Thursday 9 July: Those who fought for Britain must not have their statues pulled down

Posted on by Geoff Graham

An unofficial place to discuss the Telegraph letters, established when the DT website turned off its comments facility (now reinstated, but not as good as ours),
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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/07/08/lettersthose-fought-britain-must-not-have-statues-pulled/

778 thoughts on “Thursday 9 July: Those who fought for Britain must not have their statues pulled down”

  4. Re-educated

    SIR – I have recently had the opportunity to reconsider everything I previously thought was pretty sensible. I realise now that it is actually what other people think that matters, and not my own opinions.

    I further understand that even when I was not doing or saying anything particularly bad, I was definitely behaving in a completely unacceptable way subconsciously.

    I am working very hard to educate myself so that I can more fully appreciate quite what a dreadful person I am.

    I humbly and unreservedly apologise to everybody for everything, and hope that I can be forgiven and continue to have a job. And I love Big Brother.

    Anthony Whitehead
    Bristol

    What a very moving letter. I’m sure most NoTTLers feel exactly the same way. {:^))

    3. That phrase ‘educate yourself’ crops up a fair bit when the person who says it has no intention of debating an issue. Not only is it patronising, it is designed to shut down any opposing argument.

    4. If it was subconsciously then how can he know what he’s apologising for…

      Sounds suspicious to me! He’s obviously an istaphobe!

    1. I wouldn’t want Mandelson’s flayed, flensed skull in the same country, let alone in the house.

      I’ve no real problem with Brown – he was evil like the others were. I would like him to be honest and admit he wrecked the economy and he was warned repeatedly of the damage he was doing. That we didn’t bail out all the banks and that it was his fault we have 15 trn of debt.

      1. Brown kept us out of the Euro. Brexit would have been even more difficult if we had given up the £.

  6. I see Fish is still the number one topic in the negotiations with the EU….

    “Mr Barnier met David Frost, his UK counterpart, for a dinner of halibut in Downing Street on Tuesday night. He said on Wednesday that he had a “nice dinner” and “useful discussion” with Mr Frost, and that negotiators were “working hard for a fair agreement”.

    Morning folks.

    1. We had a fish supper last night. MB’s treat as I’d had a baking day.
      I had mushy peas, he had curry sauce.
      For pudding we had the iced buns that I’d knocked out at the end of the session – complete with coloured sprinkles.
      (Grandson will be in heaven, there are now a couple of chocolate Swiss rolls in the freezer.)

          1. I’ll send you some lessons in how to make your own far superior version. :•)

          2. Half the time I try to do my own mushy peas, the bloody things refuse to go mushy.

          3. Put the dried green peas into a basin, the night before. Add a steeping tablet (or a heaped teaspoonful of bicarb) and cover to twice their depth with boiling water from the kettle. leave overnight.

            Next day drain and rinse thoroughly. Place into a large saucepan cover with twice as much water but DO NOT SEASON! Bring to the boil and keep an eye on them so they do not boil over. Scoop off the shedded skins from the surface. After 20 minutes-or-so the water will get progressively greener as the peas break down. Keep stirring and scooping skins until a mushy texture has been achieved.

            Then, and ONLY then, may you season them. I add sea salt and a little sugar (to bring back the sweetness lost when dried) and keep tasting until they are seasoned to your liking. Adding salt before you cook them will stop them breaking down and “mushing”.

            I make a large panful then put the excess into polythene tubs for freezing.

            This also makes the basis for a decent pea-and-ham soup with the addition of some softened onions, butter, chunks of ham and ham stock.

            Use yellow spit peas instead (same method) and you have a wonderful pease pudding.

      1. I’d rather he got to choke on zero fish quotas for the EU given their “negotiations” and threats…..

    3. Since when has the EU had any interest in a “fair” agreement? They are out to give us a punishment beating.

  7. BTL@DTletters

    Winston Smith
    9 Jul 2020 3:31AM
    The months ahead will determine the wisdom of Cressida Dlck’s statements to the Home Affairs Committee, reported yesterday. There had already been two Command-level investigations by the Met’s Professional Standards Department into the Maida Vale stop, both of which had concluded that the stop was lawful and that the conduct of the officers was beyond reproach. Now the commissioner appears to have publicly undermined her own officers’ actions by apologising for a policing exercise where, from a legal perspective, nothing was amiss. Is she actually trying to incite more violence? Such craven apologies are not what is required from the forces of law and order at times like these. Tensions are high and what Dlck said will be interpreted in some quarters as a signal that the allegations of racism against the police are well-founded, thereby fuelling the enthusiasm of left-wing organisations like BLM that wish to destroy the police and with it our system of capitalist democracy. The police force in London is not generally or systemically racist, but it does have to deal vigorously and apply force asymmetrically in some boroughs where violent drugs gangs operate and knife crime and murders are becoming too commonplace. For the police officers to perform effectively in those districts demands the consistent and unswerving loyalty and support of all the senior ranks. In war you swallow your blood, you never apologise, never show your hand and never explain. And generals never, under any circumstances, undermine their own troops. (1981 L District veteran)

    1. 321132+ up ticks,
      Morning C,
      In current times and to satisfy the submissive pcism & appeasement unwritten charter should every police officer not carry a compensation float to be paid on the spot of every stop/question/search issue ?
      People power is not playing it’s part in giving the likes of dick of the yard positions of power, we do NOT have to
      eat sh!te fed us by the politico’s it is NOT compulsory……yet.

        2. 321132+ up ticks,
          Morning PTV,
          Why ? no need when the easy approach & rhetoric would be
          “I’m offended”

      1. Jack Warner looked very like my father; even out of uniform.
        Sadly, my father wasn’t a successful actor. On the plus side, he didn’t look like Cressida RichardBonce.
        Do you remember Jack Warner’s sisters who were the double act Gert and Daisy?

        2. Definitely, Annie. Their real names were Doris and Elsie (good name that!) Waters. What confused me was why their surname was not Warner if they were Jack’s sisters – or did they both marry brothers? (Good morning [just] to all NoTTLers, btw.)

          4. You is krect. Either the wireless or the steam radio; never the steam wireless.

          6. I say wireless in the motor vehicle.

            I’ve got junior saying the same thing. Although… when he was found listening to the Archers I did get worried.

          8. Crystal set. We was so dead common that we could not afford electricity to run a real radio.

    3. Yo Citroen

      The head of the Met is:

      Dick by Name: Dick by Nature

      Even the surname ‘Dick’ is a Gender Oxymoron,

      2. Yo, Mr Effort.

        In “her” case I think it’s a symptom of the penis envy that is innate in such people.

          1. Bozza sacked Ian Blair (aaarrgghhh – that surname) who was the Met High Heid Yin at the time.

          2. In a word: YES. (It’s a good opportunity, just like when Boris expelled 21 MPs from his party who voted against him in the days of the midget Commons Speaker.)

  8. SIR – The Chancellor’s statement was a major political occasion but it unfolded in dispiriting near-silence.

    With football and now cricket played against a background of canned crowd noise, should we have something similar in the House of Commons?

    David Stanley

    Agreed about the HoC but I have watched a couple of MOTDs (fast forwarding whenever Lineknob opens his mouth) and prefer the footy without the crowd. The players are much better behaved – no writhing around after a foul, no crowding the referee, no OTT celebrations when scoring a goal.

    It is much more civilised and perhaps any child players watching will unlearn the habits they have copied from their idols.

    1. Might the steady grunting and squealing of pigs at a trough be a suitable reminder for viewers and listeners?

    2. Racing takes place behind closed doors – there is muted applause when the winner comes into the enclosure from the connections of the runners. There aren’t many allowed.

  9. Will have to have a word with the victualling manager. The only thing suitable (?) for brekker was a chocolate muffin dated 11/2018 (at least it was soft, the ones dated 2017 were like rocks).
    I’m not a fan of sweet breakfasts, but if I’m on the scaffolding much of the day, a bite to eat at the start is always welcome.
    At least here’s good coffee.
    Food shopping later, after working outside.

      1. ‘Morning, Belle.

        Maybe, although I drank rather a lot of mineral water with it.

        1. Hungry? Our cats do that, they get very impatient when the biscuit bowls are empty… and they won’t eat from the other cats bowl, either.

          1. She has an in-built timer, not necessarily linked to her appetite. When I moved back to Blighty I lived for 8 months in a 3-storey rented house. I used to watch the 10 pm News, then go to bet. She would race up the stairs, or more accurately the bannisters, ahead of me.
            On the rare occasions when I watched a programme after the News, she would get very agitated & ‘nag’ me to go to bed. Just like a wife, really.

          2. Spartie does the same. His sense of time is incredible; the slightest movement/change in programme/closing laptop/or nothing other than the passage of time and he wakes from an apparent deep sleep and is gung-ho for the next stage of the day.

          4. Spartie knows that he owns Allan Towers and can be rather choosy over who should be allowed to use the nearby fields and pathways.

          5. The warbeast peeks an eye open every so often to make sure I’m still here. He thinks I don’t notice.

            He just moves his bed about to where I am. When that didn’t work he moved the chair to where he was.

          6. My first adult dog was like that; he’d been sent to a rescue centre when he was six because his owners became too frail to look after him. He was very set in his ways; one rose at 07.30 and retired at 22.00. He would brook no disruption in his routine – at 22.00 he would pointedly go to the door to the hall and give “the stare”. As I’m a night owl, we compromised by letting him go to bed while I stayed up 🙂 When it came to Saturday mornings (I was working at the time), I used to have to plead for “just another half an hour”. Thirty minutes later, he would insist I got up 🙂

    4. Lucky you. I didnt sleep at all well last night and I have no ideo why not.

      1. I find that fresh air, physical exercise and two bottles glasses of wine, and I’m away.

  11. Saved from stamp duty
    SIR – I welcome the stamp duty holiday from the Chancellor.

    My wife and I are living with our young daughter in a small property that has no garden. We need to move, and I think it was unfair that I should have been expected to pay thousands of pounds out of my taxed income simply for moving to a home that meets the needs of my family.

    The money that I save on stamp duty will be spent on improvements to the new property, thus helping with the economic recovery.

    S J G Fields
    Arlesey, Bedfordshire

    I agree, why should the government take huge lumps of our spening our already-taxed money? WE are having the house painted at home, and the bill is large – then add another 25% to be paid to the government for doing absolutely bugger-all in that transaction.
    Problem is, people expect government to do more and more, and pay out more & more, so they have to get money from somewhere. Wouldn’t it be nice t find a government that cuts back to minimum, the basics, and tells folk to sort themselves out? Sigh…

    1. Good Morning Oberst

      If you send me the 25% I will promise to do even less than sweet bugger-all and leave you alone in peace.

      With kind regards

      Citroen1
      Protection Rackets R Us

    2. I suspect nothing short of revolution or the collapse of western civilisation will produce a robust population again.
      What a future we are passing to our grandchildren.

  12. Neo-Nazis telling followers to ‘deliberately infect’ Jews and Muslims with coronavirus, report warns. Indy 9 July 2020.

    Neo-Nazis have encouraged followers to “deliberately infect” Jews and Muslims with coronavirus as extremists exploit the pandemic, a report has warned.
    Research by the Commission for Countering Extremism said groups of all kinds had been seeking to “breed hate” and spread conspiracy theories feeding into their worldview.

    “We have heard reports of British far-right activists and neo-Nazi groups promoting anti-minority narratives by encouraging users to deliberately infect groups, including Jewish communities; and of Islamists propagating anti-democratic and anti-western narratives, claiming that Covid-19 is divine punishment from Allah on the west for their alleged ‘degeneracy’,” said a report published on Thursday.

    “Islamists have also claimed that Covid-19 is punishment on China for their treatment of Uighur Muslims. Other conspiracy theories suggest the virus is part of a Jewish plot or that 5G is to blame.”

    Morning everyone. This is a mixture of biased speculation, rumour and fabrication. The examples given are actually drawn from articles in the MSM. Nowhere does it tell you at first hand who these people are or when and where they supposedly uttered these ideas. One sympathises to some extent with the Commissions difficulties; there are no Far right organisations as such so they have invented them but surely “we have heard” sounds more like some gossip mongers line than serious research while “Neo-Nazi groups” is an admission of generalised ignorance. When I first read it I thought it might be some sort of gutter press version of the report but it is actually a fair representation. One can only assume that being unable to furnish actual proof is beyond its capabilities (there being none) it has decided to invent it and thus perpetuate its own existence and the cash flow that it generates.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/neo-nazis-coronavirus-jews-muslims-racism-antisemitism-islamophobia-a9608851.html

    https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/898925/CCE_Briefing_Note_001.pdf

      1. Am I alone in thinking there is an uncanny resemblance between the bloke in the armband and the cartoon of the bloke with the teeth? Are they by any chance related?

        1. I suspect it’s a case of kicking against the things you hate about yourself.

          Julius Streicher

          Born 12 February 1885

          Fleinhausen, Kingdom of Bavaria, German Empire

          Died 16 October 1946 (aged 61)

          Nuremberg, Bavaria,

          U.S. Zone of Occupation,

          Allied-occupied Germany

          Cause of death Hanging

          Political party NSDAP (1921–1945)

          Other political

          affiliations DSP (1918–1921)

          Spouse(s) Kunigunde Roth

          (m. 1913; died 1943)

          Adele Tappe (m. 1945)

          Children Lothar

          Elmar

          Parents Friedrich Streicher

          Anna Weiss

          Known for Publisher of propaganda

          Military service

          Allegiance German Empire

          Branch/service Imperial German Army

          Years of service 1914–1918

          Rank Leutnant

          Unit 6th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment

          Battles/wars World War I

          Awards Iron Cross

          Julius Streicher (12 February 1885 – 16 October 1946) was a member of the Nazi Party. He was the founder and publisher of the virulently antisemitic newspaper Der Stürmer, which became a central element of the Nazi propaganda machine. His publishing firm also released three antisemitic books for children, including the 1938 Der Giftpilz (translated into English as The Toadstool or The Poisonous Mushroom), one of the most widespread pieces of propaganda, which warned about the supposed dangers Jews posed by using the metaphor of an attractive yet deadly mushroom. The publishing firm was financially very successful and made Streicher a multi-millionaire.[1] At the end of the war he was convicted of crimes against humanity in the Nuremberg trials, and was executed.[2] Streicher was the first member of the Nazi regime held accountable for inciting genocide by the Nuremberg Tribunal.

          1. The danger – and horror – is that the Left are still at it under the banner of racism. Doing evil while pretending to do good is their most successful attempt yet at brainwashing.

      2. ..and never forget the determination of the Nazis to defund the Police.

        Not because they wanted anarchy on the streets, but because they wanted the SA to be the controlling authority.

        Hmmm…? Perhaps we could learn from history?

    2. What about the attempts by Slammers t infect the white population – as seen laughing gleefully on Youtube and other places licking handles and the like, in the mistaken belief that Slammers won’t get the virus. Not laughing now, are we?

  14. SIR – We have asked Durham County Council to exclude monuments and statues to those who fought for Britain from the review of “all monuments and statues” that the Labour leader of the council has decided to undertake.

    Our constituents don’t want this review – they recognise the importance of honouring those who fought for our country. The thing is a waste of time and resources, especially during the coronavirus outbreak.

    We have support in Parliament from the Armed Forces minister. Britain has just celebrated the anniversaries of the Battle of Waterloo and of VE Day. We should be honouring those who fought for us, died for us and protected us.

    Durham council is being insensitive, tin-eared to the views of a community recently stripped of the Durham Light Infantry Museum by the council.

    Richard Holden

    MP for North West Durham (Con)

    Dehenna Davison

    MP for Bishop Auckland (Con)

    Paul Howell

    MP for Sedgefield (Con)

    SIR – Why does Britain have an inferiority complex about how it has treated immigrants? Our record is excellent.

    Priti Patel’s parents were Indian and emigrated to Britain from Uganda in the Sixties. She is the Home Secretary.

    Advertisement

    Rishi Sunak’s father was born in Kenya and his mother in Tanzania. They were Indians and came to the UK in the Sixties. He is Chancellor of the Exchequer.

    Alok Sharma’s parents were Indian and he came to Britain with them in 1973. He is the Business Secretary.

    Britain is not racist. It is the most generous country in the world.

    Rupert Pitt

    Winchester, Hampshire

    1. This is where when those councillors start doing this sort of thing, the public coughs quietly into a closed fist behind them, opens the door and escorts them outside along with their p45.

      Should said councillors start to get uppity, an eyebrow is raised and the remaining constituents all, as one cough, gently into their fists. Sack the scum. They’re useless dross.

  15. SIR – Each week my husband and I stand at our window with a large “Thank you” sign for our dustmen (“Unsung heroes”, Letters, July 8).

    We are rewarded with broad smiles and cheery inquiries as to how we are.

    Christine Hutchings

    Cheam, Surrey

    1. Dustmen? Now there’s a novel concept.

      I grew up with teams of dustmen — one driver and three or four bin-emptiers — visiting every week to empty the bins. Here in Skåne the bins are emptied once a fortnight by a sole operator. The dustman (or dustwoman) drives the lorry, jumps out (leaving the engine running!), drags the bins across the road, empties them, then drags them back to the pavement (both sides of the road), before jumping back into the cab and driving a further ten yards down the road to repeat the process over and over.

      This happens every week of the year, even when there are six feet deep snow drifts, with no “health and safety” back-up for the lone driver/bin emptier. In a nanny state, such as Sweden, I find that quite strange.

      1. We have the same in East Dorset, Grizz. The single guy has just been to empty our recycling and glass bins.

      2. We still have teams of dustmen; when the desk pilots and councillors greasing up for re-election keep out of the way, they do a good job.

      3. We still have teams of dustmen in Wiltshire and last time I saw them they included the first dustwoman I have ever seen.

      4. Same here, Grizz, we have it every fortnight.
        It used to be a team, emptying the bins by hand into the lorry. One guy, looked in his late 50’s, was the toughest old bugger I ever saw – he would run to the next bins, swing them out, hurl the thing into the truck, empty it, then put it back & run to the next set of bins…

        1. In Jo’burg we used to have a weekly gang of 1/2 dozen binmen running down both sides of the street, picking up the bags and dumping them into a slow-moving dustcart before running on to the next house whilst all the time whistling and singing. They must have been fit. Oh, and they took all the rubbish, domestic and garden. In summer there were always several bags of garden rubbish – Kikuyu grows like a bastard!

      5. I remember a time when the bins were emptied every week, rather than fortnightly, and the dustman came to our house, picked up the bin, took it to the lorry, emptied it and brought it back to where he’d taken it from. Now, I have to take my bin out and then look for it once it’s been emptied as it’s never in the same place (once it had been put on my neighbour’s property and I had to retrieve it before it was claimed).

  16. SIR – Like Mrs Hays-Nowak (Letters, July 8) I recently had a fall, on the pavement in Wimbledon village while holding on to my shopping and my dog.

    Two delightful passers-by rushed to my aid and I was soon back on my feet. I am very grateful that nNot everyone is as selfish as the sad people in Cambridge who refused to help Mrs Hays-Nowak, for which I am very grateful.

    Liz Beaumont

    London SW19

    SIR – When I took a tumble from my bicycle I was helped up immediately by a postman and two other passers-by, with a car also stopping to check I was all right. So society isn’t entirely broken – although my foot was.

    Jane Ward

    Teddington, Middlesex

    1. ‘Morning, Epi.

      Are e to understand that Liz is very grateful that Mrs H-N was not helped?

      1. 🙂 My late English teacher would have shredded that letter in its current form.

  19. Margaret Robinson
    9 Jul 2020 9:24AM
    Ah, Rupert Pitt, the problem is that the three senior politicians you mention are not ‘really’ black so do not register in blm’s pantheon of badly treated people.

    I think that mob’s title should be ‘ONLY black lives matter’.

    AAARGH! Why do people still think that BLM has anything to do with racist treatment of Blacks? It’s a Marxist movement that has as it’s aims the removal of democracy and the crushing of the West. How will that help blacks? See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7QXlhLrlaE for an explanation in plaintext.

    2. As far as I can see one of the principal aims of BLM is to turn Britain, the most racially tolerant country in Europe, into a hub of racism and nastiness.

      Has any white person in Britain become less racist for being repeatedly told how evil he, she and every other white person is?

      1. No,en masse it just makes me wish they’d all go back and crawl under a rock in Africa or wherever they came from. At an individual level, I expect I would still treat people on the basis of how I find them (fools not suffered gladly of any colour).

      2. It’s certainly alerted me to the difference between Indians and … others.

      3. The eternal Marxist aim, “We MUST destroy Society in order to recreate it.”

    1. Wonderful. It’ll soon be as bigger a fox pox as wearing tank tops or big hair.

  22. Kanye West reveals ‘Birthday Party’ banner for his presidential bid says Wakanda will be his model in office. 9 July 2020.

    Kanye West has said he will run for the White House under the banner of the “Birthday Party” and is ending his past support for Donald Trump in his first interview since tweeting he would seek the US presidency.

    While significant doubt remains about whether the rapper is serious about challenging in this November’s election, West has given an interview to Forbes magazine where he discussed the possible bid.

    During what Forbes described as “four rambling hours of interviews”, with West occasionally breaking into rap, the 43-year-old gave insights into his political thinking as well as making a number of controversial statements.

    You shouldn’t laugh! It is a real possibility when you reflect that one of the other candidates has dementia. There is a good thing out of all this; it has furnished valuable insights into the politics of the end of empires. Caligula and his horse Incitatus seem almost reasonable nowadays. Of course none of the previous civilisations had Nuclear Weapons so this time it will very probably be the real end!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/08/kanye-west-reveals-birthday-party-banner-presidential-bid-says/

    2. I secretly admire Kanye West – he has made a small fortune out of being deliberately controversial.

      People bite every time and the cash keeps rolling in.

      1. He was good, but I still prefer Enver Hoxha for sheer longwinded sincerity.

        1. But Enver Hoxha didn’t want to marry Princess Anne.
          Now THAT match would have cut Big Daddy down to size!

          1. Well, Princess Anne is pretty much Queen of Scotland*, so no need to marry the King.

            *She seldom misses a Scotland home rugby match.

          2. He didn’t want to marry Princess Anne because he was in love with Norman Wisdom.

        2. Zulu leader Gatsha Buthelezi would give him a run for his money “He is also listed in the Guinness World Records as having made the longest speech to a legislative assembly with an address in March 1993 over 11 days, with an average of two-and-a-half hours each day.”

          Incidentally in the film Zulu, he played the part of King Cetshwayo kaMpande, his great-grandfather.

    4. Enid Blyton’s Noddy and the gang of golliwogs chasing his car always stays etched in my mindset .

      Funny really, I wonder whether she was also re-enacting her own nightmares?

      I know that was off topic , but it is similar scenario , isn’t it?

  23. Lionel Shriver
    We’re making a spectacle of shame
    From magazine issue: 11 July 2020

    When I was about ten, on return home from church I ate a peach, the juice of which dribbled down my new pink frock. I scuttled to my room to change, bunching the dress under the bed. I emerged the picture of innocence, but I felt guilty. For weeks, the garment pulsed with accusation. Going to sleep, I always knew it was there.

    Sure enough, my mother discovered the wad while vacuuming, and she was furious. She could have scrubbed out the juice had I told her about it right away. To this day, I’m mindful that you can only expunge stains while they’re still fresh — and somewhere in there lurks a metaphor.

    I’m not prone to remembering the ingestion of individual pieces of fruit. That small memory looms as a touchstone for the experience of culpability. I’d not acted responsibly, and I’d compounded my malfeasance with concealment. When called out, I hung my head with nothing to say for myself. The last thing I felt inclined to do was to tear outside and advertise to the whole neighbourhood that I’d been a bad little girl.

    Though the concept of collective ‘white guilt’ has been with us since at least the 1960s, it’s seen quite the fashionable resurgence in the wake of the George Floyd protests last month. As universities, businesses and celebrities fall all over themselves to banner their racial blameworthiness, pale-faced mea culpas gather into a deafening chorus.

    The issues are two. First, one of this column’s running themes: emotional fraudulence. Clarion declarations of moral dereliction do not have the texture of guilt. They are prideful. They have the texture of preening. Elaborate racial apologies are a form of showing off. When last month the actress Jenny Slate resigned from the animated Netflix show Big Mouth because voicing a half-black character was ‘an example of white privilege’ and ‘an act of erasure of black people’ within ‘a system of societal white supremacy’, she wasn’t making a career sacrifice, but bidding for elevated status.

    Bet it works, too. Bet the lady isn’t short of work for long. FYI, a backhanded boast of my own: my latest novel anticipates white audiobook readers and voice-over artists being forbidden the ‘mimicry’ of speaking as non-white characters. The prescience is depressing.

    We’re witnessing the spectacle of white people frantically competing with other white people over who can appear more self-excoriating, more self-loathing. But these people don’t hate themselves. They hate other people — mythical other people, for the most part, all those terrible racist white folks to whom they can feel vastly superior. Now that ‘white silence = violence’, they can also feel superior to regular going-about-their-business white people who haven’t managed to get prostrate pronouncements of self-disgust on Buzzfeed.

    These confessions are also defensive. They’re diversionary, and an attempt to opt out. They translate as: ‘You don’t want to come for us! We’re on your side! We’re allies! We’re the nice white people, and because there’s no such thing as nice white people, that means we’re not really white after all! So you don’t want to burn down our premises, right? You want to go for those horrible white people, over there! Here, take some petrol and matches, on us! And we won’t call the cops, honest!’

    Yet ask Adam Rapoport, forced to resign as editor of Bon Appétit over an ancient ‘brown face’. The opt-out doesn’t work. You get cancelled anyway, when your unseemly Black Lives Matter grovelling is deemed insufficiently pious.

    Proper guilt feels bad. Its emotional cousin, shame, feels even worse. Whenever I leaked a bit because I didn’t want to come in from playing outside, my mother forced me to wash out my panties by hand in the sink, in front of my brothers. Behold: shame. Adult examples of shame in my life I’d be reluctant to share here. Shame is soul-destroying, the stuff of suicide. You don’t parade shame in public; you’re unlikely to leave the house. So none of last month’s white protestors was ashamed.

    Issue two: We’re in danger of installing heritable guilt as morally valid. Now that we’re to embrace the concept of an ineradicable ‘systemic racism’ while employees take mandatory courses on ‘unconscious bias’, bigotry is no longer a sin we choose or refuse to perpetuate, but a stain handed down through the generations that’s just as indelible as the peach juice on my pink dress. Is this what we want? Really? Will we stick modern Mongolians with the rampages of Genghis Khan? Hold some 19-year-old Muscovite today responsible for Stalin’s gulags? Force Germans to keep expiating their little hearts out over the second world war in the year 3000?

    Maybe we should enlarge the lens. Frankly, I’m weary of the whole category ‘white people’, which throws folks of wildly different backgrounds, from Russians to Jews to Scots, into one big indiscriminate pot. So let’s talk about people, full stop. As a species, we’ve been treating each other like shit from the year dot. The horrors to which we’ve subjected one another, including slavery but a great deal else, are so incomprehensibly dreadful that no one, as an individual, could conceivably bear the crushing weight of all that torture, mass murder and sadism. If guilt is inherited, then every last one of us should be condemned to Dante’s nine circles of hell.

    None of us chose the world in which we emerged. We didn’t pick our race, sex or natal nationality; any inbuilt leg-up or disadvantage these traits conferred at birth was not of our making. We didn’t select which awful history soaks the ground at our feet. It’s insensible to feel ‘guilty’ or ‘ashamed’ about something you didn’t do. It’s entirely sensible to feel regret, sorrow and abhorrence about the likes of slavery. It’s commendable to be informed about the past and to try to understand the nature of its wretchedness, as it’s also commendable to strain to leave the world a little better than you found it. But claiming that what happened before you were born is all your fault is not only ridiculous. It’s vain.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/we-re-making-a-spectacle-of-shame?utm_medium=email&utm_sou

    1. A rather long winded way of saying all this BLM and taking the knee stuff is nothing more than collective virtue signalling.

    4. Morning all.
      I get where you’re coming from 2CV.
      At least two massively ugly stains in the history of mankind were sourced in the Africa of not long ago, there was never a mention of it world wide as the British picked up the inevitable pieces. I’m referring to Idi Amin – Wikipedia
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idi_Amin
      Idi Amin Dada Oumee was a Ugandan military officer who served as the President of Uganda from 1971 to 1979. Popularly known as the “Butcher of Uganda”, he is considered one of the cruellest despots in world history.
      Who murdered people because he could and no one 5 thousand plus miles away uttered a word of complaint.

      And then along came another one, even crueller Robert Mugabe, who as we know had more than 20 thousand people murdered because he knew they wouldn’t vote for him. “The list of Mugabe’s crimes is endless”
      https://thisisafrica.me/politics-and-society/the-list-of-mugabes-crimes-is-endless
      Where were Black Lives Matter then ?
      Keeping rather quiet !
      But safely living in a country administered by mainly white people, but moaning everyday about their ancestors being shipped across the oceans to work in cotton industries. But free from the types of people who must have hated their (tribalism) ancestors in order to see them gone.
      And of course there were the tribal wars in the central African regions where uncounted thousands died at the hands of Africans,…….. BLM ?
      Not a single word from their brothers !

      1. Looking at Africa today one could argue that the descendants of slaves were far luckier than the descendants of those who stayed in Africa.

        Who is going to organise a special celebration to praise and thank the slave traders for saving so many people from slaughter and poverty in their homelands?

        1. It is noticeable that there is no mass reverse migration of oppressed blacks returning eastward towards the ancestral lands.

          1. Assistance could be made available. There are many container ships afloat.

            [Those ships also sail in a southerly direction!]

        2. Exactly what I’ve been saying for many years Richard, and none of them would have the courage to go back and try to get as much out of life and it’s opportunities as they do where they are now. But as ever, it’s everyone else fault.

      2. Just two, and there have been many more. Mugabe’s successor is no better, the South African ANC has trashed their beautiful country, and who could forget the contents of Bokassa’s freezer?

        2. I mentioned central Africa but i simply haven’t got the time to post more.

      3. BLM is about marxist destruction, not black lives. That’s why you didn’t hear a peep.
        Repositioned…

    5. Ouch.

      That reminds me of the things my father used to ask me when a new boy friend loomed on the horizon.
      He used to say .. “Fine , but what does his father do”

      That harks back to a more formal age , when society was different . My father was quite strict .

      I can remember a child my age , when we lived overseas, who was our neighbour.. I was forbidden to speak to her( but I did , I was six or seven then) her parents were Russians .

      I think children are much more adaptable and freer these days , not so constrained in the way they are brought up.

      As most parents used to say, don’t do as I do, but do as I say!

      1. I wasn’t allowed to play with a boy next door but one as his parents were Labour and my parents frowned on the fact that later in life I went out with a Catholic girl

        1. You’d have been buggered if you’d grown up on my estate, Spikey. It was built by the NCB with nary a Tory voter in sight.

    6. “I’m mindful that you can only expunge stains while they’re still fresh.”

      Clearly and lucidly expressed.

      I might add that if I am guilty because I am white then it follows that a cripple is guilty because he is crippled. What a cruel, barbaric and absurd way of looking at the world.

      1. That was the belief until about C18. The crippled body reflected a crippled (evil) soul.
        Imagine the cruelty that stemmed from that belief.

        1. In the Iliad the other Gods used to laugh at Hephaistos because he was a cripple.

          1. We’re a bit rubbish, us humans, aren’t we?

            I remember some of the horrors inflicted on my brother simply because he was different. One moment especially – we were kids at school long before there were genuinely useful special needs places and he was being picked on. I don’t really remember much except cal beating my chest to tell me to stop. Nearly got expelled for that apparently. What did I know of it all. I was 14.

    7. “I ate a peach”. Well, there you have it. A confession. An admission of having been wrapped in white privilege, eating expensive fruit, harvested by exploited darkies working for a pittance in the burning sun, under the watchful eye of cruel overseers.

    8. It is not vain. It is violent. It is allowing the excuse of causing suffering to deflect from your own actions.

      If you can point to someone and say ‘him bad, me not bad, me do as he telled me’ then you are guilt free. You are blameless. We are told that shame is a bad thing. Look at the assault on the fellow saying that you should plan for children before having them. It was to deflect shame. It was to make someone else feel bad so they didn’t have to.

      That’s all this black looters are mindless nonsense is about. A desperate urgency to blame someone else for their own failings. Accepting people as individuals is difficult. far easier to label them. Labels let you frame who they are. Then you can position yourself in opposition or alignment with them – based on how you define them.

      You see? It’s all about *them*. It’s not about us.

      The problem is, of course that when they make it about ‘us’ we make it about them, confirming their prejudices.

        1. Good morning Belle.

          They are setting the scene……

          Haircut for me this morning!

          2. A haircut, well done, I am sure you will enjoy the experience .. please report back with regard to the palavar and longer scissors etc.

            I cut my own hair a while ago, but it does look rather raggle taggle now, and so out of condition, like the rest of me !

          3. I use a local lass; apart from her and her assistant wearing those visors that, presumably, direct the breath downwards, there was no noticeable difference.
            A couple of empty chairs parked outside and a disposable cover rather than a washable one. That area of plastic the size of Australia (or was it Wales?) swirling around in the Pacific will soon be the size of Eurasia.
            We chatted quite normally which would really upset the Nannies of Whitehall.

          4. There will have to be a rethink as to what to do with all the disposable plastic being used now.

          5. I had an eye exam with our local optician yesterday, masks mandatory. Halfway through the letter reading exercise we had to stop because the whirry lensy thing had fogged up.

            Apparently only able to see half of the patients that they would normally see but even with that reduced throughput they are working harder than ever with all of the mandated polishing and scrubbing. They already have a twelve month wait for appointments and are not accepting new clients, is this just another service that is going to suffer?

            After several hacks with the sheep shears I am reluctant to venture back to the hairdresser, a whack round the ears for such incompetent coiffing is likely.

          6. I have an appointment for the 23rd – Grahame has been doing my hair for over 30 years – but this will be a bit different! I’ve hacked some off the front a few time so I can see out, but it’s all a mess.

          7. I have had the same hairdresser since we used to live in the Wimborne area. 1980

            I have to travel miles just to have a few things done , I am not too sure whether he has retired or not , or suffered the loss of his salon.

            I had better ring for an appointment soon , just in case we have another lockdown!

            He had his mullet in those days then the perm and was very trendy , straight out of Dallas or Bodie and Doyle!

            My hair is a bit lopsided after I fiddled with it myself .

            Heyho , I have saved myself some money though I suppose.

          8. Hi Belle, it was an ok experience, actually. On arrival, immediately as you walk in was a small table with with pad for name and tel. number, alongside the hand sanitizing stuff. Only one other person was having hair done in the salon (it is a sleepy village salon), no separating perspex screens – the other lady and myself were far enough apart – the only screen was at the pay desk. I even got offered a cup of tea, substantial disposable mug type of thing. Hairdresser lady wore attached perspex screen over her face – conversation got animated (the penny had started to drop) – we were putting the world to rights, so I suspect the screen was paying lip service to the requirement. I was not asked to wear a mask, I did offer but she said no, that’s fine unless you really want to wear one. So I didn’t. No magazines which didn’t bother me. And I was really pleased with my hair cut!

  25. Douglas Murray
    Trump is taking on the historical revisionists

    Can the President’s sermon on the mount bring him more disciples?
    From magazine issue: 11 July 2020

    Ahead of Independence Day last week, CNN went live to its correspondent Leyla Santiago. Here is how she described the upcoming celebrations: ‘Kicking off the Independence Day weekend, President Trump will be at Mount Rushmore, where he’ll be standing in front of a monument of two slave owners and on land wrestled away from Native Americans.’ She went on to report that the President was expected to focus on efforts to ‘tear down our country’s history’. And where might the President have acquired such an idea?

    Even a few years ago it would have been unthinkable for a major network like CNN to have described Mount Rushmore in such nakedly hostile terms. America still had its agreed-upon holy sites, people and ideas — revered as unifying points of the nation’s past and necessary for any conceivable future. Not any more. Today every element of the American past is up for grabs, and the ferocity of the campaign may well provide the likeliest means for Donald Trump to remain in the White House.

    It is stunning to watch, this unweaving of a nation. While it has been going on for decades, the latest orgy of iconoclasm has seen crowds assail statues of the Founding Fathers with equal ferocity to that aimed at Confederates. A statue of George Washington pulled down in Portland, Oregon had ‘genocidal colonist’ spray-painted on it. A statue of Thomas Jefferson, pulled down outside a school, was graffitied with ‘slave owner’ as well as the name of George Floyd.

    Far from spontaneous, this is the logical conclusion of a radical, revisionist view of American history that has been fomented for years. This sees Christopher Columbus as the start of the problem, slavery as the country’s other characterising sin, and everything since then as typified by ‘white supremacy’ and racism. The campaign has been very well organised. Last year the New York Times launched its ongoing ‘1619 Project’. This presents the origin of the American story as the arrival of the first African slaves. Despite its factual and moral sloppiness, the project was awarded a Pulitzer prize. Statues downed in recent weeks have been tagged with ‘1619’, and when one commentator suggested that the recent nation-wide riots in America be called ‘The 1619 riots’, the project’s creator Nikole Hannah-Jones responded: ‘It would be an honour. Thank you.’

    Nor is it just about the statues. One poll last month revealed that 70 per cent of self-identified ‘liberals’ want the US Constitution to be rewritten. Similar numbers want the national anthem to be changed and the school curriculum to take in more of the bigotry-founded-in-sin view of US history. It is in this context that President Trump chose to address the nation from Mount Rushmore.

    Outside of the US there seems such a consensus on Trump that the details of what he says tend to be overlooked. They shouldn’t be. His Mount Rushmore speech was an important event. It constituted the strongest pushback a president could make against a divide that has festered during his presidency. Part of it was spent identifying enemies new as well as old. Trump talked of the ‘new far-left fascism that demands absolute allegiance’. He spoke of how this ‘left-wing cultural revolution is designed to overthrow the American revolution’. He mentioned the absurdity of an education system which teaches children ‘to hate their own country’. But the speech was more subtle than this makes it sound. The problem, as the President said, is that in this new view of history, ‘all perspective is obscured’.

    He — or his speechwriters — then did something very simple. He gave a succinct history lesson on each of the four figures carved into the mountain behind him. It was a wonderful thing to hear. Not the hostile, monochrome, ahistorical register in which all dead figures have lately come to be described, but a succinct reminder of why George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt came to be immortalised. Demonstrating that this is an inclusive, not exclusionist, story, his speech wove other heroes into this tradition. Trump talked of Dr Martin Luther King’s urge to his fellow citizens ‘not to rip down their heritage, but to live up to their heritage’. And, announcing a new park to celebrate the heroes of America, he listed some of these great Americans, including Frederick Douglass, Jesse Owens and Louis Armstrong. As he finished reeling off this genuinely diverse list, he added: ‘Only America could have produced them all.’

    Trump’s critics responded in the only way they know how. The Washington Post ran a column claiming the President was running ‘an openly racist campaign’ and that ‘everyone knows that what he is really defending is not “our freedom” or “our history” but, rather, “white power”’. CNN asserted that in his speech, the President had ‘defended Confederate monuments’, when he had done no such thing. And Senator Tammy Duckworth (one of the women Joe Biden may choose as his running mate) claimed that the President had ‘spent all his time talking about dead traitors’. Asked whether statues of George Washington should come down, she ducked what has become a difficult question.

    Of course what the President is doing is just the most basic counter-play. When his opponents talk about 1619, he talks of 1776 and 1492 (‘when Columbus discovered America’). When the revisionists talk about how terrible American history is, he reminds the public of how great their history is. While protestors urge Americans to be cringing, guilt-ridden and weak, the President urges them to be proud and strong. And when the nation is told to ‘take the knee’, Trump claims (with somewhat limited truthfulness) that ‘we only kneel to Almighty God’.

    The President has plenty of problems of his own to deal with. But in fighting back against the 1619 view of American history, he is doing something important not just for his own survival, but for the survival of the republic. After all, if Mount Rushmore is ‘stolen’, then what of the rest of the country? And if all the land is stolen, the Founding Fathers were only slavers and the Constitution is a product of ‘white supremacy’, then what exactly holds this grand, quarter–millennial project together? Trump has his own answer, and doubtless for his own reasons. But it is a better, far more unifying answer than the dismantling options being offered by his opponents. And who knows, perhaps in an election year that fact will count for something.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/trump-is-taking-on-the-historical-revisionists?utm_medium=email&utm_source=CampaignMonitor_Editorial&utm_campaign=WEEK%20%2020200711%20%20AL%20%20SERVICENOW+CID_39631df3f71c95d0ebf261990e496cac

    1. Well Trump only has himself to blame. Rejection of these these revisionist ideals is the only way forward but that speech like all of the others failed to come forward with an olive branch to unite people of all parties behind the idea.

      He needed to word it in a way that sidelined Pelosi and would have made CNN objections look bad in the eyes of moderate Democrats.

      As it is, no change and by the way 60,000 new CV cases were supposedly reported yesterday

  26. Good morning, all. A dreary, drizzly morning – but humid, too. Most unpleasant at Fakenham Market. Fish man cross – because some snitchers had reported” him for having queues less than two metres apart. There are some Barstards about.

    Good news – Dr Stupid is away – so will speak to Dr Young Sensible later….!!

  27. Grovelling antics by all at Southampton cricket yesterday getting a richly-deserved
    kicking in Sun comments section following surprisingly sympathetic article
    about the pathetic ‘kneelers’. Methinks the Sun either doesn’t know – or doesn’t care – about its readers’ depth of feeling on the matter.

    https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/12066005/england-cricket-west-indies-knee-black-lives-matter/?utm_source=spotim&utm_medium=E-mail&utm_content=liked-message
    (then scroll down long(ish) way to comments).

    Noticed that a minute’s silence was observed there for Covid victims (surely a
    pointless exercise), but nothing relating to the ‘Forgotten Three’ Reading murder victims. Wonder why.

    1. From the article All England and West Indies players take knee in poignant Black Lives Matter protest before rain-soaked First Test. A TV reporter described the kneeling as ‘moving’. The only moving there would be for me would be to vomit.

      How do these people not realise what the mood in the country is to this nonsensical gesture. Do the England cricketers not realise that they are being used by a political movement? If there was any doubt before, the use of black gloves in the ‘Black Power’ salute by the West Indian players must surely make people wake up to what this movement’s aims really are.

    2. 58 BTL comments. I ha e just read them all and found just one, vaguely supportive comment among them.

      Morning vvom

    3. A BTL commenter in the DT referred to yesterday’s spectacle as KBW – knee before wicket.

  28. Morning, all Y’all!
    Sunny night, now sunny day 😎
    More housepainting…

    1. Have fun! It’s going to look great (I’m jealous of the sprayer).

      Morning all. Raining again here

  29. The news came through just now about the split in the Liberal Democrat group at Malvern Hills District Council.

    After the last election, under the leadership of Tom Wells (who stood for Parliament in 2005), they took their nine councillors into coalition with ten independents and five greens and took control of the council. Last week Wells retired as leader of the Lib Dem group, handing over to someone younger, who then announced after a vote of the councillors, to pull out of the coalition. Wells, along with three other Lib Dem councillors (comprising his wife who is the other councillor in his ward, the Chinese launderette and takeaway proprietor who is a councillor in the town, and the lady who stood for Parliament in 2019), has quit the Lib Dem group deciding instead to remain in office with the Independents and the Greens. Wells remains a Liberal Democrat on the county council.

    The Lib Dems departing the coalition want to increase the use of the new community hospital to take pressure off the PFI basket case hospital in Worcester, and to insist that there is a bigger proportion of social housing when agreeing to any planning application. The former Lib Dems remaining in the coalition say that it is better to keep stability with the Independents, who can do more than the biggest group on the Council, the Tories (who have 17 councillors), who would take over if all the Lib Dems left the coalition. In office, it is not always possible to do all the things one would promise in Opposition, but at least there is some opportunity of doing some good. Right now, the priority for the council is to get local business surviving and hopefully thriving after the Lockdown. The more interventionist approach of the Independent-led coalition is more constructive than the more hands-off market-led approach of the Tories.

    Who is right?

      1. Is the top one Mrs Merton of “What first attracted you to millionaire Paul Daniels?” fame?

        1. ‘Morning, Anne.

          Which one would you like? Will that be poached or sautéed?

    2. Ah … the good ole ABC party; Anyone But Conservatives.
      Colchester has had one of those for at least twenty years..

  30. Morning, Campers… (Don’t Touch the Roof!!!!)
    An article from The Critic sent to me by Sonny Boy. Pretty much sums up what NOTTLers think.

    Wokeism is Latter Day Puritanism

    Today’s political conflicts replay past battles between Britain’s libertarian and puritan traditions, argues historian Nigel Jones

    ARTILLERY ROW

    By

    Nigel Jones

    9 July, 2020

    Behind the wave of Wokeism that has swept and is now swamping Anglo-American Culture, is a pattern that has recurred throughout British History since the early 17th century. This is the pendulum that regularly swings between periods of joyful Libertarianism and purse lipped Puritanism.

    Puritanism takes it’s name from the Calvinist religious movement that arose during the Protestant Reformation, partly in reaction to the explosive cultural Renaissance of the Elizabethan era – the age of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Ralegh and John Donne.

    The familiar disapproving stern features of Puritanism are now ever more apparent behind such phenomena as Extinction Rebellion, the Trans movement, and Black Lives Matter

    The Puritans exported their austere doctrines to America aboard the ‘Mayflower’, where they eventually became one of the building blocks of the USA, and briefly achieved political power in England after the Civil War in the forbidding guise of Oliver Cromwell’s Commonwealth.

    We all have a mental picture of the Puritans in action. Sombrely dressed in black and grey, smashing the statues of saints, preaching their varied versions of the scriptures, and policing and banning anything when they suspected people of enjoying themselves, from Christmas festivities, to theatres, to fornicating for pleasure rather than reproduction.The Puritans endeavoured to dictate what people could think, speak and write. If this rings any bells with Wokeism, that is surely not coincidental.

    There was an inevitable vengeful reaction to this po faced culture of control and repression, and it soon came with the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660. King Charles II exemplified in his own libidinous person, with his myriad mistresses and tribe of illegitimate children, the loose culture of license that spread out from his court like a stain. This was the easy going Age of Lord Rochester and Nell Gwynn, so disapprovingly, if hypocritically, frowned on in the diaries of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn. More darkly, the Puritan Regicides who had beheaded Charles’s father were hung, drawn and quartered along with Cromwell’s exhumed corpse.

    The Libertarianism ushered in by the Restoration had a much longer run than the initial rule of Puritanism had enjoyed. It lasted through the Georgian Age of the 18th century, culminating in the decadence of the Regency bucks and Queen Victoria’s “wicked uncles”. Puritanism made it’s comeback with the accession of Victoria herself, with her eponymous reign infamous for it’s crinolines, covered piano legs , cruel persecution of that supreme Libertarian Oscar Wilde, and it’s massive hypocrisy – a constant adjunct of Puritanism when it comes up against the incontrovertible facts of life and human nature.

    Neatly coinciding with the reign of Victoria’s despised eldest son, Libertarianism returned in the portly shape of Edward VII in the opening decade of the 20th century to which he gave his name. As during the Restoration, the ruling elite again set the tone of the Edwardian era with their shooting and hunting, their discreet adultery at country house weekends, and their lavish clubs and parties.

    Partying and clubbing came to a sudden stop in 1914 with the First World War, but resumed at full throttle in the 1920s – the age of flappers, jazz, the tango, cocaine, and the vile bodies satirised by Evelyn Waugh. The pendulum swung back again in 1929 when the Wall Street Crash ushered in the Great Depression: a serious age of unemployment, austerity and anxiety, seductively characterised by the rise of those severely Puritan creeds of Fascism and Stalinist Communism.

    After the suffering of the 1930s and World War Two and the grey, pinched, fun rationed years of the postwar Labour government, by the end of the 1950s an increasingly prosperous Britain had never had it so good and was ready to party again. The Profumo affair of 1963 was an early signal of the return of social and sexual Libertarianism, with it’s colourful combo of eroticism, crime, and louche behaviour among the upper crust.

    The “Permissive Society” of the swinging Sixties followed, fuelled by drugs, rock music, sex, the decline of orthodox religion and a relaxation of the laws on abortion, divorce and homosexuality. Puritanism remained in full retreat for the rest of the 20th century until a disapproving reaction set in, only lightly disguised as political correctness.

    The familiar disapproving stern features of Puritanism are now ever more apparent behind such phenomena as Extinction Rebellion, the Trans movement, and Black Lives Matter. As so often in the past, loud and articulate minorities, deeply embedded in the media, academia, and the establishment, are seeking to impose their intolerant view of how we should behave and what we should believe on the rest of us.

    Puritanism is currently breaking out of it’s cramped cultural corner and may be overreaching itself as it seeks to seize control of the commanding heights of the state, turning once independent institutions such as the Police, the courts, and Civil Service inside out, and dumping free speech, Democracy, and History itself in the trash. Opponents of this naked power grab characterise it as the Cultural Marxism formulated by Antonio Gramsci and the Frankfurt School in the 1920s, but it a much older phenomenon than that.

    It is ironic that this Cultural Revolution is being presided over by a Cavalier Prime Minister who is himself the embodiment of Libertarianism made substantial flesh. Boris Johnson faces the grim, unsmiling Roundhead figure of Sir Keir Starmer – perfectly typecast as a finger-wagging Puritan Witchfinder General. Ironic, too, that demands are being made to pull down the statue of Oliver Cromwell, the founding father of Puritanism made stone. But logic and consistency were never the hallmarks of the judgemental nay sayers to whom we must all now bow the knee.

    1. Food for thought. Pity about the multiple misspellings of “‘it’s” when he means “its”.

      2. Considering the illiteracy of people using possessive apostrophes when they mean plurals, not using them in contractions, the overall demise of literacy, grammar and spelling it’s a wonder the world hasn’t packed up beneath us and said ‘that’s it! I won’t have another wont cross me ever again!’

        The saddest one – I’ve lost the link now – was a university student, all full of earnest intent about how much he had learned on his woke course starting a sentence with lowercase, not using them in contractions and spelling disservice as desserverse.

        I make mistakes but (I hope) correct them. I blunder over typos left right and centre but at least I can actually spell and punctuate. These people don’t even see how wrong they are.

    2. The timely closure of theatres and concert halls has given the Woke luvvies something else to do.

  31. ‘One of the cruelest things that she has ever done’: Johnny Depp says Amber Heard withheld his rehab medicine as he lay ‘sobbing like a child’ and going through withdrawal on his private island in the Bahamas. 9 July 2020.

    Johnny Depp today accused Amber Heard of withholding his rehab medicine while he lay ‘sobbing like a child’ as he from suffered from withdrawal on a pre-wedding detox trip to his private island in 2014, as the actor took the stand for a third day of his libel trial in London.

    The 57-year-old gave evidence at the High Court as he sues The Sun for libel after it described him as a ‘wife beater’ following claims by his ex-wife Heard, 34, that he repeatedly attacked her.

    I would just like to make it clear to those having doubts that I have absolutely no interest in the moronic travails of Johnny Depp and Amber Heard!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8505515/Johnny-Depp-says-Amber-Heard-withheld-rehab-medicine-detox-trip-Bahamas.html

    1. Just wondering why you posted it then! Why would anybody want to read about these two.

    2. Yes, but I wouldn’t mind ‘being trapped in Amber’ for a while. Ow, stop hitting me woman!

    3. It occurs to me that the Depp item never grew up. He seems to inhabit the fantasy world he’s inhabited for much of his life.

      Just look at his hair. It resembles the outrageous, idiotic, clownish, well over-the-top make-up he wears in all of his films.

      1. Amazingly Grizz. He is fifty seven years old! One would have thought that he would have accumulated some gravitas along the way!

      2. I find it hard to distinguish between Depp off duty and Depp acting, I thought that they were one and the same.

      3. He’s now in hell having been in Paradis!

        I believe that both Rowan Atkinson and Stephen Fry came out strongly in favour of free speech and said that without the ability to offend people comedy would cease to exist.

        But have either of these two leapt to the defence of their fellow thespian Laurence Fox?

        1. fickle fik’l, adj inconstant in affections, loyalties or intentions; changeable. [OE ficol; gefic fraud]

    4. Just wondering why you posted it then! Why would anybody want to read about these two.

      1. I thought that I detected an undercurrent of suspicion that I was a secret Deppophile!

        3. If you keep posting reports from the trial then people will start to wonder you know.

          1. BJ of the celeb news world!

            Oh I miss Bill, I now have to look at news sources to see the bad and the ugly.

    5. All I know about Johnny Depp is that he was so disliked by the entire cast of Kenneth Brannagh’s MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS that every one of them stuck a knife in him. But I’ve never heard of Heard.

      :-))

      1. You clearly have heard immunity, which, they say, is a good thing to have.

      2. I HEARD that the entire cast of Sidney Lumet’s 1974 version of Murder On The Orient Express similarly disliked Richard Widmark so much that they also gave him the same cutlery treatment. 😱

    6. It is all over The Grimes, as well – because News International is a party to the action.

      At least it is keeping some legal folk in funds…{:¬))

    8. I cannot click on any of this stuff, but the headlines alone are stomach-churning. They sound like a very unpleasant pair; it’s impossible to say which is worse.

  32. Morning all

    SIR – When will the Duke of Sussex realise that he has abdicated the right to comment from Los Angeles on affairs relating to the United Kingdom, and understand that we are no longer interested in his opinions?

    He is of course free to offer them, but we would rather hear the wise leadership given by his grandmother for so many years, now continued by his increasingly respected father.

    Ian Brent-Smith

    Stratton Audley, Oxfordshire

    1. “we would rather hear the wise leadership given by his grandmother for so many years, now continued by his increasingly respected father.”
      Not so sure that’s true about his father.

      2. I have a lot of time for Chas.
        We all have our quirks, but he does a lot for many (real) charities and he now has a sensible woman in his life to keep him grounded.

        1. I remember Charles escorting MeGain down the aisle when her father couldn’t attend the wedding.
          I thought that was a chivalrous action. Much good has it done him.

          1. If you want to be an ex friend of Meghan then become her friend. Guaranteed to be dumped unceremoniously at some point. Watch out Harry.

  34. Syrian food and vaccines at risk as Russia uses UN veto to scupper aid plan. Wed 8 Jul 2020 14.48 BST

    Frantic talks are being held after Russia was accused of a “despicable and dangerous” use of its veto at the UN security council to block a draft resolution that would have renewed cross-border humanitarian aid to civilians in Syria.

    The veto came at the close of months of negotiations between security council members over the number of cross-border aid points that should be kept open, a dispute fuelled by the Syrian regime’s determination to control the supply of international humanitarian aid to the country.

    Much is being made of this veto in the MSM but nothing at all about the areas in question being strongholds of the Jihadists and who would certainly seize most of the supplies by Force Majeure. There is also the point that it would offer the opportunity to rearm and reequip most of them by including clandestine weapon shipments.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/08/syrian-food-and-vaccines-at-risk-as-russia-uses-un-veto-to-scupper-aid-plan

    1. I’m afraid I’ve reached the stage where, if Russians are involved, I assume the decision is made on rational grounds, not mere virtue signalling.

      1. Morning Anne. Russia looks like an Island of Sanity in an Ocean of Hysteria!

        1. When we attended a concert in St. Petersburg, we got talking to a retired RAF officer who had deliberately chosen to settle in Russia as his pension went further.
          (Broods deeply.)

    2. The Litmus test:

      Does the Guardian like it? Do the opposite.
      Does the guardian hate it? It’s the right thing to do.

      The UN is an appalling organisation. Much like all giant overblown bureaucracies, it has an agenda irrelevant to the aid.

  36. Morning folks.

    Another blissful sunny day over here with temperatures in the mid thirties. With the humidity this is getting close to the limit for golfing

    An recent survey over here that shows how bad memories of the past have become. Canadians are proud of the way that the country came together during WW1 they are taught about the war in school and how it was the first time that Canadian regiments first taught together under one flag.

    So to prove that the are a patriotic lot, they surveyed youngsters and asked which WW1 battle thay thought was the most significant to Canada. The most common answer was the Battle of Helms Deep which Tolkien fans will recognize from Lord of the Rings. Despair all round.

    1. Vimy Ridge. I would guess that if you were to ask the same question about WWI battles to British young people, most of them will never have heard of the Battle of the Somme.

      1. That is where the Canadian memorial is and planeloads of youngsters go there on a pilgrimage but obviously the lessons do not sink in.

        1. I saw the reality sink in during a school trip to Auschwitz 2006.
          The kids would sit down to chatter every time we stopped to be told about a feature, to the increasing irritation of the nice Polish lady guide. After a day of this, we reached the crematoria in Birkenau camp. They sat down amongst some ponds with weirdly turquoise water in them, and the guide stopped her discourse to ask the children “Do you see those small white bits in he grass where you are sitting?”
          Yes, they did. “Well, these are the remains of bones from the people who were cremated in the buildings just there!” As one, they sprang to their feet in horror, and in that moment, they got the point.
          If it’s too remote in time or so far outside their experience, they just don’t connect.

          1. That is why I’m ambivalent about Auschwitz. We shouldn’t forget, but the seething crowds, many chowing down on burgers or squatting on the steps and chattering, degrade the visit.

    2. No longer a subscriber because of ‘belt-tightening’. Any chance of sight of full article please?

      1. Use the ‘Open link in new private window (right click) option to read the Ob.

        If
        companies were judged on what they said rather than what they did,
        business would be booming for Boohoo. In the wake of the killing of
        George Floyd, the fashion firm was saying all the right things about
        what it would do to make the world a better place. ‘We are louder
        together. Say his name. #GeorgeFloyd #BlackLivesMatter’ Boohoo told its followers on Instagram. Boohoo Instagram

        Boohoo wasn’t finished there. In a follow-up post,
        the company assured its customers: ‘We are committed to use our
        influence as a brand and community to help your voices be heard’.

        ‘At
        Boohoo we will no longer just be doing our thing,’ the company
        said. ‘We will be doing better. We see you, we hear you and we,
        throughout all of this and beyond will stand with you’.Boohoo InstagramBoohoo also offered its followers on Instagram suggestions for
        ‘5 black-owned businesses you need on your radar’. One of the
        most-liked responses to this post was from an unimpressed customer: ‘Am I
        the only one who thinks this is utterly ridiculous? It shouldn’t matter
        what ‘race-owned’ businesses you buy from, as long as you’re happy with
        the product, then who cares!?’

        But now, Boohoo has far more than just one disgruntled customer to worry about. A report in the Sunday Times
        alleged that workers at a Leicester factory that supplied clothes to
        Boohoo were underpaid. It was also alleged that little or no protection
        was given to workers to protect them from coronavirus. The report also
        claimed that the factory was still operating during the lockdown in
        Leicester.

        The
        backlash to these allegations was swift. A new hashtag is now trending:
        #boycottboohoo. The social media influencers and models that Boohoo
        relies on to peddle its clothes have distanced themselves from the
        company. Next and Asos have dropped Boohoo goods. And the company’s
        share price has tanked. So far today, it has lost 23 per cent of its
        value; this week alone, the price of a share in Boohoo has halved.

        Before
        the allegations, business had been booming for an online retailer that
        was largely unaffected by the shutting down of the high street. The firm
        said in June that it expected sales to rise by a quarter. Instead,
        these allegations could mean curtains for a business which was recently
        valued at £5bn.

        As a result, Boohoo is now trying a new social media strategy: begging for forgiveness.Boohoo InstagramWill
        this be enough to save Boohoo? Only time will tell. But for other
        businesses keen to tout their virtue, the old saying rings true: actions
        speak louder than words.

        2. Thank you for reproducing article and advice about viewing them.

          Something about glass houses and stones comes to mind here concerning Boohoo!

  38. Toby Young
    Does the curriculum really need ‘decolonising’?
    From magazine issue: 11 July 2020

    https://images.contentstack.io/v3/assets/bltf04078f3cf7a9c30/bltdd2435914de3ce98/5f060b1143f3857059ba5aee/TobyYoung-Getty-Images.jpg?format=jpg&width=1920&height=1080&fit=crop
    [Sorry Anne. Twice before brekkers]

    Layla Moran, the Lib Dems’ education spokesman, has written to Gavin Williamson urging him to do something about ‘systemic racism’ in schools. ‘Changes to the history curriculum, such as learning about non-white historical figures and addressing the darker sides of British history honestly, are a vital first step to tackling racism in our education system,’ she wrote. ‘This chasm in information only serves to present students with a one-sided view of the events in history.’

    I’m not sure Moran knows very much about how the education system works. For one thing, Williamson cannot dictate how history is taught in free schools and academies — they don’t have to follow the national curriculum. Since that’s about three-quarters of secondary schools, there isn’t a great deal he can do. Then there’s the fact that children already learn about ‘non-white historical figures’. Doesn’t Moran recall the petition seven years ago insisting that primary school children continue to be taught about Mary Seacole? It secured more than 35,000 signatures, forcing Michael Gove to abandon plans to dump the ‘black Florence Nightingale’.

    As for the ‘darker sides of British history’, my own kids have been taught about little else, including Britain’s role in the transatlantic slave trade. The ‘chasm in information’ is all on the other side I’m afraid, with children not being taught that many more Europeans have been enslaved throughout history than Africans. What’s unique about the British Empire isn’t that it participated in the slave trade — that’s true of every empire. It’s that it committed blood and treasure to abolishing it.

    Listening to the politicians and activists urging schools to ‘decolonise the curriculum’, you’d think children were being taught about the ‘white man’s burden’ and re-enacting Gordon of Khartoum’s defence of Sudan in the playground. Even in the Tom Brown’s School Days era, I doubt the curriculum was ever as pro-Empire as these people would have us believe. At the last general election, 85 per cent of teachers voted for left-of-centre parties. Do the Black Lives Matter protestors really think these hand-wringing liberals are getting children to measure skulls in biology classes?

    You think I’m exaggerating? A whistleblower sent me a memo on ‘decolonising the curriculum’ that had been distributed to all the teachers at a secondary school in Haringey. The headteacher asked them to ensure that ‘the curriculum diet offered our students in terms of anti-racism, anti-fascism, anti-prejudice, is broad, thorough, comprehensive across year groups, faculty areas and times of the year’. And woe betide any member of staff who challenges the idea that schools are perpetuating a system of white supremacy. A teacher at an academy in south-east London has got in touch with the Free Speech Union because he’s being put through a ‘disciplinary’ after writing a blog post criticising the violence of some of the BLM protestors.

    It’s not just state schools, either. If anything, the BLM agenda has been even more enthusiastically taken up by private schools; 635 old and current Etonians and parents recently signed a letter to the headmaster, Simon Henderson, demanding that the school start teaching children about ‘entrenched systemic racism in our society’. In response, Henderson issued one of those boilerplate confessions that reads as if it’s been written by someone in an orange jumpsuit, and announced that ‘decolonisation’ will be incorporated into assemblies, religious services, tutorials and societies.

    There’s one small problem with these attempts to make schools more diverse and inclusive — they’re already among the least racist institutions in the country. Layla Moran takes it for granted that black and minority ethnic (BME) children are doing much worse than their white counterparts and concludes it must be due to ‘systemic racism’. In fact, they’re doing better. The lowest performing ethnic group in England’s secondary schools are whites. According to the new Progress 8 measure, which assigns a score to GCSE entrants based on how much progress they’ve made between the ages of 11 and 16, Chinese pupils do the best, with a score of 1.03, Asians are second (0.45), then blacks (0.12), mixed race (-0.02) and, bringing up the rear, whites (-0.10).

    But when did facts matter to progressive activists? It’s as well I’m not a teacher, because I would probably lose my job for writing this column.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/does-the-curriculum-really-need-decolonising-?utm_medium=email&utm_source=CampaignMonitor_Editorial&utm_campaign=WEEK%20%2020200711%20%20AL%20%20SERVICENOW+CID_39631df3f71c95d0ebf261990e496cac

    3. “There’s no art“, said King Duncan, “to find the miind’s construction in the face”

      I disagree – one look at this woman’s face and one knows just how her mind works!

      1. Didn’t he mean it was easy to read character from the face?
        Art as in skill, analytical ability.

        2. He had judged the First Thane of Cawdor to have been a loyal friend. But when Cawdor led a rebellious force against him he saw that he had been wrong in judging him by his appearance.

          He then adds that Cawdor ” …was a gentleman on whom I built an absolute trust”

          And then a glorious piece of dramatic irony:

          The Stage direction: “Enter Macbeth”

          (another gentleman on whom he wrongly had built an absolute trust.)

    4. It needs ‘decolonising’ in the sense that the arseholes (colons) in politics and the educational world of today need to be got rid of.

      1. Warning: it would be unwise to include semi-colons in your critical comments. As J.K.Rowling discovered.

    5. How should history be taught in schools? Schools should be about giving facts to pupils. I was astonished (and confused) about how I was being told two utterly conflicting stories when I was only about eight or nine.

      I would go from a Religious Education class, where I was told that all humans descended from Adam & Eve, directly to a History class, where I was informed about cave men in the old stone age. My question is : “how dare they mess with a developing mind in this manner?”

      1. Off to reducation, Grizz. Such heretical nonsense as this “Schools should be about giving facts to pupils.” cannot be allowed to be heard.

        The state will decide what ‘those facts’ are and present them how it chooses. Just like the BBC does – lying by omission.

    6. No mention that the Empire was mostly an accident, brought about by the Government attempting to bring some order to exploration and trading.

    7. Layla Moran had the advantage after Nick Clegg resigned of not being around when the students were double-crossed over that pledge. She can still play that card since Ed Davey was a Government minister at the time.

      Sadly though, she seems to have gone loopy.

      1. The girlie make-weights we had to interview as potential Conservative candidates were an embarrassment.
        But what David wanted, David got. 50% of the final candidates had to be female.
        It was an absolute insult to the women who had got to that level through ability.

        1. There have been some very impressive Tory women around in recent years. Coming to mind immediately are Ann Widdecombe and Penny Mordaunt.

          The harbinger of the Red Wall was that Tory lady Trudy Harrison they put up in Jack Cunningham’s old constituency in Cumbria, way adrift from the Tory heartlands down south, but it was a target marginal and she did very well and deserved to win.

          Mind you, on the same day, they did pretty well with a young lad out for some work experience in Stoke-on-Trent who humiliated the UKIP leader in one of their target seats at the height of their popularity.

          1. Paul should never have been selected (I suspected machinations behind the scenes). I was there when the result of the selection was announced and my heart sank. I knew we’d lose. The local candidate would have walked it.

    10. I’ve been retired 20 years, but I recall one set of French textbooks where the main character came from the Côte d’Ivoire (and was black as your hat, of course).

  39. Good morning fellow Nottlers

    DT Today https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/07/09/no-10-has-just-fallen-jaws-britains-dangerous-political-paradox/

    If they’re not careful, Tories will fall into the same trap as Blairism
    The Tories are about to repeat the lethal mistake that cancelled New Labour

    Sherelle Jacobs

    There was a song about Tony Blair written a year or two after he came to power. The song finished with the lines:

    I won’t believe in anything unless you want to me to
    I’ll wreck the Act of Union – what’s history to you?
    I’ll be so glib and reasonable – on me you’ll bet your shirts
    And with new Labour – endlessly – You’ll get your just deserts.

    The songwriter was right – even though Blair’s party when led by Brown finally lost an election and Corbyn lost two – New Labour continued under the name of The Conservative Party.

    2. 321132+ up ticks,
      Morning R,
      As in, a mass uncontrolled immigration, submissive pcism & appeasement. paedophile umbrella, pro brussels coalition party.
      IE, Political enemas of the state.

      1. Only if they comes armed with paintbrushes!
        Anyhow, we’re waiting on a resupply of paint… beer in hand.

        1. A wise move. I think that this guy rushed ahead without stopping to think about the colour to use.

    3. One litre bottle of propellant with a rag in the top would sort out that monstrosity.

  41. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/981b1b726507a37a7036d0007045ec9ff6c92f0f8bd798c92abb469960ea4a54.jpg
    Who says you need to eat tasteless and bland food to maintain a diet?

    Home-made hamburger (100% chuck steak, minced and seasoned) with melted cheddar cheese on top, dash of Thai sweet chilli sauce and a fried egg. Served with a stir-fry (in Chinese unrefined* peanut oil) of onions, garlic, mushrooms, yellow pepper and beansprouts; seasoned with black pepper, oyster sauce and dark soy sauce.

    Mmmmmmm!!!!!

    [*This oil, only available from Chinese stores, is de rigueur if you want to achieve that authentic Chinese taste]

    1. The egg has been fried too quickly and is crispy and I hate that. The yoke is under cooked and should have been splashed with hot fat to cook it it turns lighter colour when it is cooked. Each to their own.Prefere to see bacon with it. Egg, bacon and Bury black pudding. Fried bread on the side with lashings of strong black tea.

      The loss of Empire went hand in hand with increased coffee drinking.

      1. I’m half with you JN, half without.
        I like the white crispy, but then I also like the yolk to be a bit more cooked, not solid but with the top cooked by spooning fat over like you suggest.

      2. I thought the egg looked rather dried up, but not undercooked. Each to his own, as you say – but I prefer to see the yolk, not have it hidden under white.

      3. I was going to argue with you, re the egg, John, but I mellowed when you wrote about Bury black pudding, bacon and fried bread.

        Tea, especially decent Assam, made properly in a teapot, is the drink of emperors (and I don’t mean penguins!).

        1. I agree with Johnny, to a point. For me, a perfect fried egg would have some of the oil/fat spooned over the yolk. But I’m basically lazy, so I just flip it over for a few seconds, which has more or less the same effect. You can keep your Assam, though. I’m into Twining’s Strong Breakfast, which do justice to my quite large mugs..

          1. As John says, each to their own. I love a soft yellow yolk and a brown crispy-edged white.

            Did you know, Geoff, that English Breakfast Tea is a blend of Assam, Kenya and Ceylon teas?

            Strong Breakfast Tea has more Assam in the blend because that is what gives it its oomph! I just cut out the middle man.

    2. Mr Grizzle

      Try Wing Yip

      https://www.wingyip.com/our-stores/

      They will post it to you

      Whilst the UK and EU are inthe transition period and are negiating a trade deal, International
      Deliveries will now resume as normal until Thursday 31st December 2020,with the final date for

      orders to be accepted is Friday 18th December 2020 by 12pm.

      1. Thanks for the link, but I doubt I’ll need them. I use a number of Chinese shops in Malmö where most ingredients can be bought.

        [I bought a 5kg granite mortar and pestle there a few years ago and took it home on the train. Carting it provided quite a work-out!]

        1. Addendum: I’ve just checked the delivery charges and I think I’ll pass on Wing Yip. A £37·59 delivery charge for a bottle of cooking oil to Sweden is just a bit outside my price range.

          1. Take a guess how much those two books i posted to you. I should have just sent you book vouchers.

          2. I can guess. I’ve paid the same when I’ve posted parcels to the UK. Licence to print money for the postal charlatans.

            You were very kind and a very nice man for sending those books. 👍🏻😉

          3. Had to get rid of the evidence. The Fuzz were on my tail. !

            Joking aside. My local parcel company had quoted £20 but not tracked or fast delivery. Then i stupidly went to the post office. 🙁

          4. We live about 25 miles away, even with their postage charges of about £6:50, it is cheaper than buying out the shop….

    4. I’ll await the Alien to pop out of your chest.

      Sorry Grizz…sure it tastes nice but it looks horrible. I would use red and green peppers for a bit of colour.

      1. I was more concerned about the flavour (and using up what was in the fridge), Philip, than the æsthetics of the meal.

        1. Of course…..still looked horrible though. If you were serving copious amounts of booze though i would forgive you. 🙂

    1. As with trying to squash any sphere on to a flat plane you end up with distortions.

      The maths to correct it is staggering.

      1. That’s why the world looks ridiculous in an atlas. Greenland and Antarctica come out twenty times larger than they actually are.

    2. And there was silly me thinking that the centre of England was islington where the champagne socialists live.

  43. The Beginning of the End of Whites in South Africa. Thu Jul 9, 2020. Katie Hopkins.

    Many watched their grandfathers turn it from rough bushveld into fertile acres where for the fortunate, bananas, macadamias and avocados will grow. Even on struggling farms, many white farmers work alongside the same families of black farm workers their grandfathers employed two generations before.

    For most, the land is all they have. Many are incredibly poor; they have no savings or assets with which to start again. Everything they own or earn is in front of them, rooted in the soil they would leave behind, along with their hearts.

    Sombre stuff! Don’t read it if you want to be cheered up!

    https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/beginning-end-whites-south-africa-katie-hopkins/

    1. Decriminalise the licence fee. Simplest bit of legislation going.

      The BBC will then have to adapt to a customer based audience rather than telling people what it wants them to believe.

    2. All comments have been removed from the BBC article. Including mine which, of course, specified the”m””word.

    3. Wrote to my MP yesterday suggesting that he join Defund the BBC. A worthy cause!

    4. I blame the bus. It should not have been going down that street and would have been a lot safer kept locked down back in the depot.

  45. ”Goodness me, Holmes, look at these two jobs which David Cameron picked up, one of which means he’s apparently receiving Soros’ money….”

    ”In May 2017 the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (ACOBA) granted Cameron’s appointment as a Director of U2 Frontman Bono’s One Foundation which is also supported by Bill Gates and George Soros’s Open Society”

    https://powerbase.info/index.php/David_Cameron

    and..

    ”Inside the mysterious world of AI firm Afiniti which boasts David Cameron and Princess Beatrice as recruits”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2019/11/02/inside-mysterious-world-ai-firm-afiniti-boasts-david-cameron/

    ”I think both those jobs are called ”funnels”, Watson, and are paid positions, as indeed is likely in view of Mr Cameron’s stated intent ”to put some hay in the barn”. What would be more logical for him than to accept any offers his billionaire friends might have made him ? Certainly I suspect his ”barn” could be filled up very quickly with ”hay” in view of his apparent contacts.

    ”Did you also see that Theresa May received approx $1,250,000 plus expenses recently for just eight speeches, Holmes ?”

    ”Imho, that looks like another funnel, Watson”, they seem quite popular in certain circles in the Conservative Party as indeed historically in Nu Labor. Perhaps related to the claimed ”leveraging of policy and legislation” by a certain billionaire(s) for ”three decades” no less, as I remarked to Inspector Lestrade and my esteemed client Lord Archibald Lockemup of Pentonville only yesterday morning……”

      1. He won’t be needing that if my client Lord Archibald Lockemup of Pentonville has his way.

  46. ‘Gavin Williamson scraps target of getting half of young people into university’

    Great news. Perhaps the bloke isn’t a complete waste of space after all.

    1. ‘Gavin Williamson scraps target of getting half of young people into penury’

      1. Agreed, that’s the other half of the win:win. The first half is that a lot of kids who are good at making things will get into a career that they enjoy rather than trying to convince some sceptical prospective employer that a degree in sociology will in some way enhance his business.

    3. Let us hope that when some of the ‘New Universities’ go bust, he lets them…

      1. Or, in the majority of cases, revert to their original functions as polytechnics and technical colleges.

      1. Thankyou. Malva mystic merlin. Used to celebrate May day by weaving into garlands and spreading around doorways.

      2. The young leaves and flowers can be eaten in a salad. Also helps to settle the stomach when made as a tea. And used for paresthesia and nettle stings when painted on the skin.

        I didn’t know what it was as it came in a mixed bag that i just chucked around the garden.

      4. It’s probably a mallow, but my first reaction was Thorn Apple, but that has more pointed leaves & the flowers are trumpet-shaped.

        https://www.google.co.uk/search?sxsrf=ALeKk03h4KrZpBEOO52oESYN7b9Y9Jy15Q%3A1594286547138&source=hp&ei=0-EGX_yFBsmSkwXCgb6wBw&q=thorn+apple&oq=thorn+apple&gs_lcp=CgZwc3ktYWIQAzIICAAQsQMQgwEyAggAMgIIADICCAAyAggAMgIIADICCAAyAggAMgIIADICCAA6BQgAELEDOgQIIxAnOgQIABAKUMKsoQlYr8uhCWCkz6EJaABwAHgAgAGcBogBnA-SAQs3LjIuNC0xLjAuMZgBAKABAaoBB2d3cy13aXo&sclient=psy-ab&ved=0ahUKEwi8u72a7L_qAhVJyaQKHcKAD3YQ4dUDCAk&uact=5

        One turned up in the garden in Germany, probably the seed was carried by a bird.

        1. Fooey.
          Every plant is either a dog something, a crab something else, or a bog myrtle. No paws or claws visible, so must be the bm.
          Logic!

    4. I name it

      Herbaceous Sponworgel

      But, we will have to wait for Covid to end, fpr the Christening

  48. From the Speccie USA

    Five questions for Ghislaine Maxwell

    Did Ghislaine Maxwell supply information to the FBI?
    Dominic Green
    https://3h7pwd17k2h42n17eg2j7vdq-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/GettyImages-1422912-820×550.jpg

    Ghislaine Maxwell with supermodel Naomi Campbell in 2002

    1. Why now?
    Maxwell was arrested at her remote estate in Bradford, New Hampshire eleven months after Jeffrey Epstein’s death in a New York police cell. The house was purchased for $1 million in cash through a shell company in December 2019. In the same month, Reuters reported that Maxwell was a target in the FBI’s investigation of people who ‘facilitated’ Epstein’s sexual crimes. Meanwhile, her location became the subject of international speculation. It now appears that the FBI knew exactly where she was. On Thursday, the FBI’s New York Assistant Director, William Sweeney admitted that ‘an eye was being kept and information was being collected’ for months:

    ‘We’ve been discreetly keeping tabs on Maxwell’s whereabouts as we worked this investigation. And more recently, we learned she’d slithered away to a gorgeous property in New Hampshire.’

    If, as the US Attorney’s Office now claims, Maxwell presents ‘an extreme risk of flight’, why didn’t the agency arrest her earlier?

    2. Why was she in the US at all?
    ‘In short, Maxwell has three passports, large sums of money, extensive international connections, and absolutely no reason to stay in the United States and face the possibility of a lengthy prison sentence,’ the prosecutors argue in a detention memorandum filed on Thursday, before Maxwell was refused bail. If she has ‘no reason’ to stay in the US, why did she remain in the US at all?

    Born in France and raised in Britain, Maxwell has British and French passports as well as the American passport she took in 2002. If she wanted to avoid the FBI, she could have gone to France. The French authorities do not automatically extradite suspects to the US: consider Roman Polanski. Also, her father, the intriguing and posthumously disgraced businessman Robert Maxwell, was Jewish. She could have gone to Israel, which is even less accommodating to extradition requests.

    Did Maxwell have a good reason not to go to France or Israel? Or did she have a better reason to remain in the US?

    3. Why wasn’t Maxwell prosecuted along with Epstein in 2007?
    Maxwell is now charged with four counts of sex trafficking and two counts of perjury. The sexual offenses were allegedly committed between 1994 to 1997, the perjury charges from 2016.

    The recently unsealed documents from the Florida case show that the FBI gathered testimony from 34 alleged victims. This number rose to 40 in the final non-prosecution agreement. A Florida court convicted Epstein in 2008 on a single felony charge of solicitation of prostitution. Multiple witnesses identify Ghislaine Maxwell as managing Epstein’s complex domestic affairs in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the period in which the Florida prosecution gathered its evidence. Several claimants now allege that Maxwell was an active participant in sexual abuse and exploitation in this period. In 2008, the FBI, then under the direction of Robert Mueller, supplied the Palm Beach police with a 53-page document investigation into Epstein. Why wasn’t Maxwell charged along with Epstein?

    4. Was Jeffrey Epstein an FBI informant?
    In 2008, Alex Acosta was the US attorney for the Southern District of Florida. In 2019, when Acosta was in the running for becoming Trump’s labor secretary, told a Trump transition team that unspecified persons had told him to back off from the case: ‘I was told Epstein “belonged to intelligence”, and to leave it alone.’

    Acosta later recanted this story in a fumbling statement. But a 2008 FBI document confirms Acosta’s earlier claim that he had been told to ‘back off’. The FBI document records that the US Attorney’s Office had notified the FBI that the Epstein investigation was ‘highly sensitive’.

    The same FBI document, written five months after Epstein’s legal team had secured a non-prosecution agreement from Acosta’s office, noted that ‘no prosecution will occur in this matter as long as Epstein continues to uphold his agreement with the State of Florida’. This, the document says, was because Epstein had ‘provided information to the FBI as agreed upon’.

    FBI Epstein by ChrisSpargo on Scribd

    https://html2-f.scribdassets.com/7woj9sqwcg74zene/images/1-b87013e293.jpg

    Was Epstein was an FBI informant from at least 2008?

    5. Did Maxwell also supply information to the FBI?
    Ghislaine Maxwell was, as Epstein said, his ‘best friend: the person who knew him most intimately and managed, prosecutors allege, the most secret aspects of his life. Yet she wasn’t prosecuted in the Florida case. A source familiar with the Florida investigation told me this week that Epstein personally requested and secured immunity for Maxwell from the FBI. The terms of the deal are unclear, but it granted immunity to ‘any potential co-conspirators’.

    This week, a source familiar with Maxwell’s case told me they believed Maxwell had supplied information to the FBI, and had remained in the US because she believed she was protected by Epstein’s immunity deal of 2008. A second source familiar with both Epstein and Maxwell agreed that it was possible, and might explain why Maxwell didn’t leave the US.

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

    So many photographs have gone missing from online archives……can’t think why

    2. History is awash with spoilt little filthy-rich kids acting like they are entitled to do so.

        2. Quotes from the Paper of Record (The Sun) 6th July:

          “He is one of many Johns, all of whom were video-taped by Ghislaine,” she claims, after she allegedly told her in 1997 they secretly kept tabs on their friends.
          Andrew came onto the scene in 1999, and she feels the royal, along with those Maxwell has information on, could be her “get out of jail free cards.”
          “He is not a victim here, but Ghislaine was never his friend, she was taping him,” Christina said. “Friends don’t tape friends.
          “He may be thick as a plank, but she’s a depraved ,,,,,,”.

          4. You could try scrubbing your hands with antiseptic gel, while humming the national anthems of every country on the planet consecutively.

    2. They should have left him alone. i can’t even remember what the pretext was for that disaster.

      1. Wasn’t he trying to sell oil in currencies other than the US $. Others had pointed out it had its own independent Central Bank..

        1. He was trying to set up a gold dinar as an international currency.

          Up until then he was liked by the West.

          1. Yes – I remember that now – hardly a good reason to destroy a whole country. Doesn’t sound any worse than the nation-destroying Euro.

          2. I would agree with you, however many politicians thought that it was highly dangerous to have a gold dinar in general circulation.

            ..and thus came about Libya’s destruction.

          4. Very roughly.
            The value of all the gold ever mined would be worth in the region of $8Tn.
            Libya’s oil reserves were worth ~ $2Tn

            Thus a gold dinar, if it actually was “covertible into gold” and was allowed to float, might seriously affect gold prices, national gold banking reserves and create great currency fluctuations as oil and gold values moved.
            This in turn could affect both equity and derivatives markets significantly.

            Purely speculative, of course, and a somewhat simplistic rationale.

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_reserve

      2. I met him once.
        Funny little man, with curly greasy hair, blue shiny suit, looking mazed. He was always photographed from below, to look tall and masterful, but reality… He was in the same hotel as me, we met in the lift from the ground floor to the mezzanine restaurant. His security detail were absent somewhere… maybe guarding the fleet of black Mercedes outside.

          2. I also think that it was very likely George Soros and Open Society ”persuaded” David Cameron to introduce the Marriage Act 2013 as well as depose Gaddafi, and I also believe Dave’s two jobs outlined below are related to that ”persuasion”.

        1. More than 20 years before……and the putative perpetrator had been released by then.

          2. “Der Regen kehrt nicht zurück zum Himmel.
            Wenn die Wunde nicht mehr schmerzt, schmerzt die Narbe”.             B. Brecht.

        2. No one really believes the story of Libyan involvement. The verdict brought eternal shame on the Scottish justice system.

          1. Ah yes. The Maltese haberdasher who had so little trade that he remembered a swarthy man (not many of those thereabouts) buying a pair of basic jim jams a decade earlier. If business was so quiet, how did he keep going?

    3. Libya had the largest proven oil reserves on the planet.
      The problem Gadhafi faced was he wanted to stop trading oil in US dollars and would have preferred the trading to be made in African Gold Dinars.
      Guess who didn’t like that.
      And some one gave the order to have his 2000 kl long water pipe line bombed.

    4. The Libyans I met and got to know were educated, rational and dignified people. What’s being done to their country makes me both depressed and furious. A pity those who toppled Ghaddafi aren’t living there to reap the whirlwind.

    1. 321132+ up ticks,
      O2O,
      He did it his way 2000 years ago which puts all this current sh!te to shame.
      My personal view.

    2. An English test for those purporting to be British

      I took my furlough in Loughborough, where the weather was rough so I sat under the
      bough of a tree, although it did not shelter me too well

          1. It wasn’t the cough that carried him off, but the coffin they carried him off in.

          4. When I was nobbut a lad, a game was to put a whole cherry AND stalk in ones mouth and tie the stalk in a knot.

          8. I reckon you can get them further and aim better by squeezing them between the fingers; and much more surrepticious.

      2. OLT – It’s a braw bricht moonlicht nicht the nicht . A phrase you had to recite to prove that you were a Scot during WW2

        1. English 17th century – leave of absence for a soldier.

          From the Dutch – verlof

          2. Ah.
            I thank m’Learned Friend for the information, and declare that, whilst none the wiser, I am, at least, better informed.

          4. She can do Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, some Dutch, smattering of German, a gnats of Italian, and English.
            Not bad for a lass who was written off at school as utterly useless in languages!

      4. I bought a really good fake (cough, cough) passport though. It was worth the dough, I thought. BTW why do some Geordies pronounce this as thowt?

  55. Long ago as I garbled my way through German and French (speaking) public transport in Switzerland when I bungled my translating telephone speech the french bus driver just looked at me as if I were effluent and waved to the bus station I needed. As I did the same in Germany the attendant said – in perfect English – “you need platform 7, sir, and thank you for trying.”

    I asked him his address and he and his family are popping over for dins this evening after exchanging emails and larks for over a decade or more. Junior and his sons get on very well. Junior speaks German better than I ever will (I still look up words in my phrase book). The war queen of course is now on to Hindi or something.

    This is where these massive multinational oppressors go wrong. We’re all different. But that’s a good thing. We should stay different. That’s how we come together. Not by force welding of economies, language and tottering treaty but by being who we are.

    I came across this from Terry Crews. The sad bit is reading the ‘Immavictim’ idiots who refuse to use their own agency to change their lives:

    https://mobile.twitter.com/terrycrews/status/1279493774679261185

    1. “We’re all different. But that’s a good thing” – Exacto (c) Peddy. Wouldn’t it be dull if we were all the same, and God forbid, all like me?

  56. 321132+ up ticks,
    ” Those that fought for Britain must not have their statues pulled down”
    By the same token those who were given a future by those that fought for Britain must, if capable, pull up their collective socks and via the polling booth fight this odious sh!te.
    Since the mid 70s the governance parties are in name only and their actions have never been beneficial to these Isles as our present sinking
    stance within the stinking faeces marsh bears witness.
    Without doubt this Country has GOT precisely what it’s electorate voted for in it’s pursuit of the keep in / keep out mode of voting especially over the last four decades, all the while the true hatred of Britain brigade
    was / is multiplying on a daily basis, who can deny it ?

    1. Too angry to remain polite.

      My mummy told me there were no monsters,…but there are.

        1. I do detect a tone when referring to women you don’t like.
          What equivalent of ‘effing witch’ would you have used for a male?

    5. 321132+ up ticks,
      Afternoon Rik,
      That there Gerard Batten ain’t nothing but a truthhound dog.
      Little wonder he had to be tagged / suppressed as a
      far right racist.

        1. Just the one though……. i did spread the others round the neighbours. They produce so much fruit. Two of the neighbours have allotments so i get a cornucopia of things in return.

    4. No idea what they are called, but one grew uninvited in my garden a few years ago. Doesn’t seem to have seeded – or perhaps the seeds are biding their time.

        1. Indeed. It was St John Cholmondeley-Featherstonehaugh.

          [Or “Sinjun Chumley-Fanshaw” to his chums.]

          They are associates of the Cox-Hooker clan.

          [That’s “Coe-Zuker”.] 😂

  61. Ignore the fact that they were technologically incapable and, even if they had been, that the Native Americans would not have been so easily overwhelmed.

    Just imagine how the world would look if it had been Black Africans instead of Europeans who had colonised the Americas.

    I suspect that pretty much the whole of the two continents would have been unchanged, if anything become even more tribal.

    The world’s population would be a fraction of what it is now.
    Very few advances for the good (such as it is) of mankind would have happened.
    No USA and all that they brought to technological advance.
    Constant wars in Europe.

    1. “Constant wars in Europe.”

      There has never been a time in the history of mankind free from warfare. It is an intrinsic part of the human psyche, and will evermore be so.

      1. It’s not what Africans and BLM people would have you believe.
        All was always well in Africa before evil whitey arrived

      2. But the EU faught the dastardly nàzis and brought a hundred years of peace to Europe.
        Or so they tell the Canadian troops stationed in Latvia.

    2. There’s a popular fantasy of course that the North American Indians lived some sort of idyllic hand-in-hand with nature existence. They were stone age and didn’t even manage to invent the wheel. Life was hard, food production was inefficient, the tribe next door were constantly on the attack and population numbers were deliberately kept down by the simple expedient of killing people. Very BLM I suppose.

      1. We watched Dances with Wolves as part of our history teaching.

        Well, other people did. I’d fall asleep as soon as the lights went out.

        1. I tried to watch the rubbish once. Possibly the worst film ever made. The acting ‘ability’ of Kevin Costner is a ludicrous joke: he has all the personality and panache of a clothes peg.

          1. I honestly couldn’t comment. The TV would start, I’d fold my arms on my desk and the next thing I knew the lights were going back on.

            I’ve not watched him in anything else bar Robin Hood, and even then preferred the ‘Hooded Man’ series on ITV.

          2. Talking Pictures are showing the Richard Greene version. Very stylised and rather beautiful. Believable acting just wasn’t what it was about.
            Robin Hood, Robin Hood, riding through the glen
            Robin Hood, Robin Hood, with his band of men
            Feared by the bad, loved by the good
            Robin Hood, Robin Hood, Robin Hood

          3. Much better than the Ridley Scott effort, parts of which were filmed about half a mile from here. I quite liked the Monty Python version “Dennis Moore, Dennis Moore…”

          5. Robin Hood, Robin Hood, riding through the glen
            Robin Hood, Robin Hood, with his band of men
            Stole from the poor to give to the rich
            What a bitch

          6. That abysmal Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves film was equally as atrocious as the Dances with Wolves tripe. Awful films, terrible scriptwriting, deplorable acting.

        2. Dances with Wolves is to my mind a good film. Kevin Costner also starred in The Untouchables, Open Range, JFK and others. I can’t comment on KC’s acting , all I can say I thoroughly enjoyed all four of these pictures with Open Range being my top choice

          1. KC couldn’t act his way out of a paper bag. And don’t get me started on his voice. Whiny, to say the least.

      2. A myth that goes against what you see near a reserve nowadays. Broken cars and other scrap just abandoned, substandard housing and many unemployed drunks and druggies.
        There are entrepreneurial businesses selling gas, cigarettes and pot to non natives, but a significant number on reserve live in abysmal conditions.

        I did receive some rather harsh feedback when I suggested that Ottawa should not increase payouts to reserves because their objections to oil pipelines were stopping the sale of oil. It seems that we have a national pride in being guilty of suppressing the chosen ones.

      3. I was always amused by the response from people with persistenty crying babies, when I suggested that the quickest remedy, unless there was something serious, was to pour water down their nose.

        I explained that NA plains indians did this. The child soon associated crying with water down the nose and would only cry in extremis. It was literally life or death if a crying baby gave your location away.

      4. The sainted Native Americans were also slave owners; the enslaved ones belong to the conquered neighbouring tribe.

  62. So much for the Nauseating Unhealth Service.

    Wrote a letter to Dr Stupid and delivered it by hand this morning to the surgery at 09.15.

    Told Dr Stupid away (hooray) so stroppy receptionist found a pen and changed the name on the envelope (marked URGENT) to Dr Young Thruster.

    I explained current sitch and ask Dr to phone after 12 noon.

    Heard nothing. Rang at 5.15 – “no trace of letter”. Explained again…and again. They have just called to say that Dr Thruster HAS the letter but won’t phone me until tomorrow…. All I want is another box of tablets…..FFS.

    Better if I just top myself – so much less work for them.

    1. Just stand right in front of her. State what is going to be. Do not budge from your position. Do not raise your voice or swear. Do not accept any excuse. Wear the bitch down until she either answers or uses the phone.

        1. Don’t tell her it was me.

          Personal relationships are different. When dealing with a functionary who would really just like you to self immolate to make their day easier is a different matter. Be awkward. You’ve earned it.

      2. “Wear the bitch down…”
        Charming Phizz
        You do realise the ‘bitches’ are doing what the clinicians have instructed them to do, don’t you?
        I have worked on enough health centre reception desks to have witnessed and experienced inordinate abuse and complaints from patients (who are themselves wrong nine times out of ten) who don’t say a word to the nurse or doctor.

        1. I did think i would get a response from you Storm after a post like that.

          I only speak from experience of my GP surgeries over years.

          Stressed and bad tempered.

          Turning all phones to mute as they are overworked.

          Not exactly my fault as a patient in pain.

          The last receptionist i saw at my local was very nice. (pre-cov). And i was surprised.

          I shouldn’t be surprised. I’m treated well at the Dentist and i’m treated well at the Vet.

          Perhaps it’s about time the NHS and GP Service was privatised.

          1. I agree, but don’t take it out on the poor and poorly paid receptionist. Save your frustration to let rip at the doctor who will have given the instructions to the receptionist.

      3. Definitely stay quiet and calm or you will end up being banned from the surgery like my wife was when trying to get answers about her mothers fall.

      4. Me ‘I need to see a doctor’

        Harridan ‘why, what is wrong with you?’

        Me ‘If I knew that. I would not need to see a Doctor’

        Harridan ‘No Need to be like that’

        Me ‘ ‘I need to see a doctor’

        Harridan ‘No appointments are available’

        Me ‘Would you put that in writing please’

        Harridan ‘Why’

        Me ‘for my wife to give to solicitor our solicitor, if anything medically prevetative happens to me in the near future’

        Harridan ‘You have been a patient of ours for 6 years and never needed to see a doctor’

        Me ‘Do you not think, in that case I think I have a problem’

        As I have said before, went to see Doctor, with pain in lower back, prescibed pills, no good, went back to see him and asked him, if he took his car to the garage because the engine wasmaking strange noises and I said “Turn the radio up so you can’t hear them’ would you be happy.

        Result, sent for XRay, hip change two weeks later

    2. I had a problem once on a Saturday. Doctors closed. Went to chemist explained forgot to order repeat. They gave me 50% of the pills and placed the prescription themselves. Collected the remainder the next week.

    3. I chose my current surgery by their Internet booking service – like booking a flight. Choose Dr. Choose day – from the little calendar, days with free time not greyed out. Choose time. Enter reason (“Follow-up of blood sugar” or suchlke.
      They also do e-repeat prescriptions.
      Easy as.

      1. Stop showing off – it doesn’t suit you. Just because you live in a civilised country…..

      2. See my reply to BT just below. Patient Access works, if it’s available. I’ve been known to log on, see available appointments, book one, and arrive at the surgery, all within fifteen minutes…

      3. I used to be able to do that until they stopped on line appointment bookings.

    4. Just a thought, Bill. Does your GP surgery use”Patient Access” by any chance? If so, it’s worth registering. You can order repeat prescriptions, and book appointments without ever having to encounter the Nazi er, receptionist…

      1. They have limited online services. I can order repeat prescriptions – and collect three days later. I can attempt to make an appointment online (in normal times) but there is usually a three-four week waiting list.

        The simplest thing is to roll up and stand in front of the harridan and refuse to go away util something happens.

        Quite WHY it should be so difficult for a Dr – who just now has very little else to do – to make a bloody phone call – is beyond me.

        1. Internet newspapers don’t read themselves, Bill.
          My Dr had a locum a while ago. Iraqui lady Dr who ignored me as far as is possible, to the exent of playing with her phone when taking the blood pressure (by machine). Had to Google some symnptoms. Me no impressed, I can google, too.

        2. You wouldn’t get through the door to our surgery! They are not doing face-to-face appointments apparently. I’ve tried for two days to find out what to do about making an appointment and getting a blood test in July for MOH as requested by the MO last February.

        3. Quite. Admittedly, my practice now offers the option of telephone appointments, and a very limited number of face to face “URGENT” appointments. I suspect one has to be in danger of imminent death to get one of those…

          1. Best just to die.

            Trouble is, I only go there twice a year – as a general rule – for a blood test. So no one knows who I am.

            I do observe people who are clearly there several times a week. They are treated like long lost family…..

          2. Know what you mean. On the other hand, the Pharmacy (in the next village, same as the GP) know who I am as soon as I arrive. I’ve never had to tell them who I am – it’s always “Hello Mr Graham”, before they lose my prescription…

          4. Nah – it’s usually squirrelled away in a cardboard box. I’m picking the latest prescription up tomorrow. Three and a half mile walk to pharmacy, bus to Guildford, quick shop at Waitrose, then Uber home. Such excitement…

            Haven’t played the organ (origami?) since March. Singing is banned, but there’s no apparent hurry to open our local churches for worship anyway. I’m awaiting news of an interview for a retirement bungalow at t’other end of the parish, supposedly happening in July. This place has had the photos taken, the floor plans drawn, and an energy performance survey carried out. Not obviously on the market yet. I believe the village is up in arms, but fully expect the sale will go ahead.

          5. Hope it all works out for you and i will be banging on your new front door with some Ale !

          7. My usual church has opened but without music and I’m peed off with them anyway. Too woke.
            Went to St Barts in the City last Sunday and registered for next. They had an organist and a cantor. Both behind a screen, which is how the building is configured anyway. My first live music for months! Their online services include the choir.

          8. Sadly, that’s the current law. You’re allowed a Cantor, provided he/she is isolated behind a plexiglass screen. In any normal world, singing hymns would never be regarded as dangerous. Welcome to the new normal (which I hate…)

          9. We are holding a service on Sunday, including communion (without the wine). Looking forward to it.

          10. I ‘attended’ our Zoom Communion service on Sunday. Apparently, the PCC has to decide where we go from here. At the moment, we’re open for private prayer, for two hours, twice a week. No-one comes. The (usually tranquil) building resembles a post-nuclear apocalypse. I suspect that most of our congregation will continue to cower behind the sofa. Choirs? Fucked. Meanwhile, Welby and his acolytes are more concerned about non-PC memorials in churches.

          11. This is a real service and Stuart (the Kapellmeister) will play the organ, although singing will be verboten. Welby needs the Almighty to strike him with a thunderbolt.

          12. As it happens, while I’m keeping a weather eye on the rental property market, a new apartment appeared yesterday. Next door to my Pharmacy, and a minute from the GP Surgery. I might be tempted…

          13. Go to A & E. The hospitals are empty. Still took me 3 hours to see a Doctor though. At least the nurse gave me fast acting morphine.

          14. Agreed. I was at the Eye Clinic a week ago; had an injection in the good eye. Frimley Park was less deserted than it was 12 weeks previously, but still very quiet.

      2. I used to use Patient Access for repeat prescriptions. Then it changed and I no longer had access. Haven’t tried it recently.

        1. I’ve had to run the gauntlet of “select all the squares with fire hydrants” nonsense, the last few times I’ve tried to log on. Rather like Disqus…

          1. Oh, no! Whenever I’ve used it, I’ve logged straight in. If I have to select crosswalks, fire hydrants, buses, taxis, bicycles, stairs, bridges, hills and traffic lights next time, I think I’ll give up 🙁

  63. I was arrested, jailed and assaulted by a guard. My ‘crime’? Being a journalist in Trump’s America. Andrew Buncombe. 9 July 2020.

    City officials may have had good cause to retake the area “ceded” last month by mayor Jenny Durkan in an attempt to defuse protests triggered by the killing of George Floyd. While days in the zone had been overwhelmingly peaceful, at night there had been a number of criminal incidents, including six shootings, two of them fatal, with one of those deaths being of a 16-year-old. But the way the officers went about it, wielding sticks and mace, pressing people’s faces into the streets as they forced their hands into handcuffs, appeared heavy-handed at least.

    Only two murders hey? Hardly worth bothering about! Rather reluctantly I have come to the recent conclusion that not enough “journalists” are being assaulted. They have become not seekers of truth but purveyors of lies and propaganda. Witness this “report”. It is a parody of the truth. Aside from the sophistry involved in describing his own arrest Trump bears no responsibility for the activities of the Seattle Police Force while the pattern of Law Enforcement in the United States was settled long ago under a series of Democrat Presidents!

    In the field of reporting from war zones there is an inescapable logic that they should be treated as enemy combatants since they come not to find out the truth but to manufacture a narrative that supports those who sent them. Marshall McLuhan the Canadian philosopher used to say “the medium is the message” a sound bite I never understood at the time and would think has been long surpassed by the present truth that “the medium has become the message.”

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/journalist-arrest-seattle-chaz-protest-police-prison-black-lives-matter-a9606846.html

    1. Two murders is just a normal weekend in the US, they have been running at about 17,000 a year.

    3. Is the journalist really, honestly complaining that the police stepped in to stop even more murders?

      Oh they were heavy handed – probably because a mob of thugs was trying to kill each other!

      I can’t tell any more – is he serious (and so dementedly ideologically perverse he passes of murder as acceptable) or just completely out of touch with reality and therefore psychopathic?

  64. Hmmm….

    “Attorney General Bill Bar has insisted that the government will not allow Ghislaine Maxwell to die in jail like Jeffrey Epstein, who was found hanging in his cell last summer while awaiting trial on child sex trafficking charges.

    Asked an interview with ABC News if the government had Maxwell’s security ‘locked up’ to ensure she would neither be able to kill herself or be harmed, Barr answered firmly: ‘Yes. We have asked them to tell us specifically the protocols they’re following and we have a number of redundant systems to monitor the situation.’

    He added that he was ‘livid’ when Epstein killed himself and that he wanted to see him brought to justice. “

    The truth has many faces….

      1. I did wonder that if the systems were “redundant” – they might not work very well.

    2. …We have asked them to tell us specifically the protocols they’re following… – that sounds really like they have full control of the situation! He should have said “I have the Governors balls here in my hand, and I’m squeezing gently (so far) to get his attention on the matter. The Governor claims full control”.

    3. …We have asked them to tell us specifically the protocols they’re following… – that sounds really like they have full control of the situation! He should have said “I have the Governors balls here in my hand, and I’m squeezing gently (so far) to get his attention on the matter. The Governor claims full control”.

    4. So if they will not allow her to die like Epstein, does that mean that suicide by hanging is out?

  65. The young couple who run the local pub have been particularly public spirited and resourceful during the lockdown, providing veggie boxes and all the other necessities for the locals as well as evening takeaways and a very efficient offy. We locals are all very grateful to them and, by way of support, Nagsman joined me for lunch (limited menu in a large tent in the pub garden).washed down with a most welcome couple of pints of proper ale from the cask.

    The landlord explained that he had to comply with all manner of silly government regulations including requiring contact details. We tried telling him that we were Mr & Mrs Bill Allan, of Allan Towers, Nr Colchester, Essex but it wouldn’t wash as he has seen us so frequently before. {:^))

    2. They sound great. Mine and Dolly’s invite must have got lost in the post. 🙁

      1. Do come by anytime that you and Dolly find yourselves in the Hungerford-Pewsey-Marlborough area. It’s the sort of pub where dogs are not merely welcome but compulsory, especially during the shooting season and they are wet and smelly. There are two open fireplaces for drying out people and hounds. The food is reliable and sometimes rises above that. There is always a large jar of doggy treats on the bar counter.

        1. Sounds lovely. Dolly can hold her own and see off the big dogs. She runs under their legs and bites the soft bits. I taught her well.

          I missed seeing you and Nags. Wanted a second look to see if you were for real. 🙂

          1. A bloke walked into the pub and asked: “Whose Great Dane is that outside”?
            A chap replied: “Mine. Why do you ask?”
            “Well sir: said the bloke “I’m afraid to tell you my dog has just killed your dog”.
            Shocked the chap asked: “What sort of a dog is your dog?”
            The bloke replied: “A Chihuahua …”
            “Are you telling me your Chihuahua has killed my Great Dane!? How?”
            “I’m afraid’ replied the bloke, “that your Great Dane choked to death on it….”

        2. Sounds like my kind of pub! We have some very dog friendly pubs in my area, too (and a lot of the shops are d-f as well).

          1. Indeed Conners. I used to live in Leintwardine, just to the West of Ludlow racecourse and knew that area fairly well.

        3. There’s a distinct possibility that Maddie the Schnauzer may return to Blighty within the next fortnight. The ex’s eldest is working in Saudi, and has just returned there. Wife and kids are still in Ludlow, but F-I-L is apparently not too keen on having a dog in the family. Dianne the Ex might take her in, but her shiny new eco-home in Devon is less than dog-friendly. I may have a canine lodger in the not-too-distant future…

  66. That’s me for today. A nice piece of plaice for supper – and garden beans, peas – and new potatoes. Washed down with something agreeable.

    I may join you tomorrow – all being well.

    Have a spiffling evening setting up your standing order to Black Loaves Matter.

    A demain.

        2. Pumpernickel.

          Or do you really mean pimpernickel?

          TOP DEFINITION – Urban dictionary
          pimpernickel
          The bread that a pimp needs to consume daily in order to obtain his proper nourishment to be able to pimp.

          “Dag yo, i’m feelin low, i needs to get me some pimpernickel in me if i want to be keep my pimp hand strong.”

          1. I am very confident from the timing of the comment, I saw it appear, that it was deliberate. And I thought it was clever and amusing.

          2. I didn’t realise it was an actual word – I meant just a word-play on pumpernickel.

  67. The carers and social workers supporting my Mother are undoubtedly lovely people, but when faced with something even faintly out of the ordinary, cannot cope.
    A week ago, her power failed, so they checked the fuse, then called me – what am I supposed to do about it? After emails and calls from everybody and her dog, it turns out the power company knew about it, it was a mains failure… but they didn’t think to call the power company for some hours.
    Now I get a mail saying that there is a water mains burst, the road is dug up, and they can’t get to my Mother without walking down tha lanes – and that isn’t allowed. FFS, the road has two fucking ends (Penarth end & Sully end), come from the other way! Jesus H Christ, whatever would happen if they got a splinter??
    Not solution-oriented folk, as Firstborn just commented.

    1. Ol

      Tell them to call 105, in future

      Experiencing a power cut? No matter who your provider is, 105 is the number to call to get emergency help and advice, free of charge on mobile and landlines.

      https://www.powercut105.com/

      I have put this up before, but just got sarky comments

      It would have certainly made life easier for everyone

      1. Thanks! Didn’t know that – obviously, neither did they!
        I’m sure they are lovely people, but from where I sit, utterly fu**ing useless.

      2. I’ve had that number plumbed into my mobile as ‘Power Cuts’ for a few years now. Saves having to scrabble about in the dark trying to find out who you’re supposed to phone…

        Very useful.

      4. When my father was living with us in his final years, he needed an oxygen concentrator 24/7 because of COPD. We contacted our electricity provider and they put us on their ‘at risk’ register for power outages. The theory was they would get a portable generator to us if the outage lasted more than an hour. Needless to say the dozen or so power cuts we did experience in that time lasted less than an hour.

    2. Sigh… Reminds me of a phone call a couple of weeks ago.
      “Hi, I have your delivery from the Hog’s Back Brewery. I can’t find you. I’m outside the Village Hall.”
      “OK, no worries – which way are you facing?”
      “The Village Hall is on my left.”
      “Great – just keep driving. I’m the last house in School Hill.”
      “That doesn’t make sense – the last house is Yarn Hill, on my right”
      “No – if you came in from the top end of School Hill, Yarn Hill is the first house.”
      “I don’t understand.”
      “The road has two ends. You’re at one end; I’m at the other. Just keep driving, and stop when you see me standing in the middle of the road…”

  68. From “Walk Away”

    Deaths in care facilities as a % of total Covid deaths:

    Scotland 58% cc.

    @NicolaSturgeon
    England 21%
    Wales 25%
    Germany 37%
    France 66%
    Spain 66%
    Sweden 53%
    Belgium 51%
    Norway 61%

    1. This is where Canada shines, eighty one percent of CV deaths were in care homes.

      Really appalling conditions have been uncovered in homes that apparently passed all health department checks. The socialists are all blaming private care homes for the problem and politicians who should have been aware of issues are running around claiming that action must be taken.

      1. You’d think – rather than blaming politicians or the private sector that you’d look at those responsible for monitoring them.

        After all, if the private can scrimp, it will. Such is the nature of the beast. This is why the state is paid. To ensure standards are maintained. That’s not a political issue. It’s like blaming Boris for hospitals being inefficient. There are 70 or 80 layers of quangos, offaldoms (sic) and managers before you even get to the person buying stuff. Blame the department. Expose it’s incompetence and start hacking off some heads until people are employed not to build their towers but to serve the public.

        1. Remember governments and their civil service cannot run or control antything. They privatised the railway but not all of it rail track ws left to control the track. they could not control the running of it so now want to nationalise it again. We need as little government as possible and 75% of civil servants made redundant.

  69. Evening, all. I can’t see the point of pulling down statues anyway, but then I was never very keen on iconoclasm. As an aside to the intellectually challenged Hamilton, he’s put his dog on a vegan diet. He claims Max (the dog – not our MTD) has given up meat. No, YOU have made him give up meat, you pillock! Dogs are primarily carnivores. He should be had up for cruelty.

    2. Hamilton is destined – perhaps – for a self-inflicted car career crash …

    1. I especially like, “Black Death was a form of bubonic plague, newsworthy because it wiped out vast numbers of humanity sufficient to almost decimate the European population without any help from Bill Gates”.

  73. ‘It’s a kick in the teeth for millions’: Outrage as BBC announces it will scrap free TV licences for over 75s from August 1 forcing millions of households to pay £157.50 fee
    Controversial plans to end free licences for all aged over 75 given the green light
    Only those who receive the Pension Credit benefit won’t have to pay the fee
    BBC hoped to make the change on June 1 and the delay has cost £35m a month
    Boris Johnson’s spokesman described today’s move as ‘the wrong decision’

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8506049/Free-TV-licence-75s-means-tested-August-1-BBC-confirms.html

    EastSpenders: BBC criticised for £87m cost of new Albert Square

    https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/mar/20/eastspenders-bbc-criticised-for-87m-cost-of-new-albert-square

      1. I don’t know if it’s technically possible but a subscription package allowing buyers to decide which channels they want would be very telling.

        1. The Beeb wouldn’t want to give people that choice. They wouldn’t get any money.

        2. I said something similar a while back.
          There are now so many subscription services, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Now TV, Sky, Virgin, etc., ad nauseum , no-one, or at least only those who can least afford it, can afford to subscribe to all services.
          What is needed is one subscription account through which users can access any of the above with a payment going to the provider of whichever programme or film you decide to watch.

      2. I watch whatever I want to on the BBC, free of charge, by virtue of a secret VPN.

        I still choose not to watch their news programmes.

    3. Just received from Age UK

      “The BBC have said no one will be expected to pay for a new licence until
      they have been contacted by a letter from TV Licensing and either
      claimed a free licence or agreed a payment plan. We will let you know
      when the BBC send out their official letters and tell you what they look
      like. For now, if you are over 75 please ignore any emails or
      letters you receive asking you to pay your TV licence as they may be a
      scam. You can find more information here.”

      All very well but Age UK seem to think anyone in their 70s is incapable of reading a letter from the BBC or recognising what it looks like. Patronising.

          1. My Mother wouldn’t tell me squat about anything even mildly private, but she’ll hatter for hours on the phone to a voice that asks her private stuff.
            Fortunately, she desn’t talk money to anybody, as that’s “not done”. Making the execution of the Power of Attorney less than easy… can’t even find out the name of the ruddy banks!

      4. Sounds like a good defence to avoid paying. “I thought it was a scam letter”.

      5. So elderly people who have never worked in their lives, or have recently landed on a south coast beach, will get free TV?

      6. I will be over 75 one day, so I am old. What’s a letter? Is it one of those rubbery things that stop you getting diseases when getting too close to a woman, which I use to fill with water and throw at the cat?

        1. …I use to fill with water and throw at the cat” – pitched one like that out of the 13th storey of the Halls of Residence, towards a hated person. Landed right next to him, and man! Was he wet & cross!
          :-))
          That was fun!

        2. …I use to fill with water and throw at the cat” – pitched one like that out of the 13th storey of the Halls of Residence, towards a hated person. Landed right next to him, and man! Was he wet & cross!
          :-))
          That was fun!

        4. A letter is someone with more than one ‘ouse with someone else living in it

      7. I will be over 75 one day, so I am old. What’s a letter? Is it one of those rubbery things that stop you getting diseases when getting too close to a woman, which I use to fill with water and throw at the cat?

      8. 332243+ up ticks,
        Afternoon N,
        A Matryoska type letter warning of a could be scam letter sent out and not by proven scammers the BBc.

    4. Just stop paying it. Collection is run by crapita and they go after easy targets in high density estates and dwellings. Probably not black single mothers though. Wouldn’t want to be seen as racist lol.

      The BBC are an absolute effing disgrace. Who the hell do they think paid in the first place?

      1. About time someone tore down the effigies on the front of Broadcasting House. They were created by a paedophile.

        2. My Father went to Effiji. Came back with a cannibals brain-eating fork, in wood. Ukk.

        3. If they went after Eric Gill we would lose the same on Australia House, London Transport House and other prominent buildings and the Stations of the Cross at Westminster.

          They would then trash books printed with beautiful typefaces such as Gill Sans and Perpetua.

          They might try to attack the London Underground signage as many think Gill designed it. It was in fact designed by Edward Johnston with whom Gill had shared rooms in Lincoln’s Inn.

    7. Let’s hope the BBC reduce the licence fee to the level it was before the government agreed to an increase on condition that the BBC funded the free for over 75s package – I seem to recall Lord Hall described the move as a good deal for the BBC – if they renege on their side of the deal surely they can’t expect to keep the good bits [actually I suspect they don’t see any problems and the spinless government will let them get away with it!]

      1. I don’t think the government is spinless – spineless, definitely, but their spin machine is whizzing round.

    1. Of course it is, they let it run its course and this is what happens in the end.

    1. She should be made to live with the Clintons and they made responsible for her actions, she breaks a law, they (the Clintons)
      are imprisoned for the same offence, for the same amount of time, but, with no remission for them

      Just as all those who shout for unlimited immigration shold have to support them

  77. Good morning everybody.
    On 9th July 1944 in Tilburg, the Netherlands, some Sicherheitsdienst (SD) operatives burst into a small house and forced three Royal Air Force evaders into the backyard, where they were shot and killed.
    The lady who was sheltering them, Jacoba Pulskens, was ordered to cover the bodies with a sheet; instead she covered them with a neatly ironed Dutch flag.
    After interrogation, Coba Pulskens was transported to Ravensbruck.
    Miss Pulskens has a memorial, and her story is immortalised on the web.
    Her flag is displayed in St Michael’s Church, Coningsby.

    Where did ‘Aunt Coba’ find her courage?
    Where is ours with regards to a certain Chinese virus?

    1. I was stationed at RAF Coningsby in ’72 but was unaware of that, thanks.

      1. It is now the home of what iremains of the RAF

        Battle of Britain Memorial Flight

        1. When I was at Cranfield, they used to do the major maintenance on the BBMF – you’d hear a Merlin fire up on the airfield, and everybody not in class would bale out of the buildings to look.
          One event sticks in my mind – a late-ish model Spitfire beat up the airfiled – of course, with a high-speed Merlin flying just above the roof, we all fell out of the buildings, in my case in time to see the aircraft in plan view (so he had a close to 90 degree bank on) flying out of the car park & between the poplar trees, just by the School of Aeronautics hangar. The wingtip cannot have been more than 6′ from the ground, and by God was he going fast!
          Happy days!
          Superb airmanship.

          2. I happen to know that the QRA is still based at Coningsby. And Lossiemouth. The ex’s eldest may well be working for BAe in the Saudi desert now, but we still have a presence in Lincs…

          3. I was at RNAS Lossiemouth in the early ’60s

            Buccaneers, Scimitars and Humters

        3. I went round the hangars a couple of years ago. I think the guide was a bit annoyed that I was either the only person who knew the answers to his questions, or the only one prepared to speak.

        4. When I was at Cranfield, they used to do the major maintenance on the BBMF – you’d hear a Merlin fire up on the airfield, and everybody not in class would bale out of the buildings to look.
          One event sticks in my mind – a late-ish model Spitfire beat up the airfiled – of course, with a high-speed Merlin flying just above the roof, we all fell out of the buildings, in my case in time to see the aircraft in plan view (so he had a close to 90 degree bank on) flying out of the car park & between the poplar trees, just by the School of Aeronautics hangar. The wingtip cannot have been more than 6′ from the ground, and by God was he going fast!
          Happy days!
          Superb airmanship.

          2. Yo Ol

            I used to live on the Lincolnshire coast. BBMF were always flying overhead

            I am plane magnet. now we have moved, get the helos from RAF Shawbury

      1. Thanks Issy. Great idea.
        A cousin was a Flight Sergeant.
        I have glanced at his grave online, but crocuses and lavender obscure the inscription.

        1. My father flew in Stirlings at the end of the war. Lots of remarkable photos here in his scrap book. I must get them copied.

      2. Thank you. What a contrast to the little unthinking shits ‘protesting’ today.

        1. They’ve been given everything, they want for nothing, they are rich, safe and happy.

          Of course they’re looking for someone to blame for it all. They’ve no values or integrity of their own.

    3. Brave lady. Respect. Did she come back from Ravensbrück?
      Where is ours with regards to a certain coloured lives movement?

      1. Coba Pulskens was killed in Ravensbruck in March 1945.
        She apparently volunteered to replace a younger woman who was due to be gassed.
        It is also said that in her home she sheltered Jewish people, so it is possible that she should be recognised at Yad Vashem.

        1. That’s awful, and so sad. Volunteered to take the gas… words fail me. I wonder if I could have done that, in similar circumstances?

          2. I hope so, but suspect she would have been included in the next “batch” in the chamber.

        2. She doesn’t seem to be in Yad Vashem, but maybe the spellings are a bit awry.
          There were a lot of Yacoba/Yakoba/Jakoba/Jacoba in Netherlands back then. Their fates, “murdered” are distrubing (I don’t know a better word).

  78. We had a great lunch out today at our local Italian.They had run out of our normal red wine £17 but gave us the next best £25 at lower price. Best lasagna I have had. Stephans late mothers recipe from 1976.

  79. Good night all.

    Fried fillet of lemon sole, butter/lemon/parsley sauce – I let the parsley get really crisp in the pan, washed down with Montgravet SB 2019 & followed by lemon tart.

      1. I think it’s my favourite fish. During Summer I used to buy it nearly every Wednesday from a fishing family in Norddeich, so fresh it used to curl up in the pan & such good value too!!

    2. Being in the middle of a 90 degree F day, I opted for a cold tortellini salad with grape tomatoes and asparagus in fresh basil vinaigrette. Have to say I found the tortellini a little heavy going, but overall, very tasty.

  80. Looks like Donald has sorted Iran just like he sorted N Korea…….

    ”BREAKING: IRAN EXPLOSIONS – A staggering 3/4’s of the Natanz centrifuge facility enrichment hall was destroyed by recent mysterious events in latest 2nd round satellite footage updates. Damage could be ‘irreversible”..

  83. I just read that Sturgeon is intent on closing the ‘border’ between England and Scotland under the pretext that we English are infectious whereas the Scots are free of the plague, or so they claim.

    Silly me but I understood that there is no border just a sort of county line. Where otherwise are the border posts? Why in fact do the SNP seek to divide the UK if not for some nefarious and subversive aims?

    I remain firmly of the opinion that devolution was a mistake. If devolution was properly enacted we would have a border between Scotland and England, we would patrol the border and keep the Scots out. We would also stop the massive subsidies which keep Sturgeon in new outfits and smart heels.

  84. A mother goes to town to register for child tax credit.

    “How many children?” asks the assessor.

    “10,” replies the mother.

    “10?” says the council worker. “What are their names?”

    “Wayne, Wayne, Wayne, Wayne, Wayne, Wayne, Wayne, Wayne, Wayne and Wayne.”


    “Doesn’t that get confusing?”


    “Nah,” says the mother. “Its great, because if they are out playing in the street I just have to shout, ‘WAYNE, YA DINNER’S READY’ or ‘WAYNE, GO TO BED NOW’ and they all do it.”


    “What if you want to speak to one individually?” says the perturbed council worker.


    “That’s easy,” says the mother, “I just use their surnames.”

  85. Another thought for the day.

    Africans had a head start of probably 10’s of thousands of years in the evolutionary process, long, long before Asians, let alone whitey appeared on the scene.

    Why are they not the most technologically, economically, cultuirally and territorially dominant humans?

    2. Environmental determinism – colder climes require a tad more inventiveness for survival…..

        1. Large Neanderthals, once thought extinct, have made a comeback in recent decades…

      2. This is one of the reasons for the Ashkenazim being so smart. They’ve sharpened their wits on 2000+ years of persecution.

      1. That doesn’t match the narrative.
        Even though it’s true that they evolved.

  87. In what I think of an increasingly Age of Insanity, I read that Notre Dame is to be restored to its pre-fire design. Thus the magnificent spire designed by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc will be faithfully restored.

    This is a great result and the ultimate rejection of the supposedly ‘Modern Masters’ such as the creeps Norman Foster, Richard Rogers, Renzo Piano and their wretched acolytes. Some idiot had even suggested putting a swimming pool and spa on the roof of the cathedral.

    My architectural heart weeps at much of the nonsense which is evidently now the normal.

    1. Do they have the enormous oak beams that would be needed or the craftsmen to build such a magnificent building?

      I suppose that we will never know, it will be decades before they finish the work.

      1. It took quite a hunt to find the oak beams to replace those lost in the fire in Windsor Castle. They did manage to find them though, and the craftsman were still around, thanks to a revival of interest in the medieval crafts since the 1970s.

        A bigger challenge might be to stop it happening again. I heard the “allahu akhbar” shouted from the roof moments before the fire took hold, and there may not be the political will to safeguard national institutions from hostile attack from fifth columnists that there was (and in the case of the French, I say this with a huge dose of irony since Notre Dame has been regularly attacked by revolutionaries ever since it was built). A more worrying modern development is to consider what happened to the loving restoration of the Macintosh Building at the Glasgow School of Art after it was damaged by fire in 2014.

        1. I watched the video of the man on the roof and what looked like a flame but i missed the shout. I don’t think i had the sound on. Was allahu akbar really heard?

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