Thursday 20 February: When the men from the quango arrive to spoil miles of riverbank without stopping floods

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/02/20/letterswhen-men-quango-arrive-spoil-miles-riverbank-without/

728 thoughts on “Thursday 20 February: When the men from the quango arrive to spoil miles of riverbank without stopping floods”

  1. TO RUSSIA WITH LOVE – THE RAPE OF BRITAIN. written by TR News 13th February 2020.

    Tommy gives a quick update as to what he’s been up to behind the scenes, as usual, he’s been busy, busy preparing for a trip to Germany and then Russia after that. Tommy will give presentations in both countries, he will speak of the issues, the facts and the disturbing figures behind the industrialised rape of British children by predominantly Muslim paedophile gangs.

    Morning everyone. Mmmmm. I don’t think that the PTB are going to like that so they will probably kibosh it. As near to the departure date as they can manage of course!

    https://www.tr.news/to-russia-with-love-the-rape-of-britain/

    1. As hear to the departure date as they can manage of course!

      So nobody can turn a deaf hear?

    2. AS,
      This “Tommy” being the ex personal
      advisory of one Gerard Batten ( ex real
      UKIP leader) tagged as many are, myself included as far right racist
      that one ?
      The day is fast approaching when a
      legion of Tommies is once more going to be sorely needed.

      1. ogga1: I have just upvoted you because – in my onion – both Tommy and Gerard are decent and patriotic British citizens. And I have never called you a “far right racist”. But the way you bang on – day after day after day after day after day – about the stupidity of the British because they “always” vote for the politicians and parties they criticise puts more people off you than wins them to your cause.

        1. Morning EB,
          316489+up✔s
          Yet by the same token the same segment of the electorate continue to
          support / vote for the same parties that continue to take us deeper into the sh!te as a Country.
          By your own admission they are in the wrong but the party MUST come first, regardless.
          My advice to you is just skip ogga1 comments.
          Part of my cause is
          not to support / vote for parties that have a mass uncontrolled immigration policy & via that policy all the odious consequences
          ie rotherham etc,etc,etc, ongoing, as is being revealed.

          1. ogga1, I bow to your excellent advice (“My advice to you is just skip ogga1 comments’) and will now block you as suggested. Goodbye ogga1.

          2. Afternoon EB,
            316489+up✔s,
            Sad to hear but glad to hear you can accept advice plus your intentions are your prerogative, to use while you still can.

    3. Not at all. Just look at Meghan of Sussex, for example. Having said that, we are talking about looks, aren’t we? And beauty is only skin deep – all that glitters is not gold.

  6. Morning all

    SIR – During the floods of 2013-14, Somerset residents soon laid the blame on the Environment Agency and its failure to keep the rivers flowing. Until the turn of the century the Somerset Rivers Authority, and later the National Rivers Authority, had kept waterways in good order.

    Then along came the EA, in thrall to the conservation bodies, systematically failing to carry out the most rudimentary river maintenance.

    When Owen Paterson arrived on the scene he listened to local people and the Somerset Rivers Authority was reborn. It is part funded by residents of the whole county. Somerset is now wet but not drowning.

    Edwin White

    Easton, Somerset

    1. SIR – You report (February 18) that by the Environment Agency’s “own calculations, the number of properties built on flood plains is likely to nearly double in the next 45 years”.

      How shockingly irresponsible! The clue is in the words “flood plain”.

      Stephen Gledhill

      Evesham, Worcestershire

      1. What really is shockingly irresponsible is the policy of overpopulating this small island for extremely suspect economic/political reasons.

  7. SIR – The return of Greek statues (“EU inserts ‘Elgin Marbles clause’ into trade demands”, report, February 19) is an international problem.

    The Aphrodite of Milos was taken to France with the permission of the Turkish occupation authorities. She stands (with her name changed to the Roman equivalent) in the Louvre as the Venus de Milo, along with other Greek statues.

    Why should we lose our marbles if the French keep theirs?

    Geoffrey Hodgson

    Leeds, West Yorkshire

    SIR – Negotiators in Brussels should remember that the “Bayeux tapestry” was embroidered in Canterbury.

    A W Fox

    London W14

    1. Morning E,
      316489+up✔s,
      They, the negotiators should also keep in mind these “negotiations are not
      necessary or needed for a clean break.

  8. Morning again

    SIR – Ah, back to the days of non-existent service in restaurants and workmen leaving jobs half-done, while over a million able-bodied British people are handed large sums of taxpayers’ money because they are too lazy to work (“Points-based migration to end era of cheap labour”, report, February 19).

    Louis Altman

    London SW17

    SIR – The Government has decided that staff working in care homes are unskilled. They won’t be allowed to come from other countries and do the work that many British-born workers shun.

    What message is this sending – apart from “Don’t get old”?

    Richard Gilbert

    Guyhirn, Cambridgeshire

    SIR – To set a salary threshold of £25,600 for potential migrants is a London-centric absurdity. It does not need deep economic understanding to appreciate that such an amount has an entirely different resonance in rural and provincial areas.

    Huw Baumgartner

    Bridell, Pembrokeshire

    1. BTL:

      Christian Malford 20 Feb 2020 1:11AM

      Louis Altman and Richard Gilbert trot out the old line ‘lazy Briton, hard-working foreigner’. I don’t suppose either of them spent much of their working lives waiting on tables in out-of-season seaside greasy spoons, packing vegetables in cold and remote sheds or tending to doubly incontinent dementia patients in care homes. Nor do I expect those immigrants who come here to do that to spend the rest of their lives in similar minimum wage hard labour. They do it for long enough to earn their residence and benefit entitlements and then leave, to be replaced by more, many of them living in squalid conditions because that’s all they can afford but are prepared to do so to get a foothold in our land of plenty (sic).

      There is undoubtedly (and disgracefully) a large unemployed and unemployable underclass (we should ask ourselves how we managed to allow that to be created) but there are also many Britons who have been priced out of the jobs market, especially at the bottom end, because of high living costs. Many would be worse off for taking these jobs.

      Messrs Altman and Gilbert should ask how it is that the relationship between the cost of living and wages has become so distorted that so many organisations can only survive by hiring low-cost, imported slave labourers. They should then stick their righteous moralising where the sun doesn’t shine.
      _______________________________

      T Sedman-Smith 20 Feb 2020 8:34AM

      I am sick of the constant reference to to idle work shy British who will not do the jobs migrants come here and do.

      The Britain I grew up in was always regarded as having a hardworking population, with those who did not work when they could looked down on.

      Benefits were tightly controlled, quite low and of limited range, designed mostly to help those between employment.

      The expansion of the welfare state, had a corrupting influence that has continued out of control; understandably with so much on- line booking in and closure of local offices and the loss of local staff, who knew the workforce/unemployed.

      We have the recent case of the sons of a migrant who had returned home continuing for years to collect her benefits and use the money to fund their terrorist activities.

      In referring to the “Idle British” it should be remembered that some of the highest unemployment rates are amongst those of a certain religion, 60%+ I believe in some areas.

      Unlike sensible EU countries that imposed restrictions, we entered into the uncontrolled EU migration chaos, but only in 2004; how on earth did we ever manage before?

      War, famine disease has in the past reduced the workforce, but resulted in higher wages, more innovation and invention, so add leaving the EU to that.

      However, a point never answered by those wanting migrants to come and live here to look after our ageing population, is who is going to look after the migrant care workers when they grow old?

  9. SIR – The very best reason for using a bright white tablecloth (Letters, February 18) is that it reflects light upwards and makes everyone’s face look its best.

    Linora Bennet

    Tunbridge Wells, Kent

        1. There is sometimes so little jus that there is not enough to spill. I often ask for extra.

          1. They look like crab claw crackers. The bowl in the middle is probably for everyone to lob the shells into.

      2. Crystal D’arc Champagne flutes incorrectly placed.

        Unironed table linen.
        No centerpiece.
        No cruet.

        1/10

  12. ‘Morning All

    With utter predictability the usual suspects are up in arms,wailing and screeching about the “points based immigration system”

    One reasonable answer…………

    https://twitter.com/MartinP25888179/status/1230254260488634368?s=20
    Round at my sisters I was condemned to watch the Al-Beeb news where among the wringing of hands they made a couple of slips
    “How will I pick my pumpkins??”
    Well matey I suspect you’ll use workers on the “seasonal workers scheme”
    “How will I staff my care home,many prefer to work part-time”
    I just bet they do matey,that wouldn’t be the magic 16 hours part-time would it?? You know the magic number of hours that unlocks in-work and housing benefits??
    Remember the farmer that advertised full time jobs and everyone wanted to work part-time??,now you know why

    1. Not using the funding available for apprenticeships, as reported last week, is shameful.

    2. Scottish Fishermen representative said they need immigrant workers to man the Scottish fishing Industry. Grimsby rep says they can manage with the labour and up to date equipment which they have. [Radio 4 News]

        1. For the time we are still under EU regs (the end of this year?) perhaps the Scots can employ hundreds of extra foreign workers per ship, then toss the those “surplus” extras over the side before they return to the land. Of course, the hundreds of extras would need to prove that they are unable to swim at their job interview.

    3. Following current UK trends it now seems that too many youngsters have been persuaded to claim they have mental health issues. And consequently are not fit for purpose or able to get out of bed to work.
      Or as has been an inherent problem in the UK for far too long, home comforts, trusses, tattoos, trout pouts, growly vowels and nail care come first and most of all, they just don’t like to get their snowflake hands dirty.

  13. WARNING EYE BLEACH MAY BE NEEDED

    Obviously I’m not going to watch something like the Brit Awards but I note they continue to set exemplary role models for da yoof,another chippy rapper with a taste for lyrics about ho’s,guns,gangs and drugs and a couple of brothers in jail gets to call BoJo racist and this beauty is held up as an example to young women

    (Step away from the chicken bucket)

    https://twitter.com/prisonplanet/status/1230225390574149633?s=21
    Like Minty,I’m glad I’m old,with luck I should be spared the worst of the fall that is coming

  14. I have never experienced flooding, it must be awful, truly awful.

    I wonder about the most efficient deployment of the emergency services though when you see people being ‘rescued’ in a dinghy being pulled along by others on whom the water is barely up to their knees.

    1. Morning all.
      Apparently they do this because there is a risk of manhole covers being lifted due to the upthrust of the flood water. If a person stepped into one it could be a long way down.

        1. Did he duckie 😆

          I can remember in Mill Hill yonks ago we had a sudden prolonged cloud burst and floods in the dip in our street. And many manhole covers were off.
          But back in the day our practicle dads were allowed go out side to replace them.
          With out hard hats, yellow jackets, kevlar gloves, safety boots and goggles. ☺

    1. Could one of our Cornish friends please enlighten me on how you grow your cauliflowers. I’ve never had to dig mine up, just cut them off.

    2. BTL:
      “Caroline Voaden, echoing the thoughts of every deep South plantation owner in 1865.”

      1. Another reply exemplifies where we have gone wrong

        “Couple lived next door to my gran in early 70’s Boston. Man – cabbage cutter, wife – part time veg packer. Two children, own house. proud and responsible. Impossible today because of low wage migrants, tax credits and benefits gap. Today they would be on benefits with low esteem.”

    3. I don’t want to stir things up , but many British youngsters are spoilt and immature and still behave like kids at 26 yrs of age.. Even student life doesn’t prepare them for the grubby jobs in life .

      I heard that recruiting care staff and student nurses was very difficult because British women have life style issues , their manicured nails are VERY important as are their social lives … and high maintenance requirements .
      Modern British lads can be very hard working and earn good wages, but many DO NOT want jobs in agriculture .

      There are alot of Polish , Lithuanian and others who work on the land around these parts .. there are many EU women who work in nursing homes and hospitals , they are very efficient , kind and caring . I think the government has shot itself in the foot to tell you the truth .

      I cannot believe that the illegals who come ashore , or the burqa clad communities would take kindly to botty wiping and the intimate chores that care in the community demands.. nor are capable of making sausage rolls or hot cross buns!

      1. Kids have been brought up to be too soft.
        My sister’s son is a prime example. He’s nearly 30, has had a evening delivery job, but that’s been pretty much it. My sister does everything for him, so he has absolutely no impetus to get out into the world on his own. Her excuse is that he has Aspergers, which he may well have,but when she’s no longer around to provide a home, food on the table, laundry services, etc, (she’s 61 this year) what’s he going to do? He is unlikely to ever marry or have his own family. He’s never really grown up, and she’s never made him. He’s just banking on inheriting the house and any money she has (which won’t be as much as he thinks as she spends like it’s going out of fashion).

        We’ve provided our children (well, not me, as I didn’t have any) with all the comforts we didn’t have, tv’s, phones, central heating, easy travel, indoor toilets, functioning baths. As far as I’m concerned, a little deprivation goes a long way.

      2. ‘Morning, Mags, “I cannot believe that the illegals who come ashore , or the burqa clad communities would take kindly to botty wiping and the intimate chores that care in the community demands.. nor are capable of making sausage rolls or hot cross buns!”

        I hope they thoroughly wash BOTH their hands between botty wiping and sausage roll making!

    1. Unlike bamboozled pundits, the public completely gets the Cummings Project
      SHERELLE JACOBS
      DAILY TELEGRAPH COLUMNIST
      Follow
      20 FEBRUARY 2020 • 6:00AM
      Save
      213
      Dominic Cummings interviews Stuart Wheeler at the launch of Wheeler’s book Winning Against The Odds; My Life in Gambling and Politics, in central London,
      The second most ruthless man in Britain wants to radically rewire the system

      11 steps to follow before you fly with diabetes
      Sponsored
      The millions who voted for change are rooting for the PM’s disgustingly ambitious aide
      There is only one thing more tragic than a misunderstood genius: a genius who has given up on being understood. I refer, of course, to Dominic Cummings. In the same way the EU lives to stun the brain cells of dim politicians with its paroxysms of legalese, the PM’s aide seems to delight in torturing journalists who “don’t get” The Project with outbursts about cyberpunks and Pennsylvanian superforecasters.

      Mr Cummings’ playful vindictiveness towards politicos is both entertaining and a shame. After all, his basic idea is rather simple: the system is broken, and if we don’t fix it, humanity is cancelled.

      To summarise Mr Cummings’ world view as briefly and unsensationally as possible, modern technology is proving a catalyst to total world destruction. High frequency algorithmic trading – which enables financial markets to make decisions at robot speed – has opened the way for crashes that would make the 2008 credit crunch look like a mosquito smudge on the graph paper. We are mere years away from nutcases with £50 to spare cultivating DNA-altering weapons that could wipe out entire populations, from the comfort of their kitchens. Clunky centralising bureaucracies – which tend to replicate rather than correct mistakes – render global calamities even more likely. Not to mention residual systemic niggles that steadily corrode Britain’s quality of life, from a collapsing health service to botched transport infrastructure.

      Mr Cummings thinks that, to make matters worse, our politicians are pathetically out of their depth. His solution is to cull the eloquent blaggers who dominate the ruling class and replace them with experts in their field who have strong ethics, excellent project management skills and a powerful capacity for rational thought. He believes that such a goal is so subversive to vested interests that it can only be attempted when the system is in a state of shock – which is where an event like Brexit comes in handy.

      Naturally, the establishment has concluded that Mr Cummings is an Aldous Huxley novel tripping on post-modern psychopathy. But here’s the twist: unbeknownst to the hacks rattling off character assassinations, and political rivals plotting his demise, much of the public instinctively grasps the Cummings Project.

      Granted, the intricacies are a little puzzling – from Whitehall modelling itself on NASA to nauseating phraseology like “high performance teams”. But many voters suspect Mr Cummings is onto something. They feel in their bones that Britain – perhaps the West at large – is suffering deep systems failure and must be radically rewired.

      This perspective is both instinctive and informed by everyday life. There is a widespread suspicion that the institutional failings everywhere one looks – from uninvestigated burglaries to late trains – are rooted in lunatic design flaws, as well as limited resourcing. Watching brown-nosers and blaggers float to the top of dysfunctional corporations, like the scum of curdled milk, is also an all too typical experience in Britain plc.

      An unelected aide skulking in the shadows Mr Cummings may be, but he has allies in the millions who voted for change. Downing Street might do more to communicate his mission. A fly-on-the-wall YouTube documentary giving the public a taste of his Whitehall revolution perhaps?

      More importantly, Downing Street needs to give voters some credit. Boris Johnson may have won his majority on the back of a simple manifesto that promised 50 million new GP appointments and 20,000 more police. But voters also want to see these institutions undergo reform.

      Millions of crimes pass unreported because the basic algorithm of modern policing is to categorise and prioritise crime rather than indiscriminately solve it. Thousands die every year because hospitals don’t follow checklists to avoid catheter infections.

      Repairing broken machines can also spark new opportunities. Mr Cummings himself believes, for example, that the NHS can be the world leader in genomic prediction, which may yet prove to be the future of preventative healthcare. More’s the pity then that the only genome-related media story this week was the scandal involving one of Mr Cummings’ more foolish “weirdo” hires. Andrew Sabisky resigned following revelations that he once suggested black Americans have a lower average IQ than white Americans. And so it goes when human judgment error gets in the way of re-engineering the world.

      It would be a shame if Dominic Cummings were to blow up before he gets going. He not only captures the brilliance of Brexit, but the terrifying nature of the alternative. For, if his diagnosis of the future of humanity is a tad extreme, his remedy is authentically conservative. He wants Britain to master technology rather than recoil from it. He wants to make management work better rather than dream up some insane collectivist alternative (which is where the Left, with its talk of a “people’s BBC’ is heading). Let’s hope the second most ruthless man in politics lasts the course.

      1. Thanks for that Joseph. I’m not sure how reliable Sherelles account of Cummings ambitions are but some of the description of our shortcomings is accurate. Myself I would have thought only a revolution could save the UK! We shall have to wait and see.

        1. AS,
          316489+up ✔s,
          My personal belief is that once the lab host
          party is finally taken over by the islamic faction & in view of the
          increasing number of
          atrocities being revealed then the real battle will be out of the polling booth and onto the streets.

  17. Daily Mail = “Priti Patel is accused of ‘bullying’ and creating
    ‘atmosphere of fear’ in the Home Office as she goes to war with her top
    civil servants
    Staff are said to have accused the Home Secretary of bullying in meetings
    Officials complained she has made unreasonable demands during discussions
    Sir Philip Rutnam has raised concerns about the way she treats her staff ”

    Oh Dear,civil serpents can’t use the “Racist” card to dispose of a minister so “bullying” emerges,would that “bullying” be do what you’re told by your minister for a change??
    Sack Rutnam,remind these people elected politicians say what goes,not you!!

  18. – What good will it do to see Boris standing in a pair of waders up T’North in the floods? the media have a bee in their bonnet about it at the moment.

    1. Morning Bob. This is the same mentality that sends reporters to comment on the Royals from the gates of Buckingham Palace and the Government from the lawn outside Westminster!

      2. We haven’t seen many reports from the Westminster lawn lately – is that because Steve Bray has packed up and gone home since Brexit day?

    2. The shrieks have more to do with the media attacking a Conservative PM than worries about soggy Britons.
      The sheer hassle of a senior politician visiting an area wastes the time and energy of useful people.
      Security problems apart, the presence of prominent people is a good way of bringing attention to such events, but, if visits are needed, that’s what the royals are for; politicians are supposed to be running the country, not acting as photo opportunities.

    1. The asking price for those islands seems reasonable.

      How much extra, though, would it cost to hire your own private army to thwart an invasion?

      1. If the Greek Government would issue an “End User Certificate” for suitable arms such an Island used as a retirement home for NoTTLers friends and relatives would be quite able to defend themselves
        (Bags I the Flammenwerfers)

          2. And the pit does not need to be very deep, just enough to drive the excrement smeared stake through the foot of whoever stands in it.

        4. Flamethrower? Never get me near one of those! A sniper rifle & machine pistol (MP5 for preference) for me.

  21. 316489+up✔s,
    May one ask how we as a nation can have limited resources for many issues within the Country and still go ahead with HS2 & fund overseas aid ?

  22. Dozens of hospitals targeted during latest phase of Syria’s bloody war. Sky News 20 February 2020.

    There have been at least 67 attacks on hospitals, health facilities and health workers in northwest Syria since April last year, Sky News analysis has shown.
    Many of the sites we have identified are in villages in Idlib province that have been on the frontline as Syria’s President Bashar al Assad has fought to reclaim territory he lost during the nine-year civil war.

    A hospital in every village! No wonder we whinge about the NHS! These people make the Chinese look like slackers! They are building hospitals faster than they can be bombed!

    https://news.sky.com/story/under-attack-hospitals-deliberately-targeted-as-syrias-war-intensifies-11938292

    1. The last few nights we’ve had Orla Guerin intoning portentously about nearly a million refugees from Assad’s barrel bombs as he attempts to reclaim his territory. We’ve seen pictures of injured children but none of the bombs.

  23. SIR — Susan Grey ought to be informed (“Why faking my plummy accent has served me awfully well”, comment, February 20) that millions in the UK cringe when they hear the ghastly concocted speech impediment known as “received pronunciation” uttering from the lips of one of its hapless users. RP was invented by Regency dandies as a private jape. Those fops wanted a private club with unique use of the awful screech but all society in the south-east clamoured to join in and it soon spread.

    The fundamental problem with RP is the fact that it has no rules. Individual speakers invent which A’s in a word are to be pronounced long or short. You end up with canal properly pronounced as “can al”, whilst banal is absurdly voiced as “ban arl.” This incongruity and cluelessness extends to many words. Why, for example, is the as in gas and mask pronounced differently in each word? This renders a sensible “gass massk” deteriorating into a risible “gass marsk”.

    I have heard Afghanistan pronounced no fewer than eight different ways on the BBC. If its proponents are clueless, how do you think the rest of us feel when forced to listen to the awful cacophony?

    A Grizzly B…

    [I love coming back to my favourite hobby horse, especially if it winds up those gormless ingenue southerners who don’t know the history of that awful, caterwauling, nerve-shredding screech.]

      1. There’s little difference, Rastus.

        What you need to realise is that by inventing that ‘system’ of pronunciation in the first place, those Regency dandies had invented their own form of snobbery. There were sneering down their little noses at the rest of us.

          1. I’m not looking down on anyone, John.

            I get pissed off when RP users habitually, loudly and incessantly tell me that other dialects are not as good as theirs. Elsewhere today in this very forum a southerner (one with a poor command of English in any case) is taking the piss out of “t’North”.

            It seems that it is fair game for RP users to have a laugh but woe betide anyone having a go back at their precious dialect.

    2. I guess that is why I am a fan of the very watchable , listenable Freddie Flintoff, and I genuinely enjoy Top Gear .. he is a proper lad !

      Good morning dear Griizzler.

          1. Nearly, Jenny.

            I’m, ‘aif Derbyshire and ‘aif Yorkshire, tha’ knows. 😘 It is so easy to get some of these southerners wound up. They take it all so seriously whenever I criticise their precious way of speaking yet they think nothing of perpetually taking the Mick out of how northerners speak.

            I think they spent too much time on mummy’s titty.

          4. It’s worse than that. There are traces of Mick, Jute, Roman, Angle, Norman, Saxon, Celt, Ancient Briton, and Viking in me DNA.

            I’m what me mum called a Heinz.

            57 Varieties

          5. ‘Morning, George, try tracing your family tree – it’s good detective work and may produce strange results. With the help of others, on my Father’s side I can go back to 1580 in Fleiston, Lincolnshire but my Mother’s side took me back 1,490 years to Egil, King in Sweden, Uppsala born in 530. Whilst doing it it is worth remembering:

            If you could see your ancestors all standing in a row,
            Would you be proud of them or not, or don’t you really know?
            Some strange discoveries are made when climbing family trees,
            And some of them you know do not particularly please.

            If you could see your ancestors all standing in a row,
            There might be some of them perhaps, you wouldn’t care to know.
            But here’s another question which requires a different view.
            If you could meet your ancestors, would they be proud of you?
            (from Edith Fletcher’s pedigree book)

          6. ‘Morning, Tom.

            My cousin has done more genealogical research into the family than I have. On my father’s side I haven’t progressed much further back than a paternal great grandfather from Sheffield. My paternal grandmothers family were a mix of north Nottinghamshire and West Riding.
            On my mother’s side of the family, my cousin went a bit further back discovering that my maternal grandfather was the son of an Irishman and a lady who was born in Staffordshire but ended up in Castleford by way of Lancashire. My maternal grandmother’s family were all Derbyshire.

            The biggest quandary (anomaly) in tracing your heredity is the fact that an immense [nay: colossal] amount of inbreeding must have routinely taken place at every juncture of the past. I can illustrate this when I point out that every human has two parents, four grand parents, eight great grandparents and so on, doubling every generation.

            You only need to go back 33 generations to discover that a child born today, in 2020, would be the product of 8,589,934,592 back in around 1195 AD (assuming 4 generations per century). That is a lot more than the entire number of people on the planet today.

            Mind boggling.

          13. ‘Morning, Tom.

            My cousin has done more genealogical research into the family than I have. On my father’s side I haven’t progressed much further back than a paternal great grandfather from Sheffield. My paternal grandmothers family were a mix of north Nottinghamshire and West Riding.
            On my mother’s side of the family, my cousin went a bit further back discovering that my maternal grandfather was the son of an Irishman and a lady who was born in Staffordshire but ended up in Castleford by way of Lancashire. My maternal grandmother’s family were all Derbyshire.

            The biggest quandary (anomaly) in tracing your heredity is the fact that an immense [nay: colossal] amount of inbreeding must have routinely taken place at every juncture of the past. I can illustrate this when I point out that every human has two parents, four grand parents, eight great grandparents and so on, doubling every generation.

            You only need to go back 33 generations to discover that a child born today, in 2020, would be the product of 8,589,934,592 back in around 1195 AD (assuming 4 generations per century). That is a lot more than the entire number of people on the planet today.

            Mind boggling.

          20. I used to work at Newcastle for a few years with people from Durham and elsewhere in the country. When they heard the banter between me and the Durham lads the southern lot were a bit puzzled.

            I took great delight in informing them that the Tyne was so much more than just a river or waterway. It was a barrier – a division.

          22. I used to work at Newcastle for a few years with people from Durham and elsewhere in the country. When they heard the banter between me and the Durham lads the southern lot were a bit puzzled.

            I took great delight in informing them that the Tyne was so much more than just a river or waterway. It was a barrier – a division.

    5. Oh Daaaahling. I listened to a “sermon” preached at Evensong a couple of weeks ago by a wee girlie chorister with a painfully plummy accent. She’ll be early twenty something but came across as a hoity toity precocious schoolgirl sharing her homework. The tone was condescending and the content was vacuous. She’ll probably be a CofE bishop soon.

      1. Thank you, daaaaahling. Did she sound like the love-child of Malcolm Muggeridge and Dame Edith Sitwell (with a soupçon of Brian Sewell thrown in for good measure)? :•)

        Let me be straight. I have nothing against any dialect per se; however two things to consider:

        1. All other dialects never waver from what they are; they are standard across their range.

        2. If RP had conformity, I wouldn’t be bothered. Unfortunately it doesn’t. It users make it up as they go along.

          2. That, as you well know, is not the platform of my argument.

            In RP, a speaker would pronounce the fish bass either way depending upon his/her whim. The same goes for many other words.

      1. John. I choose my hook, select the juiciest worm, impale it, pull back the rod, cast it far out (in a southerly direction), and then …

        … BITE! I’ve hooked one! :•)

      1. You tell me, Paul.

        “I slipped orf the parth, fell on the grarse, having a larf, so I went and took a barth.”

  24. Engineering at its Finest

    Quality Engineering
    This one is well worth the time to read it…….It made my day; I hope it makes yours too! You don’t have to be an engineer to appreciate this story. It is typical in Industry and Government too!

    A toothpaste factory had a problem. They sometimes shipped empty boxes without the tube inside. This challenged their perceived quality with the buyers and distributors. Understanding how important the relationship with them was, the CEO of the company assembled his top people. They decided to hire an external engineering company to solve their empty boxes problem. The project followed the usual process: budget and project sponsor allocated, RFP, and third-parties selected. Six months (and $8 million) later they had a fantastic solution – on time, on budget, and high quality. Everyone in the project was pleased.

    They solved the problem by using a high-tech precision scale that would sound a bell and flash lights whenever a toothpaste box weighed less than it should. The line would stop, someone would walk over, remove the defective box, and then press another button to re-start the line. As a result of the new package monitoring process, no empty boxes were being shipped out of the factory.

    With no more customer complaints, the CEO felt the $8 million was well spent. He then reviewed the line statistics report and discovered the number of empty boxes picked up by the scale in the first week was consistent with projections, however, the next three weeks were zero! The estimated rate should have been at least a dozen boxes a day. He had the engineers check the equipment, they verified the report as accurate.

    Puzzled, the CEO went down to the factory floor, viewed the part of the line where the precision scale was installed, and observed just ahead of the new $8 million dollar solution sat a $20 desk fan blowing the empty boxes off the belt and into a bin. He asked the line supervisor what that was about.

    “Oh, that,” the supervisor replied, “Bert, the kid from maintenance, put it there because he was tired of walking over every time the bell rang.”

    2. A similar air-jet system is used in the packaging of After Eight mints to detect any empty envelopes.

    3. Excellent example of the consulting service my colleague & I are selling (the fan, not the scale). Practical & cost-effective solutions focusing on availability, reliability & quality.

      1. There is the apocryphal (?) story about the US spending $millions developing a pen that would write in zero gravity.
        The Russians used a pencil.

        1. Probably true. Pictures of the Vostok capsule do not suggest sophistication. But it worked.

      2. There was a documentary series about how clockmaker John Harrison solved the longitude navigation problem in ships.

        Whilst the Royal Navy specialists were relying on astronomical data and precision optical instruments, Harrison reckoned that all it needed was an accurate clock and the position of the sun at noon to set the longitude. He then went to build a wonderful clock that had counterbalances to correct the movement of a ship at sea, which had to be delicately manhandled on board and protected during a storm, In order to verify its accuracy, he checked it against his pocket watch, which he knew was accurate.

        Then it dawned on him, why not abandon the elaborate clock and just use his pocket watch?

          1. The TV dramatisation of Dava’s Book starring Michael Gambon is excellent too.

            A couple of years ago the Royal Observatory at Greenwich had an exhibition of all 6 Harrison timepieces. The progression from his first wooden clock to his pocket chronometer is absolutely fantastic. The shits in the Government of the day tried to withhold the promised prize money.

    4. Bit like the aircraft research place – the fuselage fractured just in front of the tailplane and the aircraft crashed. The engineers/designers made some structural alterations but again the fuselage split in the same place and it crashed. To cut a long tale short many ideas were tried all resulting in the fuselage breaking and the aircraft lost. The hangar toilet cleaner came along and said “I know how to cure that” The designers said “How can you, a mere bog cleaner, come up with a solution?” He said “Take my advice and drill a series of holes round the fuselage where it is always breaking” In desperation they agreed and drilled the holes. The next test flight was perfect and the fuselage remained intact. The designers said “How did you know that would be the solution?” Bog cleaner replied ” In my experience toilet paper never tears along the perforations so I guess it would work on metal too”

      1. When I started reading this I thought it was going to be about the Hawker Typhoon.

        My mistake. 🙂

  25. Priti Patel’s immigration plan will be fair to all

    LEO McKINSTRY

    Now, in the aftermath of election victory, the Conservatives have come up with a new approach, one founded on our national interests rather than fashionable metropolitan ideology or narrow commercial greed. Yesterday the Home Secretary Priti Patel, herself the daughter of immigrants, announced the introduction of a points-based scheme, whereby applicants for work visas here will have to meet a robust set of qualifications. These include a job offer paying at least £25,600, an ability to speak English and skills equivalent to A-level standard. If accepted, migrants will also have to pay an annual fee of £400 to the NHS and will be barred from claiming benefits for five years.

    These measures amount to a sensible, pragmatic change. It provides plenty of flexibility but, by restricting low-skilled immigration, could end the current anarchy and abuses. After decades of chaos fuelled by free movement, Ms Patel’s plan is a laudable attempt to get to grips with the issue, fulfilling the Government’s pledge to take back control.

    Predictably, there have been howls of protest from an unholy alliance of big businesses and Left-wing politicians. “Firms will be left wondering how they will recruit,” bleats the CBI, while the trade union Unison warns the proposals “spell absolute disaster”. On the political front, Liberal Democrats wail about “xenophobia” and Labour warns of “a hostile environment” for migrants. This chorus of disapproval is grossly misplaced. It reveals a profound lack of faith in both our nation and our people.

    There is nothing racist about immigration reform. When Ms Patel’s system is implemented, Britain will remain an open, tolerant country, welcoming newcomers who have a real contribution to make and providing a haven for genuine refugees, just as we have done throughout history. Indeed, the new model will be much fairer than the present mess with its open bias in favour of EU citizens at the expense of other migrants. In future all applicants will be treated on merit, regardless of their origins. That is true equality.

    It is amazing that Left-wingers now act as cheerleaders for corporate irresponsibility. In practice, uncontrolled immigration has created a culture of falling living standards and welfare dependency, where low rates of pay are subsidised by benefits. At its worst, the reckless, open-door policy has meant a return of Dickensian squalor in our midst, reflected in rising homelessness and instances of migrants living in appallingly overcrowded conditions. This paper recently highlighted one case in north London where 31 tenants were living in a four-bedroom house.

    Instead of defending the indefensible, corporate Britain should be backing reform. That requires putting more trust in the recruitment of home-grown talent, as well as investment in training, new technology and practical education. It is a disgrace that, since 2004, reliance on foreign labour has seen a 20 percent cut in expenditure on training. The idea that Britain cannot cope without the present levels of unskilled immigration is absurd. The NHS provided a much-admired service for decades before the advent of EU free movement.

    Much of the scaremongering about Ms Patel’s plan sounds like a reprise of Project Fear. The propaganda is just as dodgy. Supporters of the status quo proclaim all migrants are looking for work but that is rank dishonesty. According to the latest report from the Office for National Statistics, just 34 percent of the 609,000 new arrivals last year came here to work.

    In fact, economic inactivity is much higher among migrant communities, contrary to sneers from -liberal elitists about “lazy” and “stupid” Britons.

    Far from promoting harmony, the present immigration shambles is a recipe for division and resentment. Public services, from policing to schools, appear under dangerous strain. Even our national identity, which gives meaning to citizenship and cohesion to society, seems under threat. But, thanks to Brexit, there is hope of a brighter future through a properly managed system.

    https://www.express.co.uk/comment/columnists/leo-mckinstry/1244743/Immigration-news-leo-mckinstry-priti-patel

    1. … “while the trade union Unison warns the proposals “spell absolute disaster”.
      Sweet li’l old-fashioned me asks: “Aren’t the unions meant to demand increased wages for their members? Not provide competition that keeps them down?”

    2. Why do the pro-immigration people never acknowledge that by accepting immigrants from Europe (EU citizens) to work here we deprive their country of their skills and labour? Or that they are being deliberately being exploited on low wages (See Amazon warehouse workers advert for confirmation.)
      As well as keeping wages depressed in this country. which discourages indigenous natives from working. Moreover, on a broader front, this also is bad for our economy as money sent to the families back in the EU is money that is not circulating in the UK.

    3. There’s still the problem of the dross already here milking the benefits system – that should also be addressed. Why do these new rules come in next January instead of immediately?

      1. Alec, I would imagine that’s because – although we are now out of the EU – we still have to abide by certain of their rules until trade negotiations are concluded by the end of this December. In January 2021 we can do exactly what we like and will be free of EU rules and regulations.

    1. Your post reminded me of something I saw a few nights ago and the subject probably comes under the, “Not a lot of people know this,” banner.

      Corn Flakes Were Part of an Anti-Masturbation Crusade

      Dear Dr Kellogg produced corn flakes as a bland source of food in order, as he thought, to stop people self abusing. Mind you, corn flakes were at the less extreme end of his ideas: silver wire and carbolic acid for boys and girls respectively are enough to make one’s eyes water.

      Kellogg and His Self Abuse Cures

  29. TONY BLAIR has confirmed he supports Prime Minister Boris Johnson on his Brexit plans as the former Labour leader said Britain shouldn’t campaign to rejoin the EU.
    https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1244905/tony-blair-news-brexit-news-boris-johnson-EU-latest-speech-video

    He’s just realised his chance of being EU President has been lost forever!….

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1f34de5a6052742c352c9e6beb131c02a9cb64781e0f3ae359341c4ee05679e7.jpg

          1. Probably not, but on the plus side, the fragrant Cherie would have to keep her gurning face behind a burqa.

      3. I thought Blair and his ghastly tribe had obtained Irish citizenship which is much the same as German citizenship. The two countries fought alongside each other in two world wars.

        1. Many Irish joined the British forces to squash the Nazis, even though it was illegal to do so in Ireland. They were good friends in need.

    2. I completely block out Tony Blair and his endless pro-globalist advice from my life now, and have done so for years. He is such a duplicitous doublespeaker that the only way that you can work out what he is really saying is by looking at a text of his comments in a mirror by candlelight, while hanging upside down with a group of Nuns singing in the corner of the room.

      One thing stands out as the truth though. He won’t be in favour of campaigning to rejoin the EU at this point, as it will just put peoples backs up even further. He and his friends will just play with words as they always do. Their primary goal for now is that we do not have serious border controls that stop illegal immigration and that we keep paying the EU every year for “ongoing commitments” instead of calling it a membership fee.

        1. There was a quote that I read from one of the “Two Fat Ladies” Clarissa Dickson-Wright that she made in 2012 about Tony Blair. It was from when she knew him when they were both young barristers:

          “‘He has psychopath eyes. You know those dead eyes that look at you and try to work out what you want to hear?’”

          She was not wrong.

    4. The more I see of him the more I dislike him, WTF has anything got to do with him ?
      He supports Boris ?……….he’s probably digging a trench under him as we speak and he’ll be filling it with vipers as soon as he can.

  30. Little grandson coming for a visit (quietly screams heeeeeeeellllp) See you later, be sure and have a nice day…pouring here and wind is gaining strength. I may survive this day….but maybe not…lol.

      1. I will try…love the little guy so much but he is very much like Bam Bam out of the Flintstones…you get my drift? Lol.

      2. Last two hours delightful thank you…he served us plastic food…lol. He sleeps now for a couple of hours then we will watch a programme before tea – then he is gone and I am sad again.

          1. I had a lovely coffee and Costa ginger biscuit….yum. No hot drinks allowed when little ones are around and awake…..:-)

    2. Not so little grandson staying for a couple of days.
      When not patting me on the head, he’s an enthusiastic cook.

    3. I’d love a grandchild, Jenny. Small and large, children are lovely. May I borrow yours? ;-))
      Firstborn has no way with women, Second Son is about to leave school so is too young.

      1. Oh Obers……they are my life – this one is two and is sleeping now after a lovely lunch hubby made for him – so I am having a nice coffee. The others are 7, 10 and 12 and take turns on a weekend for a sleepover. They look after me and I asked the eldest if he still wanted to come now that he is almost a teenager and he said ‘Of course Grandma, I will always take care of you’. Isn’t that lovely ….. brought tears to my eyes. Don’t give up hope Obers…..your children may just surprise you. This little one’s Mum was in her 40s when this darling came along. My other daughter is Mum to the three older grandchildren.

        1. Best Beloved has seven Grandchidren, I have five plus two Great-grandchildren! Sadly scattered all over the country and the globe.

    1. I make it 315 nights to 31/12/2020. Looking forward to it.
      Edit. Oops, should have been 315 – fat fingers!

  32. Are economically inactive people the answer to staff shortages?

    he claim: Staff shortages can be dealt with by training the 8.5 million people who are economically inactive.
    Reality Check verdict: Many of those people are students, carers, sick or retired – and fewer than two million of them say they would actually like to have a job.

    Home Secretary Priti Patel was asked on the BBC’s Breakfast programme about the ways in which businesses might be able to deal with staff shortages under the government’s new immigration system.

    “We have over 8.45 million people in the UK aged between 16 and 64 who are economically inactive,” she said.
    “We want businesses to invest in them, invest in skilling them up.”

    Economically inactive people are:

    not employed – they do not have a job

    not unemployed – they have not looked for a job in the past four weeks and/or are not available for work in the next two weeks

    A lot of BBC exaggeration

    The latest Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures show 8.48 million 16- to 64-year-olds are economically inactive, so the home secretary is right on this.
    The ONS breaks down some of the reasons they fall into this category.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/51560120

    1. “The ONS breaks down some of the reasons they fall into this category.”
      How do they know? Is it by looking a sample and extrapolating?
      Or is everyone in the UK categorised in this way? If so how?

      (What about those in the black economy? Or the self-employed such as freelance writers?)

    2. Apparently the HS is seriously considering deporting asylum seekers. They are probably costing us as much as jailing habitual criminals and drug dealers. A good move I’d say.

  33. I suppose many people would describe Nottlers as bigoted old fogeys who are sexist and racist.

    Yet many of us think that the best prime minister in the last 50 years was a woman as was the best Speaker.

    And our favourite DT journalists at the moment are Sherelle Jacobs and Allison Pearson.

          1. Having been married to her for nearly 52 years I can confirm that vouvray is neither a fogey nor old. 🙂

  34. Blair BACKS Boris over Brexit in bombshell moment and urges Labour to FORGET rejoining EU

    Is he trying to get back into politics? It is the only reason I can see for his sudden U turn

    TONY BLAIR has revealed he supports Prime Minister Boris Johnson on his Brexit plans as the former Labour leader said the party should forget about campaigning to rejoin the EU.

      1. Blair’s a realist and obviously knows when he’s beaten lying, conniving bastard who would say anything that furthered his interests and kept the cash flowing in to his offshore bank accounts.

        Is that not better, Jules?

    3. BJ,
      316489+up✔s,
      They have been a long term coalition &
      it is a snake giving a scorpion a lift tis all, don’t let anyone be fooled b liar still has a great deal of support & it grows daily as sure as the coming in & going out of the tide.

    4. What is he up to now? Trying to wriggle his way back in the Labour party in time for a place in the leadership contest, or the next one? That man must have a hide the thickness of a rhinoceros.

  35. A deal that would lead to a new government being formed may not be finalised until April, Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin has told his TDs and Senators.
    Mr Martin told a meeting of his parliamentary party, on the eve of the first sitting of the 33rd Dáil on Thursday, that it could be two months before a new government is formed.

    His comments come ahead of what is highly likely to be an unsuccessful vote by the Dáil for a new taoiseach at the first sitting of the House since the general election.

    Mr Martin, Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald, Taoiseach and Fine Gael leader Leo Varadkar and Green Party leader Eamon Ryan are all expected to put their names forward.

    None will come close to the required 80 Dáil votes to succeed, with tentative negotiations on forming a new government ongoing.

  36. Ofsted fears schools could ‘squander’ extra cash as officials warn against waste ahead of expected £14bn budget boost for education

    There is certainly a lot of waste in schools as well as excessive management pay and management staff and poo procurement

    1. … ‘poo procurement’. Is that a comment on the standard of teaching or the school veggie patches?
      Doncha just lurve prediktiff toxic.

    1. If seven maids with seven mops

      Swept it for half a year,

      Do you suppose,’ the Walrus said,

      That they could get it clear?’

      (I know they were referring to sand)

  38. Question Time broadcasts from Weymouth tonight

    The show, presented by journalist Fiona Bruce, is being held at The Bay Theatre at Weymouth College.

    Panellists lined up are Environment Secretary George Eustice, former Conservative Cabinet member Michael Portillo, left wing political activist Ash Sarkar, Labour MP Alison McGovern and the economist and author Howard Davies.

    https://www.dorsetecho.co.uk/news/18248863.question-time-broadcasts-weymouth-tonight/

      1. It might not be as bad as you think, NtN. Mr Portillo may be wearing a more sombre-coloured jacket tonight and there may not be a question on HS2 and its trains.

        :-))

    2. I wonder why they keep having Ash “Duh! I’m a communist you idiot!” Sarkar on so many programs? Someone once put up a link to a social media account of hers, and the foul-mouthed filth that she typed on it would make a salty sea-dog faint away. An absolutely disgusting example of the human race who is on mainstream media everywhere.

      There must be a suspicion that it is only the tone of her skin, and the fact that some could argue that she is a female, that makes her a media darling. In spite of the emptiness inside of her head, which is clearly displayed when she argues her beliefs.

  39. 6 Vegan Foods That Are Shockingly Unhealthy

    1 Frozen fake meats

    Products like “no-chicken chicken nuggets” aren’t as healthy as they may seem. “Often, these substitutes are high in sodium,” Check the label: if something has 400 mg or more of sodium per serving, that’s a no-go.

    You should also watch out for artificial ingredients, preservatives, and processed oils. Products “that contain a lot of preservatives are most likely are low in every other nutrient vegans need (protein, vitamin B12, minerals like iron, etc.),

    2 Tofu deli meats

    Generally speaking, deli meat is pretty bad for you. So it’s no surprise that vegan deli meat isn’t great for you, either. “Many meat-free alternatives are high in sodium and, in some cases, sugar,. “Looking for ones that contain 400mg of sodium or less is the better option.”

    3 Vegan desserts.

    vegan desserts might be even worse for you than a traditional chocolate mousse or strawberry cheesecake. “When manufacturers take out butter and eggs, they often put in starches, gums, [and] pectins to achieve a similar consistency and texture,” and these increase the sugar and calorie count.

    4 Coconut yogurt.

    This creamy milk yogurt alternative can quench that yogurt craving for vegans, but it’s important to watch the portion size because it is very high in saturated fat, with basically no protein,, “more and more fast-casual restaurants are stocking coconut yogurt in to-go cups that are two to three times bigger than a typical portion size,” which means you can often overdo it on the calories without knowing it.

    5 Veggie chips.

    We hate to break it to you, but veggie chips can be just as bad for you as real chips. (They’re fried and topped with salt. Are you really surprised?)
    Look for kale, beet, or carrot chips that don’t contain any extra seasonings, which may pack on sugar and calories

    6 Seitan.

    Made from wheat gluten, seitan “if the label of the seitan you are buying contains a lot of sugar (5-10g or more) and a high amount of salt (above 400mg), chances are there are other ingredients incorporated into it that you don’t need in your diet,

  40. Why veganism isn’t as environmentally friendly as you might think

    many companies are seeing the pound signs associated with veganism. Tesco has just launched a vegan range of food, as has Asda. Age-old brand Walls has a non-dairy ice cream, and a whole hoard of newer food brands, such as the cult Pip and Nut and the Coconut Collaborative, base their very being on having no dairy. And almost all the supermarkets have vegan sections on their websites as our obsessions with “free from” items grows.

    The number of vegans has increased 160 per cent over the past 10 years, but people need to be asking “where has this food come from” as they fill their shopping baskets with the fruits of the world: pomegranates and mangos from India, lentils from Canada, beans from Brazil, blueberries from the US and goji berries from China. Eating lamb chops that come from a farm a few miles down the road is much better for the environment than eating an avocado that has travelled from the other side of the world.

    Avocados

    Smashed on toast or snapped on Instagram, this Millennials’ favourite is another water-hungry crop. According to the Water Footprint Network, 2,000 litres of water are needed to produce just one kilo of avocados. That’s four times the amount needed for the same volume of oranges, and 10 times more than for tomatoes.
    What’s more, their rise in popularity has created some unexpected environmental consequences. In Mexico, for instance, demand for avocados has led to forests being illegally destroyed by farmers keen to profit from these increasingly valuable crops.

    Soya

    Packed with vitamins, soya beans are also incredibly versatile. You’ll find them in tofu, flour, meat-free burgers, veggie sausages and much more.
    So far, so great for vegans. But according to the WWF, soy is the second largest agricultural driver of deforestation worldwide after beef, ‘from the US to the Amazon, forests, grasslands, and wetlands are being plowed up to make room for more soy production.’

    Palm oil

    From soap to sweets, margarine to make-up, palm oil is in around half of all supermarket products – and it’s a common ingredient in vegan alternatives, such as non-dairy ice creams and cheeses.
    In theory, there’s no problem with cultivating palm oil. The problem is that it’s often grown irresponsibly – and the rapid rise in palm oil production, in Southeast Asia in particular, has caused huge deforestation and pushed the orangutan towards extinction. Environmental campaign group Greenpeace claims an area of forest the size of a football pitch is being lost in Indonedia every 25 seconds to palm oil farmers.

    Imported fruit

    Studies show that vegan diets tend to have far lower carbon, water and ecological footprints than those of meat- or fish-eaters. But in one 2017 Italian study, two vegan participants had extremely high eco-impacts – this turned out to be because they only ate fruit!
    As Helen Breewood, research assistant at the Food Climate Research Network (FCRN) explains, fruit that’s been air-freighted into the UK has a very big carbon footprint. (It’s important to remember, though, that ‘food miles’ alone aren’t always the best measure of sustainability – and that some intensively grown local produce can have a bigger footprint than imported food.)

    1. I thought Wall’s has had non-dairy ice cream for years. Looking at the ingredients label on Carte D’Or it hasn’t used proper milk or cream for years.

      1. That’s a good enough reason to eschew Wall’s ice-cream It’s a Frankenstein concoction of chemicals.

        I don’t eat ice-cream at present (it’s the sugar) but when I do I only eat that with full fat cream in it.

        1. If we all bought food on the basis of quality and short ingredients list, we’d be healthier and slimmer too.

          1. The food that I buy always has a short ingredients list. I simply don’t buy any ready-made food. I prefer to make my own. I’ve just enjoyed a dishful of the delicious cabbage soup I made yesterday.

            I even pickle my own onions with no nasty additives. Did you hear that, Paul? PICKLED ONIONS! :•)

          2. Grr!
            Barsteward.
            :-))
            Have the ingredients to hand now, for own-pickling. Test batch, once I can get going from this Unflu, but for the moment I am well flucked.

          6. Don’t remind me TB, when our lovely lab lies on her rug in the evening, we quite often get a strange waft in the still air.
            I say have you done one ? She then wags her tail making it worse.

          7. After a particularly foul emission our boxer, Rumpole, who was invariably the culprit, always looked accusingly at an innocent human and moved away from him or her.

          10. I made some for Christmas, with chillies to liven it up Still got 2 jars left as they appear too hot for general consumption. Might try one right now.

    2. Why don’t vegans just eat lamb, beef, butter and cheese and drink milk? Sheep and cows are vegan.

      [Pork, duck, goose, chicken and turkey are off the menu, though, because they are not vegan.]

      1. Neither are sheep and cows Grizz. They don’t have the means to separate out the various nutricious creepy-crawlies they take in with their grass.

        2. Also battery farms feed the poor buggers ground-up cattle, sheep, etc for the protein. Hence the spread of bse.

    3. “The number of vegans has increased 160 per cent over the past 10 years…”

      What, there are now 300 of them?

      As usual, and as with LGBTQWERTY, Homosexuals and BAME, minority rules.

        1. I think, George that in the case of the 4 minorities mentioned earlier, it’s a case of empty vessels make the most noise (Oh, and include the Greens and Climate extremists.)

  41. Labour the party of Islamic intolerance is the gift that keeps on giving:

    Blackburn’s

    first two Asian women councillors have been deselected for speaking out

    against old-fashioned attitudes, it has been claimed.

    Saima Afzal

    and Maryam Batan are understood to have alleged the selection process

    on 7 February was unfair and broke Labour party rules. Sources say they

    were replaced with Asian women who would be less independent minded and

    toe the line.

    Supporters of the two councillors believe they have

    been victims of misogyny by a group of older Asian men within the

    Blackburn Labour party because the two women were independent-minded and

    willing to speak out against old-fashioned attitudes.

    The regional Labour party would not comment on allegations of sexism and council leader Mohammed Khan declined to comment.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-51561654
    We are lost,totally lost

    2. ‘Afternoon, Rik, I suggest that they are the lost ones inasmuch that we don’t trust them and they will NOT integrate.

      I would also suggest that we start deporting these b******ds back to their shïtholes of origin – they don’t like us, they wish to undermine our democracy and eventually be numerous enough to infiltrate all walks of UK administration and then implement Sharia upon us.

      Enough is enough.

        1. Can get it in Denmark & Norway (well, dark grey). Liquorice flavour, with black salt ammoniac sprinkles… Yum!

          2. Sweet, salt, and salt ammoniac (salmiak). The Finns make salmiak vodka… Nobody wants to share, so I get it all!

          7. When I were nobut a lad, as well as liquorice, our local sweetie shop used to sell small sticks of hard black stuff, with a flavour much more strong and delicious than that soft stuff. We used to know it as ‘Spanish’. It did turn the mouth black though…

  43. Huddersfield grooming: Six men jailed for up to 15 years each for sexually abusing girls. Sky news. 19 February 2020.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a21719cfcefb1adebbb25bf2770453e7e0e814bc7752ec780931d7531a6999d7.png

    Usman Ali, 34, Gul Riaz, 43, Banaras Hussain, 39, Abdul Majid, 36, and two others who could not be named for legal purposes were jailed for a combined 55-and-a-half years on Wednesday.

    They were found guilty of a total of nine counts of rape and two counts of indecent assault of two girls in the Huddersfield area between 1995 and 2011.

    No end in sight! One could speculate here that if only around one in ten of these cases come to court (a not unreasonable figure) that the victims must number in the tens of thousands! A rate of which the Red Army in Germany would not have been ashamed! It also implies a cover up of truly staggering proportions, not some neglectful coppers in grim northern towns but the systematic suppression of all news and investigations by every state bureaucracy including the Security Services, all of this allied to the deliberate ignorance of the political elites.

    https://news.sky.com/story/huddersfield-grooming-six-men-jailed-for-up-to-15-years-each-for-sexually-abusing-girls-11938137

    2. Morning AS,
      316489+up ticks,
      “Combined” should have read 55,1/2
      years each, deportation along with family close associates day of release.
      Much of this was known or suspected by the general public prior to the JAY
      report and most certainly after yet the
      mass uncontrolled immigration parties
      lab/lib/con still found support.
      Many of these parties
      supporters / voters being Governance employees.
      Submission,Appeasement,PCism,at best will cover up rape & abuse, long term (rotherham) but also has the potential to kill.
      Just who is responsible for releasing this dangerous sh!te upon the nation ?
      In my book welfare of kids comes well in front of party first, sod the consequences, mode of voting.

  44. Good grief, that was nasty!
    Realised I needed stuff for tea, so had to walk into Cromford & back.
    At least the rain had eased off from earlier on and I was able to tote a couple of lumps of dead elm on the way home!

    1. Last I heard, Rik, the virus was stolen from a research laboratory in the UK by a Chinese who left abruptly and returned to China.

      Anyone got any other conspiracy theories, apart from pangolins and bats?

    1. Shortly going to walk the Springer for an hour. We will both get soaked but she doesn’t care!

      1. Big Aussie leather cowboy hat & Drizabone stockmans coat keeps the wet out, I find.
        Or a Swiss ex-army plastic poncho – doesn’t make you sweaty_wet inside (uniquely in plastic bag clothing in my experience)

        1. I also have a leather cowboy hat and a stockmans long coat. I have been out along the cliff paths for 2 hours in heavy rain and come back as dry as a bone. 🙂

          Unless I have forgotten the yearly waxing of the hat.

          1. The coat doesn’t like arctic weather… The wax stiffens and falls off, so it gets used 8 or so months a year.

          2. The coldest that I can remember it getting down here in Cornwall in a long while was -1. Below 5 degrees is normally the coldest that it gets. This is one advantage of being surrounded on 3 sides by the sea with windy weather being the norm, which blows over water which is warmer than freezing, obviously.

            You get an exaggerated example of this by blowing over hot tea with your hand on the other side of the cup. You can feel the transferred warmth of the liquid against your skin.

          3. I went to work in Hagalund, Stockholm, Sweden one morning in January when it was -20°. When I had walked the 20 yards from the taxi to the entrance, my moustache had frozen but…

            ,,,on the same day, in Northern Sweden, the temperature was reported as -54° – it just doesn’t compute in my brain. And people live up there!

    2. Lab test confirmed.
      I just opened the back door and she (our black Lab) refused to go out. If that’s what she wants,………. so do I.

  49. “Everyone competes in the same market, everyone has similar costs – why punish or benefit some farmers as to others? They should all be on a level playing field, this is what we argue for all sectors of the single market, let’s apply it to farming as well.”
    — Latvian prime minister, Arturs Krisjanis Karins

    No hill-farms in Latvia, then?

    ……….. I’ll get me theodolite.

  50. I don’t get it. I make a comment and my previous comment disappears BTW this was my lost comment:

    I’ve worked it out – I’m a Far-Right Moderate.

    2. Afternoon LD,
      316489+up✔s,
      I bet you don’t get as many written verbals as me on being a far right , racist.

        1. Afternoon Ims2,
          What gets up the nasal canals of many in the UK is that the real UKIP party
          ( not the current ersatz NEc) have been in the solo, lonely, political party position for many a years of being
          ………….. ” So far right”.

    3. LewisDuckworth – I can see both of your comments, both this one and the one that is below Duncan Mac’s. I have noticed with Disqus these days that if I refresh the page and scroll down too quickly for the images of others to load then my comments often “disappear.” The same thing can happen when I jump around the list too quickly.

      If I refresh the page again, and scroll down giving the images time to show, then my comments reappear again. The joys of online life.

    1. It seems now there could well be a ‘black list’ for actors to feature in TV advertisements, panel games, news reading, daily political and current affairs progs, baftas including other obscure awards etc. etc. Its all becoming quite ridiculous as in, a race to the bottom.

      1. They already dominate tv ads.
        It also grates in otherwise watchable tv shows where they are over-represented, unless it’s at a global level, where white Caucasians now only make up 7% of the world population. In which case, we’re the ethnic minority who need positive discrimination….

        1. Well give it 250 years Ims and aborigines like us Brits, and other white Europeans, as has occured with Australian abo- riginals, Eskimos and American Indians will be given the respect they deserve. It’ll be a long haul.
          But don’t hold yer breath. 💡

    2. This all stems from the ridiculous notion that there must be absolute parity. The egalitarian myth is of course at it’s root simply a power grab.

      1. Let’s go a step further.

        Imagine medical residents refusing to mimic a surgical technique pioneered by a racist doctor, or declining to listen to any music written by sexists. Imagine people in all fields being made to feel as if opposing racism or sexism requires that sort of boycott. What a waste that would be in a world where there is a perfectly good alternative, one that hardly requires airbrushing history or human pathologies.

        In a world where rejecting bigotry is thought to require rejecting everything produced by every dead bigot, and the fantasy that it’s possible to shun the part of our cultural inheritance contributed by people who held ugly ideas won’t survive.
        To really confront the horrific scale of bigotry, and racism in particular, is to know that it is impossible. Too much would have to be shunned. The history of humanity is too crooked. We’d have nothing left.

        (That’s enough thinking for this afternoon, my head hurts. Time for tea.)

  52. 316489+up✔s,
    The french are worried & have good reason to be on account of letting loose 148 jihads in the near future.
    They are judged to be dangerous by the authorities and my personal view is they will have received innick training and hold a MAJOR grudge.
    We have the same problems in the UK but the governance parties depend on Appeasement / PCism &
    recycling the terrorist (deradicalisation ) few teething problems with that at the moment, collateral damage, peoples getting killed, but given time …….
    Tic.

      1. We have had warm sunshine down here for 2 hours now and its forecast to be clear skies for the rest of the day and up until 03:00am. I have washing out drying in it. 🙂

        1. And since typing that, I’ve cut up the elm I carried home this morning with the weather going from bright sunshine, to horrible hailstones and back to bright sunshine again as I was busy!
          Fingers now freezing so I need a mug of tea to warm them up!

        2. Cold here in Narfulk (where’s Bill Thomas when we need him?), so I’ve lit a fire. Underfloor heating only seems to work when it’s sunny.

      2. Started wet, got wetter, got really wet. Stopped being wet (I finished my last fence panel renewal), and now it got wet again.
        The Met Office thinks there is no let up for the next 10 days.
        I blame XR, never had this sort of weather when we burnt coal in power stations. 🤣

  55. Nine dead – after a gunman opened fire on two shisha bars in the western German city of Hanau, killing at least nine people and injuring several others, police say.

    In both places targeted on Wednesday night the clientele were reported to have been predominantly Kurdish. The suspect was found dead at his home along with the body of his mother.

    Federal prosecutors are treating the attack as terrorism, with officials saying there is evidence the gunman was a far-right extremist.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-51567971

    1. ‘Morning, Jenny, “…with officials saying there is evidence the gunman was a far-right extremist.”

      MRD award – they would say that, wouldn’t they? I suppose it makes a change from a deranged Norwegian Methodist.

          1. ….if they got off the floor….ha ha ha…they are beauties. My Persians are quite small……they do not eat a lot even though food is always available. They take what they need and not a morsel more.

          3. They are as quiet as a mouse……and eat very sensibly. Not normal if you ask me….but then, their owner isn’t so what do you expect.

          4. …and Dotty goes on regular truffle hunts around the kitchen floor in order to hoover up any thing that might have dropped.

            ‘Morning, Phil.

          5. Dolly does the same. I sometimes accidentally drop the odd tidbit. It saves being constantly nosed in the ankles. And much better than being tripped up as she has tried to do when she didn’t get something.

            Morning, Nanny.

  57. Rod Liddle

    Words we are not allowed to use any more now include ‘cultural Marxism’.

    Suella Braverman, now the Attorney General, used them last year and was

    immediately upbraided by the organisation Hope Not Hate. Very

    right-wing people sometimes use it too, you see, so it must never be

    uttered by anyone else. Banning the use of the phrase ‘cultural Marxism’

    is about as culturally Marxist as it is possible to get, but I don’t

    suppose the cultural Marxists at Hope Not Hate appreciated the irony.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/2020/02/the-blindness-of-cultural-marxism/

      1. It’s Rod Liddle, so automatically a good read.

        “Words we are not allowed to use any more now include ‘cultural Marxism’. Suella Braverman, now the Attorney General, used them last year and was immediately upbraided by the organisation Hope Not Hate. Very right-wing people sometimes use it too, you see, so it must never be uttered by anyone else. Banning the use of the phrase ‘cultural Marxism’ is about as culturally Marxist as it is possible to get, but I don’t suppose the cultural Marxists at Hope Not Hate appreciated the irony.

        Cultural Marxism is a largely 1960s excrescence in which everything must be seen through the prism of unequal power relations, other than which nothing else matters at all. Especially power relations regarding race and gender, the basis of identity politics. As such, then, cultural Marxism is a dominant paradigm in university courses across the country which deal with what we once knew as history (but now might be better named ‘resentment studies’), geography, sociology and all those non-academic subjects of no use to man nor beast, such as gender studies or urban studies.

        Of course, unequal power relations between black and white, male and female, gay and straight are interesting issues, worthy of discussion and debate. But with the cultural Marxist there is no debate or discussion: it is a bovine implacability and authoritarianism which defines the approach. And so if a university professor suggests that while western colonialism was undoubtedly a morally flawed venture, not absolutely everything that came out of it was bad, he will be eviscerated by the cultural Marxists, despite the fact that his statement is incontestable — even if that comparative ‘good’ is only a useful railway bridge, a schoolhouse or, er, democracy. Cultural Marxism is one-dimensional, tautologous, absolutist and intellectually stunted. And yet it has great purchase, even away from our campuses.

        I listened to a programme on BBC Radio 4 last week — a rare occurrence, for sure, given that the station has become a conduit for incessant whining, acquired victimhood and existential misery. It was a documentary called Not Enough Pride for Charley Pride and concerned the black middle-of-the-road US country singer named in the title. It was the perfect example of how the monomaniacal paradigm of cultural Marxism is now au courant pretty much everywhere.

        I listened to this programme because I like country music, and quite enjoy Charley Pride, not least for his fine voice. But this programme was concerned with one thing and one thing alone — the fact that Charley was black in a predominantly white oeuvre. Nothing else mattered. Not his singing, his guitar-playing, his music (!), his very existence and character and essence — nothing mattered in this documentary beyond the colour of the man’s skin.

        Had I listened to the trailers or read the blurb on the BBC’s website I would have known what to expect. There was the implication, first of all, that we didn’t know about Charley because he was black. Well, sorry, I knew about him. Further, last July BBC Four ran a documentary about the bloke called Charley Pride — I’m Just Me, which covered identical ground. So, two documentaries in seven months. I don’t remember a single doc in the past ten years on the BBC about, say, Don Gibson, Marty Robbins, Chet Atkins or Kitty Wells, all of whom were white contemporaries of Charley and in musical terms arguably more important. This is the first point to make about cultural Marxism — its proponents will softly lie to you, to suit their agenda. Charley Pride — a man ignored because of his skin colour. No, and no again. He was inducted into the Grand Ole Opry by the time cultural Marxism had taken hold and started rewriting history.

        But the real issue is with cultural Marxism’s blindness, its funnel-thinking, its reductiveness, its impoverishment. There’s no doubt in my mind that Charley Pride’s blackness is of importance, especially as he was touring the USA at a time when Jim Crow had a certain hegemony: segregated towns and cities and schools, racial hatred, inequality. Country music was largely created by the poor white trash of the southern states and fans sometimes turned up to hear Charley Pride sing not knowing he was black, although it seems they quickly got over their shock. All of that is well worth remembering and should be part of any documentary about the chap.

        But it is a long way short of the totality, surely. To be defined not by the quality of your music or your voice, but solely by the fact that he was un-white. It does such a disservice to a talented man who, in his interviews, seemed far more interested in talking about baseball — his first and real love — than in the obsessive questioning of his racial origin. And yet it seems to me that Charley Pride’s skin colour was a big part of the reason Radio 4 decided to make a documentary about the man, and perhaps a big part of the reason BBC Four did the same thing.

        Jean-Paul Sartre, a Marxist himself, had it right: we are not like rocks. Our existence precedes our essence and however much we are influenced by the circumstances of our origins, we can nonetheless escape them. For the cultural Marxist, though, this escape is not possible. We are forever imprisoned by either victimhood or privilege and neither of these two things are in any way alterable, they simply are. Such a moronic way in which to view humankind.”

      2. The blindness of cultural Marxism

        Rod Liddle

        Words we are not allowed to use any more now include ‘cultural Marxism’. Suella Braverman, now the Attorney General, used them last year and was immediately upbraided by the organisation Hope Not Hate. Very right-wing people sometimes use it too, you see, so it must never be uttered by anyone else. Banning the use of the phrase ‘cultural Marxism’ is about as culturally Marxist as it is possible to get, but I don’t suppose the cultural Marxists at Hope Not Hate appreciated the irony.

        Cultural Marxism is a largely 1960s excrescence in which everything must be seen through the prism of unequal power relations, other than which nothing else matters at all. Especially power relations regarding race and gender, the basis of identity politics. As such, then, cultural Marxism is a dominant paradigm in university courses across the country which deal with what we once knew as history (but now might be better named ‘resentment studies’), geography, sociology and all those non-academic subjects of no use to man nor beast, such as gender studies or urban studies.

        Of course, unequal power relations between black and white, male and female, gay and straight are interesting issues, worthy of discussion and debate. But with the cultural Marxist there is no debate or discussion: it is a bovine implacability and authoritarianism which defines the approach. And so if a university professor suggests that while western colonialism was undoubtedly a morally flawed venture, not absolutely everything that came out of it was bad, he will be eviscerated by the cultural Marxists, despite the fact that his statement is incontestable — even if that comparative ‘good’ is only a useful railway bridge, a schoolhouse or, er, democracy. Cultural Marxism is one-dimensional, tautologous, absolutist and intellectually stunted. And yet it has great purchase, even away from our campuses.

        I listened to a programme on BBC Radio 4 last week — a rare occurrence, for sure, given that the station has become a conduit for incessant whining, acquired victimhood and existential misery. It was a documentary called Not Enough Pride for Charley Pride and concerned the black middle-of-the-road US country singer named in the title. It was the perfect example of how the monomaniacal paradigm of cultural Marxism is now au courant pretty much everywhere.

        I listened to this programme because I like country music, and quite enjoy Charley Pride, not least for his fine voice. But this programme was concerned with one thing and one thing alone — the fact that Charley was black in a predominantly white oeuvre. Nothing else mattered. Not his singing, his guitar-playing, his music (!), his very existence and character and essence — nothing mattered in this documentary beyond the colour of the man’s skin.

        Had I listened to the trailers or read the blurb on the BBC’s website I would have known what to expect. There was the implication, first of all, that we didn’t know about Charley because he was black. Well, sorry, I knew about him. Further, last July BBC Four ran a documentary about the bloke called Charley Pride — I’m Just Me, which covered identical ground. So, two documentaries in seven months. I don’t remember a single doc in the past ten years on the BBC about, say, Don Gibson, Marty Robbins, Chet Atkins or Kitty Wells, all of whom were white contemporaries of Charley and in musical terms arguably more important. This is the first point to make about cultural Marxism — its proponents will softly lie to you, to suit their agenda. Charley Pride — a man ignored because of his skin colour. No, and no again. He was inducted into the Grand Ole Opry by the time cultural Marxism had taken hold and started rewriting history.

        But the real issue is with cultural Marxism’s blindness, its funnel-thinking, its reductiveness, its impoverishment. There’s no doubt in my mind that Charley Pride’s blackness is of importance, especially as he was touring the USA at a time when Jim Crow had a certain hegemony: segregated towns and cities and schools, racial hatred, inequality. Country music was largely created by the poor white trash of the southern states and fans sometimes turned up to hear Charley Pride sing not knowing he was black, although it seems they quickly got over their shock. All of that is well worth remembering and should be part of any documentary about the chap.

        But it is a long way short of the totality, surely. To be defined not by the quality of your music or your voice, but solely by the fact that he was un-white. It does such a disservice to a talented man who, in his interviews, seemed far more interested in talking about baseball — his first and real love — than in the obsessive questioning of his racial origin. And yet it seems to me that Charley Pride’s skin colour was a big part of the reason Radio 4 decided to make a documentary about the man, and perhaps a big part of the reason BBC Four did the same thing.

        Jean-Paul Sartre, a Marxist himself, had it right: we are not like rocks. Our existence precedes our essence and however much we are influenced by the circumstances of our origins, we can nonetheless escape them. For the cultural Marxist, though, this escape is not possible. We are forever imprisoned by either victimhood or privilege and neither of these two things are in any way alterable, they simply are. Such a moronic way in which to view humankind.

        https://www.spectator.co.uk/2020/02/the-blindness-of-cultural-marxism/

        2. Well said Rod Liddle.

          the fact that Charley was black in a predominantly white oeuvre. Nothing else mattered. Not his singing, his guitar-playing, his music (!), his very existence and character and essence — nothing mattered in this documentary beyond the colour of the man’s skin.

          Strangely I have never considered this guys ancestry or his colour, only his talents such as his singing ability.
          Charley Pride looks as if he had at least one white parent or grandparent he has not only Caucasian features but also a white daughter.
          The strange little caustic creatures that infest our media these days especially at the BBC. Are hell bent in trying to torture white people for no apparent or plausible reason, other than that they are white. we live in northern Europe in case they haven’t noticed. Quite often as in this case, they malign the person and their creative relatives along side them.
          One well known Marxist was Mugabe when he was murdering thousands of his own people because he knew they would never vote for him, not an eyebrow was raised by the BBC. The significance in this genocide was he was a black man, Taboo to call such a person to explain his motives.

          The Rwandan genocide, also known as the genocide against the Tutsi, was a mass slaughter of Tutsi, Twa, and moderate Hutu in Rwanda, which took place between 7 April and 15 July 1994 during the Rwandan Civil War. The genocide was organised by members of the core Hutu political elite,… but for reporting, hardly a BBC eyebrow raised.
          Black on black okay, white on white okay, black on white okay but………..invented for devious purpose, white on black…………all hell breaks loose.

          1. I’ve never seen this before, and I laughed out loud. It demonstrates that you can be funny even when portraying a homophobic, sexist and racist character. As we laugh at the skit, we are laughing at Harry Enfield and not the other three characters. But that is not how some homosexual, female and black people would see it nowadays; give it another couple of decades and it will be condemned by some “up North” as anti-Yorkshire.

          2. It’s more subtle than first appears. The black actor doesn’t have a speaking part so his character cannot send himself up as do Ponytail and Miss Uptight.

        2. Let’s immediately deport them to Shiitestan and if they want to appeal they can appeal from their at their own expense. Oh yes and human right, the right to family life, deport their families and relatives at the same time.
          Problem solved.

        3. These people are a waste of oxygen and should be stripped of British citizenship whether they were born here or not.

        4. The police did not arrest and prosecute the 300 rapists did they? They and the CPS have condoned rape and violence to little girls, again.

        5. I wish you hadn’t posted this, Maggie. I am now fuming with ANGER!!! (At those scum, not at you, naturally.)

          2. Exacto! And then on to the chores of the day. See you all tomorrow – or perhaps tonight. Keep well, NoTTLers.

      4. Didn’t you get the memo….As the speccie page is loading tap the escape button a few times and it defeats the paywall.

  60. DT Font Page:

    Live Germany terror ‘Far-Right’ suspect found dead after 10 people killed

    I suppose that if you are going to be blown up or shot it won’t make very much difference to you whether the perpetrator is extreme right-wing or extreme left-wing.

    2. This is one of those situations where more information is needed to know what happened. What did he write in that note that he left, if he did indeed write it himself? That body that was found in the room with him also needs to be explained, as it is unlikely that he would take the remains of one of his victims home with him. There is one scenario that might be completely inaccurate in this case, but you can imagine it happening:

      “You are at home when you hear soft banging on your door and it is a family member / wife / child who has just been viciously sexually assaulted or stabbed. They die there in front of you before you can even call for help, but they say who did it. As your mind moves into a feeling of glacial calmness you collect the items that you need and you go to find those who just did this.”

      This could also be known as “my little girl has been killed by that gang and I’m not waiting for a biased legal system to put them away for only 4 years in a holiday camp” reaction. We do need more information. He might actually be far-right, but you can assume that the media will label him as that no matter what the circumstances.

      1. I think the body in the room was that of his mother. What they don’t tell us is whether he killed her.

        1. If my mother were killed by a group of people… Even with my high moral standards, or even because of them, I would not stop until someone stopped me.

          1. He appears to have mounted a random attack on people who happened to be at a couple of Shisha bars – we haven’t yet been told whether this was revenge for the death of his mother, whether he disposed of her frst, or what. Not enough information to make a judgement.

          3. Yes, this is what I said. 🙂 We do need to know the circumstances. I was merely pointing out one one scenario that must have happened by now somewhere, with our “new visitors” approach to morality and their penchant for attacking people when they are in a gang.

            You can imagine them trying to avoid the future vengeance of a father when they start to groom young girls. “You are really pretty… What do your parents do? Your father is gone you say… You are very, very pretty. Have a drink.” Compared to “Your father is a builder? Get out of the car.”

            This guy in Germany may well have been a madman. But from the only news report that I have seen he wasn’t shooting people at random, he went to one specific place and then to another one. Which is what you would do if you were looking for someone and you knew where they went. We might know if the media find out and decide to report the truth about what happened. They do love creating “far right extremists” whenever they can though.

    3. When looking at the report on a German newspaper website, it seems clear from the interposed links that there are lots of such incidents in Germany.

    2. WTF has ‘diversity’ to do with reading classIcs?

      Never went to university myself, so I may be wrong, but I would have thought that getting a degree in classics involved … well … the study of classic literature.

      “O tempora o mores”
      — Cicero (probably next on their list for airbrushing out)

      1. “WTF has ‘diversity’ to do with reading classIcs?”

        Exactly, that’s the point of the tweet. Presumably they want to include ancient African philosophers instead of Homer, etc.

      2. My father got a double first in classics at Cambridge – he would be turning in his grave.

    3. Those in charge of education in the UK need ripping from their posts. Now!

      The longer we procrastinate the worse it will become.

    6. Very few people studying Eng. Lit. at “A” level are expected to study Milton or Chaucer any more. It is considered too difficult.

      Of course the people who are really cheated are the intelligent students who have to study absolute garbage instead.

    7. The DM article states that the reason for doing this is to make it easier for students who did not take Latin in school. When I were nobbut a lad, you could not get into Oxford or Cambridge to study “Greats” without excellent “A” levels (the real ones) in Classics, i.e. Latin, Greek and Ancient History. Plus, of course Homer and Virgil were part of the school syllabus.

      It’s all a bit like saying that Shakespeare, Dickens, etc., etc., should be removed from English Lit studies, as they are “too difficult”. Still, I did read that one of the new “pop up”, i.e., in it for the money, universities offered a degree in Harry Potter, so maybe we should not be surprised.

      BUT I do not want to fly on a plane designed by engineers who weren’t required to study the “hard” bits, like structural analysis and fluid dynamics, and as for Medical Schools, maybe they could drop anatomy as a requirement? Bit tricky, working out what all those bits do.

      With this kind of daft approach to education in the West, the Chinese really will end up ruling the world.

  63. QT tonight…

    Fiona Bruce presents the topical debate from Weymouth, where the panellists are environment secretary George Eustice, chair of the political organisation Progress Alison McGovern, chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland Howard Davies, journalist Ash Sarkar and politician-turned-broadcaster Michael Portillo.

    1. First a kosher butcher in Paris, now a shisha bar in Germany. Whatever next ? A vegan restaurant in Londonistan ?

  68. Shootings in Germany: What we know so far about suspected far-right shisha bar attacks. the local. 20 February 2020. 10:31 CET+01:00

    At this stage it’s too early to tell but German daily Bild and other media outlets reported that the confession letter expressed a far-right motive for the attack.

    Federal prosecutors on Thursday announced they had taken over the investigation, saying there are signs of a “xenophobic motive”.

    There are suspicions of a terrorist act of violence, Hesse CDU politician Beuth said.

    The man had not been known to the authorities so far and had not attracted police attention in the past.

    This appears to be a German version of a trade paper but in English for some reason. It has some personal quotes so I assume that it has access to the area of the murders and is thus reasonably accurate. By contrast I caught the beginning of the Victoria Derbyshire show and the subsequent piece where it was discussed. There was some considerable lip smacking over this “Far right” and “Xenophobic” attack where the BBC’s security correspondent (the one in the wheelchair) gave us a detailed resume of this guy’s career as a menace to western civilisation though how he came by this I have no idea since it far exceeded that in the report above. Since far right extremists don’t as a rule kill their mothers I am somewhat sceptical. What I suspect here is that we have another Thomas Mair, an individual who is seriously disturbed but possesses no far right credentials whatsoever! This of course does not prevent his being a suitable decoy for Muslim terrorism..

    https://www.thelocal.de/20200220/shootings-in-germany-what-we-know-so-far-about-suspected-far-right-shisha-bar-attacks-hanau

    1. The media are over the moon about this far right stuff. They always had a bit of a problem calling out Islamic extremism (you know, bias, racism, etc) so now that the Islamists have been knocked into second place they don’t sound so bad.

    2. https://twitter.com/MayorofLondon/status/1230463278104686593

      Funny how he ignores the Pakistani multi rapes of little girls , nor does he mention the terror that his religious cult has brought to the streets of our big cities and towns .

      This little midget of a Mayor has selective hearing and sight .. and his sort are the ones wiping out the Kurdish people and mutilating their women ..
      A far right nutter is dangerous , but Khan’s type are even more dangerous.. yes … feral stalking of young females and the support of a very bad group of lazy repressive prehistoric shoe throwing cult of people

        1. ‘Afternoon, Basset, maybe it’s time to put him in a box and ship him out to his shïthole of origin, together with most, if not all, of his compatriots.

        2. Both Khan (5′ 4″) and Bercow (5′ 5″) suffer from “small man syndrome” and spend their lives posturing and grandstanding.

          Haven’t made up my mind about Boris yet – he’s only 5′ 9″, you know.

      3. Mayor of London

        ✔

        @MayorofLondon

        London stands in solidarity with Hanoi after the horrific terror attacks last night.
        We send our commisserations to all the Vietnamese people.

    3. Never waste a good crisis. A bit of spin here, a touch of economy with the truth there, and Vips! Stormtroopers on the march again.
      What’s not to like? Göbbels would be proud.

    4. My first reaction was ‘mental issues’ when I read he had also killed his own mother. Not that the meejah will mention it.

        1. Can a muslim be Islamophobic? The answer to that question is ‘yes they can be’. Especially if the other muslim is of the wrong flavour/sect.

        2. I suspect that by this time tomorrow many Tweets will have vanished into the ether.

          Screeeeem-shots are your enema.

  70. Criminals have no fear of the Police in crime ridden London

    If challenged by the police they will probably saw they are ER protesters and in any case the police will be to busy painting their faces in LGBT colours and attending their meetings

    This is the shocking moment a gang of youths steal a locked bicycle using an angle grinder in broad daylight outside a primary school before threatening onlookers who try to intervene.
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0a10cdf757f0d3db73e916338e8ac0bb8428eec0d5acc25fac664580011ee609.jpg

    1. BJ,
      I put this up yesterday as in showing
      a successful up & coming criminal
      combining the haul with escape.
      by the by he could be done on the grounds of not having mini grinder users competence certificate.

      1. Look at now many people are around. They clearly have no fear of the police. If they were called it might be the next day before they turn up in any case

        Time as well for face coverings to be banned i public places. No chance of being caught when their faces are covered. It is pretty certain that CCTV would be covering that area

        1. It would only be applied to grieving widows at their husbands’ funerals.
          White widows – natch.

  71. Yet another normal day in London

    Teenager played dead to escape man who slashed her neck in east London park toilets

    A teenage woman “played dead” to escape a knifeman who dragged her into a park’s public toilets and slashed her neck.
    The 18-year-old hammered on the front door of a nearby house “drenched in blood” and begging for help after the attack next to a children’s playground in Little Ilford Park, Newham.

    A family, who had been watching television, took her inside to protect her as she cried: “Help me, I’ve been stabbed, I think I’m going to die.”

    A woman, trained in first aid, grabbed two tea towels and kept pressure on the victim’s knife wounds while the man called 999.

    When police arrived the teenager, who has not been named, was able to whisper a description of her attacker.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a55e679e9311416a3fd6fad4604e4193a8ee4153f487a7de0a3d60b12aadb8c6.jpg

  72. Points Based Migration System

    How will it work and when will it likely be rolled out?
    The Government’s plan for for a points-based immigration system is set to come into force on January 1, 2021.

    The paper set out the first phase of changes.

    – Skilled workers:

    All applicants – both EU and non-EU citizens – who want to live and work in the UK will need to gain 70 points to be eligible to apply for a visa.
    Points will be awarded for key requirements if they can demonstrate they:
    – Have a job offer from an approved sponsor, such as an employer cleared by the Home Office (which earns 20 points).

    – Have a job offer that is at a “required skill level” (20 points).
    – They can speak English to a certain level (10 points).
    Other points could be awarded for certain qualifications and if there is a shortage in a particular occupation.

    The salary threshold for skilled migrants will be lowered from £30,000 to £25,600 for those coming to the UK with a job offer.

    But migrants “will still need to be paid the higher of the specific salary threshold for their occupation, known as the ‘going rate’, and the general salary threshold”, the paper said.

    If an applicant earns less than the required minimum salary threshold – but no less than £20,480 – they may still be able to come to the UK if they have a job offer in a specific occupation which appears on the Government’s jobs shortage list, or if they have a PhD relevant to the job.

    This could mean lower earners such as nurses may still be able to apply for a visa, provided a shortage of staff in this area remain on the approved list.

    – Highly-skilled workers:

    This would allow a some of the most highly-skilled workers, who can gain the required level of points, to enter the UK without a job offer if they are endorsed by a “relevant and competent body”.

    This will include science, technology, engineering and mathematics professionals.
    There will also be an “unsponsored” visa option where points will also be awarded for factors such as academic qualifications, age and relevant work experience for a small number of highly-skilled workers without a job offer. The route would be capped to begin with.

    – Low-skilled workers:

    There will be no temporary or general visa options for low-skilled migrant workers.
    The paper said: “UK businesses will need to adapt and adjust to the end of free movement, and we will not seek to recreate the outcomes from free movement within the points-based system.
    “As such, it is important that employers move away from a reliance on the UK’s immigration system as an alternative to investment in staff retention, productivity, and wider investment in technology and automation.”

    It is estimated 70 per cent of the existing EU workforce would not meet the requirements of the skilled worker route, which will help to bring overall numbers down in future, according the Home Office.

    – Students:

    They will need to demonstrate:
    – They have an offer from an approved educational institution.
    – Can speak English.
    – Can support themselves during their studies in the UK.

    – Other routes:

    – Current arrangements for specialist occupations such as religious ministers, artists, musicians and entertainers are expected to broadly remain the same and be extended for EU citizens.

    – Self-employed and freelance workers can continue to apply for visas under existing rules and will not need to be sponsored.
    – Visitors, including EU citizens, will be able to come to the UK without a visa for six months but will not be allowed to work.

  74. Half typed text on phone of drink-driver who crashed with child in car

    The idiot should have been banned for far more than 4 years. How they got out of that car alive I dont know

    A drink-driver who crashed his car on the A14, while carrying his six-year-old son as a passenger, has been banned from the road for almost four years

    Three-and-a-half hours later, having been discharged from hospital, Harrison provided a breathalyser reading of 73 microgrammes of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath – more than twice the legal limit of 35mcg.
    The court heard Harrison had been convicted of drug-driving on September 19, 2016, and would be liable for a three-year ban.
    Andrew Cleal, mitigating, said: “Notwithstanding his guilty plea at the earliest opportunity, he is clearly wracked with remorse by what could have happened.”
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/cf2ea04e9a52186dcef3d3a834520b86fcda0e8305780feebdef2b8d841e8eac.jpg

  75. Freezing cold woman found clinging to submerged car roof after 12 hours overnight

    She is lucky to be alive but people continue to recklessly drive through flood water risky their lives. and that risk is quiter high. You dont know how deep the water is and you may not even know where the road is

    This is the moment a hero passer-by wades into ­floodwater to rescue a freezing woman trapped on her submerged car for 12 hours.
    Mark Smith risked his own life to save the unnamed victim in Monmouth, South Wales.
    The 51-year-old said: “I didn’t really think. I just knew I had to get her out.”

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/978acda475351e03a3c947de53bc5a4defe40ea5215658ca0c4b2cfea3bf0341.jpg

    1. If the man could wade to her, why couldn’t she swim to the trees? I’ don’t think I’d have stayed there for 12 hrs.

      1. Probably dark when she drove into the water and you would have no ide of the depth and that water would be pretty cold

          1. “I was pissing by the door, when I heard two shats. You are holding in
            your hand a smoking goon; you are clearly the guilty potty.”

        2. I’m as anti the pedantry as most here but in your case what is irritating is that you don’t appear to make the slightest effort to get it right.

  76. Tony Blair declares Labour may have to join with the Lib Dems to win power

    The former Prime Minister said the party must correct a “defect from our birth” and “reunite” the long-split traditions of the old Liberal Party and the Labour Party.
    Mr Blair even didn’t rule out a full-blown formal alliance with the Lib Dems – saying: “How this is done institutionally, that’s a matter for debate.” Asked directly he said: “I literally don’t know at this stage. It could go in a number of different directions.”
    He warned simply ditching Jeremy Corbyn’s left-wing agenda wouldn’t be enough to win

    1. “It could go in a number of different directions”.

      Aye, and so could Blair – all at the same time, while maintaining a “sincere” mien.

      That snake never stops plotting and meddling. He’s got his fingers in more pies than a leper in the “Great British Bake-Off”.

      1. With Blair it should go in one direction.

        Down.

        Suddenly.

        From a standing start.

        With an abrupt stop.

        Caused by several feet of hemp cordage constricting and twisting.

      2. He seems to be desperate to get back into politics. I cannot see a tie up with the Lib-Dem’s gaining them voters other than in London

      3. “Aye, and so could Blair – all at the same time” . When I saw that I had a deeply satisfying mental image involving four horses and some stout rope.

  77. Retail sales bounce back in January after weak end to 2019

    I would not read to much into that. Poor Christmas sales so deep discounting in the January sales to clear stock. Sales figures may be good but I suspect margins less so. The next months or quarters figures will give a better indication

  78. I see the Bbc are going into raptures reporting on the rise in far-right extremists in Germany.

    1. Yes I thought Victoria Derbyshire and the guy in the wheelchair were going to have on screen sex!

    2. Yes I thought Victoria Derbyshire and the guy in the wheelchair were going to have on screen sex!

    3. Did they mention that he was a far-right conspiracy theorist who believed in aliens, mind control and secret US bases where children are sacrificed to Satan?

      Seems he had a few things going on apart from being ‘far-right’.

      1. They always give a select reading list which excludes everything that the rest of the population reads as matter of course.

      2. The media don’t want to waste a good killing spree by talking about his other hang-ups when they can just shout “far-right!” Even if he was a communist at heart, they would skip over that bit.

        1. And isn’t it strange that, when a “far right” whitey has carried out this kind of attack, there’s an almost instant photo of him in the press whereas …

          1. ….. whereas when it is an ‘islamist’ it is on page 10, column 4, a couple of inches from the foot of the page. No photo.

      3. Insider knowledge eh 😉
        Not ‘mental health issues’ as some other murderers representing the religion of peace are often said to suffer from.
        So far this ‘far-right’ chap seems like a classic example of a complete and utter nutter.

          1. Apple oggies. I didn’t mean you BE, I meant the culprit, with his alleged knowledge of ‘the dark state’.

    4. Did they mention that he was a far-right conspiracy theorist who believed in aliens, mind control and secret US bases where children are sacrificed to Satan?

      Seems he had a few things going on apart from being ‘far-right’.

    1. I never had food poisoning but I do rather wonder what I ate on some evenings in the 80s after a session. I stopped visiting ‘Indians’ after a friend who worked as an EHO told me of the horror stories of some venues, even the posh-looking ones. Mind you, he was working in Manchester.

      1. I used to enjoy the Bradford curry houses, particularly after a pub crawl. The best one was next to the city morgue.

        Typically, there was a table, plates of curry, no utensils, just platters of chapati to scoop up the curry.

        Absolutely brilliant, I never, ever, had gut rot.

      2. The overwhelming majority of kebab shops and Indian takeaways in Portsmouth score one or less on the food standards agency website. Hey ! order our food and get free shit.

    2. “ It says that ‘innovative new research’ has provided a better estimate of how many cases of infectious diseases are caused by food.”

      Having worked in the food and beverage industry for a number of years I suggest that ‘innovative new research’ has sfa to do with it.

      Inspectors used to be experienced people who knew what to look for. However over time these were replaced with ‘wet behind the ears’ youngsters who had no experience whatsoever.

      Add into the mix (delib. Food pun):

      the rise in immigration from third word countries – complete with their hygiene standards.

      The increase in illegal immigrants working in the fast food industry.

      Lack of general common sense among the younger generations when it comes to food preparation & hygiene.

  80. PM’s flooding no-show ‘is to avoid media jamboree’, minister says

    Probably no real need. What can he do himself?

    It does though expose we do not have any regional Councils so the dealing of the floods is very fragmented with no real body in charges. It will be up to local councils and water authorities in overall charge and directing resources

      1. It should Kp, but unlike Korbinsky i suspect they are all too busy.
        The news media seems to have missed the fact that the effing dumbo labour PM daft vader, put a stop to dredging.
        I rather hope all that free water is being stored in reservoirs. Oh i just remembered……. we haven’t built a new water storage facility in the UK for around 50 years. Roll on summer 😎

    2. Korbinsky has been putting him self about. Dribble and drooling over over Boris being too busy to try and stop the rain. But Korbinsky’s dribbling is pushing up flood levels.

          1. Isn’t that supposed to be in the purview of the Enviroment Agency? George Eustace i believe it is or was. It is for them to make an appearance not the PM.

        2. Like too many once easily accessible Web sites Bill, i had to agree to future obeisance to watch it.

          1. I quite like these cartoons, but I don’t normally note that level of “acidity” in them. It is saying that Boris is throwing away £200 billion pounds on an EU vanity project just because the EU has told him to, while his own people are being carried to safety in inflatable boats.

            It might be more accurate than we would like, but it is quite a strong statement.

          2. I have to declare an interest here.

            I am a huge fan of Adams. I immediately liked his style when he first appeared at the DT.
            He used to do a column on the creation of individual cartoons and he also copied a New Yorker caption competition where his prize was the original cartoon with “your” caption, signed by him.
            He’s nowhere near as vicious as may of the political cartoonists but still gets the point across.
            He’s getting close to Matt levels, but Matt’s still the King.

          4. MM,
            316489+up✔s,
            “It might be more
            accurate than we would like”
            That is certainly a statement of truth, as is the cartoon.

        1. Our resident troll has multiple identities and is easy to spot because she is a plant. Well, more of a vegetable. :o)

      1. It is a bit difficult as domestic violence is a problem but there was no indication that this was domestic violence just a simple row which resulted in a very minor injury that needed no hospital treatment

        1. I wonder who released the images of the bloodstained bed. It couldn’t possibly have been the Police. Perhaps they had a BBC camera crew with them.

          1. minor cuts can result in what looks like a lot. The number of times I have managed to inflict minor cuts to my hand that can look like an attempt at murder taking place i have lost track of. blood on the floor and door as I make my way to the bathroom to stick a plaster on it. It is amazing how much blood a very minor cut can generate

          3. Oops, I’ve had the same injury Phizzee – (more than once), only difference was the cause. Red wine, whisky, Brandy, Gin or all of them in the same evening!

          4. Minesweeping were you? :o)

            We both know it but mixing drinks is a very bad idea.

            For me it wasn’t just the Tequila. I was feeling so jolly that after four Margarita’s i went on to another Bar and had goodness knows how many Black Russians.

            Got back to the flat and went to put the key in the door and swayed backwards. Lucky for me i whacked my head on the cast iron ballustrade where it split my scalp before hitting the tiled floor. Although it was the ballustrade that did the damage it saved me from a fractured skull.

            I got up and got into the flat and i kept my head down as i didn’t want to get blood all over my clothes. Sat at the dining table with blood down all over my face.

            The Ambulance Crew were great. They cleaned me up and bandaged my head and took me to Matre Dei Hospital. I was under observation for an hour and at this point i was stone cold sober. Took the bandage off and walked out after thanking them all.

            No headache, no concussion, nothing. No stitches either. I still have a 5 inch white line scar on my scalp but it’s covered and i don’t suffer from male pattern baldness.

            That the the first night of the holiday. :o(

            I consider myself extremely lucky.

    1. It’s cultural appropriation, the SNP has hi-jacked Gaelic for political purposes. I can only suppose it’s an attempt to make Scotland appear as ‘different’ from England as possible, forgetting that the Lothians used to be a Saxon Kingdom.

      The only SNP politician that speaks Gaelic as a native – that I know of – is Kate Forbes MSP. There may be others but they’ll be damn’ few (an’ likely a’ deid!). For a glaring example of the SNP’s crassness, after kicking up a fuss to have Scots Gaelic recognised by the EU – and hiring lots of translators – not one SNP MEP could address the European Parliament in the language.

      Native Gaelic speakers number about 1% of the population – mostly in the Western Isles – yet the Scottish Parliament wastes £millions in tax-payers money on ensuring all the road signs are bi-lingual (Gaelic/English), even in the areas where Gaelic has never, ever been spoken.

      Maybe they should put up the road signs in Norwegian on Shetland and Orkney. It’d be a lot closer to historical reality than signs in Gaelic on those islands.

      1. Gaelic signs in central Edinburgh. You couldn’t make it… oh well, they could and we pay.

      2. I suspect the number of claimed Gaelic speakers is based on census returns with most of them having less then phrase book knowledge of the language

        I have strong reservations about traffic signs in duel language. Signs need to have the minimum information need so they can be read quickly

        2. I have strong reservations about traffic signs in duel language.

          That’s fighting talk where I come from

          3. ‘Aye, fit like the day? I also have the Doric, having lived in Banff, Banffshire (1984-1989). So I’m familiar with Quines and Loons, Mannies and Wifies.

      3. When I had an office in the Central Belt in the late 90s, which took up one or two days a week of my time away from my normal office, with a night or two a week in some soulless hotel, I developed a theory regarding Gaelic.

        As I was settling into my hotel at 18.30, the slot on BBC2 that south of the border would be taken up by a quiz show or something like that was taken up by some strange Gaelic magazine show. My theory was that these shows pushed out in Gaelic by the BBC had an audeince count of precisely zero.

        The reason was that everybody in the whole of Scotland who could speak Gaelic was either appearing on the show, or they were somehow otherwise employed in the production of said waste of airtime. There was nobody left over to watch them.

          2. I did tune in one day and was delighted to catch what appeared to be a children’s singing competition for songs in Gaelic.
            Though I suspect it was only a flash in the pan.

          3. Did you know that the Siamese national anthem is sung to the same tune as God Save the Queen?

            Oh whattana Siam
            Oh whattanna Siam
            Oh wattanas

        2. I recalled a story from last year about BBC Scotland getting zero viewers on several shows and it being branded a waste of time, but I didn’t realise that it was 21 shows. 🙂

          “BBC Scotland figures branded ‘deplorable’ after 21 shows have no viewers at all.
          Some television shows on the BBC’s new Scottish channel have had no viewers at all, it has been reported. 21 shows recorded no audience some days, according to the Mail on Sunday. The viewing figures prompted media watchers to brand the channel a waste of taxpayer money.

          The figures were gathered from The British Audiences Research Board (Barb) between February 24 and June 2 this year. Barb provides data from meters fitted to TV, computers and tablets from 5,300 panel members. Among the 21 shows to record no viewers at all were several editions of news bulletin The Seven, discussion show The Collective and new music programme Tune.

          Former BBC editor Tim Luckhurst, who is now a professor in journalism, said: “These figures are deplorable. But they simply confirm the central flaw in the entire project – there was never a shred of audience demand for it. It was launched as a forlorn attempt to please the SNP, a classic example of why the BBC should never bow to political bullying.”

          https://www.scotsman.com/news/people/bbc-scotland-figures-branded-deplorable-after-21-shows-have-no-viewers-at-all-1-4948119

          1. As a bairn, I used to speak Gaelic with my grandparents – it was their first language – but they were fluent in English too. I’ve never met a Gaelic-speaker who wasn’t bi-lingual but the SNP assumes we’re all simple ‘teuchters’ who can’t properly understand English.

            It’s nice to keep the language alive, but I resent being patronised, either by SNP politicians or pretentious beeboids

          3. Which just goes to shew that the SNP is largely populated with ‘Numpties’ whose brains are as, “thick as shïte in a bottle.”

  84. EU budget

    This is where an EU split could start. There is already a lot of dissatisfaction over how the EU budget is split and with the UK’s massive contribution coming out of it there will be a lot of infighting. It is wait and see at present

    BRUSSELS has been told to finally deliver a “level playing field” for its member states and stop allowing rich countries to benefit from lucrative unbalanced EU handouts.

    The bloc must not “punish” farmers based on which country they operate in across the Continent, the Latvian prime minister today warned. Speaking to Express.co.uk on the fringes of a crunch EU budget summit, Arturs Krisjanis Karins said: “The argument is quite simple, if we are going to subsidise farming, we should do it fairly. “Everyone competes in the same market, everyone has similar costs – why punish or benefit some farmers as to others? They should all be on a level playing field, this is what we argue for all sectors of the single market… let’s apply it to farming as well.”

  86. Jeremy Corbyn visits flood-hit Welsh valleys that are counting the costs of Storm Dennis… while Tory voter calls on Boris Johnson to take a break from his Chevening recess to show support for water-ravaged families

    Our half baked devolution causes endless confusion

    The responsibility for flooding in Wales is Fully devolved. Westminster plays no part on it. So Corbyn should be saying where is the Welsh Assembly? He will not do that though as it is Labour run so prefers to try to blame Westminster. The body the Welsh Assembly have set up is the NRW

    Jeremy Corbyn clambered over sandbags to speak to flood-hit communities in the Welsh Valleys today after one Tory voter inundated by rain called on Boris Johnson to repay for his vote and pay him a visit.

    The Labour leader sported a blue raincoat and walking boots as he spent this afternoon consoling residents in Rhydyfelin, Pontypridd.
    He echoed residents’ calls of ‘Where’s Boris?’ after the Prime Minister failed to give up his Chevening getaway to go and see those worst affected by floods.

    1. That’s all water off a duck’s back to me. It will be water under the bridge in a few days’ time.

  87. Any chance of civil servants – academics working out a deFarRight programme for those far-right extremists and laying out conferences near London Bridge which they can attend after serving half a short-term prison sentence? Just asking. (thinks – would the BBC approve?)

  90. Apols. to all – again, only just arrived, but I had to share this with you- especially the last paragraph
    :

    YOUR DAILY BREXIT BETRAYAL – Thursday 20th February 2020
    Posted by Vivian Evans | Feb 20, 2020 |

    How about that then: we have the ‘War of the Slides’ between us (that’s No10) and the EU (that’s Barnier). Even the Remain MSM are suddenly on the side of Leave as Brussels accused No10 of hitting ‘below the belt’ by using an old slide. It’s absolutely delicious!

    I’ll go into the details of that ‘war’ below – first there’s an extraordinary report on M Barnier’s ‘Mandate’ which should gladden our hearts. Joe Barnes, Brussels correspondent of The Express, writes:

    “After weeks of internal wrangling, EU ambassadors decided they needed more time to hammer out the final details of the bloc’s negotiating strategy ahead of formal trade talks with Britain. Mr Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, now faces having to start discussions with his UK counterparts without an official mandate signed off by the bloc’s remaining 27 member states. If the capitals continue to drag their feet, the Frenchman’s scope for negotiations will be severely limited.” (link)

    No gloating on the back benches, ok! There’s more, and M Barnier’s bedrock attitude towards us looks more like a rock made of styrofoam as used in theatres. It looks as if the Barnier cries about a shortage of negotiating time might be severely undermined by EU member states:

    “The document is scheduled to be rubber-stamped by Europe ministers as a General Affairs Council in Brussels next Tuesday. An EU diplomat told Express.co.uk a French-led bloc of countries are holding out for hardened language on the so-called “level-playing field” to be included in Mr Barnier’s mandate.” (link)

    That the new EU Fisheries Chairman – another Frenchman – is trying to reinforce this hard-line attitude by demanding that nothing must change in regard to Fisheries (link) is just par for the course. RemainCentral also reports on this internecine EU wrangle, and look who the ‘hard-liners’ are:

    “France, Spain and Belgium lead a group of countries pushing for Britain to be bound by “dynamic alignment” with all EU competition, social and environmental laws. The requirements are backed with EU monetary and trade sanctions if the EU thinks the rules have been breached. […] Divisions over the issue surfaced at a meeting of Brussels ambassadors yesterday. One said that the EU may not be able to agree a negotiating mandate in time for a deadline next Tuesday.” (link, paywalled)

    What a surprise (not!): the leaders of those ‘hardliners’ are France, Spain and … Belgium? For those who remember their history of the Napoleonic Wars that makes sense, oddly enough.

    It is of course all about that Canada Deal which suddenly is of the devil, as far as Barnier is concerned. Thus the ‘slide war’. The background is of course Mr Frost’s speech where he said that we want nothing more and nothing less than a deal like those between the EU and Japan, Korea or Canada, where ‘single market’, ‘level playing field’ and the ECJ don’t come into it.

    There were two slides, one produced by Barnier in the wake of ‘that’ speech, one dug out by No10. You can see them both in this tweet albeit in miniature size. Let me first draw your attention to Barnier’s ‘bubble’ slide, on trade volume:

    “A bubble representing trade volume with the UK on an EU graphic was 16 times bigger than that relating to Japan. The official figures suggest it should be four times bigger. David Spiegelhalter, a professor of the public understanding of risk at Cambridge University, told the website Politico that the EU’s graphic was “indefensible” and went against standard graphical practice. “It’s incorrect to use diameter to represent volume,” he said.” (link, paywalled)

    That doesn’t matter to the EU – it’s simply about creating a visual impact for readers who don’t have the time to check numbers – not that our MSM are doing this, as the reports on facts4eu show again and again, not that these make it into the Remain MSM.

    Then there’s the ‘below-the-belt’ slide. This is a graph made by Barnier in 2017, relating to that Canada deal which was on offer and then rejected by Ms May (link).This has been reproduced for all to see here and here, paywalled here and here.

    But there’s a truly amazing piece of news relating to this deal. Mr Hogan, the Trade Commissioner, has undermined M Barnier when he wrote to the Dutch Parliament which is in the process of ratifying that Canada deal (CETA):

    “Phil Hogan, the EU’s trade commissioner, has undermined his colleague’s argument for a special, bespoke and unique pact that ties Britain into the Brussels’ state aid, taxation, environmental and workers’ rights standards. In a letter to the Dutch parliament, the Irishman made clear the EU’s deal with Canada already contains acceptable “fair trade” provisions” (link)

    This letter was written a week ago, and it’s certainly totally unfair that our negotiators dug it out! Here’s a comment by a ‘UK source’ in the DT:

    “A UK source close to the negotiations said: “Given that the EU is praising the level playing field commitments in CETA in this way, it’s surprising that they’ve suggested they would not be willing to accept similar provisions in a trade deal with the UK. It is worth noting that there is no reference to the ECJ in CETA, and no commitment to dynamic alignment on regulation. In its current form, the EU mandate asks the UK to commit to aligning with the EU’s standards forever.” (paywalled link)

    Ah – but the difference is that we are only separated from the EU by the Channel, not by the Atlantic, as Barnier and as his spokespeople keep trying to tell us because we’re obviously not aware of that fact. See for example this:

    “In a speech in London yesterday Stefaan De Rynck, an aide to Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, said that the EU’s agreement with Canada was a “different ball game” to a future relationship with the UK. He was responding to demands by Boris Johnson’s chief negotiator, David Frost, for the EU to drop its insistence on post-Brexit regulatory alignment. “Some in the UK now seem to want to become Canadians. But Dover is much closer to Calais than Ottawa is. Proximity matters, distance matters . . . what also matters is the interconnectedness between our economies,” Mr De Rynck said.” (link, paywalled)

    Something neither Mr De Rynck nor Messrs Barnier and Hogan mention, something our MSM have still not reported on, not even just as background for the ‘bubble’ slide and for the talks, are actual numbers. So here they are again, as we reported yesterday. The numbers come from the EU – keep them in mind when you look at that infamous bubble:

    ”The EU27 earned a €125 billion trade surplus from the UK in 2019. That’s a staggering 62% of the EU27’s total global trade surplus in goods last year. The EU27 made more from the UK than from the next five countries COMBINED. It’s 7 TIMES MORE than the EU did with Canada, whose trade deal the EU talks about constantly.” (link)

    That’s why Brussels, why Barnier, Hogan, Macron and his allies are desperate to keep us shackled to their bosoms. However, Asa Bennett points out in the DT:

    “Under pressure from Mr Johnson’s team, the EU has now shown how important it sees UK post-Brexit in trading terms. But rather than embrace healthy economic competition from across the Channel, Brussels is adamant that the British are literally too close for comfort and need to be restrained. The EU needs to preserve good relations with the UK post-Brexit, but its zealous approach puts that at risk. After compromising on the backstop, Mr Barnier and his colleagues will need to compromise yet again if they are to avoid spurning one of the bloc’s most important future trading partners.” (paywalled link)

    This slide war again demonstrates that the Continentals are welded to their ideology, apparently incapable of looking for pragmatic solutions. Such pragmatism has sadly been lacking in the May negotiating team which was infested by EU ideology. If this has now changed then that is to be welcomed.

    It seems that Mr Frost’s speech has sown confusion amongst the enemy, ahem: the EU, ahem: France. Germany? Forget it. Ms Merkel is damaged, the German economy is sliding fast, but let’s not gloat, ok? Gloating is bad form, it’s not done … Ladies and gentlemen don’t gloat. Like Willie Whitelaw, we simply gloat ‘like hell’, in secret!

    https://independencedaily.co.uk/your-daily-brexit-betrayal-thursday-20th-february-2020/?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=INDEPENDENCE+Daily+Newsletter1

    1. It all seems to indicate a ‘No Deal’ and trading under WTO rules with a tit-for-tat tariff on any imposed by the EU. Stupid boys.

      1. Let’s hope so. They are childish and arrogant almost beyond belief. They really do show the differences between Our Island Race and the Continentals’ mentality.

  91. Surprised today to see that all-electric double-decker busses are running in Cambridge. They have a distinctive livery.

  92. Early reports suggest Beijing is facing a Wuhan style total lockdown.
    “Among the infected at Fuxing Hospital in Beijing’s Xicheng district were eight medical workers, nine cleaning staff and 19 patients, along with members of their families”
    Hope we are all not going to be well and truly Fuxed…

  93. Today is the great Jimmy Greaves’ 80th birthday. One of the best footballers on the planet. Poor old Jim’s not been at all well for a few years.
    But I remember watching him in so many home games at WHL.

    1. Oct 1968 a visit to WHL. Spurs V Man Utd, 2-2 draw.
      Greaves, Charlton, Best, Mullery, Styles, so many greats.
      I loved every minute of it.

      2. The first time I went to WHL it was about 10 years old. It was an evening game the flood lighting stayed in my memory for good.
        They were playing Man City.
        Bert Trautman was in goal for MC.

    2. Would he have slotted the hat-trick?

      Who knows?

      But I have always thought he was a better striker ( hate that word) than Hirst.

          6. I was in a canoe at the time, paddling down the river Nene, and I never saw the match.

            My father was there. He was called on the morning of the match to attend because his boss had cried off ill and the winners of a competition in his firm were awarded tickets. He was a former rugby player and cheered the team in white, by mistake!

      2. Allen Gilzene and Jim worked well together. AG would climb high and nod the ball done and JG would slot it in.

  94. Someone (Minty?) posted about civilisations falling as they desert their core religion

    Came across this

    Mithras, God of the Morning, our trumpets waken the Wall!
    “Rome is above the Nations, but thou art over all!”
    Now as the names are answered, and the guards are marched away,
    Mithras, also a soldier, give us strength for the day!

    Mithras, God of the Noontide, the heather swims in the heat.
    Our helmets scorch our foreheads, our sandals burn our feet.
    Now in the ungirt hour – now lest we blink and drowse,
    Mithras, also a soldier, keep us true to our vows!

    Mithras, God of the Sunset, low on the Western main –
    Thou descending immortal, immortal to rise again!
    Now when the watch is ended, now when the wine is drawn,
    Mithras, also a soldier, keep us pure till the dawn!

    Mithras, God of the Midnight, here where the great Bull dies,
    Look on Thy children in darkness. Oh, take our sacrifice!
    Many roads Thou hast fashioned – all of them lead to Light!
    Mithras, also a soldier, teach us to die aright.
    Kipling of course

    2. Rik,
      316489+up✔s,
      Sad to say but currently Mithras would be in the hands of the lawyers, for actions past.

  95. I am a bit scared to post tonight….;-) Having biscuit crumbs in my keys thus missing letters and can only type whilst in slight recline position…I know I make typos….so I’m staying quiet for the moment….I can’t bear admonishments.

    2. I can’t hit thr roght keys eithrr Jenny. I blame the Data Troll who shifts the key judt begore my finger hits it leading to midtypes.
      :-((

    3. My sympathies, Jenny, I know how you feel. A little while back, every time I used my keyboard, it kept separating the words with the number 3.14159.

      Turned out there was a crumb of pie under the space bar.

    6. My sympathies, Jenny, I know how you feel. A little while back, every time I used my keyboard, it kept separating the words with the number 3.14159.

      Turned out there was a crumb of pie under the space bar.

      2. Ha ha ha……I eat Bel Vita biscuits often as a meal replacement…..hence the crumbs…..xxx

  98. Good afternoon all. Lots more rain here today. It’s getting boring !!

    Found in His Closet

    One day Steve’s mom was cleaning his room. In the closet, she found a bondage S&M magazine.

    This was highly upsetting to her.

    She hid the magazine until his father got home.

    When Steve’s father walked in the door, she irately handed the magazine to him, and said, “THIS is what I found in your son’s closet.”

    He looked at it and handed it back to her without a word.

    After an uncomfortable minute of silence, she finally asked him, “Well, what should we do about this?”

    Dad looked at her and said, “Well I DON’T think you should spank him.”

    1. Read a couple of her articles, she even made the US press with an article saying that Meghan was hated in Britain and driven out because she was black. She really is both an anti-white and especially an anti-Britain bigot.

    3. She is an example that even an Oxford education cannot fix the stupid in some people. Or she is just a hardcore racist.

      “Guardian article about Nelson’s Column.
      In August 2017, in The Guardian, Hirsch questioned whether Nelson’s Column should remain in place, with the implication it might be removed. She argued that the London monument is a symbol of white supremacy because Horatio Nelson opposed the abolitionist movement.”

      But that other Nelson, Mr Mandela, who some would point out could be called a terrorist in his early days, is worthy of praise and many statues.

    4. Not a slightest mention of racism in my comment, but does she understand the often linked words of f**k off ?

    6. I’m afraid that I am not going to be liked by what I post here, Maggie, perhaps this is similar to my post above about the odious Diane Abbot having her words misinterpreted. Whilst this woman Hirsch also seems very odious, for Piers Morgan to badger, harangue and constantly interrupt her is just as bad as most left-wing interviewers interrupting, etc. those from the right who are trying to make a case for their point of view.

    1. I’ve been told the rear supply on the the roll is deliterious for ladies finger nails.
      A lesson learned. ❌

        1. Having been educated (?) in Catholic schools I have no great liking for nuns, but even I wouldn’t inflict Abbott on them.

          2. Let’s dress the silly wee woman in a nun’s habit – then we send her to Antarctica.

            With a bit of luck, a ravenous sea lion might get her.

    5. Frank Haviland writes “Diane Abbott: all migrants can speak English”. But in fact Diane Abbott does not say that; she says “I’ve never heard an employer or anyone else complain that migrants can’t speak English”. Much as I dislike Ms Abbott, to traduce her by misrepresenting what she said is just simply putting invented words into her mouth to make her appear to be an idiot.

  104. Phew!
    Just listened to Sibelius’s 2nd Symphony on R3, a cracking performance from The Lighthouse in Poole,
    I think the term “emotional roller-coaster” is too weak a description.

  105. Home Office deports asylum seekers on charter flight to EU countries despite warnings of ‘inadequate access to justice

    The Home Office has gone ahead with a charter flight deporting asylum seekers this morning despite a stark warning from immigration solicitors that these individuals may have been denied access to justice.
    The flight, which departed at around 7am, was removing people to Germany, Austria and Switzerland under the Dublin convention – a law that requires asylum seekers to claim asylum in the first safe EU country they arrive in and not move from one to another.

    lawyers said many of those scheduled to be on the charter plane were potential victims of trafficking or torture, meaning they should be exempt from this rule until their vulnerability is assessed.

    At least 16 people who had been issued removal directions were granted last minute reprieve after solicitors intervened and challenged their deportation on the basis that they were trafficking victims. It is not known how many people were on the flight.

  106. HAPPY HOUR – Love – you too.

    I was looking forward to a fun tennis tournament last week however I was well and truly stuffed losing 1-6 -3-6 -1-6 –
    Sadly I knew my singles tennis days were over and had reservations about a return match. Rise to the challenge my Churchillian spirit told me, don’t be such a bluddy snowflake.
    However I declined due to a severe medical condition called cowardice.
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/356153e6bc3263b82b089fb04d1a47eb38b0bcfaf7858fccdb75c182bb035807.jpg

        2. So how does ‘cowardly’ come into it? The No. 10 ranked woman doesn’t have a chance against the No. 100 ranked bloke, Shirley.

    1. The Germans murdered around 6 million people .. in a far nastier fashion , over 75 years ago.

      And of course we know what the Turks got up to as well.

  109. A friend has two tickets for the Formula 1 final race of the season the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, at the Yas Marina circuit on the weekend of the 28th – 29th November. They are box seats and include flights, hospitality, and hotel accommodation.

    He didn’t realise when he bought them that this is the same day as his wedding.

    If you’re interested and want to go instead of him, it’s at St Johns Church, Worcester at 2.15pm on the 28th.
    Her name is Janet. She’ll be the one in the white dress.

  112. The 2 lefty women on QT were typically rude interrupters. As for that Ash female, how can anybody be taken seriously when they have false talons like hers?

    1. It’s not only her talons that are false.

      I joined late, heard her rant about people not policies and, when the next question was raised, “Can we be kind?” I switched off.

  113. Looks like everyone has gone to bed – I shall finish this snifter and follow suit. Good night and God bless to one and all.

  114. I have to tell you this lovely story. Little grandson today kept getting my arm and putting it around him. I said…oh look at poor Grandma’s hands…they are so old and wrinkled…look how thin the skin is and how smooth your hands are….the little darling took my hand and kissed it…there were tears in my eyes. Bless his little heart.

  115. A friend has two tickets for the Formula 1 final race of the season the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, at the Yas Marina circuit on the weekend of the 28th – 29th November. They are box seats and include flights, hospitality, and hotel accommodation.

    He didn’t realise when he bought them that this is the same day as his wedding.

    If you’re interested and want to go instead of him, it’s at St Johns Church, Worcester at 2.15pm on the 28th.
    Her name is Janet. She’ll be the one in the white dress.

    2. I’d rather go to the wedding than go to Dubai F1 shiite, even on a sunni day. The Irish Bar at the airport was OK, but that’s it.

    3. I’d rather go to the wedding than go to Dubai F1 shiite, even on a sunni day. The Irish Bar at the airport was OK, but that’s it.

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