Thursday 10 August: Soaring salaries for senior civil servants are insulting to the taxpayer

Posted on by Geoff Graham

An unofficial place to discuss the Telegraph letters, established when the DT website turned off its commenting facility (now reinstated, but we prefer ours),
Intelligent, polite, good-humoured debate is welcome, whether on or off topic. Differing opinions are encouraged, but rudeness or personal attacks on other posters will not be tolerated. Posts which – in the opinion of the moderators – make this a less than cordial environment, are likely to be removed, without prior warning.  Persistent offenders will be banned.

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here.

415 thoughts on “Thursday 10 August: Soaring salaries for senior civil servants are insulting to the taxpayer”

  4. Duchess of Sussex photographer accuses Surrey shop of racism. 10 August 2023.

    In a video on Twitter, Mr Harriman said: “I saw the most triggering thing, I’ve just come in to try and get toys for my girls, and I just saw the most incredibly triggering imagery; luckily my children are not with me.

    I just went to Cobham to get my kids some toys and went into a shop called @Farrants_Cobham

    There is a MASSIVE picture that is pride of place at the point of payment. It is an image of black men, broken black men at a tobacco plantation with their overseers next to them?!?! I…

    I guess this triggering thing is akin to the vapourings of Victorian ladies when they saw something risqué. Did he need smelling salts; his corset laces loosening? What of the people who work there? Are they swaggering, whip cracking overseers devoid of all humanity? Have the last shreds of compassion been wrung out of them? Are they White? The horror!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/09/photographer-misan-harriman-accuses-surrey-shop-of-racism/

    1. I saw the picture in the Mail. It’s just a field of tobacco with a few workers and a couple of bosses. I suppose the hysterics are because the picture depicts white bosses and black workers instead of the other way round.

    2. Perhaps the picture is intended to show the oppression of blacks by whites, back in the early 1900s, in an artistic format. In what way is it racist? Does the picture say “This is the way things should be?”
      What an arse. Why do people like that exist?

      1. Because guilt ridden whites with too much time and money on their hands continue to pay Danegeld.

        1. Why do folk get guilty on behalf of others, especially when the others are dead?
          Be guilty from your own misdeeds, that should be enough for anyone.

      1. Morning folks.

        I read yesterday that he has lost the title His Royal Highness. Can anyone confirm it’s been replaced by His Royal Lowness?

    4. “luckily my children are not with me”.

      I doubt his children would have noticed anything about it or if they did, would only have been ‘triggered’ if he had primed them to be.

      I winder if this is why there are so few black agricultural workers and fruit pickers? Reminds them of a past they never experienced.

    5. It’s remarkable how this man managed to find his way to this shop quite by chance and then made a video with a carefully scripted narration.

      He is the well-spoken son of a wealthy Nigerian politician, considered to be one of the ‘founding fathers’ of modern Nigeria. The moment I read that, the klaxons were blaring and the alarm bells ringing – descended from slave owners!

      3. I’ve mentioned before two personal examples this year of wealthy Nigerian kids being given specific targeted leg-ups because they are black. These kids are loaded and well-educated but are still deemed to be needing affirmative action/positive discrimination.

  5. Good morning all. Cloudy with blue patches.

    Bad back – will be off NoTTLe much of the day. Have fun.

    1. I gave my right knee a good dunt when wandering from summerhouse back to the kitchen.
      I thought it was bit painful this morning.
      Then I remembered that MB selfishly declined to finish the bottle of ’19 Crimes” rose so I had to avoid wasting wine (think of the planet).

    3. Sorry to hear that, Bill. Take a couple of cocodemols and rest easy. Should you begin to perspire, let the MR mop your brow. (That last sentence was meant as a joke, a bad back is not at all funny.)

  6. One for the foodies to discuss:

    “Sir – I thought Mark Hix’s recipe for pork pie was a little bland (Magazine, August 5).

    I have been making raised pies for over 50 years and have always added a great variety of flavours and herbs to both the pastry and the meat. Fresh chopped or dried herbs, nutmeg, ground black pepper, Dijon mustard, garlic, Worcestershire sauce or sweet chilli sauce can all be used in any combination you fancy. Add a stock cube to the water for the pastry: vegetable, chicken or pork.

    For meat, I use chicken or turkey mince with diced gammon and lean diced pork with a mid layer of chicken breast, thigh or leg meat, or pheasant, thin-cut steak, even ostrich steak. The mid layer can also have red pepper strips for dramatic colour when cut open.

    This year I am teaching a number of friends to make the pies for our annual harvest supper. There will be a vegetarian version and one made with gluten-free flour.

    I avoid lard, preferring to use a white vegetable fat. To glaze, I always add salt to the beaten egg for extra depth of colour. For the cooking times I make sure the centre is cooked by using a meat thermometer set to 72C.“

    Personally when I make pastry I don’t use enough water to need a stock cube but probably Mre Follett, the letter-writer, makes huge batches (that’s how I read the letter, anyway). But who can enlighten me as to what “white vegetable fat” is? (Full disclosure- I’m an emphatic and enthusiastic user of lard).

    1. It’s a sort of white solid margarine type thing, marketed for cooking. Pretty toxic, I should imagine.
      I’ve gone back to using lard since Grizzly opened my eyes to the dangers of seed oils.

        1. Some people make pork pies with dinosaur meat Grizzly? Lol. (Good morning, btw.)

          1. Good morning Auntie Elsie. I’ve eaten a few pork pies bought in petrol stations and I think that might be the case!🤮

    3. More info required: when I want a decent pork pie, I simply add it to my shopping list. Life is too short to faff about. Lol.

    4. I have responded to that letter with one of my own (but doubt it shall be published):

      SIR — As an enthusiastic pork pie maker, I enjoyed reading Elizabeth Follett’s delicious recipe (Letters, August 10), until she stated that she avoids lard in favour of a white vegetable fat.

      White ‘vegetable’ fats contain no vegetable matter. They are a trans-fat seed oil, invented originally as an industrial lubricant, before various companies decided to modify them by bleaching and adding various chemicals and deodorisers so they could be sold as food. This product was first sold in the USA as ‘Crisco’ and the exponential rise in the use of this, and its imitators, has seen a rapid upsurge in chronic ill-health among its users.

      Pork lard is a time-honoured natural fat that is delicious, nutritious, healthy and does not cause obesity or disease in the same way that seed-based trans-fats do. She should take a tip from her ancestors who remained fit and healthy using a natural product.

      With regard to water in pastry, the correct pastry for pork pies is hot water crust which necessitates melting lard (and butter) in boiling water to make an emulsion before adding the flour. It is a quite different product in both composition and ingredients to shortcrust pastry or puff pastry.

      1. 375346+ up ticks,

        Morning G,

        Tallow, was used in screwing pipe
        with hand & machine dies.

        No sexual connotations.

        When you opened a new tub it looked good enough to construct a full English with.

        1. Morning, O.

          I render my own beef tallow. It is what is still used in Belgium and Yorkshire to deep-fry the world’s tastiest fish and chips.
          I also render my own pork lard (since it is not sold in Swedish shops).

  8. The real crisis is global gaslighting. Spiked. 10 August 2023.

    They’re lying to us. Forget global boiling, the crazy term invented by UN chief António Guterres a couple of weeks ago. Forget global warming, even. It’s global gaslighting we should be worried about. If gaslighting, in the words of the Oxford dictionary, is ‘the process of making somebody believe untrue things in order to control them’, then that lunatic Standard cover was classic gaslighting. The planet is not on fire. Earth is not burning. These are untruths. This is delirium, not journalism; fearmongering, not fact-gathering. And the aim, it seems to me, is to try to control us; to frighten us with pseudo-Biblical prophesies of hellfire and doom until we obediently bow down to the eco-ideology.

    Brendan has awoken!

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/08/09/the-real-crisis-is-global-gaslighting/

    1. Brendan has awoken!

      Now all we need is the remaining tens of millions of the electorate to follow Brendan’s example.

      1. Jeremy Paxman used to say that when he started interviewing a politician he began with the question uppermost in his mind:

        Why is this lying bastard lying to me?

        It is actually damaging for society for people to be as sheepishly acquiescent as too many of us have become. We need to rekindle our scepticism and cynicism.

        1. This is why the state so feverishly imposes fact checkers (liars) to lend credibility to their lies and pretend they’re the real source of truth.

  9. Interesting article from Alan Cochran (following on from Allister Heath’s excoriating article on Net Zero) which explains a lot. In this case, the demonisation of Scottish estates. It appears that if, as a Govt, you can shut them down by legislating to make it impossible for them to survive, and then buy them up cheaply, you can make a fortune in the “carbon credits” markets.

    I am preaching to the choir here, as we all know Net Zero is a scam, but yet more evidence that it is a financial con being played on us by our “elites”:

    Extract from article – “ Land managers fear that many more shooting estates will be sold and turned into extensive woodland. The reasoning is simple. Woodland can be used to offset the production of carbon – a lucrative business. And if governments such as that led by the SNP impose ever more restrictions on grouse shooting, who could blame landowners for selling up?”

    Incidentally there was also a letter from someone who had had their house built with all the recommended eco-nonsense but the house was still only eco-rated a grade B….for lack of a windmill and some other impossible things with a ridiculously long pay-back period.

    1. ‘Morning, Mir. Purchases of Scottish estates – cheap or otherwise – must be the only thing not to appear on the Scottish Nasty Party credit card bills. She missed a trick there.

  10. ‘Morning All

    Matt

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f1b4ae31295c763312d7a179a186ffdc1354428fe3e2e659d8f4379dc02d0148.jpg

    Rest of the medley

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/50c7d2587afa19388b1e56de924e5d626ec560bac8a94739cdad716b798cc544.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/651b61183352e228cefb8728e85a8bc25d4cfba6f3d48edeffe154f7ff5a4918.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b4f92d95a6cf89631a2d2cc5d824f2e08ecdd079cdfb672f487dcff9feede49a.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9942df0a6255a853eda811c53c407e4eb12f0a4814e714497edfca735ee64860.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/981fa4db950edce9fd190f05fe1896617f245a6df22d36eec30a466d048b2a10.gif

    https://twitter.com/KonstantinKisin/status/1689352686280327170?s=20

  11. When someone said the Crooked House had burned down, I thought they meant the house of commons.

  12. 375346+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    The public still isn’t being told the full, horrifying truth about the net zero permanent revolution
    A restrictive architecture of carbon budgets and climate committees is killing democratic choice.

    Truth be told the majority voter does NOT want to know that that is showing out daily, to acknowledge it would take them from their party before reality, comfort zone.

    This NET ZERO is one major segment of repress,replace, RESET, The route to RESET is via mass controlled / uncontrolled immigration/ child rape & abuse of both body & mind, mandatory assisted killing via experimental vaccines,
    overloading the NHS with daily arriving foreign patients, indigenous second placed when it comes to medication, education.accommodation,as in the scraps left over from a once credible nation infrastructure.

    At this moment in time our biggest danger is from the power brokers, AKA the electorate.

  14. Good morning, all. Sunny blue sky and calm. All-day sunshine forecast =
    good drying day and washing is on
    next year’s fruit bearing loganberry canes will be tied in
    weeding and dead-heading
    grass feed and weed will be applied later.

    All in all a very productive day in prospect with real ales this evening at either the Layer Fox or the Donkey and Buskin in the village down the road.

    Apropos the Oxford St incident yesterday.

    Another scene of rough justice from the USA, this time Arizona.
    The lesson to be learnt here is how difficult it is to overcome someone who is determined to fight back, or is on drugs, or is mentally disturbed or all of these things. Some of those guys in the restaurant are burly but it took a surprise attack with a chair and five men to put the perpetrator down and keep him down. Unless someone is a confident and experienced self-defence expert it’s best not to get involved and the thief has probably taken that into consideration. That’s where a a gun comes in handy in the USA but not here in the UK, of course.

    https://twitter.com/JimFergusonUK/status/1689375756797767680

    2. Diversity strength!

      And don’t hit him. Do permanent damage such as breaking his arm. Knock him to the ground, stand on the shoulder and pull upward. Then boot the arm pit. He won’t be able to use it for months.

      1. As my eldest brother said, after he’d done National Service, stand on their head, pull his arm from its socket and hit him with the soggy end.

  15. If global warming and domestic energy consumption is such a problem, why are the companies refusing my neighbour a contract to fill his 1200 litre LPG tank once a year at a reasonable market price because his usage is not adequate to support the company’s capital investment in providing a tank that is already there?

      1. Dealing with insurance companies, where they bury the telephone number in 5 layers of contact us, then customer service, THEN there’s a 10 level IVR to wade through before the hapless fellow at the end – after 52 minutes on hold says ‘Oh, you need to call these people. Not me. I won’t help you. I’m not allowed.’

        It’s simple: answer the phone within 5 rings. Job done, move along. There are 5 million unemployed.

  16. Reposted from late last night.

    Thursday 10th August 2023

    ourmaninmunich

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/bb8ca1bf42f9387b5cac4a9e0c6ac0712fae04844dc99800df97887620e3c721.png

    Where have you been – we know you’re probably youngest Nottler on the forum but that is no reason not to drop in!

    Many more very Happy Birthdays and best wishes

    Caroline and Rastus

    https://www.google.com/search?q=night+train+to+munich+al+stewart&oq=Night+Train+to+Munich&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqBggAEEUYOzIGCAAQRRg7MgkIARAuGEMYigUyCQgCEC4YQxiKBTIHCAMQABiABDIHCAQQABiABDIHCAUQABiABDIGCAYQRRg9MgYIBxBFGD3SAQg5NDYzajBqN6gCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:c4cc4144,vid:QEZ9NQyRG_4

          4. My son is taking part in a social experiment.
            He has to wear a Sadiq
            Khan 2024 t-shirt for 2 weeks to see how people react.
            So far he’s been
            spat on, punched and had rubbish thrown at him.
            I’m curious to see
            what happens when he leaves the house later.

    2. Grattis på födelsedagen, ourmaninmunich (or wherever you may be these days!). Skål!🍻

    4. Thank-you all for your good wishes. Life is ridiculously hectic at the moment both at home and work so I barely have time to check in and see what you are all up to, let alone post!

      Please keep up the good work of helping to keep me sane! – Wibble.

  17. Good morning all.
    Another bright sunny morning with 10°C on the yard thermometer.

    A very disturbed night. I had a rather horrible session of gastric reflux and the DT has a cold with sore throat and every time I actually got comfortable enough to sleep, she woke me up!

    1. Obsv you both have New Variant Covid and are likely to be very very ill for several months.

    2. When our daughter was a baby vw took her to the doctor, do you remember those days when you could see a doctor, because she had a rotten cold. He said to us “if I treat it, it will last 2 weeks, if I don’t treat it, it will last a fortnight “.

  18. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7d138d55406b44a0ec348e604fa6b94c62455475569458dfba72c6402f35e495.png
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/08/09/echr-rishi-sunak-calls-from-cabinet-to-scrap-strasbourg/

    BTL (Percival Wrattstrangler)

    Either leave the ECHR immediately or admit that the UK is tied in it for ever because there is no way that the Conservatives will win the next election with the ECHR still in place and no way Labour – or a Labour Coalition – will leave it.

    1. Why didn’t they do it whilst they had a majority in the HoC?

      They certainly won’t have a majority after the next election.

      1. Because they don’t want to to, Janet. The intent is not to ever achieve anything. It’s simply to discuss it with the intent of sounding relevant while ensuring nothing whatsoever is done to jeopardise the rechaining of this country to the hated EU.

        2. …” jeopardise the rechaining of this country to the hated EU.”. You mean tightening the noose around UK’s neck.

    2. Just think of all the changes for the better a CONservative government could make if they had an 80 seat majority
      Instant deportation of illegals,bin Net Zero etc etc etc
      Oh wait………………..

      1. Rarely in the field of British political history has such a useful majority been so comprehensively wasted…

          1. The quangos set up to decide which ones should be tossed on the bonfire are due to make an interim report in 2097.

    3. We will open a quango on whether we should perhaps consider leaving the ECHR in 50 years. It has a budget of 1 billion, employs 20 people on 250,000 a year and will involve lots of travel to Brussels.

      (and will be packed with Lefties, europhiles, remoaners, statists and wonks).

    4. Sunak appears to be beholden to the WEF as his policies e.g. mass immigration, Net Zero/climate change and a digitised currency match that nefarious organisation’s pronouncements. Following these policies and others have isolated many Tory voters and the threat of a major defeat at the next GE has IMO frightened the Tory MPs.
      Some have made clear that they will not be standing at the GE but many will lose their nice sinecure when the voters reject them. Hence the desire for these Tories to adopt a radical idea that might convince the Tory voters that all is not lost.
      Such an untrustworthy self-centred bunch; the immigration scandal has been ongoing for years and the MPs cannot claim that only now, and so late in the day, that the issue is worthy of their attention. Any promise made between now and the GE will be worthless as should by a miracle the Tories retain power they will renege on any promises made – no change there – and should they lose they know that the Labour shower will continue with the destruction of the UK that is the ongoing Tory policy.

      1. Sunak will have a massive pay rise when he loses the general election as he will immediately be off to the USA to continue his job in finance.

        Conservative MPs are extraordinarily slow and phenomenally thick. Did they not see that replacing Johnson and then Truss with Sunak as leader was a guarantee that their careers as MPs would soon be over?

  19. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1703a6ca38df3a6c398a152e25214152b8ed811ea89603321cdd510c8d51dca5.png

    BTL Percival Wrattstrangler (retired PDG of Rodent Elimination Services)

    STOP PENSION ARPARTHEID NOW

    How much money would there have to be in a private pension pot to fund an inflation-proof pension of £100,000 pa?

    Those in the private sector used to be able to put almost unlimited annual amounts from their earned income into their pension schemes exempt from standard and higher rate income tax and no restriction on the capital in their personal pension pots which, before Gordon Brown’s Private Pension Theft, could accumulate free of tax.

    1. Brown’s theft of our pensions was egregious. Folk don’t understand how destructive that was. Ever since then they’ve fiddled and tweaked to take ever more of our money on spaff on the unwanted and unnecessary.

      1. Can you explain what happened in words of one syllable? During the Brown years, I was distracted and missed the whole pensions thing.

          1. He reduced the amount of money from your salary that you could put into a pension scheme and reduced the tax relief on your pension contributions. Added to this the growth in your pension pots were subjected to CGT and income taxes – which had not been applied to them previously.

            At a stroke he ruined one of the best pension schemes in the world.

          3. I was fortunate, being a snivel serpent, to have a taxpayer funded pension. It’s not a lot (a quarter of my final salary plus the extra I’d paid in ) but it keeps me going.

          4. He removed the ACT (advanced corporation tax) credit – equivalent to 25% of the value

        2. He stopped Pension Funds from claiming a specific tax relief which, effectively, drained a couple of billion out of what up to then had been the best funded and secure pension funds in Europe.

          2. That was the final straw thta led to us leaving the UK. It took something like 30% out of my projected pension, so we said Fcuk him, we’re off.

  20. 375346+ up ticks,

    Far from it, you have lied, deceived, and treacherously took the mass uncontrolled immigration baton from the lab party and continued the mass treachery, we witness the truth of your / parties actions daily.

    breitbart,
    Tory Spokesman Admits What We’ve All Known: ‘We Have Failed’ on Boat Migrants

  21. Good morning, chums. Very late on parade. I went to bed at turned midnight and slept for a solid eight hours. Today will again be a very busy day so I will take it easy tomorrow in preparation for a very busy Saturday. Enjoy your day, NoTTLers.

    2. #me too. First trip out for me on the (old) 34’ motor yacht that we purchased after I raided my pension last year. Boat is nearly as old as me. Currently in Fowey harbour having a well-deserved G&T. (MOH has spent half the year on the boat – reward for having sacrificed his career to bring the children up).

    2. Wiggy would hear something, lift an ear and roll over in that ‘Your turn’ attitude.

      That said, one night I remember Junior started to learn how to climb out of his cot and I came to groggily to see Wiggy standing right next to it, great big head jammed up against the slats, lapping away at Junior to distract him from his escape attempts, having his ears pulled, his nose bashed and generally being a very tolerant uncle.

  24. Morning all 🙂😊
    Another Cloudless sky and a lot warmer over night. Especially for the Fox family who were shouting at each other out side our bedroom window at 4:45. Thanks Reynard.
    And of course civil servants will help them selves to more money they regard themselves as the saviour’s of our country. When ‘deep down’ we all known the opposite.
    It won’t be long before that useless mob in Westminster are helping themselves to a pay rise.

        1. I’d go for Cromwell or the another Jack Cade as Fawkes was a religious zealot who wanted to kill Protestants – much like modern remoaners, covid vaccinators, climate change fanatics and Lefties generally.

          We need someone whose focus is on the unfairness of authoritarian, oppressive, arrogant government.

        1. Folk – I assume civil servants – still squeal and rage at Truss’ budget. They utterly refuse to accept reality.

  25. Good morning all,

    Sunny day at McPhee Towers, wind in the South, 15℃ rising to 24℃. Actually above the 1990-2022 August average. Perfect. Summer’s back. For today, anyway.

    Most interesting of the letters today:

    SIR – Kevin Liles’s suggestion of a board instead of a Cabinet (Letters, August 9) has some merit.

    A prime minister would be free to appoint qualified people who know what they are doing, as opposed to the inexperienced and largely talentless group-thinkers who have run the country for the past 20 years. This is the method used in the United States.

    Dr Andy Dyson
    Newark, Nottinghamshire

    SIR – Kevin Liles’s plea for a “coalition of talent” dismally fails the Tony Benn test: “And how can we get rid of you? If you cannot get rid of the people who govern you, you do not live in a democratic system.”

    Yes, of course our government should employ people with specialist knowledge, but elected politicians have to remain in charge of spending our money or the next election becomes meaningless. I’d much rather stick with democracy than be governed by “nanny knows best”.

    Michael Keene
    Winchester, Hampshire

    The interesting thing is that is more or less what we had before the political parties came into being and usurped the power of the Monarch and his/her ministers. If we could get rid of the parties and have a Parliament of independents we could institute Grand Juries of Parliamentarians to select ministers from among their number or from any walk of life, people who really knew a thing or two. They would form the executive and from among them one would be appointed PM. Any member of Parliament who becomes a minister would immediately resign their seat so that no member of the Executive sat in the legislature, so complying with a provision of the Act of Settlement 1701 which has been side-lined. Government control of the representative legislature would be ended.

    All legislation proposed to Parliament by the executive would have to comply with Common or Natural Law and be debated and voted on by Parliament. Parliament’s decision would be binding on the Executive. Parliament could also propose and debate legislation and all proposed legislation passed up to the executive by Parliament would be binding on it.

    The senior judiciary would be appointed/confirmed by Parliament following every General Election.

    The Monarch would give Royal Assent, in person not by committee, and he/she could withhold Assent to any legislation which would infringe Common or Natural Law or the Coronation Oath. The Monarch would have the power on Parliamentary Petition or on a People’s Petition of more than a pre-determined number of electors to suspend the Executive.

    It’s the bare bones. What do others think?

    1. Wouldn’t the wealthiest people become MPs, as only they could fund a campaign? How would they be prevented from effectively buying constituencies, as happened in the 17th and 18th centuries?

    2. Technology is sufficiently advanced that all proposals by Government could be voted on by plebiscite – every week, maybe. You could sign in using your electronic bank ID, for example. Government and electorate free to propose motions that must be adopted, if agreed.
      The briefing should have, by law, a pro and contra argument, provided by parties and their experts, and must have the implications of a yes or no vote.

  26. Man who threatened to assassinate Biden shot dead in FBI raid. 10 August 2023.

    A man who threatened to assassinate Joe Biden in Utah was shot dead by the FBI hours before the president arrived in the state.

    Craig Deleeuw Robertson, who was in his early 70s, died when special agents raided his home to arrest him in Provo, south of Salt Lake City.

    This being the FBI one has to wonder how genuine all this is. They have a long history of provocation and then murdering those who respond!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/08/09/fbi-shoots-dead-utah-man-credible-threat-joe-biden/

  27. I had an idea. We – the UK – build lots of these bibby Stockholm things and lash them together, float it out to sea and proclaim it a principality. All Left lawyers – who are all going to be foreigners – and the dinghy arrivals immediately go there.

    We air drop seeds and sacks of soil over and drop a big water collector butt over there – leaving them to both grow the food and collect the water. After all, they’re all engineers and scientists.

    Then… forget about them.

  28. Grizz is gonna go spare….

    SIR – I thought Mark Hix’s recipe for pork pie was a little bland (Magazine, August 5).

    I have been making raised pies for over 50 years and have always added a
    great variety of flavours and herbs to both the pastry and the meat.
    Fresh chopped or dried herbs, nutmeg, ground black pepper, Dijon
    mustard, garlic, Worcestershire sauce or sweet chilli sauce can all be
    used in any combination you fancy. Add a stock cube to the water for the
    pastry: vegetable, chicken or pork.

    For meat, I use chicken or turkey mince with diced gammon and lean diced pork with a mid layer of
    chicken breast, thigh or leg meat, or pheasant, thin-cut steak, even
    ostrich steak. The mid layer can also have red pepper strips for
    dramatic colour when cut open.

    This year I am teaching a number of friends to make the pies for our annual harvest supper. There will be
    a vegetarian version and one made with gluten-free flour. I
    avoid lard, preferring to use a white vegetable fat. To glaze, I always
    add salt to the beaten egg for extra depth of colour. For the cooking
    times I make sure the centre is cooked by using a meat thermometer set
    to 72C.

    Patricia Follett
    Leamington Spa, Warwickshire

  30. Trust stamped out
    SIR – Regarding problems with postage stamps (Letters, August 7), I had a lot of the old second-class stamps, which I sent to be exchanged for new ones.

    In return, I received the equivalent value but all in new, barcoded first-class stamps, which I rarely use. So I gave some to our grandson, who used one to send me a card. This wasn’t delivered and I had to pay a fee to receive it. I then discovered the card was marked “re-used stamp”. I complained to Royal Mail, enclosing the envelope as proof of my claim.

    It replied to say: “Close inspection revealed that the stamp had been used before” – which was patently untrue. As a result, I have lost my trust in what was such a fine national institution.

    Gwen Walton
    Darley, North Yorkshire

    Royal Mail has been taking lessons from the Post Office.

    1. The leftist climate cult don’t care about facts. Facts don’t matter when you’ve got a civilisation to destroy..

  32. Heaven forfend the Greeniacs or the politicians they own listen to an actual engineer………

    “Nuclear power needs to be recognised as a low emissions source of

    electricity that is superior to wind and solar power. Subsidies,

    mandates and other enormously expensive policies intended to promote

    wind and solar power must be abandoned and the money switched to

    expediting nuclear power.Governments need to face the fact that

    wind and solar power can never deliver their net zero dreams of low

    cost, reliable, emissions free electricity. They have only two realistic options: switch to nuclear power, or abandon net zero.

    Rest here I commend the whole article to the house

    https://12ft.io/proxy?ref=&q=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/09/renewable-energy-nuclear-power-green-net-zero-chernobyl/

    2. 🎵You put your left arm in, your left arm out, you do the Dopey Wokie and shake it all abou🎶t……..

    3. At a drinks party a stout old woman starts to wobble.
      An Etonian shouts “Someone bring this dear lady a chair, immediately!”
      A Winchester man rushes off to locate one.
      As soon as he returns, an Harrovian sits on it.

  35. How Ukraine changed its tactics to save its faltering failing counter-offensive. 10 August 2023.

    The Ukrainian counter-offensive this summer has probably been one of the most heralded military operations of all time.

    Since at least the beginning of the year, pundits, commentators, and experts – not least the Ukrainians themselves – have been telling us that Ukraine has built up a force of tens of thousands, equipped them with modern Western kit, and that these will cut through Russian lines. The Russians – poorly trained, ill-equipped, and of low morale – will give up and run away.

    Or so the story goes.

    Yes most of them told by the morons in this paper.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/08/10/ukraine-changed-tactics-save-faltering-counter-offensive/

    2. I’m afraid I can never be bothered to listen to these long-winded videos. What were the main bullet points?

  40. To RUIN your day….this from The Grimes:

    Here’s Carrie Johnson, social media influencer

    The £120 pink floral Ghost dress that she wore for her first appearance at No 10 as first girlfriend was front-page news. The £2,870 wedding dress that she wore to marry Boris Johnson sold out in 24 hours — though, trendily, she rented hers. And what says “social media influencer” louder than a completely unrelatable home tour complete with £840-a-roll wallpaper?

    If not for her husband’s antics, Carrie Johnson might have realised her potential as an influencer long ago. But having recently switched her Instagram account from private to public, and with 81,000 followers to date, I wonder if this might be the moment.

    So far there haven’t been any sponsored posts, nothing #gifted. But she has started to tag the brands she’s wearing, so that her followers can shop the look — a nightgown from the family-run British company If Only If; two floral dresses from St Clair London, with a poll asking followers to vote for their favourite. The brand then reposted her stories on its own account. She might just be pre-empting the DMs from followers asking what she’s wearing — several of her followers asked after a Beulah strawberry cardigan that wasn’t tagged, with Carrie politely replying to each — or backing small British brands that she has recently discovered. But I wouldn’t be surprised if a fashion collaboration happened soon. With those 81,000 followers she’s not in mega-influencer territory — yet. “Carrie could demand anywhere from £2,500 to £5,000 for one outfit post on her Instagram feed,” says a consultant who specialises in brand communications. “If she has an agent and if a brand wants to put paid spend behind the post to drive reach and sales she could demand double.”

    The front steps of No 10 aren’t the red carpet of an awards ceremony, but it has featured in more than one fashion career: Samantha Cameron launched her brand Cefinn after her stint as PM’s wife, and Isabel Spearman, her former adviser, now has her own talent agent and has worked on several brand partnerships with her @dailydressedit Instagram account.

    Saved highlights on Carrie’s Instagram page dating back years give us a sliding-doors view of influencer paths not taken: in one titled “Nigella” she attempts baking, but writes it off as a “total bloody disaster”, so the cookbook is probably on the back burner. But recently she has been posting about her love for salted dark chocolate almonds, so we can’t completely rule it out.

    After gold wallpapergate, Carrie isn’t in prime everywoman position — not like, say, Holly Willoughby, who rivals the Princess of Wales for her ability to shift the floral mididresses that Carrie clearly loves, but who, despite her success, is still viewed by many as “just like us”, especially when she wears M&S.

    The Johnsons famously snubbed Theresa May’s interiors, which a visitor is said to have called a “John Lewis furniture nightmare”, when they moved into the flat above No 11 — a dead giveaway of snobbery, since John Lewis is a British institution. But Carrie might yet sit somewhere in between everywoman and royal, in that “posh mum in a countryside idyll” bracket that many aspire to. Picture the scene: a deVOL kitchen built around the Aga; a fresh coat of Farrow & Ball on the front door; a Maker&Son sofa; make-up tutorials and outfits for days at the races or nights at Glyndebourne filmed in a wallpapered walk-in wardrobe with original ceiling beams. And, for relatable mumfluencer vibes, an occasional look at chaos caused by the children, like Tuesday’s post of her eldest attempting to wash his own scribbles off the wall, captioned: “Turned my back for one minute and our little Picasso decided to strike.”

    The children feature heavily on her page (with their faces artfully turned away), romping through fields of daisies and picking their own strawberries. Cynically, that’s a very marketable backdrop for product placement — insert designer papoose here, a line of organic squeezy baby food there. The reaction to her first post after the birth of her third child, Frank Alfred Odysseus, pictured cradled in a cream blanket in Carrie’s arms, was a boost in exposure for the British designer Alice Palmer, who made the lampshade and cushion seen in the background. Palmer does make wallpaper too, but it’s priced from £125 a roll — still not within reach of most, but clearly some lessons have been learnt.”

    1. Cripes. If that’s what you are reduced to reading, the sooner your back recovers the better.

    1. They didn’t look too broken to me. They seemed to be well dressed and not in loincloths, had white clothing and hats.
      He’s obviously one of the permanently offended on behalf of others.
      I wonder what he’d be doing now if his ancestors hadn’t been rescued by whitey?

      1. He was born in Nigeria. There’s a strong possibility his ancestors were slave owners and traders.

      2. It was clearly taken long after slavery was abolished by the British. So he is saying that having a job makes you “broken.”
        It is true that the plantation was probably on ancestral hunting grounds, but our ancestral hunting grounds disappeared to progress a thousand years ago, and they had to come into the modern era at some point.

        1. It was taken in Cuba in 1907, 21 years after Spain abolished slavery there by royal decree.

      3. It was clearly taken long after slavery was abolished by the British. So he is saying that having a job makes you “broken.”
        It is true that the plantation was probably on ancestral hunting grounds, but our ancestral hunting grounds disappeared to progress a thousand years ago, and they had to come into the modern era at some point.

      4. Jimi Famerewa the food critic walked into Rules restaurant WC2 and complained about a black boy wood carving which was actually part of the structure since 1798.
        Anyone else other than the permanently offend would have just done an eye roll.

        1. There’s a clock in Stroud, high up on a house, which has a figure of a black boy that strikes the hours.

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

          Every now and then there is a furore about it, which seems to have died down, for now. You wouldn’t notice it if you didn’t know it’s there, but the permanently offended will have another go soon, i expect.

  42. It is reported in the DT today that the epitome of good looks and personal charm, Dianne Abbott, has had to withdraw an unpleasant tweet she made about the drowning of 41 migrants near to Lampedusa.

    I am in Tunisia at the moment and I have learned a great deal about migrants from North Africa.

    This particular boat set off from Tunisia where the sea was calm, not knowing that there were storms brewing near to Sicily. Other deaths take place daily but are not reported in the UK.

    Most of the boats are Zodiacs, made locally of the cheapest possible materials, knowing that they will be abandoned, and they are totally unseaworthy, Some are very old steel or wooden boats, long past their safety limits.

    The smugglers do not accompany the migrants but one of the migrants is commandeered to pilot the boat, with nil experience, of course. No wonder so many boats get lost.

    Tunisia now has 80,000 refugees from West Africa, mostly Ivory Coast and Guinea, who arrive across the border with Algeria. Libya recently invited Tunisia to send some of them there. But a Pakistani deputy secretary general of the UN (Farhan Haq), sitting in his ivory tower in New York, said a few days ago: “We are profoundly concerned about the deportation of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers from Tunisia.” No offers of help or suggestions of what the solution might be, of course!

    But two days ago, the Tunisian border patrols saved three boats in difficulty off the Tunisian coast and rescued many sub-Saharan migrants. One would have thought that they would be grateful. But these migrants triggered a mutiny on board and attacked the agents who had just rescued them, with ‘bladed weapons’. Reinforcements arrived on the spot and managed to control them before returning to the port of Mahdia.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8723017385cee71403f9021a5146b7f3c6d3afa70f3da791e69351ff7192f249.png

    I discussed this with a Tunisian who planned to go in a Zodiac to the small Italian Island of Pantelleria last week, but the motor failed and the trip was abandoned. He said that there was only one other Tunisian on board, the rest being from the Ivory Cost, Guinea and Algeria. The Algerians are escaping from their basket case of a country, managed, including the economy, by soviet style state control. The country is infested with radical Islamists, including the Muslim Brotherhood plus interference from Iran through its embassy in Algiers.

    1. Reported last night.

      Diane Abbott deletes tweet saying migrants who drowned off Italy have ‘indeed f—– off’

      MP had Labour whip suspended in April after writing an alleged anti-Semitic letter to a newspaper

      By Telegraph Reporters • 9th August 2023 • 10:02pm

      Diane Abbott has been criticised after saying migrants who drowned off Italy have “indeed f—— off” in a now deleted tweet. The independent MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington tweeted “These migrants have indeed f—– off. To the bottom of the sea” as she shared a news story about the disaster in the Mediterranean.

      The post was a response to a comment made by Lee Anderson, the deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, who earlier this week said asylum seekers complaining about being moved on to an accommodation barge should “f— off back to France”.

      Brendan Clarke-Smith, a Tory former minister, tweeted: “And to think that Sir Keir Starmer campaigned for this person to be made our home secretary. We all know that you can’t take Labour seriously on immigration or national security, but what a shame they also seek to exploit tragedies like this to push their warped agenda.”

      A Conservative spokesman said Ms Abbott’s tweet was “wrong”. “The fact that she deleted it suggests she agrees with us,” they added.

      It is believed that 41 out of 45 migrants died after a boat capsized off Tunisia in rough seas. The metal boat left Sfax, Tunisia on Aug 3, but the vessel was overturned by a huge wave hours into the journey. Survivors were taken to the island of Lampedusa on Wednesday after a rescue operation.

      Ms Abbott’s tweet was not the first criticism she made of the Tory deputy chairman for his comments. Ms Abbott, who once served as shadow home secretary, had previously described Mr Anderson’s comments as “a new low even for the Tories”. But ministers have rallied around Ashfield MP Mr Anderson, with Justice Secretary Alex Chalk suggesting his “indignation” was “well placed” after only 15 migrants had initially entered the Bibby Stockholm accommodation barge.

      The transfer of migrants on to the vessel has been mired in difficulty and delays amid safety concerns, local opposition and legal challenges.

      Ms Abbott had the Labour whip suspended in April for suggesting Jewish, Irish and traveller people are not subject to racism “all their lives” in a letter to the Observer newspaper.

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/08/09/diane-abbott-deletes-tweet-migrants-drowned-italy

      1. How do certifiable imbeciles such as the retard, Abbott, continue to remain in positions of overpaid influence?

      2. I think that both Lammy and Abbott were given places at Oxbridge owing to their ethnicity rather than their brains.

    2. Reported last night.

      Diane Abbott deletes tweet saying migrants who drowned off Italy have ‘indeed f—– off’

      MP had Labour whip suspended in April after writing an alleged anti-Semitic letter to a newspaper

      By Telegraph Reporters • 9th August 2023 • 10:02pm

      Diane Abbott has been criticised after saying migrants who drowned off Italy have “indeed f—— off” in a now deleted tweet. The independent MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington tweeted “These migrants have indeed f—– off. To the bottom of the sea” as she shared a news story about the disaster in the Mediterranean.

      The post was a response to a comment made by Lee Anderson, the deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, who earlier this week said asylum seekers complaining about being moved on to an accommodation barge should “f— off back to France”.

      Brendan Clarke-Smith, a Tory former minister, tweeted: “And to think that Sir Keir Starmer campaigned for this person to be made our home secretary. We all know that you can’t take Labour seriously on immigration or national security, but what a shame they also seek to exploit tragedies like this to push their warped agenda.”

      A Conservative spokesman said Ms Abbott’s tweet was “wrong”. “The fact that she deleted it suggests she agrees with us,” they added.

      It is believed that 41 out of 45 migrants died after a boat capsized off Tunisia in rough seas. The metal boat left Sfax, Tunisia on Aug 3, but the vessel was overturned by a huge wave hours into the journey. Survivors were taken to the island of Lampedusa on Wednesday after a rescue operation.

      Ms Abbott’s tweet was not the first criticism she made of the Tory deputy chairman for his comments. Ms Abbott, who once served as shadow home secretary, had previously described Mr Anderson’s comments as “a new low even for the Tories”. But ministers have rallied around Ashfield MP Mr Anderson, with Justice Secretary Alex Chalk suggesting his “indignation” was “well placed” after only 15 migrants had initially entered the Bibby Stockholm accommodation barge.

      The transfer of migrants on to the vessel has been mired in difficulty and delays amid safety concerns, local opposition and legal challenges.

      Ms Abbott had the Labour whip suspended in April for suggesting Jewish, Irish and traveller people are not subject to racism “all their lives” in a letter to the Observer newspaper.

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/08/09/diane-abbott-deletes-tweet-migrants-drowned-italy

      1. “Islam seems to be causing a lot of problems “

        Is – not seems!

        As Hamlet said: “Seems,” madam? Nay, it is; I know not “seems.” …

    4. The Ivory Coast is 42% Muslim.

      Exercise a high degree of caution in Côte d’Ivoire overall due to the high levels of
      violent crime and the possibility of civil unrest.

      And they are coming here.

      1. The Guinean population is mainly Muslim (86 percent) and is composed of several ethnic groups including the Fula, the Mandinka, and the Susu.

        There’s a risk of violent crime, including: assaults · muggings and armed robbery; break-ins; minor theft; carjacking.

        And they are coming here.

    5. Triggered a mutiny and carried knives. Right. Simple. Sick of this now. When they next squeal, if they’re in frog water, ignore them. If they’re in international water, ignore them. If they’re in British water, go out and sodding well kill every last one of them.

      Pack the ones here freeloading into shipping containers and get rid of them. I don’t care where. If they won’t let us land, tip the plane up and dump it out the back from 10K feet.

  43. I have just spent a good hour and a half going through the letter of reply from the hospital management I received yesterday after my complaint.
    It appears as the patient I have been judged as the guilty party and all of the delays and problems caused were my fault.
    I have made a lot of margin notes and underlined high lighted certain sections that don’t correspond to or with my experiences.
    I might send it back as it now is after I have printed a copy and just see what happens.
    The chap I met in the departure lounge of the hospital last week describe very similar health conditions to mine after his covid jabs.
    I also bumped into and old work colleague about three months ago in Wickes. He had similar health problems after his jabs and similar problems at the same cardiology department. I don’t have a contact number and can’t remember his second name, but he changed hospitals in the end.

    1. The NHS’s primary function is to blame you for it’s every failure. It is utterly, solely and totally devoted to it’s own perpetuation.

    2. My OH was advised last week to stop taking Amiodarone after the GP’s pharmacist had spoken to the cardiology dept at the hospital in Gloucester. He did and has been feeling a lot better this week. We had an appointment at the surgery yesterday and she said the fact one of his symptoms was uncontrollable itching all over was a red flag to her and could be liver damage. The itching has now stopped.

      I have to say we’ve had good service from our GP surgery.

      1. I’m Itching it is driving me mad. Perhaps I should self medicate and stop taking them. I’m down to one a day now.
        I’ll try my gp practice and tell them first, but it will take three weeks to get an appointment.

        1. Ask them – Natasha the pharmacist said yesterday that was why she asked the cardiologists if he could stop. You don’t want liver damage on top of everything else.

          2. Well done. The last blood test he had at the sugery was with Helen, an older lady, not even a registered nurse but a healthcare assistant. She was very helpful and arranged the chat with Natasha, the pharmacist. While we were waiting yesterday, Helen popped her head round the door and asked how he was.

          3. I don’t think I would have even had the recent procedure if I hadn’t seen a paramedic minor injuries assistant instead of a GP. The young lady was horrified at the way I have been treated and that I had to wait nearly two years to even be on the waiting list. I haven’t seen her since, but I think she did ring and spoke to the booking department and they rang me the next morning with my appointment.
            I type her a thank letter and posted it at the GP practice.
            And now the cardiology department at Lister hospital has turned nasty and are lying about certain aspects of my mistreatment.

          4. That’s rotten – at least you finally got in at Barts, thanks to the young paramedic. Has the procedure done the trick this time? Natasha said yesterday that cardioversion doesn’t always work.

    3. When I complained about A&E treatment their reply was a pack of lies. I obtained a copy of the notes of my visit and in my reply told them it was a pack of lies. I then demanded a face to face meeting with them saying that if they were going to lie to me I would like them to do it to my face.
      I had the meeting with the Chief Nurse, the A&E consultant, and Ophthalmologist and an admin woman who made a record of the meeting. When I asked where their information about the visit they said they interviewed the doctor concerned who said all the examinations had taken place. They were visibly surprised when i produced the notes of the visit that verified my account that no examinations had taken place. They hadn’t bothered to look at their own records.

      1. Excellent. I don’t think I can be bothered to go that far. I’m just going to send the letter back with all the appropriate comments I have made and I’ll go to another hospital for the next stage of my treatment.
        Perhaps they’ll learn from it. Or not.

        1. I think mine made a difference. I was told my detached retina was not a problem and an appointment would follow. To cut a long story short, the chap I played at bowls yesterday his wife, last year, had flashing lights in the eye and went to St Peter’s, was seen quickly and had laser surgery within a day.
          At the meeting they said they had put 2 emergency appointments into their system every day to counter the problem I had. I like to think I made a difference.

  44. The Crooked House – yet again!

    Trust the Daily Mail to insert some cleavage into the story. The couple who have bought it sound like the kind of people who, in the 1980s, would have ostentatiously driven a white, open-top Mercedes through the run-down neighbourhood in which they used to live.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12389385/EXCLUSIVE-Pictured-Glamorous-businesswoman-bought-Britains-wonkiest-pub-just-days-destroyed-fire-demolished-locals-claim-purchase-followed-rows-road-access-neighbouring-land-site-run-husband.html

    1. How silly, perhaps it’s too obvious to say………. they should have “let the dogs out” before it was demolished.

      1. Let a ‘property developer’ at it and they’d swiftly burn it down. Err… re-develop it if planning permission were denied.

      2. Twisted when the first Virgin was married there and will straighten when the next one does.

        Chesterfield lore!

        1. Indeed. Another folk tale has the devil flying over and resting on the spire awhile, wrapping his forked tail around it for balance.
          The tale then relates that Old Nick then flew off but forgot to unwind his tail first, pulling the spire out of shape.

        1. Indeed. Benn took over as the local MP when Eric Varley retired from being a (fairly soft) socialist MP in order to take up a lucrative directorship in a capitalist enterprise (Coalite).

    4. I understand they are going after the digger driver who knocked it down. I expect he’ll plead the Nuremburg defence.

  46. Right, that’s the windows washed, the virginia creeper pruned and the roses dead-headed.

    I don’t want to get at the young but I suppose I’m just about to. When I’m out and about in shops, cafes, restaurants or even on the ‘phone, some words and phrases which are used incessantly by those who serve us are like fingernails on a blackboard. Here’s a few (not an exhaustive list):

    ‘You guys’. (My name is not guy)

    In answer to a question, even one to elicit my name : “Perfect’!

    In answer to the simplest request, often in a cafe: ‘No problem’ or ‘No worries’.

    ‘Have a nice rest of your day’

    On leaving a restaurant approaching 9 or 10 pm: ‘Have you guys got any plans for the rest of your evening’.

    All delivered in a manner which suggests they have just selected the tape and pressed a button without looking at the person they are addressing and considering whether or not what they are about to say is appropriate. It’s robotic.

    Is it just me or do others feel the same?

    6. “Drive safely” is one I had today. I told him (the youngster on guard duty at the gate) that I’d do my best!

    7. I live in Norway. In English, we get endless Americanisms or Strine expressions, so yes, I’m used to it.
      Have a nice day!

  48. I’ve seen two people today wearing masks over their mouths but not over their noses.

        1. Impressive. Act normally and the plod will not notice. Much more effective than a 100 mph getaway…

          2. Friday would be a good day – no plod would dare stop you – he’d assume you were gong to the mosque.

          3. Help, uncle Bill! Came back from lunch out with my husband to discover one of our apple trees has a very broken branch but is still attached to the tree. If I remove the fruit, which presumably was too heavy, can I bind/tape/bandage the branch back on?

          4. You could try – but you’d need splints to stop the break re-opening. Might be better to cut it neatly off, seal the wound and let a new branch grow.

          6. Then I fear you have no choice but to remove it. Apple trees are very resilient – and it WILL come back, I promise you.

          8. Ah. They don’t last for ever.

            That said, most of our trees are 50 years old. Heavy pruning every three or four years keeps them shapely.

  49. 375346+ up ticks,

    The NHS waiting list is the highest it has ever been with new referrals entering the system daily,

    The governing overseers and their supporters are, as clear as day, running a kill NOT cure campaign, acceptable numbers awaiting NHS treatment can NEVER be reached all the time the governing cartel & supporters are supporting the Dover daily invasion of incoming potential patients / troops.

    To my mind this governing body is running a copy cat campaign to the mafioso / murder incorporated.why are they seeking more space for the dead, just what are we about to receive ? ask yourself will you be around to support them next time round.

  51. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/cb19f79f2498cebfe000ea7972eaa48939d6049bf3e699aededc87882a7969ba.png
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/consumer-affairs/a-level-leavers-paying-student-loans-retire/

    It is not the loans that are the problem – it is the criminally high usurious rates of interest charged upon them.

    In civilised countries students loans are interest free.

    In civilised countries repayment of one’s student loan is a charge against income tax.

    In civilised countries employers should be given tax incentives to help pay off their employees’ student loans.

    In civilised countries those working for the state in fields such as medicine and teaching should have their loans liquidated after ten years service in the state systems of medicine and education.

    Having young graduates emerging into the world of work with unrepayable outstanding loans hanging over them through virtually all their working lives is a sign that Britain is a barbaric place.

    The best thing my wife and I did was to live fairly frugally so that we could pay for our two sons’ university education so neither of them was lumbered with a repulsive and immoral student loan when they started their careers.

      1. Encouraging gullible young people into getting useless degrees and then having to spend the rest of their working lives bogged down in unrepayable debt is nothing short of EVIL.

        1. Just had an online conversation with a friend who believes in UFOs. I agreed that our politicians are all from another planet but I do live in Woking where the Martians landed.😉

        2. Blame Blair who wanted to normalise debt. Personally I would front load and fix the interest amount.

          Set it at 5% of the loan value. That’s what you pay. For universities facing fixed fees and falling student numbers they’re increasingly reliant on the foreigner, especially the Chinese.

          However, a lot of Chinese people don’t want to come to the UK. We’re no longer that ‘safe’ free nation thanks to massive uncontrolled, unwanted, unwelcome gimmigration.

          1. Zero is what it should be.

            At 5% on a £60,000 loan an annual repayment of £3,000 pa (= £250 a month) means you still haven’t paid back a single penny.

            I was lucky to have wealthy parents who paid all my costs when I was at university and so I graduated without owing a penny. Many of my friends with less well-to-do parents also left university debt free because they had received maintenance grants. I also got jobs (such as working as a roustabout on an oil rig in the North Sea) during the university holidays which enabled me to buy and run a second-hand MGA like this one:

            https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ff47532fd776cd78480223981553332ef510ad902c1d4f7c209e54d5223bde0f.jpg

        3. Agreed. We have 2 grandchildren at university and one who has finished one course about to do a Masters. Two of them have very well off parents, the other not so. Don’t know what their arrangements are but it must be like a noose hanging around the neck.

        4. Agreed. We have 2 grandchildren at university and one who has finished one course about to do a Masters. Two of them have very well off parents, the other not so. Don’t know what their arrangements are but it must be like a noose hanging around the neck.

      2. Encouraging gullible young people into getting useless degrees and then having to spend the rest of their working lives bogged down in unrepayable debt is nothing short of EVIL.

    2. I agree. There are ways to get through university without a mountain of debt, and it’s worth following them.
      You’d have to be insane to take out a loan that won’t be paid off after 40 years, at the interest they charge. That’s why they target school leavers of course – nobody with life experience would fall for a con like that!

      One effect of this loan fraud is that graduates will be skewed towards those who fall for it. The civil service, NGOs, NHS etc recruit graduates. Therefore, the pool from which they recruit is filtering out those with common sense or financial sense, and is favouring those who trust the system and don’t worry about the future. Reverse Darwinism for the management of the bloated public sector…

    3. In the early 90s when my two sons were students, they dd not have to pay tuition fees. They also both received a small grant towards their living expenses as I was a single parent on a low salary. They had small loans supplemented by working in the holidays and both paid off their loans very quickly.

    4. Did the same. Made daughter take the loans, we financed her while investing them then at the end paid back the loans and gave her the profit.

  53. A real Conservative speaks.

    Tories don’t need ‘long conversation’ on leaving ECHR, John Redwood says

    Sir John Redwood says Tories should not be waiting for next election to take action on European Convention on Human Rights

    By Jack Maidment, Politics Live Blog Editor • 10 August 2023 • 10:52am

    The Tories should avoid a “long conversation” on whether to leave the European Convention on Human Rights and take alternative action now to ensure immigration measures can be fully implemented, a former Cabinet minister has said.

    Sir John Redwood said the Conservative Party should not be waiting until the next general election to set out how it intends to address the impact of the convention on its efforts to “stop the boats”. He argued ministers should instead come forward with a “very short” and “simple” new law which would “disapply” rulings made by European judges which stand in the way of the Government’s border policies.

    His comments came after the Telegraph revealed Rishi Sunak will face calls from up to a third of his Cabinet to put leaving the ECHR at the heart of the next Tory election campaign if migrant flights to Rwanda are blocked by the courts. At least eight Cabinet ministers are prepared to back the move if ECHR membership prevents Britain from protecting its borders. But Sir John said the Government should not wait for the next election to address the issue.

    He told Talk TV on Thursday morning: “My advice to the Government today is don’t have this long conversation about the overall European human rights position with some kind of manifesto pledge for a year or more’s time, we have got to solve the problem now. And the legal fix now is to get parliament back and put through a very short, simple piece of legislation which instructs all British courts to say it is parliament [that] will take these necessary actions to stop the boats, notwithstanding anything that the European court might have in mind.

    “If you did that the European court ruling on that would disapply without having to get out of the whole thing and cause all that kind of row and you’d get an instant result. I don’t know why the Cabinet doesn’t see this and why it doesn’t get on and do it.”

    Deportation flights to Rwanda have been suspended since June last year, when a judge from the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg issued an 11th-hour injunction. The Supreme Court is due to rule in the autumn on the legality of the policy after a series of domestic legal challenges.

    Ministers are confident they will win the Supreme Court case but have been advised the Government cannot appeal to the European court if it loses as only individuals can lodge appeals. If the Government does win the Rwanda case it is likely immigration lawyers representing migrants would challenge the ruling in Strasbourg.

    That has prompted calls for ministers to draw up contingency legislation to enable deportation flights to go ahead by disregarding parts of the Human Rights Act if they lose the case. The broad principle of the UK being able to ignore rulings by the European court has already been established. The Government’s Illegal Migration Act gives ministers the power to ignore future injunctions, known as rule 39 orders, from the court.

    The European Convention on Human Rights came into force in 1953. It is an international treaty which affects the 46 states in the Council of Europe but is not a European Union convention, so the UK’s adherence to its principles was not affected by Brexit. It is ruled on by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, with judgments binding on the states which are signatories to the convention.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/08/10/leaving-echr-now-sir-john-redwood-rishi-sunak/

    1. Did the DT sub-editor really put ‘Tories’ and ‘take action’ in the same sentence?!

    2. Repealing the ECHR has significant consequences for other law, most notably the Belfast agreements, not to mention the Windsor framework (deliberately). If we were to repeal that law, we would have to enact other laws to replace it – such as external arbitrators.

      To my mind this is obvious and necessary, but the state machinne would much rather add to the weight of EU law than move away from it. No doubt, as it’s full of bungling incompetents (from the PSNI disaster this morning) the civil service would deliberately make a total hash of it all leaving everyone worse off – because it doesn’t ever take the blame.

      1. BTL:
        David Bevan
        Treating international law as a holy shibboleth that should never be questioned is a corruption of the social compact. If the demos cannot through parliament change the laws that impact their lives then we end up being ruled by the will of others. Besides all international law is treaty law. All countries are sovereign and it is legitimate for countries to take up and renounce treaties based purely on their self-interest.

        1. He should let the government know that. They seem to think they don’t run a sovereign country any more (but since we haven’t actually left the EU, we don’t).

  54. The Spamhead Slammer’s “policeman” brother has been put in charge of Immigration at the Home (and Away) Office.

    “Policeman brother of Tory ex-Cabinet minister Sajid Javid given top Home Office role and vows to ‘protect the integrity’ of Britain’s immigration system”

  55. By the way, that Nigerian toy buyer who loathes white people and all they stand for is married – predictably enough – to a white woman.

  56. Trans activists dislike Karens, because we’re women who refuse to shut up

    SNP MP Mhairi Black suggested gender-critical commentators are “bad actors” and “Karens” – if so, I am proud to be one

    ELLA WHELAN • 9th August 2023 • 5:09pm

    My husband has often called me a Karen. When I tut at dogs sitting on seats in cafes, or accost cyclists using the pavement, I know I’m being a Karen in the original sense of the word – a nag. But while the word “Karen” began as a catch-all term for women who demand to “speak to the manager” or cause a scene, it quickly became something more sinister.

    Following a series of videos from the US of ladies taking issue with BLM protesters, Karen is now what Time magazine describes as slang for “middle-aged white women”. In essence then, it has become a nasty – but acceptable – stereotype.

    It’s shorthand for “stay in your lane, lady”. And it’s this latter usage that Mhairi Black, the SNP MP, seemed to deploy at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

    Speaking with journalist Graham Spiers this week, Black suggested that gender-critical commentators were “bad actors” and “50-year-old Karens”. She also compared the gender-critical school of thought to historic white supremacy and intellectuals “who made these big prolific statements about how race was a key factor”.

    When challenged by a member of the audience, who asked if someone could be perfectly decent and simply disagree with her on gender ideology, Black replied “If you keep it to yourself, aye.” So her message to those of us concerned about our hard-won sex-based rights might be summed up as: shut up woman.

    It’s not exactly the kind of statement you would expect from someone who has made their name preaching about the problems facing women in politics. Indeed, not so long ago Black announced that she would step down from Parliament because of Westminster’s “sexist and toxic” environment.

    Yet it is hard to imagine any other group being maligned so casually by a sitting MP. If you think that dedicated male and female changing rooms for teenagers are a good thing, don’t expect much respect from Black. And perhaps that is for the best, given that she’s spent her time in politics making headlines only because of the ridiculousness of her statements.

    Anything an SNP politician says about gender-critical women should, at this point, be taken with a truck load of salt. But what Black might not realise is that, in her tut-tutting at women who dare to speak out, she herself is demonstrating everything that is perceived to be wrong with “Karens”. By telling women to keep their political views “to yourself” if they don’t fit in with gender ideology, she exemplifies a bossy, self-righteous know-it-all.

    But sadly, this is an issue which goes far beyond one politician and her attention-seeking ways. Increasingly it is deemed OK for those in the mainstream to call middle-aged women (quite often lesbians) slurs like “Karen” or “Terf” – particularly when their views are shared by the multitude, such as that sex is real, giving hormones to kids is questionable, and women should be able to pee in peace.

    Why did Oxfam deem it acceptable to use a haggard woman’s face in their “terf” section of their Pride campaign? [See below] The answer is that there is a right kind of woman and a wrong kind. The right kind “keep to themselves” their concerns and questions about the erasure of sex difference and women’s freedoms. The wrong kind are the ones who won’t shut up. Well Mhairi Black, call me a Karen.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/09/trans-activists-dislike-karens-women-who-refuse-to-shut-up

    From Tuesday, the DT piece on Black:
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/08/08/mhairi-black-snp-fringe-gender-critical-white-supremacist/

    BTL:
    Mike Farish
    Ms Black’s words simply illustrate the extent to which her mindset – and by extension that of much of today’s ‘liberal’ establishment – is dogmatic, inflexible and straightforwardly intolerant to the point of being totalitarian. Her mix of groupthink conformism and personal narcissism simply cannot coexist with difference of opinion.

    From the ‘trans’ issue to the ECHR article I posted earlier. Here’s a comment from that:

    Douglas Rabbenstein
    The ECHR protects YOUR rights, too, you know. It is not beyond the realm of fantasy that a repressive, woke left-wing government could be elected in the UK and your last line of defence would be the ECHR.

    No one (yet) has answered that by saying that a ‘repressive, woke left-wing government’ would be just that! There would be no defence, Douglas. The country would soon be as Mike Farish describes it.

    Here’s Michael Deacon’s piece on Oxfam, an organisation that is beginning to make the BBC look attractive.
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2023/06/07/oxfam-jk-rowling-terf-cartoon/

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ac945186164e38a3e85bb01e24c7678c220fd650b4f6206001c1e3df33c1680b.jpg

  57. Gosh – it is not only warm but very humid. I don’t want to excite any NoTTLer ladies – but I am going to have a shower…..

  58. Lil’ Birdie Three today.

    Wordle 782 3/6
    ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨
    ⬜⬜⬜🟩🟨
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

      1. Par four for me.

        Wordle 782 4/6

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

    2. Par for me

      Wordle 782 4/6

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

    1. I was pondering on just HOW one would get Gus or Pickles into that thing. Without having to go to A & E.

        1. Lily hated the cat carrier so we took her to the vet in the laundry basket and she settled down happily in there. She was very calm on her final visit last month.

        1. Not just that but the angle, where all the cat’s weight is, that they’re not supposed to sit like that.

  60. That’s me for this painful day. I just hope that the bearable discomfort agony will be less tomorrow.

    Time for some (healing) medicine. The MR was in Narridge today and I asked her to stock up on Co-codamol. Not a tablet to be found even for ready money. World shortage I expect. Global boiling has dissolved them all…

    Anyway, have a peaceful evening.

    A demain (after I have been to Nursie AGAIN – at 8 30)..

  61. Evening, all. Busy day at the Families’ Day. We took lots of moolah on the stand (the Chinducks – Chinook-shaped ducks, new for 2023 – were selling like hot cakes). Lovely hot, sunny weather as well (but we were in a hangar, so not too sweltering). As a bonus, as I was bringing Oscar back from his date with the groomer to have his nails clipped, a Spitfire flew over. The sound of that Merlin- magic!

  62. I get the impression that Rishi Sunak isn’t bothered about achieving his objectives:

    Passing new laws to stop small boats, making sure that if you come to this country illegally, you are detained and swiftly removed.

    Halving inflation this year to ease the cost of living and give people financial security.

    Growing the economy, creating better-paid jobs and opportunity right across the country.

    Ensuring that our national debt is falling so that we can secure the future of public services.

    Reducing NHS waiting lists so that people will get the care they need more quickly.

    I cannot see him achieving any success; perhaps he has his next job lined up with the WEF?

    1. He is a silly little indian opportunist, who is backed by the the WEF because he doesn’t give two hoots about this country and just wants to make money and disappear to the USA.

    2. Any chance of reducing the estimated 7 million a day we spend to keep 100,000 invaders in comfort, very Richie ?

  63. I seem to remember as a very young man serving on a Modified Type 12 frigate I would have given my eye teeth for the accommodation and facilities on the Bibby Stockholm

    2. One of my nephews served in HMS on a cod war boat. He said it was horrendous.
      Then a mine hunter in the gulf. Then HMS Manchester. Second Lieutenant.
      Much more comfortable.

  64. Ukraine orders Kharkiv evacuations amid Russian attempts to breach front line. 10 August 2023.

    Ukraine on Thursday issued an evacuation order for nearly 12,000 residents in the eastern Kharkiv region where Russia is increasingly attempting to punch through the front line.

    Residents across 37 towns and villages were told to leave or sign a document saying they would remain at their own risk.

    Hanna Maliar, Ukraine’s defence minister, recently warned “the intensity of combat and enemy shelling is high” in and around the town of Kupiansk, which was under Russian control until last September.

    They are getting ready for the Russians breaking through the line!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/08/10/ukraine-kharkiv-evacuations-russian-breach-front-line/

  66. Have the new owners of the Crooked House become complacent because they’ve got away with this behaviour before?
    From the DT. (Apologies if already posted. Busy day.)

    “The new owners of the Crooked House pub hired a digger several days before the building burnt down, with the vehicle used to demolish the building.

    AT Contracting – owned by Carly Taylor, who bought the historic pub in Himley, near Dudley in the West Midlands, in July – rented the digger from a plant hire firm a week before the fire, which is being treated by police as arson.

    It also emerged that the fire brigade’s attempts to put out the blaze were hampered by a large mound of earth that was blocking access to the site when they arrived on Saturday night.”

    1. Have the new owners of the Crooked House been charged with a comprehensive list of offences?

      If not, why not?

    1. I go into a meeting with our Spanish fellows and it’s like walking to a Gucchi advert.

      I’m there as a scruffy halfwit with hair all over the place and they all – men and women – look immaculate, not a hair out of place.

  68. Anyone who’s disagreeing with Lee Anderson is missing his point on migrants

    The Conservative party’s deputy chairman wasn’t saying they should return to countries blighted by war – only liberal, safe France

    MICHAEL DEACON, Columnist & Assistant Editor • 9th August 2023

    Until this week, most of us would probably have guessed that “Bibby Stockholm” was the name of some high-spirited young blonde from Made in Chelsea. Abruptly, however, it’s become the subject of the most furious row in politics. Because, as everyone is now well aware, the Bibby Stockholm is, in fact, a huge barge moored off the Dorset coast, which the Government is using to house a small number of asylum seekers. And the Left, inevitably, are appalled.

    They were angry enough when the idea was proposed. They denounced it as cruel, callous and inhumane. Now, though, they’re angrier still. Because Lee Anderson, the deputy chairman of the Conservative party, has told a newspaper that if migrants don’t want to live on a barge, they should “f— off back to France”.

    Cue a wildfire of progressive apoplexy. Diane Abbott called his words “a new low even for the Tories”. Sadiq Khan accused him of “stoking up more division and hate”. Meanwhile, the SNP-supporting newspaper The National devoted its entire front page to the headline: “ANDERSON IS A POUND-SHOP ENOCH POWELL”.

    I think we can safely assume that this was not meant as an endorsement. At the risk of provoking yet more fury, however, I wonder whether I might ask: what precisely is it about Mr Anderson’s remark that progressives find so outrageous?

    I assume it isn’t his use of rude words – unless, decades after they ridiculed Mary Whitehouse, metropolitan liberals have suddenly developed an unexpected revulsion to profanity. But I suspect not. Frankly, I doubt that they would have been any less furious with Mr Anderson if, instead of “They should f— off back to France”, he had said, “I cordially invite them to return to France at their earliest convenience.”

    So it isn’t the language they find offensive, but rather the sentiment. Outside liberal circles, however, I find it unlikely that this sentiment would provoke such horror. Mr Anderson is not, after all, saying that migrants who don’t like barges should go back to the countries they have fled. He is specifically saying that they should go back to France, a prosperous, liberal Western democracy through which they’ve already passed – and which is wholly safe. Well, at least during the odd moment when it isn’t rioting.

    Mr Anderson, therefore, is not suggesting for a moment that these migrants should be exposed to any danger. He is merely, in his admittedly less than elegant way, expressing his frustration with the difficulties posed by the need to accommodate the tens of thousands arriving in Britain by small boats.

    As even the most high-minded Labour MP must know, this is a frustration shared by many voters. And these voters’ frustration is only likely to grow when they read that some migrants have refused to board the barge because they have a “severe fear of water”, or because it would somehow remind them of “hiding from Isis”.

    As it happens, though, those migrants who have boarded the Bibby Stockholm don’t appear to find it so bad. After his first night, a 32-year-old from Algeria said: “It’s good. Bed was good. Food was good.” And a man from Iran told The Sun: “I like it”.

    Such verdicts suggest that living on a barge off the Dorset coast isn’t necessarily the unendurable hardship that middle-class progressives have made it out to be. In which case, perhaps Mr Anderson should revise his opinion. Rather than sending the migrants to live in France, we should send the middle-class progressives, instead.

    Since they find modern Britain so ghastly, they should be only too delighted to escape – and everyone wins.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2023/08/09/lee-anderson-bibby-stockholm-comments/

    95% support for Anderson BTL – but there’s also these two dissenters, dismissed by followed by Andrew Lynch:

    Gerard Parker
    Yobs don’t have any points. Obviously the boneheads who enforced a hard Brexit didn’t consider the impact on this and a thousand other everyday, practical policies.

    Fisher Bloke
    Anyone who’s agreeing with 30p Lee Anderthal is missing the point on those fleeing war and the “First Country” myth.
    The UN Refugee Convention does not make this requirement of refugees, and UK case law supports this interpretation. Refugees can legitimately make a claim for asylum in the UK after passing through other “safe” countries.

    Andrew Lynch:
    The UN Refugee Convention does not give anyone the god given right to pick and choose which country they want to live in and then pay serious organised criminal gangs a load of money to help them get there. These people have been living in tents and shacks in the sand dunes of Calais, but somehow giving them luxury en suite accommodation and three square meals a day at UK taxpayers expense makes us the inhumane ones. Weird logic of the EU loving UK hating leftists.

    We were told that only thick people voted to leave the EU. Mr Parker proves otherwise.

    On the day that we are told that the fraudster of 10 Downing Street is being told to do something about the ECHR, here’s another treaty to resign from – the ICR. Fisher Bloke’s opinion is one shared by many in the ‘Let them all in’ camp, the same people who also assert that it’s not illegal to apply for asylum anywhere. How many, FB, how many?

    1. Ah Gerard, still fighting the last war you lost. We haven’t had Brexit. The fact that gimmigrants are pouring in is part of that. Our government could refuse them. it could change the law. It doesn’t want to. This isn’t the fault of Brexit. It’s bitterness and spite fighting it.

      Fisher, also we could immediately, without consideration reject their applications. The state doesn’t. It grants them – with no reason whatsoever. Again, you keep pretending that this isn’t intentional.

      1. If the WEF allowed the British government to restrict legal immigration and stop illegal immigration then Sunak might try to do it. But as he is not allowed to do so and he is an obedient little fellow he doesn’t.

  69. Haven’t done much today, fed the green house tommies. Tied a few new sprouts back.
    A bit of a poor show this year. Despite having the door open 24/7 I don’t think the bees or others manage to administer the pollination process.
    Oh well, Erin’s dozed orff, shes been busy all day with our grandchildren and one of their friends.
    Rothampstead Park. Lots of things for youngsters to do. Under the very watchful eyes of a lovely Elderly lady.
    Shutting down now bed by half nine.
    Poor old Tom, best wishes, I hope you get well soon. 🤗

    1. I’m shocked, I didn’t know about sj.

      Our tomatoes are not doing very well at all, nor our apples. A very poor crop. I think this is a home-grown communist plot.

      1. My greenhouse toms are less than half the hight of normal and turning yellow as if its the end of season. Strange!

      2. Not enough sunlight, heat and CO₂. I’ve 6 piccolo plants with about 80 or more fruit on each, full size, that are just refusing to ripen. If I bring ’em in they ripen in a few days. Not as sweet as they should be because the sunlight isn’t doing the biz.

    1. I had the privilege of meeting him and hearing him play in Caen Cathedral around about 2002 during the D-Day commemorations whilst serving on HMS Kent. His playing and the cathedral acoustics were amazing, and sent shivers up and down my spine.

    1. Moral: Islands surrounded by water need to be self sufficient and not sucked dry by removal of their assets. If necessay the need to return to burning fossil fuels to survive.

  76. The trans movement will only become more Orwellian

    War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. And now, it is feminists who we’re told pose a threat to trans extremists

    JULIE BINDEL • 10 August 2023 • 1:09pm

    When it comes to deciding who is transphobic, the bar is being set so low that even a world-class limbo dancer would struggle to slip beneath it.

    Simply saying that transwomen are not biological females is enough to get you in hot water, and anyone daring to point out that the presence of natal males (however they identify) in a women-only space is unsafe is at risk of being branded a bigot. The actor Amanda Abbington is the latest in a long line of women to experience this.

    When Abbington announced that she would be taking part in Strictly Come Dancing this year, gender extremists pointed out that, in March, she had tweeted her disapproval of young children being subjected to drag shows. The backlash was such that she left Twitter and has yet to return.

    Back in the days before feminism became the opposite of its true meaning, we worried that men dressing as sexualised parodies of women was sexist and offensive.

    To explain: men who both dress as women and claim to be women are now taking umbrage at men who dress as women for fun. The former believe the latter are making light of something deadly serious. Many feminists will see that they are all men masquerading as women – but the important distinction is that drag queens don’t generally demand access to women’s hospital wards, rape crisis centres and prison wings.

    Abbington is by no means alone as a victim of this reverse logic, which could be best described as “Darvo” (Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender), and can be adopted by male perpetrators of abuse towards women as a way of skirting accountability for their behaviour. It is used to describe men who coerce their female partner, then gaslight her into believing she is the problem. It is a key tactic used by some trans activists to target feminists fighting for our sex-based rights.

    As the reverse logic goes, LGBTQIA+ BBC staff might feel “unsafe” with Abbington on set, so some are calling for a boycott of Strictly until Abbington is cancelled.

    And last weekend, it was a transgender activist who brought the men’s road race at the Cycling World Championships to a dangerous halt to protest the fact that men (transwomen) are no longer allowed to compete against women.

    Look also at what is happening to my friend Joanna Cherry MP: because she has spoken out against male rapists being placed in women’s prisons, she now requires serious security at the Edinburgh Festival. Consider the experiences of Kathleen Stock, driven out of her job at Sussex University by a baying mob of students claiming to be “in danger” from her perfectly reasonable views on sex and gender.

    I have been physically attacked by trans activists for simply speaking out against the erosion of single sex spaces. These assaults took place when I was an invited speaker on the topic of male violence. Although I have been campaigning, researching and writing about such matters for more than four decades, the trans activists portrayed me as a direct threat to them rather than someone campaigning for women’s liberation.

    The reality is that it is women who are under threat. The extreme wing of the trans lobby appears to believe it acceptable to intimidate feminists for holding mainstream views on biological sex. It’s a clever trick to claim that men – at least those identifying as transgender or non-binary – are now oppressed by women. What could be more Orwellian?

    Society is being sold a lie and many women have been duped as to what an actual transgender woman is. A recent poll conducted among British women showed that 35pc believe a transgender woman to be female from birth. Unsurprisingly, those who understand least about sex and gender are of the younger generation. Perhaps they have been indoctrinated. It is they who are most likely to have no idea that transgender women are born – and remain – biological males.

    It is high time for us to return to reality. Women like me are no threat to men masquerading as women. The reverse may, however, be true.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/10/the-trans-movement-will-only-become-more-orwellian/

    I first saw this DT piece with a picture of Amanda Abbington and thought immediately “What has the gobby left-wing harridan said now?” It’s rather a muddle. Abbington spoke out against drag but has since back-tracked. Bindel appears not to have noticed. If Abbington has been threatened, have the police investigated? She may have uttered the usual bilge about Brexit and Tories in the past but she shouldn’t have to go into hiding for this. It’s all getting rather nasty.

    Abbington apologises here: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/aug/08/strictly-contestant-amanda-abbington-denies-being-transphobic

    And Julie Bindel still hates men…

Comments are closed.