698 thoughts on “Wednesday 16 October: A switch to driving on the right side of the road would be wrong-headed”

  1. Russia assumes mantle of supreme power broker in Middle East as US retreats from Syria. 15 OCTOBER 2019.

    The move leaves Moscow the decisive military power in Syria, and US allies, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE, are likely to see friendship with Moscow as important if they are to contain regional rivals Iran and Turkey.

    Kremlin has worked closely with Iran to prop-up Bashar Assad in Syria, leaving it with valuable diplomatic leverage on either side of the conflict between Tehran and Riyadh.

    Mr Putin said he and his opposite numbers were “intensively coordinating in the regional and international issues that are related to the situation in Syria, Libya, Yemen and the situation in the Arab Gulf.”

    Morning everyone. With Russia running things it will mean the end of Western operations to destabilise and overthrow the Assad government! The Syrian Jihadists and ISIS will eventually be destroyed, because the Turks will be prevented from supplying them, although the possibility of Erdogan sending the latter into Europe should not be discounted. Putin unlike his western counterparts is interested in peace in the Middle East which is good news for everyone except American Oilmen and Arms Manufacturers. All in all the first ray of sunshine in the Middle East in many years.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/10/15/russia-assumes-mantle-supreme-power-broker-middle-east-us-retreats/

    1. Before you put too much faith in Russia, or for that matter anyone else, I refer you to Afghanistan.

      Where there is Islam there is war. The ME will never resolve itself. Any country with any sense should stay well clear.

    2. Been a lovely afternoon here; I managed to make a start on putting the garden to bed for the winter.

    1. Good morning.

      Lucky you. Wet here again and another day lost trying to point my new patio. Frustration doesn’t cover my mood.

    3. Yo Peddy

      10 Deg C here in Frosty Spain

      That Oirishman Hal O’Geneater has made his first visit

  4. – Not leaving the EU on October 31st October, then it is curtains for the Conservatives and Boris
    Leaving with a dodgy deal on the 31st October, then it is curtains for the Conservatives and Boris
    Leaving the EU on the 31st October with no withdrawal agreement then it is a landslide victory for the Conservatives and Boris.
    But the majority of Conservative MP’s don’t want to do that, mainly because they are not Conservatives. .

    1. Why, oh why did Farage take his eye off the ball in the immediate aftermath of the Referendum?
      As soon as The Coward Cameron stood down it was obvious that the Remain die-hards would use the delay to organise themselves.

        1. The state he left UKIP in because of his inability to prime up a decent candidate to take over gave the Remainers a free run.

          1. And then he didn’t help matters by slagging off UKIP, promoting the dolt Bolton and setting up a rival group to split the vote.

        2. Well talks appear to be ongoing. The problem keep coming back to the NI border and that’s an issue even with No Deal

          There are Fundamental differences between Mays deal & Boris’s. I have summarised them below

          May’s Deal

          WE REMAIN in single Market and Customs Union until the EU agree we have an acceptable solution and we continue to pay the EU during that period

          Boris’s Deal

          We LEAVE the EU on the 31st of October and cease to be in the single market or customs union and pay the EU no further money from that point

          NI will be able to choose to temporarily opt back into the Customs union. If they choose to they control when they leave this arrangement

          The reason for the above arrangement is to get around the problem of collecting tariffs. As they will be temporarily withing the customs union for goods originated from within NI they can flow across the land border tariff free

          The remaining part of the problem is mainland UK as that will be OUT of the Customs union so tariffs will have to be applied this where we get the Border down the Irish sea claim. First it is not border but just a tax collection point and second it is not in the Irish sea but will be at the mainland ports.

          The above arrangements will continue until the EU is happy that technology can be used around the NI land border. It is slightly daft as my understanding is both Dover and the Channel tunnel will be using pretty much the same technology that is proposed for the NI border

          If we take the Channel tunnel they will be using number plate recognition and a bar code so when a lorry arrives the number plate is recorded, The lorry has to stop it does so now and this is the opint where the bar code is scanned and thats it. The basis of it are very simple

          2. I am unsure of the position on th ECJ that does not appear to have been mentioned so unil we see the full text who knows. Talks still appear to be going on so anything could change and most of this is based on vague statements from the EU

            The simple Fact though is even a NO Deal option require a solution to the NI border issue

          3. No, the Irish border does exist, in theory. I can confirm that in one or two places there is real physical evidence that it exists. There are a few signs. There are also about 200 unmarked crossing places.
            So please stop pushing the myth that the border, the management of the border, or even its existence, are of any consequence outside the meeting rooms of the EU.

          4. HJ, I commented yesterday that Rees-Mogg has expressed the opinion that the ECJ would have an input on some areas e.g. how EU citizens living here are to be treated. He thinks that its control will diminish over time. Not good enough if that’s true. A foreign court, and a political one at that, should have no say how this country conducts its internal business. We need to see the detail if the talks get that far.

          6. When has any control the EU has had over us “diminished over time”? They do not relinquish acquis communautaire.

          7. You are swallowing the headlines, hook line and sinker. The Devil will be in the detail and I can promise you that the headline bait wraps some filthy poison if you accept it

          8. May tried that by spouting blatant lies. Leave legal and constitutional experts debunked her “facts” for what they were. If Johnson hasn’t learned from May’s lies being exposed in short order then he’s a fool. The experts allied to social media form a powerful tool and nothing will escape close scrutiny.

          10. Indeed Korky but the problem is the Al-Beeb and the rest of the MSM will not broadcast the truth,social media is all over the betrayal about defence but the vast majority of our people have no idea what is going on
            Mushrooms,kept in the dark and fed bullshonnet

          11. If Veterans for Britain are correct then many in the House were unaware of what May was up to. She worked to keep it secret and perhaps being aware of the lack of interest from many of our lazy MPs she thought she would succeed in her treachery.

          13. They keep all the fish, and tell us what to grow on our farms. (Nothing that will compete with EU farmers obviously. Possibly borage and tweazels.)

    2. Blast you! I am sure you are absolutely right.

      The only hope Boris has is with a general election but this will require multiple deselections and an electoral pact with The Brexit Party if he is to win.

    1. The EU do not care, it won’t go through Parliament and it will all drag on for another three years.

    2. Yo Bill

      What continues to amaze me. is that the EU in general, France and Germany in paricular, absolutely, hate us, but they will not let us leave.

      Our money is wanted not us

  7. Good morning from the IBIS Nottingham Centre.
    Excellent concert last night.
    The Finzi, “The Fall Of The Leaf” was one I’d never heard before and was beautiful.
    The Bruch No.1 Violin Concerto was inspiringly played by Canadian violinist James Ehnes.
    I had to stop myself from singing along with the 2nd movement!
    As much as the Tchaikovsky 4th is a bit of a pot boiler, it was also played superbly and with great vigour.
    The evening was further enhanced by the young lady, a music teacher, who was sat next to me for the performance who was more than willing to engage in conversation!
    Next foray? Perhaps the BBC Symphony’s Vaugn-Williams concert in January.

  8. Prince Harry breaks down during emotional speech as Sussexes lay bare their ‘world of pressure’ in documentary. 15 OCTOBER 2019.

    The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are to lay bare the “world of pressure and pain behind the brave faces” in a ¬documentary, it has been revealed, after the Duke broke down during an emotional speech about seriously ill children on Tuesday night.

    The Duke and Duchess, who have both given interviews to their friend Tom Bradby as part of an ITV programme about their ¬recent tour in Africa, will speak on camera about the “challenge and ¬pressure of balancing their public ¬duties and family life”.

    I don’t doubt that from my own point of view that this is a sh1t life but one has to point out that they have volunteered for it. Harry is rich enough in his own right to drop out if he wishes and live a private life of Leisure or whatever suits him. Far more than the rest of us can hope for!

    What I detect here is the not unusual desire to be admired and feted with no negative feedback, surely a hopeless wish that anyone acquainted with the MSM would recognise for a pipe dream!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-family/2019/10/15/duke-duchess-sussex-lay-bare-world-pressure-pain-behind-brave/

    1. There are so many families who have suffered tragedies , a lot of of people have back bone and very little support , but they get on with it .

      These droopy pathetic Royals are getting on my nerves . Their mother’s lifestyle caused self inflicted injuries . Diane was a hoist to her own petard.

      Bit too early to put some poetry on here but…

      This Be The Verse
      BY PHILIP LARKIN

      They f### you up, your mum and dad.
      They may not mean to, but they do.
      They fill you with the faults they had
      And add some extra, just for you.

      But they were f###### up in their turn
      By fools in old-style hats and coats,
      Who half the time were soppy-stern
      And half at one another’s throats.

      Man hands on misery to man.
      It deepens like a coastal shelf.
      Get out as early as you can,
      And don’t have any kids yourself.

      1. “These droopy pathetic Royals are getting on my nerves.”

        Mine too, Belle (and good morning). They are the leaders of generation snowflake. If they must blub at the sight of deprivation and impoverishment then perhaps they are in the wrong job. (Can’t help thinking that the PR competition is hotting up, with Billy Wales getting lots of coverage in Pakistan, too. Cynical? Me?? You bet!)

        1. For goodness sake; they are well into their thirties.
          By that stage, MB and I had experienced losing parents to cancer, had a mortgage to pay, gained qualifications on student nurses’ wages, were running a business and had two sons in senior school.
          All done on a shoe string.
          Just Bloody Grow Up, You Wealthy Whingers.

          1. Don’t hold back.
            But seriously, it must be awful to be chained to life of luxury, living in palaces paid for by someone else, getting a tax-free stipend that would pay the wages of a car factory, having always to wear nice clothes, travelling in private planes, paid for by somebody else, well, actually paid for by the workers in the car factory, being on the cover of colour magazines for chav hairdressers, and the emotional upset of seeing and even meeting poor people.
            (Where is Grand Admiral Prince Grigory Potemkin when you need him?)

        2. For goodness sake; they are well into their thirties.
          By that stage, MB and I had experienced losing parents to cancer, had a mortgage to pay, gained qualifications on student nurses’ wages, were running a business and had two sons in senior school.
          All done on a shoe string.
          Just Bloody Grow Up, You Wealthy Whingers.

    2. FFS.
      Bring back the stiff spine and equally rigid upper lip.
      They are going bana …… ah ….

    3. Having one’s cake and eating it springs to mind. If they can’t take the heat, they should stay out of the kitchen.

        2. The House I belonged to also had a green badge (my least favourite colour). It was Wenlock. I would rather have been in Bredon (light blue) or Malvern (dark blue) 🙂 Clee was yellow.

    1. Can’t tell yet Johnny. It is the Secret Protocols that worry me and that will emerge in the coming years!

      1. The outline deal, in legal text, will be issued and then more serious talks begin to thrash out the details, so says a political journalist.
        That’s where the real sellout will be concocted and I await Martin Howe QC’s et al. opinions. Headline facts can be spun by politicians but the detail betrays the truth.

        1. What Mrs May said was very different from the details that were found in her surrender WA – I expect that under scrutiny Boris’s WA will have all the same concealed flaws.

  12. Morning all

    SIR – Charles Moore (Notebook, October 15) suggests that we should switch to driving on the right for the sake of uniformity, as this would save lives.

    He does not appear to consider how many lives would be lost due to traffic accidents during such a switchover – let alone the economic cost of replacing all our signage overnight.

    Dominic Powell
    London SW11

    SIR – Ninety-one per cent, or thereabouts, of the world’s population is estimated to be right-handed.

    When driving a car (even an automatic), it is necessary to take one hand off the wheel on occasion. Which hand would Mr Moore recommend should always be gripping the steering wheel? If his answer is the right hand, then driving on the left side of the road makes a lot of sense.

    David Maples
    Petersfield, Hampshire

    SIR – I agree with Mr Moore that everyone in the world should drive on the same side of the road.

    That would be the left side, so as to keep the sword arm free against oncoming hostiles – for the left side is the right side and the right side is the wrong side.

    Ken Stevens
    Sonning Common, Oxfordshire

    2. Well there is some data o this as Sweden switched from driving on the left to driving on the right there are also safety improvements with driving on the right for large vehicles as you have better visibility

      2. Napoleon introduced driving on the right simply to cock a snook at Blighty.
        The Yanks followed suit because they harboured the naive belief that the French were their noble allies in the 1770s. (Burning down the White House probably didn’t help our cause.)

    3. Thanks, David Maples. Motor insurers are always looking for any excuse to increase premiums. We left-handers are now fair game.

      ‘Morning, Epi.

    4. Yo Epi

      To avoid too much confusion by changing sides all at once, we should adopt the Oirish way

      Those with Number plates with ‘Even Numbers convert on Day One, Odd numbers Day Two
      Edit
      For the trial

      Even Monday, Wednesday Friday
      Odd Tuesday, Thursday Saturday

      Sunday normal

      1. The last country to Switch did so almost overnight. These was a lot of preparation involved but it is the only sensible way to do it

        2. A number of countries have switched from Left to right such as Sweden & Canada. With countries that are Islands there is less incentive to change. but growing number of people no to drive broad. Switching the UK from Left to Right though would be very expensive although it would improve road safety

        3. …not to mention some truly hideous expense, together with our roads being fouled up for far more than just one night if the omnishambles of Brexit is any guide.

          1. Given the size of the UK and that it is an Island there is Little reason to switch. The main reason might be more people come to visit the UK and drive over here and the highway around. that increases the risk of accidents as people can get confused as to what side to drive on. The cost of switching the UK though would be to high to jusify it

          2. There hundreds of East European – particularly Polish – lorry drivers in Britain. So many, that large haulage companies actually employ Polish speaking traffic managers.
            Their accident rate is no worse than that of British lorry drivers.

          3. The stats indicate otherwise. You need to look at it on a percentage basis though as clear UK lorry drivers will have more accidents simply because there are far more of them

          4. But their rate of getting lost when they are diverted is pretty high if our roads are anything to go by. It got so bad that temporary road signs in Polish were put up!

          5. There was a movement in the 20th century towards the harmonisation of road laws in Europe and a gradual shift began from driving on the left to the right. The last Europeans to change from left to right were the Swedes who bravely made the change overnight on Dagen H (H Day), September 3rd 1967. At 4.50am all traffic in Sweden stopped for ten minutes before restarting, this time driving on the right.
            Today, only 35% of countries drive on the left. These include India, Indonesia, Ireland, Malta, Cyprus, Japan, New Zealand, Australia and most recently, Samoa in 2009. Most of these countries are islands but where land borders require a change from left to right, this is usually accomplished using traffic lights,

          8. 35%. That is a very large majority. *

            “Arithmetic – the Remainer Way” by Dianne Abbott.

          9. You omitted to mention that parts of Austria drove on the right until Herr H took over, then they had to change sharpish, whether they liked it or not.

    5. SIR – I fear Charles Moore will have upset a lot more “lefties” than the few he deigns to mention.

      From his list of those who drive on the left he omits Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa, much of Southern and East Africa – almost 80 countries, in fact, from Anguilla to Zimbabwe.

      John Newbury
      Warminster, Wiltshire

      1. I suspect it’s yet more ‘harmonisation’ pressure from the EU.
        Drip, drip, drip…..
        It was obvious by the poor standard of the column in general, that CM was struggling to fill his word quota.

      2. I was about to point out that India is a notable exception from that list, given its size, then I remembered from experience that they drive wherever the hell they want and on the side that suits them at any given moment.

  13. The Telegraph headline says it all:

    Deal is drafted in Brussels

    By Brussels – they mean.

  14. The voting system in Britain is the outcome of centuries of struggle and
    civic engagement. The degree of trust that allows us to vote on the
    basis of showing up and giving our names is a real boon. We should be
    proud of the fact that voters are not generally called upon to ‘produce
    their papers’ – though for some parts of the community, that has become a
    more common experience than for others. There might well be a case for
    stricter conditions on postal voting, but Voter ID will do more harm
    than good. Let’s not go down that path.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/10/14/voter-id-will-damage-democracy/
    The idiot that penned this is a TBP candidate,it follows support for mass migration from other candidates TBP is well infiltrated with 5th columnists before it really gets going

    1. Rik,
      UKIP has suffered thus for years with members fighting
      today with certain members of the NEC,& which will be rectified shortly.
      Many political quarters know the potential of UKIP as seen prior and in their eyes it must be suppressed.

    2. If there had been so many fifth columnists available in ancient Greek times then the Parthenon could have had even more columns than it already has.

    3. There are very sound reasons for introducing a requirement for voter ID. It is already used in NI and work well. In the past trust worked reasonably well but does not do so now. The current system is total daft in that you do not even need to show the Voter Card

      The fact that some are so anti it indicates that a lot more fraud is going on then the government thinks. A voter ID card also could be used to prove entitelment to Free NHS care

        1. If only we could find solution that would get rid of several million that prevent it being the cohesive nation it used to be.

        2. I believe Boris is planning to tighten up the postal voting system. Mass harvesting of Postal votes will be banned as will handing in Postal votes on the day. If you have a postal vote you will have to post it. If you forget to tough

          The other thing being looked at is improved security the main check is the signature but they are not really checked all that is checked is that there is a signature and it appear to be the correct one thing being looked at is used security checks that the banks are introducing so you will after entering certain data or and using a card reader be sent a oNe off code you will have to enter on your postal vote

      2. Go the whole hog Bill and require comprehensive ID cards for all UK adults. There are many fraud and security reasons for universal ID cards and the sooner the better in my opinion.

        1. Be careful what you wish for. What may seem at first sight a sensible measure to tighten up security may, through mission creep of various governments, become an instrument for control. Express the wrong opinion and suddenly you become a non-person, unable to access your bank account, vote, receive your pension …

  15. Bashar Al Assad – the tyrant who drowned his nation in blood – is the real winner in Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of Syria. 15 October 2019.

    The 54-year-old dictator has turned out to be the great survivor, despite his fine doctor’s hands being drenched in blood, despite worldwide condemnation as a war criminal who indiscriminately slaughtered his own people. He has outsmarted the US at every turn, and regained his territory first from rebels and now from the Kurds who helped destroy IS for him and for the West.

    Well he’s not a dictator and his hands are no more blood drenched than those of any other leader defending his country. He has had to deal with a ruthless enemy, the Jihadists, who were backed by the West and its proxies, every vehicle, weapon and round of ammunition which they supplied coming in through Turkey. The UK played its part of course with the chemical weapons False Flag operations. It is a wonder that he has survived and the ordinary people of Syria and Europe should be thankful for it. His victory has prevented a mass exodus of refugees into Europe and the establishment of an ISIS caliphate on the Mediterranean coast.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7577097/MICHAEL-BURLEIGH-Bashar-Al-Assad-tyrant-drowned-nation-blood.html

    1. As is so often the case, the West backed the wrong side.

      Millions of lives and reservoirs of blood would have been spared if we had backed Assad against those who wished to overthrow his country.

      1. It would have been far better had we stayed out altogether. If they want to kill themselves, let them get on with it; just don’t accept fugitives here. In fact, pursue the Jeptha solution.

    2. Perhaps. it is better the ‘Dictator you know’, rather than a new one

      Look how the Midle East has been since Saddam Hussein, hung up his clogs

      Winning wars is (comparitevely) easy, if you really want to ie

      USA 1 Grenada 0

      Vietnam 1 USA 0

      Winning the peace is beyond the capability of most Nations

      1. Trump tried the novel approach of smashing the peace to smithereens with one phone call.

    3. MACBETH. If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well
      It were done quickly: i

      Of course the chap who wanted to become the King of Scotland was talking about the murder of one man.

      If Boris s trying to bamboozle and bounce us into a vassal surrender WA he is talking about the murder of our whole nation.

  17. The UK cities where rent is rising the fastest

    The cost of renting a home rose fastest in Nottingham, Leeds and Bristol in the past year, research indicates

    Aberdeen recorded the biggest fall with rents i the last quarter falling by 4.1%. Aberdeen is dependent on the oil industry and that’s not doing well

  18. SIR – Charles Moore (Notebook, October 15) suggests that we should switch to driving on the right for the sake of uniformity, as this would save lives.

    David Hardy 16 Oct 2019 7:14AM
    Why can’t we ‘unite’ the country by having 52 percent driving on the left and 48 percent driving on the right?

  21. I am escaping to find gash wood for the winter. Think of the “poor man came in sight gathering…etc”.

    TTFN

      1. Not a soul in sight.

        Got two sacks of useful wood. Tiring, though. And the ground is still damp.

  22. Lib-Dems planning to try to sabotage Brexit today

    As it has been looking increasingly likely a deal will be struck the Lib-Dems have had to try to come up with new way to sabotage Brexit. There latest ploy it to try to get legislation in place that requires any deal to be approved by a peoples vote. What the options will be who knows and this will be on top of the Benn legislation. The sole purpose of course is an attempt to sabotage Brexit . They could well shoot themselves in the foot though as if they did get this ploy through we would be long out of the EU as a peoples type vote would take several months

      1. ‘Morning, Bob, please bear with me if I add the perfect adjective…

        …”This Contemptible Parliament…”

    2. MorningT-B – “What’s going on there?” That’s a rhetorical question. Treachery.

  24. Morning, Campers:

    Douglas Carswell in the DT:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/10/15/eus-spineless-leaders-always-vocal-brexit-have-gone-strangely/

    “The EU’s spineless leaders, always vocal about Brexit, have gone strangely silent on Catalonia

    This sordid episode tells us what the EU is really about

    This week, pro-democracy activists were handed down lengthy prison sentences. Their leader, forced to live in exile, condemned the authorities’ “repression”. No, I’m not describing any kind of clampdown in Hong Kong. Those sent to prison were not living in Africa or Venezuela. They were in Spain – a supposedly civilised European state.

    Nine leaders of the Catalan nationalist movement have been imprisoned for organising an independence “referendum” in 2017. The poll they ran was, by any objective measure, neither free nor fair. The Spanish government would have been entirely justified to have simply ignored it. But they did much more than that, incarcerating those that ran it, inflaming opinion, and stoking up precisely the separatist sentiments that they fear.

    To appreciate quite how draconian the behaviour of the Spanish state has been, conduct this little thought experiment. Imagine for a moment that it was Nicola Sturgeon of the SNP who had been forced to flee Scotland after running an impromptu poll. Try to contemplate a scenario under which Ian Blackford MP had been sentenced to time in Wormwood Scrubs.

    It’s hard to entertain that idea, even momentarily. But perhaps Spain’s behaviour is shocking only if you start from the assumption that she is a serious nation state, to be judged by the same standards that we might judge ourselves. It is clear from her actions that she isn’t.

    But it is not only the actions of Spain that are revealing. This sordid episode tells us what the EU is really about, too. As nine Catalan leaders were locked up for their beliefs, those EU institutions we are endlessly led to believe exist to safeguard freedom and democracy stayed silent.

    The European Commission, quick to proclaim its commitment to “European values” of human dignity and freedom, refused to condemn an actual instance of those values being flouted. The European Parliament, which likes to believe it has democratic legitimacy, looked the other way as elected officials in a European country were carted off to their cells.

    Why such double standards? Why does the EU remain silent when one of its own violates the norms of decency and democracy? Precisely because the Madrid government is “one of its own”, a supplicant state.

    What the silence of the EU establishment proclaims loudly is that the EU is an imperial project. Like the Habsburg empire before it, its basic business model is to co-opt local elites into its embrace. The local elite that hold office in Madrid are its clients. They accept the EU’s supremacy, subsidies and support. Faced with upstarts in Catalonia wanting to break away, Madrid gets a free pass.

    Ever since the Madrid government began to clamp down on the leaders of the Catalan separatist movement, EU officials have clung to the excuse that what Madrid does is up to Madrid – it’s an “internal matter”, they say.

    Why might the European Union suddenly discover respect for the internal affairs of its member states? Not because of any sudden conversion to the principle of national sovereignty, but because it suits its ambitions.

    European leaders have been more critical about Poland’s leader, Jarosław Kaczyński, who had the temerity to win an election on Sunday, than they have been of Madrid. Unlike the leaders of a supplicant state in Madrid, the government of Poland is prepared to assert itself. Kaczyński is not a supplicant ruler. And neither, of course, is Boris Johnson. Which perhaps explains why, while EU president Donald Tusk declared there to be a “special place in hell” for the leaders of the Leave campaign, he has yet to find the time to criticise the imprisonment of politicians in Spain.

    Last month, Guy Verhofstadt, one-time leader of the European Parliament, did manage to find the time to come to the UK. Standing shoulder to shoulder with Jo Swinson of the Lib Dems, he openly called on the EU to turn itself into an empire and encouraged our MPs to overturn the UK’s Brexit referendum result.

    Intervening in the internal affairs of member states is acceptable if it is to support local elites who will accept their supplicant status, you see. Fortunately in Britain we have free and fair elections to decide who our local elites might be.”

    1. I expect it’s because G S does not want Catalonia to be independent and thereby upset his dream of control pver Europe.

      So in one of his week;y meetings with the European Commission he probably gave instructions.

    2. Don’t dare mention that Hungarian bloke. The one that thinks Hungary is for Hungarians.

      1. The Hungarian Foreign Minister did a really good interview on RT at lunchtime.

        Very impressive.

    3. There was a piece to camera on the news last night where the Spanish PM (I think) was ironically condemning the Catalunyans as undemocratic whilst his government has just put them away, not for years, but decades.
      How democratic is that?

  25. Just watching Mary Peters on Breakfast TV.. superb example of happy smiley sports womanhood.. and she is 80 years old!

    She was a real champion.

    1. She visited our Lightning squadron in Suffolk in the early 70s – I’m not sure if she got a flight in the two-seater but she did get lunch in the Ruperts mess

    2. Vomit! Is it really OK to put your hand on someone? Really? I don’t think so.
      What do others think?

  28. Extinction Rebellion trying to take the Met to court over the banning of them from protesting in London

    First thing is they have not been banned but they need to get prior approval from the Met and second Extinction Rebellion have been breaking the law. They seem to think that any non violent protest is Lawful i. it is not. Violence has in any case been involved also you cannot legally deliberately obstruct the public highway which they have been doing also illegally parking vehicles etc is an offence as is camping on a public highway as is littering a public highway

  29. Daily Brexit Betrayal

    My God, we do live in extraordinary times!

    So – have we ‘got Brexit’ or haven’t we? If you only saw the headlines

    in one paper yesterday afternoon, you had to think that we were

    witnessing the collapse of Johnson and his Brexit team! It ain’t so and

    it wasn’t so!

    One of those headlines is here.

    At that time though nobody really knew what was being negotiated, just

    that something was going on because suddenly ERG members and DUP members

    were ‘seen rushing’ to No 10. That was ‘it’!

    Sadly for the waiting reporters

    nothing was leaked,. We now know why: the Leaker-in-Chief from the

    Cabinet had removed herself. How she and her recipients must now regret

    this! Instead she now accused her Tory colleagues as ‘sexists’ – no, she

    wasn’t groped – because that is the only reason they rejected Ms May’s

    Vassalage Treaty! Read it for yourselves here and ponder that this lady held some high posts in government …

    There’s one more item

    I simply have to share with you, with giggles: our dear HoC peacocks

    are now upset because they may have to come to Westminster for a session

    this Saturday but only if the EU has agreed to a deal which would make

    that session necessary. So they moaned …:

    “MPs have been kept

    guessing over whether they will be called to the Commons on Saturday,

    with some complaining about having to be in Westminster for 9.30 on a

    weekend morning. […] Jacob Rees-Mogg, the leader of the Commons,

    dismissed complaints from opposition MPs about the uncertainty, saying

    that “to meet twice or three times on a Saturday in 70 years is not too

    inconvenient even for those with the most pressing diary concerns”. (link, paywalled)

    Oh dear – have these MPs never

    had to make conditional appointments? Even we peasants are able to tell

    our friends that we may or may not be able to attend depending on

    something happening! It’s just another sign of the deterioration in the

    mental caliber of MPs because, let’s face it, one doesn’t have to be too

    clever when one only needs to rubber-stamp EU directives.

    https://independencedaily.co.uk/your-daily-brexit-betrayal-wednesday-16th-october-2019/

    1. “…one doesn’t have to be too clever when one only needs to rubber-stamp EU directives….”
      They haven’t done anything else since the last century.

    3. I told my friends at lunch that I may or may not be available to meet up next month as someone is coming to see me that day and it depends on what time he arrives as to whether I shall be free to attend. That’s normal in my life.

  30. The one thing that Brexit has shown very clearly is how much MP.s hate democracy. They prefer the Elected Dictatorship form of politics

  31. Latest from Father Christmas Corbyn

    He has now added Free prescriptions and totally free social care to his Christmas list . Has he won the lottery? Mind you it will need to be a multi Billion pound
    win

    1. It’s the magic money tree, Bill. It will provide everything. It will need to as there will be another brain drain, like the one in the seventies.

    1. Haj Amin the Mufti was a great admirer of Hitler and formed a number of SS Bosnian Units. He escaped to Cairo unfortunately and became a leader of the treacherous Palestinians.

    1. Sickening. Thank heavens we don’t have a television and my grand-daughter seems to only seems to go on the internet to do maths at the moment.

      1. Felix Dennis on the right went on to be a very wealthy philanthropist, poet and publisher. I have my copy of the Schoolkids edition to this day.

      2. I never really followed the Oz trial, although I was aware of it. It would have been hard not to be.

        What put me off was the defendants all looking like a bunch of w*nkers.

    1. The current population of the United Kingdom is 67,634,213 as of Wednesday, October 16, 2019, based on Worldometers elaboration of the latest United Nations data.

        1. I am not sure if that figure includes overseas student they tend to like to leave them out as it gives a smaller number. THe argument is most return home after their studies. Thats not really a valid argument though as they will bee replace by new students so although you have a constant churn of students the net affect is a constant increase in UK population

      1. The government wants to halve livestock farming and use a lot of farming land for housing for gimmegrants
        As for why no reporting………………………

    1. Quite so. The standard instructions on defibrillators do not start with the instruction, “First Remove the Knife”.

  37. I feel we could all do with a little cheering up,so here is a post from elsewhere about ER in jail

    “Here is something that will brighten your day. Many of the
    Extinction Rebellion lot have been nicked and some of them remanded in
    custody or sentenced.

    I said at the time it’ll be a hell of a
    shock to a few of them. Anyway I collated this from another forum form
    someone who works for Her Majesty’s Pleasure:

    We’ve just had some
    XR double barrell named wet come in on remand. He’s been put on our
    specialist spur for first timers and those deemed to vulnerable for a
    main spur.

    The worst thing for him is I spent most of exercise yesterday trying to convince our main wing prisoners that he wasn’t a nonce!

    He is so far out of his depth in prison that perhaps he may decide that the environment isn’t worth it that much.
    ————-

    ……initially
    when I first saw him I felt an inkling of pity for him. That quickly
    disappeared when he started chopsing off about human rights because he
    had to share a cell and had been bullied on the induction wing.

    I
    was in the middle of explaining the regime to him quite politely as I
    do, but ended up snapping at him reminding him he is not in the Hilton.
    He then promptly burst into tears.
    —————

    What I find
    particularly irksome is that individuals like him have been given a life
    line by being put on this spur, so they need to pin their ears back and
    listen to any advice any officer gives them on how to conduct
    themselves.

    Failure to follow orders, the regime, complain about
    the accommodation or back chat officers about human rights quite simply
    means they will moved across to another spur and fed to the lion’s.

    Shortly
    after moving they will miraculously loose all their canteen and
    valuables whilst sporting a brand new black eye, they will be warned off
    not to grass to officers and that’s the end of that.

    If he continues to push officers buttons then this will be his fate.
    ————-

    I
    was on leave for most of last week but did an early Friday. It
    transpires that said mong continued to piss staff off and the rest of
    the prisoners on the spur.

    I was given the task of telling him he
    was being moved off the spur in the afternoon during association because
    frankly every other staff member has had enough of attempting to talk
    with him.

    He enquired why? Completely oblivious to his obvious failings as a human being in actually being able to interact with people.

    He
    stated he was being bullied by prisoners and staff a like to which I
    pointed out perhaps he was the issue rather than absolutely everyone
    else he’s come into contact with…..

    Time will tell if he learns
    anything from what will continue to be a terrible experience for him,
    one that will only have got far worse as it’s canteen Friday arvo.
    —————

    Bizarre
    turn of events in the end. He had remained on the spur for first timers
    as he was deemed to vulnerable, however today just before bang up he
    got moved across onto the spur I was working on.

    All the prisoners
    were out at the time (feeding time at the zoo) and his reception on the
    spur was as welcoming as you would imagine.

    Immediately the more
    sensible prisoners came up to me telling me he needs to get off the spur
    and the lad who he got chucked in with refused to bang up as he would
    kill him (idle threat TBF).

    Anyway I asked why he’d been moved
    whilst stating he’s going to be eaten alive and it turned out he’d taken
    to attempting to bully his cellmate (an even weaker individual).

    Essentially it turns out he’s a shit magnet that cannot keep his head down!”
    ——–

    2. The most aggravating patients were the druggies from Essex University.
      They would ponce around the wards, sneering at staff and other patients.
      I learnt to go very deaf and blind when a ruckus kicked off in a distant corner of the sprawling ward.

      1. No.
        Maybe I’m obsolete, but too much public emotion is not good for Northern Europeans. It undermines the emoter when hard decisions and actions need taken.

  38. Latest from Al-Beeb: chances of a deal today are disappearing according to sources. Negotiators working furiously…

    2. Predictable…each side says there’s progress so that they can blame the other side when negotiations hit the buffers. Standard political operating procedure.

      ‘Morning, Korky.

      1. The Brexit Party have nothing to fear about not achieving a deal as long as they Leave on 31 October.

      2. Morning, HJ.

        Is it case of Barnier demanding (does he ever ask?) too much or Johnson not conceding enough? It sounds to me that Johnson’s “deal” is regressing into May’s capitulation. That of course would be Barnier’s aim.

    1. It doesn’t look like the soggy & sticky muck (straight from the cow barn) being spread on our fields at the moment. Dutch farmers are too kind to their victims.

  41. Now trans and gay hate crime will mean SIX months in jail after
    judges are ordered to crack down with harsher sentences than those that
    are given for domestic burglaries
    Transgender hate offences to get harsher sentences than domestic burglaries
    Judges ordered to hand out tough jail terms in a crackdown on hate crimes
    Figures revealed that transgender hate crimes up 37 per cent on the year before
    Sentencing Council denies the guideline is ‘politically influenced or motivated’

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7577477/Now-trans-gay-hate-crime-mean-SIX-months-jail-judges-ordered-crack-down.html
    Jeez,do we neede a reset or what……………….

  43. The Independent reporting that the Government are saying that Boris will ask for an extension to Article 50 if his deal fails to get agreed. Goodbye the Conservative Party.

    1. Boomerendum
      A boomerang referendum, reversing the result of the first one, demanded by the baby boomers who never grew up.

  45. “Dear Bill’s” grandson is improving.
    Mind you, the Thos. Cook farrago is an open goal.
    Henry Deedes in the DM:

    “So often it’s the businesses’ chairmen, those cheery, hands-off creatures, whose main duty is invariably turning up to present the trophy at company golf day, who end up looking clueless in these situations.

    Sure enough, the Belgian was no different. ‘What is the position of Thomas Cook now? Reeves asked him. ‘It no longer exists,’ Meysman replied.

    ‘And why is that?’ she probed. ‘That’s a good question,’ he pondered.

    At that moment, I’m fairly sure I could hear the meaty thwack of his media adviser’s palm against his own forehead.”

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c75f1728a7f0e7d5eb25c122b60ea6a94454a42cdd16baa73b8fa261693424cb.jpg

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-7576837/HENRY-DEEDES-watches-Thomas-Cook-boss-Peter-Fankhauser-face-business-committee.html

  46. HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS FROM LONDON TO BRUSSELS

    I sprang to the rollocks and Boris and me,
    And I galloped, you galloped, we galloped all three.
    Not a word to each other: we kept changing place,
    Neck to neck, back to front, ear to ear, face to face:
    And we yelled once or twice, when we heard a clock chime,
    “Would you kindly oblige us, is that the right time?”

    I unsaddled the saddle, unbuckled the bit,
    Unshackled the bridle (the thing didn’t fit)
    And ungalloped, ungalloped, ungalloped a bit.
    Then I cast off my coat, let my bowler hat fall,
    Took off both my boots and my trousers and all
    Drank off my stirrup-cup, felt a bit tight,
    And unbridled the saddle: it still wasn’t right.

    Then all I remember is, things reeling round,
    As I sat with my head ‘twixt my ears on the ground
    For imagine my shame when they asked what I meant
    And I had to confess that in vain I’d been sent
    With the pain in my arse and my cramped aching muscles
    I’d forgotten the news I was bringing to Brussels,
    Though I’d galloped and galloped and galloped and galloped and galloped …..

    (reposted from late last night)

  47. Katie Price is facing bankruptcy by Christmas after allegedly failing to pay back her spiralling debts.

    It appears she has defaulted on the IVA agreement

    Today at the Insolvency and Companies Court, Judge Sally Barber ordered Price to be served with a draft petition notice within seven days.

    “Service will be effective on the expiry of seven days of completion of such sending of the email and such posting.

    “Once you’ve done both, service will be effective on the expiry of seven days.
    “I also extend the time for hearing the bankruptcy petition – I think six weeks.”
    Price will return to the insolvency court on on November 27.

    A spokesman for HMRC, which is believed to be one of Katie’s creditors, said they would not comment on individual cases.

    Mr Taylor from JMW Solicitors told the judge he had been in email contact with Price in the last two and a bit weeks, but she had failed to attend an appointment with her creditors.

    She has a habit of not turning up she did not turn up today and instead preferred to be on holiday in Turkey

  48. Archant loses £7.6m before tax as advertising and circulation revenues fall

    Archant, publisher of the The New European and Eastern Daily Press titles, made a pre-tax loss of £7.6m last year, new full-year accounts show.

    Group revenue for 2018 was down 9.6 per cent to £87.3m. Advertising revenue, which makes made up the majority, fell by 10.8 per cent to £64.2m.

    Newspaper circulation revenue fell 6.6 per cent to £16.4m while magazine circulation revenue fell 4.4 per cent to £6.6m.

  49. Profits plummet at Telegraph group despite subscriber uplift

    The Telegraph’s pre-tax profits fell by 88 per cent to £1.6m last year, new financial figures show.

    But total subscription revenues at the group were up by ten per cent, driven by a 27 per cent uplift in digital subscription revenue.

    1. Copying and pasting this chart has completely destroyed the formatting but you can still see the figures. What’s really striking is that the Guardian is at the bottom of the list but doesn’t seem to have any funding crisis?

      Circulation in thousand copies
      The Sun 1,371.19
      Daily Mail 1,199.76
      The Sun on Sunday 1,137.11
      The Mail on Sunday 997.55
      The Sunday Times 707.6
      Daily Mirror 499.82
      The Times 406.28
      Sunday Mirror 403.18
      Daily Telegraph 335.74
      Daily Star 321.48
      Daily Express 312.77
      Sunday Express 268.05
      The Sunday Telegraph 262.78
      i 230.83
      Daily Star – Sunday 189.45
      Financial Times 168.55
      The Observer 159.77
      Sunday People 157.64
      The Guardian 134.57
      © Statista 2019

      https://www.statista.com/statistics/529060/uk-newspaper-market-by-circulation/

        1. And probably all those Telegraphs, Times and Mails that are free in Waitrose if you spend over a certain amount.

      5. Extract the copies the Guardian sells to the public sector (BBC, Government, academia etc) and I suspect the situation in the “real world” is hardly any copies sold.

        1. I expect the Guardian gets funding from charities as well. They cannot as I understand it do it from the charity itself but most charities get around that by setting up a so called commercial arm

          2. Over here they seem to use the same agency ad feeds as anyone else. Next to Viner’s alarmist article on “Global Heating” – the new official Graun phrase – there are ads for cheap flights to Mexico.

            Incidentally, their “US version” is a joke. They move a few articles around, but by the time people are up and about even here on the East Coast, many/most articles have had comments shut down – seems to happen about mid afternoon UK time. Staff decamping (probably the wrong word) to the local wine bar, I suspect. I find to hard to believe anyone here actually reads it. If they do get a decent story, they pass it to their “partner”, the New York Times, editor one Alan Rusbridger…

          4. That’s why I look always take a look. And it is one of the few papers that seems still to have subs – grammar and spelling are usually correct. I do enjoy (along apparently with quite a few others) commenting on some of the articles. Adding facts usually torpedoes their arguments, but there are some real loonytune postings.

        2. Two local newsagents, and the garage have stopped stocking the Guardian, which only leaves Waitrose with about six copies on their shelves in the morning, and most still there after lunch.

          1. It shows the likely shopping base.
            I suspect that well cloaked off-shore trusts will keep it afloat for a while yet.

      6. They have an ongoing “send us some money” campaign which their editor claims is keeping them afloat. At one time, they had a massive cash pile which under Rusbridger they were happily burning through. Probably get EU grants as well.

        Isn’t it compulsory for BBC staff to buy it??

        1. I wouldn’t wipe my backside with it but I do remember receiving a corporate e-mail informing us that BBC News and the Guardian are “the most influential” news sources. Carefully worded. There were nods of agreement around the office.

        2. “Since you’re here…. We have a small favour to ask. No one buys the Guardian anymore, since we turned into a glorified student rag, and we keep getting sued over the lies we tell. We need your support to keep churning out this garbage because our writers’ support for socialism instantly disappears when it’s their paycheque involved. Honestly, if it gets any worse we’ll be sat next to a cash point in Covent Garden with a mangy dog on a string.”

  51. BREXIT.

    What is happening today?

    10:00 BST – Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay will appear before the Commons Exiting the European Union committee

    13:00 – Michel Barnier due to brief EU ambassadors

    16:00 – The PM meets the cabinet

    17:15 – Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron hold joint press conference

    19:30 – The PM meets 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers

  52. Not good news from the EU negotiations. Looks as if Boris is being led by yhe nose down Theresa May’s treacherous path. More concessions to the EU, more money to Northern Ireland to bring the DUP on side. Another extension to Article 50. Borders not ready [NAO report]. Mind you all of this is speculation on the BBC reports but it suits there agenda to Remain in the EU. If any of this is true Boris is preparing such a climbdown and U-turn that his party is finished. This an an EU trap and even I can see that.

    1. Boris deal is very different to Mays deal. It takes us out of the EU including the Customs Union and single market on the 31st October. WE would have no financial commitments to the EU after that date unless we decided to opt into certain organisations which may carry a fee

    2. We seem to have lost the art of tough negotiation at the political level. Too many “professional” politicians and the few conviction politicians that are in politics have been sidelined e.g. John Redwood.
      Compare our chaotic methods to Churchill, Brooke and the Imperial General Staff in the early 1940s. We convinced the USA to follow our strategy of fighting in North Africa against their better judgement. They muttered afterwards that the British were far too well prepared, turning up at the conference with everything covered, well argued, written down and beautifully presented in leather bound volumes. The Yanks learned not to make that mistake again.
      Has Johnson learned from May’s disastrous folly of entering negotiations prepared to give way everywhere as her policy? If the continual reports of concessions are anything to go by he hasn’t done his homework as thoroughly as he should have done. We await the result as the negotiations continue. Why does Barnier make me compare his demeanour to that of an undertaker who has discovered he’s mislaid a corpse?

      2. But it will be if the Government carries on spending in a way that make’s Mr Corbyn’s money tree look like a Weedol-soaked weed.

      3. As stated below it is down to the triple lock and the 4% comes from earning growth which gives the highest figure

  54. Well silence on Brexit so far the next milestone is at 13:00 BST when Michel Barnier due to brief EU ambassadors may be there will be a press release after this meeting ?

    3. They’re telling the EU to hang tough, the UK Parliament will force through a second, but totally fixed referendum, that will mean we stay.

  57. Morning again

    This plus multiple signatures……..

    SIR – We represent businesses, large and small, across the United Kingdom.

    We have one simple message for the Prime Minister on Brexit: no more delay. This rank uncertainty is crippling British business and it cannot continue.

    Britain must leave the EU on October 31 – no ifs, no buts. An extension will see the final breakdown of trust in our political system. The Conservative brand will be tarnished for ever, and a resurgent Brexit Party will fight every seat in the country. The result will be a hung Parliament, with more delay and uncertainty.

    Britain has compromised repeatedly for more than two years. If the EU rejects Boris Johnson’s latest proposal, he must call off negotiations immediately and walk away.

    Our businesses are prepared for no deal. With the Government and Britain’s entrepreneurs working hand in glove, we can create a hyper-competitive, business-friendly powerhouse of an economy – a true alternative to the sclerotic, backwards-looking and lobbyist-riddled EU.

    Britain is the centre of world finance and a leader in the industries of the future. We are an immense global power. It’s time to start acting like one.

    1. It’s time to start acting like one.

      The author’s previous two sentences contradict his final sentence. The UK, including the author and many businesses, are acting like a global power, the problem resides with the political minnows in the HoC and elsewhere. Lack of vision i.e. seeing the EU as their horizon and no further: in another time they would be called flat earthers.

  58. London fire chief: ‘Stay put’ advice for tower block blazes may no longer be viable

    Gosh you can see why she got the job. Sheer genius Staying put is no longer good advice

    If the fire is contained to a single flat staying put is sensible butt if the containment has been breached it is not sensible

    The LFB have never been consistent with this advise neither

    1. She seem to contradict herself as later she says

      The “stay put” strategy is used by brigades across the UK where it is assumed a building’s design and construction will stop fire spreading. Ms Cotton called for new research into what the public and firefighters should do when a building fails.

      She later says

      Dany Cotton warned that the lack of knowledge about which high-rise blocks were able to withstand blazes meant advice to residents to “stay put” and await rescue may no longer be viable.

      1. Or the Commander on the scene can apply common sense and decide what action to take.

        1. But they lack Common sense. The people outside of Greenfell could see the fire was spreading rapidly outside of the building but the firefighter were told to continue the lost cause of fighting it from inside the building

          THe priority should have been evacuating the building and only a minimal amount of firefighting to keep the stair case clear

          1. The golden rule is to run like hell and get out of the place ignoring advice to the contrary. My niece was in one of the twin towers and was told to stay put. She and her colleagues thought about it for a moment and ran. They survived .Those that stayed died.

          3. And try not to trip over or otherwise get in the way of the firefighters trying to get up those stairs in blinding smoke to put out the fire.

          5. Sadly, those in the higher floors did not have time. An old friend worked there. He was working from home that day. I recall calling his house the day after, totally unsure who would answer and with what news. He was absolutely shell shocked by his “near miss” – one of the very few times I ever knew him almost completely lost for words.

          6. There, but for the Grace of God… enough to make one turn to religion.
            I saw it all on TV – was home early that afternoon. That was bad enough, and I’m not easily shocked.

    1. That is a busy picture. There is a lot going on in it and it is nice to see that he managed to slip the two “bearded fellows” in at the centre of the mess.

      They are holding a moneybag and forcing the Swedish into the water to kill them with political correctness. The first country of many if they get their way.

    1. He is a brave and eloquent man. He speaks for me. I have none of these talents unfortunately.

  61. SIR – In Shrewsbury there are stickers on lamp posts with a picture of a badger saying: “Save Britain, Cull Tories.” There are not many at present, but they are sure to become much more prolific come the general election, as they were in 2017.

    I have reported this to the police, both as an incitement to violence and as an attack on democracy. I await their response.

    Robert Ashton
    Shrewsbury, Shropshire

    1. I have reported this to the police, both as an incitement to violence and as an attack on democracy.

      You should take that cotton wool out of your ears and get a life!

    2. Didn’t happen, or it would be headlines on the BBC. It is only a short hop from their bunker in London after all.

      If it was real you’d think the BBC would have noticed it and filled the news bulletins.

      Our world famous broadcaster, famed throughout the free world for its openness and honesty would never dream of suppressing such an outrage. Paris with its peaceful, yet vibrant life, art museums, Cafe Culture, Rive Gauche etc could never be like this.

        1. Not a word on their home page. Must be more fabrication. Spain is another peaceful, happy nation. There’s a story about Jennifer Aniston’s Instagram photo, one about Trump meeting the parents of that lad who was run over outside the American base, a question asking if ‘UK voters’ have changed their mind on Brexit and the ‘Royals’ urging action on climate change ‘on glacier visit’.

          https://www.bbc.co.uk/news

  63. AGEING

    I very quietly confided to my best friend that I was having an affair, she turned to me and asked, ‘Are you having it catered’? And that, my friend, is the definition of ‘OLD’!

    Just before the funeral services, the undertaker came up to the very elderly widow and asked, ‘How old was your husband?’
    ’98,’ she replied: ‘Two years older than me’
    ‘So you’re 96,’ the undertaker commented.
    She responded, ‘Hardly worth going home, is it?’

    Reporters interviewing a 104-year-old woman: ‘And what do you think is the best thing about being 104?’ the reporter asked. She simply replied, ‘No peer pressure.’

    I’ve sure gotten old! I’ve had two bypass surgeries, a hip replacement, new knees, fought prostate cancer and diabetes I’m half blind, can’t hear anything quieter than a jet engine, take 40 different medications that make me dizzy, winded, and subject to blackouts. Have bouts with dementia. Have poor circulation; hardly feel my hands and feet anymore. Can’t remember if I’m 85 or 92. Have lost all my friends.
    But, thank God, I still have my driver’s license.

    I feel like my body is totally out of shape, so I got my doctor’s permission to join a fitness club and start exercising.
    I decided to take an aerobics class for seniors. I bent, twisted, gyrated, jumped up and down, and perspired for an hour. But, by the time I got my leotards on, the class was over.

    An elderly woman decided to prepare her will and told her preacher she had two final requests.
    First, she wanted to be cremated, and second,she wanted her ashes scattered over Asda.
    ‘Asda?’ the preacher exclaimed. ‘Why Asda?’
    ‘Then I’ll be sure my daughters visit me twice a week’

    My memory’s not as sharp as it used to be.
    Also, my memory’s not as sharp as it used to be.

    Know how to prevent sagging? Just eat till the wrinkles fill out.

    It’s scary when you start making the same noises as your coffee maker.

    These days about half the stuff in my shopping cart says, ‘For fast relief.’

    THE SENILITY PRAYER :
    Grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway,
    the good fortune to run into the ones I do, and
    the eyesight to tell the difference.

        1. Is a carbuncle your father’s aged brother?
          Afternoon, Tom!
          Keep the funnies coming – there’s an appreciative audience offline for them!

  64. Foster: DUP to issue statement later

    DUP leader Arlene Foster and the party’s Westminster leader, Nigel Dodds, have emerged from a meeting in Number 10.

    Ms Foster tells the BBC to expect a statement from the party later.

  65. Wilson: Good Friday Agreement ‘requires cross-community consent’

    Earlier, in the Brexit committee hearing, the DUP’s Sammy Wilson said of the PM’s Brexit proposals: “Given that this is a controversial issue, that it will lead to a change in the powers of the Northern Ireland Assembly and it therefore falls under the terms of the Belfast Agreement, where there has to be cross-community consent for any change of that nature, especially if there is to be giving over of regulatory powers to the EU on limited range of issues.
    “So can we avoid the issue of consent of the assembly without tearing up that very important part of the Belfast Agreement?
    “And that’s not just against the spirit of the agreement but against the terms of the agreement.”

    1. Eh?
      Don’t they have to actually have a Northern Ireland Assembly in order to poke their fingers into the machinery?

      1. Well they want buy in from NI rather thn Westminster setting the rules. The fall back if the NI Parliament does not resume is to put it to the people of NI

  66. DT Story

    Prince Harry breaks down during an emotional speech as Sussexes lay bare their ‘world of pressure’ in documentary
    Tearful Duke comforted at children’s awards night as TV programme to reveal ‘challenge’ of balancing public duty and family life

    Virtually all of us can be emotional; virtually all of us may cry – but if we have the traditional British stiff upper lip and quiet self-respect we do it in private and not in front of the masses.

    Indeed, when Enorbarbus, Antony’s cynical, tough soldier friend hears his master, who has been defeated by Octavius Caesar, make a pathetic, self-pitying and maudlin speech he is appalled at his master’s sentimentality and feels tears well up.

    And I, an ass, am onion-eyed; for shame,
    Transform us not to women.

    I fear that the two dukes’ mother has instilled more feminine than masculine character traits into her sons.

    1. Morning Richard

      One would have assumed that by having the superb role model that one assumes Prince Philip presents , that those lads would have inherited some backbone and not the feeble wuzz like characteristics that their father and uncles appear to have .

      How strange that our Queen and Princes Anne are fine examples of stoicness yet Charles and the rest are flimsy spoilt individuals.

      2. Charles hasn’t, to my knowledge, blubbered in public. Nor Air Miles Andy, who was handy with his chopper down in the Falklands. Anne seems to be tough as boots, too, as is HM and Philip.

    2. I think your last line is a bit harsh, Rastus. I know plenty of ladies who wouldn’t dream of blubbering in public, amongst whom are my wife and my mother. Harry is just an over-rated snowflake – happy when it’s all going swimmingly, greeting when it doesn’t. He thought he could get away with getting the press onside but that’s not how they work.

  67. Swinson struggling against Ferrari on LBC. Trying (very) to make her case for another referendum on any deal. Simple question, “Why would you recognise a second referendum when you ignore the first?” Answer, “It’s about specifics…” The rest lost on me as her motor mouth defeats my 70 year old brain.

    Swinson also claiming that Remain is now ahead of Leave. Ferrari, “Then why did the Brexit do so well?” Swinson, “The Lib Dems…”. Cue exasperation from Ferrari.

    This woman is all over the place: her mouth leading what passes for her brain. PM material? Quite probably in the current climate of selecting political minnows for high office.

        1. Which covers his car, his travelling and holiday expenses (just pop in and say hallo to a customer, potential or actual).
          With a bit of imagination, little of the family living costs will actually dent his bank balance.

    2. She is very keen on Peoples votes when it suite the Lib-Dem and not keen when it does not. TRy asking her if those MP’ that have defected to the Lib-Dems should have to stand down and fight a by election and you will get a load of waffle from her as to why they don’t meed to

  68. You wanted a “Peoples Vote” luv,you just got one,suck it up

    The MP for Eddisbury in Cheshire, who was sacked by Boris Johnson for

    rebelling on Brexit, has lost a vote of confidence among members of her

    local Conservative Party association.

    Antoinette Sandbach is currently appealing over the suspension of the

    Tory whip, following the Prime Minister’s decision to strip her of it

    after she voted with Opposition MPs to take control of the Commons order

    paper last month.

    But Tory members in her Eddisbury constituency voted no confidence in

    her last night. The vote was symbolic but it opens the door to formal

    deselection.

    https://www.itv.com/news/granada/2019-10-16/cheshire-brexit-tory-rebel-mp-loses-local-vote-of-no-confidence/

    1. Well done, Eddisbury!!!!!
      And don’t give way to any arm twisting by CCHQ.
      That particular madam has been riding for a fall.

    2. If you asked the Constituents of any of the MP’s that have defected to other parties or become independents I would say everyone of them would say they should stand down and face a by election of course non of those MP’s will

    3. One of my fellow lunchers was there and described the atmosphere as “aggressive”. There was, apparently, a lot of shouting because people were not happy. The NFU rep said he couldn’t believe he was at a Conservative meeting and people there were “like the BNP”! That didn’t go down very well, to say the least. La Sandbach played the “poor me” card and got her daughter to speak, which also didn’t go down well, according to my informant, who described it as “irrelevant” and “inappropriate”.

  69. Guardian group to go carbon neutral by 2030 in pledge amid climate protests

    Dont you just love the Guardian

    The Guardian updated its style guide earlier this year to encourage reporters to refer to climate change as the “climate emergency, crisis or breakdown”, use “global heating” instead of “global warming”, and replace “climate sceptic” with “climate science denier”.

      2. A printed paper will not be around/ With the fast shrinking market for printed papers and magazines the distribution costs are increasing

    2. Am I missing something? Is the whole of the UK not supposed to be carbon neutral by 2025?

  70. Will we get a decision from he EU today? Simple logic tells me that talks are still going on and that they believe a deal can be reached. If that were not the case I would have expected the EU to state last night that talks have broken down and they have not done so that indicated to me a deal is within reach

    1. Probably got to be sent to Davos where the decision over Britain’s future will be made.

    1. Gosh. A bit like royalty. Someone else is paying. Will they have to declare this benefit.? Is it OK for UK MPs to accept gifts in kind from foreign billionaires?

  72. ‘We are watching you’: Russia accused of sending threatening texts to British troops. 15 OCTOBER 2019 .

    British soldiers have been warned “We are watching you” in texts and Facebook messages suspected to have been sent by Russia, the Telegraph has learned.

    UK troops stationed in Estonia have complained of mystery messages appearing on their social media accounts and mobile phones, sources said.

    Officials believe the communications are part of a cyber war designed by Moscow to unsettle and intimidate British troops and their allies.

    Oooh I say! Is this Novitext? Does it appear four hours after its sent?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/10/15/watching-russia-accused-sending-threatening-texts-british-troops/

    1. Makes a change from lines of loudpeakers broadcasting The Red Flag and The Internationale I suppose.

      Just keeping up with the times.

    4. I’m surprised that soldiers are frightened of text messages.

      I should have thought that modern warfare has far more serious ways of frightening the troops.,

      1. You should know that the possibility of being unfriended will drive a millennial to the edge.

  73. UK’s economy is £69bn smaller because of Brexit turmoil, says leading think tank

    Another load of nonsense , yes the UK economy has slowed down as has most of Europe and North America. On average the UK has outperformed EU countries

    If you look at the total sixze of the UK even if the £69B is real it would a tint drop in the economy

    https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/uk-s-economy-is-69bn-smaller-because-of-brexit-turmoil-says-leading-think-tank-a4262991.html#comments

    1. The turmoil will certainly have hit the economy – all that uncertainty. The fault of the politicians – if Brexit had happened in 2016, all that would be past & the economy would be on wings.

    2. The think-tank quoted by the Standard.

      From their Mission Statement:
      “The Centre for European Reform is an award-winning, independent think-tank that seeks to achieve an open, outward-looking, influential and prosperous European Union, with close ties to its neighbours and allies. The CER’s work in pursuit of those aims is guided by the same principles that have served us well since our foundation in 1998: sober, rigorous and realistic analysis, combined with constructive proposals for reform.”
      Pro-EU.
      Independent?
      See list of Advisers: https://www.cer.eu/advisory-board#tabs

    2. Takes me back to my first primary school in Suffolk. All the different rhymes were used as a basis for running about like maniacs when we were outside. This in the day when girls would tuck their dresses in their knickers to do handstands.

  75. Jessops owner plans to call in administrators

    Camera chain Jessops plans to call in administrators as its owner, Dragons Den star Peter Jones, tries to salvage the struggling High Street brand.

    I think the fact that he forecast sales of £80M in the first year and actually only achieved £7.5M was a clue. I doubt the High Strret stores will be viable might just as well move it to online only

    Mr Jones bought the chain from administrators in 2013 after it collapsed under £81m of debt.
    But since then, the firm, which has 46 shops, has not made a single profit and losses have mounted in recent years.

    He forecasted sales of at least £80m in the first year under his control. But performance was lacklustre and the group reported turnover of just £7.5m for the year.

    Last year alone, the business, which employs 500 people, reported a £13m loss as rent costs increased to £4.7m.

    Lease charges, which include rent on stores, increased from £4.4m in 2017.

    Now Mr Jones is reportedly planning to seek a rescue deal, known as a company voluntary agreement (CVA) with its landlords and lenders. This is an insolvency process that allows a business to reach an agreement with its creditors to pay off all or part of its debts.
    Sky News said the CVA was expected to lead to store closures and rent cuts.

    1. Now everyone has a camera in their phone, there is internet sharing of pictures and you can print at home, camera shops are likely to have a very thin time of it. Some specialists may survive, but they also have internet sales to contend with for “standard” specialist cameras. No wonder it’s not going well.

      1. He reduced the branch Network to the major regional shopping centres so I dont think there is much mileage in the branches. It may be the stores are locked into long term leases hence trying to get the rents down and then close the stores as the leases run out

    2. Good riddance. Call themselves a “Photographic store”?
      Cr*p staff, overpriced, don’t hold stock in store. What do you expect.
      The old Jesssops (prior to mid 90’s) was good and knew their market.

    3. I buy more, and more expensive, camera euipment that the average Joe, but the last time I bought any in a high street shop as far as I can recall, was in fact in a Jessops branch. A rather expensive 35mm negative scanner.

      In 2003!

      Since then I’ve spent many thousands of pounds on all sorts of camera bodies, lenses and peripherals, all on line, usually delivered within 24 hours.

      1. If you lok at it if people just want a camera for general usage they will use their phone. If you are seriously into photograph you will buy on line as the very limited range and higher prices in Jessops will not be an attractive offering and that leaves Jessop with no real market

        1. I spent a few shillings short of 5 grand this January alone on a body and two lenses to supplement my existing stuff. If I could do what they do with my phone my bank account would be fuller. Phones are fine for taking photos of your drunk mates at parties (as long as the pub isn’t too dark, which unfortunately it almost always is) or for quick snaps out on the road, but they aren’t a substitute for a good camera. Think Kodak Box Brownie.

          They sell them on the basis of the number of megapixels and the number of ‘filters’ (which aren’t filters) so that pouting teenagers can put specs and cat whiskers on their selfies. What is never mentioned are the sensor size, dynamic range and the glass in front of that sensor, an order of magnitude more important than the number of megapixels.

          A phone that takes pictures isn’t a camera. It’s a phone with a cheap camera and poor glass built in. Handy for snapshots.

  77. Extinction Rebellion activists begin legal fight over protest ban

    THese protester are very clearly continually breaking the law in my view. Criminal damage has occurred and they have used cars and bus people etc to obstruct a public highway

    The police have said that if they come to them and an agreed place for protesting is made then they can protest

    Extinction Rebellion activists have launched legal action over the police’s decision to ban them from demonstrating anywhere in London.
    Their lawyers submitted an application to the High Court for a judicial review which they hope will be heard later.
    The claimants include the Green Party’s Caroline Lucas and Baroness Jenny Jones, Labour MPs Clive Lewis and David Drew and writer George Monbiot.
    There have been more than 1,600 arrests over the ongoing protests, police said.
    The Metropolitan Police began clearing protesters from Trafalgar Square on Monday evening.
    It followed the announcement of new restrictions under Section 14 of the Public Order Act, which required activists to stop their protests in central London by 21:00 BST or risk arrest.

    Any assembly of more than two people linked to the Extinction Rebellion action is now illegal in London.
    The force said it decided to impose the rules after “continued breaches” of conditions which limited the demonstrations to Trafalgar Square.
    Despite the ban, protesters plan to gather again in Trafalgar Square on Wednesday lunchtime.
    Deputy Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor, who is leading the policing of the demonstrations, said he was confident the Met’s decision was “entirely lawful” and “entirely proportionate”.
    Officers would respond in a “balanced and proportionate” way towards anyone assembling in Trafalgar Square, he said, but added they would be “liable to arrest”.

    1. “The police have said that if they come to them and an agreed place for protesting is made then they can protest”
      Goodwin Sands.

    2. Ladies look away now.

      Young woman in crowded tube train : “Excuse me sir, your beard is tickling my shoulder”

      Six foot six inch muscle bound tranny: “How dare you assume my gender? I am a woman”

      TWICTT: “Only partly a woman but to be fair, you certainly are a BIG cunt”

    3. Obviously no real crime in Cheshire.
      When berks like this get the top jobs, we know we is totally and absolutely flucked.

    6. I wonder if anyone has asked the Police and Crime Commissioner what he thinks about this sort of bollux.

      1. If the Cheshire PCC is anything like the Shropshire PCC, their priority will be “hate crime”. We, the victims, wanted it to be burglaries and vandalism, but we were told we had no chance of that.

    7. Well, that was the first time in a long while that I almost jumped away from my computer in fear and surprise. I was innocently thinking “Here is just another empty-headed moron, whose actions are undermining our society and bringing down our way of life” when my eyes lowered slightly.

      How can any human have hands that big in relation to the rest of them? Is there a male standing behind her doing the gestures? As if she did not have enough problems in her life with her lack of morality and intelligence. Stuck in a job where you need to spout destructive nonsense in order to keep being paid.

      1. Man walks in to shop.

        Hello shop keeper, it;s a nice day,, are you misgendered?

        Man leaves shop with black eye.

  80. An article from today’s ‘Unherd’.

    https://unherd.com/2019/10/will-spain-be-held-together-by-force/?tl_inbound=1&tl_groups%5B0%5D=18743&tl_period_type=3

    “Will Spain be held together by force?

    Madrid’s brutal response to Catalan separatists is typical of a country forged by violence

    Spain’s peaceful transition from brutal Right-wing dictatorship to thriving democracy was one of the success stories of the late 20th century. Following Franco’s death in 1975, a referendum backing change in 1978, and the rapid collapse of a reactionary coup in 1981, the country happily progressed to become a member of Nato and the EEC and, for a time, turned into one of the most vibrant and exciting of European countries. The Seville Expo and the Barcelona Olympic Games of 1992 were the crowning glories of the new Spain, a country which had finally lain the traumas and problems of its difficult and bloody past to rest.

    It was a good story with a positive message, and survived largely unchallenged for many years. But things are changing dramatically in Spain — or rather, are reverting back to type — and the narrative of the Transición, as it’s called, is losing momentum. The past, with all its horrors and threats of bloodshed to come, is back. Because it never really went away.

    A full list of the deep problems currently facing the country would take up far too much space, but it includes the devalued reputation of the monarchy, hard hit by a string of scandals; an economy still struggling to pick itself up after the 2008 crash; an increasing gap between rich and poor; a shift towards weak, short-lived governments; a polarisation of the political spectrum including the rapid rise of a far-Right party; and a seemingly endemic culture of large-scale corruption among the political class.

    All of this has greatly tarnished Spain’s image and self-belief over the past decade. But nowhere are the cracks more apparent than in the Catalan crisis, now flaring up once again following the sentencing this week of nine separatist leaders in the wake of the illegal referendum on regional independence in October 2017.

    Reaction around the world to those scenes two years ago was one of shock and disbelief. Spanish riot police went in hard, using brute force in an attempt to shut the referendum down. Images of baton-wielding officers beating would-be voters were seen by millions, and outside Spain there was a collective intake of breath. How could something like this be taking place in a liberal Western democracy? Surely we don’t do things like this anymore?

    But the problem was to fall into the trap of thinking that Spain actually had changed, to believe the yarn spun by the story of the Transición that she was now somehow different. A long view of the country’s history reveals that old problems and divisions never really go away in Spain; they simply fall into abeyance every now again, only to re-emerge, in a slightly different guise, yet essentially the same. And the Catalan situation is a very good example.

    It is often overlooked that after Switzerland, Spain is the most mountainous country in Europe, and mountainous countries are notoriously difficult to unite and govern (Switzerland only succeeds by being a decentralised federation of cantons). Spanish geography itself, therefore, both gives a clear sense of national identity on the one hand through the distinct landmass that is the Iberian Peninsula (pace Portugal), but also pulls against this by dividing the peoples within between the numerous sierras which cross the landscape like castle walls.

    Because of this there are five official languages in a country of only 40 million people, and there are no words to the national anthem because no one can agree what they should be. “Spanishness” is something which is deeply felt by most of the country’s inhabitants, but is impossible to define. The upshot of this is that several attempts have been made to delineate it through what it is or was not.

    This search for identity through a negative can be seen clearly in Spain’s patron saint, Santiago — St James the Great. From the Middle Ages onwards this senior Disciple of Christ is commonly portrayed not in Biblical guise but as a horse-riding man of violence: as Matamoros, the “Moor-Slayer”. And by mythically slaughtering Muslim Spaniards on the battlefields of the so-called Reconquista, Santiago gave the many disparate kingdoms of Christian Spain something around which they could potentially cohere: not being Muslim. “Spanishness” was effectively constructed around “not being Moorish”.

    But while the iconography of Matamoros focuses specifically on his eradication of Spanish Muslims, the role he symbolises can refer to the crushing of any group or community which potentially threatens an essentially Catholic, unified vision of the country. So everyone from Jews to Protestants, liberals, Enlightenment thinkers, socialists, anarchists and many others have been pushed out or annihilated over the centuries in the spirit which he embodies.

    “During the Civil War of the 1930s, Franco followed this tendency wholeheartedly by describing his Republican opponents simply as “the anti-Spain”. Over half a million of his compatriots died during the conflict, while another half a million fled into exile when it ended.

    And today, as in the past, no one is more guaranteed to raise the hackles of the country’s militant patron saint than a regional group attempting to become independent. Spain — always a work in progress at best, and which has broken up and been put back together several times over many centuries — is viewed by supporters of national unity as la España eterna, “Eternal Spain”, as though created by the Almighty Himself. And to threaten this is not only viewed as something akin to heresy, but also heightens passions to a degree which is not commonly understood by observers abroad.

    This particular divide — between centralism and a pull to the regions — has been at the heart of all of Spain’s multiple civil wars, from what we erroneously call “the Spanish Civil War” (as though there had only ever been one) of the 1930s, through the innumerable conflicts of the 19th century, the Segadors Catalan rebellion of the mid-16th century and beyond. In truth every century in Spanish history, for well over a thousand years, has seen at least one major civil conflict (in 1873 alone there were two different ones taking place simultaneously on the Spanish mainland, while a third raged in the colony of Cuba).

    And while the causes change, there is always, at one level, this fundamental question: should the country unite, or break apart? For the truth is that “Spain” has only ever been created and held together by the use of force. Other methods have been tried — most recently with the narrative of the Transición — but these only enjoy short-term success at best.

    The news from Spain is currently filled with references to the past. The government is preparing to dig Franco up from his mountain mausoleum north of Madrid; conservative politicians talk of possible “church-burnings” to come in the future, in a reference to events from the 1930s; the far-Right Vox party launch a recent election campaign in Covadonga, site of the mythical first battle of the “Reconquista” in 722; even the defeat of Habsburg-supporting Barcelona in the 18th-century War of Spanish Succession is a cornerstone of today’s arguments about Catalan independence.

    Not a day goes by without history somehow making the headlines. The past is on the march, which means that Spain today has a stark choice: between national unity and democracy. Her own history dictates that she cannot have both. True democracy, by its very nature, is not authoritarian enough to hold the country together. The frequently hardline response from Madrid to the Catalan situation shows that when it comes to the crunch, national unity usually prevails. Anything else is a vote-loser, and with yet another general election scheduled for November the country feels weakened and in danger of returning to the well-trodden routes of old.

    Can the 21st century buck the trend, or will the coming years see another civil conflict flare up? It’s in the hands of the Spanish themselves to try, once and for all, to break the habits of their history.”

    Jason Webster’s Violencia: A New History of Spain — Past, Present and the Future of the West is published by Constable

    1. “…illegal referendum…” or unofficial referendum? In a democracy anyone can arrange a referendum, even if pubs have to be used as polling stations.

  81. What?? French troops in Syria?? Who knew and who invited them??

    France is calling on European and other members of the coalition

    fighting Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) in Syria to regroup as the US

    abdicates its “leadership role” in the region, AP reports.

    Foreign

    Minister Jean Yves Le Drian told BFM television on Wednesday that

    France is notably now looking to Russia, given their “common interests”

    in defeating IS in Syria.

    The American military withdrawal from

    northeastern Syria is forcing European leaders to re-examine their

    alliance with the US in the region, the minister said. France’s “own security is at stake” amid the Turkish offensive against Syrian Kurdish fighters, he added.

    https://www.rt.com/newsline/471036-france-syria-russia-us/
    The comments are scathing

    1. If the French had worried about ISIS before filling their country with its supporters, one could take this a bit more seriously. Ditto Merkel and Germany.

    2. Tell all the remainers that their children and grandchildren could well be drafted into this type of conflict, as they get conscripted into the EU Defence forces, which will be used for attack rather than defence.

      1. Lot of the Media and Remainers keep claiming the UK has a veto. That is no longer the case

    1. In other words they say they want us to Remain, but without the alleged benefits.

      Who the hell would want to be in a club like that?

        1. They want us to have a referendum with a rigged question.

          Completely IN or completely OUT and no further argument should be the only acceptable question.

          But as we have already had the hokey cokey referendum (In Out, In Out – Shake it all about) we do not need another one as we have already voted OUT.

    2. Better get ready with a new petition and movement to get out of the EU. It ain’t gonna happen under Boris.

    2. The drop in casual crime and violence would be astronomical if simple “cause and effect” punishments happened such as this.

      You damage someones property, you get hurt. You attack a woman, you wake up in hospital and it takes 6 months before you can walk again.

      The streets would be much safer.

      “Spare the Rod, spoil the child.” As they once said for a large part of civilised history.

  85. Hi-Lex: 125 jobs to go at Port Talbot car parts firm

    Seems to be a mixture of a slow down in the cr market and the EU helping them to mover To Hungary

    A car parts firm has announced it will close in 2021, with the loss of about 125 jobs.
    Hi-Lex Cable System Company makes door and window parts and cables for cars at its plant on Baglan energy park.

    Management at the firm, which supplies Honda, Audi and BMW among others, said it did not anticipate any redundancies in the next 12 months.

    Any remaining business at the plant in 2021 will be transferred to a Hi-Lex plant in Hungary.

    2. It is quite a bold move for Sky to openly say “Here is a news channel that the globalists would like you to watch. No mention at all of what is happening to the future of your country. Don’t worry your pretty little heads about it. Just leave it to our MP’s to quietly carry out their orders.”

      I have also noticed that at this critical period of time, Sky have just changed their morning news format. From 06:00 – 07:00 they did have two presenters who sometimes let slip comments that were not 100% pro-EU. It is now only one presenter with a nicely managed show called “The Early Rundown.” They have also replaced the 07:00-09:00 presenters with the awful Kay Burley and her wondrously biased news-reporting style.

      It is almost as if they want complete control of the news message in the run up to the end of this month.

    1. “Extremist Islamist Groups” – does that include Islamic State? I cannot believe they only had 57 casualties at their hands all the time they were active.

      Whatever the true figures are, Trump’s cosy little green light to Erdogan to kill the Kurdish guards has re-opened Pandora’s box, and he’s washed his hands of the whole affair. Not his problem any more.

      Why should anyone, let alone our most reliable ally in Syria have to choose between genocide and torture? Is this what US morality under Trump has come to?

      1. If the UN was of any use they would be in situ. They aren’t.
        If the Arab league was of any use they would be peace brokers. They aren’t

        If the EU was of any use they would be pressurising Erdogan. They aren’t.

        Stop blaming Trump for Erdogan’s actions; you America hating hypocrite.

        Turkey is the aggressor. Erdogan is driving it.

        You talk about Trump’s phone call, how do you know that Erdogan had not stated he would go in, come what may, and if Trump wanted to stop him he’d better get 50,000 US troops in PDQ?

        Erdogan is an old fashioned Muslim conqueror trying to stamp his own Caliphate over the ME.

        1. If Erdogan had threatened to go in, whether the US soldiers were in the way or not, then President Trump should have summoned the Pentagon and Congress immediately and sought their advice before making any decision about pulling out and leaving the Kurds adrift, or standing firm and exposing Erdogan for violating the NATO treaty. At the very least, he should have explained the situation, tweeted it even, rather better than justifying Erdogan’s aggression because the Kurds did not contribute to the Normandy Landing war effort in 1944.

          Trump was the key figure in all this. I agree that the inaction of the UN, the EU and the Arab League following this debacle has been lamentable. The day I heard about Erdogan’s decision to annexe Northern Syria, I wrote to my MP asking her to ask the Foreign Secretary to consider throwing out the Turkish Ambassador and closing the Turkish Embassy in London. All countries in Europe threatened by an Islamic State breakout from the Syrian prisons or by a flood of refugees and jihadis coming out of Turkey should have followed suit.

  89. The BBC asks What can the UK learn from Norway’s EU border?

    I’ve watched the video and this is what I’ve learnt:

    The border is vast and dwarfs the one on the island of Ireland.

    Smuggling, whether a country is in or out of the EU cannot be policed 100%.

    Solutions have been found which help to keep large-scale smuggling down to a minimum.

    The big lessons, though:

    The BBC has been so obsessed with promoting Brexit problems that it hasn’t even considered there may be solutions, let alone what those solutions could be.

    If other countries can do things, so can we.

          5. I would not dream of telling anyone what to do. I pointed out that I had edited my comment and it was there to see. Whether you refresh or not is your choice.

    2. Who is the white woman being embraced by a gentleman of colour. Would it be polite to refer to him as a GOC?

      1. I don’t know but Caroline Lucas is the lady on his right and is that Ian Blackford on the left of the group. I am sure they all want to stop Brexit.

  91. Gosh Brexit has competition the media are getting all exited over the Porn site blocking being dropped

  93. London’s first ‘iceberg’ hotel to open next year

    So many underground limes and major sewers etc surprised they could fig down that deep
    Another problem particular when its close to the Thames will be the water table. The basement must be tanked and have a lot of pumps

    London’s first “iceberg hotel” — with more space underground than above — is to open in the West End.
    When it is completed next summer, the £500-a-night Londoner hotel in Leicester Square will be 30 metres high from pavement to rooftop but 32 metres deep from the ground to the sixth basement level.

    In total, 51 per cent of the £300 million building will be below the tarmac of the West End’s home of cinema following one of the biggest subterranean excavations seen in the capital.

  94. So you can say you read it here first (as is often the case with NoTTL).

    England lose to Australia

    Japan beats S Efrica

    Final = Japan v NZ (and – for the first time EVER) there will be a ref who does not yield to the constant cheating and bullying that is the hallmark of the AB.)

  95. Leah Bracknell dead: Emmerdale star dies aged 55 after cancer battle

    Leah Bracknell, 55, was diagnosed with incurable lung cancer three years ago.
    Her manager confirmed she has died in a heartbreaking statement, where they thanked the public for their support.
    The statement read: “It is with the deepest sadness that Leah Bracknell’s family confirm that Leah passed away in September, three years after her diagnosis with stage 4 lung cancer

  96. DT Live

    Boris Johnson will request extension if deal is not struck by weekend, Stephen Barclay

    What has happened to Boris’s pledge to take Britain out of the EU ‘willy nilly’ and with ‘No Deal with the EU’ if necessary on October 31st?

    If he wants an extension does this mean that Boris fallen victim to erectile dysfunction? Has his willy become completely nilly? Perhaps we should demand an up-to-date statement from Carrie Symonds?

    2. Possibly we may get a Conditional deal today. A sort of pass subjected to the outstanding issues being resolved by a certain date

    3. Afternoon R,
      Don’t you worry about boris, the master plan of making the lab/lib/con coalition defunct even to idiots is nearing
      fruition and the profitable promised positions await in brussels.
      The current political elite have sucked the peoples in and blown them out in bubbles of broken pledges,promises,vows in manifesto’s, time,time,& time again.
      So far the politico’s have never put a foot wrong.

  97. Be gracious in victory, says Toby Young. Well, up to a point because, after all, we are the good guys.However, I’ll make an exception for the likes of Schama.

    I can only read the first two paras:

    If victory comes, Brexiteers must resist the temptation to play furious Remainers at their own game

    TOBY YOUNG

    It remains to be seen whether Boris Johnson can persuade a majority of MPs to back his new deal on Saturday, but the mere possibility that he might succeed – and take us out with a deal on October 31 – is driving Remainers round the twist. If you thought Brexit Derangement Syndrome was bad, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

    A clue as to how the provisional wing of the Europhile Army is likely to react was provided by the historian Simon Schama in a tweet: “Should this non-government succeed in forcing our exit from the EU on Halloween let all of us who bitterly mourn ring funeral bells and light bonfires of rage and grief and resolution at 12pm – up and down the nation.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/10/16/victory-comes-brexiteers-must-resist-temptation-play-furious/

    1. What concerns me is that I believe that even if we get out, no matter what the deal/clean break, the remainers will do their damnedest to ruin anything and everything, just to show that they were right and we should never have left the EU.

      1. Even if we are told we have left I bet it will be years before it’s true, if ever. I’m not cynical, I’m bloody cynical and u can’t work out why. 😀

        1. I certainly can work out why.

          I trust Parliament and the EU for one thing and one thing only, to line their own pockets

      2. Kick the Remainers out of office at the earliest opportunity. It is the only way.

        I was going to use the full quote about “nuking the entire site from orbit” but that may be a tad excessive.

          1. That is true, but get rid of the MP’s who are holding us back and then you can get rid of all the rest of them.

            Supreme court is it? Shift your corrupt backsides out of that building and beg us not to asset strip your family. You’ll be on a sink estate by the end of the day if you open your mouth.

            Corrupt Civil Servants? I think we will be having that title and pension back, as you have been working for a foreign power against the people of the United Kingdom.

            Common Purpose police officers? Well, we Brexiteers have a common purpose now and you are all going back to being car-park attendants.

            Removing the Remainer MP’s is the silver bullet that cleans out the rest of these rats.

          3. I could not stand for election. I would be unable to sit in the same room as these people who want to damage our country and bring us down.

            The urge to lunge at them and get in a few good hits would be too strong. 🙂

    2. For a start he should know there is not a time of 12pm. It’s either Noon or midday or midnight.

      1. You could argue correctly that 12pm is mathematically midnight, but I don’t think that’s what he means.

        EDIT. Reading it again, maybe it is what he meant. Ambiguous

        1. It’s ambiguous which is why, for clarity, the services always had leave finishing at 23.59 and a new day at 00.01.
          I think most use 12am to follow 11pm but, as I say, it’s ambiguous.

          3. And 1am to follow 12am. Illogical. You could even argue that 12am and 12pm are the same time.

          5. These are probably the same people who had the world celebrating a new millennium a year early.

            Chronologically and numerically challenged.

          6. Indeed so, but I bet you went with the flow and celebrated early and then celebrated again later.

  98. MPs bang tables with delight as Boris reveals deal in just five minutes

    BORIS JOHNSON has been given a rousing reception after he gave the 1922 committee an update on his Brexit plan.

        1. If we are signed up to that viciously nasty deal, then the party that says they will rip it to pieces the day after the election will do VERY well.

          Many of our MP’s will be packing their trunks and disappearing into the mire of the EU.

  103. That’s me for this fine October day. Another chilly night and a sunny day ahead. Prolly the last for a bit.

    Lots of rain up sos and Harry’s way. Still – that’;; keep the trombetti thriving.

    A demain. DV. Just think of Catalunya when you have a mo.

    2. Where we live, almost the exact opposite applies. Our locals are against abortion, the area is very short on immigrants compared to much of the US, being approx 94% Caucasian, and they are of course all armed to the teeth.

      1. I apologise as I have never, ever understood the american obsession with guns.

        I hear it’s for self defence. Fair enough…. but what if the other guy has one as well? Then I hear it’s about protecting yourself from the government. Govt doesn’t need to shoot you to destroy you. It just revokes your national insurance number, freezes your bank accounts and empties them on charges of tax evasion. What use is a gun against that?

    1. Well, I ain’t taking all my stockpiled stuff back to the supermarket, that’s for sure, so we’d better be leaving.

      If the Brexit express does get held up – and a total disaster if it is – it won’t be because of leavers on the line.

        4. The BBC will stop their wall to wall 24/7 coverage of how awful we are to want a democracy and go absolutely beserk and begin constant, unremitting assault on Boris, the Conservatives and demand that we rejoin, attacking, digging everything to tell us to go back in.

          After all:

          How to tell if a BBC interviewee is a Leaver or a remainer:
          They introduced as an expert/professor/chair in law or economics?

          They are given an utterly uninterrupted 5 minutes to spout their tripe?
          No reference given to their political affiliation or employer/funder?

          Then they’re a remainer.

          A leaver interviewee is easily spotted:

          After three words, there will be an aggressive interruption that (regardless of what was said) along the lines of ‘oh come on, that’s just a poll/the source is invalid/just stop you here to prevent you speaking so I can’

          Is any argument they make attacked, mocked and derided?
          Are they (and this is the key bit) introduced as ‘populist’ or a member of the ‘Right wing … group’?

          You’ve got a leaver on your hands.

          It’s sad that their bias is so obvious.

    2. Another Double Lammy:

      Does not the buffoon know that we WERE a democracy, when we voted to leave the EU: he and his cronies have changed that.

      What right has he to argue about what I voted for. I have lived in UK for 75 years (but was not born in Coventry where my parents lived, as the Germans still used it as a bomb repository), served in/with our Armed Forces from when I left school at 16, until I retired aged 60.

      I can trace my family (and my wife’s) back to the Industial Revolution.

      He has no right to comment on what Brits want

      1. Evening OLT,
        Good post, stood in the old Coventry Cathedral, little bits of glass still in the old stained windows.
        Was passing the new one the day they lifted the spire on.

        1. Yo ogga
          As Max Boyce said. I was there, in Pool Meadow, as the RAF helo lowered the spire onto the New Cathedral.

          The heart of the Three Spire City stayed with the old one though.

          I have been there many times and it still tugs Heart Strings
          Check out this

          http://www.coventrycathedral.org.uk/ccn/

          1. OLT,
            Good link, contract job , Canley press steel, always stayed at the Chase hostel Willenhall, S block closes to the White Bear pub,
            happy times.

          3. I was a mere school boy

            I know that all the helos that operated for me NEVER had problems

            If the pilot did wrong. that is down to him

  110. Apols if this has already been posted. Just had a long and sociable walk with Spartie; how time flies.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/10/15/eus-spineless-leaders-always-vocal-brexit-have-gone-strangely/

    “The EU’s spineless leaders, always vocal about Brexit, have gone strangely silent on Catalonia

    This sordid episode tells us what the EU is really about

    This week, pro-democracy activists were handed down lengthy prison sentences. Their leader, forced to live in exile, condemned the authorities’ “repression”. No, I’m not describing any kind of clampdown in Hong Kong. Those sent to prison were not living in Africa or Venezuela. They were in Spain – a supposedly civilised European state.

    Nine leaders of the Catalan nationalist movement have been imprisoned for organising an independence “referendum” in 2017. The poll they ran was, by any objective measure, neither free nor fair. The Spanish government would have been entirely justified to have simply ignored it. But they did much more than that, incarcerating those that ran it, inflaming opinion, and stoking up precisely the separatist sentiments that they fear.

    To appreciate quite how draconian the behaviour of the Spanish state has been, conduct this little thought experiment. Imagine for a moment that it was Nicola Sturgeon of the SNP who had been forced to flee Scotland after running an impromptu poll. Try to contemplate a scenario under which Ian Blackford MP had been sentenced to time in Wormwood Scrubs.

    It’s hard to entertain that idea, even momentarily. But perhaps Spain’s behaviour is shocking only if you start from the assumption that she is a serious nation state, to be judged by the same standards that we might judge ourselves. It is clear from her actions that she isn’t.

    But it is not only the actions of Spain that are revealing. This sordid episode tells us what the EU is really about, too. As nine Catalan leaders were locked up for their beliefs, those EU institutions we are endlessly led to believe exist to safeguard freedom and democracy stayed silent.

    The European Commission, quick to proclaim its commitment to “European values” of human dignity and freedom, refused to condemn an actual instance of those values being flouted. The European Parliament, which likes to believe it has democratic legitimacy, looked the other way as elected officials in a European country were carted off to their cells.

    Why such double standards? Why does the EU remain silent when one of its own violates the norms of decency and democracy? Precisely because the Madrid government is “one of its own”, a supplicant state.

    What the silence of the EU establishment proclaims loudly is that the EU is an imperial project. Like the Habsburg empire before it, its basic business model is to co-opt local elites into its embrace. The local elite that hold office in Madrid are its clients. They accept the EU’s supremacy, subsidies and support. Faced with upstarts in Catalonia wanting to break away, Madrid gets a free pass.

    Ever since the Madrid government began to clamp down on the leaders of the Catalan separatist movement, EU officials have clung to the excuse that what Madrid does is up to Madrid – it’s an “internal matter”, they say.

    Why might the European Union suddenly discover respect for the internal affairs of its member states? Not because of any sudden conversion to the principle of national sovereignty, but because it suits its ambitions.

    European leaders have been more critical about Poland’s leader, Jarosław Kaczyński, who had the temerity to win an election on Sunday, than they have been of Madrid. Unlike the leaders of a supplicant state in Madrid, the government of Poland is prepared to assert itself. Kaczyński is not a supplicant ruler. And neither, of course, is Boris Johnson. Which perhaps explains why, while EU president Donald Tusk declared there to be a “special place in hell” for the leaders of the Leave campaign, he has yet to find the time to criticise the imprisonment of politicians in Spain.

    Last month, Guy Verhofstadt, one-time leader of the European Parliament, did manage to find the time to come to the UK. Standing shoulder to shoulder with Jo Swinson of the Lib Dems, he openly called on the EU to turn itself into an empire and encouraged our MPs to overturn the UK’s Brexit referendum result.

    Intervening in the internal affairs of member states is acceptable if it is to support local elites who will accept their supplicant status, you see. Fortunately in Britain we have free and fair elections to decide who our local elites might be.”

    Edit; Ooops, all that fresh air has done me no good whatsoever. I myself in person posted this earlier on!

        1. I know. I visited friends for a few days on the coast near Girona for my 60th birthday.

          This time (next September) I shall be staying near Roses.

          1. I can recommend visiting the ancient site of Ampurias (Empúries) just down the coast from Roses if you’re interested in that sort of thing. The little village of St Marti close by looked like a delightful venu for an expensive meal or refreshment.

          3. An excellent suggestion. Tricky to find – but worth every effort. We have been there three times.
            Very good museum, too.

        1. On a tree just a few yards away someone, sometime, several or more years ago, had carved into the bark with a sharp knife the message ‘HERE BE MAGIC’.

          He wasn’t wrong.

          1. Sadly, Marilyn Crossley passed away, but Janis Levy is aged about 50, so presumably is still working.

        1. A very secret beauty spot!
          I had a bit of bad news before last nights concert.
          I learned a few weeks back that a lad I was in Wooler Army Cadets with was poorly and found out last night that he’d died shortly after I’d been told he was ill.

          1. Get yourself up to the Pin Well and spend some contemplation time on your own with your old mate.

            Or maybe to that waterfall.

    1. Forgive me but don’t millions already think he is suffering from arrested development?

      1. If they locked him up for a while, at least he would not be publishing yet more daft articles calling on everyone to give up everything in the name of today’s cause.

  114. Any “deal” that is acceptable to the EU is surely unacceptable to the 17.4 m of us who voted to leave the EU.
    Hammond has been on with Andrew Neill and on Sky News, looking very smug, even though he cannot remember what he said about it all last year or the year before. This suggests the he knows that we are going down the river.
    No political arrangement or connection, no legal arrangement or connection can be considered acceptable. No subordination of our regulations and standards to those of the EU is acceptable. Only trade agreements on a full reciprocal and voluntary basis are acceptable. Anything and everything else, including transition periods and the like are utterly unacceptable and a betrayal of the people of this country and of the notion that we are a democratic state.
    Why is this so hard to understand? Why do all of our politicians refuse to accept it? All of them, from the most extreme europhile Remainers to the most hard-nosed Brexiter have routinely shied away from the notion just leaving. All of them, without a single exception have grasped the illegitimate concept of a”deal” and proceeded as if this were the sine qua non of exiting the EU. It is not. Leaving is simple. You just leave, walk out, hands in pockets, whistling.
    “You all know how to whistle, don’t you?” “You just put your lips together and blow.”
    And if it sounds a lot like a raspberry tart, tant pis.

    1. If it gets passed by this remainer Parliament you can guarantee that it will be good for the EU and bad for Britain.

  115. Suffolk family beat global interest to land job on stunning island

    The farm must occupy a good part of the island

    A Suffolk farming family have been chosen to be the new dairy farmers on the island of Sark, off the north west coast of France.

    Sark Island is one of the Channel Islands measuring only 3.5 miles long and 1.5 miles wide. It relies on tourism and agriculture to support its economy. It has no cars, no paved roads, no street lighting and almost no pollution but does attract over 50,000 visitors each year fed by a number of eateries that need milk.

    2. Prison without the risk of being shanked in the shower.

      Worse than being on a cruise.

      EDIT; Well maybe not worse than a cruise, but close.

      1. I hear there’s some decent fishing there, but a week would be more than enough time on the island. Oddly enough, my sister managed an hotel’s restaurant there for some years.

        1. Well a shopping trip there would not take long as there are virtually no shops other than tourist type shops which presumably only open seasonally

  116. Evening, everyone. Went out to lunch with friends and was amazed how pro-Brexit the chatter was (I swear I didn’t bring up the subject, I was talking about travelling in Oz when I was specifically drawn into a political discussion). We all were incensed by the Bbc and their partisan language and annoyed (to put it mildly) by the attempts to kill off democracy. Going back to my car I met another friend who said that the pair of them were leavers, but they had to keep stum when invited out to dinner by remainer friends. One of the lunchers had been at the deselection meeting for Antoinette Sandbach last night. The atmosphere was described as “aggressive”. I was asked if I could remember a time when the country had been so divided. I said I couldn’t remember it, but the Civil War fitted the bill. We are suffering from the Chinese Curse.

        2. Yo Conners

          David Abbotopotamus

          And

          Diane Lammy-Lammy

          You cannot tell them apart (unless Korbynski shafts you!)

        3. Living in Remainer country I feel like a voice in a wilderness. I have pretended to be a Remainer having been verbally attacked around a dinner table …… I refer to that ‘Brexit rubbish’ (i.e. May’s Brexit rubbish) until I find out the way the land really lies with certain groups.

    2. I don’t get it with all this ‘Brexit divided the country’ stuff.

      Shortly after the referendum someone I know (and thought I knew well) who was in the ‘I’m ashamed to be British’ camp on the morning of 24th June 2016 (public sector – there’s a shock) was crying in his beer about how the result and even existance of the referendum had ‘divided the country’.

      I tried (and failed) to point out that it had done nothing of the sort. I hadn’t changed my long-held view one iota. The division that was shocking him had always been there, simmering ignored and unheard by the politicians, the media and a large sector of the public, including it seemed people I knew, who had chosen not to acknowledge that there were people who thought differently to them, and that it didn’t actually make them thick, racist, xenophobes who were selling their children’s future, despite the drivel he was posting here, there and everywhere.

      It hadn’t divided the country. It had given the ignored majority a voice. It was called ‘democracy’.

      He didn’t take it well.

      I don’t give a stuff how he takes it. Smug tosser.

      1. I agree entirely. I pointed out that the country was only divided because the losers failed to accept that a majority vote should be honoured. If they had shrugged their shoulders, admitted they’d lost and got on with getting us out there would have been no division because by now we’d have been thriving and everybody, including the remainiacs, would have been able to see how it was the best thing for the country (since the economy appeared to be their only concern, sovereignty never getting a mention).

        1. The final straw came sometime later, only a few months ago, when he back came at me with ‘Surely, someone of your intelligence should realise…..’

          That’s when I pulled the plug.

          They are hurting inside. They see their subsidy ublilicus being cut and they haven’t worked out that once we are out then they will still get paid – maybe more.

          1. The thing that annoyed me was the accusation by remainers that those who voted to leave were “uneducated”. How many degrees do they want me to have?

      2. It seems to me that those fervently in favour of the EU haven’t read the Terms and Conditions of “The Arbeit Macht Frei” construct that is the EU….

        1. They also seem to be blind to the current persistent direction of travel and how all of project fear’s predictions have come to nought (not to mention the things vehemently denied – ie by Clegg – have actually come to pass).

          1. I seem to recall the thought of a “Single Currency” progressing from being a ridiculous and unthinkable idea via it being examined as an academic exercise with no chance of being implemented and several other stages, all with no intention of actually doing anything with it, to what we have today.

    3. There is always division in every Country when there is an election and I find it irritating when politicians say “we need an end to Brexit so that we can bring the country back together again”. Every other decision taken nationally has been accepted by those who “lost” but not this time. The remainers have shattered convention in the country along with Burke-ow’s antics in the HoC.

          1. Agreed but these days I believe a chap needs to obtain consent in writing and in triplicate!

  118. Some light relief might be coming in the next few days.

    The Swedish muppet is going to Alberta to talk at the rednecks in the oil business. That should go down well, they don’t take kindly to celebs telling them off.

    We assume that she is travelling by train even though it will be a diesel locomotive.

  119. Boris has now briefed the backbenchers and is now flying to Brussels so things are happening it appears we will get a joint UK/EU update later tonight

      2. Aeneas – I feel sorry for the flunkies who need to keep moving around the building all night, turning the lights on and off to make it appear they are not all down in the bar having a drink.

  121. Good evening all. I’ve got a pleasantly Brexity week lined up. Last night I spent a lovely evening in the company of some local Leavers and my Brexit Party MP candidate. On Friday I’m looking forward to attending a Brexit Party rally! One likes to do one’s bit….

    What do we think will emerge from the EU’s ‘tunnel?’ A free and fair trade agreement? Or something more likely to be found in the dankest of sewers…

  122. Night All

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/58cd1b7b55e225ef261fff193e731afef8a881ec2e5c9aadc18bdcc3a77ade55.gif

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/721dc13613596f2d09ecb13bba90c14585b8024b552aa7e6d125408d74de11b0.gif

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4543bfe715631fa3b7795ce399c682941849691209dec9ae1b8a0d0925b15a1a.gif

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5a58d7edb6fb28452a804164391b363ff7e5fedc0c9a5b67b1635cc4edb95a8c.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2b49dc72f46a153fafd76694581d3cfb1acd176546c01a47ec9f566e4e61f0b5.jpg

    Finally,sleep well

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a9fc1ef57eacbed4cd791e92ea9c03b336fd91a10d4f781caeeedffa6918c056.gif

    1. Thanks Rik. As the owner of a Lab the third one down really made me laugh. Off to sleep happy!

  123. In my day, ‘Conflicting proposals were resolved’; in Mod Speak, “Issues get sorted”…

    Ugly language spoken by ugly politicians …

          2. As in :”The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Well it would have been had we got around to it” sr….

          5. Quote from a 12 year old schoolfriend:

            “And if this thing is called apathy
            then I don’t care about that either…”

        3. No wonder I’d never heard of him. Have the rid themselves of the crazy Australian woman.

  128. John Longworth is a hardliner. Has he been got at or is he being pragmatic?

    Can a Nottler provide the full article?

    Two Irish borders may be the necessary sacrifice for the Brexit we Leavers need

    JOHN LONGWORTH

    We all know that the border issue in Ireland has been weaponised by Remainers in Britain, by the EU and its Irish cheerleaders in order to make it as difficult as possible for the UK to leave the EU. Martin Selmayr famously said that the price of leaving for Britain would be the cessation of Northern Ireland. Naturally, the DUP have been somewhat resistant to this concept.

    So intransigent has been the Irish government, bleating that it would suffer economic damage if the UK becomes independent from the EU, while doing precious little to prepare for the scenario, that I have encouraged a boycott of Irish goods, not least so that they can more easily get used to the impending change in trade relations….

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/10/16/two-irish-borders-may-necessary-sacrifice-brexit-leavers-need/

    3. I do not have access to the full story, but I think it is safe to say that many of the ERG have been given “the talk” and not the nice one either. These people in the EU are happy to send armoured cars and tanks onto the streets to quell their own citizens, so threats to individuals mean nothing to them. Nigel Farage had what the police called “credible threats” against the life of his son just before the referendum.

      Even David Davis, whom I liked quite a lot, referred to a “No-deal Brexit” as being very bad for the UK on the news last night. Sigh. That is the only deal that IS Brexit for many of us who voted to Leave.

  129. From the DT: “Lee Radziwill was renowned not just for being Jacquline Kennedy Onassis’s sister, but also for her exquisite, and expensive, taste. “It is fantastic how much she costs to dress,” her second husband Prince Stanislaw Radziwill once said. Radziwill died in February aged 85, 20 years after her younger sister’s death. On Thursday, her family is auctioning a collection of her possessions at Christie’s in New York”

    Working as a messenger for a firm of solicitors during the school holidays I was asked to deliver a letter to her by hand to her residence in Mayfair. I was met by her butler. I remember a mounted stuffed tiger in her hallway and seeing her at the top of a magnificent staircase….even to a schoolboy she appeared stunning.

  131. We have two walnut trees on our garden and each year we get a marvellous crop most of which we give away to our friends.

    Caroline is planning to make a good quantity of walnut fudge which will be far better than anything the odious politicians can produce.

      2. They are good, and more polished, but when I read that the song itself was specifically written for this lady to sing, then that gave it some extra sparkle.

        The others are very nice cover versions, but this is her song. 🙂

        When Len Cariou starts singing around 4:14 – he also has a good voice.

  133. Here’s one law that must be repealed.

    The rise of “hate crimes” has made victims of us all

    DAVID GREEN

    The Home Office’s announcement that hate crimes have surged this year has triggered a predictable outcry. Some pressure groups find it expedient to argue that hate crime is rising, preferably fast enough to call it an ‘epidemic’.

    Yet though police-recorded hate crime rose by 10 per cent in 2018-19, the same Home Office report admitted that the increase was mainly the result of improved recording. Moreover, the Crime Survey for England and Wales, an annual survey of 50,000 households, found that in the decade to 2017-18, hate crime fell by 40 per cent.

    In America, after decades of inexcusable discrimination, from the mid-1980s laws were passed to punish more severely offenders judged to have been prejudiced. The UK followed and the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act created the possibility that assault, harassment, criminal damage and public order offences could be racially aggravated and punished more harshly. Later laws applied to religion, sexual orientation, disability and transgender.

    The cross-government action plan of 2009 declared that the state’s objective was to increase the reporting of hate crime. But, in truth, this is only possible by lowering the bar of what counts as such a crime. The Home Office explains in a footnote to this week’s report that evidence is not needed. If anyone thinks they are the victim of a hate crime, they do “not have to justify or provide evidence of their belief, and police officers or staff should not directly challenge this perception. Evidence of the hostility is not required for an incident or crime to be recorded as a hate crime or hate incident.”

    The Government says that hate crime is under-reported but the claim is based on a comparison between the crime survey and police figures, and the inspectorate of police accepted in 2018 that the survey and police data are not comparable because the survey includes other “strands”, namely age and gender. Moreover, the survey covers hate incidents, which are not necessarily crimes.

    It is entirely possible that police-recorded hate crime is low because there is not much of it. And yet the inspectorate felt it must go along with the prevailing political view that it is under-reported.

    They quickly devised a way out of this conundrum; blaming police call handlers for failing to prompt callers to divulge the extent of their trauma. The inspectorate urged that “victims may not even be aware that what they have experienced amounts to a hate incident or crime”. When control room staff warned that some callers might claim to be hate crime victims to get faster service the inspectorate judged that this was only a small problem.

    The police are also keen to ramp up the figures, establishing the True Vision website to make reporting easier. Complainants can register incidents online and do not even have to give their name: “The police take hate crime very seriously and will record and investigate this offence even if you do not want to give your details”, True Vision insists.

    Such laws are fraught with difficulty because it is not easy to establish motive and offenders often have mixed motives. Perhaps the most absurd recent case concerned a Czech woman who got into a row with a neighbour in Macclesfield in 2012. Petra Mills was found guilty of racially abusing her neighbour by calling her a “stupid, fat, Australian b—-“. It transpired that the neighbour was from New Zealand and did not like being confused with Australians.

    The magistrate fined Petra Mills £110 and said: “The word Australian was used. It was racially aggravated and the main reason it was used was in hostility.” Legally, calling her a “fat b****” would have been fine, but the national epithet made it a hate crime. The following year Petra Mills appealed her case in the Crown Court. It was found that using the term Australian was not racist and the fine was cancelled. We should think carefully before encouraging more of this confusion.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/10/16/rise-hate-crimes-has-made-victims-us/

    1. Yet again, I ask the question (certainly for David Lammy to reply to after his comments on the fact that over half the juveniles in detention were BAME)

      How many BAME have been prosecuted for a Hate Crime against ‘Whitey’

      They have disrupted Rememberance Day Parades,which is Colour Inclusive.

      Cheered when our service folk have been killed

      The perlice are not allowed to mention Terrorist when Ali’s Snack Bar is shouted, but Whitey is a terrorist if he thinks they are bad

      Like Mr Bill Thomas, I am old and hate the way OUR country is going. I would not like to grow up here, as white non Muslim

    2. Repealing this ridiculous law would be a start on the road back to normality. However, our MPs, our “betters”, are the idiots who passed the legislation in the first place. Doh!
      Edited to make sense

  134. Watching the news on BBC. More rubbish coverage of the effing Cambridge Royals emoting about the fictional concept of climate change from some glacier somewhere (doubtless dropped off there by an expensively fueled helicopter). I am seriously fed up with the coverage given to this ignorant spawn of the equally thick and self obsessed Princess Diana.

    I realise that for the MSM it might sell papers to idiots but (Jesus Christ) it is extremely annoying. The same sentiment applies to their competition, the ruddy Sussex emoters who appear from the MSM to be in some sort of competition for the headlines.

    1. I caught a few seconds of that while I was changing channels earlier. The reporter was saying that if the glaciers melted then the locals further down the valley would lose their source of fresh water.

      It struck me that if they weren’t melting they’d have no water. It would still be bloody frozen into a glacier.

      It’s the melting going back for centuries that’s been giving them their supply.

        1. I suppose grey seals will be on the list of endangered species soon because so many polar bears are eating them. A cull of polar bears soon?

          1. Quite possibly. And the Greenies would pretend that it had always been about the seals and forget the hysteria they had created over polar bears. When they get it wrong they never apologise, just move on to the next fake story.

      2. If they didn’t have a local water source they would have to move or get it piped in.

  135. Beware the Thursday DT letter by Mark Robbins on the ER founder hammering holes in a government plate glass window. There is a video of the action with the letter bur for some reason it is followed, for some unknown reason, by a disgraceful video of a muslim slahghtering sheep in a fairly large looking abattoir . It is horrible, cruel and I would say illegal.. It is not an advert for halal.Not for the faint hearted. Too early for the Thursday Nottl

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