envy. Our greenhouse tomatoes grew to one truss – then stopped. Completely. Never had such a failure i 60 years.

      The outdoor ones are OK. Not as prolific as yours but passable.

    1. Hmm. Not convinced by a chime whistle on a ‘Britannia’ – and today’s H&S officers would faint at the sight of so many spectators on the wrong side of the fences.

      1. “… today’s H&S officers would faint at the sight of so many spectators on the wrong side of the fences.”

        Not to mention the offence of ‘trespassing on railway lines’.

        1. As recently as the ’80s on the Settle Carlisle line being wrong side of the fence was tolerated. I remember being sat on the platelayer’s cabin at the North End of Rise Hill Tunnel waiting to photograph a North bound service when the Lengthman surprised me!
          After the train passed we both walked up Garsdale Station.

    2. Interesting to see the Gresley A4, 60022 Mallard (the world steam speed record-holder, as LNER 4468), labelled as “The Flying Scotsman”, which would confuse many laymen.

      The logo on that locomotive referred to the service, which was distinct from the named loco, which was a Gresley A3, 60103 under British Railways (or LNER 4472).

    2. There is no way on this planet that this is possible. None of those buildings are in danger of collapsing from built in self destruction.
      It’s just another down right lie. From our scum political classes. Who failed with their attempts of mass control with their distribution of covid.

    4. They couldn’t detect that these buildings are ‘on the verge of collapse’, even knowing their history, nor provide alternative accommodation for the schools. However this useless government can, at the drop of a hat’ sequester hotels to house illegal gimmegrants at a cost of hundred of millions of pounds.
      Yet again we go to the bottom of the pile.
      Why do they hate us so much?

  43. “I eat my peas with honey
    I’ve done it all my life;
    It makes the peas taste funny
    But it keeps them on my knife.”

    We all know that verse, but I didn’t expect to hear two primary school age children to chant it as they whizzed along on their scooters to pick blackberries. I suspect the presence of Granny accounted for their poetic outburst.
    I wonder if they appreciated the Pooterish sub-text?

    1. How very odd! I’m currently working my way through a very old copy of the Penguin Book of Comic & Curious Verse! That is in there, along with a lot of others which have made me say ‘Ooh, look at that’! My husband is not appreciative of my recollections when he’s trying to sleep!

      1. I thought I was hearing things.
        I was pottering along with Spartie when I heard these children. I think they enjoyed the sheer nonsense of it.

  44. Ah well, evensong beckons. I have a 900 year old church to go to. Portland stone. The nave is missing but it didn’t fall down. It was knocked down at the reformation. Mind, I live in a concrete building. Built 1935-37. There are bricks on the outside but it’s basically a concrete structure and showing no signs of collapsing.

    1. Knave or nave? Our house is built mainly of Cotswold stone, but the later additions include breezeblock and reconstituted stone so it’s a bit of a mish-mash.

      1. Nave! Corrected. I probably typed something garbled and predictive text actually did quite well!

  46. Has anybody seen anything from LadyoftheLake recently? From where I’m sitting, she’s been awfully silent. 🙁

    1. I’ve not seen her for a few days. Not sure when the funeral was arranged for.

      It seems normal practice now for a much longer delay between the death and the funeral. When my mother died in ’89 the funeral was only a week after she died. These days it’s more like a month.

        1. Yes indeed. She did make some light-hearted comments the other day. Thank heavens she’s got her supportive sister in law.

    1. Sunak does not give a damn about illegal immigration, he doesn’t give a damn about losing the coming election, he doesn’t give a damn about Britain, he doesn’t give a damn about whether the Conservative Party lives or dies.

      Most Nottlers can see this and so must most Conservative MPs and Conservative Party members see it too. So why have they not started to get rid of Sunak?

  48. Report from Firstborn on honey production.
    Disaster.
    Local major producer (The German) looks like he’ll get 10-15 tonnes of honey, usually gets 35-40 tonnes. Usually produces 300+ queens, now less than 100. Wet, cold, miserable summer is the cause.
    We’ll get a couple of hives’ worth I guess, and immediately start feeding. The German already started feeding, we’ll have to do so next week. Firstborn’s hive #1 has an old, tired queen, we were hoping to replace her with one from The German and get an extra hive, but…
    Tonnages corrected. Sorry.

      1. Productive life – about 2-3 years.
        Impressive, for a small insect tasked with pushing out eggs pretty well her whole life.

  50. Good evening, Nottlers. Just to cheer us up here is the talk that Col Douglas Mcgregor had with Tuckler Carlson on the Ukraine war and the insanity and evil driving it. The MSM will screech far-right racist at this guy and there are still a few out there who will shake their ostrich feathers at it, but to hear a man of this integrity and fighting record say what is said here should chill the spine of anyone whose brain still supports an independent mind.- purple prose perhaps, but warranted I think!

    https://tarableu.substack.com/publish/posts/detail/136693605/share-center

    2. Bogey here, too many choices.
      Wordle 806 5/6

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

  54. CENTURION: What’s this, then? ‘Romanes Eunt Domus’? ‘People called Romanes they go the house’?

    BRIAN: It– it says, ‘Romans, go home’.

    CENTURION: No, it doesn’t. What’s Latin for ‘Roman’? Come on!

    BRIAN: Aah!

    CENTURION: Come on!

    BRIAN: ‘R– Romanus’?

    CENTURION: Goes like…?

    BRIAN: ‘Annus’?

    CENTURION: Vocative plural of ‘annus’ is…?

    BRIAN: Eh. ‘Anni’?

    CENTURION: ‘Romani’. ‘Eunt’? What is ‘eunt’?

    BRIAN: ‘Go’. Let–

    CENTURION: Conjugate the verb ‘to go’.

    BRIAN: Uh. ‘Ire’. Uh, ‘eo’. ‘Is’. ‘It’. ‘Imus’. ‘Itis’. ‘Eunt’.

    CENTURION: So ‘eunt’ is…?

    BRIAN: Ah, huh, third person plural, uh, present indicative. Uh, ‘they go’.

    CENTURION: But ‘Romans, go home’ is an order, so you must use the…?

    BRIAN: The… imperative!

    CENTURION: Which is…?

    BRIAN: Umm! Oh. Oh. Um, ‘i’. ‘I’!

    CENTURION: How many Romans?

    BRIAN: Ah! ‘I’– Plural. Plural. ‘Ite’. ‘Ite’.

    CENTURION: ‘Ite’.

    BRIAN: Ah. Eh.

    CENTURION: ‘Domus’?

    BRIAN: Eh.

    CENTURION: Nominative?

    BRIAN: Oh.

    CENTURION: ‘Go home’? This is motion towards. Isn’t it, boy?

    BRIAN: Ah. Ah, dative, sir! Ahh! No, not dative! Not the dative, sir! No! Ah! Oh, the… accusative! Accusative! Ah! ‘Domum’, sir! ‘Ad domum’! Ah! Oooh! Ah!

    CENTURION: Except that ‘domus’ takes the…?

    BRIAN: The locative, sir!

    CENTURION: Which is…?!

    BRIAN: ‘Domum’.

    CENTURION: ‘Domum’.

    BRIAN: Aaah! Ah.

    CENTURION: ‘Um’. Understand?

    BRIAN: Yes, sir.

    CENTURION: Now, write it out a hundred times.

    BRIAN: Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Hail Caesar, sir.

    CENTURION: Hail Caesar. If it’s not done by sunrise, I’ll cut your balls off.

    BRIAN: Oh, thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. Hail Caesar and everything, sir! Oh. Mmm!

    Finished!

    ROMAN SOLDIER STIG: Right. Now don’t do it again.

    CENTURIONS chase BRIAN

    MAN: Hey! Bloody Romans.

  55. The EU’s Foreign Affairs Council usually calls for peace talks between the opposing parties in remote armed conflicts, but the opposite principle is applied toward the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, said Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó while he was in Slovenia on Tuesday.
    “Anyone who advocates an immediate ceasefire and peace talks is immediately condemned and branded a Russian spy, a Kremlin propagandist, a friend of Putin,” the minister said.
    He noted that with war raging on the continent, the position of peace is suddenly not the position of the EU bloc, despite the fact that it has been more than a year and a half since the war began and hundreds of thousands of people have lost their lives while Europe’s economy has directly suffered.

    So it appears the EU is telling the world: “Peace Off!”

    1. Free parking would be a start as out of town has free and easy parking. The towns need to fight back. rent free periods for new tenants, rents linked to turnover ETC. We have pushed for these things for years but councils just do not want to know.

      1. Our little town has several free parking lots within a hundred yards of our high street. Even on the main road, parking is a miserly five cents for fifteen minutes. Then in winter it is free all around.

        It’s not the complete answer, we have foot traffic to be sure but it is all charity shops.

    1. 99·9% of the world’s population is stupid. Thankfully only a tiny proportion of them are arsonists.

  58. From the DT:
    England’s established church is in deep trouble. An investigation by this paper has revealed that almost 300 Anglican parishes have disappeared in the past five years, the fastest rate of closure since records began. In less than 30 years, the Church of England has lost more than half its regular worshippers. In 1995 average Sunday church attendance still stood at almost 1.1 million; it was down to just over 700,000 in 2019. As with so much else, the Covid lockdowns greatly exacerbated existing trends; attendance now stands at barely over 500,000.

    The Church of England’s problems are not entirely a product of wider social trends outside of its control. The decision to close down so many parishes is its own. The hierarchy argues that it is the inevitable result of falling numbers, but the leadership’s internal critics point out that people won’t go if there isn’t a convenient church open. Offering spiritual solace to parishioners should always take precedence over apologising for slavery, catastrophising over climate change or other modish concerns that are perhaps taking up too much of the Church’s time.

    Rev Marcus Walker, Rector at St Bartholomew the Great in the City of London, argues that these decisions mean “the death knell is ringing for the Church we love and serve”. This should concern those of all faiths and none. Anglicanism has been perhaps the cornerstone of this nation’s collective identity. Without it, to quote Philip Larkin writing in another context, “And that will be England gone”.

    1. Attendance numbers at St Barts have risen since Marcus took over as Rector. I’m now on the serving team at Barts after 30 years at All Saints Fulham because ASF was rapidly becoming a Temple of Gaia even before it closed its doors and didn’t think the provision of communion to be of any importance.

      1. You’ve put your finger on why attendance is declining. I, for one, don’t like being told to get out of my “gas guzzler” to save the planet by someone who then gets into a Porsche to drive back to Birkenhead.

        1. He was at St Mary’s. T’other end of Putney Bridge. Giles is an old lefty but on the right side of the Save the Parish debate.

    3. People won’t go if the rector alienates everyone. The church was fuller than has normally been the case today because we had a visiting (retired) clergyman. I cannot help but feel that Welby was put in place to destroy the CofE for the reasons Rev Walker puts forward.

  61. I cannot vouch for the veracity of this post on ZH but it is interesting:

    In a long post on X, which included the map below (of the Soviet Union’s drive to the Dnieper River in 1943), Armchair Warlord laid out the basis for his prediction:

    The Sword of Damocles
    The Russian Army’s force buildup through 2023 and what it means for the Ukrainian War going forward
    One of the biggest – and certainly the most consequential – question marks in the world right now is the current status of the Russian Army. Some particularly dim Western commentators and even senior officials have claimed recently that the Russians have lost half or more of their combat power from the date of their initial invasion in February 2022 and are now weaker than the Ukrainians overall. These claims have so many problems they’re barely worth discussing and should simply be dismissed out of hand. Let’s work through a real analysis instead.

    Claims the Russians had a “million-man army” prewar are simply false – that was the total number of people in the entire Russian Armed Forces. The Russian “Army” (between the Army proper, the Naval Infantry, and the VDV [Russian airborne troops]) was only some 350,000 personnel, of whom approximately 100,000 were conscripts. This manning level supported some 183 combined-arms battalion task forces under the now-deprecated Battalion Tactical Group organizational scheme. In real terms this meant that for every 1900 soldiers in the overall force the Russians would get one maneuver battalion with appropriate supporting arms.

    This can be immediately sanity-checked by comparison to the United States Army. In 2018 the active-duty US Army had 31 Brigade Combat Teams, each of which had four maneuver* battalions for a total of 124 appropriately-supported battalions on an end strength of 483,500. When accounting for the fact that Russian units are about 2/3 the size of their Western counterparts (31 versus 44 tanks in a battalion, for instance), this means that the two armies had close to exactly the same number of effective battalion task forces available and the Russians are about 30% more efficient at converting end strength to combat power. This is to be expected given Russia’s relative lack of logistical, administrative and command overhead without global commitments.

    * I am including the BCT’s organic cavalry squadron as a maneuver battalion because it is frequently tasked as such operationally and has the capability to perform maneuver tasks.

    Now to the war. The Russians began recruiting volunteers quite early in the war, but more significant in the early stages of the war was industrial mobilization. As early as March 2022 Russian military industry began hiring huge numbers of personnel and ramping up production of war materiel across the board. Part of this was to replace equipment lost in combat but much of it was, I now have reason to believe, the leading edge of a deliberate plan to build out the Russian Army in the coming months. Mobilization of personnel was to come later, first with small-scale recruitment of volunteers over the Spring and Summer of 2022 and then with formal mobilization in Fall 2022.

    Russian mobilization came in two waves. First there was an announced increase in the Russian military’s end strength of 137,000 in August 2022, exactly the number of conscripts then in service. This suggests strongly that the 2021-2022 conscript class was simply retained in service for the duration. The second wave was the “partial mobilization” of 300,000 in September 2022, which was subsequently converted into another increase in the Russian Army’s authorized strength. This gives us a current strength of the Russian Army as some 750,000 soldiers, more than double its strength in February 2022 and – highly significantly – with 650,000 instead of 250,000 soldiers deployable as either “contract” or “mobilized” soldiers.

    It should be noted that the Russian mobilization of last year was not a “one-time” callup – it was a permanent expansion of the size of their army to be filled with ongoing recruitment efforts, conscription, and mobilization of reservists. This is a force that is being continually filled and which can be expected to be at or near its authorized strength.

    Applying our ratio from earlier (1900 troops to generate one battalion task force) we get a post-expansion Russian force of some 395 maneuver battalions with enablers. This is an enormous force that could easily secure Russia’s borders (particularly its now very-hostile western borders) while simultaneously overwhelming the battered Ukrainian military. Should NATO intervene directly, this force would be able to slug it out with any Western expeditionary force that could be realistically deployed into theater.

    But Armchair Warlord, you say, the Russians are running out of troops and tanks – all the Twitter blue checks are telling me this! What evidence do you have? Well, I have a few data points in support of my theory.

    1. Russia recently withdrew from the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe. The CFE treaty, originally signed in 1990 and adapted in 1999 to post-Cold War realities, sought to place national ceilings on conventional arms stationed in Europe and at first served to place a cap on the amount of hardware the Warsaw Pact could flood across the North German Plain on short notice. Serious Russia observers have long noted that, far from his characterization in the West as an unhinged autocrat, Vladimir Putin is a boring neoliberal with a highly legalistic approach to governance. Although the Russians suspended their participation in the treaty in 2007, their recent denunciation is, I believe, highly significant.

    Under the treaty the Russian Federation was allowed to station some 6,350 tanks, 11,280 APCs (including 7,030 IFVs) and 6,315 artillery pieces west of the Urals. A force of some 350 BTG-equivalents deployed west would consist of approximately 4,000 tanks and some 10,000 infantry carriers as well as 6,300 artillery pieces. This strongly suggests to me that the Russians denounced the treaty because some dimension of their force build, likely either artillery pieces or infantry carriers, violated its limitations.

    This is, by the way, an enormous army and explains the “all of the above” approach the Russians have taken to procuring war materiel lately. They wouldn’t be simultaneously rolling large numbers of T-90Ms and T-80BVMs off the assembly lines while also doing deep modernizations of their T-62 fleet for use as frontline tanks unless they had a real need for a genuinely enormous tank fleet in the near term. Same story with APCs and artillery.

    2. Contrary to what certain pro-Western analysts and officials have asserted, the Russian side of the northeastern Ukrainian border (the “non-active” front line on the prewar border) is packed with troops. What immediately struck me during the abortive Ukrainian raids on Belgorod Oblast earlier this year was the size, speed and ferocity of the Russian counterattack, with multiple Russian battalions quickly mobilizing to throw back the attackers. Russian forces responding to the attacks were often apparently from different brigades or even divisions, with different equipment sets and distinct tactical signs, and they arrived and deployed for combat in large, intact units with fresh equipment.

    This same region would be the simplest area for the Russians to concentrate forces in without disturbing logistical efforts for the “active” front line to the east and south, and a large offensive from this direction would quickly carve through the thin screen of Territorial Defense units covering the border, turn the main Ukrainian army deployed in the Donbass, and lead to a rapid collapse of the Ukrainian position east of the Dniper.

    3. In June, the Russians announced the actual units they intend to create as a result of this force buildout. The new ground force units announced were one Combined Arms Army (a corps-sized formation), one new Army corps, five new divisions, and 26 new brigades. It is unclear whether these units are entirely separate or whether they are intended to nest within each other matryoshka-style, but this would either be 78 new BTG-equivalents (if the units above brigade level are just new headquarters) or a whopping 177, very much in line with my calculations above (if all of these are complete units).

    We haven’t seen this “doom army” yet because the Russians are still pursuing their Fabian strategy of letting the Ukrainians and their NATO sponsors beat themselves bloody against their defensive line in the Donbass. The Russians can now be expected to launch a large-scale offensive at a time, place, and in circumstances of their choosing – given the exhaustion of the AFU in its monthslong offensive the time for “big red arrows” is, I feel, ripening.

    It should also be noted that the Russians do not seem to be leaving anything at all to chance. In Zaporozhe, for example, they constructed several defensive lines in a deep, complex scheme in preparation for an offensive they ended up stopping close to the line of contact. I would expect similar thoroughness out of their offensive preparations.

    Incidentally, Colonel Douglas Macgregor also believes the Ukrainians are close to collapse.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4aa7307d5191bee95a78cb4e2dc7641f5ca838ddd9520f97733a5fa5c15aef6e.png

  62. A reasonably productive day.
    A couple of pounds of blackberries picked and in the freezer, three dead elms dropped, logged up and cleared and I even managed to get ex-SS to give a hand!

    Now bathed and ready for bed.
    G’night all.

    2. Just hearing about your exertions is tiring.

      All I have done today is buy salads at the local market and officiate at a golf tournament. Now I am ready for my nap.

      1. Most I did all weekend was feed Big Cat antibiotic pills at the required interval. Nothing so strenuous as salads…

  63. Evening, all. After yesterday’s exertions I can barely move! Did manage to get to my mother church (the rectorette was away) and was asked to read the lesson. I took particular pleasure in emphasising the bit about “you will heap burning coals on their heads” and “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord. I will repay”. It was well attended and most of the former choir were there, which made for a good sing song. Nobody of the “hard core” diaspora partook of refreshments afterwards, though, although we all took communion. Then I attended the Harvest Thanksgiving at Old St Chad’s All Alone In The Fields and ended up with a punnet of damsons which I now must make into jam (as well as the plums I need to prepare and freeze).

    I don’t think the political class is bereft of ideas – on the contrary, they just have ideas that don’t benefit us and that includes being wedded to tax and waste.

  64. The Tel has a PR piece about one Rory Stewart; plenty of BTL assassination, and I admit that I enjoyed the tone of this comment by Mark Cooper:

    “A tedious, dripping-wet posho who looks like a
    fire-damaged Willem Dafoe waxwork, but lacks its insight. No doubt
    lefties who pretend to be centrists think he’s great.

    Rory was once so delusional he thought he was a Tory,
    although that delusion seems to be shared by a lot of big
    government-loving Tory MPs.

    The one shred of appeal Stewart possesses, as noted
    above, is his apparent sincerity. Unfortunately chumming up with the
    poisonous Campbell demonstrates how false that is.

    Campbell is a malignant worm with blood on his hands who
    made British politics more dishonest and malignant. In a better and
    brighter world he’d have been strung up years ago.”

  65. Suitable for a Sunday evening, although I’m sure you’ve hear this one before. Snitched from Quora.

    A burglar broke into a house one night, looking for valuables when a voice in the dark said “JESUS knows you’re here”. He nearly jumped out of his skin, he clicked his flashlight off and froze. After a bit of silence, he shook his head and continued. Just as he pulled the stereo out to disconnect the wires, he heard a voice clearly say,” JESUS is watching you”! Freaked out, he shined his light around frantically looking for the source of the voice, finally the beam came to rest on a parrot in the corner of the room, “Did you say that?”, he hissed.” Yep, l’m just trying to warn you that he is watching you,” parrot confessed then squawked. The burglar relaxed “warn me, huh, who in the world are you!”

    “I’m MOSES”, replied the bird. The burglar laughed,” Moses, what kind of people would name a bird Moses?” The bird answered, “the same kind of people that would name their Rottweiler JESUS”!!!

    1. Sustainability Manager, one of those much heralded by the wokists , ‘green’ jobs. A must have for every business, charity, sporting entity, council (at every level) etc.: however did we survive and prosper before the rise of SMs?

  69. Well, that’s it for Sunday, chums. At almost 1 am on Monday, it’s time for me to wish you all a Good Night, and hope you all have a good night’s rest.

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