Sunday 30 August: Civil servants cannot be relied upon to make necessary spending cuts

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/08/29/letters-civil-servants-cannot-relied-upon-make-necessary-spending/

731 thoughts on “Sunday 30 August: Civil servants cannot be relied upon to make necessary spending cuts”

    1. And a good morning to all NoTTLers from me. Off to bed now after watching the first 8 episodes of the 1936 Universal serial FLASH GORDON. Great fun to re-live my childhood. What a wimp Dale Arden was. All she could do was scream and faint. Totally lacking in pluck. See you all later today.

      1. Got up again early (couldn’t sleep) and watched the final few episodes. Amazing to re-live part of my childhood.

        1. Once my Mother has departed this mortal coil, there won’t be anyone but me who knows anything about my childhood… it’d be nice to have a replay.

          2. Started writing a kind of diary of my first trip to South Sudan some 10+ years ago, as there was a lot of weridness that I found amusing. Problem was, I was the only one – so I didn’t persist.

          3. That’s a pity, because someone coming across it in the future would have found it interesting. I came across a diary of my mother’s with a few sparse entries – one of which mentioned seeing a young King Faisal of Iraq coming on board the ship they were travelling on from Australia to England c1946/7. I wish she had written a lot more, but as she wrote on the first page – she was really a diary writer and doubted she would keep it up.

            I wish now I had kept all my father’s letters to my mother when he was travelling around Africa and far east in the 60s/70s – unfortunately I destroyed them all as the few I read had been written when he’d had too much to drink and were vicious to my mother. I couldn’t bear to wade through the personal to reach the historical insights.

  3. Goodness, Sunday started already. Well I might as well forget about reading Saturday’s comments and go to bed. Goddnight/good morning all.

  5. General Sir Nick Carter congratulates 5,000th Afghan Officer graduating from ‘Sandhurst In The Sand’, 30 August 2020.

    In reality ‘Sandhurst in the Sand’ is a misnomer because the Academy is not a replica of Sandhurst and nor does it sit in a desert; it is based on the Sandhurst philosophy but created for the needs of the Afghan Army, reflecting Afghanistan’s own proud traditions.

    The Afghan National Army Officer Academy has come a long way and has proven more than capable of taking ownership of its own professionalism and high standards – its British mentors over the years have done a fantastic job. And we have enjoyed working closely with New Zealand, Denmark, Australia and Norway who share in this achievement.

    Today around 75% of all combat leaders – male and female – in the Afghan National Army graduate from the Afghan National Army Officer Academy, producing the very best junior commanders ready to serve their nation.

    This has to be a sick joke! In reality this “army” which is neither “national” nor “democratic” has already been beaten by the Taliban and their service in it will mark them for life in a Muslim State.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/30/general-sir-nick-carter-congratulates-5000th-afghan-officer/

    1. They will do what they normally do when they are losing. They will take off the uniform and wave the Koran around.

      Good morning.

      1. There was a demo by SIAN (Stopp Islamisering Av Norge) yesterday. Massive police presence. The lady leaderene ripped a Koran in bits and spat on it. Cue violence from the antifa types, police sprayed them with teargas. Fun, eh?

        1. I doubt Grizz experiences Islamification much in Oslunda but there are definitely nogo parts of Sweden, Katie Hopkins reported on it and went there. She was told to go home by muslim blokes hanging about the streets. They also tried to intimidate her but that won’t wash with her.

          Good morning.

  6. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    Clever Germans, eh?

    SIR – Perhaps the most interesting entry on the list (report, August 26) of 2019’s most popular names for baby girls is Freya.

    Freya was a Norwegian goddess who was said to be able to see for 100 miles. During the war the Germans couldn’t resist naming their radar units Freyas – so giving away their purpose.

    Derek Brumhead
    New Mills, Derbyshire

    A chilly day here in yer E Sussex yesterday. We steadfastly refused to turn on the heating IN AUGUST but lit the stove instead.

  7. My dissecting daughter makes no bones about why our kids aren’t happy
    Rod Liddle
    Sunday August 30 2020, 12.01am, The Sunday Times

    Apparently British teenagers are the least happy in Europe, according to a less than comprehensive report from the Children’s Society. I asked my 14-year-old daughter why she thought this might be.

    She was busy making a pendant from the scales of a decomposing slowworm that she had found in the forest at the bottom of our garden. The creature’s tiny bones had already been stored in a little glass vial, in formaldehyde. I don’t know where she got the chemicals. Teenagers are renowned for their love of chemicals, of course — but not these chemicals, surely.

    I had always been proud of her love for and knowledge of nature, inculcated at a very early age — but it seems to have teetered into a kind of psychopathy. She even has a very sharp axe for dismembering larger dead animals, such as badgers or roe deer, and a kind of Black Museum in which she keeps the bleached skulls and reassembled torsos.

    Perhaps this is it, I thought to myself: death. Our children have become obsessed with death and surround themselves with it. But her answer, once she had removed her rubber gloves, was different.

    “We’re smarter than the other European kids. They are all gullible and deluded,” she said. “I’ve met some. They don’t have a clue what’s going on.”

    I quite liked this as an answer and I suspect there is an iota of truth to it. I remembered — before lockdown — seeing a serpentine trail of Spanish adolescents being taken on a tour of my nearby city, Canterbury, and noting how they were all grinning broadly. There is a smugness and stupidity in telling people how happy you are. Some 82% of Spanish kids report themselves mindlessly, inanely cheerful — one of the highest levels in Europe — compared with 64% of our brats.

    It certainly made more sense to me than the verdict of the chief executive of the Children’s Society, Mark Russell. Come on, you know what Marky thought was the cause of this abject misery among our children. “The increase in child poverty,” he said. Of course he did. This was published in The Grauniad.

    But there hasn’t been an increase in child poverty in the UK. There has, instead, been a rise — slowing, admittedly — in general affluence. If Marky had looked at the European Commission’s Eurostat study of the subject, he would have seen that those Spanish kids were more likely to be at risk of poverty or social exclusion than were British children.

    Further, what lies in wait for the Spanish kids is far more depressing than that which awaits the Brit brats: youth unemployment of 40.8%, compared with 12.7% over here. And if they do, somehow, manage to get a job, the average wage is miles below what it is in the UK.

    Indeed, if Mr Russell had taken his study seriously, instead of simply parroting the usual right-on mantras, he would have noted a definite correlation, the opposite of the one he identified. Almost all the countries in which young people expressed the greatest mindless enthusiasm for life were those in which the average wage was the lowest in the continent: Lithuania, Croatia, Spain and Romania (the last of which was, in that other survey I mentioned, second-worst of all the European Union countries for child poverty and social exclusion).

    I ought to point out that the Children’s Society survey did not include Bulgaria or Moldova or the former Yugoslavian microstates. But I will bet that if it had, those kids would have shown a similar level of happiness to those in Romania or Spain. It is clearly not child poverty that has anything to do with British kids being miserable. It may, instead, be affluence.

    Or, if not simply affluence, then expectation and self-entitlement, which are, of course, handmaidens to affluence. A certain avarice, if you want to get Old Testament about it — and an expectation enhanced by the rather perfidious influence of social media, which has a stronger purchase in countries that use the English language. Dissatisfaction occasioned by envy.

    And then there are the expectations we have of our own children, the weight we put on their young shoulders to succeed, to be better than the rest. It is not an absence of money that makes our children unhappy, but the very appurtenances of affluence.

    The slowworm pendant actually looked rather pretty, in the end. Weird kid, though.

    Revealed: how government policy works

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Fsundaytimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2F3127723a-e9fc-11ea-a6a2-2d43c2f75671.jpg?crop=1500%2C1000%2C0%2C0&resize=1022

    Holiday hotspots
    I see the Czech Republic, Jamaica and Switzerland have been removed from the government’s “exempt” list of places to which you can travel without quarantine. A banker must have been heard coughing in Zurich as he laundered the week’s takings.

    There are not many places left to visit. As a service to those of you who wish to get away, I checked out some extremely good hotel deals in Burkina Faso and a “fun-packed” all-inclusive trip to Yemen run by the Ansar Allah Armed Youth Wing (bring your own prosthetic limbs).

    But is life here so irredeemably awful? The whining from self-isolating British holidaymakers is the prolonged bleat of self-entitlement and privilege.

    Passion and sense in race protests
    The last place you might expect to hear a political speech combining passion, intelligence, rhetorical brilliance and a sense of history is the United States. But if you get a chance, listen to the speech made recently by John DeBerry.

    DeBerry is black and a member of the Democratic Party. He explained to his fellow politicians in the Tennessee House of Representatives how, as a child, he had been forced to sit at the back of the bus. He attended a segregated school and later marched with Martin Luther King. “We wore suits and shirts . . . and marched peacefully . . . and we changed the entire world.”

    He then delivered a stunning denouncement of the bullying, vandalism and violence of the Black Lives Matter protests, and of America’s corrosive obsession with race.

    Please, someone, bring that man over here. He should be heard, before we descend into the same chaos.

    The Beeb landed her in it, all right
    The BBC briefed journalists that the Finnish conductor Dalia Stasevska had reservations about the jingoistic nature of the words to Rule, Britannia! and Land of Hope and Glory — implying that the decision to expunge those words from the Last Night of the Proms came at her behest. This led to a torrid time for Ms Stasevska on social media.

    She insists she said no such thing. The BBC, then, is doubly guilty. First, for its usual failure to grasp the wishes of the majority; second, for its cowardly attempt to shift the blame for an idiotic decision onto a guest. Stasevska should tell the BBC to stuff its concert.

  8. Boris Johnson faces Tory wrath as party slumps in shock poll. 30 August 2020.

    Boris Johnson is facing a showdown with furious Conservative MPs over his government’s chaotic handling of Covid-19, as a new poll shows the Tories have surrendered a massive lead over Labour in just five months.

    Today, in a further blow to Conservative morale, a poll by Opinium for the Observer shows Labour is now level-pegging with the Tories for the first time since last summer, before Johnson was leader. In just five months since the full lockdown was imposed by the prime minister, the Conservatives have lost a 26-point lead over Labour who now stand neck-and-neck with the Tories on 40%.

    Only to be expected I suppose. We are truly up the creek without a paddle!

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/aug/29/boris-johnson-faces-tory-wrath-as-party-slumps-in-shock-poll

  9. Morning all

    SIR – I am sure that your headline “New spending regime ‘will prevent repeat of HS2’ ” (report, August 23) accurately reflects the good intentions of the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak.

    However, Mr Sunak’s ambitions will not be realised – no matter how many experts, internal or otherwise, are called upon – so long as the Civil Service is left to select these experts.

    Having spent six years in the scientific civil service and many more consulting for the Overseas Development Administration, I gained a view of its modus operandi. This was to agree to whatever was asked of it, but then pursue its own (generally Left-wing) agenda unhindered.

    If that agenda includes continuing with HS2 (or if that scheme can be traded for another), then suitable experts will be selected to make sure that this is what happens.

    Bruce Denness

    Niton, Isle of Wight

    SIR – Dr R G Beddows (Letters, August 23) has put it in a nutshell. HS2 should be scrapped. Instead, the Government should support existing railways, particularly at a local level.

    Anne Ballantine

    Morecambe, Lancashire

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    SIR – The Chancellor is to refer poorly thought-out projects to the Infrastructure and Projects Authority in a bid to eliminate the waste of public money.

    One of the first referrals to the IPA should be Kent County Council’s proposed Thanet Parkway Station, the cost of which was initially put at £21 million. That sum now stands at around £34 million.

    Thanet has about 141,000 residents and already has seven stations spread around the area. The economic case for this new development has simply not been made. It is clearly intended to be a commuter station – and yet it is to be built on the very edge of Thanet. Getting to it by car during peak traffic times will be time-consuming, and it will make no difference to the average journey time to London. The destruction of trees and habitat during development will be considerable – and given that it is to be an unmanned station, with awkward access on its south side, insufficient consideration has been given to the needs of disabled passengers.

    Andrew Smith

    Thanet, Kent

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    SIR – If Mr Sunak is looking for cost savings, a good first step would be to renege on the funding offered to local authorities to close roads and build cycle lanes. We now know that many of these ill thought-out schemes are being reversed (report, August 23), in anticipation of road traffic levels returning to normal in the autumn.

    Local authorities are ultimately accountable to the residents and businesses affected by these changes. Councillors should be asked to justify why these experiments have been prioritised over long-standing and better-defined local needs.

    David Warden

    Coleford, Gloucestershire

    1. How can they scrap HS2 when the money has been shifted out to the contractors, the listed buildings, ancient forests and SSSIs bulldozed while the non-approved (i.e. not BLM) protesters were locked down at home, and the planning consents for ribbon development along the prettier and commutable parts of the route duly pushed through under some Development Plan?

  10. Pardon???

    The price of clear ears

    SIR – I am sure that Jane Hutchinson (Letters, August 23) received excellent service from Specsavers when having her ears syringed – but at what price?

    After my recent three-year hearing review at Specsavers, I was advised that I needed to have my right ear syringed. This procedure could be performed for £55 if the service was not available at my local GP’s surgery. Apparently the surgery hopes to resume ear syringing within two or three weeks – so I think I will wait patiently.

    Brenda Bennett

    Hildenborough, Kent

    SIR – GPs are not, nor have they ever been, contracted or funded to provide ear-syringing services. It’s tantamount to expecting the state to provide a free nail-cutting or hair-dressing service.

    Ear wax is not a disease; it is a normal human condition.

    Dr Peter Harvey

    Aylsham, Norfolk

    1. A Doctor would syringe a patients ears when necessary because they cared about the overall well being of the patient. Unlike you Dr Harvey.

      Morning Epi.

      1. The late Aunt Agnes often needed her ears syringed. Once her balance became dodgy, she knew it was time for a visit to the GP.

        1. That is why Dr Harvey is very wrong. I wonder why he doesn’t see that. Besides the pain coming from mounting pressure and worsening deafness.

          Good morning, Anne.

          1. Exactly. A liking and understanding of human beings seems to be lacking in all too many GPs.

      2. Morning Phizee – My GP surgery employs a nurse to do the ear syringing and very good she is too.

  11. SIR – If other City of London institutions follow the lead of J P Morgan and permit staff to work from home permanently (report, August 26), then what will happen to all the coffee bars, sandwich shops and newsagents that depend upon the custom of office workers?

    K L Parsons

    Heston, Cornwall

    2. If they’ve got any sense, they’ll be following these office workers back to their villages and setting up stalls there.

  12. Saw this from Met Police relating to Bank Holiday protests:

    ‘We are aware of a number of planned demonstrations and events taking place across London, and have been liaising with the organisers, advising them to carefully consider the Health Protection Regulations regarding gatherings. Contravening this legislation
    could result in anyone involved in the holding of a large gathering (over 30
    people) being subjected to a fine up to £10,000. These regulations have been
    designed to help protect people from Coronavirus.’

    Wonder if there are any other aspects of these demonstrations that the Met may have considered?

    1. Indeed there have. What sort of vegan fillings would they like in their sandwiches?

    2. Or maybe they could get couple of months in prison like what gets handed out in Scotland.
      Or just maybe, these marches and street meetings could be banned? I mean, if things are serious enough to ban spectators at football matches surely riots could be stopped also?

      1. Footie fans tend to be white, working class men. The absolute dregs who can be kicked around by their betters.

  16. Horses slashed and ears cut off in macabre attacks across France. 30 August 2020.

    Attackers are targeting horses and ponies in pastures across France armed with knives in what may be ritual mutilations.

    Police are baffled by the macabre attacks, which include slashings. Most often, an ear – usually the right one – has been cut off, recalling the matador’s trophy in a bullring.

    Up to 30 attacks have been reported in France, the agriculture minister said on Friday. One attack was registered in February, according to the news magazine Le Point. With each attack, the mystery only seems to grow.

    Signs and Portents my friends!

    And I looked, and beheld a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth. Revelation. 6:8

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/29/horses-slashed-and-ears-cut-off-in-macabre-attacks-across-france

    1. This happens from time to time – I have read reports ever since I started going to France as an adult.

  17. For those still wondering if God exists then just consider why we mysteriously have one of the coldest August Bank Holiday weekends on record at the same time that XR have planned a weekend of action to highlight global warming and climate change and we also have a fake pandemic that prevented the Notting Hill Carnival.
    A double whammy.

    1. …but some organised heavy rain would have been even more effective.

      ‘Morning, B3.

  18. For those still wondering if God exists then just consider why we mysteriously have one of the coldest August Bank Holiday weekends on record at the same time that XR have planned a weekend of action to highlight global warming and climate change and we also have a fake pandemic that prevented the Notting Hill Carnival.
    A double whammy.

      1. Good walking weather though, Belle. I could see a tanker on the horizon 30 miles away from the top of Kit Hill this morning.

  20. Turkey and Greece staring into ‘the abyss’ as tensions in Mediterranean risk spiraling into conflict. 30 august 2020.

    “Turkey will take what is its right in the Mediterranean, in the Aegean and in the Black Sea,” he said during the speech on Wednesday.

    “If anyone wants to stand before us and face the consequences, they are welcome to. If not, stay out of our way and we will continue with our work.”

    The Greeks were not only acting like “pirates” but were “unworthy of the Byzantine legacy”, he said, in a further allusion to the tangled conflicts of the past.

    Morning everyone. Yes this is just what we need on top of everything else! All NoTTLers should make sure that their freezers and pantries are full!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/29/turkey-greece-staring-abyss-tensions-mediterranean-risk-spiraling/

    2. My prediction was a bit off. I said that it would all flare up this week. It may take longer. How involved do the French want to be? Is there not some international protocol on borders, and 200 mile economic zones that Turkey should observe? Has Turkey used Cyprus as starting point for boundaries, when their occupation is illegal and therefore can not be the foundation of further claims?
      Will we see war between Greece of the EU and Turkey of NATO?

          1. Having viewed that picture, Anne, I was relieved to be able to press the Hide button in double quick time.

          2. I bet they are raking in the dosh with all the legal protection of the illegal migrants.
            Nice move Tone, changing the law back in the day. One might think he must have seen all this coming eh.

          4. If you click on the little hyphen on the right – it goes. At least until you refresh.

          5. I know Bill, i was trying to humorous 🤩
            But once more……I’m off to ‘take the knee’ s and get on with painting the ‘king skirting and Bead and Butt panelling 🤨
            Fortunately i took the plinths off the cupboards and painted them on a bench in the garage.

          9. Well, i had to sum up the difference between replacing the whole kitchen at the whim of my good lady or becoming a slave to painting.
            I’m beginning to have second thoughts but keep it to your self.
            At least it wont be a winter of discontent. Fingers crossed.
            And exit stage left………….<<<<<<<<<<<<<

          10. If all else fails, Eddy, I can recommend trying a third wife! We have managed nearly 30 years.

          13. You can collapse the picture. Move cursor to top right of post and click the bar. Hopefully that will give her a headache.

    4. I can never decide which or the two: Blair or Cameron was the more common. What is certain is that they are both twerps.

      1. Both were uncommonly cunning in a rat like manner. Deeply polished products. A bit like a swanky new telephone but when you opened the box there was only manure rather than a pallet delivering a bent metal computer.

        (I spent yesterday racking four new servers for the company). Still annoyed at the price of disks.

    1. I can’t understand the illiterate ‘replies’ beneath that, but it seems that people think this is acceptable because a white person killed another white person, and that somehow this person – ‘Kyle’ (dear life, what a stupid name) was somehow a patriot?

      As for this:

      Laplegal

      @Laplegal

      ·29 Aug

      Replying to

      @WilliamWaltzer and @ElijahSchaffer

      OK no demos govern you know the job we pay you to do!

      Does he mean the demos – the people? The rest is tripe from an illiterate buffoon.

      1. 323118+ up ticks,
        Afternoon W,
        By the same token they tend to shoot each other
        in wartime and I do believe in many respects we are at war on many a front.
        I heard that many of the police believe that the vigilantes have good cause to take the stance they have.

  24. Treasury officials push for bombshell tax hikes to pay for virus. 30 August 2020.

    Treasury officials are pushing for the largest tax rises in a generation to plug the gaping holes in the public finances, in a move being resisted by Downing Street, The Telegraph can disclose.

    The proposed quintuple whammy of tax increases would enable the Exchequer to raise at least £20 billion a year, and some could be introduced as early as in the Budget.

    While no decisions have been made, multiple sources have told this newspaper that proposals under active consideration include aligning capital gains tax (CGT) with income tax, slashing pension tax relief, raising fuel and other duties, the introduction of an online sales tax and a simplification of the inheritance tax system.

    This is just to reduce the Kulaks to equal poverty!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/08/29/treasury-officials-push-bombshell-tax-hikes-pay-virus/

    2. Note – no raise in Income Tax on hardworking oligarchs or Davos corporations – they can get out of it too easily to bother with them.

    3. The clue is here: “PLug the gaping holes in the public finances’.

      Not recover the economy – get us our money back. This proves the state is incapable of understanding basic economics. What it wants is irrelevant. The state is monstrously expensive and fundamentally MUST be the first thing wood chipped, blended, shredded and cut back. *It* must take the brunt of the losses. If *It* refuses to do so then there’s no point bothering.

      The economy is all that matters. The wealth creating, job creating economy. Everything else hinges off that.

      This hilarious confusion that taxes must rise to pay for big state is what wil send the country spiralling into permanent recession until some product or technology can buy our way out.

  26. It seems the general institutional breakdown in this nation is going on apace, thanks to well-paid and influential controllers in London, who direct the agenda on our behalf.

    I had an SOS email from the Elgar School of Music in Worcester, suggesting that they may be forced to close because of the consequences of you-know-what.

    I commented below on the threat to the British Library below, and have quoted the Telegraph report to my MP, who no doubt knows about it and elects to do nothing constructive. I expect the usual platitudes in due course.

    I am worried about Chester Zoo. One of my favourite TV shows is Channel 4’s ‘The Secret Life of the Zoo’. Now it seems that none of the share of the £100 million that was destined to relieve the zoos from the consequences of you-know-what is to go to Chester Zoo, despite it being of international importance in the effort to put off a mass extinction of species in this century. Rather, they were ordered to close by the Department, and it was only the intervention of a couple of Chester councillors that kept it open.

    HS2 and BLM are ringfenced though, as our obligations enforced by legal teams working for economic migrants to house these chances in the style they wish to be accustomed, as they prepare their campaign to confiscate anything they regard as the product of “white privilege”.

    Does UK plc have a nation any longer?

    1. How do you close a zoo? Do the animals suddenly say, Oh, ok Bob, we’ll go without food for 6 months?

      Do they not need cleaning, caring for?

      1. The animals could go and take up residence at the Westminster trough – no-one would notice the difference.

    2. 323118+ up ticks,
      Morning JM,
      This is really the outcome of having personal MPs year on year, they know in the main they can count on your vote
      regardless of what odious strokes they pull.

      1. My MP is sitting on a majority of more than 20,000. There is no reason why she need bother.

        1. 323118+up ticks,
          JM,
          Those 20000 are part & parcel in supporting the close shop currently that got us into & are keeping us at the base of the cesspit.
          No matter if the MPs in some areas were balan singh ( indian MP), 1/2 a dozen halo’s on their canister they are all under one of the political hierarchy hydra heads who are responsibly for the present state of affairs.

  27. 323118+ up ticks,
    May one ask, these GPs that are seemingly passing the buck ( malady) onto others do they receive, or will they receive treatment, or lack of treatment, from the tinker the tailor the candle stick maker ?

    Suggestion for use,
    GP to plumber “but the bloody water is up to my hips & rising fast”
    Plumber to GP sorry doc but you know how it is with all this covid abath, try dialing 111 they might have a resident plumber.

    1. And they think they’re the good guys…

      The Left never change. The fascist Nazis thought they were righteous as well.

    2. If God had invented condoms before he invented food there wouldn’t be this sort of problem.

    3. Good morning Bill

      But not, if you agree with Grizzly, they then breed even more enthusiastically and make the problem even worse.

      2. I don’t particularly agree with Grizzly’s extremist views on population, though doing something to contain it would be a sensible. However if the rumours about using a vaccine to sterilise swathes of the worlds polulation is true, then that seems to be a really studpid way of going about. It’s not the way you’d cull any animal population. It would have been better to let covid run rife through the world’s population and remove the weak, sick and elderly, which is what it seems to do fairly effectively.

        1. Please explain to me why I am “extremist”. Don’t just give out public accusations without backing them up.

          Yesterday I was looking through my Times Concise Atlas of the World and it gave the world’s human population as 4,100,000,000. Just 43 years later it is now 7,800,000,000, which is approaching double in that minuscule time span.

          In my opinion, the “extremists” are those millions of people who care not a fig for their environment, are unflinchingly selfish, and are hell-bent on self-annihilation of their own species. Those are the extremists.

          1. Because you comments give the impression that you would be happy to remove the whole human species and that you consider everyone else to be stupid. Maybe I have gained the wrong impression from your comments.

          2. I certainly do not consider everyone else to be stupid; however, the evidence is clearly presented, every day, how stupidity — in the general human species — is growing in time with the population explosion.

            How else do you explain away the anomaly of a country, that has spent its whole history repelling invaders and protecting its shores from invasion by those with malicious intent, suddenly changing the tack of history and opening its doors to welcome those who wish us harm?

          3. Grizz, it is the manner in which you express your views (most of which I agree with) that earns you the charge of extremism.

        2. IIRC, they release sterile mosquitos to inhibit the breeding of the unsterile ones.

    5. Problem is if we feed those poor then we have to keep feeding them because they can’t feed themselves.

      It is kinder to let them starve.

    6. If you feed the “poor” they go on to breed like rabbits and produce even more “poor”. The poor are always with us.

  31. Morning all.
    30-august-civil-servants-cannot-be-relied-upon-to-make-necessary-spending-cuts/
    Just the same as politicos, they never really get anything right do they.
    They are suggesting rises in taxes. UK tax payers already have enough on their proverbial plates thanks.
    And Mr Banksy get real please, with your free boats trips you are just exacerbating an already fraught situation, you are piling more misery on them and the rest of the free world. You are transporting would be slaves to the already over crowded western world. Enough !

        1. The Upper House used to serve a useful and necessary function as an apolitical revising body.

          Blair didn’t like that concept of his legislation being stopped by people he couldn’t bribe so shoved it chock full of corrupt – Mandelson – liars (Mandelson again), thieves (Mandelson – again) and crooks (Oh, Mandelson again) and other such cronies who took – and gave bribes (Mandelson) with the morality of sewage (Mandelson) to get his pathetic legislation through.

          Cameron then did the same, handing out peerages to cornies, chums and troughers in a desperate attempt to even up the odds.

          What needs to be done is simple: defrock every appointment made in the last 30 years and make the upper house composed only of independently wealthy apolitical individuals who serve for no more than ten years.

          2. Absolutely spot on wibbers, and many of those from the Blair era wanted the lords abolished, but now revel in the extra income and free meals and anything else they can get for signing the book.

      3. The fundamental problem with the civil service is how it’s funded.

        Each department is given a budget of cash. If it doesn’t spend all of it – even if it doesn’t need to – it gets less cash next time around.

        This is daft, as it makes no consideration for fluctuations in market conditions. Unlike a company, it cannot ‘bank’ money for investment.

        However the departments also ask for what they want to spend, not what they need *to do*. As a consequence government continues to grow exponentially as each department is focussed solely on spending more and doing more rather than doing the same work more efficiently.

        1. Ah yes. The New Carpets For Geriatric Wards Syndrome.
          Installed in March – binned in May.

        2. It’s the same with all government departments. There’s a budget and, towards the end of the year, they are frantically spending what had been left to ensure they have the same or a larger budget the next year. Even the Overseas Aid budget is spent up to the hilt and I rage against there being a 0.7% of GDP budget.

          1. Yep, it’s both hilarious and absurd.

            I put in for some utterly preposterous items during my stint. Thankfully my chum in purchasing was awake as otherwise the agency would have happily paid for half a dozen exocet missiles.

            It’s simply waste. Unntil government is based on ‘we pay for what we want done’ rather than we pay for what they want to do, nothing will change.

    2. Why do these wretched people wish to escape their homelands if these homelands have not become, as Donald Trump elegantly put it, ‘shitholes’?

      And surely those interested in social justice should be more concerned with reforming the ‘shitholes’ than attacking countries in Europe which are already overcrowded?

      As far as genuine asylum seekers are concerned then surely, if religion is important and if integration and assimilation are important then Christian asylum seekers should go to Christian countries and Muslim asylum seekers should go to Muslim countries.

      Or are the wokists saying – without being prepared to admit it – that the countries from which people want to escape are shitholes?

      1. Christian asylum seekers should go to Christian countries and Muslim asylum seekers should go to Muslim countries.
        Hence my theory that the Somalian pirates were funding mass islamic invasions of Australia. The stolen money providing boats fuel and food enough to reach another muslim country Indonesia. Where they only re-fuled re-provisioned and sailed on to western Australia.

        And the most obvious problem is that they all absolutely hate western cultures and it’s established social structures.
        ‘Own houses in order’ rings a bell but most of them are far to lazy to get stuck in, as our parents and grandparents did after Hitlers most determined efforts.

      3. Muslim countries don’t pay excessively generous welfare nor give them a free house.

        It does raise a question though, why, when there’s absolutely nothing common to them here to they want to come here? The only answer has got to be invasion.

        If their homes are so bad, then they are merely a reflection of those people who live there. If the immigrants are not forcibly integrated until their own culture has been obliterated, then they will simply bring their own proclivity for carnage here.

        It’s win win for them, lose lose for us.

        The only rational consideration now has to be that those people here wanting more immigration be lumbered with the cost and the consequences.

        1. “those people here wanting more immigration be lumbered with the cost and the consequences.” – I would add the lawyers stopping migrants being deported – If they want them here, then they should be made responsible. in every way, for those they wish to keep here. The lawyers always seem to be of the same culture as those they defend. The RoP.

        2. Why does the government not say that immigrants will receive no more in benefits than they would have done in the countries from which they have fled until they have paid taxes in full for at least 5 years.

        3. They come to invade a non-muslim country (hijrah) and then make the kuffars pay jizyah (that’s welfare to us).

    3. That’s a bit unfair.

      Civil servants will happily make savings of £30-50 million. it’ll just cost £300 million to do it and end up with an even higher wage bill and more staff to achieve it.

    1. Their government invited the third world in. The rape and murder rate soared. Parts of Malmo are now shut off to natives – including law enforcement.

      Tough.The only annoyance is it’s never the lefty’s who get raped, assaulted and murdered.

      2. I’m not a Lefty. I live in Sweden. I go shopping to Malmö (do spell it correctly!). I’ve never been threatened. I’ve never been raped. I’ve never been murdered. I’ve never been robbed. I’ve never been stabbed. I’ve never been shot. I’ve never been blown up. I still go shopping there.

        1. Good afternoon, Grizzly

          What was the final line in the film of Gone With The Wind?

      1. Although Piers Corbyn is a lefty like his brother, he doesn’t seem to have his feet in quite the same camp. He is a hoax denier, climate and covid; we should make use of this. It won’t do us any good if we throw the baby out with the bathwater. Which is what the press are trying to make us do, by making his name and reputation synonymous with that of Jeremy Corbyn now that Piers is coming to the attention of the public.

  36. Call me naive – and many do; but the banner headlines about “Bombshell tax hikes” seem a touch misleading.

    Any sane person has known that by wrecking the economy for the next three generations, heavy tax increases are needed to attempt to reduce the appalling national debt – created – at a stroke – by the wazzock at the Treasury.

    So leaked “announcements” of tax increases are scarcely a surprise…..

  39. SIR – Daniel Hannan (Comment, August 23) is right to highlight the problems in our bureaucratic system.

    Much of the way in which the country runs has been delegated to quangos, very often outside ministerial control; yet poor ministers are the people taking the rap when things go wrong.

    The demise of Public Health England is a step in the right direction. Hopefully other quangos will follow.

    Robert Atkinson

    Preston, Lancashire

    2. The whole point of delegating responsibility to quangos and to privatised outsourced contractors is to remove accountability from ministers, who are answerable to the public, to appointees, often highly paid and trained in effective apologising, who are not.

      Afterthought – these bodies are guaranteed (since all commercial risk is removed by comprehensive public underwriting) generous renumeration schemes; these are ringfenced and written into watertight contracts by ministers at the point of relinquishing accountability.

  40. Have any of you grown courgettes , cucumbers, marrow etc

    I think you should all look at this .. especially as it is nearly lunchtime.

    You could be eating KILLER courgettes: How hundreds of gardeners have been poisoned in recent months and there’s even been a death

    When the pandemic left millions stuck at home, bored Britons took to their gardens to grow their own vegetables.

    Seed suppliers sold out within weeks of lockdown, and the Royal Horticultural Society reported a five-fold rise the number of calls and emails from people seeking advice. After all, what could be healthier than being out in the fresh air cultivating delicious home-grown veg – just like Tom and Barbara in the 1970s classic TV comedy series The Good Life

    In July, one of Britain’s top plant seed suppliers – Suffolk-based Mr Fothergill’s – issued a product recall after it emerged it had inadvertently released a consignment of courgette seeds with very high levels of cucurbitacins. The company acted after receiving ‘a handful’ of complaints from customers that their home-grown harvest made them violently ill.

    Some experts warn that heat stress – such as the hot, dry conditions much of Britain experienced in April and May – can drive up toxin levels in the veg.

    However, many gardeners collect seeds from their vegetables at the end of the season and save them to grow new plants the following year. Normally this is not a problem, unless the plant – whether it’s a courgette, cucumber, squash or pumpkin – has been accidentally cross-pollinated. This is when it has come into contact with pollen from another plant of the same family that still has high levels of toxic cucurbitacins.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-8676819/You-eating-killer-courgettes.html

        1. When we were reading Beowulf, I had to look up the word used by the poet for the greenery surrounding Grendel’s cave. One suggestion in the dictionary was ‘vegetables’; I immediately thought of the film.
          At least Grendel and his mummy would have been safe with those on guard. (Yes, yes, I know tomatoes are strictly speaking a fruit.)

    3. 2 days ago a friend told me about some cucumbers he’d grown that turned out yellow – and tasted so absolutely vile that he couldn’t eat them. I’ll text him.

    1. They don’t have any ‘own stuff’. Everything they have is taken from others – usually with violence.

    2. Excellent.

      But I shall leave it to Peddy to explain whether ‘owing to’ would have been better than ‘due to’ in the above notice. He might refer to Fowler or he might tell us something fascinating about the difference between adjectival and adverbial complements.

          4. Rinderfilet mit Kartoffeln, Karotten und Erbsen, mit einer Flasche Medoc.
            Ein wenig englischer Käse folgt ja und ein Glas Roséwein zu Beginn.

      3. I am the one often who quotes Fowler (and Gowers). Some others on here think they know better than those two august authorities on English usage.

      4. I was taught that ‘due to’ means ’caused by’ and ‘owing to’ means ‘because of’. So substitute the alternative phrase to see if the original makes sense.

  42. ‘Morning again.

    Daniel Hannan in today’s ST. Handycock would do well to read this after bigging up the prospect of winter lockdowns:

    I used to joke about ending up under house arrest – arraigned by Europol on charges of xenophobia for criticising the Maastricht Treaty or some such. Sure enough, here I am after an ill-timed trip to France. And house arrest is the apt term: we returnees not allowed out even for solitary walks. The rules are unenforceable, of course, and plenty of people are ignoring them, but newspaper columnists and politicians don’t have that option. If there is a double standard at work, it is the opposite of what is commonly supposed.

    Not that I am complaining. We knew when we set sail from Portsmouth that quarantine was a possibility, and we arranged our diaries accordingly. It may be illogical to impose these restrictions as we come out of lockdown, it may be focus-group driven, but that’s democracy. Dura lex, sed lex.

    The past 13 days at home have given me plenty of time to ponder the difference between the atmosphere here and that across the Channel. And the more I reflect, the gloomier I become. Put simply, we Brits are unique in our reluctance to return to work. Other than the facemasks, France felt normal. Cafés, offices and shops were full, albeit with the usual sprinkling of handwritten signs in shop windows announcing that the owners were on their summer holidays. There was standing room only on trains. The radio adverts were normal – no sombre warnings, no assurances from retailers about safety measures, no mention of covid at all.

    France has more new infections than the UK, but no one is suggesting a new lockdown. The prime minister, Jean Castex, says further closures would mean “falling into an economic and social crisis that would be much more dangerous than the health crisis.”

    Infections were bound to rise following the “deconfinement”; but, although France lifted most of its restrictions on May 11, there has been no surge in fatalities. Perhaps the virus has become less lethal: viruses often evolve that way. Perhaps the most vulnerable were carried off by the first wave. Perhaps there is a higher degree of immunity than was first thought. We can’t say for sure.

    What we can say is that covid-19 has not taken off anywhere in the way that was feared back in March. Whether we look at countries that declared lockdowns, countries that didn’t, or countries that were in no position to impose distancing measures on teeming slum populations, we find no exponential spread.

    Infection and fatality rates might vary for lots of reasons: climate, population density, average age, openness to international travel, levels of genetic immunity, incidence of obesity, exposure to previous coronaviruses and, not least, different counting methods. But the correlation with lockdowns is strikingly weak.

    Spain and Italy imposed eye-wateringly harsh closures. Germany and the Netherlands were more moderate. Sweden banned only large meetings (and, this week, lifted that ban). Dictatorial Belarus refused to shut anything. Yet you would be hard pressed, looking at graphs of the infections and deaths, to guess which graph went with which country.

    It’s the same everywhere. My native Peru won plaudits for the speed and severity of its crackdown, yet it has a higher fatality rate than neighbouring Brazil, whose president, Jair Bolsonaro, was condemned around the world for his insouciance. Those US states which imposed the mildest restrictions tend to have better than average death rates.

    This is not to say that lockdowns are wholly ineffective. Immobilising an entire population is bound to have some impact on slowing the spread of a disease. It is just that the correlation is marginal. We slammed down our sledgehammer and splintered the table, but only slightly dented the nut.

    Why have the Brits, of all nations, suddenly become what the French call “casaniers” – reluctant to leave home? What made us so different? Was it the impact of the PM’s illness, the generosity of our furlough scheme, or simply the taut and terse power of the “stay home save lives” slogan? Whatever the explanation, we seem not to want our old lives back. When the lockdown was imposed, there was much talk about the “new normal” that would follow when it was lifted; but the horrible truth is that we have normalised the lockdown itself.

    If the mortality charts look similar enough around the world, the same cannot be said of the economic charts. A survey by Morgan Stanley suggests that 74 per cent of German office workers are back at their desks, 76 per cent of Spanish and Italian workers and 84 per cent of French workers. The figure for Britain? Thirty-seven per cent. No wonder our downturn is the steepest in Europe.

    When that downturn manifests itself as lower incomes and fewer jobs, we will cast around for someone to blame. Why, we will ask, did SAGE suddenly switch course, ordering a lockdown when the infection rate had already peaked? Why did ministers go along with it? Why did broadcasters stoke the panic? In truth, though, the blame should fall closer to home. We demanded the harshest of crackdowns. We got what we asked for.

    Edit: One of the more sensible BTL commrnts:

    Richard Rawsthorn
    30 Aug 2020 7:54AM
    I agree with this article.

    The blame for this mess lies with the Government. With a huge Parliamentary majority and nearly 5 years to go before the next General Election it had no need to take any notice of the MSM which should never be seen as “the voice of the people”.

    The problem faced by the Government initially was that there was no trustworthy science available to guide it. When so many “experts” offered wildly-conflicting opinions that should have been obvious. Instead the Government should have fallen back on the old Conservative principle that when Government intervenes with a heavy hand, it usually makes matters worse. And so it has proved.

    What’s done is done. Blame isn’t going to get us anywhere. What we need is a reversal of the Government’s policy of trying to “defeat the virus” and all the scary rhetoric that goes with it. Instead, the Government should remove all the compulsion and restrictions, and repeal the legislation that enables them, as an assurance that there will be no back-tracking and freedom is here to stay. With that should come a new message: the war is over.

    1. https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-coronavirus-immunity-riddle

      The coronavirus immunity riddle | The Spectator

      Dr John Lee

      “What have we been witnessing these past few months? A worldwide crisis caused by the arrival of a new virus of exceptional virulence — or a crisis of awareness, in which incomplete information led to a wildly disproportionate reaction? Have lockdowns, face coverings and the rest saved millions of lives worldwide? Or have they had relatively little effect on the course of the pandemic, and ended up causing more harm than good? And why, so far, is Britain not seeing the surge of Covid-19 infections reported in Spain and France? What are we missing?

      We still know a lot less about Covid-19, and about viruses in general, than you might have been led to believe. Viruses are older than mankind — and more numerous than all other forms of life put together — but we have only found out about them in the past century. And the sum of what we still don’t know is huge.

      Why did you catch a cold yesterday, rather than last week, last month, or last year? Were you in contact with someone who had a cold or did you just happen to inhale the virus? Was it because you breathed in 1,000 viruses or just the one? Was it because it hit just the right cell, or because your immune system was out of kilter after a heavy night out? Was it because there was a critical imbalance among the other myriad pathogens in and around your body? The simple, truthful answer is that for most real-world cases, we have no idea at all.

      It may help to view Covid from a radically different vantage point, and go back to the start of life on earth. Bear with me: what follows may help explain why I believe that much of what is said about this pandemic is either highly misleading or just plain wrong.

      T-cell responses are harder to measure than antibodies, so they are not being widely tested for

      Coronaviruses are RNA viruses, and a widely accepted hypothesis suggests that RNA molecules pre-date life itself. In this view, an RNA world came first. RNA molecules can self-assemble, store information, and some (ribozymes) can facilitate other chemical reactions like protein enzymes. Ribosomes, a type of ribozyme which make proteins in our cells, are largely composed of RNA. Over time, DNA ended up replacing RNA as the main information–storage molecule because it is more stable and able to build longer proteins, which replaced ribozymes because their multiple amino-acid building blocks make them more versatile. Eventually cellular organisms appeared with DNA, RNA and protein molecules playing the roles now seen in all life.

      The point is that no cell has ever existed which did not have to live alongside replicating RNA molecules, and, later, RNA viruses. It’s not unusual to have a new virus that’s out to get us. It happens all the time, in more ways than we have been able to measure. Every amoeba, every simple organism composed of a few cells, every foetus in its mother’s womb, every child, every adult, has to make their way in a world rife with independent RNA molecules following their own agenda. What’s more, because simpler microbes such as bacteria existed before us, we have always had to deal with them too. We are only just beginning to realise, through recent developments in science, how much our associations with these ‘simpler’ organisms matter. It’s also wrong to think of viruses only as a disease, or a threat.

      Let me offer an example. Cells in our gut make mucus. Until very recently it was believed that the mucus acted simply as a physical barrier, preventing the bacteria that live in our gut from invading the cells of our bowel wall, where they could cause inflammation and disease. But it turns out that the mucus has evolved to host special types of viruses called bacteriophages, which infect and kill bacteria. For each of the trillions of bacteria in our gut there are about 40 bacteriophages in the mucus. So the mucus is not just a physical barrier, it’s a sophisticated bio-barrier honed to use viruses to protect us from bacteria.

      It’s the same with our defences against RNA viruses like Covid-19 — how can we judge the extent of the viral threat amid all this complexity? A lot of emphasis is being placed on the presence of antibodies: if you test negative then you’re at risk. This would be alarming if true, especially as the latest official figures show just 6 per cent of Brits have tested positive for antibodies. But the real picture is, as so often, more complicated.

      The main way we fight viruses is through T-cell responses, which kill virally infected cells. Interestingly, some studies have shown that up to 60 per cent of people apparently never exposed to Covid-19 still had T-cells that reacted to the virus — suggesting that you might not need to have had this virus to have protection from it.

      It’s a hugely important theory. But T-cell responses are harder to measure than antibodies, so they are not being widely tested for. There’s another recently discovered viral defence mechanism that operates entirely within cells: RNA interference (RNAi). If an RNA virus such as Covid-19 does manage to get inside a cell, special RNA molecules are made by the cell that interfere with and hinder replication of the virus. This crucial defence mechanism is not being tested for at all, yet it is clearly an ancient and vital part of how our bodies deal with RNA viruses such as Covid-19. Will it be important in explaining differing susceptibilities to coronavirus, or why it hits some people harder than others? Might this help explain why the pandemic curve has been the same in so many countries, irrespective of policies implemented? Almost certainly. What do we know about RNAi’s effects on disease in a population? Almost nothing.

      Then we have the virus itself. Is this a threat far greater than other new viruses that have emerged in recent decades? We now have the tools to identify and follow new viruses. Covid-19 has followed a pretty typical viral infection curve in all countries — as far as can be determined from the limited measurements we have to date. A recent Swedish study of ‘Covid deaths’ outside hospitals found that only 15 per cent of them died as a direct result of the virus. For most, there were other factors.

      So it’s far from clear that Covid deaths are of a greater magnitude than a bad flu season. It has been argued that the virus would have killed half a million people in Britain had we not taken action. But how can any model be accurate given what we don’t know about Covid and how people respond to it? You don’t need to be a scientist to look at the number of cases of the virus in different countries and wonder why there is so little correlation with the actions they took. You might also notice the absence of any viral impact from the worldwide experiments of crowded BLM marches.

      Yes, we see a rise now in test positivity rates in some areas and, with it, talk of a ‘second wave’. But there is, as yet, no second wave in hospital admissions, here or abroad. This suggests we are missing something fundamental. Could it be that the virus has significantly changed since the beginning of the pandemic? As I argued in these pages at the start of lockdown, RNA viruses change all the time and are likely to become less virulent with time. A recent study of 131 patients from Singapore has revealed a significant mutation: a less dangerous subtype of the virus with a shorter RNA molecule.

      There is still so much we do not even begin to understand, but one thing has been clear for months: this virus is similar to other viruses we have lived with for generations. And there is very little evidence to support the benefits of the lockdown measures.

      The case for returning to normal life is simple: the social, economic and public health costs of not doing so are far greater. With the Covid hospital cases in Britain now running at 96 per cent below their peak, we can reasonably ask whether the overall situation might not be as bleak as we first feared and whether now is the time to get the country moving again.”

    2. NO. The blame DOES NOT lie with the government. It lies with the NHS and healthcare quangos.

      The fellow forgets that the state quite likes this ‘war’.

    3. These government jerks are really relishing frightening the population, with all this doom-mongering. Bastards. Yet they (say they) want people to go back to work – hah! But I see signs of pushback. Hope they grow quickly.

  43. Good Afternoon everyone.
    The Daily Mail is reporting a possible link between Spotify (me neither) and the Dukes of Whatever.
    Apparently they may choose to make podcasts, to be marketed as the Toff-spot.

  44. Exclusive: British Library’s chief librarian claims ‘racism is the creation of white people’

    Liz Jolly supports changes to displays and collections in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests to purge ‘perceived racism’ at the library

    By Craig Simpson 29 August 2020 • 9:00pm

    Liz Jolly
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2020/08/29/TELEMMGLPICT000238028454_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqAWoqOBS7Dwf5NLFoEa0CwHoWJAVaauFPB5aUxwPKQIs.jpeg?imwidth=680
    The character, popular at seaside shows is: “A theatrical figure from the heyday of Victorian imperialism who ‘entertained’ through an abuse of women and children that mirrored colonial Violence.”

    Mr Punch
    Prior to the British Library, Director of Student and Library Services at….. Teesside University from 2008 to 2018.
    Wow!! quite a step-up!
    https://www.bl.uk/britishlibrary/~/media/staff%20profiles/liz-jolly.jpg

    1. Mr Punch is a figure of fun and ridicule. Ms Jolly, despite her name, is not.

      Which one is the more dangerous?

    2. Looks like she could do with a jolly good punch on the nose. “That’s the way to do it!”.

  45. 323118+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,
    Seems like in Aussie the church different denominations hierarchy are discussing the vaccine and it’s make up contents.

    Sounds like it could contain cells from aborted fetus which if an out was needed one could use religious grounds.could have averse effects on your use of the welfare structure, in short you & family will be denied.

    The course these governance party’s ( with electoral support)
    are steering currently with the use of submissive pcism & appeasement maybe the islamic ideology followers will be exempt, check with your local mayor, highly likely to be of the islamic calling.

    Personal view is I believe, we are not far short from having the politico’s attaching a bell earring to the ovids ear as a sign of warning as in, approaching non compliancer.

  46. British Library’s chief librarian claims ‘racism is the creation of white people’. 29 August 2020 • 9:00pm.

    The British Library’s chief librarian has claimed “racism is a creation of white people” and backed calls for major cultural change at the institution, the Telegraph can reveal.

    The Telegraph can now reveal that Chief Librarian Ms Jolly has urged white staff to support the institution’s plans to purge the library of perceived racism.

    Has this woman ever been to China or Japan or even India? The Chinese “know” that they are the worlds most advanced race, they even alter the evolutionary record in schools to except themselves from the African Diaspora. The Japanese think Blacks are Backward Apes. The Indian Brahmins would throw the food on the table away if the shadow of a foreigner or a lesser caste passed across it! None of them like us either! They do not think the White Race is superior! The very opposite! This is a view held solely by blacks to excuse their own shortcomings!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/29/exclusive-british-librarys-chief-librarian-claims-racism-creation/

    2. I’m sure a spot of book burning will solve the problem.
      The emissions will upset the Doom Goblin – but hey, broken eggs and omelettes.
      Morning, Minty.

  48. I wonder if this BTL comment was from a covert Nottler?

    Spending cuts? Here are a few suggestions: Scrap the TV tax and let the BBC fend for itself. Scrap the Electoral Commission, defund the British Museum, National Gallery, National Trust and all other luvvie institutions and let them fund themselves. Reduce the Overseas Aid Budget, access to Legal Aid for murderers of Emergency Workers, terrorists and their brides and house ‘asylum seekers’ in one star hostels and not four and five star hotels. Sorted!

    1. Reduce the Overseas Aid Budget,? – -Doesn’t the word budget imply there is a limit to the amount? – They certainly don’t act as if there is. Everyone gets our taxes – except us.

          1. 323118+ up ticks,
            W,
            I know it sounds dreadful, even terrifying but peoples really must learn to assess a situation
            themselves, on their own, alone, then act accordingly.

    2. Better still, remove “asylum seekers” and let them apply to the first safe country they come to (hint, they’ve crossed quite a few to get here).

  49. Watched Rick Stein in Germany earlier. Got a series of lumps in my throat when I saw all my old haunts in Hamburg & Düsseldorf.

  50. 323118+ up ticks,
    The mutilators are so thick in not realising that, he who laughs last, laughs …….

    breitbart,
    Satanists Vandalize Statue of Jesus in Northern Italy

    1. 404 was my old superintendent’s (Tommy Hoggett) call sign. Tommy was old-school and whenever you heard, “404 to Charlie Whisky” (CW = “Chesterfield West”), you knew you that Tommy was about and you needed to be on your toes. That number still has me looking over my shoulder in trepidation.

  52. NHS worker is under investigation after she claimed coronavirus is ‘a load of b*****ks’ and told how she did ‘f*** all’ during Covid pandemic. 30 August 2020.

    An NHS worker who said she did ‘f*** all’ during the pandemic and claimed coronavirus was a ‘load of b******s’ is now being investigated.

    Care UK employee Louise Hampton recorded a video criticising a certificate she had been given thanking her for ‘making a difference to patients’ amid the virus outbreak.

    In the clip, posted to her Facebook page, she says: ‘I’m an actual NHS worker and apparently I worked really hard during Covid. Did I b*****ks. That’s why it’s a certificate of b*****ks.

    Crude but almost certainly true!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8678585/NHS-worker-investigation-claimed-coronavirus-load-b-ks.html

    1. A typical social media addict who is too stupid to realise that posting such a comment is sure to bring pain to herself.
      The fact that it is most likely true is no defence against public confirmation that she has shite for brains.

        1. As I said, sure to bring about pain for herself, if this is the generation that we entrust the well-being of the UK to, there is no hope.

          1. Yes. Way too stupid if she hasn’t realised that when you go against the narrative you get cancelled.

  53. At last a serious topic in the Daily Telegraph! (An article about topless sunbathing)

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/56-still-sunbathe-topless-not/

    Why are people so obsessed with breasts?

    The most absurd thing is the censoring of nipples especially in newspapers such as the Daily Mail that put what looks like tape over them and then publish scores of photos each day people of with blanked out ‘naughty bits.’ In ‘The Sun’ you used to be given your daily ration of uncensored nipples on Page Three but now you get censored nipples everywhere!

    The British attitude is bizarre – we cannot make up our minds whether we should be completely ‘disgusted of Tunbridge Wells‘ prudes or carnally and pruriently obsessed.

    And isn’t it rather hypocritical of the DT to show a photo of the author who likes going topless modestly concealing her mammaries with a bikini top?

    3. Reminds me of the time we had our first visit to the USA. During the stay 2 stories were given prominence on local tv, a wife who was murdered at home, ( the husband paid a hit man ) lots of blood and gore shown in the reports and a story about a local club with topless dancers on stage. The reports showed 2 stars superimposed over nipples which rather nicely jiggled across the screen when they filmed her dancing.
      Blood and gore OK, nipples not at all!

    4. The Scandinavians and Germans (amongst others) laugh at the British faux prudery; a relic from idiotic Victorian “values” in which the human body was deemed to be “shameful”.

      1. 323118+ up ticks,
        JN,
        And the party’s hierarchy are of ersatz political nature and have been for many a year.

    2. 323118+ up ticks,
      O2O,
      Tax rises, & five star hotels the tab rising daily, they surely MUST invent another working day to cover the five star cost of the foreign replacement units arriving via Dover.

      1. Not a chance. Old, loyal beeboid. Known as a “safe pair of hands”. Why else was he chosen?

          2. Certainly not. EDIT. And it wouldn’t matter to me if he was.

            He is married with 3 children.

          6. I am heterosexual. The MR and I know lots of gay people.

            I do find some derogatory comments about gay people most unpleasant. I don’t mean you or PM – of course – but some NoTTLers – in my opinion – go too far.

          7. I agree and also know a lot of gay people. The guy who married twice and had 3 children, has now married a man and is so happy. His second wife was just completely bowled over when she found out he was gay.

          8. I too have gay friends and aquaintances,my (and in many cases their) problem is
            “The love that dare not speak its name”
            Has become a very shrill “Love that can never STFU”

          9. You surely cannot mean the measured comments I’ve made in the past, on the subject of fudge-packers and rug-munchers, Bill?

            In the more civilised times, now alas gone by, I didn’t give a flying XXXX about them or their habits – as long as they didn’t do it in the street and frighten the horses – but since we have been subject to endless propaganda from the shirtlifter/dyke brigade extolling the virtues of sexual perversion, I take every opportunity to demonstrate my contempt for their way of life, both online and offline. I most strongly object to my grandchildren being taught that such deviant behaviour is normal. For example, I would suggest there’s nothing normal about a man using another man’s waste disposal system for his sexual gratification.

            I don’t personally know any of these perverts, nor would I wish to. And I’ll never use the word “gay” to describe them. They have hijacked a fine old word and bent (pun intended) it out of its true meaning.

            (Rant aside, good day to you)
            ;¬)

          10. I have to admit, the denial of the realities of anal sex, the poorer physical and mental health outcomes, the fact that female gays are statistically the most likely to be in violent relationships, the realities of catalogue babies…all these lies by omission really annoy me. Children are not given the facts, they are given propaganda.

          11. Agreed.

            BUT, some of them nowadays go out of their way to ram their activities down the throats of people who are uncomfortable with it.

            My sister finally “came out”. Good luck to her.

            My issue was the way that she and her lover would be all over each other in my father’s and mother’s presence because they knew how much it upset them. It was deliberate unpleasantness and he was too polite to do anything about it. It made him squirm with embarrassment. I was only surprised that he didn’t explode and throw them out physically. He was a huge, strong, man and could have picked one up in each hand and banged their heads together. My mother was always on tenterhooks that he might.

            I would never have groped or had longue (sic) passionate kisses with HG in front of my parents and neither did my brothers and other sister with their partners.

          12. You are quite right Bill, but is it any surprise that when the BBC (other media available) actually promotes gayness, colour etc a backlash is inevitable.

          13. I have several gay friends, male and female – but they don’t flaunt it like the ‘Rainbow benders’ paraded daily on our screens and radios.

          15. Well, it doesn’t matter to me, either. It’s just that the bbc loves ticking its many diversity boxes, and showing us that it has ticked that box. I would add that in the past, as you know, a civilisation that has tolerated gays and gayness, let alone celebrated it within a society, has shown itself to be a civilisation that is on its way out. And pouf! – it is gone. I just wish they would ALL get on with their lives unobtrusively as the rest of us mostly do (and I know that many gays do just that).

    2. What is there to consider? Cancel Tony Hall’s decision now. I suppose if he does that they might rescind their decision to employ him by Tuesday.

    3. Wonder what would be done if loads of people stood outside and when the tunes started – all sang their hearts out?

        1. Au contraire – Dick Head of the Yard’s “brave boys in blue” would be there in force to arrest you.

          4. Only professional singers are allowed to sing now, Plum (diktat from the Bishops re church choirs).

          6. I haven’t been to church since they made mask wearing compulsory, so I suppose I am out of the loop.

      2. I hope people gather in the traditional grounds – Hyde Park, Glasgow, Swansea/Cardiff (I can’t remember which!) and Belfast – and do just that.

    1. In recent weeks I’ve read a couple of comments (probably on here or Going-Postal.com) re the bBC and The Falklands.
      The first was how a ‘talking head’ on a ‘Newsnight’-type programme, when asked about the apparent failure of the Argentine Exocet missiles, helpfully explained that the Argentinians had set their fusing incorrectly. Subsequently, HMS Sheffield and SS Atlantic Conveyor were lost to Exocet missile strikes.
      The second was about the bBC ‘reporting’ the strike on Goose Green the night before the attack. Fortunately, the listening Argentine Embassy staff thought that it must be a spoof and disregarded the ‘report’.
      I can’t vouch for the accuracy of either example but I certainly saw comments on the first years ago and I recently saw a comment to the effect that Col H Jones intended some legal action against the bBC regarding their ‘prior warning’.

      1. Hi Feargal. Long time.
        I recall your examples being talked about a long time ago and since, so you aren’t far from reality.

      3. My recollection is that the Exocet that sank the Sheffield was the first one launched by the Argentinians and the Atlantic Conveyor was hit soon after. There could not have been a “talking head” surmising that the fuzes (with a “z” in British Forces use) were set incorrectly before these two ships were hit. It is possible that this is being confused by reports of bomb fuzes not having time to arm before impact.

        1. After a little digging, there is a ‘Gruadian’ article by Ian Cobain, dated 15 Oct 17, about the release of the full MoD report on the sinking of HMS Sheffield.

          The ‘story’ from 1982 onwards had been that the Exocet failed to explode and that the kinetic energy of the missile had caused the damage. Later, in 2015, the MoD amended their report saying that the missile had indeed exploded.

          It is entirely possible that the ‘advice’ provided by the bBC talking head regarding the fuzes (thanks for the ‘edit’) on dumb bombs had been conflated with the performance of the ‘unexploded’ Exocet.

          I can’t find whether the missile that struck the Sheffield was the first one launched but it seems reasonable to assume that, with so few Exocet in the Argentine inventory, careful consideration would have to be given to each launch of the weapon.

          It is perhaps ironic that the Argentine had two Type 42 ships, ‘Hercules’ and ‘Santisima Trinidad’ on which to train against.

  57. Good Moaning. This Temperate Zone Gal had her best night’s sleep in weeks. Let’s hear it for traditional British Bank Holiday weather.
    Peter Hitchens in the MoS made Oi laff:

    “Covid? You may as well fear falling tortoises

    Is anyone still fooled by these figures for ‘cases’ of Covid-19? The more you look, the more you will find, but deaths and hospitalisations keep going down. It’s increasingly clear that the virus rarely affects healthy people.

    In fact, I’d guess that the chance of a healthy young person dying from Covid is about as great as the chance of an eagle dropping a tortoise on your head and killing you.

    This actually happened to Greek playwright Aeschlyus about 2,500 years ago, so it must be about due to happen again, especially with the growing eagle population in the country, and the huge number of pet tortoises on which they might swoop if hungry. Be afraid.

    Using the panic-stricken logic applied to Covid by Health Commissar Matt Hancock, we should surely be taking serious precautions against this menace.

    Perhaps the enforced wearing of tortoise-proof helmets might be necessary, or anti-eagle netting installed over the back gardens of tortoise-owners, who should from now on be strictly licensed.

    But my favourite Hancock-style solution is the compulsory greasing of all tortoises, so that eagles cannot pick them up in the first place.

    I think this meets the precautionary principle quite well, and I’m sure our domestic grease industry can cope with the demand. Save Lives. Control the Tortoise.”

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8677727/PETER-HITCHENS-rant-BBC-Proms-make-slaves.html

    1. Yes, thank goodness the weather has turned back to normal although it was 18’c yesterday in the house.

    2. I replied to a post last night suggesting that Matt Hancock is a clone of a Zombie.

      He’s not a parch on his namesake, toe, knee, hand ****.

    4. Good morning Anne

      Just a little question about Grey parrots .

      What sort of symptons did Oscar show before he died.

      Mine is so quiet and ruffled , not very active and lots of clear/ and greenish pooh etc .

      I have seen him eating , but not sure what is going on. I don’t think our vet is an avian expert . Happy hasn’t lost any feathers , he is nearly 36 years old.

      1. Just asked MB and the answer is no odd signs whatsoever ever. He literally dropped off the perch.
        Given the signs you describe (particularly the poo) he has mentioned coccidiosis. Another possibility, given the heat, is your chap dehydrated?

        1. Thanks Anne , He is drinking as normal and eating fruit, bits of tangerine , apple etc, but he is sitting whith his head hung low and fluffed . I have bought seed from another source , he enjoys big fat stripey sunflower seeds , but they are difficult to find , only miserable thin long seeds which he doesn’t like .

          I will look on line for solutions , and perhaps speak to my vet next week, consultations are still done in the carpark.

          1. Funnily enough – Oscar hated food changes. He much preferred cheap and cheerful; he rejected any posh stuff that MB bought him. Maybe your chap is in a sulk.

          3. Funnily enough – Oscar hated food changes. He much preferred cheap and cheerful; he rejected any posh stuff that MB bought him. Maybe your chap is in a sulk.

          4. A guy goes to a pet shop to buy a budgie, he tells the shop owner he wants one that talks. He walks out of the shop with a budgie that is assured to talk and a cage. A day goes by and the budgie hasn’t said a word so he goes back to the shop and complains. Shop guy suggests buying him a mirror to encourage him. Another day, still nothing. Goes back to the shop who suggest one of those kelleys that won’t lie down. Another day, still nothing. Back to the shop who sell him a little ladder for it to run up and down. Another day, still nothing. A couple of days later the guy goes back to the shop and tells them the budgie’s dead. The shop commiserates and asks if he said anything at all before he died. The guy said ” Yes – Doesn’t that shop sell f**king bird seed?”

          8. It’s odd, isn’t it?

            Mongo’s groomers and walkers are happy to interact as normal people but the vet won’t give him an appointment to clean his teeth – I do it usually but last time poor thing must have felt water boarded. It takes a good hour of gentle brushing as we stop a lot when he pulls his head back and has a drink.

          9. On those lines – fingers VERY firmly crossed – I am relieved that I appear to have solved Spartie’s skin problem. I was not happy with a young dog being on pills for the rest of his life: the car park farrago would have sent me ballistic.
            I bought a bottle of Scottish Salmon Oil and half a teaspoon (10 – 12 drops) on his supper seems to have solved the problem.

          10. Brilliant news Anne.

            Our 2 spaniels love the salmon skins from the fillets , in fact they love anything to do with fish , even marinaded anchovy or tinned tuna with most of the oil rinsed out .

        1. I remember being taken to The Rising Sun at Kemsing as a small child and sitting on a wooden bench outside with a bottle of pop and a packet of crisps. It was a tiny place in the middle of nowhere. Above the door was the publican’s name which I still remember, ‘Charles Benstead’. This would have been mid ’50s. To the right of the building was a flint-strewn car park.

          4. This song was top of the charts when I took my “A” levels in 1964.

            The song’s lyrics were bowdlerised for the Animals’version – the original Rising Sun was a house of ill repute where girls’ lives were ruined by prostitution.

            [Am.C.D.F.Am.E.Am everyone learnt this chord sequence]

        2. There was a brilliant parrot at The Yealm Hotel in Newton Ferrers in the 1970’s which we often visited when sailing up and down the South West coast of England. What he lacked in vocabulary he made up for with explosive squawks and comical gestures such as turning his head upside-down while seated on his perch

  58. Sorry to be off topic.

    I have had a couple of hours out with my dogs, Moh was playing golf , and I came home to find my poor parrot in a really bad way, far worse than this morning .

    Have contacted the vet .. expecting a call soon .

    Drat and double drat , he is nearly 36 years old , and has survived the few spaniels we have had and 2 cats , and has been a fussy eater , he is only a small bird , a Timneh grey, but used to be fullof personality . https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2ca14c1c29164c95e1469f1c1923e7428ec52fa3c53207870b630bd89557f1c9.jpg

      1. Average 70 years Alf . My parrot is half my age , + a year .

        He has been a companion and such good fun , and a chewer in his younger days .

    7. I don’t think there is such a thing as off topic on nttl, Belle. Sorry to hear about your parrot, I do hope he recovers, he looks such a knowing little bird. Do keep us informed of his situation.

  59. Apparently there has been a RTC at crossroads over half a mile from us. They have closed the whole road, about three quarters of a mile, as well as the three access roads including ours and stationed a policeman at each junction to turn people around or let them down the roads. I can see no purpose in this and have emailed Surrey Police and expressed the view that this is a case of the police wasting police time. Will let you know the result if I receive a reply. Stupidity of the first order.

  60. All 20 goats on parade this afternoon. Two condescended to approach me – if only to have a go at my trousers.

    Walking down the lane to the farm, a couple were coming towards me on foot. They didn’t actually go into the next field – but bloody nearly.

    Coming home, I stood aside for a car. The woman driver had her blue disposable gloves on; well – you never know what viruses are lurking in your own car, do you?

    3. Don’t be so gruff, tell them you’re a Billy too.

      But keep an eye out for the alpha male or you might get an eye out.

  61. I was in the grocery shop last week , some guy shouted “ didn’t you see the arrows “
    I ducked and said , “I didn’t even see the bloody Indians”

    1. MB nipped into the GP surgery lobby to post his repeat prescription request in the letter box.
      A large lady yelled at him ‘Where’s yer f*cking mask?”
      MB paused, looked her up and down and replied:
      “I thought the obese were supposed to self-isolate.”
      A titter ran through the ranks of assembled queuing sheep and one gave the thumbs up.

  62. Can anyone name an African country, governed by Africans, which is democratically elected, has no corruption, where everything works, there is no squalor and every home has piped running water, modern waste disposal and electricity?

    Just asking.

    1. No, Next.

      They bring their filthy habits with them. England will be trashed in a few years.

      Good morning, Bill. Hope today finds you in fine fettle. Where ever that may be.

      1. There was a short programme just before 12 on BBC Radio 4 this morning which included an item about UK birds being taken by well meaning scientists to seed foreign countries with these alien birds. This experiment didn’t work out well to the detriment of the indigenous bird populations and in some cases too late to do anything about it. Starlings and Blackbirds were an example of birds which have not been well received and are regarded as pests. Politicians could learn a sharp lesson from this programme but as with the birds it may be too late.

        1. Introducing fast breeding aliens into a stable environment and ignoring the consequences – that could never happen here – could it?

    2. There isn’t one, but you could substitute Europe and Europeans in the question and see what the replies are.

    3. A very fair question which needs to be asked far more often. The answer is, as we all know: NO.

      Not anywhere near the same scale as in Africa but how many countries outside Africa have no corruption?

    4. Why bother making your own country better, when you can just arrive in the UK and use everything that has been worked, built and paid for from our taxes – – – for absolutely NO ( positive ) contribution?

    5. Sub-Saharan Africa has been populated for between 100,000 and 150,000 years with little change the short , violent ,diseased and brutal lives, the only difference now is the Knobkerrie has been replaced by an AK47 and the thinnest of veneers of civilisation.

  64. So – (© telly tart) – there is a bloke in charge of the British Museum who doesn’t like the exhibits; a woman running the British Library who hates books – and a new man about to run the beeboids who doesn’t care for broadcasting, white people or objectivity.

    What a wonderful world……….

      2. And the MR reminded me about the chap running the National Gallery who doesn’t like paintings….

        1. And don’t forget the woman running the Met Police who doesn’t like law ‘n’ order.

          1. Except for hate crime, of course. The “crime” with no victim – where the perpetrators don’t carry knives or guns or attempt to kill policemen.

    2. Judging by the comments in the Telegraph letters there is also a DT editor that is not at all in favour of books, white livelives or open discussion.

      1. The DT removed/vanished/disappeared at least 270 comments, not one of which agreed with the moronic outpourings of the ex-Teesside poly librarian! Quelle surprise!

        1. I miss Yves Binoche in the letters comments. Always contrary, he frequently created good discussion.

          1. On occasion, yes! But, for sheer hilarity, Fagash (from his windswept Highland bog) wins hands down!

  65. HAPPY HOUR – cartoons from Pugh-D/Mail up there with Matt.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/59b20c10c53a50647a5298b0d7c05e2dd2eb7afb758c92c4ba455039ef2038cd.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/754e34c7e5a4007cf972208caa527ad0457afe4e59d3c59a3bdc99138c028ce9.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/59b20c10c53a50647a5298b0d7c05e2dd2eb7afb758c92c4ba455039ef2038cd.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7d04fbc1175a10116fead3fd0ea42ce2cfb288f652b17d126afe5f843f75e900.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/59b20c10c53a50647a5298b0d7c05e2dd2eb7afb758c92c4ba455039ef2038cd.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ff2638d3f65c330d6160f021868a5fd3acafb56e38b79e53e2b52c4ab330665d.jpg

  66. This weeks winner of the ‘Most Woke’ trophy – in the face of strong competition.’ Liz, call me Bame, Jolly.

    https://i.vimeocdn.com/video/693980183.jpg?mw=1920&mh=1080&q=70

    British Library’s chief librarian says ‘racism is the creation of white people’. Earlier this week, it was reported employees had urged colleagues to donate to Black Lives Matter and back the work of Labour MP Diane Abbott. For this we pay her £125,000 plus expenses.

      1. Meanwhile the natives were too busy slaughtering each other in tribal warfare and hadn’t got round to written language. Kuua, kuchoma, ubakaji doesn’t seem to carry the same sneering disdain for human life as ‘racist’.

      2. Which is why, for an instant, a nano-second, that I thought the headline meant something completely different and that the beeb was inherently racist against white people…..! Oh, silly me.

      1. It is hard work indoctrinating staff and pupils with arrant nonsense and getting it disseminated to the nations educational establishments.

      1. As a beauty she’s not a great star
        There others more lovely by far
        But her face – she don’t mind it
        For she is behind it
        It’s the people in front get the jar

    5. Does Teeside ” University ” have a copy of …

      The River War: An Account of the Reconquest of the Sudan

      Paperback – Illustrated, 15 Mar. 2007

      by Winston Churchill ?

  69. I’ve just watched Blair waffling on Fareed Zakaria. There seems little doubt that his outer appearance is beginning to resemble the rotten soul that lies within!

    1. You had me worried there. I thought Zakaria was a mosquito-borne disease prevalent in African swamps and some suburbs of London. Too close for comfort.

    2. Yup. He increasingly resembles the painting in the attic. His ghastly wife looks even worse, fat and ugly on the human rights millions she has chiselled from us.

    3. When I was 10/11 there was a girl in my class at junior school called Elfrida Zakaria. Just saying.

        1. Those far off days were in Lunnon, Geoff, Amber school near Finsbury Park. Haven’t been back since … probably 60+ years. Don’t think I’ve missed anything!

    1. I wish we didn’t have sharia in Britain either. Should be one law applying equally to everyone.

        1. What do you reckon your chances would be if you were a pakistani wife who doesn’t speak english?

      2. 323118+ up ticks,
        Evening BB2,
        We haven’t legally, only employed by the political
        overseers as in submissive pcism & appeasement.

        Those putting the political overseers into power must be in compliance as seen by the ballot booth.

  72. Alastair Campbell: ‘I’ve finally learned to live with my enemy’. 30 August 2020.

    I know my depression will always be a part of me. I’ve accepted that now. I still have suicidal thoughts and dark days, and I always will. But at least now I can recognise them, I feel them coming on, and I can deal with them better than I used to. There may one day be a vaccine for Covid-19. But I doubt there will ever be a vaccine or a cure for depression. It is part of the human condition; it is certainly part of mine. I’ve spent decades learning to live with that. And now, through trial and error, through medication and therapy, through highs and lows, above all through grief and love, I have finally got to know my enemy. I live better for having dealt with it. And I deal with it, through living better. I hope that for some of you out there, this book can help you do the same..

    This is an exercise in sickening self-pity. He should imagine how the families of David Kelly and all those dead Iraqi’s feel!

    https://www.theguardian.com/global/2020/aug/30/alastair-campbell-surviving-depression-how-i-learned-to-live-with-my-enemy

    2. Living Better: How I Learned to Survive Depression by Alastair
      Campbell is published on 3 September by John Murray at £16.99. Buy a
      copy for £14.78 from guardianbookshop.com

      Or wait a week and buy it for 50p at your local charity shop.

      Still the same old lying whore he ever was.

      If he has actually suffered from real depression then that’s Karma.

  74. I am off to pour a second glass. I hope that the gales ease overnight. We want to have a bonfire in the morning.

    Have a super evening planning your BLM marches.

    A demain

    1. OMG

      Blinking cruel Saudi Muslims have no compassion , ever .

      Their glittering palaces , their gold plated toilets , their appalling lack of concern for anyone is frighteningly hollow.

      1. I’m going to add to having a wee on a gold plated toilet to my list of Things To Do.

  76. Jesus.
    Second son’s friend threw himself off a cliff last night. Dead.
    The gang heard at a birthday party just now. End of celebrations. Just come home.
    That’s terrible. Don’t know what to say to him. Poor lad is broken.

    1. Nothing much we can say, kids aren’t supposed to come face to face with death at that age.
      Just talk to him and let him unload his feelings.

    2. My wife’s brother-in-law jumped off a tall building 28 years ago, after several pathetic attempts to kill himself. To this day, his family are still suffering the after-effects. It’s always the ones left behind who suffer the most.

      1. Agreed.
        A good friend of mine killed herself over 20 years ago, leaving husband & two boys. It still breaks me up.

      2. I think more of the person who committed suicide,
        what terrible mental suffering they must have
        endured to drive them to such an ending.

        2. Both the man I referred to and my brother suffered from mental illness, so I have seen the effects it has. However, I cannot help feeling that suicide offers a way out for the person who kills himself, but subjects his or her relatives to a lifetime of grief.

          1. It’s awful that they feel that there is no other solution, that things are so hopeless.

          2. My wife’s brother-in-law had suffered for years from mental illness, being in and out of hospital regularly. Several half-hearted attempts at suicide had caused his wife (my wife’s sister) to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown herself. In the end, one could be excused for thinking that the ultimate successful attempt came as almost a blessed relief to all concerned.

          5. When you’re in that place, though, Geoff, you just want the torment to stop. You don’t think of the consequences. Been there, nearly done that.

          6. Totally understand, Conners. And I’d be lying if I said I’d never considered it as an option. If I chose to, I could check out any time: I’ve enough insulin in the fridge to sink a battleship. On the whole, though, I don’t believe we get the choice as to when we leave. Despite appearances to the contrary, I’m not much of a God-botherer. But I believe that in this world, most of us get a certain amount of shonet chucked at us, and we deal with it as best we can. Throwing in the towel is not the answer.

          7. I have come to think that way, too, but at the time (early seventies) I was young, inexperienced, had suffered a great (to my mind) loss, was hopelessly depressed and could not see any point in continuing. It was my friends who came to take me out, keep watch over me and generally show they cared about me that got me through it.

      3. I’m sorry to hear that. It’s very hard for those left behind. I lost a close friend to suicide nearly ten years ago. I still wonder if there was anything I could have done that might have prevented it.

      1. Just glad it wasn’t my birthday party. Somewhat insensitive moment to come with that information.

        1. My brother died on the morning of Christmas Day. Rather than phone and tell my two sisters in New Zealand, who were twelve hours ahead of us in the UK and give them the bad news just before they went to bed after a (hopefully) happy Christmas Day, I decided to wait 12 hours and phone them after a hopefully good night’s sleep on what was to them the morning of Boxing Day. Just waiting those twelve hours before I phoned was the most miserable of Christmas Days for me.

          1. That’s hard, Elsie. If it helps, I believe it was the right thing to do. Telling folk immediately won’t change the reality of the situation, just make them miserable sooner.

    7. Oh bugger. Poor lad.
      13 years ago, my eldest son from 1st marriage made an arse of himself at a party. Was asked to leave and so decided to go for a walk up the M3.
      It still hurts.

        1. Not the best period of my life, but, thought the stiff upper lip went wobbly a few times and the thick skin got worn a bit thin, I Kept Buggering On and got through it.

          1. As we have to. With age comes experience, but not necessarily the ability to cope any better, unfortunately.

    9. Tough stuff, Paul, but with his Dad’s genes (and support) he’ll get through it.

      1. Barely knew the lad myself, but you’re right, Geoff, it really sucks. My poor lad, and undoubtedy quite a few others, is in bits. Its life, I suppose, getting to learn how to cope with the loss of friends, but it’s hard to take.

          2. Quite. I have friends whose 14 year old daughter contracted meningitis on a Friday morning. By the Sunday evening, they turned the life support off. Her Dad directed a choir i was involved with. Parents were devastated; we all felt we’d lost a family member. I don’t think you can ever totally recover from a situation like that, but they’ve done their best.

          3. You don’t get over it, but get used to it.
            As some wise Nottler posted not too long ago, and it’s right.

      2. Keep very close tabs on how your second son is reacting to the news.
        Talk, talk and yet more talk. You won’t rationalise it but it might help him.

        Like others on here I speak from bitter experience.

    14. That is terrible. Suicide (I assume it wasn’t an accident) is one of the biggest killers of young males (except for bleks, probably, where it’s being knifed by one of their own). It’s very difficult to know what to say – and very difficult to deal with personally. My heart goes out to all of you.

    15. Terrible – life’s too short to waste it. A shame he didn’t seek help to sort out his problems.

      1. Boys seem not to. Maybe that’s why boys tend to kill themselves much more than girls, who mostly seem to have a well-developed network of friends?

    1. He’s wearing sunglasses. Is it bright sunshine, or is he blind?
      Reminds me of a tasteless joke:-
      Someone asks Stevie Wonder – ” Does it bother you, being blind?” To which Stevie replies – “Could be worse. I could be black”.

    3. Shurely shome mishtake? Where are the white and half-caste children? Oh, it’s not a sofa for the living room they are buying, it’s a something for the kitchen!

    1. I think he has given up leadership aspirations, so has reverted to his usual private self, rather than those family pics he used to share.

      1. 323118+ up ticks,
        Evening WS,
        Being quite candid I never had any trust in him
        all the while going to the wire during the may reign
        just saving the day, but may edging forward all the time.

      1. 323118+ up ticks,
        Evening GG,
        I used it because I would like to know also, personally I have no trust in him as seen during the mayday reign.

  79. Message to Harry K

    I’ve just sent in my answers, fingers crossed.
    (I thought it was a bit easier this week)

      2. We are doing an online quiz (independently) on Sunday evenings, provided by ‘The Bookshop Alehouse’ in Southampton. You can find it on their Facebook page under ‘posts’. If you want to enter this evening’s you have about 1.75 hours to get your answers in!

        To answer your Times question, no but I’ll have a look.

    3. Me too. But I had to correct a couple of answers I had thought were correct. The Move…..and one of the pictures was in Gibraltar, I’m sure!

  80. Not been on much today. I’ve spent 5 hours doing a load of concreting up the garden and am bloody knackered.

    Stepson appears to be more settled when I spoke to him on the phone.
    It turned out the the reason I was unable to get through to him was that he was trying to charge his phone with a buggered charger!!

    1. Good to hear about your stepson, BoB. I spent three and a half hours this afternoon in the garden on stepladders reaching out to prune the tops of trees. Equally knackered as you, I took a couple of painkillers and went to bed for a three-hour sleep.

    2. That’s a relief, I’m sure. I’ve been out in the garden trying to remove the branches from a huge Viburnum Opulans which has turned from a shrub into a tree and was taking all the light from my Cox’s Orange Pippin. Next job, when I’ve recovered, will be to dig the roots out.

      1. I’ve an elm and several ash to drop to let a bit more light onto my Lord Derby.
        Pleased to see a decent crop on my Aldi special again and even my russet has a dozen apples on it, despite being planted in totally the wrong place.

        1. Oddly enough, cutting down the viburnum has also given more light to my Lord Derby. I bought an Egremont Russet, but it turned out to be a James Grieve (or possibly a Gala – whatever it is, it most definitely is NOT a russet!).

          1. I bought my russet a few years ago and it’s only produced a couple of tiny apples some years and nothing at all last year, but this year they are a decent size.
            The best one of the two that I’ve planted though was being flogged off cheap by Aldi just after I bought the russet and it’s produced a decent crop every year.

          2. our russet is too high, so I hacked off a bit last spring, then it sulked and has produced fewer & smaller apples. Cookers are ok, but too many windfalls. We have a few elderly geese, and they hoover them all up. The Discovery apples are extra large, Cox very scarce and crab apples are plentiful; they feed the birds & worms. My goal this week is to scrounge some sweetcorn from a local farm before the crop is turned into silage etc. I’m growing a butternut squash plant which is rampant (Feed Me!); melons would have been more fun.

          4. I bought mine labelled as an Egremont Russet. After three years it produced fruit, but russets they most definitely were not! Either a James Grieve or a Gala by the looks of them. Grrr! I don’t have room for any more apple trees to pet a genuine russet in.

    2. I wonder if the new woman (for it shurely will be) will be allowed to sit on the left.

    4. 323118+ up ticks,
      Afternoon P,
      There surely has to be an omen of nasty intent in the Christian name.

          1. I haven’t seen it in several years now, but there was a local who owned one and it was a magnificent looking car. I’m reasonably sure it was the real thing and not a modern reproduction

          2. Legend has it that a lady owner and former racing driver owned one locally. She had visited the Co-op in Clare where some youths were poking fun at her. She proceeded to perform doughnuts in the Market Square before driving away at speed.

            The MD of one of our shopfitter colleagues recently disposed of a lovely restored example. Super machines with a highly distinctive engine note.

          3. A former colleague had one. Possibly the kit variety, but the attention to detail was such that he had McLaren make some exhaust components from scratch…

  82. Some housing news. I’ve mentioned that my tenure of a Verger’s Cottage has been somewhat tenuous since February. I became aware of a retirement bungalow at the opposite end of the parish shortly thereafter. The upshot is that I applied, was one of four interviewees a couple of weeks ago, and tonight I’ve been offered, and accepted, the tenancy.

    It’s not perfect, but it’s cheap (for Surrey), and won’t evaporate after five years, which is what would have happened had I been able to accept the new contract, and rented a flat in Aldershot. Covid put a stop to that. In fact, I’ve no idea if/when my services will be required again, and I’m leaning towards the redundancy option. I could still play for services when needed, on a freelance basis. Sadly, most of the Diocesan clergy seem to think that the future is Zoom :-((

    1. Virtual church for virtual people with virtual faith. 77 of us at Evensong last week but only 17 this week. Hope the finances are forthcoming to keep it going.

      Great news about your bungalow. When do you move in?

      1. Prolly (©BT) 1st October. There’s no pressure to leave here, but that gives me some flexibility regarding contents that I won’t be taking with me.

    3. Very pleased to hear the encouraging news Geoff! You deserve it after what must have been a very unsettling time!

      1. Thanks, Sue. It removes one of the swords of Damocles that have been hovering overhead for six months or more. The other relates to the future for church organists, but I’m increasingly unconcerned about that.

      1. Thanks, Paul. Plan C would have been to return to my native Carlisle, where rental prices are around a third of those in Surrey. But this means I’m just on the opposite edge of the parish, and am still available if I’m ever needed to do the organ stuff.

    5. Delighted to hear you’re settled Boss,I know getting my Sheltered housing studio sorted and my next address wasn’t going to be “The Brown Sleeping Bag Council Office Steps” was a huge comfort
      Let us know when the Housewarming Party is {:^))

      1. Cheers, Rik. My alternative was the WWII pill box in the corner of the garden here. Part of me thinks that 63 is a bit young to be moving into a retirement bungalow, but – given the present uncertainty – it makes a lot of sense to accept…

          1. I became semi-retired from the day job at 55 due to ‘ill health’ – i.e. getting bits lopped off my feet. This means I’ve missed out on a potential lump sum at 65, but there was a good chance I wouldn’t reach that age, and ten years of early pension payments more or less cover that. Actually, I last worked properly at 51, when I accepted redundancy. I’ve had the organist sideline since I was 14. Whether that still exists is anyone’s guess.

          2. I missed out on more than a decade of pension contributions, which has affected my income. Ah well, I suppose it means I’m not paying extra income tax (I pay enough on what I get).

        2. My Housing 21 court was originally 65+ but they have changed to 55+ to keep the rentals full,they are also converting 3 studios to 2 one beds as vacancies occur as it seems studios aren’t popular
          I don’t get it,a ground floor studio in Woking delightful garden view,good galley kitchen,shower room living area with bed alcove £522 a month inc service charge
          Bargain
          The Awkward Squad are also a delight to drink and socialise with,I got lucky

          1. My cousin used to manage a Housing 21 site in Netley, Southampton. I’m guessing you’re in Mount Hermon Road? I lived in Waterside Way (off St John’s Road) for a year or so, and with the ex in Albert Drive for about the same length of time. It just seemed longer :-))

            The bungalow will be £60 / week, which is exceptional for Surrey. I had found a new build 2-bed apartment in Aldershot for £1160 pcm before Covid hit the fan. If push came to shove, I would have returned to God’s Own County (not Yorkshire). It’s possible to rent a 2-bed flat in Carlisle, between the Castle and Sainsbury’s, for £375 pcm. Slightly susceptible to flooding, but otherwise…

          2. Nailed it,Mt Hermon it is,Housing 21 are somewhat dubious on the accounting for the service charge but being a “Tall Poppy” makes no sense,especially as I’m not paying in full and the rest of the residents can’t be arsed to get involved

            Lazy sloppy accounting,certainly unlawful,whether it meets the standard for fraudulant accounting I’m not sure…………..

          5. Didn’t realise we were such close neighbours. If you eat out the Red Lion Horsell are continuing the 20% off food for Monday to Wednesday in September but you have to sign up to their emails to get it. They don’t send that many. yes your sister use the Red Lion?

        3. I moved into my bungalow in 1989. I was 25yrs old. The beauty of it was and is………no children. Hurrah !

          Mainly surrounded by retired ‘white collar workers’ who enjoy peace and quiet.

          Was £70,000 then and is £300,000 now. Keeps the riff-raff out. 🙂

    6. One of my choirs, the Powick Community Choir is starting up rehearsals with a whole raft of social exclusion rules next Sunday. At least we won’t have to sing with facemasks.

      The church in the village have been serving cream teas each Sunday afternoon for a couple of months now. I went today, and they say they are starting up their choir soon.

      Everyone is sick of this whole lockdown madness and cannot wait to get back to normal.

    8. Very glad to hear your news, Geoff. It must have taken a load (of uncertainty) off your mind. I hope that we soon hear equally good news from Rose.

    10. I expect your retirement bungalow is well laid out Geoff, I know some one who has one , and even though it has one bedroom , it is spacious , with cupboard space galore, living room , galley kitchen and a superb spacious wetroom with all the pull switches possible .

      All the sheltered bungalows in the local villages were built probably 60 years ago , many have gardens front and back and privacy .

      You will be a kid in clover , of that I am certain, comfortable and warm.

      1. Don’t think it’s quite 60 years old, Maggie. The charity was founded by Frank Taylor (of Taylor Woodrow fame). He lived nearby, and there are no prizes for guessing who built the bungalows. There’s a decent back garden, which needs TLC, and the front is public open space.

          1. George Wimpey & Co was part owned by some form of charitable trust created by the late great Sir Godfrey Mitchell, and they supported the Abbeyfield Society.

    11. Glad to hear of your ‘relatively good’ news, Geoff; perhaps, with hindsight, it will prove to have been the best option …

    12. Really good news about your housing and that you will still be in fairly familiar surroundings. I am shocked that the clergy thinks that Zoom is the future, what are their thoughts on Matthew 18:20. “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there among them.”

      2. Thanks, pm. You’re assuming that the current woke clergy are Christian. Most are Common Purpose graduates, and are fully signed up to Cultural Marxism, so I doubt whether they’ve even read Matthew 18:20.

    17. That’s great news, Geoff – and it means you don’t have to uproot and go far. If they can offer you the odd wedding or funeral to play for, that’s good too. When will you be able to move?

      It’s time the Clergy got back to doing what they’re paid for – looking after their parishioners – in Church and out of it but not on Zoom.

  83. Up to 300 BLM activists gather in Notting Hill for the Million People March as they lie down in road and block traffic before heading to Hyde Park
    The Million People March is protesting against racism and is taking place in lieu of the Notting Hill carnival. No carnival but most of the area is boarded up – just in case.
    https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/08/30/14/32566306-8678925-image-a-174_1598793697713.jpg

    My local when I visit the Big Smoke. It’s like a UN convention inside – with a dash of rainbow warriors too.

    Photo didn’t appear

    2. The photo of my fav bar in the Nttl Hill area disappeared. It also contained a photo of a police car without rainbow decorations. There had to be a reason.

    5. If only:
      “You have 2 minutes to clear the streets, at which point these policemen on motorcyles will be driving down the road across any remaining ankles that they can break.”

      1. They might use all the tanks that the MOD wants rid of. Get some value out of them before they are scrapped.

        1. Real balcks probably have better things to do with their time, and besides which, why ruin your freshly looted trainers?

    1. “Some say that the name originated in the brothels of the Spanish Quarters (whore is puttana in Italian, hence puttanesca); others claim it was invented in the 1950s in a famous Ischia restaurant one late night when a group of hungry customers asked the owner, who didn’t have many ingredients left, to make “una …

      1. Let’s get it out of the way: Yes, puttanesca literally translates to “of, relating to, or characteristic of a prostitute,” to quote the OED. I’ll wait while you finish chortling. It seems that no food writer can resist elbowing their readers in the ribs, making ill-advised jokes and double entendres at the mere mention of pasta puttanesca. The name is often said to have originated with old-timey courtesans, who ostensibly favored it because it was quick enough to make in between appointments, or because it smelled so good while cooking that it lured clients in from the street. But on further consideration, neither of these origin stories seems particularly plausible—I mean, sex workers aren’t the only people who appreciate quick, aromatic meals. According to food historian Jeremy Parzen, the name has more to do with the practical use of puttanesca in Italian than its literal definition: Italians use puttana (and related words) almost the way we use shit, as an all-purpose profanity, so pasta alla puttanesca might have originated with someone saying, essentially, “I just threw a bunch of shit from the cupboard into a pan.”

    3. It’s actually very difficult/awkward to cook a meal for one,almost all recipes are for at least two…………..
      I find when I cook It’s almost always mon/teus… weds/thurs/,, fri/sat
      Doubling up on the same meal
      When I cook a big steak,it’s always for two meals

      1. I find that most of the Telegraph recipes are for 4 or even 6, so I scale them down.

  85. A drug dealer who crashed into a London bus, killing its driver and injuring 14 passengers, has been jailed.

    Dorjan Cera, 20, had no insurance or licence at the time, and was driving a black Skoda Octavia he had hired using false documents. Cera drove his car at speed across a junction with a main road and collided with a bus. The bus drove into another bus coming in the opposite direction. The driver of the first bus, was ejected from the vehicle as a result of the collision and died from his injuries, Seven people suffered “serious” injuries, including passenger Paul Wassell, who broke his spine in “three or four places”
    After regaining consciousness, Cera “identified himself falsely” to police officers.

    He tested positive for cocaine during a roadside drugs wipe test, but a subsequent blood test was negative. Cera was on licence at the time of the crash, having been sentenced to two years in detention in 2018 for possession with intent to supply class A drugs, driving without a licence, without insurance, and possession of false identity documents. Cera had arrived in the UK from Albania at the age of 15 and had his application for asylum rejected in February this year.

    Paramjit Ahluwalia, mitigating, said Cera had been diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder and depressive episodes following the crash.

    Guess how long he got…
    .
    .
    .
    .
    Seven years and eight months in detention and banned from holding a driving licence for 11 years. That’ll teach the bastard! Not!

    2. I can’t see how ‘post traumatic stress disorder and depressive episodes’ can be used in mitigation for a crime committed before these episodes occurred.

    3. Yet another pharmaceutical engineer imported by the Tory Terror Team. Is he really twenty?

      1. Presumably because he is related to Albanian gangsters,. Those that go about carrying guns. The sort who give the police generous amounts in cash in order not to be bothered?

  86. These new Covid ‘rules’ have turned Britain into a nation of jobsworths

    Forms and bureaucracy dictate our new normal, leaving us more infantilised than ever before

    ZOE STRIMPEL

    Last week, a friend and I went swimming in the Charlton Lido, in deepest South London. A far cry from what swimming in a suburban pool on a cold, cloudy day used to involve, for this trip we had to book online in advance (£10 if you please for a single swim), with strict timed entry slots. We had to rush to ensure we made it in our ten-minute window; regardless of whether the pool actually was too full, latecomers are not admitted. On arrival, we realised we had forgotten goggles. They’d sold out of adult pairs, so reflexively we asked if there were any spares I could borrow. The response was flat-eyed and officious: of course not, because of Covid.

    I understand the logic – and this was hardly the receptionist’s fault – but I don’t like it. Britain has become a paradise for those who like to answer questions with ‘rules is rules’; even when they’re clearly made up on the spot or nonsensical. In the case of the goggles, I simply found a pair someone had left on the side of the pool and did what anyone entrusted to be half-way capable of thinking for themselves would do: washed and spritzed them thoroughly with sanitiser before using them.

    Lido-gate is only the very, very slimmest end of the wedge, of course, and after all, we had our swim. But the way Covid-19 was used throughout the experience was revealing. There is almost nothing now you can’t justify by citing Covid-19 safety measures. The virus has become an absolute feeding frenzy for a culture of health and safety gone mad, and it’s making us more infantilised than ever. If we thought it was bad being constantly lectured by the government on how naughty it is to eat high-calorie foods, then being micro-managed in all aspects of our life in the age of Covid is worse.

    Indeed for bureaucrats and jobsworths, and those who love coming up with reasons why you can’t possibly do something, or if you want to do them you’ll have to fill in 47 forms, the Covid era is a veritable bubble bath of pleasure.

    There’s the bliss of the paper pushers: everything now requires forms, forms, forms. I had an email from my accountant last week which said I could go into the office to meet her to go over my tax return, but it would involve “paperwork”. We’re meeting at a nearby cafe instead.

    Paperwork to go into an office? Two adults clearly cannot be trusted to socially distance or wear a mask when unsupervised. Or at any rate this seems to be the thinking. One can’t even blame the government: this kind of bureaucratic madness emanates from employers. Big companies have always given even the reddest-tape loving states a run for their money.

    If trying to organise an office meeting involves paperwork, then going to the pub now is also a jamboree of officious admin. Instead of a simple book where you write your name and number at the entry to the pub, London pubgoing – at least at the smarter establishments – now involves a whole sanctimonious pre-booking, paper-signing, ‘host will show you to your table’, and head-counting shenanigan – even outside. On Wednesday last week I made the mistake of arranging to meet a friend at The Flask in Highgate without a booking. There is a spacious beer garden, and there were empty tables (kept for social distancing, despite being more than a metre from anyone else). Whereas the golden rule of the beer garden is (or used to be) that you can’t book, now they’re just another thing that must be nabbed and planned for well in advance. There was a large host’s table, many different bits of paper, lots of sanitiser and we were turned away promptly and definitively.

    This business of having to book everything, from a spot at the pub to a swim a week in advance, has another even more troubling effect. It rewards natural planners, and the sharpest-elbowed, often ambitious middle-class alphas used to making sure they’re on the right lists and booked into all the best places. Spots and tickets and thus, ultimately, all the fun, now go to them.

    Children and those who like to wing things, or who are a little more disorganised, don’t have a chance in this new dog-eats-dog world of time-slot entries. Haven’t figured out you’ll want to swim at 11.43AM six days from now? Or have a pint a week from now? Forget about doing it then.

    Of course it’s important to keep on our guard, and sensible measures are all essential to not only keeping the virus at bay but creating an atmosphere of alertness and order. But in the new normal there was always a risk that health and safety gone mad would run riot, and it has. And so alas, instead of resisting the temptation to treat us all like dimwits or babies as we navigate uncertain times, we seem to have embraced it instead.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/new-covid-rules-have-turned-britain-nation-ofjobsworths/

    BTL:
    Delphian Contrasts
    30 Aug 2020 10:35AM
    It explains why the golf courses are busy all day long. All that working from home and keeping safe.

    Still waiting to see the first golfer in a face mask in all those hundreds of acres.

    Even less likely that Benjamin Zephaniah will be able to book a round!

      2. Tiger Woods? And in North London I believe that there is a golf club where the membership is Bame.

          1. Jewish, founded because the members were excluded elsewhere. In the final reckoning everyone will be bame except those who are WASP. Racialism is not exclusively about appearance, but includes an element of snobbery.

    3. Mask wearing golfers are out there, you just need to look in the woods not on the fairway.

      I was at a course last week where many golfers come down from the big city to play a good course at a decent price. There were many Asian heritage golfers wrapped up in long sleeved shirts,, hats and face masks. If they were good and consistent then maybe a bit of distancing might have been in order, but barn doors were not being blemished by their efforts.

      Oh and their dress sense was definitely different.

    5. He forget to mention the risk assessments, hire agreements and all the other crap we used not to need just to play table tennis at the hall we’ve used since 1975. At the leisure centre we’re now only allowed to use four tables instead of 12, and we’ve got to invest in lots of new barriers, so that nobody can get near the next table. No swapping round and playing other people, no doubles…….. it’s all completely OTT and pleasure-killing.

        1. Nope. And all tables and equipment to be wiped down. Everyone to use only their own bats.

          1. I think, to be on the safe side, only ONE person ought to be allowed to play at a time……

          2. There were two signs at the golf club toilets last week.

            One said One Person at a time.
            The other sign was naturally Masks must be worn.

            You just cannot make it up.

          10. Happy has had some narrow escapes in his long life .

            He escaped from his cage years ago, flew out the front door , and was found high up in an Ash tree , he came down when I called him. He has chewed through TV cables , has let himself out of his cage, has witnessed generations of spaniels , remembers names, says night night , loved Mozart’s Magic Flute.

            He could whistle a selection of tunes He is a better guard dog than the dogs . He didn’t like the sweep, and for such a small bird he has oodles of personality, he was a biter , but not now because he is so weak.

            He has my voice and expressions .. Oh dear, he isn’t just a bird , he is a pal, a companion who never argues . It will be a long tough night.

          15. Hope he makes it, but if not, you must think of the good times and know he’s had a good life with you.

          16. Oh, Belle, poor little thing – I am so sorry. I will be thinking of you and your vigil through this long night. xx

          17. PM, Happy died about an hour ago .

            He wasn’t just a bird , he was a treasured companion , 36 years is a long time . The boys were youngsters , I was a young woman.. Moh was away on and off for 16 years or more.

            There we go , he faded so fast. That is it I’m afraid.

          20. So sorry to hear, Maggie. 36 years by your side – no wonder it’s hit you. We all feel for you.x

          21. I am so sorry. He had seen so much in his life, and taken part in, your family history. Your life was his life. He had seen you through the good times, absorbed them; seen you through the bad times and given comfort. Grieving is somehow more profound when our non-human companions are involved – their lives are ephemeral and they are so accepting of us, warts and all. They touch us deeply. 36 years is a long time.

          23. Oh Belle, I am so sorry. It is an awful experience to watch a beloved friend and companion slip away. My love and sympathy to you and the family.

        2. The Scots and the Irish can handle their balls as much as they like, It’s part of their Celtic customs.

    6. Alf and I made the mistake of paying an impromptu visit to Polesden Lacey, a NT property. Halfway along we said to each other oh blast we haven’t booked but hoped we could be allowed in. So whilst in the queue to speak to mein fuhrer ticket bod, we saw 12 cars leave the premises, I.e., at least 12 people leaving which, BTW, is not a timed exit so you must arrive at a certain time but, once there, apparently no limit to the number of bods actually walking around.

      So of course we were denied entry despite pointing out the number of leavers in the few seconds we were speaking to mein fuhrer.

  87. Evening, all. Civil servants cannot be relied upon, it seems to me. They have their own agenda.

    1. I was a CS for 25 years and my wife can confirm that I was and remain totally unreliable. However, I dispute that they have their own agenda – they just steal someone else’s.

      1. How long have you been retired? I don’t think civil servants have always been as devious as they’ve proved in recent years – or maybe it’s just become more noticeable since we disobeyed the PTB and voted for freedom.

        1. 323118+ up ticks,
          Evening C,
          You got that right, revenge
          for taking down a very comfortable rubber stamping political lifestyle.

          1. I worked with civil servants in the Department of the Environment on government buildings. The representatives of the Property Services Agency were all thick and aware of the effect of their decision making which generally played into the hands of contractors and quite useless and subservient quantity surveyors and services engineers.

            I saw for myself the evidence of collusion between the PSA and a bunch of incompetent consultants. This experience and the fact that I contested these bastards at every turn, took ten years off my lifespan.

        2. I joined in 1983 and senior staff were almost all knowledgeable, experienced and very protective of the mission of the Department. Then the Bright Young Things (BYT) started to proliferate – highly ambitious, arrogant, and with career enhancement their only aim. They stayed just long enough in any one Branch to introduce “improvements” and then moved on leaving someone else to clean up the mess. Once they reached the top in any numbers, they recruited and promoted in their own image. Deviousness was second nature to the BYT! My guess is that the same sort of thing has damaged the Police Force.

          1. It was a similar story in education. I saw CV/career-builders take up senior management posts, re-organise everything (for the worse) and then move on to further promotion while those of us left had to try to make their mess work as best we could until the next meddler was appointed and re-organised everything again. Rinse and repeat.

          3. Sums up the Cultural Marxist “Long March Through The Institutions” in a nutshell.

          4. I was a CS from 1990 to 2011 – front’line Jobcentre staff. We just had to do as we were told and trained to carry out the policies of these BYTs who were parachuted straight from university to organise things. They never ever got it right – there was always a new way of doing things and reorganisation and “change” was part of the culture. I’ve never regretting retiring.

        3. Most of us in the lower orders just did as we were told to do. Others higher up gave the orders. Gus O’Donnell was our boss and we were brainwashed and manipulated with “lines to take” if we were questioned on policy.

    3. A hug in the morning for your son – the realisation the dawning of a new day can bring can be quite overwhelming.

  92. Time to exercise those little grey cells NoTTlers.

    ITV Britain’s Favourite Detective – which sleuth gets your vote?

    It has to be Morse….for me.

      1. Il en va de même pour moi, Harry: Christopher Foyle (et Sam) et l’inspecteur Morse …

        PS: et Peter Falk’s Columbo !

    4. I’m with Richard Sk – Foyle for me. Morse is grumpy and condescending, Endeavour has become woke, Lewis is becoming somewhat PC as well. I like Poirot and Miss Marple for the period settings. The others I haven’t watched.

          1. Ah yes – I do remember Edward Woodward. I don’t think I saw the Robbie Coltrane series but I remember the Helen Mirren ones.

      1. 323158+ up ticks,
        Morning N,
        Mass incarceration guaranteed, I really do believe that many of the electorate see no problem believing the five a day being a healthy option not realising that it can also be applied to compulsory prayers.

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