707 thoughts on “Thursday 12 September: The latest strange coincidence of a court judgment going the way that pleases Remainers”

    2. good morning.
      It’s a pleasant start in Derbyshire.
      Was planning to go into Derby, but can’t be bothered. I’ll be doing a bit up the “garden” instead correcting a past error.

  4. Boris not getting much support on the main DT Letter page comments. He has refused to make an electoral pact with Nigel Farage. He has not a good word to say about Nigel. Boris, think again, you are losing friends fast.

  5. Gary Lineker reveals his terrified son, 26, was brutally robbed when 60 fans attacked him and ripped his clothes off in a tunnel during a riot while he was filming a football match in Africa. Mail. 11 September 2019.

    The former England footballer revealed his son Harry, who was filming a World Cup qualifier between Sierra Leone and Liberia, was attacked when fans stormed the pitch.

    Lineker said the ‘terrified’ 26-year-old was beaten by around 60 thugs who ripped his clothes off and stole his phone and belongings when furious fans ‘kicked off’ after Liberia went through to the group phase of the 2022 World Cup qualifier.

    What lovable rogues Black Africans are! They were just looking for his crisps!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7451529/Gary-Lineker-reveals-son-beaten-robbery-RIOT-erupted-football-match-Africa.html

    1. An everyday story of life in Africa, sorry , Hackney no , I meant Bristol, hang on , nope, alright then Manchester perhaps,

      What do any of us know.. the next boatload will confirm our fears..

  6. Fears of no-deal chaos as ministers forced to publish secret Brexit papers

    Guardian going into over drive with Project fear. It is a worst case scenario and it looks as if it was written by pro EU civil servant

    It is a worst case scenario and if you read between the lines it will not have much of an impact. They specifically refer to French ports ie Dover. Now whilst Dover is the Largest roll on roll off port it only accounts for a small percentage of goods coming into the UK

    It talks of WORST case a 1 or two day delay at the port these sort of delays happen al the time at Dover, It states there could be problems with some short live medicines well if the life was as short as a few days thy would normally be airfreight in any case

    AS forr food the claims that people might starve are proven to be daft. The WORST case scenario states their might be some shortages of perishable food items. Why it does not explain

    What the report does not mention id the impact on French & other EU nations should they delay goods. The goods remain the property of the senders until they have been landed so if they delay them and they go off the goods get rejected. These companies may then take legal action against the French ports and possibly the French government

    In reality the goods will not be delayed at the port

    Public disorder on Britain’s streets, according to secret documents the government was forced by MPs to publish on Wednesday.
    A five-page document spelling out the government’s “planning assumptions” under Operation Yellowhammer – the government’s no-deal plan – was disclosed in response to a “humble address” motion.

    The document, which says it outlines “reasonable worst case planning assumptions” for no deal Brexit, highlights the risk of border delays, given an estimate that up to 85% of lorries crossing the Channel might not be ready for a new French customs regime.

    This situation could last for up to three months, and disruption might last “significantly longer”, it adds, with lorries facing waits of between 1.5 days and 2.5 days to cross the border.

    What next for Brexit? Follow key developments, expert analysis and multiple perspectives as the UK edges closer to leaving the EU
    The reliance of medical supplies on cross-Channel routes “make them particularly vulnerable to severe extended delays”, the report says, with some medicines having such short shelf lives they cannot be stockpiled. A lack of veterinary medicines could increase the risk of disease outbreaks, it adds.
    On food supplies, supplies of “certain types of fresh food” would be reduced, the document warns, as well as other items such as packaging.

    1. Whatever risk that COULD occur as a result of Brexit, I can guarantee that I could find more.
      Shirley it is only sensible that the Government have tried to identify all possibilities.

      I am quite sure that many of you here will have carried out a risk assessment before starting a piece of work or a project. If you wrote down everything that could happen to you when you get out of bed, you’d stay there all day, whilst worrying about the things that could happen to you as you lay there.

      GROW UP and don’t choke on your avocado (you did wash the spoon in Detol didn’t you)?

    2. Whom should we believe: a man who does port control for a living or civil servants working to an agenda? When we leave there will, without doubt, be bumps in the road to freedom, some may well be manufactured by the EU apparatchiks, but we will survive and then prosper once the EU’s dead hand has been removed from so much of what we currently do and what we want to do in the future.

      https://twitter.com/LeaveEUOfficial/status/1171413709941563392

    3. What a load of imprecise waffle that document is.

      What about the rest of the legal Opinion about the WA? It still hasn’t seen the light of day – even though it was actually ordered to be produced. Why isn’t Boris pursuing that? Because…

      1. Without Nigel Farage’s support Boris, the Conservative Party and a meaningful Brexit will be as dead as mutton. In fact they will probably all end up in the same ditch.

    4. What next for Brexit?

      Yellowhammer states that the reliance of medical supplies on cross Channel routes makes them “particularly vulnerable to severe extended delays”

      As always, if one is really intelligent, one can find a solution.

      ………………Use an aeroplane.

      I call it “The Bleriot Solution”.

      I look forward to considerable rewards for this highly innovative idea.

      1. I spent a week with French friends in the south of France earlier this year. The news reports were of a shortage of medicines in …. France. Must be due to the Brexit that hasn’t happened, then. Not that I’ve seen that reported over here, of course.

      1. Dunno, but he, like the others, speak my language – especially the lady to his right who’s definitely got her head screwed on.

  9. Morning all

    SIR – So it is unlawful for the Prime Minister to advise the Queen to prorogue Parliament prior to a Queen’s speech because Scottish judges say it was for too long and they don’t like what they believe to be the true motives.

    One judge said that the Government and the Prime Minister wish to restrict Parliament. Isn’t that what prime ministers and governments always do, using all manner of tools, with the backing of precedent?

    Meanwhile, against precedent, Parliament seeks to restrict the Government by writing a letter for it in a matter of foreign affairs, which the Speaker enables by ignoring precedent, while at the same time Parliament blocks the route of taking the matter back to the ultimate source of sovereignty – the electorate.

    The Supreme Court has already set its own precedent in relation to the “meaningful vote”, telling Parliament what its procedures should be.

    Presumably it is just a coincidence that constitutional precedents that suit Remainers are lawful, whereas actions are ruled unlawful if they might get in their way.

    Alec Findlater
    Reigate, Surrey

    1. SIR – John Longworth suggests that constitutional democracy can gain only when the Tory party is represented to the electorate as the underdog.

      ADVERTISING

      Boris Johnson should present himself as tribune of the people. After all, more than 20 years in prison did no harm to Nelson Mandela.

      Paul Trewhela
      Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire

      SIR – Now that the prorogation of Parliament has been ruled unlawful by Scottish judges, is the absence from Parliament of MPs away at their party conferences also unlawful, under Scottish law, at least?

      Christopher Sharp
      Kenilworth, Warwickshire

      SIR – The general election that must shortly be held will be fascinating – a choice between the Conservatives standing to uphold the result of the democratic referendum, the Liberal “democrats” wishing to overturn the result of that referendum, and Labour.

      It seems to me that Labour intends to stand for Leave in the North and Remain in the South East.

      Geoffrey Wyartt
      Newent, Gloucestershire

      SIR – At the TUC Congress, Jeremy Corbyn promised to “unleash the biggest people-powered campaign ever seen”.

      He’s missed the boat. The 2016 referendum was just that, and he ignores it at his peril.

      Simon Roxborough
      St Helens, Lancashire

      1. “After all, more than 20 years in prison did no harm to Nelson Mandela.”

        An understatement, Paul Trewhela – when Mandela left prison he was soon raised to sainthood in all but name. Further proof that terrorism works.

        ‘Morning, Epi.

    2. ” Scottish judges ….don’t like what they believe to be the true motives.”

      Don’t mention Iraq then.

      Morning Ep.

          1. Morning, Hugh,

            But will they push off? Or, as I think, just keep on making whining noises in order to get more and more concessions. While the Gnats are swarming in Scotland, it will continue to be a demanding, whingeing, basket case.

  10. Once the Yellowhammer papers were published, The Guardian had a live rolling report as various contributors contributed their hysteria. One headline was

    “Johnson should resign if he has misled the Queen, days Dominic Grieve.”

    He forgets that he, Dominic Grieve, misled the sovereign electorate in his constituency and therefore should resign. Fat chance.

    1. There is nothing in Yellowhammer that is new, they have been going on about all these project fear scenarios for years, Grieve obviously knows what is in it, I bet one of his underlings wrote it.

      1. Just wondering whether the Yellowhammer document is an old Labour document hastily resurrected from those terrifying 9/11 days with regard to the worst case scenario idea of the shortages that Muslim terrorism would bring to the country.

        Hang on a second , how could I suggest such a thing

      2. I said elsewhere it’s just a tick list of things to get sorted before the day. It should have been written out and circulated four years ago, giving plenty of time to work through them all.

    2. Officials prepare possible scenarios for many situations which by default will include “worst case” examples for very unlikely eventualities.
      Unfortunately, by allowing the Opposition access to these papers, the Remain faction has cherry picked the Worst Case examples as being what will happen, not what might possibly happen.

  11. Morning again

    SIR – Does anything more clearly demonstrate the decline in the dignity of the House of Commons under Mr Speaker Bercow than the fact that MPs now routinely applaud themselves?

    Professor Stefan Buczacki
    Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire

  12. The remainer collective nervous breakdown appears to be gaining momentum, it all seems to be going exactly the same way as the Democrats reacted to Trump in the USA with all the litigation from politicised judiciary.
    Trump derangement syndrome has become Brexit derangement syndrome here.
    The problem is that the majority of the electorate see through it all, their shallow project fear arguments, their personal attacks, all singing from the same hymn sheet like they have been coached on our tv and radio news programmes day in and day out.
    People resent being taken for fools and idiots by the so called liberal elites, the problem is they are not liberal, they are fanatics that will not give up the hegemony they have amassed over the years of EU supremacy over us.

    1. …he majority of the electorate see through it all…
      I hope you’re right, Bob, but I fear that you are thinking wishfully.
      In any case, even if you are right, you can be damn sure that the electorate won’t be asked their opinion about anything any more.

      1. Judging by the conversation I had with my neighbour at tea this afternoon, people do see through it. The opinion expressed was that “people are getting angry”.

  13. With Boris snookered by Remainers, the Tory Party is almost certainly finished. SHERELLE JACOBS. 12 SEPTEMBER 2019.

    If last week Remainer MPs killed the bid for Brexit by Halloween, this week they made merry on the corpse of our country’s democracy. Leave voters could only watch on in confused disgust as the most diabolical Parliament in British history convulsed with delighted outrage at its suspension, having successfully snookered the Government. From the Red Flag baritone to the frantic flapping of operatically farcical “Silenced” placards, this was not a Commons protesting for democracy, but an Enlightened Dictatorship’s tribal victory dance.

    When Brexit is finally killed off it will be only the beginning of the Country’s problems. We will have a permanently embittered section of the electorate that saw their votes not simply ignored but the cause they supported destroyed by anti-democratic forces. Such events do not simply pass away with a few phrases about “binding up the wounds” or their like. This event will fester and erode the underpinnings of the UK as an integrated whole. It will probably disintegrate politically, both Labour and the Tories will be atomised with Scotland and Wales going independent and rendering it useless as an ally on the international stage.

    Now would be a very good time to emigrate!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/09/12/boris-snookered-remainers-tory-party-almost-certainly-finished/

    1. But why is BoJo taking such a bashing? Hes only trying to implement what the electorate voted for.

      1. Because, as Mr Mandelson told us: ‘we are now living in the post-democratic age’. What we want or what we vote for is irrelevant

  14. These ‘judges’ are a right bunch, able to come to their verdict by imputing evidence rather than listening to it. The outcome was never in doubt

    Revealed: How the Scottish judge who ruled against Boris once declared Brexit a ‘very onerous task’
    BILL GARDNER – 11 SEPTEMBER 2019 • 9:00PM
    *
    *
    Colin Sutherland, Lord Carloway
    The senior judge who ruled against Boris Johnson’s suspension of Parliament once declared that Brexit was “likely to be a very onerous task”.

    During a speech in March 2017, Lord Carloway said the process of leaving the EU would pose a “mind stretching question” for the Scottish judiciary.

    “EU law has become so closely intertwined with our domestic law that separation, if that is what is to be done, will be a task of mammoth proportions,” he said, adding: “Scotland has a strong tradition of having lawyers steeped in the Europe context.”

    The 65-year-old earns £220,000 a year as Scotland’s most senior judge after being nominated to the role in 2015 by Nicola Sturgeon, a year after she became First Minister.

    Congratulating him at the time, Ms Sturgeon said: “Under his leadership I am confident that the already substantial improvements to Scotland’s courts will continue.”

    Prior to his appointment Lord Carloway had been the only high court judge to support scrapping Scotland’s unique law of “corroboration”, a policy backed controversially by the SNP. He had also publicly attacked the “depressing influence” of the London-based Supreme Court on justice north of the border.

    In his role as Lord President, he formally swore in Ms Sturgeon as First Minister after her re-election in 2016.

    “I hope that, notwithstanding its burdens, the office of First Minister will continue to give you great pleasure and fulfilment,” he told her.

    Ms Sturgeon also supported Lord Carloway’s controversial opposition to a planned register of interests forcing judges to declare their financial links.

    After the Lord Carloway spoke out against the idea, the First Minister wrote a supportive letter condemning the plan as “virtually unworkable”.
    *
    *
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/09/11/revealed-scottish-judge-ruled-against-boris-declared-brexit/

  15. LBC reporting some excellent news. The preferred construction firms for 5 new RN ships are British, a strong rumour that Babcocks has won the contract. Minister, Ben Wallace, stating that the construction will give work to a number of firms around the country. Only right that we retain this work within the UK, whether or not we are still members of the Evil Empire.

    1. Morning KK

      I guess these ships will be constructed of balsa wood..

      No one in their right mind would import steel or bits and pieces from China or India , or would they?

    2. BBC reporting that the frigates will probably be built in Scotland. I hope they have more ships to be built in England and Northern Ireland

      1. Wallace did mention that another tranche of advanced frigates e.g. anti-submarine included, are in the pipeline.

        1. Morning Korky – Let’s hope so. We need a good number of coastal border patrol boats and fishing boats as well. Plenty of work for shipyards if we keep the majority of contracts in the UK.

    3. If we remain in the EU though they will find a way to claim the tender was not fair and the work will have to be re-tendered

      1. Yes Bill, MOH tells me that the new aircraft carrier has had a serious leak every week since going to sea.

        Thank God it will never go to war.

    4. Wherever they are built, make damned sure that the shipyards do a better job of it than they have of Broon’s white elephants.

  17. Boris’ strategy becomes clearer. On The Andrew Neil Show last night (7:00pm BBC2 available on iPlayer) Kwarsi Kwarteng was the featured attraction. Disregard his remarks about biased judges which are grabbing headlines this morning. Far more interesting was his assertion that a revised Irish Backstop would represent a major and acceptable revision to the WA because about a third of the WA’s 585 pages were concerned with that topic. Thus the plan will be to reveal an Irish fudge after The EU Council Meeting 17/18 October with no other changes to the WA or PD and ram it through what’s left of the UK Parliament by 31st October. Aux barricades, les braves

    2. Don’t bother with Kwarsi…

      Just read Polly, Dolly.

      I pinpointed exactly that in Boris’ Manchester speech shortly after his election !

    3. I still don’t know the key points of the the 585 pages of May’s deal and doubt if I’m alone in this. Many remainer activists don’t seem to either.

      Is it beyond the government’s wit to condense those key points for Mr and Mrs Bloggs?

      Morning zx.

        1. Morning Harry.

          I read the other week how complex the document was, with umpteen references to other documents, treaties, etc. Yet one of the remainers’ proposals is that the British public should vote on it. Utterly bonkers.

          2. What utter autocratic c###.

            We are members of NATO.. not some cobbled together EU foreign Legion.

            How dare they .. how dare they , who on earth do these EU Wallahs think they are ..

            I know who these EU bods are .. the grandchildren and children of jack booted murderers .. nations who collaborated to extinguish life and normality by wanting one deep cleansed NATION ..

          3. It is the remoainers enthusiasm for it that means we should reject it. It is simply slavery writ large. It gives utter, complete control over to the EU.

            They want it because they know it means we’ll be forced crawling back ot join the EU under their terms. It should be burned.

            Any MP refusing their constituents should be shot.

          4. Stripping out the hard-core ‘stay at all costs, vested interests’ remainers, I suspect the majority of remainers, and indeed Brexiteers, haven’t a clue of how the EU works and what its trajectory is. I haven’t.

            In 2010, I was hoping the Tories would make the case for getting our finances in order in language Mr and Mrs Bloggs could understand – but they didn’t. Possibly, I suspect, because of their innate arrogance.

            Forget how we are to get out of the EU, the government needs to make the case for the benefits of leaving – again so Mr and Mrs Bloggs can understand and at least be under no illusions about the bumpy ride. Sadly, though, I suspect Tory arrogance will win the day and that won’t happen.

          5. I do; it is intent on destroying the nation state (it says so in the visitors’ centre in Brussels) and becoming the United State (sic) of Europe.

      3. Here is the condensation from the Press Eddy:
        What will actually happen if we stay in the EU?”

        Check it out if you wish ——>>

        1: The UK along with all existing members of the EU lose
        their abstention veto in 2020 as laid down in the Lisbon
        Treaty when the system changes to that of majority acceptance
        with no abstentions or vetoes being allowed.

        2: All member nations will become states of the new federal
        nation of the EU by 2022 as clearly laid out in the Lisbon
        Treaty with no exceptions or vetoes.

        3: All member states must adopt the Euro by 2022 and any new
        member state must do so within 2 years of joining the EU as
        laid down in the Lisbon Treaty.

        4: The London Stock Exchange will move to Frankfurt in 2020
        and be integrated into the EU stock exchange resulting in a
        loss of 200,000 plus jobs in the UK because of the relocation.
        (This has already been pre-agreed and is only in a holding
        pattern due to the Brexit negotiations, which if Brexit does
        happen, the move is fully cancelled – but if not and the UK
        remains a member it’s full steam ahead for the move.)

        5: The EU Parliament and ECJ become supreme over all
        legislative bodies of the UK.
        6: The UK will adopt 100% of whatever the EU Parliament and
        ECJ lays down without any means of abstention or veto,
        negating the need for the UK to have the Lords or even the
        Commons as we know it today.

        7: The UK will NOT be able to make its own trade deals.

        8: The UK will NOT be able to set its own trade tariffs.

        9 The UK will NOT be able to set its own trade quotas.

        10: The UK loses control of its fishing rights

        11: The UK loses control of its oil and gas rights

        12: The UK loses control of its borders and enters the
        Schengen region by 2022 – as clearly laid down in the Lisbon Treaty

        13: The UK loses control of its planning legislation

        14: The UK loses control of its armed forces including its
        nuclear deterrent

        15: The UK loses full control of its taxation policy
        16: The UK loses the ability to create its own laws and to
        implement them

        17: The UK loses its standing in the Commonwealth

        8: The UK loses control of any provinces or affiliated
        nations e.g.: Falklands, Cayman Islands, Gibraltar etc
        19: The UK loses control of its judicial system

        20: The UK loses control of its international policy

        21: The UK loses full control of its national policy
        22: The UK loses its right to call itself a nation in its own
        right.

        23: The UK loses control of its space exploration program

        24: The UK loses control of its Aviation and Sea lane
        jurisdiction

        5: The UK loses its rebate in 2020 as laid down in the
        Lisbon Treaty

        26: The UK’s contribution to the EU is set to increase by an
        average of 1.2bn pa and by 2.3bn pa by 2020

          1. The Spectator produced a long article titled “The forty worst points of the WA” which I suspect that you can find on the internet.

          2. Thanks again, Janet.

            Being of simple mind, I long for the day when stuff can be brief and to the point, especially with the trillions of words now available on the internet.

            Unfortunately, many commentators seem to work in their own bubble and forget there are hundreds more churning out something similar. They also forget that those at which their articles are aimed have real jobs and other things which tie up their time.

            As an example, I only popped in here for ten minutes three hours ago 🙃.

          3. When “stuff can be brief”
            You are mistaken Eddy.
            Many Remainers, and most of the MSM have said that there has been insufficient time to debate the ramifications of Brexit.

        2. If it is the stupid, ill-educated yobs who want to leave the EU then it is the completely brain-dead who want to stay in it.

          1. Strangely enough No to N, no.4 is now no longer relevant. The LSE will now not amalgamate with the EU Stock Exchange on orders from Brussels. See DT.

        4. Those bullet points, and other breakdowns of what the Withdrawal Agreement will really mean for the United Kingdom, have been around for a while now. Those who have read them understand what not leaving the European Union will do to this country. The “backstop” is almost meaningless and is used as a distraction by the media and Remainers to pretend that the rest of the deal is fine.

          It is the deal itself that will wreck the United Kingdom, and it is why so many Conservative voters who have read these points will walk away from the party if Boris tries to pretend that it is leaving the EU and attempts to pass it again. It is complete betrayal. It was designed and written by the EU to chain the United Kingdom in the dark.

      4. Suffice it to say, it keeps us in the single market (thus subject to all EU regulations) and customs union (thus unable to make our own trade deals) and subject to the ECJ. Search for “Martin Howe QC” and his dissection of the document. Then weep.

  18. Good mornings my friends. We have now arrived in Marmaris and it is swelteringly hot.

    What has happened to Britain in the last few days? As usual the Sherelle Jacobs article is well worth reading and posting if it has not already been posted. I hope somebody will do so.

    Here is another letter to the DT which they will not publish

    Sir,

    I am British, my wife is Dutch; we live in France where we run our own business and we travel extensively throughout Europe.

    Britain’s politicians’ determination not only to deny the result of the referendum but now to deny the British people the chance to vote in a competent government has shown them to be both undemocratic and despicable – it has also made them look ridiculous. Worse than this, they have turned Britain into a pathetic laughing stock.

    Richard Tracey

  19. Here’s Sherelle in full

    With Boris snookered by Remainers, the Tory Party is almost certainly finished
    SHERELLE JACOBS – 12 SEPTEMBER 2019 • 6:00AM

    We are hurtling towards a second referendum and the obliteration of the Conservatives

    If last week Remainer MPs killed the bid for Brexit by Halloween, this week they made merry on the corpse of our country’s democracy. Leave voters could only watch on in confused disgust as the most diabolical Parliament in British history convulsed with delighted outrage at its suspension, having successfully snookered the Government. From the Red Flag baritone to the frantic flapping of operatically farcical “Silenced” placards, this was not a Commons protesting for democracy, but an Enlightened Dictatorship’s tribal victory dance.

    The anti-Brexit media’s smirking intimation that the “high-stakes” nature of No 10’s strategy has blown up in its face, is incorrect. In truth, Boris Johnson has played the dreadful hand he inherited with sloppy, blustering cautiousness. This is why with a no-deal Brexit now “illegal” we are heading for a second referendum, and the Tory Party’s obliteration.

    The problem with brilliant men in politics is that too often their brains go to their heads. Such sadly seems to be the case with Dominic Cummings. His masterplan to deliver Brexit without the help of his enemy Nigel Farage – by calling the bluff of Remainers in order to call the bluff of the EU on the backstop – was both vigorously logical and refreshingly confrontational. But it failed to take into account the Brexit feud’s human face.

    Recent days have delivered a ghastly insight into the vainglorious fundamentalism of Remainer Tories that No 10 has so tragically miscalculated. Perhaps most underestimated of all was John Bercow. The Government strategised on the assumption that even he wouldn’t go so far as to make emergency debate motions legally binding (if, distracted by election campaigning, they even twigged he could do so).

    This was a dangerous attitude to take given that Mr Bercow is the closest Westminster has ever had to a “15-minutes-of-fame” celebrity vulgarly fixated with lifetime infamy. Nor did the Government expect as many as 21 MPs to rebel. They underestimated the allure of political immortality to mediocre MPs, panicked by the smell of mildew on their stagnant, terminal careers.

    The final nail in the coffin of No 10’s plan was the naive assumption that the PM could always get an election if Remainers did their worst. Such a theory overlooked the desperate duplicity that has desiccated the soul of Labour. Terrified of a general election rout, Corbyn has unblushingly blocked an October election.

    And now, we are where we are: the PM’s only way out is to sign the extension that will be his death-knell, or resign in the hope it will get trigger a chain reaction of events that will lead Britain to a poll sooner rather than later. The latter is now the Tories’ only hope, assuming they both keep up the People vs Parliament narrative and, as the official Opposition, run an election on a no-deal platform alongside Farage.

    The Tory movement, however, possesses neither the stomach nor the inclination to save itself. The party clings to prim arrogance like a bizarre emotional life raft in the dismal Brexit quagmire it has created. Even with 21 expelled, the vast majority of its MPs retch at the thought of contaminating the Tory plc “brand” by striking a deal with the Brexit Party. The prospect has even been raised that some of the expelled Remainer Tories will be let back in so that they can continue to incapacitate the party with sterile, colourless One Nation Toryism.

    The Conservatives remain in an advanced state of decomposition, even under an energetic leader like Boris Johnson. The legacy of Blairism has rendered it ideologically flaccid. Most Tories still have their feet planted firmly in the air, convinced that the mythical middle ground is the key to winning elections. And years of weak opposition have bequeathed it with an internal political dynamism that, rather than being strategically ruthless, is tactically vicious.

    The latter point is crucial to understanding the abysmal predicament of the Tory Party. It will not be destroyed by the intrinsically destructive cosmic force known as “Brexit”, but annihilated by its own pathetic in-fighting.

    Indeed, if Boris Johnson does the only thing he can feasibly do and resign, the big risk is that the Conservatives will tip back into civil war. There are already rumours that Michael Gove is once again on manoeuvres. Perhaps he hopes to knife Boris successfully this time, by styling himself as a moderate who can take on Corbyn, welcome back rebels and regain metropolitan constituencies. Mr Johnson has put lipstick on the Tory Party pig, but it may yet be poisoned by a serpent.

    Leavers must once again mentally prepare themselves for the reality that the “natural party of government” is logistically and physiologically incapable of leading Britain out of the EU. But while politics may eat itself, principles never die. Brexit will be carried forward, one way or another. If not by Mr Johnson then – though the Conservative movement may flare its bureaucratic nostrils at the very name – Nigel Farage.

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

    BTL:

    Steven Pickard 12 Sep 2019 6:23AM
    What I can’t grasp is that all the events that have unfolded were easily predictable beforehand.

    We all knew what the remoaner parliamentary play (with Bercow on side) was going to be.

    Is Boris really so stupid as to walk straight into this punch when most of us saw it coming weeks ago?

    If he is that foolish then we’d have been better off keeping May because she would probably have put Farage in No 10.

    So all we can do is wait and see if Cummings is an idiot. But for those of us looking for a tell as to the government’s real intentions, restoring the whip to the 21 is not a good sign.

    At least 6 million and probably more of the Tory vote will vote on Brexit. The Tories cannot discard 6 million voters and not get wiped out.

    Is Hammond worth 6 million votes to the Tory party?

    Alan Woolger 12 Sep 2019 6:31AM
    @Steven Pickard Good point, Hammond and any one of the other 20 ‘rebels’ being readmitted will cost the Tories millions of votes.

  20. BTL@DTletters

    VK Frodsham 12 Sep 2019 4:06AM
    These judges are an example of what happens when the forces of the rich and powerful join arms with a radical ideology. By 1934, an ideological party also colluded with rich industrialists and the law to circumnavigate the very democracy that party was elected by, in order to take control of government and use the law to break the law.

    That party was called The National Socialists Workers Party. It didn’t storm the Reichstag in Germany with guns and grenades. Its seats were gained by the democratic process and when they had enough they simply began dominating a fractured parliament by slowly breaking down the legal precedents it existed by.

    The same is happening with our own parliament. Government has already been usurped by opposition parties uniting with some MPs elected to represent that government but who now refuse to.

    So we have a radical, Left Wing opposition that also happens to hate Jews, using smaller parties to completely by-pass the process of government in order to pass a bill at lightning speed that forces the government, against its will, to ask the EU for another extension. This rogue parliament also refuses to resolve this impasse between government and parliament by holding an immediate General Election. There is no more insidious example of a war on democracy than this.

    It should also be remembered that the Speaker of that other parliament, played a huge part in allowing elected Nazi politicians to completely distort democracy in order to end it.

    Churchill was right about the importance of looking at the past when trying to predict the future.

    1. Your penultimate paragraph suggests that the Godwinian comparisons to H*tler may be less sinister right now than comparing Bercow to Goering.

  21. More Project Fear: Ferrari on LBC is giving someone, I missed the opening to the debate and the name, a real grilling over a claim that professors will not want to teach at British universities, including Oxford and Cambridge, after Brexit. Two of the oldest and leading universities in the World will not have top quality professors because we do not want to be ruled by Brussels? Little wonder the interviewee couldn’t offer concrete evidence as to why that would happen.

        1. Those that haven’t claimed Irish citizenship.
          Which reminds me of an ex-work colleague; as far as I’m aware, she’s still within these shores.

    2. I like the expression ‘A Parliament of Owls’.

      It is much nicer than ‘A Wankery of Politicians’.

  24. Whilst the Commons is in recess Cobyn and Co are going to decamp to Brussels and will be sitting there

  26. ‘Morning All
    What a farce,I am sure our “entrepreneurs” will solve the problems,on every street corner you will hear the hissed offers
    “Oi mate want a lettuce or maybe some salad toms”
    So goods wont flow but illegals can still flood across the channel?? Oh I forgot they don’t need paperwork……………

    2. Enquiry into police helicopter crash starts six years after crash. Luckless victims have to pay costs.

  28. Good morning from the Saxon Queen with longbow and axe.
    What with the remainer judges and every one else
    gerrymandering and Boris doing whatever i think
    Alfred of Wessex should be resurrected to deal with them all.

    1. Morning to you

      I will find you a good link to a brand new book written about Alfred by a dentist turned historian I met a few weeks ago , if I can remember where I put it , probably in the car.. will search the leaflet out later.!

          1. Thank you for the other link and this.
            I chose Æthelfled as an avatar but I really wanted to
            be the reincarnated voice of Alfred but thought as a
            woman I should chose his daughter .

          2. Really delighted you are pleased.

            I was so amazed and intrigued by the passion of the author , and he seemed as driven as you.. really and truly. My imagination was completely captured as well .

        1. Dennis: “Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. You can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just ’cause some watery tart threw a sword at you! I mean, if I went around saying I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they’d put me away!”

    2. The complainant has second thoughts about proceeding with the complaint, for starters. Which begs another question…

    3. Fewer…
      Because there isn’t evidence? Because the Police Farce can’t be arsed? Because the victim is white?

    4. Bound to be. Some complaints are malicious or the product of regret. The police are generally useless, lazy, and indifferent to justice. They have to persuade theCPS that proceedings are justified. Up till recently the foolish plods were told to believe everything so that patently innocent men and boys were subjected to grotesque indignity and emotional trauma. Never trust the police.

    5. Probably because when the police said whoever was accused would be assumed to be guilty it opened the floodgates to false claims unfortunate. It is pretty much the same as the claimed hate crimes

    6. Possibly the stats include large numbers of girls under thirteen whom the police decided were simply asking for it by consorting with middle=aged men?

  31. Daily Brexit Betrayal

    Far more interesting is a report from Brussels in The Times with the title “EU officials regret getting into bed with Remainers” (link, paywalled). Only yesterday we looked at a report on Blair and Mandelson being the Remain puppet masters (here).

    This latest report reaffirms that those two

    politically undead – unelected, at that! – have had their fingers in

    the Remain pie. That their efforts have now severely undermined the

    trust of Remain Brussels in their shenanigans is delicious:

    “European Union

    officials and diplomats are “tearing their hair out” at the twists and

    turns of Labour’s “mad” Brexit policy and regret past tactical alliances

    with Remain campaigners. One Brussels source close to negotiations said

    the EU had “made mistakes” with Labour and was now horrified at the

    party’s convoluted position as political chaos in Westminster raises the

    prospect of Jeremy Corbyn taking the keys to Downing Street. “They want

    us to negotiate a ‘credible’ deal and then they will campaign against

    it in a referendum? That is mad. How can we negotiate with people like

    that?” an EU source said. “Their divisions and magical thinking are as

    bad as anything the Conservatives produced — perhaps worse.” (

    https://independencedaily.co.uk/your-daily-brexit-betrayal-thursday-12th-september-2019/

    1. Reaping what you sow comes to mind. No sympathy for the wretched apparatchiks available from chez Korky.

  32. Fireman Sam banned by a Fire brigade Look on ther brightside though, It could have been a Barbie doll being banned and being replaced by a Boris doll

  34. ‘I lost my baby today’: Mother’s agony after her one-year-old son dies when his father, 22, ‘throws him off bridge in a Moses basket – then goes to pub and demands a drink’
    The boy was rescued from the River Irwell, Greater Manchester, by firefighters
    The child was taken to hospital where he has died, according to police statement
    A man named locally as Zak Bennett-Eko was arrested on suspicion of murder
    The boy’s mother told of her heartbreak on social media as said: ‘I lost my baby’
    It is believed that the arrested 22-year-old man was the baby’s father
    Witnesses said he sat down in the Lock Keeper pub after the incident to order a drink

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7455385/Grieving-mother-reveals-heartache-son-killed-father-threw-bridge.html?ico=pushly-notifcation-small

    1. Ah, a baby father getting fed up with the results of his incontinence.
      At the risk of seeming heartless (yes, yes, I know) there are probably replacements at home rolling around among the bin bags and needles. Or, at least, there soon will be.

      1. My w icked thoughts as well!

        Of course his partner is pregnant again.. this lust diversity thing is another fix to block out the hours of a useless day .

  35. Now about gimmigrants paying our pensions…………

    “In the period between December 2015 and November this year, of the

    400,000 migrants registered with employment agencies just 34,000 got a

    job, according to statistics from the Institute of Labor Market and

    Employment Research (IAB).”

    https://www.politico.eu/article/most-germany-migrants-fail-to-get-jobs-unemployment/
    No doubt when they get their EU passports they will be streaming their way to the land of benefits milk and honey the UK,just like the thousands of “Dutch” Somalians

    1. The governments own data shows most EU migrants are low skilled which does not match the claim that they pay more tax and draw less benefits
      There is some spin the government uses though with benefits and that the State Pension. They just look at today but that not how you treat pensions. If you tke UK nationals there will be far more Pensioners than EU nationals and for some strange reason the government lumps the state Pension in with Benefits. In a few decades it will change and most migrants will have paid less in as they arrived in the UK at an older age

      1. The tax figures are completely skewed by the highly skilled senior workers at the top end.
        This is partciularly the case in the financial services “industry” and senior health service and company directors working in London.. Many of them pay colossal amounts of tax. Take them out of the equation and I suspect you’ll find that low skilled workers pay nothing apart from VAT on purchases and things like fuel duty. They will cost us far far more than they contribute.

        1. AS you say the figures are skewed by a few billionaires

          You get the same claim of needing migrants for the NHS but the percentage of migrants in the NHS is only slightly higher and most are in non medical roles. With Doctors & Nurses it has been NHS recruiting drives not General migration that has pulled in staff

          General migration has just put a huge burden on the NHS many have poor health and many have no or poor English

        2. Pretty much spot on. Those hit hardest by tax are the middle and lower earners. For someone filling up her motor with £60 of petrol with £11K a month coming in is barely a flicker, but if you’re on £200 a week and having to spend £40 on fuel just to get to work – because there’s no public transport at sensible hours – it’s pointless.

          It really is time MPs got jobs and lived in the real world rather than an expensives fulled £70K a year one.

    2. Subtract that 400,000 from the unemployed register and a more realistic figure appears. Why are we importing people that are either unemployable or do not want to work (many of the latter probably also fit the former description)? The only sense it makes is with the replacement, societal and cultural destruction theories.

    3. You have a miss understanding. It s the UK national that are required to pay for the Migrants pensions they get the Pension for Free or at a much reduced cost

    1. Because the progressive agenda has progresses even beyond of the most demented, perverted, insane magazine readership.

    2. Perhaps they are not catering for their ‘new’ readership with articles like ‘How to stop yourself scratching your balls in public’.

  37. Feeling enriched yet……………..

    Each September brings the Muslim holiday of Ashura, commemorated for

    different reasons and observed in very different ways by Sunnis and

    Shiites.

    Some Shiites follow a gruesome practice of self-mutilation

    that involves cutting their heads, and the heads of their children,

    releasing a copious amount of blood.

    https://media.breitbart.com/media/2019/09/ashura3.png

      1. Certainly if you or I or any other indigenous person was responsible. However, we are told cultural differences must be celebrated and this is culture, therefore even if it’s barbaric it must be accepted. FGM is a case in point: sure, there’s a law prohibiting that barbaric practice but we know that the authorities do not actively pursue the perpetrators. Our recent political class have set us deliberately on a very slippery slope with chaos as the destination.

        1. Which raises the question; what are the legal responsibilities of gynaecologists, obstetricians and midwives?

          1. Quick search brought this up from the GMC. It’s a lengthy document but this snippet gives a taste of what is required. I would think that many of these principles apply to all professionals who deal with children.

            Principles for protecting children and
            young people

            1 The following principles should guide all doctors who are concerned
            about the safety or welfare of a child or young person.
            a All children and young people have a right to be protected from
            abuse and neglect – all doctors have a duty to act on any concerns
            they have about the safety or welfare of a child or young person.
            b All doctors must consider the needs and well-being of children
            and young people – this includes doctors who treat adult patients.
            c Children and young people are individuals with rights – doctors
            must not unfairly discriminate against a child or young person for
            any reason.12
            d Children and young people have a right to be involved in their
            own care – this includes the right to receive information that is
            appropriate to their maturity and understanding, the right to be
            heard and the right to be involved in major decisions about them in
            line with their developing capacity (see the advice on assessing
            capacity in appendix 1 to this guidance).
            e Decisions made about children and young people must be made
            in their best interests – the factors to be considered when
            assessing best interests are set out in appendix 2.

            GMC – Protecting Children

      3. clydesider, the state not only ignored the rape of white girls, it protected the perpetrators, locked up the one person trying to talk about it and an MP said the girls should be drugged and raped in the name of diversity.

        Criminal offence? The authorities will not only ignore it, they’llexcuse it and relentlessly assault anyone complaining about such mutilation.

      1. The followers of that cult do have a sick passion for watching blood flowing. Whether it is animal or human. In a sane persons mind, the sight of blood is a sign of an injury that needs to be healed. But these people cannot get enough of it.

        You would need to be blind not to see this threat to us all.

  40. Bonjour, Peeps.

    Greeting from Eurostar which, we hope, is heading for Brussels…blue skies, bright and sunny, and long may it continue. Hotel in Nuremberg tonight, Budapest tomorrow if it all goes well.

  41. Musings on Yellowhammer
    Do remoaners when they hear the safety briefing given before every flight stand up and demand to be let off as the warnings clearly mean
    “we’re all going to die” ??

    1. I suspect Remainers are the ones who pay no attention whatsover to the briefing and will be the ones who get the rest of the passengers killed, because they don’t have a clue what to do.

      I stopped counting how many times I’ve flown many years ago. I still pay close attention to those briefings. If nothing else it is a courtesy to the cabin crew.

      1. #MeToo. I’m not expecting to crash, but if I do, I want to know where my nearest exit is and how to get to it even if the aircraft is upside down. Most types are different in respect of the position of exits and some have different methods of opening the doors.

  43. A walker has been critically injured and her dog fatally wounded by cows on a field near a small Peak District village.

    The woman and her pet dog was charged by the animals while in a field near the village of Sheldon in Derbyshire.

    A passer-by raised the alarm after coming across the injured woman on Tuesday at 3.45pm (10 September).

    Officers attended, as did an air ambulance, and the woman was taken to hospital in Sheffield where she remains in a critical condition.

    Her dog had been killed by the cows.

    A Twitter account for Sheldon village wished the woman a speedy recovery.

    “Our thoughts are with the family of the lady who was very badly injured by cows in the fields to the rear of our village,” it said.

    The NFU says that while such events are ‘thankfully very rare’, it is important that walkers are aware of ‘possible risks’ from livestock.

    https://www.farminguk.com/news/walker-critically-injured-after-cows-attack-her-in-field_53891.html?fbclid=IwAR2Rj7XvVEYCCKqKuFLHXa1xngfZvWa6AdzL68nqQ6Dvt5o_plQKvWRa8G8

    “When out walking in the countryside it is important to remember that it is a working environment where animals graze,” guidance on its website says.

    “When walking with dogs in fields with cattle, the advice is to avoid getting between cows and their calves; to keep your dog under close and effective control on a lead around cows and sheep, but not to hang onto your dog if you are threatened by cattle – let it go and allow the dog to run to safety.”

    3. Do not go in a field with loose cows, It is the most stupid thing people can do. How thick are people whenthey just do not understand this.

      1. If the nearest you’ve been to a cow is Milton Keynes and you go on holiday in the Disney Theme Park (known to the rest of us as the working countryside), ignorance will always out.

    4. Are you on a mission to depress us, T_B? First the story about the baby, now the dead dog. Jill Backson is our doom-sayer. we don’t need any more bad news.

  44. Epic Fail? Top story in the DM:

    “The couple had previously said that they wanted to share their journey online to show that countries with a bad reputation are still okay to travel to.

    ‘Our biggest motivation behind the vlogs [video blogs] is to hopefully inspire anyone wanting to travel, and also try to break the stigma around travelling to countries which get a bad rap in the media’, they said in a post.”

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7454431/British-Australian-blogger-boyfriend-face-Iranian-jail-time.html

      2. You often see that self-satisfied “smug” look on the faces of so many mindless people on the left. It is so common that it could honestly be an outward sign that part of the brain is not working properly.

        She is far from the only one who has been murdered in islamic countries, after going there to prove that islam is peaceful and those reports about the realities of the cult are just fake news.

        2. You used to see the same expression on the faces older patients who’d undergone the ‘knitting needle into the prefrontal cortex’ lobotomy.

  46. UK tobacco giant BAT to cut 2,300 jobs

    It is a shrinking market and e-cigarettes are not gaining that much market share

    British American Tobacco has announced plans to cut 2,300 jobs as it shifts away from traditional cigarettes.
    BAT said it was creating a “more efficient, agile and focused” company as it focused on e-cigarettes and other new categories of product.
    The firm said management layers would be reduced and simplified under a plan to be substantially completed by January next year.
    A BAT spokesperson declined to give any details of where the jobs would go.
    The company has its headquarters in London and has 55,000 employees worldwide, with 55 factories in 48 countries.

    1. It was obvious the EU would demand a military. They need one to suppress the starving masses.

      It’s obvious where the EU is going. Full blown communist fascism. They can’t help themselves. They’ve created unemployment, massive poverty and when the food runs out because they’ve crushed the market, when they’ve seized all private wealth they’ll continue to blame others – those escaping the hateful thing – and then where there’s no money, no industry they’ll start killing those who rebel.

      It is inevitable when power mad, unaccountable, corrupt Lefties get together. This was always their plan.

        1. I am fortunate to be on another channel where we get regular updates on what is happening in France and how bad it is. I forget how many have died in accidents since it began, or have lost eyes from those “soft munitions” that the riot police use. I think that I have only heard it mentioned on the news 3 times since it started, and 2 of those times were 6 months ago. They do not mention any of the nasty stuff of course.

          1. ‘Afternoon, Meredith, one wonders how long before a British brand of Gilets Jaunes appear and trouble Westminster.

    2. The Commons would have been in recess during all but a few days anyway. The MP’s though are suddenly saying they would have voted not to go into recess. Strange they did not want to vote to cancel there summer recess

    3. Since when have the courts tried motive? Every time they make an arrest under ‘hate crimes’ legislation.

      Every time they’ve locked up Tommy Robinson. The time the police arrested an innocent woman who raised the query of Muslims being allowed to trespass on a park.

  50. Liddle on the honours list (and more)

    “The BBC featured a gay wedding on Songs of Praise recently.

    Of course it did. The thinking was, I assume: ‘We hate this programme

    and wish we could get rid of it, but there would be the usual moaning

    from the near-dead reactionaries. So let’s rub their noses in it,

    instead.’ The broadcast attracted 1,200 complaints, including one from

    God himself, my sources tell me. God also complained, I’m told, about

    the programme’s failure to include the hymn ‘Onward, Christian

    Soldiers’, of which He is rather fond.

    The BBC will not take any notice of the complaints — certainly not

    from God, whom the producers believe they easily outrank these days.

    Frankly, the complainants would have had more purchase if they’d moaned

    about the lack of transgender people in Songs of Praise. The

    next episode will almost certainly be broadcast live from the inside of

    an abortion clinic, with lots of vibrant women explaining how empowered

    they felt every time they saw a foetus being incinerated. You might

    think that the BBC would allow a tiny corner of its output to be free of

    the progressive agenda which it shoehorns in to every other programme.

    But nah, not a bit of it. Every single area of output must toe the line:

    there is no alternative.”

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/2019/09/theresa-mays-honours-list-make-me-sick/

    1. The Sunday religious programme on BBC2 is run by someone called Jason Mohammed.

      You couldn’t make it up!

  51. How low can they get ?

    Boris Johnson denies lying to Queen about reasons for prorogation

    Boris Johnson has denied lying to the Queen over the
    suspension of parliament, insisting such claims were “absolutely not”
    true. Speaking on a visit to NLV Pharos, a lighthouse tender, which is
    moored alongside HMS Belfast on the Thames, he was asked if he lied to
    the Queen when he asked her to prorogue parliament for five weeks.

    1. Are those Scottish judges mind readers. They in my view made a political judgement and not one based on law. All 3 judges in the lower court agreed Boris was within the law. THe English courts decided the same

      2. I’m a wee bit puzzled over this case.

        As far as I understand it, the Court of Session made its judgment relying on an obscure law dating back to 1689 which applied to the then Scottish Parliament’s right to determine whether or not to prorogue itself.

        Since the Act of Union of 1707 abolished the Scottish Parliament, I don’t quite see how a law, which specifically relates to Scotland’s governing body as it existed eight years before the Union, can now be dredged up and applied as if it were National Law. Scots Law is different from English Law in so many respects and I’m wondering why, on this unique occasion, it is thought to apply UK-wide. I believe this ruling to be an example of flagrant legal legerdemain, exercised by a highly politicised judiciary..

        Of course, the 1689 law may well apply to the reincarnated Scottish Parliament, so if Wee Krankie wanted to prorogue Holyrood, she would need its consent.
        :¬))

        1. I dont really understand as to why the Scottish courts are involved at all. The Commons ib in England the MP’s are employed in England

          Can the English courts have a say as to hoe the Scottish Government is run? Somehow I think not

          1. I find the irony that the Scots are constantly saying we run them from Westminster whereas they are exerting more power over us now than we ever have over them – unless you count giving them vast piles fo cash to spend as they want.

  52. Restaurants urged to serve us less food

    I am sure they will be keen on that. They will still charge the same price though. No wonder food outlets are going out of business

    1. I recall some 15 or so years ago, when we were on holiday in Yorkshire after 6 years in Norway. Compared to the year before, the price of a pub lunch was noticeably higher, said increase being justified by the portion size being noticeably larger.
      The thing is, considering wages, rates & other overheads, the cost of the food is the smallest contributor to the cost of the meal when eating out. So, justification for charging higher prices is easily made by adding another pile of chips. Easy.

  53. Alison Pearson on Feminist Hypocrisy

    “She’s right, of course — just not in the way she thinks. For females

    in Saudi Arabia, Taleban-controlled Afghanistan and Islamic communities

    much closer to home, Gilead is not a reading at the National Theatre

    that makes you feel pleasantly indignant before you pick up an avocado

    and herb salad wrap at Pret. It’s the hateful, oppressive place where

    they live.

    How can it be that western feminists read The Handmaid’s Tale

    without looking at a woman in a burka walking down the street and

    thinking: ‘Hang on, that’s what those bastards do to girls in Gilead?’

    While women in Iran are thrown in jail daily for daring to remove the

    veil, their sisters in Europe and the US continue to be useful idiots

    for the fundamentalist brutes who try to keep them in the dark.”

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/2019/09/the-appalling-vanity-of-western-feminists-who-think-margaret-atwood-writes-about-them/

  54. British army needs more ‘non-lethal’ options to disable our enemies, chief of defence staff says. 11 SEPTEMBER 2019.

    British forces need more “non-lethal” options to disable our enemies, the defence head has said.

    General Sir Nick Carter warned that the world is a less stable place than at any time in his 42-year career.

    Morning everyone. After the outbreak of WW2 and through its duration the RAF dropped leaflets on Germany.

    It worked really well!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/09/11/british-army-needs-non-lethal-options-disable-enemies-chief/

    2. “enemies” in this case being domestic populations (not armies) wherever they are found to be causing trouble in the United States of Europe?

    3. Just been having a discussion with the latest incarnation of the RAF; message is they are having to do more with less – less materiel, fewer personnel.

  55. Things are getting really bad. The pound is creeping up and up and up –

    1 GBP to USD = 1.23327 US

    Where are the doomsayers on the media today ? Convinced that there will be no Brexit ?

  56. Here’s some excellent reporting (in yer Weegie) about the EU & Ursula von der Leiden: https://www.aftenposten.no/meninger/kommentar/i/6j1jro/EUs-nye-sjef-vil-ruste-Europa-til-en-kamp-mot-giganter-Det-haster–Oystein-K-Langberg
    Det manglet ikke på pompøse titler da EUs påtroppende kommisjonspresident presenterte sitt nye team i Brussel tirsdag.
    Greske Margaritis Schinas ble utnevnt til visepresident med ansvar for «forsvar av vårt europeiske levesett» (newspeak for migrasjon og grensekontroll), mens latviske Valdis Dombrovskis blir administrerende visepresident med ansvarsområdet «en økonomi som fungerer for folk». Ikke dyr eller planter altså.
    Translation:
    There was no lack of pompous titles when the new President of the Commission presented his new team in Brussels Tuesday. Grrek Margaritis Schinas was named as vice-president with responsibilitry for “Defence of our European Lifestyle” (Newspeak for migration & border control) whilst Latvian Valdis Dombrovskis became administrative Vice President with the responsibility for “an economy that works for people”. Not animals, or plants, then.

    Don’t often see Aftenposten taking the P out of the EU so blatantly. Loved it!

  57. The globalists’ fight to stop Brexit mirrors the American Left’s efforts to undermine and remove President Donald J Trump……..

    ……and there’s a very good reason for that………..

    Because……….

    The same individual is behind it !

  58. Delingpole on the Al-Beeb documentaries

    “Back in the day, the BBC might have been content to strive for an

    objective take on the subject, perhaps with a voiceover by Samuel West

    and lots of period footage. But the danger of that approach, the BBC has

    since realised, is that it runs the risk of viewers making up their own

    minds what to think. Some of them might not be aware, for example, of

    the obvious parallels between Hitler, Nigel Farage, Donald Trump, Brexit

    and, to a lesser extent, Michael Gove.

    Enter former Cambridge historian Professor Sir Richard Evans, one of

    the diverse talking heads who pop up at regular intervals to interpret

    the story being acted out by young men in brown shirts,

    Himmler-impersonators, etc. Hitler said he wanted to ‘Make Germany Great

    Again,’ he explained, and specialised in ‘empty slogans’ which, though

    vague, were ‘very powerful’. Also, Hitler was a man who ‘represented

    himself as an ordinary bloke, as it were,’ he told us with

    a sneer. Gosh, which contemporary politicians could he possibly have meant?”

    But the documentary it did on George Soros — Conspiracy Files: The Billionaire Global Mastermind?

    (BBC2, Sunday) — was worse, much worse. Soros is an intriguing and

    influential character, well worth a detailed investigation. Apart from

    the time he famously broke the Bank of England in 1992 when he caused

    sterling to crash out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, there’s

    the vexed issue of what the BBC calls his ‘philanthropy’, but which some

    of us might consider more akin to bankrolling the destruction of

    Western civilisation.”

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/2019/09/with-these-documentaries-the-bbc-has-lost-any-claim-to-impartiality/

      1. Quite. It began by stating that he was born in Hungary of Jewish parents and escaped the Holocaust then moved swiftly on without pausing to acknowledge that he saved his own skin (his explanation – reference the CBS 60 Minutes interview) by being a Nazi collaborator.

    2. But he’s a good boy and wouldn’t hurt a fly. He looks after his Mother and aging Granny and is teaching his pet rabbit “Forrest”.to swim.

  59. Redwood

    This unusually high turnover has occurred with none of them thinking

    they should test their new views and new party loyalty in a by election.

    Electors are understandably angry where their MP has switched from say

    Labour to Lib Dems from a party that claimed to support Brexit to one

    that fundamentally opposes it, without asking for electoral endorsement.

    An MP moving from his or her party to be an independent, if they say

    they are doing so while still sticking with their policy promises at the

    last election have a good case for saying no to a by election, in

    contrast to those shifting from a Leave party to a Remain party in

    order to support Remain.

    http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/

    1. I would stop it altogether, Any MP elected on a party ticket has to stay with that party or else they have to stand down and a by election takes place

          5. Found it. You’ve made the location look far more attractive than it is by excluding the the gas terminal pipe bridge.

            And just a quarter of a mile from the Fisherman’s Cottage, which I last visited in 1982 when it was a Wadworth’s oasis in a Courage stronghold.

          6. Just after here you mean?
            https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/33133cffc834f23f0ec9f0232f05abcbd8c0ab3f217c8bbf84ae77fb5eb355c5.jpg
            And a bit earlier:-
            https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7a6e8c683703e8267e2fbd78922ac9b082725eb830b5ab52fb34ec4518df88b3.jpg
            This is a bit further up the Kennet:-
            https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/52e2afb5d4bc18b3a1b254ec624ea6bae0fd0084ecd1b5a6eb78c6e68816aa3f.jpg
            And not forgetting the old railway bridge into the biscuit factory:-
            https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e917b06416b25b97769a1f0e4aeb5cbfd111a2b9fbc0cb9abe8e8b0af312db4d.jpg

  61. I read yesterday that the NHS has purchased 60/70 electric jags at a cost of about 60k a pop
    Now about my sister’s knee operation………………….

    1. My cousin got new new knee joints and regrets it. No one told her about the restricted movement that the artificial joints provide.

      1. A colleague had to have his hips replaced three times – the last time, because the joints squeaked audibly, and would jam unexpectedly!

    2. Perk cars should be stopped. Only those that have an Essential need for company car should get one. That mens people who have to regularly travel on business and not the occasional jaunt

      1. Remember when the NHS decided that they needed to recruit high-flying managers from business and commerce? Lots of new jobs, well paid with BMWs? Now they are stuck with it.

        1. Interestingly those that have most need of a Carr District nurses or whatever name they give then now dont get one they have to use their own car

  62. Good afternoon all. Just back from yer Italy plus a swim. Lunch follows.

    Jolly glad there is no news from the UK…..

    1. Bon apetit, mon vieux!

      No doubt after swimming back from Italie you are ready for a well-earned lernch.

    2. As a member of the Co-op, I have been getting some interesting insights into how loopy they are. Profits given to charities, and not shareholders/members. Sponsorship of Pervert Pride events.

      1. Not forgetting boycotting Israeli settlement produce, which has lost them a considerable number of customers.

      2. I became an inadvertent member of the Co-op when my Building Society was taken over by Co-op Bank. They deducted some of my dividend for charity without so much as a by-your-leave. I got them to refund it. I don’t mind supporting charities (of which I approve), but it has to be my decision.

        1. Britannia BS one presumes?
          There was a branch in Matlock that, for a short time became the Co-op Bank before closing.

          1. Yes. Our branch soon closed, too. I’d taken my account away a long time before that – as soon, in fact, as I discovered the deal was going ahead.

  64. Pakistan is no friend of Kashmir, either. Taha Siddiqui. 18 hours ago

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6769198a8f595028392842144e7719130fbb4523e4372077677831e112cd8818.jpg

    In a recent opinion piece penned for the New York Times, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan asked the world to wake up to the conflict in Kashmir because if it does not, there is a risk of a nuclear war between India and Pakistan. Like previous Pakistani premiers, he sought to present Pakistan as a champion of the Kashmiri cause.

    Obviously a cause appealing to well-balanced Muslim believers everywhere!

    https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/pakistan-friend-kashmir-190911133539203.html

  65. “Projet Peur” about Brexit alive and well on yer French state radio….Cross-channel shipping blocked; shortage of food….(yawns…)

  66. Times are bad in most of the retail trade, and not necessarily because of Brexit. It’s changing times, a cyclical thing, or whatever.
    Come Brexit, with or without a schmeely deal, the whole damn lot of them are going to bang up their prices, whether they need to or not.
    We have to be prepared for this and simply refuse to buy when we are being ripped off.
    It won’t help us or them, but it will feel good.

    1. The price of food has fallen too low. We need quality food that gives a fair return to farmers, producers, processors and distributors. Brexit has underlined the issues. A simple question, ” Why are farmers subsidised?”

    2. Our shops are still based around the 1950s/60’s model plus in addition new out of town centers have been built and council faced with a failing High street decide the solution is even more shops

      1. That goes back a long time. The corner shop at the end of the street died from the competition from the big boys, who have now been replaced by ” convenience stores ” with sky high prices.

        1. THe model was based when people did not have cars and the woman did not work and few people had fridges let alone freezers so people shopped locally and almost daily. No one has the time for that now

    3. Reported in Norway that even web-shops are beginning to struggle.
      I guess everybody’s houses are so full of carp that they are ceasing to buy more.

      1. Or is it just that no brick and mortar store can compete with the internet? From furniture to groceries, that’s where all “retail” is headed.

    4. I see that John Lewis has blamed Brexit for a fall in profits, according to my local rag. How can that be, JL? We haven’t left yet.

  68. I am beginning think that it is about tine some 17.4 million people marched on London…. Peacefully (cf Jarrow March) – to let the turncoat, traitorous establishment know where the power lies.

    2. Size of Metropolitan Police Service (they do not call themselves a Force anymore): 30,871
      Number of “active officers” that are thin enough to squeeze themselves out of the stations doors: 20,000
      Minus those painting their rainbow fingernails, or attending transexual awareness courses, leaves: 10,000

      10,000 Officers against 500,000 (that is more than we need) quite angry believers in democracy, many of whom will be ex Army, Navy or Air Force. The words “Custers Last Stand” spring to mind. It is often the case in countries where the “ruling elite” misunderstand their power, and actually start to lose control, that the Police are some of the first to see which way the wind is blowing.

      When faced with the inevitable victory of the British people over these “here today, gone tomorrow” politicians, those in the Police can become far less willing to oppress the people. The sight of themselves being sacked and not allowed to take “early retirement,” and the prospect of their pensions being clawed back by the state for acting against the people, that can cause these “government enablers” to suddenly call in sick, or just not turn up to work at all.

      Then it is left to the Army. Which has not been diluted into an islamic militia just yet. So our soldiers can march the politicians down to the now empty police stations and close the cell doors on them. The EU flags outside of Westminster are burnt, the Remainer protesters there are sent back to school to learn the word “Democracy”, and the Union Jack is flown from every government building in the land.

      It is a dream that I have.

      1. I wonder how long it’ll be before the boffins tell us that all that water they’ve found up there is due to glaciers melting.

        Morning Bob.

        1. “I wonder how long it’ll be before the boffins buffoons tell us that all that water they’ve found up there is due to glaciers melting.”

          Morning, Eddy. :•)

          1. Morning Grizzly.

            I’m not so sure about ‘buffoons’. I’m sure many of us would have liked a well-paid job where we could say anything under a distant sun and not be disproved.

        2. And photos of green, two headed, eight legged Polar bears floating on small icebergs will be beamed back to Earth.

        3. I winced this afternoon when the station CO mentioned climate change when giving an overview of what their role now is

          1. My comment to anyone who talks about climate change is “so what?”.

            Without doing a Four Yorkshiremen sketch, when I was growing up, all that electricity in our house powered was the lights and a wireless – nothing else.

            Unless the climate-change wallahs are prepared to go back to those days and ignoring the billions of people across the globe who want our energy-guzzling lifestyle, so what?

  72. Corbyn’s plan is MAD!’ Brussels furious with Remain alliance as Brexit plunges into chaos

    EUROPEAN UNION negotiators have conceded they “made mistakes” by engaging with the Labour Party’s “mad” Brexit strategy.

    Diplomats and officials are “tearing their hair out” at the prospect Jeremy Corbyn winning the keys to Downing Street amid political chaos in London. They simply can’t understand why Labour have pledged to negotiate a “credible” Brexit deal with Brussels before campaigning against it in a referendum. Brussels sources also revealed they regret forming tactical alliances with Remain campaigners during the Brexit negotiations.

    2. “They simply can’t understand why Labour have pledged to negotiate a “credible” Brexit deal with Brussels before campaigning against it in a referendum.” – they aren’t the only ones.

    3. A surprising number of tweeted replies are ok with this. One says it will help with all the inbreeding of the Cockneys, ignoring that there aren’t enough Cockneys left to breed with each other, judging by this photo. The almost complete replacement of native people is absolutely fine with these people. One said something asinine about it being ok if all the POC assimilate ok.
      Who exactly are they assimilating with?? There’s no assimilation, just straight replacement.

          2. Technically no. You see them huddled around the pot holes scratching their heads whilst consuming mugs of tea

    2. Right; that Hammond and Gauke accounted for. Where are the other 19 Conservative MPs who’ve been de-whipped?

    3. You know why this excellent and prescient video hasn’t been awarded any upvotes, don’t you Grizz?

      It is because all of those who have deigned to watch it are complicit. They either feel guilty or they couldn’t give a fucking toss!

  75. Benefits cheat gran claimed more than £65,000 over 13 years after lying about living with husband

    Just why are no checks carried out. They make it far to easy to fiddle benefits. No real penatly when they are caugh

    Morgan pleaded guilty to three charges of fraud but denied two similar charges and one charge of obtaining money by deception but she later changed her plea to guilty in respect of all the charges.

    So far she has paid back £600 back to the DWP but is continuing to make monthly contributionsMorgan, of St Sannan Road, Pontllanfraith, was sentenced to 12 months imprisonment suspended for 12 months and was ordered to carry out 10 sessions of a rehabilitation activity requirement. She was also ordered to pay £250 in costs and a £140 victim surcharge.

      1. I love the way it is claimed that loses due to fraud are less than 1%. The best businesses in the world would love to get fraud down to that level. Our government certainty does not. It probably runs at about 10%

        1. Perhaps we should all contact HMRC and suggest they reduce IT and NI by 1%? After all, it won’t be missed.

    2. “rehabilitation activity”

      That’s a new one on me. Is it the procedure in which a powerful electric current is passed through the body, while subliminal messages of an improving nature are flashed up on a viewing screen?

  76. Nicked

    I think with all going on we should have some Definitions of those we face…..

    Remainer – someone who voted remain, who’d rather remain but accepts Brexit.

    Remoaner – someone who voted remain, can’t accept the outcome, is usually condescending, smug and abusive to leavers.

    ‪Remaniac
    – a Remainer that demands a second referendum which if they lost they
    still wouldn’t accept or preferably a complete revocation of A50‬

    ‪Remaintard – A Remainer who stands outside Parliament for months on end with a megaphone ‬

  77. Who named this document Yellowhammer… strange name , isn’t it ?

    Is that document a a legacy from Labour term in office when 9/11 threw the world into turmoil and uncertainty?

  78. Sir – Colchester Royal Grammar School is right to abandon its insistence on boys having their hair cut above the collar (report, September 10).

    Hair cannot be regrown in the evenings or at weekends, and forcing schoolboys – or men at work for that matter – to have short hair restricts their freedom of expression in their leisure time. As freedom of expression is guaranteed by the Human Rights Act 1998, it is astonishing that many schools and employers are still able to discriminate against men in this way.

    Steven Field
    Wokingham, Berkshire

    It is idiots, like you, Stevie—and countless others similarly clueless—who are collectively responsible for the progressive and insidious rise in the stupidity of the human species.

    Once upon a time there was a concept known as discipline, which was good. It kept mankind in order and its use, along with fellow concepts such as good grace, excellent manners, dignity, etiquette, intelligence and compassion, kept the species on a higher plane than other—more simple—forms of life.

    The rise of ‘entitlement’ in the humans species, which was propagated during the advent of the permissive society in the 1960s, is now out of control, as shown by your idiotic point of view. This means that the species is now running amok, totally lacking discipline and is completely directionless.

    Discipline was the main factor that kept humanity on the straight and narrow; that is now all gone and chaos and disorder are now the rule of the day.

    Thank you, Steve, and all your fellow gormless cretins.

    1. I agree with the principles you have desc ribed but fail to agree on why it’s ok for women to have long hair but not males.

      The principles would be better focussed on behavioural issues that have an impact on others.

      1. I took this a stage further. In 1975, I fell in love with a French girl who had (and maybe still has) the most wonderful long brown hair. I loved every strand, its comforting softness, the way it changed colour in different light, and its naturalness and wholesomeness. My goodness, I could get a gold star from Pseuds Corner for all this!

        The worst thing was for her to have to cut it short, or have it messed about by a stylist, because of changing fashions. I found 1980s fashion very ugly. I came across her again in 1993, and was thrilled to see her lovely hair a foot longer than it was when we were together. It seems that she kept it as a fond memento of our teenage love.

        In 1975, I then thought that why should I hope and expect my girlfriend to grow and keep her hair if I was not prepared to do the same thing myself, putting up with the barbs from society about not being fashionable, and the usual bother about caring for it? So from that day to this, I have not cut my own hair in solidarity.

      2. I am not against the length of hair of males or females.

        My point is that schools used to be (along with the home) the first place in young people’s lives when they were introduced to discipline. In my schooldays, boys were required to have their hair cut short and girls, who traditionally wore their hair longer, were expected to have it tied, pinned, or otherwise placed in a neat and tidy order.

        Remove the teaching of discipline by parents and teachers and you are quickly (as current events show) on the road to anarchy.

        1. There were no rules about length of hair in my school days in the 40s and 50s. Just regular tests for nits.

        2. Indeedy. I uphold the need for discipline etc but don’t think hair length is the be all and end all as a yardstick.

          1. If they are doing domestic science or woodwork/metalwork I should have thought that hair should be neat and tidy and confined. Otherwise it’s a safety/hygiene hazard.

    2. Morning, Grizz. Speaking of stupidity, I was on Aldershot station platform yesterday, waiting for the 12.04, when I overheard a fellow passenger asking a SWR official which carriage he would need to be on, since he was getting off at Waterloo.

      On a more positive note, there was a change of guard at Woking. He went through the usual announcements, but ended with “If you see any passenger smiling, please notify a member of staff”.

      1. Good morning, Geoff.

        I am no longer astonished by the idiocy of the human species. It is good to see that many, though, have retained a sense of humour (as in your story of the railway guard).

        1. Good morning, Grizzly.

          ‘It is good to see that many, though, have retained a sense of humour,’

          …..and fortunately most of them post on here!

          A haven of silliness, delicious irony and seeing humour in most things!!

        2. Our train pulled into Waterloo on a particularly gloomy Monday morning. Over the Buffet car tannoy came the steward’s “Hi Hoooooooo…” from Disney’s Snow White.

      2. Morning, Geoff.
        Way back in the days I used to commute from the Isle of Dogs to Feltham, the station announcer at Feltham would occasionally sing the announcement… made a nice change.
        Your passenger might not be too far wrong, since UK trains have a habit of dividing, or pulling into stations with short platforms. I once ended up in the wrong place because the train divided… :-((

        1. Reminds me of the story of the blonde who sat in a seat which had been reserved for another passenger at the rear of the plane bound for New York . All attempts by the cabin crew to get her to move failed. In the end they asked the captain to try. He went to the blonde and whispered in her ear, she immediately got up and moved to an empty seat at the front of the plane. The cabin crew asked him what he had said to her. He replied “I told her the rear of the plane only went as far as Miami”

        2. A business meeting in London overran slightly, cutting the time to get to Heathrow for the flight home. We hurriedly got on the Tube. After a bit I failed to recognise some of the stations at which we were stopping – I’d done the journey dozens of times. The line splits and one route goes to Heathrow and the other goes elsewhere. We were on the elsewhere line. So jump off at next station, cross line, go back, get off, cross line, get train for “Heathrow”. Arrive, run through terminal like loonies, squeak through closing departure gate and slide, sweaty and out of breath into seat…
          In those far off days, there were no armed police to shoot you for running suspiciously…

        4. Not on that route.
          2 Up trains may couple up at Woking, but it’s only the Down services that will divide.

        5. That was my thought, too. Often trains divide at Shrewsbury. If you’re in the wrong carriage instead of going to Chester you could end up in Abergavenny.

    3. I am a curiosity in that I agree with you that scholarly discipline and excellence in this country seems to have broken down since the 1970s, and that if we are to make any sense of Brexit, we must recover our national capacity to think, to make and to do.

      I was, however, of that generation that let my hair grow as a teenager, and was forever being got at by the Deputy Head for having hair below the collar, as if this was all there was to scholarly discipline and excellence. In the end, I got round it by saying that I was growing it for the theatre, having just successfully auditioned for a couple of parts with the Royal Shakespeare Company.

      Unlike those who give up their “hippy” ideals when they leave their teens, becoming finance consultants, wear suits and conform to “the done thing”, I have not had a haircut since 1975, and yet still aspire to be a pillar of the Establishment and push for national excellence, usually in vain.

      1. Your deputy head was part of the problem. He should have told you to wear a wig for your RSC appearances.

        1. One of the reasons I got the job was because they did not have to shell out for a wig. I actually looked very much like contemporary pictures of King Edward V.

          The school itself was going through a crisis of principle at the time. A year before I arrived, the Headmaster and four members of staff were sacked for being too enthusiastic about the use of the cane. They enjoyed inflicting pain and would do so for the slightest transgressions. The new Head, a veteran from Bletchley and very intelligent it seems, was determined to put a stop to the barbarism of the past, and impose a strict-but-fair regime on his staff and his pupils, with mixed success.

          However, there was not the ethic of self-discipline that has to be fostered with a liberal environment, but rather the disorder that happens when there are revolutionary changes from one way of thinking to another: an uneasy relationship between the old guard and the new ensued. This was the late 1960s, so echoed what was going on in society in general.

          The school eventually became a sixth form college, and is now highly regarded.

          1. “I actually looked very much like contemporary pictures of King Edward V.”

            Well, come on then, show us the evidence.🤴🏻

      2. For a while, I had hair well over my collar. Looked like Dylan from Magic Roundabout, but it used to itch horribly, so I changed to current style, achieved by a #3 clipper. Much better. Goes nicely under a helmet, too.

          1. ‘Morning, George, Our Drill Instructor would come and stand right beside you and say, “Am I hurting you, lad? I should be, I’m standing on your hair!” before yelling at you about the need for a haircut.

          3. “Have you had a shave this morning, Sapper?”
            “Yes, Sir.”
            “Well stand closer to the razor next time.”

  79. VACANCIES

    Due to as recent large increase in workload we are now looking for several migrant support worker to help recent arrivals settle into the UK

        1. I just asked whether in that context, ” migrant ” was an adjective. or whether ” migrant worker ” was a noun ? If you see what I mean…..

          1. Not sure the relevance. A Migrant support worker is typically a charity roll where the function is to assist migrants

            I am clearly missing something? Maybe a brain

  80. The Withdrawal Agreement is a wide open trap waiting for the unwary to jump right in….

    As Brexit Central rightly tells us….

    ”It makes us a rule-taker in almost all areas of EU competence. Should it be agreed, Parliament would effectively be forced to accept, apply and obey whatever regulations the EU proposed and be bound by all rulings by the European Court of Justice. Contrary to the Prime Minister’s Lancaster House speech and manifesto pledge, the European Court of Justice retains de facto primacy over the UK, remaining the final arbiter of the Agreement and of the EU laws that affect us. Thus, the Agreement is remaining in the EU in all but name, but no longer having a say, thus breaking the spirit of the referendum result and the election manifesto promises.”

    Just run that again……..

    Britain ”would effectively be forced to accept, apply and obey whatever regulations the EU proposed and be bound by all rulings by the European Court of Justice.”

    That sounds absolutely perfect for any mega investor with inside knowledge to make a few billion dollars in ”highly regulated industries”…. exactly as happened in the US under Obama according to Peter Schweizer…..

    Oh !

  81. Been on a blackberry recce. Boy, this summer has done them no favours. I’ll see what’s available after our hols; with a bit of luck the cooler temperatures and a bit of rain might improve matter. All systems go before the Devil spits on them.
    An interesting article from Unheard:

    https://unherd.com/2019/09/why-is-the-world-going-blind/?tl_inbound=1&tl_groups%5B0%5D=18743&tl_period_type=3

    “Why is the world going blind?

    How parents are damaging their children’s eyesight
    Peter Franklin

    K-pop is short for Korean pop music. It’s a global phenomenon – with Korean boybands and girlbands breaking through into the music markets of neighbouring countries and, more recently, the West.

    But there’s something odd about the perfectly choreographed, meticulously turned-out K-pop idols adorning bedroom wall posters across the planet – none of them are wearing glasses. Well not odd, because in showbiz image is everything – but, rather, at odds with the astonishingly high levels of shortsightedness among young Koreans.

    Back in 2015, Nature published an article on the phenomenon by Elie Dolgin – and, if you’ll forgive me, it’s a proper eye-opener. It seems that the world is in the grip of a myopia epidemic – with an especially high rate of incidence in East Asia:

    “East Asia has been gripped by an unprecedented rise in myopia, also known as short-sightedness. Sixty years ago, 10–20% of the Chinese population was short-sighted. Today, up to 90% of teenagers and young adults are. In Seoul, a whopping 96.5% of 19-year-old men are short-sighted.”

    It’s been getting worse elsewhere too:

    “Other parts of the world have also seen a dramatic increase in the condition, which now affects around half of young adults in the United States and Europe — double the prevalence of half a century ago.”

    What on Earth is going on? Variations between different populations might suggest a genetic component, but Dolgin, noting the astonishing rise in cases from one generation to the next, says that “genetic changes happen too slowly to explain this rapid change”.

    We might be tempted to shrug our shoulders – after all, it’s a pretty minor condition, isn’t it? Well, not for everyone:
    “In severe cases, the deformation [of the eyeball] stretches and thins the inner parts of the eye, which increases the risk of retinal detachment, cataracts, glaucoma and even blindness… about one-fifth of university-aged people in East Asia now have this extreme form of myopia, and half of them are expected to develop irreversible vision loss.”

    A recent article in Optometry Times, by Raman P Sah, confirms the threat:

    “Myopia is now one of the leading causes of vision impairment and blindness in the world… The increasing prevalence of myopia has emerged as a global health concern because of sight-threating pathologies like myopic macular degeneration, choroidal neovascularization, cataract, and glaucoma associated with high myopia.”

    When a potentially serious medical condition that used to be rare (at least among young people) becomes increasingly common, we need to know what’s causing it.

    Can we blame reading for the epidemic – whether it’s printed material or, more latterly, electronic media? Is all that squinting over page and screen harming our eyesight? Dolgin argues that it isn’t – at least not directly.

    Researchers believe that the real problem is not with the act of reading (or checking social media apps or playing computer games), but with where such activity normally takes place: indoors. Dolgin guides us through the compelling evidence that exposure to the brightness of daylight helps young eyes stay healthy.

    Of course, humans have been spending time indoors ever since our ancestors built the first hut. But in recent times we’ve conspired to keep ourselves – and especially our children – cooped-up as never before.

    Though we fret about the impact of modern life (and especially new technology) on our wellbeing, we’re rather selective in our concerns. We pay a lot of attention to some potential threats (e.g. smartphone addiction) and surprisingly little to others (see above).

    Yes, it’s true that social media exposes young people to pressures and influences that previous generations did not experience, but what about all the other ways in which we’ve altered the physical and social environment in which children grow up? I’d say that any factor that prevents children getting enough sunshine is worth worrying about.

    Back in the 1990s, I got chatting to a very nice bunch of Seventh Day Adventists. They were missionaries, of a kind – dedicated to a Biblically-based programme of health and well-being. They summed up their approach in the acronym NEW START, which stands for Nutrition, Exercise, Water, Sunshine, Temperance, fresh Air, Rest, and Trust in God.

    Decades on, it strikes me that contemporary culture is now very keen on the NEW part of that formula (even if the ‘water’ bit is now called ‘hydration’). However, we’re not so good when in comes to the START. Obviously, Trust in God is a challenge to our sadly untrusting secular society, but we could make more of an effort on the STAR. Making sure children get the sleep they need, and stay away from the alcohol and other substances they definitely don’t need, is a matter of control (and teaching self-control), but to give them more sunshine and fresh air, we need to set them loose.

    It’s time to return to a free-range childhood with plenty of unstructured, unsupervised outdoor play. Of course, that requires reasonably clean and safe places for them to play in, but adults (including parents, teachers and the various regulators of the public realm) also need to get over their paranoid, risk-averse mind-set.

    In over-protecting children and over-organising their lives, we may be doing them real physical harm.

    If we really care about our kids, we should kick ’em out.”

    1. Good afternoon, Anne.

      You have until the 23rd.September………

      after that date they are infested by the heebie-jeebies!

      Well……..that is what we in Northants know to be factual!! :-))

    2. The fresh air theory didn’t hold good in my case; I spent lots of time outdoors in the fresh air, but was still myopic by the time I was twelve.

    3. In case the opportunity doesn’t present itself later, may I wish you a Happy Birthday – have a lovely day!

  82. A new Government cost reduction scheme

    They give pensioner bus passes but axe the bus service so they cannot use them

  83. Doctor is on his way to take laptop in for its hospital sojourn. My last posting until we return from Oop North.
    Another item from Unheard.

    https://unherd.com/2019/09/a-dire-warning-for-our-old-political-system/?tl_inbound=1&tl_groups%5B0%5D=18743&tl_period_type=3

    “A dire warning for our old political system

    Established parties are being rendered irrelevant by social change
    Tim Bale

    “Far more political parties get their obituaries written prematurely than actually pop their clogs. That’s not to say that the worst never happens. We do have the odd example of a so-called extinction event. The paradigmatic case in point being the sudden and virtually simultaneous collapse of several of Italy’s biggest parties in the early 1990s, during the perfect storm created by the end of the cold war and a spate of corruption scandals.

    But it’s worth reminding ourselves, especially when we’re talking about parties that have been around a while, that they do tend to limp and linger on. They fade slowly into obscurity and obsolescence, rather than dying a dramatic death.

    That’s partly because the barriers to entry for anybody aspiring to replace them are pretty damned high, particularly in plurality systems such as the UK’s. Historically, anyway, it’s been somewhere between difficult and impossible for any party that can’t manage to score around 30% of the nationwide vote here to break through — unless, like the Scottish and Welsh nationalists or the Northern Ireland parties, they can claim to speak for a particular part of the country with a particularly strong identity. Nigel Farage, in offering the Tories some kind of electoral pact with the Brexit Party, isn’t so much doing them a favour as trying to prevent a re-run of 2015 when Ukip won nearly four million votes and only one solitary seat.

    Britain’s big two have been so dominant for so long that they are more or less dug in in a slew of safe seats. That means that, unlike their competitors, they can actually afford to slip some way below the magic 30% and still win a reasonably respectable (and often fairly proportional) haul of constituencies.

    Infrastructure keeps them in place too. They hold significant capital, whether it be physical (such as constituency offices), financial (assets and the ability to raise loans and donations), or human (members, know-how, experience, and even cosy relationships with the print and broadcast media).

    Clearly, none of that stuff lasts for ever. But only very rarely does it disappear overnight. And if you don’t already have it — and new entrants by definition often don’t — then it can take time to get it together. Nor, unless success comes reasonably rapidly, can you guarantee that it’ll last long enough to consolidate for the long term what you’ve managed to build up in the first flush.

    Members, in particular, may be pretty easy-come, easy-go. And the technology that new parties nowadays use to help hook them in the first place can easily be turned against them. Social media will make it obvious that an increasing number of rats are leaving the sinking ship, perhaps precipitating even more of them to do so. Even direct debits, which used to be something of a godsend to parties by making membership renewal the default, have turned into a potential liability: most people can cancel them in seconds by swiping left or right.

    Older parties, of course, can’t completely avoid some of the same problems. As we show in our new book, Footsoldiers, members’ loyalty can be tested beyond breaking point, especially by leaders who take the party in a direction they fundamentally disagree with. We’re seeing that more than ever during our Brexit cleavage.

    But many of those members have been around an awfully long time, are socially as well as politically embedded in their local branches, may well represent them on town or county councils, and have stuck with it through thick and thin. As a result, they are significantly less likely to abandon or jump ship quite so rapidly.

    What established parties do find difficult to escape, however, is being rendered increasingly irrelevant by social, economic and cultural change. Most of them will have come into being by mobilising identities that once upon a time were not only widespread, and made a lot of sense, but were also institutionally reinforced by relationships with big external players that both anchored them ideologically and supplied them with valuable resources.

    On the Left, for example, you had social democratic and labour parties which mobilised class consciousness and were supported by trade unions. They demanded the state do more to look after workers by regulating the economy and maintaining a welfare state.

    On the Right, in many west European countries, you had Christian democrats, mobilising religious adherence and supported (albeit at arm’s length) by the Catholic church. They put more of an emphasis on international integration and the market and were underwritten by a densely-woven, civil society-run safety net that promoted traditional, family values.

    But class, even though it continues to play a huge role in deciding our life-chances, is no longer such a big part of people’s identities. Unions are pale shadows of what they once were as economies, at least in the liberal-capitalist West, have shifted irrevocably away from industry towards services. Conventional wisdom — partly thanks to the centre-left itself giving up the fight — has moved away from the idea that the state can and should do everything.

    On the other side of the fence, church attendance and religious observance has also declined significantly in most European countries. The Catholic church has been badly undermined by scandal, and the consumerism and nationalism it has traditionally frowned upon abound. Meanwhile, the welfare state, even if it’s fraying badly at the margins, has become something of a given, meaning parties of the mainstream Right and Left have to some extent become victims of their own post-war success.

    It is no accident, then, that it is parties in those traditions which (with a few honourable exceptions) seem to be suffering a slow (and, who knows, possibly in the end terminal) decline: what’s happened to both the Labour Party and Christian democrats in the Netherlands provides possibly the direst warning. This decline has been exacerbated in recent years by a failure to come up with convincing answers to widely-felt cultural anxieties brought about by mass immigration and its exploitation by arguably less responsible, but supposedly more responsive (and often more entrepreneurial) politicians – in their case, Geert Wilders and now Thierry Baudet.

    Whether we will inevitably see the same happen to both the mainstream Left and Right in the UK, however, is at least debatable. This is not necessarily the chronicle of a death foretold – for the Tories, anyway.

    The Conservative Party, with its own long-lasting nationalist, nativist and populist traditions, and its reliance not on God but on Mammon, has far less compunction — as it’s proving at this very moment — about running down the radical right route than its continental, Christian democratic, centre-right counterparts. As such, its chances of surviving the near-death experience represented by the European Parliament elections this summer are probably (famous last words!) reasonably good.

    The Conservative party can adapt and cater to these new times – an era where belonging, as self-styled conservative communitarians like to put it, seems to be assuming more and more importance. Although doing so might (as Sajid Javid’s recent spending review seems to recognise) also involve spending more money than ‘the gods of the copybook headings’ would like on things which are seen as a vital part of that community: schools and hospitals and law and order.

    Labour, for all its own enthusiasm for such spending, might have more of a problem, however. Its romantic attachment to the working class (however outdated its conception of it) and its reliance on the trade unions make it tricky for it to transition seamlessly into the kind of internationalist, socially liberal party that would suit many of its (overwhelmingly middle-class and well-educated) members. Moreover, that space is also occupied by the Lib Dems, who also have the advantage of a clear rather than a muddied message on Brexit.

    Indeed, Labour’s dilemma over the latter is in some ways its larger strategic and electoral dilemma writ large. Does it try and hang on, perhaps nostalgically, to what some of its supporters still insist talking and (worse still) thinking of as ‘their’ people? Or does it cut its losses, believing there’s more to be gained on what traditionalists like to stereotype and sneer at as the cosmopolitan side of town.

    Some will argue – with a fair bit of justification – that the divide between the two groups of potential voters isn’t quite as significant or, indeed, quite as zero sum as others insist. But few would deny that it exists at all. If so, can and should Labour continue to try straddle it? Or, is it about to fall — and fall fatally — between two stools.”

  85. BREAKING NEWS

    Corbyn has fled the UK and is seeking asylum in Brussels . He is stating harassment by the electorate as his reason for seeking asylum

    2. Asylum. Ah, those were the days. Why did we close them? It was the wonderful Spike Milligan who pointed out that the Palace of Westminster is a political asylum.

  86. Sad News

    My venerable Canon IP4600 has partially failed with the Black text print head having failed and be sent to the ink jet scap yard

      1. Now I have got to decide what to get as a replacement

        It had me baffled for some time as to why most Pdfs would print as would URL’s but no text appeared

          2. The problem I see with HP is the cartridges tend to be pricey including third party ones. HP do seem to get better reviews. There seem to be niggles with the Canon ones such as slow , noisy and paper feed temperamental. The plus side seem to be cheaper cartridges

          3. Think I might go with this one. I shall read up a bit more but this review looks ok and it is less than £44 now and comparable cartridges are cheap. Not sure if it prints on CD’s. Not something I have used much but if you want a back of Windows CD etc it can be useful. The absence of a fax does not bother me. Does anyone still use Fax ?

            https://www.expertreviews.co.uk/printers/all-in-one-printers/1404314/canon-pixma-mg5750-review-our-new-best-buy

  88. Spiked

    Perhaps the most troubling part of the document is a section that tacitly tells journalists that they are responsible for discrimination against Muslims.

    According to the guidance, journalists must be aware ‘that their

    content can have an impact on the wider community and on how minority

    communities are treated’, and that ‘insensitivities can damage

    communities’. Journalists are warned that they may ‘contribute to

    members of communities feeling divorced from, or misunderstood, by the

    media’ and that their reporting ‘can work to increase tension between

    communities, which can make harassment more likely’.

    All of this seems to deny any agency on the part of readers. It is

    taken as a given that ordinary people are essentially unthinking and are

    prone to outbursts of bigotry. Apparently one poorly worded tabloid

    op-ed could be enough to unleash the mob.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/09/12/islam-and-the-press/
    Unleash trhe mob,yeah right we all know what sort of murderous mob they fear and it ain’t us

  89. Much is made of the fact that Sir Geoffrey Boycott is a convicted woman beater.

    I seem to remember that well after his conviction it came to light that the woman who bore witness against him was a liar and that he had never beaten her at all.

    To be frank I often find Boycott arrogant, offensive and rude – but this does not necessarily mean that he should be described as a woman beater if he is not one.

    Please would someone clarify this matter for me.

    2. I don’t have it to hand Richard but I posted the DT story where she said to a friend she had fallen and made it up that Boycott assaulted her

    4. I will clarify it gladly, Rastus.

      Boycott was tried under the interrogative system in a French court, where a suspect is presumed guilty and has to prove his innocence, and where no one had the decency to explain the proceedings to him, which were held (without access to an interpreter) wholly in the French language. Boycott doesn’t speak or understand French.

      The false charges were brought by a woman who was intent on getting rich at Boycott’s expense. After the guilty verdict it emerged that she had offered to drop the charges if he would pay her a substantial sum of money in the high hundreds of thousands to the low millions of pounds. The court awarded her damages of one Franc!

      An investigation by the Daily Telegraph in 2015 suggested that he was innocent of all the charges laid against him. Everyone who has ever met him has said that he has never shown or displayed any violent tendencies in his life. Ever.

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/09/10/sir-geoffrey-boycott-couldnt-give-toss-knighthood-criticism/

      I know a lot of people find him gruff, even for a blunt-speaking Yorkshireman, but that doesn’t automatically make him rude, arrogant or offensive. I would much sooner be in the company of honest, plain-speaking men, like Sir Geoffrey, than any number of sly, evasive, dishonest, mealy-mouthed types, of which there are so many in other parts of the UK and elsewhere.

    5. Ditto Assange, when all the usual suspects were recently queuing up to denounce him, talking about his violence against the two women he was accused by the Swedish prosecutor of raping…except that the women themselves never alleged any rape, only that they believed that he gave them an STD, and wanted him tested. Sex was consensual but unprotected. There was no violence. But that didn’t stop anyone from criticising him for it.

    6. That was my impression too.
      Apparently she let slip to a relative that she had, in fact, fallen over and decided to use the injuries to make the false claim in an effort to extort money out of him.

  91. Hmm interesting comment from elsewhere

    Trying to put in context a little my thoughts about the sudden use
    (in the UK and US) of the courts by leftists in response to losing two
    big votes (the Brexit referendum and Trump’s victory) it strikes me that
    most are missing the point.

    Suddenly the left is now defending
    judges and judicial independence. They spent decades tearing down our
    institutions, insisting that anything with too many white men couldn’t
    be trusted. It’s often forgotten now but Michael Foot’s suicide note
    manifesto openly called for the police to be made political. Blair went
    on to achieve this by exploiting the murder of Stephen Lawrence. The
    modern left has no interest in defending our legal system or judges –
    it’s pure cynicism.

    The public though is right to wonder what’s
    going on and the left is trying to shut it down by saying “oh don’t you
    trust the courts?” when the public is correctly perceiving that
    something is off. This is a rather novel development and notably it’s
    something that the right would *not* have done had they lost either of
    those two votes. We have the spectacle of Labour MPs now championing
    judges trying to intervene in political actions. Often they are Blairies
    who sat by or indeed cheered as Blair politicised the civil service,
    broke convention after convention on things like the Parliament Act,
    took us into a war on a false premise, destroyed the House of Lords,
    sold seats in the House of Lords, walked all over Parliament, destroyed
    the conventions on local people selecting candidates by imposing token
    women, he destroyed the conventions that had surrounded charity funding
    with his ridiculous foundations, he destroyed the conventions around
    behaving fairly in elections (for example he was notorious for having a
    lot of sycophantic interviews one after the other then the next morning
    announcing an election (yes yes having lied to the Queen about why he
    was timing it that way), thus binding all the media to be impartial
    right after he abused it) etc etc. Many of these things were wildly
    controversial. Alas we didn’t have wealthy people like Gina Miller to
    spend their husband’s money dragging Blair through the courts.

    So
    what is it all about? My view is that we are looking at the final stages
    of the long march through the institutions. As the far left has taken
    over the legal system, much of business, the police, the media, the
    schools suddenly they now find they like these institutions. They can
    rely on them to produce “reports” “proving” that a mass immigration rate
    of 5 million per decade “benefits” the economy. They can rely on them
    to implement things like the Orwellian Equality Act on local fire
    bridages and cricket clubs. They can rely on them to silence voices they
    dislike. They can rely on them to look the other way when Muslims
    torture and molest English girls yet pounce on people who make jokes on
    twitter…

    And finally here we are –

    they can even rely on
    them to try to undo the results of referendums. Blair lied and cheated
    at every stage and was allowed to get away with it and then shred his
    documents as he left office. Now the possibility that Johnson called an
    election for less than “pure” reasons – something that can be said of
    virtually every election in history – is a matter for the courts.

    The
    demographics are shifting against us and the institutions of this
    country are now largely hostile to our people. So I don’t think we can
    even take comfort thinking the next Labour government will be so tied up
    – the courts, media and activists won’t have any interest in tring to
    trip up Corbyn.
    Thanks Jimmy

    1. Just follow the money. It’s exactly the same in the US… and where does the billion dollar paper trail go……… ?

    2. This is the reason that Blair’s “education, education, education” has become the systematic brainwashing of the young, so that the centre of gravity has moved left. Only old fogies are on the right. A second referendum will see the addition of 16/17 year olds who can be sure to vote remain, along with all the “new citizens” of our once great country.

  95. Co-op boss warns of no-deal Brexit fresh food shortages and price hikes

    So Co-Op project fear ,now. Cannot they read it is a worst case scenario and it specifically states there will be no shortages but could be some slight delays

    Apples and pears and soft fruits imported during the winter are unlikely to be from the EU

    Why would France choose to delay its own exports to the UK as particularly with fruit and salad items they may be no good when they arrive so would reject and it would be the French & other EU counties picking up the tab

    Steve Murrells said the product area he is most worried about is fruit, where he expected prices to surge as retailers may be forced to fly in supplies if the chaos predicted in leaked government documents became a reality.
    “We think there will be shortages in some fresh food areas. Where that is the case we would endeavour to bring it in to give our customers a choice.”
    Murrells said the convenience chain was using extra warehouse space to stockpile long-life products such as water, toilet paper and canned goods – but the pinch point was fresh food, particularly soft fruits such as blueberries, and also apples and pears, which are imported during the British winter.

  96. BTL Comment : WAY OUT FOR BORIS

    Boris is not snookered.

    In the event of no agreement, he could write to the EU Commission thus:

    “Since no agreement has been reached between us, I am writing on the instruction of the UK Parliament to request an extension to the date of the UK leaving the European Union, as required by UK law, from 31st October 2019 until 31st January 2020.
    You will no doubt wish to know what the purpose of this extension is, but since Parliament has three times rejected your terms, and you have said that you are unable to change these, I am unable to see what the purpose of this extension might be.”

    He could thus comply with the law, whilst at the same time making it clear that this is not his choice, which is rather to leave without an agreement on 31st October

    1. They have set out the wording of the letter in the act, so he would not be able to use his own wording.

    2. A caller on LBC suggested that Boris revoked Article 50. Pushes for an election, now that No-deal/Brexit is off the table. Wins the election (doubtful, unless he explains his strategy during the campaign), then re-invokes Article 50 and leaves the next day.
      It’s a high-risk strategy. It assumes that Boris will win the election with a suitable majority. The two years under Art.50 is the maximum allowed, unless both parties agree to extend it (as they have done), so leaving after a day, bearing in mind it’s already been 3 years after the referendum, should be possible. With Brexit off the table, in theory, Labour and the Lib Dems would jump at the option of a GE.

      1. The ECJ judgement given last December would scupper that plan, as there would be no reinvoking of A50 within two years as it would be seen as gaming the system.

        1. Exactly. The EU makes the rules and expects everyone to abide by them – except themselves, obviously.

      1. I presume Boris is aware of this document but neither he nor Nigel have used it to get us out of the EU. It seems our civil servants have been giving illegal advice on extension of Article 50 with the connivance of May and the EU. We should have left on May 29.

  98. The Tories’ egotistical refusal to engage with the Brexit Party may spell their downfall

    ANDREW LILICO

    If Boris backslides on his tough position, both he and his party are done

    Nigel Farage has offered the Tory Party a “non-aggression pact” for the surely soon-forthcoming general election. We are told that “senior Tory sources” have dismissed the prospects of any such pact, declaring Nigel Farage not a “fit and proper person” for any role in government.

    Now of course “senior Tory sources” doesn’t have to mean anyone on Team Boris. After all, half the Tory MPs voted against him in the recent leadership campaign, and several members of his Cabinet literally stood against him themselves. We might not, for example, want to treat the comments of a “senior Tory source” as indicative of his own thinking.

    Nonetheless, there certainly has been a certain sort of Tory Leaver who in the past used to attempt to distance themselves from Farage. During the early 2010s there was even the “Farage paradox” that, the better Ukip did in the opinion polls, the lower support for leaving the EU became.

    During the EU referendum there was quite a bitter fight to be the designated official Leave campaign, and many mainstream Leavers continue to believe that if the Farage campaign had won that designation, Remain would have won the referendum easily.

    One problem with Farage was that he so often seemed captured by an irrational cynicism about the political Establishment and an almost conspiracy-theory view of the world. Even after the referendum was won he told us that the Tory politicians couldn’t be trusted to deliver it.

    At every slight flinch or compromise from the government he declared that the Tory Party was planning to betray Leave voters by either neutering Brexit with some Brexit In Name Only “deal” or by ultimately plotting not to leave at all.

    It seemed like frothing madness and sensible people declared themselves embarrassed. But you know what? He was completely right. Nigel Farage is the most vindicated man in British politics.

    Then in 2018, when details of Theresa May’s appalling deal started to emerge, Dominic Cummings wrote a notorious blog calling for Tory donors to form a new political movement to achieve Brexit. Did Boris or Jacob Rees-Mogg do it? Did the Spartan Tories break away and form a new party? Did the DUP launch a Great Britain branch to run? No. The one who stepped up to the plate, with his Brexit Party, was Nigel Farage.

    If it hadn’t been for Farage and the Brexit Party, we’d still have Theresa May as Prime Minister, Labour would be 15 per cent ahead in the polls, and the imminent general election would have given a quasi-Marxist anti-Semite a thumping majority.

    So we’ll have no lectures from Tories who voted for May’s deal after declaring it “vassalage”, let alone from other Tories who actually pushed her deal from the off, about how Nigel Farage is not “fit and proper”. We have all seen who the politicians are who are not “fit and proper”.

    These egoistic games must end. Nigel Farage does not want any position in government. He wants only to help achieve what is now the official central policy of the Conservative Party – leaving the EU at the earliest date (and not with any deal that remotely resembles that crafted by Theresa May).

    Many Leavers (including me) have been impressed with Boris Johnson thus far. He has pressed hard for an October departure and it will be no fault or failing of his if and when that does not occur. He has started a widespread purge of Continuity Remainer MPs (notwithstanding frankly implausible reports that the whip may be returned to them – an act that would surely indicate a collective death-wish on the part of the Tory Party that no-one within it could gainsay).

    Many Brexit Party supporters have been sufficiently impressed that they have considered a pact viable. But Tory strategists should not confuse that with the notion that the Brexit Party can be squeezed or marginalised. The polls indicated that around a third of Brexit Party supporters have rallied to Mr Johnson’s “October 31, do or die” standard. But when he cannot deliver that, and returns to opposition, Team Boris should not assume Brexit Party supporters will stay with him.

    Tories like me left the party because Tory MPs lied to us (and made us liars ourselves when we campaigned for them) for decades. We are not going to suddenly start trusting the Tory Party again on the basis of warm words – those same warm words that were outright lies as recently as the 2017 General Election. If the Tories want ever to be trusted again, they need to deliver. And thus far, for all his good efforts, Boris has delivered precisely zip.

    Tory strategists should also have no delusions about attracting Labour Leave voters. That was May’s 2017 hope, and it failed. Recent opinion polls say very few Labour voters, of any Brexit identity, would consider voting Tory. The Brexit Party can reach these people. The toxic Tories simply cannot.

    It would probably make sense only to announce any formal pact right at the last moment, as the campaign began, to minimise the risk that Remainers in Labour and the Lib Dems formally collaborate as well. But a formal pact may not be that important anyway. The Brexit Party was never going to stand against the Spartans, and other notable Leavers such as Jacob Rees-Mogg are also surely safe from Brexit Party challenge.

    Even if the Tories do not formally stand aside in Northern Labour Leave seats, Tory Leave voters will probably be smart enough to vote tactically for Brexit Party candidates in large numbers – especially if the Tory Party didn’t get around to campaigning much in those areas.

    So whether “senior Tory sources” declare now that they want a pact with the Brexit Party or not isn’t especially important. But it’s dumb for them to imagine that they can marginalise the Brexit Party. And they should note this. Boris’s poll lead at the moment is 100 per cent the consequence of his brand as the leader of the no-compromise, no-deal, October 31 Brexit movement. If he backslides from that in any way whatsoever, Boris and his Tory Party are done.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/09/12/tories-egotistical-refusal-engage-brexit-party-may-spell-downfall/

    1. It seems bizarre not to agree on which seats to fight. It benefit both parties. The Brexit Party will stand aside where the Conservatives are best positioned to win and the Conservatives should stand aside in seats the Brexit party stand take

      It is a win win situation

      1. It’s the ego problem Bill,how many Conservative candidates would voluntarily stand down even if they know they can’t win??
        (Iwas a contender syndrome)

        1. I think it’s more a question of not splitting the vote in Labour marginals where there is interest in the Brexit Party.

          1. I hope that secretly, there’s a small (Con/TBP cross party) team looking at all the constituencies and cooking up a cunning GE stunt.
            But I always was a wishful thinker. I doubt that it’s easy to plot anything secretly these days, the slightest electronic slip in the ether is pounced upon.

      1. Unless you are a member of one particular regiment, which one escapes me, that is so permitted because a runner, arriving at Wellington’s HQ with news of an important victory sans hat, saluted when giving the news.

  101. Brexit issues aside, what are we going to do about b######s like these?

    Britain’s biggest ever visa scam: Fraud gang is SPARED jail after creating a vast network of fake companies and bogus documents so 900 illegal migrants could stay in UK
    Gang set up fake companies and provided documents to immigration applicants
    They also transferred money into their accounts to make them look wealthy
    Court hears around 900 people were helped by the bogus set-up
    After four were jailed last year, latest four in the gang avoid prison sentences
    One member of the gang has run off to Bangladesh, reportedly to run as an MP

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7455895/Fraud-gang-SPARED-jail-massive-immigration-scam.html

    Can’t we slash and burn these people’s businesses the way that the South Africans are dealing with troublesome Nigerians?

    1. As his vertically challenged pal has decided to stand down in around six weeks, is Vaz looking over his shoulder?

    1. Here you go, Polly.
      “The Chuka Umunnas, Anna Soubrys, Tony Blairs, Peter Mandelsons, Vince Cables, Andrew Adonises and sundry nationalist and greenish politicians, bankrolled by George Soros and other financial interests, are linked by their contempt for democracy and their hostility to Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell and the socialist policies they champion.”

    1. HM: “Well done Prime Minister. I’m glad that you took my advice; we’ll show them yet.”

      PM: “Thank you Ma’am, indeed we shall.”

  105. The French city zones where police rarely escape unscathed. Gavin Mortimer. 12 September 2019

    A policeman called Camille said there were indeed inner-city housing estates where firefighters and ambulance refuse to go. The police brave them, but only in company strength, and even then they’ll usually meet a barrage of something, be it stones or abuse. Speaking in 2016, Camille noted that the hostility had strengthened since the murder of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists the previous year. ‘This is only the start,’ one youth had shouted at Camille’s unit. ‘You’ll see… in a few years, Allah will be in power.’

    I haven’t heard that anyone has shouted that in the UK yet but that might be because it’s been suppressed by the MSM. Whatever, it’s as true here as in France!

    Worth a read if only for the details of reality as opposed to the elite’s narrative of Peace through Diversity!

    https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/09/the-french-suburbs-where-police-rarely-escape-unscathed/

    2. Wotcha Minty
      Behind every Islamic whine for special treatment is the unspoken threat of violent mayhem and boy are the PTB frightened
      From traffic policing to bennies fraud these people are virtually untouchable,vile crimes like gang rape and FGM can only be mentioned in hushed voices

  106. Just back from the 21st visit to the sea.

    I’ll love you and leave you until another day.

    Stop press: One of Toy Boy’s top chaps is helping the Boys in Blue with their enquiries…..

    Politicians – doncha just luv ’em? (No reply required…)

  107. ECB to print €20 billion euros a month.
    While making people pay 0.5% to hold their cash.

    They haven’t got a clue.

    We need to get out before we’re liable for their ongoing financial incompetence.

    Yellowhammer is not the worst scenario.
    Staying in is.

    2. They don’t care. This is something people don’t seem to understand. The EU isn’t interested in economics. It’s just another weapon. Their sole and only intent is the continuation of le project.

  110. I see yet another legal challenge has been launched in Scotland.

    Funny that.

    I don’t remember a single successful legal challenge when Gordon Brown signed the Lisbon treaty with no democratic mandate to do so.

  113. New Trading Site just opened

    You can trade in your current wife of husband for a new model they have all been given a test drive and all e in full working order

    No Try before you Buy though

  114. Philip Green’s Topshop and Topman report £505m loss

    Not good news for him these were seen s the star performers of his ailing empire

    Philip Green’s Topshop and Topman chains slumped to a £505m loss last year as sales fell and the retail tycoon wrote down the value of two of his flagship brands.
    Sales at the fashion brands fell 9% to £846.8m in the year to 1 September as they struggled to compete with the likes of Asos, H&M and Primark. In the UK sales fell by 9.8%.
    Write-offs relating to loss-making stores and the unwinding of the Ivy Park athleisure joint venture with Beyoncé combined with the £161.3m write-off of inter-company debts to plunge Topshop/Topman to a £505m pre-tax loss, far ahead of the £3.8m loss the year before.

  115. Right……I’m off to cook some dinner…. and I need a glass of wine with it!

    See you tomorrow folks!

  117. ”Britain must apply and obey whatever regulations the EU proposed”

    69 meetings with the EU Commission last year.

    Billions made from investing in ”highly regulated industries” in 2009 when ”best friend Obama was regulator in chief”.

    I just Love these purely innocent coincidences !

    1. Hi Polly,

      Can I offer you another mystery to unravel. As powerful as the palindrome is, the Rothschilds are equally powerful and if one criticizes them there is an immediate cry of anti-Semitism.
      However, when the young Goldsmith/Rothschild girl, Iris, tragically died recently her memorial and funeral services were held in a church and not a synagogue.
      I know that for a fact because the son of one of my work colleagues was a pal and attended both services.
      Now if one digs around the internet there are some crazy sounding theories about the Rothschilds being controlled by the Jesuits. What do you reckon?

  118. Evening, everyone. It’s been a lovely day here, although I’ve been indoors most of it. Hope the weather is fine for the weekend; last year the flypast on Battle of Britain Sunday was cancelled due to a poor met forecast.

    1. Interestingly, the final recognised end date for the ‘Battle of Britain’ is the 31st of October.

      1. 15th September was the tipping point. The biggest battle of the campaign took place on that day and it was following it that the invasion was postponed.

      1. For a moment, I wondered what you’d done and then I realised your second post came first, if you see what I mean 🙂 Yes, it officially started on 10th July and ended on 31st October. If you were unfortunate enough to have been killed outside those dates, you are not numbered among the Few – who are down to four, I believe.

      1. Sunday, I should imagine. The Spitfire and Hurricane flew over Westminster Abbey on Sunday for Battle of Britain Day.

  120. Completely and utterly off topic.

    My tractor mower “shed” one of its three blades a couple of weeks ago. I found the blade last week. Tonight I found the locking nut that is supposed to keep it in place. The nut is roughly 1 square inch.

    The potential area of “search” being the paths cut through the meadow, is approximately a mile by 8 feet wide. ie approximately six million square inches. At those odds I think I need to start doing the lottery.

    Luck has been running against us this year, perhaps it’s changing.

    I certainly hope so.

    1. Perhaps you have a magnetic personality. To be honest, whenever I sit down on a train or aircraft I’m always guaranteed there’ll be a nut in the next seat.

  121. John Bercow today –

    “One should no more refuse to request an extension of article 50 because
    of what one might regard as the noble end of departing from the EU as
    soon as possible than one could possibly excuse robbing a bank on the
    basis that the cash stolen would be donated to a charitable cause
    immediately afterwards.”

    But if the law is an ass, must you mate with a donkey ?

  124. I listened to Nigel Farage on LBC this evening. He was on fire tonight and it amazes me that people come on to his show and try and get the better of him. Where Brexit and anything concerned with Brexit are concerned Nigel is a master of his brief. Two callers stuck out: Greg and the second, Mark tried to take Nigel on and argue from dodgy ground. The result was that both got their ärses handed to them in a sling. However, unlike O’Brien Nigel does it with knowledge, wit and no nastiness. When he’s in the form he showed tonight it’s little surprise that the Tories do not want him near any GE campaign that they plan to run. He would put them in the shade and I don’t think that they could handle that.

    1. Nigel Farage is an absolute hero for what he has done for this country. In my opinion he is easily the most influential political of the 21st century, without him we would have had no referendum. Without the Brexit Party we would still have PM May and without his UKIP we would probably still have Cameron. And he is our only chance of a clean-break Brexit. All this without ever being elected to Westminster.

      My only criticism is that he is a one-trick pony on Brexit. I hope that the Brexit Party will continue in some form even if we properly leave. I hope he has a succession plan in place, to pass on his legacy of decency, honesty and common sense to British politics.

    3. I haven’t been surfing the net today, so I can’t really make an authoritative statement, but I suspect that Boris is keeping his options open regarding Nigel’s support at any future General Elections. Wasn’t there a Telegraph article a few days ago suggesting that secret BP and ERG talks were happening?

      1. The talks were described as tentative, I believe. I hope that Boris isn’t starting to believe his own publicity: downhill all the way from that position.

  125. Goodnight, everyone. I may or may not have Internet access over the weekend, so don’t be surprised if I am AWOL.

  126. If those drone twonks disrupt the wife’s plane for even a second, I will do what the police won’t and find him and insert his drone up his backside with the rotors still going.

  127. I shall be getting my laptop soon, which I want as independent
    use away from the husband’s computer ( i have account s on
    the computer and my files are stored there.
    The point of me having a laptop was independence away from the
    computer but now husband tells me it’ll be easier to link my
    laptop to the computer account of mine and all my documents
    backed up on the computer in the ‘ cloud ‘ as it’ll be easier if
    it goes wrong. I suppose my knowledge of such things is more
    limited then I thought but I wanted my laptop to be totally
    independent of the husband’s computer.

    1. Being a cynic, I’m a bit suspicious of the ‘cloud’.

      What I would suggest to back up your stuff in case of emergencies is a portable hard drive. I reckon a 500GB storage is more than enough for most people.

      If you’re capable of transferring stuff to a USB stick, you’ll have no problems transferring stuff to one of those. Also, being very small, they can be tucked away somewhere safe.

      2. My husband uses the cloud all the time and says it’ll
        be easier if my laptop documents are backed up
        on the computer cloud system because if my laptop
        Is broken or stolen then I’ve lost everything.
        Mind you he doesn’t always use cloud himself when
        he backs things up on discs and memory sticks.

        1. I keep all my photos backed up on a portable hard disk and the original SD cards. The rest of my files are backed up by my son in Basel. I don’t use the cloud. Though my phone probably does, but those photos are expendable. I don’t like the way Google tracks every thing I do.

          1. My husband is very trusting of the cloud and backs up most
            things there but some documents he backs up on discs and
            memory sticks. He doesn’t even mind Google tracking
            what he does. He would argue that if everything is legal and
            above board then why worry and it’s all encrypted anyway
            He’ll worry about me losing
            things if the laptop is broken or lost so the need to
            back things up. I May use Memory sticks.

            I shall have what I want with the search engine which
            won’t be Google Chrome ( I have that on this Samsung Tablet)
            I shall go with Firefox.

          2. I use Firefox but it’s just as bad. Everything I do is monitored and thrown back at me sometime later – eg on Facebook adverts – they show stuff my husband looked at, or that I might have looked at some time before.

            Saying if it’s all legal, and of course I never do anything illegal makes a nonsense of the wonderful GDPR act we had imposed on us by the EU last year. Every site you go to now tells you they track your every move on cookies. Privacy?? Pish!

          3. I dislike that utterly, whatever you ever looked at turning
            up for you to see again. Even groceries with online
            shopping, Waitrose remember what you buy,
            and I utterly loath those cookies that pop up or
            boxes to tick before you can visit anywhere on line.
            Sometimes you press something and are told
            ‘ Thank you for the information you have given us ”
            and I think what information !!! .
            My husband is very trusting of the likes of Microsoft
            and he finds Google very helpful so will put
            up with their intrusive nsture.
            I will insist upon Firefox ( even if they are still a pain)
            and Microsoft edge.
            A online friend once said the internet
            Is like leaving a door open to your house, I’ve
            akways remembered that.

          4. Remember – these search engines and social media platforms are “free” because you are their product.

          5. It’s living in a goldfish bowl now.
            Emails are quicker then letters but total privacy is
            a price to pay for our modern and more convenient lives.

          6. To paraphrase a saying of many years ago.

            Never put in writing/an email something you would not wish to see on the front page of (name your favourite newspaper) the Times.

          7. Put your settings to “clear all history” when you turn off your browser.
            Turn your computer/laptop off completely every night.

        2. All my work is on a local nas thingy. That’s then backed up to an external HDD. The really important stuff is on dropbox and I regularly duplicate to iCloud, or whatever nonsense it is once a week.

          As that’s a password protected blob file it’s hardly accessible and, really if someone wants to get to it, good for them. They can read my rather bad stories and pictures of Claudius.

        3. Everything I have is backed upon to two portable hard drives. NOTHING goes to Cloud.

          Simple to do once you have trained yourself. Second nature to me.

          Edited to dissuade any more effing pedants.

          3. Not quite.
            This is the paddy approach:

            Everything I have is backed upon to two potable portable hard drives.

          4. And looking again, I see I missed a bit as well as my Oirish faux pas.

            Once upon a time?

            or:

            is backed upon up on.

          5. “Everything I have is backed upon to two potable hard drives.

            Keep ’em in the drinks cabinet, do you?

          6. Same here – everything double backed up on external hard drives which are stored separately. With essential documents in an encrypted flash drive kept in the car.

  128. I know it’s old but it’s still worth a mention

    Hacker:

    Don’t tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers. The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country; The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country; The Times is read by the people who actually do run the country; the Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country; the Financial Times is read by people who own the country; the Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country, and the Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.

    Good night from the warm Algarve.

    1. And Sun readers don’t care who runs the country as long as she’s got big tits. (Or something like that?)

      Good night!

        1. I remember years ago listening to Chris Tarrant on Capitol Radio saying he felt sorry for people who bought The Sun as they couldn’t write in and complain.

      4. Did you retrieve your bus pass Sue?

        Have been to a meeting this evening so I haven’t scrolled through comments yet.

        I hate driving in the dark .. No sign of big moths or bats , nothing as I drove along , so different from a few years ago .. Countryside is becoming sterile !

        2. I did, yes. Thank you.
          A long bus ride through Acton, Harlesden and Willesden.
          The bus came to a halt at one point in Harlesden as there was a group of young black men fighting in the road. Just fisticuffs as far as I could see but the driver said that he was worried and would wait for them to move away.
          I got there and back safely though. The guys at the Willesden Garage were very helpful.

          1. Acton, Harlesden, Willesden, not been there for a while. But I remember the 666 trolleybus that plied that route. Just.

          3. Of course I do. That nice Mr Brown decided to give pensioners free bus passes (to be paid for by local councils and not his Government, of course). So I would be a bit daft to drive into town with my Wrinklies to watch a film every Monday when going by bus costs me nothing.

    1. One route out to deal with the Conservative candidates who would lose out by not standing would be for the Brexit Party to select the existing Conservative candidate as a BP candidate under the BP umbrella.

      The Conservatives and the BP can then support the candidate and Labour and other voters can vote BP with a clear conscience.

      1. Unfortunately the Conservative candidates in question would still be perceived as Conservatives, regardless of the colour of rosette. Yer traditional labour voter wouldn’t go near. Only bona fide Brexit Party candidates will do.

        Remember when Ford owned Jaguar Cars and produced the ‘X’ type – a Jaguar badged car on a Mondeo chassis. It fooled no-one.

  130. Have I missed something? The BBC is obsessing about the Scottish court ruling but not a word about the previous week’s ruling from an English court. Was the earlier case not reported? Why is the Scottish ruling correct – hence BJ lied – but the English ruling not?

    1. Rich people !

      Just had an election or a referendum and didn’t get the result you wanted?
      No problem just call Scottish Judges. Scottish judges specialise in getting an unwritten constitution to mean exactly what you, the client, wants it to mean.

      All of our Judges are totally reliable, once they are bought they stay bought.

      1. Just like the English one who let off the four Bangladeshi criminal fraudsters. See Belle’s post from Daily Fail.

  131. A bit late, so you will be reading this in the morning.
    The European Central Bank is going full speed ahead with Quantative Easing (the stuff that was invented after the financial crash, where you digitally print money you haven’t got) Hard to do anything else when you are already on negative interest rates).
    It would be dead funny if the Remainers won and we stayed in the EU just as the Euro went bust, wouldn’t it ?

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