Commons Defeat Leaves Flat Owners Facing Enormous Bills To Fix Cladding

A plan to protect leaseholders from the spiralling costs of fixing fire safety problems in the wake of the Grenfell Tower tragedy has been rejected in parliament after the Government headed off a cross-party challenge.

Hundreds of thousands of homeowners are facing bills of up to £100,000 to repair unsafe cladding, fire doors and insulation systems found after the 14 June 2017 fire, but ministers rejected proposals from the House of Lords, Labour and some Conservative backbenchers to protect them from costs.

Amendments to the fire safety bill were defeated in a Commons vote on Wednesday evening after Labour accused the Government of moving at a snail’s pace to tackle the problem.

It warned that 11 million people may be affected by both immediate fire hazards and problems with insurance and certification, making many homes unsaleable.

The bill is the first piece of primary legislation introduced as a consequence of the Grenfell tragedy, which occurred four years ago this June.

Also defeated was a motion to force the Government to implement key recommendations from the Grenfell Tower inquiry including making owners tell fire brigades what materials are in-wall systems, inspect fire doors yearly and lifts monthly, all things that failed during the Grenfell fire, which took 72 lives.

Earlier this month the Government announced a £3.5 billion extension of the fund to pay to remove faulty cladding on buildings over the height of 18 metres, but it only offered loans for fixing those below 18 metres and nothing for other widespread defects such as missing firebreaks and faulty fire doors or paying for 24-hour fire patrols and steep insurance premium hikes.

Sarah Jones, the shadow police and fire minister, told parliament she’d heard from first hand (from leaseholders) the horrors the Government is wilfully enabling by not protecting them from costs.

Some have seen yearly insurance costs for their blocks rise from £30,000 to £500,000, while one block with 56 leaseholders in Kent has already paid more than £500,000 for 24-hour fire warden patrols.

Julie Fraser, who faces a bill of up to £40,000 on a flat she purchased in Runcorn, Cheshire, for £75,000, said that it was dreadful, and that she doesn’t have another £400,000 to throw at a building, and that she might as well go bankrupt.

It doesn’t seem fair to ask the public to finance the costs. Could you imagine asking a council tenant, unable to afford getting onto the housing ladder, to compensate for the unexpected expenses incurred on someone else’s home purchase?

Having said that, it’s not fair for leaseholders to foot this bill either. Although I’m not sure what the solution is, it’s a crummy deal for everyone, except the housebuilders, of course, they seem to be minted.

Perhaps whoever put them up should foot the bill, and how can any of these MPs live with themselves, or sleep at night – it’s shameful and morally repugnant.

Building firms and developers should be accountable for putting these buildings right because the manufacturers of the panels were shown to be culpable, and it’s sickening that Government regulations didn’t protect all these people in the first place, and of course, now they won’t foot the bill.

This is very frustrating, and if it weren’t for COVID this would be much bigger news, and how much longer are the people of this country going to put up with the Tories defecating on them from a great height?

The developers of the flat should be held accountable for the cladding as they’re the ones that built the flats in the first place, and fire safety is not fit for purpose.

Flat owners shouldn’t be held accountable for any costs for a historical issue and it’s not right that both the developers for this kind of cladding, the authorities who agreed on it, and the manufacturers who made the product that was not fit for purpose aren’t taking any responsibility.

Ministers Mull COVID Passport

Ministers are mulling a COVID clear system for people to demonstrate they’ve tested negative or had a vaccine to help open up pubs and sporting events.

The plan is understood to be under consideration as part of the Government’s approach to get the country up and running again.

Boris Johnson threw scepticism on the idea of vaccine passports saying it could be prejudicial against people who genuinely refuse jabs or can’t have them for legitimate reasons.

But the Prime Minister ordered Michael Gove to carry out a review of whether a more comprehensive system of COVID certification could be used to help reopen the United Kingdom.

One option perceived to be on the table would involve businesses able to check test results on the NHS app.

Individuals would be able to show that they’ve either had a jab or tested negative, maintaining their decision about vaccination.

Government sources stressed that no decisions had been taken and work was at an early stage, but supporters say that such a concept could help theatres, cinemas, sporting venues and workplaces get back towards normality more quickly.

On a visit to a school in South London, Boris Johnson said there were extensive and complicated issues involved in taking the new level of asking people to prove things about their health to access businesses or services.

He said that they can’t be prejudicial against people who for whatever reason can’t have the vaccine, there might be medical reasons why people can’t have the vaccine. Or some people may genuinely decline to have one, but that he thought it was a mistake, and that he believed that everyone should have the vaccine, but they needed to thrash all this out.

In the meantime, Sir Jonathan Montgomery, who’s led an evidence review into vaccine passports, said the scheme would come too late to save summer because people would need two jabs to qualify and most young people wouldn’t have both until the autumn.

The University College London professor of healthcare law told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that there were three obstacles his research team had identified.

He said, the first was the scientific one – does it work, and that all depends on this information about the risk of transmission. The second was a timing problem, and he said that they need to reopen the economy as soon as it’s safe to do so, and that vaccine passports were not going to be beneficial until people have had their second vaccine.

You can’t make people do something they don’t want to do, it’s as simple as that, and we must never be in a position where people are being made to have a medical procedure to carry on with their normal daily lives.

Vaccines in this country are not compulsory, you have to consent, but consent can never be true if it’s conditional.

The problem is, that in the end, people probably will be forced to have the vaccine, and sadly they will be suckered into this, but I don’t believe that the young and healthy are going to take the vaccine, and there will probably be numerous under 25s that will laugh at this vaccine rollout.

Many of our youngsters are informed and well-read – much more than our thick-witted government think, and they would rather take their 99.7 per cent chance of being sick than compromising their young and healthy immune system.

Dogs Are Mysteriously Turning Blue And Pink In A Russian City

Packs of dogs in eastern Russia are inexplicably turning up pink and blue.

The bizarre phenomenon has occurred in and around the town of Dzerzhinsk, about 242 miles east of Moscow, near the abandoned Dzerzhinskoye Orgsteklo chemical plant that once manufactured extremely toxic hydrocyanic acid, which is also a core component in a once commonly used “Prussian blue” dye.

According to vets, experts think this detail may help illustrate why some dogs are now blue through and through, including their faeces.

Without clearer details, Dmitry Karelkin, head physician of Zoozashchita veterinary hospital, officially blamed the blue colour on “some kind of chemical,” which doesn’t appear to have harmed the animals physically.

Meanwhile, examiners from the Lobachevsky Research Institute of Chemistry at Nizhny Novgorod State University, as well as the Committee for State Veterinary Surveillance, found “no signs of irritating chemical burns,” while results from the blood and stool tests did not show significant toxicity.

And according to a news outlet, the blue dogs reportedly will remain under close inspection for around twenty days. Meanwhile, no announcements have been made to specifically address pooches that turn up pink.

However, some are calling for an investigation of a chemical dump in another area of Dzerzhinsk, where 300,000 tonnes of poisonous waste was dumped after the Cold War. The nearby Kristall defence plant was also implicated in local news.

A news outlet has reported that city officials are calling the claims exaggerated.

Maybe blue fur coats made in Russia will be coming soon! Or are these poor doggies just cold and the fur is showing it? Perhaps in motherland Russia, dogs now want to colour up their lives, or the Russians might blame it on climate change, but it’s okay, as long as we don’t all start glowing in the dark, we should be okay!

A Loud Bang Was Heard

Investigations of aircraft accidents and incidents can take more than a year, but officials usually get an early read on factors that may have played a role.

On Monday, two days after the high profile engine malfunction on United Airlines Flight 328 from Denver to Honolulu, the National Transportation Safety Board held its first briefing on the incident, highlighting possible metal fatigue to an engine fan blade and documenting a loud bang heard on the cockpit voice recorder.

NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt gave details on how the in-flight emergency unfolded and offered preliminary findings.

Approximately four minutes after takeoff from Denver International Airport early Saturday afternoon, when the aircraft was at 12,500 feet and cruising at 280 knots, a loud bang was heard on the cockpit voice recorder and increased vibrations were recorded on the affected engine.

The pilots declared an emergency with air traffic controllers and began a critical in-flight checklist, including the shut down of the engine.

Boeing 777 grounding explained, visually that the Pratt and Whitney engine failure involved two incidents on the same day.

The plane’s condition didn’t need an immediate evacuation upon landing, and after passengers deplaned, it was taken to a nearby United hangar for examination.

Pieces from the plane, including those that fell from the sky across Bloomfield, Colorado, are now laid out on the floor of the hangar.

The cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorders were sent for analysis to NTSB facilities in Washington, DC.

Two of the 22 fan blades on one of the Pratt and Whitney engines were damaged. One fan blade separated at the root and the other was fractured in the middle, likely getting struck as the other blade was separating.

One of the pieces was discovered in a soccer field in Broomfield, a Denver suburb. A preliminary examination of the fractured fan blade exhibits signs of damage consistent with metal fatigue.

The signs were so-called beach marks or crack arrest marks that can usually be seen with the naked eye. Sumwalt compared it to marks left during tides.

He said it’s like if the ocean comes in and goes back out, you’re going to see a mark where the ocean was.

United Airlines engine failure on Boeing 777 flight to Hawaii – what travellers need to know.

The fractured fan blade was being flown overnight by a private plane to Pratt and Whitney facilities for examination.

Of course, it’s good to hear that everyone on the aircraft is safe, and, fortunately, no one on the ground was hurt or killed from the large debris that came down.

Piers Morgan Warns Troll ‘I Will Find You And Publicly Expose You’

Good Morning Britain host Piers Morgan has opened up on his trolling and death threats hell after a troll sent him horrifying messages on social media.

Piers Morgan reported the message to the police and they came and took a statement from him after an unidentified user on Instagram commented on a photo of Piers and his son Spencer, promising they would kill them both.

The chilling comment read that he was a marked man and that calling the police, big tech, or beefing up security wasn’t going to stop them getting him and that it wasn’t a threat, it was a promise, and that he was getting killed.

Speaking alongside co-host Susanna Reid about social media abuse, Piers Morgan said that he’d had a death threat made to him last week on his eldest son’s Instagram, very direct, they said that it wasn’t a promise, it’s going to happen and that they were going to find him and they were going to kill him.

But they also threatened to kill his son as well and Piers thought he was not going to have this, and he said that you can have a legitimate discourse on Twitter, it can be punchy, you can hold public figures to account, you can say what you want and you can have opinions, but you’re not allowed to issue death threats to people.

So he called the police and they came round and took it extremely seriously. So, he thanked the police and now they’re investigating.

He also spoke to Facebook because he knows some top people there because they own Instagram and he said that it wasn’t acceptable. They’re cooperating as well, and he’s going through the process and see what happens.

Because now he wants to know and find these people. They now have their account deleted. But who is this person who believes it’s acceptable to issue death threats on Instagram to his son?

I can’t stand Piers Morgan, but I do agree with him that a line has been crossed, even though he’s one of the most irritating and over-opinionated people there is, but death threats against anyone is out of order, and at the end of the day, his son hasn’t done anything to warrant such despicable threats.

He’s upset someone but that doesn’t justify someone threatening his and his son’s life, and if someone went after one of my children in the same way I’d be as outraged as he is.

Nobody deserves this, and he might be irritating and outspoken, but he’s never threatened to kill anyone and he’s certainly never threatened to kill someone’s son – he’s allowed his opinions, but that doesn’t justify death threats.

There are some gifted hackers out there that would be able to find out precisely who it was who sent the threats, and if the police and Facebook can’t find the person, then perhaps Piers Morgan could go down that route, providing he can get approval from Facebooks owned Instagram.

It seems like Piers Morgan has made many enemies throughout acting like a hard man, although that doesn’t give anyone free rein to threaten him or his son.

Motorists Who Give Up Their Vehicles Will Be Offered £3,000 In Credit

Drivers are to be given up to £3,000 to replace their vehicles with greener modes of transportation.

Motorists in built-up areas with the most polluting vehicles will receive public money to abandon their vehicle for credits.

These will be used on alternative modes of transportation such as bicycles and electric scooters but will also work on congestion, easing forms like public transportation, car clubs and taxis.

It’s hoped that the move will decrease vehicle dependency in larger cities.

According to a news outlet, the scheme will be trialled for two years in Coventry this spring, targeted at those with diesel vehicles built before 2016 and petrol motors before 2006.

Drivers in the area who consent to have their vehicle towed away for the duration of the trial will be given between £1,500 and £3,000 to spend on alternative transportation.

The West Midlands scheme is being paid for as part of a £22 million future transport initiative financed by the government.

Andy Street, the West Midlands mayor said that they have several candidates lined up in Coventry following a public appeal for volunteers last year and they were putting processes in position to allow them to scrap their old vehicles in exchange for transport credits later in the spring.

A similar programme could also take place in Hampshire, where the county council is considering a mobility credit scheme for residents who agree to give up their car for good.

Though the miles dropped in 2020 due to the pandemic, in 2019 vehicles collectively covered 365.5 billion miles, 278.2 of which were cars and taxis, representing an increase of about 11 per cent in five years.

Xavier Brice, chief executive of cycling and walking charity Sustrans, said that it was great to see local authorities considering new ways to reduce car dependency, including mobility credit.

Better, more affordable, public transportation is critical to combating air pollution and climate change, and he said car use accounted for most of the roadside air pollution and carbon emissions.

However, AA president Edmund King pointed out that the strange initiative came at a time when numerous car companies have committed to going electric, and Ford promised to only sell electric vehicles in Europe by 2030.

He said that the money would probably be better spent on providing electric charging points for those without off-street parking rather than giving mobility credits for services that people will use when they need to or feel safe to.

Although I can’t see many people giving up their vehicles because many would not be able to get into work by public transport, and it would probably cost them more on public transport than by car.

Why would anyone travel 22 miles by train when they could drive it at the fraction of the cost, as well as picking up their shopping on the way home? And it sounds like the great reset to me, and in the end, we will own nothing – everything we once cherished is going bit by bit.

And what our Government seem to forget is that unless we have a way of producing green energy from our own homes, people with electric vehicles won’t be able to leave their homes because they won’t be able to charge their cars with no power.

However, with this great reset, eventually, people won’t own anything, and yet they’ll all be happy, while the ultra-liberal globalist elites will be driving their Porsches, Ferrari’s and private jets, whilst the peasants have given everything up in the name of climate change.

The car gives you the freedom to travel and transport your goods and equipment that you need to move without having to pay someone else to do it for you, which would be more costly.

Public transport is not reliable in some parts of the country, and in the countryside, it takes over 100 per cent more time using public transport than using the car to get to your destination.

And public transport networks can’t cope now, so what will it be like afterwards?

HUGH JACKMAN Conveys All-powerful MESSAGE TO SCHOOLBOY Tyrannized FOR DWARFISM

Hugh Jackman has shared a message of support to a nine-year-old boy who’s been bullied because of his dwarfism.

Earlier this week, Quaden Bayles mother, Yarraka, shared a video of her son in tides of tears after picking him up from class on Facebook in an attempt to boost awareness of the consequences of bullying.

In the video, which has subsequently been seen more than 17 million times, Quaden Bayles can be overheard saying that he was going to kill himself and that he wanted to die.

After seeing the moving footage, Hugh Jackman posted his own video to the schoolboy on his Twitter account in which he tells Quaden Bayles, who has a type of dwarfism called achondroplasia that he will always be his friend.

Hugh Jackman said, “Quaden, you are stronger than you know mate, and no matter what, you’ve got a friend in me.”

The Greatest Showman star also conveyed a message to the child’s tormentors, saying that life was difficult enough without people going out of their way to hurt others, and he said, “So, everyone let’s please be kind to each other, bullying is not okay.”

“Life is hard enough, so let’s remember, every person in front of us is facing some kind of battle, so let’s just be kind.”

Several other celebs have shared their views on the footage after it was shared on social media, including Mark Hamill, who played Luke Skywalker in Star Wars.

“The cruelty is as astonishing as it is heartbreaking,” Hamill wrote on Twitter.

The Walking Dead star Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who plays Negan in the TV series, also shared a message of support, writing: ”My man, I don’t know your name, I don’t know your mum’s name, but I saw your video.

“What I want you to know is that you have friends, me included. You haven’t met me yet, but we’ll see if we can change that for one.”

In the original footage, Bayles, who raises awareness about his condition in his home country of Australia, can be seen getting visibly upset after being picked on at school about his height.

During the clip, his mother says “this is what bullying does” before explaining that she has to “constantly keep an eye on him because of the suicide attempts”.

Bayles is a very special young man, and he can’t help the way he was born and other children are simply jealous because of how clever this young man is, but as we well know, children can be so heartless, and bullying is so wrong.

And when Quaden’s story first became known, thousands of racist adults in Australia waged a smear campaign against him and his mother.

There are indigenous Australians and there are many deeply racist people in Australia who can’t bear to see indigenous Australians get any kind of positive recognition.

The smears began growing globally when his story went viral. Quaden Bayles is indeed a child and has appeared on TV before, on the SBS channel in 2015 when he was only four years old.

There’s no way that his mother could have predicted that they’d get the attention they did, and they gave most of the donations they got to charity.

On the evening of February 19 2020, in Brisbane, Australia, Yarraka Bayles posted a video to Facebook showing her son, Quaden, in tears.

Quaden is nine years old and has achondroplasia dwarfism.

In the video, which shows him distressed in a vehicle, Yarraka says she’d just picked Quaden up from school and that she wanted others to see the consequences of bullying on her son, and Quaden could be overheard saying that he just wanted to die.

It went hugely viral, and the preponderance of the comments supported Quaden, but it wouldn’t be more than 72 hours before parts of the internet would wrap his life story into a grotesque conspiracy theory falsely claiming he was an 18-year-old scammer.

On the afternoon of February 20, comic Brad Williams tweeted out a link to a fundraiser for Quaden, saying that a GoFundMe had been set up to send brave Quaden and his mother to Disneyland, and Brad Williams wrote to his 123,000 followers, “Let’s show a bullied kid that he is loved!”

At the time of publication, the GoFundMe had raised £467,000 and had been shared 267,700 times.

Twitter user @ZoomerMatthew tweeted side by side photos, one of which showed Quaden crying, and the other, holding a handful of Australian banknotes.

The tweet, which has been retweeted more than 5,700 times was captioned “Y’all got played”. @ZoomerMatthew didn’t respond to questions from BuzzFeed News.

Also Facebook user D Monarch DeLeon posted a video of a two-month-old Facebook live video from Yarraka’s Facebook account of Quaden calling the Queen and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison racist.

The video was captioned “This was captured from the so-called bullied dwarf kids moms Facebook before she hid everything. […] more to add to the mystery if everybody got scammed or not.”

Of course, any images on Facebook are not evidence of Quaden’s age, but photos from Yarraka’s Facebook account have documented Quaden’s childhood since he was six weeks old, and multiple interviews with Australian media organisations have also included his age.

The US Deports 95-Year-Old Former Concentration Camp Guard

Authorities in the United States have deported a 95-year-old man who admitted working as a guard in a Nazi concentration camp.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, said in a statement that Friedrich Karl Berger, a German national, was sent back to Germany this month for serving as a guard of a Neuengamme concentration camp subcamp near Hamburg in 1945.

The incident was investigated by the US Department of Justice and Friedrich Karl Berger was ordered to be expelled by a Memphis, Tennessee court in February 2020 but will not stand trial in Germany because prosecutors dismissed the case against him for lack of evidence.

According to an ICE statement, Friedrich Karl Berger worked at the subcamp near Meppen, Germany, where prisoners, Russian, Polish, Dutch, Jewish and others were held in cruel conditions and worked to the point of exhaustion and death.

Friedrich Karl Berger acknowledged serving as a guard for several weeks near the end of the war but said he didn’t witness any abuse or killings, news agencies have reported.

Friedrich Karl Berger admitted he guarded prisoners, and that he also accompanied prisoners on the forced evacuation of the camp that resulted in the deaths of 70 prisoners.

He’d been living in the United States since 1959.

A spokesperson for the prosecutor’s office in Celle said police in the German state of Hesse had been asked to investigate Friedrich Karl Berger on his return to Germany, but a police spokesperson said there was no live investigation linked to him and he was a free individual and had not been taken into custody.

In recent years, prosecutors have brought charges against several former Nazis, grabbing the last chance to obtain justice for the millions who died in concentration camps.

Earlier this month, prosecutors indicted a 100-year-old German man with being an accomplice to 3,518 deaths perpetrated while he was supposedly a guard at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. However, you’re never too old to pay for a crime like this because we often forget about the horrors that occurred in those concentration camps.

Hitler of course, led through fear and failure, and not to follow him would ultimately cost you your life, but often the soldiers that served him were worse than the leader himself. Hitler commanded, his foot soldiers just followed the orders that ultimately made them feel powerful and special.

Can you just imagine being removed from your home and community, where they thought they belonged, thought that they had rights – forcing them to make a journey somewhere they didn’t want to go, into a hostile unknown?

The war ended 76 years ago, and seventy-six years ago isn’t that long in the grand scheme of things, but so quickly we forget, especially when we’re persecuting those that come into our countries because they’ve also been forced to make that journey to someplace they really didn’t want to go, into another hostile unknown.

We create and protest that the war was such a bad thing, which of course, it was, yet we appear to have no difficulty doing it over again to other people – they might not be Jews, but they are human beings!

Friedrich Karl Berger might have been extradited to Germany, but in Germany, he will be hailed as a national hero.

And America is no better, especially when Donald Trump was keeping immigrants in cages. So, did this make Donald Trump an orange Nazi?

Then, of course, there was Operation Paperclip, which was a covert programme of the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA) mostly carried out by special agents of Army CIC, in which more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers and technicians, such as Werner von Braun and his V-2 rocket team, were taken from Germany to the United States, for US government employment, primarily between 1945 and 1959 – many were former members, and some were former leaders, of the Nazi Party.

Boris Johnson To Address The Nation

Boris Johnson will address the nation about easing coronavirus restrictions on Monday at about 7 pm, it’s been reported.

The Prime Minister will give details about the Government’s long-expected roadmap out of lockdown.

He’s expected to say that schools will reopen on March 8, when people will also be able to meet one person from a different household for a coffee or a picnic outside.

Rules could be further eased on March 29 to allow six people or two households to meet outside, while non-essential retail will open before the end of April, according to a newspaper outlet.

Pubs and restaurants should be able to operate indoor service by May but could be allowed to serve customers outside earlier.

Music festivals and football matches should be allowed towards the end of May, with the introduction of rapid testing to screen fans for coronavirus.

It’s not clear when travel will be allowed again but some sources have said domestic travel will be allowed at some period in April.

It comes as Boris Johnson has promised that every adult should be offered the COVID 19 vaccine by July.

The hastened rollout is a result of the Government reaching its target to vaccinate 15 million people in the top four priority groups. The over 70s, health and social care workers and the clinically vulnerable by February 15.

Adults aged 50 and over, as well as those with an underlying health condition that puts them at higher risk, will be offered a vaccine by April 15 under the expedited plans.

The Prime Minister said that hitting 15 million vaccinations was an important breakthrough, and there would be no let-up, and he wanted to see the rollout go further and faster in the coming weeks.

He said they will now strive to offer a jab to every adult by the end of July, helping them to protect the most vulnerable sooner, and take further measures to alleviate some of the restrictions in place.

But he said there should be no doubt, the route out of lockdown would be cautious and phased as they continue to protect themselves and those around them.

The Prime Minister intends to relax restrictions following the UK’s third national lockdown which was imposed after the second wave of coronavirus swept across the country.

This was blamed on the spread of the Kent strain of the virus, which was believed to be more transmissible.

But it seems that Boris Johnson is just loving all of this and numerous people just want their freedom back.

And there have been numerous people who have taken their own lives because of this because people are losing their jobs, homes and everything they’ve ever worked for.

The purpose of this lockdown was to get deaths down and decrease hospitalisations and it does seem this is being achieved, but numerous lives have been lost in the process, and Boris Johnson is always hesitating when he speaks, but things would have been a lot different if he had taken the essential measures in the first place.

And numerous people are going into hospital with non-COVID related illnesses, but whilst being there have tested positive for COVID, but on their discharge letter their diagnosis is COVID, yet they didn’t go in with COVID, which means the Government are fraudulent and telling multiple lies along the way.

This is shocking and should be reported to the Quality Care Commission, it must also be taken up with the hospitals unless they’re in on it as well, and using this virus as a weapon is beneath offensive.

Psychopaths Are More Inclined To Drink Their Coffee Black

If you like your coffee black rather than all milky, frothy and syrupy then many will say you’re just drinking it as it’s meant to be drunk.

However, if you have a liking for the bitter tipple then it could be a sign that you’re a psychopath, according to research.

Scientists studying taste buds have discovered similarities between the consumption of some of our preferred beverages like bitter IPAs, black coffee and tonic water and malevolent personality traits.

So you might want to be cautious if you’ve got a friend or partner who avoids milk and sugar in their cup of Joe.

The study, published in the journal Appetite, surveyed 1,000 people and was conducted at the University of Innsbruck in Austria.

Participants ranked various foods on a six-point scale and were then subjected to a test identifying their personality traits.

Authors Christina Sagioglou and Tobias Greitemeyer discovered that the more consumers enjoyed bitter flavours, the darker their personality traits, and they wrote that the existing research had shown that bitter taste preferences were associated with more noticeable malevolent personality traits, especially robustly with everyday sadism.

And they added that in preferring bitter-tasting foods more than less sadistic people, everyday sadists may see them as positive due to their potential to cause distaste, that is, to cause a negative experience in other people.

This isn’t the first time research has discovered a connection between taste and personality.

Past studies have shown sweet taste experiences increase agreeable and eagerness to help, while bitter tastes increase hostility and elicit harsher moral judgments.

This is one of the most bizarre things I’ve heard. I’ve been drinking my coffee black for the past thirty years, and I’m the most laid back person there is. Any more laid back and I’d be horizontal.

And it does make me wonder if people are getting paid to come up with this twaddle, and if so, then perhaps I’ve been in the wrong job all these years.

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