582 thoughts on “Sunday 5 January: Tackling bureaucratic inefficiency is the first step to reforming the NHS”

  1. According to discuss, I am the first to post so I will do this by thanking Geoff Graham for his superb contribution to intelligent discussion by setting up this forum.

        1. Fourthed! Geoff is a really good egg. However, if I may raise a small complaint. Why on earth did he create Sunday’s page so early when I haven’t yet read the Saturday page? (I was out all day with a friend in Bury St. Edmunds all of Saturday.)

          Seriously though, Geoff, as all the other NoTTLers say you are to be congratulated for adding so much pleasure to our lives with this site.

  3. Good morrow, fellow NoTTLers.

    An early contribution to today’s fun:

    When you have an ‘I Hate My Job day’

    [Even if you’re retired, you sometimes have those days]

    Try this out:
    Stop at your pharmacy and go to the thermometer section and purchase a rectal thermometer made by Johnson & Johnson.

    Be very sure you get this brand. When you get home, lock your doors, draw the curtains and disconnect the phone so you will not be disturbed.

    Change into very comfortable clothing and sit in your favourite chair. Open the package and remove the thermometer.

    Now, carefully place it on a table or a surface where it will not become chipped or broken.

    Now the fun part begins.

    Take out the literature from the box and read it carefully. You will notice that in small print there is a statement:

    “Every rectal thermometer made by Johnson & Johnson is personally tested and then sanitized.”

    Now, close your eyes and repeat out loud five times,’ I am so glad I do not work in the thermometer quality control department at Johnson & Johnson.’

    HAVE A NICE DAY; AND REMEMBER, THERE IS ALWAYS SOMEONE ELSE WITH A JOB THAT IS MORE OF A PAIN IN THE ASS THAN YOURS!

    Remember, if you haven’t got a smile on your face and laughter in your heart….

    …maybe you should go and work for Johnson and Johnson!

    Enjoy life now – It has an expiration date!

    2. Ah but if you go to employment and claim you have an ethical objection to work I am sure the judge will agree and say you have to be protected from work

  4. The killing of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani was state murder. How can anyone be so bloody stupid? 4 January 2020.

    But above all, what is all this about? It does not defend us, but exposes us to danger that may reach our towns and cities.

    At least in the past we could say we were defending liberty against a defined menace that would not stop threatening us until it was defeated in the field. But in these cases, what precisely are we fighting for? How will we know if we have won? Or are we heading for the permanent war envisaged in George Orwell’s 1984, in which we can switch from one enemy to the other in the blink of an eye, and pretend nothing has changed, but the fighting never stops?

    You think this far-fetched? Then bear in mind that this country has been supporting an Al Qaeda faction in Syria for several years. These are crazy times.

    Morning everyone. The last observation is true! Collective insanity has overtaken the political classes! It will not end well!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-7852247/PETER-HITCHENS-killing-Iranian-General-Qasem-Soleimani-state-murder.html

    1. Trump has modelled this attack on that used routinely by Netanyahu, and it sickens me.

      The villain first commits a crime, and then endeavours to get away with it scot-free by threatening the victim with further and worse reprisals if there is any attempt to get justice. Any third party attempting to impose independent justice is accused of a “hate crime” and is likewise threatened. It is the work of a bully, and Israel’s now the United States’ leaderships are masters at it.

      Trump has told the Iranians that he intends to mount a Baedeker raid on their most precious heritage if they make a fuss about his drone killing their top general in Baghdad. Would this be similar to the destruction of Palmyra meted out on Syria for daring to challenge the annexation of the Golan Heights? I have long pointed out that little Islamic State outpost not far away with a supply road straight into Israel, and no Friend of Israel really ever gave a satisfactory reason why it was there for so long during the Syrian civil war. Punishment demolitions in Palestinian areas for attacks on IDF personnel have long been a feature of Right Wing Israeli “justice”.

      Do we therefore side with the school bully beating up the spotty nerd with odd habits in the playground in order to be in with the popular kid?

      As always, I anticipate many down-ticks from those huddling round the bully and cheering him on.

        1. That’s got to be a Johnny Narfolk, downtick. I’d recognise one of them anywhere. It’s got puritanical written all over it.

      2. Just sit back and let Iran kill as many as they like. Trump has done the right thing and we should have dealt with Iran years ago. Hitler did what he did thanks to the inaction of France. With Chamberlain in support with his appeasment.

        1. So we should have gone to war in 1938 to defend Poland? I take it you’ve never watched any of the War Factory programs. Then we sold out the Poles in 1945. Simple solution let Hitler do what he wanted as it was none of our business. Then let Germany and USSR fight it out.

          1. In 1938, it was the annexation of the Sudetenland (in what was then Czechoslovakia) that Chamberlain gave Hitler the green light to. We drew the line at Poland, but did not have the resources to follow through, and barely enough to save us from invasion ourselves. What saved us was after we dropped some bombs on Berlin, Hitler in fury turned his fire onto London, sparing the bombed-out RAF bases long enough to make repairs and fight the Battle of Britain.

            The French were hopelessly complacent, thinking that the Maginot Line would protect them. Their Resistance proved their worth though, so weren’t all passive collaborators.

            It was the Americans who remained doggedly neutral, and only got involved after themselves being attacked in Pearl Harbor, and Hitler declaring war on the US in solidarity with the Japanese. After which, they provide decisive to the Allied victory.

            What was shameful was the way the Soviet Red Army massacred the Polish resistance fighters, who had just chased out the Germans, eager to march west preferring to surrender to the Western forces than the brutal Russians.

            In the same manner Trump condemned the Kurds for not helping out with the Normandy landing, it is hardly fair to blame the British to save the Poles from advancing Russians, since we were just too far away.

            If we must make comparisons with WW2, I would suggest that Iran is most like Britain, that Erdogan is Hitler, Trump is Stalin and Saudi Arabia is Japan.

        2. Iran did not annexe a neighbouring province, whereas both Israel and Turkey have. Pray tell me what was Trump’s response when Erdogan mounted a Sudetenland military claim over a Northern Syrian corridor with a view to mounting an assault on a troublesome minority tribe?

          I see the true appeasers are waking up with their downticks!

      3. Morning JM,
        the lab/lib/con pro eu coalition have been doing it for years
        fully supported by the peoples
        via the polling booth.

    2. It’s related to the 1995 Barcelona Declaration. The Yanks bomb hell out of somewhere. This causes refugee streams. Libya and Gaddafi was the best example. He warned them what would happen if they got rid of him. Biblical floods from sub-Saharan Africa. Fortunately Russia stood up for Assad else that would have been worse. But as easily predicted, here comes Iran on stream.
      Map from wiki page 28 EU & 14 others. Union of the Med.
      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b8f41ac332467513b88b139c91ec364a6043d934b1aa13d6413e597341dc8f02.png

    3. It does not defend us, but exposes us to danger that may reach our towns and cities.

      Whoever wrote this must have been living under a rock for a few decades. A number of our towns and large areas of many of our cities are lost already, their defences breached, undermined and betrayed by our very own politicians. The killing of Soleimani or some other butcher will light the fuse of the explosive situation that our politicians have set: perhaps the earlier it kicks off and gets settled the better.

      1. Morning KtK,
        “Our” politicians could not have got to where they are today
        without the peoples help, repeatedly, time & again, ongoing, guaranteed.

    4. AS,
      Are those politico’s / parties that have governed our past actions been
      at fault, is their thinking process
      faulty ?
      Do they, have they, will they, in the past / future put the welfare of the peoples / country first & foremost before ALL others ?
      If answered in a negative fashion why have they / do they still find support ?

    5. The problem with taking this chap out is that there are probably a dozen more to take his place. Will it change anything (repurcussions aside)?

      1. No Stormy But that’s not the intention. They are starting another war here that just like Iraq they have no idea how it will end!

    6. Good morning, Minty.

      You are not the only one who despairs!
      I realise that is no consolation…………

      But, true story…….A very dear friend’s daughter loves History,
      she hopes to go to a College where she can pursue her ambition
      to become an Historian.

      Part of her home work is to watch the movie ‘Saving Private Ryan.’;

      I give up!!

      1. The last time I was allowed to attend my children’s school parents’ day (I was frozen out entirely as soon as they hit 16 because the Law allowed them to be), I was informed that GCSE history syllabus was to be categorised into six modules. One was the Tudors; one was the Vikings, one was WW2; one was Emancipation of women in the 19th century; one was Emancipation of women in the 20th century. That left one module to cover everything else to do with world history.

  5. Good morning all. Sunny day here in Laure. Just right for the Epiphany procession in 1½ hours.

      1. ‘Morning, Belle.

        Epiphany is the excuse to eat & enjoy a truly scrumptious French gateau. It is this month’s special pud at Côte & I can’t wait to sink my teeth into it when term starts in 2 weeks’ time.

        1. Good morning, Peddy. If you can’t wait to sink your teeth into Cote’s scrumptious French gateau (don’t ever confuse it with a Spanish gato or you’ll end up getting your face scratched) why not catch the bus into Cambridge tomorrow and then you won’t need to wait any longer!

          :-))

          1. Travelling in anticipation is sometimes more enjoyable than arriving at the destination, Elsie. If I went to Côte tomorrow, what would I have to look forward to in the middle of the month? January often seems the longest month of the year, this year there are 5 Fridays.

  6. HS2 costs out of control, says review’s deputy chair

    I would say the true estimate of costs are already nearer £200B. They have already axed the HS2 link to Heathrow and are going to reduce the speed on the line and reduce the number of trains. The benefit of the line is close to zero. For the same cost you could dramatically improve a lot of the UK rail infrastructure such as linking up the Norther cities with good rail links. The distance are quite short Leeds to Manchester for example is about the same distance as the Central line so these upgrades do not need to be HS grade but just fast links so getting from Leeds to Manchester say in about 1/2 hours would be perfectly adequate and most of the traffic would be commuters so a HS line would not even really serve that demand well

    There is “overwhelming evidence” that the costs of HS2 are “out of control” and its benefits overstated, the deputy chair of its review panel has said.
    Lord Berkeley said the high-speed rail line, linking London and northern England, is likely to cost over £108bn
    .
    A vocal critic of HS2, the Labour peer said he believed MPs had been “misled” about the price – set at £55bn in 2015.

    1. I’ve always thought £200 Billion to arrive in Edinburgh 10 minutes earlier was a good investment! Lol!

      1. Only to Birmingham. Thats almost £1B a mile about £20B for each minute quicker you arrive

          5. Euston itself has poor local transport links. The Northern line is being extend a bit and is a complex and already very overcrowded line the local bus services are not much better

      2. With Sturgeon in charge surely escaping from Edinburgh at a higher rate of knots than currently available would justify the investment more?😎

      3. A of people to pay to get out of Birmingham a lot quick but not in the direction of London

    2. You are missing the point of HS2. There was never any public benefit in it. It is an exercise in transferring whatever public money can be borrowed or extracted from savers and privatised to select deregulated commercial interests. Collateral damage is immaterial, since the main beneficiaries can always move to gated offshore estates.

      One day the British public might elect an establishment prepared to act in the public interest. It might have happened at this election; I do hope so. The whitewash Review being prepared by a former director of HS2 on the payroll is not promising though. The whole thing should have been scrapped before it has done the damage it has already done. My mother tells me many trees and a hedgehog sanctuary in the immediate neighbourhood of where she lives in North London are already gone.

      Sir Keir Starmer is the MP there. Is this Bland-of-the-Bland lawyer completely relaxed about this? What is this telling Labour Northerners?

      1. Starmer was a mediocre barrister; a shocking DPP and an appalling MP.

        Do you think he cares about anything except Cur Keir Starmer?

        1. The risk is that if he alienates enough of his party, who then give up their vote in despair or join the Tories, he would end up Leader of the Opposition, voted in by a handful of North London dinner party guests.

      2. The capacity argument for HS2 in my view is fake. There is only one mainline with more spare capacity than the WCML and that is HS1

        The other argument they try to use is Europe has HS lines so we should have one. This though ignore the fact that our mainline service are already quite fast and that we are a small country and with lots of large towns and cities close together

        Intercity traffic is not growing it is the commuter traffic that is growing and HS2 does nothing for that in fact it make it worse as HS2 is soaking up all the money for investment in rail

        The other claim is people in the North want HS2 which other than companies and politicians with vested interests they dont. What they want is to be able to get on a train to get to work and a train that h turns up and has an adequate number of carriages

        1. Scrap HS2. If better N-S links are needed anywhere, it’s on the A34. The main trunk road from the ports and only two lanes – an accident closes either the N or S carriage way almost every week.

    3. HS2 was originally an EU directive (http://www.theeuroprobe.org/2015-088-hs2-controlled-by-eu-not-our-gov/), intended so that the overlords of the EU could rapidly traverse their dominions. It will cause huge environmental damage, the only people who want it are the contractors and their mates in politics who are making money out of it.

      Scrap it, invest the money in lower-cost infrastructure projects in the North and Midlands which will actually benefit ordinary people. Whilst you’re at it Boris, cut overseas aid and the BBC tax and remain in power as long as you damn well please!

      https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/taxpayersalliance/pages/16562/attachments/original/1558213640/GBTC_REPORT_FINAL_REVIEWED_18MAY2019.pdf?1558213640

    1. One wonders how they would have coped during the Battle of the Atlantic; or the Russian Convoys….

        1. Luxury, serving on what looks like a light cruiser rather than roughing it on a much smaller destroyer or corvette.

      2. One wonders how they would have coped during the Battle of the Atlantic; or the Russian Convoys….

        One of my mother’s younger brothers was conscripted when he came of age to serve, given basic training and found himself bouncing around the Atlantic in a corvette. He described that time as the very worst of his life and how it improved slightly when he was posted to a modern destroyer on the Russia routes.
        My mother who knew him very well told me that those experiences changed him for life although he tried hard to hide the effect those experiences had on him. He coped, he had no choice and he was proud of his RN service. Post WWII he became a successful partner in a building firm and lived to 92 years of age.

      3. As a youngster I read HMS Ulysses and found it humbling, a few years later I found my soon to be FiL had done a couple of North Atlantic tours in an S Class Sub . He opened up about that experience only once after quite a few beers, I thought the MacLean novel was powerful but the reality was beyond even MacLean’s descriptive powers.

    2. BTL on the DT article

      Hurricane of Hard Facts 4 Jan 2020 8:04PM

      God help us all!!!!

      HMS Transgender and HMS Ladyboy are on their way!!!!

          2. What difference does that make? The people from that country burn our country’s flag so we return the compliment.

    3. Three days of mourning in Iran yet the bodies of the 1500 protesters killed in Tehran were just dumped in a river and instantly forgotten.

      Morning Belle!

        1. The picture confirms a loss of control by the mullahs and the restrictive ‘laws and words’ of their prophet/deity. It was decreed that regression to the Dark Ages was required to reinstate control. Didn’t some western ‘democracies’ support the regime change and the rise of the mullahs? Reaping what you sow comes to mind for the West.

          1. I am pretty certain that Iran’s electorate is split nearly 50/50, similar in proportion to the Leave/Remain split in the UK between conservatives and liberals. In Iran, conservativism is called revolutionary and supports the rigorous clampdown on moral degeneracy as judged by the Islamic clerics, and is more popular in the provinces and in rural areas. Iranian liberalism is more metropolitan, and is expressed by women taking off their headscarves, getting facelifts and looking backwards to more enlightened times under the monarchy. Topsy-turvy maybe, but they are foreigners.

            I can appreciate how Trump and America in general is more in tune with metropolitan liberalism than with reactionary conservatism, but is he right to use the force of a superpower to influence democracy abroad? He may well justify it by suggesting that the Iranian clerics are doing no less themselves, two wrongs therefore making a right.

            However, it cuts both ways. If Trump’s close buddies in Israel insist on the right to protect themselves from hostile forces, then surely the same right exists in Iran? Iran may well be as much justified in perceiving a military threat coming from Israel, Saudi Arabia and the US as Israel does from its hostile neighbours, and has every much as right under any international law worth respect to defend itself.

            Shooting the top general simply for doing his job is just not cricket. However Americans play with huge shoulder pads and then charging forwards like a mad overweight bull elephant scattering all in its path, and Iran plays by grabbing hold of the opponent and forcing him to the ground inflicting as much pain as required to get a submission. Neither is quite consistent with what they do at Lords.

          2. I’m hoping they attack American assets. Then the President can glass the whole fukking place.

          3. Shooting the top general simply for doing his job is just not cricket.

            Understatement of the year so far or tongue in cheek?
            Travelling around fomenting discontent, rabble rousing and with a little bit of terrorism and mass slaughter on the side is hardly what the vast majority of people would call ‘their job’. The moment he became a terrorist enabler he put a target on his back and his front: organising the attack on the American embassy in Iraq wasn’t the smartest move, perhaps he was a bit too old and was losing it. He doesn’t have to worry now though.

      2. Apart from the lack of respect shown for the dead, I never understand why people dump bodies in rivers, down wells etc and contaminate their water supply. It seems a really stupid thing to do on purely practical grounds.

        1. Contaminating/destroying the water supply was a regular tactic in warfare to deny the enemy an essential resource. It’s clear that the authorities in Iran see themselves at war with large sections of the population and can therefore justify their actions.

        2. Don’t be so mean. It’s winter. They ought to drop a million Stars & Stripes over Gaza as a humanitarian gesture to keep them warm and cosy.

    5. I’m wondering whether there is any weight to the coffin other than wood and handles.
      I’m assuming the ring by which they identified him was a metal object to go round a finger.

    2. Given the rapidly decline quality of its programs it is no surprise. It is an issue all the TV channels suffer . In spite of the collapse in the number of views they still pay the so called TV personalities crazy amounts of money. Top shows a few decades ago got 10 to 20 Million viewers now they struggle to get 4 Million viewers. Off peak shows can struggle to get 1M and if you take S4C some of its programs get an audience of zero and even the top 10 programs struggle to reach 200,000 viewers

  12. January 5 2020, 12:01am, The Sunday Times
    As Cummings shakes up No 10, lefties are propping up the old elite
    Rod Liddle

    The prime minister’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, is advertising jobs both as his special assistant and in civil service posts in Downing Street. He has said he does not want “confident, public school bluffers” and is instead searching for people with “unusual qualities”: “super-talented weirdos, wild cards, artists” and “people who never went to university, weirdos from William Gibson novels . . .”.

    The general feeling is that they will be scribbling their application forms in Rampton and other secure institutions right now. One obvious candidate is Charles Bronson — not the actor, but the criminal. Expect to see him soon advising the home secretary, Priti Patel, about the prison system, a manic grin on his face, claw hammer behind his back.

    The most remarkable thing about Cummings’s wholly laudable 3,000-word blogvert is the fury it has aroused on the left. Cummings is worried that the civil service is not fit for purpose and that, further, our education system may be failing the young. The left usually tends to agree with both hypotheses. The civil service, at its upper levels, is a vast echo chamber of privately educated arts graduates who all think the same thing: anti-Brexit, ectoplasmically liberal, mildly Arabist, internationalist and so on.

    Yet this is precisely why the metro left is enraged with Cummings. In yet another marvellous political volte-face, it has looked for succour over the past three years in the most unusual places — a rich businesswoman, Gina Miller; the former Conservative prime minister John Major; the law courts; the Speaker of the House of Commons (a Tory); the House of Lords. All institutions or individuals that one might normally expect the left to rail against.

    Its last bastion is the civil service, which was, according to a dissident writing in The Sunday Times, wholly opposed to the UK leaving the EU. So the left, bereft of its usual allies among the working class, sticks up for it. But then, the left is no longer really the left, is it? It’s something else entirely, and its rage is illuminating.

    On social media Cummings has been denounced as a “fascist” for his attempts to suborn the precious civil service. Of course, “fascist” is a familiar term of abuse from those on the liberal left and these days could mean anything from Cummings to an inadequately chilled bottle of sancerre, the absence of a clearly defined cycle lane, a restaurant menu that omits gluten-free options or a school nativity play in which the children are cast according to the sex assigned to them at birth, rather than the gender they have subsequently embraced. All fascist. Anything that gently irks them, in other words.

    Cummings is right in all respects, except for saying that he doesn’t want people who talk about the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan with TV producers at dinner parties. Of course he is right to be averse to anyone who quotes Lacan, but no TV producers I have met have even heard of the tedious French charlatan. Talk about Lacan and they think you’re asking pretentiously about the lavatory. Oh, and his nod to William Gibson — a fine novelist — may be pitched at the wrong generation. The cyberpunks were generation X, and we’re on to generation Z now, Dom.

    But the rest? The think tank Policy Exchange recently eviscerated the civil service for its institutional complacency and low calibre of entrants — a consequence, partly, of the abandonment of basic numeracy and literacy tests as well as a big reduction in assessment panels. Making entrance to the civil service less daunting did not, as was stupidly envisaged, enable a greater breadth of intake across our social classes. Instead, it opened the door to amiably loquacious but often vapid private school bluffers possessed of confidence and little else. It also left the civil service short of those who excelled in science and engineering.

    The parallels with another much-loved institution that today the liberal left defends as if its life depended on it — the BBC — are blindingly obvious. Two privileged, liberal, arts-grad behemoths, thinking the same thing, wildly out of step with public opinion and thus losing the confidence of the nation.

    With any luck, this will be the story of the next year or so. A war between the old liberal establishment and what may soon become the new establishment, and a war in which the terms left and right are turned on their heads.

    Cummings attacks Whitehall

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/methode%2Fsundaytimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2Ffeb0799e-2f09-11ea-ad25-822082a8fb18.jpg?crop=1500%2C1000%2C0%2C0&resize=600

    Layla’s very Liberal attitude to sex
    The Liberal Democrat leadership contender Layla Moran has come out as “pansexual”. This means she is happy to have sex with all sorts, even Lib Dems — a sexual exoticism previously unknown to the UK. Perhaps even Ed Davey is in with a shout.

    Moran, who bears a remarkable resemblance to Velma out of Scooby-Doo, no doubt chose the term pansexual because it is slightly more hip than “bisexual”, despite meaning the same thing. Other Lib Dem candidates had better come out as something weirder. Most of us may be bored into stupefaction, or simply repulsed, by gender faddisms, but the Libs are obsessive about them.

    Perhaps Davey himself could come out as a climacophiliac. This is the term for someone who gains sexual satisfaction from falling down stairs, a practice he should be encouraged to pursue as often as possible.

    Inconvenienced by loo-free Snowdon
    It’s bad enough that the Lake District is racist and disablist, as the boss of the national park, Richard Leafe, implied. But what about Mount Snowdon? Awful place, according to a number of posts on TripAdvisor. Not remotely inclusive.

    “I was disgusted to find even the easiest route up the mountain was not wheelchair accessible,” one user wrote. Another complained: “This was quite a steep hill and it could have been improved by concrete paths and maybe some toilets halfway up.”

    Indeed. All these horrible countryside places would benefit from Stannah stairlifts and gender neutral lavatories.

    Madness, M’lud
    Judge David Evans has come to believe we are living in a parallel universe, which is an interesting description of where he presides — Exeter.

    Ready to sentence some youths for street robberies, he was instructed to delay because the little scrotes were being referred to the Home Office as possible examples of “modern slavery”. It was alleged they lived in fear of their gang leader.

    “What does this mean?” the bemused judge inquired. “That teenagers who get involved by their own free will now say they are modern slaves? I feel I have stepped into a parallel universe.”

    No, Your Honour. It’s the current universe. For a while, at least.

    1. But then, the left is no longer really the left, is it? It’s something else entirely, and its rage is illuminating.

      Rod as perceptive as always!

      3. The sweetmeat that forms Bertie’s head (and his hands) is not to be found in a packet of Bassett’s Allsorts. The rest of him is.

          1. I had stopped watching Dr Who years before it ended (the first time) as I discovered that girls were not the enemy after all, and the rest of life was getting in the way. I did notice that it was on one night and switched over to see what it was like. It was that very episode with the giant Bertie Bassett in it, flailing his arms around. I thought back to the days of Tom Baker and “The Horror of Fang Rock” and thought how far the childhood Titan had fallen.

            https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5bf068d5f0a9132f7498083abbe490f8fee4cc8d2a29b995462ba9cb3d705032.jpg

      4. As a liquorice fan since the late-1940s, I have to say that some parts of Harry’s body can bring on a real rush (especially if combined with a sharp 1940s/50s sherbet)

    3. I’ve met Priti Patel; Charles Bronson doesn’t stand a chance. She can reach his kneecaps.

  13. Red meat plays vital role in diets, claims expert in fightback against veganism. 5 January 2020.

    Advocates of red meat will begin a fightback against the growth of veganism this week at the UK’s biggest farming conference, with claims that eating lamb and beef is vital because some plants and fish are being drained of their nutrition.

    That would be me. I had a delicious Rib Eye Steak yesterday with egg and chips as an accompaniment. Would it be too much to point out that all these foods that are supposedly dangerous to our wellbeing have led to the fittest, healthiest, longest lived generations in human history? Veganism by comparison is a pernicious dietary cult that would be suppressed as a danger to Public Health in an advanced civilisation!

    https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/jan/05/red-meat-diet-modern-vegetables-lack-nutrients-fightback-veganism

    1. The idea that you need huge amounts of land for cattle etc is just fiction. The land used for cattle etc is usually not suitable for arable faring in any case

      You do need large amounts of land for arable faring and that land needs to be good quality and reasonably flat and most of that land is in the South where it is already under pressures from house building. Arable crops also need large amounts of water plus fertilizers and insecticides as well as machinery and trucks for transporting it. WE have zero change of growing all our own arable crops do huge amounts would need to be imported. . Just having cereal crops would also upset the delicate ecological balance of the land as well

    3. Ox cheek today; using my new Crockpot.
      If a mushroom shaped cloud appears over Colchester, you’ll know I didn’t read the manual beforehand.

  14. ‘Morning All

    Funny Old World

    500+ Drone/missile stikes by Obama multiple “collateral Damage” Meh

    1 Drone/missile strike by Trump the MSM lose their collective minds

    In a wonderful irony the best analysis I’ve found is from the Guardian

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/05/soleimani-death-huge-blow-to-iran-plans-for-regional-domination
    Moving on
    22 “Lost” in Manchester silence from our Moslem brothers
    1 “Assasinated” murdering torturing terrorist leader protests and flag burning
    Just saying……………….
    Pity we can’t go back in history and trade those 22 for Blair
    It’s almost as if it’s just fine for the little people to do the dying but an outrage if the people who run the show of whatever regime have to pay the price

    1. From the linked article:
      “Suleimani’s death is a huge blow to Iran’s plans for regional domination”

      And we could have done it in Brown’s time. The SAS were all prepared until Milliband stopped them.
      Mind you weapons technology has improved since then. These targetted drone launched missiles are pretty wondrous.

    1. It’s difficult to judege the annoyed by reflex and haven’t thought about the action, just who did it and then there are those who are concerned by the action.

      The first lot are idiots who should be ignored. The second lot should be listened to.

      1. As I distributed this, the word ‘samizdat’ sprang to mind.
        Ooops …… just I’ll just answer the doo …….

  17. Apropos the thread on record shops last night, with jmw123 and Devonian in Kent; in Chesterfield—where I grew up—a rival to the monopoly of Hudson’s music shops emerged in the late 1960s.

    A local Bakewell businessman called Dave McFee (who was the brother of Tony McFee, the founder and lead guitarist with rock band The Groundhogs) opened an independent, hippy, record shop which he named ”Some Kinda Mushroom”.

    Three house points (and a nine-bob note) to the first NoTTLer who can state the source of the inspiration for that name.

      1. Not really but you are the closest, since that lady was part of the inspiration, obliquely.

    4. It’s a lyric from Jefferson Airplane’s ‘White Rabbit’. Sung by the amazing Grace Slick.

          1. Therefore the delay, courtesy of Disqus’s arcane edit system, cost you the nine bob note!

      2. He was at school with my brother and in those days masters called pupils by their surnames. Cue much sniggering when it was Alastair Darling’s turn.

        1. My father and two friends shared a cottage after they graduated. One was called Tom Darling who worked for Players Tobacco in Nottingham. A delightful man, years later he used to take me trout fishing on the Dove in Derbyshire.

  20. LBC Debate on Who Can be the New Labour Party Leader

    The consensus of opinion is they have no credible potential leader not a good place for them to be in

    1. BJ,
      You mean the mindless, senseless,
      treacherous circus ie vote in / keep out
      the choice being sh!te, sh!te or sh!te is to continue ?
      If so, vast investments must go into the
      mental health issues of this nation as it is at epidemic level, the proof being the
      ballot booth.

  21. One for the blood pressure:

    https://www.taxpayersalliance.com/mandarin_millionaires_public_sector_pension_pots?utm_campaign=200105_weekly_bulletin&utm_medium=email&utm_source=taxpayersalliance#

    Mandarin millionaires: public sector pension pots
    Dec 16 2019

    Introduction

    The senior civil servants who lead Whitehall government departments can look forward to some of the most generous retirement packages in the public sector, with a £24.5 million pension pot between them in 2018-19. This is a 22.8 per cent increase from 2017-18, when the pot was just below £20 million.

    Compared to the private sector, where more than four fifths of the workforce is employed, civil servants can look forward to a particularly comfortable retirement, with some schemes allowing the mandarin class to take their pension as early as 55.

    Many of the top civil servants currently have pension pots well in excess of the lifetime allowance, a situation also reflected in departments’ 2017-18 accounts. Though this has increased in line with inflation this year to £1.06 million, it was slashed repeatedly by then chancellor George Osborne, disadvantaging millions who prioritised personal fiscal prudence over reliance on other taxpayers. Taking income and lump sums in excess of the lifetime allowance incurs a 25 per cent and 55 per cent charge respectively. Whilst those in the private sector have had to bear the brunt of these changes, many public sector workers have been unaffected.

    Regular promotion, salary rises and job security should be recompense enough for a career in the civil service. To obtain decent affordable pensions, all new civil servants should join on the basis of a defined contribution pension, and be funded, rather than unfunded. Unfunded pension schemes do not have assets set aside to cover the costs of employee benefits, and instead rely on future taxation.

    Private sector taxpayers on less generous schemes should not be left subsiding unfunded generosity afforded to their public sector counterparts.

    Click here to read the research paper

    Key findings

    The 23 individuals who run UK government departments had an average pension pot of £1,065,522 in 2018-19. 13 of these had pension pots worth more than £1 million.

    The mandarin with the largest pension pot was Simon McDonald, head of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. His pension pot is currently valued at £2,055,000.

    The average pension upon retirement will be £57,717 per annum. This is 94 per cent more than the average gross UK salary in 2018 (£29,817).

    15 of the departmental heads will receive a lump sum upon retirement. The average value of this is £148,167.

    The top mandarins with the largest annual pensions are Simon McDonald, Clare Moriarty, and Mark Sedwill, the heads of the Foreign Office, Department for Exiting the European Union and Cabinet Secretary respectively. They will have a pension of at least £85,000 to £90,000 a year.”

    1. To be fair almost all private pension schemes (Non State Pension) currently allow retirement at 55 normally at a reduced pension in FS schemes it reduced by typically about 2% a year so if the state retirement age was 65 taking it at 55 would reduce it by 20%. The age you can take a pension early is being increase I think it is going up to 57

      2. I retired at 52 on my company pension but as you wren’t allowed to take the pension at that age they called it a Continued Annual Payment until I reached 55 when it reverted to a pension

    2. Many top civil servants have been actively working to betray the United Kingdom and place us under the power of the European Union for decades now. To sell out your own country and enslave its people under a totalitarian state would need high levels of bribery. They have got to get their 30 pieces of silver somewhere.

      1. Morning MM,
        Part & parcel of the lab/lib/con
        coalition who have been actively working against the
        United Kingdom for decades &
        the decent peoples therein.
        Aided & abetted via the ballot box again,again & again.
        We are currently reaping what has been sown in the ballot booth again,again & again.
        A very odious harvest.

    3. Good morning Anne

      I’m already struggling with my blood pressure as I’m due a knee op on Thursday. Still high even though on an additional pill.

      vw thinks I’m now part of the worried well. I think she may be right.

      Your post has done nothing to bring my BP down.

        1. Thank you. vw will deliver me in the morning and hopefully pick me up later. It’s day surgery and hopefully will be successful as the problem has been with me since August and is debilitating.

    4. My nephew-in-Law (my niece’s husband) discovered that, thanks to Mr Osborne’s total incompetence, he would effectively be worse off with regard to his pension if he continued working as a GP.

      He is bright, fit and healthy and still runs half-marathons for fun and, by all accounts, was an excellent GP. Like many in the same position he retired at the age of 58. My niece, his wife, got blues in rowing and gymnastics at Oxford while he rowed in the Goldie boat at Cambridge They have retired to live in a large rambling house on Dartmoor and seem to spend most of their time scampering up Tors. I think his time would be better used seeing patients in an NHS which is desperately short of doctors.

      By contrast my Uncle Basil – both an FRCS and a GP – continued to see his patients until he was well into his 70’s.

      1. The law of unintended consequences, Rastus. Your nephew in law is not the only GP or consultant to do this.

        1. Hi TP’

          Rastus did point that out, although, as far as I know, he hasn’t repeated it (yet).

          Like many in the same position he retired at the age of 58.

      2. A chap in our local practice did the same thing.
        I can remember him starting as a bright eyed youngster.
        Pleasant enough person, but not a terribly good doctor, so in this case, it turned out for the best.

  22. Batteries

    Some of the manufacturers use a cheat to claim their batteries have a much longer life. They do this by comparing their Alkaline battery with the older Zinc Carbon technology which you can still get. Alkaline batteries can cost a bit more but have a longer life and they in general will not leak. Zinc Carbon will
    There is no real reason to pay a premium price for a brand leader battery. All you are paying the extra for is the clever marketing.

    1. Duracell (other brands are available) sell their latest developed batteries under their own name. Earlier developments (not as good) are sold under “own brand” labelling.

    1. O2O,
      Does Gerard Batten realise that his post fly’s / denies in the face of the
      unwritten rulings adhered to by the
      reining politicians as in
      PC / Appeasement ?

  24. Ethical Vegan

    There is a lot of misunderstanding over this. It was an Employment tribunal which purely looks at employment law. It has basically decided you cannot be sacked just for being a vegan which is pretty obvious. Equally you cannot be sacked for being a cyclist. You don’t really need an employment tribunal ruling for that

    The key issue has not yet been decided. He is trying to claim he was sacked for being a vegan his employers say he was not. Quite why the tribunal need to decide being a vegan was protected in employment law who knows as there is already adequate protection in place. We will have to wait and see what the tribunal decides on the main issue

    1. You can’t bloody sack anyone these days, however bloody useless they are. The legal profession have it all wrapped up.

      1. They seem to create ruling for the sack of it do we need a ruling to say they cannot sack someone just because they live in Essex or because they have a Geordie accent ?. There is already adequate employment protection . WE don’t need additional daft rulings from tribunals

        All this tribunal should have been deciding is was he unfairly sacked, I dont know the answer to that but he does sound as if he would be a difficult employee

    2. Too much weight has been given by the Press to this ruling. As you say, it is only to do with employment law, not law in general. If the sacking is found to be justified, and his veganism played no part in it, the fuss should die down.

      1. If you take what this guy has been claiming he could not possibly live as he claims. He said for example he will not travel on a bus as it may kill insects so that imply’s he will not buy any food from a shop as that will have been transported by road and could have killed insects or animals
        He cannot use electricity and that is produced by wind turbines which kill birds and insects

        1. Oil is countless billions of dead, squished organisms (I watched spool chocker like a hawk).

    3. The reason for his sacking was exposing that the league against cruel sports invested in animal testing firms for it’s pension fund.

      As that knowledge would likely cause a drop in sponsorship it threatens the organisation.

      1. We dont know why he was sacked . He seems to be trying to claim that but I doubt he would be sacked for that unless he had previous warnings. He would first say probably have had a formal verbal warning and then a written warning and then a final warning before being sacked

        I doubt that though had anything to do with it. When they make a decision on hid
        sacking it should come out

  25. Another of those ‘What if…’ essays.

    ‘Without coal Wales would be part of England’

    ‘Cardiff and Swansea are small villages, Wales has no capital and is considered a part of England like Cornwall.’
    A strange vision – but this is how some historians think Wales might have looked like if coal had not been discovered.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-50457035

    The comparison with Cornwall fails a little when Prof Martin Johnes says the Welsh language would be “much stronger” in south Wales because English-speakers would not have moved in such huge numbers. In other words, the language had remained well established and Wales would have remained very Welsh, whereas the Cornish language died out in the late 18th century.

    Perhaps the Welsh might not be as noisy as they are had there been no industrialisation…

  26. Soleimani assassination: Mourners flood the streets as body returns to Iran

    How you stabilize this country who knows. We do not help by almost encouraging extreme forms of Islam in the UK. An extreme form of a religion tends to be problematic

    1. We have to be nice to our Muslims here in the U.K. If we don’t, they will blow us up. Or the United Nations will.
      Be pragmatic, Bill !!!

    2. They are probably flooding the streets as they don’t want to be identified as people who did not rush to the streets.

      Police states work like that.

        1. About 90% of Iran consists of 90% with the Shia branch of Islam, the rest are mainly Sunni and Surfi branches of Islam and then there are about 0.6% of other religions

          Islam is a very intolerant religion and cannot tolerate other religions even other branches of Islam. How you resolve that who knows. I think the answer is to radicalize Islam how that is achieved who knows. I suspect it will be a slow job

          The UK could play a part be stopping the most extreme forms much of which is actually cultural and has nothing to do with the religion

          I would ban the covering of the face in all public places. It would be permitted in private homes and religious buildings but not schools

          There should be no segregation of men and woman other than in public toilets and changing rooms

          1. “Islam is a very intolerant religion and cannot tolerate other religions even other branches of Islam. How you resolve that who knows. I think the answer is to radicalize Islam…”

            I have seen others raise this question before, but with such a monumental error in that statement from you it is worth asking again. Do you EVER read your comments before you post them?

            That is just what the world needs now, even more muslims who are radicalised or, to put that phrase into its real form, to make “nice muslims” take islam seriously and become real muslims. The current 400 million of them, who will murder non-muslims at the drop of a hat because they are commanded to, is just not enough. We want a real challenge before we decide to stop them.

            Time for lunch.

          2. “Do you EVER read your comments before you post them?”

            Before he does this, it would be advisable for him to proof read his thought patterns first, before posting.

  27. Why does Labour have such a problem with patriotism? 5 January 2020.

    Patriotism is a prerequisite for electoral success. A party needs to show that it is committed to the country it aspires to run, that it feels a connection with its own people that goes beyond its vague benignity toward the human race.

    Well never mind the Labour Party, that leaves most of the Political Class out of the frame! I have no doubts that while the Labour Party as a collective actively despise and hate the native population of the UK for its (as they see it) Xenophobia and Racism the Tories as individuals are enthusiastic but covert supporters of Mass Immigration and all the other ills of Cultural Marxism.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/01/05/does-labour-have-problem-patriotism/

    1. I am confused by the term “Cultural Marxism”. It seems to me to be a perversion of “love your neighbour” Christianity, whereby we are prepared to carry the cross whilst bearing the ills of humanity on our shoulders, like some all-benign Atlas holding up the world.

      Whilst I can appreciate the concept of universal socialism applied globally, I struggle to see how a crowded island that can just about house 70 million people should then be expected to support 7.7 billion of them.

    2. Ah but Labour has no problem with Patriotism in Wales, Scotland and NI it just in England it does not like it

      1. BJ,
        Do you mean to say that the
        tory party does recognise patriotism ?
        None of the toxic trio would recognise it if it bit them on their pin striped clad arses.

    3. Morning AS,
      Why do lab/lib/con as a mass uncontrolled immigration / paedophile umbrella / PC / Appeasement / pro eu / coalition find patriotism so hard as has been soundly proven over the decades ?

    4. Who is more honest: the Labour/Lib Dem politicians who individually, collectively and openly despise the British people or the flag waving Tories who proclaim their support for the British way of life but continue with almost identical mass immigration policies as the Labour/Lib Dems? Neither group are honourable nor worthy of the people’s support. IMHO the jury is still out on Johnson and his plans for this Country. His grandiose plans for spending could be his method of attempting to deflect the people’s attention away from his Brexit arrangements.

  28. Following my post below about the Epiphany procession – here are three snaps. One shows the crib (Laure has a proud record of elaborate and imaginative cribs); the mediaeval chancel (plus ox and ass) and the blessing at the roadside shrine.

    The church is enormous – one of the largest unsupported roofs in the south of France. The tower was incorporated from the 12th century defensive towers built round the settlement. Good example of re-cycling!

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1ec555a4ac2dcc1257b50dc2c5597d3428949a9702abab46669d5061d87c2414.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ad5d71c42cf81254e20e9506fb44de90eb4c5bf83e32a5a4237b2f12192cb021.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/95994d1de1ff5ce2d83d59d30f5935f39988d02358567312088ece17a8f7376e.jpg

        1. Are you saying the bible is American?

          The only people who use ‘ass’ for arse (i.e. Yanks) are arseassholes!

      3. No animals were harmed in this procession!

        In the past, we have had a cavalcade of horses, donkeys, goats and sheep – but no one could be bothered (apparently) this year.

        1. The horses, donkeys, goats and sheep had probably all been rustled and eaten by “the other side”.

    4. …. “one of the largest unsupported roofs in the south of France.’
      Don’t allow builders with blow torches anywhere near it.

      1. No risk – no funds! It is a “historic monument” and the state did pay for the internal west facade to be re-done – a great improvement.

        It is a remarkable building.

    5. We, on the other hand, had six kings at our crib – three extra made by the local primary school class.

  29. You will have been following the story about the Lebanese “Frenchman” who ran Renault in Japan – and who was under arrest awaiting trial for fraud and skipped bail….
    (still with me?)

    Well, here are some snaps that the French Government is trying hard to suppress. Can’t imagine why…………….{:¬))

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6772597f5182d5c09f7072383993071f3ab45623d91adebbfbec206926c445ab.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9a888a8c1b5fb59168327b18df56c2e0111750455d16d5b721225e1318c0f204.jpg

      1. Apparently Ghosn was wont to give huge, enormously expensive parties with everyone in 18th century costume (think Conrad Black…)

        2. In fairness to Conrad Black, he knows a thing or two about running good newspapers.
          The DT was at its zenith when he owned it.

      1. T,
        You could say that about a very high % of the 650 the toxic trio are riddled with treachery artist.

        1. ogga1 – no, Labour women are the pits. Awful. Horrible. Loudmouth. Ugly in thought, face, mouth and deed.
          Any self-respecting Labour woman makes Theresa May look sweet.

    3. Afternoon A,
      Regarding treachery,
      Lest we forget, to many peoples minds
      it has long past the time of individual
      parties as such, more a coalition.
      Seeing as the whole political toxic trio politico’s in with a shout were ALL, for decades, pro eu willing ,without doubt, rubber stampers.
      They would have continued to be so had not the electoral worm, realised at long last the odious eu monster they had helped create via the party they were supporting, and retaliated.

  32. The DT has an article pointing out the Greeniacs are to blame for the intensity of the Aussie fires

    The unfolding tragedy in Australia is being interpreted as

    an apocalyptic portent of a “climate emergency”: justification for the

    drastic prescriptions of Extinction Rebellion to “close down the

    capitalist system”.

    Heart-rending tweets from the fire zone convey the raw anger of

    farmers burnt out of their homes. But their interpretation is strikingly

    different. Far from begging everybody to embrace the green agenda, many

    are blaming the greens for exacerbating the fires by meddling in the

    time- honoured practice of burning off excess vegetation to mitigate

    wildfires.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/01/04/green-agenda-exacerbating-australias-wildfire-problem/

    I note the gutless cowards haven’t opened it for comments

    1. It was the same with the Somerset Levels floods: the time honoured practice of dredging was abandoned on ‘environmental grounds’ and this led to disaster.

      Arguing with ‘environmentalists’ is rather like arguing with adolescents – the facts are irrelevant if they get it the way.

      1. The human race has been managing sustainably on Planet A with time honoured practices over the last 10,000 years using flood control and regulated conflagration.

        I think this is mainly down those practices that honoured the preexisting regulatory features of Planet A which involved the stabilising influence of the dynamic distribution of fire and water as our planet cooled down whilst orbiting around the sun.

        Our continued existence depends on understanding the mechanisms behind the symbiotic relationship between animal and plant life.

          1. There was a recent World Service discussion involving extinction scientists who were in agreement that a periodic rationalisation of the human population has been necessary in the past for continued life on this planet.

            If humans fail to blow themselves up then nature will inevitably sort it instead – there is no point in rebelling against it because that will just accelerate extinction.

          3. I found that absolutely disgusting. It was genocide. Why, why in the name of trousers could they not say that? Were they scared of upsetting the Germans? They didn’t do it. Heck, their parents didn’t do it. It is history and we must never, ever forget the tyranny of an unaccountable unelected clique.

          4. Did anyone see ‘The Day After’ on talking pictures TV?. I recorded it and watched it last night. Quite harrowing,. It took me back to lying under the bed clothes with my radio in 1962 listening to the reports on the unfolding Cuban Missile crisis…

        2. Hmm. We’ve been managing, but not remotely sustainably. We’re the only species that grows beyond it’s habitat. Nothing constrains us. We’re too clever.

          However, we’re not clever enough to realise that we simply cannot continue this way.

    1. Spelled Raab but pronounced Ra-abish.
      All you need to know why Raab is Rubbish and fits in well with the anti-American & anti-Israel bias of the Foreign Office :-

      He spent the summer of 1998 at Birzeit University near Ramallah, the PNA’s capital in the West Bank, where he worked for one of the principal PLO negotiators of the Oslo peace accords, assessing World Bank projects on the West Bank.

      He defended Tony Blair against a subpoena from former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević.

      In 2011, Raab wrote that “Israeli settlement building undermined prospects for a contiguous Palestinian state.

      1. And, just to think, Pud; Raab considered himself to be of sufficient calibre to put himself forward as a candidate for the leadership of the Conservative Party.

        2. Raab is a Tosser, the Tory party has recently had two Tossers as leaders – ‘Call me Dave’ followed by ‘Teresa EU shoes’ so yes going by precedent Raab is qualified to lead the Tory party into oblivion ! Hopefully Boris will ditch him in the next cabinet reshuffle !

  34. Danny is not my favourite but often has some tasty bits in his curate’s egg

    Why does Labour have such a problem with patriotism?
    DANIEL HANNAN – 5 JANUARY 2020 • 6:00AM

    Jeremy Corbyn’s distaste for British institutions and symbols was the single biggest cause of his defeat

    Patriotism is a prerequisite for electoral success. A party needs to show that it is committed to the country it aspires to run, that it feels a connection with its own people that goes beyond its vague benignity toward the human race.

    Jeremy Corbyn’s distaste for British institutions and symbols was the single biggest cause of his defeat. It set the context in which voters interpreted Labour’s Brexit U-turn.

    In different circumstances, Labour might have been able to shift its position on the EU without losing so many supporters. But Corbyn had established the tone at the start of his leadership when he refused to sing the national anthem at a Battle of Britain memorial service.

    His readiness to intrigue with anti-British terrorists, his Cold War links to Czechoslovakia, his eagerness to follow the Kremlin line in the aftermath of the Skripal murders – all these things ensured that Labour’s support for a second referendum came to be seen as fundamentally unpatriotic, an act of wrinkle-nosed disdain for the mass of voters whose Euroscepticism was at least partly informed by a belief in British particularism.

    Labour so far shows no sign of recognising the problem, let alone addressing it. Rebecca Long-Bailey, the Corbynite leadership contender, wrote in vague terms about “progressive patriotism”, but was promptly jumped on by the bulk of the Left. More in tune with the party’s mood is Clive Lewis, another Corbynite leadership contender.

    Here is his take, the mixed metaphor indicating that he is thinking in slogans rather than properly considering his words: “A toxic debate around Brexit has unleashed a torrent of racism into British society, leading to a climate of fear and a sharp rise in hate crimes and racist attacks since the 2016 referendum.”

    Those hackneyed phrases are the authentic voice of the contemporary Labour Left. In fact, there has been no increase in racist attacks: the number of hate crimes referred for prosecution has fallen. But if you start from the conviction that Britain is a peculiarly prejudiced country, you will be able to press almost any developments – including the 2016 vote – into your existing world-view.

    There are two obvious problems with this portrayal of Britain. First, it is unappealing: people don’t like being told that they are incorrigible bigots. Second, and more immediately, it is palpably false. On almost any metric, Britain is among the most open and tolerant countries in the world. British people are at or close to the top of the league tables when it comes to favouring immigration, supporting same-sex partnerships, seeing Islam in a positive light and approving of mixed-race relationships.

    Many Leftists couch their disdain for British patriotism in historical and anti-colonialist terms. If anything, though, this is even odder.

    Yes, Britain, like every country, has had its shabby moments. But it is worth asking, from a progressive perspective, how many places have a better record. Where, down the centuries, would you rather have been poor or female or from a religious minority? Where were ordinary people given so much control over their own lives? Where did the masses enjoy higher living standards? Seriously, where? Muscovy? Persia? Mexico? Abyssinia?

    One of the peculiar characteristics of the British people through the ages is a refreshing lack of deference, an unwillingness to be pushed around by those in power. That is a tradition of which the Left should be especially proud. And, indeed, Labour used to draw cheerfully on the examples of the Levellers, the Chartists, the Suffragettes and so on. Many Leftists understood patriotism as being rooted in a defence of the British people against an essentially Europeanised aristocracy.

    Successful Labour leaders saw no shame in flying the flag. Clement Attlee, who had served during the First World War in Gallipoli and Mesopotamia as well as France, had I Vow To Thee My Country and Jerusalem at his funeral. Even Tony Blair, at least in his early Cool Britannia phase, understood that he needed to be seen as a champion for his people.

    In theory, the hard Left could find an equivalent patriotism. It could, for example, make a great deal of standing up for ordinary people against multinationals. It could cast itself as the ally of the working classes against transnational elites whose residency is dictated by tax policy, and who feel no real connection to any land. It wouldn’t be my kind of patriotism, but it would at least be plausible.

    For Momentum, though, there is no acceptable form of British nationalism. The very concept is anathema. Irish nationalism? Fine. Palestinian nationalism? No problem. Venezuelan nationalism? ¡Viva la Revolución! But the United Kingdom is tainted by what the Left regards as original sin: it is powerful.

    It is hard to stress the extent to which Left-wingers are motivated, to the exclusion of other considerations, by a desire to stand up for the underdog. This is not, in itself, a discreditable instinct but, when taken to an extreme, it becomes absurd. If everything is seen in terms of imagined hierarchies of privilege and oppression, victimhood starts being confused with virtue.

    Because markets developed in Britain before they developed elsewhere, this country has tended to enjoy a technological advantage over its rivals. Sometimes, it has exploited that advantage to annex territory. But it has also used it to do things that ought to be uncomplicatedly popular with Left and Right, such as driving pirates from the seas, eliminating the slave trade and defeating Nazism.

    The trouble is that, if you see Britain as a domineering bully, the faults of Britain’s rivals become irrelevant. The IRA might have pursued ethnic cleansing, but at least it was anti-British. General Galtieri might have been a fascist dictator who tortured and murdered opponents, but at least he was attacking a British colony. Qassim Soleimani might have ordered a series of atrocious human rights violations, but he was on the right side of the anti-colonial struggle.

    There are several steps Labour should take to put itself back into contention. Demonstrating that it believes in the country it wants to govern is the most important.

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

    BTL:

    Fred Bloggs 5 Jan 2020 7:52AM

    Oh, that’s easy

    1) Labour, as presently constituted, are the intellectual and ideological heirs of the Fabians of the 1870-1939 era. See Orwell’s description of this phenomenon.

    2) Labour have the particular problem of knowing that the electorate have conclusively rejected them, more than once. Firstly in 1950-51, when the voters showed that they wanted the social reform, but not the Marxist ideology or internationalism. Secondly in 1979-85, when the voters confronted, and defeated the attempt to seize power through concerted industrial action.

    3) because the voters, given the chance, would conclusively reject multiculturalism and “diversity”, and Labour are fully aware of this. Indeed, as a definition of “patriotism”, “rejecting mass influx of alien cultures, and rejecting laws which favour those incomers, believing your existing culture to be every bit as good or superior” serves quite well.

    Shirley Mallett 5 Jan 2020 6:20AM

    Melanie Phillips has the answers. Look for her interviews on Youtube. They think the UK is too weak to stand alone, unlike every other independent country in the world. They can’t get over the loss of the British Empire, so they don’t bother trying. Better just to quit and let others make the decisions. The ‘elite’ are the weak ones, not the British people.

    1. Dan Hannan was rather a coherent Eurosceptic voice until the crunch came and he had total testicular failure.

    2. I do wish people would stop telling Labour they’re incompetent fools who are doing everything wrong.

      The first lesson of warfare is never interrupt your enemy while he’s making a mistake. Let them keep screwing up! The more disdain and bile they spew the more likely it is Labour will never get elected again.

    4. “British people are at or close to the top of the league tables when it comes to favouring immigration, supporting same-sex partnerships, seeing Islam in a positive light and approving of mixed-race relationships.”

      Saying it doesn’t necessarily mean thinking it…

      “Even Tony Blair, at least in his early Cool Britannia phase, understood that he needed to be seen as a champion for his people.”

      See above…

      “Clement Attlee, who had served during the First World War in Gallipoli and Mesopotamia as well as France, had ‘I Vow To Thee My Country’ and ‘Jerusalem’ sung at his funeral.”

      On reflection, the British Nationality Act wasn’t very patriotic.

    1. Yes, but perhaps (just perhaps, possibly not) the education system might have something to contribute to the fight against rising crime. Mind you, it would take a massive culture change among the teaching profession. Maybe a return to old-fashioned coppering holds the key.

      1. But you are still conflating two, entirely separate, government departments, each one with its own specific remit.

        I am the first to extol the fact that “good, old-fashioned coppering” needs to be reintroduced; but what has that got to do with the Department of Education, which looks after schooling?

        1. It’s called “joined-up government”, Grizz. As for old-fashioned coppering, I have two points to make: virtue-signalling is not part of the job of the police; and that there should be no “no-go” areas – the police have an absolute right to go to any public place at any time without warning and certainly without permission.

          1. I think the problem is, that for better or for worse, Priti Patel is the Home Secretary and not the Prime Minister.

          3. I wouldn’t argue with any of that, Joe. Virtue-signalling only started in the police after the politicians hijacked the old police force in the wake of the `Edmund Davies’ police pay and conditions review in 1978. Prior to that the police was made up of citizens, locally appointed, who derived their authority under the Crown. After the politicisation of the police, when the idiotic ‘graduate-entry scheme’ was implemented, they became a bunch of university rejects, appointed from anywhere, and deriving their authority from political diktat.

            Nowadays, after those graduates have been in control for 40 years, and Common Purpose degrees are awarded like confetti to the brainwashed masses, virtue-signalling has supplanted common sense; real crime is deemed to be an unnecessary nuisance; and ignoring the requirements of the public they once served is seen as an irritation.

            Not until someone with real purpose (and big gonads) emerges in public life to sack the likes of Cressida Dick, Peter Goodman and other sad useless examples of that despoiled ilk, will the corner be turned.

          4. Was it Met Commissioner Paul Stevens who got into no end of trouble for stating that 80% of street crime in London was committed by young black males?

    2. May I fiddle Mr Grizzle

      Ian Calder-Potts ought to have researched the fact that NO Cabinet Office holds the remit for Education and has not since T Bliar aka SATAN
      ruled UK

      1. Fiddle away, Mr Tryers.

        Government departments swap and change so often that I can’t keep track of it all.

        For example, just look at how the Ministry of Transport has changed its name (and remit) at the whim of politicians over the years:

        1919–1941: Ministry of Transport
        1941–1946: Ministry of War Transport — after absorption of Ministry of Shipping
        1946–1953: Ministry of Transport
        1953–1959: Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation
        1959–1970: Ministry of Transport
        1970–1976: Department for the Environment
        1976–1997: Department of Transport
        1997–2001: Department for the Environment, Transport and the Regions
        2001–2002: Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions
        2002–Now: Department for Transport

        1. They don’t really. The names change to pretend they’re relevant. They’re still the giant, pointless monoliths of a century ago.

        2. Having said that, it looks like Satan’s little helper, Camoron, reinstated the Education department in 2010:

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

          Government departments chop and change constantly at the whim of politicians. For example:

          1919–1941: Ministry of Transport
          1941–1946: Ministry of War Transport — after absorption of Ministry of Shipping
          1946–1953: Ministry of Transport
          1953–1959: Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation
          1959–1970: Ministry of Transport
          1970–1976: Department for the Environment
          1976–1997: Department of Transport
          1997–2001: Department for the Environment, Transport and the Regions
          2001–2002: Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions
          2002–Now: Department for Transport

          1. When I was working it was the DfE (Dept for Education), later adding Training. We thought, judging by the way they meddled and interfered, that it was actually the Dept Against Education!

    3. Mr Calder Potts is right though – it’s a multi disciplinary process and it starts with discipline. Discipline in the home, discipline at school. At home that means they are taught how to behave but these kids are growing up without fathers. This is a huge problem in the black demographic.

      Then we have to get them off welfare and into work. Their children will have to learn discipline and if that means marching them in a line for six hours up and down then that’s what it takes. If they refuse, they should be blasted well flogged.

    1. There was a time I think a few months ago when every time I switched the car radio on (pre-set to Radio Three) they were playing some “early music “.
      I had to wait two weeks for a doctor’s appointment to have my ears syringed.

  39. “Darn it!

    Something went wrong while trying to load this feed. Try again in a little while.

    Please visit Discuss Disqus to learn more.”
    Is that an Iranian cyber-attack, or just Disqus back to normal ?

        1. The clip is misleading Bob in that President Bartlett later opts for a “Proportional Response” in answer to Leo’s observation that it is “What our fathers taught us.”

    2. The West Wing Series 1 Episode 3 “A Proportional Response.” An aircraft full of military doctors and personnel, including a friend of the Presidents, had been shot down by state forces / terrorists.

      Here is another clip from the situation room from Series 3 Episode 20 “We Killed Yamamoto” where a foreign leader has been identified as planning and operating attacks on the United States, but he cannot be arrested because of the evidence trail. Admiral Fitzwallace is asking that the President does not cancel the visit of this leader. This is an excellent series that I have watched back to back several times.

      (Anyone who points out what happened to the prisoners at Agincourt will be hit with a big block of cheese because we all know already and it is missing the point of the clip. 🙂

      https://youtu.be/vN8U-TSbfwE?t=50s

  41. Royal Navy deployed to protect British ships in Gulf in wake of Qassim Soleimani’s assassination

    At last, a true headline from the Telly Subbies

    I think that you will find that all the vessels of the RN Active Fleet have been deployed

    What a sad time for the RN and UK

    Corbyn will be happy though

  42. Over half of the 50,000 koala’s on Kangaroo Island have perished in bushfires.
    More than 155,000 hectares have been burnt and people have died ….https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7853577/More-20-000-koalas-wiped-Kangaroo-Island-blaze.html

    This is a shocking, devastating and catastrophic ‘natural’ disaster, surely it’s time to adjust our Foreign Aid budget and help our Commonwealth friends rather than contributing to China and India’s space prgrammes.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d4515648c35226932008bd53ba7d49c5aee9b0d2ccd4281b8940061b6cc9b824.jpg

        1. “Pensioners now are rich enough to pay for their TV licenses. That gives us the money to help India with their space programme “

        2. PT,
          Excuse me asking but is this the same johnson, who has been
          in the tory party nigh on 20 years rubber stamping all their policies, that chap ?

          2. T,
            Does not apply to lab/lib/con coalition
            politico’s, that ruling ceased four decades ago
            when the golden trough appeared.

    2. Afternoon PT,
      Many issues will NEVER be sorted all the while the electorate are reshuffling
      & supporting / voting for the lab/lib/con coalition party.
      They have actually witnessed their own species being murdered / raped / abused, watched the political cretins being reshuffled and the least guilty being made top man, mainly on rhetoric alone.
      I believe the old keep in / keep out / hold the nostrils / best of the worst will still be TOP voting mode until we as a
      race self destruct.
      Real cockroaches will survive, that is, not the HOc / HOl pin striped species.

    3. It’s a disaster, PT, but is largely due to pressure from the greeniacs to prevent controlled burning. The Aborigines understood the need for this, as did Whitey, until the Green Blob infected his judgement.

      1. PS – as at 17:01, the post above is showing one upvote. Not that I care, but if I pass the mouse over the upvote count, PTV and rik have both upvoted. Something isn’t right here…

        2. If you refresh (as I have to do every time I look at the screen, because new stuff doesn’t load properly – then the true vote count shows.

          Good evening, Geoff. I am NOT complaining, by the way! I like being refreshed. It is very refreshing…

          I’ll get me Odorono…

        3. Something isn’t right here….. its called the Disqus software platform, the only commenting software that malicious Chinese hackers ignore as they know its so crappy that it will break down even without their help

        4. Good afternoon, Boss.

          The delay in up votes showing has been going on for some weeks,
          they do show, eventually!

      2. The problem with these people is they ignore what humanity has learned over millennia to try out their substitute religion and when the inevitable disaster ensues they then blame climate change and get more recruits, it’s very clever really.

  43. The increase in the state pension age is contentious but there was no option other than to increase it

    They could possibly make the state pension be more flexible by allowing early retirement from age 60 subject to below

    a) You have an adequate private pension so that you would not be dependent on benefits if you took a reduced early state pension

    b) You could be allowed to pay in extra in order to take a full state pension at age 60

    1. The qualification period should never have been lowered. Labour reduced it from 44 years for men and 39 years for women to 30 years or all. This is when life expectancy had and still is increasing. It should have gone the other way. I believe it was raised to 35 years last year.
      Sheer lunacy.

      1. I agree that was pure lunacy. It should have done to 44 years for both men and woman

        Clearly the early legislation that allowed woman to retire 5 years earlier and pay in less was very discriminatory

        1. That was done for purely actuarial reasons. When the State Pension was introduced, the average age that men retired was 65 whilst the average age difference of married couples was 5 years, men being older. Hence women could retire at 60 so they could spend a few years with their husband. The fact that women even then tended to live longer, and hence receive more pension payments, was brushed under the carpet. The new legislation simply recognises and removes those two inequalities.

    2. We have been through all this before. I retired at 60 and drew the full state pension. When I was 73 the pension was reduced.

  45. Love this, from the Speccie.

    COFFEE HOUSE

    Ten handy phrases for bluffing your way through the coming Iran crisis

    Freddy Gray

    4 January 2020 9:42 AM

    That gathering drumbeat you hear could be the sound of World War III, or it could be 10,000 journalists still Googling facts about Iran following the assassination of Qasem Soleimani. The internet is a bluffer’s paradise, but it also means that everybody— not just the hacks — now feels a strong impulse to talk knowledgeably about the Middle East when news happens. You have to know your Shiite, as they say, your IRGC from your Kataib Hizbollah. Don’t muddle Khamenei with Khomeini. But more importantly don’t be afraid! The Spectator is here with some handy phrases to get you through any difficult Twitter spat or pub chat.

    1) Say ‘Iran’s proxies in the region’ a lot
    The word ‘proxies’ is bluffer gold-dust so sprinkle liberally. You don’t even need to know what a proxy is! The very word makes you sound like you understand what the various factions are (when you don’t), plus saying ‘region’ gives the impression you know Middle Eastern tensions (when you don’t). If pushed, or asked to expand, just say ‘look at Yemen’ or ‘What happens in Lebanon will be interesting.’

    2) ‘The real winners here, of course, are China and Russia’
    You are a bigger picture guy, so deploy this phrase when the chat gets a bit too into Iranian or Iraqi politics. Talk also about ‘great powers’, or ‘the 21st century great game’, or ‘power blocs’.

    3) ‘People forget that Iran shares a large border with Pakistan’
    Have some of that! You aren’t forgetting anything, you and your geography. Advanced bluffers can try ‘let’s not even get into the politics of Turkmenistan.’

    4) ‘This could be a Sarajevo moment’

    Now you’re talking. You understand what happens when America meddles in complicated regions (yes, regions). Not for you, the naive talk about George W. Bush and the Iraq invasion, you go back to the 1990s. After saying this, you can then talk more broadly (and vaguely) about ‘the problems of Balkanisation.’

    5) ‘Soleimani really was the mastermind behind Iran’s recent expansionism’
    Stress the word recent there: it suggests a lot of deeper learning that doesn’t exist. Refer obliquely to the 1979 revolution, and speak with sadness about the ‘the overthrow of the Shah.’

    6) ‘We have this incredibly simplistic idea of what Iranian society is like’
    You don’t, no sir! Talk about Iran’s surprisingly secular and liberal middle classes, about the cool nightclubs in Tehran as if you’ve been to them. Then throw in some dark contrasts and say ‘theocracy’ in a sombre way.

    7) ‘The Iran deal was an attempt to stop the inevitable’
    Say how difficult it is to stop a country that is absolutely determined to acquire a nuclear weapon — as though you yourself have tried. Then talk wistfully about the failure of the Obama administration, mention Donald Trump, and raise your eyebrows.

    8) ‘There is a clear tension between the hawks in Trump’s administration and his more anti-interventionist base’
    If in doubt, retreat to America. Trump won in 2016, you can say, not just because he promised to build a wall, but because he told Americans that he would end endless wars. Yadda yadda yadda.

    9) ‘In fact, without the bellicose John Bolton in his administration, Trump may be MORE likely to attack Iran’
    You appreciate the paradoxes of power. You know that John Bolton wants to bomb countries and that he resigned last year. That’ll do.

    10) ‘This doesn’t have to be a Franz Ferdinand moment’
    Let others make the facile 1914 allusions and sound more intelligent. Add that ‘the one rule of history is that it doesn’t in fact repeat itself.’ Sound enigmatic — and walk away. Who was that guy?

    https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2020/01/ten-handy-phrases-bluffing-iran-crisis/

    1. As long as you Arabs are a bunch of small tribes, you are a small people, a silly people: greedy, barbarous, and cruel.

      T.E. Lawrence:

    1. No one has been hung, Cathy. They are not curtains!

      These people were HANGED by their necks until they were dead for religious reasons.

      It is important to learn English and know the difference.

      1. You took the words right out of my fingers there! I watched a video made by her a year ago, full of minor irritations. And I had to give her a lesson in currency unions.

          4. That girl…you know the one I mean..mind you, she used a magnifying glass from what she said….

    2. O2O,
      When the fallout from the iran incident
      get here will they be allowed to form their own regiment/s

  47. Another of those ‘What if…’ essays.

    ‘Without coal Wales would be part of England’

    ‘Cardiff and Swansea are small villages, Wales has no capital and is considered a part of England like Cornwall.’
    A strange vision – but this is how some historians think Wales might have looked like if coal had not been discovered.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-50457035

    The comparison with Cornwall fails a little when Prof Martin Johnes says the Welsh language would be “much stronger” in south Wales because English-speakers would not have moved in such huge numbers. In other words, the language had remained well established and Wales would have remained very Welsh, whereas the Cornish language died out in the late 18th century.

    Perhaps the Welsh might not be as noisy as they are had there been no industrialisation…

    1. The languages remained mainly because both Wales & Cornwall were quite remote. In Cornwall the language has died out complete bar a bit of local dialect although a few people have tried to recreated it but with no proper recorded is is just an artificial invention

      In Wales the Welsh language still exist in a small way as a second language in some of the more rural parts of Wales. How many people speak it is open to debater as there has been no validated audit . Tee number are based on those that tick a box on census form which almost certainly exaggerates it

      1. Some English people have problems with English. That is why we have spell checkers and proof readers.

    2. The Welsh are somewhat bitter at having to recognise that they are a ‘Subject Nation’, having been hammered by Edward I in 1282. They have never recovered and also resent being just a Principality.

      1. Tough little buggers mind,took the highest density of castles in the world to hold them down

  48. Evening, all. Throwing money at the NHS without proper reform is a waste of time – so socialist!

      1. I thought that the wasting money bit was understood – socialism always runs out of other people’s money 🙂

    2. Top BTL comments on DTletters today

      john wo 5 Jan 2020 1:47AM
      Why is there never a shortage of NHS administrators?

      John Blair 5 Jan 2020 2:07AM
      @john wo

      They are self propagating.

      1. “A large proportion of victims of mugging in London tell us that their
        assailants are black,” he wrote. “These young people, a very small
        percentage of black youths, are not becoming criminals because they are
        black. It would indeed be an unacceptable slur to suggest that …”
        (But it helps)

  50. I must go and prepare for supper – ie, open a bottle.,

    Then watch the Franch (sic) television news – full of stuff about the endless strikes. Just heard a Frog union rep (railways) saying, “I know the public may be inconvenienced – but WE have the right to strike.”

    This coming week there will be a total blockade of refineries – another chap from the union there came up with: “I know the public may be inconvenienced – but WE have the right to strike.” And a national strike on Thursday.

    Thank God we are going away on Wednesday for two weeks on the Côte d’Azur – where it will be cold and wet, of course. Popping over to Ventimiglia market on Thursday to stock up – with the new trombetti…

    Have a jolly evening polishing your Farsi.

    A demain. The buyers are coming round for their 4th visit. Ones heart sinks each time – in case they say that they have changed their minds….

    2. I could have murdered any syndicaliste of the SNCF I came across when I was going down to Aix en Provence and the @!#! TGV was cancelled. Spending several hours at Lille Europe without either restaurant, waiting room or loos is an experience I would have happily foregone.

      1. As they come from Paris – they think the house is as cheap as chips. When they wish to sell, they’ll discover…..

    4. In 2016 I had four potential buyers change their minds. There is nothing so dispiriting. Good luck.

    5. I don’t think they would be coming round if they had changed their minds, they are hopefully feeling more and more proprietorial, eyeing up the windows for curtains…..

    6. The curious thing about these strikes and the yellow vest movement is that the usual tactic of blockading the channel ports and setting fire to British (Weslh?) lamb consignments is seemingly absent.
      That alone ought to worry Macron…. this is entirely internally directed action and he is the target.

    2. Nipper the kipper forgets all his blues
      When he gets on his chair and drifts off for a snooze.

      P.S. That’s where I’m heading.

  52. Last post (really)

    The slammer who killed a man in Villejuif is not “thought to have connections with terrorism”. Fortunately, he is dead – so that’s OK.

    Metz – France – police kill slammer knifeman (in the last hour).

    Coming to a town near you.

    1. Well, they don’t do they? Any of them – have connections with terrorism. That is not how it works in their culture and somehow the West cannot get its head around, or more likely doesn’t want to, take that concept on board. There is no point in judging islamic behaviour by the behaviour of a Christian culture. Muslims are sent out into the world as individuals, not as a band of brothers, but to ‘kill the infidel wherever ye may find him’. It is as simple as that, and the motive is to kill with the end result being death to the infidel. If I can understand that, being a bear of very little brain and as obvious as the nose on my face, why can’t they? Answer: because they don’t want to. Qu: why? That is the one they really do not want to answer.

  53. In today’s DT:-

    ‘Britain’s top civil servant looks set to stay in the UK to deliver radical civil service reforms proposed by Dominic Cummings and not move to Washington to be Boris Johnson’s new US ambassador.

    Sir Mark Sedwill, the Cabinet Secretary, is understood to have won the trust of Mr Cummings and Sir Eddie Lister, Mr Johnson’s joint chiefs of staff, since they arrived in 10 Downing St with the PM last summer.

    Sir Mark had been tipped to move to the US to replace Sir Kim Darroch who resigned as British ambassador after he personally criticised Donald Trump in leaked confidential diplomatic cables last July.

    However a senior Whitehall source said Sir Mark had “proved his worth to the new regime” and was now being urged to stay in the UK to oversee the changes in Whitehall demanded by Mr Cummings.

    The source said: “He is doing such a valuable job that they realise what a valuable job the Cabinet secretary can do for them, marshalling Cabinet, that they want him to stay.

    “He is getting on well enough with Dominic Cummings and Eddie Lister. They want to use him… they are happy for him to go to Washington in the sense that ‘if this is his dream job we will work it for you’ but do this first” ‘

    A comment I made six days ago, regarding the ‘leak’ of Honours List names and addresses:-

    ‘@ Plum-Tart 6 days ago

    I think it is interesting that the buck might stop with Sir Mark Sedwill, Cabinet Secretary, Head of the Civil Service, National Security Advisor. Clearly a very powerful man and one who was complicit in May’s capitulation to the EU. A new broom sweeps clean and all that?’

    Keep your friends close and your enemies closer? Nothing I read today changes my mind.

    2. I suppose he was going to get sacked if he didn’t toe the line, and he didn’t want that did he? Not with a seat in the Lords at stake.

      1. if he leaked classified data thats a very serious offence and no way should he get a seat in the Lords. I have worked with classified data and the rules and restrictions are very tight. Politicians though seem to be just able to ignore it. A number of times politicians have been seen with classified data on display. That is a sackable offence normally

      2. If he was to be sacked he could be more of a problem outside of the tent, rather than in. These people are Machiavellian to their core and not to be trusted. Keeping him close and on a short leash is probably the wisest option.

        1. “Too many posters think it’s ‘tow the line’…”

          That’s ‘cos they’s illiterate, innit?

          1. Could be worse you could have typed ellipses as . . . . . . Which would have provoked some to have you hanged, drawned and thirds.

    3. Klaxon Sounds

      Pun Alert

      Diesel get the job done

      with Dominic Cummings and Eddie Lister.

      1. Cummins not Cummings. Makers of serious (400-600 hp) diesel and CNG/LNG engines for heavy trucks.

        (Brian) Lister – maker of serious sports cars.

    4. Did they ever find out which civil servant or politician stabbed that ambassador in the back by leaking those confidential diplomatic cables? I don’t follow the careers of civil servants, but was Mark Sedwill the Head of the Civil Service at the time and did he bother looking very hard to find out the guilty party? If he is pro-EU then he might not be the best choice as American ambassador. Or even as a street sweeper if he has been sabotaging our path to leaving the EU. There must be far better men or women out there. Such as Lord Marbury.

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c708722628b20ced23438e89059bb4c1402e5db994fe7f266a683000142bc349.jpg

      1. The civil service would have done what it always does when one of it’s own comes under fire.

        Close ranks, lock shields. The responsible fellow is probably on full pay, gardening leave until it all blows over and head one of the pointless monoliths comes along.

        1. Yes, that is the standard response on many levels for the civil service, but this was something different. They had one of the former heads of the civil service and intelligence chiefs being interviewed at the time, and he said that this type of thing “just does not happen.” That there would have been a very small number of people at the top who had access to these papers. They did not leave them out for the office temp to photocopy.

          So someone at the top was out to get the ambassador or to smear President Trump by calling him incompetent. This was not a normal leak by a mid-level flunky tired of being massively overpaid, with only future promotions and a large pension to look forward to if he kept his head down and obeyed his masters.

    1. Tony I cant view your links to the Guardian unless I donate to Hamas ( via the Guardian ) so either post part of the article on here or post a link to the page 3 girl in the Sun ( my first preference anyway )

        2. Is that the same girl you posted before? Nice to know you are in a stable relationship….:-)

  55. I am disappearing early again tonight. Have a lot to catch up on. Have a good evening, everyone.

    1. “29-year-old Ali was jailed after going on a crime spree shortly after
      arriving in the UK with his fiance, a British woman who had met the
      defendant while on holiday in his native Trinidad & Tobago,
      Guildford Crown Court heard.

      Two weeks before his wedding day and while on a temporary visa in the
      UK, Ali had followed a 15-year-old girl who was in her uniform while on
      the way to school on September 9 last year and made sexual remarks,
      prosecutors said.”

      A word missing from the report.
      “Deported”.

      1. I have much faith in our judiciary. You may recall the case of Ehsan Abdulaziz, the Saudi millionaire who said he ‘accidentally tripped and penetrated’ a teenage girl and was cleared of rape. Well – the judge in that case is now a High Court judge. Lovely chap – has a second home in this village, and sings in my choir from time to time. Sigh….

    2. Deliberate provocation to announce their superiority over indigenous laws and standards of behaviour. The problem lies with successive governments that have kowtowed to the islamists. Who is holding the whip hand over our governing bodies? Saudi and their money? Are we so in debt to these people that our elites have to obey their every command?

    5. Should have put him back in prison for another month before passing sentence with time not to be applied to time served.
      Then again and again until he gets the message.

    1. The question is – has Warburton changed the ingredients of the bread to make it halal, or have Muslims certified that the bread always did comply with their requirements?

      3. Wait for Warburton’s next published accounts to see if there is a large figure against ” inducements “.

    2. I’ve never bought any commercially made ‘bread’. I always bake my own superior product.

        1. Probably because, as a gourmand (and apprentice trencherman), I am averse to eating sub-standard produce.

          2. Thanks for playing the cat’s paw. I’ve been pondering that for the last hour.

          5. I would never be so pretentious as to claim that I am a gourmet. My brother has probably forgotten more about fine dining than I ever learnt.

      2. #metoo. You prolly (©BT) won’t approve of the fact that i use a breadmaker, but I don’t care. The Panasonic ‘Croustina’ makes wonderfully crusty bread. It should – it cost enough. I use their recipe for (supposedly) sourdough, which involves making a culture with flour, water, dried yeast, sugar, water and balsamic vinegar, and leaving it for twelve hours. I know it’s not quite the real thing, but frankly I don’t care. The end result is devoid of preservatives, and beats the shonet out of anything I can buy in the supermarkets. I bought a food slicer, slice it after a few hours, and freeze the result. I have learned by experience to keep my fingers out of the way of the blade….

        1. Good grief, Geoff. You’ve told me twice, in one post, that you don’t care! :•)

          I believe that you DO care, about making good quality bread, at home, that you enjoy. Bravo.

          I don’t knock bread-making machines at all. I’m just happy when anyone makes their own bread from good ingredients. After all, a bread-making machine is only an alternative to an oven: they both do the same job.

          3. Cheers, Grizz. I’m aware that ‘proper’ sourdough culture is a living thing which can last for generations. Me – I can’t be arsed. I don’t have any pets, and I can’t see myself taking my sourdough culture for a walk…The Panasonic recipe produces enough culture for slightly more than two loaves. I’m supposed to be able to store the remaining culture in the fridge until needed, but the first loaf, when the culture is twelve hours old, is far superior.

          4. It’s funny you should say that, Geoff. My brother, the chef, is always going on about sourdough this and sourdough that and he’s bought me books on the topic. I’ve tried to make my own ‘culture’ and had a 95% failure rate. Also, like you, I cannot be faffed to tend to this stuff. It’s one thing keeping and looking after a culture if you intend to bake the stuff more than twice a week and most of us don’t.

            Fear not, though, there are much easier alternatives than can give you a more than reasonable sourdough-like flavour. One is a French pain de campagne recipe which has a one-off starter made by combining 100g of rye flour with 100g of water, mixing into a paste, covering and leaving in a warm kitchen for between 24–48 hours, then adding it, in its entirety, to a normal bread mix.

            The other is my overnight dough which entails you mixing the dough (you can do this in your machine), then switching the machine off overnight whilst leaving it in a cool place. The next day switch the machine back on and simply progress as normal.

            What a lot of people do not understand is that the flavour of bread (the one thing that makes our mouths water) comes from just two ingredients: the flour and the water (the yeast is just a raising agent and the salt just seasons it). Experienced bakers, down the ages, have discovered that the longer the flour and water are in contact with each other, their nature changes (on a chemical level) and this marriage, called an ‘autolyse’, develops a deeper flavour the longer it is kept.

            I could easily mix my dough and bake the loaf all on the same day; but leaving it overnight to slowly rise first gives you much more flavour with the same ingredients.

          5. Cheers, Grizz. Agreed. Some sourdough starters are based on natural yeasts, present in the environment. I can do a quick loaf in the machine, which involves a small amount of butter, takes 4 hours, and it’s… OK. If I do the ‘sourdough’ thing, it’s vastly better. I’ve given a few loaves away, and the general consensus is that they’re very good. Speaking of marriage, I use Waitrose Canadian and Very Strong Bread Flour for the culture, but tend to finish each loaf with Marriage’s seeded, malted, bread flour (thanks, Ocado). It works a treat…

            https://www.theideaskitchen.co.uk/recipe/simple-sourdough-bread-recipe/

            This is today’s effort, with the balance of the starter left over from a few days ago,,,
            https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/602e1e8151e66b4adfb242402a588397a0bd80662742d80c58997ff6f32f875e.jpg

          6. Ooh…The middle classes at war !

            I would get me popcorn out but it would probably frowned upon as an American import. :o)

  59. Just posted the following comment on this Telegraph article:-
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/01/05/touch-colour-casts-new-light-dickensian-lives-ordinary-victorians/

    Dickensian lives of ordinary Victorian’s?
    Please DT, the times Dickens based his stories on were his childhood in pre-Victorian England.
    Though there was still much to be done, the conditions at the time these photographs were taken would have been vastly improved from his childhood.

    Can someone advise me why it’s been removed?

    1. The photographs of Victorian street life among the poor and low paid were taken during the mid-1870s by the Edinburgh born photographer John Thomson

      “Taken during the mid-1870s”? Charles Dickens died in 1870.

      1. It has long annoyed the crap out of me that the Victorians are depicted as cruel and oppressive in their attitudes to the poor.
        The main sources of this presumption are the writings of Dickens, largely based on his own experiences as a child in pre-Victorian times and the evidence of the diverse Royal Commissions set up to investigate the worst examples of Industry, Housing and Social Conditions so that legislation could be enacted to abolish the excesses.
        But even before the Commissions were set up, legislation on the improvement of conditions was already being formulated and enacted, but because no one bothered recording the best practice, people rather lazily assume that the conditions recorded were the norm rather than the excesses.

    2. They probably don’t like facts disturbing their preconceived opinions. The Graun has done the same to me a few times.

  61. Did you see …

    BBC2 last night Clive James …Postcard from Sydney…. followed by- Postcard from London, concluding with
    When Mary Beard met Clive James. ?

    I’m a big fan of the ‘kid from Kagorah’ and viewed all three programmes earlier on Youtube….well worth a repeat
    performance..

    1. I caught the 2nd 1/2 of Sydney (because I didn’t know it was on) & the whole of London. Excellent viewing.

      2. Is it anything like the “Letters from America” by thingy? er, Alastair Cook(e?)
        We are reduced to post cards now? Better than tweets I suppose, but “postcards” always suggests those “wish you were here” sentiments…. not sure I’d want to be there. London, certainly not. I only speak English and a little German. I’d never survive.

    2. Could that be Corbyn in the pale blue outfit & flat cap in the middle of the upper row? He’s looking backwards.

    2. Whoever he was personally he was nonetheless a senior military figure in a country’s armed forces and it sets a dangerous precedent to suggest that a country’s military leadership is now a legitimate target even in peacetime.

      If the US now says this is okay, it makes the world a far more dangerous place. How can they complain now if Iranian agents kill a US general or admiral somewhere in retaliation?

      1. If a US general was in Iran illegally and attempting to overthrow the regime by force, don’t you think that the Iranians would have a good case for killing him? I know that Soleimani was not in the US but he certainly wasn’t in Iran but in, and working against, a country that is allied to the US and against US forces there. In this case, there is a fine line between assassination, which would be illegal, and military action to kill him, which would be legal, but there will never be agreement as to which applied. We do not know all the facts behind the decision to kill the general and probably never will as they involve sensitive intelligence, so let’s not rush to judgement.

  64. Sums up the madness nicely

    “Now let me see if I’ve got this right:
    Iranian ‘refugees’ are
    protesting about the supposed murder of one of the leading lights of a
    government they fled to Britain to escape?
    Right, OK, I can see that, no conflict whatsoever.
    Oh…. Err…”

      1. Just proves they are economic migrants. Let’s hope our security services are keeping a close eye on them…

    2. I got a text about a tax rebate the other day. It was definitely a scam and not from HMRC as claimed.

      1. Maybe, but here’s another perspective on CK (sparing you the Pygmalion reference):

        The girl, Maggie, blossomed in a mud puddle. She grew to be a most rare and wonderful production of a tenement district, a pretty girl. None of the dirt of Rum Alley seemed to be in her veins. The philosophers up-stairs, down-stairs and on the same floor, puzzled over it. When a child, playing and fighting with gamins in the street, dirt disguised her. Attired in tatters and grime, she went unseen. There came a time, however, when the young men of the vicinity said: “Dat Johnson goil is a puty good looker.”

        Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, by Stephen Crane (1893)
        http://www.gutenberg.org/files/447/447-h/447-h.htm

  69. By chance, I stumbled across this post on a US forum. I was amazed at how many unused insults are available to direct against the UK media so offer them to NTTL posters. By comparison, even our most vitriolic barbs seem like the breaths of babies.

    “ Trump goes down as the greatest President in American history for having the basic capacity to recognize that the “news” media consists of a bunch of high-paid liars, work averse slackers, ret@rded monkey brains, agit-prop specialists, self-absorbed nobodies, historical revisionists, uninformed yassoles, group think martinets, hatchet job practitioners, ignorant schmucks, useful idiots, overeducated imbeciles, mouthy punks, nefarious ninnyhammers, nattering nerds, discombobulated dweebs, grinning goofballs, yammering yobs, blathering bullhorns, Bolshevik blowhards, snakes in the grass, shameless charlatans, pathetic perthons, moronic mind readers, cloying creeps, glib fishwives, moral dregs, mentally incontinent zhlubs, radical pscyhos, scolding school marms, annoying putzes, haughty bozos, dreary drones, and two-bit drama queens”.

      1. Mistress Bloodaxe, it is Enri, the eighth of that name, not to be confused with that upstart English King.

  71. Something that just occurred to me that I haven’t mentioned to anybody else, did anyone else see the ‘moonbow’ a couple of nights ago, or was it just a local phenomenon of my locality?

    1. May I fiddle P-T

      Grey squirrels Tree Rats under threat in Britain as new plan considered to eradicate them in favour of the red squirrel….

      Sorted

      1. All squirrels are rodents. Do you have black squirrels? We started to see them move in near our old house, driving the greys out….

      2. I love grey squirrels and welcome them into my garden with nuts and seeds.

        As for gene editing? . Mad scientists will be the death of everything and everyone. Although I could recommend certain politicians who might benefit…

    5. Any other such eradication plans, in favour of the indigeneous population, in the pipeline?

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