Thursday 9 September: The Government wants to throw billions at health and social care with no guaranteed outcome

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.

560 thoughts on “Thursday 9 September: The Government wants to throw billions at health and social care with no guaranteed outcome”

  1. Now NHS wants to hire £270k bosses: Recruitment drive fuels fears over where extra cash raised by social care reforms will be going. 9 September 2021.

    The NHS will hire dozens of new executives on salaries of up to £270,000 – to make sure the new £36billion health and social care tax is spent wisely.

    Health Secretary Sajid Javid promised yesterday to be ‘watchful for any waste and wokery’ over the £12billion a year raised by a 1.25 percentage point increase in national insurance.

    Seven jobs are advertised with salaries of £270,000, which is 80 per cent more than the Prime Minister earns. According to the job adverts, successful candidates will need to be ‘politically astute’ and ‘actively champion diversity, inclusion, and equality of opportunity for all’.

    Morning everyone. This thing is a Black Hole sucking in everything around it including the Tory Party’s most basic beliefs! We should shortly see the Government, Parliament and the UK following à la Jumanji!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9971921/Now-NHS-wants-hire-270k-bosses-Fears-cash-raised-social-care-reforms-going.html

    1. The Health Minister should stop these new job applications forthwith . It is an insult to the people of this country. How many “managers” in the NHS have salaries above the PM’s salary? There needs to be a serious look at the cost of NHS management, get rid of the dead wood, unnecessary managerial jobs and reduce the high salaries to more sensible levels.

      1. Morning all.

        “It is an insult to the people of this country. How many “managers” in the NHS” – I think the last sentence is more pertinent.

      2. Why would they? They don’t care where our money goes. There’s no expectations of improvement or progress. It’s just free cash to them. If they wanted to stop wasteful, pointless non-jobs then they wouldn’t have hiked tax in the first place!

    2. Fuels fears? We know where our money will go. it will be wasted on some troughing quangocrat who will achieve nothing, do nothing, waste everything and not a jot of healthcare. That’s where *all* our taxes go.

    3. And each of those new execs will need a whole new department of people to do their bidding. How much is that going to cost, and with what benefit?

      1. I think the NHS management had been tipped off. They have nearly finished building a new office block at my local hospital.

    4. I worked in the Accounts Dept of an NHS Trust for a while. It was only after a year that I learned that there was a statistics department. Each month they compile sets of reports, prints of large spreadsheets reduced to A4 size. Thr pile was 2 inches thick. Nobody looked at them.
      Why cannot every patient that is treated by the NHS be asked their level of satisfaction with the outcome of treatment (unless dead)?
      Instead we have quality managers and lots of other people who are contributing zero to the medical outcomes. When one refers to the NHS one is thinking of medical outcomes. They should be the measure.

    5. I worked in the Accounts Dept of an NHS Trust for a while. It was only after a year that I learned that there was a statistics department. Each month they compile sets of reports, prints of large spreadsheets reduced to A4 size. Thr pile was 2 inches thick. Nobody looked at them.
      Why cannot every patient that is treated by the NHS be asked their level of satisfaction with the outcome of treatment (unless dead)?
      Instead we have quality managers and lots of other people who are contributing zero to the medical outcomes. When one refers to the NHS one is thinking of medical outcomes. They should be the measure.

  2. Now NHS wants to hire £270k bosses: Recruitment drive fuels fears over where extra cash raised by social care reforms will be going. 9 September 2021.

    The NHS will hire dozens of new executives on salaries of up to £270,000 – to make sure the new £36billion health and social care tax is spent wisely.

    Health Secretary Sajid Javid promised yesterday to be ‘watchful for any waste and wokery’ over the £12billion a year raised by a 1.25 percentage point increase in national insurance.

    Seven jobs are advertised with salaries of £270,000, which is 80 per cent more than the Prime Minister earns. According to the job adverts, successful candidates will need to be ‘politically astute’ and ‘actively champion diversity, inclusion, and equality of opportunity for all’.

    Morning everyone. This thing is a Black Hole sucking in everything around it including the Tory Party’s most basic beliefs! We should shortly see the Government, Parliament and the UK following à la Jumanji!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9971921/Now-NHS-wants-hire-270k-bosses-Fears-cash-raised-social-care-reforms-going.html

  3. Now NHS wants to hire £270k bosses: Recruitment drive fuels fears over where extra cash raised by social care reforms will be going. 9 September 2021.

    The NHS will hire dozens of new executives on salaries of up to £270,000 – to make sure the new £36billion health and social care tax is spent wisely.

    Health Secretary Sajid Javid promised yesterday to be ‘watchful for any waste and wokery’ over the £12billion a year raised by a 1.25 percentage point increase in national insurance.

    Seven jobs are advertised with salaries of £270,000, which is 80 per cent more than the Prime Minister earns. According to the job adverts, successful candidates will need to be ‘politically astute’ and ‘actively champion diversity, inclusion, and equality of opportunity for all’.

    Morning everyone. This thing is a Black Hole sucking in everything around it including the Tory Party’s most basic beliefs! We should shortly see the Government, Parliament and the UK following à la Jumanji!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9971921/Now-NHS-wants-hire-270k-bosses-Fears-cash-raised-social-care-reforms-going.html

  4. At Least You’re Thinking

    The teacher says, “Class, we are going to play a little game today! I’m going to see whether you can guess what’s in my desk from the clues I give you. So here are the clues… it’s 12 inches long, it’s hard, and it has numbers on it.”
    Little Jonny sits there for a moment, then raises his hand.
    “Yes Jonny? Do you think you know what it is?”
    Jonny says, “It’s a ruler!”
    The teacher replies, “No Jonny, it’s not a ruler. It’s a maths book! But at least you’re thinking!”
    A few minutes go by and Jonny raises his hand. The teacher says, “Yes, Jonny?”
    Jonny says, “I have a puzzle for you! I have something in my trouserss that is 6 inches long, is hard, and has nuts.”
    The teacher, furious, replies, “Jonny! We’re not going to play that kind of game!”
    To which Jonny says, “Don’t get upset, it’s only a chocolate bar… but at least you’re thinking!“

    2. Although not wishing to spoil a good story with the facts, the salad is named after the hotel, not him. The hotel may have been named Caesars for its Roman theme, but Caesar is a generic term for emperor covering a multitude of Roman leaders and the main statue there is of Augustus Caesar, aka Octavian, the first Roman emperor.

      It would be like changing the name of the Adam Smith institute because Cyril Smith was a paedophile*, doubly ironic given that the proponents of cancel culture are lefties who see nothing wrong with Cyril because he was one of them.

      *Weirdly, spellchecker doesn’t recognise paedophile and doesn’t suggest replacements.

      1. The spellchecker is probably american, and they cannot cope unless the word is spelled phonically.

      2. Not Ceasar’s hotel. Restauranteur Caesar Cardini in Tijuana, Mexico. He ran out of ingredients for his salads as listed on the menu and threw together what he had to hand.

    3. Although not wishing to spoil a good story with the facts, the salad is named after the hotel, not him. The hotel may have been named Caesars for its Roman theme, but Caesar is a generic term for emperor covering a multitude of Roman leaders and the main statue there is of Augustus Caesar, aka Octavian, the first Roman emperor.

      It would be like changing the name of the Adam Smith institute because Cyril Smith was a paedophile*, doubly ironic given that the proponents of cancel culture are lefties who see nothing wrong with Cyril because he was one of them.

      *Weirdly, spellchecker doesn’t recognise paedophile and doesn’t suggest replacements.

  7. Diary of an Afghan family in the UK: “We can’t apply for jobs, drive or open a bank account—we have nothing”

    https://www.standard.co.uk/insider/diary-afghan-refugee-uk-government-support-b954064.html?itm_source=Internal&itm_channel=homepage_trending_article_component&itm_campaign=trending_section&itm_content=1

    Been here 3 weeks. First in quarantine hotel in Manchester and now another in Canterbury. Good to know all our efforts and expense have been so gratefully received. No BTL comments allowed.

    1. Morning VOM. They have jumped out of the Fire into the Frying Pan. We cannot even look after our own!

    2. Comments have been closed since last night, the earlier ones yesterday were more supportive than I would have expected.

    3. He says he has a masters from a western university and worked for the British embassy yet can’t do anything until we arrange courses on British culture for him? He moans he can’t drive despite the obvious problems of ensuring he’s safe, that we can’t get driving tests for ages and he doesn’t have the money to buy or rent a car.

      Mind you, having been involved with journalists who’ve spiced up and misrepresented the truth, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s nowhere near as ungrateful as he’s portrayed.

      1. I’m sure their main intent is to work, but we – thanks to that moron in Number 10 – have now priced him out of the market.

        Where will he live? He can’t stay in the South east, it’s too expensive. Oh! Of course. He’ll get on a council house waiting list and as he has 12 children and foreign will get first dibs.

      2. It doesn’t appear that he’s ungrateful.

        Just that various benefits that he was promised have not been given to him and his family.

  9. BTL Comment on DT Letters:

    David Jones
    9 Sep 2021 12:50AM

    Lines to a Government

    They couldn’t run a whelk-stall or a beer-up in a bar,

    They wouldn’t know if Bingley was a part of Bogota;

    They haven’t got the slightest sense of former British pride,

    They’ve never run a business and they couldn’t if they tried;

    They couldn’t build or plumb or wire, they couldn’t even light a fire,

    To golden pensions they aspire (expenses on the side!)

    They tax and rob and vilify the workers and their wealth,

    They raid our people’s pensions using secrecy and stealth;

    They tax us when we’re working, they tax us when we shop,

    They tax us in retirement, and tax us when we drop;

    They tax the strong and tax the meek: they tax the wealthy, tax the weak,

    They tax us till our corpses creak, and tax us when we pop!

    They’ve sold off every sovereign at a fraction of its weight

    To pay for countless migrants who enter Britain’s gate;

    They welcome foreign fishermen who raid our British seas,

    And pay the social service bills for doubtful refugees.

    They’ve let this country be beset by helpless, hopeless, hapless debt:

    Our children’s children won’t forget, but pay off by degrees!

    So where’s the British party that will stop this headlong slide,

    Assure our independence and restore our British pride?

    Libs and Greens are woeful, weak; and Labour’s looking pretty bleak,

    The Tories cannot even speak, a nation mortified!

  11. Good morning all, grey and decidedly damp (though less muggy than past couple of days) around here at the moment. Golf may be less than 18 holes…if any. A stewards enquiry will commence in the club car park at 08.00.

  12. ‘Morning again,

    Another BTL comment worthy of posting here:

    Kevin Bell
    9 Sep 2021 12:58AM
    Jonathan Levenson. Calm yourself. We haven’t been at war. It’s our government that has frightened you into thinking this. There have been very few excess deaths over the period, It’s sad but most were over 80 and had other serious health problems. And for that your idol Boris has trashed the economy, ruined education and created such a large backlog in the NHS that we thought we had saved that he wants to throw another £10bn a year into it. Of course this money like all other money we put in will go on wage increases and the hiring of even more managers to administer the extra funds.

    Meanwhile thousands of illegal immigrants are entering the country each week no doubt attracted by the free NHS for themselves and their family members when they join them. All paid for by us. Nice one Boris.

    1. Ditto. Fortunately, my bag carries my clubs, a sense of humour and some fortitude. If it requires an aqualung, we may reconsider.

  14. The BTLs are fizzing this morning…let us hope that the trustees of the Fellowship have just sounded its death knell. Go woke etc…

    Steve Jones
    9 Sep 2021 5:06AM
    I see the Winston Churchill Memorial Fellowship is deleting his name because his past is offensive.

    Really, how nice – now these sorts wonder why I don’t give $1 any more to any charity but one [veterans] – who would donate to support disgusting people like this..why are they even working for this charity if they don’t like the man it is named for…………………oh of course they want to get paid – and paid excessively I’ll wager.

    I am so over these types they make my skin crawl.

    1. The Weston creature needs to be reminded that she is a pathetic worm practicing the very spite Churchill fought against. If she won’t stand up for him, she should be removed – and kicked in the face, like all fascists should be.

  15. A somewhat lengthy BTL but well worth reading:

    Matthew Biddlecombe
    9 Sep 2021 6:51AM
    What has happened to this once great country of ours? The c*ck up of the Northern Ireland situation via Brexit? The NHS draining money like a colander with over-size holes? The continuing dithering of Covid restrictions? No, none of those (though Heaven only knows, that’s enough to be going on with).

    No, I mean this never ending ability of ours to reward failure. If a CEO of a major private company had run it in the same way Cressida D i c k has run the Metropolitan Police Service, (and oh I hate hate the word “Service” rather than “Force”) he/she would have been out on their ear a long time ago. We have seen this woman preside over one disaster after another; disasters that in some cases, such as the tragedy that surrounded Sir Leon Brittan and his wife, were heartbreaking to hear of. Yet, not only did she manage to hold on to her job, she is now to be offered a two-year extension to it!

    Don’t those who run this organisation realise just how insulting this is? Yes, I’m talking about the average man and woman who have sacrificed much thanks to Covid; the businesses that have been lost through no fault of their own, along with their employees who now find themselves out of work. They are now to be hammered by the tax-man in an attempt to rescue an organisation, that increasingly more and more people realise needs modernising and updating. They are already being hammered by huge increases in the price of energy as the government’s crazy energy policy begins to fall apart in front of our eyes. We’re also being hammered by rises from local government via our Council Tax bills; bills that this year include a levy for social care, so that’s twice we’re going to be paying for it now.

    This government (and if AmF tells me once more that it’s a Conservative government, I won’t be responsible for the language in my reply!) has turned it’s back on the hard-working families of this country, and the pensioners; some of whom had to live through a period of some of the highest rates of inflation and interest rates ever seen. We worked bloody hard through our lives, much as the current generation is (I know; I see the hours my three children put in at their jobs) and this government has now put two-fingers up at us and has asked us to get them out of the pit they dug themselves in.

    In the meantime, the CEO of the Metropolitan Police Service has failed on a number of counts, yet gets the opportunity to wreak her kind of havoc for another two years in the knowledge that at the end of it, her pension will give her the sort of lifestyle we can only dream of.

    What a state we’ve got ourselves into, but where is the Margaret Thatcher type figure to rescue us from this crisis, rather like the real thing who rescued the country back in the 1980?

    I despair. I truly, and utterly, despair.

    2. The state rewards failure, incompetence and stupidity. It faces no market, with an uncontrolled tap of tax payers money, tax payers who have no choice but for the arrogant thug of a state to rummage through their pockets.

      This is why we get useless policing. It’s why the NHS is a mess. It’s why the welfare bill keeps climbing – and it will ever higher this year.

      No, they’re not Conservatives. They’re just another bunch of overpaid, useless, lazy troughers. The state consumes over 52% of our income. That means we are now getting poorer, every single year.

  16. Morning all

    SIR – Allison Pearson (Comment, September 8) argues that failing to guarantee the elderly a dignified old age is un-Conservative. The problem with the Government’s proposals is that they offer no such guarantee.

    The Government is not presenting a plan – only money. It is not clear how this money will be used to increase capacity in either the GP system or the care system. I have no doubt that vast quantities of cash will be wasted and outcomes will improve only marginally – if at all.

    For the cost of the National Insurance rise, we could fund private medical insurance for nearly every adult in the country. Judging by recent letters, there is far more spare capacity in the private sector than in the NHS. Instead of spraying money at yet more state largesse, why not put it (if it must be raised) towards helping people use the private sector where capacity exists?

    Iwan Price-Evans

    Croydon, Surrey

    SIR – Boris Johnson has broken his promises on National Insurance and income tax. We are going to spend, spend, spend on the unreformed NHS and underdeveloped social services, having spent, spent, spent on Covid.

    When will reality kick in?

    Michael Bird

    Lancaster

    SIR – Here we go again – another Conservative government, devoid of common sense, which heeds the views of focus groups rather than those of its natural supporters and elected representatives.

    Christopher Gill

    MP for Ludlow, 1987-2001

    Aberdovey, Merionethshire

    SIR – Camilla Tominey (“We have just witnessed the PM sound the death knell for Conservatism”, Analysis, September 8) is wrong.

    The Prime Minister has shown great leadership and proved that once and for all the NHS is no longer the Labour Party’s province. Had a third world war broken out after the 2019 election, manifesto pledges would have had to be reviewed. In case anyone hasn’t noticed, we have just had a world war with an invisible enemy: Covid.

    The Government has done a remarkable job in helping businesses with VAT and tax holidays, and supporting millions of people with the furlough scheme. As a longstanding Conservative Party member, I fully endorse Boris Johnson and his Cabinet for doing what is clearly necessary with these small tax increases.

    Jonathan Levenson

    Minehead, Somerset

    SIR – The complaint that a younger generation is now to pay for the healthcare of older generations perhaps ignores the fact that all long-term projects have to start somewhere, and the current pensioners paid considerably higher rates of tax in their earning lifetimes.

    Ralph Ellerton

    Manchester

    SIR – The rise in NI contributions is effectively a pay cut for employees. Surely NHS staff and all key workers who have battled tirelessly to save lives, keep our shops open and bins emptied should be exempt from this otherwise essential tax increase.

    Nigel Lines

    Ferndown, Dorset

    SIR – I have no problem in principle with raising taxes to fund social care.

    However, council tax bills were increased a year or two ago by 3 per cent, the extra funding being ring-fenced specifically for this purpose.

    My council tax bill now shows a 3 per cent “social care charge” of £287.37, described as a “precept to fund adult social care”. Are we paying twice?

    David Smith

    Chew Stoke, Somerset

    SIR – Does anyone know who is responsible for administering the huge sum of money raised by Captain Sir Tom Moore, intended for the NHS?

    June Dunn

    Cirencester, Gloucestershire

    October lockdown

    SIR – Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, has said that a “firebreak” lockdown will not be imposed in October.

    Consequently, we have now cancelled any plans for the school half-term holiday. Whenever the Government has said restrictions will not be imposed or maintained, it has gone back on its word – usually at the last moment.

    Such a “firebreak” can never be described as “living with Covid”.

    Mike Tickner

    Warminster, Wiltshire

    Potholed Britain

    SIR – Leaving the Channel Tunnel by car after a three-week holiday in France was a salutary experience.

    We had become used to very good roads, and had almost forgotten the potholes, uneven surfaces and endless works that characterise the English system. Roads in the Alps which experience plenty of frost and snow in the winter months, and autoroutes with exceptionally heavy traffic, seem equally immune to the English disease.

    Our post-Brexit ambitions sit uneasily with this inability to provide good basic infrastructure.

    Dr Ken Humphris

    High Casterton, Cumbri

    1. This tax hike will make absolutely no difference whatsoever. A lot of trougher salaries will increase. Waiting lists will lengthen, costs will soar. Nothing will improve, in fact it will only get worse.

      Our ambitions are fine. The state refuses to make use of them. Besides, chances are we paid for that blasted road!

      1. We certainly paid for nice new roads in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. When we toured Europe (today is Tuesday, it must be Austria – but I’ve lost the itinerary) I did notice one thing. The roads in Czechland that led to the former German border seemed to be pre-war autobahns, preserved by having had little use for 70 years.

    2. This tax hike will make absolutely no difference whatsoever. A lot of trougher salaries will increase. Waiting lists will lengthen, costs will soar. Nothing will improve, in fact it will only get worse.

      Our ambitions are fine. The state refuses to make use of them. Besides, chances are we paid for that blasted road!

      1. Yep – the man is clearly a spaffer. It is not a small tax increase, it’s a huge increase. Worse, it was unnecessary.

        There is nothing conservative about tax hikes. Levenson is an onanist.

    5. “My council tax bill now shows a 3 per cent “social care charge” of £287.37, described as a “precept to fund adult social care”. Are we paying twice?” Yes, of course you are, Mr Smith and if you have to fund the care of a spouse with dementia you are paying a third time.

    6. “My council tax bill now shows a 3 per cent “social care charge” of £287.37, described as a “precept to fund adult social care”. Are we paying twice?” Yes, of course you are, Mr Smith and if you have to fund the care of a spouse with dementia you are paying a third time.

  17. Denmark to make migrants work to ‘aid integration’. 9 September 2021.

    Migrants in Denmark will be ordered to complete 37 hours’ work a week in order to receive welfare benefits, the Government said on Tuesday.

    Despite Denmark’s strong social democrat leanings, the country boasts some of Europe’s toughest immigration policies as migration and integration have become key issues for voters.

    The Government, which has set a target of zero asylum applications, said the plan was designed to help migrants assimilate into society.

    The Danes are getting quite Bolshie about Migrants. Unfortunately this means that they will upsticks and come here!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2021/09/09/denmark-make-migrants-work-aid-integration/

    1. “ The plan is targeting a group of roughly 20,000 people, who the government says are struggling to integrate because they are not in the labour force”
      Er, no, they are not struggling to integrate. They’re not even trying. They don’t want to integrate and have no intention of doing so. Islam rules their lives and they are doing their duty to it, keeping faith until time and their increasing numbers take over the country for Allah.

      1. There is no requirement in this country for an “asylum seeker” to either get a job, or learn the language.

        We spoke to an “asylum seeker” in the USA some years ago.

        He said that he was very grateful to the American government for giving him free English lessons of a very high quality, but added that he

        was told by the American government that if he didn’t meet a satisfactory standard after a year he would be deported back to his homeland.

    2. They haven’t physically got the room.

      And, I imagine they’re tired of hearing news reports about Mohammed and Abdul raping a child.

      So are we, but the state tells the abused child to put up with it in the name of diversity.

  18. Allistair Heath giving it both barrels. Trouble is, Johnson and his useful idiots are too busy shaking the magic money tree to listen:

    COMMENT
    Real Tories will never forgive Boris for turning his party into Blue Labour
    The Conservatives have trashed their intellectual traditions for the sake of short-term political gain

    ALLISTER HEATH
    8 September 2021 • 9:30pm

    Shame on Boris Johnson, and shame on the Conservative Party. They have disgraced themselves, lied to their voters, repudiated their principles and treated millions of their supporters with utter contempt. And for what?

    To momentarily wrong-foot Sir Keir Starmer? To steal Labour’s clothes, not for a greater purpose but because it’s easier than actually devising their own conservative policies to improve Britain? To pat themselves on the back, and boast of how brilliant they are at the Machiavellian, unprincipled game of Blair or Osborne-style triangulation politics? To further convince the electorate that every politician is only in it for themselves, for their ministerial cars, for the pathetic pretend power? Is this why all those Cabinet ministers joined the Tory party, and penned all those paeans to free enterprise and low taxes? To be complicit in the moral destruction of the Conservative Party?

    This is a seminal moment in British politics, one that could turn out to be as toxic, as poisonous and as destructive as the ERM crisis, the Iraq dossier or the bank bailouts. The damage wreaked by the Government’s juvenile approach to policymaking will be immense and long-lasting, even if it doesn’t immediately register in opinion polls. Promising not to raise or to cut taxes was always the one weapon Labour couldn’t match, the most powerful way to remind voters that the socialists would steal their money; now any such pledge would remind voters that the Tories are utterly untrustworthy.

    The scale of Johnson’s shift to the Left is staggering: his tax increases combined are the largest in half a century. The Treasury’s claim that it is hiking National Insurance by 1.25 percentage points is sub-Brownite spin: the tax rate on labour income has actually jumped by 2.5 percentage points. Combined with frozen income and other tax thresholds and the raid on corporation tax, total tax rises will be worth 1.6 per cent of GDP. The tax burden will hit its “highest-ever sustained level”, the Institute for Fiscal Studies calculates.

    The NHS will have become the state, and the state will have become the NHS: Clement Attlee’s socialist government couldn’t have imagined just how powerful its Left-wing choice of a health funding and delivery mechanism would turn out to be at destroying conservatism and capitalism. In 2004-05, the NHS and social care accounted for 28 per cent of current public spending; by 2024-25, this will have reached 40 per cent, according to the Resolution Foundation. How long will it take to hit over 50 per cent?

    The ratchet is out of control, guaranteeing the gradual socialisation of British society and the need for ever higher taxes. Just when the Left thought they had lost, their assumptions shattered by Brexit, their triumph is about to be near total.

    The Tories’ have only themselves to blame: why did they never reform the funding and structure of the NHS? Why are they perverting the noble concept of private property by turning it into a taxpayer-guaranteed entitlement? Why are they nodding through Johnson’s decision to pick an absurd, statist plan for social care rather than a more insurance-based option?

    Placeholder image for youtube video: KiTC0HRqCwU
    In time, Labour will promise to lower the £86,000 cap; eventually, it will be zero, and all care homes will be nationalised. The Tories have learnt nothing from previous extensions of the welfare state in 1906-15 and 1948: a conservative approach is to build on the private sector, to fill in the gaps, to supplement private initiative – not supplant it, which is the way social care will now also eventually go.

    In the shorter-term, Johnson’s extra spending will fail to tackle the NHS backlog. The pressure will be on to raise the levy again, but the unfairness of hammering younger generations priced out of the housing market will make calls for even more destructive taxes, this time on capital, hard to resist. Never forget that the Government was considering imposing a wealth or mansion tax shortly after it was elected. What fresh hell will Britain’s beleaguered Tory voters face next?

    The present tax rises are a choice, not a necessity. The ongoing additional spending caused by the pandemic could have been met by cutting expenditure in other areas, and the one-off costs of Covid added to national debt. The coronavirus is an excuse for Johnson’s strange urge to adopt full-fat social democracy, although it is likely that the enthusiasm with which so many embraced lockdown encouraged his Government’s collectivist bent.

    The National Insurance increase is not merely an unforgivable manifesto broken promise: it symbolises the party’s repudiation of the conservative and classical liberal world view, its rejection of Burke, Locke, Hayek, Friedman and Oakeshott. This Government is no longer Thatcherite, or even conservative: it is Blue Labour. It combines Left-wing economics – more tax and spending on a welfare state in hock to the producer class, ever more regulations, green central planning – with support for Brexit, patriotism and the Armed Forces. It tries (but fails) to be tough on crime, illegal immigration and the woke onslaught.

    Old Labour would have loved this combination, but it is not conservatism. Ever since the rise of socialism in the 19th century, and especially during the past 40 years, conservatives have argued that a smaller state, lower taxes, and a greater reliance on markets, civil society and individual responsibility represent a philosophically and economically superior form of social organisation. Lower taxes and lower spending boosts GDP growth, they explained; personal responsibility encourages virtuous behaviour such as saving and hard work. High social costs kill jobs, they wrote: just look at France. Big increases in spending just trigger massive waste and inflation, they argued: remember Gordon Brown?

    An entire intellectual tradition now lies trashed by a Conservative Party which has, for the sake of convenience, unthinkingly swallowed its opponents’ ideology. Either the Tories believe that tax rates no longer impact the economy, or they couldn’t care less, and are embracing a low-growth, stagnant future. For decades, Tories boasted about how better the UK model was than that of the Eurozone; today, they are adopting it out of laziness, despite having fought so hard to leave the EU. Reaganomics is dead in Britain: there are now two Labour parties at one on economics, but divided on culture. How bitterly, heartbreakingly disappointing.

      1. Morning, Araminta.

        We must hope that the Faux Tory Party expires before they expel the last remains of freedom from this land cursed by benighted politicians.

    2. If raising NI rates would result in more money for the NHS, why didn’t Blair or Brown raise them? Did they reject it on moral grounds or did the think it wouldn’t bring in more money, the nominal take’s being less than the unwanted costs and losses elsewhere?

    4. You wouldn’t mind so much if they just said ‘we’re tired of letting you keep a pittance of what you earn, so we’re going to take all of it to fund ‘our’ NHS.

      At least then the riots and destruction will be properly directed and total, MPs will be hanged and we can start over again.

      Yet we cannot complain. We cannot *stop* these b[eeeeeepp]ards. Under referism, recall and direct democracy Johnson’s tax hike would be kicked away, the ball burst, crushed and recycled. Same for the green drivel. We’ve got to be able to stop them.

  19. Tea with Bosie

    SIR – Lord Alfred Douglas, whom Chips Channon visited in 1942 (Features, September 6), lived in Hove for nearly two decades.

    By then he was a changed man from the beautiful youth who had had such a tempestuous relationship with Oscar Wilde. Having renounced homosexuality, he married, had a child, and converted to Roman Catholicism.

    Among others who visited him was a young John Betjeman, who got the impecunious Douglas the commission to write a foreword to John Piper’s much admired Brighton Aquatints. Another time, Hesketh Pearson, an early biographer of Wilde, motored over with Hugh Kingsmill and Malcolm Muggeridge to take tea with Douglas, recording that it was “more like a meal for lads of 14 or 15 than for men.

    “We sat up to the table, just as we had done in our teens, and faced a spread of buttered toast, scones, cream cakes, jam puffs, tarts, and all that class of confectionery which we had viewed with satisfaction as schoolboys.”

    Chips, by the way, did indeed chip in with Douglas’s straitened finances.

    Graham Chainey

    Brighton, East Sussex

    2. It’s a bit odd that and made me think. The war queen is hankering after her childhood snacks as well. In her case, jelly babies.

    3. Lord Alfred Douglas, Chips Channon, John Piper, Hesketh Pearson, Hugh Kingsmill, Malcolm Muggeridge… you wouldn’t want to be in a queue for the Gents with that lot. By the way, John Piper died at Fawleys Bottom. Does anyone know who Fawley was? 😃

      1. Fawley Bottom is in the Chilterns, near Henley. There are lots of Bottoms in the Chilterns – it’s a geographical term.

        Near to Fawley’s is the Denning Montessori School, the Oaken Grove Vineyard and the British School of Upholstered Furniture. You can tell the kind of place it is, somewhere the Fearnley-Whittingstalls and the Lawsons would feel quite at home.

          1. I should add, there is Undy, Fiddler’s Point, Lovage Close and Cockwood for the women. There are a couple of Twatts too but enough of politics and football.

  20. A remarkable career in the Royal Air Force (until they posted him to flying a desk). My admiration is unbounded, particularly for those who flew the Harrier, an aircraft requiring huge skill and coordination:

    Squadron Leader Mark Hare, pilot who flew Harrier jets during the Falklands conflict – obituary

    He undertook bombing missions in the South Atlantic, destroying enemy guns and helicopters, and later became an airline pilot with Monarch

    By
    Telegraph Obituaries
    8 September 2021 • 4:40pm

    Squadron Leader Mark Hare, who has died aged 66, flew RAF Harriers on operations during the Falklands War.

    On April 8 1982, six days after the Argentine invasion of the islands, the RAF’s No 1 Squadron was ordered to prepare for operations from an aircraft carrier as attrition replacements for anticipated Sea Harrier combat losses. After an intensive period of pilot training, and an engineering programme to modify the Harrier GR.3s, the first aircraft headed south on May 3.

    Hare was flying one of the first three aircraft to take off from St Mawgan in Cornwall. Using air-to-air refuelling from a Victor aircraft, he and a colleague reached Ascension Island after a 4,600-mile non-stop flight in their single-engine aircraft (the third aircraft had been forced to divert to Gambia).

    After the arrival of further aircraft, they were embarked in the Atlantic Conveyor and set sail for the South Atlantic on May 8. By May 19 all the RAF Harriers had transferred to the carrier Hermes.

    Flying as the No 2 to his flight commander, Hare flew his first operation on May 21, when they attacked an Argentine forward operating base near Mount Kent. He destroyed a Chinook helicopter on the ground, while the Harrier’s cannons damaged two other helicopters. His aircraft was hit by small-arms fire.

    Over the following days he bombed Stanley Airport and shared in the destruction of a Puma helicopter on the ground. On May 26 he destroyed enemy guns at Goose Green. Returning in the afternoon to support 2 Parachute Regiment, his leader was shot down, ejected and avoided capture over the next three days.

    During further attacks on Stanley Airport, his Harrier was damaged. He flew an armed reconnaissance mission searching for a land-based Exocet missile launcher and on July 11 he was flying No 2 to his commanding officer. They attacked gun positions at Moody Brook Barracks when shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles were fired against the two attacking Harriers.

    On July 13 he flew his final mission when his leader dropped a laser-guided bomb on positions near Tumbledown and Hare followed up this attack by dropping bombs on enemy positions. The following day, the Argentine forces surrendered.

    Hare had flown 22 operational missions, most against heavy anti-aircraft and small-arms fire and his aircraft had been damaged on a number of occasions.

    No 1 Squadron’s Harriers were reconfigured with Sidewinder air-to-air missiles to supplement the Royal Navy’s Sea Harrier force. On July 4 they disembarked from Hermes and deployed to a site on Stanley Airport to provide air defence for the islands.

    By the end of June, the original RAF Harrier pilots, including Hare, began their return journey home. For his services during the campaign, Hare was Mentioned in Despatches.

    The son of an RAF group captain, Mark William James Hare was born in Tidworth on January 9 1955 and educated at Rugby School and King’s School, Worcester. He was awarded an RAF flying scholarship and gained his private pilot’s licence before he could drive. He was given a university cadetship to Southampton University where he graduated in Law, having served and flown with the University Air Squadron.

    Hare entered the RAF College Cranwell, where he excelled, winning the sword of honour and five major prizes, including that for the best pilot.

    After converting to the Harrier jump jet, Hare was posted in November 1979 to No 1 Squadron based at Wittering near Peterborough. The squadron’s role was to support forces on Nato’s northern and southern flanks and it regularly deployed to bases in northern Norway, operating from basic bases and in extreme weather.

    During his time on No 1 Squadron Hare, together with his colleagues, was detached to the Harrier flight based at Belize to provide a deterrent against possible incursions by Guatemalan forces.

    Six months after returning from the Falklands, Hare was posted to join No 3 Squadron flying from Gütersloh in Germany, where the squadron frequently deployed to operate from field sites in support of the 1st British Corps in the central region of Nato.

    He was one of two pilots who regularly demonstrated the Harrier at European air shows and his outstanding ability as a Harrier pilot resulted in the award of the AFC at the end of his tour of duty in June 1986.

    He was posted to the air staff at HQ Strike Command, a ground appointment he did not relish. He made strenuous efforts to return to flying – his campaign was taken up in the national press – but he remained at Strike Command “to progress his career”. He decided to seek voluntary retirement and left the RAF in April 1988.

    He joined Monarch Airlines and first flew the Boeing 737 on European routes before transferring to the Airbus 320 and 321. He became the company’s senior pilot at Manchester, where he flew competency checks on all Monarch pilots operating from the airport.

    Hare enjoyed walking and hang gliding in his younger days. He and his wife bought a small farm in North Wales where they kept sheep.

    Mark Hare is survived by his wife Kathi, by their three daughters and a son, and by a daughter from an earlier marriage.

    Squadron Leader Mark Hare, born January 9 1955, died August 9 2021

      1. It is shocking, Bill. He was born in the year I joined the RAF! They were obviously putting him through all the hoops necessary for senior rank but he just wanted to fly.

  21. Priti Patel to send boats carrying migrants to UK back across Channel. 9 September 2021.

    Priti Patel is preparing to send back small boats carrying migrants in the Channel despite warnings from the French authorities that it could endanger lives.

    Border Force staff are being trained to employ “turn-around” tactics at sea under plans developed for two years, a statement from the Home Office said.

    It would allow UK officers to force small boats back into French waters. It is unclear if the proposals would include taking migrants back to French shores.

    If you believe this I have a very nice bridge that I am trying to get rid of! Two towers. Lift up centre. One former careful owner!

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/sep/09/priti-patel-to-send-boats-carrying-migrants-to-uk-back-across-channel

        1. She’d risk lives of desperate people seeking our help in order to satisfy the anti foreigner sentiment common in Brexit Britain.

          Morning Ndovu. There speaks 77 Brigade! Lol!

          1. Those desperate people could stay in France. It’s not a totalitarian state.

            Or any other country they passed through. You started this sentiment. It’s YOUR fault. And Brexit was necessary, if only to annoy cretinous whelps like you, now sod off and go live in France!

          3. The idiots still whining about Brexit.

            We had to leave. Infuriatingly, the state seems desperate to ensure we take no advantage of all the power that leaving gave us and is determined to do the exact opposite, and ram us into the Left wing misery the EU is creating.

      3. I believe that the UN conventions supposedly give people the right to apply. I do not believe that the UN conventions require countries to accept those applications.

      1. Endanger lives? Well, stop them going in the first place. This is on France, not us. Besides, I don’t care any more.

        You see what you’ve done, Lefties? You’ve made me not care about children dying – why? Because you don’t. You’ve weaponised gimmigration.

    3. I don’t care what the legality is. The entire invasion is illegal. Shove these vermin on a boat, tow it back to Frence coasts, then destroy the boat so it sinks and they have to swim for it.

      That should have been the policy from the outset instead we get ‘may’, ‘might’, ‘if’, ‘soon’. Just do it! If the ones here won’t go, taser them!

  22. Priti Awful should have asked that disagreeable Frenchie, Gérald Darmanin, (the one with rape accusations following him) what he would do if 1,000 illegals landed EACH DAY on the beach at Nice.

      1. Interesting that “returns” have gone from 43,000 in 2013 down to a maximum of 2000 a quarter.

        Meanwhile in a speech by the French president he claimed that France was deporting 30,000 criminals a year.

        Apart from safety on the streets for the indigenous population, deporting criminals saves the taxpayer large amounts of money

        as imprisonment costs lots.

    2. Patel isn’t doing anything. The Home office isn’t doing a thing. Well, no, that’s not true. it’s block booking hotels in 2022.

      It’s funny. When government wanted a slug of cash to waste on diversity and gimmigrants they rush through a tax hike in no time. Yet they’re happy for invaders to pour across the channel in vast hordes and aren’t doing a thing about that.

  23. Good morning all.
    A pleasant 12½°C in the yard this morning and it’s a bright & sunny start to the day.
    Sadly, instead of getting another couple of diseased trees dropped, I’ll be heading into Derby to check up on Step-son. Got a message yesterday from a neighbour that he seems to be getting increasingly psychotic.

      1. A dear elderly friend, lady who was a historian and a valued member of the community , took church services etc rang me up to ask me to collect her bread and pick up a few bits and pieces for her .

        She lived in the village you know .

        Moh and I shopped for her and also had the dogs in their crate in the back of the car , so we walked them etc, Moh stayed in the car when I delivered her shopping .

        I rattled the door knocker , she appeared at the door , invited me into her delightful Victorian hallway .. she looked pretty agitated and flustered , and not quite right , I asked her if she was alright and was she in need of a cup of tea and a chat ..

        I had the fright of my life when she picked up a giant screwdriver from her hall chair and looked as if she was going to plunge it into me , she was yelling undecipherable stuff , as if the devil had got hold of her , I backed away , and I said don’t you remember me , ###### , and she screamed and yelled and threw the bread and bag of shopping on the floor andcame too close for comfort .

        I fled .. in tears , scared out of my wits . Moh was very alarmed ..

        When we arrived home , I contacted the doctor to report what had happened .. The surgery made a note , and I heard nothing back ,

        A few weeks later a similar episode occurred when the dear lady had gone shopping in our little local town , she had caused a commotion and started to strip off her clothes in the street .. Darling lady was eighty years old , this happened about 6 years ago … police and ambulance were summoned , and she was sectioned and sent away for treatment for 4 months .

        The family were not very helpful, and when she returned to her own lovely home , she fell down the stairs , suffered damage to her brain , and died in hospital .

        I miss her cheerfullness her get up and go and life experiences . She had lived a wonderful life , but for it to end like that was a terrible shock for everyone , apart from her very selfish greedy family.

          1. Yes it was , I have always wondered since that event why she kept a huge screwdriver on her hall chair .. particulary as she used a rather nice walking stck to get around with .

          2. She had probably been having delusions.

            I remember when I was six years old, and my grandmother was living with us – she got up one night and smashed the window with the poker – she thought three men had broken in during the night. That was the last straw for my mum, and she had grandma admitted to the local mental hospital, where she died. Not sure how long she was in there as the admission records are closed for 100 years I think.

          4. Symptoms of dementia with Lewy bodies
            People with dementia with Lewy bodies may have:

            hallucinations – seeing, hearing or smelling things that are not there
            problems with understanding, thinking, memory and judgement – this is similar to Alzheimer’s disease, although memory may be less affected in people with dementia with Lewy bodies
            confusion or sleepiness – this can change over minutes or hours
            slow movement, stiff limbs and tremors (uncontrollable shaking)
            disturbed sleep, often with violent movements and shouting out
            fainting spells, unsteadiness and falls
            These problems can make daily activities increasingly difficult and someone with the condition may eventually be unable to look after themselves.

      2. Exactly.
        Beyond a once weekly visit and looking after his money, I’m doing nothing more.

  24. In my opinion the Conservatives are still the party of low taxation.
    You can’t get much lower than introducing a manifesto busting election pledge tax.

    1. It certainly is low.

      I’ll never vote for them again. There is no party that represents my wishes. Perhaps no vote, no say but I actively choose not to vote. They’re useless. The entire edifice of government is demonstrably pointless – desperate to force Left wing, big state, social dogma. To abuse taxation and keep the poor, poor. To ensure the productive don’t bother.

      It’s insanity. What’s needed is obvious and everywhere. Big fat state has no competence. It’s just a furnace for our money.

    1. “Fog in the Channel: Continent cut-off”

      According to a famous story, a 1940s headline in one of the British newspapers once read: ‘Fog in Channel, Continent Cut Off’.

      If only…..

  27. China, Russia And Iran ‘Laughing Their Socks Off’ After Afghanistan Withdrawal. 8 September 2021.

    Former defence minister and SAS officer Lord Robathan has described the Western withdrawal from Afghanistan as “the worst disaster that NATO has had in its existence”.

    Speaking during the second reading of the Armed Forces Bill in the House of Lords, he said: “The humiliating defeat and disaster that was the withdrawal from Afghanistan has changed the geopolitical spectrum beyond recognition.

    “NATO is now exposed as weak and, I’m afraid, rudderless.”

    Lord Robathan also criticised the down-sizing of the Armed Forces, saying: “The idea of reducing the Army by 11%, reducing the number of ships, reducing the number of aircraft that we can use in these times is bonkers.

    All the absolutely truth! Not something they hear often in the House of Lords one imagines!

    https://www.forces.net/news/ex-defence-minister-china-russia-and-iran-laughing-their-socks-after-afghanistan-withdrawal

    1. They’ve been laughing their socks off ever since we went in, wasting our energy and resources on impossible touchy-feely aims whilst they ruthlessly take advantage in the real world of international competition.

    2. Why on earth would China,Russia and Iran be laughing their socks off?
      All three countries are in close proximity to Afghanistan so will feel the effects of any fallout.
      Not so the good ol’ US of A.They up sticks and head off over the ocean while they scheme where they should start their next intervention.

      3. I wish more of you had seen the BBC news this morning, Paul Gamboccini one of the many well known people who signed the open letter, absolutely ripped the news reader to pieces over this. When he accused Dick of covering up and with holding important evidence in cases where she could be found as having been influential in the outcome.

  29. Good morning all,

    Awaiting the result of the dreaded pcr test but the 38.6c fever of two days ago is gone. 36.3c this morning. Slept really well but woke to soaked bed linen.

    1. Sorry to hear that Sue. I had a mild case which a weekend in bed sorted, but it’s no fun. Rest up. Get lots of chicken soup in.

    4. It’s good to hear you are on the up. It’s a bit of a blow to the system Sue and not so quickly ‘get over able’ as imagined. But according to the weather presenters last night was one on the hottest on record. Good to know the next morning eh !
      I can remember both my wife and I getting flu a few years ago, we had not long been married and only in our late 20s, early 30s. Both were bed ridden for days and we isolated our selves from the rest of the immediate family. After a few days at home we thought we were over it and decided to take the car and go for a walk in a near by park, (Verulam) but were unable to get back up the steep hill to the car. We had to take a bus to get closer to the car park in the town.

      1. The first time I had flu was at Christmas 1972. I was 24. I spent several days in bed, only getting up for a bit of Christmas turkey. A few weeks later, after I thought I was over it, I had another bout.

  30. Whilst not in the DT yet, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9970407/Birmingham-bomb-campaigner-accused-breaking-lockdown-attending-memorial-breaks-court.html.
    What has our country become? The Police and CPS completely screwed up the investigation of the Birmingham pub bombing and have since been allowed to duck and dive from taking responsibility. Governments have protected the perpetrators to avoid upsetting the IRA. And now relatives of the victims are in court for daring to get within 2m of each other at a small anniversary commemoration and protest when the Police aided and abetted other gatherings such as BLM marches without a single fine or prosecution.

    1. “At one point on the first day of the trial
      on Tuesday, District Judge Shamim Qureshi addressed a West Midlands
      Police officer giving evidence and contrasted the force’s decision not
      to fine any of the thousands who attended the city’s Canon Hill Park in
      breach of the Rule of Six in March 2021, with those on trial.

      He asked: ‘I’ll tell you how it looks… it seems a bit of an easy target so was there any need to prosecute in this case?”

      1. Chief Inspector Richard Cox replied: ‘A decision was made above me that it was appropriate, proportionate and necessary.’

        I hope the judge forces those people to testify, and if they make the same claim keep going up the line so that the one who made the decision has to explain it, even if it ultimately means calling Patel or Johnson.

  31. Good morning my friends

    I am still beating the same drum but I am appalled at the callous way in which the government has treated students.

    Young graduates to pay 52pc effective tax rate after National Insurance rise
    Tax grab ‘kick in the teeth’ for young people and makes it harder to get on the housing ladder

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tax/income-tax/graduates-face-52pc-effective-tax-rate-national-insurance-rise/

    I have posted this as a BTL comment and I have also sent it to the DT Letters editor – but nobody gives a damn that young people will be in debt until they are over 50 years of age.


    Sir,

    Student loans should be repaid in full. But it is not the student loan which is the problem – it is the fact that the rate of interest charged on it is currently over fifty times the Bank of England’s base rate . This is nothing short of theft.

    A student loan should not be an albatross around students’ necks until they are in their 50’s – it should be repaid as soon as possible – but in order to be repaid it must be repayable.

    Many countries offer their students student loans and in the more civilised countries which do so these loans are interest free. Britain ought to be looking to liberate and not enslave her young people. Repayment of the capital should be a charge against employees’ income tax and employers should be encouraged to help their employers pay off their loans by allowing the money they use to do this to be free of business taxes. In the case of people working for the NHS or in state schools students’ loans should be written off after ten years employment to encourage them to stay in their jobs.

    Richard Tracey

    When I was at university I was fortunate in that my father paid all my expenses and so I left university debt free; Caroline’s father also paid for her 5 years at university and so we were determined that our two boys should also leave university debt free. They are now in their aged respectively 27 and 25 – have good degrees and good jobs and they also have both already bought their own homes with their fiancées.

    1. What about the way they’ve treated taxpayers, deceiving them into thinking students are paying whilst in reality taxpayers are picking up over 50% of the tab through defaults, low payments from low earners and the losses from selling packages of loans to financial institutions?

      1. The whole thing is dishonest. Yes, we have far too many people at university but this is the fault of politicians not the duped young people who go there and have their lives destroyed by debt.

        When I went to university in the 1960’s fewer than 5% of young people did so but those who did could receive means-tested maintenance grants or they had to be funded by their parents. I always got jobs during the summer holidays to boost my funds and the 1958 MGA I bought in 1967 came out of honest toil. I lived beyond my means but my father did not mind advancing me money as long as he was paid back before the start of the next academic year. One summer I worked as a roustabout on a North Sea oil rig. 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. Hard work but I got myself square with my lovely father and had plenty left over with which to enjoy myself.

        I remember getting the minimum grant: £50 pa but my father had to pay the tuition fees of £83-00-00 pa. In my final year my father’s income went down a bit and so I got off the minimum grant and ended up with my tuition fees being paid but my maintenance grant reduced to £1-15 – 6 pa. I remember blowing the whole of my term’s grant in the bar on a round of drinks with my friends at the end of term.

        1. Good morning Richard,

          Very few girls were accepted for a university place , I don’t know what the percentage was in the 1960’s , but I know it was very low .

          I think teacher training colleges were infiltrated by leftie influences though , all those years ago , and where did their leftie mantra come from .

          1. I fluffed my A levels so I didn’t go – but I had a couple of conditional offers and plenty from my year did meet the grades, so I don’t think it was a matter of ‘few girls’ – maybe many girls had other aims, like going into nursing or teaching, for which a degree was not at that time a requirement.

          3. I was drawn to nursing, my no1 sister is an accomplished shorthand typist and has worked for some wonderful companies , youngest sister has her own advertising company and brother has a photographic studio /advertising company as well.

          4. When I went to college in 1973 to do an OND in Hotel and Catering Operations, the class was split after the first year into hotel management, and industrial catering. All the guys were supposed to do hotels and the girlies were to be housekeepers!
            An Irish girl called Lyla and I didn’t play that game and had to fight to join the guys! One bloke called John did the industrial stuff! We called them the ‘bog cleaners’!

          5. My teachers told me i could be anything i wanted to be if i worked hard and applied myself.

            The Careers Officer said ‘It’s a factory job or nothing’.

            That was 1980. Not many jobs about.

          6. I think UEA – which was a very new and very fashionable university in the 1960’s – attracted a very large number of very pretty girls. I must say this was a great distraction from my academic studies but I grinned and bore it manfully.

            I then worked in the world of finance for four years before going to Southampton University for my PGCE. The girls at Southampton were more serious and rather but less flamboyant and gullible than the UEA girls!

            (I wonder if BT has any views about UEA girls – his MR is one. My son Henry’s fiancée was at UEA with him and she is a lovely girl and very bright (Indeed she is almost as bright and lovely as my Caroline who went to Bath University)

        2. Richard, Labour used ‘university’ as a means of fiddling the unemployment figures.

          Keep the youth off the books and into education, normalise debt – by placing it on the parents – and tax the middle class in the bargain.

          They didn’t care about the student.

        3. I wanted to go to UNi but my parents couldn’t afford the fees for me and my brother…..so my brother went.
          I was only a ‘girl’ who would likely get married and become a mother!
          So I went to night school and took a secretarial course…
          After typing wills and probate at 17 I’d had enough.
          However it all turned out well because I finally found a job in the music industry….
          Bliss….
          All’s well that ends well.

          1. Oh – so you were TYPE cast?

            I’ll get a new ribbon…

            PS I regret not learning shorthand when I was a lad.

          2. That was the same attitude that many parents had .

            Do you play an instrument Plum , you are not Blondie or Bonnie Tyler , are you?

            Or did you work in a famous music studio or similar?

          4. My elder sister did a secretarial course in Truro and then got pregnant by a splendid young man from a very wealthy family who had been at Sherborne School when she was at Sherborne Girls’.

            They had a shotgun wedding and then after national service he and his wife and young daughter went to live in a flat in Oxford where he studied Law and then became a solicitor in the City of London.

            They have now been very happily married for 65 years.

          5. I have friends who were treated the same way but at an earlier age.
            The son failed his 11+ and was sent to a private school.
            His sister failed as well, but was sent to the nearest sec. mod. because she was a girl and education would be wasted on her.

  32. ‘Morning All

    Green Fuckwittery

    “As we approach the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow, the government has

    been proudly trumpeting its Net Zero commitments. But the embarrassing

    fact is that Britain has been forced to burn coal again this week in

    order to stop blackouts. On Monday, with the wind down to a mere

    whisper, the National Grid had to blow a huge sum of money on bringing

    an old coal plant back online.”

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/09/08/why-we-cant-rely-on-wind-power/
    The first shafts of reality start to dawn,will the greeniacs notice??Or will they put their hands over their ears and go la.la.la.la
    Now about charging those millions of electric cars…………
    Edit
    Forgot this
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/52c58867c618e8cca5a95100b01a79590e99fdbb8327642d029309fe41244d79.jpg

      1. And for every one like her how many are merely parasites or even worse, such as Michael Adebolajo or Michael Adebowale or any number of groomers and rapists?

          1. No, silly., The Romanian “British” – (oh my poor sides”) girl. Do keep up. All that jam making has muddled you.

          3. Oh for heaven’s sake..

            This Romanian woman is no more British than effing Zola Budd was.

            She claims to be British – and it suits the “British” élite to regard her as such.

            But she is no more British than Zola Budd was.

            THAT was my point.

            Good night…!

          9. …has a British passport, trains in UK (coached by Andy Murray’s pa-in-law, amongst others), goes to school here, and has better ‘A’ levels than Uncle Bill {:^))

  34. Back from the market. Very few masks – just the loonies, really. Window cleaner just finishing – that’ll mean rain…

    In fact it DID rain, in Fakenham – about half an hour before we arrived. Quite heavy Not a drop here – five miles away.

  36. I am completely out of touch with the world in which I live.

    How can politicians have the evil impertinence of wanting children aged 12 to be able to get vaccinated against covid without their parents’ knowledge, approval or consent?

    This was debated on GB News last night and most people seemed to agree with my view. However one point which was not stressed was peer group pressure.

    Anyone who has worked in schools with young pupils will know that peer group pressure often has far more influence on young people than what their teachers or parents tell them.

    Imagine a child whose parents – who are against children being given a vaccine whose long-term effects are not known – have discussed the matter thoroughly with their child. That child goes to school determined not to have the vaccine but his or her contemporaries bully, tease and abuse him/her until he or she gives in and agrees to have the vaccine after all.

    When Caroline was a little girl she went to international schools in India, Iran and Spain. When her family was in Iran she got hepatitis which, with a strict diet and medication was completely cured. But when she returned to school some of her contemporaries decided to bully her mercilessly and tell her she was unclean and contaminated. This is exactly the sort of thing to which a 12 year old child in Britain who does not want the vaccine will be subjected.

    The politicians know this and they want this sort of blackmail to take place. To describe them as sh*t is an insult to excrement which can at least be used as a fertiliser.

    2. Everything about this Government leaves me with a deep feeling of loathing and contempt such as I cannot express. They want us all on our knees, financially and Islamically (if there is such a word!). Mandating care home staff to have the experimental gene therapy – jabs for jobs – is so appalling. Insisting entertainment venues demand proof of inculcation is disgusting, they’re making business do their dirty work for them. And “offering” the jabs to children when they are not needed and now younger children “able to overrule their parents”. How do the MPs live with themselves. I wish them all to hell.

      2. As you know, I had the AZ jabs. But I am completely against all this coercion. My health status is not the business of any pub, restaurant or theatre I might choose to visit. Vaccinating children against the wishes of their parents is completely wrong.
        I had the jabs in order to continue travelling – and look where that’s got me! And if the vaccines are as ineffective as they appear to be in Israel, what is the point of having a ‘booster’? They stop neither transmission nor infection, and protect nobody but the recipient.

        1. This Government is violating all the international laws agreed after WW2 and there is no discernible opposition. Add to that the huge leap to the left they have made in social policy and the ridiculous net zero carbon issue I find it hard to believe it is even supposed to be Conservative.

      3. Why would a Conservative party allow children to over ride their parents wishes?

        A. Frankfurt School.

        Good morning, Champ.

      1. I discovered a little while ago that he’s a recognised expert on the Battle of the Alamo.

          2. #MeToo, Philip, both Ischemia and the inability to walk far caused by COPD and recurring (now chronic) PID.

          2. I use to know an old musician who played ‘Timps’ in one or several of the big orchestras.
            The problem was getting them into London in his van, parking, unloading the ‘Timps’ getting the van out of the expensive parking areas and getting the Tube back to whichever hall they were playing in that night and going through the whole process again to get back home to Hertfordshire. Easy for the violins and clarinets eh !

    1. Cool and rather pleasant here, West Sussex. Overcast but not raining yet. Thunderstorm last night, which is always fun.

    1. Seriously have you read any European History Pritti. When over a period of almost exactly 400 years one small country has given the larger more pompous country, a damn good hiding three times. And rescued them from a fate worse than they could ever imagine. You thought with their well attributed insouciance they would not try to get there own back to try to restore, under their current government failings, their still flagging pride.

  44. Education Secretary Gavin Williamson has admitted making a “mistake”
    when he confused footballer Marcus Rashford with rugby player Maro
    Itoje.

    Prime Minister Boris Johnson denied that the Minister’s error was in any
    way racist. “In Gavin’s defence” he stated, “all those darkies look the
    same to me too.”

  45. 338685+ up ticks,
    As in my post yesterday these tory’s (ino) have got the wind up & “nige” has come to their aid as he did when running the brexit group campaign,
    the tory’s (ino) have seemingly accepted his advice in reversing the flow of illegals.

    In reality the decent peoples feelings are entering the RED ZONE, thereby triggering the “wind up ” factor so a temporary halt is required.

    We as a nation could rustle up a volunteer force of safety officers to
    meet in mid channel for the return trip i’m sure, without overseers treacherous interference.

    Tory MPs Finally Back Farage’s ‘Send Back the Boats’ Approach to Illegal Migration From France

    In tory ( ino) eyes the main backlog the UNITED Kingdom has
    is definitely NOT the medical one concerning the indigenous, but
    the accommodation one concerning the illegal incomers.

    Still paying your lab/lib/con membership fee ? if so you cannot have a great deal of liking for the family then surely.

    1. 338685+ up ticks,
      O2O
      The mass uncontrolled immigration various
      assorted villains incoming lab / lib / con coalition can afford to be magnanimous winter approaches, the channel will be getting rough.

      By the time the illegal regatta resumes the electorate will have long forgotten.

      Could even have voted themselves into regular 5 times a day mosque visits.

  47. Hallo everyone, a bit late to say Good Morning. Read the letters but I have to say that I found Alistair Heaths article:

    “Boris’s shameful Tory betrayal guarantees the total victory of socialism in Britain. The Conservatives have trashed their intellectual traditions for the sake of short-term political gain.”

    I agree with him that we no longer have a Conservative party to vote for. Can’t even pretend it’s liberal, it’s full blown socialism. So what do we do now?

    Forgot to add. Priti Petals declaration to push back illegal boats sounds promising. But that is all it will be, sound, not turned into action!

    1. Les Français ne l’aiment pas up ’em

      (Caroline was unwilling or not able to give me a better translation)

      DM Story

      https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/index.html

      France lashes out at Britain’s ‘blackmail’ and warns Priti Patel it will REFUSE to take migrants if UK Border Force tries ‘pushing back’ boats in Channel – as experts say her plan could make overloaded dinghies SINK

      Border experts today warned that Priti Patel’s hopes of ‘pushing back’ migrant boats to France is ‘not going to happen’ – because they might sink and Paris would refuse to cooperate. Amid growing alarm at the scale of the problem, the Home Secretary has ordered officials to rewrite maritime laws so boats can be turned around as they try to cross the Channel. However, France has already warned that the step could have a ‘negative impact’ on the cooperation. Lucy Moreton, professional officer at the Immigration Services Union, said she would be surprised if the tactic is used ‘even once’ because the boats are ‘vulnerable’.And Tory MP Tim Loughton, a member of the home affairs select committee, said it was ‘not going to happen’ as the vessels would capsize and migrants might drown. As the wrangling continues over how to tackle the volume of desperate people trying to get to the UK, it has also emerged that Britain has offered use of a plane to help monitor the coast, but France has yet to decide whether to accept.

      1. The French should not be allowing overloaded boats to attempt to cross the channel especially knowing that they are illegally attempting to land in the UK.

        1. France is effectively allowing idiots in dinghys to be, “Standing into danger.” albeit self-inflicted.

      2. “Rewrite laws”, “rewrite maritime laws”? We have laws. Laws good enough for donkey’s years. Good enough to repel armed invaders, and smugglers. We don’t need laws. We have them, in spades! We need people who will enforce them! Politicians always resort to rewriting or introducing laws, as it kicks the can down the street. (Unless it is to allow an emergency lockdown of the entire nation – – oh, yes, that’ll fly through overnight.)

    2. This might have been written for Boris and Priti’s outpourings: … it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

      1. Exactly. I would rush to the bookies to place a bet but no bookie would bother.

        “Promises are worse than lies. You don’t just make them believe, you also make them hope.” Marilyn Munroe. No fool her!

  48. Paul Gambaccini warns he is ‘coming for BBC next’ saying corporation was ‘complicit’ in child sex abuse ‘witch hunt’

    The DJ, who has his own show on Radio 2, launched a blistering attack on the BBC accusing it of being on the ‘side of wrong doers’

    By Martin Evans, CRIME CORRESPONDENT
    9 September 2021 • 12:02pm

    ‘https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2021/09/09/TELEMMGLPICT000250257914_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BquEzxiUGB7iGb1T41e9FWx2QnZJIETfWB_fUbKb77n0w.jpeg?imwidth=680

    Broadcaster Paul Gambaccini has said he is “coming for the BBC” after accusing the Corporation of being complicit in the child abuse “witch hunt”.

    The DJ, who has his own show on Radio 2, launched a blistering attack on the BBC accusing it of being on the “side of wrong doers”.

    Interviewed by Victoria Derbyshire about the future of Dame Cressida Dick as Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Mr Gambaccini said he and other campaigners who had been victims of false accusations and misconduct were determined to expose the BBC’s role.

    He said the Corporation had given “free reign” on the Six O’Clock news to Carl Beech, the fantasist who falsely accused a string of VIPs of paedophilia.

    In a bad-tempered exchange (which you can watch below), he said: “All throughout the witch hunt the BBC was on the side of the wrongdoers and this will come out by the way.

    “Don’t think that we are going to go away. We haven’t come for the BBC yet because we are doing the Met now, but in the years to come, boy, the truth about the BBC’s complicity in the witch hunt will be known.”

    https://twitter.com/scottygb/status/1435895945191952385?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1435898132060119040%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es2_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegraph.co.uk%2Fnews%2F2021%2F09%2F09%2Fpaul-gambaccini-warns-coming-bbc-next-saying-corporation-complicit%2F

    Mr Gambaccini, who spent a year on bail after being falsely accused of sex offences, also accused of Fran Unsworth, the BBC’s head of news, of wrongdoing over the Corporation’s coverage of the raid on Sir Cliff Richard’s home.

    He said: “I will go head to head with Fran Unsworth in any public forum and I will dissect her like a frog. without ether.”

    Victoria Derbyshire replied: “Thank you I will pass your invitation on to her.”

    His comments come as he and a group of other victims of Met incompetence have signed a letter to Boris Johsnon demanding that Dame Cressida’s contract is not extended.

    It has emerged that she is likely to be offered another two years in the post.

    Other signatories include Baroness Doreen Lawrence, Harvey Proctor, the former Tory MP, and Lady Diana Brittan, the widow of the former Home Secretary Lord Brittan.

    Explaining why they had done so, Mr Gambaccini explained: “We have all found that the leadership of the Metropolitan Police is breathtakingly corrupt and non honest. It covers up at all times. It is so shocking.

    “The nation wants to know the whole truth of the Stephen Lawrence case but Cressida Dick will not allow it.

    “The nation wants to know the whole truth in the Daniel Morgan case and Cressida Dick will now allow it, well sorry Cressida it is time you started walkin the long lonesome highway.

    “You are like the Emperor of famous fable, naked, because we all know you have blocked the truth and been very economical with the truth in all of our cases.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/09/09/paul-gambaccini-warns-coming-bbc-next-saying-corporation-complicit/

    1. I saw him earlier on the BBC news, he really ripped into Victoria Derbyshire the news reader who was quite taken a back by his insistence in getting his valid point across.

    2. I used to see Gambaccini quite regularly in the audience at the Wigmore Hall. He always had a handsome young man in tow but they were definitely well above the age of consent.

        2. Well, it could be that he was introducing young friends to some culture. Definitely consenting adults, whatever else.

  49. October ‘Fire Break’……..
    Is this just more government lies and BS this is not what we were told earlier this week. I have n been saying for some time that there was a plot to get rid of the NHS as we have all known it for most of our lives and turn it into private enterprise. Leaving the less well off even more vulnerable to long term illnesses. The latest publicised waiting list indicate that patients could be dead before they get a letter informing them they have an appointment. And around 30 new members of management have bee recently employed with salaries of around 270 thousand PA………….why ? What are they going to be doing except manipulating the waiting lists and new admissions. There are already hundreds of management doing this already. As I suggest the the other day the new Logo for the now almost defunct NHS could be FOAD.

    https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/coronavirus/october-firebreak-lockdown-would-only-be-last-resort-to-save-nhs-says-government/ar-AAOb1TP?ocid=msedgntp

    1. From my experience of friends’ unnecessary deaths over lockdown, IMO the truth is more that the NHS is involved in a plot to get rid of us. It’s a monolithic disgrace, delivering far worse health outcomes for the money than just about anywhere else bar the US, all our European comparators included.

      Look at our European neighbours. The NHS has probably the worst Covid-era performance of the lot, with the worst nosocomial (hospital-induced) infection rates and the worse deterioration in other services.

      Arguably, perversely and contrary to your claims, it has produced a 2-tier system where the poor suffer what the the NHS bothers to give them and the better off go private, paying directly or using their company PHI.

      Whilst it remains a political football, with eg cries of “Tory Privatisation”, the NHS isn’t going to get any better. We need a grown-up debate and politicians putting the interests of their constituents ahead of their own narrow interests, but I think we’ll be bankrupt well before then.

      1. NHS will never be improved now, they were clapped, and now have the GC. They are bullet-proof, and apart from some A&E, mostly 3rd world.

  50. ‘I’ve got the hide of a rhino – you need to in this job’ 9 September 2021.

    “I was talking to some school friends over the summer and they said, ‘Gav, you have to have the hide of a rhino’,” he tells me, before adding with a flicker of pride: “You do need rhino characteristics. It is about grit and determination…Politicians complaining about criticism is like fishermen complaining about the sea. It is the world in which we live.”

    He certainly has the intelligence of one!

    https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/gavin-williamson-interview-education-b954132.html

        2. Big chap, isn’t he? Wouldn’t want to cross him when he was in a REALLY bad mood…{:¬))

  51. I see the decision by three telecoms companies, all of whom initially said they “had no plans to do so”, to reintroduce mobile phone roaming charges in Europe has brought out the Remoaners in force in the BBC news site – funny that some of the comments seem very similar!?

  52. Gavin Mortimer
    The West’s Islamist capitulation

    Forget foreign wars – intervention is needed at home
    8 September 2021, 12:05pm

    On Monday, Tony Blair addressed a military think tank in London and stated that the West should continue to intervene in countries under threat from Islamist extremism. According to the former PM, who led Britain as it joined the American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, an isolationist policy would serve no purpose because:

    “
    Islamism, both the ideology and the violence, is a first-order security threat and, unchecked, it will come to us even if centred far from us… Its defeat will come ultimately through confronting both the violence and the ideology, by a combination of hard and soft power.
    His declaration was along the lines of the one he made in October 2015 at the 9/11 Memorial Museum in New York City. Then Blair said that the West would be unable to vanquish Islamist terrorism if it doesn’t first intervene to eradicate the ideology. ‘The reality is that in parts of the Muslim community a discourse has grown up which is profoundly hostile to peaceful co-existence,’ he warned. ‘Countering this is an essential part of fighting extremism.’

    They were bold words, not too dissimilar from Emmanuel Macron’s statement last year after the brutal killing of the French schoolteacher Samuel Paty. But on that occasion, there was fury across the Muslim world, with threats made against Macron and his people. None of France’s allies in Europe and North America rallied to Macron’s side, evidence that the West has neither confronted nor countered Islamist extremism in the years since Blair gave his address in the 9/11 Memorial Museum.

    On the contrary, the West is withdrawing from the ideological fray. Witness the way a Yorkshire schoolteacher was abandoned by politicians and teaching unions earlier this year after he dared show a picture of the Prophet Mohammed during a discussion about freedom of expression. Theresa May’s promise to have some ’embarrassing conversations’ after the London Bridge terror attack in 2017 is just one of many empty pledges made by western leaders in the last decade.

    This insidious capitulation to Islamist ideology is attributable largely to the spread throughout western society of another strain of extremism: one that promotes diversity above all else and sees any criticism of non-western thinking as racist by definition. This ideology, as intolerant and vengeful as Islamism, also seeks to bring down western civilisation. Consequently, many of its adherents appease and excuse the West’s enemies.

    Who could have imagined just a few years ago that in 2021 the Canadian minister for women and gender equality would call the Taliban her ‘brothers’? A curious choice of word to describe men who execute pregnant Afghan policewomen in front of their families.

    Unequivocally condemning Islamist extremism is, to use the mot du jour, ‘problematic’ for some western politicians. Perish the thought they might be told to check their white privilege.

    Where once the West had values that it was prepared to defend to the hilt, now there is only cowardice. So when a by-election is held in the town from which that Yorkshire schoolteacher was hounded, the candidates avoid discussing his plight; when a teenage girl in France was forced into hiding for criticising Islam, the justice minister scolded her for using words that were ‘clearly an infringement on freedom of conscience’. And when a teacher was decapitated outside a French school for showing his pupils a picture of the Prophet, the Prime Minister of Canada lamented his death but in the same breath declared that “freedom of expression is not unlimited… in a respectful society such as ours, everyone must be aware of the impact of our words’.

    The bitter truth is that while western nations were busy intervening in Afghanistan they were indifferent to the spread of Islamism within their own countries. An alarming number of intellects have been atrophied by this new ideology of authoritarian diversity — to the point where they are unable to distinguish between unacceptable anti-Muslim sentiment and legitimate criticism of Islamist ideology. As a result, extremism flourishes. It should not be a surprise when a British survey finds that half of Muslims polled thought homosexuality should be illegal and a French survey reports that 57 per cent of young Muslims consider the laws of Sharia more important than those of the Republic.

    A few months after the invasion of Afghanistan a book was published in France called The Lost Territories of the Republic. Its editor was ostracised by the intelligentsia for his grim depiction of the parallel society that was growing within France. But from these closed-off communities emerged Islamist extremists such as Mohammed Merah, the Kouachi brothers and the Bataclan killers.

    In the wake of the London bombings of 2005, an angry Tony Blair promised the nation that ‘the rules of the game are changing’. No longer would he allow the country’s reputation for tolerance to be ‘abused by a small fanatical minority’. But the rules of the game didn’t change and, as I wrote last week, in recent years Islamists have exploited the complacency of the British state to commit a series of bloody attacks in London and Manchester. Nearly all the perpetrators, like those involved in the 2005 atrocity, didn’t, in the words of Blair, ‘come to us’. They were already here. They were born and bred Britons, just as most of France’s Islamist extremists are homegrown.

    If the West is serious about defeating Islamist extremism, the focus should not be overseas but at home, intervening in the suburbs of Brussels, Barcelona, Paris and London. That’s where the terrorists come from, as does their ideology, propagated in mosques and coffee shops and on social media.

    This war will be won only if the West rediscovers its moral courage and its faith in its inherent goodness. But don’t hold your breath. Our politicians are weak and feeble and the greatest fear of most presidents and prime ministers isn’t the threat of Islamist extremism but the thought someone might call them Islamophobic.

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

    GrizzlyMariner • a day ago • edited
    It’s fascinating how quickly narratives change once a culprit’s religion is ascertained As mentioned elsewhere when a Glasgow Muslim shopkeeper was murdered out the politicians came with candles and banners in hand decrying “islamophobia” But when it became clear that he was Ahmadi and had been killed by another muslim then everything went strangely quiet. Not even a peep asking what it is about the Ahmadiyya sect – known for its doctrines of tolerance and acceptance of other creeds – that makes it so loathsome in the eyes of mainstream Islam.

    Likewise, when a gay couple were attacked in Birmingham, cue much outrage until it was pointed out that the attackers were Muslim youths. Clearly those “Queers for Palestine” banners didn’t do much good but either way the silence is remarkable once the facts become clear. Indeed, I will be interested to see what is behind the reported rise in attacks in Spain and who exactly are the culprits. What is sure is that if they’re non muslim then you can guarantee that magically voices of anger – not to mention those bloody candles – will soon be conveniently found once more….

    alanos • a day ago
    How does Tony Blair imagine Islamic terror will reach the UK from Afghanistan if not through the Muslims already here , huge numbers of whom Blair encouraged to move here.
    Clearly the greater number of Muslims living here the greater the threat .

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-west-s-islamist-capitulation

    1. Advice from Blair! Lol! This man has never knowingly allowed the truth to pass his lips! He is evil personified.

    2. Just like charity, protecting against violent extremism and religion-inspired domination should start at home.

      I just don’t understand why so many white westerners, the most privileged and cosseted people in the world, self-harm and trash the values they espouse.

    3. Just like charity, protecting against violent extremism and religion-inspired domination should start at home.

      I just don’t understand why so many white westerners, the most privileged and cosseted people in the world, self-harm and trash the values they espouse.

    4. “…unable to distinguish between unacceptable anti-Muslim sentiment and legitimate criticism of Islamist ideology…”
      Aren’t we all, Gavin? How may it be done? Any suggestions, Gavin? You see, muslims all read the same book. They all follow its directions. They all live their lives only by the guidance of this one book, the q’ran, and the laws that have sprung from it. They could not care less about our laws, our customs, our social mores, except to ignore or violate them.
      Also, please explain, Gavin, how there can possibly be “unacceptable anti-Muslim sentiment”? When ordinary people in this country are afraid to travel on public transport if an obvious muslim is visible? Afraid to go about their business, to have fun, as public buildings and public places are liable to be attacked without warning by muslims?
      You see, Gavin. islam may have some minor divisions within it, different sects, but none of them, none of them depart from the q’ran.

    4. Pointless, they are greatly outnumbered already and the government is sending reinforcements by the train (and boat) load as soon as they are recruited by the Border Farce.

    5. They are having too much fun.

      But really, all you need is a bow. No bullets required. Much cheaper.

  55. All it would take to solve the UK, EU/France political problems would be to bomb these three buildings for a couple of days. The result would have some repercussions though – the white flag factories would not be able to keep up with the demand. Tough tittie!

    https://www.bing.com/th?id=OIP.zIAjGPIVftl8wkA6MB1pfAHaE7&w=267&h=160&c=8&rs=1&qlt=90&o=6&dpr=1.12&pid=3.1&rm=2
    https://www.bing.com/th?id=OIP.AyDGF3y1nu_xgM-3L1wxWgHaEo&w=285&h=160&c=8&rs=1&qlt=90&o=6&dpr=1.12&pid=3.1&rm=2
    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9c/Palais_Bourbon%2C_Paris_7e%2C_NW_View_140402_1.jpg/1024px-Palais_Bourbon%2C_Paris_7e%2C_NW_View_140402_1.jpg

      1. Wiki says: “V for Vendetta…is set in an alternative future where a Nordic supremacist and neo-fascist totalitarian regime has subjugated the United Kingdom.”

        Johnson and his government are anything but that!

        How ironic that a Tory government should have such clear leanings towards a form of left-leaning state control for which the Labour Party shows its admiration in its almost complete lack of opposition.

      2. “V for Vendetta…is set in an alternative future where a Nordic supremacist and neo-fascist totalitarian regime has subjugated the United Kingdom.”

        Johnson and his government are anything but that!

        How ironic that a Tory government should have such clear leanings towards a form of left-leaning state control for which the Labour Party shows its admiration in its almost complete lack of opposition.

  56. That brilliant “Modern Art” cartoon below. I sent it to my French pal Henri.

    His reply: “Be fun if that was Macron”

    Good lad, Henri. Still goes mountain skiing in his 70s.

  57. I hope that Paul Gambaccini and others continue to make progress with their attempt to make the Metropolitan Police and its functionaries accountable before they take on the atrocious and odious Beebsters.

    I had to laugh at this quote from the Telegraph, where basic literacy is falling by the wayside:

    “He said the Corporation had given “free reign” on the Six O’Clock news to Carl Beech, the fantasist who falsely accused a string of VIPs of paedophilia.”

    Of course, the BBC does behave like an absolute and autocratic monarch but I don’t think that is what he meant!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/09/09/paul-gambaccini-warns-coming-bbc-next-saying-corporation-complicit/

      1. I like to quote Gladstone and call the BBC a “tall tree of noxious growth.”

        I think that Paul Gambaccini’s sexual orientation is well-known but that did not stop him from being a target for this out of control pantechnicon of panjandrums otherwise known as the BBC.

    2. Isn’t his grandson – Fatty Soames who never lets you forget his forebear – one of the trustees?

      1. A former mistress of Fatty’s was asked what sexual congress with him was like. She replied it was like being suffocated by an enormously heavy oak wardrobe with a very small key wobbling about on top of you.

  59. Oh dear.
    Just got home from checking up on Stepson (Not particularly good news there, I’m afraid) and was getting changed to go & do a bit up the garden when I realised that it was bucketing it down.
    So that’s that idea gone for a ball of chalk!

    2. Sorry to hear that it’s not good news, Bob. It’s so difficult dealing with non-blood family members. Actually, it isn’t easy dealing with blood family members, either!

  60. Good afternoon from a Anglo- Saxon Queen with longbow and blooded axe.

    Just about to have tuna rolls for lunch. I forgot to have breakfast or even a cup of tea this morning, forgot to look after myself because the husband went off walking early without me and I’m used to making tea for both of us. Never mind, I’ll feel better after the very late lunch that’s nearly turning into afternoon tea . It might stop my headache.

      1. Its amazing how odd eating habits occur when on your own, its odd when you’re used to doing everything in twos .

    1. 338685+up ticks,
      Afternoon W,

      ” Thanks bojo” & supporter /member / voters.
      ” thanks treacherous treasa” & supporter/ member / voters”
      “thanks wretch cameron & supporter / member / voters”

      Right back to the main latch lifter g b liar AKA anthony
      charlie lynton , c/o Bow street court.

      The electorate are in the majority politically suicidal which is their prerogative, but to keep trying to take decent peoples with then is out of order.

      .

    2. There was an article in our local rag saying that Afghan “children” (the quotes are mine) will be resettled in Shropshire. Why? Let them go a) for preference back to Afghanistan or b) next best to some islamic shithole country. They do not have any intention to settle into a rural, white way of life.

    1. I would like to know how much the Danes paid per applicant and how they came to whatever figure was paid.

    1. How did the Cake Burning course go?

      I am thirty days older than you but I was at prep school until after I had turned 13. I still have not made up my mind whether 13 or 11 is the better age to move to secondary school.

      1. The only exam I ever passed Richard. :-)) I left aged 15.
        After passing the 11+ the next exam I took was the Wine & Spirit Education Trust Higher Certificate which I passed with distinction when I was 36.

    2. I would have started at Royal School Dungannon a few days before you..It was probably the 5th.

    1. Am I strange in not demanding Junior tidies his room?

      My mother would constantly intrude into my room to ‘tidy’ – throw my things away/around and I hated it, so I have set Junior’s space as his own. The only thing we do is give him storage furniture via the Ikeas.

      1. Occasionally it is necessary to have a bit of a clean – up of all the half-eaten bits of sandwich, and other bits of rubbish.

      2. My mother used to do that; it infuriated me. I blame her interference for my hoarding tendencies!

  65. https://www.takimag.com/article/9-11/
    Refections on the WTC attack, written nearly 20 years ago but in a recent article.
    One bit I found rather too close to home:

    Congress has authority to pass a law tomorrow requiring aliens from suspect countries to leave. As far as the Constitution is concerned, aliens, which is to say non-citizens, are here at this country’s pleasure …
    [T]he very nature of the enemy is that they have infiltrated this country and pass themselves off as law-abiding, peaceful immigrants.
    Their modus operandi is to smuggle mass murderers to our shores. But the country refuses to respond rationally. Rather, Congress is busily contemplating a series of “anti-terrorism” measures most notable for their utter irrelevance to the threat…

  66. Recently back from shopping. Quite pleasant out, 23C, thinly veiled sunshine and a gentle breeze. No sign of rain.

      1. There was a cloudburst on the way home – lights on and wipers at max! Fortunately, by the time I got back, it wasn’t too bad and I managed to get in without getting soaked.

  68. 338685+ up ticks,
    A rhetorical war is just kicking off regarding the invasion and the nicest thing i can say about the governance coalition is they have been asleep whilst the invasion is taking place, that is a capital offence punishable by being shot at dawn.

    Better that than being shot at dawn guilty of full blown treachery, colluding with the enemy and being political enemas of the United Kingdom.

    Wonder if he helped with the spelling ?
    https://twitter.com/Nigel_Farage/status/1435694228034793474

  69. Channel 4’s ‘Countdown’, a programme which, since Anne Robinson took over, is presented entirely by women but in which men are allowed to compete or occupy the joker’s slot, is going black tomorrow:

    Veteran journalist and broadcaster Trevor McDonald hosts the words-and-numbers game show. Acclaimed poet and playwright Lemn Sissay adjudicates the words from Dictionary Corner and maths prodigy Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon brings her arithmetical expertise to the numbers round. Award-winning journalist and beer sommelier Marverine Cole joins Lemn in Dictionary Corner.

    https://www.radiotimes.com/tv-programme/m2g4f5/countdown-season-2021/?episode=n6d9yd

      2. “Sissay’s mother arrived in Britain from Ethiopia in 1966. Pregnant at the time” … he [Sissay] was apparently the official poet of the 2012 Olympics!

  70. Aaargghhh and Phew in equal quantities.
    Last July I sent off my driving licence for renewal. Towards the end of August I checked and printed off a Check Code to cover into the middle of September.
    So far, nothing. Today I checked with my insurance broker who discovered that my type of case is a grey area. I then tried the DVLA phone number/s; 3 options and then a message telling me they were very busy and to try another day – “Goodbye”.
    While I was fighting with the DVLA website, the post arrived. In one envelope was my renewed driving licence.
    Maybe in 3 years time they will have the problem sorted.

      1. 🙂 I’ll have you know I got nicked for speeding on the A12 when the boys – who were my passengers – were still of primary school age.
        That was the one time I really impressed them.

    2. Why isn’t that fuckarse (pardon mon français) Shatts dealing with this? It is part of his bloody empire. Too busy smirking about new plague restrictions.

    3. Even before WFH there were estimated to be 500,000 people driving without licence or Insurance on our roads.

      Use your old granny persona if you ever get stopped…..Or show them your tits… :@)

  71. Steve Baker

    He abstained – he did not vote against the hike in NI contributions.

    What a disappointment to discover that he is mono-testicular rather like a former German leader.

    1. They abstain for many reasons.

      1. I don’t want to damage my future prospects.
      2. I don’t want to damage my future prospects.

      And…

      3. I don’t want to damage my future prospects.

    2. There isn’t really a good excuse for not voting on the most controversial measure this year (which should be vaxx passports, but the government have brought in this nice little distraction).

    1. It is a racket, but they should stop the ridiculous requirement for PCR tests altogether, as well as spreading the lie that we will all die if not vaxxed and tested.

  75. Evening, all. Went up the road to Donald McCain’s this morning to see the three horses I have shares in that are trained by him. Lovely day (dull start, but warm and sunny afterwards and the cloudburst waited until we were on our way home); magnificent views, as usual, from the gallops. One, a very promising three year old, is on the easy list with an unusual tendon injury, so he will have a long time off, if he ever races again. He did manage to finish third, even after sustaining the injury, which shows what a good horse he is. With respect to the headline, all governments, of whatever hue, seem to think that hosing money at a problem will solve it, without any regard to making the changes that are essential to improve the situation.

    1. “…hosing money at a problem…” Bit like keeping horses!

      Good evening, Conwy. How does Oscar get on with horses?

          1. I like to bring my Oscar home some fish after a decent angling session. He’s fond of poached pollack.

          5. Poppie has 50% kibbles, 50% Lily’s Kitchen and a helping of Country Hunter first thing in which we hide her Vetoryl capsules. And a little helping of what is on our menu in the evening if suitable. If not suitable, then Waitrose cooked chopped chicken pieces with a tiny portion of whatever veg we have.

          10. A bit like the breakfast cereal Cheerios to look at but harder, crunchier. I suppose they are like biscuits but nutritionally all encompassing so the packet tells me. It is processed dog food though so we also give her the meaty stuff as well. We give her the kibbles in order that she has something to get her jaws working in an attempt to keep her gums and teeth in good working order.

          11. Our two cats get as much cat biscuit as they want – their bowls are always filled. One a day, there’s a serving of wet cat meat with sauce – they don’t like the jelly…
            Both are just muscle and fur – no fat anywhere.

          12. Missy likes jelly, but won’t touch catmeat with sauce/gravy. She certainly likes her biscuits, dental ones, of course.

          13. Dry dog food. It is a complete, balanced diet for working dogs (not that Oscar works, but it does mean I don’t pay VAT on it). I supplement it with Canine Prime (supposed to calm and prolong active life, but actually, it just makes it extremely palatable!).

  76. That’s me for this sultry and quite sticky day. A couple of hours weeding was very satisfactory. Now to have a glass of reward.

    I’ll join you tomorrow – DV, WP (rain is sort of forecast…)

    A demain.

  79. Does anyone have any suggestions for about four boxes of small cider apples, given that we don’t have a press, and it’s not really a big enough amount to take to a juicer?

        1. Lots of creatures that inhabit your garden will be grateful and they’ll crap on your compost heap as a thank you

          1. Meh. If only they would restrict themselves to crapping on the compost heap instead of randomly on lawns and paths.
            I want dead slugs, not grateful ones anyway.

            We had this visitor to our garden yesterday; a gorgeous black bee with blue wings. He is on a sweet pea flower, so you can see how big he is. (photo taken with my very old phone, but was afraid he would fly off if I ran for the camera!)
            https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d113ba5a8c9185763c3d229078034266de394c22228579e703fb268ef12fbbce.png

          4. We get quite a number of different bees and other flying insects; amongst my favourites are the very large hummingbird hawk moths. They are about an inch long and their “tongues” are a similar length.

            Another flying beastie I like to see is the stag beetle, they don’t often take off, but when they o they sound like a miniature helicopter as they whirrrr past.

          10. We see the hummingbird hawk moths here, again they’re from mainland Europe. Haven’t seen a stag beetle since we moved from London.

          11. We seem to have four distinct types. The smallest is like a whirling dervish, going from apparently static in mid air to darting hither and thither and then settling in the hover next to a plant, taking nectar (?) for ages.

          12. Might be bee hawk moths as well as the hummingbird hawk moth. There’s a few varieties of those. The hhm has pretty distinct orange on the wings. All beautiful insects though with similar flight and habits.

          13. Much under rated creatures insects.
            We had a fairly large spider take up residence under the wing mirror of the car.
            I only noticed it because it was busy web building as we drove along and I thought I had trapped some thread litter on the mirror. The outer strands were put in place and then the classic web started to be formed. The spider was being held in place by airflow.

            We were doing 50mph at the time!
            When we got home it was clear that the web had been stretched so that it was aerodynamic and there were plenty of small insects already trapped.

            It stayed a couple of days and then vanished overnight, taking the web with it.
            Perhaps it had been predated, but the experience was interesting from our point of view.

          16. I have a large female garden spider in my car. She took up residence a few days ago and has spun her web between the dashboard & the front passenger seat. She gained access because I always leave the front passenger door window open an inch, as it’s buried in foliage when I park at home, so presents little security risk.

          17. We see the hummingbird hawk moths here, again they’re from mainland Europe. Haven’t seen a stag beetle since we moved from London.

          18. “…the stag beetle…they don’t often take off, but when they do they sound like a miniature helicopter as they whirrrr past.”

            Cockchafers are the Chinooks of the beetle world…

          19. Being of a whimsical nature, it never ceases to amaze me that flying insects can do things such that, if they were armed like the air forces of the world, they could wipe out mankind overnight.
            Even if using only the diseases that they can spread they are a deadly opponent.

        1. Pricktionary.com:

          billthomas:- n a miserable old fart, not to be confused with johnthomas, used for extracting the pee.

        4. Try pine shoot jelly! Much better, and so much vitamin C! Can be flavoured with the natural wunderbum, or anything else you like.

          2. Yes – sort of pine-flavour (as used to be hung on car rear-view mirrors, to mask the flavour of cigarette smoke in cars).

      2. I thought of that one, but my mother used to make it, and serve it with cold lamb, and I detest both cold meat and apple jelly!
        I could get rid of quite a lot via apple chutney, but my main goal is to avoid the work involved in peeling and coring the blasted things!

    4. Give them to someone who can use them?
      You could peel, core and chop and put them in the freezer.

      1. I was hoping to avoid the work!!
        I haven’t even set up our new freezer.
        Sigh – I can see the weekend gone already. Finish tax, move things in cellar, get new freezer down to cellar, peel and core a billion apples and freeze them…..!

          4. I have a gizmo that peels and cores apples. All you have to do is stick the apple on the spikes and turn the handle.

          6. No problem. I bought it in France, but the Victorians invented it (as with so much innovative stuff) as I saw a 19th century one demonstrated at an apple festival long before I found mine.

  81. Well, I’ve just learnt I’m racist.
    This afternoon, as I drove back from Lidl, I thought I saw MB walking along the road.
    A second glance proved I was mistaken. But … I had confused two mature white men; therefore I am racist (or ageiest?). They all look alike to me!

    1. Lucky escape…

      Have you seen the white middle class on the weekend?

      Easy to spot.

      Blue check shirts, Chino shorts, Panama hats. Big teeth.

    2. You mean he had got out – you had failed to lock all the doors?

      Poor chap – making a bid for freedom…

      2. Firstborn rides an enormous fuckoff bike – 2.3 litre water-cooled 3 cylinder. His mates look scary, but are the salt of the earth. Fabulous group of blokes.

      1. You are correct. The Taliban are here in large numbers. They didn’t arrive here as Taliban but they will become so..soon.

          1. “Coke en Stock” was translated into “Red Sea Sharks”, as “Coke” was code for slaves. thr book was about freeing slaves, to make up for “Congo”, apparently.

        2. Women don’t feature in Tintin, and blacks feature as figures of fun, BAMES a slave owners.
          Much like real life, I believe.

  86. Just arrived home after doing the first hedgehog talk for nearly two years!

    It went well, and the WI ladies bought a few of our items for sale. It’s as if we’re getting back to normal……..

  88. “A police state is a country run by gangsters“, from “Fatherland” by Robert Harris. I’m rereading it for the 5th time.

    1. I suggest you go back to basics.

      I suggest you read ‘Mere Christianity’ by CS Lewis, ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ by Viktor E Frankl, ‘The Vision of the Anointed’ by Thomas Sowell and ‘The Black Swan’ by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

      At least these readings will assuage your concerns and demonstrate that not everyone is mad and that we have a common bond of reason and decency.

      1. I’ve made do with the Screwtape Letters, Orthodoxy, the Cloud of Unknowing, No Abiding City. I’ll look at your list, thank you for it.

    2. South Yorkshire police, say no more. This is clearly way more urgent for them to deal with than children being gang raped.

      1. No chance. They are now pretending.

        I might just go and blag my way in to see if Mark Pemberton (Vascular Surgeon) even knows this is happening.

    2. It’s a bit small, but I think I just about made out the words “Go away and die, we’re too busy recruiting Diversity Managers, oh and covid”

      Sorry you’re going through this.

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