Sunday 9 August: The Government’s aversion to risk is fostering a climate of fear

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/08/08/letters-governments-aversion-risk-fostering-climate-fear/

658 thoughts on “Sunday 9 August: The Government’s aversion to risk is fostering a climate of fear”

    2. ‘Morning, C1. Overcast here, 19° and a strong breeze. In other words a blessed (but only temporary) relief from yesterday’s sweat-bath of a very humid and insufferable 33°. On duty today on Ashdown Forest, so not looking forward to a predicted 30° and a minority of our many visitors with illegal barbeques and the huge fire risk that they bring.

          2. So, what you are saying (© Cathy Newman) is that BT is on a different planet.

        3. I’ll see what I can do C1, but please remember that A A Milne’s Hundred Acre Wood is actually Five Hundred Acre Wood, so I may be a bit pushed to save all of it…

  2. SIR – While I would feel quite safe driving at 85 mph on a motorway alongside cars travelling at a similar speed (Letters, August 2), I would not feel safe doing so alongside HGVs travelling at (sensibly) 60  mph.

    The speed-differential factor should be considered when setting speed limits on motorways.

    Nick Jones
    Cardiff

    Minor point, Nick Jones – all HGVs are governed to a maximum of 56MPH, not 60.* Thus, the speed-differential is in fact greater than your letter suggests.

    *Unless the driver has selected neutral on a downhill stretch, in which case 60 – or more – would be possible.

    1. Nick Jones has a false sense of safety. It is a lot safer passing a lorry while travelling at 85mph than trying to do so at just over 60mph. It is also safer to slow up to 40mph, so the lorry can safely overtake, and let it get far away as soon as possible. Travelling at the same speed as a lorry is very dangerous.

      The real danger of governed HGVs is that when one is slipstreaming the one behind, which then gets a speed boost, pulls out to overtake, but then loses speed as soon as in the overtaking lane. These two lorries can then hog two carriageways for many miles, blocking the view for anyone behind, with the real risk of a pile-up if the stream of traffic has to slow down suddenly (for example to swerve past someone broken down on a “smart” motorway.

  3. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/opinion/2020/08/08/TELEMMGLPICT000236618501_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqM37qcIWR9CtrqmiMdQVx7HHLllpaLsYQtyZjj0c4gEE.jpeg?imwidth=680
    Meal planning: In the Kitchen (1923) by the Russian painter Zinaida Serebriakova

    SIR – How I agree with Marianne Jones. My parents were not well off but, as a result of their prudent budgeting, there was always healthy food on 
the table.

    I trained as a domestic science teacher in the late Fifties, when food rationing had finished but money was still short. A number of the subjects covered (such as housecraft) are irrelevant today, but one is not: cookery.

    The subject name was changed to home economics, and for the majority of my career I taught cookery, food and nutrition to secondary school students. This involved planning, preparing and cooking dishes that were healthy, balanced and cost-effective.

    Then the subject name was changed to food technology. Assignments included: “Design a pizza for the supermarket shelf.” I quit teaching.

    Anne Savage
    Malvern, Worcestershire

    Come to NoTTLerland for recipe ideas!

    1. I think I would go down with the screaming hab-dabs if served with fish & beetroot on the same plate.

    2. Given the state of Russian in 1923, I doubt any kitchen – bar, possibly that of Lenin and his apparatchiks’ – would hold such an array of food.
      Morning, C1.

        1. I thought they looked more like rudd.

          In Germany the pike-perch is known as Zander & is utterly delicious simply fried.

        2. My best guess is that they are roach, due to the silvery scales and red fins. A perusal through my book on fishes shows them to be the closest match. Rudd don’t have silvery sides and perch are much fatter.

          Moreover, roach are a favourite foodstuff in eastern Russian and Mongolia, as shown in this video:

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zmWirul-k0

    1. Yes the old XR green climate change brigade hate the oil industry and I suppose that is now feeding though in the brainwashed younger generation fresh from mind bending University.
      I have noticed that big oil is now becoming big green, will the green generation change their opinion about the oil industry companies when they realise that they are just as greedy and polluting to the planet in their pursuit of creating green energy? That will no doubt be far more expensive than the energy from oil that it supplants and leave us handicapped against the likes of China still burning coal and using oil to supply us with everything.
      Which makes me wonder if all these green activists weren’t being funded by the Chinese all along.

      1. What I find disturbing is the way such people are quite happy to watch the West be put at a huge disadvantage vs the rest of the world.

        I’m no chemist, but one might have thought it should be possible to design a solution, like a catalytic converter, that would deal with CO2 NO particulates emissions to be stored in the vehicle, possibly in a form that they can be discharged into a collection point at the same time that cars etc are refilled.

          1. That’s correct, it is a natural part of the life cycle. ALL animals on the planet (including 7·8 billion humans) that live by respiration breath out vast quantities of the stuff every couple of seconds or so. How do you go about curtailing the CO₂ that emerges in this natural way?

          2. You plant more greenery. Why don’t the greenies promote this? (The Scottish hillsides are not completely natural grouse moors. There used to be trees.)

          3. How can they plant more greenery when they keep needing to build more houses for the increasing population (all of whom will breathe out CO2, of course)?

      2. Bob, you will remember that the CND admitted (finally) to being funded by the USSR.

        I find it surprising that none of the senior churchmen at the top of CND ever knew that.

        Could we eventually discover that the various organisations dedicated to the downfall of this country might be funded by the Chinese?

    2. Classic!

      ‘Morning, Sos. On a more serious note, he may come to eat his misguided greenie words when people finally come to realise that fossil fuels still have a part to play. Before this happens, however, it is going to be a very rough ride until reality and common sense finally prevail.

    3. Sound like this zero carbon bollox is going to go the same way as the dotcom boom and bust.

      1. The “green” executives will make fortunes and the rest of us will get the bust.

  8. Morning all

    SIR – Jeremy Warner discusses risk-aversion and the dreadful consequences of a rudderless Government.

    As a result of these two problems, a fog of fear has descended on Britain. This can only be dispelled by decisive and courageous leadership – but I doubt it will be.

    Peter Taylor

    Tipton St John, Devon

    SIR – We appear to be governed by a group of politicians who do not understand science, statistics or normal human behaviour.

    In turn, this coterie is advised by a team of scientists who do not understand politics and the presentation of statistics to the public.

    Consequently, the Government makes up policy on the hoof and conveys it through confusing and often conflicting diktats.

    No wonder many people are worried and feel unsafe.

    Bryan Parker

    Twickenham, Middlesex

    1. SIR – One wonders exactly how the Government is going to enforce the quarantine measures being imposed on those returning from Belgium.

      When I leave Belgium, I arrive at Calais in France. Nobody at border control asks me where I have been. Consider, too, the hundreds of motorcyclists from Britain travelling in Europe. Some cover up to seven countries. When they return, however, they can just say they have been in France: there is no way of checking.

      Nobody will be honest as nobody wants to hide away for 14 days. The only solution is a blanket ban on all travel except in an emergency.

      Chris Balderston

      Zepperen, Limburg, Belgium

      SIR – In a Radio 4 interview on Friday morning, the owner of a bridalwear business said they would lose a five-figure sum and disappoint many brides if they had to quarantine after a holiday to Europe.

      There is a simple solution: don’t go. Everyone has had to sacrifice something this year. Why is an overseas vacation seen as an right?

      David Curtis-Brignell

      Cuckfield, West Sussex

  9. Breaking News – Exeter Rugby club have had to remove their Native Indian mascot because its offensive to Native American Indians, their supporters are saying that this is just another scalp for the politically correct .

    2. Morning Bob, I read a report about this over a week ago, it said after much thought the mascot should go. The fans can stay complete with war bonnets, pow wow drums and tomahawks. The name Exeter Chiefs can stay as well because addressing people as “chief” turns out to be a common Devonian greeting. Devonian Nottlers will be sure to confirm or deny this fact
      In other words, the rugby club has only gone a little bit woke! The left are not happy.

      https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/rugby/rugby-union/club-rugby/exeter-chiefs-name-change-native-american-big-chief-mascot-racist-premiership-rugby-a9644556.html

      1. When I first started visiting Devon some 50 years ago the most common greeting was “OK, my Loverr”. Plymouth being a naval port an all. Being a heterosexual, it was rather disconcerting being addressed by chaps in such a fashion…

      3. Rather fortuitous that the Exeter club was not located in London where, “watcher, cock!” is a common London greeting. A team called the “Exeter Cocks” might well feel very cheered and much encouraged by the spectators shouting “Come on, you Cocks!!”. However the mind boggles as to what emblem they might have on their shirts.

        1. They could be twinned with a Scottish town, I understand Hen is used for ladies.

  10. Morning again

    SIR – I went to church last Sunday. It was glorious: plenty of space for social distancing, doors wide open to let in fresh air – and not a mask in sight.

    Now, however, they are compulsory. Could someone in the Government explain why I can eat a meal in a pub or restaurant without a mask but have to wear a stifling piece of damp cloth in order to attend Communion?

    After the callous way in which local lockdowns were announced just before Eid, it seems our Government does not understand that faith is essential for helping many through this nightmarish time.

    Janetta Davies

    Reading, Berkshire

    1. 322270+ up ticks,
      Morning Epi,
      Janetta should be run through the department of submission again, meantime give her a commons canteen
      menu to study the politico’s swear by it in the house & it should show her the route the party is taking quite clearly. .

  11. PETER HITCHENS: Should the woman who said the IRA had a right to kill children really be a Baroness?
    *
    *
    *
    https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/08/08/20/31721762-8607739-image-a-101_1596913641698.jpg
    https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/08/08/20/31721762-8607739-image-m-100_1596913636152.jpg
    Its newspaper, The Next Step, said at the time of the 1993 Warrington bomb, which killed three-year-old Johnathan Ball and 12-year-old Tim Parry: ‘We defend the right of the Irish people to take whatever measures are necessary in their struggle for freedom’
    *
    *
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8607739/PETER-HITCHENS-woman-said-IRA-right-kill-children-really-Baroness.html

    2. 322270+ up ticks,
      Morning C,
      In keeping with today’s political climate very much so.

  12. 322270+up ticks,
    Morning Each,
    ” The governance aversion to risk is fostering climate fear”
    To my mind this governance party is fostering fear in general in a successfully running campaign,truth be told instructions appertaining to climate issues come straight from the pillow department.

    I cannot bring myself to believe that this party operating under a tory banner
    have gone into complete reverse over the night of 24/6/2016 from being
    pro eu rubber stampers, no, I do believe we are being seriously chastised
    and taught a lesson in submittance.
    ..
    On the 24/6/2016 the ovid broke into a very cosy club set up to cater for political father to son self interest before Country lifestyles, there was NO way we were going to exit without an ongoing fight.

    Your own sense should tell you that running the lab/lib/con same political rat pack through the ballot booth expecting a complete reversal is ludicrous you do NOT wash out treachery that has been in place for decades.

    I believe we are going through a period of adjustment that is putting the
    head of domestic staff over & above the family, as in, we are being taught
    to know our place in the NEW ORDER.

    1. I hope the pup in the washing machine is a toy. I love the expression on the dog’s face.

  15. We watched (on Iplayer) yesterday Surviving the Virus: My Brother and Me. Powerfil, moving and informative, definitely recommended.

  16. Morning, Campers.
    Sunday Tellygraff:
    “Schools will be last to close if second wave strikes, Boris Johnson vows”
    But … but … we were told, come what may, that there would be no second lock down.
    That presents me with a dilemma; who do I disbelieve the most? The DT or the British government?

    1. Someone on the radio earlier this morning was predicting another full lockdown in about a month’s time. I was half asleep and not really paying much attention. All I can say is – good luck with that in trying to enforce it. I suspect that the generally silent majority will remain silent no longer.

      Edit: ‘Moaning, Annie

    2. Plans for the second lockdown at the start of September are already underway in Europe, I’m told.
      UK was about a week behind last time round?

    3. Someone on the radio earlier this morning was predicting another full lockdown in about a month’s time. I was half asleep and not really paying much attention. All I can say is – good luck with that in trying to enforce it. I suspect that the generally silent majority will remain silent no longer.

      Edit: ‘Moaning, Annie

      1. Well the people who never emerged from the first lockdown are really going to regret not getting out and enjoying a bit of sunny weather and meeting a few fellow human beings.

      2. Morning Hugh ….also a suggestion that all people who are obese will be required to stay indoors in a lockdown. These mad scientists and politicians are treating the populace as laboratory animals. It is time for them to come to their senses or stand aside. If plasma from a recovered Covid-19 victim can help those suffering from the virus, surely that indicates that having had the virus indicates that the condition provides some immunity. The medics are very reluctant to give us the good news as shewn by their dilatory approval of medicines which are now cutting down the death rate.

        1. I’m now beginning enjoy this: will the obese self certify and isolate themselves or will a GP certificate be required if they dare to trundle out to the post box?
          Do the obese even view themselves as being a mite overweight?
          If any have such a flash of self knowledge, how do the chubsters get the certificate? Knock frantically on the barred and bolted surgery doors? Will those without a pooter or mobile phone be left in limbo? Will a phone call lead to furtively collecting a scrap of paper from the surgery lobby on the one morning when the doors are unlocked for a couple of hours? Will social services pay for the carers to spend even longer chasing fruitlessly around?
          The possibilities for confusion and frustration are endless.

          1. Forgot to mention that it will also include 60% on policemen and 100% pcos. :-))

        2. also a suggestion that all people who are obese will be required to stay indoors in a lockdown.
          Well that’s half the nurses in the NHS and some doctors and most of the admin staff probably. Will the next slogan be Medics stay indoors and save the public.

        3. I have put on weight during my enforced captivity! Even going out with the dog and starting to ride again hasn’t shifted it 🙁

      3. They will make an example of a few white people, and the rest will fall into line.

          2. Do you think they will find the time? I’d heard that their new fave is vegan hate crime…

          5. Come on, Nursey, you know full well that a scrumped apple tastes much nicer than a bought one. 🤣

  20. Supporters of lockdown cannot bear the thought that Sweden has got it right

    It’s not hard to see why politicians around the world need Sweden to fail and to fail spectacularly

    Ross Clarke, ST 09/08/20.

    Sweden has fulfilled the same role during the Covid-19 crisis as Argentina fulfils in every World Cup. It’s the team which everyone – apart from the natives themselves, naturally – wants to get beaten. This has been especially true in the liberal US press, which has taken time off from berating Donald Trump to publish lengthy pieces on the supposed failure of the Swedish approach. “The Swedish government didn’t enforce social distancing,” began the Washington Monthly, for example, in May when Sweden briefly had the world’s highest death rate from the disease. “It’s now paying the price – in lives and GDP.”

    Even neighbouring Nordic countries – normally peas in a pod – have taken against Sweden. When Denmark and Norway reopened their borders to the world they initially left out Sweden. Sweden’s chief epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, who has acquired a rock star image among some of his countrymen, is seen as a maverick by many abroad.

    It’s not hard to see why politicians, officials and many others around the world need Sweden to fail and to fail spectacularly. If the Scandinavian country is not seen to suffer for its failure to lock down its population and close down much of its economy then citizens in other countries are going to start asking awkward questions.

    For a while it looked as if Sweden might well fail spectacularly. While other, locked-down countries saw their rates of new infection plummet and gradually unlocked, infections in Sweden remained stubbornly high. Economic projections suggested that Sweden was going to suffer a deep recession anyway. All those needless deaths, it seemed, and Swedes were still going to lose their jobs.

    Then came July, and a reminder that lockdown is no long-term solution to a pandemic. Infection rates began to creep up in countries that had locked down – first Spain, then Germany, France, Belgium. Some have been going into selective second lockdowns. All they had really done by incarcerating their populations for weeks was sweep the virus under the carpet for another day. Sweden, by contrast, has as yet seen no second wave.

    Meanwhile, the Swedish economy has surprised on the upside. Last week, its economy was revealed to have shrunk by 8.6 per cent in the second quarter – cataclysmic by normal standards, of course, yet in the circumstances it counts as a triumph. GDP across the Eurozone shrank by 12 per cent, with Spain’s economy plunging by 18 per cent quarter on quarter. Britain’s GDP figures won’t be out until next Wednesday, but we will be doing very well if we don’t out-shrink Spain. At one point the Office of Budgetary Responsibility was pencilling in a 35 per cent plunge for the UK in the second quarter.

    There was no way that Sweden, with many of its neighbours’ economies closed, was going to escape without a sharp contraction. Volvo, for example, suffered a 38 per cent fall in sales as showrooms across Europe were closed. Nevertheless, there is an intriguing possibility that Sweden could be just about the only developed country to manage to get through the Covid-19 crisis without technically suffering a recession – defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth. Alone in Europe, it managed to grow its economy by 0.4 per cent in the first quarter. One after another, Swedish companies have produced results which have exceeded expectations. There have been few bankruptcies. What’s more, having kept factories and other workplaces open throughout the crisis, the Swedes have an advantage in the recovery. They don’t have a workforce which has lost the habit of working, which enjoyed weeks off in the spring sunshine and is now reluctant to return.

    But was it worth all those deaths? The case against Sweden rests on comparisons with its neighbours, Denmark and Norway. On that basis, Sweden looks to have come off badly – its 571 deaths per million residents seems reckless compared with figures from Denmark (106) or Norway (47). But then, are Denmark and Norway the right comparators? Sweden has much more significant urban areas than Norway, and it has a high number people who take skiing holidays in the Alps – which seems to have been the seat, or one of the main seats, of Covid-19 in Europe. Significantly, Sweden has a lower death rate than many European countries that did go into full lockdown, such as Italy (582), Spain (610), the UK (683) and Belgium (850).

    But even if Sweden has suffered a relatively high number of deaths to date, that is not the end of the story. As John Giesecke, Sweden’s former chief epidemiologist and adviser to the World Health Organisation (WHO), argued in April we won’t really be able to judge how different countries have performed until the crisis has reached some kind of conclusion, either through a vaccine or the natural decline of the virus. His belief is that, eventually, comparable countries will have similar death rates, but the misery – both health and economic – will be spread out far longer in some than others.

    Were an effective vaccine to become available this autumn then the suppression strategy proposed in Professor Neil Ferguson’s paper of March 16 and followed by most developed countries will seem wise. But just how long are governments prepared to suppress their economies? The longer a vaccine takes to arrive – and there is no guarantee that a vaccine will ever be approved, even if early trials have been promising – then the more that the Swedish approach will seem appealing.

    The disappointing news from Sweden’s point of view is that antibody tests suggest that the country is still far from achieving herd immunity. Their Public Health Agency revealed in June that even in Stockholm, the worst-affected place in the country, only 10 per cent of the population had antibodies – way short of the 60 to 80 per cent which our own chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, suggested would be needed for herd immunity.

    Not all scientists are agreed on this, however. Last week, modelling in a yet-to-be published paper by an international group of scientists led by Gabriella Gomes of Strathclyde University claimed that the 60 per cent is only applicable where herd immunity is gained through a vaccine programme given randomly to a population. If a virus is allowed to spread naturally, on the other hand, it will affect the more susceptible people first (people who either have fewer natural defences or who have more contacts). Once this group has been infected, the virus finds it much harder to spread and herd immunity will be reached at a much lower level – when between 10 and 20 per cent of the population have been infected. If that is right, Sweden might be far closer to herd immunity than previously believed.

    In the meantime, Sweden finds itself with unfamiliar friends and unfamiliar enemies. Thanks to its generous welfare policies it is more often a country praised on the Left and condemned by economic liberals. Now it is now the other way around. Ultimately Sweden might just end up pleasing both groups – if, thanks to a less-damaged economy, it emerges as the only country able to avoid deep welfare cuts.

    On the whole, I’d rather be in Onslunda than Ormskirk or Okehampton!

    1. Comical isn’t it, how Sweden can normally do no wrong in the lefty play-book, and now suddenly they’re the bad guys.

      1. I have to say, at the other end of the scale, it is with reluctance I have to admit they may have got it right this time!

    2. Ultimately Sweden might just end up pleasing both groups – if, thanks to
      a less-damaged economy, it emerges as the only country able to avoid
      deep welfare cuts.

      Which in turn will ensure it becomes a magnet for gimmegrants. The UK might even lose some of the Somali benefit tourists it gained from the Swedes, Danes and the Netherlands.

  22. Covid-19: only half of Britons would definitely have vaccination. 9 August 2020.

    Only half the population of Britain definitely would accept being vaccinated against Covid-19. That is the shock conclusion of a group of scientists and pollsters who have found that only 53% of a test group of citizens said they would be certain or very likely to allow themselves to be given a vaccine against the disease if one becomes available.

    This point was backed by Gideon Skinner, research director at Ipsos Mori. “Almost a quarter of 16-34-year-olds are saying they’re unlikely to get vaccinated for Covid-19 if one becomes available. That is deeply concerning and should serve as an important staging post for the government to combat misperceptions about vaccinations, particularly among young people.”

    Cue massive propaganda campaign for Bill Gates vaccine!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/09/only-half-of-britons-would-definitely-have-covid-19-vaccination

    1. I don’t have the flu jab, and especially now the manufacturers of the covid vaccine have been awarded immunity (see what I did there?) from product liability, they can forget it.

    2. I suspect that many people will wait to see what the side effects are before jumping at a vaccine that is being rushed into production.
      I believe Covid has similarities to the common cold, just imagine if the Covid wonder vaccine has the side effect of making the common cold equally deadly and as transmissible.

      1. Having had, and suffered terribly from, a ‘flu jab – I would be extremely chary about any “new” vaccine, especially one being peddled by the present collection of clowns posing as a government

        1. We’ve both had the ‘flu jab for a few years now, with no ill effects, touch wood.
          It hasn’t worked every year, but I’ll continue, given my relative pneumonia risk. M-i-L had a really bad reaction years ago and hasn’t had one since and neither has she had ‘flu. Perhaps the reaction gave her some sort of blanket immunity.

          Interestingly, after my most recent bout of pneumonia, the new doctor suggested I get those jabs too, I wasn’t even aware there were such things. The first one passed without problems. Next is due in a couple of months and the ‘flu one in November.

          3. A friend of ours was sent to death’s door with the pneumonia jab three years ago. Thanks to a swift response from the paramedics and following hospitalisation she recovered. As far as the ‘flu jab is concerned she is, and always has been, a ‘conscientious objector’, as I am. These things make me very ill, starting with the smallpox vaccination at a young age which almost propelled me prematurely into the next life.

          4. First jab or second?
            There’s always a risk with these things, I’m told my March episode nearly killed me, so I’ll take that risk if it staves off another bout of pneumonia.

          5. The usual cause of death in the case of Covid19 is, I think, the lungs being flooded out. Not dissimilar to pneumonia… I’ve only had one pneumonia jab and that was some years ago no. I think more immunisation variants have been added to the mix since I had it.
            If offered, I would take the offer up.

          6. At one point I was getting the impression that the treatments were doing more harm than good, particularly with respect to the lung problems.

          7. I’m not really an objector – more a “can’t be bothered” – I didn’t have the shingles jab, so got shingles as my punishment. I’ve never had the flu jab, and didn’t need the TB one as a teenager because I reacted to the heaf test. I had the smallpox one as a baby. I have had the Yellow Fever, Tetanus and Typhoid, & Hep A ones.

      2. As I’ve said before, let the BAMEs have the vaccination first, seeing as how vulnerable they are to the plague. Bleeding heart liberal, me.

        1. If they get it first, long before de honkies, you can be fairly confident it works as intended.

    3. 322270+ up ticks,
      Morning AS,
      To put a realistic view on it the governance party is on a win/win outcome whatever, if it was a success then they pocket the brown envelope a tad easier than if it goes
      tits up, even then they win via freeing up property wholesale to accommodate a much more submissive incoming replacement unit.
      Tell me again judging by the result shown on the 24/6/2016 how close is the insane to the sane,

    4. If he’s making one, fair play to him. Makes a change from polio I suppose.

      However, vaccination will always be doubted because we are told it is good and denied the information. You see, the state doesn’t like us to actually know anything, just to obey it.

  23. 322270+ up ticks,
    Morning R,
    Appertaining to your post last night and in the nicest
    possible way you say you are right come of late what of us in the real UKIP ( NOT the current one) who have been rarely wrong in the last 27 years,
    I have been warning of the whole political bent treacherous shebang since feeling horrified on hearing
    the cry that rent the air on the 24/6/16 “WE have won
    leave it to the tories”

    The may, leadsome,gove, johnson ALL temporary Equity
    card holders acting out the leadership farce, mogg, etc all
    down as “saviours”, saviours my left nipple.

    How many times did I have to show “nige” show us his true colours, we had his number when he supported bolton & falsely condemned Gerard Batten.

    After keeping the UKIP seat in brussels on quitting the party he went into a fully torie supporting / vote splitting
    mode.

    I believe there will be a multitude in the near future denying many more than three times ever acknowledging
    the lab/lib/con & saying ” are they political parties then ?

  24. Why are they saying that Britain is one of the fattest countries in Europe, I always assumed Germany and Belgium were.

    If Britain is , how and why?

    1. ‘Morning, Belle.

      Your parameter of Britain’s being one of the fattest doesn’t exclude other countries from also being fat.

    1. Is this person mental?

      None of these things are true. Less regulation? Higher welfare standards? Lower prices? Peace? Ask the Ukranians! Ask Cosovans!

      Free healthcare across Europe? Not remotely. If he means that the NHS pays if you’re injured abroad that’s been in place for decades.

      As for animal welfare – the EU supports and encourages halal slaughter. What utter idiocy. The usual tedious Left wing stupidity of fools. Some of these are so broad there’s obviously no basis of truth in them.

      The european arrest warrant? What, the communist black bag? No trial, no legal representation, not even being told the crime you’re accused of and held indefinitely? This is typical Left wing lies. It’s tedious. It’s ignorant. it’s dangerous.

      1. 322270+ up ticks,
        Evening W,
        Gerard Batten has been trying to inform the peoples for 27 years that if we had not been in the
        EEc/EU for the last 4 plus decades and an independent Nation we would have left the eu behind in the dark ages, where it belongs.

  27. If this turns out to be true I wonder if the BBC is going to experience Sackable Livestock?

    S Wilson
    9 Aug 2020 9:48AM
    Just had some good news on Toby Young’s Lockdown Sceptics newsletter:

    Andrew Neil is in line to be the new BBC Chairman!

    Hope it’s not a case of pigs will fly.

    1. If AN becomes chairman, he won’t be doing any more interviewing. A move to muzzle him?

    4. He does have journalistic experience outside broadcasting. The Sunday Times was once a must-read…So much so that the Telegraph decided to stop competing and develop the Saturday edition instead.

    5. He won’t be considered. I imagine he’s on the list solely for some hilarious quota.

  29. SIR – The Government needs to stop acting like a satnav and accept that a lot of us can still read a map and sometimes prefer to find our own way.

    During the early stages of lockdown, you published a letter asking if Britain had turned into a police state. The answer now is: yes.

    Victoria Edge
    Farningham, Kent

    It’s no longer your secret.

    1. Gosh! I read the first half of that before I scrolled down – I thought – “Wow! she’s got a fierce dog called Dan on patrol…..” then I scrolled down and read the rest.

      1. Send out the message to potential boat migrants that they will be coming over to inner city misery , squalor , dreadful landlords , miserable weather, lawless gangs of people who stab and rob, and segregated communities!

        2. Waste of time when the migrants are messaging home on their free iphones about the 4* hotels, excursions to football stadia, & other ‘perks’ they are being given.

    4. For goodness sake. There are already hundreds of officers, autocrats, plutocrats and military officials. The last thing we need is another blasted pen pusher.

      What’s happening to the other endless ranks of people whose responsibility this is?

    5. Won’t do any good, Priti Awful.

      The French won’t take them back. The RN won’t toss them into the sea or sink their boats.

      1. Jyst flair a few immigration booths out to the border then treat incomes like they would be treated at a regular airport.
        Passports please. No? Oh well, you cannot come in.

      2. If threatened with being turned round and escorted back to France they will simply jump in the water, thereby forcing the RN/Border Farce to pick them up. Back where we started.

        Since all these people arrive without passports we should force France to take them back. If France then wants to abandon Schengen at their borders (to prevent them arriving there in the first place), then fine. Currently, France is shirking her responsibilities.

        1. Round them up , put them on a cruise ship (plenty going spare at the moment) and take them to Guadeloupe and put them ashore.
          Or even Martinique. Both places are French Departments, that is, part of France. They won’t be expectingthat.

      3. I don’t much care what the Frogs will or won’t accept. They’re the ones behaving illegally. Drag the boats back to within swimming distance of the French shore, destroy the boat.

      1. Aye. You wonder if his real intent is to ensure the farce continues rather than stops.

      2. Those in authority can’t stop it.

        Mrs May signed us up to the Global Immigration Pact before she left office.

  31. SIR – Have the British forgotten how a strawberry should taste? The current offerings from supermarkets are far from ripe, they don’t ripen at home, and the experience of eating them is like chewing on wet balsa wood.

    With this fine weather they should be at their peak of sweet lusciousness. The only option is to pick your own – if you can find a farm that will let you in.

    Duncan Rayner
    Sunningdale, Berkshire

    There is another option, Mr Rayner- grow your own. We grow them in a raised bed, and it isn’t difficult (and if I can grow them successfully, anyone can). We pick many pounds of them every year in the brief season (over now) and eat them fresh, make jam and sauce (sauce is frozen for later use) and otherwise give them away to family and friends. I defy any supermarket to supply strawberries that are sweeter and jucier than your own fresh-picked.

    Edit: And if I could persuade Disgust to stop telling me to log in I would have attached s photo.

      2. ‘Morning, Peddy. That is of course a possibility, but if he has then he knows what to do! Chewing on “wet balsa wood” sounds most disagreeable.

        1. Only slightly worse than chewing on ‘dry balsa-wood’ i.e. turkey/chicken breast.

    2. Try Waitrose Mr Rayner

      They have had a good variety of Kent strawberries in stock all this summer.

      Much tastier than the Spanish ones, and no dearer!

    3. If you clear your cookies and history it should enable you to post a photo. However, this can be a pain and it doesn’t permanently solve the problem, it seems to revert to type once again.

    4. Personally, I have never tried wet balsa wood. But each to their own….

      We, too, had pounds of delicious home-grown strawbs.

    5. ‘Morning, Hugh.

      ALL supermarket food is vastly inferior to food produced at home or bought from a decent nursery or independent fruit grower. My own delicious strawberries ran out a few weeks back, but we have local fruit-growers which still supply wonderfully strong and luscious products; in fact I had a dish of them last night and delicious they were too.

      The problem is that most people have been seduced by the “convenience” factor of supermarkets and place the easy and ready access to foodstuffs over the importance of good flavour. If those people choose to “settle” for inferior and taste-free fruit and veg, then that is up to them. I won’t join them.

      Supermarkets have to source their products from far and wide to suit an ever-more demanding public. It is, therefore, impossible to have those products arriving at their best and possessing optimum flavour.

      Give me home-grown or locally-sourced fruit and veg any day over the masses of under-flavoured and under-/over-ripe stuff that supermarkets provide.

      1. In a previous life I subscribed to the French trade magazine “Libre Service Actualités” |(LSA), equivalent to the Grocer. I was amused to see an advert placed by the giant supermarket group Casino. It said “We go to the ends of the earth for our customers”. The featured product was Scottish raspberries.

    6. Try Waitrose Mr Rayner

      They have had a good variety of Kent strawberries in stock all this summer.

      Much tastier than the Spanish ones, and no dearer!

      1. I agree, the Waitrose strawberries have been good this year, better than usual. M&S were a disappointment as per recent years. I think part of the problem is that they are picked before they are ripe to allow for easier transportation so never getting the sun to develop their sweetness. The colour develops but that is all. Having watched cherries change from little green bullets in France, during a particularly wet and cloudy season, to ruby and garnet baubles, I came to the conclusion that the sun was not essential to the colour changing process although access to daylight probably is, and sun is essential develop the flavour and sweetness.

    7. My strawberries are just coming on stream. I ate my first today! Like my autumn fruiting raspberries, my soft fruit beds take their time 🙂

      1. You have done well to be starting your strawb season now, Con? Mine were over quite some time ago. I need to replace some of the plants with a later variety so as to extend the season.

        1. I am not sure what variety mine are. I’ve had them (albeit replacing by new runners every three years or so) for years.

  32. Good morning all! Completely OT here but I’d like to say a big thank you to a British company for their excellent customer service! I bought a pair of Spear & Jackson heavy duty secateurs and attacked the ivy on the fence. Brilliant tool until the tension spring made a bid for freedom and disappeared amongst the honeysuckle and clematis, never to be seen again! The secateurs still work but my hands don’t! I emailed the company about a replacement spring and to my great surprise, one arrived (free!) two days later! Yesterday a brand new pair arrived, also free! The customer service lady has been charming and I discovered the her sister lives about half a mile away!
    So bravo Spear & Jackson, and my old man needs a new spade!

    1. Those springs are a nightmare!

      Think very carefully when you talk about digging implements…{:¬))

      2. I have a fork with a black handle…. oh bugger!!!

        Come in officer, the door is open.

    2. So bravo Spear & Jackson, and my old man needs a new spade!

      Careful Sue, from now on the PC term is N-word.

  33. Having a cup of not brilliant tea in Costa in Woodbridge. The water used was far too cold.
    Had a swim at Shingle Street yesterday and first thing after my tea & porridge this morning.
    About to head off to Colchester, though I might do a bit of shopping if I see a Wilko’s en route!

    TTFN

    1. During my pub renovation days i use to drive from where we live to Woodbridge and back each day.
      Don’t go to Jaywick Bob,……….. you wont like it !

    2. Watch out for the endless road works in Colchester, Robert. A real pain – especially the new “double direction” roundabouts.

      1. Morning, sos. OK isn’t quite how things are but thanks for asking. I am beginning to socialise with family, friends and new people, though, and on the 18th I’m lunching with Anne and Elsie at a local pub. Looking forward to that occasion. All OK at your end?

        2. Slowly does it, Korky. A step at a time; don’t rush it. Gradually it will become easier, although probably never easy.

  35. UK weather: heatwave to continue before ‘severe thunderstorms’ roll in. 9 August 2020.

    “Overall Scotland and Northern Ireland are not tapping into the really hot air which parts of England will be experiencing on Sunday.”

    However, thunderstorms are forecast for next week.

    Yellow thunderstorm warnings for all parts of the UK have been issued for Monday through to Wednesday. The warning states: “Some places are likely to see severe thunderstorms early next week – but there is significant uncertainty in location and timing.”

    Though there are no rumblings there’s a distinct smell of Ozone in the atmosphere here.

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/aug/09/uk-weather-heatwave-to-continue-before-severe-thunderstorms-roll-in

      1. 32c in my back garden. Thank goodness for the ice in my Gin or i wouldn’t survive it. 🙂

        2. The sun finally came out this afternoon – I don’t think it’s as hot as that here.
          24c in the kitchen and pleasantly warm outside.

      3. I’ll swap you. It’s is eleventy million degrees here. No air, nothing. Just pain and suffering.

  36. 322270+ up ticks,
    Anyone remember the old film displaying a pod left outside the door to do nasties to the unsuspecting inmates is called ? ( body snatchers maybe)

    The reason I ask is because the chinese have started a campaign of dropping pks of seeds through letter boxes & marked up as Jewelry.
    Was anyone in governance going to tell us or is it a chinese / uk covert op ?

    1. Mystery seed packets from China could ‘wreak havoc’ and destroy wildlife, officials warn. 3 August 2020.

      Now, bigwigs in the US state of Virginia have warned that the seeds could be invasive species and could “wreak havoc on the environment, displace or destroy native plants and insects and severely damage crops.”

      Speaking to News9, agriculture officials said: “Invasive species wreak havoc on the environment, displace or destroy native plants and insects and severely damage crops.

      Play safe. Destroy by burning!

      https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/mystery-packets-seeds-china-could-22462266

      1. If the seeds are from China they are invasive. They will be perhaps nominally be the same but will have been exposed to different environmental factors. Just as immigrants arriving in other countries may nominally be similar. No end to stupidity. Borders salmon rivers have American crayfish. They did not come here on a jumbo jet. Some dolt brought them here and turned them loose. They eat salmon eggs. Thus are native species destroyed and the local economy of fishing, hotels and tourism vanishes.

        1. They are delicious. Though they are destroying everything, as you say, including our indigenous crayfish. Perversely you have to apply for a license if you want to trap them.

          If the Government seriously wanted rid of them they would encourage people to trap them. But just as with the other incomers we get the opposite.

      2. 322270+ up ticks,
        AS,
        I do not believe that the known
        52% sane element in GB will be taking anything at face value from the china plate department their mindset is inscrutable.
        And seemingly you could befriend a crocodile or even a current governance politico with the advantage of knowing the outcome.

      3. I’ve noticed a lot of the Chinese shown on the Australian Border program try to take in plants/seeds with soil and even insects on them, into Australia. There are so many of them trying it, it is clearly a deliberate ploy.

        1. send ’em some cane toads. Aussie youths use them for cricket practice (but that’s cruel, so don’t tell anyone.

      5. Yes, we have been warned not to use seeds that arrive in the mail, unsolicited, by the State Agriculture Dept. But I have not seen any so far.

  37. Good morning all. A strangely dull morning – with mist beginning to clear. Still a damned north-easterly blowing hard.

    Good to see that Vogue has found its true audience – BLM activists. About time that para-military outfit was proscribed by HMG and its leaders gaoled.

          1. 322270+ up ticks,
            Anne,
            Yes, you have jolted a far off memory in that department, so long ago.
            I realise I am being bold to ask but what do the ovid vote for currently ?

      3. Morning, Nursey.

        The only beaches I’ve ever enjoyed visiting are deserted ones. Why people clamour to lie on a stretch of sand alongside thousands of others has always been beyond me.

        1. Most human beings are gregarious and enjoy being together. Also, local knowledge comes into the equation; if you live in a large city, it is highly probable that only obvious resort names spring to mind.

          2. You are not alone. Well, you are, being the only one on your chosen beach obviously. We are with you in spirit, as we are also alone on a beach. Although technically, I am sitting at a table.

      1. Just imagine the foaming outcry if a group of white people dressed up in para-military kit had marched, threateningly, through London.

      3. “You put your right arm in, your right arm out, in, out, in, out, shake it all about…”.

      4. Isn’t dyeing her hair like that cultural misappropriation?

        Edit – oops, should have scrolled down a bit more!!

  38. A man in Melbourne walked into the produce section of his local supermarket and asked to buy half a head of cabbage.
    The boy working in that department told him that they only sold whole heads of cabbage.

    The man was insistent that the boy ask the manager about the matter.

    Walking into the back room, the boy said to the manager, “Some old bastard outside wants to buy half a head of cabbage.”

    As he finished his sentence, he turned around to find that the man had followed and was standing right behind him, so the boy quickly added, “and this gentleman kindly offered to buy the other half.”

    The manager approved the deal and the man went on his way.

    Later, the manager said to the boy………..
    “I was impressed with the way you got yourself out of that situation earlier, we like people who can think on their feet here, where are you from son?”

    “New Zealand, sir,” the boy replied.

    Why did you leave New Zealand ?” the manager asked.

    The boy said, “Sir, there’s nothing but prostitutes and rugby players there.”

    “Is that right?” replied the manager, “My wife is from New Zealand!”

    “Really?” replied the boy, “Who did she play for?”

  39. Seems that Simon Cowell broke his back playing with his new electric scooter at home in California.

      1. Nobody’s Got Talent & similar tv shows. Music producer, impressario & wanker.

          2. ITV was the only channel my mother’s telly was ever tuned in to. I used to tease her that “other channels are available” as she would sit there glued to one execrable mind-numbing programme after another.

            I remember her “educating” me when I was a sprog that the BBC is only for posh, stuck-up, people, and is “not for us”.

            This “not for us” theme went through life for her as she steadfastly refused to open her mind to new experiences. It seems her own mother (a dreadful individual) had done a very good job on brainwashing her.

          3. And yet you open to new experiences by moving abroad.
            Good on you, Grizz.
            What made you move to Sweden, specifically, and Skåne?

          4. Sorry, I thought you knew, Paul.

            To cut a long (very long) story short, I got back in touch with my old school penfriend, Inge, through a Swedish chap whom I met whilst working at the airport. All I wanted to do was ask her how life had turned out for her in the 35 years in which we didn’t have any contact. I was single again at the time (after two marriages, no offspring). It turned out that she had had two long-term relationships (not married) and also no children. After writing letters to and fro for a year (no phone calls) and getting to know one another we decided to meet up. I travelled to Sturup airport and we met for the first time, though it was just like meeting an old friend who I knew well. We flew up to Stockholm for a weekend and spent the entire time chatting. When I returned home the letters turned into phone calls and she visited me a few months later. Her trips over to Norfolk became more frequent (around six times a year) and I went over to Skåne a couple of times a year. When we decided to move in together it was easier for me to move to Sweden since my parents had died and I had no familial ties in Norfolk. Her parents were alive and she wasn’t comfortable in leaving them behind. So I moved to Sweden and here I still am.

          7. That’s a happy story, Grizz! Congratulations in finding your old friend again.!
            :-D)

          8. My mother to the end of her life would not have a telly in the house. Her brother caved in at some time when his children were teenagers, and in later life he would sit there shouting at it.

            I didn’t have one till the 70s and I can take it or leave it these days.

  40. ‘Doo-dah’ hoo-hah after pianist plays Camptown Races for OAP singalong as charity show erupts into race row over the ‘inappropriate’ choice of a song that dates from the era of ‘blackface’ minstrel shows
    *Pianist Sarah Fisher was criticised for‘inappropriate’ choice of song in singalong
    *The song Camptown Races dates from the era of the ‘blackface’ minstrel show
    *Ex-BBC journalist Mary Stretch took umbrage at the inclusion of the classic song
    *
    *
    https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/08/09/00/31727418-8608291-image-a-135_1596930857681.jpg
    Pianist Sarah Fisher – who was live-streaming her performance via Facebook to help isolated people deal with lockdown – was criticised for her ‘inappropriate’ choice of a song that dates from the era of ‘blackface’ minstrel shows and is famous of its ‘doo-dah doo-dah’ refrain
    *
    In apparent reference to the Black Lives Matter protests, she complained: ‘I think it would be best to consider current sensitivities and not choose a minstrel song sung by Al Jolson about poor black people living in camp towns. [BOLLOCKS, you ignorant cow. Camptown, N.E. Pennsylvania was the location of the races. I’ve been there]
    *
    *
    https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/08/09/00/31727416-8608291-While_most_of_those_watching_were_eager_to_type_messages_of_than-m-137_1596930905776.jpg
    While most of those watching were eager to type messages of thanks during the show, one of them – former BBC journalist Mary Stretch – was less pleased
    *
    *
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8608291/Pianist-plays-Camptown-Races-OAP-singalong-charity-erupts-race-row.html

    Perhaps we NoTTLers should organise our own singalong….any suggestions?
    https://youtu.be/_tuu5YtkPIo

    1. It is really astonishing how much fascism you can get away with when you frame your victims as the persecutors.

    3. If only she had followed Sherriff Bart’s example, in ‘Blazing Saddles’, and sung ‘I get no kick from champagne’ instead, then the self-serving beeboid could have joined in rather than searching for grievance where none exists.

    4. Camptown is a village south of Jedburgh. De Scotch darkies emigrated to Pennsylvania from dere, and called de town “Camptown” like de place dey done leaved.

    7. Ex-BBC journalist…took umbrage. Say no more! Had she listened to the words, the phrase “racetrack, 5 miles long” might have saved her talking bo££ocks!

  41. I asked our doctor neighbours about the Covid-19 tests and this is their answer.

    Hmmm… everyone seems to be an expert now !! …. as far as our limited knowledge goes, and in our organisation we have quite detailed updates … the actual covid 19 tests (RT-PCR) are around 60% specific … that means we are at risk of missing 40% of positive cases. But there are many kinds of “tests”…. some of them may be non-specific …but RT-PCR which is gold standard is pretty specific… it’s the sensitivity which is less . Actual NHS tests are RT-PCR. Not sure about the private ones

    I leave you to draw you own conclusions.

    1. “RT-PCR” [tests] are around 60% specific…that means we are at risk of missing 40% of positive cases”
      “but RT-PCR which Is gold standard is pretty specific”

      Is twaddle part of MDs’ curriculum nowadays? Wasn’t it always?

      1. I think that indicates, Lass, how rotten the statistics are that they are basing all their misleading, banal and false science on. They have less idea of what’s going than us NoTTLers. The majority of people are asses being led by donkeys. It is a master class in misinformation and so many people are following it and not challenging what is being said. The continual showing of the advertising, even now, has terrified millions of compliant fools. It’s unbelievable what is happening. I will not wear a mask and have been to the doctor’s surgery and the hospital and have been seen without me wearing one, I cannot believe so many are so compliant.

  42. I’d rather sound like Minnie Mouse on helium then posh

    Julie Burchill

    In my young life, I wanted to change quite a few things about myself. I was a blonde who wanted to be a brunette. I was a West Country schoolgirl who wanted to be a famous writer. I’ve achieved them all with some level of success. But one thing I’ve never wanted to do was change my voice. If you’ve ever heard me speak (look me up on Desert Island Discs if you haven’t) you might find this peculiar. I do not, to put it mildly, have a voice much found in public life. It’s been compared to a rustic child (though I come from Bristol, a big city, everyone talks like a farmer there), Minnie Mouse on helium and – my favourite – an evil toy cat.

    There’s a tradition of humbly-born media women changing their accents, from Joan Bakewell to Caitlin Moran. It’s creepy how men aren’t expected to do so to the same extent. As some wit (me) once said: “Men are the sum of their parts, whereas women are some of their parts.” But not me – I love my voice. I never get upset about what people say about me, but one of the few times I’ve been livid and thought seriously about suing was when Will Self wrote of me some years back: “Burchill is meant to have a complex about her girlish voice and her Worzelesque accent, but while we were chatting it dropped at least an octave and regional began to slide towards received.”

    Despising it as I do as being the mark of either the upper-class boor or the lower-class castrate, I was surprised that Received Pronunciation was voted the most attractive accent this week in a survey by the online dating website eharmony. Respondents were asked to listen to a sentence read by speakers with 20 varying accents and rate each on how much they associated them with ten different character traits.

    Received Pronunciation was found to be strongly associated with intelligence, sophistication and charm – really, has no one been following the recent trajectories of Princes Andrew and Harry, and of every other overprivileged clown who frequently has to extract the plum in his mouth in order to fit his foot in?

    Equally bafflingly, it was followed by the New Zealand accent two places above the Australian accent – is there a difference? (My NZ friend says yes: “We laugh in the bath, they lef in the beth. We say six six six is the number of the beast; they say it’s a night-long roll in the hay.”) Or has the plague made those who live in the wide-open spaces of New Zealand seem suddenly desirable?

    Similarly, I can’t help thinking that three of the worst four accents are influenced by current affairs. Images of Cornish natives daubing rude graffiti telling unwanted tourists to go home have obliterated the swashbuckling sex appeal of Poldark.

    While French and Spanish accents being only slightly less loathed is surely a Brexit thing; once considered the most seductive of tongues, we now associate them with pen-pushing spoilsports telling us we can’t have bendy bananas.

    I’m not a normal person by any means and my taste in accents is predictably off-message. I like some conventionally attractive lilts, such as Welsh and Geordie, but also Brummie, apparently the fourth most loathed. I’m not alone; a bar in Tel Aviv advertised for staff in a Birmingham local newspaper a while back.

    I like all the accents one isn’t meant to like – the Mancunian and the Scouser and the guttural Northern Irish. I suppose I like the accents I think of as working class; if they aren’t, that means the speaker had privilege and therefore can never be a truly self-made success, and thus is not a first-rate person in my invertedly snobbish eyes. Brutal, but true.

    And as a Brexiteer, I’m keen on voices that sound like they come from Somewhere; the bourgeoisie of Bristol or Brighton tend to sound just the same as they do in Barnes. Until we hear Radio 4 newsreaders with Bristolian and Brummie accents, the BBC’s drive for more regional voices will remain a bastion of empty-headed virtue-signalling. As they pursue the admirable a goal of racial diversity, they t should be promoting the voices of o the working class, too.

    “Nation shall speak peace unto nation” – but only if you can dumb down to RP.

    Well said, Julie. I couldn’t have put it better myself.

    2. I suppose I like the accents I think of as working class; if they aren’t, that means the speaker had privilege and therefore can never be a truly self-made success, and thus is not a first-rate person in my invertedly snobbish eyes. Brutal, but true.

      Twat

    3. Isn’t Jeremy Clarkson a Yorkshireman? He doesn’t sound it.

      I was born in Middlesex, not that far from Barnes, so my natural accent is educated Home Counties, aka RP. I had to tone it down in order to avoid being bullied at school, but never really succeeded until my voice broke. I am therefore one of the unwanted – yet another “privileged” category, along with being made male, pale, stale, devoutly heterosexual and now Christian that is who I am. I’d be lying to myself and to others to pretend to be otherwise. I’d be thrown out of the morris dancer fraternity if I blacked up and put on a frizzy black wig, drive a white van, pray five times a day with my bum in the air, and pee in the ladies in order to attempt to be more acceptable to Julie Burchill.

      1. My Father was from West Hartlepool mining stock, but didn’t speak like a monkey-hanger.

    4. I thought Posh was quite different to “Received Pronounciation” – which I thought was standard pronounciation, its advanage being it is clear and easy to understand without having to ask the person to repeat their words a thousand times. I hate regional accents over the phone.

      2. “Posh” is either that awful fruity Surrey accent that goes with gin and Jaguars, or else people who speak like the Queen (clipped) and own castles, I thought.
        RP is clear, neutral (to my ears) and increasingly rare these days.
        I cannot stand all that yowling and mangling of the English language that goes on on Radio 4 these days.

      1. 322270+ up ticks,
        Morning Ptv,
        I do believe they are more into man eating, putting the zoo keepers into jeopardy not the animals.
        Consuming your enemies heart
        gives you more strength etc,etc.
        Currently there are those out there within the UK who will say it is an old English custom that has corrupted the dark nations.

    2. 322270+ up ticks,
      O2O,
      Will the HOCs canteen menu have to be re- written or will halal cover this, that is the question Og ?

  44. Don’t let the victors define morality – Hiroshima was always indefensible. 9 August.

    If we’d lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals.” So said Curtis LeMay after America obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki with two atomic bombs in August 1945.

    Last week marked the 75th anniversary of the world’s first nuclear attacks. And while Hiroshima has become a byword for existential horror, the moral implications of the bombings have increasingly faded into the background. Seventy-five years ago, LeMay was not alone in his verdict. “We had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages,” Fleet Admiral William Leahy, chair of the chiefs of staff under both presidents Roosevelt and Truman, wrote in his autobiography, I Was There. Dwight Eisenhower, too, had, as he observed in the memoir The White House Years, “grave misgivings” about the morality of the bombings.

    Morning everyone. This is yet another attempt to increase White Guilt by twisting the facts around the Nuclear Attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. All the quotes from the American commanders given in the paragraphs above were pronounced long after the war when some degree of moderation and rapprochement with Japan was required. What Malik misses here, because he wishes to, is that no Japanese commanders have uttered any regret for their actions in the war, in fact they along with the Japanese Government have gone to considerable lengths to deny any responsibility for Japanese atrocities. The Comfort Women of Korea; The Rape of Nanking and the murders of Millions of ordinary Chinese along with the refusal to compensate the survivors of the Burma Railway bear reliable witness to this.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/09/dont-let-the-victors-define-morality-hiroshima-was-always-indefensible

  45. Let the idiot-in-chief tweet his nonsense, or it makes you something far worse
    Rod Liddle – Sunday August 09 2020, 12.01am, The Sunday Times

    As a keen and experienced observer of current affairs, it has occurred to me that the President of the United States of America, Donald Trump, can be a little crass from time to time. I realise this may be a controversial judgment, but as a columnist I feel a duty to speak the truth, no matter how upsetting it might be. I have further observed that he is not always wholly truthful; seems to possess antediluvian attitudes towards women; and on occasion makes statements that suggest, to a neutral observer, that his ignorance is a fathomless abyss.

    When George W Bush was in office, he struck me as being the most dense leader in the history of the western world. Intense stupidity seemed glazed on his face, like the frosting on a stale doughnut. But there are times when Donald makes Dubya look sage and rational. All that being said, I would have voted for Trump over that patronising, self-entitled, frozen-faced automaton, Hillary Clinton. And I would probably vote for him, if I were American, over that bumbling geriatric racist, Joe Biden, the man who thinks all black people are the same and should vote the same way. Close call, though.

    In short, Trump appears as the very embodiment of what the rest of the world has always reckoned Americans, in general, to be: loud, dumb, money-obsessed, boastful, badly dressed and arrogant. But especially dumb.

    Despite this, it is impossible not to be on his side in his battle with Twitter and Facebook. Cancel culture and the March of the Interminably Woke, with their sensitivities more delicate than the surface tension of blood, have had an appalling effect upon freedom of speech and freedom of conscience both here and in the US, to the extent that more than 60% of Americans (and only slightly fewer Brits) feel unable to express themselves honestly. This is what they call a “climate of fear”. It is shocking that it would happen in liberal democracies.

    Twitter and Facebook have removed or suspended Trump’s statements to the nation because he posted a tweet that suggested children are “almost immune” to the Covid virus. They are not. It may affect them much less seriously, in general, and that may be what Trump was driving at: but they are not immune.

    The post was described as “harmful Covid misinformation” by the tsars at Facebook and Twitter. I have read many more egregious comments about Covid on social media, but that is not the point. They barred Trump because they do not agree with what he has to say. Just as they will now bar anyone who says stuff with which the liberals who staff these ghastly corporations might disagree.

    You can be barred for repeating what many scientists have said — that facemasks do not work. Or for stating an established scientific fact — that all women have a double-X chromosome, while men have an X and a Y. That is now a hate crime, one of many imaginary hate crimes that can get you booted off. Increasingly, to use these sites you must toe the line on a whole bunch of issues, from immigration to Black Lives Matter, from global warming to Islam.

    It does not matter that you might agree with the liberals on all or some of these issues — I do, as it happens, especially on climate change and masks. It is the principle of the thing. We must be allowed to express ourselves freely, accepting that sometimes we will be wrong, without being censored by the increasingly shrill thought police who harangue institutions such as Facebook with demands to “stop hate speech!” when what they are stopping is usually just a difference of opinion.

    Facebook recently caved in when a bunch of large companies, including Unilever, threatened to withdraw their advertising after pressure from a group called #StopHateForProfit. The boundary of what you can say in our countries narrows seemingly by the week. It is becoming a noose.

    Eat out to help out

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Fsundaytimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2F8b281ee4-d97e-11ea-ae2c-1f6a5007a0a3.jpg?crop=1500%2C1000%2C0%2C0&resize=1022

    There goes the good name of Hezbollah
    It seems likely that the vast stock of ammonium nitrate that devastated Beirut was owned and managed by the Iranian-backed terrorist organisation Hezbollah. They have a liking for the stuff, having been caught in London, Cyprus and Germany with loads of it.

    It is only a year ago that the Labour Party criticised the government’s decision to list Hezbollah as a terrorist group (as opposed to, say, a convocation of peaceable individuals dedicated to spreading happiness throughout the world). Labour at the time demanded “evidence” of Hezbollah’s evil intent.

    I hope the horrible explosions in Beirut will expunge the party’s grey fug of uncertainty. But I bet there will still be plenty of members keen to blame Lebanon’s neighbour to the south.

    A chat, a cheque and let the concrete roll
    Housebuilders anxious to concrete over the entire southeast of England under the new “relaxed” planning regulations will soon be asked to make polite small talk with housing minister Robert Jenrick at a congenial charity event. That’s the first stage in the new, ultra-rapid application process, I believe.

    The second is for the contractor to make out a large cheque payable to “The Conservative Party”. The third is to obliterate what was Cambridgeshire with thousands of hideous boxes.

    It still seems to be unmentionable in political circles that the main reason we have a housing crisis is that we let into the country 100,000 more people than leave each year, and have been doing so for 20 years. Why don’t we stop doing this — and preserve our few remaining tracts of countryside?

    ● Palmerston, the official Foreign Office cat, is retiring from his position forthwith. In a letter that he was clearly coerced into signing, the rescue feline cites a desire to remove himself from the “limelight”.

    A likely story. The truth is that Palmerston was a fervent British nationalist, much as was his eminent namesake. He could no longer bear being surrounded by the one-worlders, Arabists and carping remoaners who comprise the Foreign Office civil servants.

    It is thought that he will be replaced by a more suitable animal. A poodle, probably.

    ● The Labour Party is demanding the government “prove” that Dominic Cummings did not visit Durham a second time.

    In those precious seconds before the Chinese and Russian nukes rain down on us, after the country has been ravaged by an ebola-style virus, economic meltdown and plagues of locusts, Labour will still be tabling motions about where Cummings has been in his car recently.

    It is a difficult thing to prove, isn’t it? Can you prove that you haven’t been to Durham? The government should respond by demanding that Sir Keir Starmer “prove” he has not been to Alfreton. It doesn’t have to be Alfreton. It could be, say, Datchet. Or Mexborough.

    1. So after repeating the establishment mantra that Trump is terrible, Rod Liddle admits that Trump has a point.

        1. I know. It’s just the sheer predictability of it. Oh-I’m-not-a-stupid-working-class-person-I’m-one-of-the-clever-establishment-so-I’m-sneering-at-Trump-to-prove-my-credentials. Constructive criticism would be another thing, but the Trump-haters have pretty much put the kybosh on that.

          1. I think Rod Liddle is presenting what used to be called ‘balance’. He is stating that Trump has flaws – and oh does he have flaws – but he is making the point that simply because he isn’t right all the time doesn’t make him wrong all the time. Remember the real terror the Left have of Trump is because he doesn’t obey them. He won’t play their game.

      2. Presumably he has to do that in order to get published. The editors probably only read the first paragraph before giving it the stamp of censorship acceptance.

    2. “to use these sites you must toe the line on a whole bunch of issues, from immigration to Black Lives Matter, from global warming to Islam.” – the reason I am no longer on Twitter.

          1. It’ll eventually become an echo chamber full of angry, self hating people who no one listens to. Much like the Guardian.

            When the ad revenue dries up they’ll wind it up entirely and the Lefties will attack another target. Normal people will move somewhere else and the cycle will continue. It’s the same process of white flight in cities and towns. The poison moves in, spreads and destroys, people move away from it.

            The problem is: when there’s no where left we can go. When their demented insanity of censorship, doublethink and raw, unadulterated intolerance, bigotry and utter hatred of different thoughts than their own crazed psychoses, what will we do?

            The last time we fought against it and millions died to defeat Hitler. Eventually Maoist China collapsed. At some point we have to make a stand and push them back into the dark places they came from.

    4. President Trump currently has a fight on his hands with the social media companies. US newspapers can print from whichever perspective they choose ignoring those who do not share their views, as do ours, but are liable for libel charges. The internet social media companies are protected under Section 230 of US law, should one of their users comments be deemed as libelous the company is not deemed culpable.
      This was supposed to allow ‘freedom of thought and speech’ without the companies having to ‘police’ every comment at every moment of the day. The problem arises when the ‘social media’ sites then self-censor those that do not share their view.
      Trump argues that if the social media companies want to be as skewed in their political views as the more traditional media it follows that they should also come under the same laws as said media.
      Of course the social media companies are, to say the least, reluctant to give up the protection of Section 230, which presently allows their users to comment without penalty to the companies.
      Censoring President Trump’s tweets will only encourage him to pursue the notion that, if social media companies want to act like the traditional media, they should be treated like the traditional media on a level playing field with the appropriate responsibilities for their content.
      P.S. I realise I’ve had to simplify this nonsense for my small brain, before any of m’learned friends jump in with points of order 😉

  46. 32220+ up ticks,
    The frogs seemingly want 30 million to stop the invasion if that is so then it is blackmail & blackmailers are never ever satisfied.
    m
    How long did it take that german chap Heil to take them over ?
    I do believe it would be cheaper to combine our depleted army with the Salvation army and do a reverse Dunkirk.

  47. There’s a petition to make Chris Eubank the new 007.

    I don’t think he’s cut out for the thecret thervith.

  49. BBC Sport a bit coy about numbers. Anyone know how many submitted to Marxism at the Grand Prix?

    ‘Then some drivers ‘take a knee’, but, as has happened at every race this season, a number of drivers decide to stay standing.’

    1. It would be much more interesting if the “standers” took it in turns to be nearly lapped by Hamilton and as he passes wipe out his car, accidentally, of course.

      2. Glad Hamilton didn’t win. Are reports true that they brought in some non-singer for the National Anthem?

        1. Yes! I’m afraid he was of colour and sang like a gospel singer, adding notes and trills all over the shop! Old man nearly fell over trying to switch it off!

          1. ‘Ungrateful toad.’

            I am able to think of a far more apt
            description……..but Geoff would ban me!! :-))

            Good afternoon, Sos.

        3. Yes! I’m afraid he was of colour and sang like a gospel singer, adding notes and trills all over the shop! Old man nearly fell over trying to switch it off!

  50. Boris The Betrayer…

    You know what it’s like when you post a decent joke, it gets few votes
    and then someone posts a virtual carbon copy of your idea and does
    brilliantly?.

    Imagine how Theresa May must feel.

  51. 322236+ up ticks,
    Evening R,
    Appertaining to your post last night and in the nicest
    possible way you say you are right come of late what of us in the real UKIP ( NOT the current one) who have been rarely wrong in the last 27 years,
    I have been warning of the whole political bent treacherous shebang since feeling horrified on hearing
    the cry that rent the air on the 24/6/16 “WE have won
    leave it to the tories”

    The may, leadsome,gove, johnson ALL temporary Equity
    card holders acting out the leadership farce, mogg, etc all
    down as “saviours”, saviours my left nipple.

    How many times did I have to show “nige” show us his true colours, we had his number when he supported bolton & falsely condemned Gerard Batten.

    After keeping the UKIP seat in brussels on quitting the party he went into a fully torie supporting / vote splitting
    mode.

    I believe there will be a multitude in the near future denying many more than three times ever acknowledging
    the lab/lib/con & saying ” are they political parties then ?

      1. “.in..solidarity with the indigenous communities in Brazil????”

        What about the indigenous communities in the UK you great wazzocks.

    3. The perlice didn’t even bother to turn up – pity, I always like to see them dancing with these vile people.

  53. My last post for a while to give the blood pressure chance to return to normal.

    No mention of the desire of the majority to see the BBC blown to bits and become a subscription service, I.e. you want to watch that carp, you pay for it, not me.
    Jeez, every day Johnson finds new ways to demonstrate how out of touch he is with us.

    Nicky Morgan and Andrew Neil are in the running to be the BBC’s next chairman as Boris Johnson seeks candidates who don’t want to ‘blow up’ the broadcaster

    https://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/news/article-8609191/Nicky-Morgan-Andrew-Neil-running-BBCs-chairman.html

    3. Don’t want to blow up the BBC? But that’s exactly what we want!
      So sick of being constantly disappointed!
      No, Boris, I’m not remotely tempted to vote Conservative yet. Try harder!

      Nicky Morgan FFS. Is she the candidate that is supposed to make us all cry with relief when Neil (who has taken the BBC shilling for years) gets it?

  54. I don’t know how many people here are interested in Beirut but, having lived there myself and having visited many times, I find the aftermath of the huge blast very fascinating, however tragic this has been for so many people.

    Here are few items that I have not seen in the UK press.

    1. A military expert has calculated that the amount of ammonium nitrate that exploded cannot have exceeded 300 tons because if 2,700 tons had exploded the whole of Beirut would have been wiped out. The missing amount would most likely have been stolen over the years for use in military targets. It was pointed out that Timothy McVeigh used only about one ton of ammonium nitrate fertilizer to destroy the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995.

    2. Politicians are running round in circles to divert blame onto others. This includes the president himself who is a Maronite Christian but who made a pact with Hezbollah in 2006, which is still in place. Demonstrators have been burning pictures of him in the streets.

    3. Hezbollah has been short of funds because of the sanctions on Iran but a Qatari whistle blower has revealed that Qatar has also been funding Hezbollah (among many other plots to destabilize various countries in the Middle East, going back to the days of Qaddafi who was helping them. Some of the revelations are revealed in tapes now known as the ‘Qaddafi Tapes’).

    4. People have been demonstrating in the streets of Beirut chanting ‘Iran, get out, Beirut is free’. Hezbollah called the demonstrators “The scum of the earth”!

    Lebanon is basically run by Hezbollah but the different sects there are not capable of simply getting along with each other. The level of mutual hatred between them is extremely deep. In recent times, the IMF has been refusing to bail out Lebanon because the funds would just go into the coffers of the cronies of the sleazebag Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah, (Hezbollah’s leader), and others.

    5. The ammonium nitrate arrived on a ship from Georgia In September 2013, but it put into Beirut port because of ‘technical problems’. However, the reason that the ship stopped in Beirut seaport might have been because additional money was needed to pay for the passage through the Suez Canal. Either way, the ship’s owner did not pay port fees and fines, and so the Lebanese authorities impounded the ship and its cargo, and the owners abandoned the ship.

    Lebanon’s Court of Urgent Matters took over. At first the judge refused to let the crew return home from the impounded ship, but eventually they were allowed to go, though some waited on the ship for over a year and almost starved to death. The judge ruled that the ammonium nitrate should be moved into “Warehouse 12”, next to the grain silos in the seaport, where the cargo remained for years, “awaiting auctioning and/or proper disposal.”

    Since 2014, Lebanon’s Court of Urgent Matters was asked repeatedly to allow the dangerous cargo to be removed. Customs authorities proposed three options: Export the ammonium nitrate, hand it over to the Lebanese Army, or sell it to the privately-owned Lebanese Explosives Company. The judge ignored all such requests, probably because he was being paid off by someone who wanted to keep control of the ammonium nitrate.

    6. Lebanon will never settle down until they change its constitution which requires that:

    – The prime minister must be a Sunni Muslim. Hassan Diab is the prime minister. He assumed office on Jan 21, 2020.
    – The president, currently Michel Aoun, must be a Syriac Maronite Catholic.
    – And the speaker of parliament, currently held by Nabhi Berri, must be a Shia Muslim. (The Shia Muslim sect in Lebanon is controlled by the terrorist militia Hezbollah,

    In other words, it is not a dictatorship but three dictatorships each working exclusively for their own interests. Furthermore, as long as Hezbollah has anything to do with Beirut, the country’s future can be summed up in one word ‘doom’.

    ——-

    Of course there is much more to be said, but if you have got this far, thank you for reading my rant

    Oh, I forgot something that was reported in the British press. While Lebanese depositors’ money is trapped in banks with most transfers abroad blocked, a Lebanese banker has just purchased actress Jennifer Lawrence’s $9.9 million New York penthouse. He is the chairman and CEO of Al Mawarid bank in Lebanon. Well, I never…

    3. 322270+ up ticks,
      Morning S,
      Got a lot in common with the UK in three major aspects then as in three dictatorships, them being lab/lib/con and the endgame being DOOM also.
      Their annihilation is the only acceptable term that will guarantee the return of Democracy / political honesty &
      personal self respect.

      This is NO rant but a FACT to be faced.

    4. So as expected in such devious areas of our strange human race on this planet a well planned and deeply sinister event. And the rest of the world, especially the west needs to think about what it is doing taking in migrants from who knows where.
      I saw a couple of pathetic weakling leftard reporters speaking on the bbc news about the sadness and the welfare of the ‘boat people’ (they make it sound so romantic) pregnant females and children included in these ‘desperate journeys’. What absolute bolero. One has to seriously ask the question. Desperate ? Selected or volunteer opportunists following recent far east/middle east and african invasion strategies.
      Or simply Post card fodder as in “Wish you were here”
      WTF was wrong with France that they had to risk their lives in open boats in one of the busiest sections of open sea in the world ?
      New Zealand clear of virus cases for around a week now. It shows just how a well prepared well run government can cope on a few islands where people still have plenty of space.

      1. Nobody has been allowed into New Zealand with out having to do 14 days quaratine. NZ, a couple of islands on the edge of the world, with a population of 5million, is hardly comparable to over-populated UK.

        1. Well Ellie IMHO, it’s all about common sense and compromise, we didn’t stop incoming flights for quite a few weeks after the virus was declared a pandemic. Our government have done almost their best in the circumstances, Clearly there were ways to have made more rapid ground with regulations being enforced. Especially in the areas where the local communities seem to have a more transposed and transparent agenda. But our government’s of any known hue, don’t and never have in any shape or form fully supported the people who elected them.
          New Zealand is so far an unspoiled beauty of a country to visit. with a small population but the towns and cities can be very busy at times.
          But as the locals say “Chun up, Fush ‘n’ chups siting out on the dicking on the meanu”. 🤩

    5. So as expected in such devious areas of our strange human race on this planet a well planned and deeply sinister event. And the rest of the world, especially the west needs to think about what it is doing taking in migrants from who knows where.
      I saw a couple of pathetic weakling leftard reporters speaking on the bbc news about the sadness and the welfare of the ‘boat people’ (they make it sound so romantic) pregnant females and children included in these ‘desperate journeys’. What absolute bolero. One has to seriously ask the question. Desperate ? Selected or volunteer opportunists following recent far east/middle east and african invasion strategies.
      Or simply Post card fodder as in “Wish you were here”
      WTF was wrong with France that they had to risk their lives in open boats in one of the busiest sections of open sea in the world ?
      New Zealand clear of virus cases for around a week now. It shows just how a well prepared well run government can cope on a few islands where people still have plenty of space.

    6. Very interesting, thankyou. I visited my godmother and her husband, who were living in Beirut, in 1974 during my year out before university. It seemed to be quite a civilised country then, though if the country had problems then I don’t think I would have really been aware of them. I really appreciated my visits to Baalbeck, Tyre and Sidon; just regret not getting across the border to Palmyra. It always seems so sad how countries one has known slide into disaster. My parents felt sad at the way Pakistan deteriorated and I expect there’ll be others feeling the same about the UK in the future (or even now).

    1. A chastity belt to protect against the incoming grooming gang members? All those young males are getting here when there is warm weather and plenty of young females wearing not much.

  59. 322270+ up ticks,
    UK Govt Calls in Military over Mass Flow of Illegal Migrants.

    So they control ALL aspects of the odious DOVER campaign same tactics
    employed regarding the brexit party, control ALL participants in any rhetorical conflict, they rarely take physical action, if ever.
    This governance party is devilishly clever a trait picked up from their new source of wongabung.
    Do Not let them needle you.

  60. I’m a bit behind lately but never mind eh.
    Good morning all with about a minute to go. 😉

      1. Cheeky……..nice to see you, to see you nice 🤣

        I had my knee jab Friday arvo and yesterday my face turned bright burning orange. It’s one of the possible side effects from the steroid. Other could have been worse but chance taken all good so far, face calmed down and now looking forward to a round of golf with number one son, it’s his Father’s Day present from him to me. Wentworth has been ruled out !!!!!
        But under daddies guidance he’s getting pretty good.
        I hope to have a round next month at Travois head GC with the other two. One a big hitter but subtlety and experience usually wins the day

        1. KBO…
          Hoping to return to tennis soon.
          Meanwhile I may take up fishing or golf……a lot safer!
          It’s incredibly hot today…I think I’ll hide under the stairs….

          1. Your going to get a lot of rain soon.
            I thought our next door neighbours were returning from Rural France today for a couple of weeks, but they have decided against it. And she told me it was over 40 in the shade,……….. as day say in iroland Fek dat eh, i’m not at all jealous 😎

          2. ‘ere ya go …one to record.

            Film – Tommy’s Honour 3.45 BBC1

            Father and son golfing pioneers ‘Old Tom’ and ‘Young Tom’ Morris St. Andrews in the 19th C.

          4. Great film! Made me go and find out more about their lives – very interesting and poignant.

          10. St Enodoc Church in the middle of the golf course was once covered in sand and had to be excavated. It’s the burial place of Sir John Betjeman. A lovely spot.

          15. I’ve never really found an interest in the game i’ve played it briefly and lé Froggie versions and was told for a beginner i was quite good. I still have good hand eye coordination but i thought archery would suite me, we have a club close by.
            At least the skill could come in handy.

          16. Hand eye coordination is important. It’s about the 3 L’s line, Length and luck. Line and weight. We have golfers and ex golfers playing. A skilful game and great for taking your mind off things.

    1. And who will be in charge of deciding this? It’s all simply forcing their way of life on us. If the issue is healthcare then you need to change how healthcare is funded. You cannot keep forcing us to live how you want to. That’s totalitarianism.

      Besides, these are the same people who completely fouled up the coronavirus response. The same ones who were planning a healthy eating campaign when they should have been arranging proper systems to manage a global pandemic.

      1. Covid response is all about control of the peepls, not the Virus

        The Virus we need to control is Sorositus

          3. Ah, but they learn who matters when climbing the greay pole to the top.
            Same with Oxbridge.

          4. Do you know the difference between an Eton boy and an Harrovian chap?

            They both sat the entrance exam for Eton.

  62. A bit of good news for me. My Royal Navy chum next door gave me a present. One of the messes is closing and everything is being auctioned off. She gave me a set of gold rimmed Royal Doulton in white, dinner, coffee and tea services, from the officer’s Mess.

    1. No, it isn’t.

      A market capital economy simply means ownership of property – capital – which is exchanged for goods or services.

      An economy based on equal debt is just that. The banks do this most evenings – you owe me 500m, I owe you 499m, I’ll give you 1m.

      No wealth is created, no additional value, the economy remains based on debt and credit. In reality, the 100 euro note moves around between debtors, paying off a portion – but never all – of their individual debt. This is how the public sector works. Hypothetically, bloke A, businessman earns half a million a year. two thirds is taken in tax. As I can’t do maffs, I’ll call that 350,000. an overpaid, feather bedded, thoroughly useless local government official pays himself – without recourse to the public, any failure standards, any risk, no product, no value and constantly failing in his role – let’s call him Khan – £350,000. Our man’s entire tax income is destroyed paying for a useful official.

      Now, said official spends his money on a car lease, paying the finance company some – creating a job at the car dealership, he shops at Tesco – keeping checkout ladies and shelf stackers in a job. He buys some flowers for his wife, pays his mortgage and he also pays his taxes – which pay for a doctor to earn a salary, a police officer, a paramedic. These people all earn money and spend money.

      The money goes around very quickly in the economy but nothing new is created except the original 150,000 earned by the businessman. With that, he wants to create a new job – knowing that if he offers £25K it’ll cost him £40K in tax. And so money moves around a system driven by debt and tax.

      While a market economy, it is also a debt driven economy that is sliding ever faster toward socialism.

      1. Actually no, sorry, not socialism – abject poverty and bankruptcy needing a massive reset.

    2. The hotel proprietor hasn’t got the 100 Euros owed by the prostitute, so he’s down on the deal while everyone else has paid their debts.

    3. No it doesn’t as each one would say “Would you settle for 5 Eu reduction for cash?” and pocket a fiver

    1. These MPs are 1. very slow, Rastus worked that out months and months ago, or 2. they know exactly what the agreement is worth and are trying to con the voters.
      Either way they have not done anything to win my vote back.

      1. 322270+ up ticks,
        Evening VVOF,
        Yes, I replied to Rs last nights post early doors this morning
        9 hours ago, check it out.

  65. On the BBC news – -at least 151 have arrived today – (and there’ll probably be more as the day ain’t over).

  66. Good evening from Allan Towers!
    If Elsie’s about can she tell The Master Anne has sent him an e-mail as neither of us has his phone number!

    1. OH said it was quite warm on the tennis court – but he won his match!

      Now unbeaten in 5 singles and 2 doubles so he’s quite chuffed! But the girl he’s playing later in the week might be more difficult.

          1. That’s what happens when you are a lady, or your smut-gland gets removed, you gloss over the rudery.

            };-))

      2. Good heavens, great result . Your OH’s shoulder op must have been very successful.

        I expect he is really delighted, as I am sure you are.

        1. The surgeon did a great job – but there is another tendon in there which is completely atrophied. He’s had an ultrasound and is seeing a chiropractor for more exercises to build up his deltoid since his NHS physio treatment stopped with lockdown. He’s doing pretty well though. He still doesn’t admit to any more than 42.

    2. I think, that we found one last week, in the corner of the ‘bath’room, after moving the spare awning for the tintent

      Could not find any instructions for it though

  70. Taking a leaf out of Peddy’s book: meal tonight is Spanish style omelette à la Korky. Deviated from the classic recipe by adding chopped peppers, chillies and freshly picked oregano and marjoram from my herb garden. Delicious and enough left over for lunch tomorrow. I will definitely being cooking this again. Washed down with a black red from Portugal – Portuguese wines are much underrated – Baronesa De Vilar Reserva from the Douro region. Going for the third slice, naughty but nice.

      1. Only three small glasses = approx half bottle this evening. I have a nice IPA cooling in the fridge, for rehydration purposes only after this terribly hot afternoon/evening.😎

          1. She was OK with teasing she didn’t like the viciousness.

            AC, assuming it was him rather than you or me, was a nazty piece of work at times.

          2. I am a grazer, so I can not read every comment (in plain text I could, but the scrolling takes ages) but I try hard to say something nice occasionally and I uptick loads of people; AC seemed to have a potato harvest on each shoulder, bit sad really.

          3. I always like it when a grazer converts to an irregular poster and then becomes a frequent participant.

        2. She closed her account at the same time as Max – she always came back before after a break.

      1. Tasted better than good. My first attempt at a Spanish style omelette and I’m pleased with the result. Enjoy your meal.

      1. My Laithwaite’s agent put me on to a very nice Croatian white recently. A slightly more acidic grape of the Sauvignon Blanc style, excellent with Chinese food. Wine clubs may be more expensive than supermarket shelf wines but they do introduce a wide variety of wines. The ‘black reds’ from Portugal are a case in point, you would never see them on a supermarket shelf and yet they are excellent. Some of the grape varieties are unique to Portugal and more common varieties e.g. Shiraz, are catered for by Rock Sands.

        1. Laithwaite’s was one of my favourites when we were in the UK.

          Ask him what he can recommend of Greek reds, I had some super ones when I worked in Athens.

          1. In my opinion Corney & Barrow are one the best wine merchants in the country. They used to be way too expensive for me. However they introduced an own label range that is just so good. I have been buying from them for over a year now and is the only place I buy from.

          2. If we ever return to the UK to live I will try to remember, thanks for the recommendation

        2. Back in the seventies when I lived in Clapham Common we would shop in Tescos in Victoria. My site was in Rampayne Street in Pimlico so it wasn’t an inconvenience.

          After shopping we would dine at the Seafresh restaurant just off Vauxhall Bridge Road near to Victoria. The restaurant prepared the most delicious fish and chips and was run by Greeks. The chilled Retsina they served matched perfectly their Haddock and Chips.

          In those days the sign of a good affordable restaurant in central London was the snaking line of Black cabs outside. The cabbies were inside.

          Later we found much the same in France and when looking for a decent eatery simply followed the lorry drivers.

  71. Last post.

    Forgive me for being more maudlin than usual – but four years ago today was my beloved son’s funeral.

    When he was hard up, as he often was, he would give us for Christmas/birthday presents CD compilations of pop music of the sort that he thought I should “know”.

    I am playing a “Jimpilation” right now – dating from 2009. The second track was, “We’ll meet again” (by Johnny Cash).

    Talk about not a dry eye in the house…

    A demain (again)

    1. Very sad day for you but what a wonderful memory you have. One of many no doubt.

    2. With three lovely sons our selves, I can’t imagine what you have been through, it’s so sad.
      All the best Bill.

    3. Just over seven weeks for me and every Thursday I recall taking my wife to hospital, every Friday I recall being told my wife will pass away within 24 hours and every Saturday lunchtime I recall being told that her situation is deteriorating and almost immediately after that, that she has passed away. How do you ever get over that? I am socialising and that’s fine but in the quiet moments, especially at night, those memories come back to haunt you. A good night’s sleep is just a memory for me at the moment.

      1. My wife told me that should I die first she would bury me in a favourite churchyard and visit my grave every day in order to talk with me. I promised to do the same if she died first.

        That is the bond of marriage and of love surely. You have this asset in abundance.

        1. I started writing ‘letters’ to my wife after she died. I recounted everything that was happening and who contacted me etc. However, I did not want these ‘letters’ to become a mere diary of ordinary day to day events but to highlight the important happenings and my feelings as the days passed. Now, I write about once a week when something of importance has happened and I still tell her that my heart is broken and that I miss her.

          I never did post my last story about her life, I keep mulling over whether to or not. Her story explains a lot to me about why she behaved the way she did and why she wanted a safe and secure marriage: her decision at such a young age to put her future in the hands of the young man in the new avatar remains a mystery to me and to her close family members. A sensible view is that she couldn’t have known what the future held but she went for it anyway and she got it right. I was so lucky to be captivated by such a young lady. I have no regrets whatsoever.

          1. We have to keep our cherished memories. Our house is stuffed full of my wife’s memories in the form of the stuff she inherited which might otherwise have been put in a skip. Her sister was not interested in the wider picture, but only in the monetary inheritance.

            Letters, documents, her dad’s naval uniform (minesweepers), photographs and slides, old family photos etc., My wife treasures these finds.

      2. In my experience, it will never leave you, but the things that trigger sadness will become fewer and further apart.

        I think you’re doing exceptionally well and I also think that that is down to the love that you have for each other.
        I use “have” deliberately.

      3. Korky – as a wise NoTTLer said to me four years ago (and it is SO true) you don’t get over it, you just get used to it.

    6. ,,

      Right, that is me done for on here

      Seemingly, me having lost my only son was not worthy of a comment

      1. OLT, I may have missed something, but don’t leave us. I, for one, had no idea of your loss.

      2. Have only just seen your post. It is so very sad to lose someone especially a family member. You have my sincere condolences.

        I know disqus has been playing up badly.

  72. Good evening, Chums.

    This morning the Church I attend held
    its second outside Service, we meet on
    the Church Lawn [ie the Car park when
    necessary!]

    I arrived fairly early and started to chat
    to one of the Deacons, a very Chriistian
    person……..He asked me if I had heard
    of G. Soros!!

    This Deacon is a University Mentor [no, I
    haven’t a clue either] and for thirty years
    has been concerned about the radicilisation
    of our Christian Heritage………my response:
    ” You and me, Sunshine!”

    I have invited him to join us……..he reckons
    Christianity will last for at the most, thirty years,
    before it is forced ‘underground.’
    He is one of the most level headed persons I
    know, when he says such a thing…….I think it
    is time to panic.

    Edited.

    1. How can anybody be ‘very Christian’? It’s like virginity; you either are or you aren’t.

      1. the Good Samaritan was christian but not a Christian. To understand it, the only way is ethics.

      2. You can agree with the Christian ethos without being “very Christian” – ie a regular churchgoer or a member of a church.

      3. Not at all, Peddy. You can be slightly Christian (go to church at Christmas and Easter) and other wise beggar thy neighbour, or vert Christian (live by the full principles).

        1. You can be slightly devout or very devout, which is what you describe, but there can be no degrees of being a Christian.

    2. As an underground movement it will start, over time, to gather momentum once again – such is human nature – and the cycle will repeat.

        1. We most certainly shouldn’t, but it seems to be part of the religious cycle of our country, the cry of racism! running in tandem with the cry of heresy! under similar, although not identjcal, religious circumstances several centuries ago. The ‘bleeding hearts’ have encouraged and allowed this to happen. How I long for some Christian fire and brimstone from the pulpit rather than the wishy-washu utterances of today’s representatives of Christ.

        2. Christianity had to go underground in the Soviet Union. It will be like that again, I suspect, if we aren’t careful.

    3. A University Mentor helps out with students who might be having problems settling in, organising their work, etc, as I understand it (often it’s for BAME students who aren’t up to snuff if my alma mater is anything to go by). I had the opportunity to do it and turned it down since nobody ever mentored me; I had to sink or swim by my own bl00dy efforts.

    1. Meanwhile, the Telegraph maintains that Hiroshima 8/6 was an “atrocity”.

      Edit: as I started to scroll the photo, I was thinking ‘please tell me it’s not NHS worship’.
      Both Japanese and United States citizens traditionally believe(d) that serving in the armed forces is/was immensely honourable.
      (Followed by agriculture, with merchants way down the list)

      1. Modern readers are not supposed to understand that it was the only way to end the war and save more lives than it killed.

        1. Maybe those that disagree should say what they would have preferred? Bearing in mind that the Japanese military were not minded to surrender, in fact, the opposite.

          1. They would have fought on to the last man – like those found years later in the jungle.

          2. Indeed, and the result would have been horrific, enormous loss of life and economic damage.
            Thank God for the atom bomb.

          4. I have skin in the game.
            My Father was part of the atom bomb development.
            And I’m proud. No shame.

          5. My father served with the Royal Artillery in India and Burma. A friend’s father was captured by the Japanese.

            Neither would have objected to the total annihilation of Japan, such were the atrocities they witnessed.

          6. History records that the Japanese Army had plans to kill all prisoners of war on the first day of invasion of the Japanese homelands.

            We are delighted that the atomic bombs prevented that.

          7. Even after the bomb was dropped there were still some isolated pockets of soldiery that fought on; some as late as the fifties!

        2. (sorry for late reply, some comments go to my spam section.)
          The article in question was written by a young lady who would appear to be on the political left, and who admits that her mother is an activist. The use of the bombs was a tragedy rather than an atrocity.

          1. No problem Tim. I turned off Disqus emails years ago and only use the notifications blob at the top of the page to catch up with replies.
            It certainly was a tragedy. I think an atrocity is more appropriate for a terrorist attack, delivered with malice, to cause maximum distress.

  75. Worthy of Patricia Highsmith:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/09/dentist-secretly-stalked-crossbow-carrying-patient-revenge/

    “A top dentist was
    secretly stalked by a disgruntled patient carrying a “murder kit” with a
    crossbow, mask and kitchen knife hidden in his car.
    Thomas Baddeley, 42, spent four years trailing orthodontist Dr Ian
    Hutchinson to plot revenge over his dental treatment at his private
    practice called the “Smile Lounge”.
    Businessman Baddeley even made a chilling timetable for “The Event” –
    including notes about how to avoid leaving fingerprints and what he
    should say to the police if caught.”

    1. If you are disgruntled when you have to dismantle somefing

      Will you be Gruntled, when you Mantle it

      Just asking

  76. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/70bd77fc43cc0a2c7fb574db4a6ec28d11930b812e374f6b77bb607b065cae2f.png

    Your voice — by Lissie Harper.

    I will be your voice when you cannot shout,
    I will fight your battles till my heart wears out!
    I will scream and curse and roar,
    For I am here, your love, just as before.

    I will march with an army right up to their doors,
    I will stand strong and demand that we change our laws.
    I will not break, give up, or fall,
    I will be brave for you as I hear your call.

    I will cry in rage when they get mistreated,
    I will stand up tall for them, never defeated.
    As they risk their lives in the line of duty,
    I promise I’ll push to preserve your beauty.

    As they protect with honour in their uniform,
    I cannot be silent as they weather the storm.
    I vow to be part of our family in blue,
    As they carry on, with pride, just like you.

    We will win these fights, one day I am sure.
    With the guilty locked up at the end of our war.
    We must show to the world that we stand with the best,
    Never again should loyalty be put to the test.

    Let them see that our island is united as one.
    We will not be bullied by monsters that come.
    I will speak for their value and brave sacrifice,
    As they take all the risks and offer their life.

    I will hold onto strength and courage today,
    I will sing for our team, so they have their say.
    I will be their voice when the silence sets in,
    Never broken or bruised I will help us to win.

    So come let’s protect our family in blue,
    As I needed their help they came, they just knew.
    I will shout of my pride of our true protectors,
    From Big Chief to PC’s, sergeants and inspectors.

    We stand side by side with you now do you see?
    We value your lives as it always should be,
    So help me to show the whole world what is right,
    That our officers deserve our thanks every day and every night.

    We support you all the way Lissie. 💙
    One Police UK

  77. The gutless swine have bowed to the mob and “apologised”

    “BBC director general Tony Hall has
    apologised and said a mistake was made after a news report containing a
    racial slur was broadcast last month.

    The N-word was used in full
    in a report about a racially aggravated attack in Bristol, broadcast by
    Points West and the BBC News Channel on 29 July.

    The BBC initially defended the use of the slur after more than 18,600 complaints were made.

    Lord Hall said he now accepts the BBC should have taken a different approach.

    On Saturday, BBC Radio 1Xtra DJ Sideman – real name David Whitely – quit the station over the BBC’s use of the N-word.”
    Now colour me cynical I wonder how many (c)rap records the uppity dindu played with lyrics spattered with Niggas,guns and Ho’s

    1. Tell him to F…orf…….we have too many of these
      overpaid, under delivering ‘sweetie-pops’ telling
      us what we should or should not believe!

    3. On Saturday, BBC Radio 1Xtra DJ Sideman – real name David Whitely – quit the station over the BBC’s use of the N-word

      Silver lining!

      2. Wouldn’t it be a larf if the plod “stopped” her because they knew that someone was going to attack her…..

    3. The police were driving through ‘Ackney? Or Dawn was? Can nobody write English any more?

  79. My elderly neighbour, a lovely lady aged 87 has received a letter from the BBC requiring her to pay £167.00 for a TV licence.

    She asked my advice. I told her to consult with her children, themselves in their late fifties and early sixties but that I thought she should not pay. My reasoning is that the BBC and Boris Johnson are both on their last legs.

    1. My Mother has a “Final Demand” on her table in the TV room, but I don’t know what it is for. Maybe BBC. Since she is daft now, maybe they can embarrass themselves by persecuting a 94 year old with dementia? Bring it on!

      1. That will not stop the bastards running the BBC. The saddest thing is that Boris Johnson wishes to retain and perpetuate the crap BBC Organization.

          2. She is only there to make any other appointment seem like a good choice.
            I much prefer the option that the BBC be a subscription service, then I couldn’t care less who their subscribers pay for.

          4. I’m all for them selecting the most dreadful, moke-woke, most perpetually offended candidate that they can possibly find.

            The worse the better.
            It might hasten their demise.

      2. It is too early in the present process for a ‘final demand’ for a tv licence. The word from the beeb is to do nothing until an explanatory letter arrives which rumour has it is pages and pages long and tedious in the extreme. The truly elderly will gave forgotten what they were reading in the first place by the tine they get to the end of it, if they get that far.

    2. But a TV Licence costs £157.50 (£53 for black and white TV sets) for both homes and businesses.

      TV Licence – GOV.UK

      Is it really from the BBC or is it a scam?

      1. I will check, my neighbour just asked my advice over the phone.

        Edit: Throughout lockdown my wife has a conversation with our neighbour every day at 18.30 and I have asked her to check and not do anything regarding payment for the present.

        I find the targeting of susceptible elderly and often frail people by the BBC contemptible. Apart from the actual BBC threat, as I and others have observed it leaves the door wide open for scammers and low life chancers to exploit the circumstances.

        Our politicians appear to despise us, allowing the BBC to carry on spending billions on crap film sets for Eastenders, millions paid to Lineker and his ilk, millions paid to Claudia Winkelman, a talentless harridan and the rest of their motley crew.

        1. TV Licensing will only ask you to pay using the following options:

          By post using the address: TV Licensing, PO Box 578, Darlington DL98 1AN

          Online at tvl.co.uk/75pay or tvl.co.uk/75apply

          Over the phone on 0300 790 6151

          Anything else is a scam.

          You can call TV Licensing on 0300 303 9695 to speak with someone who can help.

    3. 322270+ up ticks,
      Evening C,
      Under the current regime I would NOT expect her to do more that two years as long as she does not get saucy &
      tell the bent beak she can do that standing on her head
      that could result in him giving her another two to get her back on her feet.

      Besides that, your advice is top notch.

      1. We checked. It is a demand for £157.50. I think my neighbour transposed £157.50 to £ 175.50.

        I probably misheard my neighbour on the telephone.

  80. A Christmas Carol remembering those family members we shall miss at that time:

    Lexi Walker joined The Piano Guys for this mind blowing reimagining of “Ave Maria”‘s melody with the lyrics of “O Holy Night.” Of course, the melody for “O Holy Night” makes an appearance at the end, because why wouldn’t you want that beautiful high note?

    https://youtu.be/WGHUmpUu7Gw

  83. 322270+ up ticks,
    They realise it now & have done so for years but are locked into the party
    first mode of voting, seemingly the consequences can NEVER get bad enough to warrant any change.
    Even compulsory mosque attendance which could very well be on the cards
    will still see them voting to keep in / keep out guaranteed political failures.

    https://twitter.com/GerardBattenUK/status/1292372098460069888

  84. 322270+ up ticks,
    May one ask has Dan the Royal Marine (the priti appointment) man got access to a boat or just a loudhailer to give some bass tone to the priti rhetoric of ” please go back” shouted in a stage whisper.
    If serious what ammo is he using.

  85. Sat outside in the garden on the bench with a cup of tea ..

    The heat is unbearable , I came back inside after five minutes.. really too warm.

    2. Lovely here, Belle. About 22C, sunny, and the prosecco is cold, the prosciutto & cheese at room temp… it’ll be a nice evening. Cold cream sherry and ice also mobilised, just in case, as is the Chianti, cold beers… Any chance you & YOH can drop by?

      1. Scorchio – in a chilly sort of way. Keep out of the strong north-easterly and it is just perfect.

        1. Add a slice of lemon & chilled fizzy lemonade & you have a rebujito. I’m gonna have one in a minute.

  86. I have just read that Ben Stokes will miss the next two test matches against Pakistan for family reasons. He is returning to New Zealand where he was born and where his parents reside.

    There is an opportunity for the selectors to keep the present team but include Ben Foakes as wicket keeper and retain Jos Buttler as a middle order batsman and reserve keeper should Foakes suffer an injury.

    I might also suggest that Jack Leach of Somerset could replace Dom Bess. Leach can bowl superbly but also keep an end with his batting.

    2. Foakes, Woakes and Stokes in the same team at the same time was never going to happen. TMS would have spent 2 hours on air about it.

        1. They have all genuflected at the international game starts. Would not doing it be a career breaker, I don’t know?

  87. Evening, all. Been a lovely day spent mostly in the garden and then watching the racing on TV.

      1. Thank you. I had a very up and down day yesterday, but one of my friends came round in the evening and took me for a drive, which gave me a bit of a break.

    2. I also set it as my background on TEAMS – it’s like I’m talking from the jungle!

      1. It’s a Narrow Beech Fern.
        I love the endless shades of green.
        I always wanted to be able to paint clouds in watercolour – just shades of grey. But I lack any form of talent.
        I’ll get me artists smaock.

  89. That’s me for this hot Sunday. More to follow, allegedly.

    Have a jolly evening – being stopped for driving through Hackney.

    A demain.

    1. The video has also been reversed to make it appear she was the driver. Look the police officer she is berating. His MET logo should be on the right, but appears on the left.

      1. Typical Labour Party fabrication and disinformation. That Butler bitch should be prosecuted for wasting police time and providing disinformation (a hate crime surely?).

      1. Will we get to see the middle section of this video, or are we seeing only what is most beneficial to Butler? If so, pretty feeble stuff.

    2. Given every other person in London seems to be bleck, she has a 50-50 chance of being stopped, which is not exactly ‘racial profiling’.

  95. Unionists must stand up to the SNP’s nasty rhetoric

    The pandemic has shown the merit of the union. It’s now up to Douglas Ross to make that case

    TELEGRAPH VIEW

    Congratulations to Douglas Ross, the new leader of the Scottish Conservatives – he will need all the luck he can get. The SNP has been buoyed by Nicola Sturgeon’s single-minded reduction of every issue to the case for independence. If things go well, she takes credit; if things go badly, she blames Westminster. Even the pandemic has been played for political advantage.

    In July Ms Sturgeon said that the incidence of coronavirus was five times higher in England than in Scotland. The Office for National Statistics rebuked her for the claim, calling it misleading. Her response was to accuse politicians who challenged her on the data of partisanship.

    Until a recent spike, Scotland had enjoyed success in controlling infection rates, but comparisons with England are unhelpful, partly due to contrasts in demography and density. Plus, Scotland repeated England’s error of discharging patients into nursing homes, and many of its policies have been indistinguishable from England’s. Ms Sturgeon dismissed Boris Johnson’s “stay alert” slogan as “vague and imprecise”. Her own version was “stay safe”.

    The First Minister wants to build the narrative that Scotland’s ability to control Covid-19 shows that independence is a must, but the pandemic proves the opposite. As Mr Ross writes for the Telegraph, the furlough scheme has been bankrolled by taxpayers across the union, and at a time when we should be working together, scoring points against Westminster is counterproductive.

    Last week, nationalists unveiled a banner at Waverley Station, Edinburgh, that read “England get out of Scotland”. Mr Ross has to fight this kind of hideous rhetoric head-on and make the positive case for the union, namely that we only win when we work together.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/08/09/unionists-must-stand-snps-nasty-rhetoric/
    __________________________________________________

    We can stand up to nationalism’s false promises

    For too long Unionists have been complacent about the threat we face. It is time to start making the positive case for staying together

    DOUGLAS ROSS

    I will give the Scottish Nationalists this – their relentless campaign to try and break up the United Kingdom has forced Unionists to focus harder on how we make our counter-argument. Too often in the past we lapsed into complacency, assuming those arguments were self-evident. Or we have relied on the clear and obvious weaknesses of separation, as if that would be enough to persuade the people of the United Kingdom to stay united. It won’t.

    My mission – as I take over as the new leader of the Scottish Conservatives this week – is to take on the half-baked nationalist case set out by Nicola Sturgeon by re-making the positive case for the benefits of our union, a case that is as strong now as it ever has been.

    The Coronavirus pandemic has demonstrated those benefits in full. Millions of workers have benefited from the UK Government’s furlough scheme, one only made possible by the country’s broad fiscal shoulders. Nobody has been asked to set out whether they are Scottish, Welsh, English or Northern Irish in order to receive prompt support. As with the healthcare support we receive from the NHS when any of us walk into a hospital in any part of the UK, that is the unquestioned, unequivocal benefit we get from a union which is blind to our nationality.

    In the unified support we’ve received from our NHS, and from the UK exchequer, the benefits of our Union have been undeniable these last few months.

    But it should not require a crisis for those benefits to be revealed to us all. And the truth is, for too long, that case has not been made. Since devolution 20 years ago, there has been a tendency in Whitehall to “devolve and forget”. Left unchecked, this is deeply dangerous and could end in the nations of the Union simply drifting apart. We can’t let this continue. We must find new ways to show that our Union is a common endeavour, held together not just by convenience, but by shared values and mutual gain.

    And we should set our sights higher – recognising that the benefits of a strong UK aren’t just felt by those of us who live on these islands, but across the world, too. For example, next year, Glasgow will host the UN International Climate Change Conference when global leaders will meet to debate new targets to stop potentially catastrophic climate change from wrecking our world. [Oh dear, Dougie…]

    Here is a perfect way to show the value of our Union. While the Nationalists in Scotland can spend next year fumbling around with tedious arguments about how a currency in an independent Scotland might work, or why Scotland would want to separate from our biggest market; our Unionist response should be to spend our time more usefully. We can demonstrate how a UK hosted event, based in Glasgow, can help secure the future of our planet.

    Equally, while Nationalists will always yearn for confrontation and endless rows with Westminster, the government of the Union should refuse to play ball. Instead, it should find more ways to work together with the governments of the UK, to improve the relationship between them, all the better to show that our Union is inclusive and in touch. This is about forging a new cooperative approach which shows that the Government wants every part of the country to benefit from our shared enterprise.

    We should remember why it is that the Nationalists are so keen to have these confected rows with Westminster. They want to demonstrate that the Union is unstable. And, increasingly, it’s because they know it helps distract attention from their utterly abysmal record as a government in Scotland. Over the last few days, students from across Scotland have taken to the streets to protest over the exams fiasco which the SNP has presided over this summer. The Scottish Government’s incompetence in this scandal is appalling and off the scale. Little wonder Nicola Sturgeon is keen to point at the Westminster bogeyman rather than accept responsibility for her government’s failures.

    We keep being told the Union is in crisis. But with a little care and attention, I believe the case for the Union will be shown over these coming years to be capable of withstanding the false promises of nationalism. I believe, instead, we can become what we’ve always been at our best – a beacon for liberal, open, democratic values, one seen right around the world. When I stand up against Scottish separation these coming months, I’m standing up for that. Let’s do so together.

    Douglas Ross MP is the leader of the Scottish Conservative party

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/08/can-stand-nationalisms-false-promises/

    1. I doubt they’d have a banner that read “England, get your money out of Scotland”.

    2. Douglas Ross is a retired football referee and a nonentity.

      Ross was re-elected at the 2019 general election with a reduced majority. He was then appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, replacing Colin Clark who had lost his seat in the election. He resigned from this role on 26 May 2020, in protest against Dominic Cummings continuing to serve as Chief Adviser to the Prime Minister after having travelled over 260 miles (420 kilometres) from London to Durham during the COVID-19 lockdown period.

      That is the sum of his political career.

      1. 1. There aren’t many to choose from up there!
        2. It’s hardly an inspiring address. While he wouldn’t be expected to say he was going to rip the arms off Wee Krankie and throw them to the hoodie crows, he has to try and stir the soul a bit.

    3. I was totally pro-Union.

      The referendum and everything since has persuaded me that getting shot of the Scots would be a good thing.

      1. They seem to have far more in common with Germans to be fair, listening to an intelligible Sturgeon rant when she lets rips just reminds me of Adolf.

        1. She will do whatever it takes to get her Scaryan Scotland, she’s a Führerin as far as English cleansing is concerned.

        2. She will do whatever it takes to get her Scaryan Scotland, she’s a Führerin as far as English cleansing is concerned.

      2. Perhaps it could be more like the partition of India – we send her all our woke lefties and immigrants and she sends us those Scots whos wish to remain part of the UK. I’m we will have plenty of room for them once the undesirables have been sent packing northwards.

    1. 322270+ up ticks,
      Evening OLT,
      Many of us have been suffering for decades fighting on three fronts opposing the lab/lib/con coalition party.
      And the coalition ain’t no porg, ie party of restricted growth
      currently it must contain more imbeciles than there are privates in the chinese army.

  97. Saturday was a great day for the cricket. Sunday was interesting for the Silverstone Anniversary Grand Prix.

    The real disappointment in both events was the stupid knee bending exercise. I am surprised that this nonsensical virtue signalling propaganda persists. Hamilton in particular speaks about educating others via his protest, whereas the silly little shit has need to educate himself. His drive is Mercedes, a direct descendant of Daimler Benz, a company built on the slave labour of thousands of Poles and other Eastern European captives.

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