I’m not sure why Middlesex are allowed to play as the county doesn’t exist.
Crisis club Middlesex begin plan to move away from Lord’s
Exclusive: County take step towards private ownership amid a Cricket Regulator investigation into their chief executive
Middlesex have taken the first step towards private ownership to fund a new home away from Lord’s.
The crisis-plagued county have told members they are actively exploring demutualisation after being plunged into fresh turmoil amid a Cricket Regulator investigation into their chief executive.
Andrew Cornish was absent from a meeting with members on Tuesday at which the club began a formal consultation over becoming just the fourth first-class county to go private.
Chairman Richard Sykes told Telegraph Sport that Cornish was “on a leave of absence”, adding: “The Cricket Regulator is involved and I can’t say more than that.”
The investigation into Cornish, who has denied any wrongdoing, is unrelated to demutualisation. But the timing could hardly be worse for the 161-year-old club as they look to join Durham, Northamptonshire and Hampshire in becoming privately owned.
As tenants of Marylebone Cricket Club at Lord’s, Middlesex are unique among the 18 counties as they do not own their home ground. This means they are unable to make money through non-cricket activities such as conferencing and events.
They play at a series of outgrounds such as Merchant Taylors’ School, Richmond and Radlett, but have long sought a “home away from home” to provide stability and generate income. Sykes believes the only way to raise the funds for this is via demutualisation.
If we're doing French cycle routes, then there's a great route from Dieppe to Paris. It's an old train line that was demolished and converted to a cycle path, and you are pretty much car free from Dieppe to the outskirts of Paris.
You do -however- end up going through some of the roughest Banlieues around Paris on the last leg of the journey.
With all the flu vaccinations available today, especially for the elderly, why the increase ?
The severity of the flu season varies by a large amount from year-to-year, as does the efficacy of the flu vaccine (where they have to guess which flu variant to target some way in advance, and sometimes get it wrong).
It's not unusual to see large differences from one year to the next. What would be worrying would be if, say, the trend in a multi-year average was moving in the wrong direction.
"In November 2022, Harborne donated £1 million to The Office of Boris Johnson Ltd, one of the biggest donations ever made to an individual British politician.[13] Boris Johnson awarded Qinetiq, a company in which Harborne was the largest single shareholder, with a £80m MoD contract in January 2023."
Don't trust wiki, or people who post blindly from there. Boris left office in Sept 2022!
That may be when the donation was reported, rather than when it actually happened.
Qinetiq used to be part of the Ministry of Defence. It used to be the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency. The vast majority of its revenue comes from... you guessed it... the UK government. I suspect you can look at any point in time and fine a big contract signed.
Of course, but we have come to a rather strange point in time where million pound donations to politicians by people living abroad and winning far bigger government contracts is completely fine, whereas upgraded football tickets for security reasons can be a national scandal and woe betide an ordinary MoD official accepting a free dinner from Qinetiq.
I’m not sure why Middlesex are allowed to play as the county doesn’t exist.
Crisis club Middlesex begin plan to move away from Lord’s
Exclusive: County take step towards private ownership amid a Cricket Regulator investigation into their chief executive
Middlesex have taken the first step towards private ownership to fund a new home away from Lord’s.
The crisis-plagued county have told members they are actively exploring demutualisation after being plunged into fresh turmoil amid a Cricket Regulator investigation into their chief executive.
Andrew Cornish was absent from a meeting with members on Tuesday at which the club began a formal consultation over becoming just the fourth first-class county to go private.
Chairman Richard Sykes told Telegraph Sport that Cornish was “on a leave of absence”, adding: “The Cricket Regulator is involved and I can’t say more than that.”
The investigation into Cornish, who has denied any wrongdoing, is unrelated to demutualisation. But the timing could hardly be worse for the 161-year-old club as they look to join Durham, Northamptonshire and Hampshire in becoming privately owned.
As tenants of Marylebone Cricket Club at Lord’s, Middlesex are unique among the 18 counties as they do not own their home ground. This means they are unable to make money through non-cricket activities such as conferencing and events.
They play at a series of outgrounds such as Merchant Taylors’ School, Richmond and Radlett, but have long sought a “home away from home” to provide stability and generate income. Sykes believes the only way to raise the funds for this is via demutualisation.
Well it would be hard to locate a ground in a place which didn't.
Lord's doesn't exist?
It does, but it no longer is in Middlex, Headingley exists but it is still in Yorkshire.
Why are Lancs allowed to play at Old Trafford? Why are Warwickshire allowed to play in Birmingham etc etc etc
Because pre-1974 county boundaries are the only ones that matter.
Back when you had to be born in Yorkshire to play for Yorkshire, being born in Middlesbrough conferred eligibility, Chris Old was not kicked out of the Yorkshire team just because the Tories faffed about with local government in 1974.
That's why Surrey play at the oval. Surrey county used to extend there.
Farage puts the BBC on the naughty step for asking about allegations about him at Dulwich College
This is probably the most politically damaging situation Nigel has ever found himself in. Many Reform supporters are self-proclaimed Philosemites, so the allegations that their man was a vile Jew-baiter cannot be easily waved away. In fact, Nigel has even made himself vulnerable to anti-bigotry attacks from Tommy Robinson, which isn't optimal.
I'm not sure the matter of Farage's schoolboy politics has wings. I've not heard anyone offline mention it.
I think its the Russian stuff that is killing Farage, most people just assume that he was a bully and a tosser at school and the allegations clearly have more than the whiff of truth.
The smoking gun question is: "How much were you paid to present your Russia Today show, and what is morally different between what you did for the Russians then and what Nathan Gill has just been sentenced to 10.5 years for doing for the Russians, more recently?"
Love how invested people on this board think anyone else is about Russia. People seem to forget how detatched the average voter is from the stuff that actually affects them - when you step down to foreign affairs it really is a whole other level of DGAF. And banking of Reform voters thinking Farage isn't patriotic is taking optimism well past the point of naivety.
On the contrary, I think most people in the UK are very anti-Russian and very pro-Ukraine at present.
You don't have to be a deep thinker or very politically engaged to see Putin as an evil and very dangerous shit. The Russian population may be forgiven in time but by showing virtually zero inclination to challenge Putin they are culpable. Anyone in UK politics seen as being soft on Putin is rightly going to be under pressure.
In a poll it would come out 99-1 for Ukraine. But people who think this has electoral salience and will hurt Reform are just miles out of touch with those voters.
It almost certainly prevented Reform taking Caerphilly recently
Having a second none of the above party that voters could vote for prevented Reform taking Caerphilly
That's not to say Ukraine / Farage's Russian links is not costing Reform votes, I just think with Plaid being an option Reform would have won.
It happened at the height of the Gill conviction with lots of coverage in Wales
With all the flu vaccinations available today, especially for the elderly, why the increase ?
Because vaccinations only effective against the particular strains selected, which is an educated guess. And i'm willing to suspect 'the flu' is not confirmed cases of influenza but people with respiratory problems, viral and bacterial.
That's not quite true: influenza viruses are quite closely related, and if you prime yourself against one it will still speed up the immune system's recognition of another. It's just not as good as getting the exact variant identified ahead of time.
I’m not sure why Middlesex are allowed to play as the county doesn’t exist.
Crisis club Middlesex begin plan to move away from Lord’s
Exclusive: County take step towards private ownership amid a Cricket Regulator investigation into their chief executive
Middlesex have taken the first step towards private ownership to fund a new home away from Lord’s.
The crisis-plagued county have told members they are actively exploring demutualisation after being plunged into fresh turmoil amid a Cricket Regulator investigation into their chief executive.
Andrew Cornish was absent from a meeting with members on Tuesday at which the club began a formal consultation over becoming just the fourth first-class county to go private.
Chairman Richard Sykes told Telegraph Sport that Cornish was “on a leave of absence”, adding: “The Cricket Regulator is involved and I can’t say more than that.”
The investigation into Cornish, who has denied any wrongdoing, is unrelated to demutualisation. But the timing could hardly be worse for the 161-year-old club as they look to join Durham, Northamptonshire and Hampshire in becoming privately owned.
As tenants of Marylebone Cricket Club at Lord’s, Middlesex are unique among the 18 counties as they do not own their home ground. This means they are unable to make money through non-cricket activities such as conferencing and events.
They play at a series of outgrounds such as Merchant Taylors’ School, Richmond and Radlett, but have long sought a “home away from home” to provide stability and generate income. Sykes believes the only way to raise the funds for this is via demutualisation.
Well it would be hard to locate a ground in a place which didn't.
Lord's doesn't exist?
It does, but it no longer is in Middlex, Headingley exists but it is still in Yorkshire.
Why are Lancs allowed to play at Old Trafford? Why are Warwickshire allowed to play in Birmingham etc etc etc
Because pre-1974 county boundaries are the only ones that matter.
Back when you had to be born in Yorkshire to play for Yorkshire, being born in Middlesbrough conferred eligibility, Chris Old was not kicked out of the Yorkshire team just because the Tories faffed about with local government in 1974.
That's why Surrey play at the oval. Surrey county used to extend there.
It's why Surrey county council HQ are still in Kingston
If we're doing French cycle routes, then there's a great route from Dieppe to Paris. It's an old train line that was demolished and converted to a cycle path, and you are pretty much car free from Dieppe to the outskirts of Paris.
You do -however- end up going through some of the roughest Banlieues around Paris on the last leg of the journey.
It's 250km, but it's mostly flat so even relatively unfit cyclists can do it in two days. You can make it three if you're feeling lazy.
With all the flu vaccinations available today, especially for the elderly, why the increase ?
Because vaccinations only effective against the particular strains selected, which is an educated guess. And i'm willing to suspect 'the flu' is not confirmed cases of influenza but people with respiratory problems, viral and bacterial.
I’m not sure why Middlesex are allowed to play as the county doesn’t exist.
Crisis club Middlesex begin plan to move away from Lord’s
Exclusive: County take step towards private ownership amid a Cricket Regulator investigation into their chief executive
Middlesex have taken the first step towards private ownership to fund a new home away from Lord’s.
The crisis-plagued county have told members they are actively exploring demutualisation after being plunged into fresh turmoil amid a Cricket Regulator investigation into their chief executive.
Andrew Cornish was absent from a meeting with members on Tuesday at which the club began a formal consultation over becoming just the fourth first-class county to go private.
Chairman Richard Sykes told Telegraph Sport that Cornish was “on a leave of absence”, adding: “The Cricket Regulator is involved and I can’t say more than that.”
The investigation into Cornish, who has denied any wrongdoing, is unrelated to demutualisation. But the timing could hardly be worse for the 161-year-old club as they look to join Durham, Northamptonshire and Hampshire in becoming privately owned.
As tenants of Marylebone Cricket Club at Lord’s, Middlesex are unique among the 18 counties as they do not own their home ground. This means they are unable to make money through non-cricket activities such as conferencing and events.
They play at a series of outgrounds such as Merchant Taylors’ School, Richmond and Radlett, but have long sought a “home away from home” to provide stability and generate income. Sykes believes the only way to raise the funds for this is via demutualisation.
Well it would be hard to locate a ground in a place which didn't.
Lord's doesn't exist?
It does, but it no longer is in Middlex, Headingley exists but it is still in Yorkshire.
Why are Lancs allowed to play at Old Trafford? Why are Warwickshire allowed to play in Birmingham etc etc etc
Because pre-1974 county boundaries are the only ones that matter.
Back when you had to be born in Yorkshire to play for Yorkshire, being born in Middlesbrough conferred eligibility, Chris Old was not kicked out of the Yorkshire team just because the Tories faffed about with local government in 1974.
That's why Surrey play at the oval. Surrey county used to extend there.
It's why Surrey county council HQ are still in Kingston
No longer, Surrey CC HQ is now in Reigate. County Hall in Kingston is being converted to housing
With all the flu vaccinations available today, especially for the elderly, why the increase ?
Because vaccinations only effective against the particular strains selected, which is an educated guess. And i'm willing to suspect 'the flu' is not confirmed cases of influenza but people with respiratory problems, viral and bacterial.
With all the flu vaccinations available today, especially for the elderly, why the increase ?
My wife has the flu vaccination and within a day or so has had a very bad case - which she passed onto me who didn't have the vaccination. It's either the wrong type of vaccination or it's a highly virulent strain. Perhaps the health bods can comment.
"In November 2022, Harborne donated £1 million to The Office of Boris Johnson Ltd, one of the biggest donations ever made to an individual British politician.[13] Boris Johnson awarded Qinetiq, a company in which Harborne was the largest single shareholder, with a £80m MoD contract in January 2023."
Don't trust wiki, or people who post blindly from there. Boris left office in Sept 2022!
And Boris wouldn't have awarded a contract to anyone. Ministers do not award contracts. For obvious reasons.
No, they just get their mates on the PPE fast track gravy train.
(If a gravy train is on the fast track, there may be a risk of the gravy spilling when it goes over a set of points.)
And they didnt award any contracts there either. In terms of 'mates', all MPs and Lords were specifically asked to see if they knew suppliers, and to forward any enquiries to a specific webpage. This is exactly people like Hancock did.
With all the flu vaccinations available today, especially for the elderly, why the increase ?
My wife has the flu vaccination and within a day or so has had a very bad case - which she passed onto me who didn't have the vaccination. It's either the wrong type of vaccination or it's a highly virulent strain. Perhaps the health bods can comment.
It does take a while for a vaccination to reach its peak effectiveness, so your wife was unlucky with her timing.
With all the flu vaccinations available today, especially for the elderly, why the increase ?
Because vaccinations only effective against the particular strains selected, which is an educated guess. And i'm willing to suspect 'the flu' is not confirmed cases of influenza but people with respiratory problems, viral and bacterial.
Also Covid is still around, and still pretty nasty compared to the average respiratory virus.
Australia (who tend to lead us by 6/12 and is how we anticipate the strain) had a bad Southern hemisphere winter of flu admissions. It also mutated mid season.
I’m not sure why Middlesex are allowed to play as the county doesn’t exist.
Crisis club Middlesex begin plan to move away from Lord’s
Exclusive: County take step towards private ownership amid a Cricket Regulator investigation into their chief executive
Middlesex have taken the first step towards private ownership to fund a new home away from Lord’s.
The crisis-plagued county have told members they are actively exploring demutualisation after being plunged into fresh turmoil amid a Cricket Regulator investigation into their chief executive.
Andrew Cornish was absent from a meeting with members on Tuesday at which the club began a formal consultation over becoming just the fourth first-class county to go private.
Chairman Richard Sykes told Telegraph Sport that Cornish was “on a leave of absence”, adding: “The Cricket Regulator is involved and I can’t say more than that.”
The investigation into Cornish, who has denied any wrongdoing, is unrelated to demutualisation. But the timing could hardly be worse for the 161-year-old club as they look to join Durham, Northamptonshire and Hampshire in becoming privately owned.
As tenants of Marylebone Cricket Club at Lord’s, Middlesex are unique among the 18 counties as they do not own their home ground. This means they are unable to make money through non-cricket activities such as conferencing and events.
They play at a series of outgrounds such as Merchant Taylors’ School, Richmond and Radlett, but have long sought a “home away from home” to provide stability and generate income. Sykes believes the only way to raise the funds for this is via demutualisation.
With all the flu vaccinations available today, especially for the elderly, why the increase ?
My wife has the flu vaccination and within a day or so has had a very bad case - which she passed onto me who didn't have the vaccination. It's either the wrong type of vaccination or it's a highly virulent strain. Perhaps the health bods can comment.
She caught flu before having the jab then, or maybe has an entirely unrelated respiratory infection, and in any case it takes some time after having the vaccine to confer immunity.
I’m not sure why Middlesex are allowed to play as the county doesn’t exist.
Crisis club Middlesex begin plan to move away from Lord’s
Exclusive: County take step towards private ownership amid a Cricket Regulator investigation into their chief executive
Middlesex have taken the first step towards private ownership to fund a new home away from Lord’s.
The crisis-plagued county have told members they are actively exploring demutualisation after being plunged into fresh turmoil amid a Cricket Regulator investigation into their chief executive.
Andrew Cornish was absent from a meeting with members on Tuesday at which the club began a formal consultation over becoming just the fourth first-class county to go private.
Chairman Richard Sykes told Telegraph Sport that Cornish was “on a leave of absence”, adding: “The Cricket Regulator is involved and I can’t say more than that.”
The investigation into Cornish, who has denied any wrongdoing, is unrelated to demutualisation. But the timing could hardly be worse for the 161-year-old club as they look to join Durham, Northamptonshire and Hampshire in becoming privately owned.
As tenants of Marylebone Cricket Club at Lord’s, Middlesex are unique among the 18 counties as they do not own their home ground. This means they are unable to make money through non-cricket activities such as conferencing and events.
They play at a series of outgrounds such as Merchant Taylors’ School, Richmond and Radlett, but have long sought a “home away from home” to provide stability and generate income. Sykes believes the only way to raise the funds for this is via demutualisation.
Well it would be hard to locate a ground in a place which didn't.
Lord's doesn't exist?
It does, but it no longer is in Middlex, Headingley exists but it is still in Yorkshire.
Why are Lancs allowed to play at Old Trafford? Why are Warwickshire allowed to play in Birmingham etc etc etc
Because pre-1974 county boundaries are the only ones that matter.
Back when you had to be born in Yorkshire to play for Yorkshire, being born in Middlesbrough conferred eligibility, Chris Old was not kicked out of the Yorkshire team just because the Tories faffed about with local government in 1974.
That's why Surrey play at the oval. Surrey county used to extend there.
It's why Surrey county council HQ are still in Kingston
No longer, Surrey CC HQ is now in Reigate. County Hall in Kingston is being converted to housing
I’m not sure why Middlesex are allowed to play as the county doesn’t exist.
Crisis club Middlesex begin plan to move away from Lord’s
Exclusive: County take step towards private ownership amid a Cricket Regulator investigation into their chief executive
Middlesex have taken the first step towards private ownership to fund a new home away from Lord’s.
The crisis-plagued county have told members they are actively exploring demutualisation after being plunged into fresh turmoil amid a Cricket Regulator investigation into their chief executive.
Andrew Cornish was absent from a meeting with members on Tuesday at which the club began a formal consultation over becoming just the fourth first-class county to go private.
Chairman Richard Sykes told Telegraph Sport that Cornish was “on a leave of absence”, adding: “The Cricket Regulator is involved and I can’t say more than that.”
The investigation into Cornish, who has denied any wrongdoing, is unrelated to demutualisation. But the timing could hardly be worse for the 161-year-old club as they look to join Durham, Northamptonshire and Hampshire in becoming privately owned.
As tenants of Marylebone Cricket Club at Lord’s, Middlesex are unique among the 18 counties as they do not own their home ground. This means they are unable to make money through non-cricket activities such as conferencing and events.
They play at a series of outgrounds such as Merchant Taylors’ School, Richmond and Radlett, but have long sought a “home away from home” to provide stability and generate income. Sykes believes the only way to raise the funds for this is via demutualisation.
Well it would be hard to locate a ground in a place which didn't.
Lord's doesn't exist?
It does, but it no longer is in Middlex, Headingley exists but it is still in Yorkshire.
Why are Lancs allowed to play at Old Trafford? Why are Warwickshire allowed to play in Birmingham etc etc etc
Because pre-1974 county boundaries are the only ones that matter.
Back when you had to be born in Yorkshire to play for Yorkshire, being born in Middlesbrough conferred eligibility, Chris Old was not kicked out of the Yorkshire team just because the Tories faffed about with local government in 1974.
In the case of Middlesex it is the pre-1965 boundaries. It is 60 years since the scandal of its abolition, the forerunner of messing around with local boundaries, names and identities which continues to this day, rendering this little passage from Sherlock Holmes - The Man With The Twisted Lip - more or less meaningless
While Sherlock Holmes had been detailing this singular series of events, we had been whirling through the outskirts of the great town until the last straggling houses had been left behind, and we rattled along with a country hedge upon either side of us. Just as he finished, however, we drove through two scattered villages, where a few lights still glimmered in the windows.
"We are on the outskirts of Lee," said my companion. "We have touched on three English counties in our short drive, starting in Middlesex, passing over an angle of Surrey, and ending in Kent. See that light among the trees? That is The Cedars, and beside that lamp sits a woman whose anxious ears have already, I have little doubt, caught the clink of our horse's feet."
With all the flu vaccinations available today, especially for the elderly, why the increase ?
Because vaccinations only effective against the particular strains selected, which is an educated guess. And i'm willing to suspect 'the flu' is not confirmed cases of influenza but people with respiratory problems, viral and bacterial.
Also Covid is still around, and still pretty nasty compared to the average respiratory virus.
From the stats posted by Foss, there were approximately one eighth the number of hospitalisations for covid in the latest week than there were for flu. It's clearly fairly negligible
I’m not sure why Middlesex are allowed to play as the county doesn’t exist.
Crisis club Middlesex begin plan to move away from Lord’s
Exclusive: County take step towards private ownership amid a Cricket Regulator investigation into their chief executive
Middlesex have taken the first step towards private ownership to fund a new home away from Lord’s.
The crisis-plagued county have told members they are actively exploring demutualisation after being plunged into fresh turmoil amid a Cricket Regulator investigation into their chief executive.
Andrew Cornish was absent from a meeting with members on Tuesday at which the club began a formal consultation over becoming just the fourth first-class county to go private.
Chairman Richard Sykes told Telegraph Sport that Cornish was “on a leave of absence”, adding: “The Cricket Regulator is involved and I can’t say more than that.”
The investigation into Cornish, who has denied any wrongdoing, is unrelated to demutualisation. But the timing could hardly be worse for the 161-year-old club as they look to join Durham, Northamptonshire and Hampshire in becoming privately owned.
As tenants of Marylebone Cricket Club at Lord’s, Middlesex are unique among the 18 counties as they do not own their home ground. This means they are unable to make money through non-cricket activities such as conferencing and events.
They play at a series of outgrounds such as Merchant Taylors’ School, Richmond and Radlett, but have long sought a “home away from home” to provide stability and generate income. Sykes believes the only way to raise the funds for this is via demutualisation.
I’m not sure why Middlesex are allowed to play as the county doesn’t exist.
Crisis club Middlesex begin plan to move away from Lord’s
Exclusive: County take step towards private ownership amid a Cricket Regulator investigation into their chief executive
Middlesex have taken the first step towards private ownership to fund a new home away from Lord’s.
The crisis-plagued county have told members they are actively exploring demutualisation after being plunged into fresh turmoil amid a Cricket Regulator investigation into their chief executive.
Andrew Cornish was absent from a meeting with members on Tuesday at which the club began a formal consultation over becoming just the fourth first-class county to go private.
Chairman Richard Sykes told Telegraph Sport that Cornish was “on a leave of absence”, adding: “The Cricket Regulator is involved and I can’t say more than that.”
The investigation into Cornish, who has denied any wrongdoing, is unrelated to demutualisation. But the timing could hardly be worse for the 161-year-old club as they look to join Durham, Northamptonshire and Hampshire in becoming privately owned.
As tenants of Marylebone Cricket Club at Lord’s, Middlesex are unique among the 18 counties as they do not own their home ground. This means they are unable to make money through non-cricket activities such as conferencing and events.
They play at a series of outgrounds such as Merchant Taylors’ School, Richmond and Radlett, but have long sought a “home away from home” to provide stability and generate income. Sykes believes the only way to raise the funds for this is via demutualisation.
Well it would be hard to locate a ground in a place which didn't.
Lord's doesn't exist?
It does, but it no longer is in Middlex, Headingley exists but it is still in Yorkshire.
Why are Lancs allowed to play at Old Trafford? Why are Warwickshire allowed to play in Birmingham etc etc etc
Because pre-1974 county boundaries are the only ones that matter.
Back when you had to be born in Yorkshire to play for Yorkshire, being born in Middlesbrough conferred eligibility, Chris Old was not kicked out of the Yorkshire team just because the Tories faffed about with local government in 1974.
That's why Surrey play at the oval. Surrey county used to extend there.
And also Hampshire used to play at Bournemouth
'Hampshire' as a place name predates 'England' as a place name.
If we're doing French cycle routes, then there's a great route from Dieppe to Paris. It's an old train line that was demolished and converted to a cycle path, and you are pretty much car free from Dieppe to the outskirts of Paris.
You do -however- end up going through some of the roughest Banlieues around Paris on the last leg of the journey.
Ooh french cycle route thread. I'm in. Done loads. Burgundy next year so any suggestions welcome.
I think we would be very stupid not to be thinking about a plan B.
Journalist: Does NATO have a backup plan in case the negotiations fail and the supply of American weapons to Ukraine stops?
Rutte: I don’t have one. I don’t think we should be thinking about a Plan B.
“I don’t think we should be thinking about a Plan B” – just the kind of phrase you want to hear from the head of an organization that’s supposed to be in charge of, damn it, security. https://x.com/pepel_klaasa/status/1996269158951203206
I've been beginning to vaguely plan my route for my walk in the Spring
The places I've chosen on the way are mostly (other than Nantes and la Rochelle) to guide the route where I wanted it to go, rather than places I particularly want to see
I decided to go on the West bank before Bordeaux because I don't want to walk through Bordeaux, and I recognise more place names there
Is there anything really good that I'm missing on that route?
The good news behind this is that I'm starting to feel sure that I'll be ready to do it
I'm a bit stronger and have more stamina every day. I'm not surprised that four months off has affected my fitness, but I was quite shocked by how pathetic I was after my lung abscess and infection, and so glad to be recovering to somewhere near where I was
And it's not even four hundred miles, with less than a mile climb. Should be easy over three weeks
"In November 2022, Harborne donated £1 million to The Office of Boris Johnson Ltd, one of the biggest donations ever made to an individual British politician.[13] Boris Johnson awarded Qinetiq, a company in which Harborne was the largest single shareholder, with a £80m MoD contract in January 2023."
Britain Trump.
See that’s misleading. Qinetiq has had lots of MOD contracts long before Boris Johnson became PM and will continue to do so after he left Number 10.
Of course. It's more dodgy financial cozying rather than straightforward corruption.
This is how you do the real thing. In a semi-plausibly deniable manner.
The contract was for the manufacturing of 3,500 drone motors, and the Army also “indicated it planned to order an additional 20,000 components” from Unusual Machines next year. Trump Jr. was given 200,000 shares of the company’s stock in 2024, which are now worth millions.
Now, another small startup funded by 1789 Capital, a venture capital firm where Trump Jr. is a partner, will receive a $620 million loan from the Defense Department, the Financial Times reported. Vulcan Elements, which currently has around 30 employees, produces rare-earth magnets, which can be used in “drones, radar systems and other military applications.” The contract was awarded just three months after 1789 invested in Vulcan...
I've been beginning to vaguely plan my route for my walk in the Spring
The places I've chosen on the way are mostly (other than Nantes and la Rochelle) to guide the route where I wanted it to go, rather than places I particularly want to see
I decided to go on the West bank before Bordeaux because I don't want to walk through Bordeaux, and I recognise more place names there
Is there anything really good that I'm missing on that route?
The good news behind this is that I'm starting to feel sure that I'll be ready to do it
I'm a bit stronger and have more stamina every day. I'm not surprised that four months off has affected my fitness, but I was quite shocked by how pathetic I was after my lung abscess and infection, and so glad to be recovering to somewhere near where I was
And it's not even four hundred miles, with less than a mile climb. Should be easy over three weeks
If it's anything like the north Spanish coast, your accommodation will either be super cheap or super expensive depending on time of year / holiday weekends etc. Are you going to camp or seek out gites? I tried some Chambre d'Hotes earlier this year and found them variable. Some of the 1* chains are cheap but take earplug for the paper thin walls.
Two blokes have been arrested on suspicion of explosives offences, 200 households have been arrested, and there will be a controlled explosion, but it is not terrorism related.
So why do these blokes have something explosive that needs to be blown up? And what is it?
Two blokes have been arrested on suspicion of explosives offences, 200 households have been arrested, and there will be a controlled explosion, but it is not terrorism related.
So why do these blokes have something explosive that needs to be blown up? And what is it?
200 households arrested? Sounds like someone was starting an army.
It makes little sense for Jenrick to defect - unless the Tories are on the way to oblivion, which seems unlikely, or Reform are storming to single-handed victory, also unlikely.
He's much better to present himself as the "Unite The Right" candidate who is acceptable to the people who matter in both parties. That means playing the long game and letting the leaderships of Farage and Badenoch play out. If he defects, he automatically makes himself unacceptable to too many Tories.
He's shouldn't let himself be hurried - he's only in his early 40s. See what the election of 2028/9 brings.
I've been beginning to vaguely plan my route for my walk in the Spring
The places I've chosen on the way are mostly (other than Nantes and la Rochelle) to guide the route where I wanted it to go, rather than places I particularly want to see
I decided to go on the West bank before Bordeaux because I don't want to walk through Bordeaux, and I recognise more place names there
Is there anything really good that I'm missing on that route?
The good news behind this is that I'm starting to feel sure that I'll be ready to do it
I'm a bit stronger and have more stamina every day. I'm not surprised that four months off has affected my fitness, but I was quite shocked by how pathetic I was after my lung abscess and infection, and so glad to be recovering to somewhere near where I was
And it's not even four hundred miles, with less than a mile climb. Should be easy over three weeks
Yes it is very flat which is a prerequisite when I'm cycling. All the accommodation we used was excellent and cheap, but it is a few years ago now.
Two blokes have been arrested on suspicion of explosives offences, 200 households have been arrested, and there will be a controlled explosion, but it is not terrorism related.
So why do these blokes have something explosive that needs to be blown up? And what is it?
I've been beginning to vaguely plan my route for my walk in the Spring
The places I've chosen on the way are mostly (other than Nantes and la Rochelle) to guide the route where I wanted it to go, rather than places I particularly want to see
I decided to go on the West bank before Bordeaux because I don't want to walk through Bordeaux, and I recognise more place names there
Is there anything really good that I'm missing on that route?
The good news behind this is that I'm starting to feel sure that I'll be ready to do it
I'm a bit stronger and have more stamina every day. I'm not surprised that four months off has affected my fitness, but I was quite shocked by how pathetic I was after my lung abscess and infection, and so glad to be recovering to somewhere near where I was
And it's not even four hundred miles, with less than a mile climb. Should be easy over three weeks
If it's anything like the north Spanish coast, your accommodation will either be super cheap or super expensive depending on time of year / holiday weekends etc. Are you going to camp or seek out gites? I tried some Chambre d'Hotes earlier this year and found them variable. Some of the 1* chains are cheap but take earplug for the paper thin walls.
I go end of April, beginning of May. Tends to be pretty cheap. I mix it up between gites, hotels and Airbnb apartments
I need to have somewhere to wash my clothes every five days
I only ever book the first night in advance. I arrange every other night on the day
I’m not sure why Middlesex are allowed to play as the county doesn’t exist.
Crisis club Middlesex begin plan to move away from Lord’s
Exclusive: County take step towards private ownership amid a Cricket Regulator investigation into their chief executive
Middlesex have taken the first step towards private ownership to fund a new home away from Lord’s.
The crisis-plagued county have told members they are actively exploring demutualisation after being plunged into fresh turmoil amid a Cricket Regulator investigation into their chief executive.
Andrew Cornish was absent from a meeting with members on Tuesday at which the club began a formal consultation over becoming just the fourth first-class county to go private.
Chairman Richard Sykes told Telegraph Sport that Cornish was “on a leave of absence”, adding: “The Cricket Regulator is involved and I can’t say more than that.”
The investigation into Cornish, who has denied any wrongdoing, is unrelated to demutualisation. But the timing could hardly be worse for the 161-year-old club as they look to join Durham, Northamptonshire and Hampshire in becoming privately owned.
As tenants of Marylebone Cricket Club at Lord’s, Middlesex are unique among the 18 counties as they do not own their home ground. This means they are unable to make money through non-cricket activities such as conferencing and events.
They play at a series of outgrounds such as Merchant Taylors’ School, Richmond and Radlett, but have long sought a “home away from home” to provide stability and generate income. Sykes believes the only way to raise the funds for this is via demutualisation.
Well it would be hard to locate a ground in a place which didn't.
Lord's doesn't exist?
It does, but it no longer is in Middlex, Headingley exists but it is still in Yorkshire.
Why are Lancs allowed to play at Old Trafford? Why are Warwickshire allowed to play in Birmingham etc etc etc
Because pre-1974 county boundaries are the only ones that matter.
Back when you had to be born in Yorkshire to play for Yorkshire, being born in Middlesbrough conferred eligibility, Chris Old was not kicked out of the Yorkshire team just because the Tories faffed about with local government in 1974.
People sometimes say that its only the councils that have changed not the counties. This is just not the case. The changes in 1974 were very clear, a county exists only to service as a boundary to local government, other changes that correspond such as lord lieutenant and some cases high sheriffs were also changed where necessary.
For instance, the county of Cumbria is gone, puff, no longer in existence, it is now the geographical area once known as Cumbria, and two counties of Cumberland and Westmorland & Furness created in its place.
As always there are things such as 'ceremonial counties', which really mean 'not a county anymore' and that it was too much hard work to change the borders of the things mentioned above having to involve the monarch etc.
I’m not sure why Middlesex are allowed to play as the county doesn’t exist.
Crisis club Middlesex begin plan to move away from Lord’s
Exclusive: County take step towards private ownership amid a Cricket Regulator investigation into their chief executive
Middlesex have taken the first step towards private ownership to fund a new home away from Lord’s.
The crisis-plagued county have told members they are actively exploring demutualisation after being plunged into fresh turmoil amid a Cricket Regulator investigation into their chief executive.
Andrew Cornish was absent from a meeting with members on Tuesday at which the club began a formal consultation over becoming just the fourth first-class county to go private.
Chairman Richard Sykes told Telegraph Sport that Cornish was “on a leave of absence”, adding: “The Cricket Regulator is involved and I can’t say more than that.”
The investigation into Cornish, who has denied any wrongdoing, is unrelated to demutualisation. But the timing could hardly be worse for the 161-year-old club as they look to join Durham, Northamptonshire and Hampshire in becoming privately owned.
As tenants of Marylebone Cricket Club at Lord’s, Middlesex are unique among the 18 counties as they do not own their home ground. This means they are unable to make money through non-cricket activities such as conferencing and events.
They play at a series of outgrounds such as Merchant Taylors’ School, Richmond and Radlett, but have long sought a “home away from home” to provide stability and generate income. Sykes believes the only way to raise the funds for this is via demutualisation.
Well it would be hard to locate a ground in a place which didn't.
Lord's doesn't exist?
It does, but it no longer is in Middlex, Headingley exists but it is still in Yorkshire.
Why are Lancs allowed to play at Old Trafford? Why are Warwickshire allowed to play in Birmingham etc etc etc
Because pre-1974 county boundaries are the only ones that matter.
Back when you had to be born in Yorkshire to play for Yorkshire, being born in Middlesbrough conferred eligibility, Chris Old was not kicked out of the Yorkshire team just because the Tories faffed about with local government in 1974.
People sometimes say that its only the councils that have changed not the counties. This is just not the case. The changes in 1974 were very clear, a county exists only to service as a boundary to local government, other changes that correspond such as lord lieutenant and some cases high sheriffs were also changed where necessary.
For instance, the county of Cumbria is gone, puff, no longer in existence, it is now the geographical area once known as Cumbria, and two counties of Cumberland and Westmorland & Furness created in its place.
As always there are things such as 'ceremonial counties', which really mean 'not a county anymore' and that it was too much hard work to change the borders of the things mentioned above having to involve the monarch etc.
Yorkshire CC haven't demutualised, though highly likely the members will make that mistake when asked to vote on it.
It makes little sense for Jenrick to defect - unless the Tories are on the way to oblivion, which seems unlikely, or Reform are storming to single-handed victory, also unlikely.
He's much better to present himself as the "Unite The Right" candidate who is acceptable to the people who matter in both parties. That means playing the long game and letting the leaderships of Farage and Badenoch play out. If he defects, he automatically makes himself unacceptable to too many Tories.
He's shouldn't let himself be hurried - he's only in his early 40s. See what the election of 2028/9 brings.
To my mind he seems like a crude opportunist, making a cynical attempt to benefit from the current popularity of simplistic right-wing rhetoric.
I don't think people like that tend to play a long-term waiting game.
It makes little sense for Jenrick to defect - unless the Tories are on the way to oblivion, which seems unlikely, or Reform are storming to single-handed victory, also unlikely.
He's much better to present himself as the "Unite The Right" candidate who is acceptable to the people who matter in both parties. That means playing the long game and letting the leaderships of Farage and Badenoch play out. If he defects, he automatically makes himself unacceptable to too many Tories.
He's shouldn't let himself be hurried - he's only in his early 40s. See what the election of 2028/9 brings.
To my mind he seems like a crude opportunist, making a cynical attempt to benefit from the current popularity of simplistic right-wing rhetoric.
I don't think people like that tend to play a long-term waiting game.
The righter of the former Con voters who have moved to Reform are sick of the play hard in opposition and then go back to business as normal in power. I was speaking to someone who has become a bit of a more direct action activist, and myself naively saying that you need to use your vote to get rid of people. He threw back that he has voted to reduce immigration for every election he can think of, and look where we are.
Will likely play well to Reform base (analogue is Trump's attacks on MSM). But not so much beyond it - BBC remains respected . And, on the face of it, having an argument with national broadcaster about whether you are a racist seems sub-optimal.
He does have a fair point here. Many BBC shows now have ‘trigger warnings’ even Little Britain and, yes, racist TV shows and shows that would fall foul of today’s modern sensibilities were in abundance on all three channels back then.
You also have the MSM trying to give the guy from Oxford Uni who gloated over Charlie Kirk’s death friendly interviews to plead his case as he shouldn’t pay for saying silly things when young. I don’t think that’s unfair. What Farage said over 40 years at school, who cares, it what he is now that matters.
Will likely play well to Reform base (analogue is Trump's attacks on MSM). But not so much beyond it - BBC remains respected . And, on the face of it, having an argument with national broadcaster about whether you are a racist seems sub-optimal.
Will likely play well to Reform base (analogue is Trump's attacks on MSM). But not so much beyond it - BBC remains respected . And, on the face of it, having an argument with national broadcaster about whether you are a racist seems sub-optimal.
Well the argument was about their racism at the time and that is something that the BBC and other broadcasters clearly feel,about their output back then.
This from the early eighties was deemed acceptable.
Will likely play well to Reform base (analogue is Trump's attacks on MSM). But not so much beyond it - BBC remains respected . And, on the face of it, having an argument with national broadcaster about whether you are a racist seems sub-optimal.
I can see the theory- it was respectable in the seventies, and Reform's demographic is nostalgic for the seventies, because they were young then as well.
After all, Nigel can hardly deny what he said and did, and he can't really go down the "I said it and I regret it", because Reform Social Conservatism is that you shouldn't regret words, no matter how hurty.
The rest of it is standard schoolboy bluster- "you can't tell me off because you're such a hypocrite..."
He does have a fair point here. Many BBC shows now have ‘trigger warnings’ even Little Britain and, yes, racist TV shows and shows that would fall foul of today’s modern sensibilities were in abundance on all three channels back then.
You also have the MSM trying to give the guy from Oxford Uni who gloated over Charlie Kirk’s death friendly interviews to plead his case as he shouldn’t pay for saying silly things when young. I don’t think that’s unfair. What Farage said over 40 years at school, who cares, it what he is now that matters.
I like the programmes where they start by saying it "contains moderate language". It sounds like they might be drafting a resolution on sheltered housing at a Lib Dem conference.
He does have a fair point here. Many BBC shows now have ‘trigger warnings’ even Little Britain and, yes, racist TV shows and shows that would fall foul of today’s modern sensibilities were in abundance on all three channels back then.
You also have the MSM trying to give the guy from Oxford Uni who gloated over Charlie Kirk’s death friendly interviews to plead his case as he shouldn’t pay for saying silly things when young. I don’t think that’s unfair. What Farage said over 40 years at school, who cares, it what he is now that matters.
While Farage is expert at whataboutery, straw men, rephrasing, non apologies and so on, I just draw attention to what, it is alleged, comes from the actual time when he was at school, written in 1981 by a teacher to the head. It includes these words:
“Another colleague, who teaches the boy, described his publicly professed racist and neo-fascist views; and he cited a particular incident in which Farage was so offensive to a boy in his set, that he had to be removed from the lesson. This master stated his view that this behaviour was precisely why the boy should not be made a prefect. Yet another colleague described how, at a Combined Cadet Force (CCF) camp organised by the college, Farage and others had marched through a quiet Sussex village very late at night shouting Hitler-youth songs.”
As contemporaneous evidence from decades before people knew he might be PM it is, if authentic (and Michael Crick says it is) it is of greater evidential value than all the (I have no doubt generally reliable) accounts from memories years later.
How important it is is a separate question. But I think Reform and Farage are troubled by this.
I'm back and I laughed like a fucking drain (in Arabic) when Charlie Kirk got domed. 💯
On topic... KB was a terrible choice for Conservitus Prime. It's hard to think of somebody less well placed to win back Red Wall racist shitbags from the Fukkers than a permanently narked globalist who's black but not "cool black" like Assata Shakur or Megan Thee Stalliion.
The three month course on political correctness seems to have been time well spent.
I thought it was indoctrination at a Saudi Madrassah?
We've already got too much power generation in Scotland, and insufficient grid capacity to move the electrons down to England. Put the nukes in the Home Counties.
It's absurd we don't just put the electrons in trucks and just drive them down to England
He does have a fair point here. Many BBC shows now have ‘trigger warnings’ even Little Britain and, yes, racist TV shows and shows that would fall foul of today’s modern sensibilities were in abundance on all three channels back then.
You also have the MSM trying to give the guy from Oxford Uni who gloated over Charlie Kirk’s death friendly interviews to plead his case as he shouldn’t pay for saying silly things when young. I don’t think that’s unfair. What Farage said over 40 years at school, who cares, it what he is now that matters.
a russian shill then?
I agree with Ed Davey. There should be an investigation into all of our politics to root out Russian influence. Labour and the Tories are hardly innocents either and, unlike Reform, they had power at the time.
Will likely play well to Reform base (analogue is Trump's attacks on MSM). But not so much beyond it - BBC remains respected . And, on the face of it, having an argument with national broadcaster about whether you are a racist seems sub-optimal.
I can see the theory- it was respectable in the seventies, and Reform's demographic is nostalgic for the seventies, because they were young then as well.
After all, Nigel can hardly deny what he said and did, and he can't really go down the "I said it and I regret it", because Reform Social Conservatism is that you shouldn't regret words, no matter how hurty.
The rest of it is standard schoolboy bluster- "you can't tell me off because you're such a hypocrite..."
I was brought up in a Jewish part of London in the 1960s and 1970s. 'Gas them all' and similar thoughts were never ever uttered either to Jewish people or, in my experience, in private 'banter'. It would have marked you out as abnormal. The great majority of us were brought up on stories from our father about serving in the war against fascism.
We've already got too much power generation in Scotland, and insufficient grid capacity to move the electrons down to England. Put the nukes in the Home Counties.
It's absurd we don't just put the electrons in trucks and just drive them down to England
An electron walked into a bar and asked the barman for a whiskey
I’m not sure why Middlesex are allowed to play as the county doesn’t exist.
Crisis club Middlesex begin plan to move away from Lord’s
Exclusive: County take step towards private ownership amid a Cricket Regulator investigation into their chief executive
Middlesex have taken the first step towards private ownership to fund a new home away from Lord’s.
The crisis-plagued county have told members they are actively exploring demutualisation after being plunged into fresh turmoil amid a Cricket Regulator investigation into their chief executive.
Andrew Cornish was absent from a meeting with members on Tuesday at which the club began a formal consultation over becoming just the fourth first-class county to go private.
Chairman Richard Sykes told Telegraph Sport that Cornish was “on a leave of absence”, adding: “The Cricket Regulator is involved and I can’t say more than that.”
The investigation into Cornish, who has denied any wrongdoing, is unrelated to demutualisation. But the timing could hardly be worse for the 161-year-old club as they look to join Durham, Northamptonshire and Hampshire in becoming privately owned.
As tenants of Marylebone Cricket Club at Lord’s, Middlesex are unique among the 18 counties as they do not own their home ground. This means they are unable to make money through non-cricket activities such as conferencing and events.
They play at a series of outgrounds such as Merchant Taylors’ School, Richmond and Radlett, but have long sought a “home away from home” to provide stability and generate income. Sykes believes the only way to raise the funds for this is via demutualisation.
Will likely play well to Reform base (analogue is Trump's attacks on MSM). But not so much beyond it - BBC remains respected . And, on the face of it, having an argument with national broadcaster about whether you are a racist seems sub-optimal.
Particularly when your defence isn't a denial that you said racist things, but that other people did racist things too.
I'm sorry Nigel but you're now a candidate for being Prime Minister. Not running to be a backbench MP. You should expect more scrutiny and whining about how it's not fair isn't a winning approach.
He does have a fair point here. Many BBC shows now have ‘trigger warnings’ even Little Britain and, yes, racist TV shows and shows that would fall foul of today’s modern sensibilities were in abundance on all three channels back then.
You also have the MSM trying to give the guy from Oxford Uni who gloated over Charlie Kirk’s death friendly interviews to plead his case as he shouldn’t pay for saying silly things when young. I don’t think that’s unfair. What Farage said over 40 years at school, who cares, it what he is now that matters.
Should the Oxford Union guy go on to lead a major political party with a solid chance of becoming PM, I'm sure he'll also be quizzed about the things he said when younger.
As for what Farage is now... well, people look at him, he's praising Trump, thinks the Ukraine war is the fault of NATO, and blames everything else on immigrants.
While Farage is expert at whataboutery, straw men, rephrasing, non apologies and so on, I just draw attention to what, it is alleged, comes from the actual time when he was at school, written in 1981 by a teacher to the head. It includes these words:
“Another colleague, who teaches the boy, described his publicly professed racist and neo-fascist views; and he cited a particular incident in which Farage was so offensive to a boy in his set, that he had to be removed from the lesson. This master stated his view that this behaviour was precisely why the boy should not be made a prefect. Yet another colleague described how, at a Combined Cadet Force (CCF) camp organised by the college, Farage and others had marched through a quiet Sussex village very late at night shouting Hitler-youth songs.”
As contemporaneous evidence from decades before people knew he might be PM it is, if authentic (and Michael Crick says it is) it is of greater evidential value than all the (I have no doubt generally reliable) accounts from memories years later.
How important it is is a separate question. But I think Reform and Farage are troubled by this.
Farage’s whataboutism on the BBC & 1970s is clever, but ultimately nothing more than a smokescreen to try and cover for his unwillingness to acknowledge or apologies for his teenage edgelordism. For all the faults of the 70s, the BBC was not the one bashing out the Horst Wessel song on the regular.
What’s weird about this story is that all Farage has to do is to acknowledge that he was a bit of a shit as a teenager, apologise to all concerned & move on - this far away from the next GE he has plenty of time to make this a non-story electorally. For some reason he feels unable to do this.
He does have a fair point here. Many BBC shows now have ‘trigger warnings’ even Little Britain and, yes, racist TV shows and shows that would fall foul of today’s modern sensibilities were in abundance on all three channels back then.
You also have the MSM trying to give the guy from Oxford Uni who gloated over Charlie Kirk’s death friendly interviews to plead his case as he shouldn’t pay for saying silly things when young. I don’t think that’s unfair. What Farage said over 40 years at school, who cares, it what he is now that matters.
Will likely play well to Reform base (analogue is Trump's attacks on MSM). But not so much beyond it - BBC remains respected . And, on the face of it, having an argument with national broadcaster about whether you are a racist seems sub-optimal.
Well the argument was about their racism at the time and that is something that the BBC and other broadcasters clearly feel,about their output back then.
This from the early eighties was deemed acceptable.
With all the flu vaccinations available today, especially for the elderly, why the increase ?
My wife has the flu vaccination and within a day or so has had a very bad case - which she passed onto me who didn't have the vaccination. It's either the wrong type of vaccination or it's a highly virulent strain. Perhaps the health bods can comment.
It takes several days for a flu vaccination to be effective, so she may have just been unlucky to catch flu before the effect from her vaccination had had time to kick in.
He does have a fair point here. Many BBC shows now have ‘trigger warnings’ even Little Britain and, yes, racist TV shows and shows that would fall foul of today’s modern sensibilities were in abundance on all three channels back then.
You also have the MSM trying to give the guy from Oxford Uni who gloated over Charlie Kirk’s death friendly interviews to plead his case as he shouldn’t pay for saying silly things when young. I don’t think that’s unfair. What Farage said over 40 years at school, who cares, it what he is now that matters.
Should the Oxford Union guy go on to lead a major political party with a solid chance of becoming PM, I'm sure he'll also be quizzed about the things he said when younger.
As for what Farage is now... well, people look at him, he's praising Trump, thinks the Ukraine war is the fault of NATO, and blames everything else on immigrants.
No, the Oxford guy said something stupid. He should be allowed to get on with his life.
As for your final sentence that really is untrue for the final two and his praise of Trump has been sparse and specific. As will all things nuance goes out the window and selective quotes apply. Happens to all parties. I think most people just glaze over.
He does have a fair point here. Many BBC shows now have ‘trigger warnings’ even Little Britain and, yes, racist TV shows and shows that would fall foul of today’s modern sensibilities were in abundance on all three channels back then.
You also have the MSM trying to give the guy from Oxford Uni who gloated over Charlie Kirk’s death friendly interviews to plead his case as he shouldn’t pay for saying silly things when young. I don’t think that’s unfair. What Farage said over 40 years at school, who cares, it what he is now that matters.
Ah, Little Britain would never be made today!
It has trigger warnings and probably wouldn’t. Matt Lucas has said as such and ‘Come Fly with Me’ by the same pair wouldn’t be made.
He does have a fair point here. Many BBC shows now have ‘trigger warnings’ even Little Britain and, yes, racist TV shows and shows that would fall foul of today’s modern sensibilities were in abundance on all three channels back then.
You also have the MSM trying to give the guy from Oxford Uni who gloated over Charlie Kirk’s death friendly interviews to plead his case as he shouldn’t pay for saying silly things when young. I don’t think that’s unfair. What Farage said over 40 years at school, who cares, it what he is now that matters.
Should the Oxford Union guy go on to lead a major political party with a solid chance of becoming PM, I'm sure he'll also be quizzed about the things he said when younger.
As for what Farage is now... well, people look at him, he's praising Trump, thinks the Ukraine war is the fault of NATO, and blames everything else on immigrants.
No, the Oxford guy said something stupid. He should be allowed to get on with his life.
As for your final sentence that really is untrue for the final two and his praise of Trump has been sparse and specific.
I’m not sure why Middlesex are allowed to play as the county doesn’t exist.
Crisis club Middlesex begin plan to move away from Lord’s
Exclusive: County take step towards private ownership amid a Cricket Regulator investigation into their chief executive
Middlesex have taken the first step towards private ownership to fund a new home away from Lord’s.
The crisis-plagued county have told members they are actively exploring demutualisation after being plunged into fresh turmoil amid a Cricket Regulator investigation into their chief executive.
Andrew Cornish was absent from a meeting with members on Tuesday at which the club began a formal consultation over becoming just the fourth first-class county to go private.
Chairman Richard Sykes told Telegraph Sport that Cornish was “on a leave of absence”, adding: “The Cricket Regulator is involved and I can’t say more than that.”
The investigation into Cornish, who has denied any wrongdoing, is unrelated to demutualisation. But the timing could hardly be worse for the 161-year-old club as they look to join Durham, Northamptonshire and Hampshire in becoming privately owned.
As tenants of Marylebone Cricket Club at Lord’s, Middlesex are unique among the 18 counties as they do not own their home ground. This means they are unable to make money through non-cricket activities such as conferencing and events.
They play at a series of outgrounds such as Merchant Taylors’ School, Richmond and Radlett, but have long sought a “home away from home” to provide stability and generate income. Sykes believes the only way to raise the funds for this is via demutualisation.
West Yorkshire North Yorkshire South Yorkshire East Riding
It's a bit of geography. East Anglia doesn't have a council, but it exists. Yorkshire has never had a county council, but it exists. Pre-1974, no-one sane claimed that, say, Rochdale wasn't in Lancashire or Nottingham wasn't in Nottinghamshire just because those county councils did not have jurisdiction over those settlements. There's a lot more attached to a county than simply a council. And I don't particularly care which bit of geography my council covers or attaches its name to (well I do, but for different reasons). What I want is an immutable set of sub-national units so I can answer to a question like 'where is Barnoldswick?', or be able to ask 'how many towns in Cheshire have had a club in the football league' without havibg to explain what I mean by 'Cheshire' (or, indeed, the football league, though that is a different issue). I'm not even particularly invested in Cheshire. If we were to declare 2025 to be year 0 and henceforth here is now Lancashire, fine. As long as we don't dick around with it any further. Not for the next thousand years, anyway.
While Farage is expert at whataboutery, straw men, rephrasing, non apologies and so on, I just draw attention to what, it is alleged, comes from the actual time when he was at school, written in 1981 by a teacher to the head. It includes these words:
“Another colleague, who teaches the boy, described his publicly professed racist and neo-fascist views; and he cited a particular incident in which Farage was so offensive to a boy in his set, that he had to be removed from the lesson. This master stated his view that this behaviour was precisely why the boy should not be made a prefect. Yet another colleague described how, at a Combined Cadet Force (CCF) camp organised by the college, Farage and others had marched through a quiet Sussex village very late at night shouting Hitler-youth songs.”
As contemporaneous evidence from decades before people knew he might be PM it is, if authentic (and Michael Crick says it is) it is of greater evidential value than all the (I have no doubt generally reliable) accounts from memories years later.
How important it is is a separate question. But I think Reform and Farage are troubled by this.
Farage’s whataboutism on the BBC & 1970s is clever, but ultimately nothing more than a smokescreen to try and cover for his unwillingness to acknowledge or apologies for his teenage edgelordism. For all the faults of the 70s, the BBC was not the one bashing out the Horst Wessel song on the regular.
What’s weird about this story is that all Farage has to do is to acknowledge that he was a bit of a shit as a teenager, apologise to all concerned & move on - this far away from the next GE he has plenty of time to make this a non-story electorally. For some reason he feels unable to do this.
There is rather a large difference in the current attitude of the BBC to what it broadcast fifty years ago, and Farage's attitude to his past "banter". Which is very much the point.
I’m not sure why Middlesex are allowed to play as the county doesn’t exist.
Crisis club Middlesex begin plan to move away from Lord’s
Exclusive: County take step towards private ownership amid a Cricket Regulator investigation into their chief executive
Middlesex have taken the first step towards private ownership to fund a new home away from Lord’s.
The crisis-plagued county have told members they are actively exploring demutualisation after being plunged into fresh turmoil amid a Cricket Regulator investigation into their chief executive.
Andrew Cornish was absent from a meeting with members on Tuesday at which the club began a formal consultation over becoming just the fourth first-class county to go private.
Chairman Richard Sykes told Telegraph Sport that Cornish was “on a leave of absence”, adding: “The Cricket Regulator is involved and I can’t say more than that.”
The investigation into Cornish, who has denied any wrongdoing, is unrelated to demutualisation. But the timing could hardly be worse for the 161-year-old club as they look to join Durham, Northamptonshire and Hampshire in becoming privately owned.
As tenants of Marylebone Cricket Club at Lord’s, Middlesex are unique among the 18 counties as they do not own their home ground. This means they are unable to make money through non-cricket activities such as conferencing and events.
They play at a series of outgrounds such as Merchant Taylors’ School, Richmond and Radlett, but have long sought a “home away from home” to provide stability and generate income. Sykes believes the only way to raise the funds for this is via demutualisation.
West Yorkshire North Yorkshire South Yorkshire East Riding
It's a bit of geography. East Anglia doesn't have a council, but it exists. Yorkshire has never had a county council, but it exists. Pre-1974, no-one sane claimed that, say, Rochdale wasn't in Lancashire or Nottingham wasn't in Nottinghamshire just because those county councils did not have jurisdiction over those settlements. There's a lot more attached to a county than simply a council. And I don't particularly care which bit of geography my council covers or attaches its name to (well I do, but for different reasons). What I want is an immutable set of sub-national units so I can answer to a question like 'where is Barnoldswick?', or be able to ask 'how many towns in Cheshire have had a club in the football league' without havibg to explain what I mean by 'Cheshire' (or, indeed, the football league, though that is a different issue). I'm not even particularly invested in Cheshire. If we were to declare 2025 to be year 0 and henceforth here is now Lancashire, fine. As long as we don't dick around with it any further. Not for the next thousand years, anyway.
Middlesex is an oddity though in that it was waved away and nobody much missed it.
While Farage is expert at whataboutery, straw men, rephrasing, non apologies and so on, I just draw attention to what, it is alleged, comes from the actual time when he was at school, written in 1981 by a teacher to the head. It includes these words:
“Another colleague, who teaches the boy, described his publicly professed racist and neo-fascist views; and he cited a particular incident in which Farage was so offensive to a boy in his set, that he had to be removed from the lesson. This master stated his view that this behaviour was precisely why the boy should not be made a prefect. Yet another colleague described how, at a Combined Cadet Force (CCF) camp organised by the college, Farage and others had marched through a quiet Sussex village very late at night shouting Hitler-youth songs.”
As contemporaneous evidence from decades before people knew he might be PM it is, if authentic (and Michael Crick says it is) it is of greater evidential value than all the (I have no doubt generally reliable) accounts from memories years later.
How important it is is a separate question. But I think Reform and Farage are troubled by this.
Farage’s whataboutism on the BBC & 1970s is clever, but ultimately nothing more than a smokescreen to try and cover for his unwillingness to acknowledge or apologies for his teenage edgelordism. For all the faults of the 70s, the BBC was not the one bashing out the Horst Wessel song on the regular.
What’s weird about this story is that all Farage has to do is to acknowledge that he was a bit of a shit as a teenager, apologise to all concerned & move on - this far away from the next GE he has plenty of time to make this a non-story electorally. For some reason he feels unable to do this.
There is rather a large difference in the current attitude of the BBC to what it broadcast fifty years ago, and Farage's attitude to his past "banter". Which is very much the point.
The BBC has changed; has he ?
How do you know the BBC has changed? Has anyone asked it lately? That's the point Farage is making.
We've already got too much power generation in Scotland, and insufficient grid capacity to move the electrons down to England. Put the nukes in the Home Counties.
It's absurd we don't just put the electrons in trucks and just drive them down to England
Or encourage the building of data centres in Scotland.
We've already got too much power generation in Scotland, and insufficient grid capacity to move the electrons down to England. Put the nukes in the Home Counties.
It's absurd we don't just put the electrons in trucks and just drive them down to England
An electron walked into a bar and asked the barman for a whiskey
The barman said are you sure…….
He said, yes I’m negative? Would work better for a positron.
Better joke is ‘Two atoms walking down the street. One says to the other - ‘I’ve just lost an electron!’. ‘Are you sure?’ Etc
Will likely play well to Reform base (analogue is Trump's attacks on MSM). But not so much beyond it - BBC remains respected . And, on the face of it, having an argument with national broadcaster about whether you are a racist seems sub-optimal.
Well the argument was about their racism at the time and that is something that the BBC and other broadcasters clearly feel,about their output back then.
This from the early eighties was deemed acceptable.
I’m not sure why Middlesex are allowed to play as the county doesn’t exist.
Crisis club Middlesex begin plan to move away from Lord’s
Exclusive: County take step towards private ownership amid a Cricket Regulator investigation into their chief executive
Middlesex have taken the first step towards private ownership to fund a new home away from Lord’s.
The crisis-plagued county have told members they are actively exploring demutualisation after being plunged into fresh turmoil amid a Cricket Regulator investigation into their chief executive.
Andrew Cornish was absent from a meeting with members on Tuesday at which the club began a formal consultation over becoming just the fourth first-class county to go private.
Chairman Richard Sykes told Telegraph Sport that Cornish was “on a leave of absence”, adding: “The Cricket Regulator is involved and I can’t say more than that.”
The investigation into Cornish, who has denied any wrongdoing, is unrelated to demutualisation. But the timing could hardly be worse for the 161-year-old club as they look to join Durham, Northamptonshire and Hampshire in becoming privately owned.
As tenants of Marylebone Cricket Club at Lord’s, Middlesex are unique among the 18 counties as they do not own their home ground. This means they are unable to make money through non-cricket activities such as conferencing and events.
They play at a series of outgrounds such as Merchant Taylors’ School, Richmond and Radlett, but have long sought a “home away from home” to provide stability and generate income. Sykes believes the only way to raise the funds for this is via demutualisation.
With all the flu vaccinations available today, especially for the elderly, why the increase ?
My wife has the flu vaccination and within a day or so has had a very bad case - which she passed onto me who didn't have the vaccination. It's either the wrong type of vaccination or it's a highly virulent strain. Perhaps the health bods can comment.
It takes several days for a flu vaccination to be effective, so she may have just been unlucky to catch flu before the effect from her vaccination had had time to kick in.
ISTR it happened a lot with covid vaccination too.
I’m not sure why Middlesex are allowed to play as the county doesn’t exist.
Crisis club Middlesex begin plan to move away from Lord’s
Exclusive: County take step towards private ownership amid a Cricket Regulator investigation into their chief executive
Middlesex have taken the first step towards private ownership to fund a new home away from Lord’s.
The crisis-plagued county have told members they are actively exploring demutualisation after being plunged into fresh turmoil amid a Cricket Regulator investigation into their chief executive.
Andrew Cornish was absent from a meeting with members on Tuesday at which the club began a formal consultation over becoming just the fourth first-class county to go private.
Chairman Richard Sykes told Telegraph Sport that Cornish was “on a leave of absence”, adding: “The Cricket Regulator is involved and I can’t say more than that.”
The investigation into Cornish, who has denied any wrongdoing, is unrelated to demutualisation. But the timing could hardly be worse for the 161-year-old club as they look to join Durham, Northamptonshire and Hampshire in becoming privately owned.
As tenants of Marylebone Cricket Club at Lord’s, Middlesex are unique among the 18 counties as they do not own their home ground. This means they are unable to make money through non-cricket activities such as conferencing and events.
They play at a series of outgrounds such as Merchant Taylors’ School, Richmond and Radlett, but have long sought a “home away from home” to provide stability and generate income. Sykes believes the only way to raise the funds for this is via demutualisation.
While Farage is expert at whataboutery, straw men, rephrasing, non apologies and so on, I just draw attention to what, it is alleged, comes from the actual time when he was at school, written in 1981 by a teacher to the head. It includes these words:
“Another colleague, who teaches the boy, described his publicly professed racist and neo-fascist views; and he cited a particular incident in which Farage was so offensive to a boy in his set, that he had to be removed from the lesson. This master stated his view that this behaviour was precisely why the boy should not be made a prefect. Yet another colleague described how, at a Combined Cadet Force (CCF) camp organised by the college, Farage and others had marched through a quiet Sussex village very late at night shouting Hitler-youth songs.”
As contemporaneous evidence from decades before people knew he might be PM it is, if authentic (and Michael Crick says it is) it is of greater evidential value than all the (I have no doubt generally reliable) accounts from memories years later.
How important it is is a separate question. But I think Reform and Farage are troubled by this.
Farage’s whataboutism on the BBC & 1970s is clever, but ultimately nothing more than a smokescreen to try and cover for his unwillingness to acknowledge or apologies for his teenage edgelordism. For all the faults of the 70s, the BBC was not the one bashing out the Horst Wessel song on the regular.
What’s weird about this story is that all Farage has to do is to acknowledge that he was a bit of a shit as a teenager, apologise to all concerned & move on - this far away from the next GE he has plenty of time to make this a non-story electorally. For some reason he feels unable to do this.
There is rather a large difference in the current attitude of the BBC to what it broadcast fifty years ago, and Farage's attitude to his past "banter". Which is very much the point.
The BBC has changed; has he ?
That’s what should matter here not what was said all those years ago although has the BBC really changed all that much.
I’m not sure why Middlesex are allowed to play as the county doesn’t exist.
Crisis club Middlesex begin plan to move away from Lord’s
Exclusive: County take step towards private ownership amid a Cricket Regulator investigation into their chief executive
Middlesex have taken the first step towards private ownership to fund a new home away from Lord’s.
The crisis-plagued county have told members they are actively exploring demutualisation after being plunged into fresh turmoil amid a Cricket Regulator investigation into their chief executive.
Andrew Cornish was absent from a meeting with members on Tuesday at which the club began a formal consultation over becoming just the fourth first-class county to go private.
Chairman Richard Sykes told Telegraph Sport that Cornish was “on a leave of absence”, adding: “The Cricket Regulator is involved and I can’t say more than that.”
The investigation into Cornish, who has denied any wrongdoing, is unrelated to demutualisation. But the timing could hardly be worse for the 161-year-old club as they look to join Durham, Northamptonshire and Hampshire in becoming privately owned.
As tenants of Marylebone Cricket Club at Lord’s, Middlesex are unique among the 18 counties as they do not own their home ground. This means they are unable to make money through non-cricket activities such as conferencing and events.
They play at a series of outgrounds such as Merchant Taylors’ School, Richmond and Radlett, but have long sought a “home away from home” to provide stability and generate income. Sykes believes the only way to raise the funds for this is via demutualisation.
Farage puts the BBC on the naughty step for asking about allegations about him at Dulwich College
This is probably the most politically damaging situation Nigel has ever found himself in. Many Reform supporters are self-proclaimed Philosemites, so the allegations that their man was a vile Jew-baiter cannot be easily waved away. In fact, Nigel has even made himself vulnerable to anti-bigotry attacks from Tommy Robinson, which isn't optimal.
I'm not sure the matter of Farage's schoolboy politics has wings. I've not heard anyone offline mention it.
I think its the Russian stuff that is killing Farage, most people just assume that he was a bully and a tosser at school and the allegations clearly have more than the whiff of truth.
The smoking gun question is: "How much were you paid to present your Russia Today show, and what is morally different between what you did for the Russians then and what Nathan Gill has just been sentenced to 10.5 years for doing for the Russians, more recently?"
Love how invested people on this board think anyone else is about Russia. People seem to forget how detatched the average voter is from the stuff that actually affects them - when you step down to foreign affairs it really is a whole other level of DGAF. And banking of Reform voters thinking Farage isn't patriotic is taking optimism well past the point of naivety.
That's how Tories think. Happily others do care about questions of morality. Not as much as many of us would like but probably more than you speak for
While Farage is expert at whataboutery, straw men, rephrasing, non apologies and so on, I just draw attention to what, it is alleged, comes from the actual time when he was at school, written in 1981 by a teacher to the head. It includes these words:
“Another colleague, who teaches the boy, described his publicly professed racist and neo-fascist views; and he cited a particular incident in which Farage was so offensive to a boy in his set, that he had to be removed from the lesson. This master stated his view that this behaviour was precisely why the boy should not be made a prefect. Yet another colleague described how, at a Combined Cadet Force (CCF) camp organised by the college, Farage and others had marched through a quiet Sussex village very late at night shouting Hitler-youth songs.”
As contemporaneous evidence from decades before people knew he might be PM it is, if authentic (and Michael Crick says it is) it is of greater evidential value than all the (I have no doubt generally reliable) accounts from memories years later.
How important it is is a separate question. But I think Reform and Farage are troubled by this.
Farage’s whataboutism on the BBC & 1970s is clever, but ultimately nothing more than a smokescreen to try and cover for his unwillingness to acknowledge or apologies for his teenage edgelordism. For all the faults of the 70s, the BBC was not the one bashing out the Horst Wessel song on the regular.
What’s weird about this story is that all Farage has to do is to acknowledge that he was a bit of a shit as a teenager, apologise to all concerned & move on - this far away from the next GE he has plenty of time to make this a non-story electorally. For some reason he feels unable to do this.
There is rather a large difference in the current attitude of the BBC to what it broadcast fifty years ago, and Farage's attitude to his past "banter". Which is very much the point.
The BBC has changed; has he ?
How do you know the BBC has changed? Has anyone asked it lately? That's the point Farage is making.
I’m currently involved with the BBC over a slot next week on morning live. The producer chap couldn’t have been typical of exactly what you think a young BBC type would be. Stupid baseball cap worn indoors etc. Nice people though. Hopefully the stuff will get to air.
I’m not sure why Middlesex are allowed to play as the county doesn’t exist.
Crisis club Middlesex begin plan to move away from Lord’s
Exclusive: County take step towards private ownership amid a Cricket Regulator investigation into their chief executive
Middlesex have taken the first step towards private ownership to fund a new home away from Lord’s.
The crisis-plagued county have told members they are actively exploring demutualisation after being plunged into fresh turmoil amid a Cricket Regulator investigation into their chief executive.
Andrew Cornish was absent from a meeting with members on Tuesday at which the club began a formal consultation over becoming just the fourth first-class county to go private.
Chairman Richard Sykes told Telegraph Sport that Cornish was “on a leave of absence”, adding: “The Cricket Regulator is involved and I can’t say more than that.”
The investigation into Cornish, who has denied any wrongdoing, is unrelated to demutualisation. But the timing could hardly be worse for the 161-year-old club as they look to join Durham, Northamptonshire and Hampshire in becoming privately owned.
As tenants of Marylebone Cricket Club at Lord’s, Middlesex are unique among the 18 counties as they do not own their home ground. This means they are unable to make money through non-cricket activities such as conferencing and events.
They play at a series of outgrounds such as Merchant Taylors’ School, Richmond and Radlett, but have long sought a “home away from home” to provide stability and generate income. Sykes believes the only way to raise the funds for this is via demutualisation.
West Yorkshire North Yorkshire South Yorkshire East Riding
It's a bit of geography. East Anglia doesn't have a council, but it exists. Yorkshire has never had a county council, but it exists. Pre-1974, no-one sane claimed that, say, Rochdale wasn't in Lancashire or Nottingham wasn't in Nottinghamshire just because those county councils did not have jurisdiction over those settlements. There's a lot more attached to a county than simply a council. And I don't particularly care which bit of geography my council covers or attaches its name to (well I do, but for different reasons). What I want is an immutable set of sub-national units so I can answer to a question like 'where is Barnoldswick?', or be able to ask 'how many towns in Cheshire have had a club in the football league' without havibg to explain what I mean by 'Cheshire' (or, indeed, the football league, though that is a different issue). I'm not even particularly invested in Cheshire. If we were to declare 2025 to be year 0 and henceforth here is now Lancashire, fine. As long as we don't dick around with it any further. Not for the next thousand years, anyway.
Middlesex is an oddity though in that it was waved away and nobody much missed it.
The North Ilford Ghetto hasn't been part of the Essex Massive since 1965!
I’m not sure why Middlesex are allowed to play as the county doesn’t exist.
Crisis club Middlesex begin plan to move away from Lord’s
Exclusive: County take step towards private ownership amid a Cricket Regulator investigation into their chief executive
Middlesex have taken the first step towards private ownership to fund a new home away from Lord’s.
The crisis-plagued county have told members they are actively exploring demutualisation after being plunged into fresh turmoil amid a Cricket Regulator investigation into their chief executive.
Andrew Cornish was absent from a meeting with members on Tuesday at which the club began a formal consultation over becoming just the fourth first-class county to go private.
Chairman Richard Sykes told Telegraph Sport that Cornish was “on a leave of absence”, adding: “The Cricket Regulator is involved and I can’t say more than that.”
The investigation into Cornish, who has denied any wrongdoing, is unrelated to demutualisation. But the timing could hardly be worse for the 161-year-old club as they look to join Durham, Northamptonshire and Hampshire in becoming privately owned.
As tenants of Marylebone Cricket Club at Lord’s, Middlesex are unique among the 18 counties as they do not own their home ground. This means they are unable to make money through non-cricket activities such as conferencing and events.
They play at a series of outgrounds such as Merchant Taylors’ School, Richmond and Radlett, but have long sought a “home away from home” to provide stability and generate income. Sykes believes the only way to raise the funds for this is via demutualisation.
With all the flu vaccinations available today, especially for the elderly, why the increase ?
My wife has the flu vaccination and within a day or so has had a very bad case - which she passed onto me who didn't have the vaccination. It's either the wrong type of vaccination or it's a highly virulent strain. Perhaps the health bods can comment.
It takes several days for a flu vaccination to be effective, so she may have just been unlucky to catch flu before the effect from her vaccination had had time to kick in.
She had the vaccination about two weeks before but then she catches 'something' every year about now. She prefers to be injected for everything. I don't bother and just catch whatever she has. Saves on a trip to the GP.
He does have a fair point here. Many BBC shows now have ‘trigger warnings’ even Little Britain and, yes, racist TV shows and shows that would fall foul of today’s modern sensibilities were in abundance on all three channels back then.
You also have the MSM trying to give the guy from Oxford Uni who gloated over Charlie Kirk’s death friendly interviews to plead his case as he shouldn’t pay for saying silly things when young. I don’t think that’s unfair. What Farage said over 40 years at school, who cares, it what he is now that matters.
Should the Oxford Union guy go on to lead a major political party with a solid chance of becoming PM, I'm sure he'll also be quizzed about the things he said when younger.
As for what Farage is now... well, people look at him, he's praising Trump, thinks the Ukraine war is the fault of NATO, and blames everything else on immigrants.
No, the Oxford guy said something stupid. He should be allowed to get on with his life.
As for your final sentence that really is untrue for the final two and his praise of Trump has been sparse and specific.
I’m not sure why Middlesex are allowed to play as the county doesn’t exist.
Crisis club Middlesex begin plan to move away from Lord’s
Exclusive: County take step towards private ownership amid a Cricket Regulator investigation into their chief executive
Middlesex have taken the first step towards private ownership to fund a new home away from Lord’s.
The crisis-plagued county have told members they are actively exploring demutualisation after being plunged into fresh turmoil amid a Cricket Regulator investigation into their chief executive.
Andrew Cornish was absent from a meeting with members on Tuesday at which the club began a formal consultation over becoming just the fourth first-class county to go private.
Chairman Richard Sykes told Telegraph Sport that Cornish was “on a leave of absence”, adding: “The Cricket Regulator is involved and I can’t say more than that.”
The investigation into Cornish, who has denied any wrongdoing, is unrelated to demutualisation. But the timing could hardly be worse for the 161-year-old club as they look to join Durham, Northamptonshire and Hampshire in becoming privately owned.
As tenants of Marylebone Cricket Club at Lord’s, Middlesex are unique among the 18 counties as they do not own their home ground. This means they are unable to make money through non-cricket activities such as conferencing and events.
They play at a series of outgrounds such as Merchant Taylors’ School, Richmond and Radlett, but have long sought a “home away from home” to provide stability and generate income. Sykes believes the only way to raise the funds for this is via demutualisation.
I’m not sure why Middlesex are allowed to play as the county doesn’t exist.
Crisis club Middlesex begin plan to move away from Lord’s
Exclusive: County take step towards private ownership amid a Cricket Regulator investigation into their chief executive
Middlesex have taken the first step towards private ownership to fund a new home away from Lord’s.
The crisis-plagued county have told members they are actively exploring demutualisation after being plunged into fresh turmoil amid a Cricket Regulator investigation into their chief executive.
Andrew Cornish was absent from a meeting with members on Tuesday at which the club began a formal consultation over becoming just the fourth first-class county to go private.
Chairman Richard Sykes told Telegraph Sport that Cornish was “on a leave of absence”, adding: “The Cricket Regulator is involved and I can’t say more than that.”
The investigation into Cornish, who has denied any wrongdoing, is unrelated to demutualisation. But the timing could hardly be worse for the 161-year-old club as they look to join Durham, Northamptonshire and Hampshire in becoming privately owned.
As tenants of Marylebone Cricket Club at Lord’s, Middlesex are unique among the 18 counties as they do not own their home ground. This means they are unable to make money through non-cricket activities such as conferencing and events.
They play at a series of outgrounds such as Merchant Taylors’ School, Richmond and Radlett, but have long sought a “home away from home” to provide stability and generate income. Sykes believes the only way to raise the funds for this is via demutualisation.
West Yorkshire North Yorkshire South Yorkshire East Riding
There is no such place as Port Vale. Time to sack that club off.
Or Raith.
"They'll be dancing in the streets of Kirkcaldy tonight!"
Surrey don't play in Surrey, Warwickshire don't play in Warwickshire, Gloucestershire don't play in Gloucestershire and Lancashire don't play in Lancashire.
While Farage is expert at whataboutery, straw men, rephrasing, non apologies and so on, I just draw attention to what, it is alleged, comes from the actual time when he was at school, written in 1981 by a teacher to the head. It includes these words:
“Another colleague, who teaches the boy, described his publicly professed racist and neo-fascist views; and he cited a particular incident in which Farage was so offensive to a boy in his set, that he had to be removed from the lesson. This master stated his view that this behaviour was precisely why the boy should not be made a prefect. Yet another colleague described how, at a Combined Cadet Force (CCF) camp organised by the college, Farage and others had marched through a quiet Sussex village very late at night shouting Hitler-youth songs.”
As contemporaneous evidence from decades before people knew he might be PM it is, if authentic (and Michael Crick says it is) it is of greater evidential value than all the (I have no doubt generally reliable) accounts from memories years later.
How important it is is a separate question. But I think Reform and Farage are troubled by this.
Farage’s whataboutism on the BBC & 1970s is clever, but ultimately nothing more than a smokescreen to try and cover for his unwillingness to acknowledge or apologies for his teenage edgelordism. For all the faults of the 70s, the BBC was not the one bashing out the Horst Wessel song on the regular.
What’s weird about this story is that all Farage has to do is to acknowledge that he was a bit of a shit as a teenager, apologise to all concerned & move on - this far away from the next GE he has plenty of time to make this a non-story electorally. For some reason he feels unable to do this.
There is rather a large difference in the current attitude of the BBC to what it broadcast fifty years ago, and Farage's attitude to his past "banter". Which is very much the point.
The BBC has changed; has he ?
How do you know the BBC has changed? Has anyone asked it lately? That's the point Farage is making.
Farage puts the BBC on the naughty step for asking about allegations about him at Dulwich College
This is probably the most politically damaging situation Nigel has ever found himself in. Many Reform supporters are self-proclaimed Philosemites, so the allegations that their man was a vile Jew-baiter cannot be easily waved away. In fact, Nigel has even made himself vulnerable to anti-bigotry attacks from Tommy Robinson, which isn't optimal.
I'm not sure the matter of Farage's schoolboy politics has wings. I've not heard anyone offline mention it.
I think its the Russian stuff that is killing Farage, most people just assume that he was a bully and a tosser at school and the allegations clearly have more than the whiff of truth.
The smoking gun question is: "How much were you paid to present your Russia Today show, and what is morally different between what you did for the Russians then and what Nathan Gill has just been sentenced to 10.5 years for doing for the Russians, more recently?"
Love how invested people on this board think anyone else is about Russia. People seem to forget how detatched the average voter is from the stuff that actually affects them - when you step down to foreign affairs it really is a whole other level of DGAF. And banking of Reform voters thinking Farage isn't patriotic is taking optimism well past the point of naivety.
That's how Tories think. Happily others do care about questions of morality. Not as much as many of us would like but probably more than you speak for
It’s a perennial debate on here - what will or will not cut through. A number of posters in 2020 were adamant that no one cared about Cummings’ Castle Barnard eye-test and, in late 2021, the outset of Partygate.
I’m not sure why Middlesex are allowed to play as the county doesn’t exist.
Crisis club Middlesex begin plan to move away from Lord’s
Exclusive: County take step towards private ownership amid a Cricket Regulator investigation into their chief executive
Middlesex have taken the first step towards private ownership to fund a new home away from Lord’s.
The crisis-plagued county have told members they are actively exploring demutualisation after being plunged into fresh turmoil amid a Cricket Regulator investigation into their chief executive.
Andrew Cornish was absent from a meeting with members on Tuesday at which the club began a formal consultation over becoming just the fourth first-class county to go private.
Chairman Richard Sykes told Telegraph Sport that Cornish was “on a leave of absence”, adding: “The Cricket Regulator is involved and I can’t say more than that.”
The investigation into Cornish, who has denied any wrongdoing, is unrelated to demutualisation. But the timing could hardly be worse for the 161-year-old club as they look to join Durham, Northamptonshire and Hampshire in becoming privately owned.
As tenants of Marylebone Cricket Club at Lord’s, Middlesex are unique among the 18 counties as they do not own their home ground. This means they are unable to make money through non-cricket activities such as conferencing and events.
They play at a series of outgrounds such as Merchant Taylors’ School, Richmond and Radlett, but have long sought a “home away from home” to provide stability and generate income. Sykes believes the only way to raise the funds for this is via demutualisation.
West Yorkshire North Yorkshire South Yorkshire East Riding
There is no such place as Port Vale. Time to sack that club off.
Or Raith.
"They'll be dancing in the streets of Kirkcaldy tonight!"
Surrey don't play in Surrey, Warwickshire don't play in Warwickshire, Gloucestershire don't play in Gloucestershire and Lancashire don't play in Lancashire.
He does have a fair point here. Many BBC shows now have ‘trigger warnings’ even Little Britain and, yes, racist TV shows and shows that would fall foul of today’s modern sensibilities were in abundance on all three channels back then.
You also have the MSM trying to give the guy from Oxford Uni who gloated over Charlie Kirk’s death friendly interviews to plead his case as he shouldn’t pay for saying silly things when young. I don’t think that’s unfair. What Farage said over 40 years at school, who cares, it what he is now that matters.
Should the Oxford Union guy go on to lead a major political party with a solid chance of becoming PM, I'm sure he'll also be quizzed about the things he said when younger.
As for what Farage is now... well, people look at him, he's praising Trump, thinks the Ukraine war is the fault of NATO, and blames everything else on immigrants.
No, the Oxford guy said something stupid. He should be allowed to get on with his life.
As for your final sentence that really is untrue for the final two and his praise of Trump has been sparse and specific.
Comments
You do -however- end up going through some of the roughest Banlieues around Paris on the last leg of the journey.
It's not unusual to see large differences from one year to the next. What would be worrying would be if, say, the trend in a multi-year average was moving in the wrong direction.
https://ukhsa.blog.gov.uk/2025/11/11/how-well-will-i-be-protected-from-flu-this-year-with-the-current-uk-influenza-vaccines/
Also Covid is still around, and still pretty nasty compared to the average respiratory virus.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2dr8gzdz1wo
So brace. Its going to be a nasty one.
While Sherlock Holmes had been detailing this singular series of events, we had been whirling through the outskirts of the great town until the last straggling houses had been left behind, and we rattled along with a country hedge upon either side of us. Just as he finished, however, we drove through two scattered villages, where a few lights still glimmered in the windows.
"We are on the outskirts of Lee," said my companion. "We have touched on three English counties in our short drive, starting in Middlesex, passing over an angle of Surrey, and ending in Kent. See that light among the trees? That is The Cedars, and beside that lamp sits a woman whose anxious ears have already, I have little doubt, caught the clink of our horse's feet."
My feel for prevalence is probably skewed by two family members having had it in the last fortnight.
Journalist: Does NATO have a backup plan in case the negotiations fail and the supply of American weapons to Ukraine stops?
Rutte: I don’t have one. I don’t think we should be thinking about a Plan B.
“I don’t think we should be thinking about a Plan B” – just the kind of phrase you want to hear from the head of an organization that’s supposed to be in charge of, damn it, security.
https://x.com/pepel_klaasa/status/1996269158951203206
I'm a bit stronger and have more stamina every day. I'm not surprised that four months off has affected my fitness, but I was quite shocked by how pathetic I was after my lung abscess and infection, and so glad to be recovering to somewhere near where I was
And it's not even four hundred miles, with less than a mile climb. Should be easy over three weeks
It's more dodgy financial cozying rather than straightforward corruption.
This is how you do the real thing.
In a semi-plausibly deniable manner.
https://popular.info/p/update-trump-jr-backed-startup-receives?r=bgo2&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true
In October, Popular Information reported that the Pentagon awarded a contract to Unusual Machines, an obscure drone company that President Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., joined as an advisor in November 2024, despite having no notable experience with drones or military contracting.
The contract was for the manufacturing of 3,500 drone motors, and the Army also “indicated it planned to order an additional 20,000 components” from Unusual Machines next year. Trump Jr. was given 200,000 shares of the company’s stock in 2024, which are now worth millions.
Now, another small startup funded by 1789 Capital, a venture capital firm where Trump Jr. is a partner, will receive a $620 million loan from the Defense Department, the Financial Times reported. Vulcan Elements, which currently has around 30 employees, produces rare-earth magnets, which can be used in “drones, radar systems and other military applications.” The contract was awarded just three months after 1789 invested in Vulcan...
Two blokes have been arrested on suspicion of explosives offences, 200 households have been arrested, and there will be a controlled explosion, but it is not terrorism related.
So why do these blokes have something explosive that needs to be blown up? And what is it?
I thought UXB, but there are no arrests fo UXBs.
https://news.sky.com/liveblog-webview/politics-latest-budget-taxes-reeves-starmer-labour-badenoch-farage-12593360
He's much better to present himself as the "Unite The Right" candidate who is acceptable to the people who matter in both parties. That means playing the long game and letting the leaderships of Farage and Badenoch play out. If he defects, he automatically makes himself unacceptable to too many Tories.
He's shouldn't let himself be hurried - he's only in his early 40s. See what the election of 2028/9 brings.
I need to have somewhere to wash my clothes every five days
I only ever book the first night in advance. I arrange every other night on the day
For instance, the county of Cumbria is gone, puff, no longer in existence, it is now the geographical area once known as Cumbria, and two counties of Cumberland and Westmorland & Furness created in its place.
As always there are things such as 'ceremonial counties', which really mean 'not a county anymore' and that it was too much hard work to change the borders of the things mentioned above having to involve the monarch etc.
I don't think people like that tend to play a long-term waiting game.
He threw back that he has voted to reduce immigration for every election he can think of, and look where we are.
You also have the MSM trying to give the guy from Oxford Uni who gloated over Charlie Kirk’s death friendly interviews to plead his case as he shouldn’t pay for saying silly things when young. I don’t think that’s unfair. What Farage said over 40 years at school, who cares, it what he is now that matters.
This from the early eighties was deemed acceptable.
https://youtu.be/fKiWVf0uyxE?si=Y3H3PyRZGJ7cNARU
After all, Nigel can hardly deny what he said and did, and he can't really go down the "I said it and I regret it", because Reform Social Conservatism is that you shouldn't regret words, no matter how hurty.
The rest of it is standard schoolboy bluster- "you can't tell me off because you're such a hypocrite..."
https://x.com/FindoutnowUK/status/1996572051478282392
Find Out Now
@FindoutnowUK
Find Out Now voting intention:
🟦 Reform UK: 31% (-)
🔵 Conservatives: 20% (+2)
🟢 Greens: 18% (+1)
🔴 Labour: 14% (-1)
🟠 Lib Dems: 11% (-1)
Changes from 26th November
[Find Out Now, 3rd December, N=2,591]
“Another colleague, who teaches the boy, described his publicly professed racist and neo-fascist views; and he cited a particular incident in which Farage was so offensive to a boy in his set, that he had to be removed from the lesson. This master stated his view that this behaviour was precisely why the boy should not be made a prefect. Yet another colleague described how, at a Combined Cadet Force (CCF) camp organised by the college, Farage and others had marched through a quiet Sussex village very late at night shouting Hitler-youth songs.”
As contemporaneous evidence from decades before people knew he might be PM it is, if authentic (and Michael Crick says it is) it is of greater evidential value than all the (I have no doubt generally reliable) accounts from memories years later.
How important it is is a separate question. But I think Reform and Farage are troubled by this.
The barman said are you sure…….
West Yorkshire
North Yorkshire
South Yorkshire
East Riding
I'm sorry Nigel but you're now a candidate for being Prime Minister. Not running to be a backbench MP. You should expect more scrutiny and whining about how it's not fair isn't a winning approach.
As for what Farage is now... well, people look at him, he's praising Trump, thinks the Ukraine war is the fault of NATO, and blames everything else on immigrants.
What’s weird about this story is that all Farage has to do is to acknowledge that he was a bit of a shit as a teenager, apologise to all concerned & move on - this far away from the next GE he has plenty of time to make this a non-story electorally. For some reason he feels unable to do this.
The BBC would not bradcast that now and even shows on the scroll-past channels from the era carry warnings about language and attitudes.
Does Farage deny his anti-semetic "banter"?
If not, will he apologise and explain how his views have changed?
As for your final sentence that really is untrue for the final two and his praise of Trump has been sparse and specific. As will all things nuance goes out the window and selective quotes apply. Happens to all parties. I think most people just glaze over.
Yorkshire has never had a county council, but it exists.
Pre-1974, no-one sane claimed that, say, Rochdale wasn't in Lancashire or Nottingham wasn't in Nottinghamshire just because those county councils did not have jurisdiction over those settlements.
There's a lot more attached to a county than simply a council.
And I don't particularly care which bit of geography my council covers or attaches its name to (well I do, but for different reasons). What I want is an immutable set of sub-national units so I can answer to a question like 'where is Barnoldswick?', or be able to ask 'how many towns in Cheshire have had a club in the football league' without havibg to explain what I mean by 'Cheshire' (or, indeed, the football league, though that is a different issue).
I'm not even particularly invested in Cheshire. If we were to declare 2025 to be year 0 and henceforth here is now Lancashire, fine. As long as we don't dick around with it any further. Not for the next thousand years, anyway.
The BBC has changed; has he ?
SpeakerJohnson swears in Rep. Matt Van Epps (R-TN) to the House of Representatives.
https://x.com/cspan/status/1996593611622756570
Pure happenstance.
(This early in the winter here, clear weather for an entire day is uncommon.)
Better joke is ‘Two atoms walking down the street. One says to the other - ‘I’ve just lost an electron!’. ‘Are you sure?’ Etc
https://news.sky.com/story/israel-allowed-to-take-part-in-eurovision-2026-as-at-least-two-countries-withdraw-13479330
He’s been critical of Putin, rightly so.
The Wests timid reaction to the initial annexation of parts of Ukraine and Georgia was poor. How much of that was Russian influence ?