801 thoughts on “Thursday 14 November: The Environment Agency’s wildlife policy has made flooding worse”

  1. Morning Geoff.

    BBC:

    One in 50 ‘children in need’ are not yet born

    Not a dickie bird in the report about the far-higher number of unborn who’ll be shouldering the massive national debt being promised by our profligate politicians.

    Only a rumour but I read that leading UK politicians will be entering as many games events as possible in the ‘Chuck some money at it’ category so that the gold medals they’re assured of winning will help pay off the national debt.

    1. …and not a word about the fast-breeder Mohammedans who will be sucking up all the bennies, prior to growing up and fiddling themselves into high-level policy-making positions with a view to Islamification of the UK.

      Be afraid, be very afraid.

        2. “My personal bugbear is the way supermarkets price some things per kg, others per 100g, others per 10g and others per item in a multipack.” Even I, mathematically challenged as I am, can multiply 10g by 100 and 100g by 10 to convert them all to kilos. If there is a multipack I work out the price of the individual item then compare them with other multipack items, so if you’ve got 4 in one pack, but 6 in another, you work out per item and multiply accordingly.

          1. Like railway fares and tariffs for gas and electric, I suspect the intention is to confuse.

            The following website is very useful for comparing prices across different retailers.

            My supermarket.

            Incidentally, I bought a jar of Bovril last week from a bargain shop in town and none of the main retailers are anywhere near the price I paid. I.e. it pays to shop around.

          1. Apropos hitching a ride, I heard that Greta the Goblin was on her way back from America.

            Does anybody know by what means?

          2. She announced in a tweet on Tuesday that she’d found a ride aboard a sailboat with Riley Whitlum and Elayna Carausu, an Australian couple and their toddler who post about their travels on YouTube.

          4. Does anybody care – unless of course her hypocrisy will be on show yet again.

            ‘Morning, Peddy.

          5. ‘Morning, Hugh.

            Just curious to know what she would do, if she couldn’t get a lift on a sailboat, without breaking her principles.

  5. Labour is on the brink of the most seismic wipeout in British election history. SHERELLE JACOBS. 14 NOVEMBER 2019.

    This could actually be it – the end of Labour. Some may scoff, pointing out that it has narrowed the gap with the Tories in some polls. But on the ground, in the heartlands, the party smells of death.

    Morning everyone. I actually have no idea what the result of this election is going to be though if it ends in the extinction of the Labour Party it would not be all bad. After all there would then be the chance of something arising that actually stood for the white working class.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/11/14/labour-brink-seismic-wipeout-british-election-history/

    1. Doubt it. Polls are often wrong when compared to the actual result. People revert to the familiar.

  7. Good morning thinkers

    A bright frosty morning here .. sounds of cars de thawing , and a rumble of a tractor in the distant, warming up .

    Bad weather has been predicted for later in the day .

    2. “Ingen dårlig vær, bare dårlige klær”
      Weegie saying: No bad weather, only bad clothing.

        1. I like a caffe corretto when I’m out ‘n about in Italy.
          Espresso & grappa. Puts hairs on your chest, so it does.
          In my office, there’s a Polish dentist who offers the Polish equivalent – strong coffee & rocket fuel, at what must be 1 000% proof. Oof!

    2. EU it say no to nationalisation while we’re still a member, ditto subsidising industry. Joined up thinking has never been Labour’s forte.

  10. Good Morning, all

    Irrefutable proof of the decline in Scottish education – and/or the DT letters page staff who published them.

    SIR – The fuelling of vehicles with hydrogen (Letters, November 13) has to be a good thing.

    However, separating hydrogen from the atmosphere requires vast amounts of electrical power, and this makes it uneconomical in today’s financial climate. Generating the electricity used will cause significant pollution.

    To move a car weighing a ton 10 miles, the only green way is to push it.

    James Pickering
    Crimond, Aberdeenshire

    If Mr Pickering can separate hydrogen from the atmosphere he is a canniest scientist in the world.

    SIR – Why are electric vehicles not fitted with two batteries (Letters, November 13), each at half or 60 per cent of their present capacity?

    While running on one battery, wheel-driven alternators could be used for charging the “standby” unit, thereby providing (theoretically) an infinite range.

    This seems a simple solution to me – or am I missing something?

    David Alexander
    Banchory, Aberdeenshire

    And how much additional power will be drawn from the battery being used to operate the car, Mr Alexander?

    1. Well done, Mr Alexander – another massive fail in the search for perpetual motion!

      ‘Morning, Citroen.

    3. One suspects tongue-in-cheek. The fool in these letters is the letter editor, for publishing whats either a joke, or technically illiterate drivel.

  11. Maybe if we didnt build houses on flood plains
    and didn’t create flood plains by removing trees which even
    those in medieval periods knew soaked up excess water in
    fields and also had smaller fields. Less building, less people
    and taking care of our landscape responsibly .
    It’s our excessive house building policy which is causing issues,
    we are a small island and it cannot take anymore.

    1. Most fields had ditches around them to drain waters away. When they build on farmland the first thing they do is fill the ditches in

    2. And there is one very obvious cause driving the excessive house building; not the only one, but a hefty contributor to the problem.

      2. They were talking on BBC Radio 4 this morning about small pre-fabs possibly being used to solve the problem of the housing shortage. I don’t think our large immigrant families would be expected to live in such accommodation.

        1. WE don’t have the land for such low density housing. After the ware the land was there, Clear bombed houses and drop a prefab on the land. That is no longer an optioning fact most large redevelopments in London involve demolition low density housing and replacing it with high rise a very slow and very expensive process

          1. High-rise may be slow in the planning consent phase, but if they can buikd at a rate of a floor a day for the steelwork (as seen endlessly on Discovery channel), then the filling-in and fitting out shouldn’t take so very long. Finished within 6 months of cutting ground.

  12. Morning all

    SIR – The removal of the national flood defence budget from the incompetent grasp of the Environment Agency is now essential.

    Its misguided policy on safeguarding animal and bird life by ceasing to dredge rivers regularly has, over time, massively reduced their drainage capacity after heavy rains, and has in fact led to the drowning of millions of small mammals.

    There have also been grotesque examples of wasting money, such as spending £500 per vole to remove them from where flood defence work was due to start. In another case, a £20,000 repair job ballooned to £200,000 by the time badgers were moved to man-made setts – which 
they promptly abandoned.

    During the floods in the Somerset Levels in 2014, one long-term resident pointed out that before 1989, when flood defence was managed by the National Rivers Authority, the exit rivers were dredged regularly every autumn where needed, and it took 
five days of continuous rain for any risk of overtopping. After the Environment Agency took over, dredging was discontinued and now it took a mere two days of rain before overtopping occurred.

    R B Skepper
    Member, Middle Alde Internal Drainage Authority
    Woodbridge, Suffolk

    SIR – Before the Environment 
Agency took over flood alerts, we in the Severn valley had a very good 
and sensible routine.

    Every farmer upstream would notify a set list of other farmers and local bodies downstream of the river situation. Parish councils and village policemen were also notified.

    First it was automated, which 
didn’t work at all well. Then the Environment Agency took over completely and we farmers now never hear a word from them, even though we live on site and know exactly the state of all our watercourses.

    Rob Price
    Shrewsbury

        1. Not around these parts…we are shortly to have one or two ‘dedicated’ PCSOs restored here, just like they were some four to five years ago before they were all withdrawn to a town miles from here. The local yobs knew they were safe as it would take them at least half an hour to arrive, by which time the offenders had wandered off to somewhere else, safe in the knowledge that the risk of any contact with authority was just about nil.

  13. Donald Tusk telling the world that Brexit can still be stopped. I am sure peacemaker Blair is pulling his strings. I heard., on BBC yesterday, that Alistair Campbell will be standing as a Lib/ Dem in the election. He will be a thorn in Swinson side if both get elected.

    2. Harking back 80 years, I’m trying to think which empire it was that went to war in defence of Tusk’s country was invaded.
      Can anyone jog my memory?
      (Yes, yes, I know there were additional reasons.)

    3. He said that one of his British friends said that if the UK leaves the EU, it will be the real end of the British Empire. I think most of us know that the Empire finally ended 60 years ago. I don’t understand why Remainers keep harping on about the Empire, thinking that Leavers hanker after ‘the Good Old Days’. Complete rubbish.

  14. SIR – I find it disgusting, contemptible and reprehensible that leaders of opposition parties are making political capital out of the misery of the people of Yorkshire.

    John Gander
    Worthing, West Sussex

    2. Watching the report of the PM’s visit to the flooding, some residents were asking why it took him so long to do so and others wished that he hadn’t bothered. Seems he was on a hiding to nothing. At least he didn’t sink to the depths of Swansong, pretending to take part in a toe-curlingly awful boxing fight. Ye gods, no stunt too awful…

      1. Well responsibility is with the local council. If they need additional help they contact the government

        The harsh reality is once an area is flooded there is little that can be done until the flood waters go down. If you look at the flooded area it is surrounded by rivers and streams and is in a valley. Even the streams names and place name tell you that

  15. SIR – Stopping home visits (Letters, November 12) would be the last nail in the coffin for general practice. There have always been patients who waste doctors’ time, but this is part of the job.

    The British Medical Association is prepared to debate the matter, which is not surprising: in 2004 it negotiated a new GP contract with the Labour government that allowed GPs to opt out of evening, night and weekend on-call work. This retrograde step ushered in NHS Direct, and is the main cause of rising visits to A&E.

    In England in 2002-2003, 14.05 million people attended A&E and figures had stayed around 14 million annually for the previous 15 years. In 2016-2017, 23.36 million people attended, an increase of 66 per cent. Over the same period, the population rose by 11 per cent and the proportion of over-65s by 13 per cent.

    There are ways to reduce GP workload. Abandoning house calls must not be one of them.

    Dr Stefan Slater
    Edinburgh

    SIR – Home visits by GPs are a waste of money and time. I spent six months as a GP in northern British Columbia in the Seventies and saw thousands of patients, but only visited two homes.

    The reason was the huge distance in travelling to some homes, and the fact that everyone had a car. If a patient became ill out of hours, they phoned the GP, who arranged to meet them at the local hospital. There the patient could be examined and it was easier to make a clinical assessment than in the half-light of a bedroom without an examination couch. If the GP decided the patient was too ill to be at home, they were admitted to hospital.

    Michael Lavelle
    Scaynes Hill, West Sussex

    SIR – There is a place for home visits. Once I was called to see a patient who was falling frequently. The local specialist clinic had not been able to help. However, after I replaced a light bulb at the top of the stairs and nailed down the carpet, the falls promptly stopped.

    Dr Nick Summerton
    Brough, East Yorkshire

      2. Sadly not Anne. BC has plenty of open spaces. If I were 60 years younger I might have gone to there or Alberta.

    2. Mr Lavelle doesn’t seem to realise that he’s in the UK now ” The reason was the huge distance in travelling to some homes…”doesn’t apply here.

    3. Dr Nick himself risked falling down the stairs by fixing the light bulb and could also have suffered an haematoma whilst hammering down the carpet.
      At least he knows he could have fallen back on the NHS A&E service.

  16. SIR – Those of us who knew Lord Bramall (Obituary, November 13) will remember him not only as a most distinguished and courageous soldier, but also as one of the finest and kindest human beings.

    The Earl of Caledon
    Caledon, Co Tyrone

      1. Wet & ‘orrible in Derbyshire.
        As I ask in another post, why the Foxtrot can we not have two or dry days in a row?

        1. I’m in the top end of the rain-band with more heading over. Not a day for doing things outside I’m afraid.

  18. Morning, Campers.
    I assume the DT paywall has gone up, so here’s Sherelle Jacob’s article for your delectation.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/11/14/labour-brink-seismic-wipeout-british-election-history/

    Labour is on the brink of the most seismic wipeout in British election history

    The polls and BBC have failed to pick up on the biggest shocker of this election

    This could actually be it – the end of Labour. Some may scoff, pointing out that it has narrowed the gap with the Tories in some polls. But on the ground, in the heartlands, the party smells of death.

    Before the darkness always comes that euphoric moment of clarity. The Liberals felt it in 1924, when they suddenly grasped that the working-classes – towards whom they felt deep intellectual ambivalence – were about to sweep them away. Their push to make amends came too late. Today, Labour MPs across the Midlands, North and Wales are so certain the end is coming that, as one Tory puts it, “they are not even bothering to change tack”. They are either insulating their egos for the racuous humiliation of televised vote counts or they have quit – especially if their name is Tom Watson.

    Historic political collapses don’t so much clang with confusion as ring with lucidity. Although they almost don’t dare to, Tory candidates can sense it on the doorstep. One standing in a Midlands market town told me: “People know they have been cheated. Lifelong Labourites are reciting ‘Let’s Get Brexit Done’, before we’ve even had a chance to bring it up.”

    The Opposition’s counter-strategy is slapstick Momentum. Instead of putting Brexiteers up in marginals, it is parachuting in Corbynista loyalists. Take Natalie Fleet, who after being selected for Ashfield (70 per cent Leave), infuriated locals by trilling that Brexiteers didn’t know what they were voting for in a chalkboard-scraping Newsnight interview.

    The incumbent Labour MPs who have not already resigned are imploding. The BBC – an avuncular blind-deaf national treasure no longer of this world – may rattle off dopey items on the NHS being an election-decider. But on the frontline, attempts to shift the focus from Brexit have stupendously backfired. Instead, constituents are demanding to know why Labour is blocking democracy.

    Prospective candidates who desperately want to talk about police cuts and food banks are being forced back onto the stingy slogan that they “can’t back something that will harm constituents”. It has more than a slight tang of the Liberals circa 1924. As one mill striker put it then: “We have had two parties in the past, the can’ts and the won’ts, and it is time that we had a party that will.”

    What is more, to the horror of Labour, Boris Johnson is proving surreally popular in the West Midlands, this election’s main battleground. An old Etonian among ordinary folk he may be, but the land of closed steelworks and sparkly glamrock connects emotionally with his gloom-piercing character. Which is why social media attacks on Johnson by Black Country Labour prospective candidates – far from going viral – have been met with sniffs of disapproval. There is less love for his rival leader. One joke doing the rounds is: “I’d rather jump in the river Trent than vote for Corbyn. An’ I co’er swim.”

    In its historic heartlands, the end of Labour can’t come soon enough. It is a stillborn populist movement that has mummified hideously into a metropolitan protest group. Its story is tragic. Within 30 years of its launch, bohemian Bolshevism had smothered the hopeful pragmatism of its rank-and-file.

    But if socialism crushed Labour’s spirit, Blairism sucked out its soul. To the Mandelson set, the working class was the man who griped “too many immigrants” over digestive biscuits in their focus groups, but might find himself again at a call centre in Hull. Thank the stars that Corbynism – the spoilt adolescent of Blairism – is about to blow the whole thing up in a fit of fundamentalism.

    Nevertheless, for Labour to be decimated, two things need to happen. First, although the Brexit Party could in fact help the Tories win target seats – by splitting the Left-wing vote in areas like Ashfield where many Leavers will never vote for “Tories who closed the pits” – the two parties must seriously consider standing down in seats the other can’t win.

    The Brexit Party has a historic opportunity to become the real third force in British politics. (Rather than the Lib Dems, who merely shout the loudest in politically overcrowded Remainia). But Nigel Farage must urgently learn from the mistake he made as leader of Ukip in 2015, when he fixated on national airtime at the expense of pavement politics, and spread his operational butter too thin.

    Second, the Tories must stop throwing away votes by over-relying on their “oven-ready” deal, twinned with their bland offer of more money for public services. Candidates have picked up the hunger for an optimistic story about the future, particularly from “none of the above” voters, whether it’s reinventing their town as a tech hub or building that train network that was promised 20 years ago. The scale of the Tory victory depends on how many of these people it can galvanise with the promise of a new dawn – “a party that will”.

    As a Brexiteer from a dynasty of “Labour men”, I can’t help but reflect with a hint of melancholy. But to former supporters, the party is like the family Staffordshire bull terrier that has become feral. The kindest thing is to put it down – peacefully but resolutely.”

    1. A poor result for the Labour Party was always on the cards as soon as it became apparent that they confused Labour Party members with Labour Party voters. Killing Brexit off may be attractive to their metropolitan set but abhorrent to the Labour leave voter in their heartlands.

      1. Quite so, Oldie, and I have the feeling that they are about to find out just how toxic Comrade Steptoe is to traditional Labour voters, and particularly the Brexiteers amongst them.

    3. The drift of this is correct – Corbyn only ever could appeal to an activist fringe coalescing in London – but Corbyn’s appeal to these committed types was always that he wasn’t Blair and would do his utmost to put as much water between Blair, winner of three general elections, and himself and destroy New Labour. He has succeeded. Look at where it’s landed him. The vacuous and the deceitful are now promising to put this mediocrity into Downing Street. It is difficult to know if Corbyn really believes this. He is deeply stupid enough but one cannot ever be certain.

    4. “The Opposition’s counter-strategy is slapstick Momentum. Instead of putting Brexiteers up in marginals, it is parachuting in Corbynista loyalists.”

      And in those same marginals, the Tories parachute in Central Office Remainers.

        1. Certainly happened in Eddisbury where the Cons have chosen ex-MP (lost his seat to Labour in 2017 in Crewe and Nantwich) remain campaigner Edward Timpson. There’s a Green who wants to stay in, the unpopular ex-Con now LD who wants to expunge the referendum, a Labour candidate (who never mentioned Brexit, presumably for fear of being asked what exactly the party line on it was) and a UKIP candidate. I’m hoping the UKIP woman will hoover up the leave votes.

    5. Morning, Anne

      Sherelle is always a good read but I don’t find today’s column very convincing. Labour’s front bench and hodgepodge of policies may be the worst ever but will that translate into a ‘seismic wipeout’ and Tory gains?

      If a post December 13th Tory government fails to pursue a swift Brexit there will be a massive upheaval and Tory wipeout in subsequent by-elections and eventually a 2024 GE.

      1. I don’t think that’s true at all, Dolly.

        Outside NOTTL, many peeps already are moving on from Brexit.

        George seems to have it all pretty well sewn up.

      2. I always treat articles as opinion pieces rather than holy writ.
        On this occasion, I would like to whole heartedly agree, but I suspect I would be guilty of wishful thinking.
        My only comment would be that I have never seen the normally quiet ‘normal’ Britons so fired up about politics. The result is in the lap of the gods.

  19. – So tell me if I have got this wrong, but the way I see events so far is that the rise of the Brexit party has wiped out UKIP, taking all the leave funding and support, then the Brexit party doesn’t stand in over half the country thereby leaving nobody for the vast majority of the 17.4 million leavers to vote for, all that is left is a very soft untrusted leave party to vote for, giving us a second referendum in all but name without Leave on the voting slip under the guise of a general election.

    2. I think BXP was a lifeboat for those leaving a sinking UKIP, but was itself in poor repair. Sprung planks means BXP is sinking without trace too. Sigh

      1. Morning O,
        Rubbish, Gerard Batten was a
        party builder & leader of integrity this was not to be tolerated by the political rear exits, & their supporting members.

    3. ‘Morning, B3. The Conservatives effectively shot the Brexit Party fox when they finally dumped the useless May. If she was still in No10 BXP would have been in a very much stronger position. Events have moved on.

    4. I understand that UKIP is standing in my constituency. I wish them well, but whose fault is it that they lost the support that they had in 2013, when many of their candidates in the local CC elections (including yours truly) broke the 30% barrier, in 2014, when they came a close second to the Tories in the Euro election in my local authority area, in 2015, when their candidate (me again!) came second in the general election, and in 2016, when my LA area voted (just) to leave?

      1. You stood for parliament? Respect! A man* who puts his money where his mouth is! :-))
        * – other, uncountable, sexes &/or genders seem to be available on demand.

      2. Where is your constituency, Joseph? Congratulations on very impressive results. Our UKIP candidate in 2015 narrowly missed beating Labour into third place and is standing again, this time in Eddisbury.

    5. Has Nigel Farage done all the negotiations on his own or is the BP in support of his drastic u-turn? If not he is in trouble. He has until this afternoon to change his mind and fight the rabid Remain Torycandidates wherever they are standing.

    6. Morning B,
      I am glad it is not just me alone as I was calling for 17.4 million new UKIP members since the referendum.
      Getting castigated every step of the way.
      You could see the route laid out, the peoples had a taster with 6 years of the wretch cameron / may combo.
      The 9 month delay was the clincher.
      The peoples were / are to busy fighting the keep in / keep out voting war to see the orchestrated suppression of UKIP.
      Of late Gerard Batten was the target as he was a successful leader this was not to be tolerated “nige” was the anti Batten tool, hence the
      anti Batten / membership rant.
      IMO brexit group is a subsidiary of the ersatz tory party with many of the group unaware of being duped.

    7. The Brexit candidate was pulled in Eddisbury, but UKIP is fielding a candidate. At least leavers will have a genuine leave-supporting candidate to vote for while remain will have two ex-MPs who campaigned for remain (one now a LD), a Green who wants to stay in a “reformed” EU and the Labour chap whose party is facing a 112 strong rebellion of PPCs who want to turn it into remain central.

  21. Anyway, as “democracy” has evolved it has had one beneficial effect….

    When someone wants to take control they do it with money and not with tanks, so nobody gets hurt..

    1. Hurt

      1. cause pain or injury to

      2. be detrimental to

      You could be correct on 1 but 2? You need to rethink that.

    1. Morning Maggie – here you go…

      Child genius ‘could follow mentor to Oxford’ after finishing first degree aged 9

      13 NOVEMBER 2019 • 6:09PM

      A nine-year-old boy will become the youngest ever graduate at the end of this year, sparking a competition among the world’s top universities to sign up the boy genius.

      Laurent Simons has an IQ of at least 145 and will complete his electrical engineering degree from the Eindhoven University of Technology in December.

      “I really want to go to California, the weather is nice there,” said Laurent, who is half Dutch and half Belgian and lives in Amsterdam.

      But Laurent’s father Alexander told the Telegraph his son could be tempted away from the California sun by the dreaming spires of Oxford.

      Professors from the US’s best universities are already courting Laurent, who loves playing video games like Fortnite and Minecraft, with offers of Master’s courses and even PhD programmes. Some have already given him homework after informal Skype interviews.

      “There is definitely competition to get him on the course.If he goes to America then we will go out with him and split our time there with his grandparents,” Alexander, 37, said.

      “But Oxford and Cambridge are also in the major league” the Belgian dentist said, “and it would be very much more convenient for us.”

      One of Laurent’s mentors, a Switzerland based professor in mathematics, went to Oxford. Maths is Laurent’s favourite subject, he said, because “it is so it’s so vast, there’s statistics, geometry, algebra”.

      John Wilkes, who went to Jesus College and is now Dean of Academics at the American University in Switzerland, taught Laurent in summer courses.

      He told the Telegraph, “He really was a delight to tutor and very well balanced, able to be like a child and an adult at the same time.

      “I taught him when he was six and we studied at the level of a 16 year-old,” he said, “I really would recommend Oxford for him.”

      “He would develop somewhere the environment is about learning rather than being taught. For someone like Laurent that is ideal.”

      Alexander added, “Laurent works best when he has a good feeling with someone and clicks with them. That is the most important thing we are looking for.”

      Amazingly Laurent only began his university studies in March and has nearly completed in just nine months. His tutor said he was three times more intelligent than his next cleverest student.

      Laurent, who dreams of becoming a heart surgeon or astronaut when he grows up, will smash the world record held since 1994 by Michael Kearney, who graduated from the University of Alabama at the age of ten.

      Laurent finished secondary school aged eight after completing six years of education in just a year and a half. His father and mother Lydia, 29, an office manager, watched him collect his diploma in a hall full of 18-year-olds.

      It was his grandparents who first noticed that Laurent was gifted. They looked after the wunderkind while his father and mother ran the dentist business.

      “His grandparents told us but we didn’t take it too seriously. We thought all grandparents say that,” said Alexander, “But then he went to school and he started going faster and faster.”

      His grandparents also inspired Laurent to want to revolutionise heart surgery because they have cardiac problems.

      By the time he got to university Laurent, who has a photographic memory, was already used to being the youngest student in the room.

      Professor Peter Baltus teaches Laurent at the university in Eindhoven in the Netherlands. “He is three times smarter than the best student I have met in my long career. He achieves a level of solutions that many adult students never reach,” he said.

      Laurent started primary school at four, completed the year and then completed the next five years of study in just 12 months.

      He was six when he went to high school and a year later, to fight off boredom at school, was allowed to start a research project at the Academic Medical Centre in Amsterdam.

      Despite his voracious appetite for learning, it wasn’t always easy. Laurent’s loves are maths and science but at high school he was forced to trudge through long novels dealing with romance.

      “The high school novels were not about the things he was interested in,” said Alexander, “but he liked Shakespeare. There is a bit of action and not too much romance and he liked it because there are movies about it.”

      “When he is on his own he likes to watch Netflix,” Alexander said, “and when his friends come round to play they all sit around playing games on their mobile phones in silence like any other kids”

      Laurent loves his two German shepherds, Joe and Sam, and is a keen go-karter. He likes Formula one racing and is a fan of Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel.

      Lydia, his mother, added, “He is just as stubborn as any other nine-year-old when dinner is not to his liking. And that’s a lot!”

      1. Thank you for posting that, good morning to you .

        Wow, what an article, and such an incredible child .

        How rare are children like Laurent .. could he be classed as a savant ?

        2. And it’s very rare for any of them to make it into a normal adulthood, having been hot housed by their parents from birth.

          2. My wife knew one of these gifted children. He made it to Oxford at 14 but his lack of social skills let him down badly and he was changed with sexual assault (charges which were dropped). I hope now he’s happy, wherever he is.

        3. What is rare is being allowed onto a fast track education process. Obviously such has to be geared to the individual, served by the teachers and supported by the institution.
          Such children are not that rare. The special treatment is.
          (In the first year of a university maths course the entire curriculum of A level maths is covered in six weeks.)

          1. When I was at grammar school in the sixties, the A stream automatically took O levels in 4 years. It was the norm. Nowadays, it would be considered too tough for the little darlings and they would be stressed out.

  23. Seems to make sense!

    The room was full of pregnant women with their husbands.

    The instructor said, “Ladies, remember that exercise is good for you. Walking is especially beneficial. It strengthens the pelvic muscles and will make delivery that much easier. Just pace yourself, make plenty of stops and try to stay on a soft surface like grass or a path.”

    “Gentlemen, remember — you’re in thistogether, it wouldn’t hurt you to go walking with her. In fact, that shared experience would be good for you both.”

    The room suddenly became very quiet as the men absorbed this information. After a few moments a man, name unknown, at the back of the room, slowly raised his hand.

    “Yes?” said the instructor.

    “I was just wondering…er… if it would be all right if she…er… carries a golf bag while we walk?”

    Brings a tear to your eye doesn’t it?

    This kind of sensitivity just can’t be taught.

  24. Listening to Ferrari on LBC debating the terrible flooding: Johnson was heckled yesterday during his visit and one lady was particularly scathing about the Government’s response and that she knew of some children who didn’t have shoes to go to school.
    Meanwhile, Yorkshire requires £20 million to improve flood defences and hasn’t received that money but information regarding that perennial focus of complaints, the foreign aid budget, has come under the spotlight. Nonsense exposed this time around include a donation of £8 million to China to be used to persuade Chinese people to use less salt in their cooking and £1.5 million to try and reduce the drinking of beer in Delhi. And the Government is surprised at the response of the people in this Country?
    Back in Labour La La land the latest promise is the closing of the gender pay gap by 2030, a whole half a century before the Government’s target. Listening to the lady haranguing Johnson I’m quite sure that her priority wasn’t in anyway linked to pay gaps a decade in the future; it was the here and now and the forecast of more rain today.
    Will this Country ever again have some serious politicians at the top, people who will prioritise the quality of life of its citizens? This coming election has exposed, if further exposure was needed, that for the most part our politicians are empty vessels creating plenty of sound but providing no leadership at all.

      1. ogga1, plenty of people worth listening to, my son for instance. However, like Batten, my son has no authority to change anything within the Country. Shouting all the right things from the sideline is easy to do, becoming a serious force in politics is in another league altogether.

        1. KtK,
          Yes I do agree… up to a point, that being that we have as a nation seen the serious force in politics operating for decades and are currently witnessing the results, outright treachery.
          Yet still the keep in / keep out mode of voting continues, party before country, peoples call for change yet are unwilling to change …their vote.

        2. “…my son has no authority to change anything within the Country. Shouting all the right things from the sideline is easy to do, becoming a serious force in politics is in another league altogether.”
          A fairly withering condemnation of what purports to be democracy. If we only had decent, honest politicians who wanted to do the right thing.

          1. HP, I fear that the majority of the current crop of politicians are most certainly not democrats. In thrall to globalism and its functionary, the EU, most of what little they achieve is to further the aims of that institution.
            Batten, to be fair, has had to operate in the shadow of Farage and even the latter has had to face the reality of how difficult it is to break into the top league – 4 million votes and with nothing to show for it. This GE is another chance for a party that claims to be different to break into the top league, I hope that it does have success and that if it does gain seats that its MPs will not become corrupted by the other ‘players’.

  27. Cowshed wins architectural award, ‘house of the year’:
    https://news.sky.com/story/house-of-the-year-335-000-three-bedroom-home-scoops-award-11860693

    It even has a tin, I mean ‘zinc’ roof.The owners said: “It is a joy to live in – from seeing the soaring bedroom
    ceiling on wakening, being surrounded by the gentle landscape in the
    kitchen during the day, to enjoying the sunset in the top room.”

    Or to put it another way, ‘Location, Location, Location’

      1. ‘Morning, BoB, it makes one wonder why the Police are allowed to by-pass the law of the land rather than upholding it.

        1. The law was changed to make squatting in residential property a criminal offence but the police choose to ignore that and still want a court order before they will evict squatters so nothing much has changed

        1. They also terrorise small shopkeepers of course. Apparently they turn up en masse so that the shopkeeper has no hope of keeping an eye on their shoplifting activities.

      3. Why the heck should local authorities provide more sites for Irish pikies? They have the option of going back to Ireland. They weren’t invited here and they have a country very close by to go to. Plus, they are certainly not refugees.

          1. I’ve only got receive information about your reply – and it’s Sunday!

            Yes, quite right, and they should have got short shrift here.

          2. Do you get notifications by email? I turned them off years ago and only ever use the blob at the top right side.

    2. The existing law already adequately covers it but the police ignore the law.. If you go onto private land that in itself is not a criminal offence but if you force entry or steal electricity or water etc or cause criminal damage that then becomes a criminal offence. It also becomes a criminal offence if asked by the landowner or authorised agent to leave and you don’t leave in a reasonable time

  30. Finally up after a couple of extra hours following my early morning cup of tea.
    Bloody wet & ‘orrible outside. Why the Foxtrot Hotal can we not have two or three dry days in a flaming row?

    In case anyone missed it:-
    Transcript of a video banned from Youtube for telling the truth:-

    “Congratulations, it’s a boy!” Or, “Congratulations, it’s a girl!”

    As a pediatrician for nearly 20 years, that’s how many of my patient relationships began. Our bodies declare our sex.

    Biological sex is not assigned. Sex is determined at conception by our DNA and is stamped into every cell of our bodies. Human sexuality is binary. You either have a normal Y chromosome, and develop into a male, or you don’t, and you will develop into a female. There are at least 6,500 genetic differences between men and women. Hormones and surgery cannot change this.

    An identity is not biological, it is psychological. It has to do with thinking and feeling. Thoughts and feelings are not biologically hardwired. Our thinking and feeling may be factually right or factually wrong.

    If I walk into my doctor’s office today and say, “Hi, I’m Margaret Thatcher,” my physician will say I am delusional and give me an anti-psychotic. Yet, if instead, I walked in and said, “I’m a man,” he would say, “Congratulations, you’re transgender.”

    If I were to say, “Doc, I am suicidal because I’m an amputee trapped in a normal body, please cut off my leg,” I will be diagnosed with body identity integrity disorder. But if I walk into that doctor’s office and say, “I am a man, sign me up for a double mastectomy,” my physician will. See, if you want to cut off a leg or an arm you’re mentally ill, but if you want to cut off healthy breasts or a penis, you’re transgender.

    No one is born transgender. If gender identity were hardwired in the brain before birth, identical twins would have the same gender identity 100 percent of the time. But they don’t.

    I had one patient we’ll call Andy. Between the ages of 3 and 5, he increasingly played with girls and “girl toys” and said he was a girl. I referred the parents and Andy to a therapist. Sometimes mental illness of a parent or abuse of the child are factors, but more commonly, the child has misperceived family dynamics and internalized a false belief.

    In the middle of one session, Andy put down the toy truck, held onto a Barbie, and said, “Mommy and Daddy, you don’t love me when I’m a boy.” When Andy was 3, his sister with special needs was born, and required significantly more of his parents’ attention. Andy misperceived this as “Mommy and Daddy love girls. If I want them to love me, I have to be a girl.” With family therapy Andy got better.

    Today, Andy’s parents would be told, “This is who Andy really is. You must ensure that everyone treats him as a girl, or else he will commit suicide.”

    As Andy approaches puberty, the experts would put him on puberty blockers so he can continue to impersonate a girl.

    It doesn’t matter that we’ve never tested puberty blockers in biologically normal children. It doesn’t matter that when blockers are used to treat prostate cancer in men, and gynecological problems in women, they cause problems with memory. We don’t need testing. We need to arrest his physical development now, or he will kill himself.

    But this is not true. Instead, when supported in their biological sex through natural puberty, the vast majority of gender-confused children get better. Yet, we chemically castrate gender-confused children with puberty blockers. Then we permanently sterilize many of them by adding cross-sex hormones, which also put them at risk for heart disease, strokes, diabetes, cancers, and even the very emotional problems that the gender experts claim to be treating.

    P.S. If a girl who insists she is male has been on testosterone daily for one year, she is cleared to get a bilateral mastectomy at age 16. Mind you, the American Academy of Pediatrics recently came out with a report that urges pediatricians to caution teenagers about getting tattoos because they are essentially permanent and can cause scarring. But this same AAP is 110 percent in support of 16-year-old girls getting a double mastectomy, even without parental consent, so long as the girl insists that she is a man, and has been taking testosterone daily for one year.

    To indoctrinate all children from preschool forward with the lie that they could be trapped in the wrong body disrupts the very foundation of a child’s reality testing. If they can’t trust the reality of their physical bodies, who or what can they trust? Transgender ideology in schools is psychological abuse that often leads to chemical castration, sterilization, and surgical mutilation.

    https://www.dailysignal.com/UncensoredDoctorVideo

    2. I know a woman whose daughter, at the age of eight, decided that she was a boy. She answered to the name of Max and wore boy’s clothes. She was very proud when someone innocently complimented her mother on her two fine sons.

      She is now an attractive and very heterosexual young woman. I tremble to think what would have been done to her today.

    5. And that idiot Nick Ferrari was blathering on about this, this morning, saying he fully believed it was possible to be born in the wrong body.
      I clearly was, as I was supposed to be several inches taller, naturally slimmer, and president of the world….

    1. Well done the bikers indeed, but look at the sentence for the thief – an £80 fine, £32 victim surcharge and costs of £135 – that’s all!

    2. It does show that you don’t need to be young and agile as a ninja to stop a criminal in his tracks. I particularly like the calm way they are restraining him and it is clear that he is going nowhere.

    3. I cannot access this without accepting AOL being able to access my computer…see above re DPA

  33. Our flood defences aren’t fit for the climate we have now

    https://spectator.imgix.net/content/uploads/2019/11/leader-2.jpg?auto=compress,enhance,format&crop=faces,entropy,edges&fit=crop&w=820&h=550

    The heavily flooded village of Fishlake, near Doncaster, on Tuesday (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)
    The Spectator

    16 November 2019 – 9:00 AM

    This week’s political fuss over whether the floods in Yorkshire constitute a ‘national emergency’ misses the point. It is too easy to declare an emergency for political purposes, to give the impression that the government is taking an issue seriously. It’s quite obvious that the scenes we have seen this week represent an emergency — the question is whether, once the helicopter visits and photo opportunities have ceased, all is forgotten and the political world moves on to the next emergency.

    What has happened in Yorkshire over the past week is a symptom of chronic failure to manage the threat of flooding. We keep suffering these events. In 2015, it was Cumbria; a year earlier it was Somerset. They are not apocalyptic — even in 2012, one of the worst years for flooding, the total number of homes seriously damaged by flooding did not exceed 8,000. Given that there are 23 million homes in England, to be flooded is still a rare and unfortunate occurrence. Nevertheless, floods are, for the most part, avoidable. They happen because we do not have a coherent strategy for managing rivers and maintaining coastal defences. We nibble at the problem, making piecemeal improvements when much more comprehensive action is required.

    Every time we have floods, we are told that this is only just the beginning — climate change will make such events much more common. Government ministers and Environment Agency officials both spin this line, not least because it offers a chance to divert attention from their own failures. We hear promises that more money will be spent. Yet the action which follows is laughably out of kilter with the rhetoric on climate change. This year’s central government budget for building new flood defences and maintaining existing ones is £815 million — a pitifully small sum considering it has to cover every river and every mile of coast in England. It is less than a tenth of the £9.8 billion which the government and consumers between them will spend subsidising renewable energy.

    Never mind climate change; our flood defences aren’t fit to cope with the climate we already have. In both Yorkshire and Somerset, residents have complained that the Environment Agency had stopped dredging the river, allowing silt to narrow the stream. Floodbanks are too often trusted to the whim of landowners — even though flood defences are only as good as their weakest link. Dams, weirs and storage areas — which used to form part of flood defences — rarely get built any more. We are still relying on flood defence infrastructure which was built prior to the 1980s, much of it in Victorian times.

    Flood defence has become subject to a doctrine which puts natural habitats above the interests of all else. In the days of the old National Rivers Authority, defending homes, businesses and farmland with efficient drainage was the priority. Since the Environment Agency took over the management of rivers in 1996, there has been a far greater emphasis on protecting flora and fauna. In some ways this is a good thing. Flood defence and protecting nature are not always at odds — if you can hold water back in absorbent woodland or moorland it slows the passage of rainwater into rivers and streams, protecting wildlife as well as people. But in other cases, where dredging has been abandoned or rushes have been allowed to choke rivers, there is a conflict which too often has come down on the side of habitat protection.

    It is a similar story with coastal erosion where stretches of coast have been allowed to fall into the sea — or experience ‘managed retreat’, in the Environment Agency’s lingo. In the end, it took the owners of Bacton Gas Terminal in Norfolk to take matters into their own hands to prevent their nationally-important infrastructure collapsing into the water. They commissioned a Dutch-engineered scheme to dredge sand offshore and used it to rebuild the beaches. It is common practice in the Netherlands, where a quarter of the land lies beneath sea level and would quickly have to be abandoned if that country’s government took the same approach to flood defence as does ours.

    Meanwhile, planning policy seems at odds with warnings about greater flood risk in future. It is notable how in so many cases the properties which flood have only recently been built. Since the turn of the century, more than 250,000 new homes have been built in flood risk areas, of which 68,000 were in zones expected to flood more than once in every 100 years and 23,000 were in areas expected to flood at least once in every 30 years. And that is the risk calculated from the existing climate. It’s perfectly sensible to live in such areas if the risk is accepted — and if government can build proper flood defences.

    UK governments have taken pride in leading the world in reducing carbon emissions. But it is futile to spend so much money trying to eliminate the 2 per cent of global emissions for which Britain is responsible while doing so little to cope with basic flood risk. Adaptation is going to have to be a large part of the story of climate change, and one that — as we have seen this week — deserves much more attention.

    1. The Somerset Levels flood was not helped by EU rules which stopped rivers being dredged. Dredging was the answer but unlike the French – who have a bit more spirit than we do – we slavishly follow EU rules. Since Thatcher the British politicians have decided that the British must become subservient doormats rather than independently minded people.

    2. “They happen because we do not no longer have a coherent strategy for managing rivers and maintaining coastal defences.”

  34. General election 2019: Tories promise to cut ‘immigration overall’

    This one is trotted out every election time and is never delivered. The claim that we need mass migration for our economy is totally false. The bosses like it as it gives them endless cheap labour and avoids them having to pay for training

    Net migration numbers should be reduced over say a 3 to 5 year period with unskilled and low skilled migration reduced very quickly down to almost zero. There also need to be a big crackdown on the student backdoor to UK scam. They should be treated the same as any other person wanting to come to the UK after finishing their course and should have to apply under the points based system

      1. I have trusted Conservative MP’s for many years. But not so much any more when the future of our country is so clearly at stake and 95% have fallen at the last hurdle.

    2. Good morning Bill

      Was it you or ogga who posted the fact that the Conservatives are fielding a remainer candidate in Anna Soubry’s constituency of Broxtowe?

      If this is the case it shows the complete contempt that Boris Johnson and his party have for the voters of Broxtowe where 54.6% of them voted to leave the EU in the referendum.

      After years of having to suffer the Remain Harpy now the Conservatives are offering yet another remainer as their candidadte. How should the voters vote when they have no proper Brexit candidate – they have effectively been disenfranchised.

    1. The internet can be a wonderful thing and you can see why the “authorities” want to try to censor it. These people who made the change probably hoped that nobody would notice it, apart from those few who were trying to stop electoral fraud, and those who did notice would not be able to tell many people about it.

    2. It seems to be self-evident that the laws and regulations to protect “privacy” are really intended to keep information out of the hands of the public.
      The Government and all its agencies and outsourced bodies can get any information that they want. Marketing and sales companies can get any information that they wish, and this includes access to any computer connected to the internet.
      Has anyone else noticed that to avoid allowing other businesses access to one’s computer when going onto a newspaper site , for example, one has to go to the websites of several hundred marketing companies in order to “turn off” their access?
      The Government made the DPA an “opt out” law not an “opt in”one. Naturally the sales companies, honest and dishonest, made it very nearly impossible to opt out.
      The DPA has become smoke screen for those who wish to hide things which should be in the public domain, including much that used to be freely available, including Register of Electors and Housing Rates registers. (As an aside, the Swiss publish vehicle registration numbers. Here we have to apply, with reasons as to why we would like to know who owns a car.)

    3. Security with out voting system is almost non existent. It just relies o trust and until a few decades ago that worked but now it does not

      1. I’m trying to lighten the tone here…..too much B….T, posters are leaving the sinking ship.
        Your jokes always appreciated…

        1. ‘Afternoon, P-T, and trolls returning to take their place.

          If you’re reading Grizzly, you might be needed here.

          5. Indeed!…..he should, however be aware…. the leash on my temper
            is very, very short!! 🙂

            Good Afternoon, J,

          6. It’s a foul afternoon here, G – but hope all’s well with you!
            Between us we can hopefully keep the warring trolls in order.

        2. Not enough discussion of shades of toilet tissue, nor toast.
          Too much repetition of Brexit.
          Too much repetition of Brexit.
          Gets dull.

        3. Quite agree.
          Even a reasonably political animals like moi, is finding one-note rants extremely boring.

    2. Priti Patel strikes me as one of the very few small-state, low-tax, law n’ order/defence of the realm, red-meat conservatives in parliament. However, I heard her say recently that on immigration what people want is ‘control.’ These are weasel words, yes we want the government to have control of our borders, but this must then mean a REDUCTION IN NUMBERS!

  38. Study finds almost 80% of transgender people have considered suicide

    I don’t find that surprising a they are trying to pretend they are something they are not. They probably need mental health treatment but ones transgendered they re left in a neither fully male or fully female condition

    https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/study-finds-almost-80-of-transgender-people-have-considered-suicide-1.1613871

    Almost 80 per cent of transgender people here have considered suicide and 40 per cent of these have attempted suicide at least once, a survey published today finds.
    The study on mental health and wellbeing among the transgender community finds 78 per cent have considered suicide and 44 per cent have engaged in some form of self-harm.

        1. Do you have to turn everything round into voting liblabcon? It has staryed into the realms of complete tastelessness. You did it with War Veterans too.

          Have you no empathy or respect for any of the dreadful things that happen to people, to which your comments are not just irrelevant, but very distasteful.

          Again, you were downvoted before I wrote this – I am not a downvoter – I say what I think to the poster’s face.

          2. I agree with you, totally.

            Ogga gives no support to anyone, his warped self-righteousness
            has probably alienated as many UKIP supporters as has the NEC.
            But will he listen!……..No!!
            I have mentioned this to him on various occasions…..But he refuses
            to take heed!

            Good afternoon, HL.

          3. Afternoon HL,
            Explain please “you did it with war veterans to” if you would.
            I have suffered for decades under political sh!te dished up from the lab / lib / con pro eu coalition, others have suffered worse
            physically & mentally via the political cretins
            and the consequences of their mass uncontrolled immigration policies, as in rotherham, plus,plus,plus, all kept in place via the ballot booth and a multitude of three monkey type voting fools.
            Who else but the alternating toxic parties are responsible for bringing this nation
            to its knees ?

      1. Transgender individuals are at higher risk for suicide relative to nontransgender people (Marshall et al. 2016).
        Although there are no official estimates of deaths by suicide among
        transgender people, one study in Sweden showed that transgender
        individuals undergoing gender affirmation surgery were at 19 times
        greater risk for dying by suicide than the general population (Dhejne et
        al. 2011).
        Researchers using primarily convenience samples have discovered that an
        alarming percentage (18–45%) of transgender adults and youth have
        attempted suicide in their lifetime, which is drastically higher than
        the general population

        https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5649411/
        Here you go Paul

        1. The Trans-Taliban will often claim the high suicide rate is due to bullying and ostracism from those they brand as “transphobes”.
          More likely there are two main factors.
          First is that already being mentally disturbed, they are more likely to cross over to being suicidal than other people.
          Second is the possibility that, having “changed sex”, they suddenly wake up to the fact that no, they haven’t and, whatever hormone dosage and surgical mutilation they have undergone, are still the same sex they were born.

          1. They are delusional, whatever the trans police say – and perhaps evenually they realise that what they have done is irreversible self-harm. Who wouldn’t feel suicidal with that realisation? No amount of surgery or hormone treatment will turn a man into woman or vice versa.

            When I read David Thomas’ column in the Saturday DT, I wonder how he will end – he’s likeable enough, but completely delusional – and the process is costing him a fortune. He was saying the other week that the hormones were having a diminishing effect on his bodily strength. Why would anyone put themself through such a process unless they had mental health issues?

          2. I can’t remember where this saying came from and originally it referred to looking elsewhere to resolve some unsatisfactory aspect of your life :- Wherever you go you’re still the same person at a different address ( or a different dress in this case)

    3. I wonder if it is ‘chicken or egg’.

      Do suicidal people with ‘mental health issues’ blame the fact that they are ‘suicidal’ on the possibility that they might be transgender? Or do transgender people develop their ‘mental health issues’ and suicidal tendency as the result of being transgender?

    1. Morning LD,
      The wretch cameron vowed, promised
      & pledged to reduce the numbers then promptly raised them, thereby making the lab/lib/con a coalition with equal blame for ALL the evil consequences.

        1. Afternoon R,
          Those serving in power currently as in lab/lib/con , none is trustworthy, ALL
          defence / attack is designed in-house as in within the tory party, &
          then encapsulated within the lab/ lib / con
          pro eu coalition party within the HOC .
          Making for a closed political shop.
          Lifestyles handed down father / son and currently nourished by fools on a regular basis.
          My personal view.

      2. Remember who was Home Secretary at the time. Treason May. Remember who refused to let Boris keep the water cannon he had bought. T.May.

        1. HL,
          Precisely, that is why I could NOT believe the
          peoples cry after the victory result as in,
          ….. “Job done leave it to the tories”, this after 6 years of the wretch cameron / may combo.
          Then the 9 month delay, and still the peoples believed, their reaction to a winning result was to return to supporting voting lab/lib/con a proven eu rubber stamping coalition asset,
          unbloodybelievable.

          2. HL,
            What amounted to “some people” was too many on a regular basis, and has been without doubt the prime cause of our current major problems

          3. Sadly more fool them.
            My second thought after hearing the Referendum result was, “Now our most important task is just beginning.”
            Unfortunately, UKIP took it’s eye off the ball when Farage bailed out.

  40. The Official Loonies only have 24 candidates. Any volunteers? From their website today…

    On your marks, get set, ready, here we go. A general election has been called for Thursday 12th December 2019. Your party expects, ‘if you can’, to be a candidate, in your own constituency. You must bear in mind though, that you can’t just do it, you must get a letter of authorisation from our registered Nomination Officer. This is done easily enough by calling Howling Laud on 07946292557. Give him your name, plus ‘Loony Name’ if you have one, (if not he will sort you). Address, phone no, and E-mail, also the name of the constituency in which you want to stand. At this precise moment in time we have twenty four candidates confirmed. So come on in and join us and you never know, you could become a hero. A legend in your time, or even a sensible politician. Getting ready to Rule the Looniverse.
    Howling ‘Laud’ Hope
    Loony Party Leader.

    1. In a peaceful world without globalists, and with a sense of humour, they could win. Just to see what would happen.

      The British will give many nutters a hearing and a fair crack of the whip.

      1. Morning MM,
        The British electorate deserve
        the whip for total abuse of a nation via political treacherous
        nutters / parties being returned
        to power again,again,& again.
        Then add salt.

      2. Davis Sutch’s party has, in amongst the pee-taking, had some good proposals in its manifestos. Many a true word spoken in jest, and all that…

    2. https://www.commdiginews.com/politics-2/eric-ciaramella-brennan-protege-coup-plotter-than-whistleblower-124251/
      “Adam Schiff “whistleblower,” Eric Ciaramella, has been exposed as a John Brennan ally. An ally who actively worked to defame, target, and destroy President Donald Trump during both the Obama and Trump administrations. He was fired from the Trump White House for leaking confidential if not classified information detrimental to the President. (The Pajama Boy Whistleblower Revealed – Rush Limbaugh)

      The 33-year-old Ciaramella, a former Susan Rice protege, currently works for the CIA as an analyst.

      Eric Ciaramella: The Deep State non-whistleblower
      During his time in the Obama White House, NSC Ciaramella worked under both Vice President Joe Biden and CIA director John Brennan. He reported directly to NSC advisor Susan Rice through his immediate boss, Charles Kupchan. Kupchan had extensive ties with Clinton crony Sydney Blumenthal. Large portions of Blumenthal’s disinformation from Ukrainian sources in 2016 was used in the nefarious Steele Dossier.”

  43. ‘Morning All

    Modern Life

    https://spectator.imgix.net/content/uploads/2019/11/64_16.11.19_Robert_Thompson.jpg?auto=compress,enhance,format&crop=faces,entropy,edges&fit=crop&w=600&h=400
    Why is it the Eco-Loons never own their total fluckups??
    The push for Diesel ‘cos evil CO2 poisoned our cities with particulates
    Ban evil dredging ‘cos dunno and to hell with flooding
    Ban Forest management backburning,save the environment……………until it all burns out of control
    It begins to feel every Green Initiative seems to embuggered by the Law of Unintended Consquence

    2. Probably because Greens don’t live in the countryside and know sweet FA about anything green..

      1. So true! In 2015 the “Green” candidate was all in favour of building on greenfield sites, even when it was pointed out that conurbations produced urban hotspots. They don’t do science and they don’t do joined up thinking.

    1. Confirms my suspicions of a couple of days ago about the ubiqitous poppies on display on the lapels of our news presenters et al.

      Props.

      2. The Beeb probably buys half a dozen in mid-October and then passes them from one presenter to another.

  45. In the interests of Fairness and Diversity after the election I have decided to identify as an MP,if I am not promptly paid 77k a year and a lavish unaudited expense account I shall crowdfund a legal case in the Scottish High Court to assert my Rights
    Eminent barristers will flock to present my case and the general public will be with me to a man (woman,whatever) as this brave groundbreaking case will open the floodgates for many similar cases
    In a similar case another woman is identifying as Richard Branson and demanding her own private island and NHS trust
    This is how things work in Modern Britain isn’t it???

    1. I get the feeling she’s not taking her study of Physics/Chemistry/Biology seriously enough …

    6. I noticed on her previous sailing across the Atlantic, she nearer to normal.
      Each time, the parents seem to be absent. Is there a link?

    1. It’s just their culture. I don’t suppose the magistrates will see it that way, though. They may get probation.

      1. I believe there is a good trade in robust, shock resistant extra-wide bracelets available to the criminal fraternity so that they can be protected when they have their wrists smacked by our legal system

        1. I think they should have neck collars that blow up if they don’t obey curfew, as in The Running Man

  48. Why is that that our politicians are willing to take the blame for the flooding when everyone knows it is the fault of complying with EU directives on dredging and protecting the environment?
    Is there some unwritten rule that Westminster politicians never mention the EU when they are at fault?

    1. It took a BBC Radio 4 interviewer until yesterday to get a farmer to reveal the real reason for his fields to be under 10 feet of water – lack of dredging.

    2. Morning Bob

      I was about to say the same sort of thing .
      Why on earth do we constantly bow to the EU re their directives.. why are we so scared of them .. Yet poor old Venice who are real EU is seen to be mired in corruption and ineptitude re money for flood barriers which should have been in place almost 20 years ago.

      1. Two points:
        1. All members of the EU are obliged to implement all directives in their domestic legislation.
        2. The UK cannot resist gold-plating the directive, and making it appalling. The rest of Europe just slaps a cover sheet on it, and away they go. The directives I have had dealings with a really quite good, so why the UK feels the need to bollox it up, I don’t know..

    3. Morning, Bob3.

      We’ve all read that people receiving pensions from the EU must not criticise that organisation on pain of losing that pension. Perhaps that censure extends to all potential employees?

    4. Of course there is, the EU must never be criticised!
      Morning all BTW. Whist night tonight, was good fun last week. Not something we usually go to as we used to meet grandson after school on a Thursday. Now he is studying for his A levels and researching at home we I suppose are taking a back seat. Saw him playing football last night in the pouring rain but just missed his goal when parking the car. His team won 2 – 0 first win this season due mainly to many injuries in the team and quite a few new players.
      Slayders..

  49. Half of Europe’s Nearly Five Million Illegals Have Ended up in Just Two Countries, Germany And the UK

    Two-thirds of all so-called unauthorised immigrants in Europe live in just four member states, and by one count there are more illegals in the United Kingdom than any other EU nation, according to new research.
    Estimates of the number of illegals living in Europe in 2017, the most recent year for which figures are available, put the number at between 3.9 and 4.8 million people. Yet despite the freedom of movement between European nations, the vast majority — 70 per cent — of these illegals live in four countries, and half live in just two, Germany and the United Kingdom.

      1. I could not access Opera for 10 minutes either. Parts of the Internet might have had a “junior moment” and forgot what it was supposed to be doing.

  52. The “nige” has said that johnsons feet must be held to the fire, he has refused to stand aside in
    300 / 150 / 75 / 371/2 / etc,etc, seats and has until 4 o’clock to decide.

  53. Good riddance, Donald Tusk. Spiked . Brendan O’Neill 14 November 2019.

    His speech last night was a reminder of how shockingly anti-democratic the EU is.

    Yes it is! It is not simply that its apparatchiks like Tusk are anti-democratic. It is built into its very structure. It is quite literally a Bureaucratic Fourth Reich. Its leaders once ensconced in office are unaccountable to anyone, least of all the voters of the EU. It takes no great feat of imagination to see this power being hijacked by those of a truly malevolent disposition and who would then evict them from authority? Certainly not the EU Parliament that serves simply as Rubber Stamp for any measures the Executive thinks fit to put before them. Once it has its own armed forces it will form a tyranny that makes Communist China look like the Channel Islands.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/11/14/good-riddance-donald-tusk/

    1. And officials in or out of power are immune to prosecution for offences committed in office. Setting themselves above the law is absolutely breathtaking. It is the kind of elite that the left would normally fight against tooth and nail but they have remained as the dog that did not bark.

    2. They might try to stop us. They might even succeed this time (hope not).

      But we aren’t going away.

  55. Interesting development over the General Election candidates standing where I live. I had been planning to spoil my ballot paper, since I have no confidence in any of the parties.

    The Brexit Party has withdrawn on the grounds that they don’t stand against sitting Tories.

    The Tory is the usual brown noser of little brain, who will romp home overwhelmingly.

    The Labour whom I voted for last time as a community nurse has now ditched the NHS and become a forensic scientist investigating gender crimes.

    What is intriguing is the Green candidate. I have not voted Green since 2010 since I object to their rather offensive feminism that shuts out people like me. However, in West Worcestershire, the Green is the only man standing. He is a veteran of the Falklands, having served on submarines and on HMS Valiant in 1982, and has also recovered from cancer. He runs a small business. He says he wants to give something back to the community and won a district council seat in Upton-on-Severn, which had never before been promising for the Greens.

    I am always keen to encourage the small business wing of the Green Party, and am enthusiastic about niche local enterprises, which may well be the saving of the nation.

    2. It would be nice if the down-tickers so far object to war veterans, small businessmen or cancer survivors, or just has nothing to say for him-or-herself. Or am I being stalked by someone who dislikes my criticism of certain vile foreign leaders.

      1. Not so far declared. The BXP woman has stood aside under instruction from Farage. While I voted for UKIP in the euros, and support their robust stand against Islamism and wokeness, I do not support them over their contempt for the environment.

        1. Jeremy, UKIP supports a controlled immigration programme with a reduced target. That will ease pressure on house building on green fields. That is hardly “contempt for the environment”. On the contrary, it’s saving the planet, especially when you consider increasing the number of people means more CO2 being breathed out. Then there is the sensible policy of being able to husband our fish stocks rather than having them pillaged by Dutch super-trawlers. Very definitely a conservationist measure.

      1. That’s what drives me up the wall when I hear them going on about ‘Sea bass’.

        It’s Bass.

          9. Possibly, but smaller bass are more tender eating. Haven’t tried the farmed variety. I knew what you meant of course.

  57. Let’s bring back hereditary peers
    Alexander Pelling-Bruce – Coffee House – 14 November 2019 – 10:44 AM

    There is a new law of politics: if it happened under Tony Blair, it’s almost certainly bad. Brexit has certainly shown up the fallacies of New Labour’s constitutional reforms, in particular the creation of the Supreme Court, whose might was mistakenly thought to be symbolic. But one Blair era reform, which took place twenty years ago this week, has been largely overlooked: the decision to eject the majority of the hereditary peers from the House of Lords. It’s time to bring them back.

    The key problem with the post-1999 Lords is that it introduced a system of unfettered patronage – the overwhelming majority of its members are there for life at the gift of the prime minister of the day. This allows for the continuation of the policies of a government long after it has left office, since invariably the upper chamber has been stuffed full of former MPs, party supporters and apparatchiks. The recent elevation to the Lords of Gavin Barwell – a failed MP and a failed government advisor – is just one example.

    We can’t say we weren’t warned. During the passage of the reform bill, the Earl of Burford leapt up on to the Woolsack and implored peers to vote it down in the name of sovereignty, culture and freedom. To reporters outside, he suggested Blair was evicting the hereditary peers as the final obstacle to surrendering our nationhood to Brussels and to full political union. At the time, he was dismissed as a cranky Cassandra.

    Yet since the removal of most of the hereditary peers, the Lords has acted without restraint where reticence is required and given in to the Commons where it should have been assertive. More recently, led by Mandelson and Adonis, it abrogated its responsibilities to even scrutinise, let alone revise (or reject) the Cooper-Letwin and Benn bills. This was enormously important constitutional legislation. It had appeared in no party manifesto and was arguably abetted by a rogue Speaker. What’s more, its passage has impeded our democratically sanctioned withdrawal from the EU. If there is a Conservative majority government after the election, will the Lords ignore the Salisbury convention and frustrate Boris’s deal or the result of the trade negotiations? In this topsy-turvy time it is hard to say.

    It is no surprise then that there are growing calls to abolish the Lords, with Nigel Farage predictably leading the way. Yet the Brexit party leader has fallen into Blair’s modernising trap.

    Modernisers like Blair present themselves as moderate reformers in contrast to the radical iconoclasts in their party, but the endgame is the same. By denuding the institution and corrupting its functions, people will eventually want to scrap it altogether anyway when they can no longer see its purpose.

    There have been multiple attempts since Blair’s reforms – which were intended to be temporary – to finish the job. Last month, Labour peer Lord Grocott tabled a bill that would remove the remaining 92 hereditary members by non-replacement on death.

    But no one can agree on what should follow. The proper relationship between the Lords and the Commons is like parent to adult child. The experienced parent will advise against rash action but ultimately cannot compel. From Farage’s unicameralism comes elective infantilism. An elected second chamber on the other hand retains the problems of an appointed one and adds one more: competition with the first chamber over legitimacy.

    The best solution is return to the old status quo by simply repealing Blair’s reforms. The liberal philosopher Brian Barry wrote that it is better to perpetuate an anachronism than replace it with a piece of nonsense. Blair left us with the nonsense of an appointed chamber with farcical by-elections for the residual hereditary peers amongst themselves. Perhaps the creation of farce was intended. Liberal purists may say that hereditary privilege is indefensible. But we should take what works rather than obsessing about principles.

    When the House of Lords staff told the current Earl of Elgin to clear his belongings after Blair had his way, he asked them if he should also take the stained glass window that his ancestor had installed. Almost twenty years to the day from his defenestration, the perils of removing the old constitutional furniture are gradually being understood. It is time to put the House back in order.

        1. You mean it’s not possible to just transition into one because that’s what you believe yourself to be?

    3. Been saying that for ages; the hereditary peers had a stake in the long-term future rather than quick fix short-termism that politicians are addicted to.

  58. Essay – Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour would crush civil society

    Thirty years on, the same tactics employed in Communist central Europe are being mooted in Britain
    BY ROGER SCRUTON – November 13, 2019

    The 1989 uprising against communism in Eastern Europe was a bid for freedom, and for many commentators it was little more than that. The oppressors happened to be the Communist Party, backed up by their Soviet masters, but they might have been the henchmen of a tin-pot dictatorship or a gang of Mafiosi. The important point, for many observers, is that the oppressors had set out to control things, and the people had at last said no.

    Yet to see things in that way is to overlook the peculiar contribution of communism to the tyranny exerted in its name. It is also to ignore the abiding relevance of a political system whose charm in Left-wing circles, as we learn from the pronouncements of Jeremy Corbyn and Seumas Milne, has been barely diminished by its enormous legacy of human suffering.
    *
    *
    *
    Communism vanished from Europe 30 years ago — but the totalitarian impulse remains. Freedom of association has no sacrosanct status on the Left; in our country we see this in the matter of country sports which are, and will always be, the targets of leftist disapproval.

    The Labour Party does not see certain laws forbidding free association as an assault on legitimate freedoms but as a moral duty of the state. After the ban on fox hunting, the Party has likewise set its sights on grouse shooting, not from any concern for the grouse, which are well cared for only because we shoot them, but out of hostility to the kind of people who congregate with guns on grouse moors.

    But the associations that most need protecting, now in Britain as then in Central Europe, are not those devoted to the leisure of country people but those in which people associate for the sake of knowledge.

    At the recent Labour Party conference Left-wing activists called for private education to be criminalised, as it was by the communists, and the funds of private schools to be confiscated and used for the “common good”. Meanwhile leftists in universities are mounting effective campaigns to prevent free discussion and to expel those professors whose views they dislike. Politicised subjects like Gender Studies, which forbid ideological disagreement and have doctrine and dogma as their goal, are driving free discussion from the curriculum.

    It is not clear, yet, how far this will go. But the arguments given and the tactics adopted are exactly those of the communists in 1948. The state is seen as the guardian of public morality; it must therefore forbid the misuse of our freedoms.

    It is surely likely that the underground university that operated in Czechoslovakia in the Eighties will be needed before long in Britain. In preparing for that moment we should be looking back, not to 1989 but to 1977, when the battle which had been fought and lost in the post-war years began again in earnest. And it is our battle today. Once again we must fight for civil society against the state, and for free association against totalitarian control.

    https://unherd.com/2019/11/thirty-years-on-we-forget-the-lessons-of-communism/

  60. Telegraph

    Tories offer Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party eleventh-hour pact

    Like everything Johnson does and says on examination one finds that it is a lie – it is not true. Johnson has not offered that the Conservatives would stand down in any seats at all. This is just an attempt to try and show Farage as being obstructive when it is Johnson, and his disgusting Conservative Party which is quite determined not to deliver a proper Brexit.

    If the electorate trusted Boris Johnson to deliver a proper Brexit rather than a BRINO then there would be no need for the BP to field any candidates at all but, very sensibly, people have noticed that Johnson cannot be trusted. Nigel Farage has already made a dramatic concession in standing down in Conservative held seats – the fact that Johnson is not prepared to do the same shows just how arrogant and determined Johnson is not to produce a decent Brexit.

    Boris Johnson has revealed that he is an arrogant bully. He can say blusteringly when he is seeking to be leader of his party that he is prepared to go for ‘no deal’ but when Farage offers a glimmer of hope that this might be achieved Johnson does his best to squash it.

    Johnson is beneath contempt.

    1. Wow, he’s that high up in your estimation!

      I hope NF goes ahead with his candidates and I hope TBP really stuffs the Cons.

        1. I want a hung Parliament with NF holding the balance of power. I do not want the WA to be passed so TBP is my only option but there is no candidate in my neck of the woods as far as I know. I certainly don’t want Limpdumbs and they may give our Con MP a good run for his money. It’s getting really exciting and nerve wracking at the same time. This may be the last chance to wangle a “no deal” Brexit although, really, I know I’m clutching at straws. Hope springs eternal so ‘tis said!

          1. I’d rather have a TBP government but it’s not going to happen so I’m voting Conservative to keep Jeremy out.

        2. Good morning, Polly

          But if the BP only stands in seats where there is no chance of people voting Conservative this should not reduce the number of seats the Conservatives will win.

          The thing which could lead the Conservatives to being defeated is the Conservative Party itself. They have lied and cheated and bullied to such an extent that many former Conservative voters may well decide not to vote for them: they may not vote for other parties but they may just abstain or spoil their ballot papers.

          1. True.

            The Tories are imperfect, but the alternative is a trillion miles further away from perfect.

          2. If the Conservatives lose the election and we get a Lab Lib/Dem coalition it will be entirely the fault of the Conservative Party for not coming to a sensible agreement with the BP. The truth of the matter would seem to be that Johnson would prefer to lose the general election than form a government with the BP which produced a proper Brexit.

          3. True… but I don’t want Marxism so I’ll vote Conservative.

            If Britain had PR, I would vote TBP.

            FPTP is Britain’s downfall.

          4. So you are being blackmailed by the Conservatives with the threat of Corbyn and told you can jolly well lump it if you really want a proper Brexit because the Conservatives won’t let you have it?

          7. Rastus – I have noticed a pattern with Polly’s comments that indicates a high probability that they are in fact a Soros shill. They whine on and on about Soros to build him up as one of the Masters when he is just an office boy doing their bidding. Polly repeats his name so often that it appears they want to get people so fed up of hearing it that they dismiss anybody who mentions globalists in general.

            But twice now, when it comes down to something serious, Polly has advocated the hard-core globalist position. This is the latest time. The Withdrawal Agreement was written by their lawyers in the EU to bring down the United Kingdom. It will do so much damage to us that a massive recession would be a piece of cake in comparison.

            So what do we find Polly saying at this critical time? “Vote for Boris, get this EU deal through, crucify the UK.” Polly is even using the laughable “You’ll get Corbyn!” joke of an argument, when we can see the Labour Party falling apart in front of us as they lose voters to TBP, the Lib Dems and general apathy. The pro-EU polling organisations will not say this of course.

            There will no doubt be a frothing reply begging me to respond to Polly, which I will not read. Getting our country free of the EU is the only way forward, but it seems that many of us will not have a candidate to vote for who believes in doing that.

          8. I haven’t seen Polly for some time. Every time they were blocked, another one would pop up. But that game seems to have ceased. No doubt it will now start up again…

    2. It seems no deal will be made as today is the last day for candidates to register . It is just daft for Boris not to do a deal. It is a win win but such is the arrogance of the Conservatives they will not budge. In theory there is until 4pm to register so there could potentially be a deal but it seems highly unlikely at this stage

    3. DT now reporting that Farage is going ahead with standing in 300+ seats. The Tory CCO trolls are livid.

      1. If that is true, then excellent. It could well stop Boris getting the majority that he needs to ram this Withdrawal Agreement through against the interests of this country and trap us under the EU for years. All we need is a delay to the EU having that level of control over us and they are going to fall apart so quickly that even non-political voters will look at them and say “You want us tied to that nightmare? You must be joking.”

        After all we have seen, I was worried that Farage would pull out of those Labour seats. That would have been “Game Over” for our democracy.

        1. The crucial question is why would Boris prefer to face Labour/LibDem MPs across the floor than BP MPs?

        2. Excitement! This is turning into a horse race, and what fun is it if all horses are pulled except one?

          (Happy Thursday, Meredith).

        3. Nigel Farage should also have said he would only stand down in constituencies where the Conservatives were fielding a genuine leaver. After years of having to suffer the Remain Harpy Ms Soubry (who is standing for her Change Party) now the Conservatives are offering yet another remainer as their candidate. What a blatant insult to the people of Broxtowe – 54.6% of whom voted to leave the EU in the referendum

          How should the voters vote when they have no proper Brexit candidate – they have effectively been disenfranchised. The BP should certainly be standing in Broxtowe.

  64. EU Army: France Spearheads 13 New Joint Military Projects, Including Joint European Warships

    The European Union has stepped closer to a fully operational army by announcing 13 new joint military projects, including a new fleet of next-generation warships, prompting condemnations of the EU’s “expansionist military ambitions”.

    The new plans include a series of electronic warfare systems comprised of cyber training centres, an Airborne Electronic Attack (AEA) anti-jamming system, and a German-Czech project that could lead to the training of electronic warfare and military units in the future.

    One noteworthy project is the development of a new class of warship, the European Patrol Corvette (EPC), a highly manoeuvrable ship smaller than a frigate but larger than a cutter. The new military ship will be developed in a joint venture between France’s state-owned shipbuilding company and the Italian owned Fincantieri. It is not known yet how many ships are to be built, according to Deutsche Welle.
    PESCO will also undertake the development of the Maritime Unmanned Anti-Submarine System (MUSAS), a joint project between Portugal, France, Spain and Sweden aimed at providing an autonomous command structure for anti-submarine warfare.

    The spectre of an EU army was once derided by Remain campaigners as a “dangerous fantasy” during the 2016 European Union referendum, however, the announcement of the 13 new military projects is another confirmation of the warnings made by Brexiteers for years of the European Union’s desire to develop a fully-fledged army, citing it as a reason why the United Kingdom should leave the EU.

    “The Brexit Party is opposed to attempts to lock the UK into elements of the EU’s expansionist military ambitions”, a spokesman told The Daily Express.
    “Voters want Britain to have an independent defence and foreign policy and if they put Brexit Party MPs in Parliament we can ensure this by holding Boris’ feet to the fire”, he added.

    The new spate of EU army projects sees France taking lead, involved in most of them and spearheading three projects, one of which will work towards increasing “the ability of the armed forces within the EU to face collectively and efficiently the upcoming threats”.
    Germany, on the other hand, will only be involved in two of the upcoming projects.

    2. Looks like the Third World War will be against Germany again, and once again we will be on the same side as the Russians.

  65. Our elderly pal threw his hat at the TV .. he was furious with Corbyn and co as well as the Remainers .. He is a real Boris fan and always has been..

    The TV .. I year old .. and a large all singing all dancing screen.. has now a wobbly stripe down inside the screen where his hat struck it ..

    What a palava to get a new one delivered and installed .. he paid for the chaps to connect and organise the new one .. which is a bit larger than the old one , and they just delivered and picked up the damaged one then scuttled off.. leaving the the sound box and bits and pieces scattered all over the floor .

    Moh and son had to travel over to see him .. to try to install things for him .

    Any way , no matter how angry any of you get .. DO NOT throw anything at your TV .. the screen will go haywire .

    2. Richer sounds did an excellent job of installing my new TV etc. and disposing of the old one. Charged me for it, though.

    3. And what are the respective knifing rates between Istanbul and London?

      Oh, never mind–covert intimidation and harassment always results in lower physical assaults than overt intimidation and harassment.

      (Greetings, TB).

        1. You cut me to the bone with your jabs!! I simply meant that many stabbings in the UK seem gratuitous, and if the stabbing rate in Istanbul is lower it might not mean much, unless the UK sends a few million Brits to Istanbul to ascertain the effect on knifings.

          2. Are the many stabbings in the UK gratuitous? Many of them seem to be planned, deliberate and with a clear purpose – revenge against another person, defence of one’s home turf or protecting a criminal enterprise. From the perpetrator’s point of view, entirely reasonable. My guess is that the stabbings in Istanbul are less to do with drugs and gang warfare and more to do with personal or family disputes.

          3. I’m using the word “gratuitous” as a substitute for “unjustified”.

            If you’re trying to harass/intimidate/eliminate a rival, you use “gratuitous” and/or “unjustified” violence. If you’re just trying to rob them, you use only enough violence to get the property you want, then split (and avoid more serious charges).

          4. I am not sure that the stabbers see it that way. Their first reactions seem to be that their violence was entirely justified and only when their brief tells them to show contrition to the court do they retract this. I am also not sure about these criminals using only the minimum level of violence necessary to rob someone.

  67. Hospital waiting times at worst-ever level

    Spending on the NHS has not been cut. The rate of increase in the budget for the NHSs has slowed but so has inflation

    WE spend slightly above the EU average on health so there has to be other factors at place. I think it indicate health tourism is far higher than the NHS admit to and it also I suspect indicates the UK population is far higher than claimed. Other factors are abuse of A&E, Perhaps they should be triaged and anyone with minor injury or condition should be simply told to see their GP

    Drunks should have a 3 strikes and you pay policy. ie if they turn up a fourth time frunk a £50 charge. The obese should be told to go to a gym at their expense and be given a diet and they will be required to lose a certain amount of weigh again a 3 strikes and you pay approach

    Maybe even introduce a £10 charge for waling in to A&E for treatment

    1. I expect the stabby stabby brigade, drug takers, recreational sport, migrant illnesses, unvaccinated children and the rest take up NHS resources , yet the elderly will get the blame, as usual !

      1. Back in the summer, when OH injured his shoulder, he first went to our minor injuries unit, where he was told it would be a four hour wait to be seen, so he came home. A couple of days later, after we’d been to a meeting, we called in about 10pm, thinking it might be quieter. They close at 11pm but at two minutes to 11, he was called in and told to see his GP. We have no complaints there – the GP has been excellent.

      2. Certainly the elderly are making increasing demands o the NHS but not by that much. Walk into any A&E and it will not be full of pensioners

        1. A&E is a fraction of the NHS and hardly representative of overall use. You might as well say look at maternity. The NHS is only used by women.
          It’s an absolute fact that the age groups that use the NHS heaviest are the 0 to 5 age group and the 75+ age group, closely followed by the 65-75 age group. This is the same the whole world over and not something that only affects the NHS. Working aged people and teenaged school-children do not consume much in the way of health services in aggregate when compared with the noted age-groups. Last time I checked the average spend on a 20-40 something was around 1k per year compared to about 6k per year for an over 75.

    4. BJ,
      Walk through the exit door yesterday,
      stop treating the world , cannot be done.
      Total severance.

  68. Nicked from we took the oath – it’s an old one, but seasonal!!

    Once again this year, I’ve had requests for my Whisky Christmas Cake recipe so here goes. Please keep in your files as I am beginning to get tired of typing this up every year! (Made mine this morning!!!!) 1 cup sugar, 1 tsp. baking powder, 1 cup water, 1 tsp. salt , 1 cup brown sugar, Lemon juice, 4 large eggs, Nuts, 2 bottles Whisky, 2 cups dried fruit.

    Sample a cup of Whisky to check quality. Take a large bowl, check the Whisky again to be sure it is of the highest quality then Repeat. Turn on the electric mixer. Beat one cup of butter in a large bowl. Add 1 teaspoon of sugar. Beat again. At this point, it is best to make sure the Whisky is still OK. Try another cup just in case. Turn off the mixerer thingy. Break 2 eegs and add to the bowl and chuck in the cup of dried fruit. Pick the fruit up off the floor, wash it and put it in the bowl a piece at a time trying to count it. Mix on the turner. If the fried druit getas stuck in the beaterers, just pry it loose with a drewscriver Sample the other bottle of Whisky to test for tonsisticity. Next, sift 2 cups of salt, or something. Check the Whisky. Now shift the lemon juice and strain your nuts. Add one table. Add a spoon of sugar, or somefink. Whatever you can find sample the whiskers Greash the oven. Turn the cake tin 360 degrees and try not to fall over. Don’t forget to beat off the turner. Finally, throw the bowl through the door Finish the Whisky and wipe the counter with the cat.

    Not sure why, but this seems to have been pinned to the top? Disqus is really odd this morning!

    3. Caroline has coeliac disease so she must not eat wheat or barley. She has to make a gluten free Christmas cake, gluten free mince pies, and a gluten free Christmas pudding but they are so full of fruit soaked in brandy that nobody can tell that they are gluten free – indeed they are the best I have ever tasted though my mother ran her a pretty close race.

      1. I had fish and chips at a local pub recently. The batter was melt in the mouth. It was, apparently, gluten free and turned the haddock into the best fish and chips I’ve ever had.

          2. I use ‘OO’ – it’s for pasta making, but I used it one day when I’d run out of normal flour – and the result was yummacious.

        2. My local Witherspoons knocks the local chippies into a cocked hat
          Fish,chips,mushy peas,b&b and a pint of Doombar
          8.70

      2. I have a non-flour cake recipe.
        Main ingredients are grated carrot, ground almonds, and coconut. You can add whatever dried fruit you like. Are you interested??

  69. comparison of some European Health Services

    Health Spending as share of GDP (Figures Eurostat 2013/2014)

    Belgium 10.4%
    France 10.9%
    Germany 10.9%
    UK 9.9%

    No of GP’s per 1000 of population

    Belgium 3
    France 3.1
    Germany 4.1
    UK 2.8

    Hospital beds per 1000 population

    Belgium 6.5
    France 6.4
    Germany 8.2
    UK 2.9

    Nurses and midwives per 1000 population

    Belgium 10.7
    France 9.65
    Germany 11.1
    UK 6.7

    In addition, the cost of medicines in France is among the lowest in Europe. A UK Department of Health survey in 2008 of the cost of medicines in the EU and the USA found medicine prices in France about 10% less than in the UK

  70. Healthcare in France

    In many ways it is similar to the UK but with the exception that in France use of the private sector within the French Health service is not an issue

    For most of the Health services in France you have to may a small point of use payment some of these can be later claimed back. It is an over complex system in my view but France is known for its Bureaucracy. THe UK could introduce a scheme where you make a small upfront payment but thought the complex system of reclaiming a part of it

    Primary health care

    Primary health care is provided by a network of 23,000 general practitioners (in French, médecins généralistes) (a ratio of 1 GP per 2600 inhabitants). Most GPs are self-employed professionals, and work either on their own, or in group practices. Citizens are free to choose the GP the want, and sign up with him or her, as their personal doctor. Citizens may also consult any other GP they wish, but only the personal doctor with whom they are registered is authorised to refer patients to a specialist or to another health care provider – nurse, physiotherapist, etc – for further care under the health care system.

    In most cases, patients have to pay a flat rate fee for any visit to a general practitioner. The cost in 2019 is 25 € per visit, irrespective of the time taken, but is higher for visits to surgeries open at night or at weekends, and for home visits. Most of the cost will then be automatically reimbursed to the patient by his state-run health insurance provider, leaving the patient with between zero and 6 Euros to pay for a standard trip to the doctor, depending on the type of health care insurance he has and the age or medical condition of the patient.

    Virtually all GPs in France are “conventioned”, i.e. they have signed a contract with the national health insurance scheme to provide their services in the framework of the national health service, at the rates agreed nationally.

    Accident and emergency

    A&E services (les urgences) are part of the national heath care system. All cities and large towns have a service know as the SAMU, which is the emergency ambulance service. Paramedics and medics from the SAMU are called out in the event of accident or emergency, and provide on the spot assistance before transporting the sick or injured to A&E or other specialised units at the nearest hospital providing them.
    The SAMU ambulance service is only used for accidents and emergencies. Other routine ambulance work is carried out by private ambulance firms, subcontracted to the state health care system.

    Specialist health care

    Specialist health care is provided by thousands of specialists in all branches of medicine, in towns and cities throughout France. Specialists charge higher fees than general practitioners, but again there are official rates agreed with the national health service, which form the basis on which patients are reimbursed. A large number of specialists apply tariffs that are higher than the official rates; in such cases, patients will either be reimbursed according to the standard rate, or else at a higher rate, if their health insurance provider provides for this.

    As stated above, visits to specialists in France are only reimbursed by the health care system at the full rate if the patient has been referred to the specialist by his own GP. Citizens may also visit any specialist they want, without getting referred by their own GP; but if they do so, the cost of their specialist visit will only be paid back at the basic GP visit rate, however much they paid.

    The main exception to this is for dentists: dental care is covered by the health service, but has its own tariffs and reimbursement rates. Generally speaking, most basic dental work – fillings, extractions etc. – is carried out and paid for under much the same conditions as other specialist health care treatment. Other more complex operations are also reimbursed, but at lower rates.

    Many specialists divide their time between consultancy work in their own surgery or group practice, and hospital work. Some work exclusively in their own practice, and some work exclusively in hospitals or clinics. It is important to remember that specialists working outside state hospitals do so as self-employed professionals, offering a private service that is paid for by the patient, and then rapidly reimbursed by the state health insurance scheme.

    Medicines, pharmaceuticals

    GPs and specialists prescribe medicines and other parapharmaceutical products that must then be obtained by the patient from a pharmacy. It is unusual for GPs, except perhaps on night visits, to have any medicines available with them.
    At pharmacies, the pay-and-get-reimbursed principle again applies, with one major difference. Whereas with doctors’ visits, the patient pays the full amount due, and then is reimbursed later minus the percentage he has to pay, with pharmaceuticals the patient pays only the part of the cost that is not taken care of by the state health care system.

    Thus, for a typical visit to the pharmacy with a prescription for drugs costing, let’s say, fifty euros, the patient will be charged between zero and fifteen Euros, depending on the nature of the drugs and material prescribed, and the health insurance cover he has. There are four basic rates of reimbursement for medicines: 100%, 65% (the normal rate) 35% and not-reimbursed. Complementary health insurance plans (known as les mutuelles) will push these rates up considerably.

    Hospitals

    There are two sorts of hospitals in France; generally speaking these are known as hôpitaux when they are state run, and cliniques when they are privately run. Most private cliniques are state approved, and can therefore work for the national health service. Many specialists work in both state run hospitals and in private clinics: since they are self-employed professionals, they can sell their services to whatever hospital or clinic will pay them.

    Both GPs and specialists can refer patients for hospital treatment if it is deemed necessary; and within the framework of the health service, they can send them for treatment in either a state-run hospital or a private clinic, whichever they consider to be best for the purpose, or to provide the fastest service.
    In the framework of the French health care system, patients are only billed for a very small proportion of the cost of their stay in hospital; the most significant charge that the patient must pay is an 18€ per day hospitalisation fee, basically a contribution to the board and lodging provided by the hospital. In most cases, most or all of the rest of the bill is paid for by the state halth insurance scheme and complementary health programmes.

    Difficulties

    Like health insurance schemes everywhere, the French state health insurance program has difficulty making ends meet, and relies increasingly on topups from the general budget of the state. An ageing population and the explosion of health care costs due to increasing expectations and the development of expensive new processes and medicines, have put enormous strains on the system. The rates of reimbursement have been reduced in recent years, and some contributions increased. People complain of the cost, but at the same time very few voices are ever heard in France calling for a reduction in the services provided.

    In short, almost everyone in France knows that France has one of the best health services in the world, if not the best, and one that is the envy of many other countries. New solutions will be needed in the years to come to make sure that the system continues to provide this high level of service; but there is more or less total consensus in France that whatever the cost may be, it will be worth it.

  71. Greetings all, a Remoaner living in Spain and working in Gibraltar gets herself all worked up over Brexit (warning–language):

    https://twitter.com/Thevoiceofanex1/status/1191088312355831808

    REPLY: “Someone aspiring to be middle class; lives on a yacht in Spain, whilst working in Gibraltar (probably with some lovely little tax breaks), has just realise the price of her meds is no longer going to be covered by normal working class people in the U.K.”

    2. Hopefully her high blood pressure will do her no good in the end! What bit of “democratic” does she fail to understand?

        2. That would explain the big glasses in a futile attempt to distort her appearance.

          Society has a right to defend itself, and by her wild eyes, hate-filled expression and utterly selfish focus, it is probably better for us all that she is not allowed to vote. I would prevent her from calling herself British or ever blighting our shores again.

          Let us see her survive in the EU that she loves so well.

          1. Oh no, Meredith, The Brexit Party should fly her to London to campaign for Leave! Then the press can ask her why she was never arrested… .

          2. You want someone like that campaigning for Leave? I would prefer that her type never pollutes this green and pleasant land of ours again with her shabby presence. Our country was built by people better than her.

            Neither her help or presence is required to put our nation back on its feet again. 🙂

          3. Sorry Meredith, poor wording. Bring her back, let her make her Remoaner noises–and then she can explain why she was on the run from the British Constabulary for 3 years, accused of serious criminal charges.

            End result in the British mindset: “If a former British fugitive wants us to remain in the EU, how many other alleged and/or actual criminals are taking advantage of the UK’s membership in the EU? Isn’t it time to Leave and put a stop to that?”

      2. Every remainer I have ever spoken to has started off on how badly it will affect them and most of their arguments on how the EU is better revolve around them.

    5. Next time I’m down that way I might pop over the border at La Linea and give her a good hard laughing at.

        1. Not been on any whale trips on the Strait. If I had it would probably have been out of Tarifa on Tumares.

          You’d have thought that someone whose job it is is to keep customers sweet might think twice before insulting and seriously pissing 52% of them off.

    6. Shouldn’t the dear lady be preparing for the UK leaving the EU, now just ranting incoherently?

      So she didn’t have a vote because she lived on a boat, OK got that but what are all of these sleepless nights about?

  72. Ms Swinson pledged to revoke Article 50 on the first day of her leadership if she is elected to Number 10 during a visit to the Guru Nanak Sikh temple in Glasgow.
    She said remaining in the EU would free up money for the health service, childcare and tackling climate change.

    I am afraid her understanding of economics would fit on the back of a postage stamp

      1. It’s a European philanthropist by the name of Grant.

        A bit like Santa Claus, but more benevolent and kinder and he arrives all year round.

        1. Her other trick is to put up corporation tax but tat will cost us money as companies will just move their tax base out of the UK

      2. There are signs all over the country, on village halls, sports facilities and so on, which say exactly that.

      3. Well to be exact the EU does give the UK some money, the fact that is just some of the money that the UK gives to the EU is irrelevant.

      4. An even more staggering number of people think that the Government has huge vaults of entirely its own money and that this should be given to them.

    1. BJ: “Michael, I thought we had agreed that you would stop that until after the election”
      NF: “Sorry BJ, it’s Nigel here”

  74. Let’s bring back hereditary peers. Alexander Pelling-Bruce. 14 November 2019.

    There is a new law of politics: if it happened under Tony Blair, it’s almost certainly bad. Brexit has certainly shown up the fallacies of New Labour’s constitutional reforms, in particular the creation of the Supreme Court, whose might was mistakenly thought to be symbolic. But one Blair era reform, which took place twenty years ago this week, has been largely overlooked: the decision to eject the majority of the hereditary peers from the House of Lords. It’s time to bring them back.

    I don’t know that it is a new law, it is certainly accurate. Like some alternative modern day Croesus pretty much everything he touched, including the UK itself turned to cr@p. What he will be most remembered for in the history books will be Iraq. A fiasco of monumental proportions that has not yet played itself out and that will probably end European Civilisation. The so called reforms; Schools; Gay Rights, Immigration have all had malign effects on the country. The worse thing is that these, like hereditary peers, are largely irreversible. The First Law of Politics being you cannot go backwards!

    https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/11/restorelets-bring-back-hereditary-peersthe-lords/

    2. Having a major part of the UK’s Legislature reliant on “accident of birth” was, in the 20th Century, an anachronism that needed to be abolished. Except for the slight fact that it actually worked and worked VERY well.

      As Blair no doubt noted during so many of the Thatcher years, the House of Lords was often the only effective opposition to the Government and the quality of legislation produced by the Upper Chamber, both primary and as amendments to Government bills, was usually vastly superior to that from the Lower Chamber, hence his disastrous reforms.

      Democracy, often described as a poor form of Government, but not as bad as the alternatives, has many shortfalls, particularly the inability of our elected representatives to see further than the next ballot box.

      Largely because the Peers were able to take a much longer term view, they acted to counterbalance those shortfalls.

      1. I agree. Had I been asked in my younger, Republican, days I would have said the opposite.
        However, it became clear to me that a long view is needed. Those whose ancestors planted avenues of tree that they would never see mature, are suited for that.
        The wealth of the aristos is in the land and they are bound to that land. They are not, and cannot be, fly-by-nights like industrialists, drug dealers, bankers, financiers, oligarchs, politicians, and the like. What is good for the landowners is, by and large, good for the whole nation.

        1. One of the reasons I have heard advanced for our not having had a Revolution like the French is that French aristos ignored their estates and based themselves at Versailles, thinking that to be banished to the country was a dreadful fate, while ours were happily at home running their estates, rooted in the land, and managing their peasantry for profit (some of which rubbed off with benevolent despotism).

      2. I agree.
        My comment on the Speccie website:
        “I know this is not a popular view here, but I agree. It wasn’t perfect before, and the majority on the left didn’t like the idea of representation by the unelected hereditary peers, the Lords and Ladies of the land, a throwback to centuries past, but at least they weren’t, by and large, bought and paid for by political parties, appointed there to stuff the second chamber with their chosen lackies.
        I’d rather have 100 unelected hereditary peers than 100 unelected Lib Dems, multiple times more in number than had been elected to the HoC.”

      3. The French have an interesting system. A senator is elected for six years but half the senate is replaced every three years.

        This seems rather better than the British system where a flatulent idiot is rewarded for ‘services rendered’ to a politician by that politician and he or she is then there for life.

        When Blair announced that he planned to reform the HoL and make it better his main aim was to ruin it completely. For a start both Houses of Parliament should have their numbers very drastically reduced.

        1. The Lords needs to be reduced to about a 150 peers and they should have the relevant expertise to scrutinize the Commons legislation so people with legal skills, finance skills, Quality skills, Engineering skills, Health skills etc

    3. People who need the money from being in politics should not be in politics in the first place.

      Some people are always so wrong that as soon as they say something you know that the opposite must be the case.. Shirley Willioams was like that – I remember her saying that paying MPs more and giving them better expenses would encourage more competent people to go into politics. The reverse has been shown to be true.

      1. That may be true in the UK but I understand that Lee Kuan Yew argued that paying MPs very high salaries would attract the best people and deter them from wrongdoing as they would not risk losing them. Singapore is an amazingly successful and well-run country.

        1. And much smaller and more homogenous than the UK. Also not subject over the last 40 years to being part of an empire.

          2. True about being smaller but still not entirely homogenous with a Malay and Indian population as well as the majority Chinese (themselves not being entirely homogenous with Hokkien, Cantonese, Teochew, Haka and many others).

  75. Old eddy lister has been offering brexit group candidates
    jobs prior to the cut off time said “nige”, almost on par with keeping UKIP seats in the brussels parliament when
    leaving the UKIP party, a “nige”?
    Swings & roundabouts, goes round,comes round.

          1. SaH the Elder is now Student Son.
            So SaH the Younger is now just SaH.
            The distaff side is the DT & Dr. Daughter up in Gyetsheed.

          1. I used it in the eighties. My late mother in law, a trained hairdresser, told me that my scalp was too sensitive for the harsh chemicals in ‘Head and Shoulders’ and ever since I have used Paul Mitchell’s Special Tea Tree Shampoo at her instigation.

  78. Environment Agency chap on Bbc News saying that householders ‘should move their stuff upstairs in advance of flooding, and not do it in the dead of night when the waters are lapping at the doors’. No mention of EA policy of not dredging rivers because of EU legislation being the main cause…

  79. So the tories were offering peerages to stand down from the brexit group, and “nige” was calling the peelers.
    They turned up pronto when Tommy Robinson threatened the peoples with free hamburgers so the “nige” should have no problem.

  80. Wotta surprise….BTL@DT rolling news

    J Fountain 14 Nov 2019 6:49PM
    Come on. Fromage actually admitted to lying the day after the referendum. He is not whiter than white.

    Sir John Curtis, in a public lecture on Monday, stated that, behind the scenes, Farage asked for Boris to make his speech about 2020 deadline and Canada+ to give him political cover to withdraw candidates.

    He is in cahoots with Tories and that’s just politics.

    1. Not one of them has to worry about their energy bills tripling so i’m inclined to agree with you.

  81. I have been remiss, folks. Mea culpa! I started commenting before extending my greetings to everyone. Where are my manners? I am a little distrait today.

    1. Conway – at least you did not stride into the room, kick the cat through the rotating fan, and demand “hot vittels woman!” while pouring yourself a large whiskey. So you have still have some class.

  83. “”General election 2019: Tories promise to cut ‘immigration overall’
    Why do they want to cut it ? If the Somali lad is wearing an overall, at least it shows he’s working.

    1. 80% of the male Somali comunity in the the U.K are on benefits. We need to dig more wells so their wives have somewhere to traipse to.

        1. He should be thrown down one the effing wastrels. Sod the culture they came from they need to go to work.

        2. No, he’d send one of his four (4) wives.

          Somalia:
          1998 — Fertility rate, total (births per woman): 7.7
          2015 — Fertility rate, total (births per woman): 6.4

          So in 1998, the average family size of a “1 Somali man / 4 Somali wife” family (neglecting childhood deaths) was 36 persons ( 5 adults and 31 children). Seventeen years later, the average family size of a “1 Somali man / 4 Somali wife” family (neglecting childhood deaths) is 31 persons ( 5 adults and 26 children).

          PROGRESS?

          https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?locations=SO&start=1960&end=2015

          1. At this point in our countries history we outnumber “new arrivals” by 10 to 1, and we are breaking our countries infrastructure to be nice and to help them.

            With that birthrate of theirs, when they outnumber us 10 to 1, I wonder if they will have that same kindness in their hearts.

        3. No, he’d send one of his four (4) wives.

          Somalia:
          1998 — Fertility rate, total (births per woman): 7.7
          2015 — Fertility rate, total (births per woman): 6.4

          So in 1998, the average family size of a “1 Somali man / 4 Somali wife” family (neglecting childhood deaths) was 36 persons ( 5 adults and 31 children). Seventeen years later, the average family size of a “1 Somali man / 4 Somali wife” family (neglecting childhood deaths) is 31 persons ( 5 adults and 26 children).

          PROGRESS?

          https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?locations=SO&start=1960&end=2015

    1. It is no wonder that the Guardian are broke. It is a hate-filled rag aimed at selfish graspers. These people pay for nothing if they can avoid it. It is perfect for the BBC.

      Even looking at it makes you feel unclean.

  85. I find this incredibly suspicious. ( the link is to the Guardian, but no big deal )-

    ” Labour antisemitism row: public figures say they cannot vote for party under Corbyn ”

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/14/labour-antisemitism-row-public-figures-say-they-cannot-vote-for-party-under-corbyn

    It’s quite a long one, and worth a read.

    When a mass of mainly leftists and Remainers get together to hammer Corbyn over anti-semitism, I wonder what’s really going on.
    When this comes up just after the Israelis have been squashing Islamic terrorists and killing the statutary wives and babies ( not
    that even the Arab States seem to want to make a meal out f it this time ), well, curiouser and curiouser.

    I said a while back that the sudden fight against anti-semitism was a good thing, but was mostly being used as anti-Labour propaganda.
    Not that I’m complaining. But when even the BBC and the Guardian are gritting their teeth and moderating their bias, I do hope it’s permanent and not temporary.

    Us Jews are not used to the media being nice to us.

    1. I believe that the UN, whilst condemning Israel’s latest retaliation for Hamas’s pyrotechnics, actually condemned aforesaid pyrotechnics too!

    2. The cynic in me would suggest that the more that Labour’s anti-Jew profile is raised the greater the Muslim vote, so why would they not do so.

      1. There are about 10 times the number of Muslims as compared to Jews in the UK. Not difficult to figure out which religion Labour wants to appeal to.

    3. “When a mass of mainly leftists and Remainers get together to hammer Corbyn over anti-semitism, I wonder what’s really going on.”

      Could it be that those who want to bring our country down see what a golden chance this is for the EU to effectively take control of the United Kingdom. If Boris gets that deal through that Theresa May could not, it will be all of their Christmas’s come at once. It is highly likely that they would throw Corbyn under the bus to achieve that aim.

      They do not care about individuals, only their long-term plans.

  86. BBC Question Time

    On the panel: James Cleverly, Clive Lewis, Alex Phillips, Liz Saville Roberts and Chris Boardman.

    1. Nothing will remove anti-Semitism. You can hide it, or quieten it. The best you can do is make it socially unacceptable.
      It’s like the weather. Sometimes the sun shines, sometimes it rains. But it’s always there.

        1. Never been particularly afflicted that way. Comes of going through school with a Jewish pupil (the only one, I might add), I suppose. And a couple of the “best and brightest” people I worked with when first in the computer game were Jewish. And knew good Jewish jokes…

          1. I ‘m not aware that I know any Jews, but I’ve never understood why there is so much anti-semitism still directed at them today.

          2. I don’t understand either. It can only be Political. Much the same when you meet a Russian. Apparently they are not bogeymen, quite friendly actually.

          3. I think my genes are ethnically jewish. About 20 years ago I was cleaning my teeth, looked in the mirror….. and said to the reflection: ‘You are jewish’. A cousin confirmed this with similar thoughts and I said ‘yes, you do remind me of Dustin Hoffman.’ I am definitely not anglo-saxon with the blue eyes and blonde hair (and how I longed or those when I was young) and I have always felt from a very early age, I was not as one, in some way, with our anglo-saxon population. I realise my forebears (for centuries) lived and raised their children in the midst of a population, sometimes hostile, integrating and integrating yet again, adopting a foreign culture in order to survive, ducking and weaving yet again, and again. And yet….. my family surname, traced back to Domesday, only six miles from where I was born (and 160 miles from where I live now). I envy the jewish people their cohesive society, network, culture and devotion to family. Despite being despised and persecuted throughout history (e.g. Hugh o’Lincoln) they are one of nature’s success stories.

      1. Joanna Lumley did pin that minister in front of the media, like a moth to a board, when she was trying to get him to allow Gurkhas to have the same rights as other soldiers. That was a nice sight to see as a promise was almost dragged out of him.

        “The Gurkha Justice Campaign was a campaign group in the United Kingdom fighting for the rights of the Gurkhas. It wanted the Gurkhas who fought for the UK to gain the same rights as their British and Commonwealth counterparts. Essentially the group wanted the law to be changed so that all Gurkhas who fought for the UK will gain a right of abode, whereas under previous legislation they only had a right of abode if they retired after 1997.

        [The Gurkha’s] …have served Britain for almost 200 years with over 50,000 dying in service, and 13 have been awarded the Victoria Cross.”

        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f5d3906ef824dd5a1b7c085d6a783a7eb2a0aaf0fe020df5fbfdd5f8f6e2c2ec.jpg

        She has that in her favour. As for that voice… 🙂

        1. I was with Joanna Lumley on this. I’ve the greatest respect for the Gurkhas, they’re fine soldiers and they have a formidable reputation. Over many years, they’ve served our country well.

          From my experiences in the engagement at Mt. Longdon in the Falklands War, I must admit that the Argies fought hard, even their conscripts fought harder than we’d expected. However, at Mt. Tumbledown, faced with a joint attack by the Scots Guards and the Gurkhas, although the Argie defenders on the side of the ridge assaulted by the SGs fought well, those defending the other side that the Gurkhas had been tasked with taking, ran for Port Stanley rather than face them in combat.

          Far as I’m concerned, Gurkhas have earned equal treatment with any other British soldier. That includes full British level pensions for all Gurkhas that have served. They should also be given full rights of residency for themselves and their families and the option of British citizenship, if they want it.

          It’s perhaps worth noting that all soldiers of the French Foreign Legion are automatically granted full French citizenship when they are discharged from service. Maybe this is one of the rare circumstances in which we could learn something from the French.

      2. I remember her as an extra in the Brian Rix/Elspet Grey farces. Always popping out of cupboards, etc., dressed in a bikini. She was of course younger then….

        1. Silvikrin shampoo advert. Late 1960s. She was the one whose face popped up from the bottom of the screen with a dollop of shampoo suds on that pretty little nose.

          Shortly afterwards, when Nationwide (or a similar programme) was doing an item on ‘Do stars really use the products they endorse’ they introduced her as the model from the shampoo ad. They then ran a skit on it, where she played the same part , but saying the lines something like ‘Shampoo? I use any old stuff, they all do the same job’, or words to that effect.

          Sweet and true, but I thought her turning her coat on those who gave her the big break was a bit low, even then.

    4. Seventeen over five years is a small number. They would be easily absorbed in Londonstan. Or back in Damascus.
      But it does say they can’t get jobs, because they can’t speak English.
      Maybe they can shear sheep or something like, although I wouldn’t trust them with goats.
      Seriously, that part of North Yorkshire is very beautiful and very English. Curry houses are not a requirement.

    5. Oh no, Richmond is beautiful. I suspect brown envelopes and backhanders. Perhaps they won’t stay long, hopefully they will be off to join their mates in Bradford and Leeds. They will probably stay though until they get their feet under the table.

  90. This calmly destroys St Greta and Extinction Rebellion.

    Prof. Michael Kelly: Energy Policy Needs ‘Herds Of Unicorns’
    Date: 11/11/19Press Release, Global Warming Policy Foundation
    Utopian thinking is putting the economy at risk says Cambridge professor
    https://www.thegwpf.org/prof-michael-kelly-energy-policy-needs-herds-of-unicorns/

    The 2019 Annual GWPF Lecture
    Energy Utopias and Engineering Reality

    [the pdf file is not as long as it first appears to be. No knowledge of engineering is needed to understand what the Prof is getting at, merely common sense]

    Prof Michael Kelly: Energy Utopias and Engineering Reality (pdf)

    4. He says that XR have no idea of the costs involved or they’d walk away.

      I believe he’s wrong on this point. The leadership don’t care about costs. They’re interested in bringing in socialism, destroying capitalism. Climate change is merely the excuse or means of doing it.
      Whether they’ll be happy living in an electricity-free world is another matter. Maybe they assume they won’t be the ones starving or freezing…

      1. A week or so ago, I posted a bit from our local rag of a woman living off-grid for two weeks in solidarity with XR. I bet she wouldn’t be so keen to camp out in the woods in this weather!

        1. And did it say where she got her food from??
          And was she living in a high-rise block at the time??

          1. I think she took the food with her rather than catching rabbits, etc. She’s probably vegan, too, so I expect she shopped in the organic veg shop/market. No high rise blocks round here so presumably home is a normal house.

          1. Yes and then the list will be published because there can be no more nominations. Most candidates will have already submitted the paperwork before the deadline, so it’s only a matter of confirming the odd last-minute entry.

        1. Thats just the list of candidates and agents for a single council and is not a consoldated list nor does it give the party

    1. And there are still idiots who think that if we take the WAPD we will be treated fairly and the EU won’t go to its tame court to screw us to the floor.

      1. The EU apparatchiks are not our friends and as you well know never have been. They are sworn to the elimination of the British people and of our once proud nation.

        In those aims they have been assisted by cretinous British politicians from Heath to Major to Blair to Brown to Cameron to May.

        Enough is enough. We must finally stand up for Britain and reject the EU wholesale. The EU is a thoroughly evil Empire and we must extinguish it asap.

  95. Wondering who to vote for at the election, I got a hint from Wikipedia –

    A protest vote (also called a blank, null, spoiled, or “none of the above” vote)[1] is a vote cast in an election to demonstrate dissatisfaction with the choice of candidates or the current political system.[2] Protest voting takes a variety of forms and reflects numerous voter motivations, including political alienation.[3]
    Along with abstention,or not voting, protest voting is a sign of unhappiness with available
    options. If protest vote takes the form of a blank vote, it may or may
    not be tallied into final results. Protest votes may be considered
    spoiled or, depending on the electoral system, counted as “none of the above” votes.”

    1. My choice will be to spoil my ballot by expressing my feelings about the parties represented. Spoiled ballots with writing on are shown to the candidates or their agents for checking and are announced separately at the end of the count.

      2. They will ignore your comments and bin your voting paper. Just vote for the least worse alternative and keep your fingers crossed that it will not result in a Marxist Corbyn government.

  96. Sainsbury’s

    No wonder they are losing customers. There was a program about them on TV tonight . They decided to do away with the flimsy plastic bags you use to put loose vegetables with a thick so called recyclable one for which they want to charge you £0.30 for each one. Then they expect you to weigh the bag and then weigh it again with the product in and then print off a label and stick it on the bag. When demonstrating it half the time it did not work. I am sure the green fanatics will think it is wonderful though

    1. Their 10p bag for life has been transformed into a useless, flimsy sack with holes for handles. It replaced the previous design with thick plastic and proper handles. Rather than being re-used, they are being thrown away. Very green – not.

      1. These were flimsy bags for putting fruit and veg in a snip at 30p each and no alternative offered

      1. I mentioned a few times that Sainsbury’s have been running themselves into the ground, possibly deliberately,for the last two years.
        The food supermarket of choice here now is, strangely, Marks and Spencers. Spoiled for choice.
        If they could do for clothes what they have done for food, they would make money again.

    3. or just take your veg loose and put them on the checkout and let THEM sort it out. but thats labour loving Sainsbury’s for you.

      1. A woman in front of me in Sainsburys last weekend had her fruit and vegetables loose at the checkout. Fortunately I was moved to another checkout so didn’t see how the checkout girl dealt with the situation. I suppose they were put through singly using up more paper. The reusable bags work well for me and so far I haven’t had to weigh and label the bags. The bags themselves are very light and I see no reason for weighing them prior to putting in the merchandise.

    4. In France and Spain, in supermarkets, you put the loose fruit and veg into (separate bags) got to the scales, enter the item code(s) and a price label is printed, you put labels on bags and go to checkout :easy

      1. Last time I was in Sainsburys, they had the same system. They can’t possibly be charging 30p for those flimsy bags. They sell food bags at £0.70 per 40, FFS… BJ never worries about putting his comments in context, but he appears to be referring to a documentary on BBC One this evening. Frankly, I prefer Ocado. They do the heavy lifting, and they give me five pence for each carrier bag when I give them back. Besides, JS is largely owned by bloody Arabs nowadays…

        1. As I enter Lidls or Mecadona etc I grab a handful of thin bags

          Some I put fruit and veg in and weigh, the remainder are ‘binbags’

          Save all round

  97. I wish to register a complaint!

    It turns out someone is commenting on the DT with the screen name of Jack thelad. Note the errant space.

    For the record, Your Honours, he/she/it (how can you tell these days?) is a 100% fully-fledged imposter.

        2. I asked a similar question a couple of months ago and someone replied that he was still around. I rather miss his comments as it was a bit of a contest to spot the one lucid post amongst the veritable torrent of pure nonsense. It was rather like unicorn spotting but without the success rate.

          2. Wasn’t that about the time that the old Telegraph blog disappeared – maybe Jack didn’t notice the change – he posted in a huge variety of forums.

          3. His last Disqus post was on the old DT site, below an article dated 25 March 2016. That was around the time that DT dumped Disqus. The original NTTL was founded on 1st April 2016, as a result.

          4. There’s a post on Facebook dated June 2017 and Twitter one of 20 March but no year specified, so he could still be around.

    1. BJ,
      We have an infestation of vipers within the NEC that has to be settled first.
      Outing the last of the moles.

    1. I wonder what is meant by ”successive governments” ?

      They must mean the local globalist managers Brits have had since 1990.

      2. Wasn’t the PM who imposed the Single Market on us all when Revolving President in office before 1990 – the same one in Heath’s Government so enthusiastic about bringing us in, in the first place?

        It was the same PM eager to bring in the former Warsaw Pact countries to enable cheap labour from there to undercut our own workforce in a bid to destroy the unions.

    2. TB,
      The governance parties rubber stamp the eu directives again,again,& again.
      The peoples rubber stamp the governance parties return to power again,again,& again.
      The peoples are in self destruct mode.

  104. Lib Dems say they would make changing the gender recognition process a priority

    The process is already far to simple. It is not something that should be undertaken lightly. I think we should go back to the old process that took about 18 months. 12 months of that being that they could live as the opposite sex for 12 months

    The Lib Dems’ plans for updating the gender recognition process will be included in their manifesto, and will amend the GRA to make the process “simpler and fairer”.

    These changes will include legally recognising non-binary people, scrapping the fee (which trans people currently pay to change their legal gender) and removing the requirement for trans people to prove their gender with medical reports.

    1. I would tell them to Foxtrot Oscar, but they’d probably be confused as to which hole to use.

    2. Japan pays for gender transition surgery (80%?), but requires the patient gives up his/her old gender completely. Vasectomy for the soon to be ex-boys, tubal ligation for the soon to be ex-girls.

      Of course, activists are aghast. They want children to grow up with steroidally-induced bearded “mothers” (because you know), ‘men can get pregnant too’.

      https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/170608104043-01-trans-man-pregnant-trnd-large-169.jpg

      https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/lgbt-mob-will-not-rest-until-christians-take-view-that-men-can-get-pregnant

          1. That suggests a solution for these people: remove everything and give them all artificial cloacas. Solves all their problems at one fell swoop.

      2. I would go further if they insist that they use the Lady’s toilets etc.They should castrated

        1. Transmen are basically woman taking male hormones. Some if large breasted have their boobs removed but most just bind them
          Transwoman are basically men that are taking female hormones some have breast implants

          1. Some women, transitioning to men, also undergo the surgical procedure, known as a strapadictomy.

        3. My girlfriend introduced my friends and I to Rocky Horror back when I was 19. Several of us went the whole hog with the full kit, and it never did us any harm. No sex changes were required.

          Although we discovered that women may have a different structure to their feet than us males, as it was quite painful wearing high heels after a few hours. They may just hide it better. We whipped them off and were carrying them in our hands on the way home.

          https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a2622c1edab9b6425eb88adacdfc4b93db14e08bb423f1c319f24d995ee94768.jpg

          1. My son did the “sweet transvestite” as an audition to try to get on to his heavily over-subscribed, performing arts course.

            He did a dress rehearsal in full kit and make-up for HG.

            It took her a week to recover from the shock, he was brilliant.

            When he went for the interview it was the first thing he was asked to perform.

            They didn’t need any of his other performances, they just said thank you, you’re in, and two “E’s” is all the A level passes we require.

          2. I won “best dressed Frank-N-Furter” – Tim Curries main character – on our first night out, but that is not quite on the same scale.

            I do however have the distinction that while wearing the kit on another night, after a formal dinner when clothes were hurriedly changed for the party, my Commanding Officer’s wife came right over to me and said “You’ve got nice legs!”

            These are the little moments that stay with you, and add colour to the tapestry of life.

          3. Indeed so!

            I don’t enjoy dressing up, probably because my mother was a brilliant actress and excellent costumier. Most years as a child I would be dressed up for various events, collect the prizes but cringe with embarrassment.

            Nowadays you will only see me in Dinner Jacket, Morning Coat or Tails if formal occasions and in “real” life I’m the scruffy so-and-so over in the corner.

      2. As far as the NHS goes, that is exactly what it should be. If you want to spend your own money on having your bits rearranged, feel free.

    4. A guy* has just been on BBC Look East who presented as non-binary.
      The guy says they definitely feel not female but then not male either – i.e. somewhere in between.
      It would not be appropriate in this case to consider changing gender because of not being able to quantify any level on a non- binary spectrum.

      2. How does he know? He’s never been anything other than his biological sex to make a comparison.

        No datum, no measure.

        1. Well on Monday he looked down his top and saw boobs so he thought he was female. Tuesday he looked down his top and saw no boobs so so though he was male. It gets very confusing this none binary lark and the wardrobe gets expensive

  105. An Ode to Jimmy Krankie

    Sing a song of our pence,
    And get ready to cry
    Four and twenty referenda,
    Floated in the sky.

    When the vote was opened,
    The Scots began to sing;
    Wasn’t that a dainty wish,
    To get us all a leaving?

    The Chancellor was in his counting house,
    Counting out our money;
    The Nicola (jimmy) was in the parlour,
    Taking England’s bread and honey.

    The voters were in the booths,
    Ticking where they will,
    When the voted was counted
    It was still a bitter pill

    They sent for the Nicola’s doctor,
    Who vowed you wouldnot vote again
    He stitched her up so neatly,
    That Nicola again was never seen

    or

    There was such a commotion,
    That like little Jenny wren
    Nicola went into the garden,
    and was never seen again.

  107. Corbyns latest freebie. At the rate he is going by December every thing will be free

    His latest offer is free broadband for all. Two problems with that who is going to pay for it.The other problem is no one will invest in broadband

    1. it’s the ifs that do it –

      “Labour’s John McDonnell pledged “free broadband for the country” if the party gets elected”

      “If the Labour Party gets elected, I’ll eat my hat “.

      1. What will tomorrows freebie be ?

        Labour are now seen by most people as being daft. There is no way they can fund all the freebies they are offering
        In addition they have not even costed in all the adverse impact all the tax increases etc will cost the economy in both cash and jobs

        1. The next promise is that:

          A. The Government will pay for ‘The Abbotopotumus’s” beauty treatment

          Or

          B. Buy 24 F-35B Lightning II aircraft more for HMS (Brown’s Jobs for Clydeside) Queen Elizabeth II

          (B would be less expensive)

    2. Tax on Google and other IT companies, who will pass the extra costs onto their customers.

    3. Look. The bottom line is always and was always a competition to bribe the British public with promises of free this and free that. The Labour Party are particularly good at this tactic. It works for them because their electorate are scroungers and mostly utterly dependant on the State.

      This time around the electorate has a choice viz. whether to vote for the dead weight of the scroungers, we all have to carry, or else for a country run by the competent who know how to make profits from those whose endeavours are net contributions and who know how to invest in our great country.

      1. One doesn’t necessarily follow on to the other. A lot of those who know how to make profits do their utmost not to invest in our great country, but rather stash it away offshore for their own enjoyment and empowerment.

  108. The media have to be careful what they say in this pre-election period.
    But they are allowed to give space to politicians’ promises, and the space is taken up by a mass of incredible bullshit from Labour.
    It does not deserve publicity, because it is a fraud. And everyone knows it.
    I am not so sure about the Conservatives. If Boris or any of the others have said anything meaningful yet, it’s either been suppressed or I’ve missed it.
    And there hasn’t been much from those two women who wear red dresses (I think) look the same,and should really stop squawking and let a man take over.
    It’s all a conspiracy to numb our brains so that we will forget about Brexit and vote blind like we usually do.

  109. Darn it!

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

    Please visit Discuss Disqus to learn more.

    4. Actually, untrue. Many small children wore liberty bodices back in the 1940’s-1950’s. They were similar to vests in length and certainly did in no way resemble corsets. The main difference from a vest was that there was a row of buttons down the front. A child might have on a vest, over that a liberty bodice, and then a blouse or shirt – houses, schools, etc., being cold in those days.

      1. Why were liberty bodices so called?Discovered that liberty bodices (sometimes called “emancipation bodices”) were
        introduced when flapper gals abandoned their corsets and freed
        themselves from the tyranny of restricting clothing. Although given what
        I had to wear when I was little, I’m not sure my Mum got the message!

  112. SIR – Why are electric vehicles not fitted with two batteries (Letters, November 13), each at half or 60 per cent of their present capacity?
    While running on one battery, wheel-driven alternators could be used for charging the “standby” unit, thereby providing (theoretically) an infinite range.
    This seems a simple solution to me – or am I missing something?
    David Alexander

    I think you are, Mr Alexander, although I’m not sure what.

    4. That sounds a bit like my invention of a giant fan in front of each wind turbine. This keeps the turbine spinning which in turn powers the fan to keep the turbine spinning which in turn powers the fan to keep the turbine spinning which ……………

      Off to bed (after taking my medication).

  115. EU prez urges eu loyalists tunefully,
    🎵
    Don’t give up on us….baby
    just make the wrong seem right,
    the future isn’t just one night,
    ditto,ditto,ditto, 🎵
    He had em rocking in the Isles,
    very catche

  116. Reports by Nottlers on here that Farage has ‘sold out’ don’t tie up with this headline:

    General election 2019: Nigel Farage threatens to report Tories to police over attempts to get Brexit Party candidates to stand down

    – Shadow war escalates in final hours before nomination deadline
    – Anne Widdecombe claims Downing Street tried to talk her out of running
    – Number 10 denies offering jobs to candidates
    – Three candidates have withdrawn from the election

    Nigel Farage has threatened to report the Conservative Party to the Police for allegedly promising peerages and Government jobs to Brexit Party candidates who agreed to quit the election.

    The Brexit Party leader claimed that “many thousands” of phone call had been made to prospective Brexit candidates telling them not to stand.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/11/14/general-election-brexit-party-news-latest-candidates-farage/

    It’s Premium so that’s all I can see.

    1. IMO,
      We must see the body before saying there has been a murder, none in the brexitexit debacle are to be trusted & so far it has all been rhetorical in this latest issue.

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