894 thoughts on “Tuesday 13 August: The British will be left in the cold when the power supply cuts out”

  1. Good Morning, all

    SIR ā€“ The power outage was a foretaste of the future if the Government continues to pursue its foolish policy of promoting renewables and closing proper power plants. We are following South Australia, where the whole system crashed three years ago.

    Alex Henney
    London N6

    Who would have thunk?

    1. Exclusive: National Grid ‘had three blackout near-misses in three months’

      Industry sources say system operator aware of growing potential of blackouts ā€˜for yearsā€™

      https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/aug/12/three-blackout-near-misses-in-three-months-says-national-grid

      The Graun, Ofgen, and pretty much everyone else is heaping all the blame on National Grid. National Grid are possibly guilty of being overly pleased with their whizz-bang quick-reaction control systems (which have taken great strides in recent decades) but the underlying fault lies with successive HMGs’ (and the Green lobby) ridiculous bid criteria for new CCGT capacity.

      2. They have been very lucky. I would suspect we have had significantly more than three near misses. Until now luck has been on their sides, IT is very worrying now that we had extensive power cuts in the middle of summer when we are only using a fraction of the available capacity. It is not looking good for winter

        1. ‘Morning, Bill. Actually, “available capacity” is always down in the summer months because lower demand provides an opportunity for maintenance and so on. They were caught out this time because NG did not expect two significant sources to disconnect together and without warning, leaving very limited cover immediately available from the remainder. Nevertheless, this is still sailing very close to the wind and nothing will change until capacity increases with provision of proper and reliable baseload, I.e. nuclear and gas, along with the few remaining coal stations. In other words, pigs might fly – and it is nothing short of scandalous. Lucas and her fellow myopic maniacs must be very pleased with their handiwork.

          1. I wouldn’t mind so much if Lucas and her ilk were the ones affected by the blackouts. Our lights and heat could be on, while they’re in the dark shivering.

            That’s fair to me, but no. Their demented idiocy forces us all back to the stone age.

      3. Quite right, Citroen. In crude terms, NG can only distribute the power that is available to them at any given moment. If demand exceeds supply then cuts are inevitable.

        Successive governments have been well and truly captured by the greenies, and at long last the sheer folly of this situation is making itself obvious. Expect more of the same until this situation is reversed.

        1. The worrying thing is that nothing will be done to remedy this deteriorating situation until the lights go out regularly in Hampstead and Kensington. When the need for action is recognised it will then take a further five years to bring new power stations online.

      4. The Left need to deflect. If they accept the blame – despite it clearly and obviously being their idiotic fault – they start being questioned. The state does no brook dissent in any form. It is right. We are wrong. We will obey.

        Even when it’s obvious the problem is the relentless, idiotic, gormless pursuit of green.

        I’ll never forget the oaf Miliband saying ‘it’s right to pay more for energy if it saves the planet’ – and then he slapped his bills on us.

  2. Hong Kong airport protests: flight chaos as Carrie Lam warns of ‘path of no return’. Tue 13 Aug 2019 05.04 BST.

    At a media conference on Tuesday, Lam said: ā€œViolence, no matter if itā€™s using violence or condoning violence, will push Hong Kong down a path of no return, will plunge Hong Kong society into a very worrying and dangerous situation.

    Morning everyone. Itā€™s hard to judge whoā€™s orchestrating these riots the most enthusiastically, the pro-democracy demonstrators or the Chinese agents provocateurs. Whatever, the Mainland Communist government is simply awaiting the opportunity, probably a distraction of some kind on the international stage, to march in, take over and impose direct rule.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/13/hong-kong-airport-reopens-as-trudeau-urges-china-to-address-serious-concerns

    1. Just as well we are leaving the EU now or this could be us when the EU becomes a superstate.

  4. Good morning all, very cool in Laure. During the night it was actually cold – we had to get the duvets out. Warmer later.

      1. What, with climate emergency? Never. It’ll just get hotter and hotter until, like the frogs, we are boiled to death..!

  5. Why does the UK allow itself to sleepwalk into these sorts of disasters, we all know what the green energy agenda is going to do to our power supply and industry, we all knew what mass immigration would do to our standard of living, we all knew what joining the EU would do to our sovereignty, we all know what progressive policies will do to the family and Western civilisation yet we always blunder into these deliberate nation destroying traps, why do we keep doing it?

    1. Because the PTB are vile barstewards determined to destroy our country.

      Why, I simply do not know. Ask Dominic Grievous – or the Soubrette….for a start

      1. Morning Bill. When I read the avowed intentions of the EU/UN leaders they do indeed plan to wreck our economies but I continually check my credulity for it seems too much as if I am a victim of conspiracy theory. From the original global warming nonsense to extinction rebellion there is nevertheless this hardly hidden threat.

      2. Look to Brussels and the cabal that rules the EU. No borders, no nations, a vast amorphous society topped up with mass immigration from the Third World and control from the centre by a self selected elite.
        The two you mention are useful idiots amongst many such idiots in this country doing the bidding of the cabal. Tying us to Brussels will ensure that the EU will eventually break our economy by regulation, asset stripping and over-population. Then…

    2. ‘Morning, Bob, “…we all knew what joining the EU would do to our sovereignty…” We didn’t ‘Join the EU’ we voted for the EEC which Heath lied to us and told us it was a ‘Common Market’. That’s all we voted for.

      I agree with you on the rest.

    3. Some of us foresaw the gravity of the situation and kept their gravity fed boilers.
      Some of us saw the light and kept their four candles.
      Some of us are still smart enough not to give in to power companies who continue to keep plugging smart meters.

      Those of us who wish to give Britain the cold shoulder should remember that their food wont’t go off so quickly here.

  6. I wonder what will happen to the FTSE and Ā£sterling if/when Corbyn + McDonnell appear to be headed to No10+No11?

    Argentina’s 48% Stock Rout Second-Biggest in Past 70 Years

    Fears of Argentina Default Loom Large as Traders Dump Everything
    By Sydney Maki and Aline Oyamada
    12 August 2019, 04:07 BST Updated on 13 August 2019, 05:52 BST

    Suddenly, fears of a full-blown financial crisis in Argentina have once again come rushing to the fore.

    In the wake of President Mauricio Macriā€™s stunning rout in primary elections over the weekend, investors dumped its stocks, bonds and currency en masse in a selloff that left much of Wall Street wondering whether the crisis-prone country was headed for yet another default.

    The upset, widely seen as a preview of Octoberā€™s presidential vote, threw the doors open to the very real possibility a more protectionist government will take power come December and unravel the hard-won gains that Macri made to regain the trust of the international markets. It deepened worries his populist opponent, Alberto Fernandez, and running mate, former president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, will try to renegotiate its debts as well as its agreements with the International Monetary Fund. The country has billions in foreign-currency debt due over the coming year.

    ā€œThe market is starting to price in default,ā€ said Edwin Gutierrez, the London-based head of emerging-market sovereign debt at Aberdeen Asset Management. ā€œThe market is unwilling to give Fernandez the benefit of the doubt.ā€

    Argentinaā€™s Fernandez Says He Doesnā€™t Want to Default on Debt [Well that’s reassuring – I wonder what Corbyn would say to reassure the markets? Ed]

    Credit-default swaps showed that traders were pricing in a 75% chance that Argentina will suspend debt payments in the next five years. On Friday, the likelihood was just 49%. Its dollar-denominated government bonds lost roughly 25% on average, pushing down prices to as low as 55 cents on the dollar. Yields on shorter-maturity notes soared past 35%
    *
    *
    .https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-12/markets-set-to-sell-off-in-argentina-after-macri-loses-primary

    The idiocy of many practitioners in the Financial Markets is gloriously illustrated by Argentina’s issue of 100 year bonds in 2017 being oversubscribed about 3 times!!!

    1. Morning zx.

      It’s not Corbyn and McDonnell who are sticking plastic leaves on our dead money tree, it’s a Conservative government.

      A few more million here, a billion or so there and, an underestimate I read, a trillion for May’s legacy.

      Financial prudence, it seems, has been kicked into the long grass.

        1. Yes, morning Bill.

          It seems that debt is the new ‘wonder stuff’ and our politicians have found the seam where there’s plenty.

          Like being on a bus trundling towards Beachy Head, some of us feel the driver needs to apply the brakes (assuming they’re working).

  7. Last night we watched a film the MR had recorded a couple of years ago called “Le Quattro Volte” (sorry about foreign words….).

    Brilliant. No dialogue; superb camera work; a simple story in which nothing very much happens. Relaxing and calming. I commend it.

          2. How long before Lucas’s happy band of fruit loops demand the word be changed to ‘wifery’?
            Or, more probably, ‘partnerery’?

    2. BBC is getting its winter box set prepared for release this autumn – Blank Screen.
      I haven’t yet seen them plugging it yet though.

  8. For once a readable Tim Stanley column (and Carpe Jugulum is alive and well)

    Our liberal justice system is a joke ā€“ thank goodness we now have a home secretary who wants to terrify criminals
    TIM STANLEY – 12 AUGUST 2019 ā€¢ 9:30PM

    Priti Patel, if you are reading this, please be the Home Secretary we need. Ignore the liberal lobbyists and the Left-wing civil servants, chuck identity politics out of the window: be a Home Secretary for the people. I ask not only for myself but on behalf of Noel Gallagher.

    Yes, that Noel Gallagher. The former Oasis frontman says heā€™s leaving London, selling up and moving on, because his lovely mansion is squeezed between two housing estates. ā€œThey are currently at war,ā€ he told a newspaper. ā€œOne guy was stabbed in the middle of the… day and an air ambulance had to come and land in the middle of the street.ā€ His brother Liam has said separately on the BBC: ā€œEvery morning you wake up thereā€™s some 16-year-old being knifed to death … That freaks me right out.ā€ Me too. You know things are bad when the Gallagher brothers think the cityā€™s gone downhill.

    But where to run to? Knife crime rose 50 per cent in rural areas in 2018/19. Across England and Wales, there were 43,516 offences involving a knife or sharp implement, the highest figure since comparable records began. Two hundred and fifty people were killed.

    This is the outward manifestation of institutional rot. As the Sunday Telegraph reported at the weekend, the majority of criminals jailed for between six months and four years are now released less than halfway through their sentences ā€“ a policy allegedly sanctioned by the last justice minister, David Gauke, to reduce overcrowding in jails. The situation in prisons is indeed desperate. Eighty six inmates took their own lives in the year to June 2019; 57,968 self-harmed up to March.

    Control has broken down due, no doubt, to a lack of money: between 2009/10 and 2015/16, day-to-day spending on prisons fell by about 21 per cent. Weā€™re also minus thousands of police officers since austerity began. But the situation is explained, too, by policy choices that undermine the authority of prison officers, courts and the police ā€“ choices that imply Britain isnā€™t very serious about policing itself. For instance, on Saturday, July 6, there were several knife attacks in the capital. That same day, on-duty officers took part in the London Pride Parade in full uniform.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2019/07/06/TELEMMGLPICT000202969222_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQfyf2A9a6I9YchsjMeADBa08.jpeg?imwidth=1240
    Pride Parade London 2019
    On July 6, there were several knife attacks in the capital. That same day, on-duty officers took part in the London Pride Parade in full uniform

    The website FullFact asked the Met for comment and was told the officers were fully equipped and could have been deployed to deal with an incident if necessary.

    Our superiors seem to have forgotten some basic rules of running a society, things that the rest of us take for granted. For a start, the primary job of government is to maintain law and order. A police officer canā€™t simultaneously be your best friend and exert authority. If criminals know the police are likely to stop and search them, theyā€™re less likely to walk around with knives. If a man tells officers that he was almost castrated at a party attended by Ted Heath, itā€™s unwise to blow Ā£2.5 million looking into it. If the police want to prevent crimes, rather than just log them, they should patrol the streets. And when a man is given four years, he ought to serve as much of the four years as possible; prison must reform and rehabilitate, but itā€™s also there to punish and deter. Iā€™d be willing to bet that a stricter prison regime is safer for convicts, too.

    Every copper Iā€™ve ever spoken to has agreed with all of this, so the problem begins higher up, with that cultural elite who set the tone. In Westminster, departments are ringed by lobbyists and suffocated by orthodoxy. Dominic Cummings and Michael Gove called this ā€œthe blobā€ when they ran Education, and itā€™s there at the Home Office as well, ensuring that every minister is pushed in a liberal direction.

    Not that David Cameronā€™s Tories needed encouragement: many home and justice ministers since 2010 should have been arrested under the trades description act for calling themselves conservatives. They were ideological liberals, accomplices to the blob and slaves to the Treasury. If a minister is convinced that fewer people should be in jail or that officers should spend more time understanding criminals than chasing them, a budget cut can be easily swallowed. In fact, itā€™s yin and yang. The Tories could say ā€œyes, we are cutting the money spent on police and justiceā€, which is nasty, ā€œbut we are also building prisons without bars and cutting stop and searchā€, which is nice.

    Good relations between police and minority communities is very nice ā€“ vital ā€“ but those communities still expect to be protected from violence. One study did find that that black people in England and Wales are 40 times more likely than whites to be stopped and searched, which is unjust and perhaps an argument for the use of body cameras. But another analysis done in 2018 found that even though black people are just 13 per cent of Londonā€™s population, they account for nearly half its murder victims. When crime goes up, the rich can move out. Who is left behind? The poor.

    What happened to their right to live in peace and freedom? Who speaks for the victims of crime? Whereā€™s their lobby or their woke MP? The pensioner who lives in terror isnā€™t on Twitter and doesnā€™t get a seat on Question Time. He or she is powerless. Sometimes it feels as if the media gives a greater voice to murderers campaigning for the right to vote than they do people who want the right to walk to Tesco without having to run a gauntlet of gang members.

    Thatā€™s why we really need Ms Patel to stick to her instincts about where the balance lies. We donā€™t have to be a cruel society to be a safe one: thereā€™s a case for reform in many areas, and no cause to be mindlessly draconian. But the Home Secretary needs to send the signal that the nonsense is over, that the police have a job to do ā€“ prevent and investigate real crimes ā€“ and they wonā€™t be doing anything else.

    My initial sense is that everything the Left hates Ms Patel for makes her the most likely minister for some time to do this. She inverts their politics of identity. As an Asian woman, they believe she ought to be a liberal. But sheā€™s not. I suspect that being Asian and a woman might be part of what makes her a conservative. Ms Patel has nothing to apologise for; none of the Cameron eliteā€™s embarrassment of riches. She can say and do what she thinks is right without guilt ā€“ and one hopes she does.

    BTL:

    Carpe Jugulum 12 Aug 2019 10:12PM
    Perhaps if these oh so knowledgeable liberals had actually witnessed the devastating effects of crime on victims they would be a little more logic driven.

    I was a Scenes of Crime Officer in the 1980s and had to deal with the murder scene of a gentle old soul who was still working in his nineties because he enjoyed the company of his hardware shop customers. The animal that murdered him was released from his ‘life’ sentence on ‘licence’ and promptly murdered two other men.

    A triumph of liberal philosophy.

        1. Sorry to hear that. Yesterday I watched the rain satellite and saw heavy rain within 10 miles but here not a drop. The garden is a dust bowl.

          1. We needed some rain, although the farmers won’t agree , the harvest is getting underway. The rumble of the combines at night is a comforting sound !

        2. Good morning all.
          We had a downpour in the small hours, but dry and bright here at the moment.

        4. ‘Morning, Mags, well you were warned – Red sky in the morning… Apart from that Good morning.

    2. Since the zillions of laws, regulations, PC nonsense and public inquiries we’ve had heaped upon us over the years haven’t really made life that much better, do we need them?

        1. Morning ogga.

          We have a political class which thinks more is better.

          Being of simple mind, I think the opposite.

          1. E,
            No simple mindset is visible,
            PC / Appeasement is a form of control leading to submission and ……….

    3. Many lab/lib/con current supporter / voters would agree
      progress is being made, we have our first political prisoner, one Tommy Robinson.

    4. Robert Spowart 13 Aug 2019 7:42AM
      There is a foul cancer within the British establishment that is eating the heart out of our country. It is a cancer that needs to be rooted out and every last vestige destroyed.

      The name of that cancer is Common Purpose.

      1. You have to ask why so much money goes to this organisation.

        It’s obviously the old boy network reinvented, but someone, somewhere should say ‘Look, it’s a training course. It doens’t cost Ā£6000.

        What’s needed is a maverik (and nosey) junior to see an invoice for Ā£120,000 for a weekend retreat for the senior management team (all 6 of them) last 2 days at a 5 star hotel, fully catered for ‘leadership training.

        Photocopied, posted around the entire building. The IT guys needed training, and these wasters had blown the entire budget on a jolly.

    5. ‘Morning, Citroen, The Isle of Man seems to have the answer to the Prison problem, The Best Little Prison In Britain?

    6. Society is cruel though. It’s destructive, unfair and fairly brutal. You can’t have everything you want. You’re forced to pay for things you don’t want. Pettifogging bureaucracy obstructs every aspect of our lives and we cannot call to account their attitudes and beligerence.

      When you’re robbed, the police give you a crime number. Why can you not expect them to find the criminal and return your property and have them pay for the damage? Why then does your insurance premium rocket, through no fault of your own?

    2. Cool and wet, eh? Never mind, we have this bloke to sort out all our climate problems. He’s going to try and make it even cooler. Oh, Lordy, Lord, deliver us please, pretty sharpish, from our leftie loons. What could possibly, possibly go wrong? https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-7350713/Bill-Gates-wants-spray-millions-tonnes-dust-stratosphere-stop-global-warming.html

      Edit: Good morning, Belle. I’m now back off to bed. A bit early for me! It’s clear and sunny out there here.

      1. Good morning PM

        Can you remember the weather disruption caused when Mount St Helens volcano erupted or the global disaster that Krakatoa caused .

        We do not need lunatics like Gates interfering with our planet .. funny how billionaires believe they can control politics, economics , global discord and general destabilization by a few ill advised sound bites !

      2. And these are supposedly intelligent people?
        God help us.

        Next up:
        “Whoa, this seems to work. Now let’s cut out the sun over our enemies’ crops.”

        “Oops, we can’t disperse the clouds, we’re all gonna die.”

  10. Morning all

    SIR ā€“ As the Government moves to phase out gas central heating, and threatens to tax woodburning stoves into oblivion, how are the elderly to keep warm in the event of electricity power cuts?

    Dr Bertie Dockerill
    Bishop Auckland, Co Durham

    1. SIR ā€“ Ross Clark (Commentary, August 10) says that as we exchange gas boilers for electric heat pumps we will ā€œlose those sources of energy independent of the [electricity] gridā€.

      Most gas boilers rely on electricity for the fans, pumps and other parts. Flick the switch on yours and see how quickly it shuts down: immediately. Our dependence on the grid is even greater than Mr Clark suggests.

      Chris Whitehouse
      London SE11

      1. SIR ā€“ Captain John Maioha Stewart (Letters, August 12) is right to draw attention to the speed at which battery backup can come online in an emergency.

        The biggest battery in the world is in South Australia. It was built by Tesla for AU$ 66 million (Ā£36.8 million). If needed in a blackout, its 100MW can power the stateā€™s 700,000 households for 2.57 minutes ā€“ just long enough for other power sources to be activated.

        The Hornsea wind farm shutdown last week is yet to be explained, but, given its size and newness, we may suppose it was due to very strong winds. If we are relying on wind for half of our electricity generation (as was the case on Friday), we might be a little worried about the prospect of the whole lot shutting down in a storm.

        Dr Ken Pollock
        Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

        1. Good morning

          Thank goodness we have in addition to GCH radiators downstairs ( non upstairs ) a coal fire in the living room with a back boiler!

          1. I have coal fires downstairs and an oil boiler that can take over from the Rayburn. To run the central heating I still need an electrically driven pump.

      3. A very small generator overcomes that or even battery backup will keep it going for a while

      4. Even my Rayburn requires electricity to run the pump to circulate the water. In the event of a power cut, I have to run lots of hot baths!

  11. Morning again

    SIR ā€“ The all-female dream-team ā€œemergency cabinetā€ proposed by the Green MP Caroline Lucas is more a nightmare line-up of anti-democratic appeasers who wish to frustrate the will of the people, connected not by their gender but by their desire to disregard the result of the EU referendum.

    Of course, patriots such as Priti Patel and Theresa Villiers would not be welcome, despite being successful female politicians, as they do not subscribe to the Left-liberal agenda espoused by Ms Lucas.

    Colin Bullen
    Tonbridge, Kent

  12. SIR ā€“ The BBC reports that the RAF will allow its personnel to grow beards. An RAF spokesperson said: ā€œThis move will help broaden the recruitment pool, promote inclusivity and help us retain our highly skilled personnel.ā€

    Really? Has anyone ever left the RAF because they could not grow a beard or, indeed, decided not to join due to a ban on them? Of course not.

    This is another example of the inclusivity and diversity drivel that is insidiously creeping through the Armed Forces. It is high time that those at the top stood by the values and standards that have set these Services apart, rather than pander to the thought police.

    Martyn Thomas
    London SE27

    2. It used to be that beards were considered unsafe for fast jet flying because the hair prevented a good seal of the face mask after decompression.

    4. Like everything else to do with Service Dress, Appearance and Discipline, they are all based on historical need. It will be impossible to fit an oxygen mask tightly if beards are allowed – there is even a threat to the ‘Handle-bar Moustache’ (says he, twirling his) even though Queen’s Regulation state that ‘If the upper lip is unshaven, no trimming may be undertaken’ or words to that effect.

    5. The rules are that the beard is to be neat and cropped close, but if “for religious reasons” it needs to be bushy and longer, that will be okay. Goodbye one rule for all.

  14. Morning, Campers.
    The Monstrous Regiment of Women.

    Madeline Grant in the DT:

    “Caroline Lucas’s all-female Cabinet shows how desperate Remainers have become; but at least it’s provided light relief

    Make no mistake, this ā€˜dream teamā€™ is a daft rearguard action to try to thwart Brexit

    First Ghostbusters, then Doctor Who, a female 007, and now, perhaps the most ambitious, gender-flipping reboot in history ā€“ an all-women cabinet. Caroline Lucas has invited 10 politicians to join her in forming an ā€œemergency Cabinetā€ to fix Brexit. The Green Party MP claims her group could ā€œbring a different perspectiveā€ to politics. Women, she added, ā€œare able to reach out to those they disagree with, and cooperate to find solutionsā€. If only weā€™d had a lady leading the process until now, eh?

    But these wonā€™t be any old women setting the ā€œvagendaā€. Though Lucasā€™s unifying overtures extend to Emily Thornberry, Jo Swinson, Anna Soubry and even Nicola Sturgeon ā€“ whose sole political aim is, literally, separation ā€“ this is a selective sisterhood. All share her uncompromising belief that Brexit must be halted in its tracks.

    I am beginning to wonder whether the stop-Brexit brigadeā€™s increasingly mad-cap schemes are in fact a form of elaborate postmodern satire. Just when weā€™d finished chuckling at the latest Orwellian wheeze ā€“ a ā€œGovernment of National Unityā€ populated by rabid Remainers ā€“ along comes Lucas and her plan to exclude not just all Eurosceptics but all men. But you can never be quite woke enough for the woke Left. The Corbynista MP Clive Lewis piped up, ā€œGreat idea but what about the BME women?ā€ I predict corresponding cries of: ā€œYou bigot Clive, how dare you marginalise disabled BME transwomen?ā€

    Lucasā€™s proposal is an extreme manifestation of a depressingly common narrative of Brexit as a ā€œsexistā€ project, imposed on women by ā€œgrey men in suitsā€. Remain activists ignore the essential roles played by the likes of Gisela Stuart, Theresa Villiers and Kate Hoey during the referendum, and the female voters who turned out in their millions on June 23 2016. Other women who vote the ā€œwrongā€ way, such as Tories, are regularly smeared as ā€œgender traitorsā€ or sinister Stepford Wives.

    Lucasā€™s stereotype of women as inherent fixers and bridge-builders stems from a long-standing progressive fallacy. Echoing Mrs Lintottā€™s view of history as men making a mess and ā€œwomen following behind with the bucketā€ from Alan Bennettā€™s The History Boys, many argue that a female-led world would be a more peaceful place.

    Christine Lagarde claimed that male domination of the banking industry hastened the 2008 financial crash. ā€œIf it had been Lehman Sisters rather than Lehman Brothers, the world might well look a lot different today,ā€ she said. Such clichĆ©s of compliant female risk-aversion may masquerade as progress but they share far more with the Victoriansā€™ mawkish stereotypes of perfect womanhood. And itā€™s hypocritical for feminists, usually so quick to denounce in-built gender norms, to claim inherent virtue on the basis of sex.

    A glance through history shows that women can be every bit as ruthless as men when given the chance. One study of centuries of rule in Europe found that queens were more likely to wage war than kings ā€“ just ask Isabella of Castile or Catherine the Great. In the sixteenth century alone, Catherine de Medici allegedly masterminded the St Bartholomewā€™s Day Massacre, Queen Elizabeth I took on the Spanish Armada (and won), while ā€œBloody Maryā€ killed more heretics in five years than her sister did in 45. Boudicca appeared to have missed the memo about ā€œreaching outā€ to the Romans when she ordered every inhabitant of Colchester to be slaughtered and the city burnt to the ground.

    Female leaders even approach Europe differently ā€“ Mrs Thatcher went to the European Council and returned with a rebate, while Mrs May surrendered Ā£39 billion for the privilege of opening trade talks. Itā€™s almost as if we women are a diverse and multifaceted breed, who donā€™t always behave the same.

    ā€œSpeaking as a womanā€, as a minister in the Lucas government might say, I find this latest scheme to be just a bit patronising. But take heart: what we are seeing is merely the desperate rearguard action of a group still struggling to realise that Britain will leave the EU on October 31, deal or no deal. Treating politics like a progressive fantasy football league wonā€™t make the slightest difference to the outcome ā€“ though it will give the rest of us a good laugh in the meantime.”

        1. Nah!
          Don’t really expect them to, but hopefully my comments might just spark someone else into thinking.

    2. That’ll be the Christine Lagarde who was found to have been negligent….over a ā‚¬400 million payment to her chum Bernard Tapie…

        2. …and 10% of that still leaves ā‚¬360 million for Mr Tapie.

          Oh dear, what AM I implying?

          1. The poor naive young lady *was surely led astray by the bad Bernard, probably dragged through drug parlours and sleazy nightclubs in Marseilles.

            *aka Finance Minister of France

    3. Morning Anne ,

      How are we meant to feel as women?

      I certainly don’t feel uppity or needful of sisterhood politics or coffee morning outrages or a need to prove myself by shouting louder ..

      I really do worry when confronted by termagants and shrews . Three times during the past week , some shouty pre menopausal bints have 2 fingered us in our car , or shouted back .. Me being polite and giving that disapproving ‘Look’ certainly upsets the expletive laden Modoms.

      1. Soft and cuddly, positive and friendly, assertive and determined, smart and co-operative?

    4. This is a pretty ridiculous idea. It is no more acceptable to have all women cabinet than it was to have all male cabinets, as was the case for centuries.

      1. Well, the gender of the members of the Cabinet is immaterial, surely? We need the best people in the most suitable jobs, not some box-ticking positive discrimination regardless of the capabilities of the subjects.

          2. Sex is something that is set the moment the first cell divides, whereas gender is something you can decide on the whim of the moment. Are you a lifer or a chooser? How about contemporary society?

      2. I don’t care who’s in cabinet as long as they’re intelligent, sensible and focussed solely on stopping government doing stupid things.

    5. Hasn’t Lagarde been convicted of massive fraud and theft?

      She’s utterly corrupt. Would never have been considered if she were not rabidly pro EU.

    6. Has she a short memory? I seem to remember that it as a woman leading Brexit and that did not work out well

      And who can forget Natalie Bennet and Dianna Abbot

      1. Morning, Bill J.
        You did read this paragraph?
        “Female leaders even approach Europe differently ā€“ Mrs Thatcher went to the European Council and returned with a rebate, while Mrs May surrendered Ā£39 billion for the privilege of opening trade talks. Itā€™s almost as if we women are a diverse and multifaceted breed, who donā€™t always behave the same.”

  16. Morning Each,
    First letter,
    Old Doc Bertie is certainly not right in so far as considering plight of the poor politician & land owner who have vested interest in wind turbines.
    Wind turbine investment ( money mills) run on parallel lines to investing supporting / voting for the lab/lib/con coalition party as in the welfare of the peoples is never a prime concern.
    Any of the alternating governance politico’s will tell you that the way they have set the system up there are an abundance of charity shops so
    an extra jumper is no problem.
    Advice trade in the government for a wood burning stove.
    Otherwise, as in Nigeria, you get use to the 3 am wake up call as the genny kicks in.

  17. Met Police officer investigated after ‘having sex’ on Nigerian Big Brother

    A Metropolitan Police officer is appearing on the Nigerian version of Big Brother despite being refused permission by her bosses.
    Khafi Kareem, who was pictured alongside Commissioner Cressida Dick as the Met celebrated 100 years of women in the force last November, is one of the stars of the African reality TV show.

    The 29-year-old, who joined the force as a Pc in 2015, has had sex three times with fellow contestant Ekpata Gedoni, 31, while appearing on the show, according to Nigerian newspaper P.M. News.

    3. I suppose these new fangled batons are no match for the traditional ebony truncheons. šŸ™‚

      1. Don’t you believe it, Grumps.

        As a black female friend once told me, “You ain’t had it right, till you had it white!” :ā€¢)

        [She told me that tales of impressive endowments among all of her male compatriots are utterly mythical]

    4. Well I imagine she will have no job to return to when she is out. I hope her boss has the gumption.

      1. You jest, of course. She can’t be sacked – that would be racism – she’d be awarded tens of thousands in compo and Lammy would be acting for her…

  18. Bill and his wife Beryl go to the Yorkshire Show every year, and every year Bill would say,
    “Beryl, I’d like to ride in that there ‘elicopter.ā€
    Beryl always replied, “I know Bill, but that ‘elicopter ride is twenty quid, and twenty quid is twenty quid! ”
    One year when Bill and Beryl went to the fair, and Bill said, ” Beryl, I’m 75 years old. If I don’t ride that there ‘elicopter, I might never get another chance.”
    To this, Beryl replied, “Bill that ‘elicopter ride is twenty quid, and twenty quid is twenty quid ”
    The pilot overheard the couple and said, “Listen, I’ll make you a deal. I’ll take the both of you for a ride. If you can stay quiet for the entire ride and don’t say a word, I won’t charge you a penny!
    But if you say one word it’s twenty quid.”
    Bill and Beryl agreed and up they went. The pilot did all kinds of fancy manoeuvres, but not a word was heard. He did his daredevil tricks over and over again, but still not a word…
    When they landed, the pilot turned to Bill and said, “By golly, I did everything I could to get you to yell out, but you didn’t. I’m impressed!”
    Bill replied, “Well, to tell you t’truth I almost said summat when Beryl fell out, but tha’ knows, twenty quid is twenty quid!”

  19. The Great Wind Turbine and Solar Con

    Her we are in the middle of summer on a warm day and the grand output of all the Wind Turbines and Solar is a grand total of about 12%. Its pathetic and that in spite of all the wild claims of the latest generation of wind Turbines producing huge amounts of power

    The fast bulk of our power is coming from CCGT and Nuclear. THe grand total of green energy amounting to about 14% if you ignore biomass which even most Greens now admit is not Green

  20. I’m always eager to exercise the opportunity to give one of my favourite expressions an airing and today it is nominative determinism ( no I don’t know why, I just do) but I was heading for disappointment when reading a Mail article about obesity with a contribution from a Dr Richard Pile, turns out his speciality is cardiology . I will add do know a Dr Pill

      2. Can’t beat them when you need to get to the bottom of things, they often get a bum rap.

  21. A new records has been set today

    Today the commons has generated more wind power than all our wind turbines combined

    1. There’s a comment BTL from a Faissal Kardal saying “Yeah but, when did you ever see a man in a burkha?”
      Well, quite frankly Mr K, who would know the answer to that? That’s the point.

      1. Quite.

        And there have been reports of male suicide bombers using the outfit to gain entrance to target areas and reports of men escaping police while hiding under the garment.

        The motorcycle helmet ban was instigated precisely because they were being used to hide identitiess during robberies where CCTV was present..

      3. Didn’t a man involved in a terrorist outrage (07/07?) manage to escape by wearing a burka?

        1. Morning R,
          Think of the money saved
          in regards to court proceedings etc,etc.
          PC / Appeasement are
          guardians of the economy & the economy comes first is the mindset of the brain dead, tops all else.
          Many have found that
          submission to the said guardians is the best route to take.

      4. Morning SIADC,
        May one ask, say it was revealed to be a man wearing a crash helmet under cover of a burka what then ?
        A burka can cover a multitude of sins, and makes police work easier
        as in a police line up of burka clad peoples, ie no felon recognised = no court appearance, money saved
        and the seen to act satisfied.
        How about the victim ?
        The what ?

    2. Burka-man to the helmet-woman: “You are an Islamaphobe.”
      Burka-man to security guard: “Thank you for standing up to multiculturalism. It’s disgusting that Islamophobes like that live in our society. You’re a good man.”
      To the woman: “Don’t you feel safer?”

      It’s not obvious what his ethnicity although there’s no hint of an accent that isn’t Australian but if attitudes like his become the majority view among Westerners then civilisation is finished. His thinking is retarded.

        1. Possibly. Sometimes it’s hard to tell and there will be people applauding him.

  23. So common now is knife crime it hardly gets a mention in the media

    A murder probe has been launched after a male was knifed to death in north London.
    Police and paramedics were called to reports of a stabbing at the Munster Square estate in Camden on Monday night.
    The victim, whose age was not immediately released, was pronounced dead at the scene shortly after 11.10pm.

  24. Can an electric car really save you money?

    Assuming that expenses stay the same, including servicing, fuel and electricity, over 12 years the saving is Ā£7,200 in an EV. However, that still doesnā€™t make up the difference versus a petrol car. In fact, it would take around 14 years for your EV to comparatively ā€˜pay you backā€™. That takes no account though of the cost of changing the battery. At present there is little data on how long they will last . It will though be unlikely to be 14 years

    Petrol & Diesel has very high levels of tax and duty. Currently the electricity for charging a car has very little tax on it that though will change so unless battery pored cars lot cheaper petrol will still work out as a better bet

      1. None, a lot of the time – when they are stationary because they have flat batteries.

      2. But if you drive an EV on long journeys, you’ll pay loads of hotel and restaurant bills as you wait 8 hours for recharge every 100 miles.

        Days of your time will be wasted so pricing that in means almost everyone would go bankrupt.

    2. You wait until all cars are electric the government will tax them as much as diesel and petrol cars now as they will have to replace that tax revenue

  26. A body has been found in the hunt for missing British teen Nora Quoirin in the Malaysian jungle, police sources say.

    The discovery was made on the tenth day of an intensive search of the jungle surrounding the eco-resort where she was on holiday.

    Police would not officially confirm that the body was that of the 15-year-old.

    However, there are no reports of anyone else missing in the mountains surrounding where Nora was last seen.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7351619/Body-hunt-missing-British-teen-Nora-Quoirin-Malaysian-jungle-police-sources-say.html?ico=pushly-notifcation-small

    It comes as Shaman, believed to be able to summon spirits, joined the search and entered a trance-like state to perform a ritual incantation in a bid to find the teen.

    Shaman Khalid Mohamad said he believed the girl was lured by a genie, an invisible spirit believed by Muslims to inhabit the Earth and influence mankind by appearing in the form of humans or animals.

    He said in the video that the genie was attracted to the girl because she has special needs and had chosen her as its step-child.

    The video showed the shaman crying and appealing for the girl’s return.

      3. Yo Bill

        he believed the girl was lured by a genie, an invisible spirit believed by Muslims to inhabit the Earth

        Untouchable

      1. I agree, that young tourist in York has been ignored .. I wonder whether she was kidnapped into slavery . The police and media have virtually ignored the poor girl.. must be very frightening for her. There are some horrible people around.

        1. I was thinking about your comment and the information in the newspaper report. I now think that the girl was never really a tourist. I suspect that she was lured here from VietNam to be put to work, just as you suggest, as a slave or worse. The nature of the charges and the fact that others were arrested and questioned suggest that the police have uncovered a people trafficking gang. I suppose that a group tourist trip entry for a 15 day period is easier to obtain than a single application for a visa for a longer stay. The former is a rubber stamp compared to the extensive form-filling, and proofs of finance and support required for a single person entry.

  27. Have all Nottlers migrated to this new site?
    Have readers who did not contribute also migrated?
    Jut wondering.

    1. I suspect it will be some time before all regular contributors appear, but several “readers” have reappeared.

        1. She may be looking, but not commenting. She was randomly flagging innocuous posts on the old site for several weeks.

  28. Yay!!!! There is a God. No sprouts and, as a bonus, we also p!ss off the vegans. Can life get any better?

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7350821/Summer-heatwave-ruined-Christmas-causing-shortage-sprouts.html

    “Summer heatwave might have ruined your Sunday roast by causing shortage of cauliflower – and sprouts could be off the menu too, putting a cloud over Christmas

    Britain is facing a cauliflower shortage after this yearā€™s crop was ruined by the extreme summer weather.

    Heavy rains in June followed by last monthā€™s heatwave affected yields in the UK and Europe so badly that supermarkets are running out of the now trendy vegetable, while prices have soared up to fivefold, with the wholesale cost of a cauliflower reaching Ā£3.

    Other brassica ā€“ such as cabbage and broccoli ā€“ have also been hit, while Brussels sprouts could be in short supply for Christmas.

    The British Growers Association said the shortages were ā€˜very concerningā€™.

    Cauliflower has become popular among vegetarians and vegans, as the food is turned into vegetarian ā€˜steaksā€™ and used as a rice substitute.

    The summer washout has also contributed towards a shortage of other greens. Grocers warned last night sprouts and both red and white cabbage supplies were under threat.

    With December fast approaching there could be a race to make sure there are enough seasonal vegetables for Christmas dinner this year.

    There are already some reports of supplies running completely dry in branches of Lidl and Aldi last week and some Tesco stores yesterday morning, according to trade journal The Grocer.

    BGA chief executive, Jack Ward, told the publication: ā€˜There is a danger we take food production for granted and expect our supply chains to deliver irrespective of the conditions.

    ā€˜Over the past two seasons we have seen extraordinary weather conditions and inevitably this influences supplies.”

    2. Plenty of frozen ones. Cauliflower frozen I find fine, Sprouts not so good you have to be careful as to how you cook them., Mind you that applies to fresh spouts as well. Overcooked one are awful

      1. All sprouts are awful!

        And people that do manage to eat a few often have horrendously smelly wind for a day or two.

        The eating of sprouts needs to be banned under climate change and public decency laws.

    3. That’s ridiculous – anyone who is in the know has had their sprouts on for Christmas for at least 2 months already!!

    4. ā€œOver the past two seasons we have seen extraordinary weather conditions and inevitably this influences supplies.”

      Nonsense. We have seen routine English weather. Miserable summers and dismal rainy days for our fetes and sports days. One hot day and the MSM has a fit but it was ever thus. ā€œPhew, what a scorcher ā€œ

    5. Yo anne

      No sprouts

      There is truly a God and my prayers have been answered

      The words Go on, just try one will never again be said

      1. Nobody should be worrying about a shortage of sprouts for this Christmas, as those have already been boiling for a while. It’s the Christmas after which we should be worrying about.

          1. #Me too, it’s green beans I don’t like al dente.

            Last week I specified on ordering my main course at lunch that the green beans, which were part of the dish, should be thoroughly cooked through. They weren’t. I drew this to the attention of the duty manager & had Ā£7 taken off my bill.

          2. Must have been a hefty bill if uncooked veg meant a Ā£7 reduction but then, I pay “out in the sticks” prices for my meals out.

          3. Not really. I am a regular guest, very popular with the staff, & I recommend quite a few customers to them.

            I didn’t ask for the reduction; it was a good will gesture on their part.

    6. I wouldn’t worry about a shortage of cauliflowers and Brussels Sprouts this Christmas – if Brexit goes ahead on October 31st with no deal we will have no food from the 1st November and will all have starved to death by 25th December.

    7. Can’t help thinking this sentence is missing the words “is also” about five from the end.

      “Cauliflower has become popular among vegetarians and vegans, as the food is turned into vegetarian ā€˜steaksā€™ and used as a rice substitute.”

      1. That puzzled me.
        Why would veggies want a substitute for rice. When I last looked, it doesn’t moo, bleat or go oink.

  30. Regarding the letter from Martyn Thomas that beards are going to be permitted in the RAF for the sake of ‘inclusiveness’ and ‘diversity’, I came across a few bearded personnel during my RAF service – one guy had a very bad skin complaint – the rest were WAAFs.

  31. No-deal Brexit battle set to come to head in September

    That’s stating the obvious. Whether they will succeed who knows as without a written constitution who knows

    Boris Johnson is preparing for a parliamentary battle against MPs trying to block a no-deal Brexit in the second week of September, as his cross-party opponents continue to be divided about the best way to stop the UK crashing out on 31 October.
    A senior government source said Downing Street believes the first legislative showdown over no deal will be on 9 September, when parliament is due to debate a progress report on power-sharing in Northern Ireland.
    The expectation is that a cross-party group of MPs will try to use this to carve out time to legislate against a no-deal Brexit by requesting an extension to article 50.

    The prime minister could face a confidence motion brought by Jeremy Corbyn aimed at collapsing his government as early as 3 September, when MPs return from their summer break.

      1. I think 1642Again is planning an annexation once we leave and their economy crashes
        ‘Morning Citroen

    1. Sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is
      To have a thankless child.

      (I bet King Lear would have voted for Brexit even if his one decent daughtrer did marry a Frenchman.)

    1. Wonderful talk by an immensely brave Katie. Hopkins whose criticism of Islam and the hiding of Muslim crime has had two such fanatics practicing to behead her. She said that the block vote in London could now only produce another Muslim mayor.

        1. The block vote BY the executioners is closer to the mark. Although some of them are too clever by half and think that they already have the numbers not to bother voting anyway. They will simply ignore our democratic “kuffar” legal and voting system as we are dirty. I apologise for how small this picture is, as it is hard to read. I do not know where the larger one is.

          It was put up in some of those areas that have already been heavily invaded here in the United Kingdom, instructing followers of islam not to vote at all.

          https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/16ac24386a9801bd2854339927e4ef5e84e6b0bbf2279a4c686ef8242f70168e.jpg

          1. Using that pseudo-logic all Muslims should refuse to accept benefits of all kinds as they are a ‘man-made’ artifice.

          2. You sometimes see clips on youtube of recorded conversations that “our visitors” have in their own language when they don’t think anyone else can understand them. Before the clips are hastily taken down with a speed that does not exist for the pro-islam videos.

            To hear them laughing as they cannot believe how stupid we are to be funding our own destruction. Then calling the female who was hosting the “cultural exchange” party a “stupid German cow” as they smile and take her food. But she could speak their language… That might be one fewer mindless dreamer that blindly says islam is okay.

    2. Muslim printing presses are the problem.
      Though the more advanced may use photocopiers or even their own printers at home.

    3. There is already a statue to William Wilberforce up in Hull that would be a good place to pause and reflect on the past.

      Not London centric enough? Wilberforce is buried in London, add a plaque to his burial site.

  36. Nicked comment sums up “Climate Science”

    “As far as I can tell the whole answer to Climate Change evolves from measuring Carbon Footprints.

    This

    is basically choose a number between 1 and 99, multiply it by the

    number of cows in a field, divide it by people on a Ryannair plane to

    Lanzarote, add the number of horses in the 2-30 at Lingfield and smear

    the final number with a heavy portion of Libtard guilt and if the number

    is over 1,000 we will all be drowned in 2020.

    I think that’s how it works!”

    https://previews.123rf.com/images/kristo74/kristo741612/kristo74161200008/67105397-black-prints-of-feet-on-transparent-paper-black-footprint-isolated-on-white-.jpg

    1. Christopher Booker should be canonised for bringing the great green scams of man-made climate change and carbon footprints to the attention of the British public. Of course, some of them have yet to see the truth that they are being deceived and manipulated – but in due course they may do so.

      1. Delingpole is carrying on the banner of common sense

        “Unofficially, though, itā€™s bleeding obvious. Britainā€™s National Grid ā€”

        and by extension the nationā€™s electricity supply ā€” has been horribly

        compromised by the dash for renewable energy. The more unreliables ā€”

        wind turbines, especially ā€” are added to the grid, the more unstable the

        system will become.

        Fridayā€™s power cuts, far from being a freak event, are merely a taste of worse to come.

        Thatā€™s because brownouts and blackouts arenā€™t a bug of electricity

        systems heavily dependent on renewable energy. Theyā€™re a feature.

        And itā€™s not as though wiser heads havenā€™t been saying this for years.

        Christopher Booker, for example, writing in 2009, described

        successive governmentsā€™ embrace of wind energy as ā€œthe maddest thing

        that has happened in our lifetime.ā€

        He wrote:

        Let us be clear: Britain is facing an unprecedented

        crisis. Before long, we will lose 40 per cent of our generating

        capacity. And unless we come up quickly with an alternative, the lights

        WILL go out.”

        https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/08/12/delingpole-boris-johnsons-looming-wind-disaster/

          2. Coal comes in at around 30MJ/kg depending on the grade (eg.low sulphur/bituminous/anthracite etc) and diesel is slightly lower than petrol at 45MJ/kg.

        4. I get popup adverts on my email system. One that I saw fleetingly this morning was quite interesting. It said that the Government will be ending the use of gas and wood for heating homes so we need their system. It is a heat pump powered by electricity…

    2. Those are not the feet of a Climate Change fanatic, the sixth toe and webbing between the toes, for when the sea level rises to crisis point, are missing.

    5. That’s a million miles from my flat feet. I am genuinely plantigrade in a similar manner to all grizzly bears.

  37. I caught a glimpse on last night’s news of some government bod telling the BBC how much money would be poured into this, that and the other and it whizzed me back to the last Labour governments when ‘how much’ was a common theme.

    Considering the height of our debt mountain, when will our politicians grasp the nettle and get some value for money from our dosh?

    1. Ha ha! You’re joking? Civil servants looking at the price tag? Never. Someone else’s money. No failure clauses, no cost control, just endless spending.

      Oh, they screw the little guys over all to joyfully but as soon as they want something big, like a warship or even a helicopter the costs spiral out of control.

      The best buy we had recently was the Foxhound, Mastiff et al. That took – and it’s the only time I’ll credit him – Brown to stop General somethingorother to abandon the FRES vehicles in favour of what we needed yesterday, not in 5 years.

    2. In the Australian Press he’s being reported as being a very recent convert to Islam.

      I know conspiracy nuts ‘R us, but I’m wondering if the story and social media posts are being doctored.

      1. How strange,I have seen claims he just escaped from an asylum two days ago
        “Nothing to do with Islam,nothing to see here,no sireeee”

      2. That begs the question – do you have to be mad to become a Muslim, or does Islam send you mad?

        1. To strangle the bard.

          Some are born mad, some achieve madness, and some have madness thrust upon them.

  40. Cressida Dick

    Does anyone have any confidence at all in the Mets Commissioner? In my view she has proved to be totally inept and ineffective and has presided over an explosion of crime with most crime increasing in double figures. How has she not been called to account. ? In my view she needs to be replaced. Who by is another question. It would be very hard to find anyone worse than her though. Is she still there only because she ticks the right boxes ?

  41. In today’s Daily Mail: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7350781/Policewoman-faces-fired-having-sex-contestant-Nigerian-Big-Brother.html
    PC Khafi Kareem, 29, (pictured, left, with Commissioner Cressida Dick) from the Metropolitan Police, was warned not to take part in Nigerian Big Brother this year. But she was granted unpaid leave and entered the show, in which she has formed a relationship with fellow contestant Ekpata Gedoni, 31 (right). Audiences in Nigeria have been caught up in their liaisons, of which there has been three, but she will now be the subject of an investigation by the Met’s Directorate of Professional Standards. Nigerian news websites published footage of the couple appearing to be in an act of congress beneath the sheets
    the Met’s Directorate of Professional Standards? The standards must be very low or Cressida Dick would not even a Traffic Warden 3rd class !
    https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2019/08/13/08/17216764-7350781-image-a-15_1565682521751.jpg

    1. These dedicated and highly trained people are all that stand between us and armed Albanian gangsters, yardies, jihadis, and assorted uncategorised terrorists.

      2. Have to say I don’t see a single officer there in which I would have any confidence whatsoever if it all kicked off……!

        1. Ahh thank you. I am English and so had no idea who he was. If he spoke that way in a pub where I grew up, he would be tapped by one of the locals at the bar. When he recovered consciousness he would have been told “Learn some manners boy.” Then ignored. He must have lived a life protected from the real world to talk that way to someone, although his target did not look like the fittest of people.

  43. The sun is shining in a clear blue sky. today is our sunny day. For the next fortnight the forecast is rain.

  44. I heard a lovely – true – story today apropos the Google Climate Disaster Camp bollux.

    Some eco-freak had told the billionaire owners of the mega “yachts” that dropping the anchor
    would “cause untold damage to the sea bed”.

    So they naturally refrained from bothering a few fish and, for four days 24/7,
    left their engines running

    Imagine how much damage that did to the atmosphere they are so anxious to save.

    Wanqueurs – every single one of them.

    1. “Wanqueurs – every single one of them.”

      I have to disagree with that statement, Billy.

      To be a wanqueur, you have to possess sufficient brains to know how to wanque!

  45. The “You couldn’t make it up files” gets an outing

    Hundreds of BBC employees have been handed 20 per cent pay rises,

    just as the corporation plans to strip free TV licences from millions of

    viewers aged over 75.

    Figures

    obtained by The Times show that 889 BBC staff received pay increases

    equivalent to between 10 and 20 per cent of their salaries last year. An

    additional 256 employees were given more than 20 per cent.

    Across

    both groups the average rise was Ā£6,980, costing licence fee payers an

    additional Ā£7.9 million. This would have been enough to maintain free

    TV licences for 51,000 pensioners.

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/hundreds-of-bbc-staff-get-10-pay-rises-brqhvwk2d

    1. It’s paywalled but my guess is that a good deal of that might be down to equalisation of male/female pay scales.

      2. That was my first thought too. The BBC systems tell me that there are too few people doing the same work as me for it to divulge any information since the others will be clearly identifiable. True, there are just a couple of young guys upstairs doing the same type of work. I’m probably on slightly more than them too, simply by virtue of having put in some twenty years more continuous full time service. The feminazi nonsense doesn’t take account of such things.

        2. Get yourself a nice little earner; the BBC would love it.

          Set up a “paired job evaluation scheme” whereby the entire organisation’s jobs are compared against each other and the staff themselves do the scoring. Same value, greater value, much greater value and vastly greater value.

          It allows, say a talking head to be compared with a head of outside broadcasting or a security guard with a filing clerk.

    2. The BBC is in serious need of drastic reform. Has Boris either the testicular strength or the testicular potency to do it?

      1. Preferably get rid of it. If not prune it back to one TV channel & 1 Radio channel. For S4C and the other individual nation channels their assemblies can decide what they want to do. It would not be funded from the TV licence though

  46. A message from Crimestoppers on Twitter;

    “Taxi drivers may spot a child who is being exploited by #countylines gangs. Weā€™re working with @ukhomeoffice so taxi drivers know how to #spotthesigns and report concerns.
    Recognise the signs of County Lines and report it 100% anonymously here (link: http://bit.ly/CScountylines) bit.ly/CScountylines”

    Is there some flaw in this plan, possibly?
    Note. I do not know how to post the picture from Twitter.

      1. Yes. Here we have the Police encouraging taxi drivers to go looking for vulnerable under age girls. What could go wrong?

    1. Before events like these become a thing of the past there has to be a mass clear-out at the top of the Civil Service. To do that will take someone who is not tainted by CP and who is very hard when it comes to dealing with awkward issues. Too many siren voices in the ministries of Whitehall, the C of E, Quangos and in the HoP wittering on about human rights, family association etc.
      Personally, I do not see any change coming in the foreseeable future with the people that either inhabit the top positions or those people who aspire to them. We really do need a new kind of politics: one with its focus on doing what’s right for the UK and not pandering to the World’s flotsam.

      1. The thinking appears to be that migration is now a ” ‘uman right”, and anyone who wants secure borders must be far right, or even a far right extremist. The fact that this is a minority view held by the so-called chattering class, a opposed by the majority of the population escapes them.

  48. Picked this up from BTL in today’s John Redwood Diary article.

    The TeaBag attempting to make Johnson appear as the supplicant by having the latter running to Dublin. I hope Johnson mans up and tells Leo Veruca to get his sorry Ƥrse over to London if he wants a meeting with the grown-ups.

    Denis Cooper
    Posted August 13, 2019 at 5:26 am | Permalink

    Off topic, googling for [johnson varadkar dublin] I find this, published just minutes ago, among other earlier references:

    https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/pressure-to-ensure-varadkar-johnson-talks-in-dublin-943510.html

    ā€œPressure to ensure Varadkar-Johnson talks in Dublinā€
    ā€œTaoiseach Leo Varadkar is under pressure to ensure his Brexit meeting with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson takes place in Dublin and not London amid rising tensions over the talks.

    Government sources confirmed Dublin remains their preferred location as Mr Johnson last night finally accepted Mr Varadkarā€™s fortnight-old invitation to meet ā€” but declined to rule out a London location.

    In a statement last evening, Downing Street said Mr Johnson has agreed to meet with Mr Varadkar in order to discuss Brexit and bilateral issues including the ongoing Stormont stalemate in Northern Ireland.

    However, the spokesperson said while officials in both Dublin and London are finalising meeting plans, no date or location has been agreed.ā€
    I have made my suggestion of something like neutral territory, the Isle of Man:

    http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2019/08/12/what-wasteful-public-expenditures-would-you-like-to-see-reduced/#comment-1044787

    ā€œOff topic, Douglas on the Isle of Man could be a very good place for Boris Johnson and Leo Varadkar to have their projected meeting ā€¦ā€

    We cannot have our new UK Prime Minister kow-towing to the Irish Prime Minister in the same way as our last UK Prime Minister did, that would be utterly intolerable.

    John Redwood’s Diary – A New Approach to Crime

  49. OT – a medical question.

    Do any NoTTLers fins that, from time to time, their fingers “freeze”. It happens when I am holding book or newspaper. One of more fingers just seize up for a few minutes. It doesn’t exactly hurt – it is simply uncomfortable – and a damned nuisance.

    Any suggestions gratefully received. (Needless to say, the internet scares more than it helps…..)

      1. Yes, I experience that & have arthritis. It’s something which has appeared since I retired from dentistry.

          6. Glucosamine and chondroitin is supposed to help. Check it doesn’t disrupt other meds you are taking.

          8. If you should go that route, I recommend that you pay the extra and buy the “coated” tablets, the non-coated ones are an absolute pig to try and swallow.

          10. That is a co-incidence as I placed an order for a years supply of that recently. I do not use this myself (yet), but I order it for a friend who does not use computers very much. She says that it does make a difference to her and when she ran out of them once, she noticed a difference 10 days later after she stopped taking them. So it would appear to have some effect.

            https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/76109717c3b887bda543688bd5ef7ff2855851fc6b882248a135311a7ce4eea5.jpg

            https://www.naturesbest.co.uk/glucosamine-and-chondroitin/glucosamine-chondroitin/

          11. I think the medical people are still on the fence over this one. I tried it for my arthritis some years ago and found it to be unhelpful. My doctor thought it could help some people,but obviously not me.

          12. I normally dismiss products such as this, and if the lady that I bought them for had said she immediately felt worse then I might have thought “psychosomatic,” but she felt fine for days afterwards before the effects came back again. When she started taking them again it also took a few days for there to be any effect either, so I do not know if it needs to build up for a while before levels do anything.

            Still, it makes her feel better. šŸ™‚

          14. I take Glucosamine-Chondroitin (with MSM) twice daily. I buy it affordably at Wal-Mart. In spite of the many other complaints of my advancing age, I’m still as flexible as I was at 25. I consider it, like the other supplements I take, to be supplemental health insurance. =^[.]^=

          17. I find cox difficult to locate.

            But thanks for the suggestion. It takes me back to 1944 when I had to take those tablets every day…. And often bit them by mistake, The taste ….. ugh ugh….

          18. You were lucky. We were given cod liver oil by the spoon – every night. My mother used to keep two teaspoons for that purpose as the oil tainted the metal.
            You can also get collagen tablets.

    2. It could be cramp after the jobs you’ve been doing. I get it from time to time. However, don’t read too much about medical conditions. Like the chap below in Three Men in a Boat, it can be contagious…..

      “I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a touchā€”hay fever, I fancy it was. I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began to indolently study diseases, generally. I forget which was the first distemper I plunged intoā€”some fearful, devastating scourge, I knowā€”and, before I had glanced half down the list of ā€œpremonitory symptoms,ā€ it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got it.

      “I sat for awhile, frozen with horror; and then, in the listlessness of despair, I again turned over the pages. I came to typhoid feverā€”read the symptomsā€”discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for months without knowing itā€”wondered what else I had got; turned up St. Vitusā€™s Danceā€”found, as I expected, that I had that too,ā€”began to get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started alphabeticallyā€”read up ague, and learnt that I was sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight. Brightā€™s disease, I was relieved to find, I had only in a modified form, and, so far as that was concerned, I might live for years. Cholera I had, with severe complications; and diphtheria I seemed to have been born with. I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaidā€™s knee.

      “I felt rather hurt about this at first; it seemed somehow to be a sort of slight. Why hadnā€™t I got housemaidā€™s knee? Why this invidious reservation? After a while, however, less grasping feelings prevailed. I reflected that I had every other known malady in the pharmacology, and I grew less selfish, and determined to do without housemaidā€™s knee. Gout, in its most malignant stage, it would appear, had seized me without my being aware of it; and zymosis I had evidently been suffering with from boyhood. There were no more diseases after zymosis, so I concluded there was nothing else the matter with me.”

      2. We went through that on our Human Disease course. Every week we thought we had the symptoms of some dreaded lurgy.

        1. In the course of our training we had a flea, tick, scabies etcā€¦. lecture.
          We all sat very still. One student cracked and tried to unobtrusively scratch his knee. Then another began scratching at her wrist.
          Two then openly scruffled around in their hair.
          Moments later, the entire class was a seething mass of fidgeting and scratching students.

    3. Perhaps its cramp. I suffer from my fingers freezing up on planes. The remedy is to clutch a bar of soap (which I have at the ready when I fly)!

      1. I thought it was cramp, at first. But it recurs so frequently that I fear it is suffin else.

        I get cold fingers – Raynaud’s Disease. A nurse once told me while on a trip to the Somme to show children the WW1 battlefields. There is no cure….apart from friendly death of course.

    4. As Eddy says, cramp. Just keep wiggling your fingers gently rather than keeping them in one position.

      Afflicts us all at some point.

      You could try taking nsaids like Aspirin or Ibuprofen.

    1. If it hadn’t been for the white people being here, I somehow think that Diane’s forebears would have chosen another destination when they relocated from Jamaica.

      1. It could be argued that if it weren’t for the white people’s being here, D.A.’s forebears wouldn’t have reached Jamaica.

        1. True, but having done that they had a host of choices for onward destinations when they decided that Jamaica wasn’t for them that weren’t filled with whites, yet they chose the one that was.

        2. True but Peddy, her ancestors were a lot better off in Jamaica than Africa. They were almost certainly sold to Europeans as a consequence of losing a tribal war. They’d already been enslaved.

          1. Yes, I know, but they could have stayed as slaves in Africa or ended up being sold to Arabs & going East.

        1. You could say that. I enjoyed my time there, but that was nearly 50 years ago. Bit different today, from what I hear.

          1. How many countries have improved since Independence? Most have gone backwards. The only country off the top of my head that has improved is India. I am sure there is the other odd one or two but I cannot think of them

          2. https://www.lusakatimes.com/2014/10/20/500-years-colonization-50-years-independence/

            The first white people to land in Southern Africa were the Portuguese. In August 1487 Bartolomeo Diaz landed at Mossel Bay, near Cape Town, on his way to India. Ten years later Vasco da Gama landed at St. Helena Bay and sailed round the tip of Africa. Many other Europeans would follow and some would settle in present day South Africa and eventually make headways north into what is known as Zambia.

            Yes, it would have been over 500 years of colonization in Southern Africa if the trend would have continued to present day. What would have Africa become of if we would have continued with this? Or to bring it home, what would have Zambia become like if we stayed colonized by the British? Can we really say we are better off with 50 years of independence as opposed to 500 years of colonization?

            Many argue that colonization brought about slavery (although slavery existed among ourselves), economic and social inequality as well as political domination. Quite the contrary, colonization brought a lot of good to Africa. There is no doubt that Africa would have been a better continent had we remained a territory of the British, French or Portuguese Empires. Here is why:

            Africa would be the largest economy in the world today. Going by the abundance of natural resources, Africa was the richest continent 500 years ago. Sadly, it is still the richest continent endowed with natural resources. It is estimated that in the year 1500, United Statesā€™ GDP was about $800 million while Africaā€™s GDP was an impressive 20 billion dollars. Today, the United Statesā€™ GDP is over $16 trillion while Africaā€™s GDP is only $2 trillion. What happened exactly? If our resources were managed by the Europeans, Africa would be a continent the rest of the world would hold in high esteem. The truth is Africans cannot plan, Africans are not economic managers and Africans lack the patience that comes with building wealth. Instead Africans leaders prefer to put in place policies that benefit them individually as opposed to policies that benefit the masses…. contd

            By Wesley Ngwenya

    2. I have the answer for her. If she is so unhappy with the UK why does she not go to a country where most of the population are not white

    3. The problem in Africa is not colonisation the problem in Africa is black people.

      Now, if Jacob Rees-Mogg had said that there would be calls for his head on a plate, why can Abbott get away with it?

  51. Tomorrow will be an auspicious day in that I will reach three quarters of a century on this earth, and my daughter is traumatised by being half a century a few days later! Celebrating together, en famille, good food, good wine, good company, at the weekend. What more could one ask for……

    1. What more could one ask for…

      A massive black forest gateau with extra choccy sprinkles of course.

      Happy birthday to you both.

    1. I was going to say: the face you pull which says “I conned the lot of you” before I saw the 2nd photo.

    3. She is SIXTEEN years old.
      Has she been fed puberty delaying hormones like a Soviet bloc athlete?

    1. What is it about these flucking slebs that they think their views are more important than any other arrishole in a pub?

      1. It is the “don’t you know who I am, my good man” syndrome. I knew of a vulcanologist who was in Australia at the time of the Icelandic volcano going off a decade ago. He was desperate to get back to the UK to fulfil his commitments….. “just tell them who I am!” he commanded. I am pleased to report this cut no ice in Oz. He had to wait just like everyone else.

        1. Of course, had he had a big black beard and a silly white hat thingy – he’d have had kid glove treatment…{:Ā¬((

    2. Gere has be told by Salvini to house them all in his Hollywood home if he cares that much.

  54. UK wage growth picks up to 11-year high

    So the economy is moving in the right direction

    Wage growth in the UK reached an 11-year high in the year to June, and the employment rate was its joint highest since 1971, official figures show.
    Wage growth rose to 3.9%, while the estimated 76.1% employment rate was the best since comparative records began.
    Overall, a record high of 32.81 million people were in employment, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said.
    This was 425,000 more than a year earlier and was largely because of more people working full-time.
    However, the unemployment rate in the April to June period showed a slight rise.

    1. The reality is the EU will agree a deal either shortly before we leave or just after we leave

      What the EU are offering at present is not even a deal. It is just a withdrawal deal which ties bother our arms behind our back and all it offers is non legally binding document that’s say they may talk about a trade deal with us

  56. If a clean Brexit is effected on 31st October will Dominic Grieve, Ken Clarke and other potentially treacherous malcontents accept the fait accompli gracefully and work to try and help Britain succeed or will they nurse their smouldering resentment in order to do as much as they can to thwart their country’s best interests and future success?

    7. From the Daily Telegraph June 14 2018…………….

      ”Tory rebel Dominic Grieve has private meeting with Remain group intent on blocking Brexit

      Dominic Grieve has been criticised for meeting prominent Remainers

      Anna Mikhailova, political correspondent
      14 JUNE 2018 ā€¢ 10:38AM

      Dominic Grieve has been criticised after meeting prominent Remainers on Wednesday night, hours before the Government was due to table its new Withdrawal Bill amendment.

      The Tory rebel was seen entering the European Commission’s London headquarters to attend a private meeting of campaigners intent on blocking Brexit.

      The meeting included Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s old spin doctor, a number of Remain-supporting peers and representatives from Best For Britain, the anti-Brexit group backed by George Soros.

      Jacob Rees-Mogg warned Grieve that he was “supping with the Devil” by meeting with the pro-European campaigners.

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/06/14/tory-rebel-dominic-grieve-criticised-private-meeting-prominent/

      The meeting took place at the Smith Square EU building in Westminster.”

  57. Brexit: Legal bid to stop Westminster shutdown goes to court

    Could be a long process and the Scottish courts have no power in England so it will have to work its way through the Scottish courts and then through the English courts

    A legal challenge to try to prevent Boris Johnson shutting down parliament to force through a no-deal Brexit has begun in a Scottish court.
    A group of MPs and peers wants the Court of Session in Edinburgh to rule that suspending parliament to make the UK leave the EU without a deal is “unlawful and unconstitutional”.
    The prime minister has repeatedly refused to rule out such a move.
    Lord Doherty agreed to hear arguments from both sides in September.
    However he refused to accelerate the case through the Scottish courts, with the petitioners voicing fears that they may run out of time before the UK is due to leave the EU on 31 October.

  58. Today the Mainstream Meejah are taking great delight in announcing the beginning of the Islamic ‘holy’ festival ‘Eid al-Adha’, wishing joy upon this auspicious occasion to the adherents of Mo’s depraved death-cult. Not wishing to be left out, let me take this opportunity to add my own feelings on the subject.

    Fluck ‘Eid al-Adha’ and fluck Islam! Fluck your paedophile ‘prophet’ and the camel that he rode in on!

    (Good morning, everybody else BTW)

          3. The walk through The Close to Pull’s Ferry is one of the most scenic walks at any English cathedral.

        2. Even winterval will disappear unless Greta can save the planet from global warming in Malizia Ii.

    2. We used to celebrate Easter. Even Christmas until it became hideously commercial (thanks Coca-Cola). We used to be a Christian country. It did not matter that no one went to church, because everyone knew, understood and accepted the Christian moral code. That was the case even if they broke it. That code was the basis of our law-making. These laws are now flouted by muslims, and their transgressions are now being condoned by our Courts.

      1. “These laws are now flouted by muslims, and their transgressions are now being condoned by our Courts.”

        It’s worse than that, Horace. The Muslim lobby has grown so powerful that they are pushing hard to get ‘islamophobia’ defined and written into statute law, thus paving the way to Sharia law officially becoming part of the law of our land.

      1. I came across a twitter feed showing very distressed very young children being introduced to the delights of halal slaughter,some trying to snatch the knives from parental hands
        I didn’t post it,you don’t need that in your heads

        1. It gets worse when the 13 year-old boys are forced to do the same to condemned male criminals who are bound. You could see that the boy did NOT want anything to do with it, but was admonished by the men surrounding him for his hesitation. Much of this evil that we see is forced into these boys until they accept it and do not know any better. But it was not in this boy before they put it there.

          Our morality looks like weakness to them. But it is our strength. You can tell by the advanced societies that we have built over centuries compared to the sandy hovels that they are leaving behind to come here.

          1. Compassion is considered a weakness. It’s folly to judge non-Western cultures by Western standards.

          2. Conway – once you understand what is happening inside the heads of those who believe that islam is real, and who follow its teachings, then you realise that it is not just another religion and that it cannot co-exist with any other way of life.

            It will be the end of democracy and our societies values if it is not removed. Which is why the globalists are trying to get so many of its followers into our countries as they can. They do not like democracy either.

  59. A Spekkie read courtesy of Brendan O’Neill:

    https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/08/in-praise-of-the-bands-that-said-no-to-greta-thunberg/

    “In praise of the bands that said no to Greta Thunberg | Coffee House

    My faith in rock music has been temporarily restored. According to the manager of The 1975, the execrable essay/song that his band recorded with diminutive doom-monger Greta Thunberg had previously been rejected by other bands. By ā€˜bigger artists than The 1975ā€™, he says. He means this as a criticism. Like, ā€˜How dare these artists turn down the opportunity to work with Greta??ā€™. But I think itā€™s brilliant. Saying No to Greta and her establishment-backed moaning about the man-made cataclysm that will shortly devour humanity yada yada is the most rockā€™nā€™roll thing you can do right now.

    The 1975/Greta hook-up really is the most dreadful dirge. Over ambient piano music Greta intones about the end of the world. Natch. It is the usual mix of ageism and fearmongering weā€™ve come to expect from certain quarters of the eco-movement. ā€˜Older generations have failedā€™, says Greta, doing wonders for intergenerational relations. Apparently ā€˜we are facing a disaster of unspoken sufferings for enormous amounts of peopleā€™. Amounts? If Greta and the other green school-strikers had attended lessons, instead of bunking off to complain about humanityā€™s wretched impact on the planet, she might know it is ā€˜numbers of peopleā€™, not ā€˜amountsā€™.

    Itā€™s unlistenable. Who switches on their Spotify or goes to a gig to be lectured about how destructive humankind is? It reminds me of the time I went to see Radiohead, years ago, and Thom Yorke instructed the audience to buy George Monbiotā€™s latest book to find out what a mess weā€™ve made of Mother Earth. That brought to mind Noel Gallagherā€™s comments on Yorke: ā€˜No matter how much you sit their twiddling, going, ā€œWeā€™re all doomedā€, at the end of the day people will always want to hear you play ā€œCreepā€. Get over it.ā€™

    So the fact that ā€˜big artistsā€™ rejected the offer to turn Gretaā€™s essay into a song is heartening. There is nothing remotely rebellious or even very interesting about being an eco-doom-monger. Itā€™s the most mainstream thing you can be. In her 1975 essay/song, Greta calls for ā€˜civil disobedienceā€™ and says ā€˜it is time to rebelā€™.

    Who does she think sheā€™s kidding? This is a young woman who has spoken at Davos, been feted by political stiffs across the globe, and who is shortly setting sail for the United States on a sixty foot racing yacht. Anyone who thinks that is rebellion is in urgent need of a dictionary.

    It is time more adults said No to Greta. It is time grown-ups refused to listen to her simplistic and depressing message. Like the right-wing politicians in France who boycotted her talk at the French parliament. Okay, they went too far on the insults. One referred to her as a ā€˜guru of the apocalypseā€™. Another said she is ā€˜the Justin Bieber of ecologyā€™. But their instinct was right: why should elected politicians, actual adults, nod along and cheer to the fear-laden speeches of a child?

    None of this is Gretaā€™s fault. I actually feel sorry for her. She is, in my view, being used. She is being pushed to the forefront of the eco-doomsday cult in order to give this flagging misanthropic creed a dash of youth and freshness. The problem isnā€™t Greta. Itā€™s the adults who really should know better than to encourage a young girl, who suffers from autism, to believe that ā€˜the house is on fireā€™ ā€” that is, the Earth is on fire ā€” and that we might all soon die. Who pumps a child, any child, with such dread and fear? Shouldnā€™t adults inspire children rather than clap and whoop as children effectively say, ā€˜Iā€™m so, so scaredā€™?

    Right now there are fewer things more embarrassing, and sometimes even nauseating, than the sight of politicians and officials and celebrities going all goggle-eyed for Gretaā€™s prophecies of calamity. It has all the ingredients of a cult. The wise godhead; the uncritical, wide-eyed acceptance of everything she says; the predictions of hellfire if we donā€™t atone for our eco-sins. What a lot of hysteria. For the good of public life, and for the good of Greta herself, letā€™s call an end to this infantile fearmongering and try to get back to reasoned debate. Those rock stars who said ā€˜Nahā€™ to Gretaā€™s essay have shown us the way.”

  60. Another Spekkie read: this time Tom Slater:

    https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/08/is-it-illegal-to-mock-this-drug-dealers-haircut/

    “Is it illegal to mock this drug dealer’s haircut?

    Is it a crime to mock a criminalā€™s unfortunate hairstyle? Police in South Wales seem to think so.

    Last week, Gwent Police posted on Facebook calling for any information on the whereabouts of 21-year-old Jermaine Taylor, a convicted drug dealer from Newport who had breached his license conditions.

    They put up the obligatory mugshot, in which Taylor sports his one-of-a-kind do ā€“ completely bald on top, two vertical, wispy columns of hair in the back. Facebook users proceeded to rinse him for all he was worth, with thousands of jokes, memes and puns.

    ā€˜Who done his hair? Moses?ā€™, said one user, nodding to Taylorā€™s Red Sea-style parting. ā€˜Barber: ā€œWhat you after bro?ā€ Jermaine: ā€œYou know Joleon Lescott?ā€ Barber: ā€œSay no more famā€ā€™, said another. Another joked that ā€˜police are combing the areaā€™.

    But Gwent Police didnā€™t see the funny side. A day later they put out a statement underneath the original post, effectively warning users that mocking Taylorā€™s hairline could constitute a criminal offence:

    ā€˜Please remember that harassing, threatening and abusing people on social media can be against the lawā€™, they thundered. ā€˜If you say something about someone which is grossly offensive or is of an indecent, obscene or menacing character, then you could be investigated by the police.ā€™

    It was a ludicrous ā€“ not to mention authoritarian ā€“ response. And if their aim was to stop the thread being hijacked by pisstakers, it backfired badly.

    The police soon became the target of derision. At time of writing, the post has been shared over 15,000 times and attracted almost 90,000 comments from amused members of the public, either mocking Taylor for his trim or mocking the police for taking offence on his behalf.

    We could dismiss this as a mad one-off. Not all constabularies are as po-faced: in 2015, West Midlands Police likened a burglary suspect to Sloth from The Goonies. Mugshots and bad e-fits are often ridiculed by social-media users without coppers feeling the need to threaten them with arrest.

    But the Jermaine Taylor case is only the most risible example yet of the state showing an unhealthy interest in policing ā€˜offensiveā€™ content on social media.

    A Times investigation in 2017 found that nine people a day were being arrested for posting allegedly offensive messages online. These offences fall under Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003, which criminalises the sending of messages or material that are ā€˜grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing characterā€™.

    This particular line is quoted in Gwent Policeā€™s ridiculous post. And though it is unlikely anyone will get their collar felt for having a joke at Jermaine Taylorā€™s expense ā€“ South Walesā€™ finest certainly canā€™t arrest all of them ā€“ there are plenty of cases in which people have been prosecuted for harmless jokes, comments and posts.

    Perhaps the most high-profile Section 127 case is that of Paul Chambers. He was arrested in 2010 after he joked on Twitter about blowing up Robin Hood Airport in South Yorkshire (it had cancelled flights due to cold weather). His case drew high-level support from the great and good and he managed to appeal his conviction.

    But others havenā€™t been so lucky. In 2018, Mark Meechan ā€“ aka ā€˜Count Dankulaā€™ ā€“ was convicted under Section 127 and fined Ā£800 for uploading a comedy skit of his dog doing a Nazi salute ā€“ the explicit intent being to annoy his girlfriend by turning her cute pet into the worst thing imaginable. He lost his appeal and has said that he has refused to pay the fine.

    Even teenagers arenā€™t safe. In 2018, Chelsea Russell, a 19-year-old woman from Liverpool, was placed on a curfew and fined for quoting rap lyrics, which included the n-word, on Instagram. Thankfully, common sense prevailed in the end and her conviction was overturned. But Russell ā€“ who has Aspergerā€™s syndrome ā€“ still went through months of hell.

    The primary problem here is, of course, the law. Section 127 should be scrapped. But police are far from blameless in all this. Given how broad Section 127 is ā€“ who decides what is and isnā€™t ā€˜grossly offensiveā€™? ā€“ it gives police a lot of latitude. And the likes of South Gwent are clearly exploiting this to spook members of the public into behaving themselves.

    Theyā€™re not the only ones. In 2016, Greater Glasgow Police ran a social-media campaign warning the public to ā€˜Think before you post, or you may receive a visit from us this weekendā€™. A nifty graphic spelled out ā€˜thinkā€™ thusly: ā€˜T ā€“ is it true? H ā€“ is it hurtful? I ā€“ is it illegal? N ā€“ is it necessary? K ā€“ is it kind?ā€™

    If all that wasnā€™t scary enough for you, police have also taken to harassing people for posting ā€˜offensiveā€™ things on the internet, even when they have committed no crime. A man from Humberside was recently interviewed by the police for retweeting a limerick about trans people. It was recorded as a ā€˜non-crime hate incidentā€™.

    When the phrase ā€˜PC policeā€™ was coined, Iā€™m sure it wasnā€™t intended to be literal, or some kind of prophecy. But that is, remarkably, where we have ended up ā€“ in a society in which cops have both the means and, it seems, the will to clamp down on any online speech that might be considered offensive.

    And that, unlike Mr Taylorā€™s hairline, is no laughing matter.”

  61. Just caught a second of beeboid radio 4 where a daft bint referred to a “mangrove”. Gosh – just how out of touch she is. And a second later told us she was wearing wellingtons because she was wading “through water”….. What lives some people risk.

  62. Off anyone’s topic: two blocks of flats under my aegis have just had their windows replaced. Every flat has now been issued with its own fenestration number. I know that there’s a lot of intelligence out there; can you explain what possible purpose is served by that?

    1. Tick boxes have tickier boxes, upon their backs to smite em, tickier boxes have smaller still, and so ad infinitum?

    4. As a slightly more serious response.

      If all the flats had different sized windows and the replacements had to be “made to measure” it is easier to look up the records for replacement if one gets broken. No need to send a bod round to re-measure, you just re-order from your records. It saves time, effort and money.

      1. Yes, I know precisely which flats had which size windows. But why does the state need to know?

        1. see above re “FENSA”
          As to why, I suspect it’s make-work created by civil servants for other civil servants.

      1. Note that the property must be cited on its original footprint…

        Cited? I thought it was only us across the pond who couldn’t spell proper like.

        In fact, until I saw it was official, I thought it was a money making scam – it certainly reads like one. Talk about totally unnecessary bureaucracy.

        “Now Mrs Jones, you say the burglar broke in through a window, now what was the registration number for that window, and was it clearly visible to the burglar? Without that, there’s nothing we can do.”

    7. It opens the door to a window tax.
      Also it could create a window for a door tax.
      Could be jobs for brickies.

    1. Sowell doing his usual one perspective act.

      In fact producers have been heavily subsidised. They can keep wages at 70’s levels in USA because of various wage top-up programmes. Tax concessions. Cash grants. Interest free loans. Bailouts. Government procurement policies at well above market price. Export subsidies. Construction supported by housing subsidies.
      Subsidies for those that refuse to produce is more bollocks, it’s just his view of a welfare state even though as a neoliberal acolyte of Friedmen he knows USA must keep a fair percentage out of the workforce or suffer inflationary pressures.

      1. So… he’s right, in general terms.

        We do the same. It’s utterly absurd. The scale and size of the state means inevitably that it has to stay that big to keep putting work toward the private sector. Privae sector is then taxed punitively to pay for it all – and doesn’t raise enough.

        No one seems to say ‘You know what, if the state were not so big, it wouldn’t cost as much. If it didn’t cost so much we could cut taxes and cut welfare and all those tax programmes that we pay out to keep people in jobs that don’t need doing. If we looked at it as a market economy instead of a command economy, the poor areas could set their own business rates and duties and attract the intelligent sole trader who – shock! We wouldn’t punish to death with officialdom because, well it wouldn’t exist.

        And frankly, when some warbling moron whinges about Amazon’s tax affairs – up theirs. They shouldn’t be lauded, they should be laughed at. After all, those taxes are avoided because they are too high. Usually the moron Lefty then whinges that the Laffer curve doesn’t exist, despite evidence being in front of their face.

        All problems come back to the size, scale and cost of government. Mr Sowell is right. Monetarist economics – Friedmanite approaches – work. The Keynesian nonsense we’ve endured does not.

  64. Good Point

    “If you work out the energy cost to build the boat and all the equipment
    on it and divide the total distance it will travel in its entire service
    life by the number of sailors/passengers – and then do the same for a
    Jumbo Jet, I’d bet the plane carbon footprint per passenger mile is a
    fraction of the boat.”

    1. Is the moppet still sailing across? I read somewhere that she had opted for a plane after all.

        2. I sailed through the Sargasso Sea – full of seaweeds and breeding eels – when sailing from Tortola to Bermuda on my boat Raua in 1985.

          Give the girl a sextant, a nautical almanac and some sight reduction tables as this will be the most environmentally friendly way for her to navigate across the Atlantic.

      2. She’s just been on Radio 4 News. She is leaving on a racing boat with very few facilities. Her toilet will be a blue bucket. The crossing will be severe but she reckons she can cope. I think I heard at the end that the boat had 2 turbines at the stern. Could it have an engine?

        3. One just hopes that there is a huge Atlantic gale which causes the “sailing ship – Ho HO Ho”) to yaw, pitch and roll for weeks on end.

          So that the little fluckette discovers what green sick looks like day after day.

          And how will the muppet cope when – shock, horror – they have to turn the engine on?

    2. Rik, Urgent case to look into, please.
      Mags, True-Belle, has sent me an impassioned plea to find out the reason why she’s been deNoTTLed, i.e., why is she banned?

    3. Think about it this way, planes fly on schedules, i.e. it will fly with or without Greta on board, ergo her incremental carbon footprint is essentially zero. If she opts not to eat or visit the head while on board, she will have even less of an impact.

      On the “racing yacht” there will be a crew, provisions, waste, medical supplies, etc., etc. Plus it will doubtless be sent off in a blaze of news helicopters and escort craft, probably including the Swedish Navy… Ditto on arrival. Rather a large carbon footprint, I would say.

      Oh, and said yacht was made from carbon fibre whose manufacture is incredibly energy intensive.

      Still, let’s not let logical thinking get in the way of her progress to sainthood, eh?

  65. Mags, True-Belle, has sent me an impassioned plea to find out the reason why she’s been deNoTTLed, i.e., why is she banned?

        2. Lovely in terms of personality, kindness, positivity, etc. maybe. But not in sheer beauty, surely? That honour belongs to me, as only Venus de Milo surpasses me, and Venus does not post on here! :-))

          (Only kidding, Maggie!)

        1. I have no idea how to get to the Mods page here,just emailed Geoff for info and asked him to look at it

          2. To get there, its the following clicks:
            Speech bubble
            Cog wheel
            Admin
            Select from pulldown that normally shows “moderate comments”.
            ;-))

          4. Just poked at whatever was on the screen until I arrived at the desired destination.

          5. Mags just messaged me and this is what she gets when she tries to comment:

            Recommend 2
            Tweet
            Share
            Sort by Newest
            Avatar
            I have been banned

            Ɨ We are unable to post your comment because you have been banned by Not the Telegraph Letters. Find out more.

      1. Geoff – Maggie has mailed me to say she has been banned and doesn’t know why.

        Is it true – and, if so, could you tell me why? Privately, if need be.

          2. Just a thought.
            If you/another Mod have banned another poster recently you might check that she wasn’t swept up at the same time.

      3. On GP a user was told he was banned after an IP ban,which was aimed at another user Swiss Bob sorted,could T_B be caught the same way??

    3. NtN,
      To whom it may concern ( me for one )
      Free True Belle,
      Free True Belle,
      Free True Belle,
      She is innocent of being guilty.
      Free True Belle,
      Free True Bella.

    4. Thanks, Tom. All sorted now. I think it’s known as ‘collateral damage’. Mags wasn’t banned, but a certain helicopter pilot might have been…

    5. Wasted too much water every evening on the garden, y’see.

      I’m glad she’s with us again.

    6. Not on the nttl banned list.
      Found my way there with some difficulty, only a very few entries.

      1. To get there, its the following clicks:
        Speech bubble
        Cog wheel
        Admin
        Select from pulldown that normally shows “moderate comments”.

  66. Colour me surprised,all those “No more meat” stories

    ‘Climate Hustler, Partner At ā€˜Beyond Meatā€™ Largest Investor, Al Gore Moves To Profit Big From Anti-Meat Drive’

    “Well, wouldnā€™t you know it! There he is again ā€“ behind another multi million-dollar money-making scheme.

    Al Gore is standing to rake in millions from a World Resources Institute

    meat consumption reduction report, one that will certainly help boost

    profits for the meat substitute manufacturers ā€“ in which Gore just

    happens to be a big stakeholder!……

    https://notrickszone.com/2019/08/13/climate-hustler-and-partner-in-beyond-meats-largest-investor-al-gore-moves-to-profit-big-from-anti-meat-drive/

  67. On my way back from town this morning, I passed an elderly and frail lady using two sticks to get her into town. I never cease to marvel at the resilience of these older folk – summer and winter.

    A quarter of a mile up the road and in no-man’s land, the heavens opened – boy did it bounce – and I took shelter under a friendly tree. Another quarter of a mile up the road, I was getting as much vitamin D as I could take.

    Now, that’s what I call climate change.

    P.S. For some idea of the deluge, my fish fingers were swimming about in the bottom of the bag when I landed here.

      1. August is traditionally not a good weather month. In Germany I often had the CH on during that month & at Uni we had only the month of August off during summer – always wet. On my course we didn’t get the usual 3 months’ break which most students had.

      2. I have some very old family pictures taken at the seaside – definitely August – and overcoats were in evidence.

  68. ” Nora Quoirin: body found in Malaysia confirmed as missing girl”
    No info yet as to what happened to her.

  69. FBI raids Jeffrey Epstein’s private Caribbean island
    Expert says financierā€™s death may reduce legal issues with evidence as search begins
    ( It’s one of the American Virgin Islands -a.k.a. the Wishful Thinking Islands ).

  72. This is for all Greta’s Groupies such as Uncle Bill…….

    In praise of the bands that said no to Greta Thunberg
    Brendan O’Neill – Coffee House – 13 August – 11:40

    https://spectatorblogs.imgix.net/files/2019/08/GettyImages-1160311455.jpg?auto=compress,enhance,format&crop=faces,entropy,edges&fit=crop&w=820&h=550
    My faith in rock music has been temporarily restored. According to the manager of The 1975, the execrable essay/song that his band recorded with diminutive doom-monger Greta Thunberg had previously been rejected by other bands. By ā€˜bigger artists than The 1975ā€™, he says. He means this as a criticism. Like, ā€˜How dare these artists turn down the opportunity to work with Greta??ā€™. But I think itā€™s brilliant. Saying No to Greta and her establishment-backed moaning about the man-made cataclysm that will shortly devour humanity yada yada is the most rockā€™nā€™roll thing you can do right now.

    The 1975/Greta hook-up really is the most dreadful dirge. Over ambient piano music Greta intones about the end of the world. Natch. It is the usual mix of ageism and fearmongering weā€™ve come to expect from certain quarters of the eco-movement. ā€˜Older generations have failedā€™, says Greta, doing wonders for intergenerational relations. Apparently ā€˜we are facing a disaster of unspoken sufferings for enormous amounts of peopleā€™. Amounts? If Greta and the other green school-strikers had attended lessons, instead of bunking off to complain about humanityā€™s wretched impact on the planet, she might know it is ā€˜numbers of peopleā€™, not ā€˜amountsā€™.
    https://youtu.be/zq4eCQCgQw8

    Itā€™s unlistenable. Who switches on their Spotify or goes to a gig to be lectured about how destructive humankind is? It reminds me of the time I went to see Radiohead, years ago, and Thom Yorke instructed the audience to buy George Monbiotā€™s latest book to find out what a mess weā€™ve made of Mother Earth. That brought to mind Noel Gallagherā€™s comments on Yorke: ā€˜No matter how much you sit their twiddling, going, ā€œWeā€™re all doomedā€, at the end of the day people will always want to hear you play ā€œCreepā€. Get over it.ā€™

    So the fact that ā€˜big artistsā€™ rejected the offer to turn Gretaā€™s essay into a song is heartening. There is nothing remotely rebellious or even very interesting about being an eco-doom-monger. Itā€™s the most mainstream thing you can be. In her 1975 essay/song, Greta calls for ā€˜civil disobedienceā€™ and says ā€˜it is time to rebelā€™.

    Who does she think sheā€™s kidding? This is a young woman who has spoken at Davos, been feted by political stiffs across the globe, and who is shortly setting sail for the United States on a sixty foot racing yacht. Anyone who thinks that is rebellion is in urgent need of a dictionary.

    It is time more adults said No to Greta. It is time grown-ups refused to listen to her simplistic and depressing message. Like the right-wing politicians in France who boycotted her talk at the French parliament. Okay, they went too far on the insults. One referred to her as a ā€˜guru of the apocalypseā€™. Another said she is ā€˜the Justin Bieber of ecologyā€™. But their instinct was right: why should elected politicians, actual adults, nod along and cheer to the fear-laden speeches of a child?

    None of this is Gretaā€™s fault. I actually feel sorry for her. She is, in my view, being used. She is being pushed to the forefront of the eco-doomsday cult in order to give this flagging misanthropic creed a dash of youth and freshness. The problem isnā€™t Greta. Itā€™s the adults who really should know better than to encourage a young girl, who suffers from autism, to believe that ā€˜the house is on fireā€™ ā€” that is, the Earth is on fire ā€” and that we might all soon die. Who pumps a child, any child, with such dread and fear? Shouldnā€™t adults inspire children rather than clap and whoop as children effectively say, ā€˜Iā€™m so, so scaredā€™?

    Right now there are fewer things more embarrassing, and sometimes even nauseating, than the sight of politicians and officials and celebrities going all goggle-eyed for Gretaā€™s prophecies of calamity. It has all the ingredients of a cult. The wise godhead; the uncritical, wide-eyed acceptance of everything she says; the predictions of hellfire if we donā€™t atone for our eco-sins. What a lot of hysteria. For the good of public life, and for the good of Greta herself, letā€™s call an end to this infantile fearmongering and try to get back to reasoned debate. Those rock stars who said ā€˜Nahā€™ to Gretaā€™s essay have shown us the way.

          1. I used to own one, way back in the 1970s (silly me!). A workmate accused me of trying to sound posh when I went to buy some antifreeze for it. He accused me of saying, “Hi say, have you hany hantifreeze for a Hillman Himp?”

            Of course, I was most affronted by this accusation and told him so!

          2. I seem to remember they were rather good rally cars and gave the Mini a good run for the money.
            Didn’t some gurl win the Monte-Carlo in one?

          3. Our first car. We carted two sons, one dog and mounds of camping equipment up to the Lake District in (and on) that Noddy car.
            We even managed to bring everything back.

      3. It looks a bit like one of those sweetie dolls in a horror film, which ends up being not at all sweet…

    3. To be fair, there were quite a few apocalypse now type songs in the sixties and seventies – The Eve of Destruction springs to mind.

  73. General Election 2019

    An MP may have let slip that there are plans for a possible 2019 Generical Election

    A senior Conservative MP has fuelled expectation that Boris Johnson is planning for an autumn general election with an email reading ā€œGE 2019ā€.
    Damian Hinds ā€“ the education secretary until last month ā€“ accidentally let slip the existence of a ā€œGE teamā€ in the message posted on his Instagram account.
    Apparently sent by an aide, the snapshot of the email has a subject line reading: ā€œRe (2): GE 2019 GE team thoughtsā€.
    ā€œHi all I hope this isnā€™t unhelpful at this point (!) but I had had in mind that….ā€ it states, in the only words that can be read.
    It was revealed, and later deleted, amid a growing anticipation that the new prime minister will go the country later this year, as the Brexit crisis deepens.

    1. The Brexit crisis cannot deepen, as there is no Brexit crisis. Possibly some slight post Brexit inconvenience and adjustment. What fun!.

  75. Police hunting five suspects after man stabbed during ‘robbery’ in south west London

    Fortunately it seems to be not serious

    Police are hunting for five men after a man was stabbed during a suspected robbery in Kingston.
    Detectives said they were called to reports of five men fighting in Park Road, Norbiton, just before midnight on Monday.
    An injured man made his own way to Kingston Hospital where he has since been discharged.
    Officers believe he may have been the victim of a robbery.
    The suspects made off from the scene shortly afterwards.

  76. Now, that Epstein bloke – I know the Beatles were his best memorial – but who do you think might have had a vested interest in killing him?

    Trump? Clintons? Airmiles Andrew?? —- add a name of your choice.

    2. There’s probably a long list of people who are doubtless happy that he is no more – he knew too much about too many people.

      He had been taken off suicide watch and given back his clothes, bedding, sheets, etc. Autopsy says suicide. If he was desperate to exit stage left, he may well have arranged payments to the prison staff to either help – or just look the other way. He was in a Federal Pen, so no-one unauthorized could have got in there, and he had already tried and failed to top himself. Pity a few more of his pervert friends don’t do the same thing.

      Next target for the law will be Robert Maxwell’s daughter Ghislaine, who has been accused by some of the victims of being his procurer, and is apparently likely to face conspiracy charges.

        1. I wonder if “Steve” got paid in Bitcoin. Or, perhaps, Steve will have an accident soon.

    3. He looked a tall chap. How did he hang himself from a bunk bed?
      And aren’t prison sheets designed to tear in such circumstances?

  77. My Sons Live In London So I Sent Them Stab Vests, Worried Father Tells LBC

    This caller told LBC that he lives in Kent, where he feels “totally safe,” however his sons live in London and he is so worried about them and he bought them stab vests.
    Speaking to Andrew Castle he said that he was “so sick” of hearing crime reports near where they live, he went on Amazon and bought them “very thin” stab vests.

  78. Low fly-tipping fines are acting as financial incentive, Keep Britain Tidy complains after men who created Ā£90k mess escape with Ā£1,000 penalties

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2019/08/13/TELEMMGLPICT000206334281_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bqbe775R1SNzm4sSSdJaF7PESXDVobHLbZZp-A_Kknc4M.jpeg?imwidth=1240
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2019/08/13/TELEMMGLPICT000206334345_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bqbe775R1SNzm4sSSdJaF7PEPhGu3d8eCxEbnX1CfWC0c.jpeg?imwidth=1240
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2019/08/13/TELEMMGLPICT000206334343_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqaivqAvBJWkUV8VzepAMjBUSXDVobHLbZZp-A_Kknc4M.jpeg?imwidth=1240
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/08/13/low-fly-tipping-fines-acting-financial-incentive-keep-britain/

    As the article demonstrates, the crims are much better at maffs than the magistrate or judge sentencing them. Crime pays.

      2. Why not?

        They have plenty of them [pennies]…ā€¦..dirty, filthy scroungers.
        ā€¦ā€¦..The Irish do not allow them to contaminate the Countryside
        but we do…ā€¦.so who shall blame them?

        Yet another example of our total incompetence in
        looking after our own……

        Good evening, Sos.

    2. This is a matter in which the state really must get involved. There’s money, materials and energy in the proper disposal of all waste, household, commercial and industrial. Some sectors deal with their own but more public collection points (and large ones) are required to deal with this.

      1. No! Probably yer local illegal Gypo Site!

        Believe me….I have seen them and have had to instruct staff to clean up the
        residue!!

        Good evening, Anne.

  80. I’ve just paid for an item I’ve bought from France. The exchange rate was 1.03ā‚¬ to Ā£1. Even allowing for admin/conversion costs that is very near parity.
    Can we trust our man in the Bank of England to defend the pound over the next five months?

    2. It is absurd – the EU has far more to lose from ‘No Deal Brexit’. The pound should be rising against the euro – not falling.

      1. It’s August; all the “real” currency and other traders are on holiday.
        As a junior, it is sensible to clear positions quickly so that a major loss doesn’t get you fired. Few of them have the, as you would put it, testicular fortitude, to go against the flow.

        It’s often merely as simple as that.

        The old adage sell in May and go away is how it was, now the holiday window is shorter.

          1. I’m never the one to ask!

            If spending savings allows you to reduce a tax bill, e.g because you are not taking income from a discretionary pension, then it might be worth thinking about.

            I have something called a QROPS which I can draw down from as income.

            I pay zero tax when spending savings; I pay 20% or thereabouts tax on the income drawdown. It’s better to spend the savings.

            What you must consider is whether you need the flexibilty that having instant access to cash gives you.

            Hope that helps.

          2. Thanks sos.
            I’m saving for a holiday and there are some good deals around at present.
            Can you see interest rates rising in the near future?

          6. Rising? Very unlikely in my view.

            The old days of raising interest rates to support the currency were blown out by the ERM crisis.

            As to downwards?
            If the system explodes better to have non monetary assets. Cyprus tells us that States will happily take a “haircut” on savings capital. They can’t actually fall much lower unless the authorities force the banks to charge you for them holding your “cash”.

            I would say go for the holiday deal, unless you think prices will fall further.

          8. Good evening, Plum.

            How about a flight to St. Petersburg, spend five or six days there,
            to be followed by a Volga river trip to Moscow visiting the interesting
            Sites on the way, ending by spending five or six days in Moscow….:
            All ‘special entry’ tickets included.
            All with a personal guide for a maximum of twelve people.
            Most meals included.
            ā€¦ā€¦..and almost a year to learn the language [ if only to say
            ‘a large Sherry, please’!!] but I doubt my ability to learn the
            Cyrillic alphabet,…ā€¦ā€¦ā€¦ā€¦ā€¦ā€¦.. let alone the language!!

          9. Hi Garlands,
            Would the Thunberg brat approve of my flying….tsk…tsk!

            I love Italy, my Italian is passable and the Greek islands appeal. I’ve never been to America, that’s on my list…..
            Where did I leave those seductive brochures…. sun….sea….and
            sherry!

          1. I may well be out of date here, I retired a while ago, but that is only true up to a point.

            It is still the physical traders that trigger the computer generated trades.

            It’s why the markets sometimes go crazy and the circuit-breakers kick in.

            If they learned one lesson from LTCM and Lehmans it was that they needed the breakers.

          2. It’s called high frequency trading because trades take place every nanosecond or two. Good luck matching that with human effort. It’s a very automated industry now. I know a couple of guys who write some of the software.

          3. I know what it’s called.

            It’s those stupid arrogant fools who think that their “oh so clever” algorithms can buck the markets.

            Trust me, humans can scrƩw it up even faster.

            I watched every financial crisis since the mid 70’s to 2007/8 from live trading floors.

            All the computers do is collapse it faster. They feed on each other.

        3. The late Frank Johnson pointed each year that, far from being a relaxed holiday month, August was the time when world wars broke out.

        4. Sell Mrs May and make her go away.
          While you are at it.
          Her stock is currently at its lowest.

    3. “Can we trust our man in the Bank of England to defend the pound over the next five months?”
      Nearly lost my mouthful of wine.

    4. I read an article a few days ago that made some sense, but currency exchange is not my field and the technical details were beyond me. The long and short of it was that the Euro is so strong at the moment because it is about to collapse and many big investors know it. What they are doing is trying to shift as much of their money out of the other countries in Europe and into German banks, buying Euro’s from them which is artificially boosting its value.

      The thinking behind this is that when the uncontrollable debt of the eu comes to light and the Euro collapses, Germany will be forced to go back to the Mark instead of continuing to subsidise the rest of the eu, which is becoming increasingly unpopular with German voters. I thought that one Euro was the same as another, but I can see the sense in having your monetary assets in Germany and not in Greece or Italy when it all falls down.

      As I said, this is not my field, but I can see what he was getting at, and it might help to explain the bizarre strength of the Euro when it is circling the drain.

    1. “Every year for the next few years we have hugely important elections from the County Council elections in 2014, the European Elections in 2014 and the General Election in 2015.”

      A trifle ‘old’ news.

  82. I am off – pork shoulder is calling.

    A demain. Play nicely.

    And tweet this to the Teapot in Dublin.

    “If you want to meet Mr Johnson – just tell your driver to set his satnav to 10 Downing Street”.

    1. That’s something, I’d like an answer to. I’ve sent her messages on ‘Messenger’ . But it’s eventide and relax with the nothingness of TV.

  85. Hello all, have only just logged on.

    This seems odd (and off) “The Prime Minister is debating whether to head to France or Germany next week to hold talks with Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron.” From:

    https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1164975/brexit-news-latest-boris-johnson-new-pm-leave-eu-vote-Remain-ComRes-poll

    I thought that this time round the EU members would have to come to the UK. Or is that just Barnier, so that the rest of the time we are like MAY again? May flew to see Merkel – Merkel and/or Macron can jolly well fly over here.

      1. Evening EE,
        Richard Braine was having none of the interviewers old nonsense, came across well.

  89. I am back .. I hope .

    Wow , that was a close one .. thank goodness I had a few ways of contacting people, but I am so disorganised that it was a night mare going through a few emails I had received earlier in the year .. NTN is on F/B and OB is on Twitter and Ndovu is also on F/B.. talk about feeling locked out ,

    Moh is very naughty trolling .. it was him!!!! He just wanted to try out the new site.. He will upset everyone again , because he just won’t behave !!!

    Thank you everyone

    3. Ask him to tell us which football team (I use that term loosely) he supports, and why.

    7. Oh, goody – just back after snoozing in front of soporific TV.

      I’m glad they managed to get you back, Mags.

      Just tel your other half that he is a ‘very naughty boy’!

  91. Silly question – why is that vacant, uneducated, stupid, pre-adolescent child allowed to open dozens of IDs each day?

    When she has not even completed basic and I mean basic – potty training?

          2. Some people are determined to go through their life acting their shoe size and not their age.

          5. I do ot on first sighting, without even reading the first word of her post. Actually it’s 3 clicks.

        2. That’s what I started to do, Peddy. But now I don’t even bother; I just ignore it.

          2. “I’m good”, OLT. That’s with it (innit) for “I am rather well at present, old bean” in Rees-Mogg-ese.

      2. Done that three times already just today- stupid virgin doesn’t get it.

        When she reaches puberty – she’ll begin to realise….(or not)

    2. He/she/it really is a pest. When I block a name it should stay blocked. Mods: why does that not happen?

      It would not be so bad if she did not keep posting stuff hoovered up from the US conspiracy theorists/nutcases sites.

      A complete troll.

      1. Those will be the sites that say that the Clinton’s are as white as the driven snow?

        1. No, those are the sites that blame the Clintons for everything that’s wrong with their failed lives.

  95. Totally off topic

    Hooray!

    Metaphorically, since the beginning of August tonight’s swim put me on the beach in England and I’m now wading in for the return journey.

    Season to date, over 120 km 75 miles

  96. Here is Boris’ first real test.
    Amber Rudd is quoted on the BBC website;
    “”Government is certainly aware that if we do have a no-deal exit, there will be adverse consequences. [Unemployment] could go up, yes. And I would much prefer to see us get a deal”.”
    Boris should sack her. If she is not wholeheartedly in favour of leaving come what may, she should say nothing. She chose to give the Remainers ammunition, a free gift of more negative speculation. She may be testing the envelope. If she is not sacked it is likely that others in the Cabinet and in Government will feel free to talk against a clean, clear, Brexit.

      1. Yes, but that is not the point. She cannot be allowed to talk down Brexit. It is a management thing. If you are on the team you must not talk against it. If you don’t understand that, or choose, to break the rule, then you have to be fired. Otherwise it weakens the team and the manager.

    2. Boris has said much the same thing in the fairly recent past. It seems his policy is to hope that the threat of no deal with generate an acceptable deal. Rudd’s comments are in line with policy..

      1. Boris is the boss. He can say what he likes. The rest need to be much more circumspect.

  97. Night All

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a2968206384ab028568671d8a8324e7caa294eb5e5ac19c3b55e0aa0f747802d.gif

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/dde3a713e9e48b49d9b529eaf6973908182e3d55a9ad7beeeac896161147e416.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/dd524fdacd7417013202a42d7a1d00ee3d4c407403e6eb900680974692a0ed75.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/271b6f5d0568742135b5fc2326a4412bcfb0c7c16fc11658dd13e2f511a8ec41.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ecff81dabe5cf08b365c40bff1fa0df686704c4370ff2fed9760426adf7b1d76.jpg

    1. That’s a pig telling you we’re out on 31st of October.

      Look higher, the moon is still pale white!.

      1. She was excellent as “Connie” in the film version of “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”, a role played in the original TV version by Beryl Reid.

        1. Beryl Reid was perfect in that part. We have the DVDs its great winter watching.

        4. IMO, nothing about that film was excellent, The original TV series stuck to the plot and was much more “in period”.

  100. On a lighter note the high-tech round the world racing yacht taking the little neep* to America cost around Ā£4m. That’s Ā£4m worth of kevlar, titanium, carbon fibre, electronic positioning and communications, and a plastic bucket for convenience. Keep in mind that racing yachts are toys. (I’d love one, but that’s the reality.)

    *”neep”, Scots for swede.

    1. There would not be any room for her aboard Mianda (picture below) which cost a fraction of the price of the girl’s boat and was far less environmentally destructive in its construction than the boat on which she will be only a passenger.

      As I said in an earlier post, when I sailed from St Mawes to the Caribbean in my then boat, Raua I did not have electronic navigational aids – I had a sextant, the nautical almanac, sight reduction tables and paper charts. (No readily available photo of Raua to hand in my computer as digital cameras did not exist at the time – I shall try to make a copy from a print another time)

      The news report stated that the girl’s return trip has not yet been arranged. I expect she will take a plane which will not be reported in the MSM. I sailed back to St Mawes from the Caribbean via Bermuda and the Azores.

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ee0c09df40e4222194069415f1b0da057c310c63741de016f6d5dd1cb6142957.jpg

      2. One of my favourite books is “Sailing Alone Around the World” by Captain Joshua Slocum. He managed with a compass and a clock missing the minute hand (which worked fine after he boiled it). Ah, I am jealous.

      3. I am phenomenally jealous, envious and terrified. The courage to do that with limited supplies and kit… impressive Mr Rastus.

    2. Gosh he would banned outright by the PC brigade today. They might even regard it as a hate crime

    1. Excellent, Johnny. The Matrushka dolls reminded me of Polly Parrot, re-emerging after each appearance is discarded. :-))

    1. The RNLI replied saying they would be happy to settle the bill for the lilo as soon as the parents settled the Ā£6,000 + bill for the helicopter.

  106. German economy tanking. Strange how the BBC does not mention this

    Recession fears in focus as German investor morale nosedives

    The mood among German investors plummeted in August to its most pessimistic since the peak of the euro zone debt crisis, a leading survey showed on Tuesday, heightening concerns that Europe’s biggest economy is heading for recession.

    The sharp drop in the monthly ZEW survey, blamed on trade conflict and uncertainty over Brexit, sent German blue-chip shares to an intraday low as it prompted investors to switch into safer assets like government bonds.

    Traditionally driven by strong sales of its products abroad, Germany’s economy has this year increasingly relied on domestic demand to spur growth as exports, led by manufactured goods, have been hit by a broad-based downturn and tariff disputes that have acted as a brake on global trade.

  111. I logged in yesterday and found that my teacup avatar and all of my comment history have disappeared. I’ve been reset as a bran new user. Has this happened to anyone else?

  113. I think you can have too much of a good thing.

    Since the really horrible cases of Jimmy Savile for the minors and Weinstein for the star-struck money-grubbers, this appalling @me-too thing has become a world-wide industry. Any woman lucky enough to have rubbed against an affluent business man at a party at some time in the distant past, has joined the queue at the nearest lawyer’s office.

    And now they are going for Placido Domingo. I’ve had enough.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-49334226

    You will remember La Boheme, where Rodolfo told Mimi that her hands were cold, then seduced her in a garret ( not a Lesley one ) ?
    Well, it was mutual of course, but they are busy right now revising the libretto.Mimi will sue Rodolfo.

    Is no man safe ?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmC7wmAFsPo

      1. A girl once rubbed up against me in 1964 – and gave me an night to remember.

        Dutch she was. Very good with her fingers. She worked for one of the world’s best couturiers…

        Gosh she was a treat for a 24 year old….

      1. She has probably croaked by now surely. She could not sing but sort of breathed heavily instead.

        I remember looking for CDs in Virgin Records in Norwich circa 1995 when a coach load of Northerners entered the shop. They went en masse to the sales counter asking ā€œhave you got Lesley Garrettā€™s latest?ā€. Puke inducing it was, the absence of musicality and that ghastly breathy noise.

    3. Yet again, you see, this site is getting to be full of spoilers. And I was so looking forward to watching La Traviata for the first time!

      :-))

      1. That film version is very fine. Film versions of opera are rarely so good.
        ( For the first time ??)

  115. Here’s something that you don’t often hear people say on this site: “I admire the Left”.

    This is because, since the days of Tony Blair, they have infiltrated every aspect of our society to such an extent that anyone who dares to present an alternative view is ‘far right’. Consider the civil service, nearly all of the media, the education system, immigration, the police and, believe it or not, parliament itself!

    Why have normal people allowed this to happen?

    Every day we see evidence of this. Today, among other things, we have a liberal ‘professor’, Frances Corner, the new Warden of Goldsmiths, who said that “declaring a climate emergency cannot be empty words”. Therefore, she has decreed that Goldsmiths “will remove all beef product from its campus shops and cafes”. So much for solving the weather, sorry, climate change, not to mention empty words!

    Then we have a vegan cricket club and the champagne socialists wanting to ‘review’ Grouse shooting because, from the Islington perspective, “grouse moors are putting the environment at risk by drying out moorland”.

    If only I could have taken some of these vegans and the ‘save-the-planet-warriors-by-banning-meat’ brigade to a Lebanese-run restaurant we used to go to in Jeddah in the late ’70s (having imbibed certain beverages at home first). The restaurant was open air in the large terrace of a villa. There was a hole in the ground that we had to be careful to avoid and a large barbecue. Huge metal trays were laid out and diners had to sit on the floor around these trays. There was no menu but the first course consisted of some salad items and dips (mezza) that were placed on the tray for people to help themselves. The second course consisted of only one thing – barbecued goat. But the waiter brought a couple of live goats for the diners to choose from. Having selected one, in a flash it was slaughtered, the blood going into the hole I mentioned. It was then skinned and disemboweled with great dexterity and the edible parts of it were immediately placed on the BBQ!

    It was delicious but I might not have enjoyed it were it not for the beverages!

    Vegans and the limp-wristed eco-nuts need to get out more!

  116. Brexit: Hammond demands ‘genuine’ negotiations with EU

    The government must commit to a “genuine negotiation with the EU”, former Chancellor Philip Hammond has said.

    In his first comments since stepping down last month, Mr Hammond said a no-deal Brexit would “break up the UK”.

    “The reality would be a diminished and inward-looking little England,” he said in an article in the Times.

    A no deal would be a “betrayal of the 2016 referendum”, he said, adding “it must not happen”.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-49336144

    The BBC must be close to mental exhaustion in its continuing campaign of presenting the same story in a thousand variations.

    And Hammond should keep his condescending gob well and truly shut.

    1. Hammond can demand nothing. Sitting next to Mrs May in Parliament for all thet time with his eyes and his gob shut; he’s too late to the party now.

    2. I voted for no deal because I voted to leave the EU – not to have a deal that bound me to it.

  117. Morning all. Slight problem at Mission Control: the laptop won’t turn on. Whereas I could post a new page on the old site using only the phone, it’s not yet clear to me whether I can put up a new WordPress page by similar means. To buy time, I’m inclined to put today’s page on the old site, but it will be rather late. Sorry…

  119. If there is any hint of an uprising by the British public against the criminals in Westminster, the electricity supply will be cut off in the middle of winter.

    1. If that doesn’t cause the uprising, I don’t know what else will.
      There’s nothing better for upsetting people and getting them angry than power cuts and food shortages.

      1. As a Brit let me confirm the above with knobs on.
        However.
        Let me add.
        The public are perfectly well aware of the above facts too.
        Yet they still go out election after election to vote for more.
        So whose fault is it that these politicians govern Britain?
        Every voter who persists in voting greed, lies, and everything from theft to perversion into the House of Commons.
        Thats who!

        The voters are getting exactly what they openly vote for – and there is an option.
        I can honestly say I have never voted for one of these bastards – ever.
        I have voted UKIP for years.

        1. I have to admit that I don’t accept Craig Murrey’s view of the tory party in its entirety but certainly think that British Conservatives should be fully aware of how a huge chunk of the British electorate views them. In my view – it all depends on an individual. I personally feel hugely indebted to John Major who introduced blanket ban on personal firearms after Dunblane. So much so that I would stand into the line of fire for him without hesitating for one millisecond if necessary. It is also notable to remember how John Major once commented on his Premiership – “When I had money – I didn’t have power” which is an accurate reflection on his inability to complete his comprehensive programme of tackling inequality within the British society. John Major was reluctant to borrow from The Bank of England although he was certainly in a position to do so. Sadly his fully justified reluctance cost him his remarkable Premiership.

          La vie or C’est la vie as they say it in France ..

          1. Not so sure you will like the company he keeps.
            https://www.carlyle.com/media-room/news-release-archive/john-major-appointed-european-chairman-carlyle-group
            https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-1541096/Part-timer-Major-earns-163850000.html
            https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Carlyle_Group
            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Carlyle_Group
            The one thing I give him credit for is extending the disabled car scheme to those disabled with learning difficulties and the like.
            They too have enormous problems with public transport etc – not just the physically disabled….
            I know of a case in point myself.

            The one thing I find very hard to forgive him for is the Maasticht Treaty.
            He forced it through and it would have finished us off but for Brexit.

          3. What a highly obnoxious persistent troll you are.

            You’ve been stalking me for over a week now.

            Blocked and reported.

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