Wednesday 11 September: The early release of prisoners puts Britain’s justice system to shame

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

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572 thoughts on “Wednesday 11 September: The early release of prisoners puts Britain’s justice system to shame”

    1. I would agree with your sentiments, Johnny (Good Morning, btw.) but when the pensioner is shown as a loveable little old granny and the Labour Chancellor has her income "inflated" by adding pence to it (which does not happen with the pensioner) to me it stinks of special pleading.

  8. Good morrow, Gentlefolk. Today’s (recycled) story

    Unhappy Driver

    A guy in a car smacks into the back of a car at the traffic lights.
    Its driver, who happens to be a midget, jumps out and tells the guy behind that he is not happy.
    "OK, so which one are you?" asks the guy.

    1. I was just looking at all the sour faces on the train this morning, and thought "None of them are happy. So, which ones are they, then?"
      Morning, Tom!

        1. If you remember the animated video that went with "One Brick In The Wall" (released many years ago), there was a lass with that hammer-shaped face I thought was only a figment of the artist's imagination.

  10. Morning, all Y'all.
    Biblical rain last night, now all the clouds are running down the drains, the sun is shining!

    1. The best time for rain to fall is overnight, Paul, and it's good to have a sunny day afterwards. (Good morning, btw.)

      1. Agreed. It’s less fun when the cats go out into the rain (Norwegian Forest Cats aren’t afraid of wet) then come back in and want a cuddle… we keep a towel handy for that!

  12. Good morning all.
    A distinctly chilly feel to the day with a tad under 4°C on the Yard Thermometer.
    Damp after early morning rain, but clouds clearing and brightening up.

  13. Mass migration is tearing the EU to pieces. 11 September 2024. 11 September 2024.

    So this is how it ends – less with a bang than with a coolly pragmatic admission of defeat. It was a very Germanic action, calm and orderly. But make no mistake: this is seismic.

    As casually as if it were announcing extra bin collections, the German government has said that it is prepairng to impose tight new controls at all its land borders. From next Monday, German police will begin checking passports at all crossing points and refusing entry to some travellers.

    Hammered by illegal immigration and facing social meltdown, one of the main motors of the EU project has effectively been forced to abandon a fundamental tenet of bloc membership: free movement of people. And just like that – as if there’s nothing at all to see here, volks! – the Brussels dream dies.

    The Brussels nightmare. Let’s hope. The trigger for all this is of course the destruction of the Baltic Pipeline by the US. It has trashed the German Economy. No one (well politician) can say this. The people aren’t allowed to say it so they vote for the AfD.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/09/10/mass-migration-is-tearing-the-eu-to-pieces/

      2. "The free movement of people was supposed to be for Europeans."

        All very well before 2004…

    3. How can one then deport all those currently illegally inside the EU, UK, EEA? Round-ups, folk bundled into grey, windowless vans, never to be seen again? It's all rather scary…

    3. And the winners were..

      Hi kids! Have you heard of Jimmy Savile?
      Me neither.

      So , are you the one who is going to freeze my grandma to death ?

      For the Film buffs..
      Unman? ..(tick)
      wittering?..(tick)
      Zigo?

      "Well kids, make sure you enjoy your last Christmas with Gran and Grandad"

      How many of you have transferred here from a private school this year?

      2. One of my colleagues at Allhallows staged a production of Unman Wittering and Zigo and I had to play the role of one of the teachers. I later saw the film with David Hemmings and was not at all impressed with the actor who played the part in the film that I played on the Allhallows School's stage: I felt I had brought more actual life experience to the rôle!

    6. "When I grow up I want to be the Prime Minister who undoes all your stupid laws, you woke, Green, Marxist"

    7. My mother says you talk out of your *rse, and I believe it, I can hear you talking now – and your breath really smells!

  15. Biden poised to lift ban on firing British Storm Shadow missiles into Russia. 11 September 2024.

    Joe Biden is poised to lift a ban on British Storm Shadow missiles being fired into Russia by Ukraine.

    The president is considering changing policy after it emerged Iran is now arming Russia with ballistic missiles, which could be used in Ukraine within weeks.

    Antony Blinken, Mr Biden’s secretary of state, is due in Ukraine on Wednesday with David Lammy, the Foreign Secretary, to discuss lifting restrictions with Volodymyr Zelensky.

    Biden takes the decision. We take the risks.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/09/10/biden-poised-lift-ban-storm-shadow-missiles-russia-ukraine/

    2. I said as much in FSB AS, Is the US now going to sacrifice Britain in the same way it sacrificed Ukraine.

      And with lame-brain Lammy in charge, anything is possible.

      1. It's not inevitable, but will take some cojones to resist. Does Lammy understand what a shower of shit is coming his way, and can he deal with it effectively?

        1. No and no! ‘Morning Paul! Freezing here, but sunny! Not even autumnal, but distinctly wintry!

    3. It seems the War Drums are beating louder. I wouldn't be at all surprised if things get too hot for the US elections to be postponed indefinitely because of 'the International Emergency' . Thus preventing one D Trump from being elected…..

  16. I wonder how many Starmers there will be sitting on the pyres on Guy Fawkws Night

    Also, will it be allowed to go ahead, or is it another example of White Racism

  17. As a by the way, 63 years ago today, HM the Queen issued me with my first Navy Blue suit (and other bits too)

    1. An anniversary worth raising a glass to, and toasting Her Majesty as well. You only recognise what you lost after the event. HM and Prince Phillip were a powerful duo.

    3. Can't remember the EXACT date, might have been the 9th, but it was 56y ago I caught the train to Chepstow and arrived at the Army Apprentices College there.

      1. Similar but 53 years; train to Kingswear; Britannia Rest & Nourishment Centre (or something like that) in Dartmouth.

  18. BTL

    John Nelson
    18 hrs ago
    Criminals: let them out.
    Migrants: let them in.
    Illegal migrants: let them stay.
    Patients: let them wait.
    Pensioners: let them freeze.
    Law abiders: let them pay.

      1. I think so. A lightning strike blew out the local btinternet connections/messages and everything got garbled. I have to wade through a hundred or more reloaded emails today and will reply once I understand all.

  22. BTL Comment:-

    R. Spowart
    just now
    Message Actions
    Is Labour up to the task of reforming the NHS?
    That depends. Is the NHS subservient to Labour or is Labour subservient to the NHS?
    I have long said that the Government does not run the NHS, but rather that the NHS runs the NHS.
    The only function of Government, so far as the NHS is concerned, is to keep providing ever increasing amounts of "resources", NHS Speak for money taken from the pockets of the Poor Bloody Taxpayer.
    Tragically, far to many of those "resources" then get wasted on whatever cause is the flavour of the week, very often in the names of Diversity, Inclusion and Equality, to the detriment of not only the Poor Bloody Taxpayer providing those resources, but also the detriment of those at the sharp end struggling to provide a service with resources limited by the waste at upper management levels.

  23. 392842+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Wednesday 11 September: The early release of prisoners puts Britain’s justice system to shame along with the proposal
    " MAKE CRIME PAY " campaign.

    Hotels could be used to house early-release prisoners, says Justice Secretary
    Homeless inmates could be temporarily placed in taxpayer-funded hotels if community accommodation lacks capacity

    I take it the tax payers have been asked and are in full agreement.

    In point of fact the tax paying majority voter MUST shoulder buch of the blame as in regards of their last forty years " gives us more of the same" via family tree/ best of the worst voting actions.

    We are now, due to their diligence in continuing unabated their destructive voting mode, I do believe we have entered the
    FINAL SOLUTION era.

    Reeves claimed £4,400 in energy support before axing winter
    fuel payments

    Can this not be seen as premeditated murder as in aiding & abetting the culling campaign over the winter months ?

    Will the voting majority, if asked agree that granny an co died
    patriotically aiding the Ukrainian war effort as munition workers,
    or as welfare heroes in putting foreign INVADERS up in 5* hotels before their own needs ?

    1. If three relatively fit people found Winter incredibly difficult goodness knows what a frail elderly person felt.

      I think you need a question mark after 'full agreement'.

      This is the problem with the UK not being a democracy. Why are the foreign criminals not being deported? Why is thought crime being punished more harshly than real crime? Why are there such double standards in our justice system? Why is force used as a weapon to punish those the state hates rather than real criminals? Why are repeat offenders regularly let out? Why are men convicted of rape allowed to go into women's prisons?

      It comes down to the same thing: we were not asked if we wanted massive uncontrolled immigration. It was forced on us without our permission, consent or choice. There's another crime that parallels that: rape. The entire state machine is committing nothing less than domestic abuse and assault.

      1. 392842+ up ticks,

        Morning W,
        Why has the same odious voting pattern been followed these last 30 plus years, time after time these mass uncontrolled / party controlled immigration parties have found favour family tree voters best of the worst voters vote in “more of the same” then
        cry ” this ain’t right” time & time again.

        1. The state controls what method is used and won't change it. It suits big fat state to ensure it doens't have the annoyance of having to ask those paying for it's gormless idiocy for permission.

    2. Once more to pay for all the ongoing mistakes by the idiots (if the cap fits wear it) every person who works and or pays taxes. Pays for their continuous and deliberate mis-service.

    3. Once more to pay for all the ongoing mistakes by the idiots (if the cap fits wear it) every person who works and or pays taxes. Pays for their continuous and deliberate mis-service.

  24. A belated good morning, chums. And thanks, Geoff, for today's NoTTLe site.

    Wordle 1,180 4/6

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  26. Britain must reindustrialise – or condemn itself to permanent decline
    Labour is economically illiterate. It is the Tories who need to make the case for a low-migration model

    Nick Timothy 9 September 2024 • 8:54am

    Every Labour government has left office with unemployment higher than when it began. Keir Starmer says this time it will be different: that he is more interested in wealth creation than levying taxes. Yet already we know this is untrue.

    Government economic policy rests, supposedly, on industrial strategy – something often decried as 1970s corporatism, propping up failing companies, nationalising industries and outsourcing policy to the unions and corporations. But just as there can be good and bad education or health policy, there is good and bad industrial strategy.

    Good industrial strategy creates the conditions for market-led growth by aligning policies and public investment to maximise the bang for their buck. Good industrial strategy aims to unleash competitive forces and innovation: through planning reform to get things built, energy policies to keep us competitive, infrastructure investment to improve transport and digital connectivity, education and training policies to give us the skills we need, and tax rules and regulations to encourage enterprise and investment. For too often red tape stops getting things built and done.

    All this should be backed by monetary and fiscal policies that provide stability, get us saving and investing more, and avoid perverse incentives, such as selling off promising businesses before they reach a critical size, or allowing strategically important industries to fall into distant, foreign hands. The scale of businesses, and who controls them, matters more than orthodoxy suggests.

    This is where even good industrial strategy can become contentious. For it requires the rejection of the laissez-faire policies beloved in the Treasury. Our sustained trade deficit – which ballooned not under Margaret Thatcher, as often assumed, but Tony Blair – causes a vicious cycle of disinvestment and deindustrialisation. Britain has brilliant research universities and a culture of enterprise, but the balance of our economy – over-reliant on services, with elites too casual about the loss of manufacturing – is all wrong.

    While we need a stable long-term policy environment, the state should work closely with particular businesses. If JCB, for example, envisaged a supply chain cluster along the A50 in Staffordshire, we should be happy to designate a special zone, with lighter planning rules and investment incentives. And we should always take an interest in who owns what. As the Chinese owners of British Steel close the blast furnaces that make primary steel at Scunthorpe, they care nothing for the long-term consequences for the local community and for Britain.

    Geopolitical change makes these questions more urgent. But we should anyway recognise that international trade has never been free nor fair. When countries suppress labour costs, subsidise production, dump goods in our markets, and erect tariffs and other barriers to trade, we need to get real. If we want our exporters to be competitive, we will in some sectors need to consider subsidies of our own and even, on occasion, tariffs. The mass production of cheap Chinese electric vehicles, for example, will destroy Western capacity to manufacture our own, which is why we should be prepared to tax them.

    Yet there is little such coherence to the Labour economic policy. Ministers blithely repeat lines such as “decarbonisation must never mean deindustrialisation”, but have no idea what this means in practice.

    For the truth is that the Government is already set up to fail on the economy. It plans to re-regulate the labour market, increasing the risk of employing new workers. It plans to tax jobs, by putting up employers’ National Insurance contributions. It is empowering the unions, by scrapping laws that regulate strikes and handing out inflation-busting pay rises in the public sector and on the railways.

    Its spending choices mean more money for the unions, and less for investment in the technology that will make the public sector more efficient, and less for the infrastructure that will help the economy to grow. The nationalisation of the railways will bring added costs, less funding and – looking at the publicly-owned Northern Rail, which cancelled up to 35 per cent of some services this summer – no improvement in services.

    As the party of consensus and producer interest, the Government is already dismantling the education reforms that made English schools among the best in the world. For school leavers, it is reversing the Tory policy to restrict the number of low-quality university courses, and looks set to increase tuition fees to £12,500 and liberalise the rules for student visas. As a government driven by party politics, its housing targets prioritise not the cities – where demand is greatest and businesses need workers – but the green belt and countryside.

    Policy is most confused when it comes to energy. With the zealotry of a monomaniacal ideologue, the Energy Secretary Ed Miliband is banning oil and gas licences in the North Sea, and looks set to abandon the new nuclear plant at Wylfa in Wales. His policy to decarbonise the National Grid in six years has been written off by experts as impossible and ruinously expensive. Having promised to cut household energy bills by £300 a year, ministers have now gone quiet – because they know their policies mean prices are only going up.

    The spectre of Milibandism haunts the whole economy. At least partly because of net zero policies, ministers are unable to say if the domestic manufacture of primary steel should be treated as a strategic industry that must be protected and guaranteed. Miliband’s ban on the import of coking coal anyway makes the question redundant. Similarly, Britain is unlikely to impose tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles, not just because of Treasury orthodoxy – which promotes open trade with China even as that trade is used to eat Western productive capacity – but because Milibandism demands net zero whatever the cost.

    No country got richer generating less electricity at higher cost. But then no country has taxed its way to prosperity or achieved success by putting mass immigration before training its own people. These are the reasons why Labour will fail, but the Conservatives need to adopt a more muscular economic policy. The state should be small, but it also needs to be smart, strong and strategic.

  27. Good Moaning.
    Hundreds of bulbs snuggled safely in their earthy bed. MB has been going gangbusters on the planting.
    And there are still more to go.

      1. Has he been in my garden? I planted a load of daffs and the next day most of them were uprooted and lying on the path.

      1. And I should add, my work colleague’s (relatively expensive) bike was stolen on Monday in Hampstead and Plod couldn’t have cared less . As we could have guessed.

        1. Perhaps some of it is the type of person who joins the "force"? They appear to look as if they enjoy what they're doing.

  29. Good morning all,

    Clear blue skies overhead McPhee Towers, 9℃ in a brisk Nortrh-West breeze, 13℃ later.

    I don't know if anyone has picked up on this yet. I think I'll hold off on cancelling my 'Speccie' subscription for a bit to see what happens.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ac31386bb524ce12b3051625f9ee8929baca4276fafe52d202288cc1ad4c5f66.png
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/09/10/gb-news-owner-paul-marshall-completes-deal-the-spectator/

    So, GB News, UnHerd and now the Speccie are in Marshall's grasp. Along with the Legatum Institute which sponsored Jordan Peterson's Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC).

    Controlled opposition? Will there be a senior job for son Winston?

    1. I think the predatory nature of buying it and then shovelling debt on to it for a tax arrangement to protect a favoured product was grossly unfair, but our systems allow it. It's mostly why big companies avoid paying tax.

      If Xcorp makes a profit, it loses 25% immediately to big fat state. If xcorp makes a loss, there is no tax payable.

      Amazon does this. The UK operation makes almost no money. It is simply indebted to the Swiss parent. Thus not a penny goes to the tax man while the child company makes money.

    2. Currently on 'Special Offer' sub, offered after I stopped my payments. Going to decide when that expires. It's a quick read these days, comments were sparse but now building again. Seem to read UnHerd more than I used to.

    3. Currently on 'Special Offer' sub, offered after I stopped my payments. Going to decide when that expires. It's a quick read these days, comments were sparse but now building again. Seem to read UnHerd more than I used to.

  30. Morning all 🙂😊
    Similar to other areas we have bright sunshine chilly breeze, but had to pull knit wear over my head and arms into sleeves this morning, for the first time in many months.
    Releasing prisoners is just another way the nasties can push vindictiveness.

  32. For the footie fans..
    Carsley showing Champagne football, after Southgate could only deliver sham painful football.

    1. Sir Starmer has said that he wants to change Britain, (nb, 'change', not improve) and one of the changes is that a member of the public should not approach a policeman.

      2. Reminds me of that old Frank Sinatra song.
        I Did it My Way.
        The first lines are welcoming,
        for one who kneels. Also in the lyrics.

        1. From Coffee House, the Spectator

          How Donald Trump lost the debate
          Comments Share 11 September 2024, 5:59am
          If Kamala Harris is elected president – and that’s a big ‘if’ since the race is still tight – she won it on the debate stage in Philadelphia on Tuesday night. True, her answers were often vague, but they were also inspirational and forward-looking. She avoided the ‘word salads’ that have so often marred her (rare) comments without a teleprompter. She was clear and articulate throughout.

          Harris showed the skill of a professional politician as she avoided being pinned down on her most extreme policy pronouncements from 2019-2020, often denying she ever made them. Trump could have pressed her on those but seldom did.

          Trump’s biggest problem was himself. His answers were angry, defensive, rambling and undisciplined
          Harris effectively stressed her winning position on ‘women’s right to choose’ and damned Trump for his position. (She misstated his views on in-vitro fertilisation, but he rebutted her on that.) She also underscored her support for Obamacare, a smart position nationally, and tied it to John McCain’s vote, a smart position in the swing-state of Arizona.

          Most important of all, Harris displayed the control, sureness and coherence voters demand of their president and commander-in-chief. Demonstrating her ability to occupy the Oval Office was job number one in the debate – and Kamala Harris accomplished it.

          Donald Trump, by contrast, hurt himself time and again. He was constantly angry and defensive, qualities that engage his rallies but alienate all Democrats and many independents, especially women. On the plus side, he repeatedly emphasised his main points on immigration, crime and endless wars – all winning issues for him. He made a strong case that he would encourage fracking, a vital issue in Pennsylvania, and that a Harris administration would kill it. (She denied this.)

          Most popular
          Kate Andrews
          Donald Trump was his own worst enemy in this debate

          But all too often Trump’s points were obscured by his hyperbole, fulminations and digressions.

          That’s how he managed to submerge was should have been a central argument: ‘Are you better off now than you were four years ago?’ That vital point got lost in the weeds. His weeds. In fact, Harris managed to flip the meaning of that phrase, saying it was all part of her opponent’s ‘backward-looking campaign.’

          Trump’s strongest moment came at the beginning of his closing statement. To paraphrase, ‘If you’ve got all these great ideas, Vice President Harris, why haven’t you done them in the three and a half years you and Biden have held office?’ Great point. But instead of emphasising it, Trump let that winning argument trail away. He should have nailed it down by giving specific data on immigration and then repeating his question. He should have done the same thing with inflation, real income and rebuilding the military to deter enemies. Buttress the points with some data and then repeat the damaging question. He didn’t. He simply returned to his fulminations and exaggerations, which Harris had already labelled a tired, old act.

          If Harris’s principal theme was that another Trump presidency would be backward-looking, the former president gave her plenty to work with. Asked about whether he won the 2020 election, he should have said, ‘I have some views about that, but, like voters all across America, what I really want to focus on is the upcoming election. I want to explain why I would make America more prosperous and peaceful and why my opponent would not.’ Instead, Trump decided to relitigate 2020. He was preaching to the choir, alienating undecided voters and indulging his own sense of victimisation and righteous indignation. It is not a winning debate strategy.

          How did the moderators do? Not well, though many viewers (and all Harris supporters) will disagree. They certainly asked a series of vital questions and should get credit for that. But they also did something they never should have done: they intervened repeatedly to correct one of the candidates. Go ahead, guess which one. All the interventions were against Trump. David Muir and Linsey Davis did it some five or seven times, depending on how one counts their intrusions. They said nothing critical of Harris. That bias matches the results of a study by the Media Research Center’s study, which reports ABC News coverage of Harris has been 100 per cent positive since she replaced Biden. Their coverage of Trump has been 93 per cent negative.

          Even if you are a Harris fan and say that Trump lied and Harris didn’t, it is not the job of the moderators to intervene and rebut one candidate. During the debate, that’s the job of the other candidate. After the debate, it’s the job of other journalists and the opposing campaign.

          But biased moderators weren’t Trump’s biggest problem. Neither was Harris’s smooth, commanding performance. Trump’s biggest problem was himself. His answers were angry, defensive, rambling and undisciplined. He spoke like he was addressing a rally of the faithful, not millions of voters unsure who to vote for or whether to vote at all.

          Trump’s reckless performance will be costly. He blew his best opportunity of the campaign and will have to work hard to recover. Kamala Harris did exactly the opposite and will surely build on the momentum. She seized the opportunity in Philadelphia, won the debate easily and increased her chances of capturing the biggest prize of all.

          1. I only saw a brief clip but in it Harris claimed that she will protect democracy and the American constitution. Lies spoken easily and with a straight face. She and Starmer are out of the same mold, or should that be mould, as in fungus?

          2. From Coffee House, the Spectator

            Americans were failed by the Trump-Harris debate
            Comments Share 11 September 2024, 6:08am
            The first presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump was a missed opportunity for both candidates and, as such, a disappointment for American voters.

            Trump had three points he needed to land against Kamala Harris: that voters cannot trust her because she is constantly changing her policy positions without a satisfactory explanation; that she covered up President Joe Biden’s cognitive deficiencies from the American people and then participated in a political coup to take him out when it was politically convenient for her; and that she has had three and a half years to do the things she claims she will do on ‘Day One’ as president.

            Trump pointed out a few times that she had changed her position on fracking and defunding the police, but could have more successfully threaded the needle on what that means for her campaign. Why did she change those positions? Did she have a legitimate political transformation? Or was it, as Senator Bernie Sanders said, that she knew she needed to do it to win the election? If we believe it’s the latter, make the case that she will govern as the radical she presented herself as in 2019.

            On point two, Trump brought up that Biden was forced out in a coup and noted Harris’s involvement, but did not get to the kill shot: Harris claimed repeatedly on air both before and after the June debate that Biden was perfectly well.

            Finally, Trump waited until his closing answer to hit Harris for not doing now what she promises to do after winning the presidency. It was one of his most effective moments and should have been used earlier and more often.

            Harris, meanwhile, needed to introduce herself to the American people during this debate. She successfully disarmed Trump multiple times, such as when she pivoted from easily her worst issue – immigration – by baiting Trump to talk about his crowd sizes.

            But her performance was ultimately a disservice to voters who wanted to know more about her policy positions and were left with a whole lot of platitudes and no explanation as to her shifting policy stances over the past four years. How many times can you say ‘opportunity economy’ while dodging on whether the economy is better now than it was four years ago?

            The worst of the debate, though, came from the abysmal and uneven job undertaken by the ABC moderators. While Trump only has himself to blame for some of his meandering and off-topic answers when Harris had her belly exposed, it’s tough to be in a debate against three challengers. David Muir and Linsey Davis consistently ‘fact-checked’ Trump after his responses – including on his reference to former Virginia governor Ralph Northam saying that doctors and parents could have a ‘conversation’ about letting a baby die after an unsuccessful abortion – and then punted to Harris to finish the job. They did not fact check Harris once on the plenty of false statements she made, such as insinuating Trump did not condemn neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, claiming Trump supports abortion bans and banning IVF, alleging police officers died on January 6, that Trump said there would be a ‘bloodbath’ if Biden won re-election and that his agenda is Project 2025.

            Ultimately, it’s better to err on the side of letting the debaters ‘fact-check’ one another. The job of any good debater is to correct your opponent when they get things wrong. But if moderators are going to step in, they need to be willing to do it fairly on both sides. That sadly did not come even close to happening tonight.

            Harris probably had more to lose tonight with a bad debate, and she did fine. But her team immediately came out proposing a second debate, which means they are either overconfident and think they can put a final nail in Trump’s coffin, or they think Harris didn’t do enough to pull out a clear victory. Either way, it’s a risky proposal. Trump is known to perform better in his second-round debates, and it’s unlikely he’d agree again to an obviously biased-against-him news network like ABC. Fox News, of course, has already offered to host the next match-up.

          3. Harris managed to push Trump of track and into insupportable rants. Trump had been warning of biased moderators, he should have been prepared to avoid them and calmly focused on Democrat misdeeds.

            Harris did not win the debate, Trump threw away the opportunity to win over non committed voters to the Republican side.

            A good example would have been that it doesn't matter if the illegals are eating family pets or not, Trump could have avoided the moderator supporting cast put downs by using less inflammatory words to highlight the behaviors of the mobs.

            Theynmay as well have given Trudeau the keys to the White House – same lefty policies.

          4. Yes I suppose so.
            Trump disappoints. I’ve never supported him because of that. Whereas people may vote for Harris because she’s not Trump I would be inclined to vote Trump because he isn’t Harris.
            But he’s never convinced me as seriously presidential.

    1. 40 billion quid on an app. Dear life. For reference, a big agency we sub contract to charges about £2000-4000 per sprint – a 2 week period. Each sprint produces workable – if cludgy software.

      There's usually a team of about 5 developers, including QA, project management and so on. This is talking about 5,000,000 weeks of time to poduce a simple app that relied heavily on users firstly having the thing open, having the right radio on, that the radio connections worked, that the data was then uploaded and then reported on usefully.

      That's one coincidence built on another on another and another built on unreliable hardware.

      Government is incompetent. The only possible way this could have not been laughed out of the room by anyone with the remotest knowledge of IT is down to absolute, unutterable ignorance and stupidity.

      1. How about corruption? Money to friends etc. Plus who on earth suggested Dido Harding with her dreadful track record?

        1. That was my first thought. Yet more money laundering. The covid scam achieved the greatest ever transfer of wealth from the public to the private purse.

      3. Not that it helps the £40 billion included salaries of all those fannying around doing the contracting etc etc etc…

  35. As our business has grown we've moved into other areas and picked up new people to provide those services: such as contract writing and project planning. Increasingly customers are asking us to integrate and support software.

    As I can't stand people, we hired folk (your youngest, most efficient employee) who knows a host of programming languages to support the integration bits. He came to our team meeting yesterday with a stack of proposals, projections and evidence of where he wants to take his bit of the business. Today we officially launch a 'sub company' (so it can run or fail on it's own) with him as the director and he will hire – with our guidance and support for another developer to take on some of his workload. We have one large customer that is paying for this hire almost on it's own.

    I suppose I am comically proud of – from 6 years ago wanting to pack it in to get a normal job to finding myself an employee of the people I had hired, and now expanding to a completely different direction that I personally wanted to avoid.

    1. Good for you! – let's hope the government don't succeed in taxing and regulating you out of business.

          1. What is more, after several decades as an expat, there is no avenue for returning.

            not that I would particularly want to move back to Essex but the UK has been an obvious option for escaping Trudeauland!

          3. With Harris about to bring the US down to our level, calm waters are becoming harder to navigate.

          4. Indeed, having done it myself back in 1998. Don’t regret a moment – but then, I hadn’t much family to leave behind (Mother, Brother & fam – none of whom seemed to give a flying one where we lived.

      2. The Warqueen set up our accounts system. Our accountant is very good, but the shell companies in multiple different low tax countries is just so byzantine.

        It's daft. El Warqueeno explained it simply to me: for every 5% lower taxes are, 6/7/8/9% more is raised. Low taxes create wealthand growth. Who'd bother avoiding tax is it was 5%?

        More, who'd feel they had to if taxes went on things that were tangible to the citizen?

        1. Scandinavian countries traditionally had high tax but very good welfare. People didn’t mind, but now when welfare started to go to scroungers (there weren’t that many before) and immigrants, they have had enough.

    2. Go where fortune takes you.If you cannot do it yourself hire someone who can. Never give up.
      Well done.

    3. Similar here, decided after speaking with IFA to go for retirement. Now – any direction I like, and only responsible for myself (and younger family who are 99% independent of me). You probably have a few options, take a while to decide – good luck 🙂

      1. Our business has given us independence, freedom and a way of life no other job would have given us.

        When mobile phones and laptop computers were available we decided to buy a boat – which we found in the Baltic – and then sailed down to the Mediterranean and cruised around the Med with our two children exploring the classical world. We ran the 'office' from Mianda and flew back to France for Christmas, Easter and the Summer School holidays to run our residential French courses for Sixth Formers. (Here is Christo, aged 11, soliloquising at the classical theatre at Epidauros)

        How many MPs have actually started a new business from scratch and spent 35 years entirely dependent on the income that the business provided?

        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9d0f8a50052ff4aebb2c82f0be088eaeeeb1b13a6baa7e61e8694f3246e6f2aa.png

        1. Ours gave us financial freedom once sold. Built up over many years, an IT based business, so some hairy moments this being at the outset around mid 80s. Your question?….guessing a number of 0s…

          1. Christo (in the photo) is now an aerospace engineer; his younger brother, Henry, writes programs for artificial intelligence.

    2. I wonder if he's one of the releases who've vowed to vote Labour, having been released by 2TK. More likely re-incarcerated by time of next election.

    3. A response and to Conway too.
      Bows and crossbows are still legal. We defeated the French with the bow, there is no reason that we could not rout machete wielding thugs with them.

    4. The BBC should be forced to make that public. Of course, they'll do everything to protect the foreign criminal.

    1. Totally agree, but he didn't mention how much more money is being spent to house feed and clothe illegal invaders. Let alone keep them warm in the coming winter months.
      They talk about nearly everything but never actually do anything at all.

  41. Apparently not the cause of inflation, Sue. Have a bridge here if anyone interested? email address: doyouthinkI'macompletefool @wherever.wherever

    3. I don't think he'll be looking in – and after his dismissal of Poppiesmum when she went to see him to see if he was ok, I'm not surprised.
      I looked up his last email reply to me and it was a diatribe against various other members still here, so I won't be posting it. That was on 28/11/20.
      He was banned for his vicious attack on Conway, and although he came back as Peter Anderson, that wasn't for very long.

    1. With only 20% of the votes, It's all he can do Richard, scrape the barrel.
      And of course at everyone else's expense.

    1. Good point Sue. If a dozen police will arrest you for one swear word it clearly says that your freedom will be revoked in the very near future too.

  47. I was thinking of getting one of those intercom devices so you can see who is at the front door and talk to them without having to open the door, quite cheap now on eBay. I had the police specifically in mind about that.

  49. As Dave Rubin pointed out she lied all the way through the debate, for what it was worth, with three chairs backing her and deliberately undermining Trump. It was hardly a legitimate debate but, I'm afraid, that will not matter. I think she will win. I fervently hope not because it will be the end of the USA and possibly the end of us all. As Rubin said: "She is deeply evil." And so is the Democrat Party.

    1. The question is lo longer "Who would be the better president?"
      The question now is "Who will be the less disastrous?"

      1. I don't personally think that Trump would be a disaster. On the contrary. It is the 2 tier press (not to mention the fraudulent voting system) that has done for him. Yes, he is "larger than life" and a bit vulgar (sharp intake of breath) but he is a fundamentally decent man who cares about his country.

    2. Almost certainly Harris will win. Even if Trump manages to scrape through with sufficient votes he will be fraudulently deprived of victory.
      No way are they going to let him have another four years in the White House.

    1. Supt Rebecca Love.. "We recognise in this instance we got it wrong.. the suspect didn't rise to the bait, failed to become violent. Lessons will learned.. We''ll get you eventually. Oh, and you think you won this battle do you? Wait for your next car insurance premium. Have you received a cancellation letter from your bank yet? Enjoy."

    2. Supt Rebecca Love.. "We recognise in this instance we got it wrong.. the suspect didn't rise to the bait, failed to become violent. Lessons will learned.. We''ll get you eventually. Oh, and you think you won this battle do you? Wait for your next car insurance premium. Have you received a cancellation letter from your bank yet? Enjoy."

    3. Supt Rebecca Love.. "We recognise in this instance we got it wrong.. the suspect didn't rise to the bait, failed to become violent. Lessons will learned.. We''ll get you eventually. Oh, and you think you won this battle do you? Wait for your next car insurance premium. Have you received a cancellation letter from your bank yet? Enjoy."

    4. There is no prohibition on filming in public in England and Wales. In 2010, ACPO issued a letter on this to all forces. I have to wonder if the police are just trying in on or just want you to stop filming anyhow. If the latter, it shows woeful training standards. As for the standard "terrorist suspicion" it's pure bs. as terrorists don't go around drawing attention to them selves in public. More likely it's the standard catch-all clause to nick someone.

  51. I would ask to see the list of swear words. if the one I used was on it, I would think if I had heaard it said on any TV or Radio programme and by whom.

    I would then demand the police arrested them, too.

    If they did not, I would query Why

  52. Well, what bloody weather!
    Damp, turned fine, VERY heavy hail shower, fine again so I got the chainsaw out and started cutting ash trunks into manageable sections, then it began raining again.
    Finished the trunk sections that I had ready so, a bit damp have come in for a tea.
    And it's turned bloody fine again!!!!

    1. That's the sort of experiences I have. I spent hours last week spraying the moss that has taken root in various areas including roofs. Not mentioned in the forecasts, but next day it rained. Now I have got to go and buy some more moss killer.

    3. It's been decidedly blowy but bright-ish here so made the most of it with the washing out. I figure every hour it's outside is less tumbling to do.

    4. We've had alternate sunshine, gale force wind and lashing rain all day today, I've got loads of logging to do but can't get started

  53. https://www.resistance.org/criminals-as-social-allies

    Criminals as Social Allies of Marxism
    Even prior to the Communist Revolution in Russia, the future Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin mobilized criminals as “social allies” against political opponents and for funding through theft and extortion. Nobel Prize winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn noted in his masterwork, The Gulag Archipelago:

    “Stalin was always partial to the thieves — after all, who robbed the banks for him? Back in 1901 his comrades in the Party and in prison accused him of using common criminals against his political enemies. From the twenties on, the obliging term "social ally" came to be widely used. That was Makarenko's contention too: these could be reformed.”

    He continued:

    "Not only did the articles of the Code dealing with thieves and bandits not oppress the thief; he was, in fact, proud of his convictions under them. And he was supported in this pride by all the chiefs in blue shoulder boards and blue piping. ‘Oh, that's nothing. Even though you're a bandit and a murderer, you are not a traitor of the Motherland, you are one of our own people; you will reform…’"

    The Soviet state turned a blind eye to criminal gangs and even facilitated their activities. Whereas law-abiding citizens were disarmed, criminals possessing weapons were not punished. Efforts to disarm them were “just a game,” and criminals could murder with impunity:

    "There was no Section Eleven — for organization — in the thieves' articles in the Code. Organization was not forbidden the thieves. And why should it be? Let it help develop in them the feelings of collectivism that people in our society need so badly. And disarming them was just a game. They weren't punished for having a weapon. Their thieves' law was respected (‘They can't be anything but what they are’). And a new murder in the cell would not increase a murderer's sentence, but instead would bring him new laurels.”

    Thieves, murderers, and career criminals received token punishment if any:

    “Nor had the thieves ever been put through the same kind of interrogation [as other prisoners]. Their entire interrogation had consisted of two sessions, an easy trial, and an easy sentence, and they wouldn't have to serve it out. They would be released ahead of time: either they would be amnestied or else they would simply escape…

    "[V. I. Ivanov (now from Ukhta) got Article 162 (thievery) nine times and Article 82 (escape) five times, for a total of thirty-seven years in prison — and he ‘served out’ five to six years for all of them.]

    "Even during interrogation, no one ever deprived a thief of his legitimate parcels — consisting of abundant packages from the loot kept by his underworld comrades who were still on the loose. He never grew thin, was never weak for a single day, and in transit he ate at the expense of the innocent non-thieves, whom he called, in his own jargon, the frayera — ‘frayers,’ or ‘innocents,’ or ‘suckers…’

    In this perverse Orwellian world, criminals enjoyed privileged status, and were deemed the only “Humans” with a capital letter.

    “[‘Frayer’ is a blatnoi — underworld — word meaning nonthief — in other words, not a Chelovek ("Human being," with a capital letter). Well, even more simply: the frayera were all nonthief, nonunderworld mankind.]”

    Today, the practices Solzhenitsyn describes can be identified as historical antecedents of modern “criminal justice reform,” including policies of “catch and release,” non-prosecution, abolition of bail, and early release. Solzhenitsyn explained that these policies were grounded in Lenin’s so-called “Progressive Doctrine,” decades before the term entered mainstream U.S. political discourse as the ideology of far-left neo-Marxist extremists:

    “And why shouldn't they steal, if there was no one to put a stop to it? Three or four brazen thieves working hand in glove could lord it over several dozen frightened and cowed pseudo politicals. With the approval of the administration. On the basis of the Progressive Doctrine.

    “Yes, that is a question! Every sound and every complaining cry can be heard, and the convoy just keeps marching back and forth — why doesn't he interfere? Just a yard away from him, in the half- dark cave of the compartment, they are plundering a human being — why doesn't the soldier of the government police interfere?

    “For the very same reason: he, too, has been indoctrinated. Even more than that: after many years of favoring thieves, the convoy has itself slipped in their direction. The convoy has itself become a thief.”

    Lenin’s “progressive” doctrine, of course, is a euphemism representing the opposite of its stated claim, like so many other terms used under communism. Soviet officials benefited from their criminal “social allies:”

    “From the middle of the thirties until the middle of the forties, during that ten-year period of the thieves' most flagrant debauches and most intense oppression of the politicals [political prisoners], no one at all can recall a case in which a convoy guard intervened in the plundering of a political in a cell, in a railroad car, or in a Black Maria. But they will tell you of innumerable cases in which the convoy accepted stolen goods from the thieves and, in return, bought them vodka, snacks (sweeter than the rations, too), and smokes. The examples are so numerous as to be typical.

    “The convoy sergeant, after all, hasn't anything either: he has his gun, his greatcoat roll, his mess tin, his soldier's ration. It would be cruel to require him to escort an enemy of the people in an expensive overcoat or chrome-leather boots or with a swag of luxurious city articles — and to reconcile himself to that inequality. Was not taking these things just one additional form of the class struggle, after all? And what other norms were there?”

    What, then, was the concern of the Soviet police state, if actual criminals were let off scot-free or with token punishment? As Solzhenitsyn repeatedly documents, the state’s punitive activities were directed towards liquidating political enemies, ideological dissenters, and religious believers. He continued:

    “According to Makarenko, the origin of crime lay solely in the ‘counter revolutionary underground.’ (Those were the ones who couldn't be reformed — engineers, priests, SRs, Mensheviks.)”

    These policies of the Soviet regime are similar to those of the US Biden-Harris administration today. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies are tasked against political opponents and ideological dissenters, whereas thieves and violent criminals are set free without bail and are eligible for early release. Criminals are portrayed as victims, whereas their true victims, disproportionately from minority communities, are ignored.

    Criminal “social allies” engaging in political violence and destruction for favored causes are rarely arrested, and when arrested are typically released without being charged. Then-Senator Kamala Harris donated money to a fund which bailed out violent rioters and looters. Media attention focuses on high-profile deaths of career criminals from police abuses demonstrated by statistics to be extremely rare, whereas the resultant crime wave and vast surge in deaths of innocents from cries to “defund the police” has received scarcely a mention from activist media outlets.

    Just as Bolsheviks attacked police officers in the street to destabilize the Tsarist regime, intentional efforts to destabilize America and increase violent crime played a key role in the leftist political strategy during the runup to the 2020 election. Far-left politicians incited “uprisings,” unrest, and harassment. Individuals who have made a career of extortion inciting violence for the left have been lionized. Like Stalin’s bank robbers, today’s neo-Marxist activists engage in extortion and shakedowns of American businesses to fund their subversive political activities under the banner of “social justice.” Just as Bolsheviks allowed criminals to keep their weapons, contemporary Marxist officials have refused to press gun charges against criminal “social allies.”

    The Biden administration has enriched and strengthened criminal cartels engaged in human trafficking and drug smuggling with its open borders policy, contributing to brazen murders of police officers and civilians in Mexico and Central America. Far-left Congressional Democrats have sought to shield illegal alien gang members and other criminals from deportation, even while working to weaponize the justice system against political opponents.

    National voting rights for convicted felons has been a “progressive” wish-list item since at least 2005 as a means to expand the Democratic constituency. Socialist senator Bernie Sanders wants to let felons vote from prison, notwithstanding that most Americans don’t want to give imprisoned felons the right to vote. Even as leftist media and “fact-checkers” have criticized claims that leftists’ desire to expand felon voting is politically motivated, data cited by the Washington Post and Politifact demonstrate that convicted felons identify with the Democratic Party over the Republican Party by a wide margin, often by several-fold. The Washington Times noted in 2005 that “Most people think perpetrators of serious crimes have violated the public trust and cannot be permitted to help determine the future of the communities they harmed…serious lawbreakers should not help elect the country’s lawmakers.” Yet in 2021, overreaching federal legislation supported by every Congressional Democrat seeks to require all states to restore voting rights to convicted felons who were stripped of their rights because of causing serious harm to their societies.

    Conservative commentator Tucker Carlson noted that “Democratic politicians don't fear the mob. Why? Because they don't need to. They control the mob. The mob operates with their permission. These are their foot soldiers. This is their militia. In unguarded moments, Democrats make it very clear that they know this." Even liberal commentator Bill Maher acknowledged in 2020 that Joe Biden would have to wear looting "on his back into the election" because it is being done by the left.

    Just as under the Soviet system, today’s US neo-Marxists have no interest in decreasing crime, but have facilitated and encouraged it. Crime plays an important role in furthering their extremist agenda, and criminals have never been more important as “social allies.”

    Human Rights, Democracy, Ethics

    Copyright © 2021 http://Resistance.org

  54. I didn't know that, wibbs; it is not apparent in the above paragraph: "With the zealotry of a monomaniacal ideologue, the Energy Secretary Ed Miliband …"

    1. Where is Grizzly when we need his opinion?

      I hope all is well with him – he hasn't been around recently.

  57. 'Morning All
    I would like to think any MP that voted to end the WFA then claimed energy expenses would die of shame
    But I won't hold my breath…….
    https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/09/10/19/89500099-13835127-image-a-19_1725992093827.jpg
    Rest
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b3a4825afb73270ae17af7f5a660d3d291edafed6b70a1568366a66ca5f9b439.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/94fa989b3a59f2c1bea5979726fc4ce841b8a0b5bc8131b9f64e69c23a271ecf.jpg
    http://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1179530c86394e480716181a39d4cb4789514919b01ca435d6fcecb64260bac5.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7760532156bc8972938d415a0d14e49ad6d3ba94c3c6f6d7dfb4999e4226f3c0.png
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/691422996ec540642761708cb9e90e037c9861db8972aa653ff2008156a98d7a.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a5586e2344acebfbc861a6507f6e53c374e73938f8940a1559d439e03a848316.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/32b594f51553d0f14f20536d047cdfd79f4ed07e849bff20612da69673f2553a.jpg

    1. Double plus uptick for Thomas Sowell. In every interview with him he simply states the facts and presents the statistics to back it up.

      I wish we could use an Apache on the permawhinging gaza nutters. Everything is back to front.

  59. Incidently.. this viral Tweet
    illustrates "both-right-both-wrong" in the Anarcho-Tyranny stage of societal breakdown. And how a regime uses the Leftie sleight of hand to pit one side against the other.

    The officer invites the gobby bystander to "come with us & see what we experience". Hence the need for six burly coppers & six teletubbies to investigate this minor disturbance in Uxbridge.

    Fair enough.

    However, what the copper really meant to say was..

    "Ah well you see Sir, ever since The big change which happened after the militant social liberal Roy Jenkins became Home Secretary in December 1965 – there was a collapse in the idea of personal responsibility. Until his era, the official aim of prisons was still the Edwardian principle of 'the due punishment of responsible persons'. And the job of the police was the Victorian task of deterring crime and, where that failed, catching the criminal and bringing him before the courts. The job of the courts was to punish those they convicted. They did not necessarily expect to do the criminal any good, but to deter others from doing the same.

    But after the liberal victory, both responsibility and punishment were regarded as obsolete relics. Wicked behaviour was blamed on poverty and bad housing, the supposed 'causes of crime'. So punishment was outmoded and cruel. The aim of prison was to rehabilitate, not punish.

    So sir, gone are the days of one 6ft 8" copper turning up and the ne'er do wells disperse looking shifty. Nowadays we have no respect. And you know what.. it's going to get a thousand times worse."

    Btw, you're nicked for being faaar right. You're racist. Homophobe. You're a xenophobe. You patriarchal transphobic.You're lidderally Hilter."
    https://x.com/NotFarLeftAtAll/status/1833537044746015198

    1. #metoo

      OT: I missed your posting of personal details last week in response to my plea for help in getting St Bart's ticket website to work because they had been wisely deleted before I saw them. Thus you remain safe. Finally got the tickets to print out and may see you tomorrow evening.

      1. I didn't realise 'til this morning that one of speakers against the motion is the son of the guy who poured millions into GBN and has bought the Speccie. Winston Marshall/Sir Paul Marshall.

        1. ..and Danny Kruger is the local MP hereabouts who has exceeded expectations since he was selected to replace the appalling Claire Perry (now a Lib-Dum)

  61. From The Critic

    The odd world of Peter Oborne
    How has a far-sighted conservative commentator fallen so far?

    Artillery Row
    By Ben Sixsmith
    8 September, 2024

    Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch, claims the veteran commentator Peter Oborne, represent the “conversion” of the Conservative Party to “something like … the neo-Nazi AfD”. I’m going to side-step the necessary but off-topic argument about whether “neo-Nazi” describes the AfD — purely because I know little about them — and ask whether Oborne really thinks Jenrick (married to the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors) and Badenoch (a black woman) have anything in common with neo-Nazis?

    Yes, he does. In the case of Jenrick it is because the MP for Newark has said that he would vote for Donald Trump — not a neo-Nazi — and in the case of Badenoch it is because she has defended Douglas Murray — a commentator I have deep disagreements with but who is not, nonetheless, a neo-Nazi. Oborne does not mention any of their actual policy preferences — none of which, you’ll be surprised to hear, have anything to do with racial purity and imperial expansionism.

    The hysterical denunciation of Conservatives to his right is nothing new to Oborne. In 2020 he wrote that Boris Johnson was “the inheritor of [Enoch] Powell’s legacy and the modern carrier of the Powellite flame”. Johnson went on to oversee unprecedented levels of immigration. He had as much to do with Powellism as a giraffe has to do with the Antarctic.

    Honestly, it’s sad to read Peter Oborne. I want to like his work. I like people who go against the grain. I like conservatives who opposed Blair’s catastrophic wars and who are prepared to criticise Israel. I’m definitely predisposed towards liking cricket fans.

    But something peculiar happened in the intellectual life of Mr Oborne in the noughties. He went from being something like a British paleoconservative — a Eurosceptic and a prescient post-9/11 anti-interventionist — to our most prominent defender of political Islam.

    To describe his opinions as having drifted towards Islamophilia doesn’t quite cut it. I don’t mean that he admires the spiritual and cultural riches of Islam. I mean he has a strange inclination towards praising and defending Islamists.

    That’s the sort of claim that needs evidence. Oborne has defended the theocratic Muslim Brotherhood (“not fanatics or extremists”, unlike Kemi Badenoch presumably). In 2015, he wrote a warm — though not entirely uncritical — profile of the Hizb ut-Tahrir leader Dr Abdul Wahid, which favourably quoted Wahid’s comment that “extremist is the secular word for heretic”. It would have been interesting for Oborne to ask Dr Wahid what he would do with heretics. According to the Telegraph, the Hizb ut-Tahrir leader posted on the day of Salman Rushdie’s 2022 stabbing: “I doubt you will find anyone who loves [Allah] feeling sympathy for someone who insulted him.” This makes Oborne’s earlier praise of the breadth of his reading seem morbidly ironic.

    In Oborne’s book A Dangerous Delusion — co-authored with David Morrison, and arguing that there is no meaningful nuclear threat from Iran — he claimed that the Ayatollah Khomeini was “one of the greatest theologians of all time”, whose “teaching contained insights which went far deeper than anything the rationalists and materialists of the United States could imagine”. Would that my rationalist and materialist mind could summon up deep insights along the lines of “please murder a novelist who offended me”.

    In 2015, Oborne was listed among the endorsers of the “Islamophobia Awards” of the Khomeinite Islamic Human Rights Commission (“thee[sic] Islamophobia awards are so very important”). To my knowledge, he did not retract this endorsement when the “winners” turned out to include the murdered staffers of Charlie Hebdo.

    Utter a bad word about Islam or Muslims and Oborne will be on your tail. In 2019, he opened an article about Roger Scruton’s writing on Islam by reminding us of “Nazi philosopher Alfred Baeumler [who] legitimised the racist, exterminating ideology of Hitler’s Nazi party through his nightmare interpretation of 19th-century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.” (I’m not suggesting that Mr Oborne thinks that Scruton was equivalent to Baeumler but what an example to raise.) After Scruton’s death, in 2020, it took Oborne two days to produce an article which called Scruton — granted, after warmer words — “an ignorant bigot when it came to Islam” who played “[a] malign role in giving comfort to bigots”.

    For Jeremy Corbyn, meanwhile, Oborne had almost nothing but praise. To be clear, I am not suggesting that one must have no praise for Mr Corbyn (a man whose cheerful exile from Keir Starmer’s joyless Labour Party makes him look at least somewhat sympathetic to me). But for Oborne, no modern politician “has been proved right so quickly – or so often”. Corbyn’s re-election as Leader of the Labour Party in 2016, Oborne wrote, “vindicated everything he has ever done and said as a man and a politician”. Everything? On the IRA? On Venezuela? On Hezbollah and Hamas? I’m not sure that even Mr Corbyn’s wife would issue such a sweeping claim.

    Oborne is the sort of “conservative” that leftists call something like “the only good Tory”. When you’re in this position, as the right-winger leftists love or the favourite leftist of right-wingers, you should ask yourself why. Is your self-descriptor still applicable? Or are you among friends and allies but with a past that makes you feel nostalgically exotic?

    I don’t pretend to understand the strange philosophical world of Peter Oborne, in which Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick represent a frightening lurch towards neo-Nazism but the Muslim Brotherhood are a great bunch of lads and Jeremy Corbyn is a secular saint. In its strangeness and idiosyncratic status, it is almost charming. Right-wing, though — or reasonable, or compelling — it is not.

    1. Four things you should know about Sweden.. unlike the UK.
      1/ All Swedes are extremely patriotic, and outside of Stockholm & other cities.. 90% of all large gardens proudly feature a flagpole and national flag.
      2/ Outside of Stockholm & other cities most rural Swedes are armed.
      3/ Muzzies hate the cold and have been known to hastily return south after transportation anywhere above Västerås.
      4/ Message to Muzzies.. Don't push your luck with Swedes.

      1. Are you in Sweden, Kowloonbhoy? or lived there before?
        It's very much like Norway in those respects. Flagpole, pennant, firearms… and the ability to use them. Everybody has done National Service, too, so know how to use the firearms.

    3. I genuinely don't get it.

      They come here supposedly for the advantages this country offers – such as indoor plumbing and running water. Then they set about trying to make it like the place they came from.

      Why, when they kick off do we not simply say 'Fine, you're off to Iranistan – one way'.

  63. I'm back:
    Wordle 1,180 4/6

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

    1. Ooh look at me!
      Dont tell anyone but even with all five letters, I struggled to solve the puzzle.

      Wordle 1,180 3/6

      🟨⬜⬜⬜🟩
      ⬜🟨🟨🟨⬜
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

  64. Can anyone point me toward the official definition governing freedom of speech in English law, plus the terrorism act?

      1. Wow. Out of control Plod AGAIN.

        “Under the Policing law” lol

        “Genuinely sorry” my arse. They are sorry they got caught, is all.

      2. Wow. Out of control Plod AGAIN.

        “Under the Policing law” lol

        “Genuinely sorry” my arse. They are sorry they got caught, is all.

    2. The official explanation was offered by Yvette Cooper, who simply stated, 'The whole thing is just smoke and mirrors but I intend to jail you if you say anything I don't like. Clear?'

    3. You are free to say what you like with the following exceptions:

      1. Anything the state doesn't like
      2. Anything muslim doesn't like
      3. Anything blacks don't like
      4. Anything trannies don't like
      ….
      5009883. Anything anyone else doesn't like.

      Truth has no relevance here. The exceptions still apply.

  65. But they do seem to be a certain type of person – what they do justifies much stronger words, I agree.

  67. Just posted on Free Speech, a corruscating piece on the monumental waste and woke inefficiency that is endemic in the NHS, by a junior doctor who works in it – Demosthenes, who some of you might remember from BTL in the Spectator. Also posted is a delightful piece by Iain Hunter on the philosopher poet, Leonard Cohen, who Iain thinks was a prophet. If you can, please read and comment.

    freespeechbacklash.com

    Below is a link to a comment I posted last night, on a prisoner released early, in for reportedly killing somebody with a machete, charged with manslaughter and given two years eight months inside.
    http://disq.us/p/309rqot

  68. UK imposes sanctions on 10 ships in crackdown on Russia’s shadow oil fleet. 11 September 2024.

    The UK has taken new steps to clamp down on Russia’s shadow fleet exporting oil and funding Moscow’s war machine, with the Foreign Office announcing sanctions on 10 ships that it believes to be at heart of the operation.

    Russia has a large fleet of often unseaworthy and ageing tankers that transport Russian gas and oil products around the globe. Oil exports are Vladimir Putin’s most critical revenue source for funding the war in Ukraine, accounting for about a quarter of the Russian budget in 2023.

    Speaking on his way to Kyiv to meet Ukrainian leaders, the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, said: “Putin’s war machine is funded by a dark and illicit economic system that this government is committed to destabilising.

    All this, is in my view, a Casus Belli. There is no link to Ukraine. It is a blatant attack on the Russian State and Russian sovereignty.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/sep/11/uk-sanctions-ships-crackdown-russia-shadow-oil-fleet

    2. I know Lammy is economically illiterate, but does he really think he has any right to stop Russian vessels?

      The ego of this government, it's hatred of free market economics, it's insane belief it is of any use or value whatsoever is mind boggling.

      Hey, Lammy! GO AWAY.

  70. Culling The Elderly – At Last Pensioners Can Do Their Bit For Keir

    HOW THE BIG CHILL BENEFITS LABOUR

    by Simon Carr for Guido

    It is clear that Keir’s mission to restore trust in public life has only made preliminary progress. Nonetheless, something very like a political genius is emerging from the chrysalis of his first months in office.

    It is well known that the older people get, the more conservative they become. Keir’s strategy of releasing prisoners, giving asylum seekers the vote, and encouraging illegal immigration is now matched on the other side of the register by helping on their way the hobbling, wobbling, trembling, Tory-voting, benefit-scrounging, NHS-devouring pensioner population.

    The Government have artfully concealed this “punishment beating of pensioners” (Edward Leigh) as a fiscally-driven measure to “fix the foundations”, “end the Tory chaos”, “restore stability to public finances”.

    That argument is contestable. Several speakers pointed out that cancelling the payment may save £1.5 billion but it will tip a million pensioners into poverty – and when they take up Pension Credit it will cost £3 billion to save that £1.5.

    However, there is an obvious counter.

    They won’t be claiming Pension Credit if they’re dead!

    None of the Government MPs or ministers had the wit to make this point. When they do, it will to shift the polls. A healthy majority of the UK electorate secretly hate the old, – the canceling of their winter fuel allowance is the most likely policy to deliver another landslide with extra rubble come 2029.

    The Tories don’t see it, either.

    Shadow Pensions Mel Stride opened his Opposition Day debate with some soaring, Trades Hall rhetoric invoking the semi-mythical Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. Their scrutiny had not been invited and no impact assessment published to reveal the wickedness of what opposition parties affect to think of as an abhorrent and dishonest proposal to means test the benefit.

    Labour’s Mike Amesbury spoiled Mel’s moment by asking which Tory minister when in government had called for this very means testing. There was a pause while Mel looked around for the answer. He decided not to claim the credit. He continued with train drivers, trade union paymasters and “We are the party of triple-lock plus!” He meant it as a good thing.

    The Tory’s Ancient of Days, Edward Leigh, while recognising that Labour had guaranteed they wouldn’t do what they had now done, observed that increasing the state pension every year was the route to national bankruptcy.

    The Conservative known as Dr Johnson demonstrated how bankrupt the party already when she told the House, “The first job of government is to keep people safe”. The allure of fascism is latent in the political mentality of all parties.

    Ed Miliband arrived on the front bench towards the end of the debate, lured in perhaps by reference to his Great British Energy company “bringing down the price of electricity”. Ed is close personal friend of the prime minister and a key part of the elimination strategy.

    It defies the laws of physics let alone economics, that more wind will reduce bills. A massive increase in renewable energy will see whole retirement communities turn into a deep-frozen necropolis. The only way poverty-stricken pensioners will keep warm is by huddling together in the local crematorium.

    It’s taking Labour election strategy to a whole new level.

    PS: Candidates for metaphor-mixing awards are “balancing the books on the backs of pensioners” (Kirsty Blackman); “a sticking plaster solution of kicking the can down the road” (Andy Mcnae) and “we should not listen to their crocodile tears” (Paul Waugh, getting one of the loudest cheers of the day).

    September 10 2024 @ 17:18

    1. About time we started talking about unaffordable and unfunded public sector risk-free defined benefit pensions

      1. They should just rename DB as government pensions, no one in private industry can afford such extravagance.

    2. Take away pensioners' Winter Fuel Allowance. This will save money. Pensioners will die of the cold. This will save the Labour government paying their pensions, thus saving even more money.
      Pensioners are more likely not to vote Labour, so fewer votes for Opposition parties.

      Winner all round for Labour!

    5. Probably best viewed from a safe distance. They look OK when viewed from over here in the frozen north.

      1. Agreed, KJ. Like a couple of Chinese coolies, the sculpturer has completely missed the character in both.

      2. The King's portrait was considerably more skillful, although I didn't think it a good likeness (however slick). This one is playskool stuff, like the equally embarrassing Diana one.

        1. Even I could do a better job. Seriously, many other artist choices – far as royalty concerned seems deliberate, disrespectful personally and constitutionally.

  74. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/09/11/ftse-100-markets-latest-news-uk-economy-us-inflation/

    We have a government utterly, mindlessly incompetent. 'A greener way to produce steel.' Dear life. No! Just produce it how we always have, using the most efficient, effective tools going.

    That's 3000 jobs lost, which means 3000 people claiming welfare, and another 10,000 people also suffering because of the pay lost in the shops.

    Stupid, stupid fools. All for the vindictive, mindless tax scam hoax of 'climate change'

    2. You think the UK has troubles? Trudeau has just taken on ex BOE Governor Mark Carney as Special Economic Advisor to the Liberal Party. Cleverly set up to not be a government position, it avoids embarrassing conflict of interest claims against this WEF / UN stooge with all of his big company directorships.

      At least he can probably spell Economics which is more than the current Minister of Finance can do with her degree in Slavic languages.

    3. You think the UK has troubles? Trudeau has just taken on ex BOE Governor Mark Carney as Special Economic Advisor to the Liberal Party. Cleverly set up to not be a government position, it avoids embarrassing conflict of interest claims against this WEF / UN stooge with all of his big company directorships.

      At least he can probably spell Economics which is more than the current Minister of Finance can do with her degree in Slavic languages.

    4. Does anyone remember the panic after discovery of the ozone hole?

      The ozone hole and global warming are not the same thing, and neither is the main cause of the other.

      https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/blogs/climateqa/category/global-warming/#:~:text=The%20ozone%20hole%20and%20global%20warming%20are%20not%20the%20same,main%20cause%20of%20the%20other.

      Well it turns out that the CFCs that we banned to fix the hole were actually letting heat escape from the earth,
      Not only that, we replaced inert non-toxic CFCs with highly inflammable refrigerants that caused the Grenfell fire and set alight the insulating inflammable cladding on the building.

      Too much fuss was made about trying to fix the ozone hole which was ironically contributing to global warming and making our world so much more of a fire risk.

      Our Earth is now just reminding us how stupid the human race is by not making proper sense of scientific conclusions.

    5. BTL Comment:-

      R. Spowart
      4 min ago
      Message Actions
      Regarding the new "greener" way to produce steel using arc furnaces, that is not actually "producing" steel, but merely recycling mixed ferrous scrap to produce an inferior secondary steel that, whilst adequate for most purposes, will fall far short of the high quality required for the specialist steels demanded by so many industries.
      This can only be made by smelting iron ore in a blast furnace.

      1. Only partly correct, Bob. Pig iron from a blast furnace becomes steel only after purification. This was previously done by the Bessemer process but that has been largely replaced by the basic oxygen process, which is in use at Scunthorpe today. It can be performed in electric furnaces.

        The idiot Millepede is simply obsessed with changing the energy source. I doubt he's aware of the different stages of steel production.

  77. That's the large felled trunks sawn and brought down the bank.
    Now need to get them into manageable lengths to awayt further sawing and splitting.
    Lovely sunshine whilst doing it, but began raining as soon as we stopped for a break so I had to get the saw under cover.
    Bright sunshine now, but I think I'll get dinner started.
    Sausage, egg, bubble & squeak and beans.

  78. Voterrs will forget because until it affects them they don't care. Labours voters fall ino two camps. The welfare dependent idle dross (such as the public sector and foreigners. Labour will make sure to look after both.

    What will hopefully kill them – and the Tories off for good – is blackouts. When there's nothing the grid folks can do and the power simply goes out in a rolling basis.

  79. A longbow squadron on Dover beach would put a stop to the invasion very quickly. Could also be quite a sport with teams competing and skirmishers picking off the stragglers who run for it.

    You could score doulbe points to get 2 at once.

  80. A longbow squadron on Dover beach would put a stop to the invasion very quickly. Could also be quite a sport with teams competing and skirmishers picking off the stragglers who run for it.

    You could score doulbe points to get 2 at once.

  81. God I’m depressed! Just read the telegraph and if it wasn’t for the fact that my family and friends love me, I would be slitting my throat!
    The comments section isn’t much better. Not even a decent troll on today.
    When will it ever end? No wonder heart problems and cancer are going through the roof.
    What is the point of winding everyone up if we’re not going to be able to do anything about it for five years without ending up in jail?

    1. "No wonder heart problems and cancer are going through the roof."

      I think one of the main causes of this is the Covid gene therapy that was injected into so many people's bodies.

      1. That too Rastus, but the sheer impotent stress on people must be knocking immune systems for six right left and centre.

    2. I was in that frame of mind this morning, Mrs C. Then I had a doctor's appointment where she told me that all the tests show that I do NOT have dementia! Joy! Suddenly the sun is shining… I was awfully stressed, because my brain is about the unly useful part of me, and to have that fail was too much to contemplate!
      Try & do something else than read all the depressing stuff. Enjoy grandchildren or cats; take a weekend break somewhere in the UK you never visited before (Rhyl?); something a bit different.

      1. Oh I a, so pleased for you! Dementia is a cruel disease and no wonder you saw the sun shining after speaking with your doctor.
        I’ll get over it. You can’t keep a good idiot down! 😂😂. Definitely agree about not reading the papers. I stopped watching the news after the election. It was doing my blood pressure no good at all.

    3. Stop reading the DT and don't listen to the news. It's so depressing. If you give it a miss you'll feel a lot better! Concentrate on the good things – the sunrises and sunsets, the remaining warmth in the sun, the glorious colours of autumn. Look out on the countryside – where every prospect pleases and only Man is vile!

  82. God I’m depressed! Just read the telegraph and if it wasn’t for the fact that my family and friends love me, I would be slitting my throat!
    The comments section isn’t much better. Not even a decent troll on today.
    When will it ever end? No wonder heart problems and cancer are going through the roof.
    What is the point of winding everyone up if we’re not going to be able to do anything about it for five years without ending up in jail?

  83. Mass migration is tearing the EU to pieces
    Germany’s decision to impose new controls at its borders is seismic, and may be just the beginning
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/09/10/mass-migration-is-tearing-the-eu-to-pieces/

    The British King is all in favour of the WEF (as is Starmer) and agrees with Klaus Schwab that we need to "build back better."

    Of course before rebuilding a certain amount of demolition will be required and what better way of demolishing nation states, their values , laws and history than by using Mass immigration to do it for you.

    1. One of our motoring magazine contributors spent the recent holiday weekend counting the cars that were using our equivalent of motorway service stations, then translated that usage into power demands if we continued down the net zero path.

      Many of the service stations are well away from built up areas so it it is not simply a case of stringing a new line from the local town. The easiest approach would probably require a small nuclear reactor for that much demand.

      1. Small nuclear reactors provide a very attractive option. We have Rolls-Royce technology that would provide rapidly large numbers of highly-paid jobs. Small nuclear reactors may be sited strategically throughout the UK thus minimising the seldom-mentioned and horrendous costs of pylons with overhead cables – or the even higher cost of buried cables.

        A coherent range of nuclear reactors could provide universal, reliable and low-cost electricity without any pollution.

        The present intention of building large numbers of distant windfarms and many areas of solar farms never mentions the horrendous costs of electricity distribution over vast distances via pylons with overhead cables, the impact on farming and the destruction inter alia of “England's green and pleasant land”.

      2. Small nuclear reactors provide a very attractive option. We have Rolls-Royce technology that would provide rapidly large numbers of highly-paid jobs. Small nuclear reactors may be sited strategically throughout the UK thus minimising the seldom-mentioned and horrendous costs of pylons with overhead cables – or the even higher cost of buried cables.

        A coherent range of nuclear reactors could provide universal, reliable and low-cost electricity without any pollution.

        The present intention of building large numbers of windfarms and vast areas of solar farms never mentions the horrendous costs of electricity distribution over vast distances via pylons with overhead cables, the impact on farming and the destruction inter alia of “England's green and pleasant land”.

    1. Unsurprisingly, today's Today programme was excited by the apparently expert performance of Harris.

  87. In words

    ‘Fine Taylor… you win… I will give you a child and guard your cats with my life.’

    – Elon Musk offers to impregnate Taylor Swift in a strange post on Twitter. The pop star endorsed Kamala Harris after last night’s debate and signed off her endorsement ‘Taylor Swift, Childless Cat Lady’ in a dig at Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance.

      1. Just like Traita May.

        We met a chap who worked with her in finance at the outset of her career. She said that babies were smelly and offensive and she never wanted to have children as her career was the most important thing.

        However in the Tory Party leadership contest when Andrea Leadsom implied that with three children she thought she had a broader perspective on life Traita May accused her of cruelly drawing attention to the fact that she could not have the children she had longed for!

        Traita May is certainly not remotely maternal – she is cold and sinister. When, as I suspect she will be, she is sent to the House of Lords she should be known as the Barrenness Baroness!

  88. For every Richard Ayoade.. there's 2,000 nasties, and unfortunately Tikquaan Stephenson-Walters was gunned down by a nasty close to his home in Kensal Rise by a 'Road man' riding a moped.

    This is a huge problem for black kids (in this case a clever black kid) minding their own business.. they get mistaken for some rival gang member of the next door post code.

    1. And my follow-up Trivial Pursuit question is how many Diane Abbotts/David Lammys can (physically) be squeezed onto the green benches of the HoC? Some way short of 650, i'd wager.

  91. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/09/11/ftse-100-markets-latest-news-uk-economy-us-inflation/

    She didn't defend it, she dodged the question because it is indefensible. She's a hypocrite, plain and simple. The questioner should have kept forcing her back until she says something like 'It's in the rules' and then just slapped her in the face with the facts: she's changing the rules for others while abusing them for herself.

    And just call her a hypocrite, publicly.

    1. She talked carp – constituency MPs do NOT have to have a house in London (that stays with them when they are voted out). As has been often mentioned, a large building could be dedicated in Westminster or somewhere in London (let them take the tube and see what it is like) where MPs have flatlets or small suites that they stay in when they deign to turn up to Parliament – which isn't that often anyway. Other people work away from home too.

        1. Don’t think tourists will come to see those people’s abode. But of course the Jolly Roger could always be flown from the roof to show that the pirates were at home.

  92. Thanks for all the very amusing, and true answers, to my query about free speech. But I mean that there must be, somewhere, a HM Government thing that spells out the law, clause by clause and in suitably tedious language. I assume it would be Common Law?

    3. Disappointingly the Bill of Rights of 1689 only grants Free Speech to "Parlyament". It appears that Magna Carta didn't mention it at all.

  93. I recall that in 2023 it was an unusually mellow September in Bournville, without v.cold nights. It was almost "no heating required". But last night I was starting to feel it getting near my "heating required" temp … and now I notice a plunge to 3c forecast for Thursday night/Friday morning. Still I expect it'll be colder in the country districts and up in Bonnie Scotland.

  94. When I paid cash for two bargain sale perennials at Bournville Garden Centre, I paid cash. The young feller serving said oh good", and I thought it worthwhile to observe that i wa. thereby, avoiding scrutiny by Keir Starmer's government.

  97. The EU is disintegrating before our eyes. 11 September 2024.

    Germany’s decision to reintroduce border controls in an attempt to halt mass immigration is awkward for Keir Starmer.
    A fortnight ago the British Prime Minister, a friend of European free movement, visited Berlin and among the issues he discussed with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz were trade, defence and immigration.

    Things are so bad that Draghi admitted to having ‘nightmares’ about Europe’s future if nothing is done to halt the ‘slow agony’ of economic decline

    A few days before Starmer’s visit, three people were killed at a diversity festival by a suspected Syrian refugee. Germany’s decision to tighten its borders (initially for six months but this could be extended) is partly a reaction to that atrocity as well as the failed attack last week on the Israeli consulate in Munich.

    It is also a response by Scholz to the victory last week of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in Thuringia’s state election.

    That success was the latest triumph in Europe for parties variously described as populist, far-right or nationalist. Take your pick.

    Another description could be that they are the parties of the disillusioned, voters who see in the EU nothing but a failed project that has impoverished and endangered them.

    Across the continent, mass immigration has led to a deterioration in social cohesion, to the ‘ghettoisation’ of inner cities from Malmo to Marseille to Mannheim, and the re-emergence of an anti-Semitism that Europe hoped it had eradicated three-quarters of a century ago.

    This disillusionment has now spread to the elites. On Monday, Mario Draghi, the ex-president of the European Central Bank and a poster boy for the European technocrat class, published a 400-page report on competitiveness that was commissioned by the European Commission in 2023.

    Shortly before Draghi published the report, the EU Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, posted a message on social media saying that she was ‘eager’ to hear what the former Italian PM had to say.

    She might not have liked what she heard. Over 400 pages, Draghi laid bare just how sclerotic and uncompetitive the EU has become this century. Things are so bad that Draghi admitted to having ‘nightmares’ about Europe’s future if nothing is done to halt what he described as the ‘slow agony’ of the continent’s economic decline.

    In the press conference that accompanied the release of his report, Draghi said that only ‘unprecedented’ reform would arrest the decline. ‘For the first time since the Cold War, we must genuinely fear for our self-preservation, and the reason for a unified response has never been so compelling’, explained Draghi.

    He said Europe required additional annual investment of at least €750 billion – approximately 5 per cent of the EU’s gross domestic product – if the EU is to catch up to America and prevent being overtaken by China. It is a damning indictment of how moribund the EU has become that of the world’s leading 50 tech firms only four are European.

    If the 27 EU members ignore his report, Draghi predicted a grim future: ‘We will be forced to choose,’ he said. ‘We will not be able to become, at once, a leader in new technologies, a beacon of climate responsibility and an independent player on the world stage. We will not be able to finance our social model. We will have to scale back some, if not all, of our ambitions.’

    In other words, Europe will continue its transformation from a first world to a third world continent.
    This is the reason why so many voters have turned away from the traditional mainstream parties, be it in France, Holland, Italy or Germany. They see their living standards are on the wane, and that poverty, violence and anti-Semitism are on the rise.

    As I wrote in January, as Europe’s farmers descended on Brussels to vent their anger against an EU determined to impose ruinous green dogma on their industry, Europeans have had enough of the chronic mismanagement that has been the hallmark of the EU this century. ‘In 2008 the Eurozone and the US had comparable gross domestic products (GDP) of $14.2 trillion and $14.8 trillion in today’s prices,’ I wrote. ‘In 2023 the eurozone’s GDP had edged up to just over $15 trillion, while America’s stood at $26.9 trillion’

    If France was a US State its GDP per capita would rank it between Idaho and Arkansas, respectively the 48th and 49th most prosperous states. Germany would be 39th, just behind Oklahoma.

    Draghi’s blueprint for change contains a series of proposals for reinvigorating the bloc. ‘Europe must become a place where innovation flourishes,’ he proclaimed.

    Easier said than done. The two traditional powerhouses of Europe, Germany and France, are in desperate economic trouble with the latter crippled by huge debts. They are also the EU countries where discontent with mass immigration is the most visceral.

    France’s new Prime Minister, Michel Barnier, has promised to address the issue and he might be emboldened by Germany’s decision to reintroduce border controls. Three years ago Barnier declared himself in favour of a three to five year moratorium on immigration, saying that the current flow was unsustainable and responsible for an increase in insecurity and Islamism.

    The same applies in Britain, although Starmer and his government appear incapable of admitting it. Their heads remain stuck in the sand, not just about the downside of mass immigration but about the scale of the EU’s decline. Why would any sane political leader want closer ties with an organisation that is suffering a slow and agonising death?

    It cannot come too soon.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-eu-is-disintegrating-before-our-eyes/

  98. The EU is disintegrating before our eyes. 11 September 2024.

    Germany’s decision to reintroduce border controls in an attempt to halt mass immigration is awkward for Keir Starmer.
    A fortnight ago the British Prime Minister, a friend of European free movement, visited Berlin and among the issues he discussed with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz were trade, defence and immigration.

    Things are so bad that Draghi admitted to having ‘nightmares’ about Europe’s future if nothing is done to halt the ‘slow agony’ of economic decline

    A few days before Starmer’s visit, three people were killed at a diversity festival by a suspected Syrian refugee. Germany’s decision to tighten its borders (initially for six months but this could be extended) is partly a reaction to that atrocity as well as the failed attack last week on the Israeli consulate in Munich.

    It is also a response by Scholz to the victory last week of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in Thuringia’s state election.

    That success was the latest triumph in Europe for parties variously described as populist, far-right or nationalist. Take your pick.

    Another description could be that they are the parties of the disillusioned, voters who see in the EU nothing but a failed project that has impoverished and endangered them.

    Across the continent, mass immigration has led to a deterioration in social cohesion, to the ‘ghettoisation’ of inner cities from Malmo to Marseille to Mannheim, and the re-emergence of an anti-Semitism that Europe hoped it had eradicated three-quarters of a century ago.

    This disillusionment has now spread to the elites. On Monday, Mario Draghi, the ex-president of the European Central Bank and a poster boy for the European technocrat class, published a 400-page report on competitiveness that was commissioned by the European Commission in 2023.

    Shortly before Draghi published the report, the EU Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, posted a message on social media saying that she was ‘eager’ to hear what the former Italian PM had to say.

    She might not have liked what she heard. Over 400 pages, Draghi laid bare just how sclerotic and uncompetitive the EU has become this century. Things are so bad that Draghi admitted to having ‘nightmares’ about Europe’s future if nothing is done to halt what he described as the ‘slow agony’ of the continent’s economic decline.

    In the press conference that accompanied the release of his report, Draghi said that only ‘unprecedented’ reform would arrest the decline. ‘For the first time since the Cold War, we must genuinely fear for our self-preservation, and the reason for a unified response has never been so compelling’, explained Draghi.

    He said Europe required additional annual investment of at least €750 billion – approximately 5 per cent of the EU’s gross domestic product – if the EU is to catch up to America and prevent being overtaken by China. It is a damning indictment of how moribund the EU has become that of the world’s leading 50 tech firms only four are European.

    If the 27 EU members ignore his report, Draghi predicted a grim future: ‘We will be forced to choose,’ he said. ‘We will not be able to become, at once, a leader in new technologies, a beacon of climate responsibility and an independent player on the world stage. We will not be able to finance our social model. We will have to scale back some, if not all, of our ambitions.’

    In other words, Europe will continue its transformation from a first world to a third world continent.
    This is the reason why so many voters have turned away from the traditional mainstream parties, be it in France, Holland, Italy or Germany. They see their living standards are on the wane, and that poverty, violence and anti-Semitism are on the rise.

    As I wrote in January, as Europe’s farmers descended on Brussels to vent their anger against an EU determined to impose ruinous green dogma on their industry, Europeans have had enough of the chronic mismanagement that has been the hallmark of the EU this century. ‘In 2008 the Eurozone and the US had comparable gross domestic products (GDP) of $14.2 trillion and $14.8 trillion in today’s prices,’ I wrote. ‘In 2023 the eurozone’s GDP had edged up to just over $15 trillion, while America’s stood at $26.9 trillion’

    If France was a US State its GDP per capita would rank it between Idaho and Arkansas, respectively the 48th and 49th most prosperous states. Germany would be 39th, just behind Oklahoma.

    Draghi’s blueprint for change contains a series of proposals for reinvigorating the bloc. ‘Europe must become a place where innovation flourishes,’ he proclaimed.

    Easier said than done. The two traditional powerhouses of Europe, Germany and France, are in desperate economic trouble with the latter crippled by huge debts. They are also the EU countries where discontent with mass immigration is the most visceral.

    France’s new Prime Minister, Michel Barnier, has promised to address the issue and he might be emboldened by Germany’s decision to reintroduce border controls. Three years ago Barnier declared himself in favour of a three to five year moratorium on immigration, saying that the current flow was unsustainable and responsible for an increase in insecurity and Islamism.

    The same applies in Britain, although Starmer and his government appear incapable of admitting it. Their heads remain stuck in the sand, not just about the downside of mass immigration but about the scale of the EU’s decline. Why would any sane political leader want closer ties with an organisation that is suffering a slow and agonising death?

    It cannot come too soon.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-eu-is-disintegrating-before-our-eyes/

  99. The EU is disintegrating before our eyes. 11 September 2024.

    Germany’s decision to reintroduce border controls in an attempt to halt mass immigration is awkward for Keir Starmer.
    A fortnight ago the British Prime Minister, a friend of European free movement, visited Berlin and among the issues he discussed with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz were trade, defence and immigration.

    Things are so bad that Draghi admitted to having ‘nightmares’ about Europe’s future if nothing is done to halt the ‘slow agony’ of economic decline

    A few days before Starmer’s visit, three people were killed at a diversity festival by a suspected Syrian refugee. Germany’s decision to tighten its borders (initially for six months but this could be extended) is partly a reaction to that atrocity as well as the failed attack last week on the Israeli consulate in Munich.

    It is also a response by Scholz to the victory last week of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in Thuringia’s state election.

    That success was the latest triumph in Europe for parties variously described as populist, far-right or nationalist. Take your pick.

    Another description could be that they are the parties of the disillusioned, voters who see in the EU nothing but a failed project that has impoverished and endangered them.

    Across the continent, mass immigration has led to a deterioration in social cohesion, to the ‘ghettoisation’ of inner cities from Malmo to Marseille to Mannheim, and the re-emergence of an anti-Semitism that Europe hoped it had eradicated three-quarters of a century ago.

    This disillusionment has now spread to the elites. On Monday, Mario Draghi, the ex-president of the European Central Bank and a poster boy for the European technocrat class, published a 400-page report on competitiveness that was commissioned by the European Commission in 2023.

    Shortly before Draghi published the report, the EU Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, posted a message on social media saying that she was ‘eager’ to hear what the former Italian PM had to say.

    She might not have liked what she heard. Over 400 pages, Draghi laid bare just how sclerotic and uncompetitive the EU has become this century. Things are so bad that Draghi admitted to having ‘nightmares’ about Europe’s future if nothing is done to halt what he described as the ‘slow agony’ of the continent’s economic decline.

    In the press conference that accompanied the release of his report, Draghi said that only ‘unprecedented’ reform would arrest the decline. ‘For the first time since the Cold War, we must genuinely fear for our self-preservation, and the reason for a unified response has never been so compelling’, explained Draghi.

    He said Europe required additional annual investment of at least €750 billion – approximately 5 per cent of the EU’s gross domestic product – if the EU is to catch up to America and prevent being overtaken by China. It is a damning indictment of how moribund the EU has become that of the world’s leading 50 tech firms only four are European.

    If the 27 EU members ignore his report, Draghi predicted a grim future: ‘We will be forced to choose,’ he said. ‘We will not be able to become, at once, a leader in new technologies, a beacon of climate responsibility and an independent player on the world stage. We will not be able to finance our social model. We will have to scale back some, if not all, of our ambitions.’

    In other words, Europe will continue its transformation from a first world to a third world continent.
    This is the reason why so many voters have turned away from the traditional mainstream parties, be it in France, Holland, Italy or Germany. They see their living standards are on the wane, and that poverty, violence and anti-Semitism are on the rise.

    As I wrote in January, as Europe’s farmers descended on Brussels to vent their anger against an EU determined to impose ruinous green dogma on their industry, Europeans have had enough of the chronic mismanagement that has been the hallmark of the EU this century. ‘In 2008 the Eurozone and the US had comparable gross domestic products (GDP) of $14.2 trillion and $14.8 trillion in today’s prices,’ I wrote. ‘In 2023 the eurozone’s GDP had edged up to just over $15 trillion, while America’s stood at $26.9 trillion’

    If France was a US State its GDP per capita would rank it between Idaho and Arkansas, respectively the 48th and 49th most prosperous states. Germany would be 39th, just behind Oklahoma.

    Draghi’s blueprint for change contains a series of proposals for reinvigorating the bloc. ‘Europe must become a place where innovation flourishes,’ he proclaimed.

    Easier said than done. The two traditional powerhouses of Europe, Germany and France, are in desperate economic trouble with the latter crippled by huge debts. They are also the EU countries where discontent with mass immigration is the most visceral.

    France’s new Prime Minister, Michel Barnier, has promised to address the issue and he might be emboldened by Germany’s decision to reintroduce border controls. Three years ago Barnier declared himself in favour of a three to five year moratorium on immigration, saying that the current flow was unsustainable and responsible for an increase in insecurity and Islamism.

    The same applies in Britain, although Starmer and his government appear incapable of admitting it. Their heads remain stuck in the sand, not just about the downside of mass immigration but about the scale of the EU’s decline. Why would any sane political leader want closer ties with an organisation that is suffering a slow and agonising death?

    It cannot come too soon.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-eu-is-disintegrating-before-our-eyes/

        2. 4 other Reform MP's would be like him, I'm guessing is where RT is coming from: leaving 645 not like him.

    2. Excellent, I think he and quite a few others may have been reading Nottlers comments.
      Well said sir and a proper meaningful sir.

  101. 392852+ up ticks,

    The question is how many of the elderly brigade are we going to loose via lammys ( coloured chap,the creator of a £600.oooooo BLACK HOLE ) ukraine generosity " the laundry scam"

    1. 392852+ up ticks,

      O2O,
      The elderly could get a great deal of comfort via a £600,000000 heat booster grant.

    1. A silly error in my second guess but it was a useful mistake.

      Wordle 1,180 3/6

      🟩⬜🟨🟨⬜
      🟩⬜🟨🟨🟩
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. I'll give this 2 out of 10.
      Couldn't be bothered to display Canada.. even though they took one of five beach assault landings on D-Day.

    2. Music was entirely wrong. There's no emotion to it. I recall the right piece, but not it's name, so I can't find it in YT.

      1. I can’t imagine what the presentation would be like with “emotional music”, Oberst. One of the aspects that made me so affected by it is the combination of shocking information and neutral graphics/bland music. The sheer numbers of pointless deaths speak for themselves. I don’t think an infusion of Wagner or John Lennon would do anything but trivialise the basic information, which I find shattering.

        1. I agree: I can hear the "right" music in my head (it's classical, and written in relation to the extermination camps), but can't remember the composer, so can't track it down. It's on the tip…
          I expect I'll get it at about 03:30…

          1. Would be very interested to hear your recommendations. Oberst. Btw – I posted it because I find the numbers shocking and the ratios. I had no idea how many Russian lives were lost by comparison with other nations, for example, but I suppose it all coincided with their revolution and all that that entailed in terms of mass murder. Same, I suppose, with China.

    3. Puts it its true perspective doesn't it? I wonder how many of the 24 million Soviet deaths were due to its being a terrorist communist tyranny.

      1. What are the correct numbers, please? I assume that the ratios are borderline within credible figures.

        1. In less developed countries, those WWII numbers are based on assumptions. If a civilian was killed by the blast from a V1 rocket attack in England, fair to say that he/she died as a result of enemy action. However, if someone died of pneumonia in a remote area of western China in 1943, or malnutrition as a result of famine in Henan province, that is not necessarily 100% attributable to the Japanese invasion. Millions of Soviet soldiers died in combat in order to expel the Germans, whereas (for example) Chinese people could move elsewhere within their vast country to try and avoid the Japs.

  105. Leftie David Parsley of inews reports that Faith Leaders of The House of Commons & Islamic Council have decided to arrest Tommy Robinson on his arrival back to London & placed into immediate custody prior to his contempt of court hearing in October.

    2TK and The Met have been informed of the Elder's decision and await further instruction.

      1. Difficult to tell these days.
        If that's reality, then I apply for Norwegian citizenship straight away.

      3. Tommy Robinson · @TRobinsonNewEra. ·. 2h. I DO NOT NEGOTIATE WITH TERRORISTS Today the despicable. @theipaper. sent me an email for 'my right to reply'.

      1. Actually, I think many of us DO expect the islamic inquisition and have been worrying about it for some time!

    3. That sounds like it's been pre planned. Perhaps it's why this awful government has made a lot of space in prisons so they can fit in all the 'far right' objectors.

    1. I don't think it is incompetence, they have no intention of treating the elderly, they just put them through the mill until they get fed up with it.

    1. Beautiful, Oberst, thank you. The Russian basso profundo is astoundingly moving. We used to regularly host the Boyan Choir (from Kiev) that also had such singers, when they toured over here. I wonder what has happened to them?

  108. Hold on to your seats, more 600 million pounds worth of support aid to Ukraine humanitarian aid and energy and stability assistance.
    HELLO ……..anyone there ? Forgien secretary involved.

    1. No wonder there's a "black hole" and 2TK can't afford to give pensioners some of their tax money back in the WFA.

      1. Be careful what you say elderly chap 🤔 it's been a long time since I trusted anyone in politics.

  111. Is there something pivotal about Germany's newly announced temporary reintroduction of border controls with its Schengen neighbours? I ask because attention has been drawn to it on this forum in ways which didn't happen on previous occasions. There are 11 other current temporary controls already in place within Schengen, some of them Germany's but also those of Austria, Slovenia, Italy, France, Denmark, Norway and Sweden. It cannot be the duration, as several of the others have been imposed for the maximum permitted six months. Nor can it be the reason for the imposition, as others appear just as serious to me. Maybe it's the scope and onerousness of the controls. Germany has the most powerful economy and largest population in the Schengen zone as well as the most borders. The new controls affect the borders with Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Denmark, but the sum of Germany's four temporary controls affects more borders than those imposed by the others, thus their impact will be more keenly felt. Whatever the reason, the new temporary controls are not remotely unusual, in my estimation.

    Temporary Reintroduction of Border Control

    The Schengen Borders Code (SBC) provides Member States with the capability of temporarily reintroducing border control at the internal borders in the event of a serious threat to public policy or internal security.

    The reintroduction of border control at the internal borders must be applied as a last resort measure, in exceptional situations, and must respect the principle of proportionality.

    The duration of such a temporary reintroduction of border control at the internal borders is limited in time, depending on the legal basis invoked by the Member State introducing such border control.

    The scope and duration of reintroduced border control should be restricted to the bare minimum needed to respond to the threat in question. Reintroducing border control at the internal border should only be used as a measure of last resort.

    The reintroduction of border control is a prerogative of the Member States. The Commission may issue an opinion regarding the necessity of the measure and its proportionality but cannot veto a Member State’s decision to reintroduce border control.

    Notifications of the Temporary Reintroduction of Border Control

    Current Temporarily Reintroduced Border Controls

    Country Duration Reasons/Scope

    Germany 16/09/2024-15/03/2025 Security risks related to irregular migration, including smuggling, at the EU's external borders, continue to lead to increased levels of irregular entries, exacerbating already tense accommodation situation for refugees, especially in the context of the admission of Ukrainian nationals; borders with Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxembourg and Denmark.

    Germany 20/07/2024 – 30/09/2024 Paris Summer 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, with their potential risks to Europe and the Schengen Area, such as the impact of Middle Eastern armed conflicts, Russia's ongoing aggression against Ukraine, and the generally elevated threat of terrorism; land and air borders with France.

    Austria 03/06/2024 – 15/10/2024 The irregular migration, migrant smuggling activities, and organised crime, as well as the strain on the asylum reception system, Russia's aggression in Ukraine, espionage, cyber fraud, and the security situation exacerbated by terrorist groups, particularly in the Middle East; borders with Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

    Germany 16/06/2024 – 15/12/2024 The irregular migration and migrant smuggling activities linked to the developing situation and living conditions in migrants' countries of origin, as well as the strain on the asylum reception system, Russia's aggression in Ukraine, and the security situation exacerbated by terrorist groups, particularly in the Middle East; borders with the Republic of Poland, Switzerland, and the Czech Republic.

    Slovenia 22/06/2024 – 21/12/2024 Risks associated with the global security situation (increased instability in the Middle East, Russia's aggression in Ukraine, organised crime, and general terrorist threats), as well as UEFA EURO 2024 and the Olympic Games; internal borders with the Republic of Croatia and Hungary.

    Italy 19/06/2024 – 18/12/2024 Risk of terrorist activity, connected to the turmoil in the Middle East and the possible risk of terrorist infiltration in irregular migration flows, as well as the risk of violence connected to the continuation of the war in Ukraine and Italy’s G7 Presidency

    Norway 12/05/2024 – 11/11/2024 Increased threat to critical infrastructure, Russian intelligence operations threatening Norwegian exports of gas or military support to Ukraine; ports with ferry connections to the Schengen area.

    Austria 12/05/2024 – 11/11/2024 New threat situation in connection with the extremely unstable migration and security situation in the EU, pressure on the asylum reception system, high migratory pressure at the EU’s external border to Türkiye and the Western Balkans, threat of arms trafficking and criminal networks due to the war in Ukraine, human smuggling, the security implications following the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, the terrorist attack in Brussels on 17 October and numerous terror warnings and threats in the EU Member States, the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe, the risk of criminals and terrorists infiltrating migration flows; borders with Slovenia and Hungary.

    Denmark 12/05/2024 – 11/11/2024 Terrorist threat relating to the conflict between Israel and militant groups in Gaza and the Quran desecrations in 2023 which created a renewed focus on Denmark as a prioritised target among militant Islamist groups; threat from espionage from Russian intelligence; may extend to all internal borders, with a focus on the Danish-German land border and Danish ports with ferry connection to Germany.

    Germany 12/05/2024 – 11/11/2024 Increase in irregular migration and migrant smuggling linked to the developing situation and living conditions in migrants’ countries of origin, as well as Russia’s ongoing war of aggression against Ukraine and the security situation exacerbated by terrorist groups, particularly in the Middle East, strain on the asylum reception system; the land border with Austria.

    Sweden 12/05/2024 – 11/11/2024 The attack on Israel by Hamas on 7 October 2023 and the Israeli offensive in Gaza which have increased tensions in Sweden and in other Member States, increased risk of serious violence and attacks motivated by Anti-Semitism, serious threat to public policy and internal security; may extend to all internal borders (exact borders to be determined).

    France 01/05/2024 – 31/10/2024 The Olympic and Paralympic Games organised in France during the summer 2024, which substantially increase the risk to national security, an intensified terrorist threat, the Moscow attack of 22 March 2024 claimed by the Islamic State, constant migratory pressure at the Schengen external borders, significant increase in irregular crossings especially from Türkiye and North Africa, pressure on the reception system; internal borders.

    https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies/schengen-borders-and-visa/schengen-area/temporary-reintroduction-border-control_en

    1. I think the point is that it was Germany under Merkel which opened the floodgates and that they are now reaping what they sowed in spades, as it were.

  117. Bonsoir, mes amis! Me voici de retour. I finally completed the remaining racecourse so have now visited all the mainland UK racecourses (and as I've been doing it a long time, I have also been to Folkestone – now a housing estate – and Towcester – now just a dog track). It was a good job I set off early; I ordered a bed from B&Q – actually from one of their suppliers – which was supposed to have arrived tomorrow. It was dumped outside my back gate sometime between 3.30 when I finished unloading and 6.00 when I found it because I needed something from the garage. As there were two 20+kg packages I was not best pleased.

    The early release of prisoners puts the public at risk. With plod more interested in hurty words and protecting Ally Pally supporters the rest of us will have to take our own precautions.

      1. I wouldn't have been going even if it had been on; it's a very long way! Last time I went, I stayed in the area and visited Chepstow as well.

          1. I've done all of them now. The first time I went to Chepstow racing was abandoned due to nematodes. The second (and last) time was for a "Family Fun" day in August. I was NOT impressed. The signage was sparse so I missed a tour I'd signed up to because I couldn't find where it began. I ordered afternoon tea, which was okay, but the layout of the facilities was nowhere as good as Newmarket. It was full of families who weren't there for the racing and it was a blazing hot day. I left early and grumpy.

          3. They got into the roots of the turf and destroyed patches – hence “false ground” and racing couldn’t take place.

          10. He was rather special. His run in the 2000 Gns was spectacular. I've seen him at Banstead Manor Stud. He's a fabulous stallion.

          11. I grew up within 400 yds from Carlisle Racecourse. Before I left, aged 30, for pastures new, I don't think I visited the place more than once or twice. Since when I've twice been 'entertained*' to the races by subcontractors. Once at Newmarket (July Course), once at Cheltenham.

            Great fun. Wouldn't be allowed in these Puritan times.

          12. I spent a couple of days in Penrith. I noticed Grahams the emporium on the Market Square. Any relation?

          14. I grew up within 400 yds from Carlisle Racecourse. Before I left, aged 30, for pastures new, I don't think I visited the place more than once or twice. Since when I've twice been 'entertained*' to the races by subcontractors. Once at Newmarket (July Course), once at Cheltenham.

            Great fun. Wouldn't be allowed in these Puritan times.

        3. Chepstow used to be the most delightful little traditional racecourse but has now fallen to the developers that blight everything and is a bit generic.

      1. Thank you for the good wishes, Jules. Yes, it was excellent, thank you. I haven't been on Nttl because my ancient laptop refused to see the wifi available.

    3. I hope you enjoyed your birthday you old virgo you.
      It's someone else's tomorrow.

      And Hendon greyhound track, now a huge shopping centre.

    6. Welcome back Conners – and Kadi. I hope you enjoyed your recent birthday and that Kadi generously gave you one of his bones as a present.

      1. Thank you, Elsie. Kadi has a problem with bones because his teeth are awful (they were like that when I got him). He gets a dentastix daily and I brush his teeth (he doesn't like it, but he looks forward to the chew afterwards) after his breakfast. I did enjoy my birthday – I went racing and had a meal at the course.

  118. £ 600 million extra for Ukraine
    Pensioners losing their Winter Allowance.
    This is like Trench warfare all over again, with pensioners lives

    2. What ever they try to say to get out of all this hate aimed at the British people, they are absolute and utter liars.

      1. They will just say that they are protecting the "most vulnerable" on pension credit – ie the incomers and others (some of whom have been happily on the dole for all their lives) who didn't pay enough in NI contributions to be eligible for pension. Especially the incomers – each of potentially four wives for every slammer. Not to mention East European and their many unidentified children back "home", for whom they got child benefit.

        Fawkes had a point…

    1. They're liars and hypocrites. It's expected. The frustration is not being able to remove them once they're exposed. In a democracy they'd now be out on their ear.

      1. It will take one great individual to lead the UK out of the darkness inflicted on us by the present political elites. I am praying for such a person to enter the fray.

        Starmer clearly has a very dark past. Savile and others were given a free pass on his watch. There are also some very troubling links between Starmer and other paedophiles.

        I doubt given his horrible character and truly awful but telling popularity ratings in minus double digits that Starmer will survive for much longer. In my book he exits with the imminent defeat of Ukraine and his apparent love affair with Zelenskyy.

        1. I believe that just such an individual confronted Two-Tier Kneeler today at PMQ's. It will take time. I had an email from my favourite Muslim today. Zia Yusuf.

          Dear Geoff,

          Reform UK is the fastest growing political movement in the UK, and we are looking for outstanding people to join our team.
          From video editors to researchers, from graphic designers to Regional Directors, we have a diverse array of internships and full time roles available. Please see our jobs board here.
          We are on course to do something unprecedented in British politics: offer the British people real change from the uniparty, from the broken politics of the past.
          We need your help to do it.
          Yours sincerely,

          Zia Yusuf
          Chairman, Reform UK

      2. It will take one great individual to lead the UK out of the darkness inflicted on us by the present political elites. I am praying for such a person to enter the fray.

        Starmer clearly has a very dark past. Savile and others were given a free pass on his watch. There are also some very troubling links between Starmer and other paedophiles.

        I doubt given his horrible character and truly awful but telling popularity ratings in minus double digits that Starmer will survive for much longer. In my book he exits with the imminent defeat of Ukraine and his apparent love affair with Zelenskyy.

  124. Latest Breaking News
    Starmer announces 100% tax on Werther's Originals, hot water bottles, Milk of Magnesia and jars of Vick

      1. A few days after that sketch was transmiited Dunn &Co had signs printed and displayed in all thir shop windows:

        "Dunn & Co – As recommended by Jasper Carrott"……

      3. When I did my Christmas shopping in Carlisle in 1977 I went to Dunns and bought my Dad a very expensive, pale blue, lambs wool jumper, and a pleated skirt for Mum, from the Scottish Wool shop! The joy of having a monthly salary!

      2. IIt's Not a fluke, just late

        Wordle 1,180 3/6

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

      2. It is indeed. There does seem to be something odd about all this though, the Jimmy Savile stuff…. perhaps it involved others too well-known to mention? I hope I am not involved in the sueing, a suee(e)? An accessory?

        1. If any or all true, others will likely follow up and report- if it has legs, it’ll run. Mark Steyn or similar journalist might be sufficiently brave to stick his/her head above the parapet. If it’s fake it’ll soon be called out, stopped, possibly sued (I think unlikely you and however many others be sued but not a lawyer). I remember BJ being chastised in the House because he mentioned the abused girls the time when KS was DPP. I think the most interesting is McCann.

          2. I hadn’t heard it before, but I think we can bet others have. Web journalists always digging things up, but is it true is the rub. I guess the McCanns can sue if not.

    3. Yes! I said only recently that Croydon was a War Zone!

      I have driven along the Purley Way many times over the years. This video gives new meaning to the expression: 'Kit one – Purley one'

      Thanks for posting Johnny….

  130. I arrived in MK for the scan on my knee today. After two abortive attempts previously I finally got it done. It was somewhat unnerving, though; throughout the process, I did not see a single white person, and the music being played in the reception area was Indian. It was the same outside, no white people in evidence, just varying shades of brown through to black. England is lost, at least it is in MK.

    2. Hospital visit yesterday in Surrey. Waiting room filled with brown faces, we were the only whites. Another white woman came along the corrido but she was speaking Eastern European on her phone. Lost, indeed.

    1. I agree, John.

      I knew that a vote for Reform would clear the way for Labour. Yet I couldn't bring myself to vote ever again for the charlatan "Conservatives."

      I was involved at grassroots level with UKIP. We made mistakes (some down to Nigel). I was literally the last man standing in the Guildford branch.

      So I knew that things would be dire. But not to this extent.

      2019 seems a long way off, but at 'our age' (none of us are spring chickens), we'll soon be there. At worst, Labour will have just one term. We should prolly be more concerned about the incipient WW3, which seems likely to arrive rather earlier…

  133. Phee-ew scorchio today on the Riviera. 84F.
    I heard there had been a lot of rain at home – Oh dear, what a pity, never mind.

  134. Well, chums, it's my bedtime now. So Good Night, sleep well, and I hope we all awaken refreshed tomorrow morning.

  135. Finally got the Rayburn to light and cooked myself lamb leg steak with parsnips and roast potatoes. Mint sauce as well, of course. Washed it all down with a nice Chilean Malbec that was on offer at Aldi. Looking forward to a long soak in the bath tonight. I did shower while I was away, but I much prefer a bath. Hot water at last!

    1. I'm with you, Conners. I'll shower because it's quicker and uses less water but in winter, when I've an evening with not much to do, nothing beats a bath and an early night.

      1. I rather miss my bath. It was quite interesting getting in and out, via the adjacent lavvy. I had a bluddy marvellous Aqualisa Digital power shower, based in the loft. It had a remote control option, which I found useful. So, while the main controls were out of reach, I had an "on/off" facility by my left shoulder whilst seated in the bath.

        Since moving in 2020, I have a wet room, with an electric shower. It's OK, I suppose. But showering while seated is a bit "meh"… So I have a couple of "Limbo" cast protectors, which envelop the prostheses and the suspension sleeves, hence I can stand up and have a shower. While I still have to sit down and do the stumps, it feels much more normal.

    2. Drives me bonkers when I’m away. All “hotels” and other accommodation only comes with showers these days. I hate it.

      1. Campsites are the same. I can understand the reasoning; they are easier to clean. Still I am not keen.

  136. Started this morning with a job in Snetterton, followed by a drive to Swadlingcote for another job, then down to Barnstaple ready for the morning.
    350 miles and 4.5 hours on the tools all so I can pay unprecedented amounts of tax Keef can spaff on third world parasites.
    The merlot has gone down well.

    1. Blimey. When I lived in Thetford, I could occasionally hear the proceedings. These days it's an entirely different sort of noise from Ash Ranges… Prolly Ukrainians…

      1. When we had our bathroom rebuilt with a shower corner, we also had a huge oval bath fitted. This is about 20 years ago. I think I used the bath once. It's rather grand, but I much prefer the shower.

  138. Thursday 12th September, 2024

    Ready Eddy

    (aka Eh Calm Down)

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f15108925be65a9a2608d8e25edca14c950fe7218c958fddb1d38927a117d0b9.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9040c9037389e45b10c82ed873d9867947b369ad1d3527621ac854e75059992d.png
    Very Best wishes,

    Caroline and Rastus

    and here's one for you :

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv37Mu14Dtw
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/529918aa96e3f29257591c829915b535d750916c017f1193f11f9f6da3ad6dd6.png

  146. Well, in the absence of a new page, (I hope Geoff is just enjoying a comfortable lie in), Good Morning all.
    A dry, bright start with thin scattered cloud and a bloody chilly tad under 3½°C on the Yard Thermometer!
    Winter draws on as they say.

Comments are closed.