728 thoughts on “Thursday 28 November: Jeremy Corbyn’s refusal to apologise for his failure to act on anti-Semitism shames Britain”

    2. This type of thought control is increasing year by year with a clear final goal in mind: Everyone will be too afraid to question what is being done to our society.

      The only way to stop this is to replace the politicians who are allowing and encouraging it to happen. We have a chance to do this in two weeks time, yet the majority of people will vote back into office the same MP’s that are pursuing this agenda now.

      You do just shake your head at the blindness of the world at times.

      1. The politicians don’t even notice it’s happening, or if they do, they are trapped by it.

        The infiltrators took over the means of communication first and now the politicians say what the media allows them to say.

    3. The man asked what any sane person would consider to be a perfectly valid question. That’s Nottlers banged to rights too then.

    4. Thirty years ago this would have a had a prime comedy spot on the BBC alongside Monty Python and other surreal stuff.

      Morning Stephen.

    5. Clucking Bell! I wish I hadn’t watched this…not a good start to the day. Another nail in the coffin of free speech.

      ‘Morning, Stephen.

  2. A farmer named Paddy had a car accident. He was hit by a truck owned by the Eversweet Company. In court, the Eversweet Company’s hot-shot solicitor was questioning Paddy.

    ‘Didn’t you say to the police at the scene of the accident, ‘I’m fine?’ asked the solicitor.

    Paddy responded: ‘Well, I’ll tell you what happened. I’d just loaded my fav’rit cow, Bessie, into da… ‘

    ‘I didn’t ask for any details’, the solicitor interrupted. ‘Just answer the question. Did you not say, at the scene of the accident, ‘I’m fine’?

    Paddy said, ‘Well, I’d just got Bessie into da trailer and I was drivin’ down da road…. ‘

    The solicitor interrupted again and said, Your Honour, I am trying to establish the fact that, at the scene of the accident, this man told the police on the scene that he was fine. Now several weeks after the accident, he is trying to sue my client. I believe he is a fraud. Please tell him to simply answer the question ‘

    By this time, the Judge was fairly interested in Paddy’s answer and said to the solicitor: ‘I’d like to hear what he has to say about his favourite cow, Bessie’.

    Paddy thanked the Judge and proceeded. ‘Well as I was saying, I had just loaded Bessie, my fav’rit cow, into de trailer and was drivin’ her down de road when this huge Eversweet truck and trailer came tundering tru a stop sign and hit me trailer right in da side. I was trown into one ditch and Bessie was trown into da udder. I was hurt, very bad like, and didn’t want to move.

    However, I could hear old Bessie moanin’ and groanin’. I knew she was in terrible pain just by her groans.

    Shortly after da accident, a policeman on a motorbike turned up. He could hear Bessie moanin’ and groanin’ too, so he went over to her. After he looked at her, and saw her condition, he took out his gun and shot her between the eyes.

    Den da policeman came across de road, gun still in hand, looked at me, and said, ‘How are you feelin’?’

    ‘Now wot da fock would you say?’

  3. Michael Deacon has a worthy eulogy on Clive James in today’s Daily Telegraph with some of Clive’s notable writings. The Obituary is a fulsome one as well. Both are worth a reading.

          3. A tribute to Clive James, the greatest – and funniest – critic of our age

            MICHAEL DEACON

            PARLIAMENTARY SKETCHWRITER

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            Michael Deacon

            27 NOVEMBER 2019 • 5:20PM

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            Funnier than the comedies he wrote about’: Clive James, who has died aged 80

            Funnier than the comedies he wrote about’: Clive James, who has died aged 80 CREDIT: ANDREW CROWLEY

            What makes a great world traveller’s watch?

            Sponsored

            I think it was the bricks that did it. I first read Clive James when I was 15, the day our high school English teacher handed each of us a photocopy headed “Green Beef”. It was, she explained, a review of The Incredible Hulk. Given that the year was 1996, I might have been puzzled by the suggestion that we study a newspaper article about an American TV series broadcast in 1978, two years before any of the class was born. But instead I was puzzled by the name of its author.

            Clive James? As in, the chat show host? Had he been a writer once, as well?

            Apparently he had. “Hulk,” we read, “has the standard body-builder’s physique, with two sets of shoulders one on top of the other and wings of lateral muscle that hold his arms out from his sides as if his armpits had piles.”

            There are few sounds a teacher dreads more than that of teenagers guffawing. But today our teacher had nothing to fear. For once, we were guffawing at something we were meant to be guffawing at.

            “Given a flying start by the shock of his personal appearance,” we read on, “Hulk goes into action against the heavies, flinging them about in slow motion. Like Bionic [Woman], Six [Million Dollar Man] and Wonderwoman, Hulk does his action numbers at glacial speed. Emitting slow roars of rage, Hulk runs very slowly towards the enemy, who slowly attempt to make their escape. But no matter how slowly they run, Hulk runs more slowly. Slowly he picks them up, gradually bangs their head together, and with a supreme burst of lethargy throws them though the side of a building.”

            New paragraph. “Hardly have the bricks floated to the ground before Hulk is changing back into…”

            The bricks. The bricks floating to the ground. That sealed it. Yes, Clive James was a writer, all right.

            Clive James

            ‘He refined his prose as though it were poetry’: Clive James in 2011 CREDIT: ANDREW CROWLEY

            The next day I went to the library and ordered The Crystal Bucket, the collection of his TV reviews that featured “Green Beef”. I wolfed the lot, my enjoyment undiminished by the fact that I’d never seen the programmes described. I didn’t care about the programmes. I cared only about his reviews of the them.

            This was the first lesson Clive James taught: that a review should never just be a review. It should be a form of entertainment: one to rival, or surpass, the form of entertainment it was judging. As I later confirmed, by reading his reviews of programmes that I actually had seen, Clive James was funnier than the comedies he wrote about, and more illuminating than the documentaries he wrote about. Almost always, his reviews gave me more pleasure than their subjects had. From there, I moved on to his memoirs and his poems. But it was as a critic that I loved him best.

            His gift for the visual was matchless. “Wearing very tight striped pants, [Rod Stewart] looked like a bifurcated marrow.” In the police drama Softly, Softly, Inspector Harry Hawkins “gritted his powerfully built teeth while opening and closing doors, as if opening and closing doors were a feat not just of physical strength, but of mental concentration.” Thanks to her excessive make-up, Barbara Cartland’s eyes “looked like the corpses of two small crows that had crashed into a chalk cliff”.

            Arnold Schwarzenegger resembled “a brown condom stuffed with walnuts”. (This last phrase, one of his most popular, was frequently misquoted without the “brown”, thus vexing its author by “fatally depleting the visual information… but I learned, over time, to take the acknowledged echo of a phrase, even in maimed form, as a kind of sideways compliment.” Yes, he really did care about every detail.)

            But the pleasure came not only from the jokes. It came also from the style. Most journalists batter out their copy in a deadline-crazed shower of typos. Clive James refined his prose as though it were poetry. And how it showed: read any article he wrote, and hear the satisfying click with which each succeeding sentence slots inevitably into place. The following line was one of his own favourites, the conclusion to a magisterial essay on George Orwell.

            “To write like him, you need a life like his, but times have changed, and he changed them.”

            Look at that. Two aphorisms in four clauses. Both punchlines doubling back on their respective set-ups. The wit, the precision, the balance. So easy to read. So difficult to write.

            There was no more compelling analyst of Orwell, nor of Philip Larkin – and nor of Raymond Chandler, in my view the most obvious influence on James’s voice. Well, I say Chandler; really I should say Philip Marlowe, Chandler’s dryly unshockable LA sleuth. Because it’s in Marlowe’s first-person narration (of The Big Sleep, The Long Goodbye and other great gumshoe thrillers of the 1930s-50s) that we hear the defining tones that would one day become his admirer’s. Slangy, punchy, wisecracking, deadpan; yet also lyrical, serious, with a stoically repressed sadness.

            “From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away.” That’s Philip Marlowe, but it could just as easily have been Clive James. He was the hardboiled PI of critics. His style was streetwise.

            He began writing reviews, initially of books, as a young freelancer in the late 1960s, for magazines such as the New Statesman, New Society and the Times Literary Supplement. (“I was in demand for that kind of work, partly because I had established a fatal reputation for getting it done at short notice,” he recalled in North Face of Soho, the fourth of his five volumes of memoir. “The evidence rapidly mounted that there was a new contender in town for the post that every literary editor needs to fill: the trick pony who can work like a draught horse.”)

            Soon he was hired by the Listener magazine to write a monthly radio column, but uncharacteristically he struggled for anything to say, mainly because he almost never listened to the radio, and couldn’t quite persuade himself to change the habit. Wearily his editor shunted him over to the TV column instead. It was an accidental masterstroke. Ever since emigrating from Australia to England in 1962, at the age of 22, he had watched television “the way I smoked and drank” (that is, to a heroically unhealthy degree). He wrote his TV column “with a compulsive flow… I was having too much fun to stop writing.”

            The Observer hired him to write its own TV column in 1972. For the next 10 years, he was the best-loved TV columnist – perhaps even best-loved columnist full stop – in British newspapers.

            “It felt straight away, and still feels now, almost illegal to be paid for having such a good time,” he wrote in 1977, introducing Visions Before Midnight, the first collection of his TV columns. “There were (there still are) plenty of wiser heads to tell me I should avoid lavishing my attention on lowly ephemera, but I couldn’t see why I shouldn’t, if I felt like it. It wasn’t that I didn’t rate my attention that high – just that I didn’t rate the ephemera that low. Television was a natural part of my life… I watched just about everything, including the junk, which was often as edifying as the quality material and sometimes more so.”

            That last is a key sentence: Clive James was one of the first critics in England to see that no choice needed to be made between “high” art and “low”; he loved both, and he wrote about both, never patronising his reader either way. He was also among the first critics to see that preferring the former didn’t somehow make one a better, or even a more intelligent, person than preferring the latter.

            In 1982 he gave up witing about TV to spend more time being on TV himself. (“It is time to quit my chair,” he wrote in his valedictory column, “before I find myself reviewing my own programmes.”) But he continued to write literary criticism, the best of which can be found in Reliable Essays, Even As We Speak and The Meaning of Recognition.

            In 2011, he returned to TV reviewing with the Telegraph, writing weekly – give or take the odd necessary hiatus on medical grounds – for three years. For a while, when I was a commissioning editor on the Telegraph’s TV desk, I had the privilege of editing his column, although “editing” is the wrong word; in practice the job consisted of little more than pasting his copy on to the page. I would no more have presumed to rewrite Clive James than to daub some extra shadow on a Hockney. If the copy didn’t fit I cut the photo, not the words.

            I emailed him once to say how my class had roared at “Green Beef”. He seemed pleased, but also perhaps mildly rueful. “The trick today,” he said, “when a phrase like ‘supreme burst of lethargy’ pops into my head, is to remember that it did so once before.”

            Like so many of his best lines, it still goes on popping into mine.

  4. ‘Morning All

    I wonder what’s this all about?? I suspect it’s part of a claim we need to bring our Jihadis home to face British “justice”

    It might be marginally more convincing if they didn’t directly contradict themselves in their own headline………………

    “Jihadis face execution without trial in Syrian jails as Assad says foreign ISIS members will be hanged

    Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said he was setting up special terror courts

    Members of Islamic State held in the country will be subjected to ‘Syrian law'”

    They can’t help themselves,they follow with the already debunked claim

    “Thousands of prisoners have been secretly hanged in the Saydnaya Prison”

    A special not from Amenesty International but our old friends the SOHR

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7733041/Jihadis-face-execution-without-trial-Syrian-jails-Assad-says-ISIS-members-hanged.html
    The comments are not supportive………….

  5. Talking of Comments the censors must have been working overtime on this story

    “Hungary’s right-wing government withdraws country

    from ‘too gay’ Eurovision Song Contest branding the annual event ‘a

    homosexual flotilla’ that damages mental health”

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7733563/Hungarys-right-wing-government-withdraws-country-gay-Eurovision-Song-Contest.html
    Just two comments each with over 2000 upvotes have snuck through “Premoderation”
    I wonder what happened to the rest?? Not Gay enough perhaps??

    1. I never in my wildest dreams thought I would one day be envious of Russia and Eastern Europe!

    1. ‘Morning, Rik, he’s such a silly boy lemon, he should know from previous history that Germany has designs, not just on Alsace-Lorraine but on the rest of France.

      He needs to up production in the white flag factories.

    2. Poor little Micron, sounds as though he’s been shafted. The conquering of Europe continues unabated.

      ‘Morning, Rik.

      1. … except it’s by the Gemans and not the little would-be Napoleon. But Macron should know that the French put up no real resistance to the Germans. Except with hindsight, of course.

        4. There was a young man who said “God
          Must find it exceedingly odd
          To think that the tree
          Should continue to be
          When there’s no one about in the quad.”

          “Dear Sir: Your astonishment’s odd;
          I am always about in the quad.
          And that’s why the tree
          Will continue to be
          Since observed by, Yours faithfully, God.

      1. Faith is hope in something unseen. Boris’s deal can be seen for how bad it is by anyone who looks. Which is why no pro-EU organisation mentions it at all.

  12. Morning all

    SIR – Jeremy Corbyn’s outright refusal to apologise to the Jewish community for the scourge of anti-Semitism that afflicts his party shames not only Labour, but the entire country.

    For Britain’s main opposition party – a party polling at about 30 per cent – to be so poisoned with the oldest hatred brings Britain into disrepute. The sooner the hard-Left is removed from a once-honourable party, the better.

    Sebastian Monblat

    Sutton, Surrey

    SIR – Jeremy Corbyn was asked four times by the BBC’s Andrew Neil to apologise to the Jewish community for his party’s failure to deal with anti-Semitism (report, November 27), yet four times he refused.

    This behaviour by a man who could hold the highest office in the land in two weeks is shameful and totally unacceptable. The Jewish community has been let down time and time again by Mr Corbyn; it is for this reason that our Chief Rabbi has taken the unprecedented step of speaking out at this critical time.

    We cannot remain quiet and allow Mr Corbyn to slip into Downing Street unchecked and unchallenged.

    The pressure on Mr Corbyn and his allies at the top of the Labour Party must not be softened. Only when he apologises and the expulsion of all anti-Semitic elements from Labour is complete will the party begin the slow journey back towards a leadership that is fit to govern.

    Graham Marks

    Chester

    1. SIR – The Labour Party has massively expanded its membership since Mr Corbyn gave a political home to all the old Trots, Left-wing conspirators, anti-capitalists, communists, republicans and anarchists.

      These people openly support Hezbollah, Hamas, the Palestine Liberation Organisation and radical Islamists in the Stop the War movement. Most British Jews support the existence of the state of Israel, and so the Labour Left sees all Jews as potential political foes engaged in some global Zionist conspiracy. Such feeling is too deep-rooted for Labour to resolve without an internal counter- revolution to get rid of the far Left’s malevolent influence.

      Les Spencer

      Saughall Massie, Wirral

      SIR – Mr Corbyn would not and could not apologise for the anti-Semitism that seems to have gripped the Labour party, because throughout his life he has given his support to oppressive regimes and terrorist organisations.

      If he were now to make such an apology it would be hollow and meaningless.

      David Vetch

      Horley, Surrey

      1. I have studied the conflict between the dysfunctional Muslims who bestowed upon themselves the name Palestinians and the Jews of Judea for many years and in my library are many books whose index contains the name Corbyn. His hatred is the old fashioned one honed on the blood libel and a palpable enthusiasm for a second Holocaust. Lying is a natural function of his sinister psychological and moral deficit.

    2. We all know that the Muslim vote means more to Labour these days .

      The intellectual backbone of our culture and society .. those who supported and contributed much to our political parties , economy and cultural enrichment are now being pushed to one side by a political party that has put it’s own self interest first.

      1. Good Morning Lovely Truth

        Blair deliberately increased the flow of Muslim immigration to a flood for his own party’s political advantage.

        Let them read Karl Marx as we all did when we were young but Douglas Murray’s The Strange Death of Europe and Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules For Life should be compulsory reading for everyone – and especially Sixth Formers and university students.

      2. Good Morning Lovely Truth

        Blair deliberately increased the flow of Muslim immigration to a flood for his own party’s political advantage.

        Let them read Karl Marx as we all did when we were young but Douglas Murray’s The Strange Death of Europe and Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules For Life should be compulsory reading for everyone – and especially Sixth Formers and university students.

  14. SIR – Labour insists that no one earning less than £80,000 a year will pay more tax. I earn less than £16,000 but will pay more tax – amounting to £500 a year – as a result of the removal of the marriage allowance, dividend allowance and capital-gains tax allowance.

    I’m sure I’m not the only person who would be affected like this.

    Malcolm Chester

    Abergele, Conwy

    1. Labour rely upon two things:

      1. Lying to their voters.
      2. Their voters not knowing they have lied to them.

      They lie cheat and steal but the simple truth is that the poorest will pay more under Labour. They always do. It’s unfair. It’s wrong and labour keep lying about it.

      1. Those who want to rewrite history tend to drift towards working in totalitarian states. It is so much easier.

        I remember the first time that I read an article that referred to World War 2 as a European Civil War. That was an intellectual speed bump. It seemed to ignore the other global powers involved. You also saw a massive attempt to replace the word German with the word Nazi. So there was one article about a small leak in a church roof that had been there for as long as anyone could remember. When investigated they found a bullet in the roof from a raid on the town back in the war. It was reported as:

        “A Nazi bullet was fired during a raid on the town in 194* when Nazi bombers attacked shipping in the harbour.”

        So it wasn’t Germany then. There was another story that referred to the Nazi’s starting the war, not the Germans. These pesky Cultural Marxist’s will be blaming white people for slavery next.

        1. Shirley Knott. We all know that it was the local chieftains flogging off their surplus population to Arab trad …….. ah …..
          Would that be an Inconvenient Truth?

        2. The EU has desperately sought to re-write hthe awful world wars as civil wars.

          However, as when I travelled about I remember meeting a chap on a park bench as I, a 23 year old oik sat there eating a sandwich and this man sat beside me talked to me about the bench and what it had stood for. It was a family of Germans who hid Jews. They went without, suffered huge privation to protect people simply because they disagreed with their own government.

          There were heroes on both sides and it is important to note that the Nazi’s first invaded Germany and that not all Germans were Nazis, same as not all Britons were heroes, same as not all Labour voters are anti semitic (and, setting out my own stall, I don’t for a moment actually think Corbyn is either) and not all Muslims are terrorists – hullo Immers, Akshay and Guatam!

          We are all individual, unique, important and relevant. The problem is that the Left like to stereotype. It’s their worst crime. It allows them to hate more easily if they can label and, you’ll notice, whether Nazi or Momentum or Democrat the first thing they do is label you.

          And that’s sad.

          1. A good write up, but one serious error, “There were heroes on both sides and it is important to note that the Nazi’s first invaded Germany …”
            No, the Nazis did not “invade” Germany, they simply took over the reigns of Government because the opposition was too fractured to do anything about it.

        3. Not as confused as Obama (and presumably all his top team) who referred on a numbe of occasions to Auschwitz as a “Polish death camp”.

  16. Corbyns Fake Claim that the NHS is up for sale
    Everyone that has trawled through the 254 page trade discussion document cannot find a single shred of evidence to back Corbym claim and many have tried very hard to do so in fact there are only 4 mentions o the NHS in the entire document. There is in the document a brief mention that the US which to discuss drug exclusivity agreements but that’s as far as it goes . It is just a discussion document and nothing is agreed

      1. Corbyn is so clever and sly , he managed to whip up the fervour of the NHS staff with that trade discussion document ..

        You see, he and McDonnell are dangerous , they know how to work a crowd , they are anarchic fastasists, they are really evil old men . They throw word grenades into the ring , and then wait for a reaction, their simian grins and smirks of self satisfaction don’t fool me .

        We should be afraid , very afraid .

        This country has all the attributes of Red Riding hood .. .. You know what she said as the wolf entered the door .. she thought it had big ears, big eyes, Granny in disguise… ha ha , she was so trusting .. wasn’t she .

      2. ‘Morning, Minty. Did you notice what appeared to be doctors in scrubs and wearing the usual stethoscopes round their necks? Pathetic, they should be ashamed for not having the sense to see that they were being used. Alternatively, were they hired in for effect by Liebour??

        1. Just because they are doctors does not mean they have any skill in running the NHS, Business skills are very different skillset to medical skills and the vast majority of doctors make very poor managers

        2. I see the Left wing media has never challenged Corbyn or the Lib-Dems and Green on his privatisation claims
          N one of the NHS has been privatized some use though is made of outsource companies. HE also fails to mention that EU legislation required all NHS contracts of over £750,000 to go out to open tender

          1. I am sure that a spare manager and a junior doctor don’t go down to the local scrap yard to knock up an MRI scanner.
            Nor do nurses cut up sheets to make bandages.

          2. We used to have to cut up sheets of calico though, to make slings, and yards of gauze cut into squares, for packs of five, to be autoclaved/ sterilized to be used as dressings or in theatre..

        3. Morning Hugh. I did notice and the same thought crossed my mind,though on reflection I think that they probably had no idea of the content of the meeting beforehand! Just useful idiots!

          1. They still try to claim the NHS is the envy of the world. Strange therefore that no other country has copied the NHS model
            Strange as well that any UK person that has used the Health services in France, Germany and Spain find them far better than the NHS. Sure they are not perfect no system ever will be but they are far more efficient and provide a far better standard of service

    1. But the campaigners believe that in its attempts to rectify historical wrongs towards women, society has developed a creeping antipathy towards all things male, and this is knocking men’s confidence at a time of intense cultural shift.

      Morning Anne. This seems blindingly obvious. Misandry is now the default position of Western Society and it can continue until a hostile challenge comes from a traditional source and when it does so this false position will be found wanting.

    2. Good morning

      The fact that so many men are being down trodden is, according to Jordan Peterson, producing men who are good for nothing and especially no good at all for women.

  18. “Trump’s war crimes intervention ‘shocking and unprecedented’, says sacked Navy Secretary Richard Spencer”
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/11/28/trumps-war-crimes-intervention-shocking-unprecedented-says-sacked/
    Ergh the President is “Commander in Chief” perhaps obeying orders would have been a brighter idea??
    Military Bureaucrat shocked that the Commander gets involved in “Such a low level affair”
    Indeed how dare he look after his troops……………………
    Compare and contrast to our own boys you useless shite BoJo

    1. Douglas Murray’s The Strange Death of Europe should be compulsory reading for all politicians and lawyers in Europe and the UK.

      Sweden has probably got beyond the point of no return but Britain will shortly lose all control unless and until the problems caused by mass immigration are properly addressed.

      1. ‘Morning Rastus.

        The BBC has done a flip. Andrew Neil’s interview with Boris will be Mon. or Tues. about 7pm

      2. Morning R,
        The lab/lib/con mass uncontrolled immigration coalition party have never / will never address the issue especially all the while they find support / votes.

        1. Where the Brexit Party candidate has been removed, and the only candidates are Cons, Liebour, Lib Dumb and Green, there is no choice. Our Leave constituency has a new Cons man after the previous rabidly remoaner Con MP, Boles, defected. We have no idea whether or not the new one is a Brexiteer.

          3. Mib,
            Hobson’s choice,
            Seeing as currently the toxic trio are pro eu
            in my book I look at that as herding, mind I never take anything political at face value.
            Lincolnshire Highest exit vote, Boston 76%.

          4. Well done Dicqus, notification only came through Sunday morning. As I said above, we only have Cons, Liebour, LimpDums and Greens – where did I mention Independent? And no, we don’t have ukip either. (FYI I am not one of the mystery down voters!)

          5. Morning Mib,
            An independent candidate would have been my choice if one was available.
            No, you did not mention an independent, I did.
            Down voters without
            a reason comment, are just LMF cretins.

          6. Mib,
            What I question is once again the lab/lib/con
            political thiefdom is threatened & adjustments
            have been made.
            We suffered the same in UKIP time & again plus currently as is happening.
            IMO they fear a party of political honest brokers entering parliament, far to many lifestyles current / ongoing to protect, their pro eu stance assures them of that protection.

      3. Morning Rastus – as we all know most of the required legislation to control immigration is in place. Our politicians have been grossly negligent for many years by ignoring these regulations and actually tacitly welcoming this invasion much to the taxpayers’ cost and concern.

      4. Prayers for our heroes: Australian Muslim group makes a huge cash donation to firefighters who bravely tackled deadly bushfires
        Al-Mabarat Benevolent Society donated generous sum of $10,000 on Thursday
        Imam Sheikh Youssef Nabha met with members of the NSW Rural Fire Service
        A presentation showed the damaging affects the horrific bushfires have caused
        Sheikh Nabha announced the donation during a Friday sermon on December 15
        By SAHAR MOURAD FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA

        PUBLISHED: 05:10, 28 November 2019 | UPDATED: 05:10, 28 November 2019

        https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7734017/Al-Mabarat-Benevolent-Society-Masjid-Arrahman-donated-10-000-NSW-Rural-Fire-Service.html?ito=social-facebook&fbclid=IwAR3zBnpZDhCdTfFModME62C8KMsPEMOzaACmwHEZsj-di8ofIcwrnGwt4LQ

        Out of interest, did Muslims contribute anything to the Grenfell fire tragedy or the Manchester bombing victims.. etc, I thought not!

        1. $10,000 = HUGE cash donation?

          It’s probably far far less than the benefit payments for one muslim family per year.

    1. The good new though is we can now treat that condition. We will send you off for gender reassignment surgery

  23. Good morning, all.

    Hot off the Press (& Journal), from the Highlands, comes the news that an additional 200 parking spaces are to become available at Raigmore Hospital, Inverness, by the end of this month.

    NHS Highland Chief Executive Iain Stewart welcomed the move.

    He said: “The work has been on for a couple of months. We were very fortunate to receive money from our endowments to upgrade the car park and create I believe an extra 200 plus spaces and also there will new barrier system coming in as well which will mean that rogue parkers won’t be able to abuse the car park going forward.”

    Well now, this may prevent ‘rogue parkers’ going forward but it won’t stop them – they’ll just reverse in.

    Seems the silly sods at NHS Highland haven’t thought this one through properly.

    1. I think drivers need to worry about whether their cars will accompany the car park when it has gone forward and if so whether they will be be able to find out where it has gone.

  24. Sam Akaki wrote the piece for the Speccie blog yesterday. This was on Spiked some time ago.

    How the EU hurts the world’s poorest
    Sam Akaki on EU protectionism and neo-colonial NGOs. – SPIKED – 17th May 2019

    Free movement and free trade are supposed to be two of the founding freedoms of the European Union. But the EU’s relationship with Africa reveals these commitments to be hollow. Tens of thousands of Africans have drowned trying to enter Europe in the past decade, with migrants taking ever riskier routes into Fortress Europe’s militarised borders. African goods, particularly agricultural goods, face similar barriers and restrictions.

    Sam Akaki is director of Democratic Institutions for Poverty Reduction in Africa. He has been campaigning for more equitable trading arrangements between Europe and Africa, for an end to Western development aid, and most recently, for Brexit. spiked caught up with him for a chat.

    spiked: How does the EU harm African economies?

    Sam Akaki: Thanks to the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, which heavily subsidises EU farmers, Africa’s markets are flooded with their cheap excess produce. If you go to any African market, you can buy all kinds of European produce sold at very, very cheap prices. This is driving African farmers out of the market. At the same time, the EU imposes strict limitations on what African countries can export to the European market. In particular, African farmers cannot export value-added goods. So if a farmer in Ghana is producing cocoa, or a farmer in Kenya is producing coffee, they can perhaps get less than a dollar for their product as they have to export it raw. Only a fraction of the money you pay for a jar of coffee goes to an African farmer. The value-added goods, such as processed coffee, are then produced in Europe. Germany, especially, has been doing a lot of harm.

    EU lobby groups and NGOs are not working in the interests of Africa and are opposed to African attempts to get themselves out of poverty. For instance, many African farmers work with genetically modified (GM) crops. One of the big issues about GM food is that Western companies sell GM seeds that don’t produce new seeds for the next season. Farmers have to go back to companies like Monsanto every year. In Uganda, at the Kawanda Agricultural Research Institute, scientists have been working on their own way of producing local GM seeds that will be reusable each year. Europe is against this and tries to stop it.

    ‘And that brings us to Brexit. If we do not get out of the European Union, it would tie Africa forever to the EU and its dreadful policies. It would ensure that Africa stays poor, driving more and more migrants to the West.

    spiked: How have EU sanctions affected Africa?

    Akaki: The clearest examples are Zimbabwe and Eritrea. Of course, these countries have human-rights issues. But human rights are a question of development. Countries go through developmental stages. There would have been enormous human-rights abuses in Europe 100 years ago. The UK and the EU use their influence selectively to impose economic and diplomatic sanctions on African countries. We should follow a consistent policy. We impose sanctions on African countries but we are happy to trade with other human-rights abusers like Saudi Arabia. One danger is that these sanctions are driving African countries closer and closer into the arms of the Chinese. This is a real own goal.

    Sanctions are a blunt instrument. The leaders responsible for human-rights abuses are protected. They still have access to the best lifestyles money can buy. Their money is stashed away in British and other foreign banks. Sanctions don’t touch them at all. Instead, they hit the poorest hardest. Sanctions are directly contributing to poverty and mass migration. We should promote human rights, certainly, but we shouldn’t use human rights to punish the very poorest.

    spiked: You have campaigned for many years to end foreign aid to Africa. Why is that?

    Akaki: Each time I visit Africa, I see conditions getting worse. I never see any sign of British foreign aid doing much. Instead, I see big houses and nice cars, which all belong to local foreign-aid managers and government workers.

    In contrast, there are lots of unemployed youth, cutting down trees and burning them to sell as charcoal. Along the road, everywhere, you see bags and bags of charcoal. There is a huge amount of migration from the countryside into the cities, with people looking for non-existent wealth, jobs and housing. When they find nothing there, they move into slum cities, where there is no way to sustain an existence: there are no jobs, no houses, no food, no clean water and no health services. Instead, they are confronted with either radical preachers, who want to encourage them into lives of violence, or people traffickers who promise them a better life.

    Foreign aid was supposed to achieve two objectives: reduce poverty and buy influence. It has done neither. Since independence some five decades ago, the West has given African countries around £600 billion in aid, according to the World Bank. But parts of the continent are getting poorer, hungrier and angrier. Seven of the UN’s 15 peacekeeping missions are in Africa. According to the World Bank, by 2030 nine in 10 of the poorest people in the world will live in Africa.

    At the same time, Africa is virtually becoming a neo-colony of the NGOs. Hundreds of thousands of NGOs have taken over the role of states. NGOs provide basic needs like education, health, water, food and security.

    When it comes to buying influence, African leaders are very happy to receive Western aid money for their own personal and political reasons. But they are not paying attention to the UK or the West anymore. Foreign aid is widely seen as a Western conspiracy to keep Africa poor.

    Instead, African countries are working with China and building closer economic, diplomatic and cultural ties. China is embedding itself into construction and important export markets. And it is blocking all Western resolutions in the UN that are aimed at Africa. (The International Criminal Court, for instance, is widely seen in Africa as persecuting Africans for their race.) Today, China is learning from the English dictum and influencing education and children: catch them young and watch them grow. And yet, few Africans migrate to China. The distance and language barriers are still too great. It is still Europe that is bearing the economic and social burden of mass migration.

    I’m aware that if anyone else raises these issues they will be accused of being racist. But nobody can accuse me, an African, of being racist against my own people! Instead of throwing good money after bad, what I want is for Africa to be given the opportunity to trade itself out of poverty.

    Sam Akaki was talking to Fraser Myers.

    1. Foreign aid is widely seen as a Western conspiracy to keep Africa poor.

      How pleased I would be to free them from this criminal conspiracy!

      1. Excellent news, we can stop borrowing £12Bn we don’t have and stop sending all aid – Africa gets richer almost at once, freed of the insensitive burden of free money, and immigration promptly dips; loads of immigrants here return to their wealthy homeland and we don’t need to build all those extra houses!! Why did no one realise this before??

        2. Morning B,
          We in UKIP were asking for 17.4 million to join us from 25/6/2016 to carry out
          the issues you mention & as an anti treachery
          assurance, sadly………….

          1. Our only problem, Ogga, is finding 650 UKIP candidates to vote for.

            I’m not the only one on here who has a choice of just 4 candidates – Con, Lab, Lib or Green.

            The Green candidate is called Pratt – now there’s a thing.

          2. Morning NtN,
            The only problem we are finding at the moment is the UKIP Nec which in my belief has a remnant of Anti UKIP still active within.
            I am also of the mind that we currently should have stood no Candidates in the coming
            General Election farce.
            So once again we find ourselves as loyal party members find,as with the brexit result, it does NOT suit the few so should be ignored.

      2. I much prefer the Brexit Parties approach of trading with Africa rather than just constantly giving them aid which has proved not to work
        Aid would still be kept though for genuine disaster relief

      3. Yo Minty

        Could the Government give me £11,700,00,000 a year to help keep me poor

        Pretty please.

        I will shareit with all Nottlers, vis Mr Rachid of course, just send your bank details via BT, 9not the phone peeple

    2. “Germany, especially, has been doing a lot of harm.”
      I’m shocked,shocked I tell you……………………

    3. He might not be accused of racism but he will be accused of being a coconut, possibly an even worse creature than a racist in the eyes of the Left..

    4. Hmmm. “African farmers cannot export value-added goods.”. Interesting (and arresting economically).
      This is why it is important the the UK gets its fishing waters and catches back in their entirety, so that we can process and profit.
      We should also be aware that the EU may try this on with us, in agriculture as well as fishing. We will be able to export farm produce but not processed food to Europe. If we sign up to the WA the EU will be able to do this to us, quite legally.

  25. OMGG

    “If you were hoping to escape the bilge that’s been pumped out by

    supposedly neutral organs of the state during this general election

    campaign — the BBC, schools, the NHS — I don’t recommend going to see a

    pantomime. Gramsci’s long march through the institutions has finally

    reached the last redoubt of political incorrectness. Say goodbye to

    bum-pinching, boob-squeezing and irreverent, smutty gags about

    holier-than-thou political figures; say hello to anti-austerity scripts,

    racially sensitive casting and three-hour lectures on climate change.”

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/2019/11/panto-should-be-about-escapism-not-saving-the-planet/
    Bloody Hell it’s remorseless isn’t it,the Leftard blob,sucking the life and laughter out of everything

      1. I needed to look that name up, but those watching children in 1984 are cut from the same ideological cloth.

        “Pavel Trofimovich Morozov (14 November 1918 – 3 September 1932), was a Soviet youth praised by the Soviet press as a martyr. His story, dated to 1932, is that of a 13-year-old boy who denounced his father to the authorities and was in turn killed by his family. The apotheosic cult [around him] had a huge impact on the moral norms of generations of children, who were encouraged to inform on their parents.”

        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c9475ba09c96ebbd7052d3fb8a427e52e5f679f103ae46be0a09ea9abe2b3929.jpg

        1. When I was a child the USSR was held up is a monster country with no freedom of speech and where everyone was expected to sneak to the secret police and children were urged to report their parents.

          I was not at all comfortable when announcements appeared on television in UK encouraging people to report tradesmen such as builders who wanted to be paid in cash. However much one deplored tax evasion getting the people to sneak on their fellows is the beginning of an oppressive police state.

          1. This is what all government, once it grows wants. It becomes self serving and uninterested in it’s only role of servitude preferring to be the master.

            Sadly, there are plenty of people who happily think that taxation should be used to make society ‘fair’ or for ‘social justice’ rather than as it should properly be, to provide only specific and necessary public services.

        2. Whether or not he actually existed, he was the image of perfection held up to Soviet children.
          I find him absolutely spine chilling.

  26. The BBC are really promoting the black film called Blue Story, the film that caused a near riot in Birmingham .

    Can I just comment how very uncomfortable I feel that this film has been given the go ahead… yet I also feel somewhat relieved that by advertising this film will prove to everyone that diversity has got really out of hand , and that the colour of British cities is showing a strong resemblance to American big cities .. where only a few young wan looking white faces are visible .. and we know in our hearts , that as schools swell in non indigenous numbers and housing estates fill up to bursting point , that we have a problem .. and they will become even more dangerous and confrontational.

    Is the BBC the largest employer of people of another colour besides the NHS?

    2. Take heart, Belle – if the ‘Machetes R Us’ stormtroopers turn up again they won’t be able to blame the cinema owners this time if the film is pulled once and for all.

    3. ITV is the same now. I’ve had to stop watching even Midsomer Murders on repeats since the series since John Nettles was retired have become ridiculously populated with BAMEs or whatever they’re called.

      1. John Nettles’ replacement (name forgotten) is terrible! He has 3-4 stock facial expressions which he uses throughout each episode, it’s almost comical.

          2. He played a baddie in an early episode of MM, then years later was made John Nettles’ successor.

            Set a thief to catch a thief?

        1. I understand France has the highest Muslim population in Europe at 8.3% followed by Sweden at 8.1% of total population.

          1. And as they all live in ghettos (true, but unpleasant to say) those places then become revolting, poor and crime ridden.

            Malmo used to be beautiful. Now it’s a toilet.

          2. There’s a lot more rural France than there is rural England. (Perhaps the people in question could be placed on Scottish mountains, Suitably padlocked in).

      3. IT does not help that most are poor actors and don’t even fit the role they are supposed to be playing

  27. Solar today is shown as producing 1% of our current energy demand. They have no proper data on solar so the 1% is just an estimate the probability it is really almost 0%

    1. In the summer on our boat in Turkey our solar panels produce enough electricity for all our needs. However in the winter we have to use our petrol powered generator or run our diesel powered engine.

  28. Boris Johnson and the Tories will win the General Election with 359 seats, according to a major new poll that accurately predicted a hung parliament in 2017
    One should take polls with a large pinch of salt. The most recent polls have been variable but that may be down to the manifestos launches once the impact of those has dropped out we may get a better picture
    Con – 359 seats / 43% vote share
    Lab – 211 / 32%
    SNP – 43 / 3%
    LD – 13 / 14%
    Plaid – 4 / <1%
    Green – 1 / 3%
    Brexit Party – 0 / 3%

    1. There really should be a change to our electoral system – SNP predicted to get 43 seats with just 3% of the vote, Plaid 4 seats with <1% - yet greens 3% and 1 seat, Brexit 3% and no seats!!

      1. It’s in the interests of the Tories to get the long-delayed boundary changes implemented, so that may happen if Boris wins a substantial majority.

      2. 2015 – SNP got 56 seats with 4.7% of the vote; UKIP got 1 seat with 12.6% of the vote. Plaid – 3 seats with 0.6%, DUP – 8 seats with 0.6%, and Greens – 1 seat with 3.8%

        Four years on, and nothing was done about this.

        The very first general election I voted in was in February 1974:
        Labour – 301 seats on 37.2%
        Conservative – 297 seats on 37.9%
        Liberal – 14 seats on 19.3%
        SNP – 7 seats on 2.0%

        45 years on, and nothing was done about this either.

      3. There won’t be any change. It suits the current beneficiary parties far too much for them to agree to change it. After all, they’re there for themselves, not the good of the country.

        1. The SNP managed to get established in Scotland because the Scottish Assembly uses as form of PR. In England we have no English parliament so it makes it 10 times harder for new and small party’s to gain seat’s in England

    2. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the polling companies have been doing a hatchet job on the Brexit Party. The PTB/Establishment do not want an openly hostile to the EU political party getting any traction. They’ll tolerate a Green or two as that’s quite fashionable and they also support the EU group think. Farage is considered an outlier and as such will always be kept at arms length where the internal politics of the nation is concerned.

      1. Boris has shot Farage’s fox for now.

        The BXP’s only chance to be taken seriously was to analyse the new WA rather better, and point out either how any improvements could be got past the EU 27, or ‘No WA’ sold to the markets so they wouldn’t trash the pound and open up the UK to any asset strippers going. Then they would need to stand against any Tory not prepared to support a clean brexit and have the resources to fight 500 seats simultaneously with a reasonable prospect of picking up a fair few of them.

  30. Labours inaccurate costs for Full Fibre
    The cost they quoted was the annual cost of maintain the Fibre Network and even that was wrong. They claimed it was £230 million but the correct figure is about £600M a year these though are only estimates and given the UK’s take record with major projects could easily be 2 or 3 times that figure
    The actual estimated cost of a full Fibre roll out is estimated to be about £7B over 30 years but again could easily be 2 or 3 times
    Labours information is also vague. One could reasonably say that I areas where VM is available on their network you don’t need to roll out fibre or at least they should not be a priority. Unlike BT the VM Network for Broadband doers not really on a twisted pair. For the final mile it uses coax which will deliver very decent speeds At present VM offers as standard speeds up to 362MBPs and unlike BT it is not very dependent on distance

    1. Does anyone envisage that ‘full fibre’ i.e. fibre from the main network connection to each user end-point e.g. house, business, etc will be accomplished anytime soon? I have a fibre connection up to about a half mile from my home, then the connection is copper or possibly aluminium twisted pair wires using the original ADSL system. That half a mile knocks around 10Mbs off of the maximum bit-rate available on the fibre I pay for, leaving me with about 24Mbs: this is more than adequate for my needs but a business would need a greater bandwidth, in reality, fibre from end to end. Just stating fibre delivered broadband for all and for free is a nonsense and it’s quite clear that like today’s pronouncement about 2 billion trees this nationwide fibre idea has been thought up by people who are totally ignorant of what is actually involved.
      If nothing else, this GE is proving to the World and his dog that the majority of our politicians are working and living outside of reality, although quite a few of us knew that already: a twilight zone of hopes and promises that are unachievable both in cost and time-frame. Liars is too simple a word to describe these inhabitants of whatever and wherever their detached World is to be found.

          1. Even rural Canada can beat that

            58 ms
            5.05 mb
            1.1mb

            We don’t even have copper wire, the latest storm broke many of the telephone wires.

          2. I am hopeful, because there is a lot of cable work going on down in the valley.

            At the moment it suffices for my needs, but guests in the holiday cottage aren’t always too impressed, particularly as our mobile signal strength is only “two bars”.

          3. We have a fibre network about three kilometers away but there is no likelihood of us being connected. The cable was laid to support high speed at a nearby resort and there are no other connections. The cable runs through a local village and even though they were inconvenienced by the trenching work, the company would not install any junction boxes.

            So in our large land it is wireless or even satellite.

        3. I’m only paying for my SP’s lower end service which IIRC is around 35Mbs peak. Looking at your bit rates do you have fibre directly into your property? ADSL cannot supply those rates, I’m sure.

    1. Easily one of the nicest things that I have watched in weeks. Even the violence of Black Holes looks majestic from a distance. Nature is beautiful when human complexities and politics are removed.

      1. Liked the video but I muted Jenkins’ tedious, over-hyped dirge and watched it to a wee bit of Bach instead.

        Much better!

        1. What is this life if, full of care,
          We have no time to stand and stare.
          No time to stand beneath the boughs
          And stare as long as sheep or cows.
          No time to see, when woods we pass,
          Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
          No time to see, in broad daylight,
          Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
          No time to turn at Beauty’s glance,
          And watch her feet, how they can dance.
          No time to wait till her mouth can
          Enrich that smile her eyes began.
          A poor life this if, full of care,
          We have no time to stand and stare.

          3. A poor life this if full of care
            We have no time to stand and stare.

            By the way we had three deer in our garden this morning. They are very pretty but do no good to the bark on our trees.

          4. …and, Richard, we had one of the several muntjacs around here, barking on our drive at 04:45 this morning. I think he was annoyed with what we call ‘The Dotty Trap’ a 2 ft high movable fence across the drive, to stop our Chihuahua from dashing off next door or, even worse, out into the countryside walks she is taken on daily.

          5. We have a regular visit from one who eats my geraniums. He waits till they have recovered from the last visit and then eats the fresh flowers, leaving a lot of stalks.

        2. My father was always quoting that.
          In fact, c.1939, he won a photograph competition with a picture of my mother and him sitting on a fence gazing across the fields.
          I still have a copy on the dining room wall.

    1. ‘Red man’ eh? Always suspected Corbyn had a touch of the Cherokee about him.

      He’s probably related to that American Marxist, Elizabeth “Fauxcahontas” Warren.

    2. For the first time in my life I’m going to spoil my ballot paper as there is no BP candidate or Independent standing against T May.

          1. I do.
            I was very angry about the alternatives but was not going to waste a stamp just to send in a spoiled paper..

          6. I feel like voting for Corbyn out of sheer spite … Parliament has trashed democracy.

            No Party represents me….

          8. Macron is finding out about EU stitch-ups at the Commission.

            Britain needs a similar wake-up call.

          10. The only way that the parasitic elites are going to be brought to heel is through a complete sea change.

          11. The USSR had elections. Iran has elections. You can vote for Mohammed, or Mohammed or Mohammed. Are we seriously any different?

          13. Indeed it is, but in my experience in France a reply paid letter takes a lot longer than a stamped letter and to be reasonably certain that the thing arrived before 12th I would have stamped it.

  33. Corbyn nationalisation plans for energy sector to collide with EU law

    Gosh the Guardian has just woken up
    The Labour party’s plans to take large parts of the energy industry back under public control is on a collision course with EU laws that guard Europe-owned companies against government takeovers.
    The EU rules mean a Labour administration could face rising costs or a legal battle in European courts over plans to pay a discount to nationalise energy networks and the big six energy suppliers.
    The party set out plans in May to renationalise energy networks at below market prices by taking into account the “asset stripping and profiteering” since privatisation in the 1980s. The party has also said it would fund the multibillion plans by offering energy company investors Treasury-backed bonds.

    1. “The party has also said it would fund the multibillion plans by offering energy company investors Treasury-backed bonds.”

      If they are Labour Treasury -backed bonds, as per the outgoing Labour Government in 2010, they will be over-printed with “There is no money.”

      1. Yes, but we are not really leaving the EU.

        I wonder if Boris Johnson has the testicular strength to stand up to a television inquisition by Andrew Neil about his bogus WA or whether he will take the coward’s way out and run?

        1. It assumes Labour gain power and as best that can be established it will Remain in the EU or be BRINO both of which would prevent them nationalising them

      2. True, Tony but even with total Brexit (a mere pipe dream under Corbyn) he cannot Nationalise all the electric companies without coming up against EDF (France) and Eon (Germany). This is a measure of the dependency we have on other countries and their continuing goodwill.

        All over Britain the lights are going out – or soon will be.

        1. That is one of the reasons why we should never have sold key industries to foreigners. Now the chlorinated chickens are coming home to roost.

  34. How interesting…..

    Alleged corruption in American politics during the Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton era.. Of course, as we know, those allegations include a well known individual who, according to Peter Schweizer and his detailed analysis, supposedly colluded with Obama to make vast sums…. and who, by innocent random coincidence, is apparently a business associate of a former British prime minister…. and who by innocent random coincidence runs a multi million dollar funded political lobbying organization in London !

    I wonder what that complex story could be all about ?

    Investor’s Business Daily has some fascinating details……….

    ”Scam Exposed: Donations To Clinton Foundation Plummeted After Clinton Lost The Election.”

    ”Corruption: Throughout the presidential campaign there was plenty of talk about whether the Clinton Foundation was a legitimate charity or a pay-to-play scam. The latest financial data from the charity provides the answer.”

    ”Controversy over the foundation erupted after Peter Schweizer’s 2015 book — “Clinton Cash” — suggested that the foundation served as a way for donors to curry favor with then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.”

    https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/clinton-foundation-donations/

    1. The Conservative party leader wrote in a diary piece for the Independent on Sunday in October 1999 that Tony Blair had made people feel good about getting rich.

      In the column on single mothers, published in the Spectator in 1995, Johnson wrote that “uppity and irresponsible women” had a “natural desire to have babies” and that ways must be found to ensure they married.

      1999! 1995! Are we to see his colouring books next?

      1. There’s that word again! I’m surprised they didn’t complain about that! And the children of unmarried mothers are “illegitimate” – formerly recorded in parish registers as “baseborn” and “bastards” – – would they rather he’d used those words?

      2. School reports! Why hasn’t there been a full exposé of his school reports – there should be some really choice comments in those from his teachers. We have a right to know!

  36. Morning Geoff.

    According to The Sun,

    “He (Boris Johnson) and Chancellor Sajid Javid have agreed to let the state spend more and allow the annual deficit to start going up again”

    That makes Sajid Javid a liar then. Only last Sunday, he said that “debt would be lower at the end of this parliament than at the start of parliament”

    A budget deficit = borrowing = a rising national debt = a ball and chain around our future prospects when the debt-chickens come home to roost.

    Drinks all round, barman, for which I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday.

    Whoever gets in, I fear for my country’s future.

    =============

    A little owed:

    Oh, to be in Johnson’s place
    With pockets full of lolly.
    To spend what isn’t his to spend
    Is really rather jolly.

    So goodbye Prudence, hello Bett,
    Let’s together pile up debt
    And when the brown stuff hits the fan,
    We’ll go and kick another can.

    Anon

  37. Jihadis face execution without trial in Syrian jails as Assad says foreign ISIS members will be hanged. Mail 27 November 2019.

    Jihadis in prisons in Syria could face execution without trial after President Bashar al-Assad said he was setting up special terror courts, where the prisoners will be subjected to ‘Syrian law’.

    Morning everyone. Of course two absolutely self-contradictory positions in a single sentence is nothing new for the Mail, particularly when reporting on Assad and Syria. This said I am not opposed in principle to the hanging of foreign ISIS members since they are among its most malevolent adherents and without the mitigating factors of compulsion by nationality or the excuse of political oppression that others could offer.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7733041/Jihadis-face-execution-without-trial-Syrian-jails-Assad-says-ISIS-members-hanged.html

    1. Hi Tony, it is not ‘hostility’ to academics, it is application of the immigration laws. One of my employees had a similar problem. He has lived in the UK and worked for my company since 2009. The issue arose because of the way the ‘fives years living in the UK’ is calculated. They simply go back five years from the date of application. Unfortunately, this date corresponded to a time when my employee was spending three weeks working in Jakarta. (He was still employed and paid in the UK). He was advised by the immigration department to appeal and include a letter from the Company explaining the full situation and then his application should go through – it will take a couple of months.

      I suspect that once received applications are processed by automation and minions entering basic information. The system will then automatically do the calculations and accept/reject depending on the legal criteria.

      1. I am still trying to find a computerised system that isn’t like that. Bring back pen and ink and employees who can think.
        (It rhymes).

          1. Yes, but neither we, nor the system needs “millions of repetitive data”. That’s where we should start. Necessary and sufficient.

      2. “The creatures outside looked from machine to man, and from man to machine, and from machine to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

  39. OK. So I’m a crusty old fart harking back to halcyon days that never were; but:
    I don’t remember queuing for the 2/9s being a security issue. Has there been some sort of change in the past fifty years?

        1. Oh, thanks.

          ”

          Rapman, whose real name is Andrew Onwubolu, previously told the BBC
          there was “no connection” between his movie and the brawl in Birmingham,
          which led to five arrests.

          “And then you start thinking, is there
          hidden reasons there? What’s the owner like? Has he got an issue with
          young urban youth? Is he prejudiced?

          “Does he believe that this film brings a certain type? Is there a colour thing?”

          Of course ther’s a bloody colour thing. If the film is being shown to avoid an appearance of censorship, then why should there be censorship of saying who the troublemakers are ?

          1. When he was being introduced, I thought his name was Ratman and seeing/hearing his unintelligible ranting I thought the name suited him well.

    4. Whatever happened to the liveried commissionaire? Seen at the ABC in St John’s Street but not in the ‘flea pit’ Cameo across the road.

        1. Yes, when it was called the ‘Arts Cinema’. I did watch several mainstream films there, always after they had done the rounds a few times – bit like Al-Beeb now with repeats. Do you remember the Empire down at St Botolph’s Circus? Another flea pit that closed in the ’60s, I think.

          1. Yes. It had a great wooden partition halfway down right across the auditorium. If you were seated towards the back, you couldn’t see a thing.
            It spent its last years as a furniture warehouse.

          4. B.
            Correct, & under 30 p, my 30 p was inclusive of
            a box of malteasers, a chocice, & a John Player.

    1. Good, but I have a feeling the commentary isn’t the real deal.

      My experience of TV in India is that they cut out anything. either visual or audible that could be taken as remotely sexual in nature. Even episodes of ‘House’ have silences where one of the characters says a word that the Indian censors aren’t comfortable with.

  41. Morning again

    SIR – Liz Bonnin of Countrywise talks of vast areas of Amazon rainforest being cleared for beef production (report, November 27). What about the vast areas of rainforest being cleared for soya and palm- oil production?

    Paul Alabaster

    Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire

    3. If they had not adopted the Schengen approach, all of these farmers would have had to stay in France.

    4. Sorry, am I being a bit slow? That just looks like evrey single road around Hampshire – utterly gridlocked, nothing moving.

    2. I am not interested in this hopeless woman – I want to see Boris answering some penetrative questions about his sell-out WA. How does he get away with so much waffle and so little fact?

    1. Well, it worked fine at the Scottish Referendum. No NHS and no pensions, among other things.

      1. Talking of Colossus; Brillopad appears to have piled on the pounds.
        Has he overdone the Scotch pies?

        1. Julius Caesar would have approved of Andrew Neil:

          Let me have men about me who are fat
          Sleek-headed men and such as sleep a-nights.

        2. Coincidentally, Mrs HJ made much the same observation. Personally I welcome it because I reckon bulk like that intimidates his victims. He certainly seems far less patient with interview-stalling waffle.

        3. The BBC are fattening him up for the kill! As soon as this election is over its goodbye Neil!

      1. Morning AS – Boris is respecting Mark Twain’s advice that ” it is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt” This advice served me well over the years..

        1. “Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding.” Proverbs 17:28.

      2. Boris Johnson is a moral coward with very little integrity if he is afraid to face Andrew Neil in an interview. Whatever we think of the odious Corbyn at least he did not run away from Neil.

        If Johnson does run away from the inquisition will it not confirm the very worst suspicions we have about his WA – the nitty-gritty details of which he is so eager to conceal?

    4. Good morning Rik

      As I have repeatedly said here I would very much like to see Johnson put firmly on the spot by Andrew Neil about the very dire flaws in his rehashed May Surrender deal with the EU. Boris Johnson needs to be subjected a proper inquisition over his Brexit sell out. He has been given far too easy a ride by both the MSM and the other political parties.

  45. Brexit and the NHS have featured strongly in the election fallout but silence surrounds the impact of AI

    As Britain’s election campaign approaches a climax, there is one glaring issue which seems to be curiously absent from the debate.

    Amid quarrels over Brexit, anti-semitism, Scottish independence, the

    NHS and future investment in public services, few candidates seem

    willing or able to discuss the elephant in the room.

    Britain is on the verge of a sweeping economic change which poses a serious threat to millions of jobs.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2019/11/28/politicians-refusing-talk-burning-issue-threatening-jobs/
    Now remind me again,why are we importing untold numbers of low IQ gimmigrants??

    1. So far all we have had from Corbyn on the NHS is in my view and most others a total pack of lies. THe NHS is not up for sale and the trade discussion document that he waved around clearly showed that claim not to be tre

        1. What Corbyn carefully does not mention as well is that under EU legislation all NHS contract of £750,000 and over have to go out to open tender

    1. I haven’t seen anything yet in the Labour manifesto about planting fibre optic trees for the various cultural celebrations of our homogeneous society.

    2. I’ve figured out Labour’s cunning plan. Each new immigrant will be
      required to bring a tree with them in order to qualify for a life of
      free stuff in Britain. 2 billion is just the start.

  48. More emotional claptrap from the Garudina. The problems are real but however bad they have become, the roots of the crisis were not put down by The Evil Tories in 2015 or 2010 but go back to the 60s. The disintegration of society began then. Add the decline of UK industry and mass uncontrolled immigration and this is what happens.

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/28/when-did-we-become-this-cruel-poverty-looms-large-for-norwich-voters

    Elsewhere, it is reported that BJ once said something disobliging about some single mothers. Does anyone see the link? I think a lot of old-school Labour voters would find little to disagree with in his remarks.

    Unless I’ve missed it, none of the parties have anything to say on the huge structural faults in the UK economy that have brought us to this point.

    1. Afternoon William. We are just shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic! When the Iceberg hits we will sink without trace!

    2. If the major parties had something serious to say about huge structural faults in the economy they wouldn’t be offering to splurge untold billions on all and sundry, even if the promises are clearly lies. In addition, if they were serious politicians they wouldn’t be attempting to chain us to the slowly dying behemoth that is the EU and continue claiming, “It’s the economy, stoopid.” They are nearly all painted with the globalist/federalist brush and what literally happens to the UK is of little real concern to them as long as buggins’ turn keeps on track and rewarding them handsomely. It’s likely the break in the buggins’ turn loop that the Brexit Party threatened is one reason why Johnson would not entertain a pact. Radical politics with the well-being of the Nation as a whole being the aim is long dead in the UK.

    4. The guardian cannot admit or accept that the problems this country faces were caused by labour from 1997 to 2010. Doing so will cause their heads to explode.

    5. I honestly don’t care about that. Nurses have better things to do than prat about with a daft socialist.

      However, must get a nurses uniform for the wife.

  50. Labour unveils plans to create ten new national parks and plant two billion trees
    Gosh so whilst allowing unlimited numbers of migrants into the UK and covering the UK with Wind Turbines and solar farms and building millions of new homes it is also going to plant 2B trees whilst at the same time chopping down trees to build new homes. Nice to see the joined up thinking

    This is going to cost £3.7B and wait for it. It will be funded by even more borrowing

    1. I’ve done a bit of work on this but not how to source the trees, that’s quite another problem.

      At 4 square metres per tree (conifer commercial planting) that will require 800,000 hectares of land. Put another way that would put all of Essex, Suffolk and one third of Hertfordshire under trees. Mixtures of conifer and deciduous for commercial exploitation will require a bit less land. If the plan is to create Parks then the planting will likely not be at commercial rates and will require more land.
      Another view is that 11,400 trees per hour will have to be planted, every hour every day until end 2040. However, the best time period for planting bare rooted trees is from October to April so a mixture of bare rooted and container grown saplings, the latter requiring regular watering, will be required for optimum success.
      The clear outcome of this plan is, we need more squirrels, many more squirrels. 😎

      2. And in the meantime we are subsidising ‘biomass’ power stations such as Drax and my local one, Lynemouth to burn literally millions of tonnes of American wild forests per year. I calculated the other day that it takes half a million or more mature trees to keep the small (420MW) power station at Lynemouth producing subsidies. Drax burns much more.

      3. I’m waiting for ERNIE to cough up the million then I’ll be buying the lime kilns up the road from me with a couple of acres of the heavily wooded but totally unmanaged hillside above them.
        Then it’ll be:-
        Open up the access drive to the top of the kilns
        Remove all trees that are liable to fall onto the main road
        Stabilise the kilns themselves and carry out work to conserve them as an important industrial relic
        Fell and remove mature ash & sycamore, hopefully with the lumber being made use of for furniture and other uses.
        Replant with a broad spectrum of trees, both broadleaf & conifer.

        1. Great to have such a dream, BoB.
          My wife and I only receive the odd £25, three in the last two months. Grand kids get it in their money boxes.

          1. I’ve more Premium bonds than most people, about half the maximum, and get fairly frequent, if irregular, £25 “consolation prizes”.
            It’s about time I got something a bit bigger!

      4. If the aim is so called climate change mitigation then conifers are not a lot of user . They are fine if you want some thing that grows fast and produces low grade timber . What is needed is trees with leaves perhaps apple trees as that gives you a crop as well

        1. Bill, you’re being far too sensible. To dreamers such as Corbyn a tree is a tree is a tree. What impact different species have on taking carbon dioxide from the atmosphere wouldn’t occur to him. Reading just a few paragraphs from a Woodland website this morning throws up all manner of problems e.g. management, water course protection etc.
          On the subject of fruit trees, didn’t we grub out many of our orchards to appease the EEC/EU and French farmers? Where I picked fruit as a youngster there are now housing estates.

          1. We could also stop cutting down smaller pine trees for this ridiculous festive season (Read that as bonus time for shop owners)

          3. Close to home.
            Williamson’s orchards in Great Horkesley have now sprouted a goodly crop of ticky tacky housing.

          4. Pattinson’s in Horkesley were grubbed out back in the ’70s and some of that land is under housing. Carter and Blewit’s in Boxted also disappeared but there is a vineyard in that area now, I believe.
            C&B’s grew a wider range of fruit than Pattinson: the latter apples and blackcurrants, the former apples, pears, cherries, plums and damsons with some walnuts thrown in.

      2. Wherever there is a disease or pest that will be imported along with the new trees to destroy indigenous species.

        1. ‘Morning, Sos, the diseases called immigrants are already on their way to destroy the indigenous (pale pink) species.

      3. Morning OB..

        But…. Corbyn wants to build thousands of homes as well.. so where will 2 million trees be planted ..

        Aha, I get it , quick grow cash crop , like the old days , fir trees , incentives to grow a few acres , cash crops for investment .

        Funny really, being as though some of our precious apple and plum orchards are being grubbed up… to make room for new homes .

        Baaaah.

          1. Effectively that is what our natural Christmas tree is.
            Approx. 5 foot high. Lives in a pot all year round, roots trimmed annually and this must be at least its 6th. Christmas.

          4. No chance of that going into a dustbin.

            Five or six years time it’ll get planted out up the hill.

      2. Ah Corbyn probably thinks that you just pop around to the local garden centre and that’s without the little problem is where is the land to plant 2B trees? . To clarify as well he is only talking England

        1. One farmer on Farming Today BBC Radio 4 said he earns much more from leasing his land for Solar Panel arrays than he does for growing feed for his cattle. Farmers will go for what brings in the money and I doubt in arable areas trees will not get a look in.

          1. No doubt farmers will be offered huge incentives to plant trees on their land and we can just import even more food rather than grow it
            THey seem to have slipped up here though. If we have trees on the land instead of crops we will not need migrants to pick croips

          6. Politicians only do short term planning do it is quite possible to plant conifers in between the solar panels.

            After all by the time the frees grow enough to block light from the panels it will be some other persons problem.

          7. Trees are a very long term investment. Firstborn had an area felled last autumn & replanted this summer. He won’t be alive to see these saplings felled.

          8. While never actually warming to aristos, I do take my hat off to those who landscaped their policies and planted avenues of trees that they would never see mature.

          9. I agree. Where the Duke had his crash is the road into the Sandringham Estate. As soon as you turn in you see the whole landscape change before your eyes with the most beautiful and majestic trees. The wide grass borders to the road are kept trim as well. It’s disappointing to leave. When you get back on the A road with the scruffy litter strewn verges and the ragged hawthorns it’s rather depressing.

          10. Solar in spite of the wild claims produces very little energy but is highly profitable who cares if it pushes up our energy bills and results in us needing to import more food

          11. If my car and house windows are any guide, it will be a matter of weeks before the panels are so grubby that little sunlight will get through.

          12. Well solar panels age. Typically declaiming by 1% a year and yes dirt and leaves and birds muck on them also have a significant impact. They really need a full clean at least annually but no one ever does
            The other problem is no structural check of roofs is ever done to see if they can take the additional load and if we should get a heavy snowfall that will considerable further increase the load and potentially roofs could be damaged. It could also cause the roofs to leak

  52. List of affected branches
    The branches affected, and the month of closure in 2020, are:

    North England:

    Wigton (June)

    Newcastle Upon Tyne – Chillingham Road (September)

    North West England:

    Urmston (June)

    Chester (June)

    Chorlton, Manchester (October)

    Congleton (October)

    Warrington – Penketh (October)

    Leyland (November)

    St Annes-on-Sea (November)

    Ormskirk (November)

    Yorkshire and the Humber:

    Headingley, Leeds (February),

    Thorne (April), Skipton (May),

    Hull – Willerby (May),

    Normanton (May),

    Todmorden (June),

    Brough (July),

    Market Weighton (July),

    Shipley (November),

    Harrogate (November)

    East Midlands:

    Leicester – Cavendish Road (May)

    Eastern England:

    St Albans (September),

    Ipswich – Felixstowe Road (September)

    West Midlands:

    Birmingham – Great Hampton (April),

    Coventry – Walsgrave Road (April),

    Pershore (May),

    Cannock (September),

    Rugby (September),

    Warwick (September),

    Birmingham – Stirchley (September),

    Lichfield (October),

    Stourbridge (October),

    Coventry – Jubilee Crescent (November),

    Leamington Spa (November),

    Sutton Coldfield (November),

    Bearwood Road, Smethwick (November)

    South West England:

    Moreton-in-Marsh (May),

    Okehampton (May),

    Stroud (June),

    Poole (October),

    Salisbury (October)

    South East England:

    Abingdon (April),

    Burgess Hill (April),

    Sidcup (June),

    Amersham (June),

    Guildford (July),

    Ashford (September),

    Woking (September),

    Redhill (October),

    Basingstoke (October),

    Worthing (October),

    Fareham (October),

    Cowley (November)

    London:

    Elephant and Castle (February),

    Holborn (May),

    Finchley (June),

    Barkingside (September),

    Wandsworth (September),

    Bayswater (September),

    St James’s Park (September),

    Chingford (November),

    Gidea Park (November),

    Old Street (November),

    Twickenham (November),

    Potters Bar (November)

    Scotland:

    Barrhead (April),

    Glasgow – Govan (May),

    Bishopbriggs (May),

    Milngavie (May),

    Dunbar (May),

    Portobello (May),

    Jedburgh (May),

    Kinross (May),

    Tain (June),

    Uddingston (June),

    Edinburgh – Clerk Street (July),

    Carluke (July),

    Brechin (July).

    Dumbarton (July).

    Clarkston (July),

    Edinburgh – Morningside (September),

    Wishaw (September)

    1. We can only hope it’s true. Test it in Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, Bradford, Rotherham, Rochdale and London.

    2. Afternoon Rik,
      Wot, sorta like give archie bishop another bone, doobie, joint, spliff, like ?
      Some might snort at the idea but others might think it could inject some common sense into their mindset.

    3. For goodness sake, the religious fanatics already slaughter many of those trying to do good by vaccinating against polio and measles etc. in their shitholes. This announcement is stupidity of the first order.

    4. It is soulless puppets such as this scientist with their “engineered viruses” who will make an error in their field trials and kill billions of human beings. At least the United Nations will have that small world population that they are after.

      1. Make an error you say……………….
        Tom Clancy Rainbow 6
        John Ringo Under a Graveyard Sky
        Posit a deliberate act

  54. Thanksgiving Weather: Historic ‘Bomb Cyclone’ And Snow Hit Much Of The US. Nov 27, 2019,.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2f0d24029ca70a35dc3121d7377f9dc2227f6ef8549d883f92fafe482c584977.jpg

    In many American homes Wednesday the Thanksgiving turkey is thawing and the yard is either blanketed with snow or bracing for big winds.

    The National Weather Service warned on one of the busiest travel days of the year in the United States that two major storm systems will work their way across the continent this week, including a so-called “bomb cyclone” that could be historic.

    All complaints should be addressed to Greater Thunderbird.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericmack/2019/11/27/thanksgiving-weather-historic-bomb-cyclone-and-snow-hit-much-of-the-us/#175e152a964f

      2. Last time I cooked a chicken, it fell on the floor as I was getting it out of the roasting tin……..

  55. There’s no major difference between supporting terrorism on

    Syrian soil and sending troops there without formal approval from its

    government, Bashar Assad said as he lambasted France’s role in Syria’s

    civil war.

    Syria has “come a long way”

    toward defeating much of the terrorist insurgency on its soil, but

    pockets of resistance still remain as jihadists are receiving support

    from Turkey and Western countries, Bashar Assad told Paris Match magazine, singling out the US, the UK and “especially France.”

    France

    has joined the US-led anti-Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) coalition,

    providing air support and deploying special forces to Syria. But for

    Assad, the French intervention amounted to an “occupation,” as Paris –

    like its major NATO ally Washington – failed to secure Damascus’

    authorization of the mission.

    https://www.rt.com/news/474559-assad-france-occupation-syria/
    Don’t worry Assad,soon it’ll be the EU army,not the French

    1. Rik,
      Any info on what way the UK mercenary political fraternity
      will swing ? as in any lists of foreign rewards on offer ?

      By the by if justice reenters the fray then swing they will eventually.

  58. No10 feverishly working on plausible reasons for BoJo to avoid being grilled by Brillo. Brillo not interested in interviewing Swinson as she is too pathetic and is no longer ‘red meat’. Farage is the only one still up for it……so I’m told.

    1. If he can’t get out of it, he should get it over with asap. The closer to the election that it happens, the less time there will be for damage limitation.

      1. It would be tremendous if a proper grilling from Andrew Neil actually persuaded the Bonker to go for a proper ‘no deal with the EU’ Brexit rather that a May Rehash WA.

      2. The 3rd and 4th brillopad interviews are scheduled for next Monday and Tuesday. Boris would be ill-advised to duck it.

          1. He couldn’t possibly do worse than Corbyn, that interview will go down in history. Yesterday’s with Barry Gardiner wasn’t much better, in fact he nearly lost it with Andrew Neil.

          2. I suspect BJ will bumble through it.

            I would like to see him thoroughly quizzed on how his deal is better than May’s, because all promises ultimately come down to how much freedom we have from the EU to be able to pay for them.

    2. Farage does have one key advantage. He can tell the truth and does not need to remember the host of lies that he has spoken in the past. After 25 years of being attacked and belittled from almost all sides, it is much easier if you have held the same overriding goal of Leaving the EU. He knows where the bodies are buried and has far more credibility than those politicians who promised to respect the referendum result and then worked to overturn it.

      It would be nice if he could be asked questions about why the Withdrawal Agreement would be such a bad step for the United Kingdom, compared to his offer to leave the EU and be free and clear to trade on WTO terms by the end of this year.

    3. No Swansong? How very disappointing that Brillo’s sacrificial altar, already heavily stained following the evisceration of Queen Nicola and Comrade Steptoe, will be deprived of its third and perhaps finest moment – the final 30 minutes of she who struggles with the phrase ‘democratic mandate’.

    5. If Boris Johnson runs away from Andrew Neil then as sure as eggs are eggs he will run away from ever explaining the flaws in his Brexit plan.

      We shall only discover the full extent of the disaster once we have signed up irrevocably.

      Boris Johnson cannot, should not and must never be trusted one inch on Brexit.

    3. How many times do I have tell him that beret and lipstick should match?
      No wonder he’s hiding his hands. Chipped nail varnish, I shouldn’t wonder.

  60. If Santa Claus delivers exactly the right present on Christmas Day, does it seem likely there has been secret lobbying with Santa Claus.. ?

    Similarly with legislation, especially if left wing and socially liberal. If Presidents, especially Presidents of the European Commission, and British Prime Ministers deliver exactly what multi billion dollar funded Open Society desires, does it seem likely they have been secretly lobbied ?

    1. A London MP has suggested that absent fathers are a key cause of knife crime.

      Tottenham Labour MP David Lammy said most young people who have stabbed someone to death come from single parent families.

      Former gang member Sheldon Thomas, now a government advisor on youth violence, said he agreed with Mr Lammy “100%”.

      He said his and others’ warnings had fallen on deaf ears for at least 20 years.

      Mr Lammy, whose own father walked out, said after regularly visiting Feltham Young Offenders Institute he found that most, if not all, offenders did not have access to their fathers.

      He also suggested that most of the people involved in last year’s London riots were from single parent homes.

      ‘Real problem’
      Responding to his comments, Mr Thomas said: “Successive governments refused to look at the important role that fathers play in any community.

      “What people will be asking is how come it takes an MP to bring to light something that has been fundamentally affecting deprived communities for at least 20 years?”

      He said many factors had contributed to the phenomenon, including teenage pregnancy being “at an all-time high”.

      “The moral factors and the values of this country have completely changed significantly,” he added.

      Mr Thomas said fathers should not use the excuse of not getting along with their child’s mother as a reason not to look after their child.

      Ken Sanderson, chief executive of Families Need Fathers, said he thought the the lack of father figures was not the only cause of crime, but was a contributing factor.

      “The absence of a good influential parent or someone who can teach you the difference between right and wrong and develop you and nurture you is a real problem for a lot of families,” he said. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-19815831

      1. “Mr Lammy, whose own father walked out…”

        Bearing out the thought that absent fathers are the reason for all criminal activity – including Mr Lammy’s pontifications, mainly based on no factual evidence using bigotry and buffoonery as an excuse.

      2. He said many factors had contributed to the phenomenon, including teenage pregnancy being “at an all-time high”.

        Except it’s not…
        Conception rates for women aged 15 to 17 in England and Wales were 18.9 per 1,000 – a 9.6% fall since 2015, and a 60% drop since 1998. In England there were 18.8 conceptions per 1,000 women aged 15 to 17 (17,014 in total), an 11% drop from the year before, when there were 20.8 per 1,000 (19,080 in total). In Wales, the fall was 17%, from 24.3 per 1,000 (1,271 in total) to 20.9 per 1,000 (1,061 in total). 

      3. He said many factors had contributed to the phenomenon, including teenage pregnancy being “at an all-time high”.

        Except it’s not…
        Conception rates for women aged 15 to 17 in England and Wales were 18.9 per 1,000 – a 9.6% fall since 2015, and a 60% drop since 1998. In England there were 18.8 conceptions per 1,000 women aged 15 to 17 (17,014 in total), an 11% drop from the year before, when there were 20.8 per 1,000 (19,080 in total). In Wales, the fall was 17%, from 24.3 per 1,000 (1,271 in total) to 20.9 per 1,000 (1,061 in total). 

    2. David Lammy

      ✔@DavidLammy

      Boris Johnson used his Spectator column to call the children of single mothers “ill-raised, ignorant, aggressive and illegitimate”.
      He said working-class men are “likely to be drunk, criminal, aimless, feckless and hopeless”.

      What a bigot. Totally unfit to lead this country.

      Perceptive, I’d call it.

    1. They’ve got to get that in somehow – couldn’t possibly be building on floodplains, lack of dredging, blocked drains…..

  64. Just how mad can things get ?
    Some transmen who get themselves pregnant have indicated to the NHS that their preference would be to be treated in an all male maternity ward
    Now don’t fall over laughing at this point . The NHS are considering it
    Even dafter is these people claim to be suffering from Gender dysphoria so why an earth would they want to get pregnant when that just confirms they are not male but female

    1. Funny, I was just watching that great old film called From Here to Maternity. It’s a black and white as well.

      1. The Transmen try to get around the little problem of them claiming they have gender dysphoria but want to get pregnant by trying to claim some men have breasts and vaginas. I do hate tell them though that if they do they are a woman

  65. Trump angers Mexico by suggesting cartels should be designated as terrorist organisations. 27 NOVEMBER 2019.

    “I’ve actually offered [the Mexican president] to let us go in and clean it out, and he’s so far rejected the offer,” Mr Trump told the cable news network.

    Lol! This would make Vietnam look like a rest cure. Mexico is a fully fledged Narcostate. The cartels run and finance all the major parties. They are the State!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/11/27/trump-angers-mexico-suggesting-cartels-should-designated-terrorist/

    3. And then my doctor asked if I would like my breasts weighed …….. so I said “Yes” …….. then he put out his hands – just like this – lifted them up and shouted “Waa-aa-aaay!”

  68. COFFEE HOUSE – What happened to all the ‘vote Tory’ signs?
    Patrick West – 28 November 2019 – 10:10 AM

    General election time in Britain invariably means one thing: lots of Labour, Green and Lib Dem posters displayed outside people’s houses and in front windows but hardly any Conservative ones. In my 11 years living and travelling around Kent, I haven’t seen a single one. The last time I saw one was in the Holland Park area of West London in the early 1990s. If you live in a city centre, they are a rare species indeed. So where are the ‘vote Tory’ placards?

    Their absence has been the norm for decades now, especially since the Thatcherite 1980s. This was when Rik Mayall’s character in the comedy The Young Ones popularised the notion that Tories were ‘capitalist scum’ or ‘fascists’ (even though the character was an imbecile, and actually a send-up of student radicals). By then it had become the popular consensus that Tories were selfish and money-obsessed and that to vote Labour was an act of supreme virtue and altruism. In the last election, I found myself in the affluent north London area of Crouch End. Nearly every house was festooned with a Labour poster. These were not houses that had any material interest in seeing a Labour; quite the reverse. But I bet it made them feel as one and feel good.

    As Twitter has also paradoxically illustrated since, some left-wing people armed with an unshakeable sense of their own moral righteousness, can be quite nasty at times. There has always been that second thought that spiteful people with a grievance and who lack a sense of doubt might put a brick through a window bearing Conservative poster.

    A few years ago, James Bartholomew of this magazine coined the term ‘virtue signalling’, to indicate people voicing an opinion, usually a left-wing one, and often without sincerity, to ingratiate yourself with your peers.

    I like to think I got there first, at least in the context of British society, having written a short book in 2003 which described what I called ‘conspicuous compassion’. This phenomenon had shown its roots back in 1985 with Live Aid, where people successfully joined in something bigger than themselves, sung along with Status Quo and Queen.

    The real watershed came in 1997. Like many people I found the public outpouring following the death of Diana, Princess of Wales unreal. There were signals that displays of emotion, combined with ostentatious, unconvincing and indeed menacing signs of ‘compassion’ were becoming the order of the day. ‘Show us you care!’, some demanded of the Queen

    The 1990s was the decade in which Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse, playing the unctuous DJs Smashy ‘n’ Nicey, would liked to boast: ‘we do a lot of work for charidee … but we don’t like to talk about it.’

    In real life, ribbons for all manner of causes began to proliferate. Remembrance Day poppies got bigger and bigger and were sported earlier and earlier. Minutes’ silence began to be held for tragedies that were diminishing in gravity. Politicians like Tony Blair were apologising for historical sins, an act that cost them zero in emotional investment.

    Anti-war marchers seemed less interested in actually stopping conflicts, but keener to brag about their personal distaste for them. ‘Not in my name’ was their slogan. This was compassion inflation, mourning sickness. It was not the sign of a more caring society. It was the symptom of a cynical, atomised one that would seize any opportunity to bond with strangers.

    Of course, neither ‘virtue signalling’ or ‘conspicuous compassion’ described something new. The ideas have their origins in Charles Darwin’s 1871 book, The Descent of Man, which describes how saying or doing the wrong thing is all part of the sexual selection game. Quite simply, you are not going to get a girlfriend at university if you declare yourself a Tory. Conversely, once you get to middle age you don’t really care what anyone’s going to think of your political views.

    By the new millennium I was reading a lot of Friedrich Nietzsche. One quote from Human, All Too Human convinced me he had predicted the future and that I had to write a book about the cranky old German: ‘Observe how children weep and cry, so that so that they will be pitied… Thus the thirst for pity is a thirst for self-enjoyment, and at the expense of one’s fellow man.’ Somehow his infamous loathing of compassion no longer seemed so perverse.

    Patrick West is a columnist for Spiked and author of Get Over Yourself: Nietzsche For Our Times (Societas, 2017)

    *************************************************************************

    BTL:

    Hugh Bryant • 5 hours ago
    The reason that there are so many Vote Labour posters in Crouch End is that Crouch End is populated with rich people who work for the government. A Labour government will make them richer still: their index-linked salaries and pensions will increase while the open borders policies will push up their house values and push down the wages of their servants. It’s entirely rational.

    Fraser Bailey • 5 hours ago
    Anybody displaying a Tory sign would almost certainly have their property or person attacked by the left wing mob. The left tends to attract, represent, and support, very unpleasant and violent people.

    1. In our little enclave, the posters are all Green. There are also plenty of Labour ones in town, but I haven’t seen any Tory ones.

    2. I totally agree with Fraser Bailey.
      The Conservative poster team here are constantly going round replacing defaced and trashed posters.
      Many supporters – particularly the elderly or those living on their own – won’t display the posters because of the violence. They fear a brick through the window or finding their flower beds have been trampled on during the night.
      And that is in a provincial English town. Imagine living in London or one of the big cities.

    3. Maybe it is just a sign of the times. During our recent Canadian election, political signs were conspicuous by their absence.

      One local comedian joked that there were more signs advertising an upcoming craft show than there were candidates posters.

  69. When it comes to trust, our party leaders could learn from Tony Blair. Steven Fielding. 28 November 2019.

    This is not to say that Blair should, like a slumbering King Arthur, be called upon now to save British politics in its hour of deepest mistrust. The public in their wisdom would not accept that: he is now a tainted figure. But it is perhaps time our party leaders started to emulate New Labour and focus on modest targets and actually achieving them rather than promising implausible utopias of the free market or state collectivism – and then falling flat on their faces.

    Tainted? Is this like Stalin is misunderstood or Tamerlane was handicapped? He’s a War Criminal of Historic stature. He is responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of quite ordinary people!

    https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/11/when-it-comes-to-trust-our-party-leaders-could-learn-from-tony-blair/

    1. BTL:

      Mike Rogers • an hour ago
      Blair was like Clinton (Bill) – if you can fake sincerity, you’ve got it made!

    2. “This is not to say that Blair should, like a slumbering King Arthur…”

      That has to be one of the most wildly inappropriate comparisons that I have seen this year. If there is anyone from those tales that fits Blair then it is Mordred. His ending world was full of betrayal and his final act was trying to kill the hope of England. That is much closer to Blair.

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9a4e49c9c9237535406c8f18ffda0d7b52de10a33d85109cecfe5ac0519bfbbc.jpg

  70. 50.000 additional Nurses for the NHS
    Labour and a lot of the media seem to be trying to misrepresent this as well as claiming that the almost £1B budget for this is inadequate
    The most recent figures I can show a 43,000 shortage of nurses in the NHS. Now to fill these positions should actually need no funding as if you have a vacancy with normal accountancy practices there has to be funding in place and that would include HR recruitment costs funding
    So all this almost £1B budget needs to cover is the cost of an addition £7000 posts which are unfunded.. I suspect most of these will come from training new nurses so besides the direct costs of these nurses funding would also beed need to expand the number of training place but £1B should cover all that

    1. If the places are unfilled then money will be piling up in the budget box. Well, sort of. Public authorities transfer monies from one budget to another as it suits them. They are “moving the goalposts” all the time. The budget vs actual spend figures for last year mean nothing. This makes budgeting very inaccurate as they use a rollover process and not a zero-based process.
      Then there is the expenditure on agency nurses to cover the vacancies at perhaps twice the cost of permanent employees, often more, and sometimes much more (in which case they pretend it did not happen).

    2. Sir. Sir. I know the answer, Sir.
      We could make nurse training an apprenticeship during which they work on the wards and earn enough money to stop them ending up £50,000 in debt.
      Oooops ….. sorree; I am guilty of spouting common sense.

      1. Yo amme

        Apprenticeships, Apprenticeships

        You want the ‘apps’ to be able to open the bottle after you have taught them how to calculate it’s weight. and volume

        You demand that the BBC news.and current affairs progs tell the truth next

      3. You do have a habit of doing that. Try to connect with the real world, please. Or perhaps best not.

    1. My doggy day care has gone up to a painful £6 a day!

      They said I get a discount because Mongo is such a nice boy who doesn’t really do anything. Takes after his boss!

      1. I was paying £20 a day through a website that includes insurance. Then i dropped them when i got to know the sitter and paid her direct. Now she doesn’t want paying at all because she has fallen in love with Dolly and so has her elderly Westie.

  72. DM Story

    “Geography has become ‘soft option for not very bright, posh 6th formers’, complains Oxford professor”

    They used to call it ‘Land Economy’ in the hope of making it sound more respectable. Many rugby blues studied ‘Land Economy’ just as many PE teachers had Geography as their second subject for when they became too muscle bound to teach PE.

    Having said that, one of my nieces read Geography at Oxford and won blues in rowing and gymnastics.

    1. Land Economy, whilst it has a long line of sportsmen and children of the landed, is nothing like Geography.

    2. I find it amusing that on most quiz shows, once the ladies are faced with a choice, they rarely choose geography. However, if they are forced to answer a question on geography they invariably FU (get it wrong).

    3. Just remind me: what was the subject of May’s degree?
      I can’t imagine spending three years studying ox-bow lakes and world wide cattle production.

      1. Biogeography (vegetation and soils), historical geography, urban geography, political geography, geomorphology, geography of economies and economic geography, climate and meteorology….and so on….there is a lot of breadth in this subject, all interlinked, but not a lot of depth. I speak as one who suffered.

      2. My niece, Susie, was in the same college as Theresa May (St Hugh’s) but they did not know each other even though they both studied geography.

      3. The younger of my brother’s two sons described his sibling’s Geography degree as ‘colouring in’. A little harsh but with a ring of truth at GCE ‘O’ level, especially when making distinctions of crops across a vast land mass such as the USA – third form study that I retained with the previous year’s ‘Physical Geography’ so that I could take Geography as an additional exam 18 months later.

        1. Ah yes. Memorising the map of Great Britain by intoning “sheep, sheep, cattle, sheep, pigs, cattle ……”

          1. I used to have a jigsaw puzzle of England on which each county was a separate piece in the puzzle.

            We played the game of timing ourselves to see how quickly we could finish it and this taught me more about the geography of England than anything I learnt in the classroom.

            When we asked the History master at Blundell’s why he had studied History rather than Geography at Cambridge he replied that he preferred chaps to maps.

    1. Coo, I wish he were my Grandad – I’d have shot him in the testicles, just for the fun of watching him suffer.

      1. Morning NtN,
        If you are after a career in law would you consider the most superior position within the supreme court ,when sanity returns.

  75. QT tonight.

    Fiona Bruce presents the topical debate from Swindon. The panellists receiving questions from the audience are the Chairman of the Conservative Party Brandon Lewis, Shadow Transport Secretary Andy McDonald, former leader of the Green Party Caroline Lucas, editor-in-chief of The Economist Zanny Minton Beddoes and writer and author Lionel Shriver.

    2. Has Bloody Caroline Lucas got a season ticket?

      Is she on the BBC’s books? Is she friends with the boss?

      1. The other parties don’t want to be on there as they’ll get crucified, especially so close to Christmas. 🙂

    1. Nearly 5 years of free board and lodgings before they kick him out at half time.

      He’ll think he’s won the lottery.

        1. No competition Hugh, when we can come up with this:

          Two Paddys were working for the council works department. One would dig a hole and the other would follow behind him and fill the hole in.
          They worked up one side of the street, then down the other, then moved on to the next street, working furiously all day without rest, one man digging a hole, the other filling it in again.
          An onlooker was amazed at their hard work, but couldn’t understand what they were doing. So he asked the hole-digger, ‘I’m impressed by the effort you two are putting in to your work, but I don’t get it! Why do you dig a hole, only to have your partner follow behind and fill it up again?’
          The hole-digger wiped his brow and sighed, ‘Well, I suppose it probably looks odd because we’re normally a three-person team. But today the lad who plants the trees called in sick.’

    2. The reference at the end to Tree Houses. So what’s wrong with that ? A home from home for many of our population.

        1. That’s how they arrive, Anne. New post-Brexit trade deal with Australia.

          Unfortunately, they’ve not yet sorted out their branch office as yet.

      1. I have a recording of Cleo Laine and John Williams doing this. Which reminds me of the three deer in our garden this morning – so so beautiful.

    2. Amazing and weird. The acrobats and dancers get all the plaudits in these thpes og gigs (like Cirque de Soleil too) but it’s the stage manager, artists and technicians that make such a spectacle.
      They should all be brought on for curtain calls too.

    1. All the white man’s fault.

      If Evil Whitey hadn’t deserted them in their time of need they’d all be rich, rather than just the ones with the gold Rolls Royces.

      And if Evil Whitey hadn’t found Africa in the first place there would be none of this trouble, because they would all still be sitting around the camp fires at night singing songs of peace and co-existence, eating abundant fruit, they way they always did since the time of the vegan lions.

    2. Surely they don’t want any help from their old colonial masters. They would probably refuse saying they could cope on their own.

    3. Nothing to do with stealing fertile farms and giving them to political cronies, I’m sure.

  82. Who supports the legalization of marijuana ?

    According to the Wall Street Journal…… George Soros, who also runs a multi million dollar lobbying organization in London which wants to repeal A50.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303467004575574450703567656

    Which British political party is already alleged to be linked to George Soros via it’s leader… wants the legalization of marijuana, and to repeal A50… ?

    According to Conservative Woman… the Liberal Democrats !

    https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/legalisation-of-cannabis-is-fools-crusade/

    What a random innoocent coincidence !

    1. Eliot Higgins getting himself into trouble again! I bet he wished he’d stayed private!

  86. Simon Heffer on his latest book ‘Staring at God’ and more.

    He starts at with the years immediately before WW1:
    … the country was in a state of great unrest – industrial disputes, Ireland, the suffragettes and the constitutional crisis in the HoL…
    …Asquith’s wife wrote in her diary in October 1914: ‘This war has caught us at our worst…our young men are being blown to pieces in Flanders and we are left here staring at God’…
    …there was a sense of almost unprecedented hopelessness and a foreboding of apocalypse…

    “Boris Johnson doesn’t have the moral character to be PM.”
    “I don’t think I’m a conservative, more a Gladstonian liberal, as were Enoch and Mrs T.”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVM0ZFGYjTY

    3. What an extraordinary interview.
      Heffer is so articulate. I was surprised to see he is only 59!

      Best I’ve seen for a very long time.

      I was taken by the comment regarding Askwith and intelligent women, it struck a chord over mixing with people of other views/faiths, where one assumes that the people one meets are representative. Often not the case.

      The comments regarding the self-flaggellation through history made me smile.
      He was very damning of Johnson.

      I did exactly the same, with my wife on the 100th anniversary of her great great uncle’s death.

    4. One slip-up in the role of women in the First World War – he says that they worked in all sorts of previously male domains, including the railways, but not actually driving the trains, which he feels they ‘could have done perfectly well if they’d had the chance’.

      For that to have happened the war would have had to go on for several years longer than it did, in order to give them time to rise (as the men had to), from being a train cleaner, through fireman, passed fireman, and finally after many years of heavy work on the shovel, they could be drivers. I doubt many of them could have got through the firing stage. There was a lot more to driving a steam engine than pulling levers.

        2. Rik,
          I was going to add that but I thought it only called for one word, so we should call it a joint
          effort , if you disagree and wish to make a case of it phone my solicitor.

  90. SNP drop candidate over claims of anti-Semitism
    It is to late to take him of the ballet paper and presumably he will become an independent, Not a very satisfactory situation

    The SNP has dropped its candidate for a key target seat after allegations of anti-Semitism were made against him.

    Neale Hanvey is contesting the Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath constituency, where Labour has a majority of 0.6%.

    However, the SNP has now withdrawn all support for the former councillor’s candidacy, saying he had been suspended pending disciplinary action.

    Business convener Kirsten Oswald said: “Anti-Semitism has no place in Scotland, and no place in the SNP.”

    It is alleged Mr Hanvey shared a post on Facebook in 2016 which included an image of billionaire George Soros as a puppet master controlling world leaders.

    His name will still appear on the ballot paper on December 12, but the SNP has pulled support from his campaign and he would sit as an independent if elected.

    Ms Oswald added: “All political parties have a duty to show leadership, and to take tough action.

    “Neale Hanvey is no longer an SNP candidate, and his membership has been suspended pending disciplinary action. All support for his campaign has been withdrawn.”

    Mr Hanvey is the third candidate to have been dropped by Scottish parties inside two days.

    1. H’mmm.
      That corpse in the cell wasn’t Epstein.
      He’d been smuggled out and now has a new face.
      Ghislaine has been holed up with him, changing his dressings and making sure he takes his drugs.

      (If you know a better theory, go and find it.)

    1. Rik,
      And Cate finds this a surprise, I see it as run of the mill for any of the coalition politico’s.

  93. Any honest and objective

    appraisal of Islam’s historic jihad on the Christian world must be

    eye-opening, to say the very least. In the first century of its

    existence (between 632-732) Islam permanently conquered, Arabized, and

    Islamized nearly three-quarters of the post-Roman Christian world,

    thereby permanently severing it. Europe came to be known as “the West”

    because it was literally the remaining and westernmost appendage of

    Christendom not to be swallowed up by Islam.

    For

    roughly a millennium thereafter, Arabs, Berbers, Turks, and Tatars—all

    of whom called and saw themselves as Muslims—launched raid after raid,

    all justified and lauded as jihads, into virtually every corner of

    Europe. They reached as far as Iceland and provoked the U.S. into its first war as a nation.

    The devastation was indescribable; some regions in Europe, particularly

    in Spain and the Balkans, remain inhabitable due to the incessant

    raiding. Some 15 million Europeans were enslaved during this perennial jihad and, according to contemporary records, treated horrifically.

    In

    short, “if we … ask ourselves how and when the modern notion of Europe

    and the European identity was born,” writes historian Franco Cardini,

    “we realize the extent to which Islam was a factor (albeit a negative

    one) in its creation. Repeated Muslim aggression against Europe between

    the seventh to eighth centuries, then between the fourteenth and the

    eighteenth centuries … was a ‘violent midwife’ to Europe.”

    https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/the-motives-behind-the-false-narrative-on-islam-and-the-west/

    1. Rik,
      May I add for further enlightenment please contact Mr Gerard Batten
      truth saying ex UKIP leader who has been castigated for years for bringing to light the truth of islamic ideology, by
      treacherous fools submitting via the
      unwritten rulings of
      PC / Appeasementism,the main purveyors being lab/lib/con coalition
      party, current supporters / voters.

    2. “Repeated Muslim aggression against Europe between the seventh to eighth centuries, then between the fourteenth and the eighteenth centuries … was a ‘violent midwife’ to Europe.”

      So, guess what, it’s happening all over again.

      So, we are standing firm against it, aren’t we?

      Oh, maybe not…

  94. Night All

    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EKVDM8MW4AE292p.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7def51cdebdb675fabc2ebb6217ad4606e7d4e32eeeb559e7413416abcc442cc.jpg

    https://scontent-lax3-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/74443625_10220901743354518_707419798421635072_n.jpg?_nc_cat=111&_nc_ohc=-9_syqNvQFUAQnxelBWMutp7JkHeiimfSdbCb3OXE6WXOTTnfiRNfYJjQ&_nc_ht=scontent-lax3-2.xx&oh=900ef4bc4ba957fc20cabb91a531a19f&oe=5E48F46D

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/51025772024784c20e164240aa4b6d544ea390b87996bf10a50f5a282e5f4ba5.gif

    Finish with an old favourite

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3508f45368d6536815ab45d6972834c3a21607020015372c20f228062ccde794.gif

      2. But I thought identifying didn’t require having any of the physical characteristics – it’s just a state of mind surely.

    1. What a coincidence – I was browsing in a antiquarian bookshop today and found a copy of “Underwater Warriors” by Paul Kemp, which mentions that Italian plan in some detail! Interesting book, from what I’ve seen so far.

  100. https://twitter.com/True_Belle/status/1200161053453299712

    Thompson was whisked by taxi to Park Plaza Hotel in Westminster on July 28, 2017 after explaining he had been sleeping rough in the tower and using the communal power points to charge his phone and make toast.

    He was put up in four hotels for 247 nights, costing the council £59,949.12 and claimed £14,178.70 in housing costs and £12,637.57 for financial support including meals on room service.

    When he was allocated a council flat in Westbourne Park Road, west London he complained about the standard of decoration.

    Kensington and Chelsea council footed a further £1,525 bill for a total make-over and also had a security camera fitted at Thompson’s insistence.

    But investigators then examined CCTV footage from the tower block showed Thompson was nowhere to be seen months ahead of the fire.

  101. Zimbabwe is on the brink of man-made starvation, a UN official has warned.

    More than 60% of the country’s 14 million people are considered food-insecure, according to the findings.

    Hyperinflation, poverty, natural disasters and economic sanctions were among the identified causes.

    Women and children were “bearing the brunt of the crisis” with 90% of children aged six months to two years not consuming enough food.

    Hilal Elver, the UN’s special rapporteur on the right to food, reported her findings following an 11-day visit to the country.

    “I cannot stress enough the urgency of the situation in Zimbabwe,” she said, adding that the crisis continues to worsen.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-50586514#

      1. The bread basket of Africa is no more.

        South Africa will soon suffer badly .. white farmers murdered and land appropriation and general unrest.. The country is in meltdown.

        2. It is all down to the Empire/Raj/us ruling the world

          We should have known that our actions in the 17, 18, 19 and 20 centuries would come back to haunt us

          I think we should divorce ourselves from those who hate us and cancel all Aid

      1. Yep, we used to call it starvation but that’s an unwelcome term – too stark and too near the truth.

    4. Ah, well, put it down to depopulating the over-populated world.

      Let’s be rid of the population-polluters.

      Are you hearing me, little Miss Thunderbug?

    5. My cousin CG was a farmer in Rhodesia.

      His efficient farm was taken from him and given to one of Mugabe’s friends.

      All the black people working on the farm were left homeless, workless and if they had been sent to college or university so they could take over the running of the farm when my cousin retired they were shot. Within five years the farm had returned to wilderness producing nothing.

      Is Mr Lammy blind or just completely bigoted that he cannot see what the black tyrants are doing to Africa and the black Africans who live there and cannot escape?

      All for Nothing: by CG Tracey

      C.G. Tracey became a farmer at sixteen at the beginning of the Second World War. Entrepreneuer, businessman, plant-breeder, racehorse owner and breeder, sanctions-buster, chairman and director of many … Google Books
      Originally published: December 31, 2008

      1. The first example of NewThink created starvation and civilizational collapse ?

        Where Zimby leads, Britannia follows ?

      1. Poor chap. He’s had this hanging over him for thirty years.
        I doubt he’ll ever recover his peace of mind.

        1. I suspect he’s asked himself the question every day since it happened, “What could/should I have done differently”

      2. I have huge sympathy for the relatives of the fans who died, but there were so many factors in play that trying to blame one individual for the disaster I have always felt to have been wrong.

        1. They might just as well have blamed the designer of the ground and facilities for the disaster, but he was probably already dead.

          1. I know that. However, having seen pictures of fans crushed to death against these fences, the words ‘knee jerk reaction’ spring to mind.

          2. It took many years and many pitch invasions before the FA finally sanctioned the use of pitch-side fencing, so it was hardly a ‘knee jerk reaction’. It was just one element in a perfect storm of events, another being the idiocy of having entrances to the stands at the upper levels, where fans would flood down under the forced of gravity and people pressure. IMO, the one simple decision that the Police should have made was delaying kick-off, which would have given fans more time to enter the ground in a controlled manner. Still, as they say, hindsight is always 50-50.

          3. AA,
            “In a controlled manner” took a hike years ago along with
            decency, integrity, & common sense.

          4. Well, no. Not hindsight.
            Stairway 13 gave ample warning of what could happen if crowd control was not carried out properly, including physical locations and the control of movement. If people were funnelled into bottlenecks from which they could not escape, then death and injury results.

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_Ibrox_disaster

          5. Quite. At Hillsborough, it was the division of the terrace into four pens that killed the supporters. All of the dead were in the two central pens immediately in front of the single central entrance to the terrace. They could not move sideways into the two outer pens nor could they get onto the pitch as the emergency gates were locked.

            There had been a crush at the Wolves-Spurs semi-final eight years earlier but spectators managed to get onto the pitch, although there were some injuries (broken bones).

    4. It is thirty years ago. Remember those that died, hopefully learn from the past but for heavens sake, get on with life.

      What do they want – my pet Trudeau doing another one of his grovelling apologies? It will not change anything.

  103. Climate Change

    Even if you go along with this the UK’s contribution is negligable

    worldpopulationreview.com/countries/co2-emissions-by-country/

    1. Let me be the first to say I will voluntarily get rid of my gas boiler——— when everyone else has got rid of theirs…..

  106. A Man…………….

    https://twitter.com/LBCNews/status/1200085150564007939?s=19

    That’ll be the Far Right Nasties won’t it??

    Oh Wait

    “A man has admitted carrying out religiously aggravated criminal damage after five mosques were vandalised in Birmingham.

    Arman Rezazadeh, from Greenhill Road in Handsworth, pleaded guilty at Birmingham Crown Court to causing the damage on 21 March.

    The mosques he targeted were in Perry Barr, Aston and Erdington.

    The 34-year-old was granted unconditional bail ahead of a sentencing hearing on 28 November.”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-50252158
    Muzz on Muzz,tbh surprised at the harshness of the sentence especially with a guilty plea
    Edit
    All is revealed it was the WRONG type of of Moslem
    https://twitter.com/bbcmtd/status/1200117346788139011

    1. Rik,
      I believe the local imam said they were
      organising a whip round for him plus a bit of waccey baccy for there was mention of getting him stoned, so, not so bad are they ?

  107. Climate Change !!
    Just went out and the car windscreen iced up.
    First time this season.
    Lucky had de-icer from last winter. Doesn’t seem that long ago.
    I blame Greta.

    2. Or they have someone claiming to be transgender in order to get special treatment
      Also a rough estimate of the claimed UK transgender population is about a 131,000 and the total UK prison population is 0.13% of the UK population
      so statistically Transgenders are highly unlikely to have the claimed number in prison. I would suspect as well that transgenders are less likely to commit offences that would result in a prison sentence

  110. Following his death at the age of 80, lifelong fan Michael Deacon hails a man far wittier than the comedies he reviewed
    That’s a clever trick. Words from beyond the grave?

  111. Quick query,

    Russet apples , has anyone any idea why they are so scarce this year . They are my favourite apple .. They aren’t reaching the shops or markets, why I wonder .

    2. I’ve seen a few. It was either at Morrison’s or Aldis. I’ve always found them harder to digest.

      My favourite apple, the Sturmer, is definitely not available …. I haven’t seen one in donkeys years.

    3. We had a glut of Russets on our single small tree. Boughs literally bent to the ground under the weight. Large and thick skinned but lovely flesh. First season in 12 years that it has fruited properly and we’ve no idea why. Just a coming together of all the optimum conditions of sun, rain, temperature and lack of disease and fructivorous pests, perhaps. Still got some in the cold dark store room.

      1. How delicious , lucky you ..I do miss them

        We had a great year with our white fleshed peaches this year.. Last year was the first year the tree had fruited properly after 20 years .. and the blossom stayed intact enough for us to pollinate with the paint brush .

        This year was amazing , lots of fruit the size of small plums , sweet succulent green white fleshed peaches .. the trouble is they all ripened at once and one strong breeze made a lot fall and bruise quickly . Garden is south facing and can be very warm .

        1. Locally, this year at least, you couldn’t give away apples. The Tamar Valley was filled with them.

    4. My mother used to love an apple known as D’Arcy Spice.
      I couldn’t stand them.
      I like my apples very crisp and tart. My swing was fixed to an apple tree; the fruit was scrummy and, thinking back, I now realise why I had a gippy tummy about the time the Autumn term started.

      1. I was chatting to my long time school friend last night organising our Christmas lunch. Discussing our gardens he mentioned that the had just planted an Egremont Russet, a particular favourite of his, in his new garden – he and his wife have recently moved deeper into Suffolk and left behind a very nice small orchard with some old apples varieties including a splendid Newton Wonder. I have never liked russets but I have it on good authority that they make the best crumbles, I’ve never tested the idea so I can’t confirm or deny.

      2. I think my taste buds have altered as I have got older .

        I used to love James Grieves , large almost oval apples , juicy not much of a munch apple though , softer flesh I think.. I bite off a chunk of Braeburn or Jazz for the parrot , which he loves.

        1. As a child I thought pineapple jam was the absolute biz.
          A couple of years back I tried it again and found it sickly and bland.

          3. I remember as a child pineapple jam coming in large tins, around 2lbs or so in weight. Loved it then but can’t remember when I last tried it. Do you know if Wilkins make it, they seem to turn just about any type of fruit into jam?

    5. Our local orchard had very few russets this year, they blamed it on a cold, wet spring stopping the blossom.
      Other varieties bore fruit as normal. Maybe the same happened in the UK.

  112. Good-night, chaps and chapesses – watch out for tomorrow’s funny – it’s a goody, and topical.

  114. These protests seem to be gaining tractors,,,

    “Farmers feeling pain and frustration head to Dublin to protest.~cr From Reuters Padraic Halpin DUBLIN (Reuters) – Farmers shut down busy parts of central Dublin for a second successive day on Wednesday by parking dozens of tractors in the streets to protest against low beef prices and climate change initiatives they say are unfair.”

    Are we on the verge of a new Agricultural Revolution?

    Some fine BTL Comments here:

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/11/28/farmers-bring-central-dublin-to-a-halt-with-tractor-protest/

  117. Conservative Party Housing Policies
    Not much mention has been made of the Conservative party housing policies but they have some interesting policies
    One policy is of 95% mortgages with a 25 year fixed rate of course there are risks with such long term fixes but probably not at current interest rates
    Allow councils to use the money they raise from developers through the planning process to give low-paid local people a discount of up to a third on some of the new homes build.
    Reform leasehold, including by banning the sale of new leasehold homes I think this is only for houses as for flats you do need some kind of body responsible for the building and grounds
    Bring in a “better deal for renters”, including abolishing no fault evictions and requiring one “lifetime” deposit that moves with the tenant.
    Change planning rules so infrastructure such as schools and GP surgeries have to be built before housing.
    Protect and enhance the green belt.
    End rough sleeping by the end of the parliament: part paid for with proceeds of a 3% stamp duty surcharge on foreign buyers.
    Support the residents of highrises with the removal of unsafe cladding

Comments are closed.