833 thoughts on “Tuesday 24 December: Our Byzantine healthcare system prevents GPs from doing their job”

  1. Good morning, Geoff – and thank you, yet again.

    Christmas Eve, eh? How the years pass so fast…

        1. Hmm… I prefer Christmas at home. In someone else’s house, with too few chairs and a Methodist attitude to alcohol, it is suboptimal.

      2. My busy will be keeping out of the way… Pub visit later, I hope.
        Have a good one, Geoff. :-))

        1. You too, Paul. I’m heading to the other side of Devon on Boxing Day for a couple of ‘relaxing’ days. Drilling holes in a friend’s pristine new walls; installing her washer dryer. That sort of thing…

          3. I’d prefer to be workking in Firstborns barn.. That floor won’t chisel itself, and the ammunition load itself Sigh

    2. Good morning, Herr Oberst. It makes as much sense as the entire MSM telling us in advance what the Queen plans to tell us tomorrow in her Christmas Day speech. I don’t need to tune in tomorrow afternoon now after all – not that I would have since I don’t have a TV. But at least I can now have a long lie-in!

      :-))

      EDIT: A very long lie-in!

  3. Good Christmas Eve to all

    SIR – We all have a Christmas wish and mine is simple. I really wish the media in its entirety would start to call the SNP’s desire unilaterally to leave the United Kingdom by its proper name. This is not “independence”. It is secession.

    The desire of Nicola Sturgeon is that Scotland secede from the union of the UK. Why the collective timidity? Secession is not an attractive word but it is the accurate one.

    Even if Scotland did accomplish unilateral secession, it would not be independent but, being functionally bankrupt without the habitual huge economic support of England, would become the servant of its international creditors.

    Frederick Forsyth
    Beaconsfield, Berkshire

    Scotland going back to the Darien bankruptcy with Krankie at the wheel. What bliss.

    Happy Christmas Freddie..

    2. “It is secession.” It is indeed. But the SNP/Scottish Government do not have the guts. The theme of “independence” is simply a USP, a major policy that will keep them in power for ever. In power and in the UK.
      I have pointed out to them that the SNP has sufficient elected representatives to secede from the Union quite legally under international protocols per the Articles of the UN. So why does it not happen? On which side is the bread buttered?

    3. Er, I responded to the first sentence. Reading the last sentence, the financial position of Scotland would be little different to that of the UK as regards debt and subordination to financiers.

  4. This is the only discordant comment I’ll make today. The Queen’s Christmas Message will be broadcast tomorrow at 3 pm.

    Why does the bloody press have to tell us today what she is going to say?

    1. Oops, Bill, you beat me to it by two hours. On the same topic, Classic fm announced this morning that her “Bumpy Ride” of 2019 included Prince Philip’s car crash and hospital stay as well as “adverse criticism” of Prince Andrew and the Sussexes. Having reminded us of that, they then wheeled on an “expert” who told us that by “Bumpy Ride”she was not referring to her family but rather the whole subject of Brexit. Incidentally did you notice that in the photo of her giving her pre-recorded speech, there were several framed photos on the desk, i.e. those of her late father, her husband, her eldest son and his second wife, and the Cambridges (William, Kate, George, Charlotte and Louis). Noticeable by their absence were here second eldest son (Andrew) and the Sussexes.

      1. God Jul o trevligt nytt år, Paul.

        Unfortunately the speech was recorded, prolly a couple of weeks ago.

  5. I wonder if Professor Marshall has ever visited a GP as a patient – three weeks after he called for an appointment….

  6. SIR – Lord Hall of Birkenhead (Commentary, December 23), the BBC director general, says that “people trust us”. In the spirit of the season, may I respond: “Oh no they don’t.”

    Ian Watkins
    Peterborough, Cambridgeshire

  7. The Guardian report on the Queen’s Speech starts with a predictable tirade against the Royal Family. On the other hand, I think the photo of the Queen sitting at her desk is several years old.

    1. I wish the newspapers would go back to reporting things after theyvd happened tather than before.

      2. ‘Moring, Storm, & Merry C.

        I can remember when it was sacrilege for any newspaper to reveal anything from Brenda’s speech in advance.

        1. The BBC R2 News has just given a full account of the speech including the whys & wherefores of the arrangement of the photos on her desk. No need to interrupt Christmas lunch tomorrow to view it.

          1. Good grief, Peddy, I feel a right Charley now. I must remember to check the NoTTL site dead on 7 am in future. Everyone one here has commented on the advance reporting of her speech and the photos on her desk hours before I logged in.

          2. I didn’t rise till well after 8 this morning, Elsie, after a good night’s sleep with vivid dreams.

  8. Good news for canines –

    “The US says it has stopped sending
    explosive-detecting dogs to Jordan and Egypt after the deaths of a
    number of animals due to negligence.

    “Any death of a canine in the field is an extremely sad event,” a US state department spokesman said.

    In September, a US report highlighted cases of negligence in the care of more than 100 dogs sent to Jordan, Egypt and eight other countries in recent years.

    The US-trained dogs were provided as part of anti-terrorism programmes.”

  9. OK – that’s me for the rest of the day. There will be a new page tomorrow, whether or not there are any letters. Wishing everyone here a wonderfully Merry Christmas, and a peaceful, prosperous (outside the EU) and Happy New Year…

    1. And the same to you, old bean – and many of them.

      Play nicely! And I wish you 2020 vision!

    2. Good morning Geoff

      You have provided another great Nottler year , even though it went through a bumpy changeover period.

      Thank you so much for being the host with the most..

      Merry Christmas to you and everything else x

    3. PS

      Just seen the Carol woman bringing the weather from Gloucester cathedral… she commented on it’s organ .. she said if the organ was dismantled, and the pipes laid in a line .. they would stretch 10 miles!

      2. ‘Morning, Belle & Merry Christmas.

        Apropos Carol woman, it’s just occurred to me: I’ve suffered no carol singers this year.

    4. Thanks for everything, Geoff. Wishing you a great Christmas and an equally great New Year.

    8. Have a merry Christmas Geoff. Thank you for keeping this site going. (PS. No-one will blame you if you take a day off tomorrow :))

    10. Thanks for another year of pages on which to write our thoughts, Geoff. For me, they’ve been a bit like that thing on top of a pressure cooker.

      Have a good one.

      1. You’re welcome, Joseph. It’s not particularly clever, and I sometimes wonder what the hell I started, but we have a great bunch of people posting here. Without exception. Merry Christmas to you and yours.

    17. Thank you for our NoTTL, Geoff!

      Have a very happy Christmas and New Year.

      And to all lovely NoTTLers – onwards and upwards!

  13. SIR – Labour never took defeat well, and the calls for a Tony Blair Mark II show a determination to learn nothing.

    Mr Blair was fortunate to have an opposition in transition, as its old guard, dating back to the days of Harold Macmillan, was finally cleared out. He won three general elections by buying off fickle southern Tory voters, at the expense of the welfare of his party’s old heartlands, under the arrogant presumption that they had no other choice.

    The result was that the British National Party became the most successful far-Right party in British electoral history. By 2007, the Scottish National Party had taken over Holyrood and Scottish Labour began hurtling towards extinction. All this, and the rise of Nigel Farage, was hitherto considered unthinkable. These were but final warnings. Now Labour has reaped what its post-1945 arrogance and betrayal have sown.

    Mark Boyle
    Johnstone, Renfrewshire

    BTL@DTletters

    Fulbourne Westerley 24 Dec 2019 1:52AM
    Mark Boyle: “…the British National Party became the most successful far-Right party in British electoral history.”

    Given that it consisted largely of ex-Labour members, was supported by disgruntled Labour voters, and had a manifesto borrowed from the Labour party of the 1980s, the description ‘far-right’ is a bit, er, left-field, isn’t it?

    1. Tony Blair was also fortunate in having a news media that had demonised the Tory Party.
      About my only remaining smidgen of sympathy for Mrs. May is the way her speech to the Tory Party Conference in October 2002 was twisted by the press.

  15. I received yesterday a large envelope with a wadge of useful little booklets sent from our County Council re scams .

    I think the internet link they provided may be useful to lots of you sensible bods to spread the message on to more vulnerable bods.

    The thing here is , when our elderly pal was in a bit of a mess before he moved from his falling down cottage , 2 years ago , he was receiving junk mail by the ton and about 20+ phone calls a day .. fortunately he is deaf as a post until he puts his hearing aids in .

    It appears that his surname appeared on a Scammers list , and the safe guarding by Trading standards is quite good .. so they contacted me as I am one of his emergency contacts . https://www.friendsagainstscams.org.uk/

    I expect some of you will find the link useful . Trading standards do a You Tube Friends against scams ..

    Just have a peep and see what you think.

  17. Apart from the letter from Mr Watkins (pasted below) were there any other DT letters disagreeing with Lord Hall of Moneybags?

    1. Here you go, you cheapskate

      SIR – Robin Thomas (Letters, December 21) writes that he has protested against the BBC by cancelling his direct-debit payment for the licence fee.

      He also needs to complete the form requesting a refund, since the BBC took a six-month advance payment by increased subscriptions for the first few months of his direct-debit payment. Thus Mr Thomas, and all direct-debit payers, are always in credit for their licence, but the BBC does not automatically repay the sum.

      I was nearly caught out by this wheeze, as I had calculated that my monthly payments equalled the cost of the six-month period for which I had used the television during the licence’s annual term, and so I believed the BBC owed me nothing.

      It was thanks to a letter published in these pages, informing readers of the advance payment, that I requested a refund, and I was pleased to receive a payment equal to six months’ licence fee shortly afterwards.

      David Waller
      Gillingham, Kent

      SIR – Since Tory ministers decided to boycott Today on BBC Radio 4 (report, December 19), the programme has been much more enjoyable, and we are spared constant interruption by interviewers. Long may it continue.

      Henry Webber
      Oxted, Surrey

      SIR – The idea of moving the BBC to Salford was to remove the London bias. Instead, the BBC paid expenses for staff to commute and thus retained the bias, even though under HMRC rules their place of employment is deemed to be in the North.

      Michael Meadowcroft
      Durham

      SIR – I worked for 10 years on the management team of a reasonably significant British business. We spent half our time worrying about how to increase our revenue and the other half worrying about how to reduce costs. What on earth does the senior BBC management team do all day?

      William Crawshay
      Tasburgh, Norfolk

      1. Cheapskate? Au contraire – a prudent person who sees through the greed of the Barclay Brothers.

      2. What does the BBC board do? The same thing as council ‘executives’. SFA. Oh, they set strategy, they’ll wail. The state has no strategy. It exists to serve the public. That doesn’t change.

        It is simply a team responsible for looking at data gathered and assigning resources (money) to specific areas. Their main role is in ensuring that money is spent wisely and on the things the allocation was for.

        This function isn’t difficult. Town hall people pretend it is, but it’s tedious middle management worth no more than about 40,000 a year. This should be the default and ceiling for all senior council staff. Those doing the actual work can earn whatever, as they have specific skills and training. The troughers are just placemen. If Boris wants to reform the civil service, that’s where you start. Cut out the fat.

      1. ! !

        Happy Christmas Peddy to you and your family.

        We sent a similar card last year but we took the photo for this one yesterday afternoon so if gives an up-to-date picture of the general decay of the last 12 months.

        1. Caroline doesn’t look at all decayed.😎
          Best wishes to both of you this Christmas and a happy 2020 to follow.

    2. Morning R,
      You & Mrs R have a lovely Christmas & a very happy New Year,
      I will do my best to keep you on the right track in the new year.

    5. What’s a lovely young lass like that doing with an old curmudgeon like you?? 😉

      Joking aside, I hope the pair of you have a good’un.

  19. Good morning, everyone. Just popped in to greet everyone before we set off to spend Christmas in a dog friendly hotel in Devon. I send all Nottlers my best wishes for Christmas.

          3. I thought it was the Swiss (with their mountains) and not the Swedes who has funiculars!

            :-))

  20. Hendo’s gone a bit soft here but we’ll let him off in this instance.

    What the late, great cricketer Bob Willis taught me about friendship

    MICHAEL HENDERSON

    In these divided times, we need mutual understanding – not the restrictions of identity politics

    This afternoon, in Mortlake, we shall say goodbye to Bob Willis, the great cricketer who died earlier this month. The wider public recognised him as a magnificent fast bowler who played 90 Test matches for England. His friends knew a different man, who made time for everyone and brought much joy into the lives of those who loved him.

    It will be a sad occasion. It will also be a time for that affirmation of the spirit which always survives the loss of loved ones. Robert had so many friends, who will remember him today in the midsummer of life, draining beakers of wine and sharing tales of human folly. No surprise that Willis, a Bob Dylan aficionado so passionate that he adopted Dylan as his middle name, will make his final farewell to his idol’s secular hymn, Forever Young.

    There is never a bad time to celebrate the gift of friendship. At the end of a year when our country has been stretched almost to breaking point it seems right to acknowledge the things that bring us together, and there are more of them than some imagine. By and large, whatever our political or social views, British people rub along pretty well. In Paris they have been rioting in the streets every week for a year. In this country we settle differences by putting a cross against our name in a polling booth.

    Some grouches, like the former Labour MP Laura Pidcock, are happy to proclaim their lifelong antipathy to those of a different political hue. As she was unseated last week by the electors of North West Durham, she doesn’t lack opportunity to consider her position in more ways than one. Whether the passing of time brings wisdom is another matter.

    The House of Commons has made a good start in directing us towards our better selves by anointing Lindsay Hoyle as Speaker. How bracing to have a well-balanced person sitting in that chair, somebody clearly well-disposed towards his fellow human beings. Oddly enough, they seem to like him, too. Already the air in Westminster smells sweeter. A proper Lancastrian! You can never have enough of ’em.

    The British gift for friendship is a remarkable aspect of our national genius. Personal loyalty is not exclusive to us, of course, but strong feelings held in check can be profoundly moving. Just as a horse’s power is most visible when it is being restrained, the strength of a friendship is most touching when it remains implicit, not painted in gaudy colours.

    Take the alliance between Willis and Ian Botham, his comrade on and off the field. Botham is a forthright man with a mighty heart, untainted by self-doubt. Bobby was thoughtful and slightly melancholic. He loved Wagner, and maybe saw something of Siegfried in the young Botham. Temperamentally these great sportsmen were miles apart. Yet their friendship was strong and deep in that unaffected English way.

    Contrary to cliche, we do not choose our friends. We fall into friendship with people over months or years in ways that may surprise us. True friendship has nothing to do with similarity of opinion. We often get on best with those with whom we disagree, as Miss Pidcock may discover if she takes the trouble to find out.

    The personal, as another lazy phrase has it, is political. It may be. Then again, it may not. On the whole sympathy does more good than ‘solidarity’, just as a quiet word trumps ’emotional literacy’. Divisions along clearly marked lines of sex, sexuality, tribe or class, represent failures of the imagination. Identity politics, guarded by zealots, is the enemy of civilised life – and of mutual comprehension.

    A friend who once shared a house with Michael Gove said that although he disagreed with Gove’s political views he was a good and loyal friend. Can you imagine that batey fifth-former Owen Jones being so generous? Or Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, who seems to spend every waking hour in a fog of indignation? What comic value that fair-minded lady has provided over the years! Sadly, she vowed to leave the country if Boris Johnson became Prime Minister, and we shall now have to take our pleasures in other ways.

    It is the season of goodwill to all men (and women), when we celebrate the birth of Our Lord. Whether we are Christians or not we should all give thanks for love human and divine, and for the spark that fires our clay.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/12/23/late-great-cricketer-bob-willis-taught-friendship/

    1. Michael Henderson is, without doubt, the best cricket (and cultural) correspondent the Daily Telegraph has enjoyed over the past 30 years. Shame he went freelance and only pops up around two-to-three times a year.

      1. He was eased off the TMS journos lunchtime panel a few years ago for being a bit forthright. Dear old Aggers couldn’t cope with a couple of sixes struck back over his head.

        1. I stopped listening to TMS when they decided that Phil Tufnell was a correspondent of gravitas!

          The unfunny and irritating creep is far from it!

          1. It was once a bit po-faced and needed a bit of loosening. Now it’s gone too far in that direction.

      2. Here’s Hendo from The Spectator, February 2005 (shame about the jarring note at the end).

        Time to rescue BBC English

        Michael Henderson says that too many broadcasters have no idea how to speak our language

        Last month at the British Library, as part of the admirable series of poetry evenings organised by Josephine Hart, Edward Fox and Dame Eileen Atkins presented a reading of ‘Four Quartets’. It is not eccentric to declare Eliot’s long poem, composed between 1935 and 1942, as the greatest written in English since the death of Tennyson, and it is certainly the greatest English poem of the last century, conjoining, as it does, the language, landscape and history of this country. Fox and Atkins, sensitive to its music and grave beauty, gave a memorably lustrous performance.

        Afterwards, however, the gratitude that one felt for hearing Eliot’s resonant, mysterious language spoken with such sympathy was disturbed by what the writer, in another of his famous poems, called ‘an overwhelming question’: how often does one hear the world’s greatest language spoken with respect by its native speakers? Not often in England, that’s for sure.

        It is not only on the streets of our cities (and, increasingly, our villages) that the verbal barbarians have taken over, with their glottal stops and rising inflections. Turn on the radio or the television, and anybody who cares for the sound and meaning of the English language must recoil with horror at how it is abused by those who make a living from speaking it. Although it is our greatest gift to the world – and the world has not withheld its thanks – too many English people are either unable to speak it clearly, or, in the case of a metropolitan media class tainted by inverted snobbery, they refuse to.

        This is not a matter of accent, though it must be said that the number of bogus proletarian voices on the airwaves has reached epidemic proportions. Has anybody heard the continuity announcers on the BBC recently? Plenty of broadcasters have spoken with distinctive accents, and many, notably Benny Green, were first-raters. Compare Green, whose London voice was genuine and warm, with the ghastly Jonathan Ross and you can see how far we have slipped. Where once there was elegance of delivery, now there is cultivated oikism.

        No, it is to do mainly with language: the colour, weight, clarity, rhythm and articulation of words. Their meaning, in other words. For every presenter or reporter who speaks clearly, like the much mocked Ed Stourton, there are half a dozen guilty of elision, omission, addition and exaggeration. Familiar words, names and places are mispronounced. Verbs are left to fend for themselves – ‘troops arriving in Iraq’. The letter T (either ignored, or pronounced as a D, as in ‘alodda’) is a lost cause. Even Andrew Marr, the BBC political correspondent and a well-spoken man in most respects, cannot say, ‘going to’. Instead he says – emphatically and repeatedly – ‘gunner’.

        Ah, ‘well-spoken’. There’s the rub! The most persistent foot-soldiers in this Kulturkampf are those middle-class types who feel that by speaking poorly as a matter of principle they are expressing solidarity with that mythical sub-culture, ‘real people’. Writing in this magazine recently, Charles Moore (who speaks well, as Etonians should) observed that Ruth Kelly delivered a ‘breathtakingly graceless’ speech at a Spectator Parliamentarian of the Year lunch four years ago ‘in an accent which she would never have had while at Westminster School’. Of course she did. It would never do for an ambitious Blairite to be seen consorting with enemy forces. The assumption of an alien voice was her crass way of saying, ‘I belong elsewhere.’

        The Prime Minister himself is familiar with this stratagem. His popular touch is not infallible (they didn’t do ‘demotic studies’ at Fettes) but it doesn’t stop him trying to sound like a pop star, which is really what he has always wanted to be. Man of the people and all that guff. As Anthony Burgess, who spent most of his adult life abroad, said, on one of his last visits to this country, ‘Only in England is the perversion of language regarded as a victory for democracy.’

        These daring new democrats have established their base camp at White City, and their centre of operations is Five Live, an outlet dedicated almost entirely to the brutal suppression of decent English. Other than the outstanding Brian Hayes, who is Australian, and Nicky Campbell, the cocky Jock, the station is awash with mediocrities who enjoy nothing more than speaking out of the corner of their mouths and upsetting the balance of every sentence by emphasising the wrong syllable. But even in this undistinguished gathering it is possible to identify the worst offender. Step forward, Susan Bookbinder, newsreader and (so she insists on reminding listeners every few minutes) Manchester City fan.

        This lady’s finest hour came two years ago, after the death of Adam Faith. In the course of a single sentence, ‘born on a council estate in west London, he was determined to make something of himself’, she managed to put an incorrect stress on five syllables – ‘born’, ‘west’, ‘he’, ‘some’ and ‘him’. Even by Five Live’s lamentable standards it was a virtuoso performance. Perhaps she ex-changed high fives with her pro-ducer later.

        Can we expect the BBC to take the lead in banishing Bookbinder to the boondocks, and restoring good English to the airwaves? Mark Thompson, the director-general, should remember what Auden said about the first duty of poets, which was to act as ‘custodians of the language’. If he doesn’t know what that means, he can turn to Eliot, who commended a world in which ‘every phrase and sentence is right’, with this amplification:

        Taking its place to support the others,
        The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
        An easy commerce of the old and the new,
        The common word exact without vulgarity,
        The formal word precise but not pedantic,
        The complete consort dancing together.

        The Thompsons and Kellys of this world may feel that ‘the complete consort’ sounds intolerably high-minded, that it is terribly ‘middle-class’ to impose high standards of speech on listeners in our value-free, multicultural society. Nor are they alone. A government-funded study led by Professor Richard Andrews of York University has concluded that the teaching of grammar in schools is largely a waste of time. So we are breeding another generation of gibbering halfwits.

        In an ideal world it would be the BBC’s bounden duty to equip all employees, on their first day at work, with two literary masterpieces: ‘Four Quartets’ and Orwell’s essay ‘Politics and the English Language’. Until that blessed day dawns, can Jimmy Savile fix it for Fox and Atkins to read the news?

  22. I see that ‘Love Island presenter Caroline Flack hit boyfriend over the head with lamp’

    Any advance on him feeling light-headed?

    2. Looks as though he got a Birne in the Birne (German joke).

      Birne is a shortening of the German Glühbirne – a lightbulb. Birne is also slang for brain.

    3. This not a pun post, but the first time I read of this I thought to myself: “Two grown adults, and they can’t resolve a domestic without ending up in court?”

      1. Morning Elsie.

        Not knowing who the couple are, I suspect publicity might have something to do with it.

      2. Back in the 1970s I had to intervene in a “domestic” dispute where upon a long-married couple in their 60s had come to blows. She had hit him with a broom, cracking his skull and he had retaliated by throwing the telly at her, breaking her arm. I got an ambulance for both of them whilst they were each under arrest for causing GBH to the other! I hated “domestics”.

        On another occasion, a wife had thrown a pan of baked beans at her husband and they (the beans) were running down the kitchen wall. He had retaliated by throwing a pan of baby food at her, and this decorated the opposite wall.

        1. I was told by a very (VERY) close friend when I lived in Scotland that all the police hated “domestics” over Christmas, since when they entered the house the combatants usually turned on the police officer.

          1. I’ve never had them turn on me (they wouldn’t have dared) but they are a pain in the arse, especially when inebriated. You simply cannot talk sense to them.

    8. She’s a loose woman. I remember on a flight to Germany a long time ago, taking Flack over Berlin.

  23. Upon first reading this I did wonder for a few brief moments if the Belfast Telegraph was another Rochdale Herald but on reflection it’s not subtle enough for that.

    Bricklayer topples ‘nemesis’ to become new World Pie Eating Champion

    https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/viral/bricklayer-topples-nemesis-to-become-new-world-pie-eating-champion-38799256.html

    In the BBC’s all-inclusive world, I’m surprised the winner wasn’t featured in SPOTY. Perhaps he’s just too British…

  24. Merry Christmas to all on this site.

    I know I don’t contribute very often but remain an avid reader of all the common sense displayed by fellow contributors. Happy Christmas to all of us !

    1. Merry Christmas, Rik.

      I’ve noticed the same with bus drivers; lately some look as though they are in their early teens.

    3. That’s Lewis Burton (Burden?) who is 6’4 – same height as me – although I am twice as wide.

      That makes the police officer 5.4 at best, even accounting for his downward motion.

      Let’s put that officer on the best and he comes across some thug like me who outweighs him thrice over. What can he possibly do to stop me? I thought there were height requirements?

      What I do find disturbing is the profliteration of Muslims within the police force. By all means be representative but we’ve already seen the police looking the other way over ‘diversity’. We’ve had one convicted of aiding and protecting a paedophile rape gang. Is it really safe? Can they be relied upon to uphold the law? Heck, we’ve had a Muslim swear on the Koran in the British bloody parliament in his native language. That’s barmy! He’s an MP. A British servant of the crown. His own blasted language is now English.

      The pandering nonsense has to stop or else the traditions mean nothing.

      1. Morning Bob,
        All the best for Christmas to you & family.
        Common sense is a commodity lacking in the lab/lib/con coalition party.

      1. W,
        It is the way the governing bodies want it and also the peoples via the polling booth, as the
        voting mode continues unhindered.
        If very serious change was required it could be achieved overnight.
        Use Colchester military nick as a pattern & para’s and SAS as security until sorted.
        Got a mate done time in Colchester he told me
        “you don’t go twice”

  27. Following my somewhat incontinent rant about the bastardisation by the BBC of A Christmas Carol I had a facebook chat with a chum whose daughter (Sarah Morgan) is an occasional contributor to BBC comedy, I’ve been aware of her and I find her stuff intelligent and amusing, anyway here’s the bulk of my chum’s conversation which is quite enlightening:-

    ” Well ! I will watch with an open mind and let you know what I think. I don’t hold it quite as dear as you do – so my main hope is to be entertained. Sarah will tell you that the Beeb is still run by the same 10 middle aged white guys it always was run by and they are just paying lip service to “re inventing the medium”. They also play very safe in what they commission – known writers prepared to try something a bit edgy. “Safe pair of hands lads “. You are probably safe as they will soon revert to type when current direction loses them audience. Like you I love radio 4 though unlike you I am not unhappy with some recent changes. John Humphreys going was one of their better decisions.”

    1. That must be 10 middle aged white guys who hate/despite Boris, the Tories, Brexit voters, most white license-fee payers …. but are really into rap music, black yoof, strong language, and muslim heroes …

  28. Daily Brexit Betrayal

    Indeed – look at it!

    Look at France, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Italy – look at

    Brussels itself where it has suddenly dawned on the remaining member

    states that they have a month to get their act together and work out a

    strategy for the coming trade talks, with panic setting in (link).

    It’s their turn to be afraid, very afraid – and unlike us, they have an

    actual reason: that ‘Hard Brexit’ we’re not afraid of will damage them,

    not us. Douglas Murray concludes with these wise words:

    “Of course we should

    remind ourselves not to gloat. Of course it could have been us only a

    couple of weeks ago. But how fast the fortune wheel of global politics

    spins these days. Just a few weeks ago Britain looked in real

    difficulties. Today we look like perhaps the most stable kid on the

    international block. So yes, count our blessings this year. By

    remembering what might have been.” (paywalled link)

    Precisely! Personally and secretly,

    like Willie Whitelaw, I’m ‘gloating like hell’. And perhaps, over the

    holidays, the Establishment who have tried to sell us ‘Fear, Gloom &

    Doom’ might ponder how ineffective that was and why: We the People have

    trust in ourselves, in our Nation. We are not afraid

    https://independencedaily.co.uk/your-daily-brexit-betrayal-tuesday-24th-december-2019-christmas-eve/

  29. Christmas greetings to all NoTTLers from a mild and dull southern Sweden. [So mild it was awoken me from my slumbers!].

    Hope you all have a good time and see you all back in what will indubitably be a very HAPPY New Year. 🥃🍹🐻🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇸🇪😘

    1. Best wishes to you and yours Grizz. A pal here in France has shipped a firkin of Timothy Taylor’s Landlord down here for Christmas and we should start on it tomorrow!

      Happy New Year!

      1. Firkin hell, Harry! I’m en route!

        Timmy’s has long been a favourite of mine. It didn’t win the “Champion Beer of Britain” title five times for nothing. Cheers and Happy New Year to you and yours too!

      2. Last Friday, I went to our favourite social club* with my brother and nephew. While pulling me a pint of Wye Valley Butty Bach, the steward mentioned that they had Taylor’s Landlord Bitter on tap. I vowed to switch for the rest of the night.

        Sadly, by the time the second round came around, the barrel had been exhausted, Gone in 3 nights.according to the steward. 🙁

        *Hall Green Home Guard Club.

    3. Season’s greetings, Grizzly.
      On the subject of beers, Landlord can be found occasionally in these here parts and it is a nice brew. I stumbled on a new, to me anyway, ale last week. From Norfolk of which I believe you have some experience: Woodforde’s Bure Gold. A nice play on words, the Bure being one of the local rivers. Very good it is too.

      1. Morning Korky. Woodforde’s made their name (and won awards) with a beer called ‘Wherry’. Worth seeking out….

        1. Morning, Harry.
          I’ve had my share of Wherry over the last few years. It’s more common than Landlord around here.
          Back in the summer one of my nephews held a family party and had Wherry on tap, the difference being that he brewed it from their kit. It was very good for a home brew. Plenty of interesting brews around N Essex and Suffolk these days.

      2. And Seasons’s Greetings back to you, Korky.

        When I lived in Norfolk (between 1999 and 2011) my house was not far from the source of the Bure and it ran about 100 yards from my property. I have long been a fan of Woodforde’s superb ales and have visited its brewery in Woodbastwick and enjoyed a number of its brews at the attached pub The Fur and Feather.

        As Harry (below) rightly points out, Wherry is one of the best session beers brewed in the UK. I remember, back in the 1980s, that they brought out—for a period of a couple of years—a stronger, “best” bitter that was one of the tastiest beers of my experience, but I’m damned if I can remember its name!

        1. I’ve just looked up that long-lost delicious Woodforde’s best bitter in my old (1986) CAMRA Good Beer Guide.

          It was called Phoenix XXX (named for the resurrection of the brewery) and it had an ABV of 1047. It was described as a “full bodied malty bitter” but I cannot fathom out why this superb beer was discontinued.

    4. Merry Christmas from York, Grizz! Up here to spend a few days with my family. I stay in what was originally the Viking Hotel, though it’s long since been taken over and had a corporate identity stamped on it. Flood defences too though, so that’s not all bad. It sits on the river front.

      3. And a very Merry Christmas back to you, Sue. You certainly know how to make a chap feel jealous and homesick :•). Hope you have a really lovely time with your family. I shall raise a glass to you tonight with a huge smile. 😘🥂

      4. Merry Christmas – I say it but not really in the mood for it – yet when you talk about flood defences I know you mean barriers and sandbags, but I envisage massive 16″ guns and turrets.

  30. Vulnerable children moved miles from home – report

    It is well known that we cannot cope with the numbers of children we have in care and this is a symptom of it yet we have daft councils usually left wing once claiming they can easily take lots of so called unaccompanied child migrants. The simple fact is we cannot, The government is proving generous overseas aid to support these children in there own countries which is by far the best approach. It is also at lot less costly so more can be helped. Bring more children to the UK and putting them in care just makes a bad situation very much worse

    About 30,000 children in care live outside their local area, with nearly 12,000 placed 20 miles or more from friends and family, a report suggests.
    It says 2,000 are housed more than 100 miles from wherever they call home.
    A growing number are isolated from support and at increased risk of going missing, says children’s commissioner for England Anne Longfield.
    The government says children are moved away only as a “last resort”, with “safety and suitability” the priority.
    According to the Department for Education, there were 78,150 children in care at 31 March.
    The commissioner’s report, titled Pass the Parcel, identifies a 13% increase in the number of minors housed outside their English local authority area over four years.

    1. Good morning Bill

      I knew people who as children were evacuated to Canada during WW2 , and many of course were evacuated from our big cities , away from their parents for the duration of the war.. and what about some of us who were sent off to boarding school, who probably only saw our parents who were abroad, twice a year..

      Those of us who were lucky enough to be accepted for nurse training as late teenagers , we were accommodated in nurses quarters .. We were miles away from our families as well.

      I just wonder what goes on these days , and why there are not state boarding schools and properly supervised children’s homes for children who are discarded by their families .. Am I naive?

      1. Your post reminded me of this place:

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

        Woolverstone Hall School
        Established 1951
        Founder London County Council

        In the early 1950s the London County Council obtained use of Woolverstone Hall near Ipswich, Suffolk, and some 50 acres (200,000 m2) of adjoining land for the purpose of establishing a secondary grammar boarding school for London boys. The premises were previously occupied by the LNS Woolverstone, a branch of the London Nautical School, some students of which were permitted to complete their education in the new environment, which commenced experimentally in 1950. In September 1951, the new school formally opened with mostly new teaching staff under a new headmaster, Mr J. S. H. Smitherman. It became comprehensive in 1977, under the auspices of the Inner London Education Authority. The school closed in 1990 and the site was sold to the Girls’ Day School Trust. In 1992 it became the home of Ipswich High School.”

        1. Years ago , and I mean in the seventies when I was a young active mother of 2, I used to help organise holidays for children recommended by social services from inner cities.. and find host families in our area .. minimal payment for hosts really, but the delight these children showed , coming out into our small villages etc and a different life .. 2 weeks or a month or longer.. and the WRVS used to provide spare clothing and back up .. We really saw some genuine poverty in those days ..

          One of the amazing things was that many children took home a nice memory .. and a knowledge that they can also achieve what they wanted to .. Achievement is a numbers game .. even if one in five go on to nicer things .. that is a win win , isn’t it.

      2. There are some state boarding schools. Most of these children no though are pretty much feral and are not really suitable for the average children’s home or foster home

      1. The London Councils take in these illegals saying they can accommodate them and then dump them on councils around the UK. They do the same with London’s homeless. The coastal resorts of the South are a favorite dump ground for the London councils. All they have to do is pay their rent the rest of the costs go to the council areas they dump them on and they get no funding for them neither

        1. When the government and compliant medics began clearing out the old asylums, coastal resorts were a favoured location.
          There were many failing hotels and guest houses that were only too glad of new permanent residents. They were of varying quality, as could be seen by the sad characters plodding round Clacton etc… between the hours of 9.0 am and (if lucky) 5.0 pm.

          3. Clacton was once a quite nice seaside resort with about as near zero crime as you could get. How it has changed now though and Colchester was a quite nice large market town again that is no more

          4. Which all rather begs the question of what do we do about it?

            Approaching it from a ‘look, you’re here, we want to legalise your status AND protect you under our laws. The Left ignore that of course, as they think that compulsary registration means controlling them.

            Yes, it does. Same as any other citizen. If we cannot identify you, you cannot exist. Of course, the next step is then to deport the criminals.

    3. It has been shown that if convicts can be kept in regular contact with their families they are more likely to successfully re-integrate into society upon release. If that is true of hard case criminals how much more true is it for young, bewildered and vulnerable children?

      1. London council who claim they can take so called unaccompanied children and other migrants no they cannot accommodate them, As can be seen from the above post they take them and then dump them on the rest of the UK

        To stop this I think we need legislation that says the councils that claim they can take them have to keep them within their own council area and not dump them elsewhere

      1. Good reply, Bob but it’s wasted on the likes of Abbot. She’s driven by ideology, like so many others, rather than the reality of the situation. So much these days is stressed by the numbers being imported e.g. housing, education, travel and of course the NHS but you’ll never hear anyone of Abbot’s stripe admit to that, rather they’ll deny immigration numbers as the cause of the problem. These people really do think that the people are dumb, even after the result on the 12th. What we need is an immigration points system that isn’t designed to increase numbers by the back door but to only allow those in who will be of benefit to the UK.

      2. Asylum seekers rights are defined by international law.

        They can apply to this country and be judged on the merits of their application. If their parent(s) are already here then that is entirely reasonable. However, one would ask how and why the parent got here and left the child behind in a dangerous place rather than travelling with them.

        It’s easier, they’ll cry – well, no, it is no more difficult – if they are refugees.

        What Diane Abbot is talking about of course is illegal economic migration. Not refugee status – where the law is clear: you stop in the first safe country. The *first*. That’s not ever France, let alone the UK.

  31. Morning Each,
    My wish for the New Year is that the standing room only
    at Mass tonight is continued through the New Year.
    A basis for a decent country.

  32. AN oil well is expected to be built less than a kilometre to the north of historic Athelhampton House.

    If it finds sufficient oil it could be in operation for up to 25 years with tankers travelling daily to Fawley refinery.

    An exploratory rig, if approved, will be in action immediately north of Waterbarn Cottages and to the east of Bardolf Manor off the Puddletown to Blandford Road.

    A final decision will be made by Dorset Council together with applications also being made to the Environment Agency.

    https://www.dorsetecho.co.uk/news/18120267.dorset-oil-rig-work-25-years-approved/

    Buried news eh?

    Comments are very interesting !

    1. Morning, Belle.
      Years ago, I came across Wytch Farm oil well by accident. It didn’t seem to be particularly obtrusive.
      Unlike coal mines – particularly open cast – which can endanger houses.

      Section from Wikipedia on Wentworth Woodhouse. Which neatly brings in Grizz’s point about socialism.

      “Coal mining on the estate.

      In April 1946, on the orders of Manny Shinwell (the then Labour Party’s Minister of Fuel and Power) a “column of lorries and heavy plant machinery” arrived at Wentworth. The objective was the mining of a large part of the estate close to the house for coal. This was an area where the prolific Barnsley seam was within 100 feet (30 m) of the surface and the area in front of the Baroque West wing of the house became the largest open-cast mining site in Britain at that time: 132,000 tons of coal were removed solely from the gardens. Ostensibly the coal was desperately needed in Britain’s austere post-war economy to fuel the railways, but the decision has been widely seen as useful cover for an act of class-war spite against the coal-owning aristocracy. A survey by Sheffield University, commissioned by Peter Wentworth-Fitzwilliam, the 8th Earl, found the coal to be “very poor stuff” and “not worth the getting”; this contrasted with Shinwell’s assertion that it was “exceptionally good-quality.”

      The open-cast mining came right up to the edge of the main lawn on this side of the house

      Shinwell, intent on the destruction of the Fitzwilliams and “the privileged rich”, decreed that the mining would continue to the back door of Wentworth, the family’s east front. What followed saw the mining of 99 acres (40 ha) of lawns and woods, the renowned formal gardens and the show-piece pink shale driveway (a by-product of the family’s collieries). Ancient trees were uprooted and the debris of earth and rubble was piled 50 ft (15 m) high in front of the family’s living quarters.

      Local opinion supported the earl – Joe Hall, President of the Yorkshire Area of the National Union of Mineworkers, said that the “miners in this area will go to almost any length rather than see Wentworth Woodhouse destroyed. To many mining communities it is sacred ground” – in an industry known for harsh treatment of workers, the Fitzwilliams were respected employers known for treating their employees well. The Yorkshire branch later threatened a strike over the Labour Government’s plans for Wentworth, and Joe Hall wrote personally to Clement Attlee in a futile attempt to stop the mining. This spontaneous local activism, founded on the genuine popularity of the Fitzwilliam family among locals, was dismissed in Whitehall as “intrigue” sponsored by the earl.

      The open-cast mining moved into the fields to the west of the house and continued into the early 1950s. The mined areas took many years to return to a natural state; much of the woodland and the formal gardens were not replaced. The current owners of the property allege that mining operations near the house caused substantial structural damage to the building due to subsidence, and lodged a claim in 2012 of £100 million for remedial works against the Coal Authority. The claim was heard by the Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber) in April 2016. In its decision dated 4 October 2016 the Tribunal found that the damage claimed for was not caused by mining subsidence (2016 UKUT 0432 (LC)).

      Two sets of death duties in the 1940s, and the nationalization of their coal mines, greatly reduced the wealth of the Fitzwilliams, and most of the contents of the house were dispersed, in auction sales in 1948, 1986 and 1998. In the Christies sale in 1948, Rinaldo conquered by Love for Armida by Anthony van Dyck raised 4,600 Guineas[40] (equivalent to £172,514 in 2018).

      Many items still remain in the family, with many works lent to museums by the “Trustees of the Fitzwilliam Estates.”

      1. Wytch is miles from everywhere and a really wonderful operation , an absolute jewel in Dorset’s crown .

        Puddletown is a touristy area .. old villages like that deserve respect .. the forest is broadleaf , and historic .. and Athelhampton house has just been sold … funny thing that !

      2. What is particularly fascinating about this demolition of the reputation of the much-revered Attlee Government is to consider Manny Shinwell, who was so vindictive in his class war against the Fitzwilliams and could be considered an extreme left-winger.

        A 21st century descendant of his was the former MP Luciana Berger, who jumped ship, appalled at the drift leftwards of her party under Corbyn, and who fought Margaret Thatcher’s old seat as a Liberal Democrat.

        Which of the two relatives was the most effective class warrior?

      3. 12 individual opencast coal mines in this photo taken in 1996. (Radar North, Radar Extension F, Coldrife, Ladyburn, Ladyburn Extension, Radcliffe, Togston, Chester House, Chester House Extension, West Chevington, Acklington, Acklington Extension), Over 20 million tonnes of good quality, low cost, steam coal extracted from everything green in the photo between 1955 and 1995, as far as Amble (the distant town running aff the right of the photop just below the horizon). Derelict pitheaps and an ex-RAF airfield removed, new upgraded roads built, three successful nature reserves and a country park developed from scratch. Hundreds of well paid jobs for the local community under Labour and Conservative governments. Substandard Victorian housing without hot running water and with only outside toilets demolished in 1972 and 1982 and new modern centrally-heated housing constructed at Amble and South Broomhill to re-house the people affected in relocated communities.

        It wasn’t about politics. It was about keeping the lights on at a time when 70% or more of our electricity was produced from coal and none of it was imported.

        Don’t believe everything you read, especially about mining. Those who do the writing almost always know nothing about mining and they always have a political agenda. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6a2aa2e3dc462b04904b6c07f2de278de66a5d1a29289a360ba79212c6b4e867.jpg

        1. The modern incinerator plants are sensible they burn the non recyclable rubbish. They are local so rubbish is not transported long distance and the plants produce electricity as well as heat that is used for heating local home or Greenhouses, Any waste metals are recovered and the ash is used for road building and house building

          Once the capital cost of these plants are recovered the cost of running them is minimal

          1. The amout of any electricity produced is also minimal, supposing you get planning permission in the face of ‘green’ hostility in the first place. You can’t fuel a country on the contents of dustbins.

            Think of it another way. You need to heat and light your house for a week, also produced enough electricity for the street light outside your house, with enough left over to keep some of the machinery going at the factory along the road that’s producing cars.

            You only have the contents of your dustbin to burn to do it.

            Let me know how you fare.

        2. Personally I’ve always thought that Marcel Marceau was the “go-to” expert on miming. Nice photo, though.

      1. Happy Christmas to a much missed interlocutor..

        Have you had any more letters printed recently and do they ring you up to inform you .. just wondering why the DT need a phone number?

        1. Thanks, me duck. The last one I had published (in extremely abridged form) was on Nov 4. Since then, nowt!

          I have only ever been telephoned by the Letters’ Editor of The Sunday Times, who told me that he loved my letter and wanted to publish it in the side column (instead of the main letters’ page) and he asked me my permission to do this, which I thought was very decent of him.

          1. Wow, good heavens .. fantastic for you.

            Many of us struggle on to get a letter printed .

            I will have to think up a really vacant one , more than my monthly offerings!

        2. I’ve had numerous letters published in the DT over the years and have never been contacted by them. The only time I’ve heard of this happening was to a friend who they phoned before publishing his letter to check that his surname was genuine. Cocking.

  33. The Labour Party

    With the lack of success of the extreme left wing groups such as the Socialist Worker and UK communist party they have now adopted the approach of infiltrating the Labour party and appear to have been highly successful with these groups pretty much in total control of the party. It looks at present as if the new leader of the Labour party’s will be from the extreme left. All of the potential candidates are from the far left to the extreme left . There is not one moderate candidate there

    It is good news for the Conservative & Reform Parties. Labour is so far left that even the Lib-Dems & SNP etc dont want to work with them

    1. I was reading an account of a book, one I am thinking about buying on Amazon, called Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies …

      … when I noticed a review sent in by a purchaser. Now, most reviews on Amazon are usually sent in by people with scant command of English: many are even illiterate. It was quite refreshing, then, to notice that this particular reviewer, who goes by the nondeplume of ‘Supertzar’, was not only extremely literate and readable, his command of English left me gasping in admiration and I am more than a tad jealous of his descriptive prose. I have, therefore, copied it here for your enjoyment:

      Meet the new fools: same as the old fools.

      I ordered this after reading Niemietz’s thought experiment on benign socialism taking root in East Germany instead of reunification (reprinted as an Epilogue here). I’m a contrary sod at the best of times and surely finding fault with this alternative history would be easy. Not so. Niemietz’s logic was impeccable and his charting of the inevitable failure of the noblest of endeavours and the most socially ‘just’ of ambitions was irresistible.

      Here, Niemietz outlines the enduring allure of socialist principles, the evergreen yearning for a more just society and how the strength of socialist dogma concerning public ownership, price controls and that gloriously abstract euphemism ‘social justice’ continue to speak to us in spite of the all too obvious disasters visited on all societies which have actually implemented full-on socialism.

      The book walks us through the common stages of each socialist endeavour; the initial euphoria of the honeymoon period, the cheerleading of the leftist commentariat, followed by the all too common descent into authoritarianism, the centralisation of power among a technocratic elite, the restrictions on individual liberty required to achieve planned economic targets, the search for scapegoats when the experiment fails, the purges, the excuses and ‘whataboutery’, all followed by the reassuring cry that “that wasn’t real socialism”.

      The reasons given for each experiment never being ‘real’ socialism are baked into the experiment – humans just aren’t that interested in constant participation in decision-making for the common good – especially when such decision-making can never achieve meaningful deviation from a centrally planned target. Fairly quickly, power accrues to a technocratic elite, who are at least interested in turning up after work to discuss tractor production targets. So when the adoption of socialism fails – as it always must – its former supporters get to decry each experiment as having been ‘state capitalism’, not ‘true’ democratic socialism, with no doubt a helping of those twin scourges of all noble socialist experiments – foreign interference and counter-revolutionary sabotage. Leftist orthodoxy regarding Venezuela decries an authoritarian president, but focuses its blame for the current economic and humanitarian catastrophe on US oil sanctions, ignoring the inconvenient fact that such sanctions were only introduced as recently as January 2019. Such wilful blindness of course echoes the ‘useful idiots’ of earlier generations of the British left, who preferred to excuse or ignore famine, gulags, show trials and economic misery in the Soviet Union, believing that the ends (doomed penury?!) justified the appalling means.

      Effecting a socialist revolution requires an immediate and vast concentration of power – private companies, property, tax and welfare systems, civil defence and so on do not dramatically change priority and ownership without significant power forcing through enormous systematic change. But in amassing such power, socialist regimes hand their cheerleaders the perfect excuse that the ensuing experiment – Soviet Russia, Mao’s China, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, the GDR, Venezuela, Albania etc – weren’t ‘real’ socialism because they were not – and never could have been – democratic, grass-roots run movements. Where socialist regimes have experimented with democracy and freedom, ‘the people’ have voted with their feet and either sought refuge in neighbouring countries or used their vote in ways that have displeased the powers-that-be, bringing such experiments to a swift end.

      Like most free marketeers, I came to revile socialism only after a sustained period of believing passionately in its tenets. As a convert, I know all too well that the tribal nature of my former intellectual bedfellows will justify not reading this book. Justification for not engaging with the arguments contained herein will follow the Marxist/Gramsci playbook – by attacking the messenger, one can wilfully discredit and ignore the message. Which is a huge shame as these days, to be an intellectual free-thinker, nay dissident, is to acknowledge the transformative power of market economics and global capitalism – you know, that system that continues daily to reduce levels of absolute poverty across the world. This book should be on the shelf of every bedroom anarchist and pound shop revolutionary who still, perhaps innocently, puts their heart before their head. A timely, well-researched, well-written and difficult to refute indictment of the Japanese knotweed of bankrupt intellectual ideas. Superb.

      1. Morning, Grizz and a Happy Christmas to you.
        Socialism fails because it goes against human nature. We came down from the trees for a better life and that has been the driving motive for human nature ever since. Animals – particularly females – protect their young; with more advanced animals, the males protect the group. This developed in human beings into loyalty to kith and kin to ensure that human beings survived to breed in the new and often dangerous environment on the savannah.
        When human nature refuses to conform to socialist principles, the result is repression and frequently death. The Volga canal was built on the bones of a million kulaks; the Cambodian Killing Fields happened in our lifetime.

        1. Happy Christmas to you too, Nursey, and well said.

          Another reviewer on the same thread wrote, more succinctly (echoing your words):

          “It always goes wrong, and leaves people poorer, sicker and maybe even dead. It makes one want to vomit. How are people lured into such a failed idea?”

          1. G,
            Via lab / lib / con manifesto’s + ballot booth.
            Again,again,& again.
            Have a good Christmas & a happy New Year.

          3. Because they are lied to by power mad individuals who promise them a better life.

            Imagine you’re some twit on minimum wage who spends his days digging holes. You look at your wages and see how much you earn. Then on the news you see some banker fellow in a smart suit with a nasty grin on his face – the same sort who has just refused you a loan ‘forcing’ you to go to some lender so you can afford your next iPhone.

            You see he’s just got a bonus of say £100K and think ‘whasshegotIavent?’ and lo, when some bloke offers you free stuff you’re going to say yes – because that rich git is paying for it all. The man said he would. Then there’s that Amazon keeping all that money and stopping us getting nurses so I can never get an appointment…

            Combine bitterness and spite with low intelligence and you have the Left. Of course, the hole digging bloke doesn’t realise that actually, *he* will be the one paying the bill because he has no idea how economics works.

            It’s unfair. It’s wrong. It abuses the very people who should be helped most by government.

          4. “Combine bitterness and spite with low intelligence and you have the Left.”

            I’m nicking that precise sentence for my own further use. :•)

          5. It only works if the bitterness is explained as envy – because that’s what it comes down to.

            The Lefty chums we have think her pay obscene and decry her non-dom status. Firstly it’s defined by her bank and we add why should she pay over 70% of her salary to the state?

      2. Wotcha Grizz

        “Fairly quickly, power accrues to a technocratic elite, who are at least
        interested in turning up after work to discuss tractor production
        targets.”
        I forget where the quote is from but
        “There is more power for the revolution in a union rule book than a dozen AK47’s”

      3. It is very good, however the author has rather forgotten his audience.

        Those buying it are likely already convinced of the idiocy of socialism. Those who want to buy it, perhaps to challenge their belief that socialism works will now look at the reviewer with – as he markedly notes – disdain and anger in an attempt to discredit the reviewer.

    2. BJ,
      The bad news for decent people is, and proven by their actions in the past recent decades, that ANY are still in the running.
      Have a good Christmas & a happy New Year,

    1. For both world wars. Though in my case and probably others here, I spent some infant months clasped in my mother’s arms under the reinforced staircase in the house. My parents kept the sit-in in gas mask for years afterwards because it was government property.

    1. Filthy stinking BBC .. perverting our culture and damning one of our great authors ..

      Rotten to the core aren’t they … and there was a coloured wench as well.. We turned it off .. just sickened by them ruining . nay , distorting one of the great tales of winter.

        1. I love that .. it is a brilliant series .

          Years ago I had a beautiful Satsuma ewer..standing about nearly 3ft high , with a handle .. gorgeous design , perfect.. stood on the ground in the living room… until one day.. long ago .. young son bashed into it with the vacuum cleaner .. smashed cracked in 3 parts .. to restore it would have cost £300 .. so sadly binned it .. yes.. I regret that .. because if I had saved the bits , I could have had it repaired when we had a little more spare money in slightly flusher times .. saved up the fuel allowance or similar.. or claimed on the insurance!

      1. Last Sunday, on the Talking Pictures channel. An ep in the old “Mystery and Imagination” series from the 60’s. Too scary for me, I admit it. Being in black and white made it even more stark and effective than the full colour gruesomeness of the current stuff too.

    3. Considering Dracula is a love story very clearly between a man and a woman, about absolution, loss and sacrifice surely even the BBC couldn’t ruin that?

    1. Ada: Shouldn’t you have turned the oven off by now?

      Bert: I don’t think our goose is cooked yet.

    2. Ada : The dog can eat the cooked Parson’s nose this year.. and the giblets will be removed by you… Yes, giblet gravy , and don’t let them boil dry

      Bert : But you promised me rib of beef ..

  37. I see that Prince Philip is out of hospital. I expect he is dreading the prospect of being surrounded by his family.

    2. He anaesthetises everyone. He is in charge of the drinks trolley and apparently makes some very strong cocktails.

          2. Princess Anne and her husband stopped by for a chat when we were at Gatcombe this year. She’s very down to earth.

          3. I like her sensible attitude to children.
            She pointed out that you don’t need to actually like children (as in sloppy ‘kids’ references) to want them to have a happy fulfilling life.
            I suspect that most people who go on about ‘kids’ share the same mindset as those who emote over ‘the masses’. People are fine in theory, but pretty ghastly in reality – particularly when they fail to behave in the ‘correct’ way.
            Back to Stalin and Pol Pot.

  38. You might have thought having got smashed in the elections the Leftards would be a little quiet as they reflect on their trouncing
    Not at all,the MSM and Social Media abound with Boris Bashing,Waycism and Climate Change in ever more vicious hate filled terms
    In particular the floating of the idea of a knighthood for Nigel Farage has driven them to paroxysms of violent rage
    “Only if the Queen beheads him”
    “Pour molten lead down his throat”
    Charmers

  39. Happy Christmas to NOTTLers.
    Thanks to Disqus playing silly boogers, you are spared a cute picture of Spartacus being … well … cute.

        1. He never cared about modesty. An optimist from the day he arrived until he died 15 years and five months later.

          2. Tony Britton? Blimey, I knew his wife (or it may be ex-wife, I don’t know). A Danish sculptress called Eva, she lived down the road. He was a bit of a lad, by all accounts…

          5. Or like AVM John Lawrence – who flew throughout the last war and died on 18 December aged 99.

      3. Did you use flash to take that photo?
        More to the point – what do you do to get Disgust to accept pictures?

          1. This doesn’t work for me – I just get a message to the effect that I must be logged in to upload an image, even though I am already logged in. It has been like that for months.

          3. From the comments that I have seen over the past few months from different users, the “system” that you are using can have a big impact on what you can do with Disqus. I use Windows on a laptop with Opera as the browser and I have no problems with uploading images normally. Every now and then it will say “You need to be logged in” when I post a comment with an image, but then I just press the “post” button a 2nd time and it goes through anyway.

            There are some browsers that Disqus seems to dislike intensely and will not allow you upload images if you use them. But I cannot remember which ones were identified by users who could not get them to work. I only use Windows for playing games, as it tends to be the software that most companies use to develop them.

            If you switched browser to Opera, or a different one to the one you are using now, Disqus might let you put pictures up again.

          5. I use 2 browsers. Opera for Disqus and a normal one for Amazon and Ebay, so that I don’t need to play 20 questions with the latter 2 companies to prove that I am who I say I am. At least the Virtual Private Network on Opera appears to be working, as Amazon and Ebay both think I’m living in a different country.

            I have never used “Safari” and know nothing about it, although one user above has just said that they could not upload images anymore after Safari’s last update, so that might be why you are now blocked. Updates can cause unforeseen problems all over the place.

          8. 1) Log out of Disqus and close it down
            2) Turn computer off
            3) Reboot/restart computer
            4) Restart Disqus and log in.

    1. Wow! All mine said was ‘to be like you, Daddy.’

      So I am teaching him to be a miserable git. However, I do need to wrap this weird plastic toy thing. It makes 8 boxes of Lego – the Bugatti is mine. Mine I tell you!

    1. And even without that vegetables etc are grown in fields and insects and animals and birds use these fields. The crops are carefully screened and washed etc but some residual foreign animal matter will remain. Removing a 100% of it is not possible. This is where the daft Corbyn started quoting from US food standards. They define the maximum amount of foreign matter you can have in US food. WE have similar standard in the UK
      If you cook at home occasionally the odd hair manages to get into your food

    1. Very moving and good to see young people involved. Such an event would probably be banned in this country because of ‘elf ‘n’ safety.

      1. There are many in Europe, often youngsters, who appreciate the liberation 70-odd years ago. They just don’t make much noise about it.

    1. The idea that windmills are as efficient and as cheap as gas is laughable. I know they are ideologically driven but truly, why do they keep lying?

  46. In January the WA will complete its passage through the commons think will then move onto intensive trade talks with the EU. This will be real intensive talks rather than the occasional talks May had. These will be tough negotiation but it is quite achievable to achieve at least a provisional deal by the end of 2020

    With the current WA if a no deal were to happen the EU do not gt the £39B . WE would only need to pay about £9B and much of that is a sort of EU membership fee for the 12 month transition period. £30B should focus their minds quite a lot

    1. BJ,
      Their minds are soundly fixed on keeping us as a trading nation firmly suppressed and not as a competitor to them.
      Total severance then let them sweat for two / three months before answering their calls, and there WILL be calls.

    3. It is always nice when these low-intellect Conservative party haters skip past the finer points of reality to pretend that their way is best. Such as the small detail that the last Labour government left the country in so much debt from its borrowing, that it has taken 9 1/2 years to pull us back from just making interest payments on it.

      Some website added up the cost of that interest a few years ago and it was already £100 billion back then. Money gone into thin air just servicing debt with nothing to show for it. We would not have needed to control spending so much if that amount of taxpayers money was not being poured into bankers pockets. If the EU don’t bankrupt us then left-wing politicians are happy to do the job for them.

        1. Had Alistair Darling (spit!) stepped in smartly and saved Northern Rock, it just might have saved off the crash here.

          1. Indeed he should have done so, but I don’t think it wold have made a great deal of difference.

          3. Woah there. If Gordon the Moron hadn’t wrecked the economy with punitive debt, then continually encouraged the banks to overlend – those letters Mervyn King kept writing: you don’t think they were ‘Good job, Gordon!’ do you?

            If Brown hadn’t ignored every single piece of advice from experts and people who actually made money and people like me who understand the simplest of economic principles and who saw this continual extension to create a banking run (and really, *I* saw it, for goodness sake) then it would never have happened.

            Gordon Brown caused the banking collapse. Gordon Brown overlent. He liked spending the taxes. That’s why he created the FSA. The BoE kept telling him he was wrong and the oaf didn’t like it.

            No. Gordon Brown must be held responsible for ruining this country. Blair was a selfish, venal crook who should be tried for destroying public property, theft, fraud and war crimes and obviously shot, but Brown should be villified in every single bit of media possible. What he did will take decades to undo – look at the kick back when Cameron announced the tiniest of reductions in spending – even spending that was just waste! The Left went apoplectic with rage. That’s what we’re up against, that’s what must be rejected.

        2. Not entirely, as one of the main factors was indiscriminate lending in the U.S. (Clinton) to house-buyers who couldn’t afford the mortgage payments.
          However, Brown completely failed to read all the warning signs and take measures to alleviate it. Instead he went around boasting about curing “boom and bust” while banks and building societies were lending out far more than they had in capital or in savings, etc.

    4. “A kid I teach is having rice and gravy for his Christmas dinner.”

      Few baby goats would turn their noses up at that! Is it a nanny or a billy?

      1. Don’t you Tories ever stop getting your snouts in th trough! gah, I’m sor poor, other people are so poor and we have to drink Stella instead of Special Brew! #Tory Christmas

    5. Then his parents should stop smoking and drinking my money and spend it on food. ‘Jack Brown’ should stop being so sanctimonious and learn to use a posessive apostrophe – as Lenin says.

      Or, before they had the child, they should have properly planned for his arrival.

      As it is, War queen, junior, dog and I are so poor we can’t even afford the water to cook the rice, let alone the gravy, you lucky sod. Where’s my food parcel from the squealing Lefty?

    7. And exactly how skinny is that schoolchild?? If rice and gravy is a treat for Christmas dinner, then he can’t be eating much the rest of the time.

  48. SIR – We must not give up on the current model of general practice. It is not “broken”, as J Meirion Thomas suggests (Comment, December 19) in his latest attack on the NHS service that patients trust most.

    British general practice is tried, tested and the envy of other countries. It is valued by patients, alleviates pressure on hospitals and keeps the NHS sustainable. If it is to carry on working effectively, it needs more resources and more people, to give us more time with patients. We are already expanding our practice teams and exploring new ways to deliver continuity. But we will always require the expert skills of GPs. We need more of them, and my college will not apologise for banging that drum.

    Professor Martin Marshall
    Chair, Royal College of General Practitioners
    London NW1

    A big Christmas http://www.ashoremarine.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/raspberry.jpg from https://flashbak.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/PA-8603355.jpg

  49. SIR – The foundation of good clinical care is a thorough assessment of a patient by a GP. GPs are trained to focus on the whole patient, to listen and to think carefully before ordering tests or prescribing medicines.

    I once saw a patient who was being monitored by the local pharmacist and specialist nurse for his heart failure. His weight was fluctuating widely and, despite a raft of investigations, things were not improving.

    When I spoke to him, he said he felt quite well – but told me that on some occasions he was being weighed when he was not wearing his artificial leg.

    Dr Nick Summerton
    Brough, East Yorkshire

    This one made me smile, not least because others may decide not to post it for far of causing offence. He makes a valid point, though. After my operation, on admisson to Queen Mary’s Hospital, Roehampton, for rehabilitation, there was a gruelling round of form filling and box ticking. Then I was weighed – on a chair equipped with scales. “How tall are you?”, asked the nurse. “Well, I was six feet.” He entered the weight and height on the form, and plotted them on one of those multi-coloured BMI chart thingies. “Excellent – you’re in the normal range.” “Fantastic”, I replied. “A month ago I was overweight, not quite obese.”

    It seems that, in a hospital largely specialising in the rehabilitation of amputees, it had never occurred to them that a ‘normal’ BMI chart is probably worse than useless…

    1. I find the best help I get at our surgery is from the senior practice sister. Miles better than any of the GPs.

      The fact that the MR taught her to A level is completely coincidental!!

      1. Is she the one who prescribes you your medication which you take daily in a glass or two – or three?

  50. I’ve been a bit busy.
    I made poached eggs yesterday, but broke one yolk when cracking. I set it aside and used it to make pancakes (crepes) for breakfast this morning. I have had to tidy stuff up. The dining room, aka office, has been cleared of bicycles, stacks of papers awaiting sorting and filing, and wires, and books and soon the PC will be switched off and set aside so that the dining table can be used for dining. Three of our children are coming for Christmas and that takes some planning. We had to buy another loaf and half dozen bottles of fizz, crates of beer and a mountain of snacks that they will eat at random. It is a flying visit. One of them is working in a panto and has to be back for Boxing Day, another has work on the 27th and the third has to get back on 28th to feed her cats. I have organised the menu . Not easy. I have a long list stuck to the fridge of what each one will eat, not eat, fall down dead on contact, kind of thing.

    And so;
    Happy Christmas,
    and
    A Prosperous New Year to all Nottlers.

    It has been fun, enjoyable, informative, thanks for that, and thanks to Geoff for supporting us.
    We can look forward to an exciting year.

    1. I shall be luxuriating in delightful solitude this Christmas, after several years of being more active than I would prefer. Apart from small trips to drop off some items to scattered family members tomorrow morning. Peace can be reinvigorating. 🙂 Have a good Christmas everyone. It has been interesting meeting you after the Disqus free-channel purge. For those cooking for others:

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/03bfb8cb2c57f1d478e513bbc1bed94b7cf5f0e9269c8b9eaaafe77dc1071976.jpg

      1. My OH had a sort-out in the cupboard a few weeks ago and a few things surfaced that had been in stock for some time – including a jar of Dolmio sauce that was BB 1999. It was a bit darker than when new but otherwise fine. We’re still alive.

        Happy Christmas MM!

        1. My father told me about a tin of meatballs that was found during manoeuvres during WWII, and a dug out (or something) from WWI.

          There was no eat by date on the tin (obvs.) and the soldiers (marines, if that makes any difference) opened them, cooked them and ate them. No problems at all. If I recall correctly, he was one of the people concerned.

      2. Which reminds me that I’ve found the jar of Cranberry sauce that I forgot about last year. It’s been in the fridge all year and says use by May 2020. But it also says, do not use if the safety button will press down. It does, but I see no mould or bubbles in the contents. To use or Not to use, that is the question…

          1. That’s my feeling too. If I make no further posts after tomorrow, you’ll know we were both wrong…

    2. Indeed, thank you Mr Graham for maintaining this site, along with all the others who put their various efforts in.

      2. Merry Christmas Bill, Off to Bethlehem? Not on your Nelly!! Its now a Muslim majority town ever since we made the tragic mistake of handing over control of Bethlehem to Arafat & his PLO thugs in December 1995 under the Oslo accords. Back then Bethlehem was 80% Christian & 20% Muslim now its the complete opposite with 80% Muslim & 20% Christian. Almost immediately the PLO systematically robbed, murdered & drove out prominent Christian leaders in droves signalling to the rest to leave en mass as Muslims began taking over their property & shops . It goes without saying the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury, other Christian leaders & the media kept quiet about it or blamed “the Occupation” Most former Christians from Bethlehem have since then gone to Canada, the USA, Australia, NZ, various South American countries where they had relatives & friends.

    4. Please, Mr. Jolly Clever Website Manager/Founder,
      Can you give me an idiot’s guide to getting pictures uploaded to Disgust?
      I never used to have problems, and I can still upload videos etc… It is stills that are the problem.
      Disgust keeps telling me to log-in, but, quite patently I am already logged in.
      I have tried all suggestions so far.
      I use a MacBook Pro laptop. My browser is Safari 13.0.4

      1. Anne a Merry Christmas to you & family ! Sorry but I can’t help as I know nothing about MacBook Pro laptop or Safari browsers , I have always used either HP or Dell laptops with Windows installed on them. My main browser ( what I am using right now ) is Google’s , I also use Brave & Firefox – both have from time to time various glitches / incompatibility with certain Disqus features including the problem you have of non-stop telling me I am logged off when I am not & requiring me to press the blue D for Disqus symbol to get back on & also with a Brave browser uploading of photos & Gifs on the Disqus comments part of the page no longer works yet it does for the Blogger article section at the top of the page. Therefore if its possible to install a 2nd browser on your Mac – I recommend you install Googles Chrome browser for use when you post on Disqus.

        1. Ta ever so. My pet computer nerd is due to sort out system and printer (new one needed I fear!) in January.
          I’ll just have to deprive NOTTLers of the results of my picture research until 2020.
          Courages, Mes Braves.

          3. I am having precisely the same problem that you are experiencing, Nursey. If I had any hair (on my head: I have it everywhere else!) I’d be pulling it out in handfuls each time I try and it continues to tell me that “I am not logged in!”

            Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrgggggggghhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!

      2. It seemed to happen after a recent ios upgrade to my ipad 5. I shall try my laptop and report back.

    5. My replies to several NoTTLers are going missing. But some aren’t – it’s beyond my pore little brain.

      Whatever, all the very best to you and yours for Christmas, and Hanukkah! – it’s always good to see you on here; may your light continue to shine brightly and happily..

  52. Happy Christmas to NoTTLers, one and all.

    Nagsman has broken her finger (don’t look at me – it was a vicious, untamed sofa-bed required for visiting grandchildren) but I’ve told her that it’s no excuse for her to fail to show up tomorrow morning with my quota of mince pies. I already have the brandy butter.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2019/12/13/1412-MATT-GALLERY-WEB-PUD_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqqVzuuqpFlyLIwiB6NTmJwfSVWeZ_vEN7c6bHu2jJnT8.png?imwidth=1260

  53. Good Morning all – probably won’t be around much for the next couple of days, my youngest v.left wing Corbyn loving Brexit hating T.T. daughter , her similarly inclined Uni. Lecturer chappy and my lovely grandson are coming down from Stafford ( MP Theo Clarke Cons. 15k maj. teehee ) to spend Christmas with us. I think the next 3 days could make a plot for either an Alan Ayckbourn Play or a Ken Loach film. I’m counting on the Ayckbourn option (Seasons Greeting is one of my favourites)

    3. Junior has been kept awake playing with Mongo. He’s watching Toy Story in practically anthology.

      War queen is pretending to cook (which means is probably asleep with a decent claret beside her) and I’m posting here. In a mo, Mongo and small will go to bed and I’ll carry her upstairs.

      Apparently 20 year old Whisky is ‘yuck’.

  55. Does anyone think little Archie Sussex looks a bit wall eyed on that Christmas card photo’?

    1. A lot of babies look that way – clever how the choice of display masks his of colourness.

    2. It’s not actually unusual in small babies. The photos of me as an infant show a distinct crossed eye, but it sorted itself out.

    3. Sorry, no patience for them.

      I drove to Toronto on Sunday and they didn’t even invite me in for a cup of tea – so to hell with them.

  56. Oh dear. George Osborne having a whinge. Politics is a game for big boys and girls.

    “It was the really unpleasant way I was fired and then her (May’s) team of advisers briefing against me and I had given my life to try and help Conservatives get into office.”

      1. Absolutely ruined my Christmas ….
        (Ooops, I hope Santa doesn’t reading NOTTL; he’ll know I’ve told a lie and it’ll be no prezzies tomorrow.)

  57. Good morning all.

    Late rising today, but hey! there’s Birchermüsli for breakfast.

    Went to my Turkish barber yes’day & he gave me a bottle of citrus edc, wished me Merry Christmas (surprise!) & said I was their best customer.

    1. Good morning Peddy

      The shops in Marmaris are always full of Christmas decorations and Christmas goods.

      Turkey is predominantly Muslim but in the South West of the country the people are very friendly and seem to display none of the foul Muslim extremism you find in much of Europe. Indeed we have some very civilised Muslim friends – why do so many of the murderous ones seem to come to Britain?

      1. ‘Morning, Rastus.

        I was in Bodrum twice before it got commercialised. Lovely place, lovely people.

  59. A long, but interesting article.
    Enjoy, while I do the ironing so that Father Christmas visits a nicely organised Allan Towers.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-7823365/Dominic-Sandbrook-Farewell-hate-mobs-joyless-intolerance.html

    Dominic Sandbrook: Farewell to the hate mobs’ joyless intolerance

    “With Christmas upon us, it seems fitting that the Church of England is making the headlines.

    Unfortunately, it’s doing so for all the wrong reasons. Two days ago the former chaplain to the Queen, Dr Gavin Ashenden, announced that he was abandoning Anglicanism to become a Roman Catholic.

    The reason, he explained in a blistering broadside, is that the Church of England no longer defends Christian values.

    According to Dr Ashenden, Anglican leaders have surrendered to the new orthodoxy of the liberal Left, which is ‘highly intolerant of dissenting views’.

    In particular, he says, Church leaders have given in to the transgender lobby, refusing to stand up for the principle that the ‘vast majority of us are born one of two sexes — male or female’, which most of us regard as simple common sense.

    Democracy depends on competing opinions. And we all learn far more from people who disagree with us than from those who reinforce what we already think. Pictured: A Remainer and Brexiteer have a debate outside parliament

    Democracy depends on competing opinions. And we all learn far more from people who disagree with us than from those who reinforce what we already think. Pictured: A Remainer and Brexiteer have a debate outside parliament

    For Dr Ashenden, who as a young priest smuggled bibles into communist Eastern Europe, all this is a depressing symptom of a general narrow-mindedness.

    As he explained, ‘freedom of speech is slowly being eroded’, while ‘those who refuse to be ‘politically correct’ risk accusations of thought crime and Christians are being unfairly persecuted’.

    Obsession

    The sad thing is that all of this rings absolutely true. In recent months our cultural elite’s obsession with the transgender issue has plumbed truly absurd depths, typified by the Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson’s attempt to persuade voters that people should be allowed to choose whether to be men or women without following any legal or medical process whatsoever.

    (Currently, to legally change gender, people must be diagnosed with gender dysphoria and live in their ‘true’ gender for two years.)

    Dr Ashenden’s story is a reminder that the 2010s has been a decade of increasingly strident and intolerant political correctness, with institutions such as the Church of England, BBC and National Trust taking ever more extreme, bizarre and unrepresentative positions.

    I could fill every page of this newspaper with examples. Not surprisingly, universities have been among the chief culprits. I think of the students at Cambridge and Cardiff who tried to ‘no-platform’ the veteran feminist Germaine Greer because she dared to suggest that men could not ‘become’ women.

    Then there were the students at Canterbury Christ Church who no-platformed the veteran gay rights activist Peter Tatchell because he had dared to stand up for Ms Greer.

    Like many political trends, the illiberal intolerance of the liberal Left has been imported from America. There it goes under the label of ‘wokeness’.

    To be ‘woke’ is to be committed to social and political justice — and no one would argue with that as an aspiration. Sadly, it has come to mean being piously and annoyingly Left-wing — and utterly unable to countenance alternative views.

    The irony is that people who consider themselves woke rarely do anything concrete about it.

    Instead, they spend all their time on social media, especially Twitter, whipping up online mobs whenever somebody uses the wrong word or makes the wrong kind of joke.

    In his 2015 book So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, Jon Ronson recounted several examples of people who had misspoken online or otherwise made off-colour remarks and — thanks to the vicious efforts of a whipped-up gang of enraged keyboard warriors — lost their jobs and livelihoods. What makes these mobs do it?

    One of the many ironies about such people is that they believe themselves achingly modern, tearing down ways of thinking that have existed for millennia. But they are actually the heirs to a very long tradition of joyless intolerance.

    From England’s 17th-century Puritans, who shut down the playhouses and tried to ban Christmas, to the hatchet-faced witch-hunters in colonial America, history is littered with people who spent their time denouncing their neighbours as debauched reactionaries.

    The mad Renaissance friar Girolamo Savonarola, who briefly took over Florence, burned books, paintings and tapestries, and tried to stamp out any vestiges of fun or humanity, would have fitted in very well with today’s Twitterati.

    So would the Pharisees in the New Testament: sneering, arrogant intellectuals who hated Jesus for exposing their snobbery and hypocrisy.

    Backlash

    What these people also had in common is that they all over-reached themselves, provoking a backlash among ordinary people who were sick of being harangued by a handful of fanatics. And, thank the Lord, we seem to have reached a similar tipping point today.

    As luck would have it, Dr Ashenden’s broadside coincided with an extraordinary Twitter row engulfing Harry Potter writer J. K. Rowling, usually a heroine of the right-on Left.

    Rowling’s crime was defending a woman called Maya Forstater, who was sacked as a researcher at a European think-tank after she dared to say on Twitter that men who have sex-change surgery are still biological men.

    As is now traditional, the hyenas of the transgender lobby waded into battle — only to find Rowling’s vast fan base returning fire with gusto.

    Then another Twitter celebrity, comedian Ricky Gervais, got stuck in to them too, joking sarcastically that ‘those awful biological women’ would never understand the joys of ‘becoming a lovely lady so late in life’.

    This was the cue for more howling from the online Pharisees. They never seem to understand that the angrier they become, the more the rest of us laugh at them.

    The truth, of course, is that these people have never been more than a tiny minority. Because they dominate online platforms such as Twitter — to which most people do not belong — they have an exaggerated sense of their own importance, which means they get a shock when they discover what ordinary people actually think.

    In a sense, this was the story of the General Election twelve days ago. A tiny, fanatical, highly vocal minority ventured out from their online bubble, and were staggered to discover that the vast majority of the British people regarded their hero as a fool, their promises as unbelievable and their beloved manifesto as utter madness.

    But if the tide has turned, as I hope it has, where do we go from here? Well, since it’s the season of goodwill, perhaps both sides in the so-called culture war should start by putting down their weapons.

    Few of us, whatever our politics, would deny that social media brings out the worst in people. We could all do with thinking a little more and tweeting a little less.

    The last decade has been a low point for public debate, thanks not least to activists’ fondness for shouting and screaming. It baffles me that so many self-declared liberals, in particular, are intolerant of difference and so reluctant to listen to contrary opinions.

    Indeed, earlier this year almost two-fifths of Remainers told an opinion poll that they would seriously mind if their child married somebody who had voted Leave. So much, then, for their cosmopolitan open-mindedness!

    Humility

    Yet democracy depends on competing opinions. And we all learn far more from people who disagree with us than from those who reinforce what we already think.

    So as we prepare to celebrate Christmas and bid farewell to the 2010s, I hope fervently that we will leave behind the age of confected outrage, the culture of ‘calling out’ perceived offences and the hysterical obsession with political correctness.

    We have so much more in common than we think; we just need to recognise it, that’s all.

    So here’s my Christmas wish list for the next decade.

    A bit more freedom of speech, a bit more tolerance, a bit more perspective and a bit more humility. Is that really too much to ask?

    Happy Christmas.

    1. DS,
      How awful, to make for a win double in spotting the truth & retaining self respect his next move should be to
      join the real UKIP shortly, when the
      impostor’s in the nec are flushed.

    2. I spent Christmas 1943 in the Evelina hospital (part of Guy’s). I was there for three months. Parents were not allowed to visit …”In case it upset the child and the other children…”

      It has remained with me… There was a corridor behind the cots with windows. Once, I saw my father, in uniform, looking through. Even though he was on active service and spent the next three years overseas, he, too, was not allowed to come into the ward and see me.

          1. Same through the 50s. 45minutes at 3pm on Sundays. And the worried wait when you could see other children’s parents coming, in case yours didn’t…

          3. I was in hospital for a few days when I was three.
            It was a mixed experience; indignation at being put in a drop sided cot (I AM THREE!!!!!) and enjoyment at eating spam and mashed potato out of what looked like a white china dog bowl.

    3. Distinct lack of “diversity” in those photos, especially considering how “diverse” the population was back in Victorian times according to the BBC….

  62. A prominent politician is reported to have been arrested and charged with kissing a girl under a mistletoe.
    His legal adviser has stated that the charge is void for uncertainty as to gender.

    2. Here’s one: A veteran general controlling an army of veterans obviously has an advantage. What if the troops are green, with little combat experience?

      How much can the commander do? Vice versa, what if the general is a newbie but the troops are veterans? Can the war still be won? How much depends on the leader?

      In my own experience you can command and cajole all you want but if the ground troops are idiots then you’re already on to a losing streak.

  64. A Happy Christmas from Roger Bootle in The Telegraph:

    We can negotiate a deal with the EU in a year, and it’s not the end of the world if we don’t

    Here we go again! After Boris Johnson’s crushing victory, the Remainerish Tendency hasn’t missed a beat in returning to the fray. The issue that is now causing acute angst is the possibility that we will leave the European Union by the end of next year without a trade deal. According to all the usual suspects, this is set to bring disaster. Does this ring a bell?

    The context is the hitherto widespread, lazy assumption in the media and elsewhere that a big Johnson majority would allow the Prime Minister to sideline the serious eurosceptics in his party and go for a “soft” Brexit, involving an extension to the transition period and as close an association with the EU as possible.

    This assumed that Mr Johnson wanted a soft Brexit and/or that achieving this is in his and the country’s interests. But why? It is typical of the Remainer mindset that they cannot get their head around the idea that Brexit is not some disaster whose scope and reach must be minimised, but rather a set of challenges to be met and opportunities to be seized.

    Many have argued that trade negotiations with the EU will drag on for years, condemning businesses to an extended period of the very uncertainty that has so bedevilled their planning and reduced their investment. Yet Mr Johnson’s move last week to enshrine the date of the end of the transition period in law has cut through this argument. Unless you believe that this law will be overturned, then we will definitely leave the EU’s Customs Union and Single Market by the end of next year. The only remaining uncertainty is whether we leave with a trade deal or instead trade with the EU under World Trade Organisation terms.

    The latter has been described as a “no-deal” departure from the EU. These two words have acquired talismanic importance. “No-deal” is widely regarded as “crashing out”. The “cliff-edge” is apparently back in business.

    If nothing else, you have to hand it to the wordsmiths in the Remainer camp. For “no-deal” was originally used to describe the situation where we left the EU without any sort of agreement on anything. Even Mrs May’s ill-fated “deal” did not include a trade agreement. That was left to be negotiated later.

    The truth is that, given that Mr Johnson has struck a departure deal with the EU and that it will be enacted by Parliament, there is no way that the UK will be leaving “without a deal” in the original meaning of the expression. And there have been lots of mini-agreements on the likes of aircraft landing rights.

    Of course, we could still leave without a trade deal. Indeed, the usual gloomsters argue that getting a trade agreement with the EU by the end of next year is impossible. This is defeatist nonsense. It is eminently feasible given the political will. Unlike in most trade negotiations, in this case both partners begin from a situation of zero trade barriers and regulatory alignment. Moreover, there is the recent deal with Canada to use as a template. Nor is it absolutely necessary to have every aspect of our future relationship with the EU covered in a single deal. It might well be possible to secure an agreement by the end of next year on some aspects while continuing negotiations on others.

    Regulation is going to be the sticking point. Supposedly, the European Commission wants to insist that the UK accepts pretty much full regulatory alignment with the EU and only in return for this will it concede full access to its markets, including in financial services. It would be madness for the UK to agree to any such thing.

    The essential economic case for Brexit has still not sunk in among the commentariat. To listen to Remainers bemoaning our looming fate outside the EU, you would think that the union is a zone of stonking economic success. But it isn’t. It is mired in comparative economic failure. And the regulatory regime is one of the factors responsible. What’s more, the EU’s shortcomings are likely to intensify as it moves on to yet closer integration. Even if it means leaving without a trade deal, this is a bloc whose regulatory regime we should be itching to detach ourselves from, not aligning ourselves with.

    Over the coming year, the Johnson government will be simultaneously trying to do trade deals with other countries, in particular the US. If it secures such deals but does not reach a trade agreement on tariff-free trade with the EU, then EU producers will suffer massive price competition in the UK market. While the price of goods imported into the UK from the rest of the world will fall, as tariffs on these goods are cut, the price of EU-produced goods imported into the UK will rise as tariffs are imposed. The consequence is that Continental producers of everything from cars to cheeses would be hit very hard. Perceiving this threat ahead of them, they are going to be putting huge pressure on their governments to do a deal with the UK.

    All along, Remainers have under-estimated the strength of the Brexit case. Their thinking has been dominated by a perception of British weakness. In reality, the only weak thing about Britain’s position has been her government. Now the election result has transformed the political situation.

    Remainers have undergone several shocks over the last few years, starting with the Brexit vote in 2016. I believe that they are soon going to experience another one. The Johnson government is going to succeed in doing trade deals with the EU and several other countries, and without preserving close regulatory alignment with the EU. And, what’s more, the UK economy is going to do exceedingly well. Happy Christmas.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2019/12/22/britains-position-brexit-trade-talks-far-stronger-gloomsters/

    1. What was that busybody burbling about at the beginning? I could have done without that Gloria! screeching.

      1. It is to let the unwashed (as though they would be listening to Radio 4…) know wot’s goin’ on, innit.

      1. Nothing to do with old age. Just seems that to be an actress you have to be barmy as a coot.
        Now I’ve slipped up. We are not allowed to say ” actress ” any more. Only ” actor “. Maybe it is modern society that is barmy as a coot.
        Translation available on request.

    8. The surprise would have been if she hadn’t spouted such utter bollards.
      May I hope that Maggie Smiff remains sane?

  71. Rod’s been at the sherry..

    COFFEE HOUSE – Diane Abbott to Donald Trump: Christmas messages from the great and the good
    Rod Liddle – 24 December 2019 – 2:10 PM

    Diane Abbott

    I spent the entire day searching for those familiar traditional Christmas delicacies which all kids adore – but could find none anywhere. From shop to shop I went, asking: ‘Do you have any of those large chocolate eggs that children like so much at this time of year? Very often sold in cardboard boxes adorned with pictures of rabbits.’ In every store the answer was ‘No, we don’t have any. We may get them in by March.’ That’s Brexit for you.

    Donald Trump

    Heard a noise on the roof. Looked out and there was a bearded immigrant scrounger in a red coat trying to herd a bunch of animals around our chimney. Put my head out of the window and shouted. ‘Hey! Get lost, loser!’ Guy got the hell out sharpish, with his strange creatures. Don’t know what they were. But they weren’t American.

    Jeremy Corbyn

    I am perfectly clear in my policy as regards Christmas. I could not be more clear. I think that if we are going to have Christmas this year – and that is purely a matter for the British people – then it has to be a Christmas for jobs and not a race to the bottom.

    Piers Morgan

    Hey – shouting a big happy birthday to my old mucker Jesus. Have a great day mate, go easy on the booze and choccies and see you on the sofa with Susanna early in the new year. If you’ve got five minutes to spare for someone who was a good friend when you were nothing.

    Roger Waters

    O Little Town of Bethlehem how still we see thee lie. Not lying very still at the moment, is it? Not while it’s under the jackboot of fascist Israeli oppression.

    Diane Abbott

    This is the time of year when traditionally we gather together in church and sing those famous words: ‘We plough the fields and scatter the good seed on the land.’ But it seems almost certain to me that after Brexit there will be no ploughmen, no seeds and probably no fields.

    Greta Thunberg

    People often ask me if I have the kind of Christmas a normal sixteen-year-old girl would enjoy. Well of course I do. For example, I have an advent calendar and behind each of the 25 windows is a picture of myself explaining to a world leader why he is murdering the planet, along with a treat: a herring flavoured Quorn snack.

    Jacob Rees-Mogg

    I received through the mail this morning a quite inspiring missive. It was a piece of card folded in half on the front of which was an agreeable depiction of erithacus rubecula, the robin redbreast, perched jauntily on a sprig of hawthorn and surrounded by snow. Inside the fold was the message: Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year love from Bob and Dora. Upon enquiring I have learned that these cards can be readily purchased from newsagents or department stores. I do hope that such a charming innovation might, as they say, catch on.

    1. David Lammy

      I looked and looked and there was no snow.
      Praise be to Allah, I can’t stand a white Christmas

      2. Roger Waters is always good for a quote and he loves to have the last word. The documentary on the making of ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ ends, as does the LP, with ‘Eclipse’, accompanied by a film. The final lines are:
        All that is now
        All that is gone
        All that’s to come
        And everything under the sun is in tune
        But the sun is eclipsed by the moon.
        Even as the music and pictures fade away but before the first-time watcher has a chance to think ‘What a satisfying ending’, in comes RW:
        “But that’s not to say that the potential for the sun to shine doesn’t exist. Walk down the path towards the light rather than walk into the darkness.”
        Shut up, Roger!

    1. Precisely.

      A much quicker method is : “Leave the bloody turkey on the shelf in the butchers’ shop and buy some decent flavourful meat instead.”

      2. We’re having free-range lamb from a farm in Somerset. We get all our meat from them now, and it’s just delish! Because of the way it’s cared for, the meat is not cheap, but we just eat less meat, and enjoy what we eat much more, now.

    2. Strip the meat? Despite Jerry having had one, the blighter got at the other one.

      They are tremendously well fed. By accident.

  74. Tonight here, while sunrise remains on the same minute as yesterday, we get an extra minute before the sun sets. Spring is on the way!!!!!

  75. “London expected to co-host next stage of post-Brexit negotiations”
    Boris – when that Barnier guy comes here, just don’t give him so much as a glass of water.
    Declare him a persona non grata and make him swim the channel back home.

    1. Christmas Countdown
      Frank Kelly
      Day One
      Dear Nuala,
      Thank you very much for your lovely present of a partridge in a pear-tree
      We’re getting the hang of feeding the partridge now,
      Although it was difficult at first to win its confidence
      It bit the mother rather badly on the hand
      But they’re good friends now and we’re keeping the pear-tree indoors in a bucket
      Thank you again
      Yours affectionately, Gobnait O’Lúnasa

      Day Two
      Dear Nuala,
      I cannot tell you how surprised we were to hear from you so soon again and to receive your lovely present of two turtle doves
      You really are too kind
      At first the partridge was very jealous
      And suspicious of the doves and they had a terrible row the night the doves arrived
      We had to send for the vet but the birds are okay again
      And the stitches are due to some out in a week or two
      The vet’s bill was 8 but the mother is over her annoyance now
      And the doves and the partridge are watching the telly from the pear-tree as I write Yours ever, Gobnait

      Day Three
      Dear Nuala,
      We must be foremost in your thoughts
      I had only posted my letter when the three French hens arrived
      There was another sort-out between the hens and the doves,
      Who sided with the partridge, and the vet had to be sent for again
      The mother was raging because the bill was 16 this time
      But she has almost cooled down
      However, the fact that the birds’ droppings keep falling down
      On her hair whilen she’s watching the telly, doesn’t help matters
      Thanking you for your kindness
      I remain, your Gobnait

      Day Four
      Dear Nuala,
      You
      mustn’t have received my last letter when you were sending us the four
      calling birds There was pandemonium in the pear-tree again last night
      and the vet’s bill was 32
      The mother is on sedation as I write
      I know you meant no harm and remain your close friend
      Gobnauit

      Day Five
      Nuala,
      Your generosity knows no bounds
      Five
      gold rings! When the parcel arrived I was scared stiff that it might be
      more birds, because the smell in the living-room is atrocious
      However, I don’t want to seem ungrateful for the beautiful rings
      Your affectionate friend, Gobnait

      Day Six
      Nuala,
      What are you trying to do to us? It isn’t that we don’t appreciate your generosity
      But the six geese have not alone nearly murdered the calling birds
      But they laid their eggs on top of the vet’s head
      From the pear-tree and his bill was 68 in cash !
      My mother is munching 60 grains of Valium a day
      And talking to herself in a most alarming way
      You must keep your feelings for me in check
      Gobnait

      Day Seven
      Nuala,
      We are not amused by your little joke
      Seven swans-a-swimming is a most romantic idea but not in the bath of a private house
      We cannot use the bathroom now because they’ve gone completely savage
      And rush the door every time we try to enter
      If things go on this way, the mother and I will smell as bad as the living-room carpet Please lay off It is not fair
      Gobnait

      Day Eight
      Nuala,
      Who the hell do you think gave you the right to send eight,
      Hefty maids-a-milking here, to eat us out of house and home?
      Their cattle are all over the front lawn
      And have trampled the hell out of the mother’s rose-beds
      The swans invaded the living-room in a sneak attack
      And the ensuing battle between them and the calling birds,
      Turtle doves, French hens and partridge make the battle
      Of the Somme seem like Wanderly Wagon
      The mother is on a bottle of whiskey a day, as well as the sixty grains of Valium
      I’m very annoyed with you
      Gobnait

      Day Nine
      Listen you looser!
      There’s
      enough pandemonium in this place night and day without nine drummers
      drumming, while the eight flaming maids-a-milking are beating my poor,
      old alcoholic mother out of her own kitchen and gobbling everything in
      sight
      I’m warning you, you’re making an enemy of me
      Gobnait

      Day Ten
      Listen manure-face,
      I hope you’ll be haunted by the strains of ten pipers piping
      Which you sent to torment us last night
      They were aided in their evil work by those maniac drummers
      And it wasn’t a pleasant sight to look out the window
      And see eight hefty maids-a-milking pogo-ing around with the ensuing punk-rock uproar
      My mother has just finished her third bottle of whiskey,
      On top of a hundred and twenty four grains of Valium
      You’ll get yours!
      Gobnait O’Lúnasa

      Day Eleven
      You have scandalized my mother, you dirty Jezebel,
      It
      was bad enough to have eight maids-a-milking dancing to punk music on
      the front lawn but they’ve now been joined by your friends the eleven
      Lords-a-leaping
      And the antics of the whole lot of them would leave
      The most decadent days of the Roman Empire looking like Outlook
      I’ll get you yet, you loud bag!

      Day Twelve
      Listen slurry head,
      You have ruined our lives
      The twelve maidens dancing turned up last night
      And beat the living daylights out of the eight maids-a-milking,
      ‘Cause they found them carrying on with the eleven Lords-a-leaping
      Meanwhile, the swans got out of the living-room,
      Where they’d been hiding since the big battle,
      And savaged hell out of the Lords and all the Maids
      There were eight ambulances here last night, and the local Civil Defence as well
      The mother is in a home for the bewildered
      And I’m sitting here, up to my neck in birds’ droppings, empty whiskey
      And Valium bottles, birds’ blood and feathers,
      While the flaming cows eat the leaves off the pear-tree
      I’m a broken man

    3. Lovely pictures, UB. I’ve just pulled a dozen deep filled sweet pastry mince pies out of the oven after I’d made a tray of gooey brownies for tomorrow’s do.
      Enjoy your Christmas and your grandchildren.

        1. I used shop bought but ‘strengthened’ it with a little extra fruit and a slug of Jack Daniel’s.

          1. None of that 4 am malarkey:
            “HE’S BEEN!!!!!”
            ” ***@**^^^******@ *** ….. oh good …….”

  79. I shall sign off, now – must put a bottle of fizz in a bucket of warm water to get it to room temperature.

    I shall save my greetings until tomorrow – thus creating a spur to survive.

    A demain.

        2. mola – that is what he SAYS… He may have just loved living alone on an island with no-one telling him what to do. Until those pesky journalists became involved and he had to go back to the urban jungle instead, and start worrying about mortgages, pensions, taxes, etc.

    3. Anybody who routinely in public life calls themselves by their initials in preference to their given name is an arse and unworthy of attention.

      That Rowling woman is a case in point.

    5. Oh well, that’s my “goodwill to all men” vow well and truly broken – if the real dodgy vote in Peterborough was ignored, then surely any fake news from that pillock Grayling can be safely consigned to the “utter bollox” pile?

      Edit – note to self – ignore all tweets from that cretin – remember the blood pressure!

  82. One thing that has become apparent in the western world generally, and Britain in particular, is the decline in Christian belief. Indeed, Christianity is fast becoming a religion that dare not mention its name.
    Therefore, the sudden worry about the number of people working on 25th. December seems a tad hypocritical. When you choose jobs in nursing, security, hospitality etc…. you know darn well that working on public and religious holidays are part of the deal.
    Then I realised it was the unions trying to recover their relevance by banging on about money.

    1. When I was an articled clerk in London in 1959, we received letters from Edinburgh lawyers dated 25 December – as it was not, then, a public holiday in the Land of Murrell.

      1. Some of the more “progressive-thinking” employers did allow staff to leave at lunchtime.

      2. When I was bound apprentice in famous Lincolnshire,
        Full well I served my master for more than twenty year …

          2. I remember my last boss talking about one of our associates, saying well, ‘he IS older than me’. They’d been at school together around 50 years previously, in the same form. A year’s gap still counts, even when we are in our dotage… PS I was still at school in 1959…

          3. I remember my last boss talking about one of our associates, saying well, ‘he IS older than me’. They’d been at school together around 50 years previously, in the same form. A year’s gap still counts, even when we are in our dotage… PS I was still at school in 1959…

          5. A mere yoof… Of course you’ll find when you get to my age that you make errors. I posted yesterday about a project I’d run in the early 70s in Crawley. Except I’ve realised since that while I used to drive down via Crawley, the IPC office block was actually in Haywards Heath..

    2. Afternoon Anne,
      Unions are formed from the very same peoples known as the electorate, the electorate, in the main form the membership of the lab/lib/con coalition party.
      In total ALL these leaders are from the very secret “guild of political coxswains” steering the herd along paths of leader self interest first, then party, then country.
      Sad to say that future generations are, on today’s sightings going to inherit a country of, gimme, I want now, you ruined my life, 5 year old rosie wants a dick for Christmas, solved on parents approval, have dick’s, he don’t
      want his, what has this country come to ?
      Keep up the regular voting pattern and the herd WILL return to religion
      on hearing the call to prayer from every street corner.
      Have a good Christmas Anne / family
      and a very Happy New Year.

    1. The BBC by its charter is forbidden to report offences committed by Afro-Caribbeans or by Muslims.
      I am not sure why.

          2. I’ve read it before. I just asked why there were no comments, few upvotes, and a pretty small number of views after four years, to the You Tube video. That is unusual.

          2. Love the film, but I know it off by heart now. A bit like Zulu. I’ve got a Webley air rifle for rats in the garden, but haven’t seen one during the 3 months I’ve had it.

  86. Merry Christmas to all, feeling festive now after watching Carols from King’s. Lovely traditional carols which the Beeb never spoilt, wonders will never cease, on to Morecambe & Wise for an hour.

      1. How does it end, the same way as the last 20 times it has been on. Perhaps they could get Bercow to write an alternative ending and really c0ck it up!

          1. Wonderful theme tune, but the casting left a lot to be desired.

            Jim Bowie & Davy Crockett were never like that pair in my youthful imagination.

      2. Hmm – I am not so sure that I like the Alamo. Isn’t it a story of people from a different language and culture settling illegally in someone else’s country and, when there’s enough of them, taking it over and treating the indigenous people as inferiors?

      1. Yes, unfortunately. These things happen. I haven’t had a fall for some time and I had forgotten that I don’t bounce any more 🙂 Hopefully my ribs will be back to normal soon. I shall have to start wearing a body protector when I ride in future.

      1. You know, it occurs to me the best thing we can gift the EU is Anna sourpuss. She’s just what they needdeserve.

        1. Project her photo onto the chalk cliffs on the south coast.

          That death ray glare would sink the illegals’ boats while they were still boarding in France.

    2. Anna Sourpuss, the gripe that keeps on griping…
      oh well, that’s my new year finished… she’ll be dragging me through the courts…. but worth it.

    1. You need some backbone to wear a bodysuit like that in class – well er, perhaps a zip then!

  90. That’s me for now; I will be off to Midnight Mass later so have to get everything sorted before I set off. Have a peaceful night.

  91. Where now for Boeing

    They are in deep trouble still no sign of the FAA approving the modifications to the software. They have now stopped production but have 400 planes built but which the cannot deliver

    The 737 was a refresh of a much older design and they hit a problem as the new engines would not fit i the place of the old engines so they had to move them asnd that affected the aerodynamics and handling of the plane so they come up with this software to keep the plane stable on take off. It dos not seem particularly good to have to have software to keep the plane stable and of course thy found out that this software could malfunction

    1. It doesn’t matter. Boeing will get bailed out. They are too big to fail.
      Didn’t it used to be the case: if the worst comes to the worst, fly Aeroflot ?

    2. “It dos not seem particularly good to have to have software to keep the plane stable”. I hate to tell you, Bill, but almost all modern combat aircraft and an increasing number of commercial aircraft are designed to be inherently unstable. This allows them to be more agile, less draggy and more fuel efficient. To keep such aircraft under control would be a workload far greater than any human pilot could cope with but modern digital computers can take on this workload and keep the aircraft under control.

        1. The issue you commented on has nothing whatsoever to do with problem that caused the crashes with the two 737MAX aircraft.

    1. Spent a week there (after missing a chopper flight) in about 2002 or 2003 at Christmas. Weirdest week I’ve ever had.

        2. Ring the bell, Verger, ring the bell ring,
          Perhaps the congregation will condescend to sing
          And bloody organist will cease to play the fool –
          Play upon the organ and not upon his t**l.

    2. It’s the instructions which say ‘Stand for ten minutes…’ that used to baffle me.

      I once took a chance and sat down and the taste was exactly the same.

  95. Evening everyone. May I wish everybody a really Merry Christmas tomorrow, hope you have a wonderful festive day with family, or not, and friends, or not, or home alone. We are just the two of us, son and family are in Ireland and daughter and family are in Dubai. And boy does Dubai celebrate Christmas. We were sent a brief video of shop assistants in one of their big stores (no store is small over there!) where they were all dancing to Christmas music – they actually seem more Christmassy than over here.

    We will skype them all at some time in the day and are looking forward to a day where we can please ourselves completely, eat when we like and have a walk.

    Goodnight all. 🎁🥮🧁🎂🍤

  96. Whatever happens in the next year with us actually managing to get free of the EU, there is one message that can warm all of our hearts. The Labour Party has just been massacred and are now an ineffective and dead opposition for the next five years. In response to this, those who have taken over the party have decided to move it even further to the Left. So that is another potential 10 – 15 years of them being out of office.

    As far as they are concerned, the words of Private First Class William. L Hudson reflect the future of that party as they move even further from the soul of the British people.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/90f75d726e25597cc36bc7ac7cb711e517511a9818771b1393ae64d7a979ee50.jpg

    1. What short memories people have. After three years of hell from Conservative remainers and disruption, Hammond eggs and Theresa may but won’t, the party stank so much that nobody in their right minds would have voted Conservative unless they deemed it essential to prevent the country collapsing. The rise of Boris Johnson is a fortuitous accident and we can only hope that he continues the way he has been doing.
      Don’t ever criticise the parliamentary systems in other countries again.

    2. MM,
      Better have a major rethink on the ersatz tory party next, they are a segment of the odious coalition that helped get these Isles into sh!tesville and keep the country there.

  100. Sorry if it’s been mentioned before, but I just saw the Guardian report on the Christmas card sent by the Sussexes.

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/dec/24/duke-and-duchess-of-sussex-send-christmas-greetings-by-email

    I think the idea of an electronic (e-mailed) card is horrid. It is so impersonal. I received one myself for my birthday, and felt a bit shocked.
    I am still old fashioned and like paper. (Sorry about the trees, Greta).

    The Guardian have really hit the nail on the head, though –
    “The image on the card is black and white”

    I don’t like criticising peoples’ appearance, or making racist remarks, but somehow this couple don’t seem to fit in with the idea of Royalty.

    1. My brither sends crap Jackie Lawson cards for Christmas. They are truly baaad. And impersonal.

          1. Originally, JL designed them herself; they had a certain English whimsy, which is both gentler and edgier than the American version.
            As she got busier, she brought in other designers.

    2. The trees for paper production are a crop – just like sugar beet or barley.
      But St. Greta and her acolytes wouldn’t know about such things.

      2. Without a doubt, and to a few others who remain incognito, as well as other much-missed former contributors to these columns. Happy Christmas to them all.

  106. Here is my dad’s favourite toast which I shall be saying on the morrow:

    Here’s to you and yours,
    May us and ours, have it in our powers,
    to do for you and yours,
    as you and yours have done for us and ours,
    May these be the worst of our days!

    A very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all Nottlers, where ever you are!!

  111. Here in France the verse from John 1:1 reads:

    In the beginning was the Verb, and the Verb was with God, and the Verb was God.
    A verb is a “doing” word.
    Think on that.

    May the peace of the Lord be with you all for Christmas

  113. I think it appropriate to send Christmas greetings and best wishes to Prince Philip, who has been released from hospital today.
    The BBC have been licking their chops and can’t wait to produce his obituary. I sincerely hope that the BBC go first.

    2. I would love to be a fly on the wall when HRH Prince Philip utters his views on the BBC to the Queen over the Rice Crispies. Other cereals are available but his views will be steadfast.

      1. Merry Christmas dear friend…I have not been around but think of you always and especially at this time. God bless…..to all….xxxx

    2. Is that covering the damage from latest visit by the thought police?

      That’s a tasteful wreath did you prepare it yourselves?

      1. The door is very old and shows shall we say a number of honourable scars.

        My wife made the small wreath from stuff out of the garden and deliberately made a modest one to fit the style of the door.

  121. “Gor’ bless us, every one!”
    Had a ‘discussion’ at open mic last night with a nice lady who’s a bit of a conspiracy theorist, 5G, inoculations, and then evolution. I drew the line at that and we argued for a while. Very enjoyable though and we hugged and made up and agreed that my conspiracy theorist OH would ‘befriend her’ on faceache.

  122. There is no threat to the healthcare system in this country provided that it is properly audited and its expenditure properly accounted for.

    Why is this such an unreasonable demand?

      1. Rubbish. Sorry. The N.H.S., against the odds, works brilliantly. People die in your country, if they cannot pay.**
        ** Referring to U.S.A.

        1. Everybody is covered for a basic health service including hospitalization, out patient treatment , local doctors & specialist clinics and a basket of medicines (which includes costly life saving medicines) , here in Israel including the poor, unemployed & the work shy even if they can’t pay or have no income. Unlike in the UK you can get an appointment to see a GP swiftly Sunday to Friday & there are 4 home visit services with doctors on call 24/7 for a government fixed price

  123. I ordered two hampers from Loch Fyne as presents for Christmas. I had a message from them saying one of the hampers was unavailable. I got into a bit of a strop with them for advertising something they didn’t have. I demanded a refund which i got a couple of days later. Both hampers have now been delivered !

    As i cancelled my order and got a refund i was wondering what my position is. Can they make me pay?

    1. It won’t be you wot pays, it will be the recipient of the non-existent one, who gets the food poissoning (sic)

      1. Har har. Both hampers arrived with no internal packaging and everything had been rolling around. In both cases a tub of smoked mussel had split open making everything else a bit pongy.

          1. I’ve got so much unexpected smoked salmon now i bunged it in the freezer. Three different cures and one of them is the size of a house brick.

            Dolly isn’t getting any, too rich.

      1. Yes you are right. I do try. However in this case because of a long series of emails and cockups on their side, plus my having to make alternate arrangements i will assume they sent the hampers as an apology.

    4. Donate them to Crisis. That would givem a bit of a return on the million pounds they have spent on advertising this month.

      1. I don’t think it a good idea to give poor starving people such luxuries. Probably make them ill. :o)

      2. I did buy alternate gifts for the recipients when i cancelled the order. It wasn’t cheap. My card got hammered that month.

        1. I appreciate the cost involved, but they did deliver product.

          I would tell them what’s happened – including the damaged item – and offer to pay for the hampers.

          Now – their sensible course of action is to say ‘Thank you, but no, keep them as a gift from us.’ that encourages goodwill.

          If they ask you to pay for them, at full price simply never shop with them again. Considering their customer base is basically us lot, having yourself saying ‘they were great and generous’ or ‘swine!’ that’s a lot of business they are set to lose.

          2. The company that sells these products is not Loch Fyne. It is a separate entity.

            Loch Fyne is owned by Greene King where twice this month at Loch Fyne at Gunwharf and the Red Lion at Fareham served up overcooked rubbish. I also cancelled a Christmas day dinner at the Red Lion because their Sunday Roast was so bad. I am not feeling in any way why i should give them more money for such a poor showing.

            Given my experiences with the Brand recently they would have to ask very nicely before i payed them any more money.

    1. Thank you Rik, for all your ‘Night Alls’ always brings a smile at the end of the day!
      Merry Christmas to you!

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