Tuesday 16 June: Is shopping till we drop as patriotic as it has been cracked up to be?

Posted on by Geoff Graham

An unofficial place to discuss the Telegraph letters, established when the DT website turned off its comments facility (now reinstated, but not as good as ours),
Intelligent, polite, good-humoured debate is welcome, whether on or off topic. Differing opinions are encouraged, but rudeness or personal attacks on other posters will not be tolerated. Posts which – in the opinion of the moderators – make this a less than cordial environment, are likely to be removed, without prior warning.  Persistent offenders will be blacklisted.

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/06/15/lettersis-shopping-till-drop-patriotic-has-cracked/

731 thoughts on “Tuesday 16 June: Is shopping till we drop as patriotic as it has been cracked up to be?”

      2. Oddly enough, I went to bed at a sensible time last night and am now ready to enjoy the full day without cat-naps.

  2. First statues, then people. Spiked. 16th June 2020.

    Before waves of action to remove the employment, rights, property and dignity of persecuted people comes years of animosity fostered through misuse of history and quasi-scientific theories. Then comes iconoclasm; then comes legal discrimination; then (though not always) comes blood. What we are experiencing now may not lead to bloodshed. Let us pray and act to prevent such an eventuality. We must act now to prevent escalation by ending the iconoclasm and public shaming. That includes ‘public acts of atonement’. Stand firm; say people (whatever their race, nationality or political beliefs) should not be forced or encouraged to supplicate.

    Morning everyone. Of course it will end in blood. That is its purpose and the means by which the murderers will be bound to the New Order by their crimes. The German people were obligated to serve Hitler by being his accomplices in genocide. The Russians by the Gulag and the French by the Terror.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/06/16/first-statues-then-people/

      1. The Covid pandemic, while having its own impact, appears to be acting as a catalyst for uprisings around the World e.g. BLM and Antifa spreading their own brand of hate on the streets and now Arabs and Chechens going at each other in Dijon. One could conclude that the appearance of the virus and the uprisings are mere happenstance, or not.

    2. If the PTB didn’t have a desire for blood on the streets they wouldn’t be quite so keen to import, legally or illegally, a demographic that has a record of bloody conquest going back 1,400 years. What is truly ridiculous is that the same PTB get worked up into a lather about the Democratic Football Lads and the Veterans.

      1. Morning all 😊
        And hopefully squirming in self inflicted agony.
        Oh dear.

        Last night there was a programme on bbc 4 TV, this apparently was about the ‘black roman guards’ stationed at Hadrians wall. Sadly I missed it. 😕
        But of course would have been delighted to have seen such a great and thoughtful (propaganda filled) programme. Those ‘guards’ must have been delighted to have been able to volunteer for such an important duty as part of the roman empire.

        2. Those black guards; they wouldn’t have been slaves by any chance?
          Shirley Knott

          1. No, certainly not. Under Agricola’s first “Hearts and Minds” campaign, black legions were sent to the Northern Frontier. All of the officers and men were black, recruited from North Africa. Many of the officers were Carthaginian mercenaries. This was clever thinking by Agricola and his successors. Most of the Roman legions were entirely composed of white soldiers. The people on the other side of the Northern Frontier were coloured. Their colour was very dark blue and the Romans have no soldiers with blue skin. The Nubians and other Africans were the nearest that they had, It was Agricola’s hope that this closer similarity of skin tone would allow a peaceful rapprochement with the Northern tribes.
            However, this was not to be. After a very irritating series of raids by the Pictish tribes from the North, Agricola sent the Ninth Legion deep into Pict territory to teach the tribes a lesson. The black men of the Legion found the Picts and battle ensued. The Picts ate the men of the Ninth Legion and no trace of them was ever found.

        3. Odd that there’s no mention of slavery reparation in Rome. After all, they had proper form. No cotton farms for them, straight into the arena.

    2. Made my day, Rik. If the Graun was forced to close tomorrow it wouldn’t be too soon. Show no mercy!

  8. Jo Cox’s sister calls for ‘compassion and kindness’ on anniversary of murder. Tue 16 Jun 2020.

    Cox, 41, was shot and stabbed by far-right extremist Thomas Mair on 16 June 2016. She had been the Labour MP for Batley and Spen for just over a year when she was killed by Mair in Birstall, West Yorkshire, part of her constituency.

    “But I sometimes feel that I can’t even begin to deal with the grieving process while there is still so much work to be done on the issues Jo cared about during her life, and indeed the issues raised by her brutal murder at the hands of a right-wing extremist and white supremacist.”

    I knew as soon as I saw the title that there would be something in here about the “far Right” though Mair’s advancement to being a “white Supremacist” is new. Still I suppose it’s all grist to the “Evil Whitey” Mill!

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jun/16/jo-coxs-sister-calls-for-compassion-and-kindness-on-anniversary-of

    1. Yo Minty

      If you go by TV adverts and programmes etc, Whitey will soon become a thing of the past

      Every family will now have to have at least one half caste member

      Therein lies the problems

      The BLM peeps will not be happy with that, so Beige will become the new White, until a descendant of one of these

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

      is named Emperor of the World

      My impression of the BLM peeps, is that they are mostly of ‘African’ heritage, at times going back gererations, they
      will not be happy with the ‘Asians’ reaping the benfits of they labours

      I am just glad that I am old

    4. The guardian’s tedious racism is inherent in every word they utter. It’s boring now.

      1. ‘Moring, Hugh.

        I usually spend an hour before getting up reading, so my specs are clean when I look at the eastern horizon.

  11. What do you call a multiple convicted felon who sticks a gun in the belly of a pregnant black woman during a home invasion??
    Yes that’s right “A Thug”
    https://twitter.com/puffin1952/status/1272418597110001664
    Actually I can think of many worse things to call him but hey the Outrage Bus to Societal Suicide is now boarding with untold morons clamouring for tickets
    Still the odd sane voice about thank the lord
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/55ad8fbb7409f695403e8d8a9eddf8bcaee3a51bd5a67a8bf8457cea0dcc99e5.jpg

  13. This disastrous lockdown can never be repeated, even if the virus returns. 15 June 2020 • 10:00pm.

    In particular, ministers should listen carefully to Tony Blair. That is not an easy sentence for me to write, given that I spent four years of my life as his official arch-enemy. But the report published earlier this month by his Institute for Global Change argues persuasively for the Government to prepare now for testing on a truly massive scale – involving millions of tests every week as people enter the country, arrive at work, attend conferences or just decide to go out.

    His argument is that a wide range of rapid tests are now under development and that they can be rolled out faster with Government funding, commitment and accelerated permissions. Many are being developed by British firms. While the cost would run into billions of pounds, it would be very little compared to the costs of one day of lockdown and could even be financed through special bonds.

    I have to confess to some ignorance here as the usefulness of these tests has completely passed me by. Nevertheless, that they are recommended by Blair, is sufficient to tell me to avoid them at all costs.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/15/disastrous-lockdown-can-never-repeated-even-virus-returns/

    1. In particular, ministers should listen carefully to Tony Blair.

      I could read no further, sorry

      1. 320187+ up ticks,
        Afternoon Bob,
        I do believe quite the reverse Bob as in, we have a
        great number of the met plods suffering serious
        emotional damage and torment on account of having such a leader.

  16. Morning all

    SIR – Now that shops are reopening, we are encouraged to be patriotic and spend, spend, spend.

    Yet many goods are made in China or Far-Eastern sweat shops. How is buying these patriotic, and how does it support our own manufacturing base?

    Andrew McAllister

    Shrewsbury

    SIR – I am nervous in crowded places, like many emerging from lockdown.

    In the short term, I shall only seek essential services. I do not believe that it is my responsibility to risk my health to keep unprofitable businesses afloat.

    John Catchpole

    Beverley, East Yorkshire

    SIR – Retail businesses that treat their customers like disease-ridden pariahs will quickly lose trade.

    If they feel the need to conform to the “new normal”, they should do so with courtesy, or the decimated high street will cease to exist entirely.

    Kim Halliday

    Newport, Essex

    SIR – My inbox has messages from retailers saying they are now open, but there are no toilet facilities. How dim is that? No loos, no shopping.

    Tim Pope

    Weybridge, Surrey

    SIR – Being unlocked now in Australia to a greater extent than people in the UK, I can reassure the British that as one starts to socialise at home and go out to restaurants, anxiety soon dissipates and common sense kicks in.

    We continue to wear masks in supermarkets and busy shops. Restaurants space us out to one person per four square metres. We only go to restaurants on our own or with friends as inclined as we are to stay safe, who would not come if they felt ill.

    At home we have had four occasions to invite friends or family for meals. We spread guests out as much as possible, generally a metre apart.

    In short, this is as normal as you would expect.

    Ben Sington

    Blairgowrie, Victoria, Australia

    SIR – What a pity that allowing Black Lives Matter rallies and counter demonstrations has been taken as permission for others with nothing on their minds but selfish pleasure to attend raves. To them it appears that No Lives Matter.

    Denis Sharp

    Backwell, Somerset

    SIR – A local beer garden has groups of people complying with the two-metre rule and enjoying a drink and chat with friends. Drinks and snacks are bought from the shop next door. Yet the nearby pub has to remain closed.

    Ann Hyett

    Yate, Gloucestershire

    SIR – Since we are asked to be flexible and work from home, when will train operators be more flexible with ticket pricing? For many people it is simply uneconomic to buy a season ticket to be used only, say, three days a week, or to buy three daily tickets.

    Ian Rennardson

    Tunbridge Wells, Kent

    1. Mr McAllister needs to remember the current Government advice: “Stay alert” and first check the source of the goods on display in the shops he frequents before making his purchases. That way he can “spend, spend, spend” without supporting countries he disapproves of.

      1. ‘Morning, Elsie.

        I cannot understand the mentality of the morons shown yesterday queueing in some cases shoulder to shoulder outside newly re-opened stores to
        spend, spend, spend like badly-disciplined kids whose pocket money is burning a hole in their pockets. What on Earth is the rush about?
        I shall be continuing my weekly shop in W/rose to buy food & drink for many weeks to come & shan’t be going anywhere near any other type of shop, except possibly in an emergency.

        1. “I cannot understand the mentality of the morons shown yesterday queueing in some cases shoulder to shoulder outside newly re-opened stores to
          spend, spend, spend like badly-disciplined kids whose pocket money is burning a hole in their pockets.”

          Me too, Peddy. And I can’t understand why the moronic, posturing BBC spent so much time of their so-called news programmes visiting queues of seemingly brainless shoppers and asking endless stupid questions. Still, I suppose there is nothing our Broken Broadcasting Cretins enjoy more than a stupid ‘shopping story’, which provides endless cheap trivia to fill the hours as they wander around with a huge microphone on a long stick to bore the pants off viewers…

    2. I got a 3-year Senior Railcard last October at a cost of £70. I haven’t used it yet. You win some and you lose some!

      1. We have two of those.
        A tiny amount when we have heard of the amount of money friends are at risk of losing from holiday bookings. Thousands.

    3. I think it is important that the people of the UK go out and spend money on trainers and tacky goods from the Far East. Otherwise there might be lay-offs in Indonesia, Vietnam, China and other places. Think of all those poor kids of ten or twelve years old losing their jobs

  17. SIR – While people in England are enjoying free movement, dentistrys, shops and soon pubs reopening, we in Wales are still under house arrest.

    We are allowed to travel up to five miles from home, but that does not help those who have family further away. We have police road blocks checking our movements, no shops, no dentists and definitely no pubs.

    In 1998 the Labour government brought in the Human Rights Act, which entitled us to a family life, the right to free movement and the right to freedom from state interference. We were prepared to suspend these for a short time when the crisis was at its peak, but not indefinitely.

    Mark Drakeford, the Welsh Labour First Minister, said last week that easing travel restrictions was “not on my list of things to change” in the current three-week review period, which ends on June 18. The Welsh Assembly seems to be acting as an unaccountable totalitarian regime.

    With infections falling, there is no reason why we should not responsibly be able to visit our families.

    Simon Davison

    Cardiff

    1. One might think the Welsh socialists are hoping to see the economy collapse totally and are acting accordingly.

      The Tories will get the blame and a socialist dystopia can be put in their place.

    3. The Little People are taking over, Mr Davison, and Drakeford (and Krankie and her gang) are all drunk with power.

      ‘Morning, Epi.

    4. Whatever rule is relaxed in England, the Welsh keep in place. But their kids can go to school.

    5. ‘Morning, Epi and a note to Simon Davison who whines, “The Welsh Assembly seems to be acting as an unaccountable totalitarian regime.”

      I can only respond with, “Your get what you vote for, Butty Boy.” and question if these ‘totalitarian’ Assemblies and Wee, Pretendy Parliaments are really necessary?

    6. That’s what comes of voting (by a very narrow margin) to have your own Assembly. If you’d stayed under English rule, you’d have had your restrictions lifted partially by now. As ye sow, so shall ye reap.

  18. SIR – I agree with the Police Federation request for public demonstrations to be banned during the Covid-19 outbreak (report, June 15).

    I cannot understand the logic in imposing a 14-day quarantine on UK arrivals, but allowing, for two successive weekends, mass demonstrations with no regard for the lockdown rules.

    Priti Patel and her Home Office officials should have taken a firm stand, yet they ran scared because the theme of the demonstrations was ostensibly racial inequality.

    Kim Potter

    Lambourn, Berkshire

  20. SIR – Those opposed to the reopening of schools are opposing the one thing that has done, and will do, most to address inequality.

    Philip Crowe

    Sheffield, South Yorkshire

    SIR – As Boris Johnson says (Comment, June 15), there were black as well as white slave traders. History is more complicated than commonly depicted.

    Dr Peter I Vardy

    Runcorn, Cheshire

    1. The traffic in slaves was dominated by Arabs and black Africans including thousands upon thousands of whites stolen from the coasts of England to Spain and Italy. The trade routes of Arabia are littered with the bones of those that fell under the whip.

    1. 320187+ up ticks,
      Morning HJ,
      The spread has got more dangerously noticeable these last two decades.
      The main source must surely,surely be from kissing ( X )
      lab/lib/con candidates in the secrecy of the polling booth.

      1. Time to reclaim it back then.

        Also time to abolish (outlaw) it and set up a school that teaches Common Sense in its place.

    3. Well if nothing else the long term invasion of Europe is going well.
      France is in trouble again Protagonists in Dijon have taken to the streets with guns axes and other weapons. Apparently named as Chechens. Looking at the available pictures of the armed thugs on the daily express website, there must some sort of geographical mix up.

        2. So brave and with such utter belief that their cause is lawful, that they hide their faces. Cowards.

          1. There’s a pandemic on donchano? We will all have to wear one just to catch the bus.

    4. If there was ever any doubt about the idea that the higher echelons of our public services has been infiltrated and compromised by a subversive group, then this nonsense should put those doubts to rest. Neither the Tories nor Labour will cleanse this filth from the top as they are complicit in its rise and spread. Only a new political party or a popular uprising will sort this out.

      1. ‘Morning, Korky, Nigel is apparently, resuscitating Britain First.

        it will be interesting to see what alliances he makes.

        1. If there are any decent politicians left in Westminster they must be appalled and ashamed by what is happening and they should join Nigel Farage and help make ‘Britain First’ a proper political force. Owen Paterson and John Redwood spring to mind – but are there any other decent candidates amongst the heaving mass of stinking excrement which sullies the benches of the House of Commons?

        2. Rumours about Farage stepping back into the political spotlight have been around for a couple of weeks. With Johnson turning into a wobbly blancmange and his Cabinet all over the place due to lack of leadership, Farage should appeal to many very disappointed Tories. If he can retain the support from many of the ex-Labour people in the North and Midlands he really could put the frighteners on the two leading parties.

          He will have to be careful to whom he speaks as the MSM will be out to destroy him and his party. As he said once before, “no more Mr Nice Guy,” and this time mean it.

  22. SIR – Pulling down statues is all very well, but the next step – burning the books – is not advised, as it will delay the goal of zero carbon emissions.

    Malcolm Parkin
    Kinnesswood, Kinross

    I like parkin but not when burnt.

  23. Good morning all. A misty start in North Narfurk.

    I was busy yesterday being offended and defacing things.

    2. I was also offended Bill, after seeing recent weather forecasts I’d expected more rain. Two of my butt’s are now empty. 😠
      Tommies and courgette plants are growing well, as are two fine aubergine plants. A gift from our neighbour. For which I presented them with a nice loaf of freshly baked bread.

    3. Good morning, Bill

      I went further. I committed genocide in my back garden. That’ll teach the critters to eat my strawbs.

    4. I chucked out some ancient shortbread. Does that count as defacing things? A practice run, mayhap.

  24. There’s an Actual Playbook for Everything Happening Right Now and the US Wrote It. But Who Is Using It Against Us? June 10 2020.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8db1c72e5aae55708c97f886354cc17ef5868eb2dea371a473f8886e55992325.png

    The playbook I’m referring to in this article is the US Special Forces Unconventional Warfare Manual from 2010. These were methods that the United States military employed against Libya.

    https://www.theorganicprepper.com/playbook-step/

    1. This has been routine in the military since at least Churchill let loose the SOE onto occupied Europe in WW2, radicalising and supporting the French Resistance. I am sure such methods go back to antiquity, as any classics scholar could tell you.

      Don’t let’s pretend though that the Americans are the only ones at it.

    2. Seems to chime with my analysis of the last couple of weeks. Overall we seem to be close to the top end where Guerrilla Action kicks in.
      France is apparently there, in Dijon* anyway. Marseilles, Toulouse, Paris soon?

      * I hope that none of the mustard producers are affected.

  26. Calamity! LBC news reporting that next year’s awards ceremony season has been put back due to the pandemic.😎

    1. Which is terrible news for my brother-in-law who is one of the few sound engineers in the world good enough to deal with the technical side of such events.

      1. Just think how many ‘speeches’ will have be rewritten to include lengthy references to BLM!

        1. I wonder how many award winners will bend the knee while accepting their prizes.

    3. Any particular award or the whole boiling lot. (Fingers crossed, – please let it be the latter.)

  27. Treated to the sight of 4 hoopoes together in the garden this morning. They’ve been occasional visitors in the past, usually in ones or twos, but never 4 together before. Curious birds.

  28. SIR — With gender change there are implications for the succession of hereditary titles. If an eldest child, born a female, declares herself now to be male, will that child then take precedence over a younger sibling who was born a male?

    In any event, it is surely time to amend the rules of primogeniture for the succession of peerages and baronetcies.

    Sir Michael Ferguson Davie Bt
    Bath, Somerset

    I beg* your forgiveness, Sir Mick (even though I’m not down on one knee), but I apologise for coming across as a proletariat — maybe even Lefty — pleb.

    Why should the sons (or daughters) of nobility automatically inherit titles they have not earned? This silver-spoon syndrome is responsible for all manner of talent-free, uppity, chinless wonders finding themselves in unearned positions of influence over those who have grafted hard all their lives in an attempt to keep the country great and functioning. Let them first display that they are doing something positive to benefit the country before they are handed their gongs and positions of influence over the little people.

    [*This is a figure of speech: I never beg, under any circumstances!]

    2. Dont you think it’s a parent’s right to pass their lot on to their children, Grizz?

      1. By all means pass on the wealth etc, but get rid of the titles, apart from those in direct line of succession to the crown.
        They could also get rid of the life-peerages etc.

        3. The hereditary peerage as part of the monarchical system is surely one of the wonders of Britain.

          Only the jealous and socialists want to destroy it.

          1. It might have been once. Unfortunately, like so much nowadays, it has been totally cheapened from top to bottom.

      2. Morning, D-cup. Indeed I do when it comes to what they’ve earned in life; however, that doesn’t apply to titles.

        Each title should be earned by the recipient, not merely handed down.

        2. Morning Grizz, Just scrap titles and while they’re at it scrap the honours system

        3. Maybe that’s coz you’re not in line to pick one up ?

          Shame really. The Duke of Drizzle sounds quite fun.

    3. It was delightful that Prince William chose to study History of Art at University.

      This is a bit of a thorn in the side of the hereditaries at Longleat, particularly with the eighth Marquis. His father, the seventh Marquis, specialised in pornographic murals, with which he liberally and generously decorated the state rooms. During the documentary, it seems they unearthed in the attic a landscape collected by the sixth Marquis, painted by an Austrian artist with an elegant trimmed moustache, who went on to become a world leader for 1000 years.

    5. I’ve known Michael for decades. He and his father live/lived very modestly, never having any ‘silver spoon’ or meaningful influence over anyone’s life other than their immediate family. Michael’s son, an only child, was killed in a motoring accident aged 17 and I don’t know which distant cousin might inherit the baronetcy. Michael’s principal interests are cricket, bridge, and getting the hell out of the EU.

      SuperMac brought in the Life Peerages Act in 1958. Other than the Royal Family, very few hereditary titles have been granted since then. Willie Whitelaw was made a Viscount but as he had four daughters and no sons, that title was short lived. Denis Thatcher was made a baronet on Maggie’s insistence because she wanted her precious (and I think ghastly) son Mark to inherit something.

      I find your chippiness every bit as outdated as hereditary titles.

      1. Why is a valid opinion “chippiness”? Simply because it doesn’t concur 100% with your opinion? This is a discussion forum to air various points of view. I don’t call you out for having a different point of view from me.

        Your friend, the letter writer, might very well be a good egg and a decent chap; however, that doesn’t alter my personal opinion on the topic of heredity.

        Just look at some of the gormless and clueless chinless wonders that the Royal Family have produced over the centuries. Now try telling me that inheriting titles of power and grandeur in their case was a good thing.

    6. Anything that feeds into the Left wing agenda I am against. A good reason as any for keeping the Titles.

    7. ‘Morning, George, on the other hand stuffing the upper chamber with political harlots, ousting the Law Lords and ‘bending the knee’ to Blair’s ‘Supreme Court’ has proved to be an unmitigated disaster.

      That is why I would uphold the idea of pruning the House of Lords to the hereditaries and law lords only and giving them back the right to oversee the Commons by delaying the implementation of anti British Bills for one year, while still modifying and amending other bills. The Supreme Court must be disbanded.

      I say all this for, despite all your railing against inheritance, those who inherit titles also, very often, inherit land and thus have a vested interest in perpetuating Britain’s culture and mores, as they have grown over the last 1,000 years.

          1. Morning Tom, That’s not what I was talking about. I mean’t the land is a separate entity, the title of the landowner is irrelevant

          2. Titled landowners are key to the Lords. A title is needed to sit in the Lords. If the Lord is also a landowner, their wealth is rooted in the land. They will not just up sticks to go elsewhere. By and large what is good for the land is good for the country.
            A couple of months ago a Russian landowner on the way to his castle in the Scottish Highlands was stopped by the police who asked him why he was breaking lockdown to travel to a second home. He gave the police a satisfactory response (not made public) and the police allowed him to proceed.
            I hardly think we wish to have Russian gangsters sitting in the Upper Chamber. That is why hereditary peers who own land are the answer. Imperfect as it is.

    9. They changed the rule of primogeniture anyway (thanks Clegg). The firstborn, irrespective of how it sees its gender, will now inherit.

  29. All those disgruntled people wasting their time attacking statues and being a general nuisance could all be industriously and physically enjoying themselves out in the fields picking fruit.

      1. He mentions that commercial broadcasters- which rely on ad revenue are seeing this fall, as their advertisers pull out having been targeted by activists in large numbers. He says that this has happened to Tucker Carlson in the USA on his show and reminds us how dangerous this new attack on the norms of settled society is becoming. Just as we saw companies jump on the bandwagon burnishing their credentials by supporting this wave of protest, presumably many of them are cutting and running when commentators try and inject some sense into the argument. Strange times, to say the least.

        1. 320187+ up ticks,
          N,
          Strange times indeed, my way of thinking is a good product will always sell.
          Bandwagons = political life rafts and
          cutting and running there is no one better to ask than “nige”

        3. How many companies must we stop using because of their capitulation and sycophancy?

          Yorkshire Tea and Olay are two amongst very many

    2. This interview with Nigel Farage needs more people to listen to it and more upticks.

    3. In that small photo Nigel looks as though butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, just like my yellow Lab..

  31. Just as his favourite bar opens for the day, a guy walks in and to his surprise hears a voice saying, “Those are really nice shoes you’re wearing.”

    He looks round but he’s the first customer. No-one else is there but the bartender. Again this voice is heard, “That suit you have on is real sharp, too!”

    The customer asks the bartender, “Say, Mike, did you hear that? Who said that?”

    Mike points to a bowl on the bar and replies, “It was the complimentary peanuts.”

  32. The more I think about it the more I have sympathy with the statue topplers, all this time during the lockdown, 6 weeks or more the statues have been staring at them, while they have been trapped indoors, eating away at them mentally while the statues have been outside in the fresh air lauding it on their plinths saying look at me, I’m outside, the people just couldn’t help themselves really, the statues had it coming, if only they had covered them up earlier.

    2. 320187+ up ticks,
      Morning B3,
      Plus we have whole audiences arriving at Dover daily
      on an inclusive all benefits paid via the welfare state (tax payer) to watch and eventually participate.
      Could I be right in thinking that we the indigenous REALLY DO LIKE IT UP US that is what the ballot booth is clearly showing.

  34. Good morning all

    It felt like a very muggy night last night . Bright and warm here now.

    We switched on the BBC TV Breakfast just as they were wheeling in the ‘brave’ black chap who the media filmed carrying the besieged white guy over his shoulder after he had been lynched .. The BBC extolled his bravery , his children and wife were part of the little family Zoom group, smiling happily with daddy

    BBC didn’t ASK him why he attended the protest , and why was he endangering the health of his wife and kids re the virus , by him being present at the demo.

  35. Interesting test.

    How many of you got your daily dose of Black Lies Matter this morning but were completely unaware of a small scale war taking place in the city of Dijon in France?

    Still paying your licence fee?

    Spread the word.

    1. Chechens vs Algerians & Arabs.
      So long as they do not involve innocent parties, I’d say time to sit back, enjoy the spectacle and then go in to clear up afterwards.

        1. And, sadly, therein lies the problem.
          How long before inter-gang warfare kicks off in London?

          1. Surely inter-gang warfare in London has already been going on for years.

    2. NOTTL is ahead of the game: there was an alert late on yesterday’s page (I found it too depressing to actually watch the video posted, which appeared to promise yet another city on fire accompanied by riots).

    3. I remember visiting London on a work contract many years ago and to my astonishment learning that a full scale battle with knives, axes and assorted weapons between Greek and Turkish Cypriots had taken place very near to my hotel. I turned on the TV expecting to be fully informed as to the nature of this struggle and discovered so little that I asked my source the next day if it was true. It was! This was one of those incidents that first alerted me to the realities of the UK!

    1. Will there be special consideration for those of us affected by the murder of David Dorn?

      For some reason his death doesn’t seem to fit the agenda.

      1. I was “impacted” by the riots in London by the black mob.

        Can I have a supplement to my pension, please?

        1. I can think of another use of the word ‘impact’ but probably not one they would like. It is what my history teacher used to do with a couple of text books when I was staring out of the window and dreaming of freedom.

          2. My school wasn’t – one of the more bad tempered teachers once threw the entire blackboard [board of colour?] at our class – luckily it was so heavy it didn’t even reach the front row!

      1. ‘Morning, Hugh, and he’s having to face up to his whiteness and all the inherent sins, therein attached.

    5. It IS divided by racism though. There are a bunch of people rioting, looting and vandalising public property in the name of their skin colour.

      The vast majority are thinking how bonkers this is and want to treat people by their actions. We’re all that same group being insulted and attacked for NOT supporting the racists.

  38. Disgraced ex-Labour MP Fiona Onasanya slams Kellogg’s for using a monkey as the mascot for ‘brown’ Coco Pops but ‘three white boys’ on Rice Krispies
    Fiona Onasanya has contacted Kellogg’s regarding the Coco Pops mascot
    She asked why the chocolate-flavoured cereal is represented by a monkey
    Ms Onasanya said sister cereal Rice Krispies has ‘three white boys’ as mascot

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8423841/Disgraced-ex-MP-Fiona-Onasanya-slams-Kelloggs-using-MONKEY-mascot-Coco-Pops.html

    1. The Peterborough liar who could shove a whole cereal packet into her mouth sideways.

    2. ‘three white boys’. Should have gone to Specsavers. They are reformed trolls, certainly not human as we know it.

    3. Who cares what a convicted liar and fraudster thinks about anything.

      Good morning.

      1. Er – think Huhne, Price…et al.

        This tart has the added advantage of being of color – so her views are 1,000% more important than anyone else’s.

      2. Who cares what a convicted liar and fraudster thinks about anything.

        Good morning.

        Well, to the extent we have millions of similar dark-skinned buzzers, our cares are manifold …

    4. The fact that people like this can somehow get into Parliament must be the 8th wonder of the world. Tribal loyalty, I suppose. After all, the Abbopotomus has survived all these years.

    5. When they did a jargon buster on ITV about how to read a racecard, the cartoon character was brown. I wondered if they were unintentionally being derogatory in portraying the ignorant person as BAME. 🙂

  39. Arrive wearing your costume and avoid butterfly: Swimmers face strict rules when pools reopen after months on lockdown under new guidelines unveiled by sport’s governing body
    Swim England unveiled guidelines to ‘reduce the risk of Covid-19 transmission’
    Sport’s governing body said the reopening of pools is not ‘business as usual’
    Swimmers are not to arrive at pools if they have symptoms of the coronavirus
    They should arrive to pools with costumes under their clothes, rules state
    Here’s how to help people impacted by Covid-19

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8425595/Swimmers-face-strict-rules-pools-reopen-months-lockdown.html

    1. Will they have temperature checkers? The BBC ones are fun. One morning I had a temperature of 35.3C, which is close to hypothermia and one poor guy walked into New Broadcasting House to be told his temp was 43C, which must be life threatening if not actually dead – but once the checker stand was moved away from the TV monitor, it gave an accurate reading. It’s all bollocks of course.

      1. Good morning Sue

        What happens if some one is having a series of hot flushes , some of the presenters look as if they could be suffering from menopausal symptons , and of course all the studio lights cannot help matters can they?

          2. I used to refer to the boss’s wife in Ostfriesland as Nagina. She was attractive but venomous.

            I sometimes wondered if the staff thought I was mispronouncing it.

          4. I once did an exchange where the bedroom I was allocated had a stuffed mongoose killing a cobra beside the bed! A bit of a nightmare for a herpetophobe!

        2. Morning Belle!

          Having a hot flush actually lowers your body temp, as it’s the body expelling heat. I walked in all hot and bothered this morning and registered just 36C.

    2. Our pools reopened this week. Restrictions imposed on our gym are strict -you must book a lane, no changing room access, no more than six in the pool area. No more than nine in the aquafit classes. It’s all the effort of fitness with none of the fun.

    3. ‘Morning, Belle.

      Are they allowed to remove their wet costumes before getting dressed?

  40. It must be the hypocrite season, Hamilton pontificating on BLM.

    https://www.express.co.uk/sport/f1-autosport/1296411/Lewis-Hamilton-Support-Black-Lives-Matter-Austrian-Grand-Prix-Action-Take-A-Knee-F1-News

    Perhaps he should read this before preaching to all and sundry. He seems more than happy to drive for a company with a history of using slave labour and get paid millions of pounds doing it. Only selective history matters to some w⚓️

    https://openlibrary.org/books/OL10195762M/Mercedes_in_Peace_and_Wa

        1. “You can have any colour you like as long as it’s black”. (Henry Ford)

  41. If hordes of shoppers are free to mob Primark, why can’t they go back to work? June 16 2020.

    The first thought that occurred to me as I saw the crowds queuing to get into shops yesterday morning was: Why aren’t they at work?
    Some of the bargain hunters jostling outside Nike Town, on London’s Oxford Street, looked as if they’d come straight from a Black Lives Matter demo.

    Queue jumpers tried to force their way to the front, desperate to get their hands on a new pair of cut-price trainers.

    They could of course; just as the kids could go back to school and we could dispense (the people have actually) with the six foot rule. But maintaining these things also means perpetuating the sense of crisis which is an important part of the ongoing destabilisation process.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8424223/RICHARD-LITTLEJOHN-hordes-shoppers-free-mob-Primark-work.html

    1. Working is fraught with danger, Minty. You might pick up a nasty bug. Far better to stay away, pick up 80% of your pay and enjoy yourself.

      1. Yes, a lengthy holiday courtesy of the taxpayer and to hell with the future! (What future, they cry…)

        ‘Morning, Bill. Another day, another fresh round of malignant wokeness. Nice drop of rain just now, enough to convince me that watering isn’t necessary this evening.

      2. So many of these people are due to return only to find their jobs are no longer there.
        I sympathise with those who had no choice but to stay home, I know of many who want to return if only to try to help their company to survive.
        My grandson yesterday attended a meeting where he was told he was being made redundant, the firm is going bust and will not survive.
        The country is going to go through a very rough patch, and as normal, the man in the street is going to suffer the consequences.

    1. Can you send this tweet Boris Johnson as well, and point out that he’s lost a lot of future votes and support following his scurrilous article in the Telegraph? The guy lying on the ground, the one beaten up by a BLM mob is the racist and thug, apparently, according to Boris…

    1. When I saw that on last night’s “news” I thought it was the statue of Alison Lapper that was on the 4th plinth a while ago.

          1. If they are that far behind, they probably have no use for electricity either.

          3. I’ve recently bought a new one as my old one died while we were away in February. I didn’t really miss it for three months. My husband had a £5 PAYG one – stopped using it and never replaced it.

      2. All the nice girls love a candle,
        All the nice girls love that wick,
        Because there’s something about a candle,
        That reminds them….

    1. I can no longer access Twitter links from Disqus and not being a user can’t see the numerous videos posted here daily.
      I’m unsure if it’s my settings or the providers.

        1. Thank you.

          It’s how I’ve always done it previously if it won’t load.
          Now even that route is closed.

          2. You are a marked man.

            I find that if I click on the twitter link, the whole stream comes up and I can see the item referred to.

      4. For a while, I was an avid Twatt. Now it’s so I can’t be arsed. Almost never there now, it’s too shrill and bad tempered.

        1. I have two accounts – I can still use Help a Hedgehog though I never post anything political there.
          My Ndovu account was for tweeting petitions etc but it’s suspended and I have been unable to get Twitter to release it. Yet other people can post the most disgusting insults and that’s ok of course

          1. It will have been that time you told someone not to be such a prickly hedgehog.

            It offends almost everyone who wishes to be offended.

          2. The hedgehog one’s ok. The other one took part in a Tweetstorm calling for an end to wildlife’wet’markets.

            Perhaps I should been shrill and insulting to white people.

          4. They don’t like Tweetstorms. As my phone was dead I couldn’t put in a code to show I’m not a robot. I’ve tried appealing but all I’ve had were auto-responses.

  48. Just as the blossom of the rambler Seagull is fading, both Sander’s Whites on the west wall are opening.

    1. That looks like the recognition phrase used between two spies when meeting for the first time in the evening in a snowy Moscow, Peddy.
      :-))

    3. Maybe the Chinese have tweeked it a bit to make sure it does the job this time around.

    5. So it’s come from a Chinese wholesale market from Europe.
      Or did i misunderstand?

    6. I always thought it was a binary weapon,the “September Spike” was signposted way too early

      1. The point will come where people will be encouraged to catch it, according to a rota.

  52. Someone urinated near a plaque, remembering a police constable who
    died. That person has been jailed for a couple of weeks for committing
    “public disorder” or something – breaking the law
    We havemassive public disorder, rioting and smashing up statues etc –
    committing “public disorder” – breaking the law, yet the Police Service,
    who are supposed to uphold that very same law – Do nothing ? ?

    BLM Rules! – OK

      1. Would that be because they were ‘criminal while black’ and thus the state let them off?

      1. 320187+up ticks.
        Afternoon NTI,
        The three monkeys must die in the polling booth for sanity to return & GB to benefit.

          1. 320187+ up ticks,
            Evening NTI,
            Please read up on the rise of a true patriotic proven leader from 17th Feb 2018 one Gerard Batten UKIP leader for a year and a success story in the making.
            Then the take down of Gerard Batten after a successful run was taking shape, farage was inclusive in the take down.
            Best truest leader UKIP ever had, a founder member of 27 unbroken years service, never wavered.
            Currently the best of the worst is the age old voting mode, we would never have got to where we are without it, fools and their Country are soon parted.
            Check out G Batten / Richard Braine.

  54. Latest bulletin on the missing chainsaw bits from Latvia. I have written back to the suppliers with an update:

    “I have heard from my Member of Parliament, who promises to push British Customs for an explanation.

    The parcel containing order 4296 is still stuck at the Royal Mail Langley Heathrow Worldwide Distribution Centre, and they insist that British Customs have intercepted the batch containing the parcel and refuse to say what they have done with it. Any inspection is perfectly acceptable (and indeed your other parcel was opened by Latvian officials for examination), but this should take a couple of days at most (and usually just a few minutes), not 17 days and counting. If they are short-staffed because of coronavirus, the least they should do is to scan the bar code, so the parcel is accounted for.

    I am also interested that you have lost other parcels this way, and that this is affecting your business reputation. It is not good either for Latvijas Pasts, who rely on the parcels they send abroad getting through. You may well have a case yourself for a claim against the British authorities, and bodes ill for the trade deal between the EU and the UK, which most folk think is a good thing.

    I will keep you informed if anything changes.”

    I presume the managers responsible for allowing this nice little racket are safeguarded in their work, along with their bonuses and pension packages. I lost my job and had my pension cancelled at County Hall in Worcester because they didn’t like my beard, which flouted their policy of gender correctness among the staff.

    [Update – the parcel was finally delivered around lunchtime today. It had been damaged in the post, probably due to poor packing – the sharp edges of one of the parts would have ripped open the jiffy bag when it went through the sorting machine at Langley is the most likely explanation, and it probably never got to Customs. The Royal Mail therefore might well be using “Customs have taken it” as a standard diversion when something happens to a parcel, which sounds better than “our state-of-the-art machinery ate it”. Always blame the dog when sausages go missing! Not that the Royal Mail are immune themselves to a bit of scapegoatery. “It’s in the post” must have been used countless times by late payers.]

    2. Well, well, it’s all over the Black Broadcasting Corruption.

      Oh, wait a minute…

  56. How to choose a holiday…

    My husband bought a World map & gave me a dart.
    He said, “Throw it & wherever it lands, I’ll take you there for a holiday once the pandemic is over.”

    So, we’ll be spending 2 weeks behind the fridge,

    1. You’ve missed a trick there. Assuming you missed the map you’re off into space!

      1. peddy, I see cote Lewes are taking lunch time bookings fron the 4th July. I have just done an online booking for the following Tuesday. the grand Hotel at Eastbourne are doing the same.

        1. Mr N – about another matter entirely. A few weeks ago you said you had not received your driving licence, having had to re-apply for it in accordance with 70 yrs-and-over driving laws. My husband is of an age whereby he has had to re-apply for his driving licence, which he did online, mid-March. He is still waiting, and it is his birthday next week, at which point his old driving licence becomes invalid. All attempts to contact the DVLA have been met with a brickwall; a recorded message to say that they are working in accordance with the lockdown and will not be responding to emails or phone calls. His latest attempt was yesterday. I am just wondering if you have received your updated driving licence?

          4. Thank you for that information! We will do that.

            All this simply isn’t good enough – not only does one need one’s driving licence in order to drive, it is also required for identification purposes these days. And…… our passports ran out of date during lockdown. Charles’s was renewed very quickly, but mine took two months, and the applications were both sent off together. A cynic might well think this was deliberate (I do!). This has caused us no end of hassle in other areas of our lives, stress we could well do without at this time.

          5. You can still legally drive if you have applied for your licence but haven’t yet received it under Section 88, provided your doctor hasn’t told you not to. I had to do it for six months while the DVLA got their act together.

    2. It’s an Asian Hornet, as the article states. We had the beggers last year.

    1. I would be happier if control was not in the hands of the Foreign Office. There is a distinct possibility that the delivery method may change, the destinations remain the same.

  60. The aid sector must do more to tackle its white supremacy problem. Mon 15 Jun 2020.

    White supremacy is prevalent in the aid sector. The vast majority of heads of organisations and senior posts are held by white people – mostly men.

    Leadership positions are rarely held by local hires and are instead disproportionately staffed from countries such as France, Italy, the UK and the US: so-called developed – and overwhelmingly white – nations. There are many international staff from majority non-white countries; generally, they are slightly older, more often motivated by a desire to support their families, often less inclined to join activities centred around high levels of alcohol consumption that are typical of the aid worker social scene.

    Social events, just like in other industries, offer the opportunity to build trust and are spaces where informal discussions of employment opportunities occur. This leads to a type of thirtysomething club of white expats constantly giving each other a professional hand-up, at the expense of non-white international staff who remain a few levels below senior – predominantly white – management. A self-perpetuating system remains, as leadership continue to hire friends and contacts in this way.

    I quite agree! It’s time to get those Whiteys and their filthy money out of there and stop them putting those bloody begging adverts on TV as well.

    https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/jun/15/the-aid-sector-must-do-more-to-tackle-its-white-supremacy-problem

    1. …and, at home, remove all benefits from immigrants, legal or otherwise but allow those who have worked and contributed to the economy for five years, free access to the NHS and the benefits that we, who have paid for them, enjoy.

      Morning, Minty.

      1. That is common sense – but common sense is now illegal and could land you in prison.

        1. ‘Morning, Richard, you know that I prefer to call it good sense, ‘cos it ain’t that common.

      2. Exactly. It must stick in their craw to receive hand-outs from evil whitey.
        How bloody patronising is that!

        1. Well, could all payouts not be handled out in public? Recipients would have to queue up to receive payment in cash.

    2. Why then, is this white supremacy?

      The other groups don’t get involved and so miss out – same as I’m sure many other white fellows with families don’t. This doesn’t mean the white folks get the jobs, it means their colleagues know about them.

      The usual Lefty ‘it’s all Whitey’s fault’ is silly. The petulant ‘it’s because they drink too much, unlike the glorious abstainers’ is also silly.

  61. Good morning all. An interesting article on the ‘Silence is Violence’ slogan used by BLM:

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/06/16/no-silence-is-not-violence/?fbclid=IwAR2oANDzU3ef8SxkFJxd2ISfEmvt4y35uq9VX9akbUF8dh8h-7lI-tWA7m0

    It seems that it is not enough to silently agree that racial discrimination is bad (does anyone actually think that it is good)? We must loudly and publicly declare our support for BLM and other Woke causes or be publicly shunned. Many corporations and celebrities are jumping on the bandwagon, declaring their support for BLM or guilt over their ‘white privilege.’ No doubt, trying to feed the crocodile so that it will eat them last.

    I will not be forced to show support for an anarcho-communist group, any more than I will clap for ‘our NHS’ or go on a Pride march. This is forcing people to stay what they do not believe to avoid social repercussions. Just one more step towards a totalitarian state.

    2. That’s me, JK, with the exception of the penultimate sentence. But then, we don’t allow PC in Janus Towers.

    3. Discrimination was and is essential to all development.
      For proof see the work of Hengist Pod in “Carry on Cleo”.

    4. Silence is Violence.

      Slogans played an important part of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. One of the things about them is that they shouldn’t make sense since that makes them vulnerable to reason. They should in fact contradict reality.

      According to Shaorong Huang, the fact that the Cultural Revolution had such massive effects on Chinese society is the result of extensive use of political slogans. In Huang’s view, rhetoric played a central role in rallying both the Party leadership and people at large during the Cultural Revolution. For example, the slogan “to rebel is justified” (became a unitary theme).

      These slogans were a powerful and effective method of “thought reform”, mobilizing millions in a concerted attack upon the subjective world, “while at the same time reforming their objective world. WIKIPEDIA

  62. Can’t wait to join in with this: “Webinar 2 – Use mobile devices sensibly at 9.30 am “
    Can we use them sensibly (or otherwise) at other times of the day?
    :-))

    1. My Mama in the 1950s had 8/- a week (£0.40) each for my brother and me. Our sister, being the eldest, didn’t qualify.

      2. You got nothing for the first one or only child, which was the most expensive to keep – and when I had my second one in 1973 I got 90 pence per week.

  64. I see the Gummint has back-tracked on removing school meal vouchers over the Summer. Presumably they will now open the schools so the poor darlings can catch up on their lessons?

  65. Oh dear, New Zealand’s COVID-19 record has been tarnished by two Brits who were allowed to fly in on compassionate grounds.

  66. Bbc News report on the predominantly black Camden district in NJ, where the police force was disbanded and reformed in 2013. The move to less confrontational policing seems to have been successful, with a huge decrease in criminal behaviour. What wasn’t pointed out is that the majority of the police officers appear to be, er, Black.

    2. If nobody is arrested for criminal acts, does that mean there is no criminality?
      As in the Republic of wherever in Africa. They were asked why they had no corona cases, and answered “Because we have no testing kits”.

      1. In Mathematics there is an expression: “When you arrive at an infinite solution, renormalise”. In this case they could be simply turning a blind eye.

    3. ‘Afternoon, AA, same as our own lovely, crime-free Camden, innit?

      Oh, wait a minute…

      1. Can’t be any crime there, Tom – only yer peace-loving blecks live here.

  67. Excuse me for asking but are normal heterosexual white people doing anything newsworthy nowadays?

    Our news sources are so far into rainbow coloured black lives that they have forgotten to include any other news.

    1. Any parents who can’t feed their children need to have those children removed from them.

      Even those who were previously gainfully employed, are now unemployed and have fallen on hard times? Are there no prisons, are there no workhouses?

      1. 320187+ up ticks,
        Afternoon A,
        One may also ask are there areas of work many could be re-employed in say in a temporary nature until things pick up ?
        In my youth we use to see lines of field workers
        awaiting transport, very high % of indigenous.

      4. People should feed their own children and not expect others to do it for them. That’s what Child Benefit is for.

        1. “That’s what Child benefit is for.”

          But for many families it is for an extra session at the pub, courtesy of the taxpayer!

          1. The pubs have been shut for three months! They should have saved their beer money for the kids!

      5. When I worked for DWP I had a variety of roles, including “New Deal” adviser -some, but by no means all, actually wanted to get jobs.
        Some of the others we could rely on to have “lost their wallets” the day after theygot their benefits. Those people applied for “crisis loans” and had to say what had happened to their money.

        Some were quite inventive, others had broken down freezers that they had just restocked, etc. Others spent their money on fags, or their mobile phone bills, or Sky. The streets of Cirencester must have been paved with “lost wallets” that nobody ever found.

        So forgive me if I’m cynical. I’ve heard it all before.

  70. There was a time when I would have warned people that reading this article would have a bad impact on their blood pressure. Now, people are so inured to the crap that the time for warnings has passed.
    I haven’t put up the WordPress link because the site demands cookie acceptance without the ability to amend the settings: in addition it scrolls sideways and without accepting the cookies it is a mess to try and read.

    https://twitter.com/A_Liberty_Rebel/status/1272498941406445569

    1. ‘Afternoon, Korky, I know not why so many are in fear of ‘cookies’.

      They can easily be rid of by going to ‘History’ in your browser and deleting all.

      I do this now almost automatically when I log off and then run Ccleaner (a FREE application) that then looks for ALL rubbish on your hard-drive and deletes it. In over 20 years of Internet use, I’ve yet to be hacked or blackmailed.

      The use of good strong passwords helps – between 12 and 20 characters – I’ll leave you to work out how to remember them but the initial letters of lines from your favourite quotes, poems, soliloquies might give you a hint. Substitute numbers for words that are synonyms, maybe.

      1. Some cookies are useful and some are not. By ‘deleting all’ you make websites like this one impossible to work properly. That is probably the main reason you have trouble with it.

        1. ‘Afternoon, J, as I’ve said the only real trouble I ever had was with the ‘New Comments’ banner and Stig informed me that that was due to my blocking the Parrot and the Mad Dog. I’ve unblocked both and disgust seemed to work OK for a while bit now, if there are more than 200 posts, it plays up again. Hey-ho, just refresh, and refresh again.

          By the way, I’ve notified Ccleaner and SUPERantispyware to keep NTTL and DT Cookies.

          1. It starts to hide comments after about 200 – usually your own to start with. It’s just one of its limitations. Still it has its uses – and I wouldn’t want to be without this forum.

          2. I have no problem with this site using Safari, regardless of number of posts, except I have to back off security slightly to deal with the indirection that was introduced when we left “simple Disqus”.

            I use “private browsing” a lot as session cookies and history are wiped out when that window is closed. It reduces the amount of crazy so-called focused advertising I see – which always seems to start just after I’ve bought the item in question. Too late, I already got one!

      2. I’ve gone back to using Firefox because it can be set to delete history and cookies when I close it. Opera, which has some nice features that Firefox doesn’t, has to be manually cleaned out. Both browsers ‘leap about’ on Disqus and Firefox has a quirk when copying in text but for the moment I’ll stick with Firefox. I’m not fearful of cookies and using Firefox means that I do not have to concern myself with ‘History’ and memory being used for no good reason. I’ve been using CCleaner for years as well as SUPERAntiSpyware free edition.

  72. Breitbart,
    UK Foreign Office Says Statue of Clive of India ‘May Have to Go’
    How about the foreign office has definitely got to go along with the home office under it’s arm with ALL contents.

      1. They say that the baseball cap reduces the wearer’s IQ by 50% – but Hague’s was a deluxe model which reduced it by 62½%

    2. Wee Willie Vague true to form no matter who publishes his articles, the man is full of carp!

  75. Puzzle No. 761– Monday 15 June
    Mr and Mrs Smith have 3 daughters. Each daughter has a brother. How many in the family?

    ANSWER -There are 6 Each daughter share the son and there are the parents

    Today’s #PuzzleForToday has been set by David Feather a retired maths education lecturer

  76. Funny thing, yer science.

    According to the rain radar (which is usually pretty accurate) it is pissing down here. Just been outside to check. Dry as a bone.

    Same sort of science as Professor Branestorm used, I reckon…{:¬))

    1. Some years ago I contacted the Met Office about a rainfall radar picture that showed London experiencing a great downpour early one morning when the whole of the rest of the country was dry. “Fog” was the answer (actually warm air above cold air – temperature inversions can cause fog). Sometimes shower clouds have enough moisture in them to produce an echo but convection currents prevent the rain falling at the location of the echo.

      1. True, pretty much all weather radar shows is cloud density. Over a certain point that usually means rain – and the denser the cloud, the heavier the rain.

    2. Cracking thunderstorm here and it’s dark as night and pouring down. Saves the bother of watering.

      1. Sorry to learn of your skin problem; the pharmaciste will be able to suggest something soothing………{:¬))

  77. Labour shadow minister Lisa Nandy demands Foreign Office remove five giant ‘racist’ British Empire murals including one depicting ‘Africa as a little naked boy carrying a fruit basket’ in wake of Black Lives Matter protests

    Shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy is believed to have raised the works with Dominic Raab
    Pieces by Sigismund Goetze finished in 1921 include images of empire seen as problematic
    They feature controversial representation of Africa as a little boy surrounded by white adults

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8426075/Labours-Lisa-Nandy-demands-Foreign-Office-remove-five-giant-racist-British-Empire-murals.html

    1. Kipling’s poem, The White Man’s Burden is still very apropos – except he never foresaw the citizenry of empire drawing benefits.

    2. What about strong acid and then spend the next week washing any remaining flesh away.

  80. ‘I had pin prick eyes, sweating and vomiting’ Police officer tells of how he was poisoned by Russian nerve agent novichok ahead of new ITV drama. 12 June 2020

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/000daa2fc5b185c8596d9eda1f9dcab6e4f1fa678839202c8c2dcccb2d0e985a.png

    Really? I wonder why!

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7280fb088c6fdbff2a888dbf94f753ba91fbe7b3897323184268e2b12c750a00.png

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8415581/Police-officer-tells-terrifying-moment-poisoned-Russian-nerve-agent-novichok.html#comments

    2. I’ve been ‘half watching’ that series and frankly I can not see the point of it all.

        1. I just watched the third.
          Strange thing to put on TV, although the acting was pretty convincing.
          But no specific conclusions….make your own mind up sort of thing 😐

    3. Odd how DC Baliey’s house was contaminated everywhere, yet no other family members were affected. As they concluded in the prog, it must have been a miracle. Suppose it must have been.

  81. ‘People should thank me for not having kids’

    Cara McGoogan meets a filmmaker who is tackling the taboos around being child-free (DT 16/06/20).

    It wasn’t until Maxine Trump was in her late 40s that she could finally say with certainty: “I don’t want to have children.” The question had been hanging over her adult life — at 15, after she was operated on for a gangrenous Fallopian tube and problems with her womb, doctors told her she would have a number of miscarriages before she could conceive. In her 20s, travelling the world as a filmmaker, she didn’t want children to tie her down. This belief carried into her 30s, even as she met her husband, Granger, and bought a house in New York with him.

    She had difficult conversations with her mother and sister about how she thought her flighty career would prevent her from being a good mother. And she lost a best friend after a tense conversation in which she admitted she didn’t think kids were for her. But at the back of her mind, Trump still harboured doubts. As she entered her 40s, biological clock ticking, she realised she had to make a call on kids, once and for all – and decided to put herself in front of the camera for a documentary six years in the making. The result is To Kid or Not To Kid, an intimate portrayal of a taboo subject, in which Trump interrogates her own desires and challenges the stigma that still surrounds women who don’t want children. “I never dreamt of having kids,” says Trump, after revealing her scars at the start of the film. “Now, I’m angry that, as a woman in my 40s, I have to make this decision. [But] I never confessed to having second thoughts.”

    When Trump, 49, started making To Kid or Not To Kid, she hid behind the camera, asking other people about their decision to start a family. But she soon realised she needed to confront the question herself. “I wasn’t being very brave,” she says. “I was afraid to talk to people about it, because I wasn’t seeing my thoughts reflected back in society. I didn’t know anyone in my close circle of family or friends who had made this decision.”

    High-profile women, such as Oprah Winfrey, talk about their decision not to have kids, but it’s more difficult for those not in the public eye. For years, Trump couched her decision to delay having a family with concerns about her career — she needed to be able to travel to Alaska and film for 10 days straight without contact to the world. “I didn’t want to be an absent mother,” she says. “I was aware of what I’d put a child through.” Her husband offered, “to be the mum”, but it wasn’t enough.

    From people asking at her wedding when she planned to start a family, to those who contemplate how difficult it must be for her to make friends without the school gates to help, Trump has confronted stigma for most of her adult life. On social media, she is often trolled with comments such as “What’s your life worth if you don’t have kids?”, or: “You should be having kids, it’s what God expects of you.”

    The belief that people should have children is systemic, she adds, which makes it difficult for people to be open about their choices. In making the film, she unearthed government adverts encouraging people to have children. “There’s a Scandinavian one with a grandma actually undoing someone’s bra,” she says, as well as an Italian one celebrating Fertility Day. “And an Indian one saying: ‘Be responsible, don’t use a condom.’ How can these governments have any involvement in our reproductive choices?”

    “It’s a myth,” she continues, that more children are needed to tackle the problem of an ageing population. “I live in New York, my mum’s in Wales. It’s not the same as it was 15 years ago when you might have your grandmother living with you. We have a global workforce now.” Nevertheless, women who don’t have children still feel stigmatised and multiple people she approached refused to go on camera because they feared backlash in their social and professional lives. “It’s deemed to be hating children,” she says, adding that she loves kids, herself. “There are all these myths.”

    The tide is turning, says Trump, with younger generations feeling more comfortable having the discussion about whether or not they want children. Part of the reason is a growing awareness of the environmental impacts of having children. It comes as people choose to eat less meat, cycle rather than drive, and use recyclable products, she adds. “Six years ago, when I started making this film, that wasn’t anywhere,” she says. “There seems to be more of a passion for working this out. I feel it with younger people, which is really exciting to see, as someone who hasn’t been able to talk about not having kids. It feels like the taboo is starting to break.”

    Trump is partnered with Population Matters, a charity that campaigns for people to have smaller families to tackle climate change, of which Sir David Attenborough is patron. It encourages people to only have two children or fewer to stop population growth. “I was ambivalent about having children, so protecting the environment has been part of my decision,” says Trump. “On average, if we have half a person less in family size, then we can reduce the population.”

    Trump wants more people to really interrogate their decision to have children. “The film is trying to get people to take the time,” she says, adding that 45 per cent of pregnancies in the UK and US are unplanned. “Let’s not bring unwanted children into the world. That’s a big issue that’s really at the heart of this film.”

    At last, it was a pregnancy scare that finally helped Trump decide to be “child-free”. In the film, we watch as she and Granger come to the realisation they may have not been careful enough one night. After a tense conversation, she decides to get the morning-after pill – and he agrees to have a vasectomy. “I don’t call myself ‘childless’,” she says. “For women who can’t have children, there’s a grief process. I didn’t have to go through that. I was able to celebrate the identity in the end. And I want other people to feel that way too, to own their decision.”

    But it was difficult telling her elderly mother, who always hoped she would have children. She believes her daughter’s decision was influenced by her teenage health problems – but Trump disputes this reading. “The door was always open,” she says. “I didn’t want it enough.”

    While Trump’s mother comes to terms with her daughter’s decision, the filmmaker is grateful to her sister, whom she supported as a single mum, for giving their mum grandchildren and great-grandchildren. “I feel for those who are only children,” she says. “I have it easier than a lot of people.”

    Trump hopes To Kid or Not To Kid will encourage people to be more open and to replace the taboo around people who choose not to parent with celebration. “If you desperately want children, if it’s one of your life’s dreams, then I’m happy for you,” she says. “In the same way I want you to be happy for me.”

    Since she made the film, countless people have approached her to say they didn’t realise they had a choice not to have children. But the best moment for her is when someone congratulated her for being childfree. “It made me tingle all over,” she says. “I congratulate quite a lot of people now. It should be congratulated in the same way people celebrate in a huge way when you have a baby.”

    Well done, Maxine. I, too, am child-free by choice and, again, it is not because I do not like children: I adore my nieces, nephews etc. Perhaps those halfwits who feel it necessary to insult and castigate you should ponder as how and why the world’s human population has become wildly out-of-control in just the past half century.

    This exponential rise in humanity is a danger to all life forms. The biodiversity is being systematically destroyed; countless species of plants and animals are becoming extinct through mankind’s selfishness; and the space available for expansion and food production is dwindling at an ever-growing pace. Add to this the paucity of drinkable water and the vast increase in pollution (humans are the only species to evolve that routinely trashes its own environment) then you have a recipe for disaster.

    If only millions more humans decided to be child-free then this world — the only planet known to exist that supports intelligent life — might once again regain its vital and necessary balance of nature.

    [The appended comment, above, is mine (and mine alone) and was carefully thought out for decades before I made it. However, it might be construed as nothing more than “chippiness” by those who would rather hurl insults at the commentator rather than engage in civilised debate.]

    1. I don’t understand what business it is of anybody’s at all to judge people on whether they have had children / want t have children, or not. It’s a decision made, for whatever reason, by the individual, and hopefully they don’t come to regret it later.
      What must be hard is for those who want children, but don’t get a choice due to biology or some other problem.

      1. I’ve always wanted grandchildren but never had any. How does one choose to have grandchildren?

        2. I’m getting to the stage that grandchildren would be a great thing, but neither sons show any proclivity to procreate. Fistborn is shy and spiky, so finds it difficult to even meet women, whilst Second Son is only 19, too early for breeding.
          Firstborn also feels strongly the lack of a female half. I don’t know how, or whether to help, and TBH, I’m crap at any of this relationship stuff myself, so no role model at all.
          Sigh…

      2. Much worse to have children and then walk out on them. I’ve come across three incidents where the mother has abandoned her children and left them for someone else to bring up. I find it difficult to comprehend how any mother could do that.

  82. 320187+ up ticks,
    I do not believe this much fuss was made in the cover up department
    when the decency squad uncovered the odious rotherham issue.
    16 plus years of concealment.

  83. That’s me for this Tuesday. A satisfying day in many respects. Filled the nearest butts from the well. So I expect it’ll rain overnight!

    Looking forward to watching the BBC4 prog (last night) about Persian art and architecture. And Episode 2 of the Monaco Saga!

    Have a lively evening preparing your WLM banners.

    A demain.

  85. BBC Radio 4 this morning reported that Boris had a good meeting with the EU yesterday. Should we be worried? Boris is doing a lot of U-turns at the moment.

    1. Several letters to the DT suggest that Boris’s ‘latest squeeze’ may be the influence behind the U-turns …

    2. ”Good meetings” with the EU = Doing what the EU wants.

      Boros = Blair/Brown/Cameron/May = Soros.

  87. 320187+ up ticks,
    Listen to whine on vine whilst working in the garage and a 15 year old
    commenting on free school meals vine said the 15 year old was future PM material, I quite agreed as in the major, the wretch cameron, may,
    b liar, brown category.
    !5 a lot of us had done 1/2 years work by then, as for school dinners spend the dinner money on Monday on a french stick, hollow it out
    replace filling with chips, make up the grub shortfall by scrumping, apples, pears ,plums tomatoes, lettuce, ect.
    I cannot remember for the life of me one kid, let alone a multitude of kids
    with @rses like cart horses.
    I think if there was one he / she would have been eaten.
    We were in point of fact lean mean eating machines, they don’t make kids like us anymore.

    By the by there was nothing like chewing a bit of tar, I must have chewed up half our street before leaving school.

  88. I’m surprised there were no comments on the Humphrys article. It’s mixed – Nottlanders will agree with some of his sentiments and not with others. His main point is that the BBC has damned all Britons as guilty of racism.

    Here’s a part of it – at the start he is referring to The News Quiz:

    [Next] it was the turn of the black stand-up comedian Sophie Duker. The point of the show is the (often hilarious) ad-libbing by the panellists. But Ms Duker had prepared an announcement.

    First she dismissed the Tory MP Desmond Swayne as a ‘despicable human being’ for comments he’d made about rioters and looters and then she said: ‘If arsonists and looters have it coming (to them) then so do the Royal Family, the British Museum and the council that opted for cheaper and more flammable cladding.

    They had better watch their backs. ‘From Windrush to Grenfell…Stephen Lawrence to Sarah Reed…our nation has blood on its hands. These protests are about Diane Abbott and Meghan Markle…about you and me and those who clean your streets and save your lives.’

    When she finished, the rest of the team applauded. And Angela Barnes, who was presenting the show, announced: ‘If 500 people were in this studio they should feel uncomfortable and awkward… we bloody well should.’ This show was pre-recorded and broadcast twice.

    The BBC believes there is racism in this country and its director of news has said so. She’s right. Of course there is. I doubt there is a multicultural country on earth where it does not exist in one form or another – and probably never has been.

    But that’s not the point. The point is whether all of us are ‘guilty’. All of us whites, that is. By nailing its colours so firmly to the Black Lives Matter mast, the BBC has made clear where it stands. This is troubling.

    The BBC is our national broadcaster. It is our voice. But if it is not seen to give a platform to those who hold different views, we enter dangerous territory. By unquestioningly accepting the claim of BLM that we are all racists whether we realise it or not, it has effectively become a campaigning organisation.

    In doing so it risks creating the very thing it stands against – a more polarised society. The BBC has an obligation to bring people closer together. This new accusatory tone – an undiscriminating roll call of white sins across all its channels – can only lead to division.

    How long before there are marches behind banners declaring ‘White Lives Matter’? Note that the odious Tommy Robinson and his followers are making an unwelcome reappearance.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8416209/JOHN-HUMPHRYS-insists-Britons-NOT-guilty-racism.html

    I fear it’s not long before something really appalling happens, an event or series of events which will dwarf the Manchester Arena and July 2005. Am I being too pessimistic?

    1. With all due respect, Ms Duker should not be described as black. More a sort of medium chocolate brown.

      2. Bøack indicates self-selected permanent victim status, not skin colour .

      1. You can add that the relevant EU directive was passed into law under Blair’s government which ignored warnings about the dangers of materials approved for use in the cladding of buildings.

    3. Rwanda. April 15, 1994.

      Our dear leader, Pastor Elizaphan Ntakirutimina,

      How are you! We wish you to be strong in all these problems we are facing. We wish to inform you that we have heard that tomorrow we will be killed with our families. We therefore request you to intervene on our behalf and talk with the Mayor. We believe that, with the help of God who entrusted you with the leadership of this flock, which is going to be destroyed, your intervention will be highly appreciated, the same as the Jews were saved by Esther.

      We give honor to you.

      Pastors Ezekiel Semugeshi, Isaka Rucondo, Seth Rwyanabuto, Eliezer Seromba, Seth Sebihe, Jerome Gakwaya, and Exzekias Zigirshutu.

      1. If you ask a question “How are you” it is normal for educated, literate people to end it with a question mark (it looks like this ?) and not an exclamation mark.

          1. No, Minty, NoToNanny as was – Nanny has now morphed into Irma Gris, jackboots an’ all.

    1. What a pair of dimwits. Will we hear them pissing and moaning about a black Macbeth, a male Portia or a female Jacques?

      1. Will Helen Mirren ever apologise for playing ‘Prospero’ in The Tempest and giving the role of Trinculo to Jo Bland’s boy, Russell? And I believe Frances de La Tour (who played Miss Jones who was lusted after by Rigsby (Leonard Rossiter) in Rising Damp) once played Hamlet.

        Even it is not acceptable to play the part of people of other races why should it be acceptable to play the part of someone of a different sex? Is this consistent?

  90. After hours of hearing thunderclaps, it’s now belting down in Bournville.

  91. I received this missive from my MP via his CCO controlled website.

    June 2020

    Dear Constituent,

    Thank you for writing to me about the Black Lives Matter movement, and the current state of affairs around the world. I share your alarm about what happened in the USA, and was shocked and horrified by the tragic death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Our Government and all right minded people in public life have condemned this killing unequivocally, as do I.

    Racism has no place in our society, and is an evil that we should collectively work towards eliminating. I strongly oppose the unlawful use of violence in any form, and I am heartened that thousands of people have chosen to express their strong emotions in a peaceful manner, respecting social distancing rules.

    In this vein, I condemn the conduct of some protestors in their use of violence against the police, including in London over the weekend. I greatly value the Metropolitan Police Service, Surrey Police and other police forces across the country in the vital work they do in keeping us safe, and violence against the police and police horses is completely unacceptable.

    Regarding exports to the United States, the Government takes its export control responsibilities very seriously. The UK operates one of the world’s most robust and transparent export control regimes, with each export licence application considered on a case-by-case basis against the Consolidated EU and National Arms Export Licensing Criteria. The Consolidated Criteria provide a thorough risk assessment framework, requiring the Government to think very carefully about the possible impact of providing equipment and its capabilities. My understanding is that the Government will not grant an export licence if doing so would be inconsistent with the criteria.

    I was gravely concerned to read the figures that suggest that those from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) backgrounds are at greater risk of Covid-19. I have shared these concerns with ministerial colleagues, who too recognise that these are troubling figures and commissioned Public Health England (PHE) to research this. PHE’s report can be accessed via:
    https://assets.publishing.s…

    As I say, I share your sentiments about the death of George Floyd and we must strive to eradicate the remnants of racism in our society. We have come a huge way over recent decades but there is certainly more to do. I assure you that I do everything I can to support firm but fair policing and justice here in Woking, Surrey and the wider UK, and I think we can be proud of our Surrey Police and their current leadership and officers.

    I also believe that, with the continuing threat of coronavirus, we must continue to abide by social distancing measures and follow the rules designed to save lives. Thousands of my constituents have suffered both personal and professional hardship due to coronavirus and its impact, and in light of these sacrifices we cannot allow progress in defeating the virus to stall.
    I will continue to oppose racism and to support the right to protest peacefully and lawfully, and I strongly value the work of our police, who have worked hard over recent decades to reclaim their reputation one of the finest and fairest police forces in the world.

    Thank you again for writing to me about these really important issues.

    This is my response

    I have read with disgust the Conservative Central Office link they put on your website.

    They have missed the whole point and are scared to stand up for the majority of the British Public. George Floyd was an addict high on drugs who was being arrested. I agree that the method used to restrain him was wrong and that police officer has been sacked, quite rightly so, and is now in prison awaiting trial for murder again quite rightly so.

    CCO must have been watching a different news to me a week ago last Saturday, https://www.telegraph.co.uk….

    27 police officers were injured on 6 June and a ‘protester’ pushed a bike into a police horse the the rider had been thrown from. The Cenotaph was desecrated and the statue of Sir Winston Churchill was defaced. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/…. And the police stood by and did nothing!
    And of all those arrested the only one to be dealt with in court was a drunk who urinated in public beside the memorial to a police office, no on it. He appeared in court very quickly and was sentenced to 2 weeks in prison. On the basis of that sentence the prison population would double each week between Friday night and Monday morning.
    BLM is a racist Marxist organisation that is dedicated to the overthrow of democracy and capitalism and the destruction of the family unit and this is the organisation that all politicians and their parties are fawning over. Britain is NOT a racist country. If it was there wouldn’t be hundreds of thousands try to get here if all they were going to do is be abused.

    Why is the political class so keen to see the destruction of our society, the removal of statues etc.

    When are you all going to stand up for our culture and call out these disruptive and dangerous demonstrators. It is likely that if you do nothing to stop them the politicians will probably be the first targets. Opposition will not be allowed.

    Wake up it’s time for leadership not cowardice. You don’t all have to be sheep and follow, we need someone to stand up and be counted in favour of our indigenous population and those who want to integrate. We have always been a country that welcomed people who were going to work. In the current phase we are going through we need to halt immigration and let the 600,000 plus who came in last year to integrate and get legitimate employment. If they are illegal they should be deported immediately and if they want to appeal it should be from the safe country they passed through to get here.

    Another rant but your website head office message is likely to ensure you will not be elected again.

      1. So very polite of you, N.
        I’m afraid my keyboard started to smoke when I started typing my response.

    6. Politicians are quite simply useless Piles of Shonet, so weak in structure they would even fall through a sieve.

    8. 100% agree with everything you wrote. What a total ‘cop-out’ from the fawning, apologist, appeasing MP.

      1. Probably the standard reply to anyone who wrote to him. Some of the things in that missive I didn’t raise. They’ve obviously had so many that this it a catch all with emphasis on the catch.

  94. Good evening all. What a humid evening though only one short, sharp shower so far.
    Apologies if anyone has already posted this.
    “Racism and social inequality have contributed
    to the increased risk of BAME communities dying from Covid-19, says a new
    report.” A headline in the evening email from the tellygraph. HOW has waycism made it worse for them? Nobody made them congregate at close quarters. “Social inequality” – why should it affect them more than poor indigenous people? Could chips on shoulders be the cause.

    1. I suppose the hardworking Asian doctors who have died are also “socially unequal”? It’s poppycock!

      1. There were a couple of girls from African backgrounds in my older son’s year group at his grammar school. Both exceptionally bright and from decent, normal (Christian I seem to remember) families with similar younger siblings. Both went on to study medicine. No chips on their shoulders.
        Similarly, there was another lad, Indian, also now a doctor like his very highly rated surgeon father. Since expanding under the academy method, that school now has a significant proportion of ethnic pupils, especially from Indian sub-continent and African backgrounds.

        1. They just need good teachers and hard work to achieve their potential, just like everyone else.

          1. And parents who support and encourage their offspring, and support the schools.

      2. The agenda is to blame everything on whitey.

        Over fifty five years ago, and after my evening paper round, I would try to collect subs from local families for a Thalidomide Charity. Punters paid two shillings to be entered into a draw.

        The families I most dreaded when knocking on the door were immigrants. They all expected to win. The stench from their cooking which permeated the entrance was enough to make any normal person retch.

        I was allowed free school meals but could not eat the stuff on offer. I lived on a cheese sandwich with the rind of the Cheddar, a ‘Penguin’ chocolate biscuit and an apple or orange if I was lucky. My mother resented preparing a packed lunch and believed I should succumb to the muck on offer at school meals.

        I reckon school meals will have improved in the intervening years. The best school meal I ever experienced was at Junior School when the kitchen staff were on strike. It consisted of a crusty white bread roll, butter and Cheddar cheese.

        Afters was a fresh fruit salad as opposed to the stuff in cans. Truly memorable.

          2. Never eat at a restaurant with a skinny chef.
            Never go to a doctor whose surgery plants have died…

        2. The most appetising school meal I ever saw was on the “Two Greedy Italians” programme, when Gennaro & Carluccio visited a school in Italy, where the dinner ladies prepared a giant vat of penne, served with (home-made) tomato sauce and grated parmesan. Fantastic! Nothing like the overboiled slime I was served as an English schoolboy.
          I should have been born Italian – have the temperament to go with it, too.

          1. Curiously I have been involved in numerous Carluccio’s restaurants in the UK. This was in carrying out building surveys, assisting in obtaining planning permissions, design of shopfronts in historic settings and sorting the retail elements in numerous stores and locations.

            The company was well run until sold and bought out by Arabs. The staff, many of whom lived for Carluccio’s, were effectively told to treat their positions as just another job. Hence its demise. When will we ever learn.

          2. Curiously I have been involved in numerous Carluccio’s restaurants in the UK. This was in carrying out building surveys, assisting in obtaining planning permissions, design of shopfronts in historic settings and sorting the retail elements in numerous stores and locations.

            The company was well run until sold and bought out by Arabs. The staff, many of whom lived for Carluccio’s, were effectively told to treat their positions as just another job. Hence its demise. When will we ever learn.

          3. Shame.
            :-((
            Antonio Carluccio is/was one of the few chefs I had time for. Love his recipes, and his humour. Was very much saddened when he died.
            From the restaurant in Cardiff – pretty lady at the next table was rather upset by having a pigeon crap in her cappuccino, with a noticeable splash. :-D) – good that she noticed before imbibing…

          4. I did the external awnings and the shop fronts on the Carluccio’s at Cardiff Bay.

            I met Antonio Carluccio at the opening of Carluccio’s Harrogate. I had designed the shop front and represented the company at the Planning Inquiry held in the council offices at Harrogate.

            I worked for some years in London with Eduardo Paolozzi, a great friend of Carluccio, so I had a connection when we met.

        3. If you had been brought up in my relatively affluent home you would have eaten school meals happily.

          My parents insisted we ate everything we were offered at meal times. My mother was the most God-awful cook and even the dog refused to eat some of her meals.

          School dinners were a positive relief from home cooking.

          Oddly enough, she was a good teacher and all the children turned out to be much better cooks than she was. We followed the recipes!

          1. My Dad almost never cooked. When he did, he followed the recipe precisely – well, he was an experimental chemist (first job: centrifuge HEX to obtain fissile uranium for weapons..).
            Food was excellent!

          2. Your dad sounds as though he had my approach to cooking. I follow the recipe slavishly.

          4. Everything is relative sos.

            Edit: Apart from the ghastly school meals I confess my reluctance to take ‘free school meals’. I found it degrading and still do, so be it.

            I proved myself better than my fellow pupils who gorged on the muck by coming ‘Top of the Form’ most years.

          5. It sure is.

            My sister and I used to offer the gloop to the dog, and if the dog refused it it was put behind the fridge!

          6. Posted hockey pucks of cods roe through a slot in the floorboards when younger.
            shudder

    2. Death from sickle cell anaemia are mainly black. How are they going to spread that around white people.

      1. Exactly! It was the genetic cause that I was thinking of – having so many senior moments, ha ha! Similarly, it’s been found that people with some blood groups are more susceptible to this virus – no prejudice, just fact.

        1. Facts don’t count anymore Mum. You need some crass cranky idea to be acceptable. Haven’t we gone down the tubes at a rate of knots?

    4. What should happen (but probably won’t) is that the medical records of each of the dead should be examined thoroughly in an attempt to determine the level of contribution of the virus to the death and to determine whether the individual had a blood cell disorder (if that’s not already known). That could be determined from DNA testing of the immediate relatives; if not, a tissue sample from the victim, assuming the body hasn’t deteriorated too much.

        1. Precisely.

          “Yeah, they was jus’ poorer than anyone else, that’s why they died, man.”

      2. Far too sensible. Also, it might reveal some inconvenient and un-p.c. truths as to why certain groups have been more affected by Covid-19.

      3. The medical recording was confused beyond any rational analysis from the outset. The definitions and categories and counting changed a a few times. Tests were unreliable to the point of useless for months.
        There is no way to backtrack. You cannot do exhumations at the crematorium.
        This was entirely deliberate. It was done this way through a mixture of lack of understanding, incompetence, and backside covering.

  95. Utterly off topic.

    I have an email address that is very similar to many other people’s.

    I’ve had it since I first started using email, possibly 30 years ago. So I am very loathe to change it.

    I keep getting posts sent to stupid women, and it’s always women who forget to add the number or other character to their husband’s email address.

    The latest one is a woman called Pam, who appears to be an on-line bingo/gambling addict.
    Judging by the number of offers to add funds and free spins that come in, I suspect she may be getting into financial difficultes.

    Is anyone aware of how one might be able to warn either her husband or an ombudsman?

    I do not know her actual email address.

      1. As sure as I can be.

        The spam filter catches most of her posts, but I also get “sensible” shopping confirmations that appear to be genuine, getting into my inbox.

        I got a letter from a genuine company trying to arrange an annual service for her. All the details appeared to be reasonable.

          1. Solar panels and the electrical connections.

            When I posted, I wondered who would first!

        2. Well – you’d think she would wonder why she wasn’t getting the responses she expected and try again or check she had the right address. I wouldn’t worry too much about her.

          1. As I say, stupid.

            My concern is that people get hooked on these things can self harm or steal from their employers to feed the habit.

  97. Afternoon all.

    Check out this mob ….

    Coronavirus outbreak at Anglesey chicken factory

    About a quarter of workers at a chicken processing plant are self-isolating following an outbreak of Covid-19, according to unions.

    Shop stewards at the 2 Sisters site in Llangefni, Anglesey, say there are 13 confirmed cases among staff, with 110 people self-isolatin.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_Sisters_Food_Group

    https://www.expressandstar.com/news/crime/2019/10/30/killer-driver-antonio-boparan-freed-from-prison-early/

    3. Ah! Two sisters are questionable. They featured in a revealing news video that showed the horrors in their chicken factory in Norfolk: raw meat dropped on floor was picked up and replaced on packing line, Use By dates were changed by removing previous date and putting a date further in the future. I asked M&S for my money back on a couple of chickens. They were reluctant as it was a different Two Sisters factory that produced M&S products. I pointed out that all their factories would have the same processes and procedures so one could expect the same shortcomings. I got my money back and have bought nothing from M&S since then. Changed days. When I was in the business of supplying supermarkets we did not deal with M&S as they demanded a separate factory for their products. Now their products come off the same line as Lidl products.
      The owner of Two Sisters is not of the white persuasion. The turnover is £662m. You won’t be able to tell when you buy one of their products. Just Saying.

  98. We need more cajuns ….

    Oh, one
    thing about CAJUNS is that their hearts are always in the right place
    !

    T-Coon
    Boudreaux, a part-time City
    Councilman from Abbeville, LA., was asked on a local live radio
    talk show just what he thought of the allegations of torture of the Iraqi
    prisoners. His reply prompted his ejection from the studio, but to
    thunderous applause from the audience…

    HIS STATEMENT: “If hooking up an Iraqi
    prisoner’s nuts to a car’s battery cables will save just one American GI’s
    life, then I have just three
    things to say, Red is positive, Black is negative, and Make sure his
    nuts are
    wet.”

  100. Racist thought for the day:

    If the BAMEs are as marvellous and superior as they are constantly telling us they are, surely it should be the pinkos complaining about Black supremacists.

  101. Just when I thought I couldn’t despise the Cof E the woke and the Al-Beeb more they combine to excel themselves

    “Two headstones with “offensive” language inscribed on them have been removed from a churchyard.

    The

    gravestones of music hall singers G H Elliott and Alice Banford, who

    both wore blackface, were moved from St Margaret’s Church in

    Rottingdean, East Sussex on Monday.

    Their removal was authorised by the Chancellor of Chichester Diocese, a diocese spokeswoman said.”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-53065693

      1. G. H. Elliott was a British music hall singer and dancer. Known as the “Chocolate Coloured Coon”, he performed with a painted brown face and dressed entirely in white: white top hat, white tail-coat which came down well below the knees, white gloves, white tie or cravat, white trousers, white shoes and white cane.

        The ‘offensive’ title appeared on his gravestone, and a similar description on a nearby gravestone.

        1. Never eaten Coon Cheese, from Oz, then.
          It’s actually rather good cheese!

        3. Oh! Shock! Horror! That such words would sully the graveyard! Tear down his monument!

    2. Westminster Abbey will review memorials to reflect ‘attitudes of our time’
      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/15/westminster-abbey-will-review-memorials-reflect-attitudes-time/

      The resting place of Britain’s most revered historical figures will be reviewed following Black Lives Matter protests, as Westminster Abbey reevaluates its venerated memorials.

      Tombs of monarchs, poets, and Prime Ministers are among the many 3000 burials and memorials inside the vast London church.

      Many honours could meet criteria for censure recently set by campaigners, with links to colonial activity and slavery, including those of recently targeted figures Winston Churchill and William Gladstone.

      Following widespread reassessment of monuments in the wake of anti-racism protests across the UK, the ancient Abbey’s governing body has begun a process of reviewing memorials to “better reflect the attitudes of our time”.

      The religious site and venue for state funerals, coronations, and royal weddings has been central to the UK’s history and contains memorials to figures who may be judged poorly by modern standards of morality.

      Elizabeth I, a patron of the early slave trade, is buried there along with royal successors who also backed the business in human chattel.

      Recently targeted leader Churchill has a memorial in the church, along with Gladstone who has been accused of defending slavery on behalf of his father.

      The Abbey’s Dean and Chapter is discussing how to show the contested legacies of historical figures, but plans to change signage in the church or alter audio guides to reflect controversial stories have not yet been confirmed,

      A spokesman for the Church of England site said: “Over 3,300 people are buried or memorialised in Westminster Abbey, reflecting its place at the heart of the nation’s history.

      “Its many memorials, which range in date from the thirteenth century to our own, also reflect the judgements and attitudes of the times in which those commemorations were made.

      “In light of recent events, the Dean and Chapter of Westminster have begun a conversation about the Abbey’s memorials and how we can better reflect the attitudes of our time.”

      “In light of recent events, the Dean and Chapter of Westminster have begun a conversation about the Abbey’s memorials and how we can better reflect the attitudes of our time.”
      It seems as though the CofE’s main aim is to “reflect the attitudes of our time”. What happened to preaching the gospel?

      1. What happened to “forgive”?! I can’t believe that the CofE have jumped so quickly and on to such a bandwagon too. They really are hastening their own demise.

        2. I can only too easily believe that the current bunch in charge of the CofE have jumped on the bandwagon. It seems to get promoted there you have to be a left-wing SJW. Believing in God is definitely optional.

      2. Time surely to defrock the supposed leaders of the C of E and hand everything back to the Catholic Church. Our historic churches were after all Catholic edifices prior to the reign of Henry VIII.

      3. 320187+ up ticks,
        A,
        Was a chap not done for reading from the bible to the public.
        I came out of the UKIP 2018 meeting in Birmingham and near fell over a mad mullah
        on the pavement preaching to all and sundry
        covered no doubt by the submissive pcism & appeasement unwritten rulings.

      4. Eff them.
        “Where two or three are gathered together…”
        Who needs organised religion?
        Although, there is some absolutely wonderful music… https://youtu.be/LuDHTfNYXpE
        Simple organ, simple church… how can one not believe in God after that? And – don’t get caught up with the politics in relision, just feel the flow of spirit through the keys – and imagine yourself in a simple church, or even in the deep forest, where the “small, still voice” doesn’t have to compete with all the noisy crap around you.
        There is a God. Just not the one who wants political dominion that the world shrieks about.

        1. Was sitting in the Cathedral in Lewes some 25+ years ago, where the organist was pracising the Ave Maria.
          Stops & starts, bum notes now & again.
          It was wonderful – raw, nowhere near perfect, and has sat in what’s left of my brain since, as one of the most romanitc moments if my life to date. Just sitting there, with SWMBO, listening to the organist practice and stumble on the occasional note. Utter magic.
          God has the best tunes!

          1. A similar thing happened to me, Oberst,
            I visited Ely Cathedral, late one afternoon;
            the setting sun was catching the stained glass
            and the Organist was practising a piece, I don’t
            remember what, but as you say:
            Utter magic!

      5. It comes to something when you can’t even rest in peace these days. They’ll be exhuming the Unknown Warrior soon – he might have had attitudes that didn’t gel with today’s “anything goes” mantra.

          1. Probably say you can’t change history but history can change you.
            Learn from it, as we have.

      7. They follow the gospel of Gramsci, Marcuse, Lukacs & Adorno. The Dean & Chapter have already allowed the Quran to be preached there. It’s effectively deconsecrated.

        1. We must remember to scrap all the Routemaster buses’, built since the mid 1700’s. that used to trek into the Afriacan hinterland, to capture the slaves and take them back to the ports, where all the great and the good of England (since the year 1493) were there to personally load the slaves on the RoyaL Navy ships, to take them to the Windies/America

          2. An earlier post of mine

            Yo Minty

            Codswallop

            The Routemaster Bus was invented, in the 18 Century purely for English companies to drive into the hinterland of Africa to collect slaves

            This supported a whoole infrastructure of Filling Stations, Truck Stops, Travelodges etc

            The fuel for the buses was moved to the filling stations by bowsers, also petol powered

            At no time was anyone but Honky involved in the Slave Trade

            Signed David Lammy Lammy

            of course, we now know that the invention of the ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) was kept secret for a Century

            To doubt the above explanation is totally racist

          3. Yo Gg

            What I was saying, is that BLM totally ignore how the slaves were gathered together from the African bush and then transported to the ports, where ships transported them acroo to the Windies/US

            In reality, this was carried out by Blacks, but that is now overlooked ie erased from the history books

      8. Time surely to defrock the supposed leaders of the C of E and hand everything back to the Catholic Church. Our historic churches were after all Catholic edifices prior to the reign of Henry VIII.

          1. The problem here is that many Victorian fortunes were built upon trade which had nothing whatever to do with the C17 slave trade. Many of the great houses built in Victorian times were the homes of successful entrepreneurs.

            These included Mark Firth (steel master) in Sheffield to Leyland Brothers (ship owners) in Liverpool.

            The fact remains that we have neither a need nor a desire to have our shared history rewritten by imbeciles.

          2. In my village, the church was built in around 1100 when one of the Norman Williams was on the throne. I remember once visiting Bayeux in Normandy and thinking how very much the town church there resembled the church in my village… and then the penny dropped. I felt decidedly colonised.

            Weren’t the Normans responsible for a mass genocide and dispossession of the Saxons (who themselves dispossessed the Romano-Britons) and the introduction of a serf system whereby most folk were under the thumb of the Norman lord in his castle? If that isn’t slavery, then what is?

          3. Serfdom was definitely slavery. They were owned and worked for their overlord. If you are descended from them then you have just as much right to protest against slavery as the newly arrived.

    3. Doesn’t the BBC remember its Black and White Minstrel Show production? Let’s hurl that institute into the Thames (or wherever they’re based now).

  104. Bomber Harris was a pupil at Allhallows where I taught for many years.

    Of course he has been vilified for the bombing of Dresden and there are demands for his statue to be torn down.

    But I believe there were a few bombs dropped on London which did not win the war for Germany while the bombing of Dresden did win it for Britain.

    But when we look at Britain today the fruits of victory seem to have turned rancid and sour.

    1. In 1942, Harris said about the German bombing of European cities including London “They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind”. Very few British people at the time would have cared too much about retribution being dished out to the Germans after what they had to endure during the Blitz.

        1. To name but a few. Cardiff was clobbered the week before I was born. The house was destroyed. Fortunately, my mother was in the shelter.

        2. Don’t forget the Baedeker Raids – the Jerries set out to bomb historic cities from the travel guide! Exeter and Canterbury were victims.

          1. My mother used to say……..(about the maisonettes where we lived) that Jerry built them and Gerry would knock them down. He missed us. Gloucester seemed to escape the carnage. She was in the Observer Corps.

      2. Bomber crews were appreciated by the people on the Home Front because it was the only way to carry the war to the enemy.

  106. I think we must have had two months’ worth of rain in the last hour – our hill has turned into a waterfall! It’s still dark here, but beginning to go over. Still thundering.

  108. The BBC is beyond redemption, wetting itself over the news that steroids are immunosuppressive and rescue some whose lungs are failing because of an autoimmune response. Any doctor would have suggested this years ago but in their determination to disallow antimalarials anything will do. When all this is over and thousands have died I hope we remember.

    1. 320187+ up ticks,
      Afternoon E,
      Forgetting and covering up our past has / is costing us dearly at present.

      1. Oxford is dependent on all sorts of dirty money from despotic regimes and dodgy financiers. This has been the case for decades.

        Why otherwise would the Syrian born Saudi arms broker have bequeathed the Saïd Business School to the benighted place. Gates is funding much of the vaccine research. The much derided Cecil Rhodes was a positive plus compared to other supposed philanthropists.

        Needless to say, successive UK governments have been complicit in neglecting our national interests whilst promoting their own personal advancement. How else would Blair, Brown and Cameron have made their millions. They were all bought by Middle Eastern ‘Royals’ and their operatives.

        Edit: As have members of our Royal family. Prince Andrew being the prime example of the sell-out.

    1. Good night, Peddy. Tonight I cooked the 30 minute chicken breasts with brocolli, bacon, and Mozzarella and Cheddar cheese bake mentioned here (by Plum Tart or Lady of the Lake or ???) – it was absolutely delicious. Now I shall watch another episode of LEWIS and then off to bed. Goodnight to all NoTTLers – a demain!

      1. It was Plum – I tried a variation of it last week – and another coming up this week with thigh fillets. Last weeks had bones in and needed slightly longer cooking, but were good anyway.

          1. They were better second time around when I warmed up what was left and they were properly cooked.

  111. A couple of awkward moments but much better than some efforts of recent weeks.

    Release Winston from his grey box – he is the one person who shouldn’t be shielding

    A box is no place for a man once named the greatest Briton of all time. Release him back into the community right this minute

    ALLISON PEARSON

    I hate seeing Winston Churchill in that grey tomb of a box. Or not seeing him rather. The bronze effigy of the wartime prime minister, which has stood on Parliament Green since its unveiling in 1973, is boarded up for Churchill’s own protection, apparently – although cynics might ask who exactly is being protected by removing him from public view?

    The present Prime Minister, writing in these pages on Monday, agreed that it was miserable for his mighty predecessor to be thus shielded, saying “it was utterly absurd that a load of far-Right thugs and bovver boys” had converged on London to protect the statue. “They were violent. They were aggressive towards the police. They were patently racist. There is nothing that can excuse their behaviour.”

    I agree. There is no excuse for violent or racist behaviour. Surely, though, in the interests of balance, the PM could have acknowledged that it was appalling violence by a minority of anti-fascist and Black Lives Matter protesters the previous weekend, when the police failed to defend either themselves or the statues of Churchill and Abraham Lincoln, which fuelled the anger that inspired the latest protest?

    It wasn’t just soccer hooligans or white supremacists who were incensed. Much of Middle England looked on in horrified disbelief as the streets of the capital came close to anarchy. Millions of us flinched as a bike was hurled at a police horse. On Saturday, military veterans – of the Falklands War, of Iraq – travelled to London to “protect Winston”, as one charming elderly chap in a blazer put it. He didn’t look like a bovver boy to me, Boris.

    The now-toxic statue was based on a famous photograph of Churchill inspecting the debating chamber of the House of Commons after it had been bombed to rubble on the night of 10 May 1941. It is the most haunting image. The PM rests on his stick and the future of the free world rests on him. Somehow, democracy must be rescued from the ruins. If the great old man could speak to us now, now that his descendants have put him in a grey box to protect him from a righteous, anti-fascist mob, what do you reckon he would say? “Pah! I saw off the Luftwaffe, and now you surrender to the bloody Left-waffe!”

    The BBC, bending the knee to fashionable opinion, calls Churchill’s statue “controversial”, and it is controversial, but only if you give credence to a small number of shrill protestors who don’t understand the past terribly well. Like the young black female leader of an “independent police advisory group” who appeared on Channel 4 News to debate whether the statue of Winston Churchill should be removed. “Some say he’s a racist, some say he’s a hero,” she averred, “I haven’t personally met him.”

    That young woman was blissfully unaware that a meeting with Churchill would, at the very least, require a medium and a séance. As the novelist Lionel Shriver tells me in a terrific interview this week for Planet Normal (a weekly podcast Liam Halligan and I do for those still clinging on to sanity), such youthful ignorance is beyond a joke. A whole generation has been so badly educated, Shriver observes, they barely know their own history. It’s scary and sad. The statesman whom protesters now call racist did more than any other human being to ensure that their great-grandparents were not extinguished from this Earth. That they lived to enjoy the unthinking privilege of spraying graffiti on his plinth is all thanks to him.

    Even to attempt such an argument risks marking you out as elitist and unfeeling. One reason, perhaps, that a Conservative Government has struggled to do so over the past ten days.

    Black Lives Matter protestors, both black and white, find it hard to grasp that figures from the past who were not 100 per cent signed up to the furious mottos on their placards were capable of good, even great, deeds. If those figures held “problematic” views (that’s pretty much everyone who lived before 1997), they must be purged. But the protesters are young, and to be young is to be passion’s slave. For the British Broadcasting Corporation, there is no such excuse.

    In 2002, Winston Churchill was named the greatest Briton of all time, ahead of Shakespeare, Darwin and Elizabeth I, in the corporation’s own poll. Nothing remotely “controversial” about that. With the viewers, he is hugely and rightly popular, and that includes an older ethnic-minority generation who often revere him. Yet the BBC insists on acting as the broadcasting arm of anti-Churchill, Left-wing sects, never losing an opportunity to feature horrifying stories of race discrimination and hatred. The bias is as astonishing as it is harmful.

    To take one example, on last week’s Planet Normal, I pointed out that, after the BLM protest, the BBC new said that 27 police officers had been injured in “largely peaceful protests”. I bet Liam that, should pro-Churchill protesters respond, they would be called “far-Right” and “violent”. Sure enough, on Saturday, BBC news reported that six police officers had been injured by “far-Right thugs” in “violent” and “racist” protests.

    Pause to marvel at how “peaceful” protests manage to claim more victims (the final total that first weekend was over 40 police injured) than “violent” ones. I am not for one moment disputing the fact that a nasty, Britain First element hijacked the statue-shielding event for its own racist purposes. Nevertheless, the BBC mindset is this: young, white, working-class males at a protest equals violent thugs; young, black people at a protest equals brave warriors for social justice. Neither is totally accurate or fair.

    I should also mention that I got a message from Alan, a Metropolitan Police officer with more than 20 years’ service, who objected to the decidedly hands-off approach taken to the BLM protest. “Most of us are appalled and embarrassed by the lack of guts shown by our so-called leadership. We all feel let down and horrified that the top brass are letting this happen.”

    One form of law enforcement for one protest, a different form for another is neither a recipe for equality or racial harmony. Also conveniently overlooked is the fact that the people of this country have come a long way in the battle against racism. We have more mixed-race marriages than any country in Europe. According to a poll just this week, the number of Britons who “strongly disagree” that you have to be white to be “truly British” has soared from 55 per cent to 84 per cent. That’s a remarkable decline in racist sentiment in just a decade.

    There is still a long way to go in tackling the underachievement of people from ethnic-minority groups; the frequent bias in recruitment for the better jobs is unforgivable. Still, we have a Cabinet in which two of the great offices of State are held by a man and a woman of Indian heritage. Not that the Home Secretary would thank you for calling her BAME. Priti is British, and that’s that. The shocking, mean-spirited letter from Labour MPs accusing her of “gaslighting” them when she talked in the Commons about her own experience of racist abuse proved that the Left are only interested in black or brown people as victims, not winners. That’s what I call racism.

    Far better is the approach of Shaun Bailey, the black Conservative candidate for London mayor, who talks about tackling black disadvantage and widening access as “a means of strengthening the national team”. How much better is that than the attempt to spread division, pull down statues and get white people to bend a knee? As Shriver’s heroine remarks in her terrific, topical new novel, The Motion of the Body Through Space: “Is this the way we’re going to fix things? By swapping who treats who like shit?”

    Decades ago, when I arrived in London as a wobbly, naïve 22-year-old, I was befriended by a Winston. “As in Churchill?” I said. “As in Silcott,” he cackled gleefully. He was joking – well, a little. Winston was a fan of his famous namesake and could quote several of his astonishing speeches by heart, although he was fully aware of the statesman’s dodgy record on race. The deal between us was Winston gave me free rides in his minicab while I proof-read and corrected his essays for college. Many Jamaican boys of his generation were called after the wartime prime minister, he explained, because their parents felt that Mr Churchill had saved them. They owed him.

    Years later, after Winston got his philosophy degree, I put him in my first novel. A reviewer said Winston, the auto-didact minicab driver, was a charming, lovable black character of a kind only a white writer could invent. I smiled. I know what Winston would have said about that reviewer lady. I know what he would have said about hiding Churchill’s statue so that anti-fascist protesters couldn’t tear down fascism’s greatest foe.

    Boris Johnson, Churchill’s biographer, wrote with stirring eloquence this week that he would “resist with every breath in my body any attempt to remove that statue from Parliament Square, and the sooner his protective shielding comes off the better”. Excellently put, Prime Minister.

    But if the democratically elected leader of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland cannot insist that Winston Churchill is released back into the community right this minute, that he who shielded our world so well needs no shielding, then who can?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/politics/release-winston-grey-box-one-person-shouldnt-shielding/

    1. The way the establishment and the media are acting it will increase racist attitudes not reduce it.

        1. Agreed, whole-heartedly. If I had a gun, I wouldn’t hesitate to use it and just wish it were a sub-machine gun.

          We need to put the fear of God into the niggers and fascists, to let them know that we are not ready to be taken over by their scum ilk.

      2. And wendyballers. It’s good job fans won’t be present when they play in empty stadia, when they kneel and run around with ‘BLM’ on their shirt backs.

    2. There is a lady at English Heritage whose responsibilities include oversight of the maintenance of ALL the public statues in London, and many of those throughout the South of England. Except Parliament Square. That is the Mayor’s patch.
      Also, she will quietly tell you that people often have a pop at statues, with paint or similar.

    3. ‘Evening (or Good Morning) William, Allison says, ” According to a poll just this week, the number of Britons who “strongly disagree” that you have to be white to be “truly British” has soared from 55 per cent to 84 per cent. That’s a remarkable decline in racist sentiment in just a decade.”

      Doesn’t that more accurately reflect the now racial make-up of our dear old England?

      One thing that the BLM movement has done, is to crystallise the racism in the white, indigenous population. That’s not a good thing in what has been, so far, a very tolerant race.

      I have to say, to BLM and Antifa personnel, “Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.” It’s gonna happen boyos and a lot of you are going to lose, if not your lives, a lot of limbs.

      1. British is a catch-all phrase. It just means the holder of a British passport. I’m English, not British – I’m white and my family has been here for centuries.

        1. I take your point, Conners, yes, I’m English through and through so, maybe we should ignore the Scots, Welsh and N Irish but, I feel that they too have done a lot for these Islands in the past and we shouldn’t side-line them.

          I do understand about the passport holders – time was when a true Brit had his passport identifying him/her as a British Subject, Citizen of the United Kingdom. The wogs never had that last cachet. Let us return to that demarcation – it will make for easier deportation of the undesirables.

          1. The Scots, Irish and Welsh can be proud of their nations with no problems. I claim the same right for the English without being sneered at for being racist!

    4. London mayor Khant is hoping to harvest more votes at the next election.
      It’s really that simple.

    5. If there are any of my fellow Nottlers who think that Boris is the man to stop this country tipping over the precipice into a self destructive meltdown, I fear you are going to be disappointed.
      The man lacks the moral fortitude and integrity to do what’s needed. It pains me to say it, but it pains me even more to admit I see no obvious candidate to replace him.
      Once upon a time I would have looked at ERG members, but that is another fairytale isn’t it?

      1. One may only hope, VVOF, that Farage’s resuscitation of the Brexit Party could lead to an alternative party fighting every by-election that comes up before 2024. It could be enough to scare the spineless Government to find a backbone and do what we, the public, the electorate, elected them to do.

        1. I said in December that only a majority dependant on TBP would keep Johnson honest.
          Credit where it is due, with Brexit he is staying true to what he said, no backsliding or betrayal, YET!

    1. I haven’t seen a single swift or swallow this year. We usually have quite a few flying around.
      It could be magpies or red kites that put them off.

      3. It’s been a bit patchy this year. We only have the one breeding pair, which were a week late arriving, but they got on quickly with their egg-laying. There have been a few flying around but since the weather turned off a bit they have have moved off.

  113. Charlie has a couple of senior moments – and he might not have had such luck with his tyre in other parts of the crumbling kingdom.

    CHARLES MOORE

    It’s time to protest about these endless protests

    Recent demos by Extinction Rebellion, Black Lives Matter and assorted quasi-fascist extremists show that these people cannot guarantee peace

    Why do these Black Lives Matter and extreme-Right counter-marches happen? I do not mean “Why?” in a deep, complicated sense – as in “What are the underlying social, economic and political causes?” I simply mean, “Why, exactly, is it possible for protestors to demonstrate in Parliament Square, Whitehall and Trafalgar Square in this way?”

    The short answer is, “Because they are allowed to.” The consequent question is: “Should they be?”

    As a general rule, peaceful demonstrations should be permitted, by prior agreement with the police to sort out problems such as traffic flow. But recent demos by Extinction Rebellion, Black Lives Matter and assorted quasi-fascist extremists show that these people cannot guarantee peace. Indeed, they seem to be looking for trouble. They should not be allowed to find it. The “right to protest” is not something that applies always in every place, any more than the right to vote means a daily excursion to the ballot box. The objections go in the following, ascending order.

    First, demonstrations should not be allowed during the Covid-19 pandemic, for obvious reasons.

    Second, the streets nearby are both workplaces and residential. If they become part of an almost daily semi-warzone, the quality of life and ability to work are seriously affected. In the years when I toiled away in the Treasury over Mrs Thatcher’s papers, many a day’s study was disrupted by the loudhailers yelling from the semi-permanent pen for one cause or another tolerated opposite No 10.

    In the sky above – particularly wearying for residents at night or weekends – noisy police helicopters hover, watching and filming whatever march is going on, but not properly controlling it. Parking, public transport, even a straightforward walk, can be disrupted. The mobs leave litter and can be threatening to passers-by, especially those with young children.

    Third, these streets and squares are the nearest our secular society has to sacred spaces. They have developed as commemorations of events and people important in our country’s story. From the National Gallery at one end to Parliament, Westminster Abbey and the Supreme Court at the other, from square, to wide street, to square again, these places, buildings and monuments are for us all. Anyone allowed to take violent possession of them is stealing something important from the rest of us.

    If crowds announced they wanted to enter a cathedral and the police feared they would attack the altar, the altar would not be boarded up: instead they would be kept away. Why should it be different with the Cenotaph, or the statue of Winston Churchill?

    The final reason against such demos in such places is that they give the extremists the theatre they crave. Over-indulged by the media, they pretend to the country and the world that they represent vast swathes of opinion. After a bit, the country and the world become intimidated, which is the intention.

    We should ignore what Simon says

    Sir Simon McDonald is the permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office. He reportedly thinks that the statue of Clive of India which stands in the street outside his office should come down.

    Clive has always been a controversial figure, but his victory in the battle of Plassey in 1757 – which could not have been achieved without the support of Indians against other Indians – was momentous. Not only did it secure British power in India, it also defeated the French (who fought against us that day). It played a great part in Britain’s triumph in the Seven Years War, which made us the top nation until the 20th century. If Sir Simon feels troubled by the presence of Clive, perhaps he should apply for a job at Quai d’Orsay. French Lives Matter.

    Meanwhile, another Sir Simon is hard at work. Sir Simon McDonald’s predecessor at the Foreign Office, Sir Simon Fraser, is a director and co-founder of a company called Flint Global. In this capacity, he has had a big consultancy contract with Huawei, the company which may or may not be bringing us our 5G networks.

    “Dear Britain,” says Huawei’s advertisement in our national newspapers this week, “Keeping in contact with friends, loved ones and colleagues shouldn’t be hard. That’s why we’re making it easier to stay in touch.” That’s always nice to hear; but it was surprising not to find the word “China” anywhere in the text.

    Which friends do the two Sir Simons keep in contact with most assiduously? How friendly is either of them to the interests of post-Brexit Britain?

    Neighbourliness is not dead

    Feeling a little low at so much complaining and conflict in the national media, my wife and I drove off to start a long, restorative walk one day last week. As we climbed up a steep country lane, our tyre caught the edge of the tarmac and was punctured. The edge was jagged because no repairs have been done since the winter rains swept away the earth that normally rises slightly above it.

    Our gloom deepened. What happened next, however, was different. The AA, despite a recorded phone message about Covid chaos, arrived within 20 minutes. Its officer smilingly sorted matters out. During our wait in that not very busy lane, no fewer than four cars stopped to offer practical help. We sent them on their way with thanks since we knew rescue was at hand; but it was cheering to find a minor disaster producing a steady stream of good neighbours.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/16/time-protest-endless-protests/

    1. There are lots of kind people around. We’ve seen that in the last few days in the response to our crowdfunding appeal on JustGiving. We’re just a small charity but I think larger ones have also had generous donations.

      1. Never forget how many kind people there are out there, despite the noise and bollox of BLM or whatever crap is going on just now.
        Spend much of today dealing with the volunteers looking after me Mam in Wales, where I can’t go, and I’m humbled over what efforts ordinary folk will put in for someone they barely know. The true face of Christianity – love thy neighbour. Respect.

    2. I think they should be allowed, but if they get even marginally out of hand, the police should be allowed to crack skulls, after due warnings, rather like the old reading of the riot act.

      1. Normally I’d agree with that, having been on several – but when ordinary people are restricted the way we have been for the last three months, to allow these huge protests is taking the piss.

        1. Give them the ground rules and if they break them, break skulls.

          These people are, as you say, taking the piss but there is no reason I can see why the police should’nt make them piss themselves for doing so.

          1. If there’s no huge spike in infections after the last few weekends of mass gatherings – both on beaches and on protests – then the whole lockdown is a fantasy response to nothing and should be lifted forthwith.

          2. Hear hear!

            Although I must say that the evil side of me hopes the protesters and looters will all get it.

      2. I still remember the New Zealand police dealing with a demo in NZ back in early 80s. Big lads, they were, with UK-style helmets.
        They formed up in a line about 20-30 yards from the demonstrators, and drew their truncheons. Holding them in both hands horizontally, they took a pace towards the demonstrators and let out a Haka-style “Huh!” sound, whilst stabbing forward with the truncheon. Repeat. Repeat. Until they reached the demonstrators, who, getting the full benefit of the business end of the truncheon in the midriff, collapsed like sunflowers in front of a combine harvester.
        Most effective, it was!

  115. Evening, all – or at least, those of you who are still awake and still here. It’s been the first day of Royal Ascot so I’ve been occupied most of the day and needed to catch up before arriving here.

    1. Our telly’s not working – seems to have been knocked out by the thunderstorm – so I missed the Noos!

        1. Our internet connection’s not good enough for that – even though BT forced us onto “superfast fibre”.

  118. Idle, bored and fed up. I counted the number of pictures on the front page of the BBC website which had real people in them. There were 38 of them. Of them 22 had BAMES. That is 56%. Roughly ten times the proportion in the UK population?

    1. You must be bored. Next try it with TV adverts. I expect you’ll find it’s as high, if not higher.

    2. I would expect a significantly higher proportion given what’s going on at present, but 56% seems very high.

    3. Maybe now is the time for white people to sell up and move out of London and set up their lives elsewhere? Khan is showing them that they are no longer welcome.

      1. I think they’ve been doing that for some time, Rastus. It’s called White Flight.

  119. I just got a “write to Boris ” email from Save the Children – a charity I stopped supporting years ago due to their scandalous behaviour. They should try reducing their own budget paid to their CEO etc. They are obviously rattled and think their cut of funds will be smaller. Here’s what they want people to say:

    Boris Johnson has brought the aid budget under the control of the Foreign Office.

    The Department for International Development (DFID) was
    created to tackle global poverty and over the past 23 years has
    championed immunisation, children’s education and gender equality. Now,
    as a result, millions of children can grow up to fulfil their potential.

    Tell the Prime Minister to make sure UK aid continues to reach the children who need it most.

    It’s not right that children could lose out because of this decision made by our government. We oppose it.

    Act today: urge the Prime Minister to rethink his
    decision. The more people who share their outrage at this decision, the
    more Boris Johnson will have to liste

      1. ALL Govt. aid.

        If people want to give that should be their choice.

        I really object to somebody (the Govt,) taking my money and giving it to people I would not support.

        1. Foreign aid was always only about buying influence in order to obtain advantages, whether political or trade. Anyone suggesting otherwise is deluded.

          Regrettably the immense aid budget has been privatised such that a number of companies are enabled to exploit the resources to their own ends. This has allowed the enrichment of their CEO’s on a scale unimaginable by comparison with their purported aims.

          Meanwhile, we, the poor suckers paying for this monumental rip off, watch on aghast.

    2. Weren’t they the ones who abused children? Brings a new meaning to ‘Save the Children’…

    3. The government is the biggest institutional donor to Save the Children. They do not deserve my money but I have no way of refusing to give.

      3. They saved too many children – they should be promoting contraceptives instead.

    1. TY. I am trying to renew a license that can not be done online and have written to them.

      1. It took me six months to get my licence (which also couldn’t be done on-line). I used their complaints procedure and threatened to contact my MP.

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