Thursday 11 September: The workers’ rights Bill ignores the realities of running a business

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.

741 thoughts on “Thursday 11 September: The workers’ rights Bill ignores the realities of running a business”

  1. Good morning, chums. And thanks, Geoff, for today's new NoTTLe site. Another Wordle Par.
    Wordle 1,545 4/6

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    1. And my thoughts today are with Sue Ed as she goes back to hospital to have her stitches removed. I hope all goes smoothly, Sue.

    2. And my thoughts today are with Sue Ed as she goes back to hospital to have her stitches removed. I hope all goes smoothly, Sue.

    3. And my thoughts today are with Sue Ed as she goes back to hospital to have her stitches removed. I hope all goes smoothly, Sue.

    4. Good morning Elsie and all
      I too seem to be stuck on endless fours…
      Wordle 1,545 4/6

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    1. I wasn’t really aware of Charlie Kirk, but his untimely death appears to have made him world famous, I will have to listen to his speeches and debates now.
      This sort of thing rarely happens to left wing people that stand up for freedom of speech and honest open political debate.
      But there again, there aren’t any, I suppose

      1. I had not heard of him either before today, but I guess most of his work was in the US, also he was very much mainstream alt media, which I tend to avoid. It seems he was doing good work trying to bring open discussion back to universities.

        1. I've been watching his videos for a couple of years now and Charlie always gets the better of the people in his audience asking questions. Usually green/pink haired students.

      2. I saw his interview with Ben Leo on GBNews and was impressed by the clarity of his thought.

    2. (re-posting this from above)
      My condolences to the family of Charlie Kirk, an American who could have climbed much higher within the realm of US politics and public service.
      Edit: the tragedy is not only the death of a young man, but in the lifelong emotional impact on his children, widow and the family.

      Perhaps the shooter was ex-military, possibly even a foreigner, because one lethal shot from a distance of 200 metres is not typical of yer everyday nutter.

  8. Condolences to the family of Charlie Kirk, an American who could have climbed much higher within the realm of US politics and public service.

  9. Good Moaning.
    Thoroughly recommend The Producers at the the Garrick theatre.
    An absolute blast. The glorious bad taste never loses its appeal.

  10. The shot to Charlie Kirk's neck looks very similar to the one targeted at Trump that missed and hit him in the ear.

      1. They reckon the shot was taken from a building 185 yards away so hitting the throat was chance.

          1. Given that he was moving about, I suspect the shot was probably aimed at his chest and either went high or he moved his position as the gunman fired.

          3. As someone who was range qualified and has conducted numerous range sessions, I would agree. Firing accurately at the central body mass should be achievable by any soldier.

          4. Apparently the current record distance for a sniper kill is around 4,000 metres, by a Ukrainian sniper using AI and drone inputs?

          5. I suspect that will be propaganda; I’m afraid I trust Ukrainian reports about as much as I trust those from Hamas.

          6. Maybe so, but I’m not going to stand 4,000 meters away from one with a grievance!! As an alternative the previous records included “In mid-2017 it was reported that an unnamed Canadian special forces operator, based in Iraq, had set a new record of 3,540 m (3,871 yd), beating the record previously held by an Australian sniper (also unnamed) at 2,815 m (3,079 yd).” [Wiki!]

    1. Lovely woodstove warmth. Hazelnuts. Squashes. Tendrils of morning mist and evenings drawing in. Stock market crashes.

        1. Black leather underwear, red velvet knickers
          Pictures of chorus girls naked with vicars
          Half-naked chambermaids tied up with string
          These are a few of my favourite things

      1. 412655+ upticks,

        Morning O,
        We were on the phone last night to my sister in Virginia we told her as she hadn’t heard.

  14. Geed morning all.
    A beautiful but autumnal September morning. 11°C, blue skies with scattered cloud and a waning gibbous moon hanging high in the sky.

  15. Morning, all Y'all.
    Hooshing with rain – and another railway line washed away, this time on the west coast not so far from Stavanger.
    Here's one for you: With all the misdirection there is in the news these days, is the drone "attack" on Poland a false flag operation, designed to drag NATO into the war with Ukraine? I can't believe Russia would be so crass and careless.
    Just a thought.

    2. I wouldn't put it past Zelensky.
      Description suggest the drones were in Ukraine and then veered off into Poland.

      Programming error in the targeting?

    5. Ukraine has electronic signal jamming capabilities, which would lead to uncontrolled drones flying until they ran out of fuel and crashed to earth. Just a thought.

      1. That is what annoys me about reports of Russian rockets hitting apartment buildings.
        There is no point in firing at those buildings. Putin wants to hit military targets. Also, bad optics.

    6. The calculated distance (air line) between Russia and Poland is approximately 3,085 miles – 4,964 kilometres.

      That's an awful long way for a stray drone. Something odd about it.

      1. The closest point between Russian territory and Poland is at their shared land border — there’s no gap between them. Poland touches Russia along the southern edge of the Kaliningrad Oblast, so the minimum distance is 0 km (they’re directly adjacent).

        Outside of Kaliningrad (from Poland to the “mainland” part of Russia east of Belarus), the shortest straight-line distance is roughly 230–250 km (140–155 miles) across Lithuania and Belarus.

        Moscow is about 1 200km from Warsaw. Not nearly 5 000km.

  16. https://i2.cmail19.com/ei/j/8F/2D9/44F/csimport/unnamed-2.064749.jpg ‘Mr Epstein and I had what one might term, ahem, a special relationship.’
     https://youtu.be/7g-e4p1-eNU
    WATCH: Starmer Repeatedly Refuses to Say If He Knew About Mandelson and Epstein

    Starmer has refused repeatedly to say if he knew about the close relationship between Mandelson and Epstein. Asked repeatedly by Badenoch at PMQs, the PM said:

    “As she and the House would expect, full due process was followed during this appointment. As it is with all ambassadors, the ambassador has repeatedly expressed his deep regret. He is right to do so.”

    Starmer repeated this line numerous times as Kemi homed in:

    “The PM cannot answer any questions. That is not the behavior of someone who has full confidence. The ambassador should be in the White House talking about how we respond to an incursion into NATO airspace. Instead, he is giving interviews about himself to the Sun. This is a man who already had to be removed from cabinet twice. And now we learned that he was brokering billion pound deals with Jeffrey Epstein while business secretary. I didn’t get a proper answer. He’s talking about process. This is not about process. This is about judgment.”

    Disasterclass from Starmer…

    September 10 2025 @ 12:22

    19 hours ago
    The question should be, why didn’t Mr Forensic ex-head of the CPS know…….

    Beebsplaining
    18 hours ago
    🤔Saville = “present but not involved”
    🤔Harrods boss= wasn’t “given the file”
    🤔Nonce rings = needs a investigation before agreeing
    🤔Lucy Connolly = not “across the details”

    2 tier is to forensic detail and government what mudflaps are to a tortoise 🤔
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/22e6ffb363b9f101edc244a3e298a93c442d7190f47eb93d2ec07dcaea22b1ca.png
    The power couple
    https://talk.hyvor.com/media/website/14037/iLbOOkKIJ7xZzXMsPrnbAVaxCM6bTyALyzdbh07p.jpg

      1. I assume you are not including the Donald in the above post, Ready Eddy. (Good morning, btw.)

        1. Not a great fan of Donny but not included.
          I fell out with him when he set out to drive a man off his land in Scotland because he was building another golf course and the local chap was in his way.

          1. Yes, I remember that from the days when we watched tv. It took me a while to come round but I think The Donald he has mellowed over the years, and who knows, perhaps the lying media was lying to us again to manipulate our perceptions of the man – back in the day, well pre-covid, we trusted the media more. Presentation is everything. So accordingly my perceptions have changed, I could see first term he was what America needed. Sometimes I do wonder in which direction he is going but I realise he has to tread very carefully amongst the US's intense vaccine culture. Sometimes you have to go along with a project until the time is ripe for you to something about it.

    2. Ambassadors are usually career served members of the diplomatic service so I can only assume Mandelson's appointment was a political one. And it's come back to bite Starmer on the a**e.

  17. Quote of the Day
    As tube strikes bring London to a standstill, RMT general secretary Eddie Dempsey told Times Radio:

    “Well you can’t afford to buy a house in London, even on £72,000. I think workers should be able to afford to live in London. And if the average house price, if you’ve got to be earning more than £100,000 to buy a house in London, £72,000 is not out of this world.”

  18. https://youtu.be/IzQFsWkR5Tg
    LISTEN: Met Commissioner Rowley Defends Police Officers Who Arrested Graham Linehan

    21 hours ago(Edited)
    The police these days are little more than the military arm of cancel culture…

    Mr Anthony Nesbitt
    21 hours ago
    Rowley’s big mouth will come in very handy given how Linehan is sueing the Met. First he said they had to arrest him through the letter of the law, then says he was happy he was arrested anyway. I don’t think the Community policing wallah will survive a Reform Government meself. https://talk.hyvor.com/media/website/14037/2H6697wjoclUHgXClCSACkP550fxcaAItU6J5j8V.jpg
    https://talk.hyvor.com/media/website/14037/NnjztHgYDB6InPxgKio3CxGxecOrUHNi1MAw9aqp.jpg

    1. The thing is with cultural Marxists.. they don't do criticism, and they don't tolerate humour.

      If you could kill Linehan.. you would in a second.
      Took multiple tins of soups before you politely requested Phoebe Plummer to attend a hearing at her convenience.
      Limited discretion.. my arse.

  19. TCW

    Muslim Brotherhood wages ‘jihad by stealth’ while Westminster looks the other way
    By Joseph Robertson

    September 10, 2025

    IN HIS opening speech at Reform UK’s annual conference, Nigel Farage committed to proscribing the sinister Muslim Brotherhood should he achieve power. So one has to ask: why hasn’t it been done before? New commentary has shed light on their long-term plan to dismantle Western society from within. Yet until now a chilling paralysis in British policy has allowed an openly radical ideology to flourish on UK soil.

    A stark warning was recently issued by Dalia Ziada, a leading Egyptian Muslim human rights activist and scholar. She said the Muslim Brotherhood is engaged in a long-term, non-violent strategy of ‘civilisational jihad’ to infiltrate and ultimately reshape Western societies under Islamist rule. On the Defending Israel with David Harris YouTube series last month, she detailed a patient campaign to subvert Western nations through education, politics and demographic change.

    Her message is not new. ‘I am keeping my voice heard and fighting Islamists,’ Ziada told the Jerusalem Post in March 2024. ‘I believe Israel is leading this war on behalf of all of us in the free world against radical Islamism.’

    This narrative paints a picture of a global conquest disguised as cultural integration, with an unsuspecting West facilitating its own demise. Yet in Britain this organisation operates with near impunity, unbanned and unhindered. This inaction raises critical questions: why does the British establishment refuse to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organisation, and how does its gradualist subversion mirror the tactics of communist groups that have long sought to dismantle liberal democracies?

    Founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna, the Muslim Brotherhood’s ambitions are encapsulated in its motto: ‘Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Quran is our law; jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.’

    While the group often publicly renounces violence in the West, critics argue it pursues identical goals through ‘stealth jihad’. This claim is substantiated by the Brotherhood’s own internal documents. A 1991 memorandum known as ‘The Project’ was discovered in a Swiss raid and later presented as evidence in US terror financing trials. It outlined a 20-year strategic plan for North America, describing a ‘settlement process’ aimed at ‘eliminating and destroying Western civilisation from within’ by using its own institutions –mosques, schools, charities and political front groups – against it.

    Across Europe, the Brotherhood has established a sophisticated network, including the Federation of Islamic Organisations in Europe and the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB). The MAB, identified in the 2015 UK government review as dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood and serving as its British affiliate, was co-founded by Kamal Helbawy, a former senior Brotherhood spokesman who openly advocated jihad against Israel and worked to establish Brotherhood networks in the West.

    French intelligence reports have exposed the group’s use of ‘entryism’– infiltrating institutions, with significant financial backing from Qatar and Turkey.

    In Britain, its financial and social footprint is vast. Reports and intelligence analyses suggest a multi-million-pound network of charities and businesses, many enjoying tax-exempt status, which funds thousands of mosques while contributing little to public services such as hospitals. For instance, Interpal, a UK-registered charity, has been repeatedly investigated by the Charity Commission for alleged links to Hamas — though cleared in the UK, it was designated by the US Treasury in 2003 for funding terrorism.

    Another example is the Cordoba Foundation, a think tank led by Anas Altikriti, a prominent Brotherhood-linked figure whose organisation has hosted events promoting Islamist ideologies and lobbied for pro-Palestine causes while denying direct ties.

    Former listed buildings and conservation areas, such as Regent’s Park Mosque and the East London Mosque, have been converted into Brotherhood-linked places of worship propagating aligned ideology, hosting linked events and speakers.

    While the organisation officially eschews violence in the UK, critics allege that its UK-based institutions have been linked to individuals who later joined terror groups such as ISIS, a charge the Brotherhood denies.

    This insidious method exploits Western freedoms of speech, multiculturalism and human rights to advance an agenda that is fundamentally opposed to them. Pro-Palestine activism, weaponised accusations of Islamophobia and ‘lawfare’ are used as shields to silence dissent and manipulate public opinion, turning Western tolerance into a tool of domination.

    A stark illustration came in the 2014 Trojan Horse scandal in Birmingham when Peter Clarke’s official report uncovered a co-ordinated effort by Islamist school governors including Tahir Alam — a key figure associated with Brotherhood-influenced groups like the Muslim Council of Britain — to impose an ‘aggressive Islamist ethos’ in state schools.

    This involved segregating boys and girls, narrowing curricula to prioritise Islamic studies, bullying non-compliant head teachers and promoting intolerant views via social media groups like the ‘Park View Brotherhood’, run by school leaders such as Monzoor Hussain and involving contributors such as Razwan Faraz.

    Despite this alarming activity, the Muslim Brotherhood is not proscribed under the UK’s Terrorism Act 2000. This stands in stark contrast to Britain’s decision to ban dozens of other entities including Hamas, which openly identifies itself as the Brotherhood’s Palestinian branch. The UK’s leniency is an outlier among nations that see the group as a direct threat. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Russia have all designated it a terrorist organisation.

    In 2021, Austria became the first European Union nation to outlaw the Brotherhood, explicitly linking its symbols and ideology to religiously motivated crime. The ban carries penalties of up to €4,000 (£3,466) in fines or imprisonment.

    The definitive moment for British policy came with the 2015 government review commissioned by Prime Minister David Cameron. The inquiry concluded that association with the Muslim Brotherhood should be considered a ‘possible indicator of extremism’. Cameron stated that aspects of its ideology and activities ‘run counter to British values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, equality and the mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs’.

    The review confirmed that the group’s foundational texts portray the West as decadent and that it has indirectly supported terrorism by backing Hamas.

    Yet no ban followed. Officials cited a familiar list of justifications: a proscription could be challenged in court, would drive the group’s activities underground, could alienate British Muslims, and might damage diplomatic and economic ties with Qatar. Instead of a ban, the UK adopted a policy of monitoring, a decision critics label as dangerous naivety.

    By early 2025 this position remained unchanged, even after the UAE sanctioned several UK-based organisations for their alleged ties to the Brotherhood.

    In January 2025, the UAE added eight UK-registered entities — including Cambridge Education and Training Centre Ltd, Future Graduates Ltd and Holdco UK Properties Limited — to its terrorism list, accusing them of affiliations with the Brotherhood.

    These companies, often owned by exiled Emirati dissidents or their relatives, represent the group’s embedded financial networks in Britain, operating in sectors including education and real estate while evading UK scrutiny. The subversion continues unabated, with Islamists barred from Mecca operating freely in London, lobbying politicians, and exploiting equalities legislation to silence opposition.

          1. Muslims generally I think. Perhaps when they apply (or invited?) to join the CS they are asked on application form – tick here if you are either a member or supporter of MB, please give details. Betting not. AI isn’t really to be trusted as yet, but it’s getting stronger all the time. Think there’s a big conference going on just now in Asia, lot of attendees. In future, I may receive a post with your details…but it may not be you..scary stuff eh..

          3. I’m not certain they’d bother about concealing it…maybe there isn’t even a box to tick on application docs.

    2. There's no real surprise.
      All that effort and loss of lives and property to stop the German's invading and taking over our nation and job done by our own useless political classes.

    3. As Erdogan observed, there is no "radical islam", there is only islam. It has no place in civilised Western countries..

        1. We paid for the cake, Eddy…and will continue to do so. All politicians are voted for and paid by us, similarly taxes.

    1. She looks so sweet and innocent, probably speaks so kindly to them, hoping to influence their families.

    2. I hear some of the real people in education, who actually care about teaching, are calling her Bridget Philistine?

    1. Oggie, the left/liberals have all condemned the assassination of Charlie Kirk and sent their condolences to his widow and young children. In what way is that "lacking any kind of moral compass"? (Good morning, btw.)

      1. Heyup Elsie.
        First my response to your unanswered question of yesterday:-
        It's what we called in the Sappers a "monkey", also called a post driver and, no doubt has other names.
        It is a steel tube, blocked off at one end with a pair of handles on each side and is no light, usually about 20 or 30 pounds in weight.
        To use it, you slide the tube onto the post/angle iron picket you want to drive into the ground, lift it by the handles and drop it down onto the post which will be driven an inch or two into the ground.
        Repeat the process as often as you need to to get the post far enough into the ground.

        Second, this post is typical of the mindset of MANY on the American Left that has created the situation that led to this horrendous act:-
        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8d391ddcecfbb46d971c00c173f1d2fb979629b6900c74952fe5fa23a148010b.png

        1. Thanks, BoB, for the explanation. In fact Grizzly has already explained what the post driver was and how it is usually used. With regards to the comment posted by Lillian Marie, it is just appalling to read.

        2. I wondered if perhaps the clummox with the post driver's post was too big for the driver to fit onto it.

          A question for the grammar experts.
          The apostrophe and driver and s look strange but I can't see an alternative way that looks better.

        3. He didn't have an 'unanswered question' yesterday.

          I gave the answer. yesterday evening, with a video attached showing the item's correct use.

          1. Fairy nuff.
            I lost the earlier posts yesterday when I accidently shut the page down so didn't see your response.

        4. I'm inclined to believe that hateful rhetoric on social media helps foster such violent acts.

          Florida man pleads guilty to threatening to kill Ocasio-Cortez and Pelosi

          Paul Vernon Hoeffer, 60, also pleads guilty in federal court to threats against Kim Foxx, a prominent district attorney in Illinois

          Martin Pengelly in New York
          Sun 23 Jan 2022 13.17 GMT

          A Florida man has pleaded guilty to threatening to kill Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Nancy Pelosi, two leading Democrats in Congress, and Kim Foxx, a prominent district attorney in Illinois.

          The US attorney’s office for the southern district of Florida said Paul Vernon Hoeffer, 60, entered his plea in federal court in Fort Pierce on Friday.

          Hoeffer admitted calling Pelosi’s Washington office in March 2019, threatening “to come a ‘long, long, way’ to rattle her head with bullets and cut her head off”.

          He admitted a call to Foxx on the same day, saying bullets would “rattle her brain”.

          In November 2020, Hoeffer called the office of Ocasio-Cortez, a leading progressive from New York. This time, the DoJ said, Hoeffer “threatened that he would ‘rip her head off’, and told her to sleep with one eye open”.

          Citing the plea agreement, NBC News reported that Hoeffer also “warned of ‘all-out war’ and a ‘civilian army’” and made racist remarks in his call to Foxx.

          Hoeffer made his calls before the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, in which supporters of Donald Trump sought to overturn his election defeat.

          Some looked for lawmakers to capture or kill. One rioter, from Texas, faces charges including a threat to “assassinate” Ocasio-Cortez. His case has yet to be tried.

          Capitol police have reported an increase in threats against lawmakers. NBC cited the chief of Capitol police, J Thomas Manger, as saying there were about 9,600 threats in 2021, up from more than 8,000 in 2020.

          As prominent Democratic women, Ocasio-Cortez and Pelosi are common targets for threats, from within the walls of Congress as well as without.

          Ocasio-Cortez was elected in 2018, as Democrats took the House in opposition to Trump. She quickly became a national star. In 2019, Time magazine began a profile by describing nerves in her Washington office.
          “Every 10 minutes or so,” the magazine said, “someone knocks on the big wooden door of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s office on Capitol Hill. The noise makes staffers stiffen.

          “It’s almost always a harmless fan, one of dozens who arrive each day, leaving neon-colored Post-it notes as devotional offerings.

          “But in her first three months in Congress, aides say, enough people have threatened to murder Ocasio-Cortez that Capitol police trained her staff to perform risk assessments of her visitors.”

          This, the magazine said, was “the daily reality for America’s newest human Rorschach test. Wonder Woman of the left, Wicked Witch of the right”.

          At sentencing in April, Hoeffer will face up to 15 years in prison.

          https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/23/florida-man-pleads-guilty-threats-kill-aoc-nancy-pelosi

        5. I could have done with a monkey like the one you describe when I was trying to put some posts in to reinforce my fence against the devil dog next door.

          1. Bugger.
            If you’d told me I’d have trundled over with mine!
            I had it made specially when I was working at Eastleigh.

        1. Near the top of the BTL comments is this "These comments in the article [left wing hate about Kirk's death] are despicable. A young man has been killed and his children will now grow up without a father and his young wife had lost her husband. Have we no compassion any more in this world?" Lots of up votes but bizarrely also 40 [at present] down votes!

      3. 412655+upticks,

        Morning EB,
        Talks cheap and money buys houses,
        as a lefty leader starmer the TOOLs rhetoric
        gives credibility to my post every “truth” he
        utters is a lie in disguise.

        In that way.

      4. Morning Elsie.
        The faarr left probably had all that stuff ready to go because they knew what was going to happen..

      5. A lot of dreadful stuff was said, you only have to search on the internet. A few quotes were posted by Rik below.

        1. I've just seen a clip of an Australian news programme where they show many disgusting clips of people saying they are pleased, nay delighted, that Charlie Kirk was killed. Appalling

  24. Morning All 🙂😊
    Second attempt I must have dozed off again 🤗🤭
    12c sunny forecast thunder storms after lunch.

    I wonder how the workers rights Bill would have effected those who were self employed as many of us were a few years ago ?
    Because of Wilson's SET. Selective Employment Tax.
    I can't quite make out what that horrible person Reeves is going to do to the elderly savers private bank accounts. I have to pay to take away advertising to read even one of the seemingly varied versions.
    Any chance someone could explain please.

      1. That strikes me as a very good way to prevent people from accessing their own money…all for their own good.
        In the US, buying gold or guns has already been policed by financial institutions.

        1. The problem being that the banks can be held liable if someone is scammed. I suppose it was better when the bank manager knew you and your competency. We lost our branch of Lloyds in the village this year.

          1. My local town has no banks at all, just a "hub" which appears to be useless. Another town is about to lose its only bank. I took the opportunity of visiting a branch when I went for acupuncture – they still have one bank, but the others have closed. Not everybody banks online.

  26. Good Morning!

    Today Nanumaga reports on his evening with Rajah Mia , the brave British Muslim campaigning against the largely Pakistani Muslim rape gangs and, more importantly, the shameful cover-up by all forms of governance in this country, Labour and Tory.

    In Once Upon a Time in the West , Graham Cunningham dips into philosophy and the thesis that literature, not academic treatises, affords a truer insight into an understanding of the human condition, and that a new story is needed by those fearing that their civilisation is in an existential crisis.

    Energy Watch: Over the last 24 hours: Britain's average power requirement was 32.1 GW, sourced from Gas, 11%; Solar, 4.4%: Wind 52.3%; Imports, 13.1%; Biomass, 6.4%; Nuclear 10.2% and Miscellaneous, 2.7%.

    RIP Charlie Kirk.

  27. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/cf24c0657e6430bdeeee8f68478f67ad80ad921e8abfd4e773bd8d6d7e9c6be8.png If any further evidence is required to show that everyone with influence, power and money in this benighted world — as well as most politicians of whatever political persuasion — is on the side of the Globalist re-setting brigade; this article surely tells you a lot.

    To be a 'friend of Trump' while at the same time donating millions to Bliar's Institute for Global Change tells you all you need to know about where this planet will be going in the next couple of decades.

  28. Good moaning all, from a sunny C d S

    Today is the *Astrakhan/Maple anniversary of when I joined the RN

    *64th

  30. They're moving in on the farms.

    Devon Farming Couple Arrested | Planning Enforcement | Farming Matters #1
    Clive M Edwards – Walking The Talk

    93,756 views Sep 9, 2025
    A farming husband and wife at Devon had their peace disrupted after six burly lads from the local police station, came to arrest and bundle them in to two separate police vans. Sam and his wife Amy were then taken to police cells and kept in over night, only to be dragged handcuffed to Barnstaple magistrates court the following morning for a two minute hearing

    I explain here at my talk in Cumbria how UK farmers will need to change things if they plan to survive against a government which is determined to end small family farms

    1. Shellac: a natural resin obtained from the lac insect and dissolved in alcohol to make French polish. It was also previously used as a coating for boxing gloves [hence the expression: "He received a good shellacking!"]

        1. indeed. as do i.

          It was either here on on FSB that I learnt that if you set your VPN to Albania, you can watch YouTube without getting the adverts. Brilliant!

          1. I don't.

            I've only ever spoken to Peddy once and that was in a telephone call to "Elsie's" house when she threw a barbeque party around ten-or-so years ago.

            On that day I also spoke to "Elsie", Toots, Anne Allan, Naomi Onions and (in a separate call) to Spikey.

            I exchanged a few emails with him, over a short period, but they stopped, abruptly, some time ago.

  32. Jacob Heilbrunn
    Charlie Kirk believed in free speech. He died for it
    11 September 2025, 6:15am

    Charlie Kirk was shot on stage yesterday, speaking at a campus event at Utah Valley University. The Turning Point USA co-founder was announced dead by the President of the United States. ‘The Great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk, is dead. No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie,’ Trump wrote on Truth Social. ‘He was loved and admired by ALL, especially me, and now, he is no longer with us. Melania and my Sympathies go out to his beautiful wife Erika, and family. Charlie, we love you!’

    While the President and millions of others pray for the Kirks, others aren’t hesitating to share horrible sentiments. The 31-year-old Kirk was speaking at Utah Valley University, near Provo, a serene town in the foothills of Utah’s majestic mountains, when a gunman murdered him. Yet an early MSNBC pundit decided to suggest that the person who shot Charlie Kirk in the neck (the shooter, at time of writing, is still at large) might have been a ‘supporter shooting their gun off in celebration.’ What?

    This is a growing trend, in the wake of senseless violence: to water it down. Or even defend it. A flurry of commentators on the left are not hesitant to express Schadenfreude over this act of pure violence, like they did when Luigi Mangione shot Brian Thompson, the healthcare CEO, in cold blood. Kirk, they say, was a conservative activist, and that crime meant he deserved comeuppance for his various transgressions, including his support of gun rights. Their malignant comments do not deserve repetition. If you must read their horrible takes, you can find them easily on BlueSky, by simply searching ‘top posts’.

    Those who are feverishly revelling in the shooting, or at least tut-tutting about it, should think again. This was a soulless act, which has taken a young father’s life. To find any small glimmer of joy in that is to erode one’s own soul. If that happens to enough of us, the soul of the nation rots, too.

    We should also pause before turning this unspeaking tragedy into a political talking point. Seizing on the shooting as a pretext for a wide crackdown on civil liberties, or to broadly lump together ‘these lunatics leftists,’ as Laura Loomer put it, is also guaranteed to injure further an already injured nation. The spiral of loathing and delegitimisation of other human beings must come to an end. No one wants to discover what happens if we go any further down this cesspit.

    The last time America experienced a spate of political assassinations was during the 1960s, when the murder of President Kennedy was followed by those of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. These were atrocities that were supposed to be confined to history. But something is going terribly wrong again, which is clear in this particularly ominous killing of Kirk. It is once again not just the man, but the idea, that these killers are looking to take out. American campuses have not been immune to violence. But this was, more than likely, an act of political violence, one that could easily spread to think-tanks, journalists and academics: to anyone who speaks out. Debate is supposed to be the essence of the college experience, and the American experience. Today, it was cut short with a bullet.

    As it happens, Kirk himself could not have appeared more vulnerable. He was wearing a white T-shirt while holding forth with several hundred students. Now his mission has come to an abrupt terminus. Kirk wanted to revive America, but now it is even less certain if the country can avoid a lurch into a fresh orgy of violence.

    Written by
    Jacob Heilbrunn is editor of The National Interest. He lives in Washington DC

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

    Frederick Alexander
    2 hours ago edited
    I can barely look online. The "be kind" people are celebrating the murder of somebody who was trying to debate with them in good faith.

    Charlie Kirk was a young father and someone on the right who showed up in public, took questions, and debated his opponents fairly and with courage and conviction. He showed us what healthy civic culture looks like and paid for it with his life.

    Yes, there are nasty elements on the far right, but the "respectable" left is saturated in hatred —sociopathic hatred dressed up as virtue. They are the enemies of civilisation, and we should treat them as such.

    Therewolf
    2 hours ago
    The Left suddenly demand that the rhetoric gets toned down. But it's always after the bullets fly they want that don't they.

    It's "fine" to keep calling Trump Hitler until someone lunatic takes a pot shot at him. It's "fine" to claim that defenders of women's rights are trying to genocide trans people until someone shoots the messenger.

    There no equality of risk. If you are on the Right, you have a much higher chance of facing political violence than the other way round.

    It's witches' brew concocted by the Left that stems from their idiotic belief that words equal violence and that the Right are not merely wrong but evil.

    1. It kinda makes sense that the two.. "most repulsive, repugnant, lacking any kind of moral compass whilst believing themselves to be the most kind and moral people on the planet".. ideologies have join forces, an alliance to bring down Christian Western Culture.

    2. Charlie Kirk
      A revolution is coming to the UK
      11 September 2025, 6:43am

      https://www.spectator.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/GettyImages-2215976810.jpg
      Charlie Kirk at the Cambridge Union, May 2025 (Photo: Getty)

      In May, Charlie Kirk, who was killed on Wednesday from a gunshot wound, visited the United Kingdom to debate the students of Oxford and Cambridge, Britain’s two most prestigious universities.

      The Spectator World asked him to write about the experience. The result was this well-observed, funny and now strangely prophetic-sounding piece about the condition of England.

      Charlie Kirk believed in free speech. He died speaking freely. RIP.

      When I was growing up, people often said British politics were where America’s would be in five, ten or 20 years. What this meant was that Britain was more to the left of America: more secular, more socially liberal, more environmentalist, more globalised. The assumption was that, over time, the left would always win out, so wherever Britain was now, America would soon be.

      I travelled to the United Kingdom in May to debate the students and faculty of Cambridge and Oxford Universities in large part because that old assumption is dead and gone. Donald Trump’s political revolution has destroyed it. Now, Britain is the country trailing behind America. Make no mistake: Trump’s revolution is coming to the UK. But as I learned, just like in America, the students of elite universities may be the last to realise.

      My first stop was at the Cambridge Union. Stepping onto the Union’s debate floor was like stepping into a time warp, and not just because that floor was once used to plot a map of the D-Day landings. The Cambridge student body might as well be stuck in the high summer of 2020. For all their learning and talent, the students were unprepared and appalled to hear takes that, by now, are mainstream and even boring in America. When I described lockdowns as pointless and forced submission to mRNA shots as tyranny, they seethed and muttered. When I said George Floyd died from a drug overdose rather than under a police officer’s knee, they went into an uproar. While these students have long abandoned the faith that named Trinity and Jesus Colleges, they remain deeply hostile to heresies against a different religion. The Oxford Union was slightly more open-minded. When I described America and Britain as two of the least racist nations in the entire world, the students merely laughed instead of going into a collective paroxysm.

      In a way, the students at Britain’s two oldest universities were identical to those I meet in the US – namely, they were completely obsessed with the fine details of American politics, even our domestic issues. I was prepared for a lot of questions about tariffs, Ukraine and Israel. What I wasn’t expecting were complaints about American tax rates the students would never have to pay and Supreme Court decisions they would never have to abide by. One young man even brought up the Stormy Daniels case. It turns out that Stormy has been a guest speaker at both the Oxford and Cambridge Unions. Don’t Brits have their own dumb sex scandals to follow? Why are they so invested in a half-baked foreign one? More than once, students fretted about President Trump’s decision to admit white South Africans as refugees into America. How much do these students know about the asylum laws of their own country? Many were deeply outraged about Trump’s bid to abolish birthright citizenship, when Britain got rid of it in 1983. Keir Starmer shows no signs of bringing it back.

      As in America, a distressing number of British students seem unable to deliver a question without reading it off their phones. That said, the students of Oxbridge are certainly bright – and better at insults than the average American. Some are impressively well-informed. When the Gaza war came up, I thought I could expose the excessive focus on it by asking a student to name what African state is now in civil war (Sudan); and what Asian country is seeing ongoing ethnic cleansing (Myanmar). Unfortunately for me, he aced both questions. But being clever is not the same as being wise. If Oxbridge students were long on wit, they were short on wisdom.

      In the US, an ideological transformation has swept almost every campus I visit. Five years ago, I’d typically meet a wall of hostility like the one I found at Cambridge. But in today’s America, college-age students have moved toward Trump more heavily than any other demographic. The decline of religiosity among young people has halted and may be in reverse. On dozens of campuses in the past year I’ve met thousands of young people refusing to passively accept the decline of their civilisation. In contrast, at Oxbridge I found the dominant outlook to be a depressed and depressing near-nihilism. They were students who hardly cared their country has less free speech than 50 or 100 years ago. They were appalled that a person might think life begins at conception, but not that their own country is being steadily Islamicised. They loved the abstract fight for ‘democracy’ in Ukraine, but find the actual outcome of democracy in America very icky. That fixation on America says it all. There’s more interest in moralising about the bad man across the Atlantic than in salvaging their own declining country.

      In Britain at large, a very different attitude prevails. I spoke to everybody I could while there, from drivers and blue-collar workmen to journalists and the shockingly large number of people who recognised me in the streets. What I heard from them was clear. They’re angry at Britain’s net-zero-driven energy stagnation. They’re furious at the Biden-esque levels of immigration inflicted on them by their ‘Conservative’ government in the past decade. Over and over, they told me they were ready to smash the British party system to bits and elect a Reform prime minister. The great turn in Britain is coming. And when it arrives, the students of Oxbridge will be the most surprised of all.

      Written by
      Charlie Kirk

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

      Rod Evans
      2 hours ago
      The left have lost the argument and have abandoned civilised debate over a decade ago. They are now turning increasingly to violence to stop the valid questioning of their fixations on Race, Net Zero and Gender confusion.
      When the good men die young for asking the right questions and being refused any answer other than a bullet, then you know we are in deep trouble as a civilisation.
      RIP Charlie Kirk, your passion for truth will be missed but never lost, others will pick up your fight for honest society.

      Scottish Borderer
      an hour ago
      The universities of Great Britain have entered the modern dark ages. They are no longer a light, a beacon of excellence, a fount of learning, and of what it means to be educated in the true sense of that word.

      They are so busy incubating the seeds of their own inevitable destruction, they cannot see that the country is better of without them as they have become morally repugnant , and their universities utterly debased…..that as little as fifty years ago were a respected part of our culture.

      They are not missed. So deep in the mire are they, they have no idea the country has moved on. Poor fools still think they are relevent.

      1. Brendan O’Neill
        The killing of Charlie Kirk is an assault on America itself
        11 September 2025, 8:05am

        He was wearing a t-shirt that said ‘Freedom’. A one-word rallying cry emblazoned in black across his chest. It was his core belief: that liberty, especially the liberty to speak, is preferable to tyranny. Then, following the crack of gunfire, that word was stained red with blood. We’ve heard of blood being spilt for freedom: here it was for real. Not a metaphor, not an analogy: the literal drenching of liberty with the blood of a young man who devoted his life to fighting for it.

        The killing of Charlie Kirk has horrified the world. It is, in President Trump’s words, a ‘dark moment for America’. It was first and foremost an act of wilful cruelty. He was a 31-year-old father of two. A woman widowed and two kids orphaned at the brutish, unilateral behest of what we can only imagine to be a despicable person. But it was an assault on America too. It was a bullet not only in the neck of a young man but also in the beating heart of the American republic: the First Amendment.

        Kirk was the kingpin of America’s new conservatism. He famously forswore college – a wise move these days – to devote himself to battling the immoral excesses of what passes for leftism in the 21st century. He built not only a brand but a movement: Turning Point USA. He and his earnest crusaders brought the conservative case directly to schools and colleges. Kirk is credited with winning untold numbers of young voters, especially young men, to the Trump camp.

        I met him in LA once, fittingly while recording a podcast on the urgency of liberty. I was on his TV show, The Charlie Kirk Show, a couple of times. He always struck me as a sincere young man. His guiding belief was that open, unfettered debate, about everything was America’s best hope. ‘Prove me wrong’ was the slogan of his viral campus events. He sought not to shun or silence his critics but to hear them. He invited them to challenge his ideas, and to air their own. ‘Because when people stop talking, that’s when violence happens’, he prophetically said.

        There was something Milton-esque about his faith in free debate. ‘Let Truth and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?’, said Milton. This was Kirk’s belief too: that truth will always fare better than fallacy in the free town square. It is unconscionable that someone at Utah Valley, we don’t yet know who, responded to Kirk’s good-faith invitation to debate with extreme violence. The barbarism of cancel culture wielded against the life-giving endeavour of truth-seeking.

        The hunt for Kirk’s killer goes on. So we don’t even have a name yet, far less a motive. But it feels safe to say this terrible assault will have been fuelled at least in part by intolerance. A deep, burning, savage intolerance, presumably for Kirk’s ‘MAGA’ beliefs or perhaps his love of free discussion. The contrast between Kirk’s bustling, rowdy gathering at Utah Valley and the gunfire that brought it to an end is so striking. On one side, the free and noble exchange of ideas; on the other the violence of suppression. Freedom literally cut down, in broad daylight.

        These are the Two Americas. The America that still loves freedom and the America that fears it. The America that still adheres to its traditions of liberty as forged in the fires of revolution, and the America that is rejecting those radical democratic ideals in preference for the alien culture of cancellation. The America that still believes in the public square and the America that prefers to seek sanctuary in the ‘safe space’, far from that madding phenomenon of alternative points of view.

        It is possible we have just witnessed the savagery of grievance culture, the apocalyptic endpoint of the neo-medieval belief that ‘words hurt’. After all, if speech is violence – as so much of the wet left says it is – wouldn’t that make violence a legitimate response to speech? We are potentially seeing the dire consequences of re-educating an entire generation to fear disagreement, to cherish their own self-esteem above all else, even liberty. It seems to me that a young man might just have paid the highest price for this lethal ideology.

        This is America’s Charlie Hebdo moment. Violence wielded against ideas, a man punished for his ‘blasphemies’, gunfire cutting down discussion. And so we should say of Charlie Kirk what we said of Charlie Hebdo: Je suis Charlie.

      3. I have to agree with the two comments below.
        Our own media are of course blaming the actual possession of fire arms. But it's not the guns, they are dangerous of course, but inanimate objects until the wrong person picks them up. And let's face the facts, if someone with vile political motives really wants to get hold of one they will.
        This has been happening in the uk for decades.
        That shooting was probably organised by the NWO or an associated syndicate.

        1. There are many suggestions, Eddy – the latest footage I saw of him was debating with a young woman, subject trans community. Latest suggestion I've seen is that may have been the cause. Whatever, a good man lost to his family, community and country.

        2. As a model, banning the private ownership of firearms in the UK back in the 1990s has really stopped the use of handguns in crime, hasn't it? It's been so effective that in England & Wales (22 in year ending March 2024), the total death toll by shooting in England, Wales & Scotland would be about 24.

          1. For any criminal in the UK smuggling hand guns in must be fairly easy.
            There is so much imported produce crossing our border now it would be impossible to find them.
            There seems to be lots of situations where the fire arms have been used.

      4. I am not in the least bit sorry that the "University" of Greenwich and that of Kent are having to merge. My only disappointment is that they are not shutting down. We need to have a bonfire of the tertiary education system.

        1. Not so much a bonfire, but a radical dismantling and rebuilding back into the Technical Colleges they once excelled at being.

    3. "I disagree with what you say, but I respect your right to say it …

      … however, I don't have the wit to debate you so I'll just shoot you in the throat."

        1. She's an autistic child/teen, manipulated by parents … and the whole Left-wing establishment … for monetary gain.

          😉

        2. I'm afraid I am a bit less charitable. She is 22, so long past being a child, and you only have to look at her smug grin to see how much she's enjoying herself as the police stage another fake arrest.

          1. She’s been raised that way, parents took advantage of her condition. Can only she wakes up at some future date, makes new friends, although I think unlikely. She can’t control herself, remember the scowl when Trump walked by her.

          3. Hear you, BB2. Seems as though her support fading a bit, perhaps overtaken by ‘from the River to the Sea’…until the next Fb cause comes along.

  38. The misplaced sympathy for Angela Rayner
    Rod Liddle
    13 September 2025
    https://www.spectator.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Rod-Getty-1314537221.jpg.png

    One evening last week I came home, flipped on the TV and saw on the news what must surely be a eulogy for some sainted figure who had been taken from us prematurely, such was the wailing and the gnashing of teeth. Mother Teresa, I wondered? Isn’t she dead already? Only as I sat down with my cup of tea and saw a photograph of a woman with what looked like a dead fox on her head did I realise that the lamenting was on behalf of Our Blessed Lady of the Ginger Growler and the Vapes who had, apparently, resigned.

    It would not have surprised me, from the tone of the coverage, if the BBC had organised a shrine to our former deputy prime minister, where desolate members of the public could leave commemorative mementos, garlands of flowers, detailed advice on property taxation, etc. There were snapshots of the woman when she was a toddler and endless panegyrics to her Heroic Struggle Against Poverty and Oppression – a case of The Ragged Growlered Philanthropist, then.

    Much was made of her difficult home life with a disabled son and her lowly beginnings. Yes, she was indeed a working-class northerner, a species of person BBC journalists know about solely by repute, having never met any and being, in general, scared of them. But the rest of the sympathy seemed to me extraordinarily misplaced – especially that which followed the next day from similarly middle-class journalists, usually female, saying the usual stuff about how everybody cheats the system but working-class women are, uniquely, not allowed to get away with it. Remarkable stuff. I suspect that the Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch guessed in advance that there would be an outpouring of grotesquely misplaced love for Ange and so toned down her assault at Prime Minister’s Questions, for which she was, I think, unjustly criticised.

    I am neither a cyborg nor an insect: I am capable of empathy. Any politician whose flaws are displayed for public gratification after having done something naughty, be it with rent boys or accountants, immediately has my sympathy because it is not pleasant to be derided by the entire country. But Mrs Growler surely rather less than most, for the following reasons. First, it seems to me that she knew that the flat she purchased in Hove could not possibly be her primary residence, given that her work involved a shuttling between her grace and favour pad in London and the supposed family home in her constituency. Either that, or she had no intention whatsoever of representing her constituents in person henceforth. But secondly – and I grant you this is a tricky issue – there is the sympathy she has received for having a disabled son. Yes, much of that sympathy is deserved – it must be both heartbreaking and a burden. But Rayner took £160,000 from her son’s trust fund (in exchange for her share in the family home) to put down the deposit on a second-floor flat – no lifts – some 250 miles from where her son lives. For she is not the primary carer for the lad.

    None of that seems to me deserving of much in the way of sympathy. Put brutally, it does not seem at first sight that in deciding to use her son’s money for that nice seaview flat that he was necessarily the primary focus of her concern, despite having been the reason she was able to put down such a sizeable deposit and thus reduce the interest rates she would have paid with a smaller deposit.

    Incidentally, I have no objection to Angela Rayner owning a multiplicity of properties. The person who objects to people doing that kind of thing is, of course, Angela Rayner, among others. If I have made any wrong assumptions here then I apologise: it’s just that this is how it seems to me.

    Where the Growler can be commended, though, is in the inadvertent, lethal blow she has inflicted on the Prime Minister. Lining up to replace Rayner are very bad options and worse options, perhaps the worst of all being Bell Ribeiro-Addy, former chief of staff to Diane Abbott, former National Union of Students officer, derangedly pro-Palestine, anti-Nato, everything the nut-job left adores all wrapped up in one self-satisfied ball of racially and politically motivated spite.

    The Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson is in the running and will undoubtedly make much of her own Strong Northern Woman Born Into Poverty schtick, while being, on paper at least, the most amenable of the candidates, given her membership of Labour Friends of Israel and her sensible approach to trans issues. Paula Barker, raised in a single-parent family in Liverpool and deeply committed to allowing us to kill ourselves as often as we want, will also play the tough northern upbringing card, a feat which will be a bit tricky for Dame Emily Thornberry, aka Lady Nugee, although she’s tried similar tactics before, to general hilarity. Scouser Blairite Alison McGovern is both too intelligent and too moderate to come anywhere near winning the support of the majority of Labour activists, who are all demented and the chief reason this country is in the state it is in.

    The pragmatic thing for Keir Starmer to do now is lean to the left, seeing that he will make scant headway against Reform by tilting to the right and there are large quantities of votes to claw back from the benighted, awful southern liberals who are currently poised to vote Lib Dem, Green or Your Party because Starmer has not been sufficiently radical for their liking. But I suspect he will not do that and the party will continue, then, to haemorrhage votes at both ends.

    I also suspect that it will take not much short of a miracle for Starmer to remain in power until 2029, and that propelled on his current trajectory we could quite easily see a vote of no confidence within two years. I’m sure Paula Barker would concur that a swift, painless end would be the merciful answer.

    ************************
    Alpine Joe
    2 hours ago edited
    Remember the origins of Growlergate.

    She told a joke to some Tory MPs about distracting Boris at the dispatch box a la Sharon Stone. A rumour went around that the Tory MPs had made up the slur. Did Ange confess to making a juvenile joke? Did she laugh it off? Did she heck! She accused the Tory MPs of spreading rumours, of being misogynists and classists and tied to get them sacked.

    Which suggests to me that she has a very poor character.

    1. She is the Queen of Tarts!

      A manipulative menace ..

      Was it her decision to smother rural Britain in over 1 million new houses , was it her decision to ruin rural communities who do not have the facilities nor the transport links or infrastructure to cope with over 1,000 new homes for small villages of 5,000 or less?

      2. Morning TB.
        Yes it was her idea to build millions of new homes. Until someone pointed out that there are not enough bricks in Europe for the project. And it was reported that she said then use timber.

      1. I liked the book, but it doesn't deserve the reverence with which it is held in left wing circles. (Always thought that was because they haven't read any other books, but that is being a bit mean!)

        The article above is one of Rod Liddle's best, I think.

        1. I did actually laugh out loud at the "deeply committed to allowing us to kill ourselves as often as we want" comment

    3. How refreshing! I've only ever been to the Abbey – in a downpour. It didn't encourage me to go exploring.

  41. Morning again,

    EV passed its first MOT yesterday.
    Was worried that the tester would ask where the exhaust pipe was as it was a non-dealer MOT garage but it passed.
    I didn't get a printed lists of ticked tests – just brake level test results.

    Edit: WiFi held up long enough to even edit.

      1. If I had filled a jerry can with one gallon of petrol and put in the boot of my EV at purchase I would have used no petrol at all over the last three years!

  43. IF you can keep your head when all about you
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
    If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;
    If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
    Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
    And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

    If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
    If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
    If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same;
    If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
    Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
    And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

    If you can make one heap of all your winnings
    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
    And lose, and start again at your beginnings
    And never breathe a word about your loss;
    If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
    To serve your turn long after they are gone,
    And so hold on when there is nothing in you
    Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

    If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
    Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,
    If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
    If all men count with you, but none too much;
    If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
    Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
    And – which is more – you'll be a Man, my son!

    2. IF you can keep your head when all about you
      Are losing theirs

      They know something that you don't!

    2. Hello PM,

      I haven't seen your posts recently , and wondered whether you were okay .
      Glad to see you are around and doing busy things.

      I have managed to access my newer Twitter account which vanished quite strangely , so I tries to get the old me back , with dog pics and me , and all the photos I pasted , no luck there , which is a nuisance , because stuff goes back to 2009 when Twitter first started !
      I think you were an early Twitter user as well, weren't you ? X is ghastly , but still trying to catch up with old pals , furpals etc! https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0af03c12973f877765063483fa0ca33748808af7efcd9764ed4f0db33d922ca3.jpg

      1. Hello Belle, thank so much for wondering where I was – KJ told me late yesterday evening that you hadbeen asking after me. I'm ok, really – I've really not had a lot to say, I'm just tired of it all, everything has been going on for so long since 'normal life' (pre-covid), and I've lost my oomph, run out of wind for now. I realise it is the govt process of deliberate attrition, but there you are. I do keep popping into Nottle-land though and do a bit of upticking so that people know I'm around. I've asked poppiesdad to let nttl.blog know if anything happens to me, he has the details. We are both still compus mentis, well we think we are, others may think differently!

        Twitter has been odd recently – since May. Every few days it kicks me out, and I have to sign back via google. Until I signed back in that manner it told me someone else had that username…! Yes, it was me. I'm not an early user of Twitter, although I joined in 2015 I didn't use it much – it seemed very confusing with all the symbols down the side and tabs across the top. And what is 'direct messaging'? I asked myself, how does this fit in with everything. However, necessity is a great motivator and I had another attempt at Twitter in 2021 to see if anyone else felt the same about covid vaccines as myself and to my surprise there were loads of us. I am sorry you have had problems with Twitter too, especially when you follow people and have followers.

        We have to keep on keeping on, chipping away. 💕😊

        1. Glad to see you're getting on with enjoying life and doing the sensible thing by now wallowing in the negativity. K x

        2. I'm with you on the X thing. It seems unnecessarily complicated. I go on only occasionally but don' miss it if I don't. But I hope you realize that it is always nice to hear from you. So please pop in once at a while and say hallo to us all.

    4. This is what I wrote about that over on the Telegraph

      Starmer said “We must all be free to debate openly and freely without fear – there can be no justification for political violence.”

      Well Mr Starmer you have already installed fear in this country with your suppression of free speech. Many are afraid to say what they think or believe thanks to you. You, yourself are a purveyor of fear. But, it seems, you are so hypocritical in your left wing fanaticism that you refuse to see it.

    1. Very sad news, a good man, a family man. Condolences to his family. RIP Charlie Kirk. (As an aside, some of the posts I've read on social media are disgraceful, shows some Democrats and others for what they really are.)

    2. What's happened to the plan to build a barrage across the Bristol Channel in order to harness the tides?

    2. On the other hand, those influenced by him would not only be examples of Darwinism in action, they would be removing themselves from the human gene pool; preferably before they had a chance to breed.

  49. 412655+ up ticks,

    One can plainly see the perfect daisy chain created in hell, epstein, mandelson,and miranda.

    Dt,
    Starmer’s officials blocked release of secret Mandelson memo telling Blair to meet Epstein
    Sir Tony assured that a meeting forging business links with the financier would be useful and ‘safe’

  50. Morning all. I feel quite disturbed today. To wake up to the death of Charlie Kirk was dreadful. His murder was another incidence of the evil of the left personified in its eagerness to demonstrate its nihilism and the fact that it has nothing to offer other than pain and suffering. It seems to me that the left is all about erasure. Erasure of life, erasure of truth and thus free speech, and the erasure of all that is human in us in servitude to some sort of satanic worship to a totalitarianism of think only what we believe or be silent.

    Even now, the left is wrapping itself in a mantle of hatred about Charlie Kirk. Senator, Elizabeth Warren (Pocahontas) could not resist taking a pot shot, they never stop. The left seem to be people with no compassion and no love, just perpetrators of perpetual hatred in one form or another with no sense of peace in their hearts. Frankly I cannot wish them well but I do hope that for some they will see this atrocious act as the fruit of their own behaviour and change for the better. I will, like millions of others, miss Charlie. A good and kind man silenced.

    1. It would seem to be another sign of an all out war – hopefully only words – between a failing (and flailing) repressive left leaning system and those who believe in human aspiration and dignity.

      1. The hate-filled comments on some articles would suggest that the writers are incapable of rational thought. I want to say ‘typical kind and caring lefties’.

    2. That terrible deed will of course stop other people who are of the same opinion from stating their views in public.
      He probably was already in line to be the youngest president of the USA.
      It's not the guns as our left wing media seems to be driving home.
      It's the type of people who use them.

    3. Yes, me too – I was waking during the night – a difficult night's sleep – with yesterday evening's tragedy on my mind, together with the stabbing of the young Ukrainian women. It is so truly terrible to truly contemplate as we negotiate our own dark path on this side of the Atlantic. Saturday 13 September is almost with us and I fear a false flag event to set things off.

      2. Perp likely high. Trump calling for death penalty. You could well be correct re Sept 13th, something likely to kick off.

    4. I’ve managed hitherto to be only vaguely aware of Charlie Kirk while at the same time following his Turning Point movement from its beginning. Hopefully the movement will gather momentum. Some good must come of this.

    1. Poor young man. What an utter waste. When you think of all the real scum that walks on this earth.

  52. Elon makes it clear..

    “The Left is the party of murder.”
    “If they won’t leave us in peace, then our choice is fight or die,” and expressed agreement with a claim that wealthy investors were “funding” left-wing terrorism. The X chief further reacted to posts alleging some users were “celebrating” Mr Kirk’s death, writing, “They are celebrating cold-blooded murder."

  53. Off out shortly to meet my friends for coffee. Looks like another downpour coming – so dark I can hardly see the keyboard. Next door neighbour still in hospital but she's replied to my Whatsup and waiting to see the medics.

    1. …so has Him in the Workshop, Rik ….he laughed at this tho' so there's hope for him yet…maybe…

  55. Back from market. Sunny but chilly. Found excellent cheese at Tony's stall.

    Watched Flintoff's creekit training prog last evening. Open mind at present (knowing that nothing you see on telly is true). However, it was interesting to see that most of the foul mouthed trouble-makers featured in his first prog (3 years go) have matured into reasonably sensible, level-headed young men.

    So perhaps it will happen again with the Scouse lot…. Or not.

    Flintoff comes across (knowing that nothing you see on telly is true) as the sort of teacher with whom you did not piss about. And he seems to have a good rapport with the young people.

    2. I have not heard of this programme but it sounds like I would like it. I will seek it out.

      2. I'm surprised that they haven't demanded a full name change yet. The word 'chapel' must be more annoying to them than 'white'.

    2. Multiple waves beginning c19th... blah blah blah.
      Downplaying the extremity of the Blair-wave.. then the Boris-Wave.

    3. Some person in the comments saying "and you would have seen similar street markets too, it was always present. it's British culture" I do get fed up with non-indigenous telling us what our culture is. The markets and the whole atmosphere would have been totally different – an English market is nothing like a Pakistan market. (Except that both have stalls.)

      1. And the numbers were still tiny compared with the whole UK population. There were about 7,000 Lascars (Indian sailors) in the country in the early 1930s when the population was about 38 million.

    4. I worked in Greenfield Rd, Whitechapel at Core Laboratories 1985 to 1986. There was a sort of demarcation line where London stopped and SE Asia started. Couple of pubs close by must be gone by now. The old bell foundry still there though I see on GoogleEarth. They were still building the East London Mosque. A horrid commute by tube from Richmond.

  57. Morning all. Just waiting for my second acupuncture appointment. I allow extra time because of traffic, roadworks and finding a parking space.

    None of this lot of envious graspers has ever run a business so it’s no wonder their legislation is rubbish.

        1. I tried it once, used to get really bad headaches…sorry to say, didn’t work. Stopped getting headaches post-menopause.

          2. I don’t think we’re alone, N 🙂 Problem I have now is memory fades in and out, that’s post-vaccine, eg I can see my comment above ‘I tried it once etc’, an hour ago…but can I recall what the ‘it’ is…nope…

      2. It has certainly reduced the pain. I can almost walk normally now rather than limp. I’m going for another session in about a fortnight.

          1. I have an appointment re my knee – at an ungodly hour at the not very local centre of excellence. Now I limp less, it's putting less strain on my knee – sod's law that now I'm about to get something done about it, possibly, it's not as bad as it was.

          4. Border Terrier has arthritis, have tried herbal meds but they do nothing. She has Rheumocam, you possibly heard of it, seems to work the best. Hope you have something works for you, and continues to.

  58. Ding Dong Mandy's Gone!!
    What sort of cretin appoints this sort of degenerate in the first place??
    Oh wait……….

  59. Mandelson's been sacked.
    Again
    I wonder where he'll pop up next, he's an archetypical unflushable turd.

    1. I thought yesterday, when Ikea said he had full confidence in the Slimeball, that his days were numbered.

  60. The Left think the BBC is biased towards Reform. What planet are they on?
    An attempt to represent the views of Farage voters is being interpreted as a lurch to the Right
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/09/11/bbc-accused-of-reform-bias-michael-deacon/

    "The BBC are constantly fawning over Farage's every move despite Reform only having four MPs. Our national broadcaster should reflect the whole country, not just one man’s ego." (Ed Davey)

    A bit rich coming from Ed Davey!

    More people voted Reform (14.3%) than for the Lib/Dems (12.2%) in the 2024 general election! The Libs Dems won more seats with fewer votes not because they were popular but because of the First Past The Post system.

    The irony is that for years The Lib/Dems have begged for PR – but had they had it Ed Davey's Lib/Dems would have got significantly fewer seats than Farage's Reform Party.

  64. Usual poor start but good result:
    Wordle 1,545 3/6

    ⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜
    ⬜⬜🟩🟨🟨
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

  66. From the BBC News "The sacking of Lord Mandelson is the second time in less than a week Keir Starmer has shown a prominent member of his government out of the door.
    The former Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner quit before she was pushed five days ago over having paid the wrong amount of tax on her home, something she insists was a genuine error.
    That means that in the last 12 months, Starmer has seen nine of his inner circle go, including Sue Gray, who quit as his chief of staff. Health minister Andrew Gwynne was also sacked.
    We've also seen the resignations of former Transport Secretary Louise Haigh, former homelessness minister Rushanara Ali, anti-corruption minister Tulip Siddiq, aid minister Anneliese Dodds and whip Vicky Foxcroft.    "

    "To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness."

    2. "over having paid the wrong amount of tax on her home"
      Well she's not due a refund, is she. Why not say it straight out, fiddling her taxes? Bet they would if it was a Conservative or a Reform MP.

  67. The annual Great Disputation at St Bart’s takes place on Thursday, 18th September, at 7pm. I won’t make it this year but for anyone interested, the motion is "This House believes that America is still the Shining City on a Hill." Speakers include Karen Pierce, former British Ambassador to the US; the politician Daniel, the Lord Hannan, and the commentators Peter Hitchens, Peter Oborne, and Bonnie Greer. Hopefully it will be online later and I may be tempted to mute Bonnie Greer!

      1. Rehab care. My chest is still reminding me of my limitations. Hospital visit this afternoon to have some stitches removed.

    2. Sounds good, will look out for link. Karen Pierce currently being touted BA to US. With you on Greer, like the others. Hope you're doing well, and not overdoing things if you're feeling better..do as they tell you 🙂 x

    1. Cursing a Stranger
      Clicking ad or just $ paying for your hate projection.
      There's always a hussle in the USA.

    4. I like Tommy, as for Charlie Kirk he'd recently given a talk to a group of young (mostly female far as I know) women, on the subject of trans gender (a number if not the majority of the audience). It's currently thought that's the reason for his assassination, seemingly by a trans supporter. A good man, a family man, a great politician and Republican, gone too soon. Can only hope security upgraded for Republican politicians (yes, I'm a Trump fan and also a Vance fan).

    1. I was asking about that a few days ago. I don't think anyone cares if he is replaced or not. After all we all know that whoever it is will be a woke Marxist and not a Christian.

  74. 412655+ up ticks,

    mandelson has set the bar so low this time every lab/lib/con coalition politico will find it a challenge even,dare I say it, miranda to slither under, this is certainly a test to their loathsome standing.

    Janet Daley
    Surely even Mandelson can’t come back from this
    Everyone who has been in contact with the New Labour svengali will be frantically re-examining the history of their relationship

  76. https://docmalik.substack.com/p/sept-13th-london-false-flag-incoming

    Doc Malik's take on this weekend's protests.
    You may agree with some, all or none of it, but free speech and open discussion is what we are all about, right?
    He is the second person to mention two recent events that plausibly could be false flags (I don't say they are, I say they could be) and say "I'm sensing a false flag coming." Could it be that we have already seen it?

    1. The second post is nonsense, pure fearmongering.
      They are dangerous, but only because any large mass of landless, jobless, penniless single young men is dangerous when they have been whipped up to hate or despise the population of the country they are in.

      1. You don't think there are stashes of arms in the mosques then? The police won't be looking, they've already admitted that some time ago. Cultural sensitivities, you know.

          1. There are a lot of mosques, all round the country. Even in this neck of the woods – and then, there are the islamic centres …

        3. Did she even repent? I only remember her crocodile tears.

          Mind you, in the current culture, repentance is never rewarded – it is better to brazen it out, and then make a comeback regretting nothing and being made accountable for nothing. This survival instinct impresses people more.

    2. I just got back to the car before the heavens opened and then it was intermittent showers all the way home.

  83. It would be interesting to design a flow chart on the killing of Charlie Kirk.
    The shooter had an exit plan, which rules out mohammedans. The single shot avoided mass panic, and indicates experience.
    An exit plan implies that he/she had assistance, so it was a conspiracy; the plan would need an escape route to a secure hideout.
    A couple of people travelling in a car would cope better with road blocks and re-fuelling.
    Looking for a rented vehicle, or something that was recently acquired.
    Although hire cars usefully have lots of DNA from previous users, many are fitted with tracking devices (at least in the UK).
    I imagine an ex-soldier with a grievance, or Latin American revenge.

    1. Another possibility is that the whole thing was as staged as the Trump assassination attempts, and is part of the planned descent of the West into civil war.
      Lefties have the hate, but not the practical experience or capability.
      It would not at all suprise me to see a trans ex soldier named as the culprit for maximum outrage. I think "young white incel with narsti tendencies" and "muslim lone wolf" have been done to death (pun fully intended).

      If it is real and he did die, then I am terribly sorry for his family. But in the crazy, controlled times we live in, everything must be questioned.

      1. Perfectly possible for him to have actually been assassinated and for what you say to be true. I mean, what's a single human lufe compared to The Greater Good? 😢

        1. Yes. I had never heard of him until today, but apparently he is one of those people who went from zero to superstar overnight, which is always slightly suspect.
          I used to believe that if you were talented and kept at it, you would succeed – now I know better!

          1. If can't say I knew much about him, but he's been around for quite a time and can hardly be called zero to superstar overnight.

          2. Age 17, appeared on Fox Business Channel.
            Age 18, founded Turning Point USA together with a business man 53 years older than him.
            Just your ordinary life opportunities available to any college dropout with no connections.

          3. There are times that I think your conspiracy theories mark you out as a complete and utter nutjob.
            There was a reason he appeared on Fox.

            In April 2012, he wrote a short article for the ultra-conservative political media outlet Breitbart News in which he argued that there is a Marxist and left-liberal bias in textbooks, which he said is dangerous for America [ 18 ] . This essay led to an appearance on Fox Business [ 19 ] . In the context of the 2012 presidential campaign, Kirk wrote a series of articles for Breitbart News , calling on young people to oppose the election of Barack Obama and " Big Government ", while deploring the supposed hegemony of progressive theories to the detriment of conservative ideology in universities. BetweenDecember 2012AndFebruary 2025, Charlie Kirk contributes 51 times to the Breitbart News website , including 36 articles published in 2019 alone.

            https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Kirk#Carri%C3%A8re

          4. No, you just like insulting people that you don’t agree with. You do it regularly.

            How many talent young conservatives are there in the English speaking world? and how many get those opportunities?
            Breitbart and Fox are not genuine opposition, they are controlled arenas for corralling people with conservative views. So being taken on by them does not mean becoming genuine opposition to the deep state.
            I saw some of the most talented in my generation being simply deselected for not being pliant enough. At least one person I knew personally. Therefore, I am unlikely to believe in genuine opposition being promoted, especially by establishment channels. Genuine opposition only gets ahead by chance, or when not expected to win.

          5. I call out what I regard as unbased idiocy and give my opinion.
            Your constant conspiracy theories mark you as described, in my opinion.
            I also receive plenty of insults. But then I believe in free speech and the right of people to say what the Hell they like about me.

          6. What I just said then, you like to insult people as part of your response. I try not to apply epithets to other posters, regardless of what I think about what they are posting, because it’s plain bad-mannered.
            If I think the argument is too stupid to reply to, I just ignore it.

      2. If you have seen the video, Charlie K was shot dead on stage. Trump surely was not staged, you cant plan to clip an ear from 100m plus on a moving target.

        1. I don’t think Trump’s ear was ever clipped. Certainly he didn’t appear to have any scar a few weeks later.

  84. My old stage-brother is on Talking Pictures in a few minutes.

    He had a supporting role in a film made in 1970 with Roger Moore, and played the title role in the film 'David Copperfield'. We often used to chat about when we would appear on 'This Is Your Life'. After appearing in 'Crown Court', he vanished, never to appear again in anything. His namesake, a Scottish actor born in 1970 later starred in a long-running TV drama, apparently oblivious that there was already someone with the same name within the profession.

    He'd be 65 now, if he is still alive. I often wonder what became of him.

    1. He played the part of a child psychotic straight. A lack of any flicker of emotion, common to many accused psychopaths. The character was found guilty of manslaughter in the end. I recognised the symptoms of schizophrenia that had turned paranoid by observing my own real-life brother, although it was not mentioned at all on the show. Mostly, it was the creation of an alternative reality out of the imagination that takes one over and directs it. Normally, it is limited to fantasy, but can get nasty if it is ridiculed or controlled.

      I think that a true schizophrenic would have been more animated, enthusiastic even, rather than dispassionate, but then I am not a psychiatrist and they probably know better. My own real-life brother had to be sedated to keep him calm, and kept away from drugs that fuelled his fantasies. Skunk and black mamba were particularly harmful street drugs. He hated that, and often had to be held down, so then he'd go through life a zombie. He's cut himself off from the family now, and refused even to attend his mother's funeral.

      Neither my stage-brother nor I took up acting as a profession after childhood. I met him in Weybridge at around the time this episode was made, and might have told him how the bottom dropped out of my world when the season came to an end, losing the heightened experience and inspiration of working in a top theatre with colleagues, some of whom went on to become very famous indeed (and a fair few film and TV stars that are still household names). I was very blazé at the time, but when it was all over, the anticlimax was devastating. It was just choral singing weekends that held me together. My own voice broke when I was nearly sixteen, and it was hell at school.

  85. The Pentagon is the headquarters building of the United States Department of Defense, in Arlington County, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C.. The building was constructed on an accelerated schedule during World War II. As a symbol of the U.S. military, the phrase The Pentagon is often used as a metonym for the Department of Defense and its leadership.

    The building was designed by American architect George Bergstrom and built by contractor John McShain. Ground was broken on 11 September 1941, and the building was dedicated on 15 January 1943. General Brehon Somervell provided the major impetus to gain Congressional approval for the project.[5] Colonel Leslie Groves was responsible for overseeing the project for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which supervised it.

    In 2001, the Pentagon was damaged during the September 11 attacks. Five Al-Qaeda hijackers flew American Airlines Flight 77 into the western side of the building, killing themselves and 184 other people, including 59 on the airplane and 125 in the Pentagon.[8] It was the first significant foreign attack on federal facilities in the capital area since the Burning of Washington during the War of 1812.[9] Following the attacks, the western side of the building was repaired, with a small indoor memorial and chapel added at the point of impact. In 2009, an outdoor memorial dedicated to the Pentagon victims of the September 11 attacks was opened directly southwest of the building.

    1. Five Al-Qaeda hijackers flew American Airlines Flight 77 into the western side of the building.
      I'm sorry Biggest LOL ever.
      Airplane debris? Missile debris more like.

  87. Firearm used in the killing of Charlie Kirk. was sent to an FBI lab for further analysis, with officials also finding palm and footwear prints on the scene.
    FBI has received more than 130 tips since Kirk was gunned down.

    Just a matter of time before the Leftie is found.

  88. "In the email, according to Bloomberg, Lord Mandelson asked Epstein to call him. He explained in the message that he was facing a “terrible situation” in his personal life. Later the same day, Lord Mandelson sent Epstein a second email, thanking him for taking the time to speak by phone. “Please stick with me through this.x,” Lord Mandelson wrote."

    One to ponder; though probably not while eating.

    2. Guido

      5 hours ago
      In the email, sent as Epstein was charged for procuring a child for prostitution, the Labour peer said: "I think the world of you and I feel hopeless and furious about what has happened. I can still barely understand it. It just could not happen in Britain.

      He’s not wrong. It would have been covered up here.

      N
      5 hours ago
      ‘Cyril Smith’ ? That bastion of decency in public office?

      A
      5 hours ago
      The Press Office of the leader of the Liberal Party, David Steel, commented at the time, "All he seems to have done is spanked a few bare bottoms".

    3. 4 hours ago
      Whoever found all this out about Mandy must have had more. The Jack, Queen and King have now been played. What did the Ace hold, and I wonder if we’ll ever know?

        1. I think molamola is more inclined to sail serenely along the top. These guys are deep down and dirty

  90. No 10 insists it did not overrule security services to appoint Mandelson

    Latest News!

    Mandelson set to be stripped of honorary title in Hull.
    Lord Mandelson is set to be stripped of the honorary title of High Steward of Hull, the city’s council has announced.
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/09/11/politics-latest-news-starmer-peter-mandelson-epstein-resign/

    Ignominy upon ignominy – but of all the insults and severe punishments heaped upon Lord Mandelson this one will cut the deepest.

    4. The vetting process is thorough. The excuse that the emails were in an old account doesn't hold water.

      The security services would have been aware of the content of those messages.

      An ace held back to use at a later date.

      And now they have.

      1. Of course.
        Blair loved the creature, but then everything about Blair and his “achievements” is designed to wreck the UK.

        1. I remember reading that blairs daughter had attempted suicide during his term in office.
          And the alleged rumour was she had caught him and mandleslime at it in one of the rooms in number 10.
          All hidden behind his many ‘D’ notices.

          1. I could believe almost anything bad about Blair.
            I regard him as the most evil man ever to have held power in UK government

    1. I bet you're happy to be in Frogland with only Macron to worry about.

      And his never-ending list of prime ministers!

      1. I can think of one other country, not that far from France, that had a run of six prime ministers in quick succession. One of them (the shortest serving of them all) actually went through two Heads of State.

  94. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy3f4FFwgPU
    What Starmer is doing is appalling. He's a liar and crook. Reeves is also a moron. Raynor a crook. That not a solicitor bloke a plain liar. Most of the cabinet thick, corrupt, or likely both.

    I would never want to kill them. I don't want them even remotely harmed. I do want them to resign in disgrace.

    These Leftists are just evil.

      1. I find it odd that, despite their screaming and cheering for the death of those they hate they still think they're 'good'.

    2. I was thinking something similar this morning. I would love this shower in Westminster to be removed, but by the ballot box, not the bullet. I wouldn't dream of killing them.

      1. Of course 2Tier is smiling. Look where Mandy's hand is.

        1 hour ago

        Mandy Pandy pudding and pie,
        Kissed the boys & milked them dry,
        When The Sun came out to play,
        Mandy Pandy got sacked that day

    1. Ugh.. progressive liberal Melanie McDonagh.
      "I would have taken issue with many of his views.." Go on Doughnut, name one.
      "march organised by Tommy Robinson.. I keenly resent the money spent on police overtime that this will entail.." course you do.

      2. She wrote a really horrible and spiteful hate-filled rant when Truss was elected. Published, of course, in the Speccie. A very smug and judgmental piece of work. Also a Bear of Very Little Brain, but without the charm implied in that statement.

          1. Haven't read it, sos. I'm not going to pay to read her drivel. The last para. that you printed above shows her mettle ("a much greater man"). Ghastly, bigoted old bitch. In my opinion.

          3. It's not (free). There is a paywall. (Maybe it's just for me!) And yes, let's see. We are talking about great men, not great orators, yes?

          6. Indeed. Look forward to hearing her, which is more than I can say for most politicians. Also looking forward to hearing reason/s for Mandy’s defenestration!

          7. It is incredible to me, KJ, that a proven nonce and fraudster has become so enriched and has also been -yet again – shottled into a lucrative sinecure, involving n even greater pension. These people are very greedy indeed.

          9. The stuff on social media has to be read/seen to be believed re Charlie Kirk, opopanax, really vile. They walk among us.

          10. Strange, it comes from a link in the ES daily update. Which free, and all the links are free

            Charlie Kirk is dead. He was a champion of free speech and he died speaking freely. He had an extraordinary reach for the young of his generation – my son, a student, and my daughter, a teenager, knew all about him. I knew next to nothing until he was shot last night.

            “It’s happening”, said my daughter darkly. “This is going to be meltdown.” What she meant was that this could be the trigger for violence, at least in the US, a breakdown of the consensus that accepted that you may disagree with people but your disagreement would be confined to argument and debate, and not murder. Assassination is the end of free speech, not only because it silences the man who makes arguments but because it makes a civilised exchange of opinion less likely in the future.

            Kirk was only 31, and young people were his main audience. Although he didn’t go to university himself, he made a point of engaging with with students in universities here as well as in the US, that is, he went straight to the audiences that were most likely to disagree with him as a Trumpian conservative. That was brave, even without a gunman at large.

            Now he is dead and silenced for ever. In a poignant picture taken just before the speech he’s seen in front of a stand saying, Prove Me Wrong. The gunman didn’t prove him wrong. Rather, he made clear his importance. In a remarkably prescient piece written for The Spectator about his visit to the UK in May to speak at the Oxford and Cambridge Unions, Kirk wrote:

            “…at Oxbridge I found the dominant outlook to be a depressed and depressing near-nihilism. They were students who hardly cared their country has less free speech than 50 or 100 years ago. They were appalled that a person might think life begins at conception. They loved the abstract fight for ‘democracy’ in Ukraine, but find the actual outcome of democracy in America very icky.”

            And he was right; free speech here is under threat. But it is in America that the threat takes the most concrete form: it was in New York that Salman Rushdie was stabbed – at an event to highlight persecuted writers – by 25 year-old Hadi Matar, who disagreed with his views on Islam; it was in Utah that Charlie Kirk was shot. At least Salman Rushdie had the last word on his assailant with his coruscating book about the attack, Knife. And this summer he presciently observed that “people are too eager to prohibit speech they disapprove of”.

            Donald Trump in his anger and grief after Kirk’s death has apportioned blame: “For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world's worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today.”

            He has a point. We may not agree with Kirk – I would have taken issue with many of his views – but there is a mindset in liberal circles that does not hesitate to demonise those on what it designates the far right without foreseeing where this will lead. One fatuous columnist observed after Kamala Harris was nominated as a presidential candidate that she and her friends were really worried that some right-wing lunatic would try to assassinate her; but there wasn’t a peep from that quarter after the attempted assassination of Donald Trump.

            The sense of apprehension amongst conservatives suggests that violent intimidation works, that murder succeeds. And it mustn’t be allowed to.

            The conservative journalist Paul Johnson once observed that liberals felt free to be disagreeable because they feel they have already proved their moral worth through their opinions, which means they had less incentive to behave well. The flip side is that the same people are likely to feel that conservatives, with their ghastly views about Islam/immigration/trans issues, aren’t moral people and are probably a danger to society. It’s a short step to the view that removing the menace is a service to society. Let me give a real example: Ricky Jones, a Walthamstow former Labour councillor, roused a crowd in Walthamstow in August last year by referring to anti-immigration activists as “disgusting Nazi fascists” and suggesting their throats should be cut – drawing a finger across his throat in case anyone didn’t comprehend his point. He was, remarkably, cleared of encouraging violent disorder after saying his remarks were directed towards far-right activists who he claimed had left stickers on a train with razor blades hidden behind them, and telling police they were never intended to be "taken literally by anyone".

            We shall have the opportunity this weekend of seeing how the Kirk assassination this plays out when the march organised by Tommy Robinson, a hate-figure if ever there were one, takes place. Lots of people loathe him, but it is a test of a free society as to whether he and his followers can say what they think in public – so long as they don’t incite others to violence. Mind you, I keenly resent the money spent on police overtime that this will entail, but if there are to be highly-policed Palestine demonstrations (I saw a notably peaceable one yesterday) then those with other views – on immigration, say – should have their turn.

            But already the killing has had its effect. In the US, Peter Sessions, the conservative politician, observed that although Republicans had tended to hold meetings in the open air, “this will change us and the way we express ourselves”. There’s a sense of apprehension among combative conservatives: Jeremy Clarkson has said that: “For the first time in my life, I’m genuinely frightened about being a newspaper columnist”. That suggests that violent intimidation works, that murder succeeds. And it mustn’t be allowed to. The best response to the killing is to assert all over again that in a civilised society we are entitled to express our opinion and to have that opinion heard. We advance towards the truth through debate and argument and the free expression of contrary views. And if a man is cut down, like Charlie Kirk was, then, as was the case with Martin Luther King Jr (a much greater man), a dozen others must step forward to take his place. This has been a terrible time for free speech. And the answer to this attempt to silence debate on the issues Kirk raised is more and better debate – and more civility in conducting it.

          11. "We shall have the opportunity this weekend of seeing how the Kirk assassination this plays out when the march organised by Tommy Robinson, a hate-figure if ever there were one, takes place. Lots of people loathe him, but it is a test of a free society as to whether he and his followers can say what they think in public – so long as they don’t incite others to violence. Mind you, I keenly resent the money spent on police overtime that this will entail, but if there are to be highly-policed Palestine demonstrations (I saw a notably peaceable one yesterday) then those with other views – on immigration, say – should have their turn"

            I rest my case. What a snide piece of work this ghastly creature, masquerading s a journalist, is.

          12. I completely agree re the journalist.

            My point is that even such a screaming leftie is having to acknowledge what the left have done.
            Clearly it grates with her and hence the snideries, but she’s (and many more like her) been painted into a corner.

          13. I do so very much hope that your assessment is correct. They seem to be kicking off, online, nastier and more murderous than ever. Like they did after the Hamas atrocities, where thy celebrated in the streets whilst the murders ,kidnaps and rapes were still in progress.. And the BBC were the cheerleaders

          15. Just another virtue-signaling Leftard. If anyone asked her exactly what TR has actually done, she wouldn’t be able to say. She would fall back on platitudes. It’s a “luxury opinion” that she holds.

          17. One technique which beats some paywalls is to click on the link, then, as the page loads, to observe the scrolling bar. As soon as it suggests that the text has been loaded, click/touch the X (below the tab) to halt any further loading. The page will not fully load, perhaps missing images, videos and advertising, but the main body of text will be readable. I've had success with Telegraph, Standard and Mail webpages using this method, but not with the Times or Financial Times. It's a matter of having a go and hoping for the best.

          18. Thanks, Stig. But I am one of those very lazy folk that simply cannot be arsed to perform such procedures :-))))

          19. I can see how you might feel aggrieved. Perhaps you think that webpage updates and maintenance should be funded from advertising alone, or maybe to be supported by donations from readers, such as Wikipedia and the Guardian do, even to plead on behalf of an overarching public or self-interest which media proprietors ought to take cognisance of, but my suggestion is a most trifling inconvenience.

          20. I don't think any of that. I am a very shallow person on these fronts. I do not give a flying f as to how these people are funded. And I'm very grateful for your suggestion (just too idle to implement it) – thanK you kind sir!

      3. Re your edit:
        Her conclusion:
        ….

        That suggests that violent intimidation works, that murder succeeds. And it mustn’t be allowed to. The best response to the killing is to assert all over again that in a civilised society we are entitled to express our opinion and to have that opinion heard. We advance towards the truth through debate and argument and the free expression of contrary views. And if a man is cut down, like Charlie Kirk was, then, as was the case with Martin Luther King Jr (a much greater man), a dozen others must step forward to take his place. This has been a terrible time for free speech. And the answer to this attempt to silence debate on the issues Kirk raised is more and better debate – and more civility in conducting it….

          1. It's very clear which side she's on if you have enough life/time to waste in reading her absolute dross.

        2. Quote from Charlie Kirk (courtesy of Matt Goodwin); "they try to bury us, but we are seeds". John Barleycorn is dead …

          1. From what little I've heard of him speaking, (but that's increasing because he's piqued my interest,) he has an excellent command of language.

      4. Not as much as i resent having to pay for Plod to police the weekly anti-semitic rallies going on since October 2023. Or the JSO sit-ins. Saturday is one rally and my understanding us that it is being paid for.

  97. Just a matter of time before a UK Leftie or their deformed cousin the Muzzie-Radical take out someone in UK who is "divisive".
    Katie Hopkins..
    Tommy obv..
    Young Bob..
    Charlie Veitch..
    Daniel Boland..
    Paz49..

  100. Wordle No. 1,545 3/6

    ⬜🟨🟨⬜⬜
    🟩⬜🟩⬜⬜
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    Wordle 11 Sep 2025

    A throne for Birdie Three?

  102. According to the Mail, the Kirk shooting has a transgender theme – just as I guessed below.
    Because hating on muslims is so yesterday – we're all supposed to hate trans people now.
    It is a hard pill to swallow that the right is sometimes as easily manipulated as the left with their covid masks and ukraine / palestine flags.

    10% likelihood that it's true at face value…

  103. Madeline Grant
    How could Starmer not see the Mandelson disaster coming?
    It’s increasingly clear the man has zero political nous whatsoever
    11 September 2025, 2:18pm
    https://www.spectator.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/GettyImages-2201557845.jpg

    ‘Oh, Mandy
    Well, you kissed me
    And stopped me from shaking
    And I need you today
    Oh, Mandy’

    So sang Barry Manilow. I can imagine at one point, looking into his bathroom mirror, in the early days of his leadership, so did Sir Keir Starmer. Today, however, the government needed Mandy like a hole in the head.

    Lord Mandelson having to resign in disgrace is one of the cast iron rules of British politics. That Sir Keir couldn’t have predicted this – or more likely, thought he could rough it out – speaks to the fact that it’s now increasingly clear that the man has zero political nous whatsoever. A combination of arrogance, inexperience and ineptitude has robbed him of any judgement whatsoever. Sir Keir famously likes football: we might as well now replace him with that octopus which used to predict the World Cup by eating food from a particular box.

    Today the inevitable happened. The only really remarkable thing about the sacking of Mandy was that it was actually first announced to the House of Commons, rather than the government’s preferred form of policy publication which is leaking to client journalists.

    Urgent questions on Mandy’s future had been tabled by Tory Neil O’Brien. MPs were licking their lips and putting their hobnail boots on. Before the verbal beating could commence however, the government threw in the towel – or should I say, the bathrobe. Yvette Cooper was nowhere to be seen. Instead it was left to Stephen Doughty, Minister of State for Europe, North America and Overseas Territories, solemnly to announce that ‘in light of additional information in the emails written by Peter Mandelson, the Prime Minister has asked the Foreign Secretary to withdraw him as ambassador to the United States.’ Even when finally doing the right thing, this lot manage to screw up.

    The way the statement was phrased seems to give weight to the idea that Sir Keir thought Mandy’s creepy birthday card photo collage to his noncey pal was okay, but that an email asking for free air miles wasn’t. Cheers erupted from the opposition benches. A rare scalp had been claimed, in part, by the work of Mrs Badenoch yesterday.

    The kicking, however, still happened. Stephen Flynn congratulated the minister on being spared from having to ‘shred his reputation’ like his cabinet colleagues who had spent the morning in the airwaves defending the indefensible. Sir David Davis gave us a tour of Mandy’s former greatest hits; from dodgy passports to secret loans. Sir Roger Gale demanded a public inquiry. Rupert Lowe pointed out that American sources had described Mandy as ‘an absolute moron’ with links to China and yet still the government pressed ahead. Even rebel Labour MPs had a go. Liverpool Riverside MP Kim Johnson got cheers from the Tories when she asked ‘what due diligence was done when everyone knew about his relationship with Epstein before the appointment.’ Out of the mouths of Trots and sucklings.

    Of course there were plants from the legion of bottom-crawlers on the backbenches designed to minimise the horror. ‘Isn’t the Prime Minister stunning and brave for only taking a full 72 hours to sack his mate’, ‘doesn’t it show how kind and principled the Prime Minister is that it was only after cabinet rebellion, public pressure and the publication of massively dodgy emails by the press that he finally had the balls to get rid of the ambassador?’ That sort of thing.

    Stephen Doughty, whose parliamentary role has so far mostly consisted of sputtering out No.10-approved soundbites about the treasonous Chagos ‘deal’ to an increasingly irate House, had drawn the short straw yet again. Through clenched teeth, he praised Sir Keir’s ‘decisive decision’. Andy McDonald congratulated the PM for moving ‘at pace’. ‘Swiftly and decisively’, was Perran Moon’s verdict. All these statements drew shrieks of laughter across the House.

    Throughout, the front-bench offered a further glimpse into the reality of the state of the government. Number 10 must now resemble a cross between the downfall of the Republic of Salo in 1945 and the cancellation of The Tweenies in 2002. Just 18 months ago these people thought they were the bright heralds of the new dawn, the vanguard of progressive Britain. Now they have had to expend time and energy defending a paedophile’s pal, before then being given the order to reverse-ferret. Looking at their faces you realise it is slowly dawning on them that they are the stuffed shirts of an administration more corrupt, more mendacious and more incompetent than even its woeful predecessors. It would take a heart of stone not to laugh.

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

    Jolly Radical
    2 hours ago
    Mandelson now has the distinction of being sacked in 3 separate decades for 3 different reasons. He is also the only UK ambassador to be photographed posing in a bathrobe with a pervert.

    Making history every time!

    Mary Tomlinson
    2 hours ago
    I can't laugh, Madeline. Yes, he's probably the worst PM ever, and will have to go soon, and that's great; but have you seen the procession of harridans competing to replace him? All whilst the economy is sinking and we are dancing around the idea of nuclear war?

    3. Everything about 'Petie' is sickening.

      As Britain's EU trade commissioner on a salary of £200,000 a year plus expenses he whines he doesn't have enough airmiles to go on holiday. Hinting to the Paedo King he would appreciate some help.

      Thus putting himself under an obligation.

      For The Prince of Darkness to now say he was taken in by Epstein just won't wash.

      The only thing he regrets is being found out yet again.

      What other dirty deals has he done?

      The Americans describing him as a moron is spot on.

  104. 412655+ up ticks.

    Things really are getting very personal now, I have just received a £83 tax bill on a state pension after being subject to freezing bollocks off last year by being denied the winter fuel payment.

    Tell me are the only ones immune to this treacherous treatment illegal foreign invaders and politicians ?

    https://youtu.be/c0gw3WVbmxs?si=dwONeqAIAus9QJwz

    1. The miserable barstewards…

      it is important that everyone understands that the money in their bank accounts does not belong to them even if they are under 65 though. It is an unsecured loan to the bank and we will be last in the line of creditors if the bank goes bankrupt.

    2. If your income exceeds £12,570 – tax is payable at 20%. If your state pension means that your income exceeds the £12,570 limit – tax is payable.

        1. You may think that – my earlier comment simply describes the tax position of state pensions – which have been subject to tax as long as they have existed – IF they take your income over the limit.

        2. 22 yards

          66 feet

          Starmer has been caught out and stumped – it is almost if he is in a chain.

  105. Peter Lilley
    Its biggest champion Lord Hermer has just demolished the case for the ECHR

    For the Attorney General to admit that British judges have been wrong, and Parliament should advise them, is sheer heresy

    11 September 2025 5:26pm BST
    Peter Lilley

    If only Labour ministers would resign because their policies – not their dubious friendships or mortgages – are indefensible. Then we might be rid of the Attorney General, Lord Hermer.

    Appearing before the Lords Constitution Committee, he could not find a single legal reason why we should remain members of the ECHR. He claimed that leaving would have adverse diplomatic and political consequences (not his responsibility) – not that it would threaten our freedoms. Pressed by the crossbench peer, Lord Anderson, he admitted that if we left, Britain would be in the same “club” as Canada, Australia and New Zealand – who maintain exemplary rights without submitting to an international court.

    He admitted that the Human Rights Act, which was supposed to “bring rights home” by letting our courts interpret the Convention before cases reached Strasbourg, has backfired. Our immigration tribunals give even greater rights to foreign nationals than do Continental courts. So, he promised to give courts “guidance” on interpreting Convention rights, if need be, by Act of Parliament.

    That destroys the whole rationale of the ECHR. The central tenet of the human rights religion is that human rights are too important to be entrusted to elected politicians. Hence, the task of creating law defining each right and deciding how rights may be balanced against other legitimate objectives must be removed from Parliament and given to judges – unaccountable and therefore immune to political pressures. For Hermer to admit that British judges have been getting it wrong, and Parliament should tell them how to do it better, is sheer heresy.

    Hermer may have lost faith in the superiority of British courts, but his belief in the infallibility of the Strasbourg Court of Human Rights is unshakeable. That Court does allow member states some latitude in interpreting the Convention – “a margin of appreciation” in their jargon. But it defines retrospectively whether any national decision falls within that margin. As long as Britain adheres to the ECHR, if Strasbourg rules against decisions of UK courts and Acts of Parliament, we are Treaty-bound to change our laws.

    This is not an abstract possibility. The Strasbourg Court recently overruled a Swiss referendum, declaring that “Democracy cannot be reduced to the will of the majority of the electorate and elected representatives in disregard of the requirements of the rule of law” – as interpreted by the Court.

    None of his arguments for remaining in the ECHR related to our rights. If we left, he asserted, “it is inconceivable” that our European neighbours would enter into agreements with us on extradition. But France has mutual extradition treaties with Algeria, Morocco, the UAE and China.

    He repeated the fatuous claim that leaving would bracket us with Russia and Belarus. In fact, it would bracket us with the EU which, despite the Lisbon Treaty obligation to join the ECHR, refuses to accept any court as superior to its own.

    Once again, he asserted that “from its inception” Britain has been a “key promoter” of the ECHR. In fact, Attlee, Churchill and his Conservative successors refused to accept the authority of the Strasbourg court precisely because they foresaw it would transfer the power to make law from Parliament to the courts. The inexorable effect of which is to emasculate Parliament and politicise the judiciary – threatening the rule of law which is the the Lords Committee’s concern.

    1. There is absolutely no reason in law why Britain should have to give away The Chagos Islands to Mauritius. Mauritius has no legal claim upon them whatsoever.

      Hermer's connections in the Chagos deal are far more devious and sinister than the most perverted, sordid and disgusting acts committed by Lord Mandelson.

    3. That's all very well but Max won't take us out of the ECHR.

      Ministers are ready to change the law to stop the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) blocking deportations of illegal migrants and foreign criminals, the Attorney General has declared.

      Lord Hermer, a strong supporter of the ECHR, said the Government would "leave no stone unturned" in seeking to toughen up the way the courts applied the ECHR to prevent it being exploited by migrants and their lawyers to avoid deportation.

      On tackling Channel crossings, the Government's most senior law officer said: "Nothing sensible or practical or effective will be off the table."

      However, he said it was also "crystal clear" that Labour under Sir Keir Starmer, a fellow human rights lawyer, would not leave the ECHR as to do so would be "contrary to the national interest" and wreck agreements the UK had made with other countries to tackle the migration crisis.

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/09/10/lord-hermer-to-change-law-stop-echr-blocking-deportations

    4. Flanker, not in rugby but pulling a Flanker and on the edges of something, suggested very far left.

    5. 'Memes of England' says the little Union Flag badge in the middle with a dollar sign above…

  107. Matty Taylor makes a valid point.. Gloves are off..
    A very reasonable, polite, decent, middle of the road Conservative got murdered because for the last ten years the rhetoric used by MSN, The Talking Heads, Hillary Clinton EU UK.. the Lefties.. has been scandalous. They said they were going to stop after the failed Trump assassination. They haven't.
    Gloves are off.

  108. Matty Taylor makes a valid point.. Gloves are off..
    A very reasonable, polite, decent, middle of the road Conservative got murdered because for the last ten years the rhetoric used by MSN, The Talking Heads, Hillary Clinton EU UK.. the Lefties.. has been scandalous. They said they were going to stop after the failed Trump assassination. They haven't.
    Gloves are off.

  109. That's me for today. Two loads of washing completed and dry, ready for ironing.

    I do miss my six o'clock glass – but will get one ready for the MR, of course.

    Have a spiffing evening – imagining Lammy as Ambassador to the USA…..

    A demain.

        2. Don't forget what Mrs Wentworth Brewster discovered 'in the nick of time' – that life is for living.

          4. Not enough hair, but by perchance I have just actually had a haircut this afternoon… I am probably 10 gms lighter now. On Saturday I will be filing my nails.

          7. This Sunday?..I'd fiddle with the the control on your weighing scales 'mum, and have a few drinks, eat what you like, in the full knowledge you'll be OK 🙂

          8. I don’t know….. I went out to buy some denim jeggings last Tuesday for strolling on the South Downs – I almost dislocated my thumbs trying to haul my usual size up my lower body….. so I oh so reluctantly went for the next size up….. which wasn’t in stock so I went home and ordered on line, I have to collect tomorrow. I can still get into my old black leggings which are two sizes smaller…. in case anyone thinks I look like an elephant, the ‘two sizes smaller’ is a size 10…. 20 yrs old… I am convinced clothes sizes are measuring smaller. The thing is, as one gets older, one’s fat redistributes itself to different places around the body, where it sits, smugly laughing….!

          9. ‘I am convinced clothes sizes are measuring smaller’…exactly! I’m a size 10 but I now have to buy size 14, not my fault I have to wander around looking like a bag lady…..seriously, I just like to be comfortable now…:-DD

          10. So do I, Kate. Comfort is my priority. I discovered an M&S lambswool cardigan the other day at the back of my wardrobe. The quality is excellent, today’s offerings are nothing like it. 30 years on it still fits nicely, I love the colour and neither is it moth eaten after all this time.

            We are going away for a few days and what to take with me is a problem as the weather has changed – it is really cold today and I am snuggled under a blanket on the sofa with New Doggo.

          11. Hear you…I got some old clothes out today, for a meeting, amazingly still fitted ..phew…label said Uniqlo, not sure if they’re still trading. Meeting over, back to sports pants, baggy top, comfort. It is cold, grey, damp….what’s the New Doggo like?(mine now 15 years and counting, a too plump Border Terrier)…have a good time away! Kate x

          12. New Doggo is a Yorkiepoo, just over the puppy stage now, thank goodness! I can iron in peace without having stuff pulled off the ironing board but he still runs to the washing machine when he hears the door opening to see if he can get to any socks before I do! He looks more like an ivory poodle than a Yorkie, about the size of a miniature poodle but larger than a toy poodle. 15 years is a good age for your little border terrier, bless his plumpness!

            I bought some maximum thermal leggings from M&S last winter – I lived in them all season, they were so comfortable. I’ve just ordered another two pairs for this winter, I can highly recommend. Awful afternoon here, much colder, torrential rain and a couple of cracks of loud, overhead thunder… xx😊

          13. That’s so funny..why socks? Are they his pups having to be moved to safe space? Border here still.snoring head off but we’ll be out soon..she doesn’t like rain at all so will need her lead to get her outside. Yes I have thermal leggings too..and the underwear 😄 weather forecast mixed today unfortunately..have a good day ‘mum xx🙂

        4. When I depart this world I hope my body is a wreck. If it’s in perfect condition it will have been a life wasted.
          I’m well on the way in achieving my desired outcome.

  110. Douglas Murray.

    "The classic Left —- They didn't listen to him, demonised him.. misrepresented him.. and did that classic thing the Left always does.. which is to regard their political opponent not just as wrong but as evil. We have people routinely claiming that mainstream conservative voices are, like Charlie Kirk, somehow extreme. And they are somehow causing harm. The same ones that say.. words are violence.. questioning ideas is literally killing people.
    Well, I hope they think about the fruits of their own words."

    1. America Has A "Transtifa" Problem

      imported .30-06-caliber Mauser bolt-action rifle – with ammunition engraved with "transgender and anti-fascist ideology."

      CNN called the transgender and anti-fascist ideology engravings "cultural issues" … Groan

      An eyewitness says the shot that took the life of Charlie Kirk was fired right after he was asked about trans violence, as if it were coordinated.

      He believes it wasn’t just one person acting alone, but several people working together.

      He also claims that someone in the crowd confessed to the shooting right after it happened, even though they didn’t have a weapon.

        1. The one that was caught on the photograph travelling through the air? (in case you miserable conspiracy theorists didn't believe the shooting was real!)

          2. I believe so. I am always suspicious when they over-egg the pudding and give us details that we would never have thought of asking for.

  117. A senior doctor left a patient on an operating table in a middle of surgery to have sex with a nurse in an adjoining theatre, a medical tribunal heard today.

    Consultant anaesthetist Suhail Anjum, 44, was discovered 'in a compromising position' with another nurse in the operating theatre at Tameside General Hospital on September 16, 2023.

    Father-of-three Dr Anujm was seen tying up the cord of his trousers.

    His colleague – referred to as Nurse C – was described as having her trousers around her knees with her underwear on display when the pair were surprised by another nurse.

    The tribunal in Manchester was told that Dr Anjum left the patient, who was having keyhole surgery to remove a gall bladder, because he knew that Nurse C 'was likely to be nearby'.

    Today married Dr Anjum, who now works in Pakistan, said he felt 'shame and guilt at this horribly embarrassing incident' and added: 'I don't know why it happened.

    'I don't know what I was thinking.'

    Andrew Molloy, for the General Medical Council, told a hearing of the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service that Dr Anjum was the anaesthetist for a series of five operations taking place in Theatre Number Five at the hospital on a Saturday morning.

    Mr Molloy said: 'During the third case, about halfway through the procedure, Dr Anjum left the operating theatre to go for a comfort break. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15088883/Senior-doctor-abandoned-patient-middle-surgery-sex-nurse.html

    1. Mr Molloy said: 'During the third case, about halfway through the procedure, Dr Anjum left the operating theatre to go for a comfort break.

      I've heard it described many ways but that's a new one.

      2. "Asking only anaesthetist wages
        I come lookin' for a job but I get no offers
        Just a come-on from the whores on 7th Avenue
        I do declare, there were times when I was so lonesome
        I took some comfort there, la la la la la la la"

  118. We did some shopping earlier and I’ve just looked at the receipt and the total is rather prophetic.
    £19.84

    1. A couple of bottles of wine?

      I hope you both enjoy them!

      Don't forget to toast Mr Blair.
      Or better yet, roast Tony Blair

        1. Possibly a distraction…hmm..do we think it will work, with today's 4th estate (should that be 5th?)

    1. Starmer's become one of the budgie toys; the ones that keep being knocked down but somehow manage to upright themselves ….. until …….

  122. What a day……
    I had to go to my gp surgery to submit 'a begging letter' for renewal of some of my medication. The pharmacy have decided not to include future lists of medicines. So instead of dropping the request into the practice and them placing the order, you are required to complete the form online. Presuming that the patient can do this. Which is what I tried to do, done it before but it didn't work yesterday.
    Because it was a pleasant morning I then decided to take a walk along the river bank footpath.
    After a few hundred yards I was out of breath. I bumped into an old friend stood and chatted for ten minutes and we said goodbye and I carried on. But felt as bad as before after a short time. Stopped for a rest carried on. Stopped for a rest several times. In the end I had to sit down on some timber surrounds for a garden. Two chaps came bye with dogs and asked if I was okay. I told them what had happened. One of them rushed off home and came back in his land-rover. He kindly drove me home it wasn't far but up quite a long hill.
    I ended up at the doctors check over and have an ECG in the morning.
    The problem might have been caused because I didn't take one of my regular medication items. Because the pharmacy has decided not to issue the paper work.
    The really nice guy told me that he use to be a local fire officer. But gave it up because it had all turned very politically correct. Not good. 😏🤔
    Good night all. 😴

        2. He is endearing isn't he………..

          Actually, as you know. When people have a disability or illness the last thing they want is people saying poor you.

          1. Or reminding you of it.
            Jerks my chain when people queue up to remind me I forgot something, often in accusatory terms. Would they do the same if I can't walk any more, keep telling me that I can't walk…

    4. If you set up an NHS account online you can order your prescriptions through that. There is also a space to speak to a doctor and ask for supplementary medicines.

      1. Nominate Boots online pharmacy and they will send your meds free of charge using the Post Office. Order at least 10 days before you run out.

      2. I have done on our old desk top and they send a access code on my phone Phizz but it didn’t work this time. It might be that I was using my good ladies access my hadn’t been set up…..next time. 🤗

    5. What a dreadful experience for you.
      We use Evergreen Life rather than the online forms from the surgery or NHS. It shows all my repeat prescription medication. You tick the ones you want and select your preferred pharmacy. Still goes through to yout doctor for authorisation.
      It’s worked well for me for quite a few years.

      1. I have similar, called Shropshire POD (Prescriptions On Demand). I email my details and they send it to my designated pharmacy who text me when it's ready.

      2. That’s exactly how ours use to work and suddenly some coppiced head plonker has decided to change it all.

    2. What a fantastic vessel, I've seen it on TV, the newspapers and numerous internet links.
      What I find absolutely extraordinary is how shallow it is to be able to travel the distances it did.
      The bailing team must have been world class.

      1. You can still buy dinghy-sized rowing boats in the same style – pegs for rowlocks, beautifully decorated.
        Lovely, so they are. Really stylish!

        1. What a superb gift for ones grandchildren.

          Apologies for the tactlessness, as you don't have any,…Yet…but I'm sure you appreciate the sentiment.

          1. Indeed.
            Grandkid would be magic, especially grand-daughter, as I've never had anything to do with bringing up a small girl, and I'd like the experience.
            But, both lads aren't in any kind of relationship that would lead to stable parenting, so…

          4. I do it myself sometimes in conversation and then think why the hell did i just say that !

            Didn't Esmerelda teach you anything ?

      2. I think, no real idea to be honest, that it might be designed to bob on the water like a cork. Heavy rain might have been more of a problem.

          5. Alas, I can no longer ask Oscar anything. I miss him terribly. The other two seem to be be fine with wet fur.

      3. ChatGPT answers:
        Great question — Viking longships really did have *very* low freeboard (the distance from the waterline to the deck), often less than a meter, which seems counterintuitive for crossing rough seas like the North Atlantic. They managed it through a combination of design features, seamanship, and operating strategies:

        ### 1. **Hull Design**

        * **Flexible construction:** Longships were *clinker-built* (overlapping planks fastened with iron rivets). This made the hull slightly flexible, so it could bend with the waves rather than resist them rigidly, reducing stress and the chance of splitting.
        * **High sheer at the bow and stern:** While the freeboard was low amidships, the bow and stern curved upward. This helped the ship ride over oncoming waves and prevented water from sweeping straight across the deck.
        * **Light weight and shallow draft:** A longship sat lightly in the water and could respond quickly to wave motion, rather than plowing into swells.

        ### 2. **Seakeeping Strategies**

        * **Constant bailing:** Crews were expected to bail water continuously on long voyages. Buckets were always in use; taking in spray and small amounts of water was considered normal.
        * **Sailing season and weather knowledge:** Most ocean crossings were done in summer, when the North Atlantic is at its calmest. Vikings were skilled at reading the weather and avoiding storms when possible.
        * **Course planning:** They rarely struck straight into the open ocean if it could be avoided. Voyages to Iceland, Greenland, and Vinland were usually “island-hopping” — Norway → Shetlands → Faroes → Iceland, etc. This allowed them to wait out bad weather on land.

        ### 3. **Crew Management**

        * **Rowing in heavy seas:** When under sail, a squall or rough surf could swamp them, so in bad conditions the crew often took down the mast and rowed, keeping better control.
        * **Seaworthy seamanship:** Viking sailors were adept at steering with the side rudder and trimming sail to balance the ship against crosswinds and waves.

        ### 4. **Comparison with Larger Vessels**

        * Longships weren’t designed as “cargo carriers” across vast oceans; they were multipurpose warships and coastal raiders. For longer or riskier ocean passages, Vikings often preferred *knarrs* (broader, deeper-hulled cargo ships) which had much higher freeboard and carried more supplies.

        👉 So, the answer is: **they coped with low freeboard by using flexible, wave-riding hulls, skilled seamanship, strategic route planning, and constant vigilance against water ingress.** They weren’t “dry” vessels in the modern sense, but they were seaworthy for their time.

        Would you like me to also explain how Viking *knarrs* (the trading/ocean-going ships) contrasted with longships in terms of freeboard and seaworthiness?

        2. I read a lot of novels about the Vikings (and Saxons) and I found your explanation very useful and informative. Thank you.

      4. We saw working replicas of the boats used by English mariners circa 1600 to sail from Plymouth up the James River in Virginia. Unbelievably small. Looked more suitable for canals than crossing the Atlantic.

    3. It will eventually collapse into dust unless the enviroment is controlled as with the Mary Rose.

      A bit of varnish would probably help.

    6. When I visited the Wasa in its museum in Stockholm, back in 1964, it was shrouded in steam to keep the timbers from disintegrating.

        1. They all seem to feel they are the centre of the universe. From their own feeble views of self-agrandissement, I suppose they are.

    2. If the BBC hadn't already cancelled the bitch they would have no choice but to do so now.

      I also noticed that the cake she made for her Majesty was not received well.

        2. Though i like cooking shows like Masterchef and the Hairy Bikers i never watched Bake Off but when the line up was released lots of people on social media said she would win it.

        1. When i saw it i assumed she was alluding to hat boxes. But for it to lean over like that was not good at all.

          One of my Aunts would take orders for wedding cakes from friends and family. She would spend months painstakingly making the most beautiful and realistic flowers, made from i'm guessing, a sugar paste.

          So intricate they looked real.

          And a similar amount of time making the cakes.

          She only ever charged for the cost of the ingredients.

          Nadiya's looked rushed.

          2. My grandmother was a sugar spinner, some of her works were spectacular.

            The damage that it did to her hands was unbelievable.

            I suspect that many women of that era could have made Nadiya look like a pathetic amateur.
            Quite possibly the Queen herself!!!

          3. I must have made over 100 ‘occasion’ cakes over the years, including 3 wedding cakes, anniversary and birthday cakes etc. If any one of them had been as bad as hers, I would have started again.

  125. Who knows?
    We had three boys. Brother has five, having lost a sixth.

    The granddaughter was a real surprise.
    I know I'm biased, but I've yet to see a prettier 17 year old. No wonder our son calls her his two shotguns girl!

  127. Downing Street had not seen Mandelson’s emails to Epstein
    Downing Street had not seen Lord Mandelson’s emails to Jeffrey Epstein that were leaked by Bloomberg overnight as they had been from a long-closed email address, The Telegraph understands.

    Stephen Doughty said that the emails which showed the former US ambassador advising Epstein on how to respond when facing criminal charges over soliciting a minor in 2008 was “additional information”.

    It is understood that the cache of emails had not been seen by the Prime Minister nor officials until last night when they were published as they had come from an email address that had been long shut down.

    "Quick. Throw MI5 under the bus!!!!"

  129. What a surprise.
    Senior, no, sorry, very senior Democrats are falling over themselves to distance themselves and their supporters from the killing of Charlie Kirk.

    The new definition of hypocrisy:
    To be a Democrat who "cares".

  130. I see there is a very clear picture of the assassin, like the previous images but v good quality. On FB but I cant extract it.

      1. Nah, just some US nutter, they have plenty to choose from. Mossad have far more important things to do.

  131. Farmers are 'fed up' with Labour, says M&S executive

    Ministers urged to take food security more seriously or risk empty shelves in supermarkets

    Hannah Boland, Retail Editor
    6th September 2025, 9:00am BST

    Labour is making life harder for farmers and putting Britain's food security at risk, Marks & Spencer's food boss has warned.

    Alex Freudmann, the head of M&S Food, said farmers were getting "increasingly fed up" with the Government as they faced spiralling costs and roadblocks to producing more food. He said ministers needed to take food security more seriously or risk empty shelves for shoppers.

    "The headwinds facing their businesses and their ways of life are coming from all directions … Our national food security and our self-sufficiency is under pressure like never before," he said.

    It comes as Emma Reynolds, who was named Labour's new Environment Secretary on Friday, faces demands to shore up the future of Britain's farms. Recent figures have revealed that a record number of farms have shut in the wake of Rachel Reeves's inheritance tax raid, with more than 6,000 agriculture, forestry and fishing businesses closed in the year to July, according to the Office for National Statistics.

    The majority of these have taken place since last October when the Chancellor announced plans to cut the amount of inheritance tax relief available to family farms.

    Mr Freudmann said this posed a challenge for the industry, with "almost one in three farmers now over the age of 65", adding: "There's a succession problem in the industry and it feels to our farmers that the Government is making things harder."

    M&S is now demanding the Government start treating food security like net zero, setting out binding targets that would force Britain to shift towards producing more of its own food.

    "If it was set down in law, just like the net zero targets are, it could tilt the balance towards farmers," Mr Freudmann said.

    The demands come amid growing alarm among Britain's supermarkets over whether farms will be able to keep producing enough food to supply them. Last month, a survey suggested 13pc of all dairy farmers were planning to quit the industry, meaning more than 900 could cease producing. British farms currently produce more than 90pc of the dairy consumed in the UK.

    In other areas, Britain has been struggling with its self-sufficiency for years, with the proportion of food which is grown or reared in the UK and eaten in the UK at 62pc. In the 1980s, this stood at 78pc.

    Mr Freudmann said Britain was getting "less and less self-sufficient" for its food, adding: "We're seeing record demand for chicken from UK consumers, but imported chicken is at record high levels. Demand for eggs is increasing for British consumers much faster than our domestic farms can supply those eggs and British produce farmers can't get planning permission for more growing capacity."

    M&S's warning comes at a sensitive time for the Government as it stakes a claim to bolster Britain's food security. The former environment secretary, Steve Reed, said earlier this year that "food security is national security", arguing that the Government was "putting food production firmly back on the agenda".

    However, since then, farmers have complained that they are yet to see any improvement, with the sector having been struck by a wave of extra costs in the Chancellor's drive to fill a black hole in the UK's finances. The Telegraph revealed last month that Labour was failing to deliver a manifesto pledge to back British-grown food.

    Before the general election, Labour had set out targets for half of all food purchased by the public sector to be "locally produced or certified to higher environmental standards". Last month, only two government departments sourced a majority of their food from Britain.

    A spokesman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: "Our food system is essential to not only feeding the nation but nourishing it, protecting the planet, and driving economic growth – both now and in the future.

    "This Government's commitment to farming and food security is steadfast – we've allocated a record £11.8bn to sustainable farming and food production over this parliament and want our farmers to be well placed to bid for a fair share of the £5bn pounds a year spent on public-sector catering contracts."

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/09/06/uk-farmers-are-fed-up-with-labour-says-ms-executive

    1. Have you watched Clarkson’s Farm on Amazon?
      When you see the amount of bureaucratic nonsense farmers have to put up with it’s not surprising many want to leave farming. There are 4 seasons to see and it is real life.
      I recommend it to you and every Nottler.

      1. Much of the bureaucratic nonsense preceded Max & Co. Of course, their solution for simplifying it is to close the small farms and merge them into bigger units under some form of central control…

    3. Does leaving a farm and its land to children before you die, like a regular property, incur no inheritance tax if you or the wife survive for another 7 years?

      1. What a stupid palaver though. For what? Because Labour are spiteful nasty people who have no understanding of business and risk and farming?

    4. Well, who knew. Is there anyone who still supports the Labour government apart from die-hard supporters, union members & like-minds.

    5. I notice earlier today roadside signs in Cavendish, a village close to ours and near Long Melford, asking people to object to yet another massive solar farm on agricultural farmland nearby. We already have a large solar farm on agricultural land adjacent to the village of Foxearth and close to Cavendish.

      It would appear that local farmers are allowing substantial parts of their estates to be given over to solar farms in exchange for presumably generous taxpayer funded subsidies. If farmers continue to sell out their inheritance in this way they can forget about sympathy from me.

  132. Totally and utterly off topic.

    One of my boys has just been interviewed on their national equivalent of the BBC morning news.

    He was excellent, describing mental health issues and how people one meets in day to day interactions can be affected but supported by the general community.

    One pair of proud parents in this household.

    Hence the reason why, in answer to a Grizzly comment, I keep my profile anonymous.

    He'd be cancelled very rapidly.

      1. Yes, it was just after the GE. I remember seeing it then and wondering where was his brain, on which leftist utopian cloud was it residing.

        1. He should be strapped to a chair with his eyelids glued up, a gag in his mouth and made to watch that over and over for 24hours.

  134. From Coffee House, the Spectator

    As I write, a copy of The Hallmarked Man sits beside me. Not being on holiday, spending the morning reading a new detective novel would seem as louche as a pre-brunch martini. Not being David Niven, I’m making the book wait until at least after lunch. J.K. Rowling’s new book, under her pen name of Robert Galbraith, comes in at around 900 pages. I expect to rip through it smartly.

    I am not an ideal reader of detective fiction, nor the thrillers and mysteries that have a whodunit at the core of their tightly planned plots. My ability to figure out the murderer – even my interest in trying – is vestigial. Finishing the penultimate Harry Potter book I remember trying to figure out what was coming next, but so half-hearted was my attempt that I have no memory of my guesses, only complete confidence that they were wrong.

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    What was more interesting to me in Potter was where I felt Rowling might have drifted away from her initial intentions. There were hints, I thought, that she leaned towards making Potter himself more ambiguous, leaving both him and the reader more unsure whether only luck stopped him becoming a bully like his father or a tyrant like Voldemort. I was probably wrong about that, too, but it was where my interests lay.

    A plot has to be very simple before I find myself paying attention. I can almost manage a Reacher. John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps was about at my level, but even then I knew the plot wasn’t what interested me. The hunted escape across Scotland, like Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped but with aeroplanes and Germans, was what held me rapt. When I picked up the book for a second time, uncertain if I’d read it before, the plot held no memory for me – but that atmosphere of tense pursuit in the Highlands was instantly recognisable, and as welcome the second time as it had been the first.

    ‘Yes – oh dear yes – the novel tells a story,’ said E.M. Forster. His plot-driven The Longest Journey left me cold, as it has left most people cold, while A Room with a View – whose plot is no more than the triumph of love over prissiness – makes me happy whenever I bring it to mind.

    Plot is not enough, but somehow – even for someone as deaf to it as me – it remains essential. I enjoy Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, but their books are diminished by the fact they had as little grasp or care for coherent plot as me. ‘When in doubt,’ Chandler advised other writers, ‘have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.’ When doors opened in his stories, the motive force was usually not the rational exigencies of his plot but his bafflement at not having one.

    Trollope knew his task was to build a world in which the right things happened, for the right reasons

    The plots of Rowling’s books are a joy. You don’t have to follow them to luxuriate in their assurance, but on re-reading, watching her work is a delight of its own. You know the author has made a deal – to stick to her intentions, to keep track of the details. No one bursts through the door with a gun simply because she couldn’t think what else to write. There is character and atmosphere and moral purpose, but they take place within the frame of a plot. ‘Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room,’ wrote Wordsworth, in his sonnet on freedom needing boundaries, and the formal restrictions of a rhyming scheme giving a writer their liberty. Plots do the same for novels.

    In his fabulous Dr Thorne, Trollope, breaking the fourth wall long before secondary schools invented drama teachers, states early that his star-cross’d lovers, Mary Thorne and Frank Gresham, will find happiness in each other’s arms by the end of the book. His job as author, he explains, is to make it happen. A lovely way to begin a book. Trollope knew his task was to build a world in which the right things happened, for the right reasons, and for events to emerge as naturally as leaves come to a tree. The plot mattered, but keeping it a surprise mattered not at all. Structure is essential, but the lingeringly powerful mysteries are those of human character.

    In a few hours I’ll write my name and the date in the front of The Hallmarked Man and I’ll start reading. I expect to be absorbed, and I expect there to be murders, and I won’t have a clue about the murderer until Rowling’s final reveal. I also expect her to get her own star-cross’d lovers, Strike and Ellacott, together – maybe by the end of this book, maybe in another. No living writer matches Rowling’s ability to weave a plot perfect in itself, yet perfect as a background for the life of a fictional world. Like Anthony Trollope, her plots are neither the substance of her worlds nor their straitjacket, but their trellis.

    WRITTEN BY
    Druin Burch
    Druin Burch is a consultant physician, a former junior doctor, and the author of books on history and medicine.

    4. 'The Hallmarked Man' is the 8th Cormoran Strike novel. The BBC has adapted the first six. All but the last of those were enjoyable enough, despite the sometimes improbable setup, because modern day politics rarely intruded. 'The Ink Black Heart', however, introduced far-right groups inspired by Nordic mythology, contemporary hippy communes and incels. It was a grisly mess. However, I'll still look forward to the next.

      1. I enjoyed the first five BBC productions but I had to stop watching The Ink Black Heart halfway through the second episode since I could not stomach the risibly vapid script and trite dialogue.

    2. Their hatred knows no bounds. There's something wrong with them.

      They are so consumed with their own self righteousness that they will not see how evil they are.

    3. The assassination of Charlie Kirk was a political act. Whatever the motives of the assassin, Charlie Kirk was murdered whilst engaging with students on a university campus about politics. That is what makes this a political assassination.

    2. Perhaps Mr Ray should go and face down the Muslims who give such a bad impression of his religion that many millions of people fear it.

  137. I'll bid you all goodnight; I have to be up early tomorrow as I'm taking a neighbour to hospital for tests.

  138. Goodnight from me too – I've had to email the Telegraph – as I keep getting this message even though my subscription runs from 5th May for a year.

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  139. Just dropping in to express outrage at an ad I saw in a grocery flyer

    National Hot Cross Bun Day, September 11.

    One outrage email to company about to be sent.

    1. Quite right, King Richard. How can Hot Cross Buns have a single day of celebration. I eat one every day of my life (cold with a cup of coffee).

  142. Dark times indeed. I am reminded of this poem by W B Yeats by the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

    The Second Coming

    TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.
    Surely some revelation is at hand;
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
    Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
    Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
    The darkness drops again; but now I know
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

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