Friday 13 November: The infighting at No 10 is disgraceful at a time of national emergency

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/2020/11/13/lettersthe-infighting-no-10-disgraceful-time-national-emergency/

790 thoughts on “Friday 13 November: The infighting at No 10 is disgraceful at a time of national emergency”

    1. Can’t tell here, Bob. Too dark, but no snow and the bins are just being emptied.
      Downhill from now on 🙁

  3. Good morning all.
    I’ve not poked my nose outside yet, but it sounds windy and, from the noise of the passing HGVs, wet.

    A fitting reminder from a Bob Parke of Londonderry that the sacrifices made by the RUC during the Troubles are often forgotten:-

    Murdered on duty
    SIR – Your report (November 7) of an extradition hearing in connection with the murder of WPc Sharon Beshenivsky stated that she was “only the second policewoman to be killed on duty in the UK”.

    I assume the first by this reckoning to be WPc Yvonne Fletcher, shot by a gunman lurking inside the Libyan embassy. What surprised me was that there was no mention of the 12 serving WPcs of the Royal Ulster Constabulary murdered while on duty during the “Troubles”.

    Bob Parke
    Eglinton, Co Londonderry

  4. Good morning, all. A grey, dreary start to the day.

    Happy Friday the Thirteenth. I wonder what will go wrong today…. Millions die, I expect.

      2. No but it should be along with any form of superstition. I was born on Friday the 13th and got fed up with all this nonsense about ‘bad luck’ so I defy it by deliberately walking under ladders whenever I can.

  5. Met police told 40% of recruits must be from BAME backgrounds. 13 November 2020.

    Britain’s biggest police force must hire 40% of new recruits from ethnic minority backgrounds, while officers will have to justify stop and search to community panels under new plans designed to quell the race crisis engulfing Scotland Yard.

    Next the Armed Forces and then the cleansing!

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/nov/13/met-police-told-40-of-recruits-must-be-from-bame-backgrounds

    3. Viz yr post, [it’s Grauniad so no need to bother] presumably 999 calls will be permanently relocated to an Indian Call Centre?

      As for the headline, it would’ve been shorter and better as: The infighting at No 10 is disgraceful – Friday 13 November

      1. They are already in faraway places. Dial 999 in Edinburgh and get an operator in Birmingham.

    4. Dear God the Graunie will be in trouble. It has used the B word over and over in this article, with a small b to boot.

    6. Another one of these ridiculous quota stipulations. What if an insufficient number of BAMEs to make up 40% apply?

    8. The police were tasked with clearing the streets of guns, knives, drug dealers and sexual predators. Some left-wing university graduate with an epaulette covered in gold braid and pips has decided that recruiting them is easier than arresting them and putting them through the courts. The British justice system has gone to the dogs

  8. Can someone please explain the difference between a coloured person and a person of colour.???

    3. Sorry, John. I’ve not (yet) been lobotomised so I haven’t got a clue. You’ll have to ask someone who has lost the ability to think. Try the government.

    4. Morning! I thought in apartheid South Africa “coloured people” were Asians and those of mixed race. That is, people with darker skin who weren’t actually negro?

    5. One is just fine,the other will destroy your job,your reputation and your life
      Which is which however……………………

    8. The term “Coloured Person” was the formerly acceptable alternative to “Black Person”.
      However, to keep people on their toes and uncertain, the term “Person of colour” was adopted to give the Cultural Marxists a minor victory and a slight edge in the cultural war.

  9. Morning all

    SIR – The disgraceful infighting within No 10, and within the Tory party, at a time of national emergency, illustrates most clearly a lack of leadership.

    The Prime Minister and other senior people in Government would be well advised to read Serve to Lead, the British Army’s leadership manual, and to put its lessons into practice.

    Come the next election, the party will be consigned to opposition unless this brawling stops right now.

    Peter Munro

    Stoke Trister, Somerset

    SIR – In recent weeks I have seen Boris Johnson dressed as a warehouse operative, a construction worker and a laboratory assistant. Does he, I wonder, have a prime minister’s outfit?

    Charles Dixon

    Hastings, East Sussex

    SIR – Exactly what role does Carrie Symonds, Boris Johnson’s fiancée, play in the governance of Britain?

    Gordon Casely

    Crathes, Kincardineshire

    1. SIR – Martyn Pitt (Letters, November 9) asks: “Who is running the country?” I think we know who isn’t.

      David Saunders

      Sidmouth, Devon

      SIR – Who is running the country? Parliament (rarely), the Prime Minister (erratically), Dominic Cummings (unaccountably), Michael Gove (surreptitiously), Rishi Sunak (generously), Carrie Symonds (probably).

      Norman Fox

      Needham Market, Suffolk

      SIR – First it’s military bearskin hats, then importing fur, then wind power, then pheasant shoots, and now who advises the Prime Minister. If Cabinet ministers have to go through Carrie Symonds to speak to him, it is wrong.

      Mary Wiedman

      Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire

  11. Morning again

    SIR – Why are GPs to be paid £12.58 for every Covid vaccination they carry out (report November 11)?

    Diana Crook

    Seaford, East Sussex

      1. …if true. Does that include the cost of purchasing the vaccination, I wonder?

        ‘Morning, Epi.

    2. For a long time now, GPs have been paid for giving a flu vaccination, not that flu vaccinations are always useful as the vaccinations are prepare at the start of a calendar year to ensure enough supplies, but the flu bug may well have mutated by the onset of winter.

  12. What am I, a clown? I’m here to amuse you?

    I was never amused, in the least, by clowns when I was child: I found them to be rather strange and weird creations that were far from being funny.

    The current government is composed of clowns [in mitigation, every political party in every country in the world is composed of clowns] and these unfunny, clueless, gormless, witless and—quite frankly—useless beings have been given the whip-hand, by the electorate, to destroy the country.

    The electorate are themselves a mass coterie of clowns. It is they who are responsible for electing the clowns who ‘run’ the country. They have done so for decades; each successive circus of clowns infesting Whitehall brings its own brand of tomfoolery. The clowns in power then appoint super clowns to ‘advise’ them into enacting more and more clownish behaviour. Every circus appoints its own super clowns to ‘advise’ and misery heaps upon misery. The current crop—of clowns and super clowns—has hit the nadir.

    Statesmanship has deteriorated into slapstick. It is time the Big Top was burnt down.

    2. Morning, Grizz.

      The current crop—of clowns and super clowns—has hit the nadir.

      I agree wholeheartedly with the main thrust of your comment and I’m glad to see that you ended on a positive note i.e. Johnson’s shower can’t get any worse (fingers crossed). 🤣
      However, although the the current shudder has hit their nadir I can’t believe that there is not another in training ready to eclipse Johnson & Co. After all, aiming low is their raison d’être, isn’t it?

        1. I’m physically fine but the emotions are in no way settled at the moment. It’s a long road I’ve been told. Thanks for asking.

          I am, like you and many Nottlers, of a vintage who has had the misfortune to see the political landscape change for the worse with no sign that the situation can be recovered short of insurrection. I do not have a pitchfork but my Fiskars’ rake will suffice, especially if I sharpen the tines.😎

    5. It reminds me of an old circus joke.
      A man had taken his family including his 4 grand children to the circus. The clown made a bee line for him and with the microphone he asked the guy, “Tell me sir, are you the front of an ass”? the guy replied No, then said the clown “Are you the back of an ass” ? No said the man again…..”Then you must be no end of an ass” ? The crowed encourage by the clown clapped and laughed and laughed. The chap felt sorely embarrassed to have been ridiculed in front of his family and all the children in the audience. He thought I’ll get even with that B*st*rd. the next day he took one of his mates with him who he knew was brilliant at repartee and both sat together in the audience. The clown recognised the easy target and again approached him with the microphone. This time he held it out to his mate “are you the front of an ass sir” ? Nope he replied, “Then are you the rear of an ass” ? “No not that either”, said the friend. “Then you must t be the no end of an ass” ! But before the audience could react, the repartee guy grabbed the mic and shouted,
      “WHY DONT YOU EFF OFF YOU ****” !
      The tears of a clown eh.

      1. Don’t worry AW.

        The people will keep voting for the same parties, yet still be perpetually surprised that the country is still being run the same way.

        1. I do worry, more for my nephews bk in UK, as your point’s valid. I’m waiting for my Kenya dual nationality citizenship. Luckily, so far, all elections here, everyone never bothers me as not being able to vote in elections. That’ll remain the same once dual citizenship’s through

        2. You are absolutely spot on. It is one of life’s mysteries.

          It is the “barrel locking nut” syndrome. Do the same thing over and over again in the hope that eventually it will come right.

          2. Evelyn Waugh. “Put out more flags” Page 107 Penguin edition – all will be revealed…!

  14. Yorkshire Ripper dead at 74: Serial killer Peter Sutcliffe dies of Covid in jail after murdering 13 women. 13 November 2020.

    The Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe has died this morning at the age of 74 after refusing treatment for coronavirus.

    The serial killer, who murdered at least 13 women in the 70s and 80s, has died at HMP Frankland, Co Durham, this morning.

    No loss there and one might observe that it is too late!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8945247/Yorkshire-Ripper-dead-74.html

    8. Didn’t he have heart trouble? I suspect that is what killed him (heart failure) although he might have had Covid to help him on his way.

  15. Today’s DT Leader:

    The crisis in No 10, following the resignation of Lee Cain as director of communications, is a chance for a reset. Heaven knows one is needed. Communications for the past 10 months have been abysmal; December could be make-or-break for this Government. England will leave lockdown on December 2, to be replaced by a tier system; the vaccine has to be distributed; and the pandemic must be paid for with a new economic strategy.

    The battle between the so-called Vote Leave faction in No 10 and the Conservative establishment might sound like a Westminster soap opera – tragically self-indulgent – but it has serious policy implications. It is even possible that Britain was bounced into its second lockdown by some of the combatants, compelling the PM to announce it early, backed up by figures that turned out to be inaccurate. This is no way to run a country. How on earth did we end up here?

    It is common for a party to win an election on one issue and have to govern on another. Boris Johnson was elected, roughly 12 months ago, to get Brexit done, and the Vote Leave team, including Mr Cain and Dominic Cummings, were central to that. Their mission did not stop at Britain getting out: they understood the disaffection that triggered the Brexit vote, the forces stacked against it and the institutional reform needed to make the most of it. Fundamentally, however, they were a campaigning team, not a governing one. In office, they should only have been one (albeit critical) element of the No 10 machinery. Instead, they saw themselves as both the brains and the muscle of the operation, accumulating a degree of authority that alienated MPs who insisted, not unreasonably, that they were the ones who had actually been elected to office. Contrary to the spirit of Toryism, the set-up did not feel very collegiate. But then, as he liked to point out, Mr Cummings is “not Tory” and “not a party person”.

    The Vote Leave team emerged in protest at the domination of British life by a technocratic elite but essentially wanted to replace it with a post-ideological cohort of their own, running Britain from a so-called “mission control” in Whitehall. Implicit within Britain’s cabinet system, however, is the understanding that the prime minister’s office alone cannot manage the entire country: there must be a coherent philosophy at the centre, yes, but ministers of talent should be appointed to implement it and trusted to get on with their task.

    Power was instead concentrated around No 10 and yet – another irony – the one position that should have had the most tangible authority, chief of staff, remained unfilled. Mr Cain was offered it. Senior figures rose up in protest. So he resigned, shifting the balance of power. Some in the Vote Leave faction might think that the PM would be nothing without them, but they are wrong. As well as being the boss, Mr Johnson has a philosophy and political personality distinct from any one faction, and this is his opportunity to reassert his own authority within the apparatus. Whoever rises to the top, they must reflect his will and do his bidding – because that is their job.

    The long-term, reformist aspirations of the Vote Leave team will be part of the mix, but they do not have the bandwidth to do it alone. The coronavirus crisis requires competence and that old cliché, “joined-up government”: much of the public has been willing to lend the Government its support because it recognises the unique challenges of the past few months, as well as some of its accomplishments.

    But voters will be uncomfortably aware of how long it took to get many things right, the row over tiers and confused messaging. It is unfair to judge this Government solely on how Britain got into this mess, and it was elected to fix many of the institutional hurdles it has faced, but it most certainly will be judged on how it gets us out. Successful vaccine distribution is our best shot at moving on as quickly as possible: the Government needs to pull together the public and private sectors, to organise a near-military campaign. And while all this is going on, it also has to complete the Brexit talks, which are nearing the deadline, forge trade deals and come up with a new tax policy. The strategy cannot hinge on the outcome of an internal civil war inherited from the last election. The British Government needs to move on, fast.

    1. The whole premise of Vote Leave upon which the nation voted way back when they spun that votes meant something was that the British could run the country better than the Germans.

      That might have been so once.

    2. Really, oh really? This shambles is more likely to have come about not because the Brexit team were one-trick ponies, but because Johnson is a pony with no useful tricks at all. He has the management ability, strength and determination of blancmange.

  17. Royal Navy’s aircraft carriers lack purpose because there aren’t enough jets and support ships. 13 November 2020.

    The Royal Navy’s aircraft carriers lack purpose because ‘penny-pinching’ means there aren’t enough jets and support ships, the Common’s spending watchdog has said.

    Ministers were accused by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of a “debilitating lack of clarity” about what they want the £6.4 billion HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales to achieve.

    Perhaps someone should have brought this up when Brown ordered them! Even with escorts they are still utterly useless for Britain’s purposes.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/11/13/royal-navys-aircraft-carriers-lack-purpose-arent-enough-jets/

      1. I would certainly inject him with every single experimental vaccine. One a week until we find a cure for him.

        Read that as you will…

        1. That’s exactly why he built a huge brick wall around his Buckinghamshire estate.
          And we still have pay for his protection ???

      2. After reading the article you will realize that nowhere in it does he volunteer himself or any member of his family to be vaccinated.

        Now there’s a thought!

    2. This only reinforces the suspicion that the whole business is staged to get the vaccine into as many people as possible!

  19. Concidence? Carrie Symonds and Kamala Harris appear tohave something in common. Both slept their way up the power ladder. Kamala “bagged” Wilie Brown on her ascent.

    Carrie “hooked” Boris and now thinks being the PM’s brain entitles her to make decisions of state

  20. 326365+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,
    Seeing as the heart of these governance party’s has never truly been behind Brexitexit, and cutting to the quick I would not find it surprising to hear, coming from number 10
    ” We have decided that it will be in the best interest of ALL if we rethink our current stance regarding the eu”.

    We think a one knee position should be taken by an emissary sent to brussels with a coating of submissive appeasement, should smooth things over concerning our past foolish actions.

    Make no mistake we have in place the politico’s, boy’s, girl’s, it’s, to do it.

    1. It is difficult to avoid the thought Oggy that Remainers are about to snatch Victory from the jaws of Defeat!

      1. 326365+ up ticks,
        Morning AS,
        The future left to the left is written on the parliamentary menu as in halal.
        They will drain the lifeblood of the Nation, that is their intentions, then re-set.,

    2. Oh dear.
      V.v. tricksy and celebrating Diwali. I hate bloody hearts on anything.
      Makes me yearn for the brash ‘Wonder of Woolies’ adverts.

    3. Rather than trying to out-woke other soy retailers, how about JL bother to sell quality items at reasonable prices as they always used to? That’s when they used to make money. Get woke, go broke.

  23. I must be missing something. The views of Johnson’s latest mistress are worth no more and no less than those of any other pub bore.

    As I am a great bore, my views matter (as they say these days). So I demand that removal by the end of today of Halfcock and Williamson.

      1. Yes, she was so influential in British politics, and suddenly no one can even remember her name.

  24. ‘ Morning All

    “Equal justice for all under the law”

    “Premier League star arrested on suspicion of rape and false imprisonment”

    “Sportsmail is aware of the player’s identity but is unable to reveal it for legal reasons”

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/sportsnews/article-8943867/Premier-League-star-arrested-suspicion-rape-false-imprisonment.html
    Now hang on just a cotton picking minute,as it happens I have long been in favour of men accussed of rape having the same anonymity as the alleged victims at least until charged
    So has the law changed for all??:Or just as in this case only for the rich and famous??
    Because this stinks of expensive lawyers and superinjuctions.
    “Equal justice for all” Pah!!

  25. Grant Shapps has just reliquished all moral or political responsibility for his decision to allow the A303 dual carriageway tunnel scheme through one of the most sensitive archaeological sites in England. “It’s under quasi-judicial review”. End of argument. Buck passed. Same as HS2. Oh, and the National Trust was consulted, and gave it the go-ahead according to their current priorities.

    Only the business interests of chosen contractors matter when making policy decisions.

    1. The scheme is more than just a tunnel past Stonehenge, it includes a bypass round Winterbourne Stoke, one of the bottlenecks on the A303. I’m all for it.

      “The project will deliver eight miles of new “free-flowing, high quality dual carriageway”, with a tunnel of at least two miles underneath the World Heritage Site – meaning Stonehenge will be hidden from view to tourists from the roadside. The tunnel will closely follow the existing route but will be a further 50 metres away from Stonehenge itself, avoiding important archaeological sites and protecting the view of the setting sun during the winter solstice in December. Additionally, a new bypass will be created to the north of Winterbourne Stoke, with new junctions with the A345 and A360 either side of Stonehenge.”

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5755779780d3bb6a576d605d45120c0a39f11da63759bfb35c399c365306c879.jpg

      https://www.somersetlive.co.uk/news/somerset-news/a303-near-stonehenge-finally-upgraded-4695479

    3. He’s a creep who seems to have had his fingers in a few pies.
      Especially when he was housing minister. There has been so much new build happening in the St Albans Hatfield areas. With masses more on the cards, From the original proposal of 1300 to now over 1500 new homes in his area on green belt agricultural land. http://www.gascoynececil.com/
      They already ‘own’ the massive Hatfield house estate.

  28. Ahem

    “I just rolled a dice 100 times, and it came up 6 each time.

    After every roll I wrote down ‘6’ in my spreadsheet.

    The rolls were independently observed by inspectors standing 200 feet away
    in another room, in another house. I would have video recorded the rolls
    but that’s illegal.

    But I have had a recount and it definitely
    was 100 rolls, each recorded as ‘6’. I will now have an audit… yup,
    100 rows, each saying ‘6’.

    The total column of all the ‘6’s adds up to 687 which is not a significant deviation and makes no difference to the outcome.

    Whilst pleased with the result it’s not unexpected and – indeed – polls
    predicted I’d get 115 ‘6’s. Some Qonspiracy Qranks may question my
    methods, but unless they provide evidence that I didn’t roll a 6 each
    time then they should stop whinging and man tf up.

    I no longer have the dice, as per state law.”
    Not mine but oi laffed

  30. 326365+ up ticks,
    May one suggest, in regards to our aircraft carrier / escort craft dilemma that we go back to OAK.

    The advantage being that when mortally struck they convert readily to life-rafts.

    This could also be a political reason for the HS2 forest debris.

    While on the subject of oak we should really be taking more notice of the interviews on Hearts of Oak as a truthsayers
    platform and far less of the odious lab/lib/con coalitions patter.

      1. 326365+ up ticks,
        Morning N,
        Precisely, Hearts of Oak status has been washed out of society via
        the lab/lib/con coalition party in a well orchestrated manner.

    1. Not a Red Rag. Just a clenched jaw and worrying even more about my grandchildren’s future.
      The worst effect of the EU seems to be that it has stopped/deterred anyone of probity from entering politics.
      That is causing more long term damage than butter mountains or surplus cauliflower rotting in pits.

      2. Who was the last person of probity to enter politics?

        Any suggestions? I would suggest Kate Hooey for Labour and Owen Paterson for the Conservatives and nobody at all from the Lib/Dems.

          4. You can be sure that white flight will have further emptied Newham of white British people. It’s a foreign country.

          6. In 2011, I was staying London and travelled by bus to visit one of the Victorian cemeteries at West Norwood, where some of my family members are buried. I had to change buses at Elephant and Castle and walk round the corner to get the other bus. It was like being in Bangladesh. I felt like a foreigner in my own country.

    3. But you tell me over and over and over again my friend
      Ah, you don’t believe we’re on the eve of destruction?

      (P.F. Sloan)

  33. I have just watched Nigel Farage’s latest presentation. It is very interesting but also very gloomy about our Brexit future. I have not the ability to post it here but if it hasn’t been posted earlier I would be grateful if someone could post it for me. I liked some of the books in his bookcase behind him.

    2. Was it this one?

      NIGEL FARAGE

      11 November 2020 • 12:09pm

      Nigel Farage

      In 2016, just after Donald Trump won the US presidential election,
      I was fortunate to spend some time with him in Trump Tower in New
      York. During this meeting, the depth of his affection for the
      United Kingdom was obvious. His team told me that a trade deal
      with Britain was a priority in order to show that he was not an
      isolationist but wanted sensible arrangements unlike, say, the
      North American Free Trade Agreement between America, Canada and
      Mexico.

      Four years have been squandered since then, during which the
      British Government has dithered and a full Brexit has not been
      delivered. Now, the chance of a trade agreement with America has
      almost certainly evaporated if, as seems likely, Joe Biden is
      confirmed as the new president.

      Who can forget in April 2016, just before the EU referendum,
      Barack Obama telling the British people that if we dared to vote
      for Brexit our country would be at “the back of the queue” in
      terms of a trade deal because America’s focus would be on
      negotiating with the EU? Well, Obama’s vice president at the time
      was Biden, and his personal dislike of Brexit has not changed
      since then. Indeed, Biden is an avid supporter of the EU and his
      priority will be to improve relations between his country and the
      bloc. Obama used to fly to mainland Europe first rather than the
      United Kingdom. Biden will do the same.

      To complicate things further, Biden is a supporter of Irish
      nationalism and in the 1990s he lobbied hard for the then-Sinn
      Fein leader Gerry Adams to visit the USA. As recently as 2017, he
      met Adams to discuss a united Ireland. More astonishing still, at
      that meeting he was also photographed with one Rita O’Hare, an IRA
      fugitive who attempted to kill a British Army officer in the
      1970s.

      And, for good measure, Biden and Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the
      House of Representatives, has already swallowed the Dublin and
      Brussels line that a Brexit deal must not threaten the 1998
      Belfast Agreement, even though that agreement doesn’t even mention
      trade.

      If you are still in any doubt about Biden’s antipathy towards the
      UK, just look at his response to the BBC journalist Nick Bryant
      who asked him on Saturday if he had anything to say to the British
      state broadcaster. “The BBC? I’m Irish,” he replied as he walked
      off. He might just as well have stuck two fingers up.

      Some Conservative commentators in recent days have said that
      Boris Johnson will get on well with Biden and will be less
      embarrassed dealing with him than he was under the presidency of
      Donald Trump. It is true that when it comes to climate change and
      taking a softer line against China, Johnson and Biden will be more
      aligned. But the same cannot be said of the issue that took
      Johnson to power and which will define his legacy, Brexit.

      The omens are not good. Anthony Gardner, the former US Ambassador
      to the European Union and a close confidant of Biden’s, has
      already said that future relations between the UK and America will
      depend on our final deal with the EU.

      After years of failure, Britain is now caught in a trap between
      Brussels and Washington. Stranded in the mid-Atlantic, we have
      played ourselves into a form of checkmate. Brexit talks have
      stalled and this time the clock is genuinely running down. Johnson
      now faces a simple choice. He can either strike a deal with which
      both Washington and Brussels are happy, or he can go it alone and
      be criticised for looking friendless in the world.

      So, the Northern Irish protocol, a fisheries deal that suits the
      EU, and some form of regulatory alignment will be put to the
      British government in the next few days on a take-it-or-leave-it
      basis. I am sorry to say that Johnson, who already looks
      beleaguered and who is struggling with unity in his party and
      plummeting popularity levels, is now far more likely to do the
      deal that Brussels wants. In this, he will be cheered on by the
      global corporations and by most of our mainstream media. We will
      be told that a sensible compromise has been reached and that Boris
      has acted like a statesman, but of course Britain will come off
      second best.

      In the next few months, I predict there will be a reappraisal of
      Donald Trump’s presidency. While his New York outspokenness never
      went down well with the British electorate, these negative views
      may well have to be revised. In Trump, Britain has lost a true
      ally and friend. Furthermore, a final Brexit deal that holds our
      nation back, that doesn’t genuinely make us free, and that doesn’t
      deliver on the promises made both in 2016 and the general election
      in 2019 is now looking like a certainty.

      If all of this comes to pass, to say that it would be a
      disappointment would be the biggest understatement of my career.

  34. NEW – How could the American ‘bellwether counties’ get it so wrong this election ?

    Answer… They didn’t. Here’s statistical evidence that President Donald J Trump won the 2020 election by an even wider margin than 2016… and therefore that the Democrats cheated in the swing states………..

    November 6, 2020 Author: Suzanne Downing

    How could the ‘bellwether counties’ get it so wrong?

    Several counties in America are considered the “bellwethers,” the ones that nearly always vote for the eventual winner of the presidential race. And by “nearly always,” we mean it’s remarkable how accurate they are throughout history.

    This year, the bellwether counties voted heavily for Donald Trump, and for many of them, it appears they have broken their near-perfect records of predicting the winner, if the current trends hold and Biden is elected president.

    Valencia County, New Mexico – perfect record with the electoral college winner since 1952 (longest current perfect streak). 2020: Trump 54%, Biden 44.%
    Porcaro

    Vigo County, Indiana (county seat: Terre Haute) – has had 2 misses (1908, 1952) from 1888 on, and a perfect record since 1956. From 1960 to 2004, Vigo County has been within 3 percent of the national presidential vote every election. 2020: Trump – 56.20%, Biden – 41.45%

    Westmoreland County, Virginia (county seat: Montross) – two misses since 1928 (in 1948 and 1960), perfect since 1964. 2020: Not posted.

    Ottawa County, Ohio (county seat: Port Clinton) – one miss since 1948 (in 1960), perfect since 1964. 2020: Trump – 60.8%, Biden – 37.7%.

    Wood County, Ohio (county seat: Bowling Green) – one miss since 1964 (in 1976), perfect since 1980. 2020: Trump – 52.86%, Biden – 45.24%

    Kent County, Delaware – two misses since 1928 (in 1948 and in 1992). 2020: Not posted.

    Coös County, New Hampshire (county seat: Lancaster) – two misses since 1892 (in 1968 and 2004) 2020: Trump – 52.2, Biden – 46.2%.

    Essex County, Vermont – one miss since 1964 (in 1976), perfect since 1980. 2020: Trump – 57.10%, Biden – 37.91%.

    Juneau County, Wisconsin – one miss since 1952 (in 1960), perfect since 1964. 2020: Trump – 8,749, Biden – 4,747.

    Sawyer County, Wisconsin – one miss since 1952 (in 1960), perfect since 1964. 2020: Trump – 5,883, Biden – 4,494.

    Sargent County, North Dakota (county seat: Forman) – one miss since 1948 (in 1988). 2020: Trump – 59.96%, Biden – 35.05%

    Blaine County, Montana (county seat: Chinook) – one miss since 1916 (in 1988). 2020: Biden – 51%, Trump – 47%

    Clallam County, Washington – two misses (1968, 1976) since 1920. 2020: Biden – 51.87%, Trump – 45.78%.

    Stanislaus County, California (county seat Modesto) – one miss since 1972 (in 2016). 2020: Biden – 52.81%, Trump – 45.21%.

    Ventura County, California – two misses since 1920 (in 1976 and 2016). 2020: Biden – 60.32%, Trump – 37.78%.

    Merced County, California (county seat Merced) – one miss since 1972 (in 2016). 2020: Biden – 55.20%, Trump – 42.30%.

    Hidalgo County, New Mexico (county seat: Lordsburg) – one miss since 1928 (in 1968), perfect since 1972. 2020: Trump – 56.7%, Biden – 41.7%.

    Bexar County, Texas (county seat: San Antonio) – two misses since 1932 (in 1968 and 2016). 2020: Biden – 127,507, Trump – 89,991.

    Val Verde County, Texas – two misses since 1924 (in 1968 and 2016). 2020: Trump – 7839, Biden – 6401

    Hillsborough County, Florida (county seat: Tampa) – two misses since 1928 (in 1992 and 2016). 2020: Biden – 52.69%, Trump – 45.87%

    Calhoun County, South Carolina – one miss since 1972 (in 1980), perfect since 1984. 2020: Trump – 4,302, Biden – 3903.

    Colleton County, South Carolina – one miss since 1968 (in 1980), perfect since 1984. 2020: Trump – 54.12%, Biden – 45.20%.

    Washington County, Maine – one miss since 1972 (in 1976), perfect since 1980. 2020: Trump – 59.1%, Biden – 38.5.

    While these are the top bellwether counties, there are many more that are considered to be predictive. The entire list is found at Wikipedia.

      1. Statistical evidence is accepted in the US and what’s more it’s used in the UK too by HMRC.

          1. Who said it’s the only evidence ?

            If you ever did any research instead of quibbling from the sidelines, you would know there’s a stack of evidence and it’s all out there for you to find.

          2. I’m not saying it’s the only evidence. I’m still waiting for more concrete evidence, such as ballot papers being put in the wrong pile, rather than relying on witness statements that can be easily refuted and videos of postal workers collecting ballot papers from post boxes the day after the election, when that was actually legitimate. As for ‘finding it’, when is Trump’s team going to find it?

          4. I should add that even DNA isn’t wholly reliable, despite the usual ‘odds are better than 64 billion against of being wrong’ claim. For example, there was a case of a Birmingham man being arrested on the basis of his DNA being ‘found’ at a crime scene in London, when at the time he had the perfect alibi of being in prison.

      2. Unfortunately, statistics are not evidence

        But they are a big red flag emblazoned with the words “Yoohoo, look over here!”

  35. I see that all the mostly Cameroons at the DT politics desk are now in full swing, alongside their Democrat chums over at their US News Desk – its anti-Boris and Vote Leave and full-on snowflakery with ‘people said mean things about us’ concerning the going on at No. 10, with ‘President-elect’ (no he isn’t) Biden and the useless Harris being lauded as the second coming and any pushback on the results are just conspiracy theories peddled by tin-foil hat hearing nutjobs.

    To this day, I still wonder why some DT readers questioned why I unsubbed after nigh on 20 years. Even Fox News (sans Tucker Carlson) seems to be going in the same direction as the DT (and Times), with even the Daily Mail starting to show the occasional signs of movement in that (leftward) direction as well.

    1. The Great Reversal will be delicious….. and they’ll all have to eat crow in massive quantities when President Donald J Trump is confirmed the winner !

      1. Good morning, Polly

        Your optimism is insuppressible – we shall see if your hopes prevail.

        My greater worry is that the PM’s whore has succeeded in destroying Brexit and from the start she was working as a mole for the remainers.
        .

  36. 326365+ up ticks,
    Should have been offered a replacement position on outing the priti one.

    Romanian Trucker Jailed for Smuggling Migrants OUT of the UK

  37. I admit it is getting boring so I shall not post on this subject again.

    I see that all the down votes under many of my posts from a certain person now appear as coming from “Guest Vote”.

    Why the change?

      1. Yes – but I would never be so ill-mannered as to avoid challenging a point of view with which I disagree with a down vote rather than a sensible response.

          1. In the past i have blocked two people, they have been and are extremely rude for no reason.
            Still have one block for the same reason and one of same persons.

          2. I have never blocked anyone before. I know that several people blocked Bill Jackson (aka Jill Backson) but he – or she – has now left the Nottlers as my blockee did for some time before returning to tease us!

          3. I have only once blocked someone and that was temporarily, as that person was trolling me on other sites as well as here.

          4. Some people are mildly irritating e.g. the squawker. Others (very, very few on this board) have to have the last word, and can become offensive. It isn’t worth the grief.

  38. I see that Feaser Nelson has an article up about ‘Vote Leave has fallen, but what will now fill the power vacuum in No10?’, saying that “The transition to a new form of Government has started, but it’s a dangerous time for those at the top”

    I wonder if he REALLY means either:

    1. A return to the previous style of government from the last 30 years – i.e. soft centre-left, woke, say-a-lot-and-do-very little-except-spend-our-money-in-ever-increasing-amounts, take our freedoms away type?

    or

    2. A ‘Great Reset’ goverrnment controlled by the World Economic Forum. Notice that Bill Gates was on hand (how did he get in under the COVID restrictions?), that great economic and medical expert, to whisper sweet nothings in Boris’ ear this week. How long until we find out that we’ll have to take the vaccine (and at least annually) if we want to travel, go to sports and entertainment venues, or even get certain jobs or benefits?

    That we’ll have to show some ID or such n such to say we are ‘COVID-safe’? That HMG has shown that they won’t pay out compensation of any sort should any vaccine we take is found to have bad side effects in the future?

      1. Hancock is on record stating that the jab will not be mandatory. However, it’s almost certain that the PTB will use big business as their proxy to implement their evil deed. It has already started and will doubtless be encouraged and the PTB will be able to deny any direct involvement.

        1. There’s a whole world of difference between ‘manditory’ – i.e. threat of punative legal action and/or imprisonment, and hard arm-twisting, as per my description.

        2. He may have said that. But … it’s already been in the press that “those who have the test/vaccine will be permitted to enjoy sports, etc.” Great people will think, let’s go for it. And the anti-vaxxers who rebel against the restrictions will be stuck at home whereas the sheeple will rush out to conform. And then there will be pressure on the doubters to conform also. And then it will transform to “if you don’t have test/vaccine you will not be permitted to … such a very subtle difference.

          What I find interesting is that, so far, nobody seems to have asked the question how did Pfizer/Oxford come up with a safe vaccine in such a short time when it normally takes years of development, testing and trialling?

          Edited: to instead of from.

          1. I thought that vaccine development was in some respects still a trial and error process that would turn up many failures before a successful candidate was found.

            Unless the pretenders have all fallen quietly by the wYside, it is odd that everything is a success.

            So Russia now claims 92% efficiency, not just the 90% efficiency of the current favourite. In this game of mine is better than yours, any guesses at how efficient the Chinese will claim that their vaccine is?

          2. The chances of not dying if you do contract the Coronapanic is 99.5%. Seems to be better than all the vaccines.

          3. Unless you’re in one of the vulnerable groups. Or a poor old dear in a care home, in which case you’re more likely to die of dementia and losing the will to live.

          4. That would be the same for any disease or co-morbidity, as they call it these days, ‘twas ever thus.

          6. not the most effective of diseases if it depends on other illnesses to weaken the body before it can do its worst.

            Care homes in Canada are also seeing another resurgence of covid cases and deaths. At least the shortage of beds is being addressed.

          7. Many, if not most, infections pick off the old, the ill, the tired and the weak…

            The “intention” of the virus (although a virus cannot really be said to have intentions any more than it is subject to “short, sharp shocks” – cf. M Drakeford) is simply to find a host in which to multiply – on the whole it would rather (to ascribe, once again, feelings to a barely living organism) that its host didn’t die – because then it has to go and look for a new one.

            I was interested to received a flyer from the local (fairly new and expensive) care home in the mail a couple of days ago. It would seem that the waiting list has evaporated.

          8. “Barely living” is being charitable. It is debatable as to whether RNA constitutes a life form.

          9. Since this is not a scientific forum, and my comment wasn’t really about whether or not a virus is a form of life I felt that my comment served its purpose as it stands.

            Since a virus can be said to die or to survive, and can certainly reproduce (see all those debates at various points in the year about how long it survives on what sort of surface and at what temperature) there must be something that is alive – but that’s rather the scientific equivalent of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin… and I stopped doing those after I graduated, they’re really not sufficiently interesting to bother with unless you are far more of a purist than I am. Applied scientists tend to operate on a more pragmatic level.

  39. So, if lockdown is so good at controlling the plague, how come Peter Sutciffe contracted it in jail.

    3. He went into hospital for a heart problem. Like many ‘people of age’ he probably picked up there and brought it back into the prison population. What I don’t understand is how he managed to develop obesity and diabetes when prison rations are supposed to be bread and water. /sarc

      1. Hospitals are not clean. Staff have no concept of hygiene. But that’s just my observation.

        1. That’s what happens when nurses have to have degrees and hospitals outsource cleaning to the lowest bidder.

          1. Exactly. I was running an office in London. The cleaning contract had expired. A bloke wandered in looking for a job. “What can you do? ” “I’m a cleaner.”
            He started immediately. He cleaned. The big brown front door handles and floor plates turned into gleaming brass.
            None of the contract baloney with 300 page documents defining, “two wipe overs to a height of 38 c….” etc etc.

          2. When I was a child and hospitalised to have my tonsils out, my abiding memory was of the smell of disinfectant. Recent visits to hospital have left a less than savoury olfactory impression.

          3. Funnily enough, those gleaming brass door handles destroy viruses. Something to do with copper and ions.

          5. Like silver; it’s anti-bac, I believe. My dog had some silver ointment to clear up an infection. It was quite amusing because it was clearly for humans; it said “apply the ointment to your wound. If it does not clear up, contact your GP”.

    1. Ooohh look everybody:

      There’s a race baiting black man hiding behind his colour to act as a racist towards all things associated with white people.

      1. He probably gained his professorship on line, unless he changed his name by deed poll.
        Something very important they all seem to forget to mention is, even though slave (probably started by the Moors during their occupancy of Grenada) trading was abhorrent by most of the present day standards most of the slaves were sold or handed over by black people to order. All African people born and bred into white western societies since the US Republicans banned the trade along with the additional actions of William Wilberforce, can actually go back to where they think their ancestors came from. As in the TV programme ‘Who do you think You Are’. There are no real restrictions on travel apart from the current and most obvious. And see and discover if they are actually better off now or not. But i very much doubt if one in one million have ever done this. And never will, but they much prefer the presence of multiple chips on their ever complaining and constantly moaning shoulders.
        And chronologically as the third or fourth or maybe even the fifth race to populate the Americas i don’t doubt the originals would have found the present attitude somewhat alarming. And maybe have taken a dislike to their attitudes.

        1. “He is a National Book Award-winning and #1 New York Times bestselling author. Kendi is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities and the Founding Director of the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research. Kendi is a contributor writer at The Atlantic and a CBS News Racial Justice Contributor.”

          https://www.ibramxkendi.com/about

  41. Democracy in Hong Kong is now nothing more than a charade. 13 November 2020.

    The 70-seat Legislative Council is now entirely in the hands of pro-Beijing representatives, who already dominated it in any case. Beijing continues to deny that it is seeking to suppress Hong Kong’s remaining liberties and quasi-judicial independence, but everything that has happened in recent months belies the Communist Party’s protestations. The chairman of the Hong Kong Democratic Party said it was no longer possible to tell the world that the one country, two systems concept remained intact. “This declares its official death”, he said.

    BELOW THE LINE.

    martyn viquerat12 Nov 2020 9:37PM

    Hahaha. Democracy in the UK is nothing more than a charade!

    Nicholas Halksworth13 Nov 2020 3:55AM

    It’s not even a charade anymore.

    Morning everyone. China has quite literally no history of Democracy, from its very founding it has been ruled by decree. The Chinese could say, quite legitimately, that we have with the virus, finally caught up. As Mr Vicqueurat and Halksworth point out in their posts it has been erased as completely as in Hong Kong.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/11/12/democracy-hong-kong-now-nothing-charade/

      1. I liked the way the 35mm cannon shells drop out of their holder. It that a design feature?

  43. Professor Van-Tam wishes he could be eligible to have the vaccine. Personally, I think the Prof along with Johnson’s cabal, the vaccine promoters in the HoP, PHE, NHS England etc. should have the vaccine – and not some sterile saline solution as a stunt – publicly administered into their bodies as an act of contrition for the hell they are putting the people through. Then they should be allowed to fester for a sufficiently long period of time to prove whether or not the vaccine is safe for use on the public.

    https://twitter.com/bobscartoons/status/1327187701758615552

    1. If I could, rightly and morally, be at the very front of the queue, then I would do so.

      Well he could! Who’s to stop him?

    2. Can we make it a simultaneous jab for all leaders in all countries that are pushing vaccines.

      I don’t want Canadas inept procurement system to give Trudeau an opportunity to see the outcome overseas before he bravely leads the way.

    4. I’d start with Boris. After all, he’s virtually brain-dead anyway, so it wouldn’t harm him.

        1. Because antibodies don’t last forever. In the case of COVID-19 the evidence suggests it only last a few months.

          1. Antibodies apparently are only designed to last a few months. It’s the T-cells that give lasting protection, borne out by the people who had had SARS 17 years before, but who successfully warded off Covid. Plenty of articles and studies about that, including one in the BMJ.

  44. The Force is with you? You must be joking! Once again, Mr Plod has lost the plot. 13 November 2020.

    The sad reality is that the police are no longer citizens in uniform, as I wrote last week. They’re not on our side. At best, they’re neutral when it comes to crime. At worst, as is increasingly becoming apparent, they are enthusiastic agents of an oppressive, politically motivated State. Under Commissar Ian Blair, a social worker with scrambled egg on his hat, Scotland Yard became the paramilitary wing of New Labour.

    Littlejohn is correct, the police are now the Stasi and like their forerunners enemies of the people. Anyone who’s watched them during the so called Covid Crisis could have no doubt of this!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8944393/RICHARD-LITTLEJOHN-Force-joking.html

  45. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    Would BoB, or any other rail enthusiast, care to explain how such a device works?

    SIR – Brian Hutchinson (Letters, November 9) asks how trains from mainland Britain would cross to Ireland by tunnel, since the tracks have different gauges.

    This is made possible by an automatic track gauge changeover. These are used between France and Spain, and Poland and Lithuania, to give just two examples. There is no need for passengers to disembark or for locomotives to be changed.

    James L Walls
    Edinburgh

    1. Several ways.
      Changing bogies is common.
      Also Lock pins holding the wheels in place on the axles which are are then removed, the wheels regauged and then the pins replaced.

      1. If Isambard Kingdom Brunel had had his way all railways worldwide would been running on his 7 foot gauge.

      2. “Changing bogies is common”. Do you mean that Gordon Brown climbs aboard at the border and orders all passengers to blow their nose?

        :-))

  46. SIR – A few years ago, Peter Cameron, a Royal Marines helicopter pilot, suffered serious injuries on my boat.

    The haemorrhaging leg wound required a tourniquet and, in the dark, we applied a government-issued “first field dressing”.

    Once he had been lifted ashore by the coastguard, we inspected the packaging: the dressing was dated 1944. I am glad to report that Peter survived.

    Ewen Southby-Tailyour
    Ermington, Devon

    I always included a few field dressings in any first aid kit taken onto a range, in case we had a bad day. They are, apparently, very good for temporarily plugging exit wounds, although fortunately I never had to use one for this purpose. They are very securely wrapped as they may not always be stored correctly, or even carefully. Those I had were many years old as they do not deteriorate.

  47. There seems to be a hell of a lot of prophesying and worrying going on on this forum. The three main subjects selected, daily, are:

    ● Will Biden or Trump be POTUS after January 20, 2021?
    ● Shall the UK be prevented from achieving Brexit by dark forces?
    ● Will the powers-that-be force us to have a vaccination against our will?

    My take on this?

    Qué será será!

    Point one: I don’t give a monkey’s.
    Point two: Who knows?
    Point three: They had better bring an army!

      1. Dunno. I’ve just bi-wired my new Wharfedale Evo 4·2s and I’m now feeling mellow listening to some exquisite Zoot Sims.

    2. Yeah,

      Okay you are safely tucked up in your liberal minded Swedish eyrie, as they say , you are alright , Jack, whereas here we are being governed by a ship of fools.

      1. Are you having a pop, Margaret? Please don’t. It doesn’t become you!

        If you read my post carefully you will notice that they only touch on the UK.

        Point one has nothing to do with the UK at all.
        Point two is, but it also affects all other EU countries.
        Point three is a worldwide stratagem.

        I promise you that you wouldn’t like the muppets that pass for politicians in this country either. Tell me a country that has politicians worth their salt. I don’t know of any.

    3. Point three:

      Mr Tony Blair said in an interview that he thought it a good idea for vaccinations to be made compulsory for older people.

      Strange that he didn’t volunteer!

  48. 326365+ up ticks,
    May one ask, I have a feeling of horror & much trepidation that many are talking of the PTB ongoing, does that mean
    at the next GE the same voting pattern will still be in play even though these governance party’s have truly burnt their bridges, but the PTB will once again
    be re-shuffled & re-dealt ?

    Party before Country have us up to our foreheads in sh!te.
    People power as in referendum result = success.

      1. The bluefin have moved in here now, Belle, that should bring the orcas. No one is allowed to target bluefin tuna in our waters, so the orcas should do well.

    2. The crew should have tried to feed them with appropriate victuals.
      An orca is partial to Penguins.

    1. 326365+ up ticks,
      TB,
      That there make believe tory & his squeeze
      will have this Country back on it’s feet in no time.

  51. Concidence? Carrie Symonds and Kamala Harris appear tohave something in common. Both slept their way up the power ladder. Kamala “bagged” Wilie Brown on her ascent.

    Carrie “hooked” Boris and now thinks being the PM’s brain entitles her to make decisions of state

    2. Powerful Mistresses are a part of history. During the beginnings of WWII the French Prime Minister’s paramour, the Comtesse de Portes, was always present at the meetings between him and Churchill and since she was a rabid appeaser it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that she played some part in the country’s collapse.

        1. At least Nell Gwynn was the Protestant whore 🙂 (as opposed to Barbara Villiers and Louise de Kerouaille aka Carswell).

      3. Readers might care to read Wikipaedia about the Comtesse de Portes.

        She was described as the “side door” to influence the Prime Minister.

        1. General Spears, in his illuminating, vivid account of this page of history, speaks of Reynaud staggering not only under the burden of his own responsibilities, but ‘the additional cross of the entourage with which he had handicapped himself. He was like those savage warriors who, not contented with the wounds inflicted by the enemy, gash themselves with knives.’ The source of perhaps the most crippling wounds Reynaud received from his entourage was the one which in these terrible days should have lent him the most comfort – his mistress, Hélène de Portes. The same ruthless, relentless energy she had once applied to pushing her chevalier to the top rung of the political ladder was now devoted to the cause of obtaining an early separate peace.

          Following the Government to Tours, then to Bordeaux, the Comtesse de Portes was everywhere, plaguing the Prime Minister incessantly, without mercy, in a manner that astounded the British officials who came in contact with her. Paul Baudouin, who was completely her man and came to represent her will within the Cabinet, wrote with the utmost restrained chivalry : ‘if she acted as the controller of the Cabinet, her one desire was to save the country by defending and fortifying the man she admired.’ Certainly the impression one gets from those others who were present is that Reynaud was never for a moment left alone, never allowed to make a decision or an appointment without Hélène de Portes being party to it. In the middle of deliberations of the War Cabinet she would ring him on his private telephone; if, in despair, he should disconnect it, she would summon ushers. to take in written messages to him, and finally she would often burst into the council chamber herself. On one occasion at Tours, Spears (who admittedly was no devotee of the Countess) was astonished to see her in the courtyard of Reynaud’s residence, clad ‘in a dressing gown over her red pyjamas, directing the traffic from the steps of the main entrance’. This was relatively harmless; but on another occasion Spears also found her intercepting one of Reynaud’s stenographers and reading over his shoulder a most important and top-secret communication from Churchill. Again, when a secret telegram from the French Embassy in London had been missing for some hours, Reynaud’s chef de cabinet from the Quai d’Orsay, Roland de Margerie, eventually produced it with the hushed whisper ‘It was in Madame de Portes’s bed.’ In Spears’s opinion, as he left France, it was Reynaud’s mistress who did him the greatest harm, because she ‘had imposed on him as collaborators the men who were now his bitterest opponents’.

          Alistair Horne. To Lose a Battle: France 1940 . Pan Macmillan. Kindle Edition.

      4. Agree fully re the enduring strand “played some part in the country’s collapse”.

        Seems to part of the CV for Tory leaders if including “Grey Peas” Major, and albeit “the other side of the Bedsheets” Mamillan’s adulterous wife Lady Dorothy [daughter of Duke of Devonshire] and her long, barely concelaed affair with one of her husband’s Tory party MPs, the bisexual Robert Boothby.

        As Janetjh responded to me elsewhere: “The people will keep voting for the same parties, yet still be perpetually surprised that the country is still being run the same way”

  52. I think we all need to be ready for when Boris sells us out to the EU. I wish I was wrong, but I fear not.

      1. 327365+ up ticks,
        Afternoon TB,
        Only one run in the party I was in
        unlike other party’s, and that was that farage chap, something to do with getting his life back.

    3. 326365+ up ticks,
      Afternoon JN,
      Many of us have been saying this and fighting against it for 25 plus years, not just of late.

  53. Having finished the last bit of section of the terrace wall I’ve been working on, I’ve spent today sorting my fallen apples out and pressed 8 litres of rather nice juice out of them!
    Now relaxing with mug of tea, apple and some rather nice cheese whilst listening to this:-
    https://youtu.be/_NvZRo-3wvU

    2. Quick question for you Bob – what is an Automatic Track Gauge Changeover for different track gauges and how does it work ?. (Letter today mentioned it)
      TIA

      1. Possibly an arrangement where the wheels are secured on the axles by a mechanical device, a pin in some systems.
        To change gauge the wheels are unpinned, slid across the axle to the new gauge and then repinned.

        1. Bob, could I very discreetly mention that on an obituary in d’telegraph you wrote (btl) ‘piece’ instead of ‘peace’. It was probably a spellcheck error.

  55. ‘Morning again.

    We were not prepared for the right kind of pandemic…do bears, etc. We seem to be suffering from ‘the wrong kind of snow’. Dame Sally appears to be the first out of the traps in the ‘Not me gov’ stakes. From the DT:

    A former chief medical officer has said the UK was left ill-prepared for the Covid-19 pandemic because Public Health England told her a major coronavirus disease would “never travel this far”.

    Dame Sally Davies is set to accuse Public Health England (PHE) of misleading the Government into practicing for “the wrong pandemic” at the forthcoming public inquiry into Covid-19, The Telegraph can disclose.

    She will say the scientific advice to focus on the threat from influenza meant the UK never put plans in place for mass testing and contact tracing, unlike other countries who managed to keep Covid largely under control.

    As Downing Street’s most senior medical adviser during the decade leading up to the Covid pandemic, Dame Sally is set to be a key witness at the upcoming public inquiry promised by Boris Johnson once the worst of the crisis is over.

    In her first interview since handing the job of chief medical officer to Professor Chris Whitty last September, Dame Sally admitted the UK’s preparedness for a pandemic had been “found wanting”.

    “We were not as well prepared as we should have been,” she told The Telegraph. “I think the public deserves to know everything.”

    Her most damaging allegation is that in around 2015 she asked Public Health England officials whether the Government should rehearse for an outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars), but was assured the disease would “never travel this far in big numbers” from Asia.

    Sars, like Covid-19, is a coronavirus and can be suppressed effectively through mass testing and contact tracing, unlike pandemic influenza, which PHE advised would spread too quickly. Had the UK practiced its response to a Sars-like virus, Dame Sally said, it would have been likely to have been far better prepared for Covid.

    “I felt as chief medical officer that we should practice a number of things,” she said. “I did ask during a conversation in my office in around 2015, should we do Sars? But I was told no, because it wouldn’t reach us properly. They said it would die out and would never travel this far.

    “So I did ask, but it was the Public Health England people who said we didn’t need to do it, and I’ll say that to Parliament. That advice meant we never seriously sat down and said: ‘Will we have a massive pandemic of something else?’

    “You could argue that various people should have been asking that question. But both the minister and I had to take advice from Public Health England. That was their job.”

    The decision to focus on influenza meant ministers and officials failed to practice how to stop a disease spreading during a three-day dry run, codenamed Exercise Cygnus, in 2016. Instead, the scenario was set seven weeks into a pandemic, when hospitals were already overwhelmed.

    “That has to be one of the failings of scenario planning in that way, because what you’re doing is responding rather than thinking how do I intervene?” Dame Sally said. “It didn’t cross my mind at the time, but that’s the truth.”

    Exercise Cygnus was marked “Official – Sensitive” and kept quiet for years until The Telegraph reported its existence earlier this year. Last month, the Government finally published a summary of the report after losing a battle with the Information Commissioner’s Office.

    The document showed that Cygnus found Britain was not prepared for a pandemic’s “extreme demands” and made recommendations about surge capacity in hospitals, the need to close schools and the danger of “silos” in planning. Many of its suggestions were apparently never carried out.

    The report even forewarned of the Covid-19 crisis in care homes, raising concerns about social care’s ability to handle patients discharged from hospitals. Yet care providers devastated by Covid complained that they had never heard of Cygnus or its findings.

    “With hindsight we know care homes should have been told – although that wasn’t my area,” Dame Sally said. “But NHS England were in the room, and local authorities were in the room. If you’re in a big meeting and you make a recommendation, you kind of assume people will have a think about it. In this case, it appears that they didn’t.

    “We should all have done better, of course. If Cygnus had been out there in the open, it might have helped. I don’t know. My gut reaction is that unless it’s a security issue, it’s always better to be transparent.”

    Dame Sally also revealed her “shock” that hospitals and care homes ran out of personal protective equipment (PPE) so quickly during the first wave, when hundreds of healthworkers died and nurses were reduced to wearing bin bags. Later, it was discovered that the value of the UK’s pandemic PPE stockpile, estimated at £831 million in 2013, had declined by 40 per cent over the past six years.

    “I have a daughter who was on the frontline then and is on the frontline now. No health staff should have died because they caught Covid in a health facility,” Dame Sally said.

    “When we had Ebola in 2012, I made sure that everyone in the NHS knew how to use PPE and made sure there were supplies. After 2012 I did not think to make sure that the PPE work was still continuing. Maybe I should have done, but to be fair I was quite busy with other things.”

    She said the Government had shown a “lack of agility” in the critical first weeks, saying: “There was an article in the Lancet at the end of January from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention laying out the risk. So it was there. We could have and we should have locked down earlier, so I would argue that we need to be more agile and responsive.

    “They told university labs not to get involved in testing, labs that had done far more testing than Public Health England ever have. When the review happens, there will be horror stories.”

    A Public Health England spokesman said: “The claim that PHE ignored threats other than flu is wrong. Dame Sally Davies participated in exercises which planned specifically for a Mers coronavirus scenario in the UK amongst other health threats.

    “DHSC and the Cabinet Office have overall responsibility for pandemic planning and the focus was on planning for an influenza pandemic as this was top of the National Risk Assessment.

    “In all of our time working with Dame Sally Davies, we agreed that the country should prepare for all health protection threats including infections caused by different organisms such as coronaviruses.”

    A Department of Health spokesman said: “This is an unprecedented pandemic and we have taken the right steps at the right time to combat it, guided at all times by the best scientific advice, to protect the NHS and save lives. Thanks to our ongoing national efforts, we haven’t seen hospitals overwhelmed with patients, nor people left without hospital beds or ventilators.

    “There is a huge amount of work going on behind the scenes, all of which would not be possible without the years of preparation undertaken for a pandemic, including flu and other infectious diseases like Mers, Sars and Ebola.”

    This week, Dame Sally will publish radical new proposals urging ministers to use the “Covid moment” to make the “biggest leap forward for our society since the NHS was set up in 1948”.

    “Health is our primary asset for happiness and economic success, both as individuals and as communities, and as a nation we ought to value it,” she said. “Health shouldn’t be a drain on our resources – it is our most untapped opportunity for prosperity. And that’s why we ought to measure it, and we ought to invest in it.”

    Her ideas will be laid out in a new book, entitled “Whose Health Is It Anyway”, published this week by Oxford University Press and co-written with Dr Jonathan Pearson-Stuttard, vice-chair of the Royal Society for Public Health.

    2. That’s the pantomime Dame who thought her mammaries would explode/drop off if she drank a glass of red wine.
      Quite frankly, they’re all as bl00dy useless as each other and are now behaving like ferrets in a sack.

    3. Sounds to me like this is a blatant attempt by her to shift the blame on others and to sell her book, alongside the DT’s own agenda to bring down the government unless they control it. I bet that Ms Tominey is still smarting that she didn’t get the No.10 CoS job, and perhaps why the paper has been constantly angling by Lee Cain’s ousting and that of Cummings.

      1. Many from natural causes, accidents, ordinary illnesses….

        Just like the 1,700 who die EVERY day.

    5. Someone should have told the PHE person who advised her that ‘a major coronavirus disease would “never travel this far”‘ that we aren’t living in the 18th century. There are flying test tubes called ‘aeroplanes’ nowadays.

    1. That reminds me of the original use of ‘typewriter’, which was the person operating the device, not the device itself.

  61. 326365+ up ticks,
    One question, is she for bloody real ?
    Ogga 1,

    We’re approaching the first anniversary of our 2019 General Election victory.

    It’s a testament to the will of our entire Party that faced with unprecedented challenges this year, we’ve not only risen to the challenge of tackling the coronavirus, but also delivered on the promises we were elected on, including:

    Promises Delivered
    http://e.conservatives.com/img/xmomv/b/m3oly/v4gl7.jpeg

    1. Well, if we voted for “removing free movement” we probably did not have in mind our own house arrest.

  62. Well i have just prepared dinner. Venison casserole in the oven and tidied up the kitchen………….
    I’ll take off me piny ……..😄

    1. Venison sausage-making this weekend. At least, by SWMBO and Firstborn. I shall supervise, with a mug of beer at hand.

        1. But if it is proved conclusively in court that there was massive electoral fraud how would they actually get rid of Biden and arrest the criminals involved when so many state officials are anti-Trump? Would civil war be the only likely consequence of such a verdict?

          6. Possibly a repeat order for home delivery would be more apt.

            Although the electoral college votes are cast in mid December, that may not be the end of it. States have been known to put forward more than one set of electors. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Trump arm twisting a few republican states to select electors that are contrary to the popular vote.

            On January 20th we will probably see Pelosi inaugurated as interim president while the big boys continue their efforts to dismantle any remaining vestiges of democracy from their election system.

          7. I did think of adding “at the very least” after my ellipsis 😉 but I rather thought that it could be taken as read.

          8. I just tried to spell it out for those looking forward to the great legal success next week.

            Or is it this week or a few weeks that we were promised.

          9. Perhaps you should have used words of one syllable… 😉

            I don’t know, your guess is probably a little better than mine, if only because you are closer to the action.

        2. But if it is proved conclusively in court that there was massive electoral fraud how would they actually get rid of Biden and arrest the criminals involved when so many state officials are anti-Trump? Would civil war be the only likely consequence of such a verdict?

        3. Presumptive
          adjective
          1. of the nature of a presumption; presumed in the absence of further information.

          2. I’m not sniping – I’m just playing Devil’s Advocate. Personally, I suspect that has been fraud on a grand scale, but I’m waiting for your mate Donald to actually prove it.

          4. Any Biden information should also have the caveat:

            “This claim about winning the election is disputed”.

          6. “This claim about election fraud is disputed”

            Do all tweets about Biden winning carry a similar disclaimer? I suspect not.

  64. I would like to share with you one of my all time favourite songs it’s “The Manhattan Transfer” it’s something i watched two days ago, probably the version i watched was filmed back in the 70s and a live performance. But it makes no difference where and how i now try to find it, i just can’t except this version.
    It’s almost as if because i have already watched it, I’m not allowed to see it again, i know it sounds daft but even the title doesn’t appear anywhere except for this sound only version. I love this song and their wonderful voices.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQhv4EFucIo

    1. I thought perhaps it might not be woke enough as Calico is made from cotton and it might be construed as connected with slavery and there is a connection between the two major and only jointly reproductive sexes on planet earth.

    1. With any luck he’s a veteran who’s left the cop tied up in his underwear around the corner, and is just waiting for Boris to present himself as a target.

      1. I hope not to take Dominic away for disposal. The poppy posters in the windows makes them look like fruit machines.

        1. Tacky. Like Bojo and his Meghan-like “girlfriend”. Got herself sprogged up so now she vetoes appointments and generally controls him , To the extent that he is not already controlled by the globalists.

        1. We have noticed his skin is becoming yellow. We are between a rock and a hard place because without his medication he would have fits.

          He eats in the morning and is sometimes tempted to take a small amount of fresh food in the evenings. We do not expect him to live for much longer but are trying to ensure that he is reasonably comfortable and not in pain.

          I think he will tell us when he is ready to depart this life. He is a lovely boy and we both love him.

          Our cat Paris is a very sensitive cat aged 20 years and always checks him out in his basket(s) before eating his food. We were worried that Paris was losing weight and are glad that she has developed a taste for raw chicken, raw tail of fillet beef and unprocessed ham.

          1. Love him and enjoy him and remember every day is a bonus. He WILL tell you when it’s time; all mine have.

          4. Indeed, it does leave an awful gap.
            Our pets are more than pets.
            I believe they are an extension of
            our humanity and we see them as such.

          5. Tough stuff, John, but you’re doing your best. Paris seems to have epicurean tastes…typical cat!

      1. According to a news item they were drawn by 18, apparently random, children. Which, since Wilfred is just 6 months and A B de P J’s legitimate children range from 21 to 27, seems more likely than that his own children drew them. I’ve no idea how old the other unfortunate child is, and neither does A B de P J if reports are reliable.

      2. Evening Stormy – I think some are the poppy picture you could download from the British Legion for donating to the appeal on-line. I got the download but couldn’t print it. It was intended to be put in your car but my neighbour put his in the front window.

      1. Evening Sue – thanks for the info. They must stay out of shot when the PM comes out to speak. I’ve only seen the solitary unarmed? policeman at the door with Larry the cat often in attendance to keep him awake..

        1. They usually stand side by side behind the gates facing into Whitehall. When there were “free Tommy” rallies there and people climbing on the gates, the two guards stood stock still as if they were pretending not to notice!

          2. I remember using Downing Street as a short cut through to the Park. There is (or was) a flight of steps at the north-western end of the road.

          4. I was working opposite Downing Street (on Richmond House) when it was decided to erect railings on Whitehall to prevent public access to Downing Street.

            At that time I was asked to design the railings between The Red Lion PH and the granite gate piers to the yard between my building and Norman Shaw North and South. This involved dismantling the granite gate piers and re-erecting with stainless steel rod reinforcement on new foundations to improve strength and stability.

            My railings were founded on a pile cap beam and made in stainless steel and blacksmith fashioned mild steel held down with large stainless steel bolts sheathed in heavy stainless steel tubes.

            The Artist Blacksmith we commissioned was Jim Horrobin whose work I had spotted at an exhibition of modern ironwork at a V & A Exhibition in 1978. The railings were made in the workshop of Dick Quinnell on account of their size and extent. Jim Horrobin set the pattern and oversaw the works.

            The fear was that the buildings were vulnerable to attack by a truck carrying explosives on Derby Gate. You have to remember that the threat of the IRA was high and a truck bombing of the US Embassy in Beirut had woken everyone to the threat of the same happening here in the UK.

          6. Somewhere I have a photograph of me on the doorstep of Number 10 (and no, I am NOT Harold Wilson!) in the sixties when I was in London with an American friend.

      1. I wondered what the medals were for. I believe she has another half dozen now. Haven’t read of the recent victims yet. Probably a state secret.

          1. I don’t ‘do’ chocolate these days. I always liked CDM, and every Advent and Lent, our altar frontal is rich in CDM purple. Except we’re not allowed to be there, by law.

          3. Bofors could be right.
            Edit. This was a poor and sad attempt at a pun, as in ‘both of us’.

      3. I thought it was only middle aged white men who were supposed to be ludicrously narcissistic?

    3. ‘…. is the laughing stock ……………’

      Not only the baddies, Ped, I think most
      ‘normal’ people despise her[?] and her
      fellow cohorts!

        1. But she isn’t there – or here – not in real life. obviously that doesn’t matter any more.

      2. First in the cookhouse queue
        Last in the cookhouse queue
        Bulliest boots
        Most letters from mother

    6. Isn’t the flucker on the left the one who ran away when the copper was murdered at the Palace of Westminster?

      2. Craig Thomas Mackey, QPM (born 26 August 1962) is a former British police officer who served as Deputy Commissioner of London’s Metropolitan Police Service from 2012 until his retirement in 2018. Knighted in 2018 New Year Honours.

        1. Craig Thomas Mackey, QPM (born 26 August 1962) is a former British police officer who served as Deputy Commissioner of London’s Metropolitan Police Service from 2012 until his forced retirement because of cowardice in 2018.

          Sorted.

        2. Craig Thomas Mackey, QPM (born 26 August 1962) is a former British police officer who served as Deputy Commissioner of London’s Metropolitan Police Service from 2012 until his forced retirement because of cowardice in 2018.

          Sorted.

      3. He could not run. He simply locked the doors of his chauffeured car, or more likely his security detail locked him in for his and their own protection. An officer was stabbed to death before his eyes, one of his officers.

        In years gone by that would have meant disgrace and dismissal. Nowadays I expect he received one of his fine spread off gongs for his ‘service’. Likewise Dick herself should have been investigated and dismissed for overseeing and commissioning the shooting of an innocent man at Stockwell Underground Station, on dodgy intelligence which proved to be false.

        Instead she was promoted. Well I witnessed many examples of incompetents in the civil service being ‘kicked upstairs’ into positions where they could do less harm but this is a ridiculous practice for a supposed Police Force.

    7. “..thieves, drug barons, murdering stabbers and paedophiles…”

      Yeah, but unless they’re committing a hate crime or not wearing a mask, or standing next to someone else, or shopping with someone or not obeying state diktat they couldn’t care less. Far too annoying dealing with criminals. Much easier to deal with the real villains – the truly evil: those refusing to conform.

  68. That’s me for this dreary day – made gloomier by the kittens reaction to the first vaccine shot. “Lethargic and sleepy” – which meets most of the comments on forums about kittens. Lasts 24-36 hours. Gus has deigned to eat a bit twice – Pickles (who is the greedy one) shows no interest in food.

    Oh well – I know these things are normal – but the way they look at me and are clearly saying, “WHAT have you done to me? It is also odd not to hear the pounding of tiny paws as they race round the house.

    I’ll be forced to have a glass of calming medicine shortly.

    A demain – I hope.

  69. 326365+ up ticks,
    I see the ” nige opposition” ( reform group) is shaping up, is it just me who found the brexit group to be a MAJOR johnson asset under the “nige” leadership ?

    Is it to be yet another 25 brick to become a non member, will ALL the non members on the brexit group have to donate again, if any apply ?

    Nigel Farage has near-total control of Brexit party, constitution …
    18 Apr 2019 — Nigel Farage has almost total control over the new Brexit Party, with power to appoint its governing board and all but no membership to keep him in check,

      1. 326365+ up ticks,
        Evening C,
        Your agreement / disagreement
        is your prerogative but on this issue your agreement is appreciated.
        The man condemned himself via his LBC rant, his own rhetoric, not mine.

    1. They are talking up the return of the spamhead slammer to be “Chief of Staff”.

      God help us all. Permanent lockdown; stuck in the EUSSR – BPAMP will tell the gauleiters that leaving was a simple error and we didn’t mean it and can we stay in please – PLEEEEEASE. Because that’s was Carrion wants.

      God I need that drink.

      1. There is the nub of the No. 10 nonsense. It is not supposed to be about being liked, or being affable, or even having gone to the same expensive Public School. it should be about competence, about seeing problems and fixing them, about achieving good outcomes (for the nation).

        1. Ah, Horace, you’re talking about good *government*. Politicians are not interested in government. They only care about politics – that is the being liked, being affable.

          What confuses me is that the civil service *should* be interested in good government. Bizarrely, it seems obsessed by a nonsense agenda. I can’t help but think that those laughably called running the civil service need reminding that they do not work for a supra national government, that the wants and wishes of greedy thieves are not to be automatic beneficiaries of public money.

        2. Yep, exactly. That’s why none of us ever go into politics, because we want the best people in those jobs and would work as a team for the nation. The reality is quite the opposite – we’d never expect all the knives coming for us. Near 100% of politicians care only about climbing the greasy pole and stuffing their opponents, many of whom are suppedly on the same team. Think of it like office politics x100.

  72. Please excuse me ,,,
    WTF …. I hope all you Conservative/leave
    voters are proud of yourselves!!
    ‘ Dominic Cummings leaves with immediate effect!’

      1. So did I, Mola.
        It seems unbelievable to me that
        people remain so gullible.
        I recognise that ‘Ogga’s’
        endless record is annoying, but he
        isn’t wrong!

    4. What’s the source?

      Cummings said he would leave at the end of the year. It’s a shame, yes as the Left hate him, therefore he’s doing the right thing.

    5. Actually you should be railing against the unelected Carrie. Leave voters had nothing to do with her getting into Downing Street.

  73. On the DT COVID ticker – now SAGE are ‘warning’ (quelle surprise!) that ending lockdown and going back to the previous system will lead to a dramatic increase in infections. Never saw that coming, did we? Welcome to Hotel California.

    1. My vote is to give all members of SAGE a dose of Covid, no treatment whatsoever, and then see what happens.

      1. They are all cowards and shit scared that their predictions will yet again be found to be….er… unfounded.

        When Trump retains the Presidency Boris Batmanjelly Blancmange will have to stick to his promises. We will be out of the EU and have a trade deal with the US whether Boris and his Carrion Crow like it or not. Trump will breathe very heavily on the fat traitor just as the Turk was greasing up to Creepy Joe.

          3. It has to happen if the US electoral process is to retain its integrity.

            If Biden gets in then the majority Trump supporters will be on the streets and the Biden supporters or rather their paid activists headed up by Antifa and Black Lives Matter Brigades will be at war.

            Only one winner there.

      2. We just have to look over to California to see why endless lockdowns are ridiculous – whilst they have a very low infection and death rate, around 50% of ALL small businesses in San Francisco have closed (permanently). The people who worked in and owned them can’t live off the money tree or savings ad-infinitum.

        All that would happen is changing a relatively small number of COVID deaths (and predominantly in the already near death or very elderly) and lots of infections (but the vast majoirty asymptomatic) to loads of deaths from starvation and lack of medical care through abject poverty, shortages of supplies and food, and the inevitable lawlessness that would come after that long locked up our homes.

        They’re nuts to even suggest it, and yet they are followed without question, with the MSM cheering them on. IMHO, the Telegraph, as usual, muddies the water. I think they’re trying to be the national version of the Evening Standard.

        1. There is already a lot more dissent and unrest with this latest lockdown than there was in the spring.

        2. And therein, lies the problem.
          Here, people believe in the money tree.

          In America people end up sleeping on the streets.

          It will come here soon enough, unless they get their act together and accept that death is not completely preventable.

    2. As their actions have direct consequences that they are seemingly immune from, we must now make them feel the same burden millions of others are.

      Their salaries must be reduced, their pensions cut down and ultimately, if they continue to force lockdown, they face redundancy. That will shift their focus from what they want as an ideal situation to reality.

      1. A delicious thought. Unfortunately they have the protection of the Plod and armed forces and all being pigs with noses in the same trough will simply close ranks and carry on.

        I think daily of the unnecessary hardship these callous politicians are forcing upon the British people. There will as ever be a reckoning.

    4. Is this announcement a coincidence re Cummings’s departure or is there a hint of political choreography in this evening’s events?

  74. Hark……. I think I hear the distant chink of champagne flutes at Open Society London following Leave departures………

    Is Boros about to be made wealthy ?

  76. 13th November 2015.

    The French Papers are full of the fact that today is the Fifth anniversary of the Islamic terrorist attack in which 130 people died – 90 of whom were in the Bataclan Theatre and the other 40 in synchronised street attacks on places such as cafés.

    The MSM in Britain seems to be rather shy of mentioning this story. I wonder why?

    (A piece of information we learnt later from our son Henry – who was at UEA at the time – was that one of the groups playing at the Bataclan, The Eagles of Death Metal, on that fateful night had played at UEA just a couple of days before.)

    1. Disqus is behaving strangely and adding typos to my post above and omitting things I tied to correct in my edits)

      1. GCHQ! It’s upgraded its harassment in preparation for the campaign against the ant-vaxxers!

    2. The MSM in Britain seems to be rather shy of mentioning this story. I wonder why?
      It just might/will possibly be in opposition to their current agenda.

  77. VERY LAST POST

    Kittens brighter…eating for England.

    I wish I was a cartoonist – to portray Carrion with a yellow mop of hair – and a badge saying “I am Prime Minister”

    TTFN Haddock (and Cook) calls.

  79. The woman who stood by a monster: How Yorkshire Ripper’s ex-wife Sonia Sutcliffe remained married to him for nearly 15 years

    Only one reason why Sonia Sutcliffe would ‘stand by’ mass murderer – she knew he was the killer and failed to report it to the police. Accessory to the fact.

  80. Utterly off topic.

    Is anyone else watching the Ireland Wales rugby match?

    Do you think that a srum half with a big bushy beard looks totally out of place?

    1. I watched the first half. Two sets of thugs playing dismal, mediocre, rugby. If the ref was applying the laws at every infringement it would be 0-0, and half the teams sent off.

      1. Look again at the scrum half.

        He just looks weird to me, like that “man” who won Eurovision.

      1. Indeed – and he barely touched on the voter fraud allegations, just what the media, big tech and pollsters have been doing. It likely is happening here as well.

        What I find amazing is how many people I know, and who appear to be of reasonably sound mind as well as educated, seem oblivious to this sort of thing. I think it’s because they prefer to live in their own little bubble and they look the other way when their freedoms are being eroded by stealth and country taken over.

  83. Evening all. Been out all afternoon and just caught up with the shenanigans at no. 10.

    I see they’re already preparing the ground for next winter’s Coronavirus epidemic.

    “One source said Mr Gove would be a perfect candidate at the Department of Health to refresh the team and prepare for a potential third wave of coronavirus next winter”.

    God help us.

    1. Good evening, vw. One of the sage crew said there would be more epidemics to come, throughout the coming decade. How do they know, unless they are making it all up? They can’t even get the weather forecast correct day on day.

      2. It does make you wonder doesn’t it. Almost as if the virus and the vaccine were produced at pretty much the same time. Just holding the vax back for a few months to make it look fairly respectable.

        1. Isn’t that basically what the Wuhan lab was all about, or have I misremembered what I read about it back around Feb time?

          3. Funded by Clintons/Gates/Soros allegedly – all the bad boys. Ditto SAGE and departments or sub-departments at Imperial College.

          4. Funded by Gates or Soros or one of the usual suspects but I think they were experimenting with both viruses and vaccines?

        2. Wasn’t there a video of US senate members discussing amongst themselves back in May/June “not to worry because we have had all had the vaccine”? Or was it a spoof? It didn’t sound like a spoof as the voices were fairly low and conversational but you never know. Nothing surprises me now.

          I thought you would like to know about the daughter of a friend of mine. She got fed up of wearing the face nappy and went shopping without it. She was accosted by s member of staff with “you are not wearing a face mask” – to which she replied “No. And I’m not wearing panties either!” With which she marched off to continue her shopping. I have not been confronted, yet, but perhaps it is age related. I was delighted to hear about this little rebellion within the ranks – the more we go without our masks, the more others will get the confidence to discard them. For some there is no hope – those wearing masks in the street, in their car.

          1. I haven’t worn a mask for three weeks. I haven’t been accosted about it, but I do wear a “I am exempt from wearing a face covering” label downloaded from the government website. I was glad I wasn’t wearing one this afternoon or I would have been climbing the walls. I went to pick up my medicine yesterday, but they didn’t have enough of the pills, so I had to go back today. Whereas yesterday I walked in and was served immediately, today I had to queue for ages. Had I not been maskless I would have turned away and not entered the pharmacy.

          2. Oh you’ve given me a great chuckle Pmum thank you. Wish I’d seen the face of whoever had the cheek to accost her.

      3. Every year each ‘flu is different. The same will apply to the Covids.

        Eventually the PTB will realise that one year ‘flu will be bad, the next year it will be Covings.
        Every decade or so, one or other will be a bigger killer than normal.

        More people, more deaths.

          1. That’s probably the reason, Richard, why Best Beloved and I, although both struck down with food-poisoning, are determined to hang in there and screw out all the bennies we old, indigenous whites can get out of the system, that we have paid into for nearly 60 + years.

      5. British weather forecasting is easy.
        Morning – Mostly dry with some patches of rain
        Afternoon – Mostly wet with some dry patches

          1. You are right.
            I remember burning my shins on holiday; it was the one day in the fortnight when we could touch the tent roof.
            🙂

          2. To be truthful it isn’t so bad here in the Marches as we are in a bit of a rain shadow – most of the rain falling on the high ground to the west. West Wales, especially the hilly bits, is very wet – rather like the West Highlands. Rainfall in the 2 metres per annum region, whereas it’s generally between 700mm and 1 metre in this area.

            Of course in a drought year, when everything is burning up, you can see those rain clouds approaching… and know that by the time they reach you there will be nothing left.

          4. Cheeky devil. Here in the Marches of mid-Wales we are in something of a rain shadow. Our rainfall is less than half that of the wettest areas in west Wales. Poor old Capel Curig, Cader Idris and the Berwyns soak up the worst of it before it reaches us.

    2. With the absolute mess that Johnson is overseeing I imagine Gove is looking a little bit higher than Health Secretary. In either scenario your final sentence holds very true.

    3. Of course as Mike Yeadon has pointed out, viruses don’t actually do waves. The “second wave” in 1918 was bacterial respiratory disease most likely caused by insanitary mask wearing.

        1. Got it in one! I was thinking this morning as I longed for a return to normal; it’s never going to happen because once the PTB have got control over us they are not going to relinquish it. “Keep Calm and Carry On” has been replaced by “Panic and Hide Under the Table”.

      1. I think you’re right Garlands. I get the feeling BoJo won’t be there much longer, maybe he’ll go after BRINO, and then who will be PM – Michael Gove maybe as it appears he’s the one making the decisions. If MG steps in we’ll be locked down for ever.

    7. At least if all the ducks are in a row we will have an easier time shooting them. Arm yourselves!

    2. When most crime, pro rata, is committed by your black, no not your asian and other minorites then other Londoners will feel that you are on the side of the criminals.

      1. But as we don’t (yet) have a national police force and as you don’t live within the reach of the Met, this particular recruiting drive won’t affect you very much.

        I’m not so very trusting myself – but as I’m white and I’ve yet to see a non-white bully-boy-in-blue in this area (there probably is one, somewhere) it can’t be anything to do with race.

        1. What an idiotic parochial view you hold. I needs must travel to London on many occasions in my work. I live in North Essex, actually Braintree District, and Anne lives in Colchester.

          3. She does have her supporters though. Peddy, Lottie and that Canadian MOD. Can’t imagine why he thinks modding here is more ……Bored i suppose.

    4. The Mayor is a Muslim Brotherhood solicitor. He should never have been allowed to stand for Mayor. His encumbancy has given rise to enhanced racial tensions, the shutting down of the vital businesses which make our country run smoothly, the decapitation of our London Transport and Crossrail State Transportation systems and their impending bankruptcy.

      In addition the closure of important routes to give preference to bicycles has already proven disastrous in that narrowed roads and attendant bollards preclude access for emergency vehicles such as fire appliances.

      Khan is an enemy of this country.

      1. Yes. We know that but apparently he was told to extend the congestion charge to a much larger area within greater London. Obviously to get more funding for his little empire whilst destroying. Who within Government empowered him to do so?

        1. How come why my one or singular comment has attracted a downvote here as your’s has not. I reckon racial discrimination is at play on this otherwise comfortable forum.

          1. Well, we know who the down voter is;
            [what a little treasure we are blessed
            with!]
            To me it is not about comments but
            rather about personal dislike….
            which seems strange that anyone should expend such energy on a such innocuous and generally friendly blog.

          2. Because it is an enraged (or deranged) Jennifer SP who doesn’t seem to like anyone here giving it to the left-wing.

          3. You, like Rastus are downvote central. The usual suspect. She has also dragged over her friends from Breibart.

            Other than that press F5.

    5. The only way you will resolve this, Sad Dick, is by resigning and making way for an unprejudiced Mayor.

  85. The country is suffering badly from the coronavirus because it was not prepared. There have been years of Stalinist policies by those who wish to undermine us, Islamic fundamentalists and terrorists have been appeased and the unions are responsible for the sabotage of public services and the pressure of exaggerated social demands. Corruption is alive and well.

    In a nutshell, this is an example of what is happening to the UK, which is on an inexorable downward slope.

    BUT, I’m not talking about the UK. You may be surprised to learn that this was a widely disseminated article in the Tunisian press today (in English, Arabic and French)!

    This is from an English language source: https://news-tunisia.tunisienumerique.com/tunisia-narratives-of-the-black-decade-in-tunisia-or-how-certain-leftists-allied-with-the-islamists-destroyed-the-country/

    If there is a way to stop the left and the Islamists from destroying the UK, I’m sure that Tunisia would like to hear about it!

    Expect an increase in a similar effort at destruction in the US if Biden (and especially his VP) are confirmed.

  87. Evening, all. That’s Brexit killed off then now Cummings is out. I can’t see Bojo doing anything but reneging on it and fobbing us off with BRINO without anyone to hold his feet to the fire. On a happier note, congratulations to Tartan Pimpernel on the victory of her home-bred at Southwell – beating the hot favourite, too! Brilliant.

    3. Lacoste has just called me to congratulate me – thank you so much Conway. It was a lovely front running display of jumping and I was thrilled with him!

  89. I’ve read the National Trust report and it’s a one-sided take on history, full of woke prejudices. 13 November 2020.

    Perhaps it was by accident that she omitted the fact that there were innumerable English critics too (not least Wilberforce, or the Peckovers of Wisbech, for example), because the English are the pantomime villains of this particular entertainment. Dr Kefalas writes that a Scotsman, Thomas Carlyle, “advocated for [sic] the reintroduction of slavery to the West Indies” and that his 1867 essay Shooting Niagara, and After? “encouraged historic perceptions of racial hierarchies and promoted the idea that Africans were born for servitude.”

    Carlyle (of whom I have written a substantial biography) certainly regarded black people as inferior, as did most British people in the mid-19th century. His suggestions they should be re-enslaved were akin to Jonathan Swift’s advocacy of eating children: Shooting Niagara is about the 1867 Reform Bill, and what Carlyle regarded as the absurdity of a country worrying about the civil rights of emancipated slaves when its own people had few civil rights, no vote, and were on the verge of insurrection. Context is everything.

    An authorative take down of the absurdities of the National Trust Report on Slavery and Colonialism.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/art/architecture/read-national-trust-report-one-sided-take-history-full-woke/

    1. “Perhaps it was by accident that she omitted the fact that there were innumerable English critics too (not least Wilberforce…”, there must be two reports because the one I’ve read mentions Wilberforce 17 times. It also has an entire chapter devoted to abolition.

      1. No mention of Wilberforce in the section written by Jane Gallagher that Heffer quoted, which you would have known if you had read his report.

        1. The entire paragraph actually states, “by the end of the eighteenth century, however, objections about the morality of the slave trade were increasingly voiced by critics in North America, Scotland and France and by religious campaigners, notably the Quakers, who had pushed for abolition since the 1690s. Criticism was also fuelled by the ideals of liberty, fraternity and equality manifested in American Independence and the French Revolution. Abolition of the trade itself was eventually achieved in Britain in 1807 and the United States in 1808, with Britain using its naval blockades and diplomatic powers to persuade other European nations to follow suit. Slavery continued in the nineteenth century, with emancipation only granted in the British colonies with the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, and in the United States after the Civil War in 1865. Slavery was finally ended in Cuba and Brazil in the 1880s.”

          So Gallagher makes specific mention of British abolition and British use of force and diplomatic pressure, to end the save trade, but Heffer chooses to ignore this and the 17 references to Wilberforce elsewhere in the report, in order to pursue his attack on the NT.

          1. Cobblers. You’ve been had. Heffer deals with several of the authors in turn and makes the point that Gallagher refers to abolition (and only 140 words in almost 3,000) without mentioning Wilberforce.

            Carry on spinning.

          2. Grow up and see Heffer’s piece for what it is. The man has written click bait for people who were outraged by a report they’d never read.

          3. Pathetic. You made a fool of yourself and you won’t own up to it.

            And you didn’t need to cut and paste the paragraph. I knew ‘what the entire paragraph actually states’. Condescending or what?. How would I have known that it didn’t mention Wilberforce if I hadn’t read it? You hadn’t read Heffer’s piece and now you’re scrabbling around to hide your embarrassment.

            You seem remarkably concerned by what you describe as people’s ‘outrage’. Perhaps you should ask yourself why the NT board chose to spend so many hours writing a long-winded report instead of doing the job it’s meant to do.

          4. “You hadn’t read Heffer’s piece”. LOL, a claim for which you have no evidence as per normal. Regardless of the views of people like you, I take pleasure in being a NT Life Member and more to the point, I’m pleased that NT membership has risen in recent years despite the smears of a small segment of society which is slowly but surely, dying out. I also take pleasure in the recent election results in the US because it’s another sign that the world is returning to normal and the utter chaos unleashed by people like you, has almost run its course. You’re dying out; thank God.

          5. The US election was stolen as you know perfectly well and as the statistical analysis I linked previously clearly shows.

            So do stop your fake news, sweetie, and find something else to post about x

          6. I love watching a halfwit having a meltdown.

            What you wrote indicated that you hadn’t read Heffer’s piece or, if you had, you hadn’t read it properly and jumped immediately to the wrong conclusion and then made a fool of yourself.

            As for the rest…well, it’s just unhinged and reveals a deeply intolerant streak in someone who imagines himself to be a liberal. It’s also illogical – the ‘chaos unleashed’ is entirely a result of the actions of the new Left. And in case you hadn’t noticed, I’ve largely stayed out of the US election debate.

            Show us how brave you are and put your comment up at the top of today’s column. I’ll give you an hour…

          9. Blimey Billy Boy, a quick check of your history shows that you rarely reply to anyone but me. Proof, if proof is needed that you’re actually the pro-Putin Disloyal Barmaid.

  90. ”According to the Washington Examiner, Smartmatic’s chairman is Lord Mark Malloch Brown, a former vice-chairman of George Soros’ Investment Funds”!

    1. The only connection between Soros and Smartmatic is its chairman, Lord Mark Malloch-Brown. He has worked with Soros in the past and sits on the global board of Soros’s Open Society Foundations, an organization that funds “building inclusive and vibrant democracies.”
      FACT CHECK: Does George Soros Own The Voting Technology …
      checkyourfact.com/2020/03/23/fact-check-george-soros-own-smartmatic-voting-machines/
      checkyourfact.com/2020/03/23/fact-check-george-soros-own-smartmatic-votin…

  91. So it is Friday 13th. As I type I’m downloading a 12GB major software upgrade for my computer….what can possibly go wrong…..?

  92. Over 3,000 people apply to be candidates for Nigel Farage’s new Reform party in just 11 days. 13 November 2020.

    Nigel Farage’s new political party already has more than 3,000 applicants to stand as candidates in May’s local elections, in a move which will alarm Conservatives.

    Reform UK, renamed from the Brexit Party, has been inundated with supporters offering to stand as candidates in the elections to the Welsh and Scottish parliaments, and the English local elections, in the 11 days since it was set up.

    I would imagine that were there a General Election at the moment that the Reform Party might very well form the next government!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/11/13/nigel-farages-new-reform-uk-party-has-3000-applicants-stand/

          2. 326365+ up ticks,
            S,
            I do assume maybe wrongly that you are a current tory member supporter / voter, if so you will find treachery acceptable.

          3. The real traitors are people like you, who hope that they can get a bunch of single issue fanatics slipped into place while nobody is paying attention.

          4. 326365+ up ticks,
            S,
            What like major, the wretch cameron, clegg, may the treacherous, johnson you
            mean ?

    2. All the BTL comments cheering the news, bar one eternal naysayer who replies negatively to every post.

        1. Nah, might be a Conservative MP who likes exploring and educating the natives, one Philip Livingstone.

    3. Do they have to pay for the privilege, as per Brexit Party candidates, and will they get their money back when Farage stands them down?

      1. A good question Bob. I think he’s real but as Bill points out below he is a useless politician. Did he have some get up and go he would have been Prime Minister five years ago!

        1. 326365+ up ticks,
          Evening AS,
          I need no more proof of him being a ersatz tory coxswain, seriously check out his last two decades
          actions.
          This was his take on the very peoples that worked their bollocks off to give him a platform, I have never walked the same since.

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fc7iuUHk3Yk

          Name change to protect the guilty.

        2. He has said that he us not a politician, he is a campaigner. Roughly translated I suppose he means ‘rabble rouser’ but we are talking about an alumnus of Dulwich College.

        3. Mng, he admits he’s not a politician, but he’s astute enough to plug into the people and understands the principle of being elected “to represent the people with their consent”, which, aside a few exceptions, both main parties now openly ignore.

          Slight change of tac, this am’s piece off CW is one of the most eviscerating condemnations https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/wholl-grab-the-steering-wheel-from-out-of-control-johnson/ the honing in continues

  93. Trump is on the TV at the moment, talking about the planned purchase of the covid vaccine. He has gone grey (or gray as they prefer). Naturally he went off script and started slagging off the new York governor with a few digs at Biden for good measure.

    Free vaccine for all will please democrats but annoy a lot of those die hard Republicans will be apoplectic about socialist medicine. (We have met quite a few of the die hards during trips to the Carolinas, as soon they hear that we are from Canada, they launch into tirades about how bad our communist (?) medical system is and how they will never accept paying for medical care for others. We shall see how serious they were!).

    Seeing some of the leaked Biden plans thank God the senate stays republican, that will cramp their style.

    1. Question. ? Can you afford your own medical treatment? If not. Why would you expect anyone else to pay for it ?

      1. If they are not covered by an employer health plan, how many US families have enough cash to pay for something major – for example heart surgery? A friends husband had a heart attack two years ago and hubby received bypass surgery. The hospital bill was around $500,000.

        Not every family in the US will have insurance through their work, lose your job and you would be in serious trouble. Medicaid is not all inclusive either.

        But I guess that having to chose between personal bankruptcy or death is OK in your world.

        1. Why do you think that everyone else should pay for the misfortune of others? Yes it is sad and also difficult for family but i refuse to live in a society where everyone is expected to pay for non productive people. We now have Boob jobs and IVF on the NHS while people with cancers go untreated.

          2. You are going to have to better than that. Stop deleting my comments to your friends would be a start but i don’t see that happening anytime soon.

          3. Grow up. I do not delete your comments.

            Maybe in the past I have deleted one or two comments but normally I just post a comment urging restraint.

          6. And if i were to argue with you you wouldn’t call me a fool or an idiot? Perhaps if you showed some restraint we could have a more intimate relationship. You bring the hammer and i’ll bring the coffin.

          7. You aren’t really MOD material if you choose to use phrases like ‘grow up’. Try being a MOD in your own country and see how far you get with that. You don’t really have an understanding of the dynamics here so i can only assume you choose to be here because it is far worse on your own networks.

          10. Once upon a time I thought that as a conservative, I fitted in.

            I haven’t taken the lurch to the right of brietbart that many appear to have taken.

          12. I would like to point out that I don’t read Breitbart, and have never commented there – as a quick look at my profile would confirm.

          14. Of course I was – it’s called lashing out – and it happens all the time — I’m a “hag” again further down the page and a nightmare and a few other choice epithets… same as last night.

          17. Jack S who supported your statements this last week on Nottle said differently. Is he your evil twin?

            Just because your profile doesn’t show you commenting elsewhere doesn’t mean you don’t.

            The style is recognisable…….anywhere.

            This would, very much, suggest otherwise. He’s perfectly capable of attacking both of us at the same time. But the wholesale ganging up is getting to be a very distressing habit.

          18. notl is not particularly friendly to either of us at night – I assume after the drinking starts.

            Once upon a time the parrot was an exception, now quite a few spout extremely right wing bile.

          19. I can ignore the general right wing bile… but the personal attacks (specifically forbidden at the top of the page) are depressing – particularly when moderators are part of it. Over the last few days two of our moderators have assumed the right to say what I think (both a mile wide of the mark) and express less than complimentary opinions of those supposed thoughts; and one of them has added direct personal insults. When the “policemen” are contributing to the riot and encouraging the rioters – what is one supposed to do?

            I’ve flagged a lot of comments – but I’ve no idea whether moderators look for or can see such flags. Geoff once told me that they are not visible – but it’s strange how quickly anything I type is found and deemed to be out of line – I was even threatened at the top of the page one day. So much for everyone being on an equal footing.

            The attacks on you last night were, frankly, appalling. Drink is not an excuse. If you can’t drink and be civil – then learn to drink and shut up (as a friend of my father once said to his son).

          20. We don’t get notifications of a post being flagged, posts marked as spam result n an email (no I don’t understand it either).

          21. So there’s no point in flagging the most vitriolic of personal abuse. There’s no point in replying to it (I don’t) and if you vote it down you get another load of vitriol. Then there are the moderators who not only don’t moderate but encourage the vitriol.

            And we are told that opposing views are welcome…

            It’s not exactly encouraging.

          22. Jack S who supported your statements this last week on Nottle said differently. Is he your evil twin?

            Just because your profile doesn’t show you commenting elsewhere doesn’t mean you don’t.

            The style is recognisable…….anywhere.

          23. You don’t need to be a conservative to fit in, just someone offering intelligent or witty discourse. The right-lurching conservatives are a bit cliquey for sure, and they have no idea how silly most of their posts make them sound. People I always assumed were intelligent seem to have mentally regressed by 50% or more since 2016.

          25. Well I don’t fit the profile either. I’m a centrist libertarian Georgist, I’m no conservative.
            I truly believe that we do welcome different views here. Sure there has been some abrasive replies sometimes but that’s normal when you question beliefs people have held for fifty years.
            I’ve never felt particularly unwelcome here.

          27. Richard has been on this site – as a mod and contributor for as long as most of us. Just because he lives in Canada doesn’t make him persona non grata.

        2. If you want free healthcare I suggest you get off your fat arse, work and pay taxes to afford it.

          I see no reason why my generation, whether in the US or the UK, should pay for the health treatment of fat indigent wankers.

          2. Obviously you have been spoilt by the nhs and the health safety net that it provides.

            The nhs goes too far with the vanity treatments that are provided to all and sundry but that should not preclude basic health care for all that qualify. By that I exclude illegals, and visitors from receiving a state benefit.

          4. Come again? Try being logical next time.

            There’s a world of difference between boob jobs and basic Healthcare. The fact that the nhs has lost its way doesn’t mean publically funded healthcare is wrong.

          5. Your logic escapes me.

            If someone wishes to enlarge their breasts they can get treatment for it. If a 70 year old woman needs an examination for potential breast cancer they can forget about it.

          7. It’s not.

            NHS cosmetic surgeons perform only two kinds of breast enlargement. Reconstructive work after a partial breast removal or to fix a botched private sector breast enlargement, and psychological where it is a necessary procedure to maintain decent mental health.

          9. Glad you came through it.

            Elderly people are being denied surgery for a variety of different reasons.

          10. I wasn’t so elderly then, but follow ups lasted 10 years each time. Last time I saw my surgeon, last year, he said he’d see me next year ( this year) but I think he may have decided to retire.

          11. richardl, it’s always hard arguing this one with Britons, because people who have only experienced the NHS have no idea how social medicine works. The NHS is a dysfunctional nightmare.
            I believe there is a genuine debate about whether social healthcare is a good thing or not, and what may be done to mitigate the unfairness to those who find themselves paying out for others’ bad decisions under a social healthcare system – however, this is not the same debate about whether the NHS should be scrapped or not (100% yes, in my view!).

          12. All the NHS needs is properly quangoing. It should be taken away from politicians.

            Healthcare is one of the things best provided socially. No one is paying for other people’s healthcare, the system is funded by government and individual co-pays.

            The NHS worked pretty well as a regional system then some fool thought it would work better as a localised system with as little centralisation as possible. This expanded the cost of providing healthcare astronomically as many hospitals had to offer the same facilities as other nearby hospitals because they were parts of different trusts and competing with each other. Centralised purchasing with the huge buying power of the NHS became a thing of the past almost as trusts competed with other trusts for the same items driving prices up.

            The NHS was broken by Tory politicians quite deliberately. Nothing about the internal market reforms made any sense from a providing healthcare point of view or from a consumption of healthcare point of view.

          13. Sorry, almost everything you believe about the NHS is simply not true. Your eyes would be opened if you saw a good social healthcare system in operation, which the NHS has never been, since the moment it was conceived. We shall have to agree to disagree on this!

          14. That is rubbish. In our present conditions we are obliged to treat all immigrants as though they are EU citizens and entitled to all freedoms under EU Law.

            This is but one of the multiple reasons that we elected to to tell the EU to fuck off and die.

          15. Richard does seem to wobble a bit. Perhaps if he experienced the reality here he would have a different view.

          16. Unless the UK has the gumption to do what Ontario does and refuse to pay for outsider healthcare, you are never going to win that one.

            Trouble is that even if doctors offices were prepared to charge those that don’t qualify, it requires some proof of ID to weed out the interloper and that opens another can of worms over a national ID card.

            We cannot even travel to another province and expect healthcare costs to be covered.

            Our doctors need to submit claims for work done to the provincial health insurance plan. Doctors can treat anyone they like but unless the provincial plan acknowledges the patient as insured, the doctor is learning about pro bono.

            Oh we don5 fund social adjustments either. You want pretty plastic surgery, you pay for it.

          17. So screw burns victims, screw those born with cleft palates and similar visible disabilities. Cosmetic surgery is badly named. Most procedures are necessary.

            Things like breast enlargement are rarely funded by the NHS, although the NHS does fix private sector botch-up jobs. Gender reassignment is barely a drop in the ocean. Talking a few million out of a 150 billion budget.

          19. ‘… spoilt by the NHS’

            Richard, I have been gratified by the help given to my family, in the past, by caring Staff but please, believe me! I have and
            continue to contribute a large sum of money each year
            to the, very inefficiently run, NHS… as indeed do many
            millions of others. The NHS holds its paymaster in contempt!!

          20. We also pay a fortune to the provincial plan but seem to be faring better than the nhs.

            It may simply be a case of no proof of citizenship, no treatment beyond emergency care (our GP has a credit card machine and will use it if you do not have the correct ID).

            Another possibility is that we visibly pay into the system. We need a new hospital, the government will staff it and pay for its operation but the local community has to cough up most of the money to build and equip it. There is not a week goes by without a hospital fundraiser being advertised. Literally A&E needs a new defibrillator, the hardware store has a electronics recycling event that will raise the needed money. Healthcare is free at point of delivery but we are aware of the costs involved.

            Or it might simply be that a large number of our doctors and nurses are English.

            No its not perfect, I am not claiming that and anything but urgent care can take far too long.

          21. I agree with you and would
            add that, at the end of September
            2020 we supposedly had
            ten million out patient appointments
            cancelled because of Covid;how
            many of these appointments were carried
            forward from last year I do not know.
            It appears the NHS sees itself
            as some sort of ‘Sacred Cow;’
            however it will possibly be never that
            I forget the ‘photos, at the previous
            height of the epidemic, of NHS staff
            walking, dancing and adorning an
            extremely expensive piece of equipment.
            I think the tangible support, as you
            describe, is not only admirable but
            surely by involving the general public
            is a far more realistic view than here:
            i.e. The NHS is a free service!!
            Edited.

          22. You could stop donating to NHS charities.

            Oh you mean taxes?

            Get real. Your taxes aren’t spent on your healthcare or anybody else’s.

          24. They don’t go anywhere. That’s the beauty of electronic cash. it’s just numbers in spreadsheets.

            Where did the 100B come from to buy bank shares. The government didn’t have it, they were ‘borrowing’ but ‘borrowing’ takes time to organise and they had that money for use immediately.

            You believe that the government spends money you give it, a valid belief in 1910 but not in 2020. In fact it’s been invalid since the Bretton-Woods agreement ended approx 50 years ago. The government, just like banks, creates every penny it spends. The difference is the government doesn’t have to balance its books or die.

          25. You may be right…or not.
            Please explain to me who does benefit from the
            thousands of pounds deducted, each year, from my
            pay slip, which shows the deduction as P.A.Y.E.
            Are you suggesting my Company Pension Dept. is
            siphoning off part of my income to fund itself?

          26. We all do.

            We benefit by the fact that inflation usually hovers around the 2% mark. (oh looky there’s the mute demand function of taxes)

            Some of us are desperately hurt by taxation. Smokers, drinkers, frequent fliers, drivers etc.( ooh behviour alteration of taxes)

            and finally you get to spend pounds for goods in stores and for the services of local tradespeople, you don’t have to grow potatoes to get your windows painted or raise a cow to pay for your dental visits. ( domestic demand for pounds – it’s the only currency you can pay UK taxes in).

          27. “Are you suggesting my Company Pension Dept. is
            siphoning off part of my income to fund itself?”

            Never heard of pension fees?

          28. Yes, I have heard of pension fees but my pension
            is not subsidised by me, it certainly was when I
            worked and even more so by the company I
            worked for. Unfortunately you fail to explain
            yourself in your other post [i.e. I don’t understand
            you] so I shall not respond to that.
            By the way, your condescending attitude is quite
            wasted on me!

          29. I apologise for sounding condescending.

            We pay an annual 0.3% management fee to the NEST provider and they also charge 1.8% of all contributions.

            Now I wonder how many tiny pension companies sprang up just before NEST’s introduction and how many are linked to Tory MPs.

            I pay I think 0.5% per year on my personal private pension.

          2. Nobody should want a National Health Service. A social health insurance scheme, perhaps. But it does cost.

      2. Could you afford your own education? If not, why would you expect anyone else to have payed for it?
        Can you afford your own maritime rescue service? If not, why would you expect anyone else to pay for it?
        Can you afford your own fire brigade? If not, why would you expect anyone else to pay for it?

        The list is endless – part of civilised life is that we all pay a little into the national pot so that we can all benefit from what it pays for even though we mostly do not need it.

        1. Yep. I agree with all that. All my family and me have paid over many years. Richardl Mod is Canadian. Now i am quite happy for members of the Commonwealth to benefit but i am sure as feck not prepared to pay for the tsanumi of incomers who have never contributed fuckall.

          5. Yes, in general, if you have not contributed in spite of having had the opportunity to do so, you should pay the full price for any health treatment. There are reciprocal health service facilities with a number of countries, of course, and I cannot speak highly enough of the treatment a close relative had in Trieste through the EHIC arrangement even though not a penny was paid into the Italian health service. There are probably some compassionate cases where free treatment should be provided but these should be very rare exceptions to the rule.

          6. It benefits society if a certain amount of wealth is re-distributed to education, healthcare etc, but when the redistribution goes over a certain level (which we exceeded long ago), there are no further benefits and a disadvantage to the society, as it attracts more takers than earners.

          7. Interesting, so tell us what the ‘certain level’ is.

            Again you talk about takers and earners without realising they are often one and the same. Taxes don’t pay for welfare even if the press and the government would love you to believe they do. You are told lies about why you are taxed. Lies that can be used to cause contention between groups of people. Divide and conquer.

            Giving money to the poor is economically one of the best things we can do in a consumption economy as they tend to spend that money locally. It isn’t invested abroad, or spent abroad during holidays. It isn’t sat in a Cayman Islands bank account, it’s circulating in our economy. You are saying we give them too much. Ten years of 1.5% average growth per year though says quite clearly otherwise when our average historic growth rate is between 3 and 3.5%

          8. There are whole books written about the optimum level of wealth distribution to do the best for society.
            Net contributors, net takers – it’s not a hard concept to understand.

          9. Then at what level does one become a net contributor?

            We’ve already worked out that healthcare costs 10k per year for a man and 11k per year for his wife ( based on a 40 year working life). Then there’s the kid’s education( about 6.5k per child per year). Then all the other services not provided by councils.

            What percentage of people contribute 30k per year or more? Not bloody many. Most people don’t even earn that as that level of tax is above the median wage.

            Yeah there are books on redistribution, but how many end up at exactly the same and right conclusion?

            No comment on 10 years of half speed growth caused by austerity with welfare claimants being hurt the most by that.

            We have reached a point now where inequality is so bad and capital so accumulated that we are calling 1.5% growth per year the new normal. Since the eighties the middle-classes have approximately halved with maybe 10% moving upwards and 90% moving downwards. Works really well this short-termist neoliberal economy doesn’t it?

      3. In 2004 a study looked into lifetime healthcare expenditure. The result was $316000 for the average person in 2000 dollars. The figure is higher for women and lower for men. Women live longer and have child births in their expenditure.

        Lets adjust that for inflation….

        That’s $480000 in 2020 dollars. Almost half a million dollars. Now let’s convert that into Sterling…

        That’s roughly £365000 lifetime healthcare spending.

        Roughly 5k per year for life.

        How much of your own treatment have you paid for? If your wife was dependent on you, her bill would add another 5.5k a year, and that’s every year not working years. If we are only looking at years where you had an income from working the figure would be 10k per year for you and 11k per year for your wife.

      1. Well Trump is bragging about his gazillion dollar purchase.

        How many million did the Pfizer chairman make by selling shares this week? No pressure on his subordinates to be first?

      2. Oh, dear, Jennifer SP – you, who said that drug firms paying doctors to prescribe drugs wasn’t possible..

        Will you now retract?

        2. Not on your life. She also seems to have a MOD in her pocket. Not that she or him will admit any type of failing. Hypocrites.

        3. I said that drug firms are not allowed to make direct payments to doctors in the UK. There is no UK example given there, there is no mention of the UK at all. We all know that things are done very differently (and not for the better, at least as far as medicine is concerned) in the US of A.

          There is nothing to retract – because there is nothing there which is relevant.

          1. Direct payments. Now there is a barn door for driving through. Conventions and training in far off lands come to mind.

            Our doctors office has lots of little notebooks and posters courtesy of drug companies. I hope that they don’t sell their soul for a pad of post-it notes.

          2. Doctors in this country get small stuff too although the last time I was in the surgery (earlier this year) there was nothing promotional on the desk at all – the notebook and post-it notes were plain (except for the trademark of a well known stationer). But actual payments to prescribe are strictly forbidden (as I pointed out here some time ago, hence the foundation-less attack above) and there is nothing in that film to suggest that there have been any such payments … in the UK.

            The only place I’ve seen any trade-marks at the medical centre recently has been looking in through the hatch at the dispensary – and you can hardly expect them to keep the drugs in plain boxes 😉

          3. I wonder if it matters in the long run. If US doctors receive big bribes to promote a specific medicine, would UK or Canadian doctors have any choice except to follow along with the noise coming out of the US?

            Doesn’t the UK have a drug advisory committee that decides which drugs to approve? Why try to influence individual GPs when you can charm the procurement people.

          4. US certainly has a lot of influence. But, on the other hand, US medicine pays more for drugs than any other country (divide and conquer perhaps).

            Yes we have NICE (The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) and I suspect that is one of the main reasons why individual GP practices don’t get so many freebies. NICE seem to be a fairly strong-willed group, but I’m sure they come under a lot of pressure. They do take a fair bit of convincing – and a lot of pressure for some of the really expensive stuff comes from patient groups.

            A recently retired GP friend used to say that there was a lot of heavy advertising aimed at them, and that medical conferences (which she seldom attended; having a growing family as well as being a partner in the practice) were the place to pick up goodies. She used to say that her senior partner was quite brazen about collecting gadgets but not committing himself to buy anything – and usually not buying at afterwards.

          6. GP’s in the U.K are given incentive funding for all sorts of treatments when the NHS wish to make it look as if they are doing something positive.

    3. Typical Republican idiots unfortunately.

      USA is sovereign in the dollar which free-floats and is a fiat currency and so US federal taxpayers don’t pay for services through taxation therefore no one in USA is paying for other people’s healthcare.

      You’ll hear screams of “but, but but, our taxes, we use them to pay for everything our government buys” but that’s just them showing they have no real understanding of how modern economies actually work. Tax revenues are not spent. Newly created electronic credit is what gets spent. Taxes create domestic demand for the dollar, and they alter behaviours, and they mute purchasing power so that the economy doesn’t overboom into an inflationary event.

      If the US didn’t charge taxes at all, it could still buy everything it does now. The set of trade-offs would be a little different.

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