Thursday 29 July: How Britain lost its independent expertise in nuclear power production

An unofficial place to discuss the Telegraph letters, established when the DT website turned off its comments facility (now reinstated, but not as good as ours),
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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2021/07/28/letters-britain-lost-independent-expertise-nuclear-power-production/

827 thoughts on “Thursday 29 July: How Britain lost its independent expertise in nuclear power production

    1. Morning, Minty – and all NoTTLers. And a special “Happy Birthday” to Lewis Duckworth who is 77 today.

      1. Good morning Elsie & happy Birthday to Lewis Duckworth & despite being 77 he still needs a note from his parents giving express permission for him to post on this X rated adult channel !

      2. Seconded.
        🎶
        “Happy Birthday to Lew,
        Happy birthday to Lew ……”
        🎶

    1. At some point they will have to cut them down from the lamposts… either because of complete social breakdown and food riots or because the people of this country will catch will catch up with their kleptocratic, totatilatarian ruling classes..

      – just thougth I’d lighten the mood. 😁

  1. Some Covid Vaccines Make the Virus More Dangerous. July 28, 2021.

    Dr. Robert Malone, M.D., M.S.,, a distinguished physician who discovered RNA transfection and invented mRNA vaccines, was on Steve Bannon’s War Room today with some alarming news–new data indicates that people who have taken the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are at greater risk of getting Covid than someone who is not vaccinated.

    I lack the technical knowledge to make a judgement here but the high proportion of patients in hospital who are twice-jabbed gives some considerable credibility to this claim!

    https://turcopolier.com/some-covid-vaccines-make-the-virus-more-dangerous/

    1. Morning Minty et al. And a Happy Birthday Lewis D.

      In my home in this City
      Where the news is so shitty
      I first set my eyes on Doc Robert Malone
      mNRA explained to Steve Bannow
      Through veins broad and narrow
      Dying, Covid and vaccines, alive, alive, oh?
      Alive, alive, oh
      Alive, alive, oh
      Dying, Covid and vaccines, alive, alive, oh?

    2. Dr Malone is a, if not the, expert on mRNA “vaccines” and therefore will be ignored and vilified by the ignorant PTB/MSM, much as Geert Vanden Bossche, Dr Yeadon and all the other independent specialists. The people directing this assault on the health of nations are not experts and those that they are employing are suffering from tunnel vision: he who pays the piper…

  2. Greeniacs…..It’s a religion,nothing to do with science

    “Climate-policy wonks, eco-lobbyists and green activists will no doubt

    dispute these estimates, coming as they do from GWPF, a think-tank that

    sits outside of the green blob. But the fact remains that no government

    since the CCA was passed has been able to explain to the public how much

    Net Zero is going to cost, and how this cost is to be met. Attempts to

    ask the government or public bodies to provide costings of the policy

    agenda are met with silence.”

    Rest of the Spiked article here

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/07/28/are-we-finally-getting-cold-feet-about-net-zero/
    Trillions will be wasted for a total fantasy

    1. “Trillions will be wasted on a total fantasy”
      That is the whole point. The climate change story is nothing more than one of the vehicles being used by the U.N. to move the global economy from the First World to the Third World. One of the elements of the strategy to achieve that is to cripple the First World economies.

      1. Socialists always want to level down, not up. Apart from themselves, of course.

    1. It has not become quite difficult to get clear numbers from the gov.com websites.

  3. Mng all, back from Mombasa last night. The usual to follow:

    SIR – In the 1960s, I worked for the industrial group of the UK Atomic Energy Authority. Its head, Sir Christopher Hinton, told staff that they would be subject to a pay freeze for five years. Many, myself included, left the authority, which thereafter was no longer at the forefront of developing atomic energy for industrial purposes.

    The budget for the development programme, which concentrated on nuclear reactors for power generation, was slashed by the government of the day with no regard for the long-term implications that are now evident in our dependence on foreign resources (Leading Article, July 27).

    Bert Wright
    London W13

    SIR – British nuclear energy generation appears to rest in the hands of France and China. Moreover, gas reserves are at 29 per cent capacity, compared to more than 50 per cent at this time in 2019. Putin’s Russia has its hand firmly on the stopcock for the supply of gas to Europe, and China exerts influence over the supply, and price, of gas from the Far East (Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Business, July 22).

    The Government’s drive for net-zero emissions threatens our energy security and independence. A large increase in generating capacity will be needed to meet aspirations for electric domestic heating and motoring. (Solar, wind and hydroelectric supplies are not up to the task.) Without investment, Britain will find itself in energy poverty, and beholden to Russia and China.

    There is a home-grown solution: small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs). A British consortium, led by Rolls-Royce, proposes to generate up to 440 megawatts from each SMR, on a carbon footprint a tenth the size of a reactor site such as Sizewell. SMRs can be placed virtually anywhere and be operational within five years, instead of perhaps 20 years for a traditional gigawatt reactor. Economies of scale would soon reduce the cost of SMRs.

    We are no longer constrained by EU procurement rules. All that remains is for this and future governments to act in our strategic interests.

    Wg Cdr Steve Schollar (retd)
    Woodbridge, Suffolk

    SIR – All but one of Britain’s existing nuclear plants will come offline before the end of the decade. To avoid reversing the progress made in recent years towards a low-carbon future, it is critical to invest in gigawatt nuclear in order to generate reliable, non-intermittent British power.

    Britain’s nuclear sector has been reinvigorated through Hinkley Point C and it is ready to build Sizewell C. Some 10,000 jobs at more than 200 companies involved in the Sizewell C consortium are at risk if construction does not go ahead.

    The Government must end over-reliance on energy imports by sticking to its gigawatt nuclear commitments and quickly find a funding mechanism that allows us to build Sizewell C.

    Cameron Gilmour
    Vice-president, Doosan Babcock
    Renfrew

    Cut off by a mask

    SIR – I am very deaf and recently attended the audiology department of my local hospital.

    The receptionist was wearing a mask and sitting behind a screen. Needless to say, it was hard to sort out an appointment. I have a badge saying “I’m a lip reader”, but it didn’t help.

    Evelyn Moss
    Cambridge

    SIR – Boris Johnson is “raging” about the lack of vaccine uptake among younger people (report, July 26).

    Instead of making threats, how about making it easier for them to be vaccinated? Our private medical practice receives calls every day from young patients asking if we have the vaccine, which we have been denied the chance to offer. So we have to turn them away.

    These people do not have NHS numbers and can’t find a way to get them, so do not get immunised.

    In October, we (like pharmacies and walk-in clinics) will offer the flu vaccine as usual. Why has Covid been power-grabbed by the NHS?

    Dr Andrew McIver
    London SW3

    SIR – While I respect the individual’s right to refuse the Covid vaccine, surely it should be regarded as a form of insurance against the disease.

    Those who refuse it, therefore, should be legally required to take out health insurance to cover the costs of their care if they fall ill. It is not the job of vaccinated taxpayers to fund it.

    Dr Anthony Hawks
    Clevedon, Somerset

    Saving lives at sea

    SIR – Elizabeth Prior (Letters, July 26) says she does not support the Royal National Lifeboat Institution for it to act as an arm of the UK Border Force.

    I have been a supporter of the RNLI since I was at school. Now 90, I have been a governor of the charity for 40 years. Its sole purpose is to save lives at sea, regardless of colour, creed or nationality, and whether friend or foe.

    During the Second World War, many enemy servicemen were saved by our brave lifeboat crews – which continue with this remit.

    James Howitt
    Chelmsford, Essex

    Olympics on the BBC

    SIR – The frustration of only being able to access a choice of two live Olympic events through the BBC raises further serious questions about the value for money received from the TV licence fee.

    Jim Allpass
    Marlow, Buckinghamshire

    SIR – So annoyin’ listenin’ to BBC commentators describin’ watchin’ competitors swimmin’, runnin’, cyclin’ and boxin’.

    Rick Brown
    Tadworth, Surrey

    SIR – Could the BBC explain why, as a licence-fee payer, if I want to rewatch a show which has already been broadcast, I have to pay a fee to do so?

    I would love to see the detective series Shetland again but it is only on Britbox, for which I have to pay a fee.

    Penny Cole
    Watlington, Oxfordshire

    Invisible police

    SIR – You give details (report, July 27) of the Prime Minister’s new Beating Crime Plan.

    Boris Johnson obviously lives in a different world from the majority in this country because we do not have a police force except for when there is a murder, a motorway accident or a fracas on Saturday night.

    Michael Knight
    Taunton, Somerset

    Antipodean onions

    SIR – Yesterday, I was horrified to note that the bag of onions I had bought from the Co-op had come all the way from New Zealand to flavour my savoury mince. And it’s not even midwinter.

    Please tell me why we have to bring onions halfway around the world.

    Eileen Wale
    Selston, Nottinghamshire

    Fake death of an MP

    SIR – When the MP John Stonehouse faked his own death in 1974 (Review, July 24), I was working for an astute actuary, Cliff Jaggers, at Royal Life.

    Stonehouse was insured for a large sum and Jaggers wanted to know how it came about. “It wasn’t sold,” I told him. “He went into a branch and bought it.”

    He said: “Life assurance is always sold, so he’s still alive.”

    Spencer Leigh
    Southport, Lancashire

    Washing up as an opportunity for birdwatching

    SIR – We dispensed with our inefficient dishwasher (Letters, July 28) some years ago. I find washing up by hand a pleasant experience.

    As I gaze out of the kitchen window I not only observe the birds feeding, but also get a chance to compile a list of jobs for my husband to complete in the garden.

    Janet Newis
    Sidcup, Kent

    SIR – My gas tariff is going up from 2.40p per kWh to 3.177p per kWh and my electricity from 13.65p per kWh to 18.165p per kWh – a 32 per cent increase. I have also just heard from Wessex Water that our monthly direct debit will be rising from £45 to £71 – a 57 per cent increase.

    No doubt all will continue rising in order to “save the planet”, until I’m sitting shivering in the dark with no internet, television or car, telling my wife and son not to flush.

    Meanwhile, the Earth’s population is increasing by about a billion people every 12 years. That’s a billion extra children eating their way through all the world’s food, cooked on fires burning wood from chopped-down forests and jungles in Africa, Asia and the Americas.

    Greta Thunberg might rally children against climate change, but the supreme irony is that they’re causing it. All the net-zero carbon virtue-signalling from faux-Greens such as Allegra Stratton (Comment, July 27) is useless compared to that. Actually it’s worse than useless, it’s political suicide.

    John Duffield
    Poole, Dorset

    SIR – Do households that pre-rinse dishes really use an additional 27,000 litres of water a year (report, July 27)? I use about 10 litres to rinse everything, then a rapid 27-minute dishwasher programme, and it all comes out sparkling.

    Richard Morris
    Lutterworth, Leicestershire

    SIR – The engineer who came to mend our dishwasher told me the main reason he was called out was “to clear blockages caused by people using their machines as waste disposal units”. He looks set for a busy time.

    Dr Dennis Claridge
    Guisborough, North Yorkshire

    SIR – Failing to pre-rinse dishes results in blocked spray bars – 
 grains of rice being the usual 
culprit. You then need to rewash items to remove the gritty bits, which is not very environmentally friendly at all.

    Dr Tony McAllister
    Bengeo, Hertfordshire

    AA’s wrong turns

    SIR – John T Smith (Letters, July 27) criticises the service offered by the AA.

    Like him, I have been a member for more than 50 years. Through a combination of misplaced loyalty and laziness, I let my subscription “auto-renew”. Discussing with my daughter the AA’s offer of membership for £9 a month, I commented that my annual charge of more than £350 seemed a bit steep. So, we checked my records and found that, in the past three years, I had paid over £1,000 but only benefited from three flat-battery call-outs (for an old car I no longer own).

    I telephoned the AA, suggesting it would be cheaper for me to use another company. To its credit, my subscription was halved on the spot. Moral of the story: never auto-renew.

    Peter Spencer
    Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk

    Kingsize misprint

    SIR – I loved Tuesday’s picture of a misprinted T-shirt that said “Save Brittany” instead of “Save Britney”.

    It reminded me of the Warwickshire and England slow bowler Ashley Giles, who was nicknamed the King of Spin. His county ordered 500 coffee mugs, which arrived saying “King of Spain”.

    Dave Alsop
    Churchdown, Gloucestershire

    1. Reading the letter from Spencer Leigh reminds me that I must get in touch once again with my old friend from my younger days in Liverpool.

    2. All that remains is for this and future governments to act in our strategic interests.

      Ahh! There’s the difficulty Steve! There is no sign of any UK Government acting in the country’s interests for over twenty years. The very opposite in fact!

    3. James Howitt.

      The RNLI provide creches in Bangladesh and burkini’s in Zanzibar. Ostensibly to stop young muslims drowning.

      There is already a global organisation that can do that. It is called International Rescue. Headed by David Milliband.

      If you concentrated on British waters you wouldn’t need to sack so many people and close stations.

      1. If the RNLI saved lives irrespective of colour, creed, etc., and then returned the invaders to France, there’d be no bother.

  4. Abramovich was not ‘directed’ to buy Chelsea FC by Putin, court hears. 28 July 2021.

    The lawyer also accused the author Catherine Belton in her book Putin’s People of repeating “lazy inaccuracies” about his position in Russian politics and soc

    Roman Abramovich’s lawyer said it was defamatory to describe the businessman as having “a corrupt relationship” with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and that he had acted “covertly at his direction” in key business deals such as the purchase of Chelsea football club.

    At the heart of Abramovich’s complaint is that the billionaire’s £150m purchase of Chelsea FC in 2003 was “directed” by the Russian president. Tomlinson said the words in Belton’s book meant that Putin had ordered Abramovich to purchase the club as “part of a scheme to corrupt the west by corrupting local elites” and to “build a bulkhead of Russian influence”.

    It’s worth pointing out just for starters that Abramovich has actually bought Chelsea and so far as I am aware the team does not begin every match by kneeling to Vladimir Putin nor is there any sign of the “local elites” succumbing to a diet of Caviar and Bliny’s.

    The accusation was of course intended simply to draw attention to the book which was almost certainly sponsored by the CIA. We can see this not only in the puerile nature of its accusations but the author’s response to this libel action. Any writer receiving a libel writ from someone of Abramovich ‘s wealth would have settled immediately. The costs of not doing so are too prohibitive for an individual to bear. We may thus safely deduce that she has the support of those who can match the complainant’s considerable resources and stand the loss! They do of course also have the means to suborn the trial which suggests that Abramovich’s victory is not certain and his loss may add to the accusation’s veracity.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/28/abramovich-was-not-directed-to-buy-chelsea-fc-by-putin-court-hears

  5. Good morning, all. Bright blue skies though with a strong wind.

    No news again, I see. That’s a relief.

  6. Call It What You Will
    Morris wanted to get his beautiful, blonde wife Sherry something nice for their first wedding anniversary. He decided to buy her a cell phone.

    Their anniversary came and he gave Sherry the phone. She loved it. He explained to her all the features on the phone.

    The next day Sherry, the blonde, goes shopping.

    Her phone rings and it’s her husband Morris, “Hi hon,” he says, “How do you like your new phone?”

    “I just love it! It’s so small and your voice is clear as a bell but there’s one thing I don’t understand. How did you know I was at the beauty parlour?”

    1. Rather like the blond mother who suspended her phone above her baby’s cot because she was told it was a mobile.

  7. SIR – My gas tariff is going up from 2.40p per kwh to 3.177p per kwh and my electricity from 13.65p per kwh to 18.165p per kwh – a 32 per cent increase. I have also just heard from Wessex Water that our monthly direct debit will be rising from £45 to £71 – a 57 per cent increase.

    No doubt all will continue rising in order to “save the planet”, until I’m sitting shivering in the dark with no internet, television or car, telling my wife and son not to flush.

    Meanwhile, the Earth’s population is increasing by about a billion people every 12 years. That’s a billion extra children eating their way through all the world’s food, cooked on fires burning wood from chopped-down forests and jungles in Africa, Asia and the Americas.

    Greta Thunberg might rally children against climate change, but the supreme irony is that they’re causing it. All the net-zero carbon virtue-signalling from faux-greens such as Allegra Stratton (Comment, July 27) is useless compared to that. Actually it’s worse than useless, it’s political suicide.

    John Duffield
    Poole, Dorset

    Without a shadow of a doubt, this is the most sensible letter sent to this newspaper this year (perhaps any year). It should be necessary [nay: compulsory] reading for everyone on this fast-disappearing planet; especially those twats in positions of power in every country.

      1. Morning, Paul. Too many out-of-control parents procreating too many out-of-control offspring. I’ve sent countless variations of Mr Duffield’s vitally important third paragraph to the DT for years but they have universally been ignored.

    1. Morning Grizz

      I have re read that letter several times , and of course am quite surprised that your acute brain hasn’t picked up on the fact that because the billions who are breeding themselves out of food , and burning their forests down , are hell bent on heading for our coastline, yes our beautiful green land of plenty .. They are pitching up here , thousands of them, so very soon in another ten years or less , the UK will have increased probably by another 15 million !

      1. Morning, Maggie.

        Billions are heading for our coastline are they? We’ll be squashed together quite tightly together if they do.

        1. I thought they’d all fit on the Isle of Wight?
          (best use for it, IMHO).

          1. I made my solitary visit to the spiv-infested, overrated shithole five years ago, I shall not return.

  8. “Treasury civil servants given pay rises of up to 30pc during pandemic. Wage boosts and bumper bonuses came despite Rishi Sunak claiming there was no more money in the pot.”

    Treasury civil servants were given pay increases of up to 30 per cent and £15,000 bonuses during the Covid crisis despite rows over police and nurses’ pay and Rishi Sunak’s insistence that there was no more money for more public sector workers. The department’s accounts show that six of the top nine officials who were in post over the past two years received pay rises last year, while five received a bonus. Clare Lombardelli, Mr Sunak’s chief economist, received an increase of at least £30,000, bringing her salary to between £150,000 and £155,000. The top two officials, Tom Scholar and Charles Roxburgh, both received bonuses of between £15,000 and £20,000 on top of their salaries, alongside Beth Russell, the Treasury’s head of tax and welfare.

    It’s all right for some……..

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/07/28/treasury-civil-servants-given-pay-rises-30pc-pandemic/

    1. 150K for getting the very basics of economics wrong.

      More tax always creates unemployment. I really fail to see how this woman can advise that taxes must increase.

      Ah, but of course. She isn’t thinking of the economy. She is thinking of the *government*.

  9. Goog Moaning.
    A chewy read from Melanie Phillips.

    Reducing reason to net zero

    Climate change policy is dead in the water, along with scientific integrity

    Melanie Phillips

    Jul 28

    “The British government continues to display an intelligent, informed and above all powerfully effective approach to arresting “climate change”.

    Its climate change spokeswoman, Allegra Stratton, has said people should do their bit to stop anthropogenic global warming (AGW) by freezing leftover bread, ordering shampoo in cardboard packaging and not rinsing plates before putting them in the dishwasher.

    Makes you proud to be British, doesn’t it.

    But what’s this? As the Mail on Sunday reported, the government’s flagship green policy of reducing carbon emissions to “net zero” by 2050 has been thrown into disarray. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, is objecting to the cost which is currently estimated at more than £1.4 trillion. The Mail writes:

    As part of the net zero plan –which would decarbonise the economy by 2050 – No 10 had been expected to publish in the spring details of the strategy for moving away from gas boilers ahead of Glasgow’s COP26 climate change conference in November. But this has been delayed until the autumn amid mounting alarm about the bill.

    The independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) calculated the cost of making buildings net zero at £400 billion, while the bill for vehicles would be £330 billion, plus £500 billion to clean up power generation and a further £46 billion for industry.After energy savings across the economy, this would leave a £400 billion bill for the Treasury. The OBR also warned that the Government would need to impose carbon taxes to make up for the loss of fuel duty and other taxes.

    Moreover, the government is now panicking over its proposal to ban gas boilers by 2035, so much so that it’s pushed this date back to 2040. This is also hardly surprising. As Fraser Myers wrote in the Telegraph:

    But the truth is, the sacrifices being demanded of us in the name of net zero are incompatible with democracy, and the PM knows it. The boiler ban was a key plank of the government’s net zero strategy. Gas boilers were to be replaced with heat pumps. These heat pumps are not what anyone could call a reasonable alternative to boilers. While a boiler can heat your house fairly quickly at the flick of a switch, a heat pump can take around 24 hours to heat your home to between 17 to 19 degrees celsius – i.e., not-quite room temperature.

    For the pleasure of living in your not-quite warm house, you will have to fork out around £10,000 for the unit and installation. Then, according to the Climate Change Committee (CCC), you can expect to spend an additional £100 per year on your energy bills.

    If you want to own a heat pump and have a house that’s more than lukewarm, you’ll need lots of extra insulation. This means yet more tens of thousands of pounds in renovation costs. The Energy Technologies Institute estimates that a ‘deep retrofit’ could cost as much as building a home from scratch. This is not money that any ordinary person has down the back of the sofa – or that the taxpayer can reasonably cover for millions of households.

    Getting used to this reduced lifestyle ‘will take an attitudinal shift’, says Chris Stark, CEO of the CCC. This is quite the understatement. It means abandoning what was once a completely normal expectation in a developed country: having a warm home in winter.

    In our net zero future, we can also forget having a stable and affordable supply of electricity. Boris says he wants to make the UK the “Saudi Arabia of wind power”. But we should be wary of green energy experiments. Places like California that have rushed to swap nuclear and fossil fuels with renewable energy are regularly faced with rolling blackouts. Since Germany embarked on its Energiewende (energy transition), its electricity prices are now among the highest in the world, though, ironically, this hasn’t done much to lower CO2 emissions.

    As Myers observed, the government’s net zero policy is effectively dead in the water. This is a trifle embarrassing, since Britain is hosting the COP summit in Glasgow which is expected to bring together more than 100 world leaders to commit themselves to reach global net zero and limit global warming to 1.5C.

    Ye gods — are they all quite, quite mad?

    It’s hard to to get one’s head round the fact that virtually the entire world has lost its marbles over this “climate change” agenda.

    It’s not just that net zero carbon emissions is patently undoable without returning to a pre-industrial way of life — and unless fascist measures are used to force the population to do so.

    It’s not just that the idea that humanity can change the course of a system as complex, chaotic and non-linear as climate is in the same league as Jonathan Swift’s satirical fantasy of extracting sunbeams from cucumbers.

    Most astounding of all, the foundational premise of catastrophic warming caused by disastrous levels of carbon dioxide produced by human activity is just that: a mere premise, a theory, an idea, a hypothesis — but one for which the evidence is assembled to fit it, the precise reverse of the scientific method of examining the evidence to arrive at a conclusion.

    As I wrote here for my premium subscribers, AGW is a perfectly circular theory which repudiates the key aspect of scientific inquiry — that it is always open to conflicting argument and thus can never be “settled,” as zealots insist is the case with AGW. Predicted by dodgy computer modelling, the premise of catastrophic “climate change” is fed into further modelling of events such as flooding, hurricanes, rising seas, starving polar bears and so on.

    And so — amazing to relate — out comes yet another prediction of yet another dire outcome of catastrophic “climate change”. Yet away from the modelling, scientifically observable reality over time simply doesn’t support the claim that the rate of global warming is beyond the normal fluctuations of the climate over the centuries — nor that these catastrophic outcomes are happening, nor that if some of these developments are taking place at any level that this is mostly or entirely the result of human activity.

    Actual observable evidence that the predicted climate apocalypse just doesn’t stack up is being produced all the time — and yet it’s airbrushed out of political and mainstream media discourse.

    For example, for decades we’ve been told that AGW is destroying the Great Barrier Reef. But on Watts Up With That Peter Ridd now writes:

    The annual data on coral cover for the Great Barrier Reef, produced by the Australian Institute of Marine Science, was released on Monday showing the amount of coral on the reef is at record high levels. Record high, despite all the doom stories by our reef science and management institutions.

    Like all other data on the reef, this shows it is in robust health. For example, coral growth rates have, if anything, increased over the past 100 years, and measurements of farm pesticides reaching the reef show levels so low that they cannot be detected with the most ultra-sensitive equipment.

    This data is good news. It could hardly be better. But somehow, our science organisations have convinced the world that the reef is on its last legs. How has this happened?

    How indeed. Next, a new study has found that East and West Antarctica have profoundly cooled by -2.8°C and -1.68°C since 1979.

    Next, we learn that everything climate catastrophists have said about Atlantic hurricanes and AGW is wrong. On phys.org, Bob Yirka writes:

    Researchers affiliated with several institutions in the United States has determined that the increase in the number of hurricanes forming in the Atlantic over the past several years is not related to global warming. They suggest instead, in their paper published in the journal Nature Communications, that it is simply reflective of natural variable weather patterns.

    Fancy!

    And so on and on.

    Back in 2005, the eminent MIT meteorologist Professor Richard Lindzen, who is scathing about AGW theory and the corruption of science in its service, wrote:

    The primary implication would be that for over 25 years, we have based not only our worst case scenarios but even our best case scenarios on model exaggeration…

    The public discourse on global warming has little in common with the standards of scientific discourse. Rather, it is part of political discourse where comments are made to secure the political base and frighten the opposition rather than to illuminate issues. In political discourse, information is to be “spun” to reinforce pre-existing beliefs, and to discourage opposition. The chief example of the latter is the perpetual claim of universal scientific agreement. This claim was part of the media treatment of global cooling (in the 1970’s) and has been part of the treatment of global warming since 1988 (well before most climate change institutes were created). The consensus preceded the research.

    That media discourse on climate change is political rather than scientific should, in fact, come as no surprise. However, even scientific literature and institutions have become politicised. Some scientists issue meaningless remarks in what I believe to be the full expectation that the media and the environmental movement will provide the “spin”. Since the societal response to alarm has, so far, been to increase scientific funding, there has been little reason for scientists to complain.

    All around us, the cultural institutions of the west are repudiating reason and evidence in the service of numerous ideologies which permit no challenge whatever to their driving idea and its control over peoples’ lives. Our supposed age of reason is based on science. To understand how reason is currently being destroyed, look no further than the terrible corruption of science by the politicised ideology of anthropogenic global warming.”

    1. Good moaning-

      A good article, but we can tell you that you can’t get an heat pump and ancillary equipment supplied and installed for £10,000.

      …and anyone who thinks that it will only cost £100- extra a year to run must be wearing a very thick coat. More like £500- to £800- extra.

      1. we didn’t get solar panels put on simply because the cost is prohibitive against the return. If they were tax exempt and tax deductible, perhaps, but they’re not, so.. when it would take ten years for a return, why bother?

        1. …and here in rural Suffolk, Wibbles, there are plans to take over 500 acres of good arable farming land and cover it with photo-voltaic panels, to provide electricity via 40′ containers, containing Lithium Ion batteries, to the local sub-station. They will be there for 40+ years, destroying the viability of food-producing land while we continue to import nearly 40% of our food.

          The world has gone mad and, surprisingly, the majority of the population seem to want to along with it.

    2. The crazies hold the levers of power on AGP.

      There’s a story that has been doing the rounds that one multi-billionaire has proposed distributing millions of tons of dust into the atmosphere to increase the Earth’s albedo and reflect more of the Sun’s energy back into space and hence cool the Earth. Not sure how many flights of carbon dioxide spewing aircraft would be needed to achieve that goal but it’s an idea.🤦‍♀️
      Of course, the Earth has its own supply of dust spewers, they are called volcanoes and have been doing that job for millions of years. Imagine what chaos would be caused by the loss of two or three World harvests. Harvest loss has happened in very recent geological time due to volcanic action and some fanatic wants to seed the atmosphere with dust? What could possibly go wrong?
      Reduce the World’s population, now there’s a thought.

      1. That happened naturally several hundred years ago. The harvest in Europe failed seven years in a row. The “Dark Ages”.

    3. With particular attention to the last paragraph………….
      Very similar to my own assessment of the reply from my MP which I received in the post yesterday and posted here on Nottlers.
      He failed to make the indicated correlation between the well know phrase or saying ‘climate change’, human carbon foot print, illegal immigration to colder northern climates and the continuous building of housing to provide shelter for the arrivals instead of encouraging them to become self sufficient resourceful and stay in the huge countries where they already are and put their own houses in order.

    4. “…OBR also warned that the Government would need to impose carbon taxes to make up for the loss of fuel duty and other taxes….”

      Has it never occurred to them to simply ‘do without’ public money and, oh, I don’t know, just thinking …’F the flip off?’ After all, Chrakrabalti should be paying for her own 7 courses and 5 bottles of wine lunches by now.

  10. I am about to set off for the market. I reflected that if Russia, China and India continue to pollute the planet – what is the point of the (very small) UK bankrupting itself and its people to make a virtuous point?

    1. Morning Bill. None whatsoever! Though it does offer the opportunity to stiff the population for new heat pumps!

    2. Morning Bill. None whatsoever! Though it does offer the opportunity to stiff the population for new heat pumps!

    3. GM Bill, good shopping & the UK is a lost cause, owned & run by the Globalist Elites ( ie. Wealthy Communists ) and undergoing re-population by the Soldiers of Allah !

    4. You need to ask a politician that question but do not expect a rational answer. You know that though, don’t you?

    5. There is none. Why are you even asking the question? We all know the purpose of green is social control, not environmentalism.

  11. Interesting article about the Competition & Markets Authority on R4 ‘Today’ just now.

    It was about a thyroid medication where the pharmaceutical cartel, mostly owned by global private equity firms deregulated the drug so they could put up the price to the NHS from £20 for a course to £240. This also occurred with a cortisone drug.

    I have also said many times about my own antidepressant, Trimipramine – the only one that does not interfere with sleep patterns and does not suppress dreaming – where the price to the NHS for 28 tablets was put up from £8 to £200. In Germany, you can get 100 tablets on prescription from a High Street chemist for around 17 euros. GPs were then ordered to stop prescribing it, and ordered by the Department of Health to lie to their patients. My own village doctor took early retirement rahter than carry on with this ethical conflict.

    When asked why the fine for malpractice was levied on the company (who would simply pass on this cost to their customers) and not the individual managers who were responsible for this abuse of power, we were told that it was not the law to allow the culprits to be accountable for their criminality.

    Is this really where the Law in this country has got to?

    1. Is this really where the Law in this country has got to?

      Morning Jeremy. I’m afraid so. The whole system is falling to pieces around us!

      1. 335998+ up ticks,
        Morning AS,
        I do believe “has fell” is more apt hence reset.

        Current political mindset, first create a problem with any issue that is working as it should, THEN introduce the reset solution.

    2. Is this really where the Law in this country has got to?

      Morning Jeremy. I’m afraid so. The whole system is falling to pieces around us!

    1. I dread to think what they will come up with at the COP 26 conference

      Does it stand for Communism Or Perish?

  12. SIR – We dispensed with our inefficient dishwasher (Letters, July 28) some years ago. I find washing up by hand a pleasant experience.

    As I gaze out of the kitchen window I not only observe the birds feeding, but also get a chance to compile a list of jobs for my husband to complete in the garden.

    Janet Newis
    Sidcup, Kent

    You and me both, Janet. We we moved into our current house in 2013 there was a dishwasher in the kitchen. It is still there and has never been used. After most meals there is a minimum of washing up and it is done — by the old-fashioned method in the sink, dried using a tea-towel — immediately after eating; it takes 10 minutes. After a party it takes longer but, as Mrs Newis finds also, it is therapeutic.

    Who the hell wants to wait until a dishwasher is full — of sometimes days’ old crockery — before it is washed? I certainly don’t.

    1. Morning Grizzy, as there is normally only the 2 of us our dishwasher is rarely used. It get called into action on occasions when it can be filled in one go, i.e family celebrations.

      1. My sister’s dishwasher, for their family goes on about twice a day. It’s absurd. When they visit our thrice a week turns into 3 times a day.

      2. Hmm, with just 2 of us in the house, the dish-washer generally goes on over-night every night. There is always enough to fill it.

    2. We have plenty of crockery- it goes in the dishwasher which goes on twice a week.

        1. We already had two lots when we combined households and the first dishwasher came with the house.

    3. I have a small Miele which has a light cycle of 23 minutes, very efficient with Miele powder, glasses beautiful, all pans etc sparkling.
      Goes on at night usually…I go down in the morning to Order.
      I love it, saves terrible backache…sinks are always too low for me.
      *
      Good morning

    4. Dear life NO. A dishwasher is a machine designed to give you time. Life is too short to waste washing cutlery. Same as I don’t use a mangle for my clothes. No. Machines do work so I don’t have to.

      Use your dishwasher, take your life back.

      1. Ten minutes of quiet contemplation with my hands in suds is part of life.

        What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and … wash up?

        Don’t hurry, don’t worry. You’re only here for a short visit, so be sure to stop and smell the Sqezy.

  13. 335998+ up ticks,
    Thursday 29 July: How Britain lost its independent expertise in nuclear power production.

    Just one of many lost issues,makes one wonder just how long the reset
    agenda has been in place covertly, may one ask, one nuclear power station would replace how many spinning ( occasionally) money makers, their siting & construction alone is an abuse to nature and to the intelligence of the common sense peoples.

    One door closes ( lost expertise) another opens we as a nation can truly thank our governance party’s lab/lib/con for our standing surely as a leading nation in paedophilia.

    Sample,
    https://twitter.com/NKrankie/status/1420623743261544448

    Next week the alledged far right racist Anne Marie Waters is taking an in depth look at the child’s plight it could offend many but that is reality and the hand we have been dealt via the polling booth, not ONCE or TWICE but again & again.

    You consume enough political treacherous sh!te via the lab/lib/con mass uncontrolled immigration / paedophile umbrella coalition, it will be taken eventually as the norm, tis happening.

    1. Not a flicker in the press, either. This is simply rape, the state knows it and is endorsing it.

      One day we will look back at the horror the Left forced on this country as abomination and prevent them ever doing so again.

      1. 335998+ up ticks,
        W,
        Left / right politics took a hike along with decency,integrity and in many cases self respect long ago,leaving the decent peoples with the political choice in the polling booth of either RIGHT or odiously, treacherously wrong.

  14. Good morning all.
    And it is a bright morning after a night of rain with a cool 8½°C in the yard as I got the milk in.

    1. Don’t! Wasn’t it lovely to be able to pull the covers over rather than sleep outside them, panting for air in the humid, infernal heat?

  15. New Zealand rated best place to survive global societal collapse. 29 July 2021.

    New Zealand, Iceland, the UK, Tasmania and Ireland are the places best suited to survive a global collapse of society, according to a study.

    The researchers said human civilisation was “in a perilous state” due to the highly interconnected and energy-intensive society that had developed and the environmental damage this had caused.

    A collapse could arise from shocks, such as a severe financial crisis, the impacts of the climate crisis, destruction of nature, an even worse pandemic than Covid-19 or a combination of these, the scientists said.

    This is closely akin to the idea of buying a bunker hoping to escape the horrors of the coming Nuclear Holocaust. It’s not true I’m afraid; you would emerge into a world of Predators eager to seize whatever resources you possess. It’s the old Lifeboat Paradox. You must not only save the passengers but prevent yourselves being swamped by those less fortunate!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/28/new-zealand-rated-best-place-to-survive-global-societal-collapse

    1. Dear life. It’s always the green communists.

      Easy solution to energy – more of it, much, much more of it. It is, after all a measure of success. How much energy does that civilisation use? Not a lot – flint and fire, with lots of manual labour, hunter gatherer.

      Ooodles? Then it’s an advanced, high tech society.

      The Left should be forced to live in their ideal hunter gatherer world while the rest of us leave them behind.

      1. “The Left should be forced to live in their ideal hunter gatherer world while the rest of us leave them behind.”
        I can’t see them eating little fluffy animals.

      2. Small wonder, Wibbles they’re compared to Water Melons – green on the outside but virulent red inside.

    2. …and, Minty, they haven’t taken account of civil unrest – civil war, even?

  16. Article in Aftenposten today. The Kiwi weightlifter Laurel Hubbard, seems likely to win gold today, as a woman, although born a man. Some interesting stats: Around 10 000 men have recorded better times in the 100 metres than the current female Olympic champion. The best women runners can be out-competed by the best teenage boys.
    Not to diminish Laurel’s hard work and personal efforts, but it’s also not fair on he other real women who will be out-competed by second- or third-rate ex-men. It’s absolutely not fair on them, and will likely destroy a good part of women’s sports.
    What’s needed is a third category, Trans, to compete against trans folk.
    Incidentally, the precision rifle team down the road, although segregated, the girls usually beat the boys. But then, strength isn’t an ingredient.

      1. Good one, Elfin!
        Good morning, too, from a soggy back-country Norway, where roof-building is necessary but not recommended due to freakin’ heavy rain!

      2. They should have four divisions : i) Born Male; ii) Born Female; iii) Born Male Transed into Female; iv) Born Female Transed into Male. There should then be a contest between the winners of each division to establish the undisputed Champion.

        1. Just forbid them competing and stop this nonsense. These people are mentally ill and vanishing into a fantasy where they play out a fictional role.

    1. Are they certain they have the day correct? I thought she was in the top weight division, which isn’t for a few days.

      I will laugh if the Chinese beat her or even better if by some fortuitous quirk of nature the excitement of competing at the Olympics raises her male hormones to a level that gets her disqualified.

    2. Good morning, Oberstlieutnant

      Please would you furnish us with the statss of how many former women who have transed into men who are now competing in the men’s divisions in sport?
      I have never heard this precise question discussed in the MSM.

      1. Sorry, no can do. There may be a few, I guess, in sports where strength is not the main winner (target shooting, for example, or horseriding), but I can’t find any data.

    3. The women’s 100 metres world record is still held by the long-dead drugs cheat, Florence Griffith Joyner. She was a slightly-bulit also-ran who, overnight, developed a male physique and started running faster than any woman had before. Her team mates railed against her but, surprisingly, her “records” stand. At the same time, Ben Johnson was sent to hell for precisely the same crimes and his records were expunged. Why the same did not happen to Griffith Joyner is only known to those running athletics.

      1. because she’s a septic. The ongoing issue is over SA’s Caster Semanya who everyone knows is male and not sure if he’s competing

    4. It’s outrageous they should not be allowed to encroach and have had the guts to form their own trans world sideline Olympics.

    5. Firstly, let’s be clear. A man is competing in a women’s event.

      The purpose of male and female competitions is to ensure that the playing field is level. It’s why we forbid drug use.

      Yet here’s a man, obviously on significant quantities of drugs, with a huge unfair advantage against his competitors. Yet… because he is ‘trans’, we’re all supposed to praise his stunning an brave heroism in being a cheat.

      1. Surely that has to be a spoof – although I seem to remember one UK commentary about the sailing wasn’t far off?

        1. mng SB. No it’s real. Seb Coe and IOC tried to block it at the time, as usual it got uploaded away from official sites as it wasn’t part of official IOC approved coverage

    1. Did I dream about an article I thought I had read that the Chinese had been meeting a group of Taliban Mullahs to bargain with them re access to the Silk road?

        1. China, which shares a 47-mile border with Afghanistan, is seeking to boost ties with the group to avoid any spillover of violence into its tightly controlled eastern Xinjiang province. Taliban officials have promised to cut ties with the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a group China has accused of carrying out attacks in Xinjiang.

          Other nations have so far been less forthcoming about engaging with the Taliban publicly. The group is accused of gross human rights violations by the United Nations, including the killing of hundreds of Afghan civilians in Kandahar province in recent weeks.

          However, many states are coming to the realisation that they will have to work with the Taliban through more formal channels in the future after previously facing off against the group’s soldiers on the battlefield.

          Earlier in July, Ben Wallace, the Defence Secretary, told the Telegraph the United Kingdom would be prepared to work with the group if they came to power in Afghanistan.”

          Hang on a second, what percentage of economic migrants to these shores , have escaped from the clutches of the Taliban , and does the Taliban EXIST in the UK.. because I think it does .. Batley being a prime example of extremist bullying .

          1. The group is accused of gross human rights violations by the United Nations” – the only difference between them & China is that China runs the UN, the Taliban does not.

          2. The group is accused of gross human rights violations by the United Nations” – the only difference between them & China is that China runs the UN, the Taliban does not.

          3. They are thinking Belle, that they have met their soul mates in atrocities. Personally, I don’t find it shocking at all but totally in keeping with Chinas sense of principles or lack thereof.

          4. Money. What else?

            The difference between the Chinese and the West is that when the Muslims get uppity, the Chinese won’t pander to them and be nice. They’ll fight. The Islamic world is simply not prepared for the sheer power of the Chinese military. There won’t be any ‘oh, poor Muslims, aren’t you nice’ on Chinese state TV. They lock them in prison camps and ignore them. They shoot them, torture them and punish them. No puff pieces about how great they are, how it’s a lone wolf. This is where the West has gone wrong.

          5. The west has pandered to every single move made by this sect. And this sect see an act of kindness as the leading edge of a wedge to drive home, in splitting the moral compass of the countries they have moved into. They create trouble every where they go on the planet.

  17. Wing Commander (Retired) Schollar overlooks one critical factor in his assertion:

    “There is a home-grown solution: small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs). A British consortium, led by Rolls-Royce, proposes to generate up to 440 megawatts from each SMR, on a carbon footprint a tenth the size of a reactor site such as Sizewell. SMRs can be placed virtually anywhere and be operational within five years, instead of perhaps 20 years for a traditional gigawatt reactor. Economies of scale would soon reduce the cost of SMRs.”

    Nuclear reactors require a reliable and high capacity cooling mechanism. The only cooling system viable for nuclear reactors is water cooling. This limits the locations for deployment, even for these small devices, to the coast.

    1. But at least they won’t be totally surrounded by centre of population.
      Anyhow, there were coal stations all round the UK, mostly built in the coal fields – not the coast, and they require significant cooling, too. Cooling towers were used to good effect.

    2. The implications of numerous nuclear reactors strikes me as frightening given the potential for terrorist acts. What happened to Thorium reactors, has that gone down the chute?

      1. My son was working in the USA on a new Nuclear Power plant. The plan required the building to be able to survive a Boeing 747 crashing into it and at the entrance a machine gun nest was provided to deter unwelcome intruders.

        1. Personally I’m for fracking and nuclear power stations. I do not sympathize with the Green garbage.

  18. Why Joe Biden is in no rush to let Britons back in to the US. 29 July 2021.

    The UK’s announcement on Wednesday that it was opening its doors again to Americans was naturally welcomed on this side of the pond. If there had been hopes that Washington would reciprocate in kind, however, they were sorely dashed.

    A combination of the rise in cases of the delta variant in the UK, the complexities of the US political system and uncertainty over the status of AstraZeneca’s vaccine has made the Biden administration reluctant to make any such sudden move.

    These make good excuses but the truth is Biden hates the UK which plays as much into his decision making as anything else! Brits, the Political Elites in particular, bask in the idea that the United States are uncritical admirers of the UK. This is very far from the truth!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2021/07/29/joe-biden-no-rush-let-britons-back-us/

    1. If the MSM had been behind Britain and keen to promote Britain’s best interests they would not have supported Biden in the US presidential elections and they would have supported Brexit.
      In my view many of the politicians in Britain are also guilty of treason.

    2. All democrat POTUS’ have hated the UK – after all, the UK stopped their flow of slaves back in the day.
      Republical POTUS’ have, at best, been indifferent.

    3. The truth is that Biden is so addled I doubt that he remembers what the UK is, let alone hate us. There is a recent video of him at the Lincoln Memorial, mouth open, staring into space totally vacant, without expression, clearly no one is home, he also called on his mother in a speech a couple of days ago asking where she was!

    4. Biden, an illegitimate POTUS puppet acting on the directions of Obama and the CCP, would ban Britains from entering the States whilst allowing drug cartels and trafficked children from ‘God knows where’ in via the deliberately porous southern border.

      And that fat fool Johnson described Biden as a ‘breath of fresh air’ whilst denigrating Trump.

    5. Biden, an illegitimate POTUS puppet acting on the directions of Obama and the CCP, would ban Britains from entering the States whilst allowing drug cartels and trafficked children from ‘God knows where’ in via the deliberately porous southern border.

      And that fat fool Johnson described Biden as a ‘breath of fresh air’ whilst denigrating Trump.

    1. Have a very happy birthday Mr. LD! Keep the method in the madness! 🎉🍾🎂

    2. Thank yous so much, fellow NOTTLers … you all provide me such entertainment and information throughout the year. You also tell me “I am not alone” ….. and that’s important living in a snowflake (or BBC/MSM watching only) dominated environment.

      1. Entertainment? That must stop forthwith!

        Many happy returns. I hope it is as fine where you are as here in North Narfurk.

      2. Happy Birthday, Lewis!
        One of many more, I hope, and that you have a better day than you could even wish for yourself!

  19. 335998+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,

    Dt,
    “Developers to be banned from building on land in danger of flooding”

    Reason in all probability being they had run out of it.

    Plus: Read George Eustice, the Environment Secretary, on plans to boost 1,000 flood defence schemes this year

    He is ( maybe) discussing a plan ( NFAN)

    1. We could simply build more reservoirs. We’ve needed to for about two decades, but it’s much, much MUCH more convenient for the Left and big state to blame climate change.

      Ignoring that the state creates this situation in the first place by massive uncontrolled gimmigration, the opportunity for wildlife habitat, water conservation and finally, finally forcing the useless water regulator, rivers authority and all the rest of the layabout pro EU fanatics to do their damned job.

      1. 335998+ up ticks,
        W,
        Put forward that construction much needed plan at the same time as sticking a 100 year D notice on the johnsons current squeeze, AKA the pillow whisperer for a
        guaranteed win double.

    1. A pile of bollocks dreamt up by a bunch of wazzocks from south of The Watford Gap.

      1. Have you noticed that it is now universal to pronounce the definite article (the) as “thuh” (the way it is correctly pronounced before a word commencing with a consonant) before words beginning with a vowel, as in “thuh orange”, “thuh ink” and “thuh onion”.

        Everyone was always taught (when we had proper education) that it is pronounced “thee” before a word commencing with a vowel, as in “thee orange”, “thee ink” and “thee onion”.

        Thuh Yanks have trashed this concept and it has spread to thuh vacuous in other English-speaking countries, including the UK.

        1. The insidious baseball headgear (it doesn’t deserve to be called a cap) is another pet hate of mine, especially when worn back to front.

          1. Wearing one halves the wearer’s IQ.
            Back to front, it halves again.

            Worn indoors it halves again.

            Indoors and back to front it goes down to an IQ that’s so low it’s not even measurable.

        2. It may be a ‘sin’ committed by many people, but it is certainly not universal.

        3. At least, George, you do get the ‘th’ sound which is totally missing oop North with t’orange, t’ink, t’onion, t’internet etc.

          As a mimic, which kept me out of trouble at school on the Norfolk/Suffolk border and then in the Royal Air Force from age 15½, I have managed with most dialects and accents from Cornwall up to Durham and over both borders, Wales and Scotland and became quite proficient with the ‘Doric’ – NE Scotland from Aberdeen almost to Inverness.

      2. I remember listening to a Radio prog years ago about how accents came to change in London. in the 1700s as people became more affluent they moved out of the city it’s self to avoid the grime crime and discomfort of the central areas. As the moved into let’s say for instance Hampstead they wanted to change their identity so not to be recognised as being from inner London. They quite deliberately changed the way they spoke, it soon became the latest and recognised fashion. Leading of course to the ‘upper-class’ accents we still hear today. It being the only English accent that is not accidently acquired during school life and from friends, associates and relations. But even today is totally manufactured to suit circumstance. There’s nowt sa queer as folk eh oop toop thoop.

    2. I’m not concerned in the least. Why would northerners wish to adopt a speech impediment, because that is precisely what “RP” is?

      [I’ve displayed countless irrefutable examples of why in the past.]

    3. 335998+ up ticks,
      Morning SB,
      I can quite believe it being replaced via reset regarding replacement by URDU patter.

    4. There is a great difference between regional accents of which I approve heartily and lazy and common accents. We hear far too many of the latter and not enough of the former.

      1. So-called “Estuary” English where vowels are swallowed [communi’y]. Also words ending in a double L (wall, fall, etc) where the proponents idly fail to touch the front teeth with the tongue when pronouncing the L (an utter necessity) and the ensuing noise made is anything but an L (sounds more like a strangled W [“waww” instead of wall].

        1. So-called “Estuary” English where vowels consonants are swallowed [communi’y].

          One of the worst offenders of the dropped ‘ll’ is Danny Dyer.

    5. I rather like our regional accents. I use to love seeing one of my Good ladies’ uncle George from Sunderland, wye ay war ya gannin ya owld booger.
      Brilliant…………..

      1. Arrm gannin yam, lad. An expression my mum actually learnt in her childhood in Wharfedale, a wee bit further south.

        1. I’m going home.
          It would be such a shame to lose all those wonderful accents. My paternal Grand father was from Scarborough I was very young when he died but I remember him saying Be’ave or I’ll make thee bottom like a pepper pot. He never did.

  20. Not sure what this has to do with entry to the US, but anyhow:
    It comes as Australia’s biggest city has posted the highest number of Covid cases in a single day since the pandemic began. Despite lockdown being extended by a month in Sydney the city recorded 239 locally acquired cases in the past 24 hours.

    https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/covid-latest-updates-us-travel-uk-restrictions-green-list-vaccine-news-b948180.html
    So, Oz having been locked down tighter than a Yorkshireman’s purse, hasn’t stopped the virus.
    What next, shooting people in the street?

    1. Don’t give them ideas.

      Simply put – lock a bunch of people up and their immune systems have nothing to do, so stop wasting resources. As soon as those immune systems are needed, they go completely potty.

      Lock up is the absolute worst option possible, but hey, that’s authoritarian Lefties do.

  21. I suspect that there is a fifth column of fanatical remainers in government who are so determined to prove that Brexit was a mistake that they will do everything to destroy the British economy for ever.

    They have worked out that the best and most efficacious way of doing so is by pretending to be be ‘environmentalists’ and seeing to it that the costs of their policies will wipe out Britain’s financial good health completely. They will then blame the country’s bankruptcy entirely on Brexit. ,

    1. Well… yes? Wasn’t this obvious? All the benefits of leaving behind the hated EU – scrapping the ‘human rights’ act, binning the green nonsense (and actually imposing our own, common sense one), ending massive, uncontrolled immigration, cutting taxes and setting business free from the chains of state have been deliberately, ignored and worse, that tranche of destructive, stupid policy doubled down on and stuff the tax payer, that stupid, brexit voting, after trougher jobbing, 7 figure pension scuppering scum.

      1. 335998+ up ticks,
        Morning W,
        Neither to the electorate as proven via the ballot booth again,again & again.

      1. “From a suspended account”. There’s a surprise, not!

        Morning +2 hours!

      2. 335998+ up ticks,
        Afternoon (there) AWK,
        Sad to say even the simplest rhetorical terms, written verbal warnings are not heeded, but really vision in many cases is ALL that is needed.

        Party before Country is a nation killer even though the parties (ino) involved form a pro eu coalition asset, the party still comes before the Country.

  22. Sigh,Camps,it always ends in camps

    “This document presents considerations from the perspective of the U.S.

    Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) for implementing the

    shielding approach in humanitarian settings as outlined in guidance

    documents focused on camps,”

    https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/global-covid-19/shielding-approach-humanitarian.html#:~:text=The%20shielding%20approach%20aims%20to,of%20the%20total%20population

    Listening to the rhetoric coming out of New York,Austalia,NZ and Canada will this be far away……

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/fa2c01a00efcc3917e461102a3b8017f51af5e38afa54330e7db656b84a822f4.jpg

    http://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b36d9f03cabb8479b99f30083a1e3256bc81faec29eecb5eee80a5dc491f6894.png
    Edit
    Ahem
    https://twitter.com/BernieSpofforth/status/1420632316632838146
    Re-Edit
    Troops on the streets??
    https://twitter.com/nicola1charles/status/1420672100063318021?s=20

    1. It depends who the ‘WE’ are Plum. I expect they are they same as the ‘THEY’ who all ready do so much damage to all and sundry.
      I’ll bet they we are already ‘creaming their jeans’ over the amount of land that will become available for building more and more new homes.

        1. Don’t !
          He wasn’t the middle east ‘envoy’ for no apparent reason. Apart from the most obvious. Dosh.

      1. Correct – the local radio plays repeated bits of other progs – – plus the same tune by 3 people – -over and over. – – it has gone way beyond a joke.

  23. The Daily Human Stupidity.

    “Reason lives in a very constrained world. Stupidity lives in a world of infinite possibility.”

    R A Delmonico.

  24. Morning all.

    So Dominic Raab says “Jabs for jobs is smart policy” on front page of DT. Where are all the human rights protesters? where are the demonstrations against this?

    I just can’t believe they are being allowed to get away with this.

    1. I have been out demonstrating as often as i can; it feels rather futile when a large percentage of the population are actively cheering on the imposition of totalitarianism, though.

    2. We, the general public should be in charge of the vaccinations of ALL polytishuns, PHARMA bosses, NHS Hierarchy etc, to ensure that they are not ‘Placeboed’ by the fellow crooks

      1. Absolutely. Pzizer in one arm, AstraZeneca in the other and Moderna up their…oh to hear them squeal!

        1. Now it is being said that a THIRD jab will stop the latest variant – it really is getting farcical.

      2. With the very clear white replacement program under way and the push to stick whatever it is in our children I really do wonder if certain jabs for certain kids will stop their fertility – and it wouldn’t be found for years – which in the same time would allow several million more replacements to arrive.

  25. On the nuclear power subject in the 1950 early 60s the UK had access to more home produced nuclear power than the rest of the world put put together. Then then politicians stuffed that up.
    In the late 1940s, the British electrical engineer Eric Laithwaite, a professor at Imperial College London, developed the first full-size working model of the linear induction motor. He became professor of heavy electrical engineering at Imperial College in 1964, where he continued his successful development of the linear motor. Now the Chinese are world leaders in this
    I believe TSR2 was another classic example of British engineering being shut down by our parliament.

      1. Back in 1974ish we had to operate our helo out of RAF Cosford: they had a TSR2 in the museum

        1. It’s still there. Well worth a visit. I went there when our son was stationed at Cosford a few years ago.

    1. When TSR2 was closed down, the UK aviation industry was the same kind of mess as British Leyland became. And about as successful. Combination of bad politics and politicians who think they can run a business by dint of being elected to something or other, and the usual shite management. IMHO, it was the right thing to do, to save money & embarrasement all round.

      1. I know I keep banging on about it, but our political classes eff up everything they come into contact with. From coal, steel, aluminium, gold everything you name it they wreck it. We couldn’t even scrap fridges and freezers about 10 years ago, they had to be shipped to Germany to be degassed and processed.
        They could not even run a bath between the lot of them.

    2. Whittle invented the jet engine.

      Once granted, the patent was published and became available worldwide. It lapsed in 1934 when Whittle found himself unable to afford the renewal fee of £5.

      https://frankwhittle.co.uk/the-first-patent/

      Crowd funding hadn’t yet been invented to prop up his invention.
      The RAF jettisoned his idea.

      1. Another successful inventor who didn’t go to university and get a degree (like Barnes Wallis).

        1. The PTB must have thought Whittle had lost his marbles whilst Barnes Wallis proved they had some use.

      1. It reminded me of the sommelier at Church View winery in the Margaret River region.
        In his introduction he said,………. we really don’t mind if you swallow the wine we give you to taste or spit it into the bowls provided.
        It wont go to waste we ship it off to New Zealand.

    1. Happy birthday Mr Duckworth

      77, I hope you enjoy your strip, later, as the sun goes down.

    1. Just come back on, Lewis. Good morning and Happy Birthday – have a great time.

    2. Are Labour voters frightened of getting educated, as if they were wanting better education then they wouldn’t vote Labour.

  26. Back from market. A trip made all the more exciting by the main road into Fakenham being closed. Elaborate detours enabled me to see parts of the town I never even knew existed – despite living here for 37 years!

    I skimmed the story about the cretinous rowers. Why Italy didn’t immediately declare war is beyond me. And the tear-stained attempt to lay the blame on previous successful oarsmen was, I thought, pretty bad form.

    1. Maybe you need to go back one step further.
      How did ISIS gain a foothold in Libya?
      They certainly weren’t there when Gadafi ruled the country.

    2. Why is he given the choice? He forgoes any rights as soon as he disobeys our laws.

      1. In our world yes – but not now – he will have more spent on him than any of us. He should “escape” while being trasferred from one place to another. and never caught again – or seen.

    3. Release him through a trap door. So he doesn’t get hurt, make sure he’s attached to a rope.

  27. “SIR – Yesterday, I was horrified to note that the bag of onions I had bought from the Co-op had come all the way from New Zealand to flavour my savoury mince. And it’s not even midwinter.

    Please tell me why we have to bring onions halfway around the world.

    Eileen Wale
    Selston, Nottinghamshire”

    It IS midwinter in New Zealand….

    I’ll get me kiwi fruit….

    1. Co-op is normally very good at sourcing British ingredients.

      Obviously the onion pickers pissed off back to Poland. Don’t cry about it.

          1. Duke of Ciudad Rodrigo – is the dukedom awarded to the Duke of Wellington.

          2. Speaking to a man in the pub yesterday about his garlic, I think I’ll grow some next year. I’m not going to buy any more of Morrison’s or Tesco’s Chinese bloody garlic.

          3. Our basic stock came from either Mr Fothergill or D T Brown (the Head Gardener cannot recall – I have given her a slap but it didn’t work).

            The crop was fantastic – two varieties – ready to use and long keeping.

            D T Brown have some very interesting varieties. It is very simple to grow and look after itself.

      1. The one in the middle was in a skirt last week Bill.
        They didn’t quite get the hair right eh.

  28. Never understood the point of washing up machines. I have watched my son and daughter in law laboriously rinsing everything they put in their machine – and the drying the stuff when the “cycle” is completed.

    The time they take is a bit more than it takes me to hand wash and dry all our dishes. So much more rewarding…{:¬))

    1. We have had a Bosch dishwasher for over 15 years, no rinsing before putting dirty dishes in, and no need to dry on completion. It was great when the children were at home and we still use it, even with just the two of us, it goes on about twice a week. We found the choice of dishwasher tablet has a marked effect on how well it cleans. The only argument is deciding whose job it is to unload it!

      1. Twice a week? You mean you have dirty dishes lying around for five days out of seven? Good grief…{:¬))

        1. Bosch dishwashers used to offer a 28 minute rapid cycle, probably now banned by eco-Brusselians.

      2. Twice a week? You mean you have dirty dishes lying around for five days out of seven? Good grief…{:¬))

      3. #ustoo.
        Only used for cutlery, crockery & glasses, pots ‘n pans take too much space and aren’t a big deal to wash anyway.
        Keep putting the stuff in until it’s full, then run. Let it dry, then stack away.

          1. Why would you do otherwise?
            We run a half-full machine if we’re going away, so we don’t come back to a machine full of fungus and slimes new to science.

      1. Now you are being silly. My point was that the time taken to prepare the bloody dishes for the washing up machine was the same time as it takes me to wash up. And I use a great deal less water and and sooooooooooo much greener and protective of the dying planet…{:¬))

    2. I do the larger cooking items by hand as well as my sharp knives, that’s rewarding enough for me. The rest goes into the dishwasher and saves me time.

      1. Yo Mo

        It saves money as well.
        Few, if any, folk now have the ‘gas Geyser’ over the kitchen sink.

        If you have a Combi-Boiler, you need to run cold water to get the hot to the sink.

        Water is metered, so is power to your boiler

        If you have an immersion heater, you heat water that you do not need.

        Use a variable temperature kettle to heat it to 90 deg C, if you must get your hands wet.

        It takes 1 calory of heat to heat to raise the tempearure of 1cc of water by one Deg C, up to 99 deg C

        It takes 540 calories to raise it from 99 to boiling, ie water to steam

        We only heat 2 cupfuls at a time, for drinks, then only to 80 or 90 exceptionally we will boil water, but again, only the amount we require

        Coffee etc does not require boiling water

        1. We do not have a water meter. A combi boiler so I don’t mind squandering a bit of cold water. It all gets recycled.

          1. Boil to spoil. 92ºC is optimum for proper coffee.

            It doesn’t matter for instant since that is shit in any case!

    3. Good morning all.
      When you reach your late 80s and perhaps your hands are not quite as strong and dexterous, you might see some advantages in having a dishwasher. Main gain is that the machine washes at a much higher temperature than you can tolerate, which is likely to deal with bacteria and viruses and spores. Of course, respectable cutlery and plates may well be damaged in said machine.

      1. I would never put the Meissen and the silver cutlery (which we use every day) in a machine…

      2. Then we put our clothes in a “green” washing machine which washes at 30 degrees and is a breeding ground for bacteria………

        1. Mortality rates in maternity units went up when they switched to ‘green’ wash.

          Grizzly is right.

          1. I tried the 30 degree wash to save money, but after a few months, my son’s clothes were permanently smelly, so we went back to 40.

    4. My Dad used to put the stuff in the dishwasher and whilst he was out at work, the lady who did his domestic cleaning etc, would take it all out, wash them in the sink and put them back the dishwasher again . .!

    5. I neither rinse beforehand nor dry after the dishwasher cycle. I love my dishwasher so much, that when we moved into our house, which had no kitchen, I connected the dishwasher and we fetched water from the bathroom for months before I got round to fitting a sink. We still don’t have hot water in the kitchen – actually, you use it surprisingly rarely if you have a dishwasher.
      Did I mention that I love the dishwasher….

      1. No – must have missed that.

        Still don’t see the point…! I quite like washing up (and ironing…)

    6. Why on earth do they dry the stuff after the cycle has finished? It dries naturally due to the heat. Fair enough about rinsing off bits stuck to plates, etc. as the dishwasher isn’t very good at removing that.

    1. Churchill offered them that in 1940.

      Where would they go? Plenty of rubber boats in Dover….

      1. Towards Vichy and Petain and they left Britain and its’ Allies to save them.

        Afetr WWII eneded, 134,987,000,018 Frenchies proclaimed that they had been in the ‘Resistanc/SOE’

          1. Silly Hat

            The ermans, French, Italians and US drove the ‘Brits’ off the Continent in 1945.

            No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

        1. There were over a million French soldiers who were prisoners of war. I am baffled. We were ready to fight to the last man. France, not so much.

  29. My birthday treat? Well, my wife’s away in Poland (today is also our 32nd Anniversary), but I will be picking up this book, which arrived yesterday, that I had ordered from my local bookshop (part of my “Don’t buy from Amazon” policy). At the same time, I will place further orders … BTW the owners are definitely snowflakes …. they take orders without requiring any deposit … just wait till they see my orders for anti-ClimateHysteria and Trump favouring authors :

    As 1872 opened, the New York Times headlined four stories that symptomized the decay in public morals that the editors so frequently decried: financier Jim Fisk was gunned down in a love triangle; suffragist and free-love advocate Victoria Woodhull was running for president; anti-vice activist Anthony Comstock battled smut dealers poisoning children’s minds; and abortionists were thriving. Throughout the year these stories intertwined in unimaginable ways, pulling in others, both famous and infamous—suffragists Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton; Brooklyn’s beloved preacher Henry Ward Beecher; the nation’s richest tycoon, Cornelius Vanderbilt; and William Howe, preeminent counsel to the criminal element.

    From rigged elections, everyday shootings, and attacks on the press to sexual impropriety, reproductive rights, and the chasm between rich and poor, the issues of the day still resonate. Political parties split over a bitterly contested election; suffragist battled suffragist over bettering women’s place in society; and pious saints fought soulless sinners, until at year-end this jumble of conflicts exploded in the greatest sensation of the nineteenth century.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4c4f9e7a75a7f99cab1b8114cc5b18ab48b65976a7a798b24b89950eeb45312e.jpg

        1. You can often get a good purchase price from Abe Books. I always look there first and have found them to be honest about the condition of second hand books. They do new too.

          1. AbeBooks is owned by Amazon (since 2008). I have been buying from them for many years, using only the real bookshops. I avoid “Book Depository” and “World of Books”. I’m beginning to think that Amazon owns them too.

  30. I’d like to thank the person who took an enormous bright orange dump in a layby between Kinlochewe and Torridon, I hope they felt better after it which can’t be said of me after recovering a car from the layby yesterday evening. The car had run through this and it was on the tyres. I had to attach ratchet straps to these wheels on the recovery vehicle and once I’d offloaded the car in Lochcarron I had to wash the bed of the truck and ramps.
    Not a pleasant experience and an inconsiderate act by someone who surely could have driven less than 5 miles in either direction to find a toilet. Probably doesn’t read the DT and certainly not a Nottler – this is what is happening all over the Highlands with dirty tourists and wild campers

    1. It’s a great pity that such filthy bastards don’t get tracked down using their DNA and force fed other people’s shit at a suitable sewage works.

    2. Poor you.

      I can understand people being caught short at times but why don’t they do it into a carrier bag and bin it?

        1. I would have thought that was obvious. Tesco is shit so they already have a head start.

      1. They must have passed a toilet within 5 miles from either direction to get there

        1. I think you should up your rescue prices to include a rubbish and shit tax. Just sayin’.

    3. I canonly assume the bright orange was the result of a council employee spraying it with an aerosol to make it show up.

      1. You assume wrong Walter – it was orange because of what they had eaten, a spicy meal containing red and yellow peppers and the grass/tarmac round it wasn’t that colour

        1. Urgh!
          Too much detail…
          Hope they had to wipe their arse on their hands.

    4. Actually we can lay the blame for this on the the First Minister. Lots of money has been spent on encouraging tourists to visit the North and West of Scotland. In previous years Skye has been brought to a standstill. The North 500 was an instant success with thousands of tourists pouring North in cars, caravans and carvanettes. Single track roads and passing places were blocked, local life and work came to a halt for months. Chust sublime!
      No extra camping areas, no extra facilities, no extra accommodation, no added car parks and no additional public toilets. Bad enough. However as a result of the Councils’ response to Covid all public toilets in Scotland have been closed for over a year. Fear rules all. It will not get better as there is no money to be spent on infrastructure.

          1. WRONG!
            It’s up in Brora in the far North of Scotland where the DT & myself were planning to go away to for a week last year before the Wuhan virus buggered things up.

    1. To be followed by ecological disaster as fast-breeding beavers block streams, cause massive flooding and start to undermine houses.

  31. This is one of 5 books I’m ordering at The Snowflakes bookshop in Bournville today:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e8748aa7679e5cf2a8d214400ef831f98ab655260cfca5fefdbb5079f9986cbb.jpg
    Byrne is a libertarian who did not vote for Trump and has criticized him publicly: that said, he believes Election 2020 was rigged, and this fact should be objectionable to every person who believes that “just government derives its power from the consent of the governed.” In this book he explains what caused him in August 2020 to study election fraud, and what really happened during the 2020 election. He describes how his team of “cyber-ninjas” unraveled it while they worked against the clock of Constitutional processes, all against the background of being a lifetime entrepreneur trying to interact with Washington, DC. This book takes you behind the headlines to backroom scenes that determined whether or not the fraud would be exposed in time, and paints a portrait of Washington that will leave the reader asking, “Is this the end of our constitutional republic?”

    And this one:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ed00c4b2218f9a0415adf22a3c028a25bb2900fa4709db14b942461d7afcb0e3.jpg

    For over a decade, the work of five-time New York Times bestselling investigative reporter Peter Schweizer has sent shockwaves through the political universe.

    Clinton Cash revealed the Clintons’ international money flow, exposed global corruption, and sparked an FBI investigation. Secret Empires exposed bipartisan corruption and launched congressional investigations. And Throw Them All Out and Extortion prompted passage of the STOCK Act. Indeed, Schweizer’s “follow the money” bombshell revelations have been featured on the front pages of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and regularly appear on national news programs, including 60 Minutes.

    Now Schweizer and his team of seasoned investigators turn their focus to the nation’s top progressives—politicians who strive to acquire more government power to achieve their political ends.

    Can they be trusted with more power?

    In Profiles in Corruption, Schweizer offers a deep-dive investigation into the private finances, and secrets deals of some of America’s top political leaders. And, as usual, he doesn’t disappoint, with never-before-reported revelations that uncover corruption and abuse of power—all backed up by a mountain of corporate documents and legal filings from around the globe. Learn about how they are making sweetheart deals, generating side income, bending the law to their own benefits, using legislation to advance their own interests, and much more.

    Profiles in Corruption contains tomorrow’s headlines.

    1. That title is slightly misprinted.

      It should be “The Dee Prig” – a biography of Mrs Murrell…..

    1. Whose standard of living, I ask myself? Those not requiring a ‘vaccine passport’?

    2. When the green agenda means higher taxes, higher prices, hugely reduced choices, colder houses, far fewer jobs, mass unemployment how, how does he think the standard of living will rise?

        1. He won’t stand up to Boris…treats him like the Head Prefect all the time, does his bidding.

      1. Plus wibbling – – Don’t forget the much practised saying of the replacements – we want a better life – ( by getting here, to an infrastructure they haven’t paid a penny towards, costing us a continuous fortune as they freeload, live in a house paid for by us, that has power, windows, fresh water straight out of the taps, sewage system, also get healthcare paid for by us, get free cash for doing nothing etc etc.} Plus they can live their lawless lives, ignoring and changing our culture {that they are SO desperate to get to, but willing to kill to ensure they stay here } – – they do not want a better life, they want their life and their ways – in a better place – and they are being handed it. 30 years and it will be a total 3rd world ****hole.

      2. Friends with contracts to do green infrastructure will live a much better life.

        As for the rest, who cares!

    3. Mogg has always had the ability to convince himself that utter nonsense is true.

    1. Dark skinned animal staring at a white girl’s barely covered backside – tut tut.

    2. Is that seaweed slime or tattoos on her thighs and hips. Either way it is not very attractive.

      1. I think the seal must have attacked her judging by all the bruises on her buttock area.

      1. You jest. A new squash court was built in HQ Northern Ireland in 1976. The (local Irish) contractor left the wheelbarrow inside and they had to knock the doorframe out to get it out……

        1. Silly me, it was the cement mixer, not a wheelbarrow. Makes a difference. Old age etc…..sorry about that.

      2. They need to be shifted so I can raise the height of the wall adjacent to them and then dump soil to bring the area level with the bottom of the wall I’m just finishing off.

  32. OT – there is an excellent three-parter on PBSAmerica about the last 100 days of the War in Europe. Some interesting new archive footage. Good talking heads – including the always sound Anthony Beevor.

    One fascinating bit was to hear extracts from letters written by fanatical Narsies wetting themselves at hearing Goebbels and Hilter shrieking away about how victory was just round the corner, a month before the final surrender – and their deaths.

    The hysterical approbation reminded me of the outpouring of Full Covidians today.

    I commend the series to you.

    1. Was there a lot about the Soviet flag being raised over the Reichstag while US/UK troops were still 500 miles away?

        1. I was brought up on “We won the war” but i had my eyes opened when i delved deeper into the overall picture of WW2.
          Hitler didn’t commit suicide because “the allies” were 500 miles away.He committed suicide because Soviet troops were in the suburbs of Berlin.He knew his fate after the atrocities his troops had committed in countries like Belarus where Jewish villages were razed to the ground and the residents burned alive.

          1. Hitler would have killed himself whoever got to him first.

            We did win the war, in both theatres (Europe vs Germany & Allies and Asia vs Japan), but only as part of a coalition. The Russians & subordinates did indeed do most of the dying and beating the Germans in Europe. Arguably our greatest contribution was in not losing it by surrendering in 1940, which would have stopped the USA from joining on in Europe and left Western Europe under Hitler or Stalin.

            FWIW the Russians weren’t our friends, just our enemy’s enemy. They invaded Poland alongside Hitler and morally we should have declared war on them too, but we had enough on our plate with just Germany. Stalin showed no thanks for our efforts and supplies.

          2. The mere fact that 80% of German forces fought on the Eastern front and the huge loss of life in the Soviet Union during WW2 would suggest that they paid in full.
            How do you think Britain would have fared in 1941 if,instead of Operation Barbarossa,the German divisions and the Luftwaffe had headed West?

          3. Hitler’s fundamental mistake. Fighting on two fronts when he didn’t have to.

          4. Whilst I agree that Russia did incredibly well and that Hitler’s invasion and its timing, before securing the Western Front properly was a catastrophic mistake by the Germans, I have believed that but for the Arctic convoys Russia might well have been defeated by Germany.

            Russia certainly had an extremely hard war but its leaders were absolutely merciless to their people and their troops, killing huge numbers by their strategy and tactics.

          5. ” Stalin showed no thanks for our efforts and supplies.”

            War-Related Debts of Other Countries to the U.S. Government
            Fact Sheet, released by the Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs
            U.S. Department of State, March 1, 2000
            The United Kingdom still has amounts outstanding from World War II and its immediate aftermath which it continues to repay on a regular basis. World War II-era claims on Iran have been incorporated into the claims being adjudicated by the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal, established after the 1979 Iranian revolution. Lend Lease claims against the former Soviet Union arising from World War II were settled in a 1972 agreement between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. In the 1972 agreement, the U.S.S.R. pledged to make three initial payments totaling $48 million and to repay the remaining Lend Lease debt once the United States had granted Most Favored Nations (MFN) trade status. The Soviet Union made the three initial downpayments, but because it did not obtain MFN status at that time — because of conditions set forth in the 1974 Trade Act — its obligation to make the remaining payments toward its Lend Lease debt was not triggered before the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. However, MFN status was extended to the Russian Federation in 1992, and accordingly, in 1993, Russia signed an agreement with the U.S. in which it acknowledged its liability and agreed to a repayment schedule for the former U.S.S.R.’s Lend Lease debt. Finally, the U.S. continues to work for a resolution with Taiwan of the issue of debts arising from World War II-era loans extended to China.

          6. Yet Germany – the aggressor – was rewarded with the Marshall Plan that required them to receive massive financial aid for rebuilding their cities and their economies but the UK were (and still are) expected to pay the US billions for lend lease and other crappy agreements.

            The USA just wanted the destruction of the British Empire – and got it.

          7. Hitler would have killed himself whoever got to him first.

            We did win the war, in both theatres (Europe vs Germany & Allies and Asia vs Japan), but only as part of a coalition. The Russians & subordinates did indeed do most of the dying and beating the Germans in Europe. Arguably our greatest contribution was in not losing it by surrendering in 1940, which would have stopped the USA from joining on in Europe and left Western Europe under Hitler or Stalin.

            FWIW the Russians weren’t our friends, just our enemy’s enemy. They invaded Poland alongside Hitler and morally we should have declared war on them too, but we had enough on our plate with just Germany. Stalin showed no thanks for our efforts and supplies.

      1. Yes, episode 2. We were only 120 miles away. We had enough on our plates in securing the rest of Western Europe, including Germany and Denmark, to prevent Stalin taking it over using possession being 9/10 of the law.

    2. It’s a good series, but in reality there is little that is not covered in William Shirer’s book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, which he wrote in the 50s and was published in 1960.

  33. Holocaust memorial in Westminster is given go-ahead after inquiry. 29 July 2021.

    A controversial Holocaust memorial and education centre is to be built in the heart of Westminster at a cost of more than £100m after the government gave it the go-ahead following a public inquiry.

    The Board of Deputies of British Jews welcomed the decision, saying there was “something uniquely powerful about locating a memorial to the Holocaust right next to the centre of the UK’s democracy”.

    We don’t need a Holocaust Memorial at any cost let alone £100M! We played no part in it nor bear any responsibility for it.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/29/holocaust-memorial-in-westminster-is-given-go-ahead-after-inquiry

    1. Took a significant part in stopping it, though. Same with slavery – should there be a monument to slavery in Westminster too?

      1. If so, one could always pull it down. Giving the unemployed bames something to do.

        1. The unemployed bames wouldn’t do it,
          though, would they? They would prefer the benefits.

        2. The unemployed bames wouldn’t do it,
          though, would they? They would prefer the benefits.

          1. I remember the heady days when on the RIBA fee scale that was the percentage of the construction cost for works to listed buildings.

            Nowadays you would be lucky to get 4%.

            During the seventies recession one practice agreed to work for no fee on a project (RMJM from memory) an act which destroyed the established fee scales. Needless to say, you get what you pay for and the results may be seen all around us.

          2. From a Dutch (or Netherlands, if you refer) company. Which spells Autumn as “fall”.

            What’s wrong with English, Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish (notice I didn’t write British – which includes overrated Ghanians) architects?

          3. From a Dutch (or Netherlands, if you refer) company. Which spells Autumn as “fall”.

            What’s wrong with English, Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish (notice I didn’t write British – which includes overrated Ghanians) architects?

      2. It cost us enough to pay for both the stopping of the holocaust and of slavery.

        Now we are being asked to fork out, EDIT: AGAIN in both cases – one through a memorial and another through “reparations” of one kind and another.

        NO, NO, NO!

    2. I’m beginning to think the £2million spent on Hyde Park’s Grassy knoll was good value and potentially dual purpose!

    3. That will provide a central location for a commemorative picnic every 20th April, and potentially a great campsite.

    4. Complete and utter political egoism and wokery. Proposed by politicians, approved by virtue signalling egotists, funded by the taxpayer no doubt.

    5. Yesterday I saw pictures of the memorial to policemen who were killed in the line of duty. It cost £4.5m. It is an open door. It is symbolic. I was dwelling under the illusion that symbolism was based on history and recognisable icons. Such symbols do not need an explanation, unlike the door with symbolic holes.
      I’d have preferred a statue of Dixon of Dock Green. He epitomised our police.

      PS I am not kidding.

      https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-stoke-staffordshire-57983080

    6. There’s a very good free one a short walk away at the IWM. Why do we need 2 so close together?

      1. There are plenty in Germany, as is right.
        Why does the UK need another one?

        1. Because our Jews are being driven out by the slammers – and the Liebour party.

  34. 335998+ up ticks,

    Live Politics latest news: Jabs for jobs is a ‘smart policy’, says Dominic Raab,

    Could be on par with the numbers racket, and our channel crossing
    replacement units campaign, every little helps said raabo, before the herd fully wake up.

  35. John Ward on form over on the Slog:

    “It is, I have to tell you, quite a challenge to write a post about slithery, poisonous things without resorting to obscenity. Especially for me. So a thought has occurred to your correspondent on the subject of keeping prose both cleaner and less obviously the sort of Hate Crime that will one day see us all shut up for good.

    It would be quite nice, for example, to immortalise Romping Arse [anag 3] for all time by introducing the phrase, “You really are a complete Piers aren’t you?” for those of a malplaisant nature – thereby avoiding use of the word prick.

    Or – faced with one of those “Doctor knows best” robots – to smile and say, “Ah right – how very Morgan of you!” without actually ruining a masked supper party by saying “Moron”.

      1. Get ready for the taxpayer funded lawyer claiming he won’t dare go back cos he’ll be persecuted – – then a life in freebieland.

        1. He won’t need it – he won’t even be threatened with deportation…not really.

      2. One of OUR lives… had a mud slime been killed by a whitey, then the perpetrator would have been put in gaol and no doubt killed there, as happened with someone who put a slice or two of bacon on a mosque door…

    1. As you brought up the subject of wokes, I visited Wokeandia yesterday otherwise known as Frome. Most of the “independent’ arts & crafts traders had signs pleading with the public not to enter unless masked. I didn’t get over the threshold of one shop before being shouted out to put a mask on. The shop assistant probably thought I was a right see you next tuesday. But she had absolutely no idea what I thought of her.

      1. Frome is the place where Lewis Duckworth was conceived in the late-Autumn of 1943 in a typically less than superb bit of family planning. Apparently my mother got on well with the landlady …. I popped out at The Green Hospital, Wallsend.

          1. My father was conscripted in 1942. He exchanged 30s a week as a slaughterman at the Co-op butchers for 6s a week. My mother followed him to various postings and often his superiors were baffled by father’s success at getting my mother in lodgings.

          1. Unfortunately, Hat, she’s dead, as are all my 8 siblings and I’m the last to carry on the harum-scarum, which I shall do until I too depart this earth.

      1. I thought it still was, judging by that quitter who pulled out of the gymnastics.

  36. From the DT Obits – Better Red than Dead…

    “Baron Hermann von Richthofen, diplomat who attempted to change the stereotypical British image of Germans – obituary
    He served in Saigon during the Vietnam War, while as German Ambassador in London he tried to win over Mrs Thatcher – with no great success”

    1. There was no such turn out for the recent Town Hall meeting with Biden manisslow……

  37. 1 mix of 10 sand to 2 cement and that’s 14 blocks laid.
    Another 50 or so to go.

    After that’s done, I plan raising the wall it joins, aka “The Linepath wall”, so that the upper part matches what I’m finishing off:-
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e371a3d22531831ab502ec6585645fd2c2bb1be549db94e6c180b168b7722d1f.jpg

    and the lower bit goes up to match the foot of the wall.
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e371a3d22531831ab502ec6585645fd2c2bb1be549db94e6c180b168b7722d1f.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5a7fd6417c6d9cfd5422637acbe62763f05521bfb2d6d32da48b3e5fd500fe5c.jpg

  38. 335998+ up ticks,
    Guaranteed, who else would the overseeing tory (ino) group blame ?
    history repeats itself,hitler blaming the german peoples for his stint of overseeing and the result.
    Tis my belief that the nasty consequences of the actions of this mass uncontrolled immigration political coalition is going to have very evil
    repercussions far more so than WW2.

    Govt Will Blame Unvaccinated Minority When Lockdown Return, Conservative Implies

    1. 335998+ up ticks,
      O2O,

      Govt Will Blame Unvaccinated Minority When Lockdown Return, Conservative Implies

      ” Conservatives implies” that will be undoubtedly
      on the agenda, but may one ask, what sayeth the
      current political overseers in power at the moment ?

        1. Actually Germans are very funny if they’re from the Rhineland, Baden-Wurttemberg or Bayern in my experience. It’s the Prussians that don’t joke, I think.

    1. Ridiculous, because the Algerians would probably have been shouting “Get the Nazis!” if it were the other way round. Politically correct, they are not.

      They still call Europeans “The Romans”.

  39. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has stated that nuclear deal negotiations “cannot go on indefinitely”, but says the White House is still willing to engage in diplomacy with Tehran over the issue.
    During a news conference in Kuwait on Thursday, Blinken expressed dissatisfaction at the lack of resolution over negotiations on Iran’s nuclear deal. The secretary of state upheld that “the ball remains in Iran’s court”.

    “We’re committed to diplomacy, but this process cannot go on indefinitely… we look to see what Iran is ready to do or not ready to do and remain fully prepared to return to Vienna to continue negotiations”, Blinken asserted.

    Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who makes the final call on Tehran’s affairs, asserted that the Islamic republic will not accept Washington’s “stubborn” demands and refuted the inclusion of any other issues to the deal.

    On Wednesday Khamenei warned Tehran’s incoming ultra-conservative president Ebrahim Raisi to not place trust in the West and the US. Khamenei advised Raisi to remember the experience of the current president, Hassan Rouhani, and how “in this administration it became clear that trusting the West isn’t helpful”.
    Iran has been in indirect talks with the US in Vienna since April in an attempt to revive negotiations over the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The accord promises to alleviate economic sanctions on Tehran on the grounds that Iran reduces its nuclear capability. Talks broke off last month during the Iranian presidential elections. Tehran stated that it needed time to deal with the transition of leadership.

    Washington unilaterally withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018 under former President Donald Trump, who later imposed fresh sanctions on the Islamic republic despite Iran abiding by the deal. As a result, Iran ramped up its uranium enrichment to unprecedented levels in violation of the terms of the agreement.

    Rouhani announced earlier in July that the country is capable, if necessary, of enriching its uranium up to 90% purity, which is the minimum percentage required for producing nuclear weapons.

    1. Trump dealt with them better. Tehran is just stringing the Biden administration along.

      1. All trump did was set trip-wires for the next President.
        The US is between a rock and a hard place on the JCPOA.
        He did the same with China.

      2. How do you arrive at that conclusion?
        Trump left the JCPOA and increased the sanctions on Iran.
        Iran waited a year,waiting for the UK/EU to fill their part of the bargain…they didn’t.The IAEA said Iran were still in compliance after one year but they gave notice of their intentions.Since then they have kept everyone informed of their actions in advance.
        If the US wants them to cease the enrichment all they have to do is return to the status quo.

      1. You won’t like my attitude but i look forward to the total humiliation of the US because of their foreign policy this past 70 years.

  40. HAPPY HOUR – You’re old dahling…get over it…

    Calling colleagues grandparents is age discrimination, judge agrees with grandmother.
    A sales manager sued her employer for discrimination for being called a grandmother because she thought it was a “dig at my age”.
    https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1469366/age-discrimination-workplace-political-correctness-grandparents

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a85c7cf3365b015e556119704fe6d81487cb174e4bbd882b3b19a67c3cfbb2d8.gif

    1. I was delighted become a grandfather at the age of 54 and have been called “Bupa” by all my grandchildren ever since.

      I love it, too, when my family take the piss and make comic remarks about, “Poor old grand-father – we’ll have to speak up.”

      The woman in the case must be a very dull, humourless person.

    2. But you can be a grandmother by the time you’re 40 if you and your children produce sprogs at a young age…….

      1. 40! Not from Essex are you?

        The record lowest age is 17 and plenty of 25 year old grannies.

      2. You may legally be a grandmother at 33; a great grandmother at 50; and a great great grandmother at 67.

    3. Its obvious that she insists on being called a grandperson as mother implies her biological birth state & not her current emotional state of self identifying as a gender neutral teen

  41. From this evening’s Grimes:

    “Hundreds of troops are to patrol Sydney’s streets to enforce lockdown rules after a record surge in coronavirus cases.

    At least 300 soldiers were to be immediately deployed after the police commissioner for New South Wales approached the prime minister, Scott Morrison, for help. The authorities have yet to spell out their precise duties but it is highly unlikely that troops will be armed.”

    Two things crossed my mind.

    1 I wonder if the Australian troops will be as violent as the Australian police.

    2 Australia has had the harshest of harsh lockdowns plus restrictions plus thuggery from the authorities and yet their plague infections rise and rise.
    Perhaps their policy has kept people apart for so long that herd immunity never even began.

    1. The number of Covid deaths in Australia in the past 24 hours is 0. Their weekly average is 1. Madness.

      1. But their “cases” rise and rise.

        I know it is bollox; you all know that – but, for some unexplained reason, the Australian government is determined to crush the population.

        1. My Aussie mate here was already crushed. He wanted prison camps with machine-gun towers and barbed wire, not quarantine hotels. Shat himself daily over the virus, so he did.

      2. By their numbers, 243 in hospital with covid. Their health care system must be in deep doggy doo if it cannot handle that many.

        Supposedly 57,000 heart attacks a year in Australia but that is bearable.

          1. You could have given a warning – I saw the first picutre and – UUURRRGH! Otherwise, good evening, walter :o)

          2. NO! Apologies not accepted when you put that in as a suffix!

            Imagine sliding naked down a razorblade, one leg either side…

            :o)

          3. NO! Apologies not accepted when you put that in as a suffix!

            Imagine sliding naked down a razorblade, one leg either side…

            :o)

          4. You could have given a warning – I saw the first picutre and – UUURRRGH! Otherwise, good evening, walter :o)

          5. We used to catch Huntsman Spiders in the house quite easily, large plastic box, whack it over them to cover completely, slide a large card up under the spider, lift off, take outside and empty.

            Calm down screaming wife.

          6. Nothing in Australia is poisonous. You can eat them all without mishap.

            They are venomous, which is different. Poison is ingested: venom is injected.

          7. Have you heard of the Drop Bear? It’s a super dangerous
            creature found only in Australia. More harmful to tourists than
            residents Why? Because they hate vegemite and without that natural
            repellent given from many years of consumption, well you are
            unprotected.
            It’s like a koala with fangs. Mythical or real? You tell us.

            https://explorewitherin.com/deadly-australian-animals/

          8. Good evening Grizz
            These ‘jabs’ are they poisonous or venomous or both?

      3. Meanwhile, an average of 375 people die EACH DAY in Australia – from the usual things…

      4. So, are they just trying to punish the Aussies for… following the rules?

    2. Remember that the gun buybacks in Australia successfully disarmed the population exactly for this reason, to ensure that a disarmed population can be easily cowed into submission by the authorities whenever they want to !

      1. Your suggestion then being tghat should the police rock up and tell people toislate that the public shoot them.

        Well, that’s a stupid idea. Same problem in yankee land.

        The correct solution is, when these draconian measures are applied is for the public to vote, say no (or yes) and for government to be powerless to countermand that decision. Do you see the difference? One creates conflict, the other simply refuses the state and reminds it who is the master.

        1. As usual you miss the point, only an armed society is free society, they have taken away your guns in the UK & next the elites will decide to take away your cars in order to meet carbon emission targets , make you only use public transport, make you less mobile, be subject to bus & train schedules , service limitations, unable to go where you please when you please, certainly unable to go to an anti-government demonstration & after that they will determine the number of lightbulbs in your home, ration your electricity to save the planet, cut down on your food & calorie intake so that there will be enough food that you have paid for to feed their beloved savages in Africa & the Mid-East . Yes Wibbling you have no more rights than a herd of cattle & will end up like the cattle – hanging from a meat hook, because you don’t have guns, guns which you so obviously despise !

          1. No. No, and, oh! No again.

            A society is not free if it has guns. That’s idiotic. A country is free when it’s government cannot act without the permission of the population.

            You’re mistaking force with freedom. We have rights – but we cannot enforce them because we cannot refuse the state. other nations that can are free. They do not need guns to achieve that.

          2. I am wasting my time arguing with you wibbling, you think that Govts need the permission of the population, in the history of the world that has rarely ever happened !!

    1. I had the misfortune to hear him briefly on Radio this morning warning about the dangers of carbon – clearly if the Covid don’t get you the Carbon will!

          1. It was an absolute bastard of a car. Two-stroke engine; very uncomfortable even for a young family with two children. Couldn’t go very fast. Susceptible to damp – an those bloody carbon brushes were forever needing cleaning and/or replacing.

            Eventually – after leaving it is a shed for three years – during which time the brakes rusted onto the drums and the tyres rotted – a scrap bloke gave me a fiver for it! SLY55F was the number. Funny how one remembers such trivia after 48 years!

          2. Had a mini Traveller (woody/rusty), NBO655F, that needed new dynamo brushes every 2 weeks or so. Got to the stage that it took less than 10 minutes, including washing up afterwards.

          3. Bloomin’ heck, my motorbike (I hadn’t got a licence then) was a two-stroke Suzuki 250. Sounded like an electric sewing machine.

    1. That’ll go down well in Tewkesbury*…

      (*Insert your own favourite heavily flooded English town…)

      1. It was noticeable, when seeing an aerial shot of flooded Tewkesbury, that the cathedral was high and dry. Those mediaeval builders knew a thing or two.

  42. Programme on PBS America explaining how the Americans invented codebreaking and cryptography and their decrypts won the Battle of The Atlantic. Hmmmm….

    1. Actually – it is more about the over-looked woman who was a class one codebreaker.

      It is not as bad a prog as you might – initially – think…

      1. No problem with Elizabeth Friedman, she was very clever, just the way the programme is written.

    2. I thought it was very clever of them to use Native American speakers to transmit & receive radio messages during the war in the Pacific – (No use today with Google translate & similar apps)

        1. Double edged sword. The Germans built up the order of battle by recognising regional accents of the different regiments.

        2. I was with 39 Inf Brigade in the Belfast area in 1981. The Royal Welch Fusiliers were using Welsh on the UHF local networks. Great mob btw – I enjoyed working in their SF bases.

    3. I thought it was very clever of them to use Native American speakers to transmit & receive radio messages during the war in the Pacific – (No use today with Google translate & similar apps)

    4. Since Queen Elizabeth’s spy chief, Lord Cecil, used codes and, indeed caught Mary Stuart conspiring to murder Elizabeth via her use of a code that he broke, we must conclude that the history of America started rather earlier than we thought. But since the Americans are arbitrary about their dates and claims, largely fictional, I suppose that isn’t a problem.

    5. Odd, as encryption was being used way back in Ancient Greece. Americans are morons.

      1. Well-known that the US cracked Enigma, including stealing a Naval Enigma from a sinking submarine…
        I’ll get me bombe-sheet.

    6. The book and film version of the DaVinci Code was quite popular over here. That might have been a clue that codes had been seen before.

      Edit. Just deleted the comment about Navajo speakers, stephenroi mentioned it earlier.

    1. I imagine the large slammer community in Glasgow is rushing around setting up a fund to help rebuild the church….

      1. The good news is the RNLI have received a massive increase in donations this week after the adverse publicity of their rescue efforts in the English? (sic) Channel…

        1. “…the adverse publicity of their rescue efforts in the English? (sic) Channel…”

          Nigel Farage’s fault, according to the BBC.

        2. Probably Hamas UK charities has had its members donate as individuals to ensure that their brethren get ferried the last few nautical miles into the UK in comfort safe aboard RNLI craft.

        3. Pity – I’d rather hoped that a lot of people would follow my example and give them bugger all in future!

          1. I thought the donations were coming from the migrants themselves – making sure their relatives got here safely.

          2. But these days, who knows – a whole pile of virtual signallers might be keen to support the RNLI in bringing this detritus her?

      2. To build a mosque on the site more like.

        Churches are torched weekly in France although this goes unreported. The same is kicking off here now that the tipping point has been reached.

          1. We must be the only place on the planet where a certain culture floods in, always claiming to be the victim, cause untold problems with grooming gangs and drug gangs, blatantly threaten the police while being recorded, and the govt carry on welcoming hundreds of thousands more to live here on our taxes. Our govt clearly hates us.

          2. Beeb news claiming 60000 deaths have been prevented due to people being vaccinated – – how on earth can anyone claim that?? None of those 60k might have even caught it.

          3. To me it is as misleading as the xxx people died within 28 days of a positive result – – BUT OF WHAT????

      1. Thank you, upvoters, you know what I mean and I’m sure we can find a local manufacturer of les cocktail, Molotov.

    2. That wont make the BBC 10 pm especially when they have the slightest inkling who did it.

  43. That’s me gone for the day. Time for drinkies.

    Have a smooth evening – waiting for the rain promised for tomorrow.

    A demain.

    1. Good for them. Of course we can’t do the same coz Parliament is on holiday! More power to their elbows.

    2. The thought of JRM racing round parliament in a Sitting Image Sketch – hilarious.

    1. Tell me about it……….I knew an executive of a well known paint company and he told me that his team spent many hours coming up with a new name for all the colours they had on sale especially Magnolia. Elephants breath now i believe.

  44. Jeez………….

    “Galesburg, IL School District 205 Superintendent John Asplund sent

    this shocking email out to staff members announcing a new ID badge

    policy.

    School staff now have the option to change from the customary white

    ID badge to a yellow ID badge to indicate that they have received the

    covid vaccine.

    They are actually going to use Yellow Badges for identification.”

    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/wp-content/uploads/yellow-patches-vaxxed.jpg
    I take it he was never a history teacher……………

    1. You can collect the new id at the railway station, please bring a small suitcase…

      1. I don’t imagine that 99.9% of Americans know anything AT ALL about yellow stars, death camps, yer Narzies etc etc.

          1. Not half! Just lured him indoors (at 10 pm) away from his latest dead thrush…

      2. I don’t imagine that 99.9% of Americans know anything AT ALL about yellow stars, death camps, yer Narzies etc etc.

    1. Surely the whole point of law is to face your accusers. Why were they allowed to remain anonymous?

    2. Jàiled by the same bluddy judge who was presiding over the trial for which Murray was prosecuted! The Scottish ‘justice’ system is severely screwed. What a disgusting stitch up and probably helped by our US secret service buddies. An absolute joke.

      1. It’s not just the Scottish system of Justice that’s screwed.

        The whole verdammt, kit and caboodle requires a very quick but in-depth inquiry and overhaul, and a systemic overhaul of 3 different justice systems in England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. We are supposed to be one United Kingdom, let’s act like it.

        No more devolvement – central rule from Westminster with MPs who can and will carry out the wishes of the people.

        It’s not too hard – we managed way back when before the Bliar days – we can do it again.

  45. An excellent read.

    The current research — and that’s all we have for the vaccines, too —
    indicates that natural immunity is not as good as vaccine immunity —
    it’s better! Study after study keeps finding that the previously
    infected have stronger, broader and longer-lasting immunity than people
    who’ve received the vaccine.

    https://www.takimag.com/article/the-vaccine-karens/

    1. And what about people who have Covid, recover, have the vaccine and then get Covid again?

      I have heard that some young healthy people deliberately try to catch the disease disease knowing that they will recover and be better equipped against the virus in the future when their health is possibly less good.

    1. The surprising thing is that even the bank told her not to give the money away.

      1. Not really, every time I log on to my internet banking to make a transaction I get warnings about scams and people asking for details of my accounts.

        1. Aye, but there’s a difference between a text warning and a loan agreer actually saying ‘don’t give this money away.’ Somehow I’ve managed a high end credit rating and even then they ask what I’m spending the money on.

          The only time they flickered was with the roof, because it was silly money.

    2. We had problems getting HSBC to allow us to transfer my wife’s money to another bank they didn’t exactly shirk on the big brother attitude.

      This woman must have been really determined to throw her money away.

    3. Good evening Sos,
      I simply cannot understand these foolish women falling for ridiculous sob stories then giving any money, never mind thousands, to a person they have never even met. If they lose their home or go bankrupt, then it is only their own stupidity to blame. Similarly, the daft old fools who believe a young, handsome man they meet on a holiday abroad to be genuinely in love with them.

      1. I have to agree, Mum, as one who has used dating sites in the past. the best one can do is to be honest in every way, shape and form.

        From these sites, I’ve found a wife of 13 years – then she went very Swedish but now, I’ve at last found an English lady of Celtic origins but I won’t hold that against her – nor she against me, (Pure English).

        Love conquers all, except stupidity.

        1. I know of a couple of people who found happiness that dating sites some years ago. But they, and you, are level-headed people!
          Went Swedish?
          Good to know you then found happiness; long may it continue.

        2. It never occurred to me to use a dating agency but I took a sabbatical year to sail my boat to the Caribbean and back thinking that I might find the girl of my dreams. I didn’t – but she turned up to teach Modern Languages at the school in which I was a schoolmaster.
          The rest – as they say – is very happy history!

          1. Good for you, Richard and from your previous posts I can only wish both a continuous loving relationship.Tom

    4. Hardly her “life savings” if it was on credit cards. she was a fool – soon parted with her money and the banks’.

  46. Emmanuel Macron sues owner of billboard depicting him as Hitler https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/emmanuel-macron-sues-owner-of-billboard-depicting-him-as-hitler-675280
    Michel-Ange Flori wasn’t the first to depict the French president as Hitler as thousands protest across the country using Holocaust comparisons.
    French President Emmanuel Macron is suing a billboard owner who displayed the French president as Adolf Hitler, protesting COVID-19 restrictions, AFP first reported.
    According to the Guardian, the posters depicted Macron with the infamous mustache in full uniform with a swastika armband that read, LREM – La République En Marche. The poster read, “Obey. Get vaccinated.”

    1. The ‘They’ seem to have no recognised standards to abide by, perhaps if they did they would be aware that by most acceptable standards they are extremely nasty people and beyond any form of forgiveness.

    2. Probably not far wrong – and it could apply to the East German Commissar as well.

  47. Well my eldest granddaughter made me a Chocolate Cake and I was called round to attend a surprise Birthday Party. Nice (even if it ruined my 10 days of “no biscuits”). The record I select for my birthday is the first No. 1 I recall from my nana’s radio (I must have been 3/4 …. :

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhs5G_0iT2k

    1. Sounds like a lovely day Lewis, you can’t really beat family occasions like that. Lovely record as well, as kids we had and old wind up gramophone and piles of old 78s. One of my favourites was Sunny Side of the Street. I think by the Andrews sisters.

  48. While I remember

    This laptop is connected by cable to the router { so don’t know what happens on wifi } – – when I shut down the laptop, the screen goes down and the lights go off — but then the indicator light at the cable – router – connection on the laptop flashes on and off for several seconds – it bugs me that something is clearly loading or being sent AFTER the laptop has supposedly shut down.

    1. As an old neighbour where we lived was often heard to shout to his son when his attempts to repair his car failed in the late 50s……………David Get the ‘ammer out !!
      And after a hard days gardening, steak and salad with new pots and two large glasses of french Merlot @ 14% i’m turning in.
      Soon to be in the comfort of the land of deep Nod.

        1. Given wakey wakey ‘toilet breaks’ I always do, I can never read any more than four pages of a book I’ve been reading two different books for about 6 months. Yawning my head off Night all……………….

    2. It is more than likely a feature called “wake on LAN” where a computer can be powered on by a special signal over the cable from the network. If you are worried, Google “Turn off wake on LAN”. If you are not particularly well versed in setting up computers I’d leave it as it is, it is not something I’d worry about.

        1. But the connection between your laptop and the router is in effect a network connection, it is just one to one, so the signals follow the same structure.

    3. You are paranoid, possibly for a good reason. BTW you’re you’re looking tired.

  49. More than 50 Tory MPs ready to vote AGAINST ‘misguided’ Covid passports as Government is accused of introducing them ‘by stealth’ after quietly updating NHS app and Dominic Raab says they ‘made sense’ for returning to the office

    They are so disgusted and horrified they are going to resign the whip…….oh wait, that is not part of the token rebellion virtue signalling plan.

    https://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/news/article-9841249/More-50-Tory-MPs-prepared-vote-AGAINST-misguided-Covid-passports.html

    1. CCP used to be Chinese Communist Party but now stands for Conservative Communist Party.

      1. Narzi Party started in 1920, and as far as I can tell its supporters are still flourishing (having ticked the No Publicity box some time after 1945).

    2. 50 MPs “ready” is not the same as 50 MPs “commit unequivocally to”. I reckon they will wimp out because they are scared to challenge the whip and be branded as naughty boys. Principles wither when it comes to standing up for what they say they will do.

  50. Just heard on beeb news – Biden offering unjabbed Americans $100 to get jabbed – or else its weekly tests amd more..The global plot thickens.

  51. Right, my happy, fellow NoTTLers, I must wish you a good Goodnight and God’s blessing upon you.

    We shall re-convene in the morning with more joy and jubilation.

    Time for a (large) nightcap.

    1. Good night, Tom, to you and all NoTTLers. I too am now off to bed. It’s been a very productive day – spent over 4 hours in the garden.

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