Tuesday 8 October: The Tories must hold Labour to account for its Chagos Islands betrayal

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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566 thoughts on “Tuesday 8 October: The Tories must hold Labour to account for its Chagos Islands betrayal”

  4. Morning all, especially Geoff
    Today's Tales
    Note: Trigger warning for sensitive folk*

    "Dad,” said eight-year-old Danny, “I’m gonna get married.”
    Dad smiled indulgently. “Who to, Son?”
    “My girlfriend Kathy next door. She’s eight too.”
    “Found a place to live?”
    “Well,” said Danny seriously, “she gets fifty cents pocket money, and you give me a dollar, so if she moves in with me, we can manage.”
    Dad nodded. “You might be able to get by on a dollar fifty a week now, but what will you do when the children start to arrive?”
    “No worries,” said Danny confidently, “we’ve been lucky so far.”

    When King Arthur took off on his search for the Holy Grail, he fitted his Queen, Guinevere, with a novel chastity belt. It contained a little guillotine. If anybody tried to push past it, it sprung down with a mighty whack.
    On his return from the Holy Land, King Arthur commanded that all the Knights that had stayed behind remove their trousers**, and there was hardly a cock in sight. All except Sir Lancelot had lost their manhood.
    “Lancelot, you are the only one I can trust,” said King Arthur. “What will we do with these traitors? What will their punishment be? Come, Sir Lancelot, speak up.
    Have you lost your tongue?”

    * Are there any sensitive folk among the Nottlers?
    ** OK, historically inaccurate to say trousers, but who cares?

    1. Johnny, you don't know whether she has backed down, it's all just media speculation to keep the peasants distracted.

      Even if she has backed down now she could reinstate it in the future with the proviso that civil service pensions are not affected.

      …………….or politicians pensions?

      2. She'll do what Labour always do and go for the easy target and find a way to hammer private pensions and leave public sector ones alone.

    2. Rachel as HM Chancellor or second lord of the Treasury.. which economist do you find most insightful over the century past: Keynes? Schumpeter? Coase? Friedman? Romer? Thaler? Simon? Arrow? Phelps? Schelling? Nash? Perhaps a more compelling the case becomes that Nobelist James Buchanan of 'public choice' fame as the economist whose work best explains Gregg's 3Cs….

      Greggs? I got declined there once.. me credit card wuz max'd out.. I'd racked up £4000 in debt.

      3. Keynes was not an economist. I'd suggest Sowell.

        Notable that the OBR and Treasury both exclude tax cuts from their equations entirely. Why? Because they're the answer to every problem. If that was their only rational recommendation what point would there be for them?

    3. Rachel as HM Chancellor or second lord of the Treasury.. which economist do you find most insightful over the century past: Keynes? Schumpeter? Coase? Friedman? Romer? Thaler? Simon? Arrow? Phelps? Schelling? Nash? Perhaps a more compelling the case becomes that Nobelist James Buchanan of 'public choice' fame as the economist whose work best explains Gregg's 3Cs….

      Greggs? I got declined there once.. me credit card wuz max'd out.. I'd racked up £4000 in debt.

    4. Rachel as HM Chancellor or second lord of the Treasury.. which economist do you find most insightful over the century past: Keynes? Schumpeter? Coase? Friedman? Romer? Thaler? Simon? Arrow? Phelps? Schelling? Nash? Perhaps a more compelling the case becomes that Nobelist James Buchanan of 'public choice' fame as the economist whose work best explains Gregg's 3Cs….

      Greggs? I got declined there once.. me credit card wuz max'd out.. I'd racked up £4000 in debt.

    5. Rachel as HM Chancellor or second lord of the Treasury.. which economist do you find most insightful over the century past: Keynes? Schumpeter? Coase? Friedman? Romer? Thaler? Simon? Arrow? Phelps? Schelling? Nash? Perhaps a more compelling the case becomes that Nobelist James Buchanan of 'public choice' fame as the economist whose work best explains Gregg's 3Cs….

      Greggs? I got declined there once.. me credit card wuz max'd out.. I'd racked up £4000 in debt.

    6. Whatever they lose in state pension is more than made up for in what they get from their occupational pension. Their salary increases make sure of that – so what's the fuss about?

  7. Putin tears down favourite holiday villa over threat of Ukrainian drones. 8 October 2024.

    Vladimir Putin has demolished his favourite Black Sea holiday villa, where regular Ukrainian drone attacks have made the area dangerous to visit.

    Satellite images published by the Russian opposition website Proekt showed a gaping hole in the ground where Putin’s dacha near Sochi had once stood.

    This is just one of several personalised attacks on Vlad in the MSM. The war is going badly for the Ukies and some distraction from it is required. In truth no one knows why the Dacha has been demolished. It cannot be because of the drone threat because all that would be required was not to visit. It’s quite possible Vlad is having it rebuilt, maybe as a permanent home for his retirement.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/10/07/putin-tears-down-his-favourite-black-sea-holiday-villa-over/

    1. Morning Minty and all

      Did I not post on here a few days ago that Mr P had probably stopped work on his new retirement Dacha …..?

        1. The 60year old Robert Fico was shot four times and badly injured five months ago. He is a rare example of a politician who knows what's going on and speaks the truth.

  8. Good morning, chums. And thank you, Geoff, for today's NoTTLe site.

    Wordle 1,207 3/6

    ⬜⬜⬜🟨🟨
    ⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

  10. 394336+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,
    Listen up"hear" is a prime example of what is
    a festering Morally corrupt
    Totally objectionable, lacking integrity result of continued anti English abuse of the polling stations, gIving succour to these within our borders

    Example 2,

    The group consisted of three or four British Muslims fighting for the extremist, jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. The group's nickname, and those of its members – "John", "Paul", "George" and "Ringo" – were used by the hostages in ironic reference to the regional English accents of the musicians.

    Many of these peoples are supported via British tax payers, doya get that feel good feeling on realisation ?

    https://x.com/FUDdaily/status/1843367331948572876

    1. You can be British by nationality but you are not a British muslim. Same as there are not British Catholics.

      As it is, you've made our country unsafe. You've no right to be here. No magical fiat. You invaded us. That you're this 'muslim council of Britain' is disgusting. Fit in, sod off. Take off the silly hat and stop being an intolerant bigot.

  13. Two arrested after girl, 12, attacked by dog. 8 October 2024.

    A 12-year-old girl has suffered life-changing injuries after being attacked by a dog in south Wales.

    The girl is in hospital after the “distressing incident” and a man and a woman have been arrested on suspicion of owning or possessing a dog bred for fighting and owning or possessing a dog dangerously out of control, Gwent Police said.

    I went to the local shop early yesterday morning and a woman was walking her dog. The dog looked at me “interestedly” as they sometimes do. I pointedly averted my gaze and altered my course to give them the largest possible leeway. The reason for this was the size of the dog. It was enormous. If it had turned nasty there was no way that its owner would have been able to restrain it.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/10/07/dog-attack-girl-hospital-south-wales-brynmawr-gwent-police/

  14. 'Morning All
    Lighter side..
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/eaada52b572b2eff48176b1f35aa56ed3c2cafae07fbfc0f9bc0c972703040b4.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5f3a7f78ba9f36f275af4f9e74679a41888dedd71db124270f298ea7f129c369.jpg
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    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/94c1d60c26db06d5a21d7e6543ba8f736698f4127287bf5d7d744cfa645cd0b5.jpg

  15. Putin to meet Iranian president for Middle East crisis talks. 8 October 2024.

    Vladimir Putin will hold an urgent meeting with the Iranian president on Friday over the crisis in the Middle East.

    Putin will fly to Turkmenistan for a previously unscheduled appearance at an obscure summit of regional leaders, the Kremlin said.

    Aides said he would meet Masoud Pezeshkian to discuss the conflict that has drawn Israel and Iran to the brink of war.

    This is how wars spread and expand. They always look simple at the beginning.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/10/07/vladimir-putin-iran-president-meeting-masoud-pezeshkian/

    1. Which is to the bleedin' obvious how WW3 proceeds to the superpower level.

      Russia attacks Ukraine, but needs support from Iran to counter resistance from Ukraine supported by the USA to press home the assault.

      Israel attacks Iran, but needs support from the USA to counter resistance from Iran supported by Russia to press home the assault.

      And they said it would be all over by Christmas!

      Remind me what the UN does for a living.

      1. Sends its aid workers to support Hamas et al in their propaganda and tunnelling and attacks?

          2. Thanks for the link. Nine UNWRA workers were implicated in the 7th October raid on Israel, and were summarily sacked as soon as they were found out.

            As for rogue UN aid workers supporting Hamas military activity, the jury is still out on that. They could have been administering to the very many civilians taking refuge from the Israeli bombardment, and a tunnel is a logical place to hide if things get really busy on the surface. It would be nice too if UN workers could get to the Israeli hostages too and see to their welfare. Not that this would protect them much, as you say – the long arm of Israeli retribution extends underground.

          3. They were in Israel with the Hamas people on October the 7th.

            Hamas only permits its own supporters into the tunnels, which were built to facilitate attacks on Israel, using funds from international aid.
            None are allowed to used for civilians as air raid shelters.

            https://www.quora.com/Are-the-tunnels-in-Gaza-primarily-used-for-civilian-shelter-or-is-it-propaganda-from-Hamas

            I find your blatant anti-Israel pro Palestinian ie Hamas Hezbollah etc stance is repugnant.

          4. There again, this has a precedent during the London Blitz. Quite a number of the bunkers there were designed and administered to maintain the machine of Government, even when the civilians could no longer be protected. This carried on throughout the Cold War.

            As for the London Underground, it was originally forbidden to use this as a mass air raid shelter, but people took matters into their own hands, and London Transport had to bend to popular demand.

            I upticked your comment though, because if Hamas has been shutting people out of their tunnels, in order to preserve them as Zil lanes for party members paid for out of aid money, this is indeed shocking and needs to be said. It does not excuse the Israelis for laying waste to civilian infrastructure on this scale, nor for traumatising two million people who clearly have nowhere safe to take cover. Giving warnings without shelter merely adds to the panic and despair, and I’m afraid I find that repugnant.r

          5. Not remotely a valid comparison.
            Before it started there was no indication the Germans were going to blitz London and nor were the London underground tunnels built specifically to attack Germany, which in the case of the Hamas tunnels was their sole purpose, to facilitate attacks on Israel.

            I’m afraid I have relatively little sympathy for the Gazans, they could easily have identified every single tunnel entrance and exit to the Israeli forces, they didn’t and don’t: they are complicit in their own woes. The tunnels could have been totally sealed and cleared without the bombardments.

          6. Why should they dismantle their own civil defence infrastructure in order to collaborate with the enemy? Nobody demanded of the Israelis that they dismantle Iron Dome or close all shipping from the United States, lest it carry weapons. The main difference I can see is that Iron Dome is effective, whereas the tunnels are all too easily prey to bunker busters.

            The numerous Cold War bunkers were certainly designed in preparation for an enemy engagement.

            One thing that struck me about Switzerland is that the Alps are hollow and stuffed full of military hardware. Probably there is more of Switzerland underground than there is on the surface amid the peaceful tinkling of cow bells.

          7. You utterly miss the point.

            Why should anyone give a damn for the position of the Gazans when they so clearly support Hamas and everything Hamas are doing.

            As to the cold war issues and Swiss defence.
            The cold war bunkers were an attempt to be able to keep a Government going and the Swiss do it to be able to defend their neutrality/territory should it be necessary, not to ruthlessly attack their neighbours which is the sole purpose of Hamas.

            Nobody ever pretended the cold war bunkers were other than that.

            Hamas are evil.

          8. You presume much. How many people can claim to support their Government of the day and everything they are doing? In Iran, it is about 52/48 between the conservative clerics and liberal reformists, as it is in the USA, except that there it is their “liberals” who are the religious zealots and he conservatives that seek reform, if only to recover what has been lost there. That ratio crops up in all sorts of places – remind me of the 2016 Brexit Referendum.

            By no means all Israel supports Benjamin Netanyahu’s militarist coalition, and there is a substantial opposition to all he stands for among the intellectuals of Tel Aviv, which is perhaps why he moved the capital to Jerusalem. Even in the UK, where I live, only 20% of the electorate actually voted for the party that nonetheless secured an impregnable majority in Parliament.

            Why then should it be any different in Gaza?

          9. Their unmitigated joy after October 7th and total refusal to do anything whatsoever to discourage Hamas’s actions tells me all I need to know.

          10. The same could be said of the Israelis sadly. It’s sick, but then it’s a sick region of the world.

  16. One for Grizz
    http://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/21520a25ed7dd5e09bdf9016bad58373f898d31ba5a625aa856bf746992741a2.jpg
    Some extras
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6f144c93658bf1bd63448275531eaacaebf7e9e214669cd63ecc2a28bdf12f6b.png
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c66a2a83022d111586af86cf4041efc75db858df11111f5a626d30599acb0d84.jpg
    https://scontent-man2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/462091894_122242337642001715_5857046567482819992_n.jpg?stp=dst-jpg_s600x600&_nc_cat=101&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=127cfc&_nc_ohc=oHirGdsTm1AQ7kNvgE7FZIM&_nc_ht=scontent-man2-1.xx&_nc_gid=AaADYwVVDY1HAar8Z2tgm2h&oh=00_AYA0M4_y6ds1mDS-8ZIR0cUxaU9xUlzGUCLcsZRK6U78Ow&oe=67086943
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e5229f2dc611543a5c03f11fc5ebcd39b64e25e9856140a7fca541597301044a.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ef84ed78cfb5ba3df924c01f573592aab226c6d70c791cc8a23239c81977ef05.jpg

    1. Thanks, Rik.

      Hand-in-hand with unstoppable obesity is accelerating stupidity, both caused by the same diet.

      Frank Zappa was bang on the money when he declared, “Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe.”

      What Frank could have added is that this stupidity is directly caused by many people, who are evolutionarily carnivores, starting to munch, obsessively, on weeds and other unnatural vegetation — including seed oils — that are full of toxins. This idiotic habit has weakened their skeletons and atrophied their brains. That is why vegoons (love that word) are physically feeble, incrementally more prone to disease, and exponentially more stupid.

      1. In 1900 my job didn't exist. In 1900 I'd be 6" shorter due to a poorer diet and be dead from my asthma. However, assuming I were a fit, healthy person who is shorter I'd be working all day to feed myself and family. So would the Warqueen. Junior wouldn't be at school unless he went into the Church.

        It isn't diet that kept people thin. It was being active for 12 hours a day doing hard, manual labour to meet the basics of life. It is thanks to mechanisation, engineering and technology that we no longer have to live like that.

        1. Even in the 1960s, a typical day for me as a child would involve: walking a minimum of 2 miles – to and from school or, during holidays, to and from the local shops (because food shopping was done every day) plus walking the dog. Then there would be my share of the chores: filling the coke hods and carrying them from the coal hole to the back door; dusting and vacuum cleaning, helping in the garden etc. There was only one kid in the class who could have been remotely considered to be fat.

          1. I walked (and cycled) a lot, did the garden, looked after the dog – I was still fat. My mother was a terrible cook!

    2. Or, we could follow the Dutch, French, German, Australian, Italian, Greek, Norweigian, Swedish …. insert country – and have a compulsory insurancy scheme with an upper limit on costs, with persistent illness cover provided.

      If the NHS were made to be efficient and only paid when it did the work this simply wouldn't be an issue. The problem is because there is no incentive it doesn't bother to be efficient. It doens't have to.

  17. Morning, all Y'all.
    Raining, and darker than the inside of a cabinet minister, at breakfast time today.

  18. Good morning all,

    Light cloud overhead Castle McPhee, wind South 12℃ risng to 15℃. More showers.

    I missed this in the summer. Denmark, which has become so sensible in its migration policies, has gone full insanity in another area. It's going to tax cow farts.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9a9fb9f9278f45306f79a7ab3b20be5d13535d60224f12a34255d3a30963fb99.png

    https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/denmark-gas-pig-sheep-tax-b2569185.html

    1. Would some legal expert tell us if Shipman could appeal if this law comes into being?

      In other words, can the law be retrospective?

    2. My wife and I were sitting with my mother in law quite a few years ago when the nurses asked us to wait out side while they 'made her more comfortable'. When we were asked back on to the ward they had put screens around her bed and she was sitting half upright eye's closed.
      What ever it was they injected into her she was gone inside of fifteen minutes. Peacefully but she did have terminal cancer.
      Liverpool pathway.

    3. Also about not punishing govt (health and other) ministers who advise/demand killing as govt policy to suit narratives, budgets etc. I am thinking of one in particular at the head of a queue.

    1. Whatever Reeves presents will damage the economy. That's not being negative, it's plain fact. I have had one chancellor in my lifetime present a positive budget – Kwarteng. As he read it out and optimism surged I became despondent as I knew they would be done in and lo, they were.

  22. Good morning all.
    A tad below 8°C on a dull, overcast morning, but at least it's not raining yet.

  24. Michael Taube
    Canada’s churches are still burning down – and the Left doesn’t want to ask why

    A spate of fires has drawn condemnation from the Right. But many progressives have remained silent

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/en-us/comment/2024/10/07/TELEMMGLPICT000262908082_17283128599300_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqM-3pOeJCOGUo7ra0x7cN4zXaG_3FkRG2WH2SGzlVXbs.jpeg?imwidth=680 Flames engulf a Catholic church in Canada in 2021

    Canada has long had a reputation as a safe, welcoming and peaceful country, but in recent years that perception has been shattered. My country has struggled with the rise of aggressive and violent far-Left social movements, as well as a significant uptick in racist and anti-Semitic behavior after Hamas’s attack against Israel on October 7 2023. Now, Canada’s churches are burning.

    Over a hundred of them have been vandalised, burned down or desecrated in the last few years, according to one analysis, with more than 20 confirmed to be arsons. And while many on the Right have spoken out against this horrific wave of violence, there’s been a disturbing code of silence on the Left.

    To understand why, it’s necessary to revisit a controversial period in Canadian history.

    News broke in May 2021 that the remains of 215 children had apparently been found at a former Indian Residential School site in Kamloops, British Columbia, through the use of ground-penetrating radar. It ignited a dramatic chain of events in which more than 2,000 unmarked graves were supposedly discovered at other former residential schools between 2021 and 2022. A media fervor began, including a New York Times expose and various BBC reports. There was even an apology from Pope Francis in July 2022 on behalf of Catholic priests involved in the old residential school system.

    Others, however, have pushed back against this narrative. Three years later, no remains have been exhumed and identified, leading to justified scepticism about the initial claims. “Canada is already very far down the path not just of accepting, but of legally entrenching, a narrative for which no serious evidence has been proffered,” C.P. Champion and Tom Flanagan wrote in Grave Error: How The Media Misled Us (and the Truth about Residential Schools).”All the major elements of the story are either false or highly exaggerated,” the authors argue.

    Alas, some Canadians decided to play judge, jury and executioner without a fair trial and considering all the evidence. Blame has largely been placed at the feet of the Catholic Church – and houses of worship have been targeted.

    Another may now need to be added to the list: Notre-Dame-des-Sept-Allégresses, located in Trois-Rivières, Quebec. An October 3 fire “spread rapidly,” according to the Western Standard, “which caused extensive damage to the Catholic church built in 1914.” The Epoch Times noted the blazing inferno “resulted in the roof completely collapsing, and one of the two bell towers being destroyed.” At the time of writing, the cause of the fire had not yet been established.

    Many Canadian conservatives have condemned attacks on Christian places of worship. They are warning against the implications for religious freedom, and the right of individuals and groups to gather together to worship in a safe, secure environment. This is what most rational-thinking Canadians from all walks of life would have said in the past, too.

    The same cannot be said for Canadian progressives. While some have spoken out, many others have remained silent. Why would this group, who would surely and understandably have been outraged if this were happening to a religious minority, turn a blind eye to hateful attacks against Christians?

    Some progressives probably don’t want to confront this situation for personal or political reasons. Others may not care enough to get involved.

    It is also becoming disturbingly clear that, for some on the Left, hatred of Christianity is growing stronger. They reject traditional religious beliefs and institutions associated with Christianity. They deplore what they perceive as authoritarian leadership among Catholic priests related to the tragic history of residential schools. Hence, they may believe that burning down churches fulfils some kind of deluded tit-for-tat scenario.

    But it’s not acceptable for progressives to stay silent while churches are being burned to the ground. They need to condemn these attacks and whoever is behind them. They also need to defend the rights of all religious faiths, including Christianity, as their progressive forefathers would have surely done.

    Michael Taube, a columnist for the National Post, Troy Media and Loonie Politics, was a speechwriter for former Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper

    1. David Tozer
      9 min ago
      France has the same problem
      The third world comes with certain religious beliefs and the churches start to burn
      Notre dame was just the biggest
      Now Canada has a similar problem, exacerbated by a fantasy story that the left seemed to love as it spread hate
      The left are silent because it’s short for the invasion of a country try leads to this and the perpetrators are the people who they cannot criticise
      If it was the far right they froth at the excitement of calling them out

      nick jackson
      18 min ago
      Progressives want any institution that allows whites to connect and reinforce their ethnic or religious identity to be destroyed

      simon lobas
      13 hrs ago
      Reply to Beth Brockley
      They probably would have been turned into mosques anyway.

      Karen Hately
      13 hrs ago
      Reply to Beth Brockley – view message
      A Sikh Gurdwara in Kent was attacked the same week as the Lt. Col. was stabbed whilst in full uniform outside his barracks, also in Kent. Haven't heard a thing about either of those incidents since.

      Karen Hately
      13 hrs ago
      Reply to simon lobas
      About 500 churches have already been turned into mosques in UK.

      Trevor Pearce
      13 hrs ago
      Reply to Karen Hately
      Attacks by followers of the now-favoured religion are hugely embarrassing to the authorities. Look at the conspicuous inaction against the Manchester Airport brothers.

      1. Why are 'we' all so stupid that we let this happen ?
        It gets worse every day and the lump under the world's carpet is gaining on Everest.

      2. When I visited frogland I found that almost everyone smoked. I even saw a baby with smokers cough, with the mother puffing away breathing directly into the mouth of this coughing child as it tried to get away from the poison.

        Notre Dame could, simply have been a lazy frog worker throwing away his poison stick and starting the fire. They are that careless.

        As regards the creeping abuse of muslim – it's simple: get rid of them. If welfare were cut off tomorrow they'd leave because they'd starve. With more than two thirds entirely dependent on bennies they've no choice.

      4. …………..and the incident at Gatwick on the 28th September has been successfully hushed up.

    2. They reject traditional religious beliefs and institutions associated with Christianity. They deplore what they perceive as authoritarian leadership among Catholic priests related to the tragic history of residential schools.

      They ain't seen nuthin' yet.
      When the ultra conservative Imams get to work in their madrassas and mosques, preaching the Quran hate, the Catholics will be regarded as having been benign.

      1. They really need to be rounded up and kicked out. We already have a classic example of what they are trying to achieve and Israel is the only country that stands up to them.

    3. The world and its dog horse camel goat and brown bear will know how that happened.
      But the wires of justice seem to be crossed once again.

    4. Is it me, or is there an "i" word missing from this piece which would explain the hatred of Christianity and all the rest?

  25. Never Tested

    Never Masked
    Certainly Never Jabbed
    Yeah we see you Penis Morgan,Andrew Neil,Ester Rancid
    Neil Oliver: "The Covid experience showed so many people that actually when the single choice of their generation came down the line at them, they were Gestapo. The were ready to don the uniform and kick the doors in. And I think that's an incredibly difficult realization for people. When the choice was finally there, when we were being sorted, when that sorting of people was going on, so many people went the wrong way. And there's an enormous reckoning that has to be lived up to and lived through and accepted. And unless and until that happens you people like me are going to keep on banging on and banging on and saying: No. It's all on record what you did, what you said. And to extent to which Covid was simply used as a tool to open a door to bring in this technological revolution which leads to a digital archipelago, we can see it. It's plain. It's evident and clear….
    https://x.com/newstart_2024/status/1804244498685280744

    1. 394336+ up ticks,

      Morning Rik,

      Good post, I'm of the same status, un-tested, un-jabbed.
      Sad to say that more untimely deaths
      and life long injuries among the jabbed is the only way for many eyes to be opened.

      I believe the end game we WILL SEE justice being served.

      1. Morning, O.

        No, au contraire. I believe the end game is that we hope that justice will be served. And that hope is a feeble one.

        Don't forget that the might of the global corporations and big pharma — who are backed to the hilt by the WEF/UN hegemony — will continue to find ways of subjugating the human species with their vile products and spurious 'cures'. It is what keeps them powerful and rich. Their influence is omnipotent.

        2. 394336+ up ticks,

          Morning G,
          Hope is a fickle commodity,unified positive actions are the order of the day, in my book blade runners are proving that, as did that David chap & Goliath.

          It'll take time but it'll be time well spent in place of doing what we are doing currently, as in, dodging the inevitable
          in a very dangerous lethargic manner

  26. Oops
    The EU should establish financial measures to curb competition from Chinese airlines that can freely cross Russian airspace, according to Royal Dutch Airlines (KLM) CEO Marjan Rintel.

    Western countries closed their airspace to Russian airlines as part of sanctions imposed after the outbreak of the Ukraine conflict in 2022. In response, Moscow banned aircraft from ‘unfriendly nations’, forcing EU planes to reroute, resulting in higher fuel consumption and increased costs.

    “Russia’s airspace is closed to European airlines, while Chinese carriers fly over it, which can save two to four hours. You see that reflected in pricing, and consequently, our costs are higher,” Rintel said in an interview with Dutch broadcaster WNL on Sunday.

    Rintel suggested that Brussels should intervene to address this competitive imbalance. “Europe can at least explore how we can level the playing field by adjusting pricing or examining other alternatives,” she stated.

    In response to rising costs, KLM plans austerity measures aimed at saving €450 million ($494 million) annually, including €100 million by “adjusting” in-flight catering, Rintel said.

    “In the Netherlands, we are facing a tight labor market and rising wage costs, which differs from the situation in France,” she added, referring to KLM’s parent company, Air France-KLM. “Due to a shortage of pilots and technicians, roster changes will occur, and maintenance may need to be outsourced,” she explained.

    Last month, Germany announced it was considering halting its daily Frankfurt-Beijing flights due to similar pressures from rising costs and competition from Chinese and Gulf airlines that can fly over Russia. The previous month, British Airways announced it would suspend London-Beijing flights starting in October. Additionally, Virgin Atlantic recently terminated its only China route to Shanghai.
    Sanctions working out well again I see…………

    1. Western countries closed their airspace to Russian airlines as part of sanctions imposed after the outbreak of the Ukraine conflict in 2022.

      Cutting your nose off to spite your face.

    2. Western countries closed their airspace to Russian airlines as part of sanctions imposed after the outbreak of the Ukraine conflict in 2022.

      Cutting your nose off to spite your face.

    3. When imposing sanctions as a kneejerk reaction, it is vital ensure that kneejerk does not place one's foot in the way of the target.

  27. Freddy Gray
    Kamala Harris’s 60 Minutes interview was Prince Andrew-like in its awfulness
    8 October 2024, 8:25am

    Somebody give Bill Whitaker a prize. In his 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, which aired last night, the CBS correspondent did what no other journalist has successfully done since the Vice President was thrust to the top of the Democratic ticket: journalism. He asked Harris challenging questions about the matters voter care about most. He was civil, unaggressive, but professional enough to press her for clear answers. And Harris just couldn’t cope. Her performance was Prince Andrew-like in its awfulness.

    On immigration, for instance, Whitaker asked Harris why the Biden-Harris administration had only just started tackling the issue, after almost four years and an unprecedented surge in illegal border crossings. Harris robotically blamed Congress and Donald Trump, ‘who wants to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem so he told his buddies in Congress “kill the bill, don’t let it move forward”.’

    Whitaker was not deterred. ‘But there was an historic flood of undocumented immigrants coming across the border the first three years of your administration,’ he continued. ‘As a matter of fact, arrivals quadrupled from the last year of President Trump. Was it a mistake to loosen immigration policies as much you do did?’

    That caused the Harris-bot to malfunction. ‘It’s a long standing problem,’ she warbled. ‘And solutions are at hand and from day one, literally, we have been offering solutions…’

    So Whitaker interrupted: ‘What I was asking was, was it a mistake kind of allow that flood to happen in the first place?’

    ‘I think the policies that we have been promoting have been about fixing a problem not promoting a problem,’ she added.

    ‘But the numbers did quadruple under your watch?’ Harris ruffled, returned to square one: ‘And the numbers today…because of what we have done, we have cut the flow of illegal immigration, we have cut the flow of fentanyl, but we need Congress to act.’

    https://twitter.com/i/status/1843449294008836567

    Oh dear. That’s Harris’s overwhelming weakness as a political candidate. She can talk in soundbites and managerial slogans about ‘solutions not problems’ but on issues of substance she can’t actually offer any solutions, which is a problem.

    On the war in the Middle East, Harris was asked if the US has ‘no sway’ over Israel’s leader Benjamin Netanyahu, who has accepted billions of dollars of US aid but seems to be ignoring America’s calls for a ceasefire.

    ‘The work that we do diplomatically with the leadership of Israel is an ongoing pursuit around making clear our principles,’ said Harris, gnomically.

    Again, Whitaker pressed: ‘But it seems that Prime Minister Netanyahu isn’t listening?’

    ‘We’re not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.’

    Moving awkwardly on, Whitaker turned to the economy, and again Harris offered only platitudes. ‘My plan is about saying that when you invest in small businesses you invest in the middle class and you strengthen America’s economy,’ she said. ‘Small businesses are part of the backbone of America’s economy,” she restated. Pressed on how she would pay for her trillion-dollar spending plans, she said she make the rich ‘pay their fair share.’

    ‘We’re dealing with the real world here,’ said Whitaker. ‘How (are) you going to get this through Congress?’ Harris replied that she ‘cannot afford to be myopic…I am (a) public servant, I am also a capitalist’ – as if that clarified things.

    Perhaps the most revealing moment was when Whitaker asked why voters say they don’t know what she stands for. ‘It’s an election Bill,’ she said, with a dead smile. Whitaker then mentioned that her flip-flops on issues such as fracking, immigration, and Medicare.

    ‘In the last year fours I have been vice-president of the United States and I have been travelling our country and I have been listening to folks and seeking what is possible in terms of common ground,’ she replied. ‘I believe in building consensus. We are a diverse people. Geographically, regionally, in terms of where we are in our backgrounds and what the American do want is that we have leaders who can build consensus, where we can compromise and understand it’s not a bad thing as long as you don’t compromise to find common sense solutions. And that has been my approach.’

    Harris’s campaign recognises that a majority of Americans don’t feel they can trust Harris. That’s why she is now on what her team is calling a media ‘blitz’. But the clarity never comes. On MSNBC last week, she used the word ‘holistic’ three times to describe her housing policy. At the weekend, she did the ‘Call Her Daddy’ podcast at the weekend with Alex Cooper, who asked how it feels to be attacked for being childless and why men get to decide what women do with their bodies. Harris was more comfortable spluttering bromides in response. When confronted by a serious journalist asking serious questions, however, she melts.

    In the hours before the 60 Minutes interview aired, the betting markets spiked in Donald Trump’s favour. Clearly, gamblers understand that the more voters see of Harris, the less they hear, and that’s an issue that is only going to get worse in the last three weeks of her campaign.

    *****************************

    Bill Rogers
    7 minutes ago
    The US establishment led by the Democrat grandees know full well that Harris cannot put together a coherent sentence let alone lead a government. So they – and their showbiz backers – are lying through their teeth when they endorse this empty vessel. They know full well that she will be another puppet president. They know that they want America to be led by vested interests who dare not face an election. The UK is at a different stage. We faced the election and then the media decided it was safe to allow the truth about Labour to emerge.

    1. The question that is shouting at me through all this is why Whitaker feels he is more effective as an inquisitioner than running for office himself.

      1. The True Horror is that the Democrats will cheat again and she will become president.

      2. Candace Owens believes she has proof that Kamala's heritage does not include African blood, and that the black woman she tried to pass off as her grandmother was in fact, their family servant.

          1. I expect the media will give it as much attention as they gave Hunter Biden’s laptop, which should have finished the shameless Biden family.

    3. She really is dumb, isn't she? I get it, she's deliberately evasive and waffles around subjects, blames other epople rather than accept responsbility but she's completely, hopelessly incompetent.

  28. Good morning all

    Fierce downpours of rain during the night , on off on off…warm night though .

    Fine first thing here , then another burst of rain belted down as Pip spaniel was about to dash around the garden .
    13c , and dark skies , no thunder , beautiful cu/nimbs, cloud formations are stunning.

    I like this letter …

    The duty to defend
    SIR – Judith Austin (Letters, October 7) defines the first duty of a government.

    I recently asked a group of refugees from different countries what they saw as a government’s primary obligation to its people. Health, education and low taxation were among the suggestions. It was a Ukrainian who, like her, said “defence”.

    Tom Stubbs
    Surbiton, Surrey

    The DT comments are an excellent read, so far.

    1. The government has a duty to provide shared, essential services – law, infrastructure, security and defence. Nothing else.

      Our fails at every step: the law is applied unequally, our infrastructure is crumbling to nothing, the muslim is everywhere and the state itself is importing hundreds of thousands of violent savages.

      It is utterly, completely dysfunctional.

    1. Rotten cow. She's trying to scam because it'd cost more to fight it than just give her the cash.

          2. It fell from a shelf above her head roughly equivalent from the height of your shoulder to the floor

    3. Do you remember Joyce Grenfell's marvellous monologues : "George: 'Don't do that"?

      In one of these the class are asked to name a flower and either Sydney or Neville names a Cauliflower.

  30. Jawad Iqbal
    Hamish Falconer and the trouble with Labour’s ‘Red Princes’
    8 October 2024, 6:07am

    Hamish Falconer in action on the broadcast round (Credit: Talk TV)

    The appearance on our television screens of one Hamish Falconer, the newly-elected Labour MP for Lincoln, tells us much more about Keir Starmer’s government than meets the eye.

    Falconer is not exactly a household name, but has already been elevated to the role of junior minister in the Foreign Office. He is an ex-pupil of Westminster School and was elected to parliament at his first attempt in July. Just a fortnight or so later, Falconer – who spent his pre-MP career working at the Foreign Office – was made Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

    Few voters outside of Lincoln will have heard of him, but plenty in the Labour party will know his name all too well: he is the son of former Labour Lord Chancellor, Charlie Falconer. This qualifies him to be described as one of Labour’s ‘Red Princes’, and destined for great things.

    https://twitter.com/i/status/1843186380492394905
    A cynic might suggest that this is simply because of who his daddy once was (a chum and former flatmate of Tony Blair, who gave him a peerage and appointed him Lord Chancellor). It is a somewhat curious state of affairs for a government and a party that prides itself on ending all forms of hereditary privilege (watch out peers of the realm) and is stridently against old boys’ networks, which is apparently one of the reasons behind the targeting of private schools. Such privileges are to be abhorred and opposed, except when it comes to the doings of the Labour party itself.

    Viewers of GB News were treated yesterday to an interview with Hamish Falconer, on the one-year anniversary of the 7 October attack on Israel. It was inevitable, however, that he would be quizzed over Sue Gray’s departure from No. 10 and her replacement by Morgan McSweeney as chief of staff. After all, it was headline news everywhere. Falconer dismissed the story, claiming there was no public interest in such matters and went on to insist that Labour’s first 100 days in office had been a complete ‘success’. I would venture that no one, not even his ultimate boss Keir Starmer, really thinks that.

    Isabel Webster ended the interview by saying: ‘I would suggest that one of the first jobs that Morgan McSweeney does is choose a better candidate for the morning round because that was excruciating and I’ve interviewed a lot of politicians.’

    She has a point. Falconer came across as wooden and uncertain, lacking both in gravitas and experience. What Falconer junior’s apparently irresistible rise highlights is how small the world of our new rulers actually is.

    Everyone in Labour knows everybody else, they may be related through family, or maybe they are married or about to marry. Such interrelated networks and the conflicts of interest they potentially give rise to are deemed a problem in life everywhere else, but not, it seems, in the Labour party. It is almost as if Labour members are, by definition, above any and all reproach.

    Dig a little deeper and these little connections are everywhere. Morgan McSweeney, the new Downing Street chief of staff, is married to Imogen Walker, the newly-elected Labour MP for Hamilton and Clyde Valley. Liam Conlon, who won the Beckenham and Penge seat for Labour in the election, is the son of Sue Gray. Richard Burgon is the nephew of Colin Burgon, a Labour MP from 1997-2010. Markus Campbell-Savours MP is the son of former Labour MP Dale Campbell-Savours. Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker and a former Labour MP, is the son of former Labour MP, Douglas Hoyle. Chancellor Rachel Reeves is the sister of Lewisham West MP, Ellie Reeves. Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, is married to Ed Balls, the former MP and minister. Then there’s Hilary Benn (son of Tony) and Stephen Kinnock (son of Neil). There’s Valerie Vaz, who is the sister of former MP, Keith. It is all part of being in the ever-expanding Labour family.

    To be fair, this kind of thing is not confined to Labour. Plenty of Tories have relatives as former MPs, such as Bernard Jenkin (son of Patrick, who served as a minister under Margaret Thatcher) and Tom Tugendhat (whose uncle Christopher was an MP during the 1970s) – it is just that there are infinitely more on the Labour side of the house.

    Who else but Labour people in the know, related to the movers and shakers, has a chance of getting on to the prized candidate short lists for the safest seats? Labour could teach Hollywood stars and celebrities a thing or two when it comes to ensuring that nepo babies do well in life. No one expects any better from the world of showbiz, but Labour? The party of equality and fairness is supposed to be better, no?

    Hamish Falconer, privately educated, scion of a Labour peer, on the fast track to high office, reveals much about the new government which is against private schools, against privilege and on the side of ‘working people’. It is failing the smell test. The stench of entitlement is everywhere in the air.

    ******************************************

    Mark F. Nowland
    3 hours ago edited
    Indeed, he’s much like the hundreds of other turds in the Labour Party – an entitled, lying, morally superior Fascist (it’s always been a left wing thing), a beneficiary of the schooling, privilege and nepotism they abhor yet utterly infests their party. And like most of the Leftist totalitarians of history, criminality and corruption seems rife.

    We need to stop telling ourselves that Labour are incompetent or inept. These people are simply evil.

    Since you ask
    2 hours ago
    Thank you. We do need reminding of this stuff.
    I seem to remember his father was turned down for a Labour seat back in the day because of his decision to educate his kids privately. A solid investment? Well at least he didn’t have to pay VAT.

    Dahlia Travers
    2 hours ago
    Ed Balls ( he of neo-endogenous growth theory) was not merely a minister. He was Chancellor of the Exchequer and he was parachuted into his supposedly safe seat specifically because it was the seat next door to his wife’s.
    In the current lot we could add:Kim Leadbetter who was selected because she is the sister of Jo Cox; Alastair Campbell’s nephew who is a new MP, and Georgia Gould (daughter of Philip).

    It’s almost as if they haven’t listened to Isabel Hardman’s tales of how an MP’s lot is not a happy one.

    1. It reminds me of Islam, where inter-family and even first cousin marriages are encouraged and appointments are kept in the family.
      Appropriate that the spokesman is:

      Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

      Essentially the core of the Muslim world.

      Small wonder people believe that the Labour party has been sold to the Muslims.

        1. Although Pakistan may be the worst, for the rest although not necessarily first cousin, they do like to keep it within extended families/arranged marriages. Take a look at the powerful families/political “Imameries” and even terrorist organisations throughout the Muslim world.

          2. Funny how those regions are predominantly Islamic.

            It’s driven by Islamic attitudes, how many other religions encourage multiple wives and huge families?
            And isn’t it strange that they take it wherever they go when leaving those regions.

          3. They take more that that wherever they go. Prudence forbids me to come with examples, but none of them are healthy, pleasant or civilised.

          4. Multiple wives and huge families is islamic. Cousin marriages is regional culture as far as I know. Can you point me to where it’s spoken favourably about in islamic texts? I’m not aware of any and it certainly isn’t practised in all islamic areas

          6. The first part of that is the rule, i.e. whether it is permitted or not. It’s permitted in many countries, so islam isn’t unique in allowing first cousin marriage.

            This part at the end is the recommendation:
            “However, a different question may be asked, namely: “Is it better or preferable for a Muslim to marry someone he is not related to rather than a relative?””

            “The answer to this question varies from case to case, and perhaps it may be preferable to marry people who are non-relations, for example if one aspires to form new social ties or bonds, and regards the existence of a marriage relationship with a different family as constructive in widening the circle of social bonds.”

            Didn’t follow up the other answers, but if there was anything in the texts saying it was preferable, it would surely have been quoted here.
            I know far too much about this subject

          7. Though still a risk, it isn't the occasional 1st cousin marriage that causes the problem, but frequent liaisons over several generations.

          8. It is generally permissible under Islam which is the point I was making.
            I don’t care about other countries or religions they aren’t trying to take over the world: Islam is.

          9. afaik, first cousin marriage is permitted in Britain.
            This man defines exactly the problem with islam. I take his view of history with a slight pinch of salt because he is biased, but he puts his finger exactly on the reason why it’s incompatible with Christianity and Judaism
            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TF-ARIr9iHU

          10. It is.
            It shouldn’t be.
            But very few cases are outside the Muslim community.
            My wife worked in the special care baby unit in Bradford over 40 years ago.
            It was full of handicapped children the vast vast majority Muslim off-spring, almost certainly from such marriages.

    2. It's the career path for politicians now: university, spad, senior spad, unsafe seat, safe seat, MP, cabinet.

      This is why so many are utterly useless except at paying obeisance to the party and why the country is in such a mess. They see government as the source of everything rather than the problem.

    5. He first came to my attention when he took the side of the good people of Lincoln who were fighting to stop RAF Scampton becoming a migrant camp which would mean the removal of the small Dambuster museum (Guy Gibson's office?) and Nigger's grave – Along with the cancellation of the £300 million proposed redevelopment of the former RAF Bomber Command station which would have turned it into a modern aerospace industry hub providing 1,500 much-needed jobs to the area.

      1. Like all American political candidates, she waves to, points at and applauds her audience. There's little more I need to know. The outcome will be the same.

        1. I noticed James Cleverly doing the “point at the audience and try to look as though they were friends that you recognised and were delighted to see” gesture at the candidates’ show. I hope that this tacky and irritating trick does not catch on in the UK.

  32. Morning all 🙂😊
    Sunny half an hour ago wet now no changes there.
    To me the headline today suggests that too many Labour mps appear to hate the British public our long established culture and our general way of life. It's difficult to try and understand what they are trying to achieve and who else they may be working for. It's obviously not the generalinterest of the British public and taxpayers who are forced to financially suport them all. Perhaps they should meet pre-set targets before their full salaries are allowed.

  33. Steerpike
    Sue Gray’s allies turn on Starmer
    8 October 2024, 6:00am

    Another day, another Sue Gray-related drama. Even though the ex-civil servant has resigned from the role of Sir Keir Starmer’s chief of staff after becoming the story herself, she is still managing to generate headlines in her absentia. In an attempt to reboot his government, the Prime Minister swapped out Gray for Labour campaign guru Morgan McSweeney – but the negative briefings haven’t stopped quite yet. Now her allies are on the warpath, even hitting out at the PM. Oh dear.

    As reported by the Times, Gray’s allies have attacked claims that the former civil servant had presided over a dysfunctional culture in Downing Street. One insisted the PM’s one-time chief of staff was instead a victim of an ‘out of control’ group of senior male advisers who didn’t like her, adding:

    Either Starmer wasn’t across what was going on or he was and he let them do it. Frankly neither is a good look. You simply can’t have a lot of out of control special advisers ousting a chief of staff.

    Ouch. Another Whitehall insider insisted:

    The dysfunction in Downing Street is not the fault of Sue. There are systemic issues which Starmer has not addressed. Just because she has now gone does not mean that things are going to improve. In some ways if you’re chief of staff all roads lead to your door and you can be blamed for everything. But in reality the ultimate responsibility lies with the prime minister.

    Does Starmer’s top team have a women problem? It has been reported that yet another senior source suggested that the treatment of Gray by No. 10 staff meant at least one other senior woman had opted against applying for the job of cabinet secretary, after Simon Case announced his resignation last week. They added:

    Serious people are thinking twice about applying and at least one has decided it is not for them after seeing what happened to Sue. They’ve seen the dysfunction and the briefing and are asking themselves whether the job is worth it.

    How very curious. Certainly Gray’s resignation follows weeks of bad briefings – from her salary, to accusations she was ‘subverting’ Cabinet over Belfast’s Casement Park, to her relationship with McSweeney himself. Starmer will have been hoping that with the switching up of his top team, the negative press would stop. But it appears this isn’t quite the case yet – and with a new More in Common poll today showing Labour is only, um, one point more popular than the Tories, Starmer still very much has his work cut out…

    2. 'You simply cannot have a lot of out of control special advisors ousting a chief of staff….'

      Why not? Removing dangerous and damaging idiots is part of a rational process of improving things. The attitude is a very Left wing, big state one as if suggesting that officialdom is inviolate and should never be changed except by fiat or magic.

    3. Is this a synopsis for a tv drama? Rather like the news itself, I'll not bother watching. I have a blank wall which cries out to be looked at.

    1. No. He should be deported. He and his entire family and everyone at that rally. This isn't pallywally. He, and all the Lefty fellow travellers have got to go.

      2. Of course they should go. But the cruel truth is that they will stay and continue with their hate crime untroubled by the PTB..

  35. I imagine the Chagos islands decision was the product of many years of expesive, time consuming form filling by the foreign office and the culmination of many years work.

    Which exposes the previous foreign office minister to being culpable when really, he wasn't as ministers are largely irrelevant to government departments.

  36. Frederick Forsyth knew a thing or two about the Foreign Office.

    They consistently had it all wrong. What I saw on the ground was 180 degrees different from what the Foreign Office was touting in England.

    He was convinced it was filled with incompetents and anti-Semites.
    The latter, he said “was a tradition and goes back to St. John Philby, advisor to Ibn Saud and of course [T.E.] Lawrence and the Arab uprising.” Jews like Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion were in New York making trouble with the newly founded U.N. And that didn’t receive the approval of these snobs.”

  37. Assisted dying is not about ‘love’, it’s about not punishing doctors who kill
    Simon Caldwell : https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/assisted-dying-is-not-about-love-its-about-not-punishing-doctors-who-kill/

    This article uses the image in Graham Greene's Brighton Rock of the evil Pinkie handing a loaded gun to Rose convincing her that if she loves him she will kill herself.

    I expect many Nottlers have not only read the book but saw the film with Richard Attenborough playing the role of Pinkie and thought, as I did, that the film's ending was a travesty.

    I posted this BTL:

    'There was a terrible flaw in the filmed version of Brighton Rock.

    In the novel, after Pinkie has died, Rose takes the gramophone recording of his voice which he made to the machine that can play it believing that she will hear a declaration of love when the reader knows it is a declaration of hate.

    “She walked rapidly in the thin June sunlight towards the worst horror of all.”

    In the film Rose plays the recording which is damaged and she can only hear Pinkie saying "I'm going to say I love you .. click …. I love you … click … I love you … click. … I love you …"

    This disguises the true sadistic evil of Pinkie and the film's ending completely distorts the book.'

    And it is the same with the argument in favour of assisted dying: it distorts the horror.

  38. All my own work:
    Wordle 1,207 4/6

    ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨
    🟨🟨🟨⬜🟨
    ⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. Me too.
      Wordle 1,207 4/6

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      ⬜⬜🟩⬜⬜
      ⬜⬜🟩🟩🟩
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

      1. Lots of options today!
        Wordle 1,207 5/6

        ⬜⬜🟩⬜⬜
        ⬜🟨🟩🟩⬜
        ⬜⬜🟩🟩🟩
        ⬜⬜🟩🟩🟩
        🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

  39. SIR – More than 10 years ago I had a stall at the annual church fete to sell second-hand ties of every colour and style. I sold just two that afternoon. Today, the tie has definitely gone out of fashion for men internationally.

    Yet there is a halfway house: the cravat. Colourful, stylish, elegant and so much better than the half-dressed appearance that seems to be the new norm for men.

    Harvey Vivian
    Malvern, Worcestershire

    Yes, Harv, the tie has, indeed, gone out of fashion. However, the chumps who have eschewed wearing ties still insist — like the muppets they are — on continuing to wear a shirt that has a collar specifically designed for wearing with a tie. Nothing, but nothing, looks more idiotic than wearing on open-necked, stiff-collared shirt with a suit. It was socialist politicians and union leaders who started this scruffy, unkempt, look back in the 1980s and since then the moronic sheep, of all nations, have blindly followed them.

    Whenever I wear a suit, I either wear a collar and tie, or I remove the shirt and wear a stylish round- or crew-necked shirt instead. This is infinitely smarter, and ten times more comfortable than having a ridiculous stiff collar, unbuttoned and not doing the specific job it was designed for.

        1. The new Disqus algorithm keeps adding words and altering those I choose. Every time I write 'Big Pharma", for example, the algorithm adds 'ceutical' to make it 'Pharmaceutical', which annoys me. If iI don't go back and proofread it each time it becomes gobbledegook!

          As I was typing this it added, arbitrarily, the word 'please' for no sensible or rational reason.

          2. Good for you.

            I only pop in here for a short while when time permits. I spend most of my day in my workshop.

          3. Being house-bound, I spend a lot of my day in front of the computer. The rest, I’m in bed trying to catch up on zeds.

    3. In winter I always wear a tie as it keeps you warm before you need to wear a scarf. I have a county tie for every county we have lived in,
      Lancashire, Yorkshire (rarely worn), Hertfordshire, Northamptionshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, Essex. Sussex. I wear Royal Signals and RAOC ties. They are great to clean your specs on as well.
      Long live the tie.

    4. Years ago I worked in a pretty rough pub in Melbourne. Came in one day wearing a cravat and the boss asked "What's wrong with you mate – got an effing sore throat?" Didn't stay there long….

      1. I’ve still got my cravat, from the swinging sixties, when they were worn as a tie. I’ve not worn it since then but just kept it as a (quite pointless) souvenir of a happy time.

          3. I wouldn't know. I've never spilt runny egg due to the fact that I am civilised and use proper dining etiquette.

      1. I just think that open-necked shirts are sartorially inelegant. Round-, crew- and polo-necked shirts are smart, stylish and comfortable.

          1. We all wore that get up for the wedding of my niece. Her stepfather who was paying for everything got his hat mixed up with his son. His son had a hat that was kept up by his ears and Andrew's hat looked more like a fascinator. Would he listen? Oh no. Still the wedding photo's are funny.

          2. I really dislike those half collars, I find them uncomfortable, so only ever wore them if it was part of a uniform, eg for being an usher at a formal wedding.

          3. Agreed in full. That's when I was best man to my brother (in Sydney back in 2006). He insisted on the damn thing and I couldn't wait to rip the bloody uncomfortable item off.

        3. I agree with you in that I would never wear a suit without a tie – but I have been known to wear a sports jacket with a cravat.

          But I make no pretence of being sartorially elegant!

          I'm WYSIWYG

      1. “Although most British muslims are peaceful and moderate…”

        That that needed to be said speaks volumes in itself

    2. I suppose they could compromise. The Freedom Pass could be withdrawn for those of us still working beyond pension age and/or it could be like the Senior Rail Pass, where you pay £30 per annum and get discounted tickets for rail travel. Means testing so the poorest keep free travel would be fair but of course that generates administrative costs.

      1. The problem with means testing stuff is that it sends the message that not working at all gets rewarded and those who do work but get caught by the means testing eventually learn not to bother

        1. And, of course, conducting means testing requires yet more quangocrats in non jobs, being paid by the taxpayer!!

      2. They could introduce a senior citizen’s Oyster card which is valid for a set number of journeys or a set value of journeys per month and can be topped up in the same way the Oyster was before everybody just started using their debit card. Maybe the limit would be the equivalent of 1 return bus journey a day so elderly people who want to go to sit in the library to keep warm could afford to get there.
        Alternatively, it could entitle the holder to the equivalent of a child’s fare.

    3. PLDM – Pensioners Lives Don't Matter (particularly if they are over 80).

      It's as though we are all Jewish and live in a country that we once thought was ours and which our neighbours are intent on destroying.

  45. From MSN today:

    "On Monday, days after news of the Chagos Islands deal first emerged, Sir Keir Starmer's official spokesman said the government

    had no intention to open talks on Gibraltar and the Falklands' future in the hands of other countries".

    .

    This appears very strange.

    It was only two/three weeks ago that Starmer announced that he had ordered talks "to return the Falklands and Gibraltar"

      1. Just like Putin when he says he no intention of invading Ukraine.
        Likewise, in Sir Kier's, if it happens, it's purely a political exercise

        1. Europe broke the Minsk agreement. I expect Putin felt he didn't need to honour any previous statements of intent.

        2. Putin never said that. He said he would not start a war in Ukraine. Since the Ukrainians started that by bombarding the Donbass for 7 years, the Azov Brigade, neo-Nazis leading the way. It it pretty clear who started it. Putin interfered only after numerous entireties by the Russian speaking inhabitants of the region begging him to intervene because their homes had been reduced to rubble.

          1. So basically Ukraine invaded an area of its own sovereign country where people who spoke Russian were still living in the Soviet Block and saw Moscow as its ally in defending what they saw as the return of the events of WWII. So the military operation to restore Ukrainian borders continues and there has been no technical declaraton of war in that area of Eastern Europe.

          2. Ukraine is a product of the Soviet Union. It was created as an administrative district of the USSR and had no prior existence. Its language is a Russian regional dialect. It could be a country if its new masters had behaved well but they didn't and the longer they refuse to negotiate, the less territory they'll be left with.

          3. There are plenty of countries which were invented in modern times, but have full sovereignty today. Belgium? Germany? Italy? Israel?

            Ukraine was given such status in the 1990s, and has now earned its place in battle. It is as ridiculous to speak of Ukraine as a province of Russia today as it is to speak of the USA as part of the British Empire with Charles III as its sovereign.

          4. Serves them right – or left as the case may be.
            I note from the World at War series that after WWII finished they carried on fighting.

          5. No. The Ukrainians basically just sat there shelling the Donbass. They were happy to do that and the government in Kiev did nothing to stop it. Essentially it was a programme of genocide. Most people fled to Russia, 900,000 of them, and only the old people were left. 7,000 people were killed before Putin attacked. It's the reason why Putin is insistent on reclaiming the Russian speaking areas of Ukraine. Ukraine had, officially, by a series of programmes and acts, made all Russian speakers second class citizens actively discriminated them in education, employment, health care, housing etc. in their fanatical insistence on being 'uniquely Ukrainian', an idea that is a joke. I doubt that there is a single Ukrainian family that hasn't got Russian relatives. Because, as I keep saying, they are Russians pretending to be something else. It's as absurd as us having Yorkshire separatists.

            I don't know what you mean by 'Soviet Block' there isn't one. Modern Russian is more capitalist, now a days, than the West.

          7. So it’s more like the time when England treated Wales as an English only speaking country and part of the English Block?

          8. No, because you are erroneously thinking of the Ukrainians as a different people from the Russians, they are not. As I said, a more accurate analogy would be Yorkshire against the rest of England. The idea that they are different is pure fancy. It is, racially speaking, like the Pakistanis pretending they are a different race from the Indians when, of course they are not. But with Ukraine it is worse because they are not even culturally or religiously different. The recent banning and persecution of the oldest form of Christianity in Ukraine is an example of this forced difference being imposed. The fact that Kiev is the spiritual home of all Russians, which is now called ‘Keev’ in contradistinction to a thousand years of history as the city of Kiev, is also being obfuscated is another example of a deliberate pretence that there is something different between the the two people. It is the usual fraudulent behaviour of politicians who, in order to justify themselves, whip up differences and hatreds where non existed before. The Holodomor is another example. It is supposed to be a deliberate famine imposed on Ukraine by the Russians. It is nonsense, the same persecution was put on the Russians too but that truth is omitted to cause yet more hatred.

          9. I didn’t feel that I wasn’t in England when I went to Yorkshire.
            However, I didn’t feel I was in the rest of England when I went to Wales and they started to speak to each other in Welsh.

          10. The Azov Brigade did not exist until after the pro-Russian insurgents armed with a Russian missile carrier driven over specially brought down a neutral civilian airliner flying over Ukraine.

            A quick glance at Google Earth history tab might reveal how much of the Donbas was turned to rubble before 24th February 2022, and how much of it after.

            I suggest that what started it was the elected Maidan Government voting to apply to join the EU and possibly NATO, same as Poland and Lithuania (one of which was in the Warsaw Pact and the other part of the USSR). Then there was an election which returned the pro-Russian Yanukovich, who cancelled the application to the fury of those who supported the previous Government. They then pushed Yanukovich out of office in a coup, which spooked the Russians, who then sponsored an insurgency, which the Maidan regime attempted to suppress.

            All this is history, but there's a lot of propaganda fluff going round.

          11. It was founded in May 2014 as the Azov Battalion.
            As for the Maidan incident. In sum, a democratically elected government not to the Wests likening was overthrown and then elections were held to suit the Wests illegitimate concerns. In short the West provoked this war, not Russia which had always said it would not tolerate Western encroachment or Ukraine ever becoming a member of NATO or the EU. To say the Russians were “spooked” is hardly accurate. They were deliberately provoked after years of insisting clearly that they would not tolerate Western interference in that region. I find the Wests attitude in this matter to be pure hypocrisy, sophistry and blatant lies, which is why all news from Russia is censored out of existence because it contradicts Western propaganda. The American would not tolerate on their border a Russian controlled Canada. So why would they expect to do the analogous belligerent act toward Russia?

          12. The move of the Warsaw Pact nations of central Europe and some former USSR member states into the EU and NATO went on in the 1990s under the watch of Boris Yeltsin. This something Putin has been determined to reverse, but with little success. In fact, he made it worse by unbalancing Ukraine, which was on a knife edge politically, and worrying Finland and Sweden so much, they relinquished their neutrality and bolting for the protection of NATO. A former USSR member state, Moldova, is very concerned about their national security, as is Georgia. Only Belarus stands firm in support of the Kremlin, but we never hear what people there think about that.

            The term “spooked” accurately describes the state of mind after being provoked, deliberately or otherwise. Please explain how you understand the word I used.

            It is a pity, since Putin was well on his way to making the EU dependent on Russian oil and gas, as well as attracting cultural sympathy in the West with his social conservatism and his strong posture against militant Islam (even though pragmatism has led him into a military arrangement with Iran).

  46. Why not be really radical and call the new Version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs :

    Ebony Black and the Seven Giantesses?

    1. The latest slapstick comedy from the Bullshit Broadcasting Clowns (BBC):
      The film, narrated by Clive Myrie and featuring a number of well-known BBC journalists such as Lyse Doucet, Fiona Bruce and Orla Guerin, underscores the vital role of journalism in safeguarding truth and integrity in today’s news landscape.

      It will have you in stitches – then in clinical depression. But don't get discouraged. Most people with depression feel better with alcoholic medication, psychotherapy or both.

      1. It doesn't help that they are far too quick to accept as correct information from people they like, eg the Palestinians, and too quick to condemn those they don't, eg Tommy Robinson.

        Edit for to to too.

    2. Remember the Bbc broadcasting that Israel had destroyed a building in Gaza and killed 500 people? Turned out the building was still standing untouched and nobody died. They are masters at misinformation!

      1. CBC have a similar record. Their balanced reporting from gaza has been exposed by another news oultet reportinging other articles that their reporter has provided for muslim news outlets where he denied the right for Israel to exist. Irrelevant cried the CBC, his reports that we show are balanced!

        This from the liberal propoganda outlet that could not even mute their pro Muslim bias yesterday – they just couldn't stay away from their poor Palestinian kiddies being attacked by nasty Israel stories.

      2. Is that when a Hamas missile fell short and landed in the Hospital car park just after Oct.7th?

    3. The film, narrated by Clive Myrie and featuring a number of well-known BBC journalists such as Lyse Doucet, Fiona Bruce and Orla Guerin, underscores the vital role of journalism in safeguarding truth and integrity in today’s news landscape.

      What happened to the terror attack in Essen, Germany last week?

      2. I didn't realise that trustworthy journalism depended upon your ability to sound as if the dog's died.

    1. Are you sure it's Disqus and not your computer/phone.
      I get it on the iphone, which I never use for Disqus, so it' a guess that it might be a phone, but I don't get it on the laptop except when using search engines or writing emails.

      1. It’s Disqus, which I only ever access on my Mac Mini 2. This only started last week and it occurs on no other platform, or device.

        1. I vaguely recall you writing that you don’t shut down your device very often.
          Try closing down, rebooting and log in again, assuming you can recall all the necessary passwords.
          I recently kept having to re-enter and prove I wasn’t a bot and suddenly it stopped and and I’ve had no problems since, touch wood.

      1. That is no use whatsoever. My problem is identical to those suffered by the commenters on that forum, and no remedy was offered to them!

  50. 394336+ up ticks,

    Health and safety alert,

    Unless we get our collective fat lethargic arses into rapid gear
    the burning question of the day will have neighbours knocking on the door asking you " what camp have you got to report too"

    Dt,
    Migration surge drives fastest population increase on record
    UK experiences quickest growth since at least the 1970s despite deaths outnumbering births

    The Dover invasion is a political overseers tool , a death dealing mallet to hammer the indigenous into RESET agreeable shape.

    1. And I very strongly suspect that the deaths will mainly be white British and the immigrants far and away majority non-white.

          1. I had taken note of your comments over the years re laybys etc, so it was only slightly tongue in cheek.

    1. And the WEF (or whomever is controlling the Democrats, the UK Govt and the EU).

    2. Whatever one thinks of Putin, he and the Russian leadership are not likely to want to see their country (and their high lifestyles) disappear in a nuclear war. After all, there’s no point in trying to create something akin to the old Soviet empire just to see it vanish in a flash. Russia’s history, culture, religion and politics are recognisably rational and logical, even if not entirely to our standards. However, the same cannot be said of Iran and Islam, at least while the mullah’s are in control. Religious fanaticism, the active seeking of death and destruction, the absolute intolerance of anyone not a Muslim, the levels of hate for the West and its soon-to-be nuclear arsenal make Iran far more to be feared than Russia.

        1. Sadly, a large number of people in this country probably have great sympathy with Iranian ideals.

          1. I suspect most of the Muslim population and a significant number on the left as far as Israel is concerned.

    1. Hope you are over the worst of it JR. I was pretty much bedridden myself with a respiratory virus. It was bloody awful.

      1. It seems to be something just going around. Lot of people complaining but I have yet to hear a name for it.

          2. I got it on the day i returned from holiday. That would have been bad timing if i had it the week before.

  56. Phew!
    One chainsaw sharpened
    The last of the large and medium diameter logs brought down from the section of hillside I'm clearing of logs
    The medium diameter logs cut to between 2' to 4' and a start made on cutting the larger diameter logs for chopping.
    The the fuel ran out so I'm in for a mug of tea and will be getting the dinner on after.

    Don't know if this was posted yesterday but what is the WEF pontificating on growing your own food for?
    https://x.com/toobaffled/status/1843121250992017590

    1. Control as always…………
      First they came for the chickens now the veg
      Uncle Bill jailed for not registering his Trombetti…………….

    4. Well done on re-sharpening your saw, BoB. I have only read this post (I was working my way down from the latest post, hence my "earlier" question).

  57. Russian spies ‘on sustained mission to generate mayhem in British streets’, says MI5 boss. 8 October 2024.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8963e704f96e0948be7bcfa173457a3edc4d90b312a5f377e8188f6337eee0b3.png
    Ken McCallum said that as the war in Ukraine continues, the security services were seeing “Putin’s henchmen seeking to strike elsewhere in the misguided hope of weakening Western resolve”.

    The expulsion of more than 750 Russian diplomats from Europe since Russia invaded Ukraine has put a “big dent in the Russian intelligence services’ ability to cause damage in the West”, he said.

    As a result, malign states such as Russia – and Iran – have increasingly turned to criminal elements to carry out their “dirty work”.

    This must account for the increase in shoplifting. I’m sorry. It’s impossible to take this seriously. A ten year old could have come up with something more convincing. And yes that really is the head of Mi5.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/10/08/russian-spies-mission-generate-mayhem-britain-m15/

    1. I can hear Spike as Eccles saying, "Oi'm a Russian spy" and Bluebottle replying, "How do I know you're a Russian spy, Eccles". And it would ramble on, growing more absurd. Much in the style of, "How do you know it's 8 o'clock, Eccles"? "'Cause the man said".

      1. You are on the right track but not quite there, those MI5 people still deceiving people.
        See my post below 😂

    5. The wicked Ruskies really need do nothing but sit back with the popcorn and watch our Government destroy the country as it fills with migrants on benefits.

    6. The only thing that is causing a massive problem on British streets is our stupid government's insistence on allowing the street's to suffer long term and ongoing invasion.

    8. The Russians are crafty, all the spies are all dressed in thobes and ghutra (Muslim male dress) to fit in with the crowds in big cities. The answer is simple, arrest everyone wearing Muzzie dress and deport them. Problem solved.

  58. Russian spies ‘on sustained mission to generate mayhem in British streets’, says MI5 boss. 8 October 2024.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8963e704f96e0948be7bcfa173457a3edc4d90b312a5f377e8188f6337eee0b3.png
    Ken McCallum said that as the war in Ukraine continues, the security services were seeing “Putin’s henchmen seeking to strike elsewhere in the misguided hope of weakening Western resolve”.

    The expulsion of more than 750 Russian diplomats from Europe since Russia invaded Ukraine has put a “big dent in the Russian intelligence services’ ability to cause damage in the West”, he said.

    As a result, malign states such as Russia – and Iran – have increasingly turned to criminal elements to carry out their “dirty work”.

    This must account for the increase in shoplifting. I’m sorry. It’s impossible to take this seriously. A ten year old could have come up with something more convincing. And yes that really is the head of Mi5.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/10/08/russian-spies-mission-generate-mayhem-britain-m15/

  61. You've got larfff there are two headline articles I've just seen.
    Britain's asked to dig out old electrical items to try and ease the (current) copper shortage.
    Below the article says.
    Gloucestershire chief constable suspended due to possible misconduct.
    No wonder there's a shortage of copper. (s)

      1. Each is as bad, if not worse, than the other. And EVERY SINGLE ONE tainted with being slaves (© D Lammy) to the previous government shower.

    2. As he is a desperate and determined Remainer I don't think that result will do the Tories any harm.

    3. It looks like Tugendhat's erstwhile supporters have transferred their allegiance to Cleverly.

  63. 394336+ up ticks,

    I don't believe we should worry about Ivan to much but what is not mentioned here is the rapid increase of islamic radicalisation of the young.

    Bearing in mind that 48 % of the electorate wanted to remain in eu captivity, and the voting majority has kept us, as a nation, in a state of terrorised fear for decades maybe taking to drink is the only option left open to those with the capacity to think and evaluate

    Dt,

    Russian spies on mission to generate mayhem on Britain’s streets, warns MI5 boss
    Ken McCallum says Putin’s henchmen seeking to strike elsewhere to weaken Western resolve amid war in Ukraine

    1. Quite frankly, it's the Muzzies and their fellow travellers that worry me.
      They are the death watch beetle of our culture.

    3. 394336+ up ticks,

      O2O,
      Heard a woman 5 o'clock channel four "should we be worried about the islamic iran threat, it is external" ?

      Not nearly as much as we should the internal threat posed by the government imported ones they are bringing in on a daily basis, who within days go into criminal action.

  64. That was enjoyable.
    Water-buffalo sausages, oven chips, fried egg, mushrooms and tomatoes!

    Rain has restarted but the sun is out!

    2. Stop it, BoB. I am trying really hard to lose some of the excess weight I put on in York this past weekend.

  65. Good afternoon. Just passing through. Brilliant series of lectures. Much to think about.

    I see that the vacuous Stupidly has taken an unexpected "commanding" lead. No chance of the Tories getting MY vote, then.

  66. Britain sanctions commander of Russia’s chemical weapons forces. 8 October 2024.

    Britain has placed sanctions on Russia’s chemical warfare unit and its commander for dropping toxic First World War choking gas over battlefields in Ukraine.

    David Lammy, the Foreign Secretary, said that Russia was “riding roughshod” over international laws by deploying banned toxic agents.

    “Russia’s cruel and inhumane tactics on the battlefield are abhorrent and I will use the full arsenal of powers at my disposal to combat Russia’s malign activity,” he said.

    We are sanctioning people for dropping tear gas on the battlefield? What are we doing? Refusing to send him any Christmas presents?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/10/08/britain-sanctions-commander-russia-chemical-weapons-force/

    1. Lammy is a serious threat to the safety of the United Kingdom. A new son of Schicklgruber., relentlessly dragging the British into a possible nuclear war. Why are our politicians so ignorant of the intentions of the malignant infestation which has been continuously imported for the past sixty years or more?

      1. Quite. Lammy has forgotten that the UK provided cluster bombs to Ukraine among other violations of normal diplomatic relations.

        We allowed the seizure and continuing theft of Russian assets in western banks and in so doing triggered the mass exodus of foreign wealth and investment in the UK.

        We sabotaged at least two Minsk agreements and perpetuated the stupid policy of moving NATO to the east thereby brazenly threatening Russian security.

        Lammy gives every sign of having failed to grasp the true position of the UK in geopolitical terms. We lost an Empire over a century ago, blundered through WWII which we might have lost without American and Russian intervention and assistance. We were put in our place by the US during the Suez crisis in the fifties.

        We should always seek good relations with advanced civilised countries of which Russia is an exemplar. Likewise we should both support Israel’s right to exist and reason with the Mullahs in Iran. The Iranian culture and history is almost as old as Israel’s and its achievements in Writing, Art and Architecture profound.

        1. Ruhollah Khomeini, the Iranian Shiʿi cleric, who led the revolution that overthrew Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi in 1979, destroyed Iranian culture and history at a stroke.

          The POTUS was a peanut farmer.

          "…we should both support Israel’s right to exist and reason with the Mullahs in Iran."

          Reasoning with the Mullahs in Iran is crazy; they are dedicated to the destruction of Israel, the UK and the West.

          The Mullah's nuclear capability must be destroyed before it is ready for deployment.

          1. And yet even on Nottle there are people who would take the Palestinian's side, and by implication Hamas etc and Iran, over that of Israel.

          4. "Arrange a cease fire"?

            Its impossible to 'arrange' anything; they have at least three deadly proxy groups . . .

          5. I agree about the malign doctrine of the Mullahs and perhaps “reason” is the wrong word. The way to contain Iran is not by bombing the place but by limiting their ability to purchase weapons. Many Iranians, particularly women, would love to see the downfall of the regime.

            President Trump kept Iran in check for four years but Biden then undid Trump’s sanctions and other measures and unfroze Iranian seized assets.

            The imposition of the Shah by the Americans started the rot and enabled the imposition of Ayatollah Khomeini in the seventies when the Shah was in the States undergoing treatment for cancer.

          7. True. Khomeini was given exile in Paris for years from where he plotted the take over of Iran by the Revolutionary Guard.

            Curiously a fellow student at UCL (The Bartlett) at the time predicted the events. He was Iranian and from Isfahan and his name Akhbar Darabi Ford.

          8. True. Khomeini was given exile in Paris for years from where he plotted the take over of Iran by the Revolutionary Guard.

            Curiously a fellow student at UCL (The Bartlett) at the time predicted the events. He was Iranian and from Isfahan and his name Akhbar Darabi Ford.

        2. Ruhollah Khomeini, the Iranian Shiʿi cleric, who led the revolution that overthrew Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi in 1979, destroyed Iranian culture and history at a stroke.

          "…we should both support Israel’s right to exist and reason with the Mullahs in Iran."

          Reasoning with the Mullahs in Iran is crazy; they are dedicated to the destruction of Israel, the UK and the West.

          The Mullah's nuclear capability must be destroyed before it is ready for deployment.

  67. Back from an enjoyable lunch/ meeting , and mixing with hardy veterans who have a lot to say about the status quo..

    Elderly people of a certain age don't feel entitled , but they expect their elected MP's , Councillors , local government to use their common sense when governing the UK.

      1. Revoked at 50!
        A one way trip to the gas chamber suicide pod to follow shortly afterwards?
        We're hurtling downhill faster than a greased pig.

  68. A bonded Birdie Three!

    Wordle 1,207 3/6
    🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜
    🟨⬜🟩⬜⬜
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. Well done, a 4 today.

      Wordle 1,207 4/6

      ⬜⬜🟩⬜⬜
      ⬜⬜🟩⬜⬜
      ⬜⬜🟩🟩🟩
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    2. Good one. Par for me.

      Wordle 1,207 4/6

      ⬜⬜🟩⬜⬜
      ⬜🟨🟩⬜⬜
      ⬜⬜🟩🟩🟩
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    4. TThe Clues do not help.

      Wordle 1,207 4/6

      ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜
      ⬜⬜⬜🟨🟨
      🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

      1. Depends on which word you started with, richardl_. With the word I started with, I found two letters to your one.

    5. Blimey Rene, how many birdies have you had in the last few days?? You're on fire, man!

      I'll slink in underneath with a turgid 4…….

      Wordle 1,207 4/6

      🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜
      🟨⬜🟩⬜⬜
      ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

  69. A surge in net migration has fuelled the fastest increase in the British population in at least 53 years.

    About 68,265,200 people are likely to have been resident in the UK in June last year, up by 662,400 twelve months earlier, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

    The rise of 0.97 per cent follows a rise of 0.9 per cent in the year to June 2022 and means the UK population is estimated to have increased by 1.28 million in the two years to June 2023.

    This was driven entirely by net migration because more people died than were born. The population would therefore have shrunk without immigration. It is the biggest increase in population since comparable data began in 1971. All four home nations had a rise driven by international immigration, the ONS said.

    Deaths outnumbered births by about 16,300, the only 12-month period in which deaths have been higher since 1976, besides the pandemic year of 2020.

    The UK population estimate for mid-2023 of nearly 68.3 million is up nearly two million on the figure five years earlier in mid-2018, which was just under 66.3 million. In mid-2013 it was 64.1 million. All estimates are likely to be revised within the next year as new data becomes available.

    England’s population in mid-2023 was put at 57.7 million. In Scotland it was 5.5 million, in Wales 3.2 million and in Northern Ireland 1.9 million.

    Separate figures show that in the year to this June 1.16 million visas were granted for work, study or family reasons. Just over 75,000 people were granted permission to stay via schemes for refugees and for people from places such as Ukraine and the former British colony of Hong Kong.

    During the same period just over 38,700 people were detected arriving by “irregular routes”, such as small boat crossings.

    The ONS projected in January that the British population would grow to 70 million in two years. By the summer of 2036 it is expected to hit 73.7 million, with net migration of 6.1 million between now and then.

    James Robards, from the ONS, said at the time that the projections were uncertain because they were based on assumptions about migration in previous years.

    Last year the ONS said that a surge in Romanian migration had driven the number of people in England and Wales born outside of the UK to 10 million — or one in six of the population — for the first time.

    Those born in Romania and living in England and Wales grew by 576 per cent since the previous census, from 80,000 in 2011 to 539,000 in 2021.

    India remained the most common country of birth outside the UK in 2021, with 920,000 people, or 1.5 of all residents.

    Poland, which increased to 743,000, was second while Pakistan was third and Romania fourth, according to the 2023 figures. https://www.thetimes.com/uk/society/article/immigration-fuels-biggest-uk-population-rise-in-at-least-50-years-8v5r90jz6

    This isn’t sustainable. This is putting massive pressure on the NHS, schools, sewerage systems, etc. The south of England in particular is seriously overcrowded.

    1. Area of United Kingdom: 94,060 mile². Population density: 740 people/mile².
      Area of Sweden: 173,860 mile². Population density: 67 people/mile².

        1. Yes, 84% of the total UK population is in England. England's population density is far worse than the UK as a whole.

    1. The Tories are too busy asking themselves what went wrong to see the reason why they lost whistling past their noses.

      As for Starmer's first hundred days, it can be summed up as "2 tier justice and killing pensioners"

  71. Steerpike
    Channel 4 books Stormy Daniels for US election night coverage
    8 October 2024, 12:47pm

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/GettyImages-2167489272.jpg
    Well, well, well. Channel 4 has announced that it has booked none other than Donald Trump-nemesis Stormy Daniels as a guest on its US election night show. The adult film actor at the centre of Trump’s hush-money scandal will commentate on the events of the evening live from Washington – after spending much of the year recounting some rather lurid details about her previous run-ins with the ex-president, all of which Trump has denied. Fetch the popcorn..

    Alongside the woman who alleges the former US president slept with her before paying out a six-figure sum for her silence, Channel 4 producers have lined up some more curious choices for the coverage. Daniels will be joined by former prime minister-turned-autobiographer Boris Johnson, who will be flying into Washington fresh from his book-promoting tour across the UK’s airwaves. Succession star Brian Cox will feature on the show, while Caitlyn Jenner of Kardashian fame has also been locked in. And hosting the evening, of course, will be Channel 4’s Krishnan Guru-Murthy and the News Agents‘ Emily Maitlis – who will be hoping to avoid Trump-backer Marjorie Taylor Greene at all costs.

    The broadcaster has struck a deal with US channel CNN to share guests, journalists and data across the evening in its first overnight US election broadcast coverage since 1992. The jam-packed line-up is reminiscent of the rather interesting panel Channel 4 put forward for the UK national poll show – during which Alastair Campbell and Nadine Dorries enjoyed their, er, fair share of fighting. Got to do something to pull the viewers in, eh?

    *******************************

    There Wolf
    4 hours ago
    Between Krishnan Guru-Murthy and Matt Frei, they already have a massive pair of Trump knockers covering the election.

    Arch Stanton
    3 hours ago edited
    Channel 4 is awful but I’ve just seen a rather sinister advertisement for the BBC, on the BBC, informing viewers that they are the sole pursuer of truth, the sole purveyor of truth, the sole verifier of truth and that they will “come after” anyone seeking to deviate from that truth.

    All this after being found to have distorted the truth on no fewer than 1500 times on one single issue and having spent hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers money preventing the publication of the findings of their own report into allegations of their own dishonesty, prejudice and blatant untruth.

      1. Not only Ch4…you can also rely on Bill Thomas and me to do our utmost to lower the tone. {:^))

        1. What’s normal? Your usual sunny self? I hope so. You manage to cope with a lot of nasty ailments with good humour.

          1. It’s the only way. I’m over the worst of them though i need to rest more often than i used to when out and about. But if that is all there is then i am doing better than a lot of people.

  73. That's me for today. Very educational and enjoyable. The lady lecturer was outstanding good. Nicola Moorby. Expert on Turner and Constable.

    Have a jolly evening.

    A demain.

  74. Inclusivity and Diversity have arrived at one of our village stores .

    I was served by a very young black woman wearing a burka.. cloaked in dark head cover, not face cover, no eye contact , no smile , nothing .

    I am amazed .

    So near so Spar ..

    1. If she doesn't change her style quickly, the shop will lose trade. The village store is about getting all the local news along with your purchases, not having the cashier looking down her nose at you.

      1. The local Tool Station (or maybe Screwfix) has recently employed such a diversity. It drives my husband bonkers as she clearly has no interest in being there or serving customers.

    2. It seems recently that they being poked into all sections of our Ives so we get use to it. Give it 20 years and they be telling the remaining brits what to do and how to behave…..or else.

        1. I've already told two of our grandchildren to get out of the country ASAP. 5 And 9 years old.

    5. Why didn't you walk out and refuse to be served by her? We need to start protesting, not just rolling over and accepting.

  75. What a useless government.
    They can't even stand up to Biden, he doesn't even know what day of the week it is, let alone where the Chagos Islands are.
    Now they blame Biden for bullying them into surrendering our territory.
    Weak weak weak.

    1. The Sunday Times stated that the British government will pay a subsidy to Mauritius for the next 99 years

      for taking Chagos Atoll of our hands.

      Did Biden bully them into that as well?

    2. US news has been saying that they are annoyed with the Brits for handing the islands over.

      Somewhere in between you might find the truth.

  76. If you gave Tory members the vote , they would say neither .. Not Cleverly , not Badenoch, not any of them ..

    Tory's have rubbished Conservative politics ..ruined our confidence .. mucked up the country , and allowed a feral swarm consisting of Muslims , black brethren , feeble Trotsky minded limp twerps, Marxists autocrats, and slimey ignorant low IQ coke sniffers who are inner city idlers.
    Us lot in the countryside don't want Labour politicians ruining life out here in the sticks .. with daft ideas .

    2. "Leaked WhatsApp messages show Tory activists’ dismay at leadership contenders.
      Members of Conservative Democratic Organisation label James Cleverly a ‘clown’ and Kemi Badenoch a ‘backstabber’ "
      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/10/08/leaked-whatsapps-tory-activists-dismay-leader-contenders/

      The only concern is they are all Johnsonites. "The CDO is a group of Boris Johnson-supporting Tory activists believed to have been set up by Lord Cruddas, a long-time donor."

    3. "Leaked WhatsApp messages show Tory activists’ dismay at leadership contenders.
      Members of Conservative Democratic Organisation label James Cleverly a ‘clown’ and Kemi Badenoch a ‘backstabber’ "
      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/10/08/leaked-whatsapps-tory-activists-dismay-leader-contenders/

      The only concern is they are all Johnsonites. "The CDO is a group of Boris Johnson-supporting Tory activists believed to have been set up by Lord Cruddas, a long-time donor."

  77. THE QUANGOCRACY NOW GOVERNS BRITAIN Philip Johnston

    The expectation that the first 100 days of an administration will determine the rest of its lifespan is something of a contrivance. Why have governments become fixated on the figure? I once thought it had something to do with Napoleon Bonaparte, whose return from exile on Elba to his defeat at Waterloo and the restoration of Louis XVIII to the French throne was known as the Hundred Days (it was actually 110).

    But the real culprit was America’s President Franklin D Roosevelt, who first used the 100-day gambit to persuade voters that he was the man with the required energy and decisiveness to tackle the Great Depression. Later, President John F Kennedy deployed it to great effect. Since then “the first 100 days” has become the yardstick by which to measure presidential effectiveness and, like many Americanisms, it has crept over here.

    This weekend marks the first 100 days of the new Labour government and if a coherent agenda was supposed seamlessly to unfold during that time we have yet to see it. For a party that claimed to have a plan for running the country it has made a pretty poor fist of it so far, with in-fighting leading to the defenestration of the Downing Street chief of staff Sue Gray. Since she was meant to be the interface between the politicians and officialdom, this is a pretty serious loss. As a former senior civil servant, she was expected to know which levers to pull in Whitehall to get the right results.

    But over the past 25 years or so, these levers have had nothing on the other end. The powers of the government and of parliament have been given away to outside bodies. Foremost among these, of course, was the European Union, and, since we have left, sovereignty should have been restored in full.

    However, in a number of crucial areas this has been proxied out. The first act of the new Labour Government in 1997 was to hand full control of monetary policy to the Bank of England and a committee of faceless economists.

    Supporters say it ushered in a long period of interest rate stability, though, as the cost of borrowing was close to zero for many years, that is a questionable claim. We also do not know the counterfactual – what would have happened had there been no change during what was a fairly benign era of low inflation until recently. The Bank made serious errors as inflationary pressures grew, but it is Government ministers who get it in the neck, not the governor. If you are going to be blamed, why not have control?

    The same is true of the Office for Budget Responsibility, set up in 2010 ostensibly to offer an independent and authoritative analysis of the UK’s public finances. The OBR has become less of an auditor than a straitjacket constraining the Chancellor’s room for manouevre. A good thing, too, you might say – except that the Chancellor should be accountable to parliament and ultimately to the electorate for decisions. How many people know the name of the OBR chief?

    The most powerful of these anonymous bodies is arguably the Climate Change Committee, which has the statutory power to make sure the Government sticks to an increasingly improbable net zero timetable.

    Then there is the Supreme Court, 15 years old this week and another innovation that constrains governance because it can overturn the law of the land. In 2009, Tony Blair’s government decided to dismantle what had been a perfectly workable, if somewhat haphazard, constitutional settlement.

    In doing so, it shifted the balance of powers within the British system, establishing a European style constitutional court which sits uneasily within a common law jurisdiction without a written constitutional code.

    We have uprooted centuries of ad hoc but effective arrangements in order to bow before the phoney gods of modernisation. Even the terminology has changed. Around the turn of the century, political discourse began to refer less to “government” and more to “the executive”, counterposed with the concept of “the judiciary”. People no longer spoke of a “balance of powers”, the long-standing British constitutional dispensation, but to a “separation of powers”, along US lines.

    To that end, Labour abolished the Law Lords and set up a Supreme Court physically removed from parliament, transforming its outlook and priorities. The growing use of judicial review and the rise of so-called judicial activism has upended the relationship between the three interlocking pillars of our constitution: the legislature, the government and the courts.

    Few politicians appear fully to understand the scale of this change. Kemi Badenoch is one who does, having identified the restraints imposed by arm’s-length bodies as factors in the failure to carry out a properly conservative programme in government.

    But the Tories were complicit in giving away these powers, and wresting them back now is virtually impossible. Nor can the bodies that wield them be ignored. When Liz Truss brought forward an emergency Budget and froze the OBR out of the process the results were calamitous.

    These constraints apply not just to the Tories. Labour, too, will find decisions dictated to them by committees beyond their control, setting impossible targets, hemmed in by rules reinforced by the courts. Just look at the Rwanda policy for an example of a government unable to get its own way despite the support of parliament.

    Today, Rachel Reeves is to deliver the “major measures” for her October 30 Budget to the OBR for its perusal. A shake of the head and the Chancellor’s entire strategy goes down the pan.

    Since the OBR was a Tory construct, a new Labour government had the opportunity to dispense with it; and yet Ms Reeves is planning to give it even more power by introducing a statutory “fiscal lock” so the body cannot be sidelined, as it was in 2022. If ever a politician has created a rod for her own back, here it is.

    What is the point of being in government if your decisions are always being second-guessed by unaccountable organisations? Sir Keir Starmer may have a majority of 165, but as he approaches his 100 days he has about as much chance of deciding his own fate as Napoleon did on the road to Waterloo.

    My words. This is why we have a uni-party. And why there is crossover staff between LAB and CON. They aren't in charge, their unaccountable cronies are who have infected our institutions since Blair. Now even charities have got in on the racket – many of them being lobbying/activist groups who euphemistically call themselves charities.

    1. Sadly ll too true. Big fat state gave away vast amounts of power yet kept the pointless departments that get bigger and more expensive, yet are utterly irrelevant.

      1. Dangerously influential though and often an indirect route to power for anarchists/activists – unaccountable, of course.

  78. The British state is enabling illegal migration

    People smugglers are rightly condemned – but their foul trade would not exist without demand

    Annabel Denham, Columnist and Deputy Comment Editor • 8th October 2024 • 5:24pm

    When do we say enough is enough? At what point do we finally accept that the status quo is intolerable, and will only deteriorate if we refuse to change course? Perhaps we'll be pushed beyond our limits by the news Britain might now be the illegal migration capital of Europe. Or on hearing that some 973 people crossed the Channel in a single 24-hour period over the weekend. Nearly 1,000 people, to be housed, processed, or alternatively slip between our fingers, melting into the population. Arriving in one day.

    For me, it's the human tragedy piled upon human tragedy. The moment we say the boats must be stopped, whatever it takes, is when a two-year old is trampled to death after being crammed onto a boat with 90 migrants on board. When a toddler is crushed and suffocated in some filthy, cold dinghy packed – if the images of these vessels are any indication – full of fit, young men. [ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj041vl4j4lo ]

    According to reports, those injured in this harrowing incident were cared for in Northern France. But others, presumably witnesses to this crime, were allowed to continue their journey to Britain. It is inconceivable that the police would display such nonchalance in any other scenario. Had a child and three others died on Lake Windermere, would local cops have waved their fellow voyagers on?

    Immigration laws, the American economist Thomas Sowell once said, are the only laws that are discussed in terms of how to help people who break them. This recent Channel tragedy, which was far from a lone incident, exemplifies how we treat these illegal migrants as victims without agency – in much the same way the Left do drug addicts. It's true that narcotics dealers will use devious means to get vulnerable "customers" hooked. But many of those users are still entering into a voluntary exchange.

    The Home Office estimates around a fifth of illegal migrants are aged 17 and under. Some will have been trafficked against their will. But what of the others, including Ardit Binaj – the Albanian who came to Britain illegally in 2014 in a lorry before being arrested the following year for burglary? He spent six months of a two-and-a-half-year jail sentence in prison here, but just five months after being deported, re-entered Britain, had a baby and married his Lithuanian girlfriend, who had leave to remain. He has now won a right to stay in Britain under the ECHR.

    Most would consider the injured party in this exasperating tale to be the people who were burgled and robbed. Or perhaps British taxpayers, who paid to house him in our jails. Yet we cling to the narrative that none of these illegal migrants – which include Binaj when he first entered the UK – is making a conscious choice to leave a safe country to come to Britain. We do so, I suspect, because it allows us to duck difficult decisions about how we deter people from crossing the Channel.

    As an island nation, our pull factors ought to be weaker than elsewhere in Europe. Yet researchers at Oxford University have this week suggested some 745,000 illegal migrants are living here – more than double the number resident in France. Other analysis suggests this may be an underestimate, with the true figure closer to 1.2 million. Why? We have a large number of migrant communities which can host illegals, relatively lax rules which allow them to work and a Home Office which refuses to crack down on numbers. Nearly 68,000 asylum claims were granted in the year to June – more than triple the 21,436 in the previous year.

    Labour believe they can stop the boats by "smashing the gangs". They can't. In the 10 months to November 2023, Immigration Enforcement made 230 arrests for people smuggling, 110 of whom were convicted. Yet still tens of thousands are making the journey.

    The criminals involved in this heinous trade procure cheap, unsafe vehicles, before charging extortionate prices for each place on a boat. Given the extraordinarily high profits, breaking one or two gangs will have little impact. In fact, removing some of the bad guys will mean migrants have difficulty finding boats, driving prices up. As returns for the smugglers increase, more bad guys will enter the market. And we're back to Square One.

    How do we know this? Because it's analogous to the "War on Drugs". The only way to stop the boats is to crush demand. We could do that by detaining migrants, denying access to benefits, and threats of deportation. Of course, we could do it by nodding all applicants through. But it's doubtful even Yvette Cooper believes the current "strategy" will stem the tide.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/10/08/british-state-is-enabling-illegal-migration-channel-boats

    It will eventually be settled on the streets. At the beginning at least, the authorities will side with the illegal immigrants. Only when they are subject to the criminality of the invaders will they start to think about the consequences of it all.

    1. When they arrive give them absolutely nothing, not even refugee encampments.

      Let their communities support them and give those communities absolutely nothing for so doing.

      Any that break the law (again) deport on conviction.

      Allow them to get work but tax them like everyone else.

      Once they've paid tax for 5 years then allow healthcare.
      Once they've paid tax for 10 years consider allowing citizenship.

      If they commit crimes in the ten year time deport upon conviction.
      No rights by marriage no right for them for any children or those children

      The flow would become a trickle.

      1. Ooh that's cruel. In those circumstances they might even find that France is acceptable.

      2. You're too soft.
        Arrest, intern, deport – if they make terra firma. If not, tow them to France.

        1. We’d have to leave the ECHR and probably the UN as well.
          Not to mention repealing all sorts of legislation so the HR and the Supreme Court judges can’t over-rule Parliament

          5. Dissolve the supreme court and replace it with the working law lords.

            No need to leave the UN, just ignore the convention on refugees – as these are NOT refugees. Until they can prove where they came from their just criminals.

      3. But the state gives them all the freebies specifically because it wants these vermin here. This is pure, simple spite. It's nothing but revenge for Brexit. The Left's war to destroy democracy, decency and common sense was hindered by that act of democracy and the Left wing state will never, ever let us be free ever again. Massive uncontrolled criminal invasion is simply one of their weapons.

  79. MSN all on the same page and singing the same hymn..

    Starmer to invest £1/2 billion to build hundreds of UK-made 'cleaner air' electric buses. It's a wow. And the first to achieve double digit annual growth with the glorious Five Year Plan for tractor bus production.
    Congratulations to the magnificent Keir Yuri Gagarin Siege of Stalingrad Glorious Five Year Plan Sputnik Tractor Moscow Dynamo Back Four Starmer..

    Translation. Northern Ireland factory set to assemble stuff made in Germany as requested by EU. You pay for over-priced engines and drive trains.

    1. Plenty of slightly used EV buses available in Alberta. Admittedly the steering wheel is on the wrong side but since the buses don't work that hardly matters.

      1. Similar issue in Oslo. Cheap Chinese el articulated buses with the driving axle in the trailer couldn't move much last winter on slippery roads. Diesel buses – no worries.

  80. MSN all on the same page and singing the same hymn..

    Starmer to invest £1/2 billion to build hundreds of UK-made 'cleaner air' electric buses. It's a wow. And the first to achieve double digit annual growth with the glorious Five Year Plan for tractor bus production.
    Congratulations to the magnificent Keir Yuri Gagarin Siege of Stalingrad Glorious Five Year Plan Sputnik Tractor Moscow Dynamo Back Four Starmer..

    Translation. Northern Ireland factory set to assemble stuff made in Germany as requested by EU. You pay for over-priced engines and drive trains.

    1. Why are they estimating Canadas millionaire movement will increase? Anyone with enough cash is moving the hell out from Trudeaus dystopia.

      1. Apparently the Biden refugees are fleeing northwards. Perhaps they figure Trudeau can’t last much longer? It does seem a bit strange!

  83. And that was a rather well deserved bath!
    About 4½h put in up the hill.
    All the wood from one section of the hillside has been cleared bar a small amount of sticks and there's only a small amounts from the other section.
    I've 4 or possibly more dozen large diameter logs, 8"<20" ready for splitting and stacking, a decent stack of medium diameter which will need sawing before splitting and a lot of sticks, 1"<3½", to be chop-sawn and stacked in mushroom trays.

    It seems that FEMA, the US Emergency Relief organisation has been debating which Hurricane Victims should get priority assistance:-

    FEMA Disaster Preparedness Meeting: ‘We Should Focus Our Efforts on LGBTQIA People… They Struggled Before the Storm’
    ‘They already have their own things to deal with’
    https://news.grabien.com/story/fema-disaster-preparedness-meeting-we-should-focus-our-efforts-on-lgbt
    EXCERPT:
    ATKINS: "… sparked a few things in my mind, thinking about preparedness and how you said, you know, LGBTQIA people and people who have been disadvantaged already are struggling. They already have their own things to deal with. So you add a disaster on top of that, it's just compounding on itself. And I think that is maybe the why, why we're having these discussions, because it isn't being talked about, it isn't being socialized. We're not paying attention to this community.”

    1. How will you tell if someone is LGBT etc? Must they wear a yellow star on their clothing?

        1. Not in rural north carolina, they wouldn't dare set themselves up for ridicule by big bubba.. Maybe that is why they are not getting much support out there.

        1. Citroen1, it was I who asked the question. Is your reply meant to be to sosraboc who gave as his answer "Dcup?"

  86. Labour are set for a humiliating defeat in their war on private schools

    The policy is disintegrating before our eyes. Even the unions are worried about its disastrous consequences

    Sherelle Jacobs • 7th October 2024 • 8:46pm

    Perhaps the most terrifying moment I experienced at the Labour Party conference took place at a fringe event on the future of speech and language in schools. Rather than explore how we can raise standards, attendees fizzed with enthusiasm for the Prime Minister's plans to put "oracy" at the heart of his government's education reforms. Many appeared concerned that encouraging a Reception-aged child to pick up a pen could drive them to breakdown. Far better, apparently, that we weave public speaking through the curriculum, despite limited evidence the policy would actually work.

    Of course, the British Left has long struggled to distinguish between rigorous and "oppressive" learning. But this is now coming at a time when the Labour Party has declared ideological war against private schools. It seems more preoccupied with punishing the independent sector than devising a plan to bring the state system up to scratch.

    Interestingly, though, Labour's flagship policy to slap VAT on private school fees is running aground. Rumours are circulating that the Government's plan to levy VAT from January 1 is being put on ice, amid warnings from across the political spectrum that the measure will plunge the education sector into chaos. While tax experts warn that private schools have been given little time to adapt their accounting operations, unions warn of teacher job losses, with schools already inundated with requests from parents who will soon be unable to afford termly fees.

    Some warn that the strain on the capacity of the special educational needs and disabilities sector – which faces a spike in assessment requests for pupils moving over from private schools – could cause the system to give way.

    This VAT plan encapsulates everything that is wrong with centre-Left politics today. It fails to differentiate between blue-blooded privilege and the cerulean ambition of parents who want to help their children reach their full potential. And it fits into the Leftist cult of equality, the idea that if this cannot be reached by lifting state school pupils up, it will be achieved by pushing the privately educated down.

    But it's also a case study in what happens when socialists try to translate ideas into concrete policy: they swiftly shatter into a thousand pieces.

    It's no exaggeration to say that evidence the policy is a dud is emerging with almost daily regularity. Labour hope it will raise over £1.5 billion a year; some experts are warning these gains will be cancelled out by pupils migrating from the private into state sector. According to one study, if a quarter of pupils leave the private school system, the cost to the state will be £1.1bn.

    And the early signs of such migration are already there. Last week, a survey of independent schoools revealed that pupil numbers are down almost 2 per cent compared with 2023.

    As popular local independent schools, ones that serve middle class parents with strong value for money, edge towards bankruptcy, Labour MPs are being inundated by irate constituents. Some are starting to speak out, including Rachael Maskell, MP for York Central, who has called for schools with annual fees of less than £6,500 to be exempt.

    All the same, even as the policy disintegrates, Labour may well press ahead. The centre-Left is fanatical about private schools; they simply cannot think about the topic rationally. A party with its head screwed on would park such a mission. At a time when state schools are dealing not only with collapsing roofs and a fall in discipline post lockdowns but also the prospect of fresh austerity, a sensible party would have the sense to ditch a policy that threatens to intensify pressure on the sector.

    And after struggling to come up with a convincing state reform plan that will build on – rather than undermine – the Tory party's educational reforms, a sensible government would focus exclusively on how to improve the state sector. It would end the obsession with the 7 per cent of pupils in private education, and focus on the 93 per cent.

    Instead, the centre-Left has allowed itself to succumb to boorish resentment. They used to talk about women "smashing the glass ceiling". Now they fixate on shattering the "glass floor" of privileged children. They sneer at what they consider the superiority of private education, seethingly describing sun-dappled scenes where seven-year-olds tumble out of Land Rovers and recite Macbeth in rococo theatres or play cricket on immaculate grass lawns.

    It is lost on them that such scenarios invite feelings of longing rather than contempt among people whose capacity to want better things hasn't been corroded by the politics of envy. Nor do they seem to recognise that many private schools offer a more modest idealism – smaller class sizes, stricter discipline, the pride of school colours, the competitive camaraderie of Houses and after-schools maths clubs for those struggling with long division.

    The lack of serious engagement with the fallout of their ideals is also notable. When pressed on the closure of small independents, Leftists flippantly reply that if elite finishing schools have to swap out poached sea bass for macaroni cheese in the canteen so be it. Others eagerly speculate about the potential for a decisive collapse in middle-class support for private schools if they officially become finishing schools for the offspring of plutocrats.

    Consider education secretary Bridget Phillipson's controversial tweet at the weekend: "Our state schools need teachers more than private schools need embossed stationery…" To Phillipson, it's a zero-sum game. She doesn't realise that, in the end, everyone loses. The disadvantaged kids whose parents can't afford homes in the catchment areas of the best schools, or tutoring for the 11+. The athletic children, who used to have access to those sports pitches. Those with SEND, or from military families.

    But the Education Secretary will need to watch her back. As the ousting of Sue Gray reminds us, Leftie bruisers derive great pleasure from decapitating scapegoats. Her failure now looks inevitable. It may only be a matter of time until Keir Starmer wields the knife once again.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/10/07/labour-private-school-tax

    1. From what I hear, reception classes would be better being potty trained and learning how to tie their shoe laces.

  89. Finished in time to have a bimble around Salisbury Cathedral today. It's strange but as glorious as the building is I was more comfortable in Saint Andrew's, Tarrant Tomson.
    The mechanical device is the world's oldest working clock.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7bd6d5f8d490a603a9fbbe87530f53e4f1da7c7474839735547b4c51a0a7e281.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/fc8119c83f51330e019093c7a83aaaefe3b0d70f9c0bb126b1359b91a1500835.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9ca4e8f1c75331fb2462ec2a6e8cf33d467655b9f93b771ccc496bf1713b8aaa.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0f5bbbc53d9228381b87b438019b4d2602757040baab78e53e2c780a7f7787b0.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/abf139ace64aa24ad55f175a3aa151687fca4747ce8c00b0c0a22ea2729803b9.jpg

      1. You’ll have to narrow it down a bit as it’s been there, or thereabouts since the end of the 14th century.

  90. 394336+ up ticks,

    MI5 warns 75% of terror threats are Islamist with Isis and Al Qaeda on the rise again

    No worries there, the lab/lib/con coalitions devilish plan is coming to fruition tis masterful, we have surrounded the islamist within our borders

    1. Remember what I said earlier about a new face serving in one of our village shops, a new face wearing a Burka, this is a military area , soldiers call by to buy their extra grub, and nutty supply, I felt rather nervous when I saw her wearing her black burka, and she was very black , not Arab ..

      I wonder how the military feel now?

  91. James Cleverly is a greasy untidy individual , I don't know him, have never met him , but my gut instinct tells me that he hasn't got what it takes ..

    He will be as gobby and useless as Starmer , and as piggy as Lammy.

    2. He is surprisingly good at speeches and presentations.
      The same could have been said about Cameron.
      The Chagos farrago gives pause for thought.

    3. My superficial impression is entirely different but I know very little about him other than that he hasn't generated any antipathy in my mind.

  92. "Vineyards across France are struggling to keep up with production after being hit by spring frost, hail, and wet conditions in the early summer that encouraged the growth of mildew on vines."

    But … but … what about global boiling and polar bears dying of heat stroke?
    Isn't that why Blighty is being reduced to penury? To stave off these terrible events?

  93. The French are actually reducing production and rooting up vineyards, they can't sell the product.

    1. And so it goes on…… Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said “all the proper processes” were followed when appointing the UK’s climate envoy, as he accused the Conservatives of making “baseless” allegations.

      Rachel Kyte was recently appointed the UK’s special representative for climate, a role which aims to further the country’s green goals internationally, including at Cop summits.

      In the Commons on Tuesday, shadow energy minister Joy Morrissey questioned whether Ms Kyte’s links to Quadrature Capital, a company which has donated £4 million to the Labour Party, had been declared to officials.

      Ms Kyte sits on the advisory board of the Quadrature Climate Foundation (QCF), which was set up by Quadrature Capital, according to its website.vvv

  95. A dilemma:
    Mother's current (as far as I can tell) Will demands that she be cremated and buried with my Father. The previous version demands an eco-burial in the woods around Cardiff, in an eco-coffin (I have already bought the plot). I'm going with the latest version (15 years old), how would you guys treat this? Can't check with Mother, she's away with the fairies… and I'll have to sell the eco-plot as well.

    1. I hope HG and I can have our ashes scattered together .
      I would go with the current will.
      Was the previous one written while they were both alive? The first death changes the perception, my parents wishes were similar re eco but when it came to it they were both cremated and we scattered their combined ashes. He died a few years after her.

    2. You'll remember the scene in the film 'The Wooden Horse' where the soil from the tunnel is disposed of via the POW's trouser leg.
      Some years ago when discussing MiL's wishes she said she would like her ashes scattered on the grave of a relative which lies in a now closed Church graveyard. Even now as I type I can hear the sewing machine whirring away…..I suspect it will be my trouser leg…..!

      1. Neat!
        She was a rebel when she was young, so I suspect that would appeal to her!

      2. Do it then ask permission.

        My mother's ashes are scattered outside St Peter's church in Bradwell. We asked first, their response was We cannot say no after you have scattered the ashes.
        So we went ahead.

    3. My parents were both from North London. But both their ashes are in exactly the same square foot spot, but in our local Hertfordshire church yard. And a brass plaque amongst many on the low level memorial fence has their names and DOB on it together.

        1. I often take a short cut from my older sisters house through the church yard to the high street and stop to say ‘hello’.
          I must give the brass Plaque a polish.

    4. I would do what you feel is appropriate at the present time. Burial of ashes requires action by the cemetery, scattering of ashes can be done as Stephen indicates below. My father is still on the mantelpiece waiting for suitable day to be scattered in an appropriate place.

    5. My mother had no wishes except she didn't want to be buried. It was almost a year before I could deal with her ashes, before I knew in my heart what to do with them. I took them back to Leeds, she had been in residential accommodation in Southwold for two years and they were scattered on the same plot my father's ashes were scattered 32 years earlier at Lawnswood (Leeds crematorium). I didn't want to be parted from her ashes but I knew ultimately that that was what I had to do with them. £35 for the scattering on the plot 22 years ago. In the end you do what you think is best – and burying the ashes with your father's ashes would give you some time to come to terms with everything.

      1. The ashes of my mother and her sister have been buried with the remains of their mother in the churchyard of the village where they lived as children and a new gravestone has all three names. We had the Prayer Book ashes to ashes interment service for each. Grandmother was only 35 when she died and her daughters never quite got over it so it seemed appropriate to finally unite them.

      2. MOH left no wishes other than to be cremated. I didn't want to keep the ashes so I went somewhere that had been a special place and buried them there.

      3. Since I was eight and sent to boarding school, I never lived at home, only visited for school holidays. My attachment to Mother isn’t like yours as you describe, PM, I’m afraid, but I will miss her, like I miss Father.

    6. The latest will is current and supersedes all previous wills. Unless she makes another one to rescind what she's stated, that's the one to go with.

      1. Thanks, Conners, that’s what I thought. Now trying to find which solicitors has the latest will – there are 3 firms involved!

        1. Most solicitors will have registered it with the National Wills Register. So I suspect that anyone who checks there will also find out who lodged it. You can pay to do it yourself but any of the solicitors will probably have an account. Good luck.

  97. Leaked WhatsApp messages show Tory activists’ dismay at leadership contenders
    Members of Conservative Democratic Organisation label James Cleverly a ‘clown’ and Kemi Badenoch a ‘backstabber’

    Tory activists have expressed their dismay at the quality of candidates in the party’s leadership race, leaked messages have revealed.

    Members of the Conservative Democratic Organisation (CDO) were critical of every candidate, describing James Cleverly as a “clown” and “not the sharpest knife in the box”.

    Members said Kemi Badenoch was a “Boris backstabber” who was too close to Michael Gove, while Robert Jenrick “does nothing for me” because they do not trust his “shift from the centre”.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/10/08/leaked-whatsapps-tory-activists-dismay-leader-contenders/

    Wets wets wets!

    1. Pathetic, isn't it? And these utterly sodden dishcloths have been masquerading as conservatives for the last 3 decades. "Shift from the centre" my aunt Fanny

    2. They speak for so many of us!

      The Tories should just cut the crap and elect Farage. How they would squirm and chew wasps – and win the next election.

    3. Perhaps it should be renamed The Torrid* Party!

      *BRITISH
      full of difficulty.
      "he'd been given a pretty torrid time by the nation's voters"

    1. ShhhH! They changed the marketing because the first one was a demonstrable pack of lies! Now they've used 'climate change' because the climate always changes. It was seasons before, but now they can say anything is 'climate change'.

      It's a hoax. A tax scam. A complete pack of lies. If there were a serious problem then multiple significant things would change: not just those troughers pocketing tax payers cash demanding more cash for their trough.

  99. From Coffee House, the Spectator

    Labour lead slashed to one point
    Steerpike8 October 2024, 9:13am
    When it rains for Sir Keir Starmer, it pours. Polling by More in Common via Politico has revealed that Labour’s lead has been dramatically slashed to just one point ahead of the Tories, only three months after Labour’s landslide win.

    The survey, which polled 2,023 Brits, put support for Starmer’s army on 29 per cent – while Rishi Sunak’s boys in blue are close on their heels at 28 per cent. Compared to the last poll carried out by the firm a fortnight ago, the Conservatives have gained two points, while Labour has lost one. Meanwhile, Nigel Farage’s Reform party is in third place, on 19 per cent – just ten points behind the Labour. Sir Ed Davey’s Lib Dems sit on 11 per cent, with the eco-activist Greens on 7 per cent and the Scottish Nats on just 2 per cent.

    Can things get any worse for Sir Keir? The news follows a rather rocky start for the Labour government – which has faced a public backlash over policies like cuts to winter fuel payments, cronyism rows, the freebie fiasco and weeks of bad briefings about Starmer’s recently-replaced chief of staff Sue Gray. The Starmtroopers are less than 100 days into government – and already the Labour lot are having a rather tough time of it. If this is what three months looks like, whatever will the next five years bring?

    1. Well, it won't matter how low the ratings sink unless we can recall them and replace them.

  100. I see they've bopped off Lord Walney at the request of the glue people. Wonder how the Speccie will react?

    1. Authoritarian Lord Walney pushed out as government adviser

      CAMPAIGNERS rejoiced today as right-wing peer Lord Walney — otherwise known as John Woodcock — was pushed out as the government’s adviser on political violence and disruption.

      The ex-Labour MP produced a stream of plans to suppress pro-Palestine and climate change protests under the last government and looked to continue in the role under Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer.

      Lord Walney, whose proposals were regarded as “too extreme,” was closely associated with pro-Israel and arms and energy lobbying groups.

    2. Please decode for someone who hasn't the foggiest about Lord Walney. Unless I have no say in his fate, in which case there's no need to know.

  102. Right, chums, I'm off to bed now. Good night all, sleep well and see you all tomorrow.

  104. From Coffee house, the Spectator

    Kamala Harris’s 60 Minutes interview was Prince Andrew-like in its awfulness
    Freddy Gray8 October 2024, 8:25am
    Somebody give Bill Whitaker a prize. In his 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, which aired last night, the CBS correspondent did what no other journalist has successfully done since the Vice President was thrust to the top of the Democratic ticket: journalism. He asked Harris challenging questions about the matters voters care about most. He was civil, unaggressive, but professional enough to push her for clear answers. And Harris just couldn’t cope. Her performance was Prince Andrew-like in its awfulness.

    That caused the Harris-bot to malfunction
    On immigration, for instance, Whitaker asked Harris why the Biden-Harris administration had only recently started tackling the issue, after almost four years and an unprecedented surge in illegal border crossings. Harris robotically blamed Congress and Donald Trump, ‘who wants to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem so he told his buddies in Congress “kill the bill, don’t let it move forward”.’

    Whitaker was not deterred. ‘But there was an historic flood of undocumented immigrants coming across the border the first three years of your administration,’ he continued. ‘As a matter of fact, arrivals quadrupled from the last year of President Trump. Was it a mistake to loosen immigration policies as much you do did?’

    That caused the Harris-bot to malfunction. ‘It’s a long standing problem,’ she warbled. ‘And solutions are at hand and from day one, literally, we have been offering solutions…’

    So Whitaker interrupted: ‘What I was asking was, was it a mistake to allow that kind of flood to happen in the first place?’

    ‘I think the policies that we have been promoting have been about fixing a problem not promoting a problem,’ she added.

    ‘But the numbers did quadruple under your watch?’ tried Whitaker, again.

    Harris, ruffled, returned to square one: ‘And the numbers today…because of what we have done, we have cut the flow of illegal immigration, we have cut the flow of fentanyl, but we need Congress to act.’

    Oh dear. That’s Harris’s overwhelming weakness as a political candidate. She can talk in soundbites and managerial slogans about ‘solutions not problems’ but on issues of substance she can’t actually offer any solutions, which is a problem.

    On the war in the Middle East, Harris was asked if the US has ‘no sway’ over Israel’s leader Benjamin Netanyahu, who has accepted billions of dollars of American aid but seems to be ignoring Washington’s calls for a ceasefire.

    ‘The work that we do diplomatically with the leadership of Israel is an ongoing pursuit around making clear our principles,’ said Harris, gnomically.

    Again, Whitaker pressed: ‘But it seems that Prime Minister Netanyahu isn’t listening?’

    ‘We’re not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.’

    Moving awkwardly on, Whitaker turned to the economy, and again Harris offered only platitudes. ‘My plan is about saying that when you invest in small businesses you invest in the middle class and you strengthen America’s economy,’ she said. ‘Small businesses are part of the backbone of America’s economy,” she restated. Quizzed on how America might fund her trillion-dollar spending plans, she said she would make the rich ‘pay their fair share.’

    When confronted by a serious journalist asking serious questions, she melts
    ‘We’re dealing with the real world here,’ said Whitaker. ‘How are you going to get this through Congress?’ Harris replied that she ‘cannot afford to be myopic…I am a public servant, I am also a capitalist’ – as if that clarified things.

    Perhaps the most revealing moment was when Whitaker asked Harris why voters say they don’t know what she stands for. ‘It’s an election Bill,’ she said, with a dead smile. Whitaker then mentioned her flip-flops on issues such as fracking, immigration, and Medicare.

    ‘In the last year fours I have been vice-president of the United States and I have been travelling our country and I have been listening to folks and seeking what is possible in terms of common ground,’ said Harris. ‘I believe in building consensus. We are a diverse people. Geographically, regionally, in terms of where we are in our backgrounds and what the American people do want is that we have leaders who can build consensus, where we can compromise and understand it’s not a bad thing as long as you don’t compromise your values to find common sense solutions. And that has been my approach.’

    Harris’s campaign recognises that a majority of Americans don’t feel they know or can trust Harris. That’s why she is now on what her team is calling a ‘media blitz’. But the clarity never comes. On MSNBC last week, she used the word ‘holistic’ three times to describe her housing policy. At the weekend, she did the ‘Call Her Daddy’ podcast with Alex Cooper, who asked how it feels to be attacked for being childless and why men get to decide what women do with their bodies. Harris was comfortable spluttering bromides in response. When confronted by a serious journalist asking serious questions, however, she melts.

    In the hours before the 60 Minutes interview aired, the betting markets spiked in Donald Trump’s favour. Gamblers understand that the more voters see of Harris, the less they hear, and that’s an issue which is only going to worsen in the last three weeks of her campaign.

    1. I don't remember any interview with her. Fortunately, there's no need to know. I have no say in the matter. There's no point in spending any time on her.

  107. Evening, all. Very late on parade tonight, I'm afraid. I had to chair a meeting and, as the secretary was ill, take the minutes as well. Then, of course, I had to type them up – and decipher my handwriting!

    I doubt the Tories will hold Labour to account over anything; they all seem to be singing from the same hymn sheet.

  108. Another day is done so, goodnight, Gentlefolk. Bis morgen fruh. Schlaf gut. Ich hoffe.

  110. oh dear. It’s not going well for Thieves. First, she has to row back on her plan to limit tax relief on pension contributions to avoid upsetting the well-paid public sector. And now she may have to carve-out exemptions for VAT on school fees for military families. Pretty soon it will be a very clear them (public sector) vs us (private sector). What will they do when the private sector collapses or just gives up?

    There are warnings that limiting the amount that can be taken out of pensions tax-free will lead to legal challenges. And stopping her non-dom raid as too many are “fleeing”.

    How about just not taxing us so much?

    1. I have a private pension fund presently housed with Royal London. My takings monthly merely maintain the value of the fund. Were I to take greater monthly sums I would have to pay yet more in Tax on my monthly withdrawals.

      I find it utterly unacceptable that already taxed monies I squirrelled away to assist with my retirement are taxed again when I wish to realise their value.

      Our successive governments quite clearly hate us working folk. They pander to Gordon Brown’s Town Hall employees and neglect the rest of us who pay for the useless bureaucratic state employees.

      We need a wholesale clear out of the Town Hall filth and the reinstatement of sensible qualified Town Hall solicitors, formerly called Town Clerks, to control and moderate the practices and expenses of these cretins. At present the district and local councils are out of control and their ranks infested with uneducated and unqualified idiots imposing their party political prejudices on the lot of us. The evidence for this is their practice of proclaiming Cabinets and Cabinet status to the ignorant oiks inhabiting them in some weird emulation of our own central government pretence.

      This must end otherwise we are bankrupted beyond saving.

      1. And then you add in the devolved “governments” (sic).

        I’ve told my kids to get out.
        Once parents and in-laws are no longer with us, I’ll be leading the way. It’s a shame as it’s a great country otherwise.

      2. Good morning all. Alf and I are z just back from a bowls week in Portugal. Interesting tale from an Indian restaurant owner. Lived in U.K. for 7 years altogether, first on a student visa, got his degree, then worked to become an HGV driver as well as working at Gatwick airport as he lived in Hounslow. Really nice hard working bloke, given one extension to stay, but refused the second one. No reason given.

        He said he could have appealed but thought, sod them, I’ve been paying taxes and working hard and I see all these people on council estates not working but living off benefits. He never claimed benefits and added to our GDP unlike so many others. So he ‘buggered off’ (my expression) to Portugal where he now owns two restaurants and employs other people. How cockeyed can HMG be. Unbelievable.

    2. I have a private pension fund presently housed with Royal London. My takings monthly merely maintain the value of the fund. Were I to take later monthly sums I would have to
      Pay yet more in Tax on my monthly withdrawals.

      I find it utterly unacceptable that already taxed monies I squirrelled away to assist with my retirement are taxed again when I wish to realise their value.

      Our successive governments quite clearly hate us working folk. They pander to Gordon Brown’s Town Hall employees and neglect the rest of us who pay for the useless bureaucratic state employees.

      We need a wholesale clear out of the Town Hall filth and the reinstatement of sensible qualified Town Hall solicitors, formerly called Town Clerks, to control and moderate the expenses of these cretins. At present the district and local councils are out of control and their ranks infested with idiots imposing their party political prejudices on the lot of us.

      This must end otherwise we are bankrupted beyond saving.

    3. The public sector is already over 50% of GDP isn't it? I think the balance has already tipped over into "we're fked" territory. How many migrants and government workers do they expect the wealth generating private sector to support?
      Not forgetting that if you are a higher earner or a saver, you're paying double for school, one and a half times for university, higher taxes your entire working life and more than your care home costs to subsidise The Poorest In Society from your cradle to your grave.
      People only stay because of family and love of country – no financial calculation could find it worthwhile to live as a higher earning private sector, wealth generating worker in Britain today.

  111. I have started to do Wordle early morning viz. after midnight but before bedtime which for me is 2.00am.

    I think more clearly when it is quiet and have done so throughout my creative career in Architecture.

    The Wordle puzzle today was a real test for me but armed with my Chambers Dictionary I solved the thing. Bloody Americans spelling of words is for once evidently part of our English vocabulary.

    I will repeat post for (our very clever) Wordle chums later today or should I say tomorrow as I wonder how others have fared.

    Wordle 1,208 4/6

    ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
    ⬜⬜⬜🟩⬜
    ⬜⬜🟩🟩🟩
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

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