Mailwatch(ed) Forum

Christ. I didn't know it was this bad. This is the loss on this project only. Total debt is a lot more. And by a council that represents 103.000 people only (ex-Labour disaster area Croydon, with lower overall debts, has 389,000).

Somebody BTL suggest Spelthorne may have a reckoning coming too- can't confirm, but would be surprised if there weren't more that got burned by commercial property.

Article on Spelthorne from last year. It's also a small council- population slightly less than Woking. Some quite serious write downs here, which the council suggests is OK because they aren't intending to sell them. I wonder why the value of commercial property is going down, eh?

https://www.lgcplus.com/finance/value-o ... 0-08-2022/

I've posted too much today, but I keep finding stuff.

What's the point here? Labour can't get money off a donor if it doesn't approve of everything he donates to? That might not be a wise attack line.

I wouldn’t even go here.

It’s very dangerous for them. That Russian money that flushed through.

Greg Hands isn't far off getting his own thread. He's recognised a terrifying danger to life as we know it. "Watchdogs".

Osborne created the OBR, Michael Hestletine created the National Audit Office, But Labour doing it, "huge expansion of the state".

It's a bit "I Love 2010" too. Quangos, boo. If you want to abolish them, ask yourself if it's better that somebody like Greg Hands have direct political control.

I prefer his earlier stuff. Give us The Letter again, Greg.

He's the worst person I've ever seen at this stuff.

This is obviously a puff piece, but it does at least sound like Hands was suited for his job as Trade Minister.

https://www.politico.eu/article/greg-ha ... rade-ties/

Why take him away from a role like this to play at being a bruiser? Shouldn't he be Chief Secretary to the Treasury or something? Talking of which, the current incumbent, John Glen, has been spending his time writing to Rachel Reeves. So maybe Greg wouldn't be any better in that role.

Is this Dale Vince guy the new George Soros?
Douglas Bader had more legs than ‘Labour- Not sponsored by big oil.’
Speaking of which, 30p Lee has his knickers in a twist about novelist Ben MacIntyre. The man behind lefty woke SAS Rogue Heroes.

If Anderson gets upset about the true character of Douglas Bader, something which has been public knowledge for years , wait 'til he finds out what a cunt Guy Gibson was.

Fuck me.

"Warts and all" is now a "vile attack"? The release of the Colditz book gets a positive review here in the lefty woke Spectator.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the ... t-colditz/

One of the points made there is of the poor treatment of lower ranks. I thought Lee was interested in class.

Mrs A, who met Bader, reckoned he was a hideous snob and racist...

Lord Moylan is David Brent. "I could have done what Texas do. I think they knew that at the time, probably what spurred them on"

Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Sun Jun 04, 2023 4:33 pm Lord Moylan is David Brent. "I could have done what Texas do. I think they knew that at the time, probably what spurred them on"

From parts of the brains trust that blathered on about trade deals be able to be agreed upon in an afternoon...

There’s an episode in the TV series in which a daring-do pilot hero enters the prison but spurns the escape committee as load of resource wasting public school jolly japes. He wanted to stay and teach classes to keep the POWs minds occupied to boost morale. Not seeing officers hop it while they have zero chance of getting on the list.

Michael Green, author of the "Art of Coarse..." books said that he resolved to vote Labour after one particularly unwarranted dressing-down from an officer and that the 1945 landslide came as no surprise to squaddies who associated the Tories with the snobbish officers they'd endured for the previous six years.

John get elected on a manifesto supporting Net Zero.

Ah but everyone knew Boris was a liar and it was priced in and we hosted the conference...

There's a line of analysis that suggests Leigh Mallory and Bader's "Big Wing" strategy was a quick way to defeat in the battle of Britain.

After the battle he conspired with Leigh Mallory to unseat Keith Park, whose implementation of Dowding's "Woodchipper" strategy wrote down the luftwaffe over 7 weeks while maintaning a viable core of RAF fighters operating in the South.

Leigh Mallory then instituted wing-scale cross channel raids during 1941.
These suffered 4:1 losses against defending German fighters, and saw Bader being shot down and captured.


Once you get past the Spitfires, Michael Caine and Christopher Plummer, there's some serious shithousery going on in fighter command.
The sort of stuff that would have seen a courtmartial in a more senior service.

As a friend and supporter of his 12 Group commander, Air Vice Marshal Trafford Leigh-Mallory, Bader joined him as an active exponent of the controversial "Big Wing" theory which provoked much debate in the RAF during the battle.
Bader was an outspoken critic of the careful "husbanding" tactics being used by Air Vice Marshal Keith Park, the commander of 11 Group.
Park was supported by Fighter Command Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, the overall commander.

While it is not known whether Mallory and Bader were aware that the claims of the RAF and Big Wings were exaggerated, they certainly tried to use them as a potent tool with which to remove Park and Dowding from command and pursue the Big Wing tactic

RAF ace Johnnie Johnson offered his own view of Bader and the Big Wing:

Douglas was all for the Big Wings to counter the German formation[s].
I think there was room for both tactics—the Big Wings and the small squadrons.
It might well have been fatal had Park always tried to get his squadrons into "Balbos", for not only would they have taken longer to get to their height, but sixty or seventy packed climbing fighters could have been seen for miles and would have been sitting ducks for higher 109s.

Also nothing would have pleased Göring more than for his 109s to pounce on large numbers of RAF fighters.
Indeed, Adolf Galland and Werner Mölders complained about the elusiveness of Fighter Command and Park's brilliance was that by refusing to concentrate his force he preserved it throughout the battle.

This does not mean, as Bader pointed out at the time, that two or three Balbos from 10 and 12 Groups, gaining height beyond the range of the 109s, would not have played a terrific part in the fighting.

Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Sun Jun 04, 2023 8:31 pm John get elected on a manifesto supporting Net Zero.

They’re not closing it down, they are expanding greener and nuclear energy and moving the costs with exploration of North Sea oil over to that, which actually you have more guarantee over.

The North Sea oil rigs will continue to pump oil for err the open market.

When I was at primary school, one of our teachers told us (during some history work on WW2) that when he was a young lad in the early 70s he’d been at an airshow where Bader had attended. He’d wanted to get his autograph and pursued him across the airfield after a talk he’d given, and told us ‘he could really move on his tin legs’.

Years later, a mate of mine became a teacher himself and worked at the same school as our old primary teacher, and -as he had to teach the topic - asked him whether he remembered anything else he could use. Our old teacher apparently laughed and said he couldn’t have told us about the rest when we were kids, but Bader had been rude and arrogant during his talk and questions afterwards, and though he did give him an autograph had said “There. Now fuck off.” to a hero-worshiping 10-year-old.