Sunday 15 November: Voters are losing patience with this divided, out-of-touch Government

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/2020/11/15/letters-voters-losing-patience-divided-out-of-touch-government/

975 thoughts on “Sunday 15 November: Voters are losing patience with this divided, out-of-touch Government”

    1. Morning Bob, yes I pulled back the curtains to discover the 4 hour drought has been broken!

  3. On line we can see huge peaceful marches for Trump, but on the mainstream media nothing but a derogatory article about a stabbing and someone burning a Trump hat

    1. The whole of the MSM and this includes Ad’s, Drama and Documentaries have been taken over and are now Cultural Marxist propaganda. Like Orwell’s 1984 truth itself has been extinguished.

  4. People who spread fake news about vaccine should be prosecuted, majority believe. 15 November 2020

    The Government said its Counter Disinformation Unit has been working with online platforms to track and act on disinformation throughout the pandemic.

    Morning everyone. This is of course a worthy example of the Totalitarian State that the UK has now become. The suppression of the people’s views is a sine qua non of tyrannies from Hitler’s Germany to Stalin’s Russia. We see it here on this blog with the disruption of Disqus and the re-emergence of trolls. To counter this we must just keep on posting as long as we can. KBO!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/11/15/people-spread-fake-news-vaccine-should-prosecuted-majority-believe/

      1. Yes Bob, and certainly because people have been making comments disapproved of by the Government Disinformation unit.

        On the other hand you’ll be pleased to see on the BBC website there is a celebratory article that now Lee Cain and Cummings have gone the Reset can commence.

        1. Trump gone. Conservatives in Britain effectively gone. Brexit betrayed. All will be ready for Reset at the beginning of 2021.

      2. Yes I know Bob! It is one of those oddities that the more powerful and tyrannical the State becomes the less it can bear any criticism!

    2. Morning, Araminta.

      In view of the complete lack of any evidence provided by long term testing and the fact that the government has protected the big pharma companies from being sued if problems arise, then this has to be the sensible view. I’m not an anti-vaxxer but I’m not having whatever this particular vaccine contains pumped into my body.

      https://twitter.com/zoeharcombe/status/1327639949798207489

      1. The orgs that commission these polls expect to get the result they want. They are seldom disappointed.

    4. They must have asked the tut-tutting dog walker I passed yesterday.
      She was peering over the hedge at the school sports field and complained to me (she doesn’t know me!) that they weren’t social distancing.
      I grunted and moved swiftly on.

  5. It looks like all the problems in Number ten are being caused by people that haven’t been elected.

      1. They had the BBC Religion Show on R4 again this morning, with the BBC metropolitan belief, imposed on the churches, that their only remit is to address and deal with abuse. Never mind about enhancing one’s capacity to love and to be loved – that is beyond their ken, and soon beyond the ken of all parishes in the land, thanks to this relentless public information.

        I have not been back to church since I fell out with them over their over-zealous approach to “Safeguarding” (which is actually designed to lock kids in their bedrooms with their smartphones). That was in May 2018. They do not even allow congregations to mingle now, so there is no purpose any longer in it.

        At least I am used to living in solitude, so I cannot get any more mentally ill than I already am. It’s those who are used to being in a loving environment, who have had it taken from them by the lawmakers, that I feel sorry for.

        1. Good morning, Jeremy.

          I think I have the answer to why Churches
          are not allowed to be open for Services,
          they are going to be used as vaccination centres!

        2. What else can one expect when The Most Reverend Justin Portal, by Divine Providence Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of All England and Metropolitan, who has the effrontery to sign himself +Justin Cantuar, ignores his chapel and conducts his Easter sermon from his kitchen?

          He doesn’t know much about the fundamental purpose of his religion and turns a blind eye to the downward slope on which the CofE finds itself.

          I never watch the BBC but I suspect that it is all in favour of Welby’s hand-wringing liberalism!

          1. What were Cameron’s motives when he appointed Welby? Could he have really been aware of just how incompetent he would prove to be?

  6. ‘Morning, Peeps. Late on parade today, my bed was a far more attractive choice with the wevva as it is.

    This would seem to be the end of the debate about the Unknown Warrior:

    SIR – With regard to Joe Shute’s article, I cannot comment on the veracity of Tim Kendall’s grandfather’s story, but I can comment on that of my grandfather’s cousin, Brigadier General Louis John Wyatt.

    There are differences. The direct report from Wyatt states that, on the night of November 7 1920, the bodies of four unidentified soldiers were brought to the hut that served as the chapel of the town Saint-Pol-sur-Ternoise (location of British General headquarters), near Arras in the department of Pas-de-Calais. Each had come from one of the four battle areas over which British troops had fought during the Great War: the Aisne, the Somme, Arras and Ypres.

    At midnight, Wyatt and Lt Col E A S Gell (also from the directorate) entered the chapel. Wyatt picked out at random one of the bodies. He and Gell transferred the remains of the soldier into a pine coffin placed in front of the altar and screwed down the lid.

    It then started its journey to Westminster Abbey. Quite how the Rev George Kendall knew who the Unknown Warrior was is a mystery. Certainly Wyatt, as Director of Graves Registration and Enquiries, did not.

    Lt Col John Wyatt (retd)
    Cranbrook, Kent

  7. More letters about the goings of Cummings, and the ridiculous disarray in No10:

    SIR – On Thursday’s Today programme, Robert Jenrick, the Communities Secretary, suggested that the public was not interested in the recent machinations at 10 Downing Street. In doing so he showed just how out of touch some ministers are.

    The chaos that has emanated from the heart of Government since day one of the pandemic reflects a lack of effective leadership. In the fullness of time British voters will demonstrate just how interested they are – and the results will not be pretty.

    Catherine Castree
    Fetcham, Surrey

    SIR – I voted for a Conservative candidate in order to elect a Conservative government, on the basis of the party’s manifesto and its leader. I did not vote for Dominic Cummings, Lee Cain – or indeed Carrie Symonds.

    Several years earlier, the country – encouraged by Boris Johnson – voted to free itself from the commands of an unelected set of bureaucrats more interested in their own importance than those who pay for them. Let all the Spads and consultants eliminate each other in their internecine power struggles.

    Barry Hazelwood
    Deal, Kent

    SIR – The fall of Dominic Cummings seems to have been well received, and in fairness spin doctors are rarely likeable (Alastair Campbell being a prime example).

    For all his faults, Mr Cummings pressed for Brexit, Civil Service reform and investment in science and technology. He was right about all of those things.

    Mick Ferrie
    Mawnan Smith, Cornwall

    SIR – The Blob has won. That’s the end of our dreams of a new, dynamic, independent country.

    David Northcott
    York

    SIR – One of the things I have learnt during 70 years on this planet is that what goes around comes around. I fear that Boris Johnson is learning this, too.

    He got elected (as Conservative leader and prime minister) on the back of some dubious claims and some dubious people who think rules are for others, not themselves (Mr Cummings is one such).

    Unfortunately, you cannot fool all the people all the time. Many British voters are now realising that Mr Johnson is more concerned with himself than with providing good governance at a time of unprecedented threats. I say this with sadness as someone who has always supported the Conservative Party.

    Gordon Pugh
    Claygate, Surrey

    SIR – I note that a number of your correspondents have said they will never vote for the Conservative Party again.

    Perhaps they would like to tell us for whom they intend to vote in future.

    Andrew Browne
    Chinnor, Oxfordshire

    2. Well Mr Browne, if Screaming Lord Sutch or his successor is on the ballot paper then that might be a choice to ponder over. At least what you see is what you would get, you see an idiot and get an idiot, whereas with Johnson and his colleagues you tend to see a brighter future and get buffoons!

      1. 326410+ up ticks,
        Morning vvof,
        I beg to differ slightly, in my book
        buffoons reads as, well rehearsed orchestrated treachery artist’s.

    3. “I voted for a Conservative candidate in order to elect a Conservative
      government, on the basis of the party’s manifesto and its leader.” And what did you get, Barry? Has the manifesto been delivered? Is the government Conservative?

  8. I am off to the horsepiddle – back lunchtime, I hope. Have a jolly morning keeping out of the rain.

      1. Yes Paul, hospitals do work on Sundays, even in the UK.

        Some years ago now (well before this year’s upheavals) it was decided that complex machinery should not be left to sit idle for 2/7s of the week. A friend had an MRI scan on a Sunday afternoon about 6 years ago.

        Depending on the speciality and the numbers of staff available, some effort is being made to catch up on backlogs by holding clinics outside normal hours.

        I’ve no idea what Bill’s appointment is about (and it’s not my business) but it would seem that his local hospital is operating extended hours.

          1. A friend’s daughter is married to a chap who services complex hospital machinery – the length and breadth of Scotland (not that many hospitals after all) and he is of the opinion that it is actually better to use it than to let it stand around. Of course it has to be available at specified intervals for him to his stuff, but otherwise…. the more the better.

    1. 326410+ up ticks,
      Rik, a yesterday repeat if I may,

      326389+ up ticks,
      This campaign has been building for years awaiting a trigger
      and a suitable moment, the suitable moment came on the
      24/25 / 6 / 2016 with the gullible voicing “we have won leave it to the tory’s”

      The controlling trigger was tailored made, inclusive of minor fear elements when added together making for a major fear,
      ie, chinks, bats, etc,etc.
      There is no doubt that, if the governance party’s put it out that treading on pavement lines gave you covis so stay indoors they would be believed.

      https://twitter.com/GerardBattenUK/status/1327588637710692352

    2. What causes in equality? Big government.
      What causes poverty? High taxes, government policy – spending, waste and inefficiency.
      What solves these issues? Rampant, unrestrained market capitalism. I.e, the exact, precise polar opposite of your agenda.

      What causes climate change? The sun. Spend your efforts putting that out. Preferrably from inside it.

    4. He is so fake, how could people be taken in by that, and keep re-electing him?
      Mind you, in the light of the recent US elections, one wonders whether there were any dry runs for the cheating….

      2. There wasn’t much opposition for Saint Jacinda, in NZ, either. People seem to enjoy living in a prison island.

  10. ,326410+ up ticks.

    breitbart,
    Greek Government Admits Losing Track of over 32,000 Illegal Migrants,

    Back of the settee stuff, the UK have that many plus walking the streets, and being topped up daily via Dover,
    just one of the entry points.

    1. Waiting to hear the reply to that one! She mustn’t forget to tell them to throw away their cars and start saving up to lease an electric vehicle.

  12. On a brighter note Film 4 has a Connery season this afternoon
    Time Bandits
    Robin and Marion
    The Man Who Would Be King
    Given the biblical weather outside I may be snuggling with a duvet and an early glass

  13. Something to relieve the gloom…

    1. When one door closes and another door opens, you are probably in prison.
    2. To me, “drink responsibly” means don’t spill it.
    3. Age 60 might be the new 40, but 9:00 pm is the new midnight.
    4. It’s the start of a brand new day, and I’m off like a herd of turtles.
    5. The older I get, the earlier it gets late.
    6. When I say, “The other day,” I could be referring to any time between yesterday and 15 years ago.
    7. I remember being able to get up without making sound effects.
    8. I had my patience tested. I’m negative.
    9. Remember, if you lose a sock in the dryer, it comes back as a Tupperware lid that doesn’t fit any of your containers.
    10. If you’re sitting in public and a stranger takes the seat next to you, just stare straight ahead and say, “Did you bring the money?”
    11. When you ask me what I am doing today, and I say “nothing,” it does not mean I am free. It means I am doing nothing.
    12. I finally got eight hours of sleep. It took me three days, but whatever.
    13. I run like the winded.
    14. I hate when a couple argues in public, and I missed the beginning and don’t know whose side I’m on.
    15. When someone asks what I did over the weekend, I squint and ask, “Why, what did you hear?”
    16. When you do squats, are your knees supposed to sound like a goat chewing on an aluminum can stuffed with celery?
    17. I don’t mean to interrupt people. I just randomly remember things and get really excited.
    18. When I ask for directions, please don’t use words like “east.”
    19. Don’t bother walking a mile in my shoes. That would be boring. Spend 30 seconds in my head. That’ll freak you right out.
    20. Sometimes, someone unexpected comes into your life out of nowhere, makes your heart race, and changes you forever. We call those people cops.
    21. My luck is like a bald guy who just won a comb.
    Which one is YOUR favorite?

        1. Absolutely not! I have a cupboard full of not-fitting lids and containers! If I find a single sock I throw it out – then find the other one! Doesn’t everyone?

    9. I identify most with no. 12, I really like no. 10 and no. 19 represents me to a T(ee).

      Thanks for that Peddy, it is doom and totalitarian gloom on all the blog sites this morning. It matches the weather.

    11. Morning Peddy

      6, 17, 20

      No 20 in particular , during 1st lockdown , took the dogs out in the car to a remote spot about 3 miles away for good walkies , because I had got fed up with walking the dogs on tarmac/ concrete around the village .. and the diddah of a siren stopped me in my tracks , a cop car had appeared from nowhere, pulled me up on the hill at Lulworth and asked me what I was doing out in the car.. He wasn’t a local cop, He didn’t fine me, but gave me a good bollocking… Strange that because a month or so later the roads were crammed with cars from Leicester and Derby , Asians doing their Durdle Door Bollywood thing .. and littering the place with rubbish.

      “Sometimes, someone unexpected comes into your life out of nowhere, makes your heart race, and changes you forever. We call those people cops”

      2. What do they *think* you’re doing? Bloody idiots. Why have they not common sense? What next? Razor wire around the place?

      3. ‘I don’t mean to interrupt people. I just randomly remember things and get really excited.’
        That’s me.

      4. Bastards – I remember you telling us of that incident.
        It’s like they always pick on white-haired old women at the airport for a pat-down and bag search.

    1. Oh that’s sad. At 88, after a fall. Hate to be an old cynic but I expect Covid will be on the death certificate.

      1. That’s exactly what i said as soon as i heard the news.
        He was about to leave hospital after recovering from his pervious fall.

  17. Good morning, all. A wet start to the day – supposed to be sunny this afternoon.

    Have to go to hospital for a “clinic” this morning, When I rang them, they didn’t know why the appointment had been made – but that I ought to turn up! So I will.

    1. Morning Bill -are you sure it’s not your 2 little ginger companions that have to see the Vet.?

      2. You’re not referring to the male abusers in the Sussex family, who are due for neutralisation, if they haven’t been already?

  19. Just watched the live Touring Car race from Brands Hatch in Kent. Sunny day there now. Should be ok for plenty of dinghies to leave Calais.

        1. Good Afternoon Ndovu. if you ignore his politics, Lewis is in a class of his own in F1. He started 6th today and managed to finish 1st in wet conditions on heavily worn tyres. The second driver was more than 30 seconds behind him. A fantastic drive on a memorable day.

          1. It is actually rather sad that, for all his skills, he has contrived to make himself almost universally unpopular. It would be much more pleasing to be able to applaud him.

            It’s not just his politics, it’s his whole attitude to life and other people. I find myself growling at his assertions that his dog is healthier and happier as a vegan – for example.

          3. “managed to finish 1st in wet conditions on heavily worn tyres.” I thought there was lots of money in F1, could at least fit new ones.

        1. I think most of the F1 drivers , if given Lewis’s car, would get pretty close to his performance

  20. “Ticketmaster says it will force people to prove they’re vaccinated for COVID before selling them concert tickets in the future”.

    From a newsletter – does anyone know whether this is true?

    Or is it just a product of the Nudge Unit?

    1. Ticketmaster say that they won’t be forcing anyone to have a vaccination. I think that all such rumours should be taken with at least a bucketful of salt for the foreseeable future – at least from commercial organisations.

    2. It’s part of the campaign against the so called anti-vaxxers Janet. it doesn’t matter whether it is true or not!

    4. How would they do this? An upload of a vaccination certificate? Will such a document be issued? Sounds like an opportunity for Forgeries’R’Us.

      1. One suggestion is a digital certificate loaded as an app on mobile phones. Not everyone, including me, has a smart phone. So what then? BT’s Mr Rashid will make a killing: money wise I should add.😎

      3. 325410+ up ticks,
        Morning A,
        Running through my mind yesterday, certs. can be obtained
        via Nigeria return of post.

    5. Morning, JanetjH.

      This ‘news’ appeared a few days ago and the response on Twitter was, let’s say, not supportive of TM’s alleged stance. The following day I read that TM had not decided on any action at the moment. It would seem that only the opinion of the masses is going to stop this nonsense in its tracks.

      My opinion, for what it’s worth, is that the government are frightened of the political fall-out that will follow a declaration of mandatory vaccination and are therefore prompting companies to act as their proxies in this dirty work.

    1. If there were a new virus pandemic next year, transmitted by aerosol or contact, so virulent that everyone who was exposed to it died within three days, with no cure but a vaccine were available, would you expect everyone to have it?

      1. 326410+ up ticks,
        Morning Siadc,
        The way you have posed the question you leave no option but to give the benefit of the doubt & reluctantly agree to it.
        But,
        Seeing as the ovis are hell bent on continuing to return to power the same self interest,
        dangerously inept, deceitful, lying, treacherous political blaggards ( male/ females/ it’s) ever to dis grace the floor of the HOC to power, anything goes.

        Any of these cretins had better be prepared to take bodily substance via a straw if he/she/it approaches me with a needle.

  22. Imagine a society divided into a ruling class and an underclass. The TV adverts would be aimed at the ruling class and would feature members of the ruling class enjoying the benefits of the products. That would be logical and in line with marketing principles.
    So why do our TV adverts feature so many non-whites?

      1. Because it is well known that humans are hard coded to prefer being around people who look like them. The whole multi-culti thing goes against people’s deepest instincts.
        Stop trying to shame people for it.

          1. Good question. Off the top of my head, I can think of a couple of factors. Sexual attraction, which usually doesn’t last, is one. Another is the theory that throughout history, when one tribe conquered another, the men were killed and the women were enslaved or married by the victorious tribe – so women have evolved to be more likely to be attracted to men who come from another region or culture as a survival mechanism. Also of course, this would help to keep the gene pool healthy.

            An internet search turned up this 2008 study (half way down the page): https://scienceleadership.org/blog/same_race_vs._mixed_race_relationships

            “The comparisons across different marriages showed that interracial couples have higher rates of divorce. Furthermore, these statistics showed that white/black marriages are twice as likely to divorce compared to white/white couples and white/asian marriages are 59% more likely to divorce compared to white/white marriages. The core reason for this stems from people’s contentedness of being with the same race and the inability to develop the needed when involved in an interracial relationship which makes it difficult for an interracial couple to last.”

            That would tend to support the sexual attraction theory.

      2. Well, it never used to. I suppose years of being harangued by the press, the media and TV and any number of nobodies with no qualifications other than that their skin was a different colour to mine has made me a bit disgruntled.
        By the way you should not be making personal remarks on here, should you?

      3. Skin colour doesn’t bother me at all – but the constant harping about “diversity” is a big turn off.

          5. Most maybe, but crucially there’s plenty which is about migrants generally, especially Muslims.

          6. What has Islam to do with skin colour?
            Islam is an extremely bad set of ideas that some people choose to believe in.

          8. There was plenty of Christian coercion in previous times. Now that there is rather less there are, noticeably, far fewer Christians. Yet no one has suggest that Christianity (with all its flaws and centuries of brutality) is not a religion. Most religions have an element of brainwashing and most have an even greater element of coercion – it’s a bit of a trademark.

          9. Not really the same thing. Muslims are doing it on a daily basis, today and every day. A Stone Age cult who have acheived absolutely zero apart from terror and murder. They do no good in the world.

          11. I’d put islam at 7thC and Christianity wasn’t terrorising, murdering and beheading in 1970 let alone 1870.

          14. It’s exactly the same thing as was done by our Christian forefathers. Women who didn’t comply with every shibboleth were scorned, cast out etc. Heretics were burned, etc. etc. Plenty of terror and murder around and long after both the stone age and the advent of Islam.

          15. But it’s not happening today! Christianity and most of humanity moved on – muslims didn’t.

          16. Yet Roe v. Wade is under threat from the Christian right in America, right now, because a scrap of cellular material matters more than the woman carrying it. Christians are prosecuting women who have miscarriages in South America. And those are just two examples which can be brought to mind in 30 seconds. It is happening today.

          17. These examples are not the equivalent of the maltreatment of women in Islamic societies. Indeed, the first isn’t an example as it hasn’t happened yet.

          18. Jennifer, are they blowing people up, beheading them in the streets, mutilating little girls, beating their women, burning pilots in cages, throwing gays off buildings, threatening death to anyone who mocks their paedophile “prophet”.? No, they are not and the two cannot even bear comparison.

          19. I’m as aware of what happens in the world as you are. In fact I’m clearly more aware… if you think that the examples I gave you are a) the only ones and b) will be where it ends. Think about what supposedly Christian majority countries like Uganda are doing to gays. There’s a whole lot of Christian evil going on out there. Plenty of comparison and to ignore it is to be both smug and dangerous.

          20. Wow! What a pompous, self-satisfied remark! I shall now remove my smug and dangerous self from this thread.

          21. Islam is a focal point for people’s grievances and fears, a bugbear. As you say, we are generally happy to receive treatment from immigrant clinicians.

          22. Muslims have invited hostility due to their silence or ambivalence towards members of their religion who commit terrorist acts.

      4. Why does skin colour bother you so much?

        There you go again with the insipid liberal terminology. Its race that’s the issue, not ‘skin colour’. You’re wheeling out a straw man. Again!

        If it didn’t matter then you would presumably have no objection to everyone on TV being white. Your bleating about Horace’s comment betrays the fact that such things do matter.

        It certainly matters to the people who cast, direct and produce such TV adverts. If it matters to them, it should matter to the rest of us.

  23. I’ve just watched the John Lewis Christmas advert. Nice that they included an NHS worker in the scene on the bus.

    2. Virtue-signalling out of desperation for sales. I forsee many more JL shops closing in the New Year. All down to the lovely Ms White’s ‘leadership’.

    3. A supermarket worker is far more important to the vast majority who do not need NHS treatment. And so we could go on.

    1. I actually find that cartoon rather sad.
      Yes, yes … I know; I’m a hypocritical softie meat eater.

  25. London gym owner fined £67,000 for refusing to close during lockdown. 15 November 2020.

    He said he would not decide when to reopen the gym until the resolution of the court hearing next week. The national lockdown restrictions in England, which came into force on 5 November, mean that gyms must close under law.

    Michli said police arrived at his gym on Wednesday evening and stopped gym-goers entering.

    “The police were manned outside the gates and they were rotating shifts every two hours. A few people managed to climb over walls and shift through little gaps to get in, but it was pretty much empty,” he said. “It was a bit of a pointless thing to do keeping the gym open while it was basically empty.”

    Well this guy did his best we have to give him that! When one thinks that this is a police force that no longer investigates burglaries etc, you have to smile at their ability to produce round the clock surveillance of a gym.

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/nov/14/london-gym-owner-fined-67000-for-refusing-to-close-during-lockdown

  26. 326410+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,

    “Voters are losing patience with this divided, out-of-touch Government”

    That’s a George Raft if ever there was,again,again,& again
    should in ALL honesty be added.

    There was a party formed 28 years ago that led the way in seeing what was coming and tried in a patriotic manner to steer a course beneficial to these Isles.

    Made up in the main by amateurs, not high polished political
    treachery merchants, there lay the difference.

    They were out of step with many of the ovis by opposing the
    lab/lib/con comfort zone supporter / member / voter.

    The party’s worth was proved by designing & triggering the referendum only to have an exit victory 4 years plus in danger of being turned into a submissive semi eu return.

    The lab/lib/con in turn proved their worthlessness & treachery post referendum, standing down the ONLY pro UK party under a blitzkrieg of castigation to return to the comfort zone of the lab/lib/con pro eu coalition party.

    The treacherous political rot began to be revealed from 1990 ongoing fed & nurtured via the ballot booth.

  28. Today’s Sun Tel leader…in my view not sufficiently critical of the shambles in No 10 (with apologies in advance for posting something that mentions the Blair creature):

    Dominic Cummings, who walked out of Downing Street last Friday, is one of the most important and substantial figures in post-1997 centre-Right politics. He understood long before others the changing nature of British society, and how to reinvent politics for a Blairite era. Before much of the country had even heard of him, he had helped keep Britain out of the euro and defeated the attempt to create a pointless north‑east assembly. As Michael Gove’s special adviser he pulled off the biggest educational reform for decades – academies, loathed by the Left, which have given thousands of poorer children a better chance in life – and as head of Vote Leave, he masterminded the “take back control” strategy that won the referendum.

    It was only the partnership of Boris Johnson and Mr Cummings that squeezed Brexit through Parliament, breaking every wretched consensus designed to make change impossible in this country, until Labour agreed to an election that was practically a death sentence. It proved historic: the Tories even won Tony Blair’s old seat of Sedgefield. Very few elected politicians ever achieve this much. But in the end his attempts at integrating his Vote Leave praetorian guard into the machinery of government failed, overwhelmed by Covid, lack of bandwidth, various errors and personality clashes in No 10. The fact that his tragic departure is being cheered by so many Remainers, social-democrat Tories, careerists, woke activists and of course Labour should give his jubilant enemies in the Tory party pause for thought.

    So what next for the Tories, and for Boris Johnson? It is a shame that Cummings is leaving, but this is an opportunity for Mr Johnson to reboot his government and bounce back from the pandemic. He must appoint a strong team as soon as possible, and make the best of the fact that a vaccine is on the horizon. He needs to showcase his personality again. He needs to double down on the entirety of his agenda of the past 18 months, not just the easy stuff (spending more on the NHS) but also on the disruptive elements, too: cracking down on crime, human rights and immigration reform, and the rest.

    It must not mean caving in to the woke crowd or elevating the green agenda as his primary mission: this would make the Government almost indistinguishable from Labour, and would misread the 2019 election completely. The promise to “take back control” applies to escaping the cloying embrace of the British liberal-Left as well as the Eurocrats. Crucially, there needs to be a clearer, pro-growth economic policy inspired by supply-side economics. The country is spending too much and cuts are needed in many (but not all) areas.

    Mr Johnson knows that Brexit will only work if it is accompanied by a dramatic change in the way we do business. An example is the new proposal to transform the Supreme Court – an excellent idea, still on track despite Mr Cummings’ exit – reducing the number of permanent judges, bringing in specialists and changing the body’s grandiose name. Created by New Labour, it has metastasised into a constitutional court, which was almost certainly the point: the Left, sick of being beaten at the ballot box, wanted to advance its agenda with judicial activism backed up by spurious human rights legislation (itself imported from Europe).

    The Tories cannot do what they want to do, or even survive in government, unless they are willing to reform broken bodies and take on vested interests. They might not want a culture war – but unless they fight one, they’ll find themselves conquered and occupied by the Left. The good news is that Mr Johnson, even shorn of Mr Cummings, knows this perfectly well. He must reassert his own control and roll out a radical, reformist, yet conservative agenda.

    2. Good editorial, but it leaves out the Carrie effect. Now, this may have been exaggerated by the likes of the Daily Mail, but Boris is still way too much in the pockets of globalists and greens, and his girlfriend is still being paid by a Soros organisation.

      1. Carrieolis Effect; it is swirling the Conservative down the drain.

        I’m definitely joining the Thomas Cromwell fan club.

        2. I feel a lot more needs to be made of the fact that Carrie is working for a Soros/Clinton organisation.

    1. I would query the F&M 200.
      Thanks to Ferguson’s predictions and “solution” over 6 million animals were slaughtered.

      1. Latimer Alder’s list is certainly not anywhere near correct for FMD. The cull initially was dealt with according to long adopted protocols but lack of preparation brought matters to a halt as LAs prohibited on farm burial of carcases and burning on farms was stopped. Suitable lorries were not available to take carcases to disposal sites. In the North West animals were left alive to spread the disease in the wind to neighbouring farms. The usual procedure was to slaughter without undue delay. The disease was out of control before the field vets got to grips with it. Towards the end of the outbreak an unusual decision was taken to cull sheep within an area around the affected farms. The farm minister at the time had a haulage firm and he eventually provided secure lorries to remove the carcases.

        1. As I undertand it, the protocols were all about allowing meat sales worldwide. The UK industry made the decision not to vaccinate but to kill.

          2. As far as vaccination vs slaughter was concerned, I very much doubt that the government acted without considerable input from the industry.

          3. They acted with almost no reference to industry at all. From the beginning of the outbreak through to the end of it.

          4. Morning sos – the protocols were intended to kill off the virus. F&M was not a killer except in very young animals but it seriously affected cloven hoofed livestock productivity. Had we vaccinated our meat would not be accepted by many other countries. There are several varieties of the F&M virus which would mean keeping large stocks of vaccines in store if we went down the vaccine course.. They would need to be replaced regularly at large cost. Apart from a small controllable outbreak close to the World F&M centre in Pirbright we are coming up to 20 years of freedom from FMD. [touch wood]

          5. Long may it stay that way.

            Now read your piece and think Covid-19, but very old animals.
            My view is that similar will apply for us.

        2. Here in Montgomeryshire the LA didn’t ban burial – but the only thing you could dig around here in March 2001 was a lake. It was one of the wettest late winters in a pretty wet area. Two thousand sheep were culled and buried locally in early March – six weeks later as the river resurrected them a mobile incinerator had to be brought in to deal with the stinking remains. Burning was never stopped here – it carried on all the way through. The only movement of carcases in Wales was to amalgamate the carcases from two (or very occasionally three) small farms in one pyre.

          The contiguous cull was started in very late March / very early April and was in full swing by mid April. It did not only apply to sheep but to all livestock, including dairy herds which were still in winter housing.

          The disease was not “out of control” here, or in most areas, and there was no need for the contiguous at all.

      2. I can’t find the figures now but at the time it was being said that had only infected herds and flocks been slaughtered (and there is a good reason for doing that – because once they are infected it’s too late to vaccinate) the death toll would have been around 15 – 18% of that total.

        I remember tracking the farms being culled at the time and raging over the losses.

        1. I have a similar memory but mine was reading that it would have been less than 10% and probably concluded well after the event.

          People, like you “on the ground” would have been better placed to tell.

          What I found was crass beyond belief was killing flocks that were almost totally isolated on a “just in case” basis. Herdwicks rings a bell, but I’m not sure.

          1. There were some arguments about the figures and some, small number, of the flocks which were listed for contiguous culling were found to have the disease when the culling happened.

            There were a lot of young vets, and an enormous number of hastily imported vets, who had never seen the disease. A local farmer contacted the Ministry to say he had it in his sheep flock – the Spanish vet who turned up spoke no English and simple shook his head, said “No” and went away. Two days later the local vet confirmed the case and the farm was culled.

            With such a “heap of dead animals” – and oh, the stink of those fires; mutton roasting in a blanket of wet wool has a particularly unpleasant smell – it was difficult to get at figures but the reckoning afterwards was that roughly one farm in every six culled was actually infected. We had about a month of culling infected flocks and herds only before the contiguous was introduced. Because the law only applied to infected animals the contiguous cull could be refused… but if the herd/flock was subsequently infected there would be no compensation paid. Who can afford to lose their capital investment like that? A few farmers, who had the resources (mainly the ones who didn’t farm for a living) held out; but the majority couldn’t afford to take the risk. Much talk was made of farmers being “made millionaires” by the outbreak. But those farmers were trading, in almost all cases, a lifetime of investment in prime breeding stock for cash in the bank – they would, to a man, rather have kept the stock… they were already millionaires anyway – just on the balance sheet, not in the bank.

          2. It is a mutation which has been found in people – and passed on from person to person (if it only passed from mink to people it wouldn’t be a significant problem). Not much more solid information is available… it’s even newer, after all, than ordinary SARS-CoV-2.

          3. I would hope so, although we do know that viruses can be spread from animals to humans. Personally I was surprised to find out the Danes farm Mink, but that’s another debate.

          4. Apparently it is a mutation which may or may not be worse or more contagious than the original. An awful lot of whataboutery!

          6. It’s a cull of a large number of animals based on some of them having a virus. Do you regard the Danish decision as ‘dodgy’?

          7. It’s also based on untested “science” for a not particularly dangerous disease, which may or may not be worse than the original strain. It also has no legal basis.

          8. The seriousness of the disease depends on how you measure it. It’s true that only a tiny % will die from it, but it’s rather infectious, so if that tiny % is applied to say half the population, the absolute number of deaths is serious.

    2. Brid Flu (?) could have been a lot worse, and we need a proof reader for these memes (if that’s what they’re called).

    4. Oh come on Rik, there is a distinct downwards trend in the last three results! Fergusson’s accuracy is improving. Why, by 2050, he’ll be somewhere close to being accurate!

    5. 200 what died of Foot and Mouth?
      I’m not aware that F&M affects human beings. But I’d be the first to admit I’m no expert!

      1. Not unless you’ve got cloven hooves Anne 😉

        Even animals don’t always die of it, though young lambs drop like flies. It does, on the other hand, have a serious effect on productivity – and farm animals are not kept as pets.

      2. One ghastly aspect of F&M, as I undertstood it, was that the culling was done so that UK herds would not be “polluted” by using a vaccine, which would have made them less sellable on world food markets, because it was difficult to tell vaccinated from real cases.
        Sound familiar?

        1. One ghastly aspect? The whole b****y thing was a complete disaster. Absolutely no one took charge, lives were ruined and cruelty abounded. It was a whitewash which was then swept under the carpet, and quietly forgotten. Disgusting at every level.

          1. It was. And please do not think I am underestimating the devastation.

            But on this particular aspect I was referring to a vaccine that gave test results that would be indistinguishable from having the disease or being vaccinated (immune) against it.

            We are seeing similar with Covid testing, false positives, false negattives, and a proposal that mass vaccination should occur with little or no discernable outcome.

          3. For all the claims and doubts, I think the pharmaceutical companies and the universities have made a lot of progress.

            Where I remain very uncomfortable and sceptical is in the way it is being rushed into production and administering the vaccines to specific groups, where we have no idea what the longer or medium term side-effects might be.

            The thought that it is being proposed in some quarters to give it to front line health care workers first, the very people we will need most if there turns out to be a major problem is, in my view, madness.

          4. Not forgotten Sue. Not hereabouts anyway. Montgomeryshire was very badly hit by the disease – and then hit again by the contiguous cull.

          5. I know Jennifer. Not by those so terribly affected, physically, emotionally and financially. But those who were supposed to take the lead, dithered so long that the effect was disastrous and were never held accountable. A spectacular failure all round.

        2. It was impossible to tell vaccinated animals from diseased ones. Which then impacts not so much on food sales as on sales of high quality breeding stock – which the UK still produces.

          The decision was taken at government level and farmers were not given an option. I think that most farmers would have chosen the vaccine. I know that I would have done. Having been in the very middle of one of the badly hit areas I have some pretty horrendous memories.

          However this article might offer some hope for the future.

          https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23327-vaccine-promises-to-cull-foot-and-mouth-slaughter/

    6. I disagree with lockdowns and much of the government’s response to Covid, but surely you can see the flaw in comparing a prediction of 510k deaths based on a ‘no response’ scenario, with the actual number of deaths (so far) after attempts to stop the spread of the virus?

      1. Given the Swedish experience I think it is perfectly fair to make a comparison.

        Ferguson is totally discredited but has the great advantage, in any argument over the matter, in being able to state, without genuine proof, “Ah but if you hadn’t done it (xyz)….”

        When this first appeared you were on the forum pushing his agenda, here you are again, trying to defend the indefensible.

        1. Sweden didn’t ‘do nothing’. You seem to be under the impression they took no action. That’s simply wrong. Sweden did what the UK was originally doing and went for a ‘mitigation’ rather than ‘suppression’ strategy exactly as modelled in Ferguson’s earlier work, which consists of asking people to work from home and avoid large gatherings. You are totally misunderstanding what Sweden did if you think it proves Ferguson was widely out.

          1. I’m not suggesting the Swedes did nothing.

            I seem to recall that Ferguson was suggesting at the time that Sweden’s approach was wrong and that they would see far far more deaths than actually happened. I also recall that one of the reasons that the Swedes started off badly and that they admit themselves, was that they didn’t take enough care over care homes.

            At no point, as far as I am aware, did Ferguson even suggest that the deaths would be so heavily skewed to the old and already extremely vulnerable. It was ALL Covid as far as his models were concerned and it would be relatively across the board. Neither was true.

            I also seem to recall suggesting to you that there was a significant effect due to years of under-average deaths, which you refused to accept and which has since been accepted by numerous other sources.

            And why hasn’t Ferguson’s so-called model yet been relaesed for peer-review?

          2. Whether you are suggesting that or not is not really the point. The point is that claiming Ferguson’s model was nonsense because 510,000 people haven’t died is nonsense.

          3. It was nonsense.

            Everything we have seen points to the 510,000 for Britain figure being wrong.

            Why are you so keen to defend the charlatan, did he teach you at university?

          4. That is largely what we could and should have done.

            Now we’ve got the state controlling what people can buy in a shop.

          5. I agree, although that’s missing my point, which is that no country has ‘done nothing’, yet Ferguson’s forecast of 510,000 deaths was based on doing nothing.

    7. But aren’t they predictions of if actions aren’t taken? Action was taken that prevented the outcome.

      1. Yes, but you’re spoiling the narrative. Why not one country in the world has adopted a ‘do nothing’ approach to Covid, is never explained by the conspiracy theorists.

      2. Did it really? If so why didn’t Sweden get anywhere near the levels of deaths he was suggesting?

    1. Don worry, it will be all right this time. Well maybe, there again maybe not.

      Can you imagine world governments reaction if the much touted vaccines fail?

      2. It’s going to happen. They will tell us it wasn’t successful because the virus mutated, and we need another vaccine for next year. This is going to be a money spinner for a long, long time.

    2. And I wonder why the big Pharma companies are so keen to be indemnified against public liability.

  31. Well, well, well…the NT brought in a history professor (https://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/english/people/corinnefowler) said to be an expert in colonial matters, who has now penned an article in the BBC History magazine. The result is entirely predictable! You would think that the NT’s (alleged) shortage of funds, and the ongoing row about the hijacking of a once admired and respected organisation, might have been enough to dissuade them from throwing more fuel on the fire, but not a bit of it:

    Exotic wood, Chinese wallpaper and ivory carvings at Britain’s stately homes are symbols of slavery and should be labelled as such, a leading historian drafted in to examine the National Trust’s history has said.

    Professor Corinne Fowler, who has been called in to document the charity’s association with colonialism, says that it is a controversial topic because history has “been repressed.”

    The Black Lives Matter movement has accelerated the Trust’s plans to be more transparent about its links to the past, which Prof Fowler says “is ethically and historically just, but not universally welcomed.”

    Writing in the BBC History magazine, the Leicester University professor said, citing a 2019 survey, that there is a common assertion nowadays that “history is being rewritten”.

    “There is irrefutable evidence that country houses have significant connections to people and places all over the world,” she said.

    “Visitors can’t fail to notice the global character of country houses – it’s there in the exotic woods, Chinese wallpapers and ivory carvings that fill their collections.

    “What is less obvious is the stories of East India Company trading, colonial administration or enslavement that underpin them. For this reason, curators will need to provide clear evidence of the colonial connection to combat claims that they are making it all up.

    “Talking about colonialism in country houses generates controversy precisely because the history is repressed.”

    Prof Fowler was drafted in by the 125-year-old trust to document Britain’s “colonial countryside”, and said she believes it is a major shift in mission, where visitors will be shown more than the pastoral “veneer” which the public has “fallen for”.

    She told The Telegraph in June that following the fall of Edward Colston’s likeness, the National Trust will address links between bucolic stately homes and slavery, seeking to make their legacies relevant to more diverse communities.

    “I think it can be a watershed moment,” she said. “The important thing is to tell the stories which are central and relevant to understanding these historic houses. If that makes it uncomfortable, then so be it. It’s not all about cream tea.”

    Now, Prof Fowler has taken aim at the national curriculum and how colonial history is, or is not, being taught.

    “A 2018 survey by the Royal Historical Society found that depressingly little global history is being taught,” she wrote.

    “The survey also found that students from black and minority ethnic backgrounds are under-represented in university history courses.

    “The British empire’s fleeting appearance in the history curriculum does not do justice to the extent to which colonialism shaped the economic and political fortunes of millions of people worldwide – and changed the face of modern Britain. It has been hard for people schooled in this system to think beyond country houses’ local significance.”

    A spokesman for the National Trust told the Telegraph that it “looks after places and collections that reflect global history, including the legacies of colonial times and historic slavery.

    “Where relevant we are working to ensure the interpretation of our objects reflect and acknowledge this and add to our understanding of how they came to be,” he added.

    The Charity Commission has already contacted the charity about the publication of a controversial 115-page report in September into the links between its properties and slavery and colonialism, which included references to Winston Churchill’s home at Chartwell.

    Last week, ministers told Parliament that the Trust’s review was “unfortunate” and caused offence.

    Nigel Huddleston, the Heritage minister, said: “I accept the trust did not intend to cause offence but we must acknowledge that for many it did cause offence – the Trust must accept and learn from this.”

    Mr Huddleston also urged the Trust to focus on “its core functions to curate, and preserve historic houses, gardens and landscapes for everyone to enjoy”.

    Members vented their fury at the charity’s board at its annual general meeting last weekend, accusing of pursuing a “woke agenda” and “a witch hunt into the lives of past property owners”.

    1. History is continuously being ‘rewritten’, that is quite literally part of the job of history academics. You may not agree with the spin this particular professor puts on history and I certainly don’t, but nor should we ignore the stories of how former owners of some NT properties made their money. What they did was of its time, but regardless of whether they exploited the local peasantry, miners, slaves, child workers or foreigners generally, the history should be told.

      1. Tell the history by all means but don’t tear down or hide away the statues, artefacts and monuments involved.

        Nor attempt to use the history to justify actions against modern entities and people to try to obtain something you have not earned, be it money, respect or advantage. Unless of course you are prepared to forego all the inventions and benefits that the earlier “oppressors” created.

        1. I completely agree. To my knowledge the NT is not considering hiding artefacts away let alone pulling anything down; both actions I deplore.

          1. I understood that certain artefacts within properties were were being placed in different locations and woke artefacts and explanations given greater prominence.

          2. NT properties, like museums, tend to rotate artefacts periodically so that they are all given a “turn” at being on view. I suspect that rather a lot is being made of this at the moment but that, in fact, the changes won’t be terribly noticeable. The provision of more information can never be a bad thing (provided that it is information and not speculation).

          3. Generallly that is true, but it is not normal for what were “principal” pieces to be moved or replaced.

          4. I have no particulars for what has, or has not, been moved. As far as I’m aware nothing has been removed.

    2. “A 2018 survey by the Royal Historical Society found that depressingly little global history is being taught,” she wrote.

      So what? Welsh history isnt taught in England, Danish history isn’t, I dare say, taught in China.

      Oh and history isnt ‘ being repressed’. It might not have been studied by every body in the country, but that doesn’t mean it has been repressed.

      1. It would be good to see a little more global history being taught, if only because global travel is so much easier and it might make for better understanding in travellers. I was taught quite a bit of European history and a tiny bit of North American history and would have liked to learn more. I would suggest that, could the necessary teaching staff be found, global history would be a good curriculum option… just as various languages are options.

      2. The problem is history isn’t taught as it is. It’s taught with a specific angle in mind. To teach history as it is requires looking at a series of unpleasant events that makes everyone look bad.

        There are many success stories but even the great characters like John Bright could – and, if the state were allowed to – present the employees as low paid, oppressed slaves forced to be educated against their will.

    3. Interestingly, reading that solidified for me the problem with wokeness: the basic assumption that, as opposed to the glorious few, the rest of us have “fallen for” a simplified narrative, that it is “hard” for us to “think beyond” the local. They chivvy us to “educate yourself “, not realising that this will piss almost everyone off (it either feels like a sneer at lack of education, or a blithe assumption that we have not learned anything of a changing world since completing formal education).

      I have NO objection to the histories of artifacts and buildings being added to over the years. Although I recall many interesting tales of ancestral baddies over the years of NT visits, I’m sure that quite a lot was tactfully sugar-coated.

      Alarm bells do ring, though, at the idea that the main thing is to “tell the stories” of the NT’s estate. It should rather be primarily to preserve the fabric of that estate and allow people to imagine the experience of different times and circumstances. As a storyteller myself, I am aware of how much difference words make; a small omission can colour an entire viewpoint. The aim should surely be to present the facts in as neutral a voice as possible. When those who want to tell the stories are increasingly those who think the rest of us “need educating”, there’s bound to be friction.

      1. There are maybe a fair number who simply don’t care about it any more than they care about Anne Boleyn, or the Huguenots, or the Beaker people.

    4. Slavery was a trivial thing as far as our history is concerned, here in the UK. Only the fortune we spent stopping it is of any moment. Big houses have always been built by rich people, using the best architects, materials and designers. One might usefully remember that slaves from Africa – and these are the ones this controversy is about – really assumed some significance in the West Indies and North American plantations only after we stopped sending our white slaves there. That would be the American Revolution time.

    5. My father was a colonial administrator – he ended his career as governor of the Northern Province of the Sudan.

      He was the one of the wisest, kindest, most amusing and talented people I have ever known He had more honesty and integrity in his little finger than can be found today in the MSM, parliament and government.

    6. If the point is to tell everyone that Britons were all evil slavers, will they also ask who sold the slaves in the first place?

      Also, when the National Trust has fulfilled it’s demented intent and has told everyone how evil these old white men are, who will then visit their charges and what will become of their income stream?

      1. I’m sure there will be no mention of the Barbary Pirates stealing 1.25 million people from their homes and selling them to the Arabs.

      2. On TV last night a black professor gave a clear account that the Portuguese, the Spanish and the British purchased slaves in Africa from local black slave traders. The BBC interviewer appeared quite disappointed with his attitude.

      1. But it was all true!
        And yes, the Conservative right has just about had enough now, following Hague, Cameron, May and now Johnson.

    2. Wow again. What an article. Talk about both barrels. Does anyone have the guts to do something about it? Don’t think so. The majority of MPs seem happy to allow the ridiculous lockdown rules and regulations to continue – for ever?

      Thank you for posting the article.

    4. “…now we have the clownish horror of Bertie Wooster playing Churchill.” So good, I’m going to use it myself.

  34. Are we living through the plot of ANOTHER Tom Clancy novel?? Debt of Honour published in 1994 plotted an attack on the White House by a hijacked aircraft,fast forward to 2001………..
    Now we move on to Rainbow Six published 1998
    A mega-rich fanatic scientist with a taste for eugenics and population reduction and his purportedly estranged partner who is embedded deep in the heart of government plot with a coterie of Greeniacs to exterminate 95% of the human race by releasing a disease,the disease kills but is not the real vector,that’s the vaccine that’s very quickly produced only there are two vaccines
    A List You live*
    B List You’re dead*
    Their plan,to hide away in their enclaves while the deadly vaccine creates a societal collapse,those not killed by the disease die of hunger,thirst or the more usual plagues,cholera,typhoid etc
    They plan to emerge in a few years and enslave any survivors……………..
    One wonders as these mega-rich fanatics age Soros,Gates,Swaub just how far they would go to see their visions imposed on the world before they die??
    ** Which list do you think you and yours will be on……………………….

    1. Any mega rich fanatics planning our near extinction will never be happy, megalomaniacs never are satisfied with the status quo. It wouldn’t be long before they were lobbing ever more dangerous viruses or H bombs at each other in their enclaves. Not much of a consolation to those murdered or enslaved I know, but inevitable nevertheless.

      1. What kind of a society do they think they will have at the end of it? Not many people, no use of fossil energy – who will do all the work taht makes the money, who will buy all the shit that takes the money? There’ll be none of that, just a few folk living in mud huts and scratching the earth with a stick. That’ll be lots of fun! Make them rich in cow-poo or something.

        1. Morning, OB.

          If, as the fanatics claim, the current population will own nothing, nothing at all, then I assume that these fanatics are planning to purloin everything not already owned by them. That’s an enormous amount of wealth to be divvied up between a few psychopaths. If the likes of Johnson, Macron et al. believe that they will have a fair share, or any share at all, in the proceeds of this crime then they are bigger fools than I imagine them currently to be. The politicians driving this nationally are mere tools to be discarded when the job is done.

          As for those allowed to survive and toil for their masters I’m sure that the latter have an optimum number planned. Obviously, birth control and an arranged age for euthanasia will be well organised. The kapos will probably earn a few more years.

  35. Well. I learned something on TCW today.

    ‘Here’s one classicist Boris Johnson will appreciate.
    The rule of unaccountable harlots is called a pornocracy.’

    It is correct. I checked on wiki.

    6. Protect the NHS
      Black Lives Matter
      Special Space
      plus all the old favourites like Climate Emergency, Diversity, Community etc

      1. The only people who stole her dreams and her childhood were her avaricious parents. They are to whom she should be directing her anger. Perhaps she will one day, when she has matured.

        2. She is maturing like a ten year old Vieux-Boulogne cheese that has been festering in an abandoned farmhouse or on the menu in the BBC canteen.

      1. Non-compliance started years ago in dental & medical practices when box-ticking was introduced.

        1. I recall the start of the Compliance departments in banking. They went from being tiny oprations to full blown centres of everything in very few years.

          As a cost centre they were one of the most expensive and seldom if ever produced anything of value.
          In part because very few of the members had the first idea about what they were looking at.

    1. The cloud is down on the hill, can’t see what the weather is – there’s too much moisture in the atmosphere!
      Morning, Peddy!

      1. Watery sunshine here, but it’s not having much impact on all the water lying around after yesterday’s downpours.

    2. Is he drunk? He’s certainly not stupid but I don’t understand how he can justify ‘equality’ affects businesses except to add legislation and dead weight.

    3. Hi, R-R.

      No strings attached. The look on Johnson’s face makes me think the puppeteer has one of his/her hands up Johnson’s arse and the other squeezing his balls.😎

      1. It’s terrifying, isn’t it? Yet another burden on business.

        The insane – utterly insane belief that this is a positive thing, that a company that hires an equal balance of men and women as good is tantamount of madness.

        What if you have a bunch of builders who are men and 1 project manager and another architect who happen to be women? Dear life, it’s sheer oppression, it’s the idiot Left forcing their agenda of outcome instead of merit.

        1. MRD?

          I suspect he has, but the Independent is not the newspaper I would particularly trust to be first with the news on that one.

          1. My apologies sos et al. I got the message on my i-pad . I jumped the gun as the Independent did. When I found the report on the Independent page Donald had added a later tweet explaining that it was not his intention to give up and he would carry on fighting [I paraphrase] Just as I was about to come back on my son in Houston called me on my I pad and we had a long conversation about the Presidential election. He is a Republican but thinks DT will probably lose the fight.

          2. clydesider.

            Kind of you and polite, but there is never any need to apologise to me.

            I agree with your son, but I hope he’s wrong.

    2. Thank you for posting this – one of the most interesting articles I’ve read on the US elections.

  40. “So, can you tell me when I’m going to die?” I asked the fortune teller.

    “Yes,” she replied, glancing nervously at her crystal ball. “Cash in advance, please.”

    1. A man went to the doctor who said that he has good news and bad news. “Which would you like first”?

      The man said that he would like the good news first, of course.

      “You will be dead in 24 hours”

      “My God”, the man said, “what on earth could be the bad news”?

      “I should have told you yesterday”!

    2. A notoriously crooked business man went to his Rabbi.
      Rabbi i have to confess I’ve been more than a bit mean with some of my clients, rather too often.
      Yes i have heard says the Rabbi.
      Well despite this I would like to think that i can still get into heaven when i die. Do you think you can pull a few strings for me if i make a donation to good causes ?
      I’ll see what i can do, what sort of donation are you talking about ?
      150 thousand for local causes he replied. Here’s the cheque.
      Right, i’ll let you know, come and see same time next week.
      The man arrives next week and says the to the Rabbi what news do you have for me ?
      Well he says good news and bad news………..I’ve had a word and I can get you in no problem.
      And the bad news the business man asks ?
      The Rabi says……….Well,…… they’re coming for you tomorrow.

      Other religious representatives are also available 🤗

    1. This argument ran for decades about having a tunnel on the A3 at Hindhead, spent about 20 years sitting in 40 minutes hold ups there because swampy prevented it.
      Now they have a tunnel, no traffic no pollution.

    2. “whose bright idea was it to build Stonehenge right next to the A303?”

      It was an early EU directive – HS1 – Hauptquartier Steinhenge 1. There was supposed to be another in Homochester (HS2) but the costs escalated and they ran out of glass beads and dinosaur teeth and had to abandon the project.

      2. I’m sure a road will still be there it’s likely that most traffic will take the tunnel. They’ll still need to get the tourists there so they can collect the revenue.

        1. I hope they split the A303 with alternative routes for “Go Faster” and “Go the Picturesque Way”.

          1. The only time I’ve been there was in the 60s when it was just a pile of stones in a field. You could walk up to it and climb over the stones. The whole “World Heritage Site” thing is a tourist scam. I prefer going to Avebury, and after wallking round the ring going for a drink and meal in the pub.

      4. Probably built by slave labour. They should smash it to bits and use it as hardcore for the new road.

          1. Huh. You should try living in a town dominated by a large castle built on the remains of a Roman temple.
            Talk about rubbing one’s nose in it.

    4. What’s amazing is how LONG the issue as to whether to build a tunnel of a bypass has been going on for. Several decades – perhaps since the 1980s. So typical of this country.

      2. Tunnel? . . . .Bypass? . . . Neither . . .Save cash and build a flyover . . the support pillars have been there for ages.

    5. The builder said “I’ve just got to do an urgent job. I’ll be back on Monday to put the roof on”. And that was the last the druids saw of him.

    2. In most eras he would have earned far more caps.

      Injury and Peter Shilton saw to the lower number than he deserved, in my view.

      1. I always had him down as being a better keeper than Shilton. Neither of them were as good as Pat Jennings though.

        2. I also thought Jennings was good.
          At International level the statistics on clean sheets and % clean sheets might disagree.
          To be a top rated goalkeeper playing for the more minor teams takes more skill (and of course you get more practice!) On that score Shilton, like Banks, stands with the best.

          1. The defence plays a big part in keeping clean sheets.

            Shilton was certainly a very good goalkeeper but he didn’t move quite as well as Clemence or Jennings.

            Banks was the best of them all.

          2. I’m a great believer in getting a good defence before worrying about anything else. Most really great defences have a keeper “calling the shots” and organising them.

            Give me a defence that keeps clean sheets before a striker who scores every third game (which isn’t a bad strike rate) In terms of winning matches.

            I thought Bonnetti was underated, moved exceptionally well and again was unlucky to be around in that general era.

            If Seaman hadn’t let in that crazy goal he would have been more highly rated.

          3. Bonnetti was excellent and so was Seaman. Ronaldinho didn’t shoot, he tried to cross and fluked a goal.

            Lev Yashin is probably the best goalie ever. Gordon Banks was without a doubt the best England keeper.

          4. There have been a lot of wonderful keepers, Buffon and Zoff, certainly, as well as Peter Schmeichel, who in terms of my earlier comment on organising a defence has to be up there amongst the greats.

          5. yes and Sepp Maier, Manuel Neuer, Iker Casillas.

            No doubt about it Schmeichel was one of the greats. Actually his son isn’t bad either.

          7. Clemence was always more shaky and I remember him conceding several goals for England as a direct result of his errors. Can’t remember Shilton ever making a disastrous mistake resulting in a goal, even the infamous Domaski (?) goal at Wembley in 1973…..

          9. Ron Greenwood couldn’t choose between them. The athletic Clemence and the commanding Shilton. The 1982 world cup sorted that issue out. Clemence was at Spurs who had a long long season with european football and FA cup final whereas Shilton was at Notts Forest from memory and had a pretty lazy season. As Shilton was well rested and Clemence wasn’t he got pole position.
            Shilton’s longevity in the game though was the stuff of legends.

  43. A topical comment. Just back from a walk to see the goats. Saw the chap whose goats they are.

    The new Billygoat who is tupping the twenty Nannies is called…(wait for it, wait for it)…BORIS.

    He is also farmer who keeps his cattle out all winter – good, old-fashioned farming.

  44. A cartoon in Australia’s biggest national newspaper drew condemnation as being racist.

    “It’s offensive and racist,” Andrew Giles, an Australian Labor politician and shadow cabinet minister.

    Former attorney-general Mark Dreyfus tweeted, “If The Australian has any respect for decency and standards it must apologize immediately, and never again publish cartoons like this.”

    “The words ‘little black and brown girls’ belong to Joe Biden and were uttered by the presidential candidate when he named Kamala Harris as his running mate.

    His appointments are not to be sniffed at.

    https://www.blazingcatfur.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/leak-cartoon-biden-harris.jpg

    https://prowhiteparty.files.wordpress.com/2019/05/biden-and-asian-girls.jpg

    1. Simply appalling , disgusting , revolting , what has Britain become.

      That is racist … if he had been BLACK /BROWN/YELLOW / Chocolate , he wouldn’t have been touched by the police, if he had pulled statues down he would have been immune / We HAVE NO ONE who WILL TAKE the equivelant of the knee on our behalf , because we are White Anglo Sxon Protestants / Catholics/ Jews.. and we are being trashed .

      There are fish and chip shops/ garden centres /supermarkets/ Halfords / and fast food places open , something very very nasty is going on .

      We should be more worried and outspoken than we are at the moment.

      1. “That is racist”, no this is racist, “… if he had been BLACK /BROWN/YELLOW / Chocolate“.

        1. I think i prefer chocolate as a description rather the other terms. Whatever the acceptable terminology is this week. Chocolate suggests pleasure.

    3. Is this the Liverpool Gestapo? Arrested for having a non-Bame face and loitering with intent to breathe!

    4. It is not very clear to me just why the police set on this poor chap.

      Britain has become an open sewer turded by the police.

      1. I think he said ‘Are you proud of yourselves.’

        And of course, not obeying and praising the great stasi is cause for arrest, cuffing and destruction of the recording – the police don’t like being shown up.

        It is a massive waste of man power, a failure of common sense and a waste of time. All to protect their pride and ensure the tax paying majority are kept down because if they start pushing back, that’s a real problem for big state.

      2. I’m with you, Rastus. What did the guy do to deserve being manhandled by so many police officers?

      3. 326410+ up ticks,
        Afternoon R,
        “Britain has become an open sewer turded by the police”

        Via the polling booth.

        These issues are NOT new when you consider they went into three monkey mode regarding rotherham
        paedophile child abuse and we have had six GE since then have we not ?

        1. Sorry, Ogga, you keep wiffling on without suggesting a viable alternative. UKIP is certainly NOT viable these days so, where do we go and who do we support?

          1. 326410+ up ticks,
            Evening NtN,
            What I try to point out is the error of continuing to support & vote lab/lib/con coalition on seeing their past odious actions over the last three decades.
            Peoples must do a political 2020 assessment and not follow the
            great granddad/granddad family
            tree vote.
            Also employ 2020 vision and see in all honesty just what these party’s have done over the last 30 years.
            Personally I watch Hearts of Oak
            and know someone / something
            decent will be revealed because to continue the way we are going is not an acceptable option.

          2. “… because to continue the way we are going is not an acceptable option.”

            Whole-heartedly agree, Ogga, but I still don’t know what is a viable alternative to ‘best of a bad bunch.’

          3. 326410+ up ticks,
            NtN,
            I was calling for UKIP membership to be built on in early July 16 as a cautionary guard against treachery, it was not to be.
            At a push I would have to go
            Ann Marie Waters, “For Britain”.
            They are the nearest I can see to the real UKIP under Batten leadership plus they will tackle the dangers of islamic ideology.
            As I said I keep an eye on Hearts of Oak and seeking one possessing leadership qualities,
            law of averages dictates that one must turn up after the long run of complete rear exits we have had to endure.

            Nasal canal gripping, best of the worst, three monkey mode of voting got us to the odious depth as a nation we find ourselves at this moment in time
            and as an option is a countrywide death wish.

    5. I’ve tried to find the source of this tweet but have not been very successful. It would appear to have happened yesterday, after a couple of shootings in Liverpool which caused one fatality. And / or possibly connected with some sort of a protest (not sure what about) that took place near a burnt-out church.

      This footage is absolutely shocking. But if – and I stress, if – this man was potentially armed, a drug dealer, a known mafia thug… then surely we would be applauding this “firm police action”? Just saying… don’t shoot me!

      1. Thank you, Caroline, for the only rational and non-hysterical response to a part-video of which we know little.

      2. He was leaving a lockdown protest,just not fast enough to please the Stasi,note the violent arrest of his wife for daring to film the assault at the end of the clip
        Also note the source of the tweet UKIP web
        I don’t think they’re in the business of protecting drug dealers

    6. Six police officers to arrest one man plus several others going to help them. What shameful wimps!

      I don’t understand what he did wrong – did he murder someone?

      What have we come to when the emasculated police have morphed into a despised profession by the liberals and the Left? What is our “Conservative” government going to do about these outrages?

      1. If the police are despised by the liberals and the Left they are not doing very much to win the support the people with a Right of centre outlook are they?

      2. The government will do whatever Boris and Carrie’s minders tell them to do!
        Remind me again, who does Carrie draw her salary from?

      4. 326410+ up ticks,
        Afternoon S,
        ” What is our “Conservative” government going to do about these outrages?”

        Employ more.

      1. The bit that really gets the blood boiling is when they came for the recording of the assault – as that’s what it is.

        Perhaps he should have nicked something. The police don’t bother with that.

    10. WTF are they doing to him, knees in his back arms up his back face in the tarmac for what ??? what a bunch of pathetic useless are sholes,……….. then his wife ???
      The police farce are about as useful as a bag of dog turds.

      1. I’m thinking, Eddy, I wish we could recruit enough vigilantes to patrol the streets and beat the crap out of any uniformed police they see, so that the police become afraid to be seen.

        And I never thought that I’d ever think this way.

    2. Nothing to worry about. Just getting rid of invoices/receipts from Soros and EU financial departments.

    2. A marvel of technology and simple humanity.

      Of course, the other side of me wonders how a species so proficient at taking life could be so utterly crap at restoring it.

      Where are our nano suites? Auto docs? Where is the regrowing limb gel?

      No. Instead of these necessary tools our idiot officials ejaculate our money on pointless, inefficient effluent, creating half million strong utterly unnecessary quangos soaking up cash that would be better spent without it, creating a satelitte system we simply don’t need for bragging rights.

      There is a slice of humanity that seeks power, control and wealth and it does not care who it steps on to achieve that. Those people – so help me – I would happily put on a barge and post to the sun. The Blair’s the verhofstats, the mandelsons, the lammys – dear life I’d run out of names.

      Corbyn was a moron. A throwback to failure, incompetence, ignorance and foolishness. But he had prinicples. They were wrong, but he had them.

      I hate them. I hate them to my core.

    1. Many people are convinced that Donald Trump is not a very nice person – but it seems that Joe Biden is considerably nastier.

      1. Very good, mm. I can imagine Johnson looks like that when his paramour claims she has a headache.

          1. Are you supposed to toast pannetone? I’ve seen it on sale in Lidl and wondered about getting some.

          2. Fresh and warm no need, but a few days later I agree.

            I thoroughly enjoy melting butter on such sweet breads and at a push butter on sweetbreads improves those too.

  50. A sassy young woman in her early thirties who has been around the block a few times is likely to know all about contraception.

    So did Ms Symonds deliberately get herself pregnant in order to entrap the Bonker?

    Of course one of Johnson’s former mistresses had an abortion when she ‘fell pregnant’ but in this current case I doubt whether this ‘option’ was even discussed.

    I am cynically of the opinion that sad little Wilfred’s very existence was planned to give his mother manipulative control over her paramour.

      1. There’s natural birth control and artificial birth control. The former is OK for Catholics but does require a degree of self control.

        3. Coming from a very large extended Catholic* family, I can confidently assert that the RC teachings on artificial contraception are largely ignored.

          *I’m now Atheist.

      3. I’ve never understood how any Greeniac could possibly be against birth control, given that the greatest single problem facing the planet is too many people.

          1. In the same way that they all seem to assume that their policies won’t affect them adversely either.

      4. Don’t assume because someone is a catholic they don’t believe in birth control.

        Religion doesn’t tend to control people’s lives to the extent it once did.

    3. That could easily have back-fired on her.
      Given BJ’s track record I doubt he really cares a damn and could happily have moved on and left Carrie and the child to her own devices.

      1. But would the announcement of her pregnancy and his desire for her to have an abortion have done him any good as far as the general election was concerned?

        Announcement of Carrie Symonds pregnancy was not until February – three months before Wifred’s birth in April. This means that both she and Boris would have been well aware of the pregnancy at the time of the election as she would have conceived in August. They kept pretty quiet about it did they not?

        Brexit might have been a vote winner for Boris but this would certainly not have been. No, in my opinion her pregnancy was well-timed to give her the firmest of grips on his short and curlies.

        1. Why would he have publicly shown any desire for her to have an abortion?

          I don’t think her being pregnant would have made all that much difference to the election result.
          Times are so much different from when we were young.

      2. Not with him in the public eye though. She will always get financial support. I don’t see how any woman in their right mind could assume that marriage to Boris would last forever, so I assume she sees a father for her child as an optional extra.

        1. I think he’s so thick skinned he wouldn’t have batted an eyelid. Sofaslops didn’t dent him.

          So far only Covid seems to have done much to change him.

          I’m sure you’re right re financial support, although I doubt she’s hard up without any.

    4. Rastus, anybody in their early thirties who has been around the block a few times is likely to know that the only 100% sure contraception is the word NO!

      1. Good morning, Paul

        As I said yesterday, have Ladbrokes already opened a book on who will be the first whose father has been kicked out: Archie or Wilfred?

        2. That would be another first for BJ. A sitting PM with a live-in fiancée at 10 Downing Street was a novelty. To be ejected from No 10 following a breakdown of a relationship would be equally unique.

    6. She’s thirty-two. Any man who sleeps with a childless woman over thirty and doesn’t foresee an “accidental” pregnancy is naive…

      1. My late and much lamented younger son would confirm that – if he could. He was “fooled” twice. Crafty women. Who shortly after the arrival of their infants dumped him – while claiming child maintenance, of course.

          1. His jokes were clever and well delivered, I just couldn’t stand the sight of his face contorting as he told them. Far better on the radio.

          3. His jokes were clever and well delivered, I just couldn’t stand the sight of his face contorting as he told them. Far better on the radio.

    2. A St Albans band. The bass players daughter use to run the open mic nights at a local pub, Jim Rodford sometimes use to sit and watch. He died in Jan 2018.
      In a List out today St Albans is second in the most desirable places to live in the UK, behind Guildford.

      1. St Albans is ok to visit, I wouldn’t want to live there though, particularly in Jersey Farm.

        I do have good memories of snooker hustling in the London Road club.

      2. I’m guessing that list was compiled by southerners who’ve never ventured north. If I were to return to the UK I would head for the North York Moors, which is far more desirable than any large town. Helmsley would suit me.

        1. I wonder if the food at The Feathers, The Black Swan and The Feversham Arms is as good as it was 35 or so years ago…

          Or whether they are all still there. I know the last has gone upmarket and calls itself a spa, but it’s a very long time since I’ve been there.

          I used to live on the moor edge, north of the main road between Kirkbymoorside and Pickering.

          1. I was in The Black Swan on my last visit, 25 months ago. The town has retained its charm. I also visited Stokesley. Pickering and Malton; then across to Thirsk (another particular favourite), Ripon and Northallerton; before going over to the Dales and Richmond, Bedale, Leyburn, Masham, Hawes, Settle, Skipton and then Knaresborough (another favourite).

          2. I didn’t know the area west of the A1 as well as I knew the area from York to Middlesbrough on the east side, particularly the area from Malton to Guisborough and Helmsley to Whitby. Though my father’s uncle married a lassie from Knaresborough and they had retired to that area, so I used to visit them from time to time.

            Malton was where we took cattle to market and the home of an emporium usually just known as Yates (Ralph Yates and Sons Ltd) which sold everything in the realm of agricultural hardware – from wellie boots and rat-traps onwards and upwards. I’ve still got a little lamb-foot knife I bought there getting on for 40 years ago.

            I still deal with the NFU office in Whitby, simply because I’ve never bothered to change.

        2. It’s probably compiled by the most popular places to be within easy access to London. usually under 40 mins from Snorbens station to London bridge.
          Of course costing an arm and a leg. People furloughed at 80% of salary are laughing. Parking, rail fares and buying London Lunches they are probably better off.
          Askrigg Is a good place to be, it has easy access to so much in Yorkshire.

  54. 326410+ up ticks,
    Even the most hardened lab/lib/con supporter / member / voter must surely recognise the fact that when chief overseers put illegals in 5* hotels and manhandle, fine & incarcerate innocent indigenous peoples something is seriously amiss, this MUST surely override putting party first.

      1. 326410+ up ticks,
        Evening C,
        By the same token beggars cannot be choosers, illegal beggars have nil choice.
        Besides stringent health & safety
        rulings along with submissive appeasing,would NOT allow the illegals to be mishandled, that is reserved for the indigenous, as in ex forces suffering pavement pillows.

  58. Good afternoon. Back from horsepiddle. Sunday’s the time to go for a clinic. Seen on time – in and out in half an hour.

    Didn’t half rain round here – the puddles were enormous and everywhere. Sunny now. But too wet underfoot to make gardening an attraction. I’ll have a beer instead!

    Much been happening?

    1. Not a lot. Rumours of a virus sweeping the globe, the UK may or may not properly leave the EU and no-one is quite sure who the next President of the US will be. All is calm in the world.

          1. Dear Geoff

            Well , I would never in a month of Sundays have twigged onto that !

            Richard Sk provided a Wiki link as well.

            We live and learn , thanks to Plum throwing us something not so easy peasy .

        2. It’s just what it’s called! A piece of trivia rattling round in my head! And you’re not dim Belle, you’re a shining light on here!

          1. Belle is an English rose. Pure and unsullied. At least until i can get her to the Moonfleet for afternoon tea and Tiffin. *Devilface.

    2. French speakers call them panthere des neiges, and Spanish speakers call them leopardo nival.

      Snow leopards also have many names in the east where they live. In Nepal, snow leopards are called Heung chituwa; in Tibet they are Sah or Shen; in Russia and Mongolia they are Irbis, and in Urdu, one of the languages of central Asia, they are Barfani chita.

      See if you can pick something out of that lot 😉

    1. Sounds like full on Tit to me.

      Come to me and we will play ‘Crimes against Humanity’ until we choke to death from laughing.

      * Note All drinks and food paid for in advance.

      1. OK, you’re on!! Can’t beat a South Korean friend of mine looking fabulously blank at a lot of phrases, and when her American husband whispered into her ear (we allowed that on ground of cultural wossname), she went bright pink and almost exploded laughing. Happy to pay in advance!

        1. No charge. Bill T and Hertslass have my contact details. I would suggest you travel under the cover of darkness and come in the back way. Erm … Not that way the other way !

        1. You mean you don’t listen to Graham Norton or Allan Carr like everyone else! ?

          TBH. I haven’t put the radio on in months.

          2. You listen to Alexa for a few minutes each morning . . . And Alexa listens to you for the rest of the day.

          3. No worries. He’s out and about all day. When he comes home Alexa says ‘Where have you been? Your dinner is cold’ !

          4. Speak for yourself, Philip, though for me those two nancy boys are the ultimate in bad taste, but, c’est la vie, each to his own.

        1. Oh dear, but I know nothing of Norfolk, sadly not explored around there.

          Crumbs, have just googled Norfolk castles , I can’t believe how many there are , dozens of them, well, quite a few !

          https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1CHBF_enGB775GB775&tbs=lf:1,lf_ui:1&tbm=lcl&q=north+norfolk+castles&rflfq=1&num=10&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwinnfHdroXtAhVKZcAKHZyODuAQjGp6BAgBEEU&biw=1280&bih=521&dpr=1.5#rlfi=hd:;si:;mv:[[53.24051654886883,4.405942021874987],[51.983139344886844,-0.31817907187501326],null,[52.61634170469488,2.0438814749999867],8]

          3. By Jove! I think I’ve got it! But I can’t do that hiding thing! Thanks Geoff! I’ve spend a happy time googling and learning things!

          4. Hi Sue,

            If you want to hide something, say the word “Something”, you type the following but without the spaces which I have inserted here:

            < spoiler > “Something” < / spoiler > and it will appear thus: “Something”.

          7. Hi Sue,

            If you want to hide something, say the word “Something”, you type the following but without the spaces which I have inserted here:

            < spoiler > “Something” < / spoiler > and it will appear thus: “Something”.

  62. Deaths from Covid-19 are apparently, that is officially, running at around 100,000 a year.
    My question is : If you go into hospital with Covid-19 what treatment is carried out?
    What drugs are administered?

    1. Oxygen, dexamethasone or hydrocortisone, tamiflu, antibiotics if bacterial infection is suspected, and analgesics such as ibuprofen.

    2. Paracetamol up to March 18 inclusive as the NHS prohibited any re-purposing because that would ”prejudice patient safety”.

      From March 19, the NHS did a high speed screeching U turn and said ”repurposing is approved because the effects of these drugs are well known and your doctor will monitor your progress”.

      Only as part of Bill Gates’ Oxford trials though, otherwise repurposing still ”might prejudice patient safety and is prohibited”.

      ”I think there’s a clue here as to what’s been going on, Watson”……….

      ”I think you’re right Holmes”.

        1. No, because most hospital patients will be getting increased oxygen and that’s not readily available at home. They don’t take you into hospital whilst you’re at the “hot orange and honey” stage.

          Dexamethasone is proving pretty useful for lung inflammation and is given to a fairly high proportion of hospital patients.

  63. Good night all.

    Coq au vin with the second 1/2 of last night’s potato gratin.

    I’m 1/2 way through my 3rd T.M. Logan thriller. They’re amazing.

    2. A bit of a shame you mix food with telly. You could just sit at a table and have a conversation with a person sitting opposite. Just sayin’.

      1. I think he’s reading a book rather than watching telly. And we’re not allowed to sit with other people at the moment, unless you live with them.

        2. Not considering breaking the rules? Where i live we do as we please. Sainsbury’s selling everything. Fish and chips as normal. Burger wagon on the top of the hill overlooking Portsmouth Harbour full on.

          I think the Police have a big problem in large towns with crowds of youngers and bames. They can’t really help themselves as they see the streets they are required to police as a war zone.

          1. I think he’s well used to living alone. Our n-d-n sees who she pleases – I would but haven’t done so yet, apart from when I go out. Stupid rules are there to be broken.

  64. Not to be outdone by the Daily version, the Sunday Telgaff team have excelled with the “General Knowledge” [1459] crossword today – seems to have the wrong clues and/or wrong outline! For example there is no clue for 8 Dn, 1Dn is supposed to be 8 letters but it’s 15!! Good effort. Mrs Bleau, who loves word puzzles, is not amused!

    2. I have finally mastered the Spike Milligan crossword. I may try something a bit more challenging next year.

      https://images.search.yahoo.com/images/view;_ylt=AwrExdyfP7FfMowATJqJzbkF;_ylu=c2VjA3NyBHNsawNpbWcEb2lkAzMzOWFiNTFjZGNjNDFjMjQ2NTM3YjQzZTkwNGI5MWQ5BGdwb3MDMQRpdANiaW5n?back=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.search.yahoo.com%2Fsearch%2Fimages%3Fp%3Dspike%2Bmilligan%2Bcrossword%2Bpuzzle%26fr%3Daaplw%26fr2%3Dpiv-web%26tab%3Dorganic%26ri%3D1&w=399&h=390&imgurl=i.pinimg.com%2Foriginals%2F64%2F09%2F5f%2F64095f36e72723af564fe56c841459d7.jpg&rurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pinterest.com%2Fpin%2F150941024981644603%2F&size=11.0KB&p=spike+milligan+crossword+puzzle&oid=339ab51cdcc41c246537b43e904b91d9&fr2=piv-web&fr=aaplw&tt=Pin+by+Charlie+Jones+on+Giggly+things+%7C+Spike+milligan+…&b=0&ni=21&no=1&ts=&tab=organic&sigr=KNkE5pkqo5_d&sigb=4jTqofY.Oxtt&sigi=PtDWWcCdQjf9&sigt=BIuWbQk9OClj&.crumb=3mvUoi3mk3l&fr=aaplw&fr2=piv-web

    3. I had the alumni magazine from Nottingham today which had a crossword. That was lacking a clue as well (although I did work out what it must have been from the letters available and the theme of the crossword).

  65. Printed on Ar5eBook a few days ago by an American friend – contemplate – coming to a country near you:

    Bartholomew Chiaroscuro

    I think the election itself was the greatest example of electoral fraud in a major western nation since prior to WWII. I’ve outlined the reasons why and there are now many articles out there by others pointing out the mathematical impossibilities, the red flags, the coincidences, the votes by dead people, the prevention of proper observation by Republicans etc etc.

    So there are firm grounds for legal challenge and I think Trump will continue with this despite enormous pressure to concede. He’s not a guy who quits, although frankly I wouldn’t even blame him given the hate and malice he’s already endured for four years. How anyone keeps going and keeps fighting facing what he faces I don’t know. It’s heroic. It’s everything indomitable and human and noble and it matters far more than crude words or crass presentation. The man is a sacred flame in a thug’s body.

    Tucker Carlson said that the big crowds in the small towns loved him because he was the only who loved them, listened to them, visited them, praised them, joked with them, noticed them with respect rather than disdain. He was right. Populism is not another word for fascism. It’s another word for love. Love of a specific people in a specific place. Love of those who really are powerless, as opposed to the powerful pressure groups and vested interests that call themselves marginalised whilst receiving every handout and every genuflection you can imagine. It is love of the people.

    Those crowds didn’t think he was perfect. They knew that he was prickly and vain, boastful and bombastic, cruel to his enemies and blunt with his friends. They knew these faults just as well as the liberals and Trump haters who obsessed on them. But they could see the rest. They saw the man who sent money to strangers who had suffered to help them out, the man who wasn’t afraid of anyone, the man who laid a clumsy but sincere hand on the shoulder of a bereaved soldier, the man who knew that the opinion of the waiter or the sergeant was often more accurate than that of the chef or the general. I’ll never forget reading about him asking an ordinary marine (if such a thing as an ordinary marine can exist) what he thought should be done in Syria and Afghanistan. A question no liberal would ever ask.

    The stage we are in now is the gaslighting. This is the stage in which you are told that you are mad. You are mad for remembering the good policies and the improved economy. You are mad for knowing that there is still a legal challenge and a proper process to complete. You are mad for knowing that it is the Supreme Court or the Electoral College that confirms a winner, not the media and not foreign leaders. You are mad for expecting electoral fraud to be investigated and for not immediately accepting it as non existing, trivial or irrelevant. You were mad for voting with your head and your heart as your conscience dictated and for expecting a free and fair election in which you have a say. Everything now is designed to convince you, the American voter, and you, the audience of the entire world, that it is mad not to simply lie down, give up, and accept a verdict no matter how crooked, tainted, untrue and soiled that verdict is. It is the great gaslighting that follows the great crime. You have been beaten. Now you are mad if you remember the low blows and the weights in the other man’s gloves.

    Everything now is designed to make you repeat a lie. Not to convince you. They don’t need to convince you. They just need your submission to the lie. Biden is President. Biden is President. Biden is President. Repeat it, bitch. It’s the abuser saying tell me you love me after he’s put bruises all over his wife. That’s how the media treat you. They want you too broken to speak or support truth. Too broken to even recognise the law and the due process, how things should actually be. It’s madness to resist. You must forget and submit.

    And in this disgusting cartoon from a British newspaper we have the full gaslighting at work. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d16d90e028e2c4433387371a918a91a01bce39d8544ea4230164802a1e65233d.jpg
    You are mad unless you think Biden (that product of the system steeped in 47 years of sleaze and filth, of compromised ethics, relentless graft, nepotism, swamp dwelling corruption, soulless advancement and buried sins) is a clean broom set to sweep the Oval Office free of Trump’s boorish taint. The message is clear. Trump was a squatter who has ruined the place. The real owner is back.

    But the people still know who showed them respect. They know, and they will remember whatever happens. The people had a champion. If anything if he is slain by deceit at the hands of the media it will only make the populist idea stronger in their hearts. Hate remembers as well as love. The media don’t know what they sow for their own future.

      1. Of course, Mags – and he concurred. Why worry about a dress – the President had his way and that’s as it should be, according to the demented Biden.

    1. Presumably the recount includes not counting the same tens or hundreds of thousands of fake last minute Biden (but no senator/congress person) ‘ballots’, nor counting many Biden votes half a dozen times on the (IMHO Democrat supporter owned) electronic counting machines, plus striking out all those people who are not just dead but dead 30-50 years ago and more.

      1. President Trump has tweeted recently about this and as the count in Georgia is without a full audit, he’s instructed it stop.

    2. So are they going to count them all again – with observers present and actually allowed to see what is on them? I won’t hold my breath.

      1. Counting isn’t enough.

        Signatures must be checked on all the mail ins and if that’s not possible, they get thrown out.

        1. The problem for Trump will be that all the votes that were – in person or by the ‘counters’ altered to ‘correct’ them in order to be valid cannot be undone and no-one will be able to tell the difference between a proper correct ballot paper and one that was ‘altered’. The only thing he’ll have in his favour is that certain democrat strongholds said this can be done (illegal) and did not allow it in Trump-supporting areas.

          What’s even more of a disgrace is how both Dem front organisations and those for the never-Trumper GoP politicians have successfully being harrassing and intimidating legal firms into not working for the Trump campaign as regards looking into voting fraud. As usual, the MSM has said nothing on this, like rather a lot of stories that are negative towards their side.

          When the thruths finally gets out into the open for the normie masses to see, there’s going to be a BIG reckoning (same for COVID/The Great Reset etc). The question is – will it be too late to make a difference in a reasonable amount of time? WIll China and the multinational corproations have effectively taken over everyone’s lives so completely that protests and boycotts won’t do any more. I hope this gets resolved in our favour and soon.

          It’s getting bad here in the UK too. Most people seem to be oblivious to what’s been going on.

          1. Getting? You mean got surely. This country went down the tubes with neoliberalism, the economic system that favours companies that set up abroad and trade internationally and domestic rentseekers.

            It’s been that way since Thatcher’s second term.

      1. Strange how even Fox has no mention of this and they have always been ahead of the facts with any pimple on Bidens election..

        How did all of Trumps legal challenges go on friday?

        1. Yes, but they’ve gone over to the dark side, remember. I’m now relying on Polly for updates, as I don’t want to get involved in the murky depths of Twitt.

          2. 🙂
            Yes, I am partisan, but it’s more than party politics. The cabal of corruption at the top of the Democratic party stinks. I wasn’t too keen on the George W Bush Republicans either.

          3. They are all as bad as each other.

            Trump hasn’t been a very good POTUS. His growth rates are worse than Obama’s and he’s massively grown the national debt to even get close to Obama’s growth rates.

            The swamp doesn’t appear to be drained except possibly in the Supreme Court where Roe v Wade will be under threat real soon.

  71. Evening, all. Voters may be losing patience, but I doubt they are ready for a truly revolutionary act, which would be voting for someone other than a representative of the big three who have made such a mess of everything so far. They will vote for more of the same (with a slightly different coloured dust jacket) and expect a different result 🙁

  72. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will self-isolate after coming into contact with a lawmaker who tested positive for Covid-19, though he remains well and doesn’t have symptoms of the virus, his spokesman said Sunday.

    “He will carry on working from Downing Street, including on leading the Government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic,” according to the statement.

    The prime minister met with a small group of lawmakers Thursday morning, including Lee Anderson of Ashfield, who subsequently tested positive for the virus. Johnson recovered from Covid earlier this year.

    Options are also being explored for the premier to take part remotely in some Parliamentary business, according to the statement.

      2. This may well be a little bit of play-acting to get the message out that shock! horror! you can get it twice, don’t think you are immune just because you’ve had it before only a few months ago. Ramping up the fear for those who are frightened. Also to avoid awkward questions this week of course.

        Edited because the bl***y thing shot off before I had finished and corrected typos. Operator error, naturally.

        2. I almost invariably edit my posts because I am so very bad at typing. My lapses are always picked up by my friend, Peddy, who greets each fault I make with a chuckle and a gloat!

        3. But if he has had it and has those wonderful antibodies, isn’t he in the same boat that we would be after we get supervaccine?

          Even after vaccination, will we have to hibernate every time we come into close contact with a dreaded asymptomatic super spreader.

          1. Exactly. So what is the point. There is a picture of that r*t Faucie wearing a mask and saying that even after vaccination you will still have to wear a mask. He was wearing some sort of pleated material face mask which I can tell you are absolutely USELESS as there is no reduction of oxygen when wearing one. I was wearing a lined cloth face mask and I tested my oxygen level with an oximeter, it was exactly the same without a mask, 97%, so there was a free-flow of oxygen and presumably viruses etc. Then I tried one of the more clinical looking ones with the bluey side out, white inside next to the face. Blood oxygen level was reduced to 94%, occasionally dropping to 92%. These results were achieved whilst I was sitting down. No activity was involved. This from the web:

            “In healthy patients, oxygen saturation levels lie between 96 and 98%. Values below 95% can indicate a health disorder and make it necessary to supply the patient with additional oxygen. If your oxygen saturation value is below 95%, please consult your physician.”

          2. If wearing a mask effects you that way could I suggest that you don’t become a doctor!

            Maybe some politicians decisions can be explained by their masks cutting off the supply of oxygen to their brains.

            I was just at the curling club trying to curl with a mask on. Totally useless,one huff and puff and my glasses steamed up. Great choice – wear glasses, mist up and cannot see or take off glasses and cannot see.

          3. Spot on. The wearing of masks represents a serious health risk to those wearing them. It was the same in the Spanish Flu epidemic back in the nineteen twenties.

          4. Your point proves the point that Johnson never had Covid the first time around (tests are a con) and that having had a mild dose of seasonal flu he is now desperate to find another excuse for his utterly abysmal performance as Prime Minister.

            Any sympathy for this monstrous blob of jelly who has conned us all has now evaporated completely.

            The final straw for me was his broadcast congratulations to Joe Biden and claims that they could work together. President Trump has not even conceded the election to the criminal Biden. Nobody but a fool or opportunistic dolt will have acted in this way.

            Sorry Boris, bugger off before you are pushed. Go back to journalism where you had a certain flair for upsetting the population of Liverpool.

        4. Well understood, Mum. It won’t let me give you an upvote. Bluddy Disqus. Geoff, can we not find a better medium – this one is in a seance of its own!

      4. He had a mild dose of flu at best. This was hyped up to be a near death experience for purely political advantage and in conformity with the Soros-Gates vaccination agenda which has bought him.

      5. The lie is so big and blatant. Even intelligent people are saying to me “But there’s no immunity” and I point out to them that antibodies aren’t the only form of immunity, and coronvirus cannot be the only illness in the history of humanity to which we get no immunity…. and then one particular person said “But why would they not talk about that in the newspapers if it were the case?”

        1. Follow the vaccines money………and the PPE…… and the people making masks……..and keeping the public cowed and under control while trashing business and young people’s futures.

          As for people like me – what a wasted year – and there may not be too many left for us.

        2. Where to begin? explaining with people like that. I’ve been reading up on it for the last twenty years – ever since Blair opened up the borders to mass immigration – his policies just didn’t make sense. Why was he doing all these illogical things…that were not in our interests? I had to find out, but at the same time I wasn’t sure I wanted to. Someone on the DT comments said ‘educate yourselves, folks, on what is happening in the world. Start by googling the Frankfurt school.’ And that was it. I sat in stunned silence, hand to mouth, thinking but it has all happening now, around us. There is the answer….’ of course there is more which is only just coming to light, but once you tune in you cannot not see it, the information is all around.

          1. I have a book called “Conquest without War” which was written in the 1960s, and reports what Kruschev openly said about bringing down the West. I don’t know how much was organised, and how much was a natural consequence of too much prosperity and too many fools. But there is clear organisation now, coming from the likes of Open Borders. All we little people can do is protect ourselves and our families.

            My ex husband grew up in a country that was dominated by socialist thought, and he was in favour of global government. I think this is something the marxists have been pushing at least since the 1960s. And of course every tinpot narcissist who wants to be Emperor of the World will go along with it!

    3. Given how virulent this virus is we could hope it will kill him..

      Boris is hiding in his self inflicted bunker.

    3. How is it that many of us knew there was something badly wrong , the sight of him gave me goose bumps , we will never know the extent of his perversions.

      1. I’m not psychic, but i always had my doubts about him. I use to deride him in front of our boys when he came on TV.
        They soon got eh subtle message.

        1. I was a child in the 70s and I always loathed photos of him. He scared me. He was so creepy and utterly revolting. I could not understand why adults apparently accepted him as a good person because he was successful and on the TV. The world did not seem to make sense.

        1. Yet nobody mentions paedophiles when the subject of the BBC comes up although it’s all they ever talk about in connection to the Church!

          1. Yet nobody mentions paedophiles when the subject of the BBC comes up And never a mention in politics or another certain religious sect.
            https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06rwgdf
            If you get the chance watch this programme, he sets out the possible beginnings of slavery and child abuse on a massive scale. Centred around Granada in Spain over 2000 years ago.
            Whoops 1200 years ago.
            I’ve been rushed off my feet today, now preparing dinner, ironically Roast Pork. 🤩

          2. Without being too pedantic over this, I can’t get the clip here, but I’m guessing you mean Islam.

            Islam is nowhere near 2,000 years old.

          3. Apple ogies i meant 1200 years ago 😉
            But the programme was excellent it’s well worth watching.

          4. Given the location and the general timing, I suspected it would be the usual culprits.

            They still have ambitions there, it is regarded as part of the Mediterranean caliphate.

          5. In the prog he spoke of how the the moor sailors use to travel around the south coasts of England Wales and Ireland and grab as many blonde blue eyed children as they could and take them back to Grenada as many as 6 thousand were held in captivity for the use of. And those the caliphate didn’t care for were fed to the ride of pet lions. It reminded me of Rotherham.

    1. Keep them coming Willum,pictures of hope pleasure and innocence all in damn short supply……………

        1. Apparently his Canary had circles under it’s eyes.

          He was a great entertainer with a vey decent backing band.

      1. She is saying, “If you don’t do as I say and sack Cummings – I’ll tell the world what you don’t want them to know.”

    4. In another publication it stated that Carrie Symonds worked for the Hillary Clinton Foundation.

      I can’t find any record of that on the internet.

      Can anyone confirm that?

      PS: If that’s true she’s a smart girl getting two pay cheques a month!

    8. Rupert Brooke (1887–1915). Collected Poems. 1916.

      I. 1905–1908
      6. Wagner

      CREEPS in half wanton, half asleep,
      One with a fat wide hairless face.
      He likes love-music that is cheap;
      Likes women in a crowded place;
      And wants to hear the noise they’re making. 5

      His heavy eyelids droop half-over,
      Great pouches swing beneath his eyes.
      He listens, thinks himself the lover,
      Heaves from his stomach wheezy sighs;
      He likes to feel his heart’s a-breaking. 10

      The music swells. His gross legs quiver.
      His little lips are bright with slime.
      The music swells. The women shiver.
      And all the while, in perfect time,
      His pendulous stomach hangs a-shaking. 15

        1. Mark Twain. I agree with him, having sat through the whole of The Ring, Flying Dutchman & Lohengrin*

          *In a suit in a very hot sweaty concert hall in July in Düsseldorf.

    2. A lovely thing to read before going to bed! Thank you for posting. And the birthday lady doesn’t look anything like 100.

      1. My pleasure, pm. I am so sick of the doom and gloom. Covid does not kill 100%, even the over 70s.

  80. I must admit I was never a fan of Des O’Connor but I am sorry to hear that he has died. He was a man whom it was impossible to dislike – there was nothing unpleasant or mean about him He was clearly a very decent man who was much loved by his family and other people in the entertainment business. RIP.

    1. He seems to have been popular judging by the articles in the Mail, but what was he famous for? (I assume he was on TV)

      1. It seemed he was actually on the way to recovery. his family were looking forward to him coming home.

          1. Yes of course Alf, but considering the type of injury, it didn’t seem that his life was in danger.
            My best mate was in hospital earlier this year, (April/ May) he told be his doctor might have saved his life by sending him home. earlier than expected.

          2. I thought being 88 and having a fall is not good. I read, recently, of the same happening to someone else.

          3. I believe that’s happened to ‘Our Cilla’ on her holiday Island, but i think she laid alone for sometime before she was found.

      1. I think it was Freddy Starr who guested on the Des O’Connor Show and entered the stage carrying a Wellington boot with the words: “This is the boot that you gave me!”

  82. Enough is as good as a feast. Having partaken of an elegant sufficiency, I shall bid my gentlefolk friends, good night and sweet dreams of a future utopia.

    Perhaps dreaming is all we have left.

  84. For those NoTTLers who (a) like country music and (b) appreciate Ken Burns’s films – the 8 part series starts tomorrow evening at 8.30 pm GMT. PBSAmerica.

    We saw it first time round. Excellent.

          6. Mr Grizz. Did you see my comment on Thylarctos Plummetus? I thought it at least deserved a virtual pat on the back. 🙁

          8. Tell you what. I’ll give myself a pat on the back for getting one over on you. Rarest of occasions. Drop Bears Lol. 🙂

  87. That’s me for today. Cooke has prepared a daube – and we will drink the penultimate bottle of Ch Léoville Barton 1986. She’ll love it – I’ll enjoy the alcohol!

    Kittens still asleep – but nearly a kilo each – they were 650 g when they arrived 20 days ago!

    A demain.

      1. Not half!

        The MR expressed herself delighted. I looked up and found that I paid £8.30 for each bottle in Jan 1988. They go for around 150 now..

        2. About 1980 I discovered the fine wines after a bottle of Mouton Rothschild at the Tate Gallery restaurant. I then followed the writings on wine of Geoffrey Johnson and whenever I could afford a case of something decent I bought it.

          Whether French wines or French roses 1855 is a very important date. It is incredible that the wines classified in 1855 remain of the same order.

        3. Evening, Bill, When I was secretary of Bucks, we paid £1.00 a bottle for 100 dozen Graham 1955. I still wonder what each is worth today – if any remain.

    3. Bill, seems you remember a father’s advice to his son,

      “Don’t drink a claret under 10 years old.
      Don’t hunt south of the Thames – the bastards use wire, and…
      …Don’t marry a woman with big hands – it’ll make you feel inadequate.”

    4. Wait until they start bringing the wildlife home…. featherless pigeons in the bathroom (the feathers will be on all the stairs) with a wing under the bed, moorhens stuck in the catflap and robins on the door mat. Headless squirrels and rabbits all over the place.

          2. You optimist you. We will all be observing rammadan and diwali by then if the Arch Bish has anything to say about it.

          3. Obviously our Jenny disagrees but doesn’t bother with a counter argument because she is so consumed with bile it is poisoning her mind. I blame her parents.

          4. Between 2031 and 2033 Ramadan and Christmas will coincide. Which do you think will dominate?

            (funny how 2030 is such a key date in reset, build back, green agendas etc etc.)

          12. At the current rate of replacement by your petshop boys plus the steady decrease in religions generally, apart from the Islamics, you’ll be wrong.
            Christmas will be a commercial memory

    1. Imagine that being given its freedom snd watching it soaring into the skies with your £1.4 million under its wing!

      1. …and a vial of the latest WuFlu strapped to its leg.

        Sorry, Mum but I have to ask, “Why is a bird worth £1.4 million?”

        1. Good one, yep I often wondered whether it was Covid infected pee , discarded at great height from passenger aircraft , frozen pee has been known to drop here there and everywhere.

    2. The Chinese must have money to burn. Fancy spending £1.4 million on a racing pigeon, releasing it from Peking, only for it to fly home to Belgium!

        2. Or down a chimney (a D Day pigeon was found in a chimney not too long ago and they were trying to decipher the message it was carrying).

    1. Click through, read the thread and you’ll see the Fact Checking which debunks the claim. Your side really needs to provide these claims in Court and still no sign of that!

      2. Don’t expect others to go scrabbling around for what you purport to be evidence to support your non existent case…….

        Link it !

      1. Or Sunak, perhaps? And perhaps Trump might not be so keen to send over the hydroxychloroquine this time to save his skin. Perhaps Biden might do the honours.

    2. Thanks, Mum, it just shews what a wimp we have supposedly leading us.

      Cometh the hour, cometh the man – where is our modern-day Churchill, ‘cos by God, we need you now?

  94. Good news for the rubber boat fleet at Calais. Huge waves and flooding expected tonight. Do launch them………

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