Wednesday 5 August: A superfluity of archdeacons while churches are emptied even of pews

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/08/04/lettersa-superfluity-archdeacons-churches-emptied-even-pews/

576 thoughts on “Wednesday 5 August: A superfluity of archdeacons while churches are emptied even of pews”

      1. Far from it, Johnny. We haven’t heard from Grizzly, Phallick Alec, Uncle Bill, Rastus, etc. yet.

    1. Thank goodness Geoff is OK! Thank you Mr MLE, Sir, for all you do to make our days happier.

  3. ‘Morning All

    Strolls in nonchalantly,avoiding the unseemly rush……………

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/204d1c1f2c459d6233a3a1c2bb8b66fe0aabbe6b6e9239d28db770ae4b90af71.jpg

    Meanwhile those that stood with our troops are abandoned to their fate

    “Dozens of Afghan interpreters and translators live in fear of their lives despite a pledge made two year ago

    Gavin Williamson had promised to relocate up to 50 men who’d been the ‘eyes and ears’ of the British military

    Yet, as the Mail revealed last week, only two interpreters have been granted visas under the hard-won policy”

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8593569/The-48-tales-raw-courage-brave-Afghan-interpreters-promised-sanctuary-here.html
    Government “pledge” my arse,just another lying soundbite for the MSM amid a thousand others,these people disgust me

    1. These welcomed-in fifth columnists in their black bullet-proof jackets and their black flags and their fists in the air, patrolling the streets for white privilege, while those that offered their lives protecting the nation and its allies are left to the tender mercies of Erdogan’s new caliphate. How many Christians are asylum seekers? Even the Archbishop of Mosul, in fear for his life, was denied a visa because he was considered a threat that he might claim asylum “on the balance of probabilities”.

      They call this justice in London. Why should I any longer have anything but contempt for the law that is made there?

    2. Would you buy a used car from Williamson? Personally I wouldn’t even think about setting foot on his forecourt. The fact that the wide boy is still a government minister is farcical.

      ‘Morning, Rik.

    3. These welcomed-in fifth columnists in their black bullet-proof jackets and their black flags and their fists in the air, patrolling the streets for white privilege, while those that offered their lives protecting the nation and its allies are left to the tender mercies of Erdogan’s new caliphate. How many Christians are asylum seekers? Even the Archbishop of Mosul, in fear for his life, was denied a visa because he was considered a threat that he might claim asylum “on the balance of probabilities”.

      They call this justice in London. Why should I any longer have anything but contempt for the law that is made there?

      1. Those parading in bullet proof jackets are merely demonstrating the black problem in London – that they stab one another.

        At least they’re acknowledging the problem.

  4. Good Morning, Everyone.

    Here is today’s No. 10 communique, delivered at sparrowfart by a bleary eyed Prime Minister. As he shoved it into my hand, he muttered something about “having been kept up all night by a little shiite”. Which proves that the modern Conservative party is truly vibrant and represents twenty first century Britain in all its thrilling diversity.

    Anyway, here are is the new rules advice which Bozza and Mattie concocted over a glass of red wine while chilling out on the sofa.

    1. From 10.00 am on Wednesday, all under 25 year olds identifying as being without a cervix must wear a rainbow mask around the groin area; however, this only applies if they live in Littlehampton or Penistone.

    There will be an exemption for those who can provide a doctor’s certificate confirming that they only have one leg.

    2. On Monday, 10th. August, there will a special offer for all Jews and Muslims eating pork chops for lunch. Each household will be given £10 to offset the cost. (Ha! That got you going – just kidding. You’ll only get a fiver.)

    3. When grandchildren visit over 60 year olds after 1.00 pm on any weekday, they must be marched through to the kitchen and put through the 90° programme in the washing machine: unless you live in a hard water area in which case they must first be dunked in Cillit Bang.

    4. From 16th. August, health and safety officers will have powers to raid your homes if they have information that you are stacking your panic bought bog rolls in a manner likely to endanger life.

    5. You, the Great British Public, have nobly shown your commitment to fighting this terrible disease by using marmalade sparingly for your breakfast. We have listened to your suggestions, and you will now be allowed to spread wholemeal – but not white – toast with chunky as well as fine cut marmalade, though only in orange flavour. It is hoped that by September 1st. you will be allowed to use Three Fruit as well, but that policy is currently under review and this easing of restrictions can only be confirmed if the plebs stop going to Bournemouth on sunny days.

    6. More measures will be taken when Mattie has digested his cold sausage sandwich – which helped to mop up his bottle of Chateau Mildenhall last night – and we can think of something suitably daft and inconvenient.

    Keep Safe. Keep Scared. Keep Snitching.

    1. One hundred plus upvotes Annie. What are the current regulations on grapefruit marmalade? I have a friend who prefers this to orange marmalade but the regulations you quoted leave her in a quandry!

      :-))

      1. Grapefruit marmalade? Yummy but Doctor’s orders are to stay off grapefruit if you’re taking statins, Elsie.😕

        1. Statins? Wouldn’t touch them with a bargepole, Korky.

          (And good to see you making a few more appearance here from time to time).

          PS – Have decided to freeze the blackberries. Tonight’s meal will be courgettes once more – many thanks! And enjoy your “evening out” tonight.

          2. Stop asking such personal questions, Mr Peddy, Sir. Tonight I shall follow Miss Delia Smith’s recipe (slice and fry thin slices of courgette, add fried onions, garlic, oregano and tinned tomatoes, cover with grated cheese and bake in the over for 30 minutes). Korky has also recommended baking them stuffed with minced beef, etc. which I shall try at a later date. Now I am off to the front garden to finish my weeding and edging the lawn. Toodle-oo (until later) all NoTTLers.

          5. Pah…what does Smelia Diff know about cooking? (A damned sight more than I do!)

            ‘Morning, Elsie.

          6. Ask Peddy, he just adores the baked potatoes I gave him one summer which were prepared using the Delia method.

          7. Still today, when I do them, I do them that way. Delia has a good recipe for apple cake.

          8. I have a very good recipe for German Apple Cake. It starts: “First go out and shoot six Germans…”

            :-))

          9. Thanks, Elsie. Meal and drinks with son, brother and his two sons tomorrow evening at the Layer Fox and then with my great pal from Earls Colne days at the Butt and Oyster out Shotley way on Friday. We need to fix up a date with Annie.

          10. I was thinking the same thing.
            Tomorrow we are taking our longest journey for months – out into the Suffolk boondocks.
            Must check my passport.
            Morning, Korky.
            (You’ll be glad to know that predictive text changed your name to ‘dorky’)

      2. Let’s see what rules Mattie and Bozza can concoct create this evening. While Carrie stands guard over the sofa.

    2. ‘morning Anne,

      “ There will be an exemption for those who can provide a doctor’s certificate confirming that they only have one leg.”

      Not long after I “lost” my leg I had to attend the local council offices to get some advice on housing options. (At the time I rented an upstairs flat privately. I had to drag my wheelchair up the stairs whilst going up on my backside). The council official who was being particularly unhelpful at one point said “you will need a doctor’s report saying that you have one leg before we can assist in any way”.
      My response was along the lines of “look at this (raising stumpy above the desk), it ain’t growing back you f’wit”.

      About two years later I received notification that I was something like 4,670th on the housing list and did I want to remain on it!

      If only I had been a dark skinned, illegal immigrant…………

    3. Been reading about this green deal lark to get some insulation in the roof.

      You qualify for up to two thirds of the cost after you’ve paid, from an authorised installer, after a site survey to determine if you qualify, which you’re not told, as long as it’s installed between X and Y dates.

      All the risk is on the payer with no guarantee, no option to choose installer. It’s entirely back to front, typically statist and made difficult, restricted and limited, means tested to ensure the tax paying worker pays the most and the lazy shirker gets it all for free.

    4. Have yet to try Chateau Mildenhall. In Janus Towers the cheap stuff (i.e. the only stuff) is usually referred to Chateau Urinal. Now, how’s that breakfast going?

      ‘Moaning, Annie.

  5. 322110+ upticks,
    Morning GG,
    I’ve Alreay shorn half a flock of ovid ( latin) makes it easier for eid supporting rustlers, that’s me thinking of others again.

  6. I note poetry is a regular feature of NTTL,I suspect because the right poem has power,the power to stir,the power to move,the power to enlighten……………..

    No wonder they want it dropped

    “From bad to verse: Schools are given the OK to drop poetry from GCSE

    exams as syllabus is pared back in the wake of coronavirus shutdown

    Regulator Ofqual yesterday unveiled a slimmed-down English literature syllabus

    All students will be assessed on a Shakespeare play but can swerve poetry

    It comes after pressure from teachers grappling with a wide-ranging syllabus”

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8590155/From-bad-verse-Schools-given-OK-drop-poetry-GCSE-exams.html
    I’m having a bad day,these swine hate the UK and everything it ever stood for don’t they

      1. As the barman said to Shakespeare when he entered the pub – “You can’t come in here, you’re bard”

  7. Steven Hatfill is a veteran virologist who helped establish the Rapid Hemorrhagic Fever Response Teams for the National Medical Disaster Unit in Kenya, Africa. He is an adjunct assistant professor in two departments at the George Washington University Medical Center where he teaches mass casualty medicine.
    Here’s his take on the effectiveness of Hydroxychloroquine:

    https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/08/04/an_effective_covid_treatment_the_media_continues_to_besmirch_143875.html

  8. You’ll be pleased to hear that the salaries and bonuses of chief executives are to be safeguarded during Covid lockdowns. In fact, where there’s money to be made, their incentive packages need not be taxed, since there are other ways of raising the money to pay for their rights, such as cutting interest rates on life savings, and deregulating property speculative redevelopment in order to attract foreign money. Any money laundering is easily controlled by adding another identity check on those using the cashpoint without a mask.

    Therefore there has been no significant effect on the nation’s prosperity brought on by the necessary restrictions, and that those that matter can continue with their essential lifestyles. They’ve upped cocaine production in South America and opium production in Afghanistan, so that’s all right then.

    We’ve never had it so good. Get on yer knee everyone!

    1. “I remember, I remember, the house where I was born
      The little window where the sun came peeping through at dawn”.

      (Oops, sorry! I forgot that poetry is verboten nowadays).

    2. “I remember, I remember, the house where I was born
      The little window where the sun came peeping through at dawn”.

      (Oops, sorry! I forgot that poetry is verboten nowadays).

      1. 322110+up ticks,
        EB,
        Who say’s ? it is only verboten if peoples allow it to be verboten.
        Much the same as Countries being taken over
        if people allow it to happen then it WILL come about.

  11. Morning all, JHB doing a quest article in the DT

    Forget the unions – it’s time the Government flushed out teachers who refuse to work

    The founder of a plumbing company has told staff to go back to work or face the sack. Why aren’t teachers being told the same?

    Three cheers for Charlie Mullins, the founder of Pimlico Plumbers, who has told his 450 staff to get back to work or face the sack.

    For weeks at the height of the pandemic, we were all out on our doorsteps, clapping for the carers who battled daily on hospital wards to save lives. Now, though, it is time to cheer for the business owners and their employees who are busy fighting to save our economy.

    Mr Mullins, who runs the country’s largest independent plumbing company, is one of many thousands of business owners who has had to face up to the economic realities of the coronavirus lockdown.

    In a message to his employees, many of whom had been on furlough, he told them they had to get back to work by last Friday or they’d have no job to go back to.

    While applauding the Chancellor’s furlough scheme as a “much-needed lifeline”, he said it was time to “draw a line under it”, insisting that even some of his own staff had been “milking the system”, enjoying getting paid 80 per cent of their wages to “sit on their backsides”.

    This is precisely the sort of ruthless straight-talking that the teachers in our state schools need to hear from the people who pay their wages.

    With less than four weeks to go until schools across England are due to re-open for pupils, after many months stuck at home, Government ministers are still facing a stubborn dragging of heels from many of the teaching unions who insist classrooms just can’t be made safe enough in time for the Autumn term.

    Of course, this was precisely the same argument they gave back in June. And no doubt, if they are indulged, it will be reheated after Christmas, too.

    It is time for the Prime Minister to tell teachers to show the same “can-do” attitude we’ve seen across the private sector since March, as entrepreneurs have fought to keep their businesses afloat.

    Teachers, of course, have not been furloughed and many have done a brilliant job during lockdown, working every day to make sure their pupils have not lost out on their education, providing hours of lessons on Zoom or Microsoft Teams, handing out worksheets and marking homework every night.

    But not all teachers and schools can claim the same. Research has revealed that, during lockdown, 2.3 million children were getting only a couple of hours of lessons a week, while two million children received no education at all.

    The teaching unions have defended those failures, arguing that the most disadvantaged children don’t have screens or broadband at home so it wasn’t their fault, although why that meant no lessons for all the other children who did have online access isn’t explained. Predictably, they also blamed years of Tory austerity for tight school budgets that apparently meant teachers were unable to access online lessons that were provided to them 100 per cent free.

    In fact, the story told by parents – both middle- and working-class – reveals it was more down to luck than anything else whether their children have had anything resembling an education since Easter.

    Yet even now, with a whole summer to prepare, the teaching unions have once again demanded “more time to review” Government plans for schools.

    Study after study around the world where schools have returned since lockdown have shown no evidence that pupils have infected a single teacher, yet the unions insist the Government must do more to keep their members safe.

    Yes, of course there is a risk from going back to the classroom, and exceptions must be made for older and vulnerable teachers – but there are huge risks from pupils not going back to school too in terms of their long term education, job prospects and their physical and mental health. We need to get those relative risks into perspective. The reality is that teachers and pupils are far more likely to be knocked down and killed by a car on the way to school than to die of coronavirus caught in the classroom.

    It’s time Boris Johnson took a lesson from Charlie Mullins to flush out the teachers who wants to work, and those who don’t. Teachers must be back at the front of the class come September, or they should be told to head to the back of the dole queue along with everyone else.

    Teaching is supposed to be a vocation for life – not a lifelong vacation.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/politics/forget-unions-time-government-flushed-teachers-refuse-work/

    1. “Three cheers for Charlie Mullins, the well known tax evader who happens to be mates with an MP or two and a media baron, who has for years claimed that his employees are actually self-employed contractors rather than employees so he could avoid tax and NI payments on their labour, has told his 450 staff to get back to work or face the sack from his palatial home in Marbella where Mullins is self-isolating keeping himself healthy.”

      There fixed it for you.

      1. Ah thank you, how I ever get through the day without your assistance is a mystery to me and I suspect many others.

        Been on any good protest marches recently? I only ask because you seem to have been rather quite recently.

        Ta ta for now.

        1. I’m not the type.

          I know you see me as some hippy commie or something but really that’s not me at all.

          I did think what Mullins said did bear a touch of irony though given his history.

          1. Point taken but the main thrust of the article still rings true, schools need to reopen and that is not going to happen if teacher unions hold sway.
            In fact there should now be a drive to get as many people with no known underlying health issues back to some form of normality, time to ditch project fear.

    2. Excellent stuff, and full marks to JHB for saying what so many of us think – unlike our cowardly ministers who seem to be frightened by their own shadows. I would like to hear the same forceful argument from that prat Williamson…but I know I’m not going to.

    3. One thousand upvotes, vvof.

      PS – I do disagree, though, with the idea of “it is time to cheer for the business owners and their employees”. I have better things to do on Thursday evenings than to either clap or cheer on my front doorstep.

    4. There’s an awful lot of kids with dodgy ‘Lockdown’ A and O Level certificates, too.

    5. It’s important to remember it is the unions pushing for this, not the teachers themselves.

      What I don’t understand is why..

      1. The Unions try to make life difficult for the government. If they succeed in any way they consider it worthwhile.

        1. We know that all unionism does is destroy the jobs of the unionised.

          All the teachers I know have been working – they’re frustrated that parents aren’t supporting their children’s education.

          1. We have 3 teachers in the family. The time they have spent on actual teaching is minimal. Their sense of entitlement is off the scale – and about the same as their loathing of anything mildly right of centre.

          2. The unions will only be curbed by strong members, children’s education cannot be supported at home by parents to the same degree as opposed to being in class in school.
            It is utter stupidity for teachers to think otherwise. They need to wander around skate parks and high streets to appreciate the lack of any social distancing kids have undertaken in the last few months and then concede returning to class in September should be done.
            If the teachers have been working as you say, they will achieve far more when they and their pupils are in school together.

  12. Morning all, JHB doing a quest article in the DT

    Forget the unions – it’s time the Government flushed out teachers who refuse to work

    The founder of a plumbing company has told staff to go back to work or face the sack. Why aren’t teachers being told the same?

    Three cheers for Charlie Mullins, the founder of Pimlico Plumbers, who has told his 450 staff to get back to work or face the sack.

    For weeks at the height of the pandemic, we were all out on our doorsteps, clapping for the carers who battled daily on hospital wards to save lives. Now, though, it is time to cheer for the business owners and their employees who are busy fighting to save our economy.

    Mr Mullins, who runs the country’s largest independent plumbing company, is one of many thousands of business owners who has had to face up to the economic realities of the coronavirus lockdown.

    In a message to his employees, many of whom had been on furlough, he told them they had to get back to work by last Friday or they’d have no job to go back to.

    While applauding the Chancellor’s furlough scheme as a “much-needed lifeline”, he said it was time to “draw a line under it”, insisting that even some of his own staff had been “milking the system”, enjoying getting paid 80 per cent of their wages to “sit on their backsides”.

    This is precisely the sort of ruthless straight-talking that the teachers in our state schools need to hear from the people who pay their wages.

    With less than four weeks to go until schools across England are due to re-open for pupils, after many months stuck at home, Government ministers are still facing a stubborn dragging of heels from many of the teaching unions who insist classrooms just can’t be made safe enough in time for the Autumn term.

    Of course, this was precisely the same argument they gave back in June. And no doubt, if they are indulged, it will be reheated after Christmas, too.

    It is time for the Prime Minister to tell teachers to show the same “can-do” attitude we’ve seen across the private sector since March, as entrepreneurs have fought to keep their businesses afloat.

    Teachers, of course, have not been furloughed and many have done a brilliant job during lockdown, working every day to make sure their pupils have not lost out on their education, providing hours of lessons on Zoom or Microsoft Teams, handing out worksheets and marking homework every night.

    But not all teachers and schools can claim the same. Research has revealed that, during lockdown, 2.3 million children were getting only a couple of hours of lessons a week, while two million children received no education at all.

    The teaching unions have defended those failures, arguing that the most disadvantaged children don’t have screens or broadband at home so it wasn’t their fault, although why that meant no lessons for all the other children who did have online access isn’t explained. Predictably, they also blamed years of Tory austerity for tight school budgets that apparently meant teachers were unable to access online lessons that were provided to them 100 per cent free.

    In fact, the story told by parents – both middle- and working-class – reveals it was more down to luck than anything else whether their children have had anything resembling an education since Easter.

    Yet even now, with a whole summer to prepare, the teaching unions have once again demanded “more time to review” Government plans for schools.

    Study after study around the world where schools have returned since lockdown have shown no evidence that pupils have infected a single teacher, yet the unions insist the Government must do more to keep their members safe.

    Yes, of course there is a risk from going back to the classroom, and exceptions must be made for older and vulnerable teachers – but there are huge risks from pupils not going back to school too in terms of their long term education, job prospects and their physical and mental health. We need to get those relative risks into perspective. The reality is that teachers and pupils are far more likely to be knocked down and killed by a car on the way to school than to die of coronavirus caught in the classroom.

    It’s time Boris Johnson took a lesson from Charlie Mullins to flush out the teachers who wants to work, and those who don’t. Teachers must be back at the front of the class come September, or they should be told to head to the back of the dole queue along with everyone else.

    Teaching is supposed to be a vocation for life – not a lifelong vacation.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/politics/forget-unions-time-government-flushed-teachers-refuse-work/

  13. NHS disgrace…..

    SIR – I had a high-grade bladder cancer four years ago and am due my six-monthly check. Normal clinics have not been resumed at my local hospital, and they could not give any indication of when, or indeed if, things will return to normal.

    I find this wholly unacceptable. We understood there would be disruption to other services during the pandemic, but surely the public can expect the NHS to resume being a proper health service now? Or has the “Save the NHS” campaign given it permission to stay paused on everything non-Covid and non-urgent?

    Diana Green

    Norwich

    1. It’ll be self-perpetuating as well, as all the poor neglected cancer and heart disease sufferers get put down as corona victims, thus giving more reason not to treat other illnesses 🙁

  14. SIR – You report (July 22) that to meet government climate change targets, 20 million gas boilers must be replaced by 2035, ideally with electrically powered heat pumps. This plan has one or two drawbacks, however.

    The pumps, for instance, are about four times the size of a gas boiler, so many homes will struggle to accommodate one. The energy extracted by an electric heat pump can heat water to only about 40C. So in addition to buying 20 million new boilers, householders will probably need to buy another 20 million sets of radiators in order to keep warm in winter – and find somewhere to put them.

    John Branch

    Shrewsbury

    1. In order to avoid a buildup of legionnaires, stored hot water must be raised over 60C periodically. What amendments to the new directive on boilers must be made to save the NHS from a fresh wave of disease?

    2. It isn’t about need, practicality, efficiency or utility. The entire lie about climate change is to force statist control over our energy usage and suppress the population. Instead of meeting demand and exceeding that, the state chooses the opposite all for pointless, expensive, damaging ideology.

  15. Morning again

    SIR – Compulsory face masks will not encourage me to go anywhere again. Food shopping is unavoidable, but I will avoid the cinema and public transport.

    James Le Fanu (Health, August 3) suggests their use will probably die out. Let’s hope so: they are too hot to wear all the time.

    Peter Kirton

    Bromyard, Herefordshire

    SIR – EasyJet is sending emails saying: “Face masks must be worn at the airport, at the gate when boarding the aircraft, and throughout the flight.”

    Yet the email also says there will be a “bistro” service for food and drink. Passengers can thus spend the whole flight eating easyJet food, or chomping their own sandwiches, and not wear a mask.

    Dr Jennifer Longhurst

    Surbiton, Surrey

    1. Yep. Wore a mask to go to Tesco. Horribly uncomfortable, alienating and unpleasant.

      Thus if I can, I’ll shop on line. On the rare occassions I can’t, it’ll be once a week. What with Sunak saying he will increase business rates to ‘fund the recovery’ you have to wonder if government truly believes it can lift itself out of a bucket by the handles.

      1. I wrapped a scarf around my physog, back in March, on a trip to the Coop supermarket in Simrishamn. I got lots of strange looks since I was the only dude in town wearing some form of facial covering. I’ve not seen anyone wearing a mask in public until yesterday. At the same supermarket, just one old gubbe was wearing a face mask. He had to remove it to make himself understood to the check-out girl!

      2. I find that after a few minutes in a face mask I can’t concentrate any more and just want to leave the shop. All pleasure is gone from shopping now. Can’t stand online shopping, it’s soulless and risky (card details – I don’t trust any of ’em).

      3. I have managed to put off going shopping for a fortnight, but I shall have to venture forth on Friday. It will be a quick dash through the aisles and hopefully not too long a queue to pay. I have not been near town in the meantime.

    3. It threatens to be godawful soon. Nasty, horrible temperatures, burning light, heat and stuffy. Why people think hot is good is beyond me. Would you sit in an oven with a torch burning your eyes?

      1. He put it in the fridge to cool down while it was still steaming.
        The motor couldn’t cope.

    4. if you live in Beirut and you confiscate a ships cargo of 2700 TONS of ammonium nitrate DO NOT:

      A. Store it in a warehouse for seven years because you forgot about it

      B. Allow a welder to weld in said warehouse

      C. Allow the welder to start a fire

          1. I agree with you, Bob: the explosion was probably ANFO.
            Which begs the question: who introduced some hundred and sixty tons of FO into the vicinity of 2,700 tons of AN ? It would have been difficult to do so undetected …

          2. In the vicinity?
            I strongly suspect the bloody stuffed was mixed & ready to go bang.
            I also suspect that it was a Hezbollah stockpile ready for being used in missiles, either as an explosive or as a rocket propellent, but which had been stored for too long and began to decompose.

          3. If memory serves me correctly Bob ANFO was first discovered by an accident very similar to this some seventy years ago where a shipload of it blew up in an American harbour!

          6. Texas City disaster

            The Texas City disaster was an industrial accident that occurred on April 16, 1947, in the Port of Texas City, Texas, at Galveston Bay. It was the deadliest industrial accident in U.S. history, and one of history’s largest non-nuclear explosions. A mid-morning fire started on board the French-registered vessel SS Grandcamp (docked in the port), and detonated her cargo of about 2,300 tons (about 2,086 metric tons) of ammonium nitrate. This started a chain reaction of fires and explosions in other ships and nearby oil-storage facilities, ultimately killing at least 581 people, including all but one member of the Texas City fire department. WIKIPEDIA

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_City_disaster

      3. If you are any living organism that ever evolved in the known universe, i.e. plant, animal, fungus or amœba, you do not make explosives.

        Only one organism possesses the stupidity to do so.

    2. 322110+ up ticks,
      Morning TB,
      To make it so again a great many peoples must admit to being wrong via the polling booth & be prepared to put Country before Party.
      Then are era of realism MUST take place in peeling back the odious skins of the current “smoke” until you find a
      pearly King & Queen at the core among the “bricks”
      Keep in mind that Manchester,Birmingham, etc,etc,etc, are fast becoming replicas of the ” Square mile”
      To put them on equal terms with London it is imperative that the voting pattern does NOT change.

    3. Mluticulturailism has done untold damage to this country. There have been small clades who while not inntegrating have at least vanished without drawing attention to themselves.

      That there are now so many different colours is fine – that far too many don’t integrate, adopt our laws and mores to vanish is not.

      1. I am British. My wife is Dutch. We have lived in France for over 30 years. We speak the language. We pay our taxes. We observe the laws. We have made many close friends in France. We are integrated.

        Why?

        Basically, it is because, even if the English, the Dutch and the French have often gone to war over the centuries, we share the same Christian culture, philosophy and morality. Aliens find it far more difficult to integrate into Western Europe and if they do not even try to do so then it is no wonder that they are not very happily accepted by the indigenous population.

        I would have thought that this was obvious but politicians and the left cannot accept reality and the truth.

  21. Children love poetry – this GCSE rule-change may fail a generation
    For the first time, English Literature students may not study poems. If they (or their teachers) skip it, they’ll be making a grave mistake
    Remember prose? It’s that dull, flavourless stuff you get in essays and instruction manuals. You probably read it at school. Well, good news: students now have the chance to be freed from its shackles.

    Due to concerns about preparing for exams amid the current Covid kerfuffle, for one year only schools will no longer need to cover the full GCSE English Literature syllabus. Instead, they will have a free choice to drop one of several optional sections. But which one? Surely it would be one of the stuffy prose bits.

    No: our nation’s headline writers have already decided what will get the old heave-ho, and it isn’t prose: “Poetry is a coronavirus casualty”; “GCSE students allowed to drop poetry”; “Schools are given the OK to drop poetry”. Their assumption comes from an apparently widespread belief that poetry is difficult and unpopular among children.

    This is utter rot. It may well be the case that the GCSE exam’s approach to poetry is difficult and unpopular. If so, it’s a damning indictment of a broken school system: it takes a great deal of perverse malpractice to drive children away from something they love.

    And they do love poetry, more so than blinkered adults. (Just compare the number of books in verse on the children’s bestseller list with the adult list.) We are born loving it. There’s a reason that nursery rhymes rhyme. We are hard-wired to learn a language, and to respond strongly to patterns within that language – rhythm, repetition and everything else in poetry’s toybox of tricks appeals to us on a visceral level. The first time I heard a Dr Seuss book read aloud to me, as a small child, it felt like an electric shock.

    Keeping poetry and ditching 19th-century fiction would result in the first blissfully prose-free GCSE exam. And if my (imaginary) students feel starved of high-quality prose? Well, they can always pick up a copy of The Telegraph.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/news/children-love-poetry-gcse-rule-change-may-fail-generation/

    1. I think poetry runs in families.

      My father, my children, my wife and I all love proper poetry – but certainly not all the rubbish that calls itself poetry!

      1. I follow the strict maxim of the late Auberon Waugh:

        “Poetry isn’t proper poetry unless it rhymes, scans and makes sense!”

        I love poetry. Others may disagree but I can’t be bothered to read it if the author cannot be bothered to make it rhyme, scan and make sense.

        That rules out scruffy ‘woke’ halfwits like John Cooper Clarke then.

        1. Good morning Grizzly

          Have you read Bron’s early juvenile novels The Foxglove Saga (written when he was at Downside) and The Path of Dalliance (written during his brief time at Oxford.) Worth a read.

          I think I have told the story before here but when I was a schoolmaster in the South West of England I was put in charge of the cross country running team. At an away match at King’s Taunton I had to record the names and finishing position of each runner,

          An exhausted little chap managed to blurt out:
          “Waugh, Sir.”
          “Any relation to Evelyn or Auberon?” I enquired.
          “Grandson and son respectively.” he gasped.

          Alexander Waugh is now an author and journalist writing about the arts.

          1. Good afternoon, Rastus.

            Yes, a formidable literary family. I shall look up Bron’s books anon.

        2. Good morning Grizzly

          Have you read Bron’s early juvenile novels The Foxglove Saga (written when he was at Downside) and The Path of Dalliance (written during his brief time at Oxford.) Worth a read.

          I think I have told the story before here but when I was a schoolmaster in the South West of England I was put in charge of the cross country running team. At an away match at King’s Taunton I had to record the names and finishing position of each runner,

          An exhausted little chap managed to blurt out:
          “Waugh, Sir.”
          “Any relation to Evelyn or Auberon?” I enquired.
          “Grandson and son respectively.” he gasped.

          Alexander Waugh is now an author and journalist writing about the arts.

        2. When we were in the Sixth Form, we were allowed a little relaxation in our uniforms. I well remember Selwyn coming in wearing his Rupert trousers 🙂

    3. I found poetry at school pretty dull stuff…Wordsworth, Browning, Bronte, then I discovered Kipling and Housman…

      A Shropshire Lad XL
      A. E. Housman – 1859-1936

      Into my heart an air that kills
      From yon far country blows:
      What are those blue remembered hills,
      What spires, what farms are those?

      That is the land of lost content,
      I see it shining plain,
      The happy highways where I went
      And cannot come again.

      1. My favourite from the collection:

        When I Was One-and-Twenty
        BY A. E. HOUSMAN

        When I was one-and-twenty
        I heard a wise man say,
        “Give crowns and pounds and guineas
        But not your heart away;
        Give pearls away and rubies
        But keep your fancy free.”
        But I was one-and-twenty,
        No use to talk to me.

        When I was one-and-twenty
        I heard him say again,
        “The heart out of the bosom
        Was never given in vain;
        ’Tis paid with sighs a plenty
        And sold for endless rue.”
        And I am two-and-twenty,
        And oh, ’tis true, ’tis true.

        1. Ah….sweet bird of youth. Enjoy…

          Sweet Bird of Youth
          I have seen spring’s awakening
          And basked in summer’s sun
          And I have watched in awe
          As autumn’s colors softly sprung
          But now that winter’s here
          Amid the softly falling snow
          I mourn for the beauty
          That was lost so long ago.

          Oh sweet bird of youth
          You lavished me with your love
          Whispering sweet nothings
          Under twinkling stars above
          You led me to believe
          I’d spend eternity with you
          Then without a warning
          You disappeared from view!

          Down through the years
          I’ve searched for you in vain
          All I have are memories
          Of you that remain
          Now. most of my songs
          Have been sung
          But I cling to the melody
          Of when we were young

          Copright©2008 Beatrice Boyle
          (All rights reserved)

      2. If only the poetry I studied at school had been as good as “pretty dull stuff”.
        It was all, without exception, dire and crashingly dull. Wordsworth, Browning, Bronte, Kipling, Housman…

        1. I’m not into poetry. But, considering I’ve been involved in choirs for 55 years, an awful lot of hymnody has percolated the grey matter.

          1. I’m kind of getting the hang of it – there’s a few poems that have meaning to me that I’ve collected in the PC. But the cobblers I was told I should think at school – sheesh…

        2. We had to learn lots of poetry at school. I still remember some of it; High Flight, An Irish Airman Foresees His Death, Down By The Sully Gardens, The Naming of Parts, The Ancient Mariner (that last was a bit of an effort!). I seem to remember we had an anthology and we could choose which poems we learned (hence my selection above – the Ancient Mariner was a set piece; I had no say in the matter when it came to that or it wouldn’t have been there!).

      3. I found poetry at school pretty dull stuff…Wordsworth, Browning, Bronte, then I discovered Kipling and Houseman… Smirnoff…sherry.

    4. I cant understand what the difference is between

      I met a traveller from an antique land
      Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
      Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
      Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
      And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
      Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
      Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
      The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
      And on the pedestal these words appear:
      ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
      Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
      Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
      Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
      The lone and level sands stretch far away

      and

      I met a traveller from an antique land Wwo said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown and wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, tell that its sculptor well those passions read which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, the hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
      And on the pedestal these words appear: ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
      Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
      Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare the lone and level sands stretch far away.

      1. Have you noticed that in the first example, the ends of the lines rhyme? Well, some of them, anyway.

  22. So according the Book Burning Corporation this morning the mainly peaceful explosion in Lebanon was caused by the storage (for six years) of 3000 tonnes of Amonium Nitrate – stored as the result of a seizure.

    Hmm…

    Seized from whom by whom? 3000 tonnes was just taken and stored in a warehouse in a civilian area? Someone had the money to store 3000 tonnes of dead capital for six years?

    Sure BBC, I totally believe you.

    1. I read last night that the building was storing ammunition in the form of warheads, fuel etc. The report also said that the attack was two-pronged and cited the two explosions as evidence. It was an attack, that was a pre-emptive strike to prevent the warheads and ammunition being used. Who might make such a strike? This is a similar article:
      https://www.ibtimes.sg/beirut-blast-locals-suspect-israel-destroyed-hezbollah-weapons-depot-missile-fuel-caused-explosion-49574

  23. I walk into the kitchen and again find my wife has BBC Radio 4 (or World Service) blasting away. I can tell because the first words I hear are: “STABBED BY A RIVAL GANG MEMBER” (said with Caribbean patois). She immediately switches to Classic FM and I hear that rising solo violin in SHEHERAZADE ……

    I detest the BBC.

    1. The other night after hitting the wrong button on the remote I got “Canada’s Drag Race – (The Snatch Game ). It really was a jaw droppingly awful shock. I won’t even try to describe it, because I wouldn’t be believed.
      This is what our license money is spent buying???

  24. The tragedy in Lebanon has been compared to the blast that killed Rafiq Hariri in 2005 (the Special Tribunal for Lebanon will announce its conviction (or otherwise) of the Hezbollah perpetrators on Friday) and the devastation caused by the civil war that started in 1975.

    My travel records show that I have landed and departed from Beirut airport 35 times and I was living there during part of the civil war and saw the devastation with my own eyes. It was worse than yesterday’s awful blast in that around 120,000 people were killed.

    The problems in Lebanon are extremely complex and are caused by numerous religious factions, all vying for prominence, and innate corruption. Negligence results from this, hence the possible reason of yesterday’s explosion.

    I started visiting Beirut in the late 60s because my firm had its regional headquarters there, later moved to Athens. After the Iranian revolution in 1973, I noticed the huge placards on display beside the road from the airport depicting Shia Mullahs. I suggest that Iran with its terrorist poodle, Hezbollah, has much to answer for given the state the country finds itself in.

    In 1975 I asked an employee in my (benign professional) office if it’s true that everyone carries a gun in Beirut. He said that, of course it is, and promptly laid his gun and some ammunition on my desk to prove it!

    On another occasion a Maronite Christian, who worked in our office, invited me to go with him to his village in the mountains behind Beirut for dinner. He said that he would pick me up from outside the office. When he arrived, I asked him how he thought we would ever get up the mountain with his car in such a state that the springs and shock-absorbers appear to have failed. He said that I wasn’t to worry and off we went.
    After a torturous journey we finally arrived at his house. The family all came out to greet us. He then opened the boot of the car which was packed with Kalashnikovs, various pistols and ammunition – no wonder the car was so weighed down. We all helped to carry them up to his attic which was piled to the ceiling with arms of all types.
    His house was acting as the arsenal for the village to protect itself from the inevitable fight against the Islamists.
    If there had been one of the frequent road blocks on our journey, I probably wouldn’t be here to write this!

    Finally, here is an old joke which illustrates how Lebanese business works. When Clinton was president he needed someone to be the first person to go to Mars, knowing that he would not be able to return to Earth because it was a one-way trip.
    He approached an American who was willing to go who said that he would need $1 million because he had a wife and two children and he had to make sure they were able to manage after he left. Clinton said he would consider it.
    He then found an Italian who was willing. The Italian said that he would need $2 million because he has a wife and five children and he has to make sure they will be OK.
    Clinton then found a Lebanese who was willing but he needed $3 million. Clinton asked why he would need as much as $3 million when the Italian only needed $2 million and the American, only $1 million.
    “Because there’s $1 million for you, $1 million for me and $1 million for the guy that I’m going to subcontract it to!”

    1. The problems in Lebanon are extremely complex and are caused by numerous religious factions, all vying for prominence, and innate corruption.

      A typical multicultural state!

      1. What percentage of numerous religious factions, all vying for prominence, will it take to offset the balance here in the UK into something as disagreeable as say the Lebanon or anywhere else in the middle east or Africa or Asia?

        When people move over here they bring their complex issues with them , we are just a small congested island , and our cities are now multiracial, , we read every day about escalating problems and their irritating unnecessary interventions in our own culture.

        1. Hmm. We’re pretty well there in many parts the UK. All it would take would be for one town or city to declare itself a caliphate and things would get bad very quickly. What time is it now?

        1. It’s those blasts of logic and common sense that completely confuse Lefties.

          They also struggle with hypocrisy. Truly, it must be very difficult dealing with that degree of doublethink.

    2. Corruption & negligence go hand in hand in the Middle East, Africa and many other areas. Cyprus has also suffered large doses of corruption & negligence over the years. The Beirut boom reminded me of this, that I posted last night:

      It’s very similar to this:

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk…

      This explosion was in 2011 and severely damaged power production in Cyprus that took a few years to finally get sorted.

      Funny thing, they don’t say wether the explosion could be heard in Beirut??

  27. SIR – On Sunday, I visited two small shops, both with two customers, none masked.

    On my admonishment, one used foul language and refused to wear one. The other apologised and said he had forgotten. A losing battle, I fear.

    Gerald Lamming
    Sutton Coldfield

    What did the first shopper say to you, Gerald? Was it “Mind your own f*cking business”?

      1. It could have been someone who was exempt anyway. I suspect the foul language was along the lines of “who died and made you Emperor?” with embellishments.

    3. My eldest was ‘admonished’ in a local supermarket earlier this week. In an almost empty isle, he stepped back 6 paces to get and item he missed on his list.
      Some obnoxious twat gave him a boll*** ing.

    5. 322110+ up ticks,
      Morning A,
      I believe he remembers the second word being definitely
      “off.”

    6. When I decided to learn how to restore a fibreglass based car some years ago, I did a lot of work wearing facemasks of varying types. Used both for sanding off the old finish, straight anti dust filters in a plastic holder, and later paint spray masks with double replaceable filters when I was using base coat and clear paint with a spraygun and compressor. All were unpleasant but at least had a reason.

      I tried one of the masks that are now being used in bulk as something that satisfies the lock down rules. They are absolutely, completely, and utterly useless, letting air in and out round the edges. I’m sure my old scarf, if it didn’t keep falling off, is more effective… But basically, in the absence of full hazmat protection, the masks do not do anything.

        1. Ah! You don’t know what I have in store to be chucked at him, night and day for six months, before I hang him from a tall tree with barbed wire by his nuts.

          Pinko? Try puce!

    4. I see to recall a claim that toilet seats were cleaner than the avergae chopping board, so we know do our veg prep in the loo.

      1. Children these days never develop robust immune systems because their homes are kept much too clean. .Anti-bacterial wipes for everything, including chopping boards are quite unnecessary.

          1. I just wipe the bits off my wooden board but I never use it for chopping meat. I have a melanine surface one if I’m chopping meat and I do wipe that over with bleach spray.

  30. Started watching England v Pakistan 1st Test at Old Trafford – a couple of minutes before the start. Players had a moment’s silence in memory of Covid-19 victims, but no ‘taking the knee’. Hope it’s now finished, at least as far as cricket is concerned.

    1. Good.

      Can’t help but wonder what the Aussie cricket team reaction would be if asked to show submission to Marxism.

      1. Or the Kiwi rugger buggers.
        I skimmed over a football plonkers comments earlier he was saying that the sport from top to bottom needed to be more diverse !!!???
        I thought perhaps he needed to be paying more attention to reality.

        1. They keep going on about making equestrian sports more diverse. Why? If the bleks wanted to ride, there’s no reason they shouldn’t. They’ve got Ebony (a riding school in London for BAMEs). I suspect it’s a bit too much like hard work – although, having said that, there are a lot of Indian/Pakistani “lads” in racing.

          1. Similar to swimming not much good, at it as Zedlebrity Mastermind. University Challenge, Egg Heads.
            Farming and a long list of other etcetera’s.
            There was/is a riding school on the Ridgway in Mill Hill not far from where i was brought up. I never ad the inclination although i did once ride when i lived in SA. I couldn’t walk for two days after 😏

  32. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    Allison Pearson giving it both barrels:

    The Department of You Really Can’t Make This Stuff Up has been working overtime this week. The police are considering scrapping the terms “Islamist terrorism” and “jihadis” when describing attacks by – oh, dear! – Islamist terrorists and jihadists. Possible alternatives to be used include the snappy “terrorists abusing religious motivation” or “adherents of Osama bin Laden’s ideology”, which is a bit of a tongue twister for Huw Edwards, if you ask me.

    Apparently, the change was requested by a Muslim police organisation which blames the official use of “Islamist” and “jihadi” for “negative perceptions and stereotypes, discrimination and Islamophobia”.

    In other words, and if I’ve got this right, if suicide bombers blow up a train and leave behind videos indicating they are jihadists pursuing a “holy war”, the police must not make any reference to Islamism in case the public gets the correct impression. Can’t have that, can we? I don’t know about you, but I find it increasingly hard to suppress the suspicion that certain senior police officers see their function as protecting the guilty from the innocent.

    That same gnawing doubt applies to the criminal justice system as a whole. Consider the Court of Appeal which has just ruled that the so-called jihadi bride Shamima Begum should be allowed to return to the UK from Syria to fight the decision to remove her British citizenship, even though other cases during lockdown have been conducted perfectly well via video link. The judges said that “fairness and justice must, on the facts of this case, outweigh the national security concerns”.

    Fairness and justice for whom exactly? Not for the British people, that’s for sure. Eight in ten of us (78 per cent) think that former home secretary Sajid Javid was right, back in February 2019, to remove the then-19-year-old’s UK citizenship. That’s not because we’re Islamophobic. It’s because we are weary of being the mugs who accede to traitors returning to live among us at the expense of the very country that they wished to destroy.

    Shamima Begum’s solicitor says his client “is not afraid of facing British justice”. I bet she isn’t. Not much to be feared of with m’learned friends conducting themselves like a lightly-stoned legal outpost of The Guardian.

    At least 425 members of Isil have so far returned to the UK from Syria and Iraq, and only one in 10 has been brought to trial. Most are on rehabilitation programmes paid for by guess who? Like all those jihadists – oops, sorry, adherents of Osama bin Laden’s ideology… – chances are Begum won’t even serve a custodial sentence. Unfortunately, it’s very hard to provide evidence of what went on in Raqqa where the former Bethnal Green schoolgirl claimed to be an ordinary housewife who was merely putting out the bins. Men like Shamima’s husband conveniently murdered all the witnesses.
    One person who did survive claimed that Begum served in the Islamic State’s brutal “morality police”, toting a Kalashnikov and whipping women who failed to abide by the strict dress code. Personally, I couldn’t care less about the wretched little bism. What I do mind about is that concerned liberals fret over poor Begum’s mistreatment while good people like Alan Henning and David Haines, both charity workers executed in the most barbaric way imaginable by Begum’s buddies, are forgotten.

    To add insult to injury, the decision to allow Begum to return means that up to 150 terrorists could now be legally entitled to enter the UK to challenge the decision in their cases. The Court of Appeal, it seems, is happy to add to the huge burden weighing down our counter-terrorism officers and put innocent Britons at risk as long as these appalling individuals get “justice”.

    It makes you nostalgic for the days when the law was merely an ass. Now, it’s a self-righteous, metropolitan clique fully signed up to the creed of “human rights” which leaves wrong ’uns laughing at our weakness.

    On Sunday, the Prime Minister said that the Government is looking at “the odd and perverse” situation of someone being entitled to legal aid despite having had their citizenship revoked. Good. Boris should follow the lead of the French government which has allowed the children of jihadis to be repatriated, but has refused to take their parents because they present an ongoing danger to France.

    Advocates for Shamima Begum, including former human rights lawyer now Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, chide the rest of us for our lack of humanity. How dare they. It is a liberal elite that has overridden the fundamental instinct to protect our own while advancing the cause of our enemies which has lost its humanity – and its marbles.

    1. 322110+ up ticks,
      Morning HJ,
      In the land of reality “Deadly Dangerous @rseholes” encapsulates it nicely.
      Loose on the streets for giving the forces of law and the governance party a daily rhetorical reason for being.

      Those roaming terrorist have no chance of their & their
      families being deported before their yet to be conceived children have of dying of old age.

    2. …like a lightly-stoned…

      Freudian slip by Ms Pearson when discussing islam? Perhaps ‘lightly-stoned’ is Al-Beeb speak for a traditional islamic execution in similar vein when they describe fascist BLM etc. riots as, “Mostly peaceful.”

    3. Surely this is solved simply by those lawyers wanting to bring all these nutters back having to foot the bill?

      Just cut off any and all tax payer funding. They’ll soon stop promoting it when their own pockets are rifled through.

    4. Good article, but I wish journos would stop referring to jihadi killings as “executions”. The word suggest that some form of judicial process was undertaken. It is simply murder.

    1. Blaming Patel is a bit like blaming Hancock for the NHS.

      Ministers know nothing. They have no power. Their role is to present policy. As we have seen with the idiotic resigning home office bod – I’ve forgotten the simpering creature’s name – we know that civil servants ‘officials’ actively fight against Ministerial policy to pursue their own agenda at the tax payers expense.

  34. Police pointed gun at George Floyd seconds after approaching him, body camera footage shows. 5 August 2020.

    The leaked footage, published by DailyMail.com, shows footage from two Minneapolis police officers involved in Mr Floyd’s arrest and offers new details around his last moments.

    It shows a white police officer aiming a gun on Mr Floyd within seconds of approaching him in a parked car, prompting the 46-year-old to panic, cry and beg for his life.

    At one point in the video, a visibly distressed Mr Floyd begged one of the policemen: “Mr Officer, please don’t shoot me. Please man”, shortly before he was killed.

    Ben Crump, a lawyer for the Floyd family, said the new footage showed “the police officers approached him with guns drawn, simply because he was a black man”.

    Morning everyone. Strange article for the Telegraph; it might almost be from the Guardian with its Woke sympathies. Out of the four officers present only two were white. Police Officers in the United States due to their training and who wish to continue to live invariably draw their weapons when approaching a suspect in a car regardless of his Creed or Colour. They did not “kill” Floyd, he died from breathing problems due to a Fentanyl overdose.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/04/police-pointed-gun-george-floyd-seconds-approaching-body-camera/

    1. No, they approached him armed because he is a career criminal with several convictions for violent assault, robbery with violence, robbery with a weapon. He was scum.

      See, it’s really, really simple to not have the police bother you (or it used to be, nowadays the police seem desperate to attack the innocent in favour of supporting the criminal). You just don’t commit crime. Floyd had two decades of convictions. Does the Telegraph say that?

    3. No, they approached him armed because he is a career criminal with several convictions for violent assault, robbery with violence, robbery with a weapon. He was scum.

      See, it’s really, really simple to not have the police bother you (or it used to be, nowadays the police seem desperate to attack the innocent in favour of supporting the criminal). You just don’t commit crime. Floyd had two decades of convictions. Does the Telegraph say that?

      1. It is probable that they did not know his identity before approaching the vehicle, but given what they’d been told about his behaviour, passing a forged $20 bill and apparent intoxication, they were playing cautious.

        1. Aye, as for his emotional state, he was on drugs.

          Druggies are erratic and unpredictable.

    4. The full body cam transcript is available somewhere on the web. Yesterday’s clip cut the section where GF was shouting that he could not breath before he was on the floor, it was also he who asked to be put on the ground. Those details put quite a different slant on the incident.

    1. So, are local residents not allowed to express concern about arrests of asylum seekers for affray and assault, together with relocation of some, as well as increased hotel staffing levels and extra police visits?

      1. No, you’re not. Gimmigrant terrorists good, law abiding citizens bad.

        What’s that? Waycist! How dare you criticise the genuine problems massive uncontrolled immigration causes. We’ll come and get you – after running away from a black looters are mindless group vandalising and rioting in the city.

    2. ‘Shakes head in wonder’.

      There are real things to worry about. Heck, immigrants are not welcome. The police should be appreciating that actually, we don’t want them here and a few grumbles on twitter are fine.

      Nah, common sense has vanished. Stuff the police. It’s time we ignored them in any concept of enforcing the law and just do it ourselves.

  36. Toy Boy is going to Lebanon to support the people there.

    The very last thing they need right now.

  37. Morning all. Church News……..

    SIR – I do not always share the views of Giles Fraser (Comment, August 3), but his article on the future of the Church of England parochial system makes many points that which the Church would do well to take on board.

    It is ironic that Chelmsford diocese has announced it will axe 60 posts having, during the episcopate of Stephen Cottrell (now the Archbishop of York), created three more for archdeacons, making a total of seven.

    The new “super-diocese” of Leeds was sold on the idea that it would cut down on duplicated administration, with no extra senior posts. And what has happened? An additional bishopric (Kirkstall) has come into being.

    ADVERTISING

    Ads by Teads

    I am organist of a rural benefice of four parishes. My rector has been given responsibility for two more parishes, an extra 50 per cent workload.

    In 2020 there are more bishops than in 1900, despite there being fewer clergy and smaller congregations.

    John Radford

    Wimborne St Giles, Dorset

    Advertisement

    SIR – Giles Fraser claims that officials are trying to centralise the Church of England in the face of Covid-19. As a member of the Archbishops’ Council, I know his claim amounts to nothing.

    Since March I have spent hours in meetings – never Giles’s strong point – working with officials to ensure that parish churches like mine and his have the resources to serve God and neighbour.

    The technology he airily dismisses has actually enabled parishes churches to be parish churches over recent months. Good middle-way Anglicanism has to recognise the new opportunities that technology brings to proclaim afresh the Good News of Jesus Christ, especially to those who do not yet connect with the geographical church.

    I note that, since 2015, the published membership of Canon Fraser’s parish has declined by over 15 per cent. Instead of the endless clergy morale-sapping negativity that is his current stock-in-trade, I gently suggest a pause from this Aunt Sally journalism to focus on doing something to arrest this worrying slump.

    Canon Simon Butler

    London SW11

    SIR – The Bishop of Salisbury is reported (August 3) as saying: “Churches are community buildings which have to adapt to the needs of the community as those needs change.” It would be more correct to say that a church is a house of God, and that the community of those who enter it needs to adapt to the requirements of God.

    David J Critchley

    Winslow, Buckinghamshire

    SIR – You report that the church at Okeford Fitzpaine intends to remove the Victorian pews because the modern human body is more generously proportioned.

    Anyone who holds this view has never seen a picture of Queen Victoria’s bloomers.

    Chris James

    Abergele, Conwy

    1. Mr/Mrs Chris(topher/tine) James you are mistaken. Those are my garments not Queen Victoria’s, which went missing this weekend when I was struggling with my computer emails. Can you account for your whereabouts over the weekend?

    2. Upon reading the (loose?) canon’s letter, it seems to me that Giles Fraser has touched a raw nerve. Butler’s snide remarks are unbecoming of a clergyman.

  38. The culture war on Britain’s proletarian past. Spiked 5 August 2020.

    Talking Pictures TV, the small family-run channel broadcasting old films and TV programmes, has recently been celebrating its fifth anniversary. In an era of streaming and podcasts, it has done well to gain some national recognition. Its audience share has steadily increased year on year, and during lockdown it has been attracting six million viewers per week. It has also attracted considerable controversy during that period, too.

    Indeed, the very existence of Talking Pictures has now become controversial. At a time when TV streaming platforms are busy removing shows and films that could be deemed offensive to woke sensibilities, Talking Pictures continually broadcast shows that bring the Twitterati out in a rash. This is why the channel often has a pre-broadcast warning that a show may reflect ‘discriminatory attitudes’ prevalent during that period.

    Morning everyone. Talking Pictures real offence is that it depicts in its movies a White Working Class Britain. Considerable efforts are being made to expunge this from popular memory. TPTV will almost certainly bite the dust in the near future!

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/08/05/the-culture-war-on-britains-proletarian-past/

  39. Need for speed

    SIR – I crashed my first car after three weeks when I was 18 years old. I didn’t learn my lesson. I considered myself a good driver – I was technically good at operating a car – but I was fearless. After my third crash (two cars written off), it dawned on me that I was doing something wrong.

    It is now understood that young brains readily accept higher levels of risk.

    Decades later, I welcome restrictions on new drivers (report, August 1). The law would have given me pause for thought, but the proposed contract with parents would have had no effect whatsoever.

    James Knight

    St Albans, Hertfordshire

    1. I agree Mr Knight, but just explain to me where all these traffic police are going to come from to enforce any such regulation Boris dreams up.

        1. 2022, built in speed limiters which via traffic signs and GPS will automatically set your maximum speed. Of course “they” promise an override facility of jamming your foot down hard as a safety “get out of trouble” measure. Another EU directive Boris will enthusiastically embrace no doubt.

    2. There’s a brat who drives a very noisy car at dangerous speeds up and down our road. Despite the speed limit and that there’s barely ten metres of actual road, usually with children and pets on it.

      What annoys me is that I can’t chuck a thermite bomb on it and burn the damned thing.

  40. Just when you were all getting excited about refusing to take the lurgy vaccine, we hear that China is not playing ball over their joint venture vaccine development with Canada. Vaccine for the Canadian trials are being held up by the Chinese authorities, no trials have started.

    Who’da tthuk it – well obviously not out pretendy PM

    https://nationalpost.com/health/china-spat-may-be-threatening-canadas-bid-to-get-early-access-to-leading-covid-19-vaccine-experts/wcm/26284ea0-16b4-4350-9221-1ad8c2c14cff/

    1. Who on earth would develop a vaccine in conjunction with China? Is bat blood cheaper than duck eggs?
      What has Mick Jagger’s by-blow got against his fellow Canadians?

  41. World’s gone mad……..Brendan O’Neil

    The most striking thing about the CNN tweet wasn’t the tweet itself

    but the response to it. When people understandably pushed back against

    the tweet – asking CNN if it was talking about women – the trans lobby

    and its supporters in high places went crazy. They loudly justified the

    erasure of the word woman. It is perfectly proper to say ‘individual

    with a cervix’ instead of ‘woman’, they said, because using

    ‘gender-neutral language’ is more ‘inclusive’.

    This is patent nonsense. The whole point of this so-called gender-neutral language is to exclude.

    In this case to exclude the term woman from women’s health services,

    and, more broadly, to exclude from public life anyone who refuses to

    genuflect before the ideology of genderfluidity and its Orwellian

    linguistics.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/08/04/only-women-have-a-cervix/

    1. There are over 4 billion women on the planet. There are about 400 men in a dress.

      Those 400 should be reminded, calmly but firmly, as if talking to a child – because they are children – that they are dysfunctional, mentally ill, conceited, spoiled and utterly irrelevant.

      We must stop pandering to these fools. By all means, dress up as a woman. Take endless drugs to damage your body’s natural functions. It doesn’t make you a woman. It makes you a cross dressing masochist. You’re a man in a dress.

        1. Ray Davies’ original lyrics in his paean to trannies had a line, “…where they drink champagne and it tastes just like Coca Cola.” The Coca Cola company threatened to sue so Davies had to change “Coca Cola” to “Cherry Cola” for the single’s release.

          I downloaded the song, a fortnight ago, on Spotify and it proudly proclaims the version to have the original “Coca Cola” lyric.

        2. Gosh, was that really 50 years ago?

          Still puzzled by the last line… “I’m glad I’m a man, & so is Lola”. Does he mean Lola is also a man (well, we’ve already worked that out) or is Lola glad he’s a man?

      2. Sigh,you are completely correct of course Wibbers
        The problem is in this mad,madder,madderest world anyone employed in the public sector,academia and all too many private companies that made that statement would lose their jobs.pensions and prospects……….
        The lunatics have taken over the asylum

        1. I think it’s beyond time that proper asylums were reinstated.

          We’d need a lot of them because there are so many candidates to fill them, apart from the trannies. The occupants of the Palace of Westminster could form the first wave of admissions.

      3. I would like all sports authorities change their competition categories to e.g. ‘People with a cervix 100m Final’ and ‘People with a Prostrate 100m Final’.

        Or, more snappy ”The XX 100m final’ and ‘The XY 100m final’

    2. Heyup!
      Bright and overcast here in Derbyshire.

      I see HS2 propagandist William Barter is earning his money in today’s Letters Page.

      SIR – George Trefgarne (Comment, August 4) suggests that commuters subsidise the rest of the rail network. In fact, before Covid- 19, long-distance operators and some London commuter services paid premiums to the Department of Transport for their franchises, while other London commuter services and regional operators received subsidies.

      He is right, however, that, post-Covid, even if traditional commuting drops in the short term, the worst excesses of crowding must be eliminated if travellers are to feel safe on the railways. Moreover, if people are able to limit the number of days spent in their office, on the days they do come in, their tolerance for longer commuting journeys may increase.

      As for HS2, the major winners would be commuters in the corridor to London from Milton Keynes, Northampton and the Trent Valley, who will benefit from increased capacity when long-distance services transfer to it from the existing lines.

      William Barter
      Potcote, Northamptonshire

      Robert Spowart
      5 Aug 2020 2:46AM
      I wonder how much Mr. William Barter’s Consultancy in Rail Operations and Planning is receiving for his continual promotion of HS2 is being paid?

      http://www.williambarter.co.uk/
      Delete3Like

      Reply
      Gervase Dawidek
      5 Aug 2020 7:21AM
      Yes, I am surprised the Telegraph keeps publishing his letters without at least a declaration of interest. In any case it would have been far cheaper to have reopened the old Great Central (closed by Labour). I may be wrong but I think it runs quite close to his home village so he has further motive in promoting HS2.

      Flag14Unlike
      Reply
      Colin Thomasson
      5 Aug 2020 7:24AM
      @Robert Spowart a qualified HS2″ expert” with no academic or technical qualifications whatsoever, at least he mentions none in his long list of
      ” Expertise and Capabilities ”
      Which actually amounts to no more than a shameless ability to churn out uncorroborated bullshot to order
      Flag15Unlike
      Reply

      1. Morning, BoB.
        Willie Boy has been quiet for some time.
        Does his appearance in the DT mean the the pandemic is over and we are returning to normal levels of disinformation?

        1. I noticed A Allan putting their two penn’orth in response to Mr. West:-

          Michael West
          5 Aug 2020 7:42AM
          I can’t understand why Barter keeps getting in this paper with his HS2 propaganda

          Flag7Unlike
          Reply

          A Allan
          5 Aug 2020 7:47AM
          @Michael West

          TBF – it is several weeks since we’ve heard from him.

          I always wonder why he’s so coy about his qualifications.

          Flag4Unlike
          Reply

  43. Nicked

    Lebanon have announced that their first astronaut, Colonel Mustapha Fag,
    will be landing on Mars this afternoon after his successful launch
    yesterday.

    1. That has set me up for the entire day with a big smile on my face, Rik. Thank you!

  44. I am a muppet … [NoTTLers: “Tell us something we don’t already know!”] … in fact I could apply to be the new Swedish Chef!

    A few weeks ago I formed some left-over home-made sausage meat into flat round patties and put them in the freezer. Two weeks ago I made a batch of four hamburgers from some beef I minced and then put the unused ones in the freezer for future use.

    Last night I decide to make a Scotch egg for my dinner today. I took out a sausage meat pattie to defrost to wrap around a hard-boiled egg.

    OK so far? Are you ahead of me?

    I thought the pattie looked a little dark red but I then thought it was because I’d put some tomato puree in it (pork and tomato sausages are a Midlands’ speciality), so I carried on and made the “Scotch egg”. It wasn’t until I started to eat it, today, that I realised that I’d wrapped the egg in a hamburger! I must have invented the world’s first “Burger egg” (“Scotch burger?”). It was OK-ish, but I won’t repeat the experiment since I’m not too keen on eating cold hamburger.

    D’oh!

      1. Your attempts to wind me up, Jules, have fallen by the wayside.

        You know as well as I do (from previous correspondence) that a Hamburger was originally called a “Hamburg Steak”, is made of beef, and came from that place [just as a Frankfurter comes from Frankfurt and a Berliner (doughnut) comes from Berlin].

        Most hamburgers (only ever made from beef) are made and sold in the US. Try going there and asking for a “beefburger” (no such thing) and they will wonder what planet you’re from. Hamburgers have never contained any ham or pork.

    4. You are in fact human Griz. How does the raw fish go down with you.I had a go at a raw herring in NL with a few dutchmen watching me. Was very good much to their dissapointment.

      1. I haven’t actually tried sashimi (raw fish), John , but I do like sushi (cooked fish, vegetables or egg, on rice) with wasabi, soy sauce and pickled ginger.

        I did have a carpaccio (raw but semi-pickled in a vinaigrette) of Arctic char when I was up in Lappland 19 months ago and it was delicious.

    6. To pass the Swedish Chef test, you need to repeat the exercise with a live hen.

  45. I watched a bit of BBC “Hard News”? last night, quite late. Sir Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust was interviewed. The opening question was ageneral one of the “where are we now” overview sort. Sir Jeremy began his response by saying, ” We have a virus that has jumped from animal to human…”
    I switched off.

    https://wellcome.ac.uk/about-us/executive-leadership-team

    1. So they have decided that that is the final narrative we are to be fed. Their ‘science’ is settled.

      1. Not if he is sticking to the narrative that it is an unfortunate natural mutation. The science suggests, and the circumstances corroborate the view that this is a virus created (or spliced or assembled) in a laboratory. Probably as a bioweapon.
        I am at a loss to understand why the Chinese have been allowed to get away with this. They unleashed it on the world. From the aspect of the damage wrought it does not matter whether it results from their disgusting immoral eating habits or carelessly allowing a weapon loose on the population.

  46. Latest from Beirut

    من المفترض أن تنفجر الأبواب الدموية فقط

    I only wanted to blow the bloody doors off

  47. Further evidence to suggest Nick Clegg’s multi million dollar non job with Facebook is a Soros related reward for political services while in office……..

    “Sharyl Attkisson

    NEW: Hard fact check truth: I traced 18 of 20 Facebook independent oversight board members to political activist George Soros and/or his foundations. This helps explain why fact checks so often seem to cut in one direction and are not neutral.”

  48. Good afternoon all.
    Interesting watching the news earlier, one piece of distant footage of the huge Beirut explosion definitely shows how the explosion happened.
    You could see the smaller flashes near the bases of the storage silos as the detonators went off. Ammonium Nitrate Fertiliser unlike cladding doesn’t explode or catch fire with out human interference.
    It’s was used in road building in some countries mixed with diesel fuel and rammed into a pre-drilled holes, but it needs the be detonated. But it was very inexpensive and very efficient.
    i believe that’s why it was removed from sale in the UK.

    1. It wasn’t AN… it was rocket fuel and missiles given to Hezbollah by Iran for attacks on Israel.. and the Saudis did it to prevent another ME war.

    2. The company Scottish Agricultural Industries manufactured this product in Leith. They had a very big building across the road from the bottling hall and bonded whisky warehouse where I worked back in the early 80s. Our fire alarm system was somewhat imperfect and was prone to false alarms.
      This caused a major top level response from the Fire Brigade. They would send up to eight engines immediately*. A fire in a warehouse containing thousands of gallons of whisky just across the road from a factory making and storing ammonium nitrate was a bit of a worry. ( Actually it was officially one of the major fire risks in Scotland, I think.) As this reduced the cover for any fires that might have occurred in Edinburgh, engines would be brought up from the Borders, from West Lothian and from Kirkcaldy on the other side of the Forth to provide cover for the capital. While Fire Brigade were relieved to find a false alarm, they were annoyed by the reorganising that had to take place. Eventually they told us to get our alarm system fixed properly.

      *UK Government please note. Correct response to a possible crisis/critical incident is to respond immediately with everything you’ve got, and not to wait for committee to be formed to make prognostications of doubtful validity.

      1. Do keep up, Philip. That observation has already been made twice before you had your first instant Maxwell House. 🤣

    4. Staged! – one tiny blob of weld would not hold that in place – no goggles either

    8. I can’t quite work out which is the bigger display of utter stupidity:

      1. Welding the thing thus trapping his head, or

      2. Welding without using a mask to protect his eyes from the intense flash (‘arc-eye’).

        1. Morning, Spikey.

          When I was a fabrication and welding apprentice we would make sure to “arc up” just as a member of senior management walked past us in the workshop. Our shouts of “Get a shield!” (cover your eyes) always came a second too late! 🤣

  50. I understand there is a report saying that the government “got it all wrong”.

    Well – there’s a surprise.

    1. A Ministry of the Bleedin’ Obvious would probably be the most overworked Ministry in Whitehall

    1. I keep a sten gun for troublesome indoor mosquitos, and a well-fuelled JCB to deal with any possibility they might settle on a surface. Mosquitos are repelled by rubble, so I am told.

    2. Pretty much everything in the Public Sphere is in some sense or another an outright lie.

      1. 322110+ up ticks,
        Morning AS,
        Only because many of the peoples find it more comforting that way, if that wants verifying then check out party manifesto’s, missives of
        lies / deceit issued on a regular basis, does it make a difference to the voting pattern ? not one iota.

  52. Hiroshima at 75: bitter row persists over US decision to drop the bomb. Wed 5 Aug 2020 06.45 BST

    Behind the neglect lay a deep national ambivalence about what it represented, a quandary which endures today: was this the aircraft that finally ended the second world war, saving hundreds of thousands of lives – or the instrument of the mass killing of civilians, which heralded a new age of nuclear terror?

    There is no “bitter row” only occasional articles that using sophistry and innuendo on the anniversaries of the bombings attempt to construct a false narrative. The bombs were launched not at the behest of Truman but in accordance with a prearranged program as soon as they became available. The Japanese were not preparing to surrender prior to their arrival but were absolutely determined not to do so. Had the Allies had to invade Japan it would certainly have cost many American and British lives but missing from this equation is the cost to the Japanese. The islands were already isolated and at the mercy of the US Air Forces and Navy. Very soon large numbers of Japanese would have starved to death as imports were prevented and the infrastructure for the distribution of food and supplies was destroyed. The bombs were probably the most merciful outcome for them!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/04/hiroshima-atomic-bomb-us-japan-history

    1. I think they should send Hillary Clinton to kowtow and apologise. It was her Party after all. As a sign of sincerity she could hand over all the Clinton Foundation funds.

      Good morning Mistress Smade.

    2. If the war could have been ended by dropping the bomb on Germany in 1940 we should have done it.

      Wars should not be continued to suit the pathetic morality of the weak who would see millions killed just to salve the egos of a spoiled fifth column. Hell, just look at the black kids murdered by other black kids. The Left are happy for that to continue because dealing with it is ‘waycist’ They feel better, vindicated in their righteousness in their Nottinghill supper tables while kids die for their egotism. The Left don’t care about the body count. It’s all about them.

      1. Well, we could have had Hitler assassinated. But that would have been foul play…

  54. 322110+ up ticks,
    Looks like another burn up on the semi re-entry missile could come about,
    same old issues, same old treacherous players, gove playing assassin again same old victim, same old multitude HOPING in the same old way.
    Many of us knew about boris as we did about the wretch cameron & mayday.

    But that ” good of the party” brigade won through.

    delingpole,
    Gove got an awful lot of stick when he last backstabbed Boris. But that was before we were all fully aware of just how useless Boris is. With hindsight, Gove was right all along. Let’s hope that he does a better job of it next time round.

      1. 322110+ up ticks,
        Afternoon Anne,
        The mayday never had any problem standing in a set piece issue but her forte is lying.

          1. 322110+ up ticks,
            Afternoon HL,

            Many would like to see her do the plank jig, just once.

          2. Mornning, ogs
            Laptop playing up. Have ordered new power cable.
            I’m sure that many wish all sorts of things on that despicable woman.

  55. Have any of you heard about Baby Banks?

    The Baby Bank is like a food bank but for baby essentials. We collect new and pre-loved items for newborns to 5 year olds from the local community and give them to families who are in urgent need of help.

    Baby Banks are a crucial nationwide service, run by volunteers, helping to support some of the most vulnerable families in the UK by providing essentials such as nappies, clothing and bedding.

    Most of those who seek their help come on professional referral from services including health visitors, midwives and social workers.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-8592365/Kate-Middleton-opts-trend-look-unpacks-donations-Baby-Bank-Sheffield.html

    Edit.

    Am I feeling coldhearted when I say if one wants to drop a sprog, one must be more prepared?

    1. Yo T_B

      I would say if lots of couples were more prepared the sprog(s) woulld not have been dropped

      1. Many women (rather than couples) see a sprog as the passport to a house and a life on benefits.

    2. I quite like “Baby Changing Area“. I often snatch a baby from a pram and change it for a £20 note…

    3. If you can’t feed, don’t breed.
      Very few are genuinely in want in the British welfare state.

      1. “If you can’t feed, don’t breed.” – yet in African countries that have received millions in Foreign Aid – the population has soared and repeated pictures of them starving accompanied with more pleas for “charity” from us appear daily. Now not only are their countries over populated – they are now coming here to get even MORE for us to pay for.

        1. Which is the biggest problem with foreign aid. We can give them our money and technology but until we give them our education and infrastructure we don’t help them at all.

          1. But the Uk has been giving education & infrastructure – my Father was paid by the DFID (Commonwealth Office then) to establish a university in Nigeria, after working at another – there’s the education. The UK left a lot of railways, roads, sewers, water supplies and the like, all to be broken by the natives.

    5. Child benefit, around £80 a month from the taxpayer. Now, will it be baby supplies or a phone upgrade.

    6. Not remotely, but responsiblity and pride are not welcome in this day and age. It’s all about what the individual wants, not what they can afford.

      Paying for it is someone else’s problem. We still have our eight tab spreadsheet for planning junior. Not just the immediate costs but 5 years hence, then 10 years and through university. We also considered what we wanted to accomplish and so on.

      I heard that a chum had had a baby and asked when she had married – not married, so the kid will be a bastard. Not a home owner, in council accommodation. Maybe I’m old fashioned but part of the reason the country is in a mess is because of this lack of consideration, responsiblity and discipline.

    7. Baby banks, I thought was a little spit of sand close to Dogger Banks.
      As some would say on here, I’ll get me bucket and spade…..

    8. All these food banks, baby banks and the like do nothing but create dependancy. Just like aid to Africa creates a client state, so aid to poor people in this country creates a client group who will do nothing for themselves.

      If people want to have children, they should plan and make sure they know that raising a child to adulthood costs a lot of money. That is why most middle class couples have no more that two children these days – only the very rich and the feckless can afford more.

      So no – not cold-hearted but realistic.

    1. It doubles as bagpipes? Or is it meant to be a scorpion?
      These days he’ll probably get spoken to by plod for scaring the snowflakes.

        1. I have no idea what you are talking about, but since I threw the TV out some years ago, I accept that I’m on a different wave-length from the rest of the country.

          1. Alien the Movie was first aired at the cinema in 1979. Starring Sigourney Weaver. Horror Sci-Fi.

            As you got rid of the TV you are probably more sane than most.

          2. My movie level in 1979 was still somewhere around Snow White, I think. We were taken to see Star Wars, but I couldn’t understand the American accents or the plot!

  58. The dimness and lack of education of the younger generation never fails to astound me. Yesterday I went shopping, to the Coop in Simrishamn, and one of the items I bought was a celeriac. It was the first item I placed on the conveyor at the check-out and it was checked through with all my other groceries. Just before I paid, the check-out girl asked me what it was! [I thought, well, you’ve just checked it through so you must know what produce your shop is selling.] I said to her, “I don’t know what you call it in Swedish, but I call it a celeriac.” “Oh!”, she replied.

    As I was filling my Morrison’s shopping bag I checked the receipt and noticed that she had charged me for a kålrot (swede), but not a rotceleri (celeriac). Undaunted I marched back into the veg section and checked the produce. swedes were on display at SEK29·95/kg. Next to them the celeriac were displayed at SEK24·95/kg. I approached an assistant to whom I showed the receipt to and demanded the difference back. She told me to go back to the queue and give the receipt back to the girl who would then refund the difference. I told her that under no circumstances would I rejoin a long queue so I headed back directly to the front where I handed the receipt back. The sheepish girl had been instructed to give me a refund over her headset.

    I actually got an extra SEK20 on top of the refund because the shop’s policy is to more than make good a mistake. I was left wondering how many mistakes are made, daily, by under-educated staff who don’t have a clue (or are to stupid to ask) about the products they are selling.

    Forty years ago I was asked by a check-out girl in England what a green pepper (capsicum) was when I presented one to her. She then asked me, “What do you do with it?” I smiled and said, “Well, in my case, I eat it!”

        1. It’s all on credit T_B to be paid after they arrive from bennies,oh and pay up or something very unpleasant will happen to those left behind

        2. #metoo

          I had a girlfriend in 1963 who worked in Harley Street. Rich patients visiting private doctors. Always arrive dby tai. Never grubbed in the gutter if they dropped any coins. She reckoned she made about £2 10s a week (which was a lot of money then – she earned £6 a week as a posh secretary).

          1. Check behind benches in towns, especially if there’s a flower bed behind the bench. Drunks sit down on the bench, money falls out of their pockets…bingo!

  62. 322110+ up ticks,
    I believe that shortly hoardings are going up around number 10 as the contract starts & tic toc the clock is ticking on time it takes to enlarge the letter box to accommodate LARGE brown envelopes.

  63. I’m at the stage now where I am prepared to offer my services for the good of the country, Michael Gove, I will sharpen your knife if you want to repeat your attempt of seeing off Boris!

          3. You may think that, I could not possibly comment.

            Frankly, I can’t stand ANY of the Johnson clan – and their self-publicity and bandwagonning.

          1. None I hope – the march was for all elephants. Calling for a ban on the ivory trade. Which did actually become law later, although there are loopholes.

          5. And the fat bloke with the blue tie is assisting the perlice with their enquiries?

    1. Was amused by the sentence about policeman being investigated:
      Nicknamed ‘Sacker’ due to the number of officers kicked out of the force following his rulings.

    2. Did he say he slipped over in his garden carrying a knife and scrap the top off some of his poppy heads, for use later ?

  68. An interesting article , worth a glance .

    I wasn’t all that keen on Python , but I appreciated John Cleese and the others !

    Spam spam spam spamspam!

    Bring back the old John Cleese: the Pythons skewered cancel culture 40 years ago
    Forget Cleese’s recent decline – the Pythons’ great crusades against groupthink and frothing mobs seem more timely than ever

    BEN LAWRENCE
    5 August 2020 • 3:40pm

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/bring-back-old-john-cleese-pythons-skewered-cancel-culture-40/

  72. Snookered!
    Just as I cough up for a TV licence, thinking BBC4 is good value@ £157….I see it’s been hi-jacked by live snooker….!

    2. Quite like Snooker but then it’s followed by Hiroshima, which I don’t need to see again.

      1. What pisses me off about the A-Bombs on Japan is that woke, leftie wanqueurs are talking it up as a warcrime.

        They decline to take account of the estimated 1 to 2 million dead on both sides had the war continued to the bitter end.

        1. If the battle for Okinawa was anything to go by in its ferocity even that might be an underestimate of Branestormian proportions.

        3. I am indignant that the Traitorgraph described Hiroshima as an ‘atrocity’. Anyone could debate Nagasaki, but Hiroshima was intended to end the war. Those who perished, men, women, children and animals, effectively sacrificed their lives for the future of Japan; they were accidental heroes who helped the Emperor to stop the war before 5 or 10 million people were killed in an invasion.

    3. Damn, I was looking forward to this tube of Pringles,
      What a rip off, only three in it, and all tennis ball flavoured.

      1. I have seen some memes which are supposed to be funny regarding the explosion, but i thought them bad taste while people are still dying in the rubble.

        1. Indeed. Not remotely funny. The official story is plausible, but the multitude of flashes filmed between the first and final explosions are somewhat suspicious. But Macron is visiting, so all will be well. Just went to the DEC website to see if there was an appeal. The computer says no.

          1. It’s OK – I’ve got one from Save the Children.

            A huge explosion in the Lebanese capital has devastated homes and communities.

            Many children are unaccounted for as rescue teams desperately work to get people out of the rubble.

            At least 100 people have died, with thousands more injured – and the numbers are likely to rise. Donate now to our Emergency Fund.

          2. I’ll have a look. I’m a bit conflicted with Save the Children. On one hand, I know one of their former regional directors, and have sung in a carol service with their former DG. On the other, they’re just another woke, virtue signalling bunch of lefties.

          3. You beat me to it, Geoff.

            How does one know – these dismal days – that ANY charity is straight and true and does not take great chunks of donated income to overpay its woke “managers”?

            And, in the context of the nightmare that is Lebanon even before this devastating blow, what expectation is there that ANY donated funds will actually reach the poor bloody infantry – 300,000 of whom are said to be homeless?

          5. Our response teams are assessing the situation and planning to:

            Deliver urgent food & hygiene supplies as many shops have been destroyed
            Provide children with essential psychological first aid and help reunite children with their families
            Rehabilitate homes destroyed in the explosion
            Distribute cash transfers for families struggling to cope

          6. I stopped sending their monthly fee some time ago when various scandals emerged. Princess Anne is still their figurehead, though.

          7. Toy Boy is flying there tomorrow.

            So what passes for the “leaders” in a country effectively without a government – will have to waste their time – and the time of “emergency workers” ushering this prancing clown round the damaged city.

          9. Could be that Toy Boy has a new “special” friend – whose name is the same as his….

          11. Telegraph has an article by a specialist, Jack Watling, and it looks possible that the big blast followed a series of small fires and explosions. Those of us who remember youthful experiments before the provos-roper era may be puzzled, because IIRC, fertiliser is an oxidising agent and requires a fuel and some form of detonation.

          12. Me oppo is an ex-miner.
            Blasting paste was ammonium nitrate mixed with diesel to form a pumpable paste, and fired by a blasting cap.

          13. Really? I had no idea! Of course, that might explain why extremist criminals used to break into quarries in Ireland and elsewhere.

          14. Afternoon Geoff. You usually have to wait a few days for the holes to appear in any Official Narrative. I have just learned that the white building in the foreground of the explosion is a grain silo and it contained most of the country’s wheat supply. Coincidence?

          19. First time is happenstance.
            Second time is coincidence.
            Third time is enemy action.
            (c) James Bond “Goldfinger”

  76. Bloody gale still blowing. Knocks the garden to bits – and dries out the ground. A Double Lammy.

      1. I don’t know what Elsan Bog is so googled. A chemical toilet cleaner for caravans apparently.

        1. The chap on the right of the picture appears to be Reginald Hercules Dwight. AKA Elton John, m’lud. Sort of sounds like Elsan Bog. Or not. In the photo, he appears to be wearing a Mayoral Chain of Office. But may be his twin sister.

          You’re welcome…

          4. I thought David Furnish was married to Olive Oil. Or perhaps I’m getting stories mixed up…

          12. See other posts. It was an allusion to a certain event which involved several ‘like-minded’ gentlemen, and, later on, to the English legal system.

  78. I found an old unframed oil painting in my loft yesterday of a beautiful naked lady…

    …So i mounted it.

  79. That’s me until Saturday. Have a spiffing time in my absence.

    Enjoy the “grand chaleur” while it lasts – not long, I gather.

          2. Constable painted the House and the Park, then the university took it over in the nineteen sixties. It didn’t improve the view!

          3. It’s one of those hideous modern campuses – I went there for an interview in 1966. Fortunately I fluffed my A levels and didn’t make the grade.

          4. It won design awards, believe it or not! In ’66 they were probably still building it. Not all the Squares were completed and in use when I graduated in the early seventies.

    2. Don’t forget that Wivenhoe is right next to Colchester, Uncle Bill, where Annie, Korky and I reside. It would be great to meet up for lunch somewhere if possible.

  82. Evening, all. The Connemara worked his socks off today to produce nice work in exercises that he finds difficult. So pleased with him (even though it left me dripping with sweat!). He managed collected, working, medium and extended trot on a circle. Next week I am to ride Prelim 19 so I’ll have to do my homework! I think I’m a guinea pig because my instructor is to ride it shortly on her dressage horse in competition. I expect she’ll think if I can manage it, it will be a doddle 🙂

    1. Now that must make life better for you than it has been recently.
      Onward and upward!

      1. It’s my one period in the week when I don’t have anything to think or worry about other than how the horse is going (and next week where I’m going as well!). I call it my “destressage” 🙂 Prelim 19 looks tricky; for one thing I’ll be riding it in a 40 x 20 arena when it’s set out for a 60 x 20 arena (with extra letters) so I’m going to have to imagine the missing ones (standard is AKEHCMBF the large arena is AKVESHCMRBPF). The good thing about dressage tests is that they tend to be symmetrical; after you’ve done the manoeuver on one rein, you then change the rein and repeat it on the other. I can also foresee a lack of help from my Connemara. He doesn’t do rhythmical or regular most days! Still, I’m looking forward to it. I shall have to make sure I work him in to be supple before I go for it.

          1. Thank you. There’s no pressure (except from myself to get it right and not take the wrong course or miss bits out) as it isn’t a competition.

          2. Isn’t it?

            You are competing with yourself, often the most difficult opponent you’ll meet.

  84. Well, that’s my weekend sorted out.
    I’ve just bought 4 rather nice lamp standards at auction and have to pick them up from Brentwood on Monday, so will be loading the camping gear into the van and heading off on Friday.
    I plan heading across to the Norfolk coast stopping in the Cromer area on Friday, Shingle Street just North of Ipswich on Saturday and somewhere within easy reach of Brentwood on Sunday Night.

    Anyone fancy saying Hello?

    https://portal-images.azureedge.net/auctions-2020/peter-1-10048/images/2c46d349-764f-4e3b-87c1-ac0700c493cd.jpg?w=1920&h=1920&mode=max

    https://portal-images.azureedge.net/auctions-2020/peter-1-10048/images/a2c54c04-f016-42a9-a5cb-ac0700c4918d.jpg?w=1920&h=1920&mode=max

    https://portal-images.azureedge.net/auctions-2020/peter-1-10048/images/369533f8-e467-485a-b5c5-ac0700c496c6.jpg?w=1920&h=1920&mode=max

    1. Not my neck of the woods but if you are ever travelling along the M27 i’m in Fareham and we have a Micro pub which serves good ale.

    2. We have a spare bed at Allan Towers. Do you fancy staying the night? We can also feed you.
      Brentwood is about half an hour down the road.

      1. And if you do, please let me know. I could pop round for a cuppa and a chat (proved Annie hasn’t run out of tea). I would be good to meet up with you briefly after we met at the Rose and Crown just before you retired.

      2. I don’t know if you have my e-mail address, but I’ve asked tine (HertsLass) to send it to you.
        I will be lovely to meet you!

  86. Pleeeeese can someone tell me how to stop my nottl page going back to the top after opening a link several scrolls down?
    I do the ‘open new tab’ thing which used to work but recently I keep having to start at the top again.

    2. Disqus is broken, and unfit for purpose. If it wasn’t free, I’d ask for my money back. Haven’t had that specific issue, but plenty of others.

      1. Most times i try to post a comment it shoots down to the bottom and I have to find the post I was about to comment on.

          2. I have to scroll the upvote arrow to the middle of the screen before upvoting, or I get jumped into the profile as you mention, N.

          3. Every time i try to post it tells me i’m logged out. By repeatedly clicking the post button about 3 or 4 times it goes through. Like you say..it’s free so we should put up with it.

      2. Sir, Disqus is our main anti progressive globalist means of communication without censorship from the center, quite unlike Twitter.

        So a few minor imperfections, usually rectified, can surely be accepted in the circumstances ?

  89. 737 MAX – see https://news.aviation-safety.net/2020/08/04/faa-issues-boeing-737-max-proposed-airworthiness-directive/

    The FAA has issued a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) for a Boeing 737 MAX airworthiness directive (AD) (PDF) as another step to clear the grounded Boeing 737 MAX jets for flight again.

    The NPRM proposes mandating a number of design changes. The NPRM is open for public comments with 45 days of publication. To assist with the review of the proposed AD, the FAA also published their Preliminary Summary of the FAA’s Review of the Boeing 737 MAX (PDF).

    In short, the NPRM proposes the following steps to be taken before any 737 MAX will be allowed to operate revenue flights:

    Installation/Verification of Flight Control Computer (FCC) Operational Program Software (OPS)
    Note: Boeing updated the FCC software to eliminate MCAS reliance on a single AOA sensor signal by using both AOA sensor inputs and changing flight control laws to safeguard against MCAS activation due to a failed or erroneous AOA sensor.
    Airplane Flight Manual (AFM) Revisions
    Minimum Equipment List (MEL) Provisions for Inoperative Flight Control System Functions
    Installation/Verification of MAX Display System (MDS) Software
    Note: Boeing has revised the AOA DISAGREE alert message implementation to achieve the original design intent to be standard on all 737 MAX aircraft.
    Horizontal Stabilizer Trim Wire Bundle Routing Change
    AOA Sensor System Test
    Operational Readiness Flight

    1. That’s good. All that Hezbollah, Iran supplied, stuff could have landed on them and it would have been even worse.

      But thanks to Israel’s secretive anti Iran allies, Saudi Arabia, it didn’t.

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