Thursday 28 July: Neither of the potential Tory leaders has the ability to unify the party

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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769 thoughts on “Thursday 28 July: Neither of the potential Tory leaders has the ability to unify the party”

  4. Neither of the potential Tory leaders has the ability to unify the party

    The MP’s are unified, the Conservative voters expect something different.

    1. The party doesn’t want another WEF candidate. Even if the members don’t know what the WEF is, they can sense that something is wrong.

      1. 354668+up ticks,

        Morning BB2,

        “the members don’t know what the WEF is, they can sense that something is wrong”

        They have a well horned sense that something is wrong dating back to shirt tail major the curry fancier. .

        .

      2. Party members and the rest of us will know how entrenched the WEF is within the Tory party after a short honeymoon period starting in early September. More of what Johnson was pushing will go down as well as a cup of cold vomit. Could the Tory party survive another WEF controlled era?

    2. 354668+ up ticks,

      Morning B3,
      I cannot imagine you want to see such an obvious
      odious facade of a name stealing party find unity in going forward.

      My wish is to see this mafia offshoot trying to operate from jail charged with crimes against the realm.

      1. 354668+ up ticks,

        Morning JN,
        Beware JN, the reform party is the brexit party
        pro tory (ino) under farage leadership name change to protect the guilty.

        Check out the pro johnson marching actions resulting in many innocent peoples getting put down.

    4. Tory MPs unified behind the rallying call, “Party First,” that is all.

  5. It feels like something is missing while we are not being notified of up / down voting

  6. I see that McDonalds have put their prices up for the first time in years

    Perhaps they are making a pitch for the Waitrose set.

    1. Well, foodstuffs are going up in price all over, so it’s not surprising.

  9. Good morning, all. Cloudy and calm here in N Essex.

    Steyn interviewing a professor re the jabs. Towards the end of the interview the prof admits that there is a causal relationship between the jabs and adverse effects, quoting the outcome of an experiment he wishes he hadn’t had to instigate. Steyn is really going after the jabs, good on him.

    https://twitter.com/joeyjojojunior_/status/1552407544257298433

      1. Are you thinking that he may become a victim of ‘Sudden Adult Death Syndrome’? Killing off your critics and expecting people to ignore the consequences of that extreme action is a fine line to negotiate. However, the people running this sham are ruthless beyond belief and anything is possible as resistance grows.

      2. 354668+ up ticks,

        Morning AS,
        So should any truth seeker in current times
        going quietly forward in my book is assuring us
        of a very,very nasty ongoing future.

      4. He needs a bodyguard. If he suddenly dies unexpectedly it will have nothing to do with the Covid jabs and everything to do with the action of an assassin hired by The Government Department for Supressing the Truth. (GDST)

        1. Don’t use the Tube.
          Don’t cross the road.
          Don’t drink tea with strangers.
          Don’t go for walks on your own.
          Any other suggestions?

    2. 354668+ up ticks,

      Morning KtK,
      Good post, I do not “HOPE” the subject gains momentum

      I want to see it FRONT & FOREMOST as an GRAVE issues of major importance going forward.

      We want this thrashed out before ALL else as in, GEs etc,etc, and the electorate majority call for more of the same.

    3. I had occasion for a GP visit yesterday and mentioned who I thought my afib had returned not long after my two covid jabs and she nodded in agreement. That’s now 5 medics I’ve seen since it all started that seemed to have reach the same conclusion.
      But nothing is being or will ever be done about it.

      1. With due respect it is entirely possible that GPs have quietly decided to humour their anti-vax patients in order to avoid time consuming arguments.

        1. It’s not just GPS, this was happening to me only a couple of weeks after I had to go to A&E. Twice within two weeks of the jabs.
          Surely that suggests a common denominator amongst the informed.

      2. Doc said ‘you need to lose weight’.. I know that. Said my sugar was too high. Knew that too.

        So I came home fing miserable and at a box of chocolates.

        1. I think the way things are going Wibbers, we’ll all be losing some weight soon.
          I use to walk about 5 miles a day, I haven’t been able to do this since my Covid Jabs.

  10. I’ve been awake since about 5.00am – couldn’t get back to sleep. Now it’s nearly time to get up, I can’t keep my eyes open.

          1. I find an afternoon nap does me the world of good. Especially when I’m fed up at the blithering idiots I foolishly call customers. No, you can’t plug a fibre DAC into an RJ45 port. No, it hasn’t the ports. Why hasn’t it? Because you went with the cheaper switch. What’s that? You want something hardware limited to run faster? Well, I specced that, you rejected it. You want an upgrade? OK, here’s the quote for the hardware + install time + QA.

            No, I didn’t think you’d want to pay it. Heck, I even included taking the old one away and offering the cost as a discount. Fibre capable switches are an order of magnitude more complicated. Oh, what’s that? Your mate’s son can do it? Yeah. been that kid. He can’t. He knows he can’t, but he’ll try anyway. Oh? You want me to watch as he does it to show how easy it is. OK. Happy to.

    2. Good morning, Stormy. Can I suggest you have a cup of tea, do a bit of NoTTLing, relax a little, then go back to bed. That’s what I often do.

  11. We’ve gone from fictitious deaths in 2020 to complete silence on real deaths in 2022 for some reason

  12. National Grid asks UK coal power plants to be on standby this winter. 28 July 2022.

    Coal power plants could be paid to generate more electricity, with consumers and businesses paid to use less, as the UK hunkers down for a winter of gas shortfalls across Europe caused by the standoff with Russia over the war in Ukraine.

    I can’t even get my head around that!

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jul/28/national-grid-asks-uk-coal-power-plants-to-be-on-standby-this-winter

      1. We have in Scotland. Two perfectly good power stations, Cockenzie and Longannet instantly demolished by our insane government.

        1. 354668+ up ticks,

          Morning HP,

          May one ask,just how do these party’s (ino) get into power
          again.again,& again ?

          1. I am beginning to think that which was unthinkable a few years ago, Ogga. Rigging. And not necessarily just the stupidity of the voters.

          2. 354668+ up ticks,

            Morning PM,
            Tis been going on openly since the major era showing it is orchestrated
            with supporter / voter consent.

            As long as a fools party is still in power when the Country finally succumbs
            will satisfy many IMO.

          3. Half the population of Scotland wish independence so they vote SNP. The SNP want to stay in power so they don’t deliver independence.

    2. You don’t put a coal-fired powerplant on standby. They take far too long to go from cold to generating. They are baseload stations for that reason.

        1. Paid to use less electricity? What stupidity is this? Produce more electricity. Meet demand. Create so much we have a surplus and energy prices fall. It’s not fecking complicated you useless socialist morons.

    1. Different lighting, different clothes and he’s probably been given a wash and brush up as well as some medication.

      2. Wash and brush up! Haven’t heard that expression for years – it reminds me of Paddington Station in the ’60s.

      3. He’s clearly ill. As a human being he should be allowed to step down gracefully and with dignity, both sides respecting his work (dubious thought it is) and a second taking over.

        1. I’ve said all along that I believe he’ll go as soon as Harris would serve less than half a term of his Presidency, probably after the mid-terms; thus allowing her to be President for nearly 10 years.

          1. Allowing her? Or the person replacing her as VP after she suffers an unfortunate accident?

          2. I’m not certain how the constitution handles that.
            It would depend ho (sic) the next VP, is selected and sworn in.

          3. I’m half convinced Hillary is already lined up as VP when Harris takes over.

          4. Too old now.
            My money would be on one of the absolute crazies of the extreme BLM left:
            Alexandria Ocasio – Cortez
            OR
            If they could shoehorn her in, Michelle Obama ;

      1. Nothing is the same, and there is another video where he doesn’t blink during a whole speech. It does have the appearance of a deep fake.
        All very creepy stuff.

      2. Look at the left eye, it is not the same. In other photographs it looks almost like a glass eye.

        And not only in America.

      1. No, the footage is real alright. I expect Ndovu is right and it is medication that gives him the staring eyes.

          2. Anything is possible these days! All the old rules are broken. Criminals profit openly; a lunatic gangster is called President; a pair of probably corrupt fools are standing for Prime Minister; the media tell us only blatant lies about a medical treatment that is no better than snake oil; words are re-defined to suit the propaganda of the day on a regular basis.

            In this crazy world, one of the cabal’s few weak points appears to be the tamped down prices of gold and silver, which hide the extent to which the fiat currencies are devalued. The gold market is too big to influence, but the WallStreetSilver movement has several hundred thousand members who are having a go at the silver price.
            WSS simply doesn’t care about the price; if it goes up, they can buy lots of stuff with their stacked silver, and if it goes down, far from giving up, they simply buy more silver. They aren’t playing by the criminals’ rules any more. That’s what they mean when they say “This is the way” and I don’t think they are wrong.
            The only way off this crazy roundabout is to re-define what’s important to us and pursue it, regardless of what WEF/bankster-paid experts tell us.

      1. If medication is making that much difference, then he is clearly not fit to be in any kind of office!

    6. You can’t be pro-insurrection and pro democracy – yes, actually, you can. The very term means the people have the power. That means not the state, Biden. The state is not the people.

      Just because you didn’t like it doesn’t mean you can twist the truth. Opposing state mandate is the epitome of democracy. Typical authoritarian Lefty.

      1. Everything the Democrats are saying about Jan 6. seems to be a pack of lies anyway.

  16. Good morning all

    The people on the red sofa BBC Breakfast interviewing diversity for the Commonwealth games in Birmingham which starts today, seem to believe the Commonwealth made Birmingham great as our second city.. and the twerp Lenny Henry appears to have taken ownership of the City..

    1. Lenny is such a knob.

      Well done the Fraulein’s yesterday for beating France. Plenty of dive versity from the French ladies, perhaps they thought sympathy would win the game for them. An unusually Lucky goal for them as well, in off the keepers back via the goal post.

        1. I was making some toast and my wife had switched our kitchen radio on radio 2 and I could hear some gobby man spouting gobble de gook and guess who ?

    4. Dear life it was horrific, wasn’t it? An endless waffling tirade, a rant of whining, left wing agitprop. The smugness over the leadership race, almost to the point of ‘now we’ve got rid of our enemy…’

      I hate them all.

        1. I wake up to R4. Getting away from it’s whinging rants makes me get out of bed.

      2. So do I Wibbling .. I ranted and raged when I was eating my berry laden granola .. I was furious with the BBC .

        They should all be shot .

    5. 6.0 pm news is wibbling on about sodding diversity. The air in Allan Towers is deep blue.

      1. My sister has arrived and is staying with us for a week .. I missed the news , bt we saw the opening thing re the Commonwealth games .. we were shocked by the initial introduction from a so called female singer/comedian of diverse origins and of course Lenny Henry , what idiots .

    1. Sad to see the Telegraph in there and not the guardian, but I suppose it depends who ‘bought’ the cartoon.

  19. Good morning all.
    11°C on a dull morning after a drop of rain in the small hours. Forecast to stay overcast.

    3. It’s bright and sunny here. There’s a nice breeze to cool everything down though. We do urgently need rain. The field is yellow and bone dry.

  20. 354668+ up ticks,

    Gerard Batten
    @gjb2021
    ·
    18h
    At least World War III should be a bit of a laugh then.

    Hearts of Oak
    @HeartsofOak
    ·
    20h
    Boris Johnson is touted as potential new NATO boss after quitting No10

    Boris touted as potential new Nato boss after ‘Trumpist’ warning

    However his former ally Steve Baker said he must quell any desire to reverse his departure. Allies of the Prime Minister have launched a grassroots campaign to allow him a chance to stay in No10.

    https://gettr.com/post/p1jxgunbc85

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk

  21. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d1b1a66a9c549bb1a2bf839bb6ea8507b9976de3fbfedb47a1fb9acda00644e7.png Can you just imagine what parlous state this country would have been in for decades, if not centuries, if the Left had held sway historically? Since it is their intrinsic nature to give succour to our enemies, they would have aided the Armada and secured its intention to invade. You and I would now be speaking Spanish, señor. They would then have assisted Herr Hitler’s campaign and that Spanish would now be replaced by Deutsch. Of course, If old Joe Stalin had noticed this ingrained Leftyness, he would have joined in the mass party to boost his influence in Moscow West (as Londongrad would have been renamed).

    As long as Right-minded people in the UK continue to fail to realise that the Left only have malign intent towards the nation, and then continue to do nothing to smash them at source, then the writing is on the wall.

    1. Good morning, Grizzly. Looking at your latest avatar, are you now modelling yourself after Mr Gorbachev?

          1. Fedora to you. [I have thirty other hats, all different, to choose from.]

            I might grow an incongruous white moustache next to make myself look self-important.

          2. Fedora Hats were first seen as a feminine hat with masculine undertones in 1883, inspired by a drama called “Fédora,” created by the French playwright Victorien Sardou. Sarah Bernhardt, a French Actress, played the star role of Princess Fédora Romanoff who was wearing a stylish, center-creased, soft brimmed hat.

            https://greeleyhatworks.com/the-history-of-fedoras-a-hat-timeline/#:~:text=Fedora%20Hats%20were%20first%20seen,%2Dcreased%2C%20soft%20brimmed%20hat.

        2. I sincerely hope that you are not swearing at me, Young Grizzly. Just in case, I’ll swear at you: You are a Very Silly Sausage. Lol.

    3. 354668+ up ticks,

      G,

      The lab/lib/con coalition supporter / voter can clearly see the writing on the wall but have continued to put party (ino) before Country, we are witnessing / suffering the consequences.

    1. I think you’ve just given the reason. Mind you, I’d never buy the Aldi stuff…

    2. A lot is time. My day is a bit boring – the morning is spent sorting the washing from the night before and putting the drying (ish) stuff away. Then getting Junior breakfasted and off to school. Then I’ll work from about 9 until 4 when I’ll get Junior from school. We do a good hour of reading and homework and then tea gets started at 6 until 7, then we walk Mongo and the Warqueen emerges from her refrigerated cavern and we’ll eat, then pack everything away and clean up until about 9 whereupon Junior goes to bed and – to be honest – I want to as well, but usually we do the hoovering, tidying up, putting devices on charge and when that’s done the washer’s finished and that’s emptied while Junior’s lunch for tomorrow is made.

      Occasionally I’ll be organised enough to make coleslaws and pasta salads but all too often I find myself having a lunch just before Junior’s to be picked up.

      1. I’ve timed myself. It takes me five minutes to knock up a decent bowl of coleslaw.

    3. Yesterday my good lady was delayed again in getting home from looking after our grandchildren . I usually put together the evening meal. So I rummaged and found an aubergine, red peppers, two courgettes, a leek, red onion, white onion, soft tomatoes, home grown garlic, some small jersey potatoes. Large frying pan with a lid, olive oil some tomato paste with a splash of white wine, and……….my latest, small (palm of the hand size) spinach leaves from the garden around 20 of wilted in before serving and of course thyme, oregano and rosemary, salt and pepper. Delicious.

        1. Good Grief, Grizzly. you’ve changed from Mr Gorbachev to Prince Andrew! Lol.

    4. So that’s how you do it .

      Slavs have a different sort of slaw , I had it once and thought it was delicious .. keeps the gut regular , lots of vinegar and other stuff.

      The Pole male nurse in long gone ma inlaw’s nursing home told me that their slaw was ver good for gut health .. no idea what it is called , is it the stuff Germans eat , and is it Kimchi?

      2. Sauerkraut. The Poles also mix shredded carrot and other stiff vegetables in before salting & fermenting.
        Firstborn makes an excellent sauerkraut, with crispy tasty cabbage and a whiff of chilli.

      3. I make a delicious red coleslaw using red cabbage and a red onion. Put the cabbage, carrot, onion, garlic and oregano into a bowl then stir through the lime juice and leave it for half an hour. After that pour off the excess juice and season it before adding the mayo. It increases the flavour so much.

  25. Latest Breaking News – The UK will be seen as misogynist if it rejects Truss.
    – And racist if it rejects Rishi

  26. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/dd0443c2ad12924a5a81c167b5fb1fdb3a4dc2126a3f529dd89c407040ce1e23.png Hands-on eating is more common that you think. How many people eat a sandwich (or an ice-cream cornet) with a knife and fork or chopsticks?

    What intrigues me, though, is how do you ensure that you “wash your Right hand thoroughly” if you need to wash it with that “dirty, personal-cleaning” Left hand? This does show, however, that Left is considered dirty in many parts of the world. We say “Right = correct”, and “Left behind”. Now it all makes more sense.

    1. Wine experts slurp? No, they don’t. I’ve seen them dribble towards the end of a long hard day. I’ve seen them draw in air through their teeth, to aerate the wine. (As a wine professional I attended many tastings.)

    2. Doesn’t Ramesh Nayak Chobe realise he is now living in Great Britain , a different culture .

      Does he still squat by leaving piles of curry pooh on our heathlands , grassy verges or side streets , pick his nose and gob his lungs out onto our pavements … and millions of other things I really don’t care to know about .

      1. Probably. There have been instructions specifically for muslims on how to use a toilet.

          1. Unfortunately I lost it but for some years I kept a report about a kebab house where the sanitary arrangements were a lemonade bottle above a sink in the kitchen, filled with water with which the staff rinsed their underparts…

          2. Oh dear………but i can remember some very unsavoury toilet areas in not totally rural France.

          1. I jest not, I have worked in two offices in central London where the communal toilets have been abused/broken in this way.

      2. Probably similar outlook to his fellows, he’s here to change it TB.
        The culture that is, the culture they all hate so much but they rely on for a living. And anything else that comes with it.

    3. Not for no reason is the Latin root for the left hand ‘sinistra’.

      I eat left handed. My folks would always lay the table as if I were not. It would annoy me. Thus as a truculent sod I’d lay it back to front for them.

      However, Mr Chobe – you live in England now. You’ll use a knife and fork.

    4. I use cutlery when eating a burger in a bun. I don’t like greasy fingers or food bits getting stuck around my face. The real reason for this nudge is to make us more like them.

      1. I was appalled when a relative in her 30s chose a ‘burger’ from a reasonable menu in a restaurant. She then proceeded to pick it up with both hands and eat it . She was never invited to dine with the family again.

        1. One of my brothers eats with his mouth open. Another brother eats like a pig at a trough. My older sister eats a quarter pounder in two bites. They eat really fast too as if it’s a race. Puts me right off.

          1. Three rules when I was knee high to a Grasshopper:
            Don’t talk with your mouth full.
            Don’t eat food with your mouth open.
            Don’t drink with your mouth full of food.

            The last one seems to be totally ignored by very many these days.

          3. “Nanny, was that bomb exploding?”
            “Yes, Master Smith. Elbows off the table.”

      2. “I use cutlery when eating a burger in a bun.” Is that ‘cos you’s a soft southerner? I bet you eat sandwiches and ice-cream cornets and ice-lollipops with a knife and fork too.

        Oop norf, we don’t put our hamburgers in a ‘bun’. We eat them in a cob. Buns have currants in ’em, innit?

    5. A letter typical of a third-world savage.

      I have experienced this, having been served fish-head curry on a banana leaf in the well-established ‘Little India’ part of Singapore in the late 70s

    6. Yes Mr Chobe, people in the Britain ate with their hands in the past too, before they invented cutlery which was a vast improvement for most food.

    7. One ‘and in me gob and t’other up me arse. No thanks luv. Or should that be dextra and sinistra, darlings?

      1. 354668+ up ticks,

        Afternoon SE,
        With the end of a once decent nation
        in sight why do the electoral majority keep at it, tis like kicking a mortally wounded being ?

  28. Good Morning! A typical summer morning in Scotland. Cold (55˚F), misty, bucketing with rain. We did not see many out on deck chairs as we nipped out to the fishmonger.

    2. It was a becalmed, dry morning on the golf course here on the Costa Clyde; as of five minutes ago it’s coming down in stair rods.

  29. I think it is about time we abandoned the greedy needy Commonwealth , we have no need for it anymore .

    We are now being used and abused . They are a drain on our resources , what have they done for us?

    4. We should have established free trade agreements with the Commonwealth and told the EU to get lost if they didn’t treat us fairly. There would be no need for freedom of movement and it would have been mutually beneficial.

  30. I just heard on the ‘daily update’ Bernard Cribbins has died aged 93. He seemed like a decent sort of person.

  31. Not much has been made of this on the BBC. A chunk of rich Ukrainian farmland the size of Italy has been bought by three American companies. One of them is Monsanto. Ukraine looking to borrow around $17bn from IMF.

    https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/exclusive-ukraine-aims-15-20-bln-imf-loan-by-year-end-central-bank-governor-2022-07-26/
    https://agnostic.com/discussion/671304/since-2014-three-american-agri-food-companies-monsanto-dupont-and-cargill-have-purchased-more#:~:text=Monsanto%2C%20Dupont%20and%20Cargill%20have%20purchased%20more%20than,by%203%20giga-funds%2C%20Vanguard%2C%20Black%20Rock%2C%20State%20Street.

      1. Could be trouble ahead. The farm workers in the Ukraine will be reduced to serfs. After the break-up of communism there was a sense that farmland would be taken over by local farmers, from whom it had been stolen originally. A Peasants Revolt in prospect. Not just in the Ukraine.

  33. Good Moaning.
    Yay ….. normal English summer has been resumed. Run of dull days – all we need now is ‘apocalyptic’ rainfall that proves planning permission to build houses on water meadows was not a Good Thing.

    1. Sea levels rising around the UK according to the Met Office. Well, its been so dry that all the water that should be in rainclouds is still in the ocean. Works for me.. Drizzle here this morning.

    2. All todays clouds are coming from the south east, there must be some rain in some of them.

      1. I jolly well hope so. I hope they don’t just pass over us to rain on areas already well moistened.

        1. Driving from Colchester to Sudbury on the A134 on Tuesday afternoon the heavens opened at Newton. Not a drop between Sudbury and Clare.

          We have had no rain for weeks whereas a few surrounding villages have had an occasional drenching.

          1. Oh well, at least the golf course will look green.
            I think areas around artesian lines attract thunderstorms. Would that be something to do with lower temperature?

  34. Met Office – State ot the Climate Report

    A climate information scientist speaking on BBC R4 this morning explained that 2021 had been the averageist year since climate records began in the UK.

    As a caveat however he consoled global warming alarmists with the fact that ignoring records over the last 20 years 2021 would have been the warmest on record.

    🤔

    1. Watching a programme about Angkor Wat is the heart and soul of Cambodia and Khmer religion, dendrologists took samples from ancient trees some 50 years old and found that all over the planet climate has varied massively since a long time before smug westerners records began. Lack of rain fall caused extensive droughts and floods followed quite often many years latter.

    1. Well a military base would be very convenient, I assume many of them are coming to fight when the time is right.

          1. It will be them against the masses when they all suddenly wake up to what is happening

    2. My comment on MSN site:

      Having been based at RAF Linton-on-Ouse I can understand the local residents concern. My biggest worry is why do we keep accepting these scrounging, diseased layabouts at all? This is obviously part of WEF’s grand plan.

      1. Around two years ago i was staying at Lydstep near Tenby and we quite often saw demonstrations out side Penally Camp on the A4139.
        The surrounding area has lots of holiday accommodation and caravan parks. Having witnessed this first hand, I can imagine how the people who live locally feel about all these camps. Despite the fact they should never have ben allowed into the country in the first place It’s long past time to send them back

    3. These are not refugee camps that are camps to house illegal immigrants who should never have been allowed into the country in the first place.
      Question for Liz and Rishi – You seem to believe you can change the climate why can’t you stop illegal immigration.
      Calling them asylum centres makes it emotionally more compfortable for what passes as a government.

      1. There has not been one mention of the worse crime ever committed against our country by politicians. Not a single syllable.

      2. This was the first line of the reply to my letter to my MP regarding this situation.

        The United Kingdom has a proud record of helping those fleeing persecution, oppression or tyranny from around the world.

        So why are you allowing all of these people in, they were safe in France free from all the above mentioned.

  36. Good morning, my friends

    Back from an exhausting but good week in England. Christo, our elder son, got married last Friday and he and his bride had organised a lavish party with a very good choir (in which Christo usually sings bass) and a magnificent reception and dance to follow. The food was excellent and the wine flowed like water. As they have recently bought their own house and paid for the wedding themselves Christo must be making a fortune in his job. Aerospace engineering clearly pays very much better than teaching!

    We stayed with an old university friend in Berkhamsted, then went up to Lancaster to spend a few days with Henry (our second son) and Jess (who have a very well appointed flat overlooking the canal). We then went up to Durham for a day to see one of my very best friends whom I hadn’t seen since our wedding 34 years ago. It is astonishing how one can not see a really close friend for decades and yet when you meet up again it is as if you were never apart.

    We were warned that the M25 would be clogged because the rail strike would mean far more cars on the road so we left very early as we feared it would take ages getting through custom checks at Dover but in the event we got very quickly round the M25 with no delays and went straight through the ferry port checks so quickly that we were able to catch an earlier ferry.

    Over 2,500 kms driving over the past week so we are quite tired – but we have a group of students arriving in a couple of days so we shall be keeping busy.

    3. I spent a lot of time in the charming little city of Lancaster, 40 years ago. I remember it well.

    4. Shame you didn’t let us known Richard, I only live half an hour from Berko. 😉

    5. Things like that are what makes life worth living. Glad you all had a grand old time.

    6. Glad you’re home safely.
      A pity you couldn’t stay a bit longer and meet up with some of us! Even just a tea & sticky bun in an M6 service area!

  39. The sky is dripping occasionally. Not enough to register on my rain gauge, but enough to use it as an excuse not to cut any more hedges…

    1. After donning thick gloves, I’ve just done an hour’s bramble & briar pulling!

      1. I’m covered in bites from my efforts in the garden two days ago. Kept me awake most of the night. Will stick to housework & Nottling today!

  41. I run a small engineering consulting company. Each year I get a notice from the Information Commissioner’s Office to pay an annual fee. These fees vary between £40 and £2900 depending on the size and turnover of the company. Every company that holds any personal data of any individual is required by law to register and pay these fees. I haven’t done any accurate sums but that must amount to about £100m anually. I asked the ICO for their annual financial report to see where this money is going – it seems a lot of money to do litle more than keep a register for a law that was imposed by the EU. I have written several time to the ICO asking for their financials but have not had any response. Have any other nottlers had any dealings with this bureaucratic organisation?

  42. Bernard Cribbins, comic actor whose panoply of characters included Perks in The Railway Children and the voices of the Wombles – obituary
    DT: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2022/07/28/bernard-cribbins-comic-actor-whose-panoply-characters-included/

    Very sad that he has gone.

    I bought a CD of him singing comic songs for my sons when they were little. They loved it.

    He always enriched the numerous TV shows and films in which he appeared. He was excellent as Dangerous Davies and I remember the treat he got from his wife on his birthday in ‘The Railway Children‘!

    (The pictures accompanying tis version of the song are rather fun. Some saucy postcards!)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDYCAVcDKWg

    1. That’s very sad news, Rastus. I liked Bernard – another actor from my childhood days lost. Not many left now.

      1. Fewer and fewer people, things, thoughts from our childhood. Never has so much been lost, by so many, due to so few…

      2. Fewer and fewer people, things, thoughts from our childhood. Never has so much been lost, by so many, due to so few…

      1. I have requested that song for my funeral. Since they don’t know it in these parts, my wish may be granted.

        Naturally Right said Fred will be the song when they carry my coffins for the service.

        1. Especially music!
          “Turn that racket off!”
          “That’s Brahms’ 5th racket!”

      1. Ah, the COI (Central Office of Information) public information films. There are some classics, all stored at the British Film Institute now. They were taken so seriously at the time too. I remember lectures in Assembly at Infant School on how to cross the road safely. The school was on a busy road and most of us came from the neighbouring estates. Our parents didn’t chauffer us around, we walked.

    5. The North-West Frontier…of London. Have you ever thought how many people around here are actually at war with each other? We’ve got two religious lots of Irish, hostile African tribes, Indians and Pakistanis, Jews and Arabs, and some of the original British. Magic life for a copper.

      The spoken intro to ‘Dangerous Davies – The Last Detective’, 1980.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIhr5lfvgss

  43. Nadine Dorries was today forced to cut short a Commonwealth Games interview after a Sky News cameraman was threatened and she desperately had to call security.

    Ahead of tonight’s opening ceremony, the Culture Secretary was being grilled by Kay Burley in the middle of Birmingham when a pedestrian started yelling at the off-screen crew.

    An increasingly distracted Ms Dorries initially tried to continue with the interview – until the man’s yelling became so loud she couldn’t hear a question about justifying the £778million cost of the Games. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11056887/Moment-Nadine-Dorries-forced-call-security-LIVE-Sky-News-broadcast.html

    2. IMHO there is only one reason these games are taking place. And it’s the most obvious and most commonly used reason.

    1. Ms Feltz said she had to step down to ‘catch up on deficit of beauty sleep’

      She is doing it 20 years too late!

      2. 50 years too ate. I can’t think of any female more ugly or more emetic [‘cept for Miriam Margoyle, mebbe!]

        1. Miriam Gargoyle is a foul mouthed rug munching old baggage. And those are her good points.

    2. One of life’s many mysteries. How on earth did that uneducated fat cow ever get one day on the radio – let alone 20 years?

        2. Are you saying that Marjorie Proops, Eve Pollard, Bryony Gordon and Angela Rayner weren’t given their jobs on newspapers as a result of their innate talent?

    1. Oh, but that can mean so much. Maybe they grew up in different houses, or were not ‘together’ as siblings? Far easier simply to come along and say… no she’s not!

    3. But, but that’s her “truth”, the same as all the lies they have told about the Royal Family are their “truths”. Same as hate crime – truth is what someone feels, (however mentally unstable they are, like H & MM) not what actually is, in Wokeworld.

          1. The wretched woman has definitely isolated him from his friends and family. Those that could help most.

    4. But, but that’s her “truth”, the same as all the lies they have told about the Royal Family are their “truths”. Same as hate crime – truth is what someone feels, (however mentally unstable they are, like H & MM) not what actually is, in Wokeworld.

  47. Simple pleasures….husband has now picked 6 ripe tomatoes from his plant- he’s over the moon. They look and smell nice. A tiny treat for later 😉

    1. I made some Viennese whirl biscuits and a Ferrero Roche cake. Mainly because if I didn’t make a cake I’d finish the box. As I am having a particular bad day I also made some salted caramel croissants.

      Those have gone. Plated up a bash for her Scariness. Left it outside, knocked on the door and ran. At the ‘What! Oh’ I assume t’was welcome.

      1. You have been busy. Do you think your offerings will placate the beast?

        Rocky Road is quick and simple to make using those same ingredients.

    2. I like mine halved and lightly grilled with a pinch of salt some oregano and olive oil.

  48. Russian economy ‘crippled at every level’ despite Putin’s propaganda. 28 July 2022.

    Russia’s economy is being “catastrophically” crippled by Western sanctions according to experts, despite Vladimir Putin’s efforts to hide the damage.

    Analysts at Yale looking at “private Russian language and unconventional data sources” say imports have “collapsed” and domestic production “has come to a complete standstill”.

    Remind me again who is talking about rationing gas this coming Winter? Where is the Cost of Living rising fastest? Where is petrol £1.85 a litre? Where are heating costs expected to double over the next six months? Name one country that has been brought down by sanctions! Why did the IMF say that the Russian economy has only contracted by 9%?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/07/28/russian-economy-crippled-every-level-despite-putins-propaganda/

    1. Russia is trading with China and the Global South. The peoples of the Global South are only the darlings of the Western globalists when they can be used as a weapon to beat us with. Otherwise they’re a pesky nuisance to be sacrificed to US hegemony.

  51. One of the many, many things that infuriate me about the “leadership” bid is the way the oily one and the thick one imply that they had NOTHING to do with the shambles created over the last three years.

    They just arrived on Earth two weeks ago.

  52. While cycling slowly but surely up hill to get eggs before lunch, I pondered on two of the videos posted yesterday.

    (a) How on earth could someone stand by watching that utter bastard mistreat the mule but film it – instead of grabbing a large piece of wood and hitting bastard over the head?

    (b) The cat at the top of the escalator was clearly distressed. He had gone into lockdown mode. Why did NO ONE think to move him to a place of safety and/or check him over.

    What callous shytes people are….

      1. I did, thank you. I am fitter now than any time in the last 2½ years. Funny old thing, ageing. Must be to do with global warming…!!

        1. Swimming and cycling regular does that for you. You only need running to enter the triathlon !

      3. I didn’t either – but my laptop doesn’t play Twitter videos and I certainly didn’t want to find it on my phone.

    1. I suspect that if Sonny Boy and I hadn’t reacted quickly, MB would have been among the statistics. And also the ambulance turning up promptly after my phone call.
      A fortnight to the day after his jab he suffered a myocardial infarction.

      1. MCI, Anne, no fun been there, twice and survived. If I shall a third time is debateable.

    2. I suspect that if Sonny Boy and I hadn’t reacted quickly, MB would have been among the statistics. And also the ambulance turning up promptly after my phone call.
      A fortnight to the day after his jab he suffered a myocardial infarction.

  55. The title should read ‘The parliamentary Tory Party seems to have a death wish’

    Oh for a nasty accident somewhere soon…

    The Tory Party seems to have a death wish

    It was clear most Conservatives didn’t want either Truss or Sunak, but too many MPs have an arrogant disdain for their loyal supporters

    ALLISON PEARSON

    Well, at least I predicted that our next prime minister would be a woman. What I couldn’t possibly have foreseen was that Tory MPs would alight on the one female candidate who was most unlikely to appeal to the wider public. Oh, and the other finalist they chose is a stupefyingly rich technocrat widely mistrusted by the grassroots who, still being Conservatives, bless them, take a dim view of the ex-chancellor imposing the biggest tax burden for 70 years. What a relief the Parliamentary party is not picking someone who has to win a general election or anything important like that, eh?

    To be fair, Liz Truss exceeded expectations in the BBC’s debate on Monday night. Firm and measured, she was ably assisted by her rival, Rishi Sunak, who came across as the most obnoxious smart alec in a public school debating society. Members of Team Sunak should have been offstage frantically holding up cue cards: “Let. Her. Speak. Every. Time. You. Interrupt. You. Lose. Another. Vote.”

    Some 24 points behind Truss in a poll of Conservative members, the reliably courteous Sunak had clearly been told to get on the front foot, but he only succeeded in coming across as hyper, supercilious and rude. The Foreign Secretary can generally be relied upon to condemn herself out of her own mouth, but Sunak didn’t give her the chance to speak.

    Instead of exposing his opponent as wooden and awkward, the jabbering former chancellor allowed Liz, icily resplendent in Thatcher-blue, to look statesmanlike by comparison.

    All his clever-clever stuff about “Your economist said…” would have been entirely lost on viewers who will have seen an increasingly desperate man talking over a woman. Sunak’s perfectly valid arguments about sound money were lost in a furore about “mansplaining”.

    When a single mother, in the studio audience in Stoke-on-Trent, said that she was already struggling with rising energy bills, Rishi’s idea of assistance appeared to be “better insulation”. Lagging! Brilliant! That should keep the wolf from the door. Refusing to depart from his grim, no-tax-cuts-until-you’ve-eaten-your-sprouts plan, Sunak was unwilling to offer the poor woman even a glimmer of help. “We have to see exactly what the price cap will be,” he said primly. “Wait and see!”

    With a strategy like that we don’t have to wait and see who is going to be the next Tory leader. It’s already perfectly clear. Unless Gavin Williamson can produce photographic evidence of Liz Truss drowning puppies or helping a boat of illegal migrants ashore at Dover, it’s in the bag.

    Never the warmest of performers, Truss gave a far better impression of empathy with an anxious public. “I would act immediately,” she told the woman, vowing to reverse the rise in National Insurance. “We promised not to raise taxes in the manifesto,” she sniped. (Ooff, take that, Rishi!) Then, she suggested a temporary moratorium on green levies to reduce bills. Exactly the kind of no-nonsense, practical politics designed to play well with Tory activists.

    So, yes, enough of them will vote for her, despite the best (worst, actually, and shockingly nasty) efforts of the Rishi-backing Tory grandees and their attack dogs in the media. The members will make Truss their new leader in six weeks, I think. But not with any great enthusiasm or confidence. She is, as one despairing activist put it, “the lesser of two weevils”.

    The party in the country has every right to be upset. It was evident from the start that most Conservatives did not want either Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak to succeed Boris Johnson as prime minister. Poll after poll showed that they had a strong preference for other candidates. And if the loyalists are privately disappointed by the prospect of their new standard-bearer, then what hope is there of the British people voting for Liz Truss (or Rishi Sunak) in 2024?

    All the excitement and the energy for change went out of the race with the departure of Kemi Badenoch and Penny Mordaunt. Very different politicians with different styles and philosophies, certainly. But each, I believe, capable of creating the crucial impression of a fresh start and with an ability to reach out to younger, very different groups and (in Mordaunt’s case) the hundreds of thousands of centrist swing voters who will be tempted to stampede to the Liberal Democrats, overturning scores of Conservative “safe” seats.

    Too many MPs have shown an arrogant disdain for the views of their most loyal supporters. Those MPs should have been thinking two or three bold moves ahead when they cast their vote, not opting for cowardly careerism and the hope of ministerial preferment. They have given the long-suffering grassroots a Hobson’s choice between an ardent Remainer who converted to Leave when she saw which way the wind was blowing and an ex-Chancellor who claims he will govern as a Thatcherite after almost three years of socialist economics. It would be like an arsonist suddenly getting a job as a fire-extinguisher salesman.

    When Sunak and Truss’s names were announced last week, one senior Tory Party campaigner texted me: “FFS! Have we got a Death Wish?”

    David, a Telegraph reader, expanded eloquently on that thought: “Many members of the party are furious that MPs have given them two second-rate candidates they don’t want. Boris Johnson would be more likely to win the next election than either of them.”

    “I think MPs are ridiculously complacent about keeping their jobs,” fumed one Badenoch-backing Tory peeress who fears an electoral wipe-out is coming down the track.

    I agree. You have to ask, is the Conservative Party interested in power any longer or is it too tied up with internecine squabbling and score-settling to bother with what voters might actually like? Liz Truss was a lot less popular with both Tory members and the wider electorate; they overwhelmingly preferred Badenoch and Mordaunt to the Foreign Secretary. Yet it is Truss who will be in Number 10 when the Tories are going to need every vote they can get.

    Amid such discord, the growing clamour to Build Back Boris doesn’t look that much crazier than any of the other lunatic solutions on offer. Real hardship is coming to millions over the next 18 months. Britons will experience a shocking drop in their living standards, radiators will grow chilly, only food banks will prosper and the Government will inevitably get the blame. The Conservatives will be in a blind panic about the dire state of the polls. Could there be yet another leadership election to save all their skins and try to avert a rainbow coalition? I think there could be. I hope there will be. Some excellent women are waiting in the wings.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2022/07/26/tory-party-seems-have-death-wish/

    1. Unless the Rank & File Party Members are prepared to stand up to the Blairite New Labor Lite TINO clique that currently runs their party, and I’m afraid there are more than a few leaders of the constituency parties that are part of that clique, then they may as well shut up shop.

      1. TINO? Twats in name only?

        Sorry BoB but, If your going to invent acronyms, at least explain them to the great unwashed.

    2. Just one question, “Why do we need any of these ‘clinics’?

      As I grew up, there was never, ever any doubt about one’s sex, nobody questioned it and later, when I grew up more, one knew about queers, but they were just tolerated and, even after Leo Abse, it was just accepted that others had different life-styles.

      Well, OK that’s you; get on with it, it doesn’t mean I have to jump in, wave mulitcoloured flags and tell you that we need more queers to make the world better.

      Am I just old-fashioned, disillusioned, out of touch? Do I have to have ‘Gay Pride’ (a misnomer) forced down my throat at every turn? The answer is a resounding NO!

      1. No – it’s rammed down our throats all the time now. But the worst thing is the corruption of young children with their use of rainbows and drag queens telling stories. Subversive literature in schools should be removed – let children be children – and the fashion for ‘gender’ is a nonsense that should be stopped. Sigh…………..

        1. Until these idiots recognise, J, that ‘gender’ is just a grammatical construct, we, the educated, will have to put up with these simplistic ideas and just stand against the lunacy.

          1. It’s not just simplistic lunacy, it’s an attack on childhood, which should be a time of learning and development, not a time to be bombarded with subversive notions that people can change sex at a whim.

            These people clearly believe that they can capture young children and push their dangerous ideas to young minds. Which is what they have done, or there would be no need for places like the Tavistock clinic.

    3. The ‘excellent women waiting in the wings’ does not include Mordaunt. I just do not understand AP’s obsession with her.

  56. Hooray! The Tavistock Child Abuse Clinic is to be shut down!!

    Tavistock transgender clinic shut down by NHS after review finds it is ‘not safe’ for children
    Young people who believe that they are trans will be moved into regional centres which will take a more ‘holistic’ approach to treatment

    By
    Hayley Dixon,
    SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
    28 July 2022 • 12:22pm

    The Tavistock transgender clinic is to be shut down by the NHS after a review found it is “not safe” for children.

    NHS England will move young people who believe that they are trans into regional centres which will take a more “holistic” approach to treatment and look at other mental health or medical issues they may have.

    The decision is a response to the interim Cass Review, which warned that medics in the Tavistock had felt “under pressure to adopt an unquestioning affirmative approach” to gender identity rather than going through the normal process of clinic assessment with young people.

    Dr Hilary Cass, the consultant paediatrician who is leading the independent review, found earlier this year that the clinic as the only provider of gender identity services for young people in England was “not a safe or viable long-term option”.

    Announcing their response to Dr Cass’s recommendations, NHS England said that “given the urgent requirement to stabilise current service provision” they will establish two “Early Adopter services” run by specialist children’s hospitals.

    Clinic to close by next spring
    The centres, one in London and one in the North West, will take responsibility for all of the Tavistock clinic’s patients and waiting lists with the aim to shut down the clinic by next spring.

    NHS England have also committed to follow Dr Cass’s recommendation that they carry out “rapid” research on the use of puberty blockers by young people after it was noted there is currently “insufficient evidence” on their impact.

    The Cass review was commissioned by NHS England in 2020 amid concerns that there was “scarce and inconclusive evidence to support clinical decision making” which saw children as young as 10 given puberty blockers.

    There were concerns over a sharp rise in referrals to the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) run by the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust – over 5,000 in 2021/2 compared to 250 a decade earlier and long waiting lists.

    Dr Cass, a past president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, was also asked to investigate the “marked changes” in the patients being referred from those who are born men wishing to become women to girls in their early teens claiming that they were born in the wrong body.

    A spokesman for NHS England noted that there were “a significant number of children are also presenting with neurodiversity and other mental health needs and risky behaviours which requires careful consideration and needs to be better understood”.

    It was amid fears that doctors were too quick to affirm a child’s new identity, without looking at other mental health or medical issues, that Dr Cass recommended moving away from a single provider model.

    The NHS said that it recognised the need to “establish regional services that work to a new clinical model that can better meet the holistic needs of a vulnerable group of children and young people”.

    Recommendations to be released
    New recommendations from the Cass review, due to be released on Thursday, state that “staff should maintain a broad clinical perspective in order to embed the care of children and young people with gender uncertainty within a broader child and adolescent health context’.

    Initially two clinics will be set up, one in London led by a partnership between Great Ormond Street Hospital and the Evelina London Children’s Hospital and a second in the North West, led by a partnership between Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust and the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital.

    The NHS hopes to eventually run around eight regional centres.

    “The ongoing work of Dr Cass’ review, alongside our experience in establishing the Early Adopter services, will help shape the development of the new model of care, national standards and a new national service specification against which regional services can be commissioned,” an NHS England spokesperson said.

    “We will engage and consult fully on this service specification in due course.”

    Now, let’s get onto Mermaids!

    https://twitter.com/bloominanna/status/1074222025558900736

    2. “Young people who believe that they are trans will be moved into …”
      Call me an old fuddy duddy, but what exactly is a ‘tran’?

      I know about trains, transistors and Transylvania, but that’s my limit.

        1. “Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.”
          Gloria vomited while travelling in a commercial vehicle on the first day of the working week.

          1. Caesar sic in omnibus: Brutus sic in at.

            Two can play at that game, vieille haricot…

    4. Will it be allowed to ‘practise’ until next spring? It can do an awful lot of damage in that time.

        2. Yes, that I figured for myself – it doesn’t detract from my initial comment, one whit.

          3. Very smart. At least your hats fit properly. At my nieces wedding my uncle got the hats mixed up. They looked idiotic.

    1. The left one is me 20 years ago. The right one is where I’m heading – sans ciagrette, cos it’s disgusting.

    1. Rock up at the local library and read to the kiddiewinks.
      You’ll be dead welcome there.
      p.s. make sure your lippie and nail varnish match.

    2. :-)))))))))))))

      Not wanting to boast or anything, but we had real rain the night before last – hours of it!

          2. We had a wet evening on June 18th. It rained quite hard, though not for long. Nothing to speak of since, except a bit of drizzle.

          3. You may keep May, anytime, another stupid bitch and a PM to boot. I just wish I could!

  62. Is it just me or has anyone else noticed that American multi-billionaires, i.e the richest and most influential men on the planet, are all gormless looking, plug ugly, devoid of charisma, and nerdy to a ‘T’?

    I cite: Mark Zuckerberg (FaceBook); Jeff Bezos (Amazon); Elon Musk (Tesla); Billy Goats (Microsoft). There are, no doubt, many others that fit into this category but they don’t come readily to mind.

    1. Musk is Sarf Efrican. Notwithstanding, he fits the categories you list.

      On the other hand, all these nerds are as rich as Croesus…. So they must be doing something better than you or I.

      1. I do get the feeling that there is some kind of mutual support system going on for this crew … but I’m buggered if I know what it may be!

        2. Phizzee is right. They tend to come from that in-crowd of gangsters that run the US, behind which stand the same shadowy billionaires that founded the WEF and other groups.
          Gates didn’t just come out of nowhere, drop out of college and just happen to found a company that just happened to get the IBM contract.

          1. Gates paid IBM $80,000 for the DOS operating system that powers laptops. IBM had decided to concentrate on mainframes and drop personal computers.

    3. Sapiosexual women find Musk attractive. Just saying. The rest of the shady characters you cite, not a spark.

        1. I’m sure there was another term for the concept of women who find intelligent men attractive, but I couldn’t find it on the internet, so I was left with “sapiosexual”.

          2. I’m sure there was another term for the concept of women who find intelligent men attractive, but I couldn’t find it on the internet, so I was left with “sapiosexual”.

            You’re a woman? Who knew!

          7. We shall shortly be celebrating our Heinz anniversary – 57 years, we are marking the occasion with beans on toast, amongst other things!!

    4. Traditionally women are persuaded by good looks and/or plenty of resources. You can change the precise wording, but if physique is nul points, the male must compensate in some other way. High status, high intelligence or loads of wonga are good examples.
      Phizzee tells jokes, but I am uncertain of his success rate.

    5. The Koch Brothers are said to be worth 58 billion. No idea what they look like. I have an American brother who thinks that they’re the bad guys and not Soros. He says they funded the Barrington Declaration and thinks that proves his point. So being against lockdown is evil but funding BLM riots is good. I don’t bother arguing.

    6. With that grey topper – one of 30, are you trying to emulate the Yank multi-billionaires?

        1. Amongst a lot of things hat should’ve been took back. Not least your overweening bumptious ego.

  63. Emma Raducanu ‘will be used as propaganda by Putin’ after appointing Russian coach. 28 July 2022.

    The British No 1 has teamed up with Dmitry Tursunov on a trial basis as she looks to defend her title at the upcoming US Open

    Emma Raducanu will be used as a propaganda tool for Vladimir Putin after appointing a Russian coach, an influential MP has warned.

    The 19-year-old has been urged to abandon plans to team up with Dmitry Tursunov for her defence of her US Open crown by Chris Bryant MP, the chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Russia.

    Vlad’s going to start crowing about Tennis Coaches? I can’t really see that! It would just make him look pathetic; in fact almost as ridiculous as Bryant for suggesting it! Just imagine, here you are some poor sod trying to earn a crust and some loud mouthed half- wit comes along and starts saying you don’t deserve a job because the UK government doesn’t like it! And what’s it got to do with Bryant anyway? Who made him into God?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tennis/2022/07/28/emma-raducanu-risks-controversy-hiring-russian-coach-us-open/

    1. “Vlad’s going to start crowing about Tennis Coaches?”

      Balls. That’ll be the net result.

    2. It’s all getting a bit ridiculous. Hasn’t Chris Bryant MP got anything better to do?

        1. Chris anything but a proper job Bryant? The one who was ridiculed by the press in 2003 when he posted a picture of himself wearing only underpants on a gay dating site. That Chris Bryant?

          1. “After completing his first degree, Bryant began his training to be a priest in the Church of England at Ripon College Cuddesdon in Oxfordshire. There, he obtained a further degree in theology.

            He was ordained deacon in 1986 and priest in 1987. He served as a curate at the Church of All Saints, High Wycombe from 1986 to 1989 and then as a Youth Chaplain in Peterborough, as well as travelling in Latin America.

            In 1991 Bryant left the ordained ministry, after deciding that being gay and being a priest were incompatible. Statements made by Richard Harries, the then-Bishop of Oxford also influenced his decision.”

            One of the very, very few useful things the Bishop did…..

    3. Just go for what’s best for you, girl and forget any (unlikely) propaganda associated therewith, you have a career to advance and my best wishes go with you for that.

  64. We have a copse of 60 beech trees.

    I walked through just now – they are shedding their leaves left, right and centre. Looks like Autumn – except that the leaves are GREEN. Sad.

    2. At current rate of progress my horse chestnut will have shed all its leaves before the end of August, ditto the weeping willow

      1. One just hopes that they’ll pick up in the (almost certain) wet autumn/winter/spring.

    3. We have quite a few sycamores around us. Normally they drop their ‘helicopter’ seeds in October/November as brown and dried up smallish wings. This year they started dropping in June, large and yellow/green, almost like green leaves.

      Must be something to do with Ukraine/Brexit/Global warming*

      * Delete as your opinions direct you.

      1. We are losing a lot of apples at the moment, from our two old trees. I’m guessing it’s because of the dry spring we had!

          1. Ooh! I don’t know – we’ve only been here 37 years! I don’t remember this before.

          3. So @ Cathy Newman, when I have nae apples fer ma chutney, I’ll jest say it’s normal?

          4. Now you are being silly. Again!!

            Give the trees some time. There WILL be fruit – that you can use.

          6. You’ve got to make chutney with the windfalls!
            Ours drops half its crop every year – I already have a huge basket full. In past years, I have made peach and apple crumbles, but we’re trying not to use any electricity this year, so I’m saving them for when I start the woodstove in September.

          7. We really have never had so many windfalls at this time of year. I’ve a freezer full of purée and a few jars of apple jelly so far!

  65. I am off to a wedding reception tomorrow. They have only been engaged 29 years.
    Jolly Sailor Southsea if anyone wants to crash it. Lots of Navy types.

      1. Best friends of my next door neighbours. They got married recently…They met as teenagers and drifted apart. She since had three husbands and then re met him and decided to tie the knot. It has set off an avalanche of marriages among their group. Some people never learn.

          7. !st 37 years, 2nd 13 years, latest 4 years 11 months, at 78, I doubt I’ll try again.

          8. ??? 57y + 13y + 4y11m = 74y11m. I can’t do the maths. Did you first marry at the age of 3 if you are 78?

          9. No I was just 21 and my Mama opposed the marriage (it was all to do with marrying beneath you class – she was born in 1903) and Ann was Irish. Born in May 1944 – redo your maths, Richard. 1944 + 21 = 1965 + 37 (took an age to break it 2002) = 2002, 2003 +13 = 2016. End of ALL marriages.

            4 yeas and 11 months have ended in acrimony , despite my paying £850 to have her old rings made into an engagement ring but shit happens. Bye love, hello loneliness.

            Isn’t that how it happens?

          10. I made it through first marriage because he was working and away a lot of the time and I was working full time. Enough became enough though and I left.
            Happiness now with a wonderful and caring man and I wish I’d met him decades ago.

          11. I too, Ann would like to find happiness. So far, three attempts but no good outcome. Is it me?

          13. Christo has married a woman two years older than he is and Henry’s girlfriend is 6 months older than he. The younger of my two sisters married a man 12 years her junior her second time around and was far happier than she was with her first husband who was a few years older than she.. However my father was 6 years older than my mother and I am 16 years older than Caroline.

            Any Nottlers’ views on age difference in marital relationships?

          15. Our younger daughters husband is nearer my age than hers! And his children from his first marriage are in their mid-20’s!

          16. 7 years older than hubby – not a problem yet and don’t envisage it will be. 20 years in, reckon we have 25 to go. Have friends 5. & 9 years’ older than their hubbies too and have gone similar distances.

          17. Depends on the age of the participants, I think. At 20, a 10 year age gap is significant, but at 50 it’s less so.

          1. If you’re referring to Broon I could not agree more.
            Nobody should be so unlucky as to look like Broon.

    2. The train has a passing resemblance to the hated ‘Pacer’ units introduced by BR in the 80s. They were cheap lash-ups, intended only as a stop-gap solution to the rolling stock shortage of the time. They remained in service long past their use-by date.

      A metaphor in there perhaps…

      1. Only a passing resemblance. I think this is entirely from Adams’ imagination.

        Off topic, since you seem to be a railway buff, I’ve noticed that the North Downs Line (I live three minutes’ walk from Wanborough Station) has become extremely uncomfortable. It was fine before the “heatwave” (aka a few hours of slightly elevated temperature). Now, one is shaken left and right, and God help anyone who is foolish enough to attempt to stand up. It was never thus. The 450 class trains are fairly being shaken about.

        Any thoughts?

        1. I’m not greatly up to date with the modern railway scene so I don’t know of any current problems. However, I have a vague memory of older articles mentioning problems with stability of the track bed in some locations in the Downs section proper i.e. Guildford to Redhill.

  67. 354668+ up ticks,,

    May one ask,

    How about the eyes tight shut mode is that still in play, ( rotherham sixteen plus years of NOT rhetoric but actual paedophile plying MASS paedophilia).

    Police Force Admits it Was Wrong to Warn Feminist for Being ‘Untoward About Paedophiles’

  68. Ha, this just how silly it gets – my one-time best beloved has asked me to remove myself to the orrifice as she’s suffering from palpitations.
    ,
    I may possibly have to remove myself to a B & B for a couple of days before I depart to Ecosse. I have warned her that I could drop-dead at any moment – I know my own sore heart.

    Should you hear nothing from me for the next few days – consider the worst.

    Love you all and big hugs all round. I wish I’d know you better.

      2. Calm is not currently in my vocabulary. I’m just working up for the next MCI – hopefully the last ever.

    2. An emotional time. Hopefully calmer waters lie ahead. I do envy you going to Galloway – I love that area.

    3. Sorry to hear things are getting more difficult. Won’t she need a doctor for the palpitations?

      1. I doubt it, J, and I’m of a mind to say, I don’t care – she’ll be the death of me.

        1. You at least have us to talk to. We can’t help much but we can listen and perhaps sometimes offer help, advice, hints and tips. Be well my friend.

          2. Try to look at it in a more positive way. A new place. You at least need to make connections if not friends where you are going to. I have made quite a few connections just by using this forum. There are Nottlers up North too.

    4. Life is a bitch and then you die as they say, BUT keep your head high and stick a middle finger up to the world.

    5. So sorry Tom- wish there was something I could do. All I can do is wish you the very best of luck and a much better time in the future.

    6. Tom, I am so sorry. I think we all assumed that things would just poddle along until Sunday.
      Maybe your B&B idea is the best in the circumstances.

      1. I need all the luck in the world, Spikey but I know, you make your own luck.

        Hope to be up there with you, soon.

        1. It isn’t good for your health living with stress. You may be alone temporarily, but there are worse things – and there’s Moffat to look forward to.

          3. I can believe that Connors and can only hope that faithfulness, companionship and love abounded

  69. Who was the worst chancellor of recent years? Odius Osborne must be a leading contender when he copied Brown and started yet another raid on private pension funds.

    Many doctors, including my nephew, discovered that they would be worse off if they continued working into their 60s and so, although they were competent and happy to go go on working, they retired at the age of about 58. And this is one of the many reasons why there is a shortage of doctors today.

    How many politicians are there who are not spectacularly stupid?

    England’s GP crisis deepens: Staff numbers fall to lowest level on record, fewer than HALF of consults are with a qualified doctor and up to one in five appointments last just five MINUTES
    Daily Mail Online: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11057641/Englands-deadly-GP-crisis-deepens-Staff-numbers-fall-lowest-level-record.html

    1. Our GP retired at 58.
      Mind you, he wasn’t much cop (we tried to avoid him and book with one of the partners), so we’ve probably won.

    2. This is about the Lifetime Allowance, presumably? The answer to your rhetorical question is that few politicians are spectacularly stupid*, but almost all are interested primarily in their own bank balance, ahead of party, and (dare I say, country).

      I’m closely following the news concerning one Mr Samuel Tarry at the moment. His removal as Shadow Transport Secretary seems to have upset the Labour left. I’ve met Tarry a couple of times. I played the organ for his wedding. Having fathered two children with his delightful bride, Dr Julia Fozard, he now seems to prefer the Ginger Growler. I took a phone call from a certain Andrew Gilligan, a few years ago. Tarry had allegedly claimed to be resident in some God-forsaken London hell-hole, where he wished to be a councillor. But everyone and their dog knew that he was living in Brighton, and consequently inelegible to stand. Could he see the wedding register?

      This was above my pay grade, so I referred him to the then Rector. It was an interesting conversation, though, since I mentioned the DT’s removal of comments, and our humble alternative site. It became clear that the removal of commenting was not so much excessive Brexit support, but the sheer cost of moderating comments. Meanwhile, I had a quick look in the Vestry safe. The register clearly showed that Mr Tarry and Ms Fozard were resident in Brighton.

      A short while ago, the DT showed pictures of the Ginger Growler at Glyndebourne, accompanied by “a friend”. Said “friend” was wearing the same ridiculous bright blue suit that Mr Tarry wore at his wedding. My sympathies are with Ms Fozard.

      *There are exceptions, which include David Lammy and Diane Abbott (not for their heritage, just their absence of brain cells).

  70. Gosh it’s been a noisy day, scaffolding being put up for house painting.
    Its only been 2&1/2 years since we tried finding someone that would do it.
    Better late than never, just hope the weather is kind, but knowing my luck it will probably rain.

    An excuse to put my feet up with a glass or two of uisge beatha and this along with more of his on the hifi.

    https://youtu.be/4cOr7JmcOas

    plus

    https://youtu.be/ms0XPXSdfKg

        1. Thank you. But why do you think i can’t find a plasterer in my own area? Most of them are in Marbella with the other gangsters at the moment.

      2. I know: tradesmen seem as rare as rocking horse shit these days, especially trustworthy competent ones.

    2. We had to wait 2½ years for our painter – and there are still two rooms left for him to do – one day!

      1. We had a painter come to Allan Towers last autumn. He said he’d be back in the spring. We are still waiting for a quote, let alone an appearance.
        However, since we’ve made a decision to move, that is now some one else’s problem.

    3. We are still waiting. We sacked the last painter (having accepted his quote a year earlier, Feb 2021) who sent along his under-underling who looked as though he had spent a lifetime on drugs. He (the under-underling) gave poppiesdad ‘covid’ in February, who passed it on to me. His boss didn’t know when he would be back to finish the job, it having taken the under-underling two weeks to paint the downstairs bathroom and kitchen. The next one whose quote for the inside we accepted couldn’t fit us in for another 18 months. We said ‘yes!’ – he then proceeded to quote probably £4,000 over what was reasonable for the outside (‘it’s a good price!’ said he) and so we cancelled the quote/appt for the more reasonable inside as well. The next one omitted the costing for the scaffold…. the final one which we accepted said a three months later – ‘I’ve had a cancellation, I’ll come and start yours next week!’ – excellent, we thought, we’ll get it done whilst the weather is on the up. Three days later, on the Saturday morning, we got a phone call ‘I can’t come on Monday, my Grandad died in an accident and they’ll be turning off his life support on Tuesday so I won’t be able to come next week after all…!’ So strange it coincided with a really good run of forecasted, fine, sunny weather….. oh what a cynical old ratbag am I. What is it with painters? The carpenter we engaged to repair outhouse door frames and rotting conservatory window frames came as promised, stayed until 8.30 pm two days to finish the job and did brilliant work.

      1. You ain’t a cynical old ratbag, my dear.

        Take your time and slowly, slowly, do it youselves – fcuk the tradesmen – they”ll learn when the work dries up.

      2. There’s a saying in the construction industry: “If you can piss, you can paint”. Over the years, I’ve come across a handful of conscientious, skilled tradesmen. But they were the exception.

        1. Having retired around ten years ago, I’ve lost contact with all the old tradespeople I use to work with.
          All trustworthy and good at their particular jobs. But like me getting on a bit now and almost past it.
          But I did make a parlour guitar from scrap hard wood during first lockdown, all materials except the tuners and frets knocking about in my shed/workshop.
          I think I emailed Rastus a picture of it.
          I still find it impossible to post photographs from a device on this and other websites.

      4. My painter is in his eighties, but he’s always been good and reliable. I’m dreading the day he finally retires 🙁

          1. I’m slow tonight, that took my brain cells on a convoluted journey for about 45 sec until I twigged 🙄

          3. Not you as well 🙄
            I could be rude and say that if your geography only extends as far as the high street, there is no helping you. 🙂

      1. I know, but she says it how it is and her monologues and observations on our politicians are wonderful to behold.

      2. Hi Tom, if you have an irony meter, I suggest you check its batteries. However, I hope Moffat works out for you. Can’t see the attraction, myself, despite having worked in the Borders, but if all else fails you’ll only be thirty-five miles from the Great Border City from where I originated. Best of luck…

        1. Thanks, Geoff, I’ve already worked ou the distance to Carlisle in an attempt to curb the Krankie excess on their own native product!

      1. I love the way she calls herself ‘Chief Gammon’. She has turned the insult into a badge of honour.

  72. ‘Night all

    #HateFacts…..

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/684e70588919beafe43bf9358198605839b5ded21aa1a257f953b0c805c87658.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7cf2e632c8f55d301b7d91b990d3e32dcb21daf4bf8e3010527ee1fd40c1e959.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9249bf74c6bf73485312183ef410dddf56d9bbb441d9491171f72aa4a90f6933.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/38a5e76f4d92ae7c3effabc6bc0164876132b08492a4588575d87602748952c3.jpg
    It’s not looking good is it??

          1. As a child, that song upset me.
            My father explained it was funny. Now I am adult I can see the humour between the butler’s (?) sang froid and the rather banal tragedy he’s recounting.

        3. A long, long time ago, I remember my mama playing that on our 78 rpm, wind-up gramaphone.

          Gets to you, eh, memories.

    2. About time the Canadian mounties manned up and f%ck$d tru dough with a rocket 🚀

  74. Some people sightsee whilst travelling. Others get accidentally involved in helping the owner of an Afro-Caribbean restaurant open a kiosk on Hastings pier tomorrow. I am covered in paint and cross-eyed from focusing on lettering, and my evening will consist of making bunting and reheating goat curry. Great fun!

    2. Make sure the “re-heating” is VERY HOT….

      I don’t know (dread to think) what lavatory arrangements you have in your camp er van…..

      1. Katy and i will soon be discussing your negative attitude and decide on a cure. It won’t taste nice like a good goat curry but it will do you good. At the very least it will purge you !

    3. I am laughing because a mate and I ran a seasonal Christmas shop in our small town in CT. We begged, borrowed or stole space and rarely paid rent. One time we were allowed the use of the old building which had been the PO.
      So, we are setting up and my mate was painting, from inside and therefore backwards, a sign on the glass window…..The Chritmas Shoppe.
      I came in with stuff to place and looked at this art work. Lucille, said I, what’s a Chritmas? I won’t relate her reply ;-))

      2. I once came across my mother frowning and scratching ineffectively at a Letraset. “Wot you doing?” sez I. “There’s only one C left and I need to make a sign for the cloakroom” she replied (open house thing). She was most put out when I reassured her, in hysterics, that she only needed the one C . . .

  76. That’s me for this tedious day. Sultry; chilly; windy – that bloody wind that dries EVERY sodding thing as soon as you water it….

    While taking a pre-prandial medicine, I noticed a HOOOGE lump on my arm – which can only be a wasp sting. Very odd. There are almost none – except the two which prevent us eating outside….

    Have a jolly evening plotting…..

    A demain – when ladder work awaits..

    1. #MeToo, Bill, I’m going to recharge the RAV4 with my personals and be prepared to fcuck off until I can get to Moffat.

      1. It’s going to be a slow process for an old guy. Any help will be much appreciated but, being in the back of beyond, doesn’t help.

    2. I just visited my next door neighbour to talk about the wedding tomorrow. She said why have you got blood streaks running down your legs? Lucky i didn’t sit on her garden furniture !

      1. Are you catering or is it elsewhere?
        Did you scratch yourself on a bramble or summat?

        1. It’s at a pub and i’m a guest.

          Something bit me but i didn’t feel anything.

    3. There are a lot of horse flies out there Bill. You’ll never feel them bite. The little bastards.

      1. I got bitten on the bum once by one of those…I was in my bathing suit. Gawd, it hurt.

        1. I’ve had a few bites this summer even through a tee shirt. They still itch over a week later. I use Antisan it’s very good for insect bites.

          1. I got bitten to death a couple of days ago – they kept me awake last night and are still sore. Even with Antisan.

  77. My neighbour’s ancient boiler finally gave up the ghost after the heat exchanger burst. He’s all for climate change measures and was proud to have generated 27 kW last week for the National Grid from his solar panels.
    However he drew the line at opting for the Government’s boiler upgrade scheme when he was quoted £15k for a heat pump (installation extra) versus £3k for a combi boiler replacement.

    2. I don’t believe gas is going to be turned off. We have just had all of our gas pipe work replaced. It’s happening all over check with Cadent gas.

      1. Trouble is, you can’t just turn off the gas supply like you can with a leccy power cut. There will be some gas appliances (increasingly fewer, admittedly), which will simply leak gas into the property when the supply is restored. Pilot lights don’t relight themselves. Seems somewhat risky…

        1. The company moved several gas meters from original positions under the stairs. Ours is now in side the main garage door 3ft off the ground. And of course they came and recommissioned the appliances.
          One of the faults with gas supplies is when ‘customers’ try to steal gas and bypass the meter.

          1. There is also a problem when boilers in lofts are supplied with external copper piping running round and up accessible outer walls. Copper thieves aren’t to fussy about turning the gas off!

        2. Our gas boiler in Horsham would turn the supply off if the pilot light thermocouple got cold. Sometimes happened when there was a lot of wind, and we’d wonder for a while WTF is the heating off in the winter??

      2. I thank God that only our hob relies upon gas – Calor that is -2 huge bottles outside.

    3. We replaced our gas boiler 2 years ago for just over a £1000.00 with 10 year warranty (parts & labour) so no chance we would go down the rabbit hole of a heat pump

  78. Mark Steyn taking no prisoners,ripping the Guardian and OFCOM a new one……

    “Ofcom, Hanging onto the vax propaganda like Monica Lewinsky on Bill Clinton’s zipper “
    You can hear the leftard grinding of teeth from space

  79. Watching the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony.
    It’s a bl**dy shambles. God only knows what message and image it is trying to promote but it ain’t one to be proud of

    1. I mean, what kind of a spectacle is it when the commentators have to explain to you what everything is and it’s significance. Should be self evident.

      1. I know Bham is one of our more multi cities but having white presenters making up 10% is taking the p*ss.

        1. Oh FFS Lenny Henry has just come on. Might have guessed he’d turn up somewhere, professional Brummie that he is.

          2. He’s about as funny as walking bare foot on a couple of packs of drawing pins.
            As he’s non sporting a person might wonder why he’s even involved 🤔 ……….oh yes I see.

        1. Wait until some of the more classical events for example discus and javelin, they will be white dominated and open to cries of racism?

          Is Connors riding Coolio in dressage events at the games?

    4. Used to be The Empire Games and has gone off since they changed the name.

  81. With the focus on Commonwealth Games at the moment, can someone explain the difference between Balti and ordinary curry, I left Brum in 1966, well before the popularity of Balti was known outside the city.

    1. I believe that Balti is the name of the pot used to cook this kind of curry in. they are all higly spiced so you cannot tell if the meat is starting to go off.

          1. The problem with Elementary tests is that they are meant to be ridden in a 60x20m arena with room for the extra letters (V,S,R,P). The arena I ride in is 40x20m so the movements come up REALLY quickly!

          2. I had a grandson (born 1989) who tried dressage in a full-sized menage.

            Unfortunately he has disowned his family and is currently fcuking up his life in America. We can only hope.

  83. Is it just me ? But July seems to have slipped by very quickly ?
    Slipping off early to try and catch up on lost sleep last night 🌙 😴

    1. No, it isn’t just you. All the months seem to have slipped by very quickly. I scarcely know where this year has gone.

        3. Thank you friends – Sorry, I’m just an insomniac. But I still love and appreciate you all.

      2. My mother used to say “the older you are, the quicker it goes” – she was right.

        1. Logically it will always be that, when you think about it. When you are 6, a year is 1/6th of your life. When you’re 70 it’s only 1/70th.

          5. ,,,and boy, don’t we just feel it. See you all on the other side and we can just laugh (snigger) at those left behind.

    2. Two very hot days but not 40C, now its very cool and will end up as a normal temp. for the mont

    1. Too late. I read a few columns about the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. Madness and wokery hand in hand.

      This country has lost it big time. What an embarrassment.

    2. Time to take stock – and that’s not just the EU countries but all those who are accepting, lying, deseased, pox-ridden 3rd world gimmegrunts who are just here seeking a free-ride and the opportunity to feel-up, rape and make hay with our female population – no matter what age. These dirty bastards will always take advantage.

      Time to clear them ALL out. We don’t need this FILTH.

    1. Better than peeing in a plastic bottle then chucking it out of the window, like some lorry drivers do!

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