Thursday 27 July: NatWest’s shameful treatment of Nigel Farage is alarming for customers with traditional values

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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518 thoughts on “Thursday 27 July: NatWest’s shameful treatment of Nigel Farage is alarming for customers with traditional values”

  1. Good morrow, Gentlefolks, today’s story

    A Legal Point of View

    Two law partners hire a cute young secretary and decide to have a contest to see who can fuck her first, even though they’re both already married.

    Eventually one of them scores with her and his partner is quite eager to hear how things went. “So what did you think?” he asks.

    “Ahh,” replies the first lawyer, “my wife is better.”

    Some time goes by, and the second lawyer also gets his chance to fuck the secretary.

    “So, what did you think?” inquires the first lawyer

    To which the second lawyer replies, “You were right!”

  4. NatWest’s shameful treatment of Nigel Farage is alarming for customers with traditional values

    I seem to recall that Nigel was refused by other banks too, maybe we should be looking at all banks and big corporations and all our institutions.
    I suspect that this form of fascism is rife everywhere, especially where they are infiltrated by WEF members

  5. NatWest’s shameful treatment of Nigel Farage is alarming for customers with traditional values

    I seem to recall that Nigel was refused by other banks too, maybe we should be looking at all banks and big corporations and all our institutions.
    I suspect that this form of fascism is rife everywhere, especially where they are infiltrated by WEF members

    1. 374874+ up ticks,

      Morning B3,

      To RECLAIM our lost rights on many issues we really do need to be building on an opposition to the lab/lib/con/WEF/NWO coalition party before more, due to their actions, needlessly die.

    2. I agree. I doubt it is just NatWest.
      The Dame was immersed in that culture for 30 years and learnt her lessons well.

  7. Ukraine launches main thrust of its counter-offensive against Russia. 27 July 2023.

    Kyiv’s forces are backed by thousands of troops and Western arms as US official says: ‘This is the big test’

    Ukraine launched the main thrust of its counter-offensive on Wednesday with thousands of men and Western armoured vehicles pouring onto the frontlines in Zaporizhzhia.

    Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, on Wednesday night hailed his country’s “very good results” on the front line, and promised to provide details of their successes soon.

    An enlarged Ukrainian force, whose ranks are swelled with Western-trained troops, and around 100 Western-supplied armoured vehicles, hopes to advance south to sever a land bridge to Crimea.

    So this is the “Big Push” is it? Well I give it a Big Dollop of scepticism. Now I admit that this is mostly guesswork on my part but what else can you do when the predominant means of political communication are lies? I think that the Americans; dismayed by the looming Presidential Election, the Ukies slow progress and stung by their allies (Germany) criticism have leaned on Zelensky to use the billions of $US tax dollars and materiel that they have given him and produce some result. In some senses they are correct. You cannot sit down to conquer and the status quo serves Russian not US interests. Z has done the minimum or rather the maximum that is open to him with the forces at his disposal. If this is not true then why does it only have 100 armoured vehicles involved? We will have to wait and see but if I’m correct the whole thing should peter out in a few days!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/07/26/ukraine-russia-war-counter-offensive-zelensky-weapons/

  8. Good morning all. Rained most of the night. Should stop by the time the builders arrive. An not rain again.

    I was wondering how much that woman would get paid to quit. Billions, I expect – 35% of which comes from you and me.

    1. Enough to keep her in the style to which she has become accustomed to, I expect.

      Next thoughts: where will she pop up next and how long before she reappears?

      1. Not very long Korky.

        Yesterday on Sky Business News the announcer gave a glowing account of Dame Alison, he then

        interviewed a financial analyst who after being prompted, gave an even more glowing recommendation

        of Dame Alison.

        As I pointed out before, Common Purpose always look after their own.

      2. Not very long Korky.

        Yesterday on Sky Business News the announcer gave a glowing account of Dame Alison, he then

        interviewed a financial analyst who after being prompted, gave an even more glowing recommendation

        of Dame Alison.

        As I pointed out before, Common Purpose always look after their own.

  9. Looks like the agenda for the days is how much profit the big oil companies have made while contrasting it with the big rise in energy bills.
    They do like to create a false narrative, for some reason.

  10. 374874+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    It is the name either seen as “famous or infamous” the carries the weight of opposition to the bankers odious dealings.

    This will become his latest crusade as chief honcho I do wish him success but also bear in mind his treacherous actions
    taken in a pro johnson manner prior to the 2019 GE, political leopards ALWAYS retain their spots.

    Thursday 27 July: NatWest’s shameful treatment of Nigel Farage is alarming for customers with traditional values

  12. Good Moaning.
    With my usual retiring modesty, I will post the pearls of wisdom that I posted last night in the DT.
    (421 likes in 9 hours; my highest score yet!)
    Bolly for brekker, methinks.

    9 HRS AGO

    “This whole saga is brilliant.

    For forty years, the likes of Rose, Davies and others of their ilk have sneered at the British population while leeching off those same “little people”.

    Belittled them; patronised them; insulted their intelligence. Called them Little Englanders, racists and, latterly homophobes and transphobes.

    Now they are on the receiving end of that treatment. Let’s have more of it and clear the Augean stables of these smug, fat cats.”

    1. Have another thumb, pet!

      I can’t match your fan club – but I did get 252 on The Grimes yesterday for suggesting that the beeboids DO check facts – they check to make sure the facts conform to their prejudiced views!

        1. What I find interesting about making BTL comments on The Times is that, often, I am dismissed as foam-flecked, racist etc etc. BUT I’ll get 50 or 100 anonymous thumbs from people who agree but keep their heads down.

    1. An unusually strong illustration from Blower. Still knocked into a cocked hat by Matt though, regularly!

  14. ‘Morning All

    Medley Time

    https://twitter.com/buitengebieden/status/1684247044251058185?t=974U3LojC_auaItyJK27sQ&s=19

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/fb4425b8aa98560a55d3d3d58e1f5731c6303f4fe4d8808caa1afd0212ac00b6.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/15f69e91f3fc8c80cac44f1704b5e29f79b34cb6a6c97e865fa295aecda80a4d.jpg

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    https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbde01926-5d71-4cd5-a691-7b0483ca4d6a_966x1132.png?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e6e49974d7e19cdb0e5bf02b024c7bd226c80cddf9c54773dfd907244b86e32f.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4079eebbcc726ba73868760782a5a6504455c9f7e8150614bf694541a14cf23b.png

  15. Not that I’m revelling in this saga.
    Signed,
    Thérèse Defarge (Mrs)
    p.s. anyone seen my knitting needles?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/07/26/cut-out-cancer-woke-capitalism-before-obliterates-britain/

    “Cut out the cancer of woke capitalism before it obliterates Britain for good

    NatWest has exposed the disastrous takeover of big business by incompetent, Left-wing apparatchiks

    26 July 2023 • 7:27pm

    Economists Milton and Rose Friedman understood that private business has one social responsibility: to make the highest possible profit while staying within the rules Credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images

    Dame Alison Rose has given the game away. Too many of our banks and big companies are now run by second-rate, self-entitled, box-ticking bureaucrats who are less interested in building world-class businesses than in seeking to remodel society along woke lines.

    This is an intolerable state of affairs. Companies have no business telling us what to do, think or say, and no right to blacklist customers who don’t agree with the latest bien-pensant nostrums. Rose’s belated resignation as boss of NatWest must be the first step in a much wider counter-revolution, a fightback against the politicisation of ordinary commercial life, and a return to a world in which the customer is king and the business of business is business and nothing else.

    The mutation of big firms into quasi-activist groups is already badly damaging our economy. Everybody, even those in jail, should be able to have a bank account; every non-proscribed organisation should have access to the financial system.

    Nigel Farage was treated abominably. Will the FCA investigate Rose properly for leaking confidential information? Why is she the only executive to have quit NatWest? When will the boss of Coutts go? We urgently need a proper, investigation into how many other customers were denied financial services because of their opinions, not just at NatWest but across the industry.

    How many other vile dossiers have been compiled against customers, and by which banks? How much compensation will need to be paid out? Which executives are responsible across the industry? What other industries have been at it? It isn’t enough for banks to promise the Government that they won’t do it again, or that they will give prompt explanations next time they debank an innocent customer: we need to know everything that has happened so far, and binding, legally enforceable guarantees that it won’t happen again.

    We also need to know whether there is now a culture of discrimination in the business world: are Brexiteers, Tories or those with non-woke views not being hired or promoted in certain parts of corporate Britain? This is not just about the persecution of cultural conservatives: other groups, including certain Left-wingers, may be losing out.

    Last but not least, we need a cultural shift in the corporate sector: companies aren’t NGOs. Their job isn’t to make political statements, or advocate for social change. Yes, they should be able to lobby on laws that directly affect them, but the rot set in when many started to campaign against Brexit and to take sides on BLM and trans ideology.

    So what went wrong? Many corporate managers – the sorts who have spent their careers in gigantic, hierarchical firms rife with internal politics – are ambivalent towards free markets. These technocrats tend to view their success as due to luck or skill at outmanoeuvring rivals, and are therefore hard-pressed to justify their massive, “winner takes all” rewards.

    Rose was on over £5 million a year; too many chief executives of her ilk feel that the only way to legitimise such vast salaries is to woke-wash their businesses, pursue green or “socially inclusive” goals, and force staff to mouth Left-wing platitudes. It makes them feel better about themselves, and allows them to impress other, less prosperous members of the cultural elites at dinner parties. It also helps land the next job: many headhunters now value virtue-signalling above competence.

    Going woke is easier than actually being good at business: why bother with what Elon Musk calls “a hardcore work culture” if playing politics is all it takes to be lauded as a great leader? Why bother working long hours, obsessing about operational detail and customer satisfaction, labouring day and night to produce better products at a lower cost? The woke corporation, it turns out, is in fact the lazy, decadent corporation; social activism is a cover for managerial inadequacy. Pandering to the prejudices of a vocal minority of staff is less demanding than delivering profits – until amateurs like NatWest take on a professional like Farage and are eaten alive.

    Traditionally, shareholders would have no truck with low-grade bosses that squandered their money on self-indulgent bilge. But it’s not just the management of many big corporations that is broken: so is the ownership. NatWest’s problem, as ever, was the state: scandalously still a 38.6 per cent shareholder so long after the financial crisis, it was asleep at the wheel, proud to be a useless absentee landlord.

    Yet the rest of the economy is in even greater trouble. The power of the individual shareholder has dwindled. Even active fund management is in decline: only a few geniuses (such as Warren Buffett) regularly beat the market. For most small or large investors, it makes more sense to simply track a representative portfolio, such as the FTSE 100.

    This has led to trillions of investor money being collected into gigantic tracker funds run by a tiny number of institutions with too much power. Partly because passive fund managers had to justify their existence, they started to impose requirements other than maximising profits on firms – the so-called environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) revolution which ushered in woke capitalism.

    Aided and abetted by regulators and central banks that have embraced goals such as net zero, they undermined the economy’s central feedback loop: to do more of what is profitable and stop doing what isn’t. Capitalism is mutating into a form of socialism-lite, complete with low productivity and deranged banking blacklists.

    Milton and Rose Friedman, authors of Capitalism and Freedom and Free to Choose, would have seen the NatWest scandal coming. They explain brilliantly why “social responsibility” is a “fundamentally subversive doctrine” in a free society. Pursuing goals such as environmentalism or wokery or egalitarianism means that companies impose a “tax” on shareholders (reducing profits), on front-line workers (lower productivity means lower wages), and on “customers” (by putting up prices). If companies are going to act like governments, then there is no reason for them to be privately owned. They may as well be politically controlled, with “social” objectives determined by politicians.

    As the Friedmans put it, private business has one social responsibility: to make the highest possible profit while staying within the rules. It is because it forgot its core mission that NatWest saw fit to ditch Farage.”

    2. Businessmen/businesswomen being replaced by social engineers?
      No need to ask, “what could possibly go wrong?” is there? It’s all around us.

    3. It’s good, but it doesn’t go nearly far enough. I cannot believe that the writer and the DT don’t know about ESG* certifications.
      *(Environment, Social, Governance – a WEF type scam)

      1. He surely does, but how to fit it all into the article within word-count? That’s a whole new column on its own.

        1. It’s too important to leave ou!. Far too many people think that just a few random wokes are spoiling things, and when they are sacked, everything will be OK again.

    4. What a great article.

      “ The woke corporation, it turns out, is in fact the lazy, decadent corporation; social activism is a cover for managerial inadequacy. Pandering to the prejudices of a vocal minority of staff is less demanding than delivering profits”

      Ain’t that the truth. And it’s well paid, too. Just ask all the DEI managers in the NHS, civil service etc

    5. A long while ago (well, 5 years), I went to a convention where Elon Musk was due to speak. Remarkably, he was at ‘our table’ (there we a dozen or so folk as well). I was struck not by his ostentatious wealth, his intelligence but by when one of the waitresses wobbled a bit looked faint he got up and asked her to sit down – then he proceeded to pour the wine while asking for more water.

      His speech wasn’t about his grand dreams or ideology, it was about pushing mankind forward. He talked at length about cybernetics, bionics, nanotech healing suites and the downsides of such biological engineering but he was, fundamentally focussed on making mankind better off through technology – as we always have.

      His focus wasn’t on profit, but on life improvement – making a profit was essential to continue that goal and intent. Without market capital there could be no advancement. He didn’t care about sociological issues, leaving those to – as he said – that’s for individuals – but he simply wanted the tools to be available.

  16. I see that Starmer has amended his view on what a women is

    He doesn’t want to go into the election half-cocked.

    2. 374874+ up ticks,

      B3,
      The only thing that could prove worse for him
      would be a half cocked erection.

    3. He’s a well known < he doesn't much difference to the lives of the vast majority.

    5. He just wants to get elected. Starmer strikes me – as does Sunak – as someone who’ll say anything to get the job. He doesn’t believe what he says, he just says what he thinks the audience wants today.

  17. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9cb17dc6866af6c782d4255b20c9e02f17e1bd910b8a5df4a49be1a1c7223241.png
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/07/26/paul-marshall-hedge-fund-nets-millions-bet-against-natwest/

    The wokerati have been seriously put out by Farage’s success in bringing down Dame Alison Rose who, by any other name, would smell very far from sweet!

    NatWest Bank’s share value has fallen so they are claiming that Farage is guilty of insider trading by tipping off the owner of GB News that he was going to bring down Coutts! Farage announced on air that he was not going to take his de-banking lying down: he made no secret of the matter – he put it in the public domain.

    This is so ridiculous that we can only hope that Nigel Farage’s disgruntled enemies will continue digging their hole until it is so deep they they can never get out!

    BTL

    Those who dislike Nigel Farage are, as we have seen, more than willing to lie – indeed they are eager to do so.

    Look at Mr Chris Bryant – he accuses Farage of corruptly taking Russian money while he, Bryant, cravenly hides behind Parliamentary Privilege. When challenged to make his accusations openly outside Westminster he refuses to do so knowing full well that he would be sued for libel or slander and would lose.

    1. The shits are becoming exposed. Time for pitchforks and tumbrils.
      I always liked the word “defenestration”…

      1. Not just those shits.
        Leon Black the billionaire is being sued by a Downs Syndrome woman who claims he sodomised her with sex toys on Epstein island.
        As far as i know that’s the first person other than Prince Andrew who has been named.

        1. I am beginning to wonder how many of Epstein’s clients had bank accounts with Coutts!

  18. Beautiful sunny day today, but not yet 10C – so, where’s all this warming we see on’t telly news? Nowt up here, have resorted to wearing a vest!
    And, on a more serious note, has anyone seen anything from LotL/Lottie/Ann recently?

    1. Dull start here Paul, been raining in night but should improve.
      I was wondering about Ann too, hope she’s ok

      1. Searched for her in Disqus, but her profile is private, so I can’t see her last posts.

    2. More and more people are beginning to see the global warming scam for what it is.

      [We Nottlers always miss our friends when they don’t post. I do hope Maggiebelle and Plum will come back soon]

    3. I was wondering about Ann, too. Late on the last couple of evenings, I have scrolled the comments but not found anything.
      Perhaps she is finally getting some treatment, or pain control at least.

        2. I will email Maggie again – she ‘liked’ a post of mine on Fb the other day – but I think she’s been a bit overwhelmed with doom and gloom here.

      3. I think that the state of affairs and all the things we gripe about on here sometimes overwhelms people. Unfortunately, we are powerless in this state of political oblivion. My simple strategy is to raise the draw bridge and be thankful I have a comfortable retirement.

        1. Well, I’d like to join you in that but I do worry about how I will get the state pension, my RAF pension and my private pension if and when digital ID and CBDC is rolled out.

          1. I made an attempt at dying young by doing 10 Hajj contracts. Failed miserably, so now plan B is to spend it all. With all this inflation that shouldnt take too long.

  19. SIR – Warren Buffett’s words, spoken in 1991 while CEO of Salomon Brothers (which experienced its own crisis of confidence), should be required reading for Sir Howard Davies and his board at NatWest: “Lose money for the firm, and I will be understanding. Lose a shred of reputation for the firm, and I will be ruthless.”

    In confirming their full confidence in Dame Alison Rose, Sir Howard and the board became complicit in her “serious error of judgment”.

    David Clarke
    Claverdon, Warwickshire

  20. I see the Al-Beeb is pushing Project Fear for all it’s worth …

    The record-breaking UK heat experienced [BS!] in 2022 will be regarded as a cool year by the end of this century, the Met Office says. Its report shows that last year was “extraordinary”, with a heatwave pushing the UK record over 40C for the first time. Hot years like 2022 will be the average by 2060, if carbon emissions are as expected, the authors say. I don’t recall last year being “extraordinary” – and we all know where these so called record temperatures were measured! And, of course, these projections are based solely on modelling – lots of coulds, mights etc

    1. “A model is not factual, it only reflects the views and prejudices of those who wrote it.”

    2. In 2003, we had a lovely long hot summer. The doom-mongering BBC said then that it would count as a cooler summer, twenty years in the future.

      We haven’t had such a lovely summer since, I think! Still at their old tricks, regurgitating the same lies and thinking people have forgotten that the prophecy didn’t come true last time.

      1. Ah – but remember all those people who died of the ‘heat’ that year………

    3. We’re absolutely delighted that the BBC can accurately predict the weather as far ahead as 2060.

      We look forward to accurate predictions for this coming winter.

    4. There were a few warm days – more than can be said foir this ‘summer’ – the ‘record breaking’ high temperature on July 19th was caused by the three Typoons on the runway.

  21. Good day all,

    Drizzle out of the study window. It should stop but it’ll start again. If you can see the hill is going to rain; if you can’t see the hill it’s raining. Wind Sou’-West, a humid 17℃ with 19℃ forecast.

    Yesterday’s UK Column News was a cracker with quotations from Andrew Bridgen, who is now referring to the Uniparty, about Westminster MPs being ruled by fear or bought off, one or the other, regardless of which party they purport to represent (note party, not people).

    It’s an appropriate time to have a look again at the Model for Global Governance so we can see how the Global Dictatorship really works:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4021876b346f5cde397f2d088f52fc36f66ae6ab568ea9e312bf96f0ee290a77.png

    Someone has very helpfully produced this handy little pyramid which is perhaps a better picture for showing to friends and family:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/48b33423a8fff8137fa761cc38017b1c77e51ba4f9f1c63a112d84b7a0a984a3.png

    You can see where we, the plebs, fit into this and why our votes count for so little. Enjoy your porridge.

  22. Good morning all.
    A full 13°C outside this morning and after yesterday evenings deluge that continued into the small hours, a rainless and bright start with rather thin high clouds.

    Thinking about the rain, 38 years ago I was somewhere near three quarters of the way through my walk up the Pennine Way. This month in 1985 was, up to that point, the wettest July in the 20th Century!

    1. Every single politician who tried to rubbish Andrew Bridgen should be compelled to listen to this video repeatedly until its message manages to sink in to their corrupt and stupid pig-ignorant heads.

    2. The guy in the two bed ward in the next bed to me this morning, had almost the same experience as I did with the covid jabs.

  24. Bank in no hurry to sell The Telegraph, says Nunn.

    The chief executive of Lloyds Banking Group has said he is in no rush to sell The Telegraph after seizing control from the Barclay family in a dispute over debts secured against the business.

    Charlie Nunn, the lender’s chief executive, made the bank’s first public comments on the situation since he sent in receivers and ousted Barclay family representatives from the board of The Telegraph last month.

    With a general election looming, senior Conservatives have expressed concerns about Lloyds owning an influential news organisation. Some called for new long-term ownership for the company to be secured as soon as possible as it navigates the shift to digital subscriptions.

    However, Mr Nunn said: “There’s no need to have a rushed sale process here.”

    The Telegraph and The Spectator magazine, which was also owned by the Barclay family in the same group of companies, “are well-performing businesses”, he added. The Telegraph this week reported a pre-tax profit for last year of £39m, an increase of 32pc.

    Mr Nunn, who took over the running of Lloyds from António Horta-osório in 2021, said he took ownership of The Telegraph because the debt secured against it “has been in remediation for a long time”.

    “I inherited that situation and we felt it was the right time to take the action we’ve taken on behalf of our shareholders and make sure we were trying to get the right economic return on the debt that we had been providing to the companies and the family.”

    It is understood the debt was more than £1bn. Lloyds has written off some or all of it in its accounts and so stands to profit from a sale of The Telegraph, which is expected to begin formally in September.

    Mr Nunn said: “We’ve set up an independent receivership and this is all being managed totally independently from executives at Lloyds. You can imagine why that’s important for us and for me personally, so we aren’t involved in the decision making around how the process is being run.

    “We’ve given the receivers the complete freedom to run a process with the right diligence and, from our perspective, to ensure the process is run well from a UK perspective and maximise the returns for our shareholders.”

    Receivers from the specialist consultancy Alixpartners have appointed the City veteran Mike Mctighe to oversee the auction as chairman of The Telegraph’s parent company.

    The Barclay family declined to comment.

    I seriously hope that any new ownership of the DT/ST will return those broadsheets to the high standard of journalism they enjoyed 30 years ago and prior to that.

    The deplorable Left-leaning tabloid-standard of trash that is published daily nowadays, replete with its: imbecilic grammar, uncorrected spellings, erroneous maps and charts, a rise in vapid Americanisms, risible ‘journalism’, sub-standard editing, overexcitable hyperbole, and a determination to toe the line of the global corporations has rendered it unreadable.

    The urgent return of Simon Heffer’s inimitable Style Guide as a bible for all its journalists and editors is also vitally necessary.

    1. Would be nice, but I’m not holding my breath.

      By the way, did you hear the delingpod with Charles Malet, Grizzly? Would be interested in your thoughts about it.

          1. Ah! I don’t have the time or inclination to listen to ‘podcasts’. I have too many other interests and politics has never been one of them.

          2. Delingpole rarely has politicians on his podcast, more just people with life experience. I listen to them in the background when I am working in the kitchen.

    3. I’d add the un-banning of those whom it has banned or shadow-banned (me!) from its comments sections.

    4. I fear your hope will be dashed, Grizz. Standards are so rarely raised these days, the race is to the bottom.
      I agree about the style guide. I could do with something like that, too.

      1. Heffer encapsulated all the stuff in his Style Guide, and much more, in his excellent book, Strictly English, a copy of which I own. It is a delight to read and I thoroughly recommend it to anyone with a desire to write correctly.

    1. The judge made a proviso for the sweetheart deal. That he needed to get a job. I expect he fainted.

    1. We’re old enough to remember that it was shocking when Mark Zuckerberg said that privacy was over, shortly after he founded Facebook.
      My children, though perfectly clued up on what’s happening, regard lack of privacy as inevitable.

      I hope none of them will give away such private information as an iris scan for a few digits of fake money though.
      Idiots queueing up for the meat grinder.

    2. The yoof of this planet are being deliberately made braindead by the actions of what passes for politicians, teachers and parents these days.

  27. Mitch McConnell escorted away after freezing during bizarre press conference. 27 July 2023.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9c096bda7e046e395d00e87ec624e533363bb5fea74b663420cf3255ef55460a.jpg

    Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has insisted he is “fine” after appearing to freeze during a bizarre press conference on Wednesday.

    The lawmaker, 81, began his remarks on Capitol Hill but then stopped suddenly, staring blankly ahead for 30 seconds.

    Another one on the edge of total decrepitude.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/07/26/mitch-mcconnell-freeze-press-conference-speech/

      1. When are the floodgates going to open? When will the entire Epstein client list be published?

        2. When Ghislaine Maxwell “commits suicide” and her black book is found under the pillow?

    3. I heard a report on this on Radio 4 PM programme. (Yes, I know). Astonishing that they never report on Biden’s multiple verbal gaffes in public and his increasingly obvious dememtia, yet when it involves a senior Republican……..

    1. “The UK taxpayer through the government appears to be financing a powerful anti-Christian government”.

      Sounds about normal. Anyone and everything before the people coughing up the taxes get anything.

    2. In spite of the billions that we, the British taxpayer, have unwillingly sent to India (and elsewhere) over the years, the masses there still seem to be uncivilised savages.
      I wonder if any of these former Empire countries would be such hell holes if the British were still in charge?

  29. There is speculation as to how much compensation or leaving bonus Dame Alison Rose will receive from Nat West the bank of which 39% is owned by the British taxpayer.

    In my opinion she should be given free board and lodging in Holloway for 20 years in a shared cell with a violent transgender roommate.

    1. I bet she keeps her share options (which should be confiscated as a malus, which is a thing in banking and comes to us via our friend, EU regulation).

  30. Apropos the Global Public/Private Partnership Dictatorship model I posted below, I thought you’d like to see who currenly sits atop it as General Manager at the Bank for International Settlements. I give you Augustin Cartsens:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2268c69fe825d34369f3d751416d3f6c5021e1c575413ef2a0eda068f496e20b.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/32ddd7cf3a58c4795c5fee84603b5a0cc8635975fe6957bec9ad9b0d88301b49.png

    It’s stopped drizzling, I must pop outside to do some jobs before it starts raining again. TTFN.

    3. AHOY THAR CAP’N!
      THAR SHE BLOWS!
      LANDWHALE, 2 POINTS OFF THE LARB’D BOW!

    5. There’s only a very slim chance of his being fit enough to do the job properly. He’s a fat-chancer!

    1. Ernest Newson; our sons’ school uniforms came from there.
      My school had a uniform shop so they could rip off save the parents the trouble of schlepping into town.

  33. I have a series of meetings today with colleagues in our overseas offices and so i always have a glance at their weather as a conversation opener. For example, it is very hot in Tokyo right now, and p*ssing it down in Bombay (as my colleagues there call it – don’t tell Al_Beeb!)

    Anyway my phone gives me the following air pollution numbers:
    London – 2
    New York – 57
    Tokyo – 68
    Singapore – 77
    Bombay – 198

    I wonder if our friend the London Mayor, Khu*t, will ever acknowledge that actually air pollution in London isn’t a thing???

    1. At least the well know gin brand hasn’t become Mumbai Sapphire – yet. The distillery is just a few miles down the road from where I sit.

    2. What does the number mean? Particles per cubic whatever? or some hybrid scale comprising particles of what at whatever density? Or it means nowt to me… 🙁

  34. Copied from Guido Fawkes:

    Nigel Farage’s crusade against “woke warrior” banks isn’t stopping with NatWest. Over the next few days, he’s launching an entire database of cases from other de-banked Brits, with the “worst offenders” named and shamed to fight back against the politicisation of financial services. He writes in the Telegraph:

    “I am now seriously motivated by this issue. The desperation of those that have been wronged by the big banks means that I simply have to do something. I may not have picked this fight, but I now find myself right in the middle of it. I will be launching, over the course of the next few days, an exercise designed to gather together all of those that have been de-banked. I’m hoping to build a very large database of cases to find out which banks are the worst offenders and what the commonest reasons are, so that we can prepare and present a lobby to ministers, and to Parliament, in order to achieve fundamental change.”

    The NatWest board are still in situ as of this morning, although if Nigel gets his way, that won’t last. Alison Rose’s ‘allies’ have briefed the Financial Times to complain that the £5 million-a-year former CEO has been “extraordinarily poorly treated” this week – as though briefing lies about one of her own customers to the BBC shouldn’t have consequences. Even Sir Keir backs Farage on this one. At least she’s due a multi-million pound payout…

      2. Disagree.
        He cut & ran when he shouldn’t have done.
        I’d say that Norman Tebbit was the best PM the UK never had.

        1. I’m aware of Nigel’s shortcomings believe me, but they are as nothing compared to the rest.

    2. Excellent. Looking forward to the re-banking of nationalist organisations such as Britain First, Patriotic Alternative and folk such as Katie Hopkins and enemy of the State Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon aka Tommy Robinson.

    5. News today about the poorly treated Alison:

      NatWest’s ex-CEO Alison Rose might receive pay off up to £5million after resignation
      July 27, 2023 by Save Britain
      According to a prominent industry source, Dame Alison Rose, NatWest’s now-former CEO, is on track for a multimillion-pound severance deal following her resignation in the early hours of yesterday morning.

      Dame Alison Rose, who ultimately resigned after confessing to supplying the BBC with an incorrect and privacy-invading story about Nigel Farage being dropped as a Coutts customer for commercial reasons, would almost certainly receive a large lump sum.

      “If I were chairman, I would fire Alison Rose rather than allow her to resign,” a former FTSE 100 chairman remarked.

      “If she resigns, she will be paid her notice period, which will be at least a year and will most likely be worth £5 million.”

  36. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6b9c2ea2b0130bd7a4ae90801155f1112c8b6be6fe2463b2b861822b85005e1f.png
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/bills-and-utilities/renewable-energy/net-zero-makeover-heat-pump-log-burner-cold/

    Percival Wrattstrangler’s BTL

    Mr Gove has assured us that wood-burners are not environmentally good and we must not burn wood which is rich in carbon.

    Sorry, Haynesie, old chap. You’ll have to suffer and freeze if you can’t afford to pay up!

      1. Morning/afternoon, Delboy.
        Indeed, wood from the US – cut, pelleted and dried before shipping, as far as I am informed.
        Coal is better.

      2. Sorry Delboy, no lookee under! Happy Birthday for the other day by the way. How’s the bowls going? I played last night when it was absolutely tipping down. Not fun. (And we lost).

    4. Bizarre that heat pumps work in Norway, a country noticeably more arctic than the UK.
      Maybe the kit is made for southern Europe and you guys are being ripped off?

  37. Fish joke for the day:
    Koi always travel in groups of four.
    If attacked by a predator, Kois A, B, and C will scatter, leaving behind the D-koi.
    😀

  38. Sweden is in denial about its gun-crime problem. Spiked. 27 July 2023.

    But that was then. Sweden today is no longer an ultra-safe Shangri-La. Gun crime in particular is surging. On average, there is a shooting every day, and nearly 50 gun homicides were recorded last year alone. Sweden now has the highest rate of fatal gun violence in Europe. And there is also, on average, one bombing a week in Sweden, with over 90 attacks involving explosives recorded in 2022 alone.

    The huge surge in gun violence is very hard for us to take in. So hard, in fact, that huge chunks of the Swedish commentariat desperately try to downplay it. All across the media, you’ll see attempts to relativise the rise in fatal shootings with reference, say, to the number of people killed in traffic accidents each year.

    Those who expect the Elites to own up with a hearty smile and a “My bad Gov.” after their crimes become manifest to the majority have no knowledge of human, particularly, political human nature. They will deny, till hell freezes over, that it has anything to do with them. Witness Blair, a creature steeped in the blood of countless innocents and the source of most of the evils that beset modern day Britain. A man without a care in the world.

    Sweden has been reduced to its present condition by the belief in a social formula that has never succeeded no matter how many times it has been tried. That same process is now at work in the UK. It is so insidious that no normal measures can prevail against it. Revolution is the only viable solution to prevent total social collapse.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/07/27/sweden-is-in-denial-about-its-gun-crime-problem/

    1. I’d be interested to see what Grizz has to present in relation to this, as he lives there.

      1. Grizz lives in the Swedish version of Norfolk. All the crime is in the cities and suburbs where they have placed the migrants.

        1. He lives in Skåne, a place with a formidable accent. Containing Malmö, a decent sized city by local measures. So, I’d guess he’s pretty well up-to-speed on what goes on, especially given his previous occupation.

          2. And I too am familiar with Skåne and Malmö although my stamping grounds were Stockholm and Norrköping. Relatively civilised.

            On my family tree, to date, ii appears that I originate in Uppsala about 530 A.D.,when Egil, a future king of Sweden, was born.

    2. Senior Swedish Police officers have spoken out about the no go areas and gang related crime. They are not being backed up by their head in the sand politicians.

        1. Generally happens when faced with those who are right, as opposed to his fatuous arguments.

    4. The article would have been improved, IMHO, with a simple graph showing shootings per year as a proportion of population numbers.
      Don’t know about Sweden, but Norway’s population was 4,48 million, and is now 5,43 million. That’s 25% approx increase in 25 years, and sure didn’t come from the fecundity of the lovely Norse lasses we have here. It came from imports, like me & family, many originally from much further away.

      1. Sweden was 8,85 million in 1998, now 10,55 million.
        Wonder where the extra 2 million (25%) came from?

    1. 374874+ up ticks,

      Afternoon KtK,

      When he cracks, the rest IMHO will follow suit
      laying the blame on each other, there is only dishonour among political thieves, also a
      LMF.

  41. Apropos recent events, I have never seen the BTL comments go as ballistic as they have recently irt the Alison Rose/Natwest/Farage de-banking …. reaching a CRESCENDO when the Board tried to bluff it out on Tuesday evening. The general mood was on the edge of favouring a creating a ‘Game of Thrones’ spectacle with Alison Rose first and then the rest of the board, and those responsible for Natwest;s woke fascism.

    1. It was impossible to keep up. The comments were clicking up like a Doomsday clock.

    1. Yes – well. All the Caliph has to do is place the signs a few yards INSIDE the GLC area boundary.

      1. Ban’ ban’ Ca-caliban,
        Has a new master, get a new man.
        Freedom, high-day; high-day freedom; freedom high-day, freedom.

        [Shakespeare : The Tempest]

        Whether or not Sycorax’s son was a noble savage is a moot point but I have always enjoyed this song by Ralph McTell.

        https://www.google.com/search?q=first+and+last+man+ralph+mctell&oq=First+and+Last+Man+Ralph+McTell&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqCggAEAAY4wIYgAQyCggAEAAY4wIYgAQyBwgBEC4YgATSAQkxMzM2NWowajeoAgCwAgA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:2f0c6e32,vid:-BjzPDv5lP4

    3. Wasn’t there a court case of some sort, by those other Home Counties, against Khan?

      ETA:

      Sadiq Khan faces imminent ULEZ ruling and admits court may quash hated expansion

      The fate of outer London drivers will be sealed within the next 24 hours, according to new reports, as the courts make their final decisions on the ongoing legal battle to prevent the ULEZ expansion

  43. I see yet another “brave, heroic” saint has died young. Hyperbole lives and reigns…..

  46. “…these offenders simply come in and take what they want – they live in our communities and do what they want, they steal your livelihood from you. They come in with bags, sacks or clothing which can conceal hundreds of pounds worth of stock – coffee, meat, spirits…they clamber over the kiosks and just tip the products into their bags.”

    Co-op warns rising crime could create ‘no-go’ areas for shops

    1. This has already happened in the US! Whole areas have been abandoned by retailers because it is too dangerous for their staff!

      1. Not in all areas!! Mainly in the inner cities where drugs and crime proliferate. San Francisco is suffering badly, especially with homeless people, aided by city Democrat Mayor and council, so sad, it was always one of my favorite cities.

  47. Oi Laffed

    Seen elsewhere:

    But it was Tatchell’s comments which interested me more. He did not mention
    that Malaysia was an Islamic country. He said, instead, that Malaysia’s
    laws prohibiting homosexual relationships were a consequence of
    Britain’s colonisation of the country and its time as part of the
    British Empire. In other words, had it not been for those straight white
    men of imperialism, Malaysia might today bask in a sunlit upland of
    untrammelled buggery.

    – Rod Liddle

    1. Yet when Ugandans point out that their sodomy laws are a legacy of the British Empire, the excuse is not accepted. Because Uganda is 84% Christian.

        1. The bishops do. They were rounded on for being homophobes because they accepted the law and poinited out that it was the British who gave them their laws. Turns out the issue sprang up because the yanks were offering the Ugandans a lot of dosh but only on condition that they promote the alphabet soup agenda. The Ugandans effectively told the yanks where they could put their money.

          2. I know, Our Susan – it was a pathetic attempt at a Private Eye based “joke”.

          3. I know, Our Susan – it was a pathetic attempt at a Private Eye based “joke”.

      2. As Kenneth Williams might have said in the Carry on Buggering film they never dared to produce:

        ‘Tis odd of me, ‘s odd of me.
        They all think it’s sodomy!

    2. Some people can be described as festering pustules on the ar-sole of humankind. . . . . . Tatchell is the pustule infested ar-sole.

  48. “The British Islamic State fighter Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary has been found dead in his prison cell after going on trial in Madrid charged with terrorism.”

    Oh how sad – Covid, I expect.

    3. Where do people stand on sloth?

      I have always used the long o and rhyme sloth with growth and both while some of my reference sources say the word should be rhymed with broth, trough or even rough. Unlike some of my friends, I do not always insist that I am right!

      Grizzly and I disagree on scones. He rhymes them with clones and phones while I rhyme them with dons and cons.

      In John Betjeman’s ironic poem mocking the faux genteel, How to Get On in Society, he teases those using the wrong pronunciation:

      Milk and then just as it comes, dear
      I’m afraid the preserve’s full of stones
      Beg pardon, I’m soiling the doilies
      With afternoon teacakes and scones

      When I were nowt but a lad I wrote a rather wicked song with these lyrics:

      Nouveau Riche

      When I went to live in Hampshire, I couldn’t understand
      The jeers and sideways glances when people shook my hand
      For I am a self-made nouveau-riche – the salt of all the earth
      And I don’t know why my presence makes them squirm or shake with mirth,
      For I’m trying, yes I’m trying to be
      Socially
      Acceptable and U
      But somehow things don’t turn out right and I don’t know what to do.

      My lounge is large and spacious and my toilet’s shocking pink
      My cruets bear my monogram and my wife has got a mink
      I wear a mohair blue tuxedo when I go to the county ball
      But I overhear them muttering – ‘He’s not out type at all!’
      For it seems, yes it seems to me
      That society
      Is not at all impressed
      By the snappy way I’m dressed
      And my vocabulary
      It’s very clear to see
      Is not used, I much regret,
      By the people from the pages of Debrett.

      I’ve got a great big gothic house with turrets here and there
      And had the grounds all landscaped with gnomes leaping everywhere
      I’ve a lovely crazy-paved patio and an ornamental lake
      Where my wife and I take mid-morning tea with a slice of Madeira cake
      Oh I wish I could succeed and be a social winner
      And I wish my friends arrived at one when I asked them out to dinner
      Oh I know I’ve got the brass
      But I haven’t got the class
      And the whole situation Is getting up …. I mean’s become a farce.

      2. I am born and bred Lancashire, similar to Yorkshire but with ‘o’ levels.
        Its pronounced scon. Jam then cream.
        P.S. The only good thing to come out of Yorkshire was the road to Lancashire.

      3. Scones rhymes with stones and its jam first the cream.
        You may have different accents but, as my mum said, ‘I’m glade we were born in London as we don’t have an accent’.

          1. The beauty of the English language is that it is so flexible and we still know what each other means. I don’t know about other languages but they seem rather rigid.

          2. Scone, rhymes with gone, unless you’re Scottish and then it’s Scoone, the place it was named for.

          3. In Scotland Scone is Scoon but scones are skons. Or at least they were when I was a bairn.

            And potato scones are tattie-skons.

          4. In Scotland Scone is Scoon but scones are skons. Or at least they were when I was a bairn.

            And potato scones are tattie-skons.

          5. Usquebaugh is Scottish Celtic for Whiskey but I don’t know anyone who call it that.
            Let’s call it local dialect, no right nor wrong.

  51. And the good news just keeps coming.
    DT headline:

    “British Islamic State fighter found dead in Spanish prison

    Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary was awaiting the verdict of trial on terror charges after joining jihadists in Syria

    ….. A London-raised jihadist who posted pictures of himself with a severed head in Syria has been found dead in his prison cell in Spain where he was facing charges of belonging to the Islamic State.”

      1. It won’t be as hot as the UK in a couple of years time according to the BBC and its scientific advisors.

        2. Apparently we hit 40 deg in the UK for the first time ever. Dont suppose they thought about the times when coal was laid down in those steamy tropical rain forests. Climates do not change over a lifetime, those variations are called weather…

          1. Indeed. During the medieval period c.1000-1100 AD it was a lot warmer. Cattle were raised on Greenland which was actually green and vineyards were grown in Scotland.
            That is why the climate zealots tried to hide this fact as it buggered up their computer predictions, all of which haven’t occurred.

  52. The writer is anti-monarchist, but I have no reason to believe that his facts are incorrect – or is the article missing something?
    The Civil List was 7.6 million in 2011, but Charles will get 125 million from taxpayers this year.
    Hands up everyone whose income has increased more than 16 times since 2011, while delivering the same amount of work?
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12344093/NORMAN-BAKER-windmills-pouring-millions-King-Charless-oozing-coffers-dont-belong-neither-does-sea-bed-stupid-fault-giant-pay-rise-year.html

    1. I think all the new wind turbines on crown land make up a significant amount of the increase. All the energy companies have become richer on the subsidies the tax/bill payer is forced to pay.

      1. The article goes into detail about why this increase is happening.

        I just think it shows staggering hypocrisy on the part of the royal family to talk about service, and pretend they care about people, while living high on the hog at the people’s expense. They don’t even care that we know – they feel invincible. And as we know, Charles thinks there are too many peasants anyway.

        1. We just saw what happens to people living high on the hog.
          Let that be a warning.

          1. Charles is several steps higher on the food chain than Alison Rose, so doubtless thinks himself immune.

          4. You gotta be joking. The woman has been employed since graduating from Durham, is married to a taxpayer and is a parent to two children. In what way might Charlie be considered ‘higher on the food chain’ ? No, I am not defending Mrs Rose, just don’t see why Charles could be perceived as ‘higher’ than any other mortal.

          5. I am talking about the international bankers’ cartel/WEF food chain, which is the only one that matters in Britain.
            Charles launched the Great Reset; Alison Rose is merely one of the managers.

          7. You gotta be joking. The woman has been employed since graduating from Durham, is married to a taxpayer and is a parent to two children. In what way might Charlie be considered ‘higher on the food chain’ ? No, I am not defending Mrs Rose, just don’t see why Charles could be perceived as ‘higher’ than any other mortal.

          8. He ought not to just because we haven’t got rid of a monarch since James II if you discount Edward VIII. We have a track record.

          1. I said at the people’s expense, because the monarch has no actual moral right to money from the sea bed. It’s a tidy solution to assign the sea bed to the monarch in a constitutional monarchy, because that is the person who represents the state. However, if huge income is to be gained from it, it is rather greedy of the monarch to insist on being paid a large slice of money that he or his family has never done anything to deserve. It’s abusing his position as head of state in effect.

        3. I’m not sure that a “President” of a republican UK would cost any less to run. An Air Force One would pretty soon be “needed” for one thing.

          The pity of it is that KC is so blind upon WEF etc. The monarch shouldn’t be.

          2. I feel the same way. I am a monarchist, but I draw the line at a monarchy that has sold the country out to its foreign bosses.

    1. Haven’t a clue. Just can’t make it out at all. Give me The Times cryptic crossword any day. (Or the DT – though that is a doddle).

      1. A was in the first line. It took me some time to get the hang of the absurdly simple rules!

  54. Someone called Shuhada’ Sadaqat, aged 56, with a history of self harming, drug abuse and many vitriolic diatribes against the Pope and other leading figures has been found dead alone in London. The Police said ‘Nothing to see here’.

    Spouses
    John Reynolds (m. 1989; div. 1991)​
    Nick Sommerlad (m. 2001; div. 2002)​
    Steve Cooney (m. 2010; div. 2011)​
    Barry Herridge (m. 2011; div. 2011)​

    Partners (Not counting short affairs with someone called Prince and many others)
    Peter Gabriel (1992–1993)
    Richard Heslop (1994–1995)
    John Waters (1995–1996)
    Dónal Lunny (2004)
    Frank Bonadio (2006–2007)

    Children 4 (And several abortions)

    The BBC and the newspapers are in deep mourning for this ‘heroic’ person/thing. How sad!(sarc).

    1. She was a troubled soul, and in need of some steadying guidance which seems not to have been available. I assume “found dead” means self-deletion?

  55. HAHAHA

    Breathe

    HAHAHAHAHA

    Another one bites the dust

    BREAKING
    DM
    “Now Coutts boss quits as Nigel Farage ‘de-banking’
    row claims another victim – with Rishi Sunak stopping short of backing
    NatWest chairman Howard Davies as shares plunge.
    Peter Flavel is standing down by ‘mutual consent’ and with immediate effect from the private banking arm of NatWest.”
    BUT
    “A
    statement from Paul Thwaite, NatWest Group interim CEO, said: ‘I have
    agreed with Peter Flavel that he will step down as Coutts CEO and CEO of
    our Wealth Businesses by mutual consent with immediate effect. Whilst I
    will be personally sorry to lose Peter as a colleague, I believe this
    is the right decision for Coutts and the wider Group.
    I have asked
    Mohammad Kamal Syed to step into the role of interim CEO of Coutts and
    our Wealth Businesses. Mo has extensive Wealth Management experience and
    is the ideal person to lead Coutts through this difficult time as we
    begin the search for Peter’s replacement.’
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/pa/article-12344757/Coutts-boss-resigns-Nigel-Farage-bank-account-row.html

      1. Have you found our Ann? LOTL or otherwise and Maggie (True-Belle) is also missing.

    3. Of course, “stepping down” does not necessarily mean leaving the business. It could be a euphemism for a reshuffle. Same applies to Rose.

  56. Another scalp for Farage!

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ea31b9b2c01bf4e002e4a5dff82422d4bb113375213dfd3ac12a3ba73f759cc3.png

    Peter Flavel, who became boss of Coutts in 2016, said the treatment of Mr Farage had “fallen below the bank’s high standards of personal service.”

    Paul Thwaite, the interim chief executive of NatWest, which owns Coutts, said: “I have agreed with Peter Flavel that he will step down as Coutts CEO and CEO of our Wealth Businesses by mutual consent with immediate effect.

        1. They can afford to be generous, it’s only taxpayers’ money.

          ………………and the majority of taxpayers are contemptible peasants anyway.

      2. What I now want is for the MP Chris Bryant to stop cravenly shielding himself behind Parliamentary Privilege and to come out in the open and tell us that Nigel Farage has been corruptly receiving money from Russia.

        This would enable Farage to sue Bryant from arsehole to Christmas.*

        [* I cannot claim originality for this expression. I pinched it from Tusker in Paul Scott’s novel Staying On]

    2. And WHEN does the main board resign?

      That they should have even thought of backing Rose is a complete scandal.

      1. I want them to come out and admit that they sacked Farage because they have committed the bank to ESG certification, and that this is part of a wider movement that affects all businesses.

          1. Buggeration Corp, an essential part of all Banking. (Substitute your own capital letter).

    3. If only the mainstream media could find a good UFO story to get this off the headlines.

      1. Dick Delingpole commented this morning how funny it is that only normies believe the UFO stories, while all the conspiracy theorists are ignoring them!
        We’re just good at spotting government lies and red herrings, that’s all!

    4. The “bank’s high standards”?

      Don’t forget that this was the bank fined many millions for illegal money laundering.

      1. “I do not think that ‘high standards’ means what you think it means…”

  58. Work done for the day. Half the “honey room” tiled, waste cardboard and plastic trailered to the tip twice, and dumped, and finally splinters removed from office-soft hands. Cold beer now administered, it’s time to sit out in the sun – except, just as in Malaysia, the rain clouds are gathering… bugger!

    5. You could replace the yellow statement at 43 seconds with

      “1 in 5 builders do shoddy work”

      Just saying.

      1. A valid reason for withholding payment but that wasn’t the case here as he lied and said he had already paid. Do keep up !

  60. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7033a51bad0203d7b045641a2f2b8b430d215d9f9ce9f4e0d3c34b2089d915b2.png

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/07/27/we-should-adapt-not-prevent-climate-change/

    I am hoping Ratty will manage to provoke some of the DT trolls who frequent the Comment sections.

    BTL Percival Wrattstrangler

    Those who believe in the safety and the efficacy of the Covid vaccines have something in common with those who believe in man-made climate change: they are both completely wrong.

    1. As I sit here in July with my heating on. Its all lies they are not comparing like with like. Every prediction they have made has been wrong. Why will this be ant different.

      2. Pigging chilly here too, Johnny. Just taken the sweater off… and it’s 3/4 past July, FFS!

      4. You are quite wrong, JN. The experts tell us that July 2023 will the hottest month for 120,000 years. And experts are never wrong – especially those who remember what it as like 100,000 years ago!!

      1. You surely don’t expect the DT’s typesetters to be orthographically accurate?

        1. My late uncle Claude, a Monotype Keyboard operator at the old Pitman Press in Bath, would have a few epithets on the subject of words and spelling.

      2. Portend is just down the road from port -mouth where the verbs sail from!

        It wasn’t highlighted by my American spelling checker, it must be OK.

        1. There is a noun “PORTENT” Had the sub-editors intended to use a VERB – “PORTEND” was it. There is a dreadful, modern, lazy, slovenly tendency to “verbify” nouns

          1. Don’t get me started on that, Bilty.
            Oops too late.
            Two examples
            1. There is a perfectly good verb – To prey
            A person or animal who preys on another is a predator.
            Some who presumably have the vote have created a new word – to predate.

            2. R4 Today programme a couple of weeks ago, someone used the word synchronisationing

          2. I could understand someone using ‘synchronisationing’if it were spelt with a Z.

        1. That’s a noun. The headline is intending to use a verb – and gets it wrong. See my comment to Richard L below.

  61. 374874+ up ticks,

    Dt,

    It does seem to me that we are taking high octane to a war zone in an aggressive manner, aiding & abetting the continuance of combat instead of seeking a rhetorical peaceful settlement.

    Bare in mind the day you witness a politico at the sound of a whistle, go in the lead over the top is the day they deserve a hearing

    Putin is about to declare war on the whole world
    A Black Sea blockade against Ukraine would affect everyone on Earth

    Putin is about to declare war on the whole world
    A Black Sea blockade against Ukraine would affect everyone on Earth

    2. Putin never wanted a war in Ukraine but at least his armed forces were prepared for one.

      The abject and dismal failure of Ukrainian attempts to gain ground are not the result of a lack of armaments and equipment. They have blown through billions in both and lost several hundred thousand combatants to death and injury.

      The principal reason for the lack of progress has been the under-estimation of Russian superiority in both quality and quantity of the resources necessary to sustain a long campaign. Another major factor has been Russia’s use of relatively inexpensive drone attacks, capable of taking out heavy armaments. The latter development was never a factor in US and NATO military planning.

      Back to the drawing board for the US war planners and strategists as the old certainties have been cancelled.

  64. Any news of how Ready Eddy got on over night has he been discharged yet?

    Edit for fat finger pressed too soon!

      2. I saw that one, I was interested whether he had been discharged and was now home

  66. Junior has spent the afternoon reading Jeeves and Wooster to Mongo. When Junior laughs, Mongo barks. It’s all rather twee.

  68. UK will return to EU in future, says Tony Blair 27 July 2023.

    Sir Tony Blair said he believed that the United Kingdom will go back into the European Union in the future as a new poll showed support for rejoining the bloc was at a five-year high.

    The former Labour prime minister told the New Statesman magazine that “a future generation” would take Britain “back into Europe”.

    Much as it grieves me to say it he is probably right!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/07/27/uk-return-to-eu-future-tony-blair-brexit/

    1. A future generation will be programmed into thinking what a wonderful idea it will be. Sunlit uplands and all that.

      2. That was my first thought, Bill. Hopefully NATO too. World government is what it was all intended to lead to but only the people of Europe and the Anglosphere are stupid enough to want that.

  69. A wee Birdie Three today.

    Wordle 768 3/6
    🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜
    ⬜⬜🟨🟩⬜
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. Well done. Par four for me.

      Wordle 768 4/6

      ⬜🟨🟨⬜⬜
      ⬜🟩⬜⬜🟨
      🟩🟩⬜⬜🟩
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    2. Ah well, making you look good
      Wordle 768 5/6

      🟨🟨🟨⬜⬜
      ⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜
      ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
      ⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    3. Bogey here.

      Wordle 768 5/6

      ⬜⬜🟨🟨⬜
      🟨⬜🟨🟨⬜
      🟨🟨🟨⬜🟨
      ⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    4. Beautiful! Ignore the naysayers, they are just jealous! Are the flowers scented?

  73. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f6780b67bf145bfc1fef96c47b90bb8277b30623fd26d274c762112c39db2b26.png
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/07/27/innocent-andrew-malkinson-wrongful-conviction-compensation/

    The poor sod spent years in prison for a crime he did not commit and is expected to pay for his board and lodging while illegal immigrants who have broken the law by coming here are given full board in 4* hotels, legal aid, and pocket money.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/94e546088340ed2f1bf40aa5a0a19178c25121fb4c411b9104bf2280906ea11d.png

    The Gods have certainly got it in for us!

    1. Yes, i believe that was brought in by Jack Straw. Possibly to deter innocent people using HMP’s as hotels. Or something.

      1. Make bluddy Jack straw pay then – he had him put there, take responsibility for your actions, you Socialist Git.

    3. Well, fore those Gods’ reputation, make the right ones mad, as if we didn’t know.

    5. 374874+ up ticks,

      Evening R,
      Seemingly he has been very active among current lab/lib/con coalition voters.

    6. Absolutely not. Those who wrongly incarcerated him should be made to pay. Campaign?

    7. Absolutely not. Those who wrongly incarcerated him should be made to pay. Campaign?

  74. Now is the time to say goodbye….. Funny old day. The Wet Office failed AGAIN – despite its promise of dry weather after 7 am – it rained most of the morning. The good news was that the builders managed to d the roofing job AND found that the felt and battens (placed there in 1973) were in excellent condition.

    Useful garden work this arvo. Tomorrow is another day…..one hopes. Will the Nat West main board have fallen on their swords?

    Have a spiffing evening.

    A demain

    1. ” Will the Nat West main board have fallen on their swords?”

      I doubt it, Bill, too interested in their own positions.

  76. SWMBO just came with a lovely gooseberry crumble, with nuclear fusion custard. My God, how hot can you get without melting the ceramic bowls?

    1. The two gooseberry clumps I’ve got, leftover from before I moved in, yielded about a pound of berries which will go into a mixed fruit crumble sometime soon.

      VERY disappointed with the apples this year, nothing on the big Newton Wonder tree and what promised to be be a decent crop on the Aldi Special and Egremont Russet trees has all dropped off. No idea why, but I think it may have been the extreme downpours we’ve had lately.

      1. The June ‘drop’ from my crab apple tree was immense and I’ve got less than half of the fruit I had last year. The Bramley, still, recovering from being partially destroyed by my neighbour’s falling plum tree early last year, is doing its best. It will need a severe pruning to balance it and return it to something like normal. As for the Elstar…

      2. Our Egremont Russet has very few apples on it this year. It doesn’t seem like a good apple year.

        1. Oh well, at least I’m not the only one with a bad crop.

          Next door’s apple tree, the one I refer to as Des’s Enigma after my late neighbour, looks in a bad way.
          I wonder what the new owner will do with it? I hope he keeps it.

          1. When we moved here there were two apple trees – sadly the one near the kitchen blew down in a storm years ago – that had large apples, good for cooking or eating. The remaining one has pretty red apples which are soft and spongy, and only fit for the birds to eat, which they do, gladly. The greengage tree has fewer fruit than last year and they are not yet ripe. We also lost a plum tree years ago, that split in two one year in a storm.

      3. The apples I’ve been buying from our local shop have been tasteless crap this year and most going bad from the inside

      5. My cherry tree dropped its fruit before ripening this year and last year. Last year it was hot. This year it’s cold and wet.

  77. SWMBO just came with a lovely gooseberry crumble, with nuclear fusion custard. My God, how hot can you get without melting the ceramic bowls?

    2. Expect a slew of represssive measures very soon, all designed to “mitigate climate boiling”.

      1. The propaganda is certainly heating up far more than the climate.

        While there are still many blind believers, a substantial number can see that it’s all rubbish now – even normies!

    3. It is truly amazing that July has been called the warmest ever before the month has even ended. These people have become hysterical. However, the real damage is being done to the new generation who do not have the scepticism of us old gits and will accept these outright lies.

      1. It’s been perishing here for July. June had some warm days but most of the first half of June had a cold north easterly wind blowing.

        1. I usually sit in my garden in summer evenings with a G&T watching the sun slip below the horizon. I tried it once or twice this year before accepting defeat in the face of chilly weather..

    4. Oh dear…..now there’s another warning by ‘Experts’ of high temperatures in August. Probably best not to put the washing on the line it might burst into flames 🔥

  82. Turned on the telly (channel 236) at about 7:30to do some ironing and have watched JRMoggfor the first time and now Dan Wooton for the first time.

    He is doing a piece on Lefty meltdowns over Nige.

    It’s incredible how stoopid these Lefties are. Missing the point left, right AND centre!

  83. Right, a start made today on clearing dead elm and diseased ash from the densest and steepest clump of trees up the hill above the “garden”. VERY knackering!
    Helping set up for the Carnival tomorrow and the event its self on Saturday so I’ll not be getting much more done until next week at the earliest.

    Off to bed so g’night all.

      1. Dutch elm and ash die-back.
        Locally we get elms that grow up to 10 or 12″ before the fungus kills them off and die-back has already killed a lot of ash trees in the country with more dying off every year.

  85. ‘Entitlement’ says the woman earning more at LBC than the £325K she was picking up at the BBC.

    On yer broomstick, you raddled old hag.

    Nigel Farage playing victim in NatWest row, says Emily Maitlis

    Journalist says former Ukip leader has somehow turned ‘utter entitlement into victimhood’ over closure of Coutts account

    By Catherine Lough • 27th July 2023

    Emily Maitlis has accused Nigel Farage of claiming “victimhood” in the row over the closure of his Coutts account.

    Mr Farage, the broadcaster and former Ukip leader, obtained documents showing that Coutts intended to close his accounts after deciding that his views “do not align with our values”.

    Speaking on The News Agents podcast, Ms Maitlis, a former BBC Newsnight anchor, said Mr Farage had used the incident to “whip up a populist storm”.

    Earlier this month, after Alison Rose, the then-NatWest chief executive, sat next to Simon Jack, the BBC business editor, at a charity dinner, the BBC reported that Mr Farage’s account was closed because his wealth fell short of that required by Coutts. The BBC and Jack have since apologised to Mr Farage over the story.

    Peter Flavel, the chief executive of Coutts, resigned on Thursday over the scandal, two days after Dame Alison stepped down as the chief executive of NatWest, which owns Coutts.

    Ms Maitlis said: “If you put to one side the leaking of customer confidentiality, which I probably think we all agree is egregious, I think the one thing we have learnt from all of this is how to whip up a populist storm.

    “Because at the heart of this is the choice of one private bank to say no to one private customer who they felt was costing them too much and wasn’t bringing them in enough money. They offered him another high street bank, like 95 per cent of the population use, and that wasn’t good enough.”

    She said Mr Farage had “made it an argument about free speech, about liberty, about censorship, when it wasn’t”, adding: “No one was shutting him down, no one was stopping him from banking, no one was calling him names.

    “They simply waited until he paid off a mortgage, having decided ahead of time they would call it quits at this time. This isn’t a public utility, it’s not electricity. It’s a posh private bank – it’s in the name. Yet the power of the populist somehow is to turn utter entitlement into victimhood, and that’s quite the move.”

    Toby Young, the founder and director of the Free Speech Union, said: “I don’t suppose Emily would have been so dismissive of Nigel Farage’s battle with NatWest if it had been Alastair Campbell who’d been de-banked.

    “The liberal metropolitan elite may have nothing to fear from cancel culture at the moment, but they won’t be on top forever. When their political fortunes change, they’ll be grateful to those of us who’ve stood up for free speech.”

    Lee Anderson, the Conservative MP for Ashfield, told The Telegraph: “These comments reek of victim blaming. Emily should have the sense to realise that no one should be barred from a bank because of their political views.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/07/27/emily-maitlis-nigel-farage-victimhood-coutts-account-row

  87. It would be interesting to know how many variants of the same story the BBC has put out on this subject on the last 30 years. Plotted on a graph it would probably look like James Mann’s hockey stick.

    Climate change: July set to be world’s warmest month on record

    UN chief Antonio Guterres said the planet is entering an “era of global boiling”. Scientists agree the extra heat is mainly linked to fossil fuel use.

    Well, that’s settled then…

    2. Weather records – 250 years.
      Actual weather – 4,500,000,000 years.

    3. Because we’ve been paying ‘green’ taxes for 20 (?) years and it’s been cold this past couple of week does that mean we’ve conquered this myth?
      I suspect ‘average global temperature’ is as common as the average price of a 3 bedroom house in England, i.e. not very. A real cock and bull story.

    4. We’re it the case that fossil fuels are actually responsible for climate change the UN should be sanctioning China and India followed by the US.

      The fact that the UN does not address the emissions from the worst polluters tells you everything you need to know. The UN is sponsored by China for starters.

    5. People have to stop thinking of “science” as an authority.
      Even people who see through the covid scam and the climate fraud still say “oh, but that wasn’t real science.”

      => Yes, it was real science. Stop sounding like a third rate marxist university tutor.

  88. It would be interesting to know how many variants of the same story the BBC has put out on this subject on the last 30 years. Plotted on a graph it would probably look like James Mann’s hockey stick.

    Climate change: July set to be world’s warmest month on record

    UN chief Antonio Guterres said the planet is entering an “era of global boiling”. Scientists agree the extra heat is mainly linked to fossil fuel use.

    Well, that’s settled then…

  89. “Climate boiling”. That presumption will upset the other two halves; why not climate girling or climate trannyling?

    1. I always remember when Ayatollah Khomeini died, a friend predicted that we were in for a very hot summer, “Because they’re stoking the fires in hell”. Sure enough, it was a hot summer that year. Lord help us when Soros, Schwab and co pass on 😂!

  90. I asked on the night it was broadcast if anyone was brave enough to watch it. I was…for 15 minutes.

    An under-charged report that failed to drive home the real problem with electric cars

    Electric cars are costly and the charging infrastructure is lacking – but these elephants in the room were not properly explored

    By Anita Singh, ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR • 25th July 2023

    From 2030, you will be unable to buy a new petrol or diesel car. The future is electric, or so we’re told. But the problems with electric cars are well-documented. They’re pricier than ordinary cars, and the experience of charging them up on a long journey can range from mildly inconvenient to tear-your-hair-out infuriating.

    ‘Electric Cars: What They Really Mean For You’ was an attempt to spell out the pros and cons – part science show, part consumer programme. It was patchy. We began with Justin Rowlatt, the BBC’s climate editor, meeting a chap called Richard Morgan – Moggy to his friends – who has a business converting classic cars by fitting electric motors. Which sounded great, but when Rowlatt claimed that this was “one of the most promising green tech projects in Britain” and “here could lie the future of the car”, what exactly did he mean? How much do these conversions cost? What does it have to do with those of us who haven’t got an Aston Martin and very deep pockets? We were never told.

    Then Rowlatt met Chris Stark, CEO of the Climate Change Committee. This was set up by the government to offer independent, expert advice on its net zero climate goals, Rowlatt explained, but was also instrumental in getting the government to adopt those goals in the first place. Stark had nothing of note to say, except that he was confident about electric cars becoming a mass market product soon.

    It was helpful to learn about some of the challenges in the way of our transition away from petrol and diesel. The production of batteries is subject to geopolitics – 80 per cent are currently made in China – and the cost can fluctuate wildly. Local council red tape is slowing the introduction of charging points, and there are now an estimated 32 cars per public charger. Plus, few of those are fast chargers, meaning that drivers need to factor long waits into their journeys.

    But the programme didn’t go deep enough into these issues. The most frustrating moment was when Rowlatt met columnist Giles Coren, who ditched his electric car out of frustration with the charging situation. “I’m not sure that electric vehicles are anywhere near as bad as he says, but here’s the thing: if people think they are, that is a huge problem for the industry,” Rowlatt said afterwards. Surely, testing the argument is exactly what this show should have been doing, otherwise what’s the point?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/2023/07/25/electric-cars-what-they-really-mean-for-you-bbc-one-review

    One BTL comment: “No mention of catastrophic EV fires (buses as well as cars), child labour and modern slavery in the countries that mine metals for the batteries, as well the appalling local environmental damage.

        1. I am simply asking whether anyone has seen any news on the burning cargo ship carrying 3000 electric vehicles.

          I think we have known for some time that electric vehicles sometimes explode spontaneously. We also know that lithium and water are not friends.

          2. The latest incident was off Holland in the North Sea, one fatality and still ablaze. There was another fire on a car transporter in March 22.

      2. The report from the DM yesterday, stated that there were nearly 3,000 vehicles onboard, but only 25 of them were EVs.

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