Wednesday 2 June: Always a new variant round the corner to scare us into imprisonment

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2021/06/01/lettersalways-new-variant-round-corner-scare-us-imprisonment/

745 thoughts on “Wednesday 2 June: Always a new variant round the corner to scare us into imprisonment”

  1. Putin’s Imperial Palaces Are a Manchild’s Dream. 2 June 2021.

    Ever since his accession, Westerners have been fascinated by the macho image of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The shirtless, horseback-riding, karate-chopping leader became a meme. So did the ideas about his power that went with it: a Machiavellian leader and brilliant strategist, always one step ahead.

    That idea was always a myth. But recent efforts by Russian dissidents have further busted it open. Behind closed doors, Putin isn’t a bear-wrestling genius. He’s a corrupt manchild. Those revelations have sparked rage from Putin himself, including more rounds of arrests and persecutions. But they also show the rot deep at the heart of the regime more clearly than any fantasy of an omnipotent and macho foe.

    Morning everyone. This is a very poor (Vlad’s forté is Judo not Karate) example of anti-Putin propaganda but we must occasionally make bricks without straw. The text goes on to describe the two houses that have been attributed to him and for which no evidence exists that he has ever visited, let alone lived there. This lack of connection is a standard feature of the genre. He pushes anonymous doctors out of hospital windows, despatches assassins to kill people whom he has never met and that for no discernible purpose or gain, all this while leaving a trail that a blind Inspector Clouseau could follow. His supposed Arch Foe Navalny is sent to Germany to recover when it would have been much more convenient if he died in Omsk etc. etc. And so it goes on!

    The only real question is why these fabrications are produced. The answer lies in Vlad’s personal beliefs or rather lack of them. He is not a Neo-liberal or a Cultural Marxist. He is that thing that the Globalists hate most of all. He is an old fashioned patriot who believes in his country and people. Such a man cannot be reasoned with. He cannot be co-opted or bribed like the corrupt anti-democratic leaders of the West. He must be destroyed! This aim also explains his primacy in the MSM Propaganda War over Russia itself. Russia is to all intents and purposes integrated into the world economy; is in fact a vital member with its raw materials. It literally oils the wheels of American industry. There is no great Doctrinal Schism as in the Cold War so personal animosity is everything. Get rid of Vlad and arrange for someone more amenable to take his place. Simples! We are fortunate that he is what the author of this piece tells us he is not! “…a Machiavellian leader and brilliant strategist, always one step ahead.”

    https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/06/01/putin-imperial-palaces-wealth-navalny-corruption/

  2. Good morning, all. A very happy Coronation Day to you all. A rather better day than in 1953.

      1. No, Bob3. Like the Queen of Tonga, she intends to eat Uncle Bill for lunch!

        :-))

    1. Photos blurred. Open, honest, brave reporting it’s not. If people do things in public they should expect these things to be recorded.

    1. The Syrian Arab Republic has just held a presidential election despite the hostility of the West, which still wishes to both skin it and overthrow it in favor of a transitional government along the lines of Germany and Japan at the end of World War II. The election was fair according to international observers from all countries with embassies in Damascus. Bashar al-Assad was overwhelmingly elected for a fourth term.

      Morning AW. Not something you are likely to read in the Telegraph!

      2. Democracy is only acceptable when it produces the right result.

        A country like the USA makes sure that the result of the election produces the right result by getting the MSM and gullible other nations ‘on side’ and produces crate loads of votes for the right side and destroys as many votes for the wrong side as it can.

  6. ‘Morning All

    Well that’s it,I’m convinced,finally a vaccine I can get behind the new one shot from that totally trustworthy Pharma giant Johnson&Johnson………..

    Oh Wait

    “They could have protected customers by switching from talc to

    cornstarch, as their own scientists proposed as early as 1973. But talc

    was cheaper and petitioners were unwilling to sacrifice profits for a

    safer product,”

    2 Billion compo award upheld

    https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/01/supreme-court-rejects-johnson-johnsons-appeal-of-2-billion-baby-powder-penalty.html
    That’ll be a no from me then………….

    1. what’s not obviously being aired is WokeOsaka promoting Buy Large Mansions behind the scenes. I wouldn’t put it past her “pulling an arry” and appearing on Oprah, then seeking therapy. Urry up arry could promote it as a two for the price of one offer

  9. “Illegal channel migrants threaten ‘mob unrest’ on arrival over housing delays

    The record numbers of illegal migrants expect to be moved quickly to their accommodation, says Border Force union”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/01/illegal-channel-migrants-threaten-mob-unrest-arrival-housing/
    I think there may be a clue here about how our future “citizens” are going to regard our society and fit in………..
    See chimp out in Hyde Park for more details

  11. Illegal channel migrants threaten ‘mob unrest’ on arrival over housing delays. 2 June 2021.

    The record numbers of illegal migrants expect to be moved quickly to their accommodation, says Border Force union.

    “Border Force staff are feeling increasingly threatened. There is a risk of unrest from these groups,” said Ms Moreton.

    “They are not exhausted, beaten down and glad to be here. They know they are going to be moved into accommodation. They want to be moved into accommodation. If that doesn’t happen promptly they get cross about it.

    No sleeping on the streets like those dumb soldiers!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/01/illegal-channel-migrants-threaten-mob-unrest-arrival-housing/

        1. Spot on. Write to an MP – either silence or a wodge of Central Office justification for doing bugger all. Write to the press – not printed.

    2. As I remarked last night on Tw@tter:

      “The #DailyTelegraph dare not risk opening this to comments from readers ,,,, Note carefully
      @PritiPatel
      @BorisJohnson”

      1. And those who protested in Dover against the invasion were arrested and held in custody for three days while the Jew-hating supporters of Palestine who used a loudspeaker to tell people to murder Jews and rape Jewish girls and women were immediately granted bail and freed.

        Is this what we want in Britain?

    3. One almost hopes for an almighty rtiot, maybe even involving deaths in Border Farce, so that eyes might be opened and government humbled into stopping the flow.

      1. I have said more than once over the years that, in respect of Islam, only a calamity (something many times worse than the Manchester Arena) will prompt a government to take action. Perhaps the same will apply to immigration, legal and illegal – city riots so appallingly deadly and destructive that the blinkers are shed.

  12. Toady’s offering of bruised woke emotions. Although Tanni Grey[Thompson] has opened the Pandoras box:

    SIR – Professor Ravi Gupta, a member of the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag), is advising against lifting Covid restrictions on June 21 because of the threat of a third wave of infections driven by the Indian variant.

    Certainly, reported cases have risen, but this seems to be mainly a result of more testing targeted on areas where this variant is most prevalent. Deaths “within 28 days of a positive test” are very low. The big problem in hospitals seems to be the (self-inflicted) backlog of non-Covid cases. The overwhelming majority of new cases appear to be in groups not yet offered vaccines, or who have chosen not to have them.

    Most importantly, several months ago, both Sir Patrick Vallance and Professor Chris Whitty went on record as saying that we had to learn to live with Covid. Constantly blocking a return to something near to normality represents a horrendous threat of life in permanent lockdown, as one new variant after another comes along 
and panics the advisers into delaying again and yet again our release from this imprisonment.

    David Muir
    Stoke Gifford, Somerset

    SIR – Professor Gupta warned that the third wave had started, and cases were rising “exponentially”. “Exponentially” means rising increasingly quickly. The Government’s own data refute this.

    Michael Anderson
    Dunbar, East Lothian

    SIR – Does anyone still believe we shall have our freedom restored on June 21? Project Fear seems to be in full swing to prepare us for the announcement that lockdown will continue for a further indefinite period.

    Frank Yates
    Southport, Lancashire

    SIR – For a fortnight, a conveyor belt of scientists has appeared on Radio 4’s Today programme to intone gravely that reopening society on June 21 would
    trigger a third wave. The same scientists warned that reopening schools in March would trigger a massive rise in infections and hospitalisations, and an avoidable increase in deaths. It didn’t.

    They said the same thing before the reopening of non-food retail on April 12, and again before the reopening on May 17 – also without the outcome about which they warned us so gravely.

    Steve Narancic
    Wantage, Oxfordshire

    SIR – Already 39 million people – 75 per cent of the adult population – have had at least one vaccine dose. Everyone over 50 should be inoculated by June 21.

    Scientists are very fortunate that they do not rely on the hospitality sector for their income.

    Alan White
    Ham Green, Worcestershire

    SIR – With the discovery of the new Vietnam variant, how soon before scientists want us locked down forever?

    Christopher Mann
    Bristol

    Charity pay

    SIR – I am both amazed and horrified by your revelations of high pay in some charities (report, June 1).

    Clearly those involved have misunderstood the saying: “Charity begins at home.” Their arrogance in believing that they are worth such sums is breathtaking.

    I have a list of favourite charities to which I contribute each year. Those mentioned in your article have now been struck off.

    Major Colin Robins
    Bowdon, Cheshire

    Dying mission creep

    SIR – Baroness Meacher’s Bill on assisted dying doesn’t explicitly target disabled people. But for many disabled people it’s not difficult to see the writing on the wall.

    I was struck by a statement a few years ago by a group calling itself the Commission on Assisted Dying, which was made up largely of supporters of a change in the law.

    In its report this group expressed the view that lethal drugs should not be offered to disabled people “at this point in time”. I found those five words chilling. They told me that I would not be a candidate for legalised assisted suicide at first, but should consider myself in the waiting room.

    Such “mission creep” is inevitable when a law resting on a natural frontier, and applying equally to everyone, irrespective of their state of physical health or physical ability, is replaced by a law with an arbitrary boundary like terminal illness. Such laws contain within themselves the seeds of their own expansion. To ignore this is to court danger.

    Baroness Grey-Thompson (Crossbench)
    London SW1

    Boris’s bales

    SIR – I’d hazard a guess that the bales at Boris Johnson and Carrie Symonds’s wedding were straw rather than hay (report, May 31).

    Hay (grass that has been dried in the summer sun to provide animal feed) is soft, and doesn’t take kindly to lots of handling or large posteriors.

    Straw (the stalk on which wheat and barley grow, often used for bedding) is much more rigid. Once compressed and strung, one bale could easily have withstood the weight of the couple. Hay, on the other hand, could have proved embarrassing for the heavier of the pair.

    Liam Moore
    Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire

    Segregated Britain

    SIR – Nick Timothy’s warning that “we are not drifting into segregation, we are hurtling perilously towards it” (Comment, May 31) raises a pertinent question: the creation of multicultural Britain may be desirable, but is it practical? All our efforts towards achieving such an outcome have so far resulted in creating, not multicultural, but ghettoised Britain.

    Most of our inner-city constituencies now have expanding ethnic enclaves, where minorities live in a parallel universe with their own faith schools, places of worship, financial institutions and non-English television channels. Some even have their own ethnic MPs.

    Since Britain neither encourages a Singaporean “desegregated” housing policy nor objects to newcomers living in self-imposed ghettos, immigrants have no incentive to integrate.

    Randhir Singh Bains
    Ilford, Essex

    China and Covid-19

    SIR – Professor Angus Dalgleish and Dr Birger Sorensen have found strong evidence of man-made laboratory input in the Covid-19 virus (Letters, June 1). There has, however, been a campaign to impede the search for scientific truth.

    If the virus is proved to come from Chinese laboratories, the free world should consider a Covid reparation tariff on Chinese imports.

    Estimates assess current damages at $20,000 billion from special measures and GDP loss, and that is without the death of about 3.5 million people and the effect of this on families.

    T H B Clode
    Grouville, Jersey

    Mindful banking

    SIR – Like George H Teasdale (Letters, May 27), I had trouble getting a meeting between my wheelchair-bound father and his bank manager. The Halifax branch had no disabled access, and the problem was resolved eventually by the manager agreeing to meet him if I drove to the door in the pedestrianised town centre. I held a golf umbrella over the manager’s head as she conversed with my father in the car.

    My bloody-mindedness resulted in the long-overdue installation of a wheelchair ramp.

    Jan Elliott
    Portrush, Co Antrim

    Testament of youth

    SIR – As a school principal, I always made use of student panels to help select new teachers (Letters, May 31). The students took their role seriously and there was healthy competition for places on the panel.

    The panels’ conclusions always chimed with the view of the selection process as a whole, and they often provided insightful feedback that precisely summed up a candidate.

    Successful applicants would frequently describe the student panel as the toughest, but most enjoyable, part of their interview.

    Richard Sloan
    Alcester, Warwickshire

    A tasteful silence

    SIR – One of the happiest features of the Good Food Guide (Jane Shilling, May 31) was its insistence on reporting whether or not its chosen establishments played piped music.

    An entry for a pub I stayed at in Cumbria read: “The owners are musical so there is no background music.”

    Julian Lloyd Webber
    London SW7

    The devastating loss of millions of ash trees

    SIR – Driving nearly 300 miles from south-east England to west Wales this week, I was shocked to see the scale of tree death across the country caused by ash dieback disease.

    Ash is Britain’s third most common tree variety – it is estimated that there are more than 100 million ash trees in the UK. Experts predict that we will lose between 80 per cent and 95 per cent of them to this disease within a few years – difficult to imagine until you see it yourself.

    I passed thousands of dead or dying ash trees, many with bare branches or very sparse foliage. The problem is more apparent in the west of England and Wales, where ash is the most common tree.

    It is a devastating blow to the British countryside. Mature ash last for more than 100 years and provide a habitat for birds and other creatures. It will take a mighty effort to replace these trees after such a rapid and dramatic loss.

    Nicholas Gill
    London E11

    King’s College apology for Prince Philip picture

    SIR – I graduated from King’s College, London, in the 1970s, and am deeply offended by Joleen Clarke’s apology (report, May 21) for the “harm” caused by her email to staff of a picture of Prince Philip to mark his death and by her apparent acceptance of accusations of racism and sexism made by some of them against him. It is an insult to the Queen, who is patron of the college.

    As to “harm”, I now intend to leave King’s nothing in my will.

    Christopher Gray
    Banstead, Surrey

    SIR – King’s College was co-founded in 1829 by George IV and the Duke of Wellington, who were hardly noted for their woke tendencies. What will the supine KCL authorities do if they face pressure to change the university’s name? They appear not woke but weak.

    Alisdair Low
    Richmond, Surrey

    SIR – The narcissistically sensitive souls at King’s College who feel they were subjected to “harm” by seeing a photograph of Prince Philip, a war hero and dutiful royal mainstay, should grow up and join the real world.

    He risked his life in the Second World War fighting fascism in open conflict. What contribution have these King’s College snowflakes made?

    Nicholas Dobson
    Doncaster, South Yorkshire

    SIR – In light of Joleen Clarke’s letter of apology to staff for things the Duke of Edinburgh may have said, I would like to apologise to my family, friends, sports opponents and business associates for the nasty things I have said about or to you over the past 76 years.

    You may destroy any photographs of me that might be in your possession.

    Malcolm Baggott
    Amersham, Buckinghamshire

    1. Tanni Grey-Thompson is right though. Just like the abortion law, assisted dying will creep hugely without any further change in the law ever being put through.
      All this kowtowing to minorities, yet the one minority that has some valid claim to being treated as a special case (disabled people) is shoddily regarded in Britain.

      2. It’s one of the reasons I oppose legalised euthanasia; there will, inevitably, be mission creep.

    2. It has to be remembered that a majority of ‘modern’ charities are not actually such at all. Rather they are quangos in receipt of government funding and call themselves charities for tax purposes.

      In reality, they are lobby groups – yes, groups paid by the government to lobby for their special cause. That’s a damaging force in even our faux democracy.

    3. “Since Britain neither encourages a Singaporean “desegregated” housing policy nor objects to newcomers living in self-imposed ghettos, immigrants have no incentive to integrate.” Add to that expensive interpretation/translation services and you will find that not only is there no incentive to integrate, there is no opportunity for them to appreciate or understand the culture of the country they are living in.

    4. “Since Britain neither encourages a Singaporean “desegregated” housing policy nor objects to newcomers living in self-imposed ghettos, immigrants have no incentive to integrate.” Add to that expensive interpretation/translation services and you will find that not only is there no incentive to integrate, there is no opportunity for them to appreciate or understand the culture of the country they are living in.

  13. #CovidClownWorld
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2b6093d2d67f5d9ce57d121ed0cee3acbb80aae16bf8ff2fb6ea17b883c8a177.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/47bdd18332af730710a741278559b871bd19d3a60fc8bb5c789b8eb00d2a9701.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d04fc1dd5428e7b4accb4edbac9b73a94cc9cc1dfac12a54cc26e9e8172478fc.jpg
    Edit
    Forgot this crossover one
    http://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/97cfb7041b4f2b3d03f2e75ea5c3d700371864e2d4aee9f8816dd504c872e2a7.jpg

  14. I see that the “Indian Variant” is SO deadly that it doesn’t kill anyone…

  15. There is some narcissistic tennis person all over the paper today. She says she is so shy and lacking in confidence that she doesn’t want to speak to the press. I quite understand, I am much the same. But I don’t plaster photographs of myself all over the press to show how desperate I am to avoid publicity!

    1. mng bill, Woke Osaka is the latest in the increasing line of supporting Buy Large Mansions, then when the heat’s turned up on the exposure and obligated to undertake press conferences doesn’t want to be exposed. As usual, MSM merely focus on the opposite to spin their yarn and avoid the truth

  16. Wrong colour matey and yoiu didn’t arrive penniless just looking to take take take,out you go and to hell with your wife and family

    “An Australian landlord who sank his life

    savings into saving a 200-year-old British pub from closure is now

    facing deportation from the UK for taking a pay cut to save the failing

    business.

    Russell Young, 62, and his

    wife Tracie, 56, bought the Sun Inn in Failsworth, Greater Manchester in

    2018 for £250,000 and paid wages of just £100 per week to ensure the

    enterprise survived.”

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9640991/Australian-grandfather-moved-UK-spent-life-savings-buying-pub-faces-DEPORTATION.html
    I am convinced such nonsense cases are fast-tracked to discredit any deportations,we want to get rid of this chap but Rotherham rapists are still here??
    Stinks to high heaven

    1. I am convinced such nonsense cases are fast-tracked to discredit any deportations…

      Yes! Always someone of impeccable virtue!

    2. Good morning Rik

      Well, you have seen the vast diversity that governs the Home Office , and of course us whiteys have been sidelined as the great inheritors of this Kingdom on earth .

      The spite and malice aimed at Russell Young by the HO should be investigated by other parties , where are the the protestors that stop illegals from being deported, they are very quiet.

    3. 333733+ up ticks,
      Morning Rik,
      This lab/lib/con mass uncontrolled immigration/ paedophile umbrella coalition of overseers has been
      openly a rank, putrid, rancid, treacherous pile of political sh!te sinse M Thatcher was politically assassinated.

      IMO the herd ARE addicted and mainlining on political sh!te and are seemingly content to continue to suck it up.

    4. Some folk have good lawyers, who end up as top politicians with a duty to scrutinise the Establlshment for this sort of thing.

    5. Rotherham rapists still here? – The Stansted hijackers are still here !!! The aim of getting here is then to do something that gets them a sentence that will put them, on release, on the “Cosidered for Deportation” list. Then they plead they will be persecuted for the crime, if sent back home – and a stupid judge allows them to stay. Job part one – success. Once firmly here the “Right to family Life” is brought in – Can’t go back so – family must come here — and the family arrive, legally. Job part two – complete. All family now in, getting free life – and the freebies roll in. All for being a foreign criminal. Repeated time and time again. Kill or rape someone here – and get the criminals whole family here for all eternity as a REWARD.

  17. Good morning all, it was a warm night wasn’t it.

    There are some very dark looking clouds coming in from the West, in fact they are moving in rapidly, wouldn’t be surprised if there will be noise soon.
    Moh was away at 7am , golf again.

    1. Yes, it’ll be me complaining how hot it is.

      Thankfully there’s ‘some’ air movement so I’ve not melted yet. Alexa tells me it is 24’c in the cupboard.

  19. Breaking Latest News –

    Scientists are warning that we have to be extra vigilant after yesterdays tragic news that there were zero reported covid deaths withing 28 days of testing positive for covid.
    SAGE have done some computer modelling using the latest figures and are warning that this zero figure could exponentially double every few days especially now they have detected a new Norwegian Blue mutant variant strain they believe is transmitted by parrots migrating here because of climate change.
    They are suggesting that we delay the easing of restrictions for at least a month, maybe years, as fears grow for the NHS, of unwell people venturing out to overwhelm hospitals, the undead blocking up all the roads, high streets, offices and pubs.
    The government will be making a statement later today.

    2. Morning Bob3.

      I think we should understand exactly what is happening in the NHS..

      When I suffered a reaction to my second jab and ended up in A+E for 7 hours , I noticed that MANY of the staff flitting around were Asians, not just Indian./ Pakistan/ Malayan and Philipines Spaniards as well .. our County hospital would be rendered useless if it weren’t for the huge variety of staff.

      Our NHS depends on foreign medical staff, who may be more vulnerable to the virus , so if they go down with it, the NHS will collapse!

      1. Most of the staff who treated OH at New Year when we spent the night in A&E were not of British heritage, apart from the young doctor.

        1. It’s cheaper to plunder poor countries of their educated medical staff, pay them not very well (still better than at home) than it is to train UK subjects in medicine.

          1. We simply don’t produce enough doctors for our own needs and a significant proportion of them move abroad for better money at the earliest opportunity. We don’t value healthcare here and we pay doctors and nurses peanuts.

          2. From https://www.nurses.co.uk/nursing/blog/a-quick-overview-of-nurses–salaries-in-the-uk-in-2021/
            A newly qualified Nurses enter the workforce at Band 5.A newly qualified Band 5 NHS Nurse currently earns £24,907
            The salary ranges at each banding beyond this level are:
            • Band 6: £31,365 to £37,890
            • Band 7: £38,890 to £44,503
            • Band 8: £45,753 to £87,754
            • Band 9: £91,004 to £104,927

            and from https://www.checkasalary.co.uk/salaries/average, average salaries for a number of jobs is:
            Accounting £35,310.33
            Agriculture £22,314.02
            Armed Forces £28,793.73
            Arts £55,407.24
            Automotive £27,297.15
            Banking and Insurance £36,082.23
            Charity £25,153.57
            Clergy £36,706.26
            Construction £34,673.25
            Customer Services £21,991.22
            Education £27,288.61
            Engineering £35,540.94
            Environmental £34,728.47
            Facilities Management £21,077.10
            Finance £38,175.86
            Healthcare £33,366.04
            Hospitality and Leisure £20,896.75
            Human Resources (HR) £28,472.71
            Information Technology (IT) £48,254.54
            Leadership £56,260.47
            Legal £35,128.62
            Manufacturing £22,802.77
            Marketing £38,082.85
            Media £32,141.41
            Office Administration £25,344.45
            Personal Care £23,799.08
            Professional Services £42,734.68
            Public Sector £27,530.64
            Retail £21,075.25
            Sales £33,731.77
            Science £37,730.90
            Social Care £24,300.99
            Telecommunications £40,703.98
            Transportation and Logistics £26,815.37
            The “peanuts” seems to apply to most other jobs listed, too. “Healthcare” being on a par with the others, and yes, I am aware of the distortion due to higher Dr pay, but see below – Dr starts on a bit more than Nurse and top Consultant is actually less than ghe top of Nurse band 9.

            From https://www.prospects.ac.uk/job-profiles/hospital-doctor
            Junior doctors in foundation training earn a basic starting salary of £27,689 to £32,050.
            Doctors in specialist training start on a basic salary of £37,935 rising to £48,075.
            The basic salary for specialty doctors ranges from £40,037 to £74,661.
            Newly qualified consultants earn a basic salary of £79,860 rising to £107,668 depending on the length of service.

            Comparison: Starting pay for a qualified doctor in Norwegian hospital is about Kr 470 000 (so about £47 000).

            And, as far as I recall, the production of medics is limited by limiting the intake to medical/nursing schools by the profession itself.

          3. Most nurses are band 5 Paul. Most never get promoted into band 6 and higher. Also many nurses are currently exceeding their hours by as much as 25% and that’s unpaid. The median wage this year is 31.5k.

            A consultant doctor that studied for something like 15 years to reach that position and then has another 15 years experience in that position might hit 100k a year. There are plenty of countries where they can double that wage and have comparable living costs.

            Yes peanuts does apply to a lot of jobs (we’ve held wages down now for over 30 years), but I for one think that jobs saving lives on the risky front-line should be more highly paid than a bean counter especially as the bean counter needed 3 years of training and the clinician 10+ years.

            Yes you are quite right. Places are limited, and 7.5% of them are saved especially for overseas students.

          4. We load them with debt for a degree. One of UKIP’s policies was a debt amnesty for those taking a medical degree should they work in the NHS for five years. Seems like a sensible way to go to me.

          5. I don’t agree with tying people to jobs, and as doctors earn decent money they tend to pay loans back. All degrees should be free, or they should all cost the same. No picking and choosing who gets a subsidy and who doesn’t. If we subsidised ‘useful to the economy’ degrees we’d be subsidising media studies and not science degrees since we have a massive surplus of science grads that can’t find science work in the UK.

          6. As long as we keep up the pretence that 50% of students are capable of profiting from a university education, we simply can’t afford to make all degrees free, which is why the old system worked (people who needed them had grants).

          7. In which case we shouldn’t subsidise any either.

            It’s not the government’s job to pick winners and losers, it’s their job to ensure a level playing field for all.

    3. When there is something to discuss, the state hides it. When there’s nothing to worry about, it creates panic.

      You’d almost think government is being run by morons.

    5. I read your last line as “The government will be making up a statement later today.”

  20. How the ‘good war’ went bad: elite soldiers from Australia, UK and US face a reckoning. 2 June 2021.

    “Whatever we do … ,” one Australian special forces soldier said of his service in Afghanistan, “I can tell you the Brits and the US are far, far worse.

    It’s strange how the people who send them to these places, and in the process destroy whole countries, never end up in the dock!

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jun/02/how-the-good-war-went-bad-elite-soldiers-from-australia-uk-and-us-face-a-reckoning

  21. Good morning from sunny Finland…There are people in Russia who don’t remember how much Putin has done for Russia:

    After 17 years, Putin increased Russia’s budget 22-fold, military spending 30-fold, GDP 12-fold (Russia jumped from 36th place in the world in terms of GDP to 6th place);
    Increased gold and foreign exchange reserves 48-fold!
    Returned 256 mineral deposits to the Russian jurisdiction (it is left to return 3!);
    Disrupted the most “liberal” production-sharing agreement in history – the PSA (explanation below);
    Nationalised 65% of the oil industry and 95% of the gas and many other industries;
    Raised industry and agriculture (Russia has been ranked 2nd-3rd in the world in terms of grain exports for 5 years in a row, overtaking the US, which is now in 4th place);
    Increased average salaries in the public sector 18.5-fold in 12 years, and average pensions 14-fold.
    Well, quite a trifle: Putin (it was precisely him) reduced the extinction of the Russian population from 1.5 million people a year in 1999 to 21,000 in 2011, i.e. 71.5-fold.
    In addition, Putin:

    Canceled the Khasavyurt Accord – thus he defended the integrity of Russia;
    Made known the NGO-5th column and banned deputies from having accounts abroad;
    Defended Syria;
    Stopped the war in Chechnya.
    Putin’s cancellation of the Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) is a great achievement! The PSA is an agreement under which America plundered Russia since the 90s and in return Yeltsin was given loans. Putin fought for its abolition for almost 4 years with the help of numerous successive amendments. So the abolition of the PSA caused incredible hatred in America for Putin, as he took away from them the unhindered plunder of Russia. Hence the hatred of Putin, but unfortunately not everyone knows about it.
    Why can’t Putin change everything at once? Why does he do forced stops? Why does he sometimes have to make temporary arrangements?

    Because the gentlemen “Democrats” in the 90s melted the country down, sold it and allowed the bastards to live at the expense of Russian natural resources, adopted a thousand treacherous laws including the Constitution of 1993 and weakened the country so much that it was difficult for Russia in the early 2000s to resist America without consequences, so Putin is fighting them gradually. Therefore, Putin had to manoeuvre and do everything gradually, not in a single moment, but in one direction, and now he is also thinking about how to solve Russia’s problems and at the same time not expose it to being torn apart, like Libya and Syria were.

    America has long been tired of Putin, who takes away from them with enviable constancy their influence and area after area that they robbed in Russia, then he offers to replace the dollar with another settlement currency… And all of this is not without danger… For example: Gaddafi paid with his life for the idea of changing the settlement currency of the dollar to another, now there is no rich flourishing Libya, no Gaddafi. Libya is in ruins…

    Most people in the 90s could not just go to the store and buy most food products, they could not send their children/boys to the ARMY without pain and fear… The war in Chechnya. Fear, as our guys were constantly dying. Cities sat without heating, gas and water. There were no salaries, racketeering, open shooting in the cities. No pensions, no jobs, nothing. No one thought about improving housing, repairs and so on, they were glad that they were alive.
    Now that things have changed and most people began to live much better, when driveways and yards are crowded with cars, and houses are renovated, when it can be hard to see the old window frames and front door, when almost all repairs are done in apartments, in houses all that can be heard is drilling, buzzing and hammering, when even an average person carries an overflowing bag of groceries from the store, when young families are compensated for part of the cost of housing, when maternity capital is paid and maternity benefits. And people can no longer imagine how our mothers in the 50s-60s just gave birth and went to work on the 56th day and there was no help. When pensions are delivered on time and this has become the norm. And they are not reduced, as in many countries. When for the majority both work and salaries are issued on time. When in a global crisis, we do not feel it, to tell the truth, because life by and large does not change that much in our country.

    And now, when we started to forget the 90’s, we started to grow coarse and be susceptible to provocations. I understand that it was impossible to observe such a picture of well-being as it is now in the 90s. Even if a person worked in the 90s and was busy at work for 24 hours, they couldn’t earn or feed their family in any way. That was then. And now, when gradual changes have come and most of us have started to be better off (of course, no one disputes, everyone would like to live in a villa and get a lot of money, but, alas, there is no such thing anywhere in the world), having become better off, for some reason we started to forget how much work and labour Putin invested in our country, and thus calmly succumb to any provocation.
    Yes, not everyone is well off, not everything has been done and there is much more to be done, but this is not a reason to betray the man who pulled the country out of collapse! Moreover, now huge forces and means are shovelled into those who oppose him.

    So let us, each in one’s own place, do at least a little for the development of Russia, help it, and not help those who openly sell themselves, sell Russia, and act in the hands of other people’s aspirations. They really do not want to see Putin as PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA!

    Leonid Voronin

    1. I can’t tell if the writer is being serious or not.

      I suppose Putin has done much to help Russia, but the fundamental problem for us Westerners is that we don’t know what the truth is.

      1. “but the fundamental problem for us Westerners is that we don’t know what the truth is.”
        You could always blame the Russians!

  22. The University of Cambridge took down a website last Monday that would have enabled members of the University to make anonymous complaints about students and staff for “micro-aggressions” and other non-crimes. The published list of offences included giving someone a “backhanded compliment” and referring to a woman as a “girl”. The Free Speech Union wrote to the Canadian Vice-Chancellor, Professor Stephen Toope, threatening legal action. We reproduce, below, an article in the Telegraph about the climbdown.

    Cambridge removes website where dons can be reported for “raising an eyebrow”

    by Camilla Turner and Pravina Rudra

    Cambridge University has taken down a website which said dons could be reported for “raising an eyebrow” at students.

    It comes just days after The Telegraph exposed the university’s new anonymous reporting site which stated that academics could be committing a “micro-aggression” if they gave backhanded compliments, turned their backs on certain people or referred to a woman as a girl.

    Dons had accused the university of trampling on free speech, saying the reporting system would foster a culture “akin to that of a police state”. Cambridge’s Vice-Chancellor Prof Stephen Toope is also facing a legal challenge over the contents of the website.

    Prof Toope said that since the website’s launch last week, “it has come to light that certain ancillary material was included in error”. He explained that the entire website had been taken offline while the material in question was removed, adding that the university had launched an investigation into how it was included in the first place.

    “I believe that some of the statements and examples in this material go beyond the approved policy framework and would undermine its impact,” he said.

    “The website has been temporarily taken down while that material is removed. I have asked senior staff to look into how this error occurred.”

    The row over the website was set to escalate after the Free Speech Union (FSU) threatened to take Prof Toope to court.

    Toby Young, general secretary of the FSU, wrote to the Vice-Chancellor claiming that the website and policy “proposed a system of policing speech and everyday interaction” which would be “inconsistent” with its duty to uphold free speech.

    He pointed out that section 43 of the Education Act 1986 requires universities to take reasonably practicable steps to secure freedom of speech within the law for employees.

    “This policy, as you must be aware, would radically interfere with how your academics teach, argue with and learn from students, as well as how students interact with each other,” Mr Young said.

    “It would mean academics and students were under constant threat of being reported and investigated for having committed some wholly innocent but perceived slight, which would inevitably have a chilling effect on interactions that, in a university, should be free and unguarded.”

    Mr Young added that should the policy reappear in anything like its original form, the FSU would “seek to challenge its lawfulness in the High Court”.

    Last week, a list of potential offences were published by Cambridge on a new website on which academics and students can anonymously report “inappropriate” behaviour.

    The site had been created as part of a “Change the Culture” initiative that includes a series of policies and resources aimed at “clarifying expectations” about behaviour.

    The new behaviour resources explained that micro-aggressions are everyday “slights, indignities, put-downs and insults” to which minority groups are subjected.

    A list of examples was provided on the website, including asking someone “where are you really from?” and misgendering a person, especially if they have already shared their pronouns.

    The site claimed that micro-aggressions also included “behaviours such as a change in body language when responding to those of a particular characteristic, for example, raising eyebrows when a black member of staff or student is speaking, dismissing a staff or student who brings up race and/or racism in a teaching and learning or work setting”.

    One Cambridge don told The Telegraph: “My hope is that they have recognised that the regime is at the very least on the borders of lawfulness.

    “This is not just about the law. It is about the entire culture. This policy suggests that Cambridge dons and students are not capable of dealing with ordinary interpersonal friction in day-to-day social interactions.

    “What kind of message are we sending to the next generation if we say the solution to someone offending you is to run to the authorities and report them anonymously?”

    Earlier this month, a new bill on academic freedom was featured in the Queen’s Speech, which Education Secretary Gavin Williamson said will end “the chilling effect of censorship on campus once and for all”. Universities in England could face fines if they fail to protect free speech on campus under tougher legislation.

    Cambridge fallout

    The proposed new reporting website came in for considerable criticism in the press. Writing in the Telegraph, FSU Director Douglas Murray advised Cambridge alumni to withhold donations until the Vice-Chancellor had resigned. “Permit me to commit a macro-aggression against the Canadian lawyer currently trying to run one of our great universities into the ground,” he wrote. “I would like to ask him – and think more people should join in doing so – ‘Who do you think you are? What right do you think you have to tell people which facial muscles to move? This is a great university, not a playpen filled with your lurid and bizarre phantasms.’”

    Charles Moore, the former editor of the Telegraph, also weighed in. “Prof Toope, who has made repeated speeches in praise of Xi Jinping’s China, is developing methods of denunciation of which the People’s Republic would be proud,” he wrote.

    In addition, 25 leading Cambridge academics, including members of the FSU’s Advisory Council, wrote a letter to the Telegraph demanding that whatever replaces the website must be “fully compatible with the right to unfettered freedom of speech and expression within the law as well as with the university’s core commitment to the free and fearless discussion of ideas”.

    Fraser Myers, an Assistant Editor of Spiked, warned that “woke politics has been so enthusiastically embraced by our elite institutions and the authorities, sitting out of the culture wars is not an option.”

    The reporting website has now been put back up, but it’s a pale shadow of the original. The list of reportable offences has disappeared, it doesn’t accept anonymous complaints and – critically – the site doesn’t ask people to name the person they’re complaining about. That’s a good outcome and all those who raised the alarm deserve credit. It shows that attacks on free speech can be repelled provided we act quickly, decisively and in unison. It’s now time to turn out attention to other universities that have created snitching portals, of which there are several. More news on that soon.

    Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill Briefing

    A few weeks ago we produced a briefing paper on the Online Safety Bill, and we’ve just created another on the Higher Education Bill. We are not so keen on the former, but very much in favour of the latter.

    The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill will strengthen protections for free speech and academic freedom in English universities by imposing more robust legal duties on Higher Education Providers and Student Unions. These include the duty to take reasonably practicable steps to protect the free speech of academic staff, non-academic staff, students and visitors to universities; to actively promote freedom of speech; and to protect academics’ freedom to question and test received wisdom, put forward new ideas and express controversial opinions.

    There are already several laws protecting academic free speech on the statute books, but they are more honoured in the breach than the observance and this Bill will create some practical mechanisms for enforcing those laws, including allowing civil claims to be brought against Higher Education Providers and Student Unions, as well as creating an avenue of complaint through the Office for Students via a new ‘Free Speech Champion’. These are positive steps that will further protect freedom of speech on campus.

    In the briefing, we’ve summarised the evidence that has already been compiled that free speech is in crisis in Britain’s universities, citing research by the University and College Union, Policy Exchange and ADF International, and we’ve added to this by drawing on the FSU’s case files. Of the 500 or so free speech cases we’ve been involved in over the past year, about 100 have involved university students or academics. We’ve highlighted some of the most significant of these in the appendix to the briefing.

    We also consider some of the most common criticisms of the Bill and do our best to rebut them. You can find the new briefing document here.

    Trainee teacher spared after FSU intervention over Mohammed cartoons

    We’re delighted to report that the trainee teacher at Manchester Metropolitan University who was disciplined for criticising the teaching profession for not standing up for the teacher in Batley who was forced into hiding after showing his students a cartoon of Mohammed will face no further action. After expressing this sentiment in an email to his course supervisor, in which he also said he’d have no hesitation in showing his students a cartoon of Mohammed, he was placed under investigation and threatened with referral to a “fitness to practise” panel, which could have resulted in him being banned from teaching. He is a member of the FSU and asked for our help, and we took up his case, which included writing to the head of the Teacher Education School and accompanying him to a hearing. The University has now decided not to refer him to a “fitness to practise” panel. In an email to us afterwards, he wrote: “Thanks to the FSU I am not going to be disciplined by MMU for blasphemy. I won’t ever forget the only friends I had when it really counted.”

    Victory in Kent

    We’ve achieved another success, this time at Kent University. A first year student and member of the FSU was placed under investigation after classmates complained about comments he’d made in the course of a debate about George Floyd and Black Lives Matter. Nothing he said was remotely inflammatory or unreasonable; he just didn’t toe the progressive line. We wrote to the University reminding them of their obligation to uphold freedom of speech and the student will now face no further action.

    Defending Free Speech At the University of Abertay

    Lisa Keogh, final year law student at Abertay University. She voiced her opinion during an online discussion on gender, feminism and the law and was reported to the University by her fellow students for saying, among other things, that women were not as physically strong as men. Pic shows Lisa at Lunan Bay, Angus. Photographer: Paul Reid

    We’ve been busy defending Lisa Keogh, a member of the Free Speech Union and a fourth year law student at Abertay University in Dundee. During a seminar on gender, feminism and the law, she expressed the opinion that women aren’t as strong as men and, for that reason, trans women shouldn’t be able to compete against biological women in mixed martial arts tournaments. Lisa is a mature student and a mother-of-two – as well as the first person in her family to go to university – and wasn’t aware that this common-sense view is considered “hate speech” by woke students. She was duly reported to the university authorities, who placed her under investigation, even though she was in the midst of her final exams.

    You can read about Lisa’s case in MailOnline, as well as read an interview with Lisa in Femail and listen to an interview she did on Woman’s Hour. She has attracted widespread support, both in the media – see this piece by Fraser Hudghton, our Case Management Director, and this piece by Jim Spence, a former Rector of Dundee University – and in the House of Commons, where the SNP MP Joanna Cherry has spoken out in her defence. We hoped that Abertay would dismiss Lisa’s case after a preliminary investigation, but instead the University has referred it to a student board, with the hearing due to take place on June 7th.

    This is a genuinely shocking example of someone being punished for exercising their lawful right to free speech – and, moreover, for expressing an opinion that the vast majority of people would agree with. As Fraser Myers wrote in the Spectator, “The next time someone tells you campus censorship is a myth, made up by right-wing tabloids and leapt upon by a Tory government keen to wage a ‘culture war’ against the left, tell them to Google ‘Lisa Keogh’.”

    Free Speech Champions

    In case you missed it, the Free Speech Champions – a joint initiative overseen by the FSU and the Battle of Ideas – organised a great online discussion between some top journalists – Bari Weiss, Helen Lewis, Katie Herzog and Mick Hume – about why journalists working for elite newspapers and broadcasters are becoming less concerned with uncovering the truth and holding the powerful to account and more interested in using their platforms to advance the cause of social justice. You can watch a video recording of that conversation here.

    In addition, the Champions have been hard at work defending free speech. You can read articles by them in Areo magazine here, here and here.

    And if you want to watch me interviewing Quentin Letts about his new book – Stop Bloody Bossing Me About – in our first online ‘Speakeasy’ you can do that on our YouTube channel here.

    1. Hundreds of millions wasted on free speech laws, more billions on diversity and equal rights legislation and the Left still set about creating Nazi Germany.

      Truly, they want conflict. They thrive on it.

  23. BBC Radio 4 News report this morning that Travellers are trying to set up camp just outside the Windsor estate. The police are trying to disperse them. Interesting.

    1. People don’t get it, that type of person are priapic as hell.

      Read the African newspapers, rape is just like having a coffee at breakfast time , it seems to be an accepted way of life , and of course they do it to babies , dogs, goats , members of the family etc.

      That’s why there are so many fatherless black/half black children .

      It is in their culture , innit!

          3. Yes , bit like a village , they live in different parts, Sandton outskirts , Brianston outskirts, then one sister lives on a wonderful gated community Kruger park , and my other one Muizenburg, CapeTown .

          4. Even once-open suburbs like the one we used to live in, in Randburg now have sentried security entrances on incoming roads.

          5. We now have gated communities in Colchester.
            They give me the creeps. Or are the inhabitants more forward thinking than I am?

          6. We used not to need that kind of thing in this country – where people used to leave their doors unlocked or hang the key on a string to be accessed via the letterbox.

          7. Gated communities are different , the houses are usually large , big gardens , usually high walls, guard dogs , security etc .. BUT the scary thing is power outages can mess everything up , and what a nightmare.

            I couldn’t live like that , I would be a nervous wreck , in fact I felt like a nervous wreck after spending a month out there, fear of being hijacked , no car windows down , high security in shopping malls and supermarkets .

            The sound of gunfire , gangs , blacked out top of the range cars , lots of black police men, armed , and everyone in a hurry!

          8. One of my friends from north London went out to JHB to work in the 70s, he was shot in the head and killed in Hillbrow in his car.

          9. Not 59 Hunter Street Judith’s Parrl were i first lived in JHB. It was quite a safe and respectably Middle class area in the late 60s …most of the old homes have either been flattened or wrecked. Litter is strewn every where. I remember our night’s out in Hill-brow and a walking back to our digs at 2am perfectly safe. I looked on google earth. The old house is some sort of religious refuge now.

    2. Better go down on one knee and worship him then before the hate police bang on the door.

          1. 333733+ up ticks,
            Afternoon W,
            The electorate continued to support / vote thereby giving consent, they still do, and the frightening thing is they
            probably still will.

    4. How enriching. Maybe those phallic guns gave him the idea.
      All our fault, natch.

    5. It was his way of complaining about the museum. ‘Imperial’ can not be defended.

    1. Practice makes perfect.
      To make sure AB’s execution was … er, well executed …. Hal imported an expert French executioner who used a sword rather than an axe. (Insert French swordsman jokes here.)
      These chaps are merely honing their skills so this time we don’t rely on Johnny Foreigner. Because of Brexit, natch.

  28. A Cup of Tea

    One day my Grandma was out shopping, and my Grandpa was in charge of me.
    I was maybe 2 ½ years old. Someone had given me a little ‘tea set’ as a gift, and it was one of my favourite toys.

    Grandpa was in the living room engrossed in the evening news when I brought him a little cup of ‘tea’, which was just water. After several cups of tea and lots of praise for such yummy tea, my Grandma came home.

    My Grandpa made her wait in the living room to watch me bring him a cup of tea, because he thought it was ‘just the cutest thing he had ever seen!’ Grandma waited, and sure enough, here I came down the hall, with a cup of tea for Grandpa, and she watched as he drank it all.

    Then she said to Grandpa, (as only a Grandma would know), “Did it ever occur to you that the only place in the house that she can reach to get water, is the toilet?”

  29. A Cup of Tea

    One day my Grandma was out shopping, and my Grandpa was in charge of me.
    I was maybe 2 ½ years old. Someone had given me a little ‘tea set’ as a gift, and it was one of my favourite toys.

    Grandpa was in the living room engrossed in the evening news when I brought him a little cup of ‘tea’, which was just water. After several cups of tea and lots of praise for such yummy tea, my Grandma came home.

    My Grandpa made her wait in the living room to watch me bring him a cup of tea, because he thought it was ‘just the cutest thing he had ever seen!’ Grandma waited, and sure enough, here I came down the hall, with a cup of tea for Grandpa, and she watched as he drank it all.

    Then she said to Grandpa, (as only a Grandma would know), “Did it ever occur to you that the only place in the house that she can reach to get water, is the toilet?“

      1. Yep, but nothing will change. These are Labour’s children.

        We’ll solve it when we collar and chain these creatures.

  31. Good Moaning.
    Hot …. Again!!!! Sunny. Ash Die Back. Global Warming/Climate Change. Zero Covid. House price deflation/inflation. Glass of wine will kill you. Oh, and Hyde Park is full of homicidal enrichers.
    I really will have to find some depressing news to counter my natural optimism.

    1. There’s some good news in your ‘press release’ Anne, the wine is not that bad it can take years to carry out that task.

  32. Good morning my friends

    Why are our politicians prepared to put up with this? Why do they want these people to invade Britain and why are people who protest against the invasion taken into custody and not the invaders? It seems that very dark forces are at work at the very heart of the British establishment.

    It strikes me that if the government really wanted to begin to tackle the problem the illegal immigrants would be held in large ships anchored a few miles from the coast and held there until they can be deported or sent back whence they came.

    The longer we refuse to deal the problem the longer it will go on.

    Illegal channel migrants threaten ‘mob unrest’ on arrival over housing delays
    The record numbers of illegal migrants expect to be moved quickly to their accommodation, says Border Force union
    ByCharles Hymas:

    Channel migrants are threatening “mob unrest” over accommodation delays, a Border Force union has warned, as record numbers arrived on UK shores.‘’

    Lucy Moreton, professional officer for the ISU immigration union, said Border Force was being overwhelmed by the “phenomenal” numbers of illegal migrants now crossing the Channel.

    More than 560 reached the UK over the weekend, including 336 in 19 boats on Friday, a record for a single day in 2021, surpassing the previous high of 209 on April 28.

    She said so many had arrived at one point at the weekend that officers had to abandon the normal practice of Covid testing on arrival and instead take them to detention centres or other accommodation to avoid a potentially dangerous build-up of migrants.

    “Border Force staff are feeling increasingly threatened. There is a risk of unrest from these groups,” said Ms Moreton.

    “They are not exhausted, beaten down and glad to be here. They know they are going to be moved into accommodation. They want to be moved into accommodation. If that doesn’t happen promptly they get cross about it.

    “They have to be clothed but we cannot provide hot food there. They might not have eaten anything. There is a mob mentality that takes over. The vast majority are young males. The families and children are moved clear very quickly.

    “These are groups of people used to acting together to get what they need and frequently we cannot understand what they are saying to each other. The numbers arriving are phenomenal.”

    The number of migrants reaching the UK in small boats this year is more than double the rate of 2020, which totalled 8,713, itself more than four times the numbers in 2019.

    Over the bank holiday weekend, UK authorities dealt with 336 people in 19 boats on Friday and 144 in seven boats on Saturday. A further 17 crossed in one boat on Sunday and 71 people set out in three boats on Monday, bringing the total to 568.

    The government has said it is cracking down on the criminal gangs behind the crossings. A Home Office spokesman said gangs were “putting profits before people’s lives”.

    The department said more than 3,600 people had been prevented from crossing the Channel by French authorities so far this year.

    Officials have secured more than 65 small-boat related prosecutions since the start of 2020, the Home Office added.

    1. We have roughly 5,500 people in our village .

      Is Boris aware of how many illegals are arriving in the UK every day, does he care?

      1. Hmm, Mags, we have about 130. Fortunately with very few amenities we do not get over-whelmed with illegal gimmegrunts – yet.

        1. Until Welby the Woke starts using Church of England real estate to build dwellings for migrants in every village!

          1. Welby the Woke will have difficulties here, as our 13th Century little church is Grade 1 listed and there are many fiercely patriotic people in and around this rural village – mainly arable farmland – who will defend us vigourously.

          2. I have the feeling that listed status won’t count for much if they do launch this campaign.
            However, they underestimate the intensity of feeling in villages for our churches and our churchyards.
            Our village is even smaller than yours, but we often get visitors who have a family member buried in the churchyard, or who know that someone in their family lived in the village at some point.

            I’m picking up a worrying undercurrent of “the church is never used” “our churches are just museums” and similar, which is making me suspect that a coup against the Church’s very valuable property may be imminent.
            In Germany, migrants were dispersed to every village, via container temporary housing and/or new blocks of flats that were built.

          3. All I can say, BB2, is, Heaven help us and if Heaven won’t, then we’ll have to help ourselves, if that means with scythes, pitchforks and mattocks, so be it.

          4. Do you know anyone who is involved with church politics? I would like to contact the conservative resistance…

          5. ‘Fraid not but I can ask around – I’m the Lay Chairman for the PCC – we have responsibility for the church fabric and have, under that aegis, re-roofed the church and built a kitchen/toilet extension, in order to facilitate the use of the church for extra-mural events, as we are the hub of a village with no shop, pub, school or village hall.

          6. I’m on my PCC as well. We are generally traditionalist (and have done similar things to you – new roof after theft of the lead, new loos, new kitchen area because we use the building for fund-raising fashion shows and concerts, new pew cushions which we can’t use due to Covid).

          7. They’ve already done that by selling off vicarages and glebes all over the country – now housing estates.

      2. With yesterdays arrivals, total in 5 days is 700. Wait till their families all arrive. Cost – financial, cultural and any other way you can think of must be immense. Don’t worry – Sunak has an endless supply of cash. It is a good job PP is working hard at it – I’d hate to think she’s totally incompetent.
        How many more this week?

    2. Of course we must do everything in our power to stop these people ‘getting cross’.

    3. Now you know why all these houses are being built all over the country Richard – Was it called a million house “Arc” across England? Who would be going in them? The new arrivals. Brand new houses – For them – Paid for by us. I CANNOT see any other reason for the houses everywhere.

    4. “…illegal immigrants would be held in large ships anchored a few miles…” – Denmark has now started saying that asylum applications must be made outside of Denmark – so, in Africa or wherever. A touch of Viking spirit…

  33. Good morning my friends

    Why are our politicians prepared to put up with this? Why do they want these people to invade Britain and why are people who protest against the invasion taken into custody and not the invaders? It seems that very dark forces are at work at the very heart of the British establishment.

    It strikes me that if the government really wanted to begin to tackle the problem the illegal immigrants would be held in large ships anchored a few miles from the coast and held there until they can be deported or sent back whence they came.

    The longer we refuse to deal the problem the longer it will go on.

    Illegal channel migrants threaten ‘mob unrest’ on arrival over housing delays
    The record numbers of illegal migrants expect to be moved quickly to their accommodation, says Border Force union
    ByCharles Hymas:

    Channel migrants are threatening “mob unrest” over accommodation delays, a Border Force union has warned, as record numbers arrived on UK shores.‘’

    Lucy Moreton, professional officer for the ISU immigration union, said Border Force was being overwhelmed by the “phenomenal” numbers of illegal migrants now crossing the Channel.

    More than 560 reached the UK over the weekend, including 336 in 19 boats on Friday, a record for a single day in 2021, surpassing the previous high of 209 on April 28.

    She said so many had arrived at one point at the weekend that officers had to abandon the normal practice of Covid testing on arrival and instead take them to detention centres or other accommodation to avoid a potentially dangerous build-up of migrants.

    “Border Force staff are feeling increasingly threatened. There is a risk of unrest from these groups,” said Ms Moreton.

    “They are not exhausted, beaten down and glad to be here. They know they are going to be moved into accommodation. They want to be moved into accommodation. If that doesn’t happen promptly they get cross about it.

    “They have to be clothed but we cannot provide hot food there. They might not have eaten anything. There is a mob mentality that takes over. The vast majority are young males. The families and children are moved clear very quickly.

    “These are groups of people used to acting together to get what they need and frequently we cannot understand what they are saying to each other. The numbers arriving are phenomenal.”

    The number of migrants reaching the UK in small boats this year is more than double the rate of 2020, which totalled 8,713, itself more than four times the numbers in 2019.

    Over the bank holiday weekend, UK authorities dealt with 336 people in 19 boats on Friday and 144 in seven boats on Saturday. A further 17 crossed in one boat on Sunday and 71 people set out in three boats on Monday, bringing the total to 568.

    The government has said it is cracking down on the criminal gangs behind the crossings. A Home Office spokesman said gangs were “putting profits before people’s lives”.

    The department said more than 3,600 people had been prevented from crossing the Channel by French authorities so far this year.

    Officials have secured more than 65 small-boat related prosecutions since the start of 2020, the Home Office added.

  34. First Kew,now Windsor

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9709b05f0a9673e97b8a386ef43863af14a2663b5d584c8b5181ff4f8bf62e1f.jpg
    The Pikeys with their “Protected Characteristic” (being violent feral criminal scum) have caused chaos over many parts of this once green and pleasant land and TPTB have ignored the pain caused
    You’d have to have a heart of stone not to laff now the rich and powerful are getting a taste of the same medicine,maybe NOW some action may be taken that protects the rest of us as well!!

    2. Who gave them protected status. They leave their rubbish, pinch dogs, raid cars for catalytic converters, and cause a nuisance . They are not real Gypsies, you know like the ones in the old days who used to sell wooden clothes pegs and bless you with a wish by reading your palm.

      Don’t we have protected status , I mean , why aren’t we being protected against illegal invaders and their willingness to use machetes and knives , most of them are mentally unbalanced.

      1. Irish tinkers. The Republic of Ireland has laws against them, so they come over to Britain instead.

      2. I had my palm read when I went to the Derby years ago. None of the predictions came true!

    3. the flip side of the coin RR is the virtue signal sent what’ll happen when the Queen’s “promoted to glory”

  35. Morning all.

    The other evening I almost choked on my Sauvignon Blanc when Monty Don gave me advice on how to “reduce my carbon footprint” by changing the way I do my gardening.

    Meanwhile, back in the real world, the IEA have produced a report on global energy consumption. China is destined to increase its coal consumption by a record amount this year as it ramps up production to supply nations opening up after the lockdowns… Well over half of the increase in coal-fired electricity generation in 2021 is anticipated in China.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0f9b85dd25d29137a5a6b8b7134f744150bd3d07c97ea388e299daf1bbc2732e.png

    So what is happening over here? “In the European Union, coal-fired electricity generation is disappearing or becoming negligible in an increasing number of countries. Austria and Sweden closed their last coal power plants in 2020; others like Portugal will do so this year, and carbon allowances continue to deter coal generators.“. Of course, we are on a similar course.

    When are our governments and mainstream media going to take their collective heads out of their arses and see what is really going on?

    Here is the full report, if you want something else to get worked up about other than coronavirus.

    https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/d0031107-401d-4a2f-a48b-9eed19457335/GlobalEnergyReview2021.pdf

    1. It must be soul-destroying to know that China is doing what you want your Government to do…but you know they won’t!

    2. I rather liked Monty Don when I first saw him on TV. Funny how you can go off people!

      1. Me too. It’s sad to think that someone who is apparently intelligent and generally very likeable has been sucked into the swamp alongside the likes of Attenborough.

      2. Always thought he was a bit strange. Not malevolent, but naïve, like Charlie (Prince of Growballs Warning).

    3. It’s absolutely pointless to export our industrial processes and coal/gas consumption to China just to satisfy these green credentials. Electric cars will require enormously increased power production – and most of the necessary equipment will be made in China.

      1. I think also moreorless every residential household will need their electricity supply upgraded. With adult children often still at home with parents to their thirties 2-4 cars per household are commonplace. Each charging point draws 40A. A typical service fuse is rated at 100A and we still have a lot of properties with only an 80A fuse.

        1. I shall have to invest in a pony and trap; it’ll be the only way I’ll be able to get from A to B!

  36. The Glorious First of June! In late news we now have a new grandson. All well. He has red hair. This is very good.

    1. Congratulations HP – I fear for his future the way the world is going. England will be majority immigrant Islamic in 30 years. A true hell hole.

    1. 333733+ up ticks,
      O2O,
      Just think Og every park in the United Kingdom can
      become a bike park via the polling booth and a coating of treachery.

  38. Good morning all. A beautiful one it is too with a massive 10°C in the yard!
    ERNIE didn’t cough up the big one this morning, but I did get 3 x £25 consolation prizes to bump my Bond holding up a bit further.

    Will be off to Matlock for a bit of shopping once I’m dressed.

  39. BTL Comment & response:-

    Robert Spowart
    2 Jun 2021 6:00AM
    Segregation? The least of our worries.
    As shewn by the Batley cartoon furore and the demonstrations in support of the terrorist organisation Hamas, we are not only already in a latent Civil War against the native population, but our government is also allowing reinforcements to arrive across the channel every day.

    Delete
    87LikeReply

    Lemmy Outahere
    2 Jun 2021 8:51AM
    @Robert Spowart Batley was blatant intimidation by so called ‘Muslim elders/spokesmen/call them what you will. Schoolchildren complaining about flags and headmasters apologizing for hurt feelings. I wonder how many of the Batley mob have jobs or are they all on the dole, rentamobs seem pretty quick to mobilise. Schoolchildren are supposed to be just that, going to school to learn and be educated, not to have some kind of political agenda. Muslim gangs driving around north London threatening rape against Jewish women. What a country the UK has become.

  40. From the Telegraph . . .

    “Channel migrants are threatening “mob unrest” over accommodation delays, a Border Force union has warned, as record numbers arrived on UK shores.‘’

    Lucy Moreton, professional officer for the ISU immigration union, said Border Force was being overwhelmed by the “phenomenal” numbers of illegal migrants now crossing the Channel.
    More than 560 reached the UK over the weekend – so many had arrived at one point at the weekend that officers had to abandon the normal practice of Covid testing !!

    2. The numbers are only phenomenal because you keep bringing them here.

      Stop doing that!

      If they get uppipty, turn a water cannon on them or better yet, lock them in a shipping container, drill some holes for air and dump it in France.

  42. 333733+ up ticks,

    Dt,
    Boris Johnson under growing pressure to lift lockdown on June 21
    Prime Minister urged not to stall reopening after Nicola Sturgeon pauses, as UK goes a day without Covid deaths

    The inside seemingly opposition in action, johnson on his way to the wire as seen previous in the mayday era with moggy leading the opposition & mayday winning.

    So I believe it will be with johnson in the pursuit of herd control & manipulation.

  43. Digital currencies are the future for Russia’s financial system, central bank governor says. 2 June 2021.

    Moscow published a consultation paper on a digital rouble in October, and aims to have a prototype ready by the end of 2021. Pilots and trials could start next year, Nabiullina said.

    That could be a concern for the U.S., according to a former U.S. Treasury official, Michael Greenwald.

    “What alarms me is if Russia, China, and Iran each creates central bank digital currencies to operate outside of the dollar and other countries followed them,” he told CNBC’s Hadley Gamble on Wednesday. “That would be alarming.”

    Countries (Syria, Libya) have been destroyed for threatening to leave the US Dollar!

    https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/02/digital-currencies-are-the-future-for-russia-central-bank-chief-says.html

    2. Remember the days when you used to dress up in collar and tie to fly…

    3. Job Advert in The Lady:
      New Exciting Role.
      Do you fancy your chances as mistress to the British Prime Minister?
      This vacancy has been created as present incumbent has moved on to the more challenging role of his wife.
      All the usual bollocks about race, religion, ethnicity and gender apply.

      1. Must be willing to allow bareback riding and terminations will be used for contraception.

  47. Meanwhile,in Leningrad…

    The annual St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), which kicked off on Wednesday and will take place until June 5, is expected to bring together about 5,000 participants and see hundreds of new deals signed.
    “To date, more than 320 agreements are being prepared for the signing at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum,” the CEO of the Roscongress Foundation, Alexander Stuglev, told Russia-24 TV channel.“These are agreements to be concluded between federal authorities and regions, between regions and companies of various kinds of investment agreements, and agreements on business development between companies,” he said.

    SPIEF will be visited by about 2,000 foreign participants representing 53 nations. The largest delegations are expected from the United States, China, and Qatar, which is the guest country of this year’s forum. The business event will also welcome delegates from Britain, France, Italy and other countries.

  51. 333733+ up ticks,
    Only a suggestion but,

    In lieu of the lab/lib/con coalition and their atrocious overseeing activities would it not be seen via the electorate that the reset would benefit from the Triades, Mafia & Islamics taking the governance position ?
    It must really be an improvement. surely ?

  52. Live Coronavirus latest news: We can’t ‘scamper down a rabbit hole’ with every new variant, warns Oxford vaccine chief

    The country cannot “scamper down a rabbit hole” with every new variant, Sir John Bell has warned, as Boris Johnson comes under increasing pressure to stick to reopening on June 21.

    Sir John, a leading member of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine team, urged the Government to stick to the unlocking roadmap and ensure we “move on” rather than delay reopening the country due to new variants.

    The Oxford University professor of medicine told BBC Radio 4’s Today: “If we scamper down a rabbit hole every time we see a new variant, we’re going to spend a long time huddled away”.

    He cautioned that coronavirus “is here to stay probably forever”, and said that the Government should focus on managing “hospitalisations, serious disease and deaths” rather than cases.

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

    Julie Bower 2 Jun 2021 7:47AM
    The plot deepens. Freedom of Information request in the US has uncovered emails from Dr Fauci’s team discussing how to bury the Indian research paper from Jan 2020 that identified 4 HIV inserts spliced into the viral genome. Very interestingly, our very own Sir Jeremy Farrar was copied in the exchanges. See ZeroHedge for the details.

    2. I was asked what we could do to extend and advance diversity. In a public forum, I said ‘Bin it.’ All we do is divide and label. Treat people as individuals, as people.

      The trainer went on about how I was saying that from a position of privilege and that i had never known oppression and so it was easy for me. I suggested that she didn’t know anything about me and that her job dependend upon such labelling.

      1. Being on the dole would be more honest than peddling the diversity tripe.

    3. The ‘Conservatives’ haven’t been conservative since the end of the fifties. They are a neoliberal party now. Surely after 50 freaking years or more this is painfully evident?

  57. The virus spreads…

    Joe Root: England, New Zealand will take ‘moment of unity’ ahead of first Test

    Captain adamant move will mark start of a year “all about action” to improve diversity, inclusion

    Joe Root has confirmed that both teams will “be taking a moment of unity” ahead of the first LV Insurance Test between England and New Zealand as part of a wider commitment to combat issues around inclusion within the game.

    Root, the England captain, acknowledged that “sport and society” had faced some “ugly truths” over the last year around the issues of inclusion and diversity and resolved to “make a difference and keep bettering our sport.”

    The game was rocked [really?] by a series of allegations from non-white players – notably Michael Carberry and Azeem Rafiq – which have precipitated a period of soul-searching and the introduction of various initiatives – including mandatory education programmes, a confidential helpline and a code of conduct – which have been designed to improve the game’s record at attracting more diversity in terms of players and spectators.

    [followed by more blether]

    https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/england-vs-new-zealand-2021-teams-will-take-a-moment-of-unity-ahead-of-first-test-joe-root-says-1264837

    1. I’ve got the test coverage on now, NZ to bat. They just threw up Root with woke waffle. Let’s see if they collectively “take a knee”. Some bint just rang the bell for play, no idea who she is or why she’s there

        1. thanks for update, I didn’t go onto espncricinfo. The supposed moment of reflection was more a minute’s silence and no one took a knee which I suppose is positive

        2. thanks for update, I didn’t go onto espncricinfo. The supposed moment of reflection was more a minute’s silence and no one took a knee which I suppose is positive

        3. What on earth has a Test Match to do with a former soldier who is no longer with us?

          Just asking…

          2. Paid for Mr & Mrs Symonds decorations and wedding probably. Balance spent on new welcome mat for illegal economic migrants

          3. Paid for Mr & Mrs Symonds decorations and wedding probably. Balance spent on new welcome mat for illegal economic migrants

          5. no idea bill, it threw me when I saw the group around the bell. then again it’s the ECB / MCC taking woke Sky coverage. The only sense it would have made is if Captain Tom was a member of MCC. I’ve no idea

          7. recognition as a former member, if he was a member would have made sense. If not, no idea why family members were wheeled out

    2. Non-white players. Does this include the foreigners from all over the Third World who come here, presumably on special visas, to make their fortune playing football, and who then buy Ferraris?

  58. Time for a gallop over to Lords.
    Wouldn’t want to miss the “moment of Unity”
    I wonder if the wendyball players will be “taking the knee” at the 7 Euro games in St Petersburg?

  59. Tim Davie needs to have a quiet word with the BBC complaints department

    From Martin Bashir to presenters laughing at flags, there’s plenty to be unhappy about – maybe they should take their viewers more seriously

    ALLISON PEARSON
    2 June 2021 • 5:00am

    The fallout from the BBC’s Martin Bashir debacle continues. How could they possibly have re-employed the tainted journalist in 2016 when senior managers knew he had got someone to forge bank statements to secure that interview with Princess Diana? At least the Gods must have had a good laugh when the corporation promoted Bashir to religion editor because they were impressed by his “grasp of theology”. Bashir is to ethics what Bingo, my cockerpoo, is to gateposts.

    BBC director general Tim Davie said the result of an investigation into Bashir’s rehiring should be published this week, after an inquiry by Lord Dyson found the corporation covered up “deceitful behaviour”.

    Davie seems like a good thing; I reckon there’s a chance he reads The Telegraph, rather than The Guardian. But can I suggest he has a word with the BBC Complaints department?

    Their replies to aggrieved viewers and listeners like me sum up pretty much everything that people cannot stand about our so-called national broadcaster.

    The following “reply” is written entirely in jest – but perilously close to the condescending reality…

    ***Summary of complaint***

    We received your recent complaint about BBC Breakfast presenters Naga Munchetty and Charlie Stayt “laughing and sneering” at a Union Jack flag, during an interview with a government minister, and your comments about perceived BBC “bias”.

    ***Our response***

    We were concerned by the number of complaints we received on this issue, although we found no basis for criticism. Who doesn’t think the Union Jack is laughable? Apart from a bunch of old weirdo racists who probably live in, like, Hampshire or somewhere.

    Our staff are not, as you allege, members of a “blinkered metropolitan elite” who hold the views of most ordinary people in contempt. BBC employees are a socially diverse bunch with a number living as far out of central London as Acton. Some of them didn’t even go to private school and they are very happy working in the canteen and on reception.

    We find your complaint about bias in news reports to be unfounded. However, we accept that Sir James Dyson is not a prominent Conservative supporter, as we stated. An understandable mistake, in our view, as most rich b——- are Tories.

    The BBC has a comprehensive process take action where a breach of our guidelines is identified. But, obviously, that’s never going to happen because we’re right and you’re wrong.

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

    Gary Lafferty
    2 Jun 2021 7:25AM
    If a child continues to behave badly it sometimes worth considering withholding their pocket money.

    1. “If a child continues to behave badly it sometimes worth considering withholding their pocket money administering a short sharp shock, i.e. a mighty clip around the lug hole.”

      Fixed it for you, Softy Gary.

    1. 68 years ago I was staying with my aunt and uncle – I went back with them after my father’s funeral. Coronation Day was pouring wet – I went to a street party in wet weather gear. I have a photo taken then with a party of kids and grown-ups – I was sitting on the pavement.

    2. It was bloody freezing and wet.
      For reasons best known to themselves, my parents decided that a few days camping in a soggy field near Guildford was the best way to celebrate the formal start to a new reign.

  61. National Trust volunteer writes “‘Today I have been forced regrettably to resign from my volunteer role as I refused to carry out the diversity training. I was advised that the training must be done but I should consider if “the Trust was the right place for me?”

    Another victim of the “woke middle-class establishment” which has a stranglehold on UK has become openly anti-white, along with the big corporations. This is the ongoing preparation for eventually dismantling all borders

    1. I would have done the diversity training but would have made clear to the course leader what my feelings were (e.g. loud sighs, yawns etc.).

    1. Don’t worry, Lozza.
      At least they weren’t doing anything illegal. Like … er … being white or quoting from the Bible.

    2. A young man has been rushed to hospital after he was stabbed repeatedly by a group of youths brandishing foot-long knives in Hyde Park
      But how can this be as knives over 3 inch in length are banned for public carry in the UK ? Surely the much beloved Black & Muslim population of the UK are peaceful law abiding homicidal maniacs, terrorists, thieves, muggers, carjackers, drug dealers , pimps, fraudsters, overpaid sportsmen & TV reporters? ( sarcasm )

      1. “…knives over 3 inch in length are banned for public carry in the UK …” and handguns are banned full stop. How come some BLM woman was blown away a week or so ago, then? Hmm…

        1. And how did the Fishmonger’s Hall killer manage to smuggle in several knives to stab the young organisers of the event? How did he obtain those weapons?

          1. Mornin Jules, just like at the airport , security staff are there to confiscate small 58mm Swiss Army keychain knives from White travelers & ignore axes, spears, swords, AK47’s & suicide belts as ‘cultural & religious symbols ‘ of ethnic minorities !

          2. You can put stuff like that in the hold luggage – but a tiny fruit knife in your hand baggage will be confiscated, along with your shampoo.

          5. My corkscrew was fine until the security guard found the tiny blade (to cut the foil) was a titchy bit serrated! Then it was confiscated with extreme prjudice. Until then, it had been back & forth with me many times.

          6. Blame the Department for Transport for their Diktats on this. I used to run the security screening at Norwich airport and any failure by me or my staff to uphold the ever-changing DfT orders meant instant dismissal.

            DfT inspectors were frequently present watching our actions like hawks. Try working under such extreme pressure.

          7. Yet if I take two tiny vials and a polyester shirt, ask for some water and lob it at a window and goodbye engine and half the plane.

            It is stupid. The limitations are gormless. The problem isn’t the chemical mixes, it’s the people using them. Don’t prevent the wife taking shampoo on board. Stop the Muslim terrorist!

          8. No one is stopping your wife taking shampoo on board. It goes safely in her hold luggage (why would she need shampoo in the cabin?). As for Muslim terrorists (which exist in many colours and races) how do you tell if a passenger is one of them. Ask him?
            “Excuse me sir, but are you, or are you not, a terrorist?”

          10. No it can’t, Pud. And having worked at a senior position in the industry in the UK I know what I’m talking about.

          11. Hi Grizz, a few years ago a cousin of mine got taken aside by the TSA before a flight from NY to Miami. He had flown from Heathrow to NY with a 58mm Swiss Army knife on his key chain locked in a toiletries bag in a suitcase OK but after spending a few nights in NY he flew to Miami & after he & his wife had checked the same suitcase in & were then going through the other procedures the TSA brought back the suitcase got him to open it & went straight for the toiletries bag & confiscated the knife & gave him a verbal warning. They have bins of confiscated knives of all sizes , large pointed nail files, flat straight nail scissors & Leathermen type tools over a certain size .

          12. As you have pointed out, Pud, the USA is a different universe (in all matters!) UK airport screening only exists to prevent items that are dangerous to aviation being placed aboard outbound UK aircraft. They have no remit for incoming aircraft.

            Yanks can’t even speak English properly, therefore their brains are hard-wired to not understand common sense.

        2. Mornin Paul, there are large amounts of automatic weapons in the UK smuggled in from Eastern Europe, Ireland & via diplomatic mail of Arab countries

          1. Indeed. Nowt has changed.
            When I bought my first pistol in the UK (1981 or so), it would have been quicker & cheaper to buy one from a bloke in the pub than jump through all the hoops to be legal

      2. Met Police say after the young man repeatedly stabbing himself in the back, it’s the worst case of suicide they’ve witnessed

    3. Looks as if the one being chased was also wielding a machete.

      Well, I guess he’s lost that one and will have to order another from Deadly Weapons R Us, tout suite.

    4. I seem to have a problem on my laptop – it has turned all the faces in the video to black – when everyine knows the young lads just having some fun can only be white.

  64. Kuwaiti breeder hopes ‘superworms’ will become new superfood https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/superworms-kuwaiti-breeder-hopes-new-superfood-14918764#.YLdEdp6zhw0.twitter “My ambition is for worms to be a successful food alternative for humans”.

    He aims to expand his business beyond the pet trade & get the invertebrates onto dinner plates. But when asked how they tasted, he said he didn’t know. He’s never tried them. Another tranche to appease woke culture

    2. They could have harvested the locusts which invaded Africa last year and used them for protein instead of spraying the crops with pesticides.
      We were offered grasshoppers when we were staying in Uganda but I’m afraid I declined the opportunity.

      1. Apparently they taste of prawns, when stirfried.
        No personal knowledge, reporting for a friend.

      2. I remember seeing the picture of a poor farmer surrounded by several children saying how can i feed my family? While standing in a swarm of locust.

        I thought. Get a net and a frying pan you idiot.

          1. I expect he did but he ended up with no crops to trade or sell. Locusts like grasshoppers are a good source of protein and can be made quite tasty.

      3. As a child in Southern Rhodesia, I was introduced to the delights of fried mopani worm from the mopani tree in our back garden, courtesy of our gardener. I was too young to really remember the taste but I remember enjoying it.

    3. Insects are in a lot of food already, labeled as ‘extra protein’. My wife got hoodwinked into a BBC tasting of various insects; she found them tasty once she got beyond her initial reaction.

  65. If we witnessed a rapid rise in the quantity of woke cr@p under New Labour between 1997 and 2010, when it rose from our knees to our belly buttons, it has since then, risen steadily under Cameron and May – from belly button to armpits – and, under Johnson, it has now started to touch our chins …. unless something drastic happens we’ll be eating the stuff within months …

    1. Woke Londistan C-19 latest – Khan has urged people not to travel unnecessarily to London because of the Indian variant.Good to see he recognises his faults

      1. I don’t go there because of the black death that seems to be running rife. Hyde Park yesterday, apparently. Yer blacks, seemingly empowered by history, seemed to be trying their jousting skills.

        1. When they have no qualms about behaving in that way and do not believe they will be caught, what is the point of the police?

          Round them up, slap a collar on them, chain them and have these effluent break rocks.

      1. Perhaps he fell off a ladder. I look a bit like that, since laddergate.

    2. What appalling posture. I wonder if he has any idea of the trouble he is storing up for himself.

    5. In his defence, he’s in an Apple store going through a tutorial.

      It’s also an old picture, as they stopped making that iMac many moons ago.

      The chair is hideous though – feet aren’t on the floor, as folk have said, bad posture but… they’re not designed for you to stay there.

    1. Well there are Asian elephants in other Asian countries, so why not China. And still they want to import African ones from Zimbabwe.

  70. Warning over pilots’ mental health as planes return to skies
    Researchers say industry practice should change to encourage workers to seek help when they need it.

    A total of 1,841 flights were scheduled from UK airports to France, Spain, Italy and Greece for the two weeks from 17 May, a rise of more than 300% compared with the previous fortnight. Airlines in the US inaugurated hundreds of new routes last week.

    Aviation workers will welcome the chance to regain their salaries and reboot their careers, but survey data suggests many will feel depleted as they return to cockpits and cabins, said Paul Cullen, a commercial airline pilot and research associate with the Trinity College team.

    “We can’t sweep this under the carpet or dress it up. The data says a certain number of pilots were struggling pre-Covid but they wouldn’t disclose a mental health issue to their employer because of the stigma and fear of losing their license and perhaps losing their salary.”

    Just as airlines have procedures to ensure mothballed planes are airworthy, humans need attention too, said Cullen. “You need to do the same for the crew to make sure they’re airworthy.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jun/02/pilots-mental-health-planes-covid-airlines

    1. Remember the German Wings pilot who locked his co-pilot in the loo and proceeded to fly the plane into a mountainside.

      The Malaysian airliner that disappeared had probably a similar cause.

      1. With all the satellites sailing round this planet I cannot honestly believe that NOBODY knows where that plane went down – – but the spysats capabilities have to be kept quiet.

        1. Who flies satellites over a billion square miles of empty ocean, to no good effect?

      2. The Captain went for a wee and was locked out of the cockpit. Unfortunately, due to 9/11, the door is almost unbreakable, Captain and passengers couldn’t break in in time to avert disaster.

    2. The ones that are still employed will be grateful that they still have an income, but as important, a license to fly that is current at company expense.

    3. Now that aviation accidents are fewer and far between, suicide is becoming a significant factor. Many of the accidents due to human error stem from inadequate monitoring and deceitful pilots (for example, those Pakistani pilots picked up the investigation into the crash a year ago and several US pilots who hid past failures and assessments).

      The 737 Max accidents aside, technical issues are now rare. Even where technical issues are involved human error is significant.

    4. Another attempt at altering people’s perception to fulfil an agenda.

      Flying is safer than walking.

  71. This is interesting………

    Over 80 years ago, in Greece, sixty thousand Jews lived peacefully in Thessaloniki. It was a valued and vibrant community.
    Most of these Jews worked in the port. So much so that the port of Thessaloniki was even closed on Saturday, Shabbat. Great emeritus rabbis also lived and studied there. Everyone rubbed shoulders and appreciated each other.

    But on September 2, 1939, on the eve of the outbreak of World War II, it is on this great community that the Nazi terror will suddenly rise.

    On April 6, 1941, Hitler invaded Greece in order to secure its southern front before launching the famous Operation Barbarossa and its great offensive against Russia. Of the 60,000 Jews in Thessaloniki, around 50,000 will be exterminated at the Birkenau concentration camp, in record time!

    The massacre of the Jews of Greece was brief but intense. Very few will have the chance to make it. But among the survivors there was a family known as Bourla.

    And after the war, in 1961, a son was born into this miraculous family from the camps. His parents called him Israel – Abraham. He grew up and studied veterinary medicine in Greece. A brilliant student, Abraham will get his doctorate in reproductive biotechnology at the veterinary school of Aristotle University in Salonika.

    At the age of 34, he decided to move to the United States. He changes his first name Abraham, to Albert.

    Albert was integrated into the medical industry. He progressed quickly and joined a pharmaceutical company where he became “Head manager.” Abraham (Albert) rose through the ranks and got his appointment as CEO of this company in 2019.

    Throughout the year Albert decides to direct the efforts of the company to try to find a vaccine against a new virus (Covid)which has just struck the world. He expends great financial and technological efforts to achieve his goal.

    A year later the WHO (World Health Organization) validates his company to produce the long-awaited vaccine … His vaccine will be distributed in several countries including Germany, which counts thousands of dead from the pandemic.

    Ironically, this vaccine which will save the lives of millions of people around the world including many Germans, was led and pushed by a little Jew from Thessaloniki, son of Holocaust survivors from whom most of his people were exterminated by Nazi Germany.

    And that is why Israel became the first country to receive the vaccine. In memory of his grandparents and his parents, who gave birth to Israel-Abraham Bourla, known today as Albert Bourla: CEO of Pfizer…

    1. Perhaps the Lefties should try to emulate Jews’ over-achievements rather than hate them for their success or the minority that look and behave differently.

      1. Unfortunately for our world today, it’s not just the lefties who are the growing problem.

    1. Another mighty administrative empire to create a..a… passport! They already have chips in them but I expect the announcement that those who are vaccinated are already fully digitised! From the pic of your beautiful garden yesterday, looks like the only digits you are accepting are green.

      1. Thanks KP, I,ve always loved gardening. I bought my first packet of seeds when I was five years old……marigolds!
        Some guru said ‘ Your’e closer to god in a garden’……I don’t want to get that close thanks…..

        1. I bought a pack of Marigolds recently, but they didn’t grow. They just sat there looking all yellow and rubbery, till one day they blew away.

    2. I just can’t understand how it has been allowed to happen, all these self obsessed abnormal nutcases in charge of our lives and the future of our countries.

      1. We’ve been taken over by the mob.
        We saw it coming and did nothing now they have complete control over our lives. ID digital chips coming to a place near you soon.

        Well tattoos are soooo 1940’s…..

      2. That is how the unions became so powerful.
        Their meetings were long and dreary. Normal people with a life to lead dropped out and the narrowly focussed fanatics took over.

    4. I’m surprised Germany went along with this as it has laws that prevent it compiling such databases.

      As it is, can you imagine this ever working? The Dutch and Germans will get theirs running, then a German will want to go to Italy and it’ll be absolute chaos, the Greeks will screw it up and someone, somewhere will royally screw up and all the data will get released.

    1. What exactly is that supposed to show, and what is the data source?

      1. I guess it shows the downward rates of covid after the said vaccines were introduced. Enjoy 😉

        1. That’s not how I read it! It’s showing “expected deaths” as a decreasing dotted line and the “deaths after vaccination” as the blue line. It is apparently trying to make it look as if the vaccine is causing the deaths, and that is certainly the tilt of the other articles posted on there.

          This video cites a website on the charts , and on visiting that website I find it is a department at the University of Washington that is running projections of expected Covid deaths. The results of their analysis show that actual deaths due to Covid 19 are roughly twice what the official statistics show, thanks to discrepancies between the methods used to report the statistics in different countries. The charts shown on the video are NOT present on the UW website, so it is impossible to see how those charts were created or to know what “data” were used to produce them.

          According to advice on the European Medicines Agency website, a study was undertaken into blood clots that had been associated with the Astra Zeneca vaccine.

          “The Committee carried out an in-depth review of 62 cases of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis and 24 cases of splanchnic vein thrombosis reported in the EU drug safety database (EudraVigilance) as of 22 March 2021, 18 of which were fatal. The cases came mainly from spontaneous reporting systems of the EEA and the UK, where around 25 million people had received the vaccine.”

          Anyone suffering this extremely rare apparent reaction, which so far has not been definitively associated with the vaccine, is advised to seek medical attention so that the problem can be treated. According to the Agency “At this time, it is not possible to identify specific risk factors.”

          So basically, the video put up by “State of The Nation” is completely misrepresenting the evidence and is reinforcing the false message by claiming they are posting data from a credible source.

    2. I thought they already covered this by being female from the waist down ( no dangly bits) and male from the waist up ( no boobs).

      1. They’re semi-transitioned crash test TG dummies – but don’t know from which to which.

      1. Ooohh, you’re courting trouble with that one!

        True story: While driving to work one day in Eindhoven I watched a female driver in the car behind me doing her makeup by looking in the rear-view mirror and putting on lipstick – while driving!

        I mean, how dangerous is it to make other drivers take their eyes off the road by having them watch you doing something like that, eh?

        1. Why the heck would any other driver want to watch that?

          P.S. When I used to commute into Euston there was a (not particularly attractive) woman who used to do her whole make-up routine while on the train. She didn’t look any better at the end, and I used to feel “no wonder some men think that we are brainless”.

          Apparently she worked in a fairly responsible position for a charity in Euston.

          1. I watched the woman seated opposite me on the train to London do the full make up job; it was fascinating. What made me wince was the weird eye lash curlers she applied. I had to ask, “does that hurt? It looks painful!” Apparently not.

          2. …It was ironic humour (at least, an attempt at it) Hertslass!

          3. Oooops! It’s easy to miss the irony nowadays – especially when there are people (mostly men, I’ve found|) who actually like seeing a woman bimmel around with her face. Whether it’s a look into what should be done in the bathroom that they like, or the underlying thought “yes, bimbos all of them, only care about their silly faces”, or the “transformation” they sometimes see, I don’t know.

            As far as I’m concerned, women doing themselves up in public are looking, and behaving, like stupid bints.

        2. Why the heck would any other driver want to watch that?

          P.S. When I used to commute into Euston there was a (not particularly attractive) woman who used to do her whole make-up routine while on the train. She didn’t look any better at the end, and I used to feel “no wonder some men think that we are brainless”.

          Apparently she worked in a fairly responsible position for a charity in Euston.

        3. I saw one doing exactly the same, as Miss Glamourpuss was driving her BMW convertible on a nice sunny morning.

    4. According to the congresswoman’s tweets:

      “Female car crash victims are 73% more likely to experience serious injury or death than males. This is about more than differences in average height—there are other anatomical differences between males and females that affect how bodies react in a crash.”

      I think the congresswoman should therefore insist that the crash test dummies are twice the weight of the one shown in the picture, to more accurately represent the risk to the average American female…

    1. Silly old fool. Everyone knows that masks will STOP THE PLAGUE in its tracks. The death toll proves it…(sarc)

      1. The actual data on the effectiveness of mask use (yes, from actual scientific experiments, not hearsay) indicate that mask use reduces the risk of transmission of the disease by up to 30% (assuming the masks are worn properly, and not just draped around the chin as many of them seem to be).
        Even a number of doctors who wrote to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science journal to call for the retraction of a published paper “Identifying airborne transmission as the dominant route for the spread of COVID-19” made the statement “while we agree that mask-wearing plays an important role in slowing the spread of Covid-19, the claims in this study were based on easily falsifiable claims and methodological design flaws”.
        I think this indicates that the medical profession is being scrupulous in not allowing exaggerated or misleading claims to be made on either side of this issue.

        1. The mask fallacy is that people believe that covid is spread by droplets.
          In fact, sneezing isn’t a symptom. The droplets that people breathe out are so tiny that the water evaporates, and the virus is left floating in the air.
          If you’re in an enclosed space with ten other people, it doesn’t make any difference whether you wear a mask or not, because as long as you’re breathing, you have a chance of inhaling some of the viruses swirling around in the air.

          1. The reduction in transmission comes from the trapping of contaminated droplets inside the mask when exhaled by someone who is infected. The effectiveness of transmission reduction through mask use is a measured one, but estimates of the effectiveness vary widely owing to the different conditions used in different studies. All studies that I have seen have confirmed that there is an improvement. Claims of there being no improvement which are often made on the basis of Covid infection rates being lower where masks have not been mandated are erroneous deductions, because the conditions are completely different in different states and countries. If you perform tests under controlled conditions an improvement is noticeable.

            Here is an extract from a comprehensive study of the subject:

            “High viral titers of SARS-CoV-2 are reported in the saliva of COVID-19 patients. These titers have been highest at time of patient presentation, and viral levels are just as high in asymptomatic or presymptomatic patients, and occur predominantly in the URT (46, 47). Asymptomatic people seem to account for approximately 40 to 45% of SARS-CoV-2 infections (48). An analysis of SARS-CoV-2 viral load by patient age showed that viral loads of SARS-CoV-2 in children are similar to adults (49). Another paper showed no significant difference in saliva loads between mildly symptomatic and asymptomatic children. These findings support the contention that everyone, adults and children, should wear masks (50).”

            Source: An evidence review of face masks against COVID-19 PNAS January 26, 2021 118 (4) e2014564118; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2014564118

          2. These findings definitely do not support the contention that everyone should wear masks!

            Virus is not carried in droplets which evaporate almost immediately in the air. The virus floats freely in the air and is not stopped by the masks!

            Don’t just take my word for it, listen to Dr John Lee on youtube.
            And take this quiz to find out how good your understanding of the indisputable facts around covid is:
            https://www.hartgroup.org/quiz/covid-19-quiz/

  79. Hancock & Co repeat that the potions are safe. Dr Byram Bridle states otherwise, using peer reviewed data/articles. Dr Bridle’s information chimes with what Dr Sucharit Bhakdi was reporting on a few weeks ago. Whatever is in the potions can, and will, enter the bloodstream and then cause mayhem within the body. The piece that mentions the ovaries is particularly concerning for females of breeding age or for pre-pubescent girls.
    I have a friend who suffered a serious clot in an artery (70% blocked) in his neck, the clot caused a mini-stroke. This happened just short of four weeks after agreeing to the Pfizer jab. Then, less than two weeks after the second jab, he suffered another min-stroke. My friend is adamant that he will never take a booster and his son, in his forties, will not take the jab from any source.
    Sinister is the word to describe this government’s attitude to mass jabbing.

    https://twitter.com/Therealscienti1/status/1400025182073462786

    Dr Byram Bridle

    1. Dr Bridle is a veterinarian who is trying to develop a methodology to allow the body to fight cancer on its own…

      “The goal of his research team is to harness the natural power of a patient’s immune system to eliminate their own cancer cells. This represents the ultimate personalized therapy and holds the potential to treat cancers more effectively, safely, and at lower cost than current options.”

      https://ovc.uoguelph.ca/pathobiology/people/faculty/Byram-W-Bridle

      Having something as a “goal” of one’s research as an “associate professor” in a not very prominent veterinary college does not make one an expert on immunological matters in humans! Making a statement like this as a way of trying to undermine faith in mainstream medicine is nothing more than irresponsible quackery.

      When my mother was diagnosed with cancer my sister investigated a number of “alternative therapy” sites claiming to offer alternative treatments for cancers that had been dismissed as incurable by “conventional” doctors. None of the claims made on one of the websites were independently verifiable, but legal actions were pending against the site owner by the US authorities. Not surprisingly one of the “doctors” claiming to offer his miraculous therapy (for a high residential fee, of course) had located his “clinic” in Mexico to escape prosecution in the USA. I visited the site of the supposed well-appointed clinic pictured on his website by looking at the address on Google Earth. It was a block of rented offices.

      Believe this kind of scaremongering at your own peril, but please don’t transmit that risk to others.

      Postscript:

      Aha… So “professor” Bridle is promoting his own approach to alternative vaccines… much like the cancer “alternative therapists”

      “…a research initiative aimed at modifying the research team’s optimized cancer vaccine platforms to target severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV)-2, which is the causative agent of the coronavirus disease identified at the end of 2019 (COVID-19). The long-term goal is to have a flexible technological platform to rapidly develop vaccines against highly pathogenic coronaviruses that may emerge in the future.”

      Funny, I haven’t heard much in the press about this research team’s miraculous-sounding “optimized cancer vaccine platforms”… have you?

      1. These days veterinary science is better funded than human – no quangos taking a bite, no councils charging ground rent and greedy for business rates.

        While too late for miniclaude, if anything good comes of this, all the better.

        1. If anything independently verifiable as good comes out of any of these “alternative therapists'” work I will be applauding with everyone else. There is plenty of room for independent thought and new approaches in everything (I subscribe to that philosophy in my own work). But until the success has been achieved and proven, I think it is totally irresponsible for anyone using exaggerated credentials to spread alarm about and distrust in another treatment that has already been independently tested and proven to save lives, while trying to promote his own as-yet-undeveloped alternative.

        2. The GP doesn’t feed me roast chicken to improve my behaviour.
          Spartie is treated far better.

        3. I’d trust my vet over my doctor (should I ever be able to see her) any day!

      2. The papers that he talks about exist though. It’s been shown that the spike proteins are circulating and enter the brain.

          1. I don’t care about his alternative therapies, they are not the subject of the post.

          1. Full explanation of what? No one single paper is the full explanation of this spike protein’s behaviour.

            Here is the paper that shows that spike proteins injected into the bloodstream enter the brain, from which it is reasonable to assume that the ones produced by the vaxxes also do: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-020-00771-8

    2. KtK . . Sinister is exactly right. They are trying to force everyone to have some “vaccine” jabbed into them, which the manufacturer has NO responsibility at all, regarding side effects. What sort of govt does that? Certainly NOT a decent one.

  80. Sent this afternoon to:
    rob.bates@reclaimparty.co.uk

    Good afternoon, Rob (and Laurence),

    Given the flood of immigrants illegally being allowed to enter the country, the criminal mayhem being perpetrated in Londanistan and the illegal activities of Hamas and Hezbollah supporters, I’m saddened to think that apart from Lib/Lab/Con (none of whom appear to be agin all this) there are NO voices raised in protest.

    What is the game plan for 2024? Keep very quiet, don’t make waves and look very green and liberal.

    That won’t get any votes – now is the time to force them to pull on the brown trousers, thus ensuring that they know it ain’t going to go all their befuddled way.

    There are many of us out here who need some hope, who need to know that Lib/Lab/Con are not going to a done deal in 2024. The time to mobilise is now. Please get to it and don’t lose the myriad opportunities in front of you.

    1. Seems that e-mail doesn’t work, try this:

      info@reclaimproject.org.uk

      Looks like they’ve stopped being a party and are now just a project. Does that mean that all we’re left with is shilly-shally Farage, who cannot back up anything?

      1. There is always UKIP – yes, I know, but they do seem to be getting their act together at last and have some decent and sensible policies, particularly on invasion immigration.

    2. NtN . . Years ago we were secretly signed by someone from our govt of the time to The Barcelona Agreement. This allows free movement from anywhere near/around Europe to flood unhindered into this continent. Basically we are supposed to welcome them and provide lives/housing etc etc for them ( sounding familiar ? ) There was to be NO limits on the amount that could come. NO complaints about the RoP and their culture was to be allowed. ( even more familiar ?) – – the aim – to wipe out by sheer numbers, the working class whiteys and turn everyone into “coffee coloured”. All coming true.
      https://jamiefreeman.news/eus-dirty-little-secret-barcelona-declaration/

        1. Thanks – makes me wonder what the elite think they’ll achieve with a continent full of the savages we are being subjected to pay for. Why didn’t the elite just go to Africa and try to rule that?

    3. They can’t and they won’t. Far, far easier to waffle on about green as that just affects middle class energy bills. Like the boiling frog, they won’t notice energy is unaffordable until there’s sewage in the drinking water.

      The State doesn’t want to address the issue of gimmigration. That’s hard and a hot potato. A spud that ticks. You see, the voting electorate can be safely ignored until election time. Then they’re bribed with their own money.

      The quangocrats, back benchers, big state lobby groups, legal aid brigade all queue up the second the government does what the public wants. After all, their jobs are gone if the government stops illegal immigration.

      That’s why government is so completely pointless. It doesn’t serve the people. If these lobby groups were simply defunded the instant they get uppity and legal aid abolished for illegal immigrants then the problem would evaporate. It comes down to cash. If they can take it, they spend it – on themselves. WE lose out.

      Look at that bloke refusing to let the Scots deport two illegals. Why is he not sent the bill and charged with wasting police time?

  81. Not The Covid News.

    https://unherd.com/2021/06/nero-wasnt-misunderstood/?tl_inbound=1&tl_groups%5B0%5D=18743&tl_period_type=3&mc_cid=53a283cf17&mc_eid=3b0897cf14

    “Nero wasn’t ‘misunderstood’

    Since the British Museum seems reluctant to do so, let’s talk about Sporus. You won’t find much on the Roman emperor’s companion who went by that name in its new exhibition, Nero: the man behind the myth. This coyness may tell us something about the impulse behind a show that aims — in the words of the museum’s director Hartwig Fischer — to replace the “distorted histories” that have traditionally vilified the last of Rome’s Julio-Claudian rulers as a vain, crazed tyrant with “a more nuanced understanding” of his personality and reign. Historical nuance is good, right? Better, for sure, than one-dimensional tales of pantomime villainy — or even solemnly evasive apologias that blame Nero’s bad rap solely on so-called “elite authors” whom we can discount as patrician snobs. And Sporus gives us Roman nuance in all its fabulous oddity.

    In 65AD, 11 years into his 14-year rule, Nero’s beautiful and beloved second wife, Poppaea Sabina, died. According to the often hostile historians who transmit most of the ancient written record about Nero — Tacitus and Suetonius in Latin; Dio Cassius in Greek — he fatally kicked his pregnant spouse in the stomach. Reasonably, the British Museum fingers this plot device as a corny literary trope, and instead blames Poppaea’s death on “complications from a miscarriage”. According to two of the “elite” detractors, though, the heartbroken emperor then sought out, and found, a lookalike replacement for his lost wife. Sporus (which coarsely translates as “Spunk”) boasted all the original’s grace and beauty, but had one troublesome drawback. He was male.

    Undeterred (“Nobody’s perfect”, as we know from Some Like It Hot), Nero — so the hostiles report — had Sporus castrated. He married his new love, “with all the usual ceremonies, including a dowry and a bridal veil,” says Suetonius. The pair toured Greece as a royal couple on a triumphal tour that took in stage performances (starring — the one and only Nero!) and a first prize for the emperor in an Olympic chariot race he failed to finish.

    How much of this really happened? Certainly, the relationship with Sporus — which this exhibition largely glosses over — has as much or little grounding in the sources as other Neronian yarns that the exhibition takes pains to debunk or revise: from fiddling while Rome burned (he was out of town for the Great Fire of 64) to the execution of scapegoated Christians by public burning in its aftermath. Tacitus writes (according to the translation Edward Gibbon uses in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire) that they were “smeared over with combustible materials” and “used as torches to illuminate the darkness of the night”. The British Museum’s guide doesn’t quite rebut that legend but drily comments that “their punishment seems to have followed standard practice in that it mirrored the nature of the crime”. So that’s alright, then?

    With Sporus, historians have recently suggested that the scandalous liaison stemmed not from nostalgic attachment to the dead Poppaea, still less the conventional lust of an upper-class Roman male for a puer delicatus (“boy toy”), but the need to control a potential rival whom Nero believed to be of imperial descent. Hence, in the succession-obsessed Roman governing class, the insistence on castration. Given that Suetonius mentions that Sporus stuck by Nero to the bitter end during his overthrow in 68, might the couple have actually grown fond of each other? Now there’s a truly heretical idea. And, sadly, an unlikely one: Sporus declined to commit suicide alongside Nero and quickly partnered — whether by choice or force — with two of the warlords who succeeded him.

    As with much to do with Nero, legend, fiction and historical memory have fused into an inextricably tangled mass — like the warped iron window-grating you can see in the BM, striking proof of the Great Fire’s ferocity. But the Sporus story hints at a layered complexity to Nero and his narratives that goes beyond the binary model currently on offer in Bloomsbury. Nero: the man behind the myth seems to belong to a class of revisionist historical argument you might dub “reverse cancellation”. Emperor X, King Y or President Z — from Genghis Khan to Joseph Stalin — has suffered too long from the lies and libels of partisan chroniclers with skewed agendas. Now, we will unmask the fake news and reveal (as the British Museum puts it here) a “much less clear-cut” story. Occasionally, the rescue of a tarnished reputation can surpass scholarly score-settling and touch the heights of art. Consider all that Hilary Mantel has done for Thomas Cromwell, once a byword for state thuggery.

    For sure, the Great Man theory of history that Thomas Carlyle propounded has always required, on the other side of its mirror, a Bad Man theory. To the extent that it replaces such cartoon thinking with an open and sceptical scrutiny of Nero’s reign, curator Thorsten Opper’s exhibition does an admirable job — and does it against a splendid backdrop. The show throngs with evocative examples of first-century statuary, reliefs, frescos, artefacts, coinage and even luxury tableware, drawn not only from the museum’s collections but European lenders ranging from the Louvre in Paris to collections in Rome and Naples.

    We experience Rome and its empire high and low, splendid and squalid — from the fine bronze head of Nero recovered from the River Alde in Suffolk to the terrifying iron chains that shackled slave work-gangs in Anglesey. Whoever wore the robes of the princeps, the poor and powerless languished. To its credit, the show never forgets that. The text that accompanies a cute little statue of a lantern-carrying slave-boy reminds us that in 61 AD Nero endorsed the reprisal execution of 400 slaves from a single household after one of them killed his master, a leading senator. Whoever stood at its apex — be they saint, sage or ogre — the empire rested permanently on its bloodstained base of slavery, cruelty and conquest.

    Against this brutal backdrop, Nero: the man behind the myth doesn’t exactly whitewash the showbiz-mad emperor, but it does extenuate. It tends to claim either that Nero did not commit many misdeeds on his charge-sheet; or, if he did, then so did many of his peers. Few of them, however, eliminated their own mothers, as Nero did with the forceful and scheming Agrippina. True, he may not have sabotaged a fancy yacht with Mater on board and then — when she pluckily swam ashore — sent swordsmen to finish the job. But the exhibition’s bland acknowledgement that the emperor merely “made a decision to remove” Agrippina sounds more than a trifle mealy-mouthed. Besides, he almost certainly had his first wife Claudia Octavia liquidated in order to wed Poppaea. On the British Museum’s own website, Mary Beard discusses the family mayhem he unleashed and accepts that “There is no letting Nero off the hook for all of these crimes.”

    When waves of righteous fury can suddenly topple not just contemporary celebrities but grandees from the distant past, you can see why this exhibition wants to make us think again about Nero the beast of fable (indeed, the Number of the Beast — 666 — supposedly encodes his name). The problems arise when the reverse-cancellation process goes beyond a scrupulous reckoning with biased sources, and starts to make a polemical defence of the target of these antique slurs. So the swipes at Tacitus et al as a “senatorial elite” of character-assassins resonates with the anti-authority clamour of our time; you half-expect the BM to brand the anti-Nero authors as agents of the Mainstream Media. The British Museum’s presentation insists on the anti-Nero malice of the “elite” historians. But it won’t tell you, for instance, that Suetonius carefully enumerates all the good deeds Nero performed. “During his reign many abuses were severely punished and put down,” we learn, while court reforms meant that clients only paid “a fixed and reasonable fee”. Perhaps those snooty senatorial backbiters were not quite so manipulative as this show’s headline argument suggests.

    Along with this downgrading of traditional historiography goes a familiar elevation of the people’s will — or rather, one interpretation of it. Beyond doubt, Nero cannily appealed to the masses; Tom Holland’s Dynasty emphasises his “command of fantasy and spectacle”. The exhibition showcases the games, pageants, gladiatorial jamborees and dramatic extravaganzas that marked his reign, from the amphitheatre built on the Campus Martius to his own taboo-busting performances in roles such as Oedipus and Orestes. When, in 59, a gladiator derby between Pompeii and Nuceria triggered a riot among fans, he shortened a ten-year ban handed out to the Pompeii squad after a Senate-led enquiry.

    The curators never deny that Nero pioneered a sort of theatrical populism. Questionably, they then take his power-boosting stunts as evidence of profound popularity. The show makes much of pro-Nero graffiti scrawled on Roman walls. On that basis, historians should be investigating the ubiquity of Kilroy in the London of my youth. And do mirror-compacts that bear his image really prove that Nero “was adored by the people”, or just that he enjoyed, and cultivated, a personal fan-base? Above all, the exhibition’s refusal to treat the anti-Nero case as more than the elite spin of hindsight means that when serious challenges to his rule come along — first the Pisonian conspiracy in 65 AD, then the spiral of insurrections that toppled him in 68 AD — they appear only as selfish mischief perpetrated by “groups of disaffected individuals”. So we learn little (say) about the post-Fire economic downturn, popular resentment at the confiscation of public land for the emperor’s grandiose Golden House estate, or taxation policies that spared his adored Greece but stirred unrest in more onerously levied regions such as Gaul, Africa or Judaea.

    None of which quite justifies the damnatio memoriae, the cursing of his name, that followed Nero’s enforced suicide and prepared the ground for the dark picture painted later by those “senatorial authors”. In any case, the best answer to a historical hatchet-job may not be a snow-job. Especially at the British Museum, there should be no need to frame ancient history as a moralistic cabaret in which the only alternative to a bloody, hiss-able butcher is a public-spirited Keynesian in a toga, musing over fire regulations and infrastructure projects. Whatever their apocryphal elements, the tales of Nero’s marriage to Sporus, with their weird amalgam of mourning, eroticism, realpolitik and pure showbiz, open a window onto the sheer otherness of Rome. So don’t be distracted, or deterred, by the revisionist acrobatics intermittently on show in the British Museum’s commentaries. Nero: the man behind the myth lets visitors pass through that window and enter the material world that hosted all that strangeness — from exquisite sets of silverware found near Pompeii, to those dismal chains that bound the slaves of Wales. ”

    ‘Nero: the man behind the myth’ continues in the Sainsbury Exhibitions Gallery at the British Museum until 24 October.

    1. Often wondered if putting the Welsh in chains might not be such a bad idea…..

    2. In his Epistle to Doctor Arbuthnot Pope refers to the Earl of Bristol as Sporus ‘that milk white curd of asses milk’.

      The Bristols of Ickworth were always a nasty lot. The last one was a druggy and was booted out by the National Trust after he tried to run down visitors to the park in his Range Rover.

      Edit: An estate of about 35,000 acres is now reduced to about 10,000 acres.

    3. In his Epistle to Doctor Arbuthnot Pope refers to the Earl of Bristol as Sporus ‘that milk white curd of asses milk’.

      The Bristols of Ickworth were always a nasty lot. The last one was a druggy and was booted out by the National Trust after he tried to run down visitors to the park in his Range Rover.

      Edit: An estate of about 35,000 acres is now reduced to about 10,000 acres.

    1. They’ve now been cleared – by the ever so friendly Keystone Kops and a few bristling Royal Aides.

  84. Britain braced for summer of migrant mayhem: Fears of ‘mob unrest’ by asylum seekers who land in UK to be told there is no housing for them – as ‘phenomenal’ numbers continue to arrive despite Priti’s vow of border crackdown
    More than 500 migrants arrived across Channel in final four days of May bringing monthly total to 1,619
    Friday was busiest day of 2021 with 336 migrants reaching Britain aboard 19 dinghies and other boats
    Priti Patel has vowed to make illegal immigration across Channel ‘unviable’ but numbers are still soaring
    Dover’s Conservative MP Natalie Elphicke has called for ‘urgent action’ to stop the Channel crossings
    By MARK DUELL FOR MAILONLINE and DAVID BARRETT, HOME AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT FOR THE DAILY MAIL

    Britain is braced for a summer of migrant chaos after more than 1,600 arrived across the Channel in the past month – more than double last year’s total for May – and 500 were brought in over the final four days of last month alone.

    This is despite Priti Patel’s announcement of an immigration crackdown in March, and following an agreement with the French authorities to crack down and effectively stop migrant crossings by last spring.

    But the Home Secretary’s vow lies in tatters this summer as Home Office sources blame the French for not doing enough to stop the crossings and intercept boats before they even set sail, despite being handed a £28million fund of UK taxpayers’ money to do so.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9643651/Migrant-mayhem-1-619-asylum-seekers-landed-UK-May.html

    1. Not sure why we give them money to obey the law.

      Perhaps we should be fining France for every gimmigrant?

        1. They’ve already charged us £28,000,000 with nothing in return.

          Time to fight back.

          We may be Dad’s (or Granddad’s) Army and while we don’t want to fight, by jingo, if we do…

    2. 568 in four days – and another 132 tuesday. total 700 – and families to follow. I remember years ago that a govt figure for each one who said “asylum” – -was costing £3500 straight away due to what had to be done, by law. – probably £5k now – so this last lot – £3,500,000 – straight away – and then their housing, NHS, translators, schooling, benefits etc etc. Clearly Patel has NO desire to stop it.

      1. “Clearly Patel has NO desire to stop it”

        But she MUST have – she promised 23 months ago that she would stop it in its tracks.

          1. Brilliant, thank you. Young cats, now. Hunting, climbing trees, tearing round the garden. “Helping” with fruit and veg netting..(you can imagine!)
            They must cover several miles a day.

            They don’t stay still long enough for one to take a photo – and they have that thing children do when they see you with a camera….act up, or change the perfect position or scarper!

            They are a constant joy, nonetheless!!

      2. Our village has expanded since we moved here 21 years ago, loads of infill building in huge backgardens , new estate built coming into the village 10 years ago , plans for another 700 homes now under consultation … and the village is now roughly 5,400 people , loads of retired and many incomers .

        Thousands are coming into the country every year . I wonder what the percentage of darkies to whiteys is ?

    3. I wonder how many illegals have been “welcomed” to England in the 23 months since Priti Awful was appointed Home Sekertry?

      1. Way too many – but the aim of the Barcelona agreement 1995 is to allow ( unhindered ) free access to the whole of Europe. Especially from the nearby Islamic countries.

        1. Excuse me, Walter but, along with the ECHR, isn’t it time we said Bolloxs to Barcelona and its treaties?

          1. Not all of them no. I would take a guess at 1 million illegals in that time frame. Guessing is all we have because the Government purposely doesn’t collect the data.

          3. The supermarkets have a good idea and put the population of the UK as +70,000,000.

          4. But the stats for people who have had the jabs work on a much smaller number. This would suggest that there are millions of unvaxed people and the stats are meaningless.

    4. A government with any courage would simply resign from international agreements on refugees and start carting them out. Decades of abuse of the provisions have completely corrupted and discredited the idea of asylum. As I said elsewhere today – and an appalling thought it is – only when the very worst happens will anything change.

      1. Well, some pretty bad things have happened as a result of muslim terrorism in the UK. In recent history the only comparable damage has been caused by the Germans bombing us and by the IRA. We were at war with Germany. The IRA was a proscribed terrorist organisation whose voices were read by actors as the terrorists were given no air time. There was no IRA Council of Britain, obviously. (By the way, it is “Great Britain to you, ‘MCB”.)
        So why are muslims, (aka the “muslim community”) allowed to bomb, kill, maim, rape and harass us with no reprisals or sanction ever taken?

        1. “…some pretty bad things have happened as a result of muslim terrorism in the UK…”

          In comparison with what might be required to make our isolated, insulated political classes to force real change, incidents so far have been relatively minor.

          1. Put into your computer ….Too Many White Christian Faces in Britain….A speech by D.Cameron….

          3. He also said he looks forward to the day we have an asian PM. The traitorous thieving bastard.

          6. Apparently, the loathsome Cameron doesn’t believe in Queen and Country, Christendom, tradition or common sense.

            He should be locked – forever – in his shed …

          7. While that seems to be case, my point was to say that despite lesser damage the IRA was banned and silenced, and did not have an officially recognised organisation speaking on its behalf here on the mainland in Great Britain. If one excludes the IRA activities in Ireland, NI/S, I’d suggest that the muslims have done us more damage than the IRA, here on the mainland. I don’t have figures, but someone might.

          8. The damage is not only killings/bombs/rapes. Which in themselves are far worse than the IRA.

            It is the grotesque sense of entitlement these people have: to make ghettos in our country, which are “theirs”, to get away with crimes that an ordinary Englishman or woman couldn’t get away with, and for freezing our judiciary and politicians into a state of fear. Because, for the savages incoming this country the only thing they understand is killing. They won’t be killed here so the country is their oyster.

          9. Hmm, Lass, “…to get away with crimes that an ordinary Englishman or woman couldn’t get away with…”

            Or wouldn’t even THINK of getting away with.

          10. It’ll require a bit more than banning the MCB. Islam has taken root in the British soil.

          11. Those roots could/should be ripped up by closing (and destroying) Mosques and Madrassas and letting them ALL know that they are NOT welcome here.

            Go on – riot,you Sons of Mo, I’m ready for you with a machine gun – that’ll soon quieten you down. Plenty of rubber dinghies available to ferry you across to Europe, where you will be welcomed with open arms – of the AK47 variety.

          12. Not just the soil, but in the institutions as well. MPs, academics, Mayor of London (and other places) …

          13. Only because those incidents haven’t affected our insulated political class personally.

    5. Might sound odd but I hope they DO kick off big time – there will be NO hiding it from the world, never mind us in the UK. Then the whole govt might be forced to resign – because as far as I’m concerned – the govt waving them in is effectively aiding and abetting the crimes they commit once here. I hope that it is SO bad the Army is called in – armed and cleared to use them. The scumbags deserve NOTHING except contempt and deportation – NOT a taxpayer funded lawyer to keep them here to destroy us even further.

          1. Good to know, Lass.

            This came to me in a very different format. Although my working life was exhorting people to change the way they do things, I find that I am very resistant to change. Something I should know better but…

          2. I’m not averse to change – but it has to be change for the better, not just change for change’s sake.

    6. Rely on the French, Patel? You’ve got to be joking, they’re not designated cheese-eating surrender monkeys for nothing.

      Try that funny old thing called ‘FORCE’. The French and the boats will disappear and you can get down to initiating our leaving the ECHR, repealing the Human Rights Act, removing ANY form of legal aid for immigrants, asylum seekers or whatever. They started from Europe, deport them back to Europe – All of them.

      Then let’s shut down the mosques and madrassas, as being centres of incitement to terrorism. Kick out the bolshie so-called Palestinians – their faces are on camera.

      And then tomorrow…

    7. Our Border force should patrol the Channel just outside French waters and turn these boats back into French waters. They should not take them on board as this could be interpreted as their acceptance into the UK. The Border Force should commandeer fast powerful boats and drones to cover all the routes these migrant boats take to the Kent coast. Any boat reaching our shores should be seized and the occupants arrested. Any UK citizen, including UK officials, assisting these illegal immigrants should be arrested. The French Government should be given notice of the change of tactics at very short notice.

      1. Any “rubber boat” should be punctured well before it leaves French territorial waters, not a particularly difficult task, then let them turn back and then swim back the last bit, or leave it to the French authorities..

      1. The one where government spends all the money.

        I don’t know if it’s sad and these people should be so eager for big state spending or if they genuinely don’t understand economics sufficiently.

        Government has no money. It is all taken from tax payers. Government is appalling at getting value for money. At best it manages 40p in the pound returned. Industry has to return a profit or else it doesn’t survive.

        The richest don’t pay taxes. They hide their money or it’s not liquid cash, it’s not ‘earned’ but invested wealth. It’s the worker who gets hammered for taxes.

    1. They ought to have a prison ship anchored a few miles off the coast where all illegal migrants are temporarily accommodated until they are returned to the last country whence they came. This will often be France.

      There is only one thing wrong with this common-sensible plan – our political class has not the courage, determination and integrity to do it.

      1. Suggestion…

        “They ought to have a prison ship anchored a few miles off the French coast where all illegal migrants are temporarily accommodated until they are returned whence they came”

        …just so the return trip isn’t too exhausting. Compassion, you see.

      2. It’s got too many immigrant offspring, and too many indigenous frits. What a set!

      3. Plenty of empty cruise ships bobbing around Weymouth Bay. Fill them up and send the lot of them back to Africa. They can keep the ships.

        1. There are plenty of rusting hulks out there. We could easily borrow one and herd them all aboard then just float it back to France.

      4. I have long held the idea that those with ID, are repatriated to France – let them sort it out.

        As for those who’ve destroyed their ID, I can only suggest that they are told that they will be taken on a long sea journey around the Cape of Good Hope, up the Eastern side of Africa until we reach Somalia. At the dead of night, they will be put ashore dressed only in their underpants – and may their God have mercy on their souls.

        Illegal immigration would drop overnight!

        I think it has the makings of a very caring plan.

        1. It is vital.

          A starting point should be to remove their telephones and cigarettes, as these scum smoke constantly – give them a receipt – and put them in a yellow jumpsuit and flip flops so they can’t disappear.

    2. Well what does one realistically expect from a Turkish-descended PM and a Cabinet Minister named Patel?

      2. 333733+ up ticks,
        Afternoon HL,
        I am finding it hard to ID which of the lab/con are wearing the sheepskin over FULL treachery but it is surely one of them,kneeling, appealing, no deportation, guaranteed well padded future for the potential troops arriving DOVER daily, look at it as a retainer for future use.
        These overseers are STILL finding support from the indigenous even when the evidence against them has be danming for decades.

          1. 333733+ up ticks,
            Evening HL,
            5 year ago 52 % voted independence, since then the intake has revved up and the 48% are still in situ.
            Only a matter of time which will be sped up with peoples of the priti / johnson, and more of kahns ilk being voted into positions of power

  90. I hate to keep reminding you all but…………………………….
    Moscow dealt with Covid-19 better than almost every major city in the world by allowing businesses to remain open, avoiding mass unemployment, and preventing an economic catastrophe, all while keeping the virus under control.
    That’s according to British consultancy company Ernst & Young (EY), which placed the Russian capital in the top three, behind Oslo and Singapore.

    The study chose nine major cities and split them into two categories. Within Moscow’s class – defined as metropolises that “adapted a set of restrictions and support measures based on the changing environment” – the Russian capital performed the best.
    The two major urban centers that came above Moscow in the rankings – Singapore and Oslo – took a different tack, and were placed in the category of cities with “strict and prolonged lockdown restrictions.”

    “When considering the specifics of Singapore (an island state) and Oslo (a small population)… Moscow managed to implement the most optimal set of measures to overcome the consequences of the pandemic,” the study concluded, according to EY partner Olga Arkhangelskaya.

    The indicators used by EY included changes in Gross Regional Product, growth in unemployment, the number of Covid-19 cases, as well as the number of deaths from the virus.

    “In Moscow, the unemployment rate (1%) was the lowest among the analyzed cities, and the fall in GRP, according to preliminary estimates, was only 4%,” Arkhangelskaya wrote.
    Unlike many other European nations, Russia’s Covid-19 lockdown was very strict but also very short. At the end of March, the country went into a six-week quarantine aimed at keeping as many people at home as possible, using the time to rapidly bulk-up hospital capacity. After the month and a half, each Russian region was given autonomy over their own lockdowns, and Moscow was eventually fully opened by mid-summer.

    During the restrictions, Moscow supported businesses by allowing the deferral of taxes and other payments, while providing subsidized loans to smaller companies.

    Speaking to Kommersant, Marcel Salikhov of Moscow’s Higher School of Economics noted that the city budget increased by more than 500 billion rubles ($6.8 million).

    “This helped to quickly and aggressively increase spending on health care and social purposes,” he explained.

    1. It will be interesting to know how Moscow fares on suicides/cancers/heart attacks and other major killers that the West will be experiencing very few years down the line as the result of drastic cutbacks in non Covid related procedures and economic/employment catastrophe visited upon our citizens.
      I will hazard a guess that they will be much better.

        1. Gosh Hat, I never realised that he treated such people in the same way as the IDF!

          };-O

    1. Hi Caroline, before or after what? OK I am being a bit naughty, but now that you cut his hair he can get half price at the cinema if accompanied by an adult !

      1. ?? -wrestles you on your back, holds your legs and shears you totally bald? Family tradition?

        1. I used to shear the sheep with hand clippers. If the wool had risen off the skin it was easy to clip the sheep but if the wool was tight on the skin some skin often came off with the wool. My son only nicked me once and apologised quickly before I got upset.

        2. Rab C.Nesbitt

          I don’t know what his ‘C’ stands for – my ‘C’ stands for Cornelius.

          The Bobby Charlton look was never one to which I aspired!

    6. The ‘after’ one, Caroline. You’ve done a very good job, tidied him up no end.

        2. HG is always trying to cut my eyebrows, I’m pleased you left well alone!

    10. That you drew the short straw?

      Sorry Caroline and Rastus, open goal and far too tempting! };-))

      1. Do you think that because you’re as bald as a coot?

        I think the second picture is as I would hope to look, should I live so long.

        Not the same, just comparatively.

        Caroline’s done a superb job.

    12. Definitely after. When I had mine cut, I told my hairdresser to cut it as short as possible.

  93. DT headline

    Live England vs New Zealand, first Test Impressive Conway hits outstanding century for visitors

    A traitorous NoTTLer batting for the other side, so to speak?

    1. The ultimate for a cricketer: making your Test debut at Lord’s and getting a hundred.

    2. If you’d ever seen me playing cricket (not since I was teaching when I played for the staff side!), you’d know that any report of my hitting a century, outstanding or not, would be greatly exaggerated!

        1. In the year ended 31 May 2021 I did rather well – 1.25% tax free return.
          Fishy Rishi is good at giving us our money back…

          1. I seem to be quite lucky with them. I win at least 10 months out of 12 and two months ago i won £550.

            I take zero % interest in Chancellors of the Treasury because none of them have any probity or can count to 10 without using their fingers.

  95. That’s me done for the day. Brassicas planted out – trombetti, too. Strawberries strawed. Greenhouse getting tidier. A very agreeable day of sun and some definite warmth. Full watering cans don’t get any lighter, though…{:¬(

    Will be up and about early tomorrow as the MR is on sentry duty at the GP surgery -yet more people queuing for the suicide jab. I have been “tasked” (what a dreadful word that is) with doing the market ON MY OWN! At least I can do a bit of DIY shopping unhindered!

    Have a jolly evening

    A demain.

      1. Evening Sos. Don’t worry, they will never be real women regardless of what hormones they take or what bits they have chopped off.

          3. The only women friends i have are all ballsy.

            Can’t stand a simpering yes person.

            Of course the easiest way to filter out the wasters is to holiday with them.

        1. Be generous.
          Share misery.
          It’s what I thoroughly enjoy doing.

          Hell’s teeth, I could make the patron Saint of Happiness reconsider her career choice.

  98. Last post – couldn’t resist. G & P were out of the house at ten to six this morning, and, apart from a short siesta, have been hard at it all day. They are both zonked! Gus (and fiend) in basket – that was just the right size for my late hound -and so will give an idea of how big Gus is. Pickles in my chair (as usual).out for the count.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e897efc749c9d09aadb78f816d8114fa95c04f792e8b27d5a25c1fe590bddcc9.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9ba96c538c7dfc24aa8781140181eba156e8324d1008c1808545d4c9c96861b6.jpg

      1. Bill. And for some reason the MR is letting him loose on an unsuspecting public tomorrow !

    2. Much as I love the little creatures, I do wish that they would leave the small ventilation holes around the windows of château sosraboc alone. There are plenty of nooks and crannies in the walls with lots of room for all comers and I leave most of the grounds wild.

      Grrrr.

        1. That’s more gauze than you would use in a decade.
          Every year!

          On a more serious note, we have to keep the gaps open and one doesn’t always spot when the holes have been filled when closing parts down for winter. Good ventilation keeps vulnerable bits of the house in a far better state.

    2. Well I guess that means we will get at least four days out for good behaviour next June, especially if we have all been good little citizens and got jabbed with the spike proteins that can cross into the brain.

    3. I wish HM long life to celebrate her Platinum Jubilee. She (or her daughter) should tell the government nay-sayers to Naff Orf.

  102. Pasty Attack….Carbon Footprint of a Cornish pasty!

    The Cornish pasty has come under attack for causing too much gas!

    The meat in a Cornish pasty is said to result in greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to driving 11 miles.

    A car trip from Lands End to John O’Groats would leave the same carbon footprint as four joints of roast beef and six Cornish pasties.
    The claim comes in a Compassion in World Farming report and initiative Global Warning: The Big Food Challenge this World Food Day.

    It claims a fork has a bigger impact on climate change than a car key!

    1. Eff their lies. Wait til the sun throws out a spot or two, then we can talk about climate change.

        2. They choose to ignore it because it doesn’t fit into their fucked up ideology.

    3. Just think that some sad buggers actually waste their lives doing these calculations in the hope of shocking people out of eating meat

    4. Let’s have a Worldwide ‘No Breathing Day’. That should cut down on CO2 emissions.

      1. I’ve heard tell that to restore the energy used to start the car, takes about 12 miles running to achieve that.

        Just saying…

        1. Possibly.
          But staying at home and eating one pasty and then hitching a lift, where the start has been done on someone else’s tab?

    6. Yo Plum,

      Proper Cornish Pasties were made with Herring or Pilchard

      The wage slaves of the day could not afford Rich Man’s Beef

    7. I misread your bottom line , Plum .

      On considering something like that , not a fork but something else has really added to the planets woes , populations explosion .

      My theory is also that because people have become wealthier , they are the greatest contribution to all the ghastly waste and pollution on our tender planet .

      .Using those measurements, the equatorial circumference of Earth is about 24,901 miles (40,075 km). However, from pole-to-pole — the meridional circumference — Earth is only 24,860 miles (40,008 km) around.

      Did you know?
      The name “Earth” is at least 1.000 years old. It is a Germanic word that translates to “the ground.” No one knows who came up with it; however, Earth is the only planet that doesn’t bear a Greek or Roman deity name.
      Earth is 91 million mi / 147 million km away from the Sun or 1 AU.
      If Earth’s crustal surface would be at the same elevation, the depth of the oceans would only be at 1.68 mi / 2.7 km.
      How fast does the Moon orbit the Earth? Well, it is the equivalent of a rifle bullet.
      We are traveling through space on this big rock called home, at around 67.000 mi / 107.826 km per hour. However, when it comes to Earth’s rotation, it is slowing down at about 17 milliseconds every 1.000 years or so. This slowing down process is due to the Moon’s presence.
      Earth’s continents move at the same rate as how fast human fingernails grow.

      2. ….you mean –

        It claims a FK has a bigger impact on climate change than a car key!

        Excellent….

    8. …and, it appears, Plum, that there are an awful lot of forkin’ idiots who inhabit today’s World.

      I wonder how we might recycle them?

    9. CiWF has less to do with compassion and more to do with stopping us eating animals, in my view.

      1. Exactly. The effing wankers should be put in the stocks and pelted with pasties with a rock in the middle.

        These type of reports are falling like grey snow across our media funded by the likes of megalomaniacs like Gates and Soros.

  103. A lovely day yesterday with good food and company. Feeling a bit lower today after all the excitement and everyone telling me how wonderful i am.. :@)
    So i decided to treat myself to Lobster (a gift from Garlands) and a small pot of Cornish Crab with Linguini. And a carafe of white wine of course.

    The Pub we visited makes the most excellent pies and at least two of the group were disappointed not to see them on the menu. The landlady told me that was the Winter menu.
    If i had some space in my freezer i would have stocked up !

      2. Garlands as always is in good spirits and anyone that suggests otherwise should watch out ! :@)

        From what i gather there is constant pain and other complications which i won’t go into.

        As we all know on here as we get older it takes longer to heal.

        We do have plans in place for future dates though both of us have painful problems with our left legs.

        Garlands suggested putting a running board at the back of my wheelchair where she could with her right foot then propel me forwards around the pubs, bars, nightclubs

        I suggested a three legged race as we are sure to win !

      3. She has IT issues, in addition to Achilles and other foot problems. But she’s in good spirits, and I’m sure she’ll be back in due course.

        1. “shge’ll bew back”?

          That’s a new one on me.

          I was just telling our Pearly King yesterday how the Pompey and Cockney accents are so similar.

          He missed a trick when he didn’t respond with “yore avina larf aint ya?”

          4. Sounded like you started talking inna ‘Strine accent mate. Still…no worries’…….

    3. Glad you had a good day yesterday.

      This morning was sunny but it clouded over at lunchtime and we had some light rain.

      1. Sunny here with 10 minutes of light rain and back to sunny. Yesterday was so hot i had to have ice in my Gin !!!

        It was very pleasant thank you Big Ears. :@)

        1. It was 23 degrees C here in chilly (!) Shropshire. It rained this evening, which nicely scotched a sitting out drinking session with a friend.

      1. We should have dragged those tables a bit closer together.

        Though i understand how a group dynamic works. Too large a group and people split into 2’s and 3’s.

        I’m really happy that i raised a few laughs !

        ‘I see your Raybans and raise you my James Bonds lol.

          1. Apparently correct grammar punctuation mathematics cold fusion are now all considered to be micro aggressions against people with an IQ below 70 namely uneducated jungle bunnies

            Just trying to be with the zeitgeist dude

          2. The picture, earlier today, of the repeat assaulter/rapist, looked as if it was an australopithecine.
            That’s what the UK is welcoming, and we wonder why it’s all going banana shaped.

        2. It was a good afternoon, Phil.

          Moving the tables might have been too much for George and Daniella. Although they largely pay lip service to Covid regs. G & D had hardly taken over the Good Intent when lockdown was imposed. They’ve struggled on with takeaway. Elstead Mill prolly has the better menu, but the service at the GI is more personal. It’s a shame that Rik’s initial burger arrived via the Crematorium; at the other extreme, they served up a fish to Dianne last year which was essentially raw. It was a massive cod, admittedly, and they replaced it without quibble.

          But the pub remains one of my most favourite places in Surrey…

          1. It would have been nice to be able to speak with you more. But just being together is and was good.

            Unfortunately you were relegated to the cheap seats and so we missed all those exciting things you had to say…. :@)

            I know G & D are making a go of it but they really need to up their game somewhat.

            I have been to places in Malta that were superb but as soon as the number of customers went to capacity it all fell apart.

            From my experience concentrating forensically on a small menu of say 3 or 4 of each course done well will win hearts and £’s.

            That is not to say that they can’t do an extravaganza of a Sunday Lunch or even a Curry night but it has to be done well.

            Daniella is an absolute sweetie.

          3. Just like you when are Organning…..I play the room!

            There was laughter and it was uplifting.

          4. I could not agree with you more. I designed a kitchen for a restaurant in Bury St Edmunds called Gastono-ME. They specialise in what I can only describe as all day Brunch.

            It was a devil of a job to work out what equipment was needed because their menu was so extensive. I sort of over specified some kit in order to leave nothing to chance. Thankfully they are still trading successfully and looking to expand.

            The owners love the kitchen.

          5. At home or at work modular is the key. Anything else like all the poorly designed ill thought out rubbish is doomed to replaced or demolished and sold to the lowest bidder.

            Putting our heritage buildings aside, billions is wasted on such simple things like Laptops and office furniture every day.

      2. Pip, really?

        I only knew one man who called himself Pip. He was huge, not like our small, but perfectly constructed, Phizzee.

        He was an English Schools level prop forward, part of a threesome rated the best schoolboy front row of the year representing one school.
        Cognitive dissonance in real life.
        His surname was Lightbody!

        1. Tis true.

          It is what i was called by family and friends for many years because of my initials at that time.

          Subsequently they needed to change after so many sarcastic people met horrible and unexplained deaths quite by accident………….. :@(

          5. We also share the lovely auburn wavy locks. Though Pip looks a bit more intelligent. Ask anyone… :@(

          7. I did wonder if i should have a hair cut before being released and then i thought….No. I will not. It is rather lovely but the downside is that from the back i look like Sarah Fergusson ! :@(

          9. The curls do begin to fall out and i have tied it back in the past. Someone told me i looked like Steven Segal which i took as a compliment seeing as the short fat git with thinning hair was trying to annoy me.

          12. Sadly tumours in his lungs, and his breathing is not too good, now on antibiotics , poor dog has stuff coming out of his nostrils , but he is cheerful , deaf and absolutely gorgeous, and an excellent hunter!

          14. You will be shocked when I say they both sleep with us on our kingsize bed … bottom of the bed of course!

            They had other choices , but they just need to be close to me .

          15. Why would I be shocked, Maggie? It’s your house (bed), your pets and your choice! In his later days, Charlie couldn’t bear to be parted from me and followed me into the loo.

      1. They really were something.

        We all have had versions of pies in our lives but these made you look up and say to your fellow diners…’bloody hell…these are good’!

        1. Awww…I would send you a pie but it would probably be impounded as something that could destroy the world.

        2. Awww…I would send you a pie but it would probably be impounded as something that could destroy the world.

      2. You can call me Pip.

        And possibly be my bodyguard. Lol.

        Better rates,…….. tea, biscuits and mileage included, superior to anything offered to Magistrates Courts in 30 years. The biscuit box might even have jammy dodgers !!! :@)

  104. Utterly off topic.

    Three, nearly four, hours of spraying the terrace with Javel, (a French bleach).
    My back aches from bending, my wrists ache from pumping (quiet at the back) and I now see that my trousers are ruined.

    On the plus side it appears that most of the moss has decided to curl up and die.

    Next up:

    Monsieur Karcher on full power, and with a bit of luck HG will be happy.

    Oi, you lot at the back, I said quiet!

      2. Indeed, but I’m removing (hopefully) various fungi and assorted mould/molds.

    2. Clearly you should be supervised.

      Why would you wear a pair of decent strides to do such work?

      My Karcher is the straight version and i don’t have to bend over at all for it.

      You have been too long in France.

      1. Dat’s why I wear de patent, unladderable, Bill Thomas trousers when doin’ such work.

        The Javel is done with a sprayer, not the Karcher.

        ‘Coz U didn’t read de post with de braine in gear; I repeat: “Next up Monsieur Karcher on full power”

    3. Might wash out the cement grout, if any, to take care!
      Bleedin’ stuff sprays everywhere – oops, too much detail!

    1. How did you get yours to last so long?

      Just askin’ for a friend.

      OK I know, it must be me I have no friends!

    2. Just imagine the uproar if they had cast Daniel Day-Lewis in the title role.

  106. “Woman ‘severs boss’s p*nis in self-defence’ after accusing him of repeatedly harassing her
    The waitress has been arrested after turning herself in”
    By
    James Badcock.
    MADRID.

        1. Thanks Geoff, Garlands send me some pictures of your get together yesterday, good to see you all out enjoying yourselves. Getting back to normal slowly. Picking up Barbara’s ashes tomorrow

      2. Good to see you back.

        The piece of that lard that passed all understanding?

      6. Condolences Alec sorry for your very sad loss.
        Always pleased to see you as and when.

      1. When I used to attend block release courses at Salford College of Technology, there was an optician across the road from my digs in Eccles, called D. Igoe. But was it any worse than ‘Ham blin’ Opticians?

  107. Evening, all. They are preparing the ground for another bout of incarceration. I only hope that this time, it’s a step too far and people rebel. My local rag had an article about Covid-19 being “mentioned” in 1 in 90 registered deaths in England and Wales. It might have been mentioned, it wasn’t necessarily the CAUSE of death. Anyway, 1/90 is less than 1%, surely?

      1. Trust me to get it wrong – you know how mathematically challenged I am! 🙂 It still isn’t a huge figure, though – or have I got that wrong, too? 🙂

    2. Evening Conway

      Did you see the links I submitted to you last night re patterdales that need rehoming, I think you were just about to turn in , so I hope you managed to see them .

      1. I did, thank you, and I replied to your posts. There might be good news in the offing, but it’s too early to say (and I’ve been let down before, so I’m not holding my breath). Should I, by some miracle, pass all the tests and successfully jump through all the hoops, I will announce the glad tidings as soon as all is settled. In the meantime, everybody cross your fingers and pray!

  108. Spring watch has described politicians to a “T” when referring to shelducks.
    The males have a knob on their heads.
    So now you know!

    1. 333733+ up ticks,
      O2O,
      In answer to KK I do believe that we are witnessing
      political bridge burning big time, of a no comeback nature.
      Surely no one in their right mind would knowingly support & vote for a party that is actively party building, with foreign units obviously to satisfy a future agenda.
      Reset, replacement is REAL.

    3. Will he apologise to ducks for cultural appropriation when he gets a golden duck and will he apologise to the Queen when he gets a King pair?

  112. Amazing programme about the new Hinkley Point c nuclear power station construction BBC2 now .

    Really amazing and so clever .. and very complicated .

    1. When I was a young man, I did some work on the safety case for HPC primary circuit. To do with resistance to cracking and failure of pressure containment.
      That was late 1980s. Long time…

  115. There’s nothing civic about the SNP’s brand of Anglophobic nationalism

    Sturgeon’s activists would happily damage their own country to get one over on the English

    MADELINE GRANT

    It doesn’t take much to offend these days, but you’d think holidays – a classic water-cooler topic if ever there was one – would be a safe space. No longer, after a Telegraph article encouraging Brits to holiday in Scotland sparked a curious social media row. “Who needs the Caribbean? The Outer Hebrides has beaches to rival Punta Cana,” the headline reads, innocently enough. “Swap the hassle of a foreign break for Scotland’s most beautiful isles”.

    Ruth Wishart, a pro-independence journalist and columnist for the National, took to Twitter to register her displeasure at this glowing write-up of Scotland. “Just what our ‘beautiful isles’ don’t need; more Torygraph readers,” she grumbled, managing a somewhat eccentric use of the semi-colon and egregious misrepresentation of Telegraph readers in one sentence.

    Unfortunately for Ruth, however, an invasion of the Scottish mainland is already underway. As I write, my Torygraph-reading brother and his fiancee are on manoeuvres, plotting their highland wedding later this year.

    They’ve visited Eilean Donan Castle and Grantown-on-Spey. They’ve taken breathtaking walks in the Cairngorms, visited restaurants and pubs, enjoyed meeting the locals and generally having a wonderful time. Any minute now, I’m sorry to say, they’ll probably do another terrible thing, like support a local florist, or politely ask someone for directions. But perhaps it’s not too late for the Scottish Isles to be spared.

    Wishart said her comments were a joke and has since apologised for causing offence, yet it’s hard to imagine a mainstream English commentator joking about, say, readers of the National being unwelcome in England. And such remarks are simply too common to be dismissed as mere banter. Last week, an SNP councillor revelled in the UK’s poor Eurovision showing, tweeting “It’s ok Europe we hate the United Kingdom too. Love, Scotland”. SNP President Michael Russell referred to Scottish-born staff of the Spectator magazine as “exiled Scots”, implying they had forfeited their right to an opinion on Scottish politics by moving to a different part of the UK. The mask slips often enough to reveal both the toxicity of Scottish nationalism, and the paradoxes underpinning it.

    The SNP love signalling their pro-migration credentials; often portraying the English as irredeemably hostile to immigration, racist, imperialist etc – in contrast to “outward-looking”, Europhile Scotland. (This, of course, is the same England that has a far greater population of immigrants and their descendants, both in proportional and absolute terms, than Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.)

    The SNP also claims to have pioneered a new form of nationalism, more sophisticated than the garden variety. They call this inclusive, welcoming creed “civic nationalism” since it is based not on ethnic or racial heritage but on mere support of independence. Though open to all in theory, it thrives on animosity, towards the English and unionists everywhere. It seeks to hijack the concept of Scottishness to mean unconditional support for the SNP and independence. In practice, the “civic” part is usually about as silent as the “p” in “psychotic”.

    These attitudes aren’t just debasing public discourse, they threaten to inflict real hardship on Scottish citizens, particularly those working in the tourism sector, which was already suffering from Nicola Sturgeon’s comparatively loose and non-committal timing on holidays. With no international tourism expected for some time, the industry is more reliant on UK visitors than ever. Yet hopes of a staycation boom this summer are fast fading. In a survey by the Scottish Tourism Alliance (STA) last month, almost 40 per cent of hotels were predicting an occupancy of below 20 per cent between May and July, despite some easing of restrictions. Tellingly, the Outer Hebrides tourist board quickly issued a response disowning Wishart’s tweet, perhaps a sign of the severity of the situation.

    Given the potential damage, the nationalists’ Anglophobic rhetoric resembles scorched-earth tactics. It almost recalls the Old Testament tale of the judgment of Solomon. The bogus mother, falsely claiming another woman’s baby as her own, was willing to see the infant chopped in half rather than concede her claim. Likewise, the hyper-nationalists would rather their own country were poorer – the country they purport to love more than anyone – if it meant putting one over on the English. Just how much do they value Scotland after all?

    After a year of uncertainty and disappointment, my brother and his wife-to-be are overjoyed to be pushing ahead with their wedding in one of the world’s most beautiful places – and local business-owners appear delighted to receive visitors again.

    There is a world of difference between this Scotland – friendly, welcoming – and the sour parochialism of the “civic” nationalists. In the parallel universe they are trying to create, however, only they are allowed to love Scotland; and loving Scotland can only take one form.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/02/nothing-civic-snps-brand-anglophobic-nationalism/

    1. Scotland is the last place I would go again for a holiday. I didn’t find it very friendly in the ’90s, so it will be infinitely worse now.

      1. I have only visited Scotland on three occasions. Two being not so good but one being very warm.

        I must say that i have had similar experiences in Wales. Not anti but also not particularly friendly.

        I wonder how these ‘Little Nationalists’ will cope with the Caliphate that is coming.

        ***signed Maggie Smith. Dame etcetera. :@)

        1. I rarely visit Wales except to pass through (to Ellesmere, Oswestry, Gobowen and places). I didn’t find studying at a Welsh University very inclusive, despite my Welsh ancestry – in fact, it made me consider myself 100% English for the first time ever.

        2. As a young architect I was the draughtsman assistant on the Hunterian Art Gallery and Mackintosh House at the University of Glasgow at Hillhead.

          At the initial site meeting I attended, the Site Agent for John Laing pronounced: ‘I suppose you have come up from London to teach us about how to build a building’ or words to that effect’.

          As it transpired, that Agent was an idiot, prejudiced in the extreme and responsible for multiple errors in construction performance which eventually likely cost our practice dear.

    2. Eileann Donan used to be my Clan’s castle. Absolutely beautiful, so it is, whatever the weather.
      Used. No more.

  116. Looking for an automatic post hammer.
    Found one at a reasonable price, with 2-stroke motor, but the only positive thing they had in the review was that it was easy to return! Apparently, it couldn’t even pound in a broom-handle, let alone a 3 1/2″ fence post.
    Bugger.
    Maybe rental would be the solution…

    2. My Father many years ago used a double headed spade to dig the holes for the posts to carry the rails, which he also nailed on by hand for 30 miles of the M27. On his own.

      Besides that being a feat in itself it turns out that a family member of a Nottler supplied the timber.

  117. 333733+ up ticks,

    breitbart,

    Papers Please! Faced with Freedom, Britons Want Domestic Vax Passports

    I personally believe this to be breitbart speak.

    2. Would you prefer to be forced to stay at home or be allowed out?

      It just depends on the question asked.

      1. 333733+ up tcks,
        Evening R,
        It just depends on the quantity of balls the people’s have.

        1. It is also important to find some joy or in your husband’s case a dirty laugh to enjoy life !

          Say yes when invites arrive !

    1. Though i think David Icke used metaphors when he actually suggested we were being being controlled by a race of lizards….erm.

      They all seem like slimey bastards to me.

        1. Thank you.
          I have seen that before. I had to search about for it though.

          When I and some friends watched Starship Troopers the first time i was amazed they didn’t seem to understand what they were watching.

          They enjoyed it right enough but it seemed to me i was the only one who thought ‘what i am watching is not what they are seeing’.

          I may have been sensitised to politics at an early age by my reading of such delights as ‘A day in the life of Ivan Denisovich, Marie Antoinette and an obscure children’s book called ‘The Guardians’.

          There were no books in our house when i was a child. My father couldn’t read and my mother inhabited some sort of fantasy land with fluffy bunnies.

          I didn’t understand at the time that you could join a library and borrow books. So what i did read was by chance and a bit hot as it were.

    1. TBH, it might simplify things if Belarus became a district of Russia. At least Putin isn’t a crazy person.

Comments are closed.