Wednesday 6 October: Message to the PM: don’t just say there isn’t a crisis, do something

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here.

541 thoughts on “Wednesday 6 October: Message to the PM: don’t just say there isn’t a crisis, do something”

  1. The powerlessness of Priti Patel. 5 October 2021.

    Last year she promised to make cross-Channel migration ‘totally non-viable’ within months. Instead, it has expanded. Over the weekend she claimed that her new Borders Bill ‘will make illegal migration no longer worth the risk’. Yet it obviously won’t do that. If it could then illegal migration would fall to zero. Does anyone think that is remotely likely? At best the new provisions will nibble away at the fringes of the problem.

    Equally in her speech today, Ms Patel claimed: ‘We are smashing the economic model of the people smugglers’. Yet this quite plainly is not happening. In fact, more smugglers are making more money taking more irregular migrants across the Channel than ever before.

    Morning everyone. Patel is essentially a prisoner of the Civil Service. She may fulminate; declare this and that, but as we have seen should she contradict the Cultural Marxist ethos of the Mandarins of Whitehall nothing will happen. A demonstration of where the real power lies.

    Her strictures about pretty much everything are a joke. Her recent ridiculous announcement about sending all migrants to be vetted in Albania was just the latest in an active campaign to get her to quit or be sacked. The choice of one of the worst former communist states was bizarre to say the least and its speedy denial by their present government a real slap in the face. It was almost certainly an utter fabrication fed to her by her bureaucratic underlings who clearly despise her. One can only imagine the atmosphere of mutual hatred when they meet.

    Why doesn’t she resign? She’s been humiliated enough times for ten ministers. Well that would be to abandon the field and give them the victory and she does have some obligation both to Boris and to maintain the fiction of a functioning democracy; besides which even the Mirage of Power has its devotees.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-powerlessness-of-priti-patel

      1. Good cartoon, but I think Brookes hasn’t realised that Priti, apart from being useless, is in fact quite Pretty…

    2. The interesting thing is that she is the boss. They work for her nominally. She should start posting some of the offenders to Bradford and Manchester, Birmingham and Huddersfield for six months at a time. Ask for reports on stuff. Set tight timescales, i.e next week. Check staff arrivals and departures for punctuality. Hold up all promotions and salary increases. Scrutinise expense claims, and reject anything that is 1p out.

    1. N Essex this morning is bright-ish and quite windy. Haven’t ventured out but it looks from where I’m sitting, a fleece jacket over another couple of layers sort of day.

    1. Talking sense, representing his constituents, wants to mine coal and frack gas to save importing these essential sources of energy, the man’s a political dinosaur.😎

  7. Good morning all.
    The Sun is lighting the tops of the trees over the road and it looks fairly clear outside with 5°C on the yard thermometer.

    I FINALLY had Derby Royal’s Mental Health Unit, the Radbourne, get in touch with me yesterday. they’ve only had Stepson in there for the past 3 weeks!
    He needs clothes so I need a run into Derby to do a bit of shopping. At least I’ve access to his bank account to pay for them!

    2. Good morning Bob ,

      Charity shops have an amazing array of clothes , good quality as well , for just a few pounds .

      I bought Moh a Barbour gilet, wonderful condition as new , for £6 , unaffordable in a Barbour shop . He has bought good quality jackets as well. I am a scarf fiend , and have acquired some nice scarves and handbags for next to nothing .

      When Moh’s mother was residing in the nursing home , the laundry there was a night mare , so I used to buy jumpers and skirts and blouses for her .

      Best of luck with your shopping anyway .

      1. Sadly, I don’t have time to trawl round the charity shops looking for clothes for him, especially when I don’t know his actual sizes, so it’ll be Primark or Matalan simply for the convenience.

  9. Morning all

    SIR – We could take more effective action to stop Channel migrants arriving on our beaches, but we don’t. We should take action to stop Insulate Britain blocking our roads, but we don’t. And we could reduce the backlog in the courts, but we don’t.

    We should address the DVLA crisis, but we don’t. We need urgent steps to be taken to address the Northern Ireland situation, but we don’t.

    We could take measures to improve face-to-face GP appointments but we don’t.

    Actions speak louder than words and now it’s time for far too many “don’ts” to start to become “do’s”.

    Robert Ischt

    Ilford, Essex

    SIR – Ministers should be very careful when they blame business supply chains and cheap labour for shortages.

    These are the same businesses that kept the country going in lockdown, despite serious problems with staffing. These are the same politicians who took five years to get us out of Europe, couldn’t make their minds up on the type of exit and have still left Northern Ireland in the EU.

    These are also the same ministers who run HMRC and the DVLA, the same ministers who control schools where millions of school days were lost, control Border Force, which can’t stop migration across the Channel, and control the NHS, where millions are waiting for treatment.

    Mike Metcalfe

    Butleigh, Somerset

    SIR – Many will understand Philip Duly’s decision to resign his membership of the Conservative Party (Letters, October 5). The current Cabinet appears deaf to the party’s lifelong membership.

    An alternative to outright resignation is cancellation of one’s annual standing order. I recently employed this interim approach, since it may encourage a direct dialogue with individual members.

    Dr Tony Parker

    Ringmer, East Sussex

    SIR – I have never heard such rudeness or lack of respect on the part of an interviewer as Nick Robinson’s towards the Prime Minister on Today yesterday. At one stage, he told Boris Johnson to stop talking, even though he was barely able to make his points before Mr Robinson tried to move on.

    The Prime Minister showed remarkable restraint in the circumstances.

    Peter Clark

    Ash, Kent

    SIR – Nick Robinson told the Prime Minister to stop talking, and Boris Johnson acquiesced. How refreshing!

    Dr Richard A E Grove

    Isle of Whithorn, Wigtownshire

    SIR – I am furious. For several days there have been no pains au chocolat in my local store. This is clearly the result of Brexit and failings of our Prime Minister. He should be ashamed of himself.

    Colin Hamilton

    Chichester, West Sussex

    1. Actions speak louder than words and now it’s time for far too many “don’ts” to start to become “do’s”.

      Does Mr Ischt not realise that the lack of action is an action in itself? That it is deliberate?

    1. ‘Morning, Tryers.

      If she thinks she can bounce him into yet more gay nonsense ….she’s probably right; it will be a distraction to the current shambles and so he is sufficiently stupid to go for it.

      Yesterday he was asked about the prospect of pig farmers having to cull and incinerate approximately 100,000 animals because they cannot be processed. His response was to make a crass joke about bacon sandwiches.

      He is now trying to copy Bliar, who made it his aim to make us a “high wage country”. He should have said that it was his aim to make us “a competitive country”. That is the way to prosperity and higher wages – but of course he wouldn’t have a clue how to do that.

      The man is a cretin of the first order and the sooner he’s gone, the better.

      1. Morning, HJ.

        For many it is now clear that Johnson is working to an agenda that is counter to the best interests of the UK. His empty blathering is an embarrassment and his making light of serious situations is a sign that he has no intention to improve the lives of the people, in fact quite the opposite, he will degrade our lifestyle. That he must go is obvious but who will replace him who is not also tainted by the current agenda? Neither the Tories nor the Labour party have a leadership contender who is not on board with the agenda that Johnson is following.

  11. Putin blames ‘drastic’ switch to renewable power for energy crisis. 6 October 2021.

    Vladimir Putin has blamed the shift to renewable energy for causing “hysteria and confusion” in European markets as gas prices surged to new record highs.

    The Russian president claimed that the power crisis gripping the West is being driven by an “unbalanced” and “drastic” move away from fossil fuels, amid efforts by the Kremlin to downplay suggestions that it has sent prices surging by restricting the supply of gas.

    Vlad is of course spot on, though one notes that he doesn’t venture into anything that might be construed as Conspiracy Theory, just simply ascribing everything to natural though irrational events . He’s much smarter than that. He almost certainly knows what is going on. Witness the fact that among the world’s leading nations Russia is almost unaffected. The rest of us I’m afraid are going down the tube!

    Net-Zero is a utopian mirage like Shangri La or Eldorado. It has no reality, nor is it prompted by anything as mundane as a wish to save the planet. It is simply another step on the road to the impoverishment of the masses and their enslavement to a quasi-Marxist tyranny!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/10/05/fuel-prices-hit-eight-year-high-oil-keeps-climbing/

    1. BTL Comment:-

      Robert Spowart
      6 Oct 2021 8:15AM
      Hammer, nail, head.

      Well said Vlad.
      And, viewing the absolute total dross we have as political leaders in the West, I don’t think I’m the only one who views Putin as the potential saviour of Christian Culture and Civilisation.

  12. I hate these people with a vengeance. Something about their demeanour. Dim, dirty nasty and cruel.

    Selfish protesters

    SIR – How much longer are the Insulate Britain protesters going to be allowed to continue their selfish road blocks, which are causing major disruption to innocent motorists?

    I have just seen footage of a woman who confronted protesters at the Blackwall Tunnel, pleading with them – to no avail – to let her continue her journey to Canterbury so that she could be with her elderly mother who was, at that moment, being rushed into hospital by ambulance.

    These people have no conscience. Everybody is entitled to their opinions, but now it is time for them to go home.

    C R Parsonson

    Gravesend, Kent

    SIR – If I were to sit in the middle of a main road near me, I suspect a copper would arrest me pretty damn quick.

    Yet apparently if I do it wearing a hi-vis waistcoat and claim I am a “protester”, the same copper will leave me be. That smacks of two laws for road blockers.

    John Pritchard

    Ingatestone, Essex

    2. Nasty, evil, soap-dodgers. John Pritchard forgot to add that, as a ‘protester’, one of our useless rozzers would ask him if there was anything he could do to help – as per the video clip doing the rounds when this stupid and dangerous activity commenced. I was delighted to see angry and frustrated drivers doing the job of the police for them, and without all the the sickening touchy-feely rubbish. More power to their elbow…much more in fact.

      ‘Morning Epi.

        1. Yes, people power! And I note that no one else has tried the same stunt since.

          ‘Morning, N.

  13. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c7cc1fabf54ece725eb04e60457d1619daf99bf822581ef6dedc4b221864b136.png I really cannot see the problem, Ali, old fruit.

    No one goes to the cinema any more. Your choice of viewing this film, in the comfort of your own one, includes: watching it on the television where you may record it; DVD; or internet connection, where you may download it. All of these may be paused to allow your eyes to refresh; to enjoy a ‘comfort break’; to obey the ‘call to prayer’; or to go out and demonstrate against the government, the police, whitey, or anything else that takes your fancy. The choice is yours in this land of milk, honey and poppadoms.

      2. In our modest little town cinema we have a fully functioning Christie Organ that , with the help of volunteer organists, entertains during the run up to the P&D adds. The Cinema holds the record for the longest continually running ( not the oldest ) cinema in the country having opened it’s doors in April 1912 with a fundraiser for the Titanic survivors. It continued through both world wars ( suffering a little damage in the 2nd when the Luftwaffe jettisoned it’s undelivered cargo nearby on the way home ) , it’s ironic that what finally shut the doors was the massive over reaction to a nasty bug.
        https://www.curzon.org.uk/heritage/christie-organ/

      3. In our modest little town cinema we have a fully functioning Christie Organ that , with the help of volunteer organists, entertains during the run up to the P&D adds. The Cinema holds the record for the longest continually running ( not the oldest ) cinema in the country having opened it’s doors in April 1912 with a fundraiser for the Titanic survivors. It continued through both world wars ( suffering a little damage in the 2nd when the Luftwaffe jettisoned it’s undelivered cargo nearby on the way home ) , it’s ironic that what finally shut the doors was the massive over reaction to a nasty bug.
        https://www.curzon.org.uk/heritage/christie-organ/

    2. Perhaps he should ask a doctor to take a gander at his bladder…no, silly idea, his doctor is probably hiding at home and a ‘video chat’ is not likely to work!

  14. https://www.worcesternews.co.uk/news/19626090.college-group-rejects-mps-asset-stripping-accusation-malvern-site/?ref=ebln

    Reported in the local paper today, my Conservative MP Harriett Baldwin has supported the endeavour by the Independent-controlled District Council to buy Malvern Hills Further Education College for the community, rather than to allow the large town centre site to be sold for housing redevelopment.

    The owners of the college, Warwickshire Colleges Group, which has been buying up colleges in Worcestershire, is anxious to maintain its profits in order to help finance its larger colleges closer to their centre of operations. Some years ago, they centralised the vocational courses from Malvern to Evesham, twenty miles away. They therefore claim the college in Malvern is unviable, and therefore should be sold for redevelopment.

    WCG has the support of the Liberal Democrats, who support the consolidation of further education in Worcestershire despite it being contrary to everything I believed about their principles. At district level, the Lib Dem group split over the allocation of council land in Hallow – the Independent/Green coalition wanted it used as a community nature reserve, whereas the Lib Dems voted to leave the Coalition because they wanted the land used for social housing. Four Lib Dem councillors resigned from the party and joined the Independents. I imagine these four are eager to keep the college in Malvern. One is a prominent community musician, one is his wife, one was involved with the CBI and was its liaison officer in Brussels, and the other runs a Chinese takeaway and launderette in the town.

    I raised this during the County Council elections this year. I had always thought that education was the remit of County, especially at a time of skills shortage, but it seems that the County sold off its F.E. colleges decades ago, and has no interest in it today. The Conservative-controlled Worcestershire County Council refuse to intervene, leaving any public intervention to the District Council, who put in a bid for the site.

    The issue is that the site is worth twice as much as a housing development site as the District Council is prepared to offer, so negotiations have stalled. WCG is anxious to lift the restrictive covenant on the site placed on it through the intervention of Harriett Baldwin, who herself is anxious to maintain a college in Malvern because it is in the national interest to do so. This position was supported by the Conservative candidate, who was elected. To be fair, her main challenger was the Independent district councillor involved with the bid for the site, but his vote was split with the Liberal Democrats.

    What concerns me is the attitude of the Education and Skills Funding Agency, which apparently supports WCG selling off the Malvern college to developers. There seems to be a conflict here within Government.

    Can any Conservative here explain to me the current thinking in the party about skills shortage and the role of further education colleges in market towns?

    1. It only suits them to support any issue if it suits them. They don’t care about other people.

    2. I was rather dismayed to get an auction notification t’other month or so selling off the contents of the college.

      1. So it is fair to call WCG “asset strippers” regardless how the Malvern Hills College site ends up?

        1. Correct.
          A bit like Southampton Uni when it took over & asset stripped the small, but excellent La Sante Union Teacher Training College a couple of decades ago.

    3. Dream on. On the one hand locals scraping a few bob together with sense and community spirit on their side . On the other, the developer with well-filled brown envelopes, aggressive sales attitudes, nice lunches, and a spurious claims of the gorgeous benefits their carefully designed state of the art “green” housing using the finest concrete and cardboard will bring, not to mention the mullah in the hands of the colleges that will provide legitimate bonuses to the Vice-Chancellors et al. Place your bets?

      1. It is one reason why it is so important to have a decent Opposition to the Tories, and Starmer’s dreadful apology for a party is not one of them and is going rapidly the wrong way.

        Most of Worcestershire is overwhelmingly controlled by Conservatives, so they don’t care. They have 45 county councillors. Malvern, however, has long had a rebellious streak and the Independents, the Greens and even the Liberal Democrats push the Tories very hard. A few years ago in Malvern Priory, the Greens and UKIP pushed the Tories into third place.

        We need a lot more Malverns.

  15. The case for mass migration is built on lies. 6 October 2021.

    It expanded demand. It filled all the jobs the British didn’t want to do. It made the economy more dynamic, and it rescued us from demographic stagnation. For the past twenty years, everyone from big business to the economic establishment to Left-leaning wonks pumping out think-tank papers lectured us on how mass immigration made no difference to wages. In fact, it made us all richer.

    It destroyed an entire people and their culture. It is the greatest Betrayal in History. It was engineered by an Elite that hated and hates everything about what was their own country.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/10/06/case-mass-migration-built-lies/

    1. As we saw with the wages of HGV drivers down 50%

      Mass Immigration did make a lot of people richer. Just not the workers.

      Good morning, Minty.

    2. Yes. A few moment rational thought will reveal the truth that we do not need a large population. We do not have millions and millions of people working in factories. ideally our population would go down to around 50m or less, as it would be naturally if the politicians had not allowed in millions and millions of foreigners from alien and inimical cultures.

  16. The Escapee

    A man escapes from prison where he has been for 15 years. He breaks into a house to look for money and guns and finds a young couple in bed.
    He orders the guy out of bed and ties him to a chair, while tying the girl to the bed he gets on top of her, kisses her neck, then gets up and goes into the bathroom.
    While he’s in there, the husband tells his wife:
    “Listen, this guy’s an escaped convict, look at his clothes! He probably spent lots of time in jail and hasn’t seen a woman in years. I saw how he kissed your neck. If he wants sex, don’t resist, don’t complain, do whatever he tells you. Satisfy him no matter how much he hurts you. This guy is probably very dangerous. If he gets angry, he’ll kill us. Be strong, honey. I love you.”

    To which his wife responds:

    “He wasn’t kissing my neck. He was whispering in my ear. He told me he was gay, thought you were cute, and asked me if we had any Vaseline. I told him it was in the bathroom. Be strong honey. I love you too!!”

  17. SIR – On my local post box Royal Mail has put a notice saying that, in order to improve customer service, it is revising collection times.

    These will change from 3.15pm to 9am on weekdays and from 11.30am to 7am on Saturday. How can it think this is an improvement?

    W F Shipman
    Limavady, Co Londonderry

    We went through a similar change about 3 years ago, and it reduced the level of service, just as we and our neighbours predicted. Far from “improving customer service” it was carried out for the convenience of Royal Mail and not the customer, and our postman readily agreed.

  18. Good morning from a Saxon Queen with blooded axe, sharpened arrows and pursed longbow
    It was a delightful holiday in Devon, regardless of weather issues and petrol issues.
    Bath ( where we’ve been for the past few days visiting the mother in law on the way back )
    has been chaotic and stressful, very different from Devon . We also have a cracked window screen to contend with whilst driving. It happened, we think in Devon, the night before travelling to Bath during bad weather. It’s a long crack, auto glass have said it won’t shatter on the journey . Apart from all that, it was lovely being away in Devon and soon will be driving back to sunny East Anglia .

    2. ‘Morning Ethel. Your chariot has a windscreen??

      Sorry your stay in delightful Devon ended with a cracked screen. Your insurer should replace without loss of NCD, but watch out for the premium increase at next renewal! When Mrs HJ damaged her screen I decided that it was cheaper to go direct to a local repairer…they charged a fraction of the price to an insurer.

    3. Good morning ,

      Glad you had a lovely time in Devon , and not so in Bath .

      Remember to keep topped up with fuel because many garages are still limiting fuel intake , some around here , £30 max.

      Have a safe enoyable trip back home.

    1. During the War the Army needed to have some of these shells flown out to the troops. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1826d30fb6371235b2c898d749dff390b36073910fa86de9768b2555669a9789.jpg

      It was essential that they were kept completely dry and the best way to ensure this was to cover them in latex rubber. The only company which could produce these coverings was Durex who went ahead and made the seals for the 24″ long shells. Churchill insisted that, should these things fall into enemy hands, it would demoralise the Germans if each crate carrying these thing had the manufacturer’s name clearly displayed and so

      MADE IN BRITAIN – MEDIUM

      was stamped upon each one.

  21. 339678+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Wednesday 6 October: Message to the PM: don’t just say there isn’t a crisis, do something

    That could be a something that will be regretted by many but welcomed by
    the 48% of the electorate who do feel safer incarcerated.

    The turkish delight is an extension to the pro brussels leaders in open political treachery play, triggered by treacherous treasa & the NINE MONTH DELAY.

    The amnesty R me leader of the political cartel is NOW talking of
    controlled immigration, salve for listening fools all the while DOVER is still fully operational.

    Ask yourself this, what party had called for controlled immigration for decades only to receive rhetorically abuse from those intent on clasping
    a political krait to their breast, protecting the “party”.

    The fat political yank has taken up the slack and started pulling us even
    closer to the eu via the “deal”.

    Have the army supply HGV drivers, and many other trades all the while
    a training program is in place for INDIGENOUS tradesmen, and break this manipulating import of foreign labour.

    My true belief is this overseeing political cartel is showing far more zest for returning to brussels than in leaving.

    https://twitter.com/yorkspride/status/1445517424409726978

    2. Oh, for goodness’ sake! Does that apply in reverse? If so, shoot me now. I thoroughly enjoyed being kissed by actors of all ages, including one more than 20 years my junior unexpectedly and publicly, during my career. Sod him.

  23. 339678+ up ticks,

    Boris Johnson: I’ve got the guts to make us a high-wage country
    Prime Minister promises to reject return to ( it NEVER left) ‘uncontrolled immigration’ as he ‘tackles problems his predecessors ignored’

    Just the chap to do it to, only he has omitted to add ” for the very select few”

    He will I personally believe appear on top of the white cliffs of DOVER along with priti terrible shouting in unison ” go back” and reverse the tide of trouble

  24. SIR – The EU has embarked on a land grab of Northern Ireland in a covert manner that would make President Putin proud. It’s time to invoke Article 16, remove the protocol, and restore the integrity of the United Kingdom.

    Nick Rose
    Chichester, West Sussex

    Wow, have you only just realised this? Do try to keep up, man!

    1. The EU doesn’t want the land. It wants a foothold – a damned big foot – on the UK. That’s why it would embrace Scotland and make the oaf Sturgeon a commissar. It all squashes the UK.

      Of course, without Scotland to pay for, or Ireland we’d have a lot more money.

    2. The NI Protocol is a total disaster. I am convinced that Fox was on course to go for a No Deal Brexit until Johnson and Gove (the latter arrived in Brussels just before the deal was struck) intervened and made sure Britain capitulated on both this and fishing rights in British waters.

      Tough talk from Fox now but if he caved in to Johnson and Gove before will he have the testicular strength to stand firm this time? It would be commendable if he did – but will he?

    1. The ‘Fact checkers ‘ interpret Bill’s words one way and the rest of us see the other meaning.

    2. Well, yes they *could* in that fewer child deaths could see smaller families.

      However that imposes Western perspectives on a third world problem. You CANNOT give them the technology when they lack the education and infrastructure to use it effectively.

      We shouldn’t have given our vaccines to the third world – like illegal immigrants and Luton. They cannot exist alongside our own. It’s like giving a chimp a car.

  26. ‘Morning again.

    What a tragic loss of such a fine and capable officer:

    Major General Matthew Holmes, Marine who led a daring assault in Afghanistan but stepped down as Commandant General Royal Marines after resisting a plan to double-hat his role – obituary
    Holmes clashed with the First Sea Lord, who, among other things, wanted much closer integration of the Royal Navy and the Royal Marines

    By
    Telegraph Obituaries
    5 October 2021 • 3:32pm

    Major General Matthew Holmes, who has died aged 54, was a Royal Marines officer whose career typified the post-Cold War era, but whose appointment as Commandant General was terminated prematurely.

    In 2006-07, Matt Holmes commanded 42 Commando, Royal Marines, on Operation Herrick 5 in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. There in April 2007 Holmes led a battle group into Sangin, which he characterised as the Taliban’s “heart of darkness”.

    Intelligence warned of up to 350 Taliban armed with advanced Soviet munitions and of approaching enemy reinforcements, when Holmes launched an assault in a 33-vehicle armoured convoy travelling at 35 mph down the main highway. “It was a risk, on a route we had never travelled before,” Holmes admitted. “They wouldn’t expect us to jump straight in on the road from the north, [but] it was an opportunity to go for it, and fortune favours the brave.”

    “This is one ballsy shout from the CO, to go up the highway and start smashing heads together,” said Sgt Richard St Louis, warning his men that suicide bombers might be in the town. But in the early hours of the morning a missile from an Apache helicopter destroyed a Taliban checkpoint as the convoy roared into the dense and confusing confines of Sangeen, enabling the Marines to move forward so quickly that some vehicles almost collided when they braked.

    Twenty minutes after they arrived, and in the first light of dawn, the Marines began a sweep to secure the area. They were backed up by Apache helicopters and by naval Harriers, while artillery support was available from outside the town.

    Assault engineers used “mouse-hole” charges to blast holes in thick mud walls, and mines to collapse tunnel systems, while the air was filled with the thump of explosives and sprays of machine-gun fire as the marines advanced through a warren of buildings.

    By noon they had achieved their objectives, and began preparing to hand the territory over to Afghan forces, though one of Holmes’s officers warned: “The Taliban are not stupid. They know we have massive combat power here now. They just melt into the background; they know we can’t sustain this. Then they can move back in, and things will be as they were.”

    Nevertheless, for leading his marines against more than 300 contacts with the enemy, some for up to 12 hours, for his inability to brook anything other than the highest standards, his assiduous attention to detail, his dedication to duty and his bond with his men – which gave his group cohesion and unity – Holmes was awarded the Distinguished Service Order.

    In addition, during a fiercely contested tour the Navy was awarded one Royal Red Cross medal, a Conspicuous Gallantry Cross, 12 Military Crosses and several mentions in despatches.

    Matthew John Holmes was born on June 29 1967 at Chalfont St Giles, and was educated at Desborough comprehensive school in Maidenhead before reading Economics at Exeter, and, in 1988, joining the Royal Marines.

    His service was typical of the post-Cold War period: Norway; Northern Ireland during the Troubles, 1993-94; the Far East; Zimbabwe with 45 Commando; and Northern Ireland again in command of K company, 42 Commando, at the height of dissident activity in South Armagh.

    Promoted to major, he attended staff college, completing a Master’s in Defence Studies in 2000, before returning to 3 Commando Brigade as brigade operations officer, participating in Operation Agricola in Kosovo, followed in 2002 by Operation Jacana, codename for a series of operations carried out by coalition forces in Afghanistan which included 45 Commando Royal Marines, US, Australian and Norwegian special forces.

    Promoted to lieutenant-colonel, he briefly held desk jobs in the Ministry of Defence before moving to the Permanent Joint Headquarters as an operations team leader, when he oversaw the first autonomous EU operation, Operation Coral, a French-led multinational peacekeeping mission to the Democratic Republic of Congo during the Second Congo War in 2003, and the emergency deployment of the Spearhead battalion to Kosovo in 2004. Next, he deployed to Iraq on Operation Telic in the headquarters of the multinational division in Basra.

    In 2008 Holmes invested his operational experience in officer and senior NCO training at the Commando Training Centre, Royal Marines. After brief appointments in the MoD and at the Permanent Joint Headquarters (PJHQ, the tri-service centre of operations), he served as military assistant to the Vice Chief of the Defence Staff during the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review, and in 2012 he completed the higher command and staff course, a postgraduate, combined, joint and interagency defence and security course at the Defence Academy, Shrivenham – regarded as the pinnacle of staff training in the UK.

    In 2013 Holmes was promoted to brigadier and while at the Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre (the MoD’s think tank) he delivered two far-sighted studies: the widely acclaimed “Global Strategic Trends 2045”, which looked at the strategic context of long-term plans, future strategies, policies and capabilities; and “Future Operating Environment 2035” which examined the slightly nearer term.

    In 2015 he was loaned to the “floods minister”, Rory Stewart, to write a review of national flood preparedness, before being selected as the first chief of staff of the Standing Joint Force, a high-readiness, expeditionary command and control headquarters which he supervised from its formation to full operating capability in just two years.

    Promoted to major general in early 2018, Holmes became an adviser to the Ministry of Interior Affairs, and later senior British military representative, in Afghanistan. Returning from Kabul in 2019, he was appointed CBE for his outstanding contribution to the Royal Marines and to the United Kingdom’s defence and security interests.

    Appointed Commandant General Royal Marines that year, Holmes began developing a new concept of littoral strike for the Future Commando Force, working closely with the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin. In March 2020, he welcomed Prince Harry, in his capacity then as Captain General of the Royal Marines, and Meghan Markle, to the Royal Albert Hall for the Mountbatten Festival of Music, hosting the prince for what would be one of his last public engagements in Britain.

    Meanwhile, Radakin and Holmes, who had known each other for 20 years, clashed: Holmes’s approach was characterised by his usual no-nonsense tenacity and attention to detail, while Radakin wanted much closer integration of the Royal Navy and the Royal Marines, as indicated by the wearing of the White Ensign on updated uniforms and even the adoption, by Royal Marine officers, of naval ranks.

    The last straw came when Radakin proposed to “kick the CGRM upstairs”, as one observer commented, making him dual-hatted with another role in the MoD, divorcing him from close daily involvement with the Marines, and risking the maintenance of important links to the US Marine Corps.

    Holmes became concerned that the profile of his corps would be reduced just when he needed to see through his vision of the future, and the day-to-day management of the Royal Marines would be relegated to a less senior officer.

    As The Daily Telegraph reported in March this year, Holmes “resisted vigorously”, and this led to a “significant falling out” between him and Radakin. In April Holmes was superseded after only 20 months as CGRM, instead of serving the usual three-year term.

    Matt Holmes was mentally and physically energetic, could be fiery, was much tougher than his small (5 ft 2 in) stature would suggest, and was rather more serious than his contemporaries; he was much liked and admired by his Marines, and not averse to a good run ashore or party in the mess.

    He married, in 2002, Lea Brocklebank, a solicitor, who survives him with their two children.

    Major General Matthew Holmes, born June 29 1967, died October 2 2021

      1. That was my conclusion Bill. Elsewhere there are reports of an ‘investigation’ into his death, but I think it is odds on that this is what happened. If so I hope Radakin is proud of his work.

  27. Today’s Daily Telegraph headline:

    PM: I’ve got the guts to make us a high-wage country.

    Oh, yes. He’s certainly got the guts — his waistline is testament to that; however, he has neither the balls nor the brains to achieve his hot-air ‘aims’.

    2. The hot air emanates from his oven-ready dealings.

      There are some wonderful synonyms for hot-air/hot air, and those that generate it e.g. Johnson is a cockalorum prone to generating much fanfaronade.

    1. Yes, it is, without question.

      Why then has he hiked taxes? Why has he increased legislation? Why hasn’t he binned the green nonsense, started fracking, stopped illegal gimmigration, , cut corporation tax, scrapped the diversity nonsense and set business free?

      Why is he determined to do the exact opposite of what would help us all?

    2. Fine, Boris, no problems, but heed the saying: Lead, follow, or get out of the way.

      1. He’s a follower, the only problem with that is that most of the people haven’t worked out whom he’s following. I’ve found out that trying to convince those whom I thought would listen to reasonable argument will not: the smoke and mirrors of covid remain a shield behind which this natural liar still hides as he enables the agenda of others.

  30. I’m always proud to be ‘Tory scum’ but right now the party doesn’t feel like the one we voted for
    I can’t back what appears to be the least Conservative of Conservative governments – not until Boris is Boris again
    ALLISON PEARSON5 October 2021 • 7:00pm
    We agree with Boris. But does Boris agree with Boris? Like Jacob Rees-Mogg, I am proud to be “Tory scum”. That insult tumbled last week from the effluviant gob of Angela Rayner along with the clapped-out charge that Conservatives are all homophobic, racist, misogynistic and – the sensitive should look away now – Etonians.
    It’s a pretty strange racist and misogynistic party which assigns two women to the great offices of state, one of whom grew up above her Indian parents’ newsagent. And that the Conservatives have had twice as many female leaders as Labour, whose grand total is a shameful nil. As for homophobia, I seem to recall it was a Tory scum government led by David Cameron which legalised same-sex marriage. Devious blighters, those Old Etonians, with their equality and diversity!
    You would, however, think it might have occurred to the deputy leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition that quite a few of those despised Tory scum are ex-Labour voters; people her party must woo back if it is ever to have a chance at power again. Watching BBC2’s Blair and Brown: The New Labour Revolution, it was fascinating to be reminded of the pains that Tony Blair took to detoxify his angry, class-war party and make it palatable to Middle England. Educated at Fettes, the Eton of Scotland, Blair had the public-school polish and courtesy that Gobby Angela loathes, but which, ironically, brought her party 13 years in government. Where Rayner sneers, Blair smiled.
    The Left frequently accuses the Right of “hate speech” but could Rayner’s rant have played a part in the appalling assault this week on Sir Iain Duncan Smith outside the conference centre? “Tory scum,” jeered the gang as they tried to hit the former Conservative leader on the head with a traffic cone. Imagine the meltdown on social media if a Labour politician was attacked by yobs spitting oaths which had come out of the mouth of a senior Conservative?
    The five louts, who were arrested by Manchester police, neither knew nor cared that Sir Iain was the man urging the Prime Minister to keep the £20-a-week uplift to Universal Credit so that claimants can “live with dignity”. Sir Iain’s steadfast compassion makes me glad to be Tory scum. You may doubt that an extra £20 a week makes economic sense, but with further rancid revelations of vast fortunes made from PPE contracts (one swineish beneficiary of government largesse had the cheek to keep his furloughed staff working full time) it is good politics. And Christian charity too if you care about such things, which I do.
    I also found myself caring yesterday when I heard the Today programme’s Nick Robinson snap “Prime Minister, stop talking!” as if Boris Johnson were some chatterbox schoolboy to be chided, not the country’s democratically-elected leader.
    I was surprised how much Robinson’s rudeness annoyed me. For the sad truth is my own tribal loyalty has worn very thin this past year. Invited to take part in two panels on the party conference fringe, I declined. What could I possibly say? That I feel dismayed and disenchanted with the Government I was so thrilled to see elected? The night of the December 13 2019 when it became clear that the British people had seen off the Corbynist threat, was a moment of pure, rapturous relief. With a majority of 80, the Johnson cabinet was not only free to deliver Brexit but, unopposed, it would be able to enact the policies we believe are the foundation of a good society.
    Some 22 months later, it feels like the least Conservative Conservative government of all time. “What the hell are they doing now?” is my almost daily lament. Hang on, aren’t we supposed to be opposed to state intrusion in private life? Aren’t we the ones who trust men and women to make the best decisions for their own families? We don’t agree with squandering taxpayers’ money – do we? – or chucking money at unreformed public services.
    Surely, Tories exist to cut red tape, not give those tedious jobsworths ever greater licence to push us around. Ours is the party of freedom, not of draconian rules and restrictions. We agree with that fellow who once wrote stirringly in these pages, “If I am ever asked, on the streets of London or in any other venue, public or private, to produce my ID card as evidence that I am who I say I am, when I have done nothing wrong and when I am simply ambling along and breathing God’s fresh air like any other freeborn Englishman, then I will take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it in the presence of whatever emanation of the state has demanded that I produce it.”
    We agree with Boris. But does Boris agree with Boris? Who is this imposter who hems and haws about introducing vaccine passports to get into nightclubs and football matches? The PM had Covid himself. He must know it gives him excellent immunity so why does he pretend otherwise?
    He must also be aware that the most vaccine-hesitant people in the country belong to ethnic minorities. Is a Conservative prime minister seriously going to exclude millions of black and Asian Britons from society because they can’t produce an NHS Covid pass on their phone? There’s a name for that. App-artheid.
    And what is this haste to usher in a Green Industrial Revolution whose windy promises are scarcely credible, its costs calamitous, at a time when the nation is still reeling, our finances knackered? Did you vote for that? I didn’t.

    The things I care about right now are all collateral damage from lockdown – so many people with mental health problems; the thousands of “ghost children” who have disappeared from school registers; pupils more than a year behind; students paying full fees for a remote university education; 12,000 women with undiagnosed breast cancer; horrifying hospital waiting lists; small businesses struggling to get back on their feet; elderly residents of care homes still being treated like diseased livestock and denied basic human rights. Instead of “Build Back Better” it’s time to “Repair, Reflect and Gently Recover”.
    Yes, I’m aware that a global pandemic derailed things. Boris is not to blame for the fact that he planned to govern as a lovable Falstaff and ended up in the gloomy, prevaricating role of Hamlet. His nature is more suited to comedy than tragedy. At first, most Conservatives will have given the Government the benefit of the doubt as it wrestled with how to protect citizens from this novel virus. We accepted, perhaps too readily, restrictions which Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6, said are more excessive than any he had experienced living behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War.
    As a Tory supporter, it has been truly shocking to see how reluctant my side is to hand back the precious freedom which is fundamental to our philosophy. Esther McVey, one of the few MPs brave enough to express publicly the doubts which I know many hold privately, says: “Large parts of the establishment seemed to get drunk on that excessive power and control, and are still reluctant to give up the emergency powers they handed to themselves.”
    Emergency powers so extreme they gave the fiend Wayne Couzens a pretext to arrest that wonderful young woman Sarah Everard for the crime (astonishingly, it was then considered a crime) of having dinner at a friend’s house and walking home. It’s chilling.
    A complacent government may smirk at Gobby Angela and think that Conservative voters have nowhere else to go. I wouldn’t count on it. In the Chesham and Amersham by-election, many lifelong Tories supported the Lib Dems or simply refused to vote at all. I hear from people like that all the time.
    It’s oddly painful, this sense of alienation from the party you believe in but which no longer seems to believe in what you both once believed. Like sitting in another room after a row and longing to re-join your family next door, but pride and principle hold you back.
    In his speech at the conference, we are told the Prime Minister plans to tell people to go back to the workplace. More than that, I hope Boris will announce that we must coexist with Covid just as we do with other viruses. (As many Scandinavian countries have done). His government will be issuing no further instructions. Instead, it will rely on freeborn people to breathe God’s fresh air, as that beloved Telegraph columnist once advised, and to make our own judgments about what is best for our families. It would be so good to have Boris be Boris again. We miss him. Instinctively, I will always stick up for Tory scum. They are my people and they are decent and good. But I will not vote Conservative again. Not until the Conservative party is Conservative once more.
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2021/10/05/always-proud-tory-scum-right-now-party-doesnt-feel-like-one/

    2. She is right.

      The terror of ‘well, Labour will get in’ hangs like the sword of Damocles, but perhaps thta’s what the noxious, odious idiots need to see. But then, there seems to be a reality distortion field around the Left whereby their obvious failures are ignored and others are blamed.

    3. There is on You Tube a 9 minute video of Jacob Rees-Mogg talking to a man with cerebral palsy at the Tory conference. The man is complaining about how this government made him prove he had the disease although it is obvious. He then complains how this government stole his job from him. All Mogg can go on about is the generous welfare of the government. He seems to think that welfare is sufficient for this mans self-sufficiency and dignity being stolen from him by reducing him to dependency on the state. For all the world it sounded to me like the classical Tory grandee saying you should be grateful for the poorhouse. Have to say, that for me at any rate, the video destroyed any respect or admiration I had for Jacob Rees-Mogg. Just another cloth eared multimillionaire with no sympathy for those truly in pain

      1. No time for Rees-Mogg. When the time came to step up to the plate under May, he was noted by his absence, despite talking a good talk.

        1. He’s certainly good at talking but seems to be a coward when it comes to action. In other words his speech does not harmonize with his actions which means he is another liar.
          I think even Diogenes would have been appalled at how low our politicians are.

        2. Grease-Smogg blew his credibility to smithereens when he voted, as Boris Johnson did, in favour of Evila May’s exceptionally wicked WA.

          The fact that Boris Johnson then pretended that he had a brand-new over-ready, brilliant WA which was virtually the same as May’s sell-out surrender WA is why we are still lumbered with a multitude of problems ever since the Non-Brexit came into being.

    4. There is on You Tube a 9 minute video of Jacob Rees-Mogg talking to a man with cerebral palsy at the Tory conference. The man is complaining about how this government made him prove he had the disease although it is obvious. He then complains how this government stole his job from him. All Mogg can go on about is the generous welfare of the government. He seems to think that welfare is sufficient for this mans self-sufficiency and dignity being stolen from him by reducing him to dependency on the state. For all the world it sounded to me like the classical Tory grandee saying you should be grateful for the poorhouse. Have to say, that for me at any rate, the video destroyed any respect or admiration I had for Jacob Rees-Mogg. Just another cloth eared multimillionaire with no sympathy for those truly in pain

    5. How right you are. Public life has been polluted by corruption and not just in the Conservative party. The party system is a gift that keeps on giving for Mr Global, who keeps on getting the media to try to keep us all focussed on such stuff instead of addressing the mortal danger he has brought us to. Time for decent people of all sorts, views and creeds to join to defeat the Beast. We need to reconstruct our establishment entirely, and we don’t succeed at the ballot box this will end very badly for us all.

      Just look at these figures. This is not incompetence – it something totally different.

      https://theexpose.uk/2021/10/05/uk-has-fallen-81-percent-covid-deaths-vaccinated-teen-deaths-63-percent-higher

  31. The greatest poem ever written: none can compare to the Bard’s ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day’
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/10/05/survey-reveals-poem-uk-voters-believe-greatest-ever-written/

    The DT has published the list of the top 25 most popular poems and Shakespeare’s famous sonnet which topped the list inspired both John Mortimer and H.E. Bates (amongst others) to borrow phrases from it for their titles (Summer’s Lease and The Darling Buds of May).

    Some of my favourites were not in the list but I was delighted to see some of the ones that are were.

    BTL

    When I was a little boy in a boarding prep school in Bath in the 1950s all the boarders were invited to go to the private side of the house and an extremely old and frail man came into the hall where we were assembled and seated on the fine Georgian house’s magnificent staircase. This old man was a friend of the headmaster.

    The old man then recited one of his poems to us and we were held spellbound. It was No 11 in the list: ‘The Highwayman‘ read by its author, Alfred Noyes.

    When our two sons were small we used to read poems with them at bedtime and this was one of their favourites along with another of his poems: ‘When Daddy Fell Into The Pond.

    1. Daddy Fell Into the Pond : Alfred Noyes

      Everyone grumbled. The sky was grey.
      We had nothing to do and nothing to say.
      We were nearing the end of a dismal day,
      And there seemed to be nothing beyond,
      THEN
      Daddy fell into the pond!

      And everyone’s face grew merry and bright,
      And Timothy danced for sheer delight.
      “Give me the camera, quick, oh quick!
      He’s crawling out of the duckweed!” Click!

      Then the gardener suddenly slapped his knee,
      And doubled up, shaking silently,
      And the ducks all quacked as if they were daft,
      And it sounded as if the old drake laughed.
      Oh, there wasn’t a thing that didn’t respond
      WHEN
      Daddy fell into the pond!

      1. It is very good, with a strong beat and rhythm. I admit I like Seamus Heaney – Digging is a favourite. The change of work from father to son, the transition of manual to ‘office’ labour, the respect for the parent without diminishing the son. It just reverberates on many levels.

      2. A similar thing once happened when I was young when a relation was doing some decorating and as we watched he stepped backwards into the paste bucket

        2. I remember my daughter after we’d just taken the training wheels off of her bicycle., cycling around the edge of Bishop’s pond in Richmond Park. It’s an old bomb crater with sloping banks and sure enough, in ever decreasing circles (I did shout warnings to be careful), she rode straight into the dark muddy waters at full speed. She emerged, with my help, looking like the creature from the Black Lagoon, covered in mud and weed. She and the bike had to be carried home.
          I sometimes mention it to her and I get an evil stare. It was my loud and continued laughter that she remembers most vividly.

      3. Wilfred Owen’s Dulce et Decorum Est is in the list but in this woke age there is no room for the patriotic love of England expressed by Rupert Brooke in The Soldier.

        My father had a collection of Rupert Brooke’s poems which is now on my shelves. I have always found this poem of his on a completely different theme – the theme of bitter disgust and contemptuous jealousy of a rival – extremely powerful:

        Jealousy: Rupert Brooke

        When I see you, who were so wise and cool,
        Gazing with silly sickness on that fool
        You’ve given your love to, your adoring hands
        Touch his so intimately that each understands,
        I know, most hidden things; and when I know
        Your holiest dreams yield to the stupid bow
        Of his red lips, and that the empty grace
        Of those strong legs and arms, that rosy face,
        Has beaten your heart to such a flame of love,
        That you have given him every touch and move,
        Wrinkle and secret of you, all your life,
        —Oh! then I know I’m waiting, lover-wife,
        For the great time when love is at a close,
        And all its fruit’s to watch the thickening nose
        And sweaty neck and dulling face and eye,
        That are yours, and you, most surely, till you die!
        Day after day you’ll sit with him and note
        The greasier tie, the dingy wrinkling coat;
        As prettiness turns to pomp, and strength to fat,
        And love, love, love to habit!

        And after that,
        When all that’s fine in man is at an end,
        And you, that loved young life and clean, must tend
        A foul sick fumbling dribbling body and old,
        When his rare lips hang flabby and can’t hold
        Slobber, and you’re enduring that worst thing,
        Senility’s queasy furtive love-making,
        And searching those dear eyes for human meaning,
        Propping the bald and helpless head, and cleaning
        A scrap that life’s flung by, and love’s forgotten,—
        Then you’ll be tired; and passion dead and rotten;
        And he’ll be dirty, dirty!

        O lithe and free
        And lightfoot, that the poor heart cries to see,
        That’s how I’ll see your man and you!—

        But you
        —Oh, when that time comes, you’ll be dirty too!

        1. Is it well to wish thee happy?—having known me—to decline

          On a range of lower feelings and a narrower heart than mine!

          Yet it shall be; thou shalt lower to his level day by day,

          What is fine within thee growing coarse to sympathize with clay.

          As the husband is, the wife is: thou art mated with a clown,

          And the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee down.

          He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force,

          Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse.

          What is this? his eyes are heavy; think not they are glazed with wine.

          Go to him, it is thy duty, kiss him, take his hand in thine.

          Locksley Hall (Tennyson)

  32. I thought I’d share this with you all.

    Yesterday, I tried to find a Scottish person’s date of birth. I found the website – very complicated, difficult to navigate etc – and, after ten minutes, managed how to work out how to apply for a birth certificate. (Being in Scotland – it is infinitely more convoluted that in England). I knew the name and the year. There was then the question: “Gender”: (M) or (F) or (BOTH). I had a good larf.

  34. Spamhead Slammer’s brilliant idea of all holidaymakers arranging a zoom meeting with a self-test “expert professional” on returning home is going to be a vote winner…. Just imagine fixing up a million zooms….

  35. Well said Allison Pearson!

    Oops, Nanners got there first. However, here are the top two BTL comments, with the majority of the remaining 1,300 posts (is this a record?) expressing similar views:

    Ss SS
    5 Oct 2021 7:11PM
    This an excellent opinion. 100% right.

    I am not voting Conservative again either. Not until I see the real Conservative party that I voted in 2019.

    I am voting Reform Party at the next General Election.

    The Conservative Party only listen to us when they start to lose, like they did when millions of us voted for the BRexit Party (now the Reform Party).

    James Ash
    5 Oct 2021 7:08PM
    I am still pleased that I voted for Boris in December 2019, because Corbyn was/is an enemy of the UK, a foreign colluder, and a disgusting antisemite.

    However, I allowed my Conservative Party membership (which was many years old) to expire during Covid. I have no intention of going back.

    The Tories have become hard statist authoritarians with a genuinely left wing economic policy platform at this point. No thanks! 🙂

    1. 339678+ up ticks,
      Morning HJ,
      To my way of thinking the reform party are allied to the current tory (ino) overseers as has already be shown.

      1. Ss SS is voting for Reform, you’re voting For Britain and others will vote for Reclaim, thus splitting the ‘Anti’ vote three different ways and allowing your friends of the Lib/Lab/Con party to resume power unopposed.

        That way, lies madness. Can I be the only one who thinks that those three parties should stand together as one?

        1. No, Tom. But we have seen what happens when small parties try to collaborate. Disaster

        2. 339678+ up ticks,
          Morning NtN,
          Lets get one thing straight there are those that still support the proven treachery political cartel even though that party is in name only.

          Then there are those that will support a proven ally of the, in this case tory (ino) cartel in a proxy mode of voting as has been witnessed.

          The brexit party, now known as the reform party have been seen as being very good at ascending / descending hills, brilliant at splitting votes to the tory’s (ino) great delight.It is down to the peoples power brigade to get behind ONE leader either Fox,Curtin or Waters en masse bypass anything appertaining to lab/lib/con.

          My choice is Anne Marie Waters is based on
          she fronts up and tells as is concerning
          islamic ideology, as did Batten who was warning the nation as far back as 2005 rhetorically & in book form ALL the while the lab/lib/con fan club was voting for more of the same.

          More of the same, the likes of me would NEVER have condoned the koran as an oath taker in parliament and most certainly NOT for halal on the parliamentary canteen menu.

          1. Yep, you carry on with your vote-splitting and weep a bit more when she is not elected but Lib/Lab/Con continue on their merry way.

          2. 339678+ up ticks,
            Evening NtN,
            I was not among the peoples that put them and kept them in place these last
            three decades in following treacherous in name only parties, telling themselves they were supporting the genuine party and
            ” hoping ” things would change.

            Since 2019 GE opened a great many eyes and all those, for years constructing via the polling booth the political sh!te we are now suffering suddenly are shouting for a, dig us out of the sh!te party, don’t work that way.

          3. I’m not saying that you were, Ogga, I’m saying (read the words) that by voting for a single vote-splitting party, you allow your worst nightmare in.

            Join with me to convince Anne-Marie Waters that her only chance of victory – or at least Parliamentary representation – is to recognise compromise, and persuade both Reform and Reclaim to join with her to present one – not three – manifesto to the voting public that clearly states what their JOINT aims are.

          4. 339678+ up ticks,
            NtN,
            As you refuse to listen, reform is allied to the current tory (ino) cartel as proved in 2019 with nige showing out as the fat turks pal.

            It is the peoples prerogative to get behind a leader en masse.

        3. Agree Nanny. As I said the other day. I will vote for the leader of a small party that calls for all of them to unite and means it. Until that happens I’m not interested in their egotistical posturing as THE one with THE solution. That gets you bugger all if you don’t have the numbers to back you.

          1. Thank you, Jonathan, good to know that I’m not just a voice crying in the wilderness.

  36. NHS ‘gaslighting’ patients over trans women on female-only wards, nurse claims

    Whistleblower says official policy documents compare patients who ask for single-sex spaces to racists and label them ‘transphobes’

    Dr Sinead Helyar said that in at least one trust if patients questioned why there was a male-bodied person on a female-only ward,
    medics had been told to “reiterate … that there are no men present”.

    I suppose Princess Queen Carrie is full in favour of this

    Non LGBERTYers MUST be allowed their ‘rights as well, if all things are equal

    THe simple way is Male Ward, Female Ward & LGBT (or Carrie) Ward

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/10/05/nhs-gaslighting-patients-trans-women-female-only-wards-nurse/

      2. Would love to see them go up against the English police when they behave like thugs in London against pro freedom demonstrators.

      1. When it is singing I don’t think it matter what colour someone is. It’s different from non white actors who are pretending to be the wife of a white king and pretending that something intrinsically insulting to the population is valid. That being said this rather struck me as being in the same spirit as the Missa Luba by the Congolese boys choir, which was really terrific. If I recall correctly they ended up being murdered. A sad end to something truly beautiful.

        1. The whole show is stunning. You recognise the music, and The Magic Flute is one of my favourite operas (basically it’s a posh pantomime) but the Zulu version really gives you a high.
          I believe the soprano singing the Queen of the Night is married to an Englishman.

      2. Isn’t it ‘cultural appropriation’ though? Or does that only apply the other way round?
        Nothing wrong with the singing, and the show looks fun.

  38. SIR – On my local post box Royal Mail has put a notice saying that, in order to improve customer service, it is revising collection times.

    These will change from 3.15pm to 9am on weekdays and from 11.30am to 7am on Saturday. How can it think this is an improvement?

    W F Shipman
    Limavady, Co Londonderry

    It’s an improvement for the Post Office, silly billy.

      1. Could be that the new times are too early for the IRA (“They haven’t gone away”) to be up and about placing explosive devices in letter boxes.

    2. Why can’t/don’t they just tell the truth:

      “We don’t give a toss if this pisses you off. We are changing our collection times and if you don’t like it then that’s your problem.”

      1. I’m sure that not many people will care too much, as most correspondence these days is via e-mail and most parcel deliveries are by couriers.

        So sod Royal Mail and the Post Office – go stew.

  39. A fast growing glacier inside a volcano crater?

    An excellent video and narrative by a group of geologists who dared, in the interest of science, to invesitage the anomalies that exist inside a live volcano. Who could imagine that considering all the images we are being shown about the effects of global warming on melting ice that they could find a fast growing glacier inside a volcano crater.

    Science does not have all the answers as to how the earth is naturally evolving and that is why these guys are taking risks to find clues about the dangerous world we live in. They call it New Earth:

    https://youtu.be/L2ivI-WIunc

    2. I took a holiday in Los Angeles in 1980, just a few months after the last Mount St Helens eruption. The locals were rejoicing because the eruption had had a direct effect upon local weather patterns, including producing high winds along the Californian coast which had blown away all the city smog. They could actually SEE for the first time in years, let alone breathe fresh air.

  40. A fast growing glacier inside a volcano crater?

    An excellent video and narrative by a group of geologists who dared, in the interest of science, to invesitage the anomalies that exist inside a live volcano. Who could imagine that considering all the images we are being shown about the effects of global warming on melting ice that they could find a fast growing glacier inside a volcano crater.

    Science does not have all the answers as to how the earth is naturally evolving and that is why these guys are taking risks to find clues about the dangerous world we live in. They call it New Earth:

    https://youtu.be/L2ivI-WIunc

  41. Colin Brazier: Long gone are the days when only vampires feared the crucifix.
    At the Royal Surrey there are quite a few hajibs floating around the environment. They strike me as having far more potential for housing disease than a small metal crucifix. So why are they tolerated? There is no injunction in Islam to wear such things, they are a cultural phenomenon. Fact is that all the Koran says is women should dress modestly.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3tghNJb38o&list=TLPQMDUxMDIwMjHf7qFVOC1L9g&index=20

    1. I am impressed by the fact that Colin Brazier is a committed Christian and is not ashamed of the fact.

          1. He’s on GBN along with Nigel forage and a bunch of other renegades. He is and will do fine there. I have noticed that as they go along and grow in confidence that they are becoming more openly right wing. Which is what we need in terms of broadcasting in the UK to offset all the left wing detritus that clogs up the airways with misinformation. Andrew Doyle of Titania McGrath fame and Neil Oliver who gives terrific comments are on there too. If you haven’t strongly suggest you watch Neil Oliver giving forth. And here’s a clip of a women pretending to be Doyle’s character, Titania McGrath. He picked her so one assumes that this is his image of Titania.

            .https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5N8ibiR9o0

          2. I don’t watch any telly news/politics/current affairs.

            While the Titania McGrath character was funny at the beginning, I found that once one got the joke, it wore thin. A column “by” her appears in “The Critic”, by the way.

          6. Actually, GBNews IS on telly – channel 214 (I think) on freeview).

            I glance at the headlines in The Grimes; hold my head in my hands – And then attend to the important stuff, such as the crosswords.

          7. Precisely what my next door neighbour does. Buys the paper, glances at the headlines and then does the crossword, it’s the only reason he buys the paper.

          16. That’s prolly what I meant – I just call it “Humax” because that is what appears on the screen when I turn the box on.

            As you know well, I know nothing.

    5. Ah – the Royal Surrey. Until a year ago, if I had the misfortune to be collected by an ambulance, If asked whether to turn left or right, right would entail the six mile journey to the Royal Surrey; left would be seven miles to Frimley Park. Although I never needed said ambulance, Frimley Park has been my hospital of choice for some years. I know people who almost died as a result of the Royal Surrey’s ministrations; a former Rector and my now departed mother included.

      Having moved and changed GP surgeries, I’m seeing more of the RSCH. But I still attend the Ophthalmology Clinic at Frimley, and have regular contact with their diabetes specialist nurses.

      There are fewer hijabs at Frimley, but significantly more Nepalese. I don’t have a problem with that, other than feeling desperately sorry for the elderly Nepalese couples shambling around Aldershot, Farnham and the like. It must be a massive culture shock for them. The land of milk and honey, it ain’t.

  42. Carrie Johnson says Boris is looking at ‘extending’ gay rights
    Prime Minister’s wife tells Tory conference she is an ‘ally’ of the LGBT+ community and hails PM’s record on equal marriage
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/10/05/carrie-johnson-says-boris-looking-extending-gay-rights/

    I wonder whether she and Johnson are about to embark on bi-sexual adventures or whether she is a special agent of the Left who is doing extremely well at destroying the Conservative Party and alienating the Conservative Party’s traditional supporters.

    1. For a long time I have thought she was planted by the left to seduce the BPAPM and inveigle her way into an important place in politics – without the tedious business of being elected.

    4. What’s left to extend them to? I thought they already had more rights than straight people.

    3. Why do women insist on womangling the English language in order to womanage their insane womania? Womenstruation is a womanifestly womanky time for all women, not just Womancunians. But to womanipulate or womanufacture womanifold words to suit their womangy womanoevres is pure bad womanners.

    2. 339678+ up ticks,
      Morning P,
      The criminal fraternity are putting you on their “tidy” bugler list as a vote of thanks.

  47. The reality of what the injectates are now doing to our people is terrifying and, perhaps even more terrifying, is the total absence of response and action from the various organisations who are meant to be there just for such an eventuality. The real figures are here.

    It seem very likely to me that as the compromised immunity of jab victims allows maladies that would otherwise have been defeated by the body to take hold, and as the bloody criminals promote further injectates with high viral load we shall see an accelerating fatality rate, with an accompanying chorus from Whitty and his friends that this is another variant.

    There is no variation in the wickedness of what is happening.

    https://theexpose.uk/2021/10/05/uk-has-fallen-81-percent-covid-deaths-vaccinated-teen-deaths-63-percent-higher/

    1. How Many More Have to Die Because of COVID Lies?. 5 October 2021.

      Remember, if you are doubly or triplely vaccinated you won’t catch the Covid. Right? WRONG!! The latest lefty to succumb to the false assurances from Biden and his team of medical mediocrities is Academy Award Nominee and Emmy Award winning hair and makeup designer/stylist, Marc Elliot Pilcher. The dude was only 53.

      That is not how a genuine vaccine is supposed to work. If you take the vaccine for measles, polio or smallpox you do not get measles, polio or smallpox. But the number of people getting Covid notwithstanding having a couple of jabs is growing and it is alarming.

      A vaccine that does not vaccinate you against future infection is no vaccine at all!

      https://turcopolier.com/how-many-more-have-to-die-because-of-covid-lies/

      1. It’s very difficult to convince committed covid believers. My eldest brother lives in the wilds of Pennsylvania and yesterday told me by zoom that the father of a neighbour had died of covid because he was unvaccinated.

        It turns out that the man was in his seventies and had multiple co-morbidities that made him very vulnerable. His daughter had insisted on dragging the poor man to a hospital in Pittsburgh where they’d done a pcr test and put him on a ventilator. I argued with big brother that the pcr test means very little and the ventilator could actually have finished off a man who was already very fragile.

        It would appear that there isn’t any real evidence that he died of covid or that the vaccines would have made any difference. The indignant response was that covid is on the death certificate therefore covid it was and the man caught covid because he was an “anti-vaxxer”.

        2. Closed mind. It was seen in the “first wave” that ventilators did more harm than good, especially with frail patients. But also with younger ones. I’ve not forgotten the photo of the young Chinese whistle-blower doctor. You could see the fear in his eyes, above the ventilator mask. He knew what was coming.

          3. A neighbour came round yesterday with a quilt she had made. Wouldn’t come in the house…..

          5. Due to cowering under the stairs, Mothers “friend” won’t meet Occupational Therapist at Mother’s house so the OT can check it’s suitable for Mother to return to. OT cannot go alone – rules, innit. Sigh

        3. It is a cult, this covid-ness, Sue. They are in denial, it is as if there is a glass wall between the denier and the truth. I thought I was fully aware until this last week – I realised there was a small piece of the jigsaw missing. I had a light bulb moment, it was truly time to think the unthinkable about the nhs. I can understand how people whose sole source of information is tv news and the media have no disc space left in their heads to consider an alternative.

          1. Yes and yes. Tells me there isn’t any reason to suspect that Joe might have dementia. Trump, on the other hand…

            Also, the Koch Brothers are the bad guys and Soros is the good guy.

          2. Sounds as though there’s no hope for him then. You’ll just have to agree to disagree.

            I had lunch on Monday with my two old schoolfriends – they both wore their masks on the bus. I didn’t. Nothing was said. We’re still good friends.

        5. Some websites in the USA are expressing concern about both the “vaccines” and the “care” that some hospitals in the USA are providing. Commonly criticised by Stew Peters and Dr Ruby on Red Voice Media is the use of Remdesivir, an anti-viral drug, and ventilation for CV patients. Looking on Google, the jury seems to be undecided on the use of Remdesivir.

          1. Remdesivir was first used in experimental treatment of Ebola, but it was pulled from that because it was so lethal. But Fauci was involved very much with it and is no doubt making lots of money. It essentially causes organ failure, especially the kidneys, so essentially the only treatment allowed in the USA, is very likely to kill you.

        6. The only person I know who has died ‘of’ Covid died, in my opinion, of being ventilated. And underlying health conditions, not unlike mine. Admittedly, he still had feet, but when I last met him at his daughter’s graduation, his wife now widow was keen to talk to me about his diabetes. Which he was ignoring, and ably demonstrated through the medium of meringue that evening.

          Incidentally, I played for a funeral today. Only the fourth since the beginning of the pandemic. None were Covid-related. Back in the old normal, I would regularly have that many in a single month. Statistically irrelevant, I’m sure, but food for thought…

          1. At church this morning we had communion in both kinds! Admittedly it was intinction and the wine-dipped wafer was handed to us, but it’s a start.

      2. A vaccine that does not vaccinate you against future infection,is a con or a mistake.

    2. I see there’s now another piece on the same site that Mr Justice Jay has made an adjournment in an ongoing case and asked the government to provide evidence by 11th October to justify their decision to vaccinate children.

    3. La Quinta Columna were the first group to expose the contents of some CV “vaccines” and other groups/individuals have followed. Here are further photographs of what LQC have found. Spanish video with English subtitles.

      What’s that in the Jab?

      1. Looks like the same metallic particles, fibres and weird spiky things that were seen by doctors in Germany and in the US.

        1. You’ve got that right, Jonathan, as a pensioner I have to be almost Yorkshire careful.

  49. Clucking Bell.
    How many trannies or disabled activists attend the Conservative conference? The Beeb has managed to find both of them.
    Now listening to some female councillor going so over the top I can only assume
    1. She sprinkled Columbian marching powder over her cornflakes.
    Or
    2. She’s up for re-election next May.
    Or both.

    Edit …. ooops, it’s GBNews.
    Blimey, the picture and sound have improved enormously.

    1. It does my head in to see a group of four Britons on a TV talking sense about current events. Amazing. Don’t remember ever seeing that before.

      That Project Veritas stuff is dynamite! Sneaky, but considering the crimes being committed against us, thoroughly justified.

  51. #CovidClownWorld

    https://twitter.com/Protestlockdown/status/1445087118246678535?s=20

    https://twitter.com/angelovalidiya/status/1444549609070735363

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f830170073a4729e4a8ef2da6705a15387363f9d2a6e999c32c8fd9f04c9bba4.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a7e6e5da2cf85bb6629e4455fd87e9a40a38bd828b1f86a495956cbb153e4abe.png
    Edit forgot this
    https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/086/871/843/original/b63c9f3de4c4a2fe.jpeg

    1. Rik do you not think that those who might want it, would use the doctored image above and the exhortation of what it graphically implies, to have this site banned?

          1. The beauty of the Internet is that if the site was banned it could pop up again in minutes.

          2. Do we already have an alternative website set up somewhere?

            If so, publicise it via HertsLass and e-mails.

          3. Not as far as i know. But if the site goes down it can be resurrected. As has happened once before.

            Geoff is well aware that it is a lifeline for some.

          4. Indeed. Besides, it resides on two platforms. In the same way that I’ve ditched the Spectator (written by liberals for conservatives) subscription, yet it’s still possible to view Speccie comments via Disqus. If the Disqus account should be closed down, the WordPress blog, nttl.blog will remain. And vice versa.

            Admittedly, when I’m dragged off to the gulag, all bets are off. Send me a file with a cake in it. Or something…

          5. We Nottlers would campaign for your release. We would do fundraisers (Lunches). Marathons (drinking sessions). Swap recipes (cake and file variety).

            If all else fails we would plead insanity (us not you).

      2. The Ceausescus were tried and executed for genocide,given the Midazolan scandal I am quite happy to publically advocate the same for those responsible
        Once the bodies are cleared away Matt Hancock is next up
        We have free speech or we don’t
        To me the image implies I want politicians to be held to account and tried for their high crimes and suitably punished if found guilty
        See Blair for more details

  53. Ahem

    “That rifle on the wall of the labourer’s cottage

    or working class flat is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see

    that it stays there.”

    Too late for us but maybe in time for Brazil

    “Everybody has to buy a rifle, damn it! Armed people will never be enslaved,” Bolsonaro told a crowd of supporters on Friday outside his official residence, the Alvorada Palace.

    Rt.com reports: He acknowledged that weapons “cost a lot,” but insisted that those who oppose guns should stop nagging people who want and can afford to buy them.

    During his campaign for office, Bolsonaro vowed to relax Brazil’s gun

    laws so that citizens could protect themselves from the country’s

    rampant crime and violence.

    And he kept that promise, issuing almost a dozen decrees that made

    firearms, including semi-automatic assault rifles, more easily available

    to the public. Some of them, however, were modified by the National

    Congress.”

    https://newspunch.com/brazilian-president-bolsonaro-everybody-buy-a-gun-armed-people-cannot-be-enslaved-by-the-elites/
    Politicians keeping promises……….It’ll never catch on

  56. 339678+ up ticks,

    breitbart,

    Exclusive: Top Tory Says Invest in British Workers Instead of Relying on ‘Cheap’ Chinese Products

    To do that the overseers would have to ditch the “deal” & be true to Brexitexit and that goes against the very grain of theses current overseers.

  59. Anything that is bad news for Sturgeon must be good news…

    SUPREME COURT’S STURGEON BLOW, SCOTTISH GOVERNMENT LAWS RULED UNLAWFUL

    The Supreme Court’s just dealt a surprise blow to the Scottish government, siding with the UK government and determining parts of two Sturgeon bills to be outside the legislative competence of the Scottish parliament. The UK government’s law officers had initiated legal proceedings over concerns that the two bills were not about their policy objectives, and instead would place legal obligations on UK government ministers in reserved areas, affecting the government’s ability to make laws for Scotland. ‘Whoops’ doesn’t quite cover it.

    Alister Jack has hailed the Supreme Court’s decision. In a wider context, the ruling proves the Supreme Court is still keen on ensuring the Scottish government sticks to the boundaries of its legal competence – a ruling that should dissuade Sturgeon from thoughts about holding an illegal second referendum without Boris’s approval. Och aye the oh no…

    6 October 2021 @ 14:00

    https://order-order.com/2021/10/06/supreme-courts-sturgeon-blow-scottish-government-laws-ruled-unlawful/#com

  60. Hey there is a new acronym 2SLGBTQQIA+ ..The despised Trudeau came up with it yesterday when excusing one of his mishaps.

    Apparently the new inclusive bs stands for Two Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, Intersex, and Asexual people plus anyone forgotten.

    And you think that you have problems with Boris?

      1. Judging by the above, they already have. But there are a few as yet untapped keys on the top row of the keyboard.

    1. Hi Grizz.
      It’s the bosses that need sorting not the front line troops.

      When i was on holiday (hah!) one of the group was a serving officer for Derbyshire. Just wondered if you knew him. First name Aki.

      1. Not a name I recognise, Philip.

        The letter that I had published on Saturday was seen by an old friend, a chief superintendent (divisional commander) at Chesterfield who immediately put it on a private Facebook page for retired police staff from the area. So far it has been viewed by no fewer than 87 old colleagues who have all upvoted it and added positive comments of their own. I would say that if you ask any retired police officer (or support staff) who served prior to the 1990s you would get the same response regarding the deplorable [nay: execrable] standard of higher management these days.

        1. Exactly, George, the police have lost the confidence of the public because the higher echelons of management have not stamped down hard, on the bully-boy, macho image currently permeating through the ranks (and reinforced by the antics of the NSW and Victoria Police in Oz) and the encouragement given to the XR and Insulate Britain excreta.

          There is currently a nasty core in the Police, which has gone soft on Muslims, Pikeys and Gays but has come down hard on the common man when he dares to protest against lock-downs and Covid VAX passports. Shame on them.

          Small wonder that their credibility and support is dead in a ditch.

          I’m sure your ex-colleagues and one-time honest coppers would agree.

          1. Don’t…still grey and damp and a gale blowing. So much for the promised “heat wave”.

          2. Lovely here. Just a mild zephyr. It comes of having Southern privilege i expect. Now if you will excuse me i’m just going to tell my Wisteria off for being racist.

        1. I would think he has a number of recordings of very sensitive telephone conversations with important people such that if he should fall it would be very uncomfortable for them.

          1. Which is why the FOI of Vallance and Fauci’s emails were so heavily redacted. In my eyes that makes them guilty as sin.

      1. Just wondering why everyone is pulling out of Wiltshire , there are dozens of superb properties being sold, where are people moving to , and down sizing can’t be the answer.

        I suspect you are correct , costs must be cripplingly high .

    2. My late friends had a flat in Islington, in the same road as Boris and his Ex wife, Marina. Janet died in 2014 and Doris put the flat (which was actually two floors, with a garden) on the market for £2 million.

      1. I am not surprised , people are making a small fortune from their London properties , and the are all moving to Poundbury or here !!!

        Our prices haven’t really skyrocketed, but they are selling so quickly in the wink of an eye . The cost of London / Wool season tickets are probably over £5k.

        1. Just looked for Janet’s place on Zoopla and it was sold for £1,464,000 in Feb 2015 but the current estimate is £856,000 to £1.28m, so the value there has gone down quite a bit.

    3. My late friends had a flat in Islington, in the same road as Boris and his Ex wife, Marina. Janet died in 2014 and Doris put the flat (which was actually two floors, with a garden) on the market for £2 million.

    4. It’s not suitable for commuters. Despite the size of population Devizes doesn’t have a Railway station, the nearest one for travel to London being Swindon….

    5. When Mum died a few years ago, we asked that firm of estate agents to come and value her house.
      They arrived and walked around and said basically that this is not the sort of property they market. I felt rather like a lowly peasant and rather confused as well as Dad always used to say a mans home is his castle.🤡

      1. Snooty bunch agents are .

        We thought we would try the market abut 6 years ago . The agent walked around and declared it was rather worn , I said of course it is , we have lived here as a family for endth ears .

        I guess a large Afghan family would enjoy the space , but we are pensioners , budgetting , and can’t afford to bung en suites and that sort of thing in the bedrooms . Well I think we ccould, but that is another story.

        The rates are horrendous , but still agents are rather sneering . This is a home , dogs on sofa that sort of thing , so moving is all abit of a palavar really .

        Mum in law had lived in her little house for 60 years , it was a late 1950s time warp walking into it , we had to sell it for her to finance her nursing home care for over 3 years ..

        The house was sold for less than we wanted , and some one bought it and spent a fortune doing it up, what a transformation . If only she had had all those mod cons when she lived there , life would have been much easier for her .

        My husband would rather play golf 3.4 times a week than consider any home improvements on this house .

        1. Snooty is a perfect description of their attitude. I took the view well p**s off then, I have plenty more agents to choose from, which I did.
          I last moved nearly 35 years ago and like you have raised a family in our house, it is full of memories which are priceless to my and Mrs VVOF.
          I have no desire to line estate agent pockets with any of my money, I hope to stay here for a while yet.

  67. The unusually cold winter of 2020-2021 is one of the factors responsible for the draining of European gas reserves, and the current energy crisis in the region is proof that “rash actions” in the energy sector are fraught with the danger of creating serious imbalances, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said.
    “It’s well known that the global energy market does not tolerate fuss and flip-flopping. Investment plans in this area are long-term in nature. Therefore, harsh, rash actions can lead to (and judging by today’s situation on the market have already led to) serious disbalances of the kind which were are now seeing in the European energy market, where this year several unfavourable factors have developed simultaneously this year,” Putin said, speaking at a government meeting on energy issues on Wednesday.
    Russia, Putin said, “has always been and continues to be a reliable suppier of gas to consumers all over the world – both in Asia and Europe. Russia always fulfills all of its obligations in full – and I would like to emphasize the word ‘all’.”
    The Russian president suggested that growing global energy demand is a sign of the planet’s gradual recovery from last year’s coronavirus-related crisis, and said that Russian energy giant Gazprom could hit a new record on gas deliveries to Europe this year, surpassing the record set in 2018. According to Putin, the company has already delivered 15 percent more blue fuel to the region in the first nine months of 2021 than it had during the same period last year.
    Policy Errors
    Putin attributed the current supply crunch in Europe to a number of factors, suggesting that the European Union’s course in favour of short-term contracts with suppliers, the curtailing of long-term supply agreements and dependence on gas exchanges has proven to be one “obvious mistake.”
    Other factors, according to Putin, include the decline in gas reserves as underground storage facilities thanks to the unusually cold winter and spring of 2020-2021, and the failure to refill supplies in the months since.
    Excessive dependence on green energy – such as wind power, has also proven problematic, Putin said, pointing to the energy source’s dependence on natural factors. “It’s necessary to point out that Europe’s energy balance has changed significantly over the past decade. Many countries in the regions have rejected coal and nuclear power in favour of wind power, which is weather-dependent.”
    Putin pointed out that the greenhouse gas emissions footprint of Russian gas deliveries to Europe using newly built pipelines has been reduced by 5.6 times compared to older pipelines, and allow for supplies to be pumped through at higher pressure. Putin did not specify which pipelines he was referring to.
    Last month, a US State Department official expressed concern with Europe’s gas shortages, and accused Russia of delivering an “inexplicably low” amount of energy to the region “compared to both previous years and what they have the capacity to do.” The official urged Russia to increase the supply of natural gas to Europe via Ukraine.
    In his comments Wednesday, Putin dismissed what he characterized as “speculation” around Ukraine’s gas transit network. He pointed out that Gazprom has increased gas deliveries via Ukraine by eight percent through the first nine months of this year, and will exceed its obligations in this area to deliver at least 40 billion cubic meters of gas per year before 2021 is over.
    The Russian president suggested that it was unprofitable for Gazprom to increase transit through Ukraine, pointing to its expense compared to alternative routes.

    2. Two things of interest, Baobhan sith, so now, I assume, we know where George Lucas got the term from for his antagonist on the dark side.

      The Lambton Worm a curse on the Lambton family. I used to know Beatrice Lambton, the youngest daughter of the Lord Lambton at that time, who called her Lambikins, he absolutely doted on her, Lambikins could do no wrong! In this generation Beatrice was the recipient of the Lambton Curse, which is handed down to a particular individual in each generation. Legend has it that the worm bestowed the curse before fleeing down the well of Lambton castle. No joke, Beatrice could not get into any mechanical device without the thing breaking down. She claimed that when she got on a tug, of all things, it promptly turned turtle! Obviously she was saved. As a consequence of her mechanical woes, cars and Beatrice, did not mix, in one instance the engine literally fell out of one that she was in. In order to get from a to B she used a horse named Cerebos. Now Cerebos was a problem, he had conceived a dislike for two things, V.W Beatles and chickens. He would attack both! It goes without saying that Beatrice was suitably eccentric for an aristocrat. She dressed like a Hungarian gypsy and painted her face with heavy white makeup. Her favourite occupation seemed to be draping herself in interesting poses over furniture rocks or any other suitable props. So I learnt from Beatrice that eccentric English aristocrats are quite real and worth knowing for the entertainment value. Life was never dull when you were around Beatrice.

      1. ♬Whisht! Lads, haad yor gobs,
        An Aa’ll tell ye’s aall an aaful story
        Whisht! Lads, haad yor gobs,
        An’ Aa’ll tell ye ‘boot the worm.♬

        1. There is a film about it called, I think “The lair of the White worm”. It was a very unmemorable film that I can’t remember a thing about although I saw it.

          2. Get gannin’ then, bonny lass!

            Then you can gi’ us an encore with When The Booat Comes In.

        1. I don’t know, she had two sisters if I recall, but I never met them and she didn’t talk about them at all. Why, did you know Lucinda? And if so, was she as nuts as Beatrice?

          1. No – but she was Lord Lambton’s daughter, and often on the telly years ago. She seemed fairly eccentric.

          2. I understand that eccentricity runs in the family, they are all rather strange one way or another. Beatrice’s father was the Lambton that had something to do with the Profumo affair, if that helps in anyway to date Lucinda?

          7. She is obsessed with lavatories and has a collection of WCs and seats going back a few centuries.

      4. Lord Lambton used to be the local MP when I moved up to Wooler and was a frequent dinner guest at the Kirkups, for whom my Mam worked as cook.
        Until, of course, the Norma Levy scandal hit the papers.

    3. “British and Irish Isles”? Is that the new woke term for the geographical area known universally as the British Isles?

  72. Sunshine this afternoon, 17c.. and the washing has dried on the line .

    The birds have gone quiet , apart from the crows and jackdaws , my sunflowers have now wilted , and despite their 12 foot height, are now looking very sorry for themselves . Moh has pulled the runner beans up, and so it is goodbye to all that untill next year.

    3. That’s early – my runner beans are still beaning. We might get a frost at the weekend though, which would put paid to them.

      1. I picked the last few green tomatoes today – the plants have finished. They’ve done well though.

    4. Strange, Maggie, I hear no dawn chorus these days.

      Only a little owl hooting in the night and a yaffle (magpie) once the day has fully dawned.

      1. The best time for the dawn chorus is early May. I can’t hear it now as my hearing ‘s not so good as it used to be.

      2. It took me 50+ years to get why Professor Yaffle was so called in Bagpuss… just now I know.
        I’ll get me coat… :-((

        1. Good to spread a little knowledge, Paul.

          Called a yaffle because of its call, if you listen – it does sound like ‘Yaffle’.

        1. I don’t know Bagpuss – my children were too grown up before that nonsense appeared.

          My definition comes from growing up in the wilds of Norfolk where words were somewhat interesting.

  73. Mildish weather (due no doubt to Climate Change -formerly Anthropogenic Global Warming) means that for the moment we are consuming a lot less gas heating our home thus reducing CO2 emissions……

    1. 1756
      (October)       October 7th: a major cyclonic storm, with tornadic elements, affected much of the southern and central North Sea, most of Britain and continental areas on the other side of the North Sea. The strongest winds over Britain (with the most documented damage) occurred over northern England, with numerous trees blown down (‘twisted-off’, hence possible tornadoes). Buildings were damaged and there was considerable sea-salt contamination of farming land around the Solway Firth. In Newcastle-upon-Tyne, houses were ‘blown down’, ships sunk and others foundered on the shoreline or were blown out to sea. A high tidal surge reported on the German, Dutch & Danish coastlines: all these reports point to strongest winds being from NW or N.

      October 1762 Snow on 28th October (London/South).

  74. More than 500 years ago Mother Shipton made many prophecies, most of which have come true. This is just a couple of them:

    The king (Boris?) shall false promise make;
    And talk just for talking’s sake.
    And nations plan horrific war;
    The like as never seen before.
    And taxes rise and lively down;
    And nations wear perpetual frown.

    {False promises by politicians, wars between nations, increase in taxes and perpetual tension among nations.}

    Yet greater sign there be to see;
    As man nears latter century.
    Three sleeping mountains gather breath, And spew out mud, ice and death. An earthquake swallow town and town;
    In lands as yet to me unknown. And Christian one fights Christian two And nations sigh, yet nothing do. And yellow men great power gain;
    From a mighty bear with whom they’ve lain.

    {Volcanoes, earthquakes destroying town after town, fighting between nations. Speaks of a Chinese (yellow) – Russian (bear) alliance against the west. Most of China’s current weapons have come in deals with Russia.}

    These mighty tyrants will fail to do, They fail to split the world in two. But from their acts a danger bred;
    An ague, leaving many dead.

    {Failure of this Russian/Chinese alliance, indication of war leaving many dead. The word “Ague” means flu plague or epidemic of disease.}

    And physics find no remedy;
    For this is worse than leprosy.
    Oh many signs for all to see;
    The truth of this true prophecy.

    {No remedy in science for this coming plague.}

    https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/esp_shipton01.htm#:~:text=%20Mother%20Shipton%20%27s%20last%20prophecy%3A%20%201,fishes%20swim%20beneath%20the%20sea.%20When…%20More%20

    2. Or as old Granny Beastly used to say

      Venture ye not with thy head uncovered in ye tempest
      for else ye shall breathe not easy with the phlegm double
      Immerse ye not in the waters deep one hour repast since
      Lest ye be spavined and rendered unto he that lurks beneath

      or as lecherous old Cousin Beastly would say

      spy not the visage or hue of the object of your desires
      for the fire dogs care not and lo they be all pinken inside

  75. Summer 1783 to late winter 1783/84 Icelandic volcanic eruption (Laki): Primary eruptions (five) from June 8th to July 8th, 1783 (60% of the total volume of ejection), but minor eruptions occurred until early February, 1784. A major event, with huge production of sulphur & acid products, as well as the largest production of lava in recorded history. The majority of emissions are thought to have been confined to the troposphere, but the initial ejections of each of the five major events did penetrate the tropopause and entered the stratosphere. The intense period of eruption tallied with contemporary reports across Europe of a blue haze or dry-fog in the atmosphere, damage to vegetation and occurrence of respiratory problems (later analysis suggests that the mortality due to the sulphur-based haze was counted in tens of thousands dead): the effects noted at the time throughout summer & autumn. These effects are consistent with increased atmospheric loading of acid aerosols, particularly sulphates. Because of the (suspected) lack of major stratospheric impact, there is controversy surrounding this event: For Iceland itself, the following winter (1783/84) was known as the ‘Famine Winter’: 25% of the population died (many from wet and dry deposition of acidic pollutants). Note, there is still some argument as to whether this led to changes to the regional/European climate in the years 1783, 1784 etc., and / or by how much.

    1. Someone on facebook yesterday was stating that the Las Palmas eruption is being caused by climate change, totally insane

      1. Stothers 1989
        Stothers, R.B., 1989: Volcanic eruptions and solar activity. J. Geophys. Res., 94, 17371-17381, doi:10.1029/JB094iB12p17371.

        The historical record of large volcanic eruptions from 1500 to 1980, as contained in two recent catalogs, is subjected to detailed time series analysis. Two weak, but probably statistically significant, periodicities of ∼11 and ∼80 years are detected. Both cycles appear to correlate with well-known cycles of solar activity; the phasing is such that the frequency of volcanic eruptions increases (decreases) slightly around the times of solar minimum (maximum). The weak quasi-biennial solar cycle is not obviously seen in the eruption data, nor are the two slow lunar tidal cycles of 8.85 and 18.6 years. Time series analysis of the volcanogenic acidities in a deep ice core from Greenland, covering the years 553-1972, reveals several very long periods ranging from ∼80 to ∼350 years and are similar to the very slow solar cycles previously detected in auroral and carbon 14 records. Solar flares are believed to cause changes in atmospheric circulation patterns that abruptly alter the earth’s spin. The resulting jolt probably triggers small earthquakes which may temporarily relieve some of the stress in volcanic magma chambers, thereby weakening, postponing, or even aborting imminent large eruptions. In addition, decreased atmospheric precipitation around the years of solar maximum may cause a relative deficit of phreatomagmatic eruptions at those times.

        1. There is a theory that low Solar Activity leads to a weakened radiation belt round the Earth.
          This then allows Cosmic Rays from deep space to pass through the Earth’s core instead of being deflected.
          As they pass through volcanic magma, they leave a wake of bubbles behind them, formed from the gasses dissolved in the magma “nucleating”.
          These gas bubbles increase the pressure within the magma which then seeks a weak spot in the Earth’s crust to break out, either creating a volcano or causing an old one to re-erupt.

        2. As is so often the case:

          In the final analysis it’s all down to that big yellow thing in the sky.

        3. Yep, all changes in our climate are ultimately down to that big yellow thing that rises and sets daily in our skies.

          1. But… but… if that’s true, then how will greenies destroy our economy and standard of living?

          2. By not believing that the Sun causes climate change and trying to modulate the Sun – berks.

      2. So hot air from the Greegrunts causes volcanoes does it? What about Earthquakes then?

      3. Au contraire, Bob, the Ar5ebook lunatics should be aware that these eruptions (including that monster in Iceland that shut-down air travel) are not because of, but rather an adjunct to, climate change – a situation that has existed and occurred through millions of years in the Earth’s development.

        You know that, I know that, why can’t the eco-loons wake up?

  76. Putin vows to pump more gas as prices hit record highs. 6 October 2021.

    Russian President Vladimir Putin has vowed to pump more gas into Europe to stabilise turbulent energy markets after prices surged to new record highs.

    I’m pleased that Vlad has ridden to the rescue of the ordinary people of Europe but bearing in mind what a canny operator he is one wonders if he’s had the Nordstream pipeline approved under the table.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/10/06/markets-live-latest-coronavirus-news-pound-euro-ftse-100/

    1. Its not up to Vlad..its up to Gazprom.I would think that any extra gas(above the fixed term contract) will be charged at the going rate.
      The shortage wasn’t of Russia’s making.

      1. Afternoon Harry. It is up to Vlad in the final analysis and Gazprom is going to do as he says! I don’t doubt that his decision was made easier both by the increase in price and the prospect of sticking one in the eye of the Globalist Cabal that engineered the rise!

        1. I think you give Vlad too much credit.He is the President,not the Czar…those days are long gone.
          He has his hands full trying to get the economy up and running again.
          Gazprom is not a registered charity.If they can get more selling gas to Asia then that is what they’ll do.
          They have new Arctic projects to fund and they will need every Ruble they can earn.

          1. We’ve got a bit more in from Russian leader Vladimir Putin, whose intervention has sparked a sharp fallback in gas prices after their mammoth surge earlier in the day.

            President Putin said: “Russia has always been and is a reliable supplier of gas to its consumers all over the world – both to Asia and to Europe, and always fulfills all its obligations in full. All of them, I want to emphasise this.”

            Putin asked his government for proposals on how to stabilise the energy market, adding that this work should be “built on an absolutely commercial basis, taking into account the interests of all participants in this process.”

            https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/10/06/markets-live-latest-coronavirus-news-pound-euro-ftse-100/

          2. We’ve got a bit more in from Russian leader Vladimir Putin, whose intervention has sparked a sharp fallback in gas prices after their mammoth surge earlier in the day.

            President Putin said: “Russia has always been and is a reliable supplier of gas to its consumers all over the world – both to Asia and to Europe, and always fulfills all its obligations in full. All of them, I want to emphasise this.”

            Putin asked his government for proposals on how to stabilise the energy market, adding that this work should be “built on an absolutely commercial basis, taking into account the interests of all participants in this process.”

            https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/10/06/markets-live-latest-coronavirus-news-pound-euro-ftse-100/

      2. Afternoon Harry. It is up to Vlad in the final analysis and Gazprom is going to do as he says! I don’t doubt that his decision was made easier both by the increase in price and the prospect of sticking one in the eye of the Globalist Cabal that engineered the rise!

    2. Surely this is a case of turn the taps down (done), wait for the price to go through the roof (done), then partially turn them back on again, whereby he still makes oodles of dosh selling less gas than before he helped to inflate the price? And he may even be regarded by some in a slightly more favourable light for helping to ease the price!

          2. But…but….it seems to be generally accepted that Russia is pumping less than usual. It may not come direct to us but there is surely a knock-on effect if Europe isn’t receiving enough?

          3. The reduction was a result of production decisions and not political. The Cabal took advantage of it and cornered the market thus driving up prices. Russia has made absolutely nothing from the resulting crisis.

          4. Still a reduction though?
            The FT 18th September:

            “Russia’s position as a reliable gas supplier to Europe is in the dock.

            Record prices across the UK and continental Europe have drawn attention to lower supplies of natural gas from Russia this summer, leaving many questioning whether a quiet squeeze of the market has been executed by Moscow.”

          5. The Financial Times is notoriously Anti-Putin and indulges in regular bouts of Russophobic propaganda!

          7. You had to go back to September 12 to find that quote. This line about Russia being responsible died shortly afterwards and did not even appear on the BBC! This was because there was no way that they could be held responsible. Russia sells its gas under long term contracts and could make no profit from the spot market!

          9. Still a reduction though?
            The FT 18th September:

            “Russia’s position as a reliable gas supplier to Europe is in the dock.

            Record prices across the UK and continental Europe have drawn attention to lower supplies of natural gas from Russia this summer, leaving many questioning whether a quiet squeeze of the market has been executed by Moscow.”

      2. Oh dear…that’s NOT how long-term fixed price contracts work.Every European country will have a contract to take a certain amount of gas per year at a fixed price.
        Gazprom is fulfilling every contract.If European countries want EXTRA supplies they will have to pay market price.

  77. That’s me gone. Lecture from British School at Rome in two minutes about posh Roman housing development in the 1st and 4th centuries AD.

    May be better weather tomorrow.

    A demain

    1. Serve them right if all transport moved to Belgium and Germany and Calais turned into a ghost town occupied by Africans..

    3. It’s only a bit of fish why are they getting so upset?
      I mean we gave it up at the drop of a hat.

    5. So no goods ever come direct to Southampton or Liverpool? Nothing comes through Ireland or to Immingham or Hull? I suspect they are talking about road transport only. Still, if we have no EU goods, that means that (apart from what the government wastes sending to them) they’ll have no money from us, I would have thought. I expect they are banking on Bojo capitulating before the realities of global trade start to bite.

  80. 339678+ up ticks,
    This tory ( ino ) type rhetoric went off the trust menu nearly four decades ago the remaining members will realise this eventually when they have only fat turks words to eat, in the dark clutching a cold hot water bottle.

    Dt,
    A barnstorming performance that will restore confidence in Boris
    Those who had forgotten why they voted for the Prime Minister will have been cheered by this plausible, passionate speech

    Daly must be on the bottle.

    1. The number of people who think that the trolley in the dilemma is a trolley bus always amuses me.

  82. New technology is the answer to climate change, not more targets

    Innovation can fix climate change without infuriating ordinary people. Why isn’t it at the heart of Government policy?

    BJØRN LOMBORG

    In the midst of an energy crisis, Prime Minister Boris Johnson is expected to announce plans for all of Britain’s electricity to come from renewable sources by 2035. He wants to show climate leadership ahead of next month’s UN climate summit COP26, but the reality is that such targets rarely achieve anything. Either all electricity will go green by 2035 because it is cheaper than the alternative (in which case the target was unnecessary) or, more likely, such a policy will simply drive up electricity prices to levels voters reject.

    The last three decades of climate negotiations are littered with broken promises. In a report released in 2019, the UN offered the surprisingly frank analysis that the 2010s were a “lost decade” for the climate and it was impossible to tell the difference between what actually happened and what would have happened in a world that adopted no new climate policies after 2005.

    This puts the PM’s challenge with COP26 into perspective. The UK can choose to do what every other host has done and essentially hold one more failed climate meeting. Or it could take its role seriously and choose a different path.

    The real challenge with the current approach to climate policy is that as long as cutting emissions is expensive, leaders will talk a lot but do little. In the rich world, this is to avoid following in the embarrassing footsteps of Emmanuel Macron who was forced to backtrack on a modest hike in petrol prices by the emergence of the gilets jaunes. In the poorer world, nations focused on driving economic growth and getting their populations out of poverty do not have the luxury of investing in costlier forms of energy.

    To meet this challenge, we need a much stronger focus on green energy research. If the world can develop green energy that is cheaper than fossil fuels, then we will have solved global warming. Everybody would switch, even poorer, high-polluting countries such as China and India.

    Working with 27 of the world’s top climate economists and three Nobel Laureates, the Copenhagen Consensus, of which I am president, found that the most effective, long-term policy to help the climate would be a six-fold increase in green research and development.

    Not only is this actually feasible, the total cost for each nation will be much lower than current climate policies. Our research suggested that the world should increase its spending by another £54 billion per year by 2030, a relatively small sum compared to the £135 billion we are already spending on subsidising ineffective green energy today.

    On the sidelines of the 2015 Paris climate summit, global leaders including David Cameron and Barack Obama actually promised to double R&D spending on green energy innovations to $30 billion by 2020. Unfortunately, most nations are failing to meet their promises. Boris Johnson must seize the unique opportunity to change this.

    He should insist that the outcome of Glasgow must be all nations agreeing to spend much more on green R&D and to implement a process of verification to monitor compliance. The Prime Minister could make Glasgow a huge success by turning a corner on two decades of failure and introducing a cheaper, smarter way forward, one that will actually help fix climate change without infuriating ordinary people or exacerbating the risk of energy shortages.

    Bjorn Lomborg is the author of ‘False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet’

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/10/04/new-technology-answer-climate-change-not-targets/

    That’s all very well but what are the new technologies?

    So much blether from people critical of current energy policy and future proposals but most of them are still wedded to the idea that ‘climate change’ is a problem to be solved – and can be solved.

    In the meantime, in the darkness…

    1. FGS, we had this a few days ago with the Express. Here’s what the Met Office johnny said:

      Senior meteorologist Greg Dewhurst told The Sun Online: “We’re likely to see some snowy weather in higher parts as October moves into November. Likely areas to be affected are the Scottish mountains as well as higher ground in northern England and northern Wales. Low areas are unlikely to see any. It’s quite normal for this time of year.”

      Inhabitants of Scotland will be saying: “So what?”

      1. Our smaller roads have the snow poles (Bamboos with reflective tape to guide the plough drivers) put up the sides already.

      2. But… but Monbiot said his children would never know snow!

        Was he.. surely not… making it up to scare people into believing a fictious pile of merde?

      2. Interesting – In the light of recent events, is the USA’s position as top of the Oil & Democracy leader board completely valid?

        1. It’s a Yank-made video, Stephen. They love to take every opportunity to talk themselves up.

      3. Interesting movie, Grizz. It explains what, rather than why, which is after all, much more complex. My opinion, for what it’s worth, is that it’s a combination of that Norway has never, until the 1970s, been a rich country. We never had an industrial revolution, living instead on shipping, fish & timber, and nobody gets rich (apart from the boat owners) on that. The mindset of being a Yorkshireman is still alive and well – still now, there are a lot in government who dither about making decisions over it costing a lot of money, the result being that not so much gets done (hooray!), but when they do get on with it, it’s four times the price. Also, Norway never had much of a ruling class – most of the time, they were Danish or Swedish – and so is very egalitarian and not used to being told what to do. Very community-focused (samfunnsorientert), they are.

        This sudden onslaught of money was a big shock, and, thank goodness, there were some politicians with balls who were encouraged to make sure Norway actually got to keep most of it in one form or another, and the profits were invested, as opposed to used to prop up revenue spending as in the UK, who were/had all the things Norway did not.

        Also the “Statens pensjonskassa – utland” is tied down by a load of laws, to stop opportunistic politicians just spending it on “stuff”. Of course, the politicians could undo all the laws, but that would take time, and they would hear about it from the population before they got very far.

      2. We remembered people who were dreading trying to heat their homes this winter in church this morning!

      3. I am getting a load of logs at the end of the week. The price hasn’t risen. Cold comfort if you live in a clean air zone, I know.

      5. Wholesale gas prices went up 40% & the price of domestic gas is capped until April.

      6. OUR heating bills yes – the heating bills of the occupants of the hotels full of foreigners living there free will do what?? get more from the govt? i.e. the taxpayer?

    1. Well, yes, that was my first and only thought especially as mostly Africa (with the exception of S. Africa) has been mostly untouched by ‘covid’ anyway. They’ve got to get that stuff into the veins somehow.

      1. Most African countries which rely on wildlife tourism have been badly hit by the lockdowns and travel restrictions. Most are still on the red list – not sure why Kenya was singled out.

      3. Isn’t Hydroxychloroquine used regularly in countries where malaria is rife e.g. many African nations? Hasn’t Hydroxychloroquine been found to combat covid? Could this be a reason why African nations haven’t been hit badly by covid? Google states that Hydroxychloroquine hasn’t been licensed to treat covid. The “vaccines” under all brands haven’t been fully licensed/approved but they are being squirted into billions of arms.

        1. Yes, HCL is apparently dispensed regularly to combat malaria in African countries, it is thought that is one of the reasons why covid hasn’t made inroads there. The other reason is latitude from the equator and its relationship to sunlight and thus Vit D. S. Africa is the furthest African country from the equator. There were only two areas of India mainly affected by ‘covid’, both lacking a natural source of Vit D – whether this is because they were situated in deep valleys, or because of pollution or whether they were islamic (clothing) I have no idea. They way the media carried on you would think people were dropping down dead all over India. Some of the photos shown were of a disaster from a chemical factory years earlier.

          1. Good evening pm
            I had two consultants this year, one West Indian the other an Arab, tell me to take a high dose, 5,000 iu of vitamin D3 as nobody in this country can get enough sunshine to boost their immune system. We bought 1,000 capsules for under £20. No wonder the ministers took the brown envelopes to boost the profits of 5he pharmaceutical companies.
            Neither of us has had so much as a cold in 18 months. No experimental injections for us.

          2. Well, you know how I feel about The Injection! We are taking Vit D3+K2, Vit C+zinc and Quercetin with Bromelain and Rosehip this winter. Shortly to increase the Vit D to see us over the winter months. At the moment we are taking 2000 IU. We will increase later this month. It wouldn’t surprise me if they wiped the shelves of Vit D and the net, as they are doing with NAC (N-Acetyl Cysteine). NAC assists in clearing your body of the toxins in the jab. It is safe and has been around for decades as a supplement.

            Keep on keeping well!

    2. If there has been a plot to reduce the population of the world, its has failed miserably. And if this vaccine is any good, it will only make matters worse. Two questions: where is malaria the biggest kill; which continent has the highest birthrate?

        1. Tablets have been around for Yonks, I remember taking them before going to Singapore in the 70s and 80s.

          1. And they taste disgusting.
            An old army prank would be to drop a malaria tab on the tongue of anyone asleep and ‘catching flies’ and wait to see how long it would take to wake them.

        2. When I used to have to take prophylactics for it on a very regular basis, the bumf always said malaria was the largest killer disease. They might have been fibbing though.

      1. Trump derangement syndrome smashed it before it left the starting blocks in the USA and hence the world.

  86. Evening, all. If the government were serious about solving the crisis of their own making, they’d just leave things alone.

  87. Breaking News – Christmas pantomimes cancelled and under threat because of a shortage of dwarfs.

    Boris has relaxed the immigration rules for African pygmies.

    2. Everyone is short-staffed at present. (BTW is the collective noun for dwarfs a shortage?)

  88. Quick warning for walkers and horse riders.
    We are expecting the maize contractors today.
    Please give them a wide berth and if your dog goes into the maize DO NOT follow it.
    Alert a member of staff or tractor driver and they will stop the forager.
    You cannot outrun the machinery!
    Thank you

      2. Why do people (in films at any rate) run away from things in the same direction as they arectravelling? A quick step to the left above and danger over.

    2. FGS, one of the paramedics who attended me after my fall a fortnight ago wore a rainbow ribbon. No time to think about his proclivities, we just concentrated on getting me back on my feet & checking there was no long-term damage. Thoroughly professional, as it should be.

  92. A barnstorming performance that will restore confidence in Boris

    Those who had forgotten why they voted for the Prime Minister will have been cheered by this plausible, passionate speech
    Janet Daley

    An article in the DT, the BTL comments makes for interesting reading. When I delved into them what struck me was that these comments are coming from what should be the Conservative Party true blue supporter base, it’s dissolving away in anger and disappointment.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/10/06/barnstorming-performance-will-restore-confidence-boris/#comment

    1. People should not, he said, “have to move away from their loved ones” in order to realise their potential: an observation which was, notably, quite the reverse of the famous Norman Tebbit admonition that they should “get on their bikes” to go and find work wherever it existed.

      Bo!!ocks! Tebbit said nothing of the sort:
      “I grew up in the 30s with an unemployed father. He didn’t riot; he got on his bike and looked for work and he kept looking ’til he found it.”

      1. “People should not, he said, “have to move away from their loved ones” in order to realise their potential:”

        This also applies to the illegal gimmegrunts – go back home and realise your potential there – it’s not in the UK.

        1. Their potential is zero. What they want is a house, built and paid for by someone else, in a country where a full infrastructure has already been built. They wanr roads, and hospitals etc . THAT is why they want to come here – NOT to contribute – just to have a life in a better place – built and paid for by someone else – – the UK taxpayer !!!!!

          The foreign career criminal knows that once here and gets injured, they only have to call 999 and the free system sends out £000s of staff and eqpt to treat them, knowing there will be NO bill for THEM – ONLY FOR US. They should be deported – – NO EXCUSES.

          1. Agreed Walter – see my post concerning ECHR, ECJ and Human Rights Act, vis-a-vis deportations.

      3. In any case, people who wanted to get on have always moved, throughout history, unless they were very lucky.

    2. Plausible, and one could add specious are words which imply that Boris Johnson’s words sound reasonable but may not actually be so

    3. Er….no!
      But then I didn’t vote for Boris, so I’m unlikely to be swayed by his rhetoric now.

      1. Neither did I, and nothing I have seen since the GE has convinced me to support him or his party at the next GE.

  93. We must escape the European human rights trap

    The Government’s plans for reform are welcome, but risk keeping us under the rule of activist judges

    MARTIN HOWE • 6 October 2021 • 6:15pm

    Dominic Raab put reform of the Human Rights Act back on the agenda at the Conservative Party conference. Quite rightly, this controversial and difficult subject has been kept on the back burner while the Brexit process has been underway. But now that Brexit is complete – except in Northern Ireland – the reform of our human rights law is long overdue.

    The UK played an active role in drafting the European Convention on Human Rights, with the aim of safeguarding war-torn Europe against the return of Fascist or totalitarian regimes. It sets out a series of basic rights which, if you go by the words of the Convention, would gain universal support across the political spectrum.

    Unfortunately, the Convention has not been interpreted according to its words, nor according to the intentions of the states who drafted it. For 70 years, the Human Rights Court at Strasbourg has been “interpreting” it in ways which engraft new or extended rights onto it which are not justified by its wording. In some cases – such as prisoner voting – these can be shown to be contrary to the actual intentions of the drafters of the Convention.

    The Strasbourg Court is just as political and activist as the EU’s own Court of Justice at Luxembourg, but has a lower quality of judicial brainpower. Its politicised interpretations of the Convention have included extending its reach into overseas military occupied areas or even war zones, causing huge difficulties for our Armed Forces, and asserting that “whole life” sentences of the kind handed out to the murderer of Sarah Everard are contrary to the Convention unless they are “reducible”.

    We have the longest history of the protection of rights and liberties of any country in the world. It stretches back over 800 years to Magna Carta, with rights being progressively expanded by the common law and by Parliament in statutes such as the Bill of Rights of 1689 and the corresponding Claim of Right in Scotland.

    Tony Blair’s Human Rights Act did not just import the European Convention into our law. It also required our courts to “take account” of judgments of the Strasbourg Court. Our courts over-interpreted the words “take account” to mean that they must follow consistent Strasbourg case law.

    The way forward is not to scrap the Act, but to replace it with a UK Bill of Rights firmly based on our own traditions on the protection of liberties. It should remove the worst Strasbourg-created misinterpretations, and enhance rights in certain areas according to our own priorities as a nation, such as strengthening the protection of freedom of speech. It should be interpreted and applied by our courts, with the balance between rights, or the balance between rights and other considerations such as the protection of the public, ultimately subject to decision by Parliament.

    It seems that the Government is contemplating reforming our human rights laws along these lines but remaining in the European Convention. The ideal solution would be for us to stay within the Convention but leave the jurisdiction of the Strasbourg Court – but unfortunately the Convention was amended to remove this possibility many years ago.

    So the risk is that conflict could arise in future at the international level between the Strasbourg Court and the UK over the way in which we interpret and apply Convention rights. I fear that this could result in political and diplomatic pressure which might cause our government to buckle in the face of unjustified Strasbourg case law.

    The question is why we need to be subject to the jurisdiction of an external court in this way. Commonwealth countries such as Canada and Australia constitutionally protect fundamental rights through their own court systems, without it being thought in any way necessary to superimpose an international court on top.

    When we were in the EU we had the theoretical legal right to leave the Convention, but now we have left the EU it will be a lot easier in practice. If we are truly Global Britain, what is the point of remaining in this Continental legal structure when we can better protect rights through our own legal system? The argument that Putin will pay more attention to judgments of the Strasbourg Court against Russia if we remain only has to be stated to be laughed out of court.

    Martin Howe QC is chairman of Lawyers for Britain

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/10/06/must-escape-european-human-rights-trap/

    1. Scrap both our membership of the ECHR and ECJ and, by repealing the Human Rights Act, strip the shyster lawyers of their delaying tactics, for those illegals and criminal foreigners being deported – we don’t want them, let their own countries deal with its native scum.

      If they’ve torn up or otherwise destroyed their identity papers, they have two choices; either own up to their nationality or be dropped on a Somali beach at midnight, clad only in their underwear, to fend for themselves in a shithole that they probably feel more at home in.

  95. Can anyone tell me who is attending this upcoming COP26 shindig, will Chinese and Indian governments be represented? I’ve been searching but can only find UK and US leaders. Oh, also the Queen, Attenborough and Thunderberg.

    1. Isn’t the pope going?

      Odds on Trudeau and his entourage go and make foolish promises.

  97. OK, I guess that’s it for this rather hectic day and it’s time to say, “Good night and God bless.” to all my NoTTLer friends.

  100. “Colour blind rugby followers and players will no longer have to suffer through Ireland-Wales matches in silence, with World Rugby planning to ditch any red-green kit clashes by the 2027 Rugby World Cup.”

    Why can’t one team just wear black shorts?

    1. Black, Black,

      It would be Cultural Appropriation, for Whitey to wear BLACK Shorts.

    6. Happy Birthday Bob3

      And a happy 364 Unbirthdays in the next year

      You a just a step away from having a nappy on here

  103. Labour party chairwoman Anneliese Dodds said the Prime Minister’s speech was ‘vacuous’ and that he ‘talked more about beavers than he did about action to tackle the multiple crises facing working people up and down the country’.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10067089/Gas-bills-rise-500-year-Bleak-winter-fears-grow-energy-prices-soar.html

    Yes, Boris did mention beavers – but it’s the latest Conservative mantra:

    ‘If that isn’t conservative, my friends, I don’t know what is – build back beaver, I say.

    After all, the UK is now primarily reliant on a cervix economy.

  104. Labour party chairwoman Anneliese Dodds said the Prime Minister’s speech was ‘vacuous’ and that he ‘talked more about beavers than he did about action to tackle the multiple crises facing working people up and down the country’.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10067089/Gas-bills-rise-500-year-Bleak-winter-fears-grow-energy-prices-soar.html

    Yes, Boris did mention beavers – but it’s the latest Conservative mantra:

    ‘If that isn’t conservative, my friends, I don’t know what is – build back beaver, I say.

    After all, the UK is now primarily reliant on a cervix economy.

Comments are closed.