Wednesday 6 July: A Prime Minister without candour, judgment – or a party behind him

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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642 thoughts on “Wednesday 6 July: A Prime Minister without candour, judgment – or a party behind him”

  1. It is time for Boris Johnson to go
    The former Brexit Minister explains why he has lost confidence in the Prime Minister
    David Frost
    No-one is more downhearted than me at the events of the last few days. Over the years, I have worked as closely as anyone with Boris Johnson. I know, therefore, that he is a remarkable man and a remarkable politician. Only he could have cut through the mess left by Theresa May and delivered on the verdict of the people in the Brexit referendum. He took the country with him through the pandemic and has shown huge leadership on policy towards Ukraine.

    Frost’s words – not mine. Is he just being nice or does he mean it? If the latter, then I’d begin to doubt his potential leadership, ‘cos Brexit ain’t done and his policy on Ukraine is nuts.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2022/07/05/time-boris-johnson-go/

    1. Yes I agree. He is being nice but Brexit was never done and the Ukraine business is sheer lunacy u less you’re keen on havingnWW3.

  5. ‘Morning All

    Well Mystic Rik predictions that the Dutch Police would fire on unarmed protestors seems to have come true even more quickly than I thought………

    https://gab.com/Cynthia_Holt/posts/108597364181907095

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ce9f607e3cd1feb4f7198337ccc8cdedeed67627b003b4efa737f07b0d467d16.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/abaccc5fa0a7aa6911c98fab19ff1d5185eef06b34058b6de650d4347c30718c.jpg

    Whats driving the desire to shut down farms so quickly in the Netherlands??

    Oh wait………

    https://twitter.com/EvaVlaar/status/1544390286184431616?s=20&t=u0QE8rkK_UqdLizNjjXJ5w

    1. The Dutch Police’s open warfare on the farmers could be the spark that lights a European Revolution.

      1. This is how fascism starts. The Left have always killed to get their way. The last time we had a world war. I assume we’ll have to do the same again to stop them. The Lefties, wasters and scum squealing pride and green will be quite surprised to find that millions of people actually despise their attitude.

    2. Forcing change through taxation. Precisely what tax is not for. Do these people realise that?

    3. Bill and Melinda Gates’ investments are or were managed by a Mr Michael Larson.

  7. 353951+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Tn todays political climate this is a plague that will flash travel from nation to nation our own electorate has, over the last three decades plus, gave consent and stood by and watched the construct of an internal force only to eager to take up a KAPO stance.

    I’ve worked onshore / offshore for the Dutch decent Dutch & decent Englishmen are on par and a very hard combination to beat.

    https://twitter.com/LeilaniDowding/status/1544441009173577732?s=20&t=xhRvEwr261XZXhsKjsDVrQ

    1. I don’t quite know what these Lefties think we’ll eat when they completely shut down the food producing industry.

    2. From Twitter,

      The Dutch farmers have blocked dozens of high roads & distribution centers. Lots of supermarkets are already out of milk/eggs. We’re the second largest agricultural exporter in the world, after America. Together we feed the world. Support our farmers.

      My bold – really? A bit itchy beard.

    1. Oh that’s unfair. You train your dog to manage separation anxiety. You go away for 5, then 10, then a minute, then 5, then 10 and so on so he learns you’re coming back.

      After the the 10 minute one Wiggy turned around and wandered off. Mongo whined for a bit, but eventually settled. Neither have really been barkers.

      1. If we leave the Springer we tell her we are going to the shop (key word). She sulks and then goes to sleep until we return.

        1. I tell Oscar where I’m going and to look after the house (and not to leave me any floods and deposits!). He is usually fast asleep when I get back. I wake him up (gently as he suffers from Sleep Startle) and give him a biscuit.

        2. Ditto Poppie. ‘We’re going shopping.’ She understands she is going to be left for a while… the tail goes down and she disappears behind the curtained lobby by the front door, it is a sort of den for her. On our return she emerges from behind the curtain with a ‘ta-daaa!’ flourish.

    3. Oscar just waits for the second half of his broken biscuit. He seems not to have twigged that it’s only really one treat!

  10. Morning, all.

    Last night I missed the news re Johnson’s travails. Now, my MP is named by Mark Harper in this sorry mess.
    The only leadership quality shown by Johnson is his ability to lead the Country up the garden path to a WEF/NWO dystopia. Finally, his lies will be his undoing, and not before time.
    The Tories are struggling, the integrity of the party has been shattered: they need to elect a leader whose sole aim is to govern for the good of the people and the Country, that is if one exists and can be persuaded to take on the role that Johnson, and his acolytes, have so badly soiled.

    https://twitter.com/Mark_J_Harper/status/1544349216663027712

    1. 650 mp’s in Parliament are all complicit in duping the public with the great reset scam, most want to dupe the public into remaining in the EU, most support duping the public with the climate change scam, most support duping the public with mass immigration and population change.
      So they are all liars, but some liars are worse that others, they want us to believe

      1. Bob3 – I think there’s a huge amount of effort from Whitehall – the state itself – to ensure these agenda are pushed on. We’ve a bunch of wasteful mandarins looking for their next 6 figure + double in expenses euro-non-job. There’s no way they’ll permit their carefully crafted destruction of this country continue and certainly won’t permit any change of course for their petty empire building.

      3. 650 mp’s in Parliament are all complicit in duping the public with the great reset…

        And here I am hoping that one, just one patriotic MP exists, and hates Johnson enough to spill the truth about what is really going on. All 650 must either know or strongly suspect what is really on the agenda. If the truth doesn’t materialise then we must assume that our Politicians’ form of omerta is as strong as that of the southern Italian’s version.

      4. It’s early for me. Read that as “650 mp’s in Parliament are all complicit in tupping the public…”

      6. My (new Lib Dem) MP is still going on about ambulance waiting times. She campaigned tirelessly on that theme and how she was going to get something done about it. More empty words.

    2. Good morning Korky.
      Sorry, but he/she is not entirely your MP.
      Rather you are his/her voter. (it’s too early to use a stronger word)

    3. There are MPs who would serve the country first, but they will never be allowed near office. The state machine would do them down.

    4. “The only leadership quality shown by Johnson is his ability to lead the Country up the garden path” …into the duck house.

  11. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    SIR – While Sajid Javid and Rishi Sunak are to be commended for resigning from the Cabinet, they really should have done so sooner.

    It has been clear for a long time that Boris Johnson is at best unprincipled, and at worst (the more likely scenario) morally turpitudinous, unfit to hold the greatest office of state. We could all see this. Why didn’t they?

    One can only hope that this is a turning point in British politics, marking the restoration of principles and morality in public life.

    Andrew Holgate
    Wilmslow, Cheshire

    Why didn’t they? Because they rely on him for powerful jobs…

    Yesterday was the beginning of the end, thank goodness! Not long to go now. Why, the party will shortly have an opportunity to adopt Consevatism – will they take it? Somehow I doubt it.

    1. Both Javid and Sunak are ex bankers. Both were earning 7 figure salaries. They gave that up to become ministers. Earning a tenth of what they were before. Why is that?

      I doubt it will suddenly become Conservative or conservative. The Left wing agenda will continue. They simply don’t realise the country needs and wants a different approach, nor, so desperate are they for those cushy after office jobs are they willing to take the risk for it in enacting a real agenda for change.

      1. It’s the power they crave. Not cushy or office, just the raw power. Power like they never had as bankers.

        1. Not only that, but the four great Offices of State have special pension arrangements. Gordon Brown supposedly rejected his post-Prime Ministerial allowance/pension, but he is an exception.

        2. Not only that, but the four great Offices of State have special pension arrangements. Gordon Brown supposedly rejected his post-Prime Ministerial allowance/pension, but he is an exception.

        3. Yes, and the after office jobs. The one day a week for £180,000, the all expenses paid travel and ski resort holiday to attend a climate conference, the after dinner waffles for 5000 to pontificate about tax…

  12. “Police smash gang ‘behind quarter of Channel migrant arrivals in UK’”
    Later in the day Messrs Sunak and Javid were allowed to quietly resign.
    However corrupt they may be, some people are untouchable.

      1. 353951+ up ticks,

        Morning TB,
        The party that was so treacherously struct down has been pointing this out for years along with being the only party that forever called for CONTROLLED immigration.
        The genuine UKIP no longer with us.

      2. Time was that Catholics were barred from office as they were seen to potentially try to usurp the Church of England and put power back to the Pope.

        Sound familiar?

        1. Catholics are still barred from becoming monarch. There were many significant financial institutions in Edinburgh that did not employ Catholics at the time I left school.

    2. 353951+ up ticks,

      Morning T,

      Teflon tone AKA the bog man springs instantly to mind.

  13. Good morning, all. A grey day.

    I realised that last night’s news reminded me of the Berlin Bunker April 1945. Two smart ones burned their SS uniforms and papers, adopted their pre-prepared new IDs and slipped away. Others, more rabid, clung closer to the Fuhrer…….

    1. Give Johnson a loaded and cocked pistol and he’d miss his brain and hit one of his feet.

  14. 353951+ up ticks,

    Fodder for thought,

    Gerard Batten
    @gjb2021
    ·
    8h
    Does anyone think this would have happened if Trump were President?

    But since Biden & his crime family are in the pay of China & Russia why would anyone be surprised.

    The Russians must be feeling particularly aggrieved since having taken their cash he then sells himself to a higher bidder, the Ukraine.

    Gerard Batten
    @gjb2021
    ·
    8h
    Does anyone think this would have happened if Trump were President?

    But since Biden & his crime family are in the pay of China & Russia why would anyone be surprised.

    The Russians must be feeling particularly aggrieved since having taken their cash he then sells himself to a higher bidder, the Ukraine.

    previewImg
    Iran, Russia, China to Run War Drills in Latin America

    Iran, Russia, and China are gearing up to run a series of major war drills in Latin America in a show of force meant to signal how these militaries can reach the United States.

    freebeacon.com

  15. China and India Funnel $24 Billion to Putin With Energy Spree. 6 July 2022.

    Russia has pocketed $24 billion from selling energy to China and India in just three months following its invasion of Ukraine, showing how higher global prices are limiting efforts by the US and Europe to punish President Vladimir Putin.

    China spent $18.9 billion on Russian oil, gas and coal in the three months to the end of May, almost double the amount a year earlier, latest customs data show. Meanwhile, India shelled out $5.1 billion in the same period, more than five times the value of a year ago. That’s an extra $13 billion in revenue from both countries compared to the same month last year.

    Sanctions. Bah! The only people they are hurting is us!

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-06/china-and-india-funnel-24-billion-to-putin-with-energy-spree#xj4y7vzkg

    1. Ah, but the fun fact is that China pays Russia with money they get from us in respect to of billions of pounds worth of Chinese manufactured trash that we import, around 75 bullion dollars worth.

      Had we made the stuff in the UK our economy would be in better shape?

    2. China and India ‘funnel’ makes it sound like they are doing something illegal. Just because it undermines the shaky legitimacy of the sanctions put in place by the US and their western trading partners doesn’t make it illegal. It merely highlights the futility of their actions.

      China and India carry out legal purchases of Russian goods probably wouldn’t induce so much clickbait for the Bloomberg website.

      1. Very perceptive Feargal. I would imagine considerable effort goes into inserting these subliminal messages into propaganda. They are probably more effective than the main theme!

        1. They’ve been doing it ever since Blair and his Spin Doctors. We are just (or at least some of us) starting to notice.

  16. Good morning all.
    A 12°C start with a heavy overcast sky and, when I brought the milk in, a few scattered drops of rain. It feels as if we could do with a good thunderstorm/

    Off to Derby soon to pick up stepson’s mail and then, hopefully, take him out for an hour or two.

      1. Thankyou m’Dear. We had a pleasant 3h out.

        He’s in a much better state than a month ago, almost back to his normal self but how long that will last when he is discharged is anyone’s guess.

        1. That’s good news in the short term. The problem will be don’t care in the community, unfortunately.

  17. Yo All

    Deemed unsuitable for a DT BTL

    when responding to questions about Chris Pincher’s history?

    The way Wokist UK is going, in the near future, the one to be prosecuted will be the man who rebuffs the homosexual trying to molest him.

    Back in the 1960’s when homosexuality was made legal, the standing joke in an RN Crewroom was

    “How long will it be, before it is Compulsory?”

    That day is here

  18. 353951+ up ticks,

    Has it not been thus in many respects since Thatcher
    received the order of the knife.

    As long as the lab/lib/con coalition supporting zoms are voting in majority numbers then the tory (ino) party are safe, decent peoples & the country are not.

    Wednesday 6 July: A Prime Minister without candour, judgment – or a party behind him

      1. UK 2022

        We Native Brits would be ‘on the stool’, the incomer migrants would be on the hoist

    3. And the rest, they help themselves to millions every year. No wonder they got rid of Elizabeth Filkin.
      There is masses of information on line about their claims. They are greedy disgusting lying filth.

    5. …and is there a record of him having reimbursed the treasury?

      I doubt it.

  20. SIR – As an antiquarian bookseller I send orders all over the world. However, from the end of this month I will no longer sell to Germany or France. What has changed? Extended Producer Responsibility, that’s what.

    In brief, it appears that mail-order sellers to these countries will be responsible for the eco disposal of all packaging. This will not only affect booksellers such as myself, but also those on eBay and similar sales sites.

    I will have to declare the amount of packaging on all my orders and register with each country in order to pay eco fees. Declarations and eco payments will have to be made on a quarterly or annual basis.

    Can I be bothered? No. Will I lose orders, undoubtedly. But the people who will be most affected are the buyers in these countries, as the books they want from me cannot be obtained elsewhere. As a responsible “green”, I already recycle old cardboard packaging, but why should it be up to me to pay for my customers to recycle their packaging on receipt?

    The danger is that other countries will follow suit. Of course, the sensible option would be for these countries to impose an eco tax on their own citizens for overseas orders, in addition to the import duty that they already pay. But they would not like that.

    Christopher Barmby
    Tonbridge, Kent

    This is good old protectionism from our ‘friends’ in the EUSSR, Mr Barnaby. What else did you expect?

    1. Retired from the Royal Navy, now 76 years young, Mr Barmby MBE perhaps does not realise that his internet portal is owned by Amazon; I would imagine that if sales were to decrease, the Amazon subsidiary would look for a solution to the EU’s latest non-tariff barrier.

    2. We have told our friends to be especially careful when sending us things in the post as the French are very keen to impose irrational and unjustifiable taxes on us. Meanness and Pettiness.

      For example a cousin of our always sends us second hand books at Christmas – these have no financial value whatsoever but she thinks the books might interest us. Last year we were asked to pay €12 to receive a couple of very boring old books.

    1. Being PC
      Well to be perfectly honest, in my humble opinion, of course without offending anyone who thinks differently from my point of view, but also by looking into this matter in a different perspective and without being condemning of one’s view’s and by trying to make it objectified, and by considering each and every one’s valid opinion, I honestly believe that I completely forgot what I was going to say.

      Makes a change, nicked FROM Ar5ebook.

    2. As an RAF “crab”, I flew in the kipper fleet and spent much of the time working with fish heads. They were our friends and comrades.

      He would have been working more, with Wafus (or wafoo), ie Fleet Air Arm personnel than Fishheads (General Service Branch)

      I recommend you read “Jackspeak” a 500 + page book of RN slang and usage, written and updated by Surgeon Captian Rick Jolly,:

      Rick Jolly, who died aged 71 of complications from a heart condition, was the only serviceman in the Falklands war of 1982 to
      be honoured by both the British and Argentinian sides. The awards were in recognition of his achievements in managing three frontline field
      hospitals in which more than 1,000 casualties – among them around 300 Argentinian soldiers and airmen – were successfully treated, and in
      later years in fostering a bold and imaginative spirit of reconciliation between the once warring armies.

      Those who complain about language usage in the three services would get short shrift from this man

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

      1. Good morning OLT

        When I started my nursing training with the QARNNs, the other girls and myself in my set were all given RN nick names based on our surnames , it was a bit of a shock really, the male tutors were old hands .. a few of them had even served in Korea , and on hospital ships elsewhere .

        We lost our shyness, and realised that we were now in a different world , and we coped with ribaldry with humour

        Names like Bogey, Biscuits ,Chalky, Digger ,Knocker etc etc , these girls I trained with , are still in contact after over 55 years.. and of course we use our Christian names .. but remembering the old sailors who used to rib us with all sorts of daftness and humour .

        1. My maiden name was Drye: inevitably I was nicknamed ‘Drip’.
          Is it too late for compensashun for hurty feelings? Might pay our moving costs.

        1. I did 27+ years as a wafu
          Walrus
          Hunters
          Whirlwind Mk7

          Sea Vixen
          Buccaneers
          Phantoms
          Wasp
          Lynx

    3. As an RAF “crab”, I flew in the kipper fleet and spent much of the time working with fish heads. They were our friends and comrades.

      He would have been working more, with Wafus (or wafoo), ie Fleet Air Arm personnel than Fishheads (General Service Branch)

      I recommend you read “Jackspeak” a 500 + page book of RN slang and usage, written and updated by Surgeon Captian Rick Jolly,:

      Rick Jolly, who died aged 71 of complications from a heart condition, was the only serviceman in the Falklands war of 1982 to
      be honoured by both the British and Argentinian sides. The awards were in recognition of his achievements in managing three frontline field
      hospitals in which more than 1,000 casualties – among them around 300 Argentinian soldiers and airmen – were successfully treated, and in
      later years in fostering a bold and imaginative spirit of reconciliation between the once warring armies.

      Those who complain about language usage in the three services would get short shrift from this man

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

    1. That nasty little racist should be cancelled! What a vile man he is!

    1. My most recent scribblings to Quince elicited mere government BS and I have given up on him as a MP not only doing the right thing but at least considering doing the right thing. Mark Harper MP named/shamed him in a tweet in not too good a light yesterday. Good riddance from government and I’m hoping he’ll consider his position as the MP for Colchester. We deserve better.

    2. 🙂
      My first step to becoming World Dictator.
      p.s. That email wasn’t sent to Will but to various councillors and the agent. I suspect many constituents’ emails were more direct.
      I did send an email to Will showing my appreciation for his choice of words; I think he watched Therese Coffey being stitched up and decided to place the onus firmly back on Downing Street. Loyalty begets loyalty and DS have shown none and merely used people. I know it’s politics, but there is still room for decency.
      Downing Street banked on Will being a junior minister who wouldn’t kick back, particularly as he had already resigned two or three years earlier over Defence matters.

  26. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/18632c3fe9a98c2e3301b4cd8356bbd57d7be188346588663af6f99b82b9901e.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f02b127b7405bd6d3fbce4b864ffa3d22edab2678097000634d4c48f40dbcd09.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e478e81e4d5ee247c7f998688626a04b6b1bd68a90cc2a6c094f204a5c13bdff.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/584bf13aa1ed6051353afb08b9b76c0c2d5860c637ca4c0299fef5f78341d1be.jpg Hugely entertaining morning in the garden as our current parent redstarts were busily feeding their newly-emerged young.

  27. 353951+ up ticks,

    May one ask ,

    Aren’t these the muslim type chaps that have a ticket to lie to non believers ?

    Should we be having these types in positions of power
    PRIOR to the take over ?

    Nadhim Zahawi
    At the age of nine, he and his family fled to the UK from Iraq in 1976, during Saddam Hussein’s early years in power. Zahawi has been reported by a friend, Tim Montgomerie, to come from a Muslim background, but has avoided making any statements about religion.

    1. Oh don’t worry about that Ogga he’ll soon be reminding us all about his stuffing religion, it’s all part of their adgenda. Keep it quiet and simple as long as possible and let it all go.
      You’ll see.
      Can you imagine history being repeated, as in ex London mayor becoming PM.
      Remember it took more than 300 years to get them out of Spain. And they’re creeping back there as well.

      1. 353951+ up ticks,

        Morning RE,

        In the nicest possible way I don’t need reminding Eddy I was a long term member of the genuine UKIP party
        that was treacherously terminated for being, under Gerard Batten a successful United Kingdom asset
        party.

        halal is not the only thing on the parliamentary canteen menu in regards to the muslim question.

      2. Squalid Jawdrop kept as quiet as he could when he entered politics and even married a white woman from a Christian background. But when he entered Parliament he took his oath on the Quran rather than the Bible.

        The only thing I can say in Sunak’s defence is that he is not a Muslim!

    2. I was about to comment on that. His story seems unbelievable. I do not believe it. If there was a part where his father had transferred bank funds to a personal account in Zurich, or London, I would believe it.
      (What we should keep in mind is that Saddam Hussein seized power in a turbulent struggling country. He introduced law and order (brutally enforced, to be sure) and made sure that his people were educated, with health services. We wrecked that, but I digress.)
      The rest of Mr Zahawi’s story is a fairy tale, I think. Now if I were told that he had been sponsored and groomed to do the bidding of the sponsor, I might believe that.
      https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-58582399

  28. I feel so frustrated .

    Although I subscribe to the DT for their articles , I am still banned from commenting , now almost 4months .

    How can I reinvent myself .

    2. Can you use another account with a different email address and pseudonym? Or use your OH’ s account,?

    3. See, it’s the wrong way around. He shouldn’t have to rant, shouldn’t need to shout, shouldn’t have to have a set time to present his views.

      If a voucher system were operated then he would be the customer, not the state. The teachers and staff would be appointed *by him* and sacked *by him*. Anything deviating from the curriculum he didn’t want taught he would be able to refuse – and there would be nothing his employees could do about it.

  30. Morning all 😃.
    Bit of a grey day. Our lab doggies 12 birthday today
    She’s not keen on cake and candles.
    Happy birthday Lottie 🐶🐕 woof woof.

    1. If I leave a cake out on the worktop, two things happen. 1. It’s pulled on to the floor, 2. It’s eaten.

      Mongo then grins like an oaf all day until he is royally sick and then he whines piteously. I’ve seen him savage a box to get at a salted caramel cake before. He ate most of the cardboard as well as the cake.

      1. Our dog is so well behaved and honest if you put her food down in a bowl she won’t touch it until you tell her to.
        But she’s getting a bit grumpy and barks at everything she can hear.
        And when I tell her off she always has the last word. 🤗

        1. Just like ours (was)! We think her barking in later life was something to do with her hearing, which was definitely deteriorating. How did we know? Because cutting up an apple (core minus pips for her) no longer brought her trotting in from any part of the house or garden.

          1. Could be, she still seems to hear things before we do as in the postman before the letters hit the carpet.
            But if she’s at the bottom of the garden and I open the fridge she’s standing next to me before I have unwrapped the cheese. Perhaps she smells things first now 🤔🐶

        2. Dotty is just the same with barking but she’s Judy’s dog so I keep my imprecations to the very occasional shout at her (Dotty) to “Quiet!”

          1. Funnily enough ours was originally named Dotty she was because she had several siblings of the same colour and the mothers family put a dot of nail polish on her head, to differentiate.
            But we felt it didn’t match her personality. She still has a sister who lives with my nephew whose dog was her father, in the north Pennines. There were 5 other brothers and sisters were born this day.

        3. Oscar is a gannet. He’ll eat anything edible (or inedible, come to that!). Today he polished off the end of a cucumber.

  31. ‘Morning again.

    I spotted this BTL under today’s letters. It relates to certain comments from Angela Rayner about class and makes a point far better than I could:

    Matthew Biddlecombe
    5 HRS AGO
    I wonder if I’m the only one who feels offended by Angela Rayner’s latest comments?
    I consider myself to be working class, though maybe in the eyes of the left I came from a class family. My father was a self-employed ladies hairdresser owning a small shop that employed about half-a-dozen people. We lived in a three bedroomed detached house which Mum and Dad moved into from their first house, a mid-terraced two-bedroom home. I went to state schools, failing my 11+ exam and moving onto secondary education. My CSE grades were poor, mainly because I didn’t try hard enough; school, I’m afraid, bored me.
    At 17, I left and got an apprenticeship as a TV engineer in a shop two doors away from my Dad’s one. I went to a tech. college in Southampton one day a week to study for my City & Guilds in TV servicing. College didn’t bore me as I was now studying something I was interested in, and after five years, I left having passed all of my exams.
    I possess basic skills; my maths is reasonable (as is my mental arithmetic), my English language is excellent as is my spelling and my handwriting, and I pride myself in being able to hold a lucid and intelligent conversation with anyone, no matter what their social standing is. (Visiting people’s homes for 50 years meant I had to!)
    To be told that I somehow lack these basics, because I’m considered working class, I find extremely offensive, as I did John Prescott’s comments a few years ago when he said that those that failed 11+ exams were traumatised. The ability to be able to do basic mathematics, to speak legibly, to write in a way that others can read it and to be able to spell has nothing to do with class, and even if it did, then the fault would lie with the schooling one had, not ones social background.

    Several posters have responded, including our very own Anne, and I hope she won’t mind my lifting it and repeating it here:

    A Allan
    17 MIN AGO
    A few years ago, my husband and I (sorry) went to one of his school friend’s 70th. birthday party.
    The vast majority had attended the same secondary modern school. Through hard work – apprenticeships, night school and working unsociable hours – they had improved their lot. Their children and grandchildren had benefitted from the desire to do better.
    Looking round, I was proud that the generation often dismissed as ‘Boomers’ had possessed such a drive and vision for the future.

    * * *

    Like many others I was born in a council house. I failed my 11+ at the interview stage. My secondary modern education provided me with the standard 5 O levels and 2 As (paltry by today’s standards, no doubt, but they were hard then). A happy and productive career in commerce followed, and I ran my own business for the last 9 years. Humble beginnings should not prevent advancement in later years; the will to succeed is really all that is required – that and hard work. I fear that the work ethic is not what it was, and we will all be the poorer for its slow but sure demise.

    1. I have to admit that MB can tot up a column of figures while I am still adding the first two figures together. (13 … carry 1 …. and 7 means …. oh, rats, carry another 1 ….)

      1. My father once ran a post office and was an accounts administrator and brilliant at maths.
        But he didn’t really make what he should have out of it. Perhaps he should have joined the Masonic society as two of his brothers did.
        They moved in high places, one ranked highly in the London society.
        Oh well, Perhaps he was too down to earth and honest.

    2. Rayner makes excuses for her ignorance and stupidity to avoid the shame and guilt of being inadequate.

      This attitude has become prevalent. It’s why society is collapsing. When the stigma of being on the dole disappeared, so did the need to feel you should work for a living. For many, *it is* their career. Shame and guilt underpin a need to improve ourselves. To live better, more fulfilling lives. Remove those and you end up with ego and arrogance ‘I’ll do what I want’ attitude.

      The problem is, once one person thinks that, what’s to stop the next person thinking the same? The lazy and pointless don’t ever think beyond themselves because they lack the discipline – the shame and guilt – to do so.

    3. Rayner makes excuses for her ignorance and stupidity to avoid the shame and guilt of being inadequate.

      This attitude has become prevalent. It’s why society is collapsing. When the stigma of being on the dole disappeared, so did the need to feel you should work for a living. For many, *it is* their career. Shame and guilt underpin a need to improve ourselves. To live better, more fulfilling lives. Remove those and you end up with ego and arrogance ‘I’ll do what I want’ attitude.

      The problem is, once one person thinks that, what’s to stop the next person thinking the same? The lazy and pointless don’t ever think beyond themselves because they lack the discipline – the shame and guilt – to do so.

    4. As I said in a post yesterday, Angela Rayner’s implication that the working class should be proud of their ignorance is a gross insult to everybody and especially to those who want to improve their lives by their own efforts and not by expecting others to do it for them.

      1. All of this off the back of Crayon’s ignorance concerning Hansard. As I understand it, those compiling the Hansard entries have always ‘tidied up’ the grammar, so as to allow the meaning of the comments/speech to be intelligible to all who peruse it.

        Crayon’s problem isn’t that she’s working class – not that she’s ever held down a job – but that she is common.

        1. “…But that she is common scum”

          Fixed it (improved) for you, Feargal.

    5. Speak “legibly”? Um … I was working class (you can’t get much more working class than being the product of a steelworker and a foundry hand and born in a council house), but I benefited from a grammar school education. Now, I’d be lying if I said I was working class. Education is the key to success (which is why Blair wrecked it).

  32. Good Moaning.
    Dull and chilly.
    Another sign of the Climate Change Emergency. It Is All Our Fault …… We Will DIE!!!!!!
    And We Deserve It ….. Urrgghhhhhhhhh ……..

      2. I’ve been praying and dancing for the ‘Sweet Asteroid of Doom’ but so far the only thing falling from the sky is rain.

        1. Channelling my inner Great ++++++++++++ Aunt Boadicea.
          But without the suicide bit.

          1. The real power is from behind the Throne. Take one pace back and leave hubby out front. Much like a lightning rod. :@)

  33. The runners and riders who could replace Boris Johnson as the next Tory leader
    As the Prime Minister faces a rebellion in his Cabinet, we look at the Tories who could replace him
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/07/05/who-replace-boris-johnson-next-tory-leader-conservative/

    The MSM including the DT is so obsessed with whether or not Boris Johnson will survive that it does not consider the larger question: Will the UK survive in any meaningful way if there is a Labour government.?

    Boris Johnson won his large majority on the back of his promise to get Brexit done. Amongst the runners and riders listed in this article there is not a single one who will commit himself or herself (or even pretend to commit him or herself) to getting this job done without further delay.

    Most people know this. But how many Conservative MPs – especially the backbenchers who were elected on the back of the 2019 manifesto – are aware that this is their only chance of survival. How many of them would actively set about ensuring that this happens?

    In my view a caretaker leader such as John Redwood or David Davis is needed as soon as possible until such time as David Frost can renounce his title and be given a safe Conservative seat in the House of Commons. He can then win the process to become leader of the Conservative Party, be prime minister, get Brexit fully done and then give the party a chance of winning the next election

    2. TBH I think it makes not one jot of difference at the moment. I am angry because I expect better from conservatives, but that is now a misnomer.

      1. Yes, they simply don’t get it, do they? The ego and arrogance of these creatures is mind boggling. They over value themselves horrifically.

    3. There’s a lack of awareness amongst the political gamers that the country and economy is what matters, not the individuals fiddling about. If Larry the cat implemented a low tax, small state economy he should be elected.

      Bluntly, the problem stems from a bloated and overmanned public sector. A group that now dictates policy and sets the agenda and government is forced to go along with it regardless.

    4. Yo Rastus

      Most importanteresterer, has “Carrie-on-at-No 10” been consulted

      1. When I was a small girl with a basket of fireworks one northern 5 November, my mum was waving a sparkler around (as you do). A spark flew off and into the basket of fireworks. The result was, well, interesting. They all went off at once: volcanoes, roman candles, a couple of rockets. These things do happen. And the small girl? Fortunately she had put the basket down on the ground seconds before to eat some parkin.

      1. I guess, Paul, any box of fireworks, left open at the site where others are being let off.

  35. Ernest Coleman gives us a list of RN nicknames and is obviously unhappy about the banning of the word ‘crabs’ relating to the RAF personnel. As an ex-crab we used to refer to the RN as ‘Rum Bum and Baccy’ boys and Army personnel as ‘Pongos’ (because everywhere the Army goes the pong goes). We crabs also had our own terms for various trades – Sooties or Greasers for engine guys, Fairies for radio and radar techs, Shinies for admin staff, Rodneys or Ruperts for officers or Zobbits, Rockapes for RAF Regiment guys, All harmless fun so who is the woke who wants to ban the word ‘crabs’?

    2. Because the UK is not a democracy and MPs cannot be recalled by their employers.

  37. Russia Bucks Sanctions Gloom; Turkey Talks Grain. 6 July 2022.

    Russia appears on track for a far shallower recession than many initially forecast due to rising oil production that has blunted the impact of international sanctions over its war in Ukraine.

    US Secretary of State Antony Blinken plans a candid discussion about the war with his Chinese counterpart during an upcoming summit in Bali. Blinken, however, has no plans to meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during the Group of 20 ministerial gathering in Bali this week.

    You have to laugh!

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-06/ukraine-latest-russia-bucks-sanctions-gloom-turkey-talks-grain#xj4y7vzkg

  38. The Online Telegraph banner headline on this is that TWO more ministers whom nobody has heard of have resigned. This is described as a New Wave of resignations.

    I think I’ll leave my surf board at home for the time being.

  39. Britons are evolving to be poorer and less well-educated. 6 July 2022.

    Britons are evolving to be less well-educated and poorer because smart rich people are having fewer children, a new study has suggested.

    Researchers have found that natural selection is favouring people with lower earnings and poorer education, with the next generation likely to be one or two percentage points lower in educational attainment than today.

    Evolution also appears to be favouring people with a high risk of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), major depressive disorders and coronary artery disease, as well as younger parents and people with more sexual partners.

    This must be the new faux Cultural Marxist science! We are not “evolving” into anything of the kind. There are no genes for education or earnings. These are the products of the Socialist Policies of the last twenty years. White boys have not suddenly become dumber, the education system has been organised to discriminate against them!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/07/06/britons-evolving-poorer-less-well-educated/

    1. Evolution does come into it though.
      We have replaced survival of the fittest with
      – paying the least fit to have children
      – giving the least fit free healthcare
      Over time, this will increase the number of the least fit disproportionately.

    2. After the decades of Reverse Eugenics, (Malgenics?) that is hardly a surprise.

  40. Oldies can’t tell their apps from their elbow……,

    Richard Littlejohn – D.Fail
    PS Wots a fax machine?

  41. Apparently at a leading public school pupils are pelted with rainbow-coloured flour as they go for a compulsory run. This is to encourage awareness of, and sympathetic fellow feeling with, homosexuals.

    This is, I admit, a change from my schooldays when boys who engaged in sodomy were threatened with immediate expulsion.

    My reaction to this story has to be put behind a spoiler because my schoolboy sense of humour is not longer acceptable to schoolboys and schoolgirls:

    My attempts at humour are often in poor taste and fail to amuse. Under the new rainbow flour chucking event I was going to suggest that all the boys should engage in communal acts of buggery on the school’s 1st XV rugby pitch while the girls were given dildos to play with on the Netball pitch. Caroline said that however progressive independent schools were trying to be on sexual matters I would be asking for trouble if I dared to make such an outrageous observation in front of our students.

    1. Don’t do it Rastus. They will love and respect you more if you act more like Mr Chips.

  42. http://www.ukfires.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Absolute-Zero-online.pdf

    Net Zero

    That is seriously totalitarian. Phase out beef and lamb by 2050, airport closures, all coal gas and oil fuel supply to
    close in the next 30 years but the most telling phrase “without flying”, how deeply sinister.

    ‘Without Flying’ does not include Gates and his Co-conspirators of course.

    Back in the early 50’s, I read a newspaper article looking into the future.

    Fooballer transfers for £100,000

    Housewife prosecuted for burning coal in her grate

    Both events were unthinkable then

    Now transfer feed up to £200,000,000

    British Coal cannot be used in UK

    All for Net Zero

    Who need enemies, when you have One+ Johnson in charge

    1. 353951+ up ticks,

      Morning OLT,
      I do consider johnson almost saintly
      compared to many of the electorate
      Who time & again voice loudly “this must stop” then promptly vote in the very same party’s / politico types.

      There lies the near future ownfall of England.

      1. When NOTA is counted then I would agree with you, up to a point. At the moment the only options are a spoiled ballot or an abstention and neither of these would achieve anything.

        1. 353951+ up ticks,

          Morning R.
          I totally disagree if the same zest & misguided vigour that goes into the lab/lib/con mass uncontrolled immigration proved & ongoing, went into building a fringe party up to opposition strength then we would be on a winner the referendum vote proved this without doubt.

          You are advocating waiting until a politico within the toxic coalition is found, if he/she/or it is, then they will be immediately put down.

          The lab /con duo your dad will agree are a counterfeit of the genuine name holders, currently we have dummies voting for & electing dangerous dummies.

    2. The green agenda is nothing but authoritarianism to force the country back to the Dark ages. The state must be stopped. It is grossly over funded and malicious. This is why the Left wing maniacs must be stopped – or, better yet, be the first

  44. From today, all new vehicles sold in the EU will have mandatory black boxes fitted that record technical data and will be accessible by authorities, greasing the skids for surveillance-powered speed limiting technology.
    ….And no doubt much, much more!

    1. I wonder if that includes tail gating that seems to be a popular past time on our roads these days.
      As soon as you slow for a speed limit sign the driver behinds sees it as an opportunity to try and tell you to hurry up.
      I have often been over taken in such circumstances.
      There’s never ‘old bill’ around when you need them eh.

        1. 🤔I did consider that as well. Only when they can nick people for minor crimes and make it stick.

          1. We had a combined reunion and 75th birthday party yesterday. Combined 750 years of experience, 10 stars of military seniority, two knighthoods, two military crosses, two SAS. Not bad for a bunch of geriatric old farts!

          4. And I bet you put the whole world to rights……shame you people don’t have any influence these days we could do a bout of common-sense.

          5. Far more important things to discuss such as aching knees, how to deal with arthritis, children’s divorces etc. Interesting though that all of us are on our first wives, not one divorced couple amongst us.

      2. A chap yesterday broke every roundabout rule going – he blocked an exit, pushed in, blocked the other side on trying to leave.

        He did this because he’s an idiot who didn’t care about anyone else and because he wanted to get out at any cost and cared nothing for others.

        However, in Soton, such behaviour completely snarls up the entire traffic system. Yet people won’t stop because they want to get on and, sometimes if you don’t push in, you don’t get anywhere – which is itself the reason why no one gets anywhere.

        Same for staggered stop lines at junctions. They’re there so the other side can see and maouvre, but people push ahead, blocking line of sight and preventing others from moving. It’s all basic courtesy, and the lack gums up society just as it gums up traffic.

        1. Let’s be honest Wibbers i’ll bet there are quite a few people driving today who have never taken a test in the UK. And many who have are as thick as two planks. I’ve recently seen deliver drivers parked on pedestrian crossings Roundabouts are deadly now. Our eldest was knocked off his motorbike twice when he was already riding around a roundabout. He’s given it up now.
          Th funniest thing that happened to me was Driving a long a residential street, a car on the opposite side of the road pulled out behind a parked van on his side and we nearly had a head on. I advised the very young man of his mistake and he told me that i should have given way to oncoming traffic. You couldn’t make it up.

          1. Did it not occur to him that the highway code has *him* joining traffic and thus *he* was at fault?

            It’s astonishing. The very life blood of society is a thick, turgid stream of manure.

          2. It didn’t occur to the silly little boy that the obstruction was on his side of the road. And I was oncoming traffic. How did he pass his driving test ?

          4. Multiple choice Highway Code questions (and maybe a friend taking the practical)?

          5. I nearly got wiped out this afternoon by a bloke in a large estate car who drove straight out across me when I was already on the roundabout. Duh!

        2. It’s the ‘Me First’ syndrome, Wibbles, so common, not just in the ruling ‘elites’ (scum) but pretty well everywhere.

    2. The EUSat Galileo has been doing it for years, quietly of course

      For the black box to be activated now, it must have been installed a fair while ago

      So… the Yanks are in it as well

    1. Can’t I save petrol by giving MB a kick or smack my grandson in the Castle park?

  48. WAR
    FAMINE
    TERRORISM
    WORLD FUEL AND FOOD PRICE INCREASES
    CIVIL UNREST

    BBC NEWS: An old black bloke that was in Eastenders 30 years ago has died of old age.
    Thanks for that BBC

    1. Grammar correction, (courtesy A Rayner) An old black bloke that wot was in Eastenders……

  51. I often moan about how many bastards there are in the world. A lovely thing just happened….
    There’s a lady here who has a little dog and we have spoken to her often when sitting outside. I had mentioned to her that I had some health issues, ditto MH.
    We haven’t sat outside for a while as it’s been so windy. Anyway….
    She just came and put a card through the door, saying she’d missed us, hoped we are OK and that all is well. It is really heartwarming and thoughtful and it made me quite soppy for a while.
    We are going to, hopefully, pick up a ton of prescriptions later and some more nerve tonic. I might get her some flowers as she has quite made my day.

    1. How nice. The people in my street are like that too. Makes life worth living being surrounded by people who do care about others. Politicos have an exemption. They can all rot.

      1. One time, she sat down with us and we treated her doggy to a couple of slices of pork pie, which he loved. She is a sweet person.

    2. After the time you’ve had recently you deserve an emotional boost.

      1. Thanks Bob; it was a truly lovely gesture.
        Anyway- it ain’t over yet chez Lake 🙁

  53. Good morning. The globalists fly in formation in Parliament to try to persuade us that there is a body of integrity that will form a new and righteous government. But this is simply a spectacle of reptiles devouring each other. Every single person in the Johnson administration and 95% of the rest of the House are clearly candidates for prosecution for misconduct in public office.

    Let us just remind ourselves: 2020 was 35th in the last 50 years in all-causes mortality. There is no evidence that Covid is anything more than the seasonal flu that has gone round the world every year for a very long time. 80,000 died of flu when I was 18, and 15,000 in 2019 before “disappearing” last year to the “puzzlement of scientists”. The government chose to apoint “advisors” whose connections with the pharma sector are blatant, and has taken part in the suppression of any questioning of the pandemic fraud from the start. The evidence of the seriously harmful character of the jabs has been clear for many months, and yet MPs still produce the criminal propaganda with sententious, self-righteous wickedness.

    These people are responsible for thousands of dead and injured Britons, and for conspiring as toadies to the globalist satanism. They deserve seats in hell fire, far from the green benches of the mother of parliaments.

    1. There is no evidence that Covid is anything more than the seasonal flu that has gone round the world every year for a very long time.

      JWE, from what I understand from reading articles by, and listening to, expert doctors and scientists, there are two schools of thought on what ‘covid’, or rather what the SARS-COV-2 virus is. One idea is that the latter doesn’t exist and the infection is ‘a’ seasonal flu co-opted by those wanting to do great harm to people, cultures and countries by deploying a dangerous “vaccine”. The other idea that has much more traction (Dr Richard Fleming PHD, MD, JD is worth watching on this issue) is that it is a modified gain of function virus deliberately released to have the same effect on the World as the seasonal flu idea. Whatever the truth is, it is surely a fact that the “vaccines” were not manufactured to fight the “virus” but the “virus” was the avenue along which the “vaccine” could plausibly be deployed to the World. The idea that a natural virus could be co-opted to enable the deployment of a dangerous “vaccine” still makes that virus a bio-weapon.

      1. Dr Fleming may or may not be right, but either way the CV19 virus has never been isolated, despite a cloud of BS from the propaganda “science”. Let’s remember flu is coronavirus, so speculating on what is impossible to define is dancing round our handbags. Flu is flu, and CV19 if it actually exists, is flu whether it has Batwoman’s imprimatur on it or not. All the symptoms including long covid (forsooth!) are the same. In 1968 many took 6 months or more to recover.

        I have to say that “science” discussions around this defocus on the main point, which is the crime. We should keep laser-focussed on that and the arraignment of those who have planned or taken part in it.

        1. The common cold is a variety of coronavirus but influenza is not.

          Influenza (flu) and COVID-19 are both contagious respiratory illnesses, but they are caused by different viruses. COVID-19 is caused by infection with a coronavirus first identified in 2019. Flu is caused by infection with a flu virus (influenza viruses).

          https://www.cdc.gov/flu/symptoms/flu-vs-covid19.htm#:~:text=Influenza%20(flu)%20and%20COVID%2D19%20are%20both%20contagious%20respiratory,spreads%20more%20easily%20than%20flu.

          Causative agent
          A more obvious difference between influenza and COVID-19 is in their causative agents. Influenza viruses belong to a virus family known as Orthomyxoviridae. COVID-19 is caused by a coronavirus named SARS-CoV-2, which is classified in the family Coronaviridae. Both families consist of RNA viruses, but they differ particularly with regard to the protein layer that encapsulates the RNA.

          More specifically, influenza viruses express two surface antigens (foreign proteins)—hemagglutinin (H) and neuraminidase (N)—which trigger an immune response. The exact form of these antigens changes every now and then, resulting in the periodic emergence of new, more virulent influenza viruses with the potential to cause a pandemic. The surface of SARS-CoV-2 does not have these antigens. Rather, similar to other types of coronaviruses, its outer surface is studded with glycoprotein spikes, which give such viruses a crownlike, or coronal, appearance. Spike glycoproteins are responsible for triggering the immune response, and they carry out the critical function of enabling the coronavirus particle to enter cells, where it then replicates.

          https://www.britannica.com/story/what-is-the-difference-between-influenza-and-covid-19

          You probably won’t believe me but the Covid-19 virus, SARS-CoV-2, has been isolated numerous times.

          https://fullfact.org/health/CDC-document-viral-isolates/
          https://fullfact.org/health/Covid-isolated-virus/
          https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/lab/grows-virus-cell-culture.html
          https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-covid-rna-idUSL1N2LS27P
          https://healthfeedback.org/claimreview/the-virus-that-causes-covid-19-exists-and-was-identified-and-isolated-multiple-times-by-independent-research-groups/

        1. Mysterious stones that appeared without any explanation of who was behind them, but which articulate the aims of the Davos elite.

  55. South Dorset MP Richard Drax has been asked by the Dorset Echo whether he backs Prime Minister Boris Johnson to stay at No 10.

    He said: “Yes, I do.

    “No further comment.”

  56. Pound and euro ‘unbuyable’, says French bank. 6 July 2022.

    Britain’s fresh political crisis and the threat of Russia cutting off energy supplies to Europe have rendered the pound and the euro “unbuyable”, a top analyst has said.

    Kit Juckes, a strategist at French investment bank Societe Generale, said the Government is “in a crisis that rolls on and on to an inevitable conclusion”, but that euro is “so unbuyable” that the turmoil in Westminster has not caused the common currency to gain against sterling.

    The euro fell to a 20-year low against the dollar yesterday amid fears of a bloc-wide recession, while the pound is trading at the lowest level against the US currency since the start of the pandemic following the shock resignation of Chancellor Rishi Sunak on Tuesday.

    Mr Juckes predicted the euro could drop another 10pc against the dollar if Moscow presses ahead with shutting down the Nord Stream pipeline to Germany, a crucial source of energy for the European Union.

    It never rains but that it pours!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/07/06/ftse-100-markets-live-news-national-insurance-tax-oil-recession/

    2. Not raining for me. My investments are in dollars. When the pound/euro fall the dollar goes up.

    3. The only currency I can find that’s getting stronger than the dollar is the Rouble.

    1. 353951+ up ticks,

      Afternoon KtK,

      That has been tory (ino) party policy since Thatcher got the order of the knife, all that time with a consenting majority keeping it in play, right to the bottom of the pan.

      No opposition to pull the flush lever.

      Many shout out LOUD “NO MORE”
      then enter the polling booth look both ways and give the lab/lib/con candidate a sneaky kiss X.

    2. Johnson’s’ plan is to follow and implement every instruction received from the WEF. The WEF plan is to poison our population with inoculations coupled with causing mental issues for millions affected, to convert productive farmland to solar and wind parks thus depriving us of food and making our energy supplies precarious.

      When Tory MPs stand in the HoC to say the ‘vaccine’ rollout is to Johnson’s credit or that Brexit was his achievement, they are deluded. The ‘vaccines’ are neither safe nor effective but harmful. Brexit has not been ‘done’, the Danes, Dutch and French still plunder the North Sea and there has been no revival whatsoever in our once great fishing fleets.

      Johnson is the most hypocritical, self opinionated and privileged buffoon yet to hold the office of PM. Be gone!

  58. I watched PMQ, not something I do very often. David Davis asked the PM to resign. Javid torpedoed the PM, then did it again. A very powerful speech, possibly even a hat in the ring?
    However, just after PMQ was over and most MPs had shuffled off to the bar, a Foreign Office Minister spoke about Finland and Sweden joining NATO. She urged that our agreement be expedited. That is a very bad idea.

    2. In the current state of play with Russia, it couldn’t be a worse scenario. Do they really intend to provoke WW3?

  59. Remember this ?

    Boris Johnson’s Guarantee

    We will get Brexit done in January and unleash the potential of our whole country.
    I guarantee:

    Extra funding for the NHS, with 50,000 more nurses and 50 million more GP surgery appointments a year.

    20,000 more police and tougher sentencing for criminals.

    An Australian-style points-based system to control immigration.

    Millions more invested every week in science, schools, apprenticeships and infrastructure while controlling debt.

    Reaching Net Zero by 2050 with investment in clean energy solutions and green infrastructure to reduce carbon emissions and pollution.

    We will not raise the rate of income tax, VAT or National Insurance.

    Thank you for supporting our majority Conservative Government so we can move our great country on instead of going backwards.

    3. “We will get Brexit done in January 2045 and unleash the potential of lockdown our whole country.
      I guarantee:

      Extra funding for the NHS management, with 50,000 more non English speaking nurses and 50 million more GP surgery telephone appointments a year.

      20,000 more gay police and tougher sentencing for hate criminals.

      An imaginary Australian-style points-based system to control immigration.

      Millions more invested every week in Net Zero science, madrassa schools, diversity apprenticeships and HS2 infrastructure while not controlling debt.

      Reaching Net Zero by 2050 with investment in clean energy solutions and green infrastructure to reduce carbon emissions and pollution using battery powered windmills.

      We will not raise the rate of income tax, VAT or National Insurance until I say so.“

  60. Remember this ?

    Boris Johnson’s Guarantee

    We will get Brexit done in January and unleash the potential of our whole country.
    I guarantee:

    Extra funding for the NHS, with 50,000 more nurses and 50 million more GP surgery appointments a year.

    20,000 more police and tougher sentencing for criminals.

    An Australian-style points-based system to control immigration.

    Millions more invested every week in science, schools, apprenticeships and infrastructure while controlling debt.

    Reaching Net Zero by 2050 with investment in clean energy solutions and green infrastructure to reduce carbon emissions and pollution.

    We will not raise the rate of income tax, VAT or National Insurance.

    Thank you for supporting our majority Conservative Government so we can move our great country on instead of going backwards.

    1. I will be PM.

      Day 1, announce 30% cuts in the public sector.
      Have a nap.
      Sack all those mandarins smugly trying to destroy services out of spite.
      Enforce martial law in London.
      Execute Khan, Blair, Mandelscum
      Have Brown arrested and charged with economic malfeasance.

      Have Labour proscribed as a terrorist organisation.

  63. 353951+ up ticks,

    You have the kneeler maligning johnson & the tory (ino) party, the protector of paedophilia trying to put down an inhouse eu asset.

    One should be made to explain why the rape & abuse of children in rotherham and in what way was it beneficial to the country.

    The other political cretin to explain fully his treachery regarding the handling of Brexitexit.

    When both found guilty then a topping job should follow immediately, add a sample of the majority voter say a dozen……… for starters.

  64. When the Prime Minister said that he’d just got 500,000 out of welfare and into employment, did he mean those who had not been working because of Covid rules? If so, that would then be 500,000 people he had rendered unemployed in the first place, wouldn’t it? If so, he is being rather economical with the truth?

  65. Who will tell Boris it’s over? 6 July 2022

    In the past couple of minutes, five ministers have resigned as a co-ordinated group. Kemi Badenoch, Lee Rowley, Alex Burghart, Neil O’Brien and Julia Lopez have quit in a joint letter in which they call for Boris Johnson to step aside ‘for the good of the party, and the country’.

    It’s all over bar the shouting now! Which brings us to the really tricky bit. Who’s going to replace him? There’s really only one man capable of rescuing us from this ongoing catastrophe! The thing is he has his hands full at the moment himself. But if we can persuade him to leave the Kremlin and enter 10 Downing Street we should be OK!

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/are-there-any-ministers-left-

        1. 353951+ up ticks,

          Afternoon AS,
          Gerard Batten who showed more success as a party leader in one year than the combined treacherous trio leadership has done in one decade.

    2. Kemi Badenoch, Lee Rowley, Alex Burghart, Neil O’Brien and Julia Lopez …

      A handful of nonentities, n’est-ce pas?

    3. What have they quit? The Cabinet, the party, the whip, parliament altogether?

    4. Without looking, how many could name the ministries they are ministers in and what their titles are?

      Any increase on my “none”?

      1. Most of these “Ministries” are really just a way of getting them an extra £10-14K a year!

        1. Just so. When the next PM takes over, with their backing, they hope to profit from their display of integrity which demonstrated that they were disapproving of Boris.

        2. And keeping them hamstrung against asking embarrassing questions from the back benches.

      2. Most of these “Ministries” are really just a way of getting them an extra £10-14K a year!

      3. The only one I’d heard of was Kemi Badenoch – but I had to look up her position.

        2. That was one I thought I knew but wondered if it might have been a tennis player or some such.

    6. Yo Minty

      Kemi Badenoch, Lee Rowley, Alex Burghart, Neil O’Brien and Julia Lopez

      Rowley is the only name of English extraction….. Will us Brits be allowed to vote in the next General Election?a

      1. Old Rowley was one of the nicknames of Charles II…he had others. Rowley was the name of his stallion and, as Charles fathered numerous illegitimate children….well, think about it;-)

          1. He the one who said “Hey, Ho” in the froggy would a wooing go?
            I’ll see meself out…

  66. Well it looks like the coup is almost complete, I don’t know what Boris has done or hasn’t done to upset the forces of world government

    But I expect we will soon find out when we get a Trudeau clone taking control

  69. 353951+ up ticks,

    Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid
    in regards to building a fringe party into a political fighting force in defence of the realm, more importantly YOUR kids and old folk YOU have so sorely, treacherously neglected to the point of death via the polling booth.

    We have reached the time due to the continued voting pattern that the fan can operate no longer as being clogged with shite, a product of an abused polling booth.

    The majority electorate would find it very difficult to hit1 a cows arse with a wet sack so to rely on them to select a party of decency & patriotic common sense is out of the question as has been proved again & again.

  70. Bloody Flu?

    If COVID-19 doesn’t exist (being just a manifestation of flu) and vaccines developed to immunise against it prove themselves to be a global bioweapon then this bioweapon selectively attacks populations with certain genetic traits.

    Patients who have been hospitalised and deemed to have COVID-19 have been observed to suffer from a systemic form of blood clotting in their microcirculation leading to multiorgan failure.

    Here’s a diagram of the human clotting process:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/94707502514189f700b4b6032dbebbc1e48615ad1f943c63131a9c1dc8d22b8e.jpg

    and here’s one illustrating the action of the Factor X inhibitors (anti-coagulants). Those of us who are taking them are inclined to suffer from unconstrained bleeding for which there is no known antidote other than bleeding out or withdrawing the medication.

    The opposite of a Factor X inhibitor is therefore a coagulant (clotting agent) – a category in which bloody flu neatly fits and which could well be seen as an antidote to the undesirable effects of Factor X inhibitors.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6a8facdf65c233bf5cb33f6e5d3acf41b435db09739bb1ddc70d7025a1f499f8.jpg

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/core/lw/2.0/html/tileshop_pmc/tileshop_pmc_inline.html?title=Click%20on%20image%20to%20zoom&p=PMC3&id=7644431_gr1_lrg.jpg

      2. I ran out of space in my editing window – I tried opening it up to expand my argument into something more rational but inflewensa.

    1. Actually, given the cabinet he has got it wouldn’t be very much worse.

      1. We could follow the Belgian example and run WITHOUT a government. Let Her Majesty make policy.

    2. He seems to have problems with furniture. The wallpaper, a dodgy poof and now the cabinet.

    3. If he Carrie’d on he could actually do the country a favour and reduce the size of the cabinet to 1/3 its present size AND close all the attendant departments, making all those civil servants redundant.

  72. 353951+ up ticks,

    The remnants of society as left by the lab/lib/con member / voters will form the basis of the reset / replace
    campaign YOUR future will be in the hands of the “great provider” heading up the NWO team.

    Gerard Batten
    @gjb2021
    ·
    13m
    This being done deliberately. The getting rid of nitrate fertilisers as part of the insane Green Agenda is being driven by the EU. Sri Lanka started this three years ago & they are now on the edge of mass famine.

    Empty shelves in dutch supermarkets as Farmers step up their protest against their insane Globalist, WEF controlled, government.

    If we were still full EU members (& we haven’t fully left) things would be

  73. 353951+ up ticks,

    Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid
    in regards to building a fringe party into a political fighting force in defence of the realm, more importantly YOUR kids and old folk YOU have so sorely, treacherously neglected to the point of death via the polling booth.

    We have reached the time due to the continued voting pattern that the fan can operate no longer as being clogged with shite, a product of an abused polling booth.

    The majority electorate would find it very difficult to hit1 a cows arse with a wet sack so to rely on them to select a party of decency & patriotic common sense is out of the question as has been proved again & again.

  74. ‘I will never risk losing my integrity’: Squalid Jawdrip’s statement to MPs in full
    The former health secretary urged his colleagues to join him and quit saying the problem with the Government ‘starts at the top’
    DT Nonsense

    He also resigned as chancellor – not a man to be much troubled by loyalty. And wasn’t he one of Carrie Symonds’s exes before she hitched up with Johnson?

      1. She was only one year older than my youngest granddaughter.
        I am angry and tearful over the case. It is absolutely disgusting.

    2. Why? Honestly, what did you expect from a feather bedded, over paid, no competition, no market organisation?

      Lessons will be learned, we’ll do better: real meaning, next time we’ll make sure you never find out.

    6. It must be about time for those ambulance chasing lawyers to surface. Somewhere there must be a duty of care by those taking a salary. Maybe the lawyers are still mulling the compo to be won after vaccine damage. One of my regrets was never to take one of those credit card insurance policies which were mis sold and made the victims thousands.

    7. It must be about time for those ambulance chasing lawyers to surface. Somewhere there must be a duty of care by those taking a salary. Maybe the lawyers are still mulling the compo to be won after vaccine damage. One of my regrets was never to take one of those credit card insurance policies which were mis sold and made the victims thousands.

  76. Haven’t heard one Conservative say what Boris is doing wrong as regards policies, although the keep saying we cannot go on like this.

    1. They’ve all gone along with the policies – green crap, weapons for Ukraine and all.

    2. Net zero, high taxes, allowing EU to retain NI, continuing to borrow, not enough energy, no consideration of resolving inflation.

      There’s personal issues with his own disinterest in government but frankly Whitehall thinks it’s in charge so really, what’s the point?

      1. But no other potential leader has said they would reverse anything, most want to go further.

        1. What I find alarming is that none of them want to commit to trying to do what Johnson promised to do in his 2019 manifesto and failed hopelessly to do.

          1. This isn’t about what Boris failed to do, this is about taking what he has failed to do to another level entirely.
            The police are shooting at farmers in the Netherlands, nearly wrote never regions.
            This is what a new leader will be doing here before long when the dystopia hits.

    3. I must have missed that – what’s that about, Plum? I declare an interest – I have an account with the Halifax.

      2. Halifax said that if people didn’t like their pronoun wokeism on their staff’s name badges, they were free to take their accounts elsewhere. So that is what they have been doing.

        1. Ah, thank you. I am a bit limited in that there isn’t much choice of where to have an account without having to drive a distance.

          1. Halifax also added that their website tells people how to take their account elsewhere !!

            We are still with them, we are old and lazy and so far we simply can’t be bothered….

          2. If I take my account away (don’t think I’m not tempted), the nearest bank is some fourteen miles away. Not very good for my “carbon footprint” to have to travel to set up standing orders or get money out.

    1. Lucky to get a 5 as I put a wrong letter in twice.

      Wordle 382 5/6

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    2. Bogey Five for me …
      Wordle 382 5/6

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    3. Crap 6 today.
      Wordle 382 6/6

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  79. I see the Iraqi is demanding that BPAPM resigns.

    Carrying two-facedness to new lows.

    1. And the woman appointed to Education about three hours ago.

      They have neither honour nor decency – any of them.

    2. Arabs will cut your throat for sixpence .

      We don’t want people like that dictating British policy.

      They are money status orientated ..

      Like the Gully Gully men in Port Said .

  81. Elsewhere someone called Zahawi a “shameless opportunist”.

    Well, he’s an Iraqi slammer – what else would one expect?

  82. Kier Starmer was pretty graphic in PMQs explaining about the sort of groping that Pincher enacted on another man .

    Before that , minutes before that , Kier Starmer gave praise to the Terence Higgins trust and the promise that aids in the Gay community will be one day be cured / eliminated .

    The point I am trying to make is that Starmer is an utter hypocrite.. by extolling and demonstrating that homosexual rainbow trade marks are okay at a Gay Pride march , yet describing in graphic detail how another man was molested by the filthy Pincher … does n’t Starmer understand that his presence at that Pride march with the rest of the Labour luvvies , has probably give thousands of people like Pincher or an lesbian women the free right to grope and groom impressionable youngsters who are confused by their own immature sexuality..

    2. They are all liars and hypocrites. None of them would recognise honesty or integrity if they were shoved up their noses.
      You may have noticed that I am not a happy camper today.
      I hate this so-called government with a vengeance.

      1. I am older than you and felt as if I were at heart attack status .
        Moh was out early playing golf , and I had the usual domestic routine here .

        No one I know can chat about this and that..

        I walked the dogs , then went out again in the car after PMQs, on the way home , I developed a pain in m head , left hand side , I thought it might have been the air con in the car .. husband was home by the time I arrived home , he said my face was flushed , I still feel strange .

        2. And funny as it may seem, I was not referring to PMQs. Purely personal.

          1. Did you manage to make use of the phone numbers provided on here yesterday for everything MacMillan can help you with .

            I do hope you are being given loads of advice and help , and are feeling a little less frantic .

            I am tapping away here on my laptop , my keyboard needs replacing , half the letters are invisible and don’t respond to a light touch , so I am hammering hard, and my screen is badly cracked , it will cost oodles to repair ,been like this for 6months .

          2. No, not now. I had the follow up letter today and am going to read it a few times before coming to any decision. It is, after all, up to moi.
            I am not frantic either- I am furious with what this government has done to the people in this country.
            When the time is right for me, I shall decide what course to take. I rarely panic but I can get very angry and that is how I feel right now.

          3. Maggie, send Hertslass your e-mail address with permission to give it to me.

            I shall be very happy to allow you to vent your wrath to (not at) me and I shall do my very best to help you get through this nastiness.

            I can only emphathise, as I too have experienced those moments where I don’t know where to turn, in order to release this hollowness I feel inside.

    4. I made the point yesterday evening that Pincher’s indecent assaults on a man have led to embarrassed shuffling of feet, wringing of hands and much looking in the other direction while indecent assaults by male MPs on women have been met with outrage, long debates and full scale internal investigations.

    5. It’s never OK to touch another without their consent.

      Consenting adults can do whatever they like to each other.

      You seem to imagine that most gays have paedophilic tendencies and don’t worry about consent either. Why?

      2. Lots of transitions in dressage (and being born a male doesn’t give you any advantage when you’re riding a dressage test).

          1. As you don’t sit astride, there is less chance of the dangly bits getting pinched 🙂 It is extremely rare to do dressage aside, though. I only know of one person (a woman) who did it as a demo and not in competition.

  84. Par 4 here today

    Wordle 382 4/6

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    1. I felt sure my streak was over but…

      Wordle 382 5/6

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  85. I wonder if Boris could call a general election and really give two fingers to the party.

    2. One of the nastiest of that species. If we were humanist, we’d have him put down for his own good.

      1. I wouldn’t wish that on children, but if it’s that important they should be sent with packed lunches.

        Why the Hell should everyone always be required to kowtow to the Muslims?

          2. Something to do with, er, “critical mass”? For 50 years they crept in and laid low and bred like rabbits.

            Then – d’un coup, they came out fighting.

          7. Time to deport the lot, Bill, either by our own version of krystalnacht or burning their mosques – anything to let them know that they are NOT welcome here and it’s time for them to depart and practice their mischief elsewhere.

    3. “The furious mother, who has eight children between the ages of two and 19 …“

    4. Hold on a Mo…

      The furious mother, who has eight children between the ages of two and 19, said it made her entire household sick with a tummy bug. She described the situation as ‘really upsetting’ and even claimed it put one of her children in hospital.

      “I couldn’t see my children the way they were really ill. They have never had issues with food I’ve been making at home. It passed around. The hospital said it passed around in the family. It turned into a bug and that bug has spread all around the family.”

      Are there any reports of other children at the school developing this mysterious ‘bug’ from eating sausages? Perhaps her domestic hygiene was responsible. Was it an isolated case of norovirus?

      Lying *****.

      1. Quite.
        When HG was doing home visits in that community in Bradford, she often commented on the total lack of hygiene; including one instance where a soiled baby was being washed under a tap over a sink full of pots and pans.

      2. How odd. I was under the impression that all schools meals were now halal.

    5. If muss Rat’s children suffered a tummy-bug from eating pork sausages, how come that the local populace was NOT struck down with the same ‘tummy-bug’?

      Another lying Arab Muslim.

  88. With institutional momentum for awarding vast reparations to African-Americans accelerating, it occurs to me that during the pandemic and racial reckoning we have already run a massive national experiment in what the likely society-wide outcomes would be from giving reparations and apologies to blacks.

    The results are now in: not just more liquor and Escalades sold to joyous crowds, as in Dave Chappelle’s notorious reparations day sketch from two decades ago, but more murder and mayhem on the streets and highways.

    https://www.takimag.com/article/surviving-the-happiness-explosion/

    The more you give voluntarily, the more they take by force.

      2. The Song Against Grocers

        God made the wicked Grocer
        For a mystery and a sign,
        That men might shun the awful shops
        And go to inns to dine;
        Where the bacon’s on the rafter
        And the wine is in the wood,
        And God that made good laughter
        Has seen that they are good.

        The evil-hearted Grocer
        Would call his mother “Ma’am,”
        And bow at her and bob at her,
        Her aged soul to damn,
        And rub his horrid hands and ask
        What article was next
        Though MORTIS IN ARTICULO
        Should be her proper text.

        His props are not his children,
        But pert lads underpaid,
        Who call out “Cash!” and bang about
        To work his wicked trade;
        He keeps a lady in a cage
        Most cruelly all day,
        And makes her count and calls her “Miss”
        Until she fades away.

        The righteous minds of innkeepers
        Induce them now and then
        To crack a bottle with a friend
        Or treat unmoneyed men,
        But who hath seen the Grocer
        Treat housemaids to his teas
        Or crack a bottle of fish sauce
        Or stand a man a cheese?

        He sells us sands of Araby
        As sugar for cash down;
        He sweeps his shop and sells the dust
        The purest salt in town,
        He crams with cans of poisoned meat
        Poor subjects of the King,
        And when they die by thousands
        Why, he laughs like anything.

        The wicked Grocer groces
        In spirits and in wine,
        Not frankly and in fellowship
        As men in inns do dine;
        But packed with soap and sardines
        And carried off by grooms,
        For to be snatched by Duchesses
        And drunk in dressing-rooms.

        The hell-instructed Grocer
        Has a temple made of tin,
        And the ruin of good innkeepers
        Is loudly urged therein;
        But now the sands are running out
        From sugar of a sort,
        The Grocer trembles; for his time,
        Just like his weight, is short.
        G.K. Chesterton
        (From “The Flying Inn”, 1914)

    3. Apparently he resigned from three companies when he was made Education Secretary. That’s according to wiki, that font of all truth and knowledge!

  91. I was struck by the look of adoration from Nadine Dorries (who attended the Commons in her dressing gown) – directed at BPAPM.

    Perhaps he is her love child…..

        1. My mistake – my confusion over the new world of gender pronouns…

          You know what they say: You can’t tell a he flea from a she. But he can. And she can. Whoopee!

      2. No that was two jags, he was a bar- steward on cable laying ship.
        My wife once worked with the ship’s captains wife.

    2. She is certainly very smitten by him .

      Look, I am sure that what you see is what you get .

      Boris is not really a Falstaff figure , but he has charisma and strength , , and is dismissive over what he assumes are trivialities .

  92. Evening, all. I picked up a book called Blitz Spirit in a charity shop today; it’s based on the Mass Observation studies carried out during the war years (I have several books based on those and they are a fascinating insight into the times as ordinary people kept diaries and reported in). The very first quote, written on 30th August, 1939, is “Today I feel crisis-blasé. I am unmoved by what the beastly press says, I don’t believe a word of their reportage.” Plus ça change, n’est-ce pas?

  93. Looking at the growing list of resignations within the government (that’s the name of the cabal but they’re not doing much governing) I’m reminded of the Austrian inhabitant of a bunker in Berlin circa 1945. As all crumbled about him and his thousand years Reich he was, in his clearly demented state, prone to moving non-existent armies, corps, battalions even, to address the crushing defeat that was upon him and Germany.
    Johnson has to be moving names around the Cabinet table and junior roles trying to find talented individuals to shore up his crumbling faction posing as a functioning government.

    2. I expect he’ll find it extremely difficult to find “talented individuals”.

        1. Iron knee is what is needed right now, bang ! straight in the dangley bits.
          But who ever replaces the recently
          departed are going to be picked apart by the media. They don’t stand an earthly.
          Brighter weather ahead. Oh good. 😎

  94. That’s me for today. Anyone bet sixpence that BPAPM is gone by this time tomorrow? I won’t for a start!!

    Have a jolly evening selecting your new cabinet. Just see if you can ensure that they are all white, UK born people. Bit of a challenge, I know….

    A demain.

    1. Night, night, Bill. Enjoy a glass or two of red. Are there enough white, UK-born people in Parliament (never mind the Con party) to form a cabinet?

        2. Wattzat I ment a sixpence. I’ve not seen one for years. Back in the 50s that’s what my sisters and I had for our pocket money every Friday.

        1. The medium rich will be the targets, “middle to upper middle class”
          The really rich won’t be touched, too well protected.
          When the likes of Blair Gates and Soros are under siege, then I’ll believe things might change.

          1. How could anyone besiege a giant gin palace moored near some Pacific island? And if there is an airfield on said island, the aeroplane for escaping billionaires is the Bombardier Global 7500, which has a declared range of 7,700 nautical miles. That is enough to take you from Seattle to New Zealand.

          2. If the will was there, they would be captured and tried.
            It isn’t and they won’t.

    1. There are even some on Nottle who think cannabis is harmless and should not be controlled.

        2. It’s not the mild stuff of the 60s.
          And even that caused enough problems.

  98. Now at last the sun has come out I’d like to sit in the garden for an hour or so with my large glass of merlot, but recently I’ve been eaten alive by bloody gnats or mozzies. Probably not close enough to the church. 🦟 little bastards.

      1. I know where they are coming from. I had a wild life pond, frogs newts etc but I suddenly lost most of the water. I’ve not been able or fit enough to remove all the plants to find out where the liner I leaking. Pain in the bum situation.
        But I’ll get around to it eventually. Bloody herons ate most of the frogs last year.
        But I’ll sort it out ASAP.
        We use to have bats in the garden as well. I have two bat boxes. But not seen them for a couple of years.

    2. If you use ground coffee, keep the used grounds, dry them out and set fire to them so they smoulder. The bugs hate it.

          1. In Oz there was a spray called Areoguard. It work very well, the blowies would only hover over your face and not land on it. But I don’t think it’s around any longer probably carcinogenic.

          2. Have you noticed that if something works well it soon gets banned?

            How long until WD40 is found to be harmful…

          3. A classic example is Glyphosate a weed killer that was very effective. so much so the EU banned it.
            I have a neighbour whose garden backs on to ours and he does nothing to stop the encroachment of his horrific weeds through, over and under our 6 ft high garden fence. Weed killer containing Glyphosate used to control his growth in a few days. Brambles, Ivy, nettles the lot.

  99. ***BREAKING NEWS***

    Nadhim Zahawi elected leader of Conservative party, appoints Boris Johnson minister for sleaze…

    …more to follow

      1. MH has said that if Boris is forced out- Zahawi might become PM and might then enforce sharia law. What a state for this country to be in where the possibility of an Iraqi muslim PM is a real issue. God give me strength.

        1. The arrive here, infest the place, seek office and then set about creating the same environment they left: a corrupt, bent, useless corrupt corporatist mess.

  100. A woman who said people cannot change their biological sex was discriminated against by her employers, an employment tribunal has ruled.

    Tax expert Maya Forstater did not have her contract renewed after posting a series of tweets about gender and sex. In 2019, a tribunal judge decided such views were not “worthy of respect in a democratic society”. But in a 2021 appeal another judge ruled “gender-critical” views were protected under the Equality Act 2010.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-62061929

    It might be a welcome judgement but it’s a bad day when courts decide on the acceptability of opinions.

    1. On the basis that a trans man remains having an XY chromosome – as well as usually being blatantly a man – the truth is it’s own defence.

      Bringing how someone ‘feels’ about something is no course for law.

  101. Thanks to the census, we know that in the past decade the population of England and Wales shot up by 3.5 million. Reading this remarkable figure, you may assume that we’re having quite enough children as it is.

    But you’d be wrong. Because some of us, it seems, aren’t having anywhere near enough. And soon, this could cause problems for the entire country.

    According to a new study, well-off graduates are having fewer and fewer children. The birth rate among the poor and less educated, meanwhile, is higher. So over time, the study suggests, this may mean that Britain as a whole becomes poorer.

    Such a conclusion is bound to be controversial. Still, it’s certainly intriguing. For years, after all, the Left has claimed that many couples aren’t having children because they can’t afford it. In reality, however, it seems that the couples who can’t afford it are the ones who are having children. It’s the couples who can afford it who aren’t.

    No doubt this will worry the Government. Then again, it’s not easy to see how they can raise the subject without sounding just a tiny bit elitist. A minister can’t very well go on the Today programme and say: “Well, Martha, the lower orders are certainly keeping their end of the bargain. Breeding away like nobody’s business, bless them. But I’m sorry to say that their social superiors are rather letting the side down. That’s why this Government is announcing a target of 500,000 more middle-class children a year by 2025.”

    On the whole, such comments might not go down very well. All the same, ministers must do something. But in order to solve the problem, they must first work out what’s causing it.

    Why exactly is it that the educated elite aren’t having children? Are they too obsessed with their high-flying careers? Too busy wading through the Booker longlist? Too exhausted after another long evening in the West End? (“Not tonight, darling. I’m simply too emotionally drained by Mark Rylance’s career-defining performance in the critically acclaimed revival of Jerusalem, Jez Butterworth’s seminal meditation on the meaning of Englishness.”)

    Or perhaps the reason is more prosaic: the well-off have simply decided that raising children is too much like hard work. Menial, exhausting, often physical labour, which they consider to be beneath them. There may be something in this. A hundred-odd years ago, the well-to-do tended to have household staff. Maids, cooks, live-in nannies. These days they’re lucky if they can get hold of a decent cleaner, poor things.

    All the above reasons are plausible. Personally, though, I have my own theory. It’s David Cameron’s fault.

    Ten years ago, he scrapped child benefit for everyone earning over £50,000 a year. At the time, this seemed to make economic sense. High-earners didn’t need the money. Everyone knew they were just spending their child benefit on wine.

    But perhaps, after a hard day’s management consultancy or diversity coordinating, well-off couples needed that free wine to get them in the mood. Without it, they’ve become less frisky. And as a result, they’re having fewer children.

    If so, there’s only one way to avert demographic disaster. The Government must reinstate free wine for the middle class. And possibly throw in free candle-lit dinners, too. Means-tested, to ensure that only high-earners benefit.

    Initially, I concede, this policy might not be greeted with unanimous acclaim. Given the soaring cost of electricity, gas, petrol, public transport, food and rent, lower earners may venture to suggest that public funds could be somewhat better targeted.

    As ministers never tire of reminding us, however, the Government has a duty to make difficult decisions for the sake of the nation’s future. So, without delay, I urge Boris Johnson – or whoever’s PM by the time you read this – to stand up in the Commons and announce that he’s going to spend £50billion of taxpayers’ money on giving the richest one per cent in Britain a romantic weekend away at the five-star hotel of their choice every month, with all the free Pol Roger they can drink.

    If that doesn’t save his premiership, nothing will. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2022/07/06/plan-persuade-rich-have-children/

    1. The birthrate among the illiterate aliens is astronomical compared with even the poor and less educated whites. I doubt very much if this bothers the government. They are intent on race replacement.

      1. And our succesive governments have never realised or taken note of what’s been happening for decades.

      2. The question is – why? They earn nothing, create nothing, build nothing. They are parasites. 70% absolute – not a little, absolute – welfare dependency amongst muslims. Violent crime amongst blacks is so painfuly high it’s a genuine catastrophe, as is single parenthood (see welfare dependency), illiteracy, ESOL, innumeracy.

        Yet the state keeps paying them to breed.

    2. I really don’t know why this is only now considered. The state has been paying people to breed while taxing those who work. The worker can’t afford to have children, the waster does. Labour started this by promoting and rewarding single parents – especially the thick chavs who leave school with no qualifications and immediately get a free house and cash on the tax payer.

      Then there’s the Muslim child birth rate – and the number of significant disabilities from inbreeding.

      If this is only just coming over, then the state is truly incompetent. Child benefit and housing benefit should be scrapped. It isn’t fair that workers should be forced to pay for shirkers. If somedumb bint gets herself up the duff then she should face the consequences of her choices.

  102. Excess deaths are on the rise – but not because of Covid
    Office for National Statistics data leads health experts to call for urgent investigation into what is causing the excess mortality https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/07/05/excess-deaths-rise-not-covid/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-rhr

    By
    Sarah Knapton,
    SCIENCE EDITOR
    5 July 2022 • 9:00pm

    Hundreds more people than usual are dying each week in England and Wales with Covid not to blame for the majority of deaths, new figures show.

    Latest data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show there were 1,540 excess deaths in the week ending June 24 but only around 10 per cent were due to coronavirus.

    Health experts have called for an urgent investigation into what is behind the excess mortality, with fears that the pandemic response, lack of access to healthcare and even the cost of living crisis, may be to blame.

    Before the end of March, deaths in England and Wales were lower than usual this year despite hundreds of people dying from Covid. Yet in the last three months, the situation has reversed, with overall deaths rising even though Covid deaths have been falling.

    ‘The reality is going to be quite complex’
    Prof Paul Hunter, professor in medicine, at the University of East Anglia, said some of the excess could be people whose health was weakened by Covid. The infection is known to increase the risk of stroke and heart attacks. But he warned that there may be other more complex factors at play.

    “Some might also be down to other impacts of the pandemic, such as problems in accessing health care, delayed referrals for treatment and then things related to the restrictions we lived under, such as reduced activity and sedentary lives,” he said.

    “I think the reality is going to be quite complex but it’s something we do need to be aware of and actually try and understand.

    “We know there is a relationship between excess deaths and deprivation so maybe the current financial situation we are in is exacerbating that.

    “There is despair from your livelihood disappearing up the swanny. It doesn’t have to lead to suicide, chronic stress can lead to all sorts of problems.”

    Dr Charles Levinson, the chief executive of the private GP company DoctorCall, also called for a government inquiry into what was causing so many deaths at home.

    The ONS reported 752 excess deaths in the home in the latest week, 30 per cent more than usual, and more than hospitals and care homes put together.

    “This is exactly why a proper government investigation is required,” he said. “This is not just displacement from hospitals… I do not understand how this is not being properly discussed.”

    Dr Levinson added: “The reasons behind these horrific numbers are complicated and none of us fully understand them, so that is exactly why there should be an urgent and comprehensive Government inquiry.

    “If anything, the situation seems to be worsening. Considering the relentless focus on one virus for more than two years, requesting answers from Government on thousands and thousands of non-Covid excess deaths is entirely reasonable.”

    1. Some will undoubtedly be people dying from undiagnosed (or too late diagnosis of) cancer. The heart attacks, strokes and clots are most probably down to the vaccine – not that this will ever be admitted, I imagine.

      2. Two words in my follow up letter today that weren’t mentioned in the consultation Monday – high risk skin cancer.
        Does anyone wonder why I am so bloody angry?

          1. I can’t answer that- have not been in an English school in years. Was all set to do so, got my Enhanced DBS and then MH got sick- so there was that year gone.
            Also, the only memory of my salary as a degreed teacher in Manchester, was that I wept at it’s lowly amount.
            Can’t remember pay in US either…I did put my son through UConn on my earnings so it must have been OK. I did have to take a pay cut when we had to go to GA even though I was librarian/
            media specialist.
            I can recall limericks, poems, lines from books, plays etc but don’t expect me to remember anything re money.
            Oh and BTW- the only time I had an assistant was in my library in GA. Never in UK.
            It does seem a huge amount for a daily rate- danger money?

        2. So sorry about the way you’ve been treated with utter disregard, for your feelings, & your future.

    2. Put these figures into context. A report by the National Audit Office in 2005 estimated that up to 34,000 people are killed per year UK due to human error in the medical profession. It put the overall number of patient incidents (fatal and non fatal) at 974,000. A study into acute care in hospitals found that one in every ten patients is killed or injured as a consequence of medical error or institutional shortcomings. French healthcare put the number even higher, at 14 per cent. In USA the figure is the equivalent of two 777 crashes PER DAY.

      Black Box Thinking – Matthew Syed.

    3. Not Covid but the Covid jabs. People who have had the jabs keep getting Covid.

    1. I have come to the conclusion he’s having a planned clear our. Perhaps we need to have faith. Or something, not sure what.

      2. I asked the Warqueen what the hell was going on, what’s the real intent and she simply said ‘for a misanthropic it, you have far too high standards for your fellow man.’

      3. Have more gin would seeem the best response at the present government chaos.

    2. Why, ah yes .

      Gove is very odd, divorced his wife , was seen doing strange things in night clubs .. One wonders whether he should have been sacked ages ago .. similar snake as Gavin Williamson (Sir)

      1. Thank God Gove has gone. Though if/when Boris falls, Gove will be insufferable…

        1. I was totally turned off Gove when that picture was in the papers of him gazing with rapt adoration at the Swedish Doom Goblin. What a plonker.

    3. My MP, who was under Gove, has resigned.
      Danny Kruger – he supported Boris until now.

  106. 353951+ up ticks,

    Just bqck from manoeuvres marching the troops first up the hill then down in readiness, pro next leader as he was with johnson, a tory (ino) through & through, NOT old stock but new.

    Cut Taxes, Tackle Immigration, Get Fracking: Farage Challenges Next Tory Leader to Save Britain and Conservative Party

    1. The exact opposite of what the government – and state – wants to do.

      This is deliberate. An intentional assault on the country.

  107. Tonight I’ve got this album by Lisa Gerrard playing: it has one of my favourite cover versions of ‘All along the Watchtower’.

    https://youtu.be/H46307t2sUA

    A glass or two of Shiraz & my book should keep me cheerful.
    As has been said before ‘we are going to hell in a handcart’.

    “All Along The Watchtower”

    “There must be some kind of way out of here”
    Said the joker to the thief
    “There’s too much confusion
    I can’t get no relief

    Businessmen, they drink my wine
    Plowmen dig my earth
    None will level on the line
    Nobody offered his word
    Hey!”

    “No reason to get excited”
    The thief, he kindly spoke
    “There are many here among us
    Who feel that life is but a joke

    But you and I, we’ve been through that
    And this is not our fate
    So let us stop talking falsely now
    The hour’s getting late
    Hey!”

    All along the watchtower
    Princes kept the view
    While all the women came and went
    Barefoot servants too

    Outside in the cold distance
    A wildcat did growl
    Two riders were approaching
    And the wind began to howl, hey

    All along the watchtower

    1. After our splendid (!) trip to Sainsbury’s we came home. I sat outside for a while and then we went down to our little bistro for a meal. We sat outside in their nice garden and it was pleasant. Home and pretty tired but it’s been a horrid few weeks so we felt we deserved a treat.
      Enjoy your music- music is a great pleasure and relief.

          5. I can’t get no satisfaction neither. [Is that a triple negative, thus correcting the double? Answers on a postcard please, enclosing a postal order. (That is: if a postcard can ‘enclose’ anything).]😉

  108. With all this political turbulence going on, I wonder if any of us ordinary folk will notice the slightest difference to our daily lives?

    1. The Italians just carry on as if nothing had happened when they have this sort of thing.

      1. My experience of Italians is they live their entire lives in a state of anarchy.

  110. A comment from the article previously quoted: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2022/07/06/plan-persuade-rich-have-children/
    ”
    Child benefit is taken off high earners. The spouse of a high earner who doesn’t work, can’t transfer their tax allowance.

    A high earner will lose their tax allowance pay 45% tax topped up with 10% NI.

    Then the media will say those with the broadest shoulders must pay more etc etc.

    The incentive to be a productive part of society without being a mega earner doesn’t exist
    ”

    Nuff said. Stop robbing the earners and giving it to the dross waster.

    1. But, but, but, the high earners have the means to, and will, leave the country, taking their ill-gotten gains with them.

      That’s why taxing the rich doesn’t work. Check your policies, Labour and LibDem crappers.

  111. “Tim Loughton, Conservative MP for East Worthing and Shoreham, has a novel take on Boris Johnson’s firing of Michael Gove.

    He tells Sky News that Michael Gove offered Johnson the “metaphorical bottle of whisky and the revolver”.

    “Well clearly Boris has downed the whisky and turned the revolver on Michael Gove.
    “Who would have believed it?”

    That is by far the best bit so far! I would have loved to see the look on Gove’s face!

    1. Gove probably cried then begged. Then snorted coke and did some dad dancing.

  112. His premiership is ending in disaster, but I don’t regret backing Boris in 2019

    The tragedy of the PM is he used his Brexit triumph to impose socialism and eco-extremism on the UK

    ALLISTER HEATH • 6 July 2022 • 9:30pm

    Is this the time for a mea culpa, or as our outgoing Prime Minister might have once put it, even a mea maxima culpa, for supporting Boris Johnson three years ago? The answer, dear readers, is an emphatic “No”, and not only because I’m not a Roman Catholic. His subsequent performance has been atrocious, delusional and indefensible, but Johnson was the right and only person for the job in 2019, a time when, some have conveniently forgotten, Britain was falling apart.

    Within months of becoming leader of the Conservative Party, he had rescued the country from a debilitating constitutional crisis after a series of audacious gambles, delivered a meaningful Brexit and thus salvaged the greatest democratic exercise in our history, saved and united a Conservative Party that had fallen to 9 per cent in an election, destroyed the most Left-wing, fanatically dangerous leader in Labour’s history and repelled the threat of anti-Semitism. It was an astonishing turnaround job, confounding his Tory sceptics in the most vivid way imaginable.

    For all these historic achievements, and despite his subsequent, calamitous failures, he shall be remembered as one of this country’s most consequential prime ministers. This is why the 160 MPs who supported him in June 2019, fully aware of his imperfections, should feel no regret for their decision, and neither should the 13.9 million people who voted Conservative on that glorious December day. He delivered on his core, short-term mission, against all the odds: backing him was the right thing to do at the time, even if it isn’t true any longer today.

    Johnson’s tragedy is that he outlived his usefulness so quickly and turned from exceptional asset to prohibitively costly liability in record time, which is why so many erstwhile Johnson loyalists and voters turned on him decisively. He misunderstood his early luck and success, and refused to build a proper structure around himself, rather than a dysfunctional court made up of warring factions.

    His staggering lack of self-awareness extended to the moral realm: he didn’t seem to grasp that voters are allergic to double-standards, hypocrisy and downright lies. His lack of a guiding ideology, other than personal ambition and self-interest, meant that he failed to understand why so many of his supporters feel ideologically betrayed by his high-tax, high-spend agenda.

    It became apparent well over a year ago that there would be no lengthy Johnsonian era, as I fleetingly thought might have been possible in the immediate aftermath of the election, no new economic and social model named after him, no great project to remodel Britain a la Thatcher. It is a bitter disappointment, a catastrophic waste of an 80-seat majority, a seismic defeat for the forces of conservatism in an increasingly Left-wing culture, the ultimate proof of the futility of purposeless ambition, of the idea that charisma, slipperiness and off-the-cuff verbal dexterity beats principle, thoughtfulness, organisation, reliability, focus and managerial ability.

    Johnson’s performance went downhill almost immediately after the General Election, with his decision to approve HS2 the first of many errors. His greatest failure was to make fools of those of us who believed his assurances that he was broadly a Reaganite, freedom-loving supply-sider, albeit one with an unfortunate weakness for Keynesianism, municipalism, Helseltinian central direction and grand projets.

    For a short while, at least in the second half of 2019 and until the start of Covid, it felt as if there was some sort of plan, a fusion between his ideas and those of his advisers. I didn’t like all of them by any means, but it felt as if we would end up with a mix of tax cuts, deregulation, a radical reform of the Civil Service and procurement, the end of the licence fee, a semi-libertarian embrace of freedom, a semi-consumerist, conservative (rather than collectivist) approach to environmentalism, as well as lots of extra spending in many areas.

    We ended up instead with massively more spending, a vicious series of tax increases, global corporation tax harmonisation that made a mockery of Brexit, a hard-Left green agenda that is barely less authoritarian than that of Extinction Rebellion, a war on consumers, including drivers, meat-eaters and anybody with a suburban lifestyle, a full-on paternalist agenda, more red tape and bureaucracy, no planning reform, an unleashing of the Civil Service and further gains for the woke classes. None of the good things have been delivered, and all the bad ones have happened, and worse.

    His management of Covid was middling, average even by global standards, but no less disastrous for that. Yes, he faced difficult choices, but he refused to follow his supposed principles. Why did he not conduct proper cost-benefit analyses? Why didn’t he tell the public that furlough was strictly temporary? Why all the mendacious, demagogic nonsense about the NHS? The vaccine success was one of the few positive outcomes, but even that was squandered when Johnson returned control to the bureaucracy. The British state has learnt none of the right lessons from Covid when it comes to future pandemic-management.

    Covid would have damaged any PM, but it permanently derailed this one, and not just because he suffered so badly from it. It gave Johnson a taste for unlimited spending and state power from which he never recovered. It also exposed the hypocrisy of an elite that thought it could party while the rest of the country was locked down, destroying Johnson’s greatest political advantage: the idea he was different and on the side of normal people.

    Perhaps Johnson’s most perplexing failure was to misunderstand the purpose of Brexit, the policy that will define him forever more. Instead of a traditionally Eurosceptic pro-growth agenda, he chose to ape the continental economic model we had struggled so hard to escape. Instead of renewing our institutions, he happily embraced the technocratic status quo. His semi-socialist economic model is incompatible with growth, and will now need to be scrapped if his successor is to have any hope of rescuing the Conservative Party and the Brexit legacy.

    Now that his Government has imploded in a sordid, chaotic mess of resignations and frustration, Johnson will soon have a lot more time to reflect on how it all went so pathetically, absurdly wrong.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/07/06/premiership-ending-disaster-dont-regret-backing-boris-2019/

    1. BUT – he gained his position of power on an outright lie.

      He vowed to back the manifesto and then did the exact opposite.

      Time to be kicked into touch as a liar and a charlatan.

  113. His premiership is ending in disaster, but I don’t regret backing Boris in 2019

    The tragedy of the PM is he used his Brexit triumph to impose socialism and eco-extremism on the UK

    ALLISTER HEATH • 6 July 2022 • 9:30pm

    Is this the time for a mea culpa, or as our outgoing Prime Minister might have once put it, even a mea maxima culpa, for supporting Boris Johnson three years ago? The answer, dear readers, is an emphatic “No”, and not only because I’m not a Roman Catholic. His subsequent performance has been atrocious, delusional and indefensible, but Johnson was the right and only person for the job in 2019, a time when, some have conveniently forgotten, Britain was falling apart.

    Within months of becoming leader of the Conservative Party, he had rescued the country from a debilitating constitutional crisis after a series of audacious gambles, delivered a meaningful Brexit and thus salvaged the greatest democratic exercise in our history, saved and united a Conservative Party that had fallen to 9 per cent in an election, destroyed the most Left-wing, fanatically dangerous leader in Labour’s history and repelled the threat of anti-Semitism. It was an astonishing turnaround job, confounding his Tory sceptics in the most vivid way imaginable.

    For all these historic achievements, and despite his subsequent, calamitous failures, he shall be remembered as one of this country’s most consequential prime ministers. This is why the 160 MPs who supported him in June 2019, fully aware of his imperfections, should feel no regret for their decision, and neither should the 13.9 million people who voted Conservative on that glorious December day. He delivered on his core, short-term mission, against all the odds: backing him was the right thing to do at the time, even if it isn’t true any longer today.

    Johnson’s tragedy is that he outlived his usefulness so quickly and turned from exceptional asset to prohibitively costly liability in record time, which is why so many erstwhile Johnson loyalists and voters turned on him decisively. He misunderstood his early luck and success, and refused to build a proper structure around himself, rather than a dysfunctional court made up of warring factions.

    His staggering lack of self-awareness extended to the moral realm: he didn’t seem to grasp that voters are allergic to double-standards, hypocrisy and downright lies. His lack of a guiding ideology, other than personal ambition and self-interest, meant that he failed to understand why so many of his supporters feel ideologically betrayed by his high-tax, high-spend agenda.

    It became apparent well over a year ago that there would be no lengthy Johnsonian era, as I fleetingly thought might have been possible in the immediate aftermath of the election, no new economic and social model named after him, no great project to remodel Britain a la Thatcher. It is a bitter disappointment, a catastrophic waste of an 80-seat majority, a seismic defeat for the forces of conservatism in an increasingly Left-wing culture, the ultimate proof of the futility of purposeless ambition, of the idea that charisma, slipperiness and off-the-cuff verbal dexterity beats principle, thoughtfulness, organisation, reliability, focus and managerial ability.

    Johnson’s performance went downhill almost immediately after the General Election, with his decision to approve HS2 the first of many errors. His greatest failure was to make fools of those of us who believed his assurances that he was broadly a Reaganite, freedom-loving supply-sider, albeit one with an unfortunate weakness for Keynesianism, municipalism, Helseltinian central direction and grand projets.

    For a short while, at least in the second half of 2019 and until the start of Covid, it felt as if there was some sort of plan, a fusion between his ideas and those of his advisers. I didn’t like all of them by any means, but it felt as if we would end up with a mix of tax cuts, deregulation, a radical reform of the Civil Service and procurement, the end of the licence fee, a semi-libertarian embrace of freedom, a semi-consumerist, conservative (rather than collectivist) approach to environmentalism, as well as lots of extra spending in many areas.

    We ended up instead with massively more spending, a vicious series of tax increases, global corporation tax harmonisation that made a mockery of Brexit, a hard-Left green agenda that is barely less authoritarian than that of Extinction Rebellion, a war on consumers, including drivers, meat-eaters and anybody with a suburban lifestyle, a full-on paternalist agenda, more red tape and bureaucracy, no planning reform, an unleashing of the Civil Service and further gains for the woke classes. None of the good things have been delivered, and all the bad ones have happened, and worse.

    His management of Covid was middling, average even by global standards, but no less disastrous for that. Yes, he faced difficult choices, but he refused to follow his supposed principles. Why did he not conduct proper cost-benefit analyses? Why didn’t he tell the public that furlough was strictly temporary? Why all the mendacious, demagogic nonsense about the NHS? The vaccine success was one of the few positive outcomes, but even that was squandered when Johnson returned control to the bureaucracy. The British state has learnt none of the right lessons from Covid when it comes to future pandemic-management.

    Covid would have damaged any PM, but it permanently derailed this one, and not just because he suffered so badly from it. It gave Johnson a taste for unlimited spending and state power from which he never recovered. It also exposed the hypocrisy of an elite that thought it could party while the rest of the country was locked down, destroying Johnson’s greatest political advantage: the idea he was different and on the side of normal people.

    Perhaps Johnson’s most perplexing failure was to misunderstand the purpose of Brexit, the policy that will define him forever more. Instead of a traditionally Eurosceptic pro-growth agenda, he chose to ape the continental economic model we had struggled so hard to escape. Instead of renewing our institutions, he happily embraced the technocratic status quo. His semi-socialist economic model is incompatible with growth, and will now need to be scrapped if his successor is to have any hope of rescuing the Conservative Party and the Brexit legacy.

    Now that his Government has imploded in a sordid, chaotic mess of resignations and frustration, Johnson will soon have a lot more time to reflect on how it all went so pathetically, absurdly wrong.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/07/06/premiership-ending-disaster-dont-regret-backing-boris-2019/

  114. Wow it’s hard to keel up with your government goings on.

    I suppose that it is too much to hope that some of Trudeaus minions find some scruples and call for change. Every week is a new scandal that in previous times would have automatically resulted in a ministerial resignation but now they just carry on lying and covering up their deeds.

    One of the February truckers protest leaders is back in prison. When she was at an awards ceremony, she apparently came within shouting distance of another protest leader – no conversation between the two but enough for trudeaus mob to have here arrested for breaking bail conditions.

    1. Richard, the whole world has gone round the bend and into the straight.

    2. You, RichardL will have to take your chances as to how Canada might get back on the straight and narrow, but to me the first step is to get rid of the Turdeau, by shooting if necessary.

      I’d like to think that there’s a strong and modifying effect north of the facile USA, that might just cause Biden and his minions to think again.

  115. Wow it’s hard to keel up with your government goings on.

    I suppose that it is too much to hope that some of Trudeaus minions find some scruples and call for change. Every week is a new scandal that in previous times would have automatically resulted in a ministerial resignation but now they just carry on lying and covering up their deeds.

    One of the February truckers protest leaders is back in prison. When she was at an awards ceremony, she apparently came within shouting distance of another protest leader – no conversation between the two but enough for trudeaus mob to have here arrested for breaking bail conditions.

  116. What on earth was Nadhim Zahawi thinking?

    Tory MPs will forgive the chancellor his actions over the past 24 hours if he can prove he is a winner

    JULIET SAMUEL • 6 July 2022 • 9:30pm

    What on earth was he thinking? A week ago, Nadhim Zahawi was a contender for the leadership of the Conservative Party with an unblemished record, about whom hardly anyone in Westminster had a bad word to say. Then, late on Tuesday night, he took a call from Boris Johnson that he shouldn’t have taken and, somehow, for some reason, agreed to step into the crumbling breach in the Government and take on the job of chancellor to replace Rishi Sunak, rather than doing the sensible thing and telling No. 10 he would sooner boil his head than prop up this ridiculous administration a moment longer.

    The next morning, our new Chancellor charged bullishly into a succession of TV and radio interviews armed only with a script of platitudes and a dogged but mystifying sense of loyalty to his floundering boss. He emerged sounding exhausted, flat and down-hearted, sat wretchedly next to his leader through a howling session of PMQs and, by evening, was by many accounts part of a delegation to tell the man, finally, to go.

    What does this story tell us about a minister who, if he can overcome this little interlude, may soon replace Mr Johnson in office? A flattering version would have it that Mr Zahawi is a man with a great sense of loyalty and modesty. As he told Sky’s Kay Burley: “This is a team game and you play for the team.” Here’s the nastier version: this is a man doomed always to be the sidekick and never the hero, an operations manager suited to executing a plan drawn up by the chief, a man looking for a leader to follow, not for a chance to lead.

    There is another explanation, of course. It is possible that Mr Zahawi thought that a spell as chancellor, even if it only lasted a few weeks, would give him the chance to showcase his skills to the party faithful. With such a weak Prime Minister, he would be able to do almost anything, finally unleashing his inner Thatcherite.

    He could slash taxes, starting with fuel duty, corporation tax and national insurance, a sure way to win over Conservative members. He could fix the weird anomalies in the tax regime that disproportionately penalise extra income earned between £50,000-60,000 for child benefit claimants. He could restore the indexation of income tax, undoing a particularly pernicious move by Rishi Sunak just before inflation skyrocketed.

    Even better, if he really wanted to make his mark, he could take the erring Bank of England in hand and pile on pressure to raise interest rates to stamp out the coming decade of inflation spikes. He could junk the odd line, coined by Sunak, that government had to restrain its spending and tax cuts to avoid stoking inflation (this is backwards: the Government should set policy as necessary, and the Bank should raise rates in response if needed). If that failed, he could say what markets already acknowledge to be true, which is that Bank independence has failed, and dramatically take interest-rate setting responsibility back into the Treasury to significantly tighten monetary policy. No one could then argue that his brief time in office was wasted.

    Time, though, is too short for any of this. Instead, it’s looking rather likely that Mr Zahawi will be spending the initial part of any leadership bid explaining why he chose to prop up a falling prime minister. Is Mr Zahawi’s judgment ever again to be trusted, however brilliant a businessman or minister he was before now? Still, in the grand scheme of mistakes made by politicians, there are worse ones. Just ask Mrs Sunak.

    It is popular among Tory MPs, at present, to claim that their next choice of leader will boil down to an insider-outsider choice between someone who served in this disreputable Cabinet and someone who didn’t. The Cabinet lot are, supposedly, all irretrievably tainted. I don’t buy this reasoning for a minute – it is, in fact, the sort of argument generally made by people who wished they had been in government but didn’t get asked.

    What will ultimately motivate MPs is the same thing that always motivates them: who will let me keep my job by winning an election? On that score, I doubt that Mr Zahawi’s peculiar little dalliance with the Treasury will have changed the calculation very much. If they think someone’s on course to win, Tory politicians will forgive almost anything.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/07/06/what-earth-nadhim-zahawi-thinking/

    1. An opportunist – nothing more, nothing less.

      Discard the idea of the top 5 contenders – it’ll be more of the same.

      Redwood or Davis as interim. Frost, get out of the cushy Lords, your country needs you.

  117. Goodnight my friends and family and God bless you all through this night.

    1. When at night I go to sleep,
      Fourteen angels watch do keep,
      Two my head are guarding
      Two my feet are guiding;
      Two upon my right hand,
      Two upon my left hand.
      Two who warmly cover
      Two o’er me hover,
      Two to whom is given
      To guide my steps to heaven.

      Evening prayer from Hansel and Gretel by Humperdinck. (The real one.)

      1. The Children’s Prayer.
        Gosh, I remember my mother say this at night before sleep.

        1. We did Hansel and Gretel when I was at school; I sang the Sandman but we all joined in the choruses and added to the harmonies. I can still hear the music which is how I remember the words.

          1. Lunch time prayer;
            Thank you for the world so sweet,

            Thank you for the food we eat,

            Thank you for the birds that sing,

            Thank you God for everything.

            Amen.

          2. In our school….
            For what we are about to receive, may the cooks be severely punished.

          3. In our school, late 50’s, even the pigs refused the leftovers from the daily slop bucket.

          5. For soup and meat and finally pud
            Thank you Lord, but please make it good.

        2. As far as I remember, it went:

          Matthew, Mark, Luke and John,
          Bless the bed I lie upon…

          …the rest is lost in the mists of time

      3. Night-time Prayer

        The day Thou gavest, Lord, is ended,
        The darkness falls at Thy behest;
        To Thee our morning hymns ascended,
        Thy praise shall sanctify our rest.

      1. Thank you, Elsie (I had a Nanny called Elsie) but I don’t think I’m finished yet. My Nanny probably said the same!

  118. Don’t tell Brenda from Bristol!

    Boris Johnson drops heavy hints of snap election – but the Queen could block the plan

    PM threatens quickfire vote to thwart bid to oust him, although Buckingham Palace could refuse any request to dissolve Parliament

    By Nick Gutteridge • 6 July 2022 • 8:08pm

    Boris Johnson has heavily hinted that he is ready to call a snap general election in response to attempts to oust him, despite warnings that the Queen may block him from doing so.

    The Prime Minister said he might try to force through a quickfire vote to get re-elected by the public, after his Cabinet and mutinous MPs launched a bid to boot him out of Number 10. Mr Johnson’s future has been thrown into doubt by his handling of the groping allegations against Chris Pincher, the former deputy chief whip.

    There has been Tory anger over Number 10’s initial defence that Mr Johnson did not know about the claims before promoting Mr Pincher, which later turned out to be false. During an appearance before the House of Commons liaison committee on Wednesday, he was repeatedly grilled over whether he was considering going to the country in a final bid to save his premiership. Under heavy questioning, Mr Johnson gave contradictory answers – saying he would “of course rule out” a snap poll, but also saying that one may be necessary to fulfil his mandate.

    “History teaches us that the best way to have a period of stability and government and not to have early elections is to allow people with mandates to get on,” he said to one MP. Pressed on what he meant by those remarks, he replied that a quickfire vote would not be necessary “unless people ignore that very good principle”. He went on to say that governments with “a substantial mandate from the electorate” should be left to get on with delivering, adding that it was “sensible not to get bogged down in electoral politics”.

    Later on, when urged by Bernard Jenkin, the veteran Tory MP, to resign and rule out a snap election, he said such a contest was “the last thing this country needs”. But he also insisted: “I’m not going to step down,” and warned that: “The risk is people continue to focus on this type of thing and that is a mistake.”

    Mr Johnson was asked if he needed the Queen’s permission to call a vote. He replied that the public don’t want “politicians to be engaged in electioneering now or in the future”.

    The Prime Minister would require the monarch’s signature to dissolve Parliament and she has the power to refuse such a request if it breaches certain constitutional conventions. A government document called the “dissolution principles” sets out the conditions under which a sitting prime minister can go to Buckingham Palace and ask for an election. They state a leader must “be the accepted leader of the political party that commands the majority of the House of Commons”. Mr Johnson would also have a duty to ensure that the Queen was not “drawn into party politics” by a demand from No 10 to go to the country.

    A separate convention dating back to 1950, known as the Lascelles Principles, details further conditions under which the monarch can turn down a request to dissolve parliament. One test is whether they can “rely on finding another prime minister who could govern for a reasonable period with a working majority in the House of Commons”. Another is whether an election would be detrimental to the economy, an argument which could be used given spiralling inflation and the cost of living crisis.

    The Queen has never been put in a position where she needed to consider turning down a snap election and a request from the Prime Minister would be highly awkward for Buckingham Palace. Yet there are Tory MPs who hope that, if their leader were to act in such a way, the monarch would be advised by officials to reject a new vote.

    “There’s a threat from the Prime Minister that if the Tory party continues to misbehave, I’m going to call a general election,” one rebel backbencher told The Telegraph.

    “I could easily see the Palace would be in its absolute right to say: you’ve had two elections, your party can command a majority in the House of Commons, so you’re not going to have a general election. You make it work under your leadership or find a new one but I’m not dissolving parliament at a great time of national uncertainty.”

    Mr Johnson would undoubtedly face stiff resistance from across the Tory party if he were to attempt to forge ahead with a snap election. Changes to rules that would allow another confidence vote in his leadership could be rushed through and he would likely be hit with further resignations. “If he tries to call an election, we’re going to have to blow his brains out – politically speaking, of course,” one MP told the HuffPost website.

    In recent weeks, rebel Conservatives have become more nervous that the Prime Minister could trigger a snap vote in a last ditch bid to save his premiership. Many believe that the rumours are just an attempt by David Canzini, his chief of staff, to scare wavering MPs who are worried about losing their seats back into line. But others fear Mr Johnson may decide to gamble before he faces a worsening cost of living crisis, plus a fresh Commons investigation into partygate this autumn.

    Nadhim Zahawi, the new Chancellor, refused to rule out the possibility of a snap election as he held his first round of interviews in the job on Wednesday morning. “The Prime Minister will make a decision on any general election,” he told LBC, adding that dire opinion polling was “very much based” on the public “seeing a divided party”.

    The Prime Minister has the power to call a snap poll whenever he wishes, now that the Fixed Terms Parliament Act has been repealed. That legislation, introduced in 2011, had restricted elections to every five years unless a two-thirds Commons majority voted to go to the public earlier. Speaking at the liaison committee, the Prime Minister said the “earliest date” he was envisaging for the next election was in 2024.

    But before the wave of resignations that have rocked his leadership, Conservative Campaign Headquarters was “war-gaming” an early vote if Sir Keir Starmer is fined and forced to resign over beergate. “If Labour ends up in a leadership election, that could change the electoral dynamic and the party’s planning at the highest level,” an insider told The Times.

    But the resignations of Rishi Sunak and Sajid Javid and the weakening of Mr Johnson’s position in the last 24 hours may have changed that calculation. The Labour leader has already called for Mr Johnson to quit and has said he wants to see the country go to the polls immediately to secure a “fresh start for Britain”. “This government is collapsing, the Tory party is corrupted, and changing one man at the top of the Tory party won’t fix the problems,” he told broadcasters on Wednesday. Meanwhile Steve Reed, his shadow justice secretary, insisted that Labour is “ready to fight” a general election immediately, should one be called by Mr Johnson.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/07/06/snap-general-election-what-will-call-boris-johnson-confidence

    BTL:
    Rick Wall
    Perhaps my memory is playing tricks but I seem to remember that Harold Wilson once wrote that the British Prime Minister wielded more relative power than the US President (obviously in their respective countries) due to the British PM being able to scare the living daylights out of his MPs by threatening to call a general election that would almost certainly be lost.

    Now obviously that course of action would only be taken by a completely self-absorbed psychopath who wanted to cause the utmost damage to his party and the country itself. Johnson wouldn’t do that, would he?

    Clive Laing
    BJ would be foolish to call an election now while he is still at the helm. The result would just like the anyone but Corbyn election in 2019 – anyone but Bunter.

    1. “ He went on to say that governments with “a substantial mandate from the electorate…”

      He had a mandate in 2019 and promised to fulfil it. To date he has failed miserably, small wonder the country wants rid of a liar and a fraud.

    2. Once you realise that he’d be perfectly happy with a Labour government, as they’re all in it together, this makes a lot more sense.

  119. Good night all 😴- what a strange day it’s been. We’ll see how much longer Boris will hang on with no ministers left.
    At least our swift walk this evening went well.

      3. Sorry to hear about your sister, DiK. A sad time time for you and the family. Thinking of you.

      4. All my most precious early memories were bound in with my sister.
        It still feels as if she ought to be here…

        My condolences for you.

      5. I will not say Good morning, as it obviously will not be for you, but my condolences.

      7. Oh John- I’m so sorry to hear that. Had she been ill?
        Please let me know how you are.

      8. Oh dear dear DK, I’m so sorry. Heartfelt condolences to you and the family from Alf and me.

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