Tuesday 11 August: The only way to stop the dangerous Channel crossing by small boats

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),
Intelligent, polite, good-humoured debate is welcome, whether on or off topic. Differing opinions are encouraged, but rudeness or personal attacks on other posters will not be tolerated. Posts which – in the opinion of the moderators – make this a less than cordial environment, are likely to be removed, without prior warning.  Persistent offenders will be banned.

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/08/10/letters-way-stop-dangerous-channel-crossing-small-boats/

967 thoughts on “Tuesday 11 August: The only way to stop the dangerous Channel crossing by small boats”

      1. Good morning m’dear!
        Did you see my post about how American teachers have realised that parents are waking up to how much they are brainwashing their children?

        1. A very good post, Bob. And glad to hear that you found a good supply of Henry bags on your recent visit to East Angular. Derby is where I was born and spent most of my childhood (apart from 5 years in Argentina from 1953 to 1957); whereabouts does your step-son live?)

        2. A very good post, Bob. And glad to hear that you found a good supply of Henry bags on your recent visit to East Angular. Derby is where I was born and spent most of my childhood (apart from 5 years in Argentina from 1953 to 1957); whereabouts does your step-son live?)

          1. Son, aka t’Lad, lives in Alveston, Stepson next to where the old DRI used to be at the junction of Midland Road & London Road.

        3. Yes. That was something ‘they’ forgot when putting stuff online.
          At least when the pupils were in the classroom, parents were unaware of what was going on.

          1. One of my former colleagues and a staunch Brexiteer was furious when he discovered the amount of pro-EU brainwashing that was going on in his son’s school. Even their email address ended in .eu!

    2. Even in a cartoon they can’t resist propaganda – clock the black and white bathers in the bottom centre and the piccaninny at the bottom left. The cooler is where we’ll be if we dare to mention the invaders.

    1. That’s the maffs test. The cartoonist needs to revise for his/her English test and might then remember that the gerund takes the possessive.

  3. SIR – My professional pride can’t allow readers, especially fellow-chefs and, indeed, the Welsh, to think I wrote “Welsh rabbit” in my letter published yesterday. It’s a rarebit!

    David Brooks
    York

    i.e. the DT sub-editors are a force for evil, look you.

    2. On this occasion the DT editors were perfectly correct.

      The dish originated (first documented in 1725) as Welsh Rabbit. It was a similar gastronomical misnomer as Scotch Woodcock and Prairie Oyster, among others, which bear no resemblance to their name.

      It was only when a chef, around a century later, purposely invented the word “rarebit” to replace rabbit (since he thought the word “rabbit” was misleading) that the latter has become more commonplace if not correct.

  5. SIR – As a Cornishman, I agree with Mark Wallace (Comment, August 7) that it’s time for someone to speak up for England. In science, the arts, sport and politics, England’s contribution to civilisation is practically unrivalled.

    We Celts are proud of our flags and celebrate our saints’ days, yet 
St George’s Day passes without fanfare, and the English flag is tainted by association with football hooligans and the far Right. It may not be the done thing to blow your own trumpet, but you can’t just sit back and let Nicola Sturgeon walk all over you.

    Chris Nancollas
    Yorkley, Gloucestershire

    A fine Cornish surname.

    2. Not Pol, Tre and Pen to know the Cornish men, then? He did say he was a Celt and Nant is a Welsh word (which would be subject to soft mutation).

  6. SIR – The Data Communications Company (DCC) provides the secure network on which the smart-meter rollout relies (“Missed targets short-circuit smart-meter hopes”, Business, August 6).

    It is true that lockdown interrupted installations of second-generation smart meters (Smets2), but thanks to the effort of our customers – the energy companies – we are now seeing a return to pre-Covid daily installation rates. We have just passed 4.7 million Smets2 meters on the network.

    Your article said that the costs of the rollout have “ballooned”, but the overriding reason for additional costs is the increased scope of our task since 2013. This includes connecting all first-generation smart meters, and our work for Ofgem’s vital Faster Switching programme. On efficiency, far from wasting money, the DCC has in fact realised £343 million of cashable savings in the past two years.

    It is not true that 10 per cent of the second-generation meters have “failed”, implying some kind of enduring defunct status. In the past a tiny proportion of meters (considerably fewer than 1 per cent) have temporarily lost their connection with the network, but this is being rectified through a software upgrade without the need for an engineer visit.

    We are proud to be providing the digital spine to Britain’s energy system. Our network will enable decarbonisation, accurate billing and more flexible energy use, benefiting consumers and businesses alike.

    Richard McCarthy
    Chairman, Data Communications Company
    London EC3

    So much B/S and why don’t you come clean and admit that DCC is a wholly owned subsidiary of Capita Plc, a company of questionable repute and track-record.

    1. ‘Morning, C1. Yes, it certainly is a load of bolleaux. I take particular exception to the final paragraph…I have little idea what “decarbonisation” really is (apart from an empty, meaningless soundbite) but if he is trying to say that the fitting of a meter will somehow enable us to reach some target or other, it will do no such thing after the initial interest of the consumer wears off, a period of time that is probably a few days or perhaps a week or two, after which time most will simply ignore whatever readings it provides. Its main purpose is to provide the electricity providers with the means to jack up prices at times of higher demand, in the hope that consumers are ignoring those meters that are working. The meter-fitting business has already been caught out making false claims, and this appears to be just another example.

      This letter smacks of desperation, and if Crapita is involved then it will, sooner or later, hit the buffers in spectacular fashion.

      2. Smart meters will allow the PTB to turn off electricity in thousands of homes when renewables can’t cope with the load.

        1. And short of that, to increase your charges for detected use during ‘peak minutes’. An energy congestion charge.

    2. “…more flexible energy use,…” allowing us to disconnection whenever that is required, either because of insufficient capacity or for political reasons.

    4. Hogwash. My electricity meter hasn’t worked for months now. The real problem is it breaks the gas one as well as no one thought that the individual data might be better off not combined.

      Worse, that supposed ‘software update’ hasn’t fixed the problem. Why? Because the unit itself is not working. Why? I’ve no idea. It’s inside, dry, untouched since installation. If I had hardware that broke after 3 months of use I would send it back, get a refund and never buy from that supplier again.

  7. Boris Johnson pledges new laws to tackle migrants crossing Channel once Brexit transition ends. 11 August 2020 • 6:00am.

    Boris Johnson has pledged to create new laws to tackle migrants crossing the English Channel once the Brexit transition period comes to an end, as the RAF deployed an aircraft to assist Border Force for the first time.

    The Prime Minister conceded that it was “very, very difficult” to return migrants who arrive in the UK from France via the Channel and said the UK would need to “look at the legal framework that we have” that allows such a situation to develop.

    However Mr Johnson added that his Government needed to look at what it can do to “change” the “panoply of laws that an illegal immigrant has at his or her disposal that allows them to stay here”.

    Morning everyone. Pie in the Sky stuff here. It is all going to take place at some undetermined time in the future by measures we haven’t yet figured out. He’s obviously determined not to stop immigration. You have to wonder why that is!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/08/11/boris-johnson-pledges-new-laws-tackle-migrants-crossing-channel/

    3. Time to bring back prison hulks. Put the reffos in them, drop a bag or two of food and water each day for them to share among themselves fight over and they can have the option to stay there or return to wherever they came from.
      If they fill up, good. Build more. It could be good for our ship building industry.

    4. 322425+ up ticks,
      Morning AS,
      The wretch cameron firmly laid out the route the CON party would continue to take when he PLEDGED to cut the numbers & promptly raised them.
      Just the old game of rhetorical fodder for the ovid.

      Brexit & the current daily intake shows us that quite clearly.
      IMO the end game must be quite near now because the
      ruling politico’s are quite blatant in showing treachery.

      I see ALL the pieces moving into place Countrywide vie
      councils / parliament & positions of power plus the politico’s dining on the strength of it via the canteen menu.

      Is george a fully fledged five times a day Easterly facing double knee bender ? because that is a power move that in my opinion is imminent.

    5. “I will do such things – what they yet, I know not – but they shall be the terrors of the earth.”

    6. We don’t need new laws, especially ones that won’t be enforced. We already have the wherewithal to turn the boats round, send them back to France and impound the craft. What’s lacking is the bl00dy will.

  8. SIR – On hearing the news that pubs might close before schools can reopen, my children said that they find drinking at home is perfectly manageable, but home-schooling isn’t.

    Rona Taylor
    Bristol

  9. This exam moderation brouhaha, suppose they are right with their downgrading and the lazy children that neglect their work all year just got what they deserve.

    1. 322425+up ticks,
      Morning Rik,
      Or in, don’t give them ideas unless you are looking to enter this current political group.

    2. I crossed the channel recently on an early morning ferry.
      Saw the sun rise over the Channel; a butterfly flying round the ferry; and a boat of invaders heading for Britain. There was also a military vessel, whose purpose I assume was to provide a taxi service.

    3. He cant be choking her that badly if she has the breath to shout “you’re choking me” six times.

    1. Yet there’s always someone terrified of life.

      I propose a simple solution: those who are frightened and nervous stay at home. Wear a mask in a car. When you’re on your own. Stay away from other people – that means *you* stay away from them, not they from you, mind. Stay this way imprisoned in your life by fear until we cure death.

      The rest of us will get on with our lives. When you see us non-mask wearing fellows smiling and happy (because it’s no longer 36 flipping degrees) leap into a bush and cower just in case you might get ill.

  14. Don’t be fooled by the myth of a ‘migrant invasion’. 11 August 2020.

    Acknowledging these connections also helps us understand why some people choose to come to Britain. Those on the right frequently claim that people seeking asylum by crossing the Channel can’t be genuine refugees because they have passed through several safe countries on their way to the UK. This myth is bolstered by the false impression that refugees see Britain as a soft touch, with easy access to benefits, jobs and housing.

    It’s a myth that they passed through several safe countries? France, Italy, Germany are not safe countries? They are coming to the UK because it is a truly dreadful place with harsh laws and no access to benefits, jobs or housing? Who knew?

    This is a propaganda piece in reaction to the foofaraw about the Channel Crossings. It’s pretty well written actually; the author [Daniel Trilling] is well versed (which is probably why he got the commission) in the arguments having written a book on the subject. He wouldn’t have come cheap either which gives some idea of the importance with which this is viewed. Despite this his motivation is not mercenary. He’s a closet Marxist!

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/11/myth-migrant-invasion-government-asylum-seekers-britain

    1. ‘Morning, Minty. It’s in the Graun, a leftie rag that lost any connection with reality a long time ago.

      1. ‘It’s in the Graun, a leftie rag that lost any connection with reality a long time ago.’

        And a great many readers I would guess. It’s the paper bought wholesale by the B.B.C. It must have one of the lowest circulations but read by the people who believe they are directing our national life day in and day out.

        1. And, er, slavery, of course.

          Good morning. How was Robert? House trained (geddit) I trust…

          1. Warning note:
            I now know an uncomfortable amount about explosives. Currently, I am sizing up a tatty fence that needs clearing. Can I finagle the demolition charge so the rotted wood lands neatly in the skip? Such FUN!
            We had a lovely meal in the garden and Elsie joined us for drinks and a chat. There were a couple of pipistrelle bats flitting around, so our area must be all right for insects.
            It was lovely to meet someone who appreciates that East Anglia has a lot going for it.

          3. Sadly, I did not have sufficient time to wander into the deepest depths of Norfolk.
            Next time, perhaps.

          5. Incidentally, Korky grows some rather off the wall courgettes; very pretty to look at and they have bags of flavour.
            They might make a change from trombetti.

          7. Last year I sent him some trombetti seeds. What you saw MAY just have been this year’s trombetti….. We had our first velouté de trombetti on Sunday. Delicious.

          8. No. These were very pretty stripy numbers that looked more like gourds that phalluses (phalli?).

      3. ‘It’s in the Graun, a leftie rag that lost any connection with reality a long time ago.’

        And a great many readers I would guess. It’s the paper bought wholesale by the B.B.C. It must have one of the lowest circulations but read by the people who believe they are directing our national life day in and day out.

        1. “bought wholesale by the B.B.C.”

          …and the ennaitchess. Try finding a DT on a ward or in a patients’ day room.

    2. The scandal in the eyes of the The Guardian is that this fascist junta government is not actively encouraging ‘migrants’ to come here or not assisting them. Surely we must have a few old ferries we could use?

      1. Where has the Grauniad been? The govt IS actively encouraging ‘migrants’ to come here and assisting them via the Border Ferry Force. What riles the Grauniad, obviously, is that it isn’t doing enough to facilitate the invasion.

  15. Morning all

    SIR – As a former director (ports) in the UK Immigration Service (as it was), I have been dismayed to read of the large number of illegal immigrants arriving daily in small boats.

    Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, is considering asking for naval help, while saying she doesn’t want it to become “a taxi service”. That is precisely what the Border Force vessels have become and, indeed, it has been reported that small boats are deliberately heading towards them in the knowledge that they will be brought to Britain after interception.

    So what would be different about the strategy if naval vessels were used instead of the current Border Force arrangements?

    There is only one way of stopping this illegal traffic and that is immediately to return to France every person who is intercepted. Those seeking asylum (as almost every one of the migrants will be claiming) are required to apply in the first safe country in which they arrive, so there is no good reason why they should not be returned. Indeed, in the past the French have returned immigrants to Italy in similar circumstances.

    ADVERTISING

    Ads by Teads

    The traffickers and immigrants would soon realise that there was no good purpose in attempting the dangerous crossing. It would also be beneficial to the French, who are currently having to deal with thousands of immigrants assembling in camps in the Calais area and are furthermore using resources to try to control the traffic in their own waters.

    Peter Higgins

    West Wickham, Kent

    SIR – The surge in dangerous Channel crossings has led to criticism of French authorities for not preventing them.

    Britain’s minister for immigration is visiting his opposite number to demand action. Good luck with that! If the situation were reversed and we had thousands of illegal immigrants – economically inactive, welfare dependent with, perhaps, a sprinkling of Isil sympathisers – camped on the south coast and attempting to cross to France, would we not be tempted to say bon voyage and good riddance?

    Captain Graham Sullivan RN (retd)

    Gislingham, Suffolk

    SIR – The current concern over illegal immigrants crossing the Channel and possible use of naval assets highlights a serious issue that I have raised in the Lords over the last four years.

    Britain has insufficient ships and airborne reconnaissance to ensure the security of 11,000 miles of coastline, Territorial Seas and almost 300,000 square miles of Exclusive Economic Zone. Disparate departments involved are not operationally co-ordinated.

    The Royal Navy is, and needs to be, fully involved and should be in overall command, responsible for allocation of assets and running events from the Joint Maritime Operations Coordination Centre alongside the National Maritime Intelligence Centre.

    Our departure from the EU makes this matter more pressing.

    Admiral Lord West of Spithead (Lab)

    London SW1

    2. “If the situation were reversed and we had thousands of illegal immigrants – economically inactive, welfare dependent with, perhaps, a sprinkling of Isil sympathisers – camped on the south coast and attempting to cross to France, would we not be tempted to say bon voyage and good riddance?” Only the indigenous, Cap’n. The PTB would be thinking “let’s keep ’em all”.

    3. “If the situation were reversed and we had thousands of illegal immigrants – economically inactive, welfare dependent with, perhaps, a sprinkling of Isil sympathisers – camped on the south coast and attempting to cross to France, would we not be tempted to say bon voyage and good riddance?” Only the indigenous, Cap’n. The PTB would be thinking “let’s keep ’em all”.

  16. And a good morning to all.
    A quiet mug of tea before doing the DT’s cereal & her tea and getting ready for a run to Derby to do a bit more to Stepson’s flat. I can actually do a bit of hoovering as I actually found the last pack of Henry Bags in Sainsbury’s in Colchester.

    Something I posted on GP last night and had intended posting on here, but got distracted:-

    It appears that, thanks to Virtual Teaching via Zoom, teachers in America are crapping themselves as they realise that parents are actually finding out what crap they are teaching their children!
    And, of course, the prat who started this tread blocked his Tw@ter page to viewers.

    https://archive.is/Vgww5

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7f1bc618c2e5b511cd7e31ffffcd543ffdb669ba8f629fad42e65568d12a455b.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/74b43fc532925a8bf99dd23dfb83165679a8423db4b2f3ab96e1047136277540.png

    1. Your post made me recall the time when my daughter uttered some utter carp regarding the upcoming Brexit referendum.
      I was shocked and asked her the reasoning behind such logic, it turns out it was a repeat of an “indisputable” fact straight from her college lecturer mouth.
      I had to tell her that considering she was a mature student, I found it disappointing she could not recognise Marxist propaganda and to question future carp.
      How many students has this leftie showered with her teachings over the years. The course in question was biology not political science!

      1. Our elder son is having a bit of a feminazi battle with his daughter.
        Being 16 and dropped by her school prior to GCSEs is making her rather antsy.
        I refrain from mentioning that Colchester Girls High School spawned Stella Creasey as he has enough on his plate already.

        1. My daughter was in her thirties, I told her in a no uncertain manner that she should know better by now.
          As that was 4 years ago she seems to have got the message.

  18. Once again Good Morning all. About a month ago I decided enough was enough and cancelled my TV License and quite honestly haven’t missed a thing so far, I followed the correct route via the tv licensing web site and sat back to await the predicable slew of increasingly threatening letters from the WaffenCap. Sure enough a letter arrived about a week later but all it said was they had received my communication and had cancelled the direct debit. The day before my 70th ( or 799th in Abbott-mathics ) another buff missive arrived but rather than dire threats it contained a notification that I was due a refund of £37.98 ( which has since been paid into my account) . I’m rather liking being 70 so far.

    2. Well done! I cancelled my television tax last year. I went to the Television Licensing page online found an online form to confirm that I no longer watch terrestrial television and like you eventually had a e-mail to warn me about something or other. If anyone comes here I shall be polite, confirm I don’t watch terrestrial television and close my door. Unless the police arrive with a warrant no one comes in and I am answering no questions at all. Encourage others to do likewise. De-fund the B.B.C.

      1. Just don’t bother telling them at all. They’ve no right to know if you do or do not. That’s for your conscience. The idea they ‘let you off’ for a year of harassment is putrid.

    3. There is no legal reason to tell them you do not have a television. Just cancel the tax and don’t bother. They’ll send out bucket loads of offensive letters but no one will ever turn up. If they do it’ll be months away. Just bin them all. You’ll get about 2 a week. All threatening, offensive and full of lies. Don’t even bother opening them. If it’s from Darlington, straight in the bin.

      2. Received the letter telling MOH to pay up now the free licence has been ditched. I have put it aside to await results. Watch this space (as opposed to Bbc propaganda).

  19. Yes,yes of course i’m a member of the Nazi party,its leaders are much misunderstood and of course did far more good than harm,my Common Purpose course and my leadership of “The Behavioral Studies Group” for manipulating public opinion(see 77 brainwashing brigade for details) make me a perfect member of the Sage group to promulgate my views on public policy………….
    Frankly if the bastards don’t start wearing masks soon bugger lockdown,send’em straight to the camps(dammit let that slip)
    Can you imagine the hysteria??
    Guardian in meltdown
    Rioting Leftards everywhere
    Now let’s swap one lot of mass murderers for another………….
    National Socialist for a Communist
    Meet Susan Michie…………….
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Michie
    Our institutions are packed with these marxist swine

  20. 322425+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,
    May one ask,
    This johnson chap is pulling out the pledging,promising tools and polishing them up for future use is he going to be in a position to use them ?

    Will the treacherous brexit delay coupled with daily invasion troops moving into position have any serious repercussions via the polling booth if we have another general election ?

    If we are granted another GE will it be a re-enactment of the stupidity of the
    24/6/2016 ” we have won, leave it to the tory’s”

    ie the coalition party lab/lib/con did believe ALL their Christmases / eids had
    come at once to STILL have a mass following after years of their rubber stamping as eu caretakers.

    Will the latest treachery be reflected in the polling booth or will “party first”
    still rule the day.

  21. Good morning, all. Sticky start. According to Rain Radar it is raining quite hard. According to walking out into the garden -it is dry as a bone.

    Had supper outdoors last night. I can’t remember the last time we did that in England. It was hot, but still. Very pleasant.

    I see schools are likely not to open come September. One hopes that that will see the back of Williamson – a wazzock promoted so far above his very ordinary intelligence (or lack of).

    2. Williamson, an ex chief whip with something on a lot of MPs, Johnson most likely included.
      That is why he has been promoted beyond his abilities.

  24. Good moaning. A rather depressing snippet from the Dr. Scurr in the DM, but I think we’ve all come across these frustrations. Covid-19 has merely given the authorities an extra excuse.

    “When it comes to the care of older people, it’s clear that the NHS is stumbling badly. I see or hear evidence of this daily — most recently I was told about a woman in her 70s found dead after a neighbour noticed her curtains remained closed for days.

    There was no record of her having seen a doctor for years, so a post-mortem examination was mandatory. This revealed she’d likely had a heart attack.

    She died alone without support or care. If she had experienced symptoms and sought medical attention, her death probably could have been prevented. But she was on the autistic spectrum and in the past had been confused and frightened by the complexity of her GP’s recorded phone system, so she had given up trying to call.

    You might wonder why friends didn’t help but, if any had called on her behalf, it’s likely they would have been told they didn’t have the authority to do so, as indeed I was when calling a practice on behalf of my 93-year-old neighbour after recognising she had heart failure.

    I was told my only option was to register online as her carer, which I tried to do, only to be informed that, due to Covid, the website was not operational. I’ve written to the GP and practice nurse but had no reply — a patient in heart failure all but abandoned.

    Finally, my mother, 91, frail and diabetic, was told by text to go for a blood test at the local hospital, only to find out later that it was closed for blood tests and that she needed to go to a hospital in central London, more than ten miles away.

    This is the status of primary healthcare in the NHS for a big part of our community.”

    1. Morning Anne – I wonder if a 999 call to the police and ambulance services would have got results. I think it might.

    2. The NHS offer an excellent service regarding elastic support stockings….

      The doctor found the time to phone me to enquire size and colour range!
      Available – small, medium or large – colour range – black, tan or natural.

      I plumped for medium in natural but received medium in tan! Men……really!

    3. The problem the NHS has is it’s primary purpose is no longer healthcare. It is population management.

      It really doesn’t care if people die because those save it money. It is badly joined up, monstrously inefficient, lecturing, expensive and obtuse. The *really* frustrating bit is that inside of that there are genuinely decent people swimming frantically against that tsunami of officialdom to make it work.

      2. Population management? They aren’t even doing a good job of that. It seems to me that the NHS exists to continue to exist with the occasional treatment of inconvenient patients on the way.

        1. I think they are gearing up to euthanasia becoming legal, and then you will see the population management in full flood. But only if you are strong-willed enough to resist signing the form once you aren’t young, beautiful and most importantly, an income tax payer any more.

    4. Morning Anne. The NHS like most institutions in the UK is moribund. Years of Political Meddling have left them devoid of innovation or inspiration. They are all staffed by time servers with no personal interest in improving things or curing their ills!

    5. “When it comes to the care of older people, it’s clear that the NHS is stumbling badly”.
      I think that’s a tad closer.
      Lack of care isn’t restricted to the elderly; how many younger people have had their cancer/joint/whatever diagnosis/treatment/operation cancelled or put on hold indefinitely so the NHS can fail to treat Covid sufferers?

      1. And in a way is worse for younger people as it could cut short their life very prematurely or suffering throughout their life for a much longer period than older people.

    6. That’s quite normal these days, to die alone and uncared for.

      I have gnawing pains at night, but if they happen on a Friday or a Saturday, rather than risk a heart attack fighting my way through the 111 system, which will take my details and then advise me to drive myself to the nearest A&E Triage waiting room ten miles away, which is a PFI central unit on special measures, I think – let’s leave it until Monday, and hopefully I’ll be better by then.

      If I’m really poorly, but can still make it downstairs to boil a kettle, a cup of Oxo should provide all the nourishment and care I deserve.

      In the past, it would have been the neighbour’s dog that would alert the coroner and the skip hire if there were rotting smells from my bedroom, well corpse ones anyway, the dog is used to all the other smells. At the moment, my 95-year-old mother rings up every day because she is lonely locked down in her flat in London, and tends to worry if I don’t answer the phone too many times. It’s a toss-up whether I’ll outlive her; if I do, then I suppose it’s back to the neighbour’s dog to be my “carer”, but Ruby is getting on these days, and was never that reliable.

      1. If you do have chest pain call a bloomin’ ambulance. Please, Jeremy. 111 is actually a good attempt at a minor helper idea. It’s ok but for chest pains they’ll just call and ambulance anyway.

      2. Your mother rings daily, eh? Good news! I can’t remember when mine last called (must be 23 or so years ago, I guess, to tell me my Father was dying), and now she’s sinking into dementia, I guess she never will. Yet she berates me for not calling her – I can at least get a barb of sarcasm in, asking her if her phone is broken since it clearly doesn’t make outgoing (other personality types are available) calls.

        1. I suppose I mustn’t be too sarcastic about old people, since I am one myself, but I do remember my sister getting my mother a new washing machine because she was moaning that the one she’d got never worked.

          It turns out that she’d forgotten how to press the ‘On’ button, and this was a design flaw that must condemn it to the scrapheap. It worked fine for me, once I mastered that technique, but then I am 30 years younger than my mother, so technology is not quite so daunting yet. I cannot handle smartphones, whereas most 30-somethings seem to be able to make these work.

          Much as I hate smartphones (and indeed “smart” anything), she is happiest with a twin tub, where she can take the washing in and out, save the soapy water for a second load if it’s not too black, and keep an eye on it when it wants to chew up her smalls and nighties. There is nothing worse than a machine that, once the door is shut, will not release until several minutes after the cycle has finished. It is like the bank clerk refusing to hand over the money after cashing a cheque.

          Perhaps your mother has forgotten how to dial your number? So you need to programme in a way that she will remember that will then do what is needed. One phone I bought for my mother (which is still in my cottage until I can get out to London and install it for her) is a Gigaset, designed in Germany for old people, which has a button marked “Emergency” which will auto-dial four programmed numbers in turn until someone answers. The instructions say that it is not to be used for the Emergency services, since they’d be forever getting calls from demented old people wanting a chat, but it might enable her to ring you.

          1. That’s a thought… she has a BT Call Guardian now, which at least screens incoming calls (although I believe she answers them anyway), so I can try a Gigaset & see what happens – when I can get to Wales. I’m not too sure it will make a lot of difference, since she was unable/unwilling to call even before dementia set in – despite telling me how lonely she felt, clearly not lonely enough to pick up the phone.
            And, to my horror, I’m getting close to “old” myself… guess it beats the alternative, but even so :-((

          2. I remember the difficulty ethnic Europeans, who compared to the Japanese are built like cavemen, have with the fiddly little buttons on Japanese gadgets.

            The ideal phone is not something you need a pin to make work – the best are fist-operated, like big red buttons.

          3. Yesterday fiddling about with the network to give the warqueen her own connection out, I found that trying to have fandroid – as no one except a fanatic would use the blighting thing – is an exercise in frustration.

            iOS is better, but not by much. Android, Windows since 2000 are hideous, annoying, overblown, over complicated chaos.

          4. I’ve recently bought my mother (88 next week) an Echo Dot (advertised on TV as Alexa). It was ostensibly bought so that if she falls, or is taken I’ll, she can just call out for it to phone 999 or my sister and me.
            While I can’t see myself using one, it has proved a big hit with her. She can ask it to set alarms and reminders, to play any particular piece of music she fancies listening to, and even the answers to the last few crossword clues she can’t get.
            Once I work out how, I’goung to connect it via bluetooth to her television. She’s asked for another one for the bedroom for her birthday 🙂

          6. Only at the end, when giving up. I suppose it’s no different from looking up the answer in an encyclopaedia.

        2. Morning Oberst. I didn’t speak to mine for nearly forty years and that was only because she pegged out before it could be extended. She was the most dreadful person, all the worse for having her as a parent.

          1. How very sad.

            I was betrayed by my mother, my sisters and a lawyer – but in turned out to have been the best thing that could have happened to me as soon afterwards I met and married my wife and we set up a new life together in France

            It took some time to accept that I had had to go into exile but once I had come to terms with this we could not have been happier.

            It made me think about the nature of forgiveness – I desperately wanted to forgive my family but as they had no sense of remorse and wanted no forgiveness I could not do so. There must be a forgivee as well as a forgiver or forgiveness is meaningless.

          2. Morning Richard. I am at present reading a biography of Churchill which includes some letters, written by him when he was at schoo,l to his Mother begging her to take an interest in him; which of course she did not do, except on rare occasions to reprehend him for failure in one thing or another. I found it quite painful to read this. It is a myth that our Mothers always love us; more often we are just tolerated and not rarely we are resented and sometimes hated.

          3. I was repeatedly told I was not wanted from an early age and throughout my life – even in front of friends yet when she could not look after herself following a broken thigh who was it who took her in and looked after her? – yes muggins here! (rest of family didn’t want to know)

          6. I read some of Churchill’s letters to his mother at an exhibition in London decades ago. Most were from his schooldays on the topic of his finances and whether she could send him five shillings.

            Edit: Exhibition was at Somerset House.

          7. As my wise chum Rich W has told me – being a father is easy. Being a Dad is the hard bit.

            It means putting your needs on hold in favour of someone else. Someone with infinite demands, no patience, no consideration for you, no appreciation of your time, plans, hopes or dreams. It is a sacrifice of the self for another.

            If the parent is already damaged by their own upbringing and is unaware of this all you get is a cycle of abuse – however ill meant. Thankfully my sister and I have broken that, comically thanks to a truly abusive harpy of a girlfriend I had before the war queen. Now I look at mother with pity and sadness at what she is missing out on.

            Rastus – you do not need to forgive anyone except yourself. If others have hurt you intentionally then they are broken, damaged and while they might have succeeded or achieved their goals/got richer at heart there’s nothing there. A void of character, dignity and integrity.

          8. My sadness is that, despite loving her dearly, my two sons have never been invited to stay with her, she never calls them (little surprise there) and has had to be reminded about their birthdays. And the lads are 29 and 19 now, so she missed out on the joys of grandchildren. She has barely held a conversation with either of them. Such a contrast to SWMBOs parents – both boys have been on holidays to Grandma & Grand-dad (no parents) even when tiny, get calls from them, email messages, presents, cards, and all the other things you’d hope to get friom grandparents.

          9. I was about 10 years old before i realised that my elder sister wasn’t my mother. My actual mother was far too busy to pay me any attention.

          10. My cousin and I have had a similar conversation.
            Her mother and my mother were from a family of seven girls. Our grandfather owned several farms and a building company and wanted boys. This attitude left its mark on his daughters.
            My mother and my cousin’s mother were the only ones amongst the daughters to produce sons. To say those sons were treated as golden balls is an understatement; we daughters were tolerated. We were fed, educated etc…. but there really was no warmth or understanding.

          11. Sometimes it can take a long time to come to terms with such things – I don’t think forgiveness is perhaps the word to express it. When my father died I remained very angry with him for his alcoholism for many years and had to be persuaded by my brothers to arrange a gravestone about 15 years late. It’s taken 25-30 years to understand and accept why he spiralled down into a pit, that was hell for anyone having to live with him.

          12. I’ve one of those too. Haven’t spoken to my mother for years. There’s no point. All she does is tell me I am fat, that the dog smells, that I don’t do enough for her and how ill she is.

            All these things are true but I also have my own responsibilities and life and a business to run. We are also a comfortable 450 miles away. We’ve offered to get her a carer but she can’t cope with the window cleaner and has been through about a dozen gardeners. She also ignores they won’t give her a knee operation until she loses weight, yet mother refuses to lose weight blaming steroids – yes, she is on steroids for her sarcoidosis but again, being 60kg overweight doesn’t help that. She’s carrying more than 90% of her lean body weight yet refuses to see that it is her responsibility to resolve these issues and prefers to blame others and expect them to do everything for her.

            If mother were a nicer person – someone who gave a fig for other people – no doubt I would do more, but I’m tired of having my sister ring me up in tears because of mother’s abuse (not tired of my sister, tired of her being upset by the wretched woman).

          13. I had one like that. Dutifully I used to bite the bullet and ring her when I could fit it in between a full-time job and family commitments. The first thing I’d hear would be “you haven’t rung me”. Yes, but I’m ringing you now. Then she’d launch into a tirade about my shortcomings. At times I resorted to moving the phone away from my ear so I only heard the quackings! Once it went quiet I could start talking. It always reminded me why I left home as soon as I was eighteen and didn’t want to go back. She lived to be ninety as well.

          14. I left (before I was pushed) when I was 16 and joined the RAF. I came back home on leave whilst stationed in Germany a few years later and a strange woman answered the door – my parents had moved without telling me, I did track them down though

          15. I went to University. My list of applications was governed by how far away from home they were! St Andrews didn’t want me, but Essex accepted me unconditionally, so that’s where I went. When I drove home after attending her funeral, rather than sadness I felt a sense of relief! I should feel guilty, but I can’t. You can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family.

    7. 322425+ up ticks,
      Morning Anne,
      Your call is being recorded for training purposes.

      Currently, and prosecutions if needed.

      1. One problem of getting old is forgetting the correct words to use when spelling something out over the phone. Could I remember “Golf”? The only word beginning with G that my flickering brain would let through under pressure of the call centre was “Golliwog”.

        Five years, and a lifetime placement on an Offender’s Register, I fear.

        2. You’d better just hope you don’t have to spell any words with N in them.

          My problem is not wildly inappropriate words but ridiculous words coming to mind like “N for …(pause, search brain) ..No”

    8. The NHS offer an excellent service regarding elastic support stockings….

      The doctor found the time to phone me to enquire size and colour range!
      Available – small, medium or large – colour range – black, tan or natural.

      I plumped for medium in natural but received medium in tan! Men……really!

  25. Good morning all.

    Missy has just hauled me out of a deep sleep – she can be very persistent.

      2. ‘Morning, Anne.

        Having had her breakfast, she’s now curled up & gone back to sleep at my feet.

        1. Our Little Cat is like that. Keep telling him, if he slept during the night rather than bothering us, he’d be awake during the day, but he takes no notice.

          1. ‘Morning, Paul.

            I get frequent visits during the night, but not every night, Gott sei Dank.

          2. SWMBO left the bedroom door open last night – it was like Cat Trampoline all effing night…

          3. My late cat, Thompson, who was one of the idlest cats I have known, would jump on my chest at about 3 am… “Just checking to see if you are still alive,” he’d imply….

          4. The only door in the whole house which is kept shut is that to my upstairs study. Missy insists on opening every door she can, whether to a room or just a cupboard.

          5. My two PCs like to sleep on my feet. They usually decide iaround 6am that it’s time I woke up and move up to my head end and nibble my ears and nose.

      3. I had to wake my pooch up this morning. He opened an eye and thought, “it’s too hot to get up”, then went back to sleep!

  26. Morning all.
    Last night on the news they showed an awful lot of people on the beach at Dorset’s Durdle Door. It’s not the first time it’s happened.
    TB has brought this to our attention. And once previously there had to be a helicopter recue from the beach, because some idiot tried to jump into the sea from the rocks of the arch.
    The overall majority from the (cowardly) discreet distance used to film them, looked as if they had spent quite a lot of time in the sun already.
    The local people clearing up all the filthy polluting mess, including vomit and excrement, they left behind them, also had to spend a lot of time on the beach. But weren’t likely to have the same colouring as the recently departed.
    The authorities are afraid to act ! They had hundreds of car number plates in view and could easily have been able to issue littering and parking fines to the addresses available from the vehicle details.
    And so it goes on……therefore there’s a lesson to be learned from this. It’s becoming quite obvious that we have two social structures in this country. The ‘do as we likes’ and those who have to suffer.
    It’s about time it was forced to a stop.
    Before gets completely out of hand, and it’s too late to be dealt with accordingly.

    2. Morning RE

      This is even worse than ever!

      Durdle Door beach cleaners scrub graffiti off cliffs.. ( the photos of the destruction are horrendous .. DD is a Unesco World heritage site)

      A HUGE clean up operation has been under way since thousands of visitors descended on Dorset’s beaches to enjoy the weekend’s heatwave – as weather experts revealed Saturday was the hottest day ever recorded in Weymouth.

      Teams of volunteers have been out in force clearing up litter and mess left behind at the county’s beauty spots. They have described the scenes as ‘soul destroying’.

      As well as tidying up litter strewn over beaches, volunteers have also been busy removing graffiti scrawled on cliffs at Durdle Door, which has been packed with visitors from across the country during recent spells of hot weather.

      https://www.dorsetecho.co.uk/news/18641459.durdle-door-beach-cleaners-scrub-graffiti-off-cliffs/

      1. UK holiday destinations are having to suffer the behaviours the British tourist yobs normally impose on places like Magaluf and Faliraki at this time of year.

  27. Meghan Markle DID take offence to Princess Michael of Kent’s Blackmoor brooch that she wore to Christmas lunch and thought it was ‘insensitive’ towards her African American heritage, biography claims

    Meghan Markle, 39, felt Princess Michael of Kent ‘sent a message’ with brooch
    Princess Michael, 75, wore the brooch to Queen’s Christmas lunch in 2017

    Blackamoor is genre of art or jewellery showing men and women with black skin

    Duchess of Sussexes’ reaction is detailed in new biography Finding Freedom

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-8614635/Meghan-Markle-felt-Princess-Michael-Kents-controversial-blackamoor-brooch-message.html

    (the Megain would scream blue murder if she found that the princes had been avid collectors of the Robertsons Golly badges )

    1. If only they would go and do some good, like go and actually help people in Africa, as opposed to stopping off for a photo opp and ranting about racism.

    2. Well, it’s a jolly good job that Moaning Megain never came to our house! My mum used barley to pad out her mince and called it blackamoors teeth! Ooh! The horror!

    3. Alternatively, the wearing of the brooch could be seen as a sign of respect and a nod to black culture.

      People always on the lookout to be offended will be offended. She could have used it a an opening gambit for a conversation and got to know Princess Michael better. But that would clash with Meghan’s incipient pseudo-martyrdom.

    4. It’s funny how she identifies so much more strongly with her black heritage than her white. She isnt even that black – I dont think I would suspect she had negro genes if none had told me, her colour is that of many Mediterranean peoples.

      2. Mummy also looks pretty pale, so probably a high percentage of the dreaded white blood there as well.

  28. From Al Beeb – and Boris himself: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-53723687

    “… The prime minister said it was currently “very, very difficult” to legally return people who arrive in the UK from France using small boats. …”

    I don’t see why. If a white person did it you’d swiftly return them. France has refused to do it’s duty under international law. Tow the boats back to France, sink them. If this trafficking of illegal gimmigrants isn’t stopped then more and more will come as a full scale invasion. Use force. We don’t want them here.

    The hilarity is France demanding we pay to patrol it’s coastline so it and continue to avoid international law. This is a farce. We are being made fools of.

        1. Is the one on the bottom left The Master (Mr Harry Lime)? The one on the bottom right is Our Annie, of course.

  30. I had a bit of a brainwave this morning while shaving and listening to the radio news, as we keep getting told that Scotland wants to remain in the EU and wants another referendum on leaving the UK, which is fair enough if that is what they want.
    Then why don’t we send all the EU’s dinghy refugees to Scotland, how can anyone argue against that? they want to be in the EU, the refugees are mostly rejected asylum seekers from EU countries especially France and Germany, Sturgeon loves immigration, their schools might benefit from the higher IQ’s of the refugees.

    1. Hmmm…perhaps they could have rubber dinghy races up and down Loch Ness (a couple of miles longer than the Channel is wide) under the beady eye of Duncan Mac who could use them for artillery practise….Glorious 12th tomorrow.

      2. ‘Morning, zx.

        Will it be open season on those who confuse practice & practise?

    2. Don’t imagine that they are not pouring into Scotland. The incident at the Park Inn in central Glasgow is a clear indication. The idea that Scotland needs immigrants was first put up by Labour when they were the administration. That policy has now been followed enthusiastically for nearly 20 years. Many of the incomers are white, with a substantial number of Poles, but lots of brown brothers from the lands of islam.

  31. One consolation for the sun and soaking garden I have now is that it smells just like the Tropical House at Kew!

          1. I keep it restricted in a big pot, and give it a spot of tomato fertiliser every so often. Actually this one isn’t quite ripe enough, one should wait until the skin begins to crack.

        3. Figs wrapped in Parma ham. Grilled, then sprinkled with blue cheese and a drizzle of honey.

  32. So why didn’t the Cons blow the whistle when Tony Blair sold his best friend, George Soros, 750 state buildings dirt cheap in 2000 ?

    Was it because the Cons had done much the same in rail privatization, which would explain why they did it ?

    1. Too many questions, Polly. Try looking up the answers yourself (clue: Goldfinger).

  33. ‘I still don’t know why I was stopped’: racial profiling has to end. 11 August 2020.

    After going public with my story about being stopped by the police on Sunday, for which I believe I was racially profiled, the last thing I expected was the conspiracy theories that have followed.

    Since telling my story I have received literally hundreds of abusive messages, while I have seen many accusations on social media that I have somehow lied or made things up.

    My friend, who was driving the car when we were stopped, is black. He is not mixed heritage, or even white as many rightwing trolls are saying online – he is a black male. Nor has the footage that I recorded been “flipped” – I was using my front-facing phone camera.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/322df82bed054c4627c4f6321d67fba30d8cd2e92576a05df9a8ef044d0d617b.png

    Show us a picture! Here’s mine!

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/11/black-mp-stopped-by-police-racial-profiling-black-people-arrests

      2. You, Sue, are allowed to say whatever you want to on here.

        This forum has improved a thousandfold since you came out of hiding and gave us the benefit of your thoughts. 😊

        2. Thank you Grizz! I mentioned a digging implement the other day but I think I got away with it!😱

      1. What confuses me is that regardless of whether the driver is black or white what are they doing in the passenger seat? Or is the MP’s car a left hand drive one?

      3. Any more news on seeing police bodycam videos to allowing viewing of complete incident, rather than Butler’s heavily edited version? Would also show whether Butler had ‘flipped’ her video and if, say, an Albino black man was involved.

  34. The Government must overcome the fear of being labelled “Islamophobic” and make the registration of sharia Muslim marriages mandatory, according to a new report.

    Around 100,000 sharia marriages take place in the UK every year, of which up to 75 per cent are thought to be unregistered.

    Many Muslim women are unaware that they lack legal protection and access to marital rights after they have got married in an unregistered ceremony.

    For women in such unregistered religious-only marriages, divorce has no legal status in UK civil or family law, leaving them facing destitution without financial assets or property as well as being shunned by their community.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/11/government-must-make-registration-sharia-marriages-mandatory/?utm_content=telegraph&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR0PfPiWiwdDmQlUVjsxYVTl4lr0qWd-BFW-8_IwNoU8dmL-x4xyznn3NcM#Echobox=1597129329

    I have heard this book is a revealing read, we really must wake up!

    The Strange Death of Europe is the internationally bestselling account of a continent and culture caught in the act of suicide. Douglas Murray takes a step back and explores the deeper issues behind the continent’s possible demise, from an atmosphere of mass terror attacks and a global refugee crisis to the steady erosion of our freedoms. He addresses the disappointing failure of multiculturalism, Angela Merkel’s U-turn on migration, and the Western fixation on guilt. Murray travels to Berlin, Paris, Scandinavia, and Greece to uncover the malaise at the very heart of the European culture, and to hear the stories of those who have arrived in Europe from far away.

    Declining birth rates, mass immigration, and cultivated self-distrust and self-hatred have come together to make Europeans unable to argue for themselves and incapable of resisting their own comprehensive alteration as a society and an eventual end. This sharp and incisive book ends up with two visions for a new Europe–one hopeful, one pessimistic–which paint a picture of Europe in crisis and offer a choice as to what, if anything, we can do next. But perhaps Spengler was right: “civilizations like humans are born, briefly flourish, decay, and die.

    1. I have heard this book is a revealing read…

      It is Belle but it also depressing. I have only read it the once!

    2. “Many Muslim women are unaware that they lack legal protection”

      A ‘sociologist’ from Qatar (that hotbed of the Muslim Brotherhood) published some videos demonstrating the correct way in which to beat wives. Obviously he doesn’t think they deserve legal or any other protection.

      But this same mendicant is in the news again today because he knows the reason for the devastating blast in Lebanon. It is the wrath of God because of breast implants, homosexuality and cursing in God’s name (as in God D**n it), for all of which Lebanon is apparently famous!

      No wonder Islamophobia is alive and well!

        1. I’m sure there’s a Hadithor a fatwa or similar about how Allah doesn’t approve of breast implants, that they’re haram.

      2. Islamophobia? A non-word. A phobia is an irrational fear. There is nothing irrational about fearing an ideology which sets out to make everyone submit to its barbarous tenets and kills those who won’t.

    3. 322425+ up ticks,
      Morning TB,
      Many of us have been well aware for years and warning of the dangers.
      The problem is adherence to ” the party first” overrides
      an covers up a great many issues inclusive of rape & abuse of children.

    5. Under sharia (which has no place in this country) women have no rights or protections. The only way to cure cancer is to excise it and irradiate the area to prevent its reoccurrence.

    2. One of the things l like most about Marc Knopfler is that as he has grown older he has turned into an unashamed old codger.

      1. Posh grumpy Geordie! Just like me! (OK he was born in Glasgow, but he was practising!)

  37. SIR – The rules for worshippers are now even more absurd than those described by Alan Cochrane (“Show me the evidence for these nonsensical restrictions on church services”, telegraph.co.uk, August 9).

    We had planned to hold last Sunday’s service for our small rural church in the churchyard, with worshippers approximately five metres apart, meaning that face masks could be left off and, more importantly, that we could sing.

    It then transpired that, even outside, this is not permitted. According to the Government’s guidance of August 4, only “professional singers” can perform in front of the worshippers; we’re not allowed to sing ourselves.

    Interestingly, this document also states that face masks need only be worn “to reduce the risk of transmission (where two metres is not viable) between households”, but the Church of England tells worshippers that they are mandatory at all times.

    Rosemary Davis

    Harlow, Essex

    1. Natch Rosemary, have you not realised that the CoE is a key player in Project Fear.

      Edit: You should have shown some courage like our Apostles did and sung your hearts out anyway.

      1. I wonder what they will do when they discover that they drove all their worshippers away. Nobody to be Vicar’ed, Bishop’ed or whatever, redundancies all round.

        2. After a 500 year run, I think the CoE has had its time.
          Problem is, the Papes seem to have someone just as mad as their ‘leader.’

        3. Our local vicarene, who doubles up as the local subpostmistress, realised that the best way round the regs was to open the church serving up cream teas on a Sunday afternoon. You don’t need a mask for that, and if someone starts singing hymns while downing a scone, it’s not her problem if plod or the bishop shows up.

  39. “Attention on deck!”
    “At ease”
    Fleet Admiral Graham stumped across the deck of Helldame,the last of the Maggie T class of monitors,a museum piece,300,000 tons of flintsteel wrapped around weapons,engines and enough command and control systems to co-ordinate an 80 ship task force across ten light-minutes.
    He walked to the holoscreens and inspected the icons of the meagre forces at his disposal,he sighed,it could have been so different…….
    Grand Fleet,that massively expensive joke under Admiral BoJo had failed civilisation,under the attack of the Woke and their allies the red,green and black hordes Grand Fleet had crumpled like tinfoil,underarmoured,undergunned,built for peacekeeping not war,riven by dissent and treachery within it shattered and scattered in the face of the incoming Twitter torpedoes and Instagram gunships weak metal and weak morale was their doom,it is rumoured that Admiral BoJo retreated to his cabin with the traditional bottle of whiskey and revolver,at least honour may be upheld but no,he reappeared an hour later waving an empty bottle shouting
    “Wheresh the party,wheresh the girlies”
    Pathetic gutless fop
    The core of Helldame’s crew were the great great great great grandchildren of the original,whose families had sworn a sacred trust to see the old girl maintained in operational condition bulked out with swarms of youngsters who in a ever duller unexciting world signed up for a year aboard to learn ancient skills like gunnery,hyper-engineering,navigation etc
    Graham himself was the descendant of an infamous 21st century rebel and samizdat producer and his unconventional thinking like his ancestor probably explained why he had been shuffled out of the chain of command to this museum ship,unloved,career stalled and and and unwatched??
    It had started with the hobbyists,it ALWAYS starts with the hobbyists “I want it original” “I want it authentic” When thousands of Gloucester Attack Fighters were decommissioned in the great disarmament their Het-Lasers and control runs were removed as was their applique armour making them even faster,the perfect craft for the new Space Hockey leagues who also aquired surplus carriers…………………….
    Hmm

    Control Runs………………cheap superconductor strip
    Armour………………………bolts off,bolts back on
    Laser Packs??…………..sold as surplus to mining companies company surplus available on e-bay with original fittings Duh!!
    Hard Points……………….never removed,missile ready
    Bloody hobbyists
    Which kinda explains the first green icon on the Holoscreen,Graham’s mailed fist. Six Fleet Carriers each with Five fully armed squadrons of 12 Gloucester Attack Fighters all under the overall command of Vice Admiral Allen……………another name from the past to conjure with.

    The pilots?? You have to be crazy to play space hockey,the most dangerous sport known to man,of course they volunteered en-masse
    The 23 Light Cruisers that ran escort for the carriers were even easier to explain,during the great disarmament some gadget obsessed family called Phizzly (or something like that) had noticed the CL’s were a great easy conversion to a rich man’s space yacht
    But warships you say?? The Phizzly family were hobbyists too…………………
    Too be continued……….

  40. OMG 😮 I am back after what seems like weeks of being unable to uptick you all (well, most of you!) and make a comment. Alf has just “done something” and here I am back under my old name. Wonders will never cease. Lovely to be here again, fingers crossed 🤞 for a smooth passage from now on.

        1. Although one might think so, it’s really the state when the air is so wet/full of moisture, that the dew point is reached and water droplets form on cooler surfaces.

    2. Now 31c in Norf Zummerzet but apparently only 49% humidity. Feels more humid than that.

      1. Moh went off before 7am , got home at 10am after playing a leisurely 9 practise holes , his top and shorts were soaking wet , he couldn’t wait to leap into the shower.

        More like Nigeria humidity

      2. 30C and humid is like we had yesterday. As you say not the weather for golf but the alternative was gardening so I popped my golf bag on a little trolley and off I went.

        Hell’s bells, the experts read nttl, the latest news report includes warnings from experts that these covid restrictions will be hard to maintain in winter.

  42. With my ‘office’ window open i have heard and seen a single engine light aircraft circling the area for nearly an hour, it seems a bit unusual.
    I’ve been trying to get the number.

    1. A police spotter plane did that to me. Circled 25 times on a Sunday afternoon. I phoned the switchboard and complained. Apparently they were looking for a man with a knife.

      1. Way back when, I was “shot up” by a couple of A-10s as I drove along a ridge, on the way to Cambridge. They made about 3 passes in line astern – it was very uncomfortable, nearly abandoned the car for the ditch.
        :-((

        2. Did the road have one or two oblique squares, about 2 feet on a side, painted on it? We have that on some roads here. I surmised that they are for target practice, turning points, kind of thing?

          1. That I don’t remember – this was about 1986… and I was too busy trying to avoid driving off the road!

        4. Visiting elder daughter on the farm in the Clyde valley last week, a couple of V-22 Osprey aircraft came over the hill and flew down the valley at what seemed to be head height!

      2. It seemed to be circling over and around the local Pub.
        I’ll take a look and Look East this evening on TV it might explain what they are doing.

        1. Both the Royal Air Force’s aircraft were practising shooting each other down over us for an hour this morning. Gets a tad boring after the first 15 minutes.

    2. A couple of days ago a chopper was doing a square search around my house. I hope they weren’t taking photos of me sunbathing in the garden 🙂

    3. A couple of days ago a chopper was doing a square search around my house. I hope they weren’t taking photos of me sunbathing in the garden 🙂

  43. 322425+ up ticks,
    I want to see the back of these treacherous lying deceitful bastards by them being OUTED, and as for the immigrants, as the REAL UKIP, not the current one suggested years ago, controlled immigration.
    There are only four things against controlled immigration and that is lab/lib/con coalition & their supporters.

    https://twitter.com/Emma_A_Webb/status/1293133454876520448

        2. But as there are undoubtedly more than one tunnel on HS2, maybe they’ll dismantle it and move it to the next one.

    3. I used to be part of the team that made those things in the late 1960s and early 1970s. As a first-year apprentice my colleagues and I made a 1:20 working scale model of the Mexico City underground tunnelling machine (that was then under construction in the factory). Our model worked via compressed air.

      “Markham’s Moles” excavated 95% of all tunnelling projects worldwide in the 20th century.

        1. Been trying to enlarge that Grizz to see if I recognised anyone from my days of visiting Markhams in my nuclear days

  45. Just heard on t’telly that there’s been a 15% rise in shoplifting since 2014. I wonder what change in demographics that correlates with.

  46. Invader is now a word which Nick Robinson, BBC Radio 4, finds an abhorrent way to describe the hordes of invaders reaching our shores illegally in small boats. They are coming uninvited, they are foreigners. We don’t know what their true motives are. Most are young, fit, well fed and some a very possible threat to the UK. In my opinion , invader is an apt description for them and they should be treated as such.

      1. Containers of weapons from abroad are being delivered to Cash and Carry depots.

        1. 322425+ up ticks,
          Morning HP,
          We could stop 99% of arms getting through but it is the 1% that counts.
          Then they always have the 3D printer option.
          Opposed to “them” we have the lab/lib/con coalition and a supporting cast of fools, have I cause to worry ? you can bet your crown jewels there is an over abundance of cause.

    2. They’ve already broken British law.

      What guarantee will Nick Robinson give that they will not continue to do so?

    1. As with the EU – the body count doesn’t matter. All they care about is making themselves feel better.

  48. Now we hear there are water shortages .. huge pressures on requirements due to the hot weather..

    So now we have a conundrum, Boris wants more houses to be built .. hang on, you need water to build new homes , and a reliable water supply once they are built .

    River levels are low , as are bore holes and aquifers. The population is increasing , where are the new reservoirs ?

    Water companies are doing what?

    1. You are assuming a touch of planning there, let’s just build the houses then worry about other stuff.

      There must be some engineers on the rafts, they cannot all be doctors.

      2. That’d be the EU water regulations laws.

        See also flooding. Again, the fault of the EU.

        1. One of the paragraphs from the 2000 EU water management directive makes interesting reading:

          “Getting the prices right

          The need to conserve adequate supplies of a resource for which demand is continuously increasing is also one of the drivers behind what is arguably one of the Directive’s most important innovations – the introduction of pricing. Adequate water pricing acts as an incentive for the sustainable use of water resources and thus helps to achieve the environmental objectives under the Directive.”

          Source: https://ec.europa.eu/environment/water/water-framework/info/intro_en.htm

          Accessed today.

          Personally, I’d say the demand is continually increasing; it doesn’t seem to be an on-off process.

      3. Abberton reservoir has been doubled (?) in size.
        A friend lost her house to the development.

    5. Hi again T-B – the water companies could put some libido suppressant in certain water supply areas. The military apparently did that to our soldiers in WW2

    6. I wonder if Boris or any other politician would truthfully tell us why the population is increasing as it certainly isn’t the indigenous population who are responsible..

  49. Now we hear there are water shortages .. huge pressures on requirements due to the hot weather..

    So now we have a conundrum, Boris wants more houses to be built .. hang on, you need water to build new homes , and a reliable water supply once they are built .

    River levels are low , as are bore holes and aquifers. The population is increasing , where are the new reservoirs ?

    Water companies are doing what?

  50. Oh I am so lucky.
    Mark Carney has resurfaced after his spell as a UN advisor, he is now apparently a special advisor to the Canadian government helping plan our financial recovery from the lockdown.

    That’s it, we are officially buggèred.

  51. SIR — Fiona Wild and David Brooks (Letters, August 11) are mistaken in their assertions about the naming of the dish.

    It originated (first documented in 1725) as Welsh Rabbit. It was a similar gastronomical misnomer as Scotch Woodcock and Prairie Oyster, among others, which bear no resemblance to their name.

    It was only when a chef, around a century later, purposely invented the word “Rarebit” to replace Rabbit — which he thought was misleading — that the latter has become more commonplace if not correct.

    A Grizzly B.

    2. I thought he old English name of “Cheese on toast” was pretty good.
      I’ll get me apron…

        2. Often wondered about that name. I suppose Mummy was saucy enough already…

          (Takes cover).

        1. Byford’s in Holt (Norfolk) do a wonderfully delicious Welsh Rabbit using sourdough bread and they add some crispy bits of bacon to the cheese/beer/mustard bechamel.

          Many people use cheddar cheese but to do so in Wales would mean that you’d have to do so very Caerphilly.

  52. They are talking about the elite black athletes fretting about their body eimage… ie and their attempts at skin lightening .

    Many African women in Africa spend a fortune on skin lightening products ….. and hair straightening . They suffer from Whitey envy .. Black men like white women , or whiter than black rather!

    3. Black is Beautiful. Black Lives Matter.

      Why, then, do they want to be white? And why do white people want to get a deep suntan?

        1. I’m a redhead (well, was, when I did have hair). I just have to look at the sun and I get burnt, so I stay out of it as much as possible.

      3. I note that the leader of BLM has blond hair. Unusual choice of colouring for someone so dedicated to her race.

  53. Just off out for some lunch at one of our locals, we have two in the village, both do good food. Have been our own take on chicken salad these last few days, lots of lovely wet stuff in this awful hot weather. Griddle chicken, tomato in olive oil, balsamic vinegar and mixed herbs, mushrooms in mayo and sweet chilli sauce, beetroot, cucumber, salad leaf just what’s needed. I’m sure I’ve missed something out but in this heat … too much for me. Slayders.

      1. Funny isn’t it the difference in tastes. I am not normally a salad fan but with all these “wet” ingredients I’ve been really enjoying it. Oh, and nectarine too. I’m a gravy fan, have been since a child, and it just suits me down to the ground.
        Edit: wet not let

          1. Nowt wrong wi’ tha’ lad!

            I had pan fried hake with roasted veggies, Keralan curry sauce and brown rice when we went to our local lunchtime. Far too much rice, half of which I left, it it was OK. Never had hake before, not a great deal of taste but it was OK.

    2. Rather than recognising “head” as a verb at first, I read it as a noun! What happened to “take your dog to work day”?

  56. Had coffee with the neighbours yesterday who told me to help myself to the apples on their tree which is just their side of the fence.
    I picked a bucket full which should stop lots of fallers later on my side.
    Mrs VVOF decided apple crumble for desert after our evening meal so I spent 30 minutes peeling apples at the garden table.
    This leads me to ask the following question, what purpose does bloody wasps serve in the grand scheme of things, they must have one or did the good Lord decide to have a joke on us?

    2. Have you got one of those apple peeler and corer machines? I picked mine up in France (it was on offer) and I find it invaluable.

      2. No I have a pair of hands and a knife. I also seem to have more patience these days.
        We do not peel enough apples to consider any extra expense worthwhile.

        1. I think mine was 5 euros (reduced from 10), but it was a while ago. As I have arthritis in my thumbs it’s paid for itself many times over.

          1. Well I understand why you consider it worthwhile because of your thumbs.
            I have had a word with Mrs VVOF and she has agreed that if she ever sees one, she would be willing to purchase one (7 euros max) and take it out of my weekly allowance. All heart that woman. 🤣🤣

    3. I’m assured that they kill flies VVOF but i’ve never noticed either the deed or the result!

    4. I used to have wasp nests every year in the roof of our house in Norfolk.Some i was able to kill off myself others I had to call in the local pest man who was very fair you paid him and if you had any more that season he would deal with them at no further charge.

    6. Believe it or not, they don’t really like feeding near people, if there is an alternative near by.

      On a small plate put out something sweet, honey is ideal, plus some meat,raw is best, you don’t need very much, about 5 metres away from where you are eating; they will usually prefer the alternative food source and leave you alone.

    7. They are nature’s gits and exist solely to tormet and make miserable summer.

      They know you don’t like them, so they hover around you deliberately out of spite.

  57. From Al Beeb – and Boris himself: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-53723687

    “… The prime minister said it was currently “very, very difficult” to legally return people who arrive in the UK from France using small boats. …”

    I don’t see why. If a white person did it you’d swiftly return them. France has refused to do it’s duty under international law. Tow the boats back to France, sink them. If this trafficking of illegal gimmigrants isn’t stopped then more and more will come as a full scale invasion. Use force. We don’t want them here.

    The hilarity is France demanding we pay to patrol it’s coastline so it and continue to avoid international law. This is a farce. We are being made fools of.

    1. I suppose that those of us living in France should be delighted that Britain is such a soft touch and that British politicians have so little resolve. Every rubberdinghyload that arrives in Kent makes France a better place in which to live!

        1. I think we’ve already got it and the message from the media is we are vile if we don’t want it! I was disgusted last night; I recorded Endeavour (set in the 60s) and it was a woke fest on legs. They had a “far right white supremacist” who was electioneering and saying awful things like we need to limit immigration because it’s like an invasion and we don’t need Asians (the “victims” were Pakistani muslims). We had the son of a Pole who had anglicised his name and become a “patriot” – his mother angrily pointed out his Polish name (so integration is clearly a bad thing). When he was killed (he’d been involved in the beating up of a black gang) by a group of black youths when he was on his own, there was no mention of “race hatred” – oh, no. One of the muslims said he’d always do what his wife wanted! What? Since the director was non-Christian, there is no excuse for ignorance, so it must have been taqiyya. When I watch TV (which isn’t often) I want to be entertained, not told what to think. Propaganda masquerading as entertainment is a step too far. It’s at least the second episode that’s been like that. I am close to stopping watching it.

      2. Make he most of it, Richard.

        Yer France is deteriorating by the day. Vast parts of HLMs are no-go areas for the police. Gang led drug warfare is rife. The police are reluctant to get involved.

        And as for the economy….

    2. ““… The prime minister said it was currently “very, very difficult” to legally return people who arrive in the UK from France using small boats. …”” – then use bigger boats!! Duh!

    3. It would be an interesting experiment for a group of white people to try it without passports – I don’t suppose there would be any volunteers knowing the outcome.

  58. David Lammy has tested positive for Corona.

    The virus has been quarantined for 14 days.

    2. Nottl usually enjoys a high standard of jokes. I’m afraid that one is just too weak.

      1. I really don’t understand just how has this epidemic has got so out of
        hand.

        You’d have thought all the prayers, homeopathic remedies, reiki, special
        diets and healing crystals would have had it sorted by now.

  59. From same article I whinged in earlier:

    The UK is currently following EU asylum law during its 11-month post-Brexit transition period following its departure from the bloc in January.

    This includes the so-called Dublin regulation, which states that a person’s asylum claim can be transferred to the first member state they entered.

    Well, the first country IS NOT the UK. It’s not our problem. They had to cross many nations to get here so make the EU enforce it’s own stupid rules.

  60. Just been out to verify ANOTHER bloody wasps’ nest. Have called matey.

    Scorchio outside. The Rain Radar was ‘avin’ a larf.

      1. I dealt with one last week.
        There didn’t seem to be any citronella candles in the garden shops Might have to get some online, the flies keep landing in my glass of.
        Rosemary sprigs and lavender in a small vase don’t seem to work.

        3. I really didn’t see you as a scented candle man Eddy….Ah there ya go
          another dream shattered……………….
          Life can be a right b*tch sometimes….

    2. Talking of annoying insects, there seems to be an awful lot of flies around this year, many of which seem impervious to fly sprays.

      1. Ditto. We are spraying them with surface disinfectant which stops them flying and then crush them. It also cleans the surfaces on which they land.

  61. Putin claims Russia has developed world’s first coronavirus vaccine, says his daughter received it. 11 August 2020.

    Russia on Tuesday claimed to be the first country in the world to register a coronavirus vaccine, with President Vladimir Putin announcing it is safe for use and that one of his daughters has already been inoculated.

    The announcement comes as scientists in the U.S. and abroad warned that administering the vaccine before Phase 3 trials — which normally last for months and involve thousands of people — could backfire.

    Speaking at a government meeting Tuesday, Putin said the vaccine has undergone proper testing and is safe. He emphasized that vaccination will be voluntary.

    So Comrades it is a choice between Vlad and Bill Gates! Decisions decisions!

    https://www.foxnews.com/world/russia-registers-virus-vaccine-putins-daughter-given-it

      1. That novel that I have mentioned by Lawrence Wright includes a scene where the US president hears of a completely untried vaccine candidate and insists that he and his family get try it first. A few hours later when the vice president assumes command . . .

    2. MSM

      Vlads vaccine rushed into production without proper testing avoid
      Oxford vaccine rushed into production without proper testing will be just fine
      Now about that legal immunity…………………………..

  62. A Spekkie article.

    This is my additional comment.
    Before anyone mentions Sweden’s smaller population and large land area, 87% of Swedes live in towns and cities. In the UK, just under 84% of Britons live in urban areas.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-dangerous-is-covid-a-swedish-doctor-s-perspective

    How dangerous is Covid? A Swedish doctor’s perspective

    Sebastian Rushworth

    “I want to preface this article by stating that it is entirely anecdotal and based on my experience working as a doctor in the emergency room of one of the big hospitals in Stockholm, and on living as a citizen in Sweden. As many people know, Sweden is perhaps the country that has taken the most relaxed attitude towards the Covid pandemic. Unlike other countries, Sweden never went into complete lockdown. Non-essential businesses have remained open, people have continued to go to cafés and restaurants, children have remained in school, and very few people have bothered with face masks in public.

    Covid hit Stockholm like a storm in mid-March. One day I was seeing people with appendicitis and kidney stones, the normal things you see in the emergency room. The next day all those patients were gone and the only thing coming into the hospital was Covid. Practically everyone who was tested had Covid, regardless of their presenting symptoms. People came in with a nosebleed and they had Covid. They came in with stomach pain and they had Covid.

    Then, after a few months, all the Covid patients disappeared. It is now four months since the start of the pandemic, and I haven’t seen a single Covid patient in over a month. When I do test someone because they have a cough or a fever, the test invariably comes back negative. At the peak three months back, a hundred people were dying a day of Covid in Sweden, a country with a population of ten million. We are now down to around five people dying per day in the whole country, and that number continues to drop. Since people generally die around three weeks after infection, that suggests virtually no one is now being infected. If we assume around 0.5 per cent of those infected die (which I think is very generous, more on that later) that means three weeks back 1,000 people were getting infected per day in the whole country, which works out to a daily risk per person of getting infected of 1 in 10,000. And remember, the risk of dying is at the very most 1 in 200 if you actually do get infected. And that was three weeks ago. Basically, Covid is in all practical senses over and done with in Sweden. After four months.

    In total Covid has killed under 6,000 people in a country of ten million. A country with an annual death rate of around 100,000 people. That makes Covid a mere blip in terms of its effect on mortality.

    That is why it is nonsensical to compare Covid to other major pandemics, like the 1918 pandemic that killed tens of millions of people. Covid will never even come close to those numbers. And yet many countries have shut down their entire economies, stopped children going to school, and made large portions of their population unemployed in order to deal with this disease.

    The media have been proclaiming that only a small percentage of the population have antibodies, and therefore it is impossible that herd immunity has developed. Well, if herd immunity hasn’t developed, where are all the sick people? Why has the rate of infection dropped so precipitously? Considering that most people in Sweden are leading their lives normally now, not socially distancing, not wearing masks, there should still be high rates of infection.

    The reason we test for antibodies is because it is easy and cheap. Antibodies are in fact not the body’s main defence against virus infections. T-cells are. But T-cells are harder to measure than antibodies, so we don’t really do it clinically. It is quite possible to have T-cells that are specific for Covid and thereby make you immune to the disease, without having any antibodies. Personally, I think this is what has happened. Everybody who works in the emergency room where I work has had the antibody test. Very few actually have antibodies. This is in spite of being exposed to huge numbers of infected people, including at the beginning of the pandemic, before we realised how widespread Covid was, and when no one was wearing protective equipment.

    I am not denying that Covid is awful for the people who do get really sick or for the families of the people who die, just as it is awful for the families of people who die of cancer, influenza, or an opioid overdose. But the size of the response in most of the world (not including Sweden) has been totally disproportionate to the size of the threat.

    Sweden ripped the metaphorical band-aid off quickly and got the epidemic over and done with in a short amount of time, while the rest of the world has chosen to try to peel the band-aid off slowly. At present that means Sweden has one of the highest total death rates in the world. But Covid is over in Sweden. People have gone back to their normal lives and barely anyone is getting infected anymore. I am willing to bet that the countries that have shut down completely will see rates spike when they open up. If that is the case, then there won’t have been any point in shutting down in the first place, because all those countries are going to end up with the same number of dead at the end of the day anyway. Shutting down completely in order to decrease the total number of deaths only makes sense if you are willing to stay shut down until a vaccine is available. That could take years. No country is willing to wait that long.

    Covid has at present killed less than 6,000 in Sweden. It is very unlikely that the number of dead will go above 7,000. In an average year 700 people die of influenza in Sweden. Does that mean Covid is ten times worse than influenza? No, because influenza has been around for centuries while Covid is completely new. In an average influenza year most people already have some level of immunity because they’ve been infected with a similar strain previously, or because they’re vaccinated. So it is quite possible, or in fact likely, that the case fatality rate for Covid is the same as for influenza, or only slightly higher, and that the entire difference we have seen is due to the complete lack of any immunity in the population at the start of this pandemic.

    This conclusion makes sense of the Swedish fatality numbers – if we’ve reached a point where there is hardly any active infection going on anymore in Sweden, in spite of the fact that there is barely any social distancing happening, then that suggests at least 50 per cent of the population has been infected already and has developed immunity, which is five million people. This number is perfectly reasonable if we assume a reproductive number for the virus of two: If each person infects two new people within a five day period, and you start out with just one infected person in the country, then you will reach a point where several million are infected in just four months. If only 6,000 are dead out of five million infected, that works out to a case fatality rate of 0.12 per cent, roughly the same as regular old influenza, which no one is the least bit frightened of, and which we don’t shut down our societies for.”

    1. It makes the NZ decision to shut down Auckland after members of one family find a way to catch the bug quite suspect doesn’t it?

      So if what we do doesn’t matter, why are US cases still so high?

      1. Because half the population are too dim to understand that they should take rather more notice of the medical experts than Trump and co. It’s been proven time and again that 100% mask wearing does control spread, but we still see large portions of the right in denial. And then they wonder why it’s out of control in their states. You just can’t fix stupidity.

        1. What kind of masks? How much control? Woollen scarves, silk scarves, masks for painting? The medical masks from manufacturers that say on the box “not for anti-virus use”?
          Just maybe the virus is not spreading only by air?

        2. Are you really trying to suggest that it is only the “right” who don’t wear masks?

          And let me guess, a Republican State with Democrat cities, where it’s the cities that are completely out of control, it’s not the Democrats fault it’s the Republicans.

          Democrats, always the victims never the cause.

          1. I thought that the anti-corona regulations in the US were applied by State Governors anyway, not the President?

    3. Ditto Scotland with maybe 3000* deaths in 6,000,000. Majority of deaths were in care homes. Figures are completely unreliable, of course, as death certificates were marked up with by/with/from Covid-19 even without any tests. The tests have also been completely unreliable, of course.

      *My guess as official figures are lower with tests and higher without tests.

    1. It’s just business as usual; if you can’t name it, report it or photograph it, it doesn’t exist.

  67. Just had a thought.
    What if this Coronavirus is just Man Flu and now women are realising just how bad we’ve had it for years?

  68. Many Lefties are really suffering from Covid restrictions:

    There is a different atmosphere in the Scottish capital this August as the cancelled Edinburgh Festival leaves large parts of the city distinctly twat-free.

    The cancellation of the world’s largest arts festival has spared Edinburgh locals the misery of dealing with tiresome drama school brats and deluded stand up comedians.

    The streets are without the hustle and bustle of thousands of tourists mulling over which pretentious wank-fest to waste their cash on.

    Venues stand silent and empty this year; normally they would be echoing with the noise of an audience of anything between one to three people half-heartedly applauding a tedious one-man play.

    Locals are free to walk up the Royal Mile without being plagued by desperate ‘artists’ trying to drag them into their show that starts at 5.45am in the basement of an abandoned woolen mill.

    Furthermore, some locals have commented on how refreshing it is to be able to walk to work without finding themselves caught up in the middle of an impromptu rendition of fucking Godspell.

    Morningside resident Simone Williams gave her opinion on the what the cancellation of the festival means for her

    She told us, “I usually rent my flat out in August so I won’t be gouging posh arty English twats for extortionate rent money, which is a shame.

    “However, every time I go into a pub, I’m not subjected to some wannabe stand up comedian’s hour of lazy Pornhub and Tinder gags.

    “So swings and roundabouts, really.”

    newsthump.com/2020/08/05/edinburgh-residents-enjoying-twat-free-august/

    2. “…which pretentious wank-fest to waste their cash on.”

      Someone ought to tell them, they can stay at home and wank. It won’t cost them a penny.

      1. I posted this yesterday. Millions spent on attracting tourists to an area with no roads, no toilets, no camp sites and no accommodation.
        An area where they are not wanted as they prevent locals going about their business and normal lives. (See also Skye for similar)
        The Scottish Government is a blend of woke and nasty wrapped in all-pervading incompetence with big splash of corruption.

        1. The laybys round us are disgraceful – litter, excrement to name 2. The recovery work coming from the idiots driving abilities does make some money for me though. The council can’t empty the bins fast enough so the litter builds up round them only to be scattered by wildlife. Loads of foreigners here too

          1. I would like to see some meaningful cost/benefit analysis of tourism. One that excludes consideration of the money made by hospitality businesses and those catering to tourism and tourists. How does tourism benefit the natives?
            I have read the Report that justified the building of the Border Railway. It was unconvincing. I have been blocked in my home in the past by the Jim Clark Rally, zooming past the bottom of the garden, and more recently by the Tour of Britain cycle race. The justification for the local council handing over public money to a private commercial company to bring the bike race to the Borders was flimsy, to say the least. There is never any audit carried out to determine if the predictions made in these Project Proposals turn out to be correct.

            (All the foreigners have spent 14 days in quarantine on arrival…erm)

          2. Exactly – tourism never benefits anyone who doesn’t make money from it. We also have the odd cycle marathon here but they don’t close the roads and they have to compete with the normal trafic, the bikers aren’t too bad it’s the support vehicles who think they own the road and can dictate everyone elses journey that’s the problem.

        2. Scottish politics as usual then: minus the odd personal secretary/musician being stabbed.

  69. Just been to the Post Office – first time since January!

    OH said they shut at 4pm but the notice said 5pm so I needn’t have rushed……….

    It’s warm out there – the car thermometer said 32c and it had been sitting in the shade.

          7. Final verse
            High flying, adored, that’s good to hear, but unimportant
            My story’s quite usual, local girl makes good, weds famous man
            I was slap in the right place at the perfect time
            Filled a gap–I was lucky
            But one thing I’ll say for me
            No-one else can fill it like I can.

          8. Thank you! I’m not too keen on modern musical theatre. Give me “The Student Prince”, “Carousel” or “The Merry Widow”.

          9. I saw Evita in London when I was an art student (it had nothing to do with art – a group of us had an evening to fill and decided to go to a show). I really enjoyed it.

          12. I got fired from my Bingo Caller Job…

            Apparently “A meal for two with a hairy view” is not the way you say 69. 🙁

          14. Phizzee

            Where did you dig that one up from..

            Solent humour never changes ..

            Still very warm here .. I think you should go put your kettle on !

          20. No!!! Not true!

            Hot drinks raise your body temperature which makes you sweat. Now, if there were a breeze, then you would be cooled by that evaporation. However, when there is no air at all – like today – all it does is make you hot.

          21. You overlook the body’s own natural convection currents, which evaporate the sweat & thus cool. I can remember as a student that the discomfort in a hot, stuffy junior common room was greatly relieved by cups of tea.

          22. Phizzee

            Where did you dig that one up from..

            Solent humour never changes ..

            Still very warm here .. I think you should go put your kettle on !

        2. …or be accepted for travel on the guided bus – re. my crazy dream last week.

          2. You’ve twisted my arm! I dreamt that one could travel on the GB only if one spoke in a rhyming doggerel. Something like this:-

            To the driver
            Good man, I will to yon fair Cambridge go.
            Will you take me? I need to know.

            Driver’s response
            I see you’ve come equipped with mask
            Climb aboard, I’ll complete the task.

            Nearing stop on return journey
            Round t’next corner is where I’ll hop it.
            I’ll press this button so you’ll know to stop it.

    2. I was in the post office earlier. Three men burst in breathing heavily wearing masks. Everyone panicked. They said ‘don’t worry…this is a robbery’. Sighs of relief all round.

  70. Feeling better after a rest. I was out there earlier & nearly finished pruning/dead-heading the 2nd 1/2 of the first buddleia started yes’day, the green bin having been emptied this morning, when both knees folded under me & if I hadn’t clutched said wheelie-bin, I would have gone down. It was a near thing. That was a signal to call it a day. The bin is nearly full to the brim again, anyway

      1. It wouldn’t hurt to dead-head it; you may get a 2nd crop of blossom. I am pruning B. davidii self sown, which started as small seedlings about 10 years ago & are now huge & of various shades of purple. Unfortunately they also expand right across the pavement, so I have to keep them in check. In turn they have given rise to daughter plants in the verge across the road, as has my Rambling Rector rose.. The parent tree, beyond my west boundary, was killed by builders when they ‘developed’ the property behind mine.

        1. All buddleia have attained notoriety here in most parts of the States due to their ability to self-sow. Which is a pity since they do attract so many butterflies!

          1. Here one sees a great number on disused railway lines & sidings. They even take root on the walls & roofs of deserted buildings.

          2. Always the first thing to be seen on UK bomb sites post WW2. When being chopped back they can, I find we quite nasty because the leaves and stems tend to emit lots of small particles which stick in the lungs, like covid.

          4. Rosebay Willow Herb is another that was prevalent on bomb sites and railway embankments.

      2. I think your yellow buddleia should be pruned straight after flowering rather than the usual ones which you should prune in spring. I’ve never seen a yellow one, do you have a picture?

        1. There are 2 sorts of yellow Buddleia. One is a sport of B. davidii & should be treated as such. The other is B. globosa, which has yellow hanging balls of blossom. The following is a good website for Buddleia, with a few photos.
          Dead-heading the blossoms extends the flowering season greatly.

          2. Wow that’s big! Do the butterflies love it like the purple ones? Everything I plant now is for pollinating insects and/or fragrant.

          3. I was struck earlier when I was dead-heading the roses in the front rose bed what a lovely scent some of them had.

          5. I have a white buddleia and the butterflies go mad for it. Just today I’ve had Ringlet, Wall, Small Tortoiseshell, Red Admiral and Peacock on mine. Elsewhere in the garden I have had Brimstone, Large White, Small White, Green-veined White and Small Heath.

            Today is the 12th day of unbroken hot and sunny weather, here in Skåne. It’s been hot but never humid, and we have frequently had a refreshing easterly to keep it pleasant. No mosquitoes and very few flies but hordes of honey bees on the clover and shrubs.

          6. That’s brilliant all those butterflies. We have seen only whites and small browns with one red admiral, so very few and far between, but many bees of all sorts on different plants. Agastache is very popular with them.
            You’re so lucky with your weather, it’s hot and sticky here, really uncomfortable. Not my kind of weather at all.

          8. Supposed to hit tomorrow. Really can’t wait. Not so much sticky as covered in toffee.

          9. I thought I would cut the lawn when it cooled down a bit. Unfortunately it hasn’t, so I’ll have to put that off for yet another day.

          10. No sign whatsoever. Boy could we do with some rain. I’m having trouble keeping up with watering in the garden. We’ve put quite a few new plants in and they’re desperate for rain. However we also bought a new rather expensive toy for the garden, an automatic hose. Our son put it on the wall for us in the back and it is brilliant, rewinds automatically, 35 metres so just reaches the front as well, I love it. (Little things … ).

      3. I’ve got one of those Belle! It’s quite orange though! Buddleia globosa I think! I got a cutting from a elderly minister and it took off like a weed!

  71. Just opened the front door to a delivery man. For once it wasn’t like opening an oven door.

  72. Well that was a bit bloody annoying.
    The DT dropped me off in Cromford to pick up the paper & get a bottle of milk before walking to the station for the train to Derby.
    Checked time on my mobile and saw I had just enough time and actually arrived at the station with several minutes to spare, or so I thought.
    pressed the button on the Information Point and was then advised that the train had already gone past!
    My mobile phone was running 7 minutes slow and I had two hours to wait for the next train.
    At which point I gave up and walked back home.

    Not a happy bunny!

      1. Mine’s four minutes fast! I have no idea how to fix it, given that it updates itself when the seasons change or when I travel 🙂

          2. It’s just an idea.

            Btw, was it you who recommended Fever Tree ginger ale? I have a bottle chilling.

      2. It’s a cheap £10 burner that lacks the automatic time setting of more capable phones.
        Also, if I have it in a back pocket & sit on it and press several buttons at once it corrupts the screen & the software running it.
        To reset it I have to take the battery out for a second and restart the thing.
        When it restarts it still shows what I’ve been taking as the correct time, but I now realise that it must drop a minute of two.
        I might get round to an improved version one day.

      1. Do you touch type? I’ve worn away a number of BBC keyboards (despite their “hot desking” policies) but as I mostly don’t look at the keys while typing, it doesn’t matter.

        1. I’m a touch typist, Sue. I taught myself to touch every key with just my two index fingers!

          The other six fingers and both thumbs just sit there idly and watch gormlessly as the index fingers do all the work!

          1. Hi Grizzly – I can only type with my right hand index finger. The office typists worked fast and were fantastic with spelling , grammar etc.and could even decipher my scribbles. I couldn’t

        3. I learnt to touch type 20 years ago, but not the way I do it during nights of insomnia. I have to fold my pillow in half to prop up the head enough, and then I am leaning on my right elbow with the laptop sitting on a chair by the bed.

          3. The trick I absolutely can’t do is two thumb typing on the minuscule iPhone keyboard.

      2. Download a virtual keyboard or buy a separate key board to plug into your laptop. Or…buy a new laptop. Hubby can buy you one for your birthday instead of car tyres.

      8. You could try Lettraset. Probably the best solution is a new keyboard, though – assuming it is a plug-in stand-alone (as opposed to integral on a laptop). Actually, you can plug a separate keyboard into a laptop. I use one on the “new” machine I’ve inherited when MOH decided to ditch it in favour of a new, Win10, model. I don’t like using laptop keyboards because I touch type.

        1. Me too. This is one of the many reasons I absolutely hated trying to “work from home”. So much better with a monitor, keyboard and mouse.

          1. I had all of those on my previous laptop (which I managed to wreck by not updating properly and haven’t yet got around to sorting). The current one only has one USB socket so I use that for the keyboard.

          3. Except that the USB port is so close to the screen end that it can’t be a direct plug in hub as there isn’t room. It would have to be one that had a cable to a separate box.

        2. I touch type too. So what’s the problem? You just type a sentence without looking at the keyboard and see the correct results on your screen.

          6. My current laptop, notwithstanding the buggered keyboard, is a ‘convertible’ HP X360 model. So the integral keyboard is face down, currently on the breakfast bar, the screen is folded back, and the cheapo Chinky Bluetooth keyboard sits in front. Seems to work.

          8. I had a Dell. It was also less than resistant to wine ingress.

            I’ve actually bought another HP X360 (used) from eBay, as a backup machine, should the worst happen.

          9. I will try not to christen it with any liquid. I don’t normally type and drink in case I spill it 🙂

          10. Also, comparing the laptops with the keyboard I’m currently using (a Microsoft one), the laptop keyboard is considerably smaller. I tend to suffer from fat finger syndrome when I’m using them.

        3. I’m using a Bluetooth keyboard with the old laptop. A few quid from Amazon. The beauty is that if I accidentally flood it with Yellow Tail Shiraz, only the keyboard dies…

          1. I doubt if my prehistoric laptop would cope with Bluetooth. Not that I’m knocking it, at least it works and I can attend Zoom meetings.

          3. I’ve got a USB keyboard on the laptop, which only has one socket. I prioritised the keyboard over the mouse.

    1. Ada “Ah now I remember – you came round for PG Tips at my home and you asked me to go out with you. I said it would have to be on my parent’s bicycle. That’s when I said – Can you ride tandem?“

    1. I read somewhere today that the trackers are/might be going to be door-stepping for info.
      Probably the best thong to do it to suggest a touch of a fur related cough.

    2. Re the track test and trace the U.K. had some time in March I always wondered how the virus could have been identified so quickly and even more amazing how a test could have been produced.

      1. I suspect they sucked their thumbs, stuck them in the air and if the wind came knuckle-side it was positive.

  78. That’s me for this hot, sticky and very disagreeable day. Have a jolly evening cleaning up your local beach and park.

    A demain – DV.

  79. Rude joke time. Look away now if you’re easily offended.

    When I was younger I used to work as a waiter in a very high-end
    restaurant, and it was unbelievable when Tony Blair actually
    came in.

    He had his braised duck with white sauce and said, “Oh my, that was so
    delectable, I particularly liked the sauce. I think I’ll have a second course of this.”

    “Certainly,” I replied, and I was right out with it.

    After he devoured the second course, he said, “I think I’ll have a
    third course of this, to take home.”

    “Yes sir,” I replied, “But you’ll probably have to wait on the sauce,
    it will be at least 40 minutes before I can do that again.

    🙁

    3. That reminds me of one my dad used to like to tell. Two guys in a coffee shop and one asks the waitress for more milk. The waitress whips out a tit and the other guy says, “good thing you didn’t ask for hot water”.

  80. 322425+ up ticks,
    Wasn’t this the same chap that was making double sure johnson had an abundance of seats ?

    FARAGE: BORIS LACKS ‘POLITICAL WILL’ TO STOP MIGRANT BOATS, GOVT SHOULD DECLARE ‘NATIONAL EMERGENCY’

    1. He could have stood candidates in every seat including yours. I wager you would not have voted for his party. Voters are tribal, it just depends what tribe you consider yourself to belong to. Farage’s actions at the last GE just helped ensure a Conservative Government rather than Comrade Corbyn in charge, and no ogga, I am not a fan of Johnson.
      Until enough voters desire a meaningful change, this country will continue to slide into the sewer deeper and deeper.

      1. I cannot agree more with your final sentence. I am not sure what will happen next time. People didn’t vote for an alternative centre right party last time; they gave Boris a chance based on his claim to “get Brexit done”. Since he clearly hasn’t done that (yet or ever) and he’s made a right horlicks of the covid business (my neighbour, who is in his early 20s, was sounding off about it this morning when I got back from walking my dog) anything could happen. My guess would be apathy will win; people won’t bother to vote.

        1. 322425+ up ticks,
          Afternoon C,
          Remind me how many chances have been given since Maggie received the order of the knife ( and that alone should have been enough to signal treachery ongoing)
          turned the other cheek, employed the three monkeys mode of voting, condemning the innocents to suffer ongoing ?
          Apathy will find them praying five times a day for a chance to rectify & put right what THEY had put wrong over the decades.

      2. 322425+ up ticks,
        Afternoon VVOF,
        Being a UKIP member for years I hold nothing but disdain for the lab/lib/con coalition party inclusive of farage.
        He went out of his way to destroy peoples & party
        for self interest.
        He is & always has been a coxswain for the tory party.
        His views on LBC on leaving UKIP are his character reference, totally undeserving of the real UKIP membership that gave him a platform.

        1. Afternoon ogga, you have just proved my point, nothing will change. UKIP for all intents and purposes has ceased to be an effective means of change. What now for you?

          1. You make an assumption that UKIP is Farage – I know that’s what he tried to make it, but it isn’t actually true.

          2. I know Farage and UKIP parted ways and I have witnessed the infighting that has occurred and probably is still occurring.
            I see no possibility that UKIP has any part in the future political makeup of the country. I regret as a past member that fact but believe it to be true, the voters has seen their fights and back stabbing and is not impressed.

          3. UKIP’s 2016 Leadership contest was a choice between Batten sponsored Lisa Duffy or Nigel/Bank’s stooge Diane “Now you see me now you don’t” James.
            Kippers voted as Nigel told them to and voted for James.
            The rest is history.
            That was how it looked to we non-Kippers looking on.

          4. I am holding fire and waiting to see. If not UKIP, then who? That’s my concern. It isn’t easy to set up a new political party unless supported by the PTB (vide Macron and En Marche) and frankly, Nigel blew it when he blasted me and other activists who had worked for him tirelessly as “racists”. Sorry, you can’t congratulate me for my efforts when you were leader, only to castigate me once you’ve left in a huff. I am the same person. Hopefully, the in-fighting has ceased, but it will take time for the perception to subside. We desperately need an alternative to what’s currently available.

          5. 322425+ up ticks,
            I will tell you what is not for me and that is playing best of the toxic threesome game thereby keeping them in play… forever, we are living through what they & that has done for us currently.
            Hearts of Oak is my nearest group or an independent.
            Will not be the brexit group, group in the main good though misguided, leadership no good, leaves a great deal to be desired.
            UKIP as a genuine pro UK party under the Batten leadership an ongoing success now an orchestrated failure, ask yourself why.

        2. 322425+ up ticks,
          O2O,
          See we have another down ticker Og,
          Yeah, from ambush, nothing new there.

          1. Get yourself back on Breitbart and I’ll happily resume our discussions up until the point when you suddenly remember you have an urgent appointment elsewhere and do a runner.

            “Nigel the only honest politician….Nigel the only man who can save England/GB…Nigel should be PM.” Remember?
            You should do, you were posting that crap all day every day over on Breitbart.

          2. 322425+up ticks,
            Hello jack me old sh!te stirrer still at it I see thought I recognised the odour of the down tick.
            Trace my post back, nothing hidden, still hiding yours no doubt.
            Your post is well late I told of being a farage follower long time ago right up to he “wanted his life back) then he went into full treachery mode.

            Would go on breitbart but got the gooner because
            as they were promoting farage I was demoting him
            for his mass knifing episode,so they awarded me the DCM.

            My post history is there to be seen.

          3. No mention of your short-lived stay on Truth Revealed’s “Absolutely-Not-The-Daily-Trollograph” channel 🙂

      3. Farage is not the answer, unfortunately. A blow-hard. Unable to share the limelight, unable to delegate, and then the rest of UKIP reckon who is in charge is more important than thta they get power in the first place. Infighting incompetents, the lot of them. The voters got that bit right, at least.

        1. Farage is a fine orator, able to work an audience, but as you say, he is unable to delegate and isn’t a team player. I am firmly of the opinion that UKIP has been infiltrated to cause the dissension and in-fighting because it was too big a threat. Bad-mouthing it in the press didn’t work, so they destroyed it from the inside. I’ll just remove my tin foil hat … 🙂

  82. Virus or not, me and my partner are just having a couple of hours down Skegness seafront.

    We’ve toured the arcades, had a couple of rides and got some ace photos eating candy floss in ‘kiss me quick’ hats.

    My boss even rang up to see how we’re getting on ..

    I told him, “All quiet here Sarg, we’ve not had to make any arrests.”

  83. Yesterday evening I went to a meeting – the first evening out since March!
    It was the delayed AGM of our table tennis league.

    I had been hoping we could start again in October (normally the season starts in September) but a lot of people at the meeting seemed to be too scared to consider it before January! Eventually a decision was made to have another meeting in November to consider starting in January or scrapping the season altogether.

    The hall our club uses is a Youth club and it will be open from 1st September with hand sanitisers etc in place. You only have three people in a team so six plus occasional watchers so hardly a large group of people.

    I’d be happy tp drop the doubles, but I can’t see a problem with singles.

    Now we are faced with risk assessments and all the rest of the killjoy admin.

    A lot of the players are over 70 – I think if we scrap the season altogether a lot would never play again.

    Wy are people so scared of this?

    3. I played table tennis since a lad for the boys team in the youth league right through to veteran representation at county level. I loved it until they changed the format best of 5 up to 11, that was a change too much for me and decided to pack it in. I have seen drastic reductions of teams and leagues over the years and I fear Covid could be the final nail in the coffin, I sympathise with your predicament.

      1. We got used to that change which must have been nearly 20 years ago now – it did take some getting used to but we coped. I think we might organise some friendly practice sessions just with our club – most members are over 70 and some over 80, but we all signed up to start playing again. Younger players come and go but they mostly go off to college or give up for other sports. I’ve been playing since I was a teenager and don’t want to give up now. I’m club secretary and I’ve been minutes secretary for the league for 22 years.

        1. Has it been that long since the format changed? I know our local leagues initially used the new format for cup completions for a year or so and then finally adopted it for all matches.

      2. It’s become an old man’s game in this area – we’ve had some talented youngsters over the years, but they move on to university and so on, and those who are left are getting older. Last November we had a push, subsidised by Table Tennis England to get primary school age children playing – it was successful, but then of course came Covid.

    5. Over in Canada curling is going the same way. Some clubs are talking about maybe perhaps opening in January, others are restricting how the clubs operate.
      It basically comes down to taking the fun out of the game. No after game drinks, alcohol will only be used to sanitise equipment, teams cut from four down to three, games on different sheets start times staggered to avoid crowding of the closed locker rooms.
      I am a club icemaker and I normally work alone in the shed which is about 50′ by 140′ but even that task is coming under scrutiny and special restrictions.

      If they have never taken any risks in their lives I can accept people being scared but dammit my life us being shut down while I wish to live.

        1. #me too.
          :-((
          Soon, nothing will be allowed and everything forbidden, and we might as well crawl away and die.

          2. Can’t think why.
            My oppo is terrified of the virus, wants all freedoms cancelled. Doesn’t see where it will lead. Arse.

    6. We are in a similar position regarding re-starts with some of the societies I belong to. As our age demographic is definitely towards the upper end, we wonder whether people will start coming again when (if) we do re-start. Most are halted indefinitely and one is halted until 1st Jan at the earliest. The only positive is the Hunt, which intends to limit numbers, but will go ahead with autumn hunting while keeping to the govt guidelines about sanitising and keeping one’s distance.

    7. The whole effing world seems terrified of it, the w@nkers. I can’t believe it.

  84. I was devastated to hear about ABC Justin Welby during the current outbreak.

    Apparently he’s fine.

        1. “Staying safe

          The best sexual partner during the pandemic is yourself…”

          Says it all really.

          3. You’ll fit in well here then.

            There are a few cunning linguists who appear, but leave them to their own devices and you’ll be fine.

            };-O

          6. Three concussions and two stays in hospital before the age of 10. The first one i was 19 months. High chair..Face meet kitchen floor.

            You may well be right.

            ***I paid £50 for my medical records. Lucky the ***** is dead.

          7. My youngest nearly died from a fall.

            Terrifying for the parents. It was one time when the emergency services really came into their own for us.

          8. My brother who is two years older than me was also responsible for the other two concussions and my being run over by a car. One would think to trust an older sibling implicitly. We had both been told to walk the long way round and to not cross the busy road. He told me it would be quicker to ignore the parental safety advice and go the short way. We are standing at the curb side and he makes out as if he is going to cross and i follow. He timed it just right.

          9. Quiet day over on Breitbart.
            Last time I posted here Middleland banned me for not being respectful enough of Kippers 🙂

          10. It depends how you approach it.

            There are many I find as tedious as they find me, but I scroll on by unless baited. I suspect we agree on at least one of them.

          11. If ogga1 wasn’t banned from Breitbart I wouldn’t have to go looking for the eejit and the mindless nonsense he posts all day, every day.

          12. If you think he’s a mindless idiot and he posts nonsense, why on earth are you following him? Surely the best thing to do would be to ignore him.

          13. ogga1 and Breitbart regulars help pass a quiet afternoon.
            Life would be boring if we all confined ourselves to our echo chambers/safe spaces.

          14. Banned from BB?

            Now that really takes some doing, he/she/it’s just moved up in my estimation.

          15. Truth Revealed banned him from “Not-The-Daily-Trollograph” after three posts. TR went up in my estimation.

          17. That’s what 98% of we British voters keep telling the Further/Far Right on Breitbart. Doesn’t stop them blocking/flagging us.

          18. If the whole population of the planet did that, the lack of births would far, far exceed the deaths from Covid.

            Perhaps that would be a very good thing…

        2. I posted last week that to be safe one should only have “gloryhole sex”. Not my suggestion………i add in a hurry. This came from Sweden, so you can all blame Grizz…

    7. “That’s not to say sex is off the table, but it should ideally be with people who are part of your household.”

      Rates of incest due to soar – brothers and sisters, mothers and sons, fathers and daughters beware.

          4. The motorhome we chose on the RV dealer’s forecourt was number 69 so you can guess what we called her.

      4. Candy is dandy, liquor is quicker (unless you’re Phizzee in which case lick her is quicker), but incest is best?

  86. Off now to have lamb chops and salad on the terrace. NZ sauvignon blanc chilling………

  88. The Premier League have banned pre-game handshakes between players to prevent the spread of coronavirus.
    Never mind the fact that they’ll be rolling around on the pitch in each other’s spit for 90 minutes.

      1. Hysterical isn’t it? The Marxist dwarf was in full flow at lunchtime, waving imaginary red cards all over the place!
        She just doesn’t do reasoned debate!

  89. The thunder that has been threatening for a few days is just starting to rumble in the distance. The clouds look as though they’ve been on a seven hour coach trip with no toilet stops.

          1. Be happy.
            It’s probably warmer in your pool.
            It’s really muggy here, I’m expecting a thunderstorm even if the local forecast disagrees.

          10. Pool was 32C earlier, haven’t checked it this evening. It looks Stormy but it never happens, just this heavy humidity. Lunch at Queyssac tomorrow.

          12. No. Our usual wine stop (Chateau Terre Vieille) appears to be closed to visitors. So it’s just lunch with friends over from England.

          13. Quite. Here in the Surrey Hills, it peaked at 33 C, and has now dropped to 30 at 8:34 pm. The promised t-storm failed to materialise. A hot and sticky night looms, and one or two similar days to follow.

  90. I have been thinking about the comments on beaches and beauty spots being left covered in litter and filth. And graffiti.

    Not having been to an English beach since 1953 – I really do not know the answer to my question.

    Is what is happening this year abnormal – or do the “holidaymakers” always leave places covered in trash (and worse)?

      1. I don’t go to beaches of any description if I can avoid it. Being born just about as far away from the sea as one can get has left its mark 🙂

      2. I don’t go to beaches of any description if I can avoid it. Being born just about as far away from the sea as one can get has left its mark 🙂

    3. Not just your beaches, we are suffering a big increase in bad behaviour as we put up with more tourists than we would normally see in summer.

      The local provincial park is closing by 10AM most days by which time they are full, that is when the fun begins as disgruntled townies wander round looking for diversions and tackle some of the vineyards and breweries in the area. Police even had to be called to break up a conflab at the park entrance today after reports of guns being waved around in a threatening manner

      .Here is one of the more recent posts on a local facebook page:
      To the tourist who decided my mothers driveway was the ideal spot to stop and clean yourself up, after shitting yourself….REALLY!!!??? FRICKING REALLY!!! Don’t mind her, she will pick up your napkins full of crap! What the honest hell is wrong with you people, you heard me, you people. If you can’t respect our town or our residents, PLEASE STAY HOME, we don’t need your money that badly…JACKASS! — feeling angry.nd poop on your property etc. Many in the County are experiencing this and this never happened before. Thank you very kindly from all Countyfolk of PEC!

      I guess that we live in a vacation area that we will only be able to visit when the snow flies.

        1. Coming back from shopping in Tavistock last Thursday after crossing the bridge into Cornwall I saw a hand-written sign in a garden that read; “Cornwall’s Full, Go Home!”

    4. People litter because they don’t care. They know there are no consequences and as it’s not theirs they don’t value it.

      Thus they ruin it. No discipline, no responsibility, no integrity. They are the dross of humanity. Labour taught them that. They were told their rights mattered more than society.

    5. Good question, I have been wondering that as I have also not visited an English beach since the 60’s and am amazed at all the rubbish left behind in the photos I have seen.Remember all those signs everywhere, “Keep Britain Tidy”?

    2. I wonder what happened to her brothers Ian and Kevin. They were in the news when it was discovered that Robert Maxwell had stolen his employer’s pension fund. They claimed ignorance of their father’s financial misdemeanours and many fools evidently believed them.

  92. Just off to cook a stir fry. I may be some time 🙂 If I don’t return, see you all tomorrow and thanks for all the fish 🙂

  93. Some guy walked up to the counter and said, “Burger and Chips, please.”

    “Certainly sir.” I replied. “Are you eating in or taking out?”

    “Piss off you idiot.” He snapped, before walking off with his food.

    I love working in the prison canteen.

  94. Like Dawn Butler, I know what it’s like to be stopped by police. 10 August 2020 • 6:13pm

    But this sort of thing has been going on for decades. In 1982, my Uncle, a Rastafarian man confined to a wheelchair, and Aunty, were stopped by five Met officers who said they suspected my uncle of possessing drugs. While my aunt pleaded with them to stop, the officers dragged him from his car, pulling his dreadlocks, and threw him in the back of their van. There, he was physically assaulted and subjected to racist abuse. My aunt was made to strip naked, and jump up and down. They took action against the police for assault, false imprisonment and malicious prosecution. The case was heard in the Old Bailey and the judge ruled in their favour. But it had a lasting impact on our family, leaving both my uncle and aunt traumatised and distrustful.

    The mind boggles!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/like-dawn-butler-know-like-stopped-searched-black-woman/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter

    1. FFS! In my formative years, the youth club disco rather expanded into the outside world. Try driving a Transit van in the early hours, without being stopped by Plod (no offence, Grizz).

      If we had painted a dayglo orange stripe on either side, and the word ‘BURGLAR’ in retro-reflective paint on each door, we wouldn’t have been any more of a target.

      I don’t believe race came into it…

      1. I quickly found out that at half past one in a morning, anyone wandering abroad was likely to be:
        1. A late-night reveller going home.
        2. A railwayman going to work.
        3. A burglar.

      2. I used to attend call outs at all times of day and night, I lost count of the number of times I was followed right to the exchange car park, or the times I opened the door to leave to find plod waiting for me, all in the dead of night.
        It took months before the word got round that chap driving that car is legit, and I’s white!

      1. Can one buy ‘black’ clothes, seeing as ‘black’ is used to describe people who are actually brown I wonder if there will be calls for the definition to be changed in dictionaries. Yer actual black will need a new word.

    3. May as well issue an apology every time you do something. I guess institutions will not stand up against the ridiculous.

    8. For Gawd’s sake let’s stop pussyfooting around – what ever shade you wish to call it, then we shall go with that.

      Why are we becoming so effing afraid to say it like it is?

    9. Why? They could have called it N***er brown but that would have been wrong……. How about Bame “flesh coloured”?

    1. According to stats.gov.uk the normal death rate is about 1 in 150 for those aged 55 to 65 and 1 in 2,000 for the 25 to 35 group.

      What’s. 04% ? Bad sums comes up at about 1 in 2,500 which is hardly measurable for oldies who are supposed to be most at risk.

      1. 322425+up ticks,
        Evening M,
        The one with the shout currently is pro amnesties
        don’t forget.

    2. What they really mean, is that some smart brief has noticed the sweet smell of taxpayer money on the loose.

    1. Sh! They don’t want people who know how to do maffs working it out. It spoils the narrative that we’re all going to die.

    3. Ah, but 7 billion people would have caught the virus if there had been no lockdown. Wouldn’t they?

          1. Everybody has to die of something eventually – and Covid has cleared out a lot of over 90s . But for the last several weeks the death rate has been below the average for the last five years in the week in question.

          2. Noooooo!! Death is so last century. My friend Boris assures me that, as long as I fork out to support his party, no-one will die.

            (I might be being a little sarcastic here)

      2. Everything is wrong with our figures, even the ONS don’t believe them.

        We used to be rigorous with statistics but like many things now they’re produced to strike fear into individuals rather than explain the truth.

          2. Yes as I said the figures include all deaths where Covid-19 appeared on the Death Certificate rather than died from.

            Not worth the paper their written on and only useful as a political whip against those who can’t be bothered to check.

          4. Exactly. Apparently the PHE figures include the following. If a person tested positive for COVID-19 in March but was killed in a car crash in July they would record that as a death from Covid.

            Scandalous.

        3. The ONS recently stated that an overwhelming majority were in favour of face masks. This was in the Daily Mail. Which also showed packed beaches and Bars where nobody was wearing a mask.

          1. If one can smell food or fart it suggests that the masks are useless in protecting one from a virus.

          2. Ah, but if you’ve got covid, apparently you lose your sense of smell, so you think they work 🙂

          5. Ah, but if you’ve got covid, apparently you lose your sense of smell, so you think they work 🙂

          6. If one can smell food or fart it suggests that the masks are useless in protecting one from a virus.

          7. According to the DT last week, 96% of Brits are wearing face masks whenever they’re outside the home. They quote an ONS survey, but anyone who takes the trouble to seek the survey out will see that the DT claim is utter bollocks.

            I’m so pleased I unsubscribed. They’re so crap that I can still access the entire site. But I’m not paying for it…

          8. Certainly not borne out by empirical evidence (ie observation) when I go out to walk the dog, which I do daily. I haven’t met anyone wearing a mask. There is the odd – and I use the word advisedly – one who wears a mask in the street or alone in a car, but by far the majority only wear them in shops.

          11. Only one of the people at last night’s meeting was wearing a mask. But everyone was well spread out.

          12. Probably a survey of NHS workers. If it was NHS I wonder what the results would be in a survey about obesity?

      1. And they’ve all been given an inflatable dingy from the overseas aid budget and a map of all the benefit offices.

    1. When I’ve checked the last of the racing results (neither of the horses I have shares in did very well today, but at least they didn’t finish last), I think I might make a stir fry. I haven’t cooked one of those for a long time.

    2. When I’ve checked the last of the racing results (neither of the horses I have shares in did very well today, but at least they didn’t finish last), I think I might make a stir fry. I haven’t cooked one of those for a long time.

    3. Waitrose Chicken Kiev, freshly picked green beans and courgette with quite a lot of garlic in the mix. I had the meal deal prosecco yesterday. And left the pizza in the oven until it was cremated…

    4. Too right, if you regard mushy peas as something heaven sent I can only pray for your soul in the future.

      Check out Grizzly’s posts on the subject – a recipe from hell.

  105. OOps.
    Just read in the Penarth Times, famous for the headline “Man found drunk in street”, that Mother’s doctor has been arrested for drink-driving.
    Careless. Assume a callout after a couple of glasses of wine.

  106. Heyup all!
    Very spectacular thunderstorm passing not quite overhead at the moment. Continual thunder and lightning from about 5 miles away.

  108. Maybe, I’m behind the times but, do we have to have ads for big-titted girls that go nowhere

    Is disqus trying to extract more stupidity from us?

  110. Worthwhile looking at as to how the USA manage the idiots on parade. I may get banned for ‘inciting violence’ but I’m just passing on what happens in the USA when Idiots get on parade.. Have fun people.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGBcg-eaf_Y

    I may repost tomorrow, as this video might give a few Englishmen (and women) the guts to stand up against the forces against us.

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