Thursday 7 November: America’s decision has to be a wake-up call for Europe’s leaders

An unofficial place to discuss the Telegraph letters, established when the DT website turned off its commenting facility (now reinstated, but we prefer ours),
Intelligent, polite, good-humoured debate is welcome, whether on or off topic. Differing opinions are encouraged, but rudeness or personal attacks on other posters will not be tolerated. Posts which – in the opinion of the moderators – make this a less than cordial environment, are likely to be removed, without prior warning.  Persistent offenders will be banned.

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here.

696 thoughts on “Thursday 7 November: America’s decision has to be a wake-up call for Europe’s leaders

  1. Good morning, chums. And thanks, Geoff, for today's new NoTTLe page.

    Wordle 1,237 5/6

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    1. Good morning Elsie and all. Geoff was up early this morning!
      Wordle 1,237 5/6

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  2. Good Morning Geoff and All. Couldn't sleep?
    Today's Tale – a Golfing one:

    Harry was shipwrecked on a tropical island for twelve months. One day out of the surf came a stunning blonde dressed in scuba gear. Slowly, languidly, voluptuously, she walked down the beach and laid down beside Harry.
    “Would you like a cigarette?” she purred in his ear.
    “Are you kidding!” said Harry.
    She unzipped a pocket of her wetsuit, pulled out a packet of cigarettes, fit one for Harry and put it in his mouth.
    Then she asked, “How about a nice cold beer?”
    “Yes! Yes! Yes!” cried Harry.
    She unzipped another pocket, produced two glasses and a bottle and poured them both a drink.
    She moved closer to him, whispering seductively in his ear, “How would you like to play around?”
    “Oh God!” said Harry disbelievingly, “don’t tell me you’ve got golf clubs in there too!”

      1. Morning Belle (actually, just noticed that it is afternoon already). I hope Today's Tale offset the bad times you seem to be enduring in today's posts. RC

  3. Tracy Campbell
    BTL 2 min ago

    Sebastian Monblat would realise should he give the matter any serious thought, that Nato is an international organisation and should be financed and peopled as such. The Americans enjoy none of the benefits that we do. They have very little paid annual leave and few public holidays and hardly any paid maternity or sick leave. Their social security is not what ours is and they are responsible for their own health care. However, they have the finest military in the world. That is what their sacrifice pays for. The other members of Nato, nearly all of whom pay nowhere near their fair share and in Britain are stripping out our military personnel, want America to provide our security with their sacrifice whilst we enjoy societal benefits that they can only dream of. Why this newspaper insists on printing letters by this muppet is beyond me.

    Having lived in the States, I can only agree.

  4. Russia has declared war on US democracy. 7 November 2024.

    With the U.S. presidential campaigns in full swing, so are America’s foreign adversaries.

    As we speak, they are working around the clock, deploying information operations aimed at interfering in US elections. Russia, in particular, is sowing chaos and undermining American citizens’ faith in their institutions, democracy, and leadership, with only one end goal in mind: weakening America’s position as a global leader.

    No. Tthat would be the Globalists and its worse than the elections. They run the UK.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/05/russia-declared-war-on-us-democracy-us-election-putin/

    1. The main players in undermining American citizens' faith in their institutions , democracy and leadership are surely the Democrats, and especially Biden, Harris and Pelosi!

  5. Good morning all.
    An early start despite a bit of a disturbed night as I've a trip to Stoke then home via Baguley to pick up Dr. Daughter's Christmas Present planned.

    It's another 5°C start with a very fine, misty drizzle outside and I don't think the windmills will be producing much today.

    A full thread of Leftie Breakdowns:-
    https://x.com/shellshockkk/status/1854234939509678215

    1. A generation which has been brought up with the idea that there are no losers, so they have never had to deal with being disappointed.

  6. Good morning all ,

    Very few hours sleep for me , my cough is the problem .
    Cat visitor slept somewhere in the house last night , my coughing spasm must have disturbed the cat where ever she was , because I heard meowing myside of the bed .. she didn't disturb Pip spaniel nor Moh .

    I hauled myself out of the bed and groped my way out of the bedroom , no light on and the cat brushed alongside me as I staggered downstairs then searched in one of the kitchen cupboards for some more cough medicine for me .

    Wretched cat sat outside the utility room scratching the door .. begging for food .. yes 5.30 am ..

    Once I am awake, I cannot go back to bed and catch up on more sleep .

    Another grey damp morning , not a whisper of a breeze ..

    If the weather was freezing , and dull , no breeze etc , what will all the wind turbines do , and as the idiot Milipede has decided to freeze the life out of us , how will the story end ?

    1. Oh dear.
      Sounds like you've been adopted!
      T'Lad is in the same situation, he's got a very pretty ginger thing as an univited house guest.

    2. Oh dear take care TB. I wasn't aware you had a cat as well as doggo.
      My terrible debilitating cough is in its second week now. With a Slight improvement, but this time last year I ended up in an ambulance after taking antibiotics.

    3. Have you been to doctor.
      Yes, yes. I know.
      Is there a walk-in type place anywhere along the Jurassic Coast?

    4. Sorry to hear your cough is so bad. Have you spoken to a pharmacist? Some are very good, though not all.

  7. 396034+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,
    The european leaders in the main, are as wide awake as they could possible be, as for the peoples in the main lacking, more so the English, in a very important ingredient, unity under ONE patriotic party banner with only one base cause within its manifesto, FREEDOM, encapsulating, spirit, speech,and a personal right to think & prayer anywhere on British soil.

    ( The last MUST be included so any political / policing kapos in the future will find their odious actions will no longer be tolerated)

    We are being left no alternative in England but to be doing
    " a Frenchy" on a daily basis

    Thursday 7 November: America’s decision has to be a wake-up call for Europe’s leaders

    1. Trump has pledged to require U.S. colleges and universities to “defend American tradition and Western civilization” and to purge them of diversity and inclusion programs, which he and Republicans have said are leftist in nature.

      1. I have nothing against diversity and inclusion, believing that everyone has their own unique niche to occupy and that we are all born equal in spirit (and we can argue about whose niches are more valid than others) and should be treated equally under the law.

        In today's Orwellian Newspeak however, "diversity" has come to mean conformity, and "inclusion" means shutting people out on the grounds of supposed privilege, real or imaginary.

        1. Indeed. If you are truly diverse you are not one of us is how it goes. Because your thinking isn't the same as ours.

    2. Not sure Starmer hates the UK, he just loves the part he lives in: a hard Left, metropolitan, big state socialst utopia where he and his are secure in useless non-jobs getting fat off other people's money.

      1. Problem we have is, that the vast majority of our political classes live in mental exclusion of an actual and active reality.

    1. And two good men have died because they were unjustly persecuted by this heartless, soulless Labour government!

      1. 396034+up ticks,

        Morning BB2,

        As the time once again nears for Lest we forget” we have via lethargy and downright criminal
        tactical actions via the polling stations, amassed a great more
        ” Lest we forgetting ” to do.

      1. 396034+ up ticks,

        Morning W,

        I do believe those stats. have changed somewhat since the political / pharmaceutical top rankers took a hand, holding a jabber tool.

  8. 396034+ up ticks,

    At this very late stage of our decaying as a United Kingdom Trumps Triumph MUST be heeded and built on Englandside.

    Dt,
    Allister Heath
    Trump’s triumph is a disaster for Starmer and the self-regarding, virtue-signalling elites
    This resounding triumph is total repudiation of the Left’s brand of politics – and cataclysmic for Labour

    1. Of course she is one of them. She was the plant the mugs in the Tory party voted for.

    2. I posted an episode of the 'Lotus Eaters' yesterday that was about her. Did anyone watch it? It proves what a fraud she is. Which is what I have been saying all along. It shows her thanking the government for lifting the limits of immigration from Africa. An issue, apparently, close to her heart. Jenrick was a better choice. At least he has two daughters and, according to him, he's worried about their future in a multi culti Britain. She just wants more of it.

    3. This is indeed worrying.

      She certainly needs to distance herself from the WEF and become a champion for the immediate release of Stephen Yaxley-Lenin – whose real name is Tommy Robinson – from jail if she wants to be taken for a decent Conservative party leader.

  9. TDS will not die:

    “SIR – I am in mourning. I have lived in Britain for 51 years but have kept my American citizenship, because I felt that American is what I am. But after this election, I am not so sure.
    Do I really want to belong to a country whose citizens can vote in such overwhelming numbers for a man like Donald Trump: a convicted felon, a liar, a misogynist, and an isolationist likely to sell Ukraine down the river? I don’t know what I shall do, but I know this: he is not my president. Anne Haselhurst
    Solihull”

    1. If you've lived here for 51 years but never considered the UK your home, sod off.

      They voted for him because he offerede a better future for them. Same as most people didn't vote for Labour and wanted a better future for themselves, not a socialist dystopia.

      1. Well, such things are complex, culturally, emotionally and intellectually. I was in the USA for 40 years but could never bring myself to becoming an American citizen. After I divorced and thus the only obligation to stay was removed I was free to go and so came home. A decision I don't regret because, for me, English culture and values are superior even though they are in a struggle with an enemy. But if you are loyal, you don't stay abroad but join the fight. Those who leave because it is dark days now, are, to me, cowards and disloyal to the heart of the Anglo Saxon world that the enemy seek to destroy. Kill us and the rest of the Anglo Saxon world will die quickly afterwards because we are the source and therefore we have a duty. So I can fully understand why an American cannot bring themselves to become a British subject. Even though I might oppose their politics.

    2. It seems that Anne 'he is not my president' Haselhurst is not a believer in democracy. Spose 2TK's Britain is a great place to live then.

      1. Maybe it says much about Americans who opt to live under a king rather than a president?

    3. The ratio 48% and 52% has raised itself once again.

      It seems that in very many cases, there is a huge opposition that cannot quite scrape over the line. It is only natural that they feel sore, and a lot of them too. It is the cornerstone of any democracy and perhaps is healthy that there is not an overwhelming consensus, and those with enough power to take over when things go awry.

      I don't know offhand the turnout at this election, but whilst Trump can claim his 52% of the popular vote, his mandate must be a bit less than this, so most Americans are either anti-Trump or indifferent (mostly because his only rival was no better). I must say it compares well with Starmer's 20%.

      1. Starmer's 20% was the proportion of the electorate that voted Labour. The rest either voted for others or stayed at home.
        Are you suggesting every American actually voted? No stay at homes?

        1. "Indifferent" is perhaps the wrong word I used for the stay-at-homes. Quite a few may be disgruntled rather than apathetic.

      2. The trouble with the 48% is that they have been taken over by people who are completely stark, staring, bonkers Marxists. They need to get rid of the Marxists then they might get some more people to listen to what they have to say.

        Why do you say it compares well with Starmer's 20%? The anti-Trump vote in the USA wasn't split several different ways as was the anti-Labour vote here. I think it doesn't compare at all.

    4. Solihull. The posher bit of Birmingham. What Anne doesn't yet realise is Solihull will be like Smethwick before long.

    1. Of course he is. Trump is only allowed two terms, and next time he will be over eighty anyway and have better things to do.

      The Democrats have until 2028 to come up with someone even better. Not an easy task, since their woke contingent alienates much of the electorate, and is maliciously intended to. They need a candidate prepared to work for the whole nation, not just select favourites. Then they can challenge Trump's appointed successor.

      1. The first thing Trump should do is establish a Commission for Electoral Fraud, appoint top lawyers and leave them to get on with it. They'll have at least four years. More if he gets the succession to President right.

        I'm assuming that the Republicans don't indulge in their own form of electoral fraud. If he doesn't appoint such a commission then I guess we know that they do.

      2. Amazing how these political parties like Labour and Democrats, supposedly founded to improve life for the common man, end up being the party of choice for the non-productive and over-privileged.

        1. I’m not sure that that analogy between Labour and Democrats works completely. Historically I don’t think the Dems were any more likely than the Republicans to be on the side of the righteous (as they themselves would see it). The southern slave states were Democrat and the Dems were responsible for Jim Crow laws. They were also notorious for corruption of the political system in New York . It is in more recent times that many people in the UK have naively identified the Democrats as akin to Labour, allegedly fighting the class struggle.

  10. I'm gonna open a TikkyTokky account, point the camera at myself crying, start jabbing with an extended finger then put a clothes peg on my nose and nasally gush.. "Omg, he's lidderally Hilter, lidderally Mussolini, lidderally Franco."

  11. Morning all 🙂😊
    Same old weather wet and grey.
    There will be no effective wake call up for European leaders, most of them are as brain dead as ours are.
    Apparently our government will be taxing British pensioners within three years. Some has to pay for all the ongoing mistakes our useless government's make.

    1. Three years? Council Tax, VAT and utility standing charges are already wolfing down a sizeable part of my State pension.

      1. It’s something I saw earlier today but due to an emergency call from our son overseas, I had to sort his car on our drive, out for a viewing.

  12. China’s role in net zero
    SIR – I recently heard a BBC interview about the Government’s proposal to erect giant electricity pylons across the Derbyshire countryside as part of its net-zero drive (Letters, November 6).

    One important question the interviewer didn’t ask was: who would manufacture them? Our steel industry is no more, so presumably the materials would come from abroad, particularly China, just like our solar panels and the materials we use for wind farms.

    As China is one of the worst carbon emitters – and is increasing its use of fossil fuels – it would seem that, by importing steel as well as oil and gas, we are contributing to global warming rather than reducing it.

    Dorothea Hinton
    Chichester, West Sussex

      1. There's plenty of common sense, just not in the elite that make moronic decisions based on absurd ideologies.

    1. Chinese steel is not as clean as European/UK steel, and so is more prone to corrosion.

  13. Starmer absolutely loves the UK.. he & his grifters get paid handsomely to spend all day self-harming and whining about Britishness then get to decide on a pay rise, free rent and WFH.

  14. They just can't help themselves.

    Donald Trump-hating prosecutor Letitia James declares new war on president-elect as she admits 'we did not expect this result'

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14052555/Letitia-James-war-Trump.html

    New York Attorney General Letitia James signaled on Wednesday she is not going to back down on her cases against Donald Trump as she vowed to fight against any potential 'revenge or retribution' she may face.

    The Trump-hating prosecutor declared she would not compromise the state's integrity or principles as she seeks to work with the new administration.

    She admitted, 'we did not expect this result,' but insisted, 'we are prepared to respond to this result.

    'And my office has been preparing for several months because we've been here before,' James said during a fiery news conference. 'We faced this challenge before, and we used the rule of law to fight back.

    1. She is a loud mothed fraud. But she knows that. She will: "…not compromise the states integrity or principles…" Of course not since she has no integrity to compromise in the first place. The conclusions of the trial were bogus and would have been thrown out by a higher court anyway. You don't have a prosecutor who has vowed to get you even before a case was formulated and you don't have a judge who was a contributor to the Democratic party and who's daughter was also an operator for that party. Such a judge should have recused himself, his presence alone was grounds to render the trial null and void. The whole ridiculous waste of millions of tax payers money was bogus from start to finish.

      1. Just tragic. It's all I can do to struggle through the day. But we must all soldier on for the sake of the children.

          1. This thread reminds me of a holiday to Iceland (country, not food store, in case of any confusion) in 2016. On the morning when the Brexit referendum results were announced we Leavers gave a quick cheer and looked forward to a glass or two that evening. By contrast the Remainers went into deep mourning and spent the entire day, passing through stunning scenery, wailing into their phones to commiserate with others of their ilk! How do you spell schadenfreude?

    1. Trump should establish a Commission for Electoral Fraud, appoint a top lawyer or three, and let them get on with it. They'll have at least four years. More if he gets the succession to President right.

    2. I'm fed up with the 'Harris is Black' schtick.
      If we are to start grading people's skin colour (where's my Farrow and Ball chart?) then she is brownish.
      She's no more black than I am.

      1. The ultimate joker in that regard is Megan, for most of her life she has labeled herself as white but now it's convenient, she's black. When she first arrived on the royal scene I assumed she was white. Had to be told she wasn't. Now, if being black is so unobvious you have to be told that she's black, then she clearly isn't.

      2. Why do people who have no more than 'a touch of the tar brush' (as my parents' generation used to say) now identify as black?.

        The Duchess of Sussex claims to be Nigerian and black but in her PR blurb when she was an actress touting for work she put down that she was Caucasian/white.

  15. 395034+ up ticks,

    Reading this I just pebble dashed the kitchen wall whilst consuming one of my four boiled breakfast eggs, the tool & co reminds one of political LICE feeding of decent peoples feelings when they ( the lice) are backtracking.

    President Trumps reply really must be " YOU me old tool and lammy the scammy have in the near past rhetorically done it in your trousers, BIG TIME", as for the FAT bird & porg ………….

    Dt,
    Starmer holds ‘hearty and fond’ call with Trump despite criticism from Labour
    Sadiq Khan and Emily Thornberry were among a number of Labour figures who criticised Trump in the wake of his victory.

    1. She tends to stay away from them if she can she only attends if she has to. Apparently she doesn't enjoy them because she's rather introverted and shy.

  16. 'Morning, Peeps.

    SIR – David Lammy has effectively made his job as Foreign Secretary untenable. Calling Donald Trump a “neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath” in 2018 was extraordinary for anyone in public office.

    No foreign power can decide who is employed by the British Government, but it is Sir Keir Starmer’s responsibility to see that staff who are clearly unable to serve this country effectively are moved to jobs where their opinions do not impinge on vital relationships with our allies.

    Victoria Cockburn
    Bishop’s Castle, Shropshire

    I find Lamentable Lammy a major embarrassment when I think of this cretin representing our country in foreign affairs. But his appoinment by 2TK is perhaps an even bigger political crime. In fact, if you look along the government front bench – as no doubt many did during PMQs yesterday – you will see a number of individuals who are outstandingly ignorant, robotic, gobby and completely lacking in self-awareness. I was delighted to see LL squirm as Kemi repeated his appalling insults about Trump, but the fact that he is there at all is a major act of political stupidity on the part of 2TK. The one piece of good news – there had to be some sooner or later – was Trump's remarkable win and the defeat of his useless opponent. I fear, however, that he won't be kindly disposed towards this country when it comes to trade. Even better in the evening was Patrick Christy's compilation of all the offensive former comments from 2TK and his ragbag of useless ministers. As they say, you won't hear these on the Biased Broadcasting Corporation! I am also hugely enjoying the meltdown of the left following Trump's win – the very thought of Trump in office for the next four years has sent them to the depths of depression and/or a manic rage, as they try to outdo each other in their offensive condemnation of the new leader of the free world. Oh joy!

    1. What a difference there is between Commonwealth Blacks and Educated American blacks .

      Lammy always appears rather befuddled as he steps out in his ill fitting shirts and suits .. it is as if he has got changed in his mud hut, surrounded by banana and sugar cane instant chewing meals!

      Commonwealth blacks have always let the side down , they are pretendee people as they drive their huge white Audis and Mercs.. lauding themselves as they cast crumbs of nothing to their beleaguered underclass tribal people and cause mayhem , as post colonial history has proved !

      Lammy is a typical example , insecure , ignorant , chip on his shoulder Commonwealth black man , a mere token in a Labour cabinet tick boxing… unlike athletes or black American politicians who are happy in their own skin .

      Aren't I being mean .. go on tell me , yes or no.

    2. Patrick Christie began his programme by noisily drinking a glass of water.
      He claimed it contained Rory Stewart's tears.

      1. Patrick Christys is one of the very best presenters on TV. He combines a knowledge of the various subjects he has to cover with a perceptive but pleasantly ironic sense of humour.

    1. 396034+ up ticks,

      O2O,
      Update,

      NoticingNick
      @ItchyBallix
      ·
      37m
      It's not Ireland, UK British number plates
      Quote
      Victoria Redfearn
      @vickysmith1981
      ·
      13h
      Replying to @GoldingBF
      This was in Accrington which I’ve posted to my own X? Not in Ireland! This is literally round the corner from my house this morning. School run time.

      If it is England maybe the Salvation Army could step up to the plate.

  17. SIR – Other than Donald Trump himself, the clear winner of the American election is Vladimir Putin.

    The United States can no longer be relied upon by its allies and partners in Europe. I hope European Nato states start massively increasing their defence budgets, as well as their mutual cooperation.

    Sebastian Monblat
    London SE14

    Looney Tunes.

    1. The DT keeps printing Moonblat letters? That's a good enough reason in itself to cancel a subscription.

    2. If the Moonblot idiot really believes any European nation will increase defence spending [other than smoke and mirrors DEI costs] then I have a couple bridges to sell him!

    3. I checked. Full moon is next week.
      Someone should tell MoonBat that he's jumped the gun.

      Mind you, in fairness, it is time that Europe and Blighty stopped spaffing money on wastrels and 'asylum seekers' and spent it on defence.

  18. 396034+ up ticks,

    Tis my honest belief that as it is going to effect them greatly in the future, the children at school assemblies should forthwith sing NOT the red flag "the working class can kiss my arse"but clutching their ticker area,
    " GOD BLESS AMERICA"

  19. 396034+ up ticks,

    Tis my honest belief that as it is going to effect them greatly in the future, the children at school assemblies should forthwith sing NOT the red flag "the working class can kiss my arse"but clutching their ticker area,
    " GOD BLESS AMERICA"

  20. One for the chaps – mainly but not exclusively:

    SIR – I read with unconfined admiration of Sir Chris Hoy’s approach to his prostate cancer diagnosis, and his hugely positive take on his prognosis (“NHS to review prostate cancer guidance in wake of Hoy plea”, report, November 6).

    I was recommended a PSA test during a routine medical check-up when I was 60. My reading was higher than expected. While I knew that it was not diagnostic, but rather a marker of potential disease, I was happy to enter a process of checks, biopsies and scans, none of which was more than slightly uncomfortable. After four years, there was a spike in the readings, and things moved quickly.

    Under the wonderful treatment of an eminent professor, I had the perishing thing whipped out. The day after the operation he told me: “Something is going to kill you but it won’t be your prostate, because that’s in a bag on my desk”. Now, at nearly 75, I enjoy a healthy life.

    The message is: get tested. It is neither frightening nor painful, but it might just save your life. So again, thank you Sir Chris for using your powerful voice to send this message.

    Robin Barlow
    Newton Abbot, Devon

    Not dissimilar to my position about six years ago. Went for a routine blood test, and as an afterthought as I was leaving I suggested that my PSA – last tested 3-4 years previously – should be updated. Two days later I was back in her surgery to learn that the reading had increased significantly. She did the finger test, and when I winced at the discomfort she said "Think yourself lucky that I have the smallest fingers in the practice"! (In my experience there is always some humour to be found in any medical procedure.) Following a scan the following week I asked the Doc conducting the biopsies – all 21 of them – what do you reckon? "I think that's coming out" he said as he turned the screen around to show me a couple of 'grey' areas on my walnut-sized organ. Sure enough, the surgeon calculated a stage 3/4 and I voted for removal. I did enquire about other options, including 'do nothing'. "Sure" he said, "I would give you up to age 70 but probably not beyond". Four weeks and an 8.25 hour op with the robotic Da Vinci machine later he did the deed and I escaped home in just 24hrs – following Mrs H J's crash-course on 'catheter care' for the two weeks I was required to use it. (Best fortninght of sleep I can remember, until the bloody bag sprung a leak…) The rest is history – no serious side effects and not a day passes when I don't give silent thanks for my 'afterthought'.

    So, chaps, if you haven't had your PSA checked for a while – or at all – PLEASE go and get it done. It may well save your life. (I am in my 74th year, incidentally, and in good health.)

    Here endeth the Lesson.

    1. Wow, Hugh.

      Loved and laughed at your amusing account .. and I bet you are so pleased you acted quickly.

      Son no one , now 55yrs old .. hates needles ..always has .. and even when he needed jabs to go overseas, created a real fuss.

      He has reached the age where he needs a PSA.. Moh and I have talked to him .. to no avail..

      He is a frequent pee 'er and at night time especially..

      Are we fussing too much?

      1. On 2nd January 2001, my OH went into acute urinary retention and couldn't pee at all. We arrived at A&E in a snowstorm. He was seen pretty much straightaway and drained out. He had the finger test and a few weeks later all the scans etc. His PSA was sky-high. The cancer had already metastasised but still seems to be contained somewhere in his pelvic bone. He had a TURP done and the catheter bag was no longer needed. Can't fault the treatment he's had from the NHS.
        Get tested, chaps!

        1. A friend of Moh's developed that on the golf course .. and was in great distress .. a warning , isn't it and he needed the op and had a catheter for a month .

          1. Yes – it was quite frightening – and I didn't realise the seriousness at first. Also waited ages for the 111 doc to call back – that was a couple of hours wasted when we could have gone straight to A&E anyway which was what she told us to do.

      2. No Belle, you are not. Frequent nocturnal visits shouldn’t go unchecked. When I was involved in the early Covid jabs we had some needle-phobics – not many out of the many hundreds we shepherded around the surgery – but we had a procedure to get them through successfully. Just one them fled out the back door at the last moment!

    2. 8.5 hr op, I'm not familiar with the exact procedure but that seems a long op or was that including pre and post care.

        1. Gosh, I never imagined it would be that long. Did you check than no organs were harvested as a sideline for the surgeon!

    3. I’m glad it worked out well for you Hugh but, unfortunately, PSA is not a good accurate test and it doesn’t meet the criteria for a national screening programme. Sure, if your result is very high, it can be very helpful and you need treatment but many results come back as equivocal as do the biopsy results. This leads to lots of men spending years worrying when they needn’t as ‘watchful waiting’ is the recommendation. Alternatively they get surgery and are left impotent and/or incontinent when with hindsight they could have been left alone. Studies of treatment of what used to be considered the lowest grade of tumour (arguably not cancer at all) show that survival outcomes are as good with no treatment as with treatment but the quality of life for the treatment group is worse.
      Hopefully, better screening options using MR scanning may be on the horizon but that will obviously cost more than a simple blood test.

      1. That’s interesting Lola, thanks. Yes, PSA has its limitations, one of those being false positives. However, the subsequent MRI and biopsies should determine if disease is present. So in theory unnecessary surgery shouldn’t be happening.

        The new test is the PHI, and this is said to be more accurate. It sounds as though this is now starting to be used when the PSA is indicating a problem.

  21. Good Moaning.
    Put your hands together and applaud my super human powers of self-control.
    Today we have a friend coming for lunch.
    As I chopped and peeled, MB reminded me that, to quote his own words "you haven't forgotten that X is a full-blown diabetic".
    Apart from immense irritation at "full blown" I also refrained from reminding him that:
    1. X is a grown woman of about my age.
    2. She and I have been friends for about 40 years.
    3. She comes from a family with a history of maturity onset diabetes.
    4. She was diagnosed some 20 years ago and by now has a pretty good idea of what she can and can't eat. And in what quanitities.

    After a soothing coffee, it's back to butchering the stringless green beans! Rather than doing the same to a noteless other half who decided to compound matters by monopolising the sink to drip-water a sodding pot plant.

    1. Morning Anne ,

      Please tell us what you are preparing for lunch.

      Runner beans are my favourite veg , not so keen on the smaller beans that are grown in Kenya. I also love broad beans .

      1. Skinless chicken thighs marinated in a glop (technical term) of mayo, mango chutney, whole grain mustard and seasoning. To be roasted in the oven.
        Stringless beans (not those bobby bean things), small potatoes and carrots all steamed.
        And a mushroom sauce.
        Poached whole apples and pears with a sprinkling of blackberries for colour contrast. Posh Sainsbury custard and/or Greek yoghurt.
        Cheese and bikkies and grapes.
        It's up to X to decide what she can eat; there is plenty to choose.
        And we have plenty to gossip about.

          1. It gets better. Her quiz team is short of a participant, so I've been 'volunteered'.
            Hey ho; a chance to show off my vast well of deep knowledge …..
            Noooo ….. NOT SPORT. Please …. NOT SPORT!!!!!!

  22. Moh is attending a Cepap clinic this morning .

    CPAP, or continuous positive airway pressure, is a breathing apparatus that uses a machine to provide pressurized air to keep airways open while sleeping. It's a treatment option for sleep apnea and other sleep-related breathing disorders.

    Me , sitting here ,smell of spag bol cooking in the kitchen .. for this evening .. when we eat , always ..

    Breakfast early, cheese and cucumber roll and a fresh fig for lunch , and then eat later at about 6pm .. https://x.com/Gary43371722/status/1854424845108285462

    1. My old man has a Cpap but has never been to a clinic! I’d better not tell him or he’ll feel left out! Do you have any problems with the Darth Vader next to you in bed, Belle? My husband has a new mask with a vent hole which blows a stream of cold air at me!😳

      1. Hi Sue ,

        R has had 2 machines over the past 30 +years .. they were horrible , he looked like Hannibal Lector at night , and so noisy. They both had rotted rubber and flow thing .. so he binned them years ago, they were huge .

        I suggested to him that ( after me having to poke him , because he stops breathing in bed , frightening for me and deadly fro him) that he contacted the Cpap bods to request a new machine , they are quite small now and not so clonky , and so that is where he is this morning.

        He needed his doctor to write a letter to remind them to contact him !!!!!

        Such a palavar , and that was early in the spring that everything was initiated..

        1. Good luck with it, Belle. If I’m asleep it’s fine, but if I wake it drives me berserk!

    2. Have one too Belle. Way to cumbersome if you have to get up several times during the night so given up on using it. I have no idea whether they are any good or not. But with all the straps it isn't exactly comfortable, makes you feel like you are on a deep sea diving trip.

    3. Hope you don't have the spaghetti on yet, Belle, or it'll be like Christmas sprouts that have been boiling since Advent.

  23. Fewer people in the office today than on a normal Thursday and the tube strike has been called off. I wonder if they're all sitting at home medicating for TDS?

  24. I suspect there were a good few Conservatives who decided to wash their hair on July 4th.

  25. I suspect there were a good few Conservatives who decided to wash their hair on July 4th.

  26. "the party of choice for the non-productive and over-privileged".

    That's good. I'll steal it unless you have a © on it.

  27. I salute Captain America! How, I’m proud to say, I backed Trump all the way
    Kathy Gyngell November 7, 2024

    The Conservative Woman – https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/salute-captain-america-how-im-proud-to-say-i-backed-trump-all-the-way/

    BTL

    A man one does not particularly like at a personal level can be an excellent president who loves his country just as a contemptible and odious prime minister who despises his own race and compatriots, such as we have in the UK, seems hell-bent on destroying the country beyong repair.

  28. I salute Captain America! How, I’m proud to say, I backed Trump all the way
    Kathy Gyngell November 7, 2024

    The Conservative Woman – https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/salute-captain-america-how-im-proud-to-say-i-backed-trump-all-the-way/

    BTL

    A man one does not particularly like at a personal level can be an excellent president who loves his country just as a contemptible and odious prime minister who despises his own race and compatriots, such as we have in the UK, seems hell-bent on destroying the country beyong repair.

  29. Morning all 🙂😊
    Same old weather wet and grey.
    There will be no effective wake call up for European leaders, most of them are as brain dead as ours are.
    Apparently our government will be taxing British pensioners within three years. Some has to pay for all the ongoing mistakes our useless government's make.

      1. I'm taxed on my enormous public sector pension and my very small private one. Only the basic state pension is untaxed. I'm not complaining as they together provide enough for my needs.

      2. It now seems because my stats pension is so pathetic, if I draw money from my savings account to meet escalating house hold costs, such as heating. I am taxed on this as well.

  30. By the way. There is something that has been bothering me for the last couple of days considering the wide margin of Trumps win. How is it that all the polls were saying that it was way to close to tell who was or wasn't ahead in the Presidential election? Doesn't it strike anyone as being suspicious that they were all in lock step on the issue and how could all of them all make the same mistake?

    1. I hope that it resulted in large numbers of Democrats thinking that they had it in the bag and not bothering to vote.

      A spectacular own goal.

      1. His dad was on the GBN breakfast show this morning. It was a nice interview with a nice man.

    2. Doesn’t surprise me in the least, when I think of the MSM all singing from the same hymn sheet regarding Covid, they all said and did exactly the same thing.

    3. It's well known now, that opinion polls are not designed to gauge what the people's opinion is, but what it should be.

      Edit: There was a superb bit of "Yes, Prime Minister" when Sir Humphrey managed to get the PM to give two opposing answers to the same question by manipulating the context and the wording.

    4. The electorate have got used to opinion pollsters and now play them at their own game and lie to them. Isn’t it wonderful when the pollsters end up with egg of their faces.

      1. My YouGov experience suggested that once pollsters got a whiff of conservative tendencies, the respondent was never included in political polling and was confined to consumer products like fruit juices and men's toiletries.

    1. Sorry, Phil. The Tupac/Snoop Dogg quote was not said in the way suggested by the meme.

      Fact check: Kamala Harris did not say she listened to Snoop Dogg and Tupac while smoking marijuana in college

      By Reuters
      August 20, 20202:42 PM GMT+1
      Updated 4 years ago

      Reuters Fact Check

      Social media users have been sharing a quote online claiming Kamala Harris said she listened to Snoop Dogg and Tupac while smoking marijuana in college. Users have questioned this statement and the claim is being used to discredit Harris, because both artists’ first albums were released years after Harris had already graduated from college.

      The quote refers to an interview Harris did in February 2019 with The Breakfast Club, a morning radio show about Black culture, politics and more. Hosts Charlamagne Tha God and DJ Envy asked Harris questions on various topics.
      http://youtu.be/Kh_wQUjeaTk
      In the interview, Charlamagne Tha God asks Harris if she has ever smoked marijuana and Harris responds that she has.
      http://youtu.be/Kh_wQUjeaTk?t=2193
      Later in the interview, DJ Envy asks Harris what music she listens to. Before she has a chance to answer, Charlamagne Tha God interrupts by asking what music Harris listened to while smoking marijuana in college.
      http://youtu.be/Kh_wQUjeaTk?t=2288
      Harris laughs but ignores Charlamagne Tha God’s question and responds to the original query of what music she listens to by saying “Snoop Dogg”, “Tupac” and adds that she loves “Cardi B”.

      Without seeing the interview, the audio can lead a listener to believe Harris was responding to the marijuana question. In the video, she is looking at DJ Envy and responding to his original question about music.

      Fox News discussed the interview and the misunderstanding, stating that Snoop Dogg and Tupac had not released albums when Harris was in college. Both hosts of The Breakfast Club show appeared in an MSNBC interview and addressed the confusion and Fox News feature.

      DJ Envy explained that, “I mean, we wanted to humanize [Harris], not just talk about politics, talk about what she likes, what she does, and I asked what she listens to and she said she listens to Snoop Dogg and Tupac. At the same time, my co-host was still talking about the marijuana and it was just a funny exchange. But she was actually answering me, and people took that she was answering Charlamagne and said she was lying, which is not true.”

      Harris’s former spokesman Ian Sams addressed the mix-up in a tweet: “The rightwing is so desperate to attack @KamalaHarris they're trying to make Reefergate happen. @djenvy asked what she listened to. @cthagod made a pot joke. Then she answered @djenvy's question. This really isn't that complicated.”

      VERDICT
      False. Kamala Harris explained to The Breakfast Club hosts that she listens to Snoop Dogg and Tupac. She did not say she listened to these artists while smoking marijuana in college.

      https://www.reuters.com/article/world/fact-checkkamala-harris-did-not-say-she-listened-to-snoop-dogg-and-tupac-while-idUSKBN25G1ID/

    1. :-). So THAT's why my brother still rides a motobike..
      And the answer to the obvious question is;
      "In the fridge".

    1. I remember him being interviewed on TV by Robin Day, who accused him of being just another "here today, gone tomorrow" minister.

      John Knott just got up and walked out!

      1. With great dignity.
        When the Falklands were invaded he offered to resign, twice.
        I can’t imagine any modern minister doing similarly and so promptly.

    2. And the BBC insulted him every time it was reported saying he left an interview in a childish huff. He had been insulted by the fat kiddy fiddler, Robin Day. I would have punched him in the mouth . . . several times, then a few more times to make sure he understood how stupid he was.

      1. Even so, Day was a much better interviewer than the dross we get now. He seemed to dislike all politicians equally.

  31. Not bad:
    Wordle 1,237 5/6

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

    1. Well done. 4 today.

      Wordle 1,237 4/6

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

  32. 396034+ up ticks,

    Could a movement be started to transfer this nuclear destructive move to say, Leicester square London, a far more suitable site., and possible some deposited in Guy Fawkes old haunts.

    Dt,

    The tranquil corner of England about to be lost forever
    Explore the charms of East Lincolnshire before the sound of birdsong is replaced by the crackle and hum of electricity transformers

    1. Yes, there is a LOT of ill feeling about the mega beast pylons planned for South Holland, and the whole route.

    2. "…the crackle and hum of electricity transformers…"

      They'll be silent on a day like today.

      1. 396034+ up ticks,

        Afternoon WS,

        Yes, ed the brain dead red will stop the snap crackle pop of anything appertaining to electrics
        …… eventually.
        He will, I believe have some claim to fame, as darkness will morph
        into being called edtime.

  33. Good morning, all. Weather? Same s**t, different day.

    Now, this is what a mandate from the electorate looks like:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/036d25bc1610c9309795522698354f6984089cbbc98931852e3dc370c0042802.png
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/301a43df18a44f0244d621ce9a1c6f39454c9bc9b05ab191aa05ab547c38d11f.png

    Compare to Starmer's meagre 33% of votes cast = 20% of the electorate 'mandate' for CHANGE.

    And the Labour apparatchiks, and to be fair some other idiots, talk of democracy.

    Clearly, the demos had their day in the USA this time round: sadly we've been shafted by the system and as a result saddled with an authoritarian bunch of no-marks.

    1. Note that most of California is red. It's only the coast that is liberal. Trumps team should, in anticipation of the next election, cultivate the state hard. Remember Ronald Ragan was from California, if that went Republican, they could be in power for a long time and stamp out this leftist bull forever.

      1. Looking at a map of the vote, although the Democrats won a much smaller share of the country's land area, its vote is concentrated in the densely populated parts, hence the rather closer result amongst the population as a whole.

        1. That is always the case. I think most English people would be surprised at how conservative America is outside the cities on the East and West coasts. In the central valleys of California, people tend to drive pick ups with a gun rack and out of New York City in the state itself, it is full of villages and little towns with the values of church going Republicans. As for New England, that is mostly Democrat but the fact is they are because they can indulge themselves with liberal values because they are almost 100% white and therefore don’t have the problems of the big cities.

    1. Trump was the chosen one but Kamala became a saint after conceding to an Elongated choice.

    2. Not unheard of for a loose woman to become a saint but Kamala Harris is no Empress Theodora.

  34. 396034+ up ticks,

    Dt,
    My extraordinary journey to visit the world’s last ‘Stone Age’ tribe
    For 60,000 years, the tribes of the Andaman Islands have lived undisturbed – but now their way of life is under threat.

    I believe starmer the snake charming tool has requisitioned hotel accommodation for them in the W Midlands, to rebuild labours dwindling foundation members & giving the party new blood ready for the NEW RESET AGE.

  35. Greetings one and all,
    Has anyone heard about this? In Edinburgh on Tuesday a man's head was cleanly severed, allegedly because a bus ran him over, and the body was found in another street, then local residents and students were evacuated.
    After initial reports, the 'incident' seems to have been hushed up.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQipI33diLs

    1. They've clearly hushed it up after nobody believed the bus story – and there were no witnesses or images of it happening.

      1. Whoever put out such an obvious lie can't be very bright. The fact they lied tells us all we need to know.

    2. The deceased has been identified and named.

      Edinburgh 'severed head' incident: Police identify man killed in collision with bus

      Michael Leneghen, 74, tragically died after being struck at around 7.25pm on Saturday evening in the Cowgate area of the city while the street of Edinburgh were full of Halloween revellers

      By Rory Cassidy, Reporter Liam Buckler, Senior US News Reporter
      12:01, 7 Nov 2024 Updated12:39, 7 Nov 2024

      A 74-year-old man whose "severed head" was found in the middle of the road after he was hit by a bus has been identified.

      Pensioner Michael Leneghen's family released a heartbreaking statement through police following the incident, saying: "We wish to thank all the members of the public and emergency services involved. We would now ask for privacy at this time.”

      The horrifying tragedy happened on Saturday evening around 7.25pm, while revellers were out celebrating Halloween in the city, many of them in fancy dress. The 74-year-old was on foot when he was struck by a single decker bus.

      Sergeant Paul Ewing, of the Road Policing Unit in Edinburgh, said: “Our thoughts remain with Michael’s family and friends, as well as everyone affected by this tragic incident.

      “Our enquiries remain ongoing. We have already spoken to a number of people who were in the area at the time and work is ongoing to check public and private CCTV footage. We are still keen to hear from anyone who has not yet spoken to police. If you have any information about what happened, then please get in touch.

      “Anyone with information is asked to call the police via 101. Please quote incident number 3395 of Saturday, 2 November 2024.”

      Disturbing images and clips shared on social media in the aftermath claimed to show a 'severed head' on the street following the incident in the Cowgate area – and one top police boss urged members of the public to report them and not to share them with others.

      Chief Inspector Trisha Clark, the local area commander, said that some of the man's grieving loved ones had seen the video by accident. She commented: "We are aware of videos and images circulating on social media which are causing distress to the deceased's family and those viewing them inadvertently. We would ask members of the public not to share them out of respect for his family, and to report them to the relevant social media platform to prevent further circulation. There has been a lot of speculation, and I would like to reassure the local community that this was an isolated incident and there is no risk to the wider public.

      "This was a tragic incident. We are investigating a crash, and our road policing officers, assisted by local officers, are continuing to carry out enquiries. Anyone with concerns or any information which could assist the investigation should contact police." Police cordons in place around the road were lifted on Sunday, and floral tributes began to appear at the scene.

      https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/breaking-edinburgh-severed-head-incident-34036698

  36. Corker of a post under the DT article on Starmer's "fond and hearty" relationship with Trump.

    "Keir: "Sorry Donald but Emily T thinks you are a sexual predator"
    Donald: "I've seen her picture. Tell her she has nothing to worry about"."

  37. Just published in Free Speech is a new article on what Trump must do to end the Woke Tyrann y – a Herculean task that will take much effort and many years to achieve. The Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 has been used by those who have not read it as a club to beat Trump, who says he knows nothing about it, but it does appear to contain a realist blueprint for a return to sanity, and we hope that Trump does implement it.

    And part of that fightback against the insanity that is woke globalism, we need to understand the law and the innate freedoms it gives here, and that is why Iain Hunter’s highly interesting article on the British Constitution is a must read – know your rights!

    Finally, we are still collecting for ex-servicemen and women as part of our Remembrance Day appeal, with the charity Help For Homeless Veterans well in the lead in our poll. All donations to FSB up to Remembrance Day will be given to the winning charity.

  38. We were told many times by the media that membership of the EU required membership of the ECHR. I have spent some time trying to find proof of this but have failed.

    The EU is not signed up. This means that HR claims cannot be made made against EU law. I assume it from this that the requirement arises by default.

    Does anyone have a reference?

      1. The nearest to an answer that I can find is on a Wiki page on the Council of Europe and effectively confirms what I surmised above i.e. that the EU expects members to be signed up to the ECHR because it hasn't done so itself.

        The European Union is expected to accede to the European Convention on Human Rights (the convention). There are also concerns about consistency in case law – the European Court of Justice (the EU's court in Luxembourg) is treating the convention as part of the legal system of all EU member states in order to prevent conflict between its judgements and those of the European Court of Human Rights…

        1. I think that because the Council predates the EU and most EU member countries signed up meant the EU felt it didn’t need to.
          It seems odd that it should wish to as one is a citizen of ones country not the EU.
          In this case it strikes me that the EU is irrelevant. Perhaps signing the ECHR is now a prerequisite of being an EU member.

    1. Membership of the EU requires membership of the ECHR. However, the ECHR isn't the problem. There's a huge mass of hard Left nutters preventing the deportation of criminal vermin.

      1. "Membership of the EU requires membership of the ECHR."

        My point was that I have not been able to find definitive proof of this.

  39. This is just a rant to relieve the angst. I’ve been to the Health Centre this morning for a Diabetes Checkup. This is the first in four or five years. There were none at all during the Covid Crisis and when my blood glucose levels shot above 25 and I went hyperglycaemic they wouldn’t let me in and I had to go to the hospital. Since then I have reduced it by dieting and exercise. The nurse gave me the usual going over, Urine sample (which I forgot) Weight, Feet working normally, blood pressure, blood samples. My Blood Pressure is too high. It has always been high, Result? I have come home with a Blood Pressure monitor and a seven day program to check it morning and evening. I can do without this. I am not a doctor. I had forgotten what these people are like. This is an NHS full employment program.

    1. Stress makes it go up. At least you will be able to monitor it quietly at home. Just make sure you're relaxed and deep breaths first.
      I got bullied by texts from the GP surgery a few months ago – I borrowed my neighbour's monitor. I was quite surprised by the variation – it was much higher later in the day. I sent them two of the lower readings and they were happy with that.

  40. The start.. beginning of the end.. and all that.. 1st test.

    The suspended Labour MP Mike Amesbury facing a by-election in Runcorn and Helsby, after Cheshire Police announced this lunchtime they are charging him for assault.

    1. Meanwhile, Manchester Airport victims Fahir Amaaz and his brother Muhammad Amaad prepare for their new jobs with GM police.

    1. Not men, pakistani muslim paedophiles. And that's 10 years each on average for the mechanistic rape of children. They, and their families, should be castrated and deported.

    2. Flea / lice /crab ridden filth /passing dirty diseases around like confetti ..

      Why on earth do these girls ALLOW such filth to even touch them ..

      Hairy dark bodies are repulsive .. Those people have no care , no love , just total control.

      Those poor lasses and lads were probably a variety pack , a change from the goats dogs and sheep and hens those filthy b######## usually want to penetrate.

      1. Often the children were lonely/from broken homes/in care. Easy targets for groomers. Just the sort of vulnerable people the Police should have been protecting but didn't.

          1. But they weren’t, in fact I always thought they were an odd shape, although it may have been her figure as a whole that gave me the impression.

        1. The Monroe effect. In the 50s and 60s, TV and cinema had a thing for blondes, real or bottled.

    1. Alec will probably confirm she should be using three fingers on the bow string which looks a tad loose Lord knows what’s happened to the shaft?

      1. The pointy thing on the left is the feathers, If she needs a bigger shaft I am willing to give her mine.

        1. And there was me thinking the pointy end was the tip of the shaft…aptly named the arrowhead….

      1. I would sincerely doubt that a loose length of thick rope will make a good substitute for a taut bowstring!

    2. Probably a tranny or somewhere on the lbtq spectrum, media would never have a straight actress in a leading role.

    1. With Trudeau we already have our own emporer in waiting, we cerainly don't want him in Canada. Maybe that supposed bolthole in Portugal will be be a suitable backwater for the couple.

      If he is not deported maybe Trump will set the IRS lose and demand tax on all of Harrys worldwide wealth.

    2. With Trudeau we already have our own emporer in waiting, we cerainly don't want him in Canada. Maybe that supposed bolthole in Portugal will be be a suitable backwater for the couple.

      If he is not deported maybe Trump will set the IRS lose and demand tax on all of Harrys worldwide wealth.

    1. Weren't some US colleges also giving people a few days off to recover from Trump syndrome? I did read about one college opening up a safe space for students where they could escape the mental stresses brought on by the election.

      Just think, these are our future leaders!

  41. The Dems are tearing themselves to pieces. They blame George Clooney for saying Biden should retire.
    Biden blames Nancy Pelosi because she is Nancy Pelosi.
    Harris's campaign team accuse Biden of sabotage (garbage comment)
    Kamala Harris blames Elmo from Sesame Street.

    1. It's wonderful to see all of the angst the election has caused.

      We are supposed to be looking forward to lots of luvvies abandoning California and moving north. Good luck moving from balmy LA to Winnipeg in January.

  42. If farmers go on strike, Labour has already lost the next election

    The Government has forgotten how quickly the food supply chain can collapse – and this will be one crisis they can't blame on the Tories

    Michael Deacon, Columnist & Assistant Editor • 7th November 2024 • 7:00am GMT

    Outside the Tory party itself, I doubt anyone remotely cares who's in Kemi Badenoch's shadow cabinet. Or, indeed, who Kemi Badenoch is. Still, there's no need for Tories to let this worry them.

    That's because the single most important truth about politics is as follows. Oppositions don't win elections. Governments lose them.

    This is why Sir Keir Starmer should be absolutely petrified by farmers threatening to go on strike over inheritance tax. And it could well happen. Olly Harrison, a Merseyside arable farmer – as well as an influential YouTuber – has said: "They say we are only ever four meals away from anarchy.

    What Rachel Reeves doesn't understand is how fragile the food supply chain is, and we saw in Covid how it only took a few days of panic-buying to cause shortages. If we stop goods leaving farms for a day or two, it will happen faster than you think."

    A nightmarish vision for shoppers. But also for the Government. Because, if supermarket shelves are left empty, the next election is already lost. There may be four and a half years to go till polling day. But voters won't forget. And Labour will be duly punished.

    First, because a farmers' strike would be the first major national problem that Sir Keir can't blame on the Tories. He tirelessly blames the Tories for the state of the economy and the NHS. And no doubt he will go on blaming the Tories, when it turns out that he can't fix either. But he won't be able to blame the Tories for a crisis that's been directly caused by his own Chancellor.

    And it gets worse. Because a farmers' strike would instantly blow apart Labour's key selling-point from this year's election. Which is that Sir Keir and co are calm, sensible, reliable "grown-ups" who, after years of Tory chaos, will finally restore competence to politics. A sudden nationwide shortage of food would rather undermine this boast.

    As, come to that, would millions of ordinary workers being denied a pay rise, or losing their jobs altogether, thanks to Labour choosing to suck their employers dry via National Insurance. It might also be a touch undermined by a series of front-page news stories about lonely grandmothers freezing to death over Christmas because they could no longer afford to heat their homes. Let's see Labour try to pin the blame on the previous government for that. [Hmm. The not-Tories not only followed Millipede's 2008 legislation but added to it. I think we can stick this one on them as well.]

    Of course, no matter what the rest of us may think of Sir Keir, we'd better pray that the farmers don't follow through on their threat. But if they do, we can at least look forward to one small consolation.

    Normally, Labour activists love strikes. With furious glee, they join the pickets, denounce "scabs", and demand that ministers bow to the strikers' will. How entertaining it will be, watching them frantically rack their brains for reasons why this one strike is actually wrong – and the strikers are greedy, selfish, militant zealots.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/07/farmers-strike-will-cost-labour

    There'll be nothing left by the time of the next election…

    1. The farmers need to be careful not to ruin Christmas. People won't forgive that easily even if they support them.

      1. Christmas shortages might highlight the issue but even during normal times empty supermarket shelves would be blamed on farmers.

        Pity the supermarket that brings in replacement stock from overseas, they will be accused of price gouging if they increase prices to cover increased costs.

        Don't worry though, most of us are prepared and have had the Christmas sprouts stewing for at least a month now.

      2. I believe that they intend to do a demonstration on the 19th of this month, in London. I don't think they would ruin Christmas because they would like the support of the general public. If they are going up to London, ordinary people should go up and support them.

    2. I heard recently that almost all the cabbages in UK supermarkets come from one large farm. Have not verified that, but if the industry is this specialised and with such large businesses, will family farms going on strike have any impact? Don't they mostly produce things like wheat, that would take time for shortages to show up?
      I don't see how businesses with bills to pay could make a strike work. They have to slaughter at given times, milk cows and feed them etc.

        1. My opinion is buy British and buy seasonal. Though if someone fancies an avocado i don't see a problem. As long as their Winter veg is local.

          1. Thanks Phizzee 🙂 My supermarket experience is Asda, Morrisons, Lidl – they actually seem to listen to customers. Such produce sells out pdq, they’ll be aware of that.

        2. That's the point though, to make an impact that one farm would have to be persuaded to join the strike, and even if they did, the supermarkets would order more from Europe.
          The sleeping sheep would only notice if pizza and wine disappeared from the shelves in any case.
          It would have more impact if the lorry drivers or the food wholesalers joined in – but after what happened in Canada, nobody can be under any illusions about what 2TK would do to striking lorry drivers.

          1. Half a century ago, BB2, when I was still young, my peers were interested in politics/politicians (esp M Thatcher). I don’t find it so among many people of that age today, not the ones I know anyway – too busy on the wheel, keeping up with paying their bills, checking in online in their leisure time. Activists (usually Labour leaning) an exception.

          2. I think they actually believe similarly today, BB2 – just with the wrong ones from our point of view. I suspect a lot of young people were reached during lockdowns/online, surfing the web a lot of the time. The old saying ‘when you’re young you think/vote with your heart…when you’re older you think/vote with your head’…..😁

      1. Lincolnshire grows a lot of potatoes, cabbages, carrots and peas. It is why that county is a target for huge solar farms.

    3. Folk need a solid demonstration of what hard Left 'climate change' policies mean for our food. Lefties will get the shock of their lives when avocado can't be bought.

    4. I've always said that once the supermarket shelves are empty, people will start to feel angry enough to do something about it.

          1. I can imagine the urban dunces trampling across winter fields that are ready for next spring's sowing, complaining to the watching farmer: "There are no crops here. Why aren't you growing something? Where are the vegetables?"

            You know the farmer's reply…

  43. Good afternoon. Just passing through. Under the sodding weather again. Will be back on Monday. Have a jolly weekend.

    1. Feel better soon, in varying degrees the weather is making many of us feel awful. I blame the government.

      1. I bought this from Amazon…jumbans LED SAD Touch Timing Stepless Dimming Affective Disorder Therapy Lamp.
        Dunno if it was that that cheered me up or Trump winning.

        1. I will investigate (the lamp, that is). I met HLass for lunch yesterday. Had a lovely time!

          1. She is. My lips are sealed however…! We put the world to rights and it feels a safer place…. funny that, did something else happen?

    1. Of course if you compare the numbers in 2020 to the numbers in 2024 it won't add up. Likely most of the people who voted this time exist and are still breathing.

      1. The election was divisive. I know someone who said he wasn't visiting his parents grave again because they voted Harris.

    1. President Trump was subsequently proved right over Ivermectin and Hydroxy….No apology forthcoming from the likes of the loud mouthed bow legged growler.

  44. Anyone who is having trouble posting pics/memes.

    I found if i temporarily turn Ghostery off it allows me to post.

  45. Beautiful late summer weather here. I hand-washed the car – and that doesn't get done very often.

      1. Yes, it should be :"Recognized at birth." But I'm sure it will be corrected before he signs the bill.

        1. Well, both actually but presumably it's 'gender' in the current legislation.

          He should ensure that the new laws include a clause "…for all references to 'gender', read 'sex'…"

    1. Libtards, who support the Demonrats (or should that be Demotwats?) are a cartel of weed-munching vegetablists; the precise reason for their malnutrition and concomitant stupidity.

  46. I watched (part of) a football match in a French bar last night. One of the players was white. I reported it to the Gendarmes and he was taken off at half time. I think it is a criminal offence to play professional football in Europe if you are not BAME. I know we are supposed to be out of the EU now but it is being introduced into the UK through the back door. Cricket next!

    1. Yo Ped

      I watched (part of) a football match in a French bar last night.

      It must have been a very big bar…….

    1. You've not seen Mongo when he got a splinter. Big baby. rolled on his back and pushed himself around. Pulled it out, whining and bleating, tiniest, tiniest dot of blood as his front paws drummed on my back. A dab with antiseptic and an order to stay and Junior kept him on his side for a bit until the great oaf (well, he was 1 then so not so big) and he was away.

      Great big daft baby.

    2. My GSD cross used to limp if he wanted sympathy. His injury had long since healed (he got attacked by another dog when out for a walk), but you only had to say, "how's your poorly paw?" for him to look pathetic and be unable to put it down.

  47. Either my wife has been possessed or it's that time again. Put wet clothes out to get some air around them and got an earful – damp, no sun, cold.

    Still said no heating on as it's 17'c and we'd only get 2' out of it. That might be a bad choice as it's got to go on at some time but she's not here for a good bash of the day and yes, I'd like to put it on at about 2 until 9 but you can't with a damned heat pump.

    Went out to buy chocolate as was fed up. Got an earful about that because I'd eaten it all yet I thought she was fat (I don't, but my eating all the chocolate was evidence that I did. No, I don't understand either.). Got one of the M&S boxes out and said ' have a biscuit. 'Don't want a ''''' biscuit!'

    Made tea. Came back with giant glass of wine. I don't '''' want a '''' drink, I'm not my '''' mother!'. I said, ok, have my tea and went to do more work. Went to the loo to find her eating biscuits (and feeding Oscar same0 and getting to the bottom of the bottle.

    Complicated fellows, women.

  48. Actually – straw poll: do your dogs, if you have them, bark?

    Oscar does, a bit. Lucy doesn't. Mongo almost never does. They whuff and there's an occasional tectonic rumbling but little barking. I only noticed as Mrs Clarke's poodle thing seems to bark all the time.

    1. Dolly barks to the door bell.

      Both Dolly and Harry were very well behaved at my garden party (just 20 miles from you !) Though she did create a lot of noise as i allowed some young friends to use my/her bedroom to change their baby.

      1. Ah, see none of mine are 'well behaved'. I suppose they are, but Mongo'll eat a plate of food left out, Oscar will drink beer if that's unguarded. Lucy is still really timid and tends to stick with me when there's other folk around.

        A chum's kid – a 6 year old – isn't especially gentle with Oscar and he walks away rather than barking. They're all very good with small children. I saw them all laying around my nieces 1 year old as the toddler bounced and leant on them as she crawled about.

        1. I was hoping that if Dolly decided to bite anyone it would be Geoff !

          She did nip my financial advisor when he visited but he was forgiving as he has Chi's as well.

      1. We had one of those.
        It used to escape and I was sent to catch it. As far as the dog was concerned it was a game, it would wait for me to nearly catch up and then set off again. After about an hour it would let me put on its lead and we would walk/trot home together.
        Needless to say, I was in the school cross country team!

        1. You were sent to catch the dog because you were a cross country runner or you became a cross country runner because you had to chase the dog?

          1. Probably, and for swimming too.
            Anything over 200m was a very long way to race, even though I usually do a few hundred Km in the pool each summer

    2. Kadi is very vocal. No surprise as he's part Cairn. Yesterday I heard him kicking up a racket and saw the postie coming up the path. The postie spoke to him and Kadi ran away and hid, but kept on barking!

  49. Phew!
    Safely Home.
    Stepson is OK, turns out the bill he was worried about had been dealt with when I was over there last week. They had been worked out but had not arrived at his flat when I paid them on the telephone helplines!

    Then to Baguley for my auction purchase!
    And guess who missed his turning and ended going twice round the daffodils to get to the auctioneer's!
    The couple of lads working there were happy to see Trump win!

    1. It's damned annoying that when you're in a hurry and want to give them money but have no specific info and need to speak to a person the utility companies make it incredibly difficult.

      1. One was an automated system which was fairly quick and efficient.
        The other was a very pleasant Edinburgh lass who was also quite efficient.

  50. Just looked at ordering a Bresse chicken for a special dinner. A 1.3kg bird. £46.50 plus delivery. I'm thinking Non !

      1. This chicken has a depth of flavour no other chicken can match. A little gamey unlike the factory birdies.

        I will buy one…. but for me ! Guests can have chicken nuggets from Deliveroo.

          1. If I could only eat three cheeses for the rest of my life they would be: gruyère; roquefort; parmesan.

          2. I’ve never tried Tunsford. I like farmhouse Lancashire; Stilton (especially the superb produce of the Colston Bassett dairy); and a good Cheddar.
            This is difficult since I like a good many others, including Wensleydale, Cheshire and Leicester.
            Gubbeen is a delicious Irish cheese.
            Pavé d’Affinoise, Vacherin Mont d’Or and a good Camembert are also continental favourites.

          3. French cheese is best purchased and eaten in France. Roquefort, Reblochon, Brie, Camembert are favourites. When I buy French cheese in England it is missing something.

          4. I know. Many years ago I was shocked to see the rusty vats at San Pourcain and the dilapidated oak barrels. The wine produced was exquisite and Geoffrey Grigson wrote at that time it was “chic in Paris”.

            Move on a few decades and I happened upon the winery again. Gone were the rusty vats to be replaced by stainless steel tanks. The wine tasted differently and had lost its appeal.

      2. Turkey is, by a country league, the most boring meat. I've tried countless times to discover where the flavour is in the utterly pointless meat, but I've failed sequentially.

          1. No. I'm telling you that I stopped eating turkey 40 years ago because I kept finding it pointless.

            That's when I switched to a capon galantine at Christmas. Best Christmas dinner ever.

        1. Turkey is dull enough to add tasty sauces to. And drape bacon over. And, typically, comes round once a year.

          1. Not in my house. I eat capon; duck; goose; pork; beef; or lamb every time but never turkey. An expensive waste of money on something with no flavour.

    1. "the Bresse Gauloise breed raised within a legally-defined area of the historic region and former province of Bresse, in eastern France."

      Smoked chicken?

        1. I smoked Gitanes in my youth. In Poland early seventies similar cigarettes were named Sport.

          Took up pipe and Whisky Flake late seventies and quit altogether at age 30 on the advice of a partner in the practice I worked for. He was an Irishman named Barney (Bernard) Grimes.

    2. In one of our supermarkets it is $1.99 a pound for bland supermarket chicken. Maybe buy one of them and spend the saving on a decent bottle of wine or so.

      1. Defeats the object i think. That sort of chicken i would put in a curry but Bresse stands out on its own.

        3 Michelin star Georges Blanc made it famous. That was what i am trying to achieve.

        1. I used to poach chicken breasts for curry, but now use the meat from a fresh roast chicken. More juices and flavour.

      1. No ! And according to the 3 star recipe it is only the breast that is served. The rest makes the stock for the sauce. Luckily the chickens don't have nipples.

          1. I am sure Georges Blanc's restaurant would deflect the price to the customer given he is 3 Michelin star.
            Not that i am prepared to pay that price.
            I just steal their recipes and techniques.

            Then tell my dinner guests it's my own creation by adding a sprig of tarragon. :@)

  51. Trump's son Eric has been more blunt and has said his father would 'happily' deport the Duke – and that Britain wouldn't want him either.
    Wah!

    1. Like Andrew, Harry will be the first sacrifice that any Americans will make, to bolster their independent credentials.

          1. Good call, G 🙂 I’ve had several rescue dogs, they would mostly eat your hand if offered, but never a bonio..take it gently, drop on floor, walk away…look backward ruefully and await a better offer……

    1. How many members of U2 does it take to change a lightbulb?

      Just one. Bono holds onto the bulb and the rest of the world revolves around him.

      1. I remember the economist Jeffrey Sachs travelling on an airplane from somewhere or other, said he'd been speaking with the man who would resolve the world's ills, having been on the same 'plane…yes, Bono…😆😆😆😆

  52. A clueless Birdie Three!

    Wordle 1,237 3/6
    🟨⬜⬜🟨⬜
    ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. Par four for me.

      Wordle 1,237 4/6

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

    2. I took a roundabout route to the solution.

      Wordle 1,237 5/6

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

    3. Well done, Lacoste. Didn't realise the time. Par here, can't even remember the word.

      Wordle 1,237 4/6

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

  53. Allister Heath
    Trump’s triumph is a disaster for Starmer and the self-regarding, virtue-signalling elites
    This resounding triumph is total repudiation of the Left’s brand of politics – and cataclysmic for Labour

    Allister Heath 06 November 2024 7:58pm GMT

    America is now Trump country, at war with progressivism, open borders, international bureaucracies, net zero, Jihadism, military adventurism and the Left-wing media. The old order is dead, never to be resuscitated; for better or for worse, American politics has finally caught up with globalisation, deindustrialisation, the resurrection of history (contra Francis Fukuyama) and the internet’s explosive rise.

    Donald Trump is 78, but he is a very modern politician with an intuitive grasp of how social fragmentation and the rise and fall of institutions can work for him. He has learnt to bypass network news and The New York Times. His brand of populist, multi-racial, working-class, highly online, Right-wing politics has captured the new centre-ground. It now looks as if 2016 was a mere dry run, derailed by Covid; 2024 is the real deal, a revolutionary moment, a reconstitution and realignment of American and Western politics around fresh principles, many excellent but some much more malign.

    Trump thus appears to have clinched the majority of the US popular vote, the first time for Republicans since George W Bush in 2004 in the wake of 9/11. The party previously won an overall majority in 1988, when George H W Bush triumphed on Ronald Reagan’s coat-tails. The Republicans have also recaptured the Senate, and may well have retained the House. Trump’s vote in New York state, a Leftist bastion, was higher, at over 44 per cent, than the Tory high points in Britain in 1979 or 2019.

    Demographics isn’t destiny. The exit polls suggest a 3-point swing away from Trump for whites, more than cancelled out by a 13-point swing to Republicans by Hispanics, a 6-point swing by Asians and a 12-point shift among “others”, all of whom increasingly vote according to their conservative values and economic self-interest. Trump made massive gains among non-white voters with or without a degree, while Harris won over male and female white voters with a degree.

    Zapata County, Texas, which is 94 per cent Hispanic, voted 61 per cent for Trump. Osceola, the most Puerto Rican county in Florida, fell to Trump on a 14-point swing.

    Voters are crying out for a crackdown on crime. They don’t want mass illegal immigration, even if they are immigrants themselves. They hate inflation. They want higher wages. They believe in the American dream, and are sick of the Democratic party’s anti-Western self-loathing, its unwillingness to properly fight Islamism and absurd campus extremism, its hateful normalisation of anti-Semitism, its anti-meritocratic wokery, its rejection of biological reality when it comes to sex. They are tired of wars, which is fair enough; sadly, Trump’s tragically misguided lack of support for Ukraine is also popular.

    For Keir Starmer, the EU and the West’s Left-wing elites more generally, the scale of Trump’s triumph, and the fact that his team is much more professional this time around, is an existential disaster, the greatest blow since Brexit.

    Trump will rightly want Britain and the rest of Europe to spend more on defence: this will ruin Rachel Reeves’ fiscal plans. If he imposes a 3 per cent of GDP military spending target for Nato, where will she find another 0.7 per cent of GDP? Will Britain allocate more resources to Ukraine if Trump cuts Volodymyr Zelensky off, or will Starmer, humiliatingly, sign up to whatever deal Trump forces upon Kyiv? As to the EU, it will prove itself irretrievably split.

    Trump could veto the Chagos deal. He looks set to tackle the Iranian regime, especially given intelligence concerning a plot to assassinate him: what will his reaction be when he realises that Britain refuses to ban the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps ? His administration will have no truck with Britain’s role in the persecution of Israel. The International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice could easily be sanctioned by the US. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees will be defunded, and an assertive US administration will begin to treat those nations that don’t toe the line as hostile.

    Gilt yields had already shot up as a result of Reeves’ extra borrowing; the prospect of a higher deficit in the US has sent global bond yields even higher, which will cost Reeves even more in interest payments. Trump will torpedo The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s corporate tax harmonisation scheme, exposing Britain’s lack of competitiveness. Lower taxes and deregulation in the US will accelerate the exodus of talent and capital from Britain. The Trump administration will react with fury (and potential sanctions) if British competition authorities crack down on US tech firms, or if regulators attack Elon Musk’s X social network. Any decision by Trump to slap massive tariffs on US imports would be a grave error, and push the UK into recession.

    With Joe Biden gone, Starmer has lost his biggest environmental ally: Trump wants to frack, and to cancel the Democratic green deal. He wants to quit the Paris Agreement, exposing the net zero project as a sham, ignored by emerging markets and the world’s largest economy alike. Britain will be pursuing higher prices and extensive rationing just as America opts for cheap energy, and it will be a calamity. Musk, one of Trump’s key advisers, supports decarbonisation, but via technological innovations that protect consumers. That is the right way to create sustainable environmental improvements, but is anathema to Ed Miliband and Starmer’s command-and-control approach.

    Starmer will need to make up with the world’s most brilliant industrialist, who keeps tweeting insults at him and dismissing him as “two-tier Keir”. The trouble is that Musk and many of Trump’s other aides now have a dark, dystopian, often exaggerated view of Britain’s problems that could further toxify US-UK relations and destroy what is left of the special relationship. I miss no opportunity to decry the UK’s numerous pathologies, our lack of robustness towards extremists, our rampant crime and our insufficient protections for free speech. But many Republicans believe in a caricature of Britain and London, and often fail to understand UK law on contempt or incitement. Their critique goes too far, and they regularly retweet nonsense.

    Donald Trump is a natural Britophile; his mother was Scottish-born and he loved meeting the Queen. Starmer needs to unleash a charm offensive before it is too late, but the reality is that Trump’s triumph is likely to be fatal for Starmer’s socialistic vision of Britain.

    1. Naomi Wolf wrote an open letter with unsolicited but wise advice to the Trump team not to gloat any more, but to arrange lots of media opportunities for talking positively about how they plan to make Americans' lives better. She thinks that Trump tends to neglect this work because he believes that the media will always portray him in a bad light – which becomes a vicious circle.

    1. Pigs love eating vegetables.
      Vegans are vegetables (we are what we eat).
      Ergo: feed pigs with vegans.

      It's a win/win situation: we reduce the population; we reduce stupidity; more meat for the cognoscenti.

  54. Has Lammy been sacked yet for making unsubstantiated accusations against the leader of the free world?
    I suppose if Starmer sacks him then most of the others will have to go as well, including himself, for the same offence
    The USA has rejected the Lefts nasty identity politics and not before time.
    It is no good keep endlessly repeating awful lies about political opponents in the compliant mainstream media while hoping the mud will stick.
    Especially while having nothing but hardship to offer the public when in power.

    1. One of the people on my table (we normally ban politics, but today was an exception) said Lammy has to go. There was no disagreement.

    2. Talking about unsubstanted allegations, an excerpt from MSN :

      Sadiq Khan has sparked outrage after he refused to apologise to the firearms officer involved in the Chris Kaba shooting, after he gave his sympathies to the dead gangster at the time.

      The London Mayor was pressed for an apology during a City Hall scrutiny session today, where his former mayoral rival Susan Hall demanded he say sorry.

      Mr Khan has since been accused of being "too sympathetic" towards Chris Kaba, calling him a "young life cut short", and provoking further anger towards the police from minority groups in London.

  55. Apparently the losing Harris campaign spent a billion dollars. Wonder how much of that was siphoned off into greedy grifters' pockets.
    They did produce some truly terrible TV adverts.

    1. Coming back from lunch, because my road was closed, I had to divert. I was shocked by how many more housing estates had been built on what was formerly green fields. There's no work, the roads are grid-locked, you can't get to see a doctor or dentist for love nor money and the electricity supply is dodgy at the best of times. The lunatics are in charge of the asylum.

      1. It's not just the Jobs Conner's it's every single service and house hold supply and waste removal and disposal. Schools Hospitals GP services you name it.
        Our political idiots have effed up again.

      2. And none of the new houses are aesthetically beautiful. They are all just horrid tall narrow rabbit hutches with no garden snd no parking

  56. Prevening, all. Been out to lunch today (some people would observe that I am always "out to lunch"!). Nice not to have to worry about what I am going to cook and then doing it.

    1. Why doesn't the damned government just turn us into a colony of China and have done with it?.

      1. No Sos, the Chinese would get the coal mines re-opened.
        They stole all the mineral wealth when murdering idiot Mugabe let them into Zimbabwe.

  57. Buy shares in vets? From the Courageous Discourse Substack, an article by Nicholas Hulscher

    "Meanwhile, the USDA quietly approved an experimental self-amplifying RNA injection for dogs developed by Merck in June 2024: Nobivac NXT Canine Flu H3N2. It appears that Merck is attempting to camouflage the fact that this product is self-amplifying. The primary product description only indicates that it uses “revolutionary RNA particle technology.” However, the novel platform works by RNA particles targeting dendritic cells, where they self-replicate and result in sustained antigen production.

    The possibility of product shedding from dogs to humans or other animals was never tested. This injection is currently widely available for online purchase and canine administration. While the Biopharmaceutical Complex struggles to get self-amplifying mRNA injections approved for humans, they seem to have no problem targeting our pets."

  58. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3f98221ebe5b584cabc19f1a1b67a13ccd5932e683be6bdbd2df7419c6606b13.png I attended the funeral of my adopted mother-in-law today. It was a quiet service for family and friends in the village Lutheran church.

    At the wake we were each served with a long plate containing an elaborately-made landgång [trans: "gangplank"], which is a macka (open sandwich) very similar to the Danish smørrebrød.

    This was a long slice of buttered sourdough bread topped with a never-ending variety of deliciousness. I listed: pâte; smoked ham; prosciutto ham; rare roast beef; salt beef; salami; smoked salmon; brie; lettuce; tomatoes; red pepper; cucumber; crême fraiche with dill; sweet mustard; mayonnaise; crispy onions; orange wedges; lemon wedges; grapes.

    A sweet orange torte was served for dessert but I declined, satisfying myself with water and black coffee.

          1. I've been to a couple of memorial services recently, at which the small casket of ashes was placed in front of the altar before being interred in the churchyard.

    1. Which suit did you wear ..

      I do hope your bereaved partner is keeping well and being suitably consoled by you.
      Funerals can be grim, or they can be joyful .

      I don't want a fuss .. just a silent removal .. and that is it ..

      1. I wore my navy merino-wool pinstripe with pale grey shirt and dark grey tie. Only three males present were properly dressed! Most turned up in casual wear, as is the wont in these parts (I refuse to drop my high sartorial standards on such an occasion).

        All the family were, naturally, quite and pensive but few tears were shed since, at the age of 95 with increasing frailty, death was a kindness to her.

        I'm the same as you, Maggie. I want my carcase to be thrown into the bear cage at a zoo!

      2. Funerals can be grim, or they can be joyful

        After undertakers and clergy, I suspect that I rank at #3, in the funeral attendance stakes.

        I play what I'm asked to play. This has varied from the Star Wars theme (only spoiled by the fact that the coffin bearers couldn't be arsed to dress as Imperial Stormtroopers) to "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life". I always try to satisfy the punters. Put the 'fun' in Funeral, so to speak…

        Unusually, we hosted a RC Funeral Mass last week, of a lady of 105 years. The priest was ex-Anglican (though not the first of his ilk at Holy Angels, Ash). As a mere Prod, I was pointedly excluded from Communion. I tried to GAF, but failed miserably..

        1. We allow anyone who takes communion at a Christian church to take it in ours. If people only want a blessing, or to refuse the communion wine, that's fine. They only have to cross their arms across their chest.

      3. We have a funeral next week – one of our hedgehog team, though she had retired from being the main carer a couple of years ago, after a recurrence of the cancer which had been in remission for years.
        She will be cremated, but first, a horse-drawn cortege down the village road where she lived. Then a service in the church which we will go to. That will be a thanksgiving, as the coffin will have already gone to the crem.

      1. I wouldn't have a clue. All I know is they were delicious and freshly prepared at a local bakery of renown.

  59. Trump tells Netanyahu.. "Finish the job."

    This will traumatise man-child Owen Jones who is covering the US election and seems to be obsessed by the minor conflict 7,000 miles away because he keeps quizzing the voters about bleedin Gaza.

  60. Rayner called Trump a ‘buffoon’ who has ‘no place in the White House’
    Deputy Prime Minister also said US president-elect was an ‘embarrassment’ during Covid pandemic

    Genevieve Holl-Allen Political Reporter 07 November 2024 1:55pm GMT

    Angela Rayner once described Donald Trump as a “buffoon” who has “no place in the White House”.

    The Deputy Prime Minister said Mr Trump was an “embarrassment” during the Covid pandemic and accused him of “killing thousands of Americans by giving them duff advice”.

    Ms Rayner’s comments, spanning a number of years, raise further questions about the relationship between Labour and the president-elect when he returns to the White House.

    She is among several senior Government figures, including David Lammy, the Foreign Secretary, and Sir Keir Starmer, who have been critical of Mr Trump.

    Ms Rayner also previously called Mr Trump a “phoney President” and on Jan 6 2021, when his supporters stormed the Capitol, she said the Republicans had “blood on their hands”.

    During the Covid pandemic, she said in an ITV interview: “We’ve got the highest death rates in Europe and Donald Trump is killing thousands of Americans by giving them duff advice and his macho ‘I’m alright, look at me, I survived Covid’.

    “He’s an absolute buffoon. He has no place in the White House. He’s an embarrassment and he should be ashamed of himself, especially when thousands of Americans have died.”
    [and more . . .]

    1. Clive Baldwin, senior legal adviser at HRW, says.. but but I've just ordered a Bugatti Veyron..

    2. The 77 Chagossians who were forcibly removed and stationed outside Gatwick without any arrangements for accommodation.. hail Nigel Farage for brokering a deal with Trump.

      Well done Nige. Why are Labour & Lammy are so anti-GB?

      1. Lammy is a victim-mentality race-grifter. He has to be anti GB to justify his rantings. Labour are the useful idiots.

    3. "Oh, there be rumblings? Are you too a coward, sir? We shall go around the horn. Dismissed, sir!"

      Anthony Hopkins [Captain William Bligh], The Bounty.

        1. 396034+ up ticks,

          Evening MM,

          Old Bligh was lucky not to have his balls rumbling across the deck,

          1. I understood that, for his time (being the most important consideration), he was highly regarded as both a sailor and a skipper?

          2. A great sailor, but a good captain would have seen the symptoms coming, at least in hindsight mind. The mutineers that set him and and some of the crew adrift in the launch were hounded to the ends of the Earth. His journey to safety in the launch has always been regarded as an amazing and unparalleled feat of seamanship. Several books about the story are good reading.

          3. Yes, I understand his journey in the launch is the stuff of legend.

            The point I was trying to make was that, although he flogged his crew regularly (as was the norm for the times) he actually flogged them less than most captains – all relative I know but there you go!!

          4. Yes, it's difficult to call, but his 'cutter' was a very small vessel with a proportionally small crew. Not enough space to distance himself perhaps, I suppose you had to be there.

          1. I had no choice, Paul, I were nobbut a nipper at the time. It was Two-Way Family Favourites on the Light Programme, followed byThe Billy Cotton Band Show, followed by Round The Horne.

          2. Bona to vade your eek

            My favourite was Bona Law –
            Kenneth Horne: so you have a legal practice?
            Julian (or maybe Sandy): ohh no! We have an illegal practice!

          3. Yes, at the age I was when I listened to them, I had no idea what it was all about, but I laughed anyway. Now, listening in my dotage, I marvel that they got away with it!

          4. I've got most episodes on MP3. I always found the innuendo of Carry On films or saucy postcards particularly funny but Round The Horne did it splendidly.

    1. Imagine the offspring of it and Rachel the black hole, Reeves.

      So dense it might swallow the universe.

    1. That looks more like what I would expect. Very plain and simple, but it fits beautifully into the landscape.

      1. The large four-sided thatched building (it surrounds a quadrangle) at the top of the photograph, and the large expanse of land to its right is owned by a friend, Ingvar, a retired widower whose late wife ran a stables attached to the property. The interior of his home is large, spacious and very well-appointed.

  61. CEOs of top five Big Pharma hold emergency meetings.
    Donald J Trump tasks Robert F Kennedy Jr to clean up healthcare.

  62. Get orf my land! We have to be very careful out hunting to stick to the land edges and avoid some fields altogether. Of course you can't expect green townies to know that.

        1. My little joke is dying on its feet!

          Mrs T in a restaurant with her Cabinet.
          Waitress: "How would you like your steak, Sir?"
          Mrs T: "I'll have it raw."
          Waiter: "What about the vegetables?"
          Mrs T: "They'll have the same."

        2. My little joke is dying on its feet!

          Mrs T in a restaurant with her Cabinet.
          Waitress: "How would you like your steak, Sir?"
          Mrs T: "I'll have it raw."
          Waiter: "What about the vegetables?"
          Mrs T: "They'll have the same."

  63. Oh well – I'd better go and see what I can rake up for dinner.
    I managed to make it to my elderly friend's this afternoon after yesterday's fiasco – and the car was sweet as a nut, in spite of the overload on the clutch yesterday.

  64. From Coffee House, the Spectator

    While Republicans across the US celebrate Donald Trump’s victory and eagerly await his return to the White House, those that backed the wrong horse appear to be struggling to come to terms with it. Mr S is still waiting to hear whether certain lefty celebrities are going to follow through with their plans to leave the country over the result, and a number of pundits are still recovering from their fantastically inaccurate predictions about the race. But we should also spare a thought for some of those hit hardest by the announcement: Guardian journalists.

    It now transpires that the newspaper has reached out to its employees to offer, er, Trump therapy. In a company-wide email, editor Katharine Viner sympathised with staffers saddened by the outcome of the ‘dramatic night’. Assuring journalists she knows ‘the result has been very upsetting for many colleagues’, Viner has encouraged UK workers to contact their American counterparts – as ‘they will be most directly affected by the result’. Going on the Grauniad editor gushed:

    If you’re not in the US, do contact your American colleagues to offer your support… It’s upsetting for many others, too. If you want to talk about it, your manager and members of the leadership team are all available, as the People team. There is also free access to free support services, which I’ve outlined at the end of this email.

    How sweet. Not that the newspaper has taken well to being quizzed on the matter. A Guardian spokesperson remarked today that Viner’s Trump therapy scheme ‘is actually our employee assistance programme’, adding: ‘[This is] a function that any responsible international media organisation has available for staff at all times.’ Shots fired!

    It comes after Viner took a slightly tougher tone in a Guardian editorial on Wednesday, in which she wrote that the election result was an ‘extraordinary, devastating moment in the history of the United States’, adding: ‘It’s time for us to redouble our efforts to hold the president-elect and those who surround him to account.’ That’s all very well – though Mr S can’t imagine crying about it will help further their cause all that much…

    Steerpike
    WRITTEN BY
    Steerpike
    Steerpike is The Spectator's gossip columnist, serving up the latest tittle tattle from Westminster and beyond. Email tips to steerpike@spectator.co.uk or message @MrSteerpike

  65. 396034+ up ticks,

    This should be right up the RESET street for lab/lib/con mass paedophile umbrella, coalition member / voters, virtually warm from the cradle.

    Dt,
    Outrage as Iraq stands poised to lower the ‘age of consent’ for girls to nine

    A new law proposed by ultra conservative Shia Muslim parties seeks to strip women and girls of their rights

    The question is "will the English tory (ino) party undercut them and go for eight" in todays political, tactical voting climate it could very well be a vote winner.

    Could legalised rape find a breeding ground in the heartlands of the lab/lib/con coalition party.

      1. The example they will cite is Mohammed (pboh), he married his 'wife' when she was nine years old, or so it was reported years ago.

  66. More joy The Harris campaign spent over 1 billion dollars and is now 20 million in debt. Lots of staff unpaid….

  67. The Guardian is offering counselling to staff as it vowed to support its workforce after Donald Trump’s “upsetting” US election victory this week.

    In an email to staff, The Guardian’s editor Katharine Viner said the election had “exposed alarming fault lines on many fronts” and urged journalists based in the UK to contact colleagues in the US “to offer your support”.

    Ms Viner said that the result would be “upsetting for many others”, according to the memo seen by Guido Fawkes, adding: “If you want to talk about it, your manager and members of the leadership team are all available, as the People team. There is also free access to free support services, which I’ve outlined at the end of this email.”

    It comes after Ms Viner sought to reassure readers over the election outcome, writing in an editorial on Wednesday that the paper would “stand up to four more years of Donald Trump” and that the election was an “extraordinary, devastating moment in the history of the United States”.

    Ms Viner added: “With Trump months away from taking office again – with dramatic implications for wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, the health of American democracy, reproductive rights, inequality and, perhaps most of all, our collective environmental future – it’s time for us to redouble our efforts to hold the president-elect and those who surround him to account.”

    Above an invitation to donate to The Guardian, her editorial ended with the message that the paper “will stand up to these threats, but it will take brave, well-funded independent journalism. It will take reporting that can’t be leaned upon by a billionaire owner terrified of retribution from a bully in the White House”.

    A Guardian spokesman said on Thursday: “What you refer to as ‘therapy after Trump result’ is actually our employee assistance programme – a function that any responsible international media organisation has available for staff at all times.”

    In the US, some colleges have given students time off, an extension on deadlines, art therapy classes and access to a therapy duck in response to Trump’s win.

    The University of Oregon told students this week that to “promote well-being and lessen anxiety during election week, University Health Services is bringing Quacktavious the Therapy Duck to campus”.

    Students at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy were reportedly told this week that they could play with Lego, colouring books, and have milk and cookies in “self-care suites” following the result.

    The University of Michigan is also hosting an “art therapy” and “post-election processing” event.

    Some stores in the US even closed on Wednesday, with Iowa retailer The Collective writing on its Instagram page that it was closing to allow for a “day of collective grief”.

    Among the overseas reaction was Germany’s popular weekly Die Zeit, which led its website on Wednesday with the one-word expletive “F—”. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/11/07/guardian-offers-staff-counselling-after-trump-win/

    Peter Mounsey
    1 min ago
    DT picture editor deserves a huge bonus for that photo of Viner. She’ll need counselling if she sees it.

    Comment by Self Determination.

    SD

    Self Determination
    1 min ago
    Those Guardian journos really are feeble snowflakes, aren't they?

    Comment by Wendy Bradley.

    WB

    Wendy Bradley
    1 min ago
    They’re all just a bunch of Weak minded lefties

    Comment by J Hodson.

    JH

    J Hodson
    1 min ago
    Diddums.

    Comment by Cal Finnigan.

    CF

    Cal Finnigan
    1 min ago
    The great C.P. Scott will have fallen off his celestial editor's chair laughing!

    1. Incrediby, I'm beginning to wish that I were a Guardian columnist; a therapy duck would be just the thing for my amusement on bath night. Lol.

    2. i just had a scan through the US Guardian web site, they really are spreading discontent and panic among their readers. Every article ends with a plea for donations to help democracy survive the next four years.

      FIL used to be one of the editorial staff at the Guardian, he would probably have taken the days off and enjoyed a few scotches

  68. From Coffee House, the Spectator

    In the end, I voted for Kamala Harris, but I always knew she was destined to lose. After all, if Harris was having trouble convincing me – a mixed-race gay Northern Californian – to get behind her, her chances were worrisomely slim. And the Harris campaign – rushed and reckless, relying on the same tired playbook that failed Hillary Clinton in 2016 – appears to have lost the vast American middle in spectacular fashion.

    Harris had plenty more to offer – if only she hadn’t been so afraid to let it loose

    The biggest problem for Harris is that she wasted every opportunity to make herself seem interesting. Here is a woman born to immigrants, educated at both Howard, among the most prominent of America’s historically black universities, and California’s public higher education system; a big-city prosecutor with a nifty millennial, multi-racial family who somehow managed to still appear banal and out of touch. A woman overflowing with #intersectionality – with stakes in endless communities, yet never seeming to truly belong to any. A candidate whose race and gender were her most crucial selling points, even as her campaign – along with Harris’s celebrity proxies and media surrogates – refused to engage with what her race and gender might actually mean.

    I waited for a reason to make Harris my own, but found it hard to find one. Her campaign – mired in cowardice and timidity – continually danced around her most unique selling points without ever really hitting the dance floor. This is why Harris performed so poorly among crucial voting blocs like black and Jewish voters who will inevitably be blamed for her loss.

    Rather than authentically engaging with race and class and gender and religion, Harris stuck to a well-edited script of middle-class modesty that never quite worked with her sleek suits and multiple Vogue covers. Her campaign may have tried to play her as ‘moving beyond’ identity politics, but her real mistake was that voters never learned what all of these identities actually meant to Harris.

    Rather than speak openly about her distinct racial heritage, her immigrant parents, her marriage to a white man – any attempt to pierce Harris’s racial veil was shut down and silenced.

    I wanted to hear Harris talk about her mixed-race family – not her fake tenure flipping French fries at McDonald’s. Trump directly challenged Harris’s racial bona fides – crudely and with vulgarity. But instead of bravely taking Trump on – perhaps her own version of Obama’s now legendary “More Perfect Union” speech in 2008 – Harris merely dismissed her rival, insisting such talk was just ‘the same old show’ as a plaintive mainstream media looked on.

    The same thing happened for Harris with gender – and with Jews. Harris is 60 and childless, another American anomaly which the Trump–Vance campaign tried to weaponise against her. JD Vance was clearly churlish when bemoaning ‘childless cat ladies’. But he offered Harris an opportunity to open up about not having children, how this has shaped her worldview and what it might mean for the increasing number of other Americans like her.

    Harris stuck to a well-edited script of middle-class modesty

    Instead, Harris clapped back with charges of misogyny while talking up a parentage to stepchildren who were nearly grown when she married their father. All around were quaking gasps of lame ‘how dare he’ when Harris should have been brave and vulnerable and told us how she feels not having kids of her own. Aren’t feelings, after all, what progressives care about most?

    The same thing with Jews and Israel and Judaism. My mum is Jewish, my dad African-American – another Harris-world similarity. She and me and we are not like most American Jewish families – particularly at a moment when Jewish families are enduring unimaginable levels of antisemitism.

    As she and Biden dithered over their support for Israel, Jews needed to clearly hear what being part of a Jewish family has meant for Harris. We Jews needed to know how, and why, she is – even if by marriage – one of us. Instead, the Harris campaign sent out husband Douglas Emhoff as the nation’s top Jew, while approving deep dives into her journey through the Black Church.

    Ultimately, Harris’s entire campaign these last five months has felt contrived and expedient, rather than profound and personal. When the numbers come up showing that many Black and Jewish voters backed Trump, they’re bound to be blamed for failing to deliver Harris the White House. But the blame is all on Harris. Voting for an end to Trumpism may have been enough for folks like me to check ‘Harris’ at the ballot box, but most people needed more. Harris had plenty more to offer – if only she hadn’t been so afraid to let it all loose.

    WRITTEN BY
    David Christopher Kaufman
    David Christopher Kaufman is an editor and columnist at the New York Post

    1. " A candidate whose race and gender were her most crucial selling points,"
      And there's her problem. I'd guess people would rather a President who did something rather than just sat there being black and female? Both characteristics that, IMHO, are irrelevant to the job.

    2. All the things that the author cites as positive, I find a complete turn off. So, it seems, did many American voters.

    3. The article doesn't make sense to me. The electorate didn't want more identity politics, they saw that as the only thing Harris was offering.

    4. She, and her team, chose all the wrong sub-sets of likely voters to appeal to. Donald Trump did the opposite.

  69. From Coffee House, the Spectator

    We hear a lot about white supremacy these days. But for some reason we rarely hear about black supremacy. I wonder why? There’s a lot more of it around.

    For Butler, describing someone as white or as trying to be white is clearly a great insult

    While it is vanishingly difficult to find an overt white supremacist in British public life, it is extremely easy to identify their black counterparts.

    As exhibit A I would present the Labour MP Dawn Butler. I have written about her once before, in 2020, when Ms Butler was in a car that was stopped by police. At the time I speculated that the coppers may have pulled the vehicle over in the hope of reclaiming the whirlpool bath that Butler had treated herself to at taxpayers’ expense a few years before. But it was not to be. The incident simply gave Butler the chance to tour the television studios claiming, with great originality, that the British police are ‘institutionally racist’.

    Butler was back in the news this past week because of her response to the election of Kemi Badenoch as Conservative party leader. Some naive Tories imagine that Badenoch’s appointment is somehow going to snooker the furthest fringes of the Labour attack machine. They could not be more wrong. Those fringes are populated by people who will call anyone anything they want, however nonsensically. Erstwhile restraints like consistency, honesty or sanity do not hinder them. In 2022 the charmless Labour MP Rupa Huq attacked Kwasi Kwarteng (then, briefly, chancellor of the Exchequer) as ‘superficially black’.

    Inevitably, after the news of Badenoch’s victory, it was Butler’s turn again. She retweeted a post describing the Tory leader as ‘white supremacy in blackface’ and ‘the most prominent member of white supremacy’s black collaborator class’. While this is something that most people will rightly regard as utterly crackers, there are a few things worth noting about it.

    First is the apparent view that a surprising number of people on the ‘progressive’ side of politics hold, which is that a person’s politics should not be decided by their intellect but by characteristics over which they have no say. These ‘progressives’ take it as axiomatic that anyone who is not white must always vote for the political left, as should anyone from a sexual minority. Also anyone who is unfortunate enough to be born white and heterosexual but is willing to provide temporary proof that they are not, at present, an active member of the KKK.

    This is an unfortunate misunderstanding of the left. But it is not evidence of malice per se. Butler on the other hand now exhibits something different. Because for her, describing someone as white or as trying to be white is clearly a great insult. Butler does not seem to believe that skin colour should not matter. She apparently believes it should matter a great deal – and that her skin colour makes her superior. We have her own words to go on.

    Last month, to kick off another ‘black history month’, Butler posted a video online that was bonkers even by her standards. It was a sort of vainglorious rap video. I have watched it quite a number of times and still cannot believe it. If you too don’t believe what I am about to relate, you will just have to go online and watch it for yourself.

    At the beginning of the number, Butler chants: ‘You wanted to see me broken?/ Head bowed and tears in my eyes?/ More fool you, you didn’t realise/ That my strength is powered by your lies.’ Quite who the ‘You’ is in this is not made clear but you can make the reasonable assumption that they are white. She goes on: ‘You are the wrong one./ The violent one./ The weird one./ Whereas I, I am the chosen one./ Because I am of the first ones.’ I will give us all a brief moment to recover from that – but only to reflect on those last two lines. There used to be a moratorium in public life on allowing people to go around proclaiming themselves ‘the chosen one’. It is widely regarded as a sign of mental sickness. In Jerusalem it is known as ‘Jerusalem syndrome’ and sees a number of people confined each year. But what to make of that follow-on claim – ‘I am of the first ones’? For elucidation we must, I fear, once again, return to the verse of Dawn Butler.

    ‘You see this skin I’m in?/ This beautiful mahogany brown?/ The skin you don’t like, I believe./ So why you try so hard to achieve/ By burning yourself in the sun? /For me there’s no need / Because I am the chosen one./ For I am of the first ones.’

    To conclude Butler says: ‘You, my friend, don’t matter.’ Then there’s yet more stuff about being the chosen one and the first one, before she reaches the searing insight: ‘You created a structure/ That made you seem great./ When the simple reality is/ It is all fake.’

    ‘Weird.’
    Enough. It is time to come to some conclusions about Butler’s work. If a white MP made a video describing themselves as the chosen one because they have ‘white skin’ unlike all these ‘loser’ black people, then I think it would be fair to say that their career would be over pretty sharpish. The grandiosity would be laughed at, but the white supremacy would be the death knell.

    Yet what Butler has been displaying for some time, like a number of others on the Labour left, is the exact black counterpart to that. Butler does not appear to think she is the equal to her fellow countrymen. She seemingly believes she is superior to them if they are not of her skin colour.

    There is a term for that. The one I mentioned at the start. Perhaps we should start using it more often.

    WRITTEN BY
    Douglas Murray
    Douglas Murray is associate editor of The Spectator and author of The War on the West: How to Prevail in the Age of Unreason, among other books.

    1. "Labour MP Rupa Huq attacked Kwasi Kwarteng (then, briefly, chancellor of the Exchequer) as 'superficially black'."

      'Superficially intelligent' would have been on the mark.

      1. Starmer reportedly said he would 'deal with her' (Butler), doesn't seem to have worked, if he did.

  70. 'Night All
    Mark Felton
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdIY1TNtLI4
    I remember going to a Nepalese curry house at a time where there was a spate of local problems with drunken louts kicking off and refusing to pay I asked if they had suffered any of the same problems
    Nah he said glancing at the two kukris prominenty on display over the bar we don't get those sort of pronblems

        1. When you sheath the blade you push sideways and the notch locks into a small bar in the sheath. This secures the kukri in the sheath.

        1. Is that a Colt 44 Magnum – the most powerful handgun in the world – that can blow your head clean orff?

          I guess you have to ask yourself a question – 'Am i feeling lucky??'…….

      1. I suspect that’s a piece of fishing tackle required for taking the hook out of the mouth of a shark….

      2. Off topic, molamola: is that an Ilana Richardson framed print on the wall behind you?

    1. I would imagine these chappies would have no difficulties in quelling civil disorder if called upon to deal with our more excitable sections of our population …

      1. Yes KJ, I mean the first thing you do in times of uncertainty is to cut interest rates, isnt it?? Jesus H……..

    1. Obviously causation vs. correlation was not taught at BBC news school.

      That is as far stretched as any climate change mantra (sorry, scientifically proven fact)

  71. From the Spectator

    Who is to blame for the devastating floods that hit Valencia on 29 October? The mob that surrounded King Felipe at the weekend and drove Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez out of town with a hail of mud and stones was angry at the failure to forecast the flood and warn people to get out of its way. The BBC would like us to be angry at man-made climate change for causing the storm – putting out a headline the very next day: ‘Scientists say climate change made Spanish floods worse.’

    Charts of rainfall in Spain show no trend towards a higher frequency of more extreme downpours

    Yet Valencia had a similarly terrible flood in 1957, in which 81 people died, long before climate change became the go-to excuse for any bad weather. After that flood, to prevent a recurrence, the Spanish government built a string of dams in the hills to hold back water and diverted the Turia river away from the city. For more than six decades the system worked well. Why did it fail this year? Because the unusually warm sea made for an unusually bad storm, say some.

    Yet charts of rainfall in Spain show no trend towards a higher frequency of more extreme downpours. The data analyst Jose Gefaell published a graph this week of the number of rainfall events in Spain in which more than 100 litres fell per square metre in 24 hours. It shows, if anything, a slight decline. The three worst such downpours all happened in the province of Valencia – but in November 1987, before global warming apparently kicked in.

    In the past few years, the Spanish government has been removing dams at a furious rate. Under a European Union programme to encourage the restoration of rivers to their wild state for the benefit of fish migration, Spain set about dismantling barriers of all kinds. In 2021 it got rid of 108 dams and weirs; in 2022, another 133. That year, according to Dam Removal Europe, a coalition of seven green pressure groups, it was Europe’s proud league champion at dismantling them. Last year it was second only to France.

    Some dams were removed in the hills around Valencia but it turns out they were small irrigation dams, not reservoir dams, so they would not have made much difference last week. However, the failure to build a new dam may well be partly to blame. The Cheste dam in the Turia catchment was specifically designed to prevent flooding, to ‘regulate the flows coming from the upper basin of the Poyo and Pozalet ravines’. It was approved in 2001 as part of a National Hydrological Plan.

    Objections from people in Aragon to separate parts of the plan that would transfer water between regions led the socialist Jose Luis Rodríguez Zapatero to promise to repeal it when running for prime minister in 2004. He kept his promise and the Cheste dam was an unintended casualty. Could it have saved Valencia? Possibly. The city of Aragon was saved last month by a dam built by the emperor Augustus.

    As it happens, the same question had been asked a month earlier about the floods in North Carolina following Hurricane Helene. The area around the city of Asheville was devastated, while downstream Nashville was fine. Stephen McIntyre, a Canadian climate analyst, noticed a possible reason for this. In the 1930s, after a series of terrible floods, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) was charged with building dams throughout the catchment of the Tennessee river, to soak up unemployment, generate electricity and alleviate flooding. It built 49 dams over the next 40 years, including a huge one above Nashville, and the devastating floods of 1916 and 1927 became a distant memory.

    But one district rejected all its proposed dams because of local opposition: Asheville. A dozen dams were planned for the French Broad river and its tributaries around Asheville but they were never built. Had they been, it is likely that the floods of this year would have been far less terrible.

    McIntyre writes: ‘[Hurricane] Helene was indistinguishable from prior large storms e.g. 1916, 1793. What Helene demonstrates is something that has been ignored or concealed by the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] – that the long-term societal project of river dams for combined purpose of flood control and electricity has successfully reduced “climate-related” deaths. But, if you check IPCC reporting, the climate science community instead frets about CO2 emissions in the construction of such dams.’ The TVA itself now bangs on about climate change.

    Back in 2011, Brisbane in Australia suffered a devastating flood, which some people argued was exacerbated by the fact that the very dam built to hold back water after several previous floods had been allowed to fill before the cyclone arrived. The general view of climate scientists at the time was that Australia had entered a period of prolonged if not permanent drought and every drop was needed. So perhaps when the Wivenhoe dam began to fill up everybody was still thinking about drought and forgetting why the dam was there. In the end a long public inquiry exonerated the dam operators of blame.

    ‘Can we go on the doom loop next?’
    Climate change is happening and might indeed make flooding worse: a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture after all. But if you think that is the case, then you have all the more responsibility, surely, to take measures to plan for more flooding and work out ways to prevent it doing so much damage. Even if dam removal has not contributed this time, perhaps dam building could help next time.

    This is known to climate activists as ‘adaptation’ and they dislike it. They prefer ‘mitigation’ through reducing emissions. I am never quite sure why, but I think it is because they fear that if we find ways to make climate change less harmful we might end up being less angry about it. Throwing soup at paintings would then be less alluring as a profession.

    WRITTEN BY
    Matt Ridley
    Matt Ridley is the author of How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom (2020), and co-author of Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19 (2021)

  72. Something our late Lady of the Lake might have wielded.

    Gawd, that’s taken me back. A glass to her.

  73. After a bit of a disturbed night and best part of 100 miles (if not more) of driving, I'm knackered and off to bed.
    Good night all.

  74. Is he sufficiently wealthy? Are you saying that Kamala is transgender as well? Who knew!

  75. Just read this on the Grauniad website. Pass the sick bag…….

    The Guardian is offering counselling to staff as it vowed to support its workforce after Donald Trump’s “upsetting” US election victory this week.

    What a bunch of limp-wristed tossers.

      1. Pardon me, sir, did you see what happened?
        Yeah, I did
        I's just standin' over there by the tomatoes, and here he comes
        Running through the pole beans
        Through the fruits and veggies, naked as a jay bird
        Ethel's over at the jams, jelly's and peckels
        I hollered over, I said, "Don't look, Ethel!"
        She dropped the whole jar
        Heavens, too late, she done been incensed

  76. I was thinking of that when I saw their serried ranks; little boxes, all made out of ticky-tacky and all looking just the same. Also all hermetically sealed with no real chimneys in all probability. No wonder asthma is on the rise.

  77. Mind how you go, Nigel. There are people out gunning for you. Some of them are on here!

    Britain must now roll out the red carpet for Donald Trump

    I will do all in my power to bridge the divide between the Starmer Government and the President-Elect. It’s in the national interest

    Nigel Farage • 6th November 2024 • 7:01pm GMT

    They still don’t get it! Perhaps the most enjoyable part of being witness to Donald Trump’s victory – easily the greatest comeback in modern political history – has been watching the reaction of liberal commentators, both in the United Kingdom and in the USA. In their eyes, it is 2016 all over again, as though a dark cloud has descended over the Western world.

    This attitude also extends to the Democratic Party, whose chief protagonists are, as I write this from a hotel room in West Palm Beach, giving a press conference in New York. They’re talking about gender alignment and immigrant rights. What none of them can or will see is that Trump has put together a new electoral coalition of the most remarkable breadth.

    This is the first time for 20 years that the Republican Party has won a majority of the vote in a US presidential election. Trump managed to do this by getting a record number of black and Hispanic voters to come the Republicans’ way. These communities care about the family, they deeply resent illegal immigrants coming into their country, and they are looking for robust leadership.

    The same goes for the under-30s, especially young men who look up to Trump as a figure of strength. Above all else, most Americans wanted an economy that fires on all cylinders. Trump will give that to them.

    It is fair to argue that Trump’s victory is bringing American society together in a quite remarkable way, rather than dividing it as liberal commentators choose to think.

    That principle of coalition applies to the leadership of the campaign itself. While Trump, by necessity, remained the dominant figure, it was the additions of Elon Musk and Robert Kennedy Jr. that offered the American public the chance to consider what is now a much more extensive Republican Party.

    Vice presidential candidate JD Vance spoke of aspiration, of the American dream, and of the idea that anyone can succeed regardless of the circumstances from which they come. It is no wonder people found this inspirational.

    Trump’s victory will have profound consequences for politics across the Western world, including in the United Kingdom. At the moment, Britain’s energy costs are among the most expensive globally, thanks partly to our socialist government’s green policies. Might Trump’s cheaper energy policies now influence our own?

    There are also parallels on the thorny topic of immigration. Legal immigration has been running at record levels in Britain but it is illegal immigration that has really outraged the British public, just as voters in America have become furious by the huge numbers crossing the Rio Grande.

    The sense of disconnect between our political class and the people who live outside the M25 is as wide as it is in the USA. Ditto in Europe. Americans have had enough and are looking to Trump to solve the problem. You can bet Britons feel similar impatience.

    Those from younger generations with no traditional tie to any political party are beginning to shape a very different future. The vast majority look up to Trump and will, in their way, seek to emulate him. Be in no doubt, politics, including our own, is moving rightwards. All of this will put pressure on a Labour Party that has been deeply disobliging about Trump.

    Perhaps the biggest worry that Sir Keir Starmer faces in policy terms is that Trump has announced a big tariff regime. Britain is, potentially, in a fortunate position. Such tariffs might be avoided – but only by direct negotiations with Team Trump, something of which Starmer’s friends in the European Union would not approve. Which way will Starmer jump?

    On defence, I see deep tensions over the surrender of the Chagos Islands, in particular America’s long-term use of the base at Diego Garcia.

    Britain is really going to have to roll out the red carpet for Trump very quickly. If we don’t, a great opportunity will be squandered.

    I’m overjoyed that this process has already begun, with our very sensible Speaker of the House of Commons, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, making clear that Trump will be able to address Parliament during his State visit next year.

    However, there is no time to waste. If I can be helpful in any way when it comes to bridging the divide that exists between Starmer’s Government and Trump, I will be glad to assist.

    I might not agree with almost anything that Starmer and his Cabinet stand for, but I do believe in something called the national interest.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/06/britain-must-roll-out-red-carpet-for-donald-trump

      1. My father, who was in the Home Guard, kept a bayonet in the shed. That had a groove in it. He told me it was to let the blood run out and made it easier to withdraw it.

        1. Correct(ish) it was to allow air to be drawn in, reducing suction and make withdrawing easier

  78. Grinds my gears him in the workshop still pays the licence…to think even one penny going to Edwards and/or others…

    1. I'm afraid we still pay it too – not that I watch much at all, but he does – he's watching tennis on i-player at the moment. He likes to watch the footie matches too, and the rugby……. As he can't play tennis now it's the next best thing & we have to keep him happy.

      1. I think a lot of people will still watch for sport – especially Wimbledon. Grinds ‘his’ gears he has to pay a separate sub to Sky Sports to watch various matches, footie especially. Also cricket but I’m not sure which channel that is. Would like Sky Arts myself, especially if it’s improved at all….😆

        1. We haven't any extra subs, no Netflix or Sky, just the Beeb & ITV. But he's a bit limited now for physical exercise.

          1. I like Netflix, currently re-watching ‘Breaking Bad’ 😊 I think there are (foc)what’s called ‘armchair’ type exercises on YouTube, or just online…you may find something suitable for him to try? Good luck, Ndovu x

  79. I’ve been musing on an email received earlier today at work. It was to inform us that a colleague had passed away and went on to offer counselling for anyone who needed it, which without context seemed odd. I later found out that the poor woman had committed suicide. People were worrying that something had happened at work to push her over the edge and emotionally beating themselves up for not noticing something was very wrong. I get irritated by the oft repeated ad on GBN but its line that the happiest of faces can mask the darkest of feelings does make a valid point.

    1. Did you know her? Are there a lot of staff working there, so you might not know everyone well? It's a sad thing to happen, that someone feels so desperate and unable to talk to someone.

      1. I’d have recognised her by sight but not well enough to match name to face, no. Even just the business affairs team is too big to get to know everyone properly. Her boss always seems a nice woman but I don’t know her well enough either to judge whether she’s someone her staff could go to with personal problems.

    2. It does indeed, Sue, well said. Many think keeping to themselves the way to cope 'stiff upper lip' style. Never know what's going on in peoples lives. I've seen the ad you mention, I think – the one with young people. Lockdown won't have helped, they could use Fb etc but really not the same as meeting up, hanging out, with your mates. Older people too, I thought at the time lockdowns were a crime, in every way. Now we know the virus and the vaccine came from Pfizer, what a happy coincidence for Pfizer balance sheet.

    3. It does indeed, Sue, well said. Many think keeping to themselves the way to cope 'stiff upper lip' style. Never know what's going on in peoples lives. I've seen the ad you mention, I think – the one with young people. Lockdown won't have helped, they could use Fb etc but really not the same as meeting up, hanging out, with your mates. Older people too, I thought at the time lockdowns were a crime, in every way. Now we know the virus and the vaccine came from Pfizer, what a happy coincidence for Pfizer balance sheet.

    4. Suicide is a bad one – not only for the dead person, but those around them, as, like you wrote, they feel there should have been something they should have done, why did they not see that the deceased was that unhappy?
      I had a colleague and friend who killed herself with pills, in the car, leaving husband and small childrem. I regularly get bursts of real upsetness that I did notthing – despite that I didn't know, logic isn't part of the internal discussion.
      She died in 1998. I can't get over it.

  80. Well, it's my bedtime, so I will wish you all a good night's sleep and see you all tomorrow. However, before I climb the steps to Bedfordshire I shall take time to watch the Mark Felton video posted a short while ago. They are usually interesting and informative.

    PS – I have just watched a speech by "Sleepy Joe" Biden congratulating Donald Trump on winning the Presidency. What amazed me was just how articulate he was, light years away from the "Sleepy Joe" we had all seen over the past four years. Can this possibly be the same man or was it a lookalike and soundalike actor? Any ideas, NoTTLers?

    1. I think it was all an act. His 'dementia' allowed Obama to pull the strings, and if everything came to light under a different regime then Biden's lawyers could plead insanity/diminished responsibility on his behalf. At RFK's mother's funeral I saw Biden chatting with Obama, for a while they didn't realise they had a camera on them until Clinton alerted them – Biden was responding with a fair amount of alacrity to Obama's comments. They must have been laughing their socks off at the gullible public throughout, planning and plotting.

      1. A deaf expert on lip reading reported that Biden said “I was the stronger candidate” and to which Obama replied to both Biden and Clinton “we still have time”.

      2. A deaf expert on lip reading reported that Biden said “I was the stronger candidate” and to which Obama replied to both Biden and Clinton “we still have time”.

        1. It is also rumoured that there were two of them…. Jim Carrey and Arthur Struan. Silicon masks were involved, and I had wondered at the smoothness of his skin for an 80+ year old, fond of sitting on the beach in the sun eating an ice-cream. Also on one occasion I saw folds in the ‘skin’ on the back of his neck reaching up to his hairline which definitely were not real skin folds. It is also rumoured that the real Biden died probably seven years ago and certainly if you see the photos side by side of then and now there is a difference and it’s not just age difference.

          Dementia is the perfect excuse.

          1. I think the Obama – Clinton camp would pass anything off as truth if they could keep that old money machine going.

    2. Biden was energised because he had single-handedly scuppered Kamal Harris’s bid for the White House. I refer to the supposed “garbage” gaffe and his much publicised deliberate donning of a MAGA cap.

      Watch again closely because he is smiling for a (pleasant) change, whereas usually he exudes anger with a bitter twisted spitting mouth delivery.

  81. From Coffee House, the Spectator

    Donald Trump’s bid to take back the White House has been triumphant. It is a decisive victory and even Trump’s bitterest enemies should recognise him for what he is: an American titan, the most extraordinary politician of our time. He has just pulled off arguably the biggest comeback in US history – a feat greater even than Richard Nixon’s Lazarus-like return in 1968.

    To understand the scale of his victory, recall how weakly he began. On 15 November 2022, when Trump launched his now-triumphant bid to regain the presidency, he did not seem himself. His formal campaign announcement, delivered in the ballroom of his club in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, lacked the zing of his famous entry into the 2016 race, when he floated down the escalator of Trump Tower in New York.

    The Trump of 2022 had countless legal problems and he’d been widely blamed for the Republican party’s disappointing performance in the mid-term elections. Republican donors and the right-wing media were lining up behind Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, the coming man. Back then Trump looked disgruntled. ‘I don’t like to think of myself as a politician,’ he said. ‘But I guess that’s what I am. I hate that thought.’ Critics called his performance ‘low-energy’– turning one of his favourite insults against him.

    The Donald was only ever down, not out. ‘Trump fatigue’ turned out to be a mirage

    But the Donald was only ever down, not out. ‘Trump fatigue’, as people called it, turned out to be a mirage and the Trump of 2024 is jubilant, albeit exhausted, having accomplished his extraordinary re-election mission. ‘I’ll never be doing a rally again, can you believe it,’ he said in his victory speech, sounding truly sad. But, he added, ‘success is going to bring us together’. Whatever else you think of him, it would be hard not to admit that Trump has grit. He has survived eight years of the most brutal political warfare – two impeachments, two assassination attempts, four criminal indictments, endless media ridicule and opprobrium – and emerged victorious again. He has won back the presidency.

    It was at around 10.30 in Palm Beach on Tuesday night when the mood at the Trump campaign’s ‘watch party’ started to brighten. Nobody wanted to speak too soon, but the crowd began to whoop louder and louder as the good news poured in from Georgia and North Carolina. The Democratic Blue Wall – Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania – took time to fall. But there was a quiet confidence that the Democrats were about to face a great repudiation. ‘We’ve delivered for people in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. And [Kamala Harris] hasn’t,’ said Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s long-time adviser.

    In 2016, Trump forged a new working-class coalition to beat Hillary Clinton. That coalition fell short in 2020 so he strengthened it by adding more Latino and African American voters. He became the first politician to engage successfully with the ‘manosphere’, the growing group of disgruntled men who feel ignored and alienated by progressive policies. In key swing states, young men leapt on the Trump train. ‘This is karma, ladies and gentlemen,’ said Dana White, head of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, who joined Trump’s victory speech. ‘Nobody deserves this more than him.’

    Of course, Trump’s enemies won’t accept his victory just yet. The results may well be contested, as Democrats indulge in exactly what they accused Trump of four years ago: election denialism. The ‘lawfare’ against Trump, paused for the election, will be waged anew. But the Republicans will probably have the House of Representatives and the Senate, too, which will limit what the Democrats can do. ‘They’ve kind of shot the bullet when it comes to legal challenges,’ said a cautiously optimistic Trumpworld insider on Monday, sitting near the heart of power on Capitol Hill. ‘But I guess the question is: how crazy is the left? And the answer is we don’t know.’

    The irony is that from last year onwards, the lawfare against Trump turned out to be his political salvation. The ‘deep state’ really was out to get him. Each of the four criminal indictments against him boosted him in the polls and eased his path towards the Republican nomination. The clever-clever theory among Washington insiders was that the Biden administration felt so confident in its ability to beat Trump that it was happy to let him be the Republican candidate. Well, if that was the ploy, it backfired spectacularly.

    The 2024 presidential election has proved that political polls cannot divine the future and that the so-called ‘legacy media’ – print newspapers and most television networks – are increasingly unimportant. The pollsters went to great lengths this year not to underestimate the strength of Trump’s movement – so much so that self-appointed experts on both sides of the Atlantic (such as Rory Stewart) argued that most surveys had, in fact, become biased against the Democrats. We were told that the ‘high quality’ polling, with its ingenious modelling, showed Harris with an edge. The less sophisticated data pointed towards a Trump victory. But once again, polling companies managed to exaggerate the Democratic party’s popularity, for the simple reason that Democrat-leaning voters are more likely to respond to surveys than Trump supporters, who regard the polls as suspicious at best.

    Some will argue that what swung it for Trump was Elon Musk’s support on Twitter/X, arguably the world’s most influential social media platform. More significant perhaps was the fact that legacy media has lost its credibility and with it, the ability to shape the conversation. Since 2016, journalists have taken it upon themselves to act as the sanctioned opposition to Trumpism. In recent days, major news networks have repeatedly insisted that Trump actually threatened to kill his opponent Liz Cheney at the end of last week. They grossly exaggerated the number of pregnant women dead as a result of abortion bans and lost the trust of ordinary, undecided, voters.

    The Democratic party and its cheerleaders must ponder a painful question: might Joe Biden, for all his apparent senility, have won? ‘Kamala Harris is more threatening to swing voters than a dead Joe Biden or a comatose Joe Biden,’ said James Carville, the veteran Democratic strategist, in July. ‘So if Joe has to go, it’s gonna be Kamala and if it’s Kamala, it’s gonna be harder.’

    Donald and Melania Trump during an election night event in West Palm Beach, Florida (Getty Images)
    Biden will go down in history as a failed one-term president. But he was the only Democrat who beat Trump. Harris will blame sexism and racism for her defeat, as she did when her first presidential campaign flamed out in 2019. But even with a billion-dollar war chest this year, she was unable to overcome her glaring flaws. She gave a decent speech at the Democratic National Convention in August and outfoxed Trump in their first – and last – debate. But she fluffed her lines in her biggest interviews and seemed unable to answer difficult questions.

    She campaigned at times almost exclusively on the emotive topic of abortion and seemed to go out of her way to put off men, especially blue-collar men who tended to prefer Biden to Trump. One of the Democrats’ late campaign adverts, starring Julia Roberts, encouraged women to lie to their husbands about how they voted because the voting booth ‘is the one place where women still have a right to choose’. An odd pitch, to put it mildly.

    The Democrats all but forgot that they are meant to be the party of the working man. Team Trump made the GOP the party of the forgotten man. Team Harris-Walz spoke more to working-from-home women and affluent college graduates. In other words, the people for whom ‘the system’, as Team Trump calls it, works. But a large majority of Americans feel their country is on the wrong track and the system works against them.

    Harris’s campaign message was confused and confusing. ‘I’m not Joe Biden,’ she said. But as vice president, she also had to present herself as the continuity candidate: Bidenism with a fresher face. She posed as a force for moderation against extremes, yet her record as a senator put her far to the left of the American mainstream on culture-war issues.

    As someone who seemed to have no knowledge of international relations, Harris stuck to the Biden administration’s line on Ukraine and Gaza. But voters tended to agree with Trump and his more eloquent vice-presidential nominee J.D. Vance: the world seemed safer with Donald in charge.

    The economy seemed better off, too. In the 2022 mid-terms, anger at ‘Bidenflation’ and the exorbitant cost of living didn’t translate into a sweeping set of victories for the Republicans. But as Trump put it in that downcast campaign launch address: ‘The citizens of our country have not yet realised the full extent and gravity of the pain our nation is going through. They don’t quite feel it yet. But… I have no doubt that by 2024, [they] will.’ The results proved his point.

    Harris seemed to go out of her way to put off men, especially blue-collar men who preferred Biden to Trump

    An even bigger Democratic mistake was to ignore what has always been Trump’s strongest campaign issue: the crisis at America’s southern border. Since Biden took office, more than seven million illegal immigrants have entered the United States.

    Democrats blamed Trump and the Republicans in Congress for ‘putting partisan politics ahead of our national security’ and blocking Democratic-led efforts to control the problem. Then, in June, Biden finally issued an executive order to stem the flow of undocumented migrants and limit asylum. If his administration had listened to voter concerns and acted sooner, Harris would have been in a stronger position. But she wasn’t.

    Trump has been elected on a promise to deport millions of illegal immigrants. Vance, now the vice-president-elect, has also been clear that he is fully committed to that policy. The Trump 2.0 immigration agenda is bound to generate waves of international outrage. The UK government will come under pressure to denounce the incoming administration as a far-right tyranny. This could further exacerbate tensions between Labour and Trumpworld, especially after the fuss over 100 Labour activists being sent across the Atlantic to canvas for Harris. Moreover, if Trump and Vance move quickly to end the war in Ukraine, British politicians may feel compelled to denounce Republicans for rewarding Vladimir Putin’s aggression.

    But 2024 is not 2016, and Trump can no longer be dismissed as a freakish aberration from politics as usual. He is the new normal.

    Will the British political establishment be shrewd enough to recognise Trump’s mandate? ‘It’s almost certain that the UK now has a pro-British president,’ said Nigel Farage. ‘Labour must roll out the red carpet.’

    A more final point about Trump 2.0 is that he will be 78 at his inauguration – 159 days older than Biden was when he became Commander-in-Chief in 2021. On the one hand, that could mean that Vance, as vice president, will do much of the executive legwork. On the other, it means Trump doesn’t have to govern for re-election. ‘That means he can focus on things that matter in the long term, like debt,’ says an adviser. This could be Trump’s greatest challenge yet.

    Watch more on SpectatorTV:

    Freddy Gray
    WRITTEN BY
    Freddy Gray
    Freddy Gray is deputy editor of The Spectator

    1. Good night, Conners – and Kadi. PS – Have the fireworks stopped now, and is Kadi more relaxed? I certainly hope so.

      1. Yes on both counts. The fireworks were only on the 5th, thankfully – apart from the displays last weekend. I hope nobody decides to hold a display this weekend. Kadi is asleep beside me as I type this.

  82. Students plan pro-Palestine protests on Remembrance Day

    'Victims of zionist state' must not be forgotten, say activist groups as 'day of action' is called

    Albert Tait, Jacob Freedland – 7th November 2024 – 9:43pm GMT

    Pro-Palestine groups at universities are set to target Remembrance Day with protests.

    The Student Federation for a Liberated Palestine (SFLP), a network of 15 pro-Palestinian student groups from universities across the UK, has called for a "student day of action" on Nov 11. At least one student group, Caerdydd Students for Palestine, which represents students at Cardiff University, has organised a protest on Monday.

    Other groups, including at the universities of Nottingham and Lincoln, shared a joint social media post with SFLP calling for people to protest. In the Instagram post, SFLP says that "the victims of the zionist state" must not be forgotten on Remembrance Day.

    "As Britain prepares to commemorate Armistice Day and remember the victims of the atrocities of WW2, we must make sure the victims of the zionist state are not forgotten," the post said.

    Caerdydd Students for Palestine has organised a protest outside the university's main building at 5pm on Monday. The group said the protest would be held "to mourn and remember all of our martyrs, and remind our institutions that the student intifada isn't going anywhere, it only continues to grow stronger".

    The term "intifada", an Arabic word for a rebellion or uprising, has been interpreted by some as a call for violence, but others defend it as a call for solidarity with the Palestinian people.

    The planned protests will bring to mind events on last year's Remembrance Day, when hundreds of thousands of pro-Palestine marchers took to the streets of London. Far-Right counter protesters also clashed with police in violent scenes across the capital.

    At the time, Rishi Sunak, then prime minister, condemned far-Right "thugs" and "Hamas sympathisers" for "disrespecting" the Armed Forces.

    No protest of such a large scale is planned for this year's Remembrance Day.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/07/students-palestine-protests-remembrance-day

    Probably rather small-scale and on Monday, Remembrance Day proper, so it won't clash with Sunday's memorial services – unlike this:

    Veterans outraged as pro-Palestine march threatens to 'ruin' Remembrance Day ceremony

    A former British army officer has criticised the decision to allow a pro-Palestine march to take place concurrently to Armistice Day events in Birmingham.

    https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1972976/veterans-outraged-pro-palestine-march-remembrance-day

    I saw some headlines about this a few days ago but couldn't find any confirmation until now. This could be very dangerous.

    1. The other victims can be commemorated another day. Remembrance Day is for the fallen in war. The palestinins can get over themselves and fcuk right off.

    2. No protests should be given any official permission on Remembrance Day.
      Stupid lefty students always get it wrong. In my day, they refused to buy poppies because buying poppies "supports fascism." No, me neither.

  83. Inspired by Joe Biden, Ms Reeves has long embraced a more active state and a “modern industrial strategy” that she has previously said is essential to “make” and “shape markets”.

    Yeas, because that always works. Government is incompetent, they don't even know any history. East Germany tried this, Soviet Russia, Communist China. It always fails. If this is their stated aim we're in for 5 years of devastation until they can be removed. Why don't we short cut it and burn them out now? Why, damn it, why can we not remove dangerous, stupid, gormless fools from office on a whim?

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