854 thoughts on “Thursday 2 January: Danger of becoming too reliant upon a single ‘clean’ source of energy”

  1. Good morning all. I went to bed last night at around 11.15 pm but couldn’t sleep, so here I am – FIRST TODAY! Can’t read any DT letters so I can’t post anything meaningful. I shall instead continue reading IN COLD BLOOD by Truman Capote. It is proving to be an excellent read. When I find my eyes beginning to close I shall return to bed. Enjoy Tuesday, I will pop in later on in the day.

      1. I said I couldn’t sleep, Herr Oberst, not that I was fully awake. Apologies, all, I meant Thursday. I am clearly a Silly Sausage myself!

    1. Good morning to you too.
      Sat up in bed with a mug of tea and the curtains drawn, I only know it is still dark outside!

  3. Has anyone picked up on the mega signature letter on Dentistry? Apparently over 1,000 dentists signed it.

    Letter: A lack of funding and an increase in bureaucracy have left NHS dentistry in a rotten state


    SIR – Dentistry in England remains stuck in a morass of central neglect that is very bad for the public and for dental professionals.

    The Government has no credible national dental prevention strategy and is only resourcing NHS dentistry at half what is really needed today. Meanwhile we still have Third World charities expanding their dental activities in this country. The foremost medical reason any child is admitted to hospital in England remains rotten teeth – an almost 100 per cent preventable problem. About half of adults suffer gum disease that science now links to medical problems like heart disease, too.

    Dentists and their teams are also buried under increasing bureaucracy targets. We work with one arm tied behind our backs, while being too easily bypassed by openly compromised or even illegal providers of whitening and braces, with patients not even visiting a properly registered dentist face to face first. It makes a mockery of our high standards, training and care and, even worse, leaves the public exposed to risks.

    The new Government must fix these serious dental issues credibly. If it can’t do even that, then how can we have faith that it can fix anything else?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/01/01/letter-lack-funding-increase-bureaucracy-have-left-nhs-dentistry/

    2. Morning Bob. This is being done deliberately. The intention is to privatise dentistry by neglect!

      2. What is NHS dentistry? I have always had to pay, whether in the UK or Norway (about £60 for 20 minutes, plus medicines, xrays and consumables).

        1. I’m on the NHS Oberst but I still have to pay toward it! I think it was some £20 odd on my last visit for an inspection!

        2. I’m on the NHS Oberst but I still have to pay toward it! I think it was some £20 odd on my last visit for an inspection!

    3. Some modern parents are neglecting their chldren. A news item on BBC Radio 4 this morning said more anorexic children ended up in hospital than in recent years. It’s time that parents were reminded of their reponsibility towards their children.

  4. Good morning, all. Grey and decidedly chilly this morning – and the weather isn’t up to much, either.

    I watched the second half of the Narsty Home Movies prog last night. A lot of the footage was definitely NOT home movie – quite why it was thought necessary to introduce it, I don’t see.

    Several of the talking heads were irritating – the bloke who kept on saying, “Wow – look at that” and seemed to be on the verge of blaming the Allies for Hamburg and Dresden etc… And the German lady who completely missed the point of some of the domestic films. But Professor Nicholas Stargardt was hugely impressive, not only because he spoke in formed sentences, but was calm and objective and right on the button.

    Not entertainment in any way – but compelling.

  6. Has Boris jumped the gun a bit with his New Years message?
    He’s behaving like we have already left.
    I don’t really agree with the contention that the country needs to reunite over or after Brexit, shirley to reunite there had to be a time when we were united over EU membership, we never have been, it’s just that millions of leavers were ignored by politicians and the media for decades.
    It all sounds just like another confidence trick to me.

    2. What would you have him do, Bob3? NOT say nice things to the Remoaners and give them more incentive to dig their heels in and make last ditch attempts to prevent us leaving “our friends” in the EU? Softlee, softlee, catchee monkey.

      2. A New Year’s Message consisting of blowing raspberries, V signs and yelling ‘suck it up, losers’ would be balm to the soul, but possibly not a good way of healing divisions.

        1. I think it’s about time somebody with some clout pointed out that they lost and they need to deal with it.

        2. And if the remainers had won do you think they would pass p this pleasurable activity because it wouldn’t help create unity?I sometimes thibnk that every once in a while doing what feels good may be more fun than doing what is right when we are the only ones to worry about such things.

  7. Here’s why the UK wants to strengthen its relationship with New Zealand Māori. Laura Clarke. Thu 2 Jan 2020.

    When I expressed regret, on behalf of the British government, for the killing of nine Māori by Captain Cook’s crew 250 years ago, it was met with a wide range of responses. The response that mattered most was that of the local Tūranga iwi and hapū, the descendants of those killed, who responded with tears, warmth and friendship. I also received a large number of positive messages from across New Zealand society.

    Another exercise in Cultural Marxist fatuity. Are the Maoris going to “express regret” to the Dutch for killing four members of Abel Tasman’s crew when they first landed in 1642?

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/02/heres-why-the-uk-wants-to-strengthen-its-relationship-with-new-zealand-maori

  8. A couple of letters regarding the whinging of Baroness Stowell of the Charities Commission and a response:-

    Who controls charities

    SIR – Baroness Stowell, chairman of the Charity Commission, writes (Letters, January 1) that the Commission is “seeking to drive change in the sector”.

    She says that her department demands “that charities reflect what charity means in how they pursue their good causes”. Would it not be simpler for the Charity Commission merely to ensure that charities operate within the law and leave it to them and their supporters to decide what they do in pursuit of their aims?

    After all, those supporters can easily stop their donations if they do not approve of a charity’s actions.

    Baroness Stowell makes Nick Timothy’s point for him (Comment, December 29) that the Charity Commission is another quango that is increasing its remit, creating jobs for itself and burdening charities with excessive paperwork. If I had a vote in the matter, I would want its aims to include continually reducing the number of guidelines it publishes, not producing ever more.

    Julian Gall
    Godalming, Surrey

    SIR – If Baroness Stowell wishes to help the Charity Commission meet the public interest better, she could first of all lobby for legislation to ban “chuggers”, those over-aggressive fundraisers on our high streets; secondly, force all charities to display prominently on literature how many pennies in those pounds raised go to the good cause itself rather than being spent on admin fees, naming and shaming the worst 100; and, thirdly, publicly list individuals employed by charities who earn more than our MPs.

    Nick Rose
    Chichester, West Sussex

    Robert Spowart 2 Jan 2020 7:27AM
    Regarding the Charity Commission, “seeking to drive change in the sector”, no one appears to have picked up on the bodies that have in fact been accorded charitable status.
    Ranging from the sex change promoting “Mermaids”, whose founder arranged for her son to be castrated and surgically mutilated to imitate a girl, to Common Purpose, a globalist political pressure group masquerading as an “Educational Charity”, there are many bodies that do not deserve such recognition.

    1. Well said Bob – we could also do with a cull of the charidees that do the same as each other – why do certain causes need 2 or more bodies raising money for them, with 2 or more sets of CEOs, staff and admin fees? Oh, wait …

      1. Generally, I am wary of stifling competition even in the Charity sector. After all, at present, it would be Baroness Stowell who would be given this power to decide who was the named legitimate charity in a particular line. No, no, no.

    2. “After all, those supporters can easily stop their donations if they do not approve of a charity’s actions.”
      If only that were true,all too many “Charities” are funded by the government from our taxation willy nilly

    1. Yes most of them are sub-saharan africans where the disease is endemic. Ironically one of the conditions of emigration to Australia from the UK in the sixties and seventies was a TB scan beforehand!

      1. Don’t give them ideas. They’ll be fitting out patrol boats with mobile labs to confirm the TB diagnosis, before taxiing them to the UK for treatment….

    1. Thank you, Johnny and Good morning.

      Just another example of governments promoting a ‘Climate Emergency’ based on false science.

  11. Morning all

    SIR – The rush to rely upon “clean electricity” (report, January 1) is a disaster waiting to happen.

    Depending too much on one source of power is foolhardy; many readers will remember when the miners held the country to ransom. A major power outage in the future could cause irreparable damage in just a few hours.

    Alternative options must remain available at short notice.

    David Shephard

    Fleet, Hampshire

    1. SIR – Pat Cooper (Letters, January 1) points out that tides are predictable, whereas wind is not. Unfortunately it is predictable that tides run in cycles, twice a day and twice a month. Whether we are looking at barrages depending on the height of the tide, or on tidal stream, there will be daily blank periods, and neap tides will produce only half the energy of spring tides. This means that tidal power can only be part of the answer. It is difficult to envisage security of supply without a backup from burning fossil fuels.

      Mike Keatinge

      Sherborne, Dorset

      1. ‘Morning, Epi, my understanding is that the only European Tidal Barrier in Northern France, is so beset by problems causing the turbine drives to be continually in need of maintenance, that it is not commercially viable.

        I cannot remember what the problem is and would welcome enlightenment.

        2. The only commercial tidal system is in France. It has as you point out has lots of problem and they have no plans to replace it once life expired nor have they any plans to build any more. Basically the system is to inefficient to expensive and has high maintenance costs and damages the sea bed ecology and means you cannot fish in that area

          Unless some technology breakthrough occurs tidal it not going tp happen

          2. Ok, but it’s not there yet and it’ll soon get bunged up unless they’ve invented self-cleaning.

    2. Centralisation is the big villain here. Regardless of inefficiencies and not being able to exploit economies of scale, local provision relying on the initiative and inventiveness of local people is the only way any of us being able to sustain our services, when confidence in the central providers breaks down.

        1. You don’t “bowl” a silly mid-off.

          1. Silly mid-off is a fielding position.

          2. You may bowl fast, medium pace, slow, spin (including floaters, flippers, dhoosras, top-spinners, googlies, off-breaks, leg-breaks, off cutters, leg cutters and chinamen), bouncers, beamers, half-volleys, short-of-a-length, good lengths, full pitches, Yorkers and full tosses; wides, byes and leg-byes; utilising seam, scrambled seam, swing and reverse swing.

          OK so far?

          1. So you’re saying (© Cathy Newman) that I’m not a Silly mid-off Sausage, but rather a tosser of a Chinaman. All you have proved is that my knowledge of cricket could be improved.

            :-))

          2. Does this help, Elsie?

            “You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that’s in the side that’s in goes out, and when he’s out he comes in and the next man goes in until he’s out. When they are all out, the side that’s out comes in and the side that’s been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out.
            When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in. There are two men called umpires who stay out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out. When both sides have been in and all the men have been out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game.”

          3. Are the two men called umpires the Chinamen? And is it them who bowl the Maidens over?

  12. SIR – My wife and I have been planning to go on holiday this spring to Paphos.

    We will not go to Cyprus until the British Government is completely satisfied that the treatment and trial of the 19-year-old girl, on charges of fabricating a claim that she was gang-raped (report, January 1), were not a miscarriage of justice.

    John Owen

    Biddestone, Wiltshire

    1. As the “British Government” has allows dozens (if not hundreds) of appalling miscarriages of justice to take place under a succession of utterly useless Directors of Public Prosecutions – I would not hold my breath, Mr Owen.

    2. Just as our authorities took the view that thousands of young females in our industrial cities were were compliant in their rape.
      Stupid judicial decisions are not confined to Johnny Foreigner. (Though I still maintain that people go to Ayia Napa for two things – three, if you count the drugs.)
      But since Greek Cyprus is in the EAW, this latest hoohah shows that our judicial systems are compatible. Because I believe that Treasa wouldn’t have signed us BACK in to this agreement if that were not so.
      “Gosh, Nurse, is it already time for my pills?”

      1. ‘Morning, Peddy and, if we are being grammatically pedantic, the unnecessary use of a comma after a bracket.

  13. SIR – My New Year resolution is never again to use a plastic bag in my kitchen waste bin.

    Instead, take two double-spread pages of The Daily Telegraph; roll these into a cylinder, twist one end for extra rigidity, and insert into bin with an added folded sheet in the base for absorbency. It works a treat.

    Pat Lake

    Broughton, Northamptonshire

      1. Morning, Willum.
        I know your post is tongue in cheek, but trees for paper production are a crop; like wheat or barley.

    2. That’s me buggered then. I take the online “virtual paper” version of the DT and ST (for £26 a month).

      Shall I have to print off each page first before I line my bin with them?

  14. Great disquiet on Discuss Disqus, the community help forum that has replaced Customer Service as Disqus downsizes for market reasons.

    What seems to be emerging is a major crisis over coding ability that has been brewing for a while now. Today’s developers are stylists, rather than coders, and simply do not have the language skills to sort out software glitches. Meanwhile patch is stuck onto patch until the original program has long disappeared under the dross, and even simple word processing needs a gigabyte just to load.

    I have noticed all too well the deterioration in all operating systems since the pinnacle of Windows – XP which first emerged in 2001, and it seems to have gone downhill since then. The last decent OS X from Apple was 2009’s Snow Leopard. Linux doesn’t seem to cope with the utter complexity of the demands of modern systems, leaving open users scratching their heads.

    What then is the point of faster and better broadband and global connectivity if the capacity to run it has been lost to civilisation?

    1. Morning Jeremy. I suspect this Disqus Crisis to be engineered! Online commenting has proved to be as great a menace to the established order as printing was in its day. Both need to be brought under control. Disqus will probably be shut down in the near future!

      1. Since the Israelis, the Saudis and the Turks put their faith and covert support behind Islamic State’s smashing up of the museums, burning down the Boddleian library seems to be trending. The Brazilian State Museum burned down a couple of years ago, taking with it most archaeological and anthropological archives that have been wiped out in the wild. The National Library fire in Bucharest at the fall of Ceausescu took with it much of Romania’s culture spared by the dictator’s comprehensive redevelopment of the old cities and the villages. Google deleted Panoramio, a ten-year photographic record of the beginning of this century because it competed with its commercial advertising system.

        If Disqus shuts down, then with it becomes the writings of very many informed and intelligent people, probably to be replaced by celeb gossip.

        Peter Cook, the brilliant satirist of his period, once offered BBC management to pay for new video tapes from his own pocket, if they would let him preserve the archive of his show ‘Not Only But Also’. The manager went to work early the following day and personally saw that the shows were wiped, and the tapes used for ‘Match of the Day’.

        The deep lack of confidence in the Establishment registered in the last election is just beginning. Where will it go?

        1. I can only express a personal view Jeremy. Lack of confidence in institutions is one of the precursors of societal collapse. European civilisation is dissolving before our very eyes. It will eventually reach a critical point and the Barbarians will sweep all before them and finish it off. All that will remain (since they have no use for it) is myths and legends!

      2. AS,
        I am thinking the same way, from their way of thinking is it most definitely must be brought, as with many things, to heel, kneel, and be submissive.

  15. Boundary Changes

    It is now expected that the Boundary change legislation will go through this year. Thee narrow Conservative majority of the previous government probably made it to difficult to get the legislation passed Labour would have voted against it as would have some Conservatives , mainly those whose seat would disappear

  16. An Irish daughter had not been home for over three years. Upon her return, her father yelled at her, “Where have ye been all this time? Why did ye not write to us? Not even a line. Why didn’t ye call? Can ye not understand what ye put yer old Mother thru?”

    The girl, crying, replied, Sniff, sniff….”Dad….I was too embarrassed, I became a prostitute.”

    “Ye what!!? Out of here, ye shameless hussy! Sinner! You’re a disgrace to this Catholic family, so yer are.”

    “OK, Daddy…as ye wish…I just came back to give Mammy this luxurious fur coat, title deed to an eight-bedroom mansion plus a $5 million cheque. For me little brother Seamus, this gold Rolex.

    And for ye Daddy, the sparkling new Mercedes limited edition convertible that’s parked outside, plus a membership to the Limerick Country Club.

    She takes a breath and continues, “and an invitation for ye all to spend New Year’s Eve on board my new yacht in the Caribbean .”

    “Now what was it ye said ye had become?” says Dad.

    Girl, crying again, Sniff, sniff….”A prostitute Daddy!” Sniff, sniff.

    “Oh! Be Jesus! Ye scared me half to death girl! I thought ye said a PROTESTANT. Come here and give yer old Daddy a big hug.”

      1. Thank you Elsie, I’ve checked and I think I have enough material to continue until at least April 1st. I wonder if this is a good sign?

        2. Not at all, Mr Peddy, Sir. The Silly Sausage Boy had been persuaded by ISIS to go and fight for them, so he took the ferry to Calais to start his journey to the Middle East. But then he lost his nerve, threw away his passport and bought an inflatable raft and a paddle to make it back to Blighty. He was picked up by HM Coastguard and brought back to the UK, then frogmarched to the local Social Services centre where he was given clean clothes, £100, and the promise of a brand new flat.

          I used to think that my son was an eejit, but now……

      3. Caroline greatly enjoyed this and is going to send it to our friend, Patrick, the Irish Catholic priest who married us nearly 32 years ago.

        .

  18. Moving to PR

    There is increasing pressure for the UK to move to a form of PR for UK elections. PR is already used in Scotland Wales and London
    A common claim is PR results in unstable governments but the facts do not support that claim. PR actually comes our marginally better than FPTP for stable government . Just look in recent years as to how many unstable FPTP governments we have had

    Another common claim is you loose the link between the MP and constituency now in some forms of PR that is true but in most forms of PR it is not true

    In Wales for the Welsh Assembly they use a form of PR. It has 40 Constituency MP’s elected by FPTP. This maintains the constituency link. In addition you get 20 Regional MP’s who are elected by PR. This ensures the Assembly is made up of MEP’s that broadly reflect the percentage vote cast

    It means you vote is far more likely to count than with FPTP. It is not a perfect system no PR system is equally FPTP is far from a perfect system

    1. Methinks your logic is a little askew. BJ. Just because May’s government was unstable it does not follow that “in recent years” there have been many unstable ones. And from this you “deduce” that PR is marginally (?) better than FPTP. How can we tell when PR in this country has never been tried? Post-war PR government in Italy gives that one the lie. I think what you meant to say is:

      “FPTP is far from a perfect system” [your final seven words] but I (BJ) would prefer we changed to Proportional Representation which “is not a perfect system, no PR system is”.

      1. One can do no worse than remember Churchill who said:
        The only thing worse than democracy….. (pause for effect) ….. is everything else.”
        He meant that our democracy is not p-erfect but better than the alternatives. Indeed, like much else it has evolved over time only coming to grief as a consequence of thw 1975 Common Market and the contamination by foreign powers.I would suggest that FPTP is not perfect, i hesitate to admit of its being the least good system. Far from it. IT can and does work well. If not perfectly but perfection is an unachievable state. It is the search for perfection that is good.
        But to switch from FPTP would need a very compelling argumentabout the failures of FPTP and compelling evidence of the superiority of PR before contemptlating such a change and none of the arguments comes close to sustaining either part of that.
        Indeed, i would contest that the evidence of the success of PR is all that it purports to be.

        ,

    1. Good morning, Peddy. I had no idea that you kept very large brown chickens in your back garden! :-))

    2. Good morning Peddy. Your comment made me laugh, thank you! And especially as I am holed up with ‘flu (surrounded by an ever-growing daily mound of tissues) I am even more grateful for being brought back to the reality of my existence….!

      Edit – To anyone who may be remotely interested, it is my birthday today. I had almost forgotten as I have not yet been downstairs to examine the vast pile of birthday wishes that must surely await on the 2 January.

  22. An excellent DT letter for this forum’s resident Luddites to ruminate upon:

    Sir—Unlike wind, the tides can be relied on to cycle twice a day; but recent attempts to develop tidal power systems have been thwarted by objections on environmental grounds.

    It is worth noting that tide mills were operating in Roman times and that the site of the Woodbridge tide mill was first put into use in 1170. The mill’s latest incarnation is still working today.

    John Roberts
    Wokingham, Berkshire

        1. A hydraulic head of about three feet isn’t going to give you much output. That’s why dams are high on real hydro schemes.

          1. Hydro-Electric output is not just about the hydraulic head but includes the mass flow rate.
            What weirs like the ones on the Thames and, for that matter, the Derwent, lack in height, they go some way to making up for in flow rate.

            Whilst they will never match the output of the large hydro schemes, they could provide a fairly reliably continuous base load.

          2. That’s the ‘M’ in the equations for potential energy and kinetic energy I quoted in the other post. Mass.

          4. Agreed once again. However, unlike Norway we don’t have that much opportunity to develop Hydro Electricity. I just wonder how many tens of thousands of micro hydro electricity generators could be installed for the equivalent capital construction costs of just one massive dam. [NB I’m aware that in both cases there would be on going maintenance costs]

          5. Whatever the drawbacks or limitations, it does look like a very simple idea that is worth giving a try. No doubt the design could be improved to increase efficiency as any problems reveal themselves.

            It is almost as if some large companies and political organisations do not want there to be real “green” power generation. What fake monster could they threaten us with once they don’t have climate change to shout at us and inject fear into the lives of children?

        1. I may be wrong but the River authorities tend to want to charge a fee for anything that encroaches on their terra firma so to speak….

          1. Those same River Authorities (The Environment Agency) that resist dredging and then blame ‘Climate Emergency’ for the floods.

            As usual, it defies logic.

          2. Owen Paterson was the one good minister in Cameron’s government which is why he was sacked. He understood why the Somerset Levels were flooded and he also understood that remaining in the EU was totally against Britain’s best interests.

            I do so wish that Owen Paterson was the British prime minister.

          3. I’d like to see him back in the Cabinet.
            Let’s see what happens with the Valentine’s Day Massacre, 2020.

      3. It relies not on the whirlpool, but on the head of water. In fact the introduction of teh curves will reduce the potential output from the generator by slowing the flow of water through friction and turbulence.

      4. That looks really simple and effective, King Stephen. Is this the power generator of the future?

          1. ‘Morning, Basset, for all your cynicism, maybe it should at least be tried on a river somewhere in the UK. Working on the basis that many of our ancestors relied upon, suck it and see.

            The claim is that one such generator may power up to 300 homes.

          2. The claim is that it will power up to 300 homes. It rather depends on the demand from each of those homes. If all they power is one light-bulb in a shack in the middle of nowhere, maybe, but if they are wanting to power a three-bedroom house with an electric cooker, television, washing machine, tumble drier and all the rest, forget it.

            It’s not cynicism it’s engineering reality. Potential Energy=MGH. If H is bugger all then the kinetic energy derived (one half MV squared, where V is the velocity of the water) from it will also be bugger all, since V is reliant on H. If these hairbrained schemes worked, they woulld have been working for over a hundred years.

            I’ve got a bridge to sell you if you’re interested.

          5. The claim is that it will power up to 300 homes. It rather depends on the demand from each of those homes. If all they power is one light-bulb in a shack in the middle of nowhere, maybe, but if they are wanting to power a three-bedroom house with an electric cooker, television, washing machine, tumble drier and all the rest, forget it.

            It’s not cynicism it’s engineering reality. Potential Energy=MGH. If H is bugger all then the kinetic energy derived (one half MV squared, where V is the velocity of the water) from it will also be bugger all, since V is reliant on H. If these hairbrained schemes worked, they woulld have been working for over a hundred years.

            I’ve got a bridge to sell you if you’re interested.

    2. Ah yes, the old ‘environmental grounds’ argument. The same one that is causing the havoc in Australia due to green policies stopping the clearing of brushwood and maintaining fire breaks to ‘help the environment’. The irony is that thousands of wild animals that were supposedly benefitting from the policy have now been killed. The (roast) chickens are coming home to roost. And yet the eco-brigade still blame it on ‘climate change’…

      1. Yo NTN

        If/when HS2 is scrapped they could site the tidal barriers along the ex-route of it

        Well, Greta the Bleata and her cronies reckon we will be underwater by next Xmas

      2. ‘Morning, Tom.

        Silting may very well be a problem (it is invariably present in rivers); however, I am sure that the ingenuity of our engineers will eventually find a solution, as they do with most problems.

  25. From the previous Today’s page

    Whitehall is woefully unprepared for Dominic Cummings’ true plan to reform the state

    I know it will come as a surprise to the PTB, but not all ‘civil’ servants work in Whitehall.

    Even with this government, there is life outside the M25.

    The problem with the Civil service (CS) is that it is institutionalised, ‘same old faces, in the same old places’

    There is no guarantee that what Cummings sees as the ‘problem’ is not just asymptom, which normally is what management try and fix.

    This cannot be a one-man-band fix.

    Civil Servants , at all levels need to be behind the changes.

    Change for change sake will not solve anything or you will end up with problems like what Royal Mail had when it was decided it should be
    called Consignia.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk…

  27. It was interesting to watch the news yesterday when they came out with the statement “for the first time the United Kingdom has more than half its energy from renewable sources.” The immediate thought was “How are you going to pull off that statement?”

    Then you looked at their graphic on the screen and you saw nuclear energy in the renewable column. That will surprise many, after so many years of being told that nuclear power was evil and must be stopped. It did manage to push the balance of energy production into the green zone, unsurprisingly. Although how you reuse spent nuclear fuel rods so that they can be used again to power the reactor remains a mystery.

      1. Very interesting, OLT. Being ex Royal Air Force, albeit mostly fighter-based, I also served on bases in Germany during the late 60s that had nuclear equipped bomber aircraft – 3 & 16 squadrons spring to mind. Minevals and Tacevals kept us all well exercised.

      2. I had heard of reprocessing, not having lived in a cave for the past few decades. 🙂

        (Edit – Fallick_Alec, my reply was not meant to be offensive but I’ve just realised that it could be read that way. My apologies. My comments can be quite long enough as they are, and I didn’t want to qualify my original comment with a breakdown of how the spent rods still have a massive amount of energy in them that can be used. I thought I would just throw the line away. For years I have thought that nuclear power was obviously one of the best ways to produce energy if you want an “advanced” society, and those new ideas for using the spent rods are very good.)

      1. “What the BBC and its friends in the Green Party never point out is that investment in new onshore wind projects has dried up to virtually zero since subsidies were withdrawn. If it really was so cheap, why does it still need subsidising?”

        That really is an inconvenient question.

    5. “for the first time the United Kingdom has more than half its energy from renewable sources.”
      Not every time I look on Gridwatch. Today it’s 42%, with 34% from Wind, only 2% from solar, although they don’t know exactly how much solar contributes.

      1. So is coal. Grow big trees. Let them collapse and bury under tons of rock.
        Raise temperature …. ah …..

  29. Good morning all.

    Her Husband Dies
    A woman dies, and when she gets to heaven, she asks Saint Peter, “Would it be possible for me to get together with my dear departed husband? He
    died many years ago.”
    Saint Peter asks, “What was his name?”
    The woman replies, “John Smith.”
    “Oh heck,” says Saint Peter, “we’ve got a lot of John Smiths up here. But sometimes we can identify people by their last words. Do you happen to
    remember what his last words were?”
    The woman thinks for a moment, then says, “Oh yes! I remember them! He said that if I ever slept with another man after he was gone, he would roll
    over in his grave.”

    “Oh!” says Saint Peter. “You mean Whirling John Smith!

  30. Stimulated by “catching-up” on Parliamentarians debating the Queen’s Speech in December (following my month in Poland).

    Q: What is the most frequently misleadingly answered question (in the May household):

    A: Philip, how do I look in this outfit?

  31. Morning everyone. I’ve ricked my back! This is not the result (having foreseen the response to this announcement) of practicing some exotic convolution from the final chapter of the Kama Sutra but the much more mundane activity of opening the fridge door. Something I do twenty times a day!

    This has set me thinking. It is not the first time that I have suffered injury to this part of my anatomy and certainly not the worst, but contrary to the warnings from the PTB about lifting engines out of cars or moving Geoff Capes unassisted all occurred carrying out some everyday task. So far as I’ve been able to discern a slight twisting motion when the spine is extended seem sufficient to bring on truly purgatorial symptoms.

    As injuries go, backs, like infected sexual organs, require suffering in silence since sympathy is rarely extended to those afflicted. Indeed should you be so foolish as to even mention the former while at work the suspicion that you are about to collapse into immobility will immediately manifest itself in your fellow workers while overt and permanent hostility will almost certainly result in both cases. It is no coincidence that in this part of the country the voluntarily unemployed are referred to as “idle backed bastards” with no irony intended!

    1. Morning Minty et al. Sorry to learn that you have excruciating back pain. I do hope you get back to normal asap. I’m very, very impressed you managed to get through to the final chapter without suffering any ill effects…..although I’m not sure about the infections bit……

        1. Wow! You know what they say:”You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it scuba dive.

          PS. It seems the person on the far side of the horse is trying desperately hard not to look and who would blame them……

          1. I ‘m sure you are not interested Stephen but it is one of many erotic bas reliefs from the Khajuraho Temple.

          2. Purely in the interests of research, you understand, I had to go ogle the Temple(s). I think I now understand why India has a population approaching 1.5 billion. It seems they are just following the old religion…….

        2. Off stage, that Pushy Nurse is holding her syringe and saying, “This is just a little prick.”

    2. OUCH!
      You have my sympathy. I do not have many back problems, largely across the shoulders when I’ve been stood up too long, but that is bad enough.

    3. This time of the year is not good for backs, lying in bed longer, sitting in armchairs and over eating all goes together to stiffen up the back and then the slightest movement causes something to go.
      Pain killers, Ice packs and hot water bottles work best I’ve found.

    5. Good morning, Minty. You have my complete sympathy.

      Years ago, I heard a woman on the radio say, “I woke up in pain as usual,” and thought what a silly cow. For the last ten years, I now do precisely that – and daily apologise to the lady.

      The only respite is lying flat in bed (most of the time) and swimming (all the time).

      I hope you get better.

        1. Being a chap, I keep quiet about it. No one would know (apart from the MR, of course).

          3. Ah, the inability to genuflect one’s pseudopods…..coupled with the failure to spot the double entendre…..:-(

    7. Hello Araminta.

      I, too, had back problems this morning – it was glued to the bed till 11:10.

      I once did mine in breaking a fish in half, having just got it out of the freezer and it being frozen stiff.

    8. The muscles supporting the spinal column need strengthening. I do gentle yoga stretches twice a day.

    9. Most Refrigerators are floor standing and inevitably this means a lot of bending. I was advised, sensibly, to make a platform on which to stand the fridge which i did, both for ourselves and for my elderly mother. This was about a foot high which is often more than enough to take out the worst of the bending even just to see what’s in there hiding at the back. As a sort of table the space underneath can be used to store things not often needed.

      The same is true of beds…. make sure the mattress is high enough not to cause problems getting out.

    1. Interpreter?
      So she could understand the Hebrew for “But I’ll still love you in the morning”?

      2. Happy Thursday Bill, in Israel much more of the details were made public about the case than was published in the UK thus leading to the totally false impression that Freya Heath, stripper by profession, was gang raped by 12 Israelis . Although no money changed hands between her & the boys there is no doubt that she seduced at least one of them, enjoyed consensual sex with him & only made the allegations of gang rape after one of them distributed a video of her sexual gymnastics on the bed with the boy she seduced.

        I posted a few days ago on here a comparison between the totally dishonest & cavalier manner the UK press has reported this case and their initial reporting on the disappearance of Madeline McCann in whitewashing Mr. & Mrs. McCann of all suspicion whilst laying a false trail to Ex-Pat Robert Murat, I believe the comparison to be apt in that an agenda is at work here, that of the globalist Marxist created feminist movement & the UK’s greedy hard left human rights lawyers brigade ( the folks that seek to prosecute British soldiers on false war crime charges & earn millions out of the public purse ) and the UK’s basically dishonest media, all this combined with both the antisemitism of the BDS supporting UK Left which is part of the war against Israel to say nothing of the Foreign Offices traditional pro-Arab stance since the end of WW1 . All these factors came into play to paint a totally false picture of the events in Cyprus & unfortunately its going to go all the way to another bastion of Israel hatred – the European Court of Appeals .

    4. I wonder if our esteemed Foreign Secretary saw the video and DNA evidence before slagging off the Cypriot authorities?

      1. You will have observed that modern politicians – especially ministers – are very quick off the mark with comments they later regret.

        1. Yet when they do try to defer a response to an event they also get castigated. I give Bojo and that photo of a child allegedly lying on an A&E floor as an example.

          1. True – but ascertaining basic facts – and then making a short, correct and appropriate reply knocks the knockers.

    5. FRom an article in The Grimes today:

      “How was the judge alleged to have behaved?
      It is reported that he lost his temper frequently during the trial and berated the defendant for not facing the court. A forensic pathologist, Marios Matsakis, who was an expert witness, told the Daily Mail that the judge’s behaviour had been “shameful”.

      When delivering the guilty verdict, the judge said his decision was backed up by video evidence showing the woman having consensual sex. However, her mother said the video showed her daughter having consensual sex with one man and a group of people trying to get into the room. “[The video] shows her and the guy telling them to get out of the room,” she said.

      He also said that the only time the teenager told the truth was when she was humiliated after learning that she had been filmed by the men. “She knows that she was never raped,” the judge added.”

    6. Once the legal profession ( a.k.a. the Oldest profession ) get into it, you can forget about the truth.
      Nobody comes out well from it, and hopefully the Israeli lads’ mummies will have had a word their sons.
      Their dads probably said to them: ” Israeli girls are easy. You only have to ask. So what do you want to go to Cyprus for ? ”
      The woman got what she went there for, and to complain is very malicious. She may have a bit of difficulty getting another guy.
      This case has been blown up out of all proportion. The media don’t really care. It ‘s just something to sell their product.

      2. It is a well-known fact that the legal profession is actually the second oldest profession.

  33. Even though it has been acknowledged that the fires in Australia are most probably not down to climate change the mainstream media still thinks the Australian PM was wrong not to blame climate change anyway just to send out the right message to the world.

    8. “Look, we all know that this chamber is an utter farce, but it’s just getting too boring to be here for the cameras just to pretend otherwise. Can I at least play on my gayboy? Or is it spelt gameboy?”

    9. Have I a seat on the last flight out? Will the German biatches betray me at the last moment? Has the ECB transferred my share out? Who is capable of using a gun? But much more dangerous, the ones who can smile to your face as they slip a stiletto between your ribs. Will I be safe on her ranch in Paraguay? Is it a trap? Should I make my own plans when we arrive in Buenos Aires? I already transferred half the money to the plastic surgeon. That’s one thing less to worry about. Oh my god! What about my teeth? They would recognise me any where. I forgot about a dentist. Why did I let myself be persuaded? Why was I so greedy? I wish I was dead…

      1. “Will I be safe on her ranch in Paraguay? Is it a trap? Should I make my own plans when we arrive in Buenos Aires Asunción?”

    10. “I told my barber that I was looking forward to a parting…
      …and then I realised he had given me a haircut like this!”

    1. Since I was 0 till I had my first birthday and 1 till I had my second, am I younger than I am or older?

      Also, since I was 0 for twelve months, where did all those Rusks go?

      1. The Rusks were used in the “quick” sherry trifle as we had run out of ratafia biscuits.

    1. ‘ Morning, P-T
      Hope this helps:

      Kowtowing to Stormzy and Greta Thunberg exposes our elite’s lazy groupthink
      Jeremy Corbyn, the wintry and discontented Ghost of Seventies Christmases Past, may have spent the past weeks rattling around the political margins. But the rapper Stormzy, the blingtastic Ghost of Christmas Present, has more than made up for this in a manner most befitting of the mass media age. His viral diatribe against our “one hundred per cent racist” nation flashed on millions of smartphones as households settled into holiday hibernation. Generating almost as much hype was a ghoulish visit from the Ghost of Christmas Future, Greta Thunberg, who lamented mass apathy towards our impending climate doom as a guest editor on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
      Stormzy and Thunberg are the eerie pin-ups of an anti-rational age. They remind us that, though the working-class heartlands are reeling from populist revolt, an intolerant and lazy metrollectual elite continues to dominate our culture and media.
      Let us first deal with establishment treasure, Stormzy. The BBC invited him to read from the Bible on Christmas Day and rap “thug-loving” nihilism on Jools Holland’s usually uplifting New Year Hootenanny. He will probably claim the first Number One single of the Roaring Twenties with the subliminally entitled Own It. His crown-wielding portrait hangs in the Tate.
      Stormzy is consumerised cynicism pimped with social justice soundbites. Islington luvvies find self-legitimising comfort in his art. Thus they passionately defend his scrambled rants. Take his recent interview with an Italian outlet, which sympathisers claimed was distorted by the Right. In fact, his muddled thinking was glaring, as he puzzled over the fact that people don’t seem to take him seriously when he, a successful British black man, insists that his country suffers from hidden racism. Or is it open racism? As he pathologised the rise of bigotry in the era of Letterbox Johnson, whom he says “encourages hate among others”, his diagnosis seemed confused.
      Unsurprising perhaps, then, that he is equally unsure about whether he would accept an OBE from the Queen: he would have to weigh the Empire’s “dark history” against the fact that his mum would be proud of him. Historic tension or present-day hypocrisy? What a shame Stormzy does not share the wisdom of his mother – a Ghanaian immigrant who clearly delights in her offspring’s achievements in her socially mobile adopted country.
      But bad logic need be no barrier for those with a lyrical talent for semantics. Stormzy’s latest mantra, as he champions his Cambridge bursaries for Afro-Caribbean students, is that being “pro-black is not anti-white”. Ironically, the 20th-century Left-wing postmodern linguists who created identity politics would have sneered at such babyish reasoning. The French philosopher Jacques Derrida, for example, argued that everything that we give meaning to in the world, we define in opposition to other things. To be pro-black is to identify black as a contrasting skin colour to white, and then to give blacks exclusive access to a resource that is, by necessity, denied to whites. Being pro-black is definitionally and conceptually reliant on being anti-white.
      But if Stormzy abuses logic, Thunberg is rewriting truth. Her potency lies in the fact that she is both the fake news messenger and the fake news: imminent human-caused extinction-level global warming is a scientific fact so beyond dispute that even a child can grasp it. This is a lie so fundamental that the failure of the BBC and other liberal media outlets to tackle it is a disgraceful dereliction of duty. The “consensus” on climate change – based on the statistic that 97 per cent of scientists agree – is not only groupthinkishly unscientific in spirit, but also invalid. It is traceable back to a paper by an Australian researcher, which a later paper showed was not only unsubstantiated but outright contradicted by its own data. Still, Greta does not want us to think but to “act”. The child oracle is yanking us by the hand, not out of the eco-apocalypse’s jaws but into the jowls of vegetable-brained oblivion.
      It is now almost a cliché on the Right that we are suffering in the postmodern age; grand narrative optimism has been jettisoned in favour of fragmenting multiculturalism and primeval declinism. This, in my humble view, is not necessarily an indictment of postmodernism itself – which, after the Second World War, aimed to challenge unthinking devotion to orthodoxies. Rather, it is a reflection of how anti-intellectual liberalism has absorbed a movement that, if excessively navel-gazing, was unapologetically subversive and ruthlessly devoted to logical inquiry (even if, yes, some logically concluded that logic is impossible).
      My left-field message as we enter a new year is that the populists are the new postmodernists. It is time to shatter false idols like Stormzy and Greta, by challenging their fake truths and mangled logic – and bask in the sensation of aporia, Greek for puzzlement, which, as Derrida mused, the smashing of orthodoxy prompts. Elites claim populism is the tyranny of simplicity. My only New Year’s resolution is to call out this rot.

      2. Stormzy’s latest mantra, as he champions his Cambridge bursaries for Afro-Caribbean students, is that being “pro-black is not anti-white”.

        Now put the boot on the other foot…

        …“pro-white is not anti-black” though, by their recent antics in increasing knife-crime statistics, someone needs to give the little twerps who perpetrate this nastiness, a severe thick-ear.

    2. Can someone print this article on the NoTTL site, please? I want to know why Stormzy has been presented with a silver OXO cube.

      :-))

      EDIT: Just posted this as NtN posted the complete article. I must be Aladdin and he is the Genie in the Lamp – my wish is his command.

  40. Turning and turning in the widening gyre

    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

    The best lack all conviction, while the worst

    Are full of passionate intensity.

    Surely some revelation is at hand;

    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

    Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

    Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

    The darkness drops again; but now I know

    That twenty centuries of stony sleep

    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

    Yeats.

    Happy New Year.

    1. At any normal time, the ruling class will rob, mismanage, sabotage, lead us into the muck,” wrote George Orwell, soon after the Second World War.
      “But let popular opinion really make itself heard, let them get a tug from below – and it is difficult for them not to respond”. At the outset of this new decade, the UK’s ruling class has most definitely felt a powerful “tug from below”. Popular opinion has been expressed, repeatedly, and we’re finally leaving the European Union.

      Whether it was Ukip’s victory in the 2014 European election, or David Cameron’s 2015 majority after he promised an “in-out referendum”, the
      electorate sent the same signal. The Leave vote prevailed in 2016 – with a referendum majority bigger than the population of Birmingham. Since
      then we’ve had another European election, won by the Brexit Party, and two general elections – in which the Tories prevailed on a pledge to
      implement Brexit, the latest with a thumping majority.

      These successive votes were less a “tug from below” than the electorate grabbing our “ruling class” by the scruff of the neck. Continuity Remainers have been trounced. That’s why Michael Heseltine and Lord Adonis have conceded the fight is over – for which they both deserve credit. Some Remain-friendly media outlets have also now parked their outrage. “Britain sees in the new year on a wave of optimism” declared The Times yesterday, publishing a poll suggesting“Britons are becoming more optimistic about the economy” as Brexit dayapproaches. “Brexit presents a challenge for Britain’s economy, but this is no time for doom-mongering,” said a Financial Times editorial. That’s a relief, after three and a half years of FT doom-mongering.

      But this is no time for triumphalism, either. Those of us who’ve offered reasoned arguments for Brexit and been pilloried – dubbed thick, xenophobic and worse – could be forgiven for gloating over the electorate’s repeated refusal to be cowed by Remainer scare-tactics. Yet no good can come of that.
      What’s important now, after a post-crisis decade of relative economic stagnation, compounded by these years of political conflict, is bringing the country back together. As such, the Prime Minister’s New Year’s message struck the right note. The sure knowledge we’re leaving on January 31 will
      allow people to “turn the page on the division, rancour and uncertainty” of this ghastly Brexit debate and look forward to “a fantastic year and
      a remarkable decade”.

      As long as there was a chance Brexit might not happen, the EU was always going to exaggerate the potential downside and difficulties of leaving, in the hope of encouraging Remainers and upending public opinion. Now we’re definitely going, Brussels-based Eurocrats must see it makes sense to ensure Brexit happens smoothly and a trade deal is secured to everyone’s mutual benefit – even if unreconciled British MPs and commentators keep crying foul.
      There have always been good arguments to stay in the EU. But the arguments to leave are far stronger – and the vast majority of British voters value national democracy far more than European nation-building, sensing the ongoing Brussels power grab has already gone too far.
      What has never made sense is being half in and half out of the EU – with the UK bearing the financial and sovereignty costs, but with no say and few of the benefits. “Soft Brexit” – a notion invented only after the 2016 result – was always a con.
      Only outside the EU’s single market and customs union can the UK “take back control of our laws, borders and money”, as voters were promised – reasserting the supremacy of British law, including a democratically accountable immigration system, without breaking the
      “four freedoms” that hold the EU together. This maximises the economic benefits of Brexit, while providing the quickest, least fraught route to
      a mutually beneficial UK-EU trade deal.

      The upcoming trade talks will no doubt feature more brinkmanship and finger pointing. But with the Commons onside, Brexit is no longer on a
      knife-edge – meaning Britain finally has the upper hand in the negotiations to come.
      Financial markets are waking up to the possibility post-Brexit Britain could enjoy a “roaring 2020s”. The FTSE-100 Index of leading shares gained 12 per cent last year, having fallen by the same amount in 2018. And the FTSE-250, focused on smaller, more UK-centric firms, is 25 per cent up over the last 12 months.

      by HM Treasury – the UK has created a million since the Brexit
      referendum. New figures show our non-EU exports grew five times faster
      over the last year than our exports to the EU – which makes sense, given
      that the majority of growth is happening elsewhere.

      Since 2016, the UK economy has held up well – weathering
      Brexit-related uncertainty, as the eurozone has flirted with recession.
      And with mass protests on the streets of France and Spain, and
      hard-Right parties rampant in Italy and Germany (where Alternative Für
      Deutschland is now the official opposition) it is the EU not the UK that
      has problems with extremism. While Brexit has been painful, the
      reassertion of democracy and the nation-state will moderate British
      politics, a lesson our European neighbours have yet to learn.

      “Let’s bid farewell to the division, rancour and uncertainty that has
      held us back for too long,” said Johnson yesterday. He has a golden
      opportunity to create an economic model promoting competition rather
      than cronyism, local enterprise rather than big business, that not only
      generates wealth but spreads it – particularly beyond the South East.
      For the first time in living memory, defending their new Midlands and
      Northern seats, the Tories have a powerful electoral imperative to
      govern as “One Nation Conservatives”.

      “Patriotism takes different forms in different classes, but it runs
      like a connecting thread through nearly all of them,” wrote Orwell.
      Voters sense that Johnson gets this, in a way most of his political
      opponents don’t. He now needs to restore not only national unity but
      also, after the frustrations of Brexit, the UK’s sense of national
      pride.

      2. “But this is no time for triumphalism, either. Those of us who’ve offered
        reasoned arguments for Brexit and been pilloried – dubbed thick,
        xenophobic and worse – could be forgiven for gloating over the
        electorate’s repeated refusal to be cowed by Remainer scare-tactics. Yet
        no good can come of that.”

        Well bollocks to that,the antidemocratic EUrophile swine still haven’t given up (See A C Grayling for details)

        I want them and their Snivel Service allies smashed

        “Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of the women!”

      3. “There have always been good arguments to stay in the EU.” Shame nobody has ever articulated them (other than Project Fear which was about the dire consequences of being free, rather than any positives in staying bound).

  42. From TCW. Enjoy:

    ‘Brits went to the polls and told the hard-Left, institutionally anti-Semitic, Brexit-blocking, identity politics-obsessed, climate-change hysterics of the Labour Party, led by terrorist-sympathising, socialist simpleton Jeremy Corbyn, to get stuffed.’ Sky News Australia.

    https://conservativewoman.co.uk/reflections-on-a-labour-drubbing/?utm_source=TCW+Daily+Email&utm_campaign=7ea2f0033d-Mailchimp+Daily+Email&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_a63cca1cc5-7ea2f0033d-559682581

          7. I trust you do so with carriage and deportment. And guard against sending out the wrong signal.

          13. Eddy I am sorry that your thoughts about the rail network ran out of steam, have a cup of tea & come back and electrify us if you see a light at the end of the tunnel for Northern Rail services !

          14. Reading between the lines, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. However, since the light is on the front of an oncoming train, between the lines isn’t the best place to stand reading.

  46. From my log:

    “The setting sun cast shadows which highlighted the impacts thousands of boats had made in the cut stone work that formed Dundas wharf’s quaysides

    The Quayside Stones
    So how many bows have kissed these stones?
    Clumsy Cupid kisses chiselling countless runes.
    Once solid black gold flowed past this quay
    Coal for ancestors of me and thee
    Fires quenched, that trade’s no more
    A thing of the past – days of yore
    But kisses still rain on these stone laid banks
    As the bows of pleasure craft kiss grateful thanks.”

    1. O2O,
      To many political fools / followers give succour to this life losing double,
      global warming & islamic ideology.

  48. Sacked vegan brings landmark discrimination case

    He seems to be just trying to get compensation for being sacked . He sounds to be to put it politely a bit odd

    A vegan man is bringing a landmark legal action later, in which a tribunal will decide for the first time whether veganism should be protected in law.
    Jordi Casamitjana says he was sacked by the League Against Cruel Sports after disclosing it invested pension funds in firms involved in animal testing.
    He claims he was unfairly disciplined and the decision to sack him was because of his veganism
    .
    The League Against Cruel Sports says he was dismissed for gross misconduct.

    On Thursday, the employment tribunal will consider whether veganism is a “philosophical belief” akin to a religion.

    His beliefs affect much of his everyday life. He will, for instance, walk rather than take a bus to avoid accidental crashes with insects or birds.

    “Religion or belief” is one of nine “protected characteristics” covered by the Equality Act 2010.
    It is unlawful for an employer to discriminate directly, by treating an employee less favourably than others because of their religion or belief.
    To qualify as a philosophical belief, veganism must:
    be genuinely held
    be a belief as to a weighty and substantial aspect of human life and behaviour
    attain a certain level of cogency, seriousness, cohesion and importance
    be worthy of respect in a democratic society, not be incompatible with human dignity and not conflict with the fundamental rights of others
    be a belief, not an opinion or viewpoint based on the present state of information available.

  50. Welsh train tickets buck UK trend with average price fall

    Train fares across Wales are being reduced, bucking trends across the rest of the UK. Transport for Wales (TfW) said overall, average prices on services would drop by just over 1% in 2020.
    However, some services will see a rise of 2.8% in line with retail price inflation, similar to rises on other UK services. TfW’s fares will fall an average of 1.1%. But there will be rises on Avanti West Coast and Great Western Railway.

    TfW said there would be a 10% cut in all fares it sets in north Wales, while 33 stations in the Cardiff and Valleys network will have fares “significantly reduced” – some by more than 10%.

  51. Illegal rescued from sea off Calais in first hours of the 2020s

    A migrant had to be plucked from freezing waters off the French coast.It happened within the first couple of hours of the new decade just outside Calais.
    he victim’s cries for help were heard by a witness at the port who raised the alarm. It was just 500 metres outside the port and coastguards were alerted at 1am (midnight BST) on New Year’s Day.

    2. ” That dead body floating in the water ? No I didn’t see it. No, I didn’t hear anything. Did you ? “

  52. Greggs vegan steak bake: ‘A sad disappointment’

    Why the ASA are not stepping in I do not know, It is not a Steak Bake, It is a vegetable /fungi bake

    Reporter Brad Harper popped to the bakery firm’s Canterbury branch to sample the meat-free snack – and it’s safe to say he wasn’t impressed However, the texture of the pastry was a shock Greggs’ vegan version was sadly a disappointment – crumbly with a mostly pale appearance.
    I had another bite and managed to get a taste of the filling.

    The texture of the meat alternative did replicate minced beef – but not the steak chunks people might be used to in their beloved pasty or the chunky slices of onion

    There was a generous amount of thick gravy which filled the bake. But all I could really taste was onion, with no beef flavouring or even the saltiness you usually get with a steak and onion pasty.

    For people who like the flavour of meat but are looking for a healthy or meat-free alternative, this is probably not for you.

  53. That’s me for another day. Hope it is brighter tomorrow. No sunshine at all today – just grey and gloomy.

    Have a jolly 2020 evening.

    A demain

  54. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UedYUjcxIs&list=WL&index=52&t=0s

    How many more times do I have to tell you? OWEN JONES IS NOT A WANKER! Worms are physiologically incapable of onanism! OK?

    Owen Jones has not lost the plot; ergo, he never had it. When that standard-bearer of Leftyism (The Guardian) needed a young figurehead to “reach out” (oh, how I loathe that vapid expression) to the young, gullible, ripe-for-brainwashing, ingenues; they chose the airheaded, motormouth idiot, Owen Jones, to fill the post.

    This clueless, hapless, gormless clown is easy meat for switched on interlocutors. It is like shooting fish in a barrel. Talk about an own goal.

    1. If we can’t defeat a plonker like Owen Jones then we may as well pack up and go home.

    2. Gosh, Grizz.
      There are times when I find your reticence so frustrating.
      Can’t you say what you really think?

    1. As I understand it the UK has exactly the same policy – it’s called benefits.The more kids a mum has the more bennies…..

      1. Child tax credit is now only for two children It was not retrospective for those with more than two children born before the date of the new legislation can still claim it for all the children.. There is also an exception for multiple births

  57. “At a moment pro-Haftar Libyan forces have reportedly made advanced near Tripoli International Airport, Turkey’s parliament has voted to approve Erdogan’s next controversial foreign military adventure — sending troops to Libya to bolster the government under Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj based in Tripoli.

    Turkish lawmakers approved the motion (325 to 184) at an emergency session on Thursday to grant a one-year mandate for troop deployment, despite the clearly ratcheting destabilization in the North African country which has been in essentially a state of anarchy since US-NATO regime change aimed at decades-long ruler Muammar Gaddafi”.

      1. Ottoman Empire State Building.

        (I know, I know – I’ve signed off but Cook is slow this evening).

    2. S,
      Warn them to avoid the ants nest on the grass strip outside Tripoli airport, I
      didn’t, still it took ones mind of off the hangover.

  58. Military Intelligence – but not on this occasion

    “Taiwan’s top military leader and two major generals were among eight senior officers who were killed Thursday morning when their Black Hawk helicopter crashed in a mountainous region in the north part of the island.”
    Chief of Staff Shen Yi-ming, Political Warfare Bureau deputy director Yu Chin-wen, and deputy chief of staff for intelligence Hung-chin were among the dead. Also killed were a lieutenant colonel, a captain, a major and two senior master sergeants…”

          1. Do the Royal family still spread the load when flying?
            The monarch and heir never travelled on the same flight.
            Why don’t the military etc. exercise similar caution?

    2. “Chief of Staff Hu Flung-Dung, Political Warfare Bureau deputy director Yu
      Chin-up, and deputy chief of staff for intelligence Hung-Velly-Sad were
      among the dead.”

      1. Sounds like the Chinook accident that killed a couple of dozen of UK intelligence people back in the 90s.

    5. Where did the steel for the helicopter come from?
      Has BH helo production been out-sourced?

    2. No, but if drivers do not work a particular route or class of traction for a given time, it drops off the list of their qualifications.

  62. Brexit

    It looks as if it is going through the commons on the 7th, 8th & 9th January. I assume it goes for Royal assent once passed cannot find a date for that

    Legislation

    European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill: Committee of the Whole House

    1. The Queen went climbing up Everest in her younger days. It was called the ” Royal Ascent “

  63. Its 10:27 AM PST & the staff of Disgust should be back at their desks. Lets see if in the coming hours that notifications & posted comments on our profiles begin to appear . If by late afternoon in Kalifornication there has been no change in the situation then its likely that the problems are either too great for them to fix in one day or they simply don’t care !

    1. I get the impression Discus have financial problems and have been cutting costs a lot

      1. Hi Bill, Disqus was bought by digital marketing firm Zeta Global in New York a few years ago reportedly for $90 million . Disqus has never made a decent profit & Zeta bought them to data mine the Disqus database of many millions of email & the more valuable IP address’s of its customers since we all agreed when signing up to Disqus to let them collect, hold & share our personal data. Zeta has in the last 6 months fired at least a third of the staff in California & has hired several 3rd world staffers in their place . It is possible that Zeta has decided to either sell or close loss making Disqus in 2020 ( now that they have data mined it dry ) and the staff at Disqus know they face getting the sack so are not making any effort to fix the many problems with the software.

    2. I’ve had an email from “Danny @ Disqus” today, inviting me to sharpen up my moderation skills. Perhaps he’s not a techy, but I wish they would get their bloody act together.

      2. Hi Geoff I frequently get emails from him as I own 2 blogs & mod on 2 others and these emails go out to those with Admin Mod access
        As a rule I answer them every time : When are you going to unban me on Discuss Disqus ? Naturally I never get a reply , I have been banned on DD for going on 4 years .

        1. Howdy Pud, I’ve just had a post deleted on Discuss Disqus. Mustn’t discuss Disqus problems there!

          1. Ask the Disqus nerds. I haven’t been able to post photos since the last ‘upgrade’.

          4. I dont have a Mac but other posters have stated their are problems with that and that Chrome works so I would try chrome

          5. Ditto.
            The frustrating thing is that vids and music – which I would have thought were more challenging – are fine.

        2. I cannot currently post pictures from my iMac using Safari (I used to be able to).

          T’other day, I downloaded Google Chrome as a second browser and that permits me to upload phots and pictures.

          1. Chrome seems to be the best browser with Disqus I have had problems uploading pictures with Edge but no problems with Chrome

        3. Are you on a Mac Anne??
          I have seen comments elsewhere that the latest update is the problem,not Disqus

          1. Safari allows me to upload pics saved on my iPhone, though I can’t just cut and paste them. I save pics, copy them here and then delete from the phone.

          4. I have read that Safari has not worked well with Disqus for a while . Usually after one of the systems updates their software glitches emerge – try & install a Google browser for posting on Disqus with.

          5. Ta ever so.
            I’m afraid my attitude to cyber thingy is like my attitude to cars and plumbing. I use it and leave the clever stuff to others.
            Which reminds me, I wonder if my 13 year old grandson is free this weekend.

      4. The Canadian newsgroup that I am a member of has started looking for an alternate service.

    3. Wait until next week for a full return to work. Lots of people are off between Christmas and new year so adding two vacation days makes the time off last longer.

      After all, nothing goes wrong in December does it?

      Which reminds me of a problem that we had years ago with our software when the new year broke the expiry date calculation, support calls started coming in from New Zealand and worked their way round the globe. Luckily with just a skeleton staff we were able to focus on fixing the problem, not reporting progress to managers.

      Edited. See the comment by Tony

  65. Meat sales plunge as veganism continues to rise in UK

    More fake data

    Sales of red meat have plunged as more British people choose a vegan or vegetarian diet, according to new data.

    According to a study by the Veganuary charity, more than 800,000 people cut back on eating animal products for at least a month last year, meaning 3.6 million fewer animals were eaten in the first six months of 2019.

          1. The greater London borough of Judea.
            Many of my relatives lived there and were never persecuted for being Christian.
            Now people are being forced away in too many areas because they aren’t Muslims.

            How times have changed, for the worse.

      3. There has also been a lol of disease with pigs which has caused a shortage and driven up prices

      1. I certainly don’t buy meat from supermarkets, apart from Asda’s posh sausages; I assume their raw ingredients haven’t been peacefully blessed.
        Apart from that, all our meat comes from local butchers who use local sources. Pay more, but eat less because it’s better quality.

      2. There’s a tricky little problem with taking that viewpoint. The “mechanical” element in the preparation of Kosher meat doesn’t seem to be all that different from the preparation of Halal meat. If the production of Halal meat is banned, why not ban the production of Kosher meat? Is there a difference that would justify one but not the other? Maybe mahatmacoatmabag could provide an expert view (serious suggestion, I am not Labour).

        1. Hello Enri. It’s my understanding that Imams insist that animals not be pre-stunned for the meat to be considered Halal. Because animals understand Islamic prayers in Arabic, correct? sarc.

          According to Stuart Agnew MEP, the problem isn’t Jewish or Islamic preparation per se, but widespread consumption of religiously-prepared meats by non-adherents of either religion (in violation of Welfare of Animals Regulations, 1995) . Stuart bemoans the ‘blunt penknife’ method of slaughter in the name of Allah:

          “…the British Government allowed an exception to the Welfare of Animals (Slaughter or Killing) Regulations 1995 that states that animals must be pre-stunned. The exception (Schedule 12, Point 2) is only allowable if the slaughterer is of the appropriate religion and the meat is consumed by Jews or Muslims.”

          https://independencedaily.co.uk/religious-slaughter/

          We have lost the contributions of @disqus_jP1JipKHzK:disqus on this matter, however she may see this and (hopefully) decide to chime in.

          @mahatmacoatmabag

          3. I believe the central issue is not pre-stunning per se but the fact that UK law forbids non-pre-stunned slaughter for consumption, except by religious adherents (both Jewish and Muslim).

            According to Stewart Agnew MEP, “At present, about 25% of Halal meat is stunned in the same way as non-Halal.” The remainder of his article goes on to explain that this non-pre-stunned meat illegally finds its way into the general population.

            https://independencedaily.co.uk/religious-slaughter/
            https://independencedaily.co.uk/trade-halal-meat/
            https://independencedaily.co.uk/killing-halal-way/
            https://independencedaily.co.uk/halal-kosher-meat/

            @mahatmacoatmabag:disqus:disqus

    2. Given the belated prosecution of crimes in that neck of the woods, some may think its a literal translation from Urdu….

        1. That used to be a ‘joke’ at infant school.
          Where does PC49 live?
          999, Letsby Avenue.

  67. Pre-tax profits fall by three-quarters at Scottish publisher DC Thomson

    You wonder for how long all these papers can continue to supply printed papers when circulations are falling fast

    Pre-tax profits at Scottish publisher DC Thomson fell by three-quarters last year, from £86.4m to £21.1m.
    The owner of the UK’s top-selling regional daily, the Press and Journal, reported advertising revenues down by 5.6 per cent to £37.1m for the year ending 31 March 2019.
    New accounts filed with Companies House show the company, which also publishes the Sunday Post and Evening Express, grew its overall revenues from £207.3m in 2018 to £221m.

      2. One of the drivers I worked with up in Scotland was from Falkirk with Glaswegian parents and half the time he was totally incomprehensible, but not only did he look like an older version of Oor Wullie, has was actually called Wullie!

        1. “… and half the time he was totally incomprehensible.”

          That suddenly brought to mind a comment that I read years ago from a science fiction book set in the future about their starship’s Scottish engineer. “The Mote In God’s Eye” I think it was, which is an excellent book even if it is not the one with the quote. One of the other senior staff accused the Scottish Engineer, and all of the men on the planet of “New Scotland” of affecting their accents to hold on to the past. He said that in stressful situations they reverted to normal English.

          The Engineer denied this with his “Laddie that’s nay the truth.” His friend said “I’ve caught you practising the accent in a mirror…” The Scotsman roared “That’s a DAMNED lie!” In perfect English.

          https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7bbac8d65eb316eaeee983d8c49ad5ba3a89478b9179ae7239f477b17a0e8d8b.jpg

          “Possibly the finest science fiction novel I have ever read.” Robert A. Heinlein.

          1. Ach! My Uncle Dave was frae Kirkcaldy and his dialect wis impenetrable.

            However, he took the Sunday Post every week and that’s where I learned aboot the fly wee monkey.

          2. I never quite understood what my Mum saw in the Sunday Post, what with us being English, and residing nine very important miles South of the border. But I’m grateful for the experience, and have a better understanding of the Scots dialect than your average Sassenach, as a result.

          3. I also enjoyed the stories of Granpaw, Paw, Maw, Hen, Joe, Maggie, Daphne, The twins and the bairn; especially when they were oot at the But ‘n Ben.

          6. Ach! My Uncle Dave was frae Kirkcaldy and his dialect wis impenetrable.

            However, he took the Sunday Post every week and that’s where I learned aboot the fly wee monkey.

    2. The sad truth is that had these girls emigrated to the UK, they in all probability would still be “be married to an old guy in the next few years” (as is the custom in their home country).

      Thanks Labour, for giving these girls no earthly alternative.

  71. Completely and utterly off topic

    Thought for tonight.

    Let’s send ALL of next years foreign aid budget to Australia.
    At least they:
    A) speak our language
    B) might not waste the money on Mercedes for politicians
    C) might say “thank you” and not complain about imperialism.
    D) actually use the money well and for the benefit of people who do not hate Britain

    1. The idea behind Foreign Aid was originally for countries to receive aid and then purchase our exports. But as we no longer really produce anything to export we should use the money elsewhere.

    2. Or we could just divert that money into building ramparts and manned defences around certain cities, facing inwards. I’m sure that they will come in useful at some point in the future. Building 250,000 short term detention holding cells and a few hundred new runways could also be useful. Then there are sea defences along the Southern and Eastern shorelines. I don’t mean sea defences against coastal erosion either, more along the lines of small boat interceptions.

      So many worthwhile projects in the wind.

  73. Just been looking at the front page of the Times
    Top article – Sales of Beef and Pork plunge as Britons choose vegan diet
    Big picture underneath of Australia ablaze and Skippy getting a roasting.
    Subliminal or what?

    3. Just more of the same shit. Greggs new vegan nonmeaty thing in pastry is a big hit. Liars.

    4. Well, the canteen at TV Centre always does a meat and a veggie option and I bought the last portion of the meaty pasta bake at lunchtime today. At least 70% of the veggie version was still there and BBC staff are a fairly woke bunch.

    1. No. The food is processed by an animal’s system (the vegan); therefore animal matter will be excreted.

        1. More to the point, if they are eating only Organic vegeatables, they are in fact eating cow5hit

          3. He found a Jew too much to chew?

            Sorry Hat, that was a little tasteless.

            Oops, sorry again Hat, everyone knows Jews have taste as well as erudition.

          7. I rarely watch television but i did see a couple interviewed on morning TV. The hosts (as vacuous as they all are) ask a couple about their daily intake of each others urine. I was quite impressed with the luminosity of their skin. :o(

      2. This also asks another question: if vegetables are fed on manure (from whatever source), then surely those vegetables are no longer “vegan” food?

        Consequently, all vegans are imbibing animal matter no matter how carefully they select their food.

          1. Almost all vegetable even after bring processed would contain trace amounts of animal and insect matter and dead insect and animal matter will be taken up by the plants when growing in the field

        2. Not so because plants can ‘ingest’ only simple salts & elements. They do not ingest complex organic molecules.

    2. The Guardian (and its vacuous readership) loves its “targets” and “quotas” doesn’t it?

      1. “Targets” is what the Civil Service call “quotas” – it’s soooo less pandering to whatever the fashionable cause of the day is.

  80. Disqus is finally righting itself.

    May I apologise to anyone who did not get a reply when they responded to one of my comments and were expecting a response.

    Sorrreeee..

    1. Disqus just e-mailed me –

      Happy New Year, everybody!
      🍾 It’s officially 2020, and we are feeling nostalgic. To reflect on
      the year, we put together a roundup of the top features we rolled out in
      2019. We also want your feedback on what you’d like to see in the
      upcoming year!

  81. Well colour me surprised:


    UNPOPULAR Labour MP David Lammy has claimed a whopping FORTY-SIX times the amount of money claimed by Jacob Rees-Mogg for personal expenses, recent returns have revealed, and more than former PM Theresa May, new PM Boris, and Jacob Rees-Mogg put together.

    The shocking figures revealed that between the 1st of June, 2018, and the 31st of May, 2019, greedy Lammy raked-in just under £25,000 in expense claims (that we know of), compared to Jacob Rees-Mogg’s mere £532.56 – one of the lowest in Parliament.

    Theresa May – despite being Prime Minister at the time – claimed a modest £8452.08 (exceptionally low for a Party leader and PM), while Boris Johnson spent 9586.52 – less than half that of Lammy, despite Johnson having a far higher profile and considerably higher outgoings.

    Jeremy Corbyn and Emily Thornberry have also been criticised for their astronomically-high expense claims – raking-it-in with other Labour colleagues, in stark contrast to their hollow slogan of “for the many, not the few”.

    Corbyn and Thornberry, like Lammy, are both die-hard remainers (although Jeremy was previously a eurosceptic until the 2016 referendum was called).
    In total, both Corbyn and Thornberry got their hands on just under £50,000 in personal expenses, claiming for just 110 items, averaging at around a staggering £450 per item.

    In a recent tweet, Twitter troll David Lammy – who sometimes also focuses on his role as MP for Tottenham – slammed Jacob Rees-Mogg for promoting the correct use of the English language to his members of staff and for honouring the democratic decision made by the British public by fighting for Brexit.

    David Lammy
    ✔
    @DavidLammy
    Jacob Rees-Mogg esq., Secretary of State for dragging Britain back to the 18th century. Happy to wreck the economy and push millions into poverty, as long as we get to use Imperial measurements. https://twitter.com/itvnews/status/1154782412557168643 …

    ITV News
    ✔
    @itvnews
    ITV News exclusive: @Jacob_Rees_Mogg issues new style guide to his staff demanding male MPs are called Esq, the use of imperial measurements and which words are banned (but not ‘not fit for purpose’), reports @PaulBrandITV https://www.itv.com/news/2019-07-26/itv-news-exclusive-jacob-rees-mogg-issues-style-guide-to-staff/ …

    Yet one Twitter user, Roger Da Costa (@Roger_Da_Costa) bit back, highlighting the MP’s greed and hypocrisy:

    Claims expenses of David Lammy compared to Jacob Rees Mogg’s. pic.twitter.com/QoG1rJG9hm

    — Roger Da Costa (@Roger_Da_Costa) July 26, 2019
    Lammy has frequently come under fire over the past three years for unfounded, often highly offensive tweets targeting leave voters or for stirring-up racial tensions, and is currently under suspicion of having hate mail sent to himself to gain sympathy and win over voters, employing what some have described as “the victim card tactic”.

    http://vote-watch.co.uk/dodgy-dave-lammy-claims-more-expenses-than-may-johnson-and-rees-mogg-combined/

    3. “Double space after a fullstop. There is no . after Miss or Ms.”

      What level of education do these people have if they are employed as staff and do not know these basics? We were taught the former the first time that we used typewriters / computer keyboards to write reports. The latter we were taught at school.

          1. As with Boris I am prepared to give her a chance.

            Despite the failure of the BBC to provide accurate reporting there have been the usual insurrections across Europe over the New Year’s Holiday involving the burning of hundreds of vehicles and criminal damage to property by dissatisfied migrants.

            This has extended to Malta, a country reticent about accepting those invited by Mad Merkel to come to Europe for free stuff.

            It is now a priority to repatriate all of those wishing us harm, the destruction of mosques run by extremists and a return to our Christian way of life.

            Should Boris and his Home Secretary fail to effectively tackle the immigrant problem they too, like Corbyn and his motley crew, will be cast into the political wilderness.

          2. C,
            Do you mean you trust
            AKA the turkish delight,
            amnesties R me johnson, to handle the mass uncontrolled immigration issue ?
            As for the “wilderness” that is where you will find the decent members of the electorate, been there for years.

          3. As I stated succinctly I am prepared in the words of the cretin John Major to “wait and see”.

            As I further stated should Boris and Priti Patel fail to take positive action with the immigrants and their hostility to our normal national practises then the Conservative Party will itself pay a very heavy price.

          4. C,
            So nigh on four decades on the ever odious political treachery, deceit & lies, steepening slope is not enough as of yet.
            What will it take for the peoples to admit to the fact that we would never have achieved such a depth in the nationwide sh!te bog without the lab/lib/con continuing input.

          8. T,
            How long should this chance take ? seeing as her ilk have been rubber stamping the influx for decades & the wretch cameron even upping the numbers.

        3. 1in 65 people in Britain are undocumented illegal migrants

          1in 65 people in Britain is an undocumented illegal migrant.

        4. Belle I recall some reporter posted an article on the financial section of the DT back when it still used Disqus stating that the large supermarket chains in the UK did their planning based on population figures for the UK some 5 million more people than the official government population total. In the report it stated that the Supermarkets had seen large growth in halal food sales in the UK’s inner cities from 2000 onward . ( Labour came to power in 1997 till 2010 ) . It goes without saying the article was closed to comment

  84. The human brain is an amazing organ. It keeps working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year. From before you leave the womb, right up until you vote Labour.

    1. A bit like the young lad telling his mother, “When I grow up I’m going to be a Socialist.”

      She then replied, “Well, make your mind up; you can’t do both!”

      Happy New Year, John.

  86. Dom Cummings is hiring,apart from the usual he wants “Free thinking Weirdos”
    WooHoo I’m employable again

    2. I wonder if my RMN would cancel out the malign impression of my BA (Eng)?
      Mind you, the degree wasn’t from Oxford or Cambridge so I might pass muster.
      Plus grandmothers are known to be weird.

  87. I’ve never heard of Gertrude Himmelfarbe before reading her obituary tonight:-

    Gertrude Himmelfarb, historian and ‘neocon’ thinker who championed Victorian values yet had a major influence on Labour leader Gordon Brown – obituary

    Gertrude Himmelfarb, the American historian, who has died aged 97, was known for her studies of the intellectual history of the Victorian era and as a conservative cultural critic, commenting in astringent terms on virtue, morality and modern values; she was an unlikely guru for a Labour prime minister, yet Gordon Brown cited her as a major influence.

    Gertrude Himmelfarb’s pioneering 1984 study of attitudes towards the poor in Victorian England
    Gertrude Himmelfarb’s pioneering 1984 study of attitudes towards the poor in Victorian England
    ​Gertrude Himmelfarb’s great work, The Idea of Poverty, a pioneering study of attitudes towards the poor in Victorian England, was published in 1984, at a time when Margaret Thatcher and her ministers were calling for a return to “Victorian values” and being attacked by socialists for their pains.

    Gertrude Himmelfarb showed how Victorian society sought to educate the poor out of their poverty in the belief that moral improvement would enable them to build a better and more prosperous society.

    The book in which Gertrude Himmelfarb argued that the Victorian ethic of self-improvement had brought social and economic rewards but had been undermined by insidious moral relativism in the 20th century
    In The Demoralization of Society: From Victorian Virtues to Modern Values (1995) Gertrude Himmelfarb showed that the Victorian recipe worked. When Victoria came to the throne in 1837, crime levels were high and remained a source of concern until the 1850s. But from then on, crime rates fell year upon year, even as the population increased. The reason for this was not more police, she argued, but morality.

    The same years witnessed an astonishing growth among the poorer classes of a genuine belief in the work ethic, in respectability, orderliness, sexual propriety (reflected in a decline in births out of wedlock) and self-reliance. In other words the ethic of self-improvement, based largely on Wesleyan Methodism, brought remarkable social rewards.

    In the rhetoric of Victorian public life, philanthropy, civility and charity were cherished, though charity was regarded as a means to discourage dependency, while providing at least minimal sustenance for the indigent. The Victorians, she wrote, worked “to help restore paupers … to the class of the working poor”.

    Gertrude Himmelfarb felt that the great social and economic achievements of the Victorians had been undermined by the insidious moral relativism that had been encouraged by, among others, members of the Bloomsbury Group and spread through western society in the 20th century, particularly since the 1960s.

    In recent decades, she argued, “we have so completely rejected any kind of moral calculus that we have systematically divorced poor relief from moral sanctions or incentives … We are now confronting the consequences of this policy of moral neutrality.” What was needed was a “re-moralisation of society”.

    One of the clichés of the Left is that “respectable” moral values are just a means by which the middle classes assert their control over their social inferiors. Gertrude Himmelfarb’s claim that such values enable the poor to aspire to better things challenged the basis of late 20th century socialist demonology.

    It was hardly surprising that she was quoted as an inspiration by neo-conservatives such as George W Bush and Newt Gingrich, but when Gordon Brown paid tribute to her ideas, the Left-liberal press in Britain responded with a mixture of bafflement and horror. In fact it was not surprising that she won the admiration of a Calvinist son of the Manse who believed in the redemptive power of work.

    ​Brown was said to have been particularly impressed by Gertrude Himmelfarb’s The Roads to Modernity (2004) in which she argued that the British – particularly the Scottish – Enlightenment was more admirable than the French because it emphasised the importance of moral values as well as reason.

    Moreover, in her own way Gertrude Himmelfarb was a formidable critic of capitalism – at least in its 1980s “loadsamoney” form. The quest for self-fulfillment, she maintained, had led to an “economy of greed” which had fomented social discord. By contrast the Victorian ideal of civic duty had held unfettered capitalism in check.

    Gertrude Himmelfarb was born on August 8 1922 in Brooklyn, New York, the child of immigrant Jewish parents. She went to New Utrecht High School and to Brooklyn College where she studied history and philosophy and became a Trotskyist.

    It was at a Trotskyist meeting that she met the future “godfather of neoconservatism” Irving Kristol. They married in 1942 and moved to Chicago, where Gertrude took a master’s degree with a thesis on Robespierre.

    In 1946 they travelled to England where Gertrude had been awarded a fellowship at Girton College, Cambridge. There she completed a doctorate on Lord Acton, the Victorian historian and liberal political thinker. Back in America, she published an edition of Acton’s Essays on Freedom and Power in 1948. In 1952 her Lord Acton: A Study in Conscience and Politics was well-received.

    Between 1950 and 1965 Gertrude Himmelfarb worked as an independent scholar and her work attracted a series of grants, including two Guggenheim fellowships. During this period, she and her husband spent several years in London.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/obituaries/2020/01/02/TELEMMGLPICT000220209756_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bq2MfxYBFyJ_71J1uDNKnZO-xxajWwnrlt5CkSJHzyTxY.jpeg

    Gertrude Himmelfarb
    Her monograph Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution (1959), a study of how Darwin’s theory of natural selection influenced his contemporaries, won high praise. In 1960 she published an edition of Thomas Malthus’s On Population, and in 1962 an edition of John Stuart Mill’s Essays on Politics and Culture.

    In 1965 she was appointed Professor of History at Brooklyn College, where she remained until 1978 when she became Professor of History at the graduate school of the City University of New York.

    By this time Gertrude Himmelfarb’s views had changed from classical liberal to conservative and her increasingly strident opposition to Marxism and its offshoots made her the target of Left-wing attacks. Victorian Minds, publis​​hed in 1968, laid the foundations for her subsequent work and divided critical attention along predictable ideological lines.

    This remained the pattern of much criticism of her work. In 1974 she published an edition of Mill’s On Liberty and On Liberty and Liberalism: The Case of John Stuart Mill, in which she differentiated the man who wrote On Liberty and the one who wrote Mill’s other works, which, she argued, arose out of an older (and superior) liberal tradition. The Idea of Poverty: England in the Early Industrial Age (1984) charted a change during the Victorian era from the concept of poverty as an unfortunate fact of life to the idea that it was an urgent social problem that must be addressed.

    A volume of essays, Marriage and Morals among the Victorians (1986), was followed by The New History and the Old (1987), a scathing critique of intellectual fads such as structuralism and Marxism which had gripped American history faculties and which, she argued, belittled the importance of ideas, facts and traditional narrative.

    In Poverty and Compassion: The Moral Imagination of the Late Victorians (1991), Gertrude Himmelfarb argued that the standard of living of the late Victorian English poor was not so bad relative to the average of the country as a whole and showed how the Victorians saw poverty as residing not so much in material deprivation as in moral degradation.

    Her On Looking Into the Abyss: Untimely Thoughts on Culture and Society (1994) was an unfettered attack on the contemporary evils of relativism, nihilism and postmodernism, and in The Demoralization of Society: From Victorian Virtues to Modern Values (1995) she speculated about the social effects of the abandonment of Victorian standards of moral behaviour.

    Her call for a return to Victorian values coincided with rising concern among the American public about social breakdown and she played an active role in the debate during the reassessment of America’s welfare policies.

    One Nation, Two Cultures: A Searching Examination of American Society in the Aftermath of Our Cultural Revolution (2001) explored the gulf between the elite, permissive culture that had grown up on the American East and West coasts since the 1960s, and the moral, mainly religious, culture of middle America, coming down firmly on the side of the latter.

    “The intellect on display here is about the calibre of the village biddy who sticks her blue nose into everyone else’s business, offering opinions nobody asked for about how everybody else should live,” sniffed one critic. “What did conservatives do before they had the ’60s to blame?”

    A book of essays, The Moral Imagination: From Edmund Burke to Lionel Trilling (2006) was followed by The Jewish Odyssey of George Eliot (2009), The People of the Book: Philosemitism in England, from Cromwell to Churchill and Past and Present: The Challenges of Modernity, from the Pre-Victorians to the Postmodernists (2017).

    Gertrude Himmelfarb’s husband Irving Kristol died in 2009. She is survived by their daughter and son, William Kristol, a neo-conservative political commentator and editor of The Weekly Standard.

    Gertrude Himmelfarb, born August 8 1922, died December 30 2019​

    Sadly, the DT Auto Censor appears to have taken a dislike to my attempt to post this:-

    She was right.
    The Victorians have been castigated by the revisionists of the Left for far too long.

    So-called “Victorian Conditions” are based on two main sources, the writings of Dickens who’s stories were largely based on his pre-Victorian childhood, and the reports of the various commissions who, being set up by Parliament to examine the worst abuses of Industry, Housing and other social factors so future legislation could be better formulated to abolish them, reported exactly that, the Worst Abuses.

    1. Gordon Brown owed his promotion from village idiot to Prime Minister to his advancement as a Master Mason. The man was as thick as two short planks and possessed the moral compass of an amoeba.

      I simply do not buy the references in this obituary.

    2. She was a Trotskyist when young who “grew up” intellectually by experiencing the real world and started praising Victorian morality / Christian values. Those on the left really hate people who outgrow them. No wonder they didn’t like her.

      “A volume of essays, Marriage and Morals among the Victorians (1986), was followed by The New History and the Old (1987), a scathing critique of intellectual fads such as structuralism and Marxism which had gripped American history faculties and which, she argued, belittled the importance of ideas, facts and traditional narrative.”

      They really would not have liked her saying things like that. 🙂

      Although, with what Gordon Brown has said and done recently, I have my doubts that he really understood what this Lady was trying to say. Unless he has just rejected it all and gone over to the dark side.

      1. The weather is quite good over here in Cologne, or my name’s not Cliff. How is it over there in London, Jean?

        :-))

          1. Now you’ve lost me!

            EDIT: If Bombers’ moon is a piece of music, I thought it was “With a song in my heart”.

        2. Good ol’ Forces Favourites. There’s probably not enough Forces left these days to have a Forces Favourite as they would be playing the same old thing every three weeks.

          1. I can’t hear what you are playing in the background, Jean. Is it Beethoven’s 5th? If so I must put on some dark clothes, rub burnt cork all over my hands and my place and creep outside to cut all of Jerry’s telephone cables.

      1. Haven’t a clue about what your all going on about but I presume Cthulhu = The spread of RoPers.

        1. I was in demand on New Year’s Eve on Tuesday at the pub bash. Unfortunately, none of the demand was under the 75 year old threshold I require to maintain my self esteem.

  91. Nottlers it seems that notifications & posts have been updated about an hour ago, now lets see if a Disqus staffer makes an announcement on Discuss Disqus that explains & apologizes for the 4 1/2 day breakdown of service to customers !

    1. “We are glad to tell you that you can now see your notifications. We are aware that if you respond to a comment in notifications, it does not appear beneath the comment on the main page. And we know that if you attempt to upvote a comment, the page still jumps towards the bottom of the screen.
      As you are aware, things happen. Or don’t happen. Goodnight”.

  93. Labour Have Learnt Nothing

    Unbelievably Labour are tabling an amendment to the Brexit bill to extend our leaving by 2 years

  97. Thank you to all who acknowledged my little post yesterday. I have been ill – and lazy for quite a while. I was bitten by a tick over a year ago and have had several blood tests but the quacks can’t find the cause. I was sleeping up to 16 hours a day at one point – hardly enough time left for the pub. I will look in occasionally. I hope to celebrate New Year with you all again… next New Year that is.

    2. It sounds very much like you’ve contracted borrelia (or Lyme disease), which is the usual result of a tick bit. You certainly have all the classic symptoms.

      Where I live, in southern Sweden, ticks are rife (lots of deer). My good friend, Rolf, got a bad dose of borrelia (from a tick bite) a few months back and has all the symptoms you state you have had.

      Hope you soon recover and a Happy New Year to you.

      1. Since fewer than 50% of ticks in Europe carry the disease, the usual result of a tick-bite is a sore spot which resolves in a week or 2, providing the ttick was removed correctly & completely.

        1. I would be slightly surprised if it was even close to 50%.
          I am not tempting providence here!

          Because I work in a garden that has numerous tick carrying visitors, it is an exceptional year if I don’t get at least two ticks to remove and as far as I know I have no tick-borne diseases.

          1. I did get a swelling the size of a small plate but without the red ring. The tick stayed on for a long time because It was difficult to see and looked like a skin growth. It dropped off of its own accord. Lethargy and memory loss came later.

        2. What you say is, indeed, correct, min vän.

          However, both my friend, Rolf, and Ped suffered from much more than a sore spot for a few weeks. In both cases, their symptoms were nastily similar and lasted for a protracted period of time.

          Of course I’m not qualified to diagnose any condition (let alone Borrelia), but Rolf’s medical diagnosis of the condition was proven and it is similar in every way, closely mirroring Ped’s symptoms. With that said, a similarity cannot be discounted.

    3. I hope you come back before then, Ped!

      Sorry to hear you’ve been so ill – is it Lyme’s disease?

      I hope you will be feeling better soon.

      1. Ndovu and Grizzly: I do have the symptoms of Lyme’s disease and they said they tested for it but couldn’t find trace of the bacteria. Doesn’t mean I don’t have it though. No medicine offered so I just top up with a few beers in the bar. It might not cure it but it is a pleasant distraction. Hic!

          1. Antibiotics can be used at any stage of the infection with varying success. I’m surprised that Ped was offered none.

    8. Having had Lyme Disease I can understand your difficulties in getting a proper diagnoses. There are so many variables, hope you have been prescribed antibiotics but for much longer than the usual 10 days. Hope you feel better soon, we have all missed you!

    10. Hope you’re well soon, Ped, and deffo well* before New Year!
      Edit: * – a long time

        1. Most articles I have seen recommend immediate antibiotics after a bite, as apparently it’s easier to treat at the early stages. They are still thought to be effective at later stages but the courses are then longer. Most of these tick-borne nasties are harder, but not impossible, to treat later.

          If you get the tick extracted quickly you will be unlucky if you get something bad. Problems often arise when people try to get them out with tweezers and squeeze the guts from the tick into the bite site, a “tic-tireur” will allow extraction with far less risk.

  98. @Grizzly @mahatmaganzi

    +++ATTENTION ALL SMART AR$ES PRESENT+++

    Whose military jet was it? It was flying to a military airbase outside of BAI where it was to be met by several private jets. Merkel’s party was going on to her ranch where there was an airstrip catering for the Germanic ex-pats in the region. Verhofertwat was supposed to go with them but he’d made other plans as he didn’t trust the two frauleins. The cosmetic surgeon was based in BAI.
    I was forced to go to a grammar school. Only subjects I was interested were History, Geography and PE/Games. A Level did South America. I never read a book the whole seven years but I sure studied my atlas. Plus I had bubble gum cards with flags on them. You know what they say if you can do it, do it. So I did for 33 years shipped stuff around the world.

    Maybe you’d like to tell us why this customs union, single market, withdrawal bowlocks is well, bowlocks. To help you I’ve attached a form.

    If you want an evening of smart ar$ery, please let me know.)))))))))))))))))))

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d7b5b095bc98cc56fe25f866b197a5b461e9c518c62c885ad863e2c6ac282f3a.jpg

  100. An odd thing has just happened with Disqus. I have been away for a few hours and was catching up when the screen flickered and half of the peoples comments disappeared. I scrolled back up and many of the messages that I had just read in the previous five minutes were gone. A few minutes later and it happened again and some comments were back, and now others were missing. I have just refreshed the page and all of them seem to be back.

    So the rumours from many sources that the regular Disqus staff have just been on holiday may have been correct after all. If they have now returned and are trying to sort out the problems that have cropped up while they were away, then there might be some glitches.

    Although the “New message” notification is still not working, so it may just be that Disqus itself is falling further apart. If so, I have no doubt many of us will meet again on some new network in the future. With the Sun shining on a bright new horizon. Just as long as we can still post pictures. 🙂

    3. I think Disqus has been hacked by the dark side. So, you can all expect a 4 am wake up call sometime soon. It’s quite interesting to observe GP and see people are experiencing different problems at the same time. Apparently GP is observed by Wilshire Police, who’s looking after here, I wonder.

      1. 4 am? No – that’s the milkman. The thought police are unlikely to turn up before 6 am, but my alarm goes off at 0520, so I’ll be ready for them…

        1. I wind up a 195cm/130 plus kgs, now retired inspector of plod from the big city, at the gym. I tested his thought crime capabilities, you didn’t have to be there to appreciate the quality of the P taking. I’d repeat it but the Puritans might see it. But the first question was what word am I thinking of when I look at you? He instantly gives the obvious four letter word answer. I go “Close!” No it’s berk as in cockney rhyming slang from Berkley Hunt! Wry smile. With a look that says I wouldn’t have survived a night in his 50 mega cell facility.
          Well if they come for me I’ll then have somewhere to live.

  101. Reminds me, I’m still waiting for a certain somebody to tell me why the Foreign Office are interested in this convicted, unnamed girl, if she’s gulity, as charged.

      1. No, but I’ve read Tom Clancy’s Clear and Present Danger.. I’ll remember the Arrence bit.

  102. I went for a walk yesterday morning and took a photo of this object from the other side before I had a Julia Roberts/Pretty Woman moment while trying to buy some boots and sports clothes. After the experience I wished ill on a certain football club. It worked. They lost 3-0 and had 4 hamstrings go in 15 minutes!))))).

    I am in the process of Complaint Stage 1 with the Information Governance Officer BA Hons (I smell common purpose) at the council. The first 28 days has gone and we are now in the next stage because the matter is “complex.” Bingo! I’ll be further back at the end of the queue, those 25 jihadi brides and their 60 offspring need housing.

    There are at least six and two types available. Think I’ll check out the one on the viaduct some time as it’s the other side of the canal path and hard to get to.

    Think I’ll do the GDPR complaint next to the ICO about the landlord sending my “strong” letter to the council for what reason? guidance? The council should be advising me but it’s obvious that they have given advice to the landlord.

    Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8e99ce57e31e5ee53c0bc71ee021c0ec659b0efab52d13339ef3f41068eaf85e.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5e8dbbe87a32efb15e92eebc1e0f31db530d611dac16837f1f9572d486b1ad65.jpg

          2. It’s fairly utilitarian – reminiscent of “the District Nurse’s / Police house”. Built in 1936 as a residence for The Verger, courtesy of one Miss Dorothea S. Courtauld, of the textile empire. It also, arguably, has the best views in the village.

        2. It will be when the bailiffs come to evict me. But I also have a mini-bus and have asked the council 4 times will I be deemed as homeless if I have a vehicle.

      3. These are part of some No. 5 defence thingy that covers about 4 miles along the river. What is yours defending?

        1. There are lots of them hereabouts. I’m just south of the A31 / Hog’s Back. Before wireless telegraphy, there was a series of semaphore towers between The Admiralty and Portsmouth. I guess it was still considered a strategic route in the 1940’s…

          1. Understandable then, but I can’t quite see what these are defending, apart from the one on the viaduct. But judging by the litter around the flooded one the yoof are using it for various activities.

          2. There are loads along the River Wey, not many miles away. Before it became overgrown, my pill box would have has a very good view along the valley.

      1. Unfortunately, I only had a 15p Asda bag for life with 4 packets of loose tea in it to wave at the shop door. But I will go back and see if the manager that “served” me is there and then say can I have somebody else serve me. I intended to buy some new boxing gloves and was going to ask him if he was any good at fighting.

  103. Dianna Abbots Sons Charge sheet

    Assaulting 2 police officers in July 2019

    Assaulting a Doctor in August 2019

    Beating a nurse and racially or religiously aggravated criminal damage in November 2019

    Assaulting a police officer in November 2019

    Assaulting a therapist in December 2019

    These are additional charges over and above the earlier charges

      2. Beating a nurse and assaulting a doctor and a therapist… People who do that should automatically be denied any care treatment or at least have it’s delivery severely delayed if the case is serious. Let him lie in a field with a broken leg for for a few hours before collecting him, or let him sit at home worrying about the “strange pain” for a few days before letting him in.

        That might make the arrogant little b’stard respect those who are providing a service.

        1. I would think he has serious mental health issues to behave like that, but he needs to be locked up for his and others’ safety.

    3. H’mmm.
      Understandably, we are now very wary of the ‘mental health issue’ card, but I do think there is a problem.
      The three month gap between incidents 2 and 3 makes me wonder where he was during the intervening weeks.

    4. What is your problem?

      He is behaving in a perfectly normal way as the son of an overpriveleged over promoted black woman who has spent her entire life supporting someone who hates this country. And sleeping with the enemy. It’s no wonder he is confused.

      His cure would be to Facebook Greta.

        2. It is two way traffic. I know a chap who had two children by a beautiful English wife and a son by a subsequent liaison.

          He secured a job in Ghana working for Kvaerner and being sex-mad shagged any number of Ghanaian women. He had a son by one such and for some inextricable reason, deserted his English families, sold up and bought a stretch of sandy beach there, selling beer from a beach kiosk.

          Thereafter he ignored his English relations. I was obliged to help his last partner in selling up as I had designed their jointly owned property in Cratfield, Suffolk.

    3. Actually, since all human groups migrated out of Africa originally, there are no “indigenous European peoples”. Just as there are no indigenous Americans, Canadians, Australians, etc. Immigrants all – some groups however have a have a more complex gene mutation history than others.

  106. Dracula,so 30% of the passengers on a Russian ship on its way to Whitby are tinged
    Of course they are…………

    3. I have not started watching it yet. I thought that I would wait until I had the whole series so that I could watch several at once if they were any good. That Mark Gatiss (I think its him) writer has been good in the past, but it is the BBC, so I suspected that they would use their standard social engineering approach by re-writing history again.

      If it gets too PC / Diverse then I won’t get too far into the series.

  107. Layla Moran announces she is in ‘loving, stable relationship’ with a woman and identifies as pansexual

    Problems with this article

    1. Who is Layla Moran

    2, Has Pan (you identify as a frying or sauce pan) sexual been cleared by the National Associaton Of AlphabetLQWERTets

    3, Who cares?

    edit

    4. Had Pansexual used to be called AC/DC

    PS Having loked at the fottie of Layla, her teeth would make very good tin/bottle openers, in the spirit of pansexual of course

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/01/02/layla-moran-announces-loving-stable-relationship-woman-identifies/

        2. How come this is still being shown? Where are the NTTL Puritan Police? Or are they corrupt and only target certain individuals, like ME for example? This would be deemed as in extremely bad taste in both Wales and East Anglia.

          2. Obviously! Or her tongue is very coarse like a pussy’s and she’ scouring it But I posted this meme of a cup and the Puritans thought it was in extreme bad taste. They also said the NYE firework display in Sydney should have been cancelled. I think it’s down to the LP, myself.

    3. ” she is in a “really happy, loving, stable relationship””
      Not with another woman, then. With a horse.
      (She’s a Lib-Dem M.P. – they are mostly like that)

    5. Pansexual:

      Screw ’em all, screw ’em all,
      The long and the short and the tall…..

  109. I tried posting this comment on the Daily Mail on New Year’s Day on Johnson’s peace to all Remainers bowlocks. I tried 3 times. Clearly, one or more of the words is banned on the DM.

    For example Kalergi is banned there and so is Soros, I think. S(‘)r(‘)s is definitely banned on Breitbart along with kill and shoot.

    “And so, the Great Betrayal begins. To me, a remainer is a traitor, someone who wants to be ruled
    by a foreign power. Johnson didn’t get where he is today by not being a Useful
    Idiot for the globalists. The term Useful Idiot originated from Lenin’s and
    Stalin’s contempt for people like Corbyn and the Union leaders of the 60’s who
    were doing the bidding for their communist masters.”

    I wanted to post it to gauge public opinion amongst the DMers. Obviously I’d get heavily down voted.

    I’ve a pretty good idea what the word is, have you?

    Ah yes, I asked the Remain voting, former tanker driver, the man from FNC, if he thought we’d leave this year. “We’d better!” Hallelujah! Another soul rescued from the dark side. I told him we wouldn’t be leaving and that we’d be the last ones to leave the EU.

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