419 thoughts on “Tuesday 10 December: Younger voters should know the history of Labour’s utopian schemes”

    1. Morning OB

      Dark and windy here , but dry so far.

      Seems as if the regulars are having a lie in .. I had to stir from my warm bed because dogs needed to go in the garden !

      1. Was awake & sat up in bed with a mug of tea at 5 this morning.
        Then the DT & self rolled over & back to sleep for a couple of hours!

      1. No I haven’t Peddy. It looks like a set up as was remarked on here last night. I can’t be bothered to track down the inconsistencies!

    3. Morning Minty

      RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: What next? Storm Attila laying waste to Wales! Just why on earth did the Met Office decide to adopt a silly name for the first big storm of the season?

      OK, listen up, everyone. This meeting has been convened to compile a list of approved names for storms. Let’s start with A and take it from there. Any suggestions?

      Alan?

      BOR-ING. Too white, too male.

      Annabelle?

      It’s a storm, not a night club.

      Andrew?

      You’re kidding. We’d have #MeToo all over us. Anyway, the Yanks have already had a Hurricane Andrew. Laid waste to Miami in the Nineties. Let’s think outside the box, people.

      Adolf?

      Seriously?

      How about Angie? I’ve always loved that song. Angie, Ayyyangeeee . . .

      Nah.

      Attila?

      As in Attila the Hun?

      Just a thought, boss.

      No, I like it. We’re on the right track here. We’ve got to get away from traditional Anglo-Saxon names and start reflecting our rich, diverse, multicultural society.

      Abdul?

      That’s more like it.

      Ayatollah?

      Now we’re sucking diesel.

      Al-Baghdadi?

      I don’t think so.

      Al-Qaeda?

      I’m not sure we’re ready for Storm Al-Qaeda. Might cause unnecessary panic, a bit like War Of The Worlds. ‘Al-Qaeda swept through the West Country overnight, leaving a trail of destruction . . .’

      What about Atiyah?

      At-what?

      Atiyah.

      What does that mean?

      It’s Arabic for ‘Gift from God’.

      Male or female?

      Search me, guv.

      https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-7774551/Storm-Attila-laying-waste-Wales.html

      1. Morning.
        Howsabout “Atchoo”?
        An epidemic of sneezing across the media would be good for a laugh.
        (Er well it is a bit early, isn’t it?)

      2. I hate to be a pain towards Littlejohn but it was the Eireann Met Office who named it.
        That said, I have no doubt the conversation could be more than possible. Woke is everywhere.
        Morning to you.

    2. Morning, Annie. I first saw it on Breitbart and commented (regarding the mixed race couple) “Shot [later amended to Filmed] on location at a DFS store near you”. The moderators told me my post was “awaiting moderation”. It has now been removed. Aaaargh!

  7. Haringey stabbing: Murder probe after man in his 40s knifed to death in north London

    Unfortunately the Knife epidemic after is back. I dont think there is any quick fix for this. The favorite of politicians is Youth clubs but the people commuting these knife crimes are unlikely to frequent youth clubs

    The problem in my view is a breakdown in discipline in the family particular with single parent families and it is compounded by no discipline in the schools, probably the governments favorite of a multi cultural UK does not help as areas are now broken down into isolated communities that dont mix and have little in common and in some cases their are religious conflicts
    .

    https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/murder-haringey-north-london-stabbing-a4309161.html

    1. Morning, BJ.
      Growing up in Harringay (as it was then) and other parts of north London in the forties and fifties, the only violence I knew of was the shooting of a policeman in the High Road. That was in the 1920s, I believe.
      Of course, there was no internet then, but we had newspapers and the BBC. We were aware of crime then without being bombarded with vast and prurient detail (we had the Sunday Newspapers for that).

  10. CORPORATE SHAKE-UP

    If you’ve ever worked for a boss who reacts before getting the facts and
    thinking things through, you will love this!

    Arcelor-Mittal Steel, feeling it was time for a shakeup, hired a new CEO.
    The new boss was determined to rid the company of all slackers.

    On a tour of the facilities, the CEO noticed a guy leaning against a wall.
    The room was full of workers and he wanted to let them know that he meant
    business. He asked the guy, “How much money do you make a
    week?”

    A little surprised, the young man looked at him and said, “I make $400 a
    week. Why?”

    The CEO said, “Wait right here.” He walked back to his office,
    came back in two minutes, and handed the guy $1,600 in cash and said,
    “Here’s four weeks’ pay. Now GET OUT and don’t come back.”

    Feeling pretty good about himself, the CEO looked around the room and asked,
    “Does anyone want to tell me what that goof-ball did here?”

    From across the room a voice said, “Pizza delivery guy from
    Domino’s.”

  11. The fake claim that meat is a serious source of CO2

    Even if you accept the 0% figures (Which is wrong) most of those items and more are incurred in growing cereals. They also use a lot more fertilizers, pesticides and a lot more transport and processing . There is almost no clearing of vegetation for grazing. and waste products from cereals re used to feed cattle
    Humans that eat a ceral only diet also have increased Co2 emissions that they carefully ignore

    Burning fuel to produce fertiliser to grow feed, to produce meat and to transport it – and clearing vegetation for grazing – produces 9 per cent of all emissions of carbon dioxide, the most common greenhouse gas

    1. They have all read Oliver Twist, giving people meat makes them uppity, just thin gruel for all in future.

    2. And there are limits to the quality of ground that can be used to reasonably grow cereals, fruit, roots on. Animals can graze uplands, where crops won’t grow.

    2. Beautiful colours of the dawn of a new day a few miles further south from you, Peddy. That was half an hour ago. Grey and dismal now. I will be heading out towards Fenstanton in an hour or so for my weekly Pilates exercise – I have had more aches than ever I had before starting these sessions.

  13. Fake Photo of Child on Floor in Leeds Hospital

    It transpires that the child was never put on the floor by the hospital. The child was bought into A&E by its parents and was seen in A&E and it was decided the child should be admitted for observation. Whilst they were waiting for a bed to be prepared for the child an emergency came in so the child was temporarily put on a trolley. At no time did hospital staff put the child on the floor and that stated that this would never be done. How the child got on to the floor the hospital does not know

    Some other background information . The left wing protesters are totally wrong to say it had anything to do with cuts. NHS budgets in any case have not been cut,. AS can be seen below substantial investments are going into Leeds hospitals

    Exciting proposals for a brand-new hospital development to transform Leeds General Infirmary (LGI) were revealed today (Wed 17 October) by Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust.
    Plans for two state-of-the-art hospital buildings, including a dedicated Children’s Hospital on the Leeds General Infirmary site have been submitted to Leeds City Council for discussion at a pre-planning application presentation next week.
    They are part of an ambitious, long-term vision for the LGI called Hospitals of the Future, which aims to revolutionise health services for patients in Leeds and the wider region.
    The first hospital building, joined to the LGI’s Jubilee Wing, will extend health services for adults. Among its facilities will be a new theatre suite dedicated to day case procedures, endoscopy and radiology services and a central Outpatients department supported by key services like pharmacy.
    It will also have more critical care capacity, allowing the LGI to expand its highly specialist services – like major trauma or cardiac care, for example – and to develop further specialist healthcare in the future. These services benefit patients from Leeds, the wider region and in some cases the rest of the UK.
    The second hospital building will be a fantastic, new Leeds Children’s Hospital. For the first time in Leeds, this will bring together staff and services from the current Children’s Hospital in the LGI’s Clarendon and Martin wings to deliver health services for children and young people in purpose-built facilities dedicated solely to their needs.

    The full planning application will be submitted to Leeds City Council formally in December 2018 and is subject to approval.

    1. Alison Pearson tweeted that she will put the correct explanation into her DTel column tomorrow.

    2. I fail to see how a child being on the floor can possibly, at any level be considered the fault of the PM.

      Is he responsible for the number of bullets in a box? No. For tank shells? What if a boat sinks. Is that his fault?

      The government in the UK is a vast and incomprehensible leviathan of endless layers of management.

  15. Morning all

    SIR – In 1967, Harold Wilson’s Labour government devalued the pound by 14 per cent. Wilson became the butt of cartoonists’ and impressionists’ jokes after claiming that “it does not mean that the pound here in Britain, in your pocket or purse or in your bank, has been devalued”.

    In 1976, Denis Healey, the Labour chancellor, was forced to take his begging bowl to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and ask for a bail-out, as Britain was going bust. A significant number of Labour MPs opposed this, arguing that we should borrow and spend more.

    At the Labour conference that year, the prime minister, James Callaghan, said: “We used to think you could spend your way out of a recession and boost government spending. I tell you in all candour, that option no longer exists.” The IMF gave Britain a loan but with humiliating conditions, including heavy cuts in public spending.

    These events should serve as a reminder to pay attention to a weak pound, and never imagine that a falling exchange rate is a solution rather than a problem. Unfortunately, anyone born after the Eighties is at risk of thinking that the policies of a government led by Jeremy Corbyn (propped up by the Liberal Democrats, SNP and Greens) could lead to utopia.

    Brian Higgins

    Eastbourne , East Sussex

    The main parties’ manifestos on NHS, climate change, crime & tax | General Election 2019

    h

    1. SIR – I am concerned at the statement in Friday night’s television debate by the country’s potential leader that “Socialism carried out in a democratic way in this country, in Scandinavia and other places has raised the living standards of the very poorest”.

      In reality, Labour’s post-war social programmes meant the extension of rationing and shortages.

      Scandinavian countries practise mostly free-market economics paired with high taxes in exchange for generous government entitlement programmes. It’s not government benefits that create wealth, but wealth that makes such schemes possible.

      With Britain’s current growth at a low ebb, the return to prosperity must be of primary focus by promoting an entrepreneurial spirit, not by suppressive nationalisation.

      Simon White

      Rugby, Warwickshire

      1. Quite so. The Brown-Blair junta were the prime cause of the Crash of 2008. Oh, hang on…

    3. The IMF loan had nothing at all to do with us ‘going bankrupt’. We borrowed to stabilise the pound. We also paid off the loan in record time as we actually didn’t use much of it. It was a period of managed exchange rates. The pound didn’t free float back then.
      Sadly Mr Higgins like so many voters is economically clueless.

    4. Mr Higgins and others need reminding of the massive debt the UK has built up since 2010 and which will go even higher no matter who gets in.

      Mind you, why bother with trivial matters such as finance, mass immigration and its effects on our infrastructure, an increasingly elderly population living longer, the meaning of democracy and a creaking national grid, etc. when there’s a war to be fought over a little lad’s picture in a newspaper (as if there were no such events during 13 years of the last Labour governments).

      1. Eddy, whilst I do not quibble over the horrendous amount of debt we are leaving for our children and grandchildren to clear up, a glance at the attached graph shews that the Tories, whilst no where near eliminating the deficit, have at least substantially slowed down the rate of increase.
        Of particular note is the way the debt soared during Labour’s last years in office.
        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ee7cf25a6180f96baf0abe7f1198c0cd0d0256a8e808ffa68cee1d1cf096a3d9.jpg

        2. I’m not absolving Labour, Bob, just saying that the Tories aren’t squeaky clean when it comes to the national debt. As you know, their promise to eliminate the budget deficit by 2015 was broken and it’s looking like it’ll be many years yet before it is eliminated. Then comes the task of paying back what we’ve borrowed.

          Meanwhile, the debt goes up and adds a bit more weight to the ball and chain strapped to our young and their offspring.

          P.S. Paying off the £1.82 trillion debt at the rate of £1 per second would take over 57,000 years.

          1. We haven’t ‘borrowed’ anything. We’ll never default on gilts unless our politicians choose to. We are a monetary sovereign.

            The budget deficit is not any problem at all.

            We do not need to ‘pay back the debt’. We do not borrow anything to pay back in reality.

            There is no ball and chain attached to our children’s feet.

            Government debt is not what you think it is. It’s not a loan or mortgage. Bonds are used to target interest rates and to provide safe savings vehicle for pensions.
            https://www.forbes.com/sites/francescoppola/2018/04/30/governments-are-nothing-like-households/#4917848854f8

          2. Well now. One man’s liability is another man;s asset. To whom is the national debt owed? Thanks to QE, the Bank of England owns a lot of it, and we, collectively, own the BoE. The pension funds own a lot more – us again.

            At the moment, interest rates are ridiculously low, which cannot last. Our only saviour, or should I say our grandchildren’s saviour, will be inflation.

          3. Nothing is owed to anybody.

            The more the debt rises the more interest rates will tend towards zero. Our ‘debt’ is mostly domestic and we are a monetary sovereign. Bonds are a savings vehicle for pension funds and are useful for central bankers in interest rate manipulations. Bonds are also a minor source of stimulus.
            Anybody who thinks we actually lend the government money from the private sector to finance government operations needs to see a psychiatrist.
            Still misunderstanding of the national debt allows the MSM to put pressure on voters to plump for austerity because of the ‘household fallacy’. If only most people had an economics education, sadly they don’t. Our government is a bank, it creates what it spends. It absolutely isn’t a household only able to spend what’s coming in and what can be borrowed. Still it’s advantageous for the wealthy to paint that picture as most people understand household budgets whereas the idea that banks and governments create money at will is still not very well understood by most.

        3. It’s not debt.

          Government borrowing isn’t what you think it is. It is not the government mortgaging our children’s future for money now. Government is self-financing.

        4. What about all the off book debt? The future debt that Labour shovelled on us?

          Yes, the Conservatives have spent more but that’s compounded interest, same as it costs more to keep going when you’re already in debt.

          If Brown made us pay £11, the Conservatives have had to pay £12 – the 11, plus a quid in debt interest. The solution, of course was to spend £9 and pay off the debt with £1, saving the tax payer a pound but those sort of reductions in spending were unthinkinable for a party terrified of losing office.

    5. The sad truth is that the IMF now exists solely to force nations into the EU.

      We would be forced to adopt the Euro. The ‘savage cuts’ of spending 98p instead of £1 might actually start to change our demented economy of 45% public sector.

  16. SIR – If we vote a Labour government into power on Thursday, it will be misery for the many, not the few.

    Nigel Powell

    Christchurch, Dorset

    1. Morning E,
      Why would the electorate wish to vote any of the toxic trio into power ?
      Surely enough damage has been done.

      1. The fact of the matter is that we shall either get a government led by Corbyn or a government led by Johnson and a spoilt
        ballot paper or an abstention will make no difference to that.

        So the only option would seem to be to vote for the leader and the party which you detest and despise the least.

        1. R,
          The very same voting pattern that got us to the point of having only the choice of corbyn / johnson to choose from & collude in continuing the voting pattern that is near completion of destroying a nation,
          maybe one more push, a ?
          No thanks.

      2. One can only vote for those who stand for election, and for many constituencies this time the only choice is the toxic trio.

    2. And yet it takes a generation to learn this fact.

      The next generation then wails and moans about how their parents ‘got it all for free’ and lo, the cycle continues.

      Increasingly I believe that only the net taxpayer should be allowed to vote and even then be required to pass a basic test on the funding of government.

  17. Morning again

    SIR – I continue to be astonished that the BBC and Channel 4 are using their airtime to attempt to bully and threaten elected politicians during this election campaign.

    Our public-service television channels have been granted access to the general public in return for providing impartial news and current affairs, among other conditions. Andrew Neil is one of our best forensic political interviewers, but using BBC airtime to bully or shame the Prime Minister into accepting his invitation to be interviewed crosses a line that should never be crossed.

    Empty chairing is also, in my view, a political statement that threatens editorial impartiality. For broadcasters to pretend that a leader is shirking their duty of public accountability if they refuse an invitation to appear is risible.

    Our media is suffocating from an overdose of interviews with senior politicians of all parties in this election campaign. We have also had our two potential leaders going head to head on prime time, a historic first. Ofcom needs to get a grip on this abuse of the nation’s airwaves. Neither the BBC nor ITN is Fox News – yet.

    Lord Grade of Yarmouth

    London SW1

  19. SIR – All political parties have activists like me delivering leaflets. I’m surprised, therefore, that they don’t agree to regulate letterboxes.

    I’m a Tory, so believe in a small state and individual liberty, and am generally opposed to regulations, but letterboxes are an exception.

    No more should we suffer springs strong enough to amputate fingers, back-breakers one inch from the floor, or flaps that open vertically. Likewise, long garden paths with fussy gates and uncontrolled dogs.

    The Americans have it right: it is everyone’s responsibility to have a box at the edge of their property and to collect their post from it.

    Paul Morley

    Cropredy, Oxfordshire

    2. Twenty yers ago, an Irish friend told me that the Irish Post office had banned those letter boxes so low down that the deliverer practically has to kiss the step to reach them.

    1. A sorry tale.

      Before care in the community resulted in its closure, there was an enclave of old, large, houses which acted as a type of cottage hospital. It was full of people like “Will”, sleeping in dormitories, none of whom could care for themselves unaided. They were fed, helped to bath, shave etc. they had jobs that were really occupational therapy and their pay was enough to buy a few cigarettes and sweets. All their needs were met.

      I doubt that many of those poor souls could have been looked after by their families, certainly not their parents, many of whom would have been very old and frail themselves even if they were still alive. It is very unlikely many of them would have had children themselves.

      It is a problem that is only going to get worse.

      1. Morning all.
        Sad to say it was the Cons who closed the asylums years ago and not much else was put in place for these unfortunate people. It certainly will become worse over time, what with the inbreeding immigrants and the current seeming explosion of mental health sufferers. Depressing.

        1. The policy is the the baby of both parties.
          Behind that is a medical fad that happily coincided with the bean counters’ wishes.
          I worked in a local mental hospital during the 1970s – under both Conservative and Labour administrations.
          What began as a good and humane idea – there were cases on long term patients who should never have been in hospital – became an excuse for virtue signalling and a builders’ land grab.

          1. From what I was told a few years back, one of the factors was the increase in costs when, in response to demands by the unions, the farms and market gardens attached to the County Asylums were banned from selling their produce to the local community as the cheap labour of the residents meant they were taking jobs away from normal workers.

          2. I hadn’t heard that one, but, before my time Severalls used to have its own farm where the patients produced the fruit an vegetables for the hospital.
            My aunt and uncle considered taking over the running of the farm but were put off by the fact that, as they looked round, a spade came hurtling over the wall. (This was 1950ish when the hospital still had a wall round it.)

        2. It wasn’t just the Conservatives, Labour did their fair share of the wrecking too.
          Like so many of these things, the idea comes from the right, the left then make a total pig’s ear of it.

        3. It was cheaper to take the advice the ‘health professionals’ were giving then. At the time they all condemned mental hospitals as relics of Victorian times. ‘Care in the community’ was going to be so much better…

      2. Same in occupational therapy at Severalls hospital.
        The more able patients did minor jobs like packing screws into plastic bags for manufacturers. The organisation and slow work rate made it a public service rather than an efficient way for producers to get work done.
        At one time, the more intelligent patients worked as tradesmen’s mate; the unions stopped that on the grounds that it deprived people ‘outside’ of their jobs. The tradesmen worked without a mate.

        1. In Glasgow & Edinburgh there were hundreds of disabled people employed in the likes of Remploy. They had contracts to supply goods they made to Councils, Prisons etc as well as commercial outlets for their furniture, mattresses etc etc.

          The people “put in their day’s work” & were paid. The factories ran at a loss.

          The centres were closed and most were then put on benefits – so instead of working & meeting fellow workers + having a purpose in their lives most languish at home, with little company and modest benefits.

          Law of Unintended Consequences strikes again –
          Disabled workers – a poorer life money wise, a poorer life socially for them and a poor deal for the taxpayer as the Benefits Bill is bigger than the subsidies to keep the factory solvent.
          Benefits come out a different pot of Government money from the subsidies.

          1. The quality of the output was actually quite good, as were the items from the Blind Asylum. We are unlikely ever to have joined up thinking from local or central government.

          2. I never understood why Remploy was stopped.
            OK, the employees were unlikely to be as productive as the fit and able, but it seemed a sensible idea.

          3. In my Army days, our berets and chemical decontamination pads were made by Remploy. I used the latter extensively in training jobs and they seemed to work OK.

      3. My mother’s widowed sister lived with us towards the end if her life. She seemed very old but in fact she was no older than I am now. She paid us no rent and did not contribute to the family food budget and other household bills but she did buy her own cigarettes and gin.

        As my father put it: she lived comfortably on our overheads and her old age pension.

        She had been the black sheep of the family and she was especially loved by the younger members of the family because she told such marvellous stories. She had married a raffish, very good-looking rogue and together they failed in every venture they attempted from rubber plantations in the Far East to running sleazy clubs in Soho.

        1. I suspect many families might do similarly, but there is a huge difference between that and one who is totally dependent and mentally not much more capable than a toddler but with the strength of an adult..

          1. Our friends’ severely autistic grandson had to go into a special home when he reached sixteen.
            He was just too big and strong for his mother to cope with him. (Father had disappeared years before.)

    1. No worries, the chimps are now on sale in Brixton Market, in the section where they sell fresh bush meat.

    1. Fact?

      Half of the press is strongly right-wing. There is propaganda and half-truths in all the MSM no matter which way the editorial team lean politically.

        1. The Times, the FT, the DT, the Sun, the Daily Fail are all right-wing and I don’t see any of them pushing a pro-Corbyn agenda.

          2. The Times are no longer right-wing. They used to be, but mostly not now.
            The DM is a bit schizophrenic, with an editor who is strongly pro-EU.
            The Telegraph, yes. The Sun: maybe. I never read it. Most people don’t, they just look at the pictures…
            All the tv channels that show any news are pro-left, pro-EU, anti-Tory and BXP.

    2. Good morning ogga

      I like this from your post: “Boris may not deliver Brexit but the MSM can’t take the chance.”

      Is there anybody on this site who can tell me whether Boris Johnson actually wants a proper Brexit or not?

      I know that Swinson and Sturgeon definitely want to stay in the EU; I also know that Corbyn would like to leave the EU but dare not say so.

      My feeling is that at heart Boris Johnson would like Britain to stay in the EU for the foreseeable future or actually remain in it permanently. However, like Corbyn, he does not dare say what he really thinks or wants. If I am wrong then please would somebody explain why he has not made a pact with Nigel Farage and gone for an unequivocal, unambiguous departure from the EU as somebody who truly believed in Brexit would have done?

      1. Morning R,
        It is not in fashion to believe that the latest
        GB saviour is anything but totally country / peoples first & foremost appertaining to the brexit farce.
        I ask why would they , the politico’s, want to
        kill a golden goose ? none of those involved with the exit issue stand out as shining examples of integrity, putting UK Country / peoples first, NONE.
        I put ALL those currently ( with a shout) in brexitexit down as one steering committee &
        we sure ain’t going to like the destination.

  24. December 10 2019, 12:01am, The Times
    The ‘all must have prizes’ culture refuses to die
    Melanie Phillips

    Education establishment is still clinging to its belief that tests and inspections are wrong

    With the announcement of who had won the Turner prize, I experienced a distinct sense of déjà vu.

    The four nominees asked the judges to make the award collectively to all of them, “in the name of commonality, multiplicity and solidarity”. This was widely scorned as a ludicrous prizes-for-all approach, as if this was a new phenomenon. But in 1996 I published a book entitled All Must Have Prizes, which was about precisely this attitude. Far from being a new development, it was an important contributor to the progressive destruction of our education system, the subject of my book.

    This attitude sprang from the belief in equality of outcomes. Instead of everyone having the same chances in life, or equality of opportunity, it ordained that all should enjoy identical benefits, regardless of behaviour or other circumstances. The doctrine became a general cultural orthodoxy. In education it destroyed the idea of meritocracy, because that created winners and losers and the very idea of losers was regarded as discriminatory and unfair.

    I described how the education establishment had decided that competition meant childhood misery, lifelong trauma and a replication of the vicious world of capitalism. That led to the replacement of structured teaching, which created sheep and goats, by a system which would no longer transmit this hideous culture but enable children to challenge it.

    One of the most devastating outcomes was the un-teaching of reading. Structured reading schemes, in which children progressed by putting letters and sounds together until thyouey could decode the words on the page, were junked, largely because some children were slower than others at mastering them. Instead they were encouraged to guess or memorise words and whole passages. Then they and their parents were told they could read. In fact, they were illiterate.

    When my book was published, the education establishment rose as one to denounce it. This was echoed in the ferocious opposition from that establishment to attempts by successive governments to address this cultural catastrophe. Michael Gove was the one politician who understood all this. Under his reforms, some progress was made. He restored core subjects to the curriculum. GCSEs became harder. Academies, despite their patchy record, opened up choice which drives up standards.

    Yet the government remained too intimidated to restore academically selective schools. The universities continued to lower their standards to accommodate students who couldn’t meet previous admission requirements. And rampant grade inflation has remained, with the proportion of first-class honours degrees rising absurdly between 2010 and 2018 from 16 per cent to 29 per cent.

    To reverse this orthodoxy requires a heroic and concerted effort over many years. Yet Gove was abruptly deprived of his education brief by a prime minister panicking over the scale of teachers’ hostility. And subsequently, what some of them have been saying replicates almost word for word the nonsense spouted in the Eighties and Nineties.

    In 2014, the year Gove lost his education post, teacher Jess Edwards wrote in Socialist Review: “His plans to introduce ‘baseline tests’ at age four, together with his pass or fail phonics test for five and six year olds, are helping to write failure into the heart of education right from the formative periods in a child’s development. Many educationalists have described such proposals as a form of psychological abuse. For a child to be told at the age of five that he or she has failed will doubtless damage many for life.”

    In 2016 Jon Berry, of the University of Hertfordshire’s school of education, published his book Teachers Undefeated: How Global Education Reform has Failed to Crush the Spirit of Educators. This talks of concerted resistance being mounted by teachers to the Global Education Reform Movement, or GERM, a label which Berry tells us was “carefully chosen for its connotations of ill health”.

    So what is this educational disease that must be eradicated? Why, nothing more or less than a traditional and accountable education system, whose key features are successful teaching methods, a concentration on core subjects and the use of tests and inspection.

    Paying lip service to scrutiny of teachers and achieving good exam grades, Berry advocates resistance to what is necessarily involved in this. Achievement is once again represented as a kind of oppression. Teachers are “dispirited by kids who have learned to chase and cherish their grades”.

    This is no rogue screed by some marginalised radical. The book is recommended by the former general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, Christine Blower, who glowingly endorses its call for teachers to “collectively begin to resist the effects of the GERM” and its “meagre and measly view of education”.

    I took the title of my book from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland where the Dodo, asked who has won the race in which everyone ran when they liked and left off when they liked, answers: “Everybody has won, and all must have prizes”.

    The doctrine that gave us the four Turner winners is an agenda of failure, chaos and cultural decline: devised by the ideological, implemented by the mediocre and inflicted by the brainwashed upon those it has abandoned to a culture that’s at risk of destroying not just the notion of achievement but its own collective mind.

    1. It’s become impossible to distinguish between entries for the Turner Prize and the Turnip Prize. Parody meets Reality. Perhaps they shouldn’t have awarded it to anyone.

    2. Socialist review spouts, ” For a child to be told at the age of five that he or she has failed will doubtless damage many for life.”

      Have they never heard of “Try again, until you spot what is wrong, then rectify it.”

    1. A BTL post on GF:

      O/T re the Leeds hospital: best info on Yorkshire Evening Post web site:

      Jack was originally placed on a bed in the Paediatric Emergency Department.

      However
      – due to an emergency arrival at the hospital – Jack was told that the
      bed was needed for the other patient and he was moved into a clinical
      room, his mum said.

      Sarah added: “A doctor rushed in and said he needed the bed.

      “He just couldn’t settle or get comfy, he said he wanted to lay down.

      “He was not able to settle, he kept sitting on the floor.

      “Jack’s coat was on the floor and he ended up laying on top of it.”

      Jack – who was using an oxygen mask while laid on the floor – was diagnosed with Influenza A and Tonsillitis by doctors.

      He left the hospital shortly after lunchtime on December 4.

      1. So what function is the bag of saline lying on top of him performing? It isn’t connected to the boy, so do we assume it was all staged or are the medical staff more negligent than made out?

          2. You need your eyes tested. It’s an oxygen mask and connected by a thin plastic tube to an oxygen outlet port on the wall. The boy had obviously pulled it off. They are actually quite uncomfortable after a while.

          3. It may well have been connected to an out of shot wall medical gas distribution point ,bottle/regulator or medical steam inhaler all of which are standard equipment in A+E, it still doesn’t make the obvious stage managed shot any more believable though.

    2. He’s also credited with the photo of the boy and his mother at home. Earlier reports said the mother took the photo.

  26. Daily Brexit Betrayal

    The final days of the interminable GE Campaign are upon us.

    Expect more hysterics in the MSM, reporting on what the politicians

    said or didn’t say but should’ve. Expect more ‘people’ and their

    opinions being reported as if they were immutable pearls of wisdom.

    Expect the final polls accompanied by dire warnings. That is to come

    tomorrow – today we can already see the first signs of these hysterics.

    https://independencedaily.co.uk/your-daily-brexit-betrayal-tuesday-10th-december-2019-two-days-to-polling-day/

  28. Another prediction in the event of a Labour Government from UB’s Almanac :-

    The mighty Council Tax re-valuation database servers that have been slumbering for the last 10 years will be brought back on line and we’ll all find ourselves at least 1 band higher.

    2. And don’t forget that even under Osborne thoughts were beginning to be publicised about an annual land tax, on top of the ‘community charge’. Councils have a lot of non productive new mouths to support.

    2. So Boris has announced reviewing the BBC license fee, which BXP says he stole from them.
      And they stole it from UKIP…

    3. Farage is so lucid, clear and honest that had Johnson had the common sense and integrity to join forces with The Brexit Party their alliance would have been unbeatable.

      Johnson’s sheer buffoonery may well condemn us to a Corbyn government. And – make no mistake – if this catastrophe occurs it will be entirely the fault of Boris Johnson’s crass stupidity and arrogant hubris..

      The total lack of common sense shared by Cameron, May and Johnson beggars belief.

  30. Buzzfeed UK issued with ‘strike-off’ warning over late accounts

    Buzzfeed UK has been told it will be dissolved in two months if it fails to file its accounts with Companies House, which are months overdue.

      1. Yes. Late filing of accounts is a sign of contempt for the legislation. This Company ( U.K. company ) has ALWAYS filed its accounts late. Last filed accounts to end of 2017 due for filing 30 September 2018 were filed on Christmas Eve 2018 – three months late and at a time when nobody would be watching. Usually a sign that something is not quite right, although the auditors have given a clean certificate;they may have had problems.

        It’s a subsidiary, presumably of the American company.

        1. Auditors look fairly carefully that the correct amounts have been put in the correct columns. They do not really concern themselves with where the money comes from, or how it is spent. I applied for a contract job with an Agency that recruited auditors. The recruiter, a mature gent, was quite frank. Auditors, as in Big Four etc, need to be rehired year after year and it is not in their interests to find fault.
          I was not hired

          1. It’s called ” turning a blind eye and making sure that your professional liability insurance is up to daye “.

      1. A cat-video website, according to Tucker Carlson.
        They published the Steele dossier on Trump, when no one else would touch it, because everyone knew it was rubbish.

  34. Sherlock Holmes investigates – The Davos Connection. Part 6.

    I entered the dining room at the Meurice on Rue Rivoli almost in despair. Holmes had been missing for nearly a week and I was deeply concerned for his safety. So it was to my complete astonishment that I found him at our table studying the dinner menu as if nothing had happened..

    ”Holmes”, I exclaimed, ”I am delighted you have returned, I have been so worried, where have you been ?”

    ”Please remain calm, Watson, and allow me to briefly explain. I noticed that two individuals who I believed were accomplices of Goldfinger were staying in the hotel. So on the spur of the moment I decided to apply for the job of majordomo as the position was vacant. Naturally as I speak every European language fluently I was immediately engaged. It seems you didn’t recognize the rather pale rotund individual with a drooping moustache who took your order every day for the last week ? Of course not, my disguises are meticulous. With the position came the master keys giving unlimited access throughout the hotel. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I have discovered crucial secret documents, one of which makes remarkable insider trading allegations. If these allegations are true, Watson, they will form a crucial part of our enquiry…….. please scroll down………..

    https://politicalarena.org/2012/01/14/democrats-sugar-daddy-george-soros-helped-craft-stimulus-then-invested-in-companies-benefiting/

    I read the document with increasing astonishment at the alleged scale of the undertaking.

    ”My God, Holmes, if this is true, they must have netted billions of dollars !”

    Indeed they must, Watson, and if you would be so kind as to return those papers to me, we will place our order for dinner. Now, let us enjoy the fine ambiance of this beautiful rococo dining room and the fine service of this remarkable hotel, I will explain further tomorrow, possibly en route to the Gare de Lyon !”

  35. Would it help if we taught modern social history in schools as in the lab/lib/cons political input since the mid 70 s ? or would that knock the @rse out of the political scam they are successfully running ?

  36. Seems the Leeds hospital story was a classic disinformation technique and identical in purpose to the Greek beach pic a few years ago.

    Could the idea come from the same original source ?

      1. It must only be a random coincidence that disinformation stunts always seem to serve the cause of the guy who wants to impose his “aims and values” on Europe, and who spends billions of dollars doing so..

    3. Disinformation?

      Why then did the trust’s Chief Medical Officer confirm and then apologise publicly for the fact the boy had to be treated on the floor? Was she lying?

      Want disinformation. Try looking for the video of Hancock’s adviser being ‘punched’ by a protester at Leeds hospital. Headline news in all right-wing press, fed to them from CCHQ. Unlucky for them the incident was videoed. What actually happened is a cyclist points at a car and the adviser walks into the cyclist’s arm.

      1. Do you think there was a shortage of hospital trolleys ? Particularly as at least one was said to be empty ?

        Do you think it’s a strange coincidence that this heart tugging story happened at the pivotal moment before a crucial event ?

        In exactly the same way that other heart tugging stories have happened at pivotal moments before other crucial events ?

        1. No of course not and we know the boy moved to the floor himself. The fact remains he was ill and there wasn’t a bed for him. Those saying it’s a fake picture set-up to show false information are wrong. Sure there’s propaganda on both sides over the issue but it certainly wasn’t fake news like the so called punch of Hancock’s adviser.
          Trolleys in corridors as beds are about as acceptable as 12 hour waits in A&E. They should be rarities not commonplace.
          We had four times as many beds as we do now in 1971 when the population was barely 50 million.

          1. Why did the patient move to the floor ?

            Why were pictures circulated stating there were no trolleys ?

            Was it all a set up ?

            Didn’t the NHS under Labour contribute to thousands of deaths at Stafford and elsewhere through negligence ?

          2. The NHS has had problems since the decimation under Thatcher and Major. Over 50% of beds lost in 15 years. repetition of services locally due to internal market, decentralisation and localisation. Although Blair and Brown did build many new hospitals they managed to do so while continuing the trend of cutting out beds (at the same time as massively increasing the population via immigration and free movement). There are 80000 fewer hospital beds today than there was in 2000. We have 250000 fewer beds today than we did in 1975.
            Was it a set up, no, but there was certainly a hint of opportunism taken by the press over the picture.

          3. Why did the patient leave the trolley and lie on the floor ?

            Have you evidence to support your NHS statistics ?

          5. Bed numbers may not be particularly relevant in view of effective use and improving medical practice.

            How do you know the patient moved for more “comfort” on a hard floor ?

  38. Thoughts from the Bath.
    None of the 4 candidates in my constituency are in favour of Brexit.(As I mentioned last night, the literature being put out by Labour and Tory candidates does not mention the word “Brexit” at all.) The Tory incumbent is obsessed with Indyref2 and voted for the WA. The SNP candidate is basically a good hard-working constituency MP type but SNP policy is fanatically against Brexit.
    The Lib/Dem candidate is surely against Brexit but has circulated no information at all. (This is a bit strange as the constituency was in Liberal and Lib/Dem control for many decades.)
    As a supporter of a clean Brexit I have been effectively disenfranchised.
    How many of the 17.4 Brexit voters are in a similar position?
    Is it barmy of me to suspect some kind of collusion to stop Brexit? After all, the current position was brought about by the anti-Brexit May calling a needless and destructive General Election.

    1. I think there are probably a lot of people feeling disenfranchised. THere is certainly no one standing in my constituency that I have any positive wish to vote for. I do at least have a protest vote option, that doesn’t involve spoiling my ballot paper.

  39. Tories and Labour are united in their neglect of British defence. Charles Moore. 10 DECEMBER 2019.

    It’s quite obvious for all the Westminster talk about the Russian Menace that the UK is essentially defenceless, both the Army and Navy being travesties of their former selves and rotted from within by Cultural Marxist indoctrination. In my view Putin simply serves as an Elite bogeyman. A distraction. This may not always be so! Things change and to be devoid of the means of defending yourself does not discourage threats from within.

    TOP COMMENT BELOW THE LINE.

    Mr Smith 10 Dec 2019 6:42AM

    The Tories and Labour are the enemy within.

    According to the ONS eleven local aurthority areas will be majority Muslim by 2031, the UK being majority Muslim by 2067 on current trends.
    Millions upon millions of you idiots are voting in favour of this nation being turned into a colony of Pakistan, you are voting for the UK to be turned into an Islamic hell hole, you are mad.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/12/10/tories-labour-united-neglect-british-defence/

    1. AS,
      Mr Smith is in for a double dosing of castigation even bordering on getting a
      Tommy Robinson interlude.
      8.31 in my mind is well to late in some areas, just join the dots of those entrenched in power already.
      All the while the regular keep in / keep out voting pattern is adhered to then an alien force is being built within a host party.
      PC / Appeasement is a Countries
      Hydrogen bromide as can be seen daily.

    2. Or we could take the “radical step” of removing islam from our countries and make the world a much safer place.

      Of course, if you try to do that in the real world then the media shouts “War Criminal!” and you find yourself on trial in the Hague, as Myanmar is now finding out. It does show the world that has been created for us to live in, when an islamic country can make up lies about the treatment of muslims and the authorities will leap to take action. The media appear to be almost shaking with righteous anger that anyone could dare to question the spread of islam.

      But when you have a real War Criminal, such as Tony Blair, then all that happens to him is that he gets many well-paid jobs, and he receives a permanent invitation to the news studios to tell us all how stupid we are to want to be free of the European Union.

    1. From the Urban Dictionary:

      “politician (def.)
      Someone who will say anything to anybody at any time to get exactly what they want. Lawyer See “politician” and add: With a total lack of ethics and/or remorse for their actions.”

    3. The chief defect of J. Corbyn
      Was not eschewing far more sin
      But lots of sinning was the plan
      For cycle tours with dark Diane
      At last he swallowed all his pride
      (Which tied him up in knots inside)
      And had to say a small camp bed
      Was not fit for an ardent red
      Who really fancied quite a lot
      Concupiscence with Miss Abbott

      [The moral is the bourgeoisie
      Will mock the lefties such as he
      With parodies of H. Belloc
      Which always have the power to shock.]

      1. I guess that depends on who she shoots.

        Taking out a few private-jet setting celebs might reduce carbon output measured in megatonnes.

    1. And if Bozza had made no reference to the London Bridge events…..?
      Quite frankly, I am absolutely appalled. This man is an ageing C21 Pavlik Morosov.
      Everything – but everything – including natural family bonds are sacrificed to political expediency.

    2. There is one plus point to this mans unending political crusade (he will love that word.) The way that he is using his son’s death, when any real parent would still be trying to adjust to the loss, shows how soulless and “alien” people with his beliefs really are.

      1. Distinct echoes of Brendan Cox after his wife Jo was murdered. Within a day or two of her death he was making political points instead of devoting his time to his children.

        1. And wasn’t his marriage about to collapse? And didn’t he lose one of his jobs for ‘inappropriate behaviour’ with his female colleagues. To be really nastily cynical you could say that her murder saved him the cost of an expensive divorce lawyer.

          1. To be even more cynical one could say also that her death was politically highly convenient. Several birds with one stone.

          4. I do not think Thomas Mair killed her. If nothing else, the videos of Cox’s family in the immediate days after her death should set people wondering (which, in fact, many did). It is strange that Mair attended the same psychotherapy clinic in London as the one who attempted an assassination on Trump before his election, for example. If one digs there are many anomalies to be found that should raise questions.

    3. I think this nasty piece of work has seen how well other parents/spouses of victims have done and is hoping for wodges of easy money for himself as a consultant to charridees or a place in the Lords or as a well paid pundit.

      1. I think he said he was going to get tough on people who go around sticking knives into other people for ideological reasons.

        Typical low-life point-scoring, suggesting such a thing.

        PS What do the parents of the woman who died in the same murder feel about it?

        1. We don’t know because she is grieving the loss of her daughter and will be for years to come probably until she dies.

          1. She is maintaining a dignified silence which is what the other chap should have done. It is unpleasant to see that kind of point-scoring.

    5. I’ve just watched this guy! There is something seriously amiss with his priorities. I know that not everyone grieves in the same way but I also know that some people never grieve at all. It is a myth that all parents love their offspring! This man is one of them!

      1. There is something very disturbing about this man.

        There is nothing in the world more important to me than my wife and my two sons.

        2. If you’ve never seen it Richard it strikes you as inconceivable, it seems counter to our very instincts but I know from my own experience that my words are true!

  46. COFFEE HOUSE

    Labour, Question Time and the cult of youth
    Brendan O’Neill – 9 December 2019 – 6:00 PM

    When’s the Question Time for over-60s, then? Or maybe even over-75s? After all, elderly people face specific social problems: pension issues, care, loneliness. And yet they aren’t getting their very own QT, unlike under-30s, who are.

    Tonight the BBC is hosting a special youth version of its flagship political show and in the process it is sending out a pretty disturbing message: young people’s views matter more than old people’s.

    Presented by Emma Barnett and featuring politicians from across the spectrum, tonight’s QT for millennials promises to be an irritating affair. It’s not that I have anything against young people — I was young myself, once. It’s more that self-consciously youthful politics has become a bit woe-is-me. I predict much whining about tuition fees, the housing market and, of course, Brexit. Boomers inflicting their tragic Little Englandism on the young, etc etc.

    A worrying cult of youth is emerging. The leftish and liberal wings of the establishment, alongside much of the media, are positively obsessed with the young. Corbyn’s Labour party chases the youth vote like a tragic ageing professor going after nubile students. While the Remainer camp never tires of telling us that young people will have to live with the consequences of Brexit for longer than all those pesky old people who voted for it and therefore we should have a second referendum.

    John Curtice caused a stir on the Andrew Marr Show yesterday when he said Labour is ‘no longer a party of the working class… you’re a party of young people’. He’s dead right. Age is now a far better indicator of support for Labour than class is.

    Working-class voters have been turning away from Labour for years. And if the current polls are correct, then it looks like this sensible working-class abandonment of Labour will continue. Many inhabitants of Labour’s traditional ‘Red Wall’ constituencies look set to vote Tory on Thursday. But young people, it seems, still want to be part of Corbyn’s crew.

    A YouGov poll found that 51 per cent of 18 to 29-year-olds are planning to vote Labour this week (this is a bit of a drop from 2017). In contrast, just 17 per cent of over-60s and 10 per cent of over-70s plan to vote Labour. These are astonishing figures. The middle-aged and the elderly are super wary of Labour, while many youths see it as the best, nicest, most caring party.

    Not surprisingly, Labour has abandoned class for generationalism. In recent weeks, it has devoted a huge amount of energy to getting the youth vote out, with the help of celebs like Stormzy. It pleads with students to vote. It is going after the ‘Snapchat vote’, whatever that might be. Remainers, too, want the young to vote, because they know that the younger you are, the more likely you are to be pro-EU.

    There’s a serious problem with this cult of youth, with this flattery of youthful concerns and opinions. It is incredibly divisive. It has nurtured some really ugly boomer-bashing and granny-hating. Some of the young have come to view older generations as pampered and privileged and possibly a bit racist. The cult of youth has convinced youths that their troubles are all the fault of a greedy, destructive older generation who had it easy.

    This, of course, is weapons-grade nonsense. Many in the older generations experienced great deprivation. Some were even born into slums. They had outside toilets, a phenomenon no millennial will be familiar with. They lived through huge economic downturns, the three-day week and mass unemployment. Hardly any of them went to university. The myth that boomers are the lucky generation while millennials are life’s big victims is fact-free rot. Shame on those sections of political class that are propagating this divisive drivel.

    I hope someone says this on Question Time tonight. I hope someone pushes back against any millennial moaning that might arise and reminds the young that earlier generations struggled too. I hope someone reminds them that generational politics is nasty, divisive and anti-democratic. Everyone’s voice should be equal, whether you’re a 22-year-old PC lefty or a 78-year-old northerner who wants out of the EU.

    1. I do not know how any fair minded person could watch any news or current affairs on the BBC.

      YOU CANNOT TRUST THE BBC.

      1. Good afternoon, Johnny

        And do you trust Boris Johnson to honour his word about looking at the way the BBC is funded?

          1. Trusting Boris isn’t the point.

            The point is Boris is not Corbyn.

            That’s all that matters.

      2. You cannot fully trust any media outlet. They are all biased in one way or another. All you can do is read as much as possible from many different sources and look for the small commonalities between all the reports which is usually the grains of truth hiding in the bulls droppings.

      3. Afternoon N,
        Don’t know, but I do know that murder inc. has dropped its prices as in, Artichokes three for a pound in some venues.

      1. it just isn’t a joking matter. You should be pun-nished for saying that.
        The Democrats over there and the Labour Party over here are both evil, but the Democrats seem to have more power.

        2. It should never be forgotten that the Democrats were the Slavery Party and only saw the light at Appomattox!

          1. Appomattox ? Can you get that on the N.H.S. now or are they still waiting for the patent to run out ?

    2. Check out Steve Turley’s video channel, where he assesses the current political situation, with glee…
      The Democrats have shot themselves in both feet and kneecaps over this impeachment.

      https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCCsiAKRKcgzA_372WbXNBaw/videos

      https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rvXf1BU4bMI
      CNN suffers lowest ratings in three years amid impeachment drama.

      https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-Pq9bR7zO3A
      The Democrats are UNRAVELLING Over Their SHAM Impeachment!!!

      1. Much as it might amuse me if that is the case, I still think the disservice being done to politics as a whole far outweighs the effect it has on Trump.

        1. The only eff it’s having on trump is to increase his election chances, his approval ratings are going up.
          As for the disservice to politics, that’s been happening both sides of the Atlantic, and nearly all of it from the hysterical Left. It’s absolutely not good. Impeachment over very little in the U.S., and trying to ignore or overturn the referendum result over here. These people are only interested in their own power, and keeping it any way they can.
          At least it’s out in the open now, for all to see.

          1. When it was first being discussed I thought it was a two pronged revenge both on behalf of the Clintons, once for Hillary’s defeat and secondly for the impeachment of that nasty piece of work, Bill.

          2. Ims2,
            “These people are only interested in their own power & keeping it that way”
            I see your post as being across ALL with political input regarding
            Brexitexit.

  49. John Ward is a wise sage who knows his onions:
    “Fear not: I do not harbour delusions of grandeur. I know perfectly well that 99.5% of humanity isn’t tuned into this channel. But face it: ‘Get Brexit Done’ is like saying, in 1938, ‘Get Hitler’s signature on the Munich Agreement’.
    It isn’t going to solve anything.
    Thank you and goodnight.”

  51. And this just in from David Whitley

    I’m hearing reports that the BBC’s political editor has hacked a horse to death with a machete. I’ve made no effort to establish whether they’re true or not, but I’ve typed it out and shared it with tens of thousands of followers anyway.

  52. May one ask, will ian simms be able to make use of the
    PC / Appeasement umbrella even though not revealing
    where he hid the body of his victim ?
    If he is released would that not be seen as the parole board colluding after the fact ?

  54. It must be me. Why are the NZ authorities sending rescue workers to volcano island? Should they not be preventing them from going there?
    If people are stupid enough to deliberately put themselves at serious risk of death, for fun and jollity, surely they must be required to accept the consequences without the intervention of others?

    2. Afternoon HP,
      Could say the same about current lab/lib/con voters.
      Fair play though, they do accept the consequences, although that is the really puzzling bit, again & again.

    1. That reminds me of the bloke at the Post Office the other day after he’d bought a book of stamps.

  57. Scrapping the licence fee is the only way to save the BBC. 10 DECEMBER 2019.

    BELOW THE LINE.

    Sean Smyth 10 Dec 2019 4:29PM.

    BBC drama is a litany of left wing anti tory anti brexit cr*p, but is so “woke?” it is funny.

    Watch Casualty or Holby and when an asylum seeker is brought in he is always a wonderful caring human being, usually university educated.

    The homeless person is usually a student thrown out by a nasty tory landlord but saves someones life and turns out he is a medical student who will be employed next week.

    Any white middle aged man will be a racist bigot who is eventually saved by the AS and realises his error and wants to vote Labour.

    You have to smile because it’s true!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/12/10/scrapping-license-fee-way-save-bbc/

    2. Reliable Venetian Hand 10 Dec 2019 12:53PM
      The BBC license fee is a barbarous relic. All monopolies, cabals and concentrations of power breed contempt towards those they claim to serve. The BBC’s relationship with the public has become biased, abusive and controlling. It must be restrained from causing further harm to society.

  58. Curiouser and curiouser –

    https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/dec/10/woman-says-account-hacked-to-post-fake-story-about-hospital-boy

    ‘I was hacked,’ says woman whose account claimed hospital boy photo was staged

    So – ““I was hacked. I am not a nurse and I certainly don’t know anyone in
    Leeds,” said the woman, whose name the Guardian is withholding because
    she says she has received death threats. “I’ve had to delete everything
    as I have had death threats to myself and my children.”

    She deleted everything because she had death threats ? Really ? You don’t say ?

  59. Jo Swinson reveals she has been advised to wear ‘lower cut tops’ amid fears that the Lib Dem campaign is failing to win over voters.
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7771741/Jo-Swinson-reveals-advised-wear-lower-cut-tops.html

    The party has been flagging/sagging in the polls and Ms Swinson’s ratings are dwindling. Somehow I don’t think that will swing it Jo.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/49ef9b28e1286d941d4965fb8832e636c037c2ac43b8e521a76e4b315ec55681.jpg

    2. You would be able to see more of her that’s flagging and sagging – a gob-stopper would aid her cause more

    5. She is such a poor candidate.
      She is a perfect example of a so called snowflake.
      No idea at all of real life and the real world.
      People who vote for her are the same type.

    5. I’d vote for her. She’s got to be the prettiest politician I’ve ever seen. I wouldn’t mind being in her cabinet too, as long as she didn’t catch me peeking at her.

  61. I moved from the main BBC site to another. This is what it said at the foot of the web page;

    “This website is produced by BBC Global News, a commercial company owned by the BBC (and just the BBC). No money from the licence fee was used to create this website. The money we make from it is re-invested to help fund the BBC’s international journalism.”

    Correct me if I am wrong, but if the commercial company is wholly owned by the BBC then it was funded by our money, or earnings from our money.
    Unless, of course the BBC is laying the groundwork for a scam, whereby the luvvies become shareholders in BBC Global News and make zillions?
    No, they wouldn’t, would they?

    3. If the profits from global news were rolled back into the publically funded operation, that would reduce the loss reported by the beeb and they would find it harder to justify licences fee increases.

  64. Owen Jones is an utter creep.

    He is attacking Boris Johnson over an artilcle of many years ago describing male homosexuals as tank topped búm boys. Yes, that is offensive.

    But Jones is an extreme left wing hypocrite. He regularly uses his homosexuality as a weapon to silence or attack those he disagrees with.

    I would love it if someone asked him:
    “Well Mr Jones, please tell us where you and your boyfriends put their penises when they are enjoying their sexual relationships.”

    Each to their own, I don’t believe anyone else’s activities are any of my business, but please don’t tell me what I can and cannot think about other people’s lifestyles as long as I keep it to myself.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7776189/Carrie-Symonds-friend-Nimko-Ali-denies-Boris-Johnson-homophobic.html

    1. In days gone by, I wonder how many men have not referred to such people in a similar fashion.

      This modern day witch hunt using todays snowflake standards to judge past actions is beyond a joke.

      1. In days of old

        When knights were bold
        And pooftas weren’t in-tented

        They poked their swords
        In stones not wards
        And Camelot was invented.

        1. I am equally sure that that community has equally offensive terms for heterosexuals.
          It might be amusing to hear a few, but I won’t take offense in the same way as OJ-the-BJ

          1. At Brixton Market In the seventies my white female flat mate who later became Chief Planner at Westminster City Council was called White Trash by the West Indian girls.

        2. I thought Rug Munchers were female homosexuals. Other terms include:

          turd burglar; chutney ferret; jobby-jabber.

        4. I usually refer to them as mincing poofs, fudge-packers or jobbie-jabbers. Owen Jones’s favoured rag, the Grauniad, banned me from its ‘Comment Macht Frei’ for so calling OJ himself.

          Edit: I just checked and the term I used to describe Jones, which got me banned, was ‘catamite’.

    2. Why can’t these people keep their proclivities to themselves? I don’t want them prosecuted as they were in the past but I really don’t want all this Gay Pride rubbish and LGBT stuff rammed at us all the time. We know what they do and it should be in private.

      3. I’m heterosexual. Or normal, as it used to be called. I’m not proud of it, why should I be – it’s just the way I am. Why cant LGBTQs just get on with their thing without shouting about it and ramming it into our faces – it’s nothing to be proud of.

        1. Now how hard they try they are never going to successfully procreate without the need for a third party

          2. Trouble is that any willing third party is going to be as loopy as they are. Who want to pass on genes (from both sides, maybe) like that?

    5. Having started a thread that was almost guaranteed to create offensive comments, I would also state that what people do to or for each other is their business, not mine.
      My bugbear is the likes of OJ who I do not think are truly representative of the communities they purport to represent.

      I must declare an interest (as it were).
      I have a sister who is a lesbian, several friends who lost spouses to partners of the same sex and in-laws who are gay.

      Each to their own, all I ask is that they don’t expect me to watch, let alone join in.

      Mea culpa and apologies to those nottlers who are in same sex relationships.

  66. As I prepared the evening meal I was listening to LBC’s Eddie Mair and his Election Call hour from 18:00 to 19:00. This evening he had on the deputy leader of the Greens: I have long thought that these people are more than a bit strange but listening to this woman convinced me that they are a dangerous cult. Glib rapid responses that didn’t address many of the questions with a clear answer.
    The first 10 minutes or so was on immigration and even when told that her answer to a question was drivel she blathered on unabashed. She wouldn’t be drawn on what her party’s limit on the population of the UK would be and deflected her response by trying to involve the EU and its policy. Stating that her party wasn’t looking for a massive increase in immigration but would maintain current levels wouldn’t have won her party any support from sensible and concerned people. While they have zero chance of power they do appear to have some influence over many policy makers and that is a worrying development. Utter madness and after 20 minutes I was losing the will to live, let alone listen.

    2. And for our first question.

      “For the sake of the planet would you blow your brains out?”

      “Well, no, of course not, my job is to tell you to blow your brains out

  67. The Meaning of Life – have you found it?

    Finding meaning in your life could lower your risk of early death, a new study suggests.
    They found that those who felt they have found life’s meaning reported better physical and mental well-being, and tended to live longer.
    But those who were still looking for it had worse mental well-being as well as poor cognitive functioning.
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-7777115/Have-meaning-life-People-say-sense-purpose-live-longer.html

    So why bother …….Brian?

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/011f9c83a868d2fb216dea38c955b533f7061d6eae6501b47d69cb964edfb022.jpg

    3. Last night was fun
      I said and was wrong
      Fun has no meaning.
      It was the supreme act of loving
      The exhilaration of living
      The pinnacle of being!

    5. I must be going to live forever. I long ago worked out that there is no meaning of life.

      It just is.

      On the other hand I also worked out that I mean very much to do something with my life – not necessarily the same thing as finding a meaning of life.

  71. A Brexit Party leaflet just came through the door. Purely a Brexit-related blurb with Farage standing up on the front – no mention or picture of the candidate –

    you can only find his or her name hidden away on the back …Iman, Inaya.. A man ? A woman ? Nevererdavit. Google search found a picture.
    You do like to know who you are voting for.

    Nigel says: ” The Conservatives cannot be trusted to deliver Brexit “. So much for the grand alliance with Boris.

    I think he’s blown it.
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9fed1ced9bd45b7809ad83f87dd0b7ccf87bad307b88438a5c6203ae16dd2788.png

    1. The failure to get an alliance has all to do with the Tories rather than Farage. He offered to have one several times, and they totally rebuffed him, saying he wasn’t fit to hold office or something similar.

        1. Tony – there is a little dweeb who comes here whose only fulfilment in life is downvoting people. It gives their life “purpose” which says more about them than us.

          It may have been lms2 this time, but it is far more likely to be the other sad sack. They go for anyone.

    1. Perhaps Boris should have told then that there is a £450M expansion program for the hospital due to start shortly

  74. Greater Anglia Crisis is still ongoing

    Greater Anglia switched to the new Bi-mode trains on the Rural lines only to hit a major problem, the trains would not work with the signalling system and a near fatal accident occurred at a level crossing when the gates opened erroneously and a train missed a car by a split second. At first all the services were suspended but the Ipswich Cambridge service has been restored by bring back the old diesel sets. At present they do not know what is causing the problem and there are concerns that the same issue may affect the mainline trains which are due to be introduced soon

  75. Large crane snaps in half in Kingston

    No one appears to have been hurt but a number of buildings have been evacuated

    2. “Oh no! I’m not sure which will snap first –
      The strings on this placard or my bra strap!”

    2. In the apartment in Sweden Missy used to chase a screwed up aluminium foil ball a similar distance & slide 1/2 the length of the kitchen. She always retrieved it & placed it in my cupped right hand ready for the next throw.

  82. DT Story: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/12/10/nigel-farage-urges-tactical-voters-support-party-defectors-warn/

    Nigel Farage urges tactical voters to support his party as defectors warn he could cost country Brexit

    It is the Conservative leader and not Nigel Farage who could cost the country Brexit. Nigel Farage offered an election pact – Boris Johnson rejected it.

    I shall probably not get what I want – but nobody will probably get what they want. I would like a situation where Boris Johnson requires the support of the Brexit Party to form a government. Ideally 20 seats for the Brexit Party and the Conservatives dead level with all the other parties combined. With a 20 seat majority based on Brexit Party support Johnson could then give us a proper Brexit and his ‘brilliant May rehash deal’ could be out in the dustbin.

    1. Naturally the Electoral Commission will be investigating all those groups to make sure the funding is all legit .. oh, wait?

  84. ‘He makes jokes all of the time’: Jeremy Corbyn claims Jon Ashworth’s damning comments about the Labour leader being a security risk if he becomes PM were down to the shadow health secretary’s ‘rather odd sense of humour’. 10 December. 2019.

    Jeremy Corbyn has desperately tried to downplay damaging remarks made about him by Jonathan Ashworth as he claimed the shadow health secretary was joking when he labelled the Labour leader a security risk.

    Mr Ashworth was recorded telling a Conservative friend that Mr Corbyn was proving a massive problem on the doorstep in the party’s traditional heartlands.

    If he actually believes that he’s an even bigger fool than I think he is. I’ve listened to the recording and he’s not joking at all.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7775979/Labours-John-Ashworth-trashes-party-secret-recording-saying-voters-stand-Corbyn.html

      1. I truly hope so. Corbyn does have a devoted hard left following of privileged unemployables cynically living off their wealthy parents. They style themselves as either Momentum or else Antifa. They have no jobs, no responsibilities and are thus free to play silly games.

        A sub group comprises the slightly thicker ones who form Extinction Rebellion and whose technique is to cause general disruption to the actual workers by obstructing pavements and highways and occasionally airports.

        The other group supporting Corbyn are the youthful EU worshippers who work for companies deeply embedded in the EU and with the financial interests that go with those ties. These persons work for a multiplicity of organisations funded principally by Soros and also increasingly by Big Pharma.

        Other parties have similar financial backing such as the Lib Dems whose principal backers are also Soros and Big Pharma.

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