814 thoughts on “Thursday 23 January: Hydrogen as a green energy reservoir could meet increased demand”

  2. SOMETHING TO OFFEND EVERYONE

    What is the difference between a Harley and a Hoover?
    The position of the dirt bag.

    Why is divorce so expensive?
    Because it’s worth it.

    What do you call a smart blonde?
    A golden retriever.

    What do lawyers use for birth control?
    Their personalities.

    What’s the difference between a girlfriend and wife?
    20 kgs.

    What’s the difference between a boyfriend and husband?
    45 minutes.

    What’s the fastest way to a man’s heart?
    Through his chest with a sharp knife.

    Why do men want to marry virgins?
    They can’t stand criticism.

    Why is it so hard for women to find men that are sensitive, caring, and good-looking?
    Because those men already have boyfriends.

    What’s the difference between a new husband and a new dog?
    After a year, the dog is still excited to see you.

    What makes men chase women they have no intention of marrying?
    The same urge that makes dogs chase cars they have no intention of driving.

    A brunette, a blonde, and a redhead are all in Grade 9. Who has the biggest boobs?
    The blonde, because she’s 18.

    What’s the difference between a porcupine and a BMW?
    A porcupine has the pricks on the outside.

    What did the blonde say when she found out she was pregnant?
    ‘Are you sure it’s mine?’

    Why do men find it difficult to make eye contact?
    Breasts don’t have eyes.

    What would you call it when an Italian has one arm shorter than the other?
    A speech impediment.

    What’s the difference between an Australian zoo and an English zoo?
    An Australian zoo has a description of the animal on the front of the cage along with a recipe.

    How do you get a sweet little 80-year-old lady to say the F….. Word?
    Get another sweet little 80-year-old lady to yell “BINGO”!

    What’s the difference between a northern USA fairy-tale and a southern USA fairy-tale?
    A Northern fairy-tale begins ‘Once upon a time.’
    A Southern fairy-tale begins ‘Y’all ain’t gonna believe this shiiit’.

    Why is there no Disneyland in China?
    No one’s tall enough to go on the good rides.

  3. SIR – Why do Lord Hall, the BBC’s outgoing director-general, and the BBC think it justifiable to start charging the over-75s the full licence fee while paying Gary Lineker nearly £2 million a year to ask Alan Shearer how he thought the match went?

    Mark Sibthorp
    Taplow, Buckinghamshire

    Shearer (£400,000 pa), who doesn’t show up every week, probably gets more per word than Lineker does. It’s all rubbish.

  5. Oh good…

    John Bercow’s most senior member of staff during his time as Speaker accuses him of BULLYING in blow to his hopes of a peerage – before he hits back at ‘curious timing of this intervention’
    *Former chief Commons clerk Lord Lisvane filed a complaint against his old boss
    *Lord Lisvane served as Bercow’s chief aide in early part of his time as Speaker
    *He passed a dossier of allegations to parliamentary commissioner for standards
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7918797/Ex-Speaker-John-Bercows-peerage-placed-jeopardy-accused-bullying-staff.html

  8. What my attacker’s conviction taught me about taking on the far right. Owen Jones. 23 January 2020.

    Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me.

    Don’t pick fights with heterosexuals?

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/23/what-my-attackers-conviction-taught-me-about-far-right

    2. ‘Morning, Minty, I can’t wait for this useless little prïck to be taken off the streets by a bunch of those Muslims he supports and given flying lessons.

    3. Why dress up this attack into a hate crime? His assailant is a thug, was brought to justice, and the sooner violent criminals are locked up and preferably made good before being let loose into society, the better.

      I’m not really interested in the identity of the person he picked on.

    3. Talking of which the Telegraph has an article by Charles Moore’s niece, Felicity Moore: ‘I always knew I was a man inside’ or some such. Sorry dear, you aren’t: lesbian quite probably, but you haven’t got the right internals to be male…

  12. A last chance to save the BBC
    Rod Liddle – 25 January 2020 – 9:00 AM

    Whoever becomes the next director-general of the BBC should take a close look at last week’s Question Time. It came from Liverpool, which is perhaps the most left-wing city in the country, Brighton excepted. On it, the actor Laurence Fox was making sensible comments about the Harry and Meghan business (which is beginning to bore me into a stupor), when he was upbraided by a third-division academic from a glorified teacher training college. This was Rachel Boyle, a ‘researcher on race and ethnicity’. She trotted out the familiar, learned-by-rote cliché that Fox was possessed of ‘white privilege’ and was therefore, by implication, disqualified to comment on the matter.

    It’s what happened next that should register itself in the mind of whatever fragrant bien-pensant is hoisted into the saddle of this doomed behemoth. As soon as the ridiculous woman uttered the words ‘white privilege’ the entire audience let out a groan of ineffable weariness, as if the will to live had suddenly deserted them. And then they booed. This was in Liverpool, remember, a city often unkindly (and unfairly) characterised as a bastion of victimhood wallowing.

    The point I would hope the new DG takes from this is that virtually nobody in the country buys into this egregious identitarian rubbish — beyond, that is, the BBC and the lower halls of academia. The largely white, middle-class producers and presenters of the corporation may be obsessed with identity politics and are able to spout all the fashionable shibboleths, but it has no purchase whatsoever beyond Kensal Rise. It is considered idiotic, banal and divisive even by a broad section of the left — which is beginning to realise that it is one important reason why they never win general elections. Almost nobody swallows this guff. It does not matter how many publicly funded bodies are bullied into acceding each and every demand from one or other victim group, it is still nowhere close to persuading the average voter — or licence fee payer — to clamber aboard the woke bandwagon.

    Tony Hall’s decision to quit as DG is the last chance to save the BBC. He is a perfectly fine, emollient administrator, but under his watch the corporation has drifted further and further from the concerns, values and appetites of the people who pay for its existence. It is not that the BBC is left-wing, per se — certainly not on economic issues. Instead it is a hopeless echo chamber and its staff do not think that they are biased at all, simply correct, scarcely coming into contact with a population which is utterly averse to their obsessions.

    Under Lord Hall’s administration, a moronic wokeness began to infest each and every part of the BBC’s output. For sure, the news and current affairs programmes were hideously biased on the issues of the European Union, immigration, Israel, Islam and identity politics, even more so than they had been before. And one became used to presenters sneering and snarling at anyone who dared to offer a different view to their own. But it was as nothing compared with the rest of the programming.

    The rapidly dwindling audience for the latest, execrable Doctor Who series is the obvious case in point, a once glorious piece of fun for kids which is now a propaganda sheet for agitprop middle-class London liberals (and, for kids, virtually unwatchable). Nor could they leave poor Charles Dickens alone, turning A Christmas Carol into a tirade against capitalism. Richard Adams’s Watership Down was reimagined to include keening feminist rabbits. Every drama had a message shoehorned into it.

    There was no respite on comedy panel shows, either, where participants thought it enough to say ‘Trump’ or ‘Boris’ to gain a laugh. Radio 4 meanwhile transformed itself into an endless fugue of misery and victimhood: listen to it for more than an hour and you begin to reach for a razor blade. No wonder the audience share plummeted.

    The great mass of people simply do not agree with the BBC’s vision of the world. They may respect it for historical reasons and, occasionally, for a fine piece of journalism which somehow slips through the net. But the march away from Labour which we saw last month was occasioned by a final realisation that the party had nothing in common with the people who are supposed to vote for it. There is evidence that exactly the same thing is happening with the BBC. One of Lord Hall’s last acts was to appoint a ‘diversity’ czar. Diversity of political opinion? Nope, it was the fervent Remainer June Sarpong who was there to ensure the BBC became even more identitarian.

    The new director-general’s kindest act would be to shepherd the BBC gracefully towards its existence as a subscription-only service. Frankly, given the breadth of the BBC’s output, it would represent decent value for money compared with, say, Sky or Netflix. But the take-up will be small if the corporation continues to misunderstand how averse possible subscribers are to being told how to think, as if they were children or just plain thick. And changing the mindset of the BBC is almost impossible when it is the recipient of a direct levy on everybody in the country, like it or not, so that in the end ratings do not really matter one jot.

    If it were forced to live in the commercial world, the BBC might suddenly begin to comprehend the need to understand its audience a little better and to champion meaningful diversity — not of colour of skin or sexual orientation or gender, but of political and cultural views.

      2. I would wager Boris and Co will do exactly the same as Cameron regarding the BBC, talk an lot but deliver nothing.
        There is no point looking to Government to make changes, personally I just watch as little as possible.

    3. I have thumbed-up nearly everything that Rod has said here.

      The solution though is not to thrust public broadcasting into the thrusting arms of Murdoch, BT Sport, Netflix and Amazon Prime, but to improve the outlook of those who run our public broadcasting.

      We need another Lord Reith.

      1. John Reith’s BBC remit of: Educate, Inform, Entertain, has been systematically dismantled
        and replaced by a mantra of: Pontificate, Rip-Off, Ridicule.

        1. It does educate – it continually tells us we are all racists.

          It does inform – it uses every method going to promote it’s agenda.

          It does entertain – because it mocks those it disagrees with.

      2. …but to improve the outlook of those who run our public broadcasting.

        No one would disagree Jeremy but it is a hopeless task! Easier by far to shut it down!

      3. Improving the outlook of those who run our public broadcasting – that’s like a call for efficient and consumer-sensitive state run industries … it’s like the quest for real socialism …

    4. “…the commercial world…” The place occupied by ITV, C4 and a myriad other channels that show adverts every few minutes. A world of adverts where the population of the country lives in modern houses and flats, and flatmates and families are composed of members of divers ethnic groups, with abnormal sexual proclivities and more money than Croesus?
      I suggest that we have a Nottler Nig-Nog Prize for the advert or TV programme with the highest ratio of ethnic minorities portrayed in relation to the number of white British shown.

      1. Agreed, and for starters I’ll nominate the DFS sofa adverts and the Dove adverts on Sky Witness. All of which elicit huge sighs from both Best Beloved and me.

    5. Agreed, but there is no way Liverpool is the most leftwing city. That title belongs to London.

        1. Gone off to his horseboxes and property development. I think he did pop his head up before the election, but rapidly withdrew it when his friends in Momentum got trounced nationally. Unfortunately they are still bubbling under in local terms. And as a result, Frank Field no longer graces the commons.

    6. Ooh, careful now.

      The BBC would argue it does promote different cultural and political views. It can’t see it’s own bias. It thinks it is balanced because everyone there is a frothing Lefty, it presents the skew that *they* think is normal.

  15. BREXIT BILL PASSED BY PARLIAMENT

    Yesterday the bill passed all the outstanding stages nd now simply requires royal assent which will probably take place today. As I understand it the EU still have to approve it

  16. BBC axes Victoria Derbyshire Show ‘because of costs’. 23 JANUARY 2020.

    The Victoria Derbyshire Show is coming off air as a result of BBC cuts, the broadcaster’s media editor has said.

    Amol Rajan said on Twitter that the show was ending and that the cost of the programme was “deemed too high”.

    By the nature of things I can have no actual proof of this but suspect that Derbyshire’s cancer has proved the victor and she is going off air by her own choice!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/01/23/bbc-axes-victoria-derbyshire-show-costs/

  17. Climate Change

    Something to think about

    Chnia emits more CO2 than the US, EU and Japan put together. The UK’s emissions are so small they can be ignored

    To deal with CO2 they need to focus on China but they are not going to do that

        1. The last thing we need is the intervention of Prince Charles: he outbuffoons Bonker Boris.

      2. If we ban meat in my country, we end up with a mechanised prairie monoculture that will trash the soil and its capacity to grow crops, and drive much wildlife to extinction. I once lived in Herefordshire where I saw the effects of converting dairy pasture to barley production.

        1. I don’t know if it still goes on in African countries but several years ago I saw a clip of a Bovine being felled by a machete being used to cut the Achilles tendons before the throat was cut. The UK should be careful about bringing African meat to the UK.

    3. I said 25 years ago that the world is well stuffed if 1.5 billion Chinese decide to live like Americans.

  18. We appear to be living in a bipolar political world at the moment, one mention of climate change, brexit, or grooming gangs on social media and one is either a wise virtuous saint or an anti human demonic evil denier and racist, there is no middle ground for sensible debate any more.

    1. We are trained by our schools to be stupid and lack imagination or discretion.

      Very often, if we can only listen to both sides, we can come up with solutions that take in the best from both sides and come up with symbiosis rather than conflict. Darwin suggested that “survival of the fittest” means the extermination of the less fit. A better interpretation is for the fittest to get to the top of the heap by working with the less fit to the benefit of both. Those that exterminate the competing underlings may well find themselves impoverished as a result, and sow the seeds of their own doom.

      The likes of Trump rubbish the science of ecology, which only came to be recognised in the 1970s, but has actually existed since the beginning of life on this planet, and is essential to its prosperity.

      For example, global warming due to a build up carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. Simple minds say we should stop the generation of carbon dioxide. Opponents say that carbon dioxide is essential to plant life and that in the past more CO2 in the atmosphere enhanced the growth of plants, who then exploit this bounty, and led (for example) to the seams of coal in the ground, locking up carbon in the ground,

      Both may well be right. However, plants cannot exploit the extra CO2 if there are not plants actually growing. This is the difference between a planet with a human population of half a billion and that with nearly 8 billion, all eager to strip it of life to feed its material aspirations. Trees are the most effective users of carbon dioxide, and each tree enables us to enjoy our lifestyles without upsetting the climatic balances that sustain our civilisations.

      Planting a tree is not rocket science (and at the end of the day, I apologise for the cliché). Saplings need space to grow, light and water and protection from attack. They also need the right tree in the right place. Then they need time, and lots of it. Decades to get to productive size and centuries to get to maturity. The ignorant and the malicious sneer at “tree huggers”. I suggest that a tree that is loved is more likely to be looked after and thrive to serve us.

      1. My listening to the music on Radio 3 early this morning was interrupted by a dose of ‘news’ which included this little gem: “The government advisory panel on decarbonising the economy has recommended that a quarter of the land currently given over to agriculture should instead be devoted to carbon capture’. If the people who study these things are correct and we are in fact heading into a 30 -50 year modern Solar minimum, agriculture in the UK will be facing a difficult enough challenge without reducing the land available by 25%!

        1. That Government Advisory Panel is headed by John Gummer (aka Lord Debden) Therefore, IGNORE all his tosh.

          2. I wonder if the Acronym GAP is synonymous with the space between the ears of the Advisory Panel members’ ears?

        2. Once we let these extremists loose, ruling every facet of our lives we only have to look to history to see the ultimate outcome, they always end up culling their own people, we know they all think the world population is far too high.

          1. Which of course it is. The ideal UK population would be 30million. But I want them to be OUR 30million, not Thunberg’s.

          2. A couple of nights ago there was more wailing on BBC Scotland about “where is our population growth going to come from if not from immigrants?”
            The need for a higher population in a small country which was surely at its optimum population more than 70 years ago when our industries required lots of manual labour is never questioned. The population now stands at its highest level in all history. Yet still the bleating continues, “we need more people”. If that need is ever questioned then spokespeople for the hospitality industry are rolled out, “we need more waiting staff”.
            No one ever questions whether that supposed need for low paid seasonal workers is consistent with the other oft repeated need for more people to pay the pensions of an ageing population.
            The words”Ponzi scheme” are never ever on the lips of BBC commentators or Scottish politicians of any ilk.

          3. They think that migrants are somehow immune to the progress of time and that they don’t grow old like the rest of us, and then demand a pension.

            These people can’t count on their fingers and don’t do logical thought.

        3. That is the problem with managers setting targets and picking the easy fruit in order to improve the figures so they can pick up their bonuses. The alternative is perhaps real people doing the right thing in each place, and for the managers instead to take on the more difficult and necessary task of greening the desert.

        4. So where does the food come from that was grown on that 25% of land?
          Answer: Imported from abroad (unspecified location)
          How? By ship. You know, these things that emit great clouds of CO2 that (apparently) is the problem…
          Why then not plant the trees abroad, cut out the shipping costs and grow the f*cking stuff at home!

        5. Carbon capture? They are going in for afforestation? Biggest laugh is the claim to be “carbon free” – as respiration produces CO2, presumably they are going to kill everybody and remove all the plant and animal life.

      2. I love trees, me. My favourite is just outside my front door, a beautifully symmetric mature silver birch.

        1. I love trees, me. Also, Paul.

          I also get pissed off when people who don’t originate from our area of the North take the piss out of our ordained birthright of using I and me in the same sentence. It’s quite natural to do so, is that.

          1. It just falls out of my mouth/off the keyboard; no thought required, pee taking or otherwise.
            Edit: Adding the “me” puts the right emphasis and balance in the sentence.

          2. My ex- [spit!] wife, who was from Lancaster via Durham, was eternally vocally (oh how vocal was she?) and constantly opposed to how her new work colleagues in Sheffield spoke. Their (natural) habit of adding “me” to the end of a sentence commencing in “I” angered her beyond belief; she said they were a bunch of cretins. She also called them retarded for referring to underskirts, dialectically, as “underneathskirts”. “Of course they go underneath, Where else would they go?”

            Her pseudo-Geordie (Durham) dialect was, however, a thing of unassailable beauty to her warped mind!

          3. There’s joy to be had in everyone’s speech, Grizz. Some when they talk, some when they shut up!
            🙂

          4. I’m sure that she was a lovely lady, tolerant and a pleasure to live with. You must have upset her somehow.

        2. There are is an avenue of ENGLISH WALNUT trees in Dorchester.. magnificent .. I found some fallen walnuts during the Autumn , but am unsure how to plant them ..would love to grow my own Walnut tree.

          1. Bung them into small individual pots, place them somewhere out of the way and ignore them until next summer.
            Re-pot any shewing growth and carefully check those not to see if they have started to germinate.

          8. Several horse chestnut trees round her have popped their clogs.
            As they were planted far too near to the house, I’m not really sorry.
            It’s good to have a a sunny fertile garden or use rooms during the summer without having the lights on.

          9. I have two walnut trees in my garden I planted in the 1990s and are quite mature now.

            They are not hard to grow. You can either pick saplings up at a nursery (best are a couple of feet in height, no more), or pop the nuts whole into the ground and hope they will germinate – most won’t, but you only need one or two to. I lose my crop each year to squirrels. One year I found little walnut saplings growing in my spud bed, planted there by the squirrels. Best time to plant them is (as with many deciduous trees) on a drizzly day in November, but today is not a bad time at all – nice and damp and not too frosty. Prune them sparingly in winter – they do not like to be pruned in the Spring, since they bleed a lot. Their dropped leaves can be toxic to plants growing underneath, so best not to plant it where you have precious flowers. On a lawn is perfect though. They are quite slow growing though.

          10. Question with plant a walnut tree from scratch is, “Do you have at least thirty years to wait?”

          13. A spaniel, a woman and a walnut tree, the harder you beat them, the better they be! I don’t agree with the first two, but apparently, you need to beat walnut trees to improve the rising of the sap!

    2. Morning Bob 3,
      We are living in a political world of our making.
      I would say that societies conscience
      should have grooming gangs speaking for itself, out loud.
      As for climate change led by a plastic messiah, perfect fodder for fools along with a vegan menu.
      The Brexitexit speaks for itself of treachery, deceit, and showing the governance parties great reluctance to part company with brussels whilst
      rhetorically those in power currently cannot get away quick
      enough… supposedly.
      IMO politically you do not get from being master treachery artist to all round Country saving saints overnight, the night being 24/6/2016.

  19. Every penny spent on opera repays us in numerous ways.

    Michael Henderson (my favourite DT occasional columnist).

    Opera is in the dock again. Once more the charge sheet has been read out, almost salaciously: it costs too much to put on, and too few people are interested. The composers are almost exclusively dead white men, who were born in odd places like Italy, Germany and Russia, and the audience is full of snobs. Wouldn’t we be better off spending our money on work that reflects the vibrant, diverse nature of our own society?

    According to figures released by Arts Council England for 2017-18, the companies run by Welsh National Opera, Opera North and English National Opera received astronomical public subsidies. Opera North, for example, received £108 for each ticket it sold. Put like that, you don’t have to be a social justice warrior to wonder whether we are getting value for money.

    Yet the answer is: we are. No matter how much public money is showered on the opera, ballet and theatre companies in the UK, as a nation we feel the benefit many times over. One of the reasons this country is so attractive to people from overseas is the abundance of talent. No other land has produced so many gifted writers, actors, singers, musicians, and directors, and most owe their opportunity to subsidy.

    It is not a perfect world. Too much money still goes to London-based companies, though as London is the world’s leading city for the performing arts that is hardly a surprise. It is true that we need more income from private sources. In America there is a tradition of philanthropy that shames us on this side of the Atlantic, and not only in this country. A reliance on public money also encourages a conformist mentality, where people of like minds flock like birds of a feather. Will the National Theatre ever commission a play about grooming gangs? A truly national theatre would surely consider it.

    Kingsley Amis was on to something when he wrote that work reliant on subsidy would lead to people speaking to their peers, rather than a general audience. “Sod the public”, he called it. Nowhere is this clearer than the world of the visual arts. The Turner Prize has been a joke for years, and not a particularly funny one. The Booker Prize has gone the same way. If you really want to know which books are worth reading, don’t pay any attention to the Booker judges. As Keats knew, we must be suspicious of art that has designs upon us. Away, all you social engineers!

    Opera is expensive for a good reason. It requires plenty of bodies, in the pit and on the stage. At its greatest, though, in the music dramas of Mozart, Verdi and Wagner, to use the most obvious examples, it reaches heights that every human should experience. The Ring cycle will reveal far more about what it means to be alive than any number of finger-wagging films by Ken Loach.

    The real scandal in the cultural world is the price of theatre tickets. A trip to the West End is an increasingly grubby experience, which costs an arm and a leg. And when you look at the price of tickets for Premier League football, a night at the opera seems a steal! So who are the snobs? The folk who part with sizeable sums a dozen times a year to watch men kick a ball about, or those who treat themselves to an occasional evening at Covent Garden, one of the world’s great lyric theatres?

    We need our mummers, and we need our singers and musicians. It’s something we happen to do well, and the world thanks us for it, however much – or little – it may cost.

    2. Morning Grizz!

      Tickets to see a semi-staged opera at the Proms start at £6. How is that snobbery? Sadly, that will probably be the first thing to go if the BBC has to rely on subscription funding but that said, the Wigmore Hall manages to offer free or £5 tickets to under 35’s for a wide range of concerts and relies largely on private sponsors. Put on the right programmes and support is forthcoming.

        1. Ah but you might not enjoy living in a rabbit hutch in Hammersmith. It’s an attractive and very well situated Art Deco building, opened in 1937 and now Grade II listed but the individual units are very small.

      2. The Proms may benefit from being opened up to commercial sponsorship from private companies.

    3. I’m off to the Geilgud next month. A play by Ben Elton. Upstart Crow. I find David Mitchell in the TV series funny so thought it worth it. Tickets @£150. Lunch @£50. Drinks @£50. Train @£50. Hotel @£100. Per head.

      Snob yes. Pricey yes. Value for money yes.

      2. £50 on lunch! Good grief. Luxury! I’d take a packed lunch. Sandwiches.

        As for the train costing £50.. that’s just theft, unless it’s from Newcastle to London. Getting two people to London costs us over £100. 3 and it’s £270 for a small person.

        1. As i will be in London i thought i would treat myself to Simpsons on the Strand. They do a legendary Roast Beef served from a trolley.

          1. My wife gave me a present one year of a day-course in Simpsons’ kitchen, teaching the art of carving and roasting. It ended with my carving supper for my beloved. It also changed the way I roast meat, having switched to the Core Temperature method.

    4. Whether people like Opera or not it is culturally enriching. Which is the real reason these people want the funding spent elsewhere.

    5. I have reserved a seat to attend an opera to be performed in Salzburg in December.

      The composer is not a dead foreign man, but a teenage English girl, who composed the opera five years ago. The woke metropolitans hate her.

      The opera explores the themes of complementary love, of the conflict between personal dreams and public duty, of the power of generosity of spirit, a parody of modernist art, of the folly of ostentation and the virtue of simplicity, of lost love and found love, of the comparison between bereft orphanage and overbearing parenting… all this set in the context of a traditional tale and tuneful, memorable melodies one is encouraged to hum afterwards.

      The lady composer has been commissioned to write a new opera for the same company in Salzburg for premiering in 2022, with a working title ‘The Emperor’s New Waltz’. She is actually in her element at a formal debutante ball in Vienna waltzing to her own music – a childhood fantasy of an English girl which has actually come true for her.

      https://scontent.fbrs1-2.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/s960x960/82477747_10212565183243477_8419997631043862528_o.jpg?_nc_cat=107&_nc_ohc=mW_73ZyQZsYAX-d_oqR&_nc_ht=scontent.fbrs1-2.fna&_nc_tp=1002&oh=cb18a31a5daa5305df24584b445a04fa&oe=5E99FE2B

      1. “The opera explores the themes of complementary love, of the conflict
        between personal dreams and public duty, of the power of generosity of
        spirit, a parody of modernist art, of the folly of ostentation and the
        virtue of simplicity, of lost love and found love, of the comparison
        between bereft orphanage and overbearing parenting… all this set in
        the context of a traditional tale and tuneful, memorable melodies one is
        encouraged to hum afterwards.”
        I think that is why the majority of popular operas were written more than a hundred years ago.

        1. Not if this lady has anything to do with it. A future project of hers is to found a school whereby composers from this century can be trained up to do this.

    2. Good morning DB

      Another damp dog day. Moh mowed the back garden a couple of days ago… just skimmed the top .. Grass has been growing so quickly .

    3. Good morning, Delboy

      Are you the Father of the Nottler house being the oldest regular contributor? You were born in 1936 so you have a good ten years on me (b. 1946) and we even have some mere lads and lasses here who are still in their 50’s.

      1. Hi Richard. I don’t know if I’m the oldest (I suspect not). I genuinely see my age as merely a number as I am fit, healthy, active and busy. I don’t think I am a typical 83 year old.

    1. Of course they did. The House of Commons is the debating chamber in the Mother of Parliaments. It is not a padded cell for muffling the demented rantings of an imbecile.

    1. Lord Lisvane, one of his senior aides has filed the complaint of Bercow bullying. He does not deserve a peerage. BBC Radio 4 this morning

    1. The Chinese have a lot to answer for .. they are ruining this planet!
      Correction:

      The Chinese have a lot to answer for .. they are running this planet!

  24. Davos Doom-mongers herald a new dark age for climate science
    SHERELLE JACOBS – DAILY TELEGRAPH COLUMNIST – 23 JANUARY 2020 • 6:00AM

    Western civilisation has ditched evidence-based rigour for adolescent hysteria

    There is something sinister in the stiff mountain air at Davos this year. As ever, the spectacle is almost burlesque in its grotesqueness: the world’s elite has descended on the luxury ski resort in their private jets to discuss global warming over pan-seared Indonesian soy cutlets cooked by a celebrity vegan chef flown in from Canada. But underneath the seedy hypocrisy lingers an even murkier mendacity: an unthinking consensus on how to “save the planet”.

    Take the speech by Greta Thunberg, who rattled off Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change figures pertaining to requisite cuts in carbon emissions. “I’ve been repeating these numbers over and over again,” she droned as gormless CEOs and UN apparatchiks blinked at the hoodie-clad managtivist standing before them, grinding on about missed deadlines and squandered targets.

    Greta’s bland, corporate-friendly strategy is intriguing; it reinforces her ruse – that the science is mind-numbingly clear, the necessary actions are unquestionable, and that her task is simply to “continue to repeat” it until we are bored.

    Naturally, Donald Trump was having none of it. He let rip at this paper-shufflers’ PR stunt, dismissing the “predictions of the apocalypse” and “prophets of doom”. In his own ham-fisted way, the president was groping at – if not quite grasping – the disconcerting truth. Global warming is happening, but the climate science itself is messy, mystifying and ambivalent; the certainty with which eco-warriors present their case is thus disgracefully dishonest.

    The causal links made between global warming and the Australian bushfires is one example. Greta has tweeted her despair at the world’s failure “to make the connection between the climate crisis and extreme weather events and nature disasters like the #AustralianFires”. But the inconvenient truth is that scientists have not definitively linked the bushfires to climate change alone. It may be a factor among many. The Australian Academy of Science itself concedes: “Population growth, climate change, temperature extremes, droughts, storms, wind and floods are intersecting in ways that are difficult to untangle.”

    The misleading bushfires rhetoric barely scratches the surface of the problems with this consensus. “We know perfectly well” that humans are behind the heating of the planet, Sir David Attenborough proclaimed in a recent BBC interview: this is now a “crisis moment”. But Sir David’s onomatopoeically crumbly prose can’t distract from the shaky foundations of his apocalyptic assertions.

    You don’t need to dispute that man is contributing to global warming to question whether it is healthy to talk about the issue with such unwavering certainty, or to ask whether the situation is so urgent as to require the impoverishment of billions to fix it. Scientists have not indisputably proved that other factors are not also contributing. Studies of the heat going into the oceans by dissenters like the Israeli physicist Nir Shaviv, for example, suggest the Sun has a large effect on climate change. Eco-catastrophists have not credibly invalidated his findings, published in the prestigious Journal of Geophysical Research.

    Such uncertainties matter when people are being asked to make vast sacrifices in the name of reaching net zero carbon. All our efforts may not make a difference anyway. But contrary views are not permitted. Some researchers are chilled by the shift from scientific endeavour based on theory and evidence to reliance on IPCC-endorsed predictive modelling. Here the cult of managerialism and the mania of eco-catastrophism have dangerously intersected – as university bureaucrats push for research projects which pull in mouth-watering computer-based investment.

    Like Galileo and Descartes on the eve of the Enlightenment, scholars have found subtle ways to dodge the suspicions of inquisitorial reactionaries. They discreetly publish papers without press releases, or with incongruous “eco-consensus” inserts, even though these often jar with their findings.

    When did Western civilisation enter this new Dark Age? The creepy scenes of Greta’s machinic protestations at Davos offer a clue. Managerialism, an ideology that has filled the vacuum created by the collapse of communism and post-Seventies disillusionment with market capitalism, infects every corner of society. The twist is that it relies for its survival on the flagrant denial of the chaotic complexity upon which it feeds. It deems that all problems (like all corporations) share more similarities than differences, and can thus be solved through generic, optimised processes.

    Thus activists like Greta reduce climate change to a clearly diagnosed illness that can be treated by meeting precise deadlines, while the rest of us pay the bill. And thus our elites – who share the same arrogant belief that we have all the expertise to address the Earth’s intricacies – cravenly refuse to acknowledge anything that throws into doubt established “facts”. Sadly, until the era of managerialism falls in on itself, we are probably stuck.

    1. “Eco-catastrophists have not credibly invalidated… Studies of the heat going into the oceans by dissenters like the Israeli physicist Nir Shaviv,” which…” suggest the Sun has a large effect on climate change.”.
      Er well, try a thought experiment*. If the sun was switched off, would the Earth cool? If the sun were to double its output would the Earth warm up?

      *Thank you, James Clark Maxwell.

    2. Burial digs such as that are fascinating. There was one line in the story that stood out:

      “Archaeologists said that it was unusual for horses to be buried along with the chariot and human remains.”

      I would imagine that this was because good horses were too useful and valuable when alive to just be killed and placed alongside a dead human. Swords, shields and personal jewellery could be buried out of respect for the fallen, and we see those in other burial mounds. It is of course possible that the horses went “hooves up” along with the rider in a catastrophic high-speed impact with a tree or over a cliff edge, but that seems unlikely.

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/07f4ffbb8def18bee02580d2581fa7c82fdb39081582e70e7c390efaf51e08db.jpg

  29. Looks like YouTwatter below… NTTL must really chew into Disqus server storage capacity with all the photos and links…

  30. Tea.
    Must have tea.
    Overfilled to the point of shaking with coffee now, so tea is the only solution (during working hours).

    1. Tea: best drink of the day. In fact, best drink in the history of the universe. Especially Assam.

      1. I grew up with Corona. We had a bottle of limeade (and one more bottle from a selection of flavours); and two bottles of Tango (one each: orange and lemon) for Sunday dinner. They were delivered every Saturday morning. I still have my Corona crown-cork remover (bottle opener) in my kitchen drawer.

      3. I remember the bottle-caps that said something such as “10p back if you return the bottle.” So there was sensible incentive-based recycling even back then, without needing a doomgoblin threatening the destruction of the planet to get us motivated.

          1. You didn’t find many discarded that allowed you to have a couple of gobstoppers and some liquorice for free when you cashed in your booty.

        3. Good afternoon, Meredith

          You are showing your youth just as I am showing my age by remembering that it was just 2d deposit.

          My wife was born the year I took my O” levels, 1962. Were you born before or after that date?

          1. I was born in the summer of ’69. We even had a song that celebrates the time. The end of the morally deteriorating 60’s and before the mindless 90’s. It was a good time to be growing up as the rot had not fully set in at that point. We had TV programs that scared the hell out of us as kids, and programs such as “Secret Army” which told us at least something about lives in the recent past. Instead of pretending that the 1939-1945 period did not happen. It was not all “diversity, PC, non-think and 100 genders” as the poor souls are being brainwashed with now. 🙂

            Here is one example of the children’s TV that was on when we came home from school in the 70’s. The opening sequence to “The Feathered Serpent” with the excellent Patrick Troughton, which was about Aztec civilisation and human sacrifice, was watched by us in the 7 – 9 year old range. It would scare the 19 year old snowflakes of today into a coma. It would not be allowed within a mile of their “safe spaces.”

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kqpDwXQhB8

        1. When I was a boy we used to go looking for bottles that had been thrown away to recover the 2d deposit. This more than doubled my weekly pocket money as a dozen bottles yielded 2/-.

          1. We get that here in Norway, street bums and kids searching the bins for deposit bottles thrown away.

      5. Modern bottles, RP. I was brought up on the flip-top bottles with a ceramic stopper and rubber seal, rather like the picture below. My Gran always had a couple of bottles of Corona on the end shelf of her kitchen dresser. Whenever I visited her I received a glass of pop and a banana as a treat. Small pleasures never forgotten. Grand lady my Gran but woe betide you if you stepped out line.

        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7ab400976b844ac5b41c3acf43399870caed06054627e09594c0b06121ac40e9.png

        1. Even the name “fizzy pop” reminds me of my Great-Aunt Hilda (grandmother’s sister – grandmother died before I was born, so Hilda was a stand-in – a position she filled very effectively.

          1. The visitor’s book in a suite I stayed in at The Royal Crescent Hotel in Bath, a few years’ back, had one page purportedly signed by Arthur Scargill. It was another page that amused me most, though.

            “Wonderful hotel. Gorgeous suite. Fantastic four-poster bed. We played ‘hide the sausage!’ ALL NIGHT LONG!” [Signed with a female name].

        2. The first time I read that it was written in blue ball-point on the back of a toilet door in Morocco in 1973.

          The door was covered in reading material, presumably written by sufferers of the Tangier Trots.

          1. There’s a one eyed yellow Idol
            on the Road to Katmandu
            and a Ladies a little further on
            where for a penny on deposit
            you can sit upon the Closet
            and see sights worth at least a half o crown….

          2. Another memorable plea on the same door was ‘Has anybody got a cure for a frayed arse?’

          3. Tiny scrawl written on the bottom of the inside of the bog door:

            “You are shitting at an angle of 45º.”

          5. I feel I must write a complaint on this wall:
            The seat is too high and the hole is too small.
            I feel I must write the obvious retort
            You bum is too big and your legs are too short.

            A rather prim maiden aunt of mine told me this one which I found rather shocking as I was only five yeas old.

          2. Scene: The underground.
            Japanese tourist: Can you terr me the way to Cockfosters?
            Paul Hogan: Yes, mite. Drink it warm.

  31. Good Morning, all

    SIR – The TV licence costs less than £3 a week. That’s about the cost of one cup of coffee. What’s all the fuss about?

    Gwyneth Dear
    Sevenoaks, Kent

    Because output from the BBC is like crappy coffee.

    1. I refuse to pay £3 for a up of coffee. I have never understood why people turn up to work I the morning clutching a huge Costa or Starbucks coffee when they could make a coffee for 20p when they arrive.

      1. I enjoy a really good flat white on the way into U3A at my fave restaurant. Usually it’s on the house, but when not, I don’t object to paying £3 including a tip.

        1. Good morning Peddy,

          I keep a special mug in my car.. for one of my my rare visits to Waitrose, I have a latte after my shopping trip , very enjoyable , just sipping as I sit in the car.

        2. When It’s wild, wet and windy don’t you get soaked through having your coffee on the house, Peddy? Why not do what other customers do and sit at a table inside? (Good morning, btw.)

      2. I tend to agree, but first, define “Coffee.”
        Do you mean a beverage freshly brewed from roast & crushed coffee beans?
        Or do you mean a cup of hot water containing a teaspoon full of powder?

        1. Neither, I for one have a filter coffee machine in my office. They’re very cheap to buy and make five or six cups which can be shared with others, or kept warm for later.

          2. If you do not use a coffee machine with a hot shoe and let the coffee cool down slowly then when you reheat it in a micro-wave it has none of that bitter stewed taste.

          3. Ah, but Bugsknees specifically said may be kept warm for later

            Always read the question — how many times did you repeat that to your pupils? 😉

        2. “…a beverage freshly brewed from roast & crushed coffee beans…” using a percolator on top of the cooker. The percolator is preferred as being less nerve-racking then a vacuum machine such as the Santos or Cona. The vacuum machine is much more exciting, however, as it rumbles and shakes with the weight of the coffee in the upper chamber before it gurgles into the jug below.
          It is regrettable that Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee is so expensive. A million years ago, in the 70s, there were far fewer coffee drinkers. I had coffee every morning, buying Blue Mountain beans from the Licensed Victualler. It was less expensive then, but still dearer than Kenyan. I will not dwell on instant “coffee”.
          Now I start the day with a cup of freshly percolated Java. I only drink coffee at breakfast, so I enjoy it. Aah!
          I have a tin of Blue Mountain in the freezer waiting for an auspicious day.

  32. Our future is not assured’: Schiff issues stark warning at impeachment trial. 23 January 2020.

    “I don’t think the impeachment power is a relic. If it is a relic, I wonder how much longer our republic can succeed,” said Schiff. “If we don’t stand up to this peril today, we will write the history of our decline with our own hand.”

    Morning everyone. Watching America’s political travails one is irresistibly reminded of the Roman Republic in its death throes. Trump of course does not possess Caesar’s genius but has like the great demagogue lined up the people and the money on his side while the Democratic Party has alienated pretty well everyone except its own members. Schiff is a latter day Cato well able to see the dangers that Trump represents, but like his forerunner is only helping to bring about that which he abhors.

    The substance of Democracy is fading throughout the world and when that of the United States falls, it will be over for the rest of us!

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/22/trump-impeachment-house-managers-oral-arguments-senate-trial

    1. “…….. one is irresistibly reminded of the Roman Republic in its death throes.”

      Indeed. I have sometimes referred to what’s happening now as the Caligulafication of society.

      Morning Minty and everyone else.

  34. I get the feeling that the people behind and the people that support climate change would not allow a cheap clean form of energy if it could be invented, they like being prophets Of Doom, the power it gives them over people they do not like and the dystopia they want to inflict on them.

  37. From the comments below, Sir David Attenborough has been rumbling on again with the climate change propaganda. I really liked his documentaries, and him, before his political views were known. When he said that the people of the UK should not have been allowed to have a referendum, and it should have been left to the politicians to decide our future with the EU, the respect for him that many held fell away.

    He has spent a lifetime on holiday doing what he loves, paid for by the BBC’s television tax. There were others who deserved that Knighthood far more.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d43725d31819822ada07d822ffb4cd3789f8aa58d9e8f302d8b2d43d49d1d2aa.jpg

    1. I’m still trying hard to convince my brother that Attenborough is NOT the ‘national treasure’ that the BBC likes us all to think he is.

          9. Angie and Stephen,

            I remember Armand and Michaela Denis very well from my childhood and their films were marvellous. Jacques Yves Cousteau, the inventor of the SCUBA is an all-time hero of mine. The Undersea World Of Jacques Cousteau was unmissable on Sunday afternoons in the 1970s.

            Do either of you also remember Hans and Lotte Hass, also pioneers of underwater filming?

          11. I know of them via the Hans Hass Institut in Germany and footage purchases for BBC programmes.

          12. I remember all three, Grizzly. Also George Cansdale who appeared on children’s TV, often with a cute bushbaby on his shoulder.

          14. My childhood hero was on ITV. Dr Desmond Morris (of Zoo Time and The Naked Ape, Manwatching etc…) was the biggest influence on my thinking about the natural world.

            Later in life I got in personal contact with Mike Tomkies, who produced many books; on his solitary existence in the wilds of Canada, where he wrote about his encounters with grizzly bears, black bears, and cougars; and in Scotland, where he helped in improving the survival rates of Scottish wildcats and golden eagles.

            Giants of men, both, in my eyes.

          15. Bushbabies actually stink.
            They pee on their hands to leave a marker.
            Thank goodness we still don’t have Smellovision.

          18. I read somewhere recently that he was a bit of sod himself and not much liked. Was he in charge of London Zoo? Not sure.

          1. I wanted to marry her ciné cameras. Bell and Howell and CineKodak Specials I seem to recall.

        3. Lady Michaela Denis Lindsay, who passed away on 4th May 2003 aged 89. One of my BBC colleagues back in the 90’s grew fond of her through having to phone and write to ask permission for use of archive footage. She was quite a character and I know he enjoyed their phone conversations. I recall her letters were always hand written, never typed.

      2. I have never rated him since he refused to be the DG and just carried on his non job.

        1. He did manage to sign off some excellent stuff when running BBC2

          “Programmes he commissioned included Man Alive, Call My Bluff, Chronicle, Match of the Day, The Old Grey Whistle Test, Monty Python’s Flying Circus and The Money Programme, Civilisation, The Ascent of Man.”

    2. Attenborough studied Zoology and Geology which led to a degree in Natural Sciences at Clare College Cambridge. In the 1960’s he studied for a postgraduate degree in Social Anthropology at The London School of Economics but did not finish the course because the BBC invited him to return to the BBC as controller of BBC2.

      Whether or not this cv qualifies him to pontificate on man-made climate change is a moot point.

    3. What he does is commentate and read scripts written by others. (Oh the lovely animals, in danger because of vile humans…)
      He does not take the films, and he does not write the commentary, does he?

  38. Number of suspects charged by police hits new low

    The odds are well in your favor that you will get away with crime

    Crime pays in the UK. Only 7.3% are charged

    In addition, 1.4% of crimes led to a caution, 2.3% led to an informal warning and 0.1% were “taken into consideration” – meaning an offender admitted them as part of another investigation.

    No figure is given as to how many actually get a prison sentence

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51221054

  39. BBC News Latest…….

    I gather from the small print hidden away under the news about India’s first female robot astronaut, that Prince Charles is in Jerusalem (the Capital of Israel, oy veh) for the commemoration of 75 years of the liberation of Auschwitz.
    There are two mentions of this, one without a meaningful header. The BBC seem a little embarrassed about it, maybe because it shows Charles in a good light, or because it might upset Jeremy Corbyn.
    I am saving up hard to be able to pay my licence fee next year.

  41. Morrisons supermarket axes 3,000 managers in huge shake-up

    Morrisons is axing 3,000 management roles as part of a huge restructuring to create more shop floor jobs. The firm says it is also creating 7,000 new hourly-paid roles at its 500 stores, meaning a net 4,000 new posts. The new jobs will be in customer-facing roles, such as more butchers, bakers, fishmongers, the supermarket said.

  42. May one ask is the governments potential plague rating
    their honest assessment as in low risk up to risk ?
    Because if it goes any higher then tight security would have to be set up to stem the cross channel flow.
    I do honestly believe that even the most pro party first, in the electorate would draw the line at importing what could turn out to be a deadly plague.
    The electorate have form as shown by supporting the mass uncontrolled immigration plague, but that could be explained away as a semi deadly plague.

      1. Afternoon Anne,
        How long have the five cases been back in country (Scotland )
        was they the only five to return on whatever date, more God forbid could very well be hatching elsewhere confused with flu symptoms.
        Then again the real take on the issues will receive a type of
        D notice via the PC, Appeasement umbrella.

    2. Immigrants have already brought in diseases that had been eradicated here. A nice plague crisis might be just what Mr Palindrome wants, for its disruptive effect.

      1. Evening HL,
        After the initial shock of the nose rubbing, latch lifting exercise
        by that chap b liar & co why did the herd insist on supporting / voting for mass uncontrolled immigration parties.
        One of the toxic trio took up where tother left off.
        That was years ago and the Country has deteriorated on a daily basis since.
        TB was one of the nicer return items we received along with
        mass murder, mass rape & abuse & mass infrastructure abuse.
        Still the party comes first regardless, in the ballot booth.

  45. 4 people in Scotland being tested for the China Corona virus [BBC News] I expect they may find cases in England to test.

      1. Joking aside, this is what happens when you set out to attract foreigners to this country. Students who pay high fees mean lots of dosh for universities. We need immigrant to boost our (very slightly) falling population. We could not upset the feminists by suggesting that abortion should not happen, but that pregnancies be brought to term and the babies adopted.
        No, far better to bring in all sorts from anywhere. Presumably health checks would be racist? The insanity of allowing all and sundry free and unfettered and unchecked access to our country has been amply demonstrated in recent years with the reintroduction of poxes, and virulent TB.
        Now something incurable is spreading. but that won’t change their minds, will it? Because that would be racist.

        2. Afternoon HP,
          Now who would support / vote for a
          mass uncontrolled immigration party, I ask yer ?

        1. I was looking at the page when they both appeared almost simultaneously.
          I suspect that had you not written your bit at the beginning of your post it would have been yours that popped up first.

    2. “Sherelle Jacobs is to my mind the outstanding journalist of the DT.”
      She certainly is.

      Thanks for posting.

          1. I see we have all forgotten to include Wee Willie Vague in best journalist category.
            Well done all!

      1. I’ll try for you:

        Premium
        Telegraph News
        Davos Doom-mongers herald a new dark age for climate science
        SHERELLE JACOBS
        DAILY TELEGRAPH COLUMNIST
        Follow 23 JANUARY 2020 • 6:00AM
        Save
        390
        A mural with the portrait of Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, painted by Portuguese artists
        Dissenting scholars are deliberately conducting their research under the radar for fear of a backlash from eco-catastrophists CREDIT: YASIN AKGUL/ AFP
        Western civilisation has ditched evidence-based rigour for adolescent hysteria
        There is something sinister in the stiff mountain air at Davos this year. As ever, the spectacle is almost burlesque in its grotesqueness: the world’s elite has descended on the luxury ski resort in their private jets to discuss global warming over pan-seared Indonesian soy cutlets cooked by a celebrity vegan chef flown in from Canada. But underneath the seedy hypocrisy lingers an even murkier mendacity: an unthinking consensus on how to “save the planet”.

        Take the speech by Greta Thunberg, who rattled off Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change figures pertaining to requisite cuts in carbon emissions. “I’ve been repeating these numbers over and over again,” she droned as gormless CEOs and UN apparatchiks blinked at the hoodie-clad managtivist standing before them, grinding on about missed deadlines and squandered targets.

        Greta’s bland, corporate-friendly strategy is intriguing; it reinforces her ruse – that the science is mind-numbingly clear, the necessary actions are unquestionable, and that her task is simply to “continue to repeat” it until we are bored.

        Naturally, Donald Trump was having none of it. He let rip at this paper-shufflers’ PR stunt, dismissing the “predictions of the apocalypse” and “prophets of doom”. In his own ham-fisted way, the president was groping at – if not quite grasping – the disconcerting truth. Global warming is happening, but the climate science itself is messy, mystifying and ambivalent; the certainty with which eco-warriors present their case is thus disgracefully dishonest.

        The causal links made between global warming and the Australian bushfires is one example. Greta has tweeted her despair at the world’s failure “to make the connection between the climate crisis and extreme weather events and nature disasters like the #AustralianFires”. But the inconvenient truth is that scientists have not definitively linked the bushfires to climate change alone. It may be a factor among many. The Australian Academy of Science itself concedes: “Population growth, climate change, temperature extremes, droughts, storms, wind and floods are intersecting in ways that are difficult to untangle.”

        The misleading bushfires rhetoric barely scratches the surface of the problems with this consensus. “We know perfectly well” that humans are behind the heating of the planet, Sir David Attenborough proclaimed in a recent BBC interview: this is now a “crisis moment”. But Sir David’s onomatopoeically crumbly prose can’t distract from the shaky foundations of his apocalyptic assertions.

        You don’t need to dispute that man is contributing to global warming to question whether it is healthy to talk about the issue with such unwavering certainty, or to ask whether the situation is so urgent as to require the impoverishment of billions to fix it. Scientists have not indisputably proved that other factors are not also contributing. Studies of the heat going into the oceans by dissenters like the Israeli physicist Nir Shaviv, for example, suggest the Sun has a large effect on climate change. Eco-catastrophists have not credibly invalidated his findings, published in the prestigious Journal of Geophysical Research.

        Such uncertainties matter when people are being asked to make vast sacrifices in the name of reaching net zero carbon. All our efforts may not make a difference anyway. But contrary views are not permitted. Some researchers are chilled by the shift from scientific endeavour based on theory and evidence to reliance on IPCC-endorsed predictive modelling. Here the cult of managerialism and the mania of eco-catastrophism have dangerously intersected – as university bureaucrats push for research projects which pull in mouth-watering computer-based investment.

        Like Galileo and Descartes on the eve of the Enlightenment, scholars have found subtle ways to dodge the suspicions of inquisitorial reactionaries. They discreetly publish papers without press releases, or with incongruous “eco-consensus” inserts, even though these often jar with their findings.

        When did Western civilisation enter this new Dark Age? The creepy scenes of Greta’s machinic protestations at Davos offer a clue. Managerialism, an ideology that has filled the vacuum created by the collapse of communism and post-Seventies disillusionment with market capitalism, infects every corner of society. The twist is that it relies for its survival on the flagrant denial of the chaotic complexity upon which it feeds. It deems that all problems (like all corporations) share more similarities than differences, and can thus be solved through generic, optimised processes.

        Thus activists like Greta reduce climate change to a clearly diagnosed illness that can be treated by meeting precise deadlines, while the rest of us pay the bill. And thus our elites – who share the same arrogant belief that we have all the expertise to address the Earth’s intricacies – cravenly refuse to acknowledge anything that throws into doubt established “facts”. Sadly, until the era of managerialism falls in on itself, we are probably stuck.

        4. I am impressed by this journalist but she needs to learn the difference between carbon and carbon dioxide.

      2. He took it down immediately he realised that zxcv3 had posted exactly the same article seconds before his post appeared.

  48. London knife crime hits record high with more than 15,000 offences in a year

    Knife crime in London has risen to a new high amid a nationwide surge in blade-offending, official figures revealed today.
    The Office for National Statistics said that 15,080 knife offences were recorded in the capital during the 12 months to the end of last September.

    It amounts to a two per cent rise on the previous year and indicates the Met’s efforts to bear down on the problem are having only limited effect.

  49. Teenager fighting for life and another hurt after double stabbing near Costa coffee shop in Finsbury Park

    A teenager is today fighting for his life in hospital after being knifed in a double stabbing in north London.
    Police and paramedics were scrambled to the scene outside a Costa coffee shop in Seven Sisters Road, Finsbury Park, on Wednesday evening.

    They arrived to find two 18-year-old men suffering stab injuries. Both were treated at the scene before being rushed to hospital.

    One of the victims is in a critical condition and the other’s wounds were not believed to be life-threatening.

  50. Sky and NBC team up for new global news channel under owner Comcast

    Sky and NBC News are teaming up under joint owner Comcast to launch an international news service with a base in the UK, senior executives have revealed.

    he English-speaking channel will be called NBC Sky World News and is set to go live this summer, creating a rival to the BBC World Service and CNN in terms of global news coverage.

    The move comes almost 18 months after US cable giant Comcast, which has wholly owned NBC Universal since 2013, spent more than £40bn taking over Sky, including its Sky News division

  51. Greater Anglia introduces new fleet of modern trains on Gainsborough Line to and from Sudbury

    Something wrong with that picture. If it were 5:30am it would be dark

    A new fleet of longer trains were put into service for the first time this week, running from Sudbury to Marks Tey.
    Greater Anglia has replaced its old diesel train stock on the Gainsborough Line with new, longer, three-carriage trains, powered by diesel and electricity.
    The first of the new trains ran on Tuesday from Sudbury at 5.30am – and South Suffolk MP James Cartlidge was up bright and early to ensure he was among the first commuters to travel on the new train’s maiden day in service.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/60fd7f2ca89f80cc864d64d2bbea9cba531d9e17245ea7ca3edbe2035eaa45fa.jpg

  52. More details on Enfield tube station flats scheme

    More details have been revealed about a plan to build flats at a tube station car park in Enfield.
    Connected Living London (CLL) – a partnership between Transport for London (TfL) and developer Grainger – wants to build up to 370 homes at Cockfosters Underground Station.
    The developer plans to build four blocks of one, two and three-bedroom units at the site – 40 per cent of which would be classed as affordable.
    While parking spaces for blue badge holders would be retained, the rest of the station car park would be built on.

      1. Sound like they will be creating a lot of congestion and parking problems. Many people drive to Cockfosters to catch the tube. Bus services around there are not great

    2. What is it that makes you think that the 95% of us on this forum who are lucky that we do NOT live within the area encompassed by the M25 would care a warthog’s scrotum about the boring crap that goes on there?

        1. I certainly do and you can read all about them in my recent book, Scroti of the Animal Kingdom.

          Warthogs, in particular, are dealt with in Chapter 17: Swine and Socialists.

          [Scroti of the Animal Kingdom, by A Grizzly B, Ladybird Books, ISBN: 987654321, £35 (hardback).]

          13. I request editions that can no longer be purchased and then i tell them it was stolen. The fee is normally about £20 to cover admin. Some of those books are very rare and when the heat is off i sell them.

          16. Latin scholars would say that the plural of scrotum is scrota i.e. nominative plural of a second declension neuter noun.

      2. Grizz happy Thursday. Firstly thinking is specifically banned on Disqus and secondly I am beginning to come round to the idea that Bill Jackson is not an actual human poster but an automated Bot programme – a sort of Alexa ( which does not respond to readers comments & is certainly not programmed to upvote them ) operated by somebody viewing this blog ( but not posting ) who has decided lets bore the pants off of NTTL readers with countless pieces of trivia of no interest to man nor beast.

        2. I agree – in spite of the fact that I have occasionally upvoted his comment(s). Even his name sounds a generic UK name of a certain vintage.

          Good evening, Mr Hat.

          1. It’s not his real name – if you look at his profile you’ll see he also goes by the name of Bob Evans. Probably not the real one either. Anyway, he’s fairly harmless.

          4. Hello Mahatma,

            You mean that the possibility of taking over NTTL is to get Nottlers smashed? Some of us would be easy pickings…some of us are halfway there by 9 pm.

          10. Here’s an example of a response.

            Bill Jackson

            Araminta Smade

            11 hours ago

            More to do with very low viewing figures

            3

            Reply

            View in discussion

        3. I have received a few upvotes from him/it as well as relevant and amusing replies.

          OK , not very often but it has happened.

        4. If I walked into a house that had an “Alexa” on the table, I would say to it: “Alexa, from now on, you only answer to the name Doris! Got it?”

          Happy Thursday, Pud.

  53. Waltham Forest’s 10-year housing target reduced by more than 6,000 homes

    Waltham Forest’s 10-year housing target has been reduced by more than 6,000 homes, sparking an argument about the borough’s own plan.
    The Mayor of London reduced the target from 17,940 to 12,640 after a report revealed smaller sites were being over-estimated and the original figure might not be deliverable.
    Waltham Forest Council’s draft local plan currently aims to build 27,000 homes in the next 15 years, an average of 1,800 per year.

  54. Almost 60,000 retail jobs were lost last year

    There seems to be a lot of massaging of figure. Large numbers of jobs are being lost but they keep claiming underemployment is low. It simply does not add up

    Around 57,000 retail jobs were lost last year, according to a new report.
    The British Retail Consortium blamed the continuing transformation of the industry along with other issues such as the uncertainty brought about by Brexit and the election.
    Employment in the sector fell for the 16th consecutive quarter during the final few months of 2019, with more losses among full-time workers than part-time workers.
    The report also revealed that almost two out of every five employers in retail are planning to hire fewer staff in the coming months.

    1. “It simply does not add up”. Perhaps not if you are from the D Abbott School of Maths but a loss of 57,000 retail jobs is less than one quarter of a percent of the 25+ million people in work, and is dwarfed by typical annual rises in excess of 100,000 people in work.

  55. QT at 22.35 BBC1…

    Panellist Theresa Villiers
    Panellist Emily Thornberry (fresh from being lacerated by The Badger)
    Panellist Trevor Phillips
    Panellist Mike Barton
    Panellist Sarah Baxter

      1. It could be Mike Barton, former chief constable of Durham Police – or the deputy editor of the Sunday Times, Sarah Baxter …

        “Who Dares, Wins …”

      1. I helped my Son in law set up his 8″ telescope and viewed the rings of Saturn through it – magical.

        1. The first time I looked through a telescope that showed those rings, with the planet just seemingly hanging there in the void, I was speechless.

          1. That, the Moon and the Orion Nebula are my faves. Just as well as my piddly 6″ doesn’t show much more 🙂

          2. I’m sure your wife is perfectly happy with it… Oh, sorry, i thought we were talking about something else. My mistake. :o(

          7. I can make out the red spot on Jupiter when I look at it (as well as the four Galilean moons). However, Saturn’s rings take some beating.

          8. Even with his 8″ scope the red spot wasn’t visible but the rings resembled Galileo’s drawings.

    2. Many many years ago when the UK had Coastguards I went to the Coastguard station on Hengistbury Head and borrowed the Coastguard’s extremely powerful binoculars to focus on the full moon at dusk . The detail was so great you could practically see the astronauts playing golf!

        1. It does run a warning flag up the pole when we recall that Turkey was one of those “modern islamic countries” that the EU was working towards becoming a member state. Having islam as the basis for laws in the EU would let some of those corrupt and “overly child friendly” politicians get away with what we would call child abuse at this point.

          They could also get away with murder far more easily, as we have seen with the treatment of journalists who unwisely visit Saudi embassies.

          1. We already have dozens and dozens. Every town in Scotland has at least one Turkish Barber shop. Obviously a skilled and necessary trade that qualifies for a visa and residence.

          8. Morning HP,
            They are
            barbers in waiting.
            Carry on with the voting pattern that is responsible for our sad, sorry odious state as a nation and we will shortly need more than bandages for a close shave, guaranteed.

    3. BJ,
      We have in place a turkish delight &
      amnesties R me chap as Pm.
      Some years back female politicos were openly in talks with PIE & around about that time the age of consent being lowered to 12 or lower.
      Seeing as I regard the lab/lib/con as a
      coalition nothing would surprise me in the odious department.

  58. UK hospitals are not meeting their targets, gettaway, well I never.
    Awaiting ambulances times longer, awaiting
    seeing doctors appointments longer,awaiting operations
    longer, awaiting on the social housing list longer, etc,etc.
    More patient / occupiers / & maybe a touch of pestilence are crossing the channel as we type, I take it
    those in governance currently have all the safeguards in place, maybe there is a lab/lib/con supporter / voter out there could tell me ” no worries, it is so,” but they would say that wouldn’t they.

    1. The article did not even mention how Hydrogen gets produced commercially – a huge amount of it is made from Methane. Per Wikipedia:

      First stage:

      CH4 + H2O → CO + 3 H2

      In a second stage, additional hydrogen is generated:

      CO + H2O → CO2 + H2

      Essentially, the oxygen (O) atom is stripped from the additional water (steam) to oxidize CO to CO2. This oxidation also provides energy to maintain the reaction. Additional heat required to drive the process is generally supplied by burning some portion of the methane.

      Guess what they do with the CO2?

      The other production method is electrolysis, but that requires a lot of electricity, which of course has to come from somewhere….

  62. The likeliest thing to wipe out humans isn’t climate change, it’s the next pandemic. With the anti-vax movement, our growing resistance to

    antibiotics, and the speed at which air travel can spread disease – a modern version of the Black Death would decimate us

    Have they checked their facts out with Greta the Bleata

    Until she confirms the danger of the ‘flu’ no-one is allowed to act

    Or is it just another product of air travel (for the poor peolpe)

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/comment/pandemic-humans-extinct-air-travel/

    1. It wouldn’t wipe out everyone, but could put a serious dent in the population, which would presumably please the climate change mob.
      The Black Death halved the European population. It eventually recovered, and in this country put an end to the system of serfdom that had existed since the time of the Norman invasion. Wages and opportunities improved, greatly benefiting the peasants.

      1. OLT did say decimate, which means 1 in 10 would die, so not as many as the Black Death. Perhaps another epidemic will benefit the ordinary person again and dispose of all those who worship at the altar of PC.

  63. There’s an interesting story behind this one. The wide beam barge was cruised up from Bristol to have a dry dock survey prior to a prospective sale. Whilst in the dry dock repairs were undertaken to the chamber walls of lock. When the time came to motor back to Bristol the barge wouldn’t fit in the repaired lock so had to be cruised to Devizes where this 200 ton lift crane was commissioned to crane it out onto a low loader….

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/153bef017c3914c0ed321a2350b13ac224f519a6864a81dba90075b94326bd21.jpg

        1. I dived several times to shift a broken brick that was stopping a lock gate fully opening, so that a cruiser could enter the lock. Just those few inches were enough.

          1. Nah, when I say his private bank, I mean his private bank.

            He uses clearing banks for his visible wealth.

          1. I might be 100% wrong on this, but I can’t think of a landscape less likely to produce an echo that those broken, eroded cliffs.

    2. Not sure what you are referring to, Stephen. I got an ‘uptick’ from the ‘Olde Curmudgeone’ about six days ago in response to a particularly foul and character-damning posting of mine. He lives and breathes. He is merely enjoying his last time in budgie-smugglers with an adoring MR looking on. He will return ….with a charming vengeance….at a juncture when it suits him. He doesn’t know this but my best friend from skule & Cantab wot became a judge lives in Gunthorpe, the village adjacent to Bill and thinks he’s a ….pooft…

          5. I don’t know how to check, (GG does) but I suspect that my down vote number even exceeds my total posts.

            If so, I’m delighted.

            If some sad lefty thinks I’m worth silencing I must be doing something right.

          7. Ummm…
            You’ve posted ~ 14,000 times and have ~21,000 votes.
            Many people have more than ~50,000 posts and zero votes (in fact probably ~ 1,000’s of down votes)

            It would take years of normal posting to even get to +1.

  65. Hi, all.
    I’ve been out most of the day, visiting my poor mum in the care home.
    The care home is ok, and so is she, but she’s slowly deteriorating because of the Alzheimer’s disease. I think she still sort-of recognises me, but only as someone vaguely familiar.

    Anyway, on our way to the home we passed about 12 wind turbines somewhere near Cambridge. Not one was moving. Of another 4 that we passed on the way back, two were rotating, but very, very slowly, and one was completely still.
    I had trouble getting the wood fire to light properly – the burner filled up with smoke, I think because the chimney was cold and there was absolutely no draw on the chimney.
    Which brings me to my point: I’ve just checked Gridwatch, and at the moment, renewables are only supplying 17% of the required electricity for the country. There’s nothing from solar, of course, and it was so dull today little would have been produced even at midday. Wind is currently only producing 8%.
    That’s not exactly going to keep industry and the economy going, is it??

    1. Happy Thursday ims2. Sorry to read about your mothers Alzheimer, I am caring for a relative with Alzheimers , it is a most terrible affliction
      Regarding UK energy production, wind turbines are a scam benefiting only the politically well connected wealthy owners of the wind turbine industry & can never produce a constant & reasonably priced source of electricity. Nor can solar in the UK simply because the UK has too little sunshine, which leaves nuclear , natural gas & coal ( which I guess has been phased out by now despite its abundance ) . IMO nuclear is the best & most reliable source of power followed by natural gas, the only drawback is the UK is running out of it and is then faced with the prospect of importing it from among other nations – the Russians ! Hopefully within a few years the Israel / Cyprus / Italy East Med pipeline will be built & Europe & the UK will be able to lessen its dependence on Russia for natural gas.

      1. Fracking is also the way to go, with nuclear, but the government has chickened out in the face of the green blob. Cowards.

    2. I’m sorry about your mum, Ims. Not something to look forward to, but it sounds like she is at least comfortable.

    3. But you are supposed to use the correct day to compare energy sources. For example if you had chosen Dec 25th, you would have found that.renewables provided enough power to meet industrial demand. That is if nuclear counts as renewable.

          1. Obviously not, but it’s not renewable either. Naturally occurring radioactive materials are much older than any fossils found on our planet.

        2. We know that but when it suits them the ecoloons sometimes lump nuclear in with renewables as a clean fuel.

    4. There was very little wind in the Cambridge area today.

      In the days of open fires it was often the practice to burn a sheet or 2 of newspaper in the ‘mouth’ of the chimney ‘to show the smoke where to go’.

    1. Please give me numbers 1,3 and 4 of your PIN.
      I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that.
      Please give me numbers 4,1 and 2 of your PIN.
      Thank you, and just to confirm that I’m speaking to the correct person, please let me have the three numbers on the back of your credit card.

      Thank you, sucker.

      Great phone banking session tonight, indeed…

    2. “Hello this is the London friends of Hamas hotline, Mr. Corbyn is not here right now but if you will give me your credit card or bank account details I will see that your donation goes to one of our needy Jihadist bombers families ! “

      1. I remember the Foster parents who had their Foster children taken away because the were found to be supporters of UKIP.

        Of course we musn’t separate a child from his jihadi bride mother and must give them a taxpayer funded house and all the benefits they can eat.

          1. I only broke my IKEA (that’s “Ick-Ay-Ah”) virginity a couple of years ago aged 66. I haven’t been back since!

          1. Tried them once, on the way back from a climbing trip to the Lofotens – tasted very akin to salt water flavoured boiled blotting paper?

          3. They are round balls like meatballs – but very small made with fish and flour. And other stuff. Usually, they are ghastly – every Scandi child’s nightmare…

          4. They are round balls like meatballs – but very small made with fish and flour. And other stuff. Usually, they are ghastly – every Scandi child’s nightmare…

          5. Hello HL,

            Oh dear , are they served with a sauce ..

            R’s dear late mother used to serve up braised faggots for Saturday lunch time .. R loved them , but even the thought of them makes me feel bad .. I would rather eat haggis than those!

          7. I forgot to answer your question – yes they are served with sauce – either creamy fish sauce or more traditionally (it was a poor person’ dish) in milk.

            In fact nowadays in good restaurants one can get lovely fiskeboller in delicious sauce.

          8. Never had them but I’ve had the most disgusting thing yet: sillburgare! The bloody thing was repeating for three days.

          10. No, Belle. Caviar is fish eggs. Fiskbollar are like meatballs but made from the worst fish waste.

    2. But the other 8 are delighted to support the doomgoblin’s way of life, and can’t thank it enough for the employment opportunities she offers.

          1. I have a look at that site occasionally, but haven’t seen HP. Is he sulking because of Brexit, or just worrying about us ?

  69. Sars corona virus has mutated. Cities are being quarantined. It has spread to Singapore. All flight and trains cancelled. Fighting over food in supermarkets. A delicacy on menus in Chinese cities is whole Bat.

    Are these the end days?

    1. According to airline statistics relating to flights in and out of Whuahn (?) several hundred thousand people, now widely dispersed, may have been exposed to the disease.

    3. Probably.

      About 15 minutes ago I found a very small bat fluttering on the ground, looking somewhat the worse for wear.
      I’ve placed it in a warmer sheltered bit of the garage but I suspect it won’t survive.
      Not enough meat to make a meal of it.

      1. I wonder how long the Chinese Government covered this up for before being forced to reveal the outbreak?
        Also, are they giving the full story regarding the severity of the disease?

        1. Apparently the authorities are planning to move in with flamethrowers because there is now a Zombie Alert.
          Stop press: Greta has objected to the use of fire, except against pensioners.

        2. The fact they had to quarantine an entire city of 11 million people by preventing travel in and out shows how bad it must be.

          3. The real giveaway will be what steps they take to enforce the quarantine.

            If they use lethal force we’ll know we’re in serious trouble as the genie is already out of the bottle and heading our way.

      1. Fenrir, also called Fenrisúlfr, monstrous wolf of Norse mythology. He was the son of the demoniac god Loki and a giantess, Angerboda. … According to one version of the myth, Fenrir will devour the sun, and in the Ragnarök he will fight against the chief god Odin and swallow him.

        1. The Second Coming.

          Turning and turning in the widening gyre

          The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

          Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

          Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

          The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

          The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

          The best lack all conviction, while the worst

          Are full of passionate intensity.

          Surely some revelation is at hand;

          Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

          The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

          When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

          Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

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

          A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

          Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

          Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

          The darkness drops again; but now I know

          That twenty centuries of stony sleep

          Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

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

          Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

          W.B Yeats.

          1. The Second Sitting Of The Last Supper

            Another fish head in the dustbin
            Another loser in the queue for the soup kitchen
            Another reason for a visit
            We think you’d better come down

            Another nìgger on the woodpile
            Another honky on the dole
            Another trip from off the 15th floor
            The greatest story ever told
            Was so wrong, so wrong

            ‘Cause you promised milk and honey
            With an everlasting life
            And we listened with our ears closed
            And a blindness in our eyes
            But we heard them as they nailed you
            And we saw you crucified

            The second coming of the Holy Ghost
            We need a pocketful of miracles
            Two thousand years and he ain’t shown yet
            We kept his seat warm and the table set
            The second sitting for the Last Supper

            Another Guru in the money
            Another mantra in the mail
            An easy way from rags to riches
            God’s little acre’s up for sale

            The time is right for resurrection
            We think you’d better come down
            The church don’t ring with hallelujahs
            You haven’t been for so long,
            So long, so long

            Two thousand years and he ain’t shown yet
            We kept his seat warm and the table set
            The second sitting for the Last Supper

            Stewart/Gouldman/Godley/Creme

        2. I saw Loki and thought, Das Rheingold! Then googled and got, “Loki, in Norse mythology, a cunning trickster who had the ability to change his shape and sex”. Ye Gods, he was a trannie!

      3. I have seen the signs. Australia aflame. 360 billion cloud of locusts in East Africa. A potentially deadly global virus and worst of all,…my tea has gone cold.

    1. sos, as of a few hours ago Al-Beeb has reported that Public Health England have raised the threat level from ‘very low’ to ‘low’. People arriving from Wuhan are now going to be monitored; beats the leaflet that was being issued yesterday. Good to see that the threat is being taken seriously.

      2. But the people who have changed at other airports onto flights with different airlines before coming here? The checks nee to take those people into account too – but that will be very difficult.

    2. I care.

      I would like to see the “best” get to the top, irrespective of their colour, creed or background.

      If good enough, promote, if not don’t. But never ever promote purely on skin, creed or social status.

      1. Perfectly correct … and a very honourable comment. Well done Sos.

        I like that. . but in reality we know differently these days … the evidence has been witnessed.

        1. Imagine the outcry if the final of the Olympic 100 metres was stopped and some woke moron insisted that whites and Chinese and Arabs were under-represented and three blacks had to stand down to make room for one of each.

      2. Your last sentence shows what invariably happens nowadays – especially in woke (or wanting to look woke) circles. Which includes nearly every institution – state or otherwise – that affects us.

          1. Given their reputation, what I fail to understand is why any self respecting business or country would want to do business with them?

          2. There is a very good reason.

            Love them or hate them, they are extremely good at what they do and more to the point, they also keep quiet when they are doing it.

            I worked in Greece when they managed to fool the EU.

          3. Don’t forget the sliced and diced Collateralised Debt Obligations that thousands of idiots bought virtually bankrupting many institutions. Al Capone would have been amazed…

          4. You are getting me up on my hobbyhorse here.
            If the PTB had smashed LTCM and its geniuses, neither of the last two financial disasters would have happened.

        2. A lot of people wish that GS had done that a few decades ago. They’ve caused nothing but trouble.

    4. Probably because they are as thick as planks. In evidence for this assertion i give you Diane Lammy and David Abbott.

      *Not including Trevor Phillips in that, obvs.

    5. When I was studying at University College London in the mid seventies the students in my year comprised all sorts and quite a few nationalities.

      Most of the foreigners were incompetent and there only because they were funded by wealthy parents. We had the son of an ambassador from Sierra Leone, an Australian wine family heiress (I liked her), a ghastly girl from I think Malaysia, an over-sexed oleaginous Greek bloke, an Iranian sex-mad adherent of Ayatollah Khomenei, a Canadian conceived when Canadians visited the UK on service during the War, a fat American girl who spent much of her time chasing even larger American men students, a pleasant Indian girl and quite a few others.

      I reckon there were only half a dozen English students in my year of about 35 persons.

      1. The Chinese took it all too seriously, working in the library, studying hard… They learned all the facts, but not how to apply them!

        2. Yup. I think my own discipline required a certain aptitude and appreciation of history. Architecture is a vocation and cannot be taught by recital. You either have the gift or you do not.

          Most folk I studied with did not have the gift. That was not necessarily an impediment. Some of the most ignorant and unartistic found senior positions in major practices by virtue of family connections and freemasonic links.

        3. I didn’t go to University. Too thick. I did go to a food College though for my HND. There were about 40 Iranians that didn’t speak a word of English and had separate classes from everyone else.

          We also seem intent on our own destruction by training them and Saudis how to fly modern aircraft. Or at least we did as far as the Iranians were concerned. Plus English schools for them.

          1. No. Not too thick. Maybe not motivated, not academic. It works if you want to enough. Hell, I got a Ph.D, not by being smarter than the average bear, but by working harder than fuck.
            Perspiration beats inspiration.

          2. Well done you.
            But all that education has made you too tolerant.

            This is Phizzee you are writing about, he was right first time.
            };-O

            Open goal sorree.

          5. Perfect cat personality. Combination of arrogance, beauty, stealth, patience, and murderous intent.
            He can move in total silence, seemingly just appearing from nowhere, or can rattle his claws so you know he’s coming. Stares out the mouse, for hours if necessay, then BAM! Mouse makes a mistake and is flattened by a paw like a garden spade.
            Gorgeous animal.

          14. See my reply to HL above – this system won’t let me make the same reply twice! It bossily informs me that I have already made that comment.

          15. I always liked my mate’s cat’s name, Yetta

            Short for yet another bl**dy responsibility

          26. Talking of Ph.D.s, what exactly is the point of studying for one in Ancient Greek Crowd Psychology, as is one of the (defeated) University Challengers from this week?

          30. So.….!!….. the loud noise that set off all the
            car alarms in the Close is your fault?

            You little stinker!

          32. Our elder son didn’t go to university. He simply couldn’t be ars*d. His younger brother went to Newcastle, ‘did’ a degree in geography and at some point realised that this wasn’t going to get him a proper job. We persuaded him to continue (he might as well have something to show for his time and money spent) – he completed his degree, got a 2:2. He then started a degree in engineering, without science ‘A’ levels. He said afterwards he spent all his time in the library, it was his gaol. He got a 2:1. He is now a design engineer (but has flirtations with the idea of being a train driver). Elder son joined the RAF and trained as an electronics engineer (avionics) and on leaving the RAF got a job with a leading American jet-engineering firm. The thing is, elder son is cleverer than son no 2, but he simply couldn’t be bothered. Three or four years academic work wasn’t for him, he wanted to be doing things. He certainly isn’t thick. And neither are you, Phizzee. And we are all part of the tapestry, we all have a part to play.

          33. Kind words. I couldn’t have put it better – Phizee as tapestry – but by God is the Weft Warped 😉

        4. The Chinese are good at filching other people’s Intellectual Property (ideas, inventions) though. And not paying for the patent.

      3. 15 years or so ago, I had a friend who teaching the postgrad. Law common professional exam. This was a one-year course which allowed students who had achieved at least 2:1 Honours in their non-law degree to get the equivalent of a Law degree. He said that some of the students he taught could hardly speak English! How they got on the course at all, let alone passed (if they did) is anyone’s guess. It was a proper course, not one of these sham things to allow “students” into the country.

        1. The unfortunate Truth is that our supposed reliably prestigious University degrees are now worthless.

          Our Universities now compete in attracting morons from overseas simply in order to accumulate admission funds.

      4. Sounds like my MA cohort; even the few English people had all spent a long time as ex-pats and had gone native.

          1. Well if Maggie doesn’t know what they mean, how can she know whether those are initials or an acronym? I hadn’t a clue, either.

          2. By the format

            Unless you know of course what the WORD SCR means and how you pronounce it, it is not an Acronymim:

            an abbreviation formed from the initial letters of other words and pronounced as a word.

            Abbreviation An abbreviation is a shortened form of a word or phrase, such as Jan. for January.

          3. By the format

            Unless you know of course what the WORD SCR means and how you pronounce it, it is not an Acronymim:

            an abbreviation formed from the initial letters of other words and pronounced as a word.

            Abbreviation An abbreviation is a shortened form of a word or phrase, such as Jan. for January.

          2. Don’t feel guilty about it Mags. Our Anne is forever using acronyms and the et ceteras just to remind us that we are almost as old as she is. Oh happy days.

          3. It will be “Oh happy days” if I live to be as old as I look; and even better if I live to be older than the oldest poster here. (I wonder who that might be? VVOF, Delboy, GG)

    8. How many ‘white’ Top Academics in top university roles in

      China
      India
      Pakistan
      Jamaica
      Barbados
      Saudi Arabia
      Iran
      etc

      1. Looks as if it died drowned in its own piss & shit.

        In my younger days, when I travelled a lot, I was always happy to try anything unknown, but nowadays, there are things at which I would draw the line & I think that is one of them.

  73. Will there be any zeal in pursuit of the unwanted, unreal,deal how will we feel when they reveal, in small print, an unacceptable double dealing deal that has already been dealt… yesterday.

  74. Nice mild sunny day here. I’ve been removing brambles with stems about an inch across which have shot up over one of my greenhouse roofs over the Nov/Dec period. Vicious, really vicious even with my welding gloves on.

    1. Crikey, what have you been feeding them? At such rapid and thick growth, and at this time of year,are they triffids in disguise?

    1. I wonder if the lefty liberal elites think that we’ll let them have some payback for the empire on poor white girls.

    2. I might be in a minority of one here.

      If the absent fathers had not been absent, most of the abused girls might not have been in care and might never have been abused.

      That’s not to suggest for an instant that the paki-rapey bastards should not be strung up by their testicles.

      1. It might be the fathers fault and the mothers but they aren’t the ones suffering, in any case who knew that the state would allow that sort of thing when they were encouraging the breakdown of marriage and alternative lifestyles.

        1. I agree.
          Too many imponderables, but please don’t try to tell me that old fashioned family support might not have prevented a lot of the problems.
          This has been going on for a long time, but when did it peak? I think under Blair’s watch.

        2. At one time there would have been strong relationships with grandparents and extended family ‘just down the road’ but that has been dismantled by the State in many ways as well. Who, in the State knew what they were doing and why, and who did not when they passed the appropriate legislation, and encouraged mobility?

      3. ‘That’s not to suggest for an instant that the paki-rapey bastards should not be strung up by their testicles.’

        If we had any sense the ‘paki-rapey bastards’ testicles would have been removed at the first hint of their,
        possible, involvement.

        With reference to your comment ‘if absent fathers had not been absent……………’
        Yes, you are right but I believe we have a duty to help our own;
        I object, most strongly, to being forced, through my taxes, to support these
        sub-human excuses for ‘members of the Commonwealth,’ with all the
        attendant privileges they, un-deservedly, enjoy and exploit!!

        Yes…..I do get quite cross about the unremitting abuse of our young girls,
        whatever their background, .
        We have a duty to protect our own, whom so ever they may be!!

        1. When the ones we try to help throw it back in our faces, there comes a time when I believe we should stop helping and start kicking!

          1. Sos.

            If we ‘stop helping and start kicking’ what possible chance do children,
            involved in these abhorrent abuses, have?

            I had an idyllic child-hood compared with what appears to prevail today.

            I am compelled to help those who suffer, those whose only problem is…
            they were conceived and born……………….. with no thought to their life.

          2. I think the kicking should be at the adult level, not the children.
            We (The UK) have helped those immigrants and the abuse is what I was referring to as throwing it back in our faces.

  76. Politics latest news: Queen grants Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal royal assent

    I can’t be @rsed to post the entire narrative but it is all good news judging be the Remainers throthing in the BTL comments.

    1. I will be happier if it does not turn out that he and Parliament have accepted Brino and May’s deal with lipstick.

      I am still wary.

        1. Evening P,
          If handled correctly at the outset ie the 24/6/2016 we would have now had near four years clearing up
          the treachery the lab/lib/con pro eu rubber stampers have left in their wake.
          And we are not OUT with ALL round satisfaction from true
          Brexiteers as in total severance, yet.

    1. I’m about the same from central London – no owls, but we did hve a buzzard, years ago. I’m North-West of London. Are you?

        1. Ah, I’ve been in that area a very little. So we’e opposite! No wonder weather, and many other things, don’t coincide!

          Technically I’m not in London — 100 yards down the road they are for phone numbers, and a couple of miles away is Greater London.

        2. We are on the Greenwich Meridian, too. North. There is a possibility it runs through our home.

          1. Lying down next to your old man in bed. You are in the western hemisphere of the planet and he is in the east.

    3. I’ve heard Tawneys hooting next to Euston Station when I used to stay at the old Euston Thistle with work before it shut.

  78. Evening, all. Just back for a short while. I’ve been off sick and then dealing with all sorts of domestic catastrophes.

    1. I hope you brought a note from your Mum, Con. 🙂

      Sorry to hear you’ve not been well and struggling with other stuff too. Is there now light at the end of the tunnel?

      1. Yes, sort of, thanks for your concern. The saga of my broken drain rumbles on; I now have a huge hole near the house, but thankfully one of the loos is at last connected and functioning. There is a blockage “somewhere” in the line and the drain is cracked, so the garden will have to be dug up – major upheaval and huge expense 🙁 That can’t happen until a week on Wednesday, though! On the plus side, the kitchen ceiling didn’t come down on Monday when the water came through it, the central heating survived being empty with the Rayburn going full blast without exploding and it was just a matter of replacing the water pump which had burned itself out trying to push steam through the system.

        1. OMG – poor you! You have my sympathy. Water issues are the worst – we know from experience!

          1. After having gone down with the lurgy that has struck down so many people I feel completely drained (I lost three days unable to get out of bed!). I confess to struggling to cope with all the other things that have had to be dealt with when I still feel under the weather.

          5. Thank you anyway. It will take time for my energy to come back – now if only disasters would keep at bay for a little while!

          6. We have had this virus, too, Conway. We are now into the fourth week. You feel as though you are getting better (about day 9) then it comes back, several times over, worse at the end of the day and not so good at the beginning, either.

            Why, I wonder, do disasters happen together or in a run consecutively? We have experienced this phenomenon from time to time, and now our younger son is experiencing it too. Nice to see you back, anyway. Good luck with it all.

          7. Thank you for your good wishes. It’s the troubles never come singly, only in threes syndrome! My problem is I think I’m on the mend, so I try to catch up on everything and then I discover that, in fact, I’m not and it floors me – sometimes literally. I have come back from a shopping expedition only to have to lie down and recover.

          8. This is exactly what we have found. Shopping, housework, and that is it, we’re finished. The thing is, you do feel ok (well, in a manner of speaking) but it is in the evening when the symptoms return when you have tried to catch up and there is a certain awfulness-of-feeling that goes with it. The problem is, after three or four weeks of not doing very much the place starts to resemble a depressing student pit!

      1. Yes, thankfully. We’ve had another couple of foals since, a colt and a filly. Breathe a huge sigh of relief for that!

    3. Hello Conners,

      Just logging off myself but just to say that I empathise with “stuff” that takes everything out of you.

      KBO and goodnight, to all

    2. How does one ‘prepare’ for a virus that doesn’t yet have a cure? Make more coffins?

    1. Good night everyone on this site except for me. (If you talk to yourself they lock you up for being mad.)

    4. The father of a great friend of mine, when I was 10, had a train set in the attic.
      It was a very close model of the London underground system. His father was head of the police service for LT.

      We could watch, but touching would have meant instant death! I’ve never since seen a train set even remotely as good.

      1. I have some train sets in my collection. For America I use steam Southern Railway. Green and gold livery colors… like the old British Southern railroad. Which is what the American Railway livery was inspired by.
        And then for Great Britain I collected steam London, Midlands & Scottish railroad.
        I liked the Maroon, black and gold livery.
        My American is HO scale. And the British is OO scale. Essentially the same and run on the same scale tracks.

          4. Plum-Tart – I did not read your comment as mocking him. But I am tired and have another 4 hours of clearing TV backlogs ahead. I must stop myself buying boxed-sets when my Sky box is 98% full. On the other hand, a couple of glasses of wine will make the time pass more quickly. 🙂 Have a good night.

        1. I started to watch that and was hypnotised into losing 4 minutes of my life in a flash. It was the snowy part where I snapped back out of it. I will watch more of that when I have the time. Those trackside landscapes are incredible. The distant painted (it looks like) background landscapes are also amazing. You could spend days playing with that.

        2. I started to watch that and was hypnotised into losing 4 minutes of my life in a flash. It was the snowy part where I snapped back out of it. I will watch more of that when I have the time. Those trackside landscapes are incredible. The distant painted (it looks like) background landscapes are also amazing. You could spend days playing with that.

        3. A terrifying ride. Mr Porsche the driver keeps going through red lights. My heart was in my mouth!

          1. Fortunately no humans were harmed during the making of this railway. However, I daresay Mr Porsche’s fortune suffered a bit as it covers 400 sq metres….

        7. I started to watch that and was hypnotised into losing 4 minutes of my life in a flash. It was the snowy part where I snapped back out of it. I will watch more of that when I have the time. Those trackside landscapes are incredible. The distant painted (it looks like) background landscapes are also amazing. You could spend days playing with that.

          6. If I had the inclination for models such as those, then I would inevitably have one branch line that had soldiers and tanks on it. Just to remind me of the days of boyhood with those Airfix plastic soldiers and models that you could buy. I did have some friends who were into models and wargaming. The amount of time that they spent with magnifying lenses and tiny paintbrushes was amazing. I have not developed the dexterity for such finely detailed work.

            https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/db73cb88428cbd41d37d0d8e9de46f53f3666ab648a7639fc65b385682ab5e0e.jpg

            https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1bccbff6c1a98e49dc09078145d02dbb5f1bc1f07b618bda318bc4564f89e009.jpg

          2. Betty Grable. In the early 1940’s my mother looked a lot like her. And even children at the Saturday movie matinees, would ask her if she was Betty Grable.

    1. I’ve certainly made my contribution in fares. It’s a route I’ve travelled many times, although I usually alight at Aix, since nobody offers flights to Marignane at reasonable times any more.

    2. Evening Bob,
      Is PCism / Appeasement with a dash of three monkey business be enough
      to fend off the channel crosser’s ?

  87. Trevor Phillips on QT now. I never thought I would listen to this guy, absolutely transfixed.

    Edit – And Emily Thornberry has just said ‘I agree with you.’ to Theresa Villiers.

    Very strange evening….

    1. Trevor had his Damascene conversion many years ago. Amusingly, the woke brigade have only realised it relatively recently, but can’t shout down his arguments because he doesn’t have any white privilege in his genetic makeup.

  88. “As actress is a specifically feminine word, some groups assert that the word is sexist.
    Gender-neutral usage of actor has re-emerged in modern English,
    especially when referring to male and female performers collectively,
    but actress remains the common term used in major acting awards given to
    female recipients and is common in general usage.”
    Harvey Weinstein never touched an actress.
    “That dog is a bitch ” ?
    Modern terminology makes everything I was taught at school seem wrong.

  91. Okay. That’s it – I’ve had enough. All hell broke loose on this site last night, and now one of the offenders has the temerity to blame me. Some of us sleep at night; other Mods were run ragged trying to put a lid on things. I’m closing all open pages to comments. Have a taste of life without NoTTL. It might return in due course, but don’t hold your breath.

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