Wednesday 29 January: Why aren’t British companies competing with Huawei to provide 5G?

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),
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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/01/29/letterswhy-arent-british-companies-competing-huawei-provide/

841 thoughts on “Wednesday 29 January: Why aren’t British companies competing with Huawei to provide 5G?”

  1. Will You Live to See 90?

    I recently had a full medical by my doctor.

    After that and with the results from all the tests, he said I was doing ‘fairly well’ for my age. (I had just reached 69).

    A little concerned about that comment, I couldn’t resist asking him, ‘Do you think I’ll live to be 90?’

    He asked, ‘Do you smoke tobacco, or drink beer, wine or spirits?’

    ‘Oh no,’ I replied. ‘I’m not doing drugs, either!’

    Then he asked, ‘Do you eat fillet steaks and legs of lamb?’

    ‘I said, ‘Not much… my cardiac consultant said that all red meat is very unhealthy!’

    ‘Do you spend a lot of time in the sun, like playing golf, boating, sailing, hiking, or bicycling?’

    ‘No, I don’t,’ I said.

    He asked, ‘Do you gamble, drive fast cars, or have lots of sex?’

    ‘No,’ I said…

    He looked at me and said, ”Then, why the f…. do you want to live to 90?”

      1. Exactly, Wibbles, and Good morning, which is why at 75, I gave up smoking to enjoy more time to imbibe good whisky, red meat and good company in which to enjoy them all.

        1. I had my first slosh of Bailey’s the other day. It’s on for £12 in Tesco.

          Problem is, I didn’t just have the one, but about 3.

          3. The actress is playing the ecstasy a little too hard – it makes it seem someone’s slipped something in her coffee.

            No footage of the burqini or the 30 foot high wall in the hotel swimming pool segregating off the women from humanity.

      1. I watched the last bit of The Good Place the other night and it’s right. Heaven isn’t wealth or stuff, it’s time. Time to choose how to live your life.

        Imagine if you had all the time in the world to get that degree you wanted, to learn how to put up shelves, to study Hegel or Kant, to write that book you’ve wanted to.

        More, time is being able to choose how to live. Money buys time. Nothing else. It’s the only medium of exchange worth a damn.

        1. In an Utopian world, maybe, but in the here and now, mortgages, feeding, clothing, fuel, and provision for old age demand my attention.

    3. People who want to control you – my son says there is something very different about G5 and its possible effect on the brain to the preceding systems. I haven’t looked into this myself, but I’m sure a search of the web could bring up lots of conspiracy theories both realistic and fantastical.

  6. By stoking toxic Anglophobia, Leo Varadkar is digging his own political grave

    Unluckily for him, it’s all but certain that the Taoiseach, who swept in on the coat tails of his predecessor on a wave of goodwill three years ago, will, in less than two weeks, lose the first election he’s ever held as leader. Faced with that humiliation, he’s clearly decided to go all in by using the week in which Britain leaves the EU to remind the neighbours that they’re minor league players compared to the 27-strong continental bloc, saying: “I don’t think the UK has yet come to terms with the fact it’s now a small country.”

    “I don’t think the UK has yet come to terms with the fact it’s now a small country.”

    This bumbling little man conveniently forgets that this small country was big enough to rule 1/5th of the world. That is somewhat larger than the Irish Empire ever was, is, or will be.

    We may be a small country but we have a huge will.

    Get back in your tin-box wee mannie and have a little sulk.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/01/28/stoking-toxic-anglophobia-varadkar-digging-political-grave/

    1. It is only little people who like to talk big…and Burk-o is another shining example of this rule.

      ‘Morning, Nanners.

    2. Interesting how the units of catastrophe vary. An area the size of Belgium is the usual unit of deforestation, but yesterday an Antarctic glacier the size of Great Britain is melting under the sea. Have we gone up in the world of apocalyptic prediction?

      1. Bring back the area the size of Wales. Or xxxx Olympic sized swimming pools. Possibly yyyy football pitches; laid end to end to reach the Moon.
        Then we really knew where we were.

    3. It is little more than a appeal to Irish Nationalism. The B.B.C. would never describe this nonsense – Irish men and women were everywhere in the British Empire were they not? – as crude popularism of the kind it is usually quick to condemn, but that is what it is. Ireland north and south needs good relations with the the other countries of these islands. From a purely pragmatic position this is terrible politics. If I were Irish I would be worried that British patience might soon end.

      1. IMO the British politicians will never give the S. Irish politicians what they deserve. For the same reasons that a neutral Ireland was considered better than a German-occupied Ireland in WWII. ireland is geographically too close for comfort.

        1. As the Republic was so pro-German anyway, the Krauts didn’t need to invade, I would have thought. Yes, I know quite a few ordinary Irish people joined up and fought the Jerries, but the government was pro-N@1.

  9. Morning all!

    Not usually here at this time but I’m out shortly doing a first aid course.

    Will look in later on.

      1. ‘fraid not, George and good morning, I tend to spend the morning NoTTLing and the afternoon and evening with Best Beloved.

        I’m sure you won’t grieve (Dominic or otherwise) at a repeat.

          1. I see Stormy is trying to get it to No. 1. I confess I’ve not paid any attention to pop charts since the 60s and then it was only a passing glance.

    2. Yep. The plan is to get it to #1. I’ve bought a copy on Amazon 😁

      Let’s show those b*stardos who drove the Ding Dong song to #1 when Margaret T died that two can play at that game.

      (n.b. If you want to join in, buy it, don’t stream it. I’m not sure what the difference is but it matters)

    4. Yep, and bought.
      There’s a plan to try to get it to #1 to show those that did the same for the ding song when Margaret T died that two (or should I say seventeen million) can play at game.

      If you want to join in on line, buy it dont stream it. (Don’t know what the difference is but it matters)

    6. As a hard leaver, I thought that was really ‘naff’ when I first saw it on Guido several months ago. Nothing has changed my view.

  11. Morning, Campers.
    Set yourself up as a ‘traffic consultant’. Loadsa dosh for talking total bollards and killing people: only qualification, you IQ must match your shoe size.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/01/28/smart-motorways-scandal-police-say-misled-death-trap-roads/

    “Smart motorways scandal: Police say they were misled over ‘death trap’ roads
    Martin Evans, CRIME CORRESPONDENT Bill Gardner

    Police have said they were misled over the dangers of smart motorways as the new roads were branded a “death trap”.

    A senior policing leader yesterday accused Highways England of irresponsibly pushing through the controversial project linked to 38 deaths.

    It came after a damning report by a group of MPs concluded that the “shocking and careless” rollout of the scheme had cost lives.

    The transport agency is already facing a criminal investigation after the widow of a motorist killed on a smart motorway made formal allegations of corporate manslaughter.

    Calls grew yesterday for ministers to halt the scheme, which converts the hard shoulder into a ‘live lane’ to ease congestion. Most of the drivers killed were struck by other vehicles when they broke down in fast-flowing traffic and could not find a safe place to stop.

    John Apter, the chairman of the Police Federation and a former traffic officer, accused Highways England of misleading the Government, the public and the police about the role technology would play in keeping the network safe.

    He said the transport agency had wrongly assured officers in planning meetings that the new roads would all be fitted with radar to automatically spot broken-down vehicles so drivers could be rescued quickly. Instead, the technology has only been introduced on a 25-mile stretch of the M25, a fraction of the 400 miles of smart motorways rolled out so far.

    Mr Apter, who represents more than 120,000 rank and file police officers across England and Wales told the Telegraph: “We were told that the technology would be so advanced that if there was an obstruction the system would pick it up, help would be dispatched and the gantry would flash up a warning closing the affected lane. The inference was that would be across the whole system.

    “We were presented with a fait accompli but we have been completely misled and a poorer system has been introduced.

    “What we now learn is that it takes an average of 17 minutes for an obstruction to be spotted and another 17 minutes for help to arrive. That half an hour will feel like an eternity for the person trapped.

    “The Government and the taxpaying public are not getting what was promised. Without the technology that we were promised it is a recipe for disaster.

    “I don’t like calling them smart motorways because that suggests they are in some way better. They can be a death trap.”

    A representative from Highways England had been due to attend a roads policing conference today (Wed) at which they were expected to come under fire from officers who have to patrol smart motorways and deal with incidents including crashes.

    But at the last minute Highways England pulled out of the event, claiming they were too busy responding to issues raised in the MPs report.

    It has also emerged that Highways England refused to respond to a request from the Police Federation about the number of deaths and serious injuries on the smart motorway network.

    The information was eventually provided to BBC’s Panorama, which revealed 38 people had died on the network over the last five years.

    It comes after a series of transport ministers revealed they had repeatedly warned Highways England officials that smart motorways posed a danger to drivers. Sir Mike Penning, a former roads minister, said he had been “completely misled”.

    Highways England also faces a criminal investigation after allegations of corporate manslaughter were made to South Yorkshire Police by 43-year-old widow Claire Mercer.

    Mrs Mercer’s husband Jason, 44, was struck and killed on a ‘smart’ stretch of the M1 near Sheffield in June last year after pulling over following a minor collision.

    Next month a government review into smart motorways will recommend a major overhaul of the network, it is understood.

    Speaking to the BBC’s Panorama programme, transport minister Grant Shapps said: “We absolutely have to have these as safe or safer as regular motorways or we shouldn’t have them at all.”

    A Highways England spokesman said:

    “Any death on our roads is one too many, and our deepest sympathies remain with the family and friends of those who lost their lives. 

    “The Transport Secretary has asked the Department for Transport to carry out, at pace, an evidence stocktake to gather the facts about smart motorway safety. We are committed to safety and are supporting the Department in its work on this.”

    1. Morning Anne. When I was driving I used to get quite nervous on those stretches of Motorway with no hard shoulder. The prospect of being marooned in the traffic flow looked like a death sentence!

      1. I’ve learnt that drivers of my sons’ age try to avoid motorways; in a perverse way that made me feel better. Or at least not so old!
        Morning, Minty.

        1. ‘Morning, Anne, does that help achieve the Highways Agency’s aim of reducing congestion.

          Mind you, I think I would avoid ‘Dumb’ Motorways as well. The A12 is bad enough.

          1. We now use the A134 to B-S-E as the A14 is so horrible.
            In the dark, particularly if the road is wet, it an absolute nightmare.

          2. I think all roads are a nightmare now.. minor and major roads .. the traffic even now in winter is horrendous .. traffic lights, filter lanes on roundabouts , obstructions .. one just needs one’s wits at the sharp end .. No one cares .. and so many cars look brutish and threatening .. people are still driving using mobiles or distracted by munching and crunching and vaping .

          4. Morning Belle
            You forgot all the bloody potholes.
            Woking is a nightmare building and demolition been going on for 2 years and at least that to go again while they build 9 tower blocks with about 1000 flats and only 74 parking places. The roads are shot to bits and sticking plaster repairs are carried out turning an uncomfortable pothole into an uncomfortable hump.
            Not sure I’ll live to see the end of this carnage.

          5. Huge number of pot holes were filled in around my way. Three days later It rained. Pot hole reappeared.

            They don’t fill the properly because it’s expensive to do so so they just surface fill.

    2. Morning Anne

      An evidence stock take to gather facts … the slow arduous process of yet more consultations … how many more accidents will happen whilst the Transport Secretary consults with the D oT.

      Simple , suspend all smart motorway lanes now , revert back to how it was .. save lives for God’s sake.

      1. ‘Morning, Mags, while they contemplate their navels, I suggest that the ‘Dumb’ lane be permanently closed while it is reverted back to hard shoulder.

        1. But then we go back to the situation I had every day for months on end: get on to the M27 and put your handbrake on.

          Wait ten to fifteen minutes, crawl a foot forward. Rinse, repeat.

          1. I thank God, daily, Wibbles, that I’ve retired and can travel when it suits me – if it suits me at all.

        2. Maybe we could close the middle lanes instead and make them hard ‘shoulders’. It would stop the knobs who drive in them whatever their speed and oblivious to the traffic around them.

      2. They could face court cases,. It is now I think well established that these Smart Motorways pose a considerable risk so if they take no immediate action then they could be deemed culpable

    3. This is about doing things on the cheap. We should ignore the green loonies and we should build the roads that are needed.
      Things have changed since the M1 was built.

    4. Loads of bonus going to the contractors, executives and ministers responsible, so not all bad news.

    5. Two other unintended consequences will arrive.

      People will tend to drive in the middle and outside lanes, even though one is supposed to move to the left if the inside lanes are clear and running smoothly, leading to precisely the over-crowding the smart motorway was supposed to reduce.
      There will be far more “undertaking” leading to side on shunts..

    6. The danger of this decision to use the hard shoulder as a means of reducing congestion was obvious to me and many other drivers. Sadly the government’s decisions on immigration, climate change, the NHS, criminal justice and others are expensively misguided and in some cases potentially more dangerous .

    7. Is Highways England and independent department or a department of the Department for Transport. No doubt created so that if anything goes wrong, and it has, the Minister can don his Teflon shoulders and say nothing to do with him. It sounds as though HE is as rogue as the HS2 lot and able to carry out mayhem without recourse to scrutiny.

    8. The police comment seems entirely reasonable and intelligent. They were sold the idea on the basis, as with the short section on the pilot trial, that there would be continuous lane radar and stop gantries on sections where the hard shoulder was used. That has not happened, which is why they are so dangerous.

      1. If someone tells me planes are safe, I don’t believe them and I look at the traffic figures for that flight.

        Frankly if I were a blasted police officer and someone said ‘it’s safe’ I’d ask ‘how! Look at the things!’

        One day I was pootling along in the driving lane and suddenly we all stopped. As you look at the traffic and see it’s ok in the other lanes, you think, OK, I’ll get out of this lane.

        Turned out someone was changing a tyre on the driving lane. It’s flipping lunacy! I’m an idiot and even I could tell you that removing space for people to *get off the road* is dangerous.

        Smart highways are not smart, they’re cheap. That’s why government loves them.

        1. As for the ‘planes, Wibbles, I think it was Bob Newhart who gave the soundest safety advice.

          He said, “Flying is the safest way to fly.”

    9. So I guess this means that after struggling with roadworks on the M23 while they converted it to smartness, I can now look forward to another year or so when they dumb it back down to what it once was.

      Actually it works quite well, the last thing I need after getting off the plane is to go straight out onto a high speed motorway; a nice slow crawl through the roadworks is much better at helping me to adjust.

    10. Fundamentally all transport problems and issues arising come down to one cause and one only: Over population of a finite area of living space.

  12. Good morning thinkers.

    JOBS cuts have been announced at the HQ of aerospace giant Cobham just days after the completion of its £4billion takeover by an American firm.

    Cobham, which employs people from across the county, has not confirmed how many redundancies are being made at its Wimborne base, although one caller to the Echo claimed the figure could be as high as 50.

    https://www.dorsetecho.co.uk/news/18194623.cobham-makes-redundancies-dorset—days-us-takeover/

    Stop our national assets being sold off.. of course they won’t … Britain is being stripped back to the bone .

      1. Bones are part of the deal. They’ll leave the manky bits that nobody else wants though.

  13. Iran missile strike: 50 US troops now diagnosed with brain injuries. 29 January 2020.

    The Pentagon said on Tuesday 50 US service members were now diagnosed with traumatic brain injury after missile strikes by Iran on a base in Iraq earlier this month, 16 more than the military had previously announced.

    Donald Trump and other top officials initially said Iran’s 8 January attack had not killed or injured any US service members.

    It is now quite obvious that the United States deliberately concealed the severity of the attack on their forces by Iran after the assassination of Soleimani. Such an attack would, had the Americans have wished it, provided ample justification for a full military response. They did not choose to do so. Conversely it also shows that the Iranians were fully prepared to go to war should they deem it necessary. There is also the point, though it could just be coincidence, that a CIA plane carrying high ranking intelligence apparatchiks involved in the assassination was shot down in Afghanistan a couple of days ago.

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/28/us-troops-iran-brain-injury-attack-iraq

  14. On a cheery note, while the Chinese say the epidemic is reaching its peak, the graphs in this BBC article don’t suggest that at all. The graphs suggest the exponential growth of a pandemic. Meanwhile the Australians are rescuing their nationals. They will fly them to a fortnight in quarantine on the other Christmas Island. It is as close to Australia as Corsica is to the UK. Any Britons returning to the UK will be asked if they feel OK and will have their temperature taken, and then be free to spread the disease around the country. (We know for certain that both of these procedures are completely useless.). Spot the difference.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-51290312

    1. I’m sure our public health consultants are paid bigger bonuses than the Aussies though. So we’re safe, aren’t we, since our economic figures are better.

      1. Oh thanks. We stocked up on noodles just before Xmas. Our favourite is from the Sun Shun Fuk company.

      3. Yes, I’m sure. It has been declared free of anthrax but has not yet become overpopulated.
        Pitcairn Island might be a better choice. They are looking for new blood.

  15. SIR – It is a disgrace that Combat Stress, the charity that provides emotional support for servicemen and women, has had its funding cut (report, January 28).
    […]
    Dr Glenn Ralphs

    Gosh, a very generous bit of discrimination by Combat Stress. They only help males who have served but would appear to help any and all women.

    2. For those of us here who are veterans, did you know that there is a code which GPs are supposed to put against your name if you have served? It doesn’t give us priority, but it does make them aware that there may well be health problems related to our service. My county has signed up to the Veterans’ Covenant, but not all GPs are Veterans Aware.

  16. Anne
    Ohh, I love this brilliant quip from comments on DT letters

    A Allan 29 Jan 2020 7:28AM
    Philip Pullman would consider me to be an absolute pleb.

    Not only did I vote Leave, I thought an Oxford Comma was a type of delivery van.

    (me , well I assumed the Oxford Comma was a butterfly)

    1. The Chinese government actually believes they have a right to tell a Dutch newspaper what they can and cannot print?

      Can anyone say Charlie Hebdo?

  19. US dropped record number of bombs on Afghanistan last year. 28 January 2020.

    “This is the US military mistakenly thinking that they’re somehow going to change the political dynamics by dropping more ordnance on Afghanistan,” said Laurel Miller, former US acting special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, who is now director of the International Crisis Group’s Asia programme.

    “The argument that is made in favor what they’re doing is that this will somehow change the political dynamics and in a way that makes the Taliban more likely to come to favorable terms at the peace table, but I have no expectation that this is going to have that kind of effect,” Miller said.

    This activity is a perennial response of the US military. I used to read identical reports 40 years ago about North Vietnam and how they would eventually succumb to American Airpower. They never did of course and this present program will have no effect on the eventual defeat of the United States efforts in Afghanistan.

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/28/us-afghanistan-war-bombs-2019

    1. Kenny Everett sketch: “We’ll round ’em all up, put ’em in a field and BOMB THE BASTARDS” (ends waving arms & screeching)

      1. Afternoon Phizzee. Aside from Islamabad being in Pakistan the Taliban would probably cheer!

  20. Morning Each,
    The way I see it is that the Chinese Huawei have a third access to the GB network but not to have access to any
    security delicate material,tell me, what self respecting
    spy given such a head start would not make good ?
    We have suffered for four decades as a nation, with very little let up at the hand of the governance politico’s.
    Many of our peoples have been put in dire jeopardy from these same politico’s / parties /supporters / voters.
    Virtually the same politico’s, reshuffled, reshaped, culled,
    re-dealt, that brought us to such an odious pretty pass as a country to start with are still ruling the political roost.
    By the by,
    Same as Crusoe we will be leaving Friday, but at what final cost ? seems to me that nobody on the shop floor knows.

      1. Well if you were having a bit of wild passionate whatsit with an elephant, it would be dangerous if you did not use protection.
        After all falling off of the ladder can be dangerous.

        1. I don’t think that that was what Uncle Bill was doing when he fell…

          …come and put us straight, Bill.

    2. I’ve read Mr Jaspers opinions before. He’s an apologist for Pakistani and Muslim barbarism!

    3. He’s said this before. It’s on a par with Dickhead’s view that rape gangs have been a part of British culture for 500 years.

      1. WS,
        If that were the case why have the lab/lib/con mass uncontrolled immigration coalition party & member / voters seen fit via the ballot booth ,to condone time after time after time, the need to import them ?

  23. Oh look! He’s black!

    Oh look! His murderer was black!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7940237/Pictured-Boy-16-stabbed-death-packed-London-railway-station.html

    Goodness! It’s amost as if black kids are killing other black kids. When will the self righteous hypocrisy end and the kids stop being killed because of the road they live in? When will the Left let us say ‘It’s a problem with blacks. There’s a cultural, endemic problem of discipline and parenting by blacks.

    1. Morning W,
      Forget the political left / right this issue is about right / wrong instigated and kept alive by the lab/lib/con mass uncontrolled immigration coalition party.

    2. It’s too easy. Just imagine that you are BAME and have a spouse and children and you work in the firm which controls tagged prisoners on parole and assorted feral youths.
      Someone asks you to plug in a memory stick for a few seconds. Or else.
      Or the network of county lines serfs who hang around stations are told to send a whatsapp if they see any rival gang member.

    3. Last summer when I opined to the Professor next door that black males were more dangerous, she at first said that black knife crime was a result of living “cheek by jowl” – when I persisted she put her hands over her ears and with a pained expression retreated to a safe space indoors.

  24. Poetry Corner

    ”I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud” By William Wordsworth.

    I wandered lonely as a cloud
    That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
    When all at once I saw a crowd,
    A host, of golden daffodils;
    Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
    Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

    Continuous as the stars that shine
    And twinkle on the milky way,
    They stretched in never-ending line
    Along the margin of a bay:
    Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
    Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

    The waves beside them danced; but they
    Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
    A poet could not but be gay,
    In such a jocund company:
    I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
    What wealth the show to me had brought:

    For oft, when on my couch I lie
    In vacant or in pensive mood,
    They flash upon that inward eye
    Which is the bliss of solitude;
    And then my heart with pleasure fills,
    And dances with the daffodils.

        1. ‘Afternoon, Lass,

          But the child that is born on the Sabbath Day
          Is bonny and blithe and good and gay.

          1. Wotcher, Nanners,

            Yes, pretty, wasn’t it. I was born on a Friday – were you born on a Sunday?

          2. No, my dear…

            Wednesday’s child is full of woe.

            Having got rid of a couple of wives, both of whom caused me woe, I now find that Best Beloved fits the bill. Maybe just because she’s English and the previous were Irish and Swedish, though there are many other reasons why we find each other compatible.

            The moral seems to be stick to your own.

          3. As long as it has now worked out for you, which it happily seems to have done. Good for you both.

            I don’t think woe is limited to W3dnesday’s children though. My first husband was an experience I could well have done without!

  25. Greetings Nottlers,

    For those interested in governmental structure and safeguards, an extremely well-argued presentation by former Harvard University Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, centering on the differences between the role of the American President, as opposed to the role of the UK Prime Minister vis-a-vis the UK Parliament. Many references to William Blackstone and also the framers of the US Constitution (Hamilton and Madison):

    https://youtu.be/uqmhfyH09jM

  26. Don’t you just love the BBC?
    This morning there was a brief report that Israel Folau has been hired by Catalan Dragons, the Rugby League club, despite his “homophobic “comments for which he was fired from his previous club. Actually Mr Folau said something like “homosexuals will go to Hell”, a comment exactly in line with traditional orthodox Catholic teaching.
    To this News item was appended an interview comment by the well known* homosexual rugby player Keegan Hirst saying that it was terrible that anyone hired Mr Folau. Apparently the perceived wisdom is that people who say that homosexuality is wrong must not be allowed to earn a living.
    That very short interlude was followed by a rather longer film report about a weird woman who dresses her pet dogs in bootees and bows. Another abomination, gushed over and approved by the BBC.

    * clearly a go-to sock puppet for the BBC.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-league/51282586

    1. When will the BBC interview a few “orthodox” Muslims and get their views on homosexuality?
      12th of never, I expect.

      1. Aw but Sos, Mahomet was very even handed. He beheaded anyone who refused to submit, irrespective of their race, gender or sexual preferences.

        1. The School of Management thought subsequently taken up to great effect by Genghis Khan. Esq.

      2. Why doesn’t somebody ask a direct question about this in a live television interview on the BBC?

    2. The progressives in the church will tell you that Jesus never mentioned homosexuality therefore it must be acceptable to Him. He did say that sex is only admissible between a man and a woman and only within marriage but apparently because he didn’t list all the practices that necessarily excludes, it clearly doesn’t exclude anything.

      I don’t care what people do as long as they confine it to consenting adults but they must take responsibility for their choices and false claims still need to be called out.

      1. I’m not very progressive. I don’t think that people should be prevented from earning a living because they express Christian views.

        1. I imagine that professional players of the muslim faith just keep their traps shut. The day has already come when proclaiming the Christian message is not permitted, how long will it be until being in possession of a bible becomes illegal as in certain states.

    4. ♫ “Don’t care much for facts and such
      Take me where the fake news grows
      The BBC is all PC
      Where perverts rule and anything goes
      And dogs stand out in bootees and bows” ♫

    1. Judging from the twitter comments it seems there are thousands of people well and truly pissed off that we voted to leave the EU. Good. I’m with Richard when he points out it’s too early to Judge whether we really have left the grip of the EU.

      1. Will Boris Johnson’s ‘fantastic deal’ prove to be BRINO and not a proper Brexit at all? We have still been given remarkably few salient facts about what is actually in his Withdrawal Agreement’.

        As far as I am concerned the jury is still out and we shall have to see..

        1. Afternoon R,
          We most certainly will.
          Has the ersatz tory track of treachery reached the terminus ?
          Personally I think not.

      2. S,
        “Really to early to judge”
        and by the same token if treachery is still in play,
        Really to late to do anything ?

  30. Coronavirus: Britons on Wuhan flights to be quarantined

    Hundreds of British citizens being flown back to the UK from Wuhan on Thursday will be put in quarantine for two weeks.
    It comes as British Airways suspends all direct flights to and from mainland China because of the coronavirus outbreak.

    1. are there any other carriers

      other routes, ie from Hong Kong

      What about the crews

      Are the cabins going to be ‘sterilised’/ etc

        2. I doubt it Maggie, as far as I know the loos are emptied into special bowsers on the apron.
          Funnily enough I was staging through Gan on the way to Malaya in an RAF Britannia. The native allocated to attach the drain hose to the aircraft didn’t get it on correctly and was dowsed with the droppings of around 100 groundcrew at the end of a 6 hr flight. The last we saw of him was him being hosed down by the fire crew.

      3. The crews should certainly not be allowed to fly until it is certain that they are not infected and no longer possible carriers of the disease.

  31. The Lady of Shalott – Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-92)

    On either side the river lie
    Long fields of barley and of rye,
    That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
    And thro’ the field the road runs by
    To many-tower’d Camelot;
    And up and down the people go,
    Gazing where the lilies blow
    Round an island there below,
    The island of Shalott.

    Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
    Little breezes dusk and shiver
    Thro’ the wave that runs for ever
    By the island in the river
    Flowing down to Camelot.
    Four gray walls, and four gray towers,
    Overlook a space of flowers,
    And the silent isle imbowers
    The Lady of Shalott.

    By the margin, willow veil’d,
    Slide the heavy barges trail’d
    By slow horses; and unhail’d
    The shallop flitteth silken-sail’d
    Skimming down to Camelot:
    But who hath seen her wave her hand?
    Or at the casement seen her stand?
    Or is she known in all the land,
    The Lady of Shalott?

    Only reapers, reaping early
    In among the bearded barley,
    Hear a song that echoes cheerly
    From the river winding clearly,
    Down to tower’d Camelot:
    And by the moon the reaper weary,
    Piling sheaves in uplands airy,
    Listening, whispers ” ‘Tis the fairy
    Lady of Shalott.”

    Part II

    There she weaves by night and day
    A magic web with colours gay.
    She has heard a whisper say,
    A curse is on her if she stay
    To look down to Camelot.
    She knows not what the curse may be,
    And so she weaveth steadily,
    And little other care hath she,
    The Lady of Shalott.

    And moving thro’ a mirror clear
    That hangs before her all the year,
    Shadows of the world appear.
    There she sees the highway near
    Winding down to Camelot:
    There the river eddy whirls,
    And there the surly village-churls,
    And the red cloaks of market girls,
    Pass onward from Shalott.

    Sometimes a troop of damsels glad,
    An abbot on an ambling pad,
    Sometimes a curly shepherd-lad,
    Or long-hair’d page in crimson clad,
    Goes by to tower’d Camelot;
    And sometimes thro’ the mirror blue
    The knights come riding two and two:
    She hath no loyal knight and true,
    The Lady of Shalott.

    But in her web she still delights
    To weave the mirror’s magic sights,
    For often thro’ the silent nights
    A funeral, with plumes and lights
    And music, went to Camelot:
    Or when the moon was overhead,
    Came two young lovers lately wed:
    “I am half sick of shadows,” said
    The Lady of Shalott.

    Part III

    A bow-shot from her bower-eaves,
    He rode between the barley-sheaves,
    The sun came dazzling thro’ the leaves,
    And flamed upon the brazen greaves
    Of bold Sir Lancelot.
    A red-cross knight for ever kneel’d
    To a lady in his shield,
    That sparkled on the yellow field,
    Beside remote Shalott.

    The gemmy bridle glitter’d free,
    Like to some branch of stars we see
    Hung in the golden Galaxy.
    The bridle bells rang merrily
    As he rode down to Camelot:
    And from his blazon’d baldric slung
    A mighty silver bugle hung,
    And as he rode his armour rung,
    Beside remote Shalott.

    All in the blue unclouded weather
    Thick-jewell’d shone the saddle-leather,
    The helmet and the helmet-feather
    Burn’d like one burning flame together,
    As he rode down to Camelot.
    As often thro’ the purple night,
    Below the starry clusters bright,
    Some bearded meteor, trailing light,
    Moves over still Shalott.

    His broad clear brow in sunlight glow’d;
    On burnish’d hooves his war-horse trode;
    From underneath his helmet flow’d
    His coal-black curls as on he rode,
    As he rode down to Camelot.
    From the bank and from the river
    He flash’d into the crystal mirror,
    “Tirra lirra,” by the river
    Sang Sir Lancelot.

    She left the web, she left the loom,
    She made three paces thro’ the room,
    She saw the water-lily bloom,
    She saw the helmet and the plume,
    She look’d down to Camelot.
    Out flew the web and floated wide;
    The mirror crack’d from side to side;
    “The curse is come upon me,” cried
    The Lady of Shalott.

    Part IV

    In the stormy east-wind straining,
    The pale yellow woods were waning,
    The broad stream in his banks complaining,
    Heavily the low sky raining
    Over tower’d Camelot;
    Down she came and found a boat
    Beneath a willow left afloat,
    And round about the prow she wrote
    The Lady of Shalott.

    And down the river’s dim expanse
    Like some bold seër in a trance,
    Seeing all his own mischance—
    With a glassy countenance
    Did she look to Camelot.
    And at the closing of the day
    She loosed the chain, and down she lay;
    The broad stream bore her far away,
    The Lady of Shalott.

    Lying, robed in snowy white
    That loosely flew to left and right—
    The leaves upon her falling light—
    Thro’ the noises of the night
    She floated down to Camelot:
    And as the boat-head wound along
    The willowy hills and fields among,
    They heard her singing her last song,
    The Lady of Shalott.

    Heard a carol, mournful, holy,
    Chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
    Till her blood was frozen slowly,
    And her eyes were darken’d wholly,
    Turn’d to tower’d Camelot.
    For ere she reach’d upon the tide
    The first house by the water-side,
    Singing in her song she died,
    The Lady of Shalott.

    Under tower and balcony,
    By garden-wall and gallery,
    A gleaming shape she floated by,
    Dead-pale between the houses high,
    Silent into Camelot.
    Out upon the wharfs they came,
    Knight and burgher, lord and dame,
    And round the prow they read her name,
    The Lady of Shalott.

    Who is this? and what is here?
    And in the lighted palace near
    Died the sound of royal cheer;
    And they cross’d themselves for fear,
    All the knights at Camelot:
    But Lancelot mused a little space;
    He said, “She has a lovely face;
    God in his mercy lend her grace,
    The Lady of Shalott.”

  32. Just moving 1/2 ton of kiln-dried oak that’s been delivered. It’s a twenty yard pull for each load and I do 4 barrow-loads, Best Beloved then does 4, so turn and turn about, we’ll soon shift it to the shelter.

    I shall spend the rest of the day stacking it under cover. See yous, later.

    2. You’re not planning on burning oak?! We have a stash of well-seasoned oak boards (intended for bookshelves) stacked in out sitting room(nowhere else to store it) lovingly removed from under the house (it’s an ex-staddle barn) in case it flooded (stream flowing for first time in about 8 yrs).

      1. Why not burn oak, Cynarch (taking advantage of a rest)? My understanding is that oak burns slowly but hot. ‘Twill save me several trips with the log basket.

        Anyway, now stacking the second side of the shelter. Off I go again.

          1. LOGS TO BURN!

            Logs to burn! logs to burn!
            Logs to save the coal a turn!
            Here’s a word to make you wise
            When you hear the woodman’s cries.

            Beechwood fires burn bright and clean,
            Hornbeam blazes too –
            If the logs are kept a year
            To season through and through.

            Oak logs will warm you well
            If they’re old and dry.
            Larch logs of Pinewood smell,
            But the sparks will fly.

            Pine is good and so is Yew,
            For warmth through wintry days.
            But Poplar, and Willow too
            Take long to dry or blaze.

            Birch logs will burn too fast,
            Alder scarce at all.
            Chestnut logs are good to last,
            If cut in the fall.

            Holly logs will burn like wax,
            You should keep them green.
            Elm logs – like smouldering flax –
            No flame is seen!

            Pear logs and Apple logs
            They will scent your room.
            Cherry logs, across the dogs,
            Will smell like flowers in bloom.

            But Ash logs, all smooth and grey,
            Burn them green or old.
            Buy up all that come your way –
            They’re worth their weight in gold.

          5. From Now We are Six, by A. A. Milne

            The charcoal-burner has tales to tell.
            He lives in the Forest,
            Alone in the Forest;
            He sits in the Forest,
            Alone in the Forest.
            And the sun comes slanting between the trees,
            And the rabbits come up, and they give him good-morning,
            And the rabbits come up and say, “Beautiful morning. . . .”
            And the moon swings clear of the tall black trees,
            And the owls fly over and wish him good-night
            Quietly over to wish him good-night. . . .

            And he sits and thinks of the things they know,
            He and the Forest, alone together—
            The springs that come and the summers that go,
            Autumn dew on bracken and heather,
            The drip of the Forest beneath the snow. . . .
            All the things they have seen,
            All the things they have heard:
            An April sky swept clean and the song of a bird . . .
            Oh, the charcoal-burner has tales to tell!
            And he lives in the Forest and knows us well.

            ( Where is charcoal manufactured these days?

          8. The old Pig said to the little pigs,
            ‘In the forest is truffles and mast,
            Follow me then, all ye little pigs,
            Follow me fast!’

            The Charcoal-burner sat in the shade
            With his chin oil his thumb,
            And saw the big Pig and the little pigs
            Chuffling come.

            He watched ‘neath a green and giant bough,
            And the pigs in the ground
            Made a wonderful grisling and gruzzling
            And greedy sound.

            And when, full-fed, they were gone, and Night
            Walked her starry ways,
            He stared with his cheeks in his hands
            At his sullen blaze.

            Walter de la Mare

        2. Oak is such a lovely timber, seems a pity to burn it when oak trees are no longer two a penny. I know it was the fuel of choice for so many activities from time immemorial.

        3. Uptick for oak, Nanners! Burns hot and slow, but seasoning takes longer than most other woods. I cut some young, overcrowded oak last February, then stored under a tarpaulin with plenty of ventilation, but probably needs another summer before starting to use it Oct/Nov this year. In my experience there is nothing better.

    3. We cut ours late January/February and split it early spring. Then stack it outside to dry naturally, we’re a lot warmer and sunnier of course, and start burning late October through til roughly end of March. It burns very hot and clean.

      1. Yo JN

        You will find that you are reading a neverending Tale, in monthly or quarterly episodes

      2. Brave. Mine was estimated but to my surprise, only a little larger than actual so I paid the bill.

    5. Logs to Burn, Logs to burn, Logs to burn,
      Logs to save the coal a turn,
      Here’s a word to make you wise,
      When
      you hear the woodman’s cries.

      Never heed his usual tale,
      That he has good logs for sale,
      But read these lines and really learn,
      The proper
      kind of logs to burn.

      Oak logs will warm you well,
      If they’re old and dry.
      Larch logs of pine will smell,
      But the sparks will fly.

      Beech logs for Christmas time,
      Yew logs heat well.
      “Scotch” logs it is a crime,
      For anyone to sell.

      Birch logs will burn too fast,
      Chestnut scarce at all.
      Hawthorn logs are good to last,
      If you cut them in the
      fall.

      Holly logs will burn like wax,
      You should burn them green,
      Elm logs like smouldering flax,
      No flame to be seen.

      Pear logs and apple logs,
      They will scent your room,
      Cherry logs across the dogs,
      Smell like flowers in bloom.

      But ash logs, all smooth and grey,
      Burn them green or old;
      Buy up all that come
      your way,
      They’re worth their weight in gold.

      1. Ursula Southeil (c. 1488–1561) also variously spelt as Ursula Southill, Ursula Soothtell or Ursula Sontheil, better known as Mother Shipton, is said to have been an English soothsayer and prophetess. The first publication of her prophecies, which did not appear until 1641, eighty years after her reported death, contained a number of mainly regional predictions, but only two prophetic verses – neither of which foretold the End of the World, despite widespread assumptions to that effect.

        The most famous claimed edition of Mother Shipton’s prophecies foretells many modern events and phenomena. Widely quoted today as if it were the original, it contains over a hundred prophetic rhymed couplets in notably non-16th-century language and includes the now-famous lines:

        The world to an end shall come
        In eighteen hundred and eighty one.

        You were saying? :•)

        1. But Mother Shipton then went on to say:

          “The world shall be as good as new
          In eighteen hundred and eighty two”

          Not a lot of people know that …..

          1. I have. And I’ve been to Mother Shipton’s pub in Knaresborough (my favourite Yorkshire town).

  35. Once again the SNP got more of their share of questions at PMQs. Labour questions were few. Boris had problems with his shirt tails coming out of his trousers and he spent time trying to push the tails back into place as he stood up to answer the questions. It was a bit disconcerting. Priti Patel sitting behind him seemed amused.. The Speaker rarely appeared on screen and controlled proceedings with very few interjections.

  36. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    Yet another Rotherham?:

    https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/01/28/asylum-seeker-grooming-gang-kept-secret-scotland-police/

    Scandalous:

    “A report conducted by Detective Inspector Sarah Taylor from the National Child Abuse Investigation Unit found that of the suspects, only 14 had been deported, with 22 remaining in Glasgow. A further eight were believed to be still living in the United Kingdom, with just one in prison and one further individual pending deportation.”

    Apologies if already posted (no opportunity for a proper visit here yesterday).

    2. Just so. But kept secret. No indication that any of those involved were convicted of rape etc . Quite the opposite. The police comment on this indicated they were doing everything that they possibly could to avoid arresting the perpetrators for child rape. Instead, they carried out”disruption” and went after the perpetrators for other things, who knows what, visa irregularities, vehicle offences, dropping litter…
      I suspect that the Scottish Government was involved in hushing this up.

  37. The strange world of the radically left-wing Soas university. Louise Perry. 29 January 2020.

    I was, however, able to speak to that rarest of beasts: a conservative student at Soas, who asked to remain anonymous. Describing the experience of being a member of the university’s Conservative Society, he says there is a campus culture in which open debate is censured. ‘I found that many students privately shared conservative or centrist views. They would not voice their opinions however, because of the social stigma and fear of being ostracised. I was called a fascist several times (which I always felt was quite cliché) and one person told me bluntly “shame, I thought you were alright for a white person”.’

    This is well worth a read just to get an insight into what can happen to a University when the Cultural Marxist element become institutionalised, not only in the staff but the student body as well. Though the author makes much of its anti-Semitic activities these are really only a sideshow to its dysfunctionality. It should not be assumed that this is due to a large nativist element, it has become a dumping ground for foreign students who couldn’t give a rat’s ass about education and simply delight in disrupting what was formerly a colonialist educational establishment. What the place really needs to save it is a good cleaning out, both at the top and the bottom, otherwise it’s a goner! Baroness Amos its Black Director having failed here is now moving to Oxford where she can no doubt achieve the same results.

    https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2020/01/the-strange-world-of-the-radically-left-wing-soas-university/

    1. Can’t seem to find what SOAS stands for but given all the lefty bumf I’ve read, I suggest Study Of Amos’ Stupidity.

        2. According to the authoress of that article, Louise Perry, who is a former alumna of SOAS, it stands for School of Antisemitism.

    2. It’s been going downhill for decades, with falling student numbers each year and ever-increasing wokeness. Time for it to be put out of our misery.

  38. BBC set to announce cuts for news programmes as part of money-saving drive

    Plans to axe Victoria Derbyshire’s BBC Two programme have already been leaked, with the host saying she is “absolutely devastated”.
    Flagship BBC shows such as Newsnight and Radio 4’s Today programme are also expected to have to make efficiencies.

    BBC News has to save £80 million as part of financial pressures on the corporation, including paying for free TV licences for over-75s on pension credit.

    It is expected that BBC Radio bulletins across different stations will share more resources.

    The cuts also come amid payouts to some female staff, with radio presenter Sarah Montague getting a £400,000 settlement and Samira Ahmed winning an employment tribunal in a dispute over equal pay.

    2. Morning Bill

      Yet the BBC squandered how many £ 87 million pounds on that disgusting soap Eastender set

      The construction site is just a stone’s throw from the show’s current set and will allow for the series to be filmed in high definition.

      But the cost of the project – which is funded by licence payer’s cash – was meant to be £60million but had already gone £30million over budget.

      It is now not likely to be finished until 2023.

      https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/10245285/new-eastenders-set-pictures-houses/

    3. Nobody pays for free TV licences. They are free in the same way as with a two-slot toaster you get your second slice toasted for free. The costs are the same.

      There is less income, but with the same costs.

      2. Well, sort of. There may be cuts to programmes, but they will be paying their employees more.

  39. China’s first coronavirus hospital OPENS after workers and volunteers spend two days converting an empty building into a 1,000-bed medical centre

    China’s first coronavirus hospital has opened today in a city near Wuhan after workers and volunteers spent just two days converting an empty building to a 1,000-bed emergency facility.

      1. A whacking 120 people of those infected have died, I imagine that number would have passed on naturally due old age With or without virus.

        1. There was some expert on TV saying only about 2% of those infected would die. He did not do the numbers as 2% of the population of china would be around 28 million dead. Nothing to worry about, unless it spreads beyond China…

      1. Rubbish. We had fish and chips yesterday, and MB said the old boy behind the counter looked familiar.

  41. Good morning all.

    Tried “Winterwatch” last night but it was wall-to-wall climate change, so I abandoned it.

        1. Even central Canada is having a very mild winter, we can actually see grass which is very unusual at this time of year.

          On the other hand, winter is happening in the western provinces where they have record cold temperatures and poor old Newfoundland is still digging out after record snowfalls resulted in a week long state of emergency.

  42. DM Story

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-7942315/Husband-murdered-Labour-MP-Jo-Cox-admits-moments-thinks-shes-alive.html#newcomment

    Husband of murdered Labour MP Jo Cox reveals there are still moments when he wakes up and thinks his wife is still alive and ‘it’s all okay’ in poignant tweet about living with grief

    This man, Brendon Cox, is a sleazeball of the nastiest type. Before his wife was tragically murdered he was sacked from his job for inappropriate behaviour towards the women who worked in his office who made a formal complaint against him. Added to this he and his wife were on the brink of divorce.

    1. There are regular attempts to “rehabilitate” this scumbag and make his return to public life acceptable
      The public are having none of it,as can be seen by the obvious censorship of the comments
      #SexPestCox is your name Matey and we’ll see it’s never forgotten

  43. Troubled rail firm Northern brought under government control

    Troubled rail company Northern is to be brought under government control, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has announced.
    The decision, which will see the firm’s franchise stripped from operator Arriva Rail North from 1 March, was taken following years of major disruption.
    The government previously described the delays and cancellations as “unacceptable”.
    Mr Shapps said passengers had “lost trust in the north’s rail network”.

    2. Pity the whole thing was not privatsed propery with each company running the trains,track and property.Like they used to when private before.

  45. BBC News to close 450 posts as part of £80m savings drive

    Around 450 jobs will be cut from BBC News under plans to complete its £80m savings target by 2022.
    There will be a reduction in the number of films produced by Newsnight, which will lead to post closures on the BBC Two programme.
    There will also be job closures at BBC Radio 5 Live and the World Update programme on the World Service.
    The job cuts announced on Wednesday include those previously announced at the Victoria Derbyshire programme.
    BBC News currently employs around 6,000 people, including 1,700 outside the UK. Its budget after the changes come into effect will be around £480m per year.

      2. Yes, and let’s have the pirates back. I liked the pirate radio stations, particularly Radio London.

    2. No worries. Those made redundant will set up their own production companies and produce programmes for their chums in the BBC. That is how Kirsty Wark became very rich.

  46. Boeing reports its first loss in two decades

    Not a great surprise

    Boeing has reported its first annual loss in more than two decades as the 737 Max crisis continues to hit the firm.
    The planemaker was forced to ground the aircraft, which had been its best seller, in March last year after two deadly crashes that killed 346 people.

    Now it has said that it expects the bill for the grounding to surpass $18bn (£13.8bn).
    That has hurt the firm’s finances, pushing it to a $636m loss for 2019.
    Sales were worse than expected in the final three months of last year when the planemaker booked $17.9bn in revenues.

    1. Seen the light? No, the beeboids feel the big boot of destiny homing-in on their sorry arses.

    1. At the end of the email, suggestions of places to seek help include the candidate’s GP, the Samaritans, Citizens Advice, and the mental health charity Mind. It adds: “If you feel you are at risk of immediate harm please contact 999 in the first instance”, saying that people could also attend an A&E or call NHS 111.

      Ye Gods, they were just unsuccessful candidates in an election, not survivors of some horrific disaster. They’ll be calling for compensation and disability pensions next.

      1. I have, in the past, been an unsuccessful candidate – that’s life (and democracy)! It isn’t the end of the world.

    2. That’s what happens when you to try to make politics a profession. Meanwhile, in the real world people made redundant move on and look for another job., usually with a far less generous ‘resettlement’ allowance.

      1. Usually with no resettlement allowance! Politicians have voted themselves a nice cosy gravy-train. They don’t have to read the stuff the are legislating on, don’t have to know anything about what they are legislating on, and certainly don’t put in any background time. Wirh £70,000+ salary, plus expenses, plus perks, plus gold-plated pension.

        Then if they are unlucky enough to be booted out, they are compensated. It is obscene.

  51. Cheerful thought for the day.

    This version of corona virus seems to kill the elderly and those already weakened.
    It seems to transmit readily and the incubation period isn’t truly known. If it really is a mass killer, surely it would be better to leave people where they are.

    Perhaps there really is a climate emergency and governments have worked out, that by transporting carriers all over the planet, they can use the virus to kill off the oldest and least productive members of society and reduce the total population dramatically at the same time.

    As an added bonus all we need now is to discover that as a side effect, it sterilises 50% of those infected.

    Happy days, Gaia will love it…

      3. I suspect so.
        Edit:
        That they’ve got a cure but it will only be released once sufficient oldies have kicked the bucket.

      4. Well, for starters I think the Chinese have been spreading it around the world since early December, if not before. I don’t think they were in any great hurry to press the International Alarm Button.

        Edit: typo

        1. Yes. There was Chines woman on some programme a week ago who said that the authorities were well aware of it before the end of December.
          With the largest movement of humans ever, the Chinese New Year family visits, and with many technical support people from abroad in key roles in Chinese industry, including tourism, the Chinese would not have been keen to blow the whistle.

      3. I opened my nice Chinese watch strap yesterday. Still feel… o……k…………….

        Actually if it’s like the norovirus, it can live for 24hours or so on contaminated surfaces, but dies after that, as I understand it.

    1. Anyone with just a modicum of sense could foresee this coming! It is going to get much worse!

      2. Afternoon AS,
        It has been building for years, IMO the voting pattern lacking common sense as in party before innocent
        peoples welfare / country, will guarantee it will get far worse.

        Not only on the streets,but through the education system
        & prison systems also.

  53. Cutting Back the BBC

    Reduce to one UK wide TV channel. BBC2 to be devolved to the 4 nations and they are responsible for funding it ie BBC England, BBC2 Wales, BBC2 NI and BBC 2 Scotland

    2 National Radio Stations with the new produced Centrally

    4 National Radio Stations One for England , One for Scotand, One for Wales & One for NI

      1. Wasn’t sure if one picture caption – ‘Construction has been underway since 2015 but is coming along nicely’ – was meant to be tongue-in-cheek’.

        1. It still only seems to be half finished. Still its only licence payers money. In the real world whoever in the BBC who was in charge of this failed project would have been fired long ago

      2. £87m for buildings that don’t have rear walls or roofs? The builders must be laughing all the way to the bank.

      1. Found a headless dead hare this morning, (insert sad emoticon).
        Found a drowned rat, not so sad.

          3. The head must be really tasty, our cat would bring any number of headless rabbits and squirrels through the catflap and deposit them on the kitchen floor. Disembowelled magpies a speciality.

          4. When my parents bought their cottage near Lymington in 1959 they inherited a couple who lived down the road from the previous owners: they were Old Lane, who helped in the garden once a week, and his wife who was an excellent cook who came and cooked lunch twice week for my parents. Mrs Lane’s jugged hare served with red current jelly and dark thick gravy was absolutely delicious once one had got used to the gamey strength of its flavour.

          5. I’ve always enjoyed eating hare & rabbit. When I was a student plenty of roadkill subsidised the domestic budget.

          1. My last (and only) hare was on February 22, 1961.

            I can’t forget it since it was my 10th birthday Dad came home with one that had been shot by a friend. He was utterly clueless about most things and it was pitiful to watch him struggle to skin, gut and clean the bloody thing! The house stank like a pigsty that had been infected with dysentery. Mum, my brothers and I were rushing back-and-forth to the bog to throw up! Eventually he cut it up, put it in a pan and stewed it. It was revolting and I’m certain it was rotten. If not it tasted as if it were. Only he could eat it and I’m convinced that was only through bravado (“I’ll show ’em!”).

            He never brought another one home.

            Yes, I know the way to prepare and serve hare is to throw away the water from the first boiling and then add wine to “jug” it. But that experience put me off for life. I’ve had similar episodes with the dreaded rabbit—which is also off the menu—too.

          2. “My” hare reappeared this week in very good condition. With a bit of luck the others will join him. I enjoy watching them “boxing” in Spring, and the leverets are absolutely delightful. They hunker down, completely motionless and convinced that you can’t see them.

          3. Walking back to Wooler from a swim at Happy Valley when I was on leave from the Army, I found a very recent road kill hare and took it home with me.
            Mam was delighted.
            And it tasted good.

          4. The last one I had was one that a friend had shot. He gave it to me unpaunched, so to avoid the stink in the house I took it down to a local beach where I slit its belly and shook out the gut. Then I set to cleaning the lungs etc out and skinning it, using a handy anti-tank block that happened to be nearby, right on the edge of the falling tide, as a table. It was winter and I had the beach almost to myself apart from a distant dog-walker. As I worked, the dog walker became less distant.

            Now a hare holds a lot of blood and salt water is very good at spreading blood out. By the time I’d finished a few minutes later I was standing amidst a large and speading pool of blood on the very wet sand. It looked like a murder scene, so I shoved the meat into a bag and got back into the car before the dog walker got to the site in case she called in the authorities.

            The most memorable hare I had was one I shot the day England won the world cup on land where me and my school-mates really shouldn’t have been at the time. Had that one for Sunday dinner next day.

            Used to have hare quite often as a child. The first time I had venison, as an adult, the flavour reminded me of hare, to the extent that I took to nick-naming deer meat ‘long-legged hare’.

            Rabbit is the meat of the gods. Love it.

          5. You’re welcome to my rabbit. I can’t stand it.

            Last Christmas but one, in a restaurant at the top of a mountain in Arctic Sweden (reachable only by ski-lift) I enjoyed a four-course banquet that featured: raw Arctic char carpaccio, ptarmigan breast slices in a soup, and roast haunch of moose. It was delicious.

    1. Behind the scenes, EU countries were also concerned over how to react should Israel take the plan as a green light to annex illegal settlements on the West Bank which Trump has suggested should be recognised as under Israeli sovereignty.

      “There is an EU position we have expressed previously stressing opposition to annexation and consequences if they do so,” one European diplomat said. “But it is fair to say there is no consensus on what those consequences could be.”

      “I will do such things — what they are, yet I know not: but they shall be the terrors of the earth.”
      — King Lear
      ;¬)

      1. Well the UN has repeatedly passed resolutions requesting that Israel quite the Left Bank and stops illegally decanting arabs from their houses.

        1. The UN would almost certainly pass resolutions to have all the territory of Israel handed over to the Arabs.
          These resolutions would be vetoed.

          The UN is corruption central. Trump could do the world a favour and evict it from Manhattan to go somewhere more suited to its activities, Mogadishu or Islamabad.

          1. Please ignore Horace. He is a very nice man, but has a bee in his bonnet about Israelis. It goes back to when he was a teenager. He had a crush on a very attractive Jewish girl, but she wouldn’t go out with him because he wasn’t Jewish.
            *JOKE ALERT*

          2. I once dated a Jewish girl who was unbelievably good looking.
            We met at a party and nobody was talking to her, so I plucked up the courage. We chatted for ages, and I commented that I was surprised a boyfriend hadn’t appeared to see me off. She was very smart, very attractive, and said she was pleased to have anyone to chat to as she didn’t have a particular paramour (or words to that effect). She was a great kisser!

            Naturally nothing became of it, and she eventually ended up with a nice Jewish boy her mother approved of.

            I was at school with her two of her cousins and they joked that her looks were her worst enemy, because everyone assumed she must have lots of boyfriends and as a result nobody tried. They were very impressed that I had even approached her let alone had a snog.

          3. I’m impressed, too. I was scared stiff of women until I was thirty-two.
            (Half a century later, I still am).

          5. I don’t disagree. I’m all for leaving the EU (but you know that), the UN, and NATO. I’m unable to think of any satisfactory reason for remaining.
            There was time when the USA was a few years behind with its UN membership contributions.

          6. I’m relying on memory here, but I think the USA held back contributions to make a point about how skewed the system was and how far behind most members were.

      2. Slightly off topic. If William Shakespeare wrote histories of the Kings: John; Richards II and III; and Henries IV, V, VI and VIII; why did he then go against type and concoct a play about a wholly fictitious “King of Britain” in Lear?

        2. Originally a typo. He ran out of Kings and decided to do a play about a Politician, and call it ” Liar “.

  56. We should be wary of our spooks’ complacency about Huawei. Gavin Mortimer. 29 January 2020

    So forgive my scepticism at the breezy assurances we’ve heard in the last 24 hours about how Boris and the boffins at GCHQ have everything under control. Apparently the PM gave the green light to Huawei because Britain’s position is ‘different from any other country, thanks in part to its superior intelligence agencies’. Today’s Daily Telegraph quotes a Whitehall insider boasting: ‘The fact is, GCHQ knows more about Huawei than America’s National Security Agency. We can manage the risk; other countries can’t.’

    Spooks in France of a certain age must have a sense of deja vu after all this British braggadocio. They heard something similar in the 1990s, and while this risk is of a different nature, the confidence of the British PM and his intelligence agencies is the same. We can only hope that this time the confidence is not tragically misplaced and that a quarter of a century from now we will be wondering how we could have been so stupid to welcome an enemy into our midst.

    Yes it’s sobering to think that these are the same twats that dreamed up the Skripal business!

    https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2020/01/we-should-be-wary-of-our-spooks-complacency-about-huawei/

    1. Hubris, hubris hubris. The one characteristic with which a public school guarantees to imbue its pupils.

      1. Yes Horace that is the secret to what happened in Salisbury. It was dreamed up by people who could not conceive that the lower orders would see through their idiot scheme. It’s the Kings New Clothes for the 21st Century!

    3. AS,
      If that johnson chap made that
      “everything under control” crack a pledge then we are in for some heavy duty sh!te.

      1. The EU Parliament does not want British MEPs to display Union Flags, but the Scottish Parliament is quite happy to keep flying the EU flag after 31st January. A bit one-sided?

        1. Except you don’t. Italy and Greece both got in with fraudulent financial submissions. Hungary takes no notice. Sarkozy had the police round up plane loads of Romanians and send them back, while many places in France just ignore EU regulations if it doesn’t suit them to follow them.

          Britain failed on two fronts – installing hordes of council staff to enforce EU rules to the letter – and beyond, and not understanding that whatever was done, Britain would not get thrown out because it was one of the very few members that paid for the EU, rather than living on EU handouts.

        1. Präsidentin:
          “JEDERZEIT, UNTER ALLEN UMSTÄNDEN, MÜSSEN REGELN BEACHTET WERDEN!”

          (Exeunt flag-waving Brexiteers to sound of clicking heels, stage left)

      4. The EU’s ill-spirited and graceless Farewell to Britain shows just how vital it was for Britain to leave.

        Let us hope that the whole wretched edifice will now crumble and fall apart.

        And what about the likes of Heseltine and Alastair Campbell – are they beginning yet to putrefy, fester and stink in their own repulsive excremental slime?

          1. Ogga – you are preaching to the converted. You should post on the Guardian and bring its readers round to our points of view.

          2. Evening C,
            Not preaching just, rhetorically voicing my opinion, my fish supper would sue if found dead in the guardian .
            I wager there are far more party first members regardless of consequences if truth be told,than “converted” but then again that is their prerogative.

          3. Just asking – about party first:

            What is more important to you – your belovéd UKIP or actually being free of the EU?

          4. Evening R,
            God, Queen, & Country, in that order, believing in the first, owing allegiance to the second, and true to the third.

          5. R,
            Just telling,
            Beloved is your word not mine.
            The reason I say party first is because that best describes the ongoing voting pattern as in vote tory keep out lab, vote lab keep out tory and all the time this continues the countries enemas grow stronger by the day until…
            Have you seen any reduction under their governance in any of the odious issue plaguing these Isles over the decades, Murder,
            paedophilia,knifing’s, mass uncontrolled immigration, No, me
            neither and we ain’t alone I can assure you.
            Bare in mind I never gave the country away to start with and have had no hand it taking it down.

        2. Good evening Richard

          I think a literary minded Nottler like you would enjoy this little article , and of course the same goes for everyone else ..

          I think poor ALASTAIR Stewart has been attacked unfairly .. by an oafish idiot

          ALASTAIR Stewart today stepped down from a 40 year presenting career after being accused of calling a black man an ape on Twitter.

          The 67-year-old announced he would be quitting after “errors of judgment” in his use of social media.

          The veteran presenter’s decision came three weeks after he was accused of calling a black man an ape on Twitter.

          Stewart and the Twitter user, Martin Shapland, were locked in a debate on social media over the financial relationship between the Crown and the taxpayer when the presenter replied with an obscure quote from Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure.

          In the string of tweets Stewart wrote: “But man, proud man, Dress’d in a little brief authority Most ignorant of what he’s most assur’d – His glassy essence—like an angry ape Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven

          “As makes the angels weep; who, with our spleens, Would all themselves laugh mortal.”

          But Shapland shared the tweet, calling the presenter a “disgrace” for using the quote that appeared to use a racial slur against him.

          He later tweeted: “Just an ITV newsreader referred to me as an ape with the cover of Shakespeare.

          https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10848786/alastair-stewart-step-down-itv/?utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=sunmaintwitter&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1580320961

          “Measure for measure, Alistair is a disgrace.”

          (PS.. this last sentence is not mine)

          1. You can just see the “woke little bas*ard” looking at the innocent tweet and rubbing his hands with glee, thinking: “I don’t need to justify my position. He just used the word “Ape” so that means I win. It does not matter what the context was. In our sick little world of twisted political correctness, I win.”

            A real man would not do this.

          2. Absolutely MM

            One can imagine the strength of the simian grin as the trouble maker realises he has power and has won .. and by unseating a much respected news reader .

            I suspect a similar act of simian bliss was exhibited by the Megain as she realised she was capable of plunging our Royal family into utter turmoil.

          3. There are probably far more intelligent apes about than the odious Martin Shapland.

            (Funnily enough I have this very quotation pinned up on the wall behind and just above my computer screen)

    2. The final act, in the final seconds, by the Irish witch exemplified +++ the reasons in a nutshell for our leaving. We don’t like what you are saying so we’re cutting you off, we have the power to do so. It could not have been bettered.

    6. Nigel Farage could be the best Prime Minister that we never had. Although the next General Election is scheduled for around Thursday 2 May 2024. If we are still tied up in European red tape at that point, and are still paying them for the privilege of letting them sell us their tatty products, then Nigel will attract throngs of people who are incandescent that we voted to leave the EU 8 years ago and still haven’t really done it. Just saying “We have left” is not good enough if nothing actually changes.

      Watching Prime Minister Farage picking up the telephone to the European Commission, the day after being elected, would almost be worth the sacrifice of another 5 years waiting. But not quite. So let us wave our big green shiny behinds at the EU and sail away to a brighter future, sooner rather than later.

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/cb321d0518ca17168892dabb28d09f275cda630436dd291a290ac4017e23a918.jpg

  58. Washing machine owners must re-check for fire risk

    Owners of Hotpoint and Indesit washing machines may have to check again to see whether their model is on a recall list of fire-prone appliances.
    An extra three models have been added to the host of machines that may catch fire owing to an overheating door mechanism.
    It means that 5,000 more machines are being added to the 519,000 the company is trying to locate.

    1. BJ,
      An not to store anything inflammable
      within with a taper hanging out that could ignite also the washing machine has a built in timer so there is no reason for another to be added.

    2. I found out yesterday that my washing machine, a Hotpoint, was on the list and should be turned off. If I have to use it I should not heat the water above 20C.
      I have the choice of a like for like replacement or repair. I needed a magnifying glass to read the model number and serial number as was the colour of the door catch. I am awaiting further information.

      1. They have never really explained what the issue is other than state the door locking mechanism. That would be low voltage and would not be likely to cause a fire. I suspect that the door mechanism is allowing the water heater to come on before their is any water in the machine

      2. Having already had my dryer condemned, and replaced by Hotpoint for not a great deal of money, I confess that my washing machine has a very similar model number, and looks identical to the condemned ones. But it’s safe. Apparently.

        Should the new day’s page ever fail to appear, I may have left washing on overnight…

  59. More detail on BBC Cuts

    There will be a review of the number of BBC News presenters and how they work, she confirmed.

    The BBC did not tell staff where all the cuts will fall, but said changes will also impact senior managers.

    The National Union of Journalists has said 60 jobs will go on radio, with the remainder to fall on TV staff.

    The union has reported that Newsnight will lose 12 posts, halve production of its four weekly in-depth films and reduce spend on investigative journalism, while twelve posts to go at Radio 5 Live.

    t said there will be more sharing of radio bulletins across the BBC, with a loss of 12 posts while five news presenter posts will be cut.

    he 450 staff losses includes 150 at the BBC World Service

      1. The pension fund is separate, OLT! I’m of an age where a redundancy payment and my full pension is the worst they can throw at me so I no longer care.

        I actually sit in the commercial bit that used to be BBC Worldwide though, so cuts on the “public service” side may not affect us anyway.

        1. Depending on your age it might suite you , A big fat redundancy payment most of which will be tax free and probably an almost full BBC pension. The only downside would be you cannot draw the state pension until the state retirement age

          1. I’m less than two years away from state pension age, Bill. And yes, I already qualify for the full BBC pension.

        2. But, ‘our Susan’ could you end up in Brussels.

          The BBC has opted out of Brexit, just like Mr Sad Dick Khant, ……

        1. Indeed. There is no need for three, sometimes four or five pesenters for every sports broadcast. We want to watch the games and matches most of all, not pay money that could be spent on broadcast rights listening to a group of has beens talking about it.

          4. I beat both you and Geoff Graham to it, but I thought it was too rude to say that about someone else’s better half, so I stopped myself. 🙂

          7. On those (railway) lines, the announcements now advise us to ‘take all our personal belongings’ with us; I suspect the former word ‘baggage’ caused too many rude comments.

  62. DT Article in today’s DT

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/01/28/bbc-today-programme-expected-protected-cuts-despite-tony-hall/

    BBC Today programme expected to be protected from cuts despite Tony Hall admission that show is failing in its political journalism

    I can understand and sympathise, up to a point, with the fact that Boris Johnson and his government are not prepared to be grilled by a biased BBC.

    However, before this the Prime Minister declined repeated invitations to be grilled by Andrew Neil who subjected the other party leaders to a grilling and cannot be described as biased.

    It seems astonishing to me that the prime minister managed to get through the election campaign without giving the electorate any real information about his ‘brilliant’ deal apart from repeating over and over again that it was ‘brilliant’. I had hoped that Andrew Neil would have succeeded in getting the nitty- gritty out of Johnson about his deal – but this was clearly what the clandestine Johnson feared and this explains his cowardly evasion.

    1. R,
      Straw clutchers in action, when the issue in question depends mainly on “hope” then the worst cannot come as a surprise.

    2. Boris had only to lose by being interviewed so he didn’t face it. Frankly that wa politically astute.

      Andrew Neil is an excellent interviewer and, as you say he is not biased. He does his homework, maybe he does it or researchers do, who knows but he’s always prepared.

      So many other interviewers are not, presenting the very worst aspects of bias in their blatant support for one perspective.

      Has anyone heard Mandelson once be asked how he could afford an £8 townhouse just afterthe bank he sat on the board of got the contract to bring Greece into the EU?

      1. Or how he got on the board of a bank that debt with governments and not little old ladies?

  63. This just in, a Government spokesman has confirmed that negotiations between the EU and the UK over defence and security matters will be held in secrecy.

    The Chinese Security Service has indicated it will provide regular updates on their web site.

        2. I know that. I was testing really. If the robot doesn’t zapp me, some thick moderator does. All over the place. Such is life..:-)

    4. Evening BA,
      We are witnessing the biggest chinese take away ever.
      The mushrooms will stay in the dark.

    5. Dont worry about that. 5G mobile like any other mobile service cannot be regarded as secure and no classified data would be sent over it

        2. Why does everybody invariably refer to that bloody Clinton woman by her first name?

          Nobody called Bush fils “George” all the time and never mention his surname.

          1. Only because it’s shorter than typing “Hillary Clinton” and if I typed in “Clinton” it could have been either Bill or Hillary.

            Plus, you knew who I meant just from her first name.
            Like Boris.
            Or possibly Nigel.
            Who else would it be??

      2. I would say realism. The “transition period” doesn’t end until 31st December this year. Until then, we are still bound by the ECJ, still paying loads of money to Brussels, not in charge of our fishing grounds (they’ve just set quotas without any input from us) and still aligned to EU rules (remember, all EU legislation was incorporated into our law).

    2. To rejoin the EU, the UK would have to sign up to the complete deal e.g. Schengen, the Euro etc. Not to mention the fact that our contributions would be much higher than they are now. Would British voters agree to this?

          1. That would be a fight worth seeing in the cool light of dawn. The Germans and the French flapping their handbags at each other over which language had primacy.

          3. Ah well, perhaps you can act as our interpreter. Just translate ‘Fúck off’ into German.

          9. And make all the Swedes, Finns, Spaniards, Portuguese, Germans, Italians, and the rest learn Frog?

          13. I do hope so.
            All the Anglophone countries will react badly to that.
            USA, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand and to a lesser extent, South Africa, India, Pakistan, Zimbabwe etc etc.
            The Commonwealth, plus USA, has English as a first or second language and the EU has no single language that even gets close to English on a world-wide basis..

          14. The Chinese (ah choo!) have English as their first foreign language, which helps make English the most widely spoken second language world-wide.

      2. Evening A,
        Being a UKIP supporter / member for many a year,the real UKIP that is not the current NEc pretenders I was elated on the outcome of the referendum but ….
        Keep in mind it was 48% / 52%, then the winning team turned around & cried “victory is our leave it to the tories” up until the 24/6/2016 the best part or the lab/lib/con coalition party politico.s were pro eu rubber stampers.
        Then the may leadership farce, gove,leadsome,johnson played their part & returned to the cabinet, & still many believed, then the 9 month delay, AND THEY STILL BELIEVED.
        This was after seeing may and witnessing 6 years inaction along with the wretch cameron.
        It took British voters on the 24/6/2016 to vote we leave, by the same token it took British voters via these party’s 40 plus years building up a country fit for terrorist, murderers , paedophiles / abusers, to want to live in, and be paid for it.

        Mind being UKIP I would say that wooden eye.

      4. With enough “new arrivals” on our shores, now being registered to vote as soon as they take their water wings off, how could we stop them taking us back in? As we know with the corrupt EU and the fanatical Remainers, they don’t care about right and wrong. They could just announce that we have voted to rejoin, whatever the actual numbers are. I certainly don’t trust them, as globalists ignore voters real wishes as a matter of course.

        The only reason that we are where we are now, is that the powers that be were getting very jumpy about the possibility of someone such as The Brexit Party actually getting into a position of power. Because then they would not be able to stop us leaving. Theresa May has managed to delay us leaving for 3 years already, after both main parties lied and said they would honour the referendum result.

        I will believe that we have actually left the EU when any of their fisherman needs to apply for a licence to fish here, and does not have the “right” to do it under some treaty. Having control of our borders and sending all of those small boats right back to France would also be a good indicator. Having our own courts in charge again should go without saying.

  65. Brexit Party

    All seems to be very quiet in fact pretty much dormant, It was in any case pretty much a virtual party consisting of just Nigel & Richard and the MEP’s

    Will the Brexit Party be fighting the May elections? Who knows at present I suspect not

    2. London to Liverpool (221 miles) by train, standard fare, £334·00

      Göteborg to Stockholm, (294 miles) by train, first class, £45·42

  67. Tommy – by Rudyard Kipling

    I WENT into a public ‘ouse to get a pint o’ beer,
    The publican ‘e up an’ sez, ” We serve no red-coats here.”
    The girls be’ind the bar they laughed an’ giggled fit to die,
    I outs into the street again an’ to myself sez I:
    O it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ ” Tommy, go away ” ;
    But it’s ” Thank you, Mister Atkins,” when the band begins to play
    The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,
    O it’s ” Thank you, Mister Atkins,” when the band begins to play.

    I went into a theatre as sober as could be,
    They gave a drunk civilian room, but ‘adn’t none for me;
    They sent me to the gallery or round the music-‘alls,
    But when it comes to fightin’, Lord! they’ll shove me in the stalls!
    For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ ” Tommy, wait outside “;
    But it’s ” Special train for Atkins ” when the trooper’s on the tide
    The troopship’s on the tide, my boys, the troopship’s on the tide,
    O it’s ” Special train for Atkins ” when the trooper’s on the tide.

    Yes, makin’ mock o’ uniforms that guard you while you sleep
    Is cheaper than them uniforms, an’ they’re starvation cheap.
    An’ hustlin’ drunken soldiers when they’re goin’ large a bit
    Is five times better business than paradin’ in full kit.
    Then it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an` Tommy, ‘ow’s yer soul? ”
    But it’s ” Thin red line of ‘eroes ” when the drums begin to roll
    The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
    O it’s ” Thin red line of ‘eroes, ” when the drums begin to roll.

    We aren’t no thin red ‘eroes, nor we aren’t no blackguards too,
    But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;
    An’ if sometimes our conduck isn’t all your fancy paints,
    Why, single men in barricks don’t grow into plaster saints;
    While it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an` Tommy, fall be’ind,”
    But it’s ” Please to walk in front, sir,” when there’s trouble in the wind
    There’s trouble in the wind, my boys, there’s trouble in the wind,
    O it’s ” Please to walk in front, sir,” when there’s trouble in the wind.

    You talk o’ better food for us, an’ schools, an’ fires, an’ all:
    We’ll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
    Don’t mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
    The Widow’s Uniform is not the soldier-man’s disgrace.
    For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an` Chuck him out, the brute! ”
    But it’s ” Saviour of ‘is country ” when the guns begin to shoot;
    An’ it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ anything you please;
    An ‘Tommy ain’t a bloomin’ fool – you bet that Tommy sees!

  68. Slightly off topic

    Did Alastair Stewart know that his “twitter opponent” was a black bastard black when the exchange happened?

    If not, there is no case to answer and if so, why is it Stewart’s faullt that the “opponent” is too stupid to see that it was nothing to do with his colour?

          1. He was woke-n-up and now has been put to sleep in the Veterinary sense.

            Time to fight back has long passed.

          2. I disagree. Now is the time to fight back, don’t give in, and don’t apologise.
            If they want to take offense, that’s their problem.

    2. There’s a segment of the POC population to whom everything is about race, because they let it dominate their thinking.

    3. Alistair Stewart is an idiot. He shouldn’t have apologised. The other Tw@t was looking to be offended, like a black college friend of mine, years ago.
      We were near Lord’s cricket ground, outside Regents Park, and being familiar with the area, I was pointing out the local landmarks. One those, of course, is London Zoo, which is at the centre of Regents Park, and as soon as I mentioned that fact, he walloped me on the arm. It was completely unexpected and unnecessary. I just blurted out “what the h3ll was that for?” And I realised that he assumed I was making some sly gibe at him. I wasn’t. It hadn’t so much as crossed my mind. But he assumed, and he was wrong. And I certainly didn’t apologise. It was his problem, not mine.
      And it was the Twitter-user’s problem, not Alistair Stewart. More fool him for backing down and resigning.

      1. So what did he think you meant?

        I had an American black lover in Düsseldorf. Sometimes conversations were like walking on broken glass.

  69. A quick question for those who know (and no Googling or Encyclopædia Brittanica-ing).

    How many former Labour prime ministers had the first name, James?

    Clock’s ticking …

          1. James Ramsay MacDonald
            James Harold Wilson
            James Gordon Brown
            Leonard James Callaghan.

      3. I found a little book in a bookshop in Suffolk containing
        Daily Telegraph letters. Someone put them into a
        little book. Not called James btw .

          2. My letters have never featured in any of them. The floor of Christopher Howse’s office is littered with mine! :•(

          6. I wasn’t suggesting he might be.
            I was merely curious to know where he had been arrested.

          3. The offending post(s) were deleted. Try flagging – rather than appealing to a higher authority. With up to 1000 posts a day, the mods cant be expected to see everything that is posted here.

      1. Cheating? Go and stand in the corner!

        Now!

        James Ramsay MacDonald
        James Harold Wilson
        James Callaghan
        James Gordon Brown

          6. Now look here, you. This is my game and I make the rules.

            If you don’t like them I shall take my ball home! OK?

            [Stamps his foot in temper!]

          10. All my names are potentially ‘first names’. Years ago, North of the border, I had frequent dealings with the Borders Health Board Finance Department. Angus Allan and Drummond Gordon had the same problem.

            Meanwhile, I frequently receive emails addressed to Geoff Graham, which begin “Dear Graham”…

          2. Doesn’t make you any the less wrong, George! 🙂
            Apologies for tardy responses – we’ve been eating and Wisting.

          1. Dunno.

            Apparently James Ramsay MacDonald changed his name from James MacDonald Ramsay. He must have been confused (or worried that a Campbell might attack him in the night!)

  70. Britain is 52 hours from Brexit.

    We’re taking back control, we’re regaining our sovereignty and those pesky Europeans can no longer boss us about!

    That’s now the job of the Chinese.

      1. Oh, you don’t get me, I’m out of the EUnion
        You won’t get me, I’m out of the EUnion
        You can’t get me, I’m out of the EUnion
        Very late on Friday, until the day I die.

        PS Gene Pitney once came to tea. A nice, polite young man.

        1. It’s in the post. Apart from Stobart, and United Biscuits (formerly Carr’s), my old employer, John Laing, put Carlisle on the map. it’s a shame that the silly sausage (© Elsie) who climbed Dixon’s Chimney expired there…

          1. Do not forget RAF Carlisle, which probably supplied the infrastructure for eddy etc, after it closed

          2. When I was but a lad there was a butcher’s shop on the west side of Botchergate; a proper butcher’s, with game hanging outside the shop, sides of beef inside and roast pheasants on a tray in the window for 10/6d each. Next to the pheasants was a tray of roast wood pigeons at a more affordable (but not to me) 1/11d.

            We used to call in there to buy pasties for about a tanner each on the walk from the station to Upperby loco shed.

            Those pasties were the best and tastiest I’ve ever had to this day. Beautiful short pastry, a good meat and potato filling beautifully seasoned and peppery – a good whack of white pepper that gave them a real lift.

            Carlisle should be proud of them.

          3. The day that Terry Pratchett learned that he had dementia was when he asked his assistant what had happened to the ‘s’ on his keyboard. He couldn’t find it but was where it always was. Gonna take a close look at you when we three meet again.

          5. Do what i do and call in a professional. Better still…bin the keyboard and get a new one. Have you tried steam cleaning it? Tumble dryer? Not knocking your wine glass over? Just askin’… :o)

  71. Where is all the shouting and screaming about all the food shortages and traffic bottlenecks and lack of drugs in hospitals, that we had rammed down our throats for so long before the election ? Will we just get it on Saturday, like a sudden tornado ?

        2. You’ve just reminded me of something. The waste thingy on my computer (a Mac) used to be called the “trash”, a word I hate. But some time ago (I know not when) it has changed to “bin”, which makes more sense.

  72. From the DT: Helen Brown writes: “I’m the same age as the jollier Caitlin Moran, who encourages more personal choice in the matter, but wrote that: “Lying on a hammock gently finger-combing your Wookie whilst staring up to the sky is one of the great pleasures..”
    I had no idea – can it possibly be true?.

    1. Hmm, will the EU still be around ” one day ” it seems to be sinking,
      who when becoming free askes the shackles to be reconnected
      again. The Jesuits used to whip themselves for the same reasons .

    2. “Latch lifter”?

      For the benefit of any Cumbrians here, I assume you mean “Sneck Lifter”. Except Jennings don’t appear to brew it any more :-((

      1. Evening GG,
        Use to be a dollar / 1/2 quid entrance fee, being a good natured soul it has cost, in the past.

    3. Corporal Jones used to say of our enemies – “They don’t like it up ’em!”

      This does not apply, however, to Mandelson.

    4. Luckily, the (proper) Labour voters, ie those patriots who loved ones fought for UK/GB in WWI and WWII were not willing to be under the heel of Frau Kermits boot

      We must not give in to a Toy Boy (whose wife should be arrested for importuning a minor)
      Meerkat, whose Blood sister is Nicola Krankie, who thinks a lifetime is a few month (EUitus) where referenda are involved
      and the saviours of the world from Luxemburg, who had a Krap Radio stayion anywya

  75. I was in a Pharmacy this afternoon collecting a prescription for an elderly bed-bound friend when a woman walked in and asked if they had any face masks. They hadn’t but expected some in by Saturday. Clearly if there is going to be a national shortage of masks Nottlers might be advised to consider alternatives. It was pure serendipity that this ad popped up on a webpage I was reading:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/22a4bba3bcbf9a3c4def07fe5bd2e09ba10d7da4b7e5e86a77e35feb85cad583.png

    You may laugh but Capt Mainwaring would see the sense of using alternatives….

    1. Far be it for me to ask, but on behalf of the more sensitive Nottlers.

      What kind of sites do you visit where that is the subject under discussion?

    3. Didn’t British soldiers in WWI used to pee on their handkerchiefs and use them as gas masks?

      1. Well the good news is that they will see off the most concentrated form of Chlorine Gas Attack (See the bbc link below)

    5. Far be it for me to ask, but on behalf of the more sensitive Nottlers.

      What kind of sites do you visit where that is the subject under discussion?

      1. As you ask and for the benefit of those of a more sensitive disposition it was the Reuters Link posted below.

        I perhaps should have clarified that in a dire emergency need of an improvised face mask like the one suggested above, I guess its perfectly acceptable to don antimicrobial underwear that has been worn but not washed for up to seven weeks; anything beyond that and one is liable to die of asphyxiation rather than the virus (Although from what i’ve read about the symptoms, the former may be infinitely preferable to the latter)

  76. After reading in the DM about the unfortunate lady who died from choking on her restaurant mixed grill, we could not decide what constitutes a “proper” mixed grill these days, as the meal in question seemed to contain a real mix of ingredients, including both chicken and egg.

    Plus of course, has it, like the “full English” breakfast, changed over time? Example, baked beans never used to be served as part of a proper English breakfast when we left. Apparently they are the norm now.

      1. The old Manchester Pullman used to serve proper breakfasts, complete with a basket of those miniature Hovis loaves to nibble on – in addition to endless toast of course. And a very nice dinner on the return run.

        2. In those early days, just after WWII, British Rail (as it is now) chickens had four legs and and cousins called Bugs

          1. They rode a lot better than the old ones Souther Region had – they would slurp your food everywhere at anything like speed.

        4. I used to do that run as well.

          Buy a regular ticket then go for breakfast and sit in the dining car for the whole trip.

          About two hours from Euston up to Macclesfield seemed to be fast enough in those days

        5. On our honeymoon many years ago, there was a restaurant just outside York called (I think) The Sidings. They had a lovely restaurant in a series of “parked” Pullman coaches with a wonderful menu served by British Rail liveried waiters walking up and down the aisle.

      1. We first ran across the baked bean thing when we were back in England probably 30 odd years ago, but you could substitute for them. Way before the vegan fad took hold.

    3. They are relatively new. If they must be served, they should be cooked until they reduce to a sticky mass. Also, fresh chopped chilies in them make them far more interesting.

      1. In TexMex restaurants, refried beans are a standard part of many dishes. Definitely more of a paste than anything else. Mix all those good spices in however and enjoy the frozen margarita that comes with…

        1. I use kidney beans for my refried beans. Lots of chillies and crushed cumin and coriander seeds and a bit of tomato. Got several pots in the freezer.

      2. Mild curry powder in baked beans with a knob of butter and lots of pepper. ♬Spice up your life♬.

    5. Steak, pork chops, lamb chops, black pudding, sausage & lamb’s liver.

      Beans on breakfast is as you say, fairly recent, but not bad as long as they don’t mix with the egg yolk, but hash browns are a big ‘NO!’ I blame hotels.

      1. I remember having mixed grills in restaurants occasionally, and there was usually gammon as part of it. And sausages and I think a pork chop plus fried potatoes – definitely not chips.

        1. My recollection from 40+ years ago was no vegetables, but perhaps half a fried tomato.

          As time passed, mushrooms and onions arrived and then chips.

          The range of meats lowered. I can’t recall a “proper” mixed grill ever having fried egg.

          1. Where we ‘overwinter’ now in Spain, our Tintent Rally takes over the site restaurant on Christmas day, they have 200+ish covers

            Two years ago, the put out Turkey Dinner with tomatoes and sweetcorn for Xmas dinner

            it was pointed out that Brits but not me have sprouts, carrots etc with it

            At the next social dinner it was a Mixed Gorilla, with sprouts and carrots

            Beware what you say

          2. We were arguing about the fried egg – I seem to remember having one in a grill somewhere, but Jill says meats only.

            Our local (occasional) breakfast dive in addition to the usual eggs (any way you like them of course) and bacon, optional tomatoes and mushrooms, offers the traditional American “ham and eggs”, plus steak and eggs. The latter is ordered quite often, apparently. Amazingly, on their “extended menu”, they list bacon sandwiches. I think I would have to cross examine the waitress before I risked that, though – not quite sure what I would get.

          3. I’m a man of easy tastes.
            Ham, egg ‘n chips
            Steak, mushrooms and chips,
            Sausage, egg and chips, you name it, I’m happy with it.

          6. I support :
            Take all you want, eat all you take flat fee restaurants.

            The local ones make a hefty charge for anything that gets left.

            More power to their elbows.

          7. If you’re in the American South I expect you could order ham steak, ‘Canadian bacon’, breakfast links (sausage), chicken-fried steak, and/or corned beef hash along with side dishes of home-fried (country-style) potatoes, hash brown potatoes, grits, collard greens, beans w/ smoked ham (hocks), and biscuits & gravy.

      2. Hash browns appear to have replaced the nice thick cut slice of crusty bread fried after the bacon, eggs and sausages have been cooked. Breaking the yolks into that slice created a culinary delight.

        2. I had a big fry-up today. I fried bacon, sausages, two eggs and a tin of tomatoes. It was weird eating it with no bread because I’m on a no carb Keto diet.

          It still tasted good though.

          [I keep telling the Yanks that what thy call “Hash Browns” are nothing more than a potato rösti, invented by the Swiss.]

          1. Some years ago I went on a no carbs diet that called for eating masses of protein and fat i.e. meat, eggs, fish and cheese. The weight literally fell off me but without any plant food it became boring. I’m currently reducing my carb intake, including no booze except at the weekend, upping my protein and fat intake but retaining salads, tomatoes etc. I definitely feel less bloated and my belt has moved a notch and a bit after a couple of weeks. My wife and I have a big party coming up in April and I want one of my suits to fit comfortably.

          2. Oh, I’ve not given up all veg, only starchy root veg. I still eat all salads and leafy vegetables including cauliflower and broccoli.

            Apparently the maxim is: most of the carb content of veg stays underground.

          3. We’re eating plenty of salad and I made a tasty cauliflower cheese with three cheeses that fed us for two days. I do not think I’m being as disciplined as you but I have to balance my needs with those of my wife. It’s a plus that she enjoys salad whenever it’s offered.

      3. Would never eat black pudding, don’t even know what it is
        and don’t want to know and I’m not a veggie or vegan.

          1. Why would anyone eat that.
            I eat offal and game meats rather a lot but that sounds pretty vile.

          5. Aethefled – I have never touched black pudding either. Those who choose to eat it are mentally unbalanced. They try to pretend all sorts of reasons why it is okay, but any thinking reasoning being knows that something is wrong inside of their heads.

            Of all the things that can be eaten these days, choosing to eat congealed animal blood is disturbing. Give me a sausage, where you don’t know what you are eating, any day of the week. 🙂

          7. I get mine from a local butcher – he will let you watch him make them if the fancy takes you. 🙂

            I ordered some steak from him and he brought in 1/4 of a cow and chopped it right off of it in front of me. He is a good man that one.

          8. Living in Sweden (Swedish sausages are terrible) I have to make my own English butcher-style sausages, but no crap goes in them.

            I mince up a mix of pork shoulder and belly, mix it with rusk and a bit of water, then season with salt, black pepper and sage (and sometimes some tomato puree). Next I put it all back through the mincer. I stuff this in either lamb’s casings or collagen ones; sometimes I just form them into patties.

          9. Strange things, sausages.
            I worked in a family run butchers, their sausages contained lots of trimmings, but all very good stuff; beef and pork.
            When cooked they hardly changed shape or size and were delicious.

            Commercial stuff, no thank you!

            I worked in an abbatoir where the tails, lips, ears, nostils and arseholes were shipped away for “processing”.

            Still, what the eye didn’t see, the stomach won’t reject.

          10. The Chinese imported the trimmings from our pigs. The pig heart valves were harvested for human heart operations in the UK. The saying was that the only thing not used was the pig’s squeak.

          11. I often wonder if there’s anything approaching real meat in a heavily advertised commercial brand of sausages. I’ve discovered my local butcher’s Old English recipe sausage/sausage meat and it is a very good recipe with a nice blend of black pepper and other spices.

          14. Ah, yes. I occasionally treat myself to a fish and chips lunch at the adjacent shop – as I did yesterday.

          16. ♫ “English lords eat fish and chips,
            When dining in their castles
            But we eat pigs’ ears, tails and lips
            And rissoles of arseholes.” ♫

          17. Your last line reminds me of the occasions I spent at the GPO’s training school at Bletchley Park. A couple of times a week they would have what the cooks called a Vienna Steak on the menu. It was a ‘posh’ name for a rissole created from the left over meat from previous days. The fact that this concoction really did resemble a Richard the Third on a plate was at first a bit off-putting but it tasted quite good.

          18. I always know what’s in my sausages 😉
            I buy them from a local farm shop and they are basically
            entirely pork with some rusk and spices.
            I do like wild boar sausages, venison sausages, Cumberland sausage
            and old English pork sausages. I think the concealed blood
            thing appeals to the masculine Neolithic thing with men.
            It’s even worse in some countries who drink pigs blood as soup .

          21. This old moggy is not overly fond of fresh cream but turn it very cold, especially the way Italians do it, now that’s a very different story.

          22. My Colchester local butchers sells Dragon sausages – not sure if they contain Welsh or Chinese meat but they sure are spicy.

          23. There is Guntons deli in Colchester who sell lots
            of nice sausages amongst other things such as
            cheeses.

          25. They wrap them in waxed paper too, not all shops
            do that. I like their cake selection too and pickles .

          26. Aethefled – I have never touched black pudding either. Those who choose to eat it are mentally unbalanced. They try to pretend all sorts of reasons why it is okay, but any thinking reasoning being knows that something is wrong inside of their heads.

            Of all the things that can be eaten these days, choosing to eat congealed animal blood is disturbing. Give me a sausage, where you don’t know what you are eating, any day of the week. 🙂

          1. When I was a child, the look of it just put me off, and my mother being a good southern girl would have nothing to do with them.

        1. Cue the old Yankee joke: Why do Brits drink warm beer? Because Lucas makes their refrigerators.

          Incidentally, back in the days when Jag imported the XJ6, thy were renowned for engine troubles – oil and water leaks, excessive fuel consumption, failing ignition systems, etc. But people loved to drive them so there were enterprising companies who would fix them: remove the Jag engine/gearbox and replace with a Chevy V8 and associated ‘box, plus use the Chevy ignition system. Plenty of room in the engine bay to do that.

          Solved all the problems, and added a lot of power – Chevy had worked out how to meet pollution standards and still deliver some oomph, plus the conversion lightened the car by about 200 lbs.

  80. Now that we have left the EU we will miss all that tedious news we got day in day out from the EU Parliament?

    I mean all those in depth updates about the EU targets and directives that were imposed on us got to be a bit of a bore what with all the information about where the EU was heading, the EU army, enlargement and where all our money was being spent.

    Still never mind we can forget all that now.

    But that will now at least leave more news time for informative climate change scrutiny and in depth forensic analysis of Trumps impeachment that never made it onto our tv screens before.

    2. Sunspot activity is increasing ! Hot Summer and mild Winter is apparently not a good thing for the U.K.

          2. It’s to do with the theory that an decrease in solar activity affects the strength of the Earth’s magnetic field, which decreases the number of cosmic rays reaching the surface that lead to additional low-level cloud formation (the Svensmark Effect) There have been several scientific papers on the subject over the past 20 years or so, although experiments at CERN have proved inconclusive to date.

  81. How These British Academics Helped Russia Deny War Crimes At The UN. Chris York. 29/01/2020

    A European diplomat told HuffPost UK: “There is wide and serious concern about the extent to which academics in the WGSPM appear to be pursuing issues which so closely overlay with Russian lies and propaganda, particularly on the use of chemical weapons in Syria.

    “Russia appears to be using these academics to amplify and bolster their own disinformation, particularly to undermine the OPCW and divert attention from their own activities.

    “It is unclear whether these academics are unwittingly and naively acting as agents of propaganda for the Russians – or they actively support Russian misinformation.

    “Either way, it is difficult to see how their involvement with WGSPM is compatible with having any official role in academia.”

    Hmmm. Plenty of innuendo and threats about losing their jobs there! That and a full page in the Huffington Post tells you they are onto something! Lol! The truth is that the White Helmets did stage this “Chemical Attack” and murdered the victims in the most appalling way by suffocating them with chlorine. This is unsurprising, they have always been Jihadists or they would never have been allowed to operate in their territory! That the UK financed supplied and equipped them shows how deep their involvement was in overthrowing the Syrian Government!

    https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/the-useful-idiots_uk_5e2b107ac5b67d8874b0dd9d

    1. I don’t know if this has been said below, as I have just come in from the world outside. There was a video on youtube a few months ago of camera phone footage of what looked like a big conference room with lots of people wandering about. There were some people sat behind tables talking and many mats and carpets all over the floor. I’d estimate between 150 – 200 people sitting and standing in the room.

      There were also a group of 30 or so children aged 6-12 years old and they were playing a game. It was lying down on the floor, shouting and crying and rolling around. Then standing and rubbing their eyes and staggering about. Those who were most convincing were given praise by the men who were observing them closely. They were being trained to be victims of a fake chemical attack so that they would look good for the cameras and foreign media. They were even pouring water over each others heads and faces.

      Most of the people in the room were just chatting to each other and took no notice. This is an indication of the level of deception that is being used against us. They did not even care that someone was openly filming what they were doing on their phone.

    1. So, so, good. Where do i get Dolly one of those cars? Dolly will need the flying version with optional missiles to get the neighbours cat and the Magpies.

  83. It is now 61 years since William Connor (“Cassandra” of the Daily Mirror) was sued for defamation and libel by the flamboyant pianist, Władziu (Walter) Valentino “Lee” Liberace, for what was, in reality, a very accurate description of the individual that had been published in his weekly column. Connor wrote:

    “He [Liberace] is the summit of sex, the pinnacle of masculine, feminine and neuter: everything that he, she or it can ever want. This deadly, winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium-plated, scent-impregnated, luminous, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavoured, mincing, ice-covered heap of mother love, is the biggest sentimental vomit of all time.”

    Quite mild stuff by today’s “standards”. I can’t help wondering what Cassandra would have made of today’s snowflake brigade and of those who cannot decide if they are male, female, eunuch, “transsex”, bog-standard queer, ladyboys or just simply confused. I’d wager that if he’d not been reined in by his court case, he would have had a field day.

      1. That was from a time when even the Daily Mirror had some excellent journalists. Peter Wilson was the best sports reporter of his time.

      1. Liberace was successful in the action and was awarded £8,000. The award was the largest libel settlement for any case in British legal history to that date. In court Liberace denied he was gay stating “I am against the practice because it offends convention and it offends society”.

        Following his award for damages, Liberace joked in a telegram that “I cried all the way to the bank”. Liberace continued to maintain that he was not a homosexual throughout his life.

        Liberace was involved in further litigation in 1982 when Scott Thorson, Liberace’s 22-year-old former chauffeur sued the pianist for $113 million in palimony after he was let go by Liberace. Liberace again denied that he was homosexual and, during court depositions in 1984, he insisted that Thorson was never his lover. The case was settled out of court in 1986.

        In the immortal words of Mandy Rice-Davies: “Well he would, wouldn’t he?”

        No smoke without fire. The lying poofter cheated eight grand out of the Mirror and “laughed all the way to the bank.”

        1. My ex’s neighbour had a son who did ironing for a living, spoke like Larry Grayson, and lived with another bloke. But (according to his Mum, who he loved), he wasn’t gay. We refer to him a “Not Gay Gary”…

          I should add that I have friends of that persuasion, but at least, they’re honest about it.

          1. I have a number of homosexual and lesbian friends and the thing that marks them all out when you meet them is …

            … they are all normal.

            No effected voices or forever telling you about their proclivities. They lead private lives and bother no one. They think all the LBGT bollocks is the same as we view it … bollocks.

          2. Agreed up to a point, Lord Copper.

            My lesbian sister and her girlfriend used to take a sadistic delight in overtly sexual activities in front of my father, just to annoy/embarrass him.

            They were always stroking, kissing and cuddling, just becaue they enjoyed the effect it had on him.
            I never forgave her.

          3. I experienced that in a queue at NWF – my only reaction was, “why?”; I can only conclude it was done to annoy/embarrass those behind them in the queue.

        2. But he finally came out – at which point the Mirror should have sued him and he should have faced action for perjury.

          Cassandra’s descriptive phrase, was it “everything he, she or it could ever want”? Something like that.

  85. Grenfell Tower fire: Firms want immunity over evidence

    Firms involved in the refurbishment of Grenfell Tower have asked the public inquiry into the fire for a guarantee that anything they say in the hearings will not be used for any prosecution.
    They want a guarantee from Attorney General Geoffrey Cox that they will be protected when they give evidence.

    Experts have previously said the work failed to meet building regulations.
    Representatives from organisations including cladding company Harley Facades, building contractor Rydon and the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation made the application for the guarantee.

    1. If allowed, the precedent will be used by grooming gangs from………………well most of UK

      1. Quite.

        Are they saying “we’ll only tell the truth if the truth doesn’t bite us”?

        Of course they are, the bastards.

        I hope they get sued into bankruptcy and that all the politicians and bureaucrats who connived with them get maximum collateral damage.

    2. Could you imagine a criminal doing that? Oh wait, it’s called giving Queen’s Evidence.

      1. The panels themselves where qualified under the EU CE marking directive & there was a Signed DofC for them. It clearly said the panels were flammable so they should never have been specified

    1. After a busy day, I just watched WHITEHOUSE FARM on ITV HUB (catch-up TV) and am now off to bed. Good night Peddy – and Missy.

      1. My busy day included a visit to the Turkish barber. Now I’m off to shower to get rid of the bits before getting into bed.

        Buenas noches, amigo.

  88. Q. Why do Socialists hang around in threes?

    A. So there is one who can read, one who can write, and one party member to keep an eye on the two intellectuals.

    1. I lived in Bermanam for five years. I once mentioned to a long life Lyboir voter that eventually they would promote decriminilastion of cannabiz.. Of course he rubbished me. Him being a worker. In a publicly funded house with a wife and two kidz. Their neighbours probs have a different accent now.

  89. Two days To Brexit Day

    Is Heathrow prepared for the rush of Luvies that said they would leave the UK if we left the EU. Lilly Allen has gone very quiet surely she is not intended to stay and where the Crisp man. Has he o his bags packed ?

  90. The Saxon daughter of Alfred of Wessex, first Queen of England
    ( modestly said 🙂 does believe we need a new patron saint after Friday .
    She briefly pondered upon Thomas Becket and St Edward the Confessor.
    She then decided upon St Edmund, he that was was first to fly beneath
    The flag of a united England. King, and martyr.
    Usurped by George thanks to Richard the Lionheart who adopted George
    as our patron saint whilst gallivatìng around the Middle East
    with expensive and grandstanding crusades. ST Edmund is also
    related to the Saxon Queen… just saying, not bragging in the slightest;)
    England should dump the Turkish patron saint and have another one
    regardless of the macho Dragon skaying .

      1. Such imagination and acerbic wit .

        PS the Scots, Welsh and Irish have wholly suitable patron saints 😉

        1. How Harold died is a thorny one and can get some people quite animated. I prefer the account of how his Housecarls met their end:

          “Without their King the English were gradually ground down by the Norman archers and repeated cavalry charges. As the part-time soldiers of the fyrd withdrew into the darkness one of the great unsung chapters of our military history took place.

          With the English King dead the day was lost but a group of English warriors – the Kings feared Housecarls – refused to yield and refused to leave the battlefield. They rallied at a place on the battlefield known as Malfosse and in a desperate last stand caused such a huge slaughter among the Norman troops that once again the outcome of the battle hung in the balance. At the very end they were overcome, and they died to a man around the King’s personal banner – “The Fighting Man.””

          As for Harold himself, opinion is divided: 🙂

          “The notion that Harold died by an arrow to the eye is a popular belief today, but this historical legend is subject to much scholarly debate. A Norman account of the battle, Carmen de Hastingae Proelio (“Song of the Battle of Hastings”), said to have been written shortly after the battle by Guy, Bishop of Amiens, says that Harold was killed by four knights, probably including Duke William, and his body dismembered. Later accounts reflect one or both of these two versions.

          Harold’s death depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry, reflecting the tradition that Harold was killed by an arrow in the eye. A figure is depicted gripping an arrow that has struck his eye, but some historians have questioned whether this man is intended to be Harold or if Harold is intended as the next figure lying to the right almost supine, being mutilated beneath a horse’s hooves.

          Etchings made of the Tapestry in the 1730s show the standing figure with differing objects. Benoît’s 1729 sketch shows only a dotted line indicating stitch marks without any indication of fletching, whereas all other arrows in the Tapestry are fletched.”

          1. Oi! I drink real ale (when I get the chance) and I am beardless. Real Ale is brain food. That fizzy, frozen, chemical-laden cat’s piss called “lager” is brain destroying! :•)

          3. Yes I know you drink real ale, that is why I re-wrote the first line and changed it to “some people” instead of “people with beards who drink real ale.”

            I was actually thinking of some of my drinking companions from “back in the day” who introduced me to a brew called “Old Speckled Hen.” That was a titanic hangover that manifested itself the day after that. That was the last time that two of my friends needed to carry me on the way home. Normally I was the one carrying them. 🙂

          4. Proper Belgian lagers are an acceptable alternative if real ale isn’t available.

            I prefer bottled leffe etc, to bottled fizzy English beers/ales.

      2. Poor Harold. Those Normans won because of cheating
        and we’ve been under the Norman yolk ever since.
        If Harold have won We’d have had a less French influence
        and more Dutch / German .

        1. I blame Harald Hardrada and Tostig for the defeat.
          The English army were absolutely knackered after the forced march from Stamford Bridge.

          1. If Harold Godwinson had had a few Chelsea supporters on his side he would have kicked Billy the Bastard’s arse back to where he came from.😎

        2. If the Norman conquest hadn’t happened I wonder what the two villages, Layer-de-la-Haye and Layer Breton (Hare and Hounds is a good pub in the latter village) just up the road from where I live would now be called?

          1. I’ve always wondered why Layer- De – la Haye
            had such a Norman name. It’s always breezy
            on Layer Breton causeway when duck watching
            but at least the new reserve centre does a good
            bacon, egg and sausage sandwich.

          2. So, you’re a visitor to the locality. I’ll keep an eye out for your entourage.😎

          3. Cracked open an entire box of eggs last weekend
            and they were all double yolks, lots of twin babies were used
            In that omelette.

          4. I’ve had that experience, I once cracked seven in succession with double yokes. It must be 50+ years ago.

            Very, very strange.

            I doubt I’ve seen more than half a dozen in total since, and never more than one at a time.

    3. Leave George alone. He’s the left hand side of the Alfa Romeo badge…

      Though I’m inclined to agree that Edmund would be a preferable Patron Saint than George. The Turk.

      1. He can also fight Dragons. I shall send a petition
        to parliament forthwith asking that Edmund become
        our Patron Saint ( nothing to do with him coming
        from the same area as I, no personal interest whatsoever;)

        1. I lived in Thetford for 10 years, and worked in (or out of) Bury. I’ve also had several splendid holidays in Turkey, but I would support any move to adopt Edmund as our Patron Saint. I’m even prepared to forgive Lovejoy for walking through the Abbey Gatehouse and instantly ending up outside Moyses Hall…

          1. Yes the geography was a wee bit whìffy,
            but he looked cool with that flowing hair and
            leather jacket thrown over one shoulder.
            Even the car parks were empty.
            I am glad you support Edmond as possible replacement
            of patron saint .

          4. Early episodes had the Dog and Partridge as Lovejoy’s local. I was a regular visitor there on Friday.lunchtimes. Later. the Linden Tree was the Friday lunchtime hostelry of choice.

          5. I wonder if any regulars were paid as extras and got
            free beer for doing so. Lavenham was featured a lot too.

          6. I remember as an 18 yo watching Witchfinder General being filmed in Lavenham’s town square. I was working in Lavenham exchange and two of us wandered down, watched the filming of the crowd scene, I think it was in front of the Guild Hall, and then had a quick pint in the Swan Hotel before returning to work. Fine old town but very busy these days.

          7. Lavenham is very beautiful but always very busy,
            I always mean to visit Richard de Vere’ s house but it seems
            to always be closed .

          8. Curiously the cellars of the Abbey appear to have extended beneath the Angel Hotel and up part of Abbeygate Street.

            When designing the kitchens and other works for Gastrono-ME, an all day brunch restaurant at the junction of Abbeygate and Baxter Streets, I found mediaeval flint walling and stone quoin work in the basement. This almost certainly was connected to the Abbey.

            There is now a Cocktail bar in the stone vaults beneath the Angel Hotel. The vaults are quadrupartite and makes a wonderful venue for parties.

  91. Evening, all. Just popping in while I wait for the racing results. My horse was due to run at Hereford today, but the meeting was off and he wasn’t declared anyway. His trainer gave him a flu jab after his last run, so why he made any entries (which cost money!) for a couple of weeks I can’t fathom!

  93. ” McDonald’s shuts 300 restaurants in China as coronavirus spreads

    Fast food chain sets up epidemic task force for virus, which has killed 132 people”

    They got found out, did they ? I had a feeling it came from one their Muckey Macs in the first place.

  94. Wee Nicola Sturgeon, if you want Scottish freedom you can’t have
    The Shetlands or it’s North Sea oil, it belongs to the Queen

    1. How is that, exactly? The Queen owns flotsam and jetsam between high and low tide, but little else other than personal residences Balmoral and Sandringham. Everything else she has the use of, Buckingham Palace etc.as would any UK monarch.

      1. Flotsam is still owned by the original owner, because it arrives by accident. Jetsam belongs to whoever finds it.

        1. Flotsam is the “owners” unless it has been the subject of an insurance claim in which case it then belongs to the insurer.

          1. Generally, but that refers to the land, not the stuff that’s been washed up onto it. I might own a field (I don’t), but it doesn’t mean that if somebody loses a mattress off the back of a passing wagon in a storm and it finishes up in my field that it’s my mattress.

          2. Actually, if you build a house on someone else’s land, they own the house? It’s complicated.
            I don’t know enough and so I’m going to retire from the field

        1. Yes, I forgot. She could have them for dinner, but the Poles have eaten a lot of them.

    1. Also known as: “My friends are utterly useless with no discernible talent or ability. On their own in the real world they would starve to death. So we need to create a government job paying them £70,000 with a pension that will look after them for life. We will get those taxpayers who actually can work for a living to fund it.”

      2. Years back, there was a pretty tough exam to enter the Civil Service. No idea what they do now.

        1. JtL,
          Many of the old sayings
          now cast aside there is one that stands tall and is abided by ALL the political fraternity that is,
          it ain’t what you know it’s who you know.
          As at this moment in time we have the same old players, reshuffled.

        2. The Chinese used to have an effective screening, I believe. Left in a room with paper, pen and ink. You just had to write down everything you knew.

          1. That is exactly what my first job interview was about. Angelis Taverna. I got the job. 16 years of age from a Cypriot and then he knew exactly who to direct his rage to every night between 8pm and 9.30 pm. This happened every night. We had regular customers just to watch the Show. And the git limited staff to £2 a night for tips and pocketed the rest. His wife was a lazy old cow as well and when i was running the kitchen and the restaurant on Tuesdays and Thursdays when she was supposed to come down at 8.30pm she was invariably late. The fuckers also made me work a 12 hour shift for forgetting to bill a customer for a bottle of crappy Greek wine.

        3. I said “government job” not civil servant. 🙂

          These days as long as you can be corrupted, or have been corrupted already, then you will find yourself drifting to the top. They cannot allow talented and honest people to rise up the ranks, as they would whistle-blow and reveal what these politicians are doing.

          So as long as you are bent then you will do well. As we have seen, there are more than a few people who will sell their souls for a few shiny coins in their pockets.

          That is me now off for the night. 🙂

    1. I’m surprised that an enterprising Brit hasn’t lowered all the rest and left our flag flying!

    2. He looks like a bitter and twisted man, to allow a nations flag to touch the ground in that way. He has “Remainer” or “EU employee” written all over him.

      Suck it up child. We are leaving. One way or the other.

  97. I do not think that black people are apes or monkeys – but do black people think they are? If not why do they think it is racist to mention monkeys or apes even in a Shakespearean context?

    When Shylock’s daughter, Jessica, stole and then sold the ring that he had been given by his wife Leah he was all the more distressed to discover that she had sold it in order to buy a monkey. Shylock wailed that he would not have parted with that ring for a ‘wilderness of monkeys’! I had no idea that he was alluding to black people and being a racist.

    1. Shakespeare was not alluding to black people nor was he being racist. The ring enters the play when Tubal in twisting the knife as to Jessica’s elopement with Shylock’s gold alludes to it thus;

      TUBAL

      One of them showed me a ring that he had of your daughter for a monkey.

      SHYLOCK

      Out upon her! Thou torturest me, Tubal. It was my turquoise. I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor. I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys.

      The monkey is of course real and of little value in comparison to the ring which is of great emotional worth to Shylock as it was a gift from his wife. In addition to this, playwrights are free to invent any foibles for their characters that enhance the story line, they are not reflections of the authors own character!

      2. Good evening Minty

        Unlike you not to detect irony. Of course I knew he was not alluding to black people.

      3. Good evening Minty

        Unlike you not to detect irony. Of course I knew he was not alluding to black people.

    1. Good morning Geoff

      Thank you for for everything .. Hope you are well rested this morning.. sort of damp day to snuggle back into bed.. my dogs are rather damp after their early morning trot around the garden shrubs, cocking legs!

      1. Morning Belle. I echo your sentiments but I don’t think Geoff will be emulating your dogs….

        1. Yo gg

          Oi are fine

          The weather is bucking up, nights are not freezing.

          Having a Brexit Party today

          1. Have a great time.
            I have been invited to one tomorrow and one on Saturday;
            the Saturday one starts at midday and is not due to
            finish!! :-))

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