Focus turns to Sedwill

Things are moving fast in the breaking down of old conventions. And the old adage about those who live by the sword are playing out - or the rule of karma for the gentler souls amongst our readers. Over the weekend, capo di capi Mark Sedwill has featured more in the press than Gavin Williamson, his most recent victim. In the past, it was considered not the business of the top mandarin and National Security Advisor to be the story.

Unlike Jeremy Heywood and Gus O'Donnell, Sedwill is feared and respected rather than liked. He has made few friends either in the press lobby or amongst MPs, including cabinet ministers. A technocrat, a cyborg security warrior, he is perhaps perfectly suited to the temperament of an autistic Prime Minister unable to connect emotionally with either voters or colleagues. He comes across as an alpha wolf, feeding with the pack, greeting and grooming, but ever ready to curl back his lips to expose his fearsome teeth and assert his primacy. Poor Gavin, who reminded me of our class idiot, ever entertaining but frequently caned, was simply not up to a scrap with a killer.

Thankfully the press pack are not ready to let it lie. They smell a story, and I think they are right. For some time Sedwill has been unable to kill claims advanced by Sir Richard Dearlove and Maj Gen Julian Thompson that the Sedwill-approved Selmayr-Robbins Treaty betrayed UK defence interests. Huawei is a part of the same campaign.

At the heart of it is Britain's future defence alignment - with a choice between an EU-led, Brussels driven military Axis or a US-led reformed NATO defence pact. The popular suspicion is that Sedwill favours the former whilst professional spooks and soldiers favour the latter.

Sedwill was caught out last year when Alastair Brockbank, then a Cabinet Office security adviser and now a member of Robbins' team, was captured on tape giving assurances that the UK would stay loyal to PESCO interests after Brexit, and would find a way to keep paying the EU to develop its army.

For the EU, defence is all about money, contracts and corruption. Military effectiveness is second. When one looks for the beef, there's a whole bullock being carved up right now. A trade off is rumoured whereby the Navy will contract out to Spain the building of new support RFA vessels in a quid-pro-quo for not niggling over Gibraltar. It's also being called protection money.  In Germany, not only are there plans to abandon the US made F35 5G aircraft for the Euro made 3G Eurofighter, and even to contract H&K to develop a new infantry rifle that uses neither the 5.56 x 45 or the 7.62 x  51 NATO cartridges. Europe's big globals sniff the billions of tax money swilling around and want the snouts in the trough to be solely from this side of the Atlantic.

At the helm of the UK sits Sedwill. It is quite right that we should subject him to far greater public scrutiny - largely through televised questioning by Select Committees, the sole recourse that Brexit MPs have left to expose the truth.

Sedwill - Williamson's nemesis

May in last ditch struggle to stop Brexit

The Telegraph reports that the besieged May is engaged in a last ditch struggle to block Brexit. Securing Corbyn's co-operation in sabotaging Britain's exit looks doomed to failure as even the Comrades are unwilling to leave their fingerprints on an act of electoral suicide when they can leave May to achieve this for the Conservatives on her own. The Telegraph claims she is planning a new referendum with three choices -

Mrs May and her advisers are understood to have 'war gamed' the possibility of giving voters a choice of her deal, no deal and remain, though Government sources insisted it would only become relevant if talks with Labour collapse and Parliament forces a vote on a second referendum.

It is exactly this three-way option that is designed to split the Leave vote and allow her to defy the Brexit vote. However, since it is so clearly biased, it is unlikely to be agreed even by the deeply Remainer Electoral Commission - it would earn them opprobrium from across the developed democratic world and mire them in legal challenges. In this form, a referendum would be almost impossible to engineer before the end of October - our final end-date for EU membership. Agreeing it would mean agreeing an extension with the EU.

There are two key problems with May's final defence of her Führerbunker; with Farage set to storm the EP in July, it is unlikely the unelected officials in Brussels will want to prolong this beyond October. The second is that May's political life is limited. The latest poll of members by Conservative Home with 82% demanding May's departure now means her claws will be dug out from the Number Ten doorposts before too long - probably after the EP elections.

The Party's members will only vote for a new Leader who vows to deliver the Brexit we voted for in 2016. The Chairman called upon us to show Unity. Well, I reckon 82% demonstrates a fair degree of bloody Unity.

Theresa May wipes out 1,300 Conservative Councillors

May's done it - she's creeping up on John Major's 1995 record losses for Conservative local government. With 10 councils yet to declare, she's more than decimated Conservative local government; she started with 5,521 local councillors and has eliminated some 1,300 -  24% of Tory Council seats lost.

In contrast Labour look to have lost about 100 out of 2,300 -  around 4%. However, Labour should have been drowning in seats. Last night McDonnell was predicting 400 Labour gains on TV - which meant he was hoping for at least 600.

Now Mrs May must realise this is a damning indictment of her leadership, but never explain and never apologise is the politicians' creed, so both she and the Party chairman have blamed Parliament's failure to pass the Selmayr-Robbins treaty for the debacle. Not her fault at all, they aver.

When the facts sink in over the weekend, when Local Associations stunned by the magnitude of the defeat turn their shock to anger, May's position will worsen considerably. Can she hang on until the Euros in a couple of weeks deal the death-blow? I hope so. I've got a bottle of Prosecco waiting in the cellar for her smug, silly medicated-to-the-eyeballs face trying to laugh off the 3 Conservative MEPs likely to be returned to Brussels.

In fact I'm already feeling quite chirpy - the massacre has somehow cheered me. Surely the end cannot now be far away?

Local elections - Westminster gets a Slapping

Early Doors post - will update as the day goes on 

Conservative and Labour parties have lied their arses off over Brexit, betrayed the nation and yesterday both received a decent slapping from the electorate - nothing earth-shattering, that's yet to come, but a clear enough message.

UKIP have taken an unexpected drubbing, support tainted I think by Batten's infatuation with Yaxley-Lemon. Surprising winners of the night have been the Independent candidates - winning almost as many seats as the LibDems. I suspect if there had been more sensible local independent candidates standing, they would have taken many more seats.

The rise of the Independents in the locals may be a one-off or may presage the start of something magnificent, a grass-roots push for Localism, untainted by the mendacious corrupt foulness of national politics.

And those of you who pushed so strongly for spoiling ballot papers look to have been vindicated. Not, as thought, because the returning officers have to declare the numbers of spoiled papers (which loses some meaning at ward level) but because conscientious, dedicated local council workers have to scrutinise each one individually - a process that takes a great deal of time. As an act of civil disobedience, it works - I've seen a very cross Labour apparatchik on the box frustrated at the delay to his result from the sheer number of spoiled papers that had to be checked, re-checked and confirmed.

May - Corbyn Pact

Now I guess we're getting a taste of how Poland felt on 23rd August 1939.

Götterdämmerung

It is apposite that today marks the anniversary of Hitler's giving effect to his decision to rid the world of his own evil by putting a bullet in his brain. For the previous weeks he had lived in a fantasy world, nominally still running Germany and moving phantom armies and ghost divisions in imaginary counter-attacks as the Germany actually under his control shrank to a few hundred metres around his coward's bunker. It is instructive how those on the verge of self-destruction somehow manage to exclude all realisation of that reality from their consciousness.

There is of course no direct comparison whatsoever between the Leader of my Party and that of the NSDAP; the sainted Theresa is as far from being a fascist monster as the Pope. But they do share the same insouciance when faced with impending self-destruction.

I know many of you enjoy telling me how dreadful Conservatives are, but I think you're mistaken. I think the vast majority of ordinary grass-roots Conservatives are decent, honourable, sensible and responsible voters with a high rate of democratic participation. We are betrayed by the Party leaders and general staff in Westminster. A privileged and isolated elite, these patrician destroyers are in the process of driving a party that has lasted 200 years to its death. All because of their stubborn stupidity, vain self-regard and one incredibly lethal woman - Mrs May.

The great question is whether she can manage to destroy our country before she follows our Party into the flames. By all accounts the talks with Corbyn's Labour have thrown everything into the deal, every red line, every Tory principle, just for the sake of this most incapable and disloyal of women, so that the utterly useless May can leave office after passing a deal. She's past caring what deal - any deal will do. She no longer cares for nation or Party, only for the shattered remnants of what can be rescued as a 'legacy'. 

For Conservative councillors and activists in local government, I am so sorry. You really do not deserve this double betrayal by our own MPs and CCHQ first of Brexit and now of Conservatism.

The stench of corruption from Germany's businesses

Back in April 2018 we ran a fairly lengthy piece on German corruption. The German government had in effect encouraged widespread business corruption with law changes that made it easy to get away with - and for the past decade, it has been pervasive, deep and substantial. We quoted a report that found

A staggering 43 percent of German business executives polled by EY (formerly Ernst & Young) think bribery and corruption are fairly commonplace in Europe's economic powerhouse. That's a big jump from just 26 percent in 2015.

So who cares if most of German business is bent, the nation's judicial system ranks with Greece in terms of probity, shareholder protection is amongst the lowest in the developed world and there is little creditor protection? Who cares that courts and lawyers are beyond the reach of most victims, who must passively take the hits from German corrupt dealing?  Well, we wrote

This deep and endogenous German economic corruption will not play well in the rest of Europe. The UK, the Netherlands and the Scandinavian nations, with low levels of corruption and high scoring of commercial rectitude and probity, will be feeling fouled by contact with German corruption - and will now be adding up the commercial losses that German crookedness has cost them. The southern nations will be aggrieved that they have been bullied, coerced and hectored by a deeply crooked nation wearing a false disguise of moral superiority. And eastern nations such as Poland and Bulgaria, countries Germany has robbed of billions of Euros in corrupt complicity with Gazprom, will be looking at concrete measures to get their money back.

Yesterday Matthew Lynn broke yet another tale of German corruption in the Telegraph. The latest scandal is fraud at Wirecard - a rapidly ascending start-up that replaced the moribund Commerzbank in Germany's DAX index. The Telegraph and the FT are reluctant to be too specific; one suspects m'learned friends are hovering, and even the linked piece in the Anti-Corruption Digest is careful. Lynn writes

We have an image of Germany as a very law-abiding country, and on one level that is certainly true. The streets are safe, and no one can pay a bribe to get out of a parking fine.... yet right at the top of the country’s biggest companies it is starting to look painfully obvious there is an honesty issue.

The Germans are fond of portraying themselves as the exemplars of responsible, socially conscious capitalism. In truth, however, the hypocrisy is starting to become nauseating. There is clearly something rotten within Germany’s business culture – and even worse, no one seems to want to do anything about it.

It is the sort of casual, 'who cares?' corruption that saw Martin Selmayr's crooked appointment to EU capo shrugged off and Germany's biggest industrial names reduced to international gutter reputations no better than bootlegging prohibition gangsters.

So don't be surprised that when the downturn begins to bite, the entire German commercial edifice comes tumbling down - and the German economy proves as much of a paper tiger as did Soviet military might in 1989.

Ships with Dicks

Huawei - Why May must go now

The Huawei mess is yet another mess wholly of Theresa May's making. There is a technology cold-war underway between the US and China, and we are being asked to make a choice. Making a choice is simply something of which May is incapable - and so she has repeated, in the case of the UK 5G network, exactly the brainless false-compromise that has betrayed Brexit.

Let's take the US side for half the network, she has decided, and go with Huawei for the other half.

Thus demonstrating her utter, fatal, unquestionable inability to serve in any great office of State, let alone that of Prime Minister. It is an approach so stupid, so flawed, so as to make her previous worst decision, to try to both Leave the EU and Remain at the same time, appear almost cerebral.

Dear God, how did such cretins ever succeed in getting elected?

Meanwhile
=========
A consistent Brexit narrative is gaining an wider araldite-like traction; Patrick O'Flynn in Spiked

The Tories, the party of government, are primarily responsible for all of this. We can see now that they installed a Remainer as leader and they negotiated a Remain version of Brexit, behind everyone’s backs. From very early on, Theresa May was sending Philip Hammond and Greg Clarke round to all the multinational corporations to say, ‘Don’t worry lads, nothing is going to change for you’. They promised the multinationals completely frictionless trade, which meant they would be making all kinds of concessions on other things. Brexit voters, on the other hand, were being told they would get the real deal. It’s been a massive con from the start.

 Yep we were right all along about the Globalist betrayers in government.

Globalists - Committed to 'Big State' global government, a world-wide constitution and harmonisation of laws and standards, open borders, the primacy of global economic activity and the global corporatists, worldwide legal, judicial and justice systems, abrogation of personal freedoms to a class of unelected appointed experts who will act in the general good, the growth of the 'citizen of everywhere', the rule of benign technocracy and managerialism over 'old fashioned' democracy, the supremacy of supranational State authorities – EU, UN, IMF.

When politicians betray their electors, all trust is gone

No one should be surprised that a Conservative minister who had signed the Official Secrets Act then leaked the outcome of a National Security Council meeting to the press. When ministers, civil servants and politicians have all betrayed Britain's electors, their self-destruction by bitter schism, internal betrayal, back-stabbing, blackmail and vicious in-fighting could never be far away. We are seeing the consequence of a breakdown of both Theresa May's and parliament's moral authority. A biased Speaker acting against the people, lying politicians discarding their election promises, the inane babblings of unelected effete popinjays such as 'Lord' Adonis (if you could buy him for what he's worth and sell him for what he thinks he's worth, as my old ex-NCB tutor used to say, you could retire on the profit) and a State media abandoned by half the population for its lies and distortions are all signs that our patrician class are reaping the results of their betrayal.

The commanders have lost control of their occupying army. All discipline is gone, the troops no longer respond to orders. It's every politician for himself - grabbing what they can in their headlong retreat, pursued by a vengeful electorate determined to clear their stink from our democracy.

Our nation is at a point of great danger. These foul betrayers must go - and make way for a reform, a renewal of our demos, for only a great cull of these patrician betrayers can rescue Britain.

Belgian Globalist sneers at Britain

Belgian globalist and MEP Phillipe Lamberts sneered at Britain today, saying

"Global Britain has already happened and it happened through the EU not through nuclear bombs and nuclear submarines .... Brexit is a lose-lose so you cannot make a success of it"

Well, it could be worse. We could be Belgian.

So, the Globalists think they've won. We'll see.

Globalists - Committed to global government, a world-wide constitution and harmonisation of laws and standards, open borders, the primacy of global economic activity, worldwide legal, judicial and justice systems, abrogation of personal freedoms to a class of unelected appointed experts who will act in the general good, the growth of the 'citizen of everywhere', the rule of benign technocracy over 'old fashioned' democracy, the supremacy of supranational State authorities – EU, UN, IMF.

Varadkar's cringemaking letters

It seems that the Teasack is a dangerous man when left alone with some official letter-paper and a biro. It started when his letter to Kylie came to light; in his childish inward-sloping script Varadkar gushed 

Dear Kylie,

just wanted to drop you a short note in advance of the concert in Dublin.
I am really looking forward to it. Am a huge fan!
I understand you are staying in the Merrion Hotel which is just across the street from my office in Government Buildings.

If you like, I’d love to welcome you to Ireland personally

Leo
Teasack (Irish Prime Minister)

Now journalists want to see a letter he wrote to Melania Trump - but the Teasack's officials, wary of more cringemaking gushing being revealed, are so far refusing an Irish FOI request on grounds that it deals with 'International Relations'.

However, we can take a stab at the likely content;

Dear Dear Melania

How wonderful you looked today! How do you get your hair like that? You must tell me your secret. In fact, we should be besties and share all our secrets - I do a thing with yoghurt and cucumber peel which is very good for the private places! I loved your shoes - I could die for the chance of Manolo Blahviks like that, with the cute little bows!

Anyway must dash - Jean-Claude wants me on the phone (boring!)

Leo
Teasack (Irish Prime Minister)

Further requests are to be submitted for copies of the Teasack's letters to Beyonce, Lady Gaga and the blond boy from 'Talent'.

EU protectionism kills trade and innovation

I have commented before on a deeply protectionist, almost corrupt, culture of business in the EU that appears to offer advantages but in reality strangles innovation, stifles growth and deepens a sclerotic inefficiency that costs jobs. My old example was hairdressers; here a hairdresser must serve a three-year aprenticeship before she can pick up the scissors, whilst in the UK a 16 year old straight from school can hang her shingle without hindrance and get creative with hair. The result is that most women here look like their hair is styled by a Soviet camp tonsorist from a 1950s gulag, whilst Brit girls pioneer the world's most fashionable and glam hairstyles.

Over the Easter weekend I recalled another. I've known about this for three years but for some reason haven't written of it; it is the network of 'business only' suppliers here. It's the way in which buyers in these nations are forced to engage professional tradespersons by restricting or preventing other means of carrying out the work. Many firms simply won't deal with you unless you have a business registration number. There is no equivalent to UK Builders' Merchants for example - just the DIY stores or the 'profi' wholesalers. One can't buy glass at €8/m2 in stock pieces to cut yourself but must order each pane in a finished size at €35/m2 from a glass retailer. You can't have a palette of bags of mortar delivered next day or buy rolls of building membrane except at consumer prices.

There are ways round it for some things - Germans are slightly less constipated than Austrians, and consequently it's been cheaper, including transport cost, to order bulk plasterboard and insulation from Northern Germany than from the local stockists of the same-brand material down the road. It's always worth searching .pl and .si sites as both Poland and Slovenia sometimes carry German and Austrian made materials at a substantial discount.

The most absurd result of local protectionism is Travertine. I'm tiling the new bathrooms in Travertine stone tiles, quarried and cut in Italy, just to the south. You'd think they'd be cheap, then; wrong. You can't buy them for under €65/m2 anywhere here - but I can buy the same tiles from the UK for €22/m2. The transport costs were exactly the same. Now explain to me how it's cheaper to truck stone from Italy to the UK and back to Austria than direct to Austria?

Over the weekend I needed to order some German Häfele ironmongery for a project - you may know the name, we use it widely in the UK. No chance. Häfele only sell to the trade - and helpfully offer to put you in touch with a local profi to do the work for you. They even make their buyers sign a declaration to promise they won't resell the Häfele kit.

Well, you won't be surprised that all of these restrictive practices are unlawful in England - not illegal, but contrary to Common Law. Contracts in restraint of trade are unenforceable. My hinges are available here on the grey market for €24 a pair; I've ordered them openly from Birmingham, from a trade supplier, at £9 a pair and will have them within a week.

It's a small thing perhaps, but an irritating barrier to economic freedom. It's one of the reasons for the zero VAT threshold here - you're either a tradesman or you're not, with no room for the sub-threshold activity we have in the UK. But it will kill them - it's a system that can only work in the absence of the internet.   

Attenborough and other Eco-Liars

Readers may recall we don't have much time for Eco-hypocrisy and virtue signalling; back on 2017 we pointed out that Bloomberg's much acclaimed 'greenest ever' building actually cost around 250,000 tonnes of CO2 to build - a Carbon cost that will NEVER be repaid by energy-efficient plant over the building's entire life. It will be demolished as it stands - a vanity project, a rich man's virtue signalling, and a huge Carbon cost.

Well, another Eco-liar, it emerges is Attenborough. many viewers will have seen his heartbreaking footage of an Orang Utan attacking the backhoe that had destroyed its home. As the Daily Remain writes, these forests are cleared and replanted with Palm Oil plantations to satisfy the European market for 'clean' 'sustainable' and 'environmentally friendly' biofuels. He didn't tell you that, did he?

His home destroyed for EU virtue signallers to feel good about themselves

 CHRIST IS RISEN! Happy Easter All.

Lyra McKee's death at the hands of Remainers

The three-year long refusal by the losing Remain side in the referendum to accept the result has so far seen a bent Speaker and betrayer parliament of lying MPs using every effort to nullify the people's choice, the State media and all but one newspaper stoking the fires of anti-Brexit hatred and the illiberal metropolitan elites, who also think that 'chavs' and 'gammons' should be denied the vote, using every means to pervert, distort and disrupt our exit from the EU. Even the Deep State, a cabal of anti-democratic mandarins who will expect honours for their betrayal of a democracy that they should defend, have used all means both legal and unlawful to sabotage Britain's democratic outcome

Nowhere else in the world would such an unconscionable delay be tolerated. No advanced democracy in the world would permit this travesty of governance, this denial of a voice to the 17.4 million who won, to continue.

Tragically, the Remainers, in refusing so aggressively to accept a clear democratic majority, have inflamed weaker and more barbarous minds to violence. The death of Lyra McKee at the hands of a Remainer 'New IRA' gunman is a new low in our democracy.

We will catch and imprison the gunman, but make no mistake - it is the mass of bien-pensant Brexit Deniers, our betrayer MPs who have blocked Brexit, May's toxic Remainer government and our poisonous Remainer media who were equally responsible for pulling the trigger. For them there will be no forgiveness.

Toxic Theresa May election broadcast "cost us another million votes"

I was chatting on the phone last night to a London chum after I had accidentally caught the Conservative election broadcast transmitted just before the ITV evening news. I found it extraordinary that the thing had featured May at all - but half way through, there she was. There was no escaping the most loathed woman in Britain. I suspect about half the ITV audience flicked channels at this point. I mentioned this in passing on the phone later - to be told "Don't! The idiots have just cost us another million votes".

As the Telegraph reports today, Conservative canvassers out on the knock have been trying to pretend that Toxic May isn't the leader of the Conservative Party and that she hasn't completely screwed up Brexit. They have been met by angry shouty Tory voters either slamming the door in their faces or venting their anger over the parliamentary and government sabotage of Brexit. For anyone who missed it, the misjudged May broadcast is HERE. I won't embed it. There's some content for which we won't give blog-space. 

I think the difference between these local elections and the Euros is that for the former, Conservative voters are simply going on strike. They will not turn out to vote, far less to campaign or donate. Even if the Labour or LibDem loonies win Councils from us, who cares? Council tax has a legal ceiling (which most English Councils have hit this year) and stuff that Tory voters don't mind paying for - a decent school in their catchment area, pot-hole free roads and a local library - have either gone or can't be made worse by a Marxist administration. For the Euros, they will vote TBP. 

My guess is that an appalling local government result will galvanise final moves to oust May. I suspect many fellow Conservatives think the same. You really can't blame them.

Toxic May talks down to the nation - election broadcast

Reasons to be Cheerful ..

Ian Dury should be compulsory for all those suffering the Brexit Blues.

Today very briefly, I offer you Farage achieving top place in the pre-EP opinion polling (which as a loyal Conservative I should deprecate cough cough) and Boris achieving top place in an Express leadership opinion poll. Add to this the spectacle of the self-loving little Sadiq Khan making an utter arse of himself in London trying to get down wiv der yoof (actually most of them went to £45k a year public schools and live in Surrey with Mummy) who in turn are pretending to get down wiv der Man.

Enough to make one smile.

Macron's 'Five year' pledge is pure fantasy

Little Macron confirmed his status as a fantasist yesterday when he pledged that repairs to Notre Dame would be finished in five years. He featured on this blog previously for his vision of Europe based on the computer game Sim City, a teenage boy's pubescent make-believe fantasy world.

Using structural steel or reinforced concrete one can create large buildings quickly. Portland cement gains strength rapidly. Gypsum plasters set almost instantly. Off-site manufacturing of entire bathrooms and kitchens which are craned into place is increasingly common. Click-together polymeric components even avoid Tadeusz, his nailbag and hammer.

However, lime mortars and lime plasters mean slow building - as does ashlar or cut stone. Lime mortars cure by CO2, and this can take months. When cathedrals were first built, the building season halted in the Autumn, before the first frosts. Recent work was covered in straw and thatched and left to cure for several months. There are no accelerants for hydraulic lime.

The damage to cracked but uncollapsed rib-vaults at Notre Dame will be infinitely harder to repair than the collapsed ones. Those flying buttresses are presently pushing the roofless walls inwards, and a temporary but substantial steel structure will be needed to stabilise the nave - wind loadings could still collapse the fragile structure.

Not to mention finding sufficient European Oak timbers. As an aside, a Nelson-era frigate took about 600 oak trees to build - and we had a fleet of 900 ships. Those oaks were planted in the 17th century by Pepys expressly for that future purpose. We no longer have a reserve of large structural oaks. For the stone, old quarries must be re-opened, masons recruited from all over Europe and the cathedral close will be alive with the clink of stone on bankers.

My own guess is twenty years. At least between fifteen and twenty-five. Something in that scale. Notre Dame will be covered with a vast temporary roof and be encumbered within by a massive steel structural frame for a generation. Macron is a fool and away with the fairies.

And now for the first of my EP election memes - I return to Twitter for such events with all the enthusiasm of a plumber clearing a blocked toilet.  

Our cultural heritage is more important than foreign aid

I wept bitter tears of loss as I watched Notre Dame burn and in pain pleaded to God for his mercy.

It is early, but this morning the structure still stands, the photographs suggesting the rib-vaulted roof over the crossing had gone, and a further part of the stone vaulting over the Chancel. However, the roof over the Nave is still at great risk - the fire will have inflicted extremes of heat and streams of molten lead from the roof covering, the cold water used to extinguish the flames then likely to crack the stone. The timber roof structure dated from 1220 - 1240 and is alas now wholly gone.

Notre Dame's 13th century timber roof over the rib-vaulted Nave

When the Germans reduced the historic centre of Warsaw to rubble in the last war, the Poles swore to rebuild it exactly as it was, and even under a repressive and authoritarian Communist regime they did so. Every roof tile and window exactly as it was before the Teuton barbarians subjected it to HE. And this was exactly the right thing to do - for our European cultural heritage has a value above rubies; our nations and our peoples, our forbears and ancestors live in these stones and in this wood and in the craft and art and love with which they proclaimed for the world to see our being, our Sein.

Here's a clear message to government and to our pathetic failure of a Parliament, both antithetical to the interests of the People. Our cultural heritage is more important by a factor of magnitude than pissing away billions of our taxes to corrupt third-world tyrants in the name of modish liberalism. Notre Dame is a warning to you; you have a duty to use every effort, take every measure, spend whatever is needed, to secure our own cultural heritage from damage, neglect, negligence or malicious damage. Your failure will not be tolerated.

Mental derangement by Brexit

David Lammy isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer. He's also what my old professor would have called an unlucky wight - a blundering ninny with the gift of making himself look foolish. So it's hardly surprising that Lammy should be one of those most publicly afflicted by an increasingly common condition - mental derangement by Brexit.

Boris Johnson writes with an amused tolererance in this morning's Telegraph about Lammy's uncontrolled outburst terming Johnson a 'Nazi'. In Britain this is not an offence. However, living in a country in which calling someone a National Socialist without justification in print or on screen is a criminal offence, it is instructive to contemplate that MP or not, if Lammy had said what he said here, he would find the handcuffs around his plump wrists.

And this in turn leads me to offer Remainers a crumb of comfort. Whilst the UK remains tied to the EU, calling me a Nazi in the comments will make a correspondent liable to detention and extradition using the European Arrest Warrant - if the offence includes an element of racism or xenophobia, which Lammy's jejune mud slinging appeared to have - and an appearance before a Napoleonic court of a sort unknown to British law. Brexit, my mentally deranged friends, will paradoxically free you from this risk.

And that is really exactly as it should be.