Monday 2 November: The Government’s Covid policies are doing harm to the nation’s health

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/11/02/letters-governments-covid-policies-harm-nations-health/

1,422 thoughts on “Monday 2 November: The Government’s Covid policies are doing harm to the nation’s health”

  2. Robert Fisk, veteran UK journalist, dies aged 74. 2 November 2020.

    Veteran foreign correspondent Robert Fisk has died of a suspected stroke at the age of 74.

    The Irish Times reported that he was admitted to St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin after falling ill at his home on Friday, and died shortly afterwards.

    Fisk won numerous awards for his coverage of the Middle East, where he reported from 1970s.

    But he also drew controversy for his sharp criticism of the US and Israel, and of Western foreign policy.

    Morning everyone. I’m sorry to hear this. Fisk was one of that diminishing band of old time journalists who thought and found out for themselves and were no mere purveyors of propaganda. Needless to say this made him many enemies. His views on the Middle East were always worth consideration though the ones on the UK were at times so strange that I did consider the possibility that there were two Robert Fisks. He is leaving at a good time. That world that allowed independent thought in the MSM is at an end and will have no place for people like him in the future!

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-54774539

    1. I never took him seriously after reading an article by him in the late nineties in which he repeated stories told by Algerian asylum seekers to get political asylum in Britain as truth, and even said “We know the stories are true because they are all telling the same story”

      The truth?
      The stories were recycled tales of things that happened during the war of independence from France.
      The stories were all the same because when one man got asylum, he went and told all his friend what he’d said, so naturally, they all tried the same story!

    2. I met Robert Fisk many years ago in Beirut. I admired him for his fluency in Arabic but not for his left-wing politics. I found that his views on the Middle East, especially Israel and Palestine, had to be taken with a large pinch of salt!

  4. Exclusive: Nigel Farage to relaunch Brexit Party as Reform UK, a new anti-lockdown platform. 2 November 2020.

    The Brexit Party is to be relaunched as an anti-lockdown party called Reform UK, Nigel Farage and Richard Tice will announce on Monday, in a move which could alarm libertarian Conservative MPs.

    In a joint article for Monday’s Telegraph, Mr Farage and Mr Tice declare that “lockdowns don’t work”, and say their new party will back a policy of “focused protection” from coronavirus only for the most vulnerable, to allow the rest of the population to develop herd immunity.

    I’m not sure that an anti-lockdown party is viable. Its raison d’être could vanish with a single Government announcement. What is needed is a real Tory party.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/11/01/exclusive-nigel-farage-relaunch-brexit-party-reform-uk-new-anti/

    1. Hmm,a safety valve for dissent??
      Controlled opposition??
      Bit like Macron’s “crackdowns” to defang LePen politically

      1. Very true, Rik.

        When push comes to shove,
        NF caves in ….. we have seen
        it all before!
        Opportunism also springs to mind!

        Good morning.

    2. It’s all very well as long as they don’t pull back at the last minute letting the Tories get elected and business as usual.

      1. I have always liked Nigel Farage – he is a superb orator and has an engaging sense of humour.

        But I shall never forgive him for losing his nerve and capitulating to the oaf, Boris Johnson, by withdrawing his Brexit Party candidates from the fray of the general election in seats held by remainer Conservatives.

        This was a shameful and gutless capitulation and I would be very happy if he proves that he has the integrity to admit his mistake and has learnt from it and apologises. If he is not capable of doing this then he cannot be taken seriously ever again.

        2. I think Farage always tries to stand back and dissociate his emotions, and take the right decision to push the cause forward. This is why he dissociated himself from Batten when Batten switched the focus of UKIP before Brexit had been achieved, which was a disastrous political mistake, I thought, even though I agreed 100% with the new direction.

          Farage does not lack personal courage. Remember when he cited AIDS health tourists coming to the UK, on live TV in the leaders debate, iirc. He was visibly nervous.
          In the case of the last election, he simply made the wrong decision. Who knows what would have happened if he had decided differently. A hung Parliament? We have got a sabotaged Brexit anyway. It was a terrible decision to have to make, and every option was likely to lead to failure, thanks to the first past the post system.

      1. He does seem to be the grit on the oyster.
        Time he produced a pearl aka a genuine conservative party.

    4. 326066+ up ticks,
      Morning AS,
      This is not sour grapes but common sense, the non members of this new setup are about to retread the path that has already been taken and shown to be unsuccessful initially.
      He has form via his treatment of the UKIP membership
      which he aired before on LBC prior to his last sorry attempt at saving the day.
      A personal view.

    5. Farage has not done very well by being considered a single issue politician. Yes, his parties have done well on the question of the EU and won more seats than any other parties in the EU parliament but he has never made any inroads in Westminster.

  7. Tommy Robinson ‘arrested for breaking Covid rules’ at London rally. 2 November 2020.

    The former English Defence League leader Tommy Robinson appears to have been arrested for breaking coronavirus restrictions during a heated rally in London.

    Images on social media showed him being led away by police officers. The 37-year-old, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, co-founded the far-right EDL in 2009.

    Tommy was originally arrested for having an offensive weapon but since he didn’t have one they changed it to the lesser reason of “breaking Covid rules”. In reality of course it was simple harassment. Anyway he is out now and without charge!

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/nov/01/tommy-robinson-arrested-for-breaking-covid-rules-at-london-rally

    1. They probably chickened out of getting the batons out. It would have taken a lot of them to take him down.

    2. “appears to have been arrested for breaking coronavirus restrictions” – unlike the BLM protestors, the protestors outside the French embassy and the list goes on!

    3. The treatment Tommy Robinson has received from the police, the courts, the politicians and the MSM brings disgrace and shame down upon the British establishment.

      How can we pride ourselves on being a civilised nation when our behaviour marks us out as total barbarians.

    4. “appears to have been arrested for breaking coronavirus restrictions” – unlike the BLM protestors, the protestors outside the French embassy and the list goes on!

    6. Look at that: they deliberately identify him, personally, directly. They label him deliberately with a slur and cast aspersions on the situation a ‘heated rally’.

      Of course, for the Guardian the black looting mob was a ‘peaceful protest’.

      Spin, lies and bias.

    1. Morning, Bill. Astonishing news this morning on the radio. A man was shot in London today. He died shortly afterwards of gunshot wounds and not of Covid-19. Extraordinary! (Sarc.)

  16. Morning all

    SIR – A major tenet of medicine is: first, do no harm. It cannot be said that this new lockdown (report, November 1), which will create more fear in the minds of the general population, does no harm. Only last week, the London Ambulance Service reported a near doubling of the suicide attempts it was attending: 37 per day in October 2020 compared to 22 per day in 2019.

    Another expectation is that medicine should be evidence-based. Alas, the Government continues to implement arbitrary and harmful Covid-19 policies while ignoring the significant alarms being raised by senior clinicians who are not aligned with the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies.

    Charles Gladwin

    Louth, Lincolnshire

    SIR – On Saturday evening we were presented with a mountain of data to demonstrate why this second national lockdown is necessary. I cannot be alone in now not trusting the Government’s forecasts and rationale.

    Advertisement

    Several weeks ago, the Government’s scientific advisers presented projections of 50,000 cases per day by mid-October. Now, at the beginning of November, we have almost reached just half that level, yet are told that cases are exceeding the “reasonable worst-case” projection.

    The graphs shown to make the Government’s case are massively selective. When the numbers suit, we are shown graphs ranging back to March. But other measures are being shown only going back to May, July, or even August. This then purports to show a sharp increase, even when that particular measure remains well below the April peak. The data on hospital capacity appeared to show just 10 hospitals struggling, from which was extrapolated a national bed crisis.

    Covid-19 is a serious threat to the nation’s health and economy. If the Government wants our support for its decisions, can we at least be allowed to see accurate and consistent data?

    Andrew Fryatt

    Brind, East Yorkshire

    SIR – I live in Wales, so have been in lockdown for the past 11 days. It is challenging, but better, I think, than being dead.

    However, many people seem to think the rules do not apply to them, or that it is clever to circumvent them. A local household, decorated for Hallowe’en, had clearly spread the word and dozens of parents and children gathered – no masks, no distancing. These children will be back in school this week, then in their bubbles, but their parents will be elsewhere, potentially spreading the virus.

    Why do people think it is acceptable for them to do as they like while the rest of us stay at home? Do they really have to wait until someone in their family dies before they comply with good practice?

    Linda Quinn

    Cardiff

    SIR – Those masks worked well then.

    Gary Shaw

    London NW11

    1. Morning! The people making the rules don’t abide by them, Ms Quinn. They lie and they terrorise. Lockdown kills.

    2. Why do people think it is acceptable for them to do as they like while the rest of us stay at home? Do they really have to wait until someone in their family dies before they comply with good practice?

      Because they’ve listened to the Government and concluded that it is all bull Ms Quinn!

      1. I wonder Mrs Quinn found time to stop peering through her net curtains to write a letter to the DT.

        1. Especially since she probably washed her hands every 20 seconds in case she was infected by people living their lives.

      1. They won’t be back at school – the teaching unions want schools closed.
        Then they can be laid off, like the others in the private sector whose workplaces are closed by government whim.

        1. Talking of the private sector; thank goodness my granddaughter got a scholarship to the RHS sixth form.
          I’ve not forgotten how the Girls’ High School just dropped their pupils like a used tissue.

        2. There’s been no significant agitation from the teachers here in Wales. All the primary schools are back today (most were on half-term last week anyway) together with about half the secondary youngsters – planned phased return; years 7 and 8 and those with major exams this week, the rest are back next Monday.

      2. How does she know she will be dead if people aren’t locked away, anyway? Apart from her being run over by a bus if they are running, of course.

  17. SIR – Professor Lord Darzi (Letters, October 31) says that Emmanuel Macron “stigmatises an entire faith”.

    In fact, in his speech President Macron explicitly distinguished between “an Islam that can peacefully coexist with the Republic” and radical Islam, which wants to “create a parallel order, establish other values, develop another way of organising society which is initially separatist, but whose ultimate goal is to take it over completely”.

    If anyone is fuelling rage, it is those who confuse an attack on radical Islam with an attack on Islam as a whole.

    David J Critchley

    Buckingham

    SIR – In view of President Erdoğan’s outbursts inflaming further Islamic terrorism in Europe, is it not time to review Turkey’s membership of Nato?

    James McNie

    Rafford, Moray

    2. If I may, Mr Critchley:

      If anyone is fuelling rage, it is those who confuse an attack on radical Islam with an attack on Islam as a whole, there is only one Islam..

        1. There is also only one bible, yet the interpretations of that are myriad as they are with any fictional historical story.

          2. Yup. They’re little more than aural tradition handed down by the oldest man in the village to protect the tribe, expanded upon and lengthed, distorted.

          3. Discussing the bible has been a regular occurrence since Tyndale; the koran is the immutable word of allah and is not to be disputed.

  18. Morning again

    SIR – As a former BBC news and current affairs producer and editor, I was first stupefied, then angered by the suffocating arrogance of presenters such as James Wong, Huw Edwards and Gary Lineker in questioning the corporation’s correct guidelines on impartiality in social media (“BBC presenters deride new rules on social media impartiality”, October 30).

    I was lucky enough to work with some of the great BBC presenters, such as Peter Snow, John Tusa, Frank Bough, Olivia O’Leary, Joan Bakewell and John Stapleton. None would have dreamt of allowing their personal views to leak into their work. They knew that they would be fouling their own nests if they did so.

    Too many of today’s BBC presenters plainly don’t understand what constitutes professionalism in national broadcasting.

    Rob White

    BBC, Channel 4 News and ITN, 1973-2009

    London N3

      1. But… but… but… how do you work out what the recipe is today, Bill, without the help of JY?

        :-))

        1. In fairness to the BBC (cripes, there’s a phrase I thought I’d never use), the online recipes are usually very good.
          …. Once I’ve converted them from funny foreign measurements to something I understand.

    2. This comes down to ego. The Linekers of this world believe themselves to have a platform rather than a duty.

      It’s sadly common these days, this belief that the ‘I’ matters more than others.

  19. Ear today

    SIR – Charles Ness’s letter (October 30) on Squadron Leader Bill Holdsworth sending Morse code by wiggling his ears made me smile.

    I have forgotten the Morse code I learnt as a Boy Scout 60 years ago, but I am able to wiggle my ears, and also to tuck them in, to amuse my granddaughters.

    Sadly, as they have grown older, they no longer believe that by touching their own noses they are sending a message to my ears to pop out.

    Brian Adams

    Ashtead, Surrey

    1. I remember a great uncle, who, when I was a nipper, would blow smoke rings out of his ears when having a cigarette. Either there was a trick behind it, or he had some anatomical abnormality.

        2. It’s amazing what you learn on this site, Phizzee. (Unless, of course, your post is False News – I shall have to Google “Eustacean Tube”.)

          2. It is also amazing, Elsie,
            that according to Disqus,
            you posted your reply to Phiz
            fifty-three minutes before he
            commented!!
            Good morning.
            [Have you seen/watched
            ‘The Upside?]

          3. I don’t quite understand that, Garlands. Phizzee’s post of “Eustation Tube” is noted on this site as “an hour ago” and mine as “9 minutes ago”. I have never heard of “The Upside”. Is it a TV programme? (You will recall that I don’t have a TV set.)

          4. It is ‘Disqus’ playing up!

            I remember you don’t have a TV set,
            this is a film I watched on Amazon Prime,
            I wondered if you had seen it at the ‘flicks’
            … and, if you had, what you thought of it?

          9. Oops! Got it mixed up with Crustacean. (Well that’s my excuse, Peddy.) [Or is it Crustacian?]

        3. Having studied the anatomy of the head & neck in great detail as part of my dental training I can tell you that the Eustachian Tube has no opening to the outside. It links the nasopharynx to the middle ear chamber to adjust pressure in the latter, a mechanism which divers & air passengers make use of. There would be an opening to the outside only if the ear drum were burst. My great uncle was not deaf.

          1. As someone who’s had mild tooth ache for some time now – I’m scared of dentists – I’m rather hoping nothing will come of it. When they start up those dremmels I get twitchy.

    1. Morning, Peddy. It’s very windy here, so I shall do a little washing and hang up the clothes for the wind to (hopefully) dry them.

  21. If Noige were to stand in my constituency I’d vote for him, whatever his party’s name.

    1. But he still wouldn’t get in, Stormy. Remember the missing ballot box of votes and dirty tricks tactics the last time he stood?

      1. Even if it had been above board, the lack of investigation and reporting to prove it wasn’t a fiddle was too shifty to think it wasn’t.

    2. 326066+ up ticks,
      Morning Siadc,
      Seriously study the past track record first keeping in mind the part of the peoples giving him a platform played, and his treatment of them when leaving the party.

  23. SIR – The Church of England remains committed to rural areas, where our churches are at the heart of community life. We are grateful to both clergy and laity who faithfully worship in our churches, give sacrificially and generously, maintain their buildings and ensure the Christian presence of love and service in every community.

    However, like other charities, many parishes (Letters, October 30) are struggling in the difficult economic climate caused by Covid-19. The national church is providing financial support to dioceses, parishes and cathedrals, including rural churches. Significantly, a greater level of financial support is given to rural churches than urban ones. (…)

    I have been working at home three days a week since March and have had seven different visits to my home during the day from charity workers in this time. Is this normal? Has it ever been thus and I have been fortunate enough to be out or ar the charidees seizing the captive audience opportunity?

  24. Good morning all

    I had a strange dream, lasted seconds before I woke up , Moh was rattling around getting ready to play golf in storm force conditions .

    My dream/ nightmare.. Are Gove and Sturgeon in this together . Does Gove have an agenda?

    Graeme Andrew Logan was born on 26 August 1967.[3][4] His biological mother, whom he originally believed to have been an unmarried Edinburgh student, was in fact a 23-year-old cookery demonstrator.[3] Gove regarded his birthplace as Edinburgh until it was revealed in a biography in 2019 that he was born in a maternity hospital in Fonthill Road, Aberdeen.[5]

    Logan was put into care soon after he was born. At the age of four months he was adopted by a Labour-supporting couple in Aberdeen, Ernest and Christine Gove, by whom he was brought up.[6] After he joined the Gove family, Logan’s name was changed to Michael Andrew Gove.[3] His adoptive father, Ernest, ran a fish processing business and his adoptive mother, Christine, was a lab assistant at the University of Aberdeen, before working at the Aberdeen School for the Deaf.[7]

    Gove, his adoptive parents and his sister Angela lived in a small property in the Kittybrewster area of Aberdeen. He was educated at two state schools (Sunnybank Primary School and Kittybrewster Primary School), and later, on the recommendation of his primary school teacher, he sat and passed the entrance exam for the independent Robert Gordon’s College. Later, as he entered sixth year he had to apply for a scholarship as his family fell on difficult economic circumstances.[6] In October 2012, he wrote an apology letter to his former French teacher for misbehaving in class.[8]

    From 1985 to 1988 he read English at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, graduating with an upper second.[9][10] During his first year, he met future Prime Minister Boris Johnson and helped him become elected President of the Oxford Union.[11] In an interview with Andrew Gimson, Gove remarked that at Oxford, Johnson was “quite the most brilliant extempore speaker of his generation.”[12] Gove was elected as President of the Oxford Union a year after Johnson.

    1. And what happened to the Moynihan Plate while Gove was President of the Oxford Union?

      My impression is that Gove is too selfish and personally ambitious to make any plots with Sturgeon. He’s a leading light in Bright Blue, the talking shop for fake tories. He’s essentially a mainstream opportunist.

      1. And back stabber – with an appalling wife. Who can’t wait to install herself in No 10.

      2. Nothing really changes.
        I’m reminded of Thomas Cromwell (not from personal knowledge!).
        Ambitious courtiers are a fact of life.

    2. Good morning, Belle. I was convinced of that yesterday, that Gove was manoeuvring and manipulating for Johnson’s job when he announced that we could expect the lockdown to go on for some months. About Sturgeon, I don’t know, but it would not surprise me. Those of Scottish descent have been busily wrecking this country for decades.

        1. The trick is to remove them before posting a cut-and-paste. I do this by pasting it onto a Pages page and then removing them before re-cutting and posting on the forum.

        2. I thought it was that, Annie. (Good morning, btw.) My own car is due for its regular service on November the 11th too. We might even bump into each other (keeping a suitable distance apart, of course.)

      2. We all cut and paste from time to time.

        I often use literary quotations in my posts. I do have the ones I use rattling around in my head but cutting and pasting saves time and I have to admit to having very poor keyboard ‘skills(?)’ Editing is essential – and I am not very good at that either.

    4. I have what I believed is a healthy distrust of most politicians but Gove stands in a very small group ( inc. Blair and Wee Nippy ) who I deem to be the assorted and loathsome spawn of the union of Beelzebub and Shelob, so in answer to your question – almost certainly.

    5. Hmm. His father’s fishing business experienced hard times just after the EU, and the Tory government, introduced quotas that gave most of our fish to EU boats. Gosh!

        1. That cannot be! There are rules on net sizes, and rules on returning undersize fish to the sea. Oh, bad Frenchies.

          1. There was a nearly a riot at a fish market in France when the Market inspectors went around fining people for not displaying the fishes Latin names. Of course they were palming off inferior fish to the unsuspecting. That’s market traders all over.

  25. 326066+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,
    As Araminta pointed out early doors Tommy Robinson was “arrested”
    Are there still peoples out there that see him as a danger & a liability to the Country ?

    He is acting as a sounding board for anyone of us receiving the same
    unwarranted treatment in the future & is being used, in point of fact as
    another threatening gesture by the political establishment pointing that out.

    He hasn’t been disappeard ….. YET.

    1. Good morning, ogga

      Most reasonable people would agree that whatever they think of Tommy Robinson the treatment he has received from the police, the courts and the PTB is a disgrace. In fact it brings shame upon Britain.

      But I suppose that if a character as odiously unpleasant as the violent criminal George Floyd can serve as a focus for the BLM movement then Tommy Robinson is, by comparison, a far more attractive rallying point for a campaign in favour of equal treatment being afforded to everyone.

  26. Good moaning.
    Started the day well by dropping my car off for MOT/pre-winter service. Apparently it was booked in for 11th. November. I can even remember saying “Gosh, that’s an easy date to remember ….”
    Anyway, here’s a TCW article for political nerds.

    https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/big-on-facts-short-on-passion-the-theresa-may-story/

    Meanwhile, I will take another – much needed – swig from this:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7f6be074d2c58dc90375516a74eeb5b0e9f1400229a23aa785bcfb3af36bd228.jpg

    1. ‘Morning, Anne.

      Shouldn’t that be a transparent/translucent mug? I added translucent, because a transparent mug might magnify the view up your nostrils as you drink, & we can’t have that at breakfast, can we?

  27. The Duke of Cambridge, 38, didn’t reveal he was sick in April with covid because he didn’t want to alarm the public.

    After your most recent announcements your Highness, i don’t think too many people would have been concerned. Twat.

    2. At least a dozen plus people including their partners, all of whom i have met in the past, all of them are offspring of friends and relations have also tested positive but all have recover with in a week and shown no other symptoms.
      And also in the early days, two middle age guys i use to play golf with, (both had been to the Cheltenham festival) one was admitted to hospital but after a few days was allowed home.
      I saw the Lady doctor on Vine this morning deliberately avoiding answering the question on how many of the people who are tested positive are actually admitted to hospital and or, how many eventually die. All she did was make reference to Sweden.

      1. I have seen numerous references to people being in hospital testing positive.

        I would be very interested to know how many of those are actually in intensive care beds/units and how many tested negative on arrival in hospital.

        1. On a news programme over the weekend, the reporters set about focusing on hospital treatments. Only one reference was made to people suffering from Covid, all the other shots were of people having routine operations.
          I suppose it’s possibly they weren’t allowed to cross the thresholds of the isolation wards but the point was clearly lacking in the rather shoddy report.

        2. Actually had this conversation a couple of hours ago.
          A friend of our cleaner was tested before her operation (for advanced cancer); clear.
          Isolated for a fortnight; clear again.
          Went into hospital for operation and had a couple of days while they checked and sorted; tested just before operation – positive.
          Was sent home where she lives on her own …..

          1. I hope they completed the op, but that’s unfortunately typical of parts of our caring NHS.

    3. Just because you disagree with him, I think it’s a little excessive to call him a ‘twat’!

      2. I wish him well and best of health as a fellow human being.

        I appreciate his interest in good causes and the future, but he’s a very rich man living in a very big bubble. if he wants to really help people he should start discussing scrapping some of the acres of taxes levied by successive governments on the people.

  28. Lockdown 2.0 will plunge Britain ‘into a double-dip
    recession’, economists warn – as Boris Johnson ducks annual CBI
    conference with industry chiefs and sends business minister Alok Sharma
    instead

    PM will not address the annual Confederation of British Industry meeting today

    Business Secretary Alok Sharma will attend on behalf of the government

    It is only the second time in the CBI’s 55 year history that a PM will not attend

    It comes as fragile economy is pushed to brink by second lockdown

    By Antonia Paget For Mailonline

    Published: 07:22, 2 November 2020 | Updated: 09:30, 2 November 2020

    e-mail

    5 shares

    169

    View comments

    A second lockdown will push the economy into another nosedive and cause a double dip recession, experts warned.

    Tighter coronavirus
    restrictions will cause the nation’s already fragile economy to spiral,
    with economists forecasting a shrink of up to 8 per cent GDP in the
    final-quarter of 2020.

    It comes as it emerged the Prime Minister will not address the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) meeting for only the second time in its 55 year history.

    The
    annual conference takes place today, 48 hours after the
    announcement that much of the economy would shut down in a bid to halt
    the spread of the virus.

    The UK
    announced 23,254 more Covid cases and 162 deaths yesterday – the highest
    Sunday rise since May 24 – as a second coronavirus wave engulfs the UK.

    Boris Johnson is expected to send Business Secretary Alok Sharma to address business leaders in his place.

    Proof positive that Boris is a cowardly weakling. He dodged it because he knew there was nothing he could say to them that makes any sense.

    1. STOP PRESS

      White English person, with Christian Ethics found in Cabinet

      If BLMers demand the right of representation, owzabout us Natives having a say in our future

      The is a disproportionate number of non WASPs in Government and Mayorships

    2. What he would say is ‘if we don’t shut down the economy then people will die. That’s fairly self evident.

      However what isn’t clear is how he’ll explain why he’s having to do this again when it quite obviously didn’t work the first time around.

      2. He might as well add that if we DO shut down the economy, people will die as well. No one is immortal and while they are destroying everything, people are committing suicide and not being treated for life-ending illnesses.

    3. I misread that as:
      ‘Business Secretary Alok Sharma will defend
      on behalf of the government.’

    1. 326066+ up ticks,
      O2O,
      Didn’t Batten say we should repeal as in

      The Road to Freedom: How Britain can leave the European …www.amazon.co.uk › Road-Freedom-unconditional-uni…

      With uncanny accuracy, UKIP MEP Gerard Batten made the following prediction in this … This could be done by repealing the European Communities Act 1972.

      In 2014, before the great treachery took hold.

      1. Books, Ogga, are all very well, it’s actions, that produce results, are what is needed.

        1. 326066+ up ticks,
          Afternoon NtN,
          The man behind the books & rhetoric went on to put his feelings & ideas into actions when he took leadership of the UKIP party for 18 successful months, all on record.
          As for “it is actions that produce results” you can certainly hum that tune again as we have witnessed / are witnessing especially the revealing actions of major, the wretch cameron,
          clegg, may, johnson, a third segment of the lab/lib/con close shop.
          The reason UKIP could not be tolerated was it was out of step
          with the lab/lib/con treacherous coalition & supporting / voters.

          1. It appears, Ogga, from its current paucity of support, that UKIP are not about to sweep the board, should there be a General Election tomorrow.

          2. 326066+ up ticks.
            NtN,
            The taking down of Batten / real UKIP was a joint effort with input from the treacherous UKIP Nec & farage.
            Gerard Batten proved UKIP could once more be a credible
            patriotic political force and that was NOT to be tolerated.
            They now join the lab/lib/con coalition not to be approached by decent peoples even with a barge pole.

          3. Ogga, I’ve heard all that, times without number but it still means that with the current NEC that UKIP have, they’re not going anywhere – a busted flush, a spent force.

            Until you and your cohorts clear them out, UKIP is history.

          4. 326066+ up ticks,
            NtN,
            I do beg to differ “Times without number” the real UKIPPERS KNOW it is not going anywhere because of the input from the party Nec / farage proved to be a successful stitch up.
            The real UKIPPERS are no longer counted within the membership.
            Oh & lest we forget by his own tongue let him be known,
            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fc7iuUHk3Yk

            As for the GE tomorrow would lab/lib/con still be in
            the running ?

          5. I had just this conversation with a fellow member this evening, ahead of our AGM at the end of the month.

    1. It’s so good to see our wonderful police farce as upholders of the right to free speech, as has been practiced at Hyde Park Corner since 1878. (sarc)

      I can only surmise that, “They don’t like it up ’em!”

        1. …and not a policeman in sight, ready to arrest them for ‘Covid Violations’ a la Tommy Robinson.

          My (Christian) God – what a display of double standards.

          1. 326066+ up ticks,
            NtN,
            They stand shoulder to shoulder the double standards that is.
            By the by that GE you mentioned tomorrow would lab/lib/con still be in the running ?

          2. The police have been corrupted and politicised. This is a national disgrace and our politicians should be hanging their heads in shame.

            Their inability and failure to act impartially is an even graver danger to our supposedly democratic society that the biased BBC.

          3. The police have been corrupted and politicised. This is a national disgrace and our politicians should be hanging their heads in shame.

            Their inability and failure to act impartially is an even graver danger to our supposedly democratic society that the biased BBC.

  32. A warning from Australia: Boris Johnson’s cure is worse than the disease. 2 November 2020.

    Cases have come down, but what has exploded is a mental health and economic crisis that will take this state decades to recover from.

    Melbourne has been declared the world’s most liveable city six out of the last seven years by the Economist Intelligence Unit. Now look at what 112 days of lockdown has done to this city and the state.

    Victoria lost more than 1,000 jobs a day through this second lockdown. Since lockdown strategies began in March, 696,000 jobs have been destroyed in Victoria, according to Institute of Public Affairs research. Given that 3.3 million Victorians are employed, those job losses are equivalent to 21% of the Victorian workforce.

    This is the warning from Victoria. This state is a shell of the vibrant place it was, and its people live in constant fear. Britain is about to follow the same path.

    Worth a read! The virus will prove to be the easy bit! Afterwards will be the trial!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/comment/warning-australia-boris-johnsons-cure-worse-disease/

    1. I’d have thought the Aussies would be the last people in the world to put up with all this nonsense.

      1. Even Aussies don’t like being beaten up by their police and given large fines.

        Victoria/Melbourne has been extremely heavily policed by very heavy handed policemen.

        1. Sadly, from reports I’ve seen, this does seem to be the case. There must be an awful lot of resentment simmering just below the surface.

          1. There is a lot of adverse comment on the TV and not very supportive of the political or police hierarchy.

    2. I’m old enough to remember standing for hours in freezing cold food queues after we had ‘won’ WWII.
      I can remember being dragged round bombed out factories to get light bulbs and firewood.
      I can remember candles for lighting and my mother heating food and bath water on a Primus stove.
      I didn’t think my grandchildren would be faced with possibly the same experiences.

        1. What – Little Chefs and Beefeaters? Only kidding! 🙂 I’m to young to remember them, but I have heard of them.

        2. I never ate there, but I remember from the ’50s & early ’60s the canteen/cafeteria at Ashington Bus Station which may have started as a British Restaurant.
          The food always smelt lovely and the place was always packed.

          1. My sister, who was a pharmacist, was doing some family planning work in Ashington – handing out advice and condoms etc, when one of her ladies arrived at the clinic pregnant , despite having had a large supply of condoms. When asked what she had done with said condoms, the lady replied ” Eeh pet! My Davey didn’t like the feel of rubber, so ah knitted him one!” Circa 1975

          2. A young Swedish bloke on holiday in Ashington walked into that very same chemist’s shop.

            Chemist: “How may I help you?”
            Swede: “I’d like to buy some deodorant.”
            Chemist: “Ball or aerosol?”
            Swede: “No, it’s for my armpits!”

          5. No pet! I was hoping not to have to google!
            OK! Done that! It’s from the Old English “oxta/oxtha” for the armpit or inside of the upper arm!

          8. So can I! My sister was very naive and about 23 and really knew nowt aboot life! How we larfed!

          11. One of my many delightful nieces always used to refer to me as her Wicked Uncle and she gave me a knitted willie warmer for Christmas one year causing mirth and embarrassment when the family were gathered by the Christmas Tree for presents.

            To be honest I never used it and it may possibly still be tucked away in a drawer somewhere.

          12. One of my many delightful nieces always used to refer to me as her Wicked Uncle and she gave me a knitted willie warmer for Christmas one year causing mirth and embarrassment when the family were gathered by the Christmas Tree for presents.

            To be honest I never used it and it may possibly still be tucked away in a drawer somewhere.

        1. I remember those too. I also remember an employee of the ‘corporation’ as it was then coming round in the gloom of a mid-Novermber afternoon to light and turn on each individual gas light along our road. And turn them off in the morning. Life seemed peaceful, ordered, calm and tranquil with an attention to detail that is no longer there now.

        2. My silly, elder brother thought he’d play grocers one morning, got hold of all the family ration books and a pair of scissors, then proceeded to cut them all up into small pieces. That went down well.

          1. I used my mother’s rationed lipstick (1 a year, I think) to draw flowers on the green base of my toy push along horse. I had been inspired by the floral ‘soup plates’ the grass in Bambi and thought GeeGee might appreciate the same.
            Thinking back, it’s amazing any of us reached adulthood.

          2. In the early 70s, my sister and I riding round the supermarket in the trolley decided to peel all the price tags off the groceries and stick them onto our faces. You can imagine the scene at the till!

          4. My father once caused a storm in Lidl in Germany. He was very fond of kiwi fruit; the problem was how best to carry them. So he took an empty egg carton with him & filled it with the kiwis. When he reached the checkout the bitch raged at him & wanted to know what he had done with the eggs. Unwillingly she accepted his explanation. From then on, with each visit he saw other customers doing the same.

      3. My grandmother was still heating her bath water (and any other hot water she needed) on a gas ring in 1968 and having her bath in front of the fire too. She considered herself lucky that the lavvy which was up the back garden and shared with the people upstairs was a WC.

        When I started school in 1964 between a quarter and a third of the families attending lived in houses which had neither indoor nor flushing toilets. None of the farms or cottages outside the village were connected to the grid, we got power in 1966, upper Donside wasn’t connected until 1977.

        Despite our “wealth” there has never been a stage at which no one in the UK was living in substandard accommodation – and not because they were immigrants or feckless either.

        1. Sounds like MB’s late aunts. They had an earth closet well into the sixties; one aunt used to ‘go’ twice a day and that caused terrible ructions because the whole system was based on Uncle Fred only having to empty the pail once a week down at the allotment.
          Ethel’s overactive bowels were constant topic of conversation in that household.
          “Perce … Perce … she’s down there again….”

          2. Those conversations are embedded in MB’s memory.
            He and I have had many an hysterical (and childish) laugh over those days.

          3. I don’t ever recall any conversations about such things – as a small child I don’t suppose that I knew or cared when, where or how often pails were emptied. But I do know that I regarded such toilets as very much a part of normal life though we had a bathroom at home (added to the stone-built 18th century farmhouse in about 1948) and that as long as the Rayburn was working we had hot water – though no back-up immersion heater because the power from the generator was very limited. TV, fridge and a second-hand electric cooker (as opposed to a single electric ring) appeared after the mains power arrived as did night-storage heaters which did something to remove the chill from a farmhouse on a hillside facing north and east. Until then only the kitchen and the bathroom (because the hot water tank wasn’t lagged) were ever warm.

            We didn’t replace the water wheel, which took the water from the spring to the cistern at the top of the yard, with an electric pump until the 1980s after I had left home. Until then if the cattle were thirsty the house went dry – and we just expected it to happen. The trick was not to leave the tap turned on if the flow was slow – or you were likely to cause an airlock which required the stirrup pump to shift it. Children who did things like could expect to be told, in no uncertain terms, how pestilential they were.

          4. My maternal grandparents had a flushing loo at the bottom of the garden. It was not supplied with electricity, so a visit at night was to be avoided because a) no lighting & cold, b) it meant passing the detached utility room, where the bogey-man lived.
            I can remember prising open the manhole cover outside the loo with my cousin & pointing & laughing at the turds.

          5. There was electric light in the back loo at my grandmother’s house. But I don’t think any of the earth closets I remember had lighting. Very small children, of course, wouldn’t be expected to go out after dark – there would be a potty under the bed or a bucket in the back kitchen for them.

            Septic tanks were never (are still not) a subject for laughter. They require careful handling and a complete avoidance of bleach. Nothing other than what nature produces and the minimum of loo paper must ever be flushed … on pain of blockages, overflows and wholesale disagreeableness. Toilet cleaner which doesn’t kill any known germs is required and even that should be used sparingly. My clients with let cottages have to spend a fortune on having septic tanks emptied because only 1 tenant in 100 seems to understand that you have to allow the bugs to multiply to keep the things working.

            Back in the early 90s when I was living in a rented house on the edge of Shropshire I had a drain-junction box in the back garden which started to overflow. It took 3 months of to and fro between myself, the landlord’s agent and Severn Trent Water to a) establish that it was merely a junction of 2 drains and not a septic tank (despite the charge for sewage on Severn Trent’s bill) and b) that the blockage had been caused by Severn Trent themselves … when laying in a new water main they had cut through my sewage pipe and poured concrete into it. Then another month for them to come and dig up the road again to fix the problem.

          6. There was electric light in the back loo at my grandmother’s house. But I don’t think any of the earth closets I remember had lighting. Very small children, of course, wouldn’t be expected to go out after dark – there would be a potty under the bed or a bucket in the back kitchen for them.

            Septic tanks were never (are still not) a subject for laughter. They require careful handling and a complete avoidance of bleach. Nothing other than what nature produces and the minimum of loo paper must ever be flushed … on pain of blockages, overflows and wholesale disagreeableness. Toilet cleaner which doesn’t kill any known germs is required and even that should be used sparingly. My clients with let cottages have to spend a fortune on having septic tanks emptied because only 1 tenant in 100 seems to understand that you have to allow the bugs to multiply to keep the things working.

            Back in the early 90s when I was living in a rented house on the edge of Shropshire I had a drain-junction box in the back garden which started to overflow. It took 3 months of to and fro between myself, the landlord’s agent and Severn Trent Water to a) establish that it was merely a junction of 2 drains and not a septic tank (despite the charge for sewage on Severn Trent’s bill) and b) that the blockage had been caused by Severn Trent themselves … when laying in a new water main they had cut through my sewage pipe and poured concrete into it. Then another month for them to come and dig up the road again to fix the problem.

          7. A similar arrangement was in place when I lived in the Loire Valley in the sixties, except that the loo was “à le turcque” – ie a shed with a plank over a hole in the ground. One took a torch to cross the courtyard which was alive with rustling leaves and deep shadows. It didn’t encourage nocturnal excursions!

    3. I read somewhere today that in London, the number of suicides/attempted suicides has practually doubled over the last 6 months – up from 22 last year to 37 now – per DAY. Rather a LARGE number if taken nationally and annualised.

    4. Last time i spoke to( four weeks ago) good old Bruce from south east of Melbourne, he told me many people were and had been fined for disobeying government orders. The restrictions on movement were very firmly policed with road blocks etc. One of his less friendly neighbour ‘Dobbed him in’ for having 3 cars on their driveway instead of the usual one. The police arrived and spent well over an hour taking the details of those who were in the house and why. Their grand daughter who lived with in the legal travel distance from them and her husband had to move in, because their own home was being rebuilt. after demolition. Where else were they suppose to go. It’s not all as you see on Neighbours, just a little understanding and a friendly wave might have been better. But as he told me, the grumpy old lady was of Teutonic decent. Creeping about the neighbourhood after dark was one of her treasured past times.

        1. The heavy metal version of the three cornered Jack.😙
          In the past she complained about some other neighbours putting gravel on their drive ways, as she could hear people driving in at night time.

          1. My son was on a bus from Germany to London once, and some elderly German woman called the police on the bus driver, accusing him of damaging trees. The poor man, who was just doing his job, had been driving along the prescribed route and there were some overhanging trees.
            Some of the passengers had planes to catch, but she didn’t care. The bus was held up for more than an hour.

          2. Ganz neu in Deutschland, ich wurde auf einem D-Zug mit S-Bahnkarte erwischt. Der Schaffner hatte Verständnis für mein Unwissen, aber die blöde alte Kuh, die auch in Abteil saß, hat ihr Bestes getan, den Schaffner zu überzeugen, dass ich bestrafft werden sollte. Er gab mir eine freundlich Mahnung, bzw Aufklärung, und das war’s.

          3. You’ve just got to hope that you don’t have one of these people living in the flat below you!

          6. She wasn’t the worst. There was one in the next block who really hated me – just because I wasn’t Swedish. The Swedes are not ausländerfreundlich.

          7. I worked for a German in Port Elizabeth. We had one day off a week and whilst lazing on the beach on Sunday, he would often find us to see what we were up to. Fortunately he didn’t kick sand in our faces.

  33. A warning from Australia: Boris Johnson’s cure is worse than the disease. 2 November 2020.

    Cases have come down, but what has exploded is a mental health and economic crisis that will take this state decades to recover from.

    Melbourne has been declared the world’s most liveable city six out of the last seven years by the Economist Intelligence Unit. Now look at what 112 days of lockdown has done to this city and the state.

    Victoria lost more than 1,000 jobs a day through this second lockdown. Since lockdown strategies began in March, 696,000 jobs have been destroyed in Victoria, according to Institute of Public Affairs research. Given that 3.3 million Victorians are employed, those job losses are equivalent to 21% of the Victorian workforce.

    This is the warning from Victoria. This state is a shell of the vibrant place it was, and its people live in constant fear. Britain is about to follow the same path.

    Worth a read! The virus will prove to be the easy bit! Afterwards will be the trial!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/comment/warning-australia-boris-johnsons-cure-worse-disease/

  34. The BBC’s allies are starting to panic. 1 November 2020,

    For the first time, there are signs that a Tory government is freeing itself of its Stockholm Syndrome attitude towards the BBC. There have been suggestions it will de-criminalise non-payment of the BBC license fee this autumn, and there are signals that Number 10 is finally seeing the Corporation as what it has become: an enemy of conservatism and a champion of a vapid potpourri of fashionable nonsense.

    In response, it is clear the Corporation is mounting its own defence and once again calling on its friends in high places to take up arms and man the defences on its behalf. The liberal establishment is on high alert because it sees the barbarians at the gate and it fears, this time, the walls may be breached.

    I’m not counting my chickens yet! The BBC is virulently hostile to traditionally British values. It needs to be abolished completely or it will, like the alien organism that it is, re-establish itself by clandestine means.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-bbc-s-allies-are-starting-to-panic

    2. One option is to instead of a black and white fee or no, they could say ‘you can buy certain programs to watch, or a series if you want to without paying the licence fee.’

      That let’s them build the infrastructure and allows a degree of choice without a blanket one or the other.

  35. Did anyone read Toby Young in the “Spectator”, October 17, about the “Barrington Declaration”?

    He thinks Ofcom censored discussion of Barrington in the broadcast media.

    “We leverage policy, legislation and political influence and build strong relationships with officials, politicians, NGOs and other actors”.

    Looks like Ofcom might be yet another Open Society London classic!

    Deep State infiltration looks deep.

    1. I have previously asked you
      to refrain from posting piccies
      of me … especially the glam.
      ones!! :-))

  37. Brutal ‘backstabber’ Gove denies responsibility for leak to media after Friday’s ‘quad’ summit. 2 November 2020.

    Crisis summit was attended by a small circle of ministers, namely Mr Gove, Mr Sunak and Mr Hancock, so suspicion does not have far to fall.

    I posted yesterday that it was almost certainly Gove who leaked the Lockdown news ahead of time just to shaft Boris. It was amusing to watch that as soon as Boris had done it Gove appeared to say that the Lockdown would be even longer, thus undermining him again. He can’t help himself. He stabbed him in the back during the leadership race and he’s serially incapable of telling the truth. He’s a clinical psychopath!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/11/01/brutal-backstabber-gove-denies-responsibility-leak-media-fridays/

    1. 326066+ up ticks+ up ticks,
      AS,
      He earned his bones during the leadership farce and farce it surely was played out to place the already chosen one along with the 9 month delay.
      His portrayal of reluctant PM candidate / assassin could not have been bettered.

    3. With friends like Gove, no one needs enemies. His appearance on the telly yesterday was surely a ‘I’m still here and I’m still important’ moment, lest we forget what an utter shitbag he is. We haven’t.

      ‘Morning, Minty.

    2. He is a very unpleasant character, isn’t he? Must be all the cold and damp of his swampy hillock!

  39. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    SIR – The UK is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature. Leaving the Common Agricultural Policy provides a golden opportunity to rewild and restore a healthier balance to the ecology of the UK.

    The Pennines and other wild uplands are now ecological deserts, managed for the benefit of sheep and grouse. We can start to improve this.

    There are over two million deer in the UK. They cause deaths on the road, Lyme disease and ecological damage by overgrazing. In the UK, they now have no natural predator.

    The evidence from Yellowstone Park in America is that a predator is essential in the ecosystem and it can provide diverse benefits. The time is right to reintroduce a predator to the UK, and the lynx is the ideal candidate. It is small, selective for roe deer (70 per cent of its diet) and secretive. Experience in Switzerland, Estonia and Sweden shows that the threat to sheep farming is minuscule, and it is proven to pose no threat to humans. The financial benefits of ecotourism far outstrip the costs of sheep predation.

    The question is whether, despite its safety record, the British are now too scared of the lynx to tolerate it.

    Dr Stephen Westgarth
    Wylam, Northumberland

    If roe deer make up 70% of its diet, Dr W, do tell us where the remaining 30% will come from. If we need any predator at all it needs to be one that takes fallow deer, which is by far the most prevalent in this country and which, of all the six deer species here, requires predation. And I doubt that sheep farmers will welcome the arrival of lynx either, given that sheep are very definitely on its shopping list and the threat is certainly more than “miniscule”.

    1. Could we not selectively breed a predator that feeds only on politicians and MSM luvvies.
      Just asking for a friend. 🤔

    2. I’ve decided that reintroducing lynx and wolves would be good for the country. I’d certainly enjoy seeing them. I’ve never been that keen on sheep.

      1. A compensation scheme for farmers who lose sheep, hillwalkers who lose children, is quite simple. I think such schemes operate in other countries.
        I would like Persian leopards to be introduced to Scotland. It might help save them from extinction. Applecross would suit. It might discourage tourists.

      2. Can’t we breed/introduce an urban lynx? Good food source in our ghettos; many of the inhabitants can’t run in their blackout curtains.

          2. Well, he disappeared some weeks ago, Annie, and I have no idea whence he has gone. (That’ll please Peddy.)

          3. Oh dear, Elsie.
            Whence indicates motion from, not motion towards.

            whence
            /wɛns/
            Learn to pronounce
            FORMAL•ARCHAIC
            adverb
            from what place or source.
            “whence does Parliament derive this power?”
            adverb
            from which; from where.
            “the Ural mountains, whence the ore is procured”

          4. Methinks it’s time for me to sign off for the day, make myself another cuppa, and go back to bed. You are absolutely right, Peddy.

    3. Deer are not a problem. What we need is a predator that’ll eat politicians and Muslim terrorists.

    4. What we need is fewer bunny huggers to oppose shooting. I suggest we introduce a lynx into SW’s back garden and see how he gets on first. Who knows, he may find that the lynx is a threat to humans after all.

  40. My thanks to all who contributed with information to assist with solving my problem with posting a tweet here. I use an iPad these days and sadly it does not seem to provide me with this delightful sounding ‘snipping tool’ that was mentioned. However, one of you did solve my problem in that I can now post a link to a tweet. Thank you!

      1. Back-up, boogaloo. brilliant and a suggestion it might be but it rather reminds me of my father’s translation of the meaning of the town of Bungay (in Suffolk) and it’s erstwhile ‘protector’ Hugh Bigod. It read, “A cock crowing on its dunghill.”

    1. Yeah, right. And how many of them are going to make a song and dance in the Commons? A couple – the “usual suspects” who can safely be ignored by the BPAPM.

      1. And how many of them are going to make a song and dance in the Commons?

        With their big fat salaries, expenses and gold plated pensions ?
        Absolutely not one of the useless creeps.

    2. Thanks, Sue, but any pontifications from that twisted mouth loon need to be taken with a barrel of salt.

      Probably the worst, and most biased news reporter that the BBC has ever had. I always mute her mouthings..

      1. I think that Laura Kuenssberg must be related to Douglas Carswell. Did Conan Doyle write a detective story called: “The Pair With the Twisted Lips”? If not he should have done.

      1. Did you really think the Conservative Party changed after deposing May and installing Johnson?
        Their actions has shown them in all their glorydeceit.
        There is no bogey man Corbyn to save them next time round.

        1. Nigel Farage is making noises. He spooked Cameron into the referendum. Perhaps this time he will use red hot pokers.

          3. He needs to see it through next time, with no backtracking.
            I have had a discussion on another forum where the statement was made “… people will never be happy. I guarantee you they will be a lot less happy if they end up with Labour and the SNP shaping a deal in four years time”.
            There speaks someone who must consider a BINO as acceptable, the lesser of two evils I suppose.
            Only by killing the Conservative Party stone dead can this country ever hope to have a conservative minded option on the ballot paper be it Farage or someone else.

          4. Johnson certainly acquired a poisoned chalice when he won the election but very few would argue that he has made a success of the job.

          5. Much as I like Nigel Farage I fear he lost credibility entirely when he caved into the Bonker and withdrew his Brexit Party candidates from all seats held by the Conservatives including seats held by remainers.

          6. He had form; he gave up and ran away from UKIP first, having failed to plan for a successor.

        2. You are right – but remember that Cameron could not win an outright majority when Gordon Brown, possibly the worst ever PM, was the Labour leader and had to form a pact with the Lib/Dems under ‘Legover’ Clegg while Theraita May lost a 30 point pre-election advantage over Labour and required the support of the Ulster Unionists when Corbyn was Labour leader.

          By contrast the more right wing leader, Margaret Thtacher, won three elections on the trot with increasing majorities.

          The Conservatives must be more than a bit thick – the evidence suggests that they will win more parliamentary seats if they move to the right so they move to the left.

          1. They move to the left because they are not conservative minded. I think the Limp Dums is where they would feel most at home.

  43. Afternoon all from the western crazees …
    It appears that anyone leaving Wales would need a good reason … ” well, officer, this sawn-off shotgun, aiming at your chest, is my reason …. cheerie bye …!.

    2. Not so very far from here, in Llanymynech, you simply have to walk across the road to go from England to Wales, or vice versa. One of the pubs even has a bar on either side of the border (which used to be very popular in the days when Wales was “dry” on Sundays). Fortunately no one seems to be interfering with pedestrians – even when they are crossing the border.

      One of my farming clients currently has sheep in his “English” field, but his house is in Wales – neither he nor his sheepdog have been arrested… yet.

      I managed to get in and out without let or hindrance last week, and hope to do the same this week. Then the week after it will back to the beginning again as the English lockdown kicks in. I could very well do without it, but offering violence or insult to Dyfed-Powys police is never going to have a happy ending – and I need to keep working.

      1. Razor wire. Guard towers with spotlights and machine guns. It’s the only way if you don’t want everyone in Wales to die of covid.

      2. Razor wire. Guard towers with spotlights and machine guns. It’s the only way if you don’t want everyone in Wales to die of covid.

          2. 😘 I wasn’t ‘correcting’ you, canny lass. I wouldn’t dare!

            Don’t tell anyone, but I still cannot find what I’m supposed to be looking for in that cartoon!

    2. One of my uncles landed in that area with No 4 Commando,1st Special Service Brigade. I believe they has 50% casualties. He survived that but was later injured in Italy. He survived that too and lived to a good age. He came from Keighley and could have been friendly with, the now world famous, Capt Tom Moore.

    3. One of my uncles landed in that area with No 4 Commando,1st Special Service Brigade. I believe they has 50% casualties. He survived that but was later injured in Italy. He survived that too and lived to a good age. He came from Keighley and could have been friendly with, the now world famous, Capt Tom Moore.

  46. As noted elsewhere, Robert Fisk has died, unfortunately. He was a leftist, which is hardly surprising because he worked as a journalist for the Independent.

    I am reminded of what the late Auberon Waugh said of the Independent:

    “The newspaper caters for the same congregation of embittered female social workers, uneducable teachers, unemployable arts graduates and redundant health administrators as the Guardian, with a slightly stronger pitch towards the “gay community”!

    1. Bought a copy of the Indie soon after it was launched and was so sickened by the anti-Israel propaganda that I never repeated the mistake.

      1. On the occasion of the Queen’s 40th anniversary of her succession I was in Riyadh and wanted to buy a British newspaper. They were all sold out except for the Independent, so for the first and last time in my life I bought it.

        They had an editorial about the Queen. I have never read a more mealymouthed, splenetic apology for an article in my entire life! The rest of the paper found itself in the rubbish bin where it certainly belonged!

  47. Hi NoTTlers – Do you have any helpful advice or quotes ?

    Dr.Zachery revealed sayings like ‘everything happens for a reason’ and ‘keep calm and carry on’ are harmful for people struggling with their mental health.
    ‘People do not feel better when you say “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” and “everything happens for a reason”. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6361d73b082ffa6d412e950282b3169ceb51dd3f7f1f4da06092de9f4b08c6ab.jpg

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-8904041/Doctor-reveals-common-phrases-NEVER-say-battling-anxiety-depression.html

    2. An old friend once explained getting to grips with depression as, “I used to want to kill myself but I’m better now. I want to kill someone else.”

    3. A good hard slap on the face, and a loud, “Pull yourself together!”, and perhaps shake them back and forth by the shoulders.

    4. What someone deeply depressed needs is to be heard. Not spoken to, not told to ‘get over it’.

      The person needs to talk, but not by being asked questions.

          3. After much pushing and prodding from the Memory Team, it was changed from Citalopram to the new one, but the practice is not happy; they are refusing to put it on repeat prescription, which all makes what should be a simple request into a hassle because I now need to ring up the surgery or there would be no anti-depressants prescribed at all.

          5. I do repeats online, too, but when the drug is missing from the list of those you can request, there is a problem!

    7. Morning Plum,

      Favourite expression in this household was Buck up and Come on then a whistled tune , Happy parrot used to say that , my voice .. I miss that bird like mad . 36 years of me saying night night and good morning .. and I am still saying that to an empty space in the room.

      I must buck up , and get on with stuff .

      2. Even two plus years later, I miss a little face peering round the conservatory window to suss out what I’m doing in the kitchen.

        1. Sometimes when I drive up the hill towards the house, I can see Jason sitting on the window sill. He is the cat before last and died of of an inoperable stomach tumour 17 years ago.

        2. “Friends”. Noun plural. Collective noun for members of the Schadenfreude Conspiracy.

      1. If Blair is in favour of something one can absolutely guarantee that he has an ulterior motive that will fill his pockets whilst simultaneously harming Britain.

        1. Blair is one of the embodiments of the case for the reintroduction of capital punishment.

        1. I have mentioned this previously.
          Around 10 years after driving the 1000 or so miles from home, we had just arrived at HPB Stigliano in Tuscany. The story was, that the previous evening the B Liar’s turned up out the blue, almost demanding to be accommodated for the night. But were sent on their way. It was rumoured they had been staying with Silvio Berlusconi also in Tuscany and had not seen eye to eye over something. I seem to remember that Burlesque Phoney had been kick out of his job about two years previously and had a bad reputation for extra curricular activities.

    11. A good hard slap on the face, and a loud, “Pull yourself together!”, and perhaps shake them back and forth by the shoulders.

  48. Just back from the garden centre – I needed some weed reducing matting. Carpark heaving. Everyone stocking up n the ghastly tat they “offer” before Thursday, I suppose.

    I said I needed 2 pieces each 3½ metres long.

    “Oh, I have to sell that by the metre – I can’t do half metres.”
    “OK,” I replied, “I’ll have one piece 7 metres long.”
    “How do you work that out?” came the reply….

    Poured with rain on the way to town – now sunny – and 15ºC

    1. ‘Morning, Bill. The last time I bought weed-reducing matting I got quite a bargain, because the assistant hadn’t realised that it came off the roll folded in half…

    3. Cheaper to cut & fold out large black plastic sacks & weigh them down with bricks or large stones at the corners.

    5. Not long back from Matlock myself. Chucking it down as I went in, turned bright & sunny when I was there, but looks as if it’s going to rain again so the two 25kg bags of cement are staying in the back of the van for now.

  51. There is a discussion earlier on here about smoke coming out of ears. This may be of interest:

    Why It’s Possible to Smoke (Vape) Out of Your Ears

    In a popular Reddit video, a girl blows vape smoke out of her right ear instead of her mouth or nose. How is this possible? Magic? CGI? Nope: ear tubes, baby. Well, ear tubes when she was a baby. Let’s get into it.

    Your ears are connected to your mouth, specifically to a cavernous space behind your nose and above your mouth known as the nasopharynx, through passages called eustachian tubes. These tubes connect the nasopharynx to the middle ear (the area behind your eardrum) and allow air to flow in and out of this space.

    When you feel your ears get “full” on an airplane, or when you change external pressure environments, it’s because the atmospheric pressure on the outside of your body/in your ear canal is different than the pressure in your middle ear. Your eustachian tubes alleviate this pressure by briefly opening up to allow the air to stabilize. This is more commonly known as ear-popping, and you can trigger it by chewing gum, swallowing water, or by holding your nose and blowing — although this last method is dangerous and discouraged by doctors.

    In addition to allowing air through, the eustachian tubes can also let liquid in and out of your middle ear. This is important for when you have water stuck in your ear, but also when you have an ear infection. If you’ve ever had one, then you know ear infections can be beyond painful. This pain is caused by a build-up of bacteria in your middle ear behind your eardrum.

    Normally, the eustachian tubes can open up and allow this bacteria to drain into the back of your throat. (Gross, I know, but trust me, it’s way better than an ear infection.) However, if the eustachian tube becomes inflamed, or is just too narrow to allow all the bacteria out — as a child’s might be — then you are left with a stabbing pain that just won’t quit.

    This is where ear tubes come in. Doctors can poke a small hole in your ear drum and place a tiny plastic pipe called a myringotomy tube inside. These guys are tiny; they’re about a third of the size of a sesame seed. By placing these tubes inside your eardrum, doctors can create a new evacuation route for the bacteria in your inner ear and voila! No more infection.

    Under normal circumstances, these tubes fall out on their own within a couple of years, and the eardrum patches itself up. However, that’s not always the case.

    Since children and infants have smaller eustachian tubes, they are at a higher risk for ear infections. The girl in this video probably had a few instances of ear infections as a kid that left her with a tiny hole in her eardrum for good. This isn’t necessarily a huge health risk on its own, however, blowing anything out of it, including vape smoke, probably isn’t a good idea. But still, by keeping vapor at the back of her throat, holding her nose and popping her ears, the ear vape girl is able to push the smoke up her eustachian tube, into her middle ear, and then out of her ear canal.

    It’s not magic.

    1. And there was I thinking the cavernous space was where my brains ought to be! More seriously, when I had a winter of continuous head colds, it did lead to ear infection and my gp explained the connectivity and how those tubes can become infected.

    3. Grommits can backfire later in life. #2 son has them when very young and now has problems when skydiving or scuba diving.

  52. Away from Covid and Brexit, myself and Mrs VVOF took a walk through the fields this afternoon. I have an app on the iPad which shows rain radar for about the immediate 90mins ahead. It showed clear so we wrapped up warm and set off.
    Bloody marvelous, a fresh cool breeze with lots of autumn sunshine. This is a wonderful country, I only hope and pray we can act to keep it that way.

  53. Away from Covid and Brexit, myself and Mrs VVOF took a walk through the fields this afternoon. I have an app on the iPad which shows rain radar for about the immediate 90mins ahead. It showed clear so we wrapped up warm and set off.
    Bloody marvelous, a fresh cool breeze with lots of autumn sunshine. This is a wonderful country, I only hope and pray we can act to keep it that way.

    2. Good morning P-T

      Bad luck! This often happens – it is infuriating particularly now that the plugs and connections are all sealed.

      2. Wow, Richard, can nobody cut a sealed plug off and, with the judicious use of Stanley knives, wire-strippers and a screwdriver, change a plug?

        Perhaps I should set myself up as an electrician.

        1. The government thinks we cannot be trusted to do so and it is for our own safety!

          In fact I used a domino blocks and insulating tape to extend the length of a short cable by inserting a bit more cable but it difficult to do a very neat job like this.

        2. The government thinks we cannot be trusted to do so and it is for our own safety!

          In fact I used domino blocks and insulating tape and extend the length of a short cable by inserting a bit more cable. It is but it difficult to do a very neat job in this way.

        3. Not these days, Tom. You’ll be lucky to find a non-attached plug that you could use, anyway. Every time I threw away an appliance, I cut the plug off (in those golden days when you could re-attach a plug) so I have a supply.

    3. These people are not generous with their leads . Our kettle and toaster are pathetic examples.. as is the vaccuum that is meant to get into the corners of the rooms , retractable lead but too short . We have a Gtech cordless , okay for floors and carpets but the rechargeable power point length is hopeless.

      What is the country going to do when the twerps in charge insist on all cars being electric, you can imagine the fuss, can’t you.

      2. I await with bated breath, the discombobulation of all the new electric car owners when they find that:

        Not only can they not get to a recharge point before the car stops
        They will have to pay loadsamoney at the recharge point
        There home recharge point, despite all it cost to install, has quadrupled their already expensive electricity bill.

        As they say, “There’s one born every minute.”

    4. You could use a small box of some sort to stand the kettle on so that the plug can reach the socket.

      As I remarked to my neighbour on the train from Lindau 2 years ago, “Manchmal muß man für die Frauen denken.” He agreed.

    5. Or if it is plugged in, it won’t reach the tap to allow it to be filled?
      But seriously, the leads are short in order to minimise the possibility of accidents. That is the thinking.

    11. Have you checked that the wire has been fully pulled from the stand? Sometimes they are coiled inside the stand and there is more wire available.

  55. Thought for the day.

    They’re trying to make the UK and its people so poor that none of the illegal immigrants here will want to stay, let alone new ones to make the hazardous journey to get here.

    1. Aye Right and then you woke up…………
      When we are starving and freezing the Gimmigrants will still be snug in their warm 4* hotels with three meals a day and free everything

      2. I didn’t say it would work.
        Government policy generally has the opposite effect to what was intended!
        };-))

      3. I doubt that even our useless government would dare to extend the immigrant franchise. If I worked in one of the immigrant hostelries I would wish to be relieved at the soonest. The blighters require special foods to suit the diets of their ancestral homes and will wish to have the facility to pray five times per day whilst contributing sod all to our economy.

        In addition the costs attached to the lawyers resisting their deportation will add a billion or more to our booming national debt.

      1. The hole with the darkness within represents the keyhole of lockdown.

        He needs a torch to see what is in the darkness, but the torch isn’t working, so he will have to enter without knowing what is in there.

        2. More like he hasn’t got a clue and can’t even have the wit and foresight to ensure he has put new batteries in.

      2. It’s the Eye of the Needle, a well known narrow gateway in the Bible. And something about camels.

        3. It is easier for a camel to enter the eye of the needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. At least that was what we were taught at Sunday School.

          The eye of the needle was shaped like a keyhole and was the smallest opening in the walls of a citadel. Perhaps the cartoonist is suggesting that Boris has taken the Soros shilling and is doomed to find himself in perpetual darkness with a torch with flat batteries.

      3. It’s the Eye of the Needle, a well known narrow gateway in the Bible. And something about camels.

  57. I had the misfortune to see a TV weather forecast the other evening. Why on earth do the people presenting it speak in such a strangulated, unreal way?

    1. Occasionally on R4 we are treated to the mellifluous tones of Susan Powell. Listening to her deliver the shipping forecast stops me in my tracks, I just HAVE to listen to the end.

    2. The BBC’s presenters are terrible: variously loud, garbled, slurred, too fast, too slow, theatrical. Quite the worst two are Ben Rich (he with the unfeasibly large number of teeth) who STRESSES words and syllables AT random while perforMING a dizzying HAND-jive, and dear little Tomas Shafenaker, whose absurdly measured manner reminds one of a poncy art critic entreating the viewer to examine the marvellous brushwork.

      Darren Bett is just about tolerable.

      2. I don’t know Ben Rich nor any of the above people, William, but just listen to Sam Pittis who broadcasts on Classic fm from 1am to 6am from Monday to Thursday inclusive. (On second thoughts don’t listen to him if you want to keep your sanity and stop your head from exploding.)

    3. The women sound like Mancunians to me. Schafernaker is a gifted joker and comedian and others have remarked that he should be given his own show.

  59. An R number between 1.1 and 1.3 means that on average every 10 people infected will infect between 11 and 13 other people.

    https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-r-number-in-the-uk

    So when R goes negative e.g. 0.9 then on average every 10 people infected will infect 9 other people.

    That, according to the model below, is because the 10 originally infected people have only been able to remove one in 10 of the remaining susceptible population either by virtue of them having gained immunity by viral exposure or vaccination, or as a result of having died as a result of the infection.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0b7693fdb40d48af1b5809845d199c025e21fc31dc127263172ffebe88b78156.jpg

    I conclude that the Government’s R number is actually Re (effective R) in the models.

    1. The government’s R number is a “think of a number” by the looks of things. I’ve just had an email from my Canadian friend who can’t believe we’re going back into lockdown. I’m afraid the virtual paper of my reply nearly combusted!

      1. It turns out that R0 and Re are related according to the slope of the population immunity (below):

        A lot depends on the value of R0 which is the ab initio COVID replication factor for the UK.

        The conundrum is that because COVID was a novel virus there was no hope of establishing what R0 should have initially been for the UK and can only be retrospectively deduced post mortem🤧 by which time any viral management decisions will have been made.

        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/97ca97c3af4bae03a57cf7bc0afb715fa03c6103cdf53911bc2581593426c7f9.jpg

        1. Having gained good passes in both Maths and Further Maths at GCE “A” level, I have always found graphs and statistics fairly easy to understand. With all of these Covid-19 figures I have now regressed to Annie’s understanding of Maffs.

          1. Pure and Applied Maths me Grade A (1969) and I remain baffled by the incompetence of so called experts to describe actual outcomes.

            The Covid testing regime is as good as useless, detecting fragments at best of the flu you had last year. The testing centres are deserted but, no worries, Serco and Mears are filling their boots and may be relied upon to deliver brown envelopes stuffed with our money to the political gangsters running the country (into the ground).

            Last week I struggled with the Planning Portal when depositing an otherwise simple planning application for a coffee shop in Grande Arcade Cambridge. It was so frustrating because the software they employ is user unfriendly rubbish.

            I had been using the facility without issue for years, depositing plans electronically. I sought advice only to find that the helpline was permanently engaged and that this former government facility had been flogged off to Mears, that it is run from the drug capital of England, Bristol, and that the usual stipulated fee had attracted several extras almost doubling the amount.

            After resubmitting by starting again from scratch I ‘got lucky’ and was able to deposit the application. At least that is the way I felt about the whole tick-box process.

            I think folk need to wake up to the monstrous theft that this government and its predecessors are performing on the citizenry.

  60. An R number between 1.1 and 1.3 means that on average every 10 people infected will infect between 11 and 13 other people.

    https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-r-number-in-the-uk

    So when R goes negative e.g. 0.9 then on average every 10 people infected will infect 9 other people.

    That, according to the model below, is because the 10 originally infected people have only been able to remove one in 10 of the remaining susceptible population either by virtue of them having gained immunity by viral exposure or vaccination, or as a result of having died as a result of the infection.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0b7693fdb40d48af1b5809845d199c025e21fc31dc127263172ffebe88b78156.jpg

    I conclude that the Government’s R number is actually Re (effective R) in the models.

    1. I hope his supporters are not being so stupid.

      They are at least as, if not more, likely to stop Republicans who historically have been more likely to vote on the day than Democrats.

  65. Yo All

    Back to Covid

    HMG/SAGE/PHE do not have a brain cell between them

    The initial ‘high Covid death rate’ was high because

    A. Those who died were elderly
    B. Many were in Care Homes (an Oxymoron?)
    C.They had underlying serious health problems
    D. PPE was in short supply
    E.Lack of understanding what Covid is really about
    F Protection was for the NHS, not us punters
    G There have been 90% fewer deaths from ‘normal’ Flu

    Now the punishment for not wearing seems to be allied to ethnicity, not safety

    There are Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics

    Madness is continually repeating the same failed actions and expecting a different outcome

    2. According to their ‘analysis’, nothing has changed since March so we should all lockdown as before. Experts my backside. That news conference, especially the ‘presentations’ by Vallance and particularly Whitty, were just about THE worst I’ve seen – as convincing as if an E-grade student were giving them, in my view. Now we here that a lot of the info was out of date, and besides, they seemed to be making loads of assumptionms based on ‘worst case’ as the norm, one on top of the other.

      As an engineer who knows a reasonable amount about data, making assumtions and educated guesses, what they did, and have seemingly got away with to convince the PM, staggered me. One more reason to have far more people in high office (the Opposition are even worse but get a free pass by the media) who have a wide range of experiences, particularly from the private sector, science, tech and engineering and well away from the public sector, media and ‘professional’ politics, but who can, as well as undertsnding when ‘experts’ and officials are BSing, that they can themselves make rational decisions based on several data sets and opinions/beliefs.

      1. You’re so right, Mags. Maybe, we the indigenous population might be the ones to finally turf them out – Priti and her useless snivel serpents aren’t interested.

    4. 326066+ up ticks,
      Afternoon OLT,

      “Madness is continually repeating the same failed actions and expecting a different outcome”

      So lab/lib/con supporter / voters have been sufferers for decades then ?

  66. If I have been misinformative regarding the priest Fr Nikolaos I glady stand corrected in hearing he is still among us, being a practising RC it is sad to hear of anyone being gunned down but more so a priest.

  68. That’s me for this mixed day. Rain; sunshine – very mild.

    Then an hour and a half on the phone to my bank because “securiddy” has blocked my account. I was attempting to invest in an ISA at a building society (that offer 0.85%) – and they were suspicious. I explained during the day, three times to various children that I was quite happy with the transfer; that the BS was genuine and protected by the FSCS; and that I had not been coerced etc etc etc….It gets boring after the second time.

    The last child said that, “Following the information you have just given myself, the transfer will go though and your account unblocked WITHIN THE NEXT 48 HOURS (ffs)….” There is, apparently, no way of speeding that up…

    They also asked if I had received any large sums lately. I explained that as the account was blocked I was unable to see……

    I know they have my best interests at heart – but to ask THREE times?

    Anyway……the kittens don’t care!! Today, for the first time, they started to wash their faces with their front legs (like cats do…) Sweeeeet.

    A demain

    1. Some scum conned my mother into paying £6,000 for a small sofa. The bank stopped it, thank God. Police called. So, it’s not all bad!

      2. When you’ve been asked, for the sixth month in a row why you are paying the Barclaycard you’ve been paying for more than a dozen years it certainly feels all bad. I mean – why does anyone pay a Barclaycard?

        It’s bad enough have to jump through a hundred hoops to set up a new payee, but that does at least make some sense, but to have to explain why I’m paying Barclaycard – or HMRC – whose account details are long ago verified – every single month… it’s a waste of time and massive drain (in the current circumstances) on temper.

      3. Lloyd’s send me a notification for more or less every payment and deposit into our accounts with them.

        Barclays not so good but they are promising to provide a similar notification system.

  69. Some advice please. I tried to post a disqus comment on another website and it got ‘moderated off’, despite there being nothing contentious about it. I have a recollection that this relates to ‘upticks’ or some such, can someone enlighten me please and suggest a solution?

    1. Down votes – you have zero (as I do) we are effectively blocked on every other Discurse forum. Nothing one can do, apparently, except, log out – and rejoin as “Dordogneman”….. Life’s too bleedin’ short.

      2. I posted some accurate details about the Welsh Assembly Referendum yesterday only to receive a down vote from the usual source for no reason that I could see. Please Graham, can you ask this person to show more respect and better manners towards other decent Nottlers who are either just mildly irritated or decide to quit the site altogether?

        3. Good evening, Rastus.

          The down voting is more than
          disrespectful and ill mannered;
          after the down-voted one has become
          suitably incensed the down-vote is often
          withdrawn; if that is not a sign of a
          vindictive streak I don’t know what is!!

        4. I am still here albeit occasionally. There are a couple of snide down voters.

          As Phizzee has cottoned on and explained not everyone is exactly what they seem and a few are quite nasty pieces of work as my late father would term them.

          3. Where his reasoning falls down is that ignoring and forgiving only encourages them to commit more attacks.

        5. And, as one might expect, this drew another downvote.

          I wonder what this person is like in real life – if indeed this person exists at all in real life.

  71. Thanks to the kind words about MIL last night.

    In some ways it is a blessing, she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer almost a year ago so this was a quick release.

    Now for the bureaucracy, number 19 in the queue to talk to the doctors office.

    1. You have probably seen it, but the You Gov website has a useful checklist and has a system for cancelling/informing government docs/depts with one instruction.

    2. You may want to check that their GP or some PHE official does include her in the latest COVID figures to bolster the clamour for endless lockdown. Sadly at the moment, I wouldn’t put it past them.

      1. Well that is what she had, so no surprise if she does get added to the stats. Late nineties and diagnosed with a cancer that was not progressing but still there. Probably her immune system was weak and could not fight covid.

        Lost sense of taste on Friday, covid lollipop test returns positive on saturday, general flu like symptoms and tiredness. What would you suggest did her in – scotch mist?

        1. I’m not trying to make some nasty suggestion, given I wasn’t aware at the time of the cause of her death. TBH, someone of her age and seeming health frailty might’ve died just as easily from any relatively minor ailment (it happened to some of my grandparents) – including some like the flu which also give very similar symtpoms.

          I was really saying that the medical ‘profession’ currently has great incentives to make more people appear as victims of COVID as the primary cause but who would very likely have died from minor extra ailments that just tipped their bodies over the edge.

          Many GPs have just ticked the COVID box without any test, which itself as far as accuracy has not been independently (of those involved/NHS) verified. Many are querying whether it can differentiate between other coronaviruses – one of which is a variant of the common cold – which will give similar symptoms in many cases.

          Note that when I had the flu really bad twice about 4-5 years ago (twice in two years, despite both times getting an NHS flu jab), I too lost some of my sense of taste and smell, presumably due to my sinouses being all blocked up, etc.

    3. I’ve been listening to HMRC’s music for 53 minutes. Trying to find out why they are jumping up and down about their own error…. which I’ve already told them exactly how to fix – twice since early September. They don’t even tell you where you are in the queue!

    5. You have probably seen it, but the You Gov website has a useful checklist and has a system for cancelling/informing government docs/depts with one instruction.

  74. PHEW!!
    2 x 25kg bags of cement & 14 concrete blocks carried up to the garden.
    The last 4 blocks from the 60 I had delivered a week ago to hoik onto the wall and then carry up, plus a last two blocks left over from the last load I had delivered.
    62 blocks in all.
    Hopefully, I’ll be getting 25 blocks laid in the next couple of days, then it’ll be getting on with the next lot of concrete.

    At least doing all this graft is keeping me away from the News!!

    1. Hope you don’t get “blocked” by the council when it sees the extent of your development…{:¬))

      1. The next bit is mixing the mortar to get rid of 35 of them and then laying the next lot of concrete.
        I’ve just helped the DT get a load of apples to take down to her Mum’s tomorrow when she takes up Granny Sitting duties to give her sister a break, so I got her to take the bathroom scales up the garden and I weighed one of the blocks. 18.2kg!
        So that’s not only a ton of ballast I’ve shifted, but a ton of concrete blocks!

        2. Oh, that’s OK then, only about 15 journeys with blocks, two in each hand.

          And there I was, thinking you were having to work hard.

          };-O

  76. Marcus Walker
    If anything is ‘essential’ it’s worship
    2 November 2020, 2:45pm

    https://images.contentstack.io/v3/assets/bltf04078f3cf7a9c30/bltbb7c91a0de6d589e/5fa01b7c89353a72dcaed473/10_The-last-Christian.png?format=jpg&width=1920&height=1080&fit=crop

    “
    That the Church of England shall be free, and shall have all her whole Rights and Liberties inviolable.
    There are few clauses of Magna Carta that are still in force today. Most have been whittled away by the stultifying hands of generations of bureaucrats. But one clause still stands in its in 800-year-old majesty: that the Church of England shall be free. (I realise that my Roman Catholic readers might quibble about what was meant by the Church of England in 1217, but I ask you to bear with me).

    Freedom of religion is a cornerstone of a free people. It stands at the heart of every declaration and charter of rights. It should be dispensed with only under the gravest of circumstances and with the heaviest of hearts.

    These may indeed be such grave circumstances. In March almost everyone agreed that the circumstances were sufficiently worrisome that public worship should be suspended and that churches should be closed to the public — despite the desperate desire of so many for the comfort and solace that places of prayer might offer them in a pandemic. The bishops of the Church of England, the Roman Catholic Church, every other denomination, and the leaders of every other religion supported the government in its unprecedented suspension of liberty, and in many cases went further than the government demanded.

    As the first lockdown was eased that support was not repaid. Religion was classed as a ‘leisure activity’ and we found ourselves reopening after car showrooms, garden centres, and the Premier League.

    This casual disregard for one of the most basic freedoms guaranteed to the English people has been continued during the second lockdown. Although Robert Peston was briefed that public worship would be banned while private prayer in churches would continue to be legal, the Prime Minister forgot to mention this in his statement.

    This is a pity, as the decision to revoke one of the surviving clauses of Magna Carta, to suspend one of the key rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, should be taken with a heavy heart and only after detailed explanation as to why no alternative was possible. There has been no evidence presented that churches, which have gone out of their way to make their places of worship safe since being allowed to reopen in June, are more dangerous than supermarkets or other activities defined as essential.

    This is not just a question of rights. Or, rather, it’s important to understand what lies behind the almost universal recognition that freedom to worship, as our faiths demand, is such a crucial liberty in a free society. The worship of God is life-giving and transformational, it informs who we are at our very core. For those who believe, it is the very opposite of inessential — in the most literal meaning of the word ‘essential’ — It is of our essence.

    There are all sorts of activities that the government likes churches doing: operating foodbanks, creating credit unions, looking after the homeless. The Big Society in action. A report last month put a figure on the value to the economy of this charitable activity — it was £12.4 billion. But this good work does not come out of nowhere. It comes bubbling up from the worship that we share together. It is the vital overflowing of a love that grows and builds among people who pray together.

    And at the core of that worship is communion. The physical act of eating and (in happier times) drinking. It was one of the few explicit commands Christ gave us — alongside loving one another as he has loved us. By eating the body of Christ (however you want, theologically, to describe that), we become more Christ-like. This isn’t an inessential act for a Christian, it is the core act of a Christian. It is essential.

    Boris Johnson is a Conservative Prime Minister. He is also an instinctive Tory. I hope that he will remember his essence and fight, as any good Tory should, that the Church should be free — that the people committed to his charge by the Queen (who promised at her coronation ‘to maintain and preserve inviolably… the worship’ of the Church) should be free to worship their gods as our rights and liberties have always afforded us. And if we can’t, because the risk is just too great, to explain properly why not, and to pledge to restore this basic liberty as soon as possible — not as an adjunct to ‘other leisure activities.’

    Marcus Walker
    The Revd Marcus Walker is Rector of the Priory Church of St Bartholomew the Great, London.

    *******************************************************

    Mrs E • 3 hours ago
    The problem isn’t so much the banning of worship (not actually a surprise given the rank and growing degeneracy and craziness of this state-approved, state-practised satanist fear-and-doomsday cult).

    The problem is people going along with it. I grew up in East Germany where churches were well attended, especially for some borderline events where a political stance was taken. People were willing to risk far more than a stupid flu.

    In our church, the vicar (whose children were naturally banned from university education and taking up any meaningful career) greeted the Sunday congregation with ‘blessings to all those who choose to be here, but also to those who are forced to be here’, i.e. Stasi spies.

    He enjoyed such a level of respect that the city (of Frankenberg in Saxony) approved a monument of Luther to be unveiled for Refirmation Day, and even the SED mayor turned up to celebrate.

    Here: where are the people subverting lockdown in their homes for a prayer meeting? What is going on?

    2. “In March almost everyone agreed that the circumstances were sufficiently worrisome that public worship should be suspended and that churches should be closed to the public.”
      That “almost everyone” did not include those who actually go to Church. Weekly attendance at Sunday Mass is an obligation which Catholics have to observe, come Hell or High Water. No Catholic, other than the ruling clerics obviously, accepts that the State has the right to forbid attendance at Mass under any circumstances whatsoever. Moreover it is right and proper for Catholics to break any law that imposes such a ban.

      1. The obligation to attend Mass on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation was suspended in the UK at the start of the first lockdown and remains suspended until further notice.

        3. Actually, the bishops have neither right or obligation to promote, or obey, any rule proposed by the State that conflicts with the laws of the Church and the rights and obligations of the members of the Church.

      2. I would have thought our massive cathedrals were the perfect place for combining both worship and social distancing. Vast volumes of air and widely spaced seating.

        The Covid rules are transparently a nonsense dreamed up by nutty and dishonest ‘scientific’ advisors many of whom have presumably never visited a church.

    3. I was at St Barts this evening. Marcus preached a great sermon, as always. On Weds evening he’s reviving the service of thanksgiving for deliverance from the gunpowder plot!

    4. “Boris Johnson is a Conservative Prime Minister. He is also an instinctive Tory.” I think your argument falls down right there!

    2. I watched it several times on Saturday while babysitting my 21 month old granddaughter! Great isn’t it??

    3. Thanks, Ped – but absolute bollocks. Throw the kids into a shark tank and see how many Do-to do-do they manage before being eaten.

  79. A few of today’s DM headlice, oops, headlines:

    UK records FEWEST daily infections for a fortnight on the day Boris Johnson tries to persuade parliament we need another lockdown – as Keir Starmer roasts him for ‘ignoring’ scientists’ advice for 40 days

    Coronavirus mutation that has become the dominant strain worldwide may be MORE contagious than the original – accounting for over 85% of global cases

    Britain records FEWEST daily Covid-19 cases in a fortnight as officials announce 18,950 more positive tests and 136 deaths

    Stillbirths DOUBLED during first wave of Covid-19 pandemic amid fears that mothers were delayed from seeking NHS care

    Blair’s four-point Covid plan: Ex-PM calls for experimental drugs to be deployed more widely, speeded up vaccines and faster testing.

    What’s the truth about No10’s gloomy Covid figures? Top advisers DROPPED their estimate on number of daily cases before lockdown announcement,official infections are barely rising and NHS had 40,000 spare beds atpeak of pandemic.

    Anyone still think the PTB have a rat’s arse in Hell’s clue?

    1. Stillbirths numbers go from 1 to 2? Or 500 to 1000? As no one will know the figure off the top of their head, a guide to the actual number would be useful, please. Or a link to the source?
      This could be really serious, or just serious for a few people.

    2. Blair was not so keen on vaccinating his own children I seem to recall. He should be at the front of the queue for the experimental vaccines, rat that he is.

      1. And not just one.

        EVERY experimental vaccine out there, for him, his children, their cousins and anyone who thinks Blair is correct..

    2. Why is the world full of millions of halfwits who think that it is sensible to film with a mobile phone held vertically?

      1. Why is the world full of millions of halfwits who think that it is sensible to film with a mobile phone held vertically ?

      2. Because if they hold it horizontally all they would film is the ground. Or the sky. Or did you mean why do they film in portrait rather than landscape? ;@)

        1. Sorry, Harry. I forgot to take into consideration the mental acuity of those doing the filming. Silly me, I’m off the stand in the corner! :•Þ

      1. You can delete a post. Look for the little down arrow – hover your cursor to the right of the message.

      2. You can delete a post. Look for the little down arrow – hover your cursor to the right of the message.

      1. It takes time to craft so carefully one of those wonderfully neutral and impartial reports for which the BBC is renowned.

  81. Voters should not have to rely on Nigel Farage to force a proper lockdown debate

    British politics is stuck in a vicious cycle of pressure campaigns

    BENEDICT SPENCE

    In these uncertain days, when, depending on the time and which scientist you ask, venturing outside could either kill your grandmother, keep her alive, or risk both of you being fined for no readily apparent reason, there is some reassurance in seeing the familiar face of Nigel Farage back on the nation’s TV screens.

    It’s been almost a year now since the general election, when he ceased to have any real relevance after Boris Johnson’s victory. In the months that followed, far from the sunlit uplands promised, everything that could have gone wrong has: we left the EU but Brexit didn’t go away; and the coronavirus went airborne, leaving us all unable to leave our houses.

    Into this mess rides Farage. He has repurposed himself and refashioned the Brexit Party, renaming it Reform – not to be confused with Reclaim, the party launched by Laurence Fox in an effort to restore trust in the political system. Whether or not there is space for two such parties is up for debate – perhaps they might end up reforging themselves under one brand, like “Regroup”. Either way, it seems like this movement should have a longer shelf life than Remain ever did – though given how this year is going, who knows whether that too, will make a return.

    Farage’s entry into the arena at this point is telling. For decades, he was the only politician to give voice to mainstream ideas that were roundly dismissed as fringe by the country’s political elites. Euroscepticism was, it turned out, just waiting to be aired as a major grievance of millions, but you’d never have known it without him – it took years of campaigning to force it onto the agenda.

    Now, though, under the guise of a campaigner against the Government’s coronavirus policies, he has struck upon an issue that is already on everyone’s lips, and a position that has a fast-growing support base.

    We all know how Farage’s playbook goes. He reappears as people lose confidence in the Tories, and to a lesser extent Labour, on a major issue of the day; he gets airtime, people flock to his cause. He wins seats in elections few people care deeply about. The Conservatives, rattled, move towards his positions as a general election approaches. Mollified that this time the Tories have changed for good, and convinced that they are the only viable way of keeping Labour out, voters return to the party, keeping Farage out. The Tories then drift back to where they were before. The cycle repeats itself.

    It’s high time, though, that it came to an end.

    If the Conservatives (or indeed Labour) truly represented the people they claim to, these lurches towards protest parties and movements wouldn’t need to happen. Some might say that they’re a healthy check on the power of the two main parties – but the fact that, on some of the biggest issues of the day, from Iraq to Brexit to the response to the pandemic, both the Tories and Labour have consistently sided with each other against serious public scepticism of their positions shows that too much of the public will always be ignored where possible. Ignoring them is the default of both, until they are forced to shift by temporary insurgencies, after which they go back to ignoring people all over again.

    When the likes of Farage emerge, the reaction to them is never one of conciliation or dialogue, but scorn – yesterday’s fruitcakes and racists are today’s Covidiots. That they number in the millions seems of little importance.

    For all Boris Johnson’s promises to Red Wall seats about a new party of the working man, the Tories still do not look like changing this habit of theirs any time soon. Things for the ignored can only change with the establishment of a party that intends to represent this cohort permanently – not just as a pressure group on the Right, but as an entity that actively seeks to replace the Conservatives. But neither Reform, nor one suspects Reclaim, see themselves as permanent fixtures.

    Brexit provided an opportunity to reshape a broken political landscape on the Right. It hasn’t really been taken. The pandemic offers less an opportunity for change than a cry for it. Until one of these conservative cosplay groups grows up, that change will never come.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/11/02/voters-should-not-have-rely-nigel-farage-force-proper-lockdown/

    1. Today we had notice that our gym was closing. And yes, while it’s a gym we’ve known one another, trained together for about 5 years now. Many of us go to dinner together.

      Now, with the announcement the air was funerial. We’re all tired of it. We want our lives back.

        1. For the duration, yes.

          However they really struggled to get through the first lock down. They’re not sure they’ll survive.

          1. I hope they do.

            I wonder whether, when it’s all over and the Imperial people, SAGE and the government are shown to have been foolish, there will be a chance of “class-action” lawsuits or whatever the UK equivalent is.

          2. It will be always the case that, “Oh no, it would have been much worse.”, no matter what happened elsewhere.
            You can’t beat twisted logic.

    2. Another bullshitting professor of fuck-all. I hope (bad me) that all those dying here are BAME.

    1. And one team hadn’t heard of Max Bygraves. Apparently Ms Coren Mitchel overestimated their ages.

  84. Re BoB’s earlier Vienna post:

    ‘Seven dead and several injured near Vienna synagogue’: Huge manhunt
    underway as gunman rampages through streets and ‘accomplice blows
    themselves up’

    3. Anyone know the city well enough to tell me if the Staatsoper is anywhere near this? I have friends there tonight.

    4. Tricky. Austrians committed vile acts against Jews under Hitler. I suspect though that this perpetrator is a slammer as they have infiltrated most of a supine Europe and become wound up by the slightest provocation of their repulsive death cult and diabolical beliefs.

      1. We should not bet much against frequent media utterances of NTDWI, ‘lone wolf’ and so on. We could bet safely on the next incident of graffiti on a mosque being described as the advance warning of a new wave of deadly fascism sweeping across Europe.

        1. You are probably correct. We shall see. The first former mosque I visited was an addition to a large C18 house in Hampton Wick which served as a conference room for a firm of structural engineers. It had been built by the building owner for his wife, a Muslim.

          My next experience of mosques in the UK was when I worked for a short while for Sir Frederick Gibberd where one of the jobs in the office was Regents Park Central Mosque. The project team had just the one token Muslim.

          Nowadays it would be difficult to go anywhere in the UK without finding mosques in every city and to count them in the hundreds.

          We have been betrayed by our politicians and admitted pure evil into our country.

        3. ‘Lone wolf’ is how muslims and islam works. They do not band together in groups, but they have individually a single group purpose: “to slay and kill the infidel wherever you may find him” exhorts the Q’ran.

          3. Ah, virgins – Yes, I remember them. Rumour has it that there is still one left, somewhere in Hampshire.

        4. You are probably correct. We shall see. The first former mosque I visited was an addition to a large C18 house in Hampton Wick which served as a conference room for a firm of structural engineers. It had been built by the building owner for his wife, a Muslim.

          My next experience of mosques in the UK was when I worked for a short while for Sir Frederick Gibberd where one of the jobs in the office was Regents Park Central Mosque. The project team had just the one token Muslim.

          Nowadays it would be difficult to go anywhere in the UK without finding mosques in every city and to count them in the hundreds.

          We have been betrayed by our politicians and admitted pure evil into our country.

          1. Thousands not hundreds. Also, you don’t need a dedicated building for a mosque. A front room would suffice.

      2. We should not bet much against frequent media utterances of NTDWI, ‘lone wolf’ and so on. We could bet safely on the next incident of graffiti on a mosque being described as the advance warning of a new wave of deadly fascism sweeping across Europe.

    1. Macron is playing the big boy because the name ‘Le Pen’ is beginning to hover once again on his people’s lips. All sound and fury from him, signifying…… exactly nothing.

    3. I googled ‘Austrian nun’ on BBC online news and got; “The Sound of Music: A Belfast nun’s story.”

    1. A phobia is an irrational fear. Fear of islam, given its history, teachings and current events, is ENTIRELY rational!

    2. Does knowing that many Islamists want me dead count as being aware of reality i.e. Islamophobia?

  93. 326066+ up ticks,

    Breaking: Terror Attack Unfolding in Vienna
    •One dead, several injured say police
    •Multiple perpetrators armed with rifles attack across city
    •Six separate shootings.

    May one ask, can a way be found to exonerate Tommy Robinson of his “heinous” past crimes and have him form
    a pro English / GB protective force, before things really,really do take off.

    Our three major lines of defence via the governing parties are submissive pcism & appeasement and a large force of
    governing employee kneebenders, totalling up to sh!te.

  95. So many posts, so little time. Good-night one and all. Let’s hope we survive the night and meet again in the morn.

  96. It’s a “suspected terror attack”, according to Sky News. I’d say it is pretty obviously a terror attack. Shooting, explosions, people dead in the streets. If that is not a terror attack, what is it? An “incident” perhaps?

  97. 3,000 English Christian slaves were rescued from Algiers , who were kidnapped by Barbary pirates. … Rescued by Lord Exmouth in 27th august 1816
    BBC2 now .

    Dimblebumb talking .

      1. 326066+ up ticks,
        Evening R,
        That sounds like it came straight out of the lab/lib/con coalition
        stable.

  101. DT – Story

    Wales manager Ryan Giggs ‘arrested on suspicion of assaulting girlfriend’

    He does not strike me as being a gentleman. And if killing your brother is called fratricide what is bonking your brother’s wife called?

  102. Mail to a Con MP…….

    Who gives Ofcom instructions to censor the UK broadcast media?

    As Toby Young in the ”Spectator” tells us in relation to the media suppression of the ”Barrington Declaration” ………….

    ”I suspect Ofcom’s ‘coronavirus guidance’ has something to do with it. This guidance, published when the lockdown was announced in March, warns broadcasters to exercise extreme caution before criticising the response by the public health authorities or interviewing any sceptics.”

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-cant-we-talk-about-the-great-barrington-declaration

    So next time you meet Melanie Dawes of Ofcom, ask her if she knows anyone at Open Society and/or the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

    I think Ofcom might have been ”leveraged” and that certain individuals there might be in a ”strong relationship” with Open Society London or the Gates Foundation. That would explain the UK rush to internet censorship as well as the existing broadcast media censorship.

    Why would the Barrington Declaration be a banned subject?

    Because it challenges the Gates/Soros billionaire elite which, as we already know, ”leverages policy and political influence” and forms ”strong relationships with officials”.

    Where better for them to ”leverage” to get what they want from the broadcast media than Ofcom? It’s an obvious target.

    Polly

    4. Good morning Geoff
      It sounds as if your laptop is in the desk you’re waiting delivery of. Didn’t know IKEA sold laptops. :-))

  105. Just carrying on!

    MI5 worked with undercover police to infiltrate Vietnam protests. 3 November 2020.

    The security service MI5 worked closely with undercover police officers to infiltrate the campaign against the Vietnam war, documents released to a public inquiry have disclosed.

    Senior Scotland Yard officers told MI5 that they had deployed what they called “bearded and unwashed” male officers and “scruffy” female officers to spy on the campaign in the late 1960s.

    The Home Office–approved surveillance was initiated at a time when the political establishment feared leftwing protest groups were challenging the status quo.

    Morning everyone. This is more true today than it was then. There is little doubt that both UKIP and the EDL were penetrated by Mi5 with the intention of destabilising them. Vast covert resources are now deployed to suppress views, particularly indigenous views, that are counter to the accepted narrative of the Elites. Control of the MSM, Antifa, 77 Brigade, Hate not Hope, all these are simply facets of the same movement. This, as can be seen by the Governments present difficulties, has led not to the Millennium, but to the slow degradation of Democracy and rule by fiat.

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/nov/02/police-deployed-scruffy-officers-to-infiltrate-vietnam-protesters

  106. Just carrying on!

    MI5 worked with undercover police to infiltrate Vietnam protests. 3 November 2020.

    The security service MI5 worked closely with undercover police officers to infiltrate the campaign against the Vietnam war, documents released to a public inquiry have disclosed.

    Senior Scotland Yard officers told MI5 that they had deployed what they called “bearded and unwashed” male officers and “scruffy” female officers to spy on the campaign in the late 1960s.

    The Home Office–approved surveillance was initiated at a time when the political establishment feared leftwing protest groups were challenging the status quo.

    Morning everyone. This is more true today than it was then. There is little doubt that both UKIP and the EDL were penetrated by Mi5 with the intention of destabilising them. Vast covert resources are now deployed to suppress views, particularly indigenous views, that are counter to the accepted narrative of the Elites. Control of the MSM, Antifa, 77 Brigade, Hate not Hope, all these are simply facets of the same movement. This, as can be seen by the Governments present difficulties, has led not to the Millennium, but to the slow degradation of Democracy and rule by fiat.

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/nov/02/police-deployed-scruffy-officers-to-infiltrate-vietnam-protesters

  107. Good Morning Folks,

    Rain here today so no golf.
    Not sure if golf clubs are closing for the lockdown on Thursday.

    1. Excellent, they were unanimous for Clinton last time round.

      Let’s hope they are equally correct this time.

  109. ‘Morning Peeps and Geoff,

    Today’s crop of Covid-inspired letters:

    SIR – The second lockdown is not about protecting the NHS, it is about justifying the forced removal of millions of people’s liberty in order to prevent them from becoming fatality statistics that could negatively reflect on the Government’s ability to manage the crisis.

    Our freedom is considered a very low priority when weighed against the Government’s need to protect itself.

    Neil McKenzie
    Windermere, Cumbria

    SIR – Never mind that contracting the virus is not a death sentence; never mind that acting as if it does results in the ruination of countless livelihoods; never mind the incalculable psychological damage inflicted on our society; never mind the devastating and long-term damage to the economy; never mind that lockdown merely delays the chance of contracting the virus rather than avoiding it altogether; the one important thing is that this Christmas has been saved. Possibly.

    Philip J Ashe
    Leeds, West Yorkshire

    SIR – If people’s livelihoods are sacrificed, what kind of Christmas will they celebrate?

    Lord Shinkwin
    London SW1

    SIR – I have written off Christmas and pray we can save Easter.

    Gordon Moser
    Barkingside, Essex

    SIR – Here in rural Suffolk, our Covid rate is a seventh of the highest in England, according to the latest figures.

    Whatever the reasons for this statistic, why is it that here we will have to endure an unnecessary lockdown when the previous regional tier system was far more appropriate and effective?

    Our local economy and personal wellbeing will suffer over the next month, without justification.

    Peter Kievenaar
    Chelsworth, Suffolk

    SIR – My elder brother died aged 83, the longest-lived male member of my family. I am 79. I might be lucky and exceed his age, but very possibly I might not.

    Owing to the restrictions of government lockdowns since March, I have lost perhaps a quarter of the life remaining to me. I would rather take my chances with the virus. It kills less than 1 per cent of those it infects, but old people disproportionately .

    I think that most of my elderly friends would rather enjoy what life is left rather than isolate themselves. To those who say it is an unpleasant disease, I would say: tell me of a pleasant one. We all have to die of something.

    Nicholas Wightwick
    Rossett, Denbighshire

    SIR – Sir Graham Brady and a large proportion of the population have failed to grasp the severity of Covid in the United Kingdom. There is much talk of loss of freedoms, but we, the World, are in this together. It is beholden on each of us to do as we are asked by the combined wisdom of our public-health experts.

    Every government is trying to balance too many spinning plates at once. There will never be a definitive approach at any one moment. Boris Johnson is doing what he thinks best in an impossible situation. And my favourite paper should be behind him.

    In New Zealand, where I am a British expatriate, we did as we were asked – freedom or otherwise. We’re not complacent, but, for now, it has worked. If the British remain belligerent there won’t just be a PPE shortage – there won’t be enough hand-carts to go round either.

    David Conroy
    Christchurch, New Zealand

    SIR – The treatment is worse than the disease. Time to stop the treatment.

    Jamie Buchanan FRCS
    Sedlescombe, East Sussex

    SIR – Many things in the lockdown rules may irritate the innocent, but banning golf – a harmless, life-affirming, solo, outdoor and healthy pursuit – must take the biscuit. I can go for a walk, but not with a stick and ball.

    Frank Rooney
    Stocksfield, Northumberland

    SIR – I have an urgent business meeting in Stockholm on Friday. I may be some time.

    Graham Low
    Malpas, Cheshire

    1. When or if New Zealand ever opens up again – they will see that they have just postponed their Covid outbreak. Perhaps they want to remain isolated for ever.

  110. SIR – Katharine Birbalsingh’s piece (“BAME isn’t just a meaningless term, it’s grossly insulting”, Comment, October 30) was right on the money.
    As a former asylum seeker and British citizen for almost 60 years, I object to being lumped into one category. My lived experience – of a British public school, Oxbridge and 30 years as an NHS consultant – is completely different from that of a young Afro-Caribbean male living in council accommodation with siblings and a single parent.
    It may be convenient for the establishment to treat us as all the same, but we are as different in our own ways as the indigenous population. Please give us the respect of recognising this.
    Tony Narula FRCS

    What a stupid letter. One could say the same for any collective description. Not all of us whites are the same either, mate.
    Kn*b

    1. Sorry, Stormy…the red mist descended when I saw Narula’s letter and and I waded in without reading down.

      Good morning, btw.

        1. That is one way of describing it. Anyway, I am now persuaded to work it into the conversation much more frequently.

    2. I disagree. Mr Narula explained, very clearly, that whites are not all the same: “…but we are as different in our own ways as the indigenous population.”

      My opinion is that is a well-written and very pertinent letter and I agree with his sentiments.

  111. NCSC says record number of cyber attacks foiled in last year and announces plans to increase Manchester footprint. 3 November 2020.

    Britain’s spies foiled a record number of cyber attacks over the last year, amid a rise in opportunities during Covid-19, a new NCSC report has revealed.

    Britain was hit with 723 cyber security incidents, 194 of which were Covid-19 related, over the last year, according to the public-facing arm of GCHQ.

    The fourth annual report from the NCSC, launched today, says Russian cyber attacks into coronavirus vaccine research along with other attempted hacks of trial data and PPE supply lines have contributed to a ten per cent increase in cyber attacks over the last year.

    How did they “foil” them if they occurred?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/11/03/ncsc-says-record-number-cyber-attacks-foiled-last-year-announces/

    1. They have not foiled any cyber attacks on me yet. Every day I get phishing emails and phone calls. No one is doing anything to stop these things.
      Is that because the big boys somehow earn revenue, from phone charges etc?

  112. SIR – Katharine Birbalsingh’s piece (“BAME isn’t just a meaningless term, it’s grossly insulting”, Comment, October 30) was right on the money.

    As a former asylum seeker and British citizen for almost 60 years, I object to being lumped into one category. My lived experience – of a British public school, Oxbridge and 30 years as an NHS consultant – is completely different from that of a young Afro-Caribbean male living in council accommodation with siblings and a single parent.

    It may be convenient for the establishment to treat us as all the same, but we are as different in our own ways as the indigenous population. Please give us the respect of recognising this.

    Tony Narula FRCS
    Wargrave, Berkshire

    Well, Tony old chap, my patience won’t be able to cope with BAME sub groups, as you seem to be suggesting, so I think you are stuck with it.

    1. Afro-Caribbean male living in council accommodation with siblings and a single parent. Not the old Tom Jones syndrome again ??

      Clearly you don’t like living in a western culture …………..>>>>

    2. Revealingly, it sounds as though he regards BAME as a derogatory term when it is nothing of the sort.

      1. The implications in my ears of BAME are:
        Self-entitled
        Whinger
        Sponger
        Victim
        and similar derogatory terms.
        So, to me, it IS racist.

  115. Good morning, all. This is a right carry on…!

    Mysterious gunman in Vienna – Far-right Methodist, I expect. NTDWI.

    Must away to the kittens.

      1. I would guess that the “Sorry, you’ve won sweet Fanny Adams this month” banner is missing.

      2. Whoever compiled it forgot to include the “Sorry, you’ve won Foxtrot all this month” banner.

    4. It works OK Bob if you search for it. Nowt for me today but it suggested I take a look at the high value prize winners. 2 ladies from the South. The interest rate for prizes is reducing to 1% on the bond money in the pot for December. I think some independent enquiry into Premium Bond selection of prize winners is long overdue and why do they persist in keeping 2 £1million prizes each month.

    5. Did for me, BoB, albeit it is clunky and overblown. I let them know my feelings!
      We got £50 each this month.

  119. Russia’s ‘Sausage King’ killed in Moscow in crossbow attack. 3 November 2020.

    Several intruders broke into a sauna at the home of a Russian meat tycoon known as the “Sausage King” outside Moscow early on Monday, tied him and a woman up and demanded money before killing him with a crossbow.

    The woman managed to escape the attack in the Moscow region and alert the police but the businessman was dead when officers arrived at the scene, said the Investigative Committee, which positions itself as a Russian version of the FBI.

    The agency did not name the deceased man in its statement, but REN TV and other Russian media identified him as Vladimir Marugov, owner of the “Ozyorsky sausages” and “Meat Empire” sausage factories.

    Grisly and sometimes surreal murders often made headlines in Russia in the 1990s after the chaotic Soviet breakup, but have become less common since the current president, Vladimir Putin, came to power at the turn of the century.

    What? No Novichok? No “links” to the Kremlin? I feel this was a missed opportunity! Mind you this is probably a real murder which Mi6 didn’t have time to arrange.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/02/russias-sausage-king-killed-in-moscow-after-crossbow-attack-vladimir-marugov

  120. Have Boris Johnson and co-pilots Hancock, Whitty and Vallance hijacked the airplane and locked the flight deck doors?

    It looks like they have… so where is Flight UK heading…. ?

    1. The sooner Westminster is inoculated with some common sense the better off we will all be.

      1. 326119+ up ticks,
        Morning RE,
        Currently a pipe dream all the while lab/lib/con coalition find support.
        The electorate alternate the treacherous trio, add a few new politico faces to give a veneer of
        honesty to their true anti UK agenda’s.
        Make a list of beneficial actions
        regarding the indigenous peoples since the political demise of Mrs Thatcher.
        ( Hard innit)

  122. First US election result: “The small town of Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, reported the first results of the 2020 presidential election early Tuesday morning: five votes to Joe Biden, and none for Donald Trump”. Dixville is appropriately named. It reminds me of Ronald Reagan joking about a similar situation.

    https://youtu.be/PUu2HKZGxJ4

  125. Good morning again.

    I see that backstabber Gove has had to apologise this morning for stating yesterday that golf and tennis are excluded from the lockdown.

    What it has to do with him is a mystery. He’s like a small child who craves attention.

    2. My letter to Michael Gove
      By
      Kathy Gyngell
      –

      November 3, 2020

      Dear Michael

      I feel I have no choice but to write to you directly and publicly to say how appalled I am by your part in the government’s response to the Covid-19 virus which, in six months, has destroyed the country’s economic prospects, and turned us from a democracy into a dictatorship. For what? For a non-cure that is far worse than the disease. I have known you long enough (about 10 years, I believe) and well enough to tell you the truth.

      Your friends in the mainstream press and at the Right-leaning think tanks may still be reluctant to do the same. I suspect they dare not offend you because they need to be under the establishment umbrella. Well, I do not. You once told me that you admired my website, The Conservative Woman. What follows is a reflection of thousands of our readers’ and contributors’ views. This is not about me or my family but about our country, the one I thought you valued as much as I do.

      You may not personally be responsible for every decision made in recent months, but you are at the heart of the Prime Minister’s inner circle and chief advocate of the government’s coercive and economically ruinous policy, as you were again this weekend. People ask me what happened to the Michael who I have known to be a highly intelligent, sensitive and attentive listener. I think you – and Sarah, who is herself admirably forthright – will be grateful for being made aware of what people are really thinking and saying about you and your Cabinet colleagues.

      It’s true that every government in the world was dealt a difficult hand when Covid emerged late last year. Following a precautionary principle, as many Asian countries did straight away when so much remained unknown, would have been wise. However, no such precautions – whether airport screening or test and trace – were deemed necessary. The Government’s policy could be summed up in three words: ‘Wash your hands’. By mid-March, when Neil Ferguson’s prophecy of doom prompted your government’s overnight U-turn from ‘herd immunity’ to total lockdown, the horse had already bolted. The NHS was culpably lax over this period in securing the necessary PPE and testing that would have protected medical staff, health and care workers.

      Since then the best evidence is that the policies of lockdown, Stay at Home/Save Lives/Protect the NHS and social distancing have cost at least as many lives as saved and with very cruel consequences, callously so for the most vulnerable elderly, denying hospital treatment to the group you were meant to be protecting, and, it transpires, for mothers-to-be. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8905643/Stillbirths-DOUBLED-wave-Covid-19-pandemic.html

      Despite the lack of evidence for it and though there is now much greater understanding of who is most at risk from this disease, you have extended lockdown again and again. Can you deny the basic facts that for anyone under 50 the chances of dying from Covid are negligible, or that the average age of death from Covid at 82.4 years is actually higher than the 81.16 years life expectancy for the UK as a whole, or that the vast majority of the population is at little or no risk?

      On Sunday Toby Young, a man whose advice you once followed, set out ten reasons why a second lockdown is a truly terrible idea. Please read them and reconsider your ill-advised threat of Sunday that the new lockdown in England could be extended beyond four weeks if the number of infections does not fall far enough.

      How can you continue to treat every British citizen as though they face a very high risk of being hospitalised or even dying as a result of exposure to Covid, when this patently is not true? And why pretend the NHS is overwhelmed when the Nightingale hospitals lie empty? And how, this weekend, could you have bought into and sold the public such a dodgy Covid deaths dossier, your so-called ‘realistic worst case’ scenarios that lack any credibility an excuse for lockdown?

      How can you justify failing to subject lockdown to a detailed cost benefits exercise? And yet you are going down the same un-costed route again.

      How can you justify outsourcing the entire educational, economic, mental and social wellbeing of the nation to ever more secretive and unaccountable NHS quangos with their own political and vested interests all supposedly under the control of Matt Hancock at the Department of Health?

      Lastly, how can you, an economic liberal, be part of a government which has needlessly wrecked Britain’s economy? You and colleagues may be shielded from the onslaught that the nation is about to experience thanks to your publicly-funded salary and pension, but most others – particularly the self-employed, the sole traders and those who run small businesses – face a very different future, one that is genuinely frightening. Irresponsible doesn’t begin to describe the national economic and political catastrophe your latest lockdown decision is leading us to.

      I hold no brief for Mr Johnson, who I long suspected to be a man with little principle, now seemingly a man who is also easily spooked and dominated. You, I thought, were different – not one to fall for Leftist authoritarianism or for NHS emoting claptrap. I thought you were honourable.

      That’s why I am so dismayed that you of all people have involved yourself in what amounts to deceit on an industrial scale and are party to such a deeply manipulative Covid Fear propaganda, splurging taxpayer billions and accruing vast debt on it along the way. It is my contention that many – perhaps most – people in Britain remain unaware of the level of figure fiddling and fanciful doomsday data presentation. This feeds into my own and my colleagues’ belief that you and your Cabinet colleagues have participated in pumping out state propaganda that would not be out of place in China, Russia or North Korea.

      As you have shown no moral courage by telling the truth about this in public, I can only conclude that you have been content to sit back and watch as liberties and livelihoods have been extinguished and medical expertise has been denied to thousands who need it urgently but whom the NHS refuses to treat. Either that or you no longer pretend to be a democrat. I really wonder how you sleep at night.

      I suspect that like your leader you are so far into this mess that every decision is now about covering your back rather than confessing your mistakes. But you need to understand that it is a common view that you and your Cabinet colleagues are not just crassly incompetent, but deliberately taking the country down a very bad route – and that you are doing so after every citizen has effectively been blindfolded, bound and gagged by various arms of the state. Are you now so immersed in groupthink that you do not see the damage that you have done and continue to do?

      You need to take a long look at yourself and ask if you are happy to leave this appalling damage as your political legacy. You of all people should show the basic courtesy of honesty.

      Copies of this letter are being sent to other MPs. It will also be posted on my website.

      Yours,

      Kathy

      https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/my-letter-to-michael-gove/

      2. Thanks for posting Belle, great letter.

        Alf and I have each, separately, written to our MP saying virtually the same things. However it seems Boris is a busted flush and is just doing what he’s untold by the “quad”. I don’t know what else can be done by people like me. This is why I am convinced there is big money behind what’s happening – now we’re seeing calls for mass testing (what for?), why is it important to know test results – only to justify actions taken so far. I do not wish to be tested, daily or otherwise (again for what purpose?) and the media are now slanting news towards a vaccine is the only answer. Big Pharma and the likes of Bill Gates and Soros will be anticipating millions more in their bank accounts. And there are people over here who will be or already have been in receipt of some lovely big fat brown envelopes. And then we will see more restrictions applied – oh, you don’t have a vax certificate? Well I’m afraid you cannot …

        And this is all beside the fact that vaccines take years to develop, test, and trial, not 2 years but more like 10/15 for safety’s sake. We need a mass refusal to take part in this gigantic experiment but I can’t see it even bubbling up under the surface so far. I’m doing my bit by refusing to wear a mask 😷 but can’t think of anything that will make one halfpenny’s worth difference

        Thanks again for posting and it’s good to know the TCW has been getting lots of complaining letters against LD2.

        1. 326119+ up ticks,
          Morning VW,
          This “busted flush” accusation has proved to
          pop up on a pretty regular basis within this, in name only tory party, considering
          peoples of major, the wretch cameron, clegg, may, johnson ilk.

          And me thinking it was only applied to the real UKIP party.

        2. Good morning vw. I have been commenting over the last few days BTL on the DM site. I have been surprised (no, shocked!) at the response and downvotes I have received to my anti-lockdown stance, even when I have explained the downward economic cycle – that the government does not have a pot of money of its own, that the nhs, benefits, pensions, all public servants – they are all paid with the income derived from our taxation. When our ability to pay tax goes….. so does the government’s ability to pay for these things. (I know you know this, this is what I was explaining on the DM site). And our ability to pay tax goes when the economy goes down the plughole. The economy goes when people no longer purchase ….. people don’t get paid, money no longer flows around the system.The whole con is kept afloat – just – by furlough. I am now in minus upvote territory for the last seven days, not that I care a hoot of course but it is an indication of the fear, dimness and inability to think critically in a large sector of the population. I despair for the future, these people are ripe for the picking. I know not one person who thinks as I do, apart from poppiesdad and, of course, the lovely people here.

          1. That is why I dip into (not contribute) to the DM. If you only read the DT and NOTTL, it is easy to believe that the GBP as a whole has forensic capabilities.

          2. I read some BTL comments on Richard Littlejohn’s article and couldn’t believe the naivitey of people.

          3. I was quite surprised on Satuday evening that our next door neighbour (who was with us for dinner) agreed with me that lockdowns do no good and the virus should run its course as flu does every year. She’s a retired nurse, but well to the left of me. A Remainer through and through, but she also thinks that ‘herd immunity’ driven by young people should be the way to go.

          4. I have been surprised (no, shocked!) at the response and downvotes I have received to my anti-lockdown stance…

            77 Brigade!

          5. I was thinking about that later this morning. Similar comments under a differently biased headline are well received, as are those of others.

          6. Hi Pmum. I can’t understand why I haven’t seen more people without masks, clutching their little government “badge” saying I am exempt from wearing a mask. Everybody we speak to is fed up with what’s going on but we need somebody with a high profile to voice our opinion. Unfortunately I think the media have censored all contrary opinions as have soshul meeja. And the Barrington Declaration has been muffled too.

            Alf has written again to our MP this am urging him to vote against the government tomorrow because there is no justification for bringing in LD2 whatsoever. I don’t suppose he will vote against because of possible consequences but the MPs are lily livered leeches in my opinion. As for Boris himself he doesn’t look well and has obviously bitten off more than he can chew. Next problem, when BoJo disappears into the beyond, is who Will replace him? I hope not Michael Gove, he’s all for even more stringent measures.

            Anyway, KBO and keep your pecker up.

        3. “…this gigantic experiment…” flouts the Nuremberg Code. Bill Gates makes Dr Mengele look like the rank amateur that he actually was.

      5. A corker. I was saving that for my ‘little something at eleven o’ clock’.
        The pigheadedness of this administration is now beyond satire and become very damaging
        .

        2. Sorry about jumping in Anne , I should have guessed you would have posted on your own time .

          The link appeared on my Twitter feed .

          Good morning any way, the day started off nice and sunny, put the duvet covers and sheets on the line to dry , a squall has just gone through , soaking everything .

          Moh is cutting the lawn , last cut probably of the year !

          1. Good heffings, I’m not complaining! The earlier these items are posted, the more longer readers get a chance to comment and distribute.
            Currently I am trying to decide whether I can take Spartie out before it persists down again.

        2. Well, I interpret his look as being more ” How did I get involved in this? I wish I were somewhere else.”
          Of course, that does suggest a lack of intelligent thought and circumspection on his part. Not ideal in a politician.

      1. Are you sure??
        https://www.hias.org/blog/new-yorkers-show-support-refugees-jewsforrefugees-assembly
        https://images.forwardcdn.com/image/1300x/center/images/cropped/16664954-10158382439650268-9166377640731302894-o-1486971556.jpg
        https://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.hias.org%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fstyles%2Fslideshow%2Fpublic%2Fjewsforrefugees_group.jpg%3Fitok%3DKzZ4KpyX&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.hias.org%2Fblog%2Fnew-yorkers-show-support-refugees-jewsforrefugees-assembly&tbnid=Awj4pftHwnXDnM&vet=12ahUKEwjc_tDnjubsAhUJpBoKHd14CIkQMygDegUIARCAAQ..i&docid=OPSJFpYKpDeC3M&w=800&h=426&q=jews%20support%20for%20refugees%20images&ved=2ahUKEwjc_tDnjubsAhUJpBoKHd14CIkQMygDegUIARCAAQ
        https://images.shulcloud.com/1180/_preview/e13169dc801b6c8f9ccb857c0e8c64b1bbff2ffa.jpeg

        1. Looks like I’m wrong.

          Let’s hope they’ve been watching Vienna.
          And Paris
          And Nice
          etc etc etc, ad infinitum.

    1. That’ll be the Priti Awful that said – on the day she took office – that she would stop the illegals crossing the Channel immediately…..

      All mouth and shalwar kameez – that daft bint.

      1. Then she appointed Dan to take the flak, gave him a stupid title – and more have landed than ever before. As for putting some in Barracks – which must be full by now, so any more, that we aren’t hearing about – MUST be being put back in hotels. Lockdown starting, watch for planes bringing the families in of those already here. Dark evenings flights land at military airfields – passengers ( one way tickets) off loaded and into the NHS check, then onto coaches toward their new lives of FREE(everything)dom.

        1. Rockall, St Kilda and Ailsa Crag are all ready to welcome our asylum seeking eejits, any time soon. Tell us, Priti, that all is in train.

          1. These are nice places. Just bundle them into Leicester and Bradford. A few hundred thousand or so won’t be noticed.

          2. But, Horace, they’ll be lost among the rest of the Muslim population. Do you propose a concentration camp for Leeds/Bradford and Leicester? Can I be a camp guard?

          3. There are no train services to Rockall, St Kilda or Ailsa Craig, Tom. They’ll have to use rafts.

    2. Perhaps now she might reconsider housing illegal migrants in army camps. I know for a fact that Penally camp in Wales has a massive firing range just across the road to it.
      Perhaps it’s just something else the political classes have never bothered to consider. As they have never considered the future and lasting implications it has on the rest of our society and it’s social structure.

      1. Morning Eddy,

        They are being housed in army camps in Pengelly and in Folkstone , and they are complaining and fighting , tribal stuff I think !

    1. And she absolutely right about that. And what other impact assessments have they never carried out ?

        1. More than a few engineers at the RTC were spitting feather at the time that was carried out. They wanted to place crash dummies in the coaches and video what happened to them so the collected data could be used in designing a coach interior that would give passengers a batter chance of survival in an accident.

        3. The driver and all of the passengers did not fare as well as the nuclear container. Still, they were volunteers.

        4. Pedantic trainspotter note: The crash test loco was a Class 46 while Bob’s avatar is a Class 37.

    2. Perfectly understandable – he “wasn’t thought to be a threat…” (Official comment by yer Orstrian PTB)

      So that’s OK, then..

  132. 326119+ up ticks,
    Now there’s a question,
    Farage Bets 10 K on Trump Victory, did he lay out 10 K on
    a tory / johnson victory ?

    1. I’m thinking of putting down an accumulator on: A Trump win, 350-375 or 375+ electoral college votes, a majority of the votes generally and either 51-53% or >53% vote share. I looked it up earlier and I might be able to get somewhere around the 250-1 on that, far more if I add him to win certain Dem states (e.g. Minnesota) onto the accumulator.

      Problem is that online betting is IMHO rather dodgy (trying to keep control of your account as regards privacy etc is poor) and the betting shops will be shut by close of play Wednesday, and we might not have a definitive result by then because of the Dem postal vote chenanigans and likely lawsuits from the losing party…

      1. 326116+ up ticks.
        Afternoon EA,
        Whatever way you decide best of luck, personally I think we will have a result late on / very early doors owing to a Trump landslide.

        1. What’s a shame is that the betting shops won’t allow accumulators on the vote, just single bets: the difference between winning about £1k – £2k and £1M! Oh well – I’ll just take the satisfaction if my predictions are correct, but I’ll take a Trump win whatever the actual result. The world needs it.

          1. 326+ up ticks,
            Evening EA,
            I know how you feel, years ago I was on me tod in Brak, Libya,
            middle of the desert, listening to the national on the world service and picked the winner.

    1. The scientists only said that there could be 2,000 deaths a day.
      We all know that when there is a could involved then it is misinformation .

  135. I see that the DT stopped all reader commentary on ‘Silly Billy’ Hague’s so-called article today at around 7.30AM. Talk about snowflakes and scaredycats. No reader commentary on the article by former Times columnist Katie Glass on (IMHO the injustice of) actor Johnny Depp losing his court case yesterday and Amber Heard losing out on her career as well.

    Men’s rights just took another knee in the groin. IMHO, MS Heard was certainly NOT the innocent party – quite the opposite. How the court came to give the verdict they did is beyond me.

    1. I couldn’t believe Depp’s foolishness in bringing such an action in the UK. The verdict whatever the truth was a foregone conclusion!

      1. Have just switched off the Whine show for that very reason! When Whine opened with “Do we really want to see Depp in another film?” I was a bit cross!!

        1. We ascribe qualities to people based on a false understanding. We do not know anything real about pop stars or actors and actresses.
          We assess them on what we see in their performances. Their performances were written for them by others, directed by others, and overseen by others, including the clothes that they wear.
          What we read about them, what we see of them, outside of their performances was written by their managers and arranged by their PR representatives.

          3. I’m not sure it’s a false understanding, just face value. In this case Depp has already been cleared of the charges she made against him, in a court of law. Heard also admitted lying so I don’t understand how this seems to have been ignored and Depps career is being ruined. The fact that he is prepared to try and overturn the decision makes me think he wants the truth to come out, and I’m not sure he needs the money! He’s already given Heard a great deal of it!

          4. I write things in a hurry. The phrase “face value” is a good one. That is, in large part, what I was trying to say. But “face value” is a creation of the media and other agencies. A high “face value” is what sells cinema tickets (real world and online).
            I have not followed the case at all.

      2. They haven’t yet caught up with the fact that British justice – which used to be the best and fairest in the world – is rapidly becoming one of the very worst.

    1. Sorry to disappoint you but you are now 10 years older than you thought you were.
      Live Aid was 35 years ago. 1985

      2. However it does not do any harm to the makers of luxury limousines such as Mercedes Benz and the profits of offshore personal bank accounts..

    3. The only reason there was famine in Ethiopa was constant tribal war. It was unsafe to work in the fields. I watched a program where it showed Ethiopian markets overflowing with abundant veg once things had settled down. They only need one crop failure now and they will be back to square one multiplied by a factor of ten. Well done Sir Bob. Not.

      1. As I have said many times it is the Charities who are the problem and not the solution.

        1. It always appeared to me that the more aid that was sent to Africa they longer the queues with females and at least two children were.
          Even rabbits stop breeding when the food is scarce.

  139. BBC lunchtime weather – presenter started with
    “Well there’s a hurri and barging down through Nicaragua so keep an eye on that”.

    OK. I’ll do as I’m told but I’m not sure to do with the info I get.

    1. Email someone randomly in Nicaragua and tell them it’s going to be a bit breezy. And they might want to get the washing in.

    2. Nicaragua hasn’t bothered much with covid. The Nica govt is more worried about suppressing any criticism in advance of free&fair elections.

  141. My coworker Mohammed was looking depressed so I asked him what was wrong?

    “My wife’s going through “the change” and to be honest I’m just not finding her attractive any more.”

    “What, menopause ?”

    “No, puberty.”

  142. Whilst in America, my son and I went shopping in Wal-mart. I asked the cashier if they had any Kinder eggs.

    “Oh no, sir, we don’t sell them in the States – they are a health hazard!”

    “Okay,” I replied. “I’ll just take these two assault rifles then.”

  143. Apologies if this, from Ofcom website, has already been posted:

    Ofcom fines Islam Channel for serious broadcasting breaches

    Ofcom has today imposed a £20,000 financial penalty on Islam Channel Ltd for serious breaches of our broadcasting rules.Islam Channel is an English-language satellite TV station airing religious instruction programmes, current affairs, documentaries and entertainment programmes from an Islamic perspective.

    Our investigation found an episode of The Rightly Guided Khalifas, a religious education series on the history of the Qur’an, contained antisemitic hate speech and highly offensive content.

    We concluded that this was a serious breach of our rules which warranted the imposition of statutory sanctions.These include a financial penalty, to be paid by Islam Channel Ltd to HM Paymaster General, and a direction to the station to air a statement of our findings on a date – and in a form – to be determined by Ofcom

    2. Founder of UK’s Islam Channel awarded £140,000 after pro-Israel group libel

      In a landmark ruling, Sir David Eady of the High Court of Justice Queen’s Bench Division, awarded Mohamed Ali Harrath, the CEO of the London-based TV station, a six-figure payout on Thursday in his defamation case against Stand for Peace.

      Today’s ledger entry. High Court award £140,000. Ofcom fine £20,000. Prophet £120,000. Praise be to Allah!

    5. 326116+ up ticks,
      Afternoon VOM,
      Did they have anything akin to talking heads ? no bodies, discussing FGM I suppose.
      Was the HOC canteen menu mentioned ?

    6. There are some radical Islamic satellite TV channels, supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, and directed at countries such as Egypt. They are hosted by Turkey and Qatar, both the principal proponents of the MB in the Middle East, plus one other country.

      I’m sorry to say that the third country is none other than the United Kingdom! The UK has allowed the MB to operate its international criminal, terrorist-supporting activities with impunity for many years. I am often asked, especially in Egypt, why this is allowed. I don’t have an answer, I’m afraid.

  144. Today on Loose Women:
    A group of middle-aged, multi-millionaire women with their own TV show tell us how unfair life is.

  145. 326119+ up ticks,
    Are the figure manipulating political jockeys once again giving hope to pacify the ovis prior to once again whipping away the carrot ?

    Covid R-rate ‘has fallen to one’, raising hopes that lockdown could be avoided, there’s that ” could” again

  146. Judging from the report I just read, the threat from Islam is just about being realised by politicians – at least, in Austria, and France.
    Baby steps in the right direction…

      1. That terrorist in Nice was heard to shout in Arabic “I’m a psychologically ill loner and this has nothing to do with Islam” before he plunged the knife into his victims.

  147. I hope that stalwart NOTTLer, the Lady of the Mercians is proud of her nephew:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/11/02/forgotten-battle-ofbrunanburh-forged-english-nation/

    “The forgotten battle that forged the English nation

    Brunanburh was known as ‘the great battle’ – but Hastings a century later has taken all its glory

    2 November 2020 • 5:52pm

    One of the enduring mysteries of British history is where the battle of Brunanburh took place. Another of the enduring mysteries is why so few people have even heard of the battle.

    It took place in 937 AD, over a century before the battle of Hastings, yet during that century and for years afterwards, the battle was famous. Annals across Europe mentioned it, and usually it was called “the great battle”. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle broke into verse to celebrate it. “Never before,” the poet wrote, “was there such slaughter in this island.” Henry of Huntingdon, a 12th century churchman, called Brunanburh “the greatest of battles” in his history of England, yet that greatest of battles has been forgotten. Not only forgotten, but Brunanburh itself has been lost. Many sites have been proposed, ranging from the Solway Firth to Yorkshire, from County Durham to Merseyside, but there has been no agreement on where the slaughter took place.

    Until now. A group of amateur archaeologists, aided by professionals and equipped with all the ground-penetrating technology of modern archaeology, has discovered broken weapons and grave pits on the Wirral. Wirral Archaeology’s achievement almost certainly identifies Bebington Heath as the lost site of the battle. Perhaps the quickest way to identify the battlefield is to suggest that if you’re driving north-west on the M53 then the great slaughter took place in the fields to your left as you pass Exit 4.

    Does it matter? Why should we remember Brunanburh? Because if battles are history’s turning points then Brunanburh was just such a wrench. It was fought between Æthelstan, king of Wessex, and an alliance of Scots and Vikings led jointly by King Constantin of what is now Scotland and Anlaf Guthfrithson, a Norse chieftain who ruled much of Ireland. Their ambition was simple; to break the growing power of the Saxons.

    King Alfred the cake-burner had a vision of uniting the Saxon kingdoms of Britain into one realm. There had once been seven Saxon kingdoms, carved out of Britain by the Germanic invaders we call the Anglo-Saxons, but by Alfred’s time there were just four; Wessex, Mercia, East Anglia and Northumbria. They shared a common inheritance, they shared a language, and they shared a religion, Christianity. Alfred dreamed of one kingdom of all the folk who spoke English, but that ambition had become complicated because, during his reign, the Vikings had conquered all of Northumbria and East Anglia and much of northern Mercia. If there was to be an England, that one country Alfred desired, then the pagan northmen had to be defeated.

    Alfred himself saved Wessex, his own kingdom, from the Viking invasion. At one point the kingdom of Wessex was reduced to a few fugitives hiding in the Somerset marshes, but Alfred rallied his forces, defeated the Danes and restored it. His son Edward and daughter Æthelflæd continued his work, so that by 924 AD when Alfred’s grandson Æthelstan inherited the throne of Wessex he also ruled Mercia and East Anglia and as those three kingdoms now shared a king they became, in effect, a proto-England.

    But that left Northumbria which was ruled from York by a Norse king who was related to the king of Dyflin (Dublin) in Ireland. Those Hibernian-Norse wanted Northumbria, indeed they regarded it as an extension of their Irish lands. To complicate the situation, the growing power of Scotland also had eyes on Northumbria and had cause to hate the ever-increasing power of Æthelstan far to the south. Æthelstan called himself the Rex Saxonum et Anglorum, king of the Saxons and Angles, and much of Northumbria was inhabited by Angles. So far as he was concerned they were English, yet were ruled by pagan foreigners.

    In 927AD he invaded Northumbria and summoned the northern kings to meet him at Eamont Bridge in Cumbria. He demanded, and received, the submission of Constantin of Alba (then the name of the Scottish kingdom), of the king of Strathclyde, a kingdom inhabited by Welsh fugitives from the Saxon invasion of England, and Viking chieftains from across Northumbria. He stopped calling himself the king of the Saxons and Angles and instead adopted the title of Monarchus Totius Brittaniae, the king of all Britain.

    Constantin had sworn submission at Eamont Bridge, but the Scottish king was a proud man, and by 934AD he had renounced his oath. The consequence was an Anglo-Saxon invasion of Scotland that reached the Moray Firth in the far north. It was a humiliating defeat for Constantin who now searched for allies who could help him destroy the power of the Monarchus Totius Brittaniae.

    He found a willing ally in the Viking king of Dublin, Anlaf Guthfrithson who had a claim to the kingdom of Northumbria so he, like Constantin, had a motive to attack Æthelstan. The two were joined by Vikings from the Western Isles, by the forces of Strathclyde, and by various Viking chieftains from the wild lands of Cumbria. It must have been a formidable army which, in 937AD, invaded Æthelstan’s kingdom in an attempt to humble the self-styled monarch of all Britain and so destroy his power.

    The attempt failed. A battle was fought at Brunanburh and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that “there by Brunanburh they cleaved the shield wall”. If that is correct it means that Æthelstan’s warriors broke the invaders’ shield wall, turning discipline into chaos and so began a massacre as they pursued the fleeing enemy up the Wirral. Never was there such slaughter in this island. Both Constantin and Anlaf escaped, but it is said five kings died, and at the end of that terrible day Æthelstan was the undeniable king of what is now England.

    That is the significance of Brunanburh. It may be a forgotten battle, but it marks the moment that a new nation was born. Brunanburh was England’s birthplace, and it was a violent and blood-soaked birth, but even now, over a thousand years later, it is surely worth remembering even if it’s only a glance from your car as you drive the M53.”

    2. If Harold had delayed until the next day, he would probably have won the Battle of Hastings, because his troops were still straggling in from the long march back from Stamford Bridge. Together with other reinforcements, his army would have outnumbered the Normans, who had no possibility of extra soldiers arriving.

      1. Just look at all the small (inflatable) boats following their invasion force

        Filled with Refugees, escaping the EUSSR

    2. Yo Minty

      I noticced that and checked it out

      noun

      noun: Islamist; plural noun: Islamists

      an advocate or supporter of Islamic militancy or fundamentalism.

      “radical Islamists”

      adjective

      adjective: Islamist

      relating to, advocating, or supporting Islamic militancy or fundamentalism.

      “hardline Islamist groups”

          1. What about these endings?

            “Slay the unbelievers wherever you find them.” Qur’an 2:191

            “Make war on the infidels living in your neighbourhood.”
            Qur’an 9:123

            “When opportunity arises, kill the infidels wherever you
            catch them.” Qur’an 9:5

      1. They have Remembrance Friday – when they remember all the martyrs who died while killing westerners

      2. They probably held a quiet little ceremony a few days ago:
        “His Majesty the KING-EMPEROR has been graciously pleased to approve of the grant of the Victoria Cross to the undermentioned soldier of the Indian Army for conspicuous bravery whilst serving with the Indian Army Corps, British Expeditionary Force: —
        4050, Sepoy Khudadad, 129th Duke of Connaught’s Own Baluchis.
        On 31st October, 1914, at Hollebeke, Belgium, the British Officer in charge of the detachment having been wounded, and the other gun put out of action by a shell, Sepoy Khudadad, though himself wounded, remained working his gun until all the other five men of the gun detachment had been killed.
        — London Gazette, 7 December 1914.”

        1. I didn’t say there weren’t any. But i am reminded that when we have these events there are very few Muslims lining the streets.

          1. The situation might be a little similar to living in N Ireland years ago; you keep your head down & keep quiet because the baddies can wait until the Police are out of sight.

    2. As far as I know (I’m laying a wreath, but I haven’t heard anything to the contrary) we are meeting at our local cenotaph for a brief, open air service at 10.50. Socially distanced, of course (which means that the stragglers will be down the steps and queueing on the road – I have sharp elbows and will be in the front rank, as usual!). I qualify to attend as a) a councillor, b) a volunteer on behalf of a recognised association and c) a veteran.

  150. I had five hundred Kit Kats in my fridge and my mate had one in his. I pressured him into giving his to a homeless person.
    That’s basically how celebrity charity appeals work.

    1. You remind me of a little Oxfam joke.

      The local Oxfam office realised that it had never received a donation from the town’s most successful lawyer, so a volunteer was sent to solicit his donation.

      “Sir, you have a successful law practice. You must be worth millions. Surely you could give back a little to your community through Oxfam.”

      The lawyer said, “First, are you aware that my mother is dying from a long, painful illness? And that she has medical bills far beyond her ability to pay?”

      Embarrassed, the Oxfam rep mumbled, “Uh, no.”

      “Second, did you know my brother, a disabled veteran, is blind, confined to a wheelchair, and unable to support his wife and six children?”

      The stricken Oxfam rep mumbled another, “Uh, no.”

      “Third, do you realise that my sister’s husband died in a dreadful traffic accident leaving her penniless, with a huge mortgage and three young children?”

      The Oxfam rep was humiliated. “No, sir. I had no idea.”

      The lawyer concluded, “Well, then. If I don’t give any money to them, why on earth do you think I’d give any to you?!”

    5. Tell the whole story, you took it from the homeless person and gave it to one of your friends on the honours selection board, didn’t you!

      1. I suppose I could open a second Twitter account under a different name for the purpose of participating in the defund my employer campaigns but doesn’t that mean a new email account too, which could still be traced back to my phone. Is it worth the hassle?

        1. A little concerned that being a bit off message they might want to ‘Get’ you. Still, one can’t live ones life in fear.

        3. Are your colleagues aware of your tilt to the right, Sue? Or do you hide your light under a bushel for fear of being cancelled?

    5. I think the BBC is a mouthpiece for government policies when such policies are left-inclined which, let’s face it, has been most of the time since Thatcher was deposed

  152. Yo All

    Health Editor Laura Donnelly explains how the Army will be deployed to help roll out the mass tests

    Health Editor Laura Donnelly explains how the Army will be deployed to help roll out the mass tests

    So if we have more Troubles in Blairland/IRA-ville (aka Northern Ireland) , we will send in the NHS

    1. Not very diverse are they.

      They live in communities where everyone helps each other.
      They eschew modern tech.
      They can’t be bribed.
      They are thoughtful and consider things for the good of the people.
      They are mostly self sufficient.

      Obviously not Democrat material.

      1. I think you will find that the majority of Amish women are content and if they weren’t they could leave.

        Muslim women….not so much.

          2. Stepford wives, matey. Girls are trained to be submissive wives – and that it absolutely fine for men to make all the important decisions.

          3. “fine for men to make all the important decisions”.

            Yes. Like when to plant the crops. Which new family in the community need a barn. Those sort of decisions?

            I never took you for a feminist. The MR must have you under the thumb. 🙂

          6. Don’t be facetious.

            I believe that men and women should have an equal say. That’s not being a feminist – simply a decent human being.

            Just as “educated” slammer women claim that wearing binbags is their “choice” any sane person knows that that is simply the result of brainwashing from birth to conforming to what men determine.

            Same with the Amish – except, I am delighted to say, they don’t go round killing people who are “not like them”. But they humiliate and oppress their womenfolk.

          7. I agree with your first sentence.

            I don’t believe Amish women are brainwashed or repressed, Muslim women are.

        1. I used to think Atwood was just a lawnmower until a maid called Margaret took me in hand!

        2. I once asked Margaret Atwood a question – when she came to Holt and shared a platform on modern fiction.

          2. Nah! As sos says, they can’t see past having a go at England and the English. They really are that short-sighted! And bloody-minded!

        2. Independence, fully open borders, England swamped.
          They don’t care about Scotland, they just want to harm England.

          1. I did get that feeling. Bit of a shame for everyone else who lives and works in Scotland who isn’t a psychopath.

        3. The long term goal of the SNP clique in government is to to be the SNP clique in government. The USP of “independence” is a marketing ploy to win votes. Everything else is subordinate to that. Do the SNP really wish to rejoin the EU ? Or is that a ploy to gather voted from Remainers.

      2. No, I doubt it. However the clique at the top know which side their bread is buttered.

        1. I read a wonderful put-down on the BBC website yesterday when one of the cult was dribbling on about how well nikki has done with the situation. The reply was “Aye, another one suffering from the fumes off the face paint”! I larfed a lot!

    2. That must be fake news. JenniferSP said that Scotland pays more in than they get from England.

  155. Good morning, my friends

    DT Story: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-family/2020/11/02/prince-william-covid-sources-suggest-amid-questions-decision/

    Prince William was ‘very ill’ with Covid, sources suggest, amid questions about decision not to go public
    The Duke kept his illness a secret because the nation was already ‘scared enough’ following Prince Charles and Boris Johnson’s diagnoses

    I do not have strong opinions either way as to whether or not Prince William should have released the information that he was ill with Covid 19.

    On the other hand his participation in the great climate scam leads me to fear that, as was the case with Boris Johnson, Covid has had a very bad effect on his judgment and made him rather more stupid than he was before.

    1. Morning Richard ,

      I have mentioned this before , our Queen has bred three unctious sons , the eldest son has foisted the worst of the breeding on us , via an unstable promiscuous first wife who left her mark on 2 foppish sons !

      2. I could never understand why people were so taken in by the Princess of Wales – without expert couturiers, hairdressers and make up artists she would have been very plain.

        However her marriage was a disaster because she had so little in common with her husband. They did not share any of the same interests and did not enjoy each other’s company as there was no frisson between them at all. The difference in age between the two of them, -12 years – is often cited as the reason why the marriage was so unhappy. However all the people I know who have a marital age difference have sound and happy marriages. Caroline is 16 years younger than I am but we have been very happily married for 32 years. We share the same interests, have the same sense of humour and are the best of friends.

        1. I am certain that you didn’t have a mistress on the side that you would much rather have married.

          1. Apparently one of the original Spitting Image team said that; he spotted the change because they made the puppets.

          2. We lived in Victoria Street in Cambridge at that time. The Spitting Image team worked from a building across the road at the end of the street. Small world.

        3. My youngest sister has an age gap between her and her husband , 12 years difference , they are the best of friends and share interests, mind he , he is now in his seventies , and is very possessive and clingy , so the age gap can produce little insecurities!

          1. One of my sisters had a second husband who was 12 years younger than she. She was happier with him than with her first husband who was four years older than she was. I, and many of the family much preferred her first husband!

            She had 4 children by her first husband and two by her second; the first set of children got on well enough with their new siblings but did not really like their step-father.

        4. I think the majority wanted to ‘own’ someone. The rest wanted to fit in. In a way she was a modern popstar. Someone to base a life on when you saw the lack in yourself.

          I think this is why so many kids raise up these idols and when there’s a flicker of failure cast them down so easily. They have to be paragons, beyond compare rather than human beings like the rest of us.

          I don’t know why the warqueen hasn’t left me. I asked her once and all she said was ‘I know you’ll never hurt me.’ Seemed an odd basis for a commitment.

          1. I think the desire not to hurt the one you love is extremely important. We all hurt people who are close to us from time to time and when we do so we should, if we are decent human beings, feel saddened and ashamed. The last thing in the world I want to do is hurt Caroline or my sons, Christo and Henry.

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wA2bAaHvJCY

    2. Morning Richard.
      I’m always a tad dubious when the hierarchy join in with what the plebs are suffering. Perhaps that’s the reason he kept it quiet.
      William didn’t have to into go to hospital, we surely would have heard about it.
      Plenty of the younger generation have been affected by the virus but more often than not, have recovered after a few days.

    3. He won’t suffer from the effects of his interest, though.

      Climate change bothers me because it’s simply a false concept. The climate is changing, that’s what we used to call weather.

      The real issues are population growth and consumption. I won’t go on a rant about why we must all wear hemp and sandals. What we are doing wrong is simple things like packaging. I bought a simple network switch the other day. it came in a box, in a bag, inside a plastic shrink wrap, inside another box, inside a cardboard shell. More than the weight of the switch was thrown away in packaging.

      Then there’s – and it needs to be said – the third world. Here we are, in the first, rich and fat. However, we’ve earned that right. We’ve created the infrastructure and we were on course to design the population for it – a small one. That was reversed by Labour and massive, uncontrolled immigration. we can’t ‘feed the world’. We haven’t got the money and it’s not fair on them if we could. Until they’ve reached the same logistical, educational and structural level as us, we shouldn’t let them suffer through charity.

      Over population is the biggest issue. In the west that’s because of our massive wealth allows for the economically inactive. However all our success needs energy. Masses of it. Forcing down our energy use through taxation just adds a burden to the poorest. It is simply unfair. Climate change is a scam applied by the rich on the poor for reasons of ego rather than tackling the far bigger issues.

      1. The climate has been changing for many thousands of years. But IMHO patterns of rainfall have shifted because billions of native trees have been felled on three continents for the last hundred years.
        And still it goes on.

  157. As a gesture of compassion and solidarity with the impoverished and war stressed immigrants, the French, German, Austrian and British governments have ordered that, In addition to wearing a mask, any non-Mooslim leaving home must wear one of these at all times to make them feel more at home. Integration and assimilation – you know it’s good for you.

    http://i3.cpcache.com/product/1785694624/target_tshirt.jpg?width=750&height=750&Filters=%5B{%22name%22:%22crop%22%2c%22value%22:{%22x%22:125.0%2c%22y%22:0.0%2c%22w%22:500%2c%22h%22:680.0}%2c%22sequence%22:1}%2c{%22name%22:%22background%22%2c%22value%22:%22F2F2F2%22%2c%22sequence%22:2}]

    1. Many a true word eh…………
      The Reality of all this senseless migration is beginning to set in and come to light. And i guess there are still no churches in the arab states.

      2. It was fashionable, at the time of the Terror in the French Revolution, for English aristo women to wear a red ribbon around their necks.

  158. We damned well know that this lockdown is nothing to do with the health of the nation and the NHS , when off licences and supermarkets have customers laden down with booze and cigarettes, and I am observing trolley loads of junk food .. so the nation will not be able to indulge in any sport or exercise except walking and worrying .

        1. There are going to be many unhappy people over this but Belle’s husband really will be foaming at the mouth. A previous incarnation of his on here was ‘wannafight’

      2. So daft isn’t it .

        The local children have just got back into Saturday sports on the sports field. Golf is so well regulated with social distancing, and yet the visitors are still streaming in to our Jurassic coast and judging by the colour of them , (all males in very expensive cars) they have come from further afield .

    3. #Mea Culpa anche , a case each from Laithwaite’s (8 Black Stumps + 4 Stumps pg/Char. blend) and a dozen of the best from Naked wines. That’s November sorted, don’t know what SWMBO is going to do though

        1. Came in at a tad under £8 per bot. inc. delivery for the Stumps and much the same for the Naked assortment, I can generally taste the difference between a £5 and £8 bottle but any more than that there is only guilt. (Champagne exc. obs)

          1. That’s not a bad price. I am like you with “palate”. I can tell the difference between vinegar and reasonable plonk – but the claret that I bought and laid down (hark at me!!) in the 1980s is to me so much red ink. Fortunately, the MR and a couple of chums really CAN tell the difference and ooh and aah over it!

  159. “And finally – news of a truly hi-tech app which will diagnose covid better than any PCR test or ‘spit’ test. I checked the date, it’s not April 1st:

    “Researchers have

    developed a new artificial intelligence (AI) system which they claim can

    detect coronavirus by analysing the sound of people coughing.” (paywalled link)

    The rationale behind this research is that covid leads

    to tiny, temporary muscle impairments in the lungs which makes the

    cough of covid patients different from other coughs. I don’t know how

    valid this is – not being a medic nor a ‘medical engineer’, I’d only

    suggest with all due respect that such impairments might also be present

    in people with asthma, but what to I know”

    https://independencedaily.co.uk/your-daily-betrayal-tuesday-3rd-november-2020-three-days-to-lockdown-britain-mk-ii/
    In other news the government reports beginning training 10,000 phrenologists to feel the bumps on your head to diagnose the ‘Rona
    Jeez…………..

    1. I very much doubt if that’s achievable, my medical knowledge is almost non existent, but surely the sound of coughing comes from the upper respiratory system in the throat area not from the lungs.

        2. Morning.

          Cough sounds certainly vary, but the lungs simply don’t have any muscles to be “impaired”. Breathing is done by the diaphragm and the intercostal muscles and if you have a bad cough for several days the latter will often ache.

          1. I would have posted the same, but then I thought twice. There must be a mechanism which comes into play which constricts the bronchioles & alveoli, e.g. during an asthma attack, similar to the system which controls the minor blood vessels, e.g. when blushing or feeling the cold. That mechanism must surely be involuntary muscle & that is what influences the ‘timbre’ of a cough, which is what this new app detects.

          2. There is no skeletal muscle, so at least I was right about that. There is, as you say, smooth muscle (goodness, how much more of my anatomy have I forgotten?) although a lot of it is in the blood vessels there is also a very thin layer around the bronchi. On the other hand I simply don’t believe that there’s an app which can tell the difference. Especially since no two people make exactly the same sound when they cough – regardless of the cause.

    2. Alternatively, tie a large stone round their necks and throw them in the river. If they’re infected they float, if they’re not they drown.

    4. It’s a spelling mistake. They can tell from the sound of the coffin as it is lowered into the pit. Don’t believe everything you read from experts.

    2. Stupid boy! The money has gone to his head. What could he possible see in her, she is far too blonde to be natural. Some men never learn.

    1. Is Mark Drakeford yet another politician who has been ”turned” by George Soros and Open Society ?

      It looks like Nicola Sturgeon has been, and it also looks that devolution was a Soros policy on the shopping list given to Tony Blair in New York in 1996.

      Note the contacts in 1992 Robert Johnson claims with the British government towards the end of the article which have never been made public. The ERM looks such an inside job !

      https://www.euractiv.com/section/economy-jobs/interview/johnson-i-was-hired-by-soros-for-black-wednesday/

    2. Is Mark Drakeford yet another politician who has been ”turned” by George Soros and Open Society ?

      It looks like Nicola Sturgeon has been, and it also looks that devolution was a Soros policy on the shopping list given to Tony Blair in New York in 1996 to deliberately weaken the UK.

      Note the contacts in 1992 Robert Johnson claims with the British government towards the end of the article which have never been made public. The ERM looks such an inside job !

      The Institute for New Economic Thinking featured behind Nicola Sturgeon in the picture is a George Soros organization.

      https://www.euractiv.com/section/economy-jobs/interview/johnson-i-was-hired-by-soros-for-black-wednesday/

      1. “Is Mark Drakeford yet another politician who has been ”turned” by George Soros and Open Society ?”
        No, I don’t think so. Soros would consider it demeaning to have to deal with such a non-entity as Drakeford who is a twat all on his own.

    3. I iz blek an I haz a gud lyne in crack, charley, red birds an rophy. I olso doo a gud line in blades an haxis. Wen do I get miy freee Moola boyo???

  163. In an attempt to get Dolly’s weight down the Vet gave me some diet biscuits for dogs. She is only allowed 55grams per day. There is no fluff, dander, leaf or twig anywhere around the home and garden. And i need to re-polish all the floors. ;-(

    1. Why for has the vet given you biscuits, when it is Dolly who is ‘portly?

      I hope that you are sharing them with her

    2. Mongo has a very carefully controlled diet due to his size. As such, I am forced to eat any biscuits I get out very quickly in case he snaffles one.

      It’s a hardship, but one I rise to.

      1. Even after she has been fed if someone eats a biscuit she levitates on all fours up and down and yelps. I think i need to beat her more.

  164. “Amy Stewart is a 30-year-old mother from Yorkshire who speaks at a small, peaceful protest against the pandemic lockdown.

    She didn’t violate any health restrictions.

    Unlike Black Lives Matter protesters, she doesn’t smash anything or threaten anyone, or even use profanity.

    Yet suddenly, West Yorks police swarmed her, backed her up

    against a wall, handcuffed her, and jammed her in the back of a police

    van.

    It was all so bizarre — and to this day, Amy doesn’t know what she

    supposedly did wrong. Police haven’t charged her with a crime yet, but

    they’ve banned her from going into Leeds.”

    Watch the video

    https://www.rebelnews.com/shock_video_west_yorks_police_handcuff_a_single_mum_for_criticizing_lockdown_help_her_fight_back
    Time to move into barracks you pigs,you won’t be safe in the community

    1. We let them get away with it over Tommy Robinson, we can not afford to let them get away with this.

    4. Police harassment started with Tommy Robinson, but we did not care because he was not one of us. Now quite shamelessly they hustle people off who disagree with the state, no charges at the end of it all, just a little ruffing up to let us know what can happen. Apart from the curtain twitchers and narks, we are now all in this together.

        1. 326119+ up ticks,
          Morning P,
          So was the likes of rotherham, rochdale etc,etc, until the JAY report revealed the facts.
          Yet the governance party’s overseeing these odious issue still find support.

          Tommy Robinson
          ( heinous criminal ) is just the castigated tip of a truth
          iceberg.

  166. This is what the nation is up against…

    Asked in the House of Commons on Monday if he would “reconsider the guidance” on the closure of gyms, golf clubs and tennis courts, Johnson replied: “Once you unpick at one thing, alas, the effectiveness of the whole package is compromised.”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/54781128

    2. Sums up why he won’t challenge “the two Ronnies of Doom”. (Richard Littlejohn I think)

    3. Hmmm. Professional sport is allowed. Professional rugby union continues at club and International level. Players from this country and abroad spend a lot of time wrapped in each others’ arms and breathing heavily. They then go home. Very soon there is going to be an international rugby tournament in this country with teams from faraway places like Japan and Fiji.
      But, you, Mr Surbiton cannot, must not, go to the golf club for a round or two. Definitely not!

      1. And you can’t spread yourself out in a grandstand designed for 25,000 to watch racing (which is an outdoors activity). Bastards, the lot of them!

    4. Yet… construction is still going on, schools are – mostly – still open.

      Bluntly it’s already compromised to allow for his economic compromises.

    5. But the effectiveness is compromised because the Government will not quarantine the 7400 people who have arrived by rubber boat this year.

      Perhaps this is why Coronavirus figures for Dover are higher than similar places in Kent.

  167. Amazing how a one third stake in state owned UK defence asset QinetiQ was sold cheap by Tony Blair to the employer of John Major in 2003 and so ended up owned by a DC private equity fund, Carlyle Group, where George Soros was the star client, and sold again in 2006 for massive profits… and nobody noticed !

    Did Tony Blair and John Major fix this deal in Downing Street while getting blotted out on Perignon ?

    Did everyone get a 10% commission as this went through the works ?

    Is that why John Major is allegedly worth $60,000,000 according to some rich lists ?

    After all, if true, how do you get that kind of wealth on government pay ?

        1. 326116+ up ticks,
          Afternoon HP,
          I just knew someone would pick
          up on it, my meaning being more of a criminal nature as you in truth assumed.

    1. A diversionary tactic to take our minds off analysing how inconsistent all the Covid statistics have become.

      2. Is it, considering how many Muslims have killed people recently – and then thrown a hissy fit and killed more people because they were told that killing people for a loo and a snack bar was wrong.

        They’re flipping nutters!

  170. Spike Milligan got it right!

    Bazonka

    Say Bazonka every day
    That’s what my grandma used to say
    It keeps at bay the Asian Flu’
    And both your elbows free from glue.
    So say Bazonka every day
    (That’s what my grandma used to say)

    Don’t say it if your socks are dry!
    Or when the sun is in your eye!
    Never say it in the dark
    (The word you see emits a spark)
    Only say it in the day
    (That’s what my grandma used to say)

    Young Tiny Tim took her advice
    He said it once, he said it twice
    he said it till the day he died
    And even after that he tried
    To say Bazonka! every day
    Just like my grandma used to say.

    Now folks around declare it’s true
    That every night at half past two
    If you’ll stand upon your head
    And shout Bazonka! from your bed
    You’ll hear the word as clear as day
    Just like my grandma used to say!

        1. February is the Tursday of the year, or in other words, Tuesday is the February of the week.

      2. # Me Too Eddy…..as a rule I’m fairly positive and buoyant, looking on the bright side. However I’m in despair….I don’t give a flying fK what happens to my country anymore….how sad is that….

  173. The DT as you would expect, does not allow comments under this article. The trouble is while people are not prepared to address the problem the problem will never be solved.

    If Western Christian and Jewish civilisation, morality, law and culture are incompatible with Islam and cannot co-exist then what then?

    Do we surrender or do we fight for our values?

    And if we fight, which side shall we be on?

    Has any politician the courage even to attempt to give an answer?

    After Vienna, the West must learn that no violent jihad ends well – for them or us
    The West has long maintained a dangerous illusion that the cult of Islamist violence can be a justified ally against dictatorship

    MARK ALMOND : 3 November 2020 • 2:30pm

    Remember when the counter-terrorist slogan was “Better to fight them over there than over here”. Then as Syria descended into civil war, the argument became “Better that our would-be jihadis go there to fight than stay here to commit terrorism”. Now from Nice to Vienna we have evidence that terrorism inspired by the Islamic State’s vicious ideology is flowing back to wreak havoc in the West.

    From Afghanistan in the 1980s to Syria in our own time, the West has lived with the illusion that the jihadi cult of violence can be a justified ally against dictatorship without risking our safety. The blowback from the Afghan illusion was 9/11, but across Europe, including here, in recent years we have seen innocent people slaughtered mercilessly by young fanatics inspired from the Middle East’s current internecine wars.

    The terrorist shot dead by the police in Vienna was a frustrated would-be jihadi blocked from going to fight in Syria’s civil war. Nice’s Tunisian kiler seems out of the same mould, showing that the mentality festering over there could be transmitted to Europe by the internet and returning radicals.

    The black-and-white portrait of Syria in our secular media has, ironically, been weaponised by radical Islamists for recruitment purposes. Assad’s dictatorship may be cruel to its enemies but those enemies, too, are not nice people. Decent Syrian democrats were slaughtered by the hardmen on both sides long ago.

    Forty years ago in Afghanistan we should have seen the same process evolving but back in 1979, the Soviet Union was a serious threat to our civilisation. If it had succeeded in quickly pacifying Afghanistan, the Kremlin could have meddled ruthlessly elsewhere. The West wasn’t foolish to help resistance to the Red Army but the road to the Twin Towers was nevertheless paved with the best of intentions.

    The series of terrorist attacks spewed out of the Syrian swamp recently shows that it was a dangerous illusion to back what Franklin Roosevelt would have called “our sons of bitches” against a regional tin-pot dictator like Assad. Doing so elevated radical Islamist fringes with fantasies of global dominance by boosting their status as “freedom fighters”. This evaluation found an echo among alienated young Muslims in the West.

    The comparison of the thousands of radicalised or radicalisable young men flocking to Syria since 2011 to the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War overlooked that in the 1930s the religious fanatics fought for Franco. Some use the term ‘Islamo-fascism’ and in this regard they are not wrong. The paradox is that the background noise endorsing jihad against Assad came from the secular liberal Western media usually denounced by Islamist ideologues as decadent and corrupt.

    In recent days, high-minded Western critics of Islamophobia have jibbed at President Macron for saying that Europe finds itself at war with enemies of its values and culture which include Christianity as well as secular tolerance of all faiths and none. The murder of random people in Vienna is the latest sign that a globalised sub-culture of hate and violence directed at all and sundry has rooted itself as much here as in the arc of violence from Syria to Afghanistan.

    The world is full of evils but the main threat to our daily security comes from the specific Islamist anti-Western ideology. Though it has only a few adherents, sadly they are desperately murderous wherever they are found. Time for the West to learn that no violent jihad ends well – for them or us.

    1. 326119+ up ticks,
      Evening R,
      Currently we have four internal enemas in regards to our Countries security, namely,
      submission, pcism, appeasement & the coalition party,( lab,lib,con ).
      IMO there is no innocent side of the islamic ideology followers within these Isles,that is pure politico sh!te, guilty by association is a guilty stance and should be treated as such.

      Any future atrocities within these Isles
      should see the expulsion of a large number of islamic ideology followers families for each casualty.

      Same day of atrocity, deport.

      Refrain from taking a no holds barred line
      then purchase a kneeling pad.

    2. “Though it has only a few adherents, sadly they are desperately murderous wherever they are found.”
      I suppose that depends on how you look at numbers. There are six million of them in the UK. It is surely evident that the foundation on which this “globalised sub-culture of hate and violence” is based is the q’ran. Mark Almond does not say this, of course. He has plenty of hard words and fires off a full quiver of arrows, but he misses the bull.

    3. We’ve tried fighting them. The state backs behind the nutters and crushes dissent.

      What should happen? An immediate cessation of all such characters coming in to this country to stem the sodding flood. On top of that, the phased reduction of welfare for all. Stop feeding the bloody wretches! They obviously hate us, they come here for benies, so let’s stop giving them money, houses and free stuff!

      Then is needed a thorough open discussion on complete, total integration. No more pyjamas, no more tents, no more silly beards. Absolute and complete obliteration of their culture in favour of ours.

      What will happen? Nothing. The BBC will haul on some waster who’ll say ‘this isn’t Islam’ and so on and so forth. We’ll be forced to accept these psychotics and forbidden a voice.

  174. In yer France, in this new “confinement”, supermarkets are only allowed to sell “essential” items. (Bit like Welsh Wales).

    In our former local paper – a very neat BTL comment:

    “Sur les paquets de cigarettes vendus avec autorisation de l’Etat, il est écrit “fumer tue”, “fumer nuit gravement à votre santé”, “fumer bouche vos artères”, “fumer provoque des crises cardiaques”, “fumer nuit à vos poumons”, “fumer provoque le cancer”, “fumer provoque la cécité”, etc .. Photos à l’appui. Nos dirigeants de génie pourraient-ils expliquer en quoi le tabac est-il un produit “de première nécessité” ? .Solidarité avec les libraires, et avec tous ceux qui aiment la lecture et qui en sont privés par un gouvernement d’incapables incultes.”

    Roughly, he is saying that tobacco packaging contains – by order of the Govt – DIRE warnings – and yet is allowed to be sold as an “essential item”.
    While bookshops are forced to be closed – and supermarkets can’t sell books either – rules made by a “government of ignoramuses”….

    2. The peasants must have their ciggies – there’d be a riot if they were deprived of their cancer sticks.

    3. Are illegals managing to evade French police to get to the coast? One would imagine they would be rather conspicuous!

    4. A valid comment. Lots of people are going to discover internet shopping for the first time, another nail in the coffin of the independent traders being ‘protected’.

      Stupidity reigns in France. One can go into LeClerc and buy 3 bottles of vodka, but not a glass to drink it from. And why is a supermarket a safer place to shop than an independent retailer?

    5. People are always eager to learn from the failures of others and then make the same failures ‘with added disadvantages’ themselves. I expect the absurdities of the Welsh politicians will be seized upon and imitated throughout the world.

    6. One must not enjoy oneself on lockdown, that would be taking advantage of government. Especially if receiving furlough. 😳😳😳

  175. I had lunch in a local pub.

    Our waitress had been in the job for 3 weeks, after she was made redundant from her previous job. She will get no furlough pay.

    It is very easy to hate this government.

    1. And the worst – the very worst – thing, dear heart, is that we voted for the bastards.

      1. Who else was there to vote for back then on the ballot? The problem always was that if TBP (Farage) kept a full set of candidates, it would’ve split the ‘Tory’ vote and let Corbyn in, rather like Ross Perot did in 1992 in the US. I could easily forsee far worse than now had we let in Corbyn’s lot, and even now with all that has happened, none of the current Opposition parties are credible alternatives.

        For a Brexit/reform Party to work, a large percentage of current Tory MPs (Brexiteers only) would have to either defect and also grassroots Tory associations would have to similarly jump ship en-masse. I just can’t see that happening – too many of them would never want to work under Farage’s leadership, and I would say that most local Tory constituency associations are wedded to their MPs – despite many of them being remoaners.

        Besides, there are still too many died-in-the-wool Tories who just won’t vote for anyone else. There would have to be a monumental collapse in public support for the switch in support to happen, which would likely take some huge blunder or set of blunders (far worse than those during the pandemic etc) to happen for it to come about. That could easily bring down the government and result in a Starmer-Labour government or ‘rainbow coaltion’ of all the left wing parties, including the SNP. Then we’d be doomed, rather like if Biden wins the US election.

        1. There were alternatives in some places. In Eddisbury the UKIP candidate was the only leaver on the ballot paper. She lost her deposit and the former Crewe and Nantwich remainer Conservative was elected. Voters deserve everything they get for ignoring the alternative, frankly. Especially in view of the fact that the previous MP had been a remainer who pretended to support leave and then did everything she could to stymie it. She couldn’t believe that people were coming up to her and telling her, “I believe in everything you stand for, but I’m not going to vote for you!” What? Doing the same thing and expecting a different result is the epitome of madness.

        1. We certainly had no choice here. We couldn’t risk the libdems getting in (this is Remain territory and a highly conservative electorate) in fact the cons majority was slashed by 18,000 to just over 3,000. Once upon a time, in those hazy, lazy days of myths, legends and endless summers the con majority was 28,000 – 31,000. The last incumbent was Heidi Allen. It was a choice of three on the ballot paper, the usual suspects.

        1. It was liebour (=Corbyn) or Tory here. The useless tory is in the safest tory seat in the country. Or abstain. (There was a limp dumb but she only got about 3 votes.)

          2. Same here; a donkey with a blue rosette would have walked it – indeed, Paterson was re-elected. Voilà! 🙂

    2. If the conversations I have while out walking the dog are anything to go by, nobody supports the second lockdown. They are of the opinion that the first one didn’t work and this is going to be even worse.

      1. Can we ask

        If the first lockdown worked so well why do we need another one.?
        If the first lockdown did not work why is Government repeating it’s mistake?

        1. Indeed. The first one didn’t work, so the second isn’t going to, either! The mood on the street (judging by comments made to me while I’m out walking my dog) is not compliant!

      2. You should have heard the conversation I had with the barber in Matlock yesterday.
        He’s nearly as cynical a buggar as I am!

    3. Meanwhile, public sector workers get paid in full throught (whether they ‘work’ or not) and many of them get discounts (not just NHS/blue light workers) on even more stuff. Just seen a local district nurse turn up to visit my elderly next door neighbour in her brand new Audi A3. Obviously some people are doing well out of COVID.

          3. HP with a hefty final payment.

            “Personal contract purchase (PCP) is basically a loan to help you get a car. But unlike a normal personal loan, you won’t be paying off the full value of the car and you won’t own it at the end of the deal (unless you choose to pay the final balloon payment).”

          5. That is pretty much exactly what it is – with a few extra bells and whistles to get money out of the gullible.

            You have to sign a contract regarding how many miles you will drive – and if you go over that mileage during the period of the lease they will pile surcharge upon surcharge until you end up (after having paid every month for three years or so) with a bigger bill than if you’d bought the car at the start.

          6. It’s not a loan or HP – because there is no intention to sell you a product – merely to lease it to you. And the car never appears on your balance sheet (if, like me, you are buying it for a micro-business) unless you pay that inflated and exorbitant charge at the end.

            If you do it with a commercial vehicle the VAT is charged on each payment – if you are buying then the VAT is dealt with in full at the beginning. If you get your mileage wrong the “balloon” will be more costly than if you had paid for the car in full in the first place. They are a snare and a delusion and massive trap for the unwary. Best avoided at all costs. I’d rather have a decent second-hand car that I can pay for than a financial booby trap.

  176. It was back to March on BBC1’s 10 pm news last night. It featured Douglas Thom, a 73-year-old Liverpudlian in an intensive care ward. He had a plastic hood over his head and was being given oxygen. He said (in so many words): “To those who think Covid is a hoax, come and have go in here.” The programme was saying: “This is why we must have another lockdown”. It was as noxious a piece of propaganda as the war-zone reporting from Northwick Park Hospital in the spring.

    I hope Douglas recovers. I hope the BBC doesn’t.

    It’s the first feature at about 3 minutes:
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000p44h/bbc-news-at-ten-02112020

    2. Of course it can be unpleasant – fatal, even. But so can ordinary ‘flu and pneumonia and cancer and heart attacks.

      I can only suppose that Witless and Unbalanced and Prof “a million dead” Branestorm have not heard of these conditions….

    3. Hmm. Not so ill he couldn’t talk to a TV camera crew. Now try doing that while being sedated and intubated…

  177. I’m thinking that as a society we are suffering a slow death by a thousand cuts, both existential and corporeal, on the upside the Black Stump Pino Grigio/Chardonnay blend ( 2nd glass now BTW ) is an excellent anaesthetic .

    1. Take a look at the clip i posted.
      Black Stump Bordeaux was a god fighting wine in and old Monty Python sketch it had a bouquet like an ***’s armpit and 3 bottles of it and you were really gone. 😄

        1. I once had to fit 4 separate kitchens in the flats on one floor in a block of London flats. Flats owned by an oil company.
          On the floor above, the penthouse was occupied by arabs the had security guards to stop access to the top floor, but it didn’t stop people taking cases of booze up in the lift, or young white girls to play with.
          My father was in north Africa during ww2 and he said on many occasions never trust and arab son. The more i have seen of the them the more i understand. scus the puns.

      3. Ahhh those were the days, Black Tower, Blue Nun, Piat D’or, Hirondelle (sp.?) Roughmont Castle and Mateus Rose, the hight of sophistication for a Somerset teenager

      1. We can rise up, rebel….. it would take us out of our comfort zone, though, PT, you with your ankle and me with my wrist….

    1. One of the deficiencies of public enterprises (and I include utilities and similar that are in”private ownership”) is that everything they do is cost led. They do not look at what needs to be done, on the basis of achieving excellence, but on the bias of how cheaply they can do the minimum.
      The Victorians did it rather differently and that is why their work is still around.

    2. One of the deficiencies of public enterprises (and I include utilities and similar that are in”private ownership”) is that everything they do is cost led. They do not look at what needs to be done, on the basis of achieving excellence, but on the basis of how cheaply they can do the minimum.
      The Victorians did it rather differently and that is why their work is still around.

  182. Alone and in melancholy mood this afternoon I turned to my poetry books for comfort.
    It didn’t help..

    This poem, taken from A. E. Housman’s collection The Shropshire Lad, explores the idea of nostalgia and growing old, and was the inspiration for the tragic and touching Dennis Potter play, Blue Remembered Hills.

    Into my heart an air that kills
    From yon far country blows;
    What are those blue remembered hills,
    What spires, what farms are those?

    That is the land of lost content,
    I see it shining plain,
    The happy highways where I went
    And cannot come again.

  184. Police in Bradford recover teen girl after alleged forced conversion and marriage BBC

    A 13-year-old Christian girl in Bradford who was allegedly abducted and forced to convert and marry a Muslim man has been rescued, officials said.

    The recovery of the girl came nearly a month after the girl’s parents alleged that she was abducted by Ali Azhar, 44.

    What is wrong with this headline? It happened in Pakistan – no forced child bride has ever been recovered in Bradford… or Burnley or Rotherham or Rochdale or… they are condemned to a life of servitude and misery.

  185. Evening, all. It appears to be a case of déjà vu, but today is infinitely worse than yesterday here!

  186. I was chatting to this Muslim in our street. I said “your wife wears a burqa, your 3 daughters all wear burqas, doesn’t it get a bit confusing around the house?”

    He said “yes of course, last week I went upstairs in the night and accidentally had sex with my wife!”

      1. Very cheap and very good – I had it for years and it was accurate enough for me to use as a chronometer when I navigated across the Atlantic with a sextant which requires you to be able know what the GMT is to the second. I now have a Pulsar and a Seiko both of which have hands.

        Have you ever had a beard? If so I hope it looked better than mine.

    3. MB tried growing a beard during the 1970s.
      He looks absolutely terrible, like a refugee from Belsen.

    2. I hope Radio 3 gives us another chance to hear his 1997 Private Passions spoof as Manfred Sturmer, the last man alive to have met Brahms.

  190. Winston Churchill’s granddaughter says she has voted for Joe Biden Daily Fail

    Edwina Sandys, a U.S. citizen, writes that she was brought up as a Conservative, and affiliates herself with the Lincoln Project, a group of GOP consultants who has been savaging Trump with online ads. ‘I have just voted for Joe Biden. Some of my friends may never speak to me again; others will applaud.

    Lincoln Project – A group of very rich Republicans spending $millions denigrating Trump and voting for Democrat, Biden. A bit like the idiots in the Conservative Party who would rather see Britain destroyed than lose their EU privileges and fat brown envelopes from Soros and Co.

  191. An extract from our local Neighbourhood Watch newsletter.

    “Well another lockdown but some people feel that the rules don’t apply to them and they are not all MPs. It is strange that “our Rave” over the weekend seems not have reached the national or local media. The thought of 1000 people attending the event along with rumours of 2 deaths plus the Air Ambulance turning out would have been great copy. Then there was the plight of the “punters” wandering through the street of Ashen in the early hours. Some knocking on doors and asking for the Church to be opened so they could shelter there others falling asleep in nearby fields. I never heard a thing but I have been told the Music was very noisy and the roads packed with parked cars.

    My first knowledge of what was going on was being phoned by worried Neighbourhood Watch members. I did phone the Police on 101 and was told by the Officer that they had an operation ongoing but he couldn’t tell me more. This was after having to tell him where Ashen was. Which maybe answers my first question about why we didn’t attract any media attention? No body knows where we are!”

    Edit: The rave was in a barn adjacent to Ridgewell Airfield near Tilbury Green. It went on all night and the noise abated finally at 8.30 am. One man died presumably from an overdose and a young woman was taken ill but survived. Raves, like pop concerts are organised crime.

  192. Yo, peeps. Home now*, won’t rely on the Android App in the morning. Seems pointless to create a new page at this time of night. Hopefully, normal service will be restored in the morning.

    *home is a bit fluid at present, but Jenrick says it’s OK to move house in lockdown…

          5. 326119+ up ticks,
            Evening M,
            Right up to the time it was said ” job done ,leave it to the tory’s”

    1. He can’t really top saying he was going to carry on and run for a third term! They fell for that one hook line and sinker for about 24 hours, and then I think it dawned on them that they’d been had.

    1. That article makes it seem as though Trump personally spread the virus throughout the US.

  195. Hee hee!
    Managed to contribute 2 guest votes + 1 Oberstleutnant votes to Geoff’s featured comment!
    Vote early, vote often!

    1. Yo Paul. Just tried to post a test page, and found that there were two comments already there! Reunited with the laptop, tomorrow’s page should be OK.

    2. When we were little girls , mother used to refer to that area as our “arichafuzalem” especially after having a bath , and she would always say make sure you dry your arichafuzalem before you sprinkle yourself with talcum powder.

      That made up name stuck for ever !

      1. That’s really strange – I remember my mother using a word very similar to that. Not aimed at me, I hasten to add 🙂

        1. Morning Sean
          It could have been a word that Mothers from a certain era used , one didn’t discuss things like anatomical parts with children in those days .

          Things were alot more private then!

          1. I’m sure you’re right. It was just strange seeing the word again after all these years. I had always thought it was a word of her own creation but it seems not. I’d love to know its etymology.

      2. That’s really strange – I remember my mother using a word very similar to that. Not aimed at me, I hasten to add 🙂

    3. That’s OK as long as we get to define trans activists by a body part as well. I suggest “ar5eh0Ies.”

    2. My neighbour is American and from Georgia. She works for an organisation that raises money from wealthy Americans, based in either Fort Worth or Dallas and distributes it to the poor of the world. She has travelled to over seventy countries and is frustrated by these ludicrous lockdowns preventing her from working. She is a genuine Christian, the loveliest soul you will ever meet and a supporter of President Trump.

      We have agreed to toast his election victory over the garden fence on Thursday. Champagne is in the fridge in readiness.

      Nobody but a fool would vote for the cadaverous Biden, one of the most corrupt politicians in American history along with the Clintons and Obama.

          1. I hope that one of them walks it, a close call that waits on postal votes and lawyers games before a result is declared will be a very unstable time.

    1. I’d never really understood the story behind this song, though I have always liked it. Then I heard a programme on R3 where “A Little Night Music” was discussed and can never listen to it now without thinking how often people put off making a decision until it was too late.

    3. Not a fan. She could only play herself. That such rubbish should be admitted to the Proms says everything about the BBC and its complete desertion of its remit.

  206. AP mentions the piece of BBC lockdown propaganda I referred to earlier.

    We’re a nation sick of being lied to – and it is breeding a dangerous mistrust in our leaders

    Lockdown 2 feels less like a vital duty than an unfair imposition, with no answers forthcoming from the men who invent the arbitrary rules

    ALLISON PEARSON

    Sage has presented some frankly apocalyptic graphs to the public

    Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water… here comes Lockdown 2. Sadly, Lockdown 2 will not be showing at a cinema near you. Because cinemas are closed. Again. And hairdressers (Noooo! Not back to the Rapunzel Does Menopause look), restaurants, pubs and golf courses (why, they’re outside?), and churches (sacrilege, if you ask me), and all “non-essential” retail. Whenever I hear a minister casually use that phrase I always think, non-essential to whom? Those shops are pretty damn essential to the people who own them and to the people who work there.

    It will be very different this time, of course. We were innocents back then when the Prime Minister announced the first lockdown on March 23. It felt important. There was the sense of a nation in peril; a prickle of fear, but not without excitement. We were being called upon to do our bit for the country. We had to stay home to support the NHS and save lives. It was a simple, stirring message and millions heeded it (No.10 was startled by how well we complied) We stocked up on food and medicines. Hundreds of thousands of us volunteered to help the NHS, banging saucepans and clapping on a Thursday night to urge on frontline staff and keep up our own spirits. As our roads fell silent, we may have felt we could hear the calling of a better world.

    I remember how much I liked watching those early press briefings with Professor Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance, summoned from their labs to interpret the pandemic for the public. Reassuringly odd, the pair were oddly reassuring. Now, I think they and the rest of Sage (the Scientific Advisory Group) should be taken to the Tower and charged with high treason for destroying the futures of our children.

    The second lockdown, which starts on Thursday, feels less like a vital duty than an unfair imposition. It’s that school detention you resented bitterly as a kid because you weren’t guilty of the thing the teacher accused you of doing. It’s not just because we’re weary, although we’re certainly weary. It’s not just because most of us live in areas where the virus is at a low level, and shutting businesses and limiting family contact feels both cruel and unnecessary. It’s not just because we know more people who are about to lose their livelihoods than people who lost their lives to Covid, although the chances are we do. It’s not just because we’ve seen too much suffering among the young, whose lives are on hold, and among the old, who can’t have their loved ones beside them, although that suffering is grievous.

    No, the main reason this lockdown will be different is because the trust we had is gone. Trust in scientists, trust in politicians, trust in the media, even trust in the health service is badly frayed. Heaven knows, we did our best to support the NHS and save lives, but the NHS, we have since discovered, did not return the compliment. A devastating report from Macmillan Cancer Support estimates that 50,000 extra people have cancer and don’t know it because screenings and appointments were cancelled during the first lockdown. GPs, whose recorded messages told sick people to stay away, referred fewer than half the usual number of patients to hospital, leading to a waiting list of 3.7 million for elective surgery.

    Making the case for a second lockdown in the Commons on Monday, the Prime Minister said that cancer and heart treatment would otherwise be put at risk. “Now is the time to prevent a medical and moral disaster,” he said. Have they really not told Boris that disaster happened already, between March and June? Sorry, you don’t get to play that card twice, not when you’ve had eight months to build extra capacity, and NHS managers, or so I am told by angry doctors, have happily been saving money as they continue to ration access to hospital services.

    It is high time the NHS and its 1.4 million staff started saving all of the British people, not just those with Covid. With trust in short supply, this time round Whitty and Vallance look less like reputable scientists than dodgy conjurers at at child’s birthday party, furtively trying to palm a gold coin out of a cuff. Alarmist, barely credible “scenarios” – 4,000 daily Covid deaths, if you please – based on outdated mathematical models are used to scare the public into believing our hospitals are overwhelmed or will rapidly become so if we don’t stop kids playing football and shut gyms. Seriously? Where is the evidence that any of these healthy activities increases transmission? No answers are forthcoming from the men who invent these arbitrary rules so yet more trust evaporates.

    To its shame, the broadcast media plays the part of willing conjurer’s assistant to the scientists. On Monday, the BBC’s medical editor, Fergus Walsh, brought us an emotive report from an intensive care unit in Liverpool. Here are a few things that report didn’t say. Yes, Liverpool is one of the worst-affected areas in the country, but Covid cases are declining quite sharply, so the Tier 3 restrictions must have started to work. (So why do we need a month-long lockdown?) A senior NHS source tells me that, on that same day, Liverpool University Hospitals reported 463 Covid patients, and that the city’s two main hospital sites had 172 unoccupied beds capable of some form of oxygen supply. A challenging situation, yes, but hardly the imminent catastrophe viewers were led to believe.

    Astonishingly, my source says that the apocalyptic graphs Sage presented to the public pay scant attention to hospital discharges, “which are also on an upward trajectory”. Last week, an average of 750 Covid patients were discharged every day across England compared with 350 admissions of patients with the virus. This is extremely positive news, which is why you won’t have heard it. If we look at the national picture, out of 142 NHS Acute Trusts, there are 13 that have Covid occupancy of 20 per cent and about six, including Liverpool, are at 30 per cent or above. Elsewhere, the occupancy of Covid patients is really very low: East of England 5 per cent, London 6 per cent, Midlands 10 per cent, South West 5 per cent, South East 5 per cent, North East and Yorkshire 15 per cent, North West 18 per cent.

    Since the beginning of September, the increase in corona cases has remained constant – doubling every two weeks – with no sign of the rapid acceleration that would be needed to hit that ludicrous Sage guesstimate of 4,000 deaths a day. As you can see, most hospitals are a country mile from the medical and moral disaster foretold by the PM.

    Forgive me, I wouldn’t normally bombard you with statistics. However, according to the latest YouGov poll, a resounding 72 per cent of English adults support this second lockdown. Don’t they understand the societal ruin that is hurtling towards us like an express train? Rishi Sunak does. The light has dimmed behind his eyes; darkness is coming, and he knows it.

    Believe me, I don’t envy the Prime Minister as he ponders those terrifying graphs, flanked by his advisers, Mr Wing and Mr Prayer. But what if Sage, a bunch of academics on the public payroll with limited knowledge of how normal people live, are wrong? What if their Reasonable Worst Case Scenario is unreasonable rubbish and thousands more lives and livelihoods are about to be lost instead of saved?

    Tragically, it looks more and more as if that is the case. Yesterday, a study by Kings College London found that the R number has already dropped to 1 (Remember, folks, this new lockdown is being imposed in order to get the R number down). Appearing before a select committee in the afternoon, Sir Patrick Vallance said he “regrets” frightening people with the 4,000-deaths-a-day figure, but he and Professor Whitty went on to insist that although the three-tier system was working, it was not working quickly enough to stop the NHS running out of space by November 20.

    I’m afraid that simply doesn’t appear to be correct. As I was about to send this column, my NHS source texted to say that Liverpool Hospital now had 30 fewer Covid inpatients than the day before. “It’s definitely looking as if they have passed their peak and community cases are in steep decline,” he said.

    Wow. Who do you believe? The tunnel-visioned doomster scientists intent on shutting down society until their insane quest to “defeat” the virus is over (it will never be over) or the whistleblower collecting data from the real world and rejoicing that the damn thing is on the run so lockdown is unnecessary?

    I would shut myself away for a year if I thought it worked. But I don’t. We must learn to live with the virus before it destroys everything we hold dear. The original lockdown was a heart-warming tale of people making sacrifices for the common good, set in a rapturously beautiful spring. The sequel is destined to be a grim, cold, miserable retread in which the leading actors have become increasingly unbelievable and the baddies from SAGE have lost the plot..

    Our MPs have a chance to halt an epic disaster movie. If only they would summon the courage and vote to cancel Lockdown 2.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/nation-sick-lied-breeding-dangerous-mistrust-leaders/

    1. It’s simple,we have a vast swathe of public servants who suffer no consequences from a lockdown whatsoever and only benefit,no commuting,little work,full wages,what’s not to like and vote for………………..
      They can’t see the largesse is paid for by the productive taxpayers whose lives and businesses are being destroyed
      One example would be wetherspoons 2019 about 5/6 HUNDRED MILLION in various taxes,wonder what the 2020 take will be??
      Need to sack a lot of diversity co-ordinators to make up for those losses
      Aye Right…………..

      1. Gordon Brown’s council workers will shortly face a rude awakening when folk can no longer pay the Council Tax for lack of employment income. The banks will devalue the taxpayer money the councils have deposited in foreign bank accounts to pay for their inflated pensions.

        Eventually the scheming bastards will have to pay for their dishonesty and deception. There will be no escape.

    3. 326119+ up ticks
      Evening WS,
      May one ask, will any of these issues you pen,have any affect or jeopardise the lab/lib/con party’s running in the next General Election ?

    4. YouGov – that will get you the answer you want according to whom they ask and how they phrase the question.

    5. The exponential increase in cases, because Re is more than 1, is based on no one ever recovering…

    2. That sort are constantly priapic . It is part of their culture , they do it everywhere .

      I pity the youngster .
      That experience will probably stay with her forever!

    3. More filthy things arrested

      Child rape case sees seven men appear in court after investigation into abuse of 10 girls aged between 12 and 16
      Seven men have appeared in court after an investigation into abuse of ten girls
      The girls, aged between 12 and 16, were allegedly abused between 2011 and 2017
      Men appeared during a series of hearings at Kidderminster Magistrates’ Court
      All defendants were bailed to appear at Worcester Crown Court on December 1st

      https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8910357/Redditch-child-rape-case-Seven-men-appear-court-investigation-abuse-10-girls.html

      1. Smith, Smyth, Smythe, Jones, Fenton, Blake and Carruthers, one assumes. Or not, as the case may be.

      2. Bailed! I wonder how they will pass their time waiting for their court appearance? Does no one in that area not want to have a word with them?

      1. Nah – the main terror threat is from Witless, Unbalanced and the Clockwork Orange Professor.

    2. Terror threat from all these wonderful diversity bringing surgeons, doctors and scientists coming here? NEVER.

        1. My money’s on Biden winning. However, as I am completely useless at picking any winner, I won’t physically be placing a bet.

  209. 326119+ up ticks,
    May one ask, will this heighten security level the Country has been handed interfere with the incoming potential troops at Dover.

  211. From https://www.penarthtimes.co.uk/news/18843650.new-rules-pubs-restaurants-wales-fire-break/
    “The first minister said today (Tuesday) customers will be asked to visit these places “in as small a group as possible, and for many, this will only be the people they live with”. But a new, more relaxed restriction means groups of up to four people can meet in a “regulated setting such as a restaurant, cafe or pub,” Mark Drakeford said.
    Anyone wanting to meet up in this way must do so “subject to strict protections” such as making advanced bookings in specific time slots and providing “verified identification” and contact details.
    “This is a permission, not something we are encouraging people to do,” Mr Drakeford said. “It is the most challenging change from a public health perspective and will be kept under continuous review.”
    Hopefully, the Welsh have their ausweis handy.

    3. They won’t have an Ausweiss to leave Wales as far as I know (and definitely not to allow the English in).

      2. I got out last week(unhindered), and I’m hoping I can get out and back again tomorrow. I think it may be harder to get home next week without having to justify my existence. Work is permitted, but ….

          4. Yes in a way. She taught me to count up to 10 in Welsh & one or two phrases, but at that age I wasn’t really into languages.

          5. I have to confess that, having lived in Wales for 23 years, I still only know a handful of spoken phrases – and recognise a few obscure written things – like the terms for hedge-brushing – which crop up on handwritten invoices from time to time.

            I’ve never had a facility for languages and the job keeps one on a constant learning curve with ever-changing regulation (much of it pointless) which has to be absorbed.

            Of course, apart from a small number of the very young and the very old, everyone in Wales speaks English as well as (or better than) they speak Welsh – so I’ve never been forced to learn.

  217. That’s me for the day. Looks as though it will be a chilly night – though sunshine is promised during the day.

    Have a jolly evening.

    A demain

        1. I don’t have much that’s tender, but I do have a “Display” fuchsia that I’ve kept for many years and a couple of non-hardy plants in pots. I’d already put the other two under cover, but I’ve just put the fuchsia in the greenhouse, so it should be okay. It definitely felt chilly when I went out!

          1. We bought about ten oriental rugs from a chap who cold called for knockdown prices only to find active moth larvae on two of them.

            We firstly sprayed infected areas but on the advice of a dealer washed them using baking soda and gallons of clean water. It is a devil of a job to get them dry.

            At present some are in the greenhouse with the heater on, still very wet having hung on the washing thingy most of this breezy day and a couple remain outside under a canopy.

            It is a warning to others that some desperate folk can also be unscrupulous in their dealings. The chap will have known that the rugs were contaminated but still sold them on.

          2. I’m trying to get them organised today – a lot of geraniums and a few fuschias. There was frost on the car windscreens this morning.

  218. It’s very important that this is seen and spread far and wide. This is an outrageous and despicable act by the Yorkshire police, it’s got absolutely nothing to do with a virus. The police in London did not react when the crowd was out side the French embassy in London. Some very very sinister is going on.

    Amy Stewart is a 30-year-old single mother of two young children and from Yorkshire who speaks at a small, peaceful protest against the pandemic lockdown.
    She didn’t violate any health. restrictions.https://www.rebelnews.com/shock_video_west_yorks_police_handcuff_a_single_mum_for_criticizing_lockdown_help_her_fight_back

    1. Generally, I’m not keen on the idea of punitive damages when it becomes the taxpayer who picks up the bill, but there comes a point where I would like to see a few of the bullying police and those who command them get skinned in the courts.

        1. I suspect that their contracts allow them to be defended by the state.

          It seems a little hypocritical on my part to propose this, because I don’t believe in soldiers being hounded post battle.

          But, given how far the police seem to be exceeding their authority, I err towards chasing them.

          1. Being sent into an active warzone with the express threat of life by the state (while the state imports that same person into the country) should, in my book render you free from any form of legal redress. If necessary, sue the head of the MoD and minister but give no option for legal aid.

    1. Oh, Dems, definitely Dems and it looks as though Twitter agrees with me.

      Of 29000 votes so far,
      Republicans 17.6%
      Dems 69.1%
      Either equally likely 13.3%

      1. Oi that’s unfair.

        Those dems (in name only) will be out rioting anyway, Tuesday night is the night for looting.

        Media on both sides have been reporting that the “other side” have been training militias ready for election night so who can tell when the fighting starts.

        The first result was hours ago, Biden took all of the votes in one poll, he is ahead by five to zero.

  220. None of the COVID claims of those sweaty liars Whitty and Vallance characters stack up. There is no evidence that SARS Cov 2 has been isolated and it therefore does not exist. This is a massive fraud brought about by globalists who wish to destroy the nation state and impose their communist agenda on the world.

    The hospitals are empty, the testing centres are deserted, the test is not fit for purpose and if you die of old age or jump from a tall building your death will be attributed to Covid. The test and trace app is a device to track you and monitor your activities.

    I reckon Trump knows this and rumbled Fauci some time ago. I look forward to seeing the lot of the crooks, Gates, Soros, Blair and their network arrested, their assets seized and long prison sentences meted out.

    Edit: You can include the Vatican and Pope Francis, a committed communist, in the long list of crooks.

      1. Last year a bank deposit of £100,000.00 attracted interest of just over £50.00 per month. As of this month the interest is less than a fiver.

        Farage says on his blog that we should buy gold and remove money from banks. He predicts negative interest rates and a massive hike in taxes.

        NS&I Premium Bonds are changing payouts so that the chances of winning the occasional £50.00 or £25.00 will be much reduced.

        The whole thing stinks. Rishi Sunak is a globalist too! Edit: Sunak is married to the daughter of a globalist billionaire.

    2. There are two words I’ve heard on the radio recently that for me sum up the situation regarding the virus and our response to it – these are that the virus is embedded and its management is intractable.

      Even the pandemic models are based on the premise that the reproduction factor R<1 (required to eliminate the virus) relies on a population either gaining a certain level immunity through exposure (or vaccination) and/or suffering the necessary level of mortality.

      1. One of the most worrying aspects of this propaganda is the absence of any clinical immunologists from SAGE which is dominated by mathematical modellers (well past their sell by date in the case of Ferguson) and behavioural scientists.

        In addition the advices of thousands of clinicians and actual experts, including a Nobel prize winner, are discounted and cancelled/covered up by the media including platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.

        The principal players, Vallance and Whitty, are fully paid for drug pedlars beholden to Imperial College London and its links both to the Chinese Communist Party, the Gates Foundation, Glaxo Smith Kline and other vaccine manufacturers.

        1. When soliciting advice from an expert in their field they will generally find something wrong with what you are doing and suggest a remedy for which they inevitably have a vested interest.

          1. Quite so. There are very few disinterested professionals around nowadays. It was part of my remit and Code of Conduct to be impartial when administering contracts as an Architect.

            I managed this throughout my career but now see that the concept is lost on so many other supposed ‘professionals’ including the present crop of architects. Whitty and Vallance lost sight of their remits years ago when they took the Gates’ shilling and succumbed to bribery and corruption. It is obvious to anyone with a pulse that this has occurred. Follow the money.

          3. Funded by taxpayers.
            I suspect George doesn’t actually spend anything, he merely encourages politicians to do his bidding.

    2. The killer paragraph is:

      This is because PEPP has driven down borrowing costs for indebted governments such as Spain and Portugal so much that they are shunning EU loans tied to digital and green investments in favour of raising no-strings cash on the bond market.

      1. Yep, the plug is about to be pulled.

        Everyone is quietly being sent letters about how their personal borrowing costs are rising, even though capital market rates are falling and at the same time letters telling them their investment rates are falling.

        Does anyone else smell rat?

  223. Donald J Trump won Florida by approx 100,000 votes in 2016… and it looks from the latest data he’s now exceeded that margin with about 6 hours left of voting, and so should win the state by at least 5% !

  225. Well, at last I have overcome my technical problems and am back here.
    Hope all is well with you guys.

  232. I think we are running out of time if we wish to save our economy and prevent the wanton destruction of jobs and livelihoods at the behest of the authorities and their obsession with a seasonal flu bug.

    This transparent nonsense should be obvious to any sentient human being. We are being taken for fools. Look at golf restrictions, palpably a nonsense, and the fact that football and rugby goes on, involving close contacts, albeit without supporting crowds. Perhaps a few MPs have shares in rugby and football clubs.

    I cannot imagine a greater fraud on the populace than this COVID scam. I remain amazed that anyone is still adhering to its mindless restrictions. This is a massive international scam for God’s sake!

  233. Donald Trump the favourite as fierce battle continues in swing states – latest news. 4 November 2020.4:17am.

    Donald Trump is now the favourite to win the US election as results roll in across America on the most unpredictable election night in American history.

    In what could be a bigger shock than Mr Trump’s sensational victory in 2016, all eyes are on the vital swing states of Florida, where the president is on track to win, and Ohio, where the polls are neck and neck

    How can he be favourite when 12 hours ago he was 8 points behind according to the MSM?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/11/04/us-election-live-results-exit-poll-2020-joe-biden-donald-trump/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-rhr

  235. Ha ha ha. It looks like Trump has won North Carolina and Florida. A few are claiming that the margin of victory is minor and that they might appeal the vote. Good luck with that.

    Edit: some poor girl in a mask is trying to excuse the vote in Philadelphia.

  236. I was thinking of the general neglect of these properties. I worked in South Kensington for years and the memory of Peter Rachman never really left us and could be said to continue to this day.

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