Wednesday 18 November: The hard reality of trying to look after someone with Covid at home

Posted on by Geoff Graham

An unofficial place to discuss the Telegraph letters, established when the DT website turned off its comments facility (now reinstated, but not as good as ours),
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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/11/18/lettersthe-hard-reality-trying-look-someone-covid-home/

768 thoughts on “Wednesday 18 November: The hard reality of trying to look after someone with Covid at home”

  1. Good morning Folks,

    Clear skies here at the moment.

    Early night last night, had a power cut about 6.30pm

    1. Hard for me to understand the mentality of the very rich. Presumably if Hamilton stopped earning completely today, he would still have more money left than he can spend in his lifetime.

    2. Hard for me to understand the mentality of the very rich. Presumably if Hamilton stopped earning completely today, he would still have more money left than he can spend in his lifetime.

  4. Where on earth is the common sense among the chaos? 18 November 2020.

    In April, Boris had a really nasty bout of Covid-19. The virus’s parting gift is antibodies which give its host immunity. He announced in a video that he had to enter a 14-day quarantine because NHS Test and Trace “pinged” him to say he’s been in contact with an MP who tested positive.

    “It doesn’t matter that I’ve had the disease and am bursting with antibodies from the last time I had it,” enthused Boris looking as if he’d combed his hair with a toffee apple.

    Actually, it really does matter. If you have Covid antibodies and you still don’t have immunity then that means no vaccine will ever be effective against the disease. A purgatory of lockdown without end. “The rules are the rules and they are there to stop the spread of the disease,” he insisted.

    Morning everyone. There isn’t any is there? We are led by Donkeys that would not have been out of place in WWI.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/earth-common-sense-among-chaos/

    3. Presumably Mr Creosote will expect what is left of the NHS to repair the damage after he explodes?

      ‘Morning, Rik.

    1. No we are not, that was confirmed the day Johnson had an 80 seat majority with no presence in the HoC of an alternative voice to the usual Lib/Lab/Con cabal.

    2. You’ve been told many times by the Elite that Britain is not Leaving.

      Standby for an indefinite extension of the talks.

      But whatever is said or discussed, you are not Leaving.

  7. Boris has bottled out of the culture wars. Spiked 18 November 2020.

    Boris has bottled out of the culture wars. That’s the true story behind the infantile infighting in Downing Street. The allegedly abrasive, outspoken, grenade-chucking Vote Leave crew is out, and the more consensual, woke-leaning lobby is in. It has the whiff of a woke coup; the levers of power wrested by a PC clique. A government swept in on a wave of working-class votes looks set to busy itself with the bourgeois crap of genderfluidity, eco-nonsense and blind-eye turning as institutions from the National Trust to the Natural History Museum disappear up the fundament of wokeness. We look to be heading for a great political betrayal.

    I suspect he’s going to bottle out of everything!

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/11/17/boris-has-bottled-out-of-the-culture-wars/

    2. The great myth of the culture wars is that they are a right-wing invention, a manufactured obsession of cranky pundits or ageing Tories. Nothing could be further from the truth. The culture wars are primarily the pursuit of the woke elites, of the cultural establishment and the opinion-forming set. Whether they are cheering as the National Trust bangs on about slavery, or as the trans ideology is pushed in every educational establishment in the land, or as some un-PC thought criminal is cancelled, it is these culture warriors who are the most noisy and confident in public life right now.

      And they have developed a brilliant trick of describing any pushback whatsoever – whether it’s a group of Tory MPs writing a letter criticising the National Trust or feminists critiquing transgenderism – as a manufactured culture war. When they are waging war on reason, freedom of speech, the reality of sex and the democratic vote for Brexit, that’s ‘politics’; when someone says ‘I think this is going too far’, that’s a culture war. This is the culture warriors’ greatest achievement: convincing the world they don’t actually exist.

      The angry Nottl debate of Friday and Saturday summed up…

  9. SIR – The Crown turns the life of Diana, Princess of Wales, into a beautifully crafted soap opera. No wonder young people you have interviewed think her status overblown. But those of us who felt the impact of her work miss her still.
    (,,,)
    Esther Rantzen

    Speak for yourself Esthie baby

  10. LBC reporting on Johnson’s latest folly (doubtlessly directed by his live-in), ban on the sale of petrol/diesel cars and vans brought forward by a decade and the roll-out of the provision of charging points in homes, on streets and motorways to begin. Unsurprisingly in the unconnected world of our ignorant politicians, no mention of the several new power stations required to power all this ‘green’ nonsense. This policy is surely designed to restrict the movement of ordinary people in line with the ‘Great Reset’. It’s not a case of being advised or even told what to do, the people will not have a choice. However, they will be happy.

    2. I would love to know how they will handle terraces of houses where there is parking on one side only and no guarantee that one can park anywhere near ones own home.

      1. The solution will be wireless charging from induction cells embedded in the road. You park over one and recharge overnight. Once the market for plug-in charged cars has reached near-saturation point, the next generation of electric vehicles will be equipped with this ‘innovation’.

      1. Fancy, I just don’t get it , all these solar farms planted on good quality farm land , just to power up new fangled unaffordable electric cars , which will halt ‘Climate’ change ‘ despite the fact that we will see more extremes in weather ever so often , flash floods , etc

      2. It’s already come to a rural area near me. It was supposed to be the answer to all our power problems. Then they had to build an anaerobic digester, because there wasn’t enough power. Then that had to be enlarged because … and so it goes.

        1. Good Thursday Morning, Conway, I would be interested in the name of that site, as we are trying to gather as much evidence as possible, in order to fight against two sites here in rural Suffolk that will almost surround our little village. One is by Enso and the other by EDF.

          All help from anywhere is much appreciated – we have an Ar5ebook page – CARE Suffolk

          https://www.facebook.com/caresuffolk/

          1. All I can find about it by searching the web is the blurb about getting people to buy into a “community energy” scheme and advertising the bungs – sorry, funding for community projects – they have handed out. No stats about output, percentage of energy to the grid or anything like that.

    4. Good morning, Korky, good to see you posting regularly once more. I thoroughly endorse all you have written with the exception of the final sentence. I personally will not be happy to accept this policy, whether I have a choice or not.

  11. Morning all First letter……

    SIR – We travelled the length of the country to look after my elderly mother, who was admitted to hospital with a chest problem. She was Covid negative on admission. The day after we collected her on discharge we were told she had tested Covid positive, after an outbreak on the gynaecology ward, to which she had been transferred after initial treatment.

    At the weekend, she developed serious symptoms. The local GP practice had devolved out-of-hours care to 111 or 999. The community respiratory support team did not work out of hours (incredibly, due to restrictions caused by Covid).

    So we were left with the superb ambulance service, the cannon fodder of the NHS. My mother did not want to be readmitted to hospital, and was stabilised with treatment.

    I am a retired doctor and had bought her a pulse oximeter for her birthday, so I was able to monitor her progress. But isolation in a bungalow is not possible without medical-grade PPE. Now I am developing symptoms.

    Advertisement

    Treating Covid at home cannot be done: out-of-hours support is not available, the 111 Covid support line is useless, with non-medically trained staff referring to pro-forma advice.

    There is an urgent need for intermediate treatment facilities, such as those sought for the period before return to care homes.

    No wonder hospitals are getting overwhelmed by Covid cases, when the ambulance service has no choice but to deliver them. There is no hope of restricting the epidemic without addressing in-home transmission.

    David Ward

    Gosport, Hampshire

    1. SIR – My wife and I live alone in the country and have isolated for many weeks. Recently she was called in for a Covid test before a hospital procedure.

      To our great surprise the test was positive. The doctor who rang to tell her decided that she needed a second test, as she had no symptoms. This took place the next day, but by then Test and Trace had got going and I was told to isolate for 14 days. The hospital cancelled the procedure, despite being told that a second test had taken place. Fifteen minutes later, the result came through – negative. The hospital admin staff had gone home, and the procedure could not be reinstated.

      No one seems able to stop the impact of the first (false) test. Test and Trace has no contact number (presumably deliberately) and its threatening text messages pile in daily (fines etc).

      I am reminded of East Germany in the Seventies, as I gazed in through the wire of the inner German border while serving happily, without fear of the state, in the British Army of the Rhine.

      Richard Quicke

      Hazeley, Hampshire

    3. I am sure she loved her birthday gift…. and oximeters are not all that expensive.

      Edit: typo, loved instead of lived.

  12. Morning again. The depths to which……

    SIR – Some friends had two couples over for a socially distanced dinner, but neighbours called the police and they were all fined £1,000 each. Were the neighbours good citizens or followers of the Stasi tradition?

    Mark Solon

    London E1

    1. Why didn’t they just say that they were Muslims, doing worship?

      It’s allowed under the regulations!

  13. I have just the one question, Prime Minister: Where is all the electricity going to come from?

    1. Morning Bill

      SIR – The Government’s climate plan to phase out petrol vehicles in 10 to 12 years is not practical if all 38 million licensed cars are supposed to be electric by then.

      Assuming an average of 12,000 miles annually and battery power of 64 to 100 kWh, electric cars would consume 10 to 17 per cent of the National Grid’s supply. This might not be available during the day and, at night, although about 25 per cent of the grid supply may be accessible between midnight and 4am, it would not be enough.

      Five to 10 nuclear power stations like Sizewell C would be required, at a cost of about £18 billion each, or their equivalent from other clean energy sources.

      This is the reality of the drive to reduce vehicular pollution by going electric, and is an issue that should be addressed.

      B W Jervis

      Sheffield, South Yorkshire

      1. It is also part of a plan to cage us in. It will be impossible to drive to the south of France. Or even to the north
        .

      2. How long would it take to build one nuclear power station, let alone five to ten?

        10 years for the inevitable objections from the Left, 10 for getting planning permission, 10 for designing and awarding contracts and 10 for building and commissioning – and it/they will be over budget from day one!

        Ready in 2060.

    2. Oh dear, Bill, will you never learn? Questions of practicality are NOT to be considered when green issues are being mandated. They are irrelevant and any such discussion makes MPs heads hurt.

      1. Ah but…

        The EU is hinting that cross border top-up power will not be permitted after Brexit, particularly if there is “no deal”.

        1. Just another empty threat. With EDF active on both sides of the channel it will be business as usual, I’m sure.

          1. One would expect so, particularly as we’ll have so much green power we’ll be sending it to France

      2. Can even yer French produce the trillions of gigawatts needed to keep 30 million vehicles fully charged 24/7?

        1. It seems unlikely. I’m looking for lifestyle where I have everything within walking distance, shops, market, restaurants, railway and at least 12 pubs.

          1. Pubs will have long since closed, Harry. Halfcock and Witless will have discovered that they are the source of the plague.

          4. Ooh no! Bad beer country. Biggleswade is dominated by Charles Wells and BSE is the home of Greene-King. I’d rather drink French beer and that’s mostly awful.

      3. 326522+ up ticks,
        Morning HK,
        “Where is all the electricity going to come from?

        Out of the socket, silly, same as all our meat comes from
        tesco / morrisons.

    4. Each car will have a windmill on top, after a push off by the kids, the amps will keep flowing until you get back home. Simples. KP BSc.

    6. Pfizer are working on a vaccine that when injected into some of the abundant money trees will convert them to pollution free power stations.

    7. Compulsory Smart Meters. You can plug in your cars and motor bike overnight and discover that their batteries have been drained and are flat.

  14. I have just the one question, Prime Minister: Where is all the electricity going to come from?

  15. SIR – The newly installed lines of metal posts that now define London’s cycle lanes, at about six feet wide, narrow the highway and greatly restrict traffic movement. On Saturday, I saw an ambulance, with blue lights and siren going, trapped for an inordinate amount of time, as vehicles could not pull over to the edge of the road.

    Surely the authorities must realise that these obstructions are a risk to life.

    Michael Wauchope

    London SW4

  16. SIR – The newly installed lines of metal posts that now define London’s cycle lanes, at about six feet wide, narrow the highway and greatly restrict traffic movement. On Saturday, I saw an ambulance, with blue lights and siren going, trapped for an inordinate amount of time, as vehicles could not pull over to the edge of the road.

    Surely the authorities must realise that these obstructions are a risk to life.

    Michael Wauchope
    London SW4

    No, being seen to be a greenie transcends all other considerations, Mr Wauchope.

    1. 326522+ up ticks,
      HJ,
      “Surely the authorities must realise that these obstructions are a risk to life”

      Ho but they do,they do.

    2. It is all part of the plan that the Caliph of Londonistan has to cow the population – so that it will welcome slammerdom.

      2. If so, said Caliph runs my city too. How much does this nonsense cost? Is not this country functional broke?

        1. No problem, S o r o s has loads n’ loads of cash for this sort of thing. Oops, looks like I’ve developed psittacosis …..

    2. Good morning Peddy! Lucky you! Warm, wet and windy here! Doggy went out at 7am. and barked at a hedgehog!

  18. SIR – In France 10 years ago, I cut up an old mink coat (Letters, November 17) to line the metal kennel of a dog chained up outside an elderly neighbour’s house in freezing weather.

    The next day the coat was wet, cold and bedraggled, as was the dog. My husband offered the owner two bottles of Bordeaux in exchange for the dog.

    The dog’s name is Luc, and he still lives with us in Cornwall.

    Julia Evans

    Trewellard, Cornwall

  19. Eh?

    SIR – The Crown turns the life of Diana, Princess of Wales, into a beautifully crafted soap opera. No wonder young people you have interviewed think her status overblown. But those of us who felt the impact of her work miss her still.

    Diana was not just glamorous. She unerringly targeted neglected causes and threw upon them the spotlight they needed, from Aids to landmines.

    Her secret acts of kindness reveal how much she cared, and that is why crowds slept on the pavement to pay tribute to her at her funeral. I interviewed many of them. There was nothing “mawkish” about their grief; they knew they had lost a champion.

    Esther Rantzen
    Bramshaw, Hampshire

    If they were “secret acts of kindness” how come so many knew about them??

    1. SIR – Olivia Colman’s face is always in a sulk. The Queen never, ever sulks.

      Joan Campanini

      Twickenham, Middlesex

          2. We must ask Bill if she dressed like this when she was at Gresham’s – the school where his MR used to teach!

    2. I always thought she was sly, manipulative and felt she could use the media to her advantage (until she found she’d got a tiger by the tail).

      3. Remember when Tony Hancock was a blood donor?

        His grand-nephew Matt gave us far nastier dark coloured stuff than blood.

  22. Chris Bennion in the Tellygraff…Quite simply, most ‘BBC comedy’ is an oxymoron:

    This week it was revealed, via a Radio Times poll of experts and insiders, that the “panel show antidote” I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue, is the greatest radio comedy of all time. Quite what the show’s most regular correspondent, Mrs Trellis of North Wales, would make of it we don’t know. Perhaps she might remark on the fact that she has been writing letters to the programme since 1972 and that nothing better has been made in the intervening 48 years.

    The rest of the top six is made up of Hancock’s Half Hour (1954), Round the Horne (1965), The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1978), The Goon Show (1951) and that young whippersnapper On the Hour (1991). Decades of technological advancement and we are still glued to a nearly 50-year-old old panel show and comedies first broadcast when Vera Lynn’s Forget Me Not was in the charts.

    Is it simply the case that they don’t make them like that any more? Well, yes. Scrambling to switch Radio 4 off at 6.30pm, before the half-hour “comedy” slot begins, is almost a national sport, with its overreliance on “fast-paced” topical comedy (the interminable The Now Show) and laboured spoofs (Bleak Expectations, Angstrom).

    The quality of the people involved in these shows only serves to highlight the writing, which often feels like it was knocked out five minutes before the show began. What a relief it is when you hear that it’s an archive recording, a long-running favourite such as Just a Minute or something by John Finnemore. The poll backs this up, with only one new series from the past decade making the Top 20.

    Finnemore’s is the rare modern success. His much-loved sitcom Cabin Pressure (2008) comes in at 8, while his sketch show, John Finnemore’s Souvenir Programme (2011), is at 10. Both rely on a blend of expert wordplay and innocent tomfoolery, with a dash of the surreal; both could have been made 50 years ago. This is a compliment. The opening gag of the first Hancock’s Half Hour, The First Night Party, in which Bill Kerr types out invitation letters, at a painfully slow speed, only for it to be revealed he is wearing boxing gloves, is almost the template Finnemore joke. Finnemore, bluntly, understands radio comedy in a way that more fashionable comedians of his generation do not.

    It is not just fashion, however, that accounts for the wrinkles and grey hairs in the Radio Times poll. The rapid march of technology means that TV shows made 30 or 40 years ago look and sound dated, with anything foolish enough to rely on special effects barely making it past five years. Watching Only Fools and Horses or Porridge now, as much as you can admire the technical skill, is an exercise in nostalgia. There’s no doubting that it has aged, that it is of another era. Hancock on the radio, however, sounds as fresh as anything written now. I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue is still produced and, personnel changes aside, hasn’t changed one iota.

    It’s hard to argue with the top ten, though Just a Minute can feel a bit miffed that it languishes at No 29. However, look beyond it and it all begins to feel a bit iffy. The assembled panel of judges certainly know their onions, but their involvement in so many of the shows may help to explain a few anomalies. Barry Cryer’s presence may help suggest why the mainly forgotten Hello Cheeky crops up at No 18, while Lou Wakefield no doubt had some kind words to say for Ladies of Letters (No 19), which she co-wrote.

    In a year which has seen the small screen burst with creativity – I Hate Suzie, I May Destroy You, Small Axe – there is something a little chastening about the poll, suggesting that the wireless’s glory days are long behind it. However, there is comfort, too, proving that radio as an artform endures like no other. Hancock and The Goons are not merely nostalgic – their humour is timeless.

    To view the poll’s top 20 radio comedies, visit telegraph.co.uk/radio

    The top 20 shows as judged by the panel
    1) I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue

    2) Hancock’s Half Hour

    3) Round the Horne

    4) On the Hour

    5) The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

    6) The Goon Show

    7) Mark Steel’s in Town

    8) Cabin Pressure

    9) Blue Jam

    10) John Finnemore’s Souvenir Programme

    11) Ed Reardon’s Week

    12) Count Arthur Strong’s Radio Show!

    13) The Shuttleworths

    14) The Kenny Everett Show

    15) The News Quiz

    16) Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge

    17) Dead Ringers

    18) Hello Cheeky

    19) Ladies of Letters

    20) The Ricky Gervais Show (with Karl Pilkington).

    A leading BTL comment sums it up:

    AFishNamed Wanda
    18 Nov 2020 8:11AM
    The list is a sad reminder of how far the BBC has fallen from its formerly leading position in comedy. The output now is a load of unfunny, woke virtue signalling. Even old favourites like “The Now Show” are unlistenable. The extremely funny Mitch Benn was fired from it for the crime of being white, male and middle-aged. I listen to podcasts now, and online comedy. Another example of why the licence fee needs to be removed. The BBC radio controllers should hang their heads in shame for having perpetrated this crime against UK culture.

    You are not wrong, Wanda!

      3. I’ve got most episodes as MP3 files along with Round The Horne. I would have liked to see Radio Active on the list too.

        1. John, I am currently having a sort-out of “stuff” and have a large-ish collection of cassette tapes which I would like to transfer to some kind of modern format, so that when my cassette player finally gives up the ghost I will still be able to listen to them. (Cassette players no longer seem to be manufactured.) Can you advise me, in very simple layman’s terms how I might do this?

          2. I got my audio files from the file sharing system called Bit Torrents, but I’m afraid that most UK based internet providers don’t allow access to these sites due to copyright reasons.

            My copies are all in the MP3 format, which is a digital audio file, playable on any computer, iPod, or similar music player or even a smartphone.

            One possible way is to use a cassette to MP3 convertor which converts the audio tape to an MP3 music file. Here re a few examples . Some of these converters record directly from the players shown to a USB disk. Other convert from the cassette player to a computer.

            Once you have converted the taped version to an MP3 file, they will play on any computer, iPod, MP3 music player or even a smartphone.

            https://tinyurl.com/y5c5mw39

          3. Thanks, John, that is very helpful, and at just a tenner (reduced from £75) very affordable. My only concern is that it “does not include USB flash drive”. Is this the item in the illustration with a red plastic component? And can I easily buy one at a computer shop (when they allowed to re-open)? The answer would be very useful to an IT ignoramus. Thank you.

          5. Ah, so that’s what a USB flash disk looks like, John. I always thought that those things were called memory sticks. I shall today order myself a cassette tape to USB flash disk converter. Thanks again.

          6. I usually buy items like USB Flash Disks online as it’s cheaper than from a shop. Once the audio files are on the flash disk, you can transfer them to a computer and then on to any MPS player, depending on how you intend to listen to the files. Good luck.

      1. Yes, that was a favourite of mine. This was before the BBC decided to impose the leftie view.

    4. To be expected. I and, I imagine, many others have tumbled to the fact that we live – for me, for the second time – in a country where our betters despise us.

    5. There are far too many profanities on TV now, is that the new normal for British speech, I don’t think so. Humour.. we used to be able to laugh at ourselves and were never ever thin-skinned and sensitive about poking fun at ourselves.

  23. I think I first started to have grave concerns about these covid vaccines when politicians started saying that we were looking at the light at the end of the tunnel.

    2. I copied this comment from the DM btl just now.

      “The mRna vaccine is just the beginning. Next are DNA vaccines which are in stage 1 trials. From Moderna’s own white paper “The key challenge associated with DNA vaccines is that they must penetrate the cell nucleus (crossing two membranes; the cytoplasm and the nucleus). The DNA must then be transcribed in the nucleus into mRNA before moving to the cytoplasm to stimulate antigen production. This core complex pathway often requires both larger doses and special, often painful delivery devices using electric shocks or gold microspheres into persons skin to deliver the DNA vaccine. Once inside the nucleus, DNA vaccines have a risk of permanently changing a persons DNA.” What could possibly go wrong?”

      I feel the need to go and stick my head in the sand for some time.

      1. 326522+ up ticks,
        Morning PM,
        Don’t do that,( bike park)
        “Head in sand” the chosen position for ALL current lab/lib/con coalition member / voters, along with the three monkeys.

        Taking your post a step further, with a two headed torso be allowed two votes if the coalition is still operating.

        1. Ok. Time to take time out, then, for a while. My head is spinning with all this awfulness going on in the world.

    1. 326522+ up ticks,
      O2O,
      Did you not mention the semi re-entry missile via the wretch cameron as lift off,
      with may the treacherous ( nine month delay) as the intermediate section until burn out, then johnson as the re-entry
      nose cone ?

      And so it came to pass…….

    2. Did t’Lad a favour yesterday, picked up some bits of a VERY old 18″ gauge battery loco from Steeple Grange Railway and took them to his place.
      Did him a further favour by relieving him of several lumps of concrete rubble and 10 bags of topsoil for leveling off the uphill side of The Wall.
      Just moved the concrete lumps up, but rain stopped play before I got to grips with the topsoil.
      This is the wall as it stands now with some indication of how much more I have to do before I reach the washing line path:-
      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1f1b4545cd7c84605591fe33bc6f894db5410e2bb85108cd9301221ccc1da83d.jpg
      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3c616b7c1b3a3e5c7d21ebe560f3a3d406a8033a6233088ac6133fe126984925.jpg

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/76f58000513f9c370cde3386312b22d6b462fa633413de4f207f110dd7d2b3c7.jpg

    3. Don’t try to imitate the actions of that Renaissance artist of the Venetian school:

      While Titian was mixing rose madder,
      His model was posed on a ladder
      “Your position,” said Titian,
      “Inspires coition.”
      So he nipped up the ladder and ‘ad ‘er.

  26. Morning, All, still not getting disqus updates so, having read all that’s available at the moment (153 comments) I’ll close for now and maybe come back later with exciting news of the result of my forthcoming trip for an INR blood-test, the purchase of Immodium for Best Beloved and a trip to Gate Farm for a tray of 20 eggs for £2.00.

    I don’t know how I can face such fast-paced living.

    1. “What are you doing”?

      “I’m Reading”*

      * Please note this reply does NOT mean I am available for a discussion on carpets,curtains,bedding ,wallpaper,paint colour or the impending visit of your mother

      ** It especially does NOT mean I will put down my book and attend to any trivial DIY task you have just invented
      ***For the final time reading is NOT doing nothing!!

  29. Ladder work completed. Why on earth did I not think of using cable ties to keep climbing plants in place 30 years go?

    Much easier second time round. Gorgeous morning – will go out on the bike.

          2. I took a couple of photographs with my phone yesterday of a long leaf scattered footpath lined with beech trees.
            Unfortunately i can’t get them on to this website.

    3. I hope you’ve left the cable ties slack enough to allow for expansion of the branches, otherwise the result will be strangulation.

    5. Shouldn’t you be growing ground cover plants that avoid the need for such heights?

      I spent an hour up a ladder fixing some wind damage to a soffit yesterday, naturally it was right at the peak of the roof.

      The climb was quite reasonable when I started the climb but at the top the wind reappeared and then it started snowing. Happy would not have described my feeling.

  30. ‘Morning All

    Good piece from the slog on the brainwashing of the normies………

    “Any obstacle to the US and UK Establishment’s favoured Narratives is now disabled with the charge of being racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic, Russian, nazi, or simply “dangerous”.

    The traditional media’s total connivance has transformed the court of

    public opinion into a kangaroo court. And, as in kangaroo courts

    everywhere, the accusations are so outlandish and unfounded that the

    disbelieving will be neutralised by dumb incredulity, while the company

    men and fools scramble to assimilate the latest “2+2=5” into their

    worldview.”

    https://therealslog.com/2020/11/17/a-j-c-boone/#comment-955621
    Scary accurate stuff,the rest is worth your time

    3. MHRA is the “front”. Contractor Genpact https://www.genpact.com/about-us/regions/europe/united-kingdom 5 Merchant Square, 5th Floor, Westminster, W2, Legal Offices City of London, Holding Company Bermuda. Main business AI / Augmented Intel / Digital Intelligence DNA / advanced analytics.

      CEO “Tiger Tyagarajan https://www.genpact.com/insight/blog/working-from-home-does-not-save-cost-in-the-short-term

      Bd of Dirs:

      Mr Santosh Pushpangadan Kallattu – Indian • Director • SVP, Chief Growth Officer, Sales Leader • Born in May 1971

      Ms. Sharon May Thomas – British • Director • Solicitor • Born in May 1968

      Entity Central Corporate Services (UK) Limited – Secretary

      Mr Lester D’Souza – Indian • Director • Senior Vice President – Digital Consulta • Born in May 197

      All high order deception. £1.5m sole source contract in October for AI software? This fall into the same category as other Govt issued med contracts. RR good of you to put the original link up, without that, the rest wouldn’t have fallen through the cracks. there’s more to this without doubt

  31. Green Revolution,Build Back Better,All Electric Cars………………..
    The Hortators at the child slave mines in the DRC will have to up their drumbeat……….
    Those rare earth metals won’t mine themselves you know………..
    In fact they aren’t there to be mined at all to replace the numbers of petrol and diesel vehicles that are currently used worldwide…………Think about it,Year Zero is coming
    “The electric tractor and plough has run out of charge”
    7 years in the camps for “defeatism”
    But hey,good news,after all the cattle were slaughtered there were plenty of leather straps for us to use to pull the ploughs…….for a while at least………..

      1. If the EU still has any control over British fishing waters, British borders and British Law come January then Boris and Nut Nuts should be placed in stocks and pelted with rotten vegetables sourced from vegans’ rubbish depositories.

    4. I’m awaiting every TV and radio outlet to all come through at the same time with every mainstream politician, big business leader, top civil servant etc to say “Resistance is futile. Your life, as it has been, is over. From this point forwards, you will service…us” as Klaus Schwab approaches the screen, flanked by Bill Gates and Xi The Pooh.

      1. I would like to see George Soros and Klaus Schwab dressed in speedos and smeared in axle grease compete in a swimming race across a crocodile infested river in the Congo where child slaves are mining cobalt for the batteries of their electric cars.

    5. When i have my horses stabled in my garden shed, i can get rid of the lawn mower and at least my rose’s will benefit from all the manure.
      At the moment the manure is mainly seeping from one particular building in London.

  32. 326522+ up ticks,
    A must watch tonight 8 o’clock on you tube,Hearts of Oak,
    rotherham, “has enough been done”.
    I would like to ask has the guardians of the law & council members overseeing the welfare of children in rotherham given a satisfactory reason for their three monkey stance over 16 plus years.

    1. Sod asking them why they ignored it. I want to ask why they’re still employed and pensioned!

      Same for every social worker who didn’t raise the issue – as many did.

      Every single person responsible for this farce should have been sacked, charged with malfeasance and their pensions revoked. It’s utterly unacceptable that they are still there!

    2. Perhaps it’s like what happens with other scandals, such as Savile/Bbc and Princess Diana/Martin Bashir, where the MSM finally recognises them only when the protagonists are either dead or near death? Oh, apart from former veterans, obviously.

      1. 326522+ up ticks,
        Afternoon AA,
        Truth be told in regards to the rotherham revealing those in the
        know ie, council members & the guardians of the innocents will still be operating as usual & returning home to their families.

        Was it denis macshane MP
        ( rotherham) who said it was well known locally what was going on.

    2. No doubt our MSM will portray those protests is vile conspiracy theorist anti-vaxxers and right wing thugs. Meanwhile, Antifa and BLM go out on the rampage in the US and its nuffin to see hear, move along, move along. At least those protesting in Denmark have got some results. Let’s hope that pushback does filter through to the UK and elsewhere.

  36. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    SIR – You say that the planned 
phase-out of petrol and diesel car sales by 2030 is impractical (Leading Article, November 16). I disagree.

    The number of charge points is growing even faster than the number of electric vehicles. If current trends continue, by 2030 there will be six charge points for every electric car (compared with one petrol pump for every 600 petrol cars today).

    The global shift away from petrol and diesel will only accelerate with America’s election of Joe Biden and China’s recent commitments to reduce emissions.

    Car companies are tearing up their strategies to focus on electric vehicles. Markets and investors understand this: it is why Tesla is the world’s most valuable car company.

    The Government’s decision is not a green whim. It fires the starting gun on the creation of a new automotive economy. That is a fantastic opportunity for British entrepreneurs and businesses.

    Gi Fernando
    Chairman, New AutoMotive
    Sevenoaks, Kent

    Well, Gi, I consider your comparison of petrol pumps and charging points to be a load of bolleaux…if I visit a diesel pump it takes not much more than 5 minutes to take on enough fuel for about 600 miles. In an electric car I would first need to find a charging point that’s both available and working, and then hang around for up to an hour, in order to cover the next 150-200 miles or thereabouts. ‘Trends’ in 10 years’ time are not convincing me and, I suspect, a lot of others.

    Your website – ihttps://newautomotive.org/mission –
    is stuffed with almost every greenie buzzword imaginable, but that’s about it. No thanks, you’ll have to do a lot better than this.

    1. Edit: Someone else isn’t convinced, either:

      SIR – The Government’s climate plan to phase out petrol vehicles in 10 to 12 years is not practical if all 38 million licensed cars are supposed to be electric by then.

      Assuming an average of 12,000 miles annually and battery power of 64 to 100 kWh, electric cars would consume 10 to 17 per cent of the National Grid’s supply. This might not be available during the day and, at night, although about 25 per cent of the grid supply may be accessible between midnight and 4am, it would not be enough.

      Five to 10 nuclear power stations like Sizewell C would be required, at a cost of about £18 billion each, or their equivalent from other clean energy sources.

      This is the reality of the drive to reduce vehicular pollution by going electric, and is an issue that should be addressed.

      B W Jervis
      Sheffield, South Yorkshire

    1. The trouble is that any information that goes against the government’s narrative must be ignored or denied and dismissed.

    1. The treatment of Tommy Robinson by the police, the courts, the politicians and the MSM brings ignominy, disgrace and shame down upon the heads of all British people. How can anybody be proud of a Britain which has become such a stinking sewer of injustice?

    2. 326522+ up ticks,
      Afternoon AS,
      The compo should be enough to finance a
      pro English / GB patriotic party.
      Poetic justice.

  39. Here’s Freddy…..

    SIR – You report (November 17) that Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, is considering the imposition of vaccines. Enabling powers are purported to exist under health statutes. Any such imposition would violate both written parts of the constitution of this country and international law.

    After the Second World War, which saw millions subjected to grotesque experiments and extermination, it was decided by international agreement that such abuse should never be allowed to recur. Thus the security of personal liberty as a fundamental human right was formalised by the Western world.

    Our own constitutional law also prohibits such abuse. Any enabling legislation would place the Queen in breach of her oaths of office. Her Government is bound by the law that those oaths entrench.

    Mr Hancock should not show contempt for constitutional law.

    Lord James of Blackheath (Con)

    Frederick Forsyth

    John Bingley

    London SW1

    1. It’s okay, Freddy; Handycock is just another here-today-gone-tomorrow minister who likes to look big. It isn’t going to happen.

      1. 326522+ up ticks,
        Morning HJ,
        Even at “here today, gone today”, with enough of them in a group as say, lab/lib/con the damage they can create is limitless.

        Operating as a coalition makes them much more effective.

        Digit dick is showing quite clearly that the fear campaign as run by the coalition is working successfully.

        Proof, try taking a walk on a golf course with a stick in your hand you will be spotted from space & met at the clubhouse on your return by
        numerous units of what now passes as “the law”

      1. I am wondering if the current strengthened “over 65 flu jab” has any affect on the Covid-19 test result. Could it cause a positive result?

        1. 326522+ up ticks,
          Morning C,
          That is an unanswerable question on account of the governance number manipulators bringing out totals to suit their purpose.

      2. That is an amazing letter to President Trump. And correct in that he seems to be the only one able to halt the intentions of the globalists, the financiers, the politicians and leaders of the world in their intentions. Really impressive. I say good luck to President Trump because there’s nobody on this side of the pond willing to stand up and be counted.

        Thanks for posting.

      3. I am curious to know if anyone anywhere has a good word to say about Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury?

        1. 326522+up ticks,
          Morning R,
          I must admit to being a bit biased having little trust in the “enery creation” since the
          kick-off,plus being of the RC persuasion.

          1. Informal rule of the road here [Kenya], when people go to church, others visit the bar / restaurant [11am]. Informal church and the liquid nutrition congregation’s larger than that in church. But Kenya being Kenya, those who visit church merely seek to wash themselves of the stealing sins, straight after church, in the same bars / restaurants and on it goes. Good fun to watch

    1. Good for him. I hope he wins properly. He’s a complete maverick and rude etc. But I admire his attempts to bring industries back to the USA.

    2. For God’s sake, Donald, submit the evidence. I keep watching the (ha ha) news bulletins waiting for them all to eat crow. Feed ’em, and soon.

  42. The Muslim cemetery struggling to keep up with burials: Grave diggers work from 6am to 10pm in Bradford after surge in deaths during Covid pandemic

    Muslim community deaths from Coronavirus have surged so dramatically grave diggers are working 18 hour days, with one cemetery calling in construction experts to discover new methods to prepare burials.

    There are three shifts of diggers and bereavement support staff toiling from 6am to 10pm in Bradford, West Yorks, after the sharp rise during the pandemic’s second wave.

    Scholemoor Cemetery has seen 44 new funerals in just 11 days, pushing services there to the limit and sparking warnings it is nearing full capacity.

    One community leader said he never though he would see such scenes in a ‘non-war setting’.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8961281/The-Muslim-cemetery-struggling-burials-age-coronavirus.html

    3. I can recall at least two instances in the UK in the last few years when muslims have caused more than 44 funerals, and in both cases, the majority of victims were young people.

  44. On the radio news today, The Beano is producing a one-off edition for adults featuring current events. Will our very own Plum be replacing Beryl the Peril!

    1. Doubtful. Especially as Beryl the Peril featured in The Topper. Try Minnie the Minx; she was in The Beano.

        2. Borne from a childhood spent sitting in the barber’s shop, reading everything from the Hornet, Hotspur and Wizard, to the Beano, Dandy, Beezer and Topper left out for the young lads waiting for their regulation short-back-and-sides!

          1. I wonder how many have a secret collection of those ‘war’ comics that had Tommys battling with Germans and lots of dialogue that would have today’s kids looking for their safe space.

          2. Regular re-prints of titles such as “Commando” are still being published and sold by D C Thompson in Dundee, Kaypea.

    2. It would be great if Nottler Korky were involved in producing another copy of The Dandy. He would, of course, be on the front page.

  45. 326522+ up ticks,
    breitbart,

    ILLEGAL CHANNEL CROSSINGS TO COST TAXPAYER NEAR £250MN

    That will be annually & rising daily.

    May one ask in all honesty, why has the UK electorate got this long standing hatred of the United Kingdom ?

    1. Haven’t you noticed Ogga – the UK electorate has been muzzled and put under house arrest. We have no say in what the “government” does.

      1. 326522+ up ticks,
        Evening N,
        Make no mistake I see it well enough and sadly regard it as a form of penance to be paid for
        continuing to kiss X the lab/lib/con candidate in the ballot booth, trouble is innocents must also suffer.
        Proven UK beneficial failures,
        Eu assets = b liar / brown / the
        wretch cameron / clegg / may the treacherous & the turkish delight / amnesty’s R me / dirty dealer johnson.
        Yes I see it as enough has been said especially over the last three decades via the ballot booth to bring us to such a pretty pass.

    2. I saw something the other day about all the unimaginable filth that was discovered in some UK hotels the cleaning bills would have probably added another 2 million to that.
      My wife was out with one of our daughter in laws driving past Brocket Hall in Hertfordshire yesterday. They saw 6 African men, aged about mid twenties walking west along a foot path parallel to the B653. Almost opposite the Crooked Chimney Pub/Restaurant. It’s not a very common pedestrian area.

      1. A former neighbour who had a top
        job in the Immigration Office based in Lunar House in Croydon let slip that many illegals arrived in lorries and were dumped at the Comfort Cafe near the Fourwentways roundabout on the A11 near Babraham.

        The ‘World Famous’ Comfort Cafe has its brown sign prominently displayed and is a favourite for truckers.

        Sure enough we did notice African men on the roads thereabouts when going into Cambridge.

        2. And i believe you missed the apostrophe from daughters’
          Down vote, you’ve had it coming for a long time Mr Pullem ………. 🤗

          2. Perhaps you need to have more of a longer lie down.
            Only capital letters are necessary at the beginning of a sentence.

          3. Perhaps you need to go back to school. ‘I’ is used for the English 1st person singular subject of a verb, not ‘i’.

          4. Perhaps you just need to back off, there are plenty of people whom on this site make what you seem to consider to be serious ‘mistakes’ and it doesn’t really matter or indeed effect anybody’s opinion or means of reply at all. But sadly never the less, at every given opportunity you can’t resist the desire for an unnecessary and very insignificant, unimportant confrontation. You seem to have set your self up be the equivalent of the effing school monitor. Get an effing life, you narrow minded trivial and over fastidious pratt. I will never apologise, so you can get stuffed.

          5. What a little charmer you are. No sense of fun 🙁

            Btw, it should be: …there are plenty of people whom who* on this site make…

            *Relative pronoun introducing a subordinate clause, takes the nominative case.

          7. Perhaps you just need to back off, there are plenty of people whom on this site make what you seem to consider to be serious ‘mistakes’ and it doesn’t really matter or indeed effect anybody’s opinion or means of reply at all. But sadly never the less, at every given opportunity you can’t resist the desire for an unnecessary and very insignificant, unimportant confrontation. You seem to have set your self up be the equivalent of the effing school monitor. Get an effing life, you narrow minded trivial and over fastidious pratt. I will never apologise, so you can get stuffed.

  46. Good morning all

    I was overcome with nostalgia last night after watching BBC4 ‘s prog about Maggie Thatcher.

    I remember the the 1970s power shortages very well and the bumbling bungling of politicians from both parties , plus the absolute mess that Britain was in

    Did any one else watch it?

      1. At least there was some light after the disastrous Heath. But will the country ever recover from six consecutive disasters: Major – Blair- Brown, Cameron, May -Johnson?

        1. Never, ever .

          Why won’t someone tell Boris to wind his neck in .

          The electric car thing is frightening, look at all the tiny new modern homes that don’t have garages , and poor bods have to park on the street or in communal carparks / garages . Everywhere has rows of terraced housing, flats , retirement complexes, old homes with no driveways etc, how are people who can afford electric cars going to cope .

          So will all electric cars have the same size engine , and will they be able to tow trailers/ caravans etc.

    2. Yes, I watched it too – we seldom watch any tv but that was a really good prog – I remember the power shortages and the rubbish piled high when I visited London on one occasion when I visited, it wasn’t so bad where I was living at the time. The clips of Maggie made Boris look like the bumbling amateur fool he has proved to be.

      1. Maggie the grammar school girl – PM.
        She believed you could achieve anything if you worked hard and recognised
        opportunities when they came along. She was an inspiration but of course the feminists hated her….

          2. The last I heard (and that was a while ago), one of them became an African revolutionary and the other was cancelled by the BBC for mentioning a tennis player’s bad hair day.

          3. Was that before or after she was caught, on camera, pissing at the side of her bunk on I’m A Nonentity: Get Me Out Of Here?

        2. Just as black people hate black people like Candace Owens and Thomas Sowell.

          Success breeds resentment.

    3. WAs it the series that was on BBC1 (or2?) last year? If so , we watched it then and it was very good.

    4. I’m currently reading her book The Downing Street Years, a good read. What a contrast to todays lily-livered parasites.

    1. Politics in terms of cows
      SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The state takes one and gives it to someone else.
      COMMUNISM: You have two cows. The State takes both of them and gives you the milk.
      FASCISM: You have two cows. The State takes both of them and sells you the milk.
      MILITARY DICTATORSHIP: You have two cows. The State takes both of them and shoots you.
      BUREAUCRACY: You have two cows. The state takes both of them, accidentally kills one and spills the milk in the sewer.
      CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.
      VENTURE CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows. The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company. The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on one.
      PURE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your neighbours decide who gets the milk.
      REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your neighbours pick someone to decide who gets the milk.
      AMERICAN DEMOCRACY: The government promises to give you two cows if you vote for it. After the election, the president is impeached for speculating in cow futures. The press dubs the affair “Cowgate”.
      ANARCHY: You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbors kill you and take the cows.

  48. Ah! I can relax now with some rather nice music!
    https://youtu.be/YjqqmkDclMo

    I gave over the road a hand cutting some elder back so he gave me a hand carting t’Lad’s ¼ ton of topsoil up the garden!
    So after washing our hands he came in to sample a ½ pint of the gallon of cider I started off the back end of last month!
    Very nice he said, but a ½ pint was enough as it went straight to his head!
    I gave him a pint to take over to share with his missus!

  49. What an excellent programme the film about the fire-fighters in Paris (on BBC4). Great skill and courage. And great leadership – unlike the pathetic woman who was “in charge” of the London Fire Brigade at the time of the Grenfell fire – who told her men not to enter, “Because it might be a bit hot and dangerous”.

    I recommend it to anyone who wants to see decent, professional people trying to deal with the horror of a cathedral on fire.

    1. Given the fire was almost certainly caused by a lazy French labourer throwing a lit cigarette away, will they be castigated?

      1. There was a chap from the contractor on the prog. Looked a touch sheepish…

        Could have been a slammer, of course. They have set fire to dozens of churches in France.

    2. Good, isn’t it? There are two other programmes on the same subject; yesterday evening we watched the next about rebuilding Notre Dame. Probably watch the third and final one this evening – How To Build A Cathedral.

      1. I saw the second one in April. I hope that there will be an update (or two) as the rebuilding takes place.

        “How to Build…” was first shown in 2008 – so ‘ll record it. Thanks.

  51. “Asia’s forgotten musical gems germs rediscovered on vinyl” BBC News on line

    (Left wing) Record labels and curators are increasingly devoting significant resources to re-releasing tunes germs from earlier decades on vinyl, CD, cassette and on digital formats, in the hope of turning them into collectors’ contagious items.

    All in the interest of diversity, of course.

  52. Covid-19: politicisation, “corruption,” and suppression of science

    When good science is suppressed by the medical-political complex, people die

    Politicians and governments are suppressing science. They do so in the public interest, they say, to accelerate availability of diagnostics and treatments. They do so to support innovation, to bring products to market at unprecedented speed. Both of these reasons are partly plausible; the greatest deceptions are founded in a grain of truth. But the underlying behaviour is troubling.

    Science is being suppressed for political and financial gain. Covid-19 has unleashed state corruption on a grand scale, and it is harmful to public health.1 Politicians and industry are responsible for this opportunistic embezzlement. So too are scientists and health experts. The pandemic has revealed how the medical-political complex can be manipulated in an emergency—a time when it is even more important to safeguard science.

    https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4425

    1. Thanks Belle
      That link will be winging its way to my MP shortly and hopefully all NoTTLers will send it to their MPs.
      It probably won’t make any difference to the MPs stance but it make me feel as I’m doing something to get us out of this Stasi like helter skelter.

  54. BBC breaking;
    “The head of NHS Test and Trace is self-isolating after receiving a notification from the NHS mobile app.

    Baroness Dido Harding tweeted that she was “feeling well” after getting the alert overnight.

    “Nothing like personal experience of your own products,” she added. “Many hours of Zoom ahead.”

    It comes a week after her husband, Conservative MP John Penrose, was told to isolate by the app, and days after Boris Johnson began self-isolating.

    The prime minister was told to stay at home after having a meeting with Tory MP Lee Anderson, who has since tested positive for coronavirus.”

    Is there some sort of plan unfolding amongst the cabal? Or am I being naive in thinking they could plan any bloody thing.

    2. You want futile lockdowns?
      Canadian territory Nunavut has just been put into lockdown after about 50 covid cases were found..
      The place is spread over more than 2 million square kilometers with a population of just 35,000. You would have thought that keeping six feet apart was the least of their problems.

    4. They are taking time off to shuffle offshore the obscene sums of money they are fraudulently thieving from the taxpayer.

      Their Test and Trace is a scam because their test is at best unreliable and at worse fraudulent.

    5. Did anyone think of attempting to tell the BBC that such notifications originate from the National Horticultural Society App?

      Corimmoble’s right as stated below re offshore ££ shovelling, given Harding confirmed the proof’s in the pudding : “Nothing like personal experience of your own products” the fingers are fimrly entrenched in the money pie.

      Although it does sound drastic the Horticultural Society’s App has the ability to give orders telling Penrose to isolate. Presumably when Harding was counting the profit

  55. A DT headline yesterday announced that Boris Johnson has declared that in 2030 – 9 years time – the selling of all new petrol and diesel cars will be made illegal and by 2035 the selling of all hybrid cars will be illegal too.

    * There is scientific evidence that forests of wind turbines are adversely affecting the climate by sucking up too much wind. This is not only leading to flat calms but also to violently destructive storms and hurricanes in the wind vacuums they are creating elsewhere . All attempts to investigate this phenomenon have been squashed and even though we must ‘Follow The Science‘ vested interests do not want us to do so if The Science produces results they do not want.

    [* This report comes from the Rastus Research Institute whose directors’ scientific qualifications include an “O” level in Physics and Chemistry in1962]

      1. Is Matt getting more political nowadays? I don’t remember him being so contemptuous of political correctness and the left in general in the past.

    2. ” All attempts to investigate this phenomenon have been squashed”
      They’re just doing that until it all blows over.

      1. So why isn’t he advocating cutting immigration to zero, given it’s people who cause pollution?

      2. It looks as though it may be an ‘art’ exhibition, or gallery where Khan is pontificating. I have not listened to him, I simply cannot bear to hear him speak.

        1. Neither can I . why isn’t he back in Pakistan campaigning for clean rivers, the education of women and the banning of child marriages .

          Why do these W–s think they have the right to tell us what to do, and why is that little W– is in charge of one of the most historical cities in the world .

          1. I think he was put there (and put there he was, the opposing Goldsmith candidate was a very weak Tory choice) to make London unrecognisable to we, the indigenous, so that we no longer identify with our first and foremost city in order to demoralise us and make us feel that it, and the land in which we live no longer belongs to us, with the assumption if that us the case we will not put up a fight for it.

          2. The UKIP mayoral candidate is Peter Gammon – they’re going to have a lot of fun with his surname (but at least it will be memorable).

  56. There are more voters than people
    Ballots in the count that we don’t know,
    There are more voters than people
    And the more we find out the more I know
    Yeah, the more we find out the more i know

  57. Every day of Christmas freedom will result in five extra days of tighter restrictions, warn health chiefs
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/11/18/every-day-christmas-freedom-will-result-two-extra-days-tighter/

    Every day of Christmas freedom will result in five extra days of tighter restrictions, health chiefs have warned.

    Dr Susan Hopkins, chief medical adviser to NHS Test and Trace, told a Downing Street briefing that Sage scientific advice indicated that “for every day that we release (measures) we will need two days of tighter restrictions,” but had to send out a correction afterwards that the number of days needed is actually five.

    This means that if lockdown restrictions were eased for just six days over the festive period, a month of tighter measures would be needed to offset the potential damage.

    “For every German soldier killed in the occupied country, we will shoot ten civilians”.

    1. Stop the testing – defund Test & Trace – and the epidemic will be over! We can go back to the normal deaths of old people from flu.

      1. Dido of Carnage is isolating. Apparently it took her “world-class” Trak ‘n Trace outfit FIVE days to locate her….{:¬))

      2. The local rag is full of “cases rise!” headlines. Of course they will; you’re testing more, so you’ll find more, you pillocks! Are deaths rising, or even hospitalisations?

        1. There are deaths – of the old and vulnerable, but they seem to have taken over from flu this year.

    2. Until these people take a 5% pay cut for every week of lockdown – and no, it won’t reset – they demand, then it’s acceptable.

      While they don’t, they’ve no risks and can keep giving this destructive advice with impunity. It’s time to hammer the people demanding lock up.

  58. Baron Ahmed has taken the Dis-honourable course of action and stood down
    from the House of Lords after a string of lurid accusations.

    He was formerly briefly jailed for killing a man on the motorway whilst
    texting and driving, he got dealt the ‘Get out of Jail Free m’Lord card’
    and served a grand total of 16 days for this killing. More recently
    he’s been shagging vulnerable constituents who go to him for help and
    paedophilic skeletons from way back have now started tumbling out of his
    closet.

    Isn’t it about time the British Government also did the honourable thing
    and sent this smelly paedo rapist killer Paki back home?

    Excuse me, no decorum: Lord smelly paedo rapist killer Paki !

        1. What on earth is it with this business of Sir Mo or Sir Ahmed or any other Sir Muslim.. be done with it , what a total farce.

          People were knighted because they served the King or Queen bravely , you know, like the Knights of the round table or the Knights that rode off to the Crusades

          Why Knight anyone, all this clamour for knighting a poncy wealthy footballer or a bling clad BLM racing driver with hoards of money tucked away tax free is not a very good idea .

        2. What on earth is it with this business of Sir Mo or Sir Ahmed or any other Sir Muslim.. be done with it , what a total farce.

          People were knighted because they served the King or Queen bravely , you know, like the Knights of the round table or the Knights that rode off to the Crusades

          Why Knight anyone, all this clamour for knighting a poncy wealthy footballer or a bling clad BLM racing driver with hoards of money tucked away tax free is not a very good idea .

    1. This morning on BBC news there was an article on how UK tax payers were ripped off to the tune of 21 million in a bung to a Spanish chappie . It was centred around the supply of PPE. The politicos and other parties who should be completely ashamed of them selves were b8llsh8tting and trying to cover it up as if no one was to blame. And people of the same ilk wanted Dominic Cummings sacked for driving to Barnard castle.

      1. I was struck by the usual BS platitudes, e.g. ‘we are committed to blah, blah, blah’, while ignoring the blatant elephant in the room, namely stinking corruption.

        1. Absolutely,………. they all just prattled on avoiding the whole issue of the 21 million corruption.
          I know i keep going on about it, but the political classes really do Eff up everything they touch.

    1. Incredible if true. Remember Hillaire Belloc:

      And is it True ? It is not True.
      And if it were it wouldn’t do
      For people such as me and you
      Who pretty nearly all day long
      Are doing something rather wrong.
      Because if things were really so,
      You would have perished long ago.

        1. I agree – but we are told so many lies that is not always easy to distinguish lies from the truth.

        1. I wonder…

          Given the propensity of Democrats to want to release felons early and not imprison as many in the first place and the tendency of Democrat cities to be the ones that suffer from spontaneously combusting, I’m guessing that Republicans will let them get on with it and man the barricades instead.

    4. The size of the Trump rallies across the US by comparison with the absence of Biden rallies would suggest so. We know the polls were rigged in favour of Biden in an attempt to suppress the Trump vote. A single pollster who predicted a Trump win in 2016 also predicted a Trump win in 2020.

      The support for Trump appears overwhelming. Biden is revealed as a crook with a creepy fondness for sniffing the hair of juveniles. Biden is a proxy or stooge for Obama who has been orchestrating the anti-Trump campaigns since the 2016 election.

      Clint Eastwood had it about right when he stated that Obama was the greatest fraud ever visited upon America.

    1. Surely even the Lefty Nazis wouldn’t do that?

      Oh, hang on. They celebrate murder of their enemies.

        1. The bit to look for is their crowing. They’d see this as a victory, so if anyone is praising it then follow from there. However, I hope there’s an investigation and that they get sorted out.

      2. They have burned people’s property on the Continent. Martin Sellner’s car, iirc, and his parents holiday house (off the top of my head, haven’t checked it)

  64. Never mind Joe Biden, what about the leader of the world’s other superpower? 18 November 2020.

    How should Western liberal democratic societies manage their relationships with a nationalist, authoritarian and increasingly assertive China? That’s a question every bit as important as those over which we agonise daily – our relationship with the EU post-Brexit and the USA post-Trump. What’s more, Joe will probably turn out to be just as tough with Beijing as Donald. So, isn’t it time we all spent more time thinking about how we should be Living with the Dragon?

    No ordinary person in their right minds would admire China but one has to smile at the always present assumption that the West is composed of “liberal democratic Societies”.

    When we opposed the Soviet Union during the Cold War there was no doubt who was on the right side. The Russian Communist State was a murderous tyranny headed by rabid Marxists, and we were overall, the good guys. Trite but true. This is no longer so. The UK for one is on the cusp of becoming a totalitarian Police State that more resembles China than differs from it. The fight against the Dragon will not be one about Freedom or Democracy since both will shortly cease to exist even here, but of Power, closely resembling historical struggles between Empires.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/11/17/never-mind-joe-biden-leader-worlds-superpower/

    1. What do we expect from someone who works the BBC for most of his career? Why does the DT keep employing all these statist lefties as well as the crony establishment corporate shills like (IMHO) AEP & Co, who are all-in on how great the EU/Biden/Big Tech.the COVID vaccines and lockdowns are?

  66. Welcome to Dystopia

    DT Headline story

    Latest travel news: Police issue 14 fines to people for trying to leave the UK

    and they then put up those trying to get into the UK illegally in 4 star hotels and, feed them, clothe them and give them pocket money.

    (I used to wonder if we were going mad – now I don’t wonder, I know that we are.)

  68. A BTL comment under the article in todays’s DT with which I agree:

    The only honourable thing for Boris Johnson to do now is to get a proper Brexit done which protects Britain’s sovereignty and eradicates all control that the EU has over Britain’s laws and borders.

    Having done that he and his paramour should resign, leave Britain and not interfere in the country’s affairs in the shocking way that all the living former prime ministers from Major to May have done and are still doing.

    1. 326522+ up ticks,
      Afternoon R,
      Is poison the dog, and take the squeeze to a private room in the bunker for a wedding ceremony wrapped in the eu flag and with ode to joy background music, followed by………..

  69. NoTTL Laff

    I’m giving up drinking until Christmas. Sorry, wrong punctuation. I’m giving up. Drinking until Christmas.

    1. Good day Rik

      I was obviously composing my post with this joke from Allison Pearson at the same time as you. Sorry.

      2. I had some cider (draught) down in Cornwall in the late 50s called Screech…..and it did!

        2. She seems to be, to say the least, a rather strange lady. One can’t help feeling somewhat sorry for her daughters.

          1. Indeed.
            Her ex killed himself just before New Year – haven’y found out why. Much wailing and chest-beating.
            She had an “angel school” on how to talk to angels.
            I guess it’s the fate of the “spare” Royal, to have no real role but plenty of attention and money, often leads to falling off the rails.

        1. A question as I don’t have an account. I’ve a faceache one, but that was for the kids and workmates. I only use that now for ‘messaging’ local fishing and drinking friends. I think that’s private.

          1. It is worth checking that it is still private. That company has a nasty habit of kicking privacy settings to one side when it updates things and leaving its users “exposed”. Several people I know have fallen foul of this trick over the years.

          2. Judging by the way tweets, aches, messes etc get trawled up years after the event to discredit people, I suspect it isn’t

  71. One for Peddy, our typo, spelling, grammar and punctuation tsar, in Allison Pearson’s article in todays DT:

    “I’m giving up drinking until Christmas. Sorry, wrong punctuation. I’m giving up. Drinking until Christmas.”

    1. I do not know who Julie Bower is but she would be very welcome as a Nottler. Here is her BTL comment under the Allison Pearson article:

      You know it has gone past the point on insanity when Matt Hancock, equipped with his degree in PPE having never worked in the real world (I think he might have done a couple of internships) calls Professor Carl Heneghan an ‘outlier’ and when his boss, a former journalist, appears to be setting policy based on the latest whim of his 32 year-old girlfriend who has a degree in theatre studies.

      2. Yeah – saw that when reading the Letters Page on my tablet today (my PC is too fast at loading to use the ESC key / X to stop it loading enough to lock me out). Best comment thus far this week. What even worse is that I’m just glad Starmer or, God forbid, Corbyn isn’t the current occupier of No.10. We’d likely all be inprisoned or under full lockdowns all the way through under them. What’s amazing is the lack of any pushback by the majority of people – especially in the more affluent areas of England.

        1. Many, many people are ignoring lockdown 2 and just getting on with life in our part of the world (Cambs).

          1. I have noticed the same. Just completed drawings for a coffee bar aimed at students in Grand Arcade Cambridge (Espresso Library) now on site. The former Cafe Rouge on Bridge Street is about to become a Middleton Steak House as is the former Cafe Rouge (Alliance Assurance) in Bury St Edmunds.

        2. 326522+ up ticks.
          Afternoon EA,
          do not count your blessings yet, the way a coalition works it will be labs turn next.
          The peoples who are responsible for our present
          odious plight will, sticking to the same voting pattern,
          guarantee it via the polling booth.

      3. It’s the same with the Green Scam. Clueless politicians in thrall to scientists fixated on their own narrow specialisms, with neither able to see the bigger picture.

        1. There should be a Nobel prize – or something like the Wyndham Medal – for Science Fiction awarded to politicians who know nothing about Science Reality!

  72. That’s me for this very productive day. Two hours ladder work. Gutters cleaned; rose tied back; wall climbing shrubs reduced in height by a foot. And a bike ride. And the goats. And two happy kittens. AND a glass in hand. (Oh, and a happy wife – despite being 100% failed by effing Hermes carriers – who “lost” the item she sold on e-bay. Yeah, right – stole it. And no compo under their T&C because it was second hand.)

    Have a spiffing evening.

    A demain/

    1. Hermes are a disaster. On several occasions the occupant of a thatched cottage in Stoke by Clare has delivered parcels to us in Ashen, a mile away, because Hermes are incompetent and I presume just dump stuff at the first thatched cottage they see on the main road.

      We have also suspected them of theft when an item ordered from John Lewis never arrived. We also had occasion to complain to Debenhams but believe that they now use a more reliable courier service.

      The Hermes delivery driver is required to post a picture of the property to which the item was delivered. This might help you to ascertain whether it was given to another property.

      1. I’ve found Hermes to be utterly reliable & compliant regarding delivery instructions. Perhaps you have a crooked driver.

        1. You may be right. I think my wife might have complained but unfortunately the damage is done. We no longer order online from John Lewis. That particular company (John Lewis) is in my opinion going down the tubes in any event owing to inept management.

        2. ‘Evening, Anne, many of whom are of Eastern European origin with the inbred thieving hormone. We used to see them arriving in Spain in very overladen vans and subsequently the thieving, burglary and minor crime figures soared, only to reduce again when they left in October. Coincidence, of course.

    2. Isn’t there some sort of “unfair terms and conditions act” that you could find a good lawyer to use to sue them?

      1. “Good lawyer”? Nah – lost me there.

        I did have a big hand in drafting the legislation – but it is useless if the company simply says “eff orf”. One then has to sue…takes months; cots a bomb (even the “small claims ct) and even if you win, company refuses to pay.

    3. Put in a complaint to the depot. They track their drivers. They know where they have been and at what time.

    3. Not withstanding the mine in Mongolia, responsible for massive still births, cancers and other illnesses.

      The Western Greens don’t care about that. As usual, it’s all about making *them* feel better. Stuff those they hurt.

      1. Moh and I visited the Tsitsikamma on the Garden Route , SA , and we saw signs near trees saying watch out for falling snakes and centipedes.

        Talking about centipedes , I don’t believe I saw an earwig or even a centipede this year and very few ladybirds! lots of people were commenting on that .

          3. Same here. The petroleum like smells of whatever they spray the fields with around here prohibited the usual field walks. Then the white dust of lime or whatever coated our vehicles. It is the same every year.

            We have seen clusters of native ladybirds on some plants. Our local honey bees were out in numbers on our open dahlias, cosmos, honeysuckle and winter honeysuckle, clematis cirrhosa, jasmine, hibiscus and sedum.

        3. Judging by the summer of ’76, ladybirds like dry weather perhaps. I think the ups and downs of insects and insectivorous birds are weather dependent. Not just current weather, but that of previous months and even years. A cumulative sort of effect.

        4. Lots of ladybirds in my garden – several are clustering in the lid of my green bin at the moment. Perhaps I’ve cornered the market!

    2. The most obvious chum is Baroness Dido Harding, appointed as head of Track & Trace with no competition and with a record of abject failure as in the Talk Talk security breach where thousands of subscriber details were hacked owing to lax and insecure systems.

      Already there are serious questions about the App she allegedly ‘designed’.

    3. In normal times these revelations would cause the collapse of the government. This is cronyism on a gargantuan scale.

      How will the thieves be brought to account or will it be yet another case of ‘a week is a long time in politics’ and that the scandal will be swept under the carpet in double-quick time.

  77. Britain’s ‘worst paedophile’ Richard Huckle was strangled with a cable, stabbed in the brain with a pen and sexually assaulted by fellow prisoner who wanted him to ‘feel what all those children felt’ as he killed him, court hears. Dreary Mail.

    Richard Huckle was found dead in his cell at HMP Full Sutton, East Yorks, in 2019. Depraved paedophile was serving 22 life sentences for abusing nearly 200 kids
    Hull Crown Court heard he was strangled to death and raped by a fellow inmate. Prosecutors claim Paul Fitzgerald wanted Huckle to ‘feel what those children felt’
    Fitzgerald, 30, is on trial for killing former teacher Huckle, from Ashford, Kent.
    A court today heard Fitzgerald, himself a sexual offender, strangled Huckle, 33, forced a pen up his nose into his brain and sexually assaulted him with a kitchen utensil.

    Something to write home about?

      1. I don’t think so, Peddy. People standing up for what they believe and their values. It isn’t easy to do that. With the best will in the world, all the benefits of the doubt, there is something very strange going on with the relationship between the state and the people. Fascism is entering the lexicon of the people once again.

        1. The father of one of our German friends (who died a few years ago) was enlisted in the German Army.

          He described himself as being very lucky because when enlisting the recruits formed a line and were processed on the A-B principle. The A’s were sent to the Eastern Front and the B’s fought on the Western Front. He was a B and captured early on. He spent most of the war in Scotland being happily interned, well fed and able to listen to Mendelssohn.

          He inculcated in his four children a need to avoid confrontation and to love Britain and he despised the Nazis. I suspect many of the German children, now of my age, feel the same way. They have a good standard of living and have a work ethic. They abhor Merkel’s invitation to the third world to invade their country and have shown remarkable tolerance in trying to accept the hoards.

          However their tolerance is running a bit thin with the highly questionable lockdown policy of a discredited government led by the communist Merkel.

          The current generations of Germans are not stupid.

          1. One of my friends, now, alas, no longer with us, was German; he’d been sent to the Russian Front and was wounded at Stalingrad. He said it saved his life. He became a PoW, married an Englishwoman and stayed here, working and becoming a pillar of the community.

    2. So that is where Boris’s water cannon ended up. Mind you they look a bit smart compared with the crap we are used to in this nigh on third world country of ours.

      I have dear friends in Berlin and will ask for their take on this. Perhaps the Germans have some sort of collective memory of how their country was previously ruined by a dictatorial mad man and do not wish to see a repeat.

  79. Builder, 51, who died after falling from a 10ft ladder was actually killed by coronavirus, doctors say D Fail

    The man, who has not been named, suffered lacerations to his forehead and bruises to his face, elbow and left hand after he fell into the yard of an under construction family home. A test for coronavirus was then carried out, as required by local medical guidelines, and came back positive.

    The scientists said the evidence ‘unequivocally’ led to Covid-19 being to blame for the death.

    Ladders are much more dangerous than you think.

    1. That is Covid labelled as opposed to caused by Covid. It is part of the subterfuge and most folk have worked it out because we are not all stupid and gullible as the politicos believe.

        2. I think it is called ‘cellulite’ – ‘orange peel skin’. It is fat breaking through the inner structures of the skin that gives the dimpled effect.

          1. Yup. I showed the image to my wife who confirmed your diagnosis. She reminded me that when we lived in London I asked her what those dimples were on the thighs of the faux opera singer Lesley Garret who had appeared photographed semi-naked in the Evening Standard, forty years or more ago: she stated ‘cellulite’.

    1. The government knows it cannot stop people gathering for Christmas, so is looking for a face-saving way of backing down.

      1. I can’t believe they have the brass nerve to try the “each one day of freedom must be paid for with two days of lockdown” line on the public! (DM this evening)

          3. I’m very slow this morning. Collected my son from work at 11 pm last night. Faced down overworked daughter’s homework crisis, slept about midnight. Woken up at 5:30 am by other son creeping very quietly out to go to work. Got to go to work myself soon, brain is mush, but I can’t take any more time off. 🙁

        2. I thought I saw five days of lockdown somewhere for each day spent with family. This is all seeming so surreal now. How dare they tell us whom we can spend Christmas with, and who not! How very dare they!!

          1. They do not see you and me but the countless millions in personal wealth they have been promised by Soros, Gates and Co. for implementing their globalist policies formulated by a certifiably mad Nazi at Davos. Follow the money.

          2. They do not see you and me but the countless millions in personal wealth they have been promised by Soros, Gates and Co. for implementing their globalist policies formulated by a certifiably mad Nazi at Davos. Follow the money.

        3. They have the brass nerve for anything; they think we are sheep. Unfortunately, so many people are – I saw a woman, alone in her car, wearing a mask. Why? Who is going to infect her?

          1. She may have just forgotten to take the stupid thing off. But it’s dangerous to drive in them – lack of oxygen, slipping into your eyes, fogged up glasses etc.

          2. There must be a lot of women (and the ones I’ve seen have all been women) who forget to take their masks off, then.

          3. You’re probably right! I have seen more than one jogger and cyclist wearing them too. Nutters!

          4. I spot them walking down the street, alone and well away from anyone (sometimes in the middle of the road!) and they’re wearing a mask. They aren’t all women, either.

        4. I don’t think people will take any notice by then. It’s all too ridiculous for words. Why should we take anything these charlatans say without a large dose of salt?

    2. Could come in useful as an excuse for certain relations, not that we have many still on speaking terms.

    1. The disgust and contempt I feel for politicians who not only pocketed a £10,000 bonus but also gave themselves a pay rise while those of us running our own businesses are on the verge of bankruptcy is almost beyond measure.

      Has any MP refused to take the £10,000 and taken a significant pay cut? If not, why not?

  84. 326522+ up ticks,
    breitbart,

    Shock Poll: Majority of Conservatives Support Mandatory Vaccines in the UK

    Ah well, in the party first manner we will just have to bend the knee and submit cannot jeopardise the keys to number ten.

    1. I simply do not believe the polls. You have an almost perfect example of the inaccuracy and biased slant of mainstream polls in America where Trump won by a landslide as will be proven eventually.

      1. 326522+ up ticks,
        Evening C,
        I do agree on the American front,
        by the same token on the UK front I cannot believe the repeated, time & again dangerous stupidity of the UK voter, supporting an odious political regime again & again decade after decade.

  85. Anosognosia

    Very interesting…

    In the following analysis, the French Professor Bruno Dubois Director of the Institute of Memory and Alzheimer’s Disease (IMMA) at La Pitié-Salpêtrière, Paris Hospitals, addresses the subject in a rather reassuring way:

    “If anyone is aware of his memory problems, he does not have Alzheimer’s.”

    1. I forget the names of families
    2. I do not remember where I put some things

    It often happens in people 60 years and older that they complain that they lack memory. “The information is always in the brain, it is the “processor” that is lacking.”

    This is “Anosognosia” or temporary forgetfulness.

    Half of people 60 and older have some symptoms that are due to age rather than disease.
    The most common cases are:
    – forgetting the name of a person,
    – going to a room in the house and not remembering why we were going there,
    – a blank memory for a movie title or actor, an actress,
    – a waste of time searching where we left our glasses or keys …
    After 60 years most people have such a difficulty, which indicates that it is not a disease but rather a characteristic due to the passage of years …

    Many people are concerned about these oversights hence the importance of the following statement:
    “Those who are conscious of being forgetful have no serious problem of memory.”
    “Those who suffer from a memory illness or Alzheimer’s, are not aware of what is happening.”

    Professor Bruno Dubois, Director of IMMA, reassures the majority of people concerned about their oversights:

    “The more we complain about memory loss, the less likely we are to suffer from memory sickness.”

    Now for a little neurological test:
    Only use your eyes!

    1- Find the C in the table below!

    OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
    OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
    OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
    OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
    OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
    OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
    OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOCOOOOOOOOOOO
    OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
    OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
    OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
    OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

    2- If you have already found the C, then find the 6 in the table below.

    99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999
    99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999
    99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999
    69999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999
    99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999
    99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999

    3- Now find the N in the table below.
    Attention, it’s a little more difficult!

    MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMNMM
    MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
    MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
    MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
    MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

    If you pass these three tests without problem:
    – you can cancel your annual visit to the neurologist.
    – your brain is in perfect shape!
    – you are far from having any relationship with Alzheimer’s.

    So, share this with your friends, it might reassure them!

    I found all 3 within seconds.

    3. The prof’s got dodgy grammar though, ” a blank memory for a movie title or actor, an actress,”

      1. I think he can be excused on the basis that English is not his native language. it would have been better if he had used a ‘/’ instead of a comma.

        1. Another fail for him, a PC fail. Actress is not in the dictionary anymore, except as an abusive term.

    5. Regrettably when you are old you do not get to self diagnose. Some young doctor told my late father in law that he had dementia. After the prat had left the house I asked my father in law whether he could recall his National Service number, he could. I then asked whether he recalled the name of the captain of his MTB (Motor Torpedo Boat) which outsmarted several S Boats in the channel, he said the captain was Lewis and this checked with an article about the skirmish in the national press. I then asked him for the name of the fleet minesweeper he had served on as a radiographer and he replied HMS Pique.

      My late father in law did not have dementia but rather loss of memory in those areas which his brain did not consider important enough to recall.

        2. Yup. I think much the same but this should not consign thinking and cognitive individuals to the medical dustbin. Come to that I sometimes forget what I did yesterday, not helped I admit by these silly Covid lockdowns.

          Maybe that is part of the great reset plan. We all suffer from clinically diagnosed dementia and need to be put down to save the effing planet.

          1. My father died aged 94, but he still spoke fluent French & passable German & could recite the American presidents in order & their wives, the order of each United State’s joining the Union, its capitol & native flower. But sometimes his day to day thinking was a little ‘abstruse’.

          3. Between you & me, it’s all a front. I’m on a roll tonight because this afternoon I got rid of a problem.

          7. I’ve been somewhat distracted for the last few days so I haven’t done much cooking; just TV dinners. Same with my Swedish homework, which I did at the very last minute (& came top of the class).

      2. Sounds as if your FiL was OK, as was my father in his last years. I think dementia has more to do with dealing with the here & now, rather than the past.

    6. So did I. I’m not so sure about dementia patients not knowing they have memory loss; MOH frequently complains about not being able to remember things, yet has been diagnosed with dementia. Perhaps Alzheimer’s is different.

        1. No – but I can cope with those. I could never do those pictorial things Plum used to find – those ones where your eyes cross when you’re trying to make sense of them.

    8. I found all three within a few seconds but since the age of about 12 I suffered from all the cases of Anosog… what was it?

  87. Fragrance
    Could sniffing Jennifer Aniston or Harry Styles be the answer to your insomnia? Guardian
    A lingerie company has come up with a selection of celebrity ‘pillow mists’ – fragrances it claims will help you fall asleep to the scent of sexy famous people

    The chief tester is indisposed at the moment but will resume his duties as soon as he gets through his current stint at the US Boys and Girls Biden Scouting Camp.

      1. Biden’s son is under investigation and those dirty dealings in Ukraine were fuelled by Creepy Joe when Vice President to the corrupt Obama administration.

        I simply do not believe that most Americans remain unaware of this criminality. Trump will have won by a mile. The vote counting is obviously corrupt.

    3. Are we talking about the fragrances they use or their pheromones? The difference is not very subtle.

  88. Evening, all. Never mind looking after someone with Covid, try looking after someone with dementia 🙁

    1. I’ve experienced my missus’ mother who had it and I can’t imagine what it would be like looking after your partner. Have another glass. Don’t have any other advice, sorry.

      1. Another glass? Don’t you mean another bottle? 🙂 I’ve drunk a bottle of Shiraz since I got in. I didn’t have time to put the shopping away before I was expected to “find Windows 10” (it wasn’t lost, MOH had just pressed just about every button and had at least 20 pages of the same website running). I sorted it, as I thought, and tried to cook myself something, only to have MOH return, claiming “I’ve lost Windows 10” again. When I looked, I found exactly the same scenario as I had just sorted 🙁 That’s when I opened the bottle. Computers are not my thing, I’d not eaten lunch, so I was really hungry, and I hadn’t even had time to get out of my riding kit.

        1. I’m glad you can come here and unload some of it. I hope it helps. At least you were able to go for your ride.

          1. Yes, thankfully. The trouble is, my state of mental health is up and down; up when I’m away from home and down as soon as I come back!

          2. That’s not surprising. I really don’t know how you cope. When OH’s mother had dementia, his father looked after her for years. He escaped sometimes, but he had a rota of neighbours to sit with her while he went to the library, or wherever. You seem to be entirely on your own. She eventually went into a nursing home, on the advice of the mental health nurse who used to visit, but it all took years off his life. He never lost the feeling of guilt, either, that he had failed her.

          7. Look for a good local nursing home. Somewhere close that you can see her regularly, and let you have a life.

          8. Ah, it’s that guilt thing again. While I can cope, I feel I ought to. We’ve been married 41 years.

          10. My first in laws were married more than 50 years, but eventually she needed nursing care, though she was physically disabled, rather than demented. He was able to walk down the road each day to see her. But although he lived another couple of years, he never got over the grief.

          11. When it gets too bad, I will have to go down that route, but at the moment, I’d rather not. I’d feel really guilty.

          12. It strikes me that you are doing all you reasonably can, so you have nothing to feel guilty about.

          13. That’s quite understandable. But you must also consider your own mental health. Do you have any support for yourself? I know J’s father found Caroline, the CPN, good company. He also had piano lessons so he had some contact with other people.

          14. My riding is my lifeline. I have a friend come in once a week usually, to help out, but she’s sidelined this week following a fall when she was gardening. Hopefully, we’ll be back to normal next week.

          15. When a teenager I hated living at home. I would have nightmares and realised that I had to do everything to escape my childhood inhibitions and desire to be free of them.

            I got away and never really looked back. I paid for the funerals of my father and mother and subsequently for the funerals of my two elder sisters.

            I have set aside sufficient funds to pay for the funerals of my eldest and youngest brothers. Otherwise they would receive the basic local authority disposal, both being utterly incompetent in matters of the world. I am quite sure that I am not alone.

            My family as a whole are the result of socialism where reliance on the state supercedes individual responsibility.

          16. Precisely. I have received so much comfort from fellow Nottlers in recent months concerning my dog Sinbad, who, by the way, has rediscovered an appetite following a change in his medication, early days still. Fingers crossed.

          1. He was really good today; we worked on engagement (getting him to use his back end, basically). He did a really good canter transition at the end (it’s always good to finish on a good note) and it was really jumpy and together. Thanks to the government and their idiotic restrictions, I’m ostensibly working towards my BHS Stage III exam. I have noticed, I’ve had to work a lot harder since I started the syllabus!

        3. You have our sincere sympathies. We were able to buy in carers which removed some of the burden but it took a great toll on my wife who wished to keep her parents in their own home as opposed to placing them in a care home.

          My wife spent three days each week living in her family home and simply keeping an eye on the carers and allowing the carers free time to go into Cambridge. This actually saved us a small fortune because the carers were entitled to £30.00 per hour for two hours each day that there was no ‘cover’. Needless to say the care company ‘cover’ cost even more than the live in carer on an hourly rate.

          Edit: I sometimes wonder what has happened to our care system. Nowadays you might be admitted to a care home because your family claim they are unable to afford your care whilst others are obliged to fork out relatively large sums of money to privateers who are mostly intent on employing cheap Eastern European care workers and making vast sums in profits.

          Those who pay from their own funds are
          effectively subsidising those who claim to be unable to pay. The latter still have Range Rovers parked on the hard standings (which were once the pretty gardens) of the council houses they were enabled to purchase for a snip.

          Edit: I suppose this is socialism in real time. It never went away.

          1. I am loath to go the carers route because a) MOH is very suspicious of strangers (even worse now!) and b) I don’t really want strangers in my home. I have a friend who will come in once a week, but she hasn’t been able to this week because she had a fall while gardening and can’t drive.

          3. Yes. I leave a note to say where I’ve gone and that seems to be okay. As long as we establish a routine we seem to be able to work with it; it’s Wednesday, so I must be riding.

          6. Probably a wise decision. The carers we had to deal with were a nightmare. One I recall arrived with several enormous suitcases which probably contained her worldly possessions and then ensconced herself as mistress of the house.

            She was obviously more interested in the free accommodation and facilities and ability to milk us for her special dietary needs, for which under contract we were obliged to obtain the desired food and pay for it.

            The care system remains rotten to the core.

          8. Hah, I only know it’s Wednesday today because it’s rubbish day and tomorrow it’s shopping day.

          9. That is the crux of the matter really, putting your wife into a strange environment. It wouldn’t be easy, but I’m sure a good care home could make that a gradual process. Make some local enquiries and visit a few places. Good luck.

          10. ‘Morning, Corri, Winston Churchill had it just about right when he said, “Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the gospel of envy, its only virtue being the equal sharing of misery”.

    3. Usual helpful advice from others when facing my own impending dementia is “look after yourself”. That makes it all all right. Dementia unseen doesn’t count.

      I saw the results of “self-help” last year when I went to Cardiff to track down the founder and only administrator of a Facebook fan club group who had gone missing. A year older than me, he lived on his own, but went down with severe dementia. When I arrived at his last known address, I saw a ‘for sale’ board up and the garden neglected. The neighbour said he’d been taken away by Social Services. I found him in a home eventually in a pretty bad way. All his worldly possessions other than a certificate on the wall and a photograph of his parents had been thrown in a skip when they cleared out his home. Occasionally there would be a connection in his brain that told him who he was, but mostly he was a staring invalid.

      For me, it was like looking at Christmas Yet to Come. but without the humbugs. There must be a better way to die.

      1. That’s pretty hard stuff. It’s at times like this that one realises how helpless modern medicine is.

  90. Uff-Da

    “We have been so hopelessly dehumanized that for today’s modest ration

    of food we are willing to abandon all our principles, our souls, and

    all the efforts of our predecessors and all opportunities for our

    descendants—but just don’t disturb our fragile existence. We lack

    staunchness, pride and enthusiasm. We don’t even fear universal nuclear

    death, and we don’t fear a third world war. We have already taken refuge

    in the crevices. We just fear acts of civil courage.

    We fear only to lag behind the herd and to take a step alone-and

    suddenly find ourselves without white bread, without heating gas and

    without a Moscow registration.”

    Live Not By Lies

    Alexander Solzhenitsyn

    Rest here

    https://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles/SolhenitsynLies.php

    With a brutal ending

    “And if we get cold feet, even taking this step, then we are worthless
    and hopeless, and the scorn of Pushkin should be directed to us:

    Why should cattle have the gifts of freedom?

    Their heritage from generation to generation is the belled yoke and the lash.”
    Not looking promising is it…………….

        1. I agree, but food, schools and advisor suggest a link.

          The cartoons are not very good in my view, neither close enough nor suffiently grotesque as likenesses.
          It looks even less like another possible alternative, Cain

          1. If it looks like anyone, it looks like May’s advisor, Oily Whats’isname, but he’s long gone.

      2. Apparently it is Wilbur Brown. Wilbur is Walter the Softy’s father. He is currently the mayor of Beanotown and the president of WilburCorp. And he serves as the secondary antagonist in Dennis the Menace and Gnasher comics. Like his son, is ambitious and wants to get rid of all the fun.
        In 2017, he became headteacher of Bash Street School, with the intention of brainwashing the children to obey him. He is also the nemesis of Dennis Menace Sr.

        Of course, everyone should have known that. (Perhaps it is meant to represent Williamson – but the writers are shít scared of saying so directly).

        2. Thanks,
          So much for a logical approach to it being a political cartoon..

          Presumably one would have to have children or grandchildren of Beano reading age to have known that one.

  93. When Cummings said to Boris, “Go Out And Socket To Them”, he didn’t mean with electric charging points.

  94. https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/5-things-barack-obama-had-to-say-about-the-uk-in-his-new-memoir/ar-BB1b7XmW?ocid=msedgntp

    Oh really WTF did it have to do with him ?
    One of highlights was the alleged Bin Laden kidnap and dumping the body of who every the look alike was at sea. Lost evidence of course.
    After Benazir Bhutto had latterly confirmed that Bin Laden had died a few years before at his hideaway in Afghanistan, she was murdered, being blown up in her government car !

      1. And why killary was wetting her pants at her efforts in over acting.
        And of course why the body was dumped at sea because the DNA didn’t match Bin Laden’s.

      2. And why killary was wetting her pants at her efforts in over acting.
        And of course why the body was dumped at sea because the DNA didn’t match Bin Laden’s.

      1. And wasn’t Brenda was brave putting her arm around Michael.
        Perhaps she was ‘testing the water’.

        1. … or the plants enormous… although I did get lost in a rhododendron once, when out orienteering. Took a short-cut through the thicket, couldn’t find my way out for ages… blasted plant was half the size of Leicestershire, so it was.

          2. Might nearly have been – in the same was as the brambles mentioned, that catch & kill sheep, to get the nutrients from the carcase… nearly had me :-((

      3. Do you eat meat? So does the plant. If all the centimetre long froglets survived we would have a more than biblical plague of them. Instead the majority of them go to nourish other organisms (birds, fish and plants) and things do their best to stay in balance.

        1. If you’d ever freed a sheep that’s got its self entangled in brambles, you might have some leaning towards the theory that brambles are carnivorous plants.
          The theory being that the plant has developed its thorns to hold onto animals that have become entangled so that they starve to death, thus enriching the soil for the plant to grow stronger.

          2. Have you seen them in time lapse photography? They are like a cross between plant and searching predator.

          3. Interesting. So are the delicious fruits to entice birds to spread the seed, or to lure animals as prey? Or perhaps both.

          4. I’ve freed several such sheep over the years – usually at the expense of quite a lot of skin (why is it one never has gloves in one’s pockets at the crucial moment).

            I’m not sure, though, that I would accept that brambles (or dog roses – and they have even more vicious thorns) are carnivorous… it’s a bit too far fetched

          5. It’s not a matter of the plants being carnivorous – they don’t eat flesh, but the sheep dies & rots and the break=down products enter the soil & nourish the plant.

          6. Yes, I know. But Bob put it forward as a claim that the plant is carnivorous – which is too far fetched for me to swallow.

            Thinking of some of the bramble thickets I’ve known (and left bits of myself behind from fighting my way through) only the plants at the edges would benefit. The ones in the middle would be too far away.

          7. I knew you know, but I had to say something for the laymen. But 2 things to bear in mind: 1) root systems spread far & wide, 2) when plants spread out the ones in the centre tend to die, while those on the perimeter of the cluster flourish. That is the essence of maintaining a perennial border.

          8. Brambles, like rhododendrons, seem to defy the principle of dying out in the centre – possibly because one plant can be what appears to be a large number but the whole thicket is interconnected. Brambles are rather good at rooting themselves down at intervals as they go along.

            We found rhododendron roots some 20 yards into a field (the plants themselves were outside the wall) when we set out to reseed it. The roots nearest to the wall were almost too much for the plough. After I moved here I spent several summers battling the raspberry shoots which came up all over my garden from canes at the further side of my neighbour’s garden.

            A friend of my sister bought an old house with a huge perennial border which had been neglected for a fair number of years. Most of what was in it needed to come out (though they kept a lot of small pieces to replant and preserved all the bulbs). I spent a few days one holiday helping with the clearing and they/we ended up taking up most of the lawn too – just to get rid of the roots which had “travelled” beyond the border.

          9. Brambles & nettles form runners like strawberries. My raspberries ‘travelled’ from one end of a 2m raised bed to the other, where the compost was acidic for blueberries.
            In Germany I had a species of hardy geranium which spread by runners, but I’ve not found any reference to it here.

          10. I knew they made runners, but I have discovered over the years that they also layer themselves… not only in the ground, but (like epiphytic orchids) they will anchor themselves in little pockets of dust in the angles of branches – all the better to grab you at eye level :-((

            There are so many geraniums (and enough hardy ones even to satisfy an Aberdeenshire gardener) that I wouldn’t know where to start – do you know its proper name? (I’m not an expert, but my mother has a considerable collection.)

          11. I used to have a big collection. The one in Germany was like a G. endressii in appearance.

          13. Firstborn has a blackberry plantation. The brambles have the worlds fiercest spikes, like a furry coat made of hypodermics… you get torn to bits just tying tem onto their netting!

      4. My thoughts exactly Belle.
        When watching David Attenborough films and animals get killed why doesn’t he save them instead of taking friggin’ pictures for the telly!

        2. Because if you save the gazelle then the cheetah cubs starve… or something similar. Life feeds on life, it must.

          2. Brilliant , I have travelled on similar airlines to that featured one , all with dreadful service … One a famous German airline, then Sabena , then 2 state African airlines ,, They are the worst ever airlines I have ever travelled on.

          3. I have flown Lufthansa 1st class several times & have found them to be very good. Ditto Lan Chile.

          4. The last time I flew with Lufthansa not only was the service excellent, but the steward offered my mother his arm to go down the steps at the end of the journey. We were not 1st class, just very ordinary passengers but we couldn’t have asked for better.

          8. So many people just do not want to understand reality, the let their heart rule their head. We have become far too soft.

        4. Worse than that, they often put animals in dangerous situations so they can film them It saves them hanging about for days waiting for a real event to take place.

          1. I remember when Attenborough & co. were filming Komodo Dragons years ago, they tethered goats to lure the giant lizards into view.

  97. Melanie Sykes, 50+, shares a passionate smooch with gondolier lover Riccardo Simionato, 23, following romantic boat ride as she returns to Venice weeks after THAT six-day fling. Dreary Mail

    Just one (large) cornetto – Give eet to me! Eets now or never – I’ve ad my tea! Tomorrow may bee to late – I’m very nearly feefty three!

    2. Interesting, especially the suggestion that the Nightingale Hospitals’ actual purpose is as mass vaccination clinics.

      The jigsaw is still missing a few pieces but is coming together nicely for Hancock and his medico chums.

  100. For anyone who wants to be depressed – I recommed Robert Harris’s latest novel, The Second Sleep.

    It is set in Britain 800 years into the future, after a “systemic collapse of technical civilisation” known as the Apocalypse.

    Into the void of the “Dark Age” steps a rejuvenated and dogmatic church, whose authoritarian rule and obsessive suppression of heretical “scientism” ensure that people live in brutal and backward conditions.

    I heard it on tape last back end – and thought it a touch far-fetched. Not any more.

    1. Cheers for that Bill 😉
      I’ll give that ago I’m reading Find Them Dead by Peter James It’s about a lawyer (on trial) from Sussex who smuggled drugs into the UK and ran county Lines. Phone tracking devices ……….they know where you go and how you are.
      And has back up bully boys who are not afraid of of a bit of intimidation and blood letting.

          2. I shan’t be reading the book, I don’t like the sound of it. His Roman novels are OK though.

          4. Tastes change as the years roll by. When I was a teenager I couldn’t enough Steinbeck. Now I find them trite & boring.

          5. Tastes do change but, having also read a lot of Steinbeck in my youth I would say it also has to do with the books themselves. I’m a dedicated re-reader, there’s almost always something that you find only on the second or subsequent reading, my favourite books tend to fall apart. But with Steinbeck there doesn’t seem to be a “deeper layer”, when you’ve read it you’ve got all the meat off the bones in one go (forgive the mixed metaphors) and there’s nothing left to find.

          6. Exacto. Some films are like that too. “Cabaret” I’ve seen many times in both English & German, but every time I find something new.

    2. Dear Geoff,
      With a sad feeling I am sorry to have to inform you that after yet another confrontation with ‘the school bully’ AKA the over pedantic effing Viking.
      I am resigning from Nottlers, you can read what I have written to him as a result of his churlishness and continuous banging on about grammatical errors, he seems to think it’s his duty to pick on me, it’s happened far too often and now I’ve had enough. I don’t need this at this stage in my life. I am 74 I’ve have worked for over 54 years of my life without any problems in this respect what so ever. Thank you so much for everything you have done for everybody else who seems to enjoy this forum and it’s good bye from me. 😒
      Cheers, good luck and thank you, all the best.
      Paul Edmond, Aka Ready Eddy Omargourd and Eh Calmdown

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