Tuesday 4 February: The law should not leave the police to kill unreformed terrorists in order to protect the public

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/02/04/lettersthe-law-should-not-leave-police-kill-unreformed-terrorists/

763 thoughts on “Tuesday 4 February: The law should not leave the police to kill unreformed terrorists in order to protect the public”

  2. ‘Morning All

    Can’t sleep again,reading some Takimag

    Oof,ain’t that the truth files

    “It’s a lonely feeling being sane when most of the world has gone crazy.”

    BRITISH DETECTIVE TOLD THEY WERE INSTRUCTED TO LOOK AWAY FROM ASIAN GROOMING GANGS, “GET OTHER ETHNICITIES” INSTEAD

    A report

    based on a two-year inquiry commissioned by the Greater Manchester

    mayor to investigate “the historic failings of police and social

    workers” regarding the sexual exploitation of children concluded that

    girls were groomed and abused “in plain sight.” According to an unnamed

    detective, investigators were told to ignore the fact that most of the

    perpetrators were Asian:

    What had a massive input was the offending target group

    were predominantly Asian males and we were told to try and get other

    ethnicities.

    So they were essentially told to look the other way while indigenous

    British girls were being raped, because the larger public interest

    involves protecting the feelings of Muslim rape gangs because of

    “sensitive community issues” or other such balderdash.

    Police suspect that at least 57 girls were groomed and raped by an

    estimated 100 perpetrators. In one case, a 50-year-old man injected a

    15-year-old girl with heroin, causing her death.

    Why didn’t that case alone lead to torch mobs and looting? Not sensitive enough.

    https://www.takimag.com/article/the-week-that-perished-73/

    1. Good morning, Rik.

      The Mayor is known for missing what is in ‘plain sight’
      so no surprise, unfortunately.

    2. Morning all.

      And still nobody, I.e., Jacquie Smith, has been prosecuted for what was an explicit instruction from the Home Office. And people wonder why the public has lost faith in our institutions.

  6. Oh Dear,a reality overload

    Trying to understand this paradox and this aberrant behavior, I

    reflect on what I have seen of liberals and liberalism in Africa. The

    entire decolonization project that swept through Africa, starting with

    Ghanaian independence in 1957, was motivated by the liberal politicians

    of the Western democracies who came to dominate the political landscape

    after WWII. They successfully promoted the trope that all whites in

    Africa were racist oppressors and all blacks were innocent victims.

    Thus, following this line of thought, Shaka Zulu, a psychotic mass

    murderer who terrorized an entire subregion, has been universally

    lionized, while Cecil Rhodes, who as far as I know never killed anyone,

    and who built roads, railways, bridges, hospitals, schools, and

    universities, and supplied the funding for the most prestigious

    scholarship of the modern era, is remembered as a heartless, avaricious

    monster. On the back of this and many other big lies, one of the

    greatest man-made catastrophes of all time has unfolded in sub-Saharan

    Africa, which has cost millions of lives in wars and endemic continental

    violence, leaving hundreds of millions of people trapped in a deepening

    poverty spiral.

    https://www.takimag.com/article/trump-in-the-crosshairs-2/

  7. The terrorist who was shot in London was described as having been “radicalised” in prison. Why is “radicalisation” always down to some malign external force over which the “radicalised” individual has no control? Why are they never responsible for their radicalisation?

    And why does this notion only apply to izlamist terrorists? (Rhetorical).

    1. I really feel for him,I mean the poor lad was just delivering pizzas to Belmarsh and BANG he finds himself stuck in a cell with hate preachers for a couple of years
      Oh Wait………………………
      Fuckwits,fuckwits everywhere

    2. That’s what his mum said, forgetting that he was in prison in the first place on terrorism charges.
      That said, the sooner they do what Tommy Robinson said and separate the real Islamic hardliners from the rest of the prison population the better. Many prisoners are converting to Islam for survival, as too many prisons are run by Islamic gangs with little to lose. Prisons have become recruitment centres.

    1. Or as Douglas Murray says: “Gays for Islam?? Give me a break. If they actually lived in an Islamic state they’d have to move to Israel.”

  10. Outspoken Chechen blogger found murdered in Lille. 4 February 2020.

    The police have not yet named any suspects, although police sources have told French media that they suspect the motive may be political. Chechens living in exile who have fought or spoken out against Kadyrov – the ruthless Chechen leader appointed by Vladimir Putin – have often been targeted for assassination. Last year, a former Chechen rebel commander was shot twice in the head in a targeted killing in Berlin’s Kleiner Tiergarten. The suspected assassin is Russian.

    Morning everyone. This is peripheral to the main story. The western Security Services have been trying to fit the Russians up for the Tiergarten murder when of course it is quite obvious that it is the Chechens that are behind it. Their leader Kadyrov is in the same mould as Saudi’s Prince Mohammed bin Salman, only half as mad and twice as dangerous. This attempt to smear the Russians fits an ongoing pattern of hostile propaganda and fabricating evidence (Skripals, Gebrev etc.) to paint the Russians generally and Putin himself as not simply a political competitor but as an embodiment of evil. This latter personalisation of enmity is relatively new though with an historical parallel in Renaissance Italy where assassination was the norm. Our ancestors ended this process with the Treaty of Westphalia (1644) and the formalisation of diplomatic processes and immunity thus largely removing the destabilising personal element from Foreign Relations. Its return is a part of the ongoing failure of Democracy and is not good news. When emotion enter Geopolitics, tragedy is inevitable, since the personal survival of the Leader will become more important to them than Affairs of State.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/03/outspoken-chechen-blogger-found-murdered-in-lille

        1. Definitely not! While I have a sneaking admiration for the skilful way that he’s played a weak hand, I do not automatically attribute the atrocities committed in his name to “false flag ops”.

          1. Well you’ve damned him with faint praise there. Which atrocities do you attribute to him? The Skripals? The installation of Donald Trump as POTUS? Brexit? Boris as Prime Minister? There’s quite a list! I suppose if you looked long enough you could find one that’s genuine!

          2. No, I don’t automatically believe every conspiracy theory that crawls out of social media. That was my very point.

  11. Good Morning Folks,

    Looks windy out,
    My balls might deviate today from dead centre of the fairway.

  12. Good Morning, all

    SIR – As Britain has been in the EU for nearly 50 years, most people have no experience of how we coexisted before. Let me reassure everyone that we travelled to Europe, relocated, worked and retired there. We traded with Europe. Europeans did the same in reverse.

    Just-in-time delivery was introduced in the Seventies, especially in the motor industry which operated internationally. We also traded with the Commonwealth and parts of the world, which membership of the EU curtailed by its protectionist policies.

    David Chalker
    Kenilworth, Warwickshire

    https://media.makeameme.org/created/really-you-dont-c3e525fefd.jpg

  13. Wave of Jihadi terrorists due to be freed on early release within months. 4 February 2020.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c03f07f5ed4b8c492c4c2647fb773aaf5f2955a2192d2ac7101c22a17f697948.jpg

    More than a dozen jihadi terrorists are due to be freed early from jail within months, as ministers scramble to introduce emergency legislation to keep them behind bars.

    There’s a shameful lack of diversity here!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/02/03/wave-jihadi-terrorists-due-freed-early-release-within-months/

    1. I heard that between 20 and 30 police/security operatives had been assigned to the latest attacker. This little lot will require upwards of 300, are there sufficiently trained operatives available to make even a token gesture towards protecting the public?
      The reaction from the Government, Quangocrats, police et al. reinforces my view that they are beginning to understand the problem they have created but have absolutely no idea how to deal with it. They can’t even bring themselves to immediately deport the south coast arrivals such is their inability to act in the face of islam.

    2. Minorities are well represented in mug shots if not at the BAFTAs

      SIR – The clue to the low representation of minority groups among the Bafta awards nominees and winners is in the word “minority”.

      Nigel Baldwin
      Thornhill, Dumfries and Galloway

  14. SIR – I watched the England-France match. I love the theatre of the anthem singing, but I must say the French children accompanying the French team outsang their English counterparts with gusto, and belted out the Marseillaise with fervour.

    We must coach our children to know the words of our national anthem in schools as a basic skill.

    Jacqueline Davies
    Faversham, Kent

    That’s coz all the little cherubs on the pitch at Stade de France were froglets. I agree with the second paragraph…..including madrassas.

  15. SIR – I’ve been trying to work out what those complaining about lack of diversity at the Baftas are suggesting.

    Are they implying that this year’s nominees were not good enough and that others, of colour, were more deserving? Or do they believe that in future there should be “quotas”?

    The very people who are making the complaints demand that skin colour and sexuality should not be an issue in everyday life, and yet on this occasion they themselves could be seen as racist. It’s confusing – can you be racist towards white people?

    Jim Kirkwood
    Kilmarnock

    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cl57KANWIAAoXSD.jpg

  16. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/opinion/2020/02/03/TELEMMGLPICT000223602920_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqRdPLSElEmrKaK7hcQaxOdBHW7lxvdJvmz07AWQrYuIk.jpeg?imwidth=680
    SIR – I recently came across a set of “Safety First” cigarette cards from the Thirties, and was delighted to find that they foresaw the present-day problem of mobile phone users engrossed in their devices while walking in the street (see picture). The warning on the card covered the dangers of “colliding with other pedestrians, lamp-posts, pillar boxes etc”.

    The city gent pictured was clearly a walking disaster area. A lesson to us all.

    James Harris
    Winchester, Hampshire

  17. For those without Premium…

    SIR – Twice recently, extra-judicial executions have been carried out on London’s streets following death and serious injury to innocent bystanders because of the failure of the deradicalisation of terrorists before their release from prison.

    If such offenders are deemed such a danger to the public that they require close monitoring after release, they should remain indefinitely in custody. Alternatively, Parliament should reconsider the imposition of the death penalty, carried out after legal process rather than hastily in the streets.

    David Pynn
    Malmesbury, Wiltshire
    &
    SIR – Who are the idiots who advocate the release of certifiable lunatics half way through their prison sentences, so that they may resume the atrocities for which they were committed in the first place, setting at risk innocent members of the public and policemen with enough on their hands?

    Peter Wyton
    Gloucester
    &
    SIR – As another spontaneous stabbing frenzy occurs on our streets and is effectively closed down by our police, I do wonder at the label of “terrorist”.

    Surely a terrorist is a member of an organisation intent on pursuing a destructive strategy against the target of its ire. Was Sunday’s incident more the act of a deranged individual rather than a terrorist?

    I have no difficulty with the police action but I merely seek clarity on the differentiation between terrorism and insanity, so that solutions can be applied and public concern managed, accepting that the crossover is often difficult to determine.

    Charles Holden
    Micheldever, Hampshire
    &
    SIR – Radicalisation turns persons who already had fragile mental health into paranoid psychopathic sociopaths.

    Surely they should be held in a secure mental facility rather than prison? Broadmoor exists for them.

    Sue Doughty
    Twyford, Berkshire
    &
    SIR – Following the London Bridge attack by a convicted terrorist after his early release from prison, I seem to recall there was going to be a “review” of such cases so that early releases of convicted terrorists would not take place.

    Now that there has been another such attack by a terrorist immediately following early release from prison, will there be another such “review”?

    Christopher Foyle
    London W11
    &
    SIR – How will making convicted terrorists serve their full sentence render them less of a risk when eventually released? It seems it is merely a risk deferred.

    Terry Lloyd
    Derby
    &
    SIR – Is it not time that terrorists were sentenced, based not only upon what they have done, but also upon the risk they pose to the public?

    A minimum sentence should be imposed for the crimes committed, but detention should then be continued until the risk they pose has gone, perhaps with reassessment every five years.

    The authorities must be able to protect us by keeping terrorists locked up, and changes to the law should be made quickly.

    Phil Coutie
    Exeter, Devon

    1. BOLLOCKS to all that!

      Let’s cut to the quick!
      Terrorists … ALL terrorists … should be shot on sight! Those that surrender should be hanged.

      No other answer is tenable!

      Time we all grew balls and treated terrorism for what it is.

  18. Katie Hopkins is vile but she should not be banned. Spiked. Brendan O’Neill. 4 February 2020.

    Katie Hopkins should be reinstated on Twitter. Not because she has anything of value to say, but for these three reasons. 1) Everyone, even objectionable people, must have the right to express themselves. That is the entire nature of freedom of speech. If we limit free speech, for any reason whatsoever, then it isn’t free speech at all. It is licensed speech, something gifted to us by officialdom or capitalism so long as we say things they find acceptable. 2) We, the audience, must have the right to hear all ideas and to decide for ourselves if they are good or bad. Anything else is just pure, foul paternalism that turns us from thinking citizens into overgrown children who must be protected from difficult ideas. 3) Corporate censorship is as bad as state censorship. Calling on powerful people or rich people to police the parameters of acceptable thought, and to expel anyone who says something bad, is a catastrophically erroneous thing to do. Trust people, not power; prefer freedom over control.

    I disagree here with Brendan’s epithet aimed at Katie Hopkins who says what millions think but agree whole heartedly about Free Speech. Whenever you see anyone attempting to suppress the latter you are looking at someone with an agenda since it is a clandestine effort to propagate an opposite view. For this reason alone it should not prevail. Without Free Speech there can be no Democracy, Justice or Equality since they are dependent on it for their very existence!

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/02/04/katie-hopkins-is-vile-but-she-should-not-be-banned/

    1. Indeedy

      “Take away the right to say f**k and you take away the right to say f**k the government” Lenny Bruce

    2. It is interesting how the duality of banning is presenting. Ban someone such as Hopkins ‘silences her’. Banning Islamist hate speech (sic) simply ‘forces it underground’.

  19. Morning, all.

    The captcha has been re-instated and my KtK user is being barred. Has anyone else had problems?

    3. I have the captcha too. Since the beginning of last week the system has become a real pain, I have to log back in even if I am following a link, I cannot just retrace my step. Ditto also with the frequent ‘a problem with the web page’. Then the captcha appeared yesterday morning. I use an iPad.

  20. UK to open Glagow Climate Change Summit with ban on sale of petrol, diesel and hybrid cars by 2035.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-51366123

    Claire O’Neill is so much of a firebrand that Boris reckons that removing her as the summit’s head will cool things down more than 1.5 degC.

    In the face of the fear being engendered by the 2019-nCoV virus I think it would be a good idea to cancel the Glasgow summit as the containment of this potential extermination pathogen through travel restrictions is more urgent than trying to keep our planet’s temperature rise within an arbitrary 1.5 degC.

  21. To the Nottler grammar officionados:

    Shouldn’t the following caption to a picture “A woman reacts near to the incident in Streatham High Road.” be written as “A woman reacts near the incident in Streatham High Road.”?

    1. Yes. My daughter worked in the MGM Casino in Macau. It is the second largest in the world. A partnership between Las Vegas businessmen and a Chinese gangster. Other huge casinos are available. I expect the big Chinese resorts will also have closed, such as Hainan.
      Enormous loss of revenue.

  23. A golfer playing in Ireland hooked his drive into the woods.

    Looking for his ball, he found a little Leprechaun flat on his back, a big bump on his head and the golfer’s ball beside him. Horrified, the golfer got his water bottle from the cart and poured it over the little guy, reviving him.

    ‘Arrgh! What happened?’ the Leprechaun asked.

    ‘I’m afraid I hit you with my golf ball,’ the golfer says.

    ‘Oh, I see. Well, ye got me fair and square. Ye get three wishes, so whaddya want?’

    ‘Thank God, you’re all right!’ the golfer answers in relief. ‘I don’t want anything, I’m just glad you’re OK, and I apologise.’

    And the golfer walks off. ‘What a nice guy,’ the Leprechaun says to himself. ‘I have to do something for him. I’ll give him the three things I would want… a great golf game, all the money he ever needs, and a fantastic sex life.’

    A year goes by and the golfer is back. On the same hole, he again hits a bad drive into the woods and the Leprechaun is there waiting for him. ‘Twas me that made ye hit the ball here,’ the little guy says. ‘I just want to ask ye, how’s yer golf game?’

    ‘My game is fantastic!’ the golfer answers. I’m an internationally famous golfer now.’ He adds, ‘By the way, it’s good to see you’re all right.’

    ‘Oh, I’m fine now, thank ye. I did that fer yer golf game, you know. And tell me, how’s yer money situation?’

    ‘Why, it’s just wonderful!’ the golfer states. ‘When I need cash, I just reach in my pocket and pull out $100.00 bills. I didn’t even know they were there!’

    ‘I did that fer ye also.’ And tell me, how’s yer sex life?’

    The golfer blushes, turns his head away in embarrassment, and says shyly, ‘It’s OK.’

    C’mon, c’mon now,’ urged the Leprechaun, ‘I’m wanting to know if I did a good job. How many times a week?’

    Blushing even more, the golfer looks around then whispers, ‘Once, sometimes twice a week.’

    ‘What??’ responds the Leprechaun in shock. ‘That’s all? Only once or twice a week?’

    ‘Well,’ says the golfer, ‘I figure that’s not bad for a Catholic priest in a small parish.’

  24. Britain is losing the fight against extremism

    The authorities are wrong to think that the power of reason is enough to rehabilitate fanatics
    Melanie Phillips – Tuesday February 04 2020, 12.00am, The Times

    For the second time in just over two months, terrorism on Britain’s streets has descended into lethal farce. On Sunday Sudesh Amman, an Islamist who had just been released from prison even though he was considered so dangerous that he was being shadowed by armed police officers, seized a knife from a shop in Streatham and stabbed two people before those officers shot him dead.

    Last November Usman Khan, an Islamist released from prison 11 months earlier, murdered two people at a conference that he was attending on London Bridge organised by a prisoners’ rehabilitation project.

    This provoked much head-shaking about the risks of letting terrorists out of jail too early and accepting too easily that they’d been deradicalised. Now, some are saying we can’t go on like this.

    Easier said than done. For what’s required is a step-change in attitudes which Britain has been unwilling to make.

    The problem is not just that scores of other Islamists have been released from jail, with many more due to be released soon. Keeping them inside for longer won’t change the fact that when eventually they are released they may well still be dangerous.

    For all the evidence suggests that deradicalisation programmes both inside and outside prison are singularly ineffectual. That’s not just because of the chaos in the under-resourced prison and probation system. It’s because of a conceptual error: the belief that the power of reason can be used against fanatics who believe in killing infidels and “martyring” themselves in the name of God, and wear mocked-up bomb-belts to encourage the police to kill them.

    In a BBC radio programme a few days ago Ian Acheson, who conducted a review of extremism in prisons, explored why deradicalisation was proving such a failure. Prisoners were manipulating such programmes by parroting the jargon of moderation and “healthy identity” that they knew officials were desperate to hear.

    Most tellingly, according to Fiyaz Mughal, the founder of the counterextremist group Faith Matters, prison imams were frightened of charismatic and aggressive prisoners who sometimes seemed to know more than they did about Islamic concepts.

    That last point should surely give us pause. Islam’s history features holy war and conquest, punctuated over the centuries by attempts at enlightenment and reformation that were suppressed. So could it be that these charismatic prisoners, who further radicalise other Muslim inmates, are more faithful to Islam than the hapless imams sent in to persuade them of the error of their ways?

    Within the Muslim world there are different interpretations of Islam, some of which are peaceful and apolitical. And it should never be forgotten that Muslims are the most numerous victims of Islamist extremism. In Britain, many are cultural Muslims with scant interest in religion at all.

    Nevertheless, Islamist extremism is an interpretation based on the literal reading of religious texts and propagated by the most powerful religious authorities in the Islamic world.

    Yet in Britain and much of the West, we persist in claiming that such extremism is a perversion of Islam, whereas to its followers it is a holy duty that trumps all secular values.

    Since this threat emerged in Britain more than three decades ago, the establishment has refused to acknowledge the danger inherent in what these people believe, not just in what they do. So it lets prisoners out of jail too early, it’s easily duped over its deradicalisation programmes, and it denounces anyone who criticises the Muslim world as Islamophobic.

    It’s vital that we safeguard the majority of Muslims who are loyal, law-abiding British citizens. But it’s also important to recognise that a troubling number of British Muslims nod along with the goals, if not the tactics, of Islamist extremists. A Policy Exchange poll in 2016 revealed that more than 40 per cent of British Muslims wanted to see at least some aspects of Sharia in force in the UK.

    In 1971, the home secretary Reginald Maudling caused outrage when he said IRA attacks couldn’t be eliminated but only reduced to an “acceptable level”. It’s beginning to look as if that defeatist mindset is being repeated, through cowardice and error, towards a far greater danger.

    To begin to confront that threat properly, the government should admit what is staring it in the face: for the terrorists, we are the infidels in a holy war that will be fought to the bitter end. It is time that those states which still fund the most poisonous anti-western preachers took responsibility for the hatred they are spreading and time we shamed them into stopping it.

    Liberalism’s flaw is that it believes reason is the antidote to all problems, including a religious death-cult. “We can’t go on like this” means our own society taking steps which won’t seem very liberal — be they tougher sentences or new restrictions on hate preachers.

    But if a society is so liberal it refuses to defend itself properly, it will vanish.

    1. If people have been indoctrinated with an ideology and particularly a religious ideology the chances of reforming them are in single figures so only about 1 or 2% might be reformed.

      The other problem is there is no way of telling whether they have been reformed whatever so alled expewrts might say. These so called experts have dreadful track records as well

      1. BJ,
        But Gerard Batten has been telling you that in rhetoric & book form since 2005 only to be castigated along with many UKIP party members as far
        right, racist.
        So far right is the true fact.

    2. ‘Nuff Said

      … I was not making fun of you personally; I was heaping scorn on an inexcusably silly idea — a practice I shall always follow.
      Anyone who clings to the historically untrue and thoroughly immoral
      doctrine that violence never settles anything I would advise to conjure
      up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and their freedoms.”

    3. But if a society is so liberal it refuses to defend itself properly, it will vanish.

      We are already semi-transparent!

      1. Morning AS,
        Isolation inside, deportation outside, same day of release.
        Tommy Robinson proved
        isolation works in nick.

        1. Here, I agree with you Ogga and Good morning.

          We could radically reduce the problem of reoffending murderers by the reintroduction of capital punishment. Before the do-gooders hold up their hands in horror at the possibility of mistakes being made, ask how many of the current crop of murderers have successfully appealed against conviction?

          1. Morning NtN,
            Then I beg to differ Timothy Evans at the cost of his life proved the topping system wrong.
            I do believe the American system right, life means life, with another on top to make sure.

          2. And there’s another problem: modern juries might hesitate to convict if they thought that the death penalty was on the table.

          3. Morning Jbf,
            Currently in the case of terrorist it would seem to me as an act of collusion in the making of martyrs.
            Life means life.

          4. That is the only case that everyone quotes. I’m talking about the number of murderers convicted after hanging was abolished. Not one ‘life’ sentence (ha ha ha) has been successfully appealed.

            I’m almost sure that there are a few murderers serving a second ‘life’ sentence, having re-offended after release from the first one.

          5. NtN,
            I to agree with you on certain points but on hanging I will not change my no hanging stance.
            By the by check out the Kiszko case, it was very nearly a
            whooops sorry case also.

          8. In Scotland there is a murderer serving his third sentence for murder in Scotland. Ditto a rapist. Something badly wrong with the system – and much of it is political and financial resistance to building new prisons.

    4. But if a society is so liberal it refuses to defend itself properly, it will vanish.

      We are already semi-transparent!

    5. Morning Z,
      The power of reason took a hike long ago along with common sense.
      Fact is seemingly the islamic ideology
      followers do a form of nation service
      using the nick as a training camp.
      Radicalisation has a lot more muscle than de-radicalisation inside.
      Answer, IMHO isolation inside, deportation outside, to the place of origin, either theirs or their parents. or grandparents, outside of our borders.
      Same day of release.
      We have witnessed first hand when delays are granted as with one of 9 months.

    7. Surely the case of Usman Khan should have demonstrated once and for all that religious fanatics cannot be ‘de-radicalised.’ He was actually at an event which celebrated the success of his rehabilitation, when he took the lives of the two naive people who had been trying to help him.

      Those who let religious fanatics onto our streets are taking a huge gamble with the lives of ordinary people. What about our human right to go about our daily business without fear that we will be stabbed/run over/blown up?

      The only safe option is to put these monsters in a place where they cannot do harm. That means either life imprisonment, deportation (to their country of origin or some suitably remote island) or execution.

    8. I wish sometimes we could study history rather than constantly be re-inventing the wheel.

      Guy Fawkes Night, a British festival celebrated in November, came about when a religious fanatic attempted in 1605 to blow up Parliament, but was caught in the act and dealt with. We still burn his effigy today.

      His religion was Roman Catholicism, at the time administered pretty brutally abroad by the Spanish Inquisition. It was centuries before Britain came to terms with this religion, which was only emancipated in 1829. It was not until 2010 that an English Catholic was beatified on home soil, and 2011 when a British Catholic, or one married to one, was allowed to accede the throne.

      The condition that enabled the liberalisation of attitudes towards Catholics was over the supremacy of civil law over religious law – something that reared its head back in the reign of Henry II with the murder of Thomas Becket. Catholics must submit to the law of the land, even when it conflicts with their own teachings and religious principles. This was tested in 1967 with David Steel’s Abortion Act, and Catholics have had to swallow what they consider to be legalised infanticide.

      In recent times, my own Catholic commitments have been tested by the legal redefinition of marriage in 2014 and actually broken by the application of “Safeguarding” regulations from the Home Office that effectively criminalise the congregation and make it impossible for me to continue my worship under a blanket cloud of suspicion..

  26. UK aviation industry vows net zero carbon by 2050

    Another lot just plucking a data out of the air. They have at present no idea as to i or how it can be done. Their may hope is bio fuels but they are expensive and difficult to produce and are not very green in any case

    “We are going to have to do this through many projects,” Alex Cruz, chief executive of British Airways, told the BBC.

    “Biofuels will give us a greener alternative and we are attracted by that,” he said, while conceding that they will still produce carbon dioxide and that they are expensive today.

    “We do believe we will reach a point where the price will be compatible with the rest of fuel prices.”

    BA will also retire old planes, with the double-decker Boeing 747 being phased out in 2024.

    Other plans include planting trees – so-called carbon offsetting – and investing in renewable power sources, said Matt Gorman, a council member of Sustainable Aviation.

    2. Bollocks,plain and simple,as soon as anyone mentions the “Carbon offset” scam you know it’s just another con

      1. Morning, Rik. Many people show their ignorance by referring to carbon when they mean carbon dioxide. Diamonds have nothing to do with climate change. Of course, nor does carbon dioxide.

        1. ‘Morning, Delboy, makes sense to me, especially since human beings consist of a large amount of carbon.

          That’s the answer that they don’t want to tackle – overpopulation.

        2. I could be pedantic and suggest that diamonds have everything to do with climate change. Let me explain… Trees extract carbon dioxide from the air using sunlight and water, and turn it into wood. They then drop their leaves and eventually die and rot on the ground. In time, the bugs turn this to humus, which over millennia is compressed and turns to peat and then to coal. Finally volcanic activity converts the coal to diamonds, and voilà, here’s the connection. Diamonds are merely carbon dioxide that’s been locked up.

          Unfortunately, it’s going to take longer than until 2030 to convert the fumes from our boilers into something you can wear around your neck, but I am sure they are working on it.

          Jury’s still out on the Greenhouse Effect, but I would have thought that the global industrial scale cutting down of trees to finance the aspirations of nearly 8 billion people a thoroughly bad idea.

    3. Don’t they have to burn biofuels? Are there no by-products from combustion? Biofuels can only be beneficial if all the stars are aligned, that is, the carbon dioxide released by growing the raw material and converting to fuel, together with the carbon dioxide production from the combustion in engines is exceeded by the carbon dioxide fixed in the soil in the actual growth of the raw material. Seems like a perpetual motion machine.
      For those that understand this stuff, here is a link;

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biofuel#Air_pollution

    4. Does that mean that cattle class passengers will have to wind up the plane before they embark?

  27. Wonky House for sale at £500,000

    The UK’s version of the leaning tower of Pizza

    The 600-year-old beamed house that looks as if it is about to topple over is in the heart of Lavenham – described as the finest medieval village in the country which boasts more than 300 listed buildings- and is one of the most-photographed by the thousands of tourists who visit every year.
    The Crooked House dates back to around 1395 and was originally part of a grand hall house in the community that made its wealth from the wool trade.
    The property is protected by a Grade Two listing as being of special architectural importance and is currently used as tearooms but has also been used as an art gallery in recent years.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f163efbb1be7f5eedb3bfe4914c61555b2a0ca0055c002844e79722b8ba525fd.jpg

    2. Been round that.
      Obviously in the C14, people didn’t live long enough to worry about dodgy knees or hips.

  28. Trump’s State of the Union address to congress tonight.

    We should expect to see Nigel in the front row of the gallery and be praised and saluted by Trump at the podium. The Dems will look like thunder (not least because of their Iowa fiasco overnight) and the Beeb will make no mention of it on tomorrow morning’s news. You heard it here first.

    1. Iowa fiasco? You mean the caucus held in Glasgow and publicised on BBC Scotland? (Yes, really!)

      1. Just shadowbanned so that no-one can find it,you can still click on it to proceed and watch from my link
        (for the moment)

      2. AS,
        Just watched it, advisory to a
        REAL pro UK PM Gerard Batten type would definitely NOT go amiss

    3. TR is not my kuffar tea, but I listened. Even the Telegraph is reduced to describing the stabaholic nutter as a ‘jihadist’; he is (or was) a muslim, nothing more. I hope the authorities don’t release his body until after they have done plenty of blood tests (narcotics, medication, alcohol, HIV).

    4. Not a happy bunny!

      Like the nagging wife slagging off a husband past his prime, overwhelmed by the cares of the world, and really would rather settle down with a beer and await the grave for a bit of peace and quiet.

      And we wonder then the increasing popularity of the likes of Viktor Orban and Greta Thunberg.

      Boris Johnson’s pet Downing Street rasputin is inviting those on the lunatic fringes who have something to say about the state of the world. That an emergency has been declared that challenges the automatic parole for dangerous offenders suggests that if TR has not already had his beer and sandwiches at No.10, it cannot be far off.

  30. A top City banker reportedly on £1m a year has been suspended for allegedly stealing food from the office canteen.

    Paras Shah, one of Citigroup’s most senior traders in Europe, has left his post over the alleged theft from the Wall Street bank’s Canary Wharf office, the Financial Times reported.

    Sources said the office canteen is “not exactly expensive”. It is understood Mr Shah is accused of having stolen food on multiple occasions.

    Citigroup declined to comment while Mr Shah, who previously worked at HSBC, did not respond at the time of writing. Two of his former colleagues told the Financial Times that he was a “well-liked and successful trader”.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/02/03/high-flying-banker-suspended-stealing-food-canteen/

  31. BBC: THE FINAL DAYS
    Andrew Neil “anti-British drivel of a high order”
    Mark Francois “The BBC is heading for a horrible history of its own when we abolish the licence fee.”

    Seriously?! Tory MPs demand BBC licence fee AXE after anti-UK Brexit Day sketch is aired
    TORY MPs have said the BBC’s decision to air an anti-British Horrible Histories segment should put an end to the licence fee.
    By JOEL DAY

    https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1237078/bbc-news-bbc-bias-conservative-party-license-fee-horrible-histories

    1. The problems start with Digital TV which made a lot more bandwidth available and the BBC went on a massive expansion program

      If the BBC remains it needs to be substantially curt back. I would say 1 TV channel and a couple of radio stations. BBC can be rationalized so I would devolve that. to England, Wales, NI and Scotland and each of those nations can fund it and put their own programs on it .BBC Alba and S4C get absorbed into BBC2 channel, C4 goes fully commercial or gets absorbed into BBC2

      1. It’s more than just the number of channels or digital output; it’s the continuous left-wing drivel that has infiltrated every aspect of the BBC. What it’s been producing is little more than blatant, biased, propaganda. Watch Doctor Who as a prime example. Except, don’t. It’s unwatchable, and its viewing figures are reflecting that.

  32. Amsterdam to London Eurostar

    After launching its first direct London-Amsterdam service in 2018, Eurostar is finally ready to offer a direct return train from the Dutch capital back to the UK.
    The initial roll-out was pushed back several times due to red tape at the border – passengers were previously required to board a Thalys train on the return journey and change at Brussels to go through passport control.
    Today marks the first preview train, which is expected to take 4hr and 9m, arriving at London St Pancras at 11.57am after departing Amsterdam at 7.48am (local time)

    1. BJ,
      It could have a satisfactory send off if it’s first passengers were the terrorist sh!te due for release, on day of release.
      Tie it’s inauguration in with release from incarceration & deportation & we have a winning formula.

    2. Wonderful! but there is no chance that it will run on directly to Edinburgh is there?
      A “Eurostar” to Paris from Edinburgh was started. It did not stop anywhere and you had to drag yourself across London from KX to Waterloo. It mostly ran empty and was discontinued after a short time. the same holds for the cities in the North. I will believe that the Government is setting out to cure London-centrism when you can either travel directly from Cities on the Continong, or only just have to change platforms.

      1. Probably

        The West Coast Mainline has rail link near to Willesden Junction Junction in London this run across to the GWR mainline near Old Oak Common. The link is only used by freight etc and would need upgrading but the distance is very short. The obvious way to do it would be to run a shuttle service between Watford Junction & Heathrow

  34. Algorithms on social media need regulation, says UK’s AI adviser. 4 February 2020.

    New regulation should be passed to control the algorithms that promote content such as posts, videos and adverts on social networks, the UK government’s advisory body on AI ethics has recommended.

    Yes it doesn’t take much imagination to know what they will be controlling!

    https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/feb/04/algorithms-social-media-regulation-uk-ai-adviser-facebook

  36. Let’s get this straight. If you become a terrorist, by any means, you become an enemy of your species. It is your raison d’être. You have given up your status as a human; you are nothing more than a virus. And like a virus you must be wiped out.

    Time to stop pissing about and cleanse the planet of this virus. The more we vacillate (instead of vaccinate) the quicker we will diminish as a species.

    To those halfwits who whine, “We are more civilised than that.” I say, you have lost sight of your natural sense of being. These terrorists are not “more civilised than that” and they are winning because we have neither the brains nor the balls to deal with them effectively.

    The first law of nature is the survival of the fittest. The modern day fact is that those who are steeped in “compassion” are simply not equipped to survive. The terrorists recognise that and act accordingly.

        1. I thought it redundant Grizz. We are all one species!You should have stopped at enemy!

          1. That’s the point, Minty. We are one species and these religious fundamentalists hate every one of that species who do not conform to their warped thought patterns.

          2. I remember the Syrian pilot being burned alive in a cage,
            they encouraged children to watch and laugh as a man
            was burned to death. These terrorists and those who just
            stand by are pure evil and not human beings.
            Christianity stops us from acting accordingly but Christianity
            wasn’t a meek and mild gentle Jesus religion,
            modern times and bleeding hearts have turned it into thus.
            We have a fight for our very survival against a medieval death
            cult that wants to destroy us all.

          3. Luke 22:36 Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.

            Liberal progressive clergy tie themselves in knots trying to explain it away.

          5. I remember the Syrian pilot being burned alive in a cage,
            they encouraged children to watch and laugh as a man
            was burned to death. These terrorists and those who just
            stand by are pure evil and not human beings.
            Christianity stops us from acting accordingly but Christianity
            wasn’t a meek and mild gentle Jesus religion,
            modern times and bleeding hearts have turned it into thus.
            We have a fight for our very survival against a medieval death
            cult that wants to destroy us all.

          6. I think the religious fundamentalists hate every one of the indigenous population, Grizz, not just those who do not conform to their warped patterns.

    2. My gut reaction is to agree wholeheartedly with you. However I have some not clearly defined reservations.

      1. Our enemies, our real enemies, not rivals or geopolitical competitors; lie not in Foreign Lands but in Westminster. These have over the last thirty years implemented a series of measures that no occupying military force, Napoleonic, German or the Soviet Union would have instigated. Mass immigration has been its worst manifestation. This has effectively destroyed the English Nation as a cohesive force! We are at war with an internalised enemy with whom we would have only the most cursory contact otherwise!

        2. Agree with you wholeheartedly .

          Westminster has been experimenting .. Mass immigration here does not guarantee a loyal British mindset .. we true Brits are being eaten up by a parasitic enemy.

          1. Morning TB,
            From the day the b liar
            lifted the latch the offending party / parties
            have never lost
            support / votes, what has brought this nation to it’s knees is the party before Country mode of
            decision making, regardless of consequences.

        3. I have a theory on that.

          All governments recognise that the appallingly out-of-control overpopulation of the planet by humans is (to use one of their favourite words) “unsustainable”. The more humans that are created the more life-supporting mechanisms (in the form of plants and animals) are destroyed. This imbalance is already tangible and unstoppable. Politicians, worldwide (i.e. those who wield the power and influence) have decided that mankind is dispensable and are trying all manner of methods to cut down on numbers, short of global thermonuclear war.

          They know that food, water, oil and many other life-support systems are getting rarer so are using a convenient method of permitting our enemies to attack us from within. Any real altruistic government (as we had in centuries past) would never have permitted this state of affairs to take place.

          1. Famine, pestilence and an IQ of room temperature would have kept the third world population down naturally if we hadn’t interfered.

          6. I said this the other day, Sue. If white man had not gone into Africa to plunder its resources and attempt to “civilise” its natives (and colonise them), then the indigenous peoples of that continent would still be happy in their ignorance of all things modern, living their lives unencumbered by technology and naturally keeping their populations in check.

            The latter can be unambiguously proved when you look at Ethiopia. A “starving” population of 33,000,000 in 1984 is now an unmanageable population of 109,000,000 (and rising exponentially) in 2020. A tripling of its writhing human mass in just 36 years!

          7. I can’t see the logic of that as Western populations were already on the decrease. If it was a case of decreasing population I would have expected the focus to be in Africa & Asia.

          9. There’s certainly a force working to destroy Christendom, European Civilisation and the Enlightenment. The rest I am not so certain of!

          11. Maybe all these governments are frightened of the
            pure evil of those who have no humanity or fear of
            death, to them death is good, do an terrible dead and
            you’ll be rewarded in heaven. Maybe they are trying to
            to encourage the beasts to be civilised because they are
            afraid of what even more evil they might do.
            Those loons think they are fighting the crusades still
            even now. The rest of us have progressed through time
            but they haven’t. What can be done with those who are
            thinking thoughts of 500 years ago.

        4. Disqust playing up with me – I can’t upvote without being sent to the last upvoter’s profile.

          So, many upvotes!

    4. Grizz, there is no such thing as a ‘terrorist’.
      They are criminals, and often linked to organised crime.
      The t-word just adds a touch of macabre glamour and gives governments an excuse to increase departmental budgets and oppress the people.

      1. They are more than just a criminal and I think terrorist fits very well and they should be treated far worse than a criminal.

      2. The IRA – of which Gerry Adams was NOT a member (!?!) – were heavily involved in drugs and prostitution.

        1. They may have started out as idealistic but they have been a criminal gang for a long time now.

      3. That’s an interesting hypothesis, Tim, and I see your logic. Every human who goes against the conventions of society and breaks the rules imposed to keep order is, indeed, a criminal.

        The definition of a terrorist is someone who seeks to forcibly impose* their viewpoint on others by placing them in terror of their lives. I think the word has validity.

        [*A split infinitive and no pedant can tell me a better way of expressing that. None of them!]

      1. If that’s what it takes, so be it. Sometimes, as a preventative, one has to fight fire with fire (our bush-fires are out of control)

        1. “When they came for the Jews…” Scenario: mass violence provoked by Islamist terrorism leads to the imposition of martial law and the suspension of habeus corpus, trial by jury and press freedom. We must ask ourselves, Comrades: who benefits?

          1. Where have you been, Joe? Habeas Corpus was ditched when May gratuitously signed us up to the EAW. Trial by jury doesn’t fit in with EU law (Corpus Juris) which has been incorporated into our law. Ditto presumption of innocence.

      2. It looks like you’ve thrown in the towel, Joe.

        Don’t worry, you are in good company. There are millions upon millions just like you, all meekly waiting to die.

    6. Couldn’t agree more, Grizz. If it’s a choice between a dead martyr and a dead terrorist, I’ll take my chances with the latter every time. For now the ‘shoot to kill’ policy is at least some comfort, but we must do better than this. Those caught in the act should be despatched, no hesitation.

  37. Biggest chortle this morning was when I read the letter about sending muslims to Broadmoor.
    That would require a hospital the size of Yorkshire.

    If the Government had kept the lad incarcerated, he would still be alive and well, and might one day have become a (relatively) normal citizen.

    2. according to the BBC radio news this morning , 20 security police were required to keep a close watch on the knife attacker 24/7 and yet he managed to injure 3 civilians. The cost of that is probably more than the cost of keeping him in prison.

      1. Are they real police who are protecting the Snowflakes in Canada, and how many are required for skivvy duties over there .. If they are real police , where have they been diverted from.. and shouldn’t they be doing something more useful back here in the UK?

        1. A report mentioned seventeen officers . They were complaining about being told to do the shopping for the woke couple.

          4. Pakistan is a good idea. They could use their woke credentials to educate Pakistani men into becoming human beings.

      1. There’s already one around the much more suitable Greater (greater than what?) London. It’s called the M25.

        1. But … but … they could jump from one stationary car to another.
          “With one bound, Abdul was free.”

          1. In the same manner that neither the Antonine Wall nor Hadrian’s jobbie could keep the Jocks oot?

    1. All the political parties are coming u with daft schemes and dates they have no hope of meeting

    2. iii) He’s ‘considering it’ to make the nutters who are banging at his door go away for the time being so that he can get on with real stuff.

      1. I thought that.
        Prioritising. We have so many examples of national mismanagement to solve, that the problems must look like the briar hedge surrrounding the Sleeping Beauty’s castle.

    3. Morning Rastus

      The third, and I think governing consideration, is that (super-greenie-maniac) Carrie has him by the balls.

    4. It keeps the greenies happy with a promise and shows that we are not intending to reopen all the coal mines and pollute the air when we are free from EU control. And, of course, it will be someone else’s problem come the hour.

      1. Couldn’t ‘re-open the coal mines’ anyway. Those bridges have been burnt and the fields sown with salt long ago.

        I typed this up as a reply to a comment about 7 years ago. I had a feeling it might come in handy again, so I saved it.

        The shafts that were sunk for the old mines were sunk in places where the seams were most easily reached. They started off with a blank slate – the towns came later as a result of the shafts. They accessed the most easily worked seams and the income from these paid for the development works.

        Now it’s different.

        The old shafts have gone and the easily-reached seams around the shaft landings and bottoms are flooded and collapsed, so the access to them is lost.

        The only alternative access to the seams that remain – usually not the best bits because the best is long gone, that’s why the pits closed don’t forget, is from sub-optimal areas, away from the towns that grew at first because of the coal. These seams will be deeper than where the original shafts were sunk, but assume they are accessible.

        You’d need a billion quid or so to sink a pair of shafts. Then you’d need more money to put up processing plants, washeries, workshops, railheads, offices and god-knows what else to service your mine.

        A biggish pit will produce a million tonnes of coal a year – some did a couple of million.

        Assume for the sake of argument that you’ve managed to find a coal resource without any unmanageable faults that are only discovered as workings proceed, without any perched aquifers in sandstone above the seams that were missed by your drilling and unique among modern British mines it isn’t hemmed in by older, usually flooded workings that you need to avoid hitting.

        Assume once you have kitted up and manned your mine that you make a nice profit of a quid a tonne once your running costs are covered – not bad.

        How long does it take to recover the capital cost of sinking the two shafts? Easy. A billion divided by a million, that’s a thousand years, plus a few hundred more years to cover the capital coasts of other infrastructure and financing your debt.

        You should start to break even in about 1500 years. If you manage to double your margin through efficiencies you could cut that to under a thousand years.

        In the meantime, five years after you start your shaft-sinking there is a change of government and the new lot decide that coal is old-fashioned again and they are going to ban its burning.

        That’s why we can’t reopen the pits.

        1. V interesting. My slightly flippant comment arose from some greenie on R4 saying that our environment is doomed when we leave the evil empire because we are ALREADY opening coal mines. As usual this guff was not challenged and presented as fact.

          1. Any coal mines being opened are abroad.

            EDIT. Apart from one or two small projects. I believe someone is trying to get permission to open a deep mine in Cumbria – a special case.

          1. You don’t say! Very few and reducing is the right answer and they are getting almost impossible to open.

            Highthorn site just down the road from me was approved for planning permission unanimously by the County Council several years ago now.

            For no apparent reason other than bending over to the protesters, the approval was ‘called in’ by the government and a year after the site was supposed to open it went to a totally unnecessary public inquiry at no little expense to both the developer and the taxpayer. Later the result came through and Her Majesty’s Inspector recommended approval because the developer had met all the requirements in planning and environmental laws.

            Not good enough! Home Secretary Sajid Javid went against his own inspector’s recommendation and refused permission.

            The developer went to judicial review and the result of that was due last spring/summer. On the date it was due the developer was informed that the decision would be delayed again while an investigation was undertaken to determine the effect that the 3 million tonnes of coal from this site, produced over about 5 years would have on global greenhouse emissions. This was in June 2019. There is still no decision. The site should have opened in spring 2017 or maybe summer if the initial planning permission had been allowed.

            I’m much more than a little aware of opencast mining and its history in the UK.

            More detail here; https://www.banksgroup.co.uk/projects/mining/highthorn/

            An extract;

            In March 2018 the then SoS, Rt Hon Sajid Javid MP, refused planning permission for Highthorn – going against the County Council’s Planning Committee’s decision and the Planning Inspector’s recommendation following the Public Inquiry.

            In April 2018 Banks Mining challenged SoS Sajid Javid’s decision to reject its Highthorn surface mine planning application via a Judicial Review in the High Court.

            Then in November 2018 the High Court quashed the SoS rejection decision, as there were serious errors in the legal basis on which the then SoS Sajid Javid, made his decision, and the case went back to the SoS for a fresh decision. Currently the case is with the current SoS, Rt Hon Robert Jenrick MP

      3. I have got around it. I have self declared that my car genuine thinks its a cycle and that its wishes should be respected

    5. His word is ” considers”
      Don’t get excited. That is politicianese for ” It sounds good now, but it will be thrown into the long grass when you all stop worshipping Greta “

      1. Before or after she receives the Nobel Peace Prize? On the other hand, it might be more appropriate to award her the Economics Prize, given how she is encouraging economic disaster.

      2. Just to the basic sums and it is an impossible date to meet. Remember it is just not Hybrids but diesel and petrol

    6. Boris is a “big picture man”. Like his predecessors he does not think in detail.

      If he carries this through all it will do is to increase the market for second hand cars – and raise their value because poor people and people who have to travel any distance to work will not be able to rely on all electric vehicles a) being cheap enough and b) being reliable enough for long distance travel.

      I wonder what he thinks my family who run large wagons transporting tractors and animals are going to use? How will they manage when they run out of charge on a motorway with a load of cattle on board?

      Madness. – it is another Londoncentric policy.

        1. .. when the present snowflakes realise they will have to walk/cycle and mix with the unwashed on public transport.

        2. I recall how car and lorry owners brought the Labour government’s extra-road-fuel-duties-every-year policy to a shuddering halt in 2000 and, I fancy, ordinary folk will have to act again to snuff out this nonsense.

    7. As far as his green policies are concerned, he’s an illiterate idiot.
      I read a news article on Sky, and they were reporting that the car makers were very upset about this, blah, blah, but nowhere do I recall them saying anything about where all the electricity supply was supposed to come from. It’s all being reported from one angle, i.e. the demand side, i.e. doing away with petrol, diesel, hybrid cars, gas CH and cooking, how it was all going to “clean” electricity, but no one addresses the supply side.
      This will not end well.

  39. What to do when the voting isn’t how you want it ( U.S. Democrats style) –

    “The state’s Democratic party said it was performing “quality control” on
    the numbers “out of an abundance of caution”, after reports on Monday
    of problems with a phone app used to relay vote tallies.”

    2. From what I saw Joe Biden was doing very badly at all the large caucus sites. I must add that the caucusing system is very inferior to voting, unless your objective is to meet people of like minds or members of the opposite sex (whops that last phrase may not be permissible in US Democrat circles).

      2. Joe Biden doing badly, but especially Bernie Sanders doing well would be the reason why the Democrats will be doing everything they can get away with to rig this process. They hate Bernie, who is an affirmed socialist, but who is weak politically, and 77yo and recently had a heart attack.
        The Democrats going into political meltdown. What’s not to like?

    3. He is right, absolutely right. It’s a pity that he becomes so fired up and angry when speaking because it doesn’t help the case. We need somebody calm and collected to state what’s obvious to the indigenous population. (Well, maybe not the lefties or limp dumbs).

      1. You can sense the extreme anger and frustration in him at being called the enemy for so long, when he is just a man who has been repeatedly silenced and beaten down by our legal system and politicians who do not want the truth to get out.

        He has debated very well in the past, even at the Oxford Union. You can only be persecuted for so long, when you are trying to protect children and warn the public, before you snap.

      2. I agree. Robinson is easily isolated because of that anger. He should take care that his presentation does not cancel out his message. But, stripped of its expletive ridden passion, what he has been saying for years confirms the Biblical quotation ‘A prophet is not without honour except in his own country’.

    5. I checked Piers Morgan’s Twitter feed, and he’s getting a good bashing, with a majority of comments saying that TR had tried to tell him the same thing years ago, and was shouted do and called a racist for his troubles.

    1. “First kill all the Lawyers”
      Oh wait quoting Shakespeare is racist or incitement or a hate crime (I can’t keep up)

    2. They won’t be changing the sentences so it is not retrospective – they will only be implementing a review by the Parole Board, which they should have been doing anyway.

      1. Exactly. It was Blair’s Government that introduced automatic release to free up space in prisons, so the obvious answer is to build more prisons and only allow terrorists out once they are proven they are no longer a danger.

          1. They do the job fast, I accept that, but would they meet current safety standards, particularly as regards the cladding used to beautify these prisons?

            We don’t want them catching alight and baking the inmates, do we?

    3. The Human Rights Law needs to be abolished and replaced by a Human Responsibilities Law.

      Who (or what) decided that humans have ‘Rights’ in any case? The fact is: THEY DO NOT.

    4. The Human Rights Law needs to be abolished and replaced by a Human Responsibilities Law.

      Who (or what) decided that humans have ‘Rights’ in any case? The fact is: THEY DO NOT.

    7. Many of the “Human Rights Lawyers” are just the legal wing of the islamic world supremacy council. A subset of Globalist Central. They have almost unlimited funding to use our own laws against us. Until the day when they can replace our entire legal system with something much darker.

      1. You do them too much credit.
        They’re greedy chancers who stumbled across a magic money tree.

        1. Whilst I certainly agree with that assessment of their characters, I think there is definitely planning and strategy behind many of these legal protections that have been brought in over the past 30+ years.

      1. Nah, they were just taking the time to be sure any appeals are covered by the taxpayer through legal aid. And ensuring that each terrorist can be represented and paid for separately, to maximise their incomes.

    1. COFFEE HOUSE – The Democrats’ Iowa shambles is a delight for Donald Trump
      Dan DePetris – 4 February 2020 – 7:13 AM

      Voters in Iowa lined up in high-school gymnasiums across the state last night to prepare for a long few hours of caucusing. But nobody predicted the process would stretch late into the night without a single vote having been certified by the Iowa Democratic party. By midnight, the rival campaigns were flummoxed, unable to officially declare victory but nonetheless determined to spin the night in glowing terms.

      Caucuses can be chaotic. But the events last night were nothing short of bedlam. Rumour has it that national frontrunner Joe Biden had a terrible showing, but that didn’t stop the former vice president from rallying the troops and pretending everything was OK. Mayor Pete Buttigieg declared himself the winner, a pronouncement that came as news to every other candidate. The campaign of senator Bernie Sanders, who surged in this Midwestern state over the last few weeks, released unofficial vote tallies that showed the 2016 Democratic presidential runner-up as the leader. Senator Amy Klobuchar’s campaign did its best to write a positive story of success, declaring the Minnesota senator as the fighting underdog.

      The entire night was reminiscent of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary so far, where disorder, messiness, and messaging rule. While the winners weren’t declared. the biggest losers stood out like a sore thumb. Loser number-one was the Iowa Democratic party, which showed itself to be an incompetent organisation and languished in embarrassment for the whole world to see. The second casualty was people’s patience, which ran out after each hour that ticked by. For a country like the United States that lectures other governments about the absolute necessity of holding free, fair, and transparent elections, Iowa was one gigantic, public catastrophe.

      Democrats in the state will eventually find out who actually won the first contest of the 2020 primary. The campaigns, however, will have already moved on to New Hampshire, which will vote next week. The election schedule is so jam-packed that candidates and their aids barely have the time to relax, digest the numbers, and fine-tune their strategies.

      Joe Biden left Iowa immediately after caucusing was over, a decision that had as much to do with making a decent showing in New Hampshire as it did in fleeing a state that hasn’t been very kind to him during all three of his presidential bids.

      If Iowa was an important jumping-off point for Sanders and Buttigieg, next week’s vote in New England is border-line do-or-die for the likes of Biden and Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren. If neither one hits second-place next week, they may have to gather their staff for some difficult conversations ahead.

      As for Donald Trump, the Iowa disaster is a hilarious start to an eventful week. Trump will deliver his annual State of the Union address tonight, where he will talk about how great the American economy is and how he’s the greatest president in the history of the American Republic.

      On Wednesday, the Senate will acquit him on the charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress to the visible consternation of Democrats who prosecuted the impeachment case against him. But all of it will come with the Iowa caucus as a back-drop.

      You can almost hear Trump’s latest election talking-point: if the Democratic party can’t even run a state-wide election, can you really trust it can run the country?

        1. I roared with laughter when I heard that item on Toady this morning.
          a) Who on earth in Glasgow dreamed up that idea?
          b) Having driven across (and crashed a car in) Iowa, it’s hard to think of anywhere more unrepresentative in every way than Glasgow.
          c) Why in the name of holy heck would did the Beeb report on it…other than to make Glasgow and Glaswegians look more absurd than any Sassenach already thinks they are.

    1. What other examples have we set recently that have encouraged the rest of the world to copy us?

      Our competitors are laughing all the way to the bank as we destroy our base.

      Who was it that said ‘When you see your enemy making a mistake, don’t stop him’, or words to that effect? Napoleon, wasn’t it?

      1. Afternoon B,
        We have in the UK witnessed the political governance that many perceive as the enemas,
        making treacherous mistake after treacherous mistake but are still encouraged, supported / voted for via the polling booth.
        The UKIP initial Brexit plan was with total severance in mind, that was the only worthy plan to follow that comes to mind.

    2. Sorry he is too late. Pretendy PM Trudeau is already leading the charge to kill off resource based industries and impose expensive, unreliable power sources.

  45. The establishment pushed through the bent judgement
    for Tommy Robinson quick enough.
    If they are on an early release make is that they & families, close associates return to pakistan same day as release, otherwise full jail term plus.
    Otherwise try for a political party that will do just that and
    give 100% protection for the kids.
    Saying many adults don’t really know what is going on is complete hogwash, many adults abide by the three monkey rulings it is more comforting.

  46. Ikea announces first big UK store closure

    Ikea has announced that it will shut down its Coventry city centre store this summer, in its first big closure of a UK outlet.
    The Swedish flat-pack furniture giant said the store had made “consistent losses” since it opened in 2007, with fewer people visiting it than expected.
    It said it would be consulting the 352 workers affected and would try to find them jobs at other stores.
    Ikea added that it remained committed to growth in the UK.

    Ikea said the store, one of 22 in the UK, had been built in the city centre as one of its earliest examples of testing a new format to meet customers’ changing needs and expectations.

    “However, given its location and the size of the land available at the time, the store was built over seven levels, which resulted in a significant impact on the operating costs of the store and the shopping experience for customers,” the firm added.

    “In addition, the changing behaviour of customers in the area who prefer to shop in retail parks and online has resulted in visitor numbers being substantially lower than expected and continuing to decrease over time.”

    1. I have shopped with pleasure at IKEA in Sweden & Germany.

      If the bad manners & bad attitude of the staff at the Milton Keynes branch are anything to go by, it’s a wonder that Coventry is the only branch closing down.

  47. Unexploded World War II bomb removed from London’s Soho after discovery sparked evacuations

    An unexploded Second World War bomb found London’s Soho has been removed after the discovery sparked evacuations.
    Police cordoned off parts of Dean Street near the Soho Hotel and a bomb disposal unit were scrambled to the scene to handle the suspected explosive on Monday.

    Witnesses described “lots of commotion” as the area surrounding the site was shut off at about 1.40pm, with cordons put in place in Oxford Street, Charing Cross Road, Shaftesbury Avenue, Lexington Street and Poland Street.

    Scotland Yard confirmed shortly before 9pm that the half-tonne bomb had now been removed and that cordons in the area were being lifted.

  48. There is no solution to Islamic terrorism because there is no extremism in Islam. The question is: How far is the open and plural society willing to compromise on its foundational ideas in order to make those who are essentially post-1945 immigrants feel ‘at home’?

    1. It must be a dark and empty existence that she has, to feel the need to do something like this to feel “relevant” to the world. After the first time that she took all of her kit off, few people that were living in the real world would go near her.

      1. Let her parade naked around Bradford, Telford, Rochdale, Sheffield, Burnley, Rotherham, WOOL.

        That’ll teach her! :•)

    3. Reminds me of the stripper who was so ugly that the audience were shouting “Get ’em on!”

    6. She may get a cheap thrill out of exposing her naked body online but I shouldn’t think many, who view her video, share her thrill.
      :¬(

      1. It’s not so much the body that is offputting, Duncan; it’s the high-pitched, whiny, Libtard voice. I’m sure such people attend classes to get that voice pitch perfect for their whingeing.

  50. Labour MPs Dawn Butler and Marsha de Cordova hit out at BBC News after the broadcaster gets the two women mixed up in Commons footage

    I am no fan of the BBC but these two are just being daft. It was a mistake get over it , it was a mistake

    Ms de Cordova also hit back at the BBC’s error, writing: ‘This is what happens when the media does not represent the society it reports on. Representation matters. Diversity matters. This cannot continue.’

    Women’s Rights Activist Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu commented: ‘Clearly there’s no threshold of shame for @BBCNews to keep demonstrating an ineptitude worthy of an institutionally dysfunctional organisation projecting bias & feeding negative stereotypes. Black. People. Are. Not. The. Same.’

    2. No. But . Many. Of. Them. Look. The. Same. Especially. If. They. Ar., Very. Dark-skinned.

  51. Well there you have it folks – climate alarmism and historical guilt from our “conservative” Prime Minister:

    Britain has a “responsibility” to lead the charge on climate change due to historic emissions from its role in the industrial revolution, Boris Johnson has said. “It’s quite proper we should, we were the first country to industrialise – look at the historic emissions of the UK – and we have a responsibility to our planet to lead in this way and to do this,” he said.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/02/04/brexit-news-latest-boris-johnson-eu-trade-dealclaire-perry/

    1. “[Boris Johnson was…] Speaking alongside Sir David Attenborough at the London Science Museum.”

      That sets a small alarm bell tinkling in the distance. If he had stood there and called out the man-made climate change fantasists, in the same way that President Trump has, and used the words of those real scientists who are seriously questioning the extent that this is happening, then I would feel a gleam of pride in him.

      It has been said more than a few times in the past that Boris will change his views depending entirely upon the audience that he is speaking to. Going “Carbon Neutral” would effective destroy this country as a world class economic power.

      2. Boris is no Trump, he is as much a left/liberal as any of them. Racism, “Islamophia” climate change and open-borders are his priorities. Oh, and out-spending Labour on the NHS and HS2. I’d love to be proved wrong, but I doubt we will see much in the way of red-meat conservatism from Johnson.

        2. Afternoon JK,
          The brexit / power ball has never left tory hands since the 24/6/2016 & by crook or by crook it never will
          until the peoples awaken to the calibre of PMs running the show.

      3. ” Boris will change his views depending entirely upon the audience that he is speaking to”
        A politician after my own heart.
        How much better than sticking to one’s guns and parroting ” Britain will leave the European on 31st March”

        1. Tony – I have heard so many lies over leaving the EU that I have forgotten which politician came out with that one about the 31st March. I did see highlights of Boris’s speech just now and there were slightly disturbing words when Boris said more than once “We’ve got a deal.”

          No Boris, we really don’t have one yet.

          1. MM, you and I have both said on this and other forums what Johnson is and that we should expect betrayal from him. Huawei, HS2 and climate change are just the start.
            Unfortunately there are a great many Johnson fanboys still with their eyes closed to what is to come.
            No honesty, no integrity and no honour, just another politician more than willing to do this country down.
            As you say, the Brexit “deal” should really bring it home what we have in No10.
            Theresa May must be happy so much of her turd of a deal has been adopted by Johnson.

          4. The Withdrawal Agreement was constructed by European Lawyers to trap the United Kingdom under their ongoing control and legal authority, which is why so many people and legal experts in particular were against it. We were sold on the idea that the “transition period” would be when we finalised how our relationship with the EU would continue from the end of this year onwards.

            If Boris has now jumped to the position that this EU W/A trap IS the deal, then that is that. Unless Boris has already agreed another deal with the EU and all of this “standing strong for the UK” is just smoke and mirrors until he unveils it.

            My opinion of Boris’s trustworthiness is well known, although I was prepared to see what he would come up with. If this W/A is the deal he wants to keep us tied to the EU with, then that should fast-track opinion about whether Boris is working for the UK or the EU.

          5. The WA got us past Go – the next phase in the transition period is the trade deal – or not as the case may be. If he decides the trade deal is off, then there is no need to stay in the transition. We’ll just have to see.

          6. 30th June will be the crunch date – that is the last date for extending the “transition period” for up to two years. Boris’ “deal” is NOT Brexit.

  52. Petrol and diesel vehicle ban brought forward to 2035

    They keep plucking dates out of the air but with no hope art all of achieving them/ How long is it taking to build HS!? (assuming they go ahead with it)

    The last date to buy a new petrol, diesel or hybrid car in the UK will be brought forward from 2040 to 2035 at the latest, under government plans.
    The change comes after experts said 2040 would be too late if the UK wants to achieve its target of emitting virtually zero carbon by 2050.

    People will only be able to buy electric or hydrogen cars and vans, once the ban comes into effect.

    Where do you buy hydrogen cars., Hydrogen sounds wonderful until you find out you have to put twice as much energy in to produce it. It also needs a lot of electricity to produce hydrogen. They may solve the problems with hydrogen production eventually but it is currently long way off

      1. Why? To protect the farming industry the government will have plans to fit a super-fast high power charging point fitted to every field gatepost.😎

    3. Where are they going to get the stuff that batteries are made from..

      I suspect some Godforsaken part of the world mining Lithium will suffer the consequences..

      Can you imagine the chaos on Smart motorways with all the broken down cars.. those who have run out of charge .

      Can you imagine the demand on coffee as people wait for their cars to be charged at motorway service stations?

      1. Morning, Belle.

        Cause and effect is not a strong point with our legislators but virtue signalling to the latest bat-shit crazy idea appears to be strong.

        1. Like ‘getting mediaeval on your @rse’, ‘batshit crazy’ is one of those expressions that you can’t explain, but immediately understand.

          1. Batshit (soup), of course, is very much in the news at the moment. The other saying I hadn’t heard of until Grizz mentioned it a day or two ago. We’re rather isolated and refined out here in the suburb of Kingsford.😎

    4. There is a radical answer to this: localism. We are already beginning to witness a reaction to the great centralisations of the 20th century, restoring first a sense of national identity from the superpower blocs, such as the EU, and in time back to the old idea of the self-contained village, with its butcher, baker and candlestick maker, and no need to travel beyond the confines of the village much.

      Perhaps the most pressing need is to able to rediscover lasting companionship within our own families and neighbourhoods. I wondered ten years ago about the wisdom of having to traipse across two continents simply to find amenable female company, after it had been cut off me here by the spirit of feminist “empowerment” which regards any attempts to initiate a relationship as a form of harassment or abuse, and subject to strict laws about stalking.

      1. ‘Morning, Jeremy, how will your small village traders get their materials delivered to them?

        1. Small vans, obviously. Fully agree with the idea of “localisation” and have sent suggestions to the Scottish Government.
          For example local bottling (Coca Cola, bars, water) and reusable glass bottles.

        2. Much of it provided by butcher, baker and candlestick maker. The rest ordered online and delivered to the shop by Royal Mail.

    5. Imagine the effect this will have on tourism, on-line purchasing, ambulances,hospital and family visiting. Motorway services and car parks will become battlefields as people struggle for charging points. I won’t live to see all the problems this idiotic policy will produce but they are there to see.

  53. Many areas of Britain cannot receive phone signals , let alone fast broadband .. so what on earth is Boris playing at.. Our roads are a blinking mess , full of potholes , yet they will ALL have to be dug up to lay new cables to recharge electric cars..

    We still have telegraph poles here and huge pylons .. as well as frequent power outages .

    My feelings about Boris are now so different to how I felt 10 days ago .

    I was just giving him the benefit of the doubt .. well now my worst fears about him are realised!

    1. TB,
      Well as long as they use a pothole sieve when re-laying the surface some good will come of it.

    2. They are words, Belle, just noise. It’s his actions we have to be concerned about, watch those. Note the noise, but let it pass over you.

      1. I am assuming he was telling the greeny audience of climate fanatics what they wanted to hear.

    3. TB,
      Mine were realised many years ago only to be re-affirmed by the mayday
      leadership farce.
      You do NOT change from being AKA
      the turkish delight & amnesties R me
      overnight, only in straw clutchers eyes.

    4. By then all electricity will be bounced off satellites, like radio signals are.
      You will be able to re-charge your car from an app on your phone.

      1. Tony, go the whole hog and get Musk to create a Dyson Sphere around the Sun. Unlimited power for a couple of billion years before the Sun starts down its life cycle to becoming a red giant.

        1. KtK, you do realise that Greta Mk xxxxx will inevitably blame us for the warming climate when the Sun grows so large that it burns us to a crisp.
          I can imagine her last words, “you have stolen my future” 😎

          1. She’d be welcome to go and find herself a nice planetoid deep in the Kuiper Belt where it will never get hot even when the Sun’s diameter encompasses the orbit of the Earth.

    5. who says that the rural population will be allowed to have electric cars? In any case, there is isn’t enough electricity.

  54. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ac12dbd38b471b06227ddce54529797aefa8d0aab8415b0697da929f3459bc9d.png

    MOH was accosted by a shopper in Waitrose this morning who suggested that the plastic covered produce in MOH’s basket could be purchased unwrapped.

    In the current circumstances we both prefer to avoid contamination as a result of transmission of the 2019-nCoV.

    Public domain This image is a work of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, part of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, taken or made as part of an employee’s official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image is in the public domain.

      1. My local Sainsbury’s places fresh raw meat into brown paper
        bags. Of course sometimes blood can leak through the
        paper bag but mention that plastic would be better then
        you get a funny look. My local butcher always places meat
        in those thick white plastic looking bags, I don’t know
        what they are made of but he never places meat in
        Brown paper bags .

        1. More than 50 years ago, my mother used to buy meat from her butcher, wrapped in greaseproof paper and then a layer of thick paper. It used to stick to the paper unless unwrapped quite quickly. Then she’d put it on a tin plate – unless it was cooked within a day or two it was unpleasantly dried up.

          I can forsee a lot more wastage if plastic wrappings are completely phased out.

  57. The one thing that would really benefit the UK and reduce population and protect the environment is to control the UK’s population which means in my view reducing net migration to Zero. It is not some thing we should can do overnight though, I would suggest a 10 year program to reduce it

    Lets call the current migration levels as 400,000 a year. I have factored in an estimate for illegals and asylum seekers in that number

    So over 10 years as below

    Year 1 360,000
    2 320,000
    3 280 000
    4 240,000
    5 200,000
    6 160.000
    7 120,000
    8 80,000
    9 40,000
    10 0000

    1. BJ,
      I am terrible bloody glad you are not clutching the countries steering wheel.
      We can do the adjusting over 10 minutes as in NO MORE welfare payments unless qualifying years have amounted a credit fund, 5 minutes if you read the statement out quickly.

        1. Afternoon N,
          There are many in the lab/lib/con coalition party that would condone that as with the NHS.

      2. Because of the incompetence of various governments an companies we are desperately short of doctors and nurse etc and there is no quick fix other than migration in the short term

        I would attach conditions though. If some comes to the UK as a nurse or a doctor they have to stay working full time for the NHS for at least 5 years also they would have no access to benefits of social housing for at least 5 years

        1. Then I’d only recruit to specific areas of employment, such as medical staff, on a short-term basis, e.g. 5 years, to give enough time to train our own, and preferably from countries like Canada, NZ, and Australia, as we used to do. They also speak the same language, and their qualifications are similar.

          1. If we get staff from Canada, NZ and Australia, chances are we”l get people who left the UK in the first place!

        2. BJ,
          Not good enough, stop immigration NOW then no need of more staff, train our own as with all trades, in the case of doctors a
          mutual agreement to stay a certain period after training.
          If this cannot be done keep changing the political 650 until it CAN be done.

          2. BJ,
            What will compensate for that is getting the illegals and those with no love of MY country OUT.

      3. Especially when we are properly out of the EU and don’t need to treat Eu-derived immigrants in exactly the way we do our own people. Although I don’t see any harm in a contribution requirement (either from the person or their parents), or a two child maximum for child/family-related benefits.

        I guess we couldn’t treat non-EU derived immigrants like that because of the bl**dy Human Rights Act or the Equality Act. First from the Blairs, second from Harman. They should be deported (Blairs and Harman).

        1. Evening HL,
          Not deported that would be akin to passing on a form of plague,
          incarcerated would be more apt on regular show to the public as a warning to other politico’s, they cannot handle humiliation.

    2. Bill, that’s over a MILLION extra mouths to feed, bodies to house and that doesn’t include the illegals.

  58. Has gove became a member of the REAL UKIP party on the quite,
    “we don’t need a deal with the eu” we in the REAL UKIP
    party have been stating that fact for nigh on 28 years.

  59. Is it a bit early to add this johnson chap & others to the
    Countries security’s watch list ?
    Personally he never did make me laugh , and he never got into my, whom 2 trust file.

  61. Foreign Office warns ALL 30,000 British people in China to LEAVE as global death toll from deadly coronavirus outbreak hits 427. 4 February 2020.

    The UK Foreign Office has today told all 30,000 British nationals in China to get out of the country as the death toll from the coronavirus sweeping the world hit 427.

    In a drastic escalation of its official advice to avoid the country, the Government is now urging people to actively leave in a bid to protect their own health.

    That’s it! We’re doomed! The Yellow Death has been unleashed. Time to stock up on Rice and Noodles!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-7965149/Foreign-Office-warns-British-people-LEAVE-China-coronavirus-outbreak.html

    1. Yep. Too little too late. Except of course that bringing in 30,000 potential carriers with no real practical possibility of putting them in quarantine without renting a dozen cruise ships in Southampton, is insane.

      2. You’re supposed to say ‘a Chinese FOR supper’. Then we can make the usual joke. Leg or breast etc.?

    3. If they all heed that advice and come home as quickly as possible, where will they be isolated? Do we have enough recently closed down military bases to house them on?

        1. I live about a mile from the decade old Merville Barracks. Purpose built for the Paras and the 16th Air Assault Brigade. So, yes, we do have military bases but I think you knew that.

  63. Good Morning All from a sunny but cold Wiltshire.

    For some strange reason I am receiving emails notifying me of everyone of your comments – 600 plus yesterday filling my junk box.

    Why?

    Help please.

    2. Have you checked your Disqus profile and made sure some box has not been ticked/unticked accidentally about notifications – not knowledgeable enough to suggest anything else.

    2. Well, you think they’d have matching duvet covers.
      Are the bits of paper on the floor the IKEA assembly instructions?

  65. A cheerful science fiction thought for the day.

    The climate emergency is genuine, and to save the planet the globalists have decided they need to kill two thirds of the population of the planet.

    To ensure that there is no racial or other bias and to ensure a mix of diverse populations the PTB have designed a virus that targets very specific aspects of people.

    e.g. those who can curl their tongues, or those whose pee smells oddly when they’ve eaten asparagas, or people who have colour blindness or get hayfever or some other minority traits.

    They get it started in a densely populated area and then cause mass movement of people across the planet as a whole to spread it far and wide. A couple of years later the planet hits more sustainable population levels. There is short term economic chaos but mankind quickly recovers.

    There is already a vaccine, but it will only be made available to the chosen few.

    There, that was fun, wasn’t it?

    4. Ooh-er! I get the funny smell when I’ve eaten asparagus! That’s me done for tthen………..

    1. If we wish to reverse fly-tipping, we either:

      1. need a change/reversal in councils’ policies re. trips to tips. Instead of charging what appear to be commercial visitors and neutrality re. personal visits, payments should be made to those bringing van and full car loads.

      or

      2. impound, then mash or resell any vehicle associated with fly-tipping.

      Present policies are not working.

  68. It was briefly mentioned on the news that the corona virus is spreading exponentially, with numbers doubling every five days.
    Not really a headline stealer. I suspect no one at the BBC has a clue what that means. If my back of an envelope sums are correct, the virus will have infected over 1 billion people within 3 months. With a 2% death rate that would be 20 million dead. The vaccine is tentatively scheduled to be available in June/July.
    Has anyone seen any reference to the ethnicity of the victims? There has been nothing to suggest that anyone other than Chinese has been affected?
    Should I be more worried than the UK Health Minister ?

    1. Of course you should.

      If you get it and he gets it and there is only one hospital bed available, or only one dose of a vaccine left, who do you think will be given it?

      Hint: it won’t be you.

      1. On the other hand, on the news this lunchtime there was that 75 year old (ish) woman who had it and has now fully recovered and been released from the hospital. Along with many others in the Philippines where the mortality rate appears to be normal for a standard flu outbreak. So it’s not all doom and gloom.

        1. The only ones reported dying from it have been people with pre-existing conditions. If the immune system is weak, pneumonia can get a grip and then like flu, it can be fatal. The docs here are making the point that flu is a lot more dangerous and you are a lot more likely to catch it. Flu deaths in the US this season – 10,000.

          1. I checked the figures on the United State the other day and 80,000 people died from flu 2017 – 2018 and not a peep in the news. But now that Brexit is done (cough) the networks have got to find something to fill up the time. They ran that Royals story into the ground for days.

        2. Ah, but.

          How do you know that she is no longer a carrier who might be spreading it to more vulnerable people?
          Think about people who are “OK” carrying HIV which they can pass on, unbeknown, to their victims.

          1. I know that some people have a dim view of foreign medicine, but I suspect that if a fully equipped hospital cannot spot that she is no longer infected, then you might as well just dig a bunker and climb into it. You won’t trust the words of anyone. 🙂

            Many are catching it – which is what happens with a flu outbreak. Many are recovering and walking away – which is what happens with a flu outbreak. If these people are surviving as normal, as they would with a normal flu outbreak, then this song and dance has the whiff of “Media Distraction Story.”

            I wonder if there could be anything going on in politics at the moment.

          2. I’m sorry to be the one to disabuse you on this, but there is an enormous difference between “fully recovered” and no longer a transmitter. One can be fully recovered yet still pass on a disease.

            I suspect you may be right on the good days to bury bad news theory.

          3. My Gt Grandmother lived to be over 90……but most of her 12 siblings died of TB, as did four of her five children. She was probably a TB carrier although she didn’t get it herself.

          5. Latent bacterial or mycobacterial infections will do that (think TB and Typhoid Fever). But Coronavirus is…a virus. Generally, you’re either symptomatic and shedding virus–or you’re asymptomatic and not shedding virus.

          7. You used the word “recovered”, so we need to define “recovered” in regards to HIV.

            HIV (and Simian Immunodeficiency Virus or SIV) fall into the category of “slow RNA viruses”. HIV infection proceeds through three stages: acute, chronic, and AIDS. Without antiretroviral therapy (ART), HIV will advance from one stage to the next. It can take up to 10 years to develop full-blown AIDS.

            So equating someone who will eventually die of AIDS with an “asymptomatic carrier” of disease seems to be a false equivalence. The most famous asymptomatic carrier in history was “Typhoid Mary” Mallon, who infected 51 people with typhoid–three of whom who died. Mary Mallon died at age 69 of pneumonia, suffering a paralyzing stroke 6 years before her death (which may have made her pneumonia more severe).

            https://aidsinfo.nih.gov/understanding-hiv-aids/fact-sheets/19/46/the-stages-of-hiv-infection
            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Mallon

          8. From my point of view, “recovered” for purposes of this debate means that the individual can still have the disease/virus/whatever, and show no outward symptoms and go about their daily lives without it being obvious to an observer that they carry it.

            Taking the HIV example.

            A carrier can look, act and behave with no apparent problems, yet infect any number of people who can also show no outward symptoms and go about their daily lives without it being obvious to an observer that they carry it, and they in turn pass it on.

            I believe that shingles and other herpes viruses can allow the patient to “recover”, but they can still transmit the disease, again with no obvious indicators to third parties who come into contact with them in circumstances that allow the virus to be passed on.

            It seems to me that we know far too little about this disease to be encouraging 10’s of thousands of carriers to be moving around willy-nilly to make their own way back to the UK.

          12. Well, if more people understood the consequences of their activities…

            “Most gay and bisexual men get HIV through having anal sex without condoms or medicines to prevent or treat HIV. Anal sex is the riskiest type of sex for getting or transmitting HIV. Receptive anal sex is 13 times as risky for getting HIV as insertive anal sex.”

            https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/group/msm/index.html

          17. First of all, I don’t believe I’m encouraging 10k+ infected people to be moving around willy-nilly. The single most disturbing statistic of this Wuhan Coronavirus outbreak is that so few people have recovered. Right now there are about 20,000 people infected and not a lot is known regarding the course of this particular respiratory illness (and associated viral strain).

            Second of all, we should be comparing “like-with-like”. Coronavirus causes an acute respiratory illness similar to SARS (also a coronavirus), so we should be looking at SARS data. And other coronaviruses [1]. I would of course be interested to know if persons affected with other coronavirus strains maintain a “viral load” even after recovery (supporting your ‘carrier’ hypothesis).

            Shingles (varicella zoster virus or VZV) cannot be passed from person to person [2]. And Varicella zoster virus (VZV) itself is only infectious via direct contact with fluid from the rash blisters present on a symptomatically infected person [2]. HIV falls into the category of “slow RNA virus” which, without treatment slowly progresses to AIDS. Thankfully, surveillance for HIV infection is high. Also thankfully, ART treatment not only helps prevent AIDS but it also greatly lessens the incidence of HIV transmission from sexual partner to sexual partner [3-5]. I don’t believe coronavirus can be spread by sexual contact, but I’m not sure.

            [1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/index.html
            [2] https://www.cdc.gov/shingles/about/transmission.html
            [3] https://files.hiv.gov/s3fs-public/myron-cohen-presentation.pdf
            [4] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1600693
            [5] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1105243

          18. In some ways you’ve confirmed my concerns.

            The reference to moving willy-nilly was to the PTB, not you personally, where the Minister is suggesting that the 30,000 British citizens living in China should leave.

            I’m not a medic, so was probably using the word shingles incorrectly but my understanding is that what gives one shingles (presumably the symptom) is viral.

            I’ve had shingles and I would be interested to know how I got it, if not from another carrier. And I am informed that having had it, it can flare up again.

          19. Shingles is an adult-onset consequence of childhood Varicella zoster virus (VZV) infection, commonly known as chickenpox:

            “Herpes zoster, or shingles, occurs when latent VZV reactivates and causes recurrent disease. The immunologic mechanism that controls latency of VZV is not well understood. However, factors associated with recurrent disease include aging, immunosuppression, intrauterine exposure to VZV, and having had varicella at a young age (younger than 18 months).”

            https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/varicella.pdf
            https://www.cdc.gov/shingles/about/transmission.html

          20. New Corona virus apparently can be spread before the carrier becomes symptomatic, which has been reported as an unusual feature.

    2. Of course you should.

      If you get it and he gets it and there is only one hospital bed available, or only one dose of a vaccine left, who do you think will be given it?

      Hint: it won’t be you.

    3. Optimistic on the availability of the vaccine.

      A researcher at the Canadian lab researching the virus was interviewed on the radio yesterday. They might come up with a vaccine that works on animals but they would then need to go through three human trials before a vaccine could be marketed and that could take several years unless government changed the acceptance criteria.

      I will raise your one billion cases to everyone. But at least we will have an answer to the question of it effecting just Chinese people.

    2. The UK number – about 340 megatonnes is missing – too small to register, definitely not in the top ranks.

      Is Germany part of the EU number or as well as?

      A much more valid comparison would be tons of CO2 per head of population. By that measure, I would expect Britain to be well ahead of the game.

      2. How are they going to tackle CO₂ emissions? Prevent all animal life (including humans), and trees*, from breathing out?

        [*Trees take in CO₂ during the day (photosynthesis) but exhale it at night (respiration).]

        1. That is why we had to remove vases of flowers from the ward during the evening and put them in the sluice room .. A forty bed ward with forty lockers , laden with flowers was a recipe for all sorts of things..

          Is that old fashioned , who knows.

        2. A point I have made repeatedly. Some green idiot claimed that they were going to make us “carbon free”! Deluded.

    2. But but but … we don’t have to listen to anyone any more , do we .

      I love a side of rib of beef .. We had a delicious one on Christmas day .. Devon red.. all credit to the farmer and the rearing of the animal .

    4. “In the UK, the National Farmers’ Union says

      without cutting beef production. Instead, it says three-quarters of
      farming emissions can be offset by growing fuel for power stations and
      then capturing and burying the carbon dioxide.”
      So they can reduce people’s sugar intake by using the sugar beet to fuel the power stations – win-win!

      1. They’ve been talking about introducing carbon capture since the 1990s or earlier. They still haven’t managed it.

        Growing fuel for power stations? In what quantity? How many millions of tonnes per year? That 420 MW station just down the road from here burns 1,800,000 tonnes (dry weight after chipping) of imported American forests each year.

        They’d be better off burning bullshit. They are full of it.

        1. Whoever allowed wood pellets to be classified as “renewables” is an idiot. Grow trees, cut them down, process them into pellets and ship them across Atlantic in ships burning bunker fuel, one of the “dirtiest” fuels on the planet. And of course, wood is not a good fuel anyway as the “burnable” bit is Carbon. Natural gas is much cleaner as it approximates to Methane – CH4, i.e. mostly Hydrogen.

  72. The boris admits that very few ( read as none) islamist
    can be rehabilitated he wants to be frank about that.
    ( name change to protect the potentially guilty) can we ask frank ( boris) why do we feel the need to keep them
    on release from prison, society are obliged to cloth, feed & house them via the welfare system, why ?
    If it is to be so then it should be down, in all fairness to come from the lab/lib/con coffers & membership dues, as they have continues over the decades to condone the entrance of these felons via the polling booth.

  73. I was thinking about HS2 – Boris’s hole that keeps digging.

    What I would do is to mothball the London to Birmingham run immediately. The money is needed elsewhere right now until we have this trade agreement with the EU and elsewhere sorted out.

    Because of the new commitment to the North forced by all these Red Wall Northern Tories, I would transfer work to the route from Birmingham International to Leeds and Wigan via Curzon Street, with a first priority to open a rapid shuttle service linking New St, Moor St and Curzon St. This enables more use to be made of Birmingham Airport and the NEC, taking the pressure off London. The existing service from New St to Euston should continue to serve the Southern route for now, and reviewed later, in the light of developments in technology, what happens about Heathrow expansion, and the likely impact of the electrification of our roads.

    If Brexit forces a much bigger use of Felixstowe, should there be difficulty routing overseas trade through Rotterdam, then an East-West route from Brum to Suffolk may be a priority (there is a limit to what the A14 can carry), as is a cross-Penine route, and numerous commuter lines serving developing towns and cities everywhere.

    Beeching’s axe was taken to stations around Yate in Gloucestershire without the foresight as to commuter development around Bristol. A dodgy passenger survey taken in 1961 cannot be relied on to decide the transport requirements of places existing in 2020.

    1. That’s fine, but what about the real ‘North’? Leeds is half-way to London from this part of England.

      1. Leeds has good connection to London. It is the commuter lines in the North and the connectivity between the Norther Cites that is the problem
        Another very useful thing would be to connect the WCML to Heathrow. Thats cheap and simple to do and involves about 1km of track upgrade
        Running it as a shuttle service from Watford Junction to Heathrow would be sensible

        1. My point Bill is that what the London Bubble calls ‘The North’ (and you it seems) is a very long way from being The North. It’s a two and a half hour drive south on the A1 to get to the outskirts of Leeds for me. Leeds is the Midlands and Birmingham is at the north end of The South.

    2. Rather than HS2 other rail projects have a far better value. It is a total joke that Felixstowe the UK’s largest container port is connected to the national rail network by a single track rail line shared with passenger traffic. It is ideal traffic to transport by rail but at present the line is at capacity. They are doing a cheap patch which is to put in a passing loop but that only allows a few extra trains a day. A lot more traffic would go by rail if the line had the capacity

  74. https://youtu.be/gX8ecxRqv3E

    Despite being asked eight times by Julia Hartley-Brewer this morning on TalkRADIO, Michael Gove failed to answer how much the Government’s proposed ban on diesel and petrol cars will cost taxpayers. The radical policy has been brought forward from 2040 to 2035 “at the latest” this morning, yet the Government has not offered any indication of how the new infrastructure required will be funded. If we use Tesla charging stations as a guide they cost some £200,000 each. The nation will need millions of charging stations, to cover the country from Lands End to John o’Groats will make HS2 costs seem like pocket change in comparison. It’s easy to lumber future governments with commitments. It’s harder to come up with the spending cuts or tax rises to pay for them…

    1. The Tories are getting as bad as Labour in coming out with uncosted virtue signalling proposals. They need to be called out each and very time by the likes of JHB.

    2. Even leaving the infrastructure costs out of it (supposing it was practical to install in the first place, whatever the cost, which I don’t believe), has the clot Gove considered how much electricity will cost to charge cars once the treasury loses the 150% duty and VAT that they currently enjoy from the price of petrol? Does he imagine that power for cars won’t attract a similarly punitive tax? He’s a dope.

  76. I have been doing other things and consequently had a late start to being online today. Having only read the first 100 comments below so far, some things are looking bleaker, so here are some pictures that I found yesterday while I was looking for a picture of a submarine. As I leave for a late lunch, they might inject some lightness:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6fc78e97baec9444f3b5abf7b1c9075b3ea4550e9a0af1c47d18da63ba79103d.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a9a861d90fb5451db8e3aa68e97e14bd2def787dad28d4265e44d0c2b6751977.jpg

    1. Angry remoaners are refusing to take the new Brexit 50p coin from shopkeepers.

      This just proves they can’t accept change.

    2. Not professional attire is it? Although I suppose it does depend on the profession…..

      It says to me that she cannot be serious, the whole HoC cannot be taken seriously.

        1. A word of warning to my virtual friend. Try to stay away from such terms. The correct term is ‘whore’,,, On expenses of course.

    5. Is it just a handy wardrobe malfunction to remind her constituents that she still exists?

      1. I’m just relieved that she changed out of her dressing gown and took the slippers off.

        1. Didn’t see the bottom half. Jim-jam bottoms might have been there, but I really don’t know.

      2. Ducks don’t squawk. They quack.

        Unless, of course, you have some weird ducks, Stateside. Daffy, maybe? :•)

  78. We are informed by our MSM that Russians are corrupting what we are seeing on social media and in our elections. Just take a look at any Left wing policy of the Democrats to realise dear old Bernie Sanders wishes to see in a free country re-education camps that don’t agree with his perverse form of government.

    Well…the Russians didn’t need to involve themselves with the Iowa Caucuses. Why would they bother?

    1. I think from here on we should refer to them generously as the Iowa Cockupsies.

      [ZH has a piece that suggests the guys behind the failed Iowa counting App all worked for Hillary Clunton – if true what a surprise?]

    3. I can’t see many redneck good ol’ boys from the swamps going for Comrade Sanders. They’d rather lynch him (as would I).

      Joe McCarthy must be turning in his grave!

  82. Evening, all. I don’t know what else the police should do with unreformed terrorists. Perhaps the letter writer thinks they should invite the jihadi to tea.

          1. I may not be up-to-date with Soviet assassination methods; I was last in the USSR in 1968 🙂

  84. 3 years of a recalcitrant House of Commons was really bad but I think the Pols in the US are aiming for top spot:

    “The Democratic candidates appear to be headed for an epic court battle to determine who won the Iowa caucus – a court battle that could potentially outlast the entire primary season and ensure that the real winner of Iowa (cough – Bernie Sanders – cough) is never revealed.

    Following a morning of grumblings and whispers among the five campaigns – Warren, Klobuchar, Biden, Buttigieg and Sanders – the Biden campaign has sent a letter to the Iowa Democratic Party warning them that Biden is ready to take the issue of who actually won the primary all the way to the Supreme Court.

    1. I’m surprised that anyone wants the job of Democratic party candidate this election. Do they get a small trophy for being the one who loses to President Trump this time? Or is it just empty posturing by the little fish in the party so that they can raise their profile for the election after next?

      Which they will also lose, with the Democrat’s 100 genders and factions ripping themselves to pieces, as they increasingly disgust the traditional American voter.

  85. Wow, at last, we’ve got the Iowa Caucus Result:

    Trump 100%
    PissUpInBreweryNoCanDoParty 0%

  86. I was chatting with a ferocious mung bean munching dictatorial
    Vegan ( those who represent around 1% of the population) .
    I enquired about her rubber shoes and asked what she does on rainy
    days, she said on rainy days she travels by car ( not electric ) .
    I also asked whether if she was rural or city based, she said city based.
    I’d have thought a rural life was far healthier. The hypocrisy stinks.

      1. According to the Paleo-Anthropologists none of us can be. After all we all came out of Africa….

        1. And Dianne Abbot and David Lammy are my family tree?

          Is it okay to mention a tree and a black person in the same sentence?

          7. certain people don’t know about Shakespeare. Mugawe, Idi Amin, etc. of course they know.

          8. “If you can see into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and will not, speak to me”.

        3. Prof Alice Roberts has had a model created from a skull found in a cave in Devon. Claiming that the previous owner was from Africa. Perhaps that person may have hitched a ride in the back of a truck during the great ice age.

    1. After watching recent TV programmes about hard working UK farmers and their families it’s a wonder that Prince William hasn’t called for more diversity in the farming communities. It’s all hideously white folks working extremely hard, in them there hills.

        1. Ah yes, the fogotten once bread basket of Africa. The farmers driven off or murdered, only for the land to be abandoned because of inbred idleness. And a Crocodile Eats the Sun.
          Harold Wilson’s greatest achievement. If you can call it that.

      2. You could start by apologising… That seems to be expected, even demanded of us.
        Funny is it not, our ancestors contributed to what we have. They thought it all up, they invented it, they implemented it, they worked for it, and they paid for it in money, in work and in blood.
        Yet those whose ancestors squatted in mud huts, century after century, who are now here without the consent of our people, demand all available benefits from electric light to free medical care in return for nothing at all, and disparage us, and denigrate us, and insult us, and attack us.

        2. You’d better wash your mouth out Horace, while you wait for the knock on the door from the thought police.

      4. Rubbish! You’re off to Kenya. The sun will “do a lot about it”. :•)

        [Kenya has Zebras. I remember when Keen-ya had Zebbras. These days Kenn-ya has Zeebras! Why?]

    3. If: “It’s OK to be white” is now considered to be a white supremacist statement, then that would mean the only acceptable way to think by this council is to say:

      “It is not OK to be white.”

      I think that the British people have had enough of being told this, no matter what colour we are.

      “Bryony Rudkin, deputy leader of Ipswich Borough Council, called the white supremacist messages “deplorable.” “This racist behaviour does not represent the people of Ipswich or our town,” she said.”

      Those are not racist words Bryony and you should not be in your job if you think that they are.

      1. They are deliberately conflating an innocuous and benign phrase with “white supremacy” a term not in common use until Charlottesville.

  91. The PM ask’s the ex PM wretch cameron to head up un climate change summit,I believe the wretch blew boris out on account the wretch was busy on another scam.

      1. N,
        Very much so, & he charges the peoples for his treachery so let us not mention his animal husbandry approach, it certainly was not made cap in hand, more like helm….. no best not go there.

  94. Goodnight, everyone. I’m going to have an early night as I’ll have to be up at the crack of dawn, ready for the Fixing Of The Drains tomorrow. Yay! Can’t wait!

  95. Just wondered. Have any coronaviruses been reported from North Korea, or did it perhaps originate there ?

    2. Not really relevant I know but I went to see Traviata at Covent Garden on Saturday evening and their Alfredo was South Korean. Violetta was Russian. There seemed to be an outbreak of tuberculosis in the audience, which was irritating because it was a fabulous performance and a lovely production (even when viewed from the cheap seats).

      1. I heard the end of that on the car radio. I didn’t catch the name of the singers, at the end, so thanks. It sounded a great performance.
        Lucky you. But remember it’s not the cough that carries them off; it’s the coffin they carry them off in.

          3. I go to most of the Met/ROH performances at the local VUE cinema (unless I have had advance notice that they have buggered up the production like moving the scenery to World War Three, or giving Lucia a miscarriage in a bath (as they did a few years ago).
            They do not relay everything;that would cost too much; these Vue performances have dreadfully low attendances.

          4. We have a multi -screen Vue cinema here – they generally put the opera in the smallest one these days so it looks a bit more full. On the other hand, the seats are a lot more expensive than they charge for a film.

    3. T,
      Could have been bloody North Acton for all the establishment knows, and the movement of illegals with very little or no checks.

  96. Been reading a few crackpot ideas from the British government lately.

    First, the idea from Ofgem that they are going to convert every home heating system in the country away from gas (and presumably) oil with the next 10-15 years, and magically summon up the needed electricity from windmills and tapping peoples’ (as yet) non-existent electric car batteries. No indication of what magic technology they will come up with. But I will bet that it would all be made in China in factories relying on coal fired power stations, by Chinese who will be laughing their socks off at the stupidity of Europeans.

    Next up Boris, wanting to “go green” within 15 years and, like the above, with absolutely no idea of the implications or even any viable inkling of an approach.

    There seems to be an underlying assumption to both about the rapid take up of electric cars – zero evidence to date that will happen. And certainly not until the limited range and slow “refuelling” issues are fixed, i.e. a “next gen” of battery technology is needed. Then the rework of the grid and power stations to meet the approximately 3x demand increase.

    As an aside we have heat pumps in our current house – in cold weather they need topping up with electric resistance heat, which sucks power nicely. The end result is that as against the typical 240 V 100 amp supply for a modern British house, we have a 240V 400 amp supply. Good job our electricity is cheap – thanks to natural gas power stations. And an even better job that we also have gas fired underfloor heat for deepest winter.

    p.s. heat pumps to heat water don’t work worth a sh!t – maximum temperature you will get is around 100-110°F. A bit of a challenge to use them to replace gas boilers.

    1. I was amazed to find that after installation of a new gas boiler the installer was required to leave the hot water tank thermostat at 60 degC.

      Apparently it is a WHO recommendation that water should be heated to at least 60 degC to avoid legionalla contamination which can lead to death rates of at least 12%.

      Unfortunately that temperature can lead to scalding:

      https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2094925/

      1. There is, generally, a cold water tap as well as a hot one and they can be used together. 🙂

        1. The trouble is children often just turn on the hot tap. The recommended water heater temperature here is 120-130°F – about 50-55°C. I do remember many years ago in Britain when central heating was not yet common, boilers were generally set to 180°F. Hot enough to make you hop!

      3. Which is why we have to put “Caution – Hot Water” labels on all hot water taps at work – Health & Safety, don’t you know.

        1. I note that where premises avoid the risk of scalding there is a thermostatic mixer valve supplying the hot tap. No need for a H&S warning notice – just a “Caution – Tepid Water” label.

      4. Just checked my boiler setting. It’s at 60°. Never had a problem with it being too hot.

        1. My boiler output temperature is set at 70 degC for max efficiency. My hot water storage tank is set at 60 degC to avoid legionella.
          I don’t have a problem – I’m just amazed.

    2. Afternoon Jtl,
      My scarring acts up in the cold from rhetorical whip work, due to me suggesting that the voting pattern is at fault and what is needed is a continuing change of politico / government until such a time comes when nearly all of the population are happy.
      This party before county regardless of consequence, will destroy any nation and has very nearly achieved just that with England / GB.

    4. ” No indication of what magic technology they will come up with”
      Battery hens, of course. Easy.

  98. This is London –

    ”

    An Uber driver who conned a blind soprano by using her phone to give himself a £20 tip has received a suspended prison sentence.

    Cornel
    Mihai, 32, duped Victoria Oruwari into handing over her iPhone after he
    drove her home to Croydon, south London, last June.

    The
    taxi driver claimed he needed to use her handset to end the journey but
    then gave himself the tip on top of the £51 fare plus a five-star
    rating without Ms Oruwari’s knowledge.He
    was handed a suspended five-month sentence after being found guilty of
    fraud by false representation at Croydon magistrates’ court on Monday.
    He did not, however, walk free because detectives immediately arrested
    him on suspicion of committing other offences”

  99. Will the postal service ” letters to your local Chinese chop shop” from china, warrant more pay ?
    Is there a danger from such, should it and the surrounding area be in a state of quarantine ?
    Will the use of “me old china” be banned as infringing on the submitting / PCism / Appeasement idiotic rulings ?

    4. See, it didn’t matter whether I did my homework or not, I’m still fabulously wealthy. Now, how is life on a teacher’s salary?

  104. IIOWA CAUCUSES: In a sensational late flourish, Joe Biden, gained all 38% of the long missing Iowa Caucuses Vote, propelling him from a distant fourth place into a comfortable first place in the vote count. The Russians are carefully following developments …

  106. Crying ‘racist’ is wokery’s excuse for phasing out the old

    CHARLES MOORE

    They can’t be forced to retire but can be dislodged by Twitter vigilantes brandishing woke ideology

    ITV has pushed Alastair Stewart out, alleging racism. Many have rightly pointed out that what he said was not racist. But I believe there may have been another, quite different, reason behind the distinguished broadcaster’s fall: his age. Mr Stewart is 67.

    In an era when you are no longer allowed to lay off employees on grounds of age, people cast about for other means of getting rid of them. There can be good reason for this, since some who work beyond the state pension age do become more useless.

    But there does not have to be a good reason to get rid of someone to provoke a strong desire to do so. There is the simple fact that younger people want their day in the sun and are fed up with waiting. It was notable, to take a historical example, that all the five Cabinet ministers who attended the famous Catherine Place meeting which helped remove Margaret Thatcher from office in November 1990 were of the generation below her.

    Twitter vigilantes are the online equivalent of teenage gangs who go around beating up oldies at bus stops. They resent the old, and exploit their vulnerabilities. One vulnerability is the tendency of older people to be unfamiliar with the woke dialect.

    Thus, a 70-year-old man might speak of, say, “red Indians”, absolutely innocent of any unkind intention. He would merely be using the phase with which he was brought up. Indeed, he would probably use it with friendly intent, since most boys of that era regarded what we are now told to call “native Americans”, or “first nation” in Canada, as heroes. (I am a mere 63 years old. Full of admiration for “red Indians”, I spent many boyhood hours trying to copy their methods of moving noiselessly through undergrowth.) His good intentions would avail him nothing in the face of the Twitter storm. He’s old; he’s bad; he’s out.

    My theory may explain why Sir David Attenborough is still allowed on our screens although he is now 93. He has picked up the lingo. In recent years, he has become wokery’s most famous hostage ever.

    The moral dilemma of martyrdom

    The police killed Sudesh Amman on Sunday because he wanted them to. Like Usman Khan, the attacker outside the Fishmongers Hall in November last year, Amman was wearing a fake suicide vest when he started stabbing people. He deceived the police, one might almost say, into committing his suicide for him.

    Why? If you seek martyrdom as what you think is a true Muslim, is it not more heroic to blow yourself up, rather than contracting it out in this particularly macabre form of assisted dying? It could be, of course, that the terrorists, already under police surveillance because of their previous records, just do not have the chance to get hold of the right equipment to blow themselves to what they believe is a paradise surrounded by 72 virgins. So they feel they have no choice.

    I wonder, however, if some other thoughts may have been at work in their minds. One is that it is safer for your reputation among your peer group if you can get the police involved. If Amman had merely stabbed some unlucky people in Streatham and got away with it, how would he have become famous as a martyr? If the police want him dead, that proves his point he is a martyr.

    Up to the moment of the shooting, Amman had been treated gently by the police. Better for him, in the eyes of the followers he imagined he would acquire, to pin the blame on them. Then he is seen as the victim of our criminal justice system, even though it had just let him out.

    One really pities the police. What else could they do but grant Amman’s wish for martyrdom? They had to put public safety first. There is a strange irony in this situation. These prisoners are released early because our justice system strains itself to be merciful. Yet their early release makes it much more likely they will meet a violent death.

    Casting a wider net

    In a special supplement last week, this newspaper traced the history of its own involvement in the European issue. It took a just pride in having aired the stories and views which drove forward so much of the debate.

    Reading the account, I remembered a moment from the 1997 general election. I was the paper’s editor at the time, and two of my close staff were absent, fighting hopeless seats as Conservative candidates.

    One, Dean Godson, stood in Grimsby. The other, Boris Johnson, stood in Clwyd South where, he claimed, he was hastily learning Welsh. Returning briefly to the office from the famous port, Dean presented Boris with a fish. Boris stuck it in the editorial fridge, squeezing it behind many bottles of wine, hurried off to Wales and forgot about it. The consequent stink pervading the office tainted the purity of the “new dawn” which the victorious Tony Blair proclaimed in the early morning of May 2.

    Two observations seem relevant today. The first is that, under Boris’s leadership last December, the Tories won both Grimsby and Clwyd South. The second is that, metaphorically, politically, Boris has once again got possession of fish. He must not forget about it, or the issue will start to smell.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/02/04/crying-racist-wokerys-excuse-phasing-old/

    There is already an odour rising and it’s not metaphorical fish…

    1. The simple answer might be to train up more all-women armed response teams for these situations.
      It is suggested that for a jihadist to be killed by a woman ensures no entry to “Paradise”.

      Let’s get the girls going after them.

      1. I was thinking more of the bans on cars and gas boilers. BJ’s Greenwich speech was very good apart from that piece spliced in the middle in an oh-so-casual manner.

        1. Ah.
          I thought you were referring to the article itself and I was merely considering the suicide by cop bit.

        1. Good for them then.

          I remain convinced that the best way to counterattack these creatures is to play on their belief system.
          Anything that stops their entry to “Paradise” should be done, bullets dipped in pigs’ blood, burial in pigskin, shot by a woman in the balls; whatever it takes to dent their faith and lower morale and fighting spirit.

          1. There is a catch. The rules upstairs have changed since we left the EU.
            Jihadis are now punished for what they have done. Male ones are sentenced to spend eternity with their wives.
            Not sure what happens to the female ones.

    3. Martyrdom in Christianity means sacrificing one’s own life for one’s faith. ‘Martyrdom’ in Islam appears to mean taking other people’s lives.

      1. It’s the only way a lot of them have any hope of getting a shag, and even then they’ve got to be dead to qualify.

  108. “Gender neutral toilets, safe spaces, being pan sexual and Greta Friday’s, ”
    I’ve just been hearing about the lives of the average sixth form student.
    When I was at school it was about education now it’s about the above
    which is shoved down young people’s throats. It’s shocking how
    the left use fresh young minds to brainwash and abuse .

      2. It happened to me at a local Sainsbury. A lady was waiting outside as I opened the door.
        She was suitably impressed as I had not only put the seat down but also the lid.

        2. Me and my wife have come to an arrangement (although she doesn’t seem to be aware of it yet).

          I leave the seat up, so she needs to lower it; she leaves it down, so I have to lift it.

          Equality of labour.

    2. Mr Batten, you like the vast majority of the European political classes have not yet come to realise that islamics are just carrying out slow but systematic process of revenge for the crusades, way back in the 10th and 11th centuries.
      They have a written manual to follow.

      1. Whose Mr Batten ? I’ve not heard of him apart from
        my silver back friend mentioning him .

        1. Evening A,
          The best leader bar none UKIP have had
          precisely why he was
          deemed “NOT of good standing” by the ersatz UKIP current NEc.
          You really cannot comment about the real UKIP without the facts.

      2. Whose Mr Batten ? I’ve not heard of him apart from
        my silver back friend mentioning him .

      3. I do believe Mr Batten knows more than most the dangers of the islamic ideology as is now, no need of the rights & wrongs of yesteryear, that does not quell the current fears of say paedophile victims.

        1. The problem western societies have Ogga, is no body seems to be facing up to the facts that are so obviously set out before them.
          Education being nice or reasonable, aka de-radicalisation in a prison or elsewhere. Is never ever going to work. Their goals are set in stone.

          1. Many of us know that, Gerard Batten was laying it on the line
            warning of the dangers of islamic ideology since 2005 , but too many are in their three monkey comfort zone and the easier route is to tag Batten & likes as far right racist, that is precisely what happened.

          2. Many of the electorate vote in the party first mode as long as the party wins
            sod the consequences as evil as they may be.

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